Ravens

Here’s the last paragraph of my dissertation: 

If theology is to truly be systematic, having coherence and integrity with God’s identity and his work in this world, such divisions as exist between the church and academic theology must be overcome. It is only by listening to both that theology can, in fact, be transformative. Indeed, I would argue that for theology to be truly Christian—reflecting the revelation of Christ—it must be transformative. I would also argue that for the church to be truly Christian—reflecting the work of the Spirit—it must be transformative. To be transformative, theology must take into account the whole of life and its expressions, the whole ecology of the cosmos in its varied forms of expression and encounters. To be transformative, the church must take into account who God is and how God works in, with, and for this world. A transformative theology requires a transformative church and a transformative church insists on a transformative theology—a holistic expression of a messianic movement initiated by God in history and expressed even in our day among those who are saved by Christ, a salvation that awakens life in, with, and for this whole world. It is in this experience of such a church that we become who we are called to be, who all are called to be, in and for this world, now and into eternity.

Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.[1]

On the left side of this page there’s a sidebar, and on that sidebar are interspersed quotes. Like particularly pretty stones one might find by a riverbank, I’ve picked these up and have them displayed here, each pointing to a moment of insight or counsel, or reflecting a resource that pushed me farther away from the explicable and into some new course of life. Or gave me hope in the midst of a way that didn’t make sense to me.

Thus says the LORD: Stand at the crossroads, and look, and ask for the ancient paths, where the good way lies; and walk in it, and find rest for your souls.
Jeremiah 6:16

Books have been my mentors my whole life. I’ve always been a reader and reading has generally caused me to lose focus on the present and lose focus on what I was supposed to be learning in a given context. I get distracted by books, and of books there is no end. One book leads to another, the rabbit trail leading to the rabbit hole, down we go.

When I think back on my life, I think of the books that were shaping my thoughts and assumptions during those various seasons. That would probably be the most effective form of self-biography, a list of books. To add to that, I probably could add writing I’ve done, self-biography that is not autobiography–telling my story directly–but telling of the deeper me through the guides that are compelling me further up and further in.

I wrote essays on CS Lewis and James Michener in high school, reading almost all of both of their works before I graduated. In my sophomore year of college, I was introduced to the early church Fathers, and more specifically to Tertullian. My Spring break of that year was filled reading through the two volumes of his writings in the Ante-Nicene Fathers. It took longer than that one week, of course, but it filled that week and expanded into all my life. The strange thing is that reading has never just been academic or intellectual for me. It has when required, but the reading I’m talking about–the kind that shapes and defines me–has been quite holistic. I loved the early church fathers, for instance, because they spoke of depths of faith, love, hope in the midst of trials, perseverance. Tertullian’s mix of brilliant exposition and sarcastic wordplay delighted me to the core of my being.

I did not, to say the least, have the stereotypical college experience. I was distracted the whole time, distracted by pressing problems and, more to the point, distracted by God. This is probably why, in my junior year, I resonated greatly with Wesley’s writings. He spoke of both my passions and my struggles.

This post isn’t about college, however. I’m in the midst of writing about my journey to and through PhD studies. The last post ended with me in the mountains.

I went there to write. Really. I was living in Pasadena, looking for jobs, and writing was the only thing that stirred my soul. That and answering “run a Christian escort business” when people asked me what I did for a living.

The mountains provided, even within their own modicum of chaos, a place I could be even more deliberate about my deeper quest. People thought I was running away from life. It was entirely the opposite. I was turning around and facing the always encroaching Void, letting its waves wash over me, no longer fleeing from it. If I did not have faith, I would not stand.

Hunting truth is no easy task; we must look everywhere for its tracks

Basil the Great

I continued to write, but more importantly for those first couple of years I began to read into the depths. Each season of my life has its theme books, and the four volume set of the Philokalia was the theme of those mountain years.

I found the early church fathers in college, reading through the ante-nicene Fathers set after graduating. I found John Cassian my first year in seminary, who radically upset my ability to subsist contentedly in the world as I knew it. The Philokalia was the progression of that reading, discovered because I wanted to read Wesley deeper, and sought out a source for his Makarios, a great influence in his life. I found Makarios in the Philokalia and also so many others. Niketas Stethatos being my favorite (if one is allowed to have such favorites).

Such writings showed me a map, a path to deeper places, deeper answers, deeper hopes. Also deeper restrictions, deeper limitations, stricter standards. I was like an Autopia car when the ‘driver’ lets go of the steering wheel, bouncing back and forth but making progress along the track. I was not good in so many ways. But God sought more for me, and in the flood of the Spirit’s work, there were levees that kept me isolated, kept me moving a determined direction. As much as I might have wanted to flood into other pastures, God established the way.

Hence I ought unceasingly
to give thanks to God who often pardoned
my folly and my carelessness,
and on more than one occasion
spared His great wrath on me,
who was chosen to be His helper
and who was slow to do as was shown
me and as the Spirit suggested.
And the Lord had mercy on me
thousands and thousands of times
because He saw that I was ready,
but that I did not know what to do
in the circumstances.

Patrick of Ireland

In the midst of this path, a path of both isolation and narrowed community, I found hope. I found renewal. I found a voice.

In the midst of this, I also rediscovered a couple of theologians I had first met in seminary. I read Pannenberg and his three volume systematic theology. I also read Moltmann. Both of which radically affected my understanding of God and this life and God’s work in this world. Moltmann affected me even more personally, becoming an actual mentor of sorts, and not just through his books.

Moltmann was the way God led me down the mountain and back into life.

Which is the subject of another post.

Within the first month of my moving to the mountains in 2003(where I ended the last post), a fire broke out. That’s putting it lightly. Both in number and in verb usage. There were actually a number of fires. And “broke out” sounds a bit like Southern California had bad acne. That’s not at all fitting. No, it was much worse. Fires conflagrated around Southern California. Mandatory evacuations were ordered.

We didn’t evacuate. For a number of reasons, most to do with my mom’s health. There was fire about five miles or so away (likely less), but no smoke. The evacuation of a mountain community that had been overbuilt by housing contractors made for crawls out the available roads. It took hours, we heard, into the smoke to get down the mountain. Where we were the sky was blue, smoke was blowing different directions.

So we stayed. And stayed. Power went out after the first or second day. Gas and phones worked. That first week, my dad and I kept watch, watching the horizon for flames. We were in a valley, a mountain bowl, so could see when fire crested the ridges. That would be the sign to leave. So many fires meant so many directions to watch. Each day a different fire would make its way closer. During that week, we were essentially surrounded, one would advance another would recede. Destruction, denudation, in every direction.

After six days, it snowed. Really. That’s what happened. A week of fires, then a couple weeks of too much cold. The fireplace was kept active.

Power came back on. Life went back to its regular state of abnormality. Peace and quiet in the mountains, once more.

Wait for it.

One contribution to the fires was the dead pines. The bark beetle had plagued mountains of pines that had been weakened by many years of drought conditions. The trees died. Dead trees make for good firewood, whether chopped or standing, so the new policy was to chop them down. The electric company paid for much of it, since the trees in neighborhoods threatened power lines, and downed power lines cause fire.

Let the sawing commence. About 15 or so pine trees on my parents property (which isn’t very big) had to come down. That’s added to everyone else’s property made for a season of sawing, a lumber mill neighborhood.

Then homes had to be rebuilt. Homes not destroyed had to be, for some reason, added onto or upgraded.

It turns out mountains in southern California aren’t exactly quiet places, not when there are fires of flame and fires of real estate development.

I was there for about five years. There was another major fire in 2005 or so. The construction sounds never stopped.

This was where God had me. This is where he answered my prayers with, “wait”. Also, “learn.” But mostly “wait.”

It was sometimes on the borders of idyllic, but never quite got there. Idyllic, it seems, is not really transformative. so, that’s not the kind of waiting I needed. I was told to wait so that I could be transformed. Transformed in the nothingness, in the emptiness, in the social catacomb for which confused others and, no doubt, elicited their pity. He just gave up, some likely said. He’s being foolish, many thought.

They were likely right. But it took me a long time to let go the pride that tried to justify myself to the world. That tried to make sense to others, even as I didn’t make sense to myself, and God certainly wasn’t making sense to me.

A hermit said, “When you flee from the company of other people, or when you despise the world and worldlings, take care to do so as if it were you who was being idiotic.

That passage changed my life. That passage and those that surrounded it. It was clear that the fires and noise outside were nothing compared to the fires and noise inside, raging storms that sought constant distraction and appeasement, pride-soaked justification of my abilities and experiences. There was none of that in the mountains.

I was thirty. I was unemployed. I lived with my parents. In the mountains. I was, indeed, idiotic in just about every sense of contemporary American life.

I wasn’t unoccupied, however. I wrote. I read. I kayaked. In these, I found hope.

God continued to say wait.

I finished my PhD program a couple of weeks ago. Passed my oral defense “With Distinction”.

Which gets me to thinking about my journey to this point, the journey since I finished my Master’s degree (M.Div). Some people go straight from one into the other. I didn’t. It curved so much it’s a fair bit of a miracle that I got to this point.

I haven’t arrived at a destination yet. There’s too much unsettled. Questions of livelihood and even home are still to be determined. But, at this point, it seems worthwhile to me to consider the past. To look at what God has done. To affirm faith in the future by remembering what God has done.

In March (or so), of 2003, I ended my participation at NewSong Church in San Dimas. I was leading a young adults ministry. It was an internship at first, one that extended past the degree requirements as I kept doing that which seemed worthwhile, because there was something in me that loved it, even as I was encountering a lot of walls and frustrations. I ran out of gas. Literally. I couldn’t make the drive from Pasadena to San Dimas (about 20 miles) anymore and I wasn’t worth enough to be given any help. I was a volunteer. I needed another job, one that paid. I couldn’t find one in my field. Though, I wasn’t sure I wanted to be in that field anymore. That work at NewSong had also, in may ways, caused significant frustration with the church. Or rather, the Church – - the politics not the people. I was done. But my degree was in ministry. My training. Where was I to go? Who was I to be?

I looked at joining the military. Not becoming a chaplain, something more adventurous. I wanted to jump out of a plane. You don’t get to do that in seminary. I was tired of life as it was and wanted change, challenge, physicalized expression. I couldn’t find wisdom on what to do (so I thought), thus I told God if he wanted me elsewhere he had to stop me. Went to sign-up. They said I had high blood pressure (I hadn’t had high blood pressure ever before). A week later, I tore my ACL in my left knee playing basketball. That was that. They didn’t want me anymore.

God told me he wanted me elsewhere. But where?

Lurking depression raged. I couldn’t find a job in my field, and I was fairly certain I didn’t want a job in that field. What to do? Get a job that paid the bills. That’s not a bad plan. Raging depression raged, tearing apart my insides, my motivation, my hopes.

I couldn’t live to just pay the bills. There was something more to life.

There had to be something more, something that would explain the path God took me on from 1993 to 2003, which contained wonderful opportunities mixed with God’s heavy hand of shaping and guiding, putting up walls in every direction, shutting doors for me that were opened to others. Enlightening me to the glory of God’s identity, squelching my ability to celebrate this in community, or with myself, or with God. It was a dark night of the soul.

Dark nights, one hopes, make for bright mornings.

In 2003, darkness still sought to consume me. Now Patrick was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep. The Spirit of God was hovering over the waters. The waters were not still, they were a tempest.

There was a crossroads. Stay in Pasadena. Get a job. Try to keep up with other people who were trying to keep up. Try to be rational and responsible. I tried that for a little while.

I was on a date when I realized I had hit another wall. She was nice, but the evening was horrible, horrible in an entirely polite way. Boring. It wasn’t her (well maybe a little bit of it was). It was me, mostly. I was bored with who I was on that date. I was utterly bored with myself, with my prospects, with my setting. I was broke, faced with working in order to fund my boring reality to keep up with others who were entirely boring to me. Everyone was playing a game, a game to seem more interesting, to seem adventurous, to eat fine meals and be at fine places.

Beneath the surface, there was emptiness, boringness. Everyone was anonymous. So was I.

Depression split the sinews of my soul.

I began to write. Between applying for jobs I hated the prospect of getting. A degree in ministry really isn’t all that helpful to other vocations. Sales jobs were available. I did a sales job before. Despised it. Despised myself in it. I couldn’t do sales again. I wanted life to matter. I wanted to find light. To offer something of worth. I wanted to live, not just exist. I wrote of those things. I wrote stories.

Those stories were not about me, but they were. They tapped into hidden or disguised longings. The process of writing was the only effective anti-depressant. I felt possible after I wrote. I felt alive. For a moment, a flash, until the seeping depression reminded me of all my failings and frustrations.

A road was before me. Rent was due. I had missed rent the month before. I had a gracious roommate, but could not make him bear the burden of my confusion. Get a job that I hated but paid rent. Or… or…

I turned 29 in October of 2003. I left Pasadena. I moved in with my parents. They lived in the mountains, in a forest. My mom was sick and could use some help. So, there was some other practical reasons.

There were also very impractical reasons. I wanted to write. To find what was right. “I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.”

Near the end of October, the forest caught fire.

Something I wrote exactly 9 years ago (three 3s of years ago), back when I was keeping a daily journal:

April 26th, 2004
morning
» Posted  at 7:52 am
Some nights I enjoy sleeping. Last night was one of those, where it was delightful to pull the covers over myself, and fade away. It was restful, delightful, and waking up to a sunny Spring morning is delectable. Slight haze covers the rising sun, birds sing and fly around, new sounds (babies?) emerge from the branches, as do small red leaves from the more lively oaks. A chipmunk waves its tail as it basks in the morning light atop the woodpile, resting for a moment before moving on. This is going to be a warmer day, a taste of summer for a moment.

I realized yesterday that churches remind me a great deal of dating. Having committed I stay committed, only with difficulty breaking away. Bad experiences turn me off to the whole quest for a long while, though once I again explore, I enjoy it. To stay where it is not comfortable is often said to be a matter of commitment. That can be true, not always. Sometimes we should not stay in abusive or degrading situations, nor even stay where the fit is not right. Because a church exists does not demand our commitment. The commitment goes both ways, and we must learn to find that which fits our giving and our receiving. God never calls us to endure hardship without cause, the spiritual life is not one which assumes our unhappiness. Yes there are moments of sacrifice, moments of humility. No one has, however, ever benefited from following the lead of a fool or the lost. This is the importance of discernment, there are no set rules, only the rule of obedience to Christ and the Spirit, whose leadership is fluid.

Today I ponder my life, and the wrestlings of another with similar questions about Church, though in a significantly different place.

I wonder what I could have done in the past, how I could have fought to overcome the difficulties which seemed to bind me. Or, I consider whether the difficulties were not to be overcome because they were the hand of God steering me in a certain direction. Sometimes fighting against the issues which assail is fighting against the God who brings the issues. Until we hit the heart of the problems, return to the proper path, our fight is not a noble one. Hard to tell, for discernment in the situation is the only guide.

So, I continue to ponder, continue to debate myself, thinking I am on the right path, though feeling confused why the path is unfamiliar and not freeing. Yet, I continue on, not trusting myself, only the compass I have been given.

And learn to keep at the tasks at hand, while enjoying the beauty all around.

April 26th, 2004
evening
» Posted  at 9:53 pm

Unseasonably warm. That is what the news people said. Times like these are when I value my mountain life more, for last year I had to endure summer temperatures without the cool breeze, or without even an air conditioner. It was bad for my mind. Now, here, unseasonable does not mean unbearable. Much better for my mind.

When the pines were being cut down, the cutters did an admirable job keeping the collateral damage to a minimum. Small saplings underneath huge dead pines survived, the yard is filled with Spring growth. There was one accident. A large section of trunk was supposed to go one way, towards the street. It veered. The several hundred pound section sheared the side of a twenty foot fir, and split a seven foot tall black oak right down the middle. Once they were done cleaning I tried to do what I could, feeling sorrow for the trees. Life is always important, I think. There is more than a little bit of Ent in me.

I got some stuff which covers the wounds, and some special arbor wrap to put around broken branches. The fir was not badly damaged, just a few branches taken off. I covered the open wounds, and know it will be fine. The oak I had my doubts about. I did major surgery, wrapping the trunk after pulling it back together. Only a foot of it was not split. I wrapped some branches as well, restoring them as well I could. My hope was I got to it quick enough, and it would be able to manage.

Today, it was full of new red leaves, bud exploding with new growth. It isn’t the most vibrant of the oaks about, but the fact that it still lives is a miracle. It is a delight, and I pray it will be so for a very long while.

This was not my most succesful day. I try to have a list of what I want to get done, and have both a goal and a minimum. Today, I got done the minimum. I’m not sure why. Distractions, minor irritations, other tasks of import which took time away from my usual.

I feel like I am wrestling with new things, with new approaches, that a curtain has closed, and others are opening. And to be honest I’m not sure how I feel. This is not where I wanted to be at this point in my life, though maybe it is where I need to be.

Part of the trouble is there is no rest really. Unlike a regular monastic life I do not have either a vow nor a long term commitment, each day is one in which I feel I must prove myself, to try and forge a way. So, I have no ability to settle back and just be, no calm in which I relax. Well, not really. There are aspects which I do embrace, but it is not deep within my soul, the meditations are just enough to keep me from losing my way entirely.

There would be peace to know I have years to spend, but I do not know. I do not know the path, so I try and manage for all sorts of possibilities, keeping all options open, and thus not purely focused on any. Yet, I feel a certain sense of purpose. Something is driving me different, something has changed. I cannot yet grasp what it is, and feel uneasy and hopeful all at the same time.

In the experience of Christ, the resurrection gathers all people into the power of the messianic moment even now, as such people live in the light of the Spirit’s in-breaking of history. “Only the love which passionately affirms life understands the relevance of this hope, because it is through that that this love is liberated from the fear of death and the fear of losing its own self.”^[1]

Rather than losing one’s own self, thus always anxious about the encroaching identity of others, feeling vulnerable and fragmented, thus easily subverted, the person who lives in the light of the resurrection is secure in their identity as being alive in Christ. The substance of Christ gives substance to each person, securing their future as participants with the open fellowship of God. This security frees people to live with openness in their particular contexts.

“The resurrection hope,” Moltmann writes, “makes people ready to live their lives in love wholly, and to say a full and entire Yes to a life that leads to death. It does not withdraw the human soul from bodily, sensory life; it ensouls this life with unending joy.”^[2]

We can say yes to death only in light of resurrection hope, which allows us to no longer fear death nor be determined by false forms of identity that we think might protect us from death.

“In this resurrection dialectic, human beings don’t have to try to cling to their identity through constant unity with themselves, but will empty themselves into non-identity, knowing that from this self-emptying they will be brought back to themselves again for eternity.”^[3]

…

The identity that Christ promises to his people, then, substantiates each particular person as a particular subject in God’s particular mission. They do not lose their identity, becoming a drone in a collective, rather the promise of resurrection is a process of becoming in full who a person was always intended to be.

The hope in God is hope in one’s own future in which identity is secured and blossoms into fullness. The resurrection leads a person past the work of the cross, in which history and the past finds resolution, and into the future where a person can truly be who they are in the community of others who are similarly becoming.

“Communion with Christ,” Moltmann writes, “the new being in Christ, proves to be the way for man to become man. In it, true human nature emerges, and the still hidden and unfulfilled future of human nature can be sought in it.”^[1]

The goal of much oppression, to secure one’s own identity and power and position—to secure one’s self in a particular context and project one’s security into the future—invariably leads to death, and thus dissolution of that goal. That was the earliest deception of sin, the taking of the fruit to assert one’s own identity and bypassing God.

Only the way of the cross includes the path to resurrection, and only by participating with the crucified God do we then have a substantive hope for not only salvation from but indeed and more importantly, salvation into.

This salvation into includes those ultimate goals for which oppressing tends to be concerned—issues of fulfillment, identity formation, security. Because the cross entails the loss of identity, the resurrection is about more than resuscitation of that old identity into becoming a more successful version of the same.

Jesus does not valorize who we were but awakens us to new possibilities in accordance with who we were always meant to be. “For freedom,” Moltmann writes, “is nothing else than being open for the genuine future, letting oneself be determined by the future.” Yet, while the Spirit of resurrection can thus be called the power of the future, the resurrection is not futuram but an advent, a novum of new life, a new way of living.

This new way of living involves participating not in our determinative future but participating in Christ, “from the knowledge and recognition of that historic event of the resurrection of Christ which is the making of history and the key to it.”^[3] The cross opens a person up to be a new person, emptying and forsaking, the resurrection is the promise of filling, of new life.

Thus, the resurrection “means recognizing in this event the latency of that eternal life which in the praise of God arises from the negation of the negative, from the raising of the one who was crucified and the exaltation of the one who was forsaken.”^[4]

Hope is not static. Hope initiates movement.

This was a couple of  wee excerpts from my dissertation

So, I haven’t been able to run for a while. Since September.

It’s my fault.

Obedience is better than sacrifice, the prophet Samuel said to then-King Saul. It’s true.

I hurt my foot running. Not sure what exactly I did but that’s when it started hurting. I got some of those vibram fivefinger shoes early in 2012. Between an REI voucher and a good sale, I got them for free. And I started using them soon after.

We were house sitting the first half of 2012. It was a house in a hilly neighborhood that was not far from a large hilly county park. That makes for some of my favorite runs. Ups and downs, from the house to the trails. Downs and ups and downs and ups, from the trails to the house. A mix of incline and decline, some relatively steep inclines and more gentle declines. About 4 mile loop. The shoes were great. No problems at all from the time I started using them. A few times a week and I was a happy dissertation writer. A wonderful run. Loved it.

We moved at the end of July. Almost directly north of the hilled home. To the bottom of the hill. But the roads being what they are, the 4 mile run became a 7 mile run. The move being what it was, I had packing and unpacking and arranging to do. The weather being what it was, it was hot! About 3 weeks of 100+ degree days.

Running is a release, mentally and physically, so I missed it, body and soul. My three times a week dropped to zero times a week.

I missed running. It had been a few months. So, I went running. Same shoes.

The ups and downs, ups and downs became long ups and long downs rather than a nice mix. Four miles became 7 miles. A challenge I felt I needed to face. To get back into motion.

The most difficult stretch is a run up a long steep hill. The house we had was about halfway up, so I’d run up half at the beginning, half at the end.

Now it was all in one shot.

The run started great. It was nice to be out. About 3/4 the way up the hill, about 2 miles into the run, my left foot started hurting. I thought I was sore. Had to keep going. The pain got worse. Got to the top of the hill and it was hurting so bad I had to stop and walk. It hurt to walk. I walked a bit, then started running again, ignoring the pain, ignoring the signals my body was giving me.

I finished the run, all seven miles of it, but the last mile I could only walk. Each step was very painful. I said to myself, I’m so out of shape, I’m a wuss. Meanwhile, my foot was telling me all sorts of things. When the pain started, my foot told me, I should have stopped running and walked home right away.

It was a weird pain. I’ve sprained my ankle numerous times, stubbed my toes on countless occasions. This wasn’t those. It hurt on the top of my foot whenever I bent my toes. The Vibram shoes force a person to run differently, to no longer run on their heels, but to run on their toes, like humans do when barefoot. I found out it’s something that can happen when a person pushes too much at the beginning of using them. The foot isn’t ready. I thought because I had run before I was ready.

It had been a long time. The run was different. The run was longer. None of that mattered to me. I didn’t care if it mattered to my foot.

I had the goal, the goal was all, something to prove to myself, and maybe post on Facebook that I was back at running and a harder run at that. Hurting to run became hurting to walk. Walking became limping, limping the last mile stretch and 1/4 mile up my gravel driveway to the house.

It wasn’t that I was just out of shape, I realized.

I should have listened to my foot when it started hurting, when I was getting all the warning signals that despite my intentions and goals, the way of obedience was for me not to run as much as I did, or the way I did.

That was early September or so. In mid-October my foot wasn’t hurting. I sometimes felt sore but I could jog a bit. I wanted to run. I wanted to get my body in motion, to do something besides staring at a computer screen, typing long sentences and preparing for constant classes.

I put my regular running shoes on, my heavier, black traction-control shoes. Didn’t want to run seven miles, or even a couple of miles. I did sprints up and down the quarter mile gravel driveway.

My foot hurt a bit. Enough to feel it. I ran out of breath and ran out of energy went inside. My foot hurt more and more over the next few hours, then the next few days and has been hurting fairly consistently since then. Standing and teaching doesn’t help. When I walk fast it hurts more.

I’m not going to try to run again for a long time. I’m not even walking fast. My intentions to prove something to myself, to get myself into motion, came at the cost of my foot. Now I realize if I push it again too early, I might cause some pretty serious damage.

I’m pretty sure it’s a strained tendon on the top of my foot. Could be a hairline fracture but I don’t think so as the pain is more general. I lost my good insurance last summer and now have what is really only for emergencies. So, I haven’t had it looked at. This isn’t an emergency. It’s just a frustration.

I should have listened to my foot instead of listening to my goals and listening to that incomplete part of myself that wanted to prove something. I had angst and anxiety from an overload of tasks and I wanted to run. Good reasons and not so good reasons.

Because I pushed it so much, because I didn’t listen on that first day, and then the day in October, I ruined what could have been more gentle runs, less pressing, less breaking, just as invigorating. In trying to do too much, I broke what little I could do. Now I can’t run at all. I can’t walk fast. I can’t go hiking. All the outdoors adventures that were balms to a parched soul, are now put on hold.

Obedience is better than sacrifice. That’s what the prophet Samuel said to King Saul.

I think a lot of ministry is like this too. People want to serve God. They want to prove something to themselves and to others. Good reasons and bad reasons. They force situations and over-extend, straining and breaking, pushing themselves beyond the point at which they should stop. Pushing themselves because they think that’s what needs to be done, something needs doing, someone has to do it. Sacrifice is more self-validating than obedience.

Then it strains, breaks. What might have been a good – a calling – a way in obedience no longer is possible. They burn out, burn out others, interfere in the calling.

Like my left foot. I’ll get back to running someday, but it might take a year because I’m not willing to re-injure it. And I’m worried, honestly worried, that it’s something that is going to bother me the rest of my life.

I should have listened when my foot said to stop. I wasn’t obedient. It was a meaningless sacrifice.

I’m increasingly thinking that the all too common charge of consumerism is missing the real issue.

Consumerism is a symptom, but not the only one of what I think is the deeper problem

The problem isn’t that we idolize stuff. The problem is that we are our own idols.

The stuff becomes the offerings we give to ourselves. We are both the idol and the altar.

We think we are owed such stuff by some perceived inherent status.

It’s not just stuff.

People who aren’t into all the stuff are into acclaim, or influence, or telling others what to do, or thinking themselves the judge of what others are doing.

We are our own idols, and expect the world and the firstfruits of it, to acknowledge our status.

We say we worship God, but we’re always there in front, each of us a golden calf that we worship and want others to worship.

We say we deserve it. So much that we’ll treat others badly or dismiss them if they don’t respond.

There are whole cults like this.

It’s the cult where everyone is their own self-idol and create contexts where they encourage others to be a self-idol as well.

Worship me. That’s what we say to ourselves as we present offerings aplenty to satisfy our inner demands.

It’s a work day.

I’m at work trying to write an article on holiness, even though I’m entirely burned out with writing. It’s due on Tuesday.

Here’s a hawk, at work looking for dinner.

A hummingbird notices and pays a visit.

Christ, whose glory fills the skies,
Christ, the true, the only light,
Sun of Righteousness, arise,
Triumph o’er the shades of night;
Dayspring from on high, be near;
Daystar, in my heart appear.

Dark and cheerless is the morn
Unaccompanied by thee;
Joyless is the day’s return,
Till thy mercy’s beams I see;
Till they inward light impart,
Glad my eyes and warm my heart.

Visit then this soul of mine;
Pierce the gloom of sin and grief;
Fill me, Radiancy divine,
Scatter all my unbelief;
More and more thyself display,
Shining to the perfect day.

“Christ, Whose Glory Fills the Skies”
by Charles Wesley
who would be 305 years old today.