Relevancy of Change

Other Gen-Xers and I have been stereotyped as not accepting labels, yet everyone goes through points in time when the labels that they once accepted as a part of their lives become superfluous. Perhaps, this has happened more often for Generation X. 

We are known for being the generation that were latch-key kids. We, in some ways, raised ourselves or, as I see it, had nearly limitless options for our own unsupervised time. After my high school day was completed, I had choices to make for my time and a key to a house to use. It was up to me as to how I wanted and when I wanted to use both of those options. This kind of upbringing provides for a plethora of wonderful things. Several of those are: 1. I decide how to use my own time, 2. I choose people more individually, 3. I create space for what I want to do, 4. I say no, and 5. I expect privacy and boundaries. 

Because I didn't have a highly supervised experience while I was younger, I was feer to accept the labels that I thought fit me as a person at the time or reject the ones that I have found to be irrelevant. For example, for a long time, I understood myself as a "student." Now, I, still learning and even if I went back to a university for more education, wouldn't need the label. I don't understand myself this way; I find "student" to be what being alive is, so the label is irrelevant. To state student is to also at some point state an inherent humanness. There just isn't a need for the label from my point of view. Why then continue to hold on to the label as though it were treasure pealed from a Cambell's soup can to turn in for class points?

Identity work has a lot of labels involved in it. In my late 20s, I chose to place myself in therapy and completed a lot of identity work. I started removing labels that people placed on me much earlier in life long before that, but because I did, I seemed to be unfit to be in the world around those who had their labels, stuck to them, and had needed them to be valid for everyone. Like every generation, Gen X is between two other generations who need their identity and labels for them. The Boomers had their lives figured out and the Millenials had their grandparents, parents, and siblings to affirm the labels they were giving to one another. Meanwhile, I, a single Gen Xer, kept removing mine as do most Gen Xers still today. It seems that we tolerate the labels needed to appease those around us from time to time, but for the most part, I and others have resolved to be in our own lives to the removal of labels. 

My own key, when I was younger, meant that I had my own responsibility to get what I needed to be done at school (which was also a place of employment for me) and home when I was available to get it done. Usually there was a timeframe; however, timing was still my choice. I, fortunately for my father, am an introvert, so I didn't really get into trouble. I went home. I was an honors student and in the band, so I had practice, homework, and a job. I didn't have a lot of pressure to get things done for someone else's expectation or on someone else's incessant timeline. I've always worked within those but not to the detriment of my freedom of choice. My choices were limited; however, I could have still pretty much chosen to do whatever I wanted with my life. I didn't need to achieve anything for anyone else. I had enough ambition and self-motivation not to need someone else's. I didn't have the label to look up to or bestowed on me such that I needed to have.

I don't have the label -- veteran. I don't have a parental label or an espoused one. I have my name. I know what I've done in my life, but as far as Self labels, I don't need them other than to appease another person's curiosity. I think in terms of what I am doing. In my identity work, I challenged a lot of the labels that were placed on me and exchanged all of them at one point for Child of God. It's the only one that I really think that I need to have. In the past year, my LGBTQ+ label has been in great demand to be explained and confessed as though I were living in sin and hiding my reality. 

I don't have the same experience that most have with this part of life or that most people seem to extort about this part of life. I've only ever needed the label because someone else needed it for themselves. I don't really need the label. I know who I am and what I am atrtracted to and how that has changed over time. As most will tell you, things change over time. My need to have a label for other people hasn't changed. I wish it had changed, but the need to be labeled creates a pidgeon-hole effect. I don't have the need to be "trans," "gay," "pan," "poly," "boi," etc. For most of my life, I haven't labeled. I just used queer for a long time. Creating subcategories and understandings beyond queer has caused division and dissension. I'm going back to just Child of God with my own key and my own timeline to get what I choose to do done, whether other people want that to be that way or not. 

I would rather just be than fit in to be.

Helping the Blind

Sitting in an online classroom or a Zoom room behind a black box or a completely blackened screen is not conducting a blind observation. It's ghoulish to pop in all of a sudden to make sure that the person knows that you are there just to make sure the person knows that you can show up at any point in time. To prove that the professor or speaker has absolutely no control over another's presence is not a blind observation. It's arrogance.

Power games are important to a lot of people. Surprising presenters or showing up to be confrontational is one way that people like to play with power. Unfortunately, this kind of power play has become the norm for online teaching and learning in a way that people are not able to effectively succeed at either. The game online is that the class sessions are recorded. Often, the recording wins -- not the people. 

Human beings are not meant to play power games. People are meant to work with one another in community instead of working with power beyond our control. We are asked to live in grace and not in human power gains. While there isn't anything wrong with success, how we get there needs to be within two realms: sanity and humanity. 

Sanity requests that we not bludgeon one another with rules. Most people are trained to think in "wrongs." We've been taught that two wrongs don't make a right when we weren't taught to look for what is already correct. We're conditioned to understand what is wrong. Sanity beckons us to learn to recognize and see what is right. What is correct? That depends.

Humanity requests that we use our sanity and not give in to the powers and principalities beyond ourselves such that we think we can have magical carpet rides instead of giving freedom to our souls to experience humanness. Humanity wants sanity. Christians have the great inherent excuse of the Fall in the Garden of Eden. "The Woman!" we can cry out to say that humanity has fallen from grace. Why are we still falling?

Between sanity and humanity, we have grace. Mercy! We have grace. We have the choice not to sit behind our technological screens blasting at those on the other side. We have the choice not to surprise and hide behind power that really isn't our own. 

We will have days online when people won't speak, use their cameras, or even use a name other than iPhone. They don't know, so you won't know. But some days, none of us will fight with power that we don't have and can't control. 

Some days are wonderful. People remain in community with one another online. Success can be had, and people are able to move on with their lives knowing that they have done the very best that they could have done. We will be able to see the power in the darkness before it is even there. We will know that it isn't the worst day or experience that it could be. Those days will let us see our human-ness. We won't need to find fault to see what is meet and right so to do. 

Our communal eyes will see mercy!

Public Persecution -- The Power of Should

We live in a world of values: both collective and individual.  I may not value what the rest of my community values and still have the the responsibility to know my my own values are. Should is not ever an agreement.  What I think I should do and what I think others should do is not an agreement for action.  There are communal shoulds that replace those of the individual from time to time.

When in a conversation, even an observation for work or a therapy session, if a person starts stating illnesses and states that medication is needed.  Then,  the person says that "I need to get it;" it is rational to think that the person would need assistance.  It is not rational to think that the statement is an apology for perceived sin.  To think so would make the observer insane.  If the observer then begins to gossip with everyone about what the speaker has said when the person obviously needed help as private information is being divulged, then it situation turns into a direct actions for public humiliation.  It is obvious when someone needs help when they are divulging private information that the person would not ordinarily provide.  It is even more obvious when the person in need blatantly states it and starts talking about needing medication that was given to him or her for it.

In a paralleled conversation to one of my own, which is a personal narrative in the above scenario, is one of a diabetic.  If a diabetic goes into shock and needs his or her insulin or orange juice to help the situation and a person just observes the situation, then the observer is engaging in murder, especially if the observer thinks that the diabetic owes him or her and apology.  This is the plight inherent in the current medical community.  Should I or should I not help certain kinds of people? 

People have a civic responsibility in America not to murder another person or to stand idly by when another is blatantly murdered.  A cry for help or assistance for help is not the one asking "hitting rock bottom."  It is the observer that risks jail, institutions, and death.  Public statement of help when another looks idly by is a kin to having a video of ruthless police officers beating or murdering another citizen and saying "see if that person had only apologized this wouldn't have happened."  In this case, the observer is sociopathic or so arrogant that he or she requires detainment for the illness or crime that has been committed.

When I say that people should know about something, it is not an agreement for my own public humiliation as though I were repenting for asking for help or my own illness.  I have never apologized for an illness or for the effects of an illness.  I don't expect that I will in the future either.  I don't run around telling others that they need to apologize to me for their illnesses.  I expect that if someone asks for help in a situation that I will work to do what I can to help another person; it may even be a response prompting to get the person's medication.

Should is a values word and not agreement for informational dissemination.  The spreading of data or public use of data that so obviously is a cry for help is a form of stalking.  It is, in fact, cyber-stalking.  If it is done in an attempt to remove the person from employment, then the issue is one of dehumanizing enslavement.  The tattling of another is criminal and mainly exposes the hatred of the observer.  It shows that person's arrogance, lack of compassion, and merciless interaction with other people in the world. 

The power of should is in the justice system of the United States.  It is in the hands of the citizens to help those whom have be publicly persecuted by adults tattling on others under the guise of "the greater good."  It is, indeed, unethical to disseminate personal points of view as fact as the facts don't change reality.  One may think that a fact about another person's medical history is one of public concern.  Usually, it is when taken out of context, broken into sound bites, and claimed a speaker has done something that they haven't actually done or said

I will state again.  I don't apologize to those who demand an apology.  If someone thinks that I or anyone has apologized for some perceived misdeed, then it is the listener or the observer who has decided in that person's heart and mind that he or she is owed an apology.  No one is owed an apology.  I don't think I should.  So, I don't.  Even those who murder others in this society are not required to apologize.  I may think that they should; however, they don't have to.  To claim one it's real and is similar to looting another person's freedom.  The person spreading around mal-attained recordings and documentation belonging to another person is liable, especially when it is an attempt to harm the speaker intentionally. 

Ultimately, haters will hate.  However, they are prosecutable; I think they should be prosecuted.  Those whom turn in other people for committing crimes that they have never done should be arrested for the false accusation.  When the police are called or involved, it has immediately become, at very least, a civil issue for the courts.  If someone decides to call the police because he or she knows that another person doesn't have car insurance, which is not a part of that person's position at a body shop, then the individual who made the call should be arrested.  Tattling, and being wrong, is at very least a civil suit. 

Trying to teach someone else humility through humiliation is criminal.  Perhaps, people should think about it before illegally attaining information and spreading it around. 

Unreachable Replacements: An Apology

"Illogical, Captain," spoke Spock in almost every, if not every, episode of the original Star Trek.  While the world is still grieving the recently deceased, Ravi Zacharias, Apologetics has been at the forefront of Christianity's mind.  Apologetics, the reasoned argumentation or justification of a theory, especially religious doctrine, is the responsibility of every believer.  Every single Christian is called upon at some point to defend that person's faith. 

Apologetics and science is not my strong point and will probably never be.  Science is a wonderful field of study and incredibly helpful.  Some people need to know how the universe began, why the dinosaurs are gone, and how the earth sustains all of God's creatures.  I tend to think, "I don't need to know all that."  The need to explain how the Spirit of God volcanically erupts and flows around the land faster than light eludes me.  I accept and experience it out of a relationship with the Helper and Healer God I believe in; however, the view that Replacement Theologians claim that Jesus' crucifixion replaces all other views and understandings in the world is a place that orthodox (right believing and right practicing) Christians should defend against.  It is more logical for me to do so. 

Minimally, other than forgiveness of all sin and salvation for believers, the resurrection of Christ has not replaced all other understandings or worldviews with Christianity.  The beauty of being in the remnant post-resurrection is that we have the Helper (John 14:26) with us as a full replacement has not happened.  Had a replacement of the worldviews taken place, then there would not be any unreached people groups.  The Great Commission (Matt. 28:18-20) would have not ever taken place.

Scripture leaves Christians with the understanding that Jesus knew He was to be crucified.  He chose to complete the journey as the sacrificial lamb for all sin for all eternity -- the sin debt paid in full.  The unblemished sheep and doves were no longer needed.  These had been replaced by the Blood of the Lamb -- Jesus.  However, even the Blood of Christ, the sacrifice of God the Father, did not replace the unreached people groups or their worldviews.  What I love about evangelism and apologetics is getting to share the love of God.  What I love about meeting people and taking part in the community is the love of God.

Many would say that I should love sharing the scriptures and trying to get people to convert to mainstream Christianity wants people to move to.  I don't accept that the evangelist's job is to convert people.  The Helper does that.  It is the only way that that happens.  I have little desire to push someone towards Jesus or to tear them down.  God calls us all to Him.  I don't need to help with the restlessness; it just is.  Unfortunately, apologetics and evangelism are needed, contemporarily, more for professing believers than unreached groups. 

The only thing other than my kippah that I have been considered an apostate and asked to leave groups, even churches for, is my professed apologetic.  Once a Christian is a heretic to other professing believers that person has found a right relationship living in Christ.  God is well served when we praise what He has done in or lives and the relationships that we have been given. 

Without our relationships, we would not be sharpened into the believers that God would like Christians to be.  I am able to embrace my German-ness, my Irish-ness, my border-ness, and my Jewishness because I have loved Ravi Zacharias' Indian-ness.  His belief and love for God was brought through India.  He never left it out.  It is what I loved first about him as I was struggling, and still do from time to time, with my Jewishness.  It was so ingrained in me that even Paul left his Jewishness behind, which he did not.  I love my "ness-es" just as Ravi loved his that our loving God gave him. 

After his "nesses," I found apologetics for the first time.  We are blessed that other worldviews were not replaced.  That people are able to converse about, defend, and embrace for what it is -- a  relationship with a loving God.  The Church Militant -- the prayer warriors -- are all evangelists and apologists.  It may seem that worldviews have been replaced in contemporary theology.  The extreme sides of both liberal and conservative theology seem to accept the replacement in agreement with one another finally on something, except Scripture.       

The resurrection of Christ doesn't replace worldviews.  The Great Commission works on it.  However, the Helper left to guide and guard us in and around the world professing faith, welcoming believers, and reviving those in the Body is what heals and replaces the harm done in the world by those who haven't accepted the peace of God.  The moment of salvation is not the last moment of belief; it is the first.  Still, even with the loss of a great evangelist, apologist, and gratefully praise-filled Child of God -- dear Ravi -- the Helper is still here to guide and guard as we go into the world just as he did.  To "stand on the shoulders" of the ones who came before us as we have been prompted to do. 

I have envisioned the homecoming of Dr. Zacharias.  I hope that I will be greeted with the same "well done, my good and faithful servant," and be able to tell God that even with the work I've done, the souls that I've helped, and the love of God that I have been able to share that I am most thankful for my time in His presence with praise -- that I stood on the shoulders of those who came before me and spent time "helping thinkers to believe and believers to think."  I  believe Dr. Ravi flew into Glory with a winged beaming light and praise from Christ while wanting to have done more for people here.  Praise God for Dr. Ravi Zacharias; his memory will be for a blessing to all of us.   

Picking Lives: Serving vs. Slavery

More and more people are beginning to serve more than in other places.  All of a sudden, during this pandemic, people are more focused on communities around them instead of themselves as they have had time to think about the community time that they are not receiving.  It's been difficult to be removed from people within the places that we frequent.  As places open up again, it seems that the daily grind will continue again.  However,  it will not be the same.  The question is: what will have been replaced?

Sometimes, it seems as though the need for one person or companies to replace individual rights with whatever they want is paramount to the actual contracts that they hold.  The Torah is God's contract with the people.  A marital certificate is a contract between the two people.  Renters have a contract with a company or landlord to agree upon the ways that the two parties will interact with one another.  Everything from entry into the apartment, use of utilities, maintenance, conditions upon leaving, and pest control are all a part of the contract as are break lease fees.  The terms and length of the contract are a part of the agreement.  If it is not in the contract, then it cannot be done by either party without liability.  If a tenant damages the apartment, then the tenant is liable.  If the landlords or companies don't provide the services, including notice before entry or adding people to the entry is a cloak and dagger fashion, then the landlord is also liable for that.

Services have to be provided according to the contract.  If the rent is not collected, most landlords are not slow to begin an eviction process.  Stipulations for late rent are often included in the terms of the lease.  Even if a tenant is late with rent and pays the fees, then the rent is still paid and services still have to be rendered, regardless of the emotional involvement of the staff or leadership in the company.  Rental agreements are not one-sided; the tenant is not automatically at fault.  Attempting to remove a tenant by creating a hostile environment by not rendering services creates a liability for the company as the contract is for a specific length of time.  The company can sue for the breach of contract and the tenant can file a countersuit, even if the employees don't like it. 

Likewise, sin does not cancel out God's covenants with the people.  The Torah is an agreement.  Once it is received, then it is binding.  For Christians, once the person accepts Jesus as Lord, then that relationship is also binding.  God doesn't get to ditch the people.  God is always there, even if the person are wrong.  Conversation can take place.  Things can be reconciled.  However, the covenants are not removed from the relationship.  God has not been replaced by the pandemic.  Work positions may have been replaced, but human freedoms have not been replaced.  The pandemic does not replace the country's responsibility to care for the people.

It is one thing to chose to serve other people at this point in time, to include donating blood or plasma, making masks, continuing to deliver food and goods, continuing to work in medical environments, or having switched over to online teaching environments, has taken on a different civic service awareness to the global populace.  Those whom have price gouged, to include refusing to fixed apartments and refuse to wear masks (others' lives have a price), are refusing civic responsibility and the ability to save lives.  Even though God freed the slaves, Christ freed people's sin debts, and allowed for captivity to happen, the attempt to enslave is unethical and immoral.

I don't adhere to a theology of predestination.  While others think that I am Israeli because I accept my Hebrew lineage, I am an American.  I have not received dual citizenship and haven't removed my rights as an American.  Those, recently, whom have decided that I have to adhere to Israeli law in the United States, are greatly mistaken.  I don't even know Israeli law.  I have no idea.  I had no idea that they spend their time dickering for everything until it was just mentioned by someone (several someones) else.  The second someone serving of his or her own accord is required to do that for free by anyone, enslavement is at hand.  Choosing to pick another's life is not a call to service; it is an attempt at enslavement.  Contrary to popular belief, God does not force anyone to do anything.  The situation may be unbearable to a person; however, it is still a choice to adhere to God's exit from it.

We have a duty and a right to stand against slavery.  It is quite simple if someone is required to give or be punished in any way, then it isn't service that is being asked for.  It is enslavement that is required.  There are covenants between companies and individuals for a lot of things.  Companies, like religious institutions and non-profit organizations, and individuals like to get what they want without cost.  We like freebies, including people lives.  So, remember that sound bites can be played in full in court.  Splicing sound can be found out.  Demanding the services from another without pay with not free offerings or service.  When people cannot give or not give freely without a form of sanction or punishment, slavery is at hand.  Those whom work to stand against it are the believing patriots that the country and the world need to have.  Slavery is not an appropriate replacement for service.  Standing against slavery is heroism.

Heartstrings: The Work of Guardian Angels

The quarantine and the restarting American society has been pulling at the heartstrings of the populace.  During a point in time when society is working on trusting one another again, it seems that guardian angels are needed more now than before.  Some people may understand guardian angels as the same as Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, or the Tooth Fairy.  I fully accept the existence of guardian angels.  As my life has progressed, I have grown more resilient which I attribute to my guardian angel.  I would not be able to fully address the things that I have lived through regardless of what other people have thought about them.

People are created to trust other people.  We are designed innately to work with one another and to work with what we have been given by God.  When life pulls at our heartstrings, it is with the help of our guardian angels that we can be stabilized or even comforted a bit.  Whether someone wants to attribute this comfort and understanding as the Spirit of God or not is that person's decision; however, our guardian angels keep us company in life.  Angels are charged with being messengers and guardian angels are charged with God's message of protection for the individual and the Kingdom.

Our guardian angels help to remind us that when we were created God's intention was to pour out all of His blessings and riches upon us such that we would have prosperous, long lives.  He wanted people to to know and enjoy beauty, to be strong, to live in wisdom, to embrace pleasure, and to be honored and live honorably.  This Loving Creator wanted the best for His creation.  The very best to Him was a relationship with Him.  Some people like acts of service, words of affirmation, physical touch, or receiving gifts much more than quality time.  A relationship with God -- what concerned Him the most during the imago dei creation process, was loving interaction with His newly formed people.  God's love language is quality time.

During this tumultuous time of Covid-19, people have lost material things while others have stood around spouting that they should have saved, prevented, being willing to lose these things for God's plan, or even that they are learning to be grateful for those creature comforts like -- shelter, food, and clothing, safety, and employment.  Some relationships have been torn apart over smaller things than the Covid-19 pandemic, but this was not what God intended life to be.  He mourned the possible loss of a relationship with his creation and refrained providing secure rest to us.  He wanted us to be designed to need Him.  If we did not need God, then we would not seek Him at all while finding contentment in the things that we have and not in the Creator that provided them.

We were given the ability to be blessed with riches beyond imagination yet weariness for what really fulfills our souls.  Comfort within our daily lives while still living points of mundane activity.  We have blessings with agitation and anxiety during times of turmoil.  We have our humanity with which we embrace the divine.  People are designed this way such that neither God nor the people lose the most precious jewel of all --  a relationship with God.

In this relationship, God's guardians help us to have what we need for our own protection.  They are the messengers of God's protection.  Perhaps, a person at work likes to play power games in Zoom meetings and outside of the meeting, you receive an email accepting responsibility for the error on the other side and not your own without the knowledge of the others.  This is the guardian.  Perhaps, a leader wants to manipulate a situation in the person's favor and evidence is found of the manipulation.  This is the guardian at work.  Perhaps, someone wants the house and car you own, so there is an attempt to economically dis-empower your family leading to the termination of the individual due to EOE violations.  This is the guardian at work.  When people try to punish you through forms of public humiliation and demean the divine spark within all of us, their deceit is found out through investigations.  This is the guardian's protection -- the bringer of the shelter of peace and not creating human puppets through enslavement.

Often, the problems of another towards you can be minimized by others stating that is the Evil One causing it to excuse the works of those in a hierarchy or in the name of safety -- the safety of social manipulation.  The Evil One -- nor the demon liquor -- didn't cause others to chose the way that they did.  The desires of their hearts did.  The desire of God's heart is for the protection of His people, so we were given the blessing of the angels -- the bearers of Good News. 

We are pulled around by both good and evil.  Since we have been prohibited from inner rest and regardless of material or character possessions, we are drawn into a relationship with God and one another.  A hedge of protection or a shelter of peace raised over us to guard and guide from those around us intent upon personal gain and the wealth of their own power gives us another reason to live in the warmth and love of God.  Allow it to be wrapped around you as it is done to me through the guardians of peace. 

Power-full Life

While we are living through the COVID-19 pandemic, my life hasn't changed all that much.  I miss seeing the people in the markets, my students, and faith communities.  I am concerned about my doctors as they treat this disease and am concerned about patients in hospitals in need of physicians and staff who are unbiased enough to actually help them without extraneous harm.  I have noticed that I have learned more about my doctors in the past few years; this has caused me to be more concerned for them which has been wonderful.  I had a lovely Jewish woman and now a younger Asian man -- both primary care osteopaths.  She was at least two kinds of minorities, and he is at least one.  These concerns, in combination with my own minorities, have caused me to question everyone's safety in medical environments in the past several years.

In all of this mess, people are striving to help those around them, some are exhausted, and some are not striving so much.  The power exchange within the pandemic is fascinating to me, especially since I am in a population of people with specific advanced care instructions for current and "decision-assisted" care. Not only have I limited care that I am willing to receive, but I have limited the providers and added criterion for providers from whom are allowed to be involved in the decision making process.  While some have seen the restrictions to be overpowering and a result of disobedient control, my medical practitioners and I learned that without them people punish me in hospitals, that people will show up where I work for "social observation," and that regardless of what happens, I won't receive the level of care that others receive, even from well-meaning average skilled people.  I had to build in legal protections for current care into my advanced directive just like other other minorities have had to do in the world. 

How many of those directives are being ignored during this pandemic?  Many will say that dying people can't choose at this point in time who they are getting for providers.  Are some dying because they are not receiving the same care as others with COVID-19?  Unfortunately, this will be someone's narrative.  This is a time when people are negating requests and patient's rights about clergy visiting rooms or bedsides to pray with and/or evangelize patients.  Would my removal of clergy from my healthcare be upheld at this time?  Would chaplains show up claiming that they have the right because they are trained to do so?  Or because this is the crisis to confess, repent, and accept another's point of view before I died?  It is this very claim to power that prompted me to remove them from that activity.  I don't believe in that religious power use. 

Power is powerful.  A domination use of animals has caused them to be contaminated and fed to human beings, which is why we are now quarantined and using social distancing from one another.  Dominating animals caused the domination of the global community.  What humans have created with domination could have been prevented with dominion.  The same power of creation forms functional human relationships.  It is more than a matter of mindset, respect, and perception.  Before a person can even even set an intention for any activity at all, it has to be in the heart of the person to do.  Perception is based in education and not in the heart.  Heart-work changes the rest of the person and not the other way around.  The heart seeks power more than any other part of a human being. 

Our world is full of power to be had.  Everyone has power to choose what he or she would like to do.  Choosing to use power to help keep society full of life and creativity is a good use of it.  Choosing to share with one another instead of forcing submission to others is a far better way to live.  May this time of continued quarantine and separation cause us to value the choice we have to use our power to uphold one another.  During this quarantine, let us not dominate one another as the economy and disease has done.  Giving to one another creates dominion; it upholds life.  It creates respect and honors the holy spark within each one of us.  Give space for the holy within what we might understand to be mundane.  Let us be a people who give life as it is difficult to have a life full of power to affect the globe.   

Pausing to be Taught

"This Shark don't gots no teeth left," I thought to myself while I was vacuuming.  My machine isn't old, and the change happened all of a sudden.  It just stopped picking things up.  I had already flipped it over, emptied the cylinder, and thought about the ways that it might be clogged.  Worse than a paper jammed copier, my vacuum just wouldn't work for me like it used to it.  So, I put it away.  I didn't want to go through all of the parts and break it if it was something simple.  It's the same with life.  Sometimes, it just isn't working for us, and we put it away hoping that it isn't really broken for good.

What we put away, especially when it is something that we use, eventually will need to be taken out again.  It's how most things work.  If I use, then I use it.  However, putting things away doesn't heal the object or a situation.  Often, our perception can heal it.  In the middle of the lock down and Coronavirus pandemic, everyone has time to reflect on what is happening in the world and how they are living.  I, like many others, have taken some time to do what helps me.  I visit people.  However, the people I usually visit are mainly, dead. 

First, I visited the death in a wonderful little cemetery.  My prayer time at cemeteries has provided solace to me when the world around me has become chaotic.  Everyone dies.  It is inevitable.  I am usually taught something while in the cemetery, which is one of the reasons why I visit them so often.  When I miss people, whom have died, I visit the dead.  My friend, Charlotte Weidel, passed in 2018.  I miss her greatly from time to time.  While walking through the cemetery, I turned my head and saw on the back of a tombstone: trust in the Lord with all your heart.  Prov 3:5 -- you are where are in the right place.  Charlotte's consolation in all of life was this very thing: you are in the right place, at the right time, doing the right thing.  She learned this from teaching the piano.

When I doubt about living in the part of the country where I do and connecting with the parts of the culture that I do, I miss her.  I am brought to this understanding of being in the right place, at the right time, doing the right thing.  This kind of discipling is what can bring people together while they are apart.  They live with us as points of revival.  Some would say that it is the person looking and helping from the beyond.  These revival points are meant to console and lift us up, and at times, bring us into the community that we are used to and know.  Others call this listening to the wind.

A man named Charlie (who is not dead as far as I know) first told me to listen to the wind while I was a camp counselor in South Dakota about twenty years ago.  While my life is much different now and highly psychoanalyzed, his three lessons to me have never gone away:  1) listen to the wind, 2) beware of people who say "the only good Indian is a dead Indian" (meaning the Native Americans in America), and 3) if you need anything, find the Masons.  Since having moved, I have met more Masons that I am aware of than before and have been listening to the wind more than at other times, often in cemeteries.  What Charlie taught me is true.  The wind will tell you, Masons will help you, and enemies appear.

This natural connection to the cycle of life brings the fear that people have to a pause.  It stops the race that we live in the world every day.  Pausing as we are asked to do in the American lock down is a time that can be used to reunite with our communities, to work with our creativity, and to find the points that inflame life within us.  It can light our inner fires to reconnect.  It can cause us to be centered again.  It can cause us all to be rooted in gratefulness that we are well, that others are being cared for, and others (like me) are bringing the supplies that we all need.  I am blessed that am still getting to, at least, drive by the cemeteries that I have learned to traverse through to listen to the wind and see the beautiful architectural buildings that others are not able to enjoy right now.

We are challenged at this point to put away our fears and desires to be in the world to take care of ourselves and our families.  We are challenged to be separated from our faith communities, and most minister of every kind are now televangelists, in their own traditions to bring unity and peace, when a large majority of them find it to be substantially sad to be so.  Communities are learning to lead themselves and study for themselves, at times through Zoom together.  Our daily zooming around has been placed online to Zoom while resting.  Perhaps, we need this time.

This revival time to rest -- an introverted revival.  This odd responsibility blessing to care for one another as we have been called to do.  May this responsibility that we've always had be a focus for us at this time.  May it help to revive us as a community. It turns out that reviving one another and the vacuum does have teeth.  We just need to push the power button completely in the direction that it needs to be for thriving and reviving.

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.