the sacred and the mundane...

I had to say goodbye to somebody last night. Without being overly dramatic, I'll just say that sometimes life takes unexpected turns and the only thing that keeps a fella on the road is the guard rail. Anyways, he's taking a couple of weeks of vacation and then I think he'll decide what comes next. And me being the dutiful correspondent that I am thought I'd better say whatever I am going to say right now, before his vacation, because I might not see him again for awhile. And people need to be told things.

...

Apparently, I have a unique interest in telling people how I really feel about them. Sometimes it endears myself to people. Other times, well, it scares the crap out of them. I've had it go both ways.

An old college room-mate, who became one of my best life-time friends, told me that I was the first guy who ever told him I loved him. That same guy told me that the reason a mutual friend's ex-girlfriend wasn't talking to me so much might be because I head so directly into intimacy that she can no longer even talk with me. One guy I met pretty much jumped overboard on a new relationship because I told him that his skills and his passion, his character and his integrity thoroughly "excited" me. Yeah. I actually said that to his face.

Well, it was his face until it was the back of his head and the bottom of his running shoes. Running away.

(calling into the distant horizon with a hand cupped to my mouth) "Sorry! Didn't mean to SPOOK ya..."

He's a great guy, and I don't blame him a bit. I might have pulled the trigger on him a little early. Ah well. Lesson learned. Maybe (not).

I guess I just see so much ... insincerity in our lives that I feel the need to push back against it. Hard.

...

I told my friend last night that regardless of how he felt about himself, his successes or failures, that I had the highest regard for him and for his wife because it was their highest value to reach constantly for the sacred life.

From the look on his face, and the manner in which he put his hand on my shoulder, I know he understood what I meant.

...

I ask myself that question of myself often: Am I leading a life that is at every moment defined by sacredness? That strains towards God with each action?

The sacred life, as I understand it, is radical. The sacred life, as I understand it, is marked by a borderline myopic view of the cosmos, and its own place in it. The sacred life sees every decision, whether significant or mundane as being a decision of a "religious" nature. I use the term "religious" with a bit of reluctance, but wanting to be understood clearly, I'm afraid it must be done. By religious, I simply mean to indicate the spiritually charged-I don't know, the matters of faith. The matters of what we really believe, way deep down. The driving forces in our lives.

...

I want to live a sacred life. I want purpose. I want a reason. When the darkness encroaches, when my mood is thick and heavy, I think, "what is man that anybody should give a damn?" I think we all want to think that the blip on the cosmic radar that is our life should mean something, but just being honest, sometimes I look into my son's eyes and ask myself, how many generations of these little people (that would be *us*) have come and gone, and asked the same questions as we do, wrote the same poems as I have, sang the same songs that we do, and all of them expected to be remembered forever. By somebody. How futile.

And I don't know-maybe that's the destiny of a created being. Or, maybe it's just the whispers of a jealous angel trying to make himself like God.

I believe in God. I believe that He made everything, whether he did it by wriggling his nose and nodding his head, or whether He did it using apparently "natural" mechanical processes over eons of years.

I believe that He intended life to be something magnificent.

I believe that the magnificence of life was supposed to be an all-encompassing fullness of meaningful work, relationships of mutual and symbiotic dependency, and the victorious shalom of God's sabbath rest.

I believe that *all* people are beautiful to God. I believe equally that all people have defiled themselves by loving themselves MORE than their creator, such that God's absolute perfection cannot abide our slightest imperfection, and that Jesus was a sacrifice set up at the beginning of time not only to cover the acts of sin, but also the ontological state of sin-filled-ness that creation took on. And that he modeled the life that we should have lived but are simply unable to.

And his gift is not simply the negation of our sin-filled-ness, but it's also the gift of righteousness, the gift of being perceived by God as undefiled, and perfect. It's the promise of being restored to a life of purpose, a life of significance, and LIFE magnificent. Abundant.

Life that is good.

That is the sacred life, as I understand it. And that's the life that I want.