I am intrigued by and compelled to write about, try to illustrate or describe, something untouchable and undisclosed, something between or beneath that which is evident. This space or place or truth is just out of reach, but is still possible to grasp, not by our own power or effort, but as a whimsical gift. We brush against it at times and feel it nudge us, whisper to us in a breeze or the drama of colors and movement in a moment never to be repeated. Though it is very close to us, rarely do we see it or know it is there.
A challenge is that language is the way in which we experience life and consciousness. Without language, or the manner in which we explain and express our experience, we are unmoored and unable to know what we are experiencing, even who we are.
Language also, however, limits what we experience by its structure and word-boxes. Language is like a road that is at times well defined and solid, with curbs and guardrail and lines, wide with many lanes; at times it narrows and meanders through neighborhoods of homes that are filled with laughter and light and other neighborhoods with empty houses and broken windows, dark with danger and despair; then at times it is like a gravel or dirt road winding through a forest or off into the countryside or nearly disappearing in a dry and open landscape, perhaps becoming only a single trail threading its way into a wilderness until it fades away altogether and leaves the sojourner standing among a grove of tall trees, light shining through the branches, gentle breeze stirring the leaves, and a whisper of a voice that is strangely familiar as it echoes in the heart; or it leads us over sandy dunes where we hear breaking waves until we step upon the shore and look out over an ocean that stretches beyond the horizon. There we can go no further unless we strap together a few timbered words with poetic twine and let the currents carry us where we cannot know, into mists of imagination past islands of brief substance and then further, further, further to where no words, no boat, no vessel will carry us and we sink into the depths of the wordless from which words arise and into which words disappear and we breathe beneath the water where words cannot be spoken for they mean nothing and yet we now are known as we sought to know.

© 2016 Stephen Carl

Advent, we are reminded, is about waiting. Faithful waiting. Keeping hearts and lives chaste in a world of instant gratification and hyper-impatience.  Oddly, it isn't surprising that we aren't good at waiting, but we are very good at being distracted.  Distraction helps us ignore waiting.  There are a lot of theme parks that have discovered that the wait in line is experienced as less long when people are distracted, so various means of entertaining people in line have been developed.  It helps, but no one in line forgets what they're really waiting for: the ride.  We know this since no one chooses to stay in line when they reach the ride.  This same thing isn't true about our lives and world.  The distractions we've adopted work so well that we forget that for which we are waiting.  In essence, we become addicted to the distractions and choose them over or instead of that for which we are created.
A minor, but real Advent experience would be if on December 25 we woke up and discovered that Christmas had been postponed indefinitely.  If by April or June we are still waiting for Christmas then we would qualify as having a hint of understanding about the Biblical experience of Advent of a promise made by God with no set deadline, but also no expiration date.
Of course, Advent for those who call themselves Christian isn't about waiting for the promised Messiah, instead advent for the past two thousand years is really about waiting for the consummation of the kingdom. In the first century there was an expectation that the kingdom was immanent, and as things got worse, especially for the small community of those who were disciples of Jesus.  With two thousand years of waiting we are less certain of the immanence.  Indeed, we may even may think that if current events and attitudes in our world are any indication, then it would appear we have a long wait ahead of us. The posture toward history and the events which may point toward the timing of the eschaton has shifted.
It used to be that, for Christians, war had to be theologically justified and even then it was a moral stretch to do so.  Militant faith was applied to the spiritual world, not one's neighbors or enemies.
It just struck me, however, to consider Advent from a heavenly perspective.  I wonder what God thinks of waiting for us to settle down, to show that we really receive love by demonstrating it, not with the lovable, but the unlovable. That's what Jesus challenged anyone who would be his disciple: love those who do not love you in return, since it's no big deal to love those who love you. Heck, who doesn't do that?
Obviously God doesn't have the same experience of Advent as we do.  We are bound in time, stuck in the present, with a litter of tragedy in our wake and a questionable future around the corner or over the next rise.  God isn't bound in time, therefore waiting isn't an issue.  Still, there are passages that indicate God's patience with the chosen people ran out.  Just read nearly any of the prophets.  And in the Gospels Jesus is recorded as expressing exasperation with the disciples and others who were slow about grasping his kingdom message.
If you're a praying person and furthermore familiar with the Lord's Prayer, then you may recognize the Advent contained therein:  "Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done" and that's not just an eschatological petition since its followed by "on earth as it is in heaven."  In truth, though it is considered a petition, perhaps we might consider it also a promissory statement as well, that perhaps we should move beyond the sound of the words and be a demonstration of the Kingdom ON EARTH as it is demonstrated in heaven.  On this side of the pearly gates, the standard practice of repentance is a good place to start.  Acknowledging one's own failures in faithfulness is a good Advent activity.  Humanity has always been easily duped by its own "better-than-you" aptitude, but it seems lately we are even more eagerly  trigger happy with our index finger as we point out blame and accusation.  Lord knows we have the same damned issues plaguing humanity for centuries, just a new set of people: racism, sexism, beliefism, ageism, nationalism, greed, fear, etc.
And following repentance, we should have a healthy dose of righteous impatience, but impatience for the correct things, like the garbage we have no problem ignoring while we're pointing out everyone else's faults.  When it comes to certain things, patience isn't a virtue we have time for, just as MLK, Jr. advocated in his "Why we can't wait" book.  Some things are way past their spoil date and the fear we harbor in others who are different than us is one of them.   Yet, MLK demonstrated an INCLUSIVE impatience.  He was impatient for everyone to know justice, not only those experiencing the sharp, jagged edge of injustice.
Advent is a season we don't have time for, it seems.  Yet it is a timeless season.  We reluctantly grant it four weeks, but we fill it with a super-size-me Twelve Days of Christmas. It's all quite ironic since those days are meant to follow Christmas Day, not precede it.  We now follow Christmas with a deflating of the season, a collective sigh of relief that all the sugar-coated, hijacked meaning of Christmas is through.
I won't suggest we crater to the strong current of the cultural river, but for me it makes sense to start Advent in August when there's a wasteland of Liturgically ho-hum Sundays.  Then quit the wrangling with folk about not singing Christmas carols during the weeks leading up to Christmas.  It may be good theology, but there are more important battles to fight.
No matter what, though, let's get inclusively impatient with the real challenges. Let's get active with the kingdom work.  Let's quit bickering over the marginal matters and focus on the issues that are genuine.  Otherwise, like the Israel of old, the words of the prophets will no longer be simply an inconvenience.

© 2016 Stephen Carl

When we step back from the fray of all responsibilities, obligations, distractions, activities, and busy-ness we discover beneath all these engagements there is something that binds our lives together and provides our lives with meaning. This binding agent is stories: family stories, fictional stories, stories of heroes and heroines, stories of saints and sinners, stories of history, stories of love or hope or hardship or comfort or strength.
Can you imagine life without "once upon a time" or "in a kingdom far, far away" or "there once was a" or "he spoke to them in parables" or “did I ever tell you about the time” or “your grandfather and I once were fishing when…” or “my first kiss was with…”?
My boys are always asking me to tell them about some event in my life and they'll even sometimes just ask me to tell them some unknown story from my life that they haven't heard before.  I recall my daughter, when she was a youngling often asking me to tell her a made-up story.  She was demanding too.  She wouldn't settle for any stories that didn't have excellent detail and infused with deep meaning.  We are a storied species, as much story as we are cells and sinew, perhaps more.
Stories are powerfully archetypal, they're emotive and sometimes disturbing; they're able to open our minds and hearts to lessons we may prefer to ignore or have difficulty accessing ourselves.  They teach us things that cannot be explained any other way than in a story, things that cannot be put into an equation or formula or list or even a statement or rule.
Some stories are make-believe, which is different than untrue.  They may not be factual as we might consider fact, but that does not mean they aren't true.  Truth has to do with something far more powerful and significant than facts.  Facts are important, but truth teaches us about the life for which we yearn, the substance that we seek, the purpose for which we live, the love for which we are willing to die.
We are shaped by the stories of our lives like clay is shaped in the hands of a potter; shaped by the stories we have heard and the ones onto which our souls cling.  Sadly, we live in a culture bereft of substantive stories.  We live by tweets and posts and blogs and five reasons this or that and fifteen second commercials and thirty minute comedies with problems, crisis and resolution neatly packaged in irreverence and disrespect we've been sold as humor.  We live by the news stories of scandals and black and white/good and bad dichotomies without the grays that challenge us.  Few of us wrestle with angels like Jacob; few of us are visited by strangers we take in and protect; few of us would know what to do if we saw a valley of dried bones rattle and begin to come to life.
The dreams we have in our sleep are our deep need for stories speaking to us in mystery and metaphor.  And they affect us the way stories affect us—following us throughout the day like a shadow.
And so I am thankful, grateful for stories; for the stories I heard from my parents about when they were kids, the stories I heard of my great-grandparents and grandparents, the stories of family secrets whispered, the stories of my mother selling acorns to her neighbors when she was five, the stories of my father working on building homes with his father, the stories of my siblings, the stories of me when I was too young to remember, the stories of my father during the war, the stories of distant peoples and distant lands and distant hopes and dreams, especially the story that I'm living.
What stories define you?  What family stories do you remember?  What stories will you tell?  What stories do you long to hear?  Ask someone you barely know to tell you their story and then listen to them.  And see what happens to you and to the other and to your stories.
Furthermore, realize you are a storyteller and as such you are empowered to do amazing things by shaping your story as it weaves in and out of the stories of others and the little wiggle of space and once-upon-a-time you are granted.

© 2016 Stephen Carl

We live in a terribly harsh world. Yes, there is beauty. Yes, there is good and there are people--perhaps most--who are kind and generous and helpful. Still, there is a lot of heartache and terror. There are times when I feel like my faith and beliefs have equipped me with a squirt gun in order to fight a raging, out-of-control fire. What good can I do? What benefit is there in the gospel when the world burns out of control?

I walk through Central Park and it seems to be an unreal oasis in the middle of a city of disparity and hurt and anguish. Even in this oasis I see a homeless man sitting on a bench asleep, who has clearly soiled his pants recently, all his worldly possessions gathered on either side of him in plastic bags. I can hear the traffic nearby as cars and trucks and buses and pedestrians hustle and rush toward their own destinations, acknowledging one another only as someone to navigate around, as someone in the way between them and where they're going. The streets are littered with the dirty smudges of discarded gum, now a semi-permanent part of the sidewalks. A baby cries, a man shouts, a woman weeps, a horn honks, brakes squeal. Beneath the streets and buildings there are dark tunnels through which subways clack over the tracks carrying commuters, as they blankly stare through one another or scroll through their smart phone messages or read a book and ignore those around them.
In the buildings there are people, like ants or bees, busy with their work. Producing little of consequence, but distracted from the empty ache in their heart.
Around the world there are human traffickers ruining the lives of men, women, and children. As they do so they are killing their own souls with each dehumanizing act. Elsewhere there are deals being made as laws are being ignored; money being exchanged for political favors; corruption that poisons hope and the future as well as the ecosystem that sustains all life.
There is so much terror that never makes the news, so much suffering, so much bribery and exploitation and violence. My little squirt gun is inept and useless against such relentless fires.  I feel impotent and it seems that God is only a flimsy Dixie cup of water I can toss on the inferno.

And yet, that betrays the size of my heart more than it represents the power of God; that discloses my lack of faith and trust in the omnipotent Creator rather than acknowledging the reality of the world.

My little squirt gun is not all there is. There are billions of others who have their squirt guns. And we have an unlimited supply of water. And we have hope and persistence and vision and encouragement and examples of the faithful before us. And we have an example to provide for others to be inspired. And behind our puny efforts to make a difference is God, who will not permit one person to pass from this life without knowing the terrifyingly wondrous love God has for us, each of us. That extinguishes all fires in an instant.

© 2016 Stephen Carl

The longer I stick with the idea that there is a God and that the God that is, is testified to in a good portion of what is called the Old Testament and New Testament, the more I become aware of how most of what I've believed about this God is so lacking and limited.  God, as I have experienced, is beyond our language to describe, our hearts to contain, our beliefs to bear full witness to, our minds to conceive.  These limitations do more to mislead people than to aid them in discovery. Indeed, any explanation that isn't steeped in mystery is likely to push people away from God, rather than toward God. Scripture bears witness to this God-beyond-explanation--God answers Moses' question about who he should say sent him with "I Am", and Jesus tells Nicodemus that the Spirit cannot be predicted, and there are far more examples that point to the undefinable nature of God.
Most of the theological stages I've passed through have been little more than a wide spot on the spiritual highway, though my own experience and what I've witnessed of others is that we set up house at these barely wide-spots; i.e., we settle in thinking and expecting we are not moving from there or changing our idea of God and who we are to be.  Unfortunately, since these are not permanent theological locations, many people who discover the impermanence of these wide-spots simply give up on anything beyond them, give up on seeking anything more, give up on God because their idea of God has been so cemented to a limited idea that they feel betrayed, angry, disillusioned, and disappointed--since the limited view cannot speak to the challenges and griefs we experience.
My experience of settling in is much like I remember when I was a boy and my father would be doing yard work. My father would give me a ride in the wheelbarrow around the yard, twisting this way and that, until he would stop near where he was working and park the wheelbarrow. There I would sit in the wheelbarrow and not get out, hoping for another ride. Eventually, however, needing the wheelbarrow, my father would dump me out.
God allows the circumstances of life to dump me out of the theological and spiritual wheelbarrows I become accustomed to, and no matter how many times I try to crawl back in, it just won't hold me.
It isn't that God isn't seen through these views of God, its just that each view is so limited.  As I move further along, I become both frustrated that language is too limited to express God, and grateful in the vast landscape that continues to broaden in truth and love that is inexpressible. I have discovered that so far there's always another wheelbarrow ride as long as I remain curious.

© 2016 Stephen Carl

Assumptions are necessary in life. Without them we would be testing and confirming everything and have little time to genuinely live and enjoy each moment. We assume and take for granted the air we breath, the ground upon which we walk, the physical laws that govern our movement and existence. Beyond these we make assumptions about relationships, everything from family support to other drivers on the road. Clearly some assumptions come back to bite us.
There are other assumptions, however, that are erroneous, yet they are so knit into the fabric of our beliefs and consciousness that to question them is for some akin to heresy or overwhelmingly absurd.
One assumption humanity practices is that of our place and position as a creature upon the earth. Take for example Earth Day, recognized on April 22. It began in 1970, not even a blink of the eye in the age of the earth. Something about humanity declaring one day as earth day strikes me as arrogant and audacious.  It assumes that we have some inherent right to do with the earth as we choose, to use it and its resources as we choose, regardless of the other creatures that call the earth home or of the earth's wellbeing itself, let alone our own future on the earth that sustains us. I realize that the establishment of Earth Day is about the exact opposite of all of that, but its establishment identifies just how askew our assumptions are regarding our place and role in relationship to the earth.
For those familiar with the Abrahamic faith traditions,  the Genesis account, after the wonders of creation, indicates that The Creator spoke to humankind and said: be fruitful and multiply and have dominion over the earth.
Humankind was also given the responsibility of naming everything.  This naming and the command to have dominion is a huge responsibility. It has, for many, created the assumption that we can do anything we please, that the earth and all of its teeming life is ours to exploit to our advantage. While the earth may be granted to us for our wellbeing, to have dominion is not the same thing as dominating. Imagine, if you will, the relationship of a King or Queen who have dominion over a country of people. Though they have incredible power and privilege, the purpose of which is to govern and manage the land and people to the benefit of all--not to dominate the land and people, but to be good stewards in order to bring about prosperity and wellbeing for all. Any kingdom or nation that has a despot for a ruler will eventually fall because there is a terrifying mismanagement of the resources of land and people.

As we make decisions on various energy policies, economic policies, business policies, and politics, may we test our assumptions that we, as one species on this planet, have a right that supersedes all other life, whether plant or animal, let alone the wellbeing of the planet itself. We are stewards, not owners of the earth. We are to have dominion, not domination over the planet.
The assumption of our right to do as we please, because it serves our current purposes, is erroneous and dangerous. To have one Earth Day is quite frankly based on an erroneous assumption about the relationship between humanity and the planet we call home. Now if the earth had one day a year called humanity day, then that would make more sense.

© 2016 Stephen Carl

There are far more theologians in the world than we might think there are. The requirements to be a theologian are simply an effort of the head and heart to make sense of life. Some do so by saying there is a divine essence behind the curtain of what we can see and know and experience; some say there is no Creator and what we call spiritual is nothing more than our consciousness reaching beyond its limitations, imagining the unimaginable in order to bring order and explain what is beyond the mind to comprehend.  No matter which approach or which perspective, or anywhere along the continuum between the two, there are a lot of theologians. 

Even children are theologians, perhaps the best because of their natural wonder and acceptance of things that are beyond their capacity to explain rationally. Children innately are theologians because their hearts are usually still wide open to trust—unless they have experienced some reason to be distrustful already, something tragic and terrible, and unfortunately too common. For those children who are still trusting, they are remarkably profound in their insights and acceptance of the holy and sacred that sparkles in everything and everywhere. According to words identified as Jesus’, this child-like faith is even identified as necessary for entering the kingdom of heaven. Child-like is different than childish. Childishness has nothing to do with entering the kingdom. Child-like points to the willingness to accept something rich and necessary for living life fully, without earning it or even being able to comprehend or explain it; child-like is the inherent necessity of trusting—like the infant that is fed at the mother’s breast or the toddler that reaches to the parent knowing they will be lifted and embraced.

For those who are identified as theologians—those who have earned degrees or some form of credential that the world accepts as necessary for being a theologian, then words and descriptions and explanations are well-honed and crafted. Being a theologian, however, is not the same thing as being faithful. A theologian can be fluent in theology and capable of expressing in words truths that are teased out of ancient and contemporary texts and experience, but faith is the practice, sometimes unknowingly, of what theology only points toward.

Essentially, theology is the practice of explaining the inexplicable; creating containers for that which cannot be contained; describing that which is beyond description. In essence, it points us toward that which cannot be reached, but also lets us know that the mystery of that which cannot be reached is that it does what we cannot do: it reaches out to us and holds us. In this, we understand in a way that explanations can never explain, just as any definition of love falls short of the experience of being loved and out of that, loving.

© 2016 Stephen R. Carl