Yes, I am actually considering the unthinkable. I am probably not going to cast a vote on November 4th this year.
*Sigh* I do that a lot these days (sighing) when I start trying to pick through the morass that is America politics and the spin of words, meanings and intentions. As someone struggling to follow Christ and discover the many ramifications of that following in the world, I have to admit that politics are just coming up short.
And talk about a mess… I heard an author underscoring a good point just a couple of days ago: we have four people, all very admirable and diverse in their public service, all claiming to be followers of Christ, and all of them divided into teams bent on the ridicule, defeat and public destruction of the other. Nice! If only all the Christians could rip each other like that! Oh wait…
There are also all the other Christians, the “daily Jesus” across our nation, lining up on teams and propagating some of the most hateful spin and soul-rending, accusatory gossip I’ve never asked to see or hear. *sigh*
While I’m on my soap box… where has the moral high ground gone? I listen to both sides, and they both say the same things! The other side is bad, evil, racist, stupid, elitist, ignorant, liars. The other side wants to kill children, neglect the elderly and wreck the economy. And both sides think I’m a fresh cucumber who will just nod and chuckle and be so grateful they’ve enlightened me. I switch channels back and forth on the radio and the only thing that changes is who is doing the talking.
*Sigh* So, here are my party platforms as they currently stand… and yes you too can join my party, every Saturday night at 8pm in the front yard until it gets too cold.
1. I accept, without question, all four candidates’ profession of faith, and I celebrate that they all call on the name of the only One I believe is actually capable of making the world a better place.
2. I am going to pray my faith to tatters for these four people! I am going to be praying that they find a way to bring more peace to our country and the world. I’m praying that they can find a way to bring more harmony and civility to our discussions and political arenas. I am praying that each one’s faith grows and deepens and enlivens them as it brings all the wisdom they need before and after November 4th.
3. I don’t really have a third thought for the list. But since there should probably be a third in any list, I threw the number in for grins.
So, am I just “thumbing my nose” at the glorious American political process and all those who literally died to provide me such an opportunity? Nope. In fact, I’ll be doing my part to propagate the mess. I have been accepted as an election judge in my district, and I’ll be right in there smiling and helping folks do their thing, casting those votes! But, I’m choosing only a servant’s posture for now.
As I read the scriptures, I can find no reasonably implicit or explicit expectation to be a faithful participant in the voting process. Surely, you can quote a famous American historical figure or highly talented Rock Star to the contrary, but I just feel the need for some “change.” If I truly do place my faith in a King who transcends politics and if I place my faith in a transforming gospel which can never be bound or blunted by the governmental and political winds that blow… then maybe I need to put my ballot where my faith is.
Here’s how my growing perspective on the future looks: What will I be doing on November 5th, if we even know that soon who won? The same thing I’m doing today. I’ll be praying for our nation, for it’s leaders and people. I’ll be praying for the world’s leaders and peoples. I’ll be speaking and living the life-giving, hope-driven peace of God to the best of my abilities in every venue I find it possible. I’ll be working hard and paying my taxes. I’ll be faithful to my wife, my children, my whole family and to any and all to whom I carry my various responsibilities. I’ll be seeking and finding a transformation in Christ, along with my church family, which enables us to further grow in ministry and service to everyone within our reach. No president, Republican or Democrat, makes these things possible. No president can cause them to cease.
And I also recognize that when I begin to feel that pull, that planetary-like gravitational pull of the power and adrenaline of politics, I personally have more to lose than to gain.
I fully understand this might not be your road. I in no way mean to represent my faith musings as a template for you. Your going and voting can be as faithful as my abstinence. In fact, that’s all I would presume to ask of you, my friends and families. If you vote, vote with faith, with hope, with love and with pleas for heavenly wisdom.
My amazing, beautiful wife says I should write in a vote. Maybe I should sell my vote on eBay!? Surely that’s been done.
Right now, I’m not feeling it. I don’t think I’ll be voting. But, who knows? That gravitational pull just might overcome my defenses. Or Teresa might step it up, slap me around a little and change my mind.
I have been blessed in my short 38 years to have lived in a wondrous variety of places… places like East Africa, North Texas, Central Alabama and Western Maryland. In all these many places I have known an amazing array of Christians from all kinds of backgrounds and with many diverse ideas and viewpoints. I’m continually grateful for this range of experience and what I’ve been allowed to glimpse in their lives as they all struggled to be representatives of Christ in their own times and places.
I’ve seen that sometimes Jesus does drive an SUV.
Sometimes he drives a hybrid or even rides the bus.
He’s also been known to ride her bike to work.
Sometimes Jesus has her hands so full just trying to pay bills and raise a couple of strong-willed kids that she really doesn’t have time to think too much about the big, global questions out there.
And I’ve seen Jesus agonizing over the epidemics of AIDS and poverty that at times can seem to cripple whole continents.
I’ve seen Jesus foster “unwanted” babies in her own home.
Jesus has mortgages, unpaid bills, school loans, and is half-way to an ulcer.
Jesus also keeps giving at church and handing bills to folks on the street and wrestling with what response an American suburbanite has to the horrors of Sudan and suicide bombers.
Jesus loves peace, but sometimes she wears a uniform.
Jesus loves peace, but sometimes he marches with signs by the White House.
Jesus has been known to vote pretty liberal, choosing a candidate who promises answers from the government for the woes of poverty.
And I’ve seen Jesus vote for the fiscal conservative because she really does believe that lower taxes and helping businesses will create jobs that will help people build lives of dignity and hope.
Of course I’ve also seen Jesus scratching his head as he’s trying to figure out what a candidate just said.
I’ve seen Jesus with tattoos and even a piercing or two, or five.
I’ve seen Jesus in a Sunday-go-to-meeting suit and tie like clockwork each weekend.
Maybe Jesus isn’t a brand.
All those glimpses of Jesus, even in most diverse extremes, don’t cause me too much angst or confusion. But, I have seen and heard some things that bother me.
I don’t like it when Jesus makes fun of Jesus.
Sometimes Jesus doesn’t like Jesus’ accent, or his hair style, or her politics, and thinks that stinging, humiliating jibes might somehow be an appropriate response.
Something is wrong when Jesus hates Jesus.
I worry about it when Jesus hates Jesus, even to point to questioning if she really is Jesus, or maybe just a faker.
In fact, something’s wrong when Jesus hates anybody.
It just doesn’t feel right when Jesus subverts faith and love in favor of candidates and issues.
I’ve heard people who were standing around watching Jesus hate Jesus just chuckle and say things like, “I knew there wasn’t anything to all that Jesus junk.”
And so many folks who need to hear the words of hope and peace that Jesus hallmarked in his First Century ministry today just get a belly full of my-way-or-the-highway pride and cultural labeling in our 21st Century scramble for market share and cultural dominance.
*sigh*
I love Jesus.
I enjoy talking to Jesus.
Every time I get a chance to sit and have coffee with him, I’m there.
I love listening to Jesus tell stories of answered prayers and when she got to see God moving in exciting ways on a mission trip or in a relationship.
I pray Jesus keeps doing that “Jesus Thing” all across our globe, and that Jesus is always there to kick me back in line, loving the Jesus trying to live and breath and touch this world through me.
I love Jesus, which means I love you.
And it means that I really hope you love me.
It’s our love, and never our hate, that can change the world.
It’s our love, and not our votes, that can save the dying.
It’s our love, our hands, our feet, our faith, our peace, our joy, our Jesus that can never be lost or won in any election.
So, I took a break from picking up litter this weekend to rescue some trees. I’ve rescued dogs and a cat from various centers, but never rescued a plant before. My neighbor has built himself a new house, and planned to trash a row of sweet little trees that stood between our two homes… until another neighbor double-dog dared me to move them. How did she do that? She simply told me it could be done… that’s a double-dog dare to a guy.
I’ve never moved a tree before this weekend. But after a few hours yesterday evening and about six today… around twenty little trees have a new home in various places around my yard. Some will still offer a screen between our two houses and others line our front fence. Once we get a bird bath in with a couple of feeders, this will definitely be a choice picnic yard.
My wife and I have joked about it, but we like to eat outside. I think we’re the only folks in our neighborhood who will eat dinner in their front yard. (Enter background banjo music.) I promise we always leave the squirrels alone! But ya know, maybe if we all ate in our front yards every now and again we’d all be a little more attuned to ebb and tide of litter washing up and down our streets? Who knows, maw.
I haven’t done any gardening work or really anything with plants since we lived in Africa and I grew veggies and tended our fruit trees. It felt good… goooooooooooood. My back is sore, sure. But it was nice to grub around out there and watch the birds picking through the yard and turned soil. Please, say a little prayer for my trees… they are my first transplants, and I didn’t go to medical school! The whole experience was a blessing for me, and I’m praying it was a blessing for the trees, too. I’ll know in a month.
For now, the little trees are as yet unhugged, but out of harm’s way. If they survive the transplant ya’ll have to come over for a cookout, soon… in the front yard.
In the month of May we’ll be talking at Church in Bethesda about knowing God’s will. You know, a simple little thing like that. I started a chart, though I like to call it a “matrix” of my thoughts so far. I’ll throw it in this post at the bottom. We all know the movie, but do you know what a matrix is? I went to dictionary.com to see if I was using it properly… it’s a starting place or point of origin. I like that.
Anyway… look the matrix over and throw me any suggestions. Here’s a brief explanation of it I’ll be sharing on Sunday morning… “The chart is my attempt to gather my thoughts on moving forward with, knowing and entering into God’s will in life. The seven circles are representative of the ways I have thought of God’s will being accessible to us and the different applications of that divine will, and their interdependence (over-lapping). To the side of the circles I tried to describe the “avenues of knowing” or the scope in which we seek and apply that will. I also brainstormed a short list of concepts, activities, hopes and implications of God’s will… we’ll talk about these and more as we process this together, leave the matrix behind and approach a type of “solution.”
As you look it over and think about this week, I’d like to say just a few words about the interdependence (overlap) of the circles: I take it very seriously. I believe that we can move through life very connected to God and what God hopes and dreams for this world, and I believe that keeping all our circles over-lapped is key to not getting off in undesirable country. I mean it like this: Some folks are better at intuiting things, and some are more knowledgeable with the scriptures, just as some are wrapped up in the daily personal things of life while others have more time and opportunity to grapple with the global, cosmic issues… we need one another in this endeavor. It would be very difficult for one person to tackle all this alone: we need one another. Intuiting without a good grasp of scripture can easily go awry, just as imposing views of scripture divorced from a connection to living, breathing people can be suffocating and deadly. God has some daily concerns and some comic concerns, how do they interrelate? Divorcing God’s love of us and God’s love of creation, I believe, is a great example of how we Christians have lived an imbalance in the world that helped create some of our environmental problems today.”
I gaze upon the constellation
Filling up with consternation
Senses threaten cancellation
Living or an approximation
Seeking an inner transformation
Mixing in an appellation
Soul-felt deepening aspiration
Climbing from asphyxiation
Lost in loose transliteration
Half again the bifurcation
Ashes attest the incineration
Stretching an explanation
Spilling in evisceration
Fearing to be an abomination
Asking for a sanctification
Feeling total purification
Can I hear a revelation
Will you join the exaltation
Revel in invigoration
Spiritual inebriation
Enlightening intoxication
Transcending our classification
Shred the lines of demarcation
Spending each denomination
Gambling annihilation
Finally knowing emancipation
Accepting all propitiation
Hoping in anticipation
OK, way back in the college years when I sold Macs in our University Bookstore I also owned an old Performa Desktop and borrowed a Powerbook 520c on occasion for classes. I cannot remember any computer ever feeling as good under my hands as that Powerbook. So, when I decided recently to get serious aout making time for some creative writing, I knew I needed more than time. I needed a Powerbook 520c under my finger tips… and so I found one on Craigslist for $50.
I love it! and of course, I’m now watching for parts machines, old software… all that. I just picked up an older Ethernet adapter for it off of Ebay. And I have begun to use it for writing. Here’s an responsive prayer I wrote for this coming Sunday morning, based on Jesus’ “Beatitudes.”
Intercessions
Leader: Our Good and Gracious God, we ask you to…
People: Give us a hungering poverty of spirit
Leader: so that richness in you becomes our desire
People: Give us peace when in brokenness we weep
Leader: and let the hope of your comfort never fail us
People: Give us a humble charity towards others
Leader: until the whole world knows our serving love
People: Give us a thirst for becoming like you
Leader: that is daily satisfied by your presence
People: Give us a true gratefulness for your mercy
Leader: and implant in us a living mercy for all people
People: Purify the troubled ways of our hearts
Leader: so that you fill the scope of our vision
People: Make us a people who live and breathe peace
Leader: so you, the God of Peace, will be known through us
People: And hold us as we share the gift of your suffering
Leader: for in its affliction we will better understand and better love
Normally, I’m all about people’s privacy, but this fella came by my coffee shop this morning pushing the most impressively loaded grocery cart I have ever seen in my life. I mean, he chugged this monster up hill, against the on coming, one-way traffic. So, today I wish this dude a very Merry Christmas! He’s in my prayers, wherever he’s going with that massive cart.
Sorry for the low pic quality, it’s a cropped phone shot!
So, I am keeping a novena for Christmas… a nine day prayer routine that starts today and goes thru Christmas Eve. I’ll share some of it with you along the way. The following will be part of the daily prayer plus the day’s anitphon…
Novena in Preparation for Christmas
“O Lord Jesus Christ, who for our sake didst vouchsafe to descend from thy throne of glory to this world of pain and sorrow; who wast conceived by the Holy Ghost, born of the Virgin Mary, and was made Man; Make, we beseech thee, our hearts a fit habitation for thyself. Beautify and fill them with all spiritual graces, and possess them wholly by thy power. Give us grace to prepare for thy coming with great humility, to receive thee with burning love, and to hold thee fast with a firm faith; that we may never leave thee or forsake thee. Who livest and reignest, world without end. Amen.”
Daily Antiphon, December 16
“O shepherd that rulest Israel, thou that leadest Joseph like a sheep: Come to guide and comfort us.”
All from the St. Augustine Prayer Book,
pgs. 311-312
the legs are ok… the top is great. it’s hard to get a decent pic without diffused studio lights, so i’m just gonna throw a shot of some of the grain on here.
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