on the eve of thanksgiving break,

i would like to post a poem that makes me grateful.

i thought of posting the why of my gratefulness, but i think i will not, and will allow you all to reason it out for yourselves.


Pharaoh's Cross

It would be easier to be an atheist; it is the simple way out.
But each time I turn toward that wide and welcoming door
it slams shut in my face, and I - like my forebears - Adam, Eve -
am left outside the garden of reason and limited, chill science
and the arguments of intellect.
Who is this wild cherubim who whirls the flaming sword
'twixt the door to the house of atheism and me?

Sometimes in the groping dark of my not knowing
I am exhausted with the struggle to believe in you, O God.
Your ways are not our ways. Your ways are extraordinary.
You sent evil angels to the Egyptians and killed;
you killed countless babes in order that Pharaoh,
whose heart was hardened by you (that worries me, Lord)
might be slow to let the Hebrew children go.
You turned back the waters of the Red Sea
and your Chosen People went through on dry land
and the Egyptians were drowned, men with wives and children,
young men with mothers and fathers (your ways are not our ways)
and there was much rejoicing at all this death,
and the angels laughed and sang, and you stopped them, saying,
"How can you sing when my children are drowning?"

When your people reach Mount Sinai you warned Moses
not to let any of them near you lest you break forth
on them with death in your hand.
You are Love, and you command us to love,
and yet you yourself turn men's hearts to evil,
and you wipe out nations with one sweep of the hand -
the Amorites and the Hittites and the Peruzzites -
gone, all gone. It seems that any means will do, and yet -
all these things are but stories told about you by fallen man,
part of the story (for your ways are not our ways)
but not the whole story. You are our author,
and we try to listen to what you say,
but we suffer from faulty hearing and loss of language
and we get the words wrong.

Listen: you came to us as one of us
and lived with us and died for us and descended into hell for us
and burst out into life for us:

Do you now hold Pharaoh in your arms?

-Madeleine L'Engle, A Cry Like a Bell

I love my church. :)

I don't think I understood until I found the Early Church in Harrisonburg what it meant to love the church. I'm not saying that I don't love my church in PA. I do. And I feel like that church is home, family, love... lots of good things. But I never felt this consuming sense of rightness from my other church, the way that sometimes when I leave church here I feel like my soul is just saying Yes.

It is so hard to explain. The joy spilling out of that place; the crazy, crazy people there. Today I went to church wearing polkadot socks in my Tivas...and it just didn't matter. I probably looked homeless, a ratty sweatshirt and my sandals and socks, my wind-rumpled hair.

There are these guys at the Early Church that for some reason remind me of pictures of Che Guevara (I am so not looking for an argument for/against various economic policies, by the way). And here is where I have seen more men with longish hair than anywhere else in my life.

The cat that lives in the building. The paper crane mobile reflecting the glory of God...

Ron talking about his flaws; praying that we won't miss the miracles God is working among us. That we won't take it lightly when someone gets sober; when someone is reunited with their kids; when people turn to Jesus.

Singing from the hymnals - practicing alto lines in a congregation where no-one sings perfectly. Singing songs people in the church have written. Singing contemporary songs. Acapella; hand drums; piano; guitar... and seeing it all as valid. Its all beautiful.

There is this song that we've sung a few times since I've been going to the Early Church - it is called "All the Way Home" and it is by this group called "Entering the Worship Circle." I found the song in a youtube video that I'm attatching below.

My favorite lines from this song are
"All the way
All the way home I'm dreaming
All the way
All the way home I run
All the way
All the way home I'm laughing
All the way
All the way home here I come"

I think it really speaks to the lived theology of the Early Church. That people can get all the way home; that the journey is joyous.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dZyqfwfWecE


p.s. Also. I love the lines "you have done great things for your people/you have done great things for us" because the congregation really sings them. Its so awesome. You can tell that everyone knows those lines are coming up, and the intensity is building up to them. And then we reach it and people are just shouting them. You have done great things for your people! You have done great things for us!

And it is so especially beautiful because some of the people singing those words don't have lives where you would expect them to be so enthusiastically shouting ... it reminds me of the story behind Jars of Clay's song "Jesus' blood hasn't failed me yet." That song originated with a homeless man singing over and over

Jesus' blood hasn't failed me yet; this one thing I know, that He loves me so.

i hate having to choose

between good things.
between perfect grades and sleep, sleep and talking with friends, talking with friends and writing to friends far away, writing to friends far away or writing to family, writing to family or walking through park woods, walking through park woods or cleaning my room, cleaning my room or journaling, journaling or making artwork, making artwork or blogging, blogging or thinking, thinking or finishing homework assignments...

its horrible. i want to go back to when my parents made my schedule for me.

mmm good thoughts. yummy.

i had an explosion of new thoughts this past week!!! so exciting.

so last week was spiritual life week on campus and the theme was about crossing borders - the idea of Jesus being a divine border-crosser who, in a sense, lept giant walls of class, gender, wealth, etc, in a single bound. actually, the message of the week was not put into superman terms (although that would have been amusing), but was instead focused on immigration at the US/Mexico border. the guest speaker for the week was "Mark Adams... a Presbyterian Church USA minister who works at building relationships with people on both sides of the US-Mexico border. Mark coordinates six ministry areas of Frontera de Cristo, a Presbyterian border ministry centered in Agua Prieta, Mexico and Douglas, Ariz.: church development, health, family counseling, the New Hope Community Center, mission education, and the Just Trade Center." (this is from EMU's website)

anyway, Mark spoke about how living near the border has taught him a lot about the Incarnation. he told a story of seeing some men one year near Christmas; they were on the Mexican side of the fence and just hanging onto the fence, watching. Not trying to cross or anything. His brother was visiting him, and asked a man who was from the area why the men were hanging on to the fence. "What are they doing?"

The answer was that they were waiting for the right time.

I've wondered sometimes why Jesus came into the world in a tiny town on an arbitrary fall date to a pair of Jewish parents who had no special aspirations in the world. Why not three years earlier to Mary's older sister? Why not a thousand years later to an Aborigional Australian? Why the Jews? (cause its not like they understood who he was anymore than anyone else). why then?
and now I keep imagining Jesus hanging over the border from heaven to earth, asking his Father - is it time? Dad. Is it the right time yet? I can see them. I can see them.
and then at last he hears God say: Now. Now is the time.

Mark spoke about the incarnation as a divine border-crossing, of Jesus leaving heaven to enter a place where he was not wanted. How Herod tried to send him back to where he came from. He spoke on the Gospel of John, and how during a Bible study in the Mexican town of Agua Prieta, he heard a displaced Mexican say this:

God knows what its like to be far from home.

And on Friday in chapel we sang a song from Sing the Journey (I think) that was a prayer for God to protect us from hunger and death, for the goodness and justice of the kingdom of God to be realized on earth. Then one of the EMU pastors stood up to finish the service and said: "It is not truthful and it is not just to sing that song as if it was true just for us. We must sing it as though God is working these promises out for the least of these." As we left, the challenge was given - how can we live into the scandalous incarnation of God, the divine border-crosser? How can we, as followers of the Christ, the Savior, the man who broke barriers - how can we ourselves break down walls and cross borders?

----

next great thought is from the Early Church.
we were talking about Zacchaeus - the sermon was entitled "the dispossesing of Zacchaeus." I have a notecard full of thoughts from the morning but my favorite thought is the following:

the crowd (the mutterers) who judged Zacchaeus should have been climbing up a tree in the hopes that Jesus would call them down,

and if that didn't work they should have followed him to Zacchaeus' house,

and when they got to his house they should have banged on the door,

and if he ignored them they should have cut a hole in the roof, like the friends of the paraplegic,

and if Jesus did not acknowledge them they should have sat under his table, waiting for crumbs to fall, like the Samaritan woman,

and if they were still ignored, they could have shouted, Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me, a sinner, like the blind man,

and if the Son of God was still silent, they might have sat by his feet and wept silently, cleansing the feet of God with tears.


God feels distant, some days; far from the mortal world of humans. But Mark reminded us last week that the word became flesh and dwelled among us. He was here. In a few months I am going to walk where my Lord walked. Touch olive trees descended from trees he touched. God was here on this earth and judging from the stories of his life, he cared.
The question then becomes not why God feels distant, but where are we in pursuit of him?
Under his table? Weeping by his feet?

Or have we even left the muttering crowd to climb the tree?