It's two days before Christmas and I'm feeling like I ought to defend Christ against those who want to take Him out of Christmas, however, when I reflect, even the slightest bit about it, the idea Christ needs my defense, is absurd. He is, after all, part of the Godhead, the three in one, Father, Son and Holy Ghost and, like he told Herod, He can call down legions of angles. He does not need defending.
I, on the other hand, do desperately need someone to stand in my defense against my own ignorance let alone the slings and arrows, the powers and principalities, blind stupid chance or my willful stubborn beating my head against walls.
I don't know about you, but my intellect is finite and there are a great many things I just cannot figure out. I can fool myself into believing I make informed decisions about what I'm going to do tomorrow, what financial decisions I'm going to make, how I'm going to plan for the future, but even the least imaginative of us can come up with a number of scenarios, especially after 9/11 and Katrina, that would take any plans that I might make and dump them in the crapper.
And I know the whole born again thing strikes most as utter foolishness, it did me, but here I am, passing along the word that there is a new way to live, there is a new king and His kingdom is coming, is being made manifest one person at a time.
So, in a sense, Merry Christmas is the most subversive thing you can say in the English language. The powers that be, know it or not, are on there way out. The revolution has not only started, it's out side your door. Seek it and you will find it. Knock and it shall be opened.
Merry Christmas
Saturday, December 23, 2006
Monday, December 18, 2006
Living Water
Savage Gulf , chock full of rivers, streams and waterfalls, is an eight hundred foot deep forested canyon, cut into the South Cumberland Plateau up above Chattanooga, Tennessee. An old Indian trail follows a crack in the rock at the top of the escarpment . Called the Stone Door, ten feet wide and a hundred deep, the crack gives access to the gorge below. I went backpacking there for some solitude and wilderness time last spring. I went in on a Monday and came out on Thursday. I got a couple little sprinkles but, it was right in between the time two bad storms tore through Tennessee, so there was a lot of water, especially the first day.
Coming in through the Stone Door by the Big Creek Gulf Trail ,I turned off on the Connector Trail to camp at Saw Mill at the bottom. Right before the camp site, a hundred foot, swaying, bouncy suspension bridge crossed a roaring Collins River what seem a few feet below the bridge. Two days later I returned to Saw Mill via the old Stagecoach Trail. During that two days I passed three major waterfalls and numerous rushing streams, including a roaring current disappearing into a cave, and I made one scary stream crossing.
The second time I camped at Saw Mill, the rushing stream I got water at was bone dry. I went back up river to the suspension bridge. The former rushing cataract had dropped twenty feet leaving behind small pools among the giant boulders. I climbed down to the bottom to get water where a tiny lone minnow swam in a pool left behind.
It was early in the day. I had camp set up by eleven in the morning. The place where the stream rushed into a cave, without a heavy pack, wasn't that far away, about a mile and a half. With the water down so much I thought I might see what was going on in that cave with the water rushing into it. In my new Keen sandals, a trekking pole lengthened to a staff, a trail map, a water bottle and a baggie with some beef jerky stuffed in my pocket, I set out for a nice walk in the woods following the almost dry stream bed up Collins Gulf.
On my way to the cave I took a side trip up to Schwoon Spring. It was about a quarter mile up an old steep jeep trail. I had seen springs in Wisconsin, a bit of water burbling up out of the ground. Schwoon Spring is different. It makes me think of when Moses touched the rock with his staff. Inside a cave, roaring out of the rock, a gush of water six feet across, fell twenty five feet into a crevasse and disappeared. Lower down on the slope is a sinkhole thirty feet deep. A blast of cool damp air hits you when you climb part way in. Somewhere behind the gloom, deep behind the rock, you can hear water rushing. I had always imagined underground rivers more like water seeping through a sponge. This spring did not fit with my own understanding. Anxious to see what was going on at that other cave, I resumed my journey up Collins gulf.
A half mile uphill, the trail started following a running stream. A half mile after that is where I was headed, the sight of the previously mentioned scary crossing while trying to ford the rushing cataract. There, around Hummer size boulders, the stream split in two, one side rushing head long into a cave. I couldn't see much more than I did two days before. It was still a lot of water pouring into a hole in the ground. I decided at least some underground rivers are just that. Rushing rivers.
Where the streams split I clambered over the rocks and sat on one of the big boulders looking upstream. High sand stone shelves rose along side the banks, the water rushing and spraying and roaring. In the distance small waterfalls stepped down toward me. Here and there water spewed from the sandstone shelves as if the whole land itself was bursting. I sat on my boulder, my feet and legs wet with spray, surrounded by the tumult, eating my beef jerky, washing it down with water I purified out of the same stream. I thought of the tornado producing storms that went through a few days before, and more storms threatening, I knew. I thought how much like God it all was, certainly not tame, nothing your able to hold back. I Thought about the Samaritan woman that Jesus promised streams of living water. I thought of the Holy Spirit, rushing as on the wind.
I pray the Holy Spirit be a river bursting out of my heart and yours.
Coming in through the Stone Door by the Big Creek Gulf Trail ,I turned off on the Connector Trail to camp at Saw Mill at the bottom. Right before the camp site, a hundred foot, swaying, bouncy suspension bridge crossed a roaring Collins River what seem a few feet below the bridge. Two days later I returned to Saw Mill via the old Stagecoach Trail. During that two days I passed three major waterfalls and numerous rushing streams, including a roaring current disappearing into a cave, and I made one scary stream crossing.
The second time I camped at Saw Mill, the rushing stream I got water at was bone dry. I went back up river to the suspension bridge. The former rushing cataract had dropped twenty feet leaving behind small pools among the giant boulders. I climbed down to the bottom to get water where a tiny lone minnow swam in a pool left behind.
It was early in the day. I had camp set up by eleven in the morning. The place where the stream rushed into a cave, without a heavy pack, wasn't that far away, about a mile and a half. With the water down so much I thought I might see what was going on in that cave with the water rushing into it. In my new Keen sandals, a trekking pole lengthened to a staff, a trail map, a water bottle and a baggie with some beef jerky stuffed in my pocket, I set out for a nice walk in the woods following the almost dry stream bed up Collins Gulf.
On my way to the cave I took a side trip up to Schwoon Spring. It was about a quarter mile up an old steep jeep trail. I had seen springs in Wisconsin, a bit of water burbling up out of the ground. Schwoon Spring is different. It makes me think of when Moses touched the rock with his staff. Inside a cave, roaring out of the rock, a gush of water six feet across, fell twenty five feet into a crevasse and disappeared. Lower down on the slope is a sinkhole thirty feet deep. A blast of cool damp air hits you when you climb part way in. Somewhere behind the gloom, deep behind the rock, you can hear water rushing. I had always imagined underground rivers more like water seeping through a sponge. This spring did not fit with my own understanding. Anxious to see what was going on at that other cave, I resumed my journey up Collins gulf.
A half mile uphill, the trail started following a running stream. A half mile after that is where I was headed, the sight of the previously mentioned scary crossing while trying to ford the rushing cataract. There, around Hummer size boulders, the stream split in two, one side rushing head long into a cave. I couldn't see much more than I did two days before. It was still a lot of water pouring into a hole in the ground. I decided at least some underground rivers are just that. Rushing rivers.
Where the streams split I clambered over the rocks and sat on one of the big boulders looking upstream. High sand stone shelves rose along side the banks, the water rushing and spraying and roaring. In the distance small waterfalls stepped down toward me. Here and there water spewed from the sandstone shelves as if the whole land itself was bursting. I sat on my boulder, my feet and legs wet with spray, surrounded by the tumult, eating my beef jerky, washing it down with water I purified out of the same stream. I thought of the tornado producing storms that went through a few days before, and more storms threatening, I knew. I thought how much like God it all was, certainly not tame, nothing your able to hold back. I Thought about the Samaritan woman that Jesus promised streams of living water. I thought of the Holy Spirit, rushing as on the wind.
I pray the Holy Spirit be a river bursting out of my heart and yours.
Saturday, December 16, 2006
The agony of defeat
Well, other people know about my blog. I've told them. So here I am making my third entry because I didn't have the patience to wait for a comment. I had this idea of the comments fueling the next blog, of the honest heartfelt interaction generating a shared experience resulting in a betterment and spiritual healing that comes with the understanding and acceptance in knowing one is not alone and there is something bigger than oneself at work in the blogosphear.
This, however, requires actual comments. So sans comments (did I use the term "sans" right. I was trying to say, "Seeing I did not receive any comments..." ) I am forced to write a new entry with no input, good or bad, from any body else.
In other words, my blog is suffering under the illusion it is an autonomous blog, totally self generated. This is bad. It risks becoming a self serving narcissistic endeavor having impact on nothing and nobody.
I, on the other hand, am perfectly able to delude myself that though I have received no comments, it is possible, even reasonable to assume, by blog is being read. I myself have read blogs and left no comment. I am even capable of imagining conversations.
"Hey, have you seen Mike's blog?
"Mike's got a blog?"
"Yeah. It's okay. You know."
"What ever."
Okay, no. That is not the kind of conversation I want to imagine. I want to imagine one with the words stimulating and thoughtful and can't wait to read the next one. I want to imagine the blog with seventeen comments 70/30: for over against. I don't want to have just your average blog. I want a blog that explores the deep mysteries of life. I want to stand with John Cameron Swayze and witness the thrill of victory and the agony of defeat, keep the old watch ticking even in the face of the disappointment of having no comments.
This, however, requires actual comments. So sans comments (did I use the term "sans" right. I was trying to say, "Seeing I did not receive any comments..." ) I am forced to write a new entry with no input, good or bad, from any body else.
In other words, my blog is suffering under the illusion it is an autonomous blog, totally self generated. This is bad. It risks becoming a self serving narcissistic endeavor having impact on nothing and nobody.
I, on the other hand, am perfectly able to delude myself that though I have received no comments, it is possible, even reasonable to assume, by blog is being read. I myself have read blogs and left no comment. I am even capable of imagining conversations.
"Hey, have you seen Mike's blog?
"Mike's got a blog?"
"Yeah. It's okay. You know."
"What ever."
Okay, no. That is not the kind of conversation I want to imagine. I want to imagine one with the words stimulating and thoughtful and can't wait to read the next one. I want to imagine the blog with seventeen comments 70/30: for over against. I don't want to have just your average blog. I want a blog that explores the deep mysteries of life. I want to stand with John Cameron Swayze and witness the thrill of victory and the agony of defeat, keep the old watch ticking even in the face of the disappointment of having no comments.
Sunday, December 10, 2006
Spreading the word
This is my second blog.
As far as I know my wife, my sister who lives in Wisconsin, my folks, because they happen to be staying at my sister's, and possibly my niece and nephew and there husband and girlfriend, respectively, are the only people who have seen my first post. I don't really get how people see this unless I actually tell them, but then, that's how I advertise for my business; word of mouth.
So in that way, we who read my blog and spread the word of it by mouth, are a little like God.
We are speaking my blog into existence.
Speaking it to other people spreads the community of my blog. If you consider the degrees of separation angle, there is no telling, or limit, to who will be looking at my blog or where in the world the screen they will be looking at it on is physically located. This offers interesting implication for the "Great Commission" given through time and persistence, due to the nature of the Internet, my blog will go to the ends of the earth. I warned you I was not denying the ego.
As far as I know my wife, my sister who lives in Wisconsin, my folks, because they happen to be staying at my sister's, and possibly my niece and nephew and there husband and girlfriend, respectively, are the only people who have seen my first post. I don't really get how people see this unless I actually tell them, but then, that's how I advertise for my business; word of mouth.
So in that way, we who read my blog and spread the word of it by mouth, are a little like God.
We are speaking my blog into existence.
Speaking it to other people spreads the community of my blog. If you consider the degrees of separation angle, there is no telling, or limit, to who will be looking at my blog or where in the world the screen they will be looking at it on is physically located. This offers interesting implication for the "Great Commission" given through time and persistence, due to the nature of the Internet, my blog will go to the ends of the earth. I warned you I was not denying the ego.
Thursday, December 7, 2006
Why blog
Everybody else, or so it seems, is doing it, so why not? I’ll blog. This is my first one. I blog, therefore I…what? Have an ego big enough to think somebody out in the blogophere might want to read what words I scrawl? Actually, I just like to write and this is as good an excuse as any, not that I am denying the existence of the aforementioned ego.
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