Category Archives: Jesus

02/24/13

How to Be a Shaman

how to be a shaman
My older son is a shaman. Note that I am not pleased by this. I’d rather that he be, oh, a human rights lawyer or an organic farmer. Unfortunately, I didn’t get to choose.

He didn’t become a shaman all by himself. He was offered free training all around the world. He learned about herbs and witchcraft in Portland, Oregon. He got training in yoga and meditation in Crestone, Colorado and Fairfield, Iowa. Eventually he went to Columbia and Peru, where he received even more education, learning how to use hallucinaginic plants to access the spirit world.

All of this was completely free. As far as I know, he never paid a cent to learn any of this stuff. These days, he teaches other people how to meditate and do magick.

The people who taught him knew how to make disciples. He told me about people who had built extremely low-cost meditation centers using their own hands and community to complete the work. He described extraordinarily welcoming communities. At this point, he makes very little income, yet manages to continue to travel the world due to the hospitality of those he encounters.

I do not see most Christians making the effort to teach others the way of Jesus that I saw these other folks expend to teach my son these other things.

Do we use our hands and energy to build churches where all are welcome? Not so much in America. No, we take out mortgages and fund-raise money right out of the hands of the poor so that we can purchase better sound equipment.

Do we freely raise up leaders who will themselves go and make disciples of Jesus? Nope, not usually. Our Christian leaders — the ones we tend to respect the most — go to expensive seminaries, going into debt and ransoming their ability to heed the call of Christ to minister to the poor, to give as has freely be given.

I thought that perhaps I was being a bit cynical, that there were indeed seminaries that offered free or at least extremely affordable tuition. I typed “free seminary” into Google and got a paid result from Liberty University — an establishment that is not only not free of charge, but that charges more for an online education than many bricks and mortar universities. To have come up in the paid search results, they needed to have purchased those keywords — “free seminary.” They lied.

I saw one website that offered online information for free, but otherwise, nada. That’s okay, because leaders should be raised up out of the local church or by the Holy Spirit, or so I believe.

Is not charging to learn the word of God a bit like (or a lot like) doing business in the temple?

My anger at our culture knows no bounds today. Christian schools? Why do they charge tuition? If these folks truly believe that the unsaved are bound for hell, why are teachers not donating their time, living in concrete block houses with well-water and candles to devote their lives to educating our children and making disciples?

No, instead, we have enclaves of Christians who segregate themselves from the larger world. Who must have a certain amount of money to be in the club.

I am enraged.

Is this what Jesus wanted? Really??

I admire the heck out of people who go to live in third world conditions to care for AIDS patients, educate children and spread the gospel. Why don’t we do that here? What is it about living in the United States that blinds us to what is important?

I know that we have food banks, homeless shelters and other programs. But we need more than that. We need a massive shift where we refuse to allow any child in our community to grow up without experiencing the love of Jesus, for example.

So what am I doing? I am at a bit of a loss, to tell you the truth. This is a feeling that makes me feel uncomfortably hypocritical. I am looking for a group of people to do what author and Christ-follower Bob Goff calls “Bible Doing” as opposed to “Bible Study,” or what Goff uncharitably calls “stalking Jesus.”

I’m hoping that the support of like-minded people will help us all to break free of the tiny paradigm in which we view our lives and possibilities. It will be on Monday nights at 6:30 in my living room, if you’re interested.

02/21/13

Vision of God or Schizophrenic Hallucination?

rainbow around the throne of God

This will never look the same.

I will never ever forget what my younger son told me when he was twelve. He said that he had visited heaven and had a talk with God. God had even given him a tour.

He went into a lot of detail. He described how God’s face cannot be seen because it is such bright white light. He said he saw Jesus, and that there were marks on his wrists. He told me how there are colors that can’t be seen in this world, and that there is a feeling of such indescribable peace that there are no worries or fear whatsoever. He talked to my Uncle Bob, whom he has never met. He saw hell because God wanted him to know it was real. God let him know that Love saves people from hell.

At the time, I was understandably thrown for a loop. Sage grew up fairly obsessed with Pokemon cards and being read the stories of Brer Rabbit, not the Bible — a fact I am not proud of. I had no idea where all this was coming from. It seemed odd content for a hallucination that would arise out of prior knowledge or interests.

I told his doctor about it, and he told me about the book If Heaven Is for Real. I told my mom about it, and she mentioned the same book. I bought it.

It is about a 4-year-old boy who sees heaven during a life-threatening surgery. I’ve always been pretty skeptical about these things, and it wasn’t on my reading list.

The book was a quick read, and after I finished it, I remember lying on the bed feeling almost paralyzed. I called Sage into the room. Having read about how the boy saw a rainbow around the throne of God, I asked, “Did God sit down?”

My son said, yes, he was sitting on a throne. “What did it look like?” I asked. He told me about how a rainbow went around it.

At that point, I my mind did a flip and I started to feel really afraid. My son said, “There is a dark presence in this room. God wanted me to tell you that we are going to be in a very large spiritual battle.”

Note that I don’t recall discussing things like spiritual battles with my son at that point. I remember I had just started attending church, after the dream he had where he was quoting the Book of Revelation to me.

So there it is.

I’m convinced this was a true spiritual vision — God forgive me if I’m wrong. I really think that if all this was only neurologically based, then the vision would have been of something else entirely. Like Pokemon characters. But no, his visions have never had that sort of content. It is always God, Jesus, angels, demons, and things like exploding nuclear bombs and parched earth.

We don’t watch the news and never have. We don’t have television since I discovered that watching it was causing him to stutter several years ago. So I can’t attribute this to something he had watched a few days prior.

I am so thankful for this. This vision caused me to completely desire to follow Jesus, to give my life to God. I count myself as very fortunate, as my intellectualism had set up many arguments against much in the Bible being literally true. Being a part of this experience has forced me to put my feeble human arguments aside and simply praise God that he permitted me to see.

And he that sat was to look upon like a jasper and a sardine stone: and there was a rainbow round about the throne, in sight like unto an emerald. Revelation 4:3

01/23/13

Rambling Angry Stuff That May or May Not Have a Point

homeless
Sometimes the pain is so great I feel as though I can’t speak.

Yesterday we endured another visit to the psychiatrist, where once again the S word was tossed about liberally. There were also words like “lifelong,” “chronic” and “disability.”

I am ashamed to say that I have been feeling sorry for myself. I know it is like holding the door open so that the long-toothed depression beast can stroll right on in and make himself good and comfortable. I struggle to maintain a sense of reality.

People do not like to think about the S word. I’m one of them, since I don’t even like typing it. My own parents don’t call and ask how my son is doing or how I’m holding up. I suppose it is painful for them, so they, like almost everyone else, pretend it is not happening, that it does’t exist.

I’m so angry I could spit. Obviously, I’m angry that both of my sons, as well as my brother, have fallen victim to this disease or whatever it is.

I’m angry because I asked for support and didn’t get it. Well, not from the people I asked, anyway. The thing is, I’m well aware that I have no right to my anger because no one owes me — or my son — a thing. And I am blessed because God sent someone into my life who personifies His love, and that person also loves my son and played an instrumental role in our not going to the ER a few days ago for a psych eval.

I don’t know what to do with the anger, though. I want to say hurtful things. I want to blame someone else for this pain.

I feel like I could just explode, I really do. I’d like to see the fake constructs of our society made into visible strips of paper so I could tear them apart and the truth would lie there naked for all to see — and deal with.

We are all like blah, blah, blah. Love others. Love people with mental illness. Love unlovely people. Behind the words “Jesus loves you” are often “but I don’t, not really.” I think this has made it easy for people to mock my savior, this hypocrisy he’s so often associated with. And we all know how Jesus felt about hypocrites. That’s one thing I love about Jesus. He was not fake at all. He lived what he preached.

There was a catalyst to this anger.

My good friend Gen and I were at Starbucks a few days ago, sipping coffee on the patio. There was a man restlessly pacing the sidewalk, muttering to himself. Gen went up to him and asked him if he was okay. I followed.

It turned out he wasn’t okay, which was no surprise. He had suffered the loss of three family members in the space of two months. He was either manic, on drugs or both. We prayed with him.

I have to say that two months ago, this would have been completely outside my comfort zone. I’ll never forget the time Gen and I were in Java Jacks and she said, “Well, let’s pray about that.”

I was thinking, “Here? Now? In front of people?” but kept my mouth shut as I furtively looked around the room to see if anyone was watching.

I’m over that now.

At any rate, this guy was surprised. He said that he wanted to attend church, but didn’t know of one where he wouldn’t be judged. This was a valid concern. I figured some folks wouldn’t be able to get past his wearing swim trunks in public in January.

I realized that I didn’t know of a church I could invite him to, although some Facebook friends had some ideas. I thought about how my son doesn’t fit into most churches and how I couldn’t go to a church that couldn’t embrace people with the S disease, drug addicts, and even criminal histories, even though most probably have good intentions.

Sometimes things are messy.

Sometimes things aren’t safe. That’s okay. Jesus never says that we are supposed to stay safe. He says this instead.

In the same way, any of you who does not give up everything he has cannot be my disciple. — Luke 14:32

I interpret this verse to mean that we may be called to literally give up everything — up to and including personal safety and even our lives, especially in light of this verse:

Whoever tries to keep his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life will preserve it. Luke 17:33

What a hard teaching. To me it is clear, though, that hanging onto socially respectable behaviors and ideas about the lifestyle we feel we are entitled to is the wrong path.

I don’t want to attempt to fit the gospel into the lifestyle that I want to have.

Anyway, so Gen and I got into the car and I started to cry. Our encounter with this guy just hurt my heart so much. So many people are lonely and have such awful lives. We have to show them love, we just have to! Love in action is it, it is everything. It is the only way to defeat the devil that I can see.

And I’m thinking, what if there were more people like Gen who were willing to put whatever they are doing on hold to comfort a stranger, to cheer a friend’s son out of suicidal ideation, to randomly warm people’s hearts for no reason other than to lift them up?

Can you imagine the type of world we’d live in??

We’d all see the kingdom of God every day.

01/19/13

Beauty and the Beast Is a True Story

beauty and the beast
I woke up this morning with two things on my mind. The story of Beauty and the Beast, and this verse from John 1:

There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear.

Beauty and the Beast is not an ordinary fairy tale. The rescuer is not a prince on a white horse, but a woman of virtue and a pure heart. This fairy tale has been around for years in the oral traditions of several cultures. I believe it came from God.

The beast is selfish. He demands a human sacrifice for Beauty’s father taking a rose from his garden.

Beauty offers her life in return for her father’s.

She lives with the Beast, and eventually truly loves him, which destroys the beast, revealing the prince within.

True love conquers all.

This is what the gospel is all about.

This is not the gospel that is being preached. The gospel that is being preached has a lot to do with having the right beliefs, which vary from denomination to denomination. It often has to do with following a set of rules that we probably aren’t even supposed to worry about.

Jesus and his disciples were not preaching Jewish Mosaic law to the people. They were preaching — and showing love. They were eating with the undesirables of society, challenging hateful judgementalism. Love permeates the gospel. Jesus’ feet were washed with a woman’s hair and today’s equivalent of $35,000 or so worth of perfume. What love.

Jesus wept at the tomb of Lazarus. What love.

Jesus cast out demons easily. I think love had something to do with it. Darkness can never, ever overshadow light. Light, on the other hand, is a different story.

The Beast Prince was overtaken by a demon, it seems. What caused the demon to break away from the prince? Love.

Love heals. Jesus didn’t mind “breaking the Sabbath” to heal a blind man. He followed the law of love, which as He says,

“‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’The second is this: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no commandment greater than these.”

All the laws have to do with love for God and other people. If you commit an act of adultery, you are not being loving. Stealing and killing are not loving. Worshiping idols (money, good looks, other people) is not loving towards God. Sleeping around tends to be exploitative and selfish, not loving. Lying/gossiping about others — not loving.

Much of this seems to have gotten lost in our quest to understand the Old Testament and reconcile it to the gospel, however. I know that many, many people will disagree, but I’m not convinced we were ever supposed to worry about it. I don’t think Paul went around preaching the 10 Commandments and the meaning of the book of Daniel to the Gentiles. He was preaching the salvation of Jesus — what I think of as the “Law of Love.”

Hundreds of years ago, people didn’t have access to books. They had to listen to the word of God preached by priests, who had an investment in making people more afraid of their sin than the underlying lack of love, because this gave the church money and power. Thank goodness for an oral tradition that nevertheless revealed the truth of God.

Many Christians today have several translations of the Bible on their bookshelf. Why then, does the tale of Beauty and the Beast ring more true than the message one hears in many Christian churches today?

I have much, much more to write about this subject. Dreams, supernatural experiences, friendships — all of this is coming together to form one cohesive story of love and freedom in my life.

01/11/13

Come, and You Will See

Today, the doctor sat down on the couch where my son was sitting, held his hand and looked at him with utter compassion.

“You’re going to have to deal with this the rest of your life,” he said. “I’m sorry. We will help you learn how to manage.”

The words sounded like a curse. I wanted to jump out of my chair and scream, “No! He will not have this problem the rest of his life! Your words have power! Don’t speak this curse!”

All sorts of things were whirling around in my head. The power of life and death are in the tongue. What does that mean? Will saying it out loud make it true? God can heal him. But will He? Where is my faith? What am I supposed to think, do, believe?

God felt so far away.

He wasn’t, of course. But it felt that way.

I felt so alone. Because no one knows the answers to this. Except for God. And at that moment, the doctor’s voice was my only reality.

following JesusIt doesn’t have to be that way, though. I create a different reality when I choose to follow Jesus. To immerse myself in His presence. I don’t always make that choice, though. Today, I mostly chose to follow several design blogs in Google Reader. I spent most of the day looking at Scandinavian furniture and modern art. It was escapism, only it didn’t help me to escape a thing.

If I don’t make a daily choice to follow Him, I won’t get to where I need to be. Reading the Gospel of John tonight, these verses spoke to me:

They said, “Rabbi” (which means Teacher), “where are you staying?”

“Come,” he replied, “and you will see.” John 1:38-39

I find it interesting that Jesus did not say to these two disciples, “The last house on the right before you get to the market. Why don’t you stop by later if you have the time?”

If I want to know where Jesus is, I have to follow him. Not later. Right now.

I want to see.

The world behind me,
the cross before me.
No turning back,
no turning back.

Photo credit: Naria Nadal

12/25/12

And Unto Us, a Savior Is Born — Really!

Note: This post is not cheery.  It was either write the truth or not write at all.

Having a savior feels different than it used to.

The word “savior” just used to sound like any other word. Jesus our savior. Born in a manger. Sheep and donkeys came to mind.

nativity

I’ve known the reality of having a savior for a couple of years now, but perhaps never more than this Christmas.

My older son, my sweet boy who took off into the depths of LSD and never desired to fully resurface, well, a few days ago he changed his email address to an auto-forwarded message that sounds an awful lot like a suicide note. He’s somewhere in Guatemala. He was waiting for a cosmic change on the 21st. It was no joke to him. No one has heard from him.

Maybe my son is dead. I don’t know.

My younger son is getting inpatient treatment for a stigma-producing condition. It’s the kind of thing where people don’t send flowers, offer much support or even really want to talk to you much at all. We are in Shreveport this holiday season because that’s where the hospital is. Christmas will be the same as every other day this past week — getting into an overcrowded elevator and visiting him from 5:30 to 6:30.

It would be so easy to fall into the trap of self-pity. It would be easy to completely fall apart, actually.

But in one respect Christmas is not at all the same as any other day. It’s the day we celebrate that we have a savior. A SAVIOR.

This means the world to me, now that I know what it means.

My merciful savior stands between me and hopelessness. He grabs the demons of despair by their necks and casts them away from me. He is good he is love he is everything to me.

I tried to cover up my pain by shopping. However, the world’s solutions don’t work. I have maxed out my credit cards and now despise the mere sight of another sweater marked 50 percent off. The only cure for pain is turning to our savior. The pain doesn’t necessarily go away, but it sure as heck becomes easier to carry. Here’s why:

“Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.” Matthew 11:28-30

He arrived!! They worshiped him! He saved us! He saved us.

My savior. I love you.

 

 

 

12/14/12

Which Winter Holiday Do You Celebrate?

Jesus and Christmas

Fur Elise in the tree.


An old high school friend whom I’ve always respected put a brief rant about the folks who write CHRISTmas instead of Christmas on his Facebook status this morning. His update made me think about my own annoyance with the very same thing. Although Brian and I hold very different theological views, I think his annoyance is justified.

Here’s why.

Many of the folks who are insisting that we “put the Christ back in Christmas” are not celebrating Christmas. (In my not-always-so-humble opinion.) I’m not sure exactly what is being celebrated, but I really don’t think it’s Christmas, the name of which means “Christ Mass.” Whether or not we should celebrate a “Christ Mass” is in itself debatable, but I think it’s pretty clear that we are not participating in anything remotely close to a reverent and joyful honoring of Christ’s arrival to save us from our sins and oppression.

I passively resisted a bit this year by not putting up Christmas decorations, but my husband wanted them, so I caved. I’ve also been sucked into the commercialism, although I didn’t go so far as to line up at Wal-Mart Thanksgiving night.

I’ve been having fun celebrating this holiday that is not Christmas. I bought my husband some things that he’s been wanting for a while, and I know Sage will be thrilled with his gifts. I feel joy when I find the perfect thing for my best friend. It’s true that the spirit of giving is often alive and present during this time of year.

I’m having a party, although I’m not calling it a Christmas party. It’s a girl’s crafting night. We’ll eat cookies (not necessarily Christmas ones) and have a good time while the tree sparkles in the background.

I’m not going to feel guilty about putting up a tree or buying a bunch of gifts, although my scale will indicate its displeasure at my holiday over-consumption of baked goods, I’m sure. What I’m trying to figure out, though, is exactly how to celebrate Christmas. Because I want to. And I don’t know how.

However that turns out to be, it will still incorporate joy.

And the angel said to them, “Fear not, for behold, I bring you good news of great joy that will be for all the people. Luke 2:10

12/9/12

Jesus and The Little Red Hen

little red hen
A couple of days ago, I had a dream that brought to mind the story of The Little Red Hen.

Here’s the story. The Little Red Hen finds a wheat seed and sees that by planting it, she can have bread. She asks for help from her neighbors, the lazy and disinterested pig, cat and rat. This is fruitless, and she ends up planting the seed, harvesting the wheat, grinding the flour and baking the bread herself.

Say you encounter Jesus and begin planting seeds. You’ll soon find that not very many people are interested in planting seeds or doing anything else to to get the life, the bread, that Jesus offers.

On the other hand, there are plenty of folks who are just fine with going to church on Sunday and asking for prayer. There is not anything inherently wrong with this. But when a person lives their life la, la, la all the time without seeking the Lord, and wants their problems “fixed” by a prayer on Sunday, they are being lazy.

Jesus gives us His bread by grace. However, my experiences indicate that the bread is much more filling when we are respectful to its maker. When we seek to help him in the kitchen, so to speak.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, in his thought-provoking book The Cost of Discipleship, calls this sort of thing “cheap grace.”

Cheap grace is the grace we bestow on ourselves. Cheap grace is the preaching of forgiveness without requiring repentance, baptism without church discipline, Communion without confession…. Cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without the cross, grace without Jesus Christ, living and incarnate.

To enjoy the bread that God has set before us, I believe we need to fully participate in bringing the Kingdom of God to our world. Here are a few examples:

    We can ask God to heal us from our sickness and then proceed to sit at home and focus on our problem while waiting for God to deliver us. Or…we can sing praises to God for everything wonderful in our life and do something to show the love of Christ to someone else who is suffering.

    We can ask God for help paying our bills, or we can focus on being God’s hands and feet for those who have less than us.

    We can beg God to take us out of our circumstances, or we can repent to God for the choices we made that led to those circumstances.

My experience has been that God really moves when we focus on His kingdom more than ourselves. When we participate in the baking of the bread, then we will likely reap the most benefit from eating it.