The Renewal of Things 1

A magnificent stag ran out from the tree line of that thick wood with vivid flames dancing upon it’s antlers. And they could do nothing but watch as it seemed to bow low with its nose to the ground, and the fire licked up to low lying branches; It crept up and onward until, as if in an instant, everything was ablaze before them. The heat reverberated out to them though they were far off, and the stag stood unblinking as he was consumed, hoof to head, by the devouring and cleansing fire – happy, almost it seemed, that the fire, wild and un-harnessed, could move and spread on it’s own.

And there they lay, maimed and dying, waiting for the oncoming fire. There they lay in peace, at the renewal of things

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As morning broke on the small band of four hikers, the mist seemed to rise in accord with the terror welling up in each of them. It had been two days since they had lost themselves in the thickly wooded forest, two days since any had slept in even the comfort of a tent. Huddled together with the charred remnants of their small fire, all of them remained transfixed on their lack of food and the strange manner in which one of their companions had died, though none of them said anything concerning either.

Finally, one of them, with his friends blood still splattered across his cheek and soaked into the cuffs of his thermal wear coat, said, “maybe, it was an animal.”

“What animal makes a sound like that? Wh…what animal can do that?” she said, fighting her urge to weep.

“What do we do now? We must have been wandering for hours yesterday! Who knows how far we are from the road.”

“We left the road going West, if we head East, we are bound to hit it! We have to!”

“THERE IS A REASON THAT ROAD IS CLOSED! It dead ends! What if we meandered south, huh? What then? THERE WON’T BE A ROAD TO RUN INTO – JUST WOODS…just…more woods” said another as he stood in his frenzy, knowing well that if they were to have run into the road, it would have happened long before now.

“Calm down, calm down!” said one of the women her eyes wandering while she thought. “There is one main river that runs through this county. Do you remember that stream we saw yesterday? The river must be it’s source, and if we can get there, we are bound to run into a fisherman or a park ranger or something. We have to get back to that stream.”

“I’m not going back there. We can’t go back to that place. We can’t. That’s where it came from – that’s when it started!” said the other woman with her tears now dripping from the tip of her chin.

“What shall we do?! Stay here and be eaten or whatever that was? I’m going to the stream. It is our best hope. It’s our only hope. I won’t sit here to freeze to death…or worse. Besides, we don’t know what it was or if it came from anywhere. Now, we set out pretty straight from that direction, and I’m going back!”

Hungry and resolved, she went, walking through the soft earth and leaves that winter had moistened, holding an old compass inquisitively in front of her, and the others, dejected but lost, followed soon behind her. They wavered in their steps as hunger began to bring on its first signs of strength and the morning crept into early afternoon.

The winter’s sky gleamed sun for only a short while that morning before giving way to dull empty grayness. As they walked, with the smallest sense of purpose in them now, they began to be encouraged, and they almost seemed to forget the horror which befell their friend the previous afternoon. However, whenever their merriment or distraction would grow too great, they would catch sight of each other or their own hands and clothing which was drenched in the now dried blood of their companion. In these instances, the memory of those short minutes hung about them like the darker looming clouds which they could see rolling slowly in over the tree tops.

“We are almost there, I think.” said the leader, lowering her compass. “Is that it? is that the…um…the place? Can you see it?”

Before them was a large mound, almost a small hill, covered in moss and dirt, and just beyond it, which they could hear but not see, was a small trickling stream. As they rounded upon the mound, they could see that on the other side was what looked like a door or gate. It was made of small dried pieces of wood held together by what looked like twine or sinew which hung off it lifeless like emaciated skin. It covered a small opening in the face of the rock, and by the smell of the air that radiated out of the opening, one could tell that the stale environment beyond that door led deep into the earth. By some chance, they had made it back. They hadn’t missed it.

They all hesitated for a moment upon seeing the door. This place was indeed the place they had happened upon just the day before, and now the crooked way in which the door hung seemed to imprint itself on their minds as a warning, almost, of the folly they remembered having fallen upon them after entering that gate, and horror seemed to be near them now breathing at their necks. They stood transfixed and dazed by their own fear. The sky grew even darker. The clouds grew closer.

Breaking the silence first, the leader shook free of the trance and said, “Come on, its just over here.”

And, unthinking, she dipped her hand wildly into the murky water and splashed it to her mouth. The other woman said, “You’ll be sick! You don’t know what’s in that water!” But, it didn’t stop the other boys from falling straight to their knees to slurp up the muddy liquid, and, though it troubled her, the woman could not hold back her raging thirst for long. She joined the others. They drank for, what seemed to them, an eternity. Letting the cool water pass over their frozen and chapped lips.

“What was that?!” Said the leader, raising her head with a start. “Did you hear that?” The others, consumed in their drinking had not heard the shuffling that she had. It was the sound of something approaching. Her heart began to beat faster as she looked around frantically, and the others suddenly became aware of her fear. She rose to her feet and spun around, scanning the woods for the source of the noise. It sounded, faintly, like something bounding on branches and mud. They could hear the little snaps of twigs and movement getting louder and closer. Their breathing heightened, getting faster, and they all came back to back with each other, as every muscle in their bodies tensed.

From the thick wood, stepped an enormous male deer. His hide was almost glistening white, and the curve of his antlers made them stand taut and strong. He emerged with his head held high, and stepped lightly toward them, blinking slowly and naturally. Their breath eased for only a moment before they were caught up in the majesty of the creature and the unpredictability which accompanied his presence. He did not move. He just stood there, at ease, blinking, staring. After a moment, he seemed to peer into the ever black sky as if wrought with painful thought, and as his head lowered back down, he seemed to focus on something just beyond them. He snorted in agitation, and then clamored away proud yet listless.

And at that very moment, a wind seemed to pick up. It was not a strong wind. It was kind of gentle like a breeze, but icy as the breath of one too close for comfort. It gave them all a chill like the feeling one gets when faced with a deathly fear; burning in their stomachs, but freezing on their skin. A few leaves rustled and settled in its wake, and as this malicious breeze blew past them, they could hear it whistling and echoing down the corridor chambers of the little tunnel behind that haphazard fence, in the mound, in the forest.

As yet frozen in their stance from seeing the deer, they all slowly turned to face the crooked gate, and to their surprise, a man stood at the entrance leaning against the earth on one side of the door. He had a leisurely stance, and he was enjoying what looked like an apple or a pear or something. He crossed one arm, tucking it below the other with which he ate. He was a very pale man with stunning, burning eyes. They seemed almost grey, and he was cloaked completely in black with what seemed to be patched clothes of worn suede. A loose hood draped his head so that the fabric hung loosely at the sides.

They could hear the crunch, crunch, crunch, of every mouthful he ate, and as they fought their burning trepidation, they all inched closer to him – together, like a pack. As they approached, he straightened in acknowledgement of them, and he smiled a crooked smile.

On Being and Becoming: The Kingdom of God as an Existential Posit Part VII

This then begs the question as to what the actual parameters of God’s Kingdom really are, for while the point has already been made that the boundaries of the Kingdom are not meant to be supposed earthly and political, it is still evident that to the first-century eyes, the idea of Kingdom had to deal with “the geographical aspect of basileia; for the status of a king is shown by the area over which he reigns. basileia assumes therefore the meaning kingdom, signifying the state or area over which a king reigns.”[1] Further, as already partly noted, one sees that the term “Basileia refers primarily to the act or process of ruling, a quality or privilege that distinguishes a king or other ruler. To have basileia is to possess control, power, freedom, and independence.”[2] So in seeking the answer to this query one might notice that it points to an existential paradigm – it leads again to that idea of being and becoming. One sees this as evident, in orientation to the parameters of Gods kingdom, when realizing that “Jesus believed that the Creator God had purposed, from the beginning, to deal with the problems within His creation through Israel; through Israel, the Creator God would heal the world.”[3] If the essential message of the covenantal paradigm introduces the idea of a sacred identity in affiliation with the holy, and if Christ’s position as headship of the Kingdom of God is an active one, then the place where God’s Kingdom urges its dwellers to work for progress comes through that reconciliation to wholeness both in the self and in the whole of creation so that they themselves embody those concentric realities, and given the denouncement of physical boundaries, the authority of the headship can be more widely professed to and realized by those psychically outside of the Kingdom. Consider John Perkins words when he says:

"To do the work of reconciliation, then, we must begin by being a reconciled fellowship, by being the Body of Christ, we must model the kind of relationships into which we want to invite others. Our love for each other gives credibility and power to our witness. We must begin by being."[4]

While Perkins is poignantly here talking in the area of racial reconciliation, the essential point for this discussion rings through. The idea of the wholeness as concerns the Kingdom is at once a reality which must be embodied and manifested but in turn must also be reached and struggled toward. It is a posit which urges the covenant believers of Christ to not only take up the reality of power and fullness in their identity as that covenant community as well as the truth of Christ’s active headship, but to also become and work toward that embodiment in reconciliation. This is tantamount in one teaching of N.T. Wright when he says:

"We have often seen Jesus’ challenge as a set of timeless ethics. We have read the Sermon on the Mount, people still read the Sermon on the Mount, as though it were simply a set of rules hanging in midair – it wasn’t. It began life as the challenge to Israel to be Israel."[5]

It is a challenge to covenant people to become in line with the fullness which is professed upon them by taking up that fullness in the present and then expounding it upon creation at the same time. It is a challenge to the covenant people to lay down the claims that mark earthly citizenship (security, greed, selfish ambition) and take up the self-sacrificing nature of the headship Himself to achieve reconciliation of the self to its fullness but to also promote that reconciliation of other selves to that fullness so that the reality becomes marked by the notion that “[f]rom the highest to the lowest, [one’s] self exists to be abdicated and, by that abdication, becomes the more truly self, to be thereupon yet the more abdicated[.]”[6] One progresses the Kingdom of God by diminishing the self and pushing for the progress of the other and reconciliation of the whole of creation to the restoration of an Eden-like harmony – as he stands in the world today and in the hope of its realization in the future and in eschaton. As Adam’s very existential reality was tied up in an identity which heralded God’s authority unto creation, so too does the Christian pronounce God’s rule by the very existential institution of being and becoming.

And finally, as one harkens back to that image of the wild dancing prairie flower, taking up its identity in the fullness of the present and in its participation in existent reality as well as contingent growth, it becomes evident that the Kingdom of God is not simply something that can be sidestepped as an eschatological paradigm, but it demands the renewal of the covenant person’s thinking to address the reconciliation of the world in the present. The Kingdom of God pushes for the covenant follower to take the stance that waves not a flag but the very self in allegiance to the King – Christ. To do this, as surveyed here, it is critical that such a follower would espouse a paradigm that at the same time takes in the full realization of the immanent identity bestowed upon her in the light of her relationship and orientation to the truth of her full-fledged acceptance into that paradigm.And now suddenly, that dancing prairie flower makes sense because it is a metaphor. The flower, caught up in the winds of its being, reveals itself and the Kingdom dweller in this essential tension. And it makes sense that what philosophers only gawk at with their existentialist jargon was something like the Christian message all along – that the covenant people are, and that is okay. The covenant people are, and God loves them. The covenant people are, and God continues to work in them. The covenant people are whole, because Christ, who is their being, is perfect. The covenant people are participants of this new creation, and they can walk with confidence in that manifestation of identity given them by the Almighty creator in His present Kingdom, and they are working for the full manifestation of the Kingdom as a future hope. They are free to once more walk quietly with their God as in the freshness of Eden, and drink coolly the river waters of a real spiritual life unbound by those ideological nooses associated with a life of simple, trivial, and earthly kingdoms and politics– in this example of the flower, God reveals the struggle in the covenant to be and become; God reveals His Kingdom.

[1] Brown, New International.
[2] Harris, Understanding, 504.
[3] N.T. Wright, “Jesus and the Kingdom.”
[4] John Perkins, With Justice for All (California: Regal, 1975), 138-139.
[5] Wright, “Jesus and the Kingdom.”
[6] Clive Staples Lewis, The Problem of Pain (New York: HarperCollins, 1996), 157.

On Being and Becoming: The Kingdom of God as an Existential Posit Part VI

This, then, is in striking contrast to the theocracy proposed by the original Israelite nation and all of the parameters in its physical manifestation. Robert Bolin touches on the heart of this issue in a striking example from Joshua when, seeing a generation of Israelites preparing for exile and editing its scriptures to prepare for that challenge, he says, “The story of Achan [in Joshua] offers a vivid example of that situation which is viewed negatively in the expression, ‘in those days there was no king in Israel; every one did what was right in his own eyes.’”[1] For, in the gospels portrayal of God’s Kingdom, the faculties of a formed nation are no longer susceptible to the whims of the frail hearted, unfaithful, and anarchistic people, the brush painting Israel here, that was supposed to remember Yahweh at its headship, nor was there to be overt allegiance to the authoritative entities of the earthly realm. No, for God’s Kingdom there is no political union which has any distinguished flag or country to defend, but from its earliest, Christian community “[…]enacted an integrative covenant, embracing Jews and Gentiles, poor and rich, men and women, slaves and free.”[2] In truth, the patriotic is replaced by the faithful and passionate servant; the nation is formed, not by those who are appropriated simply by being born in a geographical section of the earth or by a particular ideological affiliation, but they are that vast population of believing individuals who are united in theocracy by their devotion to Christ as the king of the whole of the cosmos versus any human and diminished authority. And seeing Christ at the headship is only natural in this scenario, of course, since “all the options laid before Jesus by the tempter are ways of being king[…] the title is meant messianically and not metaphysically” – Christ takes up the seat of authority proclaimed by Yahweh in Theocracy and he does it in a manifested and immanent manner appealing to His citizens’ identity and not simply their patriotism.[3]

Again, this appeals to the paradigm of being and becoming. While the believer is able to take up the identity of covenantal orientation to God, she also anticipates the coming realization of the fullness of God. Christ’s parousia is that culminating event that brings history to fullness in harmony with God as Christ ushers in “his return in heavenly glory[,]’” but to the believer, the end can never admonish the present.[4] By struggling and growing, by striving and pushing, the believer is not forsaken in the covenantal identity in the present, she is wholly and fully accepted within those parameters, but she is also continually striving to become what is demanded of her in the Kingdom light so that her identity is “[…] a truth which you celebrate in worship and which you then have to go and work for in the world.”[5] The individual believer continues to strive for the realization of what she is completely meant to be by the imitation of Christ, but in His sacrifice, she, as well as the entire following of Kingdom dwelling believers, is at once and always accepted as fully integrated within that system much like – in a fitting metaphor – a prince is not a king but is continually anticipating the time when he will become king, though, in so doing, he never forsakes his royal identity at any point. Not that the Christian desires to usurp or inherit the divine throne, obviously, but she struggles toward becoming that further progression in identity which aligns itself in likeness to the Divine King. In this one sees plainly “that Christian brotherhood is not an ideal but a divine reality […] that Christian brotherhood is a spiritual and not a psychic reality” – it is not contingent upon our own earthly musings or ideology but wholly on the our professed identity.[6]

This, of course, leads right back to the idea of Israel’s concentric circles and God’s divine presence. In the covenantal paradigm, by this measure, Israel was not producing and practicing the rites of a people group who were desirous of the their deity to come and take over the ruling duties of their nation as an expected and hoped for event in the future, but they took up the identity of a covenant people and lived according to that identity as God ruled over them at the present time; Yahweh was already in their midst as a leading figure in the presence of the Tabernacle. So, even though the dwelling place of God’s presence is disjunct from the holy temple and replaced by the believing heart, how the Kingdom of God manifests, as professed to the Christian, is a similar idea, because “The original meaning of the term basileia [or the word here referenced for kingdom in Greek] is the fact of being king, the position or power of the king, and it is best translated office of king, kingly rule (e.g. Aristotle, Politics 3, 1285b, 20).”[7] The Christian covenant believer is not waiting to enact the covenant identity until some sort of eschatological telos, but she lives in an immanent reality so that it “is not that earth is a kind of training ground for heaven, but that heaven and earth are designed to overlap and interlock.”[8]

[1] Bolin, Joshua, 230; Joshua 7.
[2] Thomas Kazen, “The Christology of Early Christian Practice,” in Journal of Biblical Literature, vol. 127, no. 3, ed. James C Vanderkam (Fall 2008): 601.
[3] John Howard Yoder, The Politics of Jesus (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1994), 24-25.
[4] Stephen Harris, Understanding the Bible 6th Edition (Boston: McGraw-Hill Co., 2003), 406.
[5] Wright, Reformational UK.
[6] Dietrich Bohnhoeffer, Life Together: The Classic Exploration of Faith in Community, trans. John W. Doberstein (New York: HarperCollins, 1954), 26.
[7] Brown, New International.
[8] N.T. Wright, “On Earth as it is in Heaven”; available from ; Internet; accessed 11 October 2009.

On Being and Becoming: The Kingdom of God as an Existential Posit Part V

So then, as the gospel and the idea of God’s renewed Kingdom burst onto the scene one has to notice that it is distinctly anti-Caesarian. The word Gospel itself is appropriated from the Caesar cult and used in a fashion that places Christ over and against the authority of Cesar along with many other titles and phrases that appeal to the total authority of the emperor.[1] One might dismiss such a claim as that necessary vocabulary that creates solidarity in the wake of persecution, but whatever the reason, the important thing to note, in searching for the meaning of God’s Kingdom, is that such anti-Caesarian ideas do not make political boundaries for Israel or the new covenant of Christians any clearer. In fact, one might say that it makes the promotion of political association quite a bit more askew. But consider for a moment what Augustine says in his thoughts on earthly kingdoms:

"[God] gives earthly kingdoms to the good or the evil so that his worshippers, who are still children as regard moral progress, may not desire these gifts from him as something great. It is the sacrament of the Old Testament, in which the New Testament is hidden, […] for even then spiritual people understood, though they did not yet openly declare, the eternity symbolized by these temporal things[.]"[2]

While the allegory in this thinking is grossly archaic and, perhaps, too sorely leaned upon, it is striking to note that even in this example of a much earlier time in Christian thinking, earthly kingdoms are seen in a much more diminished light to that of the realization of the “spiritual person” to the reality of a higher value – that such a person could survey from afar, proverbially, the metaphysical territory in which earthly kingdoms could potentially occupy and realize at the same time (and in the same time, no doubt) the self’s participation in and the efficacy overall of the other; by comparing the earthly kingdoms as an allegory to the heavenly, it creates a sense of immanent participation in the heavenly kingdom as a Christian covenant member while at the same time allowing for the potential of a coming fruition of that reality. Perhaps the reality of the Kingdom of God is manifested in a similar way so that it is always in contrast to any sort of actual political dimension as an independent sphere in which those participating (those covenant people) are both striving to see it come fully while also dwelling within it. Perhaps the use of vocabulary that strictly avoided giving political nod to Rome but appropriated it for a different idea of what Kingdom was to mean, by the early church, was really more meant to create something similar to the type of orientation Augustine speaks of; maybe the idea of the Kingdom of God was much less about political ferocity in earthly dominion and much more meant to create an existent paradigm based upon that archaic idea of covenant identity in orientation to the actual ruling Godhead.

So by this, one sees that in the Kingdom of God there is no earthly boundary created in which the new political messiah can thereby rule from a kingly or imperial throne, but what it does do is complete that work which the exilic psychological effect began in Israel’s orientation to God. That is to say, instead of keeping the covenant people on hold waiting for the re-installment of God’s earthly kingship, God reinstates that harmony that was lost with the fall and which Israel could not keep in their own monarchy. Christ’s proclamation of the Kingdom of God, finishes the job of severing the political and human ideology which had suffocated Israel in her monarchy and reinstates the intended harmony originally meant by the installation of theocracy. The covenant identity that Israel has always clung to and which, even in the exile, defined her, fully lost the expectation of human institution through monarchy that kept it from the true harmony intended in theocracy; God, through Christ’s declaration, reestablished His own rule once again so that “what we are really talking about is a verb, an action – God ruling, God reigning.”[3]

[1] Shane Claiborne and Chris Shaw, Jesus for President (Michigan: Zondervan, 2008), 65-73.
[2] Augustine, Political Writings, trans. Miachael W. Tkacs and Douglas Kries (Indianapolis: Hacket, 1994), 35.
[3] N.T. Wright, Reformational UK.

On Being and Becoming: The Kingdom of God as an Existential Posit Part IV

One should not here argue, obviously, that Israel gave up whole heartedly on the restoration of political nationhood. It is an obvious thematic expectation in the time of Christ. However, by breaking out of the political parameters and into the religious, dogmatic, and eventually Pharisaic sphere, the nation of Israel created a space where their being was inseparably associated not as much with their national affiliation but more with their covenantal duties and rites. So, while one sees Ezekiel proclaiming the resignation of God from the temple and the land and Israel herself waiting expectantly for the arrival of a political champion and messiah, their orientation to God is still espoused through a covenantal identity.[1]

Taking this sort of identity into view, it is necessary to next see the historical landscape that surrounds Christ’s proclamation of the Kingdom of God. Looking to the culture at large, it is not hard to find evidence that the idea of prudence in an authority’s, namely the king’s, relationship with legality and the divine was essential to the Hellenistic lifestyle. In fact, one need not look much further than Aristotle who was one of, if not the, most prolific philosophers of the Hellenistic era, who says:

"Therefore he who asks law to rule is asking God and intelligence and no others to rule; while he who asks the rule of a human being is importing a wild beast too; for desire is like a wild beast, and anger perverts rulers and the very best of men. Hence law is intelligence without appetition."[2]

While Aristotle and the Platonic school of thought traditionally substitutes the pantheon in real faith for a more monotheistic model, the affect of such thinking on the political realm cannot be thought of as diminished simply by the sheer magnitude of influence it had in relation to the ruling imperial power. By the time of Christ’s rise to ministry, the penance due to God by the ruling and legal strata, as suggested by Aristotle here, had progressed from mere conjunction with or subordination to God in the Hellenistic ideal and law to that which was most essentially tied to the political backdrop of the Caesars. If even, in the beginning, some of Rome’s emperors did not accept a divine title, it was certainly being professed of them and demanded of the later ones so that the union of God and law was the human emperor.[3]

Here, one might suggest that at least some of the synoptic accounts are written in light of the persecution that had arisen toward Christians in the political realm. Perhaps this persecution is meant as a backlash to the Jewish revolt and the early Christians associations therein as a Jewish sect by the Roman stance. Either way, “proclaiming Jesus as the Lord, was to destroy [the] vital ideology of the Roman imperium, and the reaction it called forth was the persecution of Christians during the first three centuries.”[4] By creating a kingdom reality apart from the imperial eye, Jesus’ pronouncement of the Kingdom of God sets up kingdom boundaries that encompass the whole of creation and the entirety of one’s paradigm(s) – it disorients the centrality of Jerusalem in Israelite tradition, but more poignantly Roman headship, and gives the whole of creation the potential to be that holy land occupied by that holy people. Scholar N.T. Wright notes this when he says, “Kingdom of Heaven/ Kingdom of God is not the place called heaven where God rules. It is the fact that God who is in heaven rules.”[5] By claiming the divine title, the Caesars had transgressed upon the sacred territory of the divine and so God’s kingdom is a call to not only remember the truth of God’s sovereignty but to also live it out as that separate sphere.

[1] Ezekiel 10.
[2] Aristotle, The Politics, trans. T.A. Sinclair (New York: Penguin, 1984), 226.
[3] Craig Blomberg, Jesus and the Gospels (Nashville: Broadman & Holman, 1997), 36-37.
[4]Colin Brown ed., “Basileia,” New International Dictionary of New Testament Theology 5.1, in LaserD[CD-Rom] (Michigan: Zondervan, 2005).
[5] N.T. Wright, “Whatever Did Saint Paul do with the Kingdom of God?,” Reformational UK: A Christianity Without Gaps (June 2007); available from ;Internet; accessed 11 October 2009.

On Being and Becoming: The Kingdom of God as an Existential Posit Part III

As one notices that there is little provision for those nations “out there” in the wilderness for their access to the inner circle of holiness, as concerns the original Israelite covenant and this concentric circle paradigm, she might also realize that this more reflects the actuality of Israel and God’s concern with the outplay of covenantal being; Israel was that people who were meant to restore the harmony lost in Adam as an immanent and intermediary agent. With God at their head, Israel was meant to have a proclamatory stance to the world, but they were not doing this through their words or propaganda. No, they were to do this through their very lives – the very way in which they were being.

In seeking a view of God’s kingdom from a Jewish standpoint, one can imagine that this type of thinking was progressed in the age of the monarchy. Here, the temple replaces the tabernacle and national Israel replaces tribal Israel. Though one sees that God is no longer in the seat of the “king,” it is no less significant that the expectation of the king was always meant to be that agent of Divine will. God was still meant to be the head of the structure and His presence was still meant to be within Israel housed most specifically in the most holy place in the temple. Now, as one sees Israel’s identity get wrapped up in the idea of nationhood, it then collapses (to vastly over-simplify the details of their exile!). With the death of Josiah, one sees the nation Israel at the brink of collapse and their identity as the covenant people in jeopardy. It is here that some suggest the idea of nationhood begins to evolve in the face of such destruction. One biblical commentator, Robert Bolin, notes this about the evolving face of Israel’s nationhood in the context of exile:

"What began with Yahweh’s conquest (read “pacification”) of Canaan had issued most recently in Yahweh’s defeat and destruction of the northern nation-state (Dtr1). After the death of good King Josiah, the same was in process for the southern kingdom. It was about time to make a new start – with Yahweh the King of Israel."[1]

It is interesting that the conquered people do not look collectively to the earthly realm to fulfill the need for an overarching authority even when faced with their enemies, but they raise up God as an authority in response to, and one might argue in defiance of, a foreign authority. In conjunction with this, one might suggest that the priests’ role in the covenant community becomes heightened, if this truly is the time that a priestly addition was made to the Torah, so that the authority of Israel’s identity is housed within the confines of their religious or temple components. Thus, the idea of political countenance is relinquished, but the sovereignty of identity, of their being, becomes something unattainable by the foreign and pagan kings, for at the point of exile in the history of Israel, “the community of believers puts at the center of all decision-making the value of the individual, the quality of responsible life[…] and the willingness of the individual to be governed by ethic, to be ruled by the[…] ever-free and ever-reigning Lord.”[2] By transforming their nationhood into a borderless paradigm, Israel is then able to maintain a covenantal identity within the world; by making their reality more about Torah stipulations and obedience than earthly monarchal countenance, Israel is able to maintain a collectively psychological orientation to pureness and covenant as well as at least the hope, if not reality to some degree psychologically, of theocracy.

[1] Robert Bolin and G.E. Wright, Joshua. A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary (New York: Doubleday, 1982), 545.

[2] Bolin, Joshua, 544.

On Being and Becoming: The Kingdom of God as an Existential Posit - part II

One thing to think about when considering such a posit is the nature of what it means to be a covenant person of God. If one takes a look at the idea of Ancient Israel and their orientation to their own cultural paradigms, one thing is evident in the way they viewed the manifestation of holiness in the world. This is the idea of different spheres of holiness that are concentrated in the most holy and are then espoused, concentrically, to less holy areas as one moves further away from the center  spheres. In this, one sees that “[t]aken together the results seem to suggest that spiritual life occurred [for Ancient Israel] in three concentric spheres.”[1] This, of course, is found in the interplay between the Tabernacle/Temple and both Israel as a people and the world more generally. So, for example, the Tabernacle/Temple is, of course, that highest of holy places, with the holy of holies espousing even greater significance, but beyond this there is the next but less prominently holy place in the camp of Israel. After the camp of Israel, by this model, the concentric spheres lead away from the tabernacle to the ultimately destitute nations and land outside the camp in the wilderness, and into chaos. It is easy to see that the divine Presence, according to the beliefs of ancient Israel,  becomes ever diminished the further one journeys through these concentric spheres.[2]

This type of cultural structure, obviously, is at the heart of the ancient Israelites' identity as a covenant community. Here, one might argue that any spiritual factors aside, this type of existential worldview has a pronounced psychological affect on the orientation of the self, in the subjective view of an Israelite, to Yahweh and His realm of holiness. When God proclaims Israel a nationhood of priests, He ultimately shapes them as that people bound within the confines of not only national boundaries but much more psychological and cultural boundaries as related to their actual orientation to Him through His Presence at the Tabernacle/Temple.[3] Therefore, when Yahweh declares that the entire nation of Israel are priests, His intention is to create a bridge between the aforementioned spheres of holiness in order to allow the turbid and less holy nations of the world an entry point to His Presence; Israel was meant to be that servant who would administer access to a relationship with the one true God. However, because ancient Israel was placed at the crux between dwelling in the shadow of the Presence of God and yet still drenched by the curse of interminable sin, she, through the theocracy of God, found herself as that identifiable intermediary between chaos and the divine.

The idea of God reaching out to the world through a human intermediary was not simply started with the rise of Ancient Israel, in the biblical tradition, but one might argue that this is an idea that was set out and expounded through the very moment of first creation in Adam. Scholar Richard Hess takes this idea up when he speaks of Adam’s likeness to God by saying:

"What then is the meaning of the terms image (tselem) and likeness (demuth), used here to describe the image of God? It is best illustrated in the practice of ancient Near East kings of erecting or carving out images in order to represent their power and rulership over far-reaching areas of their empires. These represented the dominion of the ruler when the sovereign was not present in the region[.]"[4]

One here sees that Adam himself may have been a symbol of that divine work in creation and thus that herald to Divine authority in creation. And, taking a cue from the first man of their own mythology, it can be noted that the very core of Israelite's orientation to their own theocracy was always meant to be an existential paradigm, which had the purpose, ultimately, of announcing the divine Presence and authority to a corrupted, fallen world. Israel dwelt in the Presence of God, and they were meant to embody that identity.

[1] Richard Hess, Israelite Religions (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2007), 183.
[2] Hess, Israelite, 183.
[3] Exodus 19:6.
[4] Richard S. Hess, “Equality With and Without Innocence,” in Discovering Biblical Equality, ed. Ronald W. Pierce et al (Illinois: InterVarsity Press, 2005), 81.

On Being and Becoming: The Kingdom of God as an Existential Posit Part I

The wind mumbles as it blows through a field of wild and vibrant flowers, which is set high on the back hills of a rolling, prairie country side. The animated colors exuberantly dance and swoon through the arms of their love, the wind. Spending the vast portion of their days lost in the frail rhythmic sway between them, leaves an incumbent mark on the very being of the breeze and the flora that is much more than the long strings of borrowed time in which they suffer to be daily trapped in – playing out for themselves merely the contingent realities of this moment to that. Indeed, in this primal movement on the hills, there is something arcane, something recondite. There is some great connection; there is some primal truth that connects them with the heartbeat of what it means to exist, thumping and pounding in a syncopated pattern from the infinite cavern chambers of the life of being. There is the unspeakable and yet familiar, as from the deep, which comes near to these flowers as created beings, as they are flailing in the wind, and beckons them to blossom and to grow.

What does it mean to be? What is it to exist? How do we allow ourselves to be enraptured in the fullness and frailty of the most deep-seated existence? How do we engage a reality in which we are at once already atoned by Christ and yet know the equal reality of His working and refining as an on-going process in our lives? What does it look like for a child of God to sit confidently at the Eucharist table, a whore and yet a child? How does one take up the question of being and becoming as the whole of the Christian community upholds its identity as the manifestation of Christ's Kingdom in the present and the becoming of Christ's Kingdom at the consummation of time?

To speak of the Kingdom of God, for the Christian, is to more rightly bring into focus the whole sweeping paradigm of what it means to be a Christian. The Kingdom of God is that much anticipated reign of God for his covenant people; it is the restoration of the harmony lost at the fall in Eden. However, at the same time, it is more than this. The Kingdom is also realized by means of the process in achieving harmony as well – God’s ultimate means of reconciling the world to this harmony. Tragically, and far too often, “[m]any of our traditions have taught us about a Jesus who wasn’t into shaping a world but into escaping the world.”[1] In truth the urgency with which this topic comes, is revealed by the very nature that the full scope of realization of Yahweh’s theocracy has its heart the tensions found in that minute space between being and becoming. It is an existential posit.

Here, one can lean on the ideas of the French philosopher Guilles Deleuze who, when speaking of language, talks about the pronounced anti-systematic intermingling of major and minor languages. This idea has to deal with the interaction of minor dialects in language to the overarching languages that house them and the extent to which the evolutionary nature of language is expressed when those dialects, as the minor language, over take the role of the primary creating a new language all together or, more accurately, a new phase of their common language. So, for example, one could look at the seemingly foreign tongue of Old English in classics like Beowulf and note that while the text was English, it was also becoming English; the phases of growth are actually contained within the identity of the whole so that “[t]here are not, therefore, two kinds of languages but two possible treatments of the same language.”[2] This is a fitting parallel for the orientation of the Christian to the Kingdom of God. It is that necessary position which speaks the truth of Christ’s message on the Kingdom as that reality which waits in expectant hope for Christ’s return and full reign while also affording one the privilege of an identity that is marked by full fruition in their orientation to that Kingdom. Of course, such an identity fruits concurrently as Christ does His work in her personal and spiritual life, that which the Christian calls sanctification. In essence, the Kingdom is and it is becoming.

[1] N.T. Wright, “Jesus and the Kingdom,” InterVarsity Press Conference (January 1999); available from ; Internet; accessed 11 October 2009.

[2] Guilles Deleuze, “Language: Major and Minor,” The Deleuze Reader (New York: Columbia UP, 1993), 148.

The Bibliography for "On Being and Becoming: The Kingdom of God as an Existential Posit"

Aristotle. The Politics. Translated by T.A. Sinclair. New York: Penguin, 1984.

Augustine. Political Writings. Translated by Michael W. Tkacs and Douglas
Kries. Indianapolis: Hacket, 1994.

Blomberg, Craig. Jesus and the Gospels. Nashville: Broadman & Holman, 1997.

Bohnhoeffer, Dietrich. Life Together: The Classic Exploration of Faith in
Community. Translated by John W. Doberstein. New York: HarperCollins, 1954.

Bolin, Robert and G.E. Wright, Joshua. A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary. New York: Doubleday, 1982.

Brown, Colin ed. “Basileia,” New International Dictionary of New Testament Theology 5.1. LaserD. CD-Rom. Michigan: Zondervan, 2005.

Claiborne, Shane and Chris Shaw. Jesus For President. Michigan: Zondervan, 2008.

Deleuze, Guilles. “Language: Major and Minor.” The Deleuze Reader. New York: Columbia UP, 1993.

Harris, Stephen. Understanding the Bible 6th Edition. Boston: McGraw-Hill Co., 2003.

Hess, Richard. “Equality With and Without Innocence,” In Discovering Biblical Equality, ed. Ronald W. Pierce et al., 81. Illinois: InterVarsity Press, 2005

____________. Israelite Religions. Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2007.

Kazen, Thomas. “The Christology of Early Christian Practice,” In Journal of Biblical Literature, vol. 127, no. 3, ed. James C. Vanderkam (Fall 2008): 601.

Lewis, Clive Staples. The Problem of Pain. New York: HarperCollins, 1996.

Perkins, John. With Justice for All. California: Regal, 1975.

Wright, N.T. “Jesus and the Kingdom,” InterVarsity Press Conference (January 1999); Internet; accessed 11 October 2009; available from http://www.ntwrightpage.com/.

__________. “On Earth as it is in Heaven”; Internet; accessed 11 October 2009; available from http://www.ntwrightpage.com/sermons/Earth_Heaven.htm.

___________. “Whatever Did Saint Paul do with the Kingdom of God?” Reformational UK: A Christianity Without Gaps (June 2007); Internet; accessed 11 October 2009; available from http://www.reformational.org.uk/index.php?option=com_frontpage&Itemid=1.

Yoder, John Howard. The Politics of Jesus. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1994.

Something New

I said I was going to be blogging more about... mmm... five months ago or so, and thus far - bupkiss ( is that how you spell that?).

Well, here is the truth, my meager yet eager following, there is something coming, and I don't have a ton of time before I get bogged down in study again. So, that means I need to get at least the first part up soon. Until then, please enjoy this wonderfully and exacerbatingly dense piece I wrote about the Kingdom of God, and i am going to do it in increments so that you don't have to digest it in full. In it you will notice that I developed some of the language from previous posts, and as Gimli says after he has fallen off of a horse, in the second Lord of the Rings movie " Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers: "That was deliberate! That was deliberate!" yay!

brazos de El Paso.

Let it BURN!

There are times when I am full of this murdering rage. When the life of another seems simple and trivial as that of a knot on the end of a balloon – with one twist, one prick, without any hesitation and little force, every inch of air can be cut right out. And the balloon, it will wither and deflate with awful gasps and gaseous groans. It will writhe in the immanent departure of vitality – jerking side to side like a candle struggling in the gust of a door blown open by a tempest wind. And eventually, it will lie pathetic and malformed, lifeless on the ground, and I will envision it with once sultry eyes that have been burnt out. They will beckon me, those eyes, to return to sanity, to return to some sense of decency, but they will have been ill-informed on the manner and nature of my sympathies. For, what the eyes do not know is that dwelling in the cold dark cavern chamber where a heart should be, is the foulest void that is not only lacking anything like feeling, but actually has the power to suck sympathy and life from others like a light ray trying to out run the reach of a dead star; of a black hole.

In that moment, I will imagine that these fake eyes upon this balloon will harbor long and treacherous nights staring into the very core of me as if questioning my motives; as if begging an answer to the question “Why?” I also imagine myself staring back at them in a determined psychosis, laughing.

“There is no ‘why’,” I would say and then heartily explain that I did it for the mere enjoyment of stealing a balloon from a child to watch it deflate!

Yet still, other ideas come to mind, in the times of such macabre imaginings – in those moments of folly or triumph…depending on your perspective. Like one might think death on another to be swift and forceful, and the only fitting metaphor is actually more an associate of sound. It would be like the puff of wind that blows out from something enormous hitting something else enormous and then silenced – like a boulder falling hundreds of feet to the earth, exasperating all of its fine kinetic energy in a single blow of force, and then simply rolling to one side in an almost post coital dose. That would be the end of a life! Grandiose and extreme – but only a moment’s breathe in length. I can imagine people around standing dazed as to whether or not the killing they had just seen was one that had actually taken place or if, by some miracle, it was no more than the flash of some inventive subliminal marketing scheme trying to get them to drink soda more or have sex better or make their kitchens cleaner or die later, but there the evidence would lie pooling at their feet or splattered upon their faces. It would be that hard evidence to reassure them that they were witnesses to such a crime – if indeed one could call it that. Again, maybe it is all but a game of perspective.

But one should not be crass, there must be some reason for these instances of psychosis, for without reason, death by the hand of another is something crude altogether. It is like a prostitute’s kiss – it is something that seems like it should be a natural part of a common proceeding, yet it is strangely out of place. What sort of action can bring someone to the point of such confusion; to such madness as to drive and crack the mind into hinterworlds of homicide where the ground drinks blood and the stomach longs for nothing more than the entrails of another. Perhaps, and I am no expert, it is mere agitation. Maybe, when there is the presence of some sort of overt annoyance like the buzzing of another in the ear when they come far too close to the face than would naturally be expected, and the stink of them seeps into the lining of your nostril and their very air blows lightly onto your neck where no breath beyond a lover’s should be - when it ceases to stop at the appropriate distance that marks a place of comfort. Perhaps, it is when the one is left with wringing hands and a sweating brow because of a mere sound made by another. Maybe, the mind is more fragile than would have been previously implied – maybe this psychosis lingers so close to the natural frame of mind that it is not really so foreign but a true mark of conformity. Maybe it is so close to all of us that it IS the natural, and its suppression is the true psychosis.

And maybe the one who is reading this will give stern warning to me for their distaste of the reproachful subject. Maybe, they would soon rather see me ostracized than read any more of this garbage. “And you call yourself a Christian – respectable – decent- whatever,” they would say, and I would murmur with that rabid foam of murder still trickling from my chin, as it droops down to stain the shirt upon my chest, that I apologize for nothing. For, even now as it alights upon my knee giving little electric ticklish jolts, and while it prods around my thick layer of hair and flaps near my ear with a high pitch squealing buzz, I have no sympathy for this little fly that has invaded my home or the millions of friends I know it will bring with it tomorrow. So, when I catch it I will crush it, and I will dance upon its body with the exuberance of ten marching bands on a Thanksgiving Day parade! And I shall be at peace!

But for now, let this heart blaze with a fury like Jupiter! Let it rage with the sounding of Mars’ battle horn! Let it brood like the furthest depths of Hades’ kingdom!

Let this heart burn! Let it burn! Let it burn!

Juarez Reflection: Quiero Mi Ciudad en Paz!

This is a chat I had with a friend as the violence in Juarez heated up and our ministry began to fall apart.

Random – Hey!

Matt – ‘sup poopster? I am going to start calling you poopster

Random – Poopster? Matt? Really?

Matt – Yep. Just changed it in my phone!

Random – Little Jerk!

Matt – You are no longer “El Weenie”!

Random – Was it really “El Weenie?”

Matt – Yep, It always has been!

Random – you would. I didn’t know that!

Matt – We had a talk about this remember?

Random – uh huh.

Matt – Whatevs poopster!

Random – (sigh) oh gosh!...;/ How are things down thur?

Matt – Mexican –y… with Mexicans.

Random – you’re in a weird mood, aren’t you? I think I like it!

Matt – I guess. Today is my office day – I am a little loopy right now.

Random – haha! Nice! Office Day?

Matt – You know – we sit around and do blogs and finances and stuff. I don’t go to Juarez on Fridays

Random – where are y’all staying right now?

Matt – a church on this side…on our side.

Random - …how is it?

Matt – its cool – kind of stifling. We stay in the basement dorms. Its ok.

Random – mmmhmmm. How are your teammates?

Matt – cool. We don’t really have any major conflicts –we aren’t as “all across the board” as my team was last year.

Random – Is it safe to assume that’s a good thing?

Matt – mmm. Just different

Random – How’s Juarez?

Matt – Bloody. Like the Wild West.

Random – Really?

Matt – Yep. Here is a little taste:

Two weeks ago, a man was dropped off in front of the police station missing three appendages, burned beyond recognition, and a sign was posted basically saying that the cartels were going to do this to whoever got in their way. The main prosecutor for corruption in the police force, and the man who was promising protection for journalists in the cartel situation, was gunned down in broad daylight with a journalist in his car.

Random – I don’t even know what to say to that. Are you okay?

Matt – Yeah, its just nerve racking – there are a lot of folks who are just in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Random – I would tell you to be careful, but it doesn’t even sound like there’s much you can do.

Matt- Some of our community members from site one are saying that the cartel members are going to their children’s schools to demand money from the teachers and if they don't pay they are going to start stealing kids. One kid was found in TJ (Tijuana) with acid injected into his veins.

What do we do when they tell rich American missionaries that if we don't pay, a child we love is going to die, or a mother is going to be executed or they are going to set fire to one of the churches we work for? What do we do when they demand injustice or our community will suffer?

Suddenly, we are responsible for the death or torture of a child in our community let alone what might happen to us - you know?

Random – I am still speechless

Matt - There was one guy that one of the interns was talking to who said that someone from the cartel came to his shop and demanded that he pay $5000 a month (well, the equivalent in pesos, anyway) from his earnings or they would execute him. He caught the guy on tape, identified him, took it to the police, and they told him they could do nothing about it. "Here are your options man, starve or...be killed!"
Shitty.

Random – I just can’t even imagine.

Matt – yeah, its just way beyond some of the petty nonsense we had to deal with last year.

Random – Yeah, I’d say.

Matt - I saw A---'s son the other day on the street, and I just prayed he didn't recognize me, because we are pretty sure he is the one who coordinated breaking into our house when it was ransacked a couple months back. That is why we decided to leave – you know?

Random – really? Oh, wow!

Matt - In that neighborhood - the police have told us they won't even show up for a call until 45 min later - they just don't want to deal with it. there is no consequence, no justice, if A--- Jr. were to just go on a rampage you know?

Random – It just makes me sick

Matt - yeah, it churns my stomach pretty much every day. I was convinced I was getting an ulcer over it last week my stomach hurt so bad

Random - oh Matt...
I just really don’t even know what to say.

"Juarez Reflections"

It is true that I no longer am doing missions work in Juarez, Mexico. My time there, for the present, has ended, but there was much about the experience I did not say; there was much I wanted you to know. Now that things in my life have "settled" so to speak, following the wedding and post Mexico craziness, I hope to relay to you life, philosphy, theology, and everything I can think to pen, but mostly this note is meant to let you know that all the following blogs entitled "Juarez Reflection" are things I wanted to say and never did or are things I had been working on to tell you when it all (the ministry) fell apart. That said, enjoy!

Theology of Being - A Dream of Flowers

A Dream:

And the flower, having danced its dance, having connected with what it is to be a wild prairie flower, having grappled fully the contrast between simply fulfilling a destiny of the subjective self and taking up the seat of being to dwell completely in its existence as a flower, one finds (for the sake of metaphor) that the glinting streams of spring’s light are fading as a new and boding aspect of its being harbors on its brink - death and winter see their way to the horizon like a viper sliding on ice.

And, as if you the reader, were actually in some grand dream – slipping from consciousness to consciousness, the scene changes. One no longer stares at the flower in the wind. One no longer sees the onset of winter. So, as the glinting light of Spring fades into the cold and daunting pervasiveness of death, darkness and nothing else are the only things that can be seen for but a moment, when suddenly the first flickers of light begin to shade this abscence, this negative space, like sparklers on parade, and what begins as simply a fervent and yet erratic spark gives way to blindness of a different sort – to overwhelming light. The only thing perceivable is that rustling of cloth and the padding of bare feet as they take their steps onto rock and dust. You are aware. You think, and you are.

Your awareness reveals to you two men, seemingly full of vitality, sitting calmly at either end of the bed in which the Crucified Christ once lain; the guarding cherubim of that sacred place where God dwelt; the form of that to which was cast of gold atop the sacred Ark of the Covenant. When the eyes, finally adjusted to the awareness of light and following the foot tracks made in the dust, dart up to the entrance of the tomb and out to the bare and scarred back of the true king of Israel framed by the doorway, breathing in the fresh air of the garden, and soaking in the praise due him by even a single blossom, one realizes that he is witnessing the single most anticipated event in the entirety of creation. The king is ascending his throne. It is a procession. Christ, once crowned with thorns, walks amongst the praising creatures of his new and marvelous tabernacle; his new and marvelous creation; his renewed, impervious, and marvelous body. And one can almost hear the very grass and all of nature in their seemingly silent effigy screaming at him from every corner of the earth, “Hosanna! Hosanna!”

He turns to make eye contact, smirks and winks subtly, lowers his head as if waiting for an applause to quiet itself before some great inauguration, turns once more to admire this exploding newness, and then he passes. He moves out of the framing door and into the wild in order to will and to act in the manner He sees fit; in order to breathe life into everything; in order to let heaven intersect with earth; in order to let this new and Romantic tabernacle of nature release the thick curtains of dogma that man and creature might dwell with and in the risen Christ; that humanity might realize the words of Paul when he tells it that one can take up this seat of newness as well participating - one in BEING with the risen and victorious Christ - in this resurrection here and now as if heaven itself were descending upon Jerusalem; in order to free humanity up to BE those trifling humans He has made them to be.

And suddenly, the dream makes sense. The reader sees that the flower is real. One sees that the flower is a metaphor. The flower, caught up in the winds of its being, reveals itself and the human, and this tension is not merely a Socratic juggling of words but a real mystery in which one can “work out [his] own salvation [,]” and yet realize that “God is at work in [him as well], both to will and to work for his good pleasure”( RSV phil 2.12-13). And it makes sense that what philosophers can only gawk at with their existentialist jargon was the Christian message all along – that we ARE, and that is okay; That we ARE, and God loves us; that we ARE, and God continues to work in us; that we ARE perfect, because Christ, who is our being, is perfect; that we ARE, and Christ not only “saved” us from sin but put to death, like a sweeping Passover cloud, any manner in which we might be found blemished; that we ARE participants of this new creation, and we can walk with confidence in the positions of honor given us by the Almighty creator, just as no attention was given to the proverbial stains of the prodigal as he took his seat of honor at his father’s table; we ARE free…we are free to once more walk quietly with our God in the freshness of Eden and to drink coolly the river waters of a real spiritual life unbound by those nooses of religio-systemic squawkings.

God reveals to us the flower. God reveals to us our being. God reveals to us himself.

Juarez Reflection: An Ink Blotch

As the steam rises from a boiling pot of the sweet milky drink in this Mexican school kitchen, an elderly lady the people call Herman Santa (or “The Holy Sister”) meshes the corn flour mixture with her moist hands, preparing the gorditas for lunch that day. She hums a Spanish love song to herself in the absence of a radio, and the other women buzz languidly about the kitchen, setting their stations for the hordes of kids that would soon bombard the cafeteria for lunch. The smell of cooking meat, the heat of the propane powered stoves, and the chattering women give way to a feeling of normalcy and rightness as the morning overtakes this simple block and concrete lunch room.

A small cat passes by the barred window that allows the early morning light to stream through, and as it peers into the kitchen with its tail flicking from side to side; a sense of calm presides over the kitchen like a cosmic blanket settling lightly on fresh sheets. Then, its head jerks suddenly hissing as it turns to flee, and a flock of pigeons take flight agitatedly. The harsh whip of a military helicopter, with its high caliber rifle manned and at the ready, blows pass the school and its surrounding neighborhood darkening the room as its turbine wings wheel through the air daunting and low– circling and circling.

While I sit quietly cleaning the dishes and hoping for the return of day, my mind can’t escape the image of a grand and masterful painting with an ink blotch on it.

Juarez Reflection: I Saw A Storm...

I saw a storm. It was not at a distance, and its green hue shaded everything. I think, if I were to have focused on it, it would have been violent and tumultuous. I would imagine it in a snapshot, and there would be a young woman shivering in its midst, gripping her arms as she huddles into herself trying to find protection from the cold. Her hair would have been slowly dancing like a young virgin upon a pagan altar, and my entire being would have felt a cold shiver of upheaval, rebellion, in the dark presence of this storm. But, this is not the terror that haunts this dream. This is not the terror that stalks me even in the daylight…

Three men descend, resolved, from the dusty Mexican hill. An older man sits with his hands in his lap, enjoying a cigarette, letting his taped cane rest against his crooked knee, and his eyes are shifting slowly like the dangling rain clouds of a summer prairie storm; like a caged beast, hoping to break free his cast iron chains to dine a succulent jugular. My eyes wander back to the three men, and the blue bandana that one of them wears, sears into my mind. I turn to my companion in the truck to continue our chat. We have just pulled up, in the newest truck of our fleet, to the bottom of our hill in the impoverished landscape of the Juarez barrio. My mind is clouded by the warnings of my bias; I try to quiet the stereotypes in my mind, convincing my psyche to let go of the initial negative thoughts I had of the three men; I try to find the grace with which my Father views them – inviting them to dine on the supple Eucharist feast. I have only a moment to transgress these thoughts before the blue bandana blinds my vision as he flings open the cracked door of my traveling companion. He makes certain to cock the handgun he is pointing at us as he screams in Spanish for us to exit the vehicle. A hand seizes my wrist as one of the three opens my door to usher me out.

My companion and I sit dumbfounded breathing the carbon-monoxide of our truck as it speeds away. We head up the hill slowly as we try to catch our breath. The old man sits grinning and silent. He catches our eye and nods as the flash in his eye mimics the fierce tempest within him; there is a hole in the fence and this beast shakes free his chains to feast.

The harsh dry air, filled with that satiating dust, sears my lungs as the passing light of the bright and brilliant day gleams out from the setting sun. Time fades as the dark radiance of the blue bandana sets itself through terror into my psyche, and my spirit longs for the time when the tapping of my heart could find a peaceful tune of pattering rain; in which this fear would pass and it could once more see a stilled portrait of death and smile.

Juarez Reflection: Like a Bullhorn in a Library

Her swollen eyes rolled toward me in salutation, and I could see that the anguish which they expounded was not from any sort of physical pain but rather from her intense psychological distress; from the breaking of her spirit.

Hermana Jenny said hello to me quietly as I brushed past the hordes of people to enter the kitchen of “El Comedor.” Every word spoken by Jenny was tightened by her quivering lips, and her eyes rolled and swayed from side to side as if she were intensely checking some list or roster for a missing item. In reality, one could tell that she was probably going through her recent purchases trying to figure out what thing she could have scrimped on – what luxury or extra dessert or fashionable article of clothing or ice cold venti latte had lead her empty handed to a place of need.

Over the clatter of talking folks and the banging of dishes in the kitchen, Jenny’s desperation screamed out like a bull horn in a library. She hadn’t brought enough food. There were so many hungry mouths and too many empty spoons. She knew in her heart that, like the multitudes on only crumbs and a prayer, her flock would be fed this day – even if it meant there would be a screeching metal sound as the spoons brush the bottom of the pan. The pantry, however...

There wasn’t enough.

She couldn’t give them their meager portion of rice and beans.

Some would walk away downtrodden and worried about tomorrow.

In that clamorous kitchen, she sat alone in her dark subjective prison, panting and sweating under the weight of her cross.

Juarez Reflection: Becasue I Was Enticed...

 As it is, bug stories are far too frequent in Mexico to be of any great value, however, since I have been enticed to relate such a gruesome tale, I will share one of the more recent events involving one of these grotesque creatures:

One evening as the interns return to their barrio home set cozily in one of the hillsides of the Colonia Fronteriza Baja, they notice that there is a copious amount of water dribbling down the hillside and spilling onto the street. As they ascend, toward their house, they realize that the water is coming from their home. Curious as to why, they rush toward the door to see that the copper piping, actually being of great trade value – especially to someone with an addiction or a hungry family, had been torn out of the wall and taken from the spicket and the hot water heater.

The water, though pouring out like a river raging, was being rightly blocked by a well placed stick which jammed most of the flow keeping the gushing stream from spilling out. As the two lady interns, head inside to put away the groceries, as well begin organizing and cleaning the roach infested kitchen, the male intern as well as the Area Director stay outside to see if they can temporarily fix the problem. As the male intern readjusts the casing that was supposed to help protect the piping, he sees the stick neatly placed in the bowels of the copper tube. As he is leaning down to examine the scene in the dimly lit area, something becomes jostled. Water by the buckets full, by the gallons, comes flying out onto the intern and the patio.

Soon after, as the male intern, soaked to the bone, rushes to turn off the main water line, an emphatic and terror filled scream erupts from inside…

While the male intern begins his inquiry of the running water, the two lady interns enter their simple home on the hillside, set on their mission: the eradication of cockroaches. Armed with bleach, cleaning solution, aerosol cans, and if need be bug bombs, they set to work trying to make the kitchen and living space in their small abode safe for the storing of groceries. After taking all the dishes out of the cupboards to be sanitized, it becomes evident that the task before them would be a daunting one. Every cupboard opened and every drawer emptied, revealed even more creatures scurrying from the light, but the two ladies knew that the biggest mystery would be the small crack of darkness that separated the sink cupboards and the food cupboard right next to it. What ominous creeping thing could possibly be dwelling there? What darkness of life could live to seek an abode in that shadow? What mystery, with dark blinking eyes, would be watching them at that very moment?

The girls set their faces toward finishing this great work. Raising their cans of aerosol, they doused the small crack with a mighty spray in anticipation of the mythic battle about to take place with this creature of the night. And though their hearts were stout, no amount of bravery could prepare them for the onslaught they were about to face. As the smog from the deadly gas slowly dissipated from inside the crack, a slight scurrying sound accompanied the hordes of cockroaches that rushed out from the crevice, crawling and pining over each other, the floor, and the counter tops like a teeming cauldron of some black witch concoction. They zagged in every direction toward any shadow they could find, and chaos erupted as the panicked interns began hopping about in terror and resolve. One by one, the interns began their slaughter of these creatures, and the continuous sounds of spraying and crunching intermingled with each other as of some sharp violin in a horror movie as they gassed or crush each and every one. The ladies screeched and yelped and screeched and yelped as their hearts raced ever faster, and the battle raged on in a cloud of noxious fumes and deafening splats.

Having had to lay flat in the dirt to shut the water main off, and having had many attempts to "ghetto rig" the water system so that everyone could have showers that night, the male intern enters the home to see why there had been so much ruckus. He stands in the doorway to the kitchen dripping from his entire body, and there is mud caked to his face and side. He is barefoot, having shed his shoes in order to keep them from getting dirty. The lady interns stand there bewildered. Each of them is holding a half-empty can of insecticide with a multitude of oozing cockroach exoskeletons lying at their feet; the corpses of their victorious battle field.

They all connect eyes. They are blinking fast and breathing heavy. They laugh.

Jaurez Reflection: A Theology of Being? 1

There is a whisper in the wind as it blows through a field of wild and vibrant flowers set high in the back hills of a rolling country side. The animated colors vibrantly dance and swoon through the arms of their love, the wind. To spend the vast portion of their days lost in the frail rhythmic sway between them, leaves a mark on their being that is more incumbent than the long strings of borrowed time in which they would suffer to be trapped in daily – playing for themselves merely the contingent truths of this moment to that. But here, in this primal movement on the hills, there is something more…something deeper. There is some great connection to Earth; there is some primal truth that connects them with the heartbeat of what it means to exist, thumping and pounding in a syncopated pattern from the deep cavern chambers of the life of being. What does is mean to be? What is it to exist? How do we allow ourselves to be enraptured in the fullness and frailty of the deepest existence? How do we engage a reality in which we are one in being with Christ? What does it look like for a child of God to sit confidently at the Eucharist table, a whore and yet a child? How do we take up the question of being as we uphold our identity as Christ's children?

Juarez Reflection: Blessed is the Man Who Trust in You.

As the truck rumbles and bumps down the narrow and unpaved Juarez street, I cannot help but think to myself in trepidation that the outcome of this particular venture will turnout to be one of discord with my personal well-being. That is to say, I was pretty sure I was going to get my ass kicked. I look to Fransisco, who sits my opposite and watch his face as the dim street lights pass on and off it as we whiz by them like the dull glow of air bombs flashing in the midnight sky of some pilot on an ill-destined raid party. He smiles nervously back, apparently thinking the same. He is preparing himself for the worst.

My mind wanders back a week earlier to the beginning of this horrid mess, and I can see the outside of the church I was working on. We had a group come from the States to help us finish some work on the new staff housing we were building. As the leader of the site, I had of course fifteen different things I was trying to manage at one time, and this particular morning was no different. Until I realized my passport was no longer in my possession, I actually remember very little about the morning other than the fact that as I slowly placed said passport into the backpack I was carrying, instead of my pocket where it would normally be and would be the most secure, I thought to myself – “Make sure you grab that later. It shouldn’t be in there.” Then, around lunch time, as I am searching for tools, I notice that I am no longer wearing that bag, and I have no idea where I set it.

That night, after several frantic searches of the church property, an interrogation session with some of the adolescent boys who had been on site that day, and a nervous phone call to the American consulate in Juarez, my mind began to have little rest as worry permeated its inner reaches like a sponge soaking in the last remnants of bile and blood from a butcher’s table. Days passed, my hope had long faded, and I cursed my psyche for its betrayal of trust in my Lord, for every morning I awoke to a fresh sensation of imprisonment. I felt a constant nagging to run from this place and never return offset by the inability to do so, because I feared I would be unable to cross back into my homeland without proper documentation. I begged God to medicate me in the Spirit, to remind me of his mercies, but these moments were few and far between. Then, as I sat praying in the dingy yet Spirit-filled kitchen of one the churches we were using, pleading with God to remind me of the Peace and Hope I am supposed to have in Him, the impossible happened. One of the interns I was working with, walked in holding the primitive looking Mexican cell phone, and stared at me in bewilderment.

“We found your passport!” She said.

“What?!”

“Someone called A--- (a community friend) from the phone you had in the bag!!! They found your bag in a store somewhere!! They want to meet to return it!!!”

My mind snaps back to the moment as my nose stings from the thick dust caused by the truck coming to a halting stop. From the front, I can see a child standing cradling his small rusty bike. He comes to the side window asking who we are looking for. By this time, the road has gone to the outskirts of the neighborhood, and the street lights have ended. He motions for us to follow him, and we creep along slowly behind continuing to anticipate the outcome of this horrid situation. As we pull up to the dimly lit barrio home, Fransisco and I turn to face it with our guards raised. Without warning, seven or eight large stalky Mexican men begin to file out from the woodwork, each from a different part to stand at the pallet made fence.

My heart begins to race, and I wait for something to happen, and soon the crowd parts as a frumpy, worn, middle-aged Mexican woman comes to the front. This is Maria, the woman we had been unsuccessfully trying to meet for nearly a week now since she first contacted our community friend. She hesitantly hands the bag over, sheepishly admitting that her family had pressured her to sell the passport on the black market, and accepts the meager reward I offer to her and her husband. We make small talk for a bit – a lovely exchange. Then we leave grateful for the protection granted to us. Later that night, I hold the passport in my hands, and my eyes begin to well with joyful tears, not at any sentiment of relief or weak hearted-ness really, but at the glorified name of Christ who gives dew and sun to the lily as well as sustenance to his beloved.

And as the new sun rises the next morning on what would have beeen my continued accursed mind, His Spirit gently flows into my own like the small trickle of water running down hill from a heap of snow in the brisk spring of the Colorado mountains, and He gently reminds me that as Psalms states -

“Blessed is the man who trusts in you.” – Psalms 84

Juarez Reflection: From the Fisherman's Grip

 

As I exited my vehicle this evening, I was struck by the familiarity of a disturbing scene. Just beyond the front bumper, were two dogs struggling with each other and making a ruckus. I stopped to take in their interaction and realized that the aggressive male dog was in fact doing everything in its power to overcome the other for sex. Both dogs snarled and bared their teeth to each other, and the female often attacked the male dog – biting, scratching, clawing, desperate. She screeched in pain as her body was often jarred in a position of defense struggling time and again, successfully and not, to squeeze out from under each piercing violent advancement of the pursuing animal.

I turned from the perverse scene knowing the outcome. Though much larger, the female will eventually be unable to thwart the persistant pounding heart of animal instinct, and she will soon be pregnant with one of her many litters as she lies tired and defeated in the unsheltered street. The other will leave to scrounge for what little bits it can steal whilst continually prowling for another breathing thing to fulfill its driving mechanical needs unaware of the despair caused to a puppy plagued with mange, disease, starvation, and neglect.

And now, as I stare out at the interaction of this city, I see each rooftop and disquieted human, each drug addict and federal police officer, each wisp of feces and pile of rotten garbage, and each rooster crow and bolstering mega-phone as it paints the very face of this brimming cup of human calamity.

It is like a bowl of dampened worms slithering over each other to get free from the certain death of a fisherman’s grip.

Juarez Reflection: The Fiercest of all Horrors

 

The flashing police lights turn just ahead of us, and I slow in observance. Following the flow of traffic, we pass creeping by, and I lock my gaze on the woman's corpse, rigid with rigormortous, and she is surrounded on either side by police men with their patrol vehicles. Her back arches stiff seemingly from the pain, she wears a blue blouse over black shorts with one shoe kicked off, and her teeth bear in the grimace of her face.

The image seers into my psyche like this unrelenting desert sun, and my shock comes from inside myself as I search for the wells of compassion and empathy within only to find them blown and dry as they gradually fill with sand. My spirit collapses torturingly slow under the immense weight of desensitization, and I search desperately for the arms of my Father as I cower and stare timidly into the sunken eyes of apathy – the fiercest of all horrors.