Essays – Page 9 – Jane Tawel

Traveling Dreams: Mother’s Day 2018

The following is a re-post from my blog. I first wrote it in 2015. I would add that in the three years since I wrote this, Justine, Clarissa, Verity, and Gordon have continued to follow their dreams and follow The Way and I could not be happier or more proud to be their mom. I continue to study The Map for Life-guidance, and for better or worse, I still attempt to “tell stories slant”.

Traveling Dreams

May 10, 2015

By Jane Tawel

For my children on Mother’s Day: Keep in The Dream Way

I had one of my traveling dreams last night. I have always had traveling dreams and they are always stressful, slightly scary, and silly, and pretty easy to analyze.

In my traveling dreams I am always trying to get somewhere. It is always dark, even if it is happening in the daytime. I am always driving or being driven somewhere in a car of dubious merit. Since becoming a parent, I often have my children with me. I am almost always lost and can’t find my way. Told you this would be easy to analyze.

In my traveling dream last night, my cousin Emily was driving and I was in the passenger seat. We had another woman with us in the back seat who was a friend or second cousin twice removed sort of person. She was a Ginger. We were trying to get somewhere so Emily could catch a plane. We were travelling all those little back roads and highways that used to be so common in the Midwest but every once in a while we would hit a terrifying freeway and have to get off. I took over driving and got lost and pulled into someone’s driveway to turn around. We ended up in a small town and the police started following us, then another police car came along side and pulled us over. They made us get out of the car. They thought that we were kidnapping the ginger-haired girl in the back seat. The female and male cops pulled the unnamed Ginger second cousin twice removed aside and then asked Emily to tell them the first name of the girls’ father’s father. Neither of us knew it though we racked our brains trying. Even though we didn’t know the name that would prove we knew the Ginger and were not kidnapping her, for some reason unexplained to us, the cops realized we were not kidnappers and let us go. We went to a cafeteria line where suddenly my cousin Amy and my sister Janet appeared and the second cousin twice removed disappeared. I put a plastic container of salad with edemame beans on my tray. Emily asked for the two taco plate. I decided I wanted tacos as well but did I still want the edemame salad? Emily insisted she was treating all of us. The dream ended before I knew what I decided to eat.

Sometimes all you can say about a dream, is “Life is like that.”

Life is full of choices. In life, you are always trying to get somewhere. Life is confusing and you often feel lost. You have companions on the way, some known and loved and some that are just along for the ride. Bad things do happen to good people and good people do often do bad things and sometimes the cops catch the wrong people and sometimes the bad people get their just desserts and sometimes the cops don’t show up at all. Sometimes the cops in real life actually shoot you dead for no reason. And some times the cops get shot dead for no reason. Just like in their nightmares. And Life is like a dream because we so often are just asking, “why did that happen?” and we are in it having to keep driving forward without ever knowing how it ends. Ever try to get back into a dream after you wake up and find out how it ends. Life is like that.

Sometimes, in real life just like in dreams, we seem to have no idea how we got to the place we find ourselves in. It is often because we weren’t paying attention to the choices we made when we started that particular journey. Just like in dreams, suddenly you are there. Sometimes we end up somewhere in life because we are dreaming when we should have been paying attention to what we were actually doing at the time. “Did I leave my keys in the car when I locked it?” — sort of attention deficit things.

The end of a day or a month or year is sometimes like waking from a bad dream because we got lost on the way. Sometimes we push the gas instead of the brakes or the brakes instead of the gas. Life is stressful because we just keep driving even if we don’t know how to get to where we think we want to arrive. We often refuse to stop and ask directions.

And Real Life is always slightly scary, at least once you take the wheel of your own life. Life was much less frightening when your mom was driving you home and whenat the end of a day you found yourself snuggled up against your parent in a warm bed after a large meal and a cup of cocoa.

Also, to be honest, our lives are frankly always a wee bit silly. Most of our life’s journeys should be relegated to the “I went to Target and the post office today” sort of journeys, not the crossing the Rubicon or the “It is a far, far better thing I do” sort of journey. But then since none of will know until the next life, the true meaning of each day’s journey, we should never image that our silly selves are not somehow also living out an epic journey full of unseen battles and quite a few seen ones.

If you read some of the great books that show in equal parts, humans as God-imagers and frail-ly ridiculous beings, you get a better idea of how spectacular and silly we all are. We are heroes unawares. Explore characters like those in Lewis’ Space Trilogy, Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings, or Anne Tyler’s or Jody Picoult’s women heroes and you will hopefully see humanity in a light that our dreams often try to reveal to us. I am not talking here about the brokenness / heroic element in a Sydney Carton or a Billy Pilgrim. I am talking about tilting at windmills and a thumb to hold back a flood. I am talking about flying dreams and being famous dreams. I am talking about silly disciples walking with The Christ and arguing about who gets what chair near the future King’s throne. And Jesus responding by both laughing at their silly hubris while recognizing the heroic efforts to follow God that lay around the unseen bend for these human beings. Jesus must have some good chuckles at our silliness as we slap-stick through Life. And yet, just like the disciples who confused gaining a throne without carrying a cross, God has an inexplicably dream-like desire to help us humans drive towards the brink of heroism. Sometimes, we even leap over the chasm of “quiet lives of desperation” into something gloriously God-like.

I am talking about Life not as a linear attempt at accomplishment but as a traveling dream. I am talking about dreams in real life if not necessarily what we consider real time and place.

Dreams always have their own sense of time and place but aren’t usually what we consider factual time and place. Quite often they do not end up how and where we imagine they will or should. In this way our dreams illuminate something of God’s view of time and reality. A dream begs the question, what is Reality? Am I seeing this as it is? Is the meaning of what is really going on inside me more revealed when I am awake or when I am helplessly, innocently asleep?

I like to mess with my husband about my Native American heritage. If you know anything about the Native Americans you know that dreams are an important part of their belief system, much like they used to be for Judeo-Christian folk in the Bible. The Native Americans believe that it is your soul that dreams dreams, not your mind or your body. In this philosophy, life is one big Dream and in that the impermanence of this life is recognized. Steven Bancarz writes of Native American philosophy, “It is by experiencing the realness of the dream world that we appreciate the dream-ness of the real world”.[1] The Bible talks about the reality of dreaming versus the reality of what we imagine is only in our waking this way: It will come about after this that I will pour out My Spirit on all mankind; And your sons and daughters will prophesy, Your old men will dream dreams, Your young men will see visions. (Joel 2:28)

Eugene Petersen in his book Tell It Slant, talks about Christ’s use of apocalyptic language. Petersen notes that Jesus uses stories to reveal to us Kingdom reality which is not a future apocalyptic dream or a past historical accomplishment, but a present reality behind an almost dreamlike curtain of the world we try to see with fallen eyes. The kingdom world can often only be approached not with eyes wide open but through eyes closed, as in sleep, to the oncoming traffic of the world and open to the dream world that exists just beyond our consciousness. Just beyond our small egos.

Much like the telling of dreams, Jesus’ stories are not easily understood nor analyzed. Parables have a dreamlike quality because they reveal the world behind the curtain. When Jesus is telling the story of the widow and the judge in Luke 17:20-37, Petersen writes,“he does it by introducing a radical reorientation on the nature of time and place, kingdom time and place.” Peterson goes on to say, “Jesus is training our imaginations so that we will be able to participate appropriately in the great salvation drama that is taking place right now – not world events of the future but the presence of the kingdom right now. Apocalyptic is a language strategy for breaking open awareness of the tremendous energies of good and evil contending with one another beneath the apparently benign skin of the ordinary.” [2]

Apocalyptic language gets our attention, like a dream might abruptly wake us from sleep. Apocalyptic awareness says, “Repent”, which is another way of saying “Turn around, you are driving the wrong way.” Apocalyptic awareness, like a dream, reveals what is under the surface of our world and often wakes us up to a different reality.

It is like the first time you reach out your arms to hold your newborn child. Though it seems like a dream after all the planning and striving and fears and work and hopes, your deepest being knows immediately that reality will never be the same again. You will no longer see reality as you did before you became a parent. The world has changed forever. You have turned a corner and the road will lead you in a whole new direction. And you are desperate every day thereafter for the rest of your life and his or her life, to find a perfect map that will take you and the most precious being in the world in the right direction. So she will be safe. So he will be fulfilled in a career. So she will find the right soul mate. So he will be brave in the face of disaster. You scour maps so you can help this new little entrusted life drive the straight path and find The Way.

There are many options today for getting directions. I am old enough to remember the giant tome called The Thomas Guide that was your traveling bible when you moved to Los Angeles. Today I prefer Mapquest, but my children swear by Googlemaps. All religions promise to provide a life map. The Judeo-Christian Life-map is revealed in the Scriptures, the lives of those who have tried to follow the Life-map, and in the Life of the Son of God who came to live the Life-map to the fullest. Early Christians first called our Life-map simply, “The Way”. Now we often get a bit lost in what we think is Christian Reality and we start calling The Way things like theology, Arianism, Calvinism, Wesleyanism, hermeneutics, and Vacation Bible School. These often help but they often simply encourage us to define other humans as going the wrong way. Sometimes all the technologies and labels and secure findings trap us in a sort of Christian couch potato life, watching Rick Stevens live the journey while we only talk about it. Not travel it.

I fear sometimes with all my knowledge about The Way, that I have lost the joy in the journey on The Way. I think I know where I’m going but it’s just in my head. It’s a dream, not a reality of living in The Way.

Remember when you were a kid and you just hopped in the back of the car and let your parent drive you someplace. Even if the place had a name you recognized like Grandma’s house, or The Mall, how you actually got there was always a mystery. You couldn’t see much as your little child self, looking out the back seat window. But you weren’t afraid, because Dad was driving. Mom was reading the map and telling Dad, “no you missed the street, turn around.” Your sister was pulling your hair and you desperately had to pee but didn’t want to tell the parents because then they’d pull over and make you crouch behind a bush. So you looked out the window, tried to avoid your mean sister, and trusted you could hold it long enough so that Your Parent could get you to Grandma’s bathroom.

The Way is best traveled if you sit in the back seat, hold on, enjoy what you can see out the window, avoid the mean sisters, and let Your Parent drive.

The Way. Sometimes when I read about The Way or hear about people who have lived The Way, I think I must be dreaming. Who could live like this and get any where? I mean it can’t be real. You must be dreaming to think you can live out The Way on this earth, at this time, in this place, with these people, with that going on, with all the this and that and those. You are living in a dream world, girl friend to think you can do what Jesus did, follow God’s instructions, trust the Holy Spirit. Get a reality check, dude. Smell the coffee, honey. Wake up! Jane, ole thing, you gotta get in the driver’s seat, sit up front, take control of the wheel, and never stop to ask for directions or turn around and start again. Don’t admit defeat, don’t admit you are lost. Just drive, girl, drive!

That great book of stories that teach, The Bible, teaches us much about paths and ways. “Trust in the Lord with all your heart, soul, strength and mind, and He will direct your path.” Prov. 3:5,6 I am The Way, the Truth and the Life.” – Jesus –John 14:6 The Bible also teaches us about a magical kingdom that exists just beyond the touch of our own realities.

This is what the kingdom on earth as in the heavens, looks like. Kingdom Life is a dreamlike reality, open to our imaginations, beating on our hearts like an unseen guest at the door, alive in the souls who do not crush the dream for a blind, tasteless portion of “reality”. The journey towards the Kingdom is full of adventure, full of choices, full of bad guys and good guys, and filled with moments of heroism and moments of hubris. Just like the journey of childbirth or adoption, Life is full of pain and angst and fear and bad choices and good luck and you would do it all over again because at the end you get a prize.

At the end of childbirth, you get to see that little face and you know that every step of that hard dreamlike journey was worth it. You dreamt about this moment of having a child for so long and at last you know the real meaning of what it means to be a parent.

At the end of Life’s Journey, Jesus promises a prize. We will see the face of our Savior. And the real meaning of the dream of this chimeric world, will be gloriously revealed to be something similarly dreamlike and really quite different after all. And that is why following the Life- map of The Way is worth every thing. For what does it profit me if I gain the whole enchilada, but lose my soul’s way? What profit is there in gaining what I dream I want if I lose the reality of what God wants for me?

Have you heard that theory that we never actually die in our dreams? That we always wake up before we hit the ground, or get run over by the bus or crash the car? That is the promise of Christ’s dream if we follow The Way. We will never die but simply wake from what we thought was reality, to find it was always only a dream.

Once upon a time a young woman named Caitlin, saw her boyfriend named Raoul, take off for California to work for JPL. She stayed behind in Boston, a city she loved and where she had acting gigs and friends and a free place to live. It was also where she began calling herself Caitlin instead of Jane because it would make her famous enough to achieve her dream of getting on the Johnny Carson Tonight Show as a famous actress (Did I mention she dreamed of being famous?).

But a funny thing happened after Raoul had been gone for three months. Caitlin began to miss Raoul. She began to dream of him. So Caitlin hopped in her un-airconditioned Mazda GLC Hatchback and with Triple AAA flip-maps on the passenger seat, began to drive all the way across the big ole’ country of the United States of America. No GPS, no cell phone, no laptop, no gmail, no companion. Just Caitlin and her AAA maps. She made it to her mom’s house in Indiana for some loving and free food. She made it to her Uncle Marlin and Aunt Sally’s house in Kansas City. The morning Caitlin left, Uncle Marlin snuck out and filled the tank with gas and the tires with air and the whatcha ma thingy with oil. Aunt Sally snuck a packed lunch with cookies for dessert into the back seat.

Our heroine Caitlin got seriously lost in Omaha but eventually turned around and found her way. A flat tire made her swear. Once when she stopped at Wendy’s for lunch, she left her watch that her grandma had given her, in the restroom and someone stole it before she went back and could retrieve it. That watch was gone forever and it still makes her sad.

When Caitlin finally hit Phoenix she was a bit bedraggled and shell shocked and did not at first compute that it was blizzarding in what she had assumed was a part of the world that was always hot. Caitlin thought she must be dreaming. She managed to pull of the road in time to buy the tire chains but when she got to the part of the road that said “no tire chains, no go”, she was defeated. So she sat in her little tin can of a car, a bit teary for a heroine, who was going many miles for her man. Then an angel of the Lord dressed up like a trucker stepped out of a chariot that looked like an eight-wheel semi, and said “Fear not, I bring tidings of great joy!” And he asked if he could help. Caitlin never saw that trucker again which proves he was an angel.

After two nights in a Motel 6, our heroine Caitlin, outlasted the Evil Blizzard and began the terrifying trip flying on the dragon’s back of The 10 and The 210 into Los Angeles County. She arrived, eyes still stuck open with fear after her first near death experience with LA traffic, and she stepped out onto the sidewalk of Brent Avenue, South Pasadena. Caitlin realized as she stood, her legs numb with days of straight driving, that she was getting wet, and thought that it must be raining, not realizing it never rains in California. She was instead, standing in her first ever sprinkler system.

Behind the warmly lighted windows of the ground floor apartment, the inhabitants must have sensed the heroine’s presence. Out of the door flew Sophia Fifi Caesar, and Scott Warner, and their newest housemate, Raoul Tawel. And when Caitlin saw her Raoul, the one for whom she had traveled long and suffered much, she thought she must dreaming.

But it was real.

And the journey’s end for Caitlin was accomplished. And she deemed it Good. And there was peace in the land and in her heart and there was much love and joy for many days.

The End.

But of course it wasn’t the end but only a new beginning. And soon a new traveling journey was begun.

I pray for you my children, that you will dream the dreams God has for your life. They are more exciting, more joy and peace filling, and more real than any thing you could possible dream on your own. If you follow the Life Map and keep on The Way by letting God plan the journey and Jesus take the wheel, you will arrive at Life’s end and wake up to see the Face that makes you sing out, “Oh, so that is what it all meant!”

And then the journey begins anew.

Footnotes:

[1] http://www.spiritscienceandmetaphysics.com/where-our-soul-goes-when-we-dream-according-to-native-americans/#sthash.PXCziz1e.dpu

[2] Peterson, Eugene H. Tell It Slant. Grand Rapids, Michigan: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2008. Pp. 129 – 131.

Personal Potholes: “Defining Your Own”

Personal Potholes

Defining Your Own

by Jane Tawel

March 17, 2018

This past week, I have been thinking about people who do great things and, who if only perhaps for a moment, or sometimes, if rarely, for a lifetime, do something hugely important. Most of these people we won’t know anything about until Heaven’s Roll Call. When I look at those people we call great women and men; and when I read the stories we like to read about heroes; or when I meditate on the life of Jesus – there is a pattern in these lives that seems to me to be this:

Listen. Learn. Define. Choose. Focus. Do

So during this time in the kingdom to which I have been exiled, as I stumble along trying to find my path in the True Kingdom, I have been thinking more lately about historical heroes, as young people across my nation try to find their own path in speaking truth into lies, and light into darkness. They are stumbling and falling. Some will fall away and some will find a different day and cause to fight. But I feel a deep sense of sorrow that they must fight also the naysayers and skeptics and those who confuse them and thereby wear them down with other issues.

This is the same thing, of course, that keeps happening to black people in my country and possibly throughout most of the world. It is easy to sit at home and watch someone fight for the issue they believe in and then, like all Screwtapes do, drip, drip, drip the skeptical slurry of other issues that cloud the truth, and dirty the righteousness of their just cause. Are they perfect in the way they fight? No, are any of us? But was David perfect? Was Winston Churchill? Rosa Parks? Martin Luther King, Jr? Ghandi? Mother Theresa? The requirement for perfection was met by only one human – Jesus – and He did not tell His followers to become perfect before they took up the causes of righteousness, justice and truth. He did however, promise that we would be made like Him if we served with Him, served Him, and served others.

So here are my thoughts on it “all” lately.

Choose an issue to believe in. Eventually stop talking about it and DO something about it –or support the people who can. Don’t chime in on someone else’s issue by combining it with your own. Apples will never be oranges and unlike real fruit, just because something is “an issue”, it doesn’t become any better mixed into one big “fruit salad”. Disagree or agree, but stick to the facts and Big Ideas about that singular, defined, one issue. Combining other issues is fallacious reasoning. Fallacious has the same root word as deceiving which is mostly what people are doing to themselves when they muddy the waters of a clear issue. Like swimming in a stream, muddying the waters, makes it hard to see and hard to move forward. Don’t dilute someone’s issue by morphing in different issues. When you dilute the issue, you dilute the solution — quite literally. Just like in a chemistry solution, diluting the solution with other issues, makes the solution less concentrated and therefore less powerful. There are plenty of “issues” to go around, so pick your own instead of picking apart someone else’s. Listen. Learn. Define. Choose. Focus. Do.

So, just for practice’s sake, let’s take a random problem that doesn’t have the big fightin’words and emotional baggage that surrounds other issues (although in this country I am probably being naive when I say that). Let’s take potholes.

Now you can say, well, but concerning potholes, there is also this other thing over here that is a problem connected to potholes and so is this and potholes really start with this problem so how can we blame potholes, and that is a problem too, so shouldn’t you be fighting against this too or instead, and don’t forget that this here other thing is a bigger problem.

But if potholes are my problem, my “issue”, then there is a pretty simple solution that I am fighting for. Get rid of potholes.

Of course, you have the pothole supporters who say, give me my potholes or give me death. The sort of folk that believe that: Potholes are my right. People who would rather spend money on new suspension for their cars than work with others for the good of their community and spend money on getting rid of potholes. But my point here is that –every time one switches up the conversation, and rather than either agreeing or disagreeing with the position of the other person, they blame someone or something else, then it really dilutes the truth with a sort of Pandora’s box of fallacious argument. If one is adding a different element to the solution for the rampant potholes in this country, then one is in fact changing the issue, diluting the solution, and letting oneself off the hook for taking a solid stand and making a change.

We had a pothole once at the end of our drive, and it was technically in the road which meant it was our city’s problem, but we just went out there ourselves and fixed it, because we could. We had the means, but most of all we had the desire not to live with a pothole in our driveway.

About a couple months ago we had to give up a whole bunch of our God-given American rights, like parking on our side of the street, and keeping our shoes clean as we walked through the dirt and mud on our sidewalks — Because our city decided it was time to do something about our street’s potholes. The road was torn up for weeks and there were a couple of days I barely made it to work on time with the extra work I had to put into getting to my car. Now those potholes were not a big issue for me personally, and I might have rather spent our city’s money on more cops; but the community decided they were a big enough issue for the whole of our community to do something about them. Will there be more problems on our roads? Of course, I live in L.A. County, so…. Will there be new ways for potholes to be created and hence, new solutions to be found? Yes, I imagine if the world lasts that long, there will be. But for now, the problem of potholes has been solved. And you know what? They were right. It is super- duper great living in the safety and peacefulness of a street without potholes.

Of course we can all be a bit too myopic and therefore hypocritical if we don’t realize we can’t only preach out of one side of our mouths; but that is a different dilemma. However, on this topic, the bottom line is — I can’t be too happy that my potholes have been fixed, while my Biblical “neighbor” still has to drive around or lurch over the potholes in her road. So if potholes is my issue for my street, then they also need to be my issue for my neighbor’s street as well.

The one question Jesus asks us is this: What do you believe in that you are willing to act on? He is allowed to ask us that, because He believed enough in something and Someone to act on it.

This is the problem for all people – young and old, rich and poor, saint and sinner — because Jesus is quite clear that if I believe it, I will act on it; and that, if I do it for myself, I must do it for others. If I want a part of Him, I must give up the selfish parts of myself. “There is no one good, but God”, is a helpful reminder that none of us are the “good guys”.

If I want eternal life, I must die to this world’s death-loving dystopia. Jesus gives us a few hints: “If you want to follow in the way I have mapped out that leads to God, then you must give up everything to the poor and follow me”. “Greater love has no woman, than that she lay down her life for her friends.” “For I say to you, love your enemy and do good to those who persecute you.” “For whatever you do for the least of these, then that is what you are doing for me.”

The Words of God are: Sobering. Undiluted. Clear. Uncompromised. Truth.

Jesus constantly and consistently defined His issue: “From the days of John the Baptist until now, the kingdom of heaven has been forcefully advancing, and forceful men lay hold of it…. It is not the will of the Father than any should perish. Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest….. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light. The Son of Man must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and on the third day be raised.”

Listen: “Blessed rather are those who hear the Word of God and obey it”. (Luke 11: 28)

Learn: Luke 2:52: “And Jesus increased in wisdom and in stature and in favor with God and man.”

Define: Don’t misunderstand why I have come. I did not come to abolish the law of Moses or the writings of the prophets. No, I came to accomplish their purpose. (Matthew 5:17) In everything, then, do to others as you would have them do to you. For this is the essence of the Law and the prophets. (Matthew 7:12)

Choose: No one can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and money. Matthew 6:24

Focus: We do this by keeping our eyes on Jesus, the champion who initiates and perfects our faith. Because of the joy awaiting him, he endured the cross, disregarding its shame. Now he is seated in the place of honor beside God’s throne. Hebrews 12:2

Do: But don’t just listen to God’s word. You must do what it says. Otherwise, you are only fooling yourselves. James 1:22

The road is narrow and filled with many potholes. If I want to walk the Christ road, I dare not walk around the potholes. I must try to fix them.

“Let those who have ears to hear, listen,” says The Great Hero. The rest of us, need to find our own pothole.

Listen. Learn. Define. Choose. Focus. Do.

Pothole-damage

Come, But Don’t Stay Awhile by Jane Tawel

Come, but Don’t Stay Awhile

Billy Graham, World-view Check

By Jane Tawel

March 4, 2018

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Lots of talk about the Reverend Billy Graham, who moved on to a New Address this week, has caused me to reflect of course on his influence on my own particular life. Literally millions have sung Graham’s praises, in a life time lived by a man who knew he was a child of A King. I humorously, like to imagine, he looked down on the corpse lying “in state”, and thought, “well, that’s about the least impressive thing I’ve ever been a part of”. I like to imagine him remembering the sawdust floors of his tent revivals and measuring his heavenly mansion for one. Sawdust is such a wonderful metaphoric and physical joy.

I don’t remember every time I heard Billy Graham speak (and one always called him that: Billy not William, both names not just one). But I will say that any time Billy Graham held a revival meeting within driving distance (and that might mean four hours driving back in my Midwestern youth), my family was there. I remember vividly, as a small tyke, holding my Grandma Frances’ hand and watching Graham, from outside the packed saw-dust floored, hard wooden bench- filled, barn- like “Billy Sunday Tabernacle”, in Winona Lake, Indiana. My many trips to his revivals, include the last time Billy Graham spoke in Los Angeles on November 21, 2004, when Raoul and I hauled our young four children to the Rose Bowl to join over 82,000 others.

No one can report on Billy Graham without talking about God, and as the Los Angeles Times writes, Billy Graham had one message and one alone, “Individuals need to repent of their sins and accept God’s free gift of eternal life through Christ’s sacrifice on the cross.”

And it is that repent part that gets us, isn’t it? I remember the weak, shaky feeling in my legs every time I “walked forward” with thousands of others at a Billy Graham meeting. Many were walking forward to “get saved” for the first time, but I had done that back at Bethel Baptist Church when I was just a wee tyke. I walked forward with so many others, to “rededicate my life” to Christ. Because just like Billy Graham, who traveled the world with his message, and packed up his tent and his staff, and his paraphernalia; all those who came to God, were required to “come forward” but no one was expected to “stay awhile”.

This is how it has changed with us today. We now want to “accept God’s free gift” but give nothing in return. Let me be bold: This is so anti-Christ. Christ asks us to come, in the words of Billy Graham’s favorite “come forward song”, “just as we are”, but Christ demands we not stay there. There is a reason it was called “coming forward”.

So I looked up the author of Billy Graham’s iconic song, that not many churches seem to sing much anymore. It was written in 1835 by a woman named Charlotte Elliot. Here is what I found out about her:

In later years, when she was not able to attend public worship, she wrote:— “My Bible is my church. It is always open, and there is my High Priest ever waiting to receive me. There I have my confessional, my thanksgiving, my psalm of praise, and a congregation of whom the world is not worthy, — prophets, and apostles, and martyrs, and confessors; in short, all I can want I find there.”^[

Dr. Billy Graham wrote that the Graham team used this hymn in almost every one of their crusades. He said it presented “the strongest possible Biblical basis for the call of Christ.” Hymnody historian Kenneth Osbeck wrote that Just As I Am had “touched more hearts and influenced more people for Christ than any other song ever written.” Christian writer Lorella Rouster wrote, “The hymn is an amazing legacy for an invalid woman who suffered from depression and felt useless to God’s service.” Dr John D. Julian wrote:— “Though weak and feeble in body, she possessed a strong imagination and a well-cultured and intellectual mind….. Her verse is characterized by tenderness of feeling, plaintive simplicity, deep devotion and perfect rhythm. She sang for those in sickness and sorrow as very few others have ever done.”

But fun fact: Charlotte Elliot although raised in a Christian home with a Bishop as a brother, did not become a believer in the Christian Worldview until much later in life, and when she realized she wanted to “come forward to accept Jesus as Savior”, she told her mentor that she needed to “clean up her life” and “get rid of her sins” before she did. And this why she wrote this song, not because she believed that God’s salvation was cheaply bought, but because she realized that God wanted her to come “Just as She Was”. But just as she was, was a mess. Coming as we are today — That is the first step, and perhaps for many of us the hardest. But as Billy Graham and Charlotte Elliot and all great prophets and teachers have taught, it can’t be the only step we take. We are not invited to come forward and then “stay awhile”, looking after our own needs and desires. We are invited to “hit the road”, one shaky step at a time, falling down, getting up through repentance, and taking one more step of rededication, on our own Gethsemane walk down the aisle of Calvary, to the resurrection of our revival in a Resurrected Savior.

The road to Calvary cost Jesus many steps. But during this season, we celebrate – yes, celebrate!—His death on the Roman tool of torture and humiliation. Do we really think we can wave to Jesus from the stands while we thank Him for the freedom we have because of His death? Paul says, in Romans, among so many other places: Romans 6:1-6: “What shall we say, then? Shall we go on sinning so that grace may increase? By no means! We are those who have died to sin; how can we live in it any longer? Or don’t you know that all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We are therefore buried with him through baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life. For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we will certainly also be united with him in a resurrection like his. For we know that our old self was crucified with him so that the body ruled by sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves to sin.”

We rather blithely say that Billy Graham has a new address now. But that is only because He never made his first step, his last one. Graham, as Jesus did on the way to Calvary kept walking forward, even when it meant falling forward. We thank Jesus, that not only did The Christ walk every painful step forward to the Cross of Calvary, but that He did not make even The Cross, His last step. He walked forward even into the pits of hell; walked forward into the grave; walked forward out of the grave; and walked forward up those steps to heaven. As another hymn says, God expects us to keep taking steps, but He doesn’t leave us to do it alone, for “He walks with me, and talks with me, along Life’s narrow way.” We are not meant to sit down and get comfortable. Jesus’ message, as Mr. Dooley said, is that he came to”comfort the afflicted, and afflict the comfortable”.

There is another old hymn that comes to mind, that we will sing at the end of this holy season which is really always just the beginning of a new season of Rebirth: “Up From The Grave He Arose”. Jesus shows me the way; that if I walk, frightened, lame and blind, towards my own death to this world, it may feel as if I am walking in darkness and foolishly, backwards. But each step I take daily to “rededicate my life to death in Christ”, is in reality is a step towards the Light, which I can only sense out of the corner of my blinded eyes. Each step away from the treasures of this World is a step towards the true World, Christ’s World of Eternal Life. In the Eternal Kingdom, we all need to Come, “just as we are”; but we dare not, cannot, will not stay there. We are not invited to stay awhile here on this broken planet; just like Charlotte Elliot and Billy Graham, we are meant to keep walking towards our new address. We are meant to take steps toward the change that as Paul also says, means “we will not all die, but we will all be changed”. Change, like that first step is as painful and frightening as birth. But we are not meant to stay in the womb of our broken, fallen lives. We are not meant to stay awhile there. If we keep taking those oxymoronic steps toward death as Jesus lived it, then we will live as we were created to live, as God-imagers – not Just as I am, but Just As He Is.

“Just As I Am”

by Charlotte Elliot (1835)

Just as I am, without one plea,
But that Thy blood was shed for me,
And that Thou bidst me come to Thee,
O Lamb of God, I come, I come.
Just as I am, and waiting not
To rid my soul of one dark blot,
To Thee whose blood can cleanse each spot,
O Lamb of God, I come, I come.
Just as I am, though tossed about
With many a conflict, many a doubt,
Fightings and fears within, without,
O Lamb of God, I come, I come.
Just as I am, poor, wretched, blind;
Sight, riches, healing of the mind,
Yea, all I need in Thee to find,
O Lamb of God, I come, I come.
Just as I am, Thou wilt receive,
Wilt welcome, pardon, cleanse, relieve;
Because Thy promise I believe,
O Lamb of God, I come, I come.
Just as I am, Thy love unknown
Hath broken every barrier down;
Now, to be Thine, yea, Thine alone,
O Lamb of God, I come, I come.

Cheering for The Losing Side

Choose the Losing Side to Win the Game

By Jane Tawel

January 27, 2018

I am not a team person. I used to be – cheerleader, Celtics fan, Baptist, etc. My children and husband will tell you, that today, even when it seems I should pick a side, the obvious side of Team Tawel; It often seems to them that I start kicking the ball toward the other Team’s goal. If anyone playing for Team Tawel is playing the Discussion / Argument / Making Choices Game with other family teams or friend teams, life styles, or life choices; I will often go rogue and start playing offense and defense for the other side. It is my own belief, i.e. world view, that even though there seem to be many teams, there are really only two Coaches. There is God, the Life Coach and Satan / Evil, the Death Coach. So, with fear and trepidation and daily red cards on my humility, I try to determine which Coach is training and leading the team, and try my best to be playing on that side. It may seem I switch sides, but in fact, to my mind, there is only one Real Team – The Jesus-Team.

I have found that sometimes, Teams will claim a God- Team name, like Christianity, or Islam, but the self-proclaimed players don’t seem to know the rules or The Way God wants the Life-Game played. Dallas Willard uses the metaphor of an airplane pilot not realizing that she is flying upside down to describe this idea of mine — players thinking they are playing for the Christ-team, when in fact they are shooting into Satan’s hoops, scoring points for his deathly kingdom team.

I have also found that some people wouldn’t dream of putting God’s Team name on their playing abilities and yet seem to live and play the Life Game more closely to how Jesus played the Life-Game than many who claim to be “little-Christs”. I have struggled mightily to find a balance in this current game between the rules of Truth and the rules of Love. Neither of Life’s Coaches is able to reveal the whole game plan and win, but there are enough clues in the Rule Book, in the “videos” of past player’s winning games, in the clues on the playing field, we call Earth, and in what the Bible calls the “fruits” of one’s life, or the moves of one’s game, — to help me figure out if I went out today on Life’s Playing Field, and scored points for God’s Team or Satan’s Team. We need to stop listening to those who claim to be playing for Coach God but don’t want to repent of scoring points for Satan’s team. If we read the Book of Rules, it is really very clear how God and others should and will judge our Life Game.

At the end of each day I live, comes the reckoning. I talk to God Coach, Who, even though I am the most benched player of all time, always has time to listen and coach me individually. I ask God Coach, “Please forgive me for all the points I scored today for Satan’s team. I know I ended up running in the wrong direction because I just wanted so badly to win, I didn’t care that the points were scored for the Other Team. I thank you, that even though it cost me an MVP on Your Team, God, I will never cost You, The Game. You have already won it.” I thank God Coach, “Thank You for all the points You scored today with my feet, my hands, my mind, my heart. Thank you that despite all my errors, misses, and boo-boos, You remain For me, on my side, against the powers of the Other Team. Protect me from wanting to be traded to Satan’s team so I can make more money, or get more attention, or play more. Help me be willing to sit on Your Bench, God, for the glory of the Resurrection of Playing for Your Team Forever.” And I beg God Coach, “Please let me have another chance tomorrow, to play a better Life Game in your honor and glory so I can play with You forever. Let the greatest Player of All Time, Your Son, who had Your Voice constantly in His ear, inform my Game. Let me see Jesus daily and follow His moves, on the playing field of My Life.” Amen.

We live in the strangest sort of reality now, where we have come to set ourselves up as fifteen minute Celebrities, and little mini-demagogues. It is perhaps because we have so very much power as individuals that post Humanism-Enlightenment, there is only self to worship or the self of the celebrity of our current team. We often don’t even realize we are doing it, because either we simply find people who agree with our opinions and shore up the sinking sands of self-centered built belief systems; Or we make God a personal pocket genie – a god who more than any thing wants our team to win. Win at any cost. Win as a good in itself. It is all a game for us, a competitive television show to watch, a test to score well on — and we seek that constant high of winning and watching the other “team” lose. So we must keep winning to feel happy, right, powerful, fulfilled, secure. And in this way, we have truly lost sight of what it means to be fully human and we have lost sight of what it means for god to be fully God. We tend currently to associate this team mentality with politics and sports, but it is rampant in our society and in others around the world. I remember when Verity, my daughter, was on Team Jacob rather than Team Edward – all based on a puerile book and movie series. I sometimes think that if the world continues for a while longer, this will go down in history as the Age of Team Worship. Anyone who claims the name of Jehovah, needs to be very careful of this worldview as in Christ, there is no team, “neither Jew nor Greek, male nor female, Celtic nor Laker”. There is only His Body, crucified and resurrected.

The reality is, that unless we are playing for the losing team, we will lose all. Coach Jesus, says what does it profit you if you win every competition, but in the process lose your soul to Satan’s Team? In The Real Kingdom of God, we must lose to win, and crucify self to be personally resurrected. We must follow the Coach who took one for the team, and we must bench ourselves to be chosen MVP. God’s chosen people are always the ones the rest of the world considers The Losers.

Matthew’s Gospel translated by Jane Tawel: When the MVP of All Eternity comes in his glory, as The Final Coach of All Teams, and all the angels with him, then he will sit on his glorious throne. Before Jesus the Coach, will be gathered all the nations’ teams, and he will separate people one from another as a Good Coach separates the valuable players from the players for The Other Side. And he will place His Team on his right, the home team, but Satan’s Team on the left, the away with you team. Then the Kingly Coach will say to those on his right The Home Team, ‘Come, you who are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom’s Playing Field prepared for you from the foundation of the world. For you played on My Team. For I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you clothed me, I was sick and you visited me, I was in prison and you came to me.’ Then the righteous will answer him, saying, Lord, when did we play for Your Team? ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you drink? And when did we see you a stranger and welcome you, or naked and clothe you? And when did we see you sick or in prison and visit you?’ And the King will answer them, ‘Truly, I say to you, you played for Team Jesus, whenever you played the game for one of the least of these my brothers, you played the Life Game for me.’

“Then he will say to those on his left, the Get Away Team, ‘Depart from me, you cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his team players. For you put My Team Name on your jersey while your actions on the field showed you for a player for the Other Side. For I was hungry and you gave me no food, I was thirsty and you gave me no drink, I was a stranger and you did not welcome me, naked and you did not clothe me, sick and in prison and you did not visit me.’ Then they also will answer, saying, ‘Lord, when did we play for Satan’s Team; when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or sick or in prison, and did not minister to you?’ Then he will answer them, saying, ‘You scored many points for Satan’s Team, thinking that by putting my Father’s name on it, you would win the Game. Truly, I say to you, as you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to me.’ And these will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into the eternal life of Team God.” Matthew 25

Choose the right Team. It doesn’t just cost you the game; it costs you your life.

* * * * * * * * *

Once again, I defer to writing by “People who say things better than I ever could”: As promised, I will try to hold the newspaper in one hand, and the Word of God in the other. I submit to you two editorials and some news from a current newspaper, the words of the prophets in the New Testament, and A.W. Tozer.

Romans 12:2: And do not be conformed to this world’s deathly Game Plan, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, so that you may prove what the will of Coach God is, that Life Game which is good and acceptable and perfect.

I was taught as a little girl that being a Christian meant having Jesus in my heart. I was taught that my daily choices added up to my eternal choice. I would submit to you, that no matter how the world seems to change to our eyes, it has not changed since Adam and Eve in God’s. So in some writers’ words about America, that might have been written by Romans at the time Jesus lived:

First: Some editorials from writers commenting on the strangest thing of all, to my old eyes – People who claim to be pastors and evangelists in the name of my Savior, Jesus the Christ, telling powerful people they can do whatever they want and still “go to heaven” as long as they are playing for the right team. This is most tragic of all for those very powerful people who are led to believe they are “winning”, when in fact they are playing for Satan’s Team. It is most sad for those very rich and powerful rulers of the New Rome, America, that “Pharisees” continue to live in sin, so that their religious and political agenda will be furthered – just like the mistaken Pharisees did at the time of Jesus played Our Life Game. It is horrible though for those of us to whom “much has been given, since much will be required” when The Coach calls us to that Final Locker Room post-game talk in His Heaven.

“The triumph of partisanship over morality starts at the top.

Politicians have always behaved badly. What’s new is the willingness of so many not just to look the other way but to call bad behavior good.” – “Republicans Redefine Morality as Whatever Trump Does” Dana Milbank, WP

The level of cynicism here is startling. Some Christian leaders are surrendering the idea that character matters in public life in direct exchange for political benefits to Christians themselves. It is a political maneuver indistinguishable from those performed by business or union lobbyists every day. Only seedier. You scratch my back, I’ll wink at dehumanization and Stormy Daniels. The gag reflex is entirely gone.

The problem, however, runs deeper. Trump’s court evangelicals have become active participants in the moral deregulation of our political life. Never mind whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is right, whatever is of good repute. Some evangelicals are busy erasing bright lines and destroying moral landmarks. In the process, they are associating evangelicalism with bigotry, selfishness and deception. They are playing a grubby political game for the highest of stakes: the reputation of their faith.

Not long after Watergate broke, a chastened Billy Graham addressed a conference in Switzerland, warning that an evangelist should be careful not “to identify the Gospel with any one particular political program or culture,” and adding, “this has been my own danger.”

The danger endures.

–“The Trump Evangelicals Have lost their gag reflex” – by Michael Gerson

And then there is the news about the young lady who “forgives” the abusive doctor of so many “team players” in the USA Gymnastics Olympic team. Forgiveness is a very important Christ -like thing to do for this young lady and it will be a treasure to her own soul. However, we do wrong as Christians to forgive sinners, perhaps especially sinners with a lot of worldly power because by doing so, we are becoming god. Only God can forgive, as Jesus is clear to point out to the Pharisees of His own time. And God only forgives, if I repent and sin no more, as Jesus also points out to the woman caught in adultery. But time and place truly don’t change reality, since the Pharisees and Sadduccees, the men caught in adultery, didn’t stick around for God’s words either. They go off and forgive each other to sin another day in perhaps another way. Jesus went on to show all that have ears to ear and eyes to see, that forgiveness is not free, has never been free, will never be free. Sin comes with a price – death. We will all pay it. Forgiveness comes with a price and Jesus paid it on the cross even though He and He alone didn’t need it. But we have done much wrong to the Good News by thinking that Jesus paid that price to leave sinners in their sins. We must die as He did, not just wear the t-shirts of cheap grace that claims Jesus paid it all. “IF any woman or man wants to follow me”, says Jesus, “she and he must take up the cross.” “You must be completely changed,” says God, “You must be born all over again into spiritual life with Me.”

Once, again I must give you the brilliant words of A.W. Tozer on the reality that we should, as Christ followers bring daily “to earth as it is in Everywhere that Isn’t Earth = Heavens.

From The Knowledge of the Holy by A.W. Tozer:

Perhaps a homely illustration might help us to understand. An ocean liner leaves New York bound for Liverpool. Its destination has been determined by proper authorities. Nothing can change it. This is at least a faint picture of God’s sovereignty.

On board the liner are several scores of passengers. These are not in chains, neither are their activities determined for them by decree. They are completely free to move about as they will. They eat, sleep, play lounge about on the deck, read, talk, altogether as they please; but all the while the great liner is carrying them steadily onward toward a predetermined port.

Both freedom and sovereignty are present here and they do not contradict each other. So it is, I believe, with man’s freedom and the sovereignty of God. The mighty liner of God’s sovereign design keeps its steady course over the sea of history. God moves undisturbed and unhindered toward the fulfillment of those eternal purposes which He purposed in Christ Jesus before the world began We do not know all that is included in those purposes, but enough has been disclosed to furnish us with a broad outline of things to come and to give us good hope and firm assurance of future well-being.

We know that God will fulfill every promise made to the prophets; we know that sinners will some day be cleansed out of the earth; we know that a ransomed company will enter into the joy of God and that the righteous will shine forth in the kingdom of their Father… and a new heaven and a new earth be established forever.

In the meanwhile things are not as smooth as this quick outline might suggest. The mystery of iniquity doth already work. Within the broad filed of God’s sovereign, permissive will the deadly conflict of good with evil continues with increasing fury. God will yet have His way in the whirlwind and the storm, but the storm and the whirlwind are here, and as responsible beings we must make our choice in the present moral situation.

Certain things have been decreed by the free determination of God, and one of these is the law of choice and consequences God has decreed that all who willingly commit themselves to His Son Jesus Christ in the obedience of faith shall receive eternal life and become sons of God. He has also decreed that all who love darkness and continue in rebellion against the high authority of heaven shall remain in a state of spiritual alienation and suffer eternal death at last.

Reducing the whole matter to individual terms, we arrive at some vital and highly personal conclusions. In the moral conflict now raging around us whoever is on God’s side is on the winning side and cannot lose; whoever is on the other side is on the losing side and cannot win. Here there is no chance, no gamble. There is freedom to choose which side we shall be on but no freedom to negotiate the results of the choice once it is made. By the mercy of God we may repent a wrong choice and alter the consequences by making a new and right choice. Beyond that we cannot go.” (111,112 Tozer)

In closing, you can’t be a team player on the bench. Prayer is your team huddle with the Coach but it is not playing the game. We must put actions to God’s words in order to be in the Game. Understanding the game, does not mean that I can rely on the Coach to play it for me. No matter how many injuries I incur today out there, I have to pray for help from the Coach and then get out there and try to lose. My Coach assures me: If you go out there in the fray of the Game and try to win for your own sake, Janie Karen, you will lose your life. But if you go out there and lose all for My sake, you will win.”

Rooting for the Losing Team of Jesus,

Jane

wanted-losing-soccer-team

Let Them Eat Cake by Jane Tawel

Let Them Eat Cake

by Jane Tawel

December 11, 2017

Do people who claim to follow The Christ, whom they believe to have been a man named Jesus, honestly think that their Messiah could pick and choose which Romans to make furniture for and which not to? Do they honestly not remember? Before Jesus began his ministry, he worked at a job in a kingdom not God’s kingdom, called Rome — a long gone kingdom, that the United States is largely based on. For thirty some years, Jesus “served cake” to good Jews, bad Jews, good Samaritans, bad Samaritans, Roman government officials, and Jewish Pharisees, Roman heterosexuals and Roman homosexuals. It was a business. And an art, because — Like His Heavenly Father’s work when He joyfully created the world, and His earthly mentor Joseph’s work, when he taught Jesus how to work wood; Jesus created things.

For 30 years, Jesus ran a creative business –run by the only perfect Son of God who ever lived. If I read the words and biographies of this Jew named Jesus, I think Jesus was well aware that our practice of God’s laws, our service to God’s authority, our worship of the True God, involves what I do – not what others do. What others do is up to God, not me.

When did we think that the work of our hands was meant to be used to proclaim our beliefs as a bludgeon rather than as a way for all the world to see a creative, loving God who is quite clear that He gives the rain to fall on the “evil” and the “good”? When did we lose sight of the fact that all of fall into both of these categories — evil and good?

No matter what I believe about any particular choice of another human being, I am meant to use the same measure for myself. If I claim to use the Jewish and Christian Scriptures as my guide, then I must immerse myself in their meaning for my place, time, and soul.

Shall I stop serving cake to divorced people? How about people who lie? The Scriptures are very harsh on greedy people, shall I stop serving those I deem more sinfully greedy than myself? How about people who harass other people? Why do I draw this line and not others if I am claiming a religious belief? One should have to be consistent. One should have to put a sign on one’s door that says: “I will only serve people whom I believe are not living in sin”.

If I stopped serving cake to people whom I thought were sinners, then to be Biblically consistent, I would have to never allow any one to serve cake to me again, that is for sure! Jesus was the King of this Kingdom of God’s while on earth and if you claim Christianity, He is the King of our Kingdom now –now, present and reigning. If I let Him. If I follow His lead. Jesus might laughingly say to us today, “Let them eat cake”, not as that capitalistic Queen of old might have said to keep the poor people in their places in her moronic inability to understand that some people were starving on her watch. Jesus said, “let me serve you ALL cake” this is my “cake” broken for you, take this in remembrance of me. Because all are welcome at my banquet.” We should do likewise, if we want to put His name on anything—like our souls. Or our business.

I mean really, people, there are Christians today who want a job so badly they are willing to sell themselves as slaves. These are the people we need to be serving cake to. There are people being beheaded for their faith in parts of the world today; there are people in places like Russia who have to worship behind closed doors. Are you honestly going to spend “God’s” money on suing people over whom you serve cake to and you do not serve cake to!? Oh, and there are people in this very country who do not have enough money to buy cake. Interestingly enough, there are Christians in this country experiencing reverse discrimination and not being allowed to get licenses because of speaking privately about their religious beliefs. But this whole cake business, muddies the water when we as Christians try to point out when religious freedoms are truly threatened.

This cake business has nothing to do with any of your freedoms. It has to do with the freedoms we all get to experience in a place much like Rome. Jesus came in the “fullness of time” to an Empire that would let Him worship His God in the way He believed was right to do. Until they didn’t. Then they killed Him. We get to live in a country that from the beginning has allowed people to worship their God in the way they believe is the right way to do it. It will be a day of reckoning if when we who claim to be Christians stand before the Supreme Court of Jesus, and He has to say sadly, “Depart, I never knew you. When you did it to the least of these, you were doing it to Me.”

In America, we have come to believe that money is the answer to everything, rather than God being quite able to stand up for Himself and us, if we let Him. Instead of worshiping money as the answer or even America as the answer, we would do better to get back to work and glorify God in all we do, think and say. God will win His own battles if they are truly His. If not, a little humility on our parts in what we understand and do not understand and a lot of humility in terms of how we treat others in the way we want to be treated might go a lot further than The Supreme Court. If we believe in Jesus, we believe in a much higher court than that. Maybe we should try spending our money on people who truly have no freedom to worship God. Or on people who are truly hungry. Or better yet, on people who are hungry for truth, justice and love. One served cake at a time. We would do better to worship God in spirit and in truth, not on this mountain or that. And better to get back to work. The time draws near – -Our King has Come, is Present, and Will Come Again. Be ready. Time to get my own cake shop in order.

Happy Birthday Jesus 3

Me, Myself, and I – Not

by Jane Tawel

November 22, 2017

Gordon and I are re-watching the television series, “Psyche”. We love it. In the last episode, Shawn insisted that he was bringing back the use of “Not!” at the end of statements to indicate that he really meant the opposite. This grammatical conceit is used as in my saying this morning, “I am going to get the house completely cleaned in the next hour -NOT!” Gus assured Shawn, that bringing back “not”, would not be happening. And this episode aired in 2008. Fast forward to 2017, and here I am not so much insisting that I am bringing phrases like “not”, and “cool” and “psyche-out” and “radical” and “whatever” back, as much as I have never let them go.

Sometimes in moments of depression and doubt, or insecurity springing up as a downer from the high ride of pride, I am reminded that according to what I say I believe, it is not supposed to be “about me” at all. I am teaching grammar again to students, and I am a stickler for the correct use of “I” as subject and “me” as object. But as a wannabe Jesus follower, the truth is, I am at the best of what I was created to be when I allow myself to be the object being acted upon. It is when I start getting lost in the idea that it is “I” who controls or “I” who is right as in “right-eous”, that I end up feeling most displaced and disgruntled and depressed.

Thankfully in English, we write “I” small — only one little letter. It should make it easier to replace it with something longer, like the eternal word, Yahweh or Jehovah or Messiah. If I would only take “I” out of my life sentences, then there could be only “He”. And then those “life sentences” would not be an imprisonment in the egotistical-hopelessness I so often wallow in, but a “Life-sentence” of being dead to self, but alive in Christ. When I was in high school, we were asked to choose a “life verse”. I should have picked something that promised me financial blessings and a guardian angel to tote around, but instead I chose Galatians 2:20: “For I am crucified with Christ, and yet I live. Yet, not I but Christ lives in me; and the life that I now live in the flesh, I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me”. Notice that all the “I”s in this verse are preceded or followed by “nots”. Even the positive actions have to do with dying to my–self.

Now don’t even get me started on the abuse of people’s use of the word “myself”. I think people mistake it for a fancier grammatical form of “I”, but folks, I am here as a grammar guru to tell you, It ain’t that. However, in my life verse, Paul, the author, could have correctly said, “Yet, not I, myself, but Christ lives in me”. There we have it. The unholy trinity of me, myself and I, must give way to the Holy Trinity, of I crucified in Christ, God working in me, and the Holy Spirit in my–Self.

Eugene Petersen has been a big help during these my days of Weltschmurz. He writes in A Long Obedience in The Same Direction of perseverance:

We survive in the way of faith not because we have extraordinary stamina but because God is righteous, because God sticks with us. Christian discipleship is a process of paying more and more attention to God’s righteousness and less and less attention to our own; finding the meaning of our lives not by probing our moods and motives and morals but by believing in God’s will and purposes; making a map of the faithfulness of God, not charting the rise and fall of our enthusiasms. It is out of such a reality that we acquire perseverance.(133)

Petersen goes on to interpret Hebrews 12: 1,2 this way: “Strip down, start running– and never quit! No extra spiritual fat, no parasitic sins. Keep your eyes on Jesus, who both began and finished this race we’re in. Study how he did it. Because he never lost sight of where he was headed–that exhilarating finish in and with God–he could put up with anything along the way: cross, shame, whatever. And now he’s there, in the place of honor, right alongside God.”

I love the chastisingly ironic, hilarious way that Petersen interprets this, when he calls me out for my ridiculous complaints and whines about myself. Petersen mocks my taking myself so seriously when he says that The Christ “put up with anything” and then lists first the cross, then shame, and finally “whatever” –showing my comparison of my “sufferings” to The Christ’s sufferings as my little ridiculous “whatevers”. Petersen clues right in to the fact that not only am I not taking up the literal cross of Christ, but I have somehow magnified my petty problems, insecurities and complaints to the level of the things that Jesus “put up with”. Jesus might well respond, “Whatever!”.

Perhaps I am wrong to correct my students if they use the word “me” as the subject in a sentence where God is the compound subject matter. God and “me” can do much, much more together, than God and “I”. The life that I now live, I must live by the faith of, in, and through the Son of God. It is time we went back to memorizing prepositions. Oh, to understand the words of St. Francis, when He prays that Christ will live out every prepositional phrase in, through, above, below, around, before, behind and within Francis’ life. You see, Students, prepositions can never be followed by a subject like “I” but only by a direct object, like me. And God will never insist on removing me from the subject matter of my own life, but will always offer to act in and through me as the direct object of His loving grace-filled prepositional will.

Speaking of Language Arts, though –Oh, those Germans — they do have the best words for things. God’s Word tells us that when we are approaching a time of Thanksgiving, as we are this week, but we instead feel ” Weltschmurz” or weary of the world, then we should cry out: “Inner Schweinehund!” Inner Schweinehund is that little voice that tells you to get up off the couch, you selfish pig-hound (so much more motivating than couch potato) and do something, go running. Inner Schweinehund is just super fun to say.

Speaking of my beloved son, Gordon is in a “boot”, complete with crutches, for a couple months, after having fractured his foot. A boot is not as cool as a cast, and I suspect they do it for profit margin — just sayin’. I might sign the black boot in neon sharpie anyway, something, like: “Your Dad and I tried to warn you, Love, Mom”. It is a long process of healing, and for a nineteen year old, it really cramps his style (and his foot, his shoulder, his leg, his arms) — no driving, no long showers, no bike riding. So he, like so many of us in tough situations brought on by our own choices, begin to wonder, well really, who am I and what am I good for? At my age, it seems like every single day and definitely every single night, I wonder, who am I and what am I good for? But perhaps more frighteningly, when I wake up in the dead watches of the night, or return from the funeral of a young person, or watch people morally implode, but mostly when I find myself looking back and sideways and forward at the choices I have made and still make, I more often wonder, who is God and what is He good for? When I get focused on me, myself, and I, I am content and at peace-NOT! When I lose focus on God The Father, God The Son, and God The Holy Spirit, then I am lost in the subjective subject of I and I alone. If I keep God as the Subject who acts even when I sleep then even, if not perfected, I persevere. And I am assured in God’s promises, that perseverance is the long-game, the marathon, the way to faith, hope, love, and joy .

So, for Gordie and me, I recently pulled up the attached video of the Hoytes: Vater and Sohn — and was reminded that I am not and have never, ever been the dad running a marathon but I am always and have always been the son who is in the wheel chair. And when I listen to this song and see the hands, and thighs, and back muscles of this father straining to push his son to the finish line, I weep, because I can see how helpless I am in life’s metaphoric wheelchair, unless I ask my Father to run the race for and in me. In this video, as in life, if I crucify myself, then the Great “I Am” can enable me to run any race this world has to offer. If I make myself the direct object of The Father’s love, then He can push me and pull me through – Whatever. It is when I see and follow the Savior whose nail-scared hands, and thighs, and back muscles pushed all of us to the Finish Line, that I have the perseverance to keep living goodness, and the experience promised peace that passes all understanding. I just need to remember that every day is a shot at winning a new Iron Woman competition, and every day, the starting line is redrawn. So I must moment by moment ask Jesus to crucify “I”, and live in “me” and help me persevere with joy derived from His strength pushing me through in the Great Race of Life. In the video of the Hoyts’ race, look at the absolute joy on the son’s face as he crosses the finish line. That is what all those who crucify me, myself and I will some day experience when they come before the Throne, the joy of hearing from a God who did it All and pushed us through Life’s Race– saying, “Well done, good and faithful servant. Come on across your life’s finish line and receive the crown of thorns turned to a crown of Olympic Gold”.

The only reason I have ever crossed any literal or metaphoric finish line, has nothing to do with “I”, but because “me” is the direct object of God’s movement through and love in and for the world. So, German language, take a back seat to this English teacher because Me am totally psyched out by the radical and cool love of my Daddy, Yahweh. And I say to you my silly Weltschmurz – Whatever!

I…. Not. God…Yep-erroo! That is how me became thankful to see some of my own handicaps today. The opposite of “I” in God, is not “I-Not”, but You-Yes acting in me – Yes!” That is who I am when I am best, crucified with Christ yet living powerfully and free. Because that is who God is when He is working in and through me – a good, good Daddy. That is the Thanks – giving of perseverance, the Less of me and the Yes of Christ. In German, this wholeness, and peacefulness is “ganz und friedlich”. In Hebrew, it is shalom. In English, well, let’s just say peace in and Peace Out!

Psalm 136: 1 “Give thanks to The Lord, for He is good. His love endures forever”.

Team Hoyt and the song: “I Know My Redeemer Lives” :

gty_team_hoyt_2008_kb_140408_4x3_992

#notmetoo

“Hashtag: Not Me Too”

By Jane Tawel

October 21, 2017

I wanted to share a link here to an excellent article by Alexandra Petri, on the current discussion about Harvey Weinstein, Donald Trump, and other powerful men like them that have a history of abusing women. It is also an article that provides a tough look at what we as women (and men who are not abusers), have allowed ourselves to think and do in work and personal relationships to men and ourselves.

The metaphor this writer uses of women as victims of second-hand smoke is startlingly true. During the recent “me too” women solidarity campaign — and I applaud it, I do — but I felt like posting, “well, duh, me too”. Of course! I can give you countless stories — both, as this author writes “lucky escapes” and a few not at all lucky escapes but life-changing situations of abuse of power or “friendship”.

My worldview (and my family laughs at my insistence on this term), is, in ever deepening humility I pray, an incrementally and hopefully growing Judeo-Christian worldview. I feel a deep sadness that many “churches” and few “Christians” do very little to address real moral and culture-fabric destroying issues like this one. I have pathetically tried with my own children, and with students, but I often feel all I can do is pray with “groanings and moanings” for them because the mind boggles and the spirit grows faint after a while. And as Petri writes, we just get used to not speaking the Truth and instead wearing our womanly hazmat gear around all the second-hand smoke. Frankly, when the hullaballoo happened surrounding Mike Pence’s habit of taking his wife to meals with women he worked with, my ironic comment based on my own experience was, honestly, there are many times in my life and career I would have greatly preferred meeting with a boss or mentor and his wife, rather than trying to carry on professionally without another woman present. I would often have felt more respected had his wife been in the room than when I was alone in the room with him. At least a wife there would have been a second layer of protective gear.

But this whole discussion is not new, and I don’t even mean in our time and place. It is as old as Adam and Eve. It is a worldview that believes in the dual sins of omission and commission comingling in our fallen-ness. Adam blames Eve and Eve blames Adam and both of them destroy the human bonds of love, truth, and justice. Then they work together to blame anything else – the snake, the god, the trees – just so long as they don’t have to look within.

Jesus called us out when He drew in the sand and recommended that the powerful men surrounding the abused woman “taken in adultery”, look at the evil within their own hearts and the society they had created in their own images, not God’s. I think the writer of the gospels said with great Judeo-Christian dark humorous irony, this phrase “taken in adultery”, much like they might say, today, “she should be stoned because the men only did that because she dressed the way she did”. (At least Adam couldn’t blame his sin on the way Eve was dressed.) Into that dual-ly sinning world and into our dual-ly sinning world, there comes the most powerful, famous Son of Man of the day, and this Superstar who never abused any of His power or abused any of His people, says, “Woman. Where are your accusers? RISE UP! And go about your life and don’t partake in this sin any more.” Jesus, who never committed a sin of commission or omission, says, in effect, “Where there is smoke, there is fire. Hell-fire”. Then He offers to be our eternal hazmat gear. But we still have to stop the world’s smoking habit. We have to Rise Up on the fresh breaths of God’s Truth and Love.

And this is, I think, what Jesus would say to women today. And tomorrow. And forever. Rise up and sin no more.

And yes, some of the men in my stories, who have been raised to think they are “weather” also have been raised to think they are “christians”. Some worked in “ministries”. And very few of them were ever asked to look inside and put down their power stones. That is truly and eternally tragic, as this writer calls out. Evil without can destroy the body but not the soul. But–Evil within poisons the soul; and being allowed to continue to do the wrong thing is deforming and horrible for the person we pharisaical bystanders allow to continue to do it. This is why Jesus calls out His own followers and still calls them to come out – away from — our pharisaical smug, self-defensive, self-protective, “getting some help”, cheap grace bought unjustness.

This calling to account is also Godly love and truth married to each other. We need to stop professing the current culture of narcissistic power -hungry “Christianity”. The calling to account of the sins of commission pale in comparison to what God does and will do to address the sins of omission. But judgement is what He does to love us. The Gospel is truly not that cheap brand of Disney-Hollywood-idolized love currently sold in the halls of governments and churches. Alas and Woe! – as it was in the days The Christ stood up against the powerful governmental and religious leaders. Because it is our own complicity in the world’s brokenness and sinfulness that we will be burdened with and by. It is that burden we choose to keep carrying, like heavy stones we want to throw at others. The stones of our complicity which are preventing us from the true freedom of being beloved in God.

When I read this article again, I will look long and hard at my own complicity in allowing the second-hand smoke of sinfulness. I will also look long and hard at whether I am insisting on “taking the money”, so to speak or the “downtime” to relax in recreation bought by someone’s complicity, someone’s slavery, and someone’s evil towards others.

And I will ask myself: Am I the woman who is never brought before The Lord and thereby saved from her sinfulness and so continues in her complicit sinning? Or am I brave enough, to throw my own body down myself – not as a means to get ahead but as a means to find Christ’s cross in my own life? Am I willing to throw myself down in front of the people with stones in their hands and draw a line in the sand between the perpetrators of this world and their sycophants? Will I say, not “me too”, but Christ alone? Will I Rise Up against my own sins of omission?

Will I #me too? Or will I say, I have been freed to sin no more? Let’s join hands together and let the rest of the world know, they – men and women – need no longer be slaves to sin.

Hashtag – Woman, Rise Up and Sin No More. #Jesus

adam-and-eve-banished-from-garden-of-eden

Article by Alexadra Petri can be found at the following link:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/compost/wp/2017/10/18/men-of-the-world-you-are-not-the-weather/?utm_term=.1e13ca5a5782#comments

A Sheep Dog Worldview By a Sheepdog Wanna-Be

A Sheep Dog Worldview By A Sheepdog Wanna–Be

By Jane Tawel

October 4, 2017

There have often been days when one singular phrase seems to reverberate through my mind in the small byways I travel. It is a phrase I heard in long gone days that is the title of a book by Francis Schaeffer. This phrase more than so many others, seems to encapsulate for me what my worldview should daily center around. This phrase which is really a question, seems to circle round, like a shepherd dog does a flock of unruly sheep. It encapsulates the guiding force that should shepherd the many unruly questions I am asking moment by moment in work, family, play, the world’s intersections, and even in solitude in relationship to God and in relationship to what I read in God’s Holy Word. I have been a bit stunned to learn from college colleagues, that one of the phrases that has been thrown out and therefore not taught to students (perhaps in favor of “common core” –ironic pause here), is the phrase “worldview”. I have been told by youth pastors that this phrase does not “resonate” with today’s generation. I am sorry but the Midwestern in me, cries out, “Hogwash! You must be kidding!”. If there has ever been a generation of people who need to understand that every one has a worldview whether they know it or not and live by it whether they know it or not, it just might be this “worldview on twitter -steroids” generation. There is actually a neato little questionnaire they can fill out (although not on twitter). The idea is very old and there are a standard and historically and culturally applicable, 7 (or 8 depending on your source) worldview questions. Here is a link – one of many you can find. This one is from a well -known source from James Sire. I use it as often as possible in my classes.

http://www.christianity.com/theology/other-religions-beliefs/8-questions-every-worldview-must-answer.html

So what is my sheepdog? What is the question that has been imprinted by Francis Schaeffer on my feeble worldview search? The phrase is:

“How should we then live?”

There is a parallelism to the implied answer to that question that adds balance to one’s life. It is the “If –Then” equation. IF I believe such and such, THEN I should be reflecting that such and such in my actions and my choices; in my words and my deeds; in my relationships and my viewing material; and in my “heart, soul, mind, and strength”– as The Christ says in Matthew 22:37.

So I recently began rereading and newly reading some Schaeffer. And lo and behold, there in the preface were the words of another favorite theologian of mine, J.I. Packer. People like Packer and Schaeffer, Willard and Lewis, L’Engle and Sayers, Manning and Johnson, Tozer, and Tolkien, and Terese, — these people have become my sheepdogs along with too many others to name. These writers are the THEN answers to my own IF worldview questions. They become the sheepdogs who run the other side of my flock of a life—a silly sheep-like flock of thoughts and actions which has a hard time not ambling out of God’s provided pasture. My little sheep-like mind has a hard time understanding that ignorance is not an excuse for hypocrisy. And I often ignore the sheepdogs that God provides as they try to keep safe the foolish sheep of my mind, heart and soul and to prevent me from metaphorically running off a pride-invented cliff.

My sheepdog saints, both living and passed, are there to help my sheepdog questions and try to keep my unruly sheep-thoughts and sheep-actions in line with the worldview I claim to hold – The Christ in the Center Worldview – Christ in the center of everything, from history to the future of humankind, from the Epistles to the Torah, from society to politics, from laws to mercy and justice, and from Christ in others to Christ in me. Christ the Great Shepherd has provided us with sheepdogs throughout our history. But we must allow them into our foolish flocks. And there these mighty, brave, wondrously intelligent, loving and caring sheepdog saints work with the Great Shepherd, The Messiah, to guide my little silly sheep-life. Great saints and prophets do this not out of love of blessing or manna, but out of their great love for the sheep and their even greater love for The Shepherd.

I write because it is how I think and learn best, but here by someone so much more of everything than I, are words from one of the great theological sheepdogs, J.I. Packer about one of the other great theological sheepdogs, Francis Schaeffer. I hope after reading them, you might want to pick up some of my own sheepdog saints’ writings. At least pause just a moment and ask yourself as I am today:

How Shall We Then Live?

If……. Then……..

From J.I. Packer in the Preface to Francis Schaeffer’s Trilogy:

“Francis Schaeffer was a reading listening, thinking man who lived in the present, learned from the past, and looked to the future… He was an impassioned thinker who paints his vision of eternal truth in bold strokes and stark contrasts… Schaeffer saw himself as an evangelist, called to speak the truth with an uncompromising urgency to real people in real trouble, whose lives have been broken by the relativism, irrationalism, fragmentation and nihilism of our culture today. And thus I think it truest to call him a prophet-pastor, a Bible-based visionary who by the light of his vision sought out a world in need and shepherded the Lord’s sheep… The essential perceptions which shaped his vision and work:

First Schaeffer vividly perceived the wholeness of created reality, of human life, of each person’s thinking, and of God’s revealed truth. He had a mind for first principles, for systems, and for totalities, and he would never discuss issues in isolation or let a viewpoint go till he had explored and tested its implications as a total account of reality and life. He saw fundamental analysis of this kind a s clarifying, for as he often pointed out, there are not many basic worldviews, and we all need to realize how much or haphazard, surface-level thoughts are actually taking for granted… Christianity must be presented in terms of its own presuppositions and in theologically styematic form, as the revealed good news of our rational and holy Creator who became our gracious and merciful Redeemer in space and time.

Second, Schaeffer perceived the primacy of reason in each individual’s makeup and the potency of ideas in the human mind. He saw that “ideas have legs”, so that how we think determines what we are. So the first task in evangelism, in the modern West or anywhere else, is to persuade the other person that he ought to embrace the Christian view of reality…. This is to treat a human, not as an “intellectual”, but as the human being that he undoubtedly is. To address his mind in this way is to show respect for him as a human being, made for truth because he is made in God’s image.

Third, Schaeffer perceived the Western mind as adrift on a trackless sea of relativism and irrationalism. He saw that the notion of truth as involving exclusion of untruth, and of value as involving exclusion of dysvalue, had perished in both sophisticated and popular thinking. Into its place had crept the idea of ongoing synthesis—the idea that eventually there is not real distinction between right and wrong or truth and untruth, and that antithesis will eventually be swallowed up in a category-less “pan-everythingism.” To make people realize how this viewpoint has victimized them across the board, Schaeffer regularly introduced his topics with an historical analysis showing how Western thought about them had reached its current state of delirium. The aim of these analyses was to reestablish the notion that there is an absolute antithesis between truth and error, good and evil, beauty and the obscenely ugly, and so to refurnish our ravaged and pillaged minds in a way that makes significant thinking about life, death, personhood, and God possible for us once more.

Fourth, Schaeffer perceived the importance of identifying—in all discussion on what being a Christian involves – that which he called the antithesis and the point of tension. The antithesis is between truth and untruth, right and wrong, good and evil, the meaningful and the meaningless, Christian and not-Christian value systems, secular relativism and Christian absolutism. He made it his business on every topic he handled to cover the “either-or” choices that have to be made at the level of first principles and to show that the biblical-Christian options for personal and community life are the only ones that are consistently rational and satisfyingly human.

Fifth, Schaeffer perceived the need to live truth as well as think it—to demonstrate to the world through the transformed lifestyle of believing groups that the “the Personal-Infinite God is really there in our generation.”

Christian credibility, Schaeffer saw, requires that truth be not merely defended, but practiced; not just debated, but done….

What long-term significance has Schaeffer for the Christian cause? We wait to see. The law of human fame will no doubt treat Schaeffer as it has treated others, eclipsing him temporarily now that he is dead and only allowing us to see his real stature ten or twenty years down the road. My guess is that his verbal and visual sketches, simple but brilliant as they appear to me to be, will outlive everything else, but I may be wrong. I am sure however, that I shall not be at all wrong when I hail Francis Schaeffer, the little Presbyterian pastor who saw so much more of what he was looking at and agonized over it so much more tenderly than the rest of us do, as one of the truly great Christians of my time.”

— J.I. Packer, February 1990

From The Preface to The Three Essential Books in One Volume: Frances Schaeffer Trilogy

So how shall I then live, if I want to put away my sheep-ishness and take on the hard work of being The Great Shepherd’s Sheepdog? I start by keeping my ears turned to the voice of the Good Shepherd and my heart turned to the needs of the lost sheep, even when the lost one is me, but especially when it is another who is lost.

Jesus gave some pretty strong indications about His own worldview. He completely believed that He was The Center of The Eternal Worldview. He believed His Worldview of Him as Son and The Father were the only gate by which we sheep could enter into God’s worldview. Here are the words of The Son of God who lived as I did in this world but came to show Himself as Creator-Savior in a Kingdom whose worldview has no end. I plan on meditating on these words of Jesus while grazing in my own little worldview pasture today.

From John’s record of The Good Shepherd’s Words to us on Worldview:

Jesus told this simple story, but they had no idea what he was talking about. So he tried again. “I’ll be explicit, then. I am the Gate for the sheep. All those others are up to no good—sheep stealers, every one of them. But the sheep didn’t listen to them. I am the Gate. Anyone who goes through me will be cared for—will freely go in and out, and find pasture. A thief is only there to steal and kill and destroy. I came so they can have real and eternal life, more and better life than they ever dreamed of.

^11-13“I am the Good Shepherd. The Good Shepherd puts the sheep before himself, sacrifices himself if necessary. A hired man is not a real shepherd. The sheep mean nothing to him. He sees a wolf come and runs for it, leaving the sheep to be ravaged and scattered by the wolf. He’s only in it for the money. The sheep don’t matter to him.

^14-18“I am the Good Shepherd. I know my own sheep and my own sheep know me. In the same way, the Father knows me and I know the Father. I put the sheep before myself, sacrificing myself if necessary. You need to know that I have other sheep in addition to those in this pen. I need to gather and bring them, too. They’ll also recognize my voice. Then it will be one flock, one Shepherd. This is why the Father loves me: because I freely lay down my life. And so I am free to take it up again. No one takes it from me. I lay it down of my own free will. I have the right to lay it down; I also have the right to take it up again. I received this authority personally from my Father.”

^19-21This kind of talk caused another split in the Jewish ranks. A lot of them were saying, “He’s crazy, a maniac—out of his head completely. Why bother listening to him?” But others weren’t so sure: “These aren’t the words of a crazy man. Can a ‘maniac’ open blind eyes?”

^22-24They were celebrating Hanukkah just then in Jerusalem. It was winter. Jesus was strolling in the Temple across Solomon’s Porch. The Jews, circling him, said, “How long are you going to keep us guessing? If you’re the Messiah, tell us straight out.”

^25-30Jesus answered, “I told you, but you don’t believe. Everything I have done has been authorized by my Father, actions that speak louder than words. You don’t believe because you’re not my sheep. My sheep recognize my voice. I know them, and they follow me. I give them real and eternal life. They are protected from the Destroyer for good. No one can steal them from out of my hand. The Father who put them under my care is so much greater than the Destroyer and Thief. No one could ever get them away from him. I and the Father are one heart and mind.”

^31-32Again the Jews picked up rocks to throw at him. Jesus said, “I have made a present to you from the Father of a great many good actions. For which of these acts do you stone me?”

³³The Jews said, “We’re not stoning you for anything good you did, but for what you said—this blasphemy of calling yourself God.”

^34-38Jesus said, “I’m only quoting your inspired Scriptures, where God said, ‘I tell you—you are gods.’ If God called your ancestors ‘gods’—and Scripture doesn’t lie—why do you yell, ‘Blasphemer! Blasphemer!’ at the unique One the Father consecrated and sent into the world, just because I said, ‘I am the Son of God’? If I don’t do the things my Father does, well and good; don’t believe me. But if I am doing them, put aside for a moment what you hear me say about myself and just take the evidence of the actions that are right before your eyes. Then perhaps things will come together for you, and you’ll see that not only are we doing the same thing, we are the same—Father and Son. He is in me; I am in him.”

^39-42They tried yet again to arrest him, but he slipped through their fingers.

From: The Gospel of Sheepdog John in Chapter 10

Dear Lord,

Let my bark belong to you. Let my ears prick up at the sound of Your Voice. Let me joyfully work like a dog in Your Kingdom Pasture. Let me know that You have provided for my future when my legs can’t run any more and that you daily provide all that I need for my tasks. Let me keep my eyes trained on my flock which so easily goes astray and let me always be willing to go in search of the one lost sheep, just as You do. I am a foolish old hound dog but You have called me to Your side as a co-worker. You are so much greater than I and yet You allow me to sit at the foot of Your table and eat Your scraps. And somehow, You Oh, Shepherd, call me not Your pet, but Your child. I praise you with meager “woofs woofs” that in Your loving heart You choose to interpret as my earnest and loving praise.

Help me today, to herd ’em up and move ’em on, further up and further in,

Your Ole’ Dog, Jane

7-herding

I Have Got to Be That Leper

More Thoughts: on reading Henri Nouwen

by Jane Tawel

September 10, 2017

We used to sing songs like “This little light of mine” or “Jesus loves me, this I know” or “This is my Father’s world”, or “I’ve got the joy, joy, joy, joy down in my heart. Where?! Down in my heart! Where?! Down in my heart!” Now we sing songs about how broken and lost we are. I was making myself giggle the other day trying to imagine my grandpa and grandma pulling up a hymn book and singing along with “Oceans” or “Broken Together”. And, honestly, I get it, I really, really get it — I love those songs — but reading Henri Nouwen has convicted me that what is most difficult of all for me to do is to live as if I am loved by a real, true God, to live each day as a beloved child of Jehovah.

I have to grow up, out of my whining and whinging, and accept the covenantal family relationship of “IF God = Then I”. I have to see God as a parent who loves me and who promises that no matter how far the world descends into madness or “pig swill”, Our Father will be preparing a party at home in His Kingdom for the return of His lost ones. Then I have to look around at the suffering in the world and the lost folks on my own doorstep and karaoke with Jesus on, “this little light of mine. I’m gonna let it shine, let it shine, let it shine, let it shine.”

I have got to be that leper — the one out of ten — that can’t stop shouting about how joyful he is to be healed and who dashes through the opened party doors that Jesus shines the light from. Does that leper have hard days? Yep. Did Jesus have hard times? Yep. But those hard times — and they can sometimes be daily — are the times I must follow The Son’s example of retreat — even if only for a moment — to enter the accepting solace of The Father’s arms. In that love I find true joy as a dearly loved child of God.

The second hardest thing for me to do is to follow God’s ancient command to love other people as if they are also beloved children of a real live God. Matthew 22:36-40 “Teacher, which is the great commandment in the Law?” ³⁷And he said to him, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. ³⁸This is the great and first commandment. ³⁹And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. ⁴⁰On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets.” God loves the prodigal sinner in the very same and eternal way that he loves the eldest believer — both are sinners saved only by the inexplicable, unchanging, running -forward- towards- us joyful, joy-inducing LOVE of OUR Father.

So if I have opened my arms to accept the loving embrace of this God, then I must not focus on my brokenness but must fight the darkness with joy. I am a child of God called to speak truth, fight injustice, love enemies, sorrow with the sorrowful, walk upright, and to REJOICE in the nearness and love of God. This is the joy that comes with being not a servant but a child of a King. If I don’t accept what The Father offers me — complete forgiveness and restoration to what He created me to be — If I don’t allow myself to be reborn and returned not to slavery but to sonship like Jesus, The Son, — If I don’t allow the sorrows of this world to be shadows dispelled by God’s light in me — THEN I am turning my back on The Father as He dashes across the earth’s plains, longing to bring me back into His Garden Kingdom. I must know Him as loving Father and myself as His beloved. I must daily put on the royal robe and enter the party.

And if I have opened my arms to accept the loving embrace of this God, then I must open my arms with a loving embrace for all those who do not know how loved they are by a God. BY A GOD!!!!!! With that acceptance of my role as daughter, I must look up from my not so very important work to see the one lost prodigal or the one proud hateful eldest that God also runs toward. I must sorrow with she who is lost and rejoice with he who enters the same embrace I am held firmly in. I must join in God’s party for each child of God. That is what evangelism is — oh how I mourn with those who have lost that word’s meaning — Evangelism is going out there and discovering that everyone’s name is on God’s party list and then flinging open my own arms to party with each invitee like there are endless tomorrows of celebration. Because there are– God’s Hoopla has no end. The “Good News” is an invitation open for each individual, no matter who they are, who seeks joy in God’s love. In Jesus, I experience the joy of my own celebration of salvation in being loved by God when I see how dearly loved even my worst enemy is by the God who loves.

One day, as Jesus gathered His children, or those we call His disciples, to Him to give them the power of His kingdom, in Luke 10:21 the Bible tells us that ” In that same hour Jesus rejoiced in the Holy Spirit and said, “I thank you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that you have hidden these things from the wise and understanding and revealed them to little children; yes, Father, for such was your gracious will.”

Dear Father, please help me to seek Your gift of Joy in the Jesus Journey. Help me see myself and others as much loved children. Create in me a heart and will to mourn with those who have so much to mourn about. Then let me trust that no matter what, You can create joy. Forgive my petty complaints and help me not act like a slave but as your child Help me accept that everything You have is mine. Forgive my grasping hands. Help me to open my hands to all those I meet and to give what You have given me. Help me to open my arms that You have filled with plenty of Your goodness and love — enough to last forever. Please let my little light shine. Amen

From Henri Nouwen in The Return of the Prodigal (emphases are my own):

“From God’s perspective, one hidden act of repentance, one little gesture of selfless love, one moment of true forgiveness is all that is needed to bring God from his throne to run to his returning son and to fill the heavens with sounds of divine joy….

When Jesus speaks about the world, he is very realistic. He speaks about wars and revolutions, earthquakes, plagues and famines, persecution and imprisonment, betrayal, hatred and assassinations. There is no suggestion at all that these signs of the world’s darkness will ever be absent. But still, God’s joy can be ours in the midst of it all. It is the joy of belonging to the household of God whose love is stronger than death and who empowers us to be in the world while already belonging to the kingdom of joy.

All holy men and women, whether they lived long ago or belong to our own time, can recognize the many small returns that take place every day and rejoice with the Father. They have somehow pierced the meaning of true joy.

For me it is amazing to experience daily the radical difference between cynicism and joy. Cynics seek darkness wherever they go, they point always to approaching dangers, impure motives, and hidden schemes. They call trust naive, care romantic, and forgiveness sentimental. They sneer at enthusiasm, ridicule spiritual fervor, and despise charismatic behavior. They consider themselves realists who see reality for what is truly is and who are not deceived by “escapist emotions.” But in belittling God’s joy their darkness only calls forth more darkness.

People who have come to know the joy of God do not deny the darkness, but they choose not to live in it. They claim that the light that shines in the darkness can be trusted more than the darkness itself and that a little bit of light can dispel a lot of darkness. They point each other to flashes of light here and there, and remind each other that they reveal the hidden but real presence of God. They discover that there are people who heal each other’s wounds, forgive each other’s offenses, share their possessions, foster the spirit of community, celebrate the gifts they have received, and live in constant anticipation of the full manifestation of God’s glory.

Every moment of each day I have the chance to choose between joy and…….

Jesus lived this joy of the Father’s house to the full. In him we can see his Father’s joy. That divine joy does not obliterate the divine sorrow. In our world, joy and sorrow exclude each other. Here below, joy means the absence of sorrow and sorrow the absence of joy. But such distinctions do not exist in God. Jesus, the Son of God, is the man of sorrows, but also the man of complete joy. … The joy of God belongs to his sonship, and this joy of Jesus and his Father is offered to me. Jesus wants me to have the same joy he enjoys: “I have loved you, just as my Father has loved me. Remain in my love, If you keep my commandments you will remain in my love just as I have kept my Father’s commandments and remain in his love. I have told you this, so that my own joy may be in you and your joy be complete.” The Return of the Prodigal by Henri Nouwen (116-118)

Joy in my heart

Musings on Belief and the Current State of Communications Between Me and Myself

Some Musings on a Facebook Conversation between “Believers”

by Jane Tawel

July 13, 2017

Hello:

I don’t know any of you in this Facebook exchange, except Scotty. Disclaimer: I have claimed a “form of” Christianity as my own Worldview and worked with Scotty at a Christian high school. Second Disclaimer: I struggle with the idea of calling myself a “Christian” in the same way I might struggle with calling myself an “American”. I am both, but the violence done to both of these titles and in the name of both of these identities has led them to be misnomers in my own heart if not elsewhere. As a person who values the integrity of words and truth, I am content to continue to struggle with both.

Pete –your arguments are sound and I find they point to something I have been struggling with for the last several years perhaps especially as I continue to work and “play” in “Christian” circles and assess what we have “done to” the Judeo-Christian worldview in the First – World Orders in which we live. I don’t want to intrude on this conversation but at the same time I don’t like to “snoop” on conversations that I find important and I think this one is.

My own experience throughout my life is that God as a Being will be as relational as I, as a being, want Him to be. At various points in my life, I made different choices in whether I wanted to be a “Christ-follower” and a “God-believer” or did not. There have been lots and lots of days when for my purposes God worked best as an afterthought. I have found that God is perfectly okay with leaving me alone but He also doesn’t just come when I whistle for Him. He is faithful but not on a leash. He has no need at all for me to believe in Him or do anything for Him. He has an Otherness and a love for humanity that people from the very beginning have tried to communicate with varying degrees of success. Those who call themselves “Christians” believe Jesus communicated it best in the flesh.

A person having no need of what we know as god(s) is an historical, rational non-belief life choice, as you rightly say. There is nothing new about it nor can we blame science for it. We also therefore cannot look to science or any other religions as a basis for argument. The very tenant of the Judeo-Christian Worldview is “Shut up for once and Just Know that Yahweh is The God.” (Psalm 46:10) If anyone has forgotten the mystery of this it is probably us yakking, arguing, bullying, world-conforming “Christians”.

Perhaps, Pete, what your friends are trying to argue but choosing what I would say is merely an unhelpful word choice — faith — is more that everyone believes in something. Perhaps what you are correctly pointing out is that it is also true that many think they believe in something like God who is Otherness, when in fact, they believe in god who is a reflection of their own desires and need and self image. It is kind of like people saying they believe in “free market” or don’t believe in everyone having healthcare and yet their actions show what they really believe in for themselves — just not for others. Believing in God has always meant actions over words. And this is what the non-believers rightly shake their heads at as our actions too often show what we really believe. Hence, we try to argue Otherness empirically and temporally and personally and get ourselves all tied up in nonsense. No wonder you keep trying to point that out. I can only apologize for myself not for all of us, but I feel a great sense of guilt in all of this. I’m sorry.

God is a choice, not a fact for everyone’s life. I think what many Christians fear is the admission that they have lived their lives exactly as you surmise is the truth — God as a convenient Santa Claus or God as a convenient excuse and more wrongly — God as personal power and justification– and so we give in to this constant need to convince the rest of the world that we are “right”. (Side note: I keep recommending this but I highly recommend Kathryn Schultz’s Ted Talk on “Being Wrong” or her book if any of you Facebook folk have the time. It has nothing to do with “religion” and everything to do with thinking and believing unscathed in anything at all including the infallibility of science.) Also, with people I love, I feel very sad when they don’t want to believe in God but I have erred so many times on letting that sadness be anger and worry. It is a Mobius Strip paradigm, is it not?

Many of us who claim to be “Christians” — and I put it in quotes time and time again because our idea of Christianity is too often like people who think selfies are art — We too, too often have no more real Need — or real love or conception and pattern of worship of Another Being — than you do. This of course is why much of the world sadly has found no need of us or Our God. I believe we will be “judged” for this as individuals and also as religious institutions and nations. I don’t know exactly what judgment means and I understand that to you, Pete, it has no sense in eternal terms, but perhaps if I might just say that I think that somehow what I have been given as soul-life is mine to develop and will someday either be connected to an Otherness Eternity and a “Lifeforce” that I know and love and that knows and loves me or not.

We too, who call ourselves “believers” have quite often created a god in our own image. And sadly, this is what people see in today’s religion called “Christianity”. I say sadly because –mea culpa. It is why some of us are seeking a new name and new pattern of living spiritually and relationally even as we continue to turn to the Scriptures and other spiritual writings for direction and reality checks.

You are correct of course — there is something inherently irrational about both Otherness as a God and divine souls in humans — and when we keep trying to prove its rationality to atheists we do in fact “spin our wheels” as Scotty said. Spinning one’s wheels in my experience, just throws a lot of dirt on everyone nearby. Those who believe in True Myth — and again you are correct — all religions have some coherent similarities in terms of true myths– know myth to be as divinely inspired as art or communication or sunsets or tornadoes or the inexplicable love at one’s first sight of one’s baby — or anything that we “feel” and thereby “know” to be a Truth truer than “reality”. I know this idea of “True” myth sticks in your craw. If it helps you any, it also bugs a lot of Christians for the opposite reason! 🙂 Throw it around sometime with “Christians” and have some fun.

The two things that I have been dealing with the past few years are: One — God is not a one way street and faith, hope and love are my part of living intentionally in the world daily and living in a covenant with God daily — not once and then arguing with non-believers for the rest of my life that I am right and they are wrong. Just like my marriage, there are days and nights that I want out of this covenant with God because I just don’t love Him any more or He doesn’t love me enough any more. But just like my marriage, a covenant goes beyond “reality” to a different level of living together and that kind of loving relationship is quite different than anything else I know.

As those who claim “Christ” continue to use Him as a weapon or excuse or battering ram or fear tactic or successful hierarchical corporation or “community”, we create resistance, disbelief, anguish, unfaith, anger, disgust, and as you rightly say again, war and more war and more war. This is a team mentality that has made us all so small, I fear, at best. At worst, it has made us “cursed are those who give the name of good to evil, and of evil to what is good: who make light dark, and dark light: who make bitter sweet, and sweet bitter!” (Isaiah 5:20).

Secondly, I think a lot about this idea that belief is not about what I do or what God does or what tenets I believe, or what I can prove. If I read and think about what my Worldview clearly says time and time again, the purpose of my journey is about whether I know God and He knows me. Whether I love God and whether He loves me — because the idea of “Know” in the Judeo-Christian parlance is that most intimate of knowledge that marriage partners have.

So — all of this to say — these are the kinds of discussions that we should be having with JOY– with excitement — because respecting and being connected to another human’s “innerness” — albeit unusual and uncomfortable in the age of reality TV — is so much more fulfilling knowledge than knowing about a two fanged snake or whatever you were referencing as a proof. Our need to communicate with each other, our desire to love or direct each other to “truth”, our own inner light — all of these inexplicable but true facts of self and other — are the greatest “proofs” I know of that there is a Something, and I believe, Someone, greater than just “me”. Wrestling with it as you all are doing is mentally and emotionally exhausting work, but as my family says at the end of certain work days — It’s a good kind of tired.

… Thanks for a good start to a thinking working day via Facebook!!! Thanks for letting me go on and on as I think through the important ideas you all raise.

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