“It is perhaps time to see in hypocrisy not only a base contingent defect of man, but the underlying rending of a world attached to both the philosophers and the prophets.” Levinas, (Totality and Infinity p.24 )

“There are two sides to every issue: one side is right and the other is wrong, but the middle is always evil. People think that a liar gains a victory over his victim.  What I’ve learned is that a lie is an act of self-abdication, because one surrenders one’s reality to the person to whom one lies, making that person one’s master, condemning oneself from then on to faking the sort of reality that person’s view requires to be faked.  And if one gains the immediate purpose of the lie – the price one pays is the destruction of that which was intended to serve.  The man who lies to the world, is the world’s slave from then on” Ayn Rand

Is there an objective “in the right” or “in the wrong” or does it matter? I for one don’t have enough discipline to say, cause once I take a stand and preach on it, I often fall short of living by it. So being a leader, parent, friend for those seeking council, or just expressing my own values in the moment, always puts me in a precarious situation. I am the dreaded hypocrite I so loath. So why? Why is hypocrisy such a hideous thing. So much so that it draws me to a the shades of grey, subjective-driven truth, wisdom in unknowing, only God knows, who am I to say, relativism. I just don’t want to find myself being a hypocrite. So if I don’t guarantee the absolute truth in time of my knowing, then I don’t risk being wrong or a do as I say not as I do. It comes down to being okay with being imperfect. And that is hard for a self critical perfectionist. But Ms. Rand (rest her soul), I assure you that I don’t lack the balls to have an opinion and speak my truth…I am not stuck in your so called evil middle.

(from Matthew Henry’s Concise Commentary)

We must judge ourselves, and judge of our own acts, but not make our word a law to everybody. We must not judge rashly, nor pass judgment upon our brother without any ground. We must not make the worst of people. Here is a just reproof to those who quarrel with their brethren for small faults, while they allow themselves in greater ones. Some sins are as motes, while others are as beams; some as a gnat, others as a camel. Not that there is any sin little; if it be a mote, or splinter, it is in the eye; if a gnat, it is in the throat; both are painful and dangerous, and we cannot be easy or well till they are got out. That which charity teaches us to call but a splinter in our brother’s eye, true repentance and godly sorrow will teach us to call a beam in our own. It is as strange that a man can be in a sinful, miserable condition, and not be aware of it, as that a man should have a beam in his eye, and not consider it; but the god of this world blinds their minds. Here is a good rule for reprovers; first reform thyself.

Isaiah 58:

Your Prayers Won’t Get Off the Ground

1-3 “Shout! A full-throated shout! Hold nothing back—a trumpet-blast shout!
Tell my people what’s wrong with their lives,
face my family Jacob with their sins!
They’re busy, busy, busy at worship,
and love studying all about me.
To all appearances they’re a nation of right-living people—
law-abiding, God-honoring.
They ask me, ‘What’s the right thing to do?’
and love having me on their side.
But they also complain,
‘Why do we fast and you don’t look our way?
Why do we humble ourselves and you don’t even notice?’

3-5″Well, here’s why:

“The bottom line on your ‘fast days’ is profit.
You drive your employees much too hard.
You fast, but at the same time you bicker and fight.
You fast, but you swing a mean fist.
The kind of fasting you do
won’t get your prayers off the ground.
Do you think this is the kind of fast day I’m after:
a day to show off humility?
To put on a pious long face
and parade around solemnly in black?
Do you call that fasting,
a fast day that I, God, would like?

6-9″This is the kind of fast day I’m after:
to break the chains of injustice,
get rid of exploitation in the workplace,
free the oppressed,
cancel debts.
What I’m interested in seeing you do is:
sharing your food with the hungry,
inviting the homeless poor into your homes,
putting clothes on the shivering ill-clad,
being available to your own families.
Do this and the lights will turn on,
and your lives will turn around at once.
Your righteousness will pave your way.
The God of glory will secure your passage.
Then when you pray, God will answer.
You’ll call out for help and I’ll say, ‘Here I am.’

A Full Life in the Emptiest of Places

9-12″If you get rid of unfair practices,
quit blaming victims,
quit gossiping about other people’s sins,
If you are generous with the hungry
and start giving yourselves to the down-and-out,
Your lives will begin to glow in the darkness,
your shadowed lives will be bathed in sunlight.
I will always show you where to go.
I’ll give you a full life in the emptiest of places—
firm muscles, strong bones.
You’ll be like a well-watered garden,
a gurgling spring that never runs dry.
You’ll use the old rubble of past lives to build anew,
rebuild the foundations from out of your past.
You’ll be known as those who can fix anything,
restore old ruins, rebuild and renovate,
make the community livable again.

13-14″If you watch your step on the Sabbath
and don’t use my holy day for personal advantage,
If you treat the Sabbath as a day of joy,
God’s holy day as a celebration,
If you honor it by refusing ‘business as usual,’
making money, running here and there—
Then you’ll be free to enjoy God!
Oh, I’ll make you ride high and soar above it all.
I’ll make you feast on the inheritance of your ancestor Jacob.”
Yes! God says so!

2 Timothy 2:23-25: Have nothing to do with foolish, ignorant controversies; you know that they breed quarrels. And the Lord’s servant must not be quarrelsome but kind to everyone, able to teach, patiently enduring evil, correcting his opponents with gentleness. God may perhaps grant them repentance leading to a knowledge of the truth
1 Timothy 1:5-7: The aim of our charge is love that issues from a pure heart and a good conscience and a sincere faith. Certain persons, by swerving from these, have wandered away into vain discussion, desiring to be teachers of the law, without understanding either what they are saying or the things about which they make confident assertions.

James 4:1: What causes quarrels and what causes fights among you? Is it not this, that your passions are at war within you?

Titus 3:1-3: Remind them to be submissive to rulers and authorities, to be obedient, to be ready for every good work, to speak evil of no one, to avoid quarreling, to be gentle, and to show perfect courtesy toward all people. For we ourselves were once foolish, disobedient, led astray, slaves to various passions and pleasures, passing our days in malice and envy, hated by others and hating one another.

Lyrics to Memory Lane (Elliot Smith) :

This is the place
You’ll end up when
You lose the chase
Where you’re dragged against your will
From a basement on the hill
All anybody knows is
You’re not like them
They hit you in the head
And send you back to bed
Isolation called you and passed a tunnel into a
Bright world where you can rule a place of state
Here’s a little house for you to stay
But everybody’s scared of this place
They’re staying away
Your little house on memory lane
The mayor’s name is fear
His voice patrols the pier
By a mountain up of cliche
That advances everyday
The doctor speak in clowns
He rings out loud
He’ll keep the doors and windows shut
And swear
Never join a soul again
But isolation chased you ‘til every muscle ached
Down the only road it ever takes
But everybody’s scared of this place
They’re staying away
Your little house on memory lane
If it’s your decision
To be open about yourself
Be careful or else
Be careful or else
Uncomfortable apart
It’s all written on my chart
That I take what’s given to me
Most cooperatively
I do what people say
And lie in bed all day
Absolutely horrified
I hope you’re satisfied
Isolation pushes past something and chained to
A place where suffering’s a game
But everybody’s scared of this place
They’re staying away
Your little house on memory lane
Your little house on memory lane

So this remembering and talking about it to a group doesnt feel good…it is not like I forgot much. It is just the way I framed remembering things as not as bad as it might seem. But as I’ve been going thru this book Dan B. Allender book, I get really unconfortable thinking about events in my childhood. I have a lot of work to continue to do…

Fear in the small house…

from http://joy2meu.com/Fear_of_Intimacy.html

Fear of Intimacy - the wounded heart of codependency

“Fear of intimacy is at the heart of codependency.  We have a fear of intimacy because we have a fear of abandonment, betrayal, abuse, and rejection.  We have a these fears because we were wounded in early childhood – we experienced being abandoned, rejected, physically and sexually abused, and/or  betrayed by our parents because they were wounded.  They did not have healthy relationship with self – they were codependents who abandoned and betrayed themselves – and their behavior caused us to feel unworthy and unlovable.”"As children we were incapable of seeing ourselves as separate from our families – of knowing we had worth as individuals apart from our families.  The reality we grew up in was the only reality that we knew.  We thought our parents behavior reflected our worth – the same way that our codependent parents thought our behavior was a factor in rather they had worth.”

“The simplest and most understandable way I have ever heard intimacy described is by breaking the word down: in to me see.  That is what intimacy is about – allowing another person to see into us, sharing who we are with another person.

Sharing who we are is a problem for codependents because at the core of our relationship with ourselves is the feeling that we are somehow defective, unlovable and unworthy – because of our childhood emotional trauma.  Codependency is rooted in our ego programming from early childhood.  That programming is a defense that the ego adapted to help us survive.  It is based upon the feeling that we are shameful, that we are defective, unworthy, and unlovable.  Our codependent defense system is an attempt to protect us from being rejected, betrayed, physically and sexually abused, and abandoned because of our unworthy, shameful being.

We have a fear of intimacy because we were wounded, emotionally traumatized, in early childhood – felt rejected and abandoned – and then grew up in emotional dishonest societies that did not provide tools for healing, or healthy role models to teach us how to overcome that fear.  Our wounding in early childhood caused us to feel that something was wrong with our being – toxic shame – and our societal and parental role models taught us to keep up appearances, to hide our shamefulness from others.”

“As long as we are reacting unconsciously to our childhood emotional wounds and intellectual programming, we keep repeating the patterns.  We keep getting involved with unavailable people.  We keep setting ourselves up to be abandoned, betrayed and rejected.  We keep looking for love in all the wrong places, in all the wrong faces.  Is it any wonder we have a fear of intimacy?”

Transparency Incohesion

I guess I need to call this ephiphany interrupted. I asked for closeness and vision today. I asked to be shown God – I asked God to show me Him…as if it was a short order at a diner. “I’ll take the see God #67 for $4.50″.  So naturally I saw the sun rays burst out of a cloud and shine down on my path ahead. Thanks God for that. And then I headed for Rafikis to get my 3 shots of espresso and figure stuff out. But today was weird. Between a few wiffs of Jesus had boundaries, rest and be quiet in God, I’m not perfect, ambivilence towards religious folks judgement of what is wrong and evil, God’s love is unjudging, and I should be a mentor to young girls…nothing. No epiphanies. No cohesion. A bit of spiritual static to report. Transparency. I really have always wanted to be real and transparent and be loved despite what people see. But alas, I feel that my transparency has made be just a pool of boundry-less tears and incohearent rambles to others.  But I spose Jesus holds those tears dear and God has no blind spots in his eye and if I were to strare at the sun burst without the swiss cheese holes of the clouds (i.e.; straight at the sun)…I would become blind. So thanks for that God.

The Better Sacrifice

I have been interested in Cain and why God rejected his sacrifice. What is the symbolic meaning and what’s up with the whole blood animal sacrifice business. Most of my references below are from Wikipedia…

Cain and Abel were the first and second sons of Adam and Eve in the religions of Christianity, Islam and Judaism.[1] 

Their story is told in Genesis 4:1-16 and the Qur’an at 5:26-32. In all versions, Cain, a farmer,^[2] commits the first murder by killing his brother Abel, a shepherd,^[3] after God^[4] rejects Cain’s sacrifice but accepts Abel’s.^[5]

Behind the Names:

Cain and Abel are traditional English renderings of the Hebrew names Qayin (קין) and Havel (הבל). The original text did not provide vowels.^[14] Abel’s name has the same three consonants as a root thought to have originally meant “breath”, but is known from the Bible primarily as a metaphor for what is “elusive”, especially the “vanity” of human enterprise.^[15] 

Abel is here thought to derive from a reconstructed word meaning “herdsman”, with the modern Arabic cognate ibil, now specifically referring only to “camels”. Cain, on the other hand, is thought to be cognate to the mid-1st millennium BC South Arabian word qyn, meaning “metal smith”.^[21] This theory would make the names merely descriptions of the roles they take in the story—Abel working with livestock, and Cain with agriculture—and would parallel the names Adam (“man”) and Eve (“life”, Chavah in Hebrew). A few scholars suggest the pericope may have been based on a Sumerian story representing the conflict between nomadic shepherds and settled farmers.^[12][13]

So now back to some unresolved questions…Why would God require an animal sacrifice and reject plant sacrifices.

Here is What I Have Found As Biblical Based Explanations (from https://www.gotquestions.org/animal-sacrifices.html):

When Adam and Eve sinned, animals were killed by God to provide clothing for them (Genesis 3:21). Cain and Abel brought sacrifices to the Lord. Cain’s was unacceptable because he brought fruit, while Abel’s was acceptable because it was the “firstlings of his flock” (Genesis 4:4-5). After the flood receded, Noah sacrificed animals to God. This sacrifice from Noah was an aroma that was soothing to the Lord (Genesis 8:20-21). God commanded Abraham to sacrifice his son Isaac. Abraham obeyed God, but just as Abraham was to sacrifice Isaac, God intervened and provided a ram to die in the place of Isaac (Genesis 22:10-13). The sacrificial system reaches its climax with the nation of Israel. God commanded the nation to perform numerous different sacrifices. According to Leviticus 1:1-4, a certain procedure was to be followed. First, the animal had to be spotless. Next, the person offering the sacrifice had to identify with the animal. Then the person offering the animal had to inflict death upon it. When done in faith, this sacrifice provided forgiveness of sins. Another sacrifice called the day of atonement, described in Leviticus 16, demonstrates forgiveness and the removal of sin. The high priest was to take two male goats for a sin offering. One of the goats was sacrificed as a sin offering for the people of Israel (Leviticus 16:15), while the other goat was released into the wilderness (Leviticus 16:20-22). The sin offering provided forgiveness, while the other goat provided the removal of sin.

The animal served as a substitute–that is, the animal died in place of the sinner. Animal sacrifices have stopped with Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ was the ultimate sacrificial substitute and is now the only mediator between God and mankind (1 Timothy 2:5). Animal sacrifices foreshadowed Christ’s sacrifice on our behalf. The only basis on which an animal sacrifice could provide forgiveness of sins is the fact that Christ would sacrifice Himself for our sins, providing the forgiveness that animal sacrifices could only illustrate and foreshadow.

Here is What I Received After Some Prayerful Contemplation and a Hour Drive in the Hills

1) It is about connection and empathy…closeness to life

2) In the act of destroying life, which we animals do in survival (dog eat dog), we must identify with the life taken to remain connected to God

3) It is easier for us homo-sapiens to identify with animals since plants can regenerate after what seems like a visible destruction/harvest, they don’t bleed red, and they don’t make sounds of protest or move to defend themselves, fighting back tooth and nail (unless they are poisonous or have thorns, then they seem like real scrappers)

4)  When in the act of killing, in order to remain connected to God,  we must humble ourselves and grieve it’s loss – not taking the animal for granted or treating it as an object for our consumption or use, but appreciating its service to us through our humility and gratitude to ours and the animal’s creator. 

5) As we have the power to take the life of the animal, so does the creator have the power to take our life. To remain close to God, we must be aware of this daily and be  grateful to the life we live in every moment. To live in spiritual peace, serenity and joy we also must be aware of our ultimate service to the creator and trust in his consumption and use of us as divine. To God’s will be true.

6) In this constant connection to God and awareness of the ephemeral nature of physical life and death, we renew ourselves at every sacrifice…substituting the slain animal for our own death and in eating of the flesh and wearing the skins, we continue to live.

7) The animal is now one with God in the spiritually divine realm. We intake the animal and humble ourselves as sinful and imperfect, blessed to partake of such a pure being that is now with God. This act revives us and purifies our sinful nature

Jesus is God’s animal sacrifice for us and his constant washing of our sins – our constant connection to him. Pure and real vision of God’s love and nature in human form whom we can truly identify.

In short, to remain close to God, after the fall, we must be humble in our power to create or destroy life and treat it with reverence, not taking any moment of living for granted. We must not objectify any living thing as our possession and feel entitled to freely use, consume, waste, take for granted or abuse any physical essence given to us by God to serve and care for. We must empathize and identify with Gods living creature and be attune to the web of connection between us. Of course it is easier for us to identify with other humans and then animals. But this also applies to all forms of life in our fallen Eden. And it also includes ourselves. In the attempt to become close to God we also become aware of ourselves as beloved to God and treat our own bodies with reverence. Not cutting ourselves off from our soul being and thus keeping us connected to Gods source of life. Not starving for source and becoming an undead, seeing others as objects for our  consumption for spiritual survival. The latter being a pure bondage suffering in the utter loneliness and emptiness of evil. God wants us to be aware of our spiritual connection to him and other living creatures at all times while limited in our physical being doing the business of earthly animal survival.

Just some prayerful thoughts…about some odd judeochristian religious stories and ideas…

Thank you God

door

The wild and windy night
That the rain washed away
Has left a pool of tears
Crying for the day
Why leave me standing here
Let me know the way

Many times Ive been alone
And many times Ive cried
Any way youll never know
The many ways Ive tried

But still they lead me back
To the long winding road
You left me standing here
A long long time ago
Dont leave me waiting here
Lead me to your door

But still they lead me back
To the long winding road
You left me standing here
A long long time ago
Dont leave me waiting here
Lead me to your door
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah

–the Beatles

God seems to pave roads – tread paths, at every impass

every spark of awake-ness I may peak behind the curtain

ready at bated breath, for me to take that lasting step

but alas

i remain

independent and heavy…umovable rock

stuck here, blistered and swollen behind my block

buried – roots that formed MY paths

spiraling down counter clock

to drink water all by myself

all by myself mommy…

I am just cleaning my spiritual house…downsizing, and figuring out where I have been, where I am heading, and where I am right now. Where am I and where should I be? Well in Rafiki’s drinking my second cup of coffee now…and unpacking boxes back at Birdsong. So off to it.