Life and Love and Messiness.

"I know there are people who have actually gone from misery to happiness, but they didn't do it by walking through three steps, they did it because they had a certain set of parents and heard a certain song and knew somebody who had a certain experience and saw some movie, read some book, had something happen to them like a car wreck or a trip to Seattle. Then they called on God, and a week later read something in a magazine or met a girl in Wichita, and when all this had happened they had an epiphany, and somebody may have helped them fulfill what this epiphany made them feel, and several years later they rationalized this mystic experience with three steps, then they told the three steps to us in a book. I'm not saying they weren't trying to be helpful; I bring this up only because life is complex, and the idea that you can break it down or fix it down or fix it in a few steps is rather silly."

"I started wondering if the message God was communicating to mankind, this gospel of Jesus was a message communicated to the heart as much as to the head; that is, the ideas could not be presented accurately outside the emotion within the truths were embedded...

And if you think about these things, it only makes sense that if God was communicating a relational message to humanity He would use the multilayered methodology of truth and art, because nobody engages another human being through lists and formulas. Our interaction with one another is so much more about that hidden language. I started wondering if our methodology, that of charts and formulas and lists, is not hindering the message Jesus intended. If our modern methodology is superior to the methodology of historical narrative mixed with music, drama, poetry, and prose, then why didn't God choose lists instead of art?"

"If you ask me, the separation of truth from meaning is a dangerous game. I don't think memorizing ideas helps anybody unless they already understand the meaning inferred in the expression of those ideas. I think ideas have to sink very deeply into a person's soul, into their being, before they can effect change, and lists rarely sink into a person's soul."

Ok. So, one. I love this idea of poetry being woven in and out of the Bible. I love the idea that Paul, the meanest of all meanies (in my perspective) quotes poetry. I have this new picture of Paul in my head. I picture him sitting at a desk writing away in the middle of the night by candlelight in a house where he is only known as a wanted man. He pours his heart out to his brothers and sisters he has only met with for small amounts of time, and slips in and out of poetry, and confession as he writes "His grace is sufficient"

I'd like to think, knowing "how to fix the problem" would fix the problem, sometimes. But. it doesn't and it never will.

It's like in Job, when all of Job's friends, for at least twenty chapters, tell him how to fix his life. Well, it turns out God is pissed at these three friends because he thinks they're assholes. He says, "my anger burns against you and your two friends, for you have not spoken of me what is right, as my servant Job has." His friends miss Job's heart and tell him what he's supposed to be doing, but that's not how God operates. God is more than about people who do the right thing. He loves love. He loves Job's heart.

We have only a small amount of knowledge of what God actually wants in our lives...because for now “we see in part…and knowledge will pass away.” And love is all that remains. Love means letting go. Love means listening to that voice in our head, but also listening to the pull in our hearts. And according to grace, we can

"Launch out in reckless belief that

the Redemption is complete, and then bother no more about yourself,

but begin to do as Jesus Christ said - pray for the friend who comes to

you at midnight, pray for the saints, pray for all men. Pray on the

realization that you are only perfect in Jesus Christ"

And love wouldn't be love if we could just do what we knew to be right. We need love and we were made to love. Thank God we are not just lists and answers. Thank God for poetry.

Todo me lleva a Ti. Solo a Ti.