Friends feed the inherent desire in every single one of us to be seen and heard and remembered. And that makes us feel immovable and immortal as if the universe itself came alive to witness a miracle. And nothing we say or do will ever be forgotten. (This hints at the foreshadowing of a personal relationship with the ultimate Being—immovable and immortal—who is closer to us than a brother and who created us to know Him and to be known by Him.) But what if this convivial concept of friendship escapes us?
Godspeed
if you’ve dropped your keys,
hat or hash pipe
into the “rabbit hole”
of delusive fantasy,
whirling and writhing down
an eternal abyss of insanity,
further and further away
from the drain of objective reality.
Does Scripture—
the Rosetta Stone
of what sinners’ call “fire and brimstone”—
employ fear tactics of emotional control?
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Give me Narnia or
Give me the Wild Lands of the North.
Give me Aslan or
Give me the White Witch
and her black dwarfs.
Category: Beauty, JESUS, Literature, Morality, Nature, Philosophy, Psychology, Science and Religion, Scripture, Short Stories, Spiritual Formation, Suffering, Theology
God: “Truth is self-love that sets you free and enables you to see your sin as an opportunity to talk with Me about why you sin so we can have conversations like this one and walk further down life’s path together. This is My heart. This is discipleship.”
Shadows provide shade and shelter, mine to my son just till he’s ready to unzip middle-school pajamas and soar into the sun. Night holds future bodies still, revealing what’s inside, peeling the last curl of humility that laughs from a ripe insecurity, called pride, spilling secrets tightly coiled in the nucleus…
Open your eyes.
See the bioluminescence,
ascending rhythmically
up,
up
from the abyss,
or God’s firework show
descending hazily
down,
down
in dancing waves of light,
the Holy Grail of sky watching,
the aurora borealis,
the northern lights.
We need to hear and heed this NOW more than EVER! Be kind. Be understanding. People are fragile, whether they show it or not. Learn to recognize the frightened child in everyone by listening rather than speaking. Just as you were when you were a child—afraid of failure—you will undoubtedly be tempted as an adult…
If words are a bubbling brook
above the geyser of our hearts,
they’re poised
to say something about
the nature of our spirituality—
a disjointed but shared reality—
seeking comfort
in the womb of bad religion.
A carcass with a pulse,
a miracle dipped in myrrh,
perfumed a Jewish beard
and consecrated a blameless soul…