Hands and Feet

Last night on Compass I watched a Buddhist nun go round to men in prison and help them understand that they can be in a 10 foot cell but still be free in their minds. She told them about the power of the mind, the power contained within us to still our mind, the inherent amazing ability of humans to find peace within our own heads, despite the chattering of 10 thousand monkeys about this, that, and the other.

Today I walked around the environmental park and nursery at CERES. Experienced firsthand and on a spiritual level the goodness that can come from groups of people doing good - coming together in creativity, who love the earth, who want to contribute towards the renewing of the earth that is the claim of Jesus Christ that he shall accomplish.

Do we believe that? When does that begin happening? We are his Body after all, are we not? Do we still believe that? See, I'm with Fiona when it comes to the flutter of hope within me that He is food for the hungry, even while we sit by and watch children starve to death day after day while the West burps from its latest large round of consumption. I believe the way to God and the nature of God are such things of great beauty that all persons would fall down on their knees in tears because they are just so goddamned thirsty for this. "I didn't think God was like this," they will say, face-to-face.

How about these figures (HT to Bill Kinnon): in 2006, churches in Northern America borrowed $28 billion. The estimate of how much it would cost to save African children from hunger and easily preventable disease: $25 billion.

I remember a prophecy I read, several years ago when I was drinking in that sort of stuff, but a vision that has sat with me ever since, of a great Giant awakening, sitting up slowly, thousands and millions of tiny little creatures falling off of it as it sat up, this beautiful, glorious Giant that knew who it was and who it wasn't, and who only wanted to listen to it's Head, which was also its Heart.

Sometimes I think I can see the kingdom arising alongside this one. It beats in places like CERES, where ordinary people do ordinary things in extraordinary ways and create beauty. It beats in the hearts of people who are tired of being told what puny pieces of shit they are, in one way or another, either by the system that they are enfolded within or underhandedly by the Christ believers who proclaim that the way it is, is that God cannot look upon his creation without doing a bit of vomit in his mouth, because he despises his creation. As if the incarnation never happened. It beats in the words of people who see a great light, who understand what it is to live in this kingdom, who loathe Christmas and all the crap that comes along with it but understand, in the heart, what incarnation means.

I harbour dreams of happily ever after, still. I believe that God is good, despite the evidence to the contrary. I believe that this God and this good lives and beats within the hearts of human beings. I believe that hope is the most amazing thing that ever lived, unless you consider love.

I do suspect sometimes, in glimmery moments that come in through the fog, that the Church these days is eating vegetables. Is it a beautiful thing to You, this hope You see shining through us despite the muck we sit in and that we have created? I think it must. It must be like a toothless smile from a baby to you, to see this thick-threaded hope, shining warm. We understand its strength. We feel it within ourselves, the way it changes everything. May it grow stronger and brighter. We cannot walk without you.

I know in my heart that you are listening. I know you are acting also, but it is in ways I cannot see clear. I am convinced that you are crying with all of us in our sufferings, no matter how small they are, just as I am convinced that you are threading yourself through all of that stuff, in dark thread this time, thread we cannot see too easily. But still - when shall the times of pretty words and heartfelt posts and wrenching of hands sit alongside massive justice running down like a river? Like juice down the throat of the world?