"Steel Away View" Reserve

To Care: with a Breath and a Moan

[Below is something like what I hope to say this Saturday at Greenhouse Park--the former builders' tip/landfill, now a bush regeneration site. Volunteers like our little house church and our friends are coming to demonstrate our care by planting 400 native plants--trees/shrubs/ground covers/grasses.] Welcome to bush regeneration! And you thought only human beings needed to be born again! (You know, regeneration means "born again". LOL) It’s amazing this gift we humans have--to be born again--but there are some other gifts I want to talk about. The first gift: SEEING THE FUTURE. It's the joy of sending oxygen into the future. It's harvesting water and micro-organisms in the soil. It's making a promise to your family--"For better or for worse, I will be faithful." It’s a vision of promise and hope for the future. It's seeing the unseen--everything from the unseen nutrients and living things in the soil to the unseen spiritual nutrients in our souls. In Christian terms, it’s THE KINGDOM OF GOD. It's a welcoming of Heaven home to Earth. And by faith we pray in working clothes for its coming, taste it, and rejoice! Did anyone taste it today? Another amazing gift: BREATH. We simply inhale/exhale and we live. Yeah, I know lizards and sheep do this. But we know that we’re doing it and what a blessing it is! (Which leads some of us to imagine and trust the most Blessed Giver!) Our discoveries led us even to see oxygen and photosynthesis under a microscope! And our breathing is potentially so incredibly efficient and useful! Of land mammals, none can inhale as much oxygen as we potentially can! "Get up and go breathe, says the Lord!" As I aspire to trust Jesus, I also aspire to breathe. Enough about “breathing”. That’s nothing. The next gift will push you over the edge: POWER. Humans have power over the whole earth. I can abuse my family, friend, neighbor, planet or I can bless them whether or not they can pay me back. Here’s a Proverb [12:10]: The just ones are kind to their animals, but the unjust? Even their compassion is cruel. I'd say even the very soil on which I tread is a "neighbor." Here’s another example: I have the power both to leave a footprint of waste or create spaces for life! . . . Let me put that in cornbread English: I can consume the land like a locust or I can use my power to GREEN THE DESERT, so to speak. [I’ve seen the desert "greened" on YouTube, literally. These permaculture people in England went to a place where the earth was as dry and barren as a parking lot and they created a space for life in it . . . and violá! In months this desert was producing figs and pomegranates and citrus like crazy!] So, that’s the gift of power that God and/or evolutionary convergence gave to human beings. In Christian terms, it’s "Dominion" and “The meek will inherit the earth” and “In Christ, anyone is a new creation”. Resurrection knows no bounds. I know this is an incomplete list of gifts that humans share, but I want to say what I believe ties these gifts together--CARE. The proper bond for VISION and BREATH and POWER is “care”. It's care that brings green to the desert and gratitude to the one who breathes. It’s illustrated in the Bible. This is Romans 8, written nearly 2,000 years ago by Paul who followed Christ from his own people, culture, tradition, and beyond into those of Arab, Greek, Asia, and Rome. Paul said:

For all of creation is waiting, yearning for the time when the children of God will be revealed. You see, all of creation has collapsed into emptiness, not by its own choosing, but by God’s. Still He placed within it a deep and abiding hope that creation would one day be liberated from its slavery to corruption and experience the glorious freedom of the children of God. Everything created by God, including every bird, every beast, and every plant, is moaning in unison with birthing pains up until now. And there’s more; it’s not just creation--all of us are moaning together too.

When the groan in me meets the vision in you, I begin to see what care can do. When I feel anger for the mess I see or feel joy at the possibilities, I begin to care with you. I just can't sit for this slavery so I'll stand in the image of a God who cares. I’m a born-again or maybe I should say, I aspire to be a born-again. I aspire to be a man of regeneration, "bush" regeneration included. I also aspire to practice this moaning. This moaning isn't because we're stuck; it's because we're waiting for something. We’ve moaned together today by planting natives, waiting for oxygen in the air and habitat for trillions of "neighbors." If you breathed a little more than usual or feel like your power was put to good use today, go home, take a deep breath, and let out a joyful groan!

Many of you aspire to care, To really care. You breathe blessing in and blessing out, Without lack. You don't need dirt to pay you back. You aspire to care like you breathe fresh air. Most people aren’t like that most of the time. They breathe in blessing and breathe out a little less. They take others' needs and try to horde breath. How do you teach someone to aspire to care, How do you make room for others to bless? Others, I don’t know But here's my promise, for better or for worse I will care more today and start to rehearse it I'm starting with a breath And then a moan

By the way, we'll be doing this Natives Planting again in November.

H20 A Journey of Faith

I'm carrying a burden in my mind. There's something that bothers me every day. I volunteer in Bushcare every week and climb at Hangdog rock climbing gym. I've been living in Australia with my wife (now pregnant) and daughter (now 10 months) since January this year. They're not the burden. I'm enjoying all of these people, volunteer company and families both. But there's a word present in all of this that I've gotta get out.

The burden . . . I want to make absolutely sure that honest people in Wollongong have the opportunity to reject Jesus for who he really is . . . or at least my understanding of him. I've got this sense that some of my new friends have been presented with a limited and unfair experience and view of what it is to believe in God and be committed to Jesus.

As I do my best to search my motivations honestly, I also find another drive within me. Well, it's a drive within me at my best when I'm mindful of Jesus. I want so badly to see people's lives change for the better. I want to see more local food produced and shared. I want to see an end to racial, religious, and sexist prejudice. I want to see an end to abuse in the name of God or country or any other reason.

So, in a way, I've got no place here. I'm a believer. I give the scriptures of the bible a confidence in my life that I don't give to any other literature whether it be scientific, historic, or spiritual. My faith isn't an add-on, an unnecessary room in my house. It's the whole house, land and everything, as unreliably generous and inviting as my house and land might be. The message I believe . . . touches everything in my life. I want it to affect how/why I brush my teeth, love my family, make friends with strangers, live in Oz, and volunteer in Bushcare. I just can't quit practicing my faith or keep the message I believe quiet . . . and that's what makes me feel a bit out-of-style. My faith is public, not private.

On the other hand, Wollongong is just the place for me. I'm cynical and skeptical of religion. Like what Freud said, "Where questions of religion are concerned, people are guilty of every possible sort of dishonesty and intellectual misdemeanour." I appreciate the line from a U2 song, "While I'm getting over certainty, stop helping God across the road like some little old lady." Yeah! That's right! But don't get me wrong; I'm confident in God. It's just my certainty is that I don't fully know my self, let alone The Other. I pray for God to purge my dishonesty and intellectual misdemeanors.

The reasons I feel like this culture is a good fit for me abound. Just one example of why I don't always feel comfortable within popular Christianity is that I don't get the sentiment that God cares about heaven but not about earth. I've heard from evangelicals, "The physical doesn't matter, only the spiritual matters." This doesn't make sense to me. In these areas, I've had to search my faith and practice and scriptures to find something better, something closer to the truth and beauty God surely intends.

So I've been on a journey of faith. You might say I'm one of those never content types. I will just keep asking questions until I get suitable answers. And then, I'll probably learn some more questions. So far, I don't know if God is in my vision for sure, don't know if I have the truth. But I believe the Truth's got a hold of me! God is making me better, faster, smarter, stronger--for the sake of others--than I was before.

So I wanted to share the journey with some others. I don't want to download my vision or impose my journey of faith on anyone. I just want to foster a place where other seeking types will be allowed to journey together. We can drink tea and fair trade coffee while watching a 30-minute DVD called "H20 A Journey of Faith" and then have an hour-long group discussion about our response, in both faith and doubt.