"Smoke" (from George MacDonald)

For my Saturday meditation I offer this poem from the incomparable George MacDonald.* If you can, take some long moments to savor the plain simplicity and life-opening prayer.

Lord, I have laid my heart upon thy altar

But cannot get the wood to burn;
It hardly flares ere it begins to falter
And to the dark return.

Old sap, or night-fallen dew, makes damp the fuel;
In vain my breath would flame provoke;
Yet see—at every poor attempt's renewal
To thee ascends the smoke!

'Tis all I have—smoke, failure, foiled endeavor,
Coldness and doubt and palsied lack:
Such as I have I send thee!—perfect Giver,
Send thou thy lightning back.

I bring this poem-prayer today as a way to express my need for everything in my life to be an offering to God. That which is unworthy will never catch fire but only give smoke. Surely my whole life must needs be the offering and just as surely is the need for the lightning of God to purge wood, hay, stubble. It seems true we too easily offer sacrifices of Cain which are not worthy of our God. 

Today I offer myself and all I am, unworthy, even in the offering, but I offer all the same. 

"May Thy good will be done, O Lord. Thank you for the sacrifice of Christ on my behalf and for the hope of your goodness which will, in your time, make good and light and holiness of the life you have given to me."

With glad hope in the goodness and truth of Christ I pray....

*MacDonald turned to writing to support his large family. His book of Poems, Diary of an Old Soul, gives a brief poem for everyday of the year. I was surprised to learn that C. S. Lewis considered him his master. "I imagine," Lewis said, "I never wrote a thing in which MacDonald was not present." His fantasy literature includes Lillith and Phantastes. His children's story are wonderful: after I read them I felt as if I had been at the altar in a camp meeting after hearing a strong and convicting sermon. His other work includes sermons and many novels.

Some Thoughts on Time for the New Year

 [Some of you are well-studied in the mystery -- and science -- of time. I have read Augustine's famous discussion in Confessions and have wondered at the mystery. These musings attempt to look into it a bit further, with realization that Lewis' famous sermon Weight of Glory pointed the way for part of it.]

“If we find ourselves with a desire that nothing in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that we were made for another world.” (C. S. Lewis)

Maybe the Passing of Time Hints at Eternity

“Time, flowing like a river, to the sea…till it’s gone forever, gone forever.”

In my high school years I often heard the above lyric from The Alan Parsons Project on the radio. It spoke of passing friendships, life, and of course, time. The music was alive with beauty and melancholy. Over 40 years later I can still hear and feel the wonder and mystery mixed with a hint of something like hope.

Hope?

Yes! If time means so much as to leave us devastated by its passing, then maybe it has real meaning. Why else would we be devastated? Put another way, there is something in this life, in our very existence, that is real in a way far beyond us. The fact that life and loved-ones pass leaves us deeply sad, and that may be a clue that the moments and relationships really matter.

The ancient writer of Ecclesiastes nails this to the wall over and over. “Life is full and it really, really matters,” he seems to say. “Except.” And the whole world is in that last word. “Except...everything you love and work so hard for is lost to you when you die. Someone else will use it and squander it and you will be a bare memory, if that.”

Ugh! Who wants to be reminded of that! And yet, we must if we would seek wisdom. As the author says elsewhere in so many words, “There is more to be learned in the house of mourning than in the house of glee.”

And there is still more. Ecclesiastes offers clues here and there and gives a final conclusive answer at the end. But tucked in the early chapters we are told we have “eternity in our hearts.”

We don’t do eternity well because we are too chained to the here and now. Time is a creation, a construct: if you don’t believe me, try to grab it. We place crushing significance in time when it is the thing most slippery in life. Time is so elusive we don’t even know what it is or what it means. Moderns have tried to control it, but it controls us. “Father time never stops,” we are told, and our only recourse is to surrender. Time will win.

Where does this leave us? In mystery to be sure, for the greatest verities of life are beyond our complete grasp. But I think it leaves us daring to believe there must be something more, something to which time itself is subject. As a Christian I believe this is an infinite, personal God who is himself eternal and has put that eternity in our hearts. That sense of the eternal is what makes us both despise the bounds of time and hope for the something beyond.

Parsons’ lyric of time flowing to the sea is an apt metaphor as far as it goes, but it still leaves empty. What is the sea? Void and meaningless, time lost within it. Where are we? Only material beings bound by time when alive, simply gone when not? What was it that is now gone? What is it that was?

These things always bring me ‘round to what I believe life itself suggests and what C.S. Lewis put so well: “If we find ourselves with a desire that nothing in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that we were made for another world.” The eternity in our hearts makes us long for something beyond this world. For me this is the blessed hope at the heart of Christmas, and the grandest reason to embrace the New Year with joy.

He has set eternity in their hearts (Ecc. 3:11)

What Does the Gospel Mean? (Theology Thursday)

 The Meaning of the Gospel

Theology Thursday is a dull enough name, but I'm told we get more dull as we age. Also, echoing something I learned from reading Augustine, it's more important what you say than how you say it. The latter is the temptation and allure, the former the most elusive for many reasons.

I say all of this with a warm and happy smile, grateful to do this fortheloveofit.

This is perhaps a bit of free writing, certainly not like last last week which got long and laborious, and I don't know who would read it all. Often I go back and read what I wrote. But with last week's discussion of Gunton and gnosticism I could not stomach even half. Again, smile!

For this TT I remembered a discussion I had in the context of declaring for a secular audience the position of a para-church entity. We needed to choose our words carefully to avoid unnecessary trouble, while still being true to who we were as genuine Christian believers.

We were discussing whether to say we were followers of Jesus Christ or followers of the Gospel. It was a little more nuanced in my memory but that is the gist. I advocated for framing our position in terms of the Gospel. For ease of form I will express my reasons in bullets:

• We are to be “wise as serpents and harmless as doves,” an admonition for prudence and wisdom. In some contexts naming Jesus can negate dialogue unnecessarily.

• If we are known as Christians it is unnecessary to use language any more direct or potentially provocative than necessary. We are not trying to make a scene or even “prove a point.” We are trying to humbly and prudently describe who we are.

• Saying “Gospel” helpfully implies all that is included in Scripture and the Christian tradition.

Thinking a bit further on this, I remember Chesterton's remark: “Nothing is irrelevant to the proposition that Christianity is true.” We are Christians who affirm the whole Gospel which is good for all of life. Is the same conveyed as well with the name "Jesus." Maybe, but I was suggesting otherwise.

If I were to try to say what the Gospel means without simply offering the creeds, I would say something like this:

• The Gospel means all creation has purpose and meaning because it is authored by an “infinite, personal God” revealed in the person Jesus Christ.

• All people are born sharing in the lostness that we all know to be true. We cannot set the world straight. There is something in our nature that always, eventually, goes awry, often catastrophically.

• Only the one who made the world can fix it and, to paraphrase the ancient understanding of redemption, “only what the redeemer takes unto himself can be redeemed.” The only one who can take all creation on himself is the one who made it -- the one to whom creation is subject.

• In the incarnation -- that central miracle of the Gospel --God took all creation on Himself. He became radically “with us,” took on flesh, became”very man of very man” whilst also “very God of very God.”

• In doing so God began the remaking of all creation, and of you and me.

This is the Gospel and the crux of it is the Incarnation – Christmas.

I confess, though I love analysis, I weary of formulae. Yet, subjective whimsy will not do either. This understanding of the Gospel, though not brilliantly or exhaustively conceived or conveyed, does reflect the gist of the what we mean when we say ”the Gospel.”

And it declares that blessed hope which we hold by faith in Him whom we dare to believe is indeed the son of God. He has accomplished that great work of redemption, the “now and not yet” of salvation. In Him is something vastly more than, yet suggested in, the incomparable scene at the end of Jackson's Lord of the Rings. Here we know Frodo triumphed and his friends, knowing this, exult in true praise, shouting “Frodo!”

As I say, it suggests the greater story in which the myth was made real. One day all will know Jesus has accomplished what only He could, and by His death and resurrection delivered the world from doom. All who believe and have trusted Him will find themselves rejoicing in the triumph he made on their behalf. They will exult in true praise, shouting, “Jesus!”

This is the Gospel, the “Good News” greater than any other!

Are All Loves Legitimate? (100 Word Wednesday)

Short and Sweet is Hard to Beat

Are all loves legitimate? Surely not. Or perhaps, since love, i.e., giving oneself for the good of another, is a fixed good, then the problem is with the disordering of love, a concept Augustine put forth.

The easiest way to dis-order love is to turn it inward, make it about feeling good, hold it for ourselves. Where does this leave us? What is love really and how can doing what we enjoy be properly called love? I will whittle down to 100 words and finish with this: when we love God first he helps make all the secondary loves whole.

Ten Minute Tuesday

 Deadlines help brevity. Maybe less really is more.

Never have there been more written words in the cosmos,

 never more digital-lingual competition for our attention.

I set my timer and dive in. Why do this? I don't know but it is ok to ask. I love to write though I'm probably average in the discipline required. And it is a real discipline, with all the components.

Some are practical, as real as the need for purpose. Why should I even write? Are ideas enough impetus? Yes, indeed, they are. When one thinks, the thoughts cry for clarity. When one attempts to force concepts into syllables, clarity is a necessary by-product, or should be. Just as I paused for 10 seconds trying to conceive the last sentence, so most writers must give the mental sweat to be worth reading.

Worth reading? That's a tough one. Never have there been more written words in the cosmos, never more digital-lingual competition for our attention. Since I've only 10 minutes and this amounts to an almost forced free-writing exercise, I will opt for slowing down and only attempt the thinnest, and hopefully most obvious, point of analysis.

"Worth reading" brings to mind the phrase "most compelling analysis" a particular news outlet uses to promote their work. I submit trust is also involved. Trust is earned in various ways, certainly through exposure to ideas that seem to comport with reality. But we also tend to trust those who speak well and who tend to agree with our own premises. 

This last is bias in a basic sense but also as natural as thinking, quite literally. No one can exist well with constant re-examination of their own primal ideas. Imagine constantly questioning the law of gravity, testing it, listening to objections. Ok, that may be too easy an illustration.

But for another example, if I must constantly re-consider my love for and reliance on the premise of liberty I will be very frustrated in my thinking about, or reading/listening to another's essay. 

I'm out of time. Will have to keep working at this "10 minute idea." All fortheloveofit, and grateful.

Meandering Monday

 Essaying from side to side, looking for meaning in the middle

I've been working with this idea of a structure for writing, trying to produce something 6 days a week working with the grid below.

Yes, this is an all-too typical overly-ambitious idea. And no, it is not a New-Year's resolution. :) I hold it loosely and will see what I am able to do. If you read along from time to time I am grateful to be sharing the journey with you!

• Meandering Monday: A pushing of the rope with more or less random thoughts to see if it can land anywhere worthy. Of course, as always, the joy is in the journey.

• Ten Minute Tuesday: In this I will take 10 minutes, plus "a bit" of editing, to write about whatever comes to mind. It is rope-pushing (again) but with a quite brief deadline. I think I will attempt poetry in this, as well as a slowing down. Less is more, or so they say.

• One Hundred Word Wednesday: This is quite the trick and I've got to find a shortcut key for checking word count! The idea is, well, to cut the word count, to be brief, to avoid wordiness, to abbreviate, to....

• Theology Thursday: This is obvious I suppose, but I hope to take brief forays into theology proper, and some lesser-than. My first musing dealt with Colin Gunton. I will hope to deal with some richness in my own Wesleyan heritage, as well as classical literature like Imitation of Christ, Dark Night of the Soul, Confessions.... The well is deep and wide, for the Subject is infinite.

• Fun Friday: The world of ideas is endless, or seemingly so. To think is to love the good and the God who is source of all. So on Fridays I want to morsel some idea that intrigues me in the moment, that has troubled me for years, or lands somewhere in between. I will also likely do some bio and story-telling.

• Shabbat Saturday: Here I hope to do some meditative poetry, free verse, praying in print, no doubt preparing for my duties on the Christian Sabbath.

• Sunday: This is my shabbat, interpreted “break.” So I will lay off writing.

Psalm 131

I recently experimented, quite briefly, with what could be said in 100 words that might be worth reading. Of course countless intellects are capable of that. Whether I am is another matter. This morning, with limited time and grace for knowing I mustn't linger, I thought to myself, "What could be said in 10 minutes that might be worth reading?

Perhaps this is a new high, or low, for ephemerality. The absolute avalanche of words unleashed every day has little worth, mostly due to the impossible volume. How can one possibly sort out what is worth reading, and not?

Perhaps this Psalm helps, my daily reading:

Psalm 131 Lord, my heart is not haughty, nor mine eyes lofty: neither do I exercise myself in great matters, or in things too high for me. Surely I have behaved and quieted myself, as a child that is weaned of his mother: my soul is even as a weaned child. Let Israel hope in the Lord from henceforth and for ever.

The pronouncement of self is either hubris or humility or, likely, something in between. I'm afraid I can't pray the Psalm without repentance; without asking, "Lord, make it so of me, deliver me from haughtiness, of thinking the words I have to say are the last word, have any true freight at all."

And then I am mercifully brought back to two things:

    1. The unabashed, innocent attitude of a child. the daring to be as we are with a miraculous lack of self-awareness that says, "I can trust God to do with me as he will and that He will do good." So maybe all the self-worry and over-seriousness can dissolve in a childlike trust of my heavenly Father.

    2. "Let Israel hope in the Lord." Which is to say in another way what #1 already said. At the end of the day, at our last breath, at the end of ourselves in any fashion -- the happiest of places to be -- we find our only hope really ever was and is in God.

That is enough -- 10 minutes with a bit allowed for editing.

Love to all, and to all a good morning!