My Mythology of Rain

I went to worship experience different than most I've experienced last week. It was similar to a house church, but also decidedly Methodist, too. From their website:

Kuneo is a new kind of worship gathering. Hosted at the Union Coffee House near SMU, the Village, and Lower Greenville in Dallas, Kuneo seeks to show the love of Jesus in a creative, compassionate, and communal gathering of people on the journey that we call "faith."

During the gathering last week, the theme centered on knowing your story, the church knowing its story, and then living out that story. We all have a story, and as was implied, that story converges, for all, with Christ.
So I left that gathering thinking about my story.

...

I am a little behind on the entertainment phenomenon that is Game of Thrones. We do not have HBO at home, so I have never seen an episode of the series, but I do have a library card. So I checked out the first book in the series.

I'm about a quarter of the way through the book as I write this, and I've come across a recurring theme regarding the Dothraki people in the story: the important things in a man's life always occur under the open sky.

I got to thinking about that, and it occurred to me that our family has a similar mythology. Except our mythology says that the important things in a man's life always occur in the rain.

Here are a few examples:

• When I was a child I had a major surgery that would come to define the things I could and could not do. The day I was released from the hospital, we drove home in a light, steady rain.
• The day of my wedding, a deluge nearly forced us to switch transportation from automobiles to boats.
• On the day we unloaded the moving van when we moved to San Antonio so I could start at my first "real" job, we unloaded the van in the rain.
• On the day we brought our first child home from the hospital, it was raining.
• And there was that camping trip. I think it was the last time we went camping as a family.

There are other moments like these that have graced our family, but these five stick with me most clearly. Each one of them represented a new direction that required new challenges and new skills. 

There is little hope of rain in these parts for the next six weeks or so, but every time it rains, I can't help but wonder what new direction life will take us, what new challenges we will face, what new skills we will need to learn. Rain is our omen of things to come, I just don't know what's coming. 

And that is awesome!

"It's my life, and I can do what I want with it!"

Dad: "NO! It's NOT your life!"

Teenager: "Yes. It is and I can do with it whatever I want to. I can even end it."

Dad: "Did you start it?"

Teenager: "No."

Dad: "Then it is not your right to end it. And by the way your mom and I did not create your life either.

Your life is a gift. Your life is not for your own pleasure. It was given to you for a different reason, it was given to you so that you could discover your true purpose, your true identity."

Teenager: "WTF are you talking about?"

Dad: "You have a purpose, and your life was given to you so that you could discover that purpose, so go find your purpose! Don't be a coward and give up before you've even started. Before you know who you are."

Teenager storms out of the room, mind blown. 

The conversation is just starting. There is much the youngster still has to learn. "Your life is not your own" is just the first obstacle to overcome, and is perhaps the hardest, but also the easiest. There is no possibility of redemption or salvation until you understand that this life is not yours, it is the property of its creator.

It is the glory of God to conceal a thing: but the honour of kings is to search out a matter. The heaven for height, and the earth for depth, and the heart of kings is unsearchable. Take away the dross from the silver, and there shall come forth a vessel for the finer. Take away the wicked from before the king, and his throne shall be established in righteousness. Put not forth thyself in the presence of the king, and stand not in the place of great men: For better it is that it be said unto thee, Come up hither; than that thou shouldest be put lower in the presence of the prince whom thine eyes have seen . - Proverbs 25:2-7

On the Day of Judgment, Jesus is our Redeemer and Savior, there are no accomplishments a man can present before God and be declared righteous and worthy. Only Christ is able the be judged and found worthy.

Your life is not your own. It belongs to the Creator. It is redeemed by His messiah. Your purpose is to accept this truth and repent.

Do I need a break?

Yesterday, I went for a ride around the lake after work. In the course of my ride I decided to take a bit of a detour and explore a new segment of the bike trail that is under construction. Along this path, is a heavily wooded floodplain. As I was riding alongside the woods, I couldn't help but imagining that I could just escape from life in those woods. I would be hidden from the world right in the middle of the city. I could just disappear, and still be near.

I don't think it is unnatural to want to get away; that is why we go on vacation. We all need some time to ourselves, so I was pleasantly surprised to see a post from Mark's Daily Apple on The Restorative Power of the Personal Retreat.

Maybe, my mind is telling me I need a break or a "psychological restoration." And maybe God or the universe is reinforcing that thought by posting a reminder.

It's my life...

"It's my life, and I can do whatever I want!"

That was the protest that came out of my teenager's mouth as we were arguing about schoolwork, or chores or something.

I can recall the words that came from my mouth, but not from my brain.

"No, it's not your life."

Those words came out several notches of volume lower that the preceding conversation. They were not my words. They came from somewhere else.

....

Yesterday I was offered a job. It sounds like a good job. It would give me an opportunity to grow professionally. It would give me the opportunity to expand my horizons intellectually. It would give me the opportunity to expand my personal and professional network quite substantially. And it offers a bit more money and an equity stake in the company. Even better, I did not even have to apply for it; they called me out of the blue.

But...

....

This morning I took the boys to church, figuring a little talk about the meaning of life might be beneficial to my rebellious teenager. But, as is so often the case, there was an important message for me. 

The sermon this morning was about temptation, the temptation of the ego. And accepting a shortcut to your goals or your vision will leave you short of your goal and without integrity.

....

The combination of these events created a realization in me. The realization that the words I uttered, those words that were not mine, are a divine or natural truth. They are The Law. We exist to serve others. Those may be our friends or our family. Others may be co-workers, clients, colleagues. They may be complete strangers, the homeless we encounter on our community's streets, or the dignitary in a motorcade. Every act we commit not only impacts us, it impacts everyone in contact with us. Or, like the Butterfly Theory suggests, our actions have an impact well beyond our immediate environment. 

I turned down the job. It was a shortcut, and one I did not want to experience the results of taking.

Rejecting a Guilt Offering

There are basically three types of gifts. There are gifts of gratitude, gifts of recompense and gifts of guilt. In Biblical terms these gifts are given to God under the names of the the Fellowship Offering, the Sin Offering, and the Guilt or Trespass Offering.
(There is another transaction that is often confused with gift giving: when a gift is given with an expectation of receiving a gift. This is NOT a gift. This kind of exchange is more aptly defined as commerce.)
The Fellowship Offering is one that flows from the love and appreciation we have for each other. The Sin Offering is one that is given to right a wrong, an apology. The Guilt Offering is made as a substitute for that which really needs to be exchanged. God blessed us with gift giving. Perhaps He knew that gift giving would be a way to create community, not just with Him, but with each other also.
Human civilization has always appreciated the importance of the gift. Gifts are the things that bind us together, deepening our relationships with each other and with our community. I've been reading the book Sacred Economics: Money, Gift, and Society in the Age of Transition. The first chapter speaks of the importance of gifts in human society. Read it. You might learn a thing or two.

In the past week I have received two gifts. One was a gift of gratitude, one was a guilt offering. I know this was the case because in each case the giver of the gift told me so. The gift of gratitude I have accepted joyfully though the item is of little value to me. But the guilt offering I have rejected, even though it is a thing I value highly.
I do not know the effect my rejection of the guilt offering will have, if any. But I do know the effect it had on the Nation of Israel: generations of bondage under a foreign power, and a way of life foreign to the life God intended for His children.
How do you give gifts?

The Sins of our Fathers

Let's say you develop a solution to a problem. The problem is one that will cause great harm, and the solution is one that will take years to fully implement. Also assume that there is a very good chance that the solution will never be fully implemented.

Here's the question: Do you even bother to implement the solution?

I recently had a conversation with someone close to me who worked in a lab that tested organic food products for contamination. They tested for everything from e.coli to chemical pesticides, fungicides and herbicides. (This lab is run by the government, with direct and indirect funding from the Agri-chemical industry) Apparently, the organically grown foods are routinely found to have significant chemical residues. The conclusion from this person was that food products labeled "organic" is little more than a marketing ploy.

Perhaps you saw the news, High arsenic levels found in organic foods, baby formula. The products in question had one ingredient in common, organic brown rice. According to the news report,

In fact, rice takes up arsenic from the soil, Jackson explained. As it turns out arsenic looks very much like silica to the rice plant and “rice takes up silica to help it stand up in water logged soils.”

Different varieties of rice take up different amounts of arsenic, Jackson said. Brown rice tends to have particularly high levels of arsenic.

While arsenic can occur naturally, the levels found in these organic foods was much higher than typically occurs in nature. So where did the arsenic come from?

The Washington State University Cooperative Extension Service described how high levels of arsenic got into our soils in an advisory for home gardeners:

Lead arsenate was a popular insecticide during the first half of the 20th century because of its low toxicity to plants and great effectiveness for controlling insect pests. The most common use was for control of codling moth in commercial apple orchards. Ranchers also used large quantities for grasshopper control baits. Smaller but still substantial amounts were used on deciduous tree fruits other than apple, in home gardens and orchards, for mosquito control, and on lawns and golf greens. Applicators used other arsenic-based pesticides for agricultural crops, turfgrass, gardens, and rights-of-way. 

Repeated applications of lead arsenate over time caused lead and arsenic to accumulate in soil.

Some organic farming standards can require farms to practice sustainable methods for several years before becoming certified. Apparently, even that is not enough to insure that all chemical residue has decomposed in the soil. Researchers at Washington State University have admitted that an arsenic based chemical applied 50+ years ago can still bioaccumulate in soil. 

The promise of organic farming is that it can cure the land by replacing long-depleted minerals and by detoxifying the soil. No one can expect that process to happen overnight. And as we see with arsenic, this process can take decades.

So that brings me back to the original implication that organic food production is little more than a marketing ploy. 

It took humanity decades to poison our farmlands, it will take decades to detoxify that land. The marketing ploy seems to be one where organic foods are continually discredited by a media supported by corporate agribusiness.

As the Good Book warns us:

Keeping mercy for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, and that will by no means clear the guilty; visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children, and upon the children's children, unto the third and to the fourth generation. - Exodus 34:7