It's me, mike hillebrecht

How many of you ever heard your grandmother say, “If you can’t say anything nice then don’t say anything at all.”? (I am now faced with the dilemma over whether I should follow grandma’s wisdom or let ‘er rip…)

Information. We live in an age of it. Good; bad; excruciatingly bad; life altering bad.

Most information comes to us from standard media outlets, news, radio, papers, magazines – old school formats a generation grew up on. Videos, blog, podcasts, live streams now add to the overwhelming mountain of… stuff. The trouble with stuff is that there is no way to filter out good stuff from bad stuff during the course of a day. It’s a crap shoot at best. So we dabble in stuffication – the art of creating a world-view of truth out of stuff.

One of the rules of stuffication is that my stuff matters more than yours, even if we share the same thread of stuff, because my other threads, which you have no access to, bring a truer picture to the matter. The corollary to this is I will berate, criticize, harangue, make your life an on-line hell to prove my point. Grandma is rolling right now.

The media, are masters at the corollary. Smooth, artful jabs followed by bone crunching upper cuts of accusation. Before you know it, you’re being pummeled by the left and then the right. You thought you were fighting one person and suddenly blows are coming from all around you. It’s a street fight!

An accusation comes to steal, kill and destroy. It has no other purpose. People deliver them, not some spiritual bogey man with red horns and a pointed tail. Accuser. You. Me. Every one of us, at one time or another. Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter. When they’re up; when they’re down. Accuser = satan.

Flip Wilson was a comedian who crafted the line, “The devil made me do it.” Any time he was convicted of wrongdoing, “the devil made me do it” was the pat answer he issued to swells of laughter. Devil = false accuser, slanderer.

Consider that an action was undertaken and then deemed inappropriate all because of an accusation was made against someone. What if the action was appropriate? If you answer that question without thinking it through you’ve missed the point. Appropriate of not, the action came because of an accusation.

It’s a dog-eat-dog world out there and you gotta-do-what-ya-gotta-do to make it big. Bullshit on all of that. That comment is spewed hourly across the airwaves by those striving to justify the past accusations they’ve committed, the present one’s they’re getting ready to level, and the future ones that they don’t have a clue about yet. I’m tired of playing advocate for the accuser; defender of the false assumption; believer is a greater truth at the expense of wrongful charge. Get behind me, satan.

The disciples of Jesus went out into the community and prayed for the sick and lame. When they returned to him to tell him of all the wonders that had happened under their hands, he responded, “I saw satan fall like lighting.” Did the spiritual bogey man suddenly materialize and take a jolt from heaven? You’re 21st century people, think. What has been the point of this message? What did Jesus mean?

At this very moment, in Chicago, four young people sit in a cell charged with a crime against a young man who was of a different ethnicity and operating as best he could within a limited mental capacity. These four people tortured this young man and became the satan to him. I can say this without using the term “allege” simply because they embraced the nature of stuffication by publicizing their actions for the entire world to see. This action became the public organism of the satan, their demon for life.

Healing restores and removes. Wholeness comes when accusations lifted up by a community are replaced by the goodness of what God has done. Accusations = satan fall through praise of God’s goodness.

If you think for one moment that you’re going to help these people with a God who tortured, beat and then crucified his son so that his wrath would be soothed, maybe you can’t see what that type of belief has already produced in their actions.
God loves those four young people just as much as He love you right now. There is nothing that either you, or I, can do to change that. Those young people, all of them, are living in hell right now. You going to play their satan, or their deliverer? What role did the disciples take? You are a disciple, right? Grandma…

Events in the Middle East are dire. Terror seems to be the norm for people who are caught in the middle of an ancient power struggles. Life, any hope of life, seems to flicker way in the harrowing cavalcade of brutal hostilities. Sometimes, in the rarest of moments, light does burst forth and life takes hold once again. I heard a story of man from this region which brings this truth out in brilliant color.

This man, his name fails me, was one day out in the field tending to his herd. This was a profession that his entire family had worked in for generations and he hoped one day to pass on to his son, an infant, who occupied more time in the bosom of his mother than along the side of his father.

He recalled that the day started out bright and crystal clear upon the low hills that bordered the township he lived in. Occupied with retrieving a lost animal caught in the dense undergrowth in a dale, he wasn’t sure how long it was until he began to smell the acrid smoke of a fire flowing past him. As he looked over his shoulder towards the direction of the billowing smoke his eyes were horrified to see that his entire township was engulfed in flames.

Possessed by panic he frantically ran down the slope toward the village. Tongues of flame darted agitatedly across the sky as peals of shrieks and screams of horror – men, women and children – rose in intensity as he approached. Off to his side he could see soldiers, what appeared to be thousands of them march off, banners and armament held on high.

With wild abandon he rushed past the flames of his neighbors’ burning homes, swatting away the blazing debris that showered down upon and around him. His heart raced as he rounded the corner of his home to witness the shock of seeing his beautiful young wife, clutching the lifeless body of their son at her bosom, both impaled upon the iron gate leading toward their garden. His wailing, could not overcome the din of the fires burning and crashing down all around him. With super-human strength he wrestled the gate from its hinges and lowered the lifeless bodies which comprised his entire world to the ground.

Sobbing uncontrollably, he picked up his son’s frail form and pressed him to his chest, the lingering smell of a morning bath flooding his senses as tears washed over the child’s scalp. Falling to the ground he nestled the two of them next to the lifeless contours of his wife and began to softly moan for solace in the pain which strangled him.

Time became inconsequential. He recalls faint voices off in the distance calling to others to hurry and help… He could only mouth the word over parched lips, sound failed him. Someone approached them and tried to stifle a ghastly cry of horror. Barely able to move, he turned his head towards the figure obscured by the haze of the smoldering debris about him. An elderly man reached a withered hand toward his shoulder and gently pulled himself towards the family lying before him. Lightly the older man took hold of the child against the faint protests of the father and laid him on the other side of the woman. Slowly reaching behind him his back he pulled a flask of water and carefully slipped its crooked neck between the parched lips of the man. Sputtering and coughing the man drink ravenously. Something needed to quench the searing pain of…death.

As the story goes, apparently, a military detachment came through the country side terrorizing the inhabitants. Their superior force was no match for any of the towns they entered. Some people were tortured before their families, others were taken away, but only one village suffered the ultimate fate: annihilation. Regrettably, this sole survivor was spared, a kind of beacon of despair. The neighboring village came and found him among the ruins and tried their best to console his heart. They buried the bodies they were able to gather out of the charred remains in a location up on a bluff overlooking the village ruins. The sole survivor, our man, never left the resting site of his family. Day and night he could be heard wailing and sobbing in despair over their graves. Days turned to weeks and weeks to months as he, overcome with distraught, pounded the earth with bruised and bloody fists demanding the bodies of those he had lost. Trying to cut out the pain which racked his mind, he frequently slashed at his body with the jagged rocks.

Occasionally, a member or a committee of members from the surrounding communities would come to him and attempt to silence his wailing or offer food or companionship which he violently refused, chasing them off so that he could grieve alone. Some enterprising farmers found that they could leave their herds at night around the cemetery and predators would stay away because of the wailing which carried on all night long. Over time the survivor began to envision the cattle as images of the military men who had killed his friends and family. Frequently he would charge at them to chase them from the village of the dead that he had become the watchman of.

Children would often secretly venture into the countryside to taunt the survivor who wailed at them in despair from the pain of seeing his own child in their faces. Always the children would run home laughing at the screams they produced and the imaginative tells they would accuse the survivor of committing to their friends in the public places. In due course the farmers and the towns people of the surrounding communities just accepted that the survivor would remain in his turmoil sequestered in the cemetery and quietly let him live a petty existence.

Then one day, a stranger came traveling into the valley below the bluff where the cemetery lay. The watchman, vigilant to his task of protecting the inhabitants rushed down to the stranger to determine what his intention was. As the survivor approached the stranger he could sense that there was something different about him. “What is your business in this God forsaken land? Have you come to harass me too?”
“No,” the stranger softly replied surveying the bluff where the survivor had come from. “What places you at such a strategic point in this area? Are you spying on me, or do you plan on warning the garrison up there?” the stranger said pointing at the bluff while wearily watching the survivor.

Laughter burst from the mouth of the survivor. Loud, sudden, raucous laughter. It caught the survivor off guard primarily because it came from him. Out of nowhere it came pouring out of his inner most being sweeping over him in wave after wave of hilarity. The stranger was at first cautious with this strange behavior thinking that the man was simply trying to frighten him in some capacity. However, the duration of this laughter, the intensity and volume began to influence the stranger and he too began to laugh.

The survivor, seeing this happen, only laughed harder, gasping for breath, bent over from the pain he was releasing from deep within his soul. Then came the burst of pent up emotions attached to thoughts rehearsed over long agonizing hours, manifesting in giant tears of sorrow. Then out of nowhere came the touch, the arm strong enough to comfort, the hand soft enough to caress the cheek, the shoulder pliable to the sobs which lost their voice within, and then the drops of warm rain-like tears on the neck as they both wept.

As they both stood there clinging to the life they now intimately shared a few of the farmers returned to gather their herds for the day. Unaccustomed to the laughter which the herds had witnessed, the multitude ran in several directions out of fright. The farmers dispatched one of their group to go tell the towns people what was happening while the rest chased after their stock in trade.

The survivor began to confess the story of his plight to the stranger between sobs and gusts of laughter. The stranger listened attentively to all the details and frequently extended a compassionate slap on the back or embrace of camaraderie. When the villagers had arrived, the survivor had expelled all his pent-up emotions and confessed his self-inflicted guilt for having left his wife and son alone that day. His shame as a husband, father, provider, and protector was finally acknowledged before a stranger, one who cared enough to listen without criticizing, weep when faced with weeping, and displayed true empathy in a matter difficult to relate with at first glance.

“Thank you,” the survivor gratefully responded as he tried to compose himself seeing the towns people approach from afar. “I would like to journey with you through this region. I think that you could help me to better understand these things.”
“No, I think that it would be best if you went through this land and finally tell those who have heard stories about you, what truly happened. Tell them that there was a place of peace and joy before it became a God-forsaken land. Tell them that God heard your cries and felt your pain and has now brought you out of the darkness of your soul to the light of life, a life that knows God hears your pleas and restores despite the ashes of your past. Go now and do this,” the stranger urgently prodded the survivor as the towns people quickly came upon him.

“Who are you? What have you done here?’ they cried out to the stranger as they looked with bewilderment upon the survivor who somehow appeared different, changed.
“I am…” is all the stranger could respond. “Away with you. Leave. You have no part here. Go from us now,” came from the agitated multitude. Looking into their suspecting, frightful eyes the stranger simply nodded in agreement, gave the survivor a hug and turned to follow the narrow path he had arrived on. As the towns people questioned each other about the things they had seen, the survivor raised his shoulders, turned and walk away from them without saying a word. His steps were cautious at first but grew in determination the further he distanced himself from the voices of the past. The life of his story had returned and he needed to extend it further than to a life-less career as a watcher.

Trauma possesses far too many these days. The voices of loved ones passing in agony, or betrayers hissing taunts of unworthiness while destruction swirls about us. The fiend of death will create public organisms fueled by accusation who thrive on dividing the thoughts of a life well lived from the life that should have been. Often it is a matter of the context of the story that makes the narrative come to life as it never has before. Dwelling on unsettled past events makes them too contemporary to conquer as they should have been before. Change the context and the story follows.

Thanks to Mark and to the stranger, Jesus, for a context and a story of survival in the face of death.

Scallops, oysters, clams, and mussels. Raw, steamed, Rockefellered, or grilled. You love them or you hate them. Today.

Dietary restrictions kept, and still keep, many from eating these little beauties, the oceans hoovers. Makes sense, who wants to eat a dust buster? But anything is better with butter, right? Or is that bacon? (Another restriction, dang!)

Back in the days when Rome ruled the entire known world, those crazy people held to the belief that the goddess Venus was born from the sea foam. She was almost always depicted on sea shells, scallop shells to be precise. The most common depiction we have of her comes from the renaissance painter Botticelli’s image known as the Birth of Venus. She was the goddess of love and grace, prosperity and abundance, no less.

Now I’m not one to quibble with descriptions of divinity but that moniker sure sounds a whole lot like the names and/or characteristics we’ve claimed Jehovah to be. 1 John was the first to tell us that God is love. Heck, John even said that grace came through Jesus. Except for the gender issue, it might be thought that Romans were closet Jews or something. (Before you get offended, that was a joke.)

In the book, The Shack, author Paul Young depicts God as a woman, a matter that has sent many straight-laced fundamentalist into the stratosphere (which, regrettable, at that height they could still not come back with an accurate description of God) claiming that this representation was completely inaccurate and misleading to the public. In their minds manliness is next to godliness. God created man first, woman came out of man; God charged man to protect the garden, the woman ate the forbidden fruit first. This is their first line of defense for the manly qualification of God’s gender.

Let me make this clear: The only gender I truly know about in the trinity is Jesus. I understand that the terms Father and Abba lend themselves to male role models, but if, according to Jesus, God is spirit, and, according to Paul, there is no such difference as male and female in the kingdom of God, it seems gender isn’t really as important as we want to make it out to be.

Consider this for a moment. We become what we worship. Men are often stereotyped as loners, aggressive to the point of becoming violent, authoritarian, domineering, aloof, capricious, terrible at communication and single-minded. Those attributes are pretty discouraging in humans but how often have we thrust those same characteristics on the interactions of God with us or humanity in general? Let’s not even go down the road of people who have had abusive husbands or fathers and how that dynamic gets transferred onto God.

The female stereotypes are well known too. Caring, nurturing, sacrificial, loving, and communal. Who cleans up the messes in our lives? Who feeds us, bathes us, tucks us in at night? Who tends to us when we’re ill, scrape our knees or elbows, fall off our bikes? Who does every athlete thank when their face is shoved in a camera? Who knows where everything is in the house and what everyone is doing, at the same time?

Is it safe to say that our stereotypical male model keeps us from accepting or believing God really is love when we recognize the characteristics of love to be more feminine in nature? Maybe we need to adjust our perceptions from a God who can leave us shell-shocked to a God on the half shell. IF the nature of divine justice is represented through beating, flogging and death then I’m not interested. IF the nature of divine justice is giving away something at any cost to retain me and the world, then I will have God on the half shell…with the bacon bits.

Some questions left unanswered.

Why did Jesus prefer to die on the eve of Passover rather than on Yom Kippur?

What if “died for our sins” doesn’t mean what we’ve been taught it means?

How does the politically-influenced death of a young Jewish carpenter turned teacher 2,000 years ago change all of humanity in an instant?

What evidence do we have that there is power in the blood of one man to overcome evil?

What keeps people from acknowledging their accusations, and those around them, as the satan described in the scriptures?

What truly did dying really accomplish if people still die?

What is so spiritual about death if our purpose is to reign on earth?

If followers of Jesus are ambassadors of reconciliation, why do we need denominations?

If Jesus is the prince of peace, who declared that Armageddon was his final purpose?
Is it possible that this is a concept carried over from the flood/Noah narrative?

If Jesus is Emmanuel, God with us, how come we worship a god who is up there and out there rather than down here and in here?

Is it possible to make Jesus and/or Holy Spirit an idol according to the second commandment?

When do you think a fish learns that it lives in water? Is it about the same for us in the kingdom of God?

How come Jesus never told his 11 disciples what his death rectified so we could have a record of it rather than rely on the thoughts of man trying to justify why we killed God?

What is the purpose of a doctrine of inclusion if Christ is all in all?

Who, or what, are the powers that Jesus overcame? Are they relevant today or has their focus shifted allowing another to replace it?

What does it really mean to have all power in a power-less reality?

How many of you believe that the world is flat? No one, right? How is it that you don’t believe this simple fact? There is no way that you can tell me otherwise. What is your evidence, your proof to refute the fact of a flat world? Pictures?

Images displayed on a flat plane do not demonstrate that the world is anything other than flat. Maps produce the same evidence. What, a globe? Isn’t that merely a model someone constructed when they wadded up a map of a flat world? After all, who really knows if a globe is even an accurate depiction? How do we know that the shape of the world isn’t more like a cylinder, a donut, or a football? What, you have experts? Who told you they were experts? They’re scientific experts. Doesn’t that mean that they only have a theory too, because isn’t that what science is all about, creating theories in order to prove them? That’s not your kind of expert? Who then could be expert enough to prove that the world isn’t flat?

If you can’t answer that question, then Houston, we have a problem.

Having come this far, you’re probably asking yourself, “What is this nut job trying to say that is relevant to me?” It’s really simple. Today with all that we know, with all that scientific discovery has found from the depths of the oceans, the breadth of our universe and beyond, the width of the human species, and the heights of our natural environment, those who wrote the narrative of Israel, and the one the western church calls the Christ, were all flat-world believers living in an unexplored multi-dimensional reality.

All language is an expression of patterns of belief. This is why you won’t find anything in their writings mentioning computers, electricity, gasoline, steam power, cancer, leukemia, gravity, nuclear fusion, or any of a host of “current” conditions or systems relevant to our day and age. These things were unknown to them, or better yet, indescribable when, and even if, they encountered them. It is here that they had their greatest difficulty attempting to capture with their words the splendor of a Creative being greater than themselves. Words and metaphors often fell flat in what they believed and tried to convey to future generations of flat-landers.

Today, we happily proclaim to one another that God is multi-faceted (a three-dimensional concept) using flat-world support text. Some proclaim the superiority of a flat-world library in our multi-dimensional society insisting that if it’s not found in the writings of this library than it’s not uniquely representative of their world view. A flat-world paradigm falls flat in a multi-dimensional reality every time.

I don’t want you to think that I’m promoting science over belief. What I’m trying to convey is that today we have a greater, richer opportunity to describe our beliefs because of science. It has given us language that, while still limited, enables us to reach vastly beyond the realm of flat-world concepts and metaphors. It has promoted a truly multi-cultural, multi-social, multi-faceted representation of the Creator of all. Some may not see this yet, but that will come as the flatness of their being is inflated by the wind of the new reality in who we have always been. I can flat out confess that there is still a greater realm we haven’t peered into or developed the language to convey and it awaits our gaze of wonder.

Many of you who meander through here might just be wondering what is the purpose of all of this. Me too. That probably wasn’t the response that you were looking for; not a real confidence builder, right? I mean let’s face it, time is limited and you can’t spend all day looking at information that doesn’t have some meaning behind it or will be able to enrich your life in some manner. I know I can’t. Yet, somehow, purpose is only found in what you’re looking for – not what you’re looking at.

I’ll be the first to admit that I’m no special literary genius or someone who has the pulse of the masses, able to sway their thoughts and opinions on matters of relevance. No, I’m just like you in many ways but not in many others. Let me give you some history of how a normal guy became someone looking for something specific.

In the spring of 1994 the life of my family turned upside down, inside out, stretched butt first through a knot hole, or any other metaphor that can possibly describe the effect of sh*t hitting the fan. My youngest daughter was born paralyzed from the neck down, unable to breath or move on her own. We spent the first six months of her life in the hospital, trying to determine the reason and stabilize her to bring her home.

Doctors, being the natural pessimistic sort who seem at times more concerned about protecting their practice than make a flippant boast which could be seen as a promise, told us that in cases like this (a funny expression now, since they had never seen anything like this) the patient doesn’t typically live past the age of two. The lungs are more susceptible to pneumonia, limbs become dis-jointed because of their weight and need to be amputated which can lead to infections… yada, yada. The grim reaper was definitely outclassed by these heralds of doom and gloom on that day.

Well, fast forward to today. Like training a puppy not to pee in the house, we have had occasion to rub the doctor’s smell center in the crap that spewed from their pie hole that day. We did it with dignity though – they after all are on the same journey we all are. None of the things they prophesied came to pass and our daughter, while still in the same medical condition lives at home with us and we, along with a cadre of nurses and health care aficionados, keep her living and moving through the life of a vibrant young woman with the same hopes and dreams just like any other woman of her age.

In the course of living this life and its demands we did what everyone else has done at one time or another: We cried out for purpose, meaning, help, answers, relief, peace, and life. We sought God.

Situations like ours truly make you aware that there is not a damn thing you can do…ever. We looked for the one thing that only one person could provide: A miracle. You don’t have to have a belief in God to believe in miracles – just look at our political arena to understand this. Our world was in chaos and only a word filled with hope could transform it to its intended design. We developed faith, fostered it, nurtured it, always under the hope of a miracle coming any moment.

We latched onto anyone and anything that supported our view for the miraculous. Suddenly, we were surrounded by people seeking their own miracle, each of us flailing in the sea of chaos trying to keep our head… (drowning is not an apt metaphor here because sanity is more desirable than trying to breath). We all pitched shrines to miracles we never saw but heard about all in the name of stirring our faith, as if our faith ever was in danger of burning in the pot of unreconciled despair. Our belief in a miracle working God took us far and wide, into relationships and out of relationship all in order to grab our intended hope. Yet…

Grace came. No, we arrived at grace. Wearied, battered by prolonged unfulfilled hope, we reached the shores to the last vestiges of a lost realm. No one truly knew what it looked like – still don’t – but it began a process of clearing the debris of thoughts, deep, almost hidden thoughts that were never to be spoken in mixed company or in family gatherings. We began to breath with ease an air distinct yet familiar, until …It sucker punched us!

Structures began to wobble and relationships, once thought to be everlasting, became one of the “this (fill in the blank) is the last thing I’ll ever believe…” kind of ships that pass in the dark soul of the night, ever vigilant for icebergs or cold shoulders. Suddenly, vast communities spawned by the hot inflation of the dogma and doctrine of mankind were pricked by the pierced message of a supernatural love that a kind man extended to all through a last shuddering breath. All, and also nothing, in the same moment. Faith and hope; life and death. Purpose, where purpose shouldn’t be – no it can’t be found, today even as then.

This is the journey I’m on. I know not the destination since apparently, I have already arrived. However, I keep traveling, looking at the sights with new lenses which often appear to be kaleidoscopic in nature. I find myself these days sometimes waxing poetics more than waxing the car; and seem to be immersed in the maps of others who have taken this same journey trying to recognize the ancient landmarks along a “civilized” contour.

Consider this the journal of my path towards a hope I still intend to possess, yet now, without the intentionality of a purpose devoid of process. After all, isn’t your purpose a process … a process of discovery.

Ok folks. Welcome to a new year, again. I have spent the last year reevaluating key assumptions and structures of belief in my life. It has been a work, and it is far from over, but so far, the rewards outweigh the cost. There is a popular bumper sticker that says, “Question Authority.” Yes, we all have a notion of what it is implying, however I want you for a moment to think about your authority, or better yet, what, or who, gives or has given you authority. This is a broad area effecting home and work because there are a multitude of structures we have created and adopted to maintain our perceived authority. Yes, you read that correctly, authority is a perception, and perception is a projection of a belief pattern. Herein lies a challenge I propose to you for this new year.

Since most of us think dualistically, let me offer this example. What do you believe is more vital, justice or mercy? Question what your immediate response was. If it was mercy, what makes it more important? How do you recognize it? Who first demonstrated mercy to you and how has that event defined your understanding of mercy? What is the present standard that you use to measure your mercy level? What limitations or condition have you placed upon it? Who could you never give mercy to, or what would you have to do to give it to this person or people group? Does your view of mercy align with others? If not, what makes yours more or less superior? Where are you more likely to employ mercy rather than justice? What difference would mercy have in those situations where your first response is justice?

These same questions and a whole host of others can be used if your first choice was justice. The exercise is designed to bring awareness to your belief structures. Some will respond that this example is not a valid either/or choice since situations dictate the use of one over the other. I could agree with you if all situations followed a binary conclusion, which life surely doesn’t do. An either/or world view is about as stable as a two-legged chair – it takes a lot of our own effort to keep it from falling over.

This challenge is designed to exercise your beliefs of authority, to move you from the static dogma of either/or comfort-ability to the expansive wonder of both/and possibilities. Question everything; who you listen to, what you watch, who you read (yes, even me). Nothing is sacred except that which we fear to question. Fear tranquilizes everything. No advancement in any field has ever been made when fear was the dominate emotion. It’s time to grow beyond our complacency in the authority we think we have. Give it a shot, you’ve got a whole year to see the results.

Ok, let’s celebrate yet another rotation around the sun. But can we be serious for a moment? Out of the other 364 days why is this day the one that has importance in our celestial journey? Is there a particular spot in the galaxy that was designated by past cosmologists which would forever be known as the starting/finishing point? The Chinese and the Jewish people have different days for their cosmic journey; but we all travel the same path over the same duration of time.

While I’m at it, who was the brilliant person who convinced us to make a series of promises to clean up our act for the upcoming days and months after a serious night of celebrating through over indulgence and mass debauchery? Waking up in the morning with a mouth as dry as the desert, a head feeling like a pumpkin in the spin cycle, and no clue how your wrist watch got on your ankle would make any normal person to rethink their life’s aspirations.

Here is what I know from experience. Tomorrow you will wake up and the path of your life, already determined by the many small decisions and copious thoughts over your life time, will continue onward unabated. Change or no change will happen simply because you decided to permit it, unless it comes as a traumatic event beyond your direct control. However, regardless of whatever you intend in whatever circumstance you encounter, one thing is constant and unchangeable. You are greatly loved and adored and there is absolutely nothing you can ever do to change that, period. Let this be the starting and ending point for your upcoming year.

Five boxes, fifteen years. There they sat. What had once adorned the shelves of my library now rests in an indistinct corner of my overflowing garage. It came suddenly, but it was inevitable, as most things of God are. The subtlety of divine humor didn’t go unnoticed: A move of God into moving boxes stuck in a garage.
The traditions of man make the word of God noneffectual. Doctrines are the traditions man have made to explain the mysterious nature of an immense Creator. Prosperity, faith and divine healing became a doctrine that now resides in the box it feared.

The truth you know makes you free. Structures of belief never make you as free as when you know they can’t contain you in the half-truth box they fabricate around you. Spiritual warfare, authority of the believer, and praying against an enemy who was defeated 2,000 years ago, now resides on cold concrete just as it should have all these years.

The church is not the ideal place to encounter transcendence, or what should be known of as the state of grace. Churches are too stiff and cumbersome to deal with the delicate flow of grace. Books, even well written ones, have the same issues. A conglomerate of words trying to convey the vastness of the universal truth known as love filtered through a myopic world view. Take all the myopic views, bind them individually between glossy pictures and raving reviews from the camp it caters to and you have five boxes over fifteen years.

Thousands of dollars to realize a truth of how bankrupt my understanding had become. Sure, I fit in with the crowd, eager to press the palm of the apostle du jour with the newest revelation and sign up for all the latest…wisdom is the principle thing, right? It is if you tow the party line. But when deep calls unto deep, you suddenly become very aware that shallow people don’t like those who skinny dip.

While it might be tempting to say that the space created in the departure of dogma can now be used for more artistic and decorative beauty, I must recall that it is a library, not the museum it had become. The space of a fifteen-year assembly has only taken an 18-month journey to fill in ten minutes. As libraries go it now challenges you to read through the diversity. It commands you to find the flow of grace in multiple thoughts spanning millenniums. It squashes any notion that God, the true living God, creator of the universe, could be contained in any binding or box. I am… once again drawn by curiosity… and in awe of what little I know to how vast I see the potential laying before me. To be on the move again is as exhilarating as it is liberating…

So, what book are you stuck in? Maybe it’s time…