redeemed from paradox

“Without the Way, there is no going,
Without the Truth, there is no knowing,
Without the Life, there is no living.
Thomas à Kempis

(a persistent strangler of fall hangs on / Julie Cook / 2017)

“But he never said to people, ‘Come as you are and stay as you are.’
His promise was always that all were welcome –
but that they would be radically changed.
All need to be reborn.
Jesus does not affirm us in our lifestyles.
He redeems us from them.”
David Robertson

There is really so much to say.

Too much really…about so very much.

About all of this really.

As in…there is so very much that needs sorting, weeding out and pruning…

Such as those overt ‘he said, she said’ issues taking place daily….

The egregious name calling of those we do not see eye to eye with….
nor actually even see…yet everyone feels free and safe to use all manner
of vile ugliness, rather gleefully and clandestinely, behind these screens of ours
as we joyously lash out…..

There is tolerance of the intolerant and intolerance of the tolerant.

One no longer knows which one is best to be…tolerant or intolerant…
perhaps just both.

Why is it that at “this time of year” we hear about a spike in crime…
often violent crime.

Why is it that at “this time of year” we hear of what seems to be an escalation
in the sorrowful and tragic…that of accidents, death, fights, wrecks,
abuse, overdoses, fires…etc

Yet why is it that “at this time of year” we actually can witness a softer,
kinder, more generous and giving world….

A paradox found in the juxtaposition of man.

All the while there is some sort of misnomer running around out there that if
you don’t open your arms to embrace everyone and everything….
then there is something terribly wrong with you and you are made
to wear the Scarlet letter P….

P because you are phobic… homophobic…or maybe transphobic.

P because you’re just paranoid…you think that the Right and Left are
collectively out to get you…and maybe they are….

P because you’re just proud…a little too proud…as a good many of the
proud and arrogant have suddenly tumbled from their thrones.

P because you’re just pissed off,
mad as hell at all the fake news, lies, angry rhetoric, news outlets turned
tabloid junkies, anarchists burning down the towns…
mad at the progressive left who want nothing more than to destroy you and
your little corner of the world….
so no, you’re not going to take it any longer…

And right when someone hears or reads that you’ve just said as much,
you are now brandished as an extremist who should be locked up…

Maybe you should be locked up because you cracked and own a gun…
never mind all the uncracked folks out there who own guns….

Maybe you want to celebrate Christmas but since it is Christmas, you can’t call it
Christmas….
Yet you are repeatedly told to buy, buy, buy….for Christmas.
The same Christmas you’re not allowed to call Christmas.

Maybe you want to celebrate Hanukah because you’re Jewish…but a lot of folks
out there blame Jews for everything so maybe it’s best not to light the candles.

So now it is P because it is all so precarious…
especially since our vision is no longer clear.

It’s difficult crossing the narrow log spanning the deep chasm when
one’s vision is clouded…clouded by the upside down lies being offered
as what is true.

Yet how is one to know truth verse lie…
Or do we simply believe the loudest voice?

Across the chasm on the far side, across the narrow log, a tiny lone light
is lit…
And you know deep down that it is a light offering clarity to the obscured….

For from out of all of our darkness, a great Light has shone…

All that was, all that you have known, will be no more…
You cannot exist in the paradox and juxtaposition…
caught in the cycle of in and out, yes and no, left and right, up and down…
nor can you abide in the acceptance of what you know to be false yet
are constantly told that this false is absolutley true.

As all the little truths are merely by-products of the fickleness of the times…

Yet the question is asked of you….
Will you be able to ford the chasm on the narrow log, pressing ahead
toward the lone light offering clear vision or do you prefer to remain where
you are in a world turned upside down and mad upon itself?

Are you happy with what you are hearing and seeing day in and day out
as everything you once knew and thought is now turned inside out?

We are living a paradox and conundrum yet yearn for the clarity and light…

And I don’t see why the choice needs to be so difficult.

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God,
and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning.
Through him all things were made;
without him nothing was made that has been made.
In him was life, and that life was the light of all mankind.
The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.

The true light that gives light to everyone was coming into the world.
He was in the world, and though the world was made through him,
the world did not recognize him.
He came to that which was his own, but his own did not receive him.
Yet to all who did receive him, to those who believed in his name,
he gave the right to become children of God—
children born not of natural descent,
nor of human decision or a husband’s will,
but born of God.

The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us.
We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only Son,
who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.
John 1:1-5, 9:14)

Have you found what you’re looking for?

“Seeking what is true is not seeking what is desirable.”
Albert Camus

(image of a dilapidated abandoned farm house in rural west Georgia / Julie Cook / 2014)

“But I still haven’t found
What I’m looking for
But I still haven’t found
What I’m looking for”
Lyric refrain from the song “I still haven’t’ found what I’m looking for”
by U2

Certainly not being one to claim some sort of privileged knowledge about the inception of the 1987 song, nor of its meaning,“I still haven’t found what I’m looking for” by the Irish rock band, U2– the one thing I do know, however, is how I find the lyrics most applicable to my humble observations of the world in which we live.

My understanding is that the tune/ melody is steeped in the band’s front man Bono and lead guitarist Edge and their equal appreciation for American music genres. Bono supposedly has claimed the song to be a quasi piece of gospel mixed with a smattering of Bob Dylan influence. And who among us, of a particular age, can’t say that there isn’t a little bit of Bob Dylan, with that avant guard philosophical musical view of life of his, hiding deep down in us all?

Not that I’m a huge Bob Dylan fan by any stretch of the imagination, but the older I become, the more I find I have a deep appreciation for the method behind his madness. Bob Dylan can write a mean set of lyrics and he is tremendously musically gifted, despite the fact that I never thought he could sing. That garbled, almost unintelligible, nasal voice of his with his folksy bluesy sound was, when I was younger, not my cup of tea. I was a pure member of Beatle Mania coupled by a love of early Motown. Little did I know, at the time, of the tremendous impact Bob Dylan had had on the lives of those musicians whom I loved!

And so it goes as new generations of music makers continue to tap into and weave the poetic mastery of Bob Dylan into their own current take on music–with the boys from Dublin being no exception.

But back to the song. . .

As I look out upon a landscape, which seems to be more like the song Helter Skelter rather than the peace and tranquility of songs such as What a Wonderful World, I am almost overwhelmed by the madness.
Life is indeed colorful.
Life is indeed loud.

Life is full of the flashy gadgetry of the off the chart growth and hunger for all things electronic with the roots deep in technology, which this brave new world of ours seems to crave. Demand can’t keep up with the insatiable appetite. That new IPhone of yours, the one you just bought last month, its already obsolete as a new one will be out shortly—oh the frustration of keeping up!

We are now living in a country where more people currently live in large urban centers rather than the rural countryside. Songs from distant childhoods such as “This Land is Your Land” once painted a picture of a quilted country with a sweeping landscape which was stitched together by a population of residence spread out far and wide, dotting the land from coast to coast. Today it seems that most of those dots, that population of ours, is crammed in on either coast with a few remaining clusters bridging the gaping empty landscape in-between.

Our news, which is really no longer news but rather extensions of what we consider entertainment, is laced with so many stories of those who have fallen from grace it’s almost difficult to keep up. “Stars,” whose lives are splashed across our eyeballs, often against our will, along with their endeavors and exploits appear on almost every magazine cover in grocery stores, drug stores, television programs, computer screens, commercials, movie screens and even the air waves. We couldn’t escape them if we wanted to. Arrests, heroin overdoses, sex scandals, explosive public temper tantrums, bad boy and bad girl behavior run amuck—the list goes on and on.

My question: why does any of this, of what those folks do, matter to me?

Interlace Hollywood with our politicians and Government officials, whose behavior is proving equally as disturbing from the lurid sexting scandals, numerous affairs, drugs, alcohol, bribery, chronic pleading of the 5th. . .as I suppose we could say it all boils down to a sick sort of entertainment.

I for one, however, find it all terribly sad.

It seems as if Society, as a whole, is the one singing the lyrics of U2’s song— as it is our overall Society which seems to be so empty and in search of something that it just can’t seem to find.

Fulfillment
Contentment
Security
Love
Happiness
Acceptance
Success

Those seem to be the key words in which most people, famous or not, continually seek. And the seeking seems to be at a non stop pace with many of the end results coming up empty.

The drugs don’t work.
The sex doesn’t work.
The arrests don’t help.
The re-hab doesn’t help.
The endless affairs don’t work
The insatiable shopping and buying doesn’t work
The binge eating and drinking doesn’t work
The obsession with weight and looks don’t work.
The constant quest for youth doesn’t work.
The anger, the resentment, the hatred, the denial, the isolation. . .none of it works.

So everyone goes on singing.
“I still haven’t found what I’m looking for”

There is but one thing that works.
It will, however, require a great deal from an individual.
It requires a death.
It is not a physical death per se.
But it is a dying of self.

Giving up me in order to gain a life lived with the Creator of the Universe.
Giving up me to have a relationship with an only Son who died so I could have that relationship.
Giving up me to receive a mystical gift of Grace known as the Holy Spirit.
That is the only thing that will work.

But nobody seems too interested in hearing that.
Dying unto self just doesn’t seem nearly as exciting as the news these days.

My favorite psalm—Psalm 139: 1-18– Words which humble me, reassure me, touch me deeply— especially as an adopted child who knows not form whence I come. . .

O Lord, You have searched me and known me.
You know my sitting down and my rising up;
You understand my thought afar off.
You comprehend my path and my lying down,
And are acquainted with all my ways.
For there is not a word on my tongue,
But behold, O Lord, You know it altogether.
You have hedged me behind and before,
And laid Your hand upon me.
Such knowledge is too wonderful for me;
It is high, I cannot attain it.
Where can I go from Your Spirit?
Or where can I flee from Your presence?
If I ascend into heaven, You are there;
If I make my bed in hell, behold, You are there.
If I take the wings of the morning,
And dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea,
Even there Your hand shall lead me,
And Your right hand shall hold me.
If I say, “Surely the darkness shall fall on me,”
Even the night shall be light about me;
Indeed, the darkness shall not hide from You,
But the night shines as the day;
The darkness and the light are both alike to You.
For You formed my inward parts;
You covered me in my mother’s womb.
I will praise You, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made;
Marvelous are Your works,
And that my soul knows very well.
My frame was not hidden from You,
When I was made in secret,
And skillfully wrought in the lowest parts of the earth.
Your eyes saw my substance, being yet unformed.
And in Your book they all were written,
The days fashioned for me,
When as yet there were none of them.
How precious also are Your thoughts to me, O God!
How great is the sum of them!
If I should count them, they would be more in number than the sand;
When I awake, I am still with You.