Buenos Aires Poem

The humid sun stands back and looks on behind the hopeful breeze of autumn.
The old glory of Buenos Aires curls up to sleep like the dogs on the street;
Fading like the old people in cafes;
Waiting like a rainbow under the poverty.

The flow of life drones on through the habitual dust.
Hear the accustomed cry of the street vendor and the train vendor and the trained child vendor and the ill-fated families who watch TV
Two blocks behind the tourist shops with their ponchos and their tango shows
And the rusty smell of the asados
Hear the cry of truth that has stumbled on the streets where no one goes.
Truth? I think I saw her once, old and worn, trying to rest in a doorway
While I waited for a bus home.
I paid her attention with a peso and she gave me a mate stained smile
And a few words about providence…

White Page

In a room papered with poetry

On a sofa warm and leathery

Before a hearth stacked with melancholy

Over a page of new white stationary

Is scrawled a story she knows is stupidity

There once was a girl with a head full of curls

and her feet firmly planted one in each of two worlds

As she curled up in bed the worlds wound round her head

she dreamt of a room papered with poetry

of a sofa warm and leathery

and on the hearth she stacked her melancholy

Watching her life burn gently away

Over a page of new white stationary

She wrote another

The Day Metallica Came to Church

At the end of the last post I ventured to suggest that church and the kingdom (domain) of God are not the same thing. This has got me thinking...

If God's kingdom cannot be contained by institution, that means that not everything in church is from God. Maybe I've been feeling so sick of it all because I've been consuming everything as a whole and the parts I was never supposed to digest have given me heartburn.

So if I ever venture back into organised religion I will be less shocked when I discover people who do not know God and will focus my energies on finding those who do.

I wonder if I'm brave enough to say that Satan has made it into the four walls of the church and God exists outside of them?

I have just discover a Canadian Pastor called John Van Sloten who has admitted to seeing God out in unreligious places. His book is called "The Day Metallica Came to Church" and a link to his sermon about Metallica is here:

http://www.youtube.com/user/newhopecalgary#p/u/69/rXaiCOFb3XE

A Break in the Clouds

Our train races between the fields and my little boy leans back into my arms. His body relaxes in complete trust. It feels almost as if it's me who's leaning into him; he's taking my weight, literally lifting the weight right off me. The sun flashes briefly from behind a cloud freezing the moment in my mind like a photo.

I treasure these moments. Children pull you up as well as wear you down. Since the birth of my fist son four years ago my husband and I have not left the house without them to spend time together.

Just now, I interrupted writing this to go outside with him to look at a meteor shower. It's one in the morning and the children are sleeping. We walked 10 meters from the house to edge of the park and gazed up at the few stars that were visible through the mottled clouds. Hand in hand. It was just a tiny moment of togetherness, but special as our hands are usually pushing pushchairs, or carrying shopping bags, or holding little hands. In that instance we remembered what it was like walking round Buenos Aires and Amsterdam when we had no children and no money; we remembered the future when the children will be grown and it will just be the two of us again. We didn't see any shooting stars, but somehow the three stars we could see through the clouds were enough...

Just as a few treasured moments are enough to sustain us and prevent us from falling into a life unnoticed.

The Underground Church of the West

The church through history has hurt more people than it has loved and won more wars than hearts. It's painful to think about; but it's history, right? We can't change it. What then do we do if we realise that today is tomorrow's history? That maybe there's still time to change it? Will the war in Iraq be viewed as we now see the Vietnam war in future years? Will the errors of the modern church become more evident in a couple of centuries?

I know that the underground church in the East undergoes real suffering. That it forced out of sight to preserve its freedom from the control of government run churches and to escape persecution.

My question is this: Does such a church exist in the west?

Not a people who undergo such extremes of suffering, as say those in China, but a people who have no home in the modern day church as it stands...

Freethinking Artists: In need of a loose structure and space to be themselves.

Seekers of genuine friendship: Tired of keeping up appearances.

The broken and damaged: Finding they are brushed under the carpet with textbook answers that provide little comfort.

The burnt out: Have served themselves dry and found that the church is disappointed that they lack the strength to continue.

Lovers of the world: Delight in the beauty of their existence and want to engage with the world they live in, have non-christian friends, burn barriers between religion and reality, sacred and secular.

Facilitators of Change: See the fresh movements of God's spirit in the world and want to follow without being held back by structure and tradition that lacks relevance.

I leave no space here for those who think that the world exists to revolve around them and that they have the right to put their feet up and have the church cater to their every need. I speak of those who want an outlet for their love. Who understand that God is love. Who know that where there is no love, there is no God. Those whose patience with loveless Christians who claim to know God has run dry; completely dry...

I believe that the kingdom of God can be stifled by institution. That when it is pushed down it bursts up in unusual places. That when it appears to have died; seeds will spring up. That it is unstoppable. However, there is one thing that it cannot be, and that is ugly. It cannot be brash, or gaudy, or selfish, or condemning, or false; saying one thing and thinking another. It cannot give and expect anything in return, or give and not enjoy doing so. It cannot, indeed, live without enjoying doing so.

I believe, sadly, that the church is not the same thing as the kingdom of God.

Something I wrote 10 years ago...

“I woke last night, slipping from one reality into a greater one. Dream logic so solid dissolved. Still, metaphors enlarge the conscious like life sometimes gives glimpses of a distant plane; looking back from which the logic of this world seems further removed than a dream from waking.

I had a dream once in which I knew I was dreaming.

All too few are these moments of awareness. More often now I sense these bubbles, wormholes to an overlapping reality, star-shaped windows to the other side of the universe. I try to catch one, but the process of study destroys it and the thin image never burns deep enough for memory or display. I therefore cannot relay these insights to others, or make them see, for they can only be known first hand.

The regret of not being able to hold them individually in the palm of my hand is relieved by knowing that these truths are not rare, but hiding in everyday. Invisible to earth-bound eyes they blanket the dusty ground we walk on and reflect the sunlight from our tears.”

My Last Great Epiphany...

I stand alone in the centre of a vast courtyard surrounded by ancient thick-hewn stone walls that tower up forever. I feel like a snail in an amphitheatre. There’s a tremor in the distance. The ground shakes as it comes closer. Rumbling turns to roaring; thick dust billows heavenwards as one by one the great walls scream down to the earth.

I awoke aware of the nearness of divinity. A nearness which quickly receded with the advancement of the days activities: It was 2004 and I was working for YWAM in Buenos Aires, one of dozens running around like mice in a poorly lit building in the city centre. During a prayer meeting that afternoon two individuals approached me. The first said she had seen a vision of my independence falling like a wall. The second saw an earthquake tear down the old temple walls, to make way for the new, the more glorious. These bible verses came to mind:

Haggai 2:6-9 In a little while I will once more shake the heavens and the earth…..

……..The future glory of this temple will be greater than its former glory.

Hebrews 12: 27-28 Once more I will shake not only the earth but the heavens. The words ‘once more’ indicate the removing of what can be shaken – that is created things – so that what cannot be shaken will remain.

As if in confirmation the previous week three people had prayed for me independently, each declaring in turn their belief that God had new things in store for me.

Well, of course, you can imagine how I felt: I thought I’d hit a spiritual jackpot. I was going to enter the inner circle of the truly spiritual. I had been chosen for a celestial make-over and I was going to be glorious, I was going to be the next big thing. Noah, Elijah, Saint Paul, ME. Truth is; the opposite happened.

When the dust settled I was a snail without its shell; a bird without its feathers; an actor without her lines. God’s idea of glorious is gloriously different to yours and mine. His aim was never to deck me out as a diamond studded super Christian. He wanted only to strip away layers of falsity to find the real me amongst the rubble. I was left shivering and dumb with nothing to hide behind. The exposure hurt, five years later I’m still hurting, my skin raw as if I’ve been turned inside out.

The mountain of certainty I’d spent years climbing is still nowhere to be seen. All I can see for miles around is dust. But when I stop and I kneel down and the sun comes out, I slowly become aware that the powdered reminder of my failed attempts at sainthood isn’t dust at all. It’s Gold. Then, inevitably, the sun slips behind a cloud of dust and I convince myself that that’s all there ever was.

Tolstoy wrote in his book Ana Karenina, “These joys were so trifling as to be as imperceptible as grains of gold among the sand, and in moments of depression she saw nothing but the sand; yet there were brighter moments when she felt nothing but joy, saw nothing but gold.”

Questions

Has the religion of Christianity (overall) made the world a better or a worse place?

How can I live radically without being extremist?

How can I think freely when I've already been told what to think?

If God is love why do Christians who don't manifest love claim to be his followers?

Why can't I bring myself to go back to church?

Why should you bother explaining your doctrines when I already know what you're going to say?

Why do artists have to ask questions?

Why should I be discipled by someone who I don't want to be like?

Why do I have to whisper these questions in a fake name?

If I went back to church after 3 years absence would they still be singing the same songs?

Is anyone else asking the same questions?

Why was the atmosphere in a Buddhist centre so peaceful?

Was I in the wrong religion?

Does writing down questions help you answer them?

Why do I feel like I'm 40 when I'm 28?

Why don't I read 'Mere Christianity' by C.S. Lewis?

Why can't I be convinced by theology alone?

If God loves me as a Father and a Mother, why am I still screwed up over my relationship with my parents?

Why are we quick to admit what we know and slow to admit what we don't?

Why?