...The Difference Between Passive and Active Christianity
“This is the contrast
of white on white.
When in between the moon and you
the angels get a better view
of the crumbling difference
between wrong and right.”
And the unspoken divinity of Christ, the continuing conversation, pervades my brain, my inbox, reforms both cornea and retina to shape exactly how I see the world. Alive in my heart – whether remade, remaking, reborn or breaking – there is always that one certainty. That certainty of Christ.
There are but two churches alive on this only green world. There is His and there is other. Denomination synonymous with “filter” and “trappings” and “man” is the comfortable style we like our faith wrapped in. It matters so little – all of them are white on white, lace on cream, midnight on shadow – until they turn us away from the Living Word to focus on the life we live which has less to do with Christ and more to do with who we vote for and who we wrap our arms around.
In the End (of) Times, let me stand shoulder to shoulder, with my Buddhist counterpart who has lived in honesty, decency and purity, who sees Christ before us as Him of a Thousand Faces and a Hundred Names, rather than standing next to the pulpit preacher who force fed politics and hatred to a scared congregation more lost with each other than found, more drowning in socio-economic drama and titillating insular gossip about teen pregnancies, bad divorces and deviant relationships, than swimming toward the light of an eternal Christ.
Let me stand at the top of these towers of new Babylon, not to rival you, my Lord, my Christ, my guide and heart, but to stand upon these monuments to man, and look up, all the way up, to your sky, to your heavens, and feel powerful in my insignificance, feel seen and tiny in your eyes, feel alive beneath the expanse of your perfection.
Let no man light my way. Man has no light. Only God. Pave my way? Yes, many men (meaning, of course, men and women) have paved my path and I pray for their blessing. But man holds a match compared to the lightning of my Lord, and – dear Lord! – what a strike He wields, especially when we’re not paying attention.
“I walk in the air between the rain
through myself and back again.
Where? I don’t know.”
Rooftop jumping. I find myself here lately. Seems ironic. When riding became dizzy-dangerous, I thought instead to ride the air. Instead of speed, height. Instead of torque, vertigo. Embracing the feeling of midnight air the only thing between me and God. Like walking the pitch-black, silver-outlined trees, leaves and solemn paths through the forest that surrounds that place outside of time, where my friends reside so far away... and yet I walk those paths again, almost nightly now, see them in my mind, while my feet leave steel and iron behind, walking through nothing but air for the moment, that heartbeat, until my boots find metal grating again and my palms slap cold and stinging against the brick of a new building. Fire escape hopping. I’m testing the safety of each crumbling artifice. Maybe I should bill the LA fire department? Maybe I should just look up – all the way up – during those moments of flight, and see myself reflected in the eyes of my God, the only one who lights my path.
Why is it never easy until we let everything go? Giving it up to Him, living in the now-moment, waiting for inspiration divine, seems so passive to this biker chick painter who likes to claim her own speed, paint her own realities. Passive and me just don’t mesh so well. And yet... it’s so much *easier* to just hand it over.
So I jump again. In mid-flight there is a memory. Collides with me. My father, smiling, watching me from the corner of his eye, as I climb the forbidden sycamore in our back yard, that one that spans the space between our house and our neighbors to the left and behind. It is the connective tissue between three separate worlds, that from my perch, a perch shared by nests of newborn doves, I can gaze unseen into family rooms filled with strangers, can imagine Christ as a presence there even though the DeRossas were Catholic and the Williams spent every Sunday barbequing and sipping cola with extended family and friends.
Mother looked at the distance between my perch and the ground, grumbled: “What are you letting her do, Poulon?”
Father looked at the distance between my perch and the sky, turned the page of his newspaper: “I’m letting her climb, Pahmela.”
Because salvation comes after the climb.
“And she walks along the edge
of where the ocean meets the land,
just like she's walking on a wire in the circus.
But she says she's close to understanding Jesus.”
I suppose if I gave it up, let-go-let-God, I would no longer feel this desire in my chest to jump into the unknown night, to swing around corners I cannot quite see, to play devil’s advocate (oh! How apropos!) with my heart. But I truly do enjoy the journey more when I feel I’m getting my hands dirty, when I’m scrapping my knees, when I feel the growing pains required to stretch my limps... my mind... my faith... to the limits and then – in that crystal moment of divinity – beyond. Though I do believe, with all my heart, that Christ wants us to be able to shrug our shoulders for Him, that only He is Atlas and Great Turtle, I cannot accept the sweet autopilot that I know He would grant. That place where all decisions come quickly and easily – not that the “yes” or “no” are easy to act upon, just quick to come. That place where “go to her” is so simple... where “walk away” is just as clear.
I prefer to live this life that Christ has given me by transforming “endanger” into “entrust.” The active – not passive – form of letting Him light my path... and then climbing as high as I can to speak with Him about the subtleties of desire.
I would rather wait, hurt, want, cry, scream, laugh, *live* and find myself ten miles down my path at the very same decision I came to so long ago... but now with the knowledge from Christ of why, of how, of sweet secrets revealed like cosmic strings and solar winds enfolded in the petals of gardenias.
I would rather work, fight, bleed for my redemption.
“She knows she's more
than just a little misunderstood.
She has trouble acting normal
when she's nervous.”
She asks you if you’re coming to service. And you answer her, not with the easy “okay” or “not today” but rather with, “Mama, I’m in service right now. I’m in a constant conversation with Christ, my Christ, your Christ. I’m walking with Him every where now. I’m hearing Him.... I’ve woken up to a two-way conversation. A love affair with the Living Word. A new day at dawn. A rebirth. Reborn into His arms. Sorrow is less here. Loneliness is more time to speak. The midnights of my discontent and worry, of questioning myself, are lost because in His eyes, always upon me, I am found.” And she looks at you... carefully... as if you’ve lost your mind.
And you share this story with a mutual friend of ours who, in joy and laughter, shares it with me when I’m feeling low. Laughter fills my quiet room as I read her last line about you, so powerful:
“She said, she has always felt this way. This wasn’t about conversion, it was about realizing what was always there.”
And the fit is so perfect. You there. All of you together. Waking up. *Realizing what was always there.* I love that. I love that sentence. I’ve written it across blank canvases so that new images will be painted over the words. I’ve written it in chalk across the roof top. I’ve written it in silver Sharpie across my scripture boots. Because New Testament Christianity isn’t about *religion,* it’s about faith.
Another friend writes to me: “I like the ritual of my church. I find comfort in the stained glass windows. In the saints and the candles and incense and the chanting. I want to murmur in call and response. I want to kneel before the visage of my Lord. But... when my priest tells me how to cast my ballot, or when I see him shake his head at a young couple... I know in those moments that my religion is Catholic but my faith belongs to Him. I am as much a New Testament Christian as you are and that fills my heart with joy.”
“...We talk just like lions
but we sacrifice like lambs...”
Shouting into the storm what we believe, whispering it to one another in the moonlight, there is a *connection,* a unity, that cannot be denied. There is a smile, a pause, a nod, passed between us. A knowledge that we walk unafraid (or, if afraid, still willing!) not to be slaughtered like Old Testament lambs but, yes, to lay down our lives, our hearts, our sanity, in service of the Living Word.
Oh gracious, sweet Christ, how many times have I been entertained by that look of befuddlement! But that absolute gaze of, “Goodness, she’s crazy!” Even now laughter catches me up. Because, of course, it all seems crazy outside the confines that mold faith into a religion, into something that man can understand. If faith is allowed wild and free, not pulled and stitched into shapes a mortal can wear, than it’s crazy! It’s chaos theory! It’s radical fractals bouncing off the blue sky as our cathedral. It’s rock ‘n’ roll as prayer. It’s making love as worship. It’s constant whispers back and forth with our Christ.
Lord, I will be your lamb any time.
Because this little lamb, in her black leather jacket, feels very empowered by her gentle-eyed shepherd.
Amen.
EJ
