2025-02-17 A Meditation on Momentary Oasis

“7 Remember your leaders, those who spoke to you the word of God. Consider the outcome of their way of life, and imitate their faith. 8 Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever. 9 Do not be led away by diverse and strange teachings, for it is good for the heart to be strengthened by grace, not by foods, which have not benefited those devoted to them. 10 We have an altar from which those who serve the tent have no right to eat. 11 For the bodies of those animals whose blood is brought into the holy places by the high priest as a sacrifice for sin are burned outside the camp. 12 So Jesus also suffered outside the gate in order to sanctify the people through his own blood. 13 Therefore let us go to him outside the camp and bear the reproach he endured. 14 For here we have no lasting city, but we seek the city that is to come. 15 Through him then let us continually offer up a sacrifice of praise to God, that is, the fruit of lips that acknowledge his name. 16 Do not neglect to do good and to share what you have, for such sacrifices are pleasing to God.” (Heb 13:7-16 ESV)

Into the wilderness, never again satisfied when it comes to Ultimate things: calm and composed and belonging, yes, but that for only a moment: we have tasks ahead. We must labor on. We hold a dialog unspoken, with friends of years and decades past, too: because what we are is made out as Habit and Custom, as Personality and Murmuring. They know us, and if they know us then we have a moment to say Thank You (never forgetting, always celebrating, never too cautious to announce: these are Winning Years; these are Substantive Blessings; these are Occasions to say a heavenward Thanks!), to say Thank You to the miasma and hum, the buzz of a Sweet Morning Elixir called Imagination, Prayer, These Things, Too, Shall Pass.

Because the blocked out segments of our lives… there is a Lost Block, a twenty-year career path no longer viable, no longer in the Future Seen: we stumble to announce, that this is the Now and the Hour, forget the twenty-year career trajectory and remember the three year earthly ministry of our God. Remember that all the bowings, the backing out in humble deference, the Supreme Commander of our Faith being accepting, approving, welcoming, of our Instinctual Intel Briefing, even as we say, “To another, who is more worthy!”, even as we defer and tip-toe out of the high courts and wide room of His, of Her magisterium. Even amidst all this, as that Never Forget mindset sees the joy and peace on the subway or in the field, that people have this brief blip of a window in which freedom rings true, in which wars were not fought in vain, in which we Encounter and Dispute the spirit second-in-command, namely, that which claims all life is striving after the wind, that all relationship is one foot pressed hard down on the other’s foot, that all career is mockery and passed-over promotions.

No, the gasp, the soldier’s Mandate, the citizen’s mindset, is of a War here and now, one that Encourages even as it repeats platitudes at errant times, or panics and errs at forgetful times. To keep our gaze free of all that distracts, for one thing—if it is we who are the “sinner”—learning the drastic patch over the eye, the sinful obelisk wherein a small concession to fleshy thought obfuscates in mighty fashion our Viewport. We wished to be part of a church body where folks didn’t have such obstacles. We thought it a fine thing to confess in broad strokes of our unchurched ways, only to discover that within the church are sinners just as much as outside. And we ourselves, we testify with a breath, with a momentary rote pause, with a rosary or muttered prayer. All this, because in its absence is room for a Holier Spirit, for come-what-may diligence, for plain Spiritual Outlay.

To the wilderness, then, because we kept an eye on a horizon a bit more distant than our pleasantries with a nominal friend: a friend indeed! But no worry around keeping focused on Christ’s solemn wilderness, His sovereign lack of belonging, His mighty personal Call to rise up and lead. To lead by self-defeat. To lead by such simple rubrics we forget and go complex on the matter, but it is a gift received from Spirit, to go easy on a few plain doctrines which doctrines, if sincerely applied and voiced, do earn their keep and space in the ear of the audience.

Therefore there is the “Hi” devoid of any implicit or explicit rank, submission, demands on our time. There is also the silence, implicitly teaming up with each other on O so many rubrics of the lifestyle called “Career”. The more reputable careers also filled with sinners, but too the Hope, that there is occasion and vestige of Something True, that should never be taken as a given, but should—upon it’s evocation—warm up the dinner table conversation and office space decorum of mutual invite, of speech, of a rejection of so many ways our habits and patterns humiliate, prove to be so illogical, catch us up in a Bind most loathsome, regrettable, hated, and mercilessly attacked. We attack: because the shouting fool may know more about the web of burden, of prevention, of social opprobrium, than do its constituents.