well, i continue to have my computer problems! i had just typed for about 15 minutes when i thot, i'm going to see what pressing 'save as a draft' does...thinking maybe i'd do that every 15 minutes or so so as to not lose a lot of typing...and i lost 15 minutes! went to the drafts and it was not there. i can feel the frustration rising. is God telling me not to type or what?! or is this just the way things go sometimes and...motor on? i don't know but am very frustrated.
in stubbornness i will continue the quotes from lewis' letters to an american lady from last week...i am not in a good way right now spiritually. i need to fully surrender everything to God but perversely resist. i am not trusting in nor entrusting myself to Him right now. i think that, below the surface, i am full of fear. i have no one else. He's always done what He says He will. He forgives me graciously and freely again and again and again and when He's forced (that's the feel of it to me...He doesn't at all delight in it..is not eager to 'make me pay' or to 'set me straight/give me what is coming to me') to bring pain, it's always less than what i deserve....and, yet, perversely i go my own winding wicked way. may i turn to You Lord. may i give You my whole self. may i give You the trust and obedience You so richly deserve. may i, thus, love myself aright. oh what a mess i am! oh how good You are..help me Lord...on to lewis' words..
no doubt, as i know only too well, the knowledge that one's acts have, contrary to one's intention, led to all sorts of dreadful consequences, is a heavy burden. but it is a burden of regret and humiliation, isn't it?, rather than of guilt. perhaps we all dislike humiliation so much that we tend to disguise it from ourselves by treating blunders as sins?...
my idea of the purgatorial kitchen didn't mean that anyone had lately been 'getting in my hair' it is simply my lifelong experience - that men are more likely to hand over to others what they ought to do themselves and women more likely to do themselves what others wish they would leave alone. hence both sexes must be told 'mind your own business', but in two different senses!
..i can sympathise with you about old mrs. ----. i saw a great deal of a woman like that at one time. one trouble about habitual liars is that, since you can't believe anything they say, you can't feel the slightest interest in it. one has to keep on saying 'but fro the grace of God, there go i'. let us pray that we never become like that...
i can't understand the people who say cats are not affectionate...true, our ginger tom ( a great don juan and a mighty hunter before the Lord) will take no notice of me, but he will of others. he thinks i'm not quite socially up to his standards and makes this very clear. no creature can give such a crushing 'snub as a cat! he sometimes looks at the dog - a big boxer puppy, very anxious to be friendly - i a way that makes it want to sink into the floor.
..how strange that God brings us into such intimate relations with creatures of whose real purpose and destiny we remain forever ignorant. we know to some degree what angels and men are for. but what is a flea for or a wild dog?
i hope one is rewarded for all the stunning replies one thinks of that one does not utter! but alas, even when we don't say them, more than we suspect comes out in our look, our manner and our voice. an elaborately patient silence can be very provoking! we are all fallen creatures and all very hard to live with...
my stuff about animals came long ago in the problem of pain. i ventured the supposal - it could be nothing more - that as we are raised in Christ, so at least some animals are raised in us. who knows, indeed, but that a great deal even of the inanimate creation is raise in the redeemed souls who have, during this life, taken its beauty into themselves? that may be the way in which the 'new heaven and new earth' are formed.
3.19.1963 i am sorry they threaten you with a painful disease. 'dangerous' matters much less, doesn't it? what have you and i got to do but make our exit? when they told me i was in danger several months ago, i don't remember feeling distressed. i am talking, of course, about dying, not about being killed..
i'm glad you can still enjoy a new dress. i can still dislike a new suit.
6.17.1963 pain is terrible, but surely you need not have fear as well? can you not see death as the friend and deliverer? it means stripping off that body which is tormenting you: like taking off a hairshirt or getting out of a dungeon. what is there to be afraid of? you have long attempted (and none of us does more) a christian life. your sins are confessed and absolved. has this world been so kind to you that you should leave it with regret/ there are better things ahead than any we leave behind...remember, tho' we struggle against things because we are afraid of them, it is often the other way round - we get afraid because we struggle. are you struggling, resisting? don't you think our Lord says to you 'peace, child, peace. relax. let go. underneath are the everlasting arms. let go, I will catch you. do you trust Me so little?...of course this may not be the end. then make it a good rehearsal.
6.25.1963 tho' horrified at your sufferings, i am overjoyed at the blessed change in your attitude to death. this is a bigger stride forward than perhaps you yourself yet know. for you were rather badly wrong on that subject. only a few months ago when i said that we old people hadn't much more to do than to make a good exit, you were almost angry with me for what you called such a 'bitter' remark.. thank God , you now see it wasn't bitter; only plain common sense.
i do wonder why doctors inflict such torture to delay what cannot in any case be very long delayed. or why God does! unless there is still something for you to do, as far as weakness allows. i hope, now that you know you are forgiven, you will spend most of your remaining strength in forgiving. lay all the old resentments down at the wounded feet of Christ.
but oh, i do pity you for waking up and finding yourself still on the wrong side of the door! how awful it must have been for poor lazarus who had actually died, got it all over, and then was brought back - to go through it all, i suppose, a few years later. i think he, not st. stephen, ought really to be celebrated as the first martyr.
you say too much of the very little i have been able to do for you. perhaps you will very soon be able to repay me a thousandfold. for if this is goodbye, i am sure you will not forget me when you are in a better place. you'll put in a good word for me now and then, won't you? it will be fun when we at last meet..
6.28.1963 it was anaemia that endangered my life the winter before last, but of course trifling compared with yours. i think the best way to cope with the mental debility and total inertia is to submit to it entirely. don't try to concentrate. pretend you are a dormouse or even a turnip. but of course i know the acceptance of inertia is much easier for men than for women. we are the lazy sex. think of yourself just as a seed patiently waiting in the earth; waiting to come up a flower in the Gardener's good time, up into the real world, the real waking. ..we are here in the land of dreams. but cockcrow is coming. it is nearer now than when i began this letter.
7.6.1963 do you know, only a few weeks ago i realised suddenly that i at last had forgiven the cruel schoolmaster who so darkened my childhood. i'd been trying to do it for years; and like you, each time i thot i'd done it, i found after a week or so it all had to be attempted over again..
..we shall get out of it all sooner or later, for even the weariest river winds somewhere safe to sea. let us pray much for one another..
7.16.1963 the loss of all mental concentration is what i dislike most. i fell asleep 3 times during your letter and found it very hard to understand! don't expect to hear much from me. you might as well expect a lecture on hegel from a drunk man..
7.27.1963 (written for jack by walter hooper who explains that the two voices are owing to an interruption during the dictation of the letter..) dear mary, jack asked me to tell you that letter writing is physically impossible , his fingers jerk and twitch so. his physical crisis has greatly disordered his intelligence and he is vividly aware of living in a world of hallucinations. i am afraid it seems very difficult to communicate to one another the high comforts. one strange and beautiful reason is that i myself suffer so little by their withdrawal. i have no physical pain - only extreme lethargy and some sense of absurdly. God bless you.
8.10.1963 dear mrs. ----, i am professor c.s.lewis's secretary writing to tell you some of the facts of professor lewis's present state of health. he felt that you were entitled to this history. i trust that you will not mind it coming from my hand; but so it must.
professor lewis had a relapse the second week in july. on the 15th of july he entered the acland nursing home. during the last hours of the night he had a heart attack from which it was not expected by his doctors that he would emerge...last tuesday (8.6) he was allowed to come home, accompanied, of course, by a nurse. even though he is enjoying more ease and comfort at the kilns professor lewis is, by no means, capable of writing letters...
8.30.1963 dear mary, thanks for yours of the 27th. i am quite comfortable but very easily tire. (my brother) is still away so i have all the mail to do. so you must expect my letters to be very few and very short. more a wave of the hand than a letter. yours, jack
i must say that i am so happy the Lord led me to this book, a book i had known of but had scorned as not having much to feed on intellectually or grist for my faith. having read it and then retyped the things that touched me for various reasons i would have to say it is the best and may well prove to be the most potent influence on my life. we shall see. the experience, to me, is a kind of metaphor as to the difference between knowing intellectually what God has revealed about Himself in the bible and knowing Him. i very blessed to have finally gotten to know c.s. lewis. he to this point could have been likened to a gigantic mind which i often bowed down to intellectually. but from now on he is a real, living, breathing broken reed through whom i know Jesus better. if this stays as sterile knowledge of the self-emptying beauty of Jesus that would be a tragedy. i pray that i might have been materially and eternally infected with the disease so that Jesus may be seen in me too.
one of the many ways in which my life is totally out of sinc spiritually is the near collapse of and disappearance of the seven daily habits from my life. i knew this was happening at a period of overwhelming time demands and deliberately let them go so as to fulfill what i thot my duty before God. i'm not so sure, but am wondering if i should ever make such a decision again. things constantly tug me away from what i deem central (the habits) and i often think of van dyke's 4th wise man who never made it to see Jesus! may God give me direction and balance. i don't want to be a legalist on the one hand but, on the other, when not spending time with Jesus and in His word it seems that, in me at least, the Life tends to drain away. i truly can do nothing without Him but maybe He wants me always extremely busy outwardly while at the same time 'feeding on Him' in spirit. i think now of e. stanley jones who as a missionary was incredibly busy but always had a morning and every daily time with God away from teeming demands...
this morning one of the boarders left. it has affected me much more strongly than i can really put into words...summed up in the word loneliness. just another one of the myriad of events that constitute the 'dying of Jesus'. did He not, while on earth, and now from heaven endure not only loneliness from those He gives life to, but rejection, scorn, hatred and revilement. we all blame God for everything we don't like and give Him credit for nothing we enjoy. similarly, the most spiritual-seeming of relationships can be 'all about self'. (like this relationship with a deeply hurting boarder)
much, i am convinced, of the apparent beauty in relationships and in people is absolutely fools gold. i think back to the days when my personality was ablaze, i could work like samson (in my own mind of course!), was extremely involved with a lot of people, everywhere doing everything 'for God'....i think it was all about Me. it seems like my whole life is a sum total of 0, for i constantly look back on 'good times', 'accomplishments', etc. and all i see is self. i think of lewis saying that our lives are (i forget the exact word but)attempts or approximations of christianity. how true. the whole screwed-up-rescrewed-up -covered-over-and-repeatedly-redone canvas of our lives He may look down at with fatherly love and pride as at an infant and say, you get an 'A for effort' (but it was all Him) hence, He may be saying to me, KEEP WORKING OUT YOUR SALVATION, SWEETIE PIE, YOU ARE DOING WELL, HONEY...its all Me...
...but yea, oh Lord help me depend (hang from You alone), believe, obey...best i can...help me keep getting up and looking to You once again...
the current battle for the habits being reinstated is thus. meditation of 100 verses and memorization of new must happen if nothing else has. i have totally supplanted the morning time with God for this. next is 8 hours a day (40 a week) toward billable painting or house work. the trouble is that i have been involved in redoing a deck done incorrectly two years ago. that took about 50 man hours and over $200 out of pocket for prep and materials. as i LABORED physically, mentally, spiritually thru this situation the Lesson i had to 'write on the board' a thousand times was: do not continue, in any area of your life to be so arrogantly proud. always do your homework well before doing something new and if you still don't feel confident that you can do an excellent job, do not do it. i am a man of sorrows for i am a man who is arrogant and proud. will i learn this lesson and be humble, tentative, waiting on the Lord, one who prepares adequately with forethought and thorough knowledge before doing anything. proverbs 21.5 the PLANS of the diligent lead surely to advantage, but everyone who is HASTY comes surely to poverty.
then i jump out of that frying pan into the fire of violating another lesson in Jesus' school of discipline: don't promise ANYTHING without talking with Me about it first. this tale of woe is just about to begin is that i promised the pastor at church to polyurethane 11 new wood doors at a cut rate without putting it to the Lord first. the next day i began to have a strong lack of peace about the whole thing and fearing all the difficulties that have come in other recent situations when i have made quick decisions of this nature, i called back the next day and said i had a lack of peace and could not do it. THEN i kept being reminded of one of the characteristics of the person who will stand in God's presence...'he that sweareth to his own hurt and changeth not'...! finally, i was so plagued by this that i had to cast a lot: do You want me to poly these doors for pastor?....yes....had to call back and say this and say i would do the doors. what a fool! all to do what's right conscience wise...and in the process throw myself, as it were, under God's bus. i'm now looking forward to another harrowing experience. i have never professionally done this and sensing strongly in the days directly following the call back to pastor that it might be wise to consult a multitude of counsellors. i called the paint store and after talking with them had no peace. so... for the first time in nearly 4 years since i stopped painting for osborne, i decided to call him. a half hour later, having taken many notes, i hung up so greatful that i had not just plunged in as usual. paul, in maine, kindly offered to look the situation over first hand upon arriving home so i hope to look over things tuesday a.m. and then have paul, who has been doing these things for 35 years talk directly to pastor and advise him as to how best to deal with the situation. (without going into details it's kind of a 'different' thing he desires done with the trim involved...sighhhh. i'm looking forward to spending a long time on this at not much pay with the possiblity that it might turn out to be a disaster. i'm even thinking of possibly subcontracting the thing out to paul and...once again, taking a hit financially. sighhhhhhhh. 'in everything give thanks' comes to my inner ear, so...Lord thank You for this thicket of prickers. humble me down till i do nothing 'rouge' (ie. on my own). train me to be a servant who simply looks unto the hand of his master to direct what, when, where and how things should be done. may God give me the willingness to take this next lickin' like a man for i truly deserve it. i am slooooow to hear...
helped bill get situated in his home last night. his children had moved, with all the household goods, to lancaster earlier in the week and early last night his wife said goodbye after her last day at work and left to join them. the certificate noting the finality of the divorce is yet to be received and so bill and i just hung out a bit to help him over this hard transition. he now will prepare the house for sale and, hopefully, can relocate somewhere close enough to be able to be involved in the lives of his children. i will miss him.
shortly after 2:30 a.m. God awakened me and i spent the rest of the night 'in His arms' just talking to Him. it has been a while since i've spent time like this with Him. i am right in the thicket of spiritual disarray and one of the many results of this has been to have a distancing from Him. Lord knows, i don't at all deserve this but he, as usual, did not utter one word against me. i think His m.o. was simply to comfort me in all my confusion and lack of trust in Him and, in the loss of bill, back to an empty house again friday morning thru monday night each week. the only way i can describe His wordless love was just to communicate comfort and encouragement and to give grace on my first night alone. thank You Jesus for Your faithful love to me...so undeserving of anything good...
from 'st. francis of assisi by g.k. chesterton..
the son of a merchant in italy, God gave to francis grace to move from the normal life we observe in everyone here in this world to be filled with a deep, life-changing thankfulness to God that led him to move out of the paths appointed for him in the flesh: become married, become a merchant, engage in war; and give himself to God. in this giving he saw all men as equally important. this change was affected in an experience where he saw a leper coming along the road toward him and after embracing the leper and giving to him, starting on his way again he turned to look back and the leper was gone...but so was his last fear of giving himself to all men.
in his town of assisi, based upon a vision in the night which he interpreted as a call to do exploits in the ongoing war with the next town he left for battle only to realize that this was not where he was to be. on his return, he had to face the label of coward.
then, the local church was in ruins and on that site francis received the message see My house in ruins. restore it for Me'. he took this literally but was so intent on fulfilling this mission that he used some of his father's goods. his father publicly objected and the label thief was the result of this spontaneity.
this all provoked the crisis that led to him giving his life completely to God. (i yearn for the same. perhaps God will help me.)
after this crisis where he totally renounced 'normal' life others began to gather around him, eating refuse, sleeping wherever, clothed as beggars.
francis has been romanticized as a troubadour. a troubadour, loosely, 'a lover', comes out of the tradition of the love poets in provence or languedoc, territories in france during this period. this tradition was a sort of system of the 'fine art' of flirtation and philandering.
francis was more a jongleur, a joculator or jester, or sometimes a juggler who would often travel with the troubadour...or were all functions of the same man.
francis called those who surrounded him jongleurs de Deiu (of God) and the idea seems to be that all they did was not for women but for the blessed mary...in our tradition, for God. as the jongleur was often the servant of the troubadour, so he and his followers were servants...of God. this service was seen as a freedom almost amounting to frivolity. great PRAISE burst forth out of total humility. all was for God. 'blessed is he who expecteth nothing for he shall not be disappointed!
it is said that no one who met francis ever forgot him because he was so, let us say, supernormal. it was said that his actions were never anticipated but they were always appropriate.
he established three orders. the first order was the men who started to gather around him, giving up all to do so. 'he called them by a name which is generally rendered in english as the friars minor; but...(it can be rendered) almost literally as little brothers. presumably he was already resolved...that they should take the tree vows of poverty, chastity and obedience which had always been the mark of a monk. but it would seem that he was not so much afraid of the idea of a monk as of the idea of an abbot. he was afraid that the great spiritual magistracies which had given even to their holiest possessors at least a sort of impersonal and corporate pride, would impart an element of pomposity that would spoil his extremely and almost extravagantly simple version of the life of humility. but the supreme difference between his discipline and the discipline of the old monastic system was concerned, of course, with the idea that the monks were to become migratory and almost nomadic instead of stationary. they were to mingle with the world; and this the more old-fashioned monk would naturally reply by asking how they were to mingle with the world without becoming entangled with the world, but st francis had his answer to it...
the good bishop of assisi expressed a sort of horror at the hard life which the little brothers lived..without comforts, without possessions, eating anything they could get and sleeping anyhow on the ground. st. francis answered him with that curious and almost stunning shrewdness which the unworldly can sometimes wield like a club of stone. he said 'if we had any possessions, we should need weapons and laws to defend them'. that sentence is the clue to the whole policy that he pursued. it rested upon a real piece of logic...his argument was this: that the dedicated man might go anywhere among any kind of men, even the worst kind of men, so long as there was nothing by which they could hold him. if he had any ties or needs like ordinary men, he would become like ordinary men...friars must not become like ordinary men...the salt must not lose its savour even to turn into human nature's daily food. and the difference between a friar and an ordinary man was really that a friar was freer than an ordinary man. it was necessary that he should be free from the cloister; but it was even more important that he should be free from the world. it is perfectly sound common sense to say that there is a sense in which the ordinary man cannot be free from the world; or rather ought not to be free from the world. the feudal world in particular was one labyrinthine system of dependence..the 12th century had been the age of vows..but no man need obey little francis in the old brown coat unless he chose. even in his relations with his chosen leader he was in one sense relatively free, compared with the world around him. he was obedient but not dependent..the whole idea of francis was that the little brothers should be like little fishes which could go freely in and out of ..the net( of normal life interdependency)...able to travel light..fast..far..
the world was to be outflanked and out witted..you could not threaten to starve a man who was ever striving to fast. you could not ruin him and reduce him to beggary, for he was already a beggar. there was a very lukewarm satisfaction even in beating him with a stick, when he only indulged in little leaps and cries of joy because indignity was his only dignity. you could not put his head in a halter without the risk of putting it in a halo..he asked the laity for food as confidently as he asked the fraternity for fasting..he counted on the hospitality of humanity because he really did regard every house as the house of a friend. he really did love and honor ordinary men and and ordinary things; indeed we may say that he only sent out the extraordinary men to encourage men to be ordinary...the audacity and simplicity of the franciscan plan for quartering its spiritual soldiery upon the population; not by force but by persuasion, and even by the persuasion of impotence...
the whole point of a monk was that his economic affairs were settled for good; he knew where he would get his supper, though it was a ..plain supper. but the whole point of a friar ws that he did not know where he would get his supper. there was always a possibility that he might get no supper. there was an element of what would be called romance, as of the gipsy or adventurer. but there was also an element of potential tragedy, as of the tramp or the casual labourer..the cardinals who were to decide whether to allow this order were concerned...(but) cardinal san paolo seems to have argued more or less in this manner: it may be a hard life, but after all it is the life apparently described as ideal in the gospel; make what compromises you think wise or humane about that ideal; but do not commit yourselves to saying that men shall not fufil that ideal if they can.
the next passage in the history of the order is simply the story of more and more people flocking to its standard; and as has already been remarked, once it had begun to grow, it could in its nature grow much more quickly than any ordinary society requiring ordinary funds and public buildings. even the return (from rome to assisi) of the 12 pioneers..seems to have been a sort of triumphal procession. in one place in particular, it is said, the whole population of a town,,turned out, leaving their work and wealth and homes exactly as they stood and begging to be taken into the army of God on the spot. (these foreshadowed the third order which enabled men to share in the movement without leaving the homes and habits of normal humanity..the second order was for women, somewhat similar to the first i suppose).
as the orders became established, francis and several others went east to convert the muslims. he conceived this more and more in terms of sacrifice and crucifixion . he was full of the sentiment that he had not suffered enough to be worthy even to be a distant follower of huis suffering God. this time..may be roughly summarized as the search for martyrdom...he also wanted to bring the crusades to an end..only he wished to do it by conversion not by conquest..it is better to create christians than to destroy moslems..once there he succeeded in obtaining an interview that he evidently offered, and as some say proceeded, to fling himself into the fire as a divine ordeal, defying the moslem religious teachers to do the same..indeed throwing himself into the fire was hardly more desperate, in any case, than throwing himself among the weapons and tools of torture of a horde of fanatical moslems..what happened is not certain but francis returned west unharmed and greatly disappointed for the moslems remained unconverted.
back in italy francis found that his orders had been moved toward a more moderated existence than that of the original vision. (the original franciscan rule forbade the acceptance of $ for example). to some extent francis parted company with the more moderate policy which ultimately prevailed. this combined with his failure in the east cast a shadow upon him and moved him, in the last part of his life into more isolation...
francis was above all a great giver and he cared chiefly for the best kind of giving which is called thanksgiving. if another great man wrote a grammar of assent, he may well be said to have written a grammar of acceptance; a grammar of gratitude. he understood down to its very depths the theory of thanks'...
walt whitman (in the lincoln anthology, 2009)...'i shall not easily for get the first time i ..saw abraham lincoln. it must have been about the 18th or19th of february, 1861. it was rather a pleasant afternoon, in new york city, as he arrived there from the west, to remain a few hours, and then pass on to washington, to prepare for his inauguration. i saw him in broadway, near the site of the present post office. he came down, i think from canal street, to stop at the astor house. the broad spaces, sidewalks, and street in the neighborhood, and for some distance, were crowded with solid masses of people, many thousands. the omnibuses and other vehicles had all been turn'd off, leaving an unusual hush in that busy part of the city. presently two or three shabby hack borouches made their way with some difficulty thru the crowd, and drew up at the astor house entrance. a tall figure step'd out of the centre of these barouches, paus'd leisurely on the sidewalk, look'd up at the granite walls and looming architecture of the grand old hotel - then, after a relieving stretch of arms and legs, turn'd round for over a minute slowly and good-humoredly scan the appearance of the vast and silent crowds. there were no speeches - no compliments - no welcome - as far as i could hear, not a word said. still much anxiety was conceal'd in that quiet. cautious person had fear'd some mark'd insult or indignity to the president-elect - for he possess'd no personal popularity at all in new york city, and very little political. but it was evidently tacitly agreed that if the few political supporters of mr. lincoln present would entirely abstain from any demonstration on their side, the immense majority, who were any thing but supporters would abstain on their side also. the result was a sulky, unbroken silence, such as certainly never before characterized so great a new york crowd.
almost in the same neighborhood i distinctly remember'd seeing lafayette on his visit to america in 1825. i had also personally seen and heard, various years afterward, how andrew jackson, clay, webster, hungarian kossuth, filibuster walker, the prince of wales on his visit, and other celebres, native and foreign, had been welcomed there - all that indescribable human roar and magnetism, unlike any other sound in the universe - the glad exulting thunder-shouts of countless unloos'd throats of men! but on this occasion, not a voice - not a sound. from the top of an omnibus, (driven up one side, close by and block'd by the curbstone and the crowds,) i had, i say, a capital view of it all, and especially of mr. lincoln, his look and gait - his perfect composure and coolness - his unusual and uncouth height, his dress of complete black, stovepipe had push'd back on the head, dark-brown complexion, seam'd and wrinkled yet canny-looking face, black, bushy head of hair, disproportionately long neck, and his hands held behind as he stood observing the people. he look'd with curiosity upon that immense sea of faces and the sea of faces return'd the look with similar curiosity. in both there was a dash of comedy, almost farce, such as shakspeare puts in his blackest tragedies. the crowd that hemm'd around consisted i should think of thiry to forty thousand men, not a single one his personal friend - while i have no doubt, (so frenzied were the ferments of the time,) many an assassin's knife and pistol lurk'd in hip or breast-pocket there, ready, soon as break and riot came
but no break or riot came. the tall figure gave another relieving stretch or two of arms and legs; then with moderate pace, and accompanied by a few unknown looking persons, ascended the portico-steps of the astor house, disapper'd thru its broad entrance - and the dumb-show ended.' 'i will not be afraid of ten thousands of people that have set themselves against me round about' - david (psalm 3)
c.s. lewis, mere christianity..'besides being complicated, reality, in my experience,is usually odd. it is not neat, not obvious, not what you expect. for instance, when you have grasped that the earth and the other planets all go round the sun, you would naturally expect that all the planets were made to match - all at equal distances from each other, say, or distances that regularly increased, or all the same size, or else getting bigger or smaller as you go further from the sun. in fact, you find no rhyme or reason (that we can see) about either the sizes or the distances, and some of them have one moon, one has four, one has two, some have none, and one has a ring.
reality, in fact, is usually something you could not have guessed. that is one of the reasons i believe christianity. it is a religion you could not have guessed. if it offered us just the kind of universe we had always expected, i should feel we were making it up. but, in fact, it is not the sort of thing anyone would have made up. it has just that queer twist about it that real things have. so let us leave behind all these boys' philosophies - these over-simple answers. the problem is not simple and the answer is not going to be simple either'.
i've taken to wearing the oldest, hole-y, sneakers i have, sans socks, to church. last sunday night a fellow behind me, after service, pressed a $20 in my hand. i wanted God to bless him as He does me when i do stuff like that so i just said, muchas gracias. (i can get up to nyc for the muslim day parade with this maybe..) this sunday night (yesterday) i got to talk with the man, herman, and his brother, ruben, before service. two interesting things happened. 1. even though they are recent attenders and not part of the regular 'in crowd' they both just really opened up and we had a tremendous talk..the best i've had all year there! i was so blessed that they actually wanted to talk. i ended up saying, ustedes son una respuesta a mi oracion.. (you guys are an answer to my prayer...ie.for someone to speak spanish with). 2. strangely, both they and tsaltina, my longtime, 74 year old girlfriend whose portuguese i can't make out, but with whom God has given a real mutual kissing-and-hugging-and-broken-chatting affection, all told me they can't wait until i get up front and talk during the opening 'devotional' period (during which different ones share and, as a group, we read the bible and sing. i was amazed at this because God has been putting on my heart several little 'messages' i feel burdened to give the people there! i doubt whether i'll get good enough to do that..and they probably don't let non-members do stuff like that..but i'd be thrilled to..
have a good week! love, dad
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