Brainwaves

Teachers, like the rest of us, come in various personalities; so the tale told here is, in no way, meant to suggest anything other than the humor that children can bring to life with their propensity to tell it just like it is. With that said, let it be known that one of our school’s music instructors is a rather petite woman who believes the first order of business in such a relationship with young students is: maintaining order. Probably a good approach; but I laughed to hear that one of the First Grades classes, when asked the other day what they had learned this year in Art, gave various answers like: “Red and yellow make orange! How to make a mask! Some of the colors are hot and some are cool!” Good response; but when likewise queried as to what knowledge they had acquired in Music, three in the group, both immediately and simultaneously raised their hands and shouted: “How to be quiet!”…..

Authority. Some of us seem to grasp at an early age how it works. None of us enjoy it if it abuses our sense of freedom. David, over at Naked Pastor, keeps sparking heated discussion over his desire to experience a form of ecclesiastical community without all the “complications of structure, institution, government, mores, politics, laws, hierarchy, expectations, agendas, and goals” that fuel religion and destroy one’s faith along the way. He isn’t interested in the future of his denominational organization. His heart is for people; and, if love be all, then it ought to embrace without demanding the sheep be brainwashed and branded. I can appreciate the sentiments. Any time men package the product, however, it always increasingly involves the accumulation of the above; and it matters not the name over the door. It’s who we are. Allowing Him to be who He is in the middle of it all is Christianity as it ought to be…..

Our last week of school was filled with more than the normal anxieties of knowing summer vacation was about to be a reality. Rumors had somehow escaped a closed-door meeting of the powers that be and, while nothing official had yet been released on the matter, there were few who didn’t know of changes being made that affected present job conditions. Panic ensued. Some threatened to quit. Management wasn’t happy. Truthfully, though, while the move to another unit was unexpected, it didn’t surprise me at all when they requested me to assume the Third Grade boy as a one-on-one assignment next August. I like the team with whom I’ve travelled this year, but am quite familiar with this other bunch, the room actually the one where I first started this journey in Special-Ed. If the adventure has its moments, it still seems a privilege God has set before me; so sign me up for another go…..

In “Teaching a Stone to Talk”, Annie Dillard devotes the last portion of the book to an experience once shared with a child, possibly her niece. The little girl is nine; she is thirty-five; and the story takes place at a cabin rented somewhere within that long stretch of the Appalachians, mid-July, just the two of them on an annual outing that always ends too soon. It is a tale told from the perspective of how life changes us as we go and how each individual slice that comes to us, therefore, needs to be caught, because memories are really all we get to retain; and, as the journey picks up speed, even memories are too prone to become blurred if we don’t squeeze as much of the present as we can into mental snapshots for safe-keeping…..

Monday afternoon I walked the graveyard talking to ghosts. My dad and just about all the older folk on both sides of the family tree are buried there, scattered all over one particular hillside, headstones hidden beneath the mower’s grass clippings. It’s always an effort to find them; always there are a few that escape me; and, yet, only going once or twice a year pushes me to try. Each, after all, is a part of me, a point in time to which I am connected; and, like that old man in the opening and closing scenes of “Saving Private Ryan”, tears fill my eyes as I express a bond not voiced so well when they were alive, a questioning of whether my years have failed what they invested into me…..

It’s not that they, collectively, achieved great goals or were any less human than I. It’s not that, in looking back, my existence has been some horrible mistake. You do what you can do; you meet each day as it comes; you stumble much too often in the process. In the end, though, it is those relationships once held with others that are so dear to your heart. Small, seemingly insignificant events, moments shared along the way, somehow stick with you, love overcoming personalities and opinions that fail to agree. Grandparents, aunts, uncles, people not unlike others encountered through the years. These, however, were “my” people. Few were church-goers; but they can face God for themselves with whatever theology they had. I just miss them…..

Over on Jesus Creed, one of Scot’s readers asked how to respond to her eleven year old daughter concerning God’s wrath as it is illustrated in the Old Testament. Some of the answers offered by the large group of followers of that site are representative, I suppose, of what one usually hears whenever such question is raised. The little girl struggled with mass homicide being divinely required because of one man’s sin; but the idea of genocide being a commandment and a proper way to dispose of enemies wasn’t discussed. There was, however, a suggestion for this mother to just abandon the front of the Book. What she was to do with the demise of Ananais and Sapphira is beyond me; but my personal favorites were: (a) resignation to the truth that, since “the Judge of all the earth” cannot be wrong, we, as believers, ought not be troubled over Biblical account; and (b) patience brings maturity; or, in other words, her child will outgrow her distrust and eventually come to faith……

Scripture, itself, of course, is but another item on a long list of doctrinal issues that, within Christianity, can be taken to the extreme in either direction. There are those who label it infallible, setting chapter and verse in concrete once they have reduced it to their own understanding. There are others who have no problem with ignoring certain portions since, once you admit to inspiration, having been funneled through a man’s mind, being subject to imperfection, the tendency is, again, to re-write the Gospel in your own terms. Place me in whatever category you wish, but I long ago determined, as my explanation to the puzzle posed, that the Jews may well have, as a nation, pointed to Jehova as being the authority for such violent extermination of people when, in reality, it came forth out of nothing more than their own reasoning. It is, after all, the nature of the beast; and I’ve seen too many supposedly “speaking in the Holy Ghost” whose words fell short along the way…..

I sat in a Sunday school class this morning where the lesson dealt with our having, as believers, “purity” in our walk. The teacher equated that with maintaining those things set forth in THE Word. Just before we left, I noted that the term means to be single, or “unpolluted by other substances” and that it was a good bet none of us in the room would pronounce ourselves as existing in such a state. For me, then, what the Creator expects of us is a mind determined to know His voice in our life. Not a theology beyond adjustment, held together by an opinion that long ago decided we had it all figured out. Rather a faith continually renewed by a stepping through the veil and meeting Him “face to face”. That’s what I taught my three daughters; and that’s what I desire for my grandkids. The rest will evolve as they go. It remains a journey individually accomplished as we look to Him…..

Wednesday evening’s service at the rescue mission was special for several reasons. Its message, divinely pieced together through the testimonies of three men who knew not the other’s heart beforehand, dealt with the idea that, while life may indeed bring to us tragedy and discouragement, God is a strength and a peace unto us in the middle of all. It was a word of hope, meant to encourage desperate men that “Christ in me” isn’t just a promise unto the multitude who occupy a pew on any given Sunday, a word of truth, suggesting that even the “saved” struggle with questions, and a word of invitation that simply said the only requirement in this was a heart surrendered to Him. We closed in communal prayer, seeking no public statements of faith, trusting in His ability to meet the needs of those who were there…..

Afterwards, almost always, a few come forward with conversation, sharing viewpoints on something we’ve shared, showing gratitude for our being there, asking for individual petition regarding a problem they face. On this occasion, however, one fellow left me in dilemma. Earlier, within my segment, I had told these men of my stepfather’s death two decades ago from liver cancer and now this gentleman wanted to know how quickly he had passed after being diagnosed. When I answered “three weeks”, a tear ran down his cheek. He had just been given a year with the same condition. If the facts as they were cut deeply into his emotional stability, though, he made it clear that he didn’t want any continued conversation regarding such state. Whether he blamed God, blamed himself, or just counted it dumb luck, I know not. He turned and left…..

Pat. His name was Pat. He’s had my thoughts since; but I realize our meeting going as it did doesn’t necessarily encompass the whole story. The event, as it played out, in no way signifies failure on my part nor denotes damnation unto him. He’s not the first to wrestle with the journey. I’m not the solution to every problem I encounter. This is, as far as I’m concerned, a day by day walk with the Holy Ghost for both the unsaved and the saved, the tug on our heart perhaps being different as to what He would have us to do, but ever embracing the need for us to submit to “Not my will, but Thine”. We are all in this together; and yet, having been utilized in whatever manner, I can now do no more than petition from a distance, believing God has not abandoned hope. It remains, like all things, in His hands and our choice as we go…..

This Wednesday evening we visit the rescue mission once again and so my thoughts begin to rummage through the cluttered mess that always occupies my mental desk. I approach such outreach much as I do this blog, not all that struck by some individual revelation, but as if I were piecing together a puzzle and hoping that, like David with his slingshot, if I just fill my bag with a few smooth stones, the Holy Ghost will meet me in the effort. It’s not a matter of developing chapter and verse into a thirty minute sermon. My intention is not to impress anybody with my knowledge of the Bible, but to simply share Christ as I have found Him in the journey. Something as every day as the woman in the school cafeteria being depressed over her forty-fifth and my telling her she need only to remember a lot of people didn’t get that far…..

I believe that; and I find that it attaches itself to my perspective of just what the Bible means when it speaks of God’s people perishing without vision. That particular portion of Scripture doesn’t refer to chasing some pastor’s dream supposedly appointed him by the Almighty, but to possessing, both as individuals and as a body, an understanding of His voice in our present circumstances. That reality, after all, is what has been given us through the Cross. The past is ours only in lessons hopefully learned along the way and the future belongs to Him. While He may, indeed, birth within us a goal to be achieved, the best way to reach it is by resting in Him right where we are, relaxing in who we are, if not in what we are, and trusting Him to be who He is, the “I am that I am” within that which we surrender unto His hands. It works better that way…..

There’s a story in the Gospels of a man of a man in need of healing who was taken to a roof and lowered down to Jesus by his friends when rumors spread of His being “in the house”. I used to think the account centered on those last three words; but, as the years passed, I began to realize that, while the phrase is important in its actuality having been accomplished in our life, its significance really hinges on whether the “house“, at times, finds itself “in” Him. We have no option in this. The next breath takes us forward. Yet, while He has promised to go with us, how well we know Him in that next step tends to depend on how much we have experienced His reality. Faith is not a product I, myself, create, but one He creates within me as I invite His presence to meet me in the way. He proves Himself as we go if I but give the reins unto Him…..

Six years ago, sitting in the principal’s office and discussing the idea of my working with a young autistic boy in Special-Ed, I was not all that enthused. The condition was a term not in my vocabulary and my greatest fear was that perhaps I wouldn’t be able to communicate with him. That proved to be an erroneous assumption on my part, although, as I’ve learned along the way, the label covers a wide spectrum of behavior. Just who “is” and who “isn’t” is still a mystery to me; but this year there have been two within our unit who, in my mind, anyhow, who “fit the category”: one-a Fifth Grade over-grown leprechaun, full of mischief, but void of anything even resembling a temper; the other-a Third Grader who demands you meet his fancy and is not beyond making that fact known via a physical display of anger. It is beyond me why, the last six weeks or so, he has taken a particular liking to me, gives me no problems whatsoever, but woe be unto anyone else who approaches him. I’ve become a bribe, the prize to be won if he humbles himself to any task assigned. Good strategy? Who knows? We operate one day at a time. With a plan, of course, but one that remains subject to change as we go…..

Over on Naked Pastor’s site, there’s a bit of a debate being waged concerning his opinion that a Christian community needs to examine its vision. Actually, he stated that the latter “corrupts” our unity and immediately people brought rebuke, failing to grasp his meaning that what too many profess to possess is often nothing more than their ego chasing its own fancy. One fellow, however, found witness in the author’s words and his comment spoke to me so strongly that I post it, in part, here. “When we are consumed with an ideal,” he said; “it becomes very easy to be discontent with a reality. When we are focused on creating perfection, it becomes easy to overlook or deny imperfection. When we are obsessed with an end-goal, it becomes too easy to disregard or toss aside anything (and more likely, anyone) standing in the way of that goal–even when the circumstances change.” Right on! At least, in my opinion. Seeing where we’re going, as believers, is always, at best, a step taken through a veil following an inner tug on our heart. Give me, therefore, a leader who recognizes that God verifies the journey as we go…..

”Experience has taught the race that, if knowledge of God is the end, then these habits of life are not the means, but the condition in which the means operates. You do not have to do these things; not at all. God does not, I regret to report, give a hoot. You do not have to do these things-unless you ant to know God. They work on you, not on Him. You do not have to sit outside in the dark. If, however, you want to look at the stars, you will find that darkness is necessary. The stars, though, neither require nor demand it”….Annie Dillard, “Teaching a Stone to Talk”

The lady is not a preacher, but a naturalist and a writer of fiction. I’d even go so far as to suggest that she’s not a believer, at least in the sense of her having had an encounter with Christ. Nonetheless, she’s one of my favorite authors, refusing to abandon the idea of a Creator even though the Church (or I probably should say religion in general) gives her much reason to scratch her head about the matter. To put it in simple terms: she just tells it like it is. In this chapter I’m currently re-reading, she points out the comedy that our humanity brings to our ritualistic endeavors and compares it to early expeditions to the Earth’s poles. I have enjoyed the humor that can, indeed, be found in such analogy, but would beg to differ with her when she likens God unto a certain “Point of Relative Inaccessibility”. History proves both scenarios able to be conquered when men follow truth with a bit more than their egos…..

With thirty-seven years of more than just “fill-a-pew” involvement in the Pentecostal denomination, I can testify to laughter being part of the journey. There’s the night that one preacher, so excited that he miscued with his diction, shouted into his microphone for the congregation to “Praise the Gourd!” My wife could tell you about another who once invited people to get in line for a disease. One of the deacons at my old assembly, after counting ballots at a hot business meeting concerning the election of a new pastor, asked those present if they wanted to take a vote to see if they would “accept the vote”; and there is still a smile attached to my memories of one old saint who stood to request prayer for her “cranky, unloving husband” one morning, not knowing he was seated a mere three or four rows right behind her. Ms. Dillard, however, refers to far more than our ability to so amuse each other…..

Our expedition is not into some frozen wilderness with little wisdom in what we take in order to survive. We merely step through an outer foyer into an inner sanctuary; but she is quite correct when she finds that event often accomplished with little or no regard for such space supposedly being holy ground. We stumble through our programs week after week as if the promise of His presence actually coming forth to meet us in some manner has long been lost along the way; and there, of course, is the problem. It’s not that He has left us, but that we have forgotten the Reality and merely attempt to rehearse the routine. It’s not that He is unwilling to sit down with us in the garden, but that we have occupied ourselves with silliness and neglected the soil. If, from time to time, we catch His voice, feel the breeze as He passes by, it’s become so much easier to hide and cover ourselves than it is to face the facts as they are…..

When my knees hit the floor of my living room on the afternoon of March 27th, 1972, there was no doubt in my mind as to what a mess I had made of my life. It is just as true, however, that, when I arose, a realization of having been somehow given a second chance possessed my heart. Yet, when asked if an assurance of my being “saved” had come, I answered in the negative. Such ecclesiastical use of the term wasn’t in my vocabulary. Then, before I could convince myself that what I’d experienced was really no more than an emotional breakdown, while lying flat on my back in bed one Sunday night after church, my spirit somehow slipped into a flow of the Holy Ghost and the reality of His resurrection became so much more than a few verses of Scripture. Faith was His gift unto me, not something for me to wrestle with in an attempt to find His favor…..

The promise of God manifesting Himself unto us via an inner connection given through Christ is Biblical; yet, denominationally speaking, our interpretation of just how that is accomplished in our life is another matter. In taking a good look at the Church in its present state, in fact, I often wonder if Satan, rather than our former President Harry Truman, wasn’t the one who first quipped: “If you can’t convince them, confuse them!” As an ecclesiastical community, we claim that a focus on Jesus unites us, and then, not only doctrinally divide ourselves by what we believe about the Word, but also what we believe about the Spirit. For some, the third person of the Trinity is no more than a mysterious inner leading that is undetectable other than a sense of His involvement as we go. Others see Him as power, but only as an impersonal force subservient to their ego…..

For me, the Indwelling is not an individuality apart from the Father and the Son, but the very “mind of Christ”, the very “presence” of the Creator. Purchased and returned to us through Calvary’s Cross and a walk the Savior took for us into the depths of hell, the Holy Ghost is more like a “plumbing connection” restored. If that seems to strip Him of image, then so be it; but, in losing such perception, let us not dismiss His divinity. He is an “extension” of God, the “door” which Jesus declared Himself to be, for within us is a place where heaven and earth meet, an altar before which we bow, a well from which He comes forth unto us in a time when we think Him no longer there. In those moments when two are one, we do not have to question grace. It has an identity that goes beyond definition. This, alone is Truth. The rest is a stumble in an attempt to follow…..

Sunday afternoon, while Beth labored with laundry, I sat and watched a cinematic viewpoint regarding this country’s war on terrorism. It starred Tom Cruise, Meryl Streep, and Robert Redford; and, while it should have been clear to me at the time of purchase exactly what I was buying, one has to remember that I’m the guy who once stood frozen in the fairway, correctly deducing that the golf ball flying at me was about to introduce itself to some portion of my anatomy. In truth, I did enjoy the story, did not disagree all that much with the opinion being brought forth, and would recommend it to others; but thought some about Hollywood stars who use their clout in such manner. One has to be strong in that which they believe to risk their name and invest their fortune into a political statement…..

Yesterday our entire school enjoyed another Wulfe Brothers concert, an annual treat after final testing. There’s little educational value to the presentation. Three middle-aged men take a specific decade of our nation’s history and fill the auditorium with the sounds of artists who dominated that time frame. They’re sort of a Larry, Curly, and Moe combination, clowning around with each other as they draw the kids into the performance; and everybody, teachers included, loves them. One young fellow from a lower level Spec-Ed unit, however, seated with his teacher on the front row of the bleachers, became mesmerized by the flow of such rhythm. Sliding off her lap to the floor, he began to bob and weave as if in a trance, slowly inching closer and closer to the source of that music…..

Inside each of us, it seems to me, is this mystery, this creation in progress, a living “something” that exists beyond the miracle of who we are in a physical sense. The Bible puts it in terms of our possessing a soul, and a spirit, and a mind, and a heart; but leaves us in ignorance as to exactly what each one is. If the first two represent, as Theologians suggest, the emotional and thinking segments of our identity, then how does the last set differ from that already expressed? Questions: truly I am left with questions; and, yet, of this I am almost certain: however that person inside us breaks down, it can be “hooked”, following faulty reasoning and strong passion to do and say what we later regret. Thank God for a Savior…..

"Life is not a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in a pretty and well preserved body, but rather to skid in broadside, thoroughly used up, totally worn out, and loudly proclaiming 'WOW! What a Ride!'"….Anonymous

Nearly five decades ago, as a young sailor stationed aboard Sixth Fleet’s flagship, it was my privilege to share a grand adventure with a group of other fellows as we were home-ported just outside Nice, France, and visited, at least once, nearly every seaport in the Mediterranean. My memory of such times has, no doubt, faded; but the events, themselves, even if now told slightly amiss of as they actually were, still give smiles to an old man’s heart and it was a pleasant surprise to reconnect awhile back, via the internet, with some who served in that unit. Still, while I rejoice in hearing how they have prospered in the interim, in truth, their success makes me question my journey, sitting here as I am, possessing not much more than His promise and an inner peace. In truth, however, I remain convinced that, for the most part, life simply “happens”; and, if it were possible to do it all again, there’s little I would change…..

A little over thirty-six years ago, I began taking my daughters to Sunday school and somewhere along the way discovered the reality of a resurrected Christ. Demanding of others that genuine conversion requires a duplication of my experience was never my personal theology, but it remains to be said that such encounter as I knew turned me around, changed my existence, and introduced me to a divine Presence who still meets me, from time to time, in the fullness of that first plunge into the pool. He has yet to fail me in any form or fashion. The Church and I, both, on the other hand, are another story. Humanity being humanity, even indwelt by the Holy Ghost, a stumble is about as good as it gets, presently, on any permanent basis. Looking back, though, at my membership within the ecclesiastical community, it remains a road taken with Him and one for which I am thankful. My journey. His rod and staff…..

Working in Special-Education is both a privilege and a challenge. At the Elementary School level, there is very little instruction that involves reading a book or conquering established fundamentals. Some students are non-verbal and those who are verbal may only speak in single syllable terms. Focus, for most, is hard to maintain. Retaining the lessons being taught seldom happens. Nonetheless, on a daily basis, our unit addresses the calendar process, phonetics, sight words, some basic number awareness, and other simple tasks that might prove beneficial in some manner as the journey continues; and, for me, the job is not a matter of babysitting the “less fortunate”. While the package is, indeed, damaged to some extent, inside there exists a person; and if the two of us can but learn to communicate and connect, my heart tells me it’s possible for miracles to occur on both sides of the table…..

To be truthful, the above arena is not the only place I struggle to reach such conclusion. In trying to bring the reality of Christ to the youth who are incarcerated at the Detention Center, it’s not all that unusual to encounter the same sort of wrestling match. The only difference is in the fact that minds met there aren’t physically restricted. Cognitive will power already determined that it has either heard it all before or a mind already solidly set in a modern-day point of view regarding there being no such thing as a Creator puts forth heavy sighs, yawns, and makes it quite evident they are only in the room because authority leaves them no other choice. The solution, as far as I’m concerned, is similar to how I approach the former scenario. Contact is accomplished, not by attacking them with chapter and verse, but by making my ego subject to a flow of the Holy Ghost, and by their surrender to what they cannot deny is real…..

“We are called to be fruitful. Not successful, not productive, not accomplished. Success comes from strength, stress, and human effort. Fruitfulness comes from vulnerability and the admission of our own weakness”………..Henri Nouwen

Six months ago, one of my few remaining teeth broke and a trip to my wife’s dentist was actually a pleasant experience. He gave me no lectures, rebuilt that tooth, noted another in obvious need of extraction, but left it up to me as to when to accomplish the recommended operation. This one was in such condition as to require an oral surgeon to remove it. It was giving me no problems at the time, however; so, in my usual manner, I elected to await the end of the school year before addressing the issue. Too bad the tooth didn’t cooperate. Last weekend an ear infection came down to visit that side of my jaw and, for about five days, I existed, for the most part, on a diet of pain-killers and antibiotics. Medicine and fees came to more than six hundred dollars, the biggest portion of that incurred because of my opting to be knocked out for the ordeal; yet, when my consciousness returned, I was informed by the fellow that his skills had really not been necessary. The tooth, it seemed, had popped right out without breaking. He was smiling; but I wasn’t so sure I was happy or not…..