You cannot be lost unless you belong

He has taken me to the banquet hall, and his banner over me is love.  Song of Solomon 2:2

The oh-so-familiar song poured out of the open door of the small brick building squeezed in between the Wiccan Shoppe and the Wingspan office on Fourth Avenue.  Let Your banner of love wave over this place, over this street, over this city, over the state.  His banner over you, His banner over me, His banner over us. The same exact song from my dorkiness in Mexico, D.F., forty years ago.  

The heaps of couches and old rugs and throw pillows were familiar as well. Although I was the only grey-haired sort; there was pink, and orange, and white striped and lots of pitch shiny black, all with skinny skinny jeans and skinny t-shirts and lots of tats and twirling happy bodies.  

There is nothing I can but just be loved completely loved by You.  I’m completely loved by you.  Your grace has done it all.  Your love has won it all.

Splashy happy art leap across the walls with the same cheerful abandonment. And there is that same upper room picture which gazes over the Victorian King James cottage last week, and the office of Dr. Eben Alexander in Cambridge, Massachusetts, From where this community took its name, this community that is “pretty blissfully jacked up on the finished work of the Cross growing daily in the revelation of our union with Him and all that Jesus accomplished for us and in our place! Yipee!!!”

Jesus, holy and annointed one, exalted one.  

Your name is like honey on my lips,

Your spirit is water to my soul

You word is a lamp unto my fee

Jesus I love you.  

After an hour of worship, we slid into an hour of teaching from Andre Rabe, from South Africa.  Feel free to get up for bagels and coffee whenever you want.  Things to think about.  Thank You for Your love that isn’t just something to be talked about but is something to live.  

Jesus warns, “Do not miss seeing me in the most wasted life.  Whatever you do for the least of these, you do for me.  Whatever you think of one of these, you think of me.  Whoever says that he loves Me, but hates his neighbor, is a liar, and the truth is not in him.”

There is more to the gospel story that that of sin and salvation; we need to remember the bigger context of In the beginning, when I, and each and every person, began in the heart and mind of God.  He knew me, and each and every person, before He formed me and called me by name to be holy and blameless before Him.  His likeness is part of who we are, created in His image, and no amount of darkness can put it out.

And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another. For this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit. 2 Corinthians 2:18

And I was convicted to the core.  Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God. How many ways can John say it?  What he learned from walking and talking with Jesus?  “The King will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.’ 

No exceptions.  Mother Teresa got it, Each one of them is Jesus in disguise. As did Tolstoy and my favorite Christmas tale:

Then all at once he knew that he was no longer alone in the room.

This was not dream for he was wide awake. At first he seemed to see before his eyes the long stream of people who had come to him that day. He saw again the old road sweeper, the young mother and her baby and the beggars he had fed. As they passed, each whispered, "Didn't you see me, Papa Panov?"

"Who are you?" he called out, bewildered. 

Then another voice answered him. It was the voice from his dream- the voice of Jesus. 

"I was hungry and you fed me," he said. "I was naked and you clothed me. I was cold and you warmed me. I came to you today in every one of those you helped and welcomed."

Then all was quiet and still. Only the sound of the big clock ticking. A great peace and happiness seemed to fill the room, overflowing Papa Panov's heart until he wanted to burst out singing and laughing and dancing with joy.

"So He did come after all!" was all that he said. 

And may this truth burn in my soul.  That I might know God by welcoming His children.  Each and every one.  

The Father did not say, "You dirty pigsty man.” What brought him home was the sweet, sweet memories of his Father’s home.  He returned to himself, to whom he had been created to be, since the beginning, before time, free at last.  Free at last.  

In peace I will both lie down and sleep

Be angry, and do not sin; ponder in your own hearts on your beds, and be silent. Selah Psalm 4:4

This angry is the sort of thing that happens all day long.  It means “agitated” or “frustrated,” and lots of things during the day can trigger this anger in my heart and mind, justly or unjustly. 

But.  Do not sin.  Mostly this agitation or frustration leads me down two paths of sin.  Well, three paths.  First, that of unlove.  Man, it’s so easy to label others nicely and neatly like with one of those twirly things with the plastic strips.  Punch it out, peel it off and paste it on their forehead and stick them on a nice tidy shelf of my soul. Tucked away in a dark corner, to be covered with cobwebs and dark creepy things, away from the mercy so freely offered to me by my LORD.  Or worse, sometimes I allow this neatly marked package to fester and rot and stink up my whole life, poisoning not only that particular relationship, but all areas of my life, particularly my relationship with God.  Well am I admonished to leave my gifts to God in front of the altar and first go and be reconciled to my brother; then come and offer my gift.  Because they will not be accepted if I harbor this embittered anger in my soul, fueled by the flames of hell itself.  Hell, by definition, is separation from God.  

Those destructive flames of hell are mentioned elsewhere in the Bible as well.  Those which set ablaze the tongue. Nothing like taking an offense or frustration complete with embellishments and dug deep resentments, and spread this pain far and wide so that it can rot and fester in other souls as well.  Not so good.

The third path of sin is that of ... not resting, not trusting God to be at work through all circumstances with humility and peace.  This is not to say that I am to scramble into a dark passive hole to wait and wait, si Dios quiere.  There is a freedom in the pondering, to mull and to consider, but to be silent in the sense of telling the Almighty exactly where He is screwing up and what in blazes is He thinking of anyway.

Back to my ocean wave of a few days ago, because even more than the energy and excitement of trying to catch a wave into shore, my very favorite playa moments in Costa Rica this summer were the floating moments... drifting, dangling, as the water supported me, gently swaying back and forth in the great potent swelling, in silent confidence.  Selah.  

And we unhemmed all our jeans so they dragged on the floor

But you, O Lord, are a shield about me, my Glory, and the Lifter of my head.

I cried aloud to the Lord, and He answered me from his holy hill. Selah Psalm 3:3

One example of the immeasurable and inexplicable good gifts from the hand of our Creator is that of music.  Really the joy and power of song make no scientific material sense and is one of those “outside the box” indicators.  The same pile outside of the humanist door with Shakespeare sonnets and sunsets.  Why should we marvel at sunsets and rainbows?

And on top of that toppling stack of gifts that are waiting to be named and inventoried on my little list of 1000 are the Psalms which have worked their way into the hearts and souls of humanity for eons and bound them together with truth and peace throughout the travails that are common to man. 

My first tiny glimpse of that was as a young girl ripping through Heidi.  What a novel thought that Heidi’s blind grandmother would find such comfort in the twenty-third Psalm.  Novel.  =) Novel in the sense that is what stories do, wrap words around life so that we slow down and notice and remember, forever.  That was forty-six years ago, and I still remember pausing for that moment, to consider.  

My old Bible that was left behind on a seventh-grade History trip many years ago had moments and dates and names all through the Psalms that I had claimed, that I was praying over someone, or that declared His answer to me, from His holy hill.  So many of these Psalms are tied to a moment or a person.  Or a summer.

I know where I was the summer of ’72: El Instituto Lingüístico de Verano en Tlalpan, México, D.F. My dad was doing an external audit of the books for them, and my mom, the ever good sport was in charge of entertaining twenty-some-odd teenagers.  So we painted some kind of hippie murals on the rec room wall... a big hand with a single finger pointing up One Way and an unrolling parchment with the words, “His banner over me is love,” above the ping pong table.  And my mom sewed big pillows in hippie colors and old blue jeans and lightly tossed them around so we could be cool while we worked out all the Fisher and Spasskey chess games and pretended to argue over and discuss the wisdom of their choices.  And we had to play Rook because it was unChristian to play with real cards because back then they were known to be the gateway drug to all sorts of trouble.  And I read the Agatha Christie books over and over again because that is all that was in the library besides Bible Commentaries.  I did that is, until I started having nightmares full of slashing knives and crashing flower pots mysteriously tossed off balconies. There was Edgar, a young man that I managed to give my address even though I didn’t speak Spanish and he didn’t speak English when we were at the 1968 Olympics swimming pool and he brought me four dozens roses every single afternoon for two weeks until I begged the staff cook to tell him to never come back.  And my mom who of course knew absolutely nothing about soccer started a soccer league and was the center ref and ran back and forth, back and forth on that field every afternoon blowing her whistle, until the afternoon monsoons rolled in, that is.  And then we would gather in the rec room, and a couple of kids would pluck away tunelessly on their guitars and toss their stringy hair back and we would sing those songs, those choruses that were very edgy in a world of hymnbooks.  His banner over me is Love.  With hand motions.  

These edgy new songs which have put the ache of the human heart into words backwards and forwards into time to the very fulcrum of history, "Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani?" that is, "My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me?"  

My Glory and the Lifter of my head.  

Leaves withered around the edges

Blessed is the man

who walks not in the counsel of the wicked,

nor stands in the way of sinners,

nor sits in the seat of scoffers;

but his delight is in the law of the Lord,

and on his law he meditates day and night.  Psalm 1:1-2

Alan and I have this little thing for print journalism.  We are all for it, and in our small sentimental way we continue to support its last desperate gasps for survival.  Like the day after I mailed in our renewal to Newsweek they announced their demise.  Every morning there is a crunch in the driveway gravel  of the local newspaper toss.  My tree hugger soul gave in to this higher calling.  And by the time these publications are finished begging for subscriptions they work out to be cheaper than toilet paper.  And great fireplace fodder. So the bongo drums around the living room are stacked with Time and The Week and Christianity Today and Newsweek (at least until January) and The Daily Star, with NPR radio sifting down in edgewise and The New York Times popping into my gmail account every night at midnight. Words, all I hear are words.  

And what a heavy weight it is.  My very tender PG-rated soul only will watch movies with a happy ending, and there is no end in sight. Erupting riots. Afghan massacre. Filthy water. Wicked and Sinners and Scoffers galore. And those who know me can see this weight has wrapped around my ankles like heavy chains and there is no happy bounce to my step.  

So here is this promise: Blessed, (or happy) is he whose delight is in the law of the LORD and on his law meditates day and night.  And our Monday night book club is reading Thomas Merton’s “Ways of Meditation,” which is not a method or system, but a cultivated outlook of faith, openness, attention, reverence, expectation, supplication, trust and joy.  Much sweeter that the latest roiling of the Petraeus scandal, although it is relatively nice to read that France became the first Western country to recognize the coalition, seeking to inject momentum into a broad effort to build a viable and effective opposition that would hasten the end of a stalemated civil war, one does notice the term of a “stalemated civil war,” and all of the bleakness thus entailed.  

Surely everyone stands as a mere breath.  

Surely everyone goes about like a shadow.  

Surely for nothing they are in turmoil; 

they heap up, and do not know who will gather.  

And now, O Lord, what do I wait for?  

My hope is in You.  

Merton underscores that under the pretext of what is “within” one should not cultivate neglect and contempt for the “external,” ...that meditation has no point unless it is firmly rooted in life.  Firmly rooted.  In Life.  Like a tree planted by streams of water that yields its fruit in its season, and its leaf does not wither.  

And tying everything up with final flourish, today’s explorefaith.org popped up with an reminder nuance to this happy:May our sons be like plants well nurtured from their youth, and our daughters like sculptured corners of a palace. Happy are the people of whom this is so! Happy are the people whose God is the LORD!

And may this joyful refrain file away the heavy chains of the shadowed reality on the cave wall, and replace it with a lilting Cameron Hood tune, pounded out with a stomping foot,

May our sons in youth, be firm in their roots

May our daughters be pillars at the palace of truth,

May our houses be homes.  May our wells overflow

May our sheep increase ten-thousand fold

May we slay deceit, rise from defeat

May You keep us from captivity

May our walls be strong, if we sing your songs

If we sing your praises all day long

Happy were we when blessings came

Happy are we who call on Your name

Happy are those whose God is true

Happy are those whose God is You.

the ravenous wolves cannot be sated

For this is the love of God, that we keep His commandments. And His commandments are not burdensome. For everyone who has been born of God overcomes the world. 1 John 5:3-4

His commandments are not one more thing that I somehow have to juggle or add to the pot or lug around with me through yet another hurried day.  I don’t make a decision, and then think, “Oh yeah, how do I make this God-honoring?”  Life is far too complicated for that.  

Rather His commandments are a heart set before the day begins.  And from that heart flows peace and order, and the disparate segments snap into place or get brushed off the tablecloth into the garbage.  It is so much simpler to obey one Master, rather than ripping off chunks of self and tossing the bits and pieces to clamoring conflicting interests to squelch the shouting. Momentarily.   

Imagine no conflicting interest.  

Once again, Henri Nouwen reminds me that the root of “obedience” is the Latin word audire, which means “to listen,” in contrast to the word “deaf,” or surdus, from where we get the word “absurd.”  Mr. O’Reilly’s adage (yes, we taught that word to Wali last night, as we piled onto the couch in front of the now-winter fireplace) KISS*.  Every time.  

Love the LORD your God with all of your heart and soul and mind.  And love your neighbor... ah yes, the new commandment, the bar has been kicked up: not as yourself, but as He has loved you.  

For I have overcome the world.  

* Keep It Simple, Stupid

Hey, brother, let me pull that splinter out of your eye

If anyone says, “I love God,” and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen. 1 John 3:20

I think that’s why this election process was so very gut-wrenching. Millions, nay, even billions of dollars were spent trying to create hatred against our neighbor, our brother.  This undisclosed and seemingly unending and certainly unmonitored flow of cash was craftily honed and scientifically manipulated to paint one another with the blackest of brushes.  Tempting us to judge on the most superficial outward appearances, the sketchiest of demographics, the most twisted of stories taken out of context, and to cling to these fiery dart soundbites as truth that could somehow set us free.  

And these unnamed PACs, wolf packs really, were not only free to wreck this destruction for their own purposes, but to do so free from the saving grace of the Spirit at work within. The Son was not sent as the propitiation for their sins, and there is no hope of His redeeming grace to be manifest because they have no soul.  

And yet we invited this spirit of the antichrist into our airwaves and into our mailboxes and scattered across every street corner with their lies.  And pretended it was for the greater good but the line is clear: anyone who does not love, does not know God.  

Yesterday was Community Sunday at the Vineyard, which is really the best of the best, the Joshua Stone pilgrimage to the mic to articulate the revealed love of God, even in the valley of the shadow of death.  A lot of the stories described this love being revealed in the phone calls, and the pressed-into-the-hand twenty dollar bills, and raked yards and that sort of thing being perfected in the body, because although no one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God abides in us and His love is perfected in us.

There was one particular tender story told.  A brother found himself unloving.  Actually he used the word “hating.” Those slouchy teenagers tagging his walls, grinding their cigarette butts on his gravel, and dropping their sticky trash on his sidewalk.  And one day, as he glared out the window and spun webs constructed of barbed wire, the Spirit pierced his soul.  And rather than draw lines of Them and Us, he entered the world of Them.  Every day.  He sorta hung around, and maybe cracked a not-so-good joke or two, and offered a lift when a ride fell through, and learned names.  And by naming Them, we truly see Them and we become like Jesus, because He knows the number of hairs on each head.  

And likewise each one of us need to fall on our knees in repentance, and ask the Spirit to likewise cleanse this country, and more particularly His Church, and even more particularly my heart from this filth which now shadows each conversation and headline glance.  And may the fog clear, and may we understand that our salvation does not come from horses and chariots and swords, but from the lifted up arms of a Savior who so loved the world, each and every named one.  And this commandment we have from Him: whoever loves God must also love his brother.

First splashes of winter rain bring spring wildflowers

And whatsoever we ask, we receive of him, because we keep his commandments, and do those things that are pleasing to his sight. And this is his commandment.  That we should believe on the name of his Son Jesus Christ, and love one another as he gave us commandment.  I John 3:22, 23

All the bibles are the same in this Victorian-frilled cottage where I am staying.  Translated out of the original tongues and with the former translations diligently compared and revised set fourth in 1611 and commonly known as the King James Version.  But it is quite clear.  And it is clear on the dozens and dozens of knickknacks which tumble off of every cut lace  and doily-covered table and bureau and cupboard and crowd together on every wall and, well there are no empty spaces.  Love Never Faileth: For God so love the World that He gave His Only Begotten Son that Whoever Believeth in him should not Perish, but have Everlasting Life.  

And the wind is whipping fiercely through the crackling Prescott pine trees, but I am secure in this home opened up in love, His love.  And one of the things I did last night was read an old copy of Newsweek, after I went over to the very nice public library across the street, which I am quite sure is my favorite thing about America and blessings on Benjamin Franklin’s head, and checked my emails and talked to a lonely old man about how do you start using computers because he bought one because everyone has one but now he doesn’t know what to do with it.  And if he opens it up, where would he type google?  Anyways, he does know about the World Championship of Texas Hold ‘Em High held in Vegas, and he knows every little card flip and every little year who won what and when the rules changed in 2006, and now I know a lot about it too, I would really like it, he can tell by the look in my eye.  

The cover article is “Heaven is Real: A doctor’s experience of the afterlife,” written by an academic neurosurgeon at Harvard who fell into a meningitis-induced coma and experienced the truly unexpected, a journey to the afterlife.  And he freely admits that there is not scientific explanation for the fact that while his body lay in coma, his mind– his conscious, inner self was alive and well and traveled to a dimension which the old, pre-coma him would have been more than happy to explain was a simple impossibility.  And he has spent months trying to sort through the experience and wrap words around it, but the overall understanding that he now knows is that he is loved and cherished, dearly, forever.  

And every time he began to wordlessly frame questions like Where is this place? Who am I? Why am I here? the answer came instantly in an explosion of light, color, love and beauty that blew through him like a crashing wave.

Which is what God is saying here, and says to us every day: I so love you that I sent my Son, offering my self up in love.  Believe and do likewise.  That’s it.  And I can get a glimmer that if He did not withhold even His son, there is nothing that He will withhold.    Whatever I ask, I receive.  I am secure and at rest.  Just like in this rattling, humming, clunking but warm old house.  

So now there’s this big shot doctor whose nice prestigious and comfortable life has been dumped upside down, because everything he knew to be true now lies broken at his feet, destroyed, and that is OK because now he understands. And he intends on spending the rest of his life getting people to grasp the enormity of what he has seen and experienced.  Sort like John and his Revelation of Jesus Christ which God gave unto him.  And now, when Dr. Eben Alexander looks at the painting that I too am looking at straight in front of me, of Jesus breaking bread with the disciples, it evokes the message that lays at the very heart of his journey: that we are loved and accepted unconditionally by a God even more grand and unfathomably glorious that the one we both learned about in Sunday School.  

Paul heard the same voice that also crashed and burned his big shot plans, dumping them upside down broken at his feet, and set him on a new road. For this cause I bow my knees unto the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, that ye, being rooted and ground in love, May be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth, and length, and depth, and height; And to know the love of Christ which passeth knowledge, that you might be filled with all the fulness of God.  

Dear LORD, this is my prayer, even if it means taking my life and dumping it upside down broken at my feet. Because it’s not just about His love for me.  Because there were much more important things to talk about with the lonely old man with only two bottom teeth at the public library than google.  Let me be faithful as well, to speak boldly of what I comprehend.  

Together with all the saints.