See the Kingdom

The following thoughts were shared at the “Chew and Chat” held at the corners of Port Tobacco Road and Tayloe Neck Road, Nanjemoy, MD on July 31st, 2007.

I’m honored to be here and share a few thoughts with you today. We’re here to affirm and celebrate the value of community, to make it known that all of us understand the truth embodied in a certain passage of scripture. Paul the Apostle says in one place, that when one member suffers, all suffer together, and when one rejoices, all rejoice together. Just as this is organically true with a physical body, I’m here to tell you that for all of us this is not just something to think about, it is a fact.

Sometimes we don’t know why we suffer. We might have plenty of food, a safe place to sleep, good family, a well paying job, and we might feel like just so long as we keep these things, no matter what happens with anyone else, we’ll be fine. And we might even work to see to it that we keep what we have even if it means someone else doing without; but the result, the spiritual and dynamic fact is, that to the extent we contribute to someone else’s suffering, we increase our own. The Bible tells us that Jesus came with good news for the poor, but that good news benefits rich and poor alike, because all suffer together to the extent that any of us suffer.

Today is Holy Saturday in the Eastern and Western churches
a day of silence
of waiting
of mourning
and of selfless service
therefore, a day for women
who do, so it seems, a lot of the above.

The sacred time between the crucifixion and the resurrection
when all paradoxes are at their peak
all contradictions brought into the open
the God of Life participating in Death
Holiness punished for sin
The eternal Word, silent

but on Sunday morning, not with fanfare and blazing glory
but in the silence of an empty tomb
a witness to a life unstoppable is born.

Housekeeping notes: Yesterday I moved all of the material from the old seethekingdom.net site and merged it with one of my newer blogs, renaming it and setting up redirects so that everything should work. Also I had at various times had church information (Marbury Church of God) on three different places, which was cumbersome and unwieldy to maintain; now I just link from this blog to the new church site and have redirected mcog.seethekingdom.net to point there as well, so updating that will be much easier. This is the electronic equivalent of cleaning up my desk, a necessary, though somewhat tedious, process. I actually, at the end of this process, deleted the two aforementioned (and now redundant) blogs, the equivalent of throwing away whole stacks of redundant paper. I do hope that his will make things run much more smoothly in terms of timely updates.

Technorati Profile

How beautiful on the mountains are the feet of those who publish peace!

Starting today, April 1, 2006, I have decided to take down the static front page (it’s not really down; you can see it by clicking on the welcome item in the sidebar) and move to a more “blog-style” format, where the first thing you see when you come here is… you guessed it… the last thing that I (or someone) posted here. I’m doing this for the shameless purpose of increasing traffic on the site; why would you want to come back to a page that always looks the same? But I’ll post a variety of thoughts, biblical meditations, news events and comments, and occasionally links to things I find interesting, and you, dear reader (still with me?) are encouraged to post comments and reactions as you see fit. The rules: if you want to comment, please do so. Comments are moderated for first-timers, which just means I will read your remarks before anyone else does. If you register and get a password (and I have an idea who you are), I can set it up so your comments can be seen immediately, and even so that you can post on your own.

Legitimate topics for discussion:

The kingdom of God, its present meaning, how God is at work in the world today.

Helpful interpretations of biblical or other texts.

The search for integrity.

Matters having to do with the life and ministry of the Marbury Church of God, where I am pastor.

Matters touching on the history, doctrine, and common life of the Church of God (Anderson, IN).

Humor.

Bits of poetry, from time to time.

Appropriate Christian response to current events (although I don’t really want to go off on political tangents).

I’ll try to post something new here at least once a week, so please bookmark it and come back often. I look forward to seeing you in the Conversation.

Love to all! — Pastor Bob

“Reflections 5-7-95”

The various manifestations of what I have called the non-stop mystical experience continue.

In every place the main question is how to combine, and in what precise alchemical proportion, the ingredients necessary to a full life – that is to say – such things as truthfulness, responsibility, good business sense, and proper social form.

Both the wolf and the lamb shall lie down together.

The acknowledgment of sin is the first step on the way to holiness. We present ourselves to God “just as I am, without one plea” — hiding nothing, making no excuses. Those personality traits that we would cover over or suppress such as anger, laziness, and the like, are also to be sanctified. The problem with St. Augustine’s conception of sin is his insistence on identifying it with the involuntary urges of the body — because these also are subject to that integrating process known as conforming to the will of God.

The search for integrity involves quite a bit of work. Humor greases the wheels of this mechanism.

In the sense that I am using the term, integrity is not unrelated in its essence to reconciliation — one having an internal and the other an external aspect.

There is perhaps no end to the search. The seeking is finding, after all.

[one year later, more or less]

1. Reactive consciousness. Distracting. Mostly useless.

2. There is only one conversation, really.

3. Persons who find themselves capable of discussing the non-stop mystical experience bring to the discussion a high level of openness and trust which allows them the freedom also to describe a miscellany of experiences and insights that most people – most of the time – are wise enough to keep quiet about, or even deny altogether. This is how mysticism gets a bad name.

4. Despite the appearance created by this phenomenon, what mysticism is actually about is the perception of ordinary reality.

5. Everything in particular is a hologram of the universe – a fractal structure. Understanding is merely a matter of resolution enhancement. [This is presented as a metaphysical hypothesis. Its adoption as dogma should be suspended pending technical review.]

Welcome to the Bush-Clinton Katrina Fund Official Web Site

I saw these two former presidents on the teevee this morning, setting aside differences (mostly) in the name of saving and rebuilding lives, providing help for the people most affected by this tragedy. Obviously they are likely to disagree on many things; but this one is a matter of urgency, and it’s appropriate to leave disagreements for another day. It is to the current president’s credit that he called on his two predecessors to lead private-sector fund-raising efforts on behalf of long-term recovery. Will this be enough? No. Is it a beginning? Let’s hope so.

First you need to know that I am not, as a general matter, a cat person, or really much of one for any sort of critter. I did have a dog, long ago, but probably did not treat him very well. My official stance towards domestic animals is one of studied indifference; I will occasionally scratch the odd ear, if it’s convenient, but otherwise it is a matter of a more or less peaceful coexistence, kind of tolerance by way of benign neglect. I make it a point not to be the one responsible for such things as providing food, cleaning up messes, changing cat litter, etc. I am known to do such things as open a door upon request, and that is the high point of my overt kindness to domestic critters. Fact is, I think my friends Hyena and Dementia have the best approach: their menagerie requires no maintenance in the form of food or water, and, save for mysterious bits of mischief now and then, are not known to leave things about which need cleaning up. So.

My family, however, tends to be a bit differently constituted, and as a result we have two cats. One moved with us years ago from upstate New York to Maryland, and the other was found hiding out under the neighbor’s house not many months after we got here. After we persuaded the poor starving thing to come home with us, she tended to spend most of her time hiding, and thus earned the name “Phantom.” The pecking order between the two is long established; Neko (the elder cat, a male) owns the territory, and Phantom is allowed to exist at his grudging suffrage.

When we moved a couple of months ago, to a house within sight of our old residence (actually the adjacent property) it took some persuading to get either cat to come with us. Neko, however, adapted fairly quickly upon being introduced to the house; but Phantom took to hiding under buildings and had to be lured with food into a live-trap. When she first came in by that means, she hid for two weeks or more in the utility room, and was more than a month before she felt safe enough to venture up the stairs from the basement. When she finally became confident enough to permit herself the run of the house, we waited another two weeks before opening the door to let her out. Then she would look outside, venture out for a minute or so, and come back in. She’s a regular scaredy-cat, with a very narrow comfort zone.

Finally last week after I had let her out for short times in the manner described above, she sat by the door and actually asked, in her feline way, to go out. So this time I did let her go.

We didn’t see her, then, for several days, including two during which there were fierce rainstorms, to the tune of 2″ of rain each time. I began to worry that perhaps we had lost her, and it bothered my conscience just a bit; after all, it was I who had let her out.

So it occurred to me, this morning, to reach a hand up to heaven and pray that Phantom would come home. It’s not the silliest thing I ever prayed for, or the most trivial.

At five o’clock, I found her, at one of her former hiding-places under a nearby outbuilding.

I was ecstatic. Thank you, Jesus! I breathed, for answering my prayer.

I coaxed her with nice words, inviting her to come to me. She warily kept her distance, ducking into a sheltered place if she thought I might come near. So I pulled my cellphone from my pocket and called home, so that a plate of food could be brought out. Poor thing, she was nibbling on blades of grass; it’s possible that she’d not eaten, really for nearly a week. But food would not coax her more than a foot away from her hiding-place.

Meanwhile I was having a theological problem, and I prayed again thusly: Well, yes, thank you Lord for answering half of my prayer; but really, I did ask you to bring her home again, and to do it today. Now, I know that faith, it is said, can move a mountain; but I seem to be having trouble moving this cat! So would you please kind of do a St. Francis number for me, and give me some influence with my little feline sister here? Thus emboldened in prayer, I spoke to her again, addressed her as little sister even; but she would not come with me or accept food from my hand. I called my son, the cat-lover, to come talk to her, and entice her with food if she could. His efforts were fruitless. We left the plate of food there and went home.

At nine PM, there was a sound at the door. There stood Phantom, waiting to come in. She fidgets on my lap as I write, interfering with my typing.

Somehow this gives me hope for peace on earth, food for the hungry, a cure for AIDS, clean air and a balanced budget. I don’t pretend to know just how it works, but I’m here to testify: on matters large and small, to pray for the impossible is worth doing.

Make of it what you will.