An Ordinary Prophet In An Ordinary Town.

I found myself this afternoon obediently, yet not entirely enthusiastically, aboard Flight UA227, from Kansas City to Denver.  I'm heading to Denver in order to replace my lost passport before returning to New Zealand.  Now, believe me, I'm stoked about getting back to my quiet Oxford home, stoked about fostering scholastic and monastic practices, stoked about getting to snowboard in New Zealand during what is usually summer for me, and beside myself with excitement about staffing this Discipleship Training School and leading a handful of dudes down a path similar to the one I undertook last year.  My reservations are not about where I'm heading, but what I'm leaving.  

I never thought I'd say this, but I'm finding myself drawn to Kansas City, the town where I grew up.  And it's beyond the obvious facts that my older brothers and their wives are collecting babies like, I don't know, pogs or something.  After several months of occasionally feeling stuck and stagnant during this transitional stay at my folks' place, I've discover KC to be . . . alive.  Vibrant.  Growing.  And, I think, ripe for a holistic awakening.  

This has been a slow work in my heart.  Over the last 8 months, God has shown me brilliant communities the likes of which I never believed actually existed.  I had my eyes opened to the possibilities of a true and genuine Jesus-seeking collective with my buddy Phil in his Dublin hometown.  We breezed through an Acts-like, spirit-filled community of college and post-college friends of my friend Amanda in Sheffield.  And I've made a second (third?  fourth?) home for myself in Grand Rapids amongst the most renaissance, hands-of-the-gospel fellowship of my mates Jaclyn and Emrie and their people.  These experiences have created such a thirst in me for genuine, authentic community, where people who may have little in common besides Jesus band together, hash it out, and wait for love to explode all over a town.   And I feel God's opened my eyes to that possibility in my home town.  

Well, not exactly my hometown.  It would still be a sssssstrrrrrrreeeeetch for me to feel comfortable in the subrural surroundings of Stilwell, Kansas.  There's a lot of Landrovers just to the North, and a lot of cows just to the South.  And there's not much space between for people in my stage of life, where my most prized luxury is not owning a car or a phone (or a saddle, for that matter).  But slowly, and without help from the non-existent public transportation, I've become connected to so many other pockets of gospel-in-action folks all over the greater city.  Particularly a community called The Boiler Room.  I can't believe I just found them, within weeks of leaving town.  I just sigh thinking about it, and pray for trust in God and this path he has me on.  

So, on the airplane this afternoon, I opened up to 1 Kings to continue my survey of Israel's history.  I found the prophets' words jumping from the page, illuminated in full detail.  The Baal-worshipping Kings in their detestable rebellion being winnowed from their kingdom, one after another.  Faction after faction, and idols and alters to false gods tore God's chosen people from his embrace, and they find death's embrace in lieu.  The prophets, Micaiah, Elijah, the Man of God from Judah, all crying out the word of the Lord as deranged lunes, dwelling in caves, crawling to the desert to die and waking to home-cooked meals by the hands of angels.  How must cake from heaven and divine water taste after a desert death-nap?

As I drew in, I longed to know God so nearly, to have such a gripping connection that I orbit his presence to even sustain my breath. 

I didn't even have time to pray this request before I was flooded with the reality that I do hear from God like this.  Sure, every day and every moment I feel his creative pulse in the existence through which I walk, but he doesn't stop there.  Infrequently, when I don't expect it or sometimes even want it, he shows up with such revelation, as a deafening inner voice or a traumatic seizure of spirit.

Just last Sunday, I was drawn by a series of ridiculously divine encounters to the second floor of a building I'd never visited.  It was the Boiler Room I mentioned earlier.  Jean, the guest speaker, illuminated in engaging but plain style, the developmental hang-ups of newborns and infants, and how even seemingly minuscule, unintentional neglect or mistreatment by parents or others can bear staggering repercussions throughout life and relationships.  She opened up in prayer, at one point asking Holy Spirit to show us a picture of how our hearts look, from a divine perspective.  Without even thinking, before I even processed the words, I had a picture in my head of a huge, growing, bursting heart, anatomically correct but caricature in form, bound by three metal bands.  The heart strained against the restrictive bands, tearing its surface against the raw metal edges, spurting golden-red life over the edges.  The bands began to snap, overpowered not by the strength of the pulsing muscle, but by the glory of a blinding light, their tension broken as if by wire-cutters. 

I don’t feel this was a revelation to send to world leaders concerning battle or economics, nor does it seem to point in any particular direction for this next season of my life, except towards Christ.  But it gives me a boldness, a certainty wherever I walk, of purpose, vision, blessing, provision, and readiness to love freely and without reservation and bleed this love of Christ crucified and risen.

Moments On the Road

We cannot kindle when we will
The fire which in the heart resides,
The spirit bloweth and is still,
In mystery our soul abides:
But tasks, in hours of insight willed,
May be through hours of gloom fulfilled.
-Matthew Arnold

It's been so good to be back in Nashville for these last few weeks. I'm reminded of all the people and things I love about this place. Returning has raised a deepened affection and longing, and the slim possibility of a new life here. But as I ask those questions of myself and God, I'm only affirmed in my current path to keep moving until He says "stop." This is not my town any more - I'm assured of that - and there's grief in this acceptance. And as I sit in quiet and give that grief away, I'm moment by moment flooded by the blessings the last year have held and the promise of those down the road.

I feel a sense of purpose in moving on, even yet without a concrete plan. This has been the rule of my new life. Circumstances change on the daily, and the Spirit moves without warning. This is not a stagnant life. Untaken steps cannot be guided. So I'll fill up my identity from the wellspring of life each morning and walk boldly in the direction I hear the music. The words of someone wise are ringing in my head, saying you have to put out to sea before the wind can fill your sails. Sorry to whomever said this; I'd give credit if I recalled. I just know too many too wise people, I suppose.

It's interesting interacting with people from my life before this journey, trying to catch each other up on the broad strokes of how we've become who we are, just a year later. I'm more and more convinced it's not the broad strokes that change us, but the moments. The major events in life often happen by themselves, but we're formed from the seconds and minutes between, and by the things we put in our minds and hearts as time rolls along. By our moment-by-moment responses to the life that lays before us, however inconsequential it may, in the moment, seem.

I've regaled any number of people with stories from my travels, surely leaving them with an impression far more grand than the reality of a life as it is lived in another place, not so different from here. All across the world, every person I've met breathes, laughs, longs, bleeds, struggles, loves, and wonders. It's a blessing to share a bit of life with each of them and to digest how differently one organizes his or her life depending on where it's lived. It's perhaps a greater blessing to begin to grasp what a thin layer of difference actually rests on the surface of human life. I could scratch straight through it with a hair from my weird little moustache.

I've been thinking a lot about the moments that have shaped this journey for me. There are so many epic moments, so many highs, so many pictures I'll keep in my mind forever. But when I get down to the times that have shaped me and transformed me as a person, I'm drawn to the moments that were really, really hard, when nothing was working right and, with every ounce of strength and skill I could muster, I couldn't even come close to making things right. I can't comprehend the fruit that has grown from those precious few moments where I was nothing if not broken and alone. I wrote to my friend Jaclyn during this time,

I've had so many days on this freaking journey where I wake up in the morning and the only thing I have to give is a shitty attitude, frustration about relationships and 'programming' (whatever that is) and a desire to just quit and drink myself into a stupor. It seems like it's the hardest thing to wake up and take fifteen minutes to say, "Homeboy, this is what I have to offer - bones and dust. Do your thing." Some days, by the end of that fifteen minutes He's shown that bedrock you spoke about - that foundation of goodness that lies just beneath every bit of selfishness and hardship, and I'm brought to freaking tears at new revelations of the things He took to the cross for me.

Some days, there is no such revelation, and I spend the entire morning of labour commanding my muscles to move for a promise that's greater than the resistance they give.

I'm getting the sense that these are the hours that purify the saints and condition the martyrs. It's the moments when everything in your world and your head screams you're working your tail off for a lie, and you can only inhale in prayer, and the Spirit exhales the truth on your behalf in whispers the devil cannot hush.

Any story of this journey would be incomplete without these moments. Of course it's always been about loving God and loving people, and I wouldn't go if He didn't say so and wasn't reaching others through my walk. But He's at work in me all the while. These moments gave me a new depth to understand Grace and to believe in supernatural healing and power. They broke through unmeasurable old layers of guilt, selfishness, loathing, shame, and unbelief, not burying them or pushing them off, but sinking straight to their base and letting them dissolve and crumble in the presence of pure, true love and mercy. I wouldn't trade these moments for anything.


Currently reading:

Stick.

Some of my traveling mates and I came up with a sort of game one day when we were clearing brush away from the garden on our YWAM base in New Zealand. As we'd happen upon sticks of a notable size or shape, we'd examine it, name it, and hold it up declaring it's goodness for everyone to hear.

It all started when Emrie picked up a gnarled, knobby stick (really more of a limb) held it up valiantly, and dubbed it "RidicStick." Em, Jaclyn, Phil and myself began sorting, clearing, and displacing foliage in a frenzy, uncovering more and more

noteworthy finds. There was ShortStick, LipStick, and FatStick, BentStick, BurntStick, and BatStick. We must have named in excess of 300 specimens, doubling over in laughter. How I wish we had photographed and cataloged our findings. On second thought, these things usually serve as better memories for regaling than actual factual accounts. It may have been a silly game to pass the workday, but it drew upon some seriously solid principles. There was something very Genesis 2 about the whole thing - humans organizing, ruling over, and naming things of the Earth, things that God designed for our pleasure. And doing so in community, as "it is not good for man to be alone."

Days continued to pass after StickDay, but the memory lingered. For one, our vernacular had changed. Ridicstick remains synonymous with any jubilant exclamation, suitable in describing any extraordinary thing or event. But, perhaps more than that, friendships that had begun on levels of life and change and faith and humor were taking deeper root and bearing fruit, as only sheer abandonment in a common and altogether ridiculous endeavor can produce.

Weeks later, Jaclyn, Emrie, and I were walking home from a coffee/study/banter session at Seagars. I don't remember the particulars, except that there was some frustration in the air. I think it had to do with me dilly dallying and everyone around being tired of always waiting for me to wrap up some frivolous engagement. At any rate, definitively gracious and cool Emrie had walked on ahead, rightfully irritated, and I remember momentarily searching for some gesture of apology and kinship greater than words for a moment such as this. I happened upon a small, gnarled but straightish stick, hardly more than a twig, with the striking appearance of a wand from any great work of mythic fiction. Without thought, I seized it and called out to Emrie. She stopped and turned as Jaclyn and I approached with the stick. We held a sidewalk ceremony, knighting Emrie for her exemplary patience, and we bequeathed the WillowStick unto her for safeguarding. Emrie's frustration dissolved in an easily forgiving grin and we continued our walk through the idyllic Oxford Autumn air.

Winter set in as our classes drew to completion, and we made preparations for our missional deployment to the far ends of the Earth. I grew to know and love everyone in our small school of 50 or so, but you can't help but make a particular connection with just a few in such a short time. By divine design or staff's judgement, several of us who had grown especially close were each split into different teams. Phil was Africa/Asia-bound, Jaclyn would lock down the African continent, Kristi was our South American correspondent, Emrie and Katy headed for Southeast Asia, Kenny and Dan were on the Far East Asia team, and I was going to the Middle East.

Days were busy finishing studies, cleaning, and gathering essentials into packs - 'skeeter net, bible, and two pair undies ought to do. Evenings were spent in the roasty den, dining on peanut butter-cinnamon-toast, fire blazing to fight the cold through the cellophane windows. We occupied several long evenings unpacking everything that God had done in our lives to get us where we were, taking inventory of the people we had discovered ourselves to be, and speculating where our roads might lead and intersect. Someone mentioned the crassness of a mere "goodbye," and Emrie sprang into action. Producing the WillowStick from her belongings, she hurriedly broke it into 6 pieces - a piece to travel with each team, each person, in each direction, and we selected a day several months into our journeys to stop what we were doing, find a high place in whatever town we were in, and bury the WillowStick. Together. Tearful goodbyes were said as one-by-one we departed into the unknown.

I went to sleep late last night with a silent, groaning prayer for God to evidence himself in my life. I know he's there, doing his thing, as he always is. I just needed that knowledge to breach my brain and penetrate my anxiety about where I am right now. And maybe provide some peace, and a little joy if it's not too much to ask. I woke up early this morning with Psalm 23 on my lips as all these memories came flooding back.

In Ezekial 37:16, God speaks to the prophet: "And you, son of man, take for yourself one stick and write on it, 'For Judah and for the sons of Israel, his companions'; then take another stick and write on it, 'For Joseph, the stick of Ephraim and all the house of Israel, his companions.' Then join them for yourself one to another into one stick, that they may become one in your hand." God has always tended to use the natural to represent his goodness and to bind his followers together in seeking his face. In fact, that's the primary reason he created "the natural" in the first place.

1 Samuel 7 finds the Israelites on the brink of war with the Philistines, who had twice defeated Israel and seized the Ark of the Covenant. The Philistine army is encroaching, so Samuel seeks the Lord. As Sam sacrifices a burnt offering on the alter, the Philistine army is thrown into confusion by God's thunderous intervention. Verse 12: "Then Samuel took a stone and set it up between Mizpah and Shen. He named it Ebenezer, saying, 'Thus far has the LORD helped us.'" This is where the hymn Come Thou Fount Of Every Blessing derives the line "Here I raise mine Ebenezer, hither by thy help I'm come." Ebenezer is a name combining the Hebrew "Even Haazer," meaning literally "Stone of Help." It's a marker in history, one's personal history or the history of a people, where a monument is raised to remind that God has a proven track record of hooking us up. We have no reason to worry. It is the Lord that delivers, and blessing comes from his hand. It's just Homeboy doing what Homeboy does.

As it was on my lips this morning, Psalm 23:4 says "Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for you are with me. Your rod and your staff, they comfort me." If God has a recorded history of using sticks and stones to exemplify his presence and action, far be it from me to discount such elements' presence in my own story. If fellowship was born on StickDay, it was tested and cemented on WillowStickDay. And if kinship when we broke bread and divided the WillowStick, then we made covenant the day the WillowStick took root around the world. In our journeys, by some degree of intention, the WillowStick was planted. In modern-day Ephesus. Erdenet, Mongolia. Argentina. Lake Victoria, Uganda. Darjeeling. Thaiwan. We remain distanced by oceans, but connected by the love of a redeeming God who brought us together and called us to a higher purpose. During the dry times, I continue to look back on God's provenance and providence and our covenant as evidence of motion and deliverance in my life. It helps me find purpose in short nights and perspective in long days. It's all the manna I need to start fresh, and more than plenty reason to smile. And that, my friends, is ridicstick.

Leave.

To everyone who has said to me over the last year, "gee, I wish I could do something like you're doing - getting out, seeing the world, truly making a difference."

Do you? Do you really? Because there's really not much else to it. I understand we'll always have an infinite list of "buts." BUT, I sounded exactly like that a year ago. BUT job. BUT debt. BUT relationships. BUT fear. BUT BUT BUT BUT BUT.

I've been reading over old journals, and I'm reminded again how much work God does when you give him the space to do so.

What if I I told you that God is in absolute control of everything that you yield to his hand, and he loves you with absolute perfection - literally gaga over you - and knows absolutely what's best for you in every situation? I know a lot of us believe this, but I want us all to really try live like it's true. I know a lot of us have trouble believing it at all, but we should try living as if it were true anyway. We can't lose. Either we discover we were right and life goes on as it always has, or we start seeing evidence that it really is true. Really. And if it's really true, than it kicks BUT'S butt. No excuse not to dream big and hit the road.

I learned an important lesson from my friend KJay several years ago, and it's this: Everybody always does exactly what they want. You always have a choice. And it's not what you want, it's what you'll give up to get it. Comfort v Adventure. Stability v Growth. the Status Quo v the Extraordinary. Now if your dream-come-true is the 9 to 5 in the same ol' town, then I could almost envy you - BUT - I know I want so much more.

About this time last year, my friend Jon gave me Donald Miller's memoir Through Painted Deserts. There's some good moments, but the introduction alone hit me like a train heading out of town. It ends:

I want to repeat one word for you:

Leave.

Roll the word around on your tongue for a bit. It is a beautiful word, isn't it? So strong and forceful, the way you have always wanted to be. And you will not be alone. You have never been alone. Don't worry. Everything will still be here when you get back. It is you who will have changed.

We'll see you out there.

More Lessons in Landscaping, or Miracles in Mud

I've been feeling a bit numb, and a bit down in general lately. I think it's mostly just travel-withdrawal, so I haven't let it bother me too much. There's been moments of really cool revelation, and moments of trudgery in being "home", but in general it's just been kind of a slow winding-down. I like to think I'm gradually decompressing in the context of good family-time and good Homeboy-time out in the field doing my landscaping.

The other day I was cleaning up some newly planted trees, ankle deep in mud soup in the rain. It was a pretty crummy day for work, but I really wanted to get this job done before leaving for Grandma's farm for Thanksgiving. I was complaining my butt off to Homeboy about the job, the place I'm in, the stagnancy, the finances, blah blah blah blah blah, and really just saying If you love me, prove it. I'm such a whiny baby sometimes. What do I do, God? What am I here for? Where are you taking me?

After a while, he was like Beau, you already know this one. Start singing my name and worshipping, man. That's why I made you. So I started off just organizing ideas for some arrangements as I went about my work. Not much else to do out there anyway. I started singing How He Loves by John Mark McMillan, which brought me back to this story. Please watch at least the first portion where John explains the origin of the song.


As I played this out in my head I just started CRYING and CRYING and CRYING, and singing through the verses, letting them hit me in light of where it came from, and in light of my OWN seasons of mourning, and God was totally just ripping off the hard crusty stuff that has caked on in the last few months -- the stuff that builds up over the life he puts in us.

I was clearing this muddy soupy dirt off of the grass around the trees, and I was like FLETCH NO, I will not let you cover over my RIGHTEOUSNESS. I will NOT let you bury this life born into me with your displacement, lies, and bull. It came at too great a cost, and in Jesus' name, GET OFF. I began to ask God for help to keep me RAW, to keep tilling and hoeing and keep me muddy and messy and just please please please don't let me get too far away.

I feel like I sort of lost consciousness in this place for a while and started seeing myself in the heavens, worshipping and singing and shouting to armies marching forward. He told me somewhere in there that I already know the next step. I know who I am and why I was made, and I don't need to worry about the details of the hows and whens and wheres. I just need to start living it. NOW. He said NOW, and I just kind of snapped back to real life. Surprised, I was almost done with the trees and it was some 3 hours later. I couldn't even feel my arthritic hand, and the job was very nearly done.

The next day I was listening to Thrice on my iPod while finishing another job at South Haven Baptist Church. I paused the music to take a call, and when I turned it back on, it was somehow, inexplicably on a Bill Johnson message called He Tore The Heavens Open that just totally affirmed everything - the whole message from the day before. Entirely. Specifically. This is perplexing, because I don't even have this message in my iTunes. I'm sure Phil snuck it onto my iPod during our travels a few months ago. I've said it before, but God is totally in my iPod.

As I was packing up to leave, I walked across the parking lot with a shovel in one hand, the other hand in the air. I guess I was kind of shouting and actually feeling Heaven open up and invade the neighborhood, even while the people were probably peaking out their windows looking at me like I'm some freako, screaming with my hands in the air. Then some dude in a Jeep Wrangler and offered me a red Slushee from QuickTrip. Of course I said yes. I don't think I've ever bought myself a red Slushee before in my life, but it was SOOO GOOD. He turned out to be the youth pastor of the church, just showing hospitality to the landscape guy. We got to talking and he's having me visit his youth group later this month to share stories. Goes to show - when I conscientiously rest in God's goodness, he's pretty quick to give me opportunities to share it with others.

So, that's all fine and good. But here's what I think it means practically for me over the next few months. I think I'm going to record some of the mashups I've concieved over the last year (i.e. Three Little Birds/I Have Decided and Shallow Grave/How He Loves). STOKED about this. These songs really breathed life into my walk and into my traveling community over the last 9 months. I also hope to flesh out some of the stuff I've written on the road. I've started doing research for a good School of Worship through YWAM sometime over the next year. I've been really resistant to the idea of returning to YWAM, but I now think it would be a great way to get over my baggage about not trusting people and not liking corporate settings, and to get over thinking I'm no good. I want to get over all my crap, because that's all it is, really. And you're supposed to leave your crap in the toilet, flush it and walk away. I don't want to carry my spiritual catheter around anymore.

When it comes down to it, there's certain things about worship that I need a lot of work on. Like being able to do it, and being able to lead it, and letting it be a celebration and a declaration of God's goodness instead of just a groaning in our human depravity. It can start there, but again, I can be such a whiny baby sometimes. So I'm just approaching the possibility of another school as a natural way to walk towards my identity as a worshipper. I've not entertained the idea until now because A) it just seemed too logical to be legit and B) It would require me to leave my catheter behind, and that will undoubtedly require some uncomfortable soul-work.

My buddy Mark Parker talked about communication from the Holy Spirit in an interesting manner. He kind of made this weird gesture where he kept placing the palm of one hand on his head. He'd push it off with his other hand, but it would come back and rest gently on his head again like some strange, heat-seeking alien octopus. His point was that ideas from God can keep returning to your consciousness. They rest gently and return every time you refuse them.

I guess that's kind of how I feel about this idea of getting back into the YWAM paradigm. The few struggles I've had within their ministry structure have mostly just resulted in clarifying and rehabbing my own insecurities. And frankly, I believe my buddies and former leaders when they say there's no better way to go deeper in Christ than to continue down the road of discipleship.

In a lot of ways, this step is similar to my decision to leave my home, belongings, and the life I knew and loved in Nashville a year ago. I'm in the early stages of setting off on a new and uncertain adventure. It will require logistical and financial support that I can't provide for myself. Essentially, I have no ability to do this without God's direct involvement. Last year I was an anxious, apprehensive, tightly-wound basket case. This year I feel pretty well resigned and confident. I think it's his will. Ask me if it's happened a year from now, and I'll be able to tell you for sure.

Lessons in Landscaping, or Coming Home

I've had discussions with several people lately on the peculiar pressures of coming "home," especially from a long and rather intense season of travel. I wound up compiling my thoughts in a letter to a friend going through a similar transition the other day. It's a pretty good depiction of my current headspace, so I thought I'd share. Here's an excerpt:

Here's what I decided on Friday. Every place you've ever spent a worthy chunk of time, you leave a "you-shaped hole." It is precisely the same size and shape as the perception you left on those closest to you at that time, and your own perception of your role in that particular environment (+/-, of course, a margin for exaggeration and forgetfulness). The thing with wandering types is, we change and grow much during our exploits on the road, often not even able to keep up with our own internal progress. Upon returning to places once familiar, a natural gravity tries to pull you directly back into the vacuum left at your departure. It's awkward, and at times a bit painful, because you just don't fit anymore.

This was causing me some anxiety until the revelation that this gravity isn't real. We're citizens of the Heavenlies, free to traipse above the grasp of perceptions, fears, limitations, societal and relational constructs, and our own dogma. We're free to dream the biggest dreams we can and set them into action, and God is on our side. He likes creators, because he is one. So I'm trying more and more to divorce myself from the mundane, even as life begins to take on forms that look more familiar. I'm making lists of things I know about myself, and other lists of things I want to know about myself and the world around me. I'm making lists of things that change and things that remain. And I'm trying to see this old, familiar world through eyes that I know are new, finding new ways to bless the world around me as I soak it in to new depths.

The other thing hampering me has been the horrible always-present question, "What's Next?" And nobody wants to know more than me. Especially seeing as I've been spending my time this last week picking up odd landscaping jobs, doing the exact same things I did at my first job when I was just 14. It's humbling, and generally I think humbling things are good things. It's given me plenty of time to think and then worry and eventually remember to pray and then still ample time left over to do nothing but wait on answers. And knee-deep in mud with an aching back is a pretty good place to get revelation.

A number of my favourite people point out the relationship between the natural/physical and the spiritual, so I try to tread lightly with open eyes. Yesterday, Todd (the guy paying me to plant trees) was telling me why he's not too crazy about the type of tree we were putting in the ground. Todd said, "They grow really fast. But, they tend to forget which is their main trunk and split off in other directions. They get really unruly and hard to maintain."

It's rare that I'm hit immediately by the weight of statements concerning the growth of trees, but this was one such occasion. I felt like God was saying "I don't want you to be an unruly Red Maple. I want you to be a freaking ginormous Redwood. But that takes TIME. I've torn you up a bit. CHILL OUT. Let this stuff sink in and settle. Then the growing can happen straight and strong and purposeful."

I'm left in a peculiar tension between chapters. And I guess that's good. The pull of what's to come may keep me from getting too settled, while the warmth of the familiar could keep me from rushing ahead. So, until further notice I will remain planless, phoneless, content, and available for hire.

See also: Galations 5:5 "But by faith we eagerly await through the Spirit the righteousness for which we hope."

Bookends.

I had this on my heart the morning I left the States 8 1/2 months ago. I awoke early from a unlikely restful slumber on the love seat of my friend Lucy's Los Angeles apartment, and scribbled this like an exhale, as if I'd memorized it in a dreamscape conversation with God himself. It remains one of my favourite pieces.

Dear Church,
You do not own God.

Dear Islam,
You do not own God.

Dear Hinduism,
You do not own God.

Dear Judaism,
You do not own God.

Dear Science,
You do not own God.

Dear Philosophy,
You do not own God.

Dear Atheism,
You do not own God.

Dear Reason,
You do not own God.

Dear Law,
You do not own God.

Dear Learnedness,
You do not own God.

Dear Simplicity,
You do not own God.

Dear Commerce,
You do not own God.

Dear Service,
You do not own God.

Dear Vengeance,
You do not own God.

Dear Hate,
You do not own God.

Dear Love,
You do not own God.

Dear Existence,
You do not own God.

Dear Life & Death,
You do not own God.

Dear Heaven & Hell,
You do not own God.

Dear Truth,
You do not own God.

What thing for which man has a name
Could be vast enough to contain
The one who stood 'for everything
Who spake the sun to shine in flame
Who spake pure life from dust & rain
Spake dust & rain from stars he's slain
Who groans in planetary strain
Who whispers throughout everything
From whom all truth originates
Whose wisdom gifts, withholds, creates,
Whose divine nature permeates,
Whom minds of men his breath negates

This is the one I yearn for
This is the one I seek
This is the one who holds me up
When hope is lost and life is bleak

This is the one who wants me
This is the one who knows my bones
This is the one for whom I'd gladly
Scatter my ashes at his throne

This is the one for whom I wait
On bended knee in quiet place
And make a space for him to fill
For here he is and fill he will

He vibrates in my atoms
He trickles in my veins
He made the tongue that speaks
So let it say no other name
And if it should fall silent
Should it be still and rest today
Let ring throughout eternity
That he will have his way

It seems that through the adventures, lessons, and trials, I've only been drawn more into this frame of mind. I thought this an appropriate time to share.

Just got back to Kansas City tonight, and I'm stoked for this season. Homeboy's been saying for a while now that he's just waiting through the open door, and these first few steps seem drenched in his presence.

See also: John 15:16 - "You did not choose me but I chose you, and I appointed you to go and bear fruit."

The Reason For The Title.

I'm likely going to get a tattoo to inaugurate this season of my life. The concept for my Tat has also inspired this blog. It goes like this:

I'm embarking upon a journey consisting of, but not limited to the following: the giving away of everything I own, the forfeiture of all plans, comforts, and accoutrements of the typical domestic life, and the setting off into the vastness of the created world to encounter God and love His people.

So, my tattoo concept is derived from the story of Creation in Genesis 1:2, which says "The earth was formless and empty, and darkness covered the deep waters. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the surface of the waters."

The original Hebrew for "formless and empty" is the phrase "tohu va vohu" or actually,

which directly translated is "utter chaos." It was practically a whimsical term, dismissing the subject as incoherent and lacking intrinsic value.

I visited Limpopo, S.
Africa with my family a decade ago, and we took a photo on an ancient baobab tree.

This thing's one of the biggest in the world, 152 ft around, and over 6,000 yrs old.

SOOOOO, my idea is some artistic rendering of this tree growing out of a "void," of sorts, perhaps a trash heap or some visual depiction of dust and ashes, incorporating the Hebrew phrase. It's supposed to represent how I am, and collectively humanity is, just a bunch of rubbish swirling in tumultuous blunder, but that this is the very material that God uses to put together His masterpiece: beautiful Creation as a whole.

So that's it, that's that, this is it, etc. A bookend. The one on the left. Hopefully the bookshelf is stout enough to support whatever tohu va vohu it will collect between now and the next bookend.

Cheers, and we'll see you along the way.