Coffee, Resurrection
It's Friday morning. I'm sitting at my coffee shop, Javasti's on 5th Ave. NE, enjoying the noisy banter of the morning crowd. Someone stole their newspapers this morning, and I've heard they're giving free scones to people who ate one yesterday, something about dumping salt into the batter with predictable results. Too bad I didn't get one yesterday--I'd been enjoying a freebie today.
Mark the day. It was on this day 2007 that the birds in Maple Leaf decided they'd had enough of Winter quiet. As I sat in my office starting my bleary meditation, I heard them talking--the birds, that is--speaking their foreign language, testing throats too long silent. Spring's here, I guess, and as I walked up the dark street toward Javasti's, they sang me right along. Where were the crows? Still in bed, I guess.
Lent is a challenge, but life for me is in such flux, it seems pretty normal. On Wednesday, I saw Tsotsi, a gorgeous gem of a movie about a South African hoodlum who wakes up via one of the great waker-uppers in the world--a baby. The final image of Tsotsi, his hands held high in a haunting image of yielding, has stuck with me. Then there was the episode of Heroes I missed Monday night, and watched Wednesday as well. Peter Petrelli getting his head carved up, screaming, and I think...you know, there we are. Yet, I just know Silar is the Evil guy, so he just can't win. The interesting thing is not whether the world will be saved--it's how.
The people involved in the Arts Ministry at the Northwest are going to gather at my house tonight. What will we do? I'm not sure, really, but we're going to look each other in the eye and ask what we're up to, and we're going to care about it. Beauty is arriving in the world even as I write this, and our assumption is that God has drafted us, either explicitly or implicitly, to join the team responsible for various assignments in the necessary midwivery.
Nikki and I talked yesterday of frames, empty and filled, and that perhaps we are to be nothing more than frames into which God can pour Himself and the resultant images, love, and life. Makes sense to me. Truth is, I'm moving through one of those periods where life is alternately transcendent and frightening. It's a bracing thing, to walk a street, to write a word, to take a picture, and think God is here on the tip of my breath, waiting for a single word of permission to release resurrection into the world through this moment, this very one.
Abstract? Sure. But I believe the concrete finds its origin in an idea, an image, a way of seeing the world. The concrete reveals us to our selves, our world, and our God. You reading this is concrete, as is Your mulling of where resurrection is inside you, and if you will give that word of permission or not.
What if Jesus had refused?
...let third days be our daily bread...
7:04:05 AM 
