ecclesiology.

my comment this morning on church structure and discipline:
i don't believe all this weight can rest on just a few men. the call of the body of christ is too intense for that. it needs to be spread out over centuries of tradition, over the hearts and gifts of many, over the purity of the sacraments, over the communion of saints, over the order of the body. i am an anglican because i actually believe that i have more freedom in that space than in this one. it becomes too easy in this one for one person's anxieties, woundings, foibles to get put onto another when that one individual is all that there is. it becomes too easy for one person to damage another person. not that it can't or doesn't happen everywhere. but i yearn for the protection of all those other things, all those other people

pause. redirect.

i know, it looks like i have been absent for a long time.
view my "other" blog at:
www.livejournal.com/users/calledisrael

cheers.

i want to fast, and i can't, and i am alternatively really pissed off and depressed about it.

what would you say.

time to go home. messy things to deal with in the near future: a friend in england who is in real emotional trouble and reminds me of myself... getting trevor to go and pick up my stuff in ambridge before rae tosses it all... managing to talk to these wack verizon people in pennsylvania... trying to get it together for hope group... bleaching my bedspread white again... trying to budget again for this month and these few months and do it with open hands, giving freely to those who are in need... trying to learn to eat like a normal person three times a day and not feel like i am going to throw up...

i love you, god. and i trust you. and i can see the progress, the breaking through, and for that i am very encouraged. but i mean... honestly.

your love is better than my life.

i like how blogger makes me always think of frogger.

listening to jimmy seibert this morning while i do laundry and clean the house. and am just reminded again and again that the world is not unreached for a lack of strategy. the task isn't finished not because we couldn't figure out how to do it or even because there were just not enough willing. what we lack is brokenness, and submission. we lack people who are in love with god and who are completely given over to his purposes and plans and will stay in that place until they understand them. it's like whoever taught on how you can't be in the missionary task for the task, that there are so many who got in it out of the valiant spirit that wants to see the tak completed. it won't happen that way. we need missionaries who know what it is to know god and make him known, who fell in love with the glory of god and as a result are compelled to go out to the nations. i have to love god and know god and so i go. loving anything else will fail me.

damn it. i just turned my favorite white bedspread pale green. what kind of a dope am i? putting it in the wash with a green blanket... which i thought would be colorsafe, but still. i have to go and buy some clorox.

not sure how this fasting thing is going to go but i do feel compelled about it. not to be in control - for real, i know how that feels - but out of loving response. i got this prophetic word that was a real gift to me about there being a banquet of food before you that you are free to eat from, food you have not ever known about, and today i fast for that, for asking god to feed me on the food that i know not of. and as for prophetic words, i am still asking god to speak to me about the one about marriage. it is a dangerous thing to speak about. but i desperately want to be mature enough to receive it with wisdom.

i declined to have lunch with trey. it was a little hard but not that hard. it's just too dangerous for me. and i have no need to let him play with me.

love cannot spring up without that self-surrender to each other.
if either withholds the self, then love cannot exist.

e. stanley jones

to come to the pleasure you have not you must go by the way which you enjoy not
saint john of the cross


tears are like blood in the wounds of the soul
gregory of nyssa


to clasp hands in prayer is the beginning of an uprising against the disorder of the world
karl barth

starting to have some dreams again.

so, it is weird to sit outside and hear the rain on the tin roof and type on my computer.
but i kind of like it.
oh, god. your company is my favorite thing. i have started to find a peaceful place with you that i am now jealous for and beginning to be afraid of losing. i love to sit with you and know that you are near. and i want to press into it more and learn what it is to hear your voice and just to be with you. can we have more secret time? even in the middle of everything?

a good day. church was good but it felt a little weird... i was trying to pay attention to what was happening in a different way and see how i can help people do what they do better. we were really short on people setting up this morning but it got done like it always does. and i am thankful. russell was great, and i was excited to listen to god speak through the crazy things that man has walked through. what was one beautiful thing was him talking about what if we had the same faith in god that our children have in us... what if my kids asked me to make breakfast and then they stuffed it in their pockets because they were afraid of it not being there tomorrow... or i told them i loved them and they said they weren't even sure that i knew them... and then i cried, because how often the analogies go the other way. and that family is such a gift that those kids know their parents love so well, even in their imperfection.

having funny thoughts and dreams like never before in my life... dealing with the issue of choosing to establish your life, to be rooted in a place and a people, which i have always not-chosen and am starting to have dreams about. i am not sure what god is doing in that but there is a place in my soul that yearns for it. thoughts about helping to make the red c exist and what god wants in that. will this dream for pittsburgh ever go away? i think not until i see it or until i hand it off to a faithful one... i wonder if i could do it with bryan but he would have to understand and i am not sure he can yet...

thoughts too, today about control and me and god. how i can't control mariana when i am with her, i could - i am bigger and stronger - but at what cost? her love? her safety? her self? so i listen to her... and my goal is to learn to connect and listen and show myself to her and show her another way. the same is true with carli... i could say no, and judge and yell and tell her the hundred reasons why she is so *wrong* - at what cost? our relationship? so i love her and i choose her. and i receive her. and that means hearing my sister talk about her one year anniversary with her girlfriend because i want to be in her life and i want to know her... and knowing that in doing that i am not violating god, i am not selling out. god is not shocked. he loves. and what is true is still true. thank you, god, that you are god.

it is itchy out here.

praise the high tower.

so, we graduated from hope for the nations last night, and that is a little weird. it was a lovely time and everyone in my class ate lebanese like piglets (it wsa really good, very similar to some moroccan food, the keftah and chicken were great and the pita and hummus... mm. the howells' house is out on a river in the middle of nowhere and is just full of the spirit. a bride stands on the balcony and welcomes the bridegroom. and *that* is cool. susan teared a little when we gave her her gift, some photos i framed from the trip - the fire from baku (for our god is a consuming fire), the grapevines from shelter now(abide in me and you will bear much fruit), and the broken bread in morocco (this bread that you eat is my body for the life of the world.)

i am so glad that i am here. this was the answer to me asking god for real that i wanted to see his dreams and know if my dreams were his or just silly. and this was the response. my class awarded me with the'unchanging opinion of the unshakable kingdom' award and the theology award. for reporting from the field. :) i love these guys.

my last day teaching summer school. they are so cute. and they really have gotten it latin-wise... now it is just about them learning to grow in discipline and motivation and self-control. i wore my shalwar chemise today to show them and talk about afghanistan a bit. today we send off the morocco team and the england team. so much fun. i wish i was going...

have to decide whether to go to houston this weekend.