I recently read an article about why some people experience an itch that cannot be scratched (or satisfied by scratching). It has to do with the signals in the cell that are affected by particular chemicals and how an imbalance of those chemicals causes the cells receptors to remain open, thus causing the sensation of an itch through the nervous system. Since the receptors remain open, however, no matter how much one scratches the itching sensation remains.
Our bodies are incredible. If we had to consciously think about all that is going on for life to be sustained, then we’d probably not live very long. And that brief period would be very uncomfortable since as we ignored some of the details in order to maintain the big functions, then things would begin to go wrong and our pain receptors would begin to scream at us.  Just the basic stuff of heart beating and lungs breathing would keep us busy, but add to that the necessity of how we think, that inside our brains there are neurons and synapses and chemical as well as electrical signals—imagine if we had to think of these things for them to happen and that we needed them to happen if we had to think about our heart beating and lungs breathing.  Let’s not forget, however, that the oxygenated blood begins an amazing journey through the body, delivering oxygen and nutrients to cells and returning with waste which must be delivered to the proper processing stations (for example, kidneys).  What if each of those transfers needed our thinking attention, just like the thousands and thousands of deliveries of goods and exchanges of mail that take place around the world need the attention of people who do that work?  Once the deliveries are made in your body there is a lot of thinking involved in cellular activity, like managing the chemicals that affect the signals in your skin, where you might feel an itch. And all of our organs are work zones with particular tasks—filtration, absorption, processing, waste disposal, security—yes, the immune system is the security system for the body. It acts to eradicate the foreign elements it identifies, whether from the outside or from some manufacturing defect. Yes, there are mistakes that the body makes (like the itch you cannot scratch away, as well as deadlier complications), but given the phenomenal number of things going on, it’s rather amazing more doesn’t go wrong.
It’s dizzying all that goes on.  And this just scratches the surface. Realize that while you’re reading this and imagining all the work taking place that you probably weren’t actually thinking about maintaining your own system. But that’s not unusual, since none of us do. We go about our activities and don’t stop to think about the herculean task our brain is conducting without any conscious attention to it.  We walk, talk, work, play, learn, fall in love, experience disappointment, worship, laugh, dream, argue, hurt, heal, sing, calculate, plan, organize, reorganize, exercise, dispute, relate, procreate, imagine, and everything else humans are capable of doing—mostly because we are not having to consciously maintain our physiological systems.
Take a moment and realize that you are a wonder, alive among wonders in a world of wonders.  Then go back to ignoring it all, since there's no possible way to really live if you're focused on how life is maintained. Just don't take any of it for granted.  Here's an idea: let wonder be an itch you can never fully scratch away.

© 2016 Stephen Carl

Thirst

A low place in the heart

Where water once had been

Now a dry hole mocking me

Reminding me of sin

The soil now cracked and dry

Is a testament for fools

Who read there death and doom

And cast aside their tools

The dryness of the soul

Will drain you of your will

To keep the goal of life in mind

And trust in God to fill

Through thirst we learn to trust

Unless in hast we drink

Anything that satisfies

Before we stop and think

Too much will quench the sign

God’s voice in spiritual thirst

And cause us to be blind

To keep God blessed and first

The lesson’s hard to learn

When we only look for ease

The hardships teach humility

And bring us to our knees

For below the things we see

The things we touch and feel

A truth resides beneath

That wisdom shows more real

Patience grows from pain

When all we want is peace

Nothing frees us from this jail

Until by God’s release

Then the heart once like a dune

Becomes a living well

Like a fresh artesian spring

With grace to share and tell

Each day one then begins

Like a beggar on the street

With nothing, nor entitlement

Each need is God’s to meet

The cup was dry before

Last night when all was still

As rest restores the soul

And God the cup does fill

© Stephen Carl, 2016

The sermon on the mount offers a summary of the Gospel. An even more precise synopsis is contained in the Beatitudes. We read here a counter-intuitive life that begins in the struggle with and death of pride and self-salvation.  Wisdom is discovered in sacrifice; strength in service and humility; purpose in generosity; power in gentleness; blessing in suffering for the right reasons; greatness in being least and last; peace in turmoil; generosity in poverty.
The sermon on the mount passage ends (Mt. 7) with Matthew describing the astonishment of those who heard Jesus. They could tell he was speaking with authority, which is different from credibility--an earned position, like a degree. His words hit the target of the heart and ring the bell of truth. What he said made sense, the kind of sense that is confirmed in the trust one has in the speaker of truth. He wasn't telling his listeners anything that was self-promotional or self-advantageous.
And the truth begins in the defeat of self-idolatry, which manifests itself insidiously, in ways we can't even imagine or expect. In truth, our self-idolatry expresses itself even as we try to not be self-idolatrous, that we believe we have the power to overcome our own sickness.
It is only in our spiritual poverty that we are baptized in the grace we so desperately need.
The following is a poem I wrote in an attempt to illustrate the truth of Jesus' words: "blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven."

Prelude to Beatitude

A grief too great to bear
A weight one cannot share
A wound that will not heal
Your strength all these will steal

To slay the foe one must
The persona you most trust
Before the sun does set
Or die of deep regret

The face one sees reverse
Forever wears this curse
Doomed to lose it all
To the master of the thrall

Beware the lair of fools
Refuse the liar's rules
It's a game that none may win
The charade of mortal sin

For impoverished souls receive
Relief from all they grieve
These beggar hearts shall hold
The gift of soulful gold

To utter the bankrupt prayer
The proud will never dare
Till gain becomes their loss
As riches turn to dross

Ne'er gained through toil of greed
Till on swine swill you would feed
And trade deceitful swear
For a humble robe to wear

© 2016 Stephen Carl

Will it be too late?

Will it be too late
When we have the eyes to behold
The colors of love that before us unfold

Will it be too late
When we have the ears to hear
The chorus of peace beyond the fear

Will it be too late
When we have the will to live
Grateful enough to generously give

Will it be too late
When we have the hands to heal
To bind the wound and heartache feel

Will it be too late
When we have mind to know
The words we use do morrows sow

Will it be too late
When we have the conscience to be
No longer driven by unholy decree

Will it be too late
When we have the tongue to speak
Courage from the soul of the wisely meek

Will it be too late
When the shadows lift
And light reveal through subtle shift
The glory and truth beneath our feet,
The light around and within replete;
The whisper of stars telling the tale
Of inheritance that's ours beyond this vale;
The wonder and bliss which before us wait,
For us to receive before too late?

© 2016 Stephen Carl

I recently broke down and purchased an inversion table. One of those contraptions that flip you over and decompress the spine. Hanging upside down by one's feet is an unusual experience.  After the initial adjustments to inversion (relaxing one's muscles, the pressure on one's ankles, the blood flow difference, and emptying one's pockets prior to doing so) there is a strange comfort with the position. Few of us, beyond our childhood jungle gym antics and a very select group of adult athletes and harder core yoga enthusiasts change our physical positioning more than from somewhere between prone to upright. We live between lying down and standing up. Inverting ourselves even slightly is more than most of us experience, let alone entirely upending ourselves.
Aside from the spinal alignment benefits associated with inversion, the change in perspective offers some insight. While hanging upside down I look around and see things...well, upside down.  The floor is near my head and the ceiling is near my feet.  I scan the room and look at the chairs, the lamps, the items on the table, the books on the shelf.  It reminds me of Grandfather's Mansion at Silver Dollar City, which is a low tech entertainment feature of the park. You walk through a set of rooms and hallways with oddities, like the room that is uneven but all the items are set up to appear level with the unlevel floor, thereby making you and everyone else appear to be leaning. One of the hallways leads you past a window through which you can look at a room entirely upside down. All the furniture is attached to the ceiling made to look like a floor.
Inversion. It's my upside down view of the books on the shelf that reminds me of a book I purchased a long time ago called The Upside Down Kingdom. It takes the approach that the message Jesus proclaimed was inverted from what everyone thinks is important: go the extra distance for someone you actually have contempt for, forgive the person who has wronged you, give more than is required, pray for your enemies (as in pray for their wellbeing, not that they get what you think they deserve), help the ones who can't repay you, expose the hypocrisy of the righteous (which essentially exposes us all), and his counter-cultural list of inversions goes on.  He upended everything, not just each person's pet issues that get them upset and angry, but everything. His inverted kingdom perspective is exhaustive, leaving no one standing upright. He even upended the religious establishment.  All of which is why he was arrested, accused, tried, convicted, and received capital punishment.
The inverted kingdom of Jesus hasn't changed. It is still contrary to everything we think is reasonable and necessary. It isn't difficult to see how well adapted we are to the pursuit of wealth, personal comfort, security, power, self-righteousness (don't think you're excused from this party, we're all guilty of believing our perspective is more right than others), and so many other skewed values.  The only way to see it as it truly is, is to become inverted yourself.  The irony of this is that if you're successful in living according the upside down kingdom, then you're likely to be hung by your heels. You'll be in good company though. Many of the people we call saints are upside downers. One of the qualifications required for canonization as a saint is a miracle: healing someone, casting out an evil spirit, spontaneous generation of food, and so on. I can't think of anything more miraculous than truly being turned upside down by the inversion of the worldly values we too easily adopt and defend.

© 2016 Stephen Carl

As a pastor I have had the holy duty and privilege of being with family when or after a loved one dies. Sometimes these moments have been expected, other times they have been a terrible shock. All are losses.
One such time occurred when I was a new pastor for the congregation I served at the time. I had begun my service there only six months prior. It was a Saturday morning in late July. I was prepared for Sunday worship and my family was scheduled for vacation on Monday. I was contacted by the police department who had been unable to reach the deceased man's wife. Law enforcement, among other duties, are often the harbingers of the news of this sort. I think the officer was relieved that I would step in.
I spent most of that day trying to reach the man's wife, mostly by going to her house. Late that afternoon, after several unsuccessful attempts, I pulled up and saw her car in the driveway. Having one's pastor make an unexpected visit is probably unnerving. At least it was for her. When she opened the door and saw me she said "oh, this can't be good."
Her husband was an early adopter of the organically grown food movement.  He had done some amazing things to push the concept and practice forward, though it was financially burdensome. He had an explosive energy about him, but he also had a gentleness to his character. In the tender time immediately following his death, his memorial service was schedule and planned. I postponed our vacation for following his memorial. As pastors do, I spent time listening, making suggestions, and listening some more.  I prefer memorials to honor the individual, but to also bear witness to the resurrection. This man, in his larger than life way, would have wanted it that way.
Usually I'm able to identify something, some image or metaphor that captures the identity of the person. For this man, I remember talking about the signs I had seen when entering a nature preserve of some kind: take only photographs, leave only footprints. It worked well as I assembled some of the stories I had been told as "snapshots" of his life. As for leaving only footprints, what better illustration of his passion for reducing the carbon footprint?
The service, though a terrible experience given the circumstances, offered some healing balm.  I even recall a man who knew the deceased, but was himself a "religious atheist", approached me after the service and commented on it being the finest memorial he'd attended. He said that he particularly thought the homily was a perfect reflection of the deceased.
A day later my family loaded the car and drove about six hours to the state park where we were going to camp, hike, explore, and relax. On the way, we were still processing the past few days and talked about the experience, including the memorial. The first morning, after establishing our site, we drove to an area of trails and waterfalls, loaded ourselves with the necessary snacks, water bottles and such and began following the paved walkway to the waterfalls. Approximately twenty yards from the parking lot we all stopped and seemed to freeze, starring straight ahead. My daughter, who at the time was about 13, broke the silence and said "that's just too weird." Before us was a large wooden sign with a message routed into it: Take only photographs, leave only footprints.
It was as if a voice from beyond spoke to us in that moment. Of course, the sign had been there a long time, just as there are many others we might have just as easily discovered elsewhere. Still, it was one of those moments that whispers that there's more to what is going on in life than what appears to be going on. Sometimes we get nudges, other times they're shouts, most often though the reminders are subtle hints or clues.  So I have discovered that, along with prayer, alms-giving, fasting, service and a host of other religious endeavors, paying attention is a spiritual discipline.

© 2016 Stephen Carl

I was recently on an afternoon walk on a paved pathway in the woods when I heard an owl hooting and then two woodpeckers on opposite sides of me using their jackhammer heads to drill into trees for bugs. At the end of the walk I was crossing a large, open field when I heard the sound of a waterfall or rapids. Then as I walked under the only tree in the field I realized it wasn't water, but thousands of unshed, dry leaves shaking in the gentle breeze.
In that moment I realized that my keepsake box of memories in my head and heart is filled with serendipitous moments like this: unscheduled, unprepared, unforced, unrehearsed, unanticipated moments in which life caught me off guard and tickled me or splashed water in my face or dazzled me with a grand and overlooked wonder.  Like the universe is saying "are you paying attention?!"
I have another keepsake box of memories that contain the expected collection of moments and events: graduations, recitals, weddings, holidays, birthdays. These are wonderful and special and cherished. But the other box of keepsakes has a different kind of value because it contains moments that even though they happened in the ordinary flow of life, they remind me that none of this is ordinary.
We are on a chunk of space debris hurling along at several tens of thousands of miles an hour in a vast expanse with billions times billions of stars and planets and chunks of stuff, none of which, to our knowledge hosts any other life. And even if we discover there is life somewhere else, that will not reduce the wonder at all, since it will still be extraordinary.
The owl and woodpeckers have beating hearts and reproductive systems and eyes that can see far better than mine because of the uniquely adapted assortment of rods and cones.  Another of the memories in this keepsake box is of sitting for a short break along a meandering mountain trail when backpacking, with an open bag of gorp, my back is sweaty from the pack. There's nothing special about the location. The view, though beautiful, isn't spectacular. Why is this in the box? I haven't a clue, but I can remember the moment. It is shuffled in among memories of holding one of my fevered children who finally has fallen asleep in my arms after an exhausting, stressful day of work; and another is of my toes burrowing into the moist sand on a beach in Texas while leading a retreat with a group of youth; and another of the rich blue sky above the green grass of the outfield at a little league baseball game.
This box of keepsake memories continues to capture moments, some of which I don't even notice when they happen. They are beyond precious or even priceless. They are simple reminders that I am, for some reason, conscious, aware, and a part of something remarkable. Out of this I derive some sense of responsibility, some obligation to be a steward, attentive to my own footprint, considerate of the simple needs others have.
It reminds me of what the Spanish poet Antonio Machado said in reference to Jesus:  "All your words were one word: Wakeup."

© 2016 Stephen Carl