Replacement: "Stand Firm" in Stick People

As 2019 comes to a close, it is quite common to reflect on the year to make goals and plans for the future.  It has been an interesting year.  More than ever before, I embrace Remnant Theology with what it entails, and its power uses.  The South seems to be full of religious leaders, card-carrying or not.  More often than not, they are untrained, unknowing the actual Gospel, but intent upon using the name of Jesus, pleading through hematology more than acting in love which is how Christians are to be known, and desiring revival when their hearts are already closed.  The United States of America and the entire seem to be closed off from one thing: Love.  I believe, more so than ever before, in a loving God -- in Mercy.  The entire faith of Christianity is bound together in two simple verses:

A loving, merciful community of God knows who they are.  Not one person is more important than another.  Each person understands God in his or her own way through their relationship and understanding.  Everyone has a different perception of themselves and God.  One thing is certain -- God is God, and the community is the community.  They are not one and the same.  Exodus 20:2 -- I am the Lord your God.  God has boundaries for His relationships with people and has boundaries for our relationships with each other.

This balance doesn't place one person above another.  Even the leaders in the group have, inherently, no more power and importance than anyone else.  To have such things is man-made through interpretation and behavior modification to doctrine and tradition.  Not one thing is more important than love in this paradigm.  God's communication is transparent.  God is known to be always there without deception.  Without Love, it cannot exist.  Problems only arise when someone decides to replace Love:

God makes Himself known.  In our world, it has been common for people to deceive.  Many answers have been given as to why this deception exists including human nature, Adam and Eve's fall from grace in the Garden of Eden, or even Satan himself.  Ultimately, why someone wants to be God's role is not as important as what it does to the community's relationships with one another or with God.  Instead, choosing that leading raises someone above other people in some way is not how God intended relationships to be.  Title does not make a relationship -- trust does.

Sometimes, people think that they have the right to choose for other people.  Often, it is a seminary, a parent, a secular school, a denomination, a spouse, a landlord, an employer, or just another person.  There isn't a way to raise oneself above another without causing violence.  Some form of violence has to exist to remove human equality and dignity.       

Violence comes in many ways.  Often, people become violent because they are angry and don't want to admit it.  Deception is a form of violence and anger.  While it is a common practice for leaders to listen for teaching at the door or to listen to the concerns of people without being announced, Christian leaders are called to be transparent as a form of honesty.  Hiding in the shadows is not leading or living in the light that a person would claim from a holy text of any kind.  Inherent in this deception is condemnation.  To choose another's sin by looking at another human being is automatic discrimination.  There isn't a way that it can't be.  Mark 9:38-9 gives people an account of Jesus removing his disciples' behavior modification techniques based on how they understand other people.  Mark writes, "John told Jesus, 'Teacher, we saw someone driving out demons in your name.  We told him to stop because he wasn't a follower like us.'  But Jesus said, 'Do not stop him.  No one who does a mighty work in my name will able soon afterward to speak evil of me.'"  Sometimes, others will not appear to be doing what others think is holy.  Not all things are going to be recognizable to everyone; however, they are transparent.  The disciples can bear witness to what is happening; however, they are not in hiding.  The disciples openly confront, requesting behavior modification and condemning sin in another's methodology, regardless of what is happening.  Sin was prejudicially decided because it was already in their hearts to do so.

Power tripping is addictive.  The desire that people have to stop others from doing what they are called to do is prevalent.  We like to think that we live in a world that is more secular than it has ever been.  We like to think that we are worse off than other generations in spiritual commitment.  How can this be?  God has not changed.  God is still reaching out.  The difference is that never before have human beings had the ability to elect their own leaders, dictators have been able to rule by choice, and people obtain information so quickly that a sound bite is a conviction.

None of us have to give in to the oppression that is created by people who need and crave positions of power.  People who need power should not ever have it.  Most of the time, the best leaders don't want to be the leader.  It is easier to follow than lead.  Appointing leaders can often be more delicate and more discerning than leading itself.  It is imperative not to choose leaders not created after One's own heart and image.

Sometimes, leaders need to remember that it isn't about them.  Sometimes, other people need to be considered more than they think.  Not all people are as open to things as others might think.  The choice is key in keeping relationships together.  Trying to replace another person's relationship with God is probably not ever going to be received very well by the person or God.

God is always going to be God.  No one can replace God in another person's life as God won't stand for it.  Those who think they can replace God to change a person to be what that person wants him or her to be is working against God.  God doesn't really like that.

Some people need their own special invitation back to relationships.  God wants people to live a long prosperous life.  Everyone living in loving-kindness for one another brings joy to the world.  They bring the Spirit of God with them wherever they go.  Remember that we are all in this world together.  Believing that changing one's behavior to please another person is not the same as living in Christ.  To live in Christ, people have to be the best people they can be.

God's remnant people are consistently clinging to what they believe.  Working to replace what that person believes is usually met with defiance and hostility.  It causes relationships to end as the Cost of Discipleship is letting go of that which replaces God in one's life.  It means that traditions, pastors,  discomfort, fear of success and failure, and any -olatry to include, Bibliolatry, be removed.  Traditions that we have of one person's access to first attempts to meet other people are not the only way to live.  Grace gives us more chances.  It's common in Christianity to turn people away due to tradition when others don't respond immediately or the first time they try to make contact.  Thank God that God keeps seeking instead of remaining in doctrinal tradition. 

In 2020, may the Remnant be accepted more in the world, and those attempting to replace God in the world be given peace in their anger by the hand of God.

Giving Thanks -- A Love Letter (Happy Thanksgiving)

Dear Mercy-loving God:

Thank you for continuing to accept all of humanity into your loving embrace after you placed the rainbow in the sky; it's more kindness and grace than any human being deserves.  You have placed diversity in our lives -- the diversity of love, grace, kindness, mercy, and fellowship.  

Thank you for all of my being -- knitted and formed in my mother's womb into a marvelous and wonderful creation for you.  

Thank you for the religious leaders you have placed in my life to teach their patch of your tapestry to me:
         Thank you for Bill Puder (the foremost influence in my mind -- ELCA).  Thank and bless Bill for his teaching from scripture that we fight powers and principalities and not the chosen tigers we catch by the tail.  Thank you for fighting the tigers we catch to devour ourselves. For this, you have given us in Torah -- Exodus 14:14, "The Lord will fight for you; you need only be still."  Thank and bless Bill for teaching me the phrase "go should on yourself" for those who would should on me; through this, he taught me to have my own values based on my child of Godness and not on the shoulds of the world.  He taught me to know You and value You.
         Thank you for Jeffrey Hupf (Episcopal USA).  Thank and bless Jeff for his humility to help me listen to your voice in my life.  He was a support to me when others kept trying to turn me away from your altar.  He helped me to learn to set my sails to journey for you, even if I found that I was in the belly of a whale -- you were there with me.  He helped and supported me while I was learning that I, too, was your Beloved Child of God when the world had me convinced of your hatred for me.  Instead, with Jeff, I embraced my belovedness.
        Thank you for Bruce Lawson (Independent Baptist/Episcopal-Anglican).  Thank and bless Bruce and his family as they are on their continued journey.  He taught me to be enjoy being pursued by You.  He wanted me to know that You loved, pursued, and desired me.  Shelter and heal him in your love.  You wanted me to find the monastery in the world and within so did he.  Thank you both for it.
        Thank you for Stephen Duncan (OCCA).  You gave him the heart of a child for play and music.  He has helped me to heal without ever turning me away for more than two decades.  Even when he mutters in other languages, I can trust Your Stephen that it isn't a curse; You have helped him to heal.
        Thank you for my Rabbis (All kinds through the Federation).  They have embraced me while I have been healing with You in the temples and synagogues amongst my people -- Your people.  They just welcomed me as one of them; they did not let me get lost in the world.  You gave them a heart for the Torah and for people.  Thank you for Ed Soloman, my first Hebrew teacher.  May you warm his heart with the knowledge that I finally read Shalom in Hebrew. Thank you for the other survivors I have been blessed to know as I sat healing with them.  You gave them the strength to continue living and embracing life.  They have helped to give this to me.  Your survivors honored and cared for me.  Their respect for me, shown through Mr. Tibor Schaechner and Mr. Simon --- (my apologies as I have forgotten his name) who made it through the Shoah, will never be forgotten.  Thank you for Tibor who has always said on sight to me "how are you, young man?" when the medical professionals around me decided that I was too broken to read/work/thrive ever again.  He has always been a source of strength and blessing to me.  His smile helped me to not only survive but thrive.  May you bless his life and his family.  Mr. Simon ---  always welcomed me to the Oneg tables that he worked to prepare himself.  He helped me keep the strength that I needed on days when I didn't think I could go further.  You gave him the strength and grumpiness to keep me going.  You have made no other people like these two.  Thank you for helping me learn that I am Jewish.  I love Your and my people, even Ezra Cappell.  He's a good person.  You blessed me with him before I knew how to understand his desire for Shabbos' joy in the lives of people around him.
         Thank you for Dr. Charles Stanley (He claimed Pentecostal -- I'm going with that).  You have taught him to say "out of the body, home with the Lord."  You have given him a heart to know you more than anything else.  You know it is difficult to have been made to survive for my faith and denied through a civil process for other reasons -- to be told "we're working on it" in America by the prosecution.  You know that some days it is too much.  Thank you for giving him this final assurance in You.
          Thank you for Jay Bakker.  He is not the others.  You have made him to explore Christianity and be saved through grace.  You have given him grace; Lord, help him to embrace it.  Thank you for his journey of grace such that he can help others with it.  You have made him an example of what most others don't want to be and still he loves you.

Thank you for your chosen remnant people.  There have been too many to mention by name.  You know who they are.  They are the ones You love to love me.  They are with me even when I don't know them.  Thank you for all of the others I have had influence my life for the better; the names are too numerous for a blog.  May they all have blessings in gratitude for You.    

Thank you for me.  May I not be the most reluctant of them all to be in your presence.  Thank you for sitting with me in my joys, my pains, my light, my darkness, my sickness, my human health, my oppression, my freedom, my sin, my trust, my love, and everything else with which I have been blessed.  Thank you, that even without one, I've never shed the collar.  Thank you for being alive still. Thank you for seeing what people would not see, understand, or accept for nearly a decade.  Thank you for sitting with me through all of the issues and the blame that was placed upon me by those who couldn't fathom how my life was ever going to work ever again.  Thank you for dwelling in me and giving me all that I have.

A Child of God,
Israel Andrew              

Change: Accountable Perception

Human beings like to keep track of almost everything.  Those of us using Bullet Journals are tracking our goals, daily meetings, finances, water intake and pretty much anything we want, including when we cried the last time or read the Scripture.  Our checklists and tick boxes provide for us a sense of accomplishment.  We have produced what we desired during the day and had that gratifying checkmark in the bullet point of our own choosing.  Apps are made for all phone operating platforms to help us track our success rates, and the rates at which we are able to improve.  What tracking doesn't do for people is create a means of accountability.  Accountability in a person's life requires several things: 1) mutual understanding, 2) questioning, and 3) self-esteem.

Rule-driven Christians promote their understanding of parts of Scripture in any situation that they find themselves in.  I'm a state employee, so I don't promote one religion over another while allowing for the free exercise thereof as given to American citizens in the 1st Amendment of the US Constitution at work.  Non-citizens in the United States don't have the same constitutional rights as Americans do.  I teach argumentation.  So, each one of my students is, at the very least, presented with the information that morality and ethics are not the same concepts.  Essentially, morality is a matter of personal choice, and ethics has a communal understanding.  One -- ethics -- necessitates the benefit of the doubt for a human being, and the other doesn't.  Communities in the United States do not have one understanding of a deity, even if the deity is called by the same label.  Christians don't have the same religion as religion is determined by the way that the individual lives out one's life.

My classes have been full of people this autumn who have chosen to write about how lying isn't always bad.  Lying has its merits and benefits.  The common mutual understanding of this is that lying is bad.  Human beings and evangelical mainline Protestant denominations particularly, in my experience, love to hold one another accountable for what they perceive to be sin.  In this case, lying is lying, therefore, sin by default. The problem with holding another person accountable to one's own perception is that the narrative of humanity is often lost.  The grey areas of life -- change -- happen when, as one would say, life is happening.  However, it is in the accountability legality in a motivated mind for personal justice that excludes the benefit of the doubt.  When we presume guilt, we promote selfish, merciless convictions.

Questioning oneself is the main process through which another may be brought back into right relationship with another.  However, if I am focused on the deeds of another, I may not have the means through which to, as they say, "stay blessed" myself.  When "stay blessed" turns to "bless your heart," there's a problem in a relationship.  Matthew 18-15-20 states: "If your brother sins against you, go and tell him his fault, between you and him alone.  If he listens to you, you have gained your brother.  But if he does not listen, take one or two others along with you, that every charge may be established by the evidence of two or three witnesses. If he refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church.  And if he refuses to listen even to the church, let him be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector.  Truly, I say to you, whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.  Again I say to you, if two of you agree on earth about anything they ask, it will be done for them by my Father in heaven.  For where two or three are gathered in my name, there am I among them" (ESV).  Out of context and in the mind of, often, younger/immature people or those new to one another, the feeling of injustice and moralistic righteousness causes one to think that another has "sinned" against the person.

Change is not sin.  Change has not missed the mark of anything.  It is spot on as change.  Most syllabi have the phrasing somewhere that the plan of the course is subject to change.  Change doesn't mean that the person is wrong.  On first reading of this passage today, I initially thought, somewhat jokingly and somewhat not, that the sinner refusing to change must obviously be the pastor.  Pastors don't like to hear back from the flock about their own interrelational concerns.  Often, the spout of "I have my own accountability partners" is brought forward to make sure that a wall can be built into a relationship.  Essentially, the message "communicative intimacy is not welcome here" could not be more broadcast in the statement even if there were protest signs available. People forget that when you come forward to accuse another of sin that they may very well be pointing out their own.  Adding two or three others doesn't usually happen in my experience.  Getting a group of people together to scapegoat another into not choosing of their own accord and trying to just agree with the status quo probably isn't going to work.

Most religious people are not going to change to what another wants because they want it.  I, for example, don't believe in exerting one's own religion over another's as a matter of humanness.  No one has to have the same, and can't have, the same relationship with God that I do or it wouldn't be mine.  As a part of the tradition I have mainly practiced and have been taught through, your own religion and practice thereof is a matter of your own conscience; the only thing we hold in common is corporate prayer.  Those attempting to force another to do so, from my point of view, should lose their freedom in America as everyone has the constitutional right to practice his/her own belief.  It is only through questioning that a person can understand if something is continuing in a negative manner if it is indeed a sin to the accused.  Perhaps, one's conscience has not agreed that it is sin as some would say because "God has not convicted the person" of it.  Who are we to choose conviction of sin if God has not?  To do so is merciless, selfish, compassionless, and irrationally arrogant since the Creator of All Things has not deemed it important enough to charge the accused's heart with it.    

For some reason, religious believers seem to have a larger propensity for low self-esteem.  My own conjecture is that this comes from focusing on another's suffering, Christ's, and one's own sin and people have, not only encouraged, but demanded that believers do.  This has denigrated the esteem of people for centuries.  It has caused people to focus on suffering instead of helping and building up communities.  Change is not sin; therfore, the methodology does not apply.  Perception doesn't create sis, except in the perceiver.  While we have the Freedom of Religion in American and not from it, one person is not another.  If I am not you, then God knows that our virtues and sins are different from one another.  If I am you, then we are dysfunctionally codependent.  I let Him sort that out instead of choosing whom to slaughter as a sacrificial scapegoat for my own inadequacies.  I choose over a decade ago, while in graduate school although my life has been quite the battle since, to work on choosing joy and mercy.  To do so, one must choose God frequently.  Choosing God is not a one and done conversation.  

I practice choosing a less confrontation path because 1) my doctors have asked me to do so and 2) I don't believe in examining the heart of another person, especially since I only have my own human understanding of my own.  Of course, when I am the target, and I am often the point of another's accountability interests, my health and religious understanding is usually not considered.  Essentially, stripping me of my constitutional rights as an American citizen.  Following the doctor's orders, I have learned, is usually heretical to people.  I have been an apostate more than once for refusing or turning down pork or choosing to be less confrontational.  Somehow, meekness has no value when it is bold to be meek in a society of religious gladiators intent upon pursuing making real men out of boys.      

Let those who find change to be sin be bound to their own presumptive judgments now and in the hereafter.                

Simplicity: Scheduled Spontaneity

Grace is not limited to Christendom.  Ultimately, Christian theology gives us the definition that grace is the free gift of salvation.  This definition of grace is far too limiting for humanity.  Grace, simply, is a free gift.  It need not matter what it is.  We tend to think of a gift as something materialistic.  It need not be so.  A gift is something that we receive without cost.  Everything costs something; the only concern for most people for most things is who's paying.  When I think of the most costly thing I have, I don't think of my faith, my belief, my family or any plethora of things that people might think would be more important.  My time is the most valuable graced gift I have.

I am known for scheduling my life like a fiend.  People tend to think that all I do is work.  Now in my early forties, like most others my age, I have a need and a desire for high productivity in my life.  People tend to think that I am a workaholic based on the amount of ink in my Bullet Journal.  I have told people before, and I am often asked about whether or not I ever have any downtime.  My answer seems to always be the same, "Yes.  I schedule it in."

For some reason, scheduling downtime, self-care time, or whatever it gets labeled seems to be absurd.  Even more so, I schedule spontaneity time.  I literally have a need to schedule unscheduled time such that I know that there will be a point in time that I am not working, answering questions, emailing, writing, contending with the public, being concerned about faith or someone else's faith, or doing anything else for someone else.  If I don't schedule it and draw a boundary line, I won't get any time for myself.  There will always be more work to do, but there won't always be another opportunity to meet up with my newer acquaintances and friends for a game of Werewolf or go to a festival.  Somehow, when I said festival, I was told that it wasn't downtime.  It was a beautiful moment.

My father, like many, had a way with words from time to time.  Explaining pearls of wisdom from my father is often fraught with rephrasing colorful words, jaded sarcasm, and his personal view on life.  Other people's parents wanted them to be doctors, attorneys, psychologists, and teachers, regardless of teaching income as it is somehow noble to serve selflessly in poverty.  My father didn't have a chosen profession for his children. His pearl of wisdom on vocation and careers was "If you aren't having fun, then it isn't worth doing."  Finally, I got to explain that my schedule is filled with fun.   For some reason, this was filled with a statement that I was spending my time storing things up for my retirement when I was older.  That is when I realized, they have significantly underestimated my income versus the cost of living where I live.  Somehow, I make a lot of money; I was a workaholic with a lot of money.  This is nowhere close to true.  I am doing what I like to do, I'm having fun with my profession as my father wanted, and I am creating poetry, prose, and new drawings as I am able to do so.  If anything, I spend my downtime creating which is more fulfilling to me than even my own scheduled and spontaneous Netflix and Chill time.

I realized that I, have and have had for most of my life, considered work to be fun.  I have a work ethic that keeps my art being made.  It keeps me writing.  Without it, I wouldn't be having fun.  At some point, I have to take a break from having fun one way to having fun another way.  I enjoy my life, even with the stresses that it has.  It could be a lot less stressful, but those around me consider me to be wealthy - -somehow.  I am in a way -- I schedule fun.  I honor and live my father's advice that life is to be fun.  What you spend your time, energy, and emotions doing is to be fun.  It should, as is more contemporarily said, spark joy.

This spontaneous joy is that they think I am working.  I was blessed to have this discussion with my students.  I am graced with time to live.  I don't know how much time, but like everyone else I have it.  I was blessed to learn that they experience my joy, my honoring of my father's prompting for vocational fun, and the choice that I am spending my time with them.  I was blessed to share that my work is fun.  That writing to me and being creative is fun.  They have told me that I am different from several other of their teachers because I know their names.  Their humanity is important to me because humanity is fun.  Being human and not my own God, or God forbid my own savior, is fun.  I don't keep the universe spinning or gravity working.

Thank God! I'm a writer.  I teach and write.  I wouldn't want to be may other things.  I might try them out, but I love writing.  I love learning more about words and helping others to understand that creating and living in the imago dei is one of the truest ways to embrace a Creator-God and the fun He has devised for us.  Because I am a writer, I get to also be a musician, an artist, a historian, a wordsmith, a narrator, a healer, a lover, and so on.  When I wake up with my heart geared at writing and creating something new, I feel joy.  My heart is already at work -- at fun.  Fun is spontaneous.  Time to have it is necessary.

Simply stated: we have all been graced with time to have fun with what our hearts are set upon.  Live joyfully.  

Igniting the Flame Requires a Wick

Often, spiritual and religious people discuss finding their faith, when they came to faith, and how they were lost without their faith.  It is less often that the subject is brought up that people need ignited to keep the faith.  That inner flame in the person's spirit is there from the beginning, but like any good lamp, it needs to be lit again from time to time.  It needs reviving.

What has revived my inner life, my entire life, is leaving society, going to nature, and finding one-ness with creation.  That which is created is part of the Creator.  It cannot be any other way.  The Creator's blessing and imprint is upon it.  In our world, we forget that we are human.  We connect to technology and the hunt for the American dream to only realize that what we had along, quite like Dorothy, was not only plentiful but wisely sustaining.  When we asked for help, we could have been helped by those around us from the beginning of our journeys, but, like Dorothy, some of us began by dropping a lot of baggage onto the scene to start with a bit of carnage and wreckage.  Not everyone is going to want to bond with or help a cheery, house-dropping, sibling-killing newbie.  Often, those with the same secular masks covering their own flaws will provide a roundabout means of earning the desired outcome when a simple solution is all that's needed.  A customer service smile is often just that -- a means to deaden the experience until the clock rolls around for lots of people to do what they want instead of the grind for the next paycheck.  The issue within the drollness of life and the ditches that we have seemingly dug ourselves into in America is that the wick has been burned through the candle.  At some point, a flame doesn't burn without some kind of wick whether it be rope, pine needles or otherwise.  

What is your wick?  For some, the quest of knowledge is what holds their flame in place.  For others, the bonds that they have with their families keep them burning bright.  Without a place to hold the fire, the candle doesn't burn and neither do our souls hunting for their own understanding.  We would rather extinguish than burn brightly.  We don't worry about hiding our lights under the proverbial bushel as much as we may be concerned about those who continue to bushel our lights.  In a world of offendedness, the social construct that reigns is a huge game of keeping my light away from your bushel --  a global game of claiming ownership over the candles on one's birthday cake to protect them while another attempts to blow them out to get to one's cake faster.

How tired I am of candles at vigils for the dead and causes, being the only use of the archaic flames in our lives!  How tired are all of us of the lists of names in our country that are read to honor the extinguished people by the violent bushel of another!  The very first time I notice that I was at peace and far from the violence of the world was around a campfire.  This was a fire that united all of those around in melodies, snacks, and sweetness.  The circle of those whom without the glow of the fire circle and the singing of the music would not have experienced peace that year.  As the fire pit was filled and prepared, their inner wicks appeared.  They wanted to be lit.  To enjoy as much of the fire that they had built was the only thing that ignited them into a peaceful evening and continued year.  The peace they found as their own wicks were ignited just as the fire was, was contagious.  It was here that my inner life was also ignited.  It was just peaceful.

Still today, it is not the candles at the vigils we hold or the ones gathered in services for Christmas Eve or even Channukah that ignite me.  It is the one that I light every day.  My own personal candle to set the day apart from the world with the intention that I will try to write something beautiful, to live a better life, to embrace changes and challenges, to live what I believe regardless of onlookers and critics, and to remember that striving to perfection means that an intention to shine through the cracks in our stories and perceptions of others may be the only way to stay lit in an engulfing society.

Set the intention to stay aflame -- to burn brightly when the rest of the world seems to be darkened.  Be the wick around which the fire can burn brightly for the world to see how well a melody can encompass peace for one evening and bring it through the entire year.  Be the wick in the middle of your flame giving to others the same opportunity to shine.

Embrace what lights you up everyday!

Herding Cats: Discipling Out of Dichotomy

I've never made either my Christian or Jewish journey private.  In fact, I have made them both quite public.  Having a blog and writing about life on Facebook does that.  It makes one's life public.  Many have addressed this as an impossibility to have in my life, especially since I am not a Messianic Jew and am a remnant believer.  Others have posed that this dichotomy and interest is a result of the journey of a specific congregation I was a part of, and others have decided that I am just re-examing my values as a part of my age and injury.  I've always examined values and, generally, have written values arguments in my own work.  When the full span of my life is examined, a direct flow from 1999 to now shows how this dichotomy has developed for 20 years.  Essentially, when I learned that I was also genetically Jewish along with all of the other things that I am, I readily accepted it.   

Acceptance is key to loving oneself.  It is impossible to love others if one does not love oneself.  It is a part of me, so I have accepted it.  Simply - I am me regardless of what that is.  I associate with all kinds of people because, at this point in my life, I am a lot of those people or have been.  While I am not spouting that I am Everyman, I am keenly aware that I too could be a you.  I've worked far more on inclusion than exclusion, and thanks to my Reform Jewish friends/family, I have considered extreme hospitality beyond double chocolate brownies and Watergate salad.  My journey with extreme hospitality actually began much earlier than my time in Reform Temples did; however, being with people who practice it causes it to be more ingrained than the hospitality lesson would otherwise be.  I had to learn that I am both, figuratively, a dog and a cat.    

Nonetheless, those whom have worked on themselves in their own lives and lead others are far more prone to have removed the false dichotomies that our societies have chosen to enforce on us from before the time we were born.  This skill makes or breaks leaders.  If a leader can look past sameness and embrace difference, the dualistic boundaries can be traversed to include everyone.  We like our boundaries and our sameness but not as much as removing the very differences that keep us alive, well, and, in part, entertained enough to create communities.  The problem though with leaders is that someone has to lead them.  Leaders are cats.    

How do leaders lead other leaders when they are all busy serving those they are leading already?  It's quite simple: Listen to Everyone And Decide.

Listen to:  Listening is not hearing.  Listening means that the hearer has understood the message, has processed it and has considered what it means.  People have hearing tests to check if they can hear a sound.  They don't have listening tests other than in schools to see if a student can reflect what another person has said.  After that, if the skill isn't used, then it is usually forgotten.  Listening to the still small voice of God, one's own heart and the circle of trusted people in a person's life can steer everyone, especially leaders.  Dogs listen to everything from everyone and continue to love.    

Everyone: Everyone means everyone.  Credentialling doesn't necessarily create a better advisor.  Children sometimes have the most honest and wiser statements than those who haven't yet gotten their lives sorted out at 65.  Most people don't listen to children to make decisions.  Everyone also includes those who have an opposing viewpoint.  A one-sided conversation is the ego speaking through everyone to confirm gossip.  Everyone includes people who don't want and will not be in agreement.  Everyone is everyone. 

And:  And is a coordinating conjunction.  It brings at least two different things together.  This is the point of leadership in many ways.  Leaders support, serve, and unite people together for a common cause.  Joining together is not easy for people, but joining together is not desired by everyone.  Trying to force people to be together isn't ever going to bring people together.  It causes resentment and separation.  

Decide:  A decision is an intentional choice.  It can never be included in a statement of "well, I had to because..." A decision is a specific choice.  It cannot be wafted away as anything other than a choice.  To decide also means that accountability to given to the person making the decision.  It is necessary to work with decisions instead of attempting to work with the rut of whatevers.  Intentionality is supportable and leading necessitates accountability and responsibility for the decisions made even if the leader claims "I had to..." or "I have to..."  Usually, have and had to do's aren't.  They are choices.  Cats choose, and dogs want to do whatever the human wants as long as they can be together.  Dogs want to be friends regardless of the level of loyalty that they need.  Cats choose when to be around.  As the musical tells us, cats even choose their own names.     

When people L.E.A.D., goals progress to successful completion.  Absolutist viewpoints are impossible, and leaders are unable to have dictatorial commands.  To L.E.A.D., one must consider another's humanity and continue to understand that power is not the point of leadership.  Acceptance of what comes, using it to serve and loving people is the point.  If I too could be a you, then I also have to be willing to follow myself if I am going to lead.  Any leader who is unwilling to follow him or herself based on how the team members are included in the decision-making process should not be the leader.  We are all diverse people, and we want to stay that way.  We want to be cats and dogs, and to do so, we cannot live a dichotomy.  Accepting that we are not each other and not one part of us can be separated and stay alive as we were intended gives us the power we seek for everyone --- loving equality.       

  

The Adventurer's Saving Point

Most contemporary RPG games have a saving point.  The adventures that we live are quite like these games.  What I look for in the middle of the most difficult parts of the games, and always have, are the save points.  In the middle of the battle, most people want a way to save the progress that they have made through the adventure.  Our live's adventures are similar in the sense that from time to time we need a point to save what we have done, set a new goal, and remember the narrative of what we are doing.  Just before defending my thesis in graduate school, I wanted a save point.  The document had been accepted and all that was left was the public defense.  I wanted a save point almost at the end of the term in case of "do-overs."  It wasn't there.  Sink or swim is the nature of those defenses.

Most of life's adventure cannot be a "do-over."  None of us have an actual time machine, other than our collectible Tardises and back-ups for our Apple computers, to change our lives in the past.  At some point, we either learn to move forward or cyclically re-run the mistakes of the past hoping that life will somehow get better.  It doesn't.

It seems unnecessary to write that some activities are more important than others.  Certainly, job interviews, performance reviews, concert performances, the birth or death of a family member, and weddings are high priority events and are obviously of more importance than starting the dishwasher before bed or on the way out of the front door.  Over time, we learn that these events are the experiences that we are seeking, but the experiences of life that we've been given or have chosen.  Some, we would rather reset our lives and go back to the previous save point because we may not think that we have the experience to go up against the level of danger or risk that we are currently facing.  When are we ready for too much danger?

We choose to continue forward into the danger, even with our doubts and thoughts.  Without a plan or even a concept of what we might do in the future.  We take our feelings of inadequacies, fear of the unknown, whatever armor we think we need for the trip, pick up our keys for our trusty steeds and drive off into whatever reality we live for that day.  Some of us at this point don't leave home without weapons which the US Constitution seemingly permits.  Americans have the right to bear arms.  We can own our own munitions and use them according to the laws.  More and more people are learning about and earning open carry or concealed carry licenses to have their weapons with them consistently.  Most people are doing this in the name of self-defense due to the "time we live in" or "how the world is today."  The world isn't any different today than it was in the Middle Ages when people carried knives with them everywhere for protection.  Some still do.

Today, the difference is consistent media-induced fear.  It seems that, like many issues, this is double-edged.  I, personally, don't have an issue with licensed citizens carrying their munitions with them.  I was raised on military posts and not everyone is.  It doesn't phase me to think that all of my students would be carrying weapons with them to school; I've taught on military posts.  Soldiers are trained and have laws that govern munition use.  I don't believe that churches have the right to regulate munitions in the United States.  If that were so, then the government would be in violation of the Establishment Clause in the Constitution.  It doesn't bother me to think that there would be guns carried into a church building; however, in this regard, agreed upon rules are often employed.

Not one gun shooting in America, whether in a church, school or nightclub, can be a do-over for any  of the people involved.  As a person who has considered a license to carry for my own protection, specifically in churches, the rise of establishments choosing to remove those with the same inkling is disturbing.  Certainly, wanting to carry a weapon is not terrorism as I have, at one point in my life, been accused.  I don't own a gun of any kind.  I've never had the training or the desire to have one so much that I would go through the training to feel comfortable even owning one.  There are others who own them with disregard to the training that they have citing the American right to ownership.

The problem that exists in America is not one of ownership.  It is the common call that one person would have the right to force another to his/her point of view.  The inner desire to have the respect that one person believes that he or she has earned or deserves from another.  Unlike the military, respect is not built on rank or position in the world.  While some positions do have expectations of respect and honor from the people around them, it doesn't mean that the people are required to do so like the military.  

American citizenship brings with it an ugliness and a beauty all of its own.  Is respect still an American value?  Many in America would like to return to a fictitious save point.  The crusade to return to a way long forgotten when men were men and women, well, weren't.  Unfortunately, history shows that the concept of "the old ole days" never really existed.  Sentimentality combined with a desire to cheat age and death want it to exist.  Every generation chooses to change and stabilize their lives in their own ways.  Respect won at gunpoint isn't respect; it's fear.

Fear is a motivation for most social change.  The fear of oppression turns those who claim their freedom, on either side, are warriors for their causes.  They want a better future they envision while others just have claimed it and live it now.  It is not braver to be in a parade than to live the life you want every day.  I dare say that it is not braver to be living now than not, to carry a gun than not, or to love than not.  All of that is life.  To me, life is holy ground even when it is perceptually being blown up.  

I would rather it not be blown up.  I desire less save points that way.  I, like everyone else, like comfort.  Discomfort and confusion denote learning.  I cannot learn without it.  It too is holy as is the endpoint to relationships.  The end happens, especially if we shoot each other.                  

Remnancy in Society

Remnants are that which is leftover from mainly sewin projects.  However, the remnant strand is seen throughout Abrahamic scripture as those who are left over after some event.  They are people who understand themselves as chosen to be called in a different way.  This "chosenness" is often looked upon as arrogance; however, those who believe in remnancy also know that all are chosen in the same way.

Unfortunately, only about 2% of contemporary Christians have accepted remnant theology into their lives.  Our society and the world is full of people who have a need to use religion as leverage over others that they know.  Christians, specifically contemporary evangelical Christians, are the most frequently used example of hypocritical living when claiming a belief.

Remnant believers do not accept or believe in self-appointed or unaccepted/pre-chosen religious leaders of any kind.  It wouldn't matter what the person's title was.  The answer to a self-appointed unasked for religious leader is that it is presumptuous to assume that a believer wouldn't have a relationship or understanding of a deity already.  Not one person knows what another is to be doing in hi/her life or what he/she will be called to do at any point in time.  Attempts at changing the believer's life, especially through behavior modification, is specifically hostile.  There isn't a way to know what is going on in anyone else's life, regardless of intuition, without actually talking civilly with the person while attempts at changing the narrative are left behind.  One person's narrative doesn't have more leverage or importance than another's narrative when the dignity of every person is upheld within the imago Dei.

While it may seem odd to people, people usually don't accept remnancy out of a means to remove accountability from that person's life.  However, what it does is uphold the dignity, respect, and divine spark held within each person.  Remnancy and the power structures that go hand in hand with it is often chosen by those with genetic connections to the Jewish people without choosing the denomination line of Messianic Judaism.  The traditions are quite different, while like most denominations, are similar in some ways.

Remnant believers are not overtly known to those around them unless specifically asked about the person's life.  There isn't one way to be remnant other than to be leftover.  From what?  Generally, the destruction of the Temple in 70AD.  The closest thing to remnancy in the Jewish world, as far as I am aware, would be an egalitarian reconstructionist/reform Noahide.  Such a thing/category doesn't necessarily exist as reconstructionists don't necessarily accept chosenness as far as I am aware.  Christianity has remnancy which most people don't know about.

So where in the world are the remnants?  We are everywhere.  There wouldn't be a need to discuss it necessarily unless conflict has arisen.  There isn't much to discuss beyond power use and specific boundaries.  It does not, however, have a place for one person to remove and replace what another believes in any way shape or form.  The use of replacement power is seen as directly antithetical and inhospitable to the remnant believer.  It denigrates the very spark of life given to each human being.  Some would even call most remnant believers as: particular.  Contemporarily, conjectured jokes about OCD would be made concerning the individual when the use, which is abuse, of replacement power is used in the person's life.  Often, remnant believers are told that they have "burnout" or that the person is just over-reacting when they protest the use of replacement ideologies.  For those with a genetic Jewish link, it is a form of ethnic cleansing due to religious adherence.  Remnant theology accepts genetic ethnicity as God-given along with other scientific facts about each person.  God gave me my beautiful blue eyes.

Remnancy embraces and values the entire person to include the body.  Along with the body comes the very DNA and genetic information that is often refused from both sides of the Jewish-Christian dichotomy, and without it, a person would not be completely whole.  In short, remnant believers are often the conscientious objectors to causes except through educational and pacifistic social pursuits.  Instead of a protest, a remnant believer would write to protest through poetry, music, and the like instead of carrying a poster to protest through civil unrest.  It's a slightly different approach to the same social issues and civil concerns.  Due to the difference, it is assumed that the person wants special treatment.  Unfortunately, the treatment received is normally othering of the person along with defiant diagnoses.

Unity is easy when people have respect for one another.  When people really focus on radical hospitality, community can be achieved without needing others to change to one point of view over another.  The inclusion of the ger brings with it challenges, but it also accepts that others may be quite like us.  It doesn't convict or condemn without reason or work to create one.        

Sophia: Lost and Found

Spring is approaching, rapidly, or so the buds on the tree branches outside of my balcony’s railing tell me.  It seems too obvious to me in the spring that life moves forward, that we experience growth, and that, while we may experience episodes of time that cause those around us to attempt a consolation of “This too shall pass,” we are basically moving through a natural change birthing new possibilities.  I haven’t written for quite some time, almost two years, on this blog because I, frankly, found that my own writing was neither what I wanted nor what I wanted to portray of myself, a well educated, highly critically thinking human being.  As a trumpeter, we are told to sound a little more cornet-y which means to find the round center of the pitch instead of letting the trumpet control itself with a brassy sharpened edge.  While this blog is titled The Edge of Ink, ink a liquid.  What liquid is sharp?  Often thought-provoking work can bring us to the edge of what we really want.

I read another blog that gave me moments to think about it.  I have moved to the south where there are almost as many colleges and universities are there are churches.  While I appreciate the historical significance and the architectural experiences I am able to have surrounded with colorful artistry, I am not overly impressed with the need to hear the phrase “the Bible says” consistently.  I hear about the Bible more than gas prices, which for me, is the opposite of what I have usually encountered even in my seminary years.  With nearly ten years of religious study completed, it still doesn’t impress me to be inundated with what the Bible says about something when my Spiritual education has taught me differently.   Not contradicting — just differently than another’s interpretation or my own.

In an effort not to be another scripture spouting seminarian intent on writing about my favorite wisdom verse, Giles’ blog entry pretty much does it for me. I stopped, long ago, looking into a book or a mirror for wisdom.  The best Bible scholars in the world when they are asked about how the text should be applied will usually state something to the effect of  — carefully, intentionally, prayerfully.

I mainly use the Bible with supportively educational purposes.  I accept a lot of things about it, but I don’t accept that Wisdom can be embodied on a page.  Wisdom is an experienced experience.  She is lived.  I don’t think that I even look to the Bible for a specific purpose.  Do I read it regularly?  Absolutely!  I know a lot of stories, histories, instructions, social constructs, and family and gender variances through the texts.  Combined with language and historical training, I can dig through words and create a hermeneutic that works within a systematic structure to dazzle those with diploma scrolls.

I get Wisdom from trees.  I like trees.  Trees are simple.  They are created, grow, and have the stability that most people don’t have.  I am more at home in prayer with trees and plants.  Nature does it for me.  If I had a prayer closet, it would be shipped like a national forest.  It’s just how it is.  This is where Wisdom is found, prayerfully in the woods.   Remember that one who sings prays twice.  Taking a tuneful stroll through the trees may be the wisest thing for all of us to do.

Shalom.