Brainwaves

We are only into the third week of this school year, but already it is proving to be the most challenging one I’ve ever encountered. Our unit has just one Fifth Grader, an autistic boy requiring individual attention, his academic achievement thus far not enough to survive on his own, two Fourth Graders, one of each gender, possessing a social relationship that’s a constant battle of accusations, and six Third Graders who are not yet completely potty-trained. One within that last group needs to be isolated, at least to some degree, or frequent attacks upon others is always a possibility; one other is so hyper he’s unable to sit still or focus on anything at all for more than a couple of seconds. Indeed, the whole crew has us stretched beyond any sense of manageable scheduling and our entire day is spent continually trying to hold together a format that keeps collapsing as we go……

I stood on the playground yesterday counting our charges, and by the time I could locate all, it was necessary to begin again. It is unbelievable to me just how quickly some can teleport themselves two or three hundred yards in the blink of an eye; and, to make matters worse, a fellow on a huge swiveling, riding mower was racing here and there around the fringes as if frantically searching for blades of grass. This area long ago turned brown, gave up the ghost, and died; but I suppose if your contract states “twice a month”, a man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do. As he repeatedly darted in and out of the building’s recesses, however, the image reminded me of those little white spooks that chased you around the old Pac-Man game. If you didn’t think fast, it was all over……

My pastor, last night, once again returned to the Book of Nehemiah, but somewhere in the initial stages of his message simply began speaking from his heart. He calls it “vision”; I see it more like a “hunger” birthed in his belly by the Holy Ghost, giving him an ever growing compassion for the community around us. You say “toe-may-toe” and I say “toe-mah-toe”, I suppose; but, to me, the former represents having at least an idea of what awaits you down the road. The latter is an on-going experience that proves itself as you follow that inner tug. As he shared with us his own history, the beginnings of our church and God-ordained incidents along the way, it seemed but appropriate of the circumstances. Life happens. Often rather chaotically. What helps is being “equipped” for the journey……

Our Sunday School lesson, this past weekend, was on “Imitating Christ” and was built around those verses in Philippians where it’s written that Jesus “humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even to death on a cross”. In tossing around that word “humility”, we all agreed that it had little to do with stooping to perform tasks that might be considered as being beneath our dignity; rather we saw it more, in Biblical terms, as surrendering of who we are unto all that He is. It’s a continual admission that we yet need His strength, and His wisdom, and His forgiveness on a daily basis that defines our character, not whether we’re willing to scrub somebody else’s toilet…..

The lesson ended with a couple of questions that we were left with little time to examine: (a) What season (the warmth of summer, the dead of winter, the newness of spring, or the changes of fall) are you experiencing in your spiritual life right now; and (2) What is one specific way you can imitate Christ’s humility during this coming week? To the first, my own reply would be amazement to the seeming fact we often are able to walk through all four within the framework of a single day! Indeed, we are creatures whose joy seems able to be fractured by the simplest of “tragedies”, whose excitement with novelty can quickly be turned into boredom, and whose peace, the older we get, can’t handle any alterations in what we have learned as rote. All the more reason, then, why the second poser, to my way of thinking, is erroneous in its demand. Forget next week. I don’t wish to traverse the next hour attempting to clone the risen Savior. Better that I find Him alive in me along the way. Is not that, after all, the truth that we, as believers, profess to possess?.....

Monday morning, at school, my charge was a few minutes late and I found myself talking with a woman whose husband walked out on a twenty-year marriage, leaving her with two teen-age daughters, a lot of questions, and worries about where to go from here. Their kids had been raised in a denominational faith that she, herself, had never personally accepted, and now she was looking, not so much for somewhere to anchor her soul, but a port where she might find a few friends to share the journey. We talked. Of church, of life, of a reality that perhaps she had not yet known in knowing Him. After all, if what we claim to believe is formed from no more than a doctrinal dogma designed to ensure we all fall down before the same totem, who, I wonder, has created whom?.....

Beth and I drove to a nearby park last night and visited that replica of the Viet Nam War memorial that tours the country. I’ve walked the length of the original in D.C. on several occasions, but have never done so that the tears in my eyes didn’t denote the ache inside. It was no different this time. Statistics show more than forty-seven thousand were killed in battle, but that figure continued to grow, another twelve thousand dying of wounds or later discovered not just “missing in action”. In reading that, though, our mind, for some reason, mostly just registers the number for what it is: a statistic. If each name is printed, however, five or six to a line, with only one line at either end of the wall, then increased by one line with each new panel until there are one hundred forty four panels, where the middle panel falls, the list will be one hundred and thirty-seven lines deep and, stretched end to end, the volume so great, there is little you can do as you pass by but shake your head and weep…..

I stood, once, before an interview board at the U.S. Army Language School in Monterey, California, having been ordered to represent the Navy in an award ceremony. Those who knew had forewarned me of questions to be asked, so when the officers inquired as to my view of such conflict, with my own rear end never even coming close to those waters, it was easy enough to proclaim how necessary it was to maintain a force in that part of the world. Then came the body count. Again and again and again. Along with the persistent internal nagging, wondering just what “defending your nation” really meant…..

If my source was correct, last night, there were “only” one hundred six Kentucky men who gave their lives in Viet Nam. Not quite eleven per year. No so bad if you consider the nature of their mission. Then you realize the third one down on the thirteenth panel was your neighbor’s son, the little boy who used to always knock on your door selling candy, the teenager who took your daughter to her senior prom; and suddenly the one becomes the whole eleven, the entire one hundred six, a wall four hundred sixty-three feet long, name after name after name extracting from your heart: “Why?”…..

Our pastor, in last Wednesday’s sermon, utilized Noah as an example of putting one’s faith into “taking the first step”, then ended the message with a different agenda entirely. Referring to that point in the story where the old man’s two sons back themselves into his tent in an attempt to throw a blanket over his nakedness, he spoke of seeing a need for the Church at large to “cover up” the humanity yet existing in our authoritative leaders. What he actually meant was “giving grace”, or allowing “space”, for people to stumble as they go. I agree; but, at the same time, expect honest accountability from those to whom such liberty is given, be it our ecclesiastical shepherds or our elected political officials…..

There are just too many thoughts rolling around in my brain at the moment: Monday evening’s conversation at Longhorn’s with a couple who yet attend our old assembly, Wednesday night’s conclusion to a mid-week message delivered by our pastor, and a rather questionable event we witnessed at school Tuesday afternoon. I kid you not. We were loading our elementary kids on their bus, doing our best to comply with the President’s policy of “No Child Left Behind”, and suddenly our eyes found it hard to believe the image that passed before us. Slowly weaving his way around the loop, seemingly unaware of all those big yellow buses double-parked there, an elderly gentleman, wearing nothing but a painter’s cap, gym shoes, and swimming trunks, rode his bicycle as if he had lost the rest of the marathon and could care less. While his physique let you know such exercise was part of his daily routine, his white hair, nonetheless, betrayed his age and his passing through at that time verified his complete lack of common sense…..

What that has to do with my two friends who shared dinner with us is debatable. The husband suffers with a mild form of MS, is on a disability, and the “home-keeper” of the two. She holds down a job, but is also an ordained minister who is often invited to preach at area churches and seldom utilized within her own congregation. When fire destroyed their house at the beginning of summer, consuming all their personal possessions, one was left to wonder where any sense could be found in such tragedy; so it was good to find their faith still strong and enthusiasm in their hearts concerning plans to finally invest themselves into missions full-time. Theologize all you want. This has been long in coming, the door has opened, and while there’s no way to replace that which was lost, it is evident to me that their journey is held in His hands…..

Consider, then, the message brought forth making Noah the poster boy for taking the “first” step rather than the “next” one. It sounds innocent enough and well intended, no doubt, as the members were encouraged to involve themselves in the various outreach programs that were but recently birthed into their shepherd’s spirit. That initial adjective, however, suggests, or so it seems to me, an expectation of Christ to follow the believer, while the second says: when my foot hits the ground, I want to find Him with me in whatever progress has been made; and, if not, then let me correct my position in terms of just how far off course I am. To me, it’s like a game of Marco Polo except, always, it is I who must determine His voice, not the other way around. If I open my eyes to discover myself half-naked and navigating in circles where I have no real purpose to where I’m going, let me at least find His help nearby in making the best exit possible…..

“And yet, to be honest, we must say that there are times when we have not heard Him any more than we have seen Him. There are times when we have heard the Bible, the Gospels themselves, ring like a cracked bell, when we have heard truth itself go sour, indeed banal and ambiguous, have listened to our own lives and heard mostly confusion and emptiness. Instead of hearing God, there have been times when we have heard only a God-forsaken silence; and, for many of us, these are the times we know best.”…Frederick Buechner

My Sunday sermon, yesterday morning, was delivered from a small, bass-fishing vessel; and, no, I wasn’t at the lake. My sister was in town for the weekend. Therefore I agreed to attend worship services with her and her son again at that huge amphitheater in Cincinnati that was formerly an old HBQ business facility. The minister was dressed in blue jeans and flip-flops, the prop was positioned center-stage substituting for a pulpit, and at one point he cast his line (no hooks attached) into the congregation. One might assume his topic to have been “Evangelizing the Lost”. Not so. His words were part of a series being served and this particular segment was meant to drive home the idea that we are all in the same boat. Your spiritual longevity, in no way, doesn’t extinguish your seeking truth as you go, wrestling with that “veil of flesh” spoken of in Hebrews. “Faith was not in making miracles”, he said, “but in simply taking the next step, believing in the road already traveled”; and he painted us a picture by citing examples in his own life. No conquering warrior, he. More like a man humbled by continually looking back at God’s presence manifested and hearing Christ ask of him: “How is it that you do not understand?”…..

My initial paragraph is taken from Buechner’s thoughts on love and can be found in his book “Secrets in the Dark”. He begins that chapter with two portions of Scripture, the first, an exhortation in Deuteronomy for Israel to embrace the Creator so strongly and so deeply that the commitment thereof becomes a part of who they are as individuals; the second, the desperate cry of Jesus from the Cross inquiring of His Father why He had been abandoned in such hour, giving us reason to suspect that even He had His own walk in the wilderness. Relationship doesn’t mean we’ve been given all the answers; only that, within the limits we, ourselves establish, there can be developed a trust that spans the gap, a bond enabling us to endure that which we don’t understand and push on. Into each life its own burning bush, its own Mt. Sinai, indeed its own Gethsemane and its own resurrection, again and again. What Christianity extends unto us is not a theology to be set into concrete, but a Reality giving us strength for the journey. The mystery around us and before us has not been dismissed, but He does illuminate the path for us to follow. It matters not that we stumble, as long as we are willing to carry our own cross…..

Saturday morning. Early. And the first real chance I’ve had all week to just sit down in the quiet for any real length of time and gather my thoughts. Stretched out in the recliner with a good book, a hot cup of coffee, and two breakfast bars, I once again find it funny how the Shitzu runs over to beg for crumbs as if it is starving to death, but then always hesitates to receive my offering, sniffing and savoring it before delicately taking it into his mouth. Surely, rather than acting out of hunger, he dines via some mental process, turning oats and honey, perhaps, into chicken ala king…

With the chaotic hustle and bustle of settling into the changes that the first four days of this new school year has brought into my existence, my own mind is wrapped around the Biblical verse suggesting that as a man “thinketh in his heart”, so he is. Descartes tried to tell us all that we “are” only because we ideate we “are”; but I find a world of difference between self-creation and determining who we will be in spite of what is. Life happens. What we allow it to produce in us is a matter of reflection and option, becoming whom we choose to be, based upon our perception of truth…

Buechner, in the sermon I’m currently reading, states that believers live so much on the outer surface and seeming of their lives and their faith that they lose touch with the deep places that both items come from. I agree. Rather than operate out of an inner connection renewed through Christ, we tend to return to old habits, walking by our own reasoning of Scripture, trusting in our own cranial capabilities instead of resting in the Reality of who He is within us. We demand assurance, but seldom stop at the well from which it flows; and, when the storm appears, we have little other than ourself with which to meet it…

At one point it looked as if there could possibly be seven of us participating in ministry at the rescue mission this time around. So when Bob called to tell me important matters would force him to be elsewhere, I wasn’t all that concerned. Even Tony’s sudden call for grace a few days later was no big deal. The dominoes, however, continued to fall and, eventually, I found myself, last night, standing before a group of about thirty men and leading Wednesday’s evening service all by myself…

There was no fear in taking the task. I’ve been in such position before. It is not, though, a situation I relish all that much. For me, worship is about feeling the wind, catching the flow, relaxing in the Holy Ghost and letting Him direct traffic. Indeed, I’ve found living water to be contagious, in the sense of being “communicable by contact”, truly unifying the Body if only for the moment; and, therefore, whether the manifestation originates in me or the guy sitting next to me is not important…

There’s close to two feet between a man’s mind and his “belly”. If given liberty to join forces with that which comes up out of the latter, heaven and earth can be connected in an experience given us in Christ. Busy my thoughts with the mechanics of stitching the program together and that’s what is produced: a program. In other words, if I’m going to find the Spirit in me, I can’t be occupied with trying to produce the same experience in you. I can only share Him as He lives through me…

Each year I continue working as a Special Ed assistant within the public school system, I only gain that much more respect for our teachers, in general. Kentucky’s educational program is ranked, nationwide, somewhere in the bottom ten; but I have no explanation as to why that is so unless having your staff swimming in a sea of extended duties is the culprit. My image of such a career, before actually entering into joint efforts with these professionals, was merely walking into a classroom full of students and then instructing them in whatever subject it was that they needed to learn. Not so. Always there are new methods to be introduced, format to follow, legislation from higher authority. You may be permitted a certain degree of freedom allowing you to retain your own identity in the presenting of the material, but you are nonetheless bound as to what you teach and how you teach it. Throw in an abundance of reports to return, committees to chair, and daily accounting of progress all on top of keeping some sort of “plan” for each day’s journey. The job never ends. Eight to four is a fantasy. Summer “break” only means you and the kids are separated for awhile, the routine is broken, but the requirements remain. It may be a chance to “get away”, but it certainly isn’t a three month vacation. God bless those who so give their lives for our children….

Our school calendar sprang forward this year and students will "enjoy" their return to academics today. In an attempt to be prepared for such beginning, staff always meets a few days prior to such event and receive instructional briefing from the principal. Summer break doesn't accomodate a means of stays informed as to executive decisions made during that period; and thus it was that both my Special Ed supervisor and myself were blind-sided last Friday to suddenly learn of my transferal from her unit to another. When the smoke settled about forty-five minutes later, the change was cancelled. I was back in a classroom, now more than ever, under-manned to handle the volume of non-toilet-trained, emotional challenges assigned to us; and, in truth, there would have been much less stress involved had I retained the other position. Then, again, the reason I enlisted for this venture half a decade ago was to offer my services where needed, not to sail through my retirement on a self-centered pleasure cruise...

I type this at six-thirty in the morning. The grandkids are not yet out of bed. In a few minutes it all begins again. New faces. New fun. Another nine months of life! Bring it on...

They buzz you through the front entrance into a lobby where, eventually, a guard will appear to escort you through a second secured door. Now, safely sealed inside a small ante-chamber, you wait for the third passageway to be opened, allowing you to step inside what serves as a miniature gymnasium. There are usually as many as fifty teenagers seated within such space. Each is dressed in either a gray or an orange sweat-suit, depending on their residential status, and all are waiting to receive your offering. You’re permitted your own Bible and perhaps a soundtrack, but the musical equipment has been broken the last few visits so you had better be prepared to sing a cappella if you’re musically inclined….

Sixty minutes. That’s what you get to convince these kids that the Gospel can change their life; and on the drive over this morning I asked the others what Jesus would do if He walked with us into that Detention Center with us. All agreed His approach would not be to deliver some three-point sermon via chapter and verse. No; He’d simply sit down in the middle of them and begin to inquire of their homes, their hearts, and their histories, feeding them hope and assuring them of His Father’s love as the hour progressed. The system, however, doesn’t extend us such option, seeing the Book, I suppose, as being singular in its message, indeed a magic formula regardless who preaches it. One size fits all.…

Beth and I sat this evening in conversation with one of the supervisors down at Bob Evans. Mother of two, divorced, daughter of parents whose marriage also didn’t survive, clearly in need of a more solid relationship with Christ. It would have been easy to point out such fact, but it was my ear and my heart she wanted at the moment, not my theology. People see right through all our bumper stickers and religious onslaught. They have no problem detecting the difference between our ego and His reality. One offends; the other ministers. Jesus, Himself, noted that the testimony of men doesn’t amount to much. A surrendered vessel, though, can serve as a channel for all that He is and, in such flow, find life….

My latest literary purchase was a book of Frederick Buechner’s sermons and, in one, he theorizes man’s reaction should God ever decide to reveal Himself by rearranging the Milky Way and spelling out his actuality in “black and white”. While he foresaw initial reverence and fear regarding such a heavenly announcement, his final analysis predicted the novelty to eventually wear thin and, at that point, someone, somewhere, would surely look up to declare “So what!” As to how that could happen, the author noted: “It is not objective proof of His existence that we want, but (whether we use religious language for it or not) the experience of His presence”…

I agree; and yet, in recognizing the latter to be the ultimate realization of the first, and in believing that it is exactly such “proof” that Jesus brings unto us through the Cross, I also find that we, as a conglomerate ecclesiastical body, have complicated the whole affair, reducing truth to doctrinal dogma and definitions. We have no need to hear His voice in our ear, for we have replaced Reality with our interpretation of the Word and the Spiritual with our own “song and dance”, finding it easier to create Him as we go, than to simply face Him in the nakedness of our humanity. Nothing personal. It’s just who we seem to be. A flaw, I suppose, in the original design…

In the Gospel of John, Jesus lists one of the duties of the Holy Ghost to be reproving the world of sin “because they believe not on me”, having just declared, a few verses earlier, that if He had not come and spoken unto them, they “had not had sin”. To me, it’s clear enough that the state of our soul is contingent to how well we hear and obey the Voice of God and the journey amounts to more than merely following our version of the Book. At best, it is a staggered stumble down the straight path and balanced by an attempted surrender to the Holy Ghost. Mercy is not a certificate issued to us upon conversion, but an assurance we can discover on a daily basis. Grace is an Entity, not just five letters of the alphabet…

“We desire to establish a place of forgiveness and restoration rather than judgment and condemnation. Our desire is to develop a fellowship of ministers who will stand one with another during a time of failure, exhaustion, discouragement, accusation, or any other area of concern that could lead to the destruction of the minister and his or her family. Decision for restoration is not based upon innocence or guilt. Our stand is based on our love for God, His Word, and our love for those who have given their lives for the sake of building God’s kingdom.”…..mission statement based on Galatians 6:1-3

When three different pastors in the Pensacola area were recently publicly exposed, having been either caught in an act of adultery or found in possession of drugs, my friend began to approach other churches with the hope of seeing the above come to pass. Having survived false attack brought against him some years ago, he well knows the price demanded by the “righteous”. If no more than hint of misbehavior surfaces, you are guilty until it is proven otherwise; and, even then, the stain is your concern, not theirs. Yet, in dealing with issues like these, isn’t the important item the soul weighed in the balance?...

His “fleece” was to approach the elderly shepherd of a denomination whose theology pretty much has you going to hell if you don’t speak in “tongues”. Negative response to his vision from that arena would indicate he was merely pushing his own heart. Ten minutes into such invitation, however, this fellow stopped him and asked through tears running down his face why work like this had been neglected for so long. Indeed, when the second man on his list, a believer who preached “glossalia” to be demonic in nature, repeated what he experienced in the first encounter, there was little doubt but that God was in this…

I wonder: Have we finally arrived to a realization that Christianity isn’t about “strutting our stuff”? Sin is a human condition to which we all are vulnerable. Jesus came, not to overlook that fact, nor to eradicate it in its entirety. Not yet, anyhow. What He provides for us through the Cross is not a re-creation of who we are in Adam, but a relationship restored that enables us to know Him in all that He is. He walks with us via the Holy Ghost and extends unto us a choice. Grace, you see, is not a one-time covering given at conversion, but a divine Presence at work in us as individuals, and reaching through us unto others…

Early Monday morning here. I slipped out of the motel room, picked up a hot cup of coffee from the BP station just down the street, and returned to a picnic table beside the pool. Sparse traffic on the Interstate is feeding me its hum much the same as the ocean waves, lapping on the beach, did last month at St. Pete...

My sunday school lesson went well, at least in the sense that there was a flow connecting me not only to Him, but also to those who had come with an expectancy to receive. Words, however, if not developed into dialogue, always leave possibility of a misunderstanding, so I usually walk away from such venture wondering if I've helped or hindered, trusting God to complete the work...

It puzzles me how my pastor friend, having been greatly wounded by the Church several years back, could sacrifice himself again to another body of believers. In truth, this present assembly is a good group, but people, nonetheless, do remain people. Sitting together in a sanctuary doesn't automatically produce heavenly harmony. "Christ in me" is still subject to an individual act of humility...

Saturday evening was a multi-cultural gathering where members were invited to share both a bit of food and a few facts about their heritage. Great idea, but bad participation by some who, thrilled with the opportunity, extended their alloted time slot into too much information given. Likewise a visiting missionary couple's video presentation during the main service yesterday. Too often the Holy Ghost gets lost in our humanity...

All the same, this congregation, under the leadership of an anointed shepherd, is doing tremendous things. A local Teen Callenge "boot camp" facility has recently sought their partnership in ministering unto young men fighting their histories of addiction. Rather than simply pass out free school supplies to needy communities, they've "adopted" twenty-five of those kids, promising to follow them all the way to a highschool graduation...

In the midst of who we are, Jesus takes us for what we are and shapes us as we go. It isn't always easy, for us, for Him; but life takes place and progress is in the details of how much we are willing to turn the details over to higher authority. Each "next step" requires faith in what He has already done, hope in what He can yet accomplish in us, and a humility that allows Him to do it...

My last minute mini-vacation has been planned since the beginning of summer and scheduled to fall between classes designed to enhance our understanding of being “professional para-educators”. Enrollment is a matter, for the most part, of our own choosing and little or no explanation is ever given to aid us in such options. It wasn’t, therefore, until I arrived yesterday morning to attend a five-hour presentation that I discovered, too late, that I should also have signed up for its sequel today. On top of that, the county had the two-lane highway in front of the school under repair and any escape during the two-hour lunch period built into the affair was almost impossible. Working with these kids is fun; working with the system is often a different matter. Such is the manner of men…..

Maintaining a sense of sanity, an attitude of “whatever”, and an ability to still give it your best and go on is just part of “things as they are”. I find that true regarding more than a number of items, a church experience certainly being near the top of any list I might draft. The Book of Acts gives sufficient evidence that unity, from the very start, was going to be a problem within the ecclesiastical community. Those early believers may have, indeed, been “in one accord” in that upper room, but once the overflow of “tongues” subsided, humanity re-surfaced to initiate business as usual. More than two millenniums later, we’re still trying to define the Holy Ghost instead of the other way around. Wrapped up in its organizational structure, Christianity sits under a steeple, while He who originally gave it breath walks among the poor…..