Don’t worry, Larry, We all Need You, Left to Right…

Okay, these are GOOD days for Larry Craig, in spite of the embarassment of almost, but not quite, having a little tryst in the men’s room at the Minneapolis airport.  I mean, being a pastor sort of fellow, I am supposed to object at such behavior.  But perhaps it’s the whole, “Be thou hottest or coldest or I shalt spew thee forth from mine mouth,” thing.  Either you were doing something wrong, and you are guilty as sin, or you were just leaning down to tie your shoe, and t’ain’t nothin’ wrong, Lare.

But the thing I don’t get is how in the world you “panicked” and agreed to plead guilty and that now you are retracting the plea?  Okay, it’s not that I don’t get that.  It is the pretext of saying you were panicked and confused about the legal ramifications.

I’m sorry?  A U.S. Legislator confused about the law?  Made the decision without calling a lawyer?

Well, that’s all Brother Larry’s silliness, but what about OUR silliness?  You know, “we the people”?  Many are saying Larry is on a “long fall from grace” (Daniel Schorr, NPR, click here to hear), but I think his fall is going to be into a great trampoline of love and hypocrisy held by hands running across the political spectrum.

The congressionally impoverished G.O.P. needs to hold onto as many seats as they can possibly hold on to, what with their guilt by association with that guy who told a Lie of Mass Destruction.  So, we gotcha on the right Larry.

And from the other side?  Well, Larry, it’s a politically expedient time to embrace your sexuality, but just not the politics that go with it.  Who of us on the left could repudiate and despise a repressed White Anglo-Saxon Male who has been tied up so long in the chains of normalcy.  The left needs you to keep infiltrating those Good Ole Boys.  So, it is a good time for you to sit tight and be Pro-Gay and quietly Pro-Civil Union, so that the folks holding the left side of the trampoline can help soften the blow of your politically suicidal nosedive.

With any luck, everyone will keep their eyes on you and not look across and see those awful others who are helping save your political neck.

Goodbye Madeleine, I’ve Only Begun to Get to Know You

A Wrinkle in Time is one of those books that I never read in childhood.  I remember it in my older sister’s library long before those nasty events with my parents happened and the bomb hit. 

I was fascinated, horribly fascinated, by those images on the cover.  And as with many such books that I attempted to read at age 8 or so, I put them back down not understanding a dern thing, a response which still carries me through to today.

And then I missed that whole season of life of growing up in a well-read, theistic literary home where Narnia, and the Rings, and Madeleine L’Engle and many others just hang out on the shelves, waiting to sneak out and transport some young, unsuspecting one such as myself to fall into the portrait on the wall or to meet the witches in the house out back, or to greet Gandalf when he shows up to send me off to fight the dragon.

It’s not that I play the victim card here, it’s just that my parents left me with a lot of catch up work to do. 

And Madeleine…  well, I only found out in church this morning that you have been glorified.  Beatified.  Transported.  Translated.   But…   removed. 

It is said that the dead have no contact with the living.  I cannot wait to join you in the land of the living.  How great it will be to breathe for the very first time. 

Until then, and even with greater passion for play, so is the call to sit and wait and love and play on the page and let all that stuff begin to ooze out. 

So, since this is all really about saying, Thanks, let me waste no more of your time (doesn’t mean much now, does it?), and tell you.  Thanks.

Thanks for Wrinkle.  Thanks for all the other books I haven’t read yet.  Thanks for that Love relationship you maintained.  You know the one I am talking about.  And thanks for Walking on Water, and for telling us about floating down the stairs. 

Floating. 

I believe you.  Sometimes I do it to.

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Continuity and Discontinuity

A friend of mine recently “became a Christian,” whatever that actually means (I have my ideas, with supporting material, of course).  He is in his mid-30′s.  I gather he’s been thinking about it for about 16 years.

I started thinking about what changes and what stays the same when a person has their soul fused with Christ’s (if that is what actually happens).  St. Augustine, and other people far smarter than myself, suggest that it is a homecoming.  Irenaus, as we all know now that John Eldredge and Sara Groves have reminded us, said that “The glory of God is man fully alive.” 

And so, you fuse your soul with Christ’s, and you come home, you come fully alive (maybe?), but certainly, and perhaps above all, you become more yourself than you ever were before.  Or, at least you walk through an open door back into your own life in a way you’ve never been there before, but it is up to you how quickly you begin to explore the place.

But it strikes me that there is SO MUCH the same about a person when they become a Christ-follower.  I guess I begin the process of ceasing to be a shadow of myself, and the Spirit of Christ just vivifies the whole thing.  Maybe it’s like Christmas tree lights strung all around and through the place finally get turned on, and I say, “Oh, that’s what those did.  I never knew that.” 

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Godly Play #2

Yesterday they told me to take my rock again from the center of the circle.  Once we all had our rocks, Caryl told us, “Now put it back and take someone else’s.  Hold that person in prayer all day long today, and over the course of the day, find out whose stone that is and how you can pray for them.” 

All day long I went from participant to participant, extending my open hand before them as if to say, “Am I so fortunate as to hold you in my hand all the day long this day?” 

All I received in return was smiling negation.

Even that was hard.  “Ugh.  I got it wrong again.”

Finally, I had asked almost everyone.  And I began to wonder.  Would the owner of this stone have left already?  Am I certain I have asked everyone?  And then it clicked.  I looked over at Toni and smiled, opened my hand, and asked her, “Is this you?” 

She smiled back.  “I saw you choose it this morning, and I thought you did it on purpose.”

It was like our wedding day all over again.  Yes, I did.  I felt a gooey romantic warmth surge forth, knowing that if I had the chance, I’d choose her all over again, not because I had to, or because it was the right thing to do, but because among all the other choices available, she is the stone to which my heart already belongs.

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Godly Play Workshop, Friday Night

Today is day two of our Godly Play workshop.  Last night we took a stone in our hands from a tray in the center of the circle.  Mine was red, and I was told to look deeply into it.  I saw a dog face in it.  And then I saw a cat face.  And then I rolled it over and over.  “What stands out about it to you?” 

“It looks like a heart,” I said to myself.  And then, more quietly, from deeper inside, I said, “It looks like a shield.”

A shield for my heart?  A shield from heart?  Mental static on the radio inside my head? 

I was ready for both, and thought of Proverbs 4, “Guard your heart with all diligence, for from it flow the wellsprings of life.” 

More soon.

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A Call from Hungary

I’ve got something cookin’ on my heart of late.  I won’t get into what it is…  Just processing some particular little gems in my own life, and it’s the kind of thing I don’t do alone.  I shot off an email to a friend of mine who is in Hungary this week…  A place I’d love to be with my wife at a gathering where people remember how great it is to be in love with Jesus, among other things.

But we’re in Montevideo. 

So, Toni and I were kicked back on the recliner yesterday talking through the finer details of male and female attraction and whether or not attraction really IS or ISN’T a desire to make contact with some repressed part of yourself (yes, we really talk about things like that), when the phone rang.

And it was my friend.  My friend I told not to worry about emailing until he got back from his very busy trip.  And he didn’t email.  He called. 

We only chatted for a few minutes, he needing to be fully in Hungary and me nervous about what the phone bill would be (me of all people). 

But I hung up the phone and swam around in the love.   Man, it is good to be loved from afar.  Someday, I’ll hopefully be less neurotic and whiny than they tell me Henri Nouwen was, but until then, I’ll just keep soaking up the love.

Anybody want to call me from China?

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Hello Goodbye Hello Goodbye…

I just got off the phone with my aunt, who is with my Dad at his doctor’s checkup.  We were all together just a few days ago in Memphis, and now I am back home in Montevideo.

My aunt is leaving tomorrow to go back to New York, and so I wanted to call her and say goodbye.

What’s up with that?  My aunt is in Memphis, leaving for New York, and I am in Montevideo, and I want to call and say goodbye?

I am either the most geographically challenged person in the world or a person living in complete denial. 

She pointed out that tomorrow she will be one time zone closer to me.

Does that mean that I should call her tomorrow and tell her “Welcome back”?

Maybe calling to say good-bye was just my soul’s way of calling to give acknowledgment to the final separation of a wonderful family encounter.  Who knows.  But she is leaving tomorrow, and returning tomorrow, and I am reminded that I miss her.

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thinking about blogging

Oh, it’s been too long.  Far too long.  I am sitting at Cafe Francisco in Uptown Memphis feeling sad about my inability to live two lives…  finally really missing my city (though one might think that the time to miss a city is the time when one is NOT in it…  I’m proud of it, for all of its flaws and funkiness.

Like I’m proud of my Dad, and the way he has come through his nephroctomy, which is fancy for kidney removal.  And then the heart thing… the funny little unknown they found inside his heart that they now think is an independent growing tumor (all cut off and cleaned up, by the way). 

I went to urinate today (I know, not a thing you should ever blog about, but come now, we are adults, aren’t we?) sometime along the whole process when the nurses and doctors were all gathered around the container which receives the contents of the catheter.   All of them there waiting for visible, physical sign that Dad’s remaining kidney is choosing to function.  “We’d like to see more volume.”   It was a heck of a lot easier for me.  The things we take for granted.

God be praised for small favors.

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My daughter sings her love for Uruguay

Allie today made a promise to Uruguay. She promised that she would love the country. That she would never do it any harm. That she would seek it’s best. She was sick however when she did it. She had a horrible whooping cough and almost didn’t do it. She was dressed her best, however, and at the last minute, bolted over to be with her classmates for the flag ceremony. Here she is in her glory.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dxHCkErS0Go]

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It could -not- be

But it is.  Now the U.S. and Russia have nuclear tensions? 

It will be sad for anybody to get elected in 2008, having to clean up this great mess.

I remember when a U.S. president said about Putin, “I looked the man in the eye. I was able to get a sense of his soul.” 

I am not sure what happened to the mystical communion, or why the U.S. is erecting a missile defense along the Russian border, or why the U.S. president doesn’t set up another “soul encounter.” 

De-escalate my dear, dear Mr. Bush, for the sake of all of us, de-escalate.  For the sake of the worldwide price of oil.  For the sake of the rest of world’s view of my homeland.  For the sake of a future of peace.

I know we are not going to have the Kingdom of Heaven on earth.  I know your replacement couldn’t do it even if you hadn’t helped all the leaders of the free world be much more nervous and angsty. 

It’s a good world out here.  There’s lot of good stuff.  There are lots of good people.  Yes, there are some “baddies.”  Yes, there are some guys that would like to sneak into your house at night and do bad things to you and your puppy.

But there are friends.  There are friends out there who are willing to help.  They want the world to remain safe as well.  They want blue skies and green grass and clean water.  They wan’t to avoid another Cold War, another Build-Up, another Melt-Down, another whatever.

Okay, Armageddon is prophesied.  But you can’t MAKE Armageddon, as much as it would seem to be the current program.  Let it come in its own, sweet time.

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