Reflections on Glory

We discusses God's glory in church today. The speaker gave an account of a time when he was out on a dock that stretched far into a beautiful lake. Looking up, he saw the expanse of the sky bright with many stars, and fell into a great wonder. He was awed by the majesty of God's creation and told of how God's glory must be so much greater than that. He said that the hebrew word for glory was like the opposite of "making light of" - it is to recognize the emotional/spiritual weight of something. Of God.

The speaker's story reminded me of a night when I was out walking along the beach with my dear friend. The moon shone bright above us, and was reflected in the water just a few feet from where we walked. I realized that as far as we walked, the moon was still reflected right next to me. I called to my friend, a few steps away and said, "face the water, look down at your feet, what do you see?" she replied, "I see the moon!" and as I looked down, it was shining in front of my feet, too. In both places at once, the light shone for us. I could see how God used that reflection to reveal his character to me. Above, he shines for all to see, like the singular moon, he is a blessing to the world. But down here, at the personal level, Jesus walks beside each one of us, lighting the way, bringing comfort and freedom.

Oh, come, Desire of nations, bind
In one the hearts of all mankind;
Oh, bid our sad divisions cease,
And be yourself our King of Peace.
Rejoice! Rejoice! Emmanuel
Shall come to you, O Israel!
(Oh Come, Oh Come Emmanuel)

An old Advent hymn calls for God to unite the world. Bind all hearts in one! Dissolve the things that divide us! Bring the kingdom of peace! This is my prayer for the new season our country has entered, and my prayer for the world.

And another song talks about being united in love, and about caring for those less fortunate. In this song "slave" simply refers to someone of a lower caste who lacks access to resources.

Truly He taught us to love one another,
His law is love and His gospel is peace.
Chains he shall break, for the slave is our brother.
And in his name all oppression shall cease.
Sweet hymns of joy in grateful chorus raise we,
With all our hearts we praise His holy name.
Christ is the Lord! Then ever, ever praise we,
His power and glory ever more proclaim!
His power and glory ever more proclaim!
(Oh, Holy Night)

Let us remeber that we are all made of stars.

reading aloud

I've been reading the scriptures aloud lately. It helps me to hear the tone, and the weight of the words.

I hate quiet times.

If you have known me in any intimate religious sense, you know that I hate, hate, hate quiet time. The idea of it literally brings curses to my mouth. 'Course the don't always come out, but still. I passionately hate quiet times. If I want to get with God, I can't call it a quiet time because it ruins the experience for me entirely.

But when I read the scripture aloud, somehow I understand better what the writer was trying to see. The words are flat and dry when I read silently. Reading aloud gives the concepts girth and texture.

I've been reading through First Corinthians. I started out just reading First Corinthians 13 for several days in a row. I need to hear something familiar and inspiring. Then I started off at the beginning. And I realized how important this pair of letters to Corinth really are.

(26)For consider your calling [when God called you his own], brethren, that there were not many wise according to the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble; (27) but God has chosen the foolish things of the world to shame the wise, and God has chosen the weak things of the world to shame the things which are strong, (28) and the base things of the world and the despised [things/poeple] God has chosen, the things that are not, so that He may nullify the things that are, (29) so that no man may boast before God.

Perfect Example: Until 3 weeks ago, I had the highest average call length on my shift at work. Nothing I tried of my own accord. Miraculously, 3 weeks ago, something snapped. I don't know in what realm the change happened. But God knew that I couldn't go on being unproductive like that. HE knew from the very beginning what I would need to be successful in order to keep this job and be able to go to school and stuff. It's vital to my existence right now. HE knew what needed to change about my performance. HE gave me some kind of cosmic tune-up. And 'praise-him' because I was about to get swept away in a little white box at work.

He saved me. He's saving me. He's going to save me. And He keeps on saving me time and time again.

I kinda gave my spirituality a little "reboot" when I decided to move back to Tampa for good. And God keeps sneaking up behind me with little treasures. I only wish I could discipline myself to express my love to him through meditation. But He speaks. Even through my busy life He speaks. He's flexible like that.

It's very comforting.

costly

I was reading through the end of Ezekiel the other night. It's the only book I've been able to read. The last few chapters describe in detail the method for atonement - God's forgiveness for the Israelites (God's model people) going astray. It prescribes this many bulls and this many goats and this many sheep, sacrificed in such a way on an alter of this many cubits by this many cubits for x number of days until the Lord is satisfied.

It's tedious. It's time consuming. It's costly.

Getting right with God is costly. But if you think about it, we have it way easier than they had it. Through the passion of Jesus we can approach God with confidence and address our concerns to God. There are no bulls or goats to kill - imagine how expensive that would be. It sounds like a 2 day process every time you had to do it. And who gets to reign the bull in try to kill that thing? There was no lone ranger for hire to catch the thing!

And we make such a big deal about taking time out of our day to listen to the voice of Our Father and give him little pieces of our days. He's the one who's worthy of all the trouble, but because He gave up his son, and heir who died willingly for our wrongdoings, now we can march up to God's feet and sing, cry, dance, argue, laugh... because He craves our devotion.

It's for our own good anyway.

Don't neglect tedious scriptures just because they don't at first seem to apply to your life. Ask Your Dad what He meant for you by it. He answers.

4 less, 5 more

I received an email from a friend in Izmir, Turkey tonight, with an update about their church. It is a mixed fellowship included Russians (and other people from the former USSR) as well as Turks who have converted from Islam. The emails I have received from these friends have been very sad lately. Earlier this year an Armenian-Christian editor with a controversial resume was killed (Dink). Next, just after Easter I received an email from my friends about some Christian men who were killed in Malatya, and soon after that came the full report of their murders and funeral arrangements. They were "workers" in a publishing house that printed the Bible in Turkish. The young men who killed them had pretended to be students interested in Jesus so that they could gain the trust of the workers. And then they killed them. Isn't it in just this way that people have betrayed our Family even since Jesus was betrayed by one of his closest companions?

But the email i received from Sergei tonight told the testimonies of five people who were baptized in their church way up high in an office building, sitting in a tub of water, five new Christians were baptized. And I'm sure they weren't the only ones who have accepted Christ's justification recently. You see?

Fred Markert (possibly quoting an unknown author) said, "the fastest way to grow a church is to persecute it". Turkey is proof. China is proof. Mongolia is proof. Papua New Guinea is proof. Cuba is proof.

Four were lost to the world, but five were gained to the Kingdom.

Light gained 5. Darkness lost 9. We're still ahead.

menace

I was half asleep tonight as we were driving from Temple Terrace to Sulfur Springs for our house church meeting.

I kept staring at every church building we passed. Seeing these churches gave me that eery feeling that mosques give me. Somehow mosques have always felt welcoming. Aside from the minaret, they are rounded and curvaceous, with cavernous domes that seem to filter out all the stresses and allow worshipers within the mosque to get right to the matter - reverence. Even the minaret has merit... it shines in the darkness. But churches are angular ... almost menacing. Tonight the steeples (essentially parallel to minarets) seemed to be in an attack stance. Tonight, the sulfur lamps cast an eery shadow on the ground and I wondered... I wondered how I came to feel this way about churches.

But of course, I have never been a regular attender of a church body that met in a traditional edifice, aside from my 2 semesters in Gainesville - the Vineyard Church there owns a building that used to be a Methodist church. Other than that, it's been store-fronts, cinder-block warehouses, office spaces, school cafeterias, parks, the beach, and most recently, a historic black-box theatre. I can only draw from my own church experience.

Churches have so much symbolism attached to them that sometimes I have to overcome mini-attacks of social anxiety just to park in the parking lot, let alone climb the steps and be swallowed by the massive doors. Just the shape of a church (angled roof, steeple, steps, pillars - all these in varying shapes and sizes) brings up images of the Spanish inquisition in my mind. For some people it brings up the faces of Christians who have deeply hurt them. The image of a church conjures up all the pain, isolation, judgment and treachery that characterizes the so-called "body of Christ" to the point where gay people and the homeless are shoved out the front door and down the steps. (and yet people with real sin issues are applauded and paid to carry out war against the ones who are honestly seeking intimacy with God.

As I was discussing this with Rachael, she reminded me (and I agreed) that it is not the cross that is the menacing part. Surely it has been a tool of savagery, however in association with the Messiah, it has become an image of hope. It is a symbol of the love of God. We, as humans, continuously fail - we sin against God, we hurt other people - if you can't accept the fact we are all absolute failures, you will never truly understand the meaning of the cross.

What's the point of the cross? Humans are screwed up. But we don't have to be perfect to experience intimacy with God, because of what He did to sustain our relationship with Him. He gave us an endless source of second chances. Forgiveness through the cross of Christ.

dry bones gonna dance again

I keep coming back to Ezekiel 37 lately. Whenever I open my bible, I turn there immediately. it amazes me - prophecy: instead of just saying it Himself, God says to some wayward fellow, "Hey, can you tell that guy this?" He gives us tasks and builds our confidence. God has so much confidence in His own work through us. How blessed are we to be used of our Father for good works.

The other thing about Ezekiel 37 is the process by which God brings the bones back to life. The imagery is stunning, but the process is similar to creation at the start. First, He makes the bones come back together, organized into skeletons. Then, the flesh grows up onto the bones, but there is still no breath in them. They are corpses lying around on the ground, where a few moments before there were only dry bones. Finally, God tells Ezekiel to call the breath from the four winds, into the bodies. The air fills up their lungs, lifts the now-people up from the ground, stands them on their feet - imagine the sound of "an exceedingly great army" choking on new breath, new blood pulsing in their veins. Their eyeballs creaked in their sockets until the tears rushed out of ducts that had been dry.

These dry bones could do nothing on their own. They had to rely completely on the father, not only for sustenance, but for life itself! "This is the whole house of Israel" - they had been saying, "we are ruined! We are but dry bones, our lineage is cut off!" It is the people themselves who were saying, "we're screwed up! we're through! it's over!" And God comes around, as usual, and says, "wait I have a better idea." He puts us back together and gives us new life.

Sometimes decaying things have to die completely before they can live again.

We humans must submit our own plans and expectations into that greater story. We are part of it whether we wish to be, or not. Why not make the best of it, and allow Our Father to direct our steps? He works in our best interests anyway.

kapali

Rachael brought home a travel video from Turkey today and we watched it earlier before Carissa got home with the bunk bed.

I saw Ephesus, Selçuk, Kapadokya and Konya and I wanted get on the next flight to Istanbul. That place affects me like no other place on earth. Even before I set foot on Turkish soil, I was aware of a connection that pulled at me so strong. Türkiye draws me unto itself with more strength than Latin American countries ever have.

It could be that Turkey is different from all the other places I've been, the other cultures I've encountered. But eastern Asia doesn't draw me in the same way that central Asia does. There's something else. It's entirely spiritual. My desire for Turkey engages more than my intellect or my emotions - it totally engages my spirit.

I saw the mosques, the minarets, I heard the ezan (the Muslim call to prayer) on our television, and instantly I was there, in that little Mosque we visited in Denizli, listening to the imam read the Koran over the loudspeakers. The imam (the Muslim priest) begins the call by saying, "God is great - There is one God, Allah - and Muhammad is his prophet" I heard his song and I remembered kneeling in the room upstairs where the women pray. With my head wrapped in the soft, comforting fabric of my hijab, I prayed to God for his mercy upon Turkey. He desires the same things for Turkey that I desire. I prayed to God that he would draw all people unto himself - particularly Turks, since I was in their land at the time. I prayed, "God is great, there is one God... Yhwh. Jhvh. and J. is his son." I prayed what I believe, just as they pray what they believe. But there's a crucial difference among so many similarities. I get goosebumps just thinking about it even now, hours after the video ended, months after I left my heart in Turkey.

Tugçe told me that five cups of çay a day was not enough. It was 3 p.m. And she was still singing that same song to Emre, she sang it all day long... "yanarim, yanarim, gün gece yanarim..."

She was saying, "day and night, I burn." I burn for you. And he has such a gentle heart, he could not bear to break her gentle heart as well. Her heart was so. so fragile at that point. But she is learning to be resilient. (She's learning to laugh through her tears, to love without fear...)

yanarim. i burn.

yanarim. i burn.

Türkiye - gün gece yanarim
Ben sensiz ne yaparim?
Senin için ben yanarim

I want to bring some friends from my fellowship to see, to pray for this place where my heart has become entangled. Next May, perhaps? Come with me! I want you to meet these people. Fall in love with the culture and the sights, the flowering trees, the towering minarets (can you count them all?). I want you to feel the way the air quakes at the sound of 50, 100, 150 imams singing the dusk-hour ezan. I want you to catch a glimpse of Turkey's destiny.

My mother cried when I told her we were going to Turkey. I promise to make her cry as often as necessary. I cannot escape it. My soul cannot abide passivity.

MY SOUL CANNOT ABIDE PASSIVITY.

the heavenly man

i went to bed last night around 2 a.m. knowing that in a few short hours i would be getting up to celebrate the resurrection of my Lord. As I was lying there in bed, listening to Rachael's quiet, steady breathing, a question came to my mind - one I've never had before.

What time did Jesus rise from His tomb?

I wondered if He had awoken that very hour. This brought up a series of questions that I allowed my self to wonder about... Did angels come to unwrap Him and wake Him from slumber? Or did His eyes flutter open in the dark? Did He wake up peacefully, or did He struggle and cough, choking on the stale air? What were His thoughts as the door of the tomb opened? What were His thoughts as His eyes adjusted to the brightness of the light that streamed in?

How much time passed between the moment He woke up and the moment He met the women who were coming (while it was still dark) to dress him in spices and new linen?

What did He do while the time passed? I wanted to know if He ran around the tomb dancing and shouting. Or if, instead, He meditated, had a talk with Dad, quieted His spirit in preparation for the days ahead.

Did He cross paths with some wayward soul and sit down for a bit? Exchanging stories with a drunk, he confessed "I turned water into wine once..." - the drunk decided he'd made a valuable friendship ;)

Did He wander, picking flowers, remembering the prophets' promises He was proving? Did He pray for the disciples? Did He pray for Judas? Did he decide what He should say to Peter?

Did He anticipate the earnestness of his disciple, Thomas?
Did He long for John's compassionate embrace again?
Did He miss His mother's face, scorn the tears she cried?
Did He miss the friendly company of Mary Magdalene?













Rachael and I got up at 6:10 to go to mass at Sacred Heart Catholic Church in downtown Tampa. Catholic churches make me feel so small. Not in a bad way. But in a humble way. It's humbling to go to a new place where you don't know the traditions, the customs, when you don't know to kneel before you sit, which way to "cross" yourself, when to stand, when to kneel, when to answer... what to say...

I think when the protestants broke away from the Church (when we became Catholic or Protestant) we wanted desperately to be free - from limitations, from bondage to tradition, from corruption - that we ran screaming from awe and reverence, gasping at breath, we ran toward the face of a holy God who has always wanted to gather us up in the love of His arms. But then we lost reverence. We lost awe. We lost our smallness, because after so long, we could look Him right in the face and ask... "what about THIS?"

After the service was over, we drove down the street to our own Watermark Community Church where the sound guy and the worship leader were just starting to set up. I pulled out my violin and tuned up, and got ready to worship my God in my own way. It is Easter, the day the earth shook and expelled a man from the grave, the day God unjustly saw fit to spare my unworthy soul from justice. "Come and listen to what He's done..." we invited the revelers to gather together in thanksgiving. "Were you there when they crucified my saviour?" we remembered the real human pain He experienced. "Praise Him from whom all blessings flow..."

It is in this context that I have learnt compassion. I have understood truth. I have known freedom.
And I've had goosebumps off and on since I woke up - realizing the monumental importance of this day, in the heritage of my faith. Is there more to life than simply this pitiful existence, where we attempt to grab hold of security, accomplishment and satisfaction? Yeah, there is more. It is found in the words, in the actions, in the eyes of my Jesus.

freedom

On Sunday I experienced a new sense of freedom. I had a renewed understanding of what it means to be forgiven. I sensed a nearness to the presence of God.

It was so refreshing to hear my Father's voice bringing me into the light again.

I think I'm close to breakthrough.

I had a really honest and productive (and long) conversation with my Pastor(a) yesterday evening. I wanted us to be on the same page about what life is going to mean for me from this point on. She is motivated by love for me. She affirms my sound character. She trusts that I am in the palm of God's hand. For her, this is momentous. For me, it is a long time coming. My heart is comforted by the support of my spiritual family. I think my current Fellowship will become a place where "the risk it took to to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom." That is a satisfying feeling. I love my Fellowship, it has become my heart's home and I wish to spread out my roots there.

blossom

"Then the time came when the risk it took to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom."

Anais Nin

ingenuity

"Only the weak are cruel. Gentleness can only be expected from the strong."
-Leo Buscaglia

They said I was made for gentleness.
But I wanted to be strong.
I wanted to be firm.
I desired power.

But is it in my gentleness that I am strong?
Is it in my mild manners where I find strength?

I wanted violence. I wanted gore. I wanted to fight.

But I am learning to embrace my own quiet might.


I so enjoy contradictions!
They give me life,
and put a sparkle in my eyes.
I love the way they make other people feel.
I love the crisis that engages two seeming opposites.

It makes people think. It makes people wrestle with themselves.
They will wrestle with their own beliefs.
About God, about love, about strength, about ingenuity.




i'm the ingenue in this one-act.