How To Cuss Less

Behavior is everything and nothing.  It says everything about our feeling of God nothing about God’s feeling toward us.

I was just sitting here thinking about that.  I keep coming face to face with this idea in my daily events and I think its a profound and blessed contradiction, one that separates the Christian faith from most other religious systems.

“But if anyone loves God, he is known by God.” (1 Corinthians 8:3)

I find this verse very interesting.  It’s this little verse in the middle of a paragraph of scripture.  Probably overlooked a lot.  I’d never conscientiously stopped on that verse and ruminated on it.  Seems an obvious verse to some extent.

But when I stop and reflect more fully on the verse’s implication, I realize that rarely does this idea permeate my relational awareness of God and other people.

If I love God (or am supposed to love God) primarily because He KNOWS ME/HE LOVES ME, then I live much of my life WAY off the mark.

Don’t worry, I’m not sitting here writing to spiritually self-deprecate.  I did that in my last blog

I am just observing the fact that I often make choices that reflect a search and desire TO BE loved, instead of making choices that reflect simply BEING loved.

Living that way is living in a ‘cause’ not ‘effect’ mentality.   My choices, good or bad, do not forge a resolution of love/not love, like an equation.  More accurately they reflect an awareness or unawareness of divine identity, a saint who remembers or has briefly forgotten his sainthood.

Behavior is nothing, and everything also, because that awareness is essential to personal growth and development in the faith for we cannot live on milk forever, right?

And living in a ledger state of mind communicates something about the Divine that is relationally inaccurate.  This causes people we encounter to ask wrong questions, questions that hurt and damage faith.  People asking the wrong questions can be worse, in some ways, than simply getting the wrong answers through the perception of how we live an engage with those people.

But the right questions come when people begin to love from a new and unique perception of first being loved! It is the glorious example of Christ and the commission for which we exist, to love God and love people, simply because He first loved us.

In conclusion, I think I will cuss less and be nicer.

There goes that ‘quarter in the jar’, ‘Daddy love me’ talk again.

Damn it…I mean, dang it!

Swear Pig is getting awfully full, people!!

The Jerk

Confession: Sometimes I’m a jerk…

Here’s the deal though, I’m not a jerk about big things, you know the kinds of things where you see someone being a jerk about those things you go, “Wow, that guy is a jerk!”

It’s not in those big things, those things where people are watching.

It’s in the little things, the little moments behind closed doors, when no one is looking, where I can’t be accused of being a jerk.

Scenario – I’m walking my sweet dog this morning to The Pearl Cup, my local go-to for a quality cup of Joe, and down the street walking the opposite direction of me is a sweet, homeless Hispanic man. He is slowly pushing an old grocery cart full of who knows what, just his things I guess. He is approaching.

Truthfully, I didn’t see him until he was right up on me, probably because my mind was consumed with the plight I was in, that my coffee jar was running on empty and I urgently needed to fill its tank.

Anyway I look up and he is there standing in front of me.

“Excuse me, sir?” – Why does he call me, sir? I’m like 25 years younger than this guy. I mean, I know that ‘sir’ is polite when you don’t know someone but this is different. There is a tone to the word ‘sir’ in this instance, a hierarchical tone…

He continues, “How are you this morning? Is there any way you could spare a shot of coffee this morning?”

What Michael wishes he had said – “Actually, I’m going to a coffee shop now. Follow me and I’ll get you a cup.

What Michael actually said – “Sorry man, no cash. I’m just walking the dog.”

Two lies are present in this statement.

1. I had money.
2. I wasn’t just walking the dog. I WAS GOING TO A COFFEE SHOP!!!!!

Best part of the story – I’m walking away and I hear, “Walking the dog, huh? Cool. God bless…”

I turn back and there’s no one there. I’m alone again on the street with my dog and my own self important quest.

No one there…

I’m not suggesting that this guy wasn’t real or something. But I am left wondering whether the words ‘God bless’ came from him or from that other nudge living and moving quietly in the deep.

It doesn’t matter though, does it? They are the same:

“For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in.”

Jesus wanted coffee and I told him to suck it.

I’m a jerk.

It’s interesting, the way I live my life sometimes, as if there is ‘no one there.’ It’s a different way to think of the phrase, “Can’t see the forest through the trees.”

We’re surrounded by people everyday. All sorts. We’re all a part of this thing whether we like it or not and I think it’s important to open our eyes. Stop worrying about all the stupid crap that keeps us from engaging with our fellow fellows, crap like, ‘I’m to busy to talk’ or ‘homeless people make me uncomfortable’ or whatever.

I could spend 10 minutes listing reasons why I didn’t buy that guy a coffee. All of my reasons are shit and they don’t matter.

“Do you love me?” “You know I do.” “Feed my sheep.”

That seems really simple. So why is it so hard…