Ron Cole : off the map...navigating life.

returning to the garden of Love...

Poetry, parables are acts of imagination that offer and purpose "alternative worlds" because they are open, door ways to infinite possibilities. Can imagination be indeed a legitimate way of knowing?

 Numbness does not hurt like torture, but in a profound insidious way, numbness robs us of our humanity, and makes us infinitely smaller. It is taking an eraser and removing the God-image in those who do not fit. Has our imagination been claimed by false lenses of perception and idolatrous theology that we protect and defend as absolute “truth?”

 Are spiritual nomads, navigating a changing landscape and taking seriously, the shaping of their own field of perception and language of understanding? When we become so at home in a belief system, do we become oblivious to the points of contact in our neighborhoods, in culture, in technology, and art...do we drift and drown in an ocean of irrelevance?

 The dominant partisan religious culture, now and in every time, is grossly uncritical, cannot tolerate serious and fundamental criticism, and will go to great lengths to stop it.

Jesus dismantled the religion of static triumphalism by exposing their gods and showing God was profoundly more mysterious than their “truth.” Jesus dismantles the religion of oppression and exploitation by countering it with the profound mysterious reality of “truth” being God’s infinite love.

When we leave our theology unexamined and unquestioned, we end up being slaves to it. When believe in our theology at what ever the cost...do we end up suffocating the redemptive imagination of Jesus?

William Blake called imagination, " the body of God ".

( Eve in the Garden of Eden )

The Garden of Love 

I laid me down upon a bank,
Where Love lay sleeping;
I heard among the rushes dank
Weeping, weeping.

Then I went to the heath and the wild,
To the thistles and thorns of the waste;
And they told me how they were beguiled,
Driven out, and compelled to the chaste.

I went to the Garden of Love,
And saw what I never had seen;
A Chapel was built in the midst,
Where I used to play on the green.

And the gates of this Chapel were shut
And 'Thou shalt not,' writ over the door;
So I turned to the Garden of Love
That so many sweet flowers bore.

And I saw it was filled with graves,
And tombstones where flowers should be;
And priests in black gowns were walking their rounds,
And binding with briars my joys and desires. 

by William Blake

                                                                ( Mary in the garden of the tomb )

William Blake called imagination, " the body of God ", or even more profoundly, " the existence of humanity." As I begin to pull on this strand of imagination the images I placed at the beginning and end of William Blakes poem, " The Garden of Love ", will begin to make sense.

I continue to struggle with the restlessness of the question, " Could we have gotten Jesus wrong?"

Did Jesus come to start a new religion? Did he come to renovate and restore an old religion? Or could it be something profoundly more intimate...something found in that imaginative reality between the body of God, and the existence of humanity. If Jesus is infact the God-man, that profound simple relationship in the Garden of Eden would have filled his redemptive imagination. The resurrection is the mind blowing profound mysterious reality of a new creation.

Adam and Eve wander the garden in the cool of the night, the cosmic darky mirky ocean filled with glittering surf fills the ceiling of creation. By day they walk in the beauty of the garden, shafts of light cut through the vegetation, reflecting and refracting green and gold. With God in the midst of everything, it is conversations of intimacy...as beloved friends.

There is no rituals, no doctrine, no theology...just one command, " Don't eat of the tree of knowledge." They are tempted...and they eat. This is what Augustine mused as the " orginal sin." I wonder if we still aren't sinning then?

It could be this was infact the original lure of religion...our pirsuit of God. We could become God-like by climbing the ladder of religion. We've made Eve the scape goat from the very beginning, and women have never really recovered from the acusation, " If it hadn't been for Eve." But, isn't it we've made religion's greatest purpose... to know God...have we made religion more about knowledge than anything else.

The Old Testament seems nothing more than humanity's wreckless pursuit of religion. We delude ourselves in thinking religion was God's idea. We wanted laws, rules and commandments to keep...and when we failed we wanted ammendments to the laws. This was so far from the intimacy in the garden of Eden. But we were hoplessly hooked...it was always just one more chance and we'll get it right. We never did...and we never will.

If anything it must be crystal clear, there is NOT a whole lot of religion in the gospels. If anything a journey through the gospels is Jesus bulldozing every obstacle religion places in people's path. If it's anything, it is the perveyors of religion selling God as their commodity. Or access to God by way of their elaborate maps, a hopeless maze that kept people lost in religion.

And in the misdt of the religious business, it's Jesus meeting the woman at the well. Weary, tired and thirsty, and tired of maps, she asks, "How?" Is it in some temple, is it on some mountain? I'm imagine Jesus filled with love, smiling and saying, " God doesn't care about where or how...it is all about a spirit of truth."

As many times as I have read the gospels...I never come away with an image of a religious Jesus. I come away with my imagination ignited of a God who doesn't occupy a church, but a God who walks in the midst of his creation...as a friend. There are no barriers, no rituals, no confession of beliefs are needed to abide with this profound mysyerious God, who Jesus called, " Love."

In the Garden of Eden, I think of Eve who's sin maybe wasn't so much sin...but more humanity's confusion over knowledge, rather than relationship. A thought just came to me, " Can we really know God as knowledge?" Can we really know Love as knowledge?" I don't think we can, and maybe that is the tension Eve found herself in.

In the Garden of the tomb where Jesus lay, I think of Mary Magdalene, a woman, a prostitute, the least credible person to witness the resurrection...and she waits...or maybe more pofoundly, she abides. The resurrection really is the profound reality of the Garden of Love, of Love burtsing forth in full blossom.

I think Blakes poem is prophetic and should speak to us today. Have we made "Christianity" a religion that is solely consumed about itself, its self preservation. I wonder if we couldn't read Blake's imagination and see some truth.

I wonder if Jesus in the profound mysterious redemptive imagination he lived and spoke...if he didn't envision a new creation like the Garden of Eden...where it wasn't so much religion, but more life. Or as William Blake called it, " the body or God...and the existence of humanity ", as one...God again walking in the midst of his creation. Man and God, walking and talking as friends.

I wonder?

prison...in the wreckage of dreams

It was a couple of weekends ago the band was playing at some prisons over on the Mainland. It is always very sobering returning back to the island and processing my emotions. I'm reminded of going to my wife's uncle's farm back on the prairies. It seemed every year Mel would be picking stones in some field on the farm. In my mind, I thought it one of those tedious jobs you do once and your done with it. Not so. It seems they are always there buried, but the frost of winter pushes them to the surface, exposed and ready to be picked yet again.

Processing my emotions from prison is like the analogy of stone picking. Experiences, memories, wounds and guilt always seemed to be unearthed in me. Had someone rolled the dice of fate a second time I could have easily been in a place like this. Living on the streets of London and Toronto at the age of 16 trying to survive I resorted to criminal acts. Stole food out of grocery stores to eat, stole and sold to pawn shops, ate and dashed in restaurants, slept on hallway floors of apartment buildings. It was a family situation of abuse and dysfunction that drove me to the streets. It doses not excuse what I did, but it was how I dealt with the reality at 16.

I was able to turn my life around. But what would have happened had I got caught ? Why didn't I get caught ? Was it luck, fate or something, or someone else?

So looking around the prison, see the faces of the inmates guilt percolates to the surface of my being. Guilty for what I did, and guilt because received no punishment for what I did. I've shared my story with the inmates. They are always encouraged by hope, and the imagination of redemption, that out of the brokenness of their lives...out of the rubble, good can still happen.

I had the opportunity to pray with ( S ), who has been in and out of detention centers and jails since the age of 12. He is serving a 20 year sentence for the murder of his drug business partner, and his girl friend. An absolutely horrible story of family abuse growing up, drug addiction, betrayal and violence. He's 25 years old, with 18 years left in his sentence.

I shut my eyes, and think...how do I find the words to even give a glimmer of hope into his life. My hand is on his shoulder, and the period of silence is long, so long it seems eternal. Lord, please give me something, a word. And out of the silence, I whisper one word, " hope." What do you hope for ( S )?

He hopes for the mending of relationships. That when he gets out his parents, and brother and sister would somehow be a part of his life. He hopes he'll be a better person. He hopes he'll be able to beat his addiction issues. He hopes he'll be able to manage his anger. He hopes he could be loved by anyone. I tell ( S ) there is a God who hopes for exactly the same thing.

I tell him about Jesus story of the prodigal son. A young man who took his inheritance, packed his bags and headed off to live life on his own accord. Headed for the big city lights, spent everything he had, wasted it on the " high " life. With everything gone, penniless, homeless and living in abject poverty he finds himself picking through slop in a pig pen in order to survive. In the back of the young man's mind is one wish, that he could return to his father's house. He would beg for forgiveness, even if it was just as a servant.

But little did the young man know, that at the dawn of each morning the father would walk out to the end of the driveway, and look off to the horizon. Hope filled his heart, that he would see his son coming home.

One day the son decided he would return. So he left. Near naked, emaciated, hungry he staggered home. Then the Father at the end of the driveway saw his youngest son. He ran like a mad man obsessed with only one thing...his son. Before his son could utter a word, the father hugged and kissed him. He could not stop hugging and kissing him.

He told his servants to prepare a feast, for his son who was lost, but was know found.

There is hope for ( S ), in the brokenness of his life...even in prison there is hope. Jesus gave his life when we were sinners, when my life was a F'd up a mess, Jesus loved me. Grace is a constant reality of all Jesus is, God is Love. Grace is not dispensed with a measuring cup as to the goodness of your life. It is the cosmic reality of the redemptive imagination of Jesus. It, and he hold all life together. We awaken to the grace of Jesus, just a the prodigal son awoken to the mercy and grace of the father hugging and kissing him at the end of the driveway.

 Even in the wreckage of dreams, when life seems dead and buried...when hope appears to have gone to hell. Through mercy, and grace, Jesus can resurrect life...even murders serving a life sentence.

if you have ever believed that love inevitably leads to betrayal
Jesus says it doesn’t.
if you have ever believed that some people are unlovable, irredeemable
Jesus says they aren’t.
if you have ever believed that there is a limit to forgiveness
Jesus says there isn’t.
if you have ever believed you aren’t worth saving
Jesus says you are.
if you have ever believed that you don’t deserve freedom
Jesus says you do.
if you have ever believed that fear, anger, hate and despair will always win
Jesus says it won’t.

( S ) you're in my prayers, the Father stands in the drive way looking off to the horizon...waiting for you to come home.

everybody wants to go to heaven, but...no one wants to die

 

In Christ I die to every lie that withers me from life
I die, in trust, to fear
I die, in humility, to pride
I die, in charity, to what is mine
I die, in forgiveness, to justice
I die, in submission, to self-will
And, in sacrifice, I die to the illusion that my life matters most

(Rob Des Cotes)

living under the shadow of the cross...

If the world is sane, then Jesus is mad as a hatter and the Last Supper is the Mad Tea Party. The world says, Mind your own business, and Jesus says, There is no such thing as your own business. The world says, Follow the wisest course and be a success, and Jesus says, Follow me and be crucified. The world says, Drive carefully – the life you save may be your own – and Jesus says, Whoever would save his life will lose it and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it. The world says, Law and order, and Jesus says, Love. The world says, Get and Jesus says, Give.

In terms of the world’s sanity, Jesus is crazy as a coot, and anybody who thinks he can follow him without being a little crazy too is laboring less under a cross than under a delusion. ( Frederick Buechner )

During our set-up for the Association of Peninsula Churches Good Friday Service a lady rushed into where we were like a gust of wind and commented, " Lets not make this too gloomy, he has risen you know." Before I could respond the wind changed direction, and as quick as it came it was gone.

There was something about the comment that stuck with me for the rest of my Easter vigil. And reading Buechner's words this morning brought it to the surface. The " Cross " is a very uncomfortable place, the word comes " Christ has Risen " and our natural tendency is to get as far away from the cross as possible. The resurrection, the new day and the new creation...thats the good news.

But I'm reminded of Saul's experience on the road to Damascus. Now we're talking about a " new creation " transformation. Saul, religious pharisee, bounty hunter for the Law...burnt blind by Jesus, God's foolishness would become his wisdom and the long arm of the law would be Christ's embrace. And, if this wasn't enough...it would be complete with name change, " Paul."

You would think if we had this experience, we would try and cram it into every conversation we had. But as profound as Paul's resurrection experience was, he lived in the place of the cross.

17God didn't send me out to collect a following for myself, but to preach the Message of what he has done, collecting a following for him. And he didn't send me to do it with a lot of fancy rhetoric of my own, lest the powerful action at the center—Christ on the Cross—be trivialized into mere words. ( 1 Corinthians 1:17 )

5-8Think of yourselves the way Christ Jesus thought of himself. He had equal status with God but didn't think so much of himself that he had to cling to the advantages of that status no matter what. Not at all. When the time came, he set aside the privileges of deity and took on the status of a slave, became human! Having become human, he stayed human. It was an incredibly humbling process. He didn't claim special privileges. Instead, he lived a selfless, obedient life and then died a selfless, obedient death—and the worst kind of death at that—a crucifixion. ( Philippians 2:5-8 )

There is no doubt reading the Book of Acts, and Paul's letters to the early church that he lived a resurrected life, his journey was guided by the wind of God's Spirit...but more than that, he lived his life in the constant shadow of the cross.

As much as we as faith communities want to live resurrected lives, being an incarnational presence of Jesus to the world around us...there can be no resurrection and no new creation without the cross. We need to be moving by the Spirit of God, but we also must live in the shadow of the cross. It is there as communities we learn to die...that we may discover His life.

Saturday...God where are you!!! God in the silence

Thanks to Anna, Paige's daughter for providing the image to inspire me to write this morning. Saturday, the day after the crucifixion...the startling blackness of the noon day, earth quakes, relatives and friends that had been dead for years seen walking around Jerusalem. The King of the Jews, who was to usher in a new Kingdom...now lifeless, decomposing in some cave.

It was a disaster...amidst the natural storm, there was an emotional storm of confusion, despair, sadness, loneliness, hopelessness.

We know for sure the family and friends of Jesus were terrified. John describes that they were gathered " with the door bolted, locked down for fear of the Jews " ( John 20:19 ), and the apocryphal Gospel of Peter says that the authorities were actively hunting Christ's followers down. The disciples were scared, and profoundly confused.

Had they been cruelly misled for three years? Had Jesus been merely a prophet and not the Christ at all? What of all the miracles, all the proof? Hadn't he predicted something like this? But surely God wouldn't permit His one and only Son to be crucified?

Prayer...Questions? Prayer...more Questions? Prayer...and still more Questions?

For the disciples, these questions would all be answered within the matter of hours in the most glorious way. When we experience similar seasons of doubt, confusion and despair, we to can be sure that the resurrection is on its way.

However, the experience of God's absence is not on to be rushed over as if it has no value in the Christian life. Quite the contrary: These days where life seems to stand still, in darkness and deafening silence has been the experience of many of the greatest saints in history from St. John of the Cross to Mother Teresa.

When Mother Teresa died in Calcutta at the age of 87, her diaries were collected by Roman Catholic authorities and taken back to Rome. Many were shocked, however, when they read her words and discovered the extreme inner turmoil experienced by the nun and Nobel Peace Laureate who always seemed so confident of her faith.

For instance we know that Mother Teresa wrote in 1958, " My smile is my great cloak that hides a multitude of pains... [ People ] think that my faith, my hope and my love are overflowing, and that my intimacy with God and union with His will fills my heart. If they only knew." ( Il Segreto di Madre Teresa ( Mother Teresa's Secret ), cited by Bruce Johnston, " Mother Teresa's Diary Reveals her crisis of Faith," Telgraph.co.uk, November 29, 2002 )

In another letter, she wrote, " the damned of hell suffer eternal punishment because the experiment with the loss of God. In my own soul, I feel the terrible pain of this loss. I feel that God does not want me, that God is not God, and that God does not exist."

We can only imagine what was going through the minds of the disciples and friends of Jesus as they endured this great silence. The gap, between the crucifixion and the resurrection is an on going season in the life of the believer. Martin Luther goes so far as to call God, " absconditus Deus "... literally, " the God who goes missing." The basis for this is Christ's own experience of foresakeness on the cross, a moment that speaks profoundly of God's silence.

We want God to answer prayer through powerful interventions, but in the cross we recognize by faith the presence of God in weakness, suffering and silence. But in the midst of this profound darkness is a small candle with a flickering flame, that God holds close to his heart...which will split the darkness, pierce the silence...in which divine eternal light will illuminate the dawn of a new day, the new beginnings, and the new creation...all will be resurrected.

"We leave knowing
and trusting in Your faithfulness
That
even in the darkest sorrow
,Your light is the glimmering hope
of Glory to
come."

Thanks Anna, for the truth behind the hidden light of Holy Saturday

tearing apart religion...

But Jesus, again crying out loudly, breathed his last.

At that moment, the Temple curtain was ripped in two, top to bottom. There was an earthquake, and rocks were split in pieces.

The above brilliant piece of creativity is by J Nobel. This was one of the last creative acts in the Sorrow to Glory liturgy. J came up and ripped the temple curtain from top to bottom, in the silence of the room the sound almost pierced you. When J was done, this was read...

In this hour darkness, sorrow and death come

They cover lives, and the earth like a curtain drawn for night

Your shed blood, and life sacrificed tear to shreds this curtain of sorrow

Through it we see the dawn of a new day, the Glory of God

After the above words, people came forward and started cutting a piece of the curtain to take home with them at the end of the evening...as a reminder.

Can you imagine the people in Jerusalem going to the Temple and seeing the curtain ripped wide open and revealing the holy of holies. For the Pharisee's, the temple priests, the charade was over. They could no longer hide the truth ...the Glory had left the temple long ago.

The Glory would now find its place in a new temple...in the hearts of man.

God on Mute...part two

What I like about Pete Greig's God on Mute is it's got-level honesty, vulnerability, rawness and authenticity. There is no plug and play mentality like the Prayer of Jabez, where you download a piece of scripture into the rubble of your life and suddenly all the territories of your life are increased.

God on Mute, reveals the reality that unanswered prayer is a journey through seasons...where beyond cliche' answers...that far greater truths can be found in the mystery of discovery.

Much of Pete's reflection comes from navigating the dark endless valleys, deserts and occasional mountain tops with Samie...the diagnosis, brain tumour, surgery and continuing seizures. It was a book that Samie needed when she was ill...in the midst of struggling with unanswered prayer...the book offers a sense of humour and hope.

God on Mute draws insights from some of the great writers on suffering, such as St. John of the Cross, Elie Wiesel, CS Lewis, Brennan Manning and Philip Yancey. It is really a book on the practicalities of prayer: how it works; why it doesn't always work; how to get better at it; how to navigate the disappointments without losing your faith; and how to cope with those who seek to interpret your experince for you.

Now I know that sounds like a lot of " How to ", but Pete has an amazing ability as a writer to spread his thoughts out that they don't come across as a formula.

The book is broken into three larger pieces searching for biblical answers to the intellectual problems of unaswered prayers: God's world and the way it seems to work; God's will and the way it seems to interact with human free will; and God's, the cosmic struggle between good and evil.

Pete and Samie's story is not everyones...but it gets close, we all share the experience, we all struggle with prayers not being answered as we would like. The book is much more than their personal journal of a painful journey, it is filled with good quotations, good stories and solid preceptions of what the bible says about prayer.

Some are going to look at this book and judge it by its cover. It looks and feels like one of those " emerging books." Not that is a bad thing, but some will suspect it's content will be soft, lacking real truth and content. Nothing could be further from the truth. Don't be fooled. This is by far one of the most serious books on prayer I've read in a long time. It is a must read!!!

Pete offers 16 reasons why prayer might not be working...

1. Common Sense; Am I asking God to do something stupid, meaningless or illogical?
2. Contradiction; Are my prayers likely to be conflicting with those of someone else?
3. Laws of Nature; Are my prayers potentilly detrimental to the natural order or to the lives of others?
4. Life is tough; Am I expecting God to spare me from stuff that's just common human experience because of the Fall?
5. Doctrine; Does my prayer reflect God's character and his promises in the Bible? Might it be out of line with his will for my life?
6. Second best; Although my desire in prayer is for something good, is it possible God has something even better in store for me?
7. Motive; Are my prayers essentially just selfish?
8. Relationship; Is there an opportunity here for going deeper in my relationship with God?
9. Free will; Am I expecting God to override someone's free will?
10. Influence; Am I trying to exercise ungodly power over a person's life in prayer?
11. Satanic opposition; Is my prayer in line with God's will but experiencing resitance from the powers and principalities Paul spoke about?
12. Faith; Do I really believe God can do this?
13. Perserverance; Do I want it enough to keep praying?
14. Sin; Getting brutally honest, is there some secret sin sin you need to confess?
15. Justice; Am I actively seeking to express God's love for the poor?
16. None of the first 15; Am I trying to find answers where I need instead find trust?

What I like about Pete's list of 16 reasons why prayer's are "not answered" , a phenomeno-logical way of saying " they were answered but not according to my designs "...is their completeness, there honest rational thinking, and their biblical foundation. They are not simple answers; they are well thought out, lived ideas that lead us to reflect and meditate on why it is that God, at times, does not answer our prayers.

Jesus himself suffered the pain of unanswered prayer during His Passion. In the  Garden of Gethsemane he uttered the heart breaking cry of dispair, " Abba, Father, everything is possible for you. Take this cup from me." Pete Greig says that Christians must also embrace what Jesus said next: " Yet not what I will, but what you will." The power to choose God's will instead of one's personal preferences is the defining human opportunity, he says. It means saying " yes " to God, no matter what the cost.

Pete uses the frame work of the Easter drama to gude readers into a deeper understanding of prayer, suffering and sacrifice. The journey through the three days of the Pssion asks the hard questions:

• Maunday Thursday: How am I going to get through this?
• Good Friday: Why aren't my prayers being answered?
• Holy Saturday: Where is God when heaven is silent?

Finally on Easter Sunday, every prayer is answered. Living as we do with the hindsight of Easter, " we know God may be silent but that he will speak again ", Pete says. Christian faith is based on the greatest story ever told about suffering and silence, miracles and hope. The story of Christ's agony, abandonment, and eventual resurrection reamins the hope for a hijacked world.

I highly recommend Pete Greig's , " God on Mute ", I have no doubt on my journey, it will be a book I will go back to time and time again.

Easter Sunrise...Gyro Park

Mary Magdalene rose very early on that third day as a new day was dawning, to journey to the garden where Jesus had been laid. In shocking amazement she discovered the enormous stone that entombed Jesus had been rolled away...Jesus was missing. Or was He...

Looking for something different this Easter. Join my friends from The Place, as they celebrate the dawn of a new day, the reality of the new creation. We celebrate the wondrous news that Jesus is not MIA, but the glorious discovery that He now dwells in and with us.

So set your alarm, we gather at 6:00 am ( yah, that's right...it's not a typo error ). We meet right on the beach at Gyro Park around a blazing fire. So join us, you don't need to be a member of the community, the neat thing last year was I met a lady and her husband, not members of a church...but this had become an annual pilgrimage for them.

Here's the Map...see you there...bring a friend.