psalmthing to chew on: psalm 19

psalm 19 is a tough one. because there is just so much in it. it is a beautiful, beautiful psalm. make sure you read the whole thing.

It starts so powerfully with a declaration of who God is:

‘The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands.’ [Psalm 19.1] This makes me think of Jesus calming the storm in the boat ['The disciples went and woke him, saying, “Master, Master, we’re going to drown!” He got up and rebuked the wind and the raging waters; the storm subsided, and all was calm. 25 “Where is your faith?” he asked his disciples. In fear and amazement they asked one another, “Who is this? He commands even the winds and the water, and they obey him.” [Luke 8.24-25]] and when Jesus entered Jerusalem triumphantly ['When he came near the place where the road goes down the Mount of Olives, the whole crowd of disciples began joyfully to praise God in loud voices for all the miracles they had seen: “Blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord!” “Peace in heaven and glory in the highest!” Some of the Pharisees in the crowd said to Jesus, “Teacher, rebuke your disciples!” “I tell you,” he replied, “if they keep quiet, the stones will cry out.” Luke 19.37-40]

the message is that God will be praised and if we can’t do it then nature will take over. the glory and creativity and imagination of God are all revealed through nature. take a moment to praise God and add your voice or the meditation of your heart to the chorus…

verse 4 ['In the heavens He has pitched a tent for the sun'] got a little more chaotic when i read it to my wife [aka the beautiful Val] because it reminded both of us of a really funny awkward sermon moment which happened here.

but back to more serious things. STOP LAUGHING!

this next section i just loved the poetry in the writing:

‘The law of the LORD is perfect, refreshing the soul.

The statutes of the LORD are trustworthy, making wise the simple.

The precepts of the LORD are right, giving joy to the heart.

The commands of the LORD are radiant, giving light to the eyes.

The fear of the LORD is pure, enduring forever.

The decrees of the LORD are firm, and all of them are righteous.

They are more precious than gold, than much pure gold;

they are sweeter than honey, than honey from the honeycomb.

By them your servant is warned; in keeping them there is great reward.’

The first time i read over this psalm i read the word ‘warned’ in verse 11 as ‘warmed’ and i think it works both ways… because when you start to know and experience the character, heart and faithfulness of God, then even His commands/law/statutes warm you – there is a confidence and sense of being able to trust this God who promises to be with you even when you are ‘broken-hearted’ or ‘crushed in spirit’ [psalm 34.18] and even when you are walking through ‘the valley of the shadow of death’ [psalm 23.4] – He won’t take all the bad away, but He will strengthen and comfort and walk alongside you…

verse 12 and 13 ask for protection and forgiveness from sins we are aware of and even those we may not be which is a good reminder of the accountability we need to have with other people who can help point out our weaknesses in love as we invite them to.

and then the psalm ends powerfully with: ‘May these words of my mouth and this meditation of my heart be pleasing in your sight, LORD, my Rock and my Redeemer.’ [vs 14]

if only all Christ followers, myself included, could start each day with that prayer and then try and back it up with our actions, we would completely start to transform the world…

the little cow that could…

i came across this blog today and i want you to read the bio with me and try and conjure up in your mind an image of the person who might possibly be writing it:

“A few years ago, I stumbled upon the Vaquita, a tiny endangered porpoise. I was heartbroken when I read about its story, so I decided to start this blog, along with many other efforts to help this species. I post poems, facts, and updates about the Vaquita weekly, and have other pages to help inform you about the Vaquita and its helpers. I hope this blog will help save a species in need.”

if this is all the info you have, [and take another minute and read it once more to really try and figure this out], what picture comes to your mind? is it a male or a female? someone with many years of life experience to draw upon, or a young child? someone who speaks with an English accent? or are we talking European? Australian or New Zealand perhaps? or is it someone from my continent of Africa or my present home of Americaland?

who do you picture writing this?

but wait, here is one more set of clues as to the authorship of said blog:

“I love playing tennis, birdwatching, hiking, even school, but my main focus is animal conservation through writing.”

for me, ‘animal conservation through writing,’ and i instantly have a woman in mind… ‘playing tennis’ and ‘birdwatching’ makes her fifty plus years of age… hiking throws a potential hint of a curveball… but it’s the word ‘school’ that seems out of place…?

it is in fact the line i omitted, that starts off this blog bio, which fills in a lot more of the gaps:

“I am an 11-year-old boy living in Bethlehem, PA.”

well slap-my-face-to-the-side-of-a-pig-and-roll-me-in-the-mud. It’s called V-Log and it is largely about the saving of a species of porpoise called the Vaquita [of which there are only about 250 left in the world] and you can check it out here, and it does contain poetry like this, and it really just moved and excited me to see an 11 year old confident young man with poetic gifts and more really being passionate about something and then actively living out/chasing his passion in the best way he knows how… [where is Oprah or Ellen when you need them?]

his blog profile name is goldenliontamarin and it describes him well. we can learn a lot from him and i hope we do.

if you don’t have a passion and a purpose or aren’t pursuing it, then there is a really strong chance that you aren’t living, you are just existing. let’s learn from this young 11 year old guy [who seems a lot older than a lot of older people i know] and really start sucking the marrow out of life. in a good way.

choose living.

on the place of using metaphor to understand/describe God [part ii]

…continuing with an extract from the ‘Why I am Mystical/Poetic’ from Brian Mclaren’s ‘A Generous Orthodoxy’

‘This mystical/poetic approach takes special pains to remember that the Bible itself contains precious little expository prose. Rather it is story laced with parable, poem, interwoven with vision, dream and opera (isn’t this the best contemporary genre to compare to the book of Job?), personal letter and public song, all thrown together with an undomesticated and unedited artistic passion. Even Paul, who, at the hands of lawyers like Luther and Calvin comes out looking (we shouldn’t be surprised) like a lawyer – and who at the hands of prose scholars comes out sounding like a prose scholar – needs to be reappraised in this regard. Have you noticed how he resorts to poetry in Romans 11, Philippians 2, and Colossians 1?

Yes, this element can be pushed too far, straining both generosity (by asking us to condone every vision or dream proclaimed by an array of kooks, nuts, charlatans) and orthodoxy (by asking us to ignore doctrinal nonsense promoted in the name of mystical experience). Kyriacos Markides describes the needed balance well:

Christianity, a Catholic bishop in Maine once told me, has two lungs. One is Western, meaning rational and philosophical, and the other Eastern, meaning mystical and otherworldly. Both, he claimed, are needed for proper breathing… Both the mystical and the rational approaches to God were part of the early church. They were only set asunder by subsequent historical developments.

Perhaps this balanced approach means that serious theologians in the years ahead will more often, along with their scholarly work, write poetry, or make films, or compose music, or write plays and novels – not as their avocation, but right along with their primary theological vocation. Can we celebrate this kind of artistic play as the serious work of generously orthodox Christians?

I used to be embarrassed that I work as a pastor and write books on theological topics, yet have no formal training in theology, having snuck into ministry through the back door of the English department. Even though I’ve been on a seminary’s board of directors, even though I am adjunct faculty at several seminaries, and even though I have spoken to many seminary presidents and faculty and I have deep respect for the work of seminaries – and, in fact, have received an honorary doctorate from a respected seminary – I myself have never taken a single for-credit seminary class.

Even though I am unapologetically pro-education, believing that our need is not for less education for Christian leaders, but rather for better, deeper, broader education, I’m not so embarrassed by my lack of “proper credentials” anymore. In fact, I can see God’s guidance in it. My graduate training was in literature and language, which sensitized me to drama and conflict, to syntax and semantics and semiotics, to text and context, to prose and poetry. It gave me a taste, a sense, a feel for the game and science and art and romance of language. It helped me to see how carefully chosen and clear, daring words can point to mysteries and wonders beyond words. It prepared me to see how a generous orthodoxy must be mystical and poetic.

There’s mystery and poetry in everything, really, if we have eyes to see, ears to hear: in botany, in biology, in history, in architecture, in medicine, in mathematics, even in astronomy – as Carl Sagan’s movie Contact made so clear. In fact, as we learn a generous orthodoxy, we become more and more prepared to see the mystery and poetry everywhere, to hear it, to feel it, and to sing.’

on the place of using metaphor to understand/describe God [part i]

i have been busy reading brian mclaren’s ‘Generous Orthodoxy’ and as a previous not-a-big-fan-of-brian-mclaren am absolutely loving it and highly recommend it – breaks open a lot of different boxes and helps clarify a bunch of christian labels in a very helpful way…

here is an extract from the latest chapter which i really enjoyed titled, “Why I am Mystical/Poetic.” and the context is using metaphors to understand God:

‘So we reach for another metaphor to correct the first, and we say that God is also a father, or a friend, or a shepherd, or a vinedresser, or wind, or storm, or fire, or water, or a rock. Each metaphor enlightens, but if taken too far, or taken in the wrong way, it can mislead. (Is God cold and uncaring like a rock? Shapeless and conforming like water?) We must, therefore never underestimate our power to be wrong when talking about God, when thinking about God, when imagining God – whether in prose or in poetry. Romano Guardini, chaplain to Pope John XXIII in the Second Vatican Council era, captured the challenge of trying to speak of God and divine truth:

“[When one] attempts to convey something of God’s holy otherness he tries one earthly simile after another. In the end he discards them all as inadequate and says apparently wild and senseless things meant to startle the heart into feeling what lies beyond the reaches of the brain. Something of the kind takes place here: “Eye has not seen nor ear heard, nor has it entered into the heart of man, what things God has prepared for those who love Him” (1 Cor 2.9). [These realities beyond understanding] can be brought closer only by the overthrow of everything naturally comprehensible. Flung into a world of new logic, we are forced to make a genuine effort to understand.”

Now there is no need to swing to an opposite extreme, to say that since even metaphors can mislead, we might as well give up on language altogether. C.S. Lewis caught the needed balance – that language can be a window through which one glimpses God, but never a box in which God can be contained – in a dense but brilliant poem called “A Footnote to All Prayers.” The poem begins:

The one whom I bow to only knows to whom I bow.
When I attempt the ineffable Name, murmuring
Thou

Then he compares himself to Phaedius, a classical Greek sculptor famous for his majestic sculptures of the gods:

And dream of Phaedian fancies and embrace in heart
Symbols (I know) which cannot be the thing thou art.
Thus always, taken at their word, all prayers blaspheme
Worshipping with frail images of folk-lore dream…

Lewis goes on to say that people deceive themselves in prayer, thinking that their images or thoughts of God are actually God, and comparesall our prayers to arrows aimed wide of their target (but that God mercifully hears despite their bad aim). All who pray, he realises, are idolators “crying unheard/To a deaf idol” if God takes the words of their prayers absolutely literally. He concludes by begging God to “take not… our literal sense” but rather to translate our limping metaphors into God’s “great/unbroken speech.”

A generous orthodoxy, in contrast to the tense, narrow, controlling, or critical orthodoxies of so much of Christian history, doesn’t take itself too seriously. It is humble; it doesn’t claim too much; it admits it walks with a limp. It doesn’t consider orthodoxy the exclusive domain of prose scholars (theologians) alone but, like Chesterton, welcomes the poets, the mystics, and even those who choose to say very little or to remain silent, including the disillusioned and the doubters. Their silence speaks eloquently of the majesty of God that goes beyond all human articulation. And it welcomes the activists, the humanitarians, the brave and courageous and compassionate, because their actions speak volumes about God tha could never be captured in a text, a sermon, an outline, or even a poem.”

[a Generous Orthodoxy, brian mclaren, pg 170-172]

POME: the very nature of things [written at Namrock ‘10]

wind, take a bough

then send it crashing to the ground

water, flow slowly along

pummelling, pummelling, the rocks beneath the surface

smoothing their edges by sheer  weight of temporal force

little bird, glide smoothly through the air

then swoop, crashing through the water’s uncreased surface

and fly away once more, carrying death back to feed your children

blow, gentle cool breeze

upon the dying embers

breathing new life into them

breathing, breathing

and suddenly bursting into a hungry flame

which savagely devours every fresh new log in its path

lie there, harmless thorn, waiting, waiting

til an innocent foot finds a way to disturb you

and then leave disturbed

run, dassie, ran

stop for just a second to deposit a gift on the rocks

then scamper off to find some shade

noise, human, noise

with your machines and motor-powered vehicles

raising your instruments and your voices

talking, talking, just to fill the silence

to kill the silence

chasing away the solitude of this sound-filled nature seen

the word church, ‘church’, church is a verb.

last nite at enGAGE (our sunday evening vineyard church congregation weekly gathering) we held an open mic vibe

not after ‘church’, not on a different day to ‘church’, not instead of ‘church’, but as church, and it was great

it was a celebration of some of the talents and giftings that God has placed in different people in our group and so we sat around tables and munched on chips and sweets and spinach and feta rolls (as one does) we watched some Flight of the Conchords (a band parodying a parody band and they nailed it!) and heard some songs and saxophone and watched some magically illusioned tricks performed by the Roy (who also excellently mc’d the event) and some photos on the big screen and some poetry (in two different languages) and hung out and gave God thankx and vibed

and then everyone pretty much got involved in the cleaning (you know, all the smashed piggy banks and burnt cards on the floor curtesy of the Roy) and setting up of the hall and a bunch of us headed off to our weekly hangout at Ginos for some drinks and to hang out with American Phil just before he heads back home

some people, a lot of people, would not call what happened last night ‘church’ cos we didn’t read out of the bible or have an official worship team leading us in worship or have a thirty minute preach or any of that…

but we had biblical stuff happening, and we welcomed and celebrated and called on God and He was definitely there in the midst of us, we had some words on celebrating community and if you really wanted to you would find reference to all of it in Corinthians 12, and we definitely had some worship going on courtesy of Megs ‘mountain’ and other songs and Phil’s worship songs and the photos we got to witness and all the living in and celebrating of community we did…

i love being part of a church where that’s seen as ok, no more than ok, where that’s seen as church

i’m not saying that what happens on a Sunday week after week in traditional churches is not church, cos it is, or a part of it anyways, but i am definitely saying that other expressions, other celebrations, other gatherings, other instances can also be church as well

as one pastory type guy made a few congregations and gatherings awkwardly try join him in the past in singing this refrain to a Fall Out Boy parody chorus – “Church is the people, it is, not, the, place”

let’s break that box. let’s do church.

Pome: you call that a scar?

With vacant eyes staring off into the distance

You stare at nothing in particular

As another drop of blood silently drips to the floor

Screaming out your loneliness and rejection

Though no-one is around to hear

The darkness pulls itself a little closer

Embracing you as you welcome it

You are alone

As I was

Surrounded by people and none of them understood,
the pain
the depth of my isolation

Yet I too embraced it

Called it to do its work

So I could do mine

Another drop makes its way down your wrist

Running parallel to mine

A pool forms beneath my feet

Tears run down your cheeks

As a witness to what you have done

Screams rage through the depth of my lungs

Announcing through the ages that it is done

I have finished it

It has been accomplished.

Your friends and family are nowhere to be found

You have chosen your spot and moment carefully

As another cut marks another reminder to yourself

That you are still alive, and, though scarred, will go on.

I turn my face towards heaven and my Father is nowhere to be found

He has chosen this time and place with precise and careful planning

As the thrust of a spear makes a sure reminder

That death has claimed one last victim, and for now, I don’t live on.

A new day dawns

You wake and feel for the evidence of the cut

And somehow find the strength to face it all for another day.

A new time dawns

I rise and feel the cut in my side, the evidence

Reminder of victory secured that will help bring in a new day.

With vacant eyes staring off into the distance

You stare at nothing in particular

As you reach once more for the blade

Comforting ritual to bring sanity to a life and mind in chaos

But before you can coax the blade into doing its deadly deed

You are stopped

Your hand starts to shake as you stare at your scars

Your cuts, opening up on My back and sides

Streams of blood coverging to form a crimson river

That now totally sweeps you up

Engulfing you

Washing you vigorously

Wiping away every hurt, every mark of pain and fear

Every seed of rejection

On and on until every trace is gone

Sucked into the whirlpool of my life-giving water

And suddenly, as quickly as it arrived, it is gone.

And you are left standing

In front of the mirror

For the first time catching a glimpse of how I see you

And as you even begin to understand what I have gone through for you

So the blade slips to the ground

The darkness takes a small hesitant step in retreat

And the look in the corner of your eye conveys just the faintest glimmer of hope…

Pome: Cell’ing your soul (a.k.a Sign on the dotted telephone line)

Ah, there you are

I sense you, reaching for me again

Not because you need me

Just because you need to make sure I’m there

I am your preciouss

“A convenience” was my way in

“A necessity” is what I’ve become

But you don’t even notice

As I continue to slowly, subtly infiltrate your life

You smile as you convince yourself that you are in charge

And back it up by reminding the world that you have changed my setting to silent

Although still on vibrate,

You know… just in case…

And so, as I lie idol in your bag

Waiting for your next Seriously Mediocre Salutation

Or life-changing, world-saving? conversation with, oh what’s-her-name?

So I count the hours I’ve taken, money I’m making

Conversations I’ve broken into and near accidents I’ve caused

And vibrate quietly to myself as I prepare for my next cancerous assault…

pome: Raisin, the dead!

cold, haunting wind blows effortlessly

against the backdrop of the eerie silence

composing illusions of an ominous chill

creeping ever closer

corrupting everything in its path

silhouetted shadows cast their gaze

upon the still, small body

that lies unmoving on the table edge

cold and lifeless, you lie there

tiny shrivelled body

unwanted, unclaimed

just a pathetic testimony

to your own immense waste of an existence

of space.

black and squishy

mercilessly discarded

stepped on

expiring without so much as a whimper

although possibly expressing the subtle hint of a whine

pome: the final Word

“It is finished!”

Words spoken, No, shouted, from a death bed.

Following the pronouncement of having been forsaken.

Left alone, deserted, strung out to die.

Calling for a father who has turned his back

Unable to cast his eyes on a son so full of disappointments,

Shame.

Broken dreams; shattered hopes.

What had become out of all that was possible.

And so, “It is finished” – signalling the end, the final deathblow?

But wait, one final move…

The twist occurs!

Hands are revealed

Pointing towards a long-held thought-out plan.

Victor is shown as victim

Vanquished emerges Victorious

In this new light “It is finished” is seen

Not as the loser’s last bid cry of defeat

But as a new “In the beginning…”