The Question

What is the relationship between Creation and Hospitality?

i walked by the river with a scarf and a speedway coffee, listening to the September playlist from a friend, as instructed by the... well, instructions on the email about said playlist. and i decided to stop and look over the rail for awhile at the swarm of fisherman in their waders in the river. and a little, black, BMX biker boy came up and leaned on the rail right next to me. our elbows were touching. and he said, slightly audibly above the sound of the music in my head, "i wish i had a fishing pole." and i said, "you don't?" him, "No. Do you?" me, "Nope." he told me he wishes he could just pick up all the water in his hand and hold it so the fishermen could get all the fish without having to stand in the water all day. "like a superpower?" i said "yeah. and i would do it from inside the water, you know, with telekinesis!" and i said cool. then i asked him if he went to school today and where and did he like it. he doesn't hate school. he doesn't love it either. then we commented on the whole, full grown tree that had floated down stream and gotten stuck by the spillway. you can see all the roots. and we decided it was cool and that we had never seen the roots of a full grown tree just out in the open air like that. then we talked about the algae in the river on the rocks and about seaweed. and he said "I think snails eat algae" me, "how do you know?" him, "now i know you don't watch sponge bob but, on one episode they all got covered in this green stuff and i think it was algae and then a snail ate it off them." me, "actually i do watch sponge bob." and then we threw rocks and sticks in the river for a long time. we watched the sticks get sucked down by the current at the bottom of the spillway and we watched the ripples of the rocks we threw, stick in circles in the water. and the circles followed the spillway down on the surface of the water, into the foam at the bottom. and each time it happened we looked at each other with raised eyebrows and muppet smiles as if we just discovered something that seems like impossible physics. he asked, "how old are you?" "25" i said. "how old are you?" "10" he said. i never finished the playlist.

My Faithful Followers...

To my faithful blog followers (of which there seem to be about...2), this is for you. Don't kick me off your lists. I often don't even know where to begin. Do you get the feeling sometimes that writing about life not only doesn't capture your thoughts and experiences but actually makes them less real? I get that feeling often. I wish I was more articulate.. or perhaps less articulate. Whatever... I just wish writing was like taking pictures, expressing things without having to sift them through my own lens first. But I suppose photographers are forcing things through a lens too. I want to write like a security camera: grainy,black and white and objective. Then again, the world is more than that, even the most drab security camera view can't catch the truth of it. It's raining today. And yesterday and the day before... And I'm fantasizing about the emotions of nature. If nature has emotions, what does the rain mean? What are the clouds for? I have this pair of glasses that I only wear on the days when I feel the most introspective and melancholy. And they remind me, each time I have to slide them back into place, of how I feel. And I like that. If nature feels melancholy some days, maybe the rain are her glasses. Just so she doesn't forget to embrace the gray, disconnectedness of that day. It's been melancholy out for days now. I like it.. I'm feeling tragic romantic.

It was one of those moments. You know the ache you feel when you realize you can’t possibly put into words what you see lying on that bench, looking skyward. You know you’ll never be able to quite remember how the sparks of the fire mingle with the tiny bright stars, frozen in the sky. And something inside you freezes too, when you think about how you’ll never get this moment back. No matter how you try you’ll never recreate the suspended stars and the dancing sparks. Or maybe you will, but you’ll never feel this way again. You’ll never be as taken aback as right now. Shocked by the clarity of it all, the even, still, 3 dimensional living of it all. Cold air, orange embers and the bitter smells of the past that force your heart down the paths of the future where things will never be the same. For better or worse, the days that burn the eyes of our hearts today will flow by us and new days will take their place. This, what I see above me tonight, the sky, the smoke, the pain and the promise, written so obviously in the life of nature, this is my life too. Time and space are creation. I am creation too. Even after all these words, I still have that ache.

Well, it finally happened. I don't actually know where I am. I'm blank. I'm sitting in an airport but I don't know if it's in Cincinnati or Cleveland. I think Cincinnati. Regardless, it feels strange not to know exactly were I am. And it seems even more strange that it doesn't actually matter. At all. I always assumed this would happen someday. Here is how I've spent the first part of my layover. There's a chapel about a mile away in this airport. I stumbled upon it. Went in. Listened to my Gregorian Chant. Meditated (it was almost loud enough to drown out the final boarding calls). Said my Our Fathers. Listened to some Lakota George Flutes and took these pictures. I left refreshed. Amusingly refreshed. Now I'm here. Trying to stay calm. Trying to love life. Trying to pass the time. And doing a fine job of it all. Hope the flights on time. When did flying cease to be an adventure and end become instead simply a mode of transportation?

Trip #3

Leaving for my third trip of the summer. I'm at the Grand Rapids airport on my way to San Fran. I'll continue my studies there. Some upcoming reading: Creation and Reality; Micheal Welker, Crooked Little Heart; Anne Lamott (just for fun). And others I'm sure. Once I get going it's hard to stop. Why California? you ask. Well, it just so happens that my beloved sister is there for the summer and I just couldn't go 8 weeks without seeing her. I don't have many plans beside seeing her and reading (by the pool of course). Labri update: My great friend Sarah got home from Labri the other day. She lives in Atlanta. And she wrote about the separation on her blog. She said just what I, also, had felt. Something about how we leave and not only does some of our heart stay there at the Manor House but little pieces of our heart and self also fall scattered across the Atlantic on the way back to our old lives. It's strange, we decided. We leave some of us there and instead of missing just those people and that place, we seem to miss that part of ourself as well. It's as if we are still there. Rattling around in the house, doing chores, reading on the couch, arguing over lunch. And life feels strange for awhile. Until, sadly, we begin to forget and disconnect and perhaps even turn back into who we were before we knew of that place. But we are never really the same I suppose. And that's we we go. So, it was nice to read her blogs and hear the sorrow and relive that moment just for a bit. How does all this fit into my paradigm of finding a home and staying there? Cedar Rapids update: My last post of Cedar Rapids was called "Are floods and tornadoes weeds?" While I was there, I heard my Uncle preach a sermon about weeds. He preached the parable about the weeds and the wheat from Matthew. Several things about it were of interest to me in my search for the heart of this Creation. First of all, I felt compelled by picture of plants to illustrate the idea of creation. Because I think the plants are not only humanity but perhaps more. Perhaps they are systems and themes and idea and trends and emotions. Perhaps that parable has something to say to us about micro and macro life. Inside and outside of ourselves. I'm a little ahead of myself. Let's just say that the reigning idea of my Uncle's message was the we are to take care NOT to pull the weeds. What looks like weeds may be wheat. And, as it would seem, visa versa. The parable states that the garden was sown with seeds of fruit bearing plants. And then, later, another came along and scattered seeds of weeds in among the plants. I think two things. I wonder if the weeds a real. I wonder if what we think are weeds could always turn out to be wheat. I'm not sure if I believe it, or what the implications are, but I'm asking the question. I guess the parable does say that the seeds of weed were sown. Question two: We are taught that creation was distorted, or broken by sin. But does this parable apply here? Is the garden not destroyed or broken but sin is just added to the picture? Added to the already complete garden? this could mean that we are left to contend with sin in our world but that it need not have changed the nature and state of the garden. As I discussed this with my mom after the service. We tried to reconcile this idea with the knowledge that our own natures and wills are not unaffected by sin. But we discovered that here the parable might work on a micro level. There is a garden inside us as well. And there is perfect completion but also the invasion of sin. So within the world there is good, complete, unbroken wheat. And sin. If we are not to pull the weeds in the world or the church, for danger of pulling wheat accidentally, are we to not pull the weeds in ourself either? And there is a larger, more complicated, diverse question left to answer. Are the floods and tornadoes of the weeds? Are they sin sent in among the good order?

are flooding and tonados weeds? and who put them here?

Downtown Cedar Rapids had somthing like 32 feet of water. All the government offices and disaster centers had to be relocated. There were empty spaces in the Mall. Here's what it looks like with the County Treasurer next door to the Gap... and so on. Pretty ingenious. Anything touched by the water was considered contaminated. The water was toxic because of all the stuff that gets into it as it rushes around town. Sewage, gas & oil, fertilizers, chemicals, etc. So the first step of four in the flood clean up is hauling the muddy contents of thousands of basements (and some entire houses) out to the curb to be collected by the contracted trash removers, needless to say, working overtime. You have to ask yourself when you see the streets lined with 25,000 people stored atricles, "where has our consumerism gotten us today?" Sort of a poetic human statement here. You think? This is the house next to the one we worked in the first day. As you can see, the water washed away the entire block foundation, right out from under the house. But here is the same house. Curious how those pretty little delicate flowers managed to survive, with gusto, what the block foundation could not.

Behold, I am bringing a flood of water upon the earth.

So my study on nature and creation has taken me on a field trip. To Cedar Rapids IA, (it's been tagged a natural disaster area), to help with the flood clean up. An interesting perspective on the nature of nature, to be found here. Especially for 25,000 people who now have no homes. The yet unofficial, lateset word on the street is that FEMA(national disaster relief) has only been to two disaster sites of higher magnitute than this: Katrina and 9.11. They anticipated a foot of residential flooding. They got 10 feet. But as you can see, it's still as beautiful as ever here. More to come later.

I miss L'Abri. It's strange how simple it is to form connections in a totally other part of the world. Can we say modern marvels? It's so easy to get from here to there, and I think we suffer in the end because of it. Here I am in Michigan, with part of myself still in England. How strange and modern of a predicament. Who am I that I feel the right or privilege to go where I want when I want, even when it's utterly impractical? And since when does it seem like a good idea to spread myself and my heart all over the globe so flippantly. I think it's part of what brought me home early. I was beginning to wake up to this strange phenomenon of how travel and distance can affect the soul. I don't wish I hadn't gone. I don't wish I stayed. I simply reflect on the unexpected and usually hidden effects on my self, which I only now, at this point in my life am turning my attention to. Michelle and Sarah, remember the other day when we talked about the idea of running away and around from where we have our roots? I think that's what I'm feeling now. I feel that it's good and fitting, as creatures, for humans to be home. It's not a matter of avoiding challenges or adventures or keeping a narrow world view. In fact it's more difficult to stay I think. It's more risky, more of the heart to be lost when we invest where we are and have a mind to stay. But in the end and on the journey we are who we are most when we are where we belong. When we are home. That's how I feel at Western Sem. Thank you God. Love you all at L'Abri. I miss you. The house, the walks, yes. But mostly just you. And now that part of my heart is there, it's there to stay.

Well, I'm home. I woke up at 6am this morning. It felt like 11am. Imagine that. I can't wait to get into the hammock but first I wanted to let all the fellow LAbri-ers know that I finally put up the facebook group English L'Abri Summer 08. I love and miss you all dearly. Yes, all of you. I missed tea this morning. Not sure what I'll do with out it. Love you all.

Went to Winchester today. I was late for the bus, this is me running after it. Josh (UK) Winchester Cathedral: The largest Cathedral in Europe. We took Holy Communion there at noon. The Royal Oak: The oldest Pub in England. It was dark. We don't have McDonalds like this in the States! Or candy like this...

Sarah (Atlanta) "Where is my make-up." "Can I have that with one of those.. you know... straws with the crazy shapes." Philip (Canada) Anthony (Michigan) Josh (Britain) Me and Michelle at the Pub.

I’m learning about the difference between cursed and fallen. Humanity and nature where affected differently by the fall. Nature was cursed to produce hardship for humanity. Nature was destined to groan until the redemption of all creation. Humanity was cursed because of the fall and also was, indeed, fallen in nature. Humanity was expelled from the Garden and therefore was separated from communion with God. Nature was not expelled and still is joined to God by complete obedience. I think, in speaking about death, and wondering about the presence or nature of death in the Garden, pre-Fall, this is important. I used to be of the mind that there must have been death in the Garden if nature is not fallen because of humanity’s fall. But I wonder if this new difference I’ve discovered will shed more light on that. There may not have been death in the Garden. This is why God says, “do not eat of it or you will die.” And at the Fall, humanity and its domain (nature) were subjected to the cycle of life and death until redemption. So nature was cursed because of it and so death entered the world, but nature was still not fallen from the presence or will of God. Also, I’m spending some time on the idea of the creation of nature as an act of hospitality on God’s part. (Thanks Sam) God prepares a place for humanity. Paul Marshall, Heaven is Not My Home, says that the creation of humanity is the culmination of all creation, the point. And in this idea we see a culmination of two truths occurring simultaneously. 1) Nature is created for the sole purpose of being the home to these human creatures 2) We are dependant upon nature for God’s provision. We cannot sustain ourselves. If Nature is created in preparation for humanity, the focus of God’s creation, we are able to liken it to a house that your parents build you and give to you. They say, “Son, you’re getting married and you will need some provision and protection. We have built you this beautiful house and it will give you shelter.” If we receive this gift from our loved ones, we would rightfully intend to do two things. 1) care for the house and revel in its details, not just because we are sure it will “keep giving” if we do so but because we want to honor and love the one who gave it. 2) We will delight in caring and preparing this space for others. We will invite others into our homes and pass the hospitality on to them. We can do these two things, and should for nature. So, even though the actions of humanity cannot possible harbor the power to permanently destroy or even redeem nature, we still must act. We must be compelled not out of a desperation that our resources will run out or God will cease to provide for God’s creation. Not out of a calculated prediction of what the future will hold and the affect that our current action have on it. But out of love, and most of all, gratitude to the giver of the ultimate hospitality. These acts of love and appreciation are those that reflect not fear but trust in the continued provision of God through nature.

At the Pub right now with Philip. We walked 20 minute to get here. It's the closest civilization to the Manor. It's great and bizarre how there aren't really street numbers here, just cottage names. And the Post man knows just where to go. What a Holiday. So we'll probably get back late for dinner, not by much though. We came to use the internet. I'm actually typing on my own computer! Two of the more interesting parts of England: 1) the children sound smarter than me with those dang English accents 2) the walks, we walk on foot paths all over the countryside, usually every day. The paths are really just a faint row of trampled down grass which you follow blindly and uncertainly through sheep fields and meadows of buttercups until you seem to have gone full circle and you begin to look for the 14 chimneys of the Manor again. I have some to write about on what I've been discovering on death but that will have to wait, seeing as we are going to be late for dinner as it is.

Thoughts on Creation: *** Here's what's come up in the last few days. There is a difference between the idea of being fallen and being cursed when we think of the beginning. I think I'm finding that humanity is both fallen and cursed. We have experienced a separation from the perfect communion with God which seemed to be present in the garden. We have also been cursed with various hardships, presumably, as a result of the activity of disobedience in the garden. Nature was also cursed, it seems (though there is compelling argument that the curse of nature is simply the fallen-ness of humanity and our subsequent affect on it). But nature's nature does not seem to be fallen. Not separated from God. We have ample biblical narrative to tell us that nature still obeys God's every command, unlike humanity. So it's difficult to discern what appears in nature: whether it's something out of order as a result of the affects of humanity on its state or whether it's still ordered perfectly to God's will. So I wonder, how do we look at nature's rhythms and patterns to know what proper order is? And even if nature isn't fallen or corrupt, is there a visible order and pattern to see which is worthy of study or emulation? Ive learned much more too but time runs short. More later.