Cannibalism

The tragedies of Haiti have overtaken our emotions and caused us as Americans to rally around the ravaged country. We've been overwhelmed by mass graves, orphan children, and people without food. The pictures have moved many to donate resources, pray, and even to personally travel to the reeling country to volunteer help.

The hunger in Haiti is very real. People are walking the streets in search of anything to call food. While relief services are transporting tons of food to help feed the masses, the hunger pit seems bottomless. After eating today, the helpless hunger will return again tomorrow. the challenges ahead are centered in helping the people of Haiti develop new ways of feeding themselves in a country filled with rubble, unsanitary conditions, and disease.

In America, we have compassion for these tragic, helpless people. But the truth is that in many ways we have become hunger victims ourselves. I'm not talking about the food which is readily available at any number of dozens of food markets located within a short driving distance from our homes. Or the countless restaurants that dot the local landscape filled with hungry people that enjoy ordering more food than they can eat.

In America we are hungry to know ourselves. As individuals we chase the illusive "me" throughout our lives in a frantic daily sprint of activity that somehow creates an illusioned self. My job, my title, the things I've accumulated, my pleasures, all have become a food fix for trying to fill an empty stomach that seeks self-discovery and societal acceptance. We have become detached observers of our own lives caught in a squirrel cage, thinking that the constant squeaking of the wheel of our achievements is a verification of our reality and worth.

This chase motivated by hunger has actually eaten away at our true self as we are consumed by doubt and self-hate. We live in this sort of shadow existence in which we find our image self between our true self and God. As helpless observers, we watch ourselves living out a life we know to be a fragmented tragedy. This path of self hunger is not been relegated to non-Christians alone for it too has found its way into the church and consumed believers. The very thing we seek is being consumed by the drive to keep up an image. The result are lives filled with relational rubble and the disease of fearful rejection.

We have literally become cannibals of our true self.

Paul wrote, "Don't become so well adjusted to your culture that you fit into it without even thinking. Instead fix your attention on God." (Rom 12)

The journey out of daily hunger and self-cannibalism is not going to be the quick fix of an instant meal of what I do, what others think I am, or what I have. Under a culture that consumes us, we will constantly live under the temptation of the world of the false self as an answer to knowing the real me. Cultural values that surround us leads to a constant hunger to know the real me.

The true journey to know me is found in a life of centering in God because our true identity is found only in him. By means of silence and solitude we journey into ourselves.

It is only there our hunger can be satisfied.

That is counter-cultural...that is the Godlife.

Ode to David

I woke up this morning and found myself in an undesirable place. My first impression was to be overwhelmed by the darkness of the black hole I stood in the midst of. The blackness waved over me like a thick blanket without an end. My hands and my fingers seemed to just mesh into the black as if they weren't even there. My eyes were wide open but my sight seemed constricted and shut. I can't see anything.

The air seemed cold and damp so I felt my way to a cold ledge to rest upon and ponder my fate. I was afraid. There were noises but in quick time I discerned they were nothing but drops of water falling from the ceiling and hitting the floor. I felt all alone. With a quivering voice I cried out, "Is there anyone there?"

Silence in the cave.

After months (that have rolled into years) of seeking light in a life that I was called to be, I have now found myself living in a dark hole of a calling unfulfilled. I've been cast off, forgotten, and rejected. Even the one who called me to walk in the light of service has left me to be alone in black silence. After hundreds of rejections that have piled up to close the cave entry way, I can feel my hope disappearing into the damp and dingy. No progress, no direction, no hope. Failure is outside the cave seeking for me...prowling to devour... so I hide in the depths of the darkness. This is certainly not the place I expected to be when he called me to serve him full time 28 years ago.

Alone...in the dark...playing the waiting game.

I dreamed of being in that wonderful place again...outside in the light...where I would be able to finally serve out of my passion, gifts, and my calling...to leave this dingy cave and be busy again. After all, that is was I was meant to be and do. Then I bowed my head and faced the reality again of my present...the lonely cave when I am now. Dark, dingy, alone, without a purpose on a path that I fear will never end. Alone with me... in a black hole.

I cried out again, "Someone, help me get out of here!"

Again, silence.

Suddenly I felt a presence of another. I could not understand it or explain it. I reached out but couldn't feel anyone or see anything. Yet, I felt the presence of something real...no, I knew someone was there. I felt moved not to speak but to just sit and enjoy that presence. Somehow I just knew that whoever was there cared and loved me even in my fear and insecurity. He loved me for who I was and where I was. As I pondered him, I realized that he was the same one who called me decades ago.

My fears then dissipated into the blackness.

In the midst of the darkness, the demise of my cave peril...my dark situation... took on a new perspective. He is still here with me. He hasn't forgotten or dropped me. He still has a plan for me. Somehow there was meaning again.

I was meant to be here for just this purpose....to wait...to just be me... to just be with him.

In my quietness, I faintly smiled.


"You're my cave to hide in...I want to hide in you. I've put my life in your hands. You won't drop me; you'll never let me down." (David while hiding in a cave) Psalm 31, The Message

Brainwashing

I have been brainwashed!

This process was not conducted under the bright lights of systems lighting or under the power of drugs and hypnotic suggestion. Immediately I think of the film "The Manchurian Candidate" when brainwashing actually became a legitimate term in the 1950's. My brainwashing was simply being born and raised in an American culture where busyness has been deemed a virtue.

Doing double duty tasks and accomplishing long checklists of goals consume our thinking and activity. We've even added devices to make that drive easier with the Blackberry's, IPhones, and Palm Pre's we carry about. With computers in our pockets we can check email while shopping, follow the stock market while eating out and surf the web to find out what movie is playing with directions on how to get there - all while driving down the road! We have been brainwashed to think that busier is better and that sitting doing nothing is a waste of time.

So when God calls us into the practice of solitude we rebel. Sitting alone with God seems like a waste of time while our checklist sits unattended. After all what do we DO when we practice "being" with God. Here we go again...we want to be reading the Bible, praying, listening to music, or a CD or reading as part of our "time" with God - sophisticated Christian brainwashing!


I have found that learning to just sit before God has been the hardest thing I've ever done in my Christian life. Yet this is the place where the experience of His love impacts me the most. For the "being with God experience" in solitude leads to the expression of His love in my own life while living in community with others. That's because in solitude I can embrace His love first hand as He embraces me.


The phobia I have is that the "sounds of silence" will cause me to see myself as I really am under God's flashlight and sometimes that frightens me. It's much easier to go on being somebody else by identifying my worth by what I accomplish. So I stay busy in order to avoid the true realities of who I am and who God is. Brainwashing ultimately leads to fear of being found out that I am not the person you think I am.


Beyond that phobia is a God waiting to just be with me because He truly loves me for who I am. After all He created me and values me as truly unique. Being with Him in solitude eventually leads to "fear washing" and a life of genuine freedom to be myself within the context of loving people.


So, excuse me while I return to God's morning rinse cycle...

Being Stayed

"You will keep in perfect peace him whose mind is steadfast, because he trusts in you." (Isaiah 26:3). The key to a perfect peace in the midst of turbulent times is the staying mind. It's a mind that is super-glued to thoughts of trust and belief in the closeness of God and His power and control. Many days I choose to be stayed yet when I sense God's absence or lack of control (as I perceive it) the bond breaks. When that happens anxiety and fear become my stay and perfect peace is only a shadow fanthom instead of a reality. The superbond is rooted in my experience of the reality of God and His love for me. Do I really believe He is there with me during the disaster sales week or the silence in my ministry search? The real truth is that He is still there. My stay is to be glued to that thought in a belief that supercedes my emotions. I live close by Mount Ranier which dominates the sky in all its majesty. Yet there are some days of cloudiness or fog in which you would never even know it existed. The fog of my doubt cloudies my belief in a God who is there for me. Being stayed begins with an anchor of belief that can only come from solitude and awareness. That relationship that arises out of the fog is true and real. The mountain still stands even when my unbelief gives me tunnel vision. It's time to start trusting in a God who is there.

Truth Reset Button

"Teach me your way O Lord, and I will walk in your truth. Give me an undivided heart that I may fear your name" (Psalm 86:11). The way of God is a walk down the pathway of relationship that begins in solitude. It is not an easy discipline but one that sets the course of truth in our walk. We are reminded of the truth of who we are and who God is. The world will tug and pull and grab at me to replace that truth with its own psuedo-truths. Those psuedo-truths will give me a divided heart that is ruled by fears and anxieties to perform and meet the approval of others. Those pseudo-truths are anchored in what I do (performance), what others think (popularity), and what I have (possessions). Fearing His name is simply to know Him and recognize His presence with me every moment of every day. He is a mighty God who loves me good times or bad. I don't have to perform and that is the path of truth. My time of solitude every day is in actuality a time to push a "truth-reset button".