“3 But I, brothers, could not address you as spiritual people, but as people of the flesh, as infants in Christ. 2 I fed you with milk, not solid food, for you were not ready for it. And even now you are not yet ready, 3 for you are still of the flesh. For while there is jealousy and strife among you, are you not of the flesh and behaving only in a human way? 4 For when one says, “I follow Paul,” and another, “I follow Apollos,” are you not being merely human? 5 What then is Apollos? What is Paul? Servants through whom you believed, as the Lord assigned to each. 6 I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the growth. 7 So neither he who plants nor he who waters is anything, but only God who gives the growth. 8 He who plants and he who waters are one, and each will receive his wages according to his labor. 9 For we are God’s fellow workers. You are God’s field, God’s building. 10 According to the grace of God given to me, like a skilled master builder I laid a foundation, and someone else is building upon it. Let each one take care how he builds upon it. 11 For no one can lay a foundation other than that which is laid, which is Jesus Christ. 12 Now if anyone builds on the foundation with gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, straw— 13 each one’s work will become manifest, for the Day will disclose it, because it will be revealed by fire, and the fire will test what sort of work each one has done. 14 If the work that anyone has built on the foundation survives, he will receive a reward. 15 If anyone’s work is burned up, he will suffer loss, though he himself will be saved, but only as through fire. 16 Do you not know that you are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit dwells in you? 17 If anyone destroys God’s temple, God will destroy him. For God’s temple is holy, and you are that temple. 18 Let no one deceive himself. If anyone among you thinks that he is wise in this age, let him become a fool that he may become wise. 19 For the wisdom of this world is folly with God. For it is written, “He catches the wise in their craftiness,” 20 and again, “The Lord knows the thoughts of the wise, that they are futile.” 21 So let no one boast in men. For all things are yours, 22 whether Paul or Apollos or Cephas or the world or life or death or the present or the future—all are yours, 23 and you are Christ’s, and Christ is God’s.” (1 Cor 3 ESV)

Determined and sound, the plans of the saints, of the workers, of the Partakers of His Holiness, do come in and out of focus. Entire Schemes… reverse, crash down, back to the drawing board. Because it is a Holy coming together wherein Man, aside from the finitude of life, aside from the rules saying you can’t succeed, aside from the Law against flourishing, Man edges out in leaps and bounds a Plan and Design and Circumstance sublime.

Key points are called for, that air castles, castles in the sky, meet the hard truths of life plugging along cynical and beleaguered, wartorn as ever. So we fantasize, with some wild fascination and intrigue around building systems that Mine the Trust, that identify and go full hog on the Trust aspect: where there is some occasion no longer to fear an escapist, jilting partner, we can ape the common Foe, the Enemy who plagiarizes and mocks and curtails Life on Life’s Good Faith and Good Will Terms.

Christ asked all of us to put our backs to each others’ backs, and strike a Fighting Pose outward, that it is a discovered Peace no longer to counterstrike and counterpunch His Gifted Presence, rather to Discover a place where it is extremely vulnerable and relies on each Individual Disciples’ good faith negotiations. Each disciple, can settle for nothing less than This Calm Demeanor and This Beloved Status: Children of God.

So we sally forth unafraid of the Rude Awakening or Hasty Rebuke: though harmed in times past by the Hasty Rebuke, we no longer concede that no-go-zone to the devil. Indeed, Christ is both mocked as Too Strong, and meets His people on terms Too Vulnerable, Too Trusting, Too Hopeful of a walk-on-water Experience.

We have been dropped before. We have Existential Questions as to whether we are Capable and Presentable and Able to be Loved. Somehow to Find Christ is to Die to self, to Die to this life and pony up all Regaled by His loving couture and confidences built. We seek nothing more than to Be His People, because this is heaven on earth. This is ecstasy-inducing, Experience untainted, minus the Flesh yet still coveting the Brand of Human Chaste Interactions: loving on one another, saluting the Flag with one another, Retreating to nurse our regrets and wounds, together. Somehow the Art of Listening grows into Maturity in our lives and life schemes. We learn to be plain as day, as clear as the lucid, as deep as the sea, in Plain-As-Day relationship.

God regales the saints with Affection and with what is even more longed for than Love: Forgiveness. Awareness in some quixotic or deucing-to-evil Fashion, that He longs to enter our transgressive ways and set up a camp, hoist a flag, plunder the malfeasance. It even seems somewhat Engaging, to have our old fleshy ways turned to dry bones. We learn to Marvel and Accept, not based on our Promissory Notes as to renewed Goodness (like the old days, I swear!), but fully Honoring Him as Leader-of-the-Pack and first to the Cross. A Cross we, too, begin to long for and desire in such sublime and restrained, in the flesh, ways. Because our plans… they were Inspired, Salutary Genius (from Above), and yet we scrambled them and hated them and renewed them to Reboot Again, once more to redesign and Hope For what things, what dreams, may come. With so much consulting work Forgotten, yet it still means our Outlay sums it all up, and in this Faith we are Born Anew. God is at the Helm, no dependence on our mere self-awareness and contribution, but Calling to focus on things Eternal, friendships, collegiality, Listening and Being healed or Healing on our own wit.