Escape from Grombiton

One day two bats landed on the ground. Why they did this, I cannot tell. But they landed in a grassy place, and found it to their liking. The grass was soft and cool, so they were discussing whether or not to stay. Soon, however, they discovered that they could not leave, even if they had wanted. Bats, they found, cannot take flight from the ground, since they cannot raise themselves up and spread their wings.

Everyone knows, bats are made for hanging up-side down. But on the ground, bats can only drag themselves around on their little back feet and their hands. In this posture, they can only look down or straight ahead. The cannot look up into the sky.

So, with some sadness, they set out to make the place their home. As the weeks and months passed, the two ground bats reproduced, and their offspring reproduced, and soon a whole colony of bats came to live on the ground in the grassy place. All the other animals began to call them the Ground Bats, and the colony became known as Ground Bat Town, which eventually was shortened to Grombiton. The place seemed like home to all the Ground Bats.

Of all the bats in Grombiton, only two could speak of the joys of flying. But the idea of flight—even the idea of "sky"—remained a mystery to the generation that had never flown or looked up into the evening sky. For the original two could not very well describe how it happened, only that it did. They could not describe the sky, only that it was large, and it was "up there." They could not explain to the others the mechanics of flying, for when they were flying bats, they never gave consideration to what it is that makes a bat able to fly. They simply grew up flying almost from the day of their birth. So, naturally, now that they were Ground Bats, they were at a loss as to how flight could be accomplished. Flight came to be something of a myth to the flightless Ground Bats.

Over time, the flightless generation taught themselves to do many things bats were never supposed to learn. Like hole-digging, and worm-finding, and grub-growing, and mushroom-hunting. They became quite good at these things, but always, there was a sense inside them that, they weren't made for this. Of course, they could not completely shake this sense, for they were bats.

One day, a young bat wandered from Grombiton. Why he crawled away, I cannot tell. But he set out in a certain direction, and kept crawling until he reached the end of the grass. After the grass ended, the ground became very smooth, for it was bare rock. Still he continued to crawl, until at last he reached the end of the rock around evening time, the time of day when flying bats take flight to hunt for food. And at the end of the rock, there was—nothing.

Now, the young bat had never been to a place where there was nothing under him, for he had never flown, nor had any of the bats from Grombiton ever been up "on" anything. None of them had experienced the sensation of looking down farther than the ground underneath them. The young bat peered down over the edge, but not being able to see very far, and being unaccustomed to the effects of gravity on a body, he simply tumbled right over. It was a long way down, and he began to fall. It seemed a long time to him, but in a moment, and without thinking about it, he spread his wings and took flight. Up he went, and over, and round and round, darting this way and that. Flying, as well and as nimbly as any bat had ever flown!

"How can this be?" he thought. He squealed with delight, and to his surprise, he discovered that by squealing, he could 'see' flying bugs everywhere, and he filled his belly with them. This shouldn't surprise us, for he was a bat after all—flying and eating bugs is what bats do.

After he was full, he decided he would return to Grombiton and tell his friends what had happened. It took him only a few seconds to travel back to the colony, and as he landed, he tumbled over and over, rolling right into the middle of a small gathering of Ground Bats.

"I flew!" he said.

The Ground Bats crawled nearer to him, and looked at him closely. "You have a great imagination," was all they said to him. The more he tried to explain how it had happened, the less they believed him, and the more they pitied him. And because he, like the two original bats, could not explain how it had happened, he failed to convince anyone that he had actually flown.

As Kingfishers Catch Fire, Dragonflies Draw Flame

Gerard Manley Hopkins

As kingfishers catch fire, dragonflies draw flame;
As tumbled over rim in roundy wells
Stones ring; like each tucked string tells, each hung bell’s
Bow swung finds tongue to fling out broad its name;
Each mortal thing does one thing and the same:
Deals out that being indoors each one dwells;
Selves--goes itself; myself it speaks and spells,
Crying What I do is me: for that I came.

I say more: the just man justices;
Keeps grace: that keeps all his goings graces;
Acts in God's eye what in God's eye he is—
Christ—for Christ plays in ten thousand places,
Lovely in limbs, and lovely in eyes not his
To the Father through the feature of men’s faces.

The Word

"The Word was made flesh..."

The greatest parable of all.

I've decided that I don't need to own my own personal paper copy of "the bible," because "The Word" isn't the Scriptures.

What a monstrous error. Simply monstrous.

The Greatest Vice

This weekend I came to believe that trying to please God just may be the bed from which all other sins grow in the life of a believer.

For apart from law, sin is dead.
--The Apostle Paul (Romans 7)

Jesus wrote the terms of the new deal in His blood, therefore there is now no more condemnation, for there is no more law.

Only restored glory.

My Invisible Identity

A couple years ago I quit evaluating my own performance. Like, how do I dress, where do I go, how do I sound, how loud am I, how well do I speak, am I late, am I early, what words do I use, who do I hang out with, who do I avoid, how often am I late for work... basically, anything that can be measured I have tried consciously to detach myself from. It's a huge list. Sheesh. It includes all the typical legalistic stuff, but a whole lot more.

The problem was, my whole identity seemed to be wrapped up in those visible things. Not only was I scoring myself, it seemed everyone was watching me, scoring me on all of this stuff too. Even second-level stuff, like, How do my kids behave, how long has it been since I got my oil changed, how well is my yard taken care of. The list is endless. I know this sounds like the legalism thing, but it's different from that, because it's all-inclusive.

There isn't ANY visible thing that matters more than the invisible.

God has made me very leary of what I can see with my eyes, or what I can hear with my ears. Because the real truth of a person, their identity is hidden behind (or under, or beneath) what they actually say, or do, or where they go, or how they dress or smell. What is seen is temporary, what is invisible is eternal. Most of the time, I find that the visible points me in the opposite direction of the invisible reality.

Which leaves me with nothing visible to evaluate, in myself or in others. At first it was unnerving, because I was so stinkin' used to observing and evaluating. But then I realized, it's very liberating. Not only for me, but for everyone in my world, because I don't have to keep score on them either. Someone can drop the F-bomb in my home, and that in itself doesn't matter. They can spit in my face, and that in itself doesn't matter.

Who they are matters. Who I am matters.

Here is the only 'category' I have maintained. If the person claims or seems to be a follower of the way of Jesus, then things are fairly simple. If a follower of Jesus were to spit in my face, or drop the F-bomb in front of my six-year old, I instinctively want to know, "What are you afraid of? What do you want?"

What they really want or what they are afraid of might be anything. They might want to be stood down, for the first time in their life. They might just be acting defensively because they have been beaten all their lives, and I happened to be the one who said the wrong thing at the wrong time. Maybe God set me in front of their spit because they needed to see how a man takes an offense.

It comes down to being true to who God made me to be. Am I being true to my God-given identity in doing the things I do? Everything else is false, and since it's false, it's wrong.

Salt is salty because it's salt, not because it made up its mind to go good with steak. Light casts out darkness because it's light, not because it wanted people to see what's in the closet.

Do whatever you do in your world because it's who you are. Everything else is likely to be out of whack. We each are at different places along the path toward seeing who we really are.

By the way, the new covenant isn't a "remodel" job, it's a "restoration", which implies bringing back a former glory. Romans 8 comes to mind. Underneath it all, we followers already bear a striking resemblance to the Son, and we're more than just adopted bastard sons with a new last name and a green card into heaven. We're more than just forgiven.

In our deepest parts, the parts hidden by our visible attributes, we're already true -- everything we struggle with comes down to some sort of false-ness.

I'm not telling you how to do anything, I'm just telling you how God walked me through one part of my journey. He asked me, "What do you believe about yourself?" So I started telling Him. And He kept telling me, "That isn't true. That isn't true. That isn't true." And then He dangled something (a project that was bigger than me) in front of me that brought me out of myself, if that makes any sense.

The bottom line is, I'm not my own project anymore. Reforming myself isn't what I'm here to do. I encourage all of us to look outside of ourselves, and quit worrying about the ways we fall short, and get on with -- whatever. Find some darkness, and go stand in it.

Because you already glow, you just don't see it.