Parakalein

As I reflected on World Aids Day, I recalled a paper I wrote in graduate school on "Am I my Brother's Keeper".

When it is not our problem we tend to dissociate from the problem.  God in Christ associated with us even though it was not his problem, it was ours.  What a model for us to see all people and all problems as ours to care for, have compassion for, and extend care towards.  God courageously came into the world as a vulnerable little baby to teach us how to grow in wisdom and stature with God and man.  Perhaps the greatest growth spurt is when we see everyone as our neighbor and love our neighbors as ourselves.

The plight of Aids invites us to pledge solidarity as brothers to all those who suffer.  AS Jesus walked into the Leper colony of his day as a way of demonstrating his compassion and courage and care for all people so we step into the world of aids and offer the courage and care that is the heart of Christ for those who suffer regardless of anything.

Compassion and courage are the attributes of God toward all humanity and they are the attributes of those who walk the way Jesus walked.

I recently received an email presenting the cultural difference between European and American views of using athletics to bear witness to the Gospel.

For instance going into a school as an under cover agent for Christianity is acceptable to western evangelism techniques while frowned upon in European culture.  The intent is to bring the Gospel to light as light.

In a way as a Christian therapist I do something similar.  I use therapy as a means to bear witness to the peace of God and the love of God that can transform any trauma or problem by shifting the focus of that problem.  At he same time I never hide the reality of my faith (see my website) but I also never impose it.  I wait for an invitation based on our work to open the door to a faith discussion.  So while an end goal is present it is not a means ot an end.  As if the person never wanted ot hear of spiritual faith he would not.  For me it is an issue of integrity leading into sharing rather than suspending integrity for the opportunity of witness.

The usual greeting in this season is Happy Thanksgiving.

I cannot say that, this Thanksgiving.  Last Thanksgiving, I heard people saying that and it just angered me.  This was partly because I had a part that was hurt, depressed and anything but thankful.  I am in a better space this year but am more aware than ever that a season of Thanksgiving really can alienate those who are not happy from those who are or who at lest wear the mask of happiness.

In reality I know some people who are not feeling Happy this Thanksgiving:
A father whose son was killed din a car accident in which the father was the driver;
A man whose wife up and left him and won't even talk to him;
A woman who experienced neglect from her mother and sexual abuse by her father that she is dealing with;
A gay couple who are rejected and feel alienated from their church and friends;
A pastor whose son died at 15, is separated from his wife, out of the ministry and recreating a life from the rubble;
A teenager who was sexually abused by her father and exploited as a sex toy for friends,
A mother whose heart ached for her daughter who is trying to put the pieces of her life into a peace place for healing;
A spouse whose partner died suddenly leaving the pain of grief and aloneness:
A mother whose son is struggling with an addiction the threatens the presence of life force
A wife whose husband is having an affair and then beats her blaming her for his behavior;
A brother who stabs his older brother to death in the Netherlands;
An elderly couple who have lost all their retirement funds;
A mother and father whose son was killed in the war in Afghanistan;
A couple whose young child was killed by a drunk driver;
A couple whose marriage is falling apart because of the fear of being loved and the fear of not being loved, yet they deeply care for each other and feel each other's pain and suffering;
A man in such pain and grief that he is planning to kill himself on Thanksgiving Day.

None of these see this Thanksgiving as Happy.  They represent many others like them who enter this season without a "happy part".

I began, due to inner awareness, to  tell people "Have a Good Thanksgiving" or Make it as Good a Thanksgiving as you can.  When God in creative power and compassionate presence takes everything and pours good into that event, it does not make the event good or me happy but it does bring redemptive and radical transformation, and offers to make it good in some small way.

Thankfully God works good into and out of whatever horrible and horrific things happen in our world.
It does not make me happy but it does make my heart feel "good".

"God works all things together for good"  Romans 8:28

Have a good Thanksgiving!

Have a good time of being thankful!  It is all good!
It is good to "give thanks in everything" in fact it is the will of God to do so! (I Thessalonians 5:18)

Yesterday I spent some time with a wise, well read, and well written friend who asked me to dialogue with him about Just War and Holy War.  The context if I understood it right was a dialogue among scholars in both the Christian and Muslim Traditions.  The Christian advocates were defining the idea of a Just War.  I wondered to myself is this deifying war.  The Muslim advocates were defining the idea of a Holy War. I wondered to myself who defines holy.  At the time my only response was to present the idea that no war is holy and no war is just.

When we define justice in our terms and in our perspective and in our side we are in fact I think engaging in an injustice.  Is there such a thing as a just war?

After over 24 hours of thought, my idea on this matter would be to answer no with two quick qualifiers.  I have a part that truly understands that when someone is a menace to society's code of conduct or more particular the "dignity of humanity and human rights" it is a just act to protect the menaced or bullied person or group of people.  I quickly add, while that makes the intervention whether arms or restraint or arms of violence, justifiable that does not make it a defense for a "just war theory".  Justification is not justice.  Justice is when all people's right to dignity and to determine their own destiny are equally respected and any behavior or belief that threatens the rights of any one person in favor of the rights of another is not right.

Similarly, there is no holy war except in the eyes of the one who declares it holy or declares that they have a "holy directive".  The nature of holiness is to be free of "one sided ways of seeing the world" and seeing the world with open eyes to all prejudices and perspectives.  To claim a holy purpose that is self-serving is not a holy war but a war using God.  God's holy purpose is to transform people from over and against thinking that promotes self justifying and self deifying purposes that are counterproductive and violent in nature into an alongside of (parakalein) orientation that sees.  God invites the world to watch as he receives the anger, hostility, and war of humanity against divinity and transforms that war into a war that is won by surrender, sacrifice and serenity.

Whoever is willing to lose his life, will truly be set free to live his life, this is the principle of God.
To argue for a "just war" or a "holy war" is to argue against the message of peace and love.  War may have at times a justifiable or holy purpose but to declare war holy or just is counterproductive to "loving your enemies" so that hey will be free of their need to do violence and live in peace and love toward all.

Violence may sometimes have a justifiable or holy intention but to endorse violence as a way of being is counterproductive to living at peace and with love toward your neighbor.

The crucifixion intentionally receives the violence of humanity with the intention of transforming that way of living into the way of love and peace.

There is no such thing as a holy war or just war.  There is such a thing as holy surrender and just sacrifice.  There is such a thing as a holy or just intervention on behalf of the oppressed, afflicted, and abused.www.peacecripplers.blogspot.com

I had planned a Worship Experience for the runners at the NYC marathon.  It is a Worship Service like none other, not churchy very runner friendly and God focused.  I had been in touch with runners who had   a scripture to read a story to tell or a  song to share.  It was all prearranged.  This was very different than 25 years ago when I presented a message and we sang together in a spontaneous, unstructured form of Worship.  The Service "by runners for runners" had been endorsed by the marathon headquarters so I now have a tent, a sound system, a communion table and a list of participants previously secured.

None of them were there as the time for the service approached.  Understand for those none runners who are reading this that there were 48,000 runners in a small park all looking for different things that they were not finding.

So as the runners gathered for Worship I announced we were doing this the way they did it in Acts.  Whoever gathered  from that group some and a hymn, some a spiritual song and another a word from God.  I heard myself say to them that we sometimes organize our Worship and unintentionally organize God out of our worship.  A Japanese man came up to the microphone.  He spoke of the tragedies of Hiroshima, earthquakes and tsunamis and of 9/11 and the tragedies here. So he was running for peace in our world and he spoke peace to all.  Then a man from France sang a peace ballad.....it felt like, i had stepped out of the way and God's presence was bring felt in a powerful and personal way as God's people shared from their hearts encouraging one another in faith.  Maybe that is what Worship is suppose to be.

God found us.  Or rather when I let go of my agenda we found God in our midst.

God is present always everywhere all the time.....in tragedies and in triumphs the same God is there!
God works everything for good in our lives. Amen

Several days ago "I finished" the ING New York City Marathon in record time for me.  I finished in over 7 hours for the first time in my life.  My ego was mostly okay with that.  I had a part that said I could have done a 6:38 finish time which is what I did last year.  I could have strove harder, pushed more, and stayed more focused on the finish line.  Yet it was my best marathon in that I talked to people encouraged first time marathoners who went out too fast and were really hurting as I walked by them, I slowed down and walked with them talking with them as they went, encouraging them in the journey to the finish line.  Some I walked with for just a few minutes as I respected their focus and not wanting to waist energy in talking.  They just wanted to finish.  I get that.   Others really wanted to talk as it took the focus off their pain.  When they asked me my name and I said Don Paine, I watched eyes roll but the feet kept moving.
It did not matter to me what country they were from or what ethnic group or what religion they were I was presenting the encouraging presence of a fellow on the same journey.  I crossed the finish line with the memory of hundreds of people who I had talked with in my heart and mind.

I imagined that this might have been what Jesus had in his heart as he finished the course of his journey at the cross.  In his heart and mind were all the people he had talked with, been with in their journey, healed, challenged, had compassion on and then there were all the people of history that he looked back on and all the people of the future he looked forward too, He had all of humanity past present and future in His heart and mind.  Perhaps that is what helped him endure as Hebrews notes: "Who for the joy that was set before him, endured the cross, despising the shame, and is now set down, "finished".  The joy of relationship building, bridge building and nurturing a connection internal and eternal with God was so the focus of Jesus He lived, lives, and lives in all who follow the Jesus way.

The Jesus way is being with people in their journey wherever they are  in the at journey without judgment, without conditions and without an agenda except that they know and experience the loving presence of the God of love.  Taking that in, they receive the love of God in Christ.

What was finished for me the day I crossed the finish line at the marathon was being with people in that way at that time.  But I was not finished.  It, that phase of my journey, was finished.  In a sense I was taking all I learned about being with people into being with people with renewed understanding of why is si so the Jesus Way.  My wife and I went on the following Sunday to Castle Island in Boston to do the ALS Walk with a friend.  To just be with him and his family and friends is the Jesus Way.  The Rabbi is still teaching us a new and different way.

When Jesus said "It is finished" he was saying among other things that the physical journey on and in this physical world where he modeled living in peace and love with clarity and compassion was done.  The living in peace and love was and ever shall be.  God continues through the Spirit and through Jesus to live in people and to be with people through and with people.  He is the resurrection and the life, whoever lives and believes in him will never be finished.

I am a finisher but I am not finished.  Jesus finished his work on earth but He id far from finished working in the realm of the spirit.  Listen to his voice through people, through nature, through scripture and live as Jesus lived.  That was a message I go this year and it made the marathon the best ever!

In the name of the "I with be with you God", be with people in peace and love and God will bless you and them.

I am finished.

Tonight due to connections extending, we were invited to be part of a Native American Music Program featuring Joseph Firerrow, www.josephfirecrow.com.  The concert was amazing.  As he described that the flutes her makes by hand are made form the inside out.  I was amazed.  I shared with him the the therapy I engage in www.selfleadership.org , has as its focus in couple therapy, "Living form the Inside Out".  The characteristics of this inside out is that a person and partner has to live in inner peace and love toward the other regardless of anything, without any condition or agenda.

Truly in nature and in the music arts or the art of music the inner truth of all humanity's need to focus on being in peace inside and acting in loving ways toward others outside is the secret of making good music in the should and out from the soul.  This is why Joseph sees the flute as harmonizing all things and calling all to honesty and honor.

The message of Malachi rings again in my ear a message calling the 21st century to a new kind of honesty, honor and humility.

Another connection in the God who is doing a new thing in our day/.

A couple of days ago I ran my 25th New York City Marathon.  For 25 years in a row I ran, walked and finished.  This is not a testimony of my endurance but a testimony to a vision of passionate enthusiasm for God and people.

Someone asked me how I did it.  I responded that I did not do it but the energy of love and grace that sits inside all of us helped me to see beyond all of it. I finished not because I am disciplined or strong but because I kept the finish line in front of me and simply continued to move toward it at a different pace each year, with different setbacks and problems each year but with the same focus: to finish in and by the grace of God.

When Eric Little, Chariots of Fire, was asked once how he runs.  He said that when he runs he feels the breath of God, the pleasure of God, the presence of God, the wind of God's Spirit.  While I do not move as fast or as famously, I have felt that same breath, pleasure, wind and presence.  It is in all of us.  It is not about how fast we run.  It is not even about running. It is about moving in The Spirit and having the Spirit move in and through you.  We can all feel that wherever we are and whatever we do.

When Jesus spoke of being born of Spirit in John 3 he said, "The wind blows where it wills, you do not know where it is coming from or where it is going so is everyone who is born of the Spirit".  We know we are born of the Spirit when we a borne along by the Spirit regardless of anything or anyone.  I have felt that energy of Spirit in me in the darkest of hours, in the brightest of times, in times of failure to stay on course and in times of finishing the course.  In all times and in all moments:  God is always present when I am present.

So today I am thankful not just for God's presence helping me to finish 25 NYC Marathons but more for God's breath that breathes in me, on me and all around me.  I used to think I had to breathe in the breath of God.  Now I know that God has breathed into all of us the very "breath of God".  God's breath is in you and all about you because it is not about you but about the God who gives you breath. It is all about you and God walking living and being in Spirit.

Thanks be to God.