I love You

I love you, say we're together baby, you and me

I can only give my life and show you all I am
in the breath I breathe,
I will promise you my heart
and give you all you need if it takes some time,
and if you tell me you don't need me anymore
that our love won't last forever, no~
I will ask you for a chance to try again
to make our love a little better, ooh...

I love you, say we're together baby,
say we're together, ooh...
I need you, I need you forever baby, you and me

You say you hardly know exactly who I am
so hard to understand,
But I, I knew right from the start, the way I felt inside,
if you could read my mind

if you tell me don't need me anymore
that our love won't last forever,
I will ask you for a chance to try again
to make our love a little better

I love you, say we're together baby,
say we're together, ooh...
I need you, I need you forever baby, you and me

Remember when you used to hold me,
remember when you made me cry
You said you loved me, oh, you did, yes you did

--
Joanna is cool

Living the Message Jan. 12

Holiness

The newt two weeks are reflections on the Songs of Ascent
(Psalms 120 -134)

There is a great market for religious experience in our world; there is little enthusiasm for the patient acquisition of virtue, little inclination to sign up for the long apprenticeship in what earlier generations of Christians called holiness.

Do you see what all this means--all these pioneers who blazed the way, all these veterans cheering us on. It means we'd better get on with it. Strip down, start running -- and never quit! No extra spiritual fat, no parasitic sins. Keep your eyes in Jesus, who both began and finished this race we're in.

Hebrew 12:1-2A

Living the Message Jan. 11

Subversive

Jesus was a master at subversion. Until the very end, everyone, including his disciples, called him Rabbi. Rabbis were important, but they didn't makes anything happen. On the occasions when suspicions were aroused that there might be more to him than that title accounted for, Jesus tired to keep it quiet--"Tell no one."

Jesus' favorite speech form, the parable, was subversive. Parables sound absolutely ordinary: casual stories about soil and seeds. meals and coins and sheep, bandits and victims, farmers and merchants. And they are wholly secular: of his forty or so parables recorded in the Gospels, only one has its setting in church, and only a couple mention the name God. As people heard Jesus tell these stories, they saw at once that they weren't about God, so there was nothing in them threatening their own sovereignty. They relaxed their defense. They walked away perplexed, wondering what they meant, the stories lodged in their imagination, And then, like a time bomb, they would explode in their unprotected hearts. An abyss opened up at their very feet. He was talking about God; they had been invaded!

Jesus continually threw odd stories down alongside ordinary lives (para, "alongside"; bole, "thrown") and walked away without explnation or alter call. Then listeners started seeing connections: God connections life connections, eternity connections. The very lack of obviousness, the unlikess, was the stimulus to perceiving likness: God likeness, life likess, eternity likeness. But the parable didn't do the work--it put the listener's imagination to work. Parables aren't illustrations that make things easier; they make things harder by requiring the exercise of our imagination, which if we aren't careful becomes the exercise of our faith.

The disciples came up and asked, "Why do you tell stories?" He replied, "You've been givin insight into God's kigdom You know how it works. Not everybody has this gift, this insight; it hasn't been given to them. Whenever someone has a ready heart for this, the insiggts and understnading flow freely. But if there is no readiness, any trace of receptivity soon disappears. That's why I tell stories: to create readiness, to nudge the people toward receptive insight."

Matthew 13:10-13

Asking Me about My Dream?

To find someone who knows John 3:16, and then lead a modern but simple life with him after so many wanderings.

Living the Message Jan. 10

Christian Spirituality

I enjoy reading the poet-farmer Wendell Berry. He takes a small piece of land in Kentucky, respects it, cares for it, submits himself to it just as an artist submits himself to his materials. I read Berry, and every time he speaks of "farm" and "land," I insert "parish." As he talks about his farm, he talks about what I 've tried to practice in my congregation, because one of the genius aspects of pastoral work is locality.

The pastor's question is, " Who are these particular people, and how can I be with them in such a way that they can become what God is making them?" My job is simply to be there, teaching, preaching Scripture as well as I can, and being honest with them, not doing anything to interfere with what the Spirit is shaping in them. Could God be doing something that I never even thought of : Am I willing to be quiet spend fifty years reclaiming this land? Like Wendell Berry, am I willing to spend fifty years reclaiming this land? With these people?

Christian spirituality means living in the mature wholeness of the gospel. It means taking all the elements of your of your life--children, spouse, job, weather, possessions, relationships--and experiencing them as an act of faith. God wants all the material of our lives.

Meanwhile, freinds wiat patiently for the Master's Arrival. You see farmer do this all the time, aiting for their valuable crops to mature, patiently letting the rain do its slow but sure work. Be patitent ike that. Stay steady an strong. The Matster could arrive at any time.

James 5:7-8

Meiko - Piano Song

Every little thing I do I do for you
With every little think I thought of you
And I try so hard not to notice
I try so hard not to care
I try so hard not to know that you're not here
But I'm countin' down the hours
And I'm countin' up the days
I try so hard not to show this side of me
Jealous of the way they walk, the way *they* talk
'Cause I don't think they know just what they got
I'm jealous of the way they look, the way they are
When I just want to be the way we were
And I try so hard not to notice
I try so hard not to care
I try so hard not to know that you're not here
But I'm countin' down the hours
And I'm countin' up the days
I try so hard not to show this side of me

this side of me
this side of me
this side of me
this side of me
this side of me
.... .... .. ..

Living the Message Jan. 9

Gift of Words

The gift of words for communion. We need to learn the nature of communion. this requires the risk of revelation--letting a piece of my self be exposed, this mystery of who I am. If I stand here mute, you have no idea what is going on with me. You can look at me, measure me, weigh me, test me, but until I start to talk you don not know what is going on inside, who I really am. I f you listen ans I am telling the truth, something marvelous starts to take place -- a new event. Something comes into being that was not there before. God does this for us. We learn to do it because God does it. New things happen then. Salvation comes into being; love comes into being. Communion, Words used this way do not define as much as deepen mystery -- entering into the ambiguities, pushing past the safely known into the risky unknown. The Christian Eucharist uses words, the simplest of words, "this is my body, this is my blood," that plunge us into an act of revelation which staggers the imagination, which we never figure out, but we enter into. These words do not describe, the point, they reach, they embrace. Every time I go to the ill, the dying, the lonely, it becomes obvious after a few moment that the only words that matter are words of communion. What is distressing is to find out how infrequently thy are used. Sometimes we find we are the only ones who bother using words this way on these occasions. Not the least of trials of the sick, the lonely and the dying is the endless stream of cliches and platitudes to which they have to listen. Doctors enter their rooms to communication the diagnosis, family members to communicate their anxieties, friends to communicate the gossip of the day. Not all of them do this, of course and not always, but she sad reality is that there is not a great deal of communion that goes on in these places with these ill and lonely and dying people, on street corners, in offices, in work places, in schools. That makes it urgent that the Christian becomes a specialist in words of communion.

The right word at the right time
is like a custom-made piece of jewelry,
And a wise friend's timely reprimand
is like a gold ring slipped on your finger.

Proverbs 25:11012

Fort Minor - Where'd You Go

Where'd you go?
I miss you so,
Seems like it's been forever,
That you've been gone.

She said "Some days I feel like shit,
Some days I wanna quit, and just be normal for a bit,"
I don't understand why you have to always be gone,
I get along but the trips always feel so long,
And, I find myself trying to stay by the phone,
'Cause your voice always helps me to not feel so alone,
But I feel like an idiot, workin' my day around the call,
But when I pick up I don't have much to say,
So, I want you to know it's a little fucked up,
That I'm stuck here waitin', at times debatin',
Tellin' you that I've had it with you and your career,
Me and the rest of the family here singing "Where'd you go?"

I miss you so,
Seems like it's been forever,
That you've been gone.
Where'd you go?
I miss you so,
Seems like it's been forever,
That you've been gone,
Please come back home...

You know the place where you used to live,
Used to barbecue up burgers and ribs,
Used to have a little party every Halloween with candy by the pile,
But now, you only stop by every once and a while,
Shit, I find myself just fillin' my time,
With anything to keep the thought of you from my mind,
I'm doin' fine, I plan to keep it that way,
You can call me if you find that you have something to say,
And I'll tell you, I want you to know it's a little fucked up,
That I'm stuck here waitin', at times debatin',
Tellin' you that I've had it with you and your career,
Me and the rest of the family here singing "Where'd you go?"

I miss you so,
Seems like it's been forever,
That you've been gone.
Where'd you go?
I miss you so,
Seems like it's been forever,
That you've been gone,
Please come back home...

I want you to know it's a little fucked up,
That I'm stuck here waitin', no longer debatin',
Tired of sittin' and hatin' and makin' these excuses,
For why you're not around, and feeling so useless,
It seems one thing has been true all along,
You don't really know what you've got 'til it's gone,
I guess I've had it with you and your career,
When you come back I won't be here and you can sing it...

Where'd you go?
I miss you so,
Seems like it's been forever,
That you've been gone.
Where'd you go?
I miss you so,
Seems like it's been forever,
That you've been gone,
Please come back home...
Please come back home...
Please come back home...
Please come back home...
Please come back home...