It's me, mike hillebrecht

At this time of year, after all the fields have been harvested, the orchards have been picked over, the vines have been stripped of their fruit, humanity looks across the bounty to offer thanks. Granted, this is a picturesque description designed to cause reflection for many; others will scratch their head wondering how in a world of silicon and plastic any of these depictions offers them a sense of thankfulness. These fine individuals have succumbed to the onslaught of appointments, agendas, deadlines and gamesmanship in the age of immediacy.

But you’re breathing. A feat that many are not capable of performing for themselves without some assistance. Are you grateful for this?

You’re able to move. This too is a wonder in the midst of so many debilitating ailments which multitudes, young and old alike, find increasingly difficult to overcome. Are you grateful for this?

You’re able to eat. Consider the vast number of people who, for reasons beyond their control are unable to put food in their mouth, chew it and swallow. There are even those who once it has been swallowed are incapable to digest it or even keep it in their bodies for any period of time. Are you grateful for this?

Often gratitude is not for what we have but what we aren’t like. We examine others and breathe a thankful sigh of relief that we’re not like them simply because we don’t want something they have. The trouble is that we all do it, so in practice, we’re very much alike.

No one is grateful for tragedy. A loss, pain and suffering are not the realm for gratitude, particularly when you’re going through it. However, I’ve heard numerous accounts from people who are grateful after a divorce, a financial collapse, or a death of a spouse or loved one. Without this kind of change to their life they recognize that they would not be who they are today.

What are you grateful for? What do you want to recognize as being the cornerstone to who you are today? Can you seriously feel grateful for a mobile phone or laptop computer? Can 5,000 friends on social media be a basis of gratitude? Can thousands of dollars of debt be cause for celebration at this time of year?

Stop for a moment. Don’t follow the knee-jerk reaction so many of us fall into and offer gratitude for all that we have, or what we don’t want, or who we’re with so we don’t offend them, or any of a number of other socially acceptable practices. Just pause, close your eyes, breathe in deeply and clear your thoughts. Then ask yourself, “What am I grateful for right now?”

Whatever image, word, or sound you receive in response to the question is the true form of grace to you at this moment. Take time to honestly acknowledge your answer, to offer heart-felt gratitude. You don’t have to get emotional if you don’t want to; just be sincere. Don’t feel compelled to be all religious either, quoting whatever doctrinal blessing you’ve grown up with. Be true to the moment, directly from your heart.

I am grateful for each of you who have spent your precious time observing my meanderings on this platform. I am humbled how my words can offer you a respite from your daily routine or revitalize your purpose in living the life of grace you portray to so many. Thank you for your understanding and patience when I rant. May you enter into greater truths in the days, weeks and months ahead that open broader vistas with sharper clarity. Thanks, and as always, grace, lovingkindness and peace to you.

It’s cold and flu season, again! At least that is what the advertisers want me to believe. In my household, with a respirator-dependent child, we tighten our daily regime of preventive maintenance (i.e. vitamin C & D, olive leaf extract, oregano oil, hand sanitizers) to keep any unwanted virus from infecting our lives. We all know that once a virus lands, antibiotics are the only means to rid it from our system, and that is a result we don’t enjoy one bit.

Many don’t know that there is a difference between bacteria and a virus. They both may produce similar results in our bodies but there is a vast and amazing difference between them. Give me a moment to explain as best a layman can and you’ll begin to see how grace fits into this.

Bacteria (the plural of bacterium) live all around us and within us. These are single-cell creatures doing their singular-little part of living-the-life thing. Some of these wee-little ones live inside of us doing the down and dirty job of breaking apart the food which we’ve consumed so that our body can properly use the nutrients from it. There are other bacteria which offer the flavorful aroma to various cheeses, bouquets to sumptuous wines, arresting fragrances to delectable meats, and a whole host of aromatics to our diets and this planet. Our world is a symbiotic relationship we share with bacteria.

A virus is best pictured as a zombie, the living dead. It is microscopic in size too but, and this is a big but, it isn’t alive like a single-cell bacterium. It doesn’t have the ability to live on its own, it requires a host agent to carry it around. Once it finds an agent it will burrow itself into the agent and release its DNA or RNA code into the agent in order to create a susceptible environment for it to grow. The agent may be carrying the virus for a long period of time before it “awaken” and begins the infection transfer. Unlike bacteria which can be killed, a virus can only be treated with antibodies which are designed to control the virus’ activities. Our bodies can often deal with this process but sometimes we need the assistance from an outside source found in certain medications. Some viruses are antibiotic-intolerant which can cause wide-spread epidemics if not contained and treated properly. Oh, yeah, almost all viruses are transmitted in the air. This makes them buggers of a thing to isolate.

“And Jesus breathed on them and said, ‘Receive the Holy Ghost.’”

Grace infected humanity. It lays dormant waiting for the host to activate it so that the spiritual DNA contained within it can be released and transform our body into an environment rich for its growth. Grace is not like yeast which puffs up from its own life’s work but is transforming in its co-mingling and co-dependence. Religions always try to control and kill it. But you can’t kill an eternal pathogen. Its purpose is always to transform; its work is not outward but inward. It does not live alone found in every nook and corner of the my-ways, byways and highways of life. It spreads soul-ly by word of mouth.

Yup, it’s Kingdom virus season out there, all around you. And there is not a thing you can do to stop it. You’re already infested with a death-defying, DNA transforming, eternal pathogen. Time to get some rest.

Being divine creatures is pretty heady stuff. There are a number of religious strains out there which promote the human species as the pinnacle of all creation and employing the “…image and likeness…” trademark, even go so far as to brand humanity as co-creators with God. I’ve participated in the grandeur of this thought, swept up in the cavalcade of pompous utterings and baseless declarations cherry-picked from biblical sources, so before you dismiss this writing, please indulge one with an inside view about what is truly happening.

A creator is one who forms and fashions a new object never seen before. Is that you? You and I are new creations, never witnessed on the face of the earth or within the entirety of a 132 billion-year-old universe. Did our parents create this new being? No, the universal triune God did. Before you skip out here let me explain the difference.

God, the Lord Almighty, creates heaven and earth by some means associated with the power of a spoken word. Consider that a word is a container of a thought, a means to portray an intention, a desire, a final outcome. There wasn’t anything like a heaven or an earth prior to this event. Try wrapping your head around the thought of not being. Pretty hard from the position of being, right? Kinda like swiss cheese. You can’t take out the holes and make the cheese whole because the holes are a part of the whole cheese known as swiss. That is food for another thought though.

The biblical record states that we, you and me, were in Christ before the foundation of the world, and that all things were made for Him and by Him and there wasn’t anything made which wasn’t made by Him. To claim that we are co-creators would put us, the entire world, as co-architects of our entire universe.

Let me see if I can simplify this. My children were in me before they were born. My wife and I are co-creators of them. My children are not co-creators with me or my wife. My children are not new creations either. They are made in the manner and likeness according to the power of the divine union shared by me and my wife. We, and the world, haven’t seen the likes of them, however they resemble the multitude of our human species. And yet, my children, were, are and forever remain in Christ, recognized as new creatures in this universe.

Let me back up a moment. My faith buddies need to be massaged here. Faith did not create my children, no matter how “now” I wanted it. An act which went beyond a spoken word did. That act was the “Christ” event to my wife and I, the power to create. We may have hoped for children, we could’ve talked about it until the cows came home and we were blue in the face, but the introduction of “Christ” secured our desire. (You all know what I’m talking about here. There just happen to be children in the room.)

Are we co-creators with God? That is possibly one of the most egoic claims we can make. Thank God for grace! In my humble opinion I believe that we are co-participants in the creation of God. It is His ballpark; His bases, balls and bats. All of us play by His rules, no exceptions. We may kick at the dirt, pick at the grass, scratch at the mound, but He is sitting in the stands waiting for us to play so He can tag a runner with applause.

I recognize that some of you will take exception to my claim here still holding onto your co-creatorship. However, I would ask for you to let me know when you’ve created a new world from the space in the swiss cheese or better yet, staying more biblically oriented, created a new, heretofore never been seen “seed.” I will at that time hail you as a co-creator. Until then, I will accept you as I am accepted in Him.

The religious world would have us believe that the “world” is comprised entirely of lost souls. The mission is to win these souls to Christ. Winning and losing. Duality. Either/or. But who said they were lost? Why is it even a contest, or a choice?

When my boys were small, we would go into a large store and I’d instruct them if they ever got lost, they needed to head to the front of the store and tell someone that they can’t find their parents. On a few occasions I would separate myself from them and then secretly follow behind to see how they would conduct themselves. I don’t recall a time when either of the boys got “lost” and I had fun surprising them when I popped into the aisle.

Notice that in this scenario, which we repeated on several occasions, the child made the sole determination of whether they were lost or not. Also note that lost simply meant not being able to find a parent.

If you’re a person who enjoys camping in the wilderness, one of the first things that you’re instructed in is what to do should you become “lost.” Experts far and wide tell you that you need to stay right where you’re at and prepare for a long wait for help to arrive. Again, it is at the sole discretion of the camper to determine whether they are lost or not. I’ve heard stories of people “lost” in the woods for extended periods of time and how a multitude of rescuers were dispatched to “save” them, yet, after many unfruitful days of trying to locate the “lost” person, this individual walks out to the surprise that people were looking for him. It never occurred to him that he was lost the entire time he had been gone.

In the book of Ephesians, we are told that everyone was in Christ before the foundation of the world, chosen and predestined for good works per the will of the Father. Nothing lost there; all recognized and accounted for. Somewhere, mankind had a self-conscious moment recognizing that they aren’t where they thought they were. The Father comes up behind them and asks, “…Who said you were…”

Is the “world” really lost if they’ve been in Christ from before the foundation of the world? Or is it possible the religious community doesn’t want to remind them of their inclusion until they repent of their “sins?” Doesn’t this make the religious community “rescue workers” looking for someone who never thought they were lost?

2 Cor 4:3-5 But if our gospel be hid, it is hid to them that are lost: (4) In whom the god of this world hath blinded the minds of them which believe not, lest the light of the glorious gospel of Christ, who is the image of God, should shine unto them. (5) For we preach not ourselves, but Christ Jesus the Lord; and ourselves your servants for Jesus’ sake.

It would seem to me that in this passage Paul is clearly indicating that a lost person is someone who has made the conscious choice to become lost through unbelief. That’s the god of this world, our own choice. It would also appear that their unbelief is a result not of the gospel of Christ, but Paul claims, “…For we preach not ourselves…”

How much of the preaching to the “world” is about ourselves, our testimony as it were? “I was lost but now I have been found…” Do we truly believe that God didn’t know where we were along? He may have asked Adam that question, but, come on, who was the response truly intended for? How naïve do you think God is about you also?

Now I understand many may claim that Jesus said he came to find the lost sheep, which is true, however, he was dealing with the lost sheep of Israel, not what would be called “the world.” Paul, on the other hand, is the apostle to the Gentile, “the world” according to Israel, and he is making a case here in a letter to the Gentile church of Corinth, so the way that I’m reading this looks like if you don’t believe, you’re lost; not if you don’t know.

I bring this out here because a lot of people know about Jesus and believe that he is a good person. Many of these fine people don’t attend a religious institution or even want to be affiliated with one and in extreme cases, do everything in their power to stay as far away from anything or anyone associated with one. Doesn’t sound like the actions of a “lost” person, more like the actions of a person not interested in the pomp, ceremony and segregation called “church.” However, the church would claim that these people are lost basing their belief on the premise this if you don’t congregate with me, you’re lost in the world. I’m beginning to wonder if the church isn’t so lost in the traditions they’ve crafted that they can’t really see the forest of humanity or the tree Christ hung upon.

I’m stepping on a lot of toes here on purpose. The finished work is just that, finished. A sweeping pre-creation declaration surpasses any of the theories we’ve invented to attempt to justify the mystery of all mysteries. Maybe it’s time for the eternal assurances to be stressed beyond what we think we know and thereby welcome an entire planet into the act which completed things we still can’t comprehend.

I still can’t believe that God would allow himself to be killed by his own creation. According to Paul in this passage, my unbelief would make me “lost” and a surprisingly large number of people too. This is the foolishness of the cross which every single one of us still can’t believe except through the faith of Jesus. However, knowing grace the way I do, I’ve never felt lost. So why are all of you looking for me? The Father knows right where I’m at and He is darn proud of me. He even surprises me on occasions. How about you?

Talk to anybody in the so-called “Grace movement” who has been involved with it for any extended period of time and the elephant in the room sudden rears its head and blasts out a resounding alarm which by-and-large no really cares about. Welcome to apathy. What’s the alarm: people are lazy. Yup, laziness and apathy go hand in glove. Or do they?

Professionals who deal with mental health issues call apathy the emotionless emotion. They claim that most people react to a variety of stimuli throughout their daily lives. When there is an over-abundance of stimulation some people cope simply by shutting down. On another front, apathy is the product of a depressed state of mind. One of the common effects from apathy is the loss of motivation to perform simple tasks, make or plan for long-term goals. This makes people often appear passive in all their actions which most active people assume to be indifference or detachment.

Religion is a great carrot-and-stick motivator. Programs, seminars, guest speakers, bible studies, choir practice, homeless shelters, food assistance to the elderly, unwed mothers, prison ministry…on and on it goes. To be plugged in to a church means get that person to fill a slot in the machinery of “aiding” the community, not make them disciples of Jesus first.

Of course, all of these programs are your daily reminder that you’re, somehow, not quite at the level you need to be. Being involved is like penance to some people. “I spread the gospel by helping drug addicts because I was one myself. It makes me feel more whole helping these folks.” The more empty you feel, the more you’re urged to accept greater responsibility by being involved in our “new program.” Not that anyone would actually put in that manner to you, they’re more “caring” than that, but the result is the same all the while.

Then suddenly grace hits. (You ever notice how it always “hits” rather than “strolls” in?) Your penance is exposed for what it is: works. The entire host of programs are work-oriented! You realize that you have a life with grace! You suddenly face the shock that whether you do or don’t do something, it doesn’t affect your eternal soul one bit. To top it off, the revelation that this applies to every single person in the entire world, yes, even the homeless, pregnant teenage felon jonesing for another hit, becomes such a shock to your religious system that you…

“Jesus, did it all so I don’t have too.” The apathy of grace exemplified.

Here is the fault with the line in this logic. “…have to…” implies that you still what to or feel an inkling of compulsion to do something under the prior knowledge of how “work of the ministry” was accomplished. You don’t have to do anything, but breath…and pay taxes, unless you’re in a particular bracket, but I digress.

You don’t have to do anything if guilt, shame, or an overly inflated sense of self-worth was your motivation. Grace wipes all of that away, levels the playing field, makes all wrongs…well you know where this is leading.

I think what really needs to be addressed now that grace has taken a big bite out of the religious carrot and snapped the stick it dangled from is whether our programs, our little kingdoms of high esteem, are designed to promote everyone into the family of God according to the measure of grace we’ve all been given.

If die-hard believers suddenly don’t act excited about the message given on Sunday, or seem to disappear whenever a new idea is brought up, or don’t volunteer like they used to, maybe it’s time to show what grace-filled motivation looks like and operates from. Maybe we need to stop doing things (programs, sermons, prayers, worship, ect.) the way we’ve always done it out of religion and evaluate how to get things, and even people, functioning from the realm of grace.

Apathy and depression are very valid responses to the grace message if your entire life has been spent trying to measure up to the things of God by the works that you do which represent the “Christian traditions.” Laziness, or better yet, inactivity is a product of a grace-filled revelation to a person’s eternal identity. It takes time to find an eternal purpose worth getting out of bed in the morning for. Many don’t know where to begin looking for one since their entire focus had been propped up on a works pedestal.

Now I understand that some of you might think that I might be promoting this apathy/laziness approach to grace. You might cite my posting from a few days ago entitled, It Doesn’t Matter, as an example of this. Granted the title might lead someone to this conclusion, but reading the post will be a different story. Grace seems to always get a bum-wrap from some religious, law-abiding, fundamental wing-nut job.

I’m a grace guy through and through. Call it cheap, call it sleazy, call it greasy, call it whatever you like, it comes from a kingdom we know not of, hope to go to and, expect will make a change in the world if the “world” would just lie down and listen us. I’ve experienced this first hand and honestly, time is the only cure for it. A time to stop doing, a time to be aware, a time to listen carefully, a time to rest. The urgency of religion is not the rest of His grace we have all entered into.

A number of years ago I read a book entitled God is a Verb. Written from the perspective of Jewish mysticism, it presented several insights that have no immediate bearing with this writing except for the title, God is action. A verb is something being done, activity not accomplishment.

“God is love” doesn’t mean that He represents what love is, like a glass represents a container of water. Love is a verb, an action of God’s character and nature. God’s activities, his involvement in and around our lives is best understood as the performance of love.

“God is righteous” does not signify a moral superiority, it is an event of accomplishment declaring acceptance with everything in His kingdom. All of us became “righteous” in the actions undertaken by God in Jesus, the Christ event in humanity. Anything we attempted, and continue to attempt, to mimic the righteousness we see in God, is a filthy imitation, a fabrication sorely lacking in quality and substance.

“God is just” isn’t a position of judgement but a movement towards reconciliation, from estrangement to sonship. Justice is not punishment but reparation towards responsibility abandoned.

We are encouraged in the book of Ephesians to imitate God, to act like him just as little children pretend to be like their parents. Someone once said that God’s attitudes are His actions. Do our attitudes resemble the actions of the one we imitate? Are we so settled in our accomplishments that we respond from the shallow tide pools of self-reflection or have we embraced the vast sea of humanity in its variegated composition and determined to advance into the fullness of who we have always been?

Yes, God’s ways are higher than ours simply because humanity has lived far too below our original design. We have accepted a state of existence which laughs at any notion we can do the greater works. However, doing, a verb, comes from being, not pretending.

An act of God has been pronounced, is poised over and upon your entire life. It’s time to put on the new you and act like it. Life is about what you’re doing, not what you’ve done.

This will not be an easy read for many of you. However, this admission doesn’t mean you shouldn’t continue – you whole-heartily should – just beware that the purpose requires a lot from you. I recall a preacher once who told a congregation after a very provocative and stimulating message that there now rested a responsibility upon the hearer of the message to see to it that what had been said was lived out. Failure to do so was not permitted having heard what had been said. Meaning: There are no excuses allowed when you’ve been clearly informed.

There is a darkness which haunts most of us. Philosopher Ken Wilber calls this in several of his writings our shadow life. We all know that our shadow follows us telegraphing our every move; however, our shadow life is like the shadow of Peter Pan, pulling us in directions we do not wish to go at times when we least expect it. Regrettably, many spend more time in their lives trying to get their shadow behind them rather than looking into the light which always corrects the matter.

What is this darkness and its strange gravitational effect on our present lives? I would like to say that it is one thing, but I can’t with all sincerity. It is a conglomeration of many minute events in our lifetime which have imprinted themselves into our very identity. Singularly, they may not appear important to you today, but when they initially transpired, they left an indelible mark on your psyche. It might have been a lack of love, a betrayal, a defaming of significance, or myriad other impositions that made you feel…invalid.

The wound of these primary events keeps being picked at by subsequent incursions into our identity throughout our daily relations over the course of years, even decades, until today, where these wounds look like vitriol festering pools of putrefied puss. We wince when anything gets remotely close to it and lash out to protect ourselves from the great pain we believe we’ll experience if it were to be touched, poked or prodded.

Many of us have turned inward, built up a series of walls, more like a fortress, designed to enshrine the wound from all foreign incursions. Yet, not understanding the dynamic of how a wound operates, our fortress simply acts as a funnel allowing the spiral dynamic of all our wounds to coalesce into a spinning nova of painful recollections unable to scale the fortified walls we have erected.

Scientific studies have been conducted on this matter and found that we don’t even recall the actual trauma anymore but the most recent memory of the traumatic event. Since many of us replay these events in our mind multiple time during a single day, the only thing we are doing is surfing along the crest of the wave of our last memory allowing the swell from a previous recollection to form our present pain-inducing journey. Rarely are we willing to descend down the face of our wave of trauma into the barrel of over-arching memories crashing upon the shoals of adolescent ignorance.

Yes, ignorance. If you don’t know, then, well…you don’t know. How do you cope if you don’t know how, or that you can? Coping is a skill that develops in the doing of life. Trauma, imprintable memory-moments are rife with non-coping issues not for the lack of trying, but because of the sheer lack of a prior reference in the magnitude of the moment. Coping comes after the event, not during. Often the shock of the trauma will stunt the ability to beginning the process of coping, beginning the spiral of self-examination leading to culpability at one end of the spectrum with being immaculate on the other.

Most coping mechanism we employ today will often present us with the opportunity to forgive the transgressor. There is presumption in this motif that it should be conducted on a “forgive and forget” basis. How is that working for you? Not!

If we could forget, we wouldn’t remember it for the next escalation of pain-inducing, scab-picking, festering. Justified in our righteous indignation we hold a ransom over our pain-filled memories. Someone is going to pay for what we’ve had to endure. We don’t know who, but someone…someone…

Forgiving is not about forgetting. Never has been. It’s about giving. It’s about a gift. It is about a great gift given to someone who doesn’t know they deserve it or think that they somehow have earned it. Read that again, slowly. You have to give a gift which isn’t earned and is undeserving. Forgiving is not about you, it’s about the recipient, entirely. Many, if not most of us, find this too daunting a feat to perform. It negates our senses of right or wrong; it flaunts our ability to declare justice served; it besmirches our “us versus them” nobility to the point of utter embarrassment and defamation.

Paul calls us to be ambassadors of reconciliation. Many a preacher has offered this concept to his flock expecting a “forgive and forget” mentality as the means to the end. Reconciliation only happens after the battle has been waged. It never happens prior. The conflict, the struggle, the unrepentant taking without authorization is the premise, the foundational underpinning of being reconciled. Great wars with tragic battles are never forgotten by either party in the quest for reconciliation. Rarely, however, will true reconciliation be made with forgiveness, with a return greater than prior conditions warrant.

A battle-wearied man, bruised, beaten, lacerated and punctured by an enemy’s assaults draws ever closer to the brink of death. Memories, bitter, mind-numbing memories from the battle just enacted flood the senses with each labored breath. The jovial, ruckus pantomime of victory waves brilliantly in afternoon winds of the naked embarrassment to an apparent brutal submission and conquest. Identity usurped, dominion apprehended, purpose aborted. Death, the final rest, the final act of darkness swallowing up light awaits. Yet, “…forgive them, they know not what they do…” reverberates in the all-embracing act of reconciliation. The price is paid, the sacrifice made, justice served, love…

“As he is so are we in this world…” Battered, beaten, bruised, punctured. Never forgotten, always forgiven. We don’t deserve it, we didn’t earn it. We gained more than we thought we lost just so we could be who we always have been. No, we don’t forget it all. We forgive it all to reconcile, to brand as right what He has already declared as being right. The choice has already been made; can a shadow of doubt exist in the light of this truth?

“I tooted,” he giggled. Laughter broke out between the two of them as they poked their sticks into the campfire.

“What!” I shot back at him. “Who in the world toots around a campfire?” I guess it was inevitable. Social graces had invaded the sacred realm of manliness. While camping, no less.

“Okay, let’s get one thing straight, boys, men don’t toot. We fart. Got it?”

“But mom says we can’t say that,” the older son responded meekly.

“Mom…is not here. We are camping like men, right? Men fart. We’ve always farted. Women hate that about us, so they try to make it more civilized, more respectable in the company of others, particularly other women. But boys, get it out of your head that you toot. As long as you’re with me, a fart it is, a fart it will forever be.”

A sense of harmony spread across their cute little faces as the entered into the sacred realm of manhood. Somehow, they recognized there was a difference about them, something to set them apart, not higher or lower, just apart, but united.

“Daddy, does Jesus fart?” the littlest sincerely asked poking at an ember.

Trying not the choke on the coffee entering my mouth, my wide-eyed expression confounded my son. “Uh…yes, he does,” I stated with all the reverence I could muster as I wiped the few drops of coffee running down my beard.

“No sir!” shot back the oldest stirring the embers before him. “He’s dead. Mom says that Jesus doesn’t fart.” “He’s not dead,” the youngest quickly responded. “Is too.” “Is not,” the youngest challenged his brother by waving his stick at him, burning tip inches from his face.

“Hold on there for a moment, partner,” I broke in before they escalated the theological debate into a duel. “Put that stick down, sit still and listen. First, Jesus did die…”

“See, I told you,” the oldest proudly announced.

“…however,” I continued holding my hand up to silence any further interruptions, “Jesus, also rose back to life after three days and all of his disciples saw him and claimed him to be alive.” A broad smile beamed from the youngest one’s face directly at the oldest. “So, you are both correct, Jesus died but now he is alive. Now, why would mom say that Jesus doesn’t fart?” The beauty of teaching children is that they don’t know what a rhetorical question is and at that moment I could see their imaginations whirling at break-neck speed to offer an answer.

“I’m sure that you both will agree that Jesus was a man, just like us, right?” They nodded their heads in agreement. “There isn’t anything different between you and him. The skin that you have is just like his; the feet you have, he had also; the mouth you feed your belly through is just like the one that Jesus had. So, there is no difference. If you eat something that doesn’t agree with you, what happens?”

“You puke,” the youngest one shot out, being the recipient of his brother’s vomit from the morning excursion to the pond where crawdads flourished from the entrails of our daily fishing adventures.

“That’s right, you puke. And I’m certain that Jesus did that too, just like us. So, since Jesus was a man just like us, if he ate just like us, if he pukes just like us, then he has to fart…” giggles explode from them both, “…just like us. Agreed?”

Both shake their heads in chuckling agreement, each stirring up the embers of the fire nearest them. Silence descended upon us, broken by the irregular cracking and popping of the fire. “Phhhhttt!”

We all smiled, acknowledging our inner nature. “Daddy, does Jesus poop in the woods?”

Many years ago, I attended a seminar given by the late Stephen Covey, author of the best-selling book, 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. An entire day was dedicated to learning about these seven habits he had researched. Today, there is only one thing that I recall from that event. It shook me when I heard it and the vibrations have not stopped since. Allow me to give my rendition of this one pearl.

Everyone, every day spends their waking hours climbing a ladder. It can be related to work, school, social gatherings, even PTA meetings. We seem obsessed with advancement, higher levels of responsibility, greater heights of influence. We work hard, sometimes fighting and clawing our way around impediments or people determined to halt our progression. The goal, the prize, always beyond our grasp, keeps us moving upward and onward, until one day, joyfully we reach the mark, the pinnacle of our vaulted success. As we survey the horizon of our garnished accomplishment we might look back from whence we’ve come recalling the journey we have taken to get us to this point only to realize that the ladder we’ve been climbing is perched beside the wrong wall.

Thomas Merton puts it another way, we each live a dual life – our false self and our true self. Our false self is, regrettably, more apparent to all since it is the disguise we feed to keep up our created identity. The false self is the image we maintain while traversing the ladder on the wrong wall. Keeping up appearances is the rational expression to our false self.

However, there comes a point of exhaustion. When appearances be damned, you can’t continue to live the lie. Has this happened to you, yet? Some might call it a mid-life crisis or possibly a crisis of faith. Some don’t know what to call it even as their world begins to unravel thinking how they’ve expended all this energy, an entire life, for what?

Fr. Richard Rohr, in his book Falling Upward calls this moment the end of the first half of your life. You’ve built things for others to enjoy and be comfortable within, yet you’re not satisfied. You’re drained. Your life has been poured out, as the apostle Paul would say, in the service of others and there isn’t any fruit left for you to partake of or a drop to slacken the stifling thirst to live just one more day.

At this junction you face a choice. Continue to live the lie as a zombie; or decide to find your true self and live a life of real worth, of real passion, of real purpose. The ladder for your true self isn’t your work, it’s your rest; it’s understanding how who you’ve always been never needs to hide behind veiled agendas of hidden motives. The true self thrives in the pursuit of purpose-filled passion.

Have you succumbed to the boredom found in reaching for another wrung upon a ladder laden with the rumpled garments of false appearances? Do you find it difficult to activate any part of your being to accomplish the simplest of tasks which assault you daily? Do you not know what you believe to be true anymore? A ladder awaits. It reaches to places you’ve yearned to experience but felt reluctant to consider. How true, how real, do you want to be? How much are you willing to die in order to live resurrected?

Grace is inclusiveness. No one gets left out at any time, for any cause, for any reason. But you can’t handle the truth of this, can you? It’s okay to admit that this is one of the most repugnant things you know about grace. Some just shouldn’t receive it, right?

It doesn’t matter. Honestly, this phrase has caused more angst to people than any other in the grace realm. Why? Obviously, it doesn’t matter. “But it does matter,” is the response of a person who can’t accept a gift, no matter how priceless, simply because their value system is askew.

Consider that a long time ago, in a realm far, far away, you and I occupied a place of complete and absolute peace and harmony, filled with an overwhelming, incomprehensible presence of love. We were accepted fully just as we were, but more importantly, accepted for “when” and “how” we would become.

The “when” aspect was our birth into the world at some point in time. Notice how our acceptance pre-dates time, meaning that when we arrived on this orb called earth, we arrived perfected in love. What occurred to us from that moment forward is the “how” aspect.

If we don’t know we’re loved and accepted, the strangest thing happens: We create a false reality to mask love and acceptance. This false reality becomes our earthly persona, a coat of armor which we wear to protect ourselves from the self-induced perception that we aren’t loved and accepted. Regrettably, this armor also becomes our prison since we find it so hard to believe an eternal truth when posited in an earthly existence.

As long as we allow the armor of our thoughts to dictate our actions we strengthen the idea that we are not loved, or that others aren’t loved as much as we are by our false identity. Judgement, personal and directed at others, is our battle weapon to secure the thoughts which continually tell us we’ve been abandoned.

How we look; how old; how smart; how rich; how poor; how tall; how short; how thin; how fat; how much we own; how much we don’t like people; how much we like certain people more than others; plus, myriad other nuances swirl around us living this life within the armor of self-deception. Yet, it doesn’t matter.

Let me provide an example. The other day, I happened to see two individuals attack one another about racism. Each held the extreme position for and against it in a particular situation. The more I watched, the greater my agitation for the dialogue increased. I don’t hold any of their positions. My agitation rose because both of these people were of the same ethnicity and each was determined to enforce their belief upon the other, and all of those watching, without stopping to consider that a false identity of being unaccepted and loved is the genesis of this entire issue. Whatever their particular point was in this matter, ultimately, they both were correct: each lived from the deception of being unaccepted and unloved. They each had developed a deep reliance in living from the opinion of how others saw them rather than the truth of who they were.

Now I know that some, if not most, of you will take exception to this example and might feel that the best thing for me is to roast my hide for exposing this condition. However, first recognize that I wouldn’t be writing this way if I didn’t believe it so much that I’m able to live it. Second, I’m not taking a position either way, simple because it doesn’t matter. Each of us should reach a point in our life where we’re free to let the armor of our false identity fall to the ground and expose the truth of love and acceptance which resides within and is us. True, many will not like what they see, their helmet of saving face obscures their vision to reality. Grace.

If you’re issues in life don’t matter because you are loved and accepted by God, why should they matter to me to a greater degree? Don’t feel that I don’t care about you simply because I don’t jump on your self-deceptive parade of angst. I demonstrate my care by not adding to your circus. That might not appear to be what you think you need, however, until you understand of how greatly you are loved and accepted, your actions, which are trying to convince me otherwise, well…it doesn’t matter.