Parakalein

I was with a person who was very troubled by events in his life that we overwhelming.  He had been judged badly and cruelly, I think, by people who had been treated badly and cruelly by him.

I met with him even though he had said some mean, judgmental and cruel things to me about me.  I asked him why he thought I was willing to meet with him given what he had said to me.  He was not sure.  I told him that I was there because I refused to let my life be directed by parts of me that are hurt, wounded or frustrated.  I choose to respond to people with "openheartedness" regardless of their behavior.  It is about me not about them.

As we met he told me the story in his head about what people had done to him, said about him, and how rejected and judged he felt.  After listening at length to his story.  I told him the reason I had chosen to meet with him is that I heard his attack of me as the expression of a hurt and wounded person who I wanted to see and hear, from an "open heartedness" that was about who I try to be.  I asked him if he could hear another story.  I told him a story using all the facts that he had used in his story with a different spin on it that was about people really caring about him but feeling very frustrated by him.  There actions toward him were from frustration as his actions toward them.  He was incensed.

I asked him a simple question, "Why do you believe and value the story inside your head and cannot see or value the alternate story in your head."

His head has been wounded so deeply that when he tries to speak for that wounded part to protect it or defend it, the result is perennial wounding.  The tragedy is that there is truth to both stories.  It is only about him.  the tragedy is that the other people's story is only about them.  This is what makes this conflict un-resolvable.  When stories of a wounded head meet stories of wounded heads there is only more head injuries and the heart can never feel heard or healed.

At the same time to invite a person to be healed in heart so they can not have to fight for their rights or cause sounds "counter productive".  Interestingly it is the only thing that will result in countering that is productive.

Cultivating an open heart is to nurture a healed heart.  For a heart to heal it has to give up its burden and beliefs from the wounds of the head.  The wounds of the head are real life head injuries.  The come from experience and from conclusions based on those experiences.  However stories based on a true story are not the true or full story ever.  The story behind the hurt or wounded head is the unheard or wounded heart.  It is only when the heart is healed that the head is relieved form it s burden.  No head convincing will do the work of the heart.  It is the work of the heart that is transforming.

I have a part that has learned the hard way this life lesson: Open your heart to hear the inner story of healing that is in you.

Unfolding the mysteries of the universe outside or inside is a formidable task to say the least.

This morning as I was waking and communing with God and the Self within, I began to review some of my journey over the last two years.  In particular the part of me that felt "unloved and un-lovable" was coming up strongly.

This part recalled that many times it sought to protect me by having me do things to impress people so I would get some attention or care that would make me fee lovable.  Upon successfully doing so it would feel a failure as the part that was getting attention got attention because of what it did no for who I was.  It was a whirlpool of sinking sands of thoughts and feelings.  Like sand in an hourglass it was going no where while moving.  I realized that the part that worked so hard was protecting the exiled part that felt unlovable.  This part reminded me that i was the one who reached out to my brothers, to friends, family. I did things to get the feeling of being loved only to feel unloved as that part said, they never called me or reached out reciprocally to me.  It concluded that the reason for this lack of loving back was because I was unloveable,  Furthermore the part alleged that I was just play acting care to get cared for.  This made me a phony, a failure, a fake, and a fraud.  As I invited the exiled part to come into the light of loving I realized something.

Before anything but God existed there was no light as there was no need for light.  Darkness was all that was.  In that darkness there was light and there was/is SELF.  SELF, divine self that is, was and is and ever shall be. This SELF is LOVE.  It is not needing to be loved so when God created the world it was not to get love it was for the experience of extend the nature of love beyond God into others.  God is primarily loving.  While God enjoys when creating is loving back God does not need that love as God is love.  God cannot get more of who God is. When God created the World he tucked the divine SELF of loving energy into the human soul self, and body.

God stepped outside of SELF without losing a sense of SELF.  I got outside of my self in trying to love others as I felt God called me to do only to lose my sense of Self.  I had reached to to my brother and others not as a phony or fake but as a genuine person of love. When I did not feel loved back, when no one seemed to reach out to me I concluded that I had no worth.  The problem was not the conclusion as much as the belief that I had to be loved by someone outside of me to feel lovable.  My worth was placed inside of me as the DIvine Self which i neglected to dee until with the eye of faith it become visible..  Indeed faith is seeing what no one else sees.  then choosing to live by faith not by sight.

Then it dawned in me.  When I am loving without the need to be loved back the exiled self that wants to be loved is loved from within therefore begins to settle into a state of balance and peace so feels loved.  The elusive need to be loved is surrendered not to the illusion of being loved but to the infusion of love itself.

The fear of not being loved or lovable surrenders to the faith that sees love inside and is comforted from the inside rather than conflicted by what is not inside.  The Divine SELF is the wisdom of God inside.  The Kingdom of God is within you and me, so let's live it outside.

Being human is living outside of the Self without losing the sense of SELF.  AS John put it, "being in the world but not of the world".

Recently, I read a Hasidic legend that spoke to me. I hope it speaks to you.

When God created human beings, the angels were jealous because God had endowed the humans with divine wisdom that would guide them through life. So the jealous angels conspired to hide this gift from the humans. "Let's take it to the peak of the highest mountain," said one. "No," said another, "Let's bury it at the bottom of the deepest sea." But the smartest angel of all said: "Let's hide divine wisdom deep inside each person. It's the last place they'll ever look."


There are those who believe in "original sin" or the Freudian concept that man is "poly-morphously Perverse".  Others maintain that humanity is basically good, Jungian "original blessing".  Some religious people feel that there is no wisdom inside yet Jesus taught "the kingdom of God is within you".  People invariably look outside of themselves for help, identity, validation, even redemption none of which change the basic frustration of humanity in fact often this search outside oneself for meaning or reality adds to frustration.  Those who learn to "go inside" to seek inner wisdom often find it.


Religion often proposes and external redeemer yet when the redeemer is resident behavior and beliefs that impact living in peace and harmony are seldom changed.


What is it were both.  What if inside all of us is "inner wisdom", that "we are loved and that we are loving" so we need not struggle nor add to the frustration of living by looking outside for affirmation and validation.  This is not living without respect to others but in deed with respect to all people and things.  What if the role of external redeemers were to place in us the "jump start" that we need because we do not believe there is wisdom inside.  So the external redeemer helps us to redeem a sense of who we are and that wisdom exists inside.  The kingdom of God is within you.  The redeemer is inside and outside and all around you.


Then we could live from the inside out to all those around us the love and peace that is inside.


True wisdom is everywhere we just need to get out of our preoccupation with other things and focus on love and peace.

When you look at someone, what do you see.  What is in your eyes.  What do people see in your eyes.

I sat with a caring person who has a great heart for God and people, for truth and justice, for righteousness and freedom.  We agreed on the heart of God being for people, and that People want to know and experience the power of the resurrection.  Rising to newness of life in Christ is living in the power of the resurrection.

We disagreed on one important issue.  He wanted to use shame and blame and guilt to lead people to repentance.  When I quoted Romans 2:8 that tells us that it is the "kindness of God that leads to repentance", he objected on the basis that we have to judge sin as sin and take a stand against sin in peoples life.  For him speaking truth into people's lives seemed to be connected to telling people where they are sinning to warn them of their wrong ways.

I agree that we dare not enter into categorizing behavior as ok if by that we mean, to make people feel no shame.  Shamelessness does not lead to Godliness. Neither does shamefulness lead to Godliness.  It is repentance that leads to Godliness and kindness that leads to repentance.  this is the Biblical formula.  The call to the believer, job description if you will, is to love God and to love our neighbors (all of them) as ourselves.  The job description for the Holy Spirit is to "convict the world concerning sin and guilt".  When we take on the work of the Holy Spirit we grieve the spirit.  When we love and leave the work of conviction to the Holy Spirit we grace people's lives.  The Holy Spirit does not need my help in judging.  But without my loving people the arms of God are not wrapped around people in tangible ways.

Some seems to want to condone behavior that needs no condoning, others want to condemn behavior and people that does not set those people free, the cross calls all of us to extend compassion and care to all regardless of anything.  The covenant is to love not to condone or condemn.  It is the Chalice of Covenant that extends compassion to all and rejects the roles of condoner or condemner.

Grace is not just unmerited favor it is bestowing favor on people before they deserve it, to draw them to the God of forgiveness and grace.

Recently someone sent me an email stating that our president stated that American is no longer a Christian Nation.

The email was sent to generate emotional responses, to enlist protesters, and ultimately to plant a seed against the president being re-elected.  This puzzled and perplexed me at several levels.

My greatest concern is that we lose perspective and think of this statement in only one way.  One way thinking is the death blow to a healthy social contract and respectful community building.  It is the cyclops of criticism and is the absence of critical and cooperative thinking.

One way to hear this statement is that of an indication that we have moved form being a Christian nation to a secular nation.  It sounds like an announcement or pronouncement of a  "post-modern" if not "post-Christian" era.  While I hear that I think it is in error.

Another way to hear that is to deal with two realities without fear or threat (emotional triggers) hijacking that reality.  We have a moral and ethical foundation to our nation which is essentially fostered by a Christian world view inclusive of God loving and seeing value in all people and in diversity itself.  We began as a nation with a commitment to religious and social and economic freedom.  The principles of "liberty and justice", Christian principles were inherent in the nation.  So too was tolerance and embracing diversity.  We were never an exclusive or excluding Christina nation.  The pronouncement that we are not a Christian nation is more true even in our inception than a statement that we are a Christian nation.  If the highest ideal of a Christian nation is loving God and loving all of our neighbors without tension and contention.  We can be a nation founded on CHristian principles but not a Christian nation.  to think this way we have to remove the idea of dominance and control and exchange the idea of   sacrifice and surrender of control for the greater good.  Interestingly that sounds like a Christian principle.

It is about perspective and what you want to see.
Open eyes create a healthy world.  Closed eyes is about blindness that leads to destruction.

It is Monday morning.  The disciples are waking up with a whole new perspective.  They had failed. They had failed to hear God, to stand up with Jesus through his days of suffering, and they had failed to make what really matters matter.  Their perspective was changing from thinking about themselves is a self-protective way to thinking about others in a loving and caring way.  This was the way of Jesus.

 Some 1980 years later, I wake up.  You wake up.  Do we wake up with a new perspective.  On my morning walk I was thinking and praying for my children, my wife, my brothers, my mother you know the routine ending in praying for all people of earth.  A memory flooded my soul about my son.  He was about 12 and singing in a musical along with his sisters at the church his dad was pastor of.  The musical was "I Trouble", me myself and I trouble.  I reflected on that then realized we all have "I trouble, me myself and I trouble".  We see things in only one way, our way.  We taped that musical at church.  My son thinking about his desire to tape a sports event taped over that recording, thinking only of himself.  I got mod when I discovered it, thinking only about myself.  I reflected how brilliant my son was.  Had he not taped over it his dad probably would have played it at his wedding last November.  It would have been one of those most embarrassing moments.  Trust me my son and I, as people, have embarrassed ourselves in other ways over the years.  It is about perspective.

The disciples eyes were opening.  They were seeing things differently and so they were choosing to live there lives differently.  The eye of faith sees what no one else sees.  the eye of faith sees my "I trouble" and shifts into seeing myself and the worked in equally loving and caring ways.  It is never just about me. It is never just about them.

It is never just about what I think about anything.  It is always being able to see other perspectives that helps me to live life in perspective.

I am looking at this moment in the holy week experience very differently as I had a walking through hell experience  during the last year.  I shared some of this at the Epic Failure Pastor's Conference in PA last week.

What was going through the mind and heart of Christ on Saturday as he was in the tomb, as he was in Hell?

I imagine he was thinking of the glory of heaven he had given up, sacrificed to come to earth.  He lived among us and died for us.  He was the "living sacrifice".  He sacrificed all power and authority and embraced the death he did not deserve to teach us to be a living sacrifice.  To teach us to sacrifice the things that we think count for the thing that counts more.

The quote from the Seder readings must have gripped and graced his gut.  "The willingness to sacrifice is the prelude to Freedom".  I first met this quote at a funeral home, then later at a military post.  It has ben used to encourage the young men and women who join the military to see their willingness to lay there if eon the line as what is necessary for freedom to ring over our nation.  If a part of you is thinking that is a bit machiavellian you would be right.  I researched its context which is the Seder.  God is willing to sacrifice his comfortable place in heaven, giving up his birthright like Essau of old, to come to earth to teach us the laws of heaven.  To teach us that freedom only comes when we are willing to give it all up!  to be alive and sacrificing simultaneously.  To be a living sacrifice (Romans 12:1-2).

Freedom is not having nothing left to lose (Janis Joplin) so you do not care anymore.  Freedom is not having enough power, popularity, or money to get what your ego wants and thinks it needs. Freedom is having all power in heaven and earth and being willing to "lay it all down", to not use it for your own benefit, or use it for your defense, or to use it to punish those who do not get it.  From the well of our own unloved hearts we act in unloving ways toward others.  From the eternal well within that is always springing up to everlasting living, those who are willing to sacrifice taking in any other substance drink of that well that never runs dry.  The well is the well of "sacrifice" and it leads to freedom from ever having to go to the "well of human" water ever again.  Catch the symbolism.

Freedom is the capacity and discipline to be "willing to sacrifice" all that seems to meet our needs for that which truly creates in us the loving heart of God toward all people.  It is to be willing to sacrifice all defensiveness, all protectors, all fear of loss , and all desire for gain.  This is the prelude to living freely from a "whole heart" to all people.  Give up getting loved and love with a whole heart and you will be loved.

The dark tunnel of the grave is the place that sets the pace for living free!

Someone asked yesterday why they call the Friday of Holy Week, Good Friday.

For God it was a bad day but for all humnaity it was a good day as God poured his love out onto all humanity.  That was and is good!

From God's perspective it was not a good day.  Imagine that you were a father and had to watch your son be wrongfully accused, taunted without cause, humiliated for sport, ridiculed for mockery, mocked with a fake crown that was not the crown of a King.  Cruelty abounded on that day.  It was not a good day.
It started out with a betrayal.  Had a mock trial.  Jesus stood before Herod and opened not his mouth.  Does anyone think that that was because Jesus had nothing to say, was afraid of Herod, or was defeated?  No, Jesus was choosing to "accept the harshness of humanity" and to transform the abuse of the cross into the power of the cross to transform lives.  Darkness gripped the land.  As Light sharpened its laser love beam, God's love shone in the darkness.

In the darkest hour of abandonment, Jesus cried, "My God My God why have you forsaken me!".  He was quoting Psalm 22.  The reality in the psalm and in Jesus' experience was that it felt like God had abandoned him but it was not "the truth" it was true that it felt like that.  As God watched the scene, he must have hated it, yet He did it out of love for the creation he made.  It was a bad day for God.  It was a good day for all humanity.  Whenever we feel like God is not presented or when we feel abandoned we can be assured that God does not abandon us even if it feels that way.  That is the good news of Good Friday:  that God opened his heart wide so that ll could know and experience love.

It looked like a colossal failure.  Jesus who many had thought would usher in a new era of peace and justice was hanging to die in between two common criminals.  This was the end of a great run.  But what looked like failure would become the frame of hope for everyone who feels a failure.  God loves you not what you do good or bad.  God simply and profoundly loves you.

The I am wants you do be who you are empowered and redeemed by God's love and grace.

On Thursday of holy week, Jesus celebrates the passover meal with his disciples.  As they gather around the table they tell stories and Jesus shows them the servants towel and the servants truth.

When God created the word with intentional freedom, God simultaneously knew: he would need to sacrifice control of creation to allow for true freedom.  Then he would have to lead that very creation to the experience of the truth about life.   Letting go of trying to master destiny or control anything and just trust the unfolding of mystery created "living by faith  not by sight".  When we try to be loved, get loved we constantly frustrate ourselves and others.  When we are loving we enter into the free and sacred space for growth.

At the seder table Jesus was modeling the power of surrender and sacrifice as the way to experience inner peace and express transformational loving.  On the night he was betrayed he loved even the betrayer.  The betrayed would not betray the character of loving presence.  In a moment of time Judas eyes met Jesus's eyes.  The eyes of the betrayer met the eyes of the betrayed.  If it was me I would have said something like, "you rat, traitor, go and do what you have to do, look all of you he is the betrayer!".  In Jesus there was no desire to point a finger of accusation at Judas, no need to attack him, and no desire to shame him.  There was only grace in Jesus eyes toward him.  It is not that Jesus did not have the human response of hurt and anger it is just that he surrendered his human reaction to his divine discipline and proaction.  Judas felt shame, fear, and desired to get something happening.  He was not suspected by anyone.  Jesus had handed bread dipped in wine to everyone of the disciples.  No one saw anything but love emanating form Jesus to his betrayer.  The betrayed loved for he could not betray the essence of who he is, loving God! The eyes of the betrayed were filled with love and grace.

I was at the Epic Failure Conference and one of the speakers said that "Judas was the devil".  I commented that the scriptures indicate that the devil entered into him, not that he was the devil.  Any time I have felt a failure the devil has entered into my life to trip me up and present me anything but faultless.  The apparent failure of the cross, "He saved others himself he could not save" was transformed  into the power to love those who were rejecting, shaming, and heaping words of failure.  The one who was free of the burden of failure lived to believe in faith that saw all with eyes of grace. "Father forgive them for they do not know what they are doing".  A simple statement of profound grace.

The law of surrender and sacrifice is the prelude to living free of the fear of failure, rejection and shame, living the loving state of the kingdom of heaven.   The kingdom of God is within you.  Let it live out from within you.

On that dark night when Judas betrayed Jesus with a kiss, something happened inside Judas.  This was not unlike Peter who denied Jesus, and then felt deep shame and sorrow.  Both men felt the penetrating love and grace in the eyes of Jesus.  The difference in them was Peter was able to forgive himself the act of denial. Judas though sorrowful, could not receive the forgiveness of Jesus because in his head his failure was beyond forgiveness.  This is never true as there is nothing God's grace is not equal too.

No betrayal is beyond the love of the God who will not betray his loving nature no matter what the act.

God's healing grace is available.  The devil wants us to feel and stay defeated.  God invites us to remember that His Grace is made perfect in our weakest moments.  To God be the glory to us the good of God's goodness and love.

Albert Einstein said, "Not everything that counts can be counted and not everything that can be counted counts".  this idea is over and against the idea that "if it cannot be measured it does not exist".  The later is a statement based on the focus of the researcher that intends to predict or control behavior by measuring what impacts of effects behavior.  The former statement eludes to the idea that there are subject experiential realities that are hard if not impossible to quantify, codify, calculate or control.  A loving heart heart full of peace and compassion responds to crisis and criticism and rejection differently if the heart is open.  

During Holy Week, we see and imagine the passion of the cross and the crowd.  We can easily measure the power of mob mentality.  On Sunday with high expectations of a new day of peace and justice the crowds were counting on their desires being fulfilled.  By Wednesday the tide was turning and the wave of celebration was moving to tsunami of rejection.  What counts for some is getting what I want.  What counts for others is being open hearted and open minded.  The number of those supporting Jesus was diminishing quickly.  From the crowds, to 12, to 1 to none.  What counted for Jesus was not the number of people who followed him but the heart of the Father that he was declaring "wide open" to receive all God's creation into the canopy of God's loving.  What counts is not what I gain but what I am willing to lose or let go of anything that gets in the way of my being loving toward God, self, and all people.

JIm Elliot a missionary who died at the hands of those he came to love said, "He is no fool to give up what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose".  That is what counts.  In Holy Week the message is that loving toward all no matter what they do to you counts beyond measure as it represents a God who's love is beyond measure and truly counts!

Count on and count upwards.

I imagine that the disciples are losing patience with Jesus. They were so excited about his triumphal entry into Jerusalem.

By Tuesday they began to wonder?  What is up?  Can I trust that what Jesus has said will be true that greater JOy will come if they wait for God to show up.  Do they take him at his word or do they stay in an anxious state.

At the Epic Failure Conference, I met a young man who had just up and driven hundreds of miles to be at this conference.  He sensed God wanted him there.  He had no place to stay and was planning to sleep in his truck.  Another attendee heard of this and offered him to stay in their hotel room.  When they arrived and he discovered that he had neglected to put a breathing machine in his truck he stated that he needed to sleep in his truck because he was to anxious and could not bare the fact that he would disturb his brothers sleep.  The host convinced him that he would tell him if he snored too loudly.  He chose to trust that and so they slept the first night.  In the morning, he realized that they both slept well.  They shared stories in a healing of each others hurt as they listened to each others stories.  When they parted at the end of the conference they were aware that trust was a key to relaxing their fears.  Trusting that what is said is true and relaxing into the truth is when healing occurs.

It is not about doing it right or praying it right, it is about living into connections with people that firm up the confidence of loving care in the world.  Incredible connections were made at this conference.  People learned that when they try to push their grief away in fear they collapse under the weight of the shame of it.  When they without fear and without shame they collapse onto the floor they find that Jesus is the floor onto which they have collapsed and who holds them in "loving care".  Grief, guilt and shame are all instruments to bring us to trust the God who loves us.  The enemy uses them to drive us into hiding.  God invites us to collapse into his perfect love for perfect love casts out all fear for fear has to do with punishment shame and rejection.

On the first day of the conference, JR put on the screen the characteristic of "failure, rejection and shame".  He announced his sense that the cross and the Gospel intercepted the failure and gave hope.  An attendee suggested that the Gospel of the Cross encircled all the "failure, rejection and hurt" as God in Christ took on the failure to be understood, and translated it into a new understanding.  He took the rejection and translated it into redemption.  He took the shame and translated it into grace from the inside out.  The transformational work of the cross changes everything and everyone and how I see and experience everything and every one.

A new day is dawning.  This idea was as new and fresh for JR as it was for the open who shared it.  God never works in isolation but in community.  As we listen to the parts in each other the whole truth becomes more true.  The disciples were getting parts of the truth in their holy week experience.  Each one had a different truth they were to learn and as a community of faith they were preparing for a kingdom change within while thinking it was a bout a kingdom change without.

Jesus would teach them something new each of these days as he did us at this conference.  The disciples and the crowd wanted to succeed in setting up the kingdom on earth.  Jesus would teach them how to fail in a glorious transformative way.