In Ukraine

Well...I am in Ukraine right now...again. The trip is interesting so far...So much accomplished and so much left to do. Learning some things actually and hope to write about it soon.

TIME FLIES

Break from editing -

I google mapped down the old neighborhood in Portland Oregon... going back in time to 1974.

Wow. Things change but then they don't. The 'boys club' seems abandoned. I played pool there with a 100 other fatherless guys when I was just 6 and 7. Wow - that is Matt's age! I liked the guy who ran the place. He treated me well, took time to talk to me. I think now he probably knew I wasn't comfortable being the only white kid. I had not met my dad yet but he seemed like what a dad was I guess. I never met my dad until he came for me a few years later. Funny thing, my dad turned out to be a corporate exec. Think these years were just the result of some marital revenge on his part. I bounced to several foster homes at times, but they were all in the neighborhood.

The business buildings look exactly the same - just closed now. And the mailbox is gone. The 'store' was on the corner there. I use to go down to get cigarettes for my 12 year old sister...tell them it was for my mom and to put it on charge. We had a huge charge the guy kept in an index box. He gave me grief every time...then gave me whatever I was sent for. I thought all milk was 'powdered' :-)

Here is a photo of my street - seems they renamed it 'Rosa Parks Way.' I got my second dog from the house in the foreground - the people moved one day and just left the dog. I named her Blackbeard.

Looks like they replanted 'street trees.' The city came in to beatify the neighborhood when I was a kid. My brother and his 'friends' bought some machetes at a flea market and literally chopped down the city's first attempt.

The tall house was abandoned the whole time I lived there, like 4 years. The kid across the street taught me how to use matches when I was 5 years old. That same day we ran around lighting little fires and putting them out. One kind of got away from us under the back porch of this house. So we worked hard to stamp it out...with a large wood door laying in the back yard...and other wooden boards we found. I finally got an idea...I ran to the house and passed my mom while I carried a party punch bowl full of water.

"What are you doing?"

"Noth'n."

The fire department came and saved the house...but not the back part. The fireman said, "the other boy says he didn't do anything."

I said nothing. But remember processing that.

I told them I set the fire. He talked to me about never doing that again and stuff like that.

Funny - fire has been serious stuff with me. I never trust its really out. I ended up driving fire trucks later in life.

Doctrine of Election

I want to see thousands of these photos. How to accomplish this? It seems so the least of ministries to so many. Getting the 'word' out seems to be the primary 'commission'. Most of these little guys and gals barely escaped abortion...they are the residual, flukes of their societal context. Yeah, hundreds of thousands of them in the one country if you include those living on the streets.

One morning, when I was 12, I left the Fairmont hoity-toity hotel in New Orleans. I walked and walked. I walked into a pretty bad area of town. I slowly passed a kid my age...an old coat draped on him like a blanket. Curled against a door to an abandoned building. He was asleep. I stopped, don't know why. I remembered the night before I had ordered a cheeseburger from room service. They came to my room and cooked it in front of me...in the room.

The pain is everywhere. The poor are always with us. What can you do? But we still find ways to market them...talk of a village gets miles for one power hungry woman. Throwing money at them as a former community organizer gets another one the Presidency. And yet...there they always are. The answer? I hear another power happy woman in the congress say...make less of them and it will reduce the burden. Really, she doesn't appear to me to be burdened.

This little guy above is Ukrainian. Hes on his way to a family, a hope and a future. I don't know all the motivations for people to step out and pull one of these little guys in. But I can't stop seeing the Gospel in this photo. He does not really know the hell he is escaping...or the incredible future he is stepping into. He's a little down syndrome boy excited about his new backpack and riding a train. Riding a real train! And talk about airplanes! He was chosen.

You - yes you - are a down syndrome little boy from the worst mental institution in the back-waters of Ukraine. Except you have freedoms to eleviate and limit some of your suffering. A semblance of control. If you find this idea painful you can reject it too. But it may be that you see what I see in this photo...a child brought out of a mess into a real family. Forever. Maybe you see yourself and wonder...what would that smile look like on me? If you are a Christian 'in the family'..you might ponder what God felt like when he slapped that first eternal grin on you. Maybe He wants you to know. Maybe...He wants you to know.

Blog Manager

Hey! This is his daughter. I just changed his page. Let me know what you think!

Impossible?

Ever wonder if God was there? Or if he cared? Or maybe you messed up with this whole Christian thing?

That he gave you a heart for good...but then bound your hands. Or a time when he answered a small little day-to-day kind of prayer - took care of something that was nothing really...but did it in a big way, astounding way. Yeah...it was cool.

Then something big comes...something really worthy of His intervention...but nothing. Thats ok..not yet, his timing. Wait. Wait. Trust.

Still waiting? Yeah, me too.

Oh - and while you wait you see people (friendly friends) drop off like rain. You find yourself alone...staring at the impossible...the impossible he is famous for making sooooooo possible. Alone. Stupid.

Maybe you are suppose to learn something. So many are sure of it, maybe they are right? But then...when you think, they are as stupid as you. You just have the view... the one you get at the end of the rope. Only room for one there. One at a time I guess.

Look up that rope and you will see where you have been...all the kind folks gripping the rope with one hand and clinching onto their latest salvation in the other hand. Some holding a good sermon, a cool tune, vacation plans, a beer, a good deed, volumes of Calvin, ... each item from you view though... looks like a handful of crap.

One orphan girl pinned in by demons. Come on! Really...how hard is that??

Out of Options...

I met a stranger the other day. He noted that there is something, just something, about stopping. Stopping at something you were certain about when you first started. Specifically, were you ever sure about something God told you? Where he cut through all your garbage and made you to hear Him? Probably, you were at your worst spiritual state...and therefore, unknowingly, at your most attentive to him. A broken and momentary spiritual giant who heard Gods personal direction.

I have been there a couple of times. Usually it is an answer to prayer for direction. He speaks. And often in very general terms He tells you to go...to do...this or that. So you do gladly and with all confidence and hope. Then somewhere along the way you sense His pulling away. You begin to see that your idea of speed does not reflect the reality you are experiencing. You slow...you wonder...you doubt. You plead. Nothing.

There you are...in the cernter of the weeds where you first expected glorious flowers all about you. Alone. You slow.

You stop. And you harden. You are surrended to your experience where once...some time back, too far back...you were surrendered to Him, trusting.

You are then resolute to create a 'Paxel' kind of state of mind. Where nothing gets to you, where you expect little if anything, and you plod. There is something about plodding that cements your stoppage...a kind of stopping program. This is life...plod...expect nothing...wait the ride out.

Back to my stranger. There is just something about stopping - when things don't turn out. The results were not what you expected, dreamed or hoped for. But the One who set you on your venture...He had results in mind for certain. All He asked was that you move in Him. Do we presume He would want us to stop moving in Him? In what He laid on our heart in such a general way demanding daily trust? No. But the enemy...yes, that is his focused interest. To move on our flesh...to vex...to clog and cloud.

Was there direction back there? You know there was...

"Move in Me writing, fighting for an orphan..."

But all is shattered and hopeless.

"You are called to My purpose."

But where is your power?

"In My Son in you."

That is theology.

"No. Move in Me."

I just don't know anymore.

"Take that with you."

Really?

"Yep. See?"

Living the Life

You ever wonder why you are where you are? This may be an actual 'after 40' writing. You ever get caught between your incredible blessings, the attending responsibilities, and a wrong vocation?

We know the free spirits for which living seemed their art. They would write or paint, sure. But we find they lived with passion. Others recluse. But each living as true to their desires as they possibly could. I am thinking of Poe, Gauguin, Einstein, Hemingway, Louis L'Amour, others.

Compromise was not something they allowed into their lives and dreams. Do you spend a great deal of time in a cubical? Or a business that simply serves the same function and purpose? A work that attends the responsibilities of your wonderful blessings - your family.

Now some of heroes listed above and others made a choice - a decision to compromise their families. But some didn't even allow even that one indiscretion. They insisted on having it all to the best of their ability.

What if you missed this understanding early on - the one they grasped? What could you do then being old? Now, as the title of L' Amour final work - Education of a Wandering Man - I can say that has been my case until the point I turned deeply into my own thinking. Waking from my slumber now I get that old familiar itch...to travel, to meet, to work something new. To rescue and create.

Scripture tells us that a work was put in place for us before we were even born. And Christian gurus tell us that we can find our 'purpose.' For me, I can't hear that without thinking of Steve Martin in the Jerk. But scripture, I can buy that. He says the poor is always with us...and that orphans need help as well, fatherless need fathers. He says, shake the world off you. Serve, give, help, and live abundantly resting in Him.

What if we made that our art? Families in tow on that adventure. A smile on our face not brought there by the latest comedian, movie, or Italian meal.

What if we sought to maybe even make that our vocation?

Yeah, I need to get real. And while I do that stop telling other people what they should do - what 'the Bible says.'

That's the real hurdle isn't it - living a life that enrages people. Being a counter-cultural freak who oppresses others with their talk of ... orphans.

PLACES

Travel. There are so many possible places. There is always the 'before I die I want to' kind of place. I think this city, Budapest, would have to be my number one. It brings to mind many images of history....but of of other cultures and places. East meets West. All the counts and kings and queens. All the scandal and intrigue. It seems a strange and dark place to me.

What interests me most is how little I know of this place, culture or history. The city is more like a vague rumor. I don't even know one single historic point of interest or landmark. I know about a few places, some details of them,but have no inclination to visit them...the great well-known areas of the world...not since they invented cable TV.

Wait. I believe they have a large Gypsy population. It all makes sense now. :-)

If you are passing by this blog along your Internet travels - and you have been to this great city of which I am so stupid of - please drop some knowledge and experience in the comments section below. I would love to learn more about it.

Köszönöm!!

Inertia

Inertia


Do you know what
You wrote on me?
A start so strange
violent

You moved me through
To
And about
Windless

The struggle,bliss
The books and bikes
Choices
Too hard to know

You with me to act
From the rim
Of my sleeve
Running

Slowing too often
In wonder
And to touch
Asking always

Vexing me so very
Where blue meets blue
The endless horizon
And you...beyond it

How I Became a Feminist - well, I get it anyhow

New Testament Review and comparison. The conclusion to a contextual study of Genesis Chapter 3, 1-7

NKJV - 1Ti 2:14 -And Adam was not deceived, but the woman being deceived, fell into transgression.

NLT - 1Ti 2:14 -And it was the woman, not Adam, who was deceived by Satan, and sin was the result.

NIV - 1Ti 2:14 -And Adam was not the one deceived; it was the woman who was deceived and became a sinner.


Note that in all three popular versions that

1) they do not state that Eve deceived Adam. This is consistant with Genesis 3.

2) The NLT is incorrect - Adam was deceived by Satan. The NLT is inconsistent with Genesis 3.

The popular implication of the text of Gen.3 combined with 1 Tim. 2:14 is that Eve deceived Adam. By his silence and submitting to her offer to eat of the fruit he took a submissive role. The idea that she gave him the fruit implies that she deceived him.

But the reality is clear. They both were deceived. First Adam who was responsible for the whole garden. In this deception of his heart he was teamed with Satan to allow Eve to test the fruit from the framework of her own state of deception.

Adam sinned first. And it was for his sin that the New Testament said Christ had come.

So both Adam and Eve were deceived by Satan. The context of the Genesis narrative informs the silence of Adam who was present and therefore engaged.

Both Adam and Eve were enticed at the notion of autonomy from God - to be His peer. The result of their acting on this (as individual children of God) was that they received limited autonomy from God (they received a degree of what they wanted). Adam would be called to provide fro his family and Eve would conceive without divine protection from the pain of it.

Together they would discover community without God. That was the moment when power and politics was formed. And this has been our lot since.

See Text:


Gen 3:15
And I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed; it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel.

Gen 3:16
Unto the woman he said, I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy conception; in sorrow thou shalt bring forth children; and thy desire [shall be] to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee.

Gen 3:17
And unto Adam he said, Because thou hast hearkened unto the voice of thy wife, and hast eaten of the tree, of which I commanded thee, saying, Thou shalt not eat of it: cursed [is] the ground for thy sake; in sorrow shalt thou eat [of] it all the days of thy life;


Adam listened to the CONVERSATION of his wife (present and engaged...though silent) no where does the text say Eve said "here Adam, eat this."

So folks of the faith, this is important to know as far as reflecting on how our theology has informed our understanding and attitudes. The church for two millennium has mixed the post-fall reality with the pre-fall condition. The church has indoctrinated in one form or another that 'Adam was deceived by Eve.' and 'Adam gave up his headship over Eve, becoming a passive male.'

This understanding has led to much misery for women for literally thousands of years. No one having time to be clear on the fact of equality before God as laid out in the Genesis narrative. The narrative being warped and proclaimed from the male dominated church. This, as explained later in Genesis, only brought natural rebellion from the other now dominated (rather than loved and respected according to plan) group...women.

So in conclusion and for illustration I present a small tidbit from my own life:

Child 1: "She did it first."

Child 2: "That's not true, he did."

Father: "That's not the point...in fact...it doesn't even matter. You are treating each other badly, and that hurts me too."