Why would we ever be surprised when truth turns up in strange places?
People wrote these stories down because they found in them something that helped restore their dignity; the stories gave them a sense of identity; they helped give voice to their pain.
Sometimes the reason people have a problem accepting ‘the gospel’ is that they sense that the God lurking behind Jesus isn’t safe, loving, or good. It doesn’t make sense, it can’t be reconciled, and so they say no.
Whatever those things are that make you feel fully alive and like the universe is ultimately a good place and you are not alone, I need a faith that doesn’t deny these moments but embraces them.
I can’t find one place in the teachings of Jesus, or the Bible for that matter, where we are to identity ourselves first and foremost as sinners.
Because when you can’t hear the cry, when you stop caring for the widow, the orphan, and the refugee among you, it always leads to the diminishing of your empire.
How we respond to what happens to us – especially the painful, excruciating things that we never wanted and we have no control over – is a creative act.
Because sometimes you need a biologist, and sometimes you need a poet. Sometimes you need a scientist, and sometimes you need a song.
What would it look like for you to approach tomorrow with a sense of honor and privilege, believing that you have work to do in the world, that it matters, that it’s needed, that you have a path and you’re working your craft?
People aren’t static; they’re dynamic – endlessly complex and capable of tremendous surprise and change.
At any moment in the day, you can only do one thing at a time. And the more intentional you are about knowing what your 1 is, the more present you will be.
Are you breathing? Are you here? Did you just take a breath? Are you about to take another? Do you have a habit of regularly doing this? Gift. Gift. Gift. Whatever else has happened in your life – failure, pain, heartache, abuse, loss – the first thing that can be said about you is that you have received a gift. Often.
No one has ever done this before. No one has ever been you before. This exact interrelated web of people and events and places and memories and desire and love that is your life hasn’t ever existed in the history of the Universe. Welcome to a truly unique phenomenon. Welcome to your life. I want you to be here. Welcome to here.
There are always two risks: the risk of trying something new, and the risk of not trying. You risk settling and continuing in the same way, wondering about other paths and possibilities, believing that this is as good as it gets while discontent gnaws away at your soul.
The question is: Why have these poems and prayers endured? Why, thousands of years later, do we still have them? And the answer you’ll return to again and again is: They speak to our human experience.
But the first Christians didn’t see Jesus this way, as if God were somewhere else and then cooked up some way to solve the sin problem at the last minute by getting involved as Jesus. They believed that Jesus was somehow more, that Jesus had actually been present since before creation and had been a part of the story all along.
The Psalms show us what healthy spiritual life looks like. You name everything that’s happening inside of you. You give it language and expression, You articulate exactly what the desolation feels like. If you don’t drag it up and give it words, then it’s buried down in your being somewhere. And it will come out in other ways. Unhealthy, destructive ways. You’ll keep it bottled up. And you’ll be miserable.
So as a Christian, I am free to claim the good, the true, the holy, wherever and whenever I find it. I live with the understanding that truth is bigger than any religion and the world is God’s and everything in it.
To make the cross of Jesus just about human salvation is to miss that God is interested in the saving of everything. Every star and rock and bird. All things.
What’s disturbing, then, is when people talk more about hell after this life than they do about hell here and now. As a Christian I want to do what I can to resist hell coming to earth: poverty, injustice, suffering – they’re all hells on earth and as Christians we oppose them with all of our energies.