God of the Spider House

It's hot today. I'm sitting outside of Spider House, waiting for a friend and thought I would share the moment with you, because it's a moment.

The courtyard at Spider House is unique. Tiled and full of old lawn furniture and picnic tables. There is statuary and greenery but everything is thrown together, like the place was designed by a garage sale artist. The the huge tree, (elm?) that stands sentinel over this area sports bamboo wind chimes and Christmas lights nonchalantly, as if they were his natural fruit. Just as the young student, finishing his breakfast and smoking his cigarette is reading Steinbeck, like it was as natural as the summer heat; like everyone reads Steinbeck.

There is an older guy close by with a long gray ponytail, scratching his way through the classifieds, obviously, despondently, seeking a few dollars of employment. There is a dog. Well, it is Austin!

There are lovers of various types, deeply involved in their own worlds. There are people just.....here.....waiting for something. And many humming computers with pilots flying them through work and waste. And there is one more thing.......

God is here.

In this jumbled mess of life and liberty; between the smiling lovers and the furrowed speakers; between the courtyard and the porch; between the porch and the caffeine altar. In all this beautiful, thrown together, beauty is God. He makes this space holy, and I find His holiness within this moment.

To my left is a bird bath with a broken statue in it. The statue used to be a ship's pilot, standing by the wheel of his vessel. Now the wheel is broken and the pilot's head is missing. So often does life make us feel this, that I have no direction, or vision, or even a head to turn and look and think. But here, in this holiness, he still stands tall, he remains a thing of beauty in this jumble, who stands with dignity, grasping the ruined wheel, saved by grace and waiting for full restoration. Yes, there is no doubt, God is here.

He creates and breaks and recreates. He rescues, redeems and restores. By His blood, he collects all of us broken, cast-off, castaways in the garden of His delight and makes us beautiful peoples, statues, trees, lights, lovers, searchers, readers, wasters, waiters, all of us.

This is a holy place if you can see it.

Spider House, cafe, bar, coffee house:

God is here.

Masked

The Stranger

Well we all have a face
That we hide away forever
And we take them out and
Show ourselves
When everyone has gone
Some are satin some are steel
Some are silk and some are leather
They're the faces of the strangerBut we love to try them on

Well we all fall in love
But we disregard the danger
Though we share so many secrets
There are some we never tell
Why were you so surprised
That you never saw the stranger
Did you ever let your lover see
The stranger in yourself?

So, I'm thinking I must have miscommunicated something the other day while I was preaching. I know what I did, my word choices led to a misunderstanding of the point I was trying to make. So let me put it another way.

People wear masks.

Sometimes we are forced to, most times it is a choice.

Some people put on the 'wise' mask or the 'smart' mask so people don't know what is really happening. Some people wear the 'introvert' or frankly, the 'extrovert' mask to hide their insecurities or self-loathing. Some folks choose 'holiness' as a mask to cover what they really are. Many of us pretend to be stoic and strong, many of us pretend to be weak. It just depends on the situation.

I'd like to believe that folks on their spiritual journey, especially followers of Jesus Christ, would be in the process of becoming more and more themselves, less concerned with the opinions and of the World around them (I don't mean in terms of holiness!), and more concerned with the wholeness of their walk; the desire to be the same person, inside and out. I think that's the best place to be. Most of the Jesus folk that I have the privilege of knowing are somewhere in that transition, thanks to the work of the Divine (the Holy Spirit in this case), but there is a catch, and that's where Sunday's sermon crossed with this topic.

The one requirement for spiritual growth is brokeness; admission of failure, admission of need, admission of wrong-doing. Our pretensions and protestations of our own holiness and self-sufficiency hold us back from real growth. We first come to Christ saying, "I can't make it on my own," and every step after that is based on a working knowledge of the adjustments (repentance) I need to make in my life to Jesus as our master, teacher, sensei.......Lord. Therefore, self-honesty is a cornerstone ethic of our walk. I don't mean to say that you look at yourself and just see how horrible you are, you also need to see the good that God is making you into, but there can be no ompromise or ignoring of the things in your life that need to change. In this case, I am specifically talking about the 'mask' of religion that many of us wear to hide where we are with Jesus. But the 'masks' of self-deceptive attitudes and beliefs must be thrown away.

Here's the bright sun shinging through. God will help you throw down falsehood and pretension, but it is He, not you, that enacts real change in you. So the drive should be towards surrender to God and allowing Him to speak His words into your heart, not towards behavior modification.