“2 So if there is any encouragement in Christ, any comfort from love, any participation in the Spirit, any affection and sympathy, 2 complete my joy by being of the same mind, having the same love, being in full accord and of one mind. 3 Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves. 4 Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others. 5 Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, 6 who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, 7 but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. 8 And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. 9 Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, 10 so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, 11 and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.” (Php 2:1–11 ESV)

Crazy talk, Spirit alights pell-mell, to Induct the Recipient Dutiful Ones; love that sustains was part of a dastardly Receipt not easily shared, not broadly Experienced, not—all judicious parenting attempts aside—bequeathed on All Comers. And to those who were Loved, in a way that Sustains: to these a God who mocks the Proud, a Spirit who Humbles the Conceited, a Christ who snubs just a bit until Repentance or Humility alights… like the Spirit, alights on the Sinner.

Because the Crazy Talk evokes Factual Visitation from On High: this one, that one, today is Caught Up to a second heaven, a third heaven, a fourth… And to be those Sanguine and Readied, is to be those Manhandled, Affectionately but Purposefully Embraced, Swept Up in divine Chaos, a Chaos strangely Musical and Life-Affirming: take it with you, O Soldier, the Way a Spirit goes post-mortem, post-any fear or dying, to be the Risk Taker and the Forward Jaunt Divine.

Then to an enemy’s Obsession: as if, as if there were no erroneous zones in the world save the fact that Obsessive Compulsive Focus itself walks around proud and in possession of the Senses. More, the obsession, sure, strangely Exaggerating but only sadly the Fact, it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy, that such-and-so might just Go Far (these Obsessive Ones, unlike some, had the Faith, the New Testament, the notion of Christ-like prophecy or Pauline, Petrine, Magdalene, etc., Mission; deep mysteries they Understood).

More, there are the ways an enemy even Self-Ruins rather than see a gig go viral; “guilty by association with us…”. Never do we concede, however, that some Magical Extension applied to our own Experience of Grace, never concede others in our social fabric or umbrella, are somehow Magically now remade as church-folk. Consult! Work in tandem! Come up with a Plan!

It is strange outlays wherein each of us hastily sends a dozen missives, but One is attributed to us and we shall never know quite which one; they assume we Obsess as well, but rather a certain Effectiveness meets Attention that Lacks. The goal is to Persuade—because we struggle to respect ones we see as having been wronged—that there are myriad “fronts”, several “social networks” non-overlapping much; what we boldly (boastfully?) once claimed of one social network: Don’t blame the others as though all were cut from the same cloth.

The petty grievances, the catty rejoinders, the malaise for having Drawn Near to the sort of person never to be vulnerable around: these things never quite Take from us the Unction and Sanctity of living out Purpose. They shun, we soldier on. They obsess, we occasionally check in. They covet, we gladly surrender anything in accord with a Moral Majority. It isn’t some magical “gifting” or “bequest” that will save the day, rather the Opposite: that everyone Already Knows of the Experience of Divinity, of Rumors of Angels, of Conversion, and the question is, do not muzzle an ox as it treads out the grain.

Therefore to the Love that Sustains, the dear friend of old, and to Acknowledge, if our choices are Smart, so much more are Their’s, To the cavalry never found—in the field or otherwise—alone. Christ for us, the Spirit around us, the Father Ruling from On High.