“24 And after five days the high priest Ananias came down with some elders and a spokesman, one Tertullus. They laid before the governor their case against Paul. 2 And when he had been summoned, Tertullus began to accuse him, saying: “Since through you we enjoy much peace, and since by your foresight, most excellent Felix, reforms are being made for this nation, 3 in every way and everywhere we accept this with all gratitude. 4 But, to detain you no further, I beg you in your kindness to hear us briefly. 5 For we have found this man a plague, one who stirs up riots among all the Jews throughout the world and is a ringleader of the sect of the Nazarenes. 6 He even tried to profane the temple, but we seized him. 8 By examining him yourself you will be able to find out from him about everything of which we accuse him.” 9 The Jews also joined in the charge, affirming that all these things were so. 10 And when the governor had nodded to him to speak, Paul replied: “Knowing that for many years you have been a judge over this nation, I cheerfully make my defense. 11 You can verify that it is not more than twelve days since I went up to worship in Jerusalem, 12 and they did not find me disputing with anyone or stirring up a crowd, either in the temple or in the synagogues or in the city. 13 Neither can they prove to you what they now bring up against me. 14 But this I confess to you, that according to the Way, which they call a sect, I worship the God of our fathers, believing everything laid down by the Law and written in the Prophets, 15 having a hope in God, which these men themselves accept, that there will be a resurrection of both the just and the unjust. 16 So I always take pains to have a clear conscience toward both God and man. 17 Now after several years I came to bring alms to my nation and to present offerings. 18 While I was doing this, they found me purified in the temple, without any crowd or tumult. But some Jews from Asia— 19 they ought to be here before you and to make an accusation, should they have anything against me. 20 Or else let these men themselves say what wrongdoing they found when I stood before the council, 21 other than this one thing that I cried out while standing among them: ‘It is with respect to the resurrection of the dead that I am on trial before you this day.’ ”” (Acts 24:1–21 ESV)

It ain’t too shabby, they say, the way the other half lives. Spectral paths and liminal beauty, it really ain’t, after all, too shabby. Because logic reaches its fulfillment aka its limits: there is no formula for so-and-so. No formula to predict or model how they Contribute, Act, Engage, Deliberate. More, the plutocrat or hedge-fund financier is blind to see that a poor person who starves… they have their Magic Unction from above. Who is to say, the heavens do not open to them Stephen-like and Promise something beyond the ken of this world? 

But life is hard. The levity, the joie-de-vivre, the songbird’s appeal, the levels of Socialization, someone a so-called “card”, charming the room, refusing to concede to formulaic denouement if said denouement—every model—predicts despondency, concession to demons, failure. 

Bring in the infantry, it is said: the trials of the saints, where were you come Roll-Call? Because the dastardly despised classes—”who are ‘they’ to lead?”—these have their fidelity to True Religion. These have their fidelity to a heart whose murmurs break the spell, calm the nerves, set at ease the laborer, who acts as psychologist and therapist if true that to be in that calling is to be a Listener. Heal with your nod. With your refusal to judge. With your Christ-like Positive Thinking.

But any Success, if couched in terms beyond the ken of Christ and of God’s World, is easily upended, not founded on the Rock. Our very existence… it becomes Illegal and For-Illicit-Profit, to some naysayers. No, our Peace, our strange little arena of life as carved out of the seaside or the plains or woodlands, is Hated by some, plagiarized or denigrated, faked, slandered. Indeed, the very Language used to identify ourselves, this is studied and stolen. Oh, so these “Church folk”… do they have something special going for them? Astonishing Power? Social levity? Prize possessions? As if.

The Christian is in an arena not coveted. His or her trials are not jealously sought out. Will that “none-to-shabby” backing, will it bear uncontested Fruit come D-Day? This we hope… but as a studied specimen of Life Eternal, we also know going to the mat for Principles sadly life sentences: we are sentenced by faux “judges” for our mirth and for our pristine Hope stored up in a bottomless decanter. Called Christ. Called… isn’t this sad, I thought you knew the hope was for all of us. And that the most they can do with a Testimony is seek malicious gossip… why not Invest in a Hope? That One Person, and Him as good as dead, can change the world for the ages?

We nurse at the teat of such a backdrop of Levity, of Weight, of Life Experience in the strangely uncorrupted, uncompromised, legal and God-fearing estate. Sometimes, in some ways, Christ’s Church here on earth is indeed manifest, God with us and all. Emmanuel. Real Healings, Real Hedge-Funds of the Divine, Real License to “Religionate” or Pontificate. To Pray. To Honor as flesh-of-my-flesh and bone-of-my-bone a long lost Lover of Life, of Shared Trust Falls, of so much more it would be zany and cuckoo to try and put into words. Oh, of Course! Haven’t you had such hastily-arranged Friendships yourself? Isn’t that in your bag of Experience? The teens who as nothing more than friends, did visit a “Grown-Up” restaurant, trying without realizing it to be romantic? The Grown Adults casting caution to the wind and realizing the Kid in each of them?

But we save some license and Experience for a later day, a post V-Day day. The wealth is shared quite amply, because not all life is a stock market ticker, dollar-for-dollar, zero-sum game. One Man, one Woman, and she or he as good as dead… can spell Resurrected Strength for an entire Army of allegiance. Of inspired Calling as soldiers to “fill in” the fact: God loves us. He or She, indeed, Cares. We are etched in His or Her heart. And to the harems of parenting knowledge or to the dancing troupes or singing festals, to the “folks back home” for whom we fight, they are Preserving, Maintaining, that Incarnate Church whose mercies are felt for real, whose Peace is spread like wildfire, whose Justice is calling out from the rafters. Help us find this Arena, this Corner of Civilized Life, so that that fact, life is abhorrent, it reeks, it can meet some cause Today for a grin and a smile on the face.