Either the world is holy or it's not. Either the creator's work is a sign of himself or it's a sham. Where else can one draw the line between sacred and profane except around all the cosmos? For "profane", meant originally, outside the temple, and all creation was, in the beginning, a temple for God's "very good." Whenever we eat, drink, breathe, see, take anything in by any means, we are commanded to remember the sacrifice. We try to hedge in the holy, to pour it into tiny, trivial cups, to make bread as pale and tasteless as possible, like fingernails. We are saying to God: Get away from me. Just so, the desert Israelites implored Moses to keep God on the mountain and not bring him down among their tents. As though our immolation by the holy were not our only hope.
Still, we take the big black crayon in our hands and draw these little islands where we will let God live in the world. In the tiny cups and on the unfamiliar silver plates so cold you can see your breath on them. We cover him up with white linen napkins just as they did in the grave. We draw more lines around Bibles and sanctuaries, thus adding a few more islands to this archipelago of the holy, and there you have it. Little concentration camps for Christ. Our incremental piety bristles around the perimeters like barbed wire, hemming him in."
- From And the Trees Clap Their Hands
By Virginia Stem Owens
I am still processing....this is one of my favorite quotes. I would highlight most (if not all of it) if I could.
Although we do not practice communion, I have always related to this quote because I know the God "who hides in bushes and jumps out in flames to startle us into thinking." He seems to like to surprise me and I am always looking for him around every corner.
Yet, I feel so often he is not acknowledged or recognized for the God of surprises that he is. Not recognized for how awesome and magnificent he is! He seems instead to be watered down in our lives so much that all we are left with is a weak impression of what someone once thought he was. Nothing taste good watered down that much.
In our own way, I think we too, box him in ....picking up our big crayons and marking the places we will allow him to move. I do not want to be left with "Little concentration camps for Christ." I do not want to be in a "little concentration camp for Christ."
How is it that we have "found" a way to box in a God who can not be contained?
He broke out of the temple box and spread throughout the world for all mankind.....we catch his wind and try desperately to shove him back in a box again..
Sometimes the box is old and familiar and sometimes the box has new ribbons on it and is more attractive.... it's still a box.
Surprise us Lord!
Don't waste yourself in rejection, nor bark against the bad, but chant the beauty of the good. ~Ralph Waldo Emerson
Everybody can be great ... because anybody can serve. You don't have to have a college degree to serve. You don't have to make your subject and verb agree to serve. You only need a heart full of grace. A soul generated by love. ~Martin Luther King, Jr.
