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Playing with the ideas of shock and awe about what we say we believe about Christmas.  I don’t know about some people, but I get off track this season easily. I stop being a fool for Christ and really just end up being a fool for self.  This is a ditty really, not a poem, but perhaps  a way to start making myself focus on Christ-Mass and maybe jump start an old brain too used to watching “the Hallmark-approved show” and forgetting the nitty gritty of a God who loved “a worm like I” by becoming one.

Questioning Christmas Signs

By Jane Tawel

December 11, 2015

And this will be a sign to you

A Savior born among goat poo?

And this will be what angels sing

A Jew who will become a King?

And shepherds who are dirty, dumb

Will be the Savior’s first welcome?

What right had she to wear a ring?

This unwed mother bears a King?

A family traveling penniless

Without a forwarding address

Will flee from kings and diatribes—

To Him a crown you will ascribe?

This sort of thing seems lunacy

When asked to worship this baby;

Despite the rumor of Wisemen three

How could I think this child Christly?

And once I heard the end of it,

None of his story even fit,

A man who claimed to be a god

Lashed with whips and beat with rods?

His stupid followers even thought

That he was raised and rolled a rock

To escape hell and reign with God,

Don’t you think too– he was a fraud?

I look around at Christmas time

And wait in endless shopping lines;

I buy and buy and buy and buy

And never once do I ask why?

Why I believe in Santa Claus

And all the season’s fake hooplas,

But cannot find a good reason

To worship Jesus as God’s son?

I worship Yuletide’s dollars and cents

But a swaddled King is pure nonsense.

Or am I living upside down?

And should really kneel before the Crown

Of the babe who came and lived and died

To take us as His holy bride?

In the manger scene, am I really the ass?

To question Holy true Christ Mass?

Next week I will be looking at some Sonnets and Psalms with my Freshman Writing Seminar students. We will be writing our own Sonnets and Psalms. So I’m “playing” with some myself.  I love the Psalms, not just because I like poetry and music, but because they are so very, very human and reveal the wrestlings of real people — the struggle to understand the outer world and the human interior landscape, with God in mind, heart and soul.  In the Psalms, our relationship with Yahweh is not linear, and I find that to be true.  Mine has been quite circuitous, that is certain.The Psalms are the Bible’s “Reality Shows”, which actually I hate. But I love real literature about real human experience that seeks to know more than what we can see, smell,taste, touch and hear — writers that strive for metaphor that expands understanding. The Psalmists do that as well as any. So for what it is worth, which is never very much…..

 

Psalm #1

November 28, 2015

By Jane Tawel

Praise to the God who reigns;

Though I forget You on a daily basis, You keep the stars in their places, and the sun gazes on.

Praise to the God who weeps;

Though we kill and kill and kill until our trigger fingers are numb, You mourn for each life wasted.

Praise to the God Who takes away,

No army can defeat You, no nation survive.

How I long, Oh Jehovah, to be at peace, to know what wholeness is like.

My soul shrinks daily with the expenditures of my life,

And my nights are as an endangered species, wakeful and watchful, for a morning of more loss.

But You alone, are my God, if only my ears were still young,

I would come to You, Yahweh, with open hands, now cragged and dappled.

I yearn to reach beyond my plasticized world,

To the Heavens of Your dreams,

To be a better Human, like Your Son.

How long, Oh, God, will You dally, while we work and slave?

My heart sighs and yawns and breaks into a million pieces,

My pain is my heartbeat and my mind rushes on.

My soul only truly knows myself.

How many angry tears are left for me to shed?

But I will praise You, for You alone are a God.

Though many have more money than You,

Though many have more might than You,

Though many have more worshippers than You,

Though many are much sexier than You,

You alone are God.

You Are.

You Were.

You Ever More Will Be.

Praise to the God Who loves,

Even Death could not out-embrace You.

Praise to Jehovah, Who lives,

You create life and sustain us.

Praise to the God who laughs;

In Your Triune comedy act, You make Each Other roar, like thunder on a sun-soaked day.

Praise to the God Who gives, and gives

You own every molecule, every cell, and all is Yours to distribute as You will.

Praise to the God Who Is

And ever more will be!

When to dust I return, to snuggle up next to my grandparents,

You alone, still reign.

Though I have no right to ask,

May You crook a small finger

To call me from my dusty bed,

 To live with You in Your peaceful Kingdom,

Where You and Yours will reign

 forever.

A Foreign Land

by Jane Tawel

November 15, 2015

In the parts of the Middle West of the United States of America, where my family grew up, there was little to none of what today is known as cultural diversity. I grew up in small towns and on small farms where people still made a living and bought houses and had medical insurance and every one sat around the same television set watching the same show on the only night that show was on, commercials included.  The kids all went to the same elementary school, junior high, and high school, except for the Catholic kids who sometimes went to a Catholic school.  But Catholic or Protestant you still played on the same streets and in the same back yards after school.  There were white and  black families and the black kids played with us too. We didn’t know anything about diversity and we treated each other the only way we knew how — if I liked you, I wrote you a note letting you know; if you were mad at me, you yelled at me on the playground, and if you were really mad you might pull my hair, and I might scratch your arm and a teacher might have to come talk to us. After the teacher talked to us, we all just went back to playing kickball or tether ball together. If we looked different or worshiped somewhere different,  I guess we noticed the difference, but the difference made no difference, you know? We were all really the same — we all lived in the same town; we all called “ollie ollie in free”  with Midwestern accents; we all played kick ball or tag in each other’s back yards; we all tried out kissing in the bushes with each other; and we all had to race home in time for dinner, “Little House on the Prairie”, and bed. I don’t remember much homework in those days, some of us were good at some subjects and some of us stunk at them, sports were for having fun, and teachers knew stuff and we learned stuff,  and somehow most of us went on to college and got jobs we mostly liked.  Go figure.

I don’t mean to go all Norman Rockwell, idealistic on you.  There was a lot of what we now call brokenness in my family and the families around us.  Maybe it would have been better to realize this at the time. Maybe not.  No doubt, even as Midwestern kids,  we should have been more aware of what went on in this country and the oddly misguided American right to express prejudice towards other cultures, but we just weren’t. The first prejudice I ever experienced was when my mom remarried and we moved to a bigger city and a junior high girl who happened to be black and who must have misinterpreted my “nervous -where- the- heck- am- I- first- day- of- new- school” smile that I aimed at her, did the Junior High girl  move: hands on hips, elbows projecting like weapons. She looked straight at me standing across from her in my parallel waiting in line stance, and snarled at me, “Wipe that cheesy smile off your face!” That will add to your first day of new school  nervousness let me tell you!  I can of course remember every word exactly as she snarled it. Why do we remember slights so much more clearly than kindnesses?

The first time I recognized prejudice in myself was when I started substituting in Los Angeles Unified School District. When a young naive Midwestern  “going to be a famous actress” type lands a day job at LAUSD, the first thing the army of substitute teacher schedulers whisper gleefully to themselves is, “She’s not in Kansas anymore!”  The schedulers are perfectly justified in sending you to every continuation school (code for one step up from juvenile detention hall). I mean they have to send someone there to cover for the poor slob who idealistically took a full time teaching job at Mini-Hell High,  and now has a nervous break-down once a week which requires an unarmed substitute teacher to offer up her life instead for $113.00 a day.  Are you kidding me!? At first that seems like a lot of money, until you realize it does not include a bullet proof vest or crash helmet. As an aspiring actor and full time temporary substitute, you take every teaching gig they send you. Besides when they call you at 5:00 am you are still mostly incoherent and get caught off guard every stinking time.  That is until you learn to say at 5:00 am when the call to sub comes, “Please dear God, don’t send me back to El Sereno Junior High! Don’t you have anything else?!? I’ll pay you  half my daily rate to send me to Roosevelt High School today!”

After I had been in about every high school in the gigantic county district, I began to realize that if I walked in, picked up my class roster,  and saw a long list of students with a certain type of last name, I would spend the day bouncing on my toes, and making sure my pencils were sharpened to a shiv – worthy point. At certain schools I would arrive dutifully but then walk into the  windowless, school phone-less classroom  where my stomach lurched and I would shiveringly think, “Oh, Lord this is going to be another day from hell and  Dear God, why doesn’t someone please invent a phone that you can keep hidden  in your pocket for emergency calls to 911?!”

On the flip side of cultural diversity, if I saw a group of student names from a certain other country of origin, I breathed a big sigh of relief and said, “Thank you Jesus!  these kids will study and be quiet and they don’t even need a teacher here,  let alone an armed guard, and I may just go home alive today.”  This is how prejudice begins. One day about a year into this gig, and after seeing some LA cops haul off  two of my junior high students  — girls!– I realized that I understood how policemen and women develop prejudices. Because I had developed prejudices.  That was the first step to confronting prejudice in myself. Not the last.

When I graduated from my small Midwestern college and began moving around the country in search of my destiny, I thought  that I was pretty “cultured”, whatever the heck that might mean.  My mother’s family had traveled the world on business and pleasure; I went on to grad school in Boston — to Brandeis for Judah’s Sake! — and I was seriously dating what my grandpa delightfully  called a “ferener”. My three sisters and I in fact, sort of acted out the modern Midwestern version of “Fiddler on the Roof”, and if we’d had a father around, he probably would have acted much like Tevye.  Julie, the first sister to marry, chose a “poor” tailor, well, actually a musician and school teacher.  Janet married a black man, who still prefers not to be called “Afro- American”, I might add, (“I am all American, and I am not from Africa.”). And I, Janie Karen, married a man with several European countries to his DNA credit, and an accent (one of the big attractions for little Middle West Janie Karen).  Tevye might have sung, “I can bend no further”,  but bend the Gordon clan of Springfield, Ohio, did, with the grace of old oaks, not unduly effected by foreign or “feren” elements.  We were all loved, as were our  “culturally divergent” spouses.

Then my fiancé got at job in Los Angeles and I followed fast on his heels.  Southern California is one of the most culturally diverse small nations on the planet.  I googled this for you to read:

The diverse, multiethnic population of Los Angeles today distinguishes the city as the cultural hub of the Pacific Rim. In fact, Los Angeles is one of only two U.S. cities without a majority population.  People from 140 countries, speaking approximately 86 different languages, currently call Los Angeles home. (http://www.discoverlosangeles.com/press-releases/facts-about-los-angeles)

My mother used to come visit me, well, really her grandkids, but I liked to think she came for me.  We had moved from an apartment in South Pasadena, to a 1940’s post- World War 2 house in Glendale.  You know those houses sold for about $15,000 in the 1950’s and today they  sell for $700,000. Same 500 square foot fenced in yards, same 1200 square foot, 2 bedrooms and a third office, galley kitchen, and one car garage home. Inflation experts tell us that really it’s about the same price in today’s world. Who put those guys in charge? Are you kiddin’ me?!

About the time of my mother’s third or fourth visit, Grandma, the kids and I were walking back home from my kids’ and my favorite local Armenian grocery,  and my mom said, “I think it is “interesting” that you live around the people who still speak the language of Jesus.”   I’m like: what, Mom?  My mom  is like, “yes,  I realized after I was out here last time, that Jesus spoke Armenian.” Now, when we from the Bible Belt, use the word, “interesting”, you need to know that in reality, we are using a code for, “I’m trying to be nice but that person really makes me uncomfortable”.  My mom, though, thought she could get around the idea of her daughter living around people who were “fereners” by finding connections.  That’s another totally Midwestern thing.  Connect enough dots, and we’re good.  I had to put my mom straight though on this one for her own sake, lest she go back to Indiana and tell everyone her daughter’s  grocer speaks like Jesus. I’m like: Mom, Jesus didn’t speak Armenian; Jesus spoke Aramaic, mom.  Minus one point for the Armenians.

We used to try to get my mom to move out here to live with us.” Mom, listen, We have nice winters compared to Indiana and you can watch your grandkids learn karate.”  Well, there was no way I could convince my mom that Jesus practiced karate, so that didn’t work.  Finally, in a pique of honesty, my mom told me she could never live in Los Angeles.  “Whenever I come to visit you,” my seventy something Midwestern mommy said, “I feel like I am coming to a foreign country.”

The world has changed. It’s more foreign.  The United States of America has changed. It’s both more and less United. The world changing is unsettling — to all of us if we’re honest.  It used to unsettle me a lot like it did my mom.  One day I heard a sermon from one of the greatest prophets of God’s Holy Bible I have been privileged to hear, Darryl Johnson of Glendale Presbyterian Church, but now somewhere prophesying in the wilds of Canada, for Saint Peter’s Sake!  One Sunday,  Dr. Johnson talked about our culturally diverse city and assured us that we of all people would be well prepared for heaven. Because heaven would look a whole lot like Los Angeles — every nation, every tongue, every tribe — all worshiping and rejoicing together.  No more sorrow. No more tears. No more guns. No more cancer. No more color. No more confusion.  No more distrust. No more fear. No more anger. No more injustice. No more hate. No more need. No more greed. No more abuse. No more violence. No more prejudice.

And being found in appearance as a man,

he humbled himself

by becoming obedient to death—

even death on a cross!

Therefore God exalted him to the highest place

and gave him the name that is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow,

in heaven and on earth and under the earth,

and every tongue acknowledge that Jesus Christ is Lord,

to the glory of God the Father. (Philippians 2)

Someday, I hope to be playing out in a heavenly Midwestern backyard beyond the great beyond. And all there will be as we were first created to be– like God’s Son, blameless, and pure and without prejudice. There will be no more need for justice for He who sits on the throne of that kingdom, will have come to judge the living and the dead and establish a perfect world. We will be seen for who we really are and we will be given new names on a new roster with no cultural diversity at all, because we will all be like Him.

Today God calls me to train my mind and heart to see others as He sees them, as His children, ready to kick a ball around in the back yard and rush home to dinner. “Ollie Ollie in Free!” — Race you Home! “Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles. And let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us.” (Hebrews 12)

We are indeed all foreigners in a strange land, until we arrive Home. “For God so loved the world, that He gave His only Son, that whoever believes in Him, shall not perish but have everlasting life.”

Race you home!

   I Think Jesus

By Jane Tawel

October 23, 2015

Random thoughts – no order — neither linear nor of importance — definitely no theological significance.  But I like to think that maybe all these years of reading the bible and thinking about Jesus have given me enough to go on to at least say, “well, none of these may be true, but they aren’t really lies either, and they aren’t anti-biblical, or anti-Christ, so why not?” And it was kind of fun to do this.

It also was sort of a theological exercise in letting Jesus into my thoughts as a friend, a co-worker, a brother, a fellow human being –  a guy that your mother would like you to marry, a pal that was always welcome at the dinner table. I could think of him not only as a Savior, a King, a God, but someone you could water cooler talk with. It sort of made me find a way to ask myself, well, what if in everything I did, from drinking my morning coffee, to how I spend my time on Sundays, to whether I should eat dessert first or not, — what if every moment and every choice was made with the idea of having Jesus share the experience with me, no matter how small a thing it may seem? And if  I couldn’t actually accomplish anything close to that minute by minute thought process of Jesus doing stuff with me, which of course no one can, except, well, Jesus, then at least, at the end of the day,  I might imagine looking back over my small little day and imagining Jesus saying, “yes, I liked that too! That was pleasant. Let’s do it again tomorrow!” What if Jesus smiled at us and said, “Isn’t life good?”

I mean what if Jesus were a real person?!

I don’t think Jesus will be too upset to read these. I hope you aren’t too upset by them either.  In fact, I think you also could have some fun imagining Jesus as a real human being.  After all, that’s what God sent him to be. Real.  Human. Being.

So for what it is worth, which is always very little, here is what……

 

I Think Jesus

By Jane Tawel

I think Jesus probably liked to drink coffee in the mornings before he went to work at the shop.  Coffee just helps mornings go better and I think he liked to smell it and then sip it slowly while he watched the dawn.

I think Jesus ate slowly.

I think when Jesus was a toddler, his mom liked to sing silly songs to him before he fell asleep at night just to make him giggle.  I think when he got older, Jesus had a big deep guffawing har–dee- har- har laugh, but when he was about three he had a silly little high- pitched giggle that made all his relatives want to make him laugh so they could laugh too.

I think when Jesus was about seven or eight, he cried when he saw a little dead sparrow in the backyard.  I think he quickly buried it so a stray dog  wouldn’t bite it apart.

I think when Jesus was a tween he had a little crush on the girl next door. He thought she was so pretty.

I think sometimes Jesus liked honey on his pita bread.

I think Jesus had really good eye sight and super hearing — almost like Superman hearing.

I think by the time he was about twenty, Jesus had such thick calluses on his hands that he could stick a needle deep into them and not even feel it.  I think sometimes he stuck a bunch of needles in his calluses to make the girls screech, “oooh, gross, Jesus stop it!”

I think when he was little and it was bedtime, Jesus would beg his parents to tell him just one more story about David, and they had to say, no it’s time for sleep now.

I think all his life, Jesus played soccer in the streets.  Even with the disciples –just to let off some steam. I think he was really athletic and good at it, but what bugged the other players, is he really didn’t care if they won or not. It was just fun no matter what.

I think Jesus helped his mom with the dishes, even if he was tired.

I think when his father Joseph died, Jesus cried and cried and cried.

I think when Jesus was growing up, he  used to give his brothers pretend noogies. They probably tried to give them back but he could run away if he wanted, because he was older and faster. I think sometimes he let them catch him and give him back noogies.

I think after the Jerusalem temple thing when he was twelve, Jesus convinced his folks not to worry about him anymore.

I think he often gave his little sister piggy back rides.

I think Jesus liked to eat dessert first but he held back sometimes.

I think Jesus insisted he wanted the smaller half.

I think Jesus had a pretty good singing voice.

I think Jesus was kind of ugly like Jonathan Rhys Meyers  or Linus Techtips  but he had a killer smile that when he was younger, completely made women get goofy and throughout his life made men say, “What a great guy”.

I think Jesus sometimes had a hard time balancing his family’s budget at the end of a day because there was never anything left over. I don’t think it bothered him much.

I think Jesus sometimes had to have Stone Soup with the neighbors and they all laughed a lot and had fun and were full.

I think Jesus liked to listen to music.

I don’t think Jesus went out to eat on the Sabbath.

I don’t think Jesus did homework on the Sabbath.

I don’t’ think Jesus mowed the lawn on the Sabbath.

I think Jesus would have really liked chocolate but I’m not sure he ever tried it.

I think Jesus was known as someone who laughed a lot and had a good sense of humor.

I don’t think Jesus liked pranks.

I think Jesus would have preferred to grow old.

I think Jesus was known as someone who was a good listener.

I think Jesus had really big biceps.

I think Jesus really loved to play in the water and body surf the waves.

I think Jesus liked the feel of sand between his toes.

I think Jesus took lots of breaks at work to talk and pray with people, but he always put in a good day’s work.

I think Jesus was known as someone who worked hard and played hard.

I think Jesus had good grammar.

I think especially in his teen years, Jesus wrote poetry.

I think Jesus took good care of his teeth.

I don’t Jesus was that quiet but he wasn’t a jabberer either.

I can’t decide if Jesus would have liked ice in his drinks or not.

I think Jesus always took a book with him.

I think if he hadn’t gone into the family business of carpentry, Jesus would have liked to be a horticulturist.

I think Jesus liked to doodle.

I think when Jesus was a baby he played with his toes.

I don’t think Jesus ever got brain freeze.  Sadly, I don’t think he ever had ice cream either. I think there will be lots of ice cream in heaven but no brain freeze.

I don’t think Jesus wished he had a middle name.

I don’t think Jesus bit his finger nails.

I think Jesus took dares if they didn’t hurt anyone.

I think Jesus picked up other people’s trash and threw it away for them.

I think Jesus liked green and blue.

I think Jesus liked surprises.

I think Jesus liked to just hang out.

I think Jesus always had enough time and never had to hurry anywhere.

I think Jesus looked good in hats.

I think Jesus would really like s’mores around a campfire.

I think Jesus liked to snuggle.

I think Jesus was thought-full.

POV #1

by Jane Tawel

October 11, 2015

Fidget and Desire.

Which one takes us higher?

The fidget makes you anxious to get moving, choosing

While desire makes your dreams amusing, approving.

But is Higher where we really want to go?

Or is life lived better fully in the Low?

Man was meant to live in plains, or so I’m told,

And that mountains can get old, and air streams cold.

Am I better  with my neck ache craned  to skies?

Or are you,  with earth below your soaring eyes?

And in truth, if you see me and I see you,

Can either really see the other’s point of view?

Last week I started teaching a College course in Freshman Writing.  Exhilarating, nerve-wracking, delightful, weighty.So thankful for the opportunity — so scared I’m going to mess up. In our first class we had an assignment to react / argue / write about a philosophical position after a class game and discussion on several rather bald statements.  I like to do the assignment myself in “real time” whenever possible because I think it helps me as a teacher. So for what it is worth, here was my submission as a response to: “Outer beauty is important to love”.  Very glad Professor Tawel isn’t grading me.

Beauty is in the Eye of the Beholder

by Mrs. Tawel

Outer beauty is important to love.  If you do not find the person you love beautiful or attractive, then you don’t really love them.  That doesn’t mean other people find them beautiful though, or that you thought they were beautiful the first time you saw them.  It may not be a standard outer beauty at all.

When my first daughter was born, she was jaundiced and for several weeks was entirely mustard yellow from head to foot.  We had to lay her naked in the sunshine to catch the Vitamin D.  Eventually, we were told, with enough sunshine she would turn baby pink. Like a plant — sunshine and liquid.

Justine Nicole Tawel was also almost completely bald, well, actually it was a bit worse than being completely bald. She had hair on the back of her head, but not in the front, so she looked like she had a tonsure like the ancient Celtic monks used to wear.

She had a little pot-belly but she was extremely thin, with spindly arms and legs — remember, they were mustard yellow spindly arms and legs.

I can still see little tiny Justine wrapped only in a swaddling cloth diaper, lying on the floor on a blanket, in front of  the apartment window to catch the California sunshine — all bald and yellow with her little round brown eyes, looking kindly up at me and I remember thinking to myself …………………

my baby girl is the spitting image of Ghandi!

And she was the most beautiful creature in the whole entire universe.

Because she was mine.

And I loved her.

And my all consuming love for her still sees her, twenty-five years later, as the most beautiful girl in the whole entire world. And I always will.

**********************************************************

Just as I find my eldest the most gorgeous child in the world, whenever I look at Justine’s sisters, Clarissa and Verity, or her brother Gordon, my eyes are blinded by love at how completely beautiful they are. My heart aches at the perfection of their features — so perfectly created to be adored by me. Sometimes, I am so caught up in the beauty of what they are saying or doing that I forget for a moment, how lovely they are on the outside. The inner beauty of a Justine comment, a Gordon observation, a Clarissa delight, or a Verity intuition, shines so brightly into the world, that I have to step back and look in wonder at these Beings of Light. When I see a Clarissa hand helping, a Gordon hand working, a Verity hand instructing, a Justine hand creating — I am humbled and honored that God would allow me to love these Creatures of Eternal Beauty. My soul magnifies the Lord that He has blessed me with such perfection in these children of His, these four that He has allowed me to be the earthly guardian of.

My son and daughters, created in the image of God– Shine On.  “Let your lights so shine before humanity, that all may see your beauty and good works, and glorify your Father in Heaven.”

For Behold!  You are beautifully and wonderfully made.

My darlings, your beauty amazes me.

Musings on a Trip Well-Lived

by Jane Tawel

August 2, 2015

 A partial but long musing on the Tawel Family  Bryce /Zion Trip

June 2015

There is an extremely straight road in the desert going South / West into Vegas, cutting through Arizona.  I am glad all roads are not straight and that not all days in life are without unexpected turns either. Turns on roads can be scary, disorienting, polarizing, and wrong. Turns in life can be like that too.   But straight roads in a desert can be so boring. Regard the winding, switchback, straight up, steeply down, achingly  up roads and trails of Bryce and Zion Parks.

Driving twisty roads can make you ill.  Best to keep your focus straight ahead, but aaahhh! the scenery. How not to gaze at creation’s wonders?!  Looking  out the windows is freedom worth grasping.  Hiking the heights and narrow paths can scare the living daylights out of you. Vertigo can entrap us all. But Oh! the vistas! Stopping on the trail and looking over the edge is an adventure of heroic proportions.

Bryce and Zion fill one with the anticipatory feeling that life is only going to get better from here on out.  The absolutely baroque richness of the land is metaphor for  a full life, well lived. In contrast, the Arizona desert is like some lives — barren of fruit, of water, no discernable life. No unexpected turns or unmarked crossroads. No shade in need, no hide and seek sunlight,  no sound of sniggering chipmunks, guffawing water, or birds warming up for the concert. The endless nothingness is hypnotizing.  The land is one big couch potato.

I have never been to Las Vegas. Not my cup of tokens so to speak. When you drive past Las Vegas, there are signs throughout, surrounding, leading up to and leading out of it. Remember that crazy old song: Signs, signs, everywhere signs. Blocking up the scenery breaking my mind?  That must have been written by someone driving through Vegas.

There are blinking signs, gigantic signs, neon signs, road side signs, billboard signs, building signs,  little signs that tell you that someone will be cleaning this mile of road. If you are looking for a sign, go to Vegas.

A large percentage of the signs in and around Vegas  are selling “Love”.  The other signs seem to be selling lawyers to help you get out of things you aren’t in love with any more — like  people, cars, businesses, homes.  The Love Signs  are quite preachy. “The Love Store — where the fun begins.” “Love at first bite!” “Let the Love affair begin!””You will love our girls!” “Find Love at the Tropicana”. “Drive-through Chapel of Love”.  Buying and selling love —  Such a misleading oxymoron and how very sad. And yet not new. How many types of relationships on every level, in every generation, throughout history,  are really just exchanges. In businesses, marriages, trusts, barters, affairs, commerce, friendships — we hold our hearts out in one hand and hold the other hand out to get something in return.

We actually talk about exchanging love when we exchange wedding vows. Definition of exchange: “giving something and receiving something of the same kind in return.” But somewhere deep inside, we all suspect that if we are defining love in the same sentence as we are defining exchange, there is something horribly, tragically wrong with our  understanding of love.  Humans were created to know real love, God-love,  true love, lasting love and to  eventually  learn that mature love cannot expect to receive the same thing in return. Love is not a commodity. Love somehow involves sacrifice — it is sacrificial. It is gift. But when we decide we will not wait, will not give up, will not trust, will not believe, will not give, – — when our selfishness of the moment or our fear of the twisty, steep blind curve  overpowers our faith, then we usually just sadly decide we can redefine the idea of love.

There is much  talk about this false and needy and lying love, and not only around Vegas.  Turn on your television for five minutes. Pick up a summer best seller. Listen to the radio.  Maybe even visit your local Sunday morning service.  We like to use the word “love” to mean satisfaction, feel -good sensuality, enjoyment, let the good times roll, need supplier, until such and such, take care of me, I’ll give you any thing you want so you think I’m nice, lust, interest, fun, or enabling.  We have confused love with “charisma”.  Charisma is defined as: “compelling attractiveness or charm  that can inspire devotion in others”.  This is why we can say with the same gusto, I love that guy and I love Starbucks.

I Corinthians 13 has an interesting take on love. This scripture combines love with “charism” not “charisma”. Charism is defined as that which: ” denotes any good gift that flows from God’s love to humans. The word can also mean any of the spiritual graces and qualifications granted to every Christian to perform his or her task in the Church. In the narrowest sense, it is a theological term for the extraordinary graces given to individual Christians for the good of others” . Charism is defined as  simply, theology, or “man’s attempt to understand God”. One definition states: Charism: “an extraordinary power (as of healing)given a Christian by the Holy Spirit for the good of the Church.” In the Greek charism means: any good gift that flows from God’s love to humans.”

Imagine if we, The Church, we the Creation, we the Imago Dei, we the stewards of the world, we the beloved Bride of Christ,  we the brothers and sisters of each other, we the heroes and heroines of lives well lived, imagine if we began to love each other with charism.

The demeaning of words and redefining them to suit our ends has to be one of the great undetected evils of our time. Well, it has been for all times but we are a people of the ubiquitous use of words in this internet, media, cell phone age.  The redefinition of words  is especially degrading to our humanity because we blithely but purposely  use words as propaganda for financial gain, as manipulation of reality, and as power plays over other humans. If you are a scholar of dystopian literature it will come as no surprise that all tyrannical forces always use the slow and creeping  redefinition of words in a surreptitious power takeover.   This is surely one of Satan’s greatest ploys — changing the meaning of words, ever so slightly,  allows people to sin against God and each other by simply putting a different name on it. Well, we don’t even use the word Satan any more, do we? Or sin. Those have become archaic words for many. We have redefined a deep wrong or sin so that we do not have to feel judged or guilty or vulnerable to a Higher Power or each other.   We call it “brokenness” or “wiring” or “biological” or “different” or even sometimes, “evolved”. We claim everyone does it, or it’s not hurting anyone, or it was an honest mistake, or who cares, or whatever, or truth is all relative, or I just fell out of love, or god is whatever you need him to be. Not that things and people aren’t broken or wired or biological; mistaken, or hurting or no different than any one else,  but different words must have and retain different meanings and meanings should not be changed to suit our world view. Words are at the center of  our God-likeness, our imprint  of the divine, and what make being fully and articulately human, something, well, special.

Right next to Vegas is an area called “Primm Valley”  — someone’s lovely ironic joke to name it that. The meaning of the word “prim” has come to have some undeserved negative connotations.  Why are “formal and respectable”  now considered “disapproving and pursed”; well, there is some interesting theology for you! In cultural changes it is often difficult to discern which is the cart and which is the horse? Does the Weltanschuuang  change and therefore the words change meaning, or do people subtly change the definitions of words and the worldview swings into line to follow the linguistic seismic shifts?

Theology is billboarded in Vegas  in the strange and unique ways you might imagine. “Jesus is the only way to Heaven” — a  billboard followed by “Read your Bible” and this followed immediately by a billboard with “UFO Hotel in Bakers Nevada.  Get a Quicky and Jerky at Baker UFO Hotel” Somehow in Vegas Unidentified Flying Objects seem to be identified as having something to do with Jesus. And somehow “quickies” seem to have become synonymous with love.  As Waylon Jennings used to sing, we are looking for love in all the wrong places, in too many faces, another heart  broken looking for love.”

There is an easily missed  billboard near Vegas about  Father Louis Querbes:  “a Viatorium who loved Jesus”. You might miss it as it humbly rests  in the midst of all the gaudy, glaring billboards for strip shops and impound, divorce, and bankruptcy lawyers.   I had to look up Fr. Querbes and what in the world a viatorium was (thank you search engines everywhere, we would be stuck in libraries if it weren’t for you.)

Louis Querbes was a parish priest in the aftermath of the French Revolution. He literally risked his life, taking up his cross, to teach and minister to a country torn apart by fear and hatred, greed and poverty, prejudice and injustice, and a justified distrust of The Church. Sound like any where you know? History does in fact repeat itself, and let the buyer beware. I encourage you to read about Louis Querbes and the Viatoriums. ( http://viatorians.com/about-us/our-founder) They have communities in America,  mostly centered in Chicago and the Vegas areas. Bottom line: They believe in Jesus and that they should live like he did.  They believe both priests and lay persons, men and women, should be trained and equipped  to educate and serve the needy. Their vision statement includes the following: “we embrace those who are accounted ‘of little importance by some'”.  In other words, the Viatoriums think they should love those whom the majority of the world, might not see as lovable. It doesn’t seem to most as if the “little importance people” are a fair exchange.

And this is what they say about love and charism:

“Spirituality is a dynamic process, the result of a relationship with God, with people, and with the cosmos, a dynamic process that deeply unifies the corporal, affective, and intelligent aspects of the person. It brings about an integration of eros, friendship, and agape. That is why everything in spiritual men and women is filled with God, who is Love.”(italics are mine)

The motto of the Viatorium Community: “Adored and loved be Jesus”.  I had to read that several times because I kept thinking it was a typo.  Don’t they mean “adored and loved BY Jesus”? Nope.  In one terse profound sentence, the Viatoriums sum up the whole gospel, the whole of the good news of Jesus Christ. “Adored. Loved. Be Jesus.”

When we returned from our all too short but perfect trip to Bryce and Zion National Parks, people asked us, “Well, what did you think? Did you have a good trip?”

We said, “We LOVED it!  It was amazing!  It was a great trip! You have to go there as soon as possible.”

And I think, “What if I loved the Creator as much as I loved His Creation?”  We loved the creation, and believe me if you want to see creation worthy of an “Intelligent Force”, commune with the crimson canyons, and slate grey walls, and turquoise greenery, sapphire skies, billion nighttime stars, pristine waterfalls, giggly creeks — my silly trite descriptors could go on and on and still fail! But:  If I had that much fervor for God, that much need to put words to experience and encounter with the Living Savior, then what a trip this life would be!  I would be telling everyone about my relationship with God. I would say things like: “I LOVE Him! He is amazing!  God makes life a great trip! You have to go to Him as soon as possible!” What if I adored God as much as the Viatoriums claim God adores me? What if I looked for love in all the right places, all the right faces? What if I defined love as “be Jesus”?

Over and over again, we are called to know God.  The Biblical sense of know is the same as the biblical sense of intercourse.  It is to know someone in the most intimate way possible. The Psalms reveal a heart that yearns for the Living God as a lover, as a newlywed, as a virgin longs for her or his soul mate.  The Psalms are the billboards along a life trip that Jehovah has planned for His beloved Bride.  A trip of intimate knowledge, of beauty, of adoration, of being one together, until death does not part but only opens the world’s door to a greater trip of greater scenery and accomplishments and joy and worship and love.

Psalm 63:1 – 8: O God, you are my God; I earnestly search for you. My soul thirsts for you; my whole body longs for you in this parched and weary land where there is no water. I have seen you in your sanctuary and gazed upon your power and glory. Your unfailing love is better to me than life itself; how I praise you! I will honor you as long as I live, lifting up my hands to you in prayer. You satisfy me more than the richest of foods. I will praise you with songs of joy. I lie awake thinking of you, meditating on you through the night. I think how much you have helped me; I sing for joy in the shadow of your protecting wings. I follow close behind you; your strong right hand holds me securely.

Psalm 42: 1, 2: As the deer pants for streams of water, so my soul pants for you, O God. My soul thirsts for God, for the living God. When can I go and meet with God?

Psalm 84:2 My soul yearns, even faints, for the courts of the LORD; my heart and my flesh cry out for the living God.

 

Psalm 27:8 2 My heart has heard You say, ‘Come and talk with Me.’ And my heart responds, ‘LORD, I am coming.’

The Bible verse that scares me even more than a very high, narrow, twisty, trail is Matthew 7:23 when on Judgment Day  Jesus turns to those of us who have a litany and laundry list of all the things we have spent our  lives doing  for God which will actually  end up being things we really did just for ourselves.  And The Christ, sorrowfully, must condemn us,  with words whose meaning will then be all too clear:  “I never knew you.” You were busy seeing the sights of Vegas, looking for love in all the wrong places, exchanging love for thrills, believing the flashing lights of the billboards, filling yourself with the world’s fast food, falling in love with the dust,  preaching by banging on a clanging gong, and all the while you were walking by Me, while I waited for you. Jesus will redefine our lives by saying,  I loved you with a love that was defined by My life and death given for you. I gave my body and blood for you because I am Love. I  ask you to let Me adore you as a bride, to love you as a brother and for you to love Me enough to be one with Me. But you were looking for love in every face but mine.  You bankrupted the home I prepared for you,  while I stood at the door of your heart, simply knocking. You traded real love for gain.  And on that final day, The Word will be all too clear: I longed to be intimate with you. But we did not know each other as love knows the lover.

Loved. Adored. Be Jesus.  Words too important for us to change their meanings. The Word, Jesus, the Christ.  He is too important for us to change His meaning.  And though we were created from but dust, our individual lives are mysteriously  too important to change the meaning of what we were created, designed, defined to be.

Take a marvelous journey  today.  Be loved by the One who created love. Be adored by The One who lived a life well-lived, who  died for you, and who reigns as the eternal Lover of your soul. Then look out the window, look over the precipice, take one small step towards redefining your life. And  Be Jesus in a world looking for Love.