On the Under Side

When the rock don't roll
When I was young, I played in the woods behind my house. I would spend hours finding new adventures behind every tree. One day, as I stooped to look at a cool looking bug. I heard a snap behind me. My 10 year old brain raced. It was Bigfoot, no! A dragon, no! Mutated aliens from planet P9X82! Oh NO! I thought I was a goner destined to be a brainless slave for squid like creatures that enjoyed making young boys do the Macarena till there arms fell off. If I was to be an X-file it would be filed under 'WTF' for Whiteboy-Totally-Flipedout. I gathered the needed courage, with a snort I was ready to give them all the fight I had. Slowly turning, I readied myself to face my soon-to-be captors. If I was going down, I was going down swinging for white boys should never be forced to dance their arms off!

To my relief, my eyes fell on a small deer about as old as I was, (in deer years). I exhaled. The deer was startled and shot up. Our eyes locked, the moment felt sacred, till the holiness was broken by his big daddy (who I did not see) shooting off like some criminal on a crime drama! I did the same, running as fast as I could. Thinking the aliens got my deer brother. I slowed a little to look back as I ran. Then it happened, the communication between my head and my feet where interrupted by a rock. I tripped. Hitting the ground with a thug I lay there for a moment, half giggling and half whimpering, enjoying both my over active imagination and the interesting artifact my feet had found moments earlier. A rock shaped like a half moon that smooth on one side and jagged on the other. It was rippled with color with an otherworldly beauty to it. Interested and with nothing better to do, I began to dig around the rock. As I dug the rock seemed to grow larger. I kept digging partly because it was there but mostly because the mystery drove me. It took the remaining hours of light I had to get it uncovered. To me, the rock was a marker that revealed the location of some ancient sage's most precious secrets. As the mystery was within my grasp, I heard the one thing that would pull me away. "Dawson, its supper time!" The mystery was great but my hunger was greater so the mystery would have to wait for tomorrow. Yet even after eating my fill, a hunger still remained: a hunger for the deep mysteries on the underside.

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Our greatest danger
Many Christians try to be good without the gospel. Such an endeavor is like shooting yourself in the foot, jumping into a shark tank, while humming the theme from Jaws! You may get out alive but only part of you will make it. Following Jesus' teachings without cognitively appropriating the work of Jesus will eventually leave you in pieces.

James 4:1-3 tells us that we have a sinful tendency to escalate our desires and preferences into ruling desires and dogmatics. It may be desires to protect ourselves, or be famous, be liked or please others but such desires mutate and take on a life of there own if allowed to gain too much control in the soul. Put another way, man has inner dogmatics also called strongholds of the mind. They are the beliefs, “the sure enough’s” and “should not’s” “the ought to’s” and “must haves”, all the little beliefs that improperly rule our perception of the world. When we try to be good without the gospel those little sinful beliefs often remain and make the Christian life a frustrating and tedious venture. Such sinful and irrational beliefs inevitably lead to self-defeat. Some examples of these bad beliefs are:

• I must have love or approval from all the significant people in my life
• I must perform important and moral tasks competently and perfectly.
• Because I strongly desire that people treat me considerately and fairly, they absolutely must do so.
• If I don’t get what I want or expect, it is terrible and I can't stand it.
• It is easier to avoid facing life’s difficulties than to undertake more rewarding forms of self-discipline.
• It is easier to avoid facing life's responsibilities than to undertake more rewarding forms of self-discipline.

Like those above, such irrational beliefs seem innocuous unimportant little thoughts yet their appearance conceals a more sinister truth. These beliefs don’t remain in our heads like tiny vaporous clouds in the sky. But just as rivers to land, they change the very landscapes of our mind. Such, irrational rivers of thought have a power to change the contours of our thinking. The longer we follow their flow the more our mental landscapes are formed around them and naturally they mold and guide the paths we walk in this world.

These irrational beliefs also remind us that if left to ourselves we are like ticking time bombs marking off the seconds till we self-destruct. The evidence is in the behaviors fostered by the beliefs. You can see how we “Tick-Tick” our way to destruction. We are quick to manufacture blind spots for our most problematic areas. “Tick-Tick” We cultivate self-discipline in all the wrong ways. “Tick-Tick” We become overly demanding of others and quick to give excuses to (justify) ourselves. “Tick-Tick” We often see ourselves as the victim and project on others the responsibility to grow and change. “Tick-Tick” We immobilize our ability to make helpful and fully productive choices which we can follow through to completion. "Tick-Tick-Boom” and we all fall down. By living from these hidden irrational beliefs many Christian sabotage their relational and spiritual lives.

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Back to young Dawson and the rock! All night I lay awake full of all the possibilities that rock covered. The sun could not rise quickly enough! But like all ten year olds night got the best of me and I awoke well after sun rise. When I awoke it was with purpose and not long after I resumed my excavation. The rock was as I left it yet in the light of morning I realized it was the size of my dog 'Bear' and too big too lift. I could not move it by myself. So I used a trick I saw on MacGyver. Just like Mac, I placed a strong stick under the rock and pulled down on the other end. The rock popped out like a pop tart. I scrambled to the hole; the morning light illuminated the little abyss. My eyes widened, my heart raced, as I peered in not knowing what I would see.

What did I find? I found the most revolting truth? Sometime what is hidden, what is the mystery, is nothing but bugs, worms, bones, and a half crushed, all dead, mole. On the underside of our hearts are the bad beliefs that direct our lives. We are the problem, the one with junk on the underside of our hearts. We should take the time to dig deep and see what is under our rock. The answer to the mystery may not be pretty but it will be beneficial. As for my rock adventure, I later used my new knowledge to defend the honor of MacGyver against those that would doubt the reality of his inventions. With the passion of an evangelist I cried, "MacGyver did not lie! For I, Yes I dear brother, have lifted a rock just as he did!" Years later I realized the real truth I had found on the underside was not truth of MacGyver's science but the spiritual reality of the heart. I learned human heart’s truest description. Objects of faded beauty that hide below there well weathered façade, the darker truths of our past. The human heart is not nearly as beautiful and worthy to lead our life as many romantically claim. Yet it is worth digging out if only for sober transformation we find in the process. The opportunity to change begins with dealing with what is on the underside of our hearts. Hearts are mysteries and beautify markers, jagged but colorful sign-stone that cover the deepest truth of our nature and darkest truths of our past.

Getting at the Heart
That day, I had lifted my world with just a stick and found my heart better for it! But how do we get to the underside? It is not easy to get to the underside of inner deceptive beauty. The work will be hard but I have learned that when we do the hard work, what we find may not make us happy but it will make us better. We are better for being willing to dig, for the courage to uncover what is under our hearts and place those things in the clear light of the day. So how do we uncover and clear out our bad beliefs? Here are six sticks that I have found can lift my rock hard heart. My hope is they will help you lift your heart to see and clear those beliefs that secretly destroy you from the underside.

1. Seek a contemplative encounter with God’s holiness (Isa 6:1-10).
As prideful sinners, we have a self-destructive tendency to make and keep ourselves emotionally disturbed. This is one reason it is difficult to maintain good healthy emotional and relational lives. Our deepest uncheck beliefs betray us. They are the terrorists of the soul. Our odd assumptions about how the world works turns out to be our own undoing. So it is wise for us to, seek a contemplative encounter with God. Through times of prayer and study the lights are turned on: We see life in light of God’s glory and ourselves in light of God’s holiness. Prayer, the Spirit’s power and humility are central in gaining true perspective from which to view our selves and others. In seeking God and getting a revelation of His Holiness we are opened to gain a humble perspective on life. Without such an epistemological virtue you rarely see past the layers of deception we all hide behind. It is through the discipline of contemplation that we are cultivated towards life in this way. This way we cultivate humble perspective by comparing ourselves to God and rarely to the rest of humanity.

2. Sit at the feet of Jesus
When Jesus walked the dusty road of humanity, his ministry aimed at the heart. Time and Again he taught in parables to uncover the underside of man’s heart. In using parables, Jesus was not being vague. If Jesus was cryptic you can be sure it was for a reason. This indirect way of teaching was not a detour but an express lane to the heart. The parables did not give all the answers but called a person to respond. This indirect communication did two things. First, it sifted the real truth seekers from the religious information seekers and dogmatic control freaks. Only the real truth seekers would be curious enough to dig for answers. Then as now, too many people want a fast-food quick packaged answer, Spiritual transformation with a little plastic toy inside. Jesus never spoon feed his disciples. He taught in a way that made them think. "As soon as He was alone, His followers, along with the twelve, began asking Him about the parables." (Mark 4:10) Second, this indirect communication spoke to people’s hearts and called them to respond on a heart level. Each parable asks something of each of us, something fundamental and essential to what it means to be a Christian. Like Samuel did to David, Jesus told stories to bring people to a place where he could say “You are the man?” Use his parables to get at your heart. Ask yourself, where do I find myself in the story? What does this little story call me to do? What does it convict me of? How must I respond to the call of Jesus in this parable? What is Jesus calling me to do? What rises to the service when I contrast this parable with my heart? When reading the parables I am always struck by the simple but profound understanding given to me by Jesus. It always forces my heart to be laid uncovered and naked before me.

Also don’t think to deeply. The parables are all pulled from real life. Learning to think like Jesus is learning to think like a normal common person of the land. Jesus liked the people rooted in the soil of real life. If we don’t get the parable it is not because it is to mystical and cryptic but because more than likely we are removed from the land. Our feet don’t know the feel of soil and our hands the common work of people rooted in the soil. In short, be instinctive and think simple!


3. Learn to hear others by Following.
Before we can hear we must follow. It is by faith alone that we are free of sin's punishment and power. We no are longer slaves to sin; faith in the work of Christ frees to follow Christ. We are free to follow and in following we become free of sin's present influence. For Christians, sin still abides on the underside of our hearts left unchecked it destroys us. So we follow to be free. Jesus explained it this way, "If you continue in my word, then you are truly disciples of Mine; and you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free." (John 8:31-32). It is continuing in his word, being his disciple that practical lighthearted freedom comes. Now Jesus’ discipleship is a call to die so freedom is not free but it is worth it. We have to do the hard work. The gospel asks us to think long and hard about the deep things of life. It calls us to treasure what is truly valuable. It demands we place our egos aside and die daily in humble following of Jesus. In these ways death and discipleship opens our ears to hear for our opinions, our preferences, our thoughts, and ideas about life slowly drowned out all other voices and make our ears spiritually deaf.

People tend to be deaf, but in different ways. Remember the admonition of Jesus in his parable of the sower, "Be careful, how you hear" (Luke 8:4-8, 11-15). In a conversation, most ether don’t listen but think while the other person is talking believing there thought superior to all others (the hard soil). Such an attitude is the sign of impenetrable ego and easy pickings for the devil. Others don't think enough and don’t understand what is being said to them (shallow soil). Such shallowness is because they don't, like, care much about, like, thinking and stuff! Without meditation information is not an education. Others think to much about the wrong things thus they only hear what they want to hear (weedy soil). All three only invest about half there energy in truly hearing and never train themselves on how to truly hear from the heart. This is why Jesus ended many teachings with, "He, who has ears to hear, let him hear." (Mark 4:9). Jesus was saying there is a prerequirement to understanding my teaching. If you have not denied self, died to ego and followed Christ, you will not get his teachings. Gaining spiritual understanding and being a sideline Christian are incompatible. You can not enjoy your view from the pew and get spiritual food from the preacher. What you get only fills your pride. In the discipleship of Jesus teaching is important yet it is only a pause between the actions of following. Every sermon ends in silence for at its end is a call to action, affection, and admiration to follow Jesus.

4. Let wise and discerning people speak into your life.
The first work and most prevalent work of the spirit is conviction. Conviction is not a bad thing it is a God thing. It is evidence that the spirit lives in you, that God has not given up on you. When we feel bad because we have been bad, don’t be sad, rejoice. It is pride that causes a Christian to be sad and self-pitting after being convicted. Conviction is an opportunity to become a better person, a more authentic human. When we know who we are in Christ. When we know our freedom from sin's punishment and power. Conviction is a blessing much like a cold shower. Also the gospel must be our acceptance. When the blood is enough for us, and we do not need to earn God's acceptance, we rest in our freedom as adopted children of God. Through all this we come to a place where the gospel strengthens the inner man to stop striving and rest in Christ finished work. In this way we hear in the peace of the soul. Many clouds of confusion are blown away and the soul is freely open to the possibilities life in the Spirit brings. In this secure rest, we can have the real conversations that lead to real change for we no longer fear judgment but see failure as an opportunity to learn. Practically speaking, Learn to ask trusted wise and discerning Christians what they see and stop all excuses, all justifications, and just take it in. Remember it’s to the level you truly trust and respect them that you will hear what they say in a transformative way.

5. Use the Gospel to balance our heart
The Gospel cleans up our thinking and feeling in fundamental ways. It reminds us we are fallen but not hopeless, we are more than we think and still much less than God. Theologically guilt is at the root of the human condition. Under God's judgment, humanity is permeated with a sense of despair/guilt. Wither unconscious or conscious we live from this constant condition. Thus a common character flaw of humanity is found in its use of blame. We blame ourselves and others improperly. We should seek to cultivate a bifocal gospel vision of the self. Bifocal glasses have two different focuses one that in near for examination and the other more father off so you can make your way in the world. The gospel remind us we live in an “already - not yet” reality. We are a sinner and not yet completely free of sin. This is like the up close focus we will always need to see the sinner to continue to grow and change. The other focus is farther off, we see ourselves as saint or holy one. This motivates us to continue the journy. It assures us that our relationship with God not based on us. We can already live as sinless saints even though the fullness of that state is not yet upon us. This bifocal vision calls us to deal with our problems without hopelessness and continue in the Love of God without despair. We can rest in his work for us a serve him in gratitude without dishonoring Christ by seeking to earn the favor of God.

So always remind yourself, God has, because of Christ, accepts the unacceptable, receives the rejected, forgives the unforgivable, loves the unlovable and brought close those that declared a jihad on God. We should seek to accept ourselves in our imperfections because the gospel alone gives us dignity and saintliness. The gospel trains our hearts that being authentically human means we can't live from self-reliance, self-pity, fear or guilt, but that gospel gratitude, glorious sonship, and intimate fellowship is the authentic rhythm of the human soul.

6. Seek to uncover and disprove irrational beliefs by the Word and Spirit.
Once a Hebrew prophet pouted about his own heart, "The heart is more deceitful than all else and is desperately sick; who can understand it?" (Jer 17:9) God response to the prophet's frustration, "I, the LORD, search the heart, I test the mind, Even to give to each man according to his ways," (Jer 17:10) Digging is hard but it is not imposable if you are letting God help you get at your heart. He has given us tools for the task. First himself, the Holy Spirit, second the Word as a mirror for seeing the imperfection of the soul. The Spirit and the Word will slowly help you mine your heart of these bad beliefs. The Spirit convicts and cleans as the Word; our mirror helps us to see the many imperfections we have in our thinking. One way of doing this is by being mindful of one's language. Jesus said, the words that come our of a man's heart defiles him. He was getting at the idea that out of the abundance of the heart the mouth will speak. Unguarded words are telling of our heart's disposition. If we look at our language and take note of the "musts" "should" and "ought" phrases we use, we will uncover many of our bad beliefs. Repent and then seek to change your language along biblical lines and you will begin to change your way of thinking.

7. Learn to laugh again
C S Lewis claimed that the greatest mark of evil was not impurity but not having a sense of humor. Prideful people can't laugh at themselves humble people can. Learn not to take yourself too seriously. It is true, God can do without you. You are expendable and not absolutely necessary to God big picture plan. He can accomplish all his purposes without yours or my help yet he enjoys having us along for the ride. God wants you to be a part of his plan for the ages but he wants you to do it with a smile. So breathe in peace and gospel, Breathe out and smile!


Epilogue – Holey Life
Years later I walked through those same woods and came on the spot where I had my metaphysical treasure hunt. The hole was still there with one exception rising from its center were the makings of a mighty Oak. It already stood well above 15 feet. The only oak for miles and miles was rising from this hole. It slowly dawned on me, the seed had been there all along. Among all the dirt and bones, the seed quietly slept. It too was on the underside of the heart rubbing elbows with dead moles. It just needed the light of day to call it forth to take root and grow. Out of the death and decay, life sprang up.

Where a hole once was now there is life, a holey life! The Christian life is a process of excavating, dying and living again. Sometimes we have to die in little ways to authentically live. Sometimes those unpleasant things we uncover when we mine out our heart become good fertilizer once the light of day is shined on it. Dealing with the underside of our hearts is part of growth and a key in becoming a mighty oak of Righteousness.

As Christians, the gospel was already present on the underside of our hearts. When we first believed it was implanted there by the Holy Spirit, and there it remained, imperishable and pure. From the seed of the gospel, we can grow to be an Oak of righteousness but only if we first deal with the underside of our hearts. While many Christians try to be good without the gospel there is another way. In dealing with what is on the underside of our hearts we also make room for the gospel to take root and grow. The gospel seed is the beginnings of the good life. From the underside of the heart the gospel acts as the root of the ethical life. By the gospel, flawed people grow to be flawed good people. In this way, we can be good without shooting ourselves in the foot.

You have been born again not of seed which is perishable but imperishable, that is, through the living and enduring word of God.
1 Peter 1:23 (NASB)

How blessed is the man who does not walk in the counsel of the wicked,
Nor stand in the path of sinners, Nor sit in the seat of scoffers!
But his delight is in the law of the LORD, And in His law he meditates day and night.
He will be like a tree firmly planted by streams of water,
Which yields its fruit in its season
And its leaf does not wither; And in whatever he does, he prospers.
Psalms 1:1-3 (NASB)

Ethical Living as a Creative Act

The Wake of Those before Us
Leonardo DaVinci is considered one of the most creative men to have lived, dabbling in all areas of art as well as a profound inventor. He was a true artist, whose creativity touched ever area of his life. Oddly, DaVinci slept only 4-5 hours a day, clamming he had more important things to do than sleep. He invented an alarm clock that worked by streaming water from one receptacle to another. When the second receptacle was full, a system of gears and levers raised Leonardo’s feet into the air promptly waking him up.

DaVinci's more modern equivalent was Thomas Edison. Like DaVinci, Edison was an artist but of a different stripe. He put down the pant brush and picked up the wrench. He held over 1500 patents including those for the phonograph, kinetoscope, radio, light bulb, and my favorite, the tattoo gun. Edison was obsessed with maximizing his cognitive ability through thinking with a rejuvenated mind. So he discarded the normal sleep pattern of night day. Instead, he would take many short catnaps throughout a 24 hour period. To make sure he did not over sleep he invented his own simple alarm clock. He would sleep in his chair, holding ball bearings in the palms of his hands. After an appropriate number of z's, he'd relax enough to drop the balls, waking himself up. Then he'd go back to being a creative genius inventor.

Edison and DaVinci where eccentric, some would clam they lived odd or unusual lives. Most see them as the blessed oddities of humanity. Both men where gifted. Both knew the urgency of creative moments. Both shinned with such creativity we still feel the warmth. And In the wake of these two men, we are moved and made to wonder about the importance of creativity. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, professor of psychology at the University of Chicago, notes that:

The world would be a very different place if it were not for creativity. We would still act according to the few clear instructions our genes contain, and anything learned in the course of our lives would be forgotten after our death. There would be no speech, no songs, no tools, no ideas such as love, freedom, or democracy. It would be an existence so mechanical and impoverished that none of us would want any part of it… To be human means to be creative.

From the witness of history, Csikszentmihalyi clams that "To be human means to be creative." Edison and DaVinci are not odd only humans. They lived from the spark of their humanity. They were alive with the understanding of their own creative potential and it kept them up at night.

The Landscape of Creativity
To be human means to be creative? Could it be it’s in our DNA to be creative? Deep down are we artists of the soul? Poet and philosopher, John O’Donohue gives the two reasons why he thinks the artist is an aspect of what it is to be human.

"Everyone is involved whether they like it or not in the construction of their world. So, it's never as given as it actually looks; you are always shaping it and building it. From that perspective, each of us is an artist. Secondly, I believe that everyone has imagination. That no matter how mature and adult and sophisticated a person might seem, that person is still essentially an ex-baby."

O’Donohue is right. The world is liquid. It exists in such a way that we can't help but effect our environment just as it affects us. Step into a river and not only does the river change but you as well. We are artist because changing our world is not optional. Human existence means human involvement. This involvement is not just in our bones it’s in our books. Theologian Paul Tillich said there is no such thing as the immaculate conception of an idea. Every idea came from somewhere else. Creativity is not a matter of conjuring up something brand new. Everything always depends on what went before. Any new way of thinking or looking at things depends on what has gone before and then we simply add a little something more. I have heard it said, "The only reason he could see so far was that he stood on the shoulders of the giants who went before him." One idea plus another idea adds up to be not two, but three ideas. To be human, to live a human life, is to add in some way to what has gone before, to use your life to somehow make a difference in the world, so the world is better off for your having been, all the while, building on the shoulders of those before us. It's always a beautiful view when we look from the landscape of creativity.

The Breath of the Soul
When Edison died in 1941, Henry Ford a friend and fellow inventor captured his last breath in a bottle. We know we can not capture creativity in a bottle, yet there is something of the eternal in creativity. In the Hebrew language ‘ruach’ means breath or wind, it also is used to describe the spirit of creativity that moved over the chaos of creation creating form and beauty where their was only a void. In the Jewish tradition, the same idea is in play to describe the spark of life breathed into humanity to make us living souls. To access imagination was to tap into the breath of the soul, operate in harmony with the creative impulse that ordered the world. The creative souls on who’s shoulders we stand may well have come before us but are to us co-conspirators - breathing the same 'ruach' as us and contributing to a world far beyond present comprehension. In 1917, Frank Baum, the author of The Wizard of Oz, explains it this way:

Imagination led Columbus to discover America. Imagination led Franklin to discover electricity. Imagination has given us the steam engine, the telephone, the talking machine and the automobile, for these things had to be dreamed of before they became realities. So I believe that dreams--day dreams, you know, with your eyes wide open and your brain-machinery whizzing--are likely to lead to the betterment of the world. The imaginative child will become the imaginative man or woman most apt to create, to invent, and therefore to foster civilization.

Everyone has imagination but it is not common something of the eternal is presence. Humans are the only creatures which have the captivity to imagine. As children we all lived in an imaginal world. For example, when you've been told don't open that door, because there are monsters in there, “Oh! The world you'd create on the other side of the door!” We dreamed ourselves into and out of worlds beyond our today. Yet our educational system trains children to become followers by rewarding them for completing assigned tasks in conventional ways. As Baum notes, If we want to prepare the young for positions of leadership in society, we must nurture their capacity to imagine, to envision a future, to dream. For great leaders are great visionaries and dreamers. I believe that deep in the heart of each of us, there is this imagining capacity and when man ceases to dream he ceases to be alive. Creativity and imagination are necessary for the child to sees an enchanted forest in the backyard and for that child to one day lead people into a better world. The same man who cried "I have a dream" was the boy who played in that dream-world as a child.

The Necessity of Being a Child
In the Christian tradition, Jesus taught that all men should become as a child. He was speaking of childlikeness not childishness. But what is childlikeness? What is childishness? In most spiritual traditions, Childishness and childlikeness are two opposing dispositions toward life. George MacDonald and C. S. Lewis offer some helpful insights into the nature of these two dispositions towards life. Lewis summarizes the two when he writes, "there are only two kinds of people in the end: those who say to God, 'Thy will be done,' and those to whom God says, in the end, 'Thy will be done'"


What is childishness?
In both writers childishness is primarily egocentrism. Childishness is a living from an ego centrality. Where the higher faculties of imagination, reason, and logic are used in the service of unchecked selfishness and egocentrism. The childish person is overly concerned with himself and only relates to his surroundings in terms of self-aggrandizement. Others are important only because of what the childish person can get from them. They view the world as revolving about themselves, often expressed in a lust for power and traitorous behavior or whining megalomania and greed. In Lewis' writings the characters that fit the bill are Edmund Pevensie and Eustace Clarence Scrubb from The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe and The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, Both view the world as revolving about themselves, both begin as thoroughly obnoxious, childish little creatures, mature into spiritually damnable children. Beautifully and receptively Edmund and Eustace have profound personal encounters with Aslan and leading to a humbling self-realization and genuine change in nature.

MacDonald in his book Lilith shows how we trade a inborn moral poster for one more self serving. In the story we find young, relatively uncorrupted children who become more childish as they grow older. As one character says: "If a Little One doesn't care, he grows greedy, and then lazy, and then big, and then stupid and then bad" In addition to egocentricity, other attributes of childishness are spite, pettiness, cruelty, and pseudo-sophistication. MacDonald's insight into the childishness of pseudo-sophistication is worth quoting. "For it must be confessed that there are children who are not childlike. One of the saddest and not least common sights in the world is the face of a child whose mind is so brimful of worldly wisdom that the human childishness has vanished from it"

In our modern age, among the blur of IPods and MTV, designer narcissism and celebrated vanity, many have lost their childlike since of wonder. It passed through the cracks of their lives and now collects dust among all things forgotten (like virtue and Cindy Lopper). Imagination has been assailed by CGI effects and the ‘Gore-fest’ horror movies, not to mention the way the internet (particularly porn) has made the imagination a blind 90 pound wimp. People are unpracticed in the breath of the soul. Becoming adult in all the wrong ways: Choosing escapism over problem solving, Sex over relationships, pessimism over possibility and skepticism over potential. The sad irony is that as many grow up and slowly trade being childlike for being childish. Through this seduction into selfishness they are closing themselves off from the simple resonating joys of being childlike.

What is childlikeness?
Together they give us three aspects of childlikeness. The childlike personality is marked by humble perception and self-less memory. MacDonald understood childlikeness to be a kind of innocence akin to humility. He often ties humility to selflessness or self-forgetfulness: "To be rid of self is to have the heart bare to God and to the neighbor--to have all life ours, and possess all things. I see, in my mind's eye, the little children clambering up to sit on the throne with Jesus." The innocence way a child can get lost in a story or gives themselves at play without one thought of themselves is what he is getting here. It follows that He also held this humility to be characterized by unpretentiousness: "He who will be a man, and will not be a child, must--he cannot help himself--become a little man, that is, a dwarf. He will, however, need no consolation, for he is sure to think himself a very large creature indeed” Unpretentiousness in this way lacks the prudishness of the religious egoist and the holds a kind of honesty about ones stature, about who they really are. Childlikeness is marked by the humility of knowing your size. Every normal child conserves himself as truly bigger than the last line on the wall but not bigger than a mountain. They are innately aware of their smallness, frailty and true scope of the self in a world infinitely larger than they. Take a child crowned king he still must sup at this mother’s breast and when they rule it is as if it were a game. No child known their greatness even if the Titans rest in their shadow. It coaxes inquisitiveness out of its shell. Remember when you'd ask questions like why is the sky blue or where does God live? It is imagination that gave feet to your curiosity and humility that allows such questions to be perceived and breathed into the world. Children have the humility to see the real question and humility to ask the honest question when the prideful blindly keep their questions inside for fear of looking foolish or for love of appearing smart. The inquisitiveness of a child is the three-way conversation humility and curiosity have with imagination.

The second mark of a childlike personality is a spiritual longing. This longing is a grounded yearning for more than what exists. It is something of a romantic yearning for something more. Yet it is much more than just mere sentiment. In Corbin Scott Carnell's book, Bright Shadow of Reality: C. S. Lewis and the Feeling Intellect, he looks at this longing from a holistic perspective calling it the feeling intellect. Carnell used the German word 'Sehnsucht' to get at how this longing interwove thought and feeling. 'Sehnsucht' means "an underlying sense of displacement or alienation from what is desired” This sense of longing is a universal experiance; it is the experiance St. Augustine wrote of in his confession. "Thou hast prompted him that he should delight to praise thee, for thou hast made us for thyself and restless is our heart until it comes to rest in thee." Like a conductor taps on his stand to prompt the orchestra to attention God as made man in such a way as to prompt all humanity thought the restless longings of the soul. Lewis puts it this way, "If I find in myself a desire which no experience in the world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world." This longing is in every temporal pleasure as the fulfillment of that the temporal pleasure promise of satisfaction. Is such an eternal longing morbid? Lewis responded sighting that boy who reads about enchanted woods does not then become depressed about his own world: "He does not despise real woods because he has read of enchanted woods: the reading makes all real woods a little enchanted. This is a special kind of longing . . . The boy reading the fairy-tale desires and is happy in the very fact of desiring" this is more than just the joy of the hunt but a spiritual awareness of transcendent beauty.

Living in childlikeness does not mean embracing of sentimentality and gullibility with the castigation of logic and reason. Children have a great capacity to think logically. One child psychologist described the child’s soul as made up of three parts: the natural child, the adapted child, and the little professor. This little professor is the part of the child's soul that contains an unschooled wisdom that is logical, profound, and creative. We are born as little professors to logically and skillfully think within the storyline we have been given.

It is in such story lines that feelings and intellect meet. This felt intellect element comes from the fact that stories are the key to realizing this longing. The imagery of a pilgrim and journey is appropriate when understanding this idea for it is framed in story form. Our longing is always on a journey for the eternal shores are farther than life. This longing is rooted in the narrative way we are all frame life. Think of it this way, in our very beings - we are all stories! People are stories! We are more than ideas or facts, biology and protoplasm; we are a story, with narrative ands plot. This longing we speak of takes a narrative form, just as we take a narrative form. A redemption form of narrative is found in all good stories. In a nut shell here it is, there is peace, there is a problem, there is a solution, and there is resolution. This patter resonates with meaning even in this peanut of a form.

Particularly for Lewis the stories of MacDonald bring us to long. "[MacDonald's myths arouse] in us sensations we have never had before, never anticipated having, as though we had broken out of our normal mode of consciousness and 'possessed joys not promised to our birth.' It gets under our skin, hits us at a level deeper than our thoughts or even our passions, troubles oldest certainties till all questions are re-opened, and in general shocks us more fully awake than we are for most of our lives" Stories of redemption or good wining our have the power to wake something up in us. G. K. Chesterton makes the point this is why the fairytales are more real than the evening news.

C.S. Lewis gives us the third mark of childlikeness: Awe-full imagination. The childlike personality is evidenced in the proper operation of the imagination. Such people are to be marked by a sense of awe that is at its core an enthusiastic delight in surprise rising from an imagination without borders. In the essay "On Stories," Lewis reflects on how stories affected him. They produce "a feeling of awe, coupled with a certain sort of bewilderment such as one often feels in looking at a complex pattern of lines that pass over and under one another" Another way of saying this is that an Awe-full imagination gives us vision. Imagination filled with awe enables us to see, even if momentarily, that there is more to life than the physical reality about us. Such vision is terrifying and refreshing; terrifying in that we are left to ponder the possibility of unperceived dimensions of life, and yet refreshing because we are exposed to the unexpected flash of hope that the predictability dullness of our own world is not all there is.

As a part of an Awe-full imagination, Lewis explains that awe as an enthusiastic delight in surprise. Children don't get tripped up by curiosities about plot and the like. They seek the real beauties and delight in just enjoying the story for its own sake. Children, he writes, "understand this well when they ask for the same story over and over again, and in the same words. They want to have again the 'surprise' of discovering that what seemed Little-Red-Riding Hood's grandmother is really the wolf" The pleasure of the unexpected draws the childlike reader back time and again to a well-worn story. Just because, it is a good story! And like all good stories not everything is predictable and mundane. We entertain the possibility that another world exists on the other side of the wardrobe, we could blink and no longer see a train station but find ourselves on the shores of a whole other world.

In the essay, "On Three Ways of Writing for Children," Lewis elaborates how this is a work of the imagination. In defending his own love of fantasy, he takes issue with how "the modern critical world uses 'adult' as a term of approval. It is hostile to what it calls 'nostalgia' and contemptuous of what it calls 'Peter Pantheism.' Hence a man who admits that dwarfs and giants and talking beasts and witches are still dear to him in his fifty-third year is now less likely to be praised for his perennial youth than scorned and pitied for arrested development". The childlike Imagination is not offended by the seeming impossible but delights in it. Lewis' homey Tolkien description of a fairy-tale makes this point: "The magic of Faerie is not an end in itself, its virtue is in its operations: among these are the satisfaction of certain primordial human desires. One of these desires is to survey the depths of space and time. Another is . . . to hold communion with other living things" The childlike imagination can soar as far as the story can take it, and in some cases even beyond or back into the physical world somehow redeemed from the blan-vanilla-whitebread-bullshit called 'adult'.

Proper childlikeness enjoys a healthy imagination, in service of a greater good. Through it we see a more constructive side of ourselves--the abilities to sacrifice self, to wonder at life's mysteries, and to yearn for a world somehow cleaner, somehow more compelling than our own. Such Imaginations act as a muse for faith. Imagination posters the soul to be open to possibility, mystery, and the infinite. It call us to faith by opening us to the drama of possibility that "could be - if only" we would act.

Breathing out questions
Breathing is important. we all need it to live. If you stop breathing you stop living. Its important! But rarely do we think about our breathing. Back in our little lives, we do not sit in down to think about our breathing. Normal people don't think about breathing. Only, weird eyed skinny people in India do that. Or rich white upwardly mobile women doing expensive starching do that. Stoned surfer dudes from California do that. But Normal people, we forget about our breathing. In fact, some people may have never been aware of their breathing at all. Until now! We all take things for granted. Breathing is just a common one of those things till we stop breathing. A choking man appreciates what its like to breath. It is so essential for life yet we only think about it when something goes wrong.

Could the same be true of the moral imagination in us all? We have in us an eternal creativity, a breath of life. We come into this world to be artisans of the soul. Even if you draw stick men and your last good idea was a year ago, your deepest self longs to be creative. If we are artists then what is it that all men are to put forth this inner breath towards? I would propose the childlike making of ourselves. Creativity and Imagination are ethical categories. We ought to give ourselves to becoming the best human we can be. Living is a creative act. An individual life is to be a work of art and we are commissioned to creating our lives. We are all artisans of our own growth into something beautiful. Plato once asked, "What is the good life? What does it mean to be a good person?" Such questions are just the articulated "ruach" of being human.

When our eyes fall on a life that elevates, and ennobles our own soul with some palpable excellence – we call it beautiful. From King on the steps of the Lincoln memorial to Mother Teresa caring for the dyeing in Calcutta, the profound nature of there lives rises from the simplicity and trajectory they set their lives by. This is how a life speaks and gives ennobling words to something we are doing. As artist, they created a life worthy to be a living synonym of beauty. The art of moral living creates a better world in the very act of being moral. How you ask? When an acts of kindness, an event of moral courage, a movement of justice in grace, passes by our eyes, our 'Rauch' whispers, "I have just seen God!" In those moments such virtues are born in us. As moral truth is felt, as human destiny perceived, as moral trajectory is discovered what it means to be human is whispered to us and life born in us afresh. When the highest beauty a soul can imagine is putt on display, creation happens, art is born in us, and virtue is cultivated. The ethical breathing of a soul begins in asking what is beautiful before our eyes and where do such glimpse of beauty point?

Today to be human is often unconsciously defined by economic forces. We are conditioned to be consumers for the free market or producers for the state. We have in many ways lost what it means for a soul to move forward in time as a creative act. We have forgotten what it is to be an artisan of living, to think of life as a creative act. We are so strange and we lose sight actually of how strange we are. I have never met a human — I meet humans looking for all kinds of things. If you ask someone, "What are you looking for on this day?' you never hear, 'I'm looking for yesterday. Where did yesterday go to?" We just take it for granted that it goes into nothingness. And that's on one side. The other side is that we have no idea what will land on the shoreline of tomorrow. So we are always actively involved in receiving and shaping.

The Freedom of Living Artfully
When it comes to becoming human the ability to imagine is important. Without it, growing in virtuous character and in spiritual trajectory of personal ethics are stunted. That is why, it is better to imagine a possibility than to know a fact. Albert Einstein once wrote, "Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited; imagination encircles the world." By this he meant that thinking like a scientist and knowing facts will not help you if it stays in your head. In ethics facts are important but being an artist of the soul is more important. Imagination will allow you to use the facts for the good of humanity and the cultivation of your own soul.

As we create a life out of what comes to us in the flow of time we take that raw material afforded us by providence and begin to re-form a life for ourselves. The two key factors in this ethical renovation are our community and our childlike imagination. Our chosen community will helps us deconstruct what needs renovation and build what needs remodeling. It is true of community: Where we live molds us. Who we rub shoulders with sharpens us. What group we give ourselves to changes us. Our childlike imagination will help us by opening us to a world unseen in which strength and hope are as abundant as sand. It will give to those who use it an inner vision to see the end from the beginning, for without such a vision the path towards transformation is daunting. It is true of childlike imagination: Where we rest our hearts quickens us. What we ponder transforms us lives. Who we focus on we become like.

Through this building plan, we learn to embody the character of one who is childlike in freedom and virtuous in substance. This is the context all ethics is done and the place all life is lived, In-between the moral agent and the fielded of action. Thus human life happens at the intersection of personal character and life trajectory, also called the corner of human nature and human destiny. Ethics is often thought of as rules and but it is a journey to find the human in us all. It is a personal journey on public roads. It is creative but not formless, for true creativity is always from void to order, from clear canvas to visionary beauty. G. K. Chesterton in Orthodoxy reminds us:

It is impossible to be an artist and not care for laws and limits. Art is limitation; the essence of every picture is the frame. If you draw a giraffe, you must draw him with a long neck. If, in your bold creative way, you hold yourself free to draw a giraffe with a short neck, you will really find that you are not free to draw a giraffe. The moment you step into the world of facts, you step into a world of limits. You can free things from alien or accidental laws, but not from the laws of their own nature. You may, if you like, free a tiger from his bars; but do not free him from his stripes. Do not free a camel of the burden of his hump: you may be freeing him from being a camel. Do not go about as a demagogue, encouraging triangles to break out of the prison of their three sides. If a triangle breaks out of its three sides, its life comes to a lamentable end. Somebody wrote a work called "The Loves of the Triangles"; I never read it, but I am sure that if triangles ever were loved, they were loved for being triangular. This is certainly the case with all artistic creation, which is in some ways the most decisive example of pure will. The artist loves his limitations: they constitute the thing he is doing. The painter is glad that the canvas is flat. The sculptor is glad that the clay is colourless.

No man can free himself from himself. We are artists of living and as such the natural laws of life train our journey for the good. The experience of creation stirs imagination to ponder a greater majesty than the mountain, a grander beauty than the splendor of kings, a truer beauty than the splendor of a sunrise. In the end, we are made to breathe the high and lofty air of moral excellence and feel the deep truth of who we are. So are you living artfully using your moral imagination to build clocks that wake up the world or are you still sleeping warm and snug in the covers of moral mediocrity? As one Christian teacher and mystic has exhorted.

Awake, sleeper,
And arise from the dead,
And Christ will shine on you.
Therefore be careful how you walk, not as unwise men but as wise,
making the most of your time, because the days are evil.

Eph 5:14-17

Behind, "How He Loves"

To me, the story of a song can rise the joy and clarity of the moment.
John Mark does just that when he talks about the background behind "How He Loves"

On the Lonely Road – A Parable from My Life

Preface
God and I disagree. It is a lover’s quarrel. I like to think of myself as a academic. God likes to think of me as a mystic. I want to read Homer, he wants me to encounter him, pick up what I find and take it back to his people. (honestly, I live for such moments of grace, they are spirit and life to me) I am the kind of guy that prides himself on beng academic, thinking logically and clearly about any and all things. Yet, God made me (dyslexic) to see things just a little differently. I am a highly allegorical thinker finding connections where most see random causality (a good view of providence disavows such moments to be only 'random' but opens them to wider possibilities). When taken into the wind and kissed with the life of God's Spirit it can be moments of encouragement, and pictures that silently speak God's whispers of love and oversight.

On the Lonely Road
I had an experience today that was encouraging. Today (sep 12) is my birthday. I am not 33 years old, but my body and the calendar tell me I am. I like to say Im "turning Larry Bird" (basketball great who’s number was 33). I have not been looking forward to this day, where I saw myself at 33 is not where I now hang my 'existencal' hat. But on this day, the Lord reminded me that he is still the one that guides all history and places man where He wills. He alone is God and is not finished with little old-er me.

Here is how it played out.

Experience on the Road
At my aunts house for the weekend. Not much to do here so I when for a run, that quickly morphed into a fast walk, and then finally a quit stroll. I passed three horses grazing in a fenced in meadow. Down the road a family of deer, 4 at lest, darted in font of me. Each prancing down the meadow one after another. I smiled at there freedom and noted the graceful way they ran, a mix of control and abandon, mastery and recklessness. They run so wildly and free but there is controlled beauty in each stride.

I turned to continue on my way and something changed. In the heat of the day, i felt grace move on me and I stepped into something bigger than me. The moment became clear and still, like time took a break from ticking life away. The Lord was near. On the road with me in a dust and dry warmth of that Georgia road. He asked "what have you seen?" I said "horses and deer" He reminded me horses are a symbol of man-power and the flesh (Example - Egypt chariots where pulled by mighty horses). He reminded me deer are a symbol for those that seek after God.("As the deer pants for streams of water, so my soul pants for you, O God." Psalms 42:1) He gave me a challenge, a call to follow at all cost. He laid out grace to seek after God, depend on him and not seek strive in the flesh (Gal 5:1-22) or I would end up like the horses fenced in and not like the deer living free!

I walked on pondering these things. Up the road I saw something shimmer. It was laying just right of the middle of the road. Coming upon it I saw it was a quarter, and then two, then three, then four, then five, lastly i lifted my foot and there was number six. six quarters all together in the middle of a dirt road. Not in the ditch, Not mixed with pennies and dimes, six quarters all in a row.

Before i could think how odd, the Lord asked "How much CHANGE do you have?" I said "a buck 50". He said and I promise you it sounded like he was smirking. "John 1:50, Change is coming, and is already here, Dawson!" First off, I thought no chapter in john has over 45 verses. Curious, I put it in high gear to get back to the house, and in doing so got my exercise on! After water, air, more water and air (it was a long way home) I opened to the gospel of John and scanned the first chapter, 24, 36, 48, 49, 50! Hot dang there is a fifty. John 1:50 reads "Jesus said, "You believe because I told you I saw you under the fig tree. You shall see greater things than that."

John 1:50 is the key verse in Jesus’ conversation with Nathaniel. A man that came to the Lord after a might prophetic experience.(Nat and I have some common ground). John 1:50, Jesus concludes his dialogue with Nathaniel, encouraging him with words of hope. Jesus knew God was not finished with Nat; there was more to come, much more! "You shall see greater things than that."

Like Nat, The Lord was encouraging me that he holds the future and is not done with me at 33. Change is coming! The day will dawn! I need only be ready by choosing to be the deer and seek him instead of strive in my own power.

Application
We all can draw courage from the truth: Christ sees us under our fig tree and He will see us through on the long lonely road!

I was also encouraged by what the puritan Matthew Henry wrote about this passage.

See the nature of true Christianity, it is following Jesus; devoting ourselves to him, and treading in his steps. Observe the objection Nathanael made. All who desire to profit by the word of God, must beware of prejudices against places, or denominations of men. They should examine for themselves, and they will sometimes find good where they looked for none. Many people are kept from the ways of religion by the unreasonable prejudices they conceive. The best way to remove false notions of religion, is to make trial of it. In Nathanael there was no guile. His profession was not hypocritical. He was not a dissembler, nor dishonest; he was a sound character, a really upright, godly man. Christ knows what men are indeed. Does He know us? Let us desire to know him. Let us seek and pray to be Israelites indeed, in whom is no guile; truly Christians, approved of Christ himself. Some things weak, imperfect, and sinful, are found in all, but hypocrisy belongs not to a believer's character. Jesus witnessed what passed when Nathanael was under the fig-tree. Probably he was then in fervent prayer, seeking direction as to the Hope and Consolation of Israel, where no human eye observed him. This showed him that our Lord knew the secrets of his heart. Through Christ we commune with, and benefit by the holy angels; and things in heaven and things on earth are reconciled and united together.

A Bonehead Form of Government?

When I was in high school I napped in my Government class. My basketball couch taught it and well I thought "what good is this to me anyway!" At the time, I was many bricks shy of a full load! Caring more about sports, appearances and that girl in the next town. Yet, I consider my experience and attitude towards government to be the common experience of my generation.

Things changed for me when I took two classes back to back. The first 'Philosophy of Government and Law’ (at 7:30 am, yea I know, I had no life) the other "Wittgenstein, Foucault and the philosophy of language and culture'.(long name right! at 9 am). about half way through the semester I had an awakening of sorts. In-between reading Plato's republic and studying the French revolution while milling over Wittgenstein's language games, the thought dawned on me.

'What If someone redefined the way I understand words like democracy republic, freedom, federalism, ect. They just similar enough that you could change everything and people would be none the wiser. You could slowly take power and ….. Ha HA Cool!!'

Now 6 years later, I no longer think 'cool!' I realize now, that my naps some 15 years ago were one more boneheaded thing in a long line of boneheadedness! So, take it from a reformed bonehead. A clear understanding of the terms and ideas behind the American form of government is not trivial information to sleep through but necessary for the freedom of a nation that clams "we the people." Otherwise we may wake up one day to find our freedom was redefined as we slept.

Here is a nice little video I have found that gives a good primer in a classical overview of Government from a historical and philosophical perspective, giving special consideration to the American form of Government.