Lightworks Two/5 Freewrite

Ah, I am out on my deck again. It is supposed to be in the 90s again today. I love sitting out here, and I hope to do it everyday I am here in the summer months and maybe into the fall. 

I had a hard time falling asleep last night. I usually have this after being sick and sleeping more than my sleepless elite 6 hours (have a gene that makes me only need that much - I have been in a study so no question I have the gene). When I do that, I usually recalibrate and have shorter nights of sleep to equal always to 6 hours. 

So, I got up and had an Examen prayer time by candlelight and had some time in Scripture. This week, my verses are...

Deut 30:11-20 - I listened to this over and over again yesterday as I walked up and over hospital hill and really mulled on "Look what I've done for you today: I've place in front of you . . .

Life and Good

Death and Evil 

And I command you today: Love GOD, your God, Walk in his ways. Keep his commandments...so that you will live, really live, live exuberantly, blessed by GOD, your God, in the land you are about to enter and possess (15-16).  

God wants us to REALLY LIVE. The "Good Life" that Aristotle talked about.  Jesus came that we might have life and have it abundantly. I feel so rejuvenated lately in this. I has helped to go through these Exercises and let go of disordered loves and attachments and to become indifferent, especially to the approval of people which is something I had struggled with my whole life. 

I listened to that part over and over, and I am sure the people driving by wondered what this tall woman was so joyful about. 

The next was Mt 25:31-45. I camped on loving others. Who are the sick, homeless, thirsty, and hungry around me. This was perfectly timed as I am leading a Renovare Book Study today called Reconstructing the Gospel: Finding Freedom from Slaveholder Religion. I didn't particularly care for the book, and the author makes some strange leaps in thought. But I do believe we are to love our neighbor. For me, it is getting up everyday and asking God what I can do to show love today. That is the simplicity of devotion to Christ. I love God, listen, obey, and love my neighbor. This goes along with what Tetlow says in the last two "considerations" this week of the Exercises, but I am going to type out all five because they really all relate:

• Jesus proclaimed that he had come "to bring fire on the earth" (Lk 12:49). Indeed, Jesus Christ has fired generations with passionate desires for justice, peace, righteousness, and love.
• God our Lord writes not only his law on our hear, but his hopes in your heart's truest desires. For your deepest desiring for love rises directly out of the passionately burning love of God at the core of your being, creating you in all your concreteness. 
• This means that in your authentic self burns a passionate desire to do whatever will bring you to the love of God. Because of sin in the world, this desire gets blurred and dampened by lesser wants and needs. And your original yearning for God is bent and skewed by sin in you and by your own sin. 
  

• Yet your mission in Christ remains: you are to learn to love, God first, and in God those real living persons whom God gives you to love and be loved by. This is your mission, as in fact it was Jesus's mission. This is the fire he came to spread on the earth.
• This is the truth you are called to do: "Love one another; just as I have loved you, you also must love one another" (Jn 13:34). You are likely to be a failure in more than one thing, as everyone is. The only ultimately important failure would be to fail as a lover of the real living persons whom God gives to you, including anyone near you who is in any kind of need. 

According to this author, my mentor, who just died after serving in Japan for 35 years did not do God's work. She was captive to "slaveholder religion" because she did not join in the cause of blacks in America. The last time I met with her she reminded me (as she had done several times before) that her call was to "sow the word of God," and she faithfully lived up to her calling from God from the time she was a teenager to her death, one months short of 94. This guy would say this woman's life did not count. I think otherwise. 

The last passage was Mt 3:14-17 and the baptism of Jesus. I camped on what the Father said of the Son, after the Holy Spirit descended like a dove: "This is my Son, chosen and marked by my love, delight of my life." 

Lorraine was chosen and marked by God's love, the delight of God's life, and she heard a "Well done, good and faithful servant," no doubt whatsoever in my mind. She probably never joined the NAACP (which this guy recommends you do if you really want to be "serious") and "tell your  friends why you can no longer vote with the good white Christians for every Republican candidate on the ticket" (p. 169). 

Anyway, this is supposed to be about what you are teaching me God. So part of my loving yesterday was to prepare to lead this book club even though I really disliked the book. So I listened to three of his podcasts and listened to all his writings, and I still do not think what he did through this book is contributing to the conversation and is doing more to divide than unite. But I prepared, and I probably will be in the minority in my distaste for the book. It really was a labor of love for my neighbors, and TODAY, my neighbors are the five women coming over to discuss this book today! 

TTFN!