Novitiate Rants

Marrissa asked me about what I had learned on purity, and this prompted me to go back to my notes from life of Jesus class with tom thatcher, so id like to share a few more thoughts which tie into our speaker at chapel. I’m sorry, this got really long. Break it up, make some tea, enjoy, or don’t. Ill still love you, but give it a try.

So…the original context for understanding purity comes from the Levitical law, correct? Correct. Our present understanding comes from doing certain activities, aka sin, that make us impure. I guess in this sense it just got a whole lot bigger.

Well, you did stuff in Ancient Israel that made you impure, like get leprosy, eat a certain animal, or get your period. Btw, women spent a lot of their life in a state of impurity that was uncontrollable. In Lev. 15:31 God points out that these impurity laws are to separate the people from their uncleanness so that they do not die by coming into contact with God, at this time coming into contact with things at the Tabernacle.

Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God, for only the pure since way back when, were allowed to touch him.

Now, Jesus comes along and rocks the boat on the Pharisees system of purity. He lays down a new definition of purity. “it is not what goes in, but what comes out that defiles a person”. In mark our Lord says, “there is nothing outside a person that by going in can defile him”

Then my first question is why? Why does our system of understanding purity immediately look like the Pharisee’s? Having sex with someone, not your spouse, makes you impure, you lose your purity if you do this.

The speaker said he was approached by a prostitute in the MGM lobby. His response was a firm “no”, followed by a firm pat on the back for his faithfulness to his wife and God. Which I agree, not having sex with a prostitute = good thing. But his response looked more like a Pharisee than our Lord. A firm no and an “away with you”. Jesus knew that purity was an inner state so he stayed with prostitutes, tax collectors, lepers, the most impure people of his time. By merely touching them, sleeping on their beds, eating their food, this would make Him far from God, but nothing outside defiles him. He eats without washing his hands and bowl in the ceremonial way, and that defiled food goes right down into his belly, but after a few days it goes out, because who he is, to the core, is one who is pure. Thus he can hang out with these “impure” people, who do impure things, and don’t all stop, though some do, and still remain pure himself.

Religion that is pure and unpolluted (a scripture that was quoted by the preacher) is, to be with widows and orphans in their affliction. How can we be with them if we think they will get in the way of our pursuit of God. This scripture clears up the mess, declaring that this IS the way to be with God, to be with the broken, troubled, and marginal. Because God has made us pure through baptism, through the workings of the Holy Spirit, we are pure and mobile to go to dark places and the dark things that go on there do not make us dark, but we as lights will shine.

And the other part to that verse is that pure religion is to keep oneself unstained from the world. 2 things on that. First, undefiled, or unpolluted. These are words which reflect a temporary state, we are to remain on the clean side of this sliding scale, because the more you get caked in this stuff, the harder it is to get out. This does not say do not touch, this says do not be stained when it touches you, it assumes you will get dirty, if you are living like our Lord. But we are not to let it change us, our inner being remains pure as the Spirit inhabits our body, and we remain mindful and discerning with our community.

Next is the “world”. When we hear the world we often think of the people who kill or steal, or maybe the people who cheat and stab each other in the back for some gain, or maybe dictators and crime bosses, or maybe porn peddlers, or smokers, or maybe any various folk who sins. But, I am troubled by what I read in Col. 2:8. There are principles that people live their lives by that are worldly. When I hear I first hear what paul was dealing with, which was gnosticism, as he immediately declares Christ’s deity and body, one can see these were the patterns he was calling worldly. But I think in this country, the heresy is one of materialism, and a lack of a Sabbatical understanding of life. A theology of enough, and that our God will provide without our need to hoard. This is something we need to find, and we need to reorient our understanding of the world to hear that this is the danger and evil that lurks, not the flesh and blood of a man with a gun, but the Spirit that says you will never have enough, if you just get a new car, if you just get that job, that iPod or, if your attendance numbers go up, if you can just give more, if you can just have more God. We have turned God into a commodity, and “He is all we need”. “God is not yours to own, we are His to love and make holy.” – Rich Mullins. I see this as such a complicated and urgent problem. We say that we need more quiet time, another worship session, better prayer. We have changed our focus from “worldly” desires and desire God in a worldly way. Not that desire for God is bad, it is good, this is a huge subject, with many words and life needed to get through it, I simply want to say that we start to turn our ferocious appetite that we learned in the Wilderness Wanderings, and try to control as much of God as we can, when we are no longer allowed to hoard other commodities so we turn to this somehow acceptable commodity called Spirituality and are allowed to go unchecked.

Sorry, that was a really long rant. And it’s still not a complete thought for me. But I digress, back to the world, then I will digress back to purity.

In Col. 2:20 he speaks about worldly people who put regulations on what to touch and eat, sound familiar? This is what worldly people do, they are often our very own brothers, as they were in the letter, people setting up rules of purity. They are worldly and they keep the work of God from happening, they keep people from seeing God by establishing a false purity which says they can no longer visit the impure, who in fact, are part of the actual plan for seeing God.

Of all the people groups in the world, God only identifies himself with 2. The church, and the poor. the broken, the orphan, the stranger, the marginal, the prostitute. These people represent something key about God. Spending time in India this summer, living and working with the outcasts, I can easily say that I saw God. I walked with him, I held his hand, and put bandages on his wounds. I could not do that if my religion were defiled from within. If I were polluted by the worldly principles that tell me I need to finish school to get a good job to get security, or the ones that say, don’t talk to the prostitute, don’t sit down and share a meal with her. These voices espousing the proper understanding of purity are keeping people from seeing God. Not that our chapel speaker specifically is one of them, I need some more shared life with him to discern that. The problem is I don’t even know the guy and he comes in using the most inefficient method of teaching, public lecture, trying to convince people who have no shared context of faith with him, that they need to act like he did, and not like Christ did.

It pisses me off enough to flip tables.

I was thinking today before I got to chapel about the name of satan. That he is called the accuser. He is a force of hate and darkness in the world, but the main title he is given is that of accuser. That to me is fascinating. Because most of the time we talk about him it is that of tempter, or worker of dark deeds, like killing babies or causing illness, but he is referenced most as an accuser.

Then when I got to chapel I had to fight really hard. Guarding my heart so as not to be incredibly pissed off as our chapel speaker got up.

There was a lot of good stuff in what he said. He talked about purity, that this is the way to see God, true. So much of what he said was laced with the truth of the Bible, but then there were this little twists, things that just made me tense up. How he said no to a prostitute, how has never drank and that this is the model of proper christian purity. Well, if that is true, our Lord was a piss poor christian and rather impure. Jesus taught about purity that was an inner state which allowed one to go to these places and not sin. To sit with a prostitute and talk with her, to drink enough to be called a glutton. But core to our faith is the teaching that Jesus did not sin, he was a pure sacrifice, how can it be the behavior we condemn as making it difficult to commune with God is the very same behavior God himself does.

I’m not saying he had sex with prostitutes, there were still limits and boundaries to this, but he lived with sinners and did not sin, because his inner purity allowed him mobility.

And that is what is wrong with the church’s teaching on purity, it keeps people in bondage to its own sin or moreover, its potential sin. The church takes over the role of accuser, instead of support. Jesus preached of a different kind of purity. One that was not merely limited to the outward behavior. One that is not limited to drinking, drugs, sex, and cussing, but includes a common sharing in our brokeness around a table of sinners and prostitutes and the beautiful savior who loves us.

The nature of the beatitudes is one that reflects the fortunate reality that God has come. Blessed are the poor. (subtext = because I, the Savior, am here among you and declare you as blessed.) Blessed are the pure, (because I see you, I purify you, and through my work in your heart, you will be purified) and you will see God.

Ive been trying to listen to my body more. When I feel tense, why is that? When I am relaxed, what happened to get me there. Through doing tai chi am growing more in touch with what my body is reacting too.

This is good an bad. Good in every way it is growing me and allowing me to control, or at least work with, maybe not control, my self. Bad in the sense that when things really get to me, they really get to me. I am going to be a wreck in a few years, whoo.

Take last night for instance. Ive grown a bit more comfortable with a room full of white folk, but last night there were 600, and it was a suit and tie event. A little unnerving. It is now something I feel, in my shoulders, in my inner mid back, lower back, and arms a bit.

The main question of last night was asked after amy sent me a text saying a person was shot and killed in SW philly last night.

The tension came with the marriage of that event and the event I was at, where people were bidding money on a date with 5 CCU boys. Quite harmless, fun and lighthearted, and a lovely evening to be sure, but I could not help but feel tense as I thought about the neighborhood that was just rocked, again.

Talking with Ken about the idea of moving to the inner city, and what it means to stay in one place, I was sitting, and felt different tensities. Not in larger muscle groups, in very small ones.

I don’t really know what it all means, I just know I am really benefiting from tai chi and learning how my body works. And that there are so many tensions in life right now, and it is all I can do to relax whenever I can find the time.

Right now, debussy’s clair de lune is helping, but if not for God, then what point is there in this search, He is at the center of it all. A search for God, always.

you know what this world needs?

another generation of idealistic fools with their lives bent on saving it…

…and i am here to deliver…

so odd that You would give me a feather today. after this week.

what am i supposed to do with this? just pick it up and go?

You are the wind, and you move as You will, when You will. you gave me inspiration with Regina, then you gave me strength for the Score, then you gave me vision at the Warehouse, then you gave me dependence on You, then, today you gave me a feather.

something has been happening for years, and it cannot be stopped even by my best efforts, because at the core of me, i want it more than anything.

i hear You. be with me. ill go, it is a treasure hidden in a field. and nothing can stand in the way.

Soli deo

It was 8:08 when I walked over. Nothing in my pockets but a cell, my keys, and 2 pens in the back pocket. We loaded into the van, Brother Gilbert, Pastor Joe, and I, whispering wishes of wisdom to see what we needed to do today.

There is something very different about the city when driving through it. Everything looks more dirty, more busted. Maybe it was the neighborhood we were in, but ive been in some broken places, so maybe not. The difference is walking. When you walk, you have time to notice the good things, when you drive by, all you see is trash, peeling paint, rusted cars and fire escapes. Its the pace a lot of folks live their life. Many white folk are a drive by kinda people. They run so fast, that they only see what is bad, and wont slow down enough to notice the good and help the bad be not so bad. Instead we drive by, getting to our important engagements, skipping over the hurting world. May we never become so desensitized to not feel at least a little twinge of sorrow for the broken places around us, and let us not feel pity, or disgust. Love, and hope.

We drove up to the warehouse but couldn’t find an entrance at first. The old entrance had been blocked up. We walked around, I held the camera, Gilbert and Pastor Joe handed out flyers to anyone that was there on the street, letting them know the recovery homes were a free place to get help, if you or anyone you knew needed help. Maybe saying to a few folks that God loves them and has a plan for their life. Then I saw Pastor following a man, I stayed where I was, then realized he had walked into the warehouse. I assume when a warehouse closes, they take most everything of value and leave very little behind, put it in a dumpster and whatnot. Well, this warehouse was no exception, there was nothing of value, but there was a lot of new, if I can call it that, paraphernalia. Big warehouse, covered with needles, wrappers, and every kind of trash you would expect to find. I’ve been in heavy places before, and I felt a weight here, but I felt I was being protected from feeling the real weight. The amount of loneliness in that place, helplessness, the tears, the oppression. We walked around, videotaping, we walked back into an area, someone told us people lived back here, there was so much more trash there. They were once offices, but now only needles, trash, a couch, and when I entered I smelled feces. This is what some people call home.

I cannot help but think it is because we have made some places inhabitable for some people. We shut down the suburbs to black people when they became available, we shut down good land to the Indians, we shut down all land to the illegal alien. And throughout so much of our history, we have shut the church doors. We let these people in and not those people. Whether or not we do that physically with doors slamming in faces, it happens, they get the message that they are not wanted. And thus, inhabitable places become home because the promised land has a large wall around it, and in my definition, we call that a ghetto. The church ghetto, except we put up the wall and only we can pull it down.

It was said that the gates of hell will not prevail against the church. I dream that the gates of the church will not prevail against the church.

By the way, just as we were leaving, Pastor Joe leaned out the car window and handed a flyer to a man walking by. He got about 20 feet past the car, and turned around and asked if we could help him right now. He looked rather well put together, and I never would have thought to give him a flyer, but Joe doesn’t see with my eyes. He hops in and we drive over to the mens home. He says he is here alone, his mom is in puerto rico, he has no one. Maybe he will find a home with the other men, he has to go to detox, hopefully he will make his way back to the home.

oh God, give me the divine life.

one not distracted, one full of the lowest creatures, men and women like me, constantly lost and found. staple these fragments of living into one story. give me a life that looks like death, and a death that is life. keep me far from all falsehood, in myself and others. You are so good. let me walk in your goodness.

I see this commercialization of life destroying most any art form. And I consider art a very broad realm. Basically anything that is not math or science, and then I would say math and science can be performed like art.

Anyway, ill take the principle from johnny appleseed and booze.

Apple seeds cannot produce the same apple they came from. Their genetic code is so diverse from seed to seed that if you plant a seed, you will most likely get a bad tasting apple. Meaning, ol johnny boy was not going around giving tasty apples to homesteaders, he was growing vast orchards for hard apple cider (or just plain cider, only recently with refrigeration have we had the ability to “keep” sweet apple cider)

So there was a use for all these terrible bitter apples. But what that many apples going into the ground provided was the possibility for genetic heros. The red delicious, the cameo, even the grannysmith. These apples beat the odds and someone had the good sense to save the tree and sell the apples. But now as we have huge farm of only these varieties, we are left with almost no genetic pool. The “need” for vast quantities of a reliable product have robbed us of the potential for something great, that and prohibition.

This story is true of musical theater. As broadway is more of a business that must operate on certain rules, the quality of shows becomes more narrow every year. Case in point, from Pippin, to Phantom, to Shrek the musical. Carousel however I cannot figure out, it sucks no matter when it came chronologically. The potential for diversity is going the way of the buffalo. People with grand ideas have no venue, and even if they find a venue, they have no audience as the audience’s minds have been stripped away by crappy renditions of the same movie theyve already seen. The same is true of film and music. Mediocrity is celebrated in order to push its own money grabbing agenda. The same thing is vastly true of agriculture. As the green (not the new sense of green, the old one coined to combat the red in russia) revolution from the 60’s continues to dominate public policy we continue to see fields dry up and more and more people will grow hungry.

But there is hope. There are little heros in all of these realms. Individuals growing heritage apple seeds to see if something will come of it. Musicians doing something new and not simply a permutation of jason mraz, damien rice, lil wayne, or brittany spears (if you want to find any of these tiny people, just look on youtube, they are what inspired this rant) Films looking for something more than the same story with newer flashier effects, and broadway shows that tell an original story in a new way.

I notice these specific realms because they are the ones I hope to impact and be a little hero of. Adding to the genetic diversity of the whole by contributing a verse instead of simply writing the same code with sloppier handwriting than the original.

Now I hope to go plant an apple tree and get drunk. Unfortunately, that will take a few years. Mmmm, drinking with a side of patience, just the way it was intended.

Don’t I just feel like a real writer. Like that guy who wrote girl from ipenema. Sitting in that cafe, day after day, seeing her walk by, and then writing an immensely successful song. I see no girl, nor do I hear a song, but I am in a coffee shop, which is quite out of the ordinary for me. Drinking my coffee, looking at what the past few weeks have brought me.

There are so many thoughts in my head, most of them don’t have enough time to stay and I am trusting that God will bring them back when the time is appropriate.

Damn, these paintings are expensive. Is that thing really worth 450$?

I’m reading and thinking on so many interesting things that continue to have this common theme of life.

And how lazy am I that I don’t want to tell you. Seriously, so freakin lazy. Well, lets just say some good good things are happening. And I am really trying to enter into the adventure of it all.

I cant wait till I have nothing. Nothing to lose, and everything to give, itl be sweet.

After reading the intro to simple spirituality by Chris Heuertz I realize how much stuff ive done. How similar my story is to his. I went to India, to Kolkata, but Mother had already been dead sometime. I went to the brooke of Elah and picked up stones like David did, like Chris did. Ive watched the vast slums of Rio from a relentless tour bus.

Ive been around the globe seeking my spirituality, seeking my God and for the past year ive been living in Philly trying to do the same thing. I want to be back in India, spirituallity life made sense, well more sense. In America it is so difficult for me to hold on, even as I am living with 5 other christians in an intentional discipleship program. What else do I need right? But yes, it is still so cloudy. And I don’t mind clouds, I do mind chains. This thing called western culture is a millstone around my neck, and instead of leaving it, I believe God is calling me to it.

I want to be in India, and perhaps I will go again someday, but I believe God has called me to this vile and deaf nation. Because who better to minister to it than one who is so vile and deaf himself. I live like this nation but want to be in Kolkata, living like a Brother of Charity.

Everyday ive been trying to establish new rhythms of living, ones I think flow into this Kingdom better, but I cannot do it without other people. Thats why I had to leave and come to Philly, cause here there would be people to help me start on that path. Last night we as a house had a long talk, and it was so counter-cultural. We talked, listened, and genuinely asked the question of what it means to love each other and die to our own wants…so different from a world of self-indulgent dorm life. It was hard as we sat through the tension, but the fact that we all got up, did dishes, sat around and talked more, was evidence that there is a love here that is bigger than we can muster ourselves.

It gives me hope that those who hunger and thirst for righteousness will have it. Knowing that God wants to give us this Kingdom is a truth I hold onto daily. Cause even now as I try and hold onto all that I am thinking and feeling, I know some of it will fall away, and I need Him to bring it back up.

Will the one thing, and that thing is to be with God. Love Him and People, and life will settle.