“9 Am I not free? Am I not an apostle? Have I not seen Jesus our Lord? Are not you my workmanship in the Lord? 2 If to others I am not an apostle, at least I am to you, for you are the seal of my apostleship in the Lord. 3 This is my defense to those who would examine me. 4 Do we not have the right to eat and drink? 5 Do we not have the right to take along a believing wife, as do the other apostles and the brothers of the Lord and Cephas? 6 Or is it only Barnabas and I who have no right to refrain from working for a living? 7 Who serves as a soldier at his own expense? Who plants a vineyard without eating any of its fruit? Or who tends a flock without getting some of the milk? 8 Do I say these things on human authority? Does not the Law say the same? 9 For it is written in the Law of Moses, “You shall not muzzle an ox when it treads out the grain.” Is it for oxen that God is concerned? 10 Does he not certainly speak for our sake? It was written for our sake, because the plowman should plow in hope and the thresher thresh in hope of sharing in the crop. 11 If we have sown spiritual things among you, is it too much if we reap material things from you? 12 If others share this rightful claim on you, do not we even more? Nevertheless, we have not made use of this right, but we endure anything rather than put an obstacle in the way of the gospel of Christ. 13 Do you not know that those who are employed in the temple service get their food from the temple, and those who serve at the altar share in the sacrificial offerings? 14 In the same way, the Lord commanded that those who proclaim the gospel should get their living by the gospel. 15 But I have made no use of any of these rights, nor am I writing these things to secure any such provision. For I would rather die than have anyone deprive me of my ground for boasting. 16 For if I preach the gospel, that gives me no ground for boasting. For necessity is laid upon me. Woe to me if I do not preach the gospel! 17 For if I do this of my own will, I have a reward, but if not of my own will, I am still entrusted with a stewardship. 18 What then is my reward? That in my preaching I may present the gospel free of charge, so as not to make full use of my right in the gospel. 19 For though I am free from all, I have made myself a servant to all, that I might win more of them. 20 To the Jews I became as a Jew, in order to win Jews. To those under the law I became as one under the law (though not being myself under the law) that I might win those under the law. 21 To those outside the law I became as one outside the law (not being outside the law of God but under the law of Christ) that I might win those outside the law. 22 To the weak I became weak, that I might win the weak. I have become all things to all people, that by all means I might save some. 23 I do it all for the sake of the gospel, that I may share with them in its blessings. 24 Do you not know that in a race all the runners run, but only one receives the prize? So run that you may obtain it. 25 Every athlete exercises self-control in all things. They do it to receive a perishable wreath, but we an imperishable. 26 So I do not run aimlessly; I do not box as one beating the air. 27 But I discipline my body and keep it under control, lest after preaching to others I myself should be disqualified.” (1 Co 9:1–27 ESV)

Frames of consciousness, frames of Thought: our deities arise, form, take mental shape, not quite always by inspiration, not always quite because of a Divine Spirit implanting ideas, but because we panic or dwell in the Needful: “I need God to be this for me”. That is, to find Mission and be Sent, is finally to unclutch the firm grasp on Plausible Religion. We are no longer pleading, “Just tell me if I’m in error!”; “Just intervene, see me force you to intervene!”; “How could any loving Visage have allowed me to do such-and-such?”. What is meant is that Divine Mission has an aspect of “laughter and forgetting”: suddenly, our sins are not only washed away in the breakwaters of Time and Love, but our sins seriously Cease to matter: our Calling is elsewhere, our wild weird and wonderful headspace, as taught on mother’s, father’s knee, mocks Higher Thinking: Forget the impasses and unforgiven regrets; see you have a Career and a Calling! To soldier forth. To enlist. To serve Christ and His Kingdom. Today, and couldn’t have been more urgent, because self-destructive behavior treads a fine line from Conservative, Reasoned, Missional outlay. We are not risk-taking to a fault, rather risk-averse and Dwelling in a higher plane than Enemy number one, two, and three (we like to fight around).

Our higher plane, it comes about when the ennui and Boredom simply goes Ghost and Absent. Our invention of problems, it ceases to Define us: we invent no longer, only lean heavily in on Authority Above that doesn’t coddle us, won’t intervene if we go the route of error, will Honor and Pay forward in spiritual dollars, certain Evoked, Obtained, Massaged Hence and Forth, deeds of spiritual import. He in Heaven might call them inspired. Curious. But no strapping anyone or anything down to evoke higher truths: God is the being who created us, and He seeks to do what to our minds is impossible: to create a New Man, New Woman, self-contained and circumscribed in the super ego, to know their Duty, to understand a sparse high vacuum between us and Him, little by way of committees and chains of command, except that All will one day answer to Him.

We deserve as much, right? In fact, His love is prescriptive of a longing He bears on Christ’s and His equal Heart, to invest in the poor kid from the middle-of-nowhere, yet how to go about it? How to enter in upon a community or township with all its functioning government of and by the people, its local authorities and structures… and to do so without getting anyone Killed in the process (there being many kinds of death, we all have ceased to worry therein, since there are things worse than dying). More, His investment in His children is precisely that, a strange Conduit of intertwined particles at a distance. And we are His people, destined to Create and Ascertain Progress on the Love Front. Anyone, if they are believed in, third eye stuff and Inspiration, as heard in song lyrics or strange comforting “what if” question-response answers: God is for us, and we His people watch all the more Alert, because it is a New Thing unfurling over the Nation, a New Respectability, new ocean waves of Succor and Unction, healing waves and strangely Formed sons and daughters. What we see is no fantasy nor phantasmagoria, but a notched-up Real Experience we were Destined to squint a bit, rub our eyes a bit, and Go: go hog-wild because we Knew this kind of a Father in Heaven. We knew His will for His children, and that wild mystery wherein He somehow had the means to extract from the war room just for a couple of hours, to hear the exuberant Testimony of some of His chosen vessels.