God Shopping

I was reading one of my favourite authors the other day, Don Miller. He's sort of like this pop theologist that says real casual things about life and existence. I was reading from his book "Searching For God Knows What" and he wrote this:

If I weren't a Christian and I kept seeing Christian leaders on television more concerned with money, fame, and power than with grace, love, and social justice. I wouldn't want to believe in God at all. I really wouldn't. The whole thing would make me want to walk away from religion altogether... [I would think],their God must be an idiot to see the world in such a one-sided way. The god who cares so much about getting rich must not have treasures stored up in heaven, and the god so concerned about getting even must not have very much patience, and the god who cares so much about the West must really hate the rest of the world, and that doesn't sound like a very good god to me. The televangelist can have him for all I care.

As much as I love my boy Don, I had to pull a pen and write in the top margin: It Doesn't Matter. It really doesn't. It's like we are all missing the concept of God. Is He not an all-powerful personality? If you believe there is a God, then it doesn't really matter what you think about Him. He's God. It isn't as if you could argue with him, and say "hey I don't like the way you operate." I mean I feel as if a lot of people are trying to tell God that his idea of goodness is a little off or that in order to be just he needs to change his methodology. It's like arguing with Dickens about the thesis of A Tale of Two Cities. "I should know, I wrote it," he would say.

If you ask me, we're lucky God is good. If he were not, it wouldn't matter a lick. You can't ignore God. You just can't. He is everything.

I was talking to my friend Barefoot Brian at Lee one day at lunch as we spooned our sherbert out of coffee cups. I like talking to Brian because he is really smart and isn't judgmental. We were talking about our problems with the Christian faith. He began to tell me why he decided he was an agnostic buddhist. He said he believed in God, but the way we claim kindred to that God is different for everyone. I told him that this way to paradise and higher knowledge is awfully convenient. I told him that for all we know it could be convenient, but it also could be, in our books, unjust, unfair, difficult, foolish, or evil. I told him I didn't think it was, but if God was God then it didn't really matter if I thought he was good or just. If goodness or justice existed, it was because a supreme being wired humans to attract it or repel it.

Once my friend Lila and I walked to the park as she smoked her cigar and we talked about a similar subject. We thought God might have favourites. I've never liked this notion, but it's not about what I like. It's about the truth.

If you believe in God, then you can't believe that he is something you can shop for. There is no off-brand God. There is only one. There is no, better buy, none more durable or longer lasting. There is no "as seen on T.V." God.

There's only God and He is who He says He is, and who He says He is, is good.

Ephesus

To the angel of the church of Ephesus write, To the angel of the church of Ephesus write, I know your works...your labor, your patience, and that you cannot bear those who are evil. And you have tested those who say they are apostles and are not, and have found them liars; and you have persevered and have patience, and have labored for My name's sake and have not become weary. Nevertheless I have this against you:
 That you have left your first love.
I have a friend at college and he really loves people, and by George, they love him right back. He is my social rival. I say this because I look at life like it's some elaborate movie with characters and that's where he fell into place. So I conjure this imaginary competition between us where we attempt to sequester the love of our friends one from the other. And he always wins. But the truth is he couldn't care less, and I think it's heaps of fun.

Somehow summer became, and with it the colors of my home were sucked from township Portrait. But other colours spewed, fell, and leaked into the little province and one of those colors was the summer residence of my social rival. I was in his room and I told him my story. I told him my sickness.

He knew. He knows.

"Do you remember what John the apostle told the church of Ephesus?"

Of course not, I haven't cracked a Bible in months.

But I found out. I read their mail.

Remember therefore from where you have fallen; repent and do the first works, or else I will come to you quickly and remove your lampstand from its place unless you repent.
I want to be good. I try to do good. I try to love people. I try to watch over them. I try to answer their prayers. I try to forgive them. I try to advise them. But I don't have a place to do any of this. I don't have a place for my head under their foot, much less a hand in their heart.

So what? So I did something good one time. People write me poems. Several people. I read a poem recently that was accurate for a change and so did my social rival. We know that underneath a composure that's sickeningly calm there is a broken, lost, confused, sorry (for everything), apathetic, and lonely man.

Call me Ephesus.

Ephesus was the mother church to the others.

I always put the kids to bed before I take up the bottle, and I always sober up before they wake.

We are all connected by the same Roman road. A load of nerved up, pagans puppeting, staggering, and knocking heads in the dark in search for a temple with a little light. I used to feel as if I should pray for people. Now I only feel like they should pray for me. Pray that I will find my first love. That I can believe. That I can love. 

He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches. To him who overcomes I will give to eat from the tree of life, which is in the midst of the Paradise of God.

Today Ephesus is in ruins, and its church is gone.

Goodbyes and One Times

(Do you think?)the
i do,world
is probably made
of roses & hello:

(of solongs and,ashes)

                                                              --e e cummings

It is amazing how it all comes flooding back.

Once I was sitting on my bed in my dorm room in college and some big athletic guy had some Asian with a panda hat on in a headlock and the song "We Are Young" by the indie pop band Fun was playing loudly in the room. I had Coca-Cola in my mouth and a Bible in my lap. Someone else was asleep in my floor and some guy I didn't know came in to brush his teeth. Someone outside was screaming Merry Christmas and my phone was ringing.

I thought to myself, In all my ponderings and imaginations, I never in a million years would have imagined this scene in my college experience.

Nothing actually happened the way it was supposed to. In all my composing, I could never have dreamt up such a song. It at once saddens me and thrills me.

So this is life.

And it grew up so fast.

There was never a dull moment. Everyday was a holiday and it was full of adventure, tragedy, and dragons to slay.

What you want to do is think back to each character and remember how you met them and how they changed you.

Life is full of goodbyes and one times. Goodbyes are sad, so are one times. They are memories. But there are no goodbyes without hellos and there are no one times without adventures. I think that's mostly why I'm obsessed with nostalgia and I revel in goodbyes.

I'm faced with the horror of fleeting youth for the first time.

Because tonight we are young, but tomorrow we are not. Anthems aren't something you cue, they are something that happens. They are the moments you sit in and feel and touch but can't keep. This is our story and we have a responsibility to it. It is what we make it.

The truth is, adventures happen to adventurous people. If you keep running away because you are bored or because you can't find experience where you are, then chances are you will never find it. Where you are is the best place. Where you are there are stories untold. It is up to you to tap into them. There are no such thing as dull moments unless we make it so. Everyday has the potential to be tucked away in the annals of the human endeavor. We are the children of God. The brave princes and princesses that are His supreme joy. We have a grail to find, but we aren't to find it with our head down.

Look up.

There's a tree there, climb it.

There's a cave there, explore it.

There's love there, pursue it.

There's a stone there, turn it.

There's life here

Take it.

Goodbyes and One Times are my very breath.

Story

I sit on benches sometimes and just watch. People walk and run and I wonder what they look like from way up high. Crawling all over the planet.

Sometimes all you can do is live in a moment. It sounds silly, but sometimes I sort of pray in the back of my mind that God would let me watch life all over again after it was finished, and that there was always some hidden camera with innate cinematography following me around, and at the end of all things I could watch the best movie ever.

Because everything is happening so fast. I can't keep up with it. Sometimes all you can do is live in a moment, and try to hold a pillow over philosophy's head so you can maintain some measure of practicality in your life. Sometimes all you can do with the beauty of a moment is just live in it. You can't write of it or paint it or photograph it. You're just helplessly falling through it with windy seconds flying up past you ticking your arms like gnats.

I got that feeling when I sat on a roof once. I looked out over the dark Aladdin-blue sky full of childhood glitter and heard a train stack by. And I let the puppy wind snap at my skin and lifted a bottle of Cola up with good cheer. All I could do was live.

But the worst of it is when I am with a soul. They are impossible to keep. Every second inside their mind is avalanching and stampeding and noise. Their hearts are like a thousand motley balloons looking like clown suits flying upwards and I can't catch one of them.

I so wish I could.

I look at them and every movement in their face or sound from their tongue is like old magic. I've known the best kind of people and when I watch them smoke cigars or write poetry or scream war cries I get chills. Because they are real and I get to be near them. I know the best people. That is my biggest blessing and what I'm most proud of. I am surrounded with greatness.

The problem is with time, or the passage thereof. We keep moving when I just want to stop. And nostalgia is like running backwards on a cursed conveyor belt.

I think of the places I've been and the places I've seen and that's what I want to keep doing. Keep meeting and loving and learning. And I want them all to know that they can be free, because I've been freed for good. And I want them to know that in His presence is fullness of joy and at his right hand are pleasure forevermore. And I need them to see that because the place where we are going to find unedited love is also a place where we will always be together and we will all love each other the same and time will be a laughable thing.

So I have to tell them. I have to listen to their stories for the rest of my life, and I have to tell them that we are all pilgrims and we all have to go seek the Kingdom and do anything we have to do to find it.

I was telling someone the other day that I don't have a story.

But that isn't true. I do have a story.

My story is everyone else's story.

I have to tell their stories. Even if it kills me.

Because in reading theirs, I can write mine.

Becoming Someone's Testimony

I used to hear songs and think to myself that maybe some divine memorandum was sent out to the great bards and musicians of our time and that they had written these anthems for me. Each word permeated through me, each note skied through my soul slopes stinging and soothing in due turn. But whatever protagonist the song was praising, whether he was a fallen hero or at the top of his game, that hero was always me. I just knew it.

I was the hero of every song I heard.

It is only recently that I have heard songs and known I was the villain. For the first time the hero was singing and telling of my misdeeds. Telling of my menace.

And that is a devil of a realization to come to.

So just what is it I've become? God is "the master of my fate [and] the captain of my soul." So what? What am I?

I believe I am a testimony.

It happens to everyone. It's never good. But, when we tell our testimony, many times there is someone else involved in the story. Many times there is a perpotrator. A villain. We never know their names. We just are told of their crimes. They just lay beaten and bruised in the alleyways of the story.

But the thing is, they are people and they are souls and they too have a story.

To rejoice in someone's testimony is correct. It is their triumph.

But anothers defeat. So we have a paradox

But maybe, maybe becoming someone's testimony is a testimony in itself

And even though we are singing along to our own judgment and humming our own dirge...

Maybe there is hope for us yet.

We are distorted harbingers of the grace of God. We did it the wrong way, but He isn't finished with us, and He will get to glory. It's not about what we want to be, it's about an inescapable past. And it's about how maybe, just maybe we can find an ending to the story to make the book worth finishing. The first stack of paper in my left hand is useless. Tear them out and hand them out as religious tracts. Learn from me. Learn from me.

We always think about our testimony.

But a greater triumph may come from the transformation from murderer to martyr.

At least that's what I'm hoping.

Stupid songs.