Who is missing from the table?

Yesterday, I skyped with my Grandpa and Grandma who live in Taiwan.  My parents had bought one of those giant mesh socks of fruit only instead of some manageable fruit it was filled with four pomelo and I am pretty sure that tube of giant grapefruit as I like to think of them could have knocked someone out. So Mom, Dad, and I are cutting and peeling away at the pomelos and my dad crowned me with a pomelo hat. You can't really tell... From the picture it looks like some glowing orb or cheese wheel.

We laughed.

We laughed, and it was so simple. I couldn't remember the last time the parents and I really laughed together. I couldn't remember the last time I was willing to be small, the little one in their household... So resentful I had become of being made the peacemaker, the clown, the mediator.
Ah-Ma pointed and delightedly squealed "A pomelo hat! A pomelo hat! I used to make those as a little girl." Grandpa was uproarious... Then again, he always was with me. I hope I'm still laughing at awfully simple, ridiculously cheesy childish things when I'm as shrivelly and toothless as Ah-Gong... And still willing to learn new things, like how to skype.

At Urbana09, we rang in the new year with communion led using fresh and beautiful Tanzanian Eucharist Rites:

"... All our problems we send to the cross of Christ. All our difficulties we send to the cross of Christ. All the devil's works we send to the cross of Christ. All our hopes we set on the risen Christ ..."

After these blessings she called out,  ""Is there anyone who has not eaten of the bread, who has not drunk from the cup of salvation?"  This was not as I first heard, a call around the stadium to make sure that their massive organizational feat of distributing the elements to 17,000 had been inclusive.

The liturgy continued to beg, "Is there anyone missing from the LORD's table?" And we began counting them together... The millions, billions of Chinese, Muslims, Indians, etc. And we recalled that feasts are communal: Even in my very personal gratitude for the breaking and pouring out of Christ, I gather with others who Christ singularly redeemed, and when we join as Church redeemed we are to remember and break and pour out for those still missing from the Table.

We laughed together last night and amid that joy there was an extra pomelo and someone glaringly missing from the table. Josh is vacationing in Vegas... Had he been home, though, I suspect we would have been out somewhere together or hiding away in our rooms making our usual secret laughter or just too wise and sane and bitter to mingle with the charents.

And so my prayer for the year ahead, is that I would do exactly as during the final hour of last year, yearning that those far away would share in the abundance at hand. May each table be a gathering of children, not presuming but assured, not deserving but invited. May each toast include absent friends and the absent far. May we draw to communion with joy that cannot be contained, cannot be hoarded. May joy--be it laughter, remembrance, gratitude, or any else--pass the truth test by its spilling over.

We must be shaken, almost shattered, before we change.

"People abandon their bad habits only when catastrophe is close at hand. Intellect alone is not enough. We must be shaken, almost shattered, before we change, just as a grave illness must pass its crisis before it is known whether the patient will live or die... The danger of extinction is upon us, but so is the opportunity for a better life... We must therefore find a way to confront Medusa and to diagnose the sickness. Diagnosis is no cure, but it is a necessary first step" (Stoessinger, Why Nations Go to War 310).

Diagnosis?

It appears I am not a second-hand learner.

No trials but mine can bend or bow me. You are gracious to do just this. To burn in the furnace unyielding metal until it comes forth as gold, pure and malleable. To pummel by plow a heart of stone into arable good soil. To tempt in the tempest until at last we walk over water with eyes fixed on you.

Studies show weaksauces cave under pressure.

Why am I here, Dad? Why am I anywhere at all. I feel like such FAIL... such a waste of carbon.

Well, yes... you are made of carbon.

Uh. Yeah. THANKS.

And also... you are made.

*silence*
*shifty eyes*
*shifty feet*

I'm insulted!

You're used to it.

Yes. I can take it. I took it to the cross.
But you should know...
Everything I created, I purposed.

*shrugs*

O there now, dearie.*divine pat on the head*
I know you know it. And you'll see it, in time.

And... I much prefer "carbon under pressure."

Job 23.10, please.
Shall I come forth as diamonds?

On Tiger and Respect-me-ness

The recent media circus surrounding and exposing Tiger Woods has been sickening and particularly painful...

Because of his unique role and branding. Did he create the image? Or is that all on his sponsors--did he merely accept and endorse the stardom? Either way, he perpetuated the mask in his consistent efforts to conceal his shame under the all-American family man guise. If his sponsors needed him to be squeaky shiny spotless, if his family needed a loving husband and doting father and pro golfer to look to, he also needed to meet that need of theirs.

Keep back your servant also from presumptuous sins;
   let them not have dominion over me!

But secret sins and private stumbles... They mastered him. And paraded his shame on the worldstage in disgrace that far exceeded the guilty pleasure.

The recent exposure and media saturation has been revolting and particularly painful...

Because it bares the same sin of my heart before the LORD.  And I am... still more sinful than I know.

(all of me is more than enough for all of me)    Who can discern his errors?

Declare me innocent from hidden faults. 

How constantly I am tempted to maintain a veneer of faithful above-reproachedness to at least a few people. How I veil my fear of man and of confronting my sin and self with convincing justifications of love, obligation, honor or nurture--so as not to stumble or because they need to believe in . . . 

Heart intentions that deceive all, myself included, but maybe the most discerning. Sin "undiscerned and unsuspected . . . takes occasion to arise from every thing; it perverts and abuses every thing . . . even the exercises of real grace, and real humility, as an occasion to exert itself . . . He that trusts his own heart is a fool" (Edwards on Revivals, 273).

In view of Tiger's exposé (yes... we are on first-name basis. no... that's not why),  
Challies warns of the temptation "to add a layer of respectability" between yourself and the way you want to be perceived:

Do not construct elaborate falsehoods to mask your sin and your shame. These false fronts cannot stand forever. And the shame and pain of the ruin of a life lived out behind false pretenses will be far worse than the shame and pain of just dealing with sin immediately and properly. The temptation to mask your sin is nearly as strong as the temptation to sin in the first place. But to mask it is just to compound sin upon sin. It is merely to delay the inevitable.

Under your grace, LORD, sin has no dominion over me. Search me, show me, gently. Forgive me, correct me, expose me, perfect me in your mercy. By your blood and in your name

I shall be blameless,

and innocent of great transgression.

Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart

be acceptable in your sight,

O LORD, my rock and my redeemer. 

Psalm 19.12-14

On discovering INT ENV GOV term paper requires 1.5-not-double spacing.

Who 1.5-spaces?! WHY?
400 words per page instead of 250!

☑ Re-bloat essay with more adjectives after paring down to super-conciseness because I thought I was running out of words.
☑ Move ideas and references out of footnotes and integrate into text.
☑ Vent to those still awake and online.
☑ Blog for those already asleep and offline.
☑ Caffeinate.

Yes I would like cheese with this whine. Har HAR H A R . . . !

Ohai. Jesus speakings.

Hans Urs Von Balthasar

Is this the God I have revealed to you?!

The self-sufficient God of the wise men of this world, who lacks nothing?

My love for you has put their philosophy to SHAME.

This was the most divine thing about God,

and to show this was My whole concern:

God was free enough to give himself up.

This is how I decided to give Myself... right out of My hand.

I wanted to be the one given away par excellence.

The corpse over which the vultures gather.

The Consumed, the Eaten, the Drunk, the Spilled, the Poured Out.

The Plaything. The Worn Out.

The One squeezed to the very dregs.

The One trod upon to infinity.

The One thinned to air.

The One liquefied into an ocean.

The Dissolved.

This was the plan; this was the will of the Father.

By fulfilling it through obedience,

I have filled the world from heaven down to hell.

and every knee must bend before Me,

and all tongues must confess Me.

Some things that confuse me.

Grace
Patience
Kindness
Chivalry