2025-03-02 A Meditation on Celebration

“11 Let the heavens be glad, and let the earth rejoice; let the sea roar, and all that fills it; 12 let the field exult, and everything in it! Then shall all the trees of the forest sing for joy 13 before the Lord, for he comes, for he comes to judge the earth. He will judge the world in righteousness, and the peoples in his faithfulness.” (Psalm 96:11-13 ESV)

Angling for heights untold, the Christian’s pursuit of all that is exuberant, fun, scarcely legal levels of reverb: this ends any and all talk as far as needing to calm down a bit. Needing to sober up a bit, and talk with shackles on the heart. Needing to apologize or be “Sensitive” to ones who are hurting “out there”. No, because we are legit, street cred divine: that we are no strangers to the impossible bind, no strangers to the world mocking us as we stride with heads hung low, no strangers to Hurt, to Inevitability around frustrated self-image and even more hurtful receipts from “out there”. They mock, we demure. They scandalize, we wrongly apologize. They dismiss, we accept our lower digs.

Therefore all things are Yes in Christ Jesus. Our faith need no warning tape or caution signs, but rather our bestest Feelings come together with our worst needs of Escape: we are escapist like a Houdini, around a tantrum of hard vibes, of hurtful slogans, of inner turmoil spelt in vague utterances called Self-Querying. Did we hear right? Are we in need of “someone to talk to”? Are we experiencing heightened Alert and rapidly increasing Change, all the more as we experience Boldness, Holy Strife met with Holy Unction. Then come the “changes”. Then come the “New Me”, not quite a right me. Why, was it always so much better in the history of it all? The earlier times… they were good and holy and true, correct?

Count it all joy when you meet various trials! The soldier snaps out of all head hung low mentalities. The soldier goes for broke, around simply unimpeded Celebration. To bring all pleasing things to the Altar, to bring all healed pains to the Altar, to bring all rebounding gotchas to the Altar. Hear me, O colleague in the strife, in the war, in the peace: today I celebrate You! I celebrate that Christ spoke to me through a tantric Communal vibe. That Christ exalted the Lower Climes, called simple poor-man’s Mercy, poor-man’s Grace, poor-man’s Nothing To Lose, and overran the heightened states of alert surrounding Law, surrounding Methodology idolized, surrounding Marks of the Christian.

Our “marks” are found in the gutters of life, where we met a peer and they unburdened to us. Where we met the “ill” and though accepting their abundant apologies for imposing, we nonetheless refused to categorize them as “special needs” quite: rather, as reliable and loving True Souls. The “special needs” these too we do not need any longer to apologize around being therein forgetful: we are celebrating Everyone. We are celebrating in the face of Discord. We are celebrating in the Limelight of hurt, of pained recollections, of hardship because of our frantic need to be all things to all people. We, heads-down, Labor in the field unto forgetfulness, that is, unto Celebration: we labor until we cease to labor or to feel it any longer. And then, it is Okay that we daydream. It is Okay that we have given up on being all-things in terms of Law-abiding status. We indeed recognize, rectify, revise our deeds around any and all accountability, but this in itself is no religion! Our honesty around the incomes and expenses, this is not what brings us closer as a family or coheres us as a military of the Spirit. Rather it is all those things being come what may—Oh, so you want to shape up a bit? Do so with my blessing—and an alternate Posture teaching Grace. Teaching a different Come Home to mother, to father, mentalism. That flies directly in the face of the forgotten grace, in the face of the faux-Warmth surrounding Legalism.

And we see ourselves, more easily hurt precisely when we were closer to being “understood”. We mourn lost relationships, even those in their infancy, while we also hope for the perseverance of others. At some time in life we must begin to accept the role of rascal, of mere loser, of aging fool, at least in the minds of some folks. Also however Today we Celebrate, that affection recognizes itself in each other, that having once been loved, we are game for the course. And this investment, pennies on the dollar, this bears contagious fruits in the community. Because each of us as we pass on the street or ride the bus together, are reflecting that Joy and sharing without expecting a reward, even with strangers. Because we are a healthy specimen. We are a hopeful citizen. We are a lauded retiree. We are to some certain someones out there, a bundle of goodness.