Here’s a thought…

I love animals, but mice belong OUTSIDE!!!

What Are We Doing?

Craigie argues that, given how intrinsic violence is to human society, it would be impossible for God to reign as king over the world unless he had “some kind of relationship to war” (43). If “the prerequisite for divine action were sinless men and sinless societies,” then, Craigie argues, “God could not act through human beings and human institutions at all” (96). More specifically, Craigie agrees with Jacques Ellul (referring to Ellul’s masterful work Political Illusion and Violence: Reflections From a Christian Perspective) that violence is intrinsic to the establishing and preservation of states and nations (69- 74). If God was going to try to establish his kingdom through the nation of Israel, therefore, it had to involve violence. (This is a point that we’ll see becomes extremely important later on).

The bottom line is that that Old Testament war tradition teaches us that God is willing to compromise his ideals to work in and through the violent, fallen world. So, even in something as diabolically horrendous as war, God is present. He is at work to use this violence both to judge human fallenness and move the world forward toward his redemptive purposes (95). God’s presence in such a diabolic situation does not justify it or make it holy (unlike most Old Testament scholars, Craige refuses to speak of a “Holy War” tradition, for he argues war is always sinful, even when commanded by God.). But God’s presence in war should provide us “hope in a situation of hopelessness” (43).

Greg Boyd

Freedom and Responsibility

Christians and Others

1. All go to God in their distress,
seek help and pray for bread and happiness,
deliverance from pain, guilt and death.
All do, Christians and Others.

2. All go to God in His distress,
find him poor, reviled without shelter or bread,
watch him tormented by sin, weakness, and death.
Christians stand by God in His agony.

3. God goes to all in their distress,
satisfies body and soul with His bread,
dies, crucified for all, Christians and others
and both alike forgiving.

-Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Translation from German by Edwin Robertson

This Was My Day

Let Love Go On

Let it go on; let the love of this hour be poured out ’till all the answers are made, the last dollar spent and the last blood gone.

Time runs with an axe and a hammer, time slides down the hallways with a pass-key and a master-key, and time gets by, time wins.

Let the love of this hour go on; let all the oaths and children and people of this love be clean as a washed stone under a waterfall in the sun.

Time is a young man with ballplayer legs, time runs a winning race against life and the clocks, time tickles with rust and spots.

Let love go on; the hartbeats are measured out with a measuring glass, so many apiece to gamble with, to use and spend and reckon; let love go on.

-Carl Sandburg

A new pursuit

I’m re-reading “Smoke and Steel” by Carl Sandburg. Besides being one of the greatest books of poetry I’ve ever read, it also deals with a subject very near to my heart, namely the reconciliation of man and God. The book begins by laying its thesis, ” Smoke and blood is the mix of steel.” He sees that while civilization is essential, that we are broken, that the things we make are temporary as we ourselves are temporary. The primary thrust of the work is outward… reaching for permenance, for beauty in the temporal that outlasts the shell of things… that redeems both the essence of us and our temporary state. There is no resolution to this book, only a search. Love is his only rule and in the persuit of its changing manifestations, he finds both his freedom and his mortality a blessiing. All of creation becomes relative to Love in this book. The force behind the world is a giving one to this man and he becomes it’s passionate lover, courting this God in the vast and changing imagery of the world. For the next little while I’ll be posting poems from this beautiful collection.

I Forgot How Good It Is

I’m learning to start small, where I am.

“…of such is the Kingdom Of Heaven.”

Today I saw a group of kids wrap their minds around something entirely new. We made book covers today at Reservoir and I don’t think it could have gone better. We put out all of the supplies; the loose ends of fancy paper we got for dirt cheap, the glue, the scissors, and told them what to do. I was SOOOOOO scared when they first sat down. They had no idea where to begin and I think this was the first time they had made anything without drawing pictures. It was so amazing to see the freedom well up in them and unfold into their work. They have such an intuitive sense of things and a joy that I admire.
One of the guys in my group covered his book in a plain red paper that was so uninspiring on the table and asked me if he could draw a picture on it. I said no and he looked so frustrated. He then proceeded to pick out a fantasticly yellow-green patterned paper and stick it square in the middle. It looked great. This one girl used entirely too much glue, but the paper absorbed it and crinkled in the most astonishing way. She made a very aesthetically mature collage on top of it and I almost jumped out of my seat with excitement. People thought their projects were ugly and found that they were beautiful in the end. I’m so proud of these kids. I’ve got to get pictures to put up here!
Anyway, when I stopped to look around, every kid in the room had their head down, intent and focused and happy. Rarely are things this beautiful, or maybe we just don’t look. Kids who have been abused, forgotten, cut down, abandoned, uprooted again and again, found peace today in glue, paper, smiles and safety. And we were a part of that.

I Wrote This On The Bus

I don’t want to hold on, hold
on to you. I won’t cage you
up in the bars of my fingers.
Dreams are like our shadow
hands; givers, lovers
and robber barons.
I don’t want to be timid, but
it feels like I forgot the dream
when I awoke. I’m so confused.
Sleep is the escape we
chose; your dreams are the most
beautiful I have ever seen.
I’ve forgotten now
what might have been.