“25 “Therefore I tell you, do not be anxious about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, nor about your body, what you will put on. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing? 26 Look at the birds of the air: they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? 27 And which of you by being anxious can add a single hour to his span of life? 28 And why are you anxious about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin, 29 yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. 30 But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which today is alive and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe you, O you of little faith? 31 Therefore do not be anxious, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ 32 For the Gentiles seek after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them all. 33 But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you. 34 “Therefore do not be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble.” (Matt 6:25-34 ESV)

The intellect of Man, the caretaker’s habit of some hours of prayer just in order to stay mindful around here, just in order to remember to keep first things first things… all this, put into practice, seems to mock our better intentions: Man’s first impulse, this is where the Spirit may after all reside just as much as in the aged, stockpiled, chess move or memorial to some deep and Holy jurisprudence. Some sense that we must think our way into marvel, yes, so much is good: that we think our way into some earlier underappreciated fascination. These things are right, Holy, and True! And Man… Man thinks out all too mathematically, some six generations hence, some endless maneuver of “draw” or “honey pots” or “loyalty tests”. What Scripture counsels, what the Holy Spirit counsels, is not to acquiesce blindly to what thoughts may come, rather, to marvel at “God don’t make no junk”: that we are equipped to Do Good even before we purposefully or manfully Understand said Good. 

The teacher’s crimp, the educator’s nip and tuck, the sophist’s birth canal of Feeling, Sentiment, Estuary and Habit: these are Intended to good ends, even apart from some manful guile or purposeful Ownership. We do not Own the Spirit, only we Receive good things from the Spirit. The fright factor, that today’s errors are though manageable, no corrective to past deeds unrelentingly awful or painful to remember: we are, however, not timid nor cowed, sitting in a corner trying to be inoffensive. Christ’s Spirit is offensive and risk-taking. Christ’s Spirit trust falls into that Educated Edifice by which our spirit is coached and habituated: to do good, coming out of the gates; to respond in ten minutes rather than ten hours; to fall, finally, into the loving embrace of “good enough”.

Because His Death… it put into sharp contrast all theologies of Accomplishment and Victory. All theologies start to recollect, painfully enough, that Christ knows: the lives of some people are just so hard. And He chose to be known here, rather than in His seat in high and heavenly places. So to our wonder, and to our prayer, to indulge Spirit’s mystery personality and aloof, guileless Imminence. Spirit is Here and Now, and so to that past error not of saying too much but of subsequently clamming up; we get ashamed of our own deeds and go silent, when the right move is to hit the ground running, to keep up despite early missteps, to be unembarrassed and not forlorn, not timid nor protective of our very selves.

Because what is our Final Judgment… at the courtroom of our Peers, in the barracks, as agents of the Cross? That we were “almost good enough” but required some compassionate Love directed our way? Well of course, we settle for this hardly at all, rather wishing to be All Things and in All Ways respected and relied upon. We, who went through lives of trauma in our youth, do eagerly alight upon a Spirit who just… “works”. Who gets things done. Who gives those hours of prayerful Fascination as hours to Own, and then to Accept: we are our own first Judges, and the paradox! On the one hand to mope about our sins, on the other hand to recoil at the thought of anything “loving” or “patronizing” directed our way! We want it all! The top-tier Respect, and the Low-Down camaraderie with others in the name of being sinners.

Because it is a Received Notion, an Externality made Local and Homebound, a Teacher’s Pulpit that informs and shapes tomorrow’s War. We shall in that hour of haste not have the luxury of long reflection, but at the same time we are to have the seventy-five percent Correct sense of immediate reaction and response. We decide in that hour, lives on the line. We hear Pastor Jesus’s call to Forgive an enemy or Lay Down a competition, with some strange Facet of Faith wherein our Faith in the Unseen—that’s all that Faith is, we can literally quantify what is “unseen”—carries the day. It reshapes and reforms our personalities, to be Agents and Soldiers of a Mystery Religion, one Sadly Hidden to many, but the Impetus and Causal Agent of our Joy and of our relevance. To bide our time in the community, sharp of mind and forehead, of gaze and discernment, but malleable and willing of tone, of flesh and encounter. We pass on a Militant’s good cheer, but a Pacifist’s zero compromise. Or vice-versa: the Pacifist in us simply some modicum of Honesty around that dualism: that it is only having tasted War that we rightly hold up high the Tomorrow Peace. It is only in view of such Peace that we reluctantly but boldly go to War. War of the spirits. War of the “Come again? Don’t you believe what we believe? That Victory belongs to the Children of God?”. Our Victory, no tears spilt beyond the torrent of pains and losses, but no tears couched in self-righteous lack of submission. We submit to the causal agent of tears, to the War, while seeking always to make our libations poured out come tomorrow libations of Victory. Mourning serves its purpose. The radio in hand, the dance in the hallway, the Coping with what was shocking and still not fully integrated: our lost Friend, Jesus our lost Easement and Okay Factor from God.