Love
Once when I was in contemplation of a possible object of affection.
I feel a bit embarrassed at this task I have set for myself. The subject pleads for poetry but I long ago vowed I would write no such lines,
The Poet's Hex
I the poet would write of love
As something flowing from above,
But in this world of blatant sex
The poet's task is under hex.
I write of curls and skin so fair,
The reader's already stripped her bare.
I write of walking through the glen,
The reader's got her classed at ten.
I write of a secret, stolen kiss,
And he dreams of the Frenchman's bliss,
And even Browning's red, red rose,
Lost her virginity, everyone knows.
So love and making love are one,
And having sex is innocent fun,
And I will write no poetry,
About such ugly ribaldry.
So it is in the pedantry of prose that I write about love. Already I have broken the first law of love by using the first person personal pronoun six times. Love is supposed to be "other' centered. Oh woe is me. Oops. Seven!
We get the concept of other centeredness from the Bible which sets agape love as a high goal, the kind of love God expressed when He sent His son to live amongst His devil wrecked creation. As a Christian I accept for myself that high goal... eight, nine!
Enough, already! OK, I'll admit it. I don't want to write about love. I want to be loved!
(Long pause.). . . . . . .
(Fire does not fall from heaven). . . . . . .
Is it alright to want to be loved? It does not change my wanting to love selflessly. And it makes sense. If all of us love others as the Scriptures say we should then, when we are "others", get loved also. No? Sho nuff!
So here I go two paragraphs below: How I want to be loved. Oh, that sounds too grossly self-centered!......(Be patient I got to get this thing off my chest) But then again, is not that yearning for God in the heart of every man really a yearning to be loved? Perhaps a greater pride lies in the opposite direction: to be one who loves without ever needing to be loved, the tough cowboy type who kisses his horse and rides off into the sunset., What a hero! Godly? Not really. God Himself wants to be loved. In the prophets He is often presented as a rejected lover who loved unconditionally but who remains unloved and weeps because of it. So we have a need to be loved by God and He has a desire to be loved by us. It is impossible to love without having someone to love so it is the object that makes possible the act and tonight I am an object.
So try some more, paragraph four. The first thing you think about when asking to be loved is that you will receive in return some of that sloppy, sickly, do nice things for him, behavior that makes you want to vomit. The do nice things is a natural fruit of love but when it is bourne on a tree of "ought or "sympathy" it is rotten before it is ripe. I want none of that. I'll give none of that. But I suppose loving behavior is in the end what I am after for how shall I otherwise recognize love. The behavior though, must arise out of emotion and free choice or the feigned love will be a worse rejection than hate.
A second thought that comes to mind is that to be loved you must love. Strange as it may seem love develops much like fights do. One kid taps another on the shoulder. The other returns a little harder to the chest. Back to the stomach. The face. The nose. Soon it is a whirlwind of fists, feet, teeth and dust. Ain't love grand? In love though, the hardest thing is the first punch.
Questions
When you have a question,
And you care deeply
That the answer be "yes,"
Then you ask only questions,
That have no answers.
The more you care the harder it is to go first. If you get a love punch hard up the side of your face, beware - - the puncher really doesn't care. But watch out those little taps from trembling hands. There hide the lovers.
Did you ever have a conversation with a guy who seemed to read the text for his part off the shiny tops of his wingtipped shoes? He is afraid. And did you ever watch a gal make the social rounds in a room but she carefully avoids one particular guy. Her fear of him shows that she either loves him or she hates him. Fear is a component of both love and hate. Perhaps that is why rejected love snaps so easily to hate. It is hard to relate fear to love. The fumbling teenager who is afraid of the little red haired girl is a common experience to us Charley Browns of this world. Another place fear and love touch is in our relationship to God. He is our King to be feared and He is our Papa to be loved. Then the Bible goes and says that perfect love casts out all fear.
I remember a big mouth state fair hawker selling spot remover. He loaded a glass of water with ink, grape juice, blood and every other stain that life doles out. Then he added the most audacious miracle wonder spot remover and lo, the deep mud red turned to clear water. Applause, Oooos. Ahhhhhs. Maybe love is like that, almost all fear to begin with but then changes over time and experience to become only love, a trusting papa kind of love, a perfect love that casts out fear. The essence of romantic drama is a process of watching the shades of love change color. They fall in love. Then the behavior of one , seemingly inconsistent with love causes the other to shade toward red fear. Will they end as black hate verses blue melancholy love or will it be red fear begging black hate to come back home? Is it only in the fairy tales that clear, pure love finds clear, pure love with never the smallest tint of fear? Tune in next week.
Trembling love! That's it.
Scared? Yes, for sure.
Ahhh, ahem, errrrr, (tap, tap) Xcuse me, Dawn. . . . . . (Louder) DAWN! Oh, I'm sorry, I didn't mean to startle you. I guess you didn't feel my tap on your shoulder.
Sooooo, have you any plans, . . . .well, I'm sure you have plans, . . . . I mean, all of us kind of decide what we're going to do before we do it. Ha. Ha.....But I mean, plans like an appointment or something, . . . . Uh, for Saturday night . . . . I love scary movies . . . but documentaries are good too . . . errrrr even Friday is OK. Sooooo, wasn't that a fine sermon last Sunday?
Thursday, September 18, 2003
Sitruc Learns to Sing
Sitruc Learns to Sing
Gather around children. I want to tell you the story of Sitruc.He was a mean little kid until he was eleven. For years he had heard the Holy Spirit calling "Sitruc, come to me and let me have your spirit." Then one hot summer night while everybody was singing "Just as I Am" he wept his way to the altar rail down front. The Holy Spirit answered his sobs and said, "Thank you Sitruc, I'm here, in you and you are here, in me." And a song was born in Sitruc that strangely he was afraid to sing out loud. Here's how it went:
In my spirit, In my spirit,
The Holy One sings of your glory
I will worship, With my spirit
Worship you thou mighty prince of glory.
That was the first night of a week of revival meetings in the little church on Chauncy Street whee the preaching was as hot as the summer night on which the meetings were held. Joy was awakening in Sitruc. The preacher haranged about hell and joy bubbled in Sitruc. The preacher shouted about sin and joy sizzled in Sitruc. Sitruc's soul was blessing the Lord. The Holy Spirit gave him a second song but he could not sing it either. It was like the songs were too holy, or maybe too precious to lay out there for anyone to hear. So he hid it away in his heart. It went like this:
In my soul, In my soul,
The song breaks forth in holy laughter
Joy is bubbling, In my soul
A river flowing ever after
Over the years the song of his spirit never ceased. The song of his soul however was often silent. Especially when the cold winds of worry blew. Then one day he went to another meeting. The summer night was hot and the preaching sizzled but one thing was different. They were singing his songs. Out loud! He was so embarrassed. They celebrated his spirit song. They raised their hands for his soul song. He even saw one lady dance! And one old man knealt down right in the aisle. Sitruc didn't know what to think. The kingdom was supposed to be invisable. Worship was to be internal. These people acted as if King Jesus were really there. Really there? He was really there! Sitruc then began to sing out loud in worship of the King who was really there. That's when the Holy Spirit finished his song,
With my body, with my body
I sing and clap and raise my hands,
And I bow down, with my body,
For you have loosed me from my bands.
You are my king, you are my Lord,
I kiss the hem of your garment
And you raise me, To look on your face
My love answers love that you have sent.
Gather around children. I want to tell you the story of Sitruc.He was a mean little kid until he was eleven. For years he had heard the Holy Spirit calling "Sitruc, come to me and let me have your spirit." Then one hot summer night while everybody was singing "Just as I Am" he wept his way to the altar rail down front. The Holy Spirit answered his sobs and said, "Thank you Sitruc, I'm here, in you and you are here, in me." And a song was born in Sitruc that strangely he was afraid to sing out loud. Here's how it went:
In my spirit, In my spirit,
The Holy One sings of your glory
I will worship, With my spirit
Worship you thou mighty prince of glory.
That was the first night of a week of revival meetings in the little church on Chauncy Street whee the preaching was as hot as the summer night on which the meetings were held. Joy was awakening in Sitruc. The preacher haranged about hell and joy bubbled in Sitruc. The preacher shouted about sin and joy sizzled in Sitruc. Sitruc's soul was blessing the Lord. The Holy Spirit gave him a second song but he could not sing it either. It was like the songs were too holy, or maybe too precious to lay out there for anyone to hear. So he hid it away in his heart. It went like this:
In my soul, In my soul,
The song breaks forth in holy laughter
Joy is bubbling, In my soul
A river flowing ever after
Over the years the song of his spirit never ceased. The song of his soul however was often silent. Especially when the cold winds of worry blew. Then one day he went to another meeting. The summer night was hot and the preaching sizzled but one thing was different. They were singing his songs. Out loud! He was so embarrassed. They celebrated his spirit song. They raised their hands for his soul song. He even saw one lady dance! And one old man knealt down right in the aisle. Sitruc didn't know what to think. The kingdom was supposed to be invisable. Worship was to be internal. These people acted as if King Jesus were really there. Really there? He was really there! Sitruc then began to sing out loud in worship of the King who was really there. That's when the Holy Spirit finished his song,
With my body, with my body
I sing and clap and raise my hands,
And I bow down, with my body,
For you have loosed me from my bands.
You are my king, you are my Lord,
I kiss the hem of your garment
And you raise me, To look on your face
My love answers love that you have sent.
Wednesday, September 17, 2003
A History of the New Religious Middle
A History of the New Religious Middle
(How to find the Right party without being Left out in the cold.)
It was the time before time. Well, that may be a bit too dramatic but it has all the catch of "it was the winter of our discontent." Say, come to think of it that was it; The Winter of Our Discontent. On the other hand that phrase is one of those that used once exhausts its power so I decided not to open this piece with it which as the reader will note I did not although I have pretty sneakily tossed it in so now I've effectively rammed this whole introduction about six feet under. So as I said, It was the time before time.
We wanted to start a whole new political concept. The old continuum from liberal to conservative was too uncomfortable, like being in a shooting war as an enemy and an ally of both sides. We tried for years to carry on the battle from between the armies in no man's land but got awfully tired of fighting the flack shot by both sides. It was like being caught in the center of a Chicago street with two rival gangs trying to even a score neither side could really add up.
We held to values that in a two party system seemed mutually exclusive. We believed there were absolutes; principles that would never change. To us there was such a thing as unchanging truth. Absolutes made sense because we all believed in God who revealed that He would never change. When He said love was good it would always be good. When He said I Am, He would always be I Am, the God who is, present tense, forever. So when we entered the public forum we always found ourselves saying conservative sounding things like, "We hold these truths to be self evident that all men were created equal..." And then we found that it was a pretty Liberal stance in its original context. Some of us were a little more blunt about our conservative values: "My Bible says that God will judge a people who oppress the poor!" And then, lo and behold as we espoused our conservative absolutes (like caring for the poor) we discovered that all of them fit over on this century's liberal side. Consternation and confusion!
Ah but then over time we realized a mediating principle: We were to be always calling the nation back to the faith of our fathers but not necessarily to the ways of our fathers. We denied the post-modern conclusion that truth is relative to the times but espoused their observation that the interpretations and applications of truth are tied to time. The eternal, absolute principles were to be fresh to us every morning. They never changed but the way they applied to each new culture changed. Over time the Lords Table became the altar rail, became the anxious bench, became the arena floor became the side prayer room, became the "would you like to pray?" after the Four Spiritual Laws. The principle that a man needs to have a face to face hand-shaking kind of experience of God is an absolute that has never changed. But different cultures, denominations, personalities, revivals of religion, have found the experience in different ways. So then we were often like the Right, valuing the old values, looking backward for our definitions of right and wrong, believing that they did not change. And we were also often like the Left, calling for new ways, new applications recognizing that many behaviors could cover one Truth, and that one Truth could have many applications even in one society.
So, there we were. What to do? Suddenly we saw the answer on the computer screen before us. Just a small adjustment and the whole political world as we knew it would change. We took the center of the Liberal - Conservative spectrum about twenty rows straight down (on the PC) to a safer spot. There was a collective sigh from the group around the terminal. The artists loved the triangularity, and the theologians thought it looked so . . . trinitarian. As usual the apologists reserved their praise noting a certain cabalistic element in the design. It was a "contrinuum," or a "spectrime" if you please. The "two's company" ole buddy days of "right" and "left" were over. All hailed the stability of the third leg. And then somebody said, "How are we going to let the other two legs know we're here?"
A name! That's it, a name. Something pithy that says it all.
So here we are still needing some help. We have boiled our ideas down into five names that might fit. (There were five of us in the discussion.) Here they are: the Versatile Immobile Party, the Protean Permanence Party, the Evolutionary Immutablity Party, The Quicksilver Stability Party and the Chameleon Leopard Party.
What do you think?
(How to find the Right party without being Left out in the cold.)
It was the time before time. Well, that may be a bit too dramatic but it has all the catch of "it was the winter of our discontent." Say, come to think of it that was it; The Winter of Our Discontent. On the other hand that phrase is one of those that used once exhausts its power so I decided not to open this piece with it which as the reader will note I did not although I have pretty sneakily tossed it in so now I've effectively rammed this whole introduction about six feet under. So as I said, It was the time before time.
We wanted to start a whole new political concept. The old continuum from liberal to conservative was too uncomfortable, like being in a shooting war as an enemy and an ally of both sides. We tried for years to carry on the battle from between the armies in no man's land but got awfully tired of fighting the flack shot by both sides. It was like being caught in the center of a Chicago street with two rival gangs trying to even a score neither side could really add up.
We held to values that in a two party system seemed mutually exclusive. We believed there were absolutes; principles that would never change. To us there was such a thing as unchanging truth. Absolutes made sense because we all believed in God who revealed that He would never change. When He said love was good it would always be good. When He said I Am, He would always be I Am, the God who is, present tense, forever. So when we entered the public forum we always found ourselves saying conservative sounding things like, "We hold these truths to be self evident that all men were created equal..." And then we found that it was a pretty Liberal stance in its original context. Some of us were a little more blunt about our conservative values: "My Bible says that God will judge a people who oppress the poor!" And then, lo and behold as we espoused our conservative absolutes (like caring for the poor) we discovered that all of them fit over on this century's liberal side. Consternation and confusion!
Ah but then over time we realized a mediating principle: We were to be always calling the nation back to the faith of our fathers but not necessarily to the ways of our fathers. We denied the post-modern conclusion that truth is relative to the times but espoused their observation that the interpretations and applications of truth are tied to time. The eternal, absolute principles were to be fresh to us every morning. They never changed but the way they applied to each new culture changed. Over time the Lords Table became the altar rail, became the anxious bench, became the arena floor became the side prayer room, became the "would you like to pray?" after the Four Spiritual Laws. The principle that a man needs to have a face to face hand-shaking kind of experience of God is an absolute that has never changed. But different cultures, denominations, personalities, revivals of religion, have found the experience in different ways. So then we were often like the Right, valuing the old values, looking backward for our definitions of right and wrong, believing that they did not change. And we were also often like the Left, calling for new ways, new applications recognizing that many behaviors could cover one Truth, and that one Truth could have many applications even in one society.
So, there we were. What to do? Suddenly we saw the answer on the computer screen before us. Just a small adjustment and the whole political world as we knew it would change. We took the center of the Liberal - Conservative spectrum about twenty rows straight down (on the PC) to a safer spot. There was a collective sigh from the group around the terminal. The artists loved the triangularity, and the theologians thought it looked so . . . trinitarian. As usual the apologists reserved their praise noting a certain cabalistic element in the design. It was a "contrinuum," or a "spectrime" if you please. The "two's company" ole buddy days of "right" and "left" were over. All hailed the stability of the third leg. And then somebody said, "How are we going to let the other two legs know we're here?"
A name! That's it, a name. Something pithy that says it all.
So here we are still needing some help. We have boiled our ideas down into five names that might fit. (There were five of us in the discussion.) Here they are: the Versatile Immobile Party, the Protean Permanence Party, the Evolutionary Immutablity Party, The Quicksilver Stability Party and the Chameleon Leopard Party.
What do you think?
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)