"Right Now" - Bright Light Parade

I was mowing the lawn, minding my own business, listening to my mp3 player (yes, I am a dinosaur who does not own an iPod), when the song "Right Now" by Bright Light Parade began to play.

I was captivated by the lyric, "I've realized there's more to life than hiding from what's inside."

In the context of the song, it speaks to allowing myself to express my love for God without concern for the opinion of others, to quit covering that up or excusing it.

None of us get there without first admitting what's inside that blocks this free expression.

Maybe we call it the Shadow, or Original Sin, or Illusion. I don't care what we call it, just that we see it.

There is a Me that I live with every day, and a Me that I want people to think I am. Like St. Paul, I say, "I want to do what is good, but I don't. I don't want to do what is wrong, but I do it anyway." (Romans 7:19, New Living Translation [NLT])

So it is and so it will be as long as I do not invite God into that part of me. This is part of human nature. Scarecly a few passages into the Hebrew Bible, people are beginning to try to hide things from God. We read about Adam, "Then the LORD God called to the man, 'Where are you?' He replied, 'I heard you walking in the garden, so I hid. I was afraid because I was naked.'" (Genesis 3:9-10, NLT)

What a great cosmic joke it is for us to say God is all-seeing, all-knowing, and ever-present, and yet to think we could hide our nakedness, our realness, from God. God seems to play along, asking, "Where are you?" like a parent playing hide and seek with a child who covers his eyes thinking if he cannot see, he cannot be seen.

God has already seen our nakedness.

So, no more hiding what's inside. No more trying to cover up, medicate, numb, or compartmentalize it all away from God. We build a fortress of behavior and pretense around our weaknesses, which only locks us inside with them. No more pretending it doesn't exist! My part in the human experience is well-established. I'm sorry to disappoint you, but I am flawed.

When I quit hiding from that fact, I can begin to allow God to see it, too, and healing can begin. I can tear down that fortress, but it can only be done from the inside.

"I've realized there's more to life than hiding from what's inside."

Pace e bene,
David +

Necessary Grace and the Meaning of a Single Day

In the middle of a busy afternoon, the cell phone rang. "This is the hospital calling and we have a patient who would like to see a minister..." I am one of the overnight and weekend ministers on call, so I shifted my day and headed to the hospital. Who am I to know what to say to a stranger on a hospital bed? What words can I offer to a family whose loved one just died? The hospital doesn't call me for people who can wait for the day chaplain. I don't often know how I will be called upon to serve; this leaves plenty of room to depend not only on grace but on necessary grace. I stopped at the nurse's station to check on the patient, but his nurse was on her rounds and the man at the desk could offer no information. After a short walk to the room and a knock on the open door, I met the patient. He was an older man, although I could not tell if he was all that much older than me. Heavy, restless, and uncomfortable with a mass of grey dreadlocks and piercing brown eyes, he looked up at me and said, "I'm going through some stuff." Medication and weariness interrupted his thoughts from time to time so that constructing a sentence ebbed and flowed like trying to start a car motor on a cold winter day. Sadness, regret and doubt clouded his words. Relationships had fallen away; expectations were unmet; potential was unrealized. Jobs came and went, some good, some not so good. He was a talented photographer in the 35mm film days; his illiteracy never allowed him the chance to catch up. He had never become the man his mother envisioned, never felt able to fill his father's shoes, lost touch with his children, and was estranged from his brother and sister. This was his life: alone for three weeks in a hospital bed, with one visitor other than me in all of that time. His next home would be a brief stay at a hospice facility. Lacking a heart transplant, there was no other prognosis and the one he had was short-term. He did not look at his life and ask me, "Is God punishing me? Does God not like me?" He only asked, "How can I know I'm all right with God? I have failed at many things." I quoted Psalm 51:17 to him. "My sacrifice is a contrite spirit; my humbled heart You will not spurn." I assured him that the moment we ask, "Am I all right with God?" God rushes to answer, "Yes, and how I love you!" It is not in our achievements that God delights, although we feverishly continue to build our personal Towers of Babel as though they make a difference in eternity. It is in our hearts that God delights, in hearts turned toward God, in hearts that ache and long to feel connected with God. God does not need us to have a perfect heart, only a humble one, only one that needs God and knows it. He was tired, so I excused myself and told him I will see him tomorrow. Tomorrow? Tomorrow, he will be taken off of an IV medication and switched to oral prescriptions. This will increase the likelihood that the hospital will be able to find an "end-of-life care placement" for him. I asked the nurse to include a staff note to let me know the next facility to which he goes so that I can be a friend to this man who could use one. Tomorrow may or may not find him still here. He does not seem to have many tomorrows left. But he had today, and today we talked, and he cried, and he told the nurse it helped. Today he had the opportunity to hear that God loves him, loves him deeply and fully as if he were God's only child. God forgives him. God is always offering a new start to him. I hope he'll be around for me to see him tomorrow. We were a somewhat unlikely pair to find common ground, but faith, hope and love make up some powerful common ground. Today, I could offer him all three. A time will come when faith will be rewarded and hope will be fulfilled, and only love will remain. Forever. Not regret, not sadness, not doubt. Pure love. Necessary grace.

Am I God's facebook friend?

"Devotion is neither private nor public prayer, but prayers whether private or public are particular parts or instances of devotion. Devotion signifies a life given or devoted to God."

These words open Anglican priest William Law's 1729 book "A Serious Call to a Devout and Holy Life." It may be awhile before I get to Paragraph 2!

I respect writers like Fr. Henri Nouwen or Fr. Law who can stop me with a few words and send me into a universe of contemplation.

Fr. Law describes a life given to God, not just parts of it. A life. In George Lucas' Star Wars trilogy, the wise character Yoda says to his pupil Luke Skywalker the famous line, "No 'try.' Only 'Do.'" Similarly, Fr. Law is saying, "No 'part.' Only 'Life.'"

Do I trust God sufficiently to offer all of my life, every second, including every juicy mistake and selfish action? Am I that devoted?

Is it a matter of devotion or a matter of trust?

What happens when God sees who I truly am, which of course is the case although my ego believes otherwise?

Do I really offer to God the unpolished parts? Do I really offer to God the secrets, the shame, the failure, the addiction, the longing, the confusion? Will God be shocked, offended, disappointed, unable to cope, unwilling to love?

This then becomes how I determine if I am a devotee or a follower, a disciple or a fan, God's facebook friend or God's true servant: am I willing to devote every moment to God, reserving nothing, entirely as-is.

If I am, then God gets free reign to use me any moment, every moment. I give God all-area access to my life to influence, repair, heal and nurture it with pure love.

If not, then I am a part-timer.

Which is always an option.

But is different from being devoted.

Blessings,
David

God of My Heart

God of my heart,
You do not need to enlighten me today.
I need no brilliance to toss around.

God of my heart,
You do not need to bless me today.
I need no favoritism to show off.

God of my heart,
You do not need to create through me today.
I need no talent to justify me.

God of my heart,
all I ask
is to remember
You are there.



Blessings,
David