A journal entry from a while ago about Curt's memorial service.

This is a journal entry from a while ago when i went home for Curt's memorial service. I wrote it on 11/9.

The memorial service was awesome. Curt's life was most certainly unique. It was a life that fought against the status quo with joyful abandon. he broke through the veneer of a world that is drunk on image and presentation (to use David Lawton's phrase) but not simply to snub the world and turn his back on it. Rather, he smashed through image and presentatin in order to reach the real people on the other side. He broke thru his own need for image in order to break thru others'.

For those who have no fear of life, death holds no terror--because even the autumn rot becomes the humus that supports the spring. Cycles, cycles, cycles. things go around and around--but not like tires spinning in mud--no, it is a holistic cycle, not an endless spinning. The autumnal leaves become a moldy carpet--the very basis of life to come. All death is the birth of life. Hold to life loosely and you will find that life has sought you out. The same is true for God. Spend your energies seeking God? It is a waste of time. Spend your energies being found making yourself available to God, and you will find that your life is being swept up into the great journey of Christ.

How can we do this? how can we release ourselves in this way? after all, we are what we have been given responsibility for! To release our selves and our communities to the good graces of the divine seems to be crazy and incredibly irresponsible. But it is in fact a profoundly faith-filled, generous act. In the refusal to hoard anything, including ourselves, we find true freedom.

On the bus, I see so many people who are searching after some sort of God. Tarot cards, people talking of communes and marijuana. I see several ones obsessed with the god of music, or they are devoted to eccentricity. Everyone is, fashionably, a "spiritualist." I think of Busta and his journey. I think of my own journey these past 4 or so years. All of us feeling the oppressive weight of our own journeys. But what is a faithful, generous, trusting response to the search?

I believe it is to take the search off of our own shoulders and lay down in a woods, on the fallen leaves--and wait for spring to come. There are times when we must trek, of course, but if we believe in a benevolent God--if we believe this is a God worth finding--then let us lay down the search and accept what revelation comes to us. When we are always striving, there is much less of God in the struggle than we might think. There is more of us than we may understand. It's as if, when confonted with the blinding light of the divine, as was the Apostle Paul, for example, we spend so much time fumbling to find our glasses (because we know our eyesight is bunk) that by the time we get them on, the light that would have healed our eyes has passed and we--sad fools!--are as blind as ever.

Curt held life loosely. life was to be distinguished and celebrated (no undue tears for Curt!) but one could not look past the holistic and cyclical view of life that allowed all things to be whole.

Walking in Annadel today, the covering of wet leaves on the path softened every sound. A holy silence descended on my heart. I am always amazed at how that place, its familiarity that has come over time and its strangeness that will always exist because nature is somehow always "other" to us humans, never fails to see me for who I am. Rather, all parts of me bubble to consciousness on those trails (and off them). Even when it is late summer and all moisture has escaped, I am drawn there in my wholeness. Even when it is not beautiful, Annadel is the most true place in the world for me. This morning I was engrossed in the silence of wet autumnal leaves beginning to decompose. The whole place is waiting for winter. It is mourning, but with a knowing smile. It is preparing to enter deeply into the winter death when the birds are the only things that seem to move over the frosty morning ground and even their movement seems only to accentuate the stillness. Yet that stillness was coming over the dull roar of the whole valley. When you are truly quiet, you can hear the thousands of cars moving from Sebastopol to Oakmont, from Larkfield to Rohnert Park. Yet my quiet in those moments comes over the dull and muted roar of the valley's activity and I know that my God is present. my very existence begins to pray.

I look back to the beginning of this entry and I am reminded of Curt's life. He was like the prophet with no eyes who calls the whole world blind. On the surface it is, "Image! You say I have no sense of image! Yet your own acknowledgement and fear of me [so much so that we must tell funny stories to ease our discomfort] displays your false image." And even deeper, "Love! You wonder how someone like me can love? Do you not see that the only way to truly love is to cast off those inhibitions that you claim enable you to love?" Curt lived in the twinkling silence, closer to willing one thing than almost anyone I know. Cast off anything that gets in the way and love God with all that is in you. Forget fashion and trappings. Pragmatism's virtue is that we are left with only those things that support our search for God. May I live my life this way. Amen.

ladders, paths, and parables

at Bread of Life tonite, I stood silently at the clothes table while wealthy Point Loma girls (always in pairs) passed out clothes to some of San Diego's homeless. I was struck by this clash, this mixing of the waters. I was reminded of the deep sense of otherness I used to have in that place--before I had more homeless friends than Loma friends on Tuesday nights--and I wonder what happened to bridge that gap. how do we step across that gap of otherness and touch someone on the other side? we often spend so much time making ourselves comfortable that we forget to listen, to touch the other side. if only i could figure out a way that would allow each one of those people to listen and hear someone each Tuesday night. There is already a lot of good happening in there. An atmosphere of love bubbles up in many places and that's not always the case for places that have served the homeless for long.

but i'm still left with the gap. how do we shuttle people across the gap? how do we let people into the world that is unknown and do so in a way that is loving for all? how do we say, "Come! Come with me and I will show you a world where God is real, although you may not see it at first. I will help you see a world of joy and hope that is very different from that which you are used to. Listen closely to the tracks and you can hear the train coming. put your ear to the sidewalk and you can hear the rhythm of these streets. and it is good."

i want to minister long and hard with all my life. i want to listen well, to touch well, to be an instrument of healing. and sometimes i want to be a ladder for people who are wealthy to come to where those who are poor are and see that Jesus is with the poor in ways he is not with them and that they should listen to those ways because they are at least equal to the ways Jesus is with the rich. i want to be a bridge to simplicity, a path to the silence of Christ. i want to be a parable of Jesus. i hope all those pairs of girls saw the parables of Jesus that were happening all around them tonite. i hope.

i wish i could let myself rot well...

it is late autumn here in San Diego.

contrary to popular belief, there are seasons here. they are different. they don't look like Rhode Island or Ohio or even Northern California's seasons, but there are seasons. we've moved past early autumn--which is awfully ugly. it's as if the world can't make up its mind and is stuck in limbo. the sky is only half-overcast and it is a cold wind over a warm day. the fact that i commute makes it even worse.

but this is not early autumn. it is late autumn, when the chill sets in and San Diego loses any of its luster. it is hardly the tropical tourist getaway that travel agents have been selling it as for years. i have to wear a sweater lately and maybe even a beanie. the world is, in fact, dying. raking thousands of fig leaves out at Capt. Hirst's today, i saw spiders and beetles as well as moss and mold. and i didn't let them do their work. cleaning out the gutters, i would wipe away the top layer of drying leaves and get down to the bottom where the months that i have been away have led to the development of a rich humus: a deep black dirt that feels like airy coffee grounds and reminds me that life is beautiful and regenerative. and here it is for me! dirt in a rusting gutter is the reminder of what this world is to be.

circles in time, like the path
of a bumblebee flight,
bumbling bumbling and time doubles back.
i am where i was,
though the view is not the same.
it is peace to see the world again.

when i read over my last post, i realize that so much of my frustration with revolutions is in the fact that they don't accomplish anything. they just change the scenery. i want to live in a way that lives something new and old in each moment. held up by the hand of the Divine and transformed in the death of Jesus, i become a parable and a metaphor for Christ. this is good and whole. a hidden wholeness, the kind that is connected to all things in my own solitude.

autumn will come again. the decay will always be taking place. the humus will build and that rot is the most deeply beautiful thing in the world. and we humans--what of us? shall we let ourselves sink down deep into the earth where we belong? shall we let our own desires and convictions rot in order to foster new life? dare we do such a thing? dare we not?

Jesus with a beret and a picket sign

There was a video in chapel today that, at some point, had words on the screen that read something like, "Be a revolution", "Be like Jesus", and "Join the Revolution." As if they believe that we are young and idealistic and are just looking for a revolution to jump onto.

Well, I have a message for the church and all its para-church organizations that are grappling for our attention, money, time, and loyalty. It is also for all the people who categorize me and my friends into generations and try to define us as something that we are or aren't. Here's the message: Stop it. Maybe my frustration with being defined is something that the Gen-Y/Millenial/late-'80s-early-March-birthday demographic is prone to based on empirical research and years of scientific guessing by more or less qualified psychologists, sociologists and...others, but I'm sick of hearing who I am from someone else. And I'm sick of hearing what the church should be from everyone but Jesus, the Bible and the Church.

Stop caring about getting the college kids involved and be interested in getting people involved. Stop trying to sell yourself as the next movement and the next revolution. Do you know what happens to revolutions? They fail. People get disillusioned and cynical and they fall on their face. I have been hearing about this generation being an Ezekiel generation and a Jeremiah generation and a Shane Claiborne generation since I was in junior high and I'm sick of it. How many times do we have to say it? Jesus is not a revolutionary! He is not Lenin or Che or Claiborne or George Washington!

Do you really want to be revolutionary? Take your possessions, sell them, and give to the poor. Love people who are not like you. Listen to those who don't get listened to. Fast and pray. Help everyone. Give yourself to others in your search for God. And be faithful--above all, be a witness that God is not subject to the whims and flippant desires of this world. Do not be swayed when you hear people saying "the Messiah has come! He is over here! No, she is over there! Oh wait, they were back there!" Be faithful to the God who saves. That is a revolutionary idea because it means that all this shouting is probably a waste.

I'm not trying to knock the church for wanting to be relevant. That's important too, I guess. But our loyalty is not to relevance, nor is it to this world. Our loyalty is to Christ.

If this doesn't jive with you, I'm not that sorry. I'm sure there are plenty of revolutions that would be happy to have your name on their petition list.