The Deconstruction of the Self before the Risen hands of the Spirit
A postmodern emergent tries to steer away from the dualistic tensions created between love and hate, flesh and spirit, man and God, whose allusions seem only to bring meaningless loss and pain by their acts of distinction. But rather we must find a resident interconnection between broken-ness and risen-ness that makes all one within the broader spectrum of humanity's joys and misery. By our own hands we seek the allusion of the well-being of our souls and yet, too often, we bring upon ourselves the very seeds of neglect and ruin we wish to avoid. Measured carelessly, if not unmercifully, upon ourselves, by the lies we tell ourselves in self-delusion and careless fantasy. However, in Jesus is the truer mirror of our reflection. A mirror willing to attest to the poverty of our ruin against the uplift of God's embracing love in the midst of our own personal ruin. Who meets us in the ruin and pain we know-and-feel to create a spiritual healing within our shattered lives on the very basis of our torn brokenness. A brokenness that God can use in our lives. For without its affects we will never seek A-nother beyond the otherness of ourselves.
To look up from the bottomless depths of our own personal landfills and dirt pits to there find the heart of God yielding His own broken body and soul thrown upon the same by an unforgiving humanity. A humanity that we stand within before a Redeemer-God who patiently interlocks His own past experience with our own present experience to recreate an open future that would release the poverty of our spirits. A future that would take the landfills and dirt pits we find ourselves ruthlessly cast upon to yield its own rich, earthen loams, measured out by a water that cleanses, and an altar that can call the dead to life. To a life renewed, rebirthed, revived, reclaimed, and restored.
Yes, love and hate are profoundly personal, but from each strong experience must we die to self, so sure of its ways, its schemes, its plans and assurances. For without brokenness and pain there can be no resurrection of our souls. Only the smells of rot and surety of death. A death that dies instead of a death that makes alive. That causes the soul to rise with a Savior from pain and ugliness when at-the-last overcome by the landfills of a its own brokenness. Or blinded by its own actions that have put to death afresh the Prince of life, as all have done, and must do, if personal deconstruction should come, and must come, before resurrection occur. Renewal lives all around us though we see it not. But it must begin we where are and not where we think we should be.
So then, let pain hurt. And let bitterness remain. Each as fresh memories to death's door we each must enter through - if only to discover the broader paths of life and love, healing and hope, found in the Prince of Life, our forerunner and redeemer. Who measures out each man's life by the power of His Spirit - mighty to reclaim any man or woman who would yield heart and soul to the freshly consecrated altars of new life and light in Jesus. For without death there can be no life. And without a personal deconstruction there can be no reconstruction. Not of ourselves nor of our churches and communities. The cross of Calvary shows this oft-ignored truth. Let us not deny our pain, but accept its horribleness while allowing God's love and grace to change all within the depths of our scarred lives.
R.E. Slater
January 29, 2013
Landfill, by Daughter
Throw me in the landfill
Don't think about the consequences
Throw me in the dirt pit
Don't think about the choices that you make
Throw me in the water
Don't think about the splash I will create
Leave me at the altar
Knowing all the things you just escaped
Push me out to sea
On the little boat that you made
Out of the evergreen
That you helped your father cut away
Leave me on the tracks
To wait until the morning train arrives
Don't you dare look back
Walk away, catch up with the sunrise
'cause this is torturous
Electricity between both of us
And this is dangerous
'cause I want you so much
But I hate your guts
I hate you
So leave me in the cold
Wait until the snow covers me up
So I cannot move
So I'm just embedded in the frost
Then leave me in the rain
Wait until my clothes cling to my frame
Wipe away your tear stains
Thought you said you didn't feel pain
Well this is torturous
Electricity between both of us
And this is dangerous
'cause I want you so much
But I hate your guts
I want you so much
But I hate your guts
Well this is torturous
Electricity between both of us
And this is dangerous
'cause I want you so much
But I hate your guts
I want you so much
But I hate your guts.
"I think the layered meanings in this vid are self-evident. Let's just say what
you see on the surface goes down a bit into our societal angst." - re slater
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