Tuesday, November 27, 2012

Epic Wants

"What do you long for?" we were asked in church last weekend.
What is your epic want.  It is good to know, because uncovering this sort of longing within ourselves puts us in touch with our most intense form of hope.

I participated in the exercise.  I came up with this: my most intense longing is to repeat as often as possible those moments when I have felt the Spirit of God lift me to a place where joy seems almost tangible and time irrelevant.  But when the "thinking" time was finished, the pastor began listing sample answers, and I realized I'd gone a different direction than he intended.  He spoke of failing health, broken relationships, financial or professional issues.  Maybe it would involve an epic want for the sake of a loved one--one with failing health or addictions to battle.

So I went back to my thought on the epic want and began considering it in terms of others.  Use the word epic with me, and I'm going to engage.  I love the idea of the epic. Saint Peter lived epic.

Sept. 21, 2005
Thinking more on this idea of being "in the gap" as a prophet.  Reading about Peter's vision in which God proclaims clean what had been unclean since the days of Moses.
 

Peter Visits Cornelius Acts 10:9-15

9 The next day as Cornelius’s messengers were nearing the town, Peter went up on the flat roof to pray. It was about noon,and he was hungry. But while a meal was being prepared, he fell into a trance. He saw the sky open, and something like a large sheet was let down by its four corners. In the sheet were all sorts of animals, reptiles, and birds. Then a voice said to him, “Get up, Peter; kill and eat them.”

“No, Lord,” Peter declared. “I have never eaten anything that our Jewish laws have declared impure and unclean.”

But the voice spoke again: “Do not call something unclean if God has made it clean.” The same vision was repeated three times. Then the sheet was suddenly pulled up to heaven.

Peter was very perplexed. What could the vision mean? Just then the men sent by Cornelius found Simon’s house. Standing outside the gate, they asked if a man named Simon Peter was staying there.

Meanwhile, as Peter was puzzling over the vision, the Holy Spirit said to him, “Three men have come looking for you. Get up, go downstairs, and go with them without hesitation. Don’t worry, for I have sent them.” So Peter went down and said, “I’m the man you are looking for. Why have you come?”
 
Two different things appear to be happening here. One being that God intends that all people have equal access to the effects of the sacrificial Death and Resurrection of Jesus Christ.  The other being that Peter is told he can eat unclean foods.  Had Peter gotten "stuck" thinking the vision was devoid of a larger symbolic meaning, he'd have missed that point entirely. 
But Peter understood. When he met with the Roman officer who sent for him on an angelic prompt, "...Peter told them, 'You know it is against our laws for a Jewish man to enter a Gentile home like this or to associate with you. But God has shown me that I should no longer think of anyone as impure or unclean. So I came without objection as soon as I was sent for. Now tell me why you sent for me.' (vs. 28-29) The symbol within the vision (eating what was unclean) was different from the reality of how Peter was to walk through its meaning (going into the home of a Roman officer.)  The symbol was personal (Peter was hungry when he went into the trance) but the reality was universal (all people can be made clean.) Peter's visionary "filter" was working well.

I have spent the years since writing that post in September of 2005 waiting for some of the things visionary to migrate from personal to universal. When a vision finds its reality as quickly as Peter's did, that's one thing...when it is years coming to any life-application it is more difficult to keep its image-potential real. Peter stood in a gap that involved perceived Hebrew law and the revelation of God.  His only defense for the inscrutable gap he was called to fill: "Who was I that I could withstand God?" (Acts 11:7)

The day after receiving the challenge to uncover my epic longing, I read the following in Forgotten Among the Lilies, by Rolheiser.  He based it on his reading of G.K. Chesterton.:

"A man who was entirely careless of spiritual things things died and went to hell.  And he was much missed on earth by his old friends.  His business agent went down to the gates of hell to see if there was any chance of bringing him back. But, though he pleaded for the gates to be opened, the iron bars never yielded.
His priest went also and argued: 'He was not really a bad fellow, let him out, please!'
The gates remained stubbornly shut against all their voices.
Finally, his mother came, she did not beg for his release. Quietly, and with a strange catch in her voice, she said to Satan, 'Let me in.'
Immediately, the great doors swung open upon their hinges. For love goes down through the gates of hell and there redeems the damned."

Christ "descended into hell," and I believe there are ways in this life we act in kind as His ambassadors.  And maybe we don't have any other "excuse" for what we're doing than Peter's: "who was I that I could withstand God?"
So with regards to other people, I found my epic want.
You've called me to be a Mother, God.
You reminded me that when Deborah, the prophetess was "recognized" in song, she was not described as one who arose a prophet, or even as one who arose a judge--though she was both. No, the song went like this:
"The peasantry ceased in Israel, they ceased until you arose, Deborah, arose as a mother in Israel..." (Judges 5:7)
And Deborah is my name, too.
So I agree.  I acknowledge my epic longing--to be such a "mother" sent after those You choose for me--though they be in their own personal hells.  I will go and ask for the gates to be opened that I may enter.

Monday, November 12, 2012

Don't Do Too Much Too Soon








‎"It's hard to beat a person who never gives up."--Babe Ruth.

"Now hope that is seen is not hope. For who hopes for what he sees? But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience." (Romans 8:24-25)

But here's the rub: how do we "hope" for those things we feel God has given us that make no sense?  How do we "never give up" on what we don't even understand?  How do we hope for a landscape that defies everything we know?
At this point in my journal I perceived myself as actively engaged in dream-ministry, as  it is called by my friend who received the benefits of my "unwitting" middle-of-the-night dream-prayer over her heart troubles.  But dreams are often unfamiliar landscapes.  How does one attach faith to such a thing?  I began to explore that question through scripture and reflection.


Sept 21, 2005
Scripture study on these images: escaping, bread, communion-Sabbath
I the Lord have called you in righteousness, and will hold your hand..." (electricity in the hand that slices bread...)
Behold the former things have come to pass,
And new things I declare,
Before they spring forth I tell you of them.  --Isaiah 42:6-9
Holy bread--only Aaron and his sons are to eat it (Exodus 29:33) but years after Aaron lived, David and his men ate the showbread.  (I Samuel 21-22) Then Saul killed those who helped David, except the one who "escaped" and ran to tell David.  He took the ephod, the tool of inquiry, the thing worn by a high priest when he represented the people before God, took it to David.  David received this one who escaped and protected him. Here is both the one who escapes and bread together in a story...

All this comes around to Christ, because he refers to this particular story.  David ate the showbread. David was not a priest.  Many would say end of story.  David was wrong.  But Christ used the story as an example to help his accusers understand why they should not accuse him.  "If you had understood what this means, 'I desire mercy and not sacrifice,' you would not have condemned the guiltless. For the Son of Man is Lord even of the Sabbath." (Matt. 12:3-8) To this day, I've heard sermons that say, "the priest and David screwed up so all those people died," but I think that misses why the story is in the Bible, or at least why Christ thought it was there.

"In all I have said to you, be circumspect and make no mention of the name of other gods, nor let it be heard from your mouth." (Ex. 23:13) This comes right after the section about the law of the sabbath which Jesus references.  Circumspect in my dictionary is defined as "to look around, be cautious, careful to consider all circumstances and possible consequences.  Prudent."  I do feel the need to be circumspect.  I feel like I am in the position of slicing the showbread for serving.  Maybe even of being one with the bread.  That the bread may be sliced twice--one for the priest who has the "right" to it, but also for the priest to share to sustain the life of one God chooses, for a mercy.  That the mercy and not just the sacrifice might be the thing to give glory to God. 
Now, how?  How does all this apply? 



I studied this way through scripture and reflection, and I struggled--and still do--wrestling under the Spirit's ongoing lead--indeed like a sheep that could easily wander astray, not out of willfulness, not out of spite or disbelief; more out of the ignorance of simply being human.  As Peter said, "Who was I that I could understand God?" (Acts 11:7)
So the Spirit began to lead my understanding in things that required that high level of circumspection..  He drew me out to new places, new landscapes. He challenged my assumptions about right and wrong. He drew me sip by sip to the well that would eventually quench my thirst.  With little sparks that flared in the random things of life, He linked my most personal thoughts and dreams and wants and mysteries to a larger plane. 
For instance, I'd be reading C.S. Lewis' work, The Great Divorce, tootling along through it,  until I read the story of Sarah Smith, one of the "great ones" of heaven, As the narrator said, "ye have heard that fame in this country and fame on Earth are two quite different things." I read her story impersonally as it was given, until I came to this part:  "It is like when you throw a stone into a pool, and the concentric waves spread out further and further.  Who knows where it will end? Redeemed humanity is still young, it has hardly come to its full strength.  But already there is joy enough in the little finger of a great saint such as yonder lady to waken all the dead things of the universe to life." (p.118-120) I stopped at those words and gasped, as I immediately thought of my dream of cutting bread, of power coursing through my little finger and up my arm.  A morsel of definition, but nothing more.

But now, I re-read the full text about this lady as I look for the quote to put here, and I gasp yet again for much more of what Lewis wrote of her has become my story.  But there is a beautiful hope for a different ending in my own telling of the story, a shift concerning those who would inhabitant heaven and those who would choose hell for the sake of nursing self-pity over a perceived lack of her regard.  If I am her, the dwaves of life might still choose heaven.  There is far more hope for now in my life's telling of the tale.  A beautiful bend in the river the Spirit travels as He tells the story through me.  But on first reading 7 years ago, it was nothing more than a beautiful clue to solving a mystery of hope and redemption that required all this time in order to find its pertinence again.

So the first thing He shows me is the hardest to look at for it is what I see merely as myself, and what I see reminds me of my ignorance, my selfishness, my canality.  Only  courageous looking will do this. It is like hacking away with humility, beating through the thicket of sin and haunts from the past. But if I come out on the other side of first-sight, I find He breaks down my perspective and reshapes it such that I see something refreshingly different. I see something "truer" in its fitness for defining the "heavenly vision" as it was first given, truer than what my ferverishly cold and worldly eyes thought they were seeing. 

Over time, I learned this: Never give up on the vision, on the covenant that it is brought by the hand of God.  Let it be battered into proper shape, as Oswald Chambers says.  Finally, what shall we do when God chooses to use us as such an instrument of vision? We follow the advice David Kundtz received from his seventh grade teacher:  "Sit down, be still, and pay attention!"
Certainly regarding the things God says are His plans, we need to do exactly that.



Friday, November 2, 2012

On Receiving That Which Is Sacred

Ken Gire in his book The Weathering Grace of God, says "I have had moments when it seemed I was at the railing that separates heaven and earth, and there was offered as sacrament...whatever your moments have been, you sensed that something sacred was being offered you."

This next entry is that sort of thing.  Surely, the most poignant vision of sacrament I've ever know personally.

September 20
Last night, I dreamed I was slicing a loaf of bread.  It had been sliced once before, but I was cutting another slice.  And as my hand holding the knife reached the bottom of the loaf, an electric-like charge ran through my pinkie finger and up my arm.  I had thoughts of communion bread swell in me as this all happened.  What is this about, God?!? It "felt" a lot like the anointing vision I had about my husband.  And my mind heard Your words, "This is my body, broken for you."  If this is to be made real somehow, prepare me and those around me for it, Lord.  Is this part of that "going into the gap" idea?

My Bible reading today also hits brokenness in prophetic living.  Ezekiel's wife dies suddenly, and God directs Ezekiel to process the event as a prophet rather than just as a man.  What an incredible assignment!  How profoundly connected he must have been to God, with all people--even his wife--cast as but a shadow of a larger existence for him, a larger one that he was called to proclaim.  Then in chapter 24 of his book, it says "And you, son of man, will it not be in the day when I take from them their stronghold, their joy, their glory, the desire of their eyes, and that on which they set their minds, their sons and their daughters:  on that day one who escapes will come to you to let you hear it with your ears; on that day your mouth will be opened to him who has escaped; you shall speak and no longer be mute.  Thus you will be a sign to them, and they shall know that I am the Lord." 
Who or what is the stronghold You'll take away, O God?  The joy?  The glory?  The desire of their eyes and the one they think about?  Even as Ezekiel surely wanted to feel these things privately for his wife, suddenly lost to him, he instead would open his mouth, lose his muteness and become a sign to those who fell into a similar experience in their own way.  Who is Ezekiel's wife now, God?  Or what?

I think of something that happened in my homeroom this morning.  [I taught at a Christian school and had a junior high homeroom when this entry was written.]  The little gal who always volunteered to pray at the start of the day was pulled out of the school last Friday.  So when I asked for a prayer volunteer this time, it was to an open field.  And a little boy who had never before volunteered raised his hand and prayed.  The memory haunts me again as I see a real-world echo of this passage from the pages of prophetic history.  When the stronghold is removed, a formerly mute voice will rise.  When Ezekiel's wife was taken suddenly, it was a sign of how swiftly comes judgment and/or change. And it happened today, too.  And I think it will surely happen again.

Are You calling me into the gap only to swiftly remove me as a sign of how limited is the time left for revelation?  Maybe not, but maybe so; and if so, I ask that You make me strong enough to endure such a thing, as well as the Ezekiel who loves me.  I know You do not leave any to suffer any longer than is necessary to accomplish your larger purpose for good, if suffer they must. I do believe this.

I will study on these things.  I will study on anointing oil, sacramental bread, and the "one who escapes." I will see why You are showing me these things...

So much has passed since this early wash of visionary stuff.  So slow has been my learning curve in the most important part of it all. 
Chastity, in its larger definition.

Today in my prayer journal, I quoted from Rolheiser's Forgotten Among the Lilies:

 "To be chaste means to experience things, all things, respectfully and to drink them in only when we are ready for them.  We break chastity when we experience anything irreverently or prematurely.  This is what violates either another's or our own growth.  It is the lack of chastity in experiencing, irreverence and prematurity, that lobotomizes the soul.
"Experience can be good or bad...Travel, study, achievement, sex, exposure to newness, the breaking of taboos, all can be good if experienced reverently and at their proper time.
"Conversely, they can tear the soul apart (even when they are not wrong in themselves) when they are not drunk in chastely, namely at a pace that respects fully both others' and our own growth."

I went on to observe that this is the crux of my trouble the whole time I've walked a path of  receiving these things visionary.  They "feel" so deliciously alive with a life that is incredibly intoxicating, and even when they are inscrutable, they pull the soul into a state of heightened awareness that is in itself compelling.  I find myself wanting with urgency to both receive more of them and to see them manifested real-world.  I do not stop to consider that often times--because of their very nature as revelation of Your creative work--they appear to "breach taboos," as Rolheiser puts it, in ways I need to allow my heart and mind time to process.  I think both I and my spouse have struggled with the strain of waiting for You to "link learning to integration" within us, for we both have received inscrutable visions from Thee.
God help us understand how to walk in this prophetic-chastity better and how to honor You even in the context of Your profoundly good and life-giving messages! Help us to distinguish between what we are meant to see and what we are meant to do.  To let go of the desire to force things to happen according to our limited understanding of what You're saying.  We don't receive the visions for that reason.  Help us to keep our side of the balance between why You give the vision and why we receive it that we might keep the childlike faith!
And Jesus called a little child unto him, and set him in the midst of them, And said, Verily I say unto you, Except ye be converted, and become as little children, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven. (Matthew 18:2-3)

When all my days are ending
And I have no song to sing,
I think I shall not be too old
To stare at everything;
As I stared once at a nursery door
Or a tall tree and a swing...
--G.K. Chesterton in A Second Childhood



Thursday, November 1, 2012

Another Instance of Vision Meeting Sacred Poetry...for My Husband

"Our culture's demand that everyone be like everyone else is not so much malicious as it is despairing.  The death of idealism is a child of despair, always."
and
Prophecy is seen as unrealistic, idealism as immature.  We are growing ever more dumb.  Hence our task today is to be leaven, to be idealistic and in that way to be prophetic..." 
Ronald Rolheiser in Forgotten Among the Lilies


September 18
Have I mentioned yet the vision I had of my husband?  I saw him being anointed with oil--a gleaming rivulet dripping and flowing over him like liquid silver spilling over his face and beard and shoulders.  He was in a dark place, but the oil lit him as it dripped over him for it carried an internal glow.
I had this picture come to me a while ago.  Now I come across this Psalm:

Behold how good and how pleasant it is
For brethren to dwell together in unity!
It is like the precious oil upon the head,
Running down the beard,
The beard of Aaron.
Running down on the edge of his garments.
It is like the dew of Hermon,
Descending upon the mountain of Zion;
For there the Lord commanded the blessing--
Life forevermore.
Psalm 133

In my continuing devotional study on the topic of visions, I see read the following:
Oswald Chambers in his March 10-11 entries in My Utmost...says "the natural heart will do any amount of serving, but it takes the heart broken by conviction of sin and baptized by the Holy Ghost and crumpled into the purpose of God before the life becomes the sacrament of its message...we cannot attain to a vision, we must live in the inspiration of it until it accomplishes itself...Watch God's cyclones.  The only way God sows His saints is by His whirlwind.  Are you going to prove an empty pod?  It will depend on whether or not you are actually living in the light of what you have seen.  Let God fling you out...If God sows you, you will bring forth fruit." 

Christ, himself, did not expect the seeds He sowed to sprout in half an hour. He shared vision, then lived it out in front of his followers. Even then, His disciples had trouble "getting it," but He knew the seed had "all the germinating power of God and would bring forth fruit after its kind when put in the right soil."

In Daily Thoughts for Disciples, Chambers again uses this imagery:  "Sow the word of God, and everyone who listens will get to God.  If you sow vows, aspirations, resolutions, emotions, you will reap nothing but exhaustion...but sow the word of God and as sure as God is God, it will bring forth fruit.  A person may not grasp all that is said, but something in one is intuitively held by it."   

Finally, he says this: "If an emotion be kindled by the Spirit of God and you do not let it have its right issue in your life, it will react on a lower level." Spur us on, O God, to giving a high enough level to the emotions You plant within us.

Visioning is not for the faint of heart, nor is being caught up in a prophet's vision  that is from God.  Easier to melt into obscurity than to become the stuff of a divine vision. 
Nevertheless, as DC Talk sings, "Even the deepest seed still finds the light of day,"  and when that prophetic seed meets daylight, it is a thing most glorious to behold.  Whether you're the seed, or the soil, or even the whirlwind, it is glorious if it is a thing of God. 
Never fear the vision; fear the lack of it.  Fear settling for the attainable second best. 
I love that the man I married is one who could live out such a vision as this one God sent for him, this of glowing anointing oil.  I love that he could carry it to its full fruition. 
I love that I am reminded of it right now.