New blog

It is time..

My new blog can be found at:

http://thehesychast.blogspot.com/

It will, at times, contain recent posts from this blog. I am also toying with the idea of another blog, "Chronicles of the Great Spirit", which will be filled with stories of spiritual exploit.

Thanks for following DEEP WATERS HERITAGE, sporadic though it was. "the hesychast" will have regular posts.

Snow Day Rewards

I lay in bed on this snow day, off and on for cumulative hours, moving in and out of His aroma, which feels slight today - yet nonetheless enthralling to touch upon again.

"I'm never gonna leave, I'm never gonna leave, I'm never gonna leave... I'm never gonna leave this place, this place, at your feet, at your feet, God, I want to stay, all the days, of my life..."

Jonathan David-Helser, The Reward, playing at a volume just as slight as your aroma's sliding, as I write. I want to live here forever; I have lived here often, I know, yet so easily I forget what that means - then tumbling to other means. How deep the slightest turn of cheek and upturn of a smile can be.

I lay in bed, and sit at desk, and choose to not let slightness of delight be less than everything.

This is your Reward.

Reaping the unsown

Here is the end of an interesting parable in the Gospel of Luke, chapter 19:

"Then another servant came and said, 'Sir, here is your mina; I have kept it laid away in a piece of cloth. I was afraid of you, because you are a hard man. You take out what you did not put in and reap what you did not sow.' "His master replied, 'I will judge you by your own words, you wicked servant! You knew, did you, that I am a hard man, taking out what I did not put in, and reaping what I did not sow? Why then didn't you put my money on deposit, so that when I came back, I could have collected it with interest?'"

Is Jesus, in this parable of a demanding, difficult nobleman, likening himself to such a man? Well, it seems so - but how?

While dwelling on this idea, it took me awhile to find a reasonable answer - after all, the servant based his analysis of the nobleman on the character of his demands. And the nobleman confirmed the servant's analysis. The problem of likening Jesus' call and this man's demands lies here: What can God extract from me which I have not given him? What can he benefit from in my life, that he did not initiate?

The answer here lies in the way he described the unfaithful servant: wicked. The servant himself was wicked for not acting in accordance to the known nature of his master.

So, again: What can we give God he did not plant in us? What can God receive from our lives he did not first initiate? We can give him exactly that - Everything he did not initiate, and each way of living he did not plant.

While this servant did nothing, we often make the mistake of trying to give God our best, doing the works we think will please God. We like to use gifts, abilities and talents to do something for him he has not asked of us. We even like "having" intimacy with God through prescribed modes or attempts instead of acting in accordance with the nature of our King. This is giving what God did not sow, but in the negative.

We try to give from our good, but the darkness of sin, shame and the corruption of broken communion with Life itself is what our Master demands. Not as an aside, not as a requirement for "The Good Life!", not so we can write bestsellers to help people be more like us. The zeal of his heart for ours; the potential, everlasting quality of bliss that he sees available to us in love consummated; these things unlimited drive the divine author to leave the book open for one more day, to keep writing for blank pages' possibility.

Sin, shame, broken attempts - He demands these things, but did not sow them. The scars on his hands, feet and in his side are not blemishes; they are the reminder that he already gave all. He already took your shame and reaped the decay of death for you. He has taken and reaped, now is the time to deposit and sow the eternal quality of life you have, as he has.

And to the one that has, more will be given.

Dreams made big

I've heard it shared a couple times that 2010 is a year for dreams to be reawakened, restored, and then seen coming to pass. I believe it's true.

Of course, this kind of statement can be confusing for many. You dreamed of the perfect boy, girl, car, home, candidate, family happiness, contract, job, weight loss or version of yourself, or world peace (or, at least, maybe just the Middle East for starters) and that hasn't happened yet. However, these awakening dreams aren't dreams to impart a picture-perfect veneer that keeps a person, family or nation from issues of the heart; these are heart issues coming to bloom that see the beginnings of life released through you, that mean far more to you than gifts that gloss over the processes of life. These dreams are dreams that reveal your deepest desire in union with eternity.

These aren't necessarily dreams from the night - you know, the supernatural kind that speak of things to come or reveal Christmases past. Although day and night dreams can and will teach you and open you more fully to what is held in your heart, the dreams that will see their bloom bud this year are not limited to supernatural verbal or picture communications, or to something perceived outwardly. Again, these dreams reveal your deepest desire, which is held in union with eternity.

They come alive and bounce in you as you read the words of Jesus in the sacred text, and explode from your lips in conversation with others (if and when some of us can get past the intimidation of sharing such dreams with trusted family and friends).

Shame will be removed from big dreaming. Lives will be transformed, not beginning with the world stage, but from your life-stage.

I believe many couples will realize the adoptions they have dreamed about (and possibly worried over) for years are not just an option for good deeds, but a core issue to fulfilling their life's purpose. Physical and spiritual adoption may be a necessary step toward satisfying the pull of selfless love to be given, and embracing the way of the cross.

You can miss everything you were meant for through inaction on the divine rhema communicating from within your heart.

For me, my truest dream's bud comes by my getting over the ways others have misused their bloom. I dream of Adam reawakened to find himself restored. People stepping from behind the veil of belief in veils, and into unbroken love communion with the God that made them. It's not an issue of emotion solely, but to me, everything. It's a dream of heart-blindness lifting, cancers melting, AIDS and disappearing, darkness departing, and no thoughts as to what if God doesn't show up this time (aka, our what-if god, Doubt).

This dream is not for a picture-perfect veneer that sees health, wealth or miraculous powers as a source of life. That has been tried, and found wanting. It's not an eternally excited posture (i.e., hype) that keeps one too worked up to forge into life's real issues - faith, hope, love, and their companions that include desire's true depths, meekness and unoffended living. It is the true issues of life working out the salvation of an open-to-you Kingdom of God, which when allowed to work, comes out and changes more than we could ever believe.

It's what you feel when you first read Jesus' words, "Take of me", as entrance into everything you've ever dreamed possible. An unquenchable, unoffendable hope that never ceases in its availability when held as love itself and an honor given. The only difference the dreams you hold before those words, and the dreams after, is that before He was the means. Now He is the substance.

The God that made you imparts purpose, and will help you find that purpose. And, if you allow, that same God will show you purpose is more than a destination. God's world, as originally shown to Adam, and now through Jesus, is open to you.

Let your dreams bud this year and believe the blooms you see. You may just begin to find the nature of Jesus permeating their process.

And when you see, know that you believe.

from God

When Johnathan Edwards, Charles Wesley and others we historically esteem (including Jesus) spoke, strange things happened. The manifestations of spirit at Edwards' meetings was similar to that of Toronto and many other, current renewal/revival ministries; the emotion and radicality of Charles Finney's meetings and Jesus' followers in the gospels could be put next to what happened in Brownsville in the 90's or many Pentecostal or renewal churches today, and the similarities would be striking.

Edwards and Finney (and Paul, Peter, Simpson, Seymour) many of us "get" - though not all of us may get both (some may prefer Edwards' revelation of sovereignty over Finney's free will, vice versa, or one man's style or emotional makeup over the other). Their lives and theologies continue to impact the American experience. Entire denominations hail one man or the other at seeming saint status, yet would not be able to stomach the same manifestations in their churches today. Many esteem their theology, but leave the experiential dynamic of relationship with God as a thing to be ignore, or as just for someone "so holy". Reverence and submission to God declared without evidence, in propriety, is even prized - what Paul calls having a form of godliness, but lacking its power. Empty religion.

Perhaps we do, after all, know a little bit about what Jesus meant when he declares the evidence of being a whitewashed tomb in Matthew 23 - hailing prophets and Godly people of old, but despise the Godly and prophetic people in one's midst:

"Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You build tombs for the prophets and decorate the graves of the righteous. And you say, 'If we had lived in the days of our forefathers, we would not have taken part with them in shedding the blood of the prophets.' So you testify against yourselves that you are the descendants of those who murdered the prophets."

Then Jesus outlines to them that though God sends men and women of God and moves of the Holy Spirit in order to reconcile the world to Himself, God also sends them in order to expose the disdain many so-called followers of God have for God - that they may have a chance to be reconciled again.

Jesus, though possessing a charisma that could enable peaceful, diplomatic resolutions to conflict was not afraid to live in a way that angered anyone - even his own family! He did not live to cause conflict or try to appear sacrilegious; His life was the conflict. His being was the apparent sacrilege.

Jesus dispensed grace to the ungraceful and loved the despised, yet Mother Teresa, Hallmark moments, and even Shane Claiborne don't bring that kind of response, that degree of division. Your message, though full of love and a greater audacity than that of worldly hope, must also demonstrate the insufficiency of life as we know it. This requires power.

The lame must walk, the deaf must hear, the blind must see. Through your voice, your touch and your presence in union with God.

Jesus' life seemed as an incontrivable paradox, because at every turn it proved the religious order of that day and every other to be defunct; He laughed at institutionally inappropriate times, his words were inopportune and did not please the right people, he spoke with boldness because he spoke from God. And that paradox had a power that evidenced it - pure relationship with God through the life of Jesus Christ - as the only way.

Yet the scandal was not in what he did, who he ate with, or that it challenged perceived Jewish-ness or imperial Rome. The scandal was not age, or in being misunderstood as a prophetic voice. The scandal was that He is and all knew it. He said he was from God, and he was. Uh-oh.