And at the top of this morning's TO DO list is to rip out all of the invasive species which have overtaken the garden.

It is to the glory my Father that you should bear much fruit, and then you will be my disciples. John 15:8

 Jesus asks Peter three times, “Do you love me?” God is waiting for us to respond. Life gives us endless opportunities for that response. But our love for Him must come first.

God wants all of our heart, all of our mind, and all of our soul. It is this unconditional and unreserved love for God that leads to the care for our neighbor, not as an activity which distracts us from God or competes with our attention to God, but as an expression of our love God who is revealed to us as the God of all people. It is in God that we find our neighbors and discover our responsibility to them. We might even say that only in God does our neighbor become a neighbor rather than an infringement upon our autonomy, and that only in and through God does service become possible. Henri Nouwen, The Loving Reminder

So I am starting to turn my thoughts to home, and the life that awaits me there. How do I take this repentance and this recentering and walk it every single day, anew? Beyond making a checklist I mean. I, being me, did make a checklist this morning. Not a TO DO list which is so very satisfying to tick off one at a time, but a TO CONSIDER list. Areas of my life to hold up to The Light and consider.

Because this is the hard step. The ruts are deep and well-worn. Thought patterns and Pavlovian systems ripple out in all directions, crisscrossing the hip-high in green new paths I wish to trod. And it isn’t calling for a backhoe scrape down to the foundational caliche. The truths are not new. But I wish to walk in freshness, with a light step. Freedom from The Accuser. Courageous joy. Rest in His centered Love. Come further up, come further in.

He will hear my voice. He will bring me safely back. God who is enthroned of old, will hear me. Psalm 55:17

O God, you have taught me to keep all Your commandments by loving You and likewise, my neighbor: Grant me the grace of your Holy Spirit, that I may be devoted to You with my whole heart and united to others with pure uncontaminated, affection; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with You and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

Even now the axe is laid to the root of the tree.

Knit my heart to You. Psalm 88:11

I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt and said, “Open your mouth wide, and I will fill it.” Psalm 81:10

Finally, and perhaps most importantly, is the question: What are you afraid of?

“Spiritual discernment is a way of preparing and disposing the soul to rid itself of all inordinate attachments, and, after their removal, of seeking and finding the will of God in the disposition of our life.” -St. Ignatius of Loyola

I hung out with a couple of wise friends of Nicole’s Wednesday and the topic at hand was “inordinate attachments,” and the need to sort through one’s (my) life and rip them out. What has distracted me from My First Love?

And it’s got to be fear. Fear of not doing It right. Fear of what others might think. Pretty brutal, but could it be that I am a man-pleaser rather than a God-pleaser?

And He wants to be the Lover of My Soul. To have my eyes and mind fixed on Him and no other. To have my heart knit to His, seamlessly one.  To have Him be the yearning of my soul and no other. And of course in moments like these, it is hard for me to not turn to my friend, Puddleglum.

But the main thing is He and no other is the LORD my God who has brought me out of slavery through the blood of His only begotten Son, and if I open wide my mouth, He will fill it.

And the ladies had this picture of me running along the beach in the sunshine with the biggest smile ever and my hair flowing out behind me. And, well, the Christy-limited-by-the-material-and-bad-twisty-ankles-seemingly-realistic-me doesn’t really run. But the Christy in my childhood daydreams was a big beautiful horse, with a tossing mane and tail who galloped along the beach towards the horizon with a strong joy.

Disposition. What am I going to do with it?

Take my love, my Lord, I pour
At Thy feet its treasure store.
Take myself and I will be
Ever, only, all for Thee.

Stand back. For even now I am at work.

Faithful one hundred percent

I know your powers of endurance—how you have suffered for the sake of my name and have not grown weary. But I hold this against you, that you do not love as you did at first. Remember then how far you have fallen. Repent and live as you lived at first. Revelation 2:3-4

I am not called to be Horton the Elephant.

So Horton kept sitting there, day after day.

And soon it was Autumn.  The leaves blew away.

And then came the Winter…the snow and the sleet!

And icicles hung

From his trunk and his feet.

But Horton kept sitting, and said with a sneeze,

“I’ll stay on this egg and I won’t let it freeze.

I meant what I said

And I said what I meant…

An elephant’s faithful

One hundred per cent!”

And while I just read that we are called to faithful endurance, it’s not an endurance just for sake of the endurance. I can be looking down the feet and counting footsteps rather than looking upward and catching a glimpse of He who goes ahead, the flash of white, a turned head, the look.

And as I read and reread this passage, the church at Ephesus is not being commended for not tolerating wickedness and “putting to the test self-styled ‘apostles.’” Really what He whose face was ablaze like the sun at its height said was, “Yes, I know who you are, that you work, work, work and are ever so strict about doctrine and behavior, and it is absolutely worthless.” All of this suffering and holiness is nothing. His call to Ephesus is to repent or to lose their lampstand. And how have they turned to the own path? They have lost their first love. Somehow their faith had turned into a to do list chiseled into stone, and a them against us fight.

So in class yesterday, as we were starting to read Fahrenheit 451, the temperature at which books burn, we read this quote: A book is a loaded gun in the house next door. Burn it. Take the shot from the weapon. Breach man’s mind.  And I asked the kids to think about what book was a loaded gun in their life? That blew to bits the same old, same old? Think about when you read it...What words stuck… the setting when you read it… who you were at the time… And they had great answers. Wow. That made me so grateful for books.

And my mind was swirling with books…Little Bear…The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe or everything else by Lewis, The Idiot by Dostoevsky …I could list books all day. But one that pierced my heart over and over with its bullets was The Bronze Bow.

“Daniel, he said. I would have you follow me.

Master! I will fight for you to the end!

My loyal friend, he said, I would ask something much harder than that. Would you love for me to the end?

I don't understand, he said again. You tell people about the kingdom. Are we not to fight for it?

The kingdom is only bought at a great price, Jesus said. There was one who came just yesterday and wanted to follow me. He was very rich, and when I asked him to give up his wealth, he went away.

I will give you everything I have!

Riches are not keeping you from the kingdom, he said. You must give up your hate.” 

And because I had lots of time on the plane to Carmel-by-the-Sea, I read and reread the John letters and the Jesus to His disciple passages in the Epistle of John. John does talk a lot in his letters about not sinning, about not be of the world. But the big thing is to bear fruit–fruit that will last– and to love one another. Once again I am reminded of what is true and good and of eternal value. So be it.