A Jewish Folk Tale

This Jewish folk tale demonstrates the confusion associated with the simple statement "I Love You," while illustrating how difficult it can be to get the word "Love" right:

Once upon a time, an angler pulls a large pike out of the water.  "Look at the size of this fish!  I"ll take it to the Baron.  He loves pike."

Hearing these words, the poor fish says to himself, "There's hope for me yet."

When the fisherman presents himself at the gate of the manor house, the guard inquires:  "What do you have?"  

 "A pike for the Baron."

"Great," replies the guard.  " The Baron loves pike."

Once  the fish hears the words, and while he can hardly breath as he is brought into the palace, he still finds hope: the Baron loves pike.

As he is brought into the kitchen, all the cooks get excited as they look at the fish, nodding to one another how much the Baron loves pike.  The fish is then placed on the table, and the Baron himself enters and examines the fish.  "Cut off the tail, cut off the head and slit it this way."

With his last breath, the fish cries out in great despair, "Why did you lie?  You don't love pike, you love yourself!"

The poor fish is as confused as we are about the different meaning of the same verb.  Love is the most complex word in the english language.  The most misused and abused word ever stated and by now the most unloved word we use.  More has been written about love than any other word.  The dumbest words ever written about love:  "Love means never having to say you,re sorry" (Love Story by Erich Segal)

"Love" is a hard word to get right.  The true character of love is self-giving, the emptying and expending of oneself for the well being of others.  True love lays down the draw bridge of the self so that others can cross over into this kind of love.  You don't find love by looking for it you find love by laying it down and letting it go.

It has been said that "Agape" love (the Greek word for God's love) doesn't expect anything in return.  I disagree.  There is no such thing as one-way love.  Also there is no such thing as self-less love.  All love is relational.  The notion that we can give love without receiving love violates the Biblical understanding, where, "Love is from God; everyone who loves is born of God and knows God.  Whoever does not love does not know God, for God is love" (1 Jn 4:7-8).  For us to experience love , we must receive the love offered to us.  "God love was revealed among us in this way: God sent his only Son into the world so that we might live through Him.  In this is love, not that we loved God but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the atoning sacrifice for our sins" (1 Jn 4:9-10).  It all starts with God and not us.

We can't reciprocate God-love; we can only respond to God-love.  To love as God loves, the love of forgiveness, grace, hope and sacrificial giving, is not possible without God's power.  

One last thought, one of the most incredible verses in the Bible can be easily overlooked: "Jacob served seven years to get Rachel, but they seemed like only a few days to him because of his love for her" (Gen. 29:20).  Upon reading it again you find that it does not say, "and those seven years were as seven life times."  It says those seven years of unrequited love were as seven days.  For Jacob, the love itself and not the quest of the object of his love was the satisfaction.  

"To love at all is to be vulnerable.  

Love anything and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly be broken.  

If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, 

you must give your heart to no one, not even to an animal".   

C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves

PS  I think this might become a series of articles.  

The Synergy of Two

"YOU"  A New Intimacy.

Christianity is a religion of the "I", but it quickly becomes the relationship of the you.  In fact, Christianity is best described as a first-person faith that puts the second person first.  Especially the last person.  In the Shema (Deu. 6:4-9)  "...Love the Lord your God with all your heart with all your soul and with all your strength.  The first part is addressed to the individual (heart) and the second part is in the plural and is addressed to the Hebrew people as a whole (Deu. 11:13-21).  This is the beginning of Jesus answer to the question as to which of the commandments was the greatest.  In Jesus own words "Love the Lord your God and your neighbor as yourself".  You must first Love as a singular person and then love in a plural sense, your community or neighbor.  In fact God told Adam in Genesis that it was not good for him to be alone, so he created Eve for him.  It has been said for many years that when "God put Adam to sleep and took Eve out of his side and when Adam woke up he found out he was married." That has been happening ever since to us men, one day we wake up and figure out we are married.  

Actress Jamie Lee Curtis in an interview with USA today stated,  "You can have everything under the tree that you ever wanted.  and if you're sitting there alone, you are the saddest, loneliest human being on the planet, and there is absolutely nothing that money can buy that will fill your soul."

None of us can go at it alone in today's world. The price for trying that is being left alone. It has been said that "New York was once a city where one could weep on the sidewalk in perfect privacy."

It's interesting how individualization works here in the West.  When every individual is born, you get some kind of document that proves you were born on such-and-such a date in such-and-such a place. This is called a birth certificate and is used to get a passport, drivers license and other such important documents that prove we are who we say we are.  In the East, when parents give birth to a child, that child's name is added onto the family of record.  While in the West, every child enters life legally defined as a separate entity.  In the East, every child enters life legally defined by the network of relationships into which one is born.  In some African cultures, a child does not achieve "moral" standing until he or she is "presented" to the community.  Until an infant is introduced into relationships with others, he or she has no "moral arrival,"  only a "biological arrival".  The African people have introduced us to probably the most important global spiritual truth, the Ubuntu principle of "I am because we are."  

One of the greatest spiritual heresies of our day is the notion that we are separate from one another - that I can function in this world without you, that I can cry "in perfect privacy."  The well known "Lords Prayer" begins with "Our Father."  The disciples never approached Jesus for a personal prayer, but a prayer that would teach "us" to pray.  They asked for the good of their brothers and sisters.  It has been said that in the Lord's Prayer the "I" is silent.

The Talmudic reading of the "rib" from which Eve was made is the word "face".   Adam had two faces.  The "I"(singular) becomes truly itself only in communion, in the "YOU" (community).   In the community, we see something  that reminds us of intimacy, and connection.  In human life as well as divine life, two is really one, and one is really two.  Love needs two.  When love is only one, there is something missing and homesickness happens.  God's original intent for Adam and Eve was that, "they become one" but it takes two to do that.  We are in need of each other and were not created to go it alone.  We need each other.

I need to stop writing and go hug my wife, I'll talk to you later.

Bob 

Making time

I just finished "East of Eden" by John Steinbeck.  It's a wonderfully written novel that takes the reader into the lives of his characters with creative prose that weld you and the character together for eternity.  I was drawn to this book by my wife (Linda). I had preached a sermon from Genesis and took the statement that all of the early Bible characters moved "East" of Eden once they were cast out of the beautiful garden God had created for them.  My wife remembered John Steinbeck's book and checked it out of the library and consumed his writing with the veracity of a race horse.  As you read his book you will probably say to yourself that you'll never write anything other than Email's again in your life.  He is a very penetrating, perceptive writer and story teller.  The book reads itself.

Finding the time to read is a challenge these days with all the demands on us as ordinary people, when finding any time takes  the work of a hired detective.  Why is this so?  Possibly because we are all consumed with trying to live in a consumer society.  I was thinking the other day how the word 'growth' has been so misrepresented as a word in our society.  To most of us it might mean bigger.  Some one asked me the other day if my church was growing?  I said that depends on how I count my Schizophrenics.  Why do we always associate growth with bigger or numbers?  In the world of weight control and diet bigger is not a positive thing.  When was the last time you heard of a house under construction that was under a thousand square feet?  Why we are so mortgage broke, is bigger was better, better for the bankers, not us.  

Just how thick does a steak have to be to be a steak?  Bigger has gotten us into trouble in all areas of our lives.  Small one room schools educated a lot of very intelligent people and a few of them actually became presidents.  The books were smaller but the teachers were great at multitasking.  What was life like when the X-Box was not with us?  Well, believe it or not children actually read for pleasure and adventure, with the by product being a wonderful thing called imagination.  Their was a time when each child had his own imagination and not one borrowed from some other place or thing.

You see, we are smart people when we are allowed to be smart.  Unfortunately what happens is we are restricted or played the fool by the world of advertising and media groups.  They have us all figured out.  What we buy, why we buy it, where we live and what kind of work we do and why.  How much money we make and how much is left over after we pay the bills.  This information then targets us and limits us in our social and economic groups.  The "new" industry vision that build cars, homes and electronics'  are geared to keep us on the edge of our economic scale.  We sit on the peak of our standard of living with no room to move or think.  Everything cost the amount of money we have, goods are targeted at us economically priced.  It is all affordable, at least that is what this new industry would like to have us all believe.  

Affordable. What a word this is.  It actually means to be "reasonably priced".  Reasonable being the optimum word here.  Some things are fine just the way they are, no improvement is necessary.  Make more of what works and make it cheaper and gives us the consumer a break.  One of past myths was bottled water, somehow we all believed it was better.  It was the same old water in a new problematic packaging device.  

Better would be, that it lasts longer, costs less and actually works.  Not to forget the best part that it is needed and intended to make life simpler.  Are we any better as people, I hope so.  I'm not placing any bets on it, but I do think so.  I just hope that we all learn how to out think the people that are our out thinking for us these days.  Wanting less is a good thing.  What it can produce is "more" time.  More time means you can do what you want to do, not what you have to do to keep everything running and updated.  I'm updated to death these days.  I just updated my house insurance, what a trip that was.  Yes, it all goes by square foot, so much per square foot.  Bigger demands bigger money.

All that said to say that we need time to read more.  So shut off the TV put all the furniture that speaks away, find a nice soft chair or couch, find your favorite blanket, turn on the gas fireplace, open the book and start to read.  See how far you get and who knows you might enjoy it, it might improve your life.  Make time for yourself.  You can make time, so stop looking for it and start making some of it.  

Do you know what people group reads the most?  Prisoners in jail. Yes, they have the time to read.  We reward our criminals with the most precious gift life gives - "time".    That's why they call it "doing time".

Dirt under my finger nails

I just looked at the date on my last blog; I must have fallen asleep in between then and now.  I might have been busy or lazy, come to think of it, maybe I simply spaced it out.  I did actually write something, but then rejected it due to the fact that it was a bad rant and not worth your time.   One thing I find when  I do not keep notes is my mind tends to stare.  You know that feeling that you get when you see someone and you must have that second look, when you take that second look it can last up to ten seconds.  That ten seconds is when your mind is in neutral, the gears are not moving forward or backwards, you've shifted into the staring zone.  I feel I've been staring a lot lately and not really engaging my feelings or emotions.  I think it has been very healthy for me.  I needed the rest and opportunity of nothingness of the brain (NOTB).  

Today I came out of the stare.  I was as happy as a pig in crap.  I was in twelve yards of top soil and three yards of the best Maple Ridge cow crap available.  My drive-way was plugged with top quality earth and the best waste a Jersey Cow can produce.  The aroma was similar to the empty box of chocolates that Forrest Gump was always talking about.  Cigars might be a closer match in smell and texture, but chocolate does work for a word picture as well.  When I'm in my winter-stare zone with the frost and numbness that comes after the holidays and prior to spring, the planet is like a safe that has a combination, but the combination is locked inside the safe and no one knows the combination.  We are held captive until the safe naturally lets its door open to us.  

I felt today that the door opened  and I got a peek inside and yes, the earth will live and warm up again.  I have the scent of the planet on me and it smells authentic.  Our great, great Grandfather to the hundredth power started by working with dirt and talking with God.  We are genetically wired to the dust and soil that we live upon.  In the West we try to live above the soil by building platforms above the dirtiness of dirt for cleaner living.   I guess it works but wonder if it is as necessary as we think.  Now the East is not as aggressive with the platform strategy as we Westerners are.  Have you  tried using an Asian toilet lately?  When my thoughts are not staring at the maze of nothingness  I tend to think about strange things and ask even stranger questions.   What this blog is about is that my mind got kick started today and it was brought along by digging in the soil of our planet.  I got to spend today redecorating my small piece of terra firma.  

I bathed in the soil of creation and cleansed my mind with the soil of life.  It got under my finger nails, skin and maybe into my blood.  It was a good day.  Tomorrow will be even better as the soil will be warmer.  But to some, it is very inappropriate to call this planet Earth when it is mostly Ocean.  But not so with me.