If you've ever noticed the organic section at the grocer you may have also noted the price difference. Organic stuff costs more than the processed foods and I'm guessing that's because the companies behind the organic foods are generally smaller and because organic foods aren't as popular as the microwavable spaghetti cans. It might just be that the organic growers are really proud of their stuff or that they're greedy, I don't know for sure. For the sake of this blog, though, let's just say that organic foods are more expensive to produce, ship, and position at the local grocer. I'm open to correction by anyone in the know.
The expense of organic foods vs. the chemically-laden-preservative-infused stuff that would still taste "fresh" long into the Great Tribulation serves as a fine metaphor for authentic worship. Real worship costs more than the popular stuff. Real worship bears with it the expense of sacrifice, selflessness, and servitude. Real worship engages the heart, soul, mind, and strength. Real worship has little to do with songs and a lot to do with soul. Authentic worship doesn't have a long shelf life because it is always current, always now, always alive and vital somehow in a way that the imitations can never bear. Real worship is the homemade pasta prima vera and the phony stuff Spaghetti-o's.
There's a great story in 1 Chronicles 21 about King David. He decided to take a census which the LORD had not ordered and it ticked God off. God sent an angel with a big sword (most scholars would say it was probably a theophany, or a pre-incarnate appearance of Christ) to smite Israel and this is what happened:
16 David looked up and saw the angel of the LORD standing between heaven and earth, with a drawn sword in his hand extended over Jerusalem. Then David and the elders, clothed in sackcloth, fell facedown.
17 David said to God, "Was it not I who ordered the fighting men to be counted? I am the one who has sinned and done wrong. These are but sheep. What have they done? O LORD my God, let your hand fall upon me and my family, but do not let this plague remain on your people."
18 Then the angel of the LORD ordered Gad to tell David to go up and build an altar to the LORD on the threshing floor of Araunah the Jebusite. 19 So David went up in obedience to the word that Gad had spoken in the name of the LORD.
20 While Araunah was threshing wheat, he turned and saw the angel; his four sons who were with him hid themselves. 21 Then David approached, and when Araunah looked and saw him, he left the threshing floor and bowed down before David with his face to the ground.
22 David said to him, "Let me have the site of your threshing floor so I can build an altar to the LORD, that the plague on the people may be stopped. Sell it to me at the full price."
23 Araunah said to David, "Take it! Let my lord the king do whatever pleases him. Look, I will give the oxen for the burnt offerings, the threshing sledges for the wood, and the wheat for the grain offering. I will give all this."
24 But King David replied to Araunah, "No, I insist on paying the full price. I will not take for the LORD what is yours, or sacrifice a burnt offering that costs me nothing."
25 So David paid Araunah six hundred shekels [c] of gold for the site. 26 David built an altar to the LORD there and sacrificed burnt offerings and fellowship offerings. [d] He called on the LORD, and the LORD answered him with fire from heaven on the altar of burnt offering.
27 Then the LORD spoke to the angel, and he put his sword back into its sheath. 28 At that time, when David saw that the LORD had answered him on the threshing floor of Araunah the Jebusite, he offered sacrifices there. 29 The tabernacle of the LORD, which Moses had made in the desert, and the altar of burnt offering were at that time on the high place at Gibeon. 30 But David could not go before it to inquire of God, because he was afraid of the sword of the angel of the LORD.
My point is in verse 24 where David said I insist on paying the full price. I will not take for the LORD what is yours, or sacrifice a burnt offering that costs me nothing. It just seems to me that people in church are happy to "take for the Lord" the offering that the worship leaders have prepared for their own sacrifice to God. In a way it is kind of like eating off of someone else's plate like the blind child Helen Keller did before Anne Sullivan got ahold of her.
Did you ever see in the movie The Miracle Worker how the young Helen would go around the dinner table grabbing peas and corn and whatever off of her family's plates and smashing it into her face like a wild child? That's the one scene I always think of when I think of Keller. Everyone just sat there ignoring her behavior because it was "normal". So what's so normal about people filing into church week after week and feeding off of the platform, grabbing at the praise songs on our plates like blind children starving for a morsel? How are we justified as God's family to ignore this behavior? Are we not the guiltier party for perpetuating such dependency?
Araunah had a good heart. He wanted to give the king what he needed to make God happy but David knew better. He knew that God looks upon the heart. He knew that this issue was personal, something between him and the LORD, and that he had to get jiggy with it and not screw around and make things worse. The sword of an angel makes for a bad hair day. So David insisted on paying full price for Araunah's field and oxen to sacrifice to God. God received his offering and answered with a bolt of fire upon the altar from heaven.
God doesn't get mad at us anymore. Our sins and blunders were placed on Christ at the cross and He was our ultimate sin offering. The point is that we are offering some pretty cheap offerings to Him in return for His amazing offering to us. He gives us eternal life and we give Him an hour on Sundays. He gives us total forgiveness of our sins and we gripe about having to stand up for three songs in a row at church. He pours life into us constantly and we have a hard time being happy about it because gas prices are high.
I'm voting for a return to worship organic. Enough of this performance stuff that is a complete hijacking of the song of the people. Enough of worship-as-church-growth-tool. Enough of pastors who are disengaged with the reality of worship, the reality of lament, and the reality of their people's struggling souls. And enough of worship leaders up on our platforms imitating the latest, greatest "worship star" they've heard on a CD, getting their own artist's itch scratched while we have to stand there and watch. Where is reality? Where is the full-throated song of the people in the ears of God? Who cares if the world is impressed with our worship show?
Worship organic may cost a little more, but in the end it tastes better and we are healthier for it.
Be encouraged. Live. Love. Lead.
Tuesday, September 16, 2008
Friday, September 5, 2008
Brontosaurus for Breakfast
It's probably not a good thing to wake up teary.
I'm pretty sure it would be better to wake up feeling chipper, bright, alive. Maybe we should all float out of bed and twirl around the room humming a Disney theme like Snow White as the little forest animals help us smooth the bedclothes, sweep the cottage floor and fling wide the shutters for a shimmering new day, but that hasn't been my experience yet.
I woke up this morning feeling a whole lot more like Grumpy, ready to snap at anyone or anything that happened to stumble into my swarthy path. My breath reeks, my feet and back hurt, and my eyes are refusing to focus. I feel about a half-million years old, like a brontosaurus that somehow woke up in my house this morning, transported miraculously from the paleolithic era to the 21st Century. I haven't had my second shot of java yet so that may be half the problem. Or it might be the seemingly immense battles I'm facing right now that make the bed so appealing despite all the little forest animals waiting outside to play.
Sometimes I feel like my life has been one giant mood swing. I can feel victorious in Christ one minute and low as the fortieth ring of Dante's Inferno the next. Life can be one big party or one big misery in about a nano-second. Anti-depressants don't help artistic types all that much, either. They might smooth the edges a little but they can also take away the depths of feeling that feed our creativity. Some of those meds could turn Michelangelo into an accountant. Too much alcohol just feeds the darkness as many of the great writers found out to their detriment.
The only consistent answer I've found so far is to feel whatever I need to feel and go on with life knowing that whatever I feel right now, good or bad, will probably change in about five minutes. I am like the weather in Portland. I'm just a feeling-based person. So sue me. I am wired intrinsically to my emotions and, for the life of me, cannot extricate myself from the ups and downs of my silly little insides. The good news is that God loves me enough to have made David, Asaph, and the other psalm writers open up their insides long ago so I wouldn't feel so bad, at least for the five minutes or so that I read them.
In Psalm 69:1-4 David writes out of his anguish (and I'm sure stinky bad breath because he had to hide in caves a lot):
David had some very real enemies. His own son, Absolom, wanted to cut his head off. He was a warrior-king who felt things at a very deep emotional level, like me, and he wasn't afraid to wear a tunic and play a harp. He kicked butt and wrote songs. So far my worst enemies are in my head and my teen-aged daughter still wants me to drive her to the mall. I don't own a tunic or an ephod but I do have some baggy jeans. I'm just learning that it's okay to sing a lament or two along with the happy-clappy praise stuff that can momentarily lift any of us out of the doldrums.
Maybe that's the real lesson here. God is big enough to hear the praise and take the complaints. He doesn't love us more when we're happy than when we're sad. He is with us in the good and the bad, when we want to love Him and when we can't understand why He doesn't seem to be listening. He sees us when we're on the mountaintop and when we're hiding in a cave somewhere fearing for our lives. Maybe it's just okay to feel what we feel and remember that Jesus was well acquainted with our weaknesses. Hebrews 4:15 says, "For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are - yet without sin."
I was tempted to stay in the bed today. I may be tempted to play the part of Grumpy the Brontosaurus Dwarf all day if things don't seem to be going my way or if I don't seem to be getting what I want. I may snap and bite at my loved ones if I don't think life is fair and I may even complain to God. If I do, at least I will be in good company. Maybe I'll wake up tomorrow feeling a little more like Happy, Doc, or Sneezy. In the meantime, brontosaurus for breakfast, anyone?
I'm pretty sure it would be better to wake up feeling chipper, bright, alive. Maybe we should all float out of bed and twirl around the room humming a Disney theme like Snow White as the little forest animals help us smooth the bedclothes, sweep the cottage floor and fling wide the shutters for a shimmering new day, but that hasn't been my experience yet.
I woke up this morning feeling a whole lot more like Grumpy, ready to snap at anyone or anything that happened to stumble into my swarthy path. My breath reeks, my feet and back hurt, and my eyes are refusing to focus. I feel about a half-million years old, like a brontosaurus that somehow woke up in my house this morning, transported miraculously from the paleolithic era to the 21st Century. I haven't had my second shot of java yet so that may be half the problem. Or it might be the seemingly immense battles I'm facing right now that make the bed so appealing despite all the little forest animals waiting outside to play.
Sometimes I feel like my life has been one giant mood swing. I can feel victorious in Christ one minute and low as the fortieth ring of Dante's Inferno the next. Life can be one big party or one big misery in about a nano-second. Anti-depressants don't help artistic types all that much, either. They might smooth the edges a little but they can also take away the depths of feeling that feed our creativity. Some of those meds could turn Michelangelo into an accountant. Too much alcohol just feeds the darkness as many of the great writers found out to their detriment.
The only consistent answer I've found so far is to feel whatever I need to feel and go on with life knowing that whatever I feel right now, good or bad, will probably change in about five minutes. I am like the weather in Portland. I'm just a feeling-based person. So sue me. I am wired intrinsically to my emotions and, for the life of me, cannot extricate myself from the ups and downs of my silly little insides. The good news is that God loves me enough to have made David, Asaph, and the other psalm writers open up their insides long ago so I wouldn't feel so bad, at least for the five minutes or so that I read them.
In Psalm 69:1-4 David writes out of his anguish (and I'm sure stinky bad breath because he had to hide in caves a lot):
"Save me, O God,
for the waters have come up to
my neck.
I sink in the miry depths,
where there is no foothold.
I have come into the deep waters;
the floods engulf me.
I am worn out calling for help;
my throat is parched.
My eyes fail
looking for my God.
Those who hate me without reason
outnumber the hairs of my head;
many are my enemies without cause,
those who seek to destroy me.
I am forced to restore
what I did not steal."
David had some very real enemies. His own son, Absolom, wanted to cut his head off. He was a warrior-king who felt things at a very deep emotional level, like me, and he wasn't afraid to wear a tunic and play a harp. He kicked butt and wrote songs. So far my worst enemies are in my head and my teen-aged daughter still wants me to drive her to the mall. I don't own a tunic or an ephod but I do have some baggy jeans. I'm just learning that it's okay to sing a lament or two along with the happy-clappy praise stuff that can momentarily lift any of us out of the doldrums.
Maybe that's the real lesson here. God is big enough to hear the praise and take the complaints. He doesn't love us more when we're happy than when we're sad. He is with us in the good and the bad, when we want to love Him and when we can't understand why He doesn't seem to be listening. He sees us when we're on the mountaintop and when we're hiding in a cave somewhere fearing for our lives. Maybe it's just okay to feel what we feel and remember that Jesus was well acquainted with our weaknesses. Hebrews 4:15 says, "For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are - yet without sin."
I was tempted to stay in the bed today. I may be tempted to play the part of Grumpy the Brontosaurus Dwarf all day if things don't seem to be going my way or if I don't seem to be getting what I want. I may snap and bite at my loved ones if I don't think life is fair and I may even complain to God. If I do, at least I will be in good company. Maybe I'll wake up tomorrow feeling a little more like Happy, Doc, or Sneezy. In the meantime, brontosaurus for breakfast, anyone?
Tuesday, September 2, 2008
Waking to a Dream
I just woke up from a really bad dream about Oprah.
It was one of those three-hour epics that leave you exhausted and sweaty. Now, I am okay with Oprah. I don't look to her for spiritual advice, but I think she does a lot of nice things with her money. I want to be in the audience when she gives everyone a car. In my dream, though, she was pretty much the antichrist. I had been invited to sing on her show and had to meet her before going on. I met her backstage in a very dark room and I couldn't make out her face. I had something she wanted in a little box that I didn't even know I had (you know how dreams are).
From approximately 3:30 to 6:30 this morning I was being chased by her minions. There was a lot of running and fighting. I had the sense I was only one step ahead of the very large and powerful mean guys chasing me at all times like in the movies. I could do some supernatural things like burrow through walls and levitate like the Mario Brothers. We wound up somehow on the rainy streets of New Orleans and I jumped into a car with some people I didn't know. They turned out to be allies, thankfully. We were being shot at and pulled into a convenience store for a Coke or for whatever the nice people in New Orleans drink. It was probably a dacquiri. That was pretty much where it ended though there were lots of other bizarre scenes and weird claustrophobic moments when I must have been suffocating in my pillow. Dreams are so weird.
When I woke up, finally, I thought about Ephesians 5:14 that says in the grand old poetic King James version, "Awake thou that sleepest, and arise from the dead, and Christ shall give thee light." Sometimes its hard to find the light of Christ in our dreams. One dream I have had over the years is that I'm casting out a demon and I can't get the name of Jesus to come out of my mouth, something very important I think for exorcism along with a cross and holy water. In that particular dream my lower lip quivers and my teeth are clacking together and I make a "Je-je-je-je-je-je" sound but His name never makes it past my lips. It is freaky. I don't like that one.
As I lay there thinking about that Scripture I realized that I actually wake to His reality, His dream, for me every day. In Ephesians 2:10 it says that we are His "workmanship" created to do good things with our lives and to spread His loving kingdom. The Greek for that word is poeima, which could easily be translated as poem or lyric. We're God's song. I like to think of it like He's singing me every day, making up the verses as He goes along. Of course, He already knows the whole lyric from start to finish, but its fun for me to think of Him using His unqualified imagination to dream-sing me every day. That just sounds like more fun for God instead of ticking my days off like a laundry list.
I'm usually sleepy about 9:30 each night. Unless I'm stressed or depressed I don't have too much trouble sleeping. I don't always dream a lot and I avoid excessive pizza, sweets, and caffeine prior to bedtime. I haven't even thought about Oprah in months and haven't seen the show in a long time. Someone said she was crying at the Democratic Convention last week when Obama spoke. Maybe that's what triggered it. I wouldn't mind singing on her show and I would love to talk about my worship book on it. Maybe that's what I have that she really wants, my book for her club. She doesn't have to chase me to get one, though. I'd be happy to drop a copy, autographed, in the mail.
It was one of those three-hour epics that leave you exhausted and sweaty. Now, I am okay with Oprah. I don't look to her for spiritual advice, but I think she does a lot of nice things with her money. I want to be in the audience when she gives everyone a car. In my dream, though, she was pretty much the antichrist. I had been invited to sing on her show and had to meet her before going on. I met her backstage in a very dark room and I couldn't make out her face. I had something she wanted in a little box that I didn't even know I had (you know how dreams are).
From approximately 3:30 to 6:30 this morning I was being chased by her minions. There was a lot of running and fighting. I had the sense I was only one step ahead of the very large and powerful mean guys chasing me at all times like in the movies. I could do some supernatural things like burrow through walls and levitate like the Mario Brothers. We wound up somehow on the rainy streets of New Orleans and I jumped into a car with some people I didn't know. They turned out to be allies, thankfully. We were being shot at and pulled into a convenience store for a Coke or for whatever the nice people in New Orleans drink. It was probably a dacquiri. That was pretty much where it ended though there were lots of other bizarre scenes and weird claustrophobic moments when I must have been suffocating in my pillow. Dreams are so weird.
When I woke up, finally, I thought about Ephesians 5:14 that says in the grand old poetic King James version, "Awake thou that sleepest, and arise from the dead, and Christ shall give thee light." Sometimes its hard to find the light of Christ in our dreams. One dream I have had over the years is that I'm casting out a demon and I can't get the name of Jesus to come out of my mouth, something very important I think for exorcism along with a cross and holy water. In that particular dream my lower lip quivers and my teeth are clacking together and I make a "Je-je-je-je-je-je" sound but His name never makes it past my lips. It is freaky. I don't like that one.
As I lay there thinking about that Scripture I realized that I actually wake to His reality, His dream, for me every day. In Ephesians 2:10 it says that we are His "workmanship" created to do good things with our lives and to spread His loving kingdom. The Greek for that word is poeima, which could easily be translated as poem or lyric. We're God's song. I like to think of it like He's singing me every day, making up the verses as He goes along. Of course, He already knows the whole lyric from start to finish, but its fun for me to think of Him using His unqualified imagination to dream-sing me every day. That just sounds like more fun for God instead of ticking my days off like a laundry list.
I'm usually sleepy about 9:30 each night. Unless I'm stressed or depressed I don't have too much trouble sleeping. I don't always dream a lot and I avoid excessive pizza, sweets, and caffeine prior to bedtime. I haven't even thought about Oprah in months and haven't seen the show in a long time. Someone said she was crying at the Democratic Convention last week when Obama spoke. Maybe that's what triggered it. I wouldn't mind singing on her show and I would love to talk about my worship book on it. Maybe that's what I have that she really wants, my book for her club. She doesn't have to chase me to get one, though. I'd be happy to drop a copy, autographed, in the mail.
Monday, September 1, 2008
Pizza Gustav
I feel most like me with a chopping knife in my hand.
I don't know if it is a power/control issue, something to do with latent anger and hostility from my childhood, or just that I like to chop vegetables. It is difficult to put into words the visceral satisfaction I feel as that sharp blade glides through, yea cleanly severs, the sinewy tendons of celery stalks. Time would fail me to describe those magical endorphins that explode in every sphere of my cerebral cortex lighting untold numbers of synapses like a million lights at Dollywood when I get to mince an onion or a garlic bulb. Once I nearly blacked out from making a Greek Salad for a party of eight. I currently own a nice Cutco chopper but I'm saving up for the Rachel Ray set. Hers even comes with a wood block and the kitchen shears.
My family and I have been weathering Hurricane Gustav this weekend here on the Gulf Coast. Every hurricane season I make a new oath to relocate up state or out to Colorado but we never do. Somehow I settle down again and find myself in new wonder of the massive live oaks, trees in their hundreds with low-hanging branches over the streets of Mobile, in the parks, or in front of trailer homes that are known hurricane magnets. The oaks appear indiscriminate where they stand and their mossy branches offer shade and housing to squirrels or to anyone else around. The bayway crosses eight miles between Mobile and Baldwin counties over what the Spaniards called "the Bay of the Holy Spirit" about 500 years ago when they came to visit. Sometimes I sense something of His presence as I drive back and forth over the water that is often so low you can see the baited crab traps. Sometimes I hear Him whisper, "I made this bay." Sometimes I just hear Him say, "Slow down, you're scaring Me again."
When I don't know what else to do I cook. Donna says I can do a lot with one bag of carrots. I've been cooking a lot lately because I'm in a particularly transitional state of mind. I feel the tectonic plates of my soul shifting around inside me and it makes me feel very anxious. I told a friend on the phone this weekend that it feels like I'm one of the Flying Zambinis. I have worked the trapeze for years but my grip is getting weak. The powder on my hands is gunking up from my sweating palms and I'm looking down for a net every few seconds. I suddenly feel like I've let go of one trapeze and can't quite grab the one that should be swinging toward me. If there is an audience they must be holding their collective breath. My biggest fear is that there really is no audience.
So I cooked a pizza this morning to relieve some stress over myself, my future, Gustav. We'd already stacked or removed anything from the deck and yard that could become projectiles and I spent seven hours Saturday cleaning out and reorganizing the garage just in case I needed to find something. I got up at four this morning to check the status of the storm and prayed for New Orleans a little. Is God mad at them for drinking too much? I slept a little more and then decided to chop.
It is amazing what lives in a refrigerator. If the people of New Orleans weren't so needy we could start a program for neglected food items turned science experiments. By the time I scraped the four corners of my fridge I had unearthed black and green olives, Baby Portobello and white mushrooms, yellow onion, pepperoni, ground beef from the freezer, red and green bell peppers, mozzarella and parmesan cheese and a jar of Newman's spaghetti sauce. Oh, and a pre-cooked crust. Making dough is never as dear to me as chopping.
I felt a light rush at the base of my skull as I opened the drawer that cradles my favorite Cutco. My friend Nancy says we're the only family that still has the cardboard covers to all our knives but that's only because I don't have the Rachel Ray woodblock yet.
I don't know if it is a power/control issue, something to do with latent anger and hostility from my childhood, or just that I like to chop vegetables. It is difficult to put into words the visceral satisfaction I feel as that sharp blade glides through, yea cleanly severs, the sinewy tendons of celery stalks. Time would fail me to describe those magical endorphins that explode in every sphere of my cerebral cortex lighting untold numbers of synapses like a million lights at Dollywood when I get to mince an onion or a garlic bulb. Once I nearly blacked out from making a Greek Salad for a party of eight. I currently own a nice Cutco chopper but I'm saving up for the Rachel Ray set. Hers even comes with a wood block and the kitchen shears.
My family and I have been weathering Hurricane Gustav this weekend here on the Gulf Coast. Every hurricane season I make a new oath to relocate up state or out to Colorado but we never do. Somehow I settle down again and find myself in new wonder of the massive live oaks, trees in their hundreds with low-hanging branches over the streets of Mobile, in the parks, or in front of trailer homes that are known hurricane magnets. The oaks appear indiscriminate where they stand and their mossy branches offer shade and housing to squirrels or to anyone else around. The bayway crosses eight miles between Mobile and Baldwin counties over what the Spaniards called "the Bay of the Holy Spirit" about 500 years ago when they came to visit. Sometimes I sense something of His presence as I drive back and forth over the water that is often so low you can see the baited crab traps. Sometimes I hear Him whisper, "I made this bay." Sometimes I just hear Him say, "Slow down, you're scaring Me again."
When I don't know what else to do I cook. Donna says I can do a lot with one bag of carrots. I've been cooking a lot lately because I'm in a particularly transitional state of mind. I feel the tectonic plates of my soul shifting around inside me and it makes me feel very anxious. I told a friend on the phone this weekend that it feels like I'm one of the Flying Zambinis. I have worked the trapeze for years but my grip is getting weak. The powder on my hands is gunking up from my sweating palms and I'm looking down for a net every few seconds. I suddenly feel like I've let go of one trapeze and can't quite grab the one that should be swinging toward me. If there is an audience they must be holding their collective breath. My biggest fear is that there really is no audience.
So I cooked a pizza this morning to relieve some stress over myself, my future, Gustav. We'd already stacked or removed anything from the deck and yard that could become projectiles and I spent seven hours Saturday cleaning out and reorganizing the garage just in case I needed to find something. I got up at four this morning to check the status of the storm and prayed for New Orleans a little. Is God mad at them for drinking too much? I slept a little more and then decided to chop.
It is amazing what lives in a refrigerator. If the people of New Orleans weren't so needy we could start a program for neglected food items turned science experiments. By the time I scraped the four corners of my fridge I had unearthed black and green olives, Baby Portobello and white mushrooms, yellow onion, pepperoni, ground beef from the freezer, red and green bell peppers, mozzarella and parmesan cheese and a jar of Newman's spaghetti sauce. Oh, and a pre-cooked crust. Making dough is never as dear to me as chopping.
I felt a light rush at the base of my skull as I opened the drawer that cradles my favorite Cutco. My friend Nancy says we're the only family that still has the cardboard covers to all our knives but that's only because I don't have the Rachel Ray woodblock yet.
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