“3 But I, brothers, could not address you as spiritual people, but as people of the flesh, as infants in Christ. 2 I fed you with milk, not solid food, for you were not ready for it. And even now you are not yet ready, 3 for you are still of the flesh. For while there is jealousy and strife among you, are you not of the flesh and behaving only in a human way? 4 For when one says, “I follow Paul,” and another, “I follow Apollos,” are you not being merely human? 5 What then is Apollos? What is Paul? Servants through whom you believed, as the Lord assigned to each. 6 I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the growth. 7 So neither he who plants nor he who waters is anything, but only God who gives the growth. 8 He who plants and he who waters are one, and each will receive his wages according to his labor. 9 For we are God’s fellow workers. You are God’s field, God’s building. 10 According to the grace of God given to me, like a skilled master builder I laid a foundation, and someone else is building upon it. Let each one take care how he builds upon it. 11 For no one can lay a foundation other than that which is laid, which is Jesus Christ. 12 Now if anyone builds on the foundation with gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, straw— 13 each one’s work will become manifest, for the Day will disclose it, because it will be revealed by fire, and the fire will test what sort of work each one has done. 14 If the work that anyone has built on the foundation survives, he will receive a reward. 15 If anyone’s work is burned up, he will suffer loss, though he himself will be saved, but only as through fire. 16 Do you not know that you are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit dwells in you? 17 If anyone destroys God’s temple, God will destroy him. For God’s temple is holy, and you are that temple. 18 Let no one deceive himself. If anyone among you thinks that he is wise in this age, let him become a fool that he may become wise. 19 For the wisdom of this world is folly with God. For it is written, “He catches the wise in their craftiness,” 20 and again, “The Lord knows the thoughts of the wise, that they are futile.” 21 So let no one boast in men. For all things are yours, 22 whether Paul or Apollos or Cephas or the world or life or death or the present or the future—all are yours, 23 and you are Christ’s, and Christ is God’s.” (1 Co 3:1–23 ESV)

The edifice resembles a house of cards; the Logic, the hastily-upheld Tit-for-Tat, the Vision Modulo some plaintive claims: one day it will all go belly up and we, we will concede far more than what we conceded at the outset. We will concede some World of God’s, some Created Order, some Passionate Unction, the analogies, the mocking back-and-forths, the “see me take on untold burdens, because in a logical world, in a righteous Judgment, I’d have some more easements and travelling companions of the spirit”. We may indeed push ourselves according to Modicums Principled, that such-and-so “Should” be our initial Complaint, a Complaint we live into, we marry, we merge with. In a perfect world…

Tomorrow’s War begins Today. It begins as strange jaunts lick up and hastily upbuild our Status Quo anew, our Pose, our Sentinel Tower, our Perch. It isn’t ours to Shoulder Alone, rather the coming War upbuilds because we can get accustomed to the distant dull roar, to the lives lost and lives made out in heroisms. To the smart aleck, who leaps into, jumps all over simple mistakes… to her or him we yield not for a second: be still my soul, watch the watchpoints, stare down the Inimical Ones, it isn’t your burden alone, rather it is shared by that same Spirit who Christ married, who with Christ went to the Cross, who mocked His ministry via an untimely and scandal-ridden Death, in order that we might ourselves two-fold: one, have hope, two take up our own Cross.

The coming Justice Day, league of saints, of churches, of Nations, will test our belly-up frustrations and sense of all akin to a loss, all with a center that cannot Hold, all with a softer portion that cannot hold up the burden. Whether we go balderdash and Threat, or whether we go Love and earnest Yearning… after a professional repartee, after a league of friendlies, after a back-and-forth Sublime… in any case we are those Consecrated unto Holy Service. Our lives, placed on the line in ways that frustrate the would-be nominal Heads: (“You make it all up!”; “I shall be your headship!”; “See my uptight upper lip!”).

When we think on those who are “sinners”, we do a service to our own Prayer Life to recognize, their sins… these only the more point to our own sins. And some churches do a better job of the je ne sais quoi of Forgiveness. They are a bit more Meek around self-righteousness; who are we to judge? Let the sinner at least speak in her or his Defense!

Tomorrow’s War will indeed laud and flatter all our High Thoughts of Christ as Preeminent. Maybe. Maybe we will see indeed that His militarized Lamb is on the flags, His sword and shield is on the Garb or again the flags. Not because we love war, not because we are belligerent, but because at some point the Abuse inverts itself, and in the subsequent Vacuum rockets begin to fly. We were running well, what hindered us? It was a Heightened Alert, a Reckoning with Abuse, or with Grift, or with Shenanigans, that sadly upped the ante unto a New Reckoning: we fought because to do any less would have been to murder and rob the Poor; to do any less would have been to make derelict and third-class citizens of the youth; to do any less would have been to nod to a Pagan Deity.

Before stating our claims, we launch into a back-and-forth that others say we imagine, that they say is just a devilish Dream. We are those Certain and Self-Composed, of a mettle unheard of, of strength untold, of zeroing-in Focus Sublime. But it behooves each of us to remember where others are; to pause on the communiques sent; to be in all things first Pastoral, and second Informative. Only not any banal “clericalism”, not any Denial of what we are positing, denying it to the face of a would-be penitent: you merely Dreamt I was incriminating you!