Do remember the columns on your first grade report card?  The one entitled “Plays well with others”?  When did failing in the “plays well with others” category  Since when did “not playing well with others” become something to strive for?  A platform on which to succeed in politics? Sen. Richard Lugar, known for his willingness to dialogue, to cross the aisle, to seek common ground, lost his primary bid, BECAUSE of his willingness play well with others.

I guess that explains why there’s a proposal to slash social supports and divert the “savings” to the military.  When you don’t play well with others, you’d best be prepared with the biggest weapon you can find.  Too bad we’re electing people who think fear and intimidation and not playing well with others will save us.  Why not try something different for a change? Perhaps we could find something in Rob Bell’s Love Wins?

“Because sometimes we need to drop what we’re doing, step out of our routine, breathe in some fresh air, and be reminded that we signed up for a revolution.” (Rob Bell, quoted in Bare Feet & Dolphins).

On Day 2, I decided to drive into Joplin on my way west.  I headed up the street where the big box stores had been.  I guess I expected that a magic wand would have been waved over the town. There is new construction and many lots are cleared of debris.  But I was caught off guard by the number that still have dumpsters and boarded up windows.   I drove north, then west, making the same square we drove the last day of the mission trip last year. The hospital structure stands mostly without windows.  The few mangled trees in the large area devoid of trees and buildings still takes my breathe away.   The large cross brings back memories of the stories relayed by church staff in Joplin last year – about community, about miracles, about God’s grace.  How silly stuff we tend to get all tangled up in is so irrelevant.

It was surreal when Jeff texted a couple hours later to say C-U was under a tornado warning…. He didn’t know I’d been in Joplin, and initially didn’t respond to my texts to see how C-U was fairing.

I met Judy, a volunteer in the museum, on the way to the kittens.  She’s from Columbus, and this is her 13th summer at Ghost Ranch.  The museum has a beautiful exhibit of woven creations – rugs, clothing, etc – which think Lloyd and Josiah would enjoy.

When your basis is steeped in…  Was it oppression or theft? Was it murder or self-preservation?  Was it punishment & justice or just more murders?  The answers depend by your frame, your paradigm, your world view…. What’s God’s paradigm?  Where is the Kingdom of God in all of this violence and self-interest?

Can these bones live?  Loooorrrrrddddd,  YOU know.  ‘Cause I sure don’t have a clue…..  I don’t have a clue why we are here….what our purpose is…. But Ezekiel offered hope when there was absolutely NO humanly logical reason for hope. None.  Ezekiel exemplifies God’s faithfulness despite us, in spite of us.

Listen closely….listen for the whisper of the Lord.  Richard Rohr suggests Ezekiel is the one who introduced us to restorative justice, Ezekiel was the one who revealed the radical grace of the gospel.  HOW COOL IS THAT???????

We don’t deserve to be saved, we haven’t earned it.  Because we can’t earn.  Transformation is an OUTPUT. The input is the grace of God. Transformation always comes AFTER.  God will use anyone….even the broken, especially the broken.

In the meantime, listen to the whispers that float in the quiet corners, hiding in the dark, too vulnerable to be on the center stage.

• when I was lost, you offered guidance
• when I was homelessness, you worked with me to find a home
• when I was hurt, you came to my aid
• when I had no friends, you became my friends
• when I was hungry, you fed me
• when I was in prison, you visited me
• when I was without clothes, you provided me with clothes
• when I was grieving, you comforted me

Matthew 25 is happening. Any way. ANY WAY In spite of.  Until the next phone call… the reminder that Ezekiel is still the prophet of the day.

Oh how frequently I am the one who does nothing or whose efforts result in nothing.  Have mercy on those who are further along the path who have tried to teach me. I can hear their thoughts:

 ”What a silly follower you are! You have no presence — no sense of God! No focus to your life! How many times do I have to repeat this? How much longer do I have to put up with your childish ways?

“Bring the kid to me.  But could ya’ll just at least try, just try, to catch up with me? If you could catch up, if we could all row together, just THINK what the world could be like.  Just THINK of it!  It’d spread like wildfire. ” And with a steady and practiced hand, the boy was healed.

How many times? How many times? How many times?  Why am I unsuccessful?

 ”Well, you’re not (yet) taking God seriously…. It’s simple really, if you had just the tiniest little bit of faith, say the size of the head of a pin, you could tell this mountain, ‘Move!’ and the mountain would hop right on over into the sea. The strength to perserve despite ANY obstacle would be within you. There is nothing, nothing at all, that you wouldn’t be able to face or to accomplish.”

Visual
Matt. 17:14 – 20

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood, and sorry I could not travel both and be one traveler, long I stood and looked down one as far as I could….

Long I stood. Looking. Watching. Seeing. Observing. Planning. Indecisive. Non-committal. Erratic. Stop-start.  Waiting for certainties, for the door to spring open, for the spotlight to shine on one path, dreaming of knowledge to select the “right” path, the way without mistakes, without regrets.

So what to do when the path we’ve seen heads in the wrong direction? Or the path ends? Or when today’s sinkhole swallows the road before my very eyes?  Or when the wet leaves underfoot are too slick for walking and I slide into the muck and the cold slime?  Or what if I just don’t like the way it feels under my feet?  Or the scenery’s getting so monotonous?

What are the paths when the future is uncertain?  When the world is shifting, when what has been known and understood is passing away? When the old ways no longer work? Thirty years ago, twenty years, maybe even ten, the road I want to walk was so clear, well-trodden, well-understood. Not any more. The old is passing away.

Do I even recognize the new? What’s a path look like when the world is unstable, fertile, simultaneously brimming with promise and impending doom?

The poet sends an answer, softly, silently, whispering into the silence.

Caminante…. Caminante…. Caminante….. Wanderer. (How appropriate.) 
No hay camino. There is no road.

What?!!?  There is no road??? But I need a road. I WANT a road. I don’t know how to go forward without a road. You know — one with maps and those big green signs and a full-color guidebook. Get me the Garmin.  And oh yeah, wasn’t a private tour guide offered in the advertisement?

Caminante….. Caminante….. Caminante…..

Son tus huellas el camino. Your footsteps ARE the road. Al andar se hace camino. By walking one MAKES the road. Son tus huellas el camino. Su camino. Y nada mas. Your footsteps are the road. YOUR road. And nothing more.

Really?  You mean I just put one foot in front of the other?  Head in a general direction? Wow. Are you sure?

Yes. Just walk. The fact is that we were made for these times. For years, we have been learning, practicing, been in training for and just waiting to meet on this exact plain of engagement. 

Yes, I can see that.  How the threads of the distant past are weaving through recent days.  But I can’t even see the space for the very next footstep! And so often, it seems like I’m walking alone.

We are needed, that is all we can know. And though we meet resistance, we more so will meet great souls who will hail us, love us and guide us, and we will know them when they appear.

I do recognize those great souls. I have known them and I do know them.  That helps. But I still can’t see that next footstep.  And so often it seems like nothing is happening.  I want change. Now. Not tomorrow. Not five years from now.

Didn’t you say you were a believer? Didn’t you say you pledged to listen to a voice greater? Didn’t you ask for grace? Don’t you remember that to be in grace means to submit to the voice greater?

It is not given to us to know which acts or by whom, will cause the critical mass to tip toward an enduring good. What is needed for dramatic change is an accumulation of acts, adding, adding to, adding more, continuing.

Just keep walking.

Just keep walking.

Excerpts from Robert Frost, Antonio Machado, Clarissa Pinkola Estes

The 30 most anticipated movies of 2012:

Brave

Release Date: June 22
 

The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey

Release Date: Dec. 14

The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel

Release Date: May 4

You are Emergent/Postmodern in your theology. You feel alienated from older forms of church, you don’t think they connect to modern culture very well. No one knows the whole truth about God, and we have much to learn from each other, and so learning takes place in dialogue. Evangelism should take place in relationships rather than through crusades and altar-calls. People are interested in spirituality and want to ask questions, so the church should help them to do this.

96% – Emergent/Postmodern
79% – Classical Liberal
75% – Modern Liberal
54% – Evangelical Holiness/Wesleyan
54% – Roman Catholic
46% – Charismatic/Pentecostal
43% – Neo orthodox
18% – Reformed Evangelical
0% – Fundamentalist

“Entrepreneurship is the pursuit of opportunity without regard to resources currently controlled.”

“They see an opportunity and don’t feel constrained from pursuing it because they lack resources,” says Stevenson. “They’re used to making do without resources.”

Faith Entreprenuership (Entrepreneurial Faith: Launching Bold Initiatives to Expand God’s Kingdom (Kirbyjon Caldwell and Walt Kallestad))

Can’t stop improving things, see visions others don’t, workaholic tendencies,  no barriers allowed, want to change the world, see the Kingdom of God, a mission that’s worth living out.

• Yes Magazine’s Beyond Prisons
• Presence: An Exploration of Profound Change in People, Organizations, and Society (Peter  Senge, et al.)
• Switch: How to Change Things When Change is Hard  (Heaths)