i had an opportunity to engage in some interesting dialogue with a friend of mine the other day. it all began with a link to a fun site called The Brick Testament.on this site we find edited highlights of the bible, all illustrated with tableaux created out of lego blocks.
but why is God frowning?
it's not that i think God always smiles- that wouldn't be a real person. however, neither is a God who is perpetually frowning. i mean, why would God say that everything was good and very good if the divine was actually uniformly displeased?
my friend shared some thoughts:
I do believe that God does not have a lot to smile about when He looks at Canada.
Let's be honest about it - we are a nation of luke-warm believers. I don't think He is smiling much when He thinks about spewing us out of His mouth.
When the Bible tells us to "run the race", how many of us do you feel are actually running to win? I think we are power walking at best some of the time. How many of us praise Him as we should - He created us and protects us . How many of us truly walk in obedience - He sacrificed his only Son for our sins. How many of us search the scriptures daily and spend a significant amount of time in prayer - can any of us say as the Psalmist "As the deer panteth for the water, so my soul longeth after thee" or as Paul wrote "That I may know Him and the power of His resurection and the fellowship of His suffering"
The race that I am in - I certainly am not running. I know that is a choice of mine - I own that 100%.
I am placing no judgement or condemnation on anyone - this is just my perspective and I thought I would share it with you as my friend.
yeah, there is much to frown at in canada and around the world.
however, as he pointed out, the lordship issues are our own. the fact that we are unfaithful, disobedient and spiritually flacid is due to the choices we make- our stewardship of God's greatest gift next to life itself: our free will.
when our kids make decisions that represent some kind of sell out or compromise- the turning from what they know to be true in favour of what they just want to do- i think that we as parents typically have some degree of frustration, sure, but we also love our kids and try to walk them through this stuff, affording them grace and mercy that is only God's to give.
i think that in light of all the willful disobedience and disregard for love and provision, it's more likely that God's eyebrows / \ in sadness, disappointment and teeth gnashing pain, than they go \ / in anger, judgement and retribution. that's how i, with only a small portion of love, grace and mercy, respond to mistakes in the lives of those i love...
Jesus had a bit to say on this one in matthew 7.9-11
"Which of you, if his son asks for bread, will give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a snake? If you, then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good gifts to those who ask him!
interesting- this passage directly follows some of Jesus' teaching on judgement.
here's something to think about: God has agreed to withhold judgement from the earth until that final day. see, grace is really a breach of justice... 'unmerited favour' of God. God cannot be both gracious and impartial because they are polar opposites. we don't get what we deserve and will continue to live under the canopy of God's mercy until there's nothing left to say, no cases left to plead, no intercessions left to be made. then, and only then, will God rise up from the mercy seat and separate the sheep from the goats... yet even then, i can't imagine his eyebrows furrowed with the chill of retribution. not when it means losing his beloved forever. i think the expression of God will contain much more pain and sacrifice and utter hopelessness than sanctimonial fury.
speaking from experience, i think we frown at ourselves far more than God frowns at us.
it is on cold, dark, rainy nights when i am deeply in need and yet find the prospect of venturing out into the abyss for a dine-in experience overwhelming, that i am most ready for the good news that is pizza, and it is at these times that i am most grateful for those who will bring the pizza to me free of charge.
free delivery is awesome.
it’s not that i want my pizza free- i’m happy to pay for it- i just don’t have what it takes on nights like that to go get it myself… i’m more likely to just be hungry and miserable.
that’s why, if we had a family pizza place, i would offer free delivery… because i know what it’s like to need something and yet to be overwhelmed by the things that stand in the way of getting what i need. see, it’s not that people are avoiding the transaction- that exchange where they give of that which they have in exchange for that which they need- it’s that they are more likely to engage in this life-giving transaction if the transaction itself is brought to them.
sure- we could stick to our guns and keep our exclusively dine-in establishment going for the regular dine-in crowd (for both those our regular clientele and those who like to sample a variety of dine-in experiences) OR we could also endeavor to make our pizza available to those who are hungry and are, for reasons of their own, unable to or uninterested in coming to our fine restaurant.
it would all come down to this: what’s the focus of our pizza business: to provide a dining experience or to get our pizzas into people?
two monks went up onto a hill to pray on a windy day. at the insistence of the one, they both brought pillows.
upon attaining the summit, the other monk sat down and began to ready his pillow for a time of lengthy prayer and meditation. the one, however, remained standing. with his eyes he followed the wind as it bent the trees and brushed the weeds back and forth in waves through the valley below.
the seated monk began to pray and meditate. the standing monk continued to stand, looking down.
after awhile, the seated monk hazarded a glance, with one eye, towards his standing comrade. with a swift and decisive motion, the standing monk produced a knife from beneath his habit and cut open his pillow, releasing the feathers, surprisingly multi-coloured, into the valley, carried by the wind.
the seated monk stood up and walked to his friend's side. the standing monk, whose idea it had been to bring pillows this day on their prayer walk, remained silent.
the wind continued to blow and the feathers continued to drift to and fro for quite some time, each one eventually finding the ground on the terms established for it by that wind and of course by the spinning of the earth.
the once-seated monk finally asked: brother, how will you pray in comfort, now that you have no pillow?
his teacher replied: i would rather sacrifice to make this world a softer place than pray comfortable prayers.
I have been doing some blogging around the net and because I am one person with one set of experiences - I cannot speak for the whole state of the church (as much I try to anyways). I am going to ask a series of questions - answer if you want - and let me know how you see the church.
(1) What programs are offered at your church for people that are struggling with poverty in your community?
(2) How many people attend your church and how many of those people do you have close relationships with?
(3) Do you think church has made you a more ethical person? If so, why?
(4) If I had to ask you a % - what % of people in your church do you think are very moral people and would not hurt another soul?
(5) How do you wish the money in the church was being spent?
(6) What aspect of church do you find most rewarding?
(7) Concerning church focus - what % is on spiritual matter and what % is on here and now matters?
not everyone who reads writes. not everyone who writes reads. not everyone who argues fights. not everyone who fights bleeds.
fair enough.
a movie that found its way into a lot of dialogue awhile back was '300.'
no doubt pretty much everyone has seen it in whole or in part by now. we've certainly seen the 'WE ARE SPARTA!' kick-the-guys-into-the-well trick spoofed ad nausium .
perhaps the reason that the movie wins for most of us has nothing to do with the fact that the underdogs lose but do so heroically. perhaps the movie works because audiences embrace the art of larger than life storytelling- and delight in the whole idea that it is the telling of the story that determines the impact of it, not necessarily the details, factual or fictional, that are covered.
the facts are historically chronicled and anyone with access to an encyclopedia can check 'em...
(you remember those epic, leather-bound, pre-internet, paper compendiums of all the most useful and useless information a baby-booming household could possibly ever need in order to participate knowledgeably in the realization of optimistic post-war self-actualization dreams)
...but the facts are embellished in the telling to the point where xerxes is a godlike giant 9 feet tall his troops are darkly intimidating and mysterious his concubines mind-bendingly exotic ...
(interesting, considering this is the environment in which a biblical heroine named esther does some pretty great work as wife of this very same godking, saving her countrymen from a jealousy-inspired act of state-sanctioned anti-semitism)
and the simple warriors of sparta are commonly steeped in enough uncommon valour that their six-packs are denser and more well-defined than batman's body armour.
basic fruit drink facts but with redbull intensity. scandalous pulp publication story telling.. pain and promise treachery and triumph hope, hype and heroism alliteration galore and rumours of glory
yeah, like that.
but we recognize that the spartans fail, right? miserably. they die like dogs... courageous, stubborn and proud dogs but dogs nonetheless.
so why does a story of failure, gloriously told or not, captivate us? because failure is not an option- it is a necessity. (Rev Edwin Lee) because increscunt animi virescit volnere virtus (Friedriche Nietzsche) (the spirit grows- strength is restored by wounding)
because we need to be inspired beyond failure and disappointment, lest we curl up in the fetal position and let life on fallen planet earth have its way with us again and again and again. we need to know that something good can come out of something bad... that the bad guys don't always win any more than the good guys always lose. that there is hope lurking in the backstory of even the most hopeless of life's episodes.
take, for example, the couch i recently bought.
i was excited because i knew that bringing this sofabed down into our basement would allow us to more hospitably open our home to travellers and such than the current lumpy futon situation. so when i saw this couch that appeared to match the rest of our basement in both function and form, and realized that it was even on sale, i jumped at the paperwork.
i knew it was perfect because it needed to be ordered. no problem. it would not be here for three weeks. great- more time to get things ready.
so three weeks later, when the thing arrived, i had already arranged to borrow a truck from someone to pick it up, and had secured the helping hands of another to help get the thing out of the truck, through the door, down the stairs, around the corner, through the pocket door and into the media room where it would rest.
it was a bit of work getting the thing through the door. had to take the door right off, as it was a bit bulky to go through.
we had to lift it over our heads in order to angle it right down the stairs.
halfway down i realized that the packaging (all that clear plastic and cardboard that had served as protection during shipping) was making the thing bigger than it actually was, so i removed it while my friend balanced the couch in the stairwell.
that was went the bed opened up. we were, after all, holding it upside down and tipped to one side. springs will be springs.
so i tied the thing closed and then discovered the awful truth... this couch wasn't going to go around the corner.
i should maybe step back and say that, after many more trials, new angles, greater force and such, i discovered that this now rather roughed up couch was not going to go around the corner.
back up the stairs it went, and around the front of the house to the garage, where it still remains to this day.
not that there's anything wrong with our garage... i had just envisioned something a bit nicer for any guests that might happen to roll through town and were in need of some free accomodation.
upon telling many others, i learned that pretty much everybody measures a couch before they buy it. even the good people at the furniture store were surprised that i hadn't measured first. by the time i came to ask them directly, news of my dilemma had already circulated amongst them.
granted, this is not exactly an epic battle. it is the everyday kind that we all face... but where is the hope? if i am to be numbered with the spartans, the 301st to fall in this, the 301st post, then i need to know that somehow my suffering has not been in vain; that there is something good that is to come of this...
the best i could do was to find an allegory
see, there is a way to get this couch into the basement. essentially, what we need is teleportation: we need to disintegrate the couch on one side of the corner and then reintegrate it on the other side of the corner, through the door. we are in need of a carpenter.
now to find a saviour who will do this for free...
"Stand at the crossroads and look; ask for the ancient paths, ask where the good way is, and walk in it, and you will find rest for your souls. But you said, 'We will not walk in it.' (Jeremiah 6.16)
the crossroads has become a traditional place for us- a recognized symbol of those times when one’s life transitions from one phase to another by his or her own volition. it involves decision- the active engagement of free will.
and we come to crossroads many times over the course of a life. there are always options to consider, factors to calculate in, outcomes and consequences to weigh out and ultimately a choice to be made.
at the crossroads of life, we selah.
another transitional symbol is the bridge. bridges are typically these carefully constructed causeways which join two very separate lands that are divided by some type of water hazard which is impossible to cross on foot, but even a huge log laying across a fast-moving channel can serve as one. whatever the form, the function remains the same because, like crossroads, bridges are essentially about movement into a new land.
for my family, a certain bridge plays a very significant role in the transition from childhood to manhood. however, instead of crossing it, the point is to jump off of it…
every culture has them... these things that young men do to prove they are old enough and old men do to prove they are young enough. they are portals which lead to that elusive and undefined wormhole in the space-time continuum called 'our prime'
this bridge, some sixty feet above the thompson river (depending on time of year), is such a portal.
What does it mean to be a man? Am I a man? What should I do in this or that situation? These boys are growing up into uncertain men because the core questions of their souls have gone unanswered, or answered badly. (John Eldredge)
on holidays recently back in my hometown, my sons and i went bridge-jumping. the first time i had jumped off of this thing was when i was about 12... i dragged my younger brother up and off with me a couple years later.
however, that was very long ago. at the time of our holiday, i had not been 'in the air' for about fourteen years and so my boys had grown up on the mythology, having never actually seen me or my brother actually jump. so we decided, amidst some well-meaning protest from both their mother and mine, to take the historic leap together. it was time. my younger brother went ahead of us and then the three of us jumped, hitting the water in order of age (or weight).
the boys will never be the same... nor will i.
somehow their passing through the portal also changed me- can't explain it really, other than to simply acknowledge that when we see something or someone differently, it usually means that change has happened on both sides of the lens.
anyway, a couple days after successfully conquering the height and gravity of the bridge, we decided to paddle a canoe out to copper island and go cliff jumping (something else i hadn't done since the last time i went over the side of the red bridge.) this jump was more precarious because, although it was slightly lower, there was the fact that in order to clear the rocks and safely hit the water some fifty feet below, the jumper needed to hurl himself more than ten feet forward from only a two-step approach.
after i had gone to essentially prove two things to the guys: that it could be done and that i had the jam to do it (yeah, i know- so lame), it was time for my older son to go. in order to tap into a little external motivation through sibling pressure, he asked for a countdown, and his younger brother obliged. he jumped, arms and legs flailing, whooping and hollering all the way to a rather uncomfortable enema that resulted from landing a bit wrong.
by this time i had made it back up the rocks and was ready to film my younger son- the one that had been just two months old the last time i had been here. he asked for a countdown and i refused.
refused?
it just seemed wrong to me to be somehow putting that kind of pressure on my boy to be like his old man, or even like his older brother. i was holding the camera, documenting (rather poorly, i might add) the whole thing, but it was his jump... it had to be his call when and how he addressed the challenges that were presenting themselves.
and anyway, there were enough boats anchored in the bay to provide plenty of external pressure to conquer this... nothing like moving through a rite of passage in front of a live audience.
so when he was ready, he took it on his own terms, silently but with perfect form. his brother, still in the water, could be heard loudly and proudly proclaiming 'he's only fourteen!'
every culture has them... these things that young men do to prove they are old enough and old men do to prove they are young enough. all this business of growing up and never growing old seems to plague some of us to no end, but within all the confusion and quest for an identity that ascends to relevance and remains that way, never growing obsolete or otherwise outdated, there is the volition factor that has been in heartbreaking play since the beginning of human history:
you can do whatever you want.
the fact that we often want the wrong things out of life is probably a whole nother blog, but certainly the establishment of oneself in the bigger picture, having a role and a sense of identity within this role, has to do with the fact that, in the end, it's your jump...
I'm supposed to introduce the Torah reading tomorrow at shul so thought I'd share here what I've written. At shul we have two talks during the course of the 3 hour service. The one I will be giving is just prior to the Torah being chanted and is an overview of the reading with comments of course. Later on someone else will give a d'var Torah which is more like a short sermon.
This week’s parashah, Chukkot, is a fascinating parashah with speaks of death and dealing with death, of battles avoided and battles fought, of songs of triumph and voices of complaint.
The parashah presents a series of perhaps contradictory images.There is a red heifer ritual which makes an impure person pure while at the same time rendering a pure person impure. There is the rod which was instrumental in gaining our freedom but which now contributes to the downfall of the very leader who led us to freedom.There is a bronze snake fashioned to bring healing to those who spoke against God, yet which we see later in Tanakh being destroyed for leading people away from God.There is the avoidance of conflict with Edom which leads to complaining while the battles fought against the Amorites lead to singing.
The parashah begins with a ritual for being cleansed after coming in contact with a corpse.Three pages in our Chumashim are devoted to describing this mysterious ritual, yet even though the parashah then tells us of Miriam’s death followed shortly thereafter by Aaron’s, we never read of this ritual actually being followed.It remains a bizarre ritual which midrash teaches not even King Solomon could understand!
Immediately following these instructions for the red heifer, we read a very stark statement:Miriam died there and was buried there.That’s it.It seems her death had little impact on the community, yet perhaps the text gives a hint of her value when immediately following this brief statement of her death we read that the community was without water.Our tradition teaches that the well which provided us water in the wilderness was Miriam’s contribution.Her brothers were the leaders, the greatest prophet and the Cohen Gadol, so perhaps the terse statement of Miriam’s death shows how little she was appreciated while she was alive while the subsequent events show how quickly her presence was missed.Perhaps as is often the case with behind the scenes people, her value was not recognized until after she was gone.
The loss of Miriam, of Miriam’s water, led to a thirsty people and an angry brother.The brother’s mourning the loss of their sister, missing the water she provided for them as well, were perhaps not ready to deal with all the stresses of leadership.Perhaps that is why when Aaron dies, 30 days of mourning follows; a result of what we learned from Miriam’s death, that we need time to mourn before we’re required to once more take on the responsibilities of every day living.
When Miriam died there was no mourning period, only complaining people, angry leaders and a rock.One might well wonder what God was thinking in telling a frustrated leader to take a rod and produce water from a rock! Surely it is asking for trouble to put temptation right in someone’s hand!Nevertheless, God holds Moses and Aaron responsible for striking the rock.Moses is told to bring Aaron and Aaron’s son to MountHor.Aaron will die there and Aaron’s son will carry on in his father’s stead.Perhaps this is something we also learn from Miriam’s death, that we need to pass things down generation to generation so that the community can carry on even after the loss of someone as valuable as a Cohen Gadol.Aaron dies, his son takes on his role, every one mourns for 30 days.Perhaps it is suiting that the death of a peacemaker was followed by days of peace rather than the upheaval we see after Miriam’s death.
Afterwards Moses alone is left to carry on.The people aren’t allowed to pass through Edom and begin to complain, again, as they are skirting the land.This time God sends serpents and many people die.Moses again intercedes for the people, but this time only after they ask him to do so and this time something is required of the people.If they’re not willing to at least lift their eyes and look at the snake, they will not be healed.In previous intercessions Moses asked for forgiveness for the people and it was granted; Moses had Aaron run through the camp with a fire pan to make expiation for the people.Perhaps this time, with Moses alone and knowing he would soon be joining his siblings, it’s time for the people to start taking some responsibility for themselves and their actions.
The people complained as they avoided conflict with Edom, yet once they were able to fight the Amorites, to conquer land and destroy people, we find bards reciting poetry, a bit of a disturbing, but all too human, image I would say.
The parashah comes to an end with us sitting on the opposite side of the Yarden from Jericho, seemingly poised to enter the land, yet as you can see, Torah, which ends with us still on the opposite side of the Yarden, if far from finished.So close, yet so far.It’s sort of like when Rabbi says, “Let me just say a few words and then we’ll go in for kiddush….”
