...into thy hands i commit my spirit....

i have no earthly idea why God is so patient with me.   i've gone through so many periods of questioning, of failing, of cursing the earth i was born into that any reasonable deity should of just let me sell my soul to the devil when i wanted to and be satisfied with cool people like mother terresa. 

but no, when this lamb escapes, the hellhound of heaven happily leaves all 99 of the ones who have their lives together.  for me. and i have no idea why.  don't get me wrong, some times i really love God and feel His-Her joy covering everything.  there are times when being in a community, and being free to shout and dance about how God's saving me is the only thing important in my life.  but there are other times, when i don't feel anything. i still act excited and reverent before everyone else but it's all a mask. these are the times when i don't feel anything, and God seems so distant, and my own life seems purposeless.   there are times when my devout "Thy will be done" morphs into an agnostic "let me go! i want to be done with this whole santification process, it's too damn hard."  but its at these times that i find myself less able to break away from God.  the angrier i get at God's silence, the more likely it is that something (or someone) is going to come along, and God forces me back to Him-Her, just like a Parent who always lets me come home. 

in the words of one of my favorite old blues songs "late in the evening, i'm gonna lay my lonesome head on the railroad track/and when i hear that train a-commin', i'm gonna snatch my damn head back."  and it's true. it is at those moments that i feel the despair that hope flood in. and that is how we keep going.  to steal a phrase from barrak obama who stole it from rev. jerehmiah wright we regain the audacity of hope only when we begin realize how audacious hope really is.  that really corny poem about how God's footprints are always next to ours, but when we only see one set of prints its because She's carrying us is actually on to something....  everything is going to work itself out.  He hasn't brought us this far to leave us now....

when i was at one of my lowest points, a very wise friend told me that when we agree to become God's slave, He takes our brokenness away from us, so that we remade as more than the product of our sin, and the ways people sin against us. nearly 400 years ago, a people stolen from africa would gather illegally in the woods and created one of the greatest forms of christian worship in the history of the religion - at a time when all they heard about the gospel was b.s. about how Jesus wanted them to be obedient to the "master." why?  i think it's because, somehow, the Spirit let them know that becoming God's slave meant that you could not, and should not, be a slave to anything - or anyone else. 

this summer, i've prayerfully decided to start attending st. sabinia, a spirit-filled african-american catholic church on the south side - and have been impressed with how much i, as a white protestant, have in common with their vision and beliefs, and have learned from their passion. two sundays ago, during the mass for mother's day, a woman came up to the alter as father pflager explained that her son had been shot and killed just last week. "i went to the hospital, and we prayed for God to save this boy's life, and for reasons i don't understand, God said 'no, i want him here with Me.'" this beautiful woman then took the microphone from the pastor, and explained that, "it's hard to loose a child. you expect your child to outlive you. but, this expedience has think more about all those other mothers who are loosing children everyday. that's why i want to tell my church that because of this painful experience, i've become committed to ending gang violence in our community." i think she was the only one in the santuarry not crying.

the secret to happiness? - loose yourself. love God with your heart, soul, and mind, give Him-Her your whole being - and love your neighbor as yourself, don't get lost in self-pity, but let suffering be a motivation to work for justice.

random metaphores, loosley based on experiences and thoughts

...drops of heaven in the middle of hell...

just when i thought my perception of the world couldn't get
any more intense, my gluttony for getting involved in any extra-curricular
activity that doesn't involve playing sports or being republican has come back
to bite me.



i spent this weekend in uptown, trying to get a sense of what homeless people
go through by both talking to whoever would listen to us and trying to live
it.  it wasn't about feeding or helping them, but about learning from
them, forming relationships while we (not us and them) endured the city at its
most merciless. 



final reflections... this world is fucked up.  i'm sorry, but i've run out
of polite words that help me work through it.  God created humanity in
His-Her own image to live in a certain way, but society ain't operating according
the designer's instructions, by a long shot.  beyond simple material
comforts that i knew the urban poor don't have, probably the worst part of
their lives is all the little things against you.  is it really necessary
for seats on the el or bus stops to be curved in the middle and have arm rests
that make it impossible to lie down?  why do restaurants keep their dumpsters
locked - if they're throwing stuff away, why should they be afraid to give it
away to someone who might have a use for it? when we were sleeping under an
overpass (we didn't last long doing that - it was really cold) a police officer
came up to us (because, technically, we were breaking the law by
"loitering" there)  and  asked what we were doing. 
when fearless leader kelly (yes, this is the same kelly who did my hair, i owe
that girl mad props)   talked  him out of arresting us and
explained what we were doing - he said "yeah, well, you have to understand
that homeless people choose to be where they are - they get into drugs and
become alcoholic, and stop looking for things that can help them." 
none of us responded to him... but i kind of wanted to.  homelessness is a
miserable life, no one would ever choose it.



before getting to the streets, i mostly expected the people i met to be stupid
freaks, to put it bluntly.  my mind was filled with all the stereotypes of
the drunk and dirty illiterate guy who thinks he's from saturn.  what i
found instead was many wonderful, intelligent, and wise people. some of them
were well-read, and eager to communicate their ideas and often very exciting
life experiences.  some held to their religious beliefs very deeply, and i
learned to call them brother or sister in Christ as we cried and prayed
together.  i did meet one guy who called himself an atheist "because
of what i've learned from philosophy."  he went on to talk about
cultural constructions of reality and about how he didn't think any one
religious view point was sufficient to fully explain how the idea of God is
within every human culture. i listened to him in silent awe, unable to answer
him and silently repentant for judging him  because of where he was on our
socio-economic totem poll.  



ultimately to be homeless is, just that, to be without a home, to have no
private space or personal community of individuals who can support you. 
my weekend was full of a lot of boredom, of walking around and feeling empty,
and of trying to spend several hours in mcdonalds before they kick us out for
only buying a cup of coffee and going to sleep.  the people i met had both
sinned and been sinned against, but then again, who hasn't?  all of
humanity has to deal guilt, anger, and regret from painful pasts.  the
only thing separating me from the people i met this weekend is that i grew up
in a supportive community that could help me get where i am.  where i
could take my pain to social networks filled with people who told me how to get
by and gave me love and encouragement.



  but, there are other people in this world who don't have that. 
they can't trust anyone but themselves, they have no where to go but places
where they're not welcome. the streets are filled with brilliant people, who
are slowing going insane because they have nothing to depend on - all they once
believed in has fallen apart and left them alone. all human beings are
radically dependent on each other, no one can survive on their own - because it
is only by mattering to someone else that we get the motivation to keep
surviving. more then a hand-out, or even a hand-up, what Christ in the
poor really needs is our love - reminders of a God who cries for their pain and
cares for them enough to expel the demons that keep this world light-years away
from His-Her kingdom. 

Currently Reading Colossians Remixed: Subverting the Empire By Brian J. Walsh, Sylvia C. Keesmaat see related

i'm a rebel (soul rebel)

Currently Reading The Autobiography of Malcolm X : As Told to Alex Haley see related

...the day the apocalypse began

 a few weeks after you-know-what five years ago, a friend of mine displayed the NY times from September 10, "to remember the last day the world was normal."  however, it didn't take long before i realized how abnormal sept. 10 really was. on  page 2, there it was - suicide bombing in Jerusalem, nearly 40 people dead or wounded.   terrorism was real before i knew about it, i just didn't care because my brother didn't live in the gaza strip. 

that's why, in a way, i'm glad to be a part of a world in which 9-11s happen.  not to say that it wouldn't have been better for all those people to still be alive, but, in the words of the bible, "what men meant for evil, God meant for good."  or, in the words of one of my favorite phil keaggy songs,"suffering restores us, burns away the empty shallowness, softening the heart to be broken bread and poured out wine."  i haven't realized until today just what happened to me through the tragedy, and that God used it to change my heart.  like i said before, my brother doesn't live in the gaza strip.

"apathy in the face of human suffering is the worst form of evil."  i wish i could say i made that up, but i didn't.  before the world came crashing in on me, i was apathetic in the face of human suffering.  my brother doesn't live in the gaza strip.  but at the time he did work in manhattan. for the first time in my life, i had a reason to panic from something i saw on television.   i thanked God a million times when we got a phone call saying he was safe, my family cried together and hugged each other, more together then we've ever been before or since. 

cut to a worship service in the park two weeks later.  i have no idea what band was playing or what church was in charge, but my life was changed.  it lasted several hours, some of the most heart felt crying out to God i've ever experienced.  we got into small groups, to pray.  requests starting pouring out for all the people dying, missing, and grieving, nearly everyone i talked to seemed to know at least one person directly affected.  then the worship leader did something really bold.  he asked us to pray for the people who did this to us, because Jesus taught us to love our enemies.  "osama isn't such an evil sinner that God can't save him, and that's something we should be praying for."   if the poles are reliable, it is almost inevitable that at least someone in that park voted for the bush in the last election.  but when one of the guys in my prayer circle said that "i really don't think we should attack afganistan, because that's only going to create more violence," both me and my other partner agreed. 

a few weeks later, i looked at the news and saw starvation, genocide, death, war, and felt pain for the first time in my life. .  i later learned that pain was called love, and its what Christ felt on the cross.   i realized that i do have brothers in the gaza strip, hundreds of them - God was breaking my heart, and I was beginning to see the world through His-Her eyes 

i haven't had the chance to watch television much in the past few days,  so i don't really know what the media is trying to tell you what you should feel about what happened. i do want to encourage you - to not use the pain in hurting others or getting bitter- getting angry at clinton, or bush for letting it happen, or using it to prove that the believers in the world's fastest growing religion are all insane bloodthirsty killers.  instead, use it to examine your heart, and try to show love to those around you

together, i believe we will stop the cycle of hatred.