Who's in denial?

11 Here is a trustworthy saying:
If we died with him,
we will also live with him;
12 if we endure,
we will also reign with him.
If we disown him,
he will also disown us;
13 if we are faithless,
he remains faithful,
for he cannot disown himself.

2 Timothy 2:13

We're inseparable from his infinite, good character. We are never NOT in relation to him. How do i know...? He became a man, "God with us." Ask, why? ...to grasp the wide and long and high and deep love of Christ, with the saints! There is something about God's personableness in sending His Son that helps each of us in the silence to see the Father. Jesus says this, "No one has ever seen God.The One and Only Son-the One who is at the Father's side-He has revealed Him." (Jn 1:18 Holman translation) BUT THEN, there is something about God's magnitude...His weight, His glory, that is comprehended being rooted and established with the saints. We need power and each other to even apprehend this love of Christ...and he is coming again. I imagine us standing together beholding this great faithfulness, this rapture, this Person we've always wanted to know. 

analogies

Love found me. When i didn't see it. When i didn't feel it. When it was a concept and i was a cognition. i was a waif, a heady wanderer. Time rolled on, ticking through dark hours, and i soldiered on too. i crossed planes and do you know? the darkness over those interminable spaces passed. i can see them, that dense...immense horizon, not far behind. But i think i crossed over. In hindsight it seems momentary, as if that dark line vanished to a point, and then that was gone too. But i know it was dark... i was down trodden, grieving...practically blind. That darkness is right over there. it's terrifying, enveloping, but I can see it. Now i think i've walked onto a different set. There's a framework and a theme and vigor keenly known. It's as though i'm on stage and a different script renews me. The story is called "Love". i hope you see it. Then come join me.

for love is of God. everyone who loves...

these are simple, life directing thoughts.

I don't know when I first verbalized "I love Jesus." I do remember having difficulting with those words for a long time. It's a serious thing-to love someone. Often, I think, if we spend even a fraction of time thinking about "how it is that I love so and so", "what is it that I love so much?" we end up with a short list of mannerisms, or experiences we've shared, or even perhaps how that person makes us...us. (that funny thing you do. how relaxed and pleasant conversation is.)

Somehow these things mean "I love..." whoever it is. I suppose that's mostly love, but I don't think it's all of it. In fact, the most arresting and bewitching part of it might be the most difficult to describe. It's a declaration. To some degree I love you because you love me, and vice versa simply because we say so. That seems kind of remarkable...choosing someone with our words, which is different than irresistible emotions and fond experiences. Words are permanent...never fully recanted. People change for better and for worse, but their words and deeds tell the whole story, regardless of the person's intentions. Words name things: husband, wife, God, truth, work, rest, what I do, who I am. The senses are more fragile, fragmented sentences, vanishing thoughts, winds blowing in the body.

I wonder how often people are afraid to trust their words. I have been afraid. I didn't understand them. "I love Jesus"?? How do you love someone in history? What does that mean?

Well, firstly, it means to believe that "love comes from God." Everything we do and feel is love...is a peripheral experience of the center. "God is love." He defines it.
Then, "This is how God showed his love...He sent his one and only Son into the world..." Again, it's declarative. Believe it or reject it.
But "This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son...."
Why? "that we might live through him." Are we not alive if we do not believe that love is of God? That Jesus' coming is how we know what love is? No. No, we're the living dead. Dead in our sins, and only sometimes sensing that God is the center and we are somewhere in orbiting space. Living?

Remember. He [Jesus] rose from the dead. History doesn't contain him. He loves us and gave himself for us. He intercedes on our behalf right now. He sent his Spirit and went back to heaven so that while we wait for his return, we begin to understand God the Father's will. Aside from God being the only existent Being who's reason for existing is in Himself, there are not simple answers for what the will of God is. He and his reasons are perfect. But it is true that because Jesus died, was buried, and rose again I can know him and love him. God wants to bring me into love for Himself..."to glorify and and enjoy Him forever", as the catechism declares.

"We know that we live in him and he in us, because he has given us of his Spirit. [The Holy Spirit. The spirit of love that is between the Father and the Son.] And we have seen and testify that the Father has sent his Son to be the Savior of the world. If anyone acknowledges that Jesus is the Son of God, God lives in him and he in God. And so we know and rely on the love God has for us."

keywords: seen and testify. We agree with what God has done and declared. acknowledges. We not only feebly declare with our words, but also we bend to the truth. know and rely. God's words are more trustworthy than mine. I can trust them. ...perhaps this is why we "solemnly swear to tell the whole truth, so help me God."

verses referenced are from 1 John 4:7-16

Paul

...So whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do it all for the glory of God. Do not cause anyone to stumble, whether Jews, Greeks or the church of God - even as I try to please everybody in every way. For I am not seeking my own good but the good of many, so that they may be saved. Follow my example, as I follow the example of Christ.
1 Corinthians 10:31-11:1

Why do you think Paul says to follow his example? as if he knows how to live...
Ans: Because people see us and hear us and sense us. If they don't believe and trust in Jesus, he's nothing more than a name, a character in history. But they see us.

Do you know what you love? That is what I see.
You must know whom it is I love.

o man o man o man. where are you woman?

I'm sitting reading an ironically fascinating explanation of finite state grammar. It's ironic because i'm so pleased i can enjoy it. I love irony. I love being surprised. I love discovering that what i thought might a drag or disappointment is ironically still, or newly fascinating. Now, if i may attempt some correlations. applications. ...enunciations.
When we pine for a person...we hope that person will a) take notice b) check us out & c) romantically chase us come hell or high water. maybe you can describe it as "glorying in some new found love....enamored and giddy". ...or something like that. But normally there is a problem. The problem seems to be a, b, and c are supposed to go two ways, that is, between the men and the women. I'll call it romantic reciprocity (because i love verbosity). There's all kinds of ways of sending the signals and attempting to clue in the love interest that there is, in fact, interest. Can we please fall in love? But if reciprocity is not somehow worked out, then we pine in our own little worlds.
So we can do our best to say, "i like you" and initiate, but then we must wait. Sometimes we wait a very long time. Sometimes our initiation is never well received or understood. Sometimes we give up way to soon because we think that other person is not responding the way we expect them to. The point is men and women have to initiate and they do it differently. And then we have to wait. And waiting is not sitting on pins and needles, self criticizing or neglecting all the other things to do. We cannot wait for another to define us. That is, check us out, romantically discover what we wish they'd see. We have to go on enjoying who we are (our interests), such that at some point, that person...whomever it is, may wake up and say, "Wow, what an interesting person you are." I do believe that is the order of things.

This may follow with, "Do you know what finite state grammar is?"
"No."
"Are you enamored with me yet?"
"...maybe." and so on.

to not detract from the horrible process of "initiation" and "reciprocity", I will not expound on my thoughts of "love" in this entry. that can be for another entry.

I love. but God is.

If I tell you I love you, it's normal...and genuine too. I suppose I have varying degrees of affection for most people...and then some aversion too. Call me sentimental.

What if I said, "'True love never professes anything.'" It is abiding.

1 Jn. 21:17 Peter was hurt because Jesus asked him the third time, "Do you love me?" He said, "Lord, you know all things; you know that I love you."

"True love never professes anything." It is and it is known. "You cannot say nice things when the Lord speaks directly to you, the hurt is too terrific...the point of the hurt is the great point of revelation. Peter began to see how much he did love Jesus..." ~Oswald Chambers, My Utmost for His Highest March 1st and 2nd.

I forget how much I love people

How do you forget how much you love someone? Did you love them? Was it not memorable...?
I have many old relationships. Older than dirt. It feels weird to make new ones. It takes time to make new ones. People sometimes think I'm weird when we've not covered ourselves in dirt...like children, in the old days. I think perhaps I love these "Old Ones" now more than I did when I met them. ...that's how I "forget." I didn't love as much as I do now.

You: scribbles for someone

you

I know what I say when I see that you have no heart. You are heartless. What did you do with it? Did you not want it? I loved it before you stopped up your ears and with tears shot holes in your beautiful heart. I love you now, but you look deathly ill and your words spell despair. There is never bright light in your eyes. You don't bring me joy. I feel sorrow because I see you.

I know what I say when I see…because I hear you have brilliance. You speak lots of things and comprehend lots of expression…of knowledge…in different mediums, but you have no emotion. Everything is jade. Everything is permissible and there is little difference in meaning.

Or maybe I see you are only emotion, and not one principle. You bleed derision or conceit or blatant hatred. You scream confusion, but when have you stood still? When have you asked why and expected an answer? And listened. I know you know lots of things. And think lots of things and feel lots of things. Stop dreaming what you want. Ask me what you have. Nightmares happen at night and are bad. Don't say, "I'm fine. I'm fine as fuck." You're not. Don't live a nightmare because you want to. It's bad for you. Don't call it good. It's not. Don't let in a lie.

I looked up to heaven and beheld a great light. It cast me in brilliance and heat. I didn't know I was so complicated or impressible, nor that I was blind and never discerned color. I had only ever contemplated me. I didn't know why blood stirred me to waking? I didn't know I was heartless. Because I didn't know the heart is a matter of perspective. Someone told me. That is why I see you.

i'm starting to believe....

I’m starting to believe that my green t-shirt and my Levi’s plaid button-up are not dirty when I wear them for a day. I am not believing the sad truth. Maybe it’s because I live in Bolivia and I want to believe people can’t smell me. Maybe they can’t smell me. Maybe it’s because I wash my clothes in the backyard…which is not what you’re imagining. It’s cold here. Maybe I make much todo about nothing. I’m starting to believe my cat is an independently employed spy. I think she knows and is indifferent to what her preeminent sociologist owner thinks, but has watched her every move and NOW pretends to be the cat that lives here. I talk to it…all the time. I’m starting to believe the irony of this environment. Why shouldn’t I talk to the cat that does not leave me alone. Or why shouldn’t I wear the same clothes over and over. It’s cold here. We can’t smell anything unless we’re smashed in little mass transit Toyota vans that never need new transmissions. Even the 1960’s Ford buses are still climbing the steep steep valley “calles”. The streets are cobbled and sidewalks are narrow. The homes are gated and the “oficinas” facaded. At night it’s dim and thick and old and the Old Ford buses lumber up the little narrow streets, too big for normal life and barely big enough for 800 passengers. And inside I sit and I think about the irony of the circumstances. I think about my cat and my landlady and my home and my writing—or lack there of. I think about Spanish and teaching English. I think about you and I think…sometimes this little life in big-ironic-Bolivia is to be transparent. It’s to say a whole lot of things all at once, but not incoherence. It’s to say, “hi Mom and Dad, I’m alive. I’ll tell you a story.” It’s to connect and share. I remember someone once saying, “We teach what we know”. I know a whole lot. I mean a whole damn lot.
I’m kind of joking. I know you didn’t expect that. “Enserio?” I know you don’t know how much I love absurd humor and words…or that I’ve secretly wanted to be British ever since I met my 12th grade American English teacher. “…but we teach what we know,” inadvertently, knowingly and unknowingly. You behave and talk and open your mouth and say things that describe something of what you believe, what you think. Aaack?! I think all the time. I think I have loads to say, probably all the time, but what do I know? What should I teach? I’m a teacher, an ESL teacher.

The funeral was on a Wednesday. The viewing was packed. The casket lay lengthwise in the sunlit room, concentric rings of sad, brightly colored flowers covering the floor. I can’t remember the last time I had seen so many flowers. I found the pastor dead. I found him in the swollen, rainy season river on the way to Coroico. Two weeks before I had heard him speak in that same church. He was calm and chose his words. He knew what he wanted to say. I think maybe he was wry but not silly. He was tall and handsome in his Sunday suit, close cut hair and one long lock in, I think, a very selected location. He carried himself as man who enjoyed simple things, his wife, the church, the Bible, and truths that somehow simplify the ironies of La Paz, Bolivia. He smiled and it was confident but considerate. He reflected on the Bible in front of him and was transparent. I found him captivating, and I found him in the river, the same but beaten and lying still, face down. He’d been missing four days and the complications of getting him back to his agonizing family made me feel numb. I don’t know why. I can’t. Good men die everyday. I wondered why I wasn’t him, taken in the river, bone and skin stolen from the body. “It’s appointed unto man once to die.” I think he walked through a gate of splendor that day. Or maybe for a moment I did…as if that sandbar was a space between Eternity and Bolivia, God and his time and me, Feb.20th. The sandbar sat amid those rainy season rapids and on it was only a body. Back in La Paz people, bodies of love, breathing and praying and hurting, waited. I watched. I have never seen so many people at a funeral. Affected or not, those who knew him honored the memory of an exemplary man and wept at the loss. That’s what I felt. He was 37. That’s not what he said though. “He said he gave his life to Jesus,” in a video testimony he had made when he was probably 18. He gave it away. His wife lost him. His congregation lost him. But Christ holds him. That pastor’s death made those people weep because it’s God’s great love he shared with them. God shared him with them.

God made us to love him. Ironic? We were never meant to die. But we (Adam) had a choice. We always have a choice. We can always say, “Jesus didn’t die because he loved the whole world. That’s not true. …Jesus wasn’t God’s Son and God has nothing to with good men dying…and neither does Adam.”

But why do people want to fall in love? ...I rhetorize. To be chosen? To feel chosen? YES. To be known and somehow love and know another? YES. …And do people die? YES. And does God say, “I love you”? YES. Does that die? Does it change? God is love, all love, the ethos of love. He made you for him. You are (the verb “to be”, “ser”) to be loved. 1 Jn 4:19 “We love because he first loved us.” Ps. 8:17 I love those who love me, and those who seek me find me.” He wants you to know he loves you.

Life and Death is the choosing or the not choosing eternal, perfect Love. Death is at the end of your life, and it is also in the walking away, thinking, “He doesn’t love me. I don’t understand. I do what I want.” Life, your life, began in the mind of God before your parents lay together, and you know love when you believe what he says...about you, “He loves me. He has always loved me. 'Do you take this man...? and Do you take this woman...?' ‘I do.’” (1 Jn 4:7) “…love comes from God and everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God.” Life and death are the daily practice…or lack there of…of love. Choose him. Choose to be loved and then love as though love is of God…and that is why we are here. Fall in. Tip over backwards and fall so deeply in.

I left the funeral feeling all of life is for living a transparency, for telling about a Love that is complete and I get it and it’s difficult and it’s serene and ironic and I don’t get it…because it’s Love. I left feeling ‘I will live that way’. I will choose, because Love chooses…everyone. I will wait, because love never leaves. I will live a transparent life, because thank God, I know how to do nothing else.

So…what do I know? What do I want to share? A few stories about life I can’t keep for me. I’m starting to believe….

1 Pet. 1:12 “So I will always remind you of these things, even though you know them and are firmly established in the truth you now have. I think it is right to refresh your memory as long as I live in the tent of this body.”