Enough

Within the sacred text
We scour to find grain.
The potential for life, sustained, renewed.
And we find grass and weeds
Enough to choke an ox.

We seek the seed to plant
So the harvest comes full.
Our anger rises
As we find only fodder
And it still green and growing.
Where is the grain;
Enough to serve and plant?

Finally we lay our bodies in the dewy carpet
Exhausted from the empty search.

Perhaps only then shall we find
The grain is in the head
The head is on the grass
The grass is at our hand.
Enough to fill a dream.

All is well, all is well.

- D. A. Weesner

Middle of the Road

The middle of the road is a safe place. I find when I get too far to the right or too far to the left I can easily slip into the ditch. And then I am not going anywhere. The middle of the road is not always popular or in style, but it does keep one moving forward.

There are a whole lot of folks who live in the middle of the road. They just go to work and do thier job, no big drama, just keep things moving. Perhaps they are the real heros in life, instead of the guy on the TV news who rides a lawn chair hooked onto hot air ballons over the city. Seems many times people in the ditch or even the ones who ride the edge of the road are lifted up as special. Different yes, special no.

Give me a mom working two jobs with barely enough time to get her hair done, or see the children's school program; now there is someone special. We will never see her on the TV news. Give me a man who invests his time keeping the water running for an entire town; late nights, early mornings, working holidays. His name will not be in the running for volunteer of the year, but it ought to be lifted up somewhere.

So I guess the middle of the road is my place. It may look boring, slow paced, and without fanfare. I am good with that, as looks don't really mean very much to people who have been around. What matters is keeping things moving. That is the secret to the middle of the road. And by the way, even a Seven-lane freeway has a middle lane.

A Word on Immortality

Have we confused immortality with resurrection? Samuel Clemmons was quoted as saying, “The news of my death has been greatly exaggerated.” Of course he was responding to a newspaper account that he had died. How curious it would be to see our own obituary in the press. Interestingly, this is not at all unlike Clemons’s fictional character of Huck Fin who faked his own death and attended his own funeral.

I wonder if the news of our lives may have also suffered the same illness as Clemons’s death of having been greatly exaggerated. Our culture seems to expect, even demand, a reality of immortality apart from any relationship with God. To be immortal is to stand over and above the trials of time and history. The immortal human life transcends all earthly powers and, if we are honest, perhaps even God. I find many funerals primarily concerned with offering a sense of human immortality, a kind of disembodiment of the Spirit, rather than sharing the reality of physical death and resurrection as offered through Jesus Christ.

1 Corinthians 15 offers, “We shall not all die, but we shall all be changed…the mortal puts on immortality…” The mortal life here celebrated is the created life, both physical and spiritual, even in a fallen and sinful state. The immortal life being “put on” by the change of accepting new life in Christ is also both physical and spiritual. The immortality of Jesus Christ is accepted and appropriated during the change. Simply put, our immortality is the resurrection immortality of our God. Note the key operative here is God. Without God we are left with good deeds and kind words offering a kind of temporary buffer against meaninglessness. However we are also without real power to hold back the dark night of the soul. Neither are we able to consistently view and understand the body and soul as still together in one package, one person.

Resurrection offers both the immortality of God and the final oneness of Body and Spirit. This is the final resolution and wholeness we seek. Here, in resurrection, we find true immortality of both body and soul.