Jesus’ particular humanness changed religion from an impossible thing that man knows is impossible; to a thing that is possible that man knows is possible.

The biggest risk to a person of faith and religion is to walk into the trap of the rationalist.   One with the same walls and bars as his peers.  Walls made of rationalism and materialism;  high, unreachable windows barred with adamantine determinism.   Caught in the complex gears of a machine rather than strolling in the simple daylight of a miracle.  


The biggest risk to a law abiding person is to no longer abide in the law, but die in it.
The biggest risk for the Christian is to no longer bear his cross but buck against it.

He took everything away from me—all the obstructions, all the accretions, all the cataracts and clothes and scales-- everything but the truth.  And revealing it; raising it high enough even for me to see, I finally see I am hanging naked on a cross. The place I have always been. 
The sight explaining so much: explaining the ache in my hands and feet; explaining the stretching rack in my shoulders; explaining the piercing in my chest; explaining the tired collapse of my unbroken bones; explaining the bitter aftertaste of every drink; explaining everything and everything and everything.
And I cry with relief, “It is finished!"
I am ready to go home. I am ready to be free. I am ready to let go of this cursed tree and leap into the air. And if ever again I land, I will land in a new life.  I will love this world like Christ.  I will walk through the petrified forest of crosses shouldering my own as I go.  I will lay my hand on every bloody trunk. I will set up my cross and willingly scale to the top.  I will hang there again, yet this time helping thieves see and understand and live. Thank you Father for letting me see the whole world!
​"Into your hands I commit my spirit.”

What is the enjoyment of life?  Where is it? Is it possible to see it and find it? Is it possible to find it today—suddenly—like suddenly finding you're in the middle of your own surprise birthday party?  Is it possible joy is hiding right at this very moment, around the corner, breathlessly waiting for you—the guest of honor— to walk in and turn on the lights?

Shannon saw life in a different way. And this is key.  All who came into contact with her looked and listened because a different way of seeing life is a different way of seeing God.  And people may think they are busy little bees doing and thinking and seeing many things, but they are ONLY trying to see God.  She understood something about joy and life.  She understood what Abel was feeling as he presented himself before the alter of God: Life was funny.  And funny things could be laughed at.  Even God.  And God and his cosmos laughed back at her and with her.  To Shannon, life was something more like a song or a dance.   So she sang along.  Enjoying the harmonies. The high parts and the lows. And she danced.  But not to get to the end, or get it over with, or get anywhere; she danced just to dance.  Because it was fun.  Life was a dance; a thing to be enjoyed for the thing itself.  Which is love.  She held God and He held her and they danced. 
But the rest of us—the poor, blind rest of us— sit on the side.  Waiting for something. Waiting in the wings of Elah. Waiting in the mouth of the cave for God to pass by.  Always looking for him in the hurricanes, those rare and terrible things, but never in the gentle breezes; the daily, quiet voices.  We see the mundane where Shannon saw everyday eternities.  We walk outside occasionally reminded the grass needs mowing. Shannon walked outside constantly amazed that grass is green.  She loved life. She loved the existence God gave her.  She loved the bluebird that dropped briefly into her backyard as profoundly as she loved the grocer that briefly dropped groceries into her bag.  These were not random events. They were anything but random. They were a rhythm and a melody to be enjoyed for themselves. They were the ever surprising spins and twirls of the dance.

Left and Right—the whole crowd is at fault.
Ezekiel 7:13ff
(Parallelism to St. Paul in the Castle barracks in Jerusalem in Acts 22)


Even when the left has you by the scruff of your neck and the right has the gun at your temple, there is no more joyous place to be than directly in the center of God’s will.

That is how forgiveness works.
Like life, the past is something you can choose to give away instead of keep.

To forgive is to give away a closely held past in the present moment.  In a real sense, it is to walk into the past and release the poisonous link from the chain of your existence before it ever happened. And miraculously when you look down at the infected wound on your flank, it is healed.  Just an old scar with the echo of something forgotten. The negative meaning, the pain, somehow unobtainable because you have finally chosen to let it go in the swift river.  The injury and the wound set free to be spoken aloud with the tongues of angels in the mouths of man.  

When you’re in the zone...
which is the proper mode of being... 
which is the mode of Christ’s being...
...the target is huge. The bullseye enlarges to encompass all of you. You suddenly stand at the center of the magical fire.  You can’t miss. Shoot.

I hate these bars.
I hate these chains.
I hate history.
Ok, but why hate? Why hate the thing you stand in the middle of? 
Why not love?  Or at least accept, which is the same thing since by any standard a good definition of love must include acceptance of a thing despite its limitations?
Bars, chains, and history just are. Limitations simply exist as a reality. 
When Paul said—“I am exactly where I am supposed to be.  How could I be anywhere else?”--
prison doors opened and chains fell off. This is the way to freedom.



When you hate your history you become the most hateful history.   
Just ask the Bolsheviks.

The past is a cloud.  A memory.  A collection of thoughts and ideas as immaterially vast as it is materially insubstantial.  An eternal memorial whose sole purpose is to help me live in the present.  It is NOT a place I should live or even can live.  For who can live in the sky?
My past permeates the heavens, looking down to inform my present; but it is not my present.  In the same way my reflection on my experience, is not my experience: it is a reflection.
The “great cloud of witnesses” in the Book of Hebrews is a list of great and awful acts of faith from the past.  It is both my personal and collective cloud.  An "I" cloud.  A  storehouse.  Not a dead and dusty one.  No, it is a living storehouse on whose contents I may gaze and to whose clamor I may listen.  But only if I lift my eyes and listen honestly, with the proper attitude--with my feet firmly on the ground of today--does this great cloud of yesterday look down and proclaim, judging each act of my faith.  It floats above my ever-present life praising and condemning.  This cloud is a thriving witness of my life—not the other way around.  I am not to drift upwards and away, bearing witness to yesterday's artifacts while turning my back on today. Otherwise my vast and light cloud condenses and ossifies.  Then I become trapped in my cloud-turned-sarcophagus; and together we plunge into the sea.

I am not the past.  I am alive.  

The most damnable condemnation handed down to me by this immense shouting, screaming, bloody, struggling, joyously cheering cloud of witnesses from the past was this:
That I failed to recognize my present.
I was the brood of vipers to whom Jesus proclaimed: “The Ninevites will condemn this generation!"  Jesus stood directly in front of me; but I could not see him.  
To live in the past, to be defined by the past, was to become stuck and stagnant—to become memorialized.  It is to become incased in stone,  instead of contemplating the terrible and marvelous monuments of the past while shouldering the cross in the present. 

But miraculously I, paralyzed in the past, was able to shoulder my mat and walk home.  A miracle of strength only made possible by the Forgiveness of Jesus.  The man-child fish who swam to the bottom of my soul and set me free.