Dear All of Us,
So what do we do
when we haven't a clue,
much less clarity or conviction,
about what's going on,
what to do about it,
how to proceed,
when it comes to
conflicting major matters?
MAYBE THIS
MAYBE THAT
Can this marriage be resuscitated,
or do we need to pull the plug?
Can our nation survive
the slash and burn,
the demolition derby,
ravaging our political
and cultural experience?
Do we invest or
do we go for gold
and hide it in the freezer?
What about surgery with
a fifty-fifty survival rate?
How do we deal with churches
low on realized Gospel community?
Stick or stay home and
say our Hail Mary's there?
What do we do when
we just don't know what to do,
when it's an excruciating
MAYBE THIS
MAYBE THAT
Maybe is a tame term for
the terror of major league
ambiguity,
and there's absolutely
no ambiguity about that.
Terror it is.
The psychologists say that
ambiguity is way worse
than any known
negative or danger.
The enemy unknown
is decidedly more threatening
than the enemy known.
With the unknown
MAYBE THIS
MAYBE THAT
we're like deer in
the headlights of
ambiguity.
Soul Stalled
what do we do,
how do we proceed?
Mostly we don't!
We can't.
We're stuck on stopped.
It's the hardest
of all crosses to bear.
It's the crisscross of uncertainties,
of a seeming impossibility.
Throws a whole new light on
"...pick up
your cross
and follow me."
Jesus
Matthew 16:24
So "crossed"
we bear the burden
of not being able
to understand,
to fix,
to solve,
to tidy up,
to control,
to power ahead.
In the strangest of ways
that's how we proceed -
going nowhere fast,
stuck on stymied.
No one knows how Jesus
came to the consciousness
of who he was
over the stretch from
being potty trained to
"The Father and I are one."
John 10:30
I suspect it was
The Identity Crisis
of all identity crises,
ambiguity on steroids.
MAYBE THIS
MAYBE THAT
"Am I just a kid
kicking the can
around the playground
here in Nazareth
who has all sorts of
divine sensitivities,
or am I somehow divine
in a very human way?
If somehow I am Godly,
God personalized,
how do I go about all this?"
Given the typical life span
in his day, Jesus didn't go public
until well into the second half of life.
In his own way he lived
the later wisdom
of the Quakers:
Wait.
"The way will open."
Like it or not, and we don't,
we wait for a way to open
when we are stretched
between major
MAYBE THIS
MAYBE THAT
What we can do, need to do,
while in the pain of waiting
is to pick up
that cross of ambiguity,
fall in behind Jesus
and get going
where and however
that is and takes us.
That's key in all this.
Ambiguity
does not Soul Stop
beyond that one limiting cross
if we get going and keep going,
shouldering that cross
in company with Jesus,
vigorously following him
and living him in all
the particulars and practicals
of sweaty/sweet life out here
on the street of everyday life.
Stopped by ambiguity
in one way,
we don't throw in the towel
and come to a dead stop
on everything else.
We carry on
carrying our cross
following along with Jesus.
We're in good company:
- couples starting families
more than perplexed
about planet and its people
shredding security
for safe and civil life.
Can their children prosper,
even survive?
- all those generations
of black people
who could not find a way
to proceed free of degrading,
inhumane slavery to whites
- the millions of migrants around
our conflicted world today,
living in abject ambiguity
and squalor, many with children
- families trying to live
with an addicted member
- young adults raised
by inattentive or
permissive parents
and now trying to find
a foundation
for
meaning and a way in life -
Is it
MAYBE THIS
MAYBE THAT
In all this we count on
The Spirit of Truth
for strength
as we wait for
our way forward to open.
We gather, supported
and supporting in
Christian Community.
We wait as we move on
carrying the cross of ambiguity,
and it hurts like hell.
Real crosses aren't stylish,
gold pendants of easy devotion.
Real crosses are rough hewn
and heavy.
They hurt,
none more so than
the cross of ambiguity.
And in our 2022
right here, right now
we find ourselves in
the crosshairs of ambiguity
in many much ways.
The way to proceed
is not one of our design nor liking.
Rather we pick up our cross as is
and get going by following Jesus
in our everyday living.
Come on.
Let's go.
No
MAYBE
about it.
John Frank
******
frankly speaking
spirituality for the street
johnfrankshares.blogspot.com
******
PRAY AND PONDER
Sometimes we just have
to keep showing up
until things open up.
"Her breakthrough comes
as breakthroughs often do:
by long and prepared accident."
Richard Powers
The Overstory
"It takes an unhurried while. Then
there it is: absences become Presence.
Eugene Peterson
"Give energy to the things
you need to give energy to.
Rest where you need rest.
And, through it all, trust:
no matter what you are waiting for,
you are not simply waiting.
You are growing in your capacity
to be prepared for what's to come."
Morgan Harper Nicholas
******
frankly speaking
spirituality for the street
johnfrankshares.blogspot.com
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******
Thanks for this time and more together.
Every blessing. See you next week.
******
