IDENTITY

Let me tell you about myself in an attempt for you to know me better. In an attempt to pull back the curtains and look inside my being to know a bit more about who I am.

To begin, I will tell the story of the atom. The atom is the foundation of all pertinent matter in this universe of ours (to say nothing of nothingness and dark matter). Suffice it to say, nothing physically present in space exists without them. Atoms unite to form molecules, molecules unite to form compounds and all things are thus held together. Since Grecian times humans have known (or at least, posited to that end) atoms to exist and in our estimation of them our knowledge has grown from thinking them to be small, hard ball bearings to the infinitesimally complicated little universes we now know them to be. They are physically present yet displaying metaphysical tendencies. They are immutable and unsquishable; they are bound by immense attractions and charges; their predilection to holding fast to one another can hardly be severed and given the right circumstances, they contain within their minute bodies potential energy capable of leveling the earth. And yet, there they are floating in your bloodstream, composing the very grey matter of your brain and linking arms to form the layered, spherical substrate you walk on – the Earth.

They are nothing short of miraculous.

And it doesn’t stop there. Bear with me, because this is important. Atoms are made of three things, in general: protons, neutrons and electrons. Protons and neutrons, like the nucleus of a cell, are tightly bound together in the center of the atom and give it its mass. The proton is charged positively, the neutron is neutrally charged and to balance it out is the negatively charged electron cloud. So you’ve got a weighty center being orbited by a hyperactive cloud of electrons. But here’s the thing: scale.  

The scale of the atom is unbelievably vast.

Atoms are already small. Like, millions fitting together on the head of a pin small. And yet, within themselves they are even smaller. The nucleus is 2,000 times heavier than the electrons surrounding it (think 2,000 elephants versus 1 elephant), yet that same tiny, heavy nucleus is 100,000 times smaller than the electrons surrounding it.

100,000 times!

To put this in perspective, it’s as if the nucleus of an atom is the sun of our solar system and the electrons buzz around a spherical path on the outskirts beyond Pluto – but that sun is 2,000 less massive than Pluto! Can you imagine?

A tiny sphere maybe a 1/3 mile around you could walk in 6 minutes spinning in the middle of a solar system in which there is nothing but emptiness for decades and decades until you come to a thin, minute screen of negatively-charged, hyper-fast buzzing force way out on the edges.

All of that space and nothingness exists right now in every atom composing your existence. Every atom, to last trillion billionth in your very eyeball as you read, is full of empty space more vast than the space in our very solar system.

It’s true.

Selah. (That’s a Hebraic word for “take a breath, praise God, pause.”)

So that’s where I come in. What do I have to do with an atom? Who am I and what is an atom to me?

It’s Jesus Christ in me that I mean to talk about, or rather, my faith in the Way of Jesus, the carpenter-Jew from Nazareth who claimed to be the Son of God and whom the disciples and early church claimed rose from the dead, many even claiming to have seen it with their own eyes.

I have, by the power of the very breath of God, put my faith in the ridiculous claims of this Christ. I have staked my eternal soul on them in fact, so much so that my identity has been fundamentally changed.

“It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me, ” to quote Paul of Tarsus.

What this means for me and for the atom is simply this: my identity in Christ is my nucleus. It is my mass and weight, my very substance and stabilizing force. Who I am now is because of the person and work of Jesus Christ. I am forgiven of my sinful condition, I am adopted into God’s family, I am no longer at enmity with God, my Father. My heart no longer beats for my own life but for the lives of those around me, my soul yearns for the liberation of the oppressed, for mercy to be shown to the merciless and the penniless and the loveless and my being longs to extoll the goodness and joyfulness I have found in Christ to all living creatures, human and otherwise, in every ghetto, every city.

My identity is comprised of these weighty, heavenly bodies: protons and neutrons tightly bound together in my center.

This means that all other identities, then, float busily around and above my core, like that electron cloud spinning out past all that empty space. My sexual preferences, my talents, my desires, my fears, my future hopes, my job, my familial roles – anything else that might “define” me is, necessarily, insignificant when compared to my core. In fact, it is all able to be lost to me. It is dead in comparison to my core. I have died and am an altogether new thing in Christ.

But hear, insignificant does not mean meaningless. Remember it is the electron cloud which allows the atom to bond to other atoms. The electrons, in equal number to the weighty protons within, balance out the atom and allow it to connect to others. And yet the electrons can only connect because they are counterbalanced by the core of positivity, which holds it all together in proper tension!

What a metaphor!

My center has given my identity a new job to do. Whereas once my identity was self-focused, concerned with purely the exultation and satisfaction of my identities, my wants and desires, it is no longer. My purpose has changed. My charge has changed. My core is Christ.

Oh my soul, praise Him.

Thoughts on On the Road, pt. 2: March Run

I'm reading On the Road for the first time in acknowledgement of its great American, racing, literary heartbeat. I thought it would be fun to post some of my thoughts as I go. – – – – – –

I wanted to see the sun as it set so as soon as I could don-off the work trappings and deadline woes of the day I did so and set off at a trot in a sleeveless shirt to greet the night breezes that were surely coming. March had come that year like a bashful boy at a dance, cautiously waiting for a pretty girl to make herself available With every courageous warm advancement, he didn’t know if old Wintress might snap in and give him a cold No, but today he was feeling hearty and sure. Aware of his confidence I stepped on out, too, eager to dance myself.

For severe minutes of suburban blocks my body cried out in revolt (I had been sluglike and work-worn with it for a good two weeks), but when I crested the top of a grassy rise and I saw the grinning March sunset I got myself back together and went on in confidence. Down a dusty hill and across the road, I ran up a great flag-poled forested hill and then climbed a tree so to see the last winks of sun. I peered over the miles of house peaks and tree-streets and there was that old March sunset, making tracks down below the earth. A bit satisfied, I stood up on my branch to get a look around me and behind my tree I was met with three great circles of dog-training masters, short-leashed pure Worldbred dogs yipping and lazing and hopping with dog joy. I grinned at their weaving-around community, the playing of it all, and at the kindest grey-haired man who talked so softly to the animals, warming the mean ones with a gentle muzzle touch. I looked down from my tree boughs and a quiet madame with two stately flowing dogs stopped and stared up at me and then over across the hill and miles off to the sun, now setting for sure, a great shaking orange gleam behind the glass horizon of the city. “It’s huge tonight” she offered, and I agreed for sure. When the sun went down and the sky brought out its neons and pinks I started to walk. Down a horse trail I passed a stock-still old mean hound who looked me right square in the eyes and if he was a man he would have cursed my life and taken it right then and there. But the Hispanic teenage boy held him true with a steel collar fit for a criminal and I slinked on by, staring right back. In the cool woods I pondered the snakes coming out of their sliding holes and the skittering things back in the thickets made me turn and turn again. A wise owl hooted and it was just a bird after all, but I wanted truly to see a good old coyote grizzle his lean self across my path. Alone instead, I came back to the buzzing dusk traffic street and as I crossed I wondered if any window passed me with a knowing look, a lonesome look and friendsome look. I peered through the glass as they shot by me but no one looked back, so I made my bobbing way up the next hill. The creek was finally breathing out cold woodsy airs and I passed by refreshed as I came upon the night practicing of some sport well-lit up in a concrete court. The young neighborhood kids batted at something while their parents idled at the curb, burning gas and reading books. I wondered if I’d ever have the parent-patience to sit inside a car on so great a night as that one.

Thinking heavy thoughts with every plodding step I nearly got hit by a red-lighting blue truck careening by, window down and a good old father making his way home to wife and babe for an American meal somewhere in my old neighborhood. Funny thing was, I didn’t even need to cross the street, but there I was thinking of those waiting parents and that old March sunset. I then perked up along the safe sidewalk and there it was: every good old dinner-time smell, every roasted and chicken-fried thing, every meat-loafed and potatoed plate brimming heavy in bright rooms, windows down and good-evening sounds streaming in and smells streaming out. Before I knew it I was back to my own orange puddle of streetlight and wouldn’t you know I passed right by that self-same blue truck, windows up and driver in-house. No lights in my house and no one home. Spring had come at last and I went in to open the windows.

Thoughts on On The Road, pt. 1: The American Way

I'm reading On the Road for the first time in acknowledgement of its great American, racing, literary heartbeat. I thought it would be fun to post some of my thoughts as I go. 

–  –  –  –  –  –

What a mad, lusty adventure Jack Kerouac went on – I see how the generations of the young in our country have read him with a fire in their breasts too – how they, too, wanted to course along the wide beautiful land of America and find their meaning and joy and purpose in its freedoms and its open roads, its great big stars and lonely cold nights.

But I cant help but wonder at the men who built those roads. The immigrants who laid the railroad. What did they dream about? What hope did they have?

In the commercial light of pluralistic freedom and democratic dreams, we look back with joy and warmth at that America, nostalgia-driven steam-powered dreams of altruism and slave-free historiography. We can sleep comfortably with that history and tread those roads with a deserving joy. But the very asphalt upon which we drive in our excesses and wide-eyes was laid with labor and sweat. Thankless, breakless labor done by nameless masses of lean, hungry men toiling across the native soils of other peoples, poring over their labors for meager pay and a mouthful of food. Did they envision the commerce of a future America rumbling ceaseless across the works of their hands? Did they see full families headed to the coast? Laden with skis? Truck after truck full of commodities and lettuces, refrigerated stuffs and limitless sundry wastes?

Their bones are the ribs of the roads and their sweat mingled with the soils of the American dream weaving and marauding Westward.

Love and country, origin and future they sacrificed for entitled us to sojourn out into the stars to see what’s in our own flimsy souls under the sky, before the great crashing ocean. We both dream – ours a luxury, theirs a necessity.   

Despair & Light In New Mexico

From my journal. I hope this encourages you as it indeed encourages me.


Eagle Nest, NM

Dec. 28, 2013

I'm sitting on the upper deck in the frigid morning air watching the Wheeler Peak range glow as the sun, still unseen behind the lesser peaks over my left shoulder, casts its warmth on its rise.

I am thinking of despair and hopelessness and being buried by our broken and faithless world. And these thoughts, as you may guess, hinder me from enjoying the splendor of my freezing fingers and funky coffee on the {sic} New Mexico morning.

And so I'm beginning to learn that I have a choice.

I can choose to succumb to hopeless distraction, colorless woes; or I can choose faith. Yes, faith is God-given but Jesus all the time admonishes & convicts his disciples to "have faith", one time castigating them as "Ye of little faith." So clearly we are the active agent in utilizing (or not) our faith within us. We are not passive socks full of a faith only useful when God decides to use us - in His wild, magnificent plan He's put the keys in our hand and said "trust in me" and now "drive."

So I must choose to drive and choose to trust the verse that tells me God has planned good works for me to walk in. I am to rely on my faith in the truth of this grand fact and walk in confidence and without worry in whatever places He has for me to go.

OR I can choose fear & anxiety, letting the darkness of the world bind me in inactive passivity and ultimately in selfish angst, sinful indulgence; "Well, it's all shit, may as well get mine and pray for change." THAT is certainly not how Jesus meant for His bride to live.

His people are more than conquerors, vibrant world-changers, patient as rocks and steadfast as the mountains. We are to abound in grace and overflow in unselfishness, to befriend outcast and poor, widow and orphan. Meek in spirit, humble in nature, strong in faith and joyful in living. We laugh as we trudge, we suffer with whom suffering has come and rejoice at what is good.

But above all we have chosen to live in light of this: Jesus Christ is the hope of the world and in His resurrection we find life to the full and seek for as many as can to know Him and His life also. To place my faith HERE, I have chosen; to live out my fleeting, human shuffling-of-a-life with this as the leitmotif through it all, learning to let it color my every breath and my every doing, for my joy and for God's glory. 

What is this Sept. 25th?

From my journal:

This morning an aerial host of elegant white threads went soaring aloft as a certain species of spider sent itself into the heavens to be carried by the coming fall winds and live wherever the breezes happened to carry them. Looking up, some alighted in the tops of trees, the roofs of cars, the line of a fence. Vince Guaraldi's "Cast Your Fate to the Wind" comes to mind, though it's more like, "Trust your Future" to the wind - God's wind. He's at work and may send me anywhere. Like a spider's strand I am subject to His mercy and His good plan, and I may land just where I started or I may rest miles away; but above all I know Him whose hand casts me onward and He is good, He is trustworthy, He is loving, He will provide.

As I look up I see the gossamer strands dancing in the bright morning breezes hundreds of feet up, twisting and flowing, drifting and billowing; dancing. So I, too, shall enjoy the dance.

Justice Conference 2013: Post-Thoughts and Pending Thoughts

Hey avid readers -

Just got done with the conference and I will be posting and re-capping soon.

Suffice it to say, this conference has found my friend Ben and I more mature and more practically inspired by the wise and encouraging words of endurance, faithfulness, tenacity and consistent righteousness.

We labor and pine that this burgeoning Justice movement - starting in the church and flowing outward - is more than a fad and that we remember the tireless and thankless labor of our forefathers and mothers.

We are the most over-rated generation in the history of humanity. We are extraordinarily entitled and living in a culture of conflated self-worth. The call of Christ to die to self can be grossly rewritten into a self-centered rhapsody of our own 'selflessness' while we exploit the very ones we claim to serve, all in the name of Jesus; this is a scary thing.

There is so much potential in us. So much energy and labor and creativity. We are so wealthy and we are so able. Let us reclaim our neighborhoods, live amongst the needy, pour out our time and limited funds like water, pray without ceasing and love without reciprocation.

For now I leave this conversation, lest I bore everyone with a burden of helplessness. Christ's yoke is easy, after all, and His burden light. More later. Goodnight.

Justice Conference 2013: Day 1 Thoughts, Part 1

(There may or may not be a part II. I have hopes and notes.)

Today was day 1 of the conference - I attended the pre-conference and the actual 1st day of the conference itself. 7.30 am till 9.30 pm of learning, listening and pondering.

For now, I'll talk about what I've gleaned so far.

I learned in Session 1 that justice is not sexy but it is beautiful, that it is the power of Christ, as Martin Luther King Jr. said, to 'make a way out of no way' and to be 'a balm in Gilead for the sin-sick soul,' that Jesus has been to Mordor and back and that Dietrich Bonhoeffer, like me, wrestled through doubts about who he even was, fundamentally torn between an imprisoned, light-longing soul and a supposed lover of the Truth.

I learned in Session 2 not to pity the Congo but to labor and seek for its beauty to be realized, to intercede for reconciliation at the tribal level and to download a helpful and practical app for saving money to be used for small but important charity victories called Forgo.

I learned in Session 3 from a Chinese-American lover of Philly named Laurence that scarcity leads to clarity and reveals my priorities, that suburbs are good at hiding the poverty they contain in larger numbers than most cities, that the changing urban world requires unity among Believers and that unity requires sacrifice of self motivated by a Grace that 'breaks the seams and redraws boundaries beyond the familiar.'

I learned in Session 4 from the man who started One Day's Wages just how exactly I might go about putting action to my dreams and hands to work to create my vision, that I, like him, suffer from the "messianic complex" that I and I alone must do all and save all, and that our generation is "the most over-rated generation in human history," that our conflated sense of self, entitlement and wasted creative brilliance has us "languishing on the surface" of truly impactiul initiatives while lackimg the tenacity.

Then there was the poetry slam, some gospel, a tiny acoustic set by Michael Gungor and meeting a handful of the exhibitors. For now, day 1. I'm falling asleep already - we met up with several conferencers after the last session and then met even more new strangers-turned-friends on our walk back home. We keep things busy.