hitting a wall of pain

 

have you ever had one of those days where you run into someone’s wall of pain, so hard, you have to  leave the pavement to take a break from it all? well, I have, and I did, not long after lunch. and after a systematic trip through the recesses of another human being’s personal and public oral description of their life in hell on earth, I climbed back into my vehicle feeling 80 years older. Checking my phone, the time blinked 3:00 in the afternoon, and by my internal calculations, every last remaining appointment would now have to be rescheduled for another day. sure, maybe, just maybe, I did some good in this world listening and all, but…

well, the whole thing makes me tired. I just wanna take a nice little nap.

so….I quit early, drove down the road…drove down the road some more…until I fond a nice little spot with a luxurious leather lazyboy and accompanying grill and…I mean, a nice little parking space alongside a nice little stream with nice little deer running around. in other words, 10,000 times more relaxing than a documentary on the joys of wart removal, than how they actually make chicken McNuggets in real life, than a 2 hour conversation with someone who has 10 times more problems than you, your dog, and your neighbor’s dog combined.

sure, it was a bit brisk out there today, but the air does wonders for a brain beset with the frailties of man (or woman). there, amongst the piney woods, I could drink in the aroma of the manly trees, and feel at home, out among the pine needles, dirt, and fallen leaves. I could sit in the symphony of the breeze, the music through the trees, and find my Maker so much closer than before. Because, the natural is closer than the man-made.

and here the subtle…spiritual…becomes more focused. when you ask for a sign from God in the busy man-made world, the noise and mortality of it confuses the mind. but far from the man-made, God’s signs are there, waiting for you. you have to be in the right place. and you cannot be in the right place when you are surrounded by  the things that won’t last, the things some chase after, the cares that weigh heavy on too many hearts…that mean so very little in the light of the full timeline of life. like the run on sentence I just wrote, life becomes a run on sentence when you are looking for God in all the wrong places.

so, I saw the sign clearly, when I looked up…and turned. and found the best seat in the forest. and sat down. and..

 

found the place I needed to be.

it is so important to find that place where you can spend time with God, without distractions, so you can find the God of peace in the place of peace.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

a bad day to be a fish

imagine…if you will…that you have the intelligence of a fish. why? because, my dear friend, that is your brain on public education.

now, imagine, if you will, that you have spent a long futile day attempting to cross the lip of a pond edge to another inlet where the water appears….appears…to be more pleasant, more tasty…with tasty things floating around in it.

you squirm your way to the edge and hit dry land…and find the pebbles irritating your scales as you try to push across the small piece of land and into the most glorious looking bright shiny water you have ever seen…since you last had a conscious thought about geographic locations.

but…you have no hands, you have no feet, you are a fish. and it is a really bad day to be a fish.

so bad, you have decided not to be a fish.

you would rather be a seal. or a porpoise. or a proctologist. you would prefer to be a creature with legs…to go anywhere you want…to do anything you want…even if they had to be hairy.

but as you lie there imagining…some wise guy will come along, pick you up, and throw you in the trash can…

so thank God you are not a fish. worse yet, you could have been created a weasel…and had weasel breath. isn’t it good to know that your chances of amounting to anything here on this blue-brown-green spinning ball are infinitesimally more likely than that of your standard blue whale, your average red snapper, and even you most delicious sea bass?

sure, you may have a bad day…or two.. or several thousand. that never entitles you to become an ugly, loathing, ten-toed sloth, moping your life away because you think No One on planet Earth seems to care if you live, die, or play Ultimate Pokémon. things could be worse…oh yes, they could be worse. you could be married to the Cat From Hell, live alone in a hammock tent all winter and have icy butt syndrome, or be married to someone who has all the warmth of an Angela Merkel. you are infinitely more valuable to the Universe than you can imagine.

you are too complex to be an accident.

who me?

are you breathing? are you alive?

you know there is no one else in this world who looks like you, who sounds like you, who even smells like you. how could you be an accident? you were no surprise to your creator – you were planned by forces higher than hormones and the wrong time of the month.

it is a good day to be a human…even if it is a bad day to be a fish.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Free Range: No More Poop in the Coop

chickens running free through sweet meadows and forests, clucking their way into the sunset, free to run across the range…smiling, happy chickens…spreading their wings under the vast blue skies, with no….

caca grande en la casa

this bucolic vision of bird heaven reminds us all that it is a much better world we live in when we too are freed from the coop full of poop- in the Big Coop with the Big Rooster.

The Big Rooster rules the roost in the Big Coop because that is the way things go. The way things have always gone. That is what they say. That ubiquitous they. And they are always right, even when they are wrong.

The Big Coop is a clucking palace, where the chickens cluck away, strutting about as if taking selfies, running into their neighbors, eating everything in sight, and decorating the floor with verbal and visible manure. They may be clucking about The Big Rooster,  but their clucking is so loud that even the Big rooster rarely hears them. This keeper of the coop ensures that weak ones die, that clucking continues, and that the order of all things remains in his power. The growing mounds of shite collect, members oblivious to their smell, and sometimes oblivious to their presence,  with no…

prospect of freedom from the decay surrounding them.

But I am not speaking of chickens, I am speaking of weak souls…weak, pellet-fed souls repressed by a religious regime where an autocrat rules inside a boxed-in world…

that Jesus never came to proclaim…instead, He proclaimed…

 “A time is coming, and is come, when the true worshippers will  worship the Father in spirit and truth; for indeed the Father seeks such worshippers. God is spirit, and His worshippers must worship in spirit and truth.”

“Do you not know that you are a temple of the Holy Spirit?”

Jesus did not come to establish the coop mentality. He came to destroy the man-made temple. The age Jesus came in was filled with temples worshipping gods. He came to see that all would be filled with the Holy Spirit, becoming temples of the living God.

If you are a temple, you have no need to be confined inside someone else’s temple culture, with its pagan rituals that stink to high heaven. Jesus came to give you freedom to live outside the religious building structure and its self-made gods of Big Egos. He came to create an environment where you, like free range chickens, can network and live free and healthy community, with…

no more poop in the coop.

 

 

 

 

 

 

in the void of time

the world is cold, and unafraid,

but that world won’t let you go

the weight of my hands on this clod of dirt

as i stand before your throne

it’s not the Hill of Tara nor a piece of my mind

but a picture of you going home….

warmth, rush over me

hide me in the nothing 

the everything, the all you are

in the void of time………..

finger to tablet, lips to screen

you can kiss it a million times

before these eyes see another flower like this

they will be digging them inside my mind

and as the fierce wind blows, and the fire grows

there’s a silence of a different kind…

warmth, rush over me-

hide me in the nothing,

the everything, the all you are…

in the void of time…………………….

warmth, rush over me-

hide me in the nothing,

the everything, the all you are…

in the void of time

a tornado comes to Garrett Hill

gray outstretched arms

waving without and within,

a song sent over the ridge

ridge-crest-covering crescendo,

ripping siding from wall-sides

snapping the breath from my dried lips…

face to the ground, face to the ground…….

a glob of bright red acrylic paint

and a whispering, a whispering above my ears

the breath of God came and took her

though the body on the tailgate…

these tears painting are painting her face

the long road ahead

 

no one said it would be easy. no one was there to give a “now you’re going to set the world on fire.” and no one mentioned the faith needed to persevere and age like fine wine.

that was many years ago…but as i watch a dear young woman cross over that imaginary line, i am reminded of how dim-minded my self-appointed mentors would prove so many years later.

that was because i had very few aged witnesses who would pour out the truth to me. and in that, when the truth did come from them, the moments came like shots of stiff whiskey- given and taken short and quick…not settling in till much later. i rushed here, rushed there, but finding so often life required me waiting on the decisions of others.

and that was something all my educated adults failed to explain to me, as i watched my new diploma sink farther into the storage box as weeks passed to months, and days and nights became years.

so…you’re young and vibrant, ready to take on the world, but have to wait for this person to do this and for that person to make decisions effecting your future. i learned to break the box of rules that the older generation said worked, the laws of economics and the meaning of life. i found the truth inside the words of Jesus more than the dozens of interviewers who thought they  were making decisions for me. contrary to what these gifted adults taught, i discovered that God did make me for unique purposes and it did not mean keeping a job from 8am to 4pm and retiring with a pension after thirty years. that world they told me about had existed in someone’s past fantasyland, and maybe it came true for them, but why would i want to settle for such a mediocre life?

Jesus came to give an abundant life, living life to  the fullest every day. you cannot get that sitting around watching television, going to the races, or spending hours being entertained. it comes from living actively. and maybe there will be regrets, but there is a God who forgives us, if we get back in His will, which is a freeing will, freeing us to be who we can be.

so as you pass the line into that place they call “being an adult,” or “moving to the next level,” if you have questions about this life, turn to God first, turn to the Bible second, and find out just what God has planted within you. And do not be afraid to get away and get somewhere where you can talk to God and listen- truly listen. You may be surprised. I still am, and grateful for what He has brought me through to this point today.

 

Misplaced vision

To my “brothers and sisters” in the churches who have embraced the Mosaic Law, putting people into bondage in tithes, Jewish feasts, and 600 other laws, while saying they are living in the New Covenant:

Stop swimming in a hole in the Old Testament, and start living in the New! If you have decided to follow Jesus, there is no turning back- Jesus fulfilled the Mosaic Covenant. So, why do you want to mix the two? Why do you want to blur the message of the gospel…because that is exactly what you are doing when you try to grocery shop from the covenants.

If you call yourself Christian, and desire to please God, then it is time to know and walk out what Jesus Christ said for you to do…as long as you are truly a disciple of Jesus.

 

Mister Scottie and the Forest of Flowers

He’s not as ferocious as he looks…

…but this wise warden looks after the forest of flowers…

of pink delights…

and…

 

southern beauty…

 

 

and this bright green leafy flowered plant.

Mister Scottie has many trails to walk through this forest of flowers, and sometimes he is accompanied by guests coming to view the forest and the flowers…guests he carefully watches and sniffs. 

He is a classic, just as this flowering forest is…

…they serve as a reminder to all to enjoy the beauty that God has brought us…both in flowering plants and trees and in other living, breathing witnesses to his creation.

the train has left the station on the wrong track

last summer i sat in bewilderment as i listened to the answers over and over again. the question was so simple, but the answers were mind-blowing. of the hundreds i met who claimed to be Christians, very few could tell me what they were saved from, what they died to, and what they were raised to- and this coming from a majority who claimed to be Baptist. it was, i now realize, just one more sign that the train has left the station and is headed down the wrong track…

back in reality, that train left centuries ago. what i heard that day, though, was a louder whistle, more passengers, and a whole line of cars beyond numbering. the train was not only on the wrong track- it was moving so quickly out of control, burning fuel at a massive rate.

meanwhile, numerous conductors, all trying to out-perform each other, contributed to an over-fired furnace, the engine burning like the midnight sun…

and i wondered…and began to stop each one, and bring them back to scripture…the track they and the assemblies they attended had switched from, onto a new line.

it began at the heart of the gospel: Jesus Christ came to save you from your sin.

the people i spoke with all had something in common. they all “went up to the altar” or “prayed the sinner’s prayer.” when i asked what had happened to them, i got a mixture of responses, but they all had something else in common- they were not what i had expected.

the majority of them told me that they became a Christian that day when they accepted Jesus as “personal savior.” Not more than a few out of the hundreds i met could tell me what that really meant. they were as clueless about being a true follower of Christ as they had been before they knelt at the altar or prayed the sinner’s prayer. sadly, this is true for so many- there are fewer true disciples of Jesus than there should be.

Why are so many who confessed Jesus as “personal pan savior,” so confused, so deceived, and so far from  being a real Christian?

(1) today, in many churches, we have a church structure Jesus never taught. Nowhere in the New Testament is  there indication that the disciples- the Christians- organized along the lines of the denominations today. Nowhere!

(2) the church in the New Testament was “organic” in nature. One “elder” in the faith- that is, older and more experienced- taught new disciples how to be disciples. There were no degreed professionals who were “in the business of church.” They were concerned about new disciples being disciples, not members. Nowhere in the New Testament will you find the kind of membership taught by the current synagogue-structured church.

(3) Paul states, at one time, that he “admonished the saints daily” for “three years.” He was constantly being sure that they knew what to do, how to do it, and why to do it. Disciples- those who followed after Christ- were active daily in the work of being a disciple.

(3) Nowhere in the New Testament do you read of an altar being present in any of the disciples’ meetings. Never. The whole “come to the altar” at a church building is cultural, not scriptural. 

(4) The testimony of the saints was at the core of their witness. Three separate times in Acts we read Paul’s lengthy testimony as he presents it before those who did not believe. If- like the New Testament disciples- you are surrounded by the testimonies of saints, you will not be confused about the process of becoming a follower of Christ.

(5) Many of today’s “churches” never “require” the convert to repent. Nor does the convert have any idea what that means. In the New Testament, Jesus clearly called all to repent first. All needed to be buried with Christ and then raised with Christ. Being baptized in water and the Holy Spirit. Read the entire New Testament- that is what it says.

It is time to go back to what the New Testament states the church is. Time to throw off the bondage of synagogue-style Churchianity, and embrace Christianity. Time to join the last reformation now spreading one by one throughout the earth.

 

burning yesterday away, one flame at a time

 

Lord, I thank You for taking the hurt of yesterday and burning it to ashes, throwing those into a sea of forgetfulness as far as the east is from the west…and in  a world of selfishness, where many destroy themselves and everyone around them, You stand out as a refuge, a safe place in the storm. Thank You for being my hope in all things, loving always, faithful always…today and forever…