FLOWN FREE

"Mack, pain has a way of clipping our wings and keeping us from being able to fly." She waited a moment, allowing her words to settle. "And if left unresolved for very long you can almost forget that you were ever created to fly in the first place." from The Shack chapter A Piece Of Pi

Listen to FLOWN FREE HERE

This brings many tears this morning...some of joy based upon the freedom I have found and still finding and many full of sorrow for people I love dearly who are still trying to find their way out of the cage.

IF YOU CAN ONLY HANDLE ONE...SKIP THE OIL CHANGE AND CHANGE THE FILTER FIRST

I will begin with a confession. The kind of person Richard Rohr describes in this video used to be me. I lived within the confines...the mindset...a world view shaped by Christendom. I never knew Jesus nor had I ever accepted him for who he truly is. That lasted until the day I could no longer live with the internal conflict...the day my hypocrisy and destructive world view came into full view and I came to understand that I had been perpetuating the hostility towards Jesus and those I was to love.

As Richard explains, the former filter just wouldn't allow me to see Jesus or even more importantly, hear Jesus. Since faith comes by hearing, hearing is an essential thing. Well, I began to hear things clearly and my first responses went something like this, Okay, I'm seeing and I am hearing but I don't know if I can do this. Turns out, I can't, but his life inside me makes it possible...makes it reality. It leaves me with nothing to boast about just One to marvel at and follow out into a very unpredicatable, uncontrollable world.

WOULD I RATHER HANG WITH VAN JONES OR GLENN BECK?

In reality, it's actually impossible for me to answer that question because I really don't know either one of them personally. But if going solely on the messages (and message can tell us a lot about the messenger) they are putting out in the public, my choice is clear at least as far as what resonates with my heart when it comes to the human element...lifting people up instead of tearing people down in order to maintain the status quo.

I've surprised several of my friends that have been watching Glenn Beck by saying to them that I would much rather spend a weekend having a conversation with Van Jones than with Glenn. And I am serious about that. The old game that Glenn and many on his side are pushing has nothing to do with moving humanity down the road towards justice for all...or to say it in a way that has taken on deep meaning for me...towards Honorable Relations. It actually just continues to ignore the problems that are at the center of the problematic dilemmas we face today in this nation and the world. The power class always fights change and they are almost always on the wrong side of justice, just like with Dr. King in his day. He was on the right side of justice and the powerful were not.

This morning I awakened with some words of Nelson Mandela in my head which led me to do a google search to find the quote. Instead it led me to an interview with Van Jones where he mentions Mandela in the context I was looking for...Mandela's refusal to dehumanize his oppressors during the 20 years he was incarcerated basically for being opposed to the oppressors form of governance.

As I say often, I really don't have much hope for there ever being a solution found through political means. But when it comes to government and the fact that it's not going away anytime soon...I'm really open to and hoping for a government that not only talks about equality and equal opportunity for all, but one that actually works hard to make it a reality.

You can listen to the interview HERE

NATURALLY

I've learned much from nature. There is something very healthy and completely natural about accepting the progressive nature of life. It's a perpetual cycle of new beginnings..seasons of growth...time for letting go. And it's all done with little effort. Nature never wastes time trying to be something other than it was created to be.

I'm so done with the human activity of carving out space and defending it as if it's an arrival point. The only things that stay in the condition of sameness are dead. I lived there too many days of my life and I'm not interested in going back.

Simplifying how I live, what I allow myself to get involved with has made this transition (returning to a life more in tune with how I was created to live) possible. Learning what is necessary and letting go of that which is not, has been at the heart of this transition. It's funny how in the culture I have been shaped by, entertainment of all sorts turns out to be a way of "unwinding" from the things people would call necessity. I came to find out that just like everything else, this was upside-down thinking. That way of unwinding wasn't really helping me at all. It was instead just something else that was at work draining the tank and distracting me from the Life I was in need of.

I AM LISTENING

I arrived home from work today and grabbed my camera before heading out into the garden for a walk-through in the light rain. The fall colors are still wonderful and I know I have missed many worthwhile shots simply due to the fact that there are too many for me to even be able to recognize them all.

Tranquility is the word that comes to mind when I think of my garden and some seasons of the year just ever so gently project that feeling more than others. Fall is one of them. Rainy days are another. Combine those two and the garden oozes with a sense of peace and calls to visitors to enter and to slow their pace. Well, at least to the visitors that are listening.

I am listening.

A LIFE TO RELAX INTO

Believe me when I say, grace doesn't let us of the hook....it just helps us own our own crap. In contrast to the law that just muddies the water by complicating things with all kinds of manipulative posturing and helps people stay in the scapegoat cycle.

THE WORLD SYSTEM ON TRIAL

Read this in light of what our nation prides itself for. The rule of law and what we as humans determine to be just.

"Pilate represents Roman authority and applies Roman law. Now, I concede that no civilization ever created so well-developed a law or could give such decisions in trials, debates, and conflicts. I say this without irony. I taught Roman law for twenty years and discovered all the nuances and all the skill of jurists whose one aim was to say what was right. They defined law as the art of the good and the equitable, and I can guarantee that in hundreds of concrete cases they rendered decisions which showed that they were in effect dispensing justice. The Romans were not in the first instance ferocious fighters and conquerors, as they are often described. Their chief achievement was Roman law. A little problem which virtually no one considers is that their army, strictly speaking, was never large. At most it seems to have had 120 legions, and these were nearly all stationed on the frontiers of the empire. They came into the interior only when there was a rebellion. The order of the empire was not a military order. It was through administrative skill and through the equilibrium established by skillful and satisfying legal measures that the empire endured for five centuries. We have to bear this in mind in evaluating what the accounts of the trial tell us.



The law of which the Romans were so proud and which provided the justest solutions---what did it accomplish in this instance? It allowed a Roman procurator to yield to the mob and to condemn an innocent man to death for no valid reason (as Pilate himself recognized!) This, then, is what we can expect from an excellent legal system! The fact that Jesus submits to the trial is not in these circumstances a recognition of the legitimacy of the authority of government. On the contrary, it is an unveiling of the basic injustice of what purports to be justice. This is what is felt when it is said that in the trial of Jesus all those who were condemned to death and crucified by the Romans are cleared. We thus find here once again the conviction of the biblical writers that all authority is unjust. We catch an echo of the saying in Ecclesiastes 3:16 that "where the seat of justice is found, there is wickedness." Jaques Ellul Anarchy and Christianity