If you don’t look up to the sky, perhaps you wouldn’t see the two rainbows gracing it, making you all kinds of promises. Perhaps, if you stare only at your own feet and think only of your own happiness you will miss the moon nestled in cloud nest and loose perspective completely.

If the only reputation you care about is your facebook profile…

and sex is the closest thing to transcendence you have encountered…

and drunk is the closest you can get to renewing your mind…

When you live in a world without hope and no purpose in your life, perhaps then, you would think it is ok, to light the world on fire and watch the rest of us go up in smoke.

(Vancouver Riot Photo Credit to National Post)

Joining Gypsy Mama with a five-minute unedited writing prompt…

BACKWARDS

I get it all backwards and mixed up.

Sometimes I shine the outside of that cup so shiny it is hard to look at. Sometimes leave the inside so grungy it is hard to live in this old skin.

Sometimes I spend more time on the things that pass away and fade instead of investing in the immortals I am surrounded by.

Sometimes (and usually at the most important moments), my tongue seizes up inside my mouth. I can’t for the life of me give an adequate response. When moments are the least important, when it would be prudent to bite my tongue, it wags like a disobedient dog.

Often times, I get lazy and grass grows under my feet because I’ve stood in the same place for too long. If you stop moving forward; growing, stretching, reaching you start moving backwards. Nothing is static.

Other days, on a morning like this I move the right direction. Up too early, knowing that to navigate this day with dignity I have to start the day right. Open journal, open bible, I pull rocking chair to window sill and soon little boy makes his way under the blanket I am wrapped in. We watch the sun pitch itself into the sky and see the trees stretch into shadows.  We watch the clouds settle in a solid sheet over the valley. Today having no words was just right and holding on tight to beauty was the only lesson that we needed.

Perhaps, I’m really not so backwards after all.

People were once projects to me. Objects to win over to a cause. I make myself nauseous when I think about it. In a Travellers Cafe in Malaysia, in darkened wine bars, over sushi lunches I’ve declared myself the worst of these. Begged forgiveness for the blemishes I put all over the church, forgiveness for the blemishes the church puts all over my reputation. I had it all backwards and mixed up.

Didn’t He declare the project finished?

How dare I add to the magnificent work he has done? What he whispered over the finale, what my bible reads in blood-red is Love. That is it. There is no pretense in this, no agenda, no ulterior motive. I choose love…His and yours.

So on this Good Friday, again I beg sorry. If you’ve ever felt less than an object of affection in my presence. If you’ve ever felt that I was trying to fix you up or make you better…forgive me. I got it wrong. I am only a recipient of this radical grace gift, celebrated especially today. Love is by no means, neat, tidy and clean…I’m not always good at it.

But, my friends, this love of mine? It is sincere and I will spend the last of my breath proving it to you.

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Some years, some weeks, some days I can dig in deep. I can lose myself for hours in thinking about Easter and Love and Suffering. This year, mothering these two, it’s just not going to happen. This year Easter snuck up on us and here we are days in advance and very few preparations have been made.

I’m at peace with that. Theology is useless unless it grows feet and hands and puts itself to work. Unless it stretches and shows itself to be Love to the fever and headache that grow in the night that prove giants in little bodies. Unless it is expansive and warm like the moonlight love letter I received in the night, it is useless. Unless it has room for the most intense of suffering, the most dramatic and intense of the human experience than we are not living the truth of Easter. We’ve not yet become the Easter people.

There is a headache at five am and a request for me to kiss it. Little face is hot and dry and I can feel the illness settling into him. I pour myself onto his bed like a moon beam, wrap myself around him and pull him into safety embrace.

This act is theology enough for me. Even as this morning I have moments of more, the types of moments that make sense of the work and remind us the reason Jesus came, the way that ‘he calls us to total self-giving. He does not want us to keep anything for ourselves. Rather, he wants our love to be as full, as radical, and as complete as his own. He wants us to bend ourselves to the ground and touch the places in each other that most need washing. He also wants us to say to each other, “eat of me and drink of me.” By this mutual nurturing, he wants us to become one body and one spirit, united by the love of God.” (Nouwen).

Theology has to wear skin. It’s the only way to walk in truth.

“Having loved his own who were in the world, he now showed them the full extent of his love”John 13:1

When the ground we stand on cannot be trusted. When our best technologies fail. When everything that could go wrong, does. When watching the news makes our ears want to stop hearing, makes our eyes want to be blind. When the quake shakes your core too and your very spirit is shifted 2 meters to the right. When we are afraid our hearts will rip clean out of our chests… its tempting to just to let it happen. To stop up that heart and tuck it away somewhere less risky than planet earth…

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Today I did. Today, I place this heart in bigger hands. I choose to remind myself that it is all His and that it is still His. That though I cannot see my way to peace with it yet, I will trust that those in the midst of it will find some. I will pray fervently and I will do all I can to be one with those muddling in their broken hearts. I will read this book to my kids over and over to remind myself the point of a soft heart. Remembering that the best and most beautiful are also sensed by that same aching chunk in my chest. Reminding myself to let go of the need to control and understand…Those are the responsibility of a mind much greater than mine and a heart much softer (even if today that is hard to reconcile).
Linking today with:

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When we are weak then He is strong. And when a stalk of wheat falls down something is born out of it. And last month when I left that place and felt defeated and deflated and thought

“That is it; I gave it a whirl and this speaking gig is just not for me”.

I said it out loud to several. “Its just not for me, I’ve got too much to say and when I say it out loud the words rush and trip over each other and I lose myself and I don’t say anything at all”.

One week ago I received an email and she talked about unlove and defeat and small blades to teenage forearms. She talked about the shame and things stolen . She was planning to quit something she loved because of the shame of having to expose old wounds and after I spoke she tattooed over them instead. She grew a tree from her suffering and she let God draw new life from old death. She spoke about finding life abundant and learning to ‘forgo the shame for one more minute and not let Satan take that joy from (her) any longer’. She talked of beauty and worth. I breathed in grace because isn’t that just the way he works? Use the nutrients of my own death to grow something that looks like fruits of His Spirit…

Our scars peek out sometimes.

Even when He heals and we grow up and out. Even when our branches near reach the sky our broken parts are never wasted. He uses them to bring glory to himself about how he finds beauty in the broken and creates all kinds of good gifts. None of it is wasted. Even when our words fall flat, even when we hurt ourselves, even when we quit…only a God like ours could grow something beautiful from it.

and they are talking about forgiveness over here…isn’t the hardest person to extend grace to ourselves???