Holding Out Where Ex-seed-ingly Hard!

"Holding Out Where Ex-seed-ingly Hard!"

Might as well take a whore as a spouse; vow-torn nation conducive to nothing but faithlessness, trustlessness; given so much, yet acting on no Source of Gift, no Covenant with one another, no marriage, no union, no mutual responsibility; hiring whores, feeling good without deeper cost, wishful for "feel good" God, of appearances; toxically dumping sins on our children, provoking their bitterest defamations:

"God Will Reap What God Sows,"
"These People Are Not To Be Pitied,"
"These Are Not Even My People!"

Yet and still, God being God, cannot help Godself, trying again, and again, God-set against giving up -- what else can it mean to be Resurrectionary! Nonetheless growing wiser about us, as any parent learns loving own children!
If ever God was a War-God at all, "I will not save them by bow, or by sword, or by war!" Shamelessly undeserving our saving, reachable only by One Being Like Us, a Child, unfazeable by bought-out priests, profiting prophets, patronizing splendor -- salary, sharkskin, skyscraper, success -- offering no options to kingly seductions -- Military-Industrial-Security-Incarcerational complexes, crass concentrations, craven corruptions.

Paul: "Instead of doubling our own efforts, simply embrace what the Spirit is doing in us" -- Simply embrace! Miracles of provision, proliferations of plantings: from expectable eight-fold or ten-fold increase, to exhorbitant hundred-fold, sixty-fold, even thirty-fold -- exceeding everything! Exposing all our audacities of austerity, persuasions of poverty, mindsets of scarcity -- contradistinguishing sower's casual, carefree confidence; scatterings of plucky persistence, stubborn survival, no matter "conditions on ground," odds against us -- pecked, withered, choking as we are on circumstance and condition!

Sower even seeming to care, much less contain or control, how far afield seeds are flung? Oblivious to birdiness, stoniness, weediness? Attentioning less who we are not, what we lack, than who we are, what gifts are hid in whatever we got? No blaming of victims! No condemning of seeds that fail, soils that abet them. If we do not use all our seeds, just as they're given, spreading them freely, fully, apt to miss out on soil of best chance to grow in. Without trying, at least, to save, to liberate, free and include, everybody, surely will miss out on somebody -- run risk of not saving anybody -- Gospel Living so adamant: so all-or-nothing! Keep sowing seeds, no matter what -- only proposing, never disposing -- nor pretending worthiness to receive. Creation revolving around us? Or shining in us and through us? Ex-seed-ing endurance through rocking resistance: "I just want to go the distance? (Rocky) Even Sower lands one seed in four . . .

Grounding in "faith facts" as well as in natural ones, rejoicing in creative, dynamic in-tenseness, where religion and science, mundane and miraculous, engage and embrace one another! Who knows what finally happens -- or why? Faith communities born raising questions: What else is going on here? What else -- more than meets the eye? What else -- more than fits the tradition? What else -- more than suits the logic? What else -- more than avoids the risk? What else -- yet to be given new Pentecost, Jubilee, vision and voice? What kind of seeds do we think we are anyway? Yielding from isolation, insulation, to interdependence, acknowledging all share One Fate of One Earth! How easy, how arbitrary and accidental, for me, for us, to fall anytime, anyplace . . .

Seed to soil, leaven to loaf, salt to meat, light to hill, death to life -- If I should die before I wake, all my bones and sinews take. Put me in the compost pile to decompose me for a while. Worms, water, sun will have their way, returning me to common clay. All that I am will feed the trees and little fishies in the seas. When radishes and corn you munch, you may be having me for lunch! And then excrete me with a grin, chortling, "There goes Lee again!" (Lee Hayes)

No longer affording straight, narrow ascents, long-laddered escapings from Earth shared with every Other -- One hundred ninety-two nations -- and counting! (South Sudan making one ninety three!) How dare there be room only for One at the Top? One over All? Eternally questing perfection, upwardly mobile forever, heavenly state of comfort, personal glory, head trip right out of our bodies? Ladder our way up to rest in God? Or God's way down to wrestle in us? Who descends for no favored few but for all -- beginning with First Mother Sarah, laughing at angels, suspecting of old-aged birth announcement, dancing no more ups-and-downs, only ins-and-outs? Spreading Circle to all who come in -- or out?

"The image of Sisyphus pushing his personal boulder up the eternal mountain grips me as I push, transforms my labor into consciousness, reshapes my grasp on destiny." (Gerald Forshey)

Room always for more in the Circle; how quickly the Ladder is filled! Ladders tending to hierarchy, violence, ruthless independence; circles to democracy, strong gentleness/gentle strength, interdependence; ladders to jealousy, judgmentalism, abstraction, distance, linearity, ladder-likeness; circles to pride, acceptance, nurture, sensuality, curvature, circle-likeness; ladders either immanent or transcendent theism, separation love of neighbor from love of what's at the top, circles panentheistic, neither God in everything, nor everything in God, but both! All at once! Mestizo! Utter Transparency: Love of Neighbor IS Love of God! (Matthew Fox)

Jacob's whole life getting up, getting over, at odds with Esau even in womb; (Interests of Full Disclosure: We birthed a later-life Jacob, after adopting Jeff and Jane, who liked reminding him, he was mistaken, they were chosen -- Abraham, Sarah at it again!) life on lam, flight in fear, forever dread, meeting again! Yet, indisputably, stemming from Single Source. One Womb, Many Peoples! One Seed, Many Fruits. Jesus warning of premature judging -- judging at all? Letting wheat, weeds grow together; nothing outside can defile us, only psychoses, projections on others. How would we not tend to judge prematurely, impetuously? Jacob's whole laddered life circle-dancing toward Esau?

One of my hands is black and one white . . . One part of me is being strangled, while another part horribly laughs. Until it changes, I shall be forever killing and being killed. (Kenneth Patchen)

One hand black, one white; one male, one female; one young, one old; one gay, one straight; one Israeli, one Palestinian; one English-speaking, one any number of other tongues! One born in U.S., one in place we call "foreign." One of my hands is victim, one executioner . . . "Where can I go from your spirit, O LORD; Or where can I flee from your presence?"