The earth is ripe and being harvested, and all of west Tennessee is under the harvester’s scythe. The earth producing bounty is a perfect proclamation of The Loving God. The richness of harvest, corn, soy, cotton, and more rises in row upon row of exuberant abundance. I will miss this about West Tennessee. Every fall I have my lover drive me into the fields to experience Gloria in Excelsis Deo. He never disappoints.
 |
Have you ever felt the fight, been in a situation tense with violence needing only a spark to become an instant inferno? Have you ever known it spiritually? As if you are keen to the Veil, ear to the mirror no longer dim? My lover and I feel that way about our town. She suggested we drive around its border and pray. Yesterday we did just that. It was holy. As the miles tripped by our prayers became more urgent, our spirits more tender, and our hearts and bones burning within us. We desired our praying to be connected with others praying, that lives, churches, schools, businesses, authorities, families, governments even the very land, air, and vegetation would be bound up under His authority. We also prayed against with great fervor. However, it was the ending that meant the most as we both wept under the Lordship of God’s Almighty presence in our prayers. And then it ended! Abruptly. And The Wind blew away where it might and we were tired.
The river is like shimmering mercury this morning, veined with dark blue steel, cold but beautifully living. Everything at Fair Haven is alive and no sign of man. My lover and I lounged around the edge yesterday, reading, napping, me beholding her, warming me as much as the sun, and both, like sundials, often turned to rest in the warmth. So free we were that often my mind would instantaneously create for me a memory of some sweet time long ago. I was living peacefully while simultaneously viewing reruns of joy-filled bygone days. Peace, upon peace, upon peace with my lover aside the river; “when peace like a river attendeth my way.” Fair Haven.
I have been up since 2:19, 5:35 now. I struggle with insomnia but truly it’s worry and concern that so often causes “sleep won’t come, the whole night through.” God and I have had a time this early morning, Him searching me, me finally listening. All of life comes down to loving Him and loving others as ourselves. It’s the latter that I often struggle with. Reading Jonah I see a lot of myself, enjoying my love for myself, quickly forgiving all my transgressions while bemoaning all others' transgressions toward me. Jonah wasn’t written by Jonah but about Jonah. This blog is about me and is mostly written by God. "Who will save me from this wretched man I am?" Hank didn’t answer that, God did; “Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord.”
 |
| I am in the midst of attempting to write the Bible. The illumination for the book of Jonah. |
I was shamed the other day. Several men, collogues actually, surrounded me calling me hurtful names, laughing at me, and running me down in front of many of my other collogues. I have lived through this so many times, mostly in church where I learned early on, many Christians can only feel holy by making you feel unholy. As a preacher's kid, we moved often, mostly because these “Christians” would throw my dad out of the church for being “unholy” in their holy eyes. But I digress. One thing about moving so often is you would have to go into a new school alone, defenseless, no gang to have your back. Often this would lead to fights or scraps but mostly to just being an angry kid. This anger eventually turned into rebellion and a long trip down the highway to hell breaking every speed limit. I have thought a lot about what happened the other day. It was just ripping the scab off an old buried wound, I was once again just that new kid, “hippy boy”, who many loved to make fun of. There is a moral to this story. While on that highway to hell a young Jewish Man “had compassion on me, ran to me, wrapped his arms around me and kissed me” and made me His Father’s son. The other day, that shaming day, a brother of that Jewish Man heard it all, came up beside me, put his arm around me, and reminded me, “your cool” because That Young Jewish Man, now lives inside of you! Thank you David Ward!
 |
| The Young Jewish Man's brother, David Ward. |
I am often charmed by The Word of God. I sit quietly alone in the dark reading and thinking and being set upon by Him. This morning I read Jonah and Numbers' account of Balaam. I was carried away by God’s sovereignty over winds, worms, plants, donkeys, men, religion, and kingdoms. This overarching kingship awakens me to the dearness of faith, faith in the above-described God who also lives in me. My faith is often carried away in emotion. Such was the fire this a.m. But the reality of life is faith is only faith when one is not charmed by emotion but changed by God in Christ by the Holy Spirit. This truth came to me when it was not the talking donkey or the killing worm that enchanted me but the God, the One and Only God who strives with me alone, who demands a personal relationship with me, me, in reality, not much more than the worm or donkey and yet here I am, He and me and the very air I breath is His and the chemical makeup of that same air that satisfies my lungs and my lungs and my movements that type out this short note. And the band marches on and I am again charmed by this God, my God, I am His and He is mine and I am His heir. The fairy tale that is no tale.
A child was named for me last week. A new human being bears my name. It is not a minor thing this naming a human after another. It is more like a compact, an agreement between father, mother, child and me. It goes something like this. They agree that my life is worthy and the worthiness is titled, Lee. I agree that their new life is worthy of the titles as he is to manifest the qualities the father and mother see in me. It is also a gift of thanksgiving from the parents to me and a pact that I will continue to live a life modeled to be watched and imitated by the son. The entirety of this compact is based on one absolute Truth; anything good and worthy of emulating in the father, the mother, the son or myself is due completely, wholly and with all gratefulness on Him who lives inside of us and His manifestations in us are those that are the ink on the compact. It is this ink, God in Three, that will eventually live in Lee Alan that will someday be passed from him to his which will be titled his name sake. It is the way of God, passing Himself from generation to generation, for all earthly time, His compact that we are literally His children, here and forevermore—the children, Lee Alan, child of God.
 |
