8.06.2006

blog# 21 - time to evolve past pooh

an of aged blog

time to extinguish accusations of poots and speculations of secretions
the deep rooted dogma in me is like darth vader
everyone wants to be him right?
I don’t want to be a VADER
His half dead scorched flesh tangled with technology
A messy bag of bolts and force capacity
And the breathing
Every breath pounding on his armor shell gasping for real air a natural breath!
Yeah I used to make fun of the spiritual more charismatic tendencies of other parts of the church… called people “JESUS JEDIS”
Sign me up
I have been like VADER
I been like EUSTACE (see VOYAGE OF THE DAWN TREADER)
EUSTACE a (literary)rat human child transformed by selfish greed into a wounded dragon
A dragon with flaking scales
Saved by one he mocked
THE ONE

So this post is a bit of coming of age for misadventuresofpooh
Potty trained
No more pooh
Going deeper
Pooh was an ice-breaker…

Time to be a history maker
Be closer to THE ONE
Be like the one
Rid myself of the dragon scales and droid made armor
Stop being a CHRISTIAN who only talks to GOD about the bad stuff of me
Time to dump the bad
Rid my being of baseless beliefs
I find my self asking the same questions my young summer soccer players ask that I do not for fear of being perceiving me as a heretic (I think the illusion of what I think other people are thinking of me will be in a blog soon…)

STAY WITH ME HERE!

Stop letting my flesh and gray matter dictate 99.9% of my existence
My life has been like VADER BREATHING and I am gasping for capacity
The SOUL KIND
And asking the question the psalmist asks:

psalm 24.3-5
who can climb MOUNT GOD?
who can scale the HOLY NORTH FACE?
only the clean-handed,
only the pure-hearted,
men who won't cheat,
women who won't seduce.

GOD is at their side;
with GOD's help they make it...

(from the MESSAGE)

it is deepen into the afternoon and i have not rested
it is a positive restlessness
weary eyes, shaking flesh
yet deeper composed
refining and revelation
two powerful words
one whole experience

summer soccer has been going on for months
young players restless with soccer
played kick ball
just having the field set up differently stirred the kids
a bit of change and yeah you can use your hands

i really struggled to come up with something KINGDOM
to talk about with the young students
my talker doesn't always work the best and so i like to prepare
so my mind and mouth are connected and prepared
honestly sought a WORD for HIS youngins
nothing
but it wasn't an uncomfortable nothing
something would happen

circled the students up
they tackled me
impressive teamwork
now for next week i can use my knockdown as a lesson of teamwork and one purpose: to knock mr. mark on his @**

so they are winded
woke up from summer time sleepin in
winded and yet wide eyed
waiting

still no fancy child-oriented-theology lessons or KID KINGDOM REVELATIONS
i request the students to quiet down and announce i am going to pray
ask some open-ended questions about prayer...

PRAYER: a youngling at church exclaimed: "GOD doesn't talk back to me!"

ooohhhhh.....there is the SOMETHING!
how does GOD talk to us?

an OPEN OPEN OPEN conversation
unmuddled by my theological agenda for the next generation
an open conversation
a KINGDOM CONVERSATION
my nothing
some JESUS something SOMETHING

"GOD doesn't talk back to me!"
a loaded statement
a question better than any answer i could ask the students

so the conversation:
"how does GOD talk to us"
full scope of student experiences and observations:
dreams
trees falling after getting struck with lightning "i think GOD was telling us we need to chop that tree down"
"my grandma ran out of gas on the side of the road and she prayed and then she turned her car on and made it to a gas station"

review those three:
dreams: PROPHECY & PERCEPTION
lightning: PROVIDENTIAL
gas: MIRACLE

ok we are missing one
me: “give ya a hint, starts with a “B”
the BIBLE
so yeah it is just a book of a bunch of middle-eastern people’s experience of GOD
no it is GOD’s WORD

the BIBLE thing has been getting me lately
kind of BIBLE BURNED OUT a bit ago
but now I am starved
part of me has atrophied

standing in front of those kids
reinforced all of their experiences
and with an atrophied soul-mind
flat out preached to them

GOD SPEAKS TO US THROUGH THE BIBLE
THEY ARE HIS WORDS NOT MANS
WORDS FOR US

The word of GOD is LIVING
Written a very long time ago but for today
It takes some imagination to comprehend the big idea of the BIBLE being LIVING
Told them that young ones like them have a greater capacity to imagine and that an imagination lead by the HOLY SPIRIT allows one to start to wrap their minds around the big ideas that are stumbling blocks to us cynical adults stressed out but bills and all the other rat race obstacles

Their eyes were still wide eyed and they had questions
It was a heavy moment so I asked them what they had for breakfast because at least I needed some space for this significant moment

…what did I learn? That moments, that questions like today impact
our future
their future
they did not walk away with all the right answers
they heard a great question
a scary question
a question that lead to SOMETHING
some Jesus SOMETHING

to be continued…..