the Four Needs: Ephphatha!

“The idols of the nations are silver and gold,

the work of the hands of humankind.

They have mouths, but cannot speak;

they have eyes, but cannot see;

they have ears, but cannot hear;

there is not even breath in their mouths.

Those who make them become like them,

as does everyone who trusts in them.” Ps 135

For modern, “enlightened” folk, idols sound primitive.  Yes, i’ve been in homes that had statues of buddha and the like, but only rarely have i seen actual shrines.  But as with nearly all of our visible sins, they are merely the outward expression of an inward desire.  And i probably shouldn’t even use the word ‘desire’.  Hosea  and Ezekiel paint it as a much more lurid picture.  We don’t just desire our idols, we Lust for them.  We are not passive.  We are violently active.  i’m guessing Eve didn’t take a tentative, dainty, lady-like bite with pinkies out.  She dug in like a shark and got its blood-red juice all over her face and offered it out to Adam with stained hands and a come hither gleam in her eyes.  As Paul says, “Therefore put to death what is earthly in you: sexual immorality, uncleanness, lustful passion, evil desire, and greediness, which is idolatry…” (Col 3)  Earthly.  i like that because Ezekiel tells us we have hearts of stone.  Earth.  Stone, metal and wood.  Temporary things which are passing away.  We have become like what we desire, taking on its properties, the properties of the temporal and the dull and the blind.

But if we’re deaf as posts and blind as a bag of rocks and acting out of our basest instincts, how in God’s name are we supposed to put off idols?  We’re slaves!  We’re prisoners of our own disobedience, born as prisoners, born as slaves!  How can we be freed?  Yes indeedy!  How is that even possible?

It’s not.  You don’t.  But fear not!  “For he knows our frame.  He remembers that we are dust.” (Ps 103)

“Say to those who are hasty of heart,

“Be strong; you must not fear!

    Look! your God will come with vengeance,

with divine retribution.

    He is the one who will come and save you.”

Then the eyes of the blind shall be opened,

    and the ears of the deaf shall be opened.

Then the lame shall leap like the deer,

    and the tongue of the dumb shall sing for joy…” (Is 35)

Christ has come!  He who stood in the church of the blind, “And the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was given to him, and unrolling the scroll he found the place where it was written,

“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,

    because of which he has anointed me

to proclaim good news to the poor.

    He has sent me

to proclaim release to the captives,

    and recovery of sight to the blind,

to send out in freedom those who are oppressed,

    to proclaim the favorable year of the Lord.”

And he rolled up the scroll and gave it back to the attendant and sat down. And the eyes of everyone in the synagogue were looking intently at him. And he began to say to them, “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.”

We’ve seen and believed!  Thanks be to God!  He has done this, His grace has done this!  He has stuck his fingers in our ears and said, “Ephphatha!” and dropped the scales from our eyes and we looked and we saw the rodent of sin crawling away in fear from the holy one, into the crusty ground of our heart.  And we hollered, “Hang tight, Jesus!  i got this!”  And we grabbed our shovel of the Spirit and started digging and we’re surprised at how deep the hole goes and then we hit something hard, something unyielding, something metal.  We dig and we dig and the more we dig, the more we expose a colossus.  The idol beneath.  This week (of all weeks!) i hope and pray we’re going to see how God takes what we think we need, how he takes the Four Needs which perhaps we should relabel, the Four Lusts, the idols of Comfort and Control and Approval and Power and replaces them with Love.  This week of all weeks, i hope and pray you hear HIM say,

“No.  You hang tight.  I AM’s got this.”

Make Slogans Great and Stronger Together Again

Used with permission of the artist, Rod Gillies
https://www.flickr.com/photos/24681250@N07/30756737366

Taking a break from the Four Needs for a brief acknowledgment of the imminent Black Tuesday, a date which will live in infamy.  The day we decide if we want to be ruled by a ruthless sociopath or a megalomaniacal one.  If we want the devil we know or the one hiding behind the door on the right.  But this is not a negative post.  i'm not bashing anyone more than they bash themselves.  That would be whipping an octopus which is busily flogging itself with all eight limbs.  It just wouldn't notice.

What i would like to talk about are slogans.

Mr. Trump says he would like to Make America Great Again.  i am all for that.  i would like America to be what it was when i last thought it was great.  When i was taught civics by idealists from the forties, fifties and sixties who came from both the left and the right and still shared the same ideals.  The same belief that we could do anything as a country.  That despite our foibles and faults and faux pas we were still the greatest country on earth.  When i played with white and black and filipino and vietnamese and hispanic kids and never thought a bit about what made us different.  Before i new the N word.  Heck, i may not have even known the F word.  Because those words weren't allowed on tv.  Back when stores were closed on Sundays and holidays.  Back when i thought everyone went to church except that one or two neighbor of mine who still fought and put out a fire in our house one Sunday before we got home from church.  Back before i knew the word "corporate" as a slur.  When i thought my money was safer in a bank.  i would love for America to be all the things i thought it was when i was young and naive.  What it was before i new what naive meant.  When i believed leaders when they spoke.  When i teared up for patriotic speeches.  When i wanted to stand at attention when i saw a marine walk by.  When i believed in just wars and liberations and the defeat of actual tyrannies by citizen soldiers.  When i thought America would never ever but never flirt with electing a tyrant ourselves.

Mrs. Clinton says we are Stronger Together.  And i completely agree.  Which is why as the most despicably divisive candidate to ever be put up against the most dispicably mad one we've ever had, if she actually believed what she says, she would step aside and let someone run who could actually have a prayer of uniting this country.

Mr. Johnson, i'm sorry, sir, i have no idea what your slogan is, which is really all i need to know about you and your chances.

So if i may, i'd like to propose a new slogan:
God save America.

the Four Needs: Power

Undisturbed in the wild, i have it on pretty good authority over at National Geographic that the biggest threat to lions is other lions.  In his pride, a male lion is king…until another male comes along.  Should this new contender defeat the original, the first thing the new king does is kill the cubs of the old male.  The pride is now his.  The offspring will be too.  In my mind, and keep in yours that all of this is just my own thoughts, but i see Power as male.  Power is a maned Lion.  Even a woman who worships at the paws of Power subverts her femininity the deeper she goes.  

In his pride, Lucifer thought himself the equal of God.  Pride gave way to lust for power and he became deluded enough to vie for the throne.  Thrown down,  (not directly by God but by his servant Michael.  God has no challenger.) yet allowed to keep some semblance of authority, Satan set about killing the children of the King, the true Lion.  Being a serpent instead of a lion, he uses lies, incidentally, the same lies he himself believes.  “Has God really said…?  If you are the Son of God…?  God doesn’t love you.  God cannot be trusted.  For God knows that on the day you both eat from it, then your eyes will be opened and you both shall be like gods, knowing good and evil.”  He infected us with his own pride, for pride is subject to none.  The bait was swallowed, the fruit was eaten, the die was cast and we live with the lust for power, for godhood, roaring in our ears.  We died and became children of the Liar, sons of destruction, sons of disobedience.  We cannot bow to you, for we are gods.  We are lions.  We are kings!

A king loves comfort but he will sacrifice it for his honor, he will take to the warpath to prove his greatness.  A lion must have control but he’s perfectly happy to have servants do the work.  A god does not need your approval, he is god!  What he wants, needs (though he would never admit to so base a weakness), Deserves! is your fealty, your submission, your fear.

Your worship.  

As i found out for myself, He is not always easy to see.  For all his pride, the Lion does much of his work under cover of darkness.  Resting during the day when your eyes are upon him.  He may boast or he may prefer others boast about him.  He may need to be the center of attention or just prefer the center of attention to perform for him and by his leave.  He may lead the group; and the group may need to either be large or of high quality or he may be a hermit ruling a kingdom of one where he is unquestioned.  He may think of himself as a warrior, an apostle, a poet, a leader, a messiah, even a humble servant, almost anything, but he is above it all.  Above the petty needs and worries of the unwashed masses.  He may appear to listen intently as you pour your heart out to him but he is looking for his opportunity to pounce and pummel you with his logic, his vision, his opinion, his interests or his humorous anecdote which, let’s face it, is so much funnier than yours.   Even his needs and his problems are more important than yours, more urgent than others'.

Underneath it all is the power of shame and honor.  Love me or hate me but you must not ignore me.  And don’t you dare disrespect me!  More easily identified by what he fears: insignificance, shame, disgrace, embarrassment, losing face, being disdained, ignored, irrelevant.  When slighted, he cannot let it go.  He fantasizes imprecatory psalms.  If He prays, he prays as Samson.  If he pleads, it is something along the lines of, “O God, just don’t waste my time and talents.  Do not let me live an insignificant life!”

He can also be spotted by his reaction to these things, his governing emotion: Rage. He can forgive but only on his terms, only when it makes him more regal.  Anger seethes beneath his haughty expression, his manners, his ingratiating, his bullying, his opinions which must be presented as absolute truths, his casual advice which he expects to be followed, his service which must be praised, his deeds which must be held in awe.  Wrath, completely justified in his own eyes, for remember, he is king, he is the lion, he is a god, self-determined, self-righteous, lies in waiting for anyone who challenges his intelligence, his strength, his abilities, his talents, for any of these things may be the vessels of his pride.  His wisdom, his business savvy, his athleticism, his learning, his sexual prowess, his theology, the lion will spend his youth looking for the thing that makes him great, the thing he can do which others seem to struggle with and he will take it into his heart as proof that he is worthy of honor, worthy of esteem, worthy to be worshiped.  

““You were a perfect model of an example,

    full of wisdom and perfect of beauty.

You were in Eden, the garden of God,

    and every precious stone was your adornment:

carnelian, topaz and moonstone,

    turquoise, onyx and jasper,

sapphire, malachite and emerald.

    And gold was the craftsmanship of your settings

and your mountings in you;

    on the day when you were created they were prepared.

You were an anointed guardian cherub,

    and I placed you on God’s holy mountain;

you walked in the midst of stones of fire.

    You were blameless in your ways

from the day when you were created,

    until wickedness was found in you.

In the abundance of your trading,

    they filled the midst of you with violence, and you sinned;

and I cast you as a profane thing from the mountain of God,

    and I expelled you, the guardian cherub,

    from the midst of the stones of fire.

Your heart was proud because of your beauty;

    you ruined your wisdom because of your splendor.” (Ezek 28)

the Four Needs: Approval

All of the idols objectify others in our lives to some degree or another.  All of them use people to get what they need, but for Approval, getting what we need from other people IS the goal.  No other idol seems to directly feed off of other humans the way this one does.  And so the Eagle of the Spirit-Filled believer, noble and true is warped and twisted into the Vulture who feeds on the souls of men.  Vulture and Eagle are even the same word in the Bible usually translated as one or the other according to context.  

Approval and Power have fuzzy borders in many of our minds.  It’s hard to know where one ends and the other begins.  “There needs to be a fence here,” says everyone with a Control idol.  Hopefully this helps.  They began to take on a more distinct personality for me when i thought of them this way.  There are two mindsets to our sins, dominant and servile.  The dominant proud say in their deepest heart, a place so buried sounds in it do not reach the consciousness, there in the dark they whisper to themselves, “i am god!”  The dominant has either destroyed the Lord in his mind, denying His existence or he sees Him but thinks himself His equal or even His better.  The servile on the other hand, recognize they are not God, fear him but in their pride think they can justify themselves to Him.  The statement in their heart of hearts is, “i am good.”  Power desires godhood.  Power is Lucifer’s own path.  Approval would be content to just be worthy of God.  But both are positions of Pride.

‘Well, what’s wrong with that?’  You ask.  ‘Aren’t we all just seeking God’s approval?  ‘Well done, good and faithful servant?’’  Well, yeah, no… maybe?  Sort of?  No, no we don’t.  And here’s why.

We already have it.  

Jesus is the good and faithful servant.  Faith is believing, not only has his death taken the place of our death, but his good works, both past, present and future are ours as well!  We already are good and faithful servants!  In Christ!  So a healthy servant at this point isn’t seeking anything but to bring joy to the Father in thanksgiving!  Joy to his brothers and sisters, in praise!  Love seeks the good of the other, always!

Approval does not love.  Approval needs.  The flow is not outward, no matter how much good it does for anyone.  No matter how much work it does for the church.  No matter how much happiness it even brings to anyone.  Good deed, bad deed, all that it does for others, is ultimately only for Itself.  The flow is inward.  Incurvatus in se.  Approval wants to hear, “Well done, good and faithful servant,” yes.  But not because it loves God.  But because it hates Him and wants to deny His authority over it.  Because it fears His rejection, Approval sees its inferiority, sees its need and despises itself.  And then it despises the one who makes it feel small.  It knows it cannot be a god, or so it thinks, it may even praise itself for its humility in thinking so, but what it seeks is to not be under God’s power but to be free of it!  It wants to be the one being on this fallen world whom Jesus did not have to die for.  Do you see it?  Do you see how even in the church, this person whom so many will love for their “servant’s heart” can even set their sights upon Jesus himself’s approval and miss the Gospel entirely because they don’t want Him, the Way, the Truth and the Life, they want Him to think they are good enough as they are.

““Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter into the kingdom of heaven, but the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. On that day many will say to me, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and expel demons in your name, and perform many miracles in your name?’ And then I will say to them plainly, ‘I never knew you. Depart from me, you who practice lawlessness!’” Matt 7

the Four Needs: Control

i don’t wanna put on my Tom Cruise School of Psychology hat here but if Comfort Kids were weaned too early and held too little, then Control Kids often seem to have grown up in chaotic households.  Fear dominates.  Anxiety dominates.  The desire for Safety becomes a ruling need.  Protection.  Security.  Control.

God is not big enough.  God is not good enough.  Trust in God but lock your doors.  i have to do it because others are too careless.  i can’t do that because well, what if…?  You can’t do that because what if…?  Rules are good.  Laws are good.  Walls are good.  We must keep that out there and this in here manageable.  We must keep them out there and everyone in here needs to toe the line.  Power is only good if it is outside the wall or governed by the law or safe here in my own little paw.  Might ruffle a feather or two here but i think this is why many of us want to carry a gun.  It’s not the gun we crave and they are not evil because all things are pure for those who are pure and besides, guns is cool!  It’s the sense of power over chaos.  It’s the sense of control they give us.  When it hits the fan, I’ll have options.  I’ll be one of the ones deciding things.  Not a slave to anyone.  Not a victim.  The greatest commandment Control etches into the shivering stone of our hearts is “Thou shalt not be a Victim… again.”  

And thus, Control is an infant king.  The Man corrupted.  The son of man who never stopped being afraid, who never stopped being small, who never trusted the goodness and love of the Father.  “And God said, “Let us make humankind in our image and according to our likeness, and let them rule over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of heaven, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every moving thing that moves upon the earth.” So God created humankind in his image, in the likeness of God he created him, male and female he created them. And God blessed them, and God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it, and rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of heaven, and over every animal that moves upon the earth.”  (Gen 1)  Man was made ruler over the earth, to fill and subdue but trust was broken and in our arrogance, we treat God as if he were the one who broke it.  As if He can’t be trusted.  Control looks out upon it all now and said, ‘chaos! No one can rule this!’ and it retreats to an enclave.  It builds a tower to keep all of its chicks home.  To keep from ever getting lost.  It cries, “There are giants in the land and we are but grasshoppers!”  It says wealth keeps me safe, keeps me in control, i cannot part with it, i must have my nest egg for rainy days.  Control is an insomniac; waking many times in the night needing to be comforted but with eyes fiercely tight, little walls to keep out the dark, it never sees the Father standing over.  It says my party must be in power for yours doesn’t have my interests at heart.  It says i have to be in charge because you cannot be trusted.  It hovers over its children’s educations for what if they aren’t equipped?  What if they are exposed to something i don’t approve of?  What if they are bullied?  It wears suspenders and a belt with drawstring sweats.  It buys security systems and insurance policies and security systems for its insurance policies.  It keeps the job it hates because, better the devil i know...  It moves to the suburbs and then it moves to the mountains when the roads get too crowded.  It risks nothing, smothers what it loves and condemns all that disturb the order.  It loves tradition and hates change.  It inherits an empire built by adventurers and micro manages it into the ground because it’s afraid to lose any of it.

Three times God told Joshua, “be strong and courageous.”  Joshua.  No slouch by any means.  A warrior tested and true.  A spirit filled disciple of Moses himself.  Joshua, “Be strong and very courageous.”  And again, “Did I not command you?  Be strong and courageous.  Do not fear or be dismayed for Yahweh your God is with you wherever you go.”  Why?  Why three times?  Why does every time God describes himself, he uses words like ‘faithful’ and ‘loyal’?  Why does the person with OCD check fifteen times to see if the toaster is unplugged and then lie awake in bed worrying about fire?

Because they don’t believe.  And neither do we.

The Four Needs: Comfort

Comfort is a cow.  

You probably didn’t think of it as such before, did you?  Neither did i.  But it fits rather well.  Sleek, luxuriant, docile, idly chewing her cud and blandly watching the world go by.  Self-serving, irresistible in size, she just bulls her way into your thoughts and sits down on your lap, and moos, “i’m bored.”  “i’m hungry.”  “i’m lonely.”  “This is making me anxious, i just want to (fill in the blank).”  

Cuz that’s what comfort does.  It fills in the blanks.  The empty spaces we think God has not filled in our lives.  God didn’t give me a job i like so i need this to stay sane.  God didn’t give me a husband/wife who loves me so i need this to fend off the loneliness, to feel wanted.  God didn’t give me joy or peace today so i need this to feel full, satisfied, comfortable.  Everything and everyone are just things to be used to satiate our longings.  i had a rough day, i need this time to write and draw (oh cruel irony!), this drink, this porn, this gossip, this hobby, this teevee, this gym, this video game, this person, this child, this church service, to feel good, to feel right, to feel even, to feel WHOLE.  

Forty days Moe was up on Mount Sinai.  The people got anxious.  The people felt out of control.  Their shepherd had led them far from their masters.  And now their shepherd was gone.  They felt a gap, a blank in their lives.  “And the people saw that Moses delayed to come down from the mountain, and the people gathered opposite Aaron, and they said to him, “Come, make for us gods who will go before us, because this Moses, the man who brought us up from the land of Egypt, we do not know what has become of him.”

And Aaron said to them, “Take off the rings of gold that are on the ears of your wives, your sons, and your daughters, and bring it to me.” And all the people took off the rings of gold that were on their ears and brought it to Aaron. And he took from their hand, and he shaped it with a tool, and he made it a cast-image bull calf, and they said, “These are your gods, Israel, who brought you up from the land of Egypt.”

And Aaron saw, and he built an altar before it, and Aaron called, and he said, “A feast for Yahweh tomorrow.” And they started early the next day, and they offered burnt offerings, and they presented fellowship offerings, and the people sat to eat and drink, and they rose up to revel.” (Ex 32)

“Waiting for Moses, waiting for Yahweh, is too hard.  Putting off pleasures (that may never come!) is stupid.  This life is all you have,” Comfort lows to you, “look around, see what this place has to offer.  We can make a little heaven right here on earth.  Fasting is stupid.  You were made to eat.  You’re a sexual being, a human with needs, she doesn’t understand, he never even sees you anymore.  One more for the road, you can handle it.  It’s going to be legal everywhere soon and you need to unwind, you do a lot for people and they don’t appreciate it.  You need to love yourself too.  No one else is looking out for you.  You don’t want to read the Bible, it’s boring, you need sleep anyway.”

The problem starts with a perceived need.  A longing if you will.  And that is good because it’s true.  i will not deny your needs.  Your gaps.  Your blanks.  They exist.  Our problem isn’t that we need, it’s that we don’t need enough!  Ask the addict at the end of his rope, there is never enough!  Because you were made for infinity!  Infinite pleasure, infinite joy, infinite life, infinite love, an Infinite God!  As C.S. Lewis so eloquently put it, “If I find in myself desires which nothing in this world can satisfy, the only logical explanation is that I was made for another world.”  You are going to feel the lack and the longing for as long as you live in this world.  Even more of Him will only make you desire more of Him but the veil is torn!  Easter has come!  We know whom we serve and where He is. “‘Child, you are always with me, and everything I have belongs to you.” (Luke 15)  We can KNOW the Day is coming, when you will eat the bread and drink the wine in the presence of the only lover you have ever truly had!

And i don’t promise you, HE promises you, (quotes nearly the whole Bible) you will be satisfied.  

The Four Needs

i think in metaphors.  i try and understand things by associating them with other things which i may or may not think i understand.  Sometimes i do this in the first degree, with willful intent.  Other times it’s involuntary idea slaughter.  The comparison, metaphor or similarity just pops into the ol’ oblong pumpkin unbidden, uninvited and with all the grace of Kramer barging through Jerry’s door.  (Some of you will now need to go and look up reruns of Seinfeld.  Nothing like derailing half your audience in the first paragraph.  Without reasonable concern, we damn the torpedoes and pour on more steam!)  (Some of you will now need to go look up Admiral David Farragut.)

So it was no surprise to me when studying what some people wiser than me have determined are the four underlying idols of our hearts that my mind was off into Ezekiel and Revelations and picturing the idols as demonic manifestations; twisted, bent copies of the cherubs of God.  It was a compelling image in my head.  A satanic pretender throne surrounded by the four faces of idolatry: Comfort, Control, Approval and Power.  The four Needs.  (Did you know our word ‘need’ comes from the German ‘Not’ which implies danger or emergency?  How appropos to our topic at hand.  Learning is fun and educational!)

The four cherubs are described as the Ox or Calf, the Man, the Eagle and the Lion (Ezek 1 and 10, Rev 4) Zeke saw them as four similar beings with four faces each.  Johnny saw them as four separate creatures.  Could be the difference in eye witness accounts of witnesses who are in the process of having their minds jellied by the Holiness of what they are witnessing but i tend to think God does this stuff on purpose.  He is separate parts.  He is one whole inseparable.  He is paradox.  Which is a fancy word for, He-don’t-fit-in-your-box cuz He made you and the box you came in.

The cherub’s likenesses are said to be symbolic and have been interpreted many ways and also assigned to the four gospels.  Matthew the man, emphasizing the humanity and incarnation of Jesus.  Mark the lion, emphasizing Christ the Lord over all powers and authorities.  Luke the Ox, strength, servanthood and sacrifice.  And drawing up the four, John with his high minded, spiritual Savior-Logos, the eagle.  (Full disclosure here, cuz we’re friends and i like ya, look hard enough and you can find different assignations and symbology.  Why?  Cuz God didn’t say in His Word, 

“Okay, Matt, you get man; John, you have to have the eagle cuz you’re so flighty, Luke, you get the cow and Mark gets lion.”  And Luke spake unto him, “Aw man!  Why does Mark get lion, i wanted lion!”  And God answered him, “Mark wrote his first so he gets first pick.  Deal with it.”  

This part is church tradition.  So hold it loosely.)

So in my mind, these idols become the four Needs, fallen angels with counter gospels, lies they tell us which are all variations on the same theme their boss, the serpent, gave Eve in the garden: "God doesn’t love you.  You need to be your own god."  Is it useful to think in such terms?  i don’t know.  If it keeps the conversation going; if it helps us look at our own sin and confess more intelligently; if it makes it easier to picture for us visual thinkers (nothing like having a self-possessed cow sitting on your lap to give you a mental image of temptation); if it helps somebody remember, "Finally, become strong in the Lord and in the might of his strength. Put on the full armor of God, so that you may be able to stand against the stratagems of the devil, because our struggle is not against blood and flesh, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the world rulers of this darkness, against the spiritual forces of wickedness in the heavenly places."  Then good.  If it doesn’t, then leave it alone.  i don’t assume every thought that pops into my head is good for edifying and feeding the Body but enough of them have been that i would rather err on the side of sharing than bottling.  Most days.  So without anymore ado, cuz we’ve had enough ado, i give you the four Needs….

starting tomorrow.  This post is long enough.

Vocational hazard

"What do you think about vocation, Seamus?"
"Ah do-on't."
"You don't wonder what your true calling is?"
"Ah'm doin' it."
"You were called to clean septic tanks?"
"Look," he poked the rancid air between his finger and my chest, "'Callin'' is what you lazy, starry-eyed dreamers want to do instead o' work.  Ye make up words like, 'vocation' to legitimize it."
"You can't poss--"
"Fook ye, get a job."
"A vocation is a job, it.."
"Not if no one pays you for it, it ain't."
"Dude, sometimes you have to strive for something, like olympic athletes or artists or.."
"Oy aye, and everyone loves those wankers, 'cept for the one payin' their room n' board!"
"Didn't you dream about being something when you were a kid?"
"Oh aye."
"What?"
"Ah dreamt a cleaning shite holes.  And here ah am!"
"You're a miserable bastard, Seamus."
"Vocational hazard, mate."

Stranger in a strange bed

The air is too thick

the welcome too thin.

came in from the cold

must have let it in.

the sheets are too clean

can’t shake the smell

of being a guest

in my own hotel

the silence’s too loud

there’s no sense of place

sealed in a capsule

tumbling through space

the bed is too soft

it’s freshly turned dirt

from the hole she dug

to bury her hurt

the distance too great

we’re too far apart

no man’s land between

and walls round her heart

we are two people

one swore we to be

now there’s a stranger

that stranger is me.

No Rhoads Warrior

i have been encouraged to write again.  And i almost wish i wasn't.  It makes life nigh on unbearable for me.

Not because i don't want to write, quite the opposite actually.  i do.  i want to with all of my innerds and a few of my outterds too.  i love writing and to make matters worse, i'm being urged to write a devotional which is a bit like inviting heroin into your life.  It feels good but several months from now i suspect my life will bear a strange resemblance to much of Syria.

i don't say that flippantly.  i've tried it before.  Devotion writing, not heroin.  i was, as you can read in the archives of this very blog and my Rabbit Trails one as well, full on into the expedition, with gunboys, porters, elephants and two particularly stout and careful fellows bearing my Ming dynasty bone china tea set.  One need not be uncivilised about such things.  But like the Brits with their empire, after the war, i had to give it up.  And for much the same reasons.

i had become an insufferable twat.

Here's the thing and it's taken me some time to recognize this about myself.  Or i recognized it long ago but oddly, my ego wouldn't allow me to speak the words.  i suspect i'm great.  i do not say i am fully convinced of this for i spend much of my time lamenting not being great.  Much of my depression seems to me now to come from not living up to my suspected potential, a word and phrase i heard growing up about as often as, "Wash your hands before dinner." or "Be nice to your brother, you know he looks up to you." or "Quit picking your nose!"  "He doesn't work up to his potential," they'd say.  "He has so much potential, this is disappointing."  "If you would only try, you have so much potential!"  Apparently, other people thought i was more than i was trying to be.

Which brought on two counter cravings.  The desire to be praised and recognized for the things i did, to be as great as they said i was and the equally emphatic desire to be ignored, to be left alone to do what i felt like doing rather than trying to "live up to my potential."  It was like i had to compete not with someone else, but with an imaginary better version of me.  A version, i was fairly certain, i did not recognize.  Though i fantasized about him a lot.  Eventually i decided i couldn't be him so why try.  i set my sights at achievable goals, OSHA approved industry minimums and bowed out.  Slowly, sadly the disappointed shook their heads and went away.

And you would think that would be the end of it.  Or you might not.  You're probably savvy enough to know that the worst voice of judment this side of the Great White Throne is in our own heads.  There's no where to hide from that voice.  No where to run.  And so as not to go into a narcissistic navel novel; yada yada, he grew up, struggles with angst common to man, listened to the voices, tried to live up to the potential once, failed, wrecked his marriage, his finances, his family and became a shell of a man, a burnt-out desolate man, a man who wandered out into the wasteland.

And now here they come again.  Worming their way into the black matter of my brain.  Should i take the bait my soul craves so mightily?  Have i become wise enough to handle the power or will the shame this time be mine?  Is the Cross enough?  Will i here, in this blighted place, learn to live again?

communion (i think i might illustrate this)

And there was a man
clinging to a bit of wood
alone in the sea
for many days.
Many, many days.
So long he despaired of ever seeing land again.

He cried out to God
both day
and night,
"Please save me!"
Day after day
night after night
the same plea
"God, please save me!"

One day he heard something.
A voice,
not an answer
but an echo.
And there was another man
clinging to a bit of wood
alone in the sea,
crying out, "God, please save me!"

"My boat sunk!" said the man.
"Mine too!
"All i have is this chunk of wood."
"Me too."
"I've been here many, many days."
"As have i."
"I've despaired of life."
"Brother." said the man.

the famous final scene

A question texted to his eldest son hangs in the ether unanswered.

Hello?

HellooooOOOOOooo?  He tries to make it funny.

His youngest finishes eating.  "You want me to put this away?" he asks.  Pappy looks at the vegetables and fruits in their sealed containers.

"Sure."  The young man puts them back in the fridge.  He never says a word.  He finishes and he goes upstairs.

Loreena McKennitt begs on the radio, "Please remember me."  Pappy sits alone at the table.  He sips his ale.  "Please remember me."  He thinks, this is where the camera pans back, back, back out the window, the air conditioner noise fades and the night enters the screen from the sides and closes on the shrinking man sitting alone.  Somehow the music rises to the fore.  "Please remember me."  Fade to black.  Roll credits.

But this isn't a movie or an artsy fartsy television show with a healthy dab of sap in its closing scene.  We won't magically move to our protagonist waking up tomorrow.  There's no way to cut out the loneliness, futility, frustration of waiting to sleep.  Of waiting for a little blessed oblivion.  Cut to daylight.  Cut to another day in the life of a sad sack.

The ipod randomly, yeah right, shuffles Ray Charles crying about something or other next.  He looks at the clock.  Seven twenty-seven.  Shit.  It's going to be a long night.  He takes another sip.

Life

"Life," Seamus said to me once, "is riding a bus somewhere you don't want to go with wankers you don't even like."

Had to ask

"Have you ever been treated for depression, Seamus?"
"Life is depression.  Everyone's depressed, lad.  Weeborns come out screaming and crying.  Living, yer way of life, is nothing more or less than how you choose to treat it."

Why do i talk to this guy?

"Yikes, Sheila cut off all her hair!"
"Woman-hater's hair cut," Seamus stated matter of fact around a mouthful of spaghetti.  I knew when I was being baited.  He knew I would give in.  Eventually.  Damn him.
"Okay, why not a Man-hater's hair cut?"
"Now what about that looks Man-hating to ye?" He gestured to Sheila's bob with his fork.
"I don't follow you.  She had gorgeous long hair.  Men loved it.  She cut it all off.  Obviously she's sick of being eye candy for men."
"Certain men.  Some like that sort of thing, I'm told.  Anyhoo, what's the worst thing a woman can do to a man?"
"Cut off his --"
"Oh aside from that, ye unphilosophical simpleton!"  I shrugged.  "Become a man!  And how can you truly hate a man if you're working so hard to become one?  They cut their hair, they wear men's clothes, they try to be independent, they try to do men's jobs, they talk like men, cuss like men and destroy and distort everything feminine about themselves.  They don't hate men.  They want to be men!  It's themselves they hate."
"So smart guy, what does a man-hater look like?"
"All the rest o' em."
"Jeez!  What do you call this dark, bleak little world you live in?!"
Seamus stabbed a spherical meatball and held it up to inspection.  "Earth."

A mystery wrapped in an enigma all tied up with paradox

Only my God.  Only Yahweh the mysterious and all knowing could come up with this.  Only He would know that you can teach a dog like me to love by denying me all visible love.  Only He would know that you could make someone an encourager by placing them in a desert devoid of the encouragement they crave.  Only He would know that a drought of kind words, a mouthful of sand and not a drop of joy even in a mirage, could make one a fountain for others.  Only He would hatch such a plan.  Only He would spring it in a moment when at my lowest i was crying out to him and lamenting this dry, waterless waste that i stagger through.

Only He would know i would totally see Him behind it all.

i love Him! 

Good Friday

 

Good Friday. 

Right now you have been up all night, first praying but then dragged to and through a mock trial.  You have been beaten and spit on, derided.  In a few hours, they will drag you up to Pilate, a foreigner, a pagan for yet another farce of a trial.  You will then be dragged to Herod for more of an interrogation.  But there you will be beaten and mocked some more.  Then back to Pilate where he will condemn you upon a political expediency.  Better one man die than many in an uprising.  And he lose his job if not his life.  With great power comes great anxiety.  And so he washes his hands and signs your death bill.  But first, you are flogged, scourged, flagellated.  Your skin torn off.  A crown of thorns, carefully woven by some sadist, is mashed down onto your head.  The king of sin, the king of the fall then tries to carry his own cross but is unable.  A Libyan Jew is forced to carry it for you.  Or with you.  You walk the streets of Jerusalem, staggering from pain and the weight of the all the world’s sin.  You who has never sinned, now is forced to endure the punishment of it, the separation from the Father, communion is broken.  Love is broken.  Now there is only wrath.  The wrath of the Father pours out on you, the faithful and true and undeserving son.  The only flesh born ever that did not deserve the wrath of God from birth. 
 

By around nine o’clock they will have nailed you to the wood and hoisted you high into the sky.  They offer you a drugged wine and you refuse.  Though when you do cry out for drink, they offer you only sour wine.  Vinegar.  Even those in the same predicament as you mock you from their own crosses where they pay for their own sins.  Save one.  Who begs you to but remember him.  Who recognizes your innocence.  Three hours you hang there.  The sky goes dark.  You cry out to God the Father as but God.  You declare it all done.  All the work of all creation finally finished.  And you commit your spirit into your Father’s hands.  The earth quakes, the veil in the temple is torn in two.  There is now no separation between us and you, the profane and the holy, we have been made clean by your finished work. 

By tonight, before darkness falls and the Sabbath begins, they who adored you in secret will finally make public their declaration by coming and asking for your body and preparing it for burial and placing it in their own tomb.  Freshly cut.  Never used.  A stone is rolled over the entrance.  It is sealed with the governor’s seal.  Guards are set and the world wanders away, your followers to hide behind locked doors in confusion and despair, your detractors behind smug self satisfaction, your executioners behind their ignorance.  Darkness falls.
 

Hi there, I AM.

Passover.

Slaves under an oppressive regime, literally worked to death.  And when God comes and introduces himself to them by name, their cultural memory of him and his last communication with them being four hundred and thirty years prior, he tells them something amazing.

Their biggest problem isn't the one they can see.  Yes, they are slaves.  Yes, the government is evil and wicked.  Yes, Yahweh is going to rescue them from their geopolitical and economic reality but what He has really come to do is rescue them from their sins.  From a curse which if they knew it at all was merely a part of their creation myth.  He has come to rescue them from eternal death.  And he even hints at how He's going to do it. 

Somewhere around two thousand years later a man comes to the same people, now subjects under a foreign empire in their own land.  This man sits down to another Passover dinner, now not much more than a religious ceremony that establishes their cultural and racial heritage, and tells them something amazing.  Their biggest problem isn't occupation forces and pagan governors, it is still not geopolitical and socio-economic.

He tells them He is God, and he's what Passover was all about.

The thoughts of an old soldier

When i was young, i thought i would win the war.
As i aged, i became afraid i'd missed the war.
Now...
   now.
Now i just hope to win this one, little skirmish before i die.


(And in other news, this site, my oldest blog, my first presence on the Wild World of Web, has over ten thousand views now.  i wish that meant something but i suspect, most, if not nearly all, are just spam bots.  But hey, milestones are milestones no matter how you get to them, i suppose.)

Welcome

i hate locked doors.

By extension, i hate being ignored, passively or actively locked out of a conversation, a group, a place where i was hoping to enter, participate in or just listen to.  i don't need to be celebrated, i don't have to have the recognition and delight of every participant, i just want to be included, allowed, given a fair shake. 

Welcome. 

America is locking its doors.  Fear and jealousy is taking over.  Selfishness.  If we share with you, there won't be enough for us.  If we let you in, you might do something violent.  If we let a lot of you in, we may change.  We won't be in charge anymore.  There is danger in welcome.  Guests are not always pleasant.  Hospitality is costly.  Safety is tenuous.  Comfort is more comfortable.  Welcome is vulnerable.

Vulnerable is scary. 

You have to assume damage if you are going to love the damaged.  And everyone is damaged.  None are healthy, no, not one.  Everyone is hurting from something.  And where they've been hurt, they have learned mechanisms to defend themselves.  Where they've been denied, they've learned skills to get what they think they need.  Those mechanisms and skills are broken, they are almost always sinful and damaging, but they work in the short term and that's all that matters to the damaged and the needy.  If you let them in, you are going to be stolen from, you are going to be hurt, your stuff is going to get broken.  They may be ungrateful.  They may lie about you.  They may hurt you.  They might even beat you up. 

They might kill you. 

They might drag you through your own streets, nail you onto a beam and hang you up for public ridicule.  This is what happens if you cross us!  This is what happens when you welcome!  This is what happens when you love! 

People call Christians intolerant.  They accuse us of being exclusive.  Unwelcoming and i'm sure they've got some examples they could hold up.  We are all broken, we are all damaged and some have yet to understand the God they believe in.

But that's not what we are.  Christians are people pointing to a door.  Testifying about a door.  You don't enter a house through the wall.  Only thieves go into a temple through the window.  You enter a kingdom through a gate.  Through a door.  Jesus is the door.  He's literally the way in. 

And for now, he's not locked.

A Night in Nox

In the gray, failing light of the last day of the year, the foot-tired travelers turned there backs to the chilling airs hovering over face of the lake and made for home.  Back, back to the road.  Back to the hard, poured surface of pitch and stone.  The black scythe swathe cut which proved man ruled these woods and went where he willed and did just as he pleased.  If they listened, they could just hear the whispered echoes of the rolling fortresses upon it.  They were not far.  Not far indeed.  The path was clear and hard packed from many feet; the way would be easy.  They would make their own fortress before dusk.

Twisting and twining, coiling and writhing the path led down into a shadow gloom of crouching pines.  Stunted and malformed, an army of ancient children, angry at their maker, keeping counsel with none but themselves, they hid from the light and turned the silent ground below to a moist carpet of needles which gave beneath the travelers’ tread.  Not in soft delight did they place their feet but in eerie dread as if trod upon the very flesh of a sleeping giant.  As if the softness and the blanket might muffle the breaths and they would fall into the very mouth and be swallowed up in darkness. 

Neither had much will to ponder long the spongy earth however as their ears and eyes were hooked and pulled to the gnarled spider limbed branches hanging low over their fearful faces.  A shadow flitted before them.  First one, then two, then three, then fifteen, then fifty, then a countless cacophony of feathers and wing, chirp and screech!  A great squawking, Hitchcockery mob, long overdue in the southlands, hanging here in this wicked wood.  Robins, robbed of their warm reds, cold gray and dull drabs in the gloom, glimpsed only for a moment as their sharp beaks split to cry at the interlopers.  Fear!  Flight!  The impenetrable net above them that strained out sky and light was filled with the wind of beating wings, they could feel it on their faces, it thrummed in their ears, an arrhythmic beat, an erratic madness.  Fear!  Flight!  Flee!  But never far, never far, always one step ahead, one branch further, only to take flight again!  The world around them became a dark, thrumming mass of flashing wing and darting darkness.  Their steps quickened but the path twisted back, this way and that, never free of the copse of malevolent trees and terrified birds. 

Light often comes in strange forms when one feels most trapped by the darkness.  A spell.  The grizzled traveler knew a charm for such times.  He sang an old, throaty song, a song of light in darkness, of warmth in cold, of succor in abandonment.  A melancholy tune of being found when lost.  A song it was, imbued with ancient power, an enchantment stronger than fear, greater than darkness: Hope.  Soon the shadows parted.  The wings drew back, further and further to either side and then fell at last, fell behind.  Joy began to peek out and then…

They froze, the song cut off. 

A call.  A voice of Night.  A sentry’s query.  Ominous and portent.  Who?  Who goes there?  State your business.

A shadow, a silhouette on a dead branch, a horned watchman on his tower.  Who? Who goes there?  They did not answer.  The interlopers dared not speak.  The great watchman lifted up and on moccasin wing and silenced currents went to make his report.  Joy stillborn, hope forgotten, the interlopers pressed on no longer sure of the Road.  No longer sure of Home.  Eyes wide for what may come next. 

What came next were gnomes.  At first the travelers spirits lifted.  At first they laughed at the brightly colored comedians.  The cavorting fools.  The antics of the minuscule denizens of this enchanted wood.  So here, then must be the source of the tricks of light and noise.  Here then was the cause of their folly.  And favored guests they must be to see this village of the fair folk!

But no fair welcome was this.  All they received was course jest and rude name.  Insult and ignominy.  And warning.  The guard made it clear what the natives thought of their grossly oversized intruders.  The dead eyed scavengers gnawing on bones made it clear what the fate of those caught in these woods at night would be.  But fear not us, they mocked, no, no, fear not us!  We are the janitors, we are but the gardeners.  Fear the Parliament!  Aye, they laughed,

    The Parliament, the Parliament,
many wasted minutes spent,
    many fools’ last moments,
wondering what the wee folk meant
    by fear the Parliament!

When they know just what we mean
    split they are from spine to spleen
Too late they see what we’ve seen
    and we will pick their fool’s bones clean
And sing a jolly last lament
    to fools who should fear the Parliament.

And with many more rude noises and raucous laughter at our backs, we quit that place and none too quickly.  And before i and my companion had time to consider the song of the faerie folk, the sentry called again.  From far ahead, between us and the road came the challenge.  It was answered from West.  That challenge was answered from the East.  Then behind.  Again, and closer from before. 

Surrounded.  Hurried we did now.  The gnomes had achieved their fateful work.  It was dusk, we had lost the light.  No silhouette accompanied our warnings from above now.  The sentries hung over us unseen but not unheard.  Now before us.  Now to the side.  Faster and faster we went, as fast as we dared as root and rock sought to trip us in the gathering gloom.  Night fell and still we were fighting the path itself.  This way and that it turned.  Taking us tortuously close to the road, within sight of passing fortresses and then away and deeper into the rolling wood and hollering cataract.  A watery trench between us and the road.  An open maw.  And always the Parliament overhead!  Unseen talons in the dark.  Silent wings at our backs.  The values shifted.  Dark path became ribbon of light. Reflecting leaves became deep shadow.  Trees closed in around us, reached for us, cut us off from the Road and then…

We stumbled and nearly fell down the steep embankment cut by human hands, abrupt, unnatural and oh so welcome at last we came to the Road!  Fumbling for the key, encased in steel and glass, engine roars to life, lights stab the darkness and make it deeper still but outside, outside, blessedly outside.  Escape at pursued impala speeds, they breathed deeper the artificially heated air, they let the chill escape their feet, they tore into sugary chocolate to sweeten the fear from their mouths and set course for home.

The deep raking talon tears along their souls will heal and be forgotten in a week or two.  Or so i’m told.

Probably not an original thought

The Oath is forged in moment of peace

when witness shine upon the maker;

But in battle fierce and darkness deep

are the keeper divided from the breaker.

The Vow is not for when love's river

be swollen with the rains of Spring;

But when choking drought and love's stone well

naught but dust the lover bring.

None need promise what none doubt done

in joyful days when Satan slept;

The Promise is not judged on noble intent

but in the devil's hour when it is kept.

Of fog and crows...

For no one hopes in what they've seen.

Voice of the Apocalypse

It has become an uphill slog of gory hand to hand combat to write.  To force fleeting flickers of thoughts to coalesce into lamps of luminous prose.  And it's not a block.  A lump of wall between the world of words and i.  It is the i in i.

i just don't see the point.

Lately i think a lot about finishing.  A conversation with Jeff the Elder in which we lamented and he said something that my mind remembers as, "there is a dearth of men finishing well."  Ending their lives as firm and as solid and as noble as they began them.  There is a falling off which happens.  An inward curvature.  A parabolic arc that turns the man upon himself, inward, selfish, low.  As if we all, like Gollum, bury ourselves beneath the mountain, far from eyes, far from light, far from anyone and anything we need to care about.  Hobbies become obsessive.  My precious.

Depending on how you measure it, i am either in the last third of my life or the very middle.  i think of life in terms of twenties.  Scores.  The first Score: birth and childhood.  The second Score: marriage, family, raising my sons.  i am in the third Score now, what is it?  What's its purpose?  What is its mission?  Does it have one or can that only be determined in hindsight?  Mid-life crisis?  Would we have the stereotype if it weren't true?  To me this score is the last of my productive years.  Anything beyond sixty is bonus round.  But the life i've lived will most likely make it a wasteland of the physical.  My body won't be up for another twenty by then.  If i follow in the footsteps of some of my forebears, my mind won't either.  So i don't hold out much hope for a fourth movement (though who knows?  Moses did ALL of his work from eighty to one twenty).  This is it.  This is the time you have allotted to you.

How shall you spend it?  What shall you do?

i feel the deck heave beneath me.  The world at large and personal is a Titanic in her death throws.  Nothing holds together.  i can hear the screams of the metal as it tears away and it mixes with the fear of the dying.  What is yet worth doing?  Is there anyone listening?  Anyone i can give a life preserver to?  Should i just sit here and draw the bow along the cello until the deep closes over?  Would anyone draw strength from the music?  Would i?

Is it enough to be the last DJ on the overnight, graveyard broadcast, playing his songs as the stars fall?  Pappy Fricken here, your shepherd through the pilgrim's progress of the long, dark night of the soul.  The last watchman on the wall, talking to the crickets and the katydids.  "Watchman, what of the night?" they cry, "Watchman, what of the night?"  Morning comes and also the night, i would answer.  If you would inquire, inquire.  Come back again to WHUT, playing your musical score to accompany the end of the world.  Saying never forget, never forget, Salvation before Revelation, my friends, crickets and katydids.  The end is only a new beginning and you don't want to miss the next world.  It's going to be the one you thought this one should be.  One worth writing about.  Come Lord Jesus, come!

Excerpt of another conversation with Seamus

"Ye know what i hate?" Seamus asked me one cooling evening in our favorite publick house.
"Everything," i answered with the full weight of assurance.
"Now that's a lie you could'a-"
"Excepting Guinness."
"Oh well, then aye.  Pretty much," he admitted.  Small victories.  "So to be perfectly clear then, do ye know what's particularly chafing this week?"
"No, but i'm sure it's epic."
"Completely overused descriptor, lad, it's this generation's 'awesome."
"Paramount then."
"Better," he took a swig of his beer, "it's this whole business of being holier-than-thou."
"Run into that a lot do we?"
"More'n ye c'n know nor likely guess."
"Try me."
"Never ye mind, it's moot."
"How so?  Cuz it's not true?"
"Ach no!  It's dead nuts!"
"So your annoyed that your better than everyone or that they notice it?"
"Not better, ho-li-er," he drew out the key word.
"Ah well, we can't all be saints as righteous as you."
He slammed his hand down on the bar, startling me and not a few others.  "A fookin' cannibal pimp with blood on his fookin' lips could be as righteous as I fookin' am!"
"Right.  Yet it's accurate to label you holier-than-thou?"
"Aye."
"And that annoys you."
"Fook no," he took another sip, as if i didn't know it was for dramatic pause and effect.  "It annoys me that ..," he swept the entire pub and by extension, society at large in a roll of his eyes, "they..think the problem lies with me!"

An awkward introduction

"Seamus!  You wazzock!  You never told me you were married?  This beguiling woman is your wife?"
"Wife?"  Seamus looked intently at the woman for a moment, "no.  'at's not quite it.  Is there a word for, 'stranger I 'appen to sleep naked in the same bed with?'"
"I hate you," she said to him.
"Nemesis!  That's the word.  Thank you darling."

about cows

No, your confederate flag does not make you a racist...

But your dogmatic adherence to it does make you unloving...

"Therefore, let us no longer pass judgment on one another, but rather decide this: not to place a cause for stumbling or a temptation before a brother. I know and am convinced in the Lord Jesus that nothing is unclean of itself, except to the one who considers something to be unclean; to that person it is unclean. For if because of food, your brother is grieved, you are no longer living according to love. Do not destroy by your food that person for whom Christ died. Therefore do not let your good be slandered. For the kingdom of God is not eating and drinking, but righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit. For the one who serves Christ in this way is well-pleasing to God and approved by people.

So then, let us pursue what promotes peace and what edifies one another. Do not destroy the work of God on account of food. All things are clean, but it is wrong for the person who eats and stumbles in the process. It is good not to eat meat or to drink wine or to do anything by which your brother stumbles or is offended or is weakened. The faith that you have, have with respect to yourself before God. Blessed is the one who does not pass judgment on himself by what he approves. But the one who doubts is condemned if he eats, because he does not do so from faith, and everything that is not from faith is sin."  Romans 14

"But this knowledge is not in everyone. But some, being accustomed until now to the idol, eat this food as food sacrificed to idols, and their conscience, because it is weak, is defiled. But food does not bring us close to God. For neither if we eat do we have more, nor if we do not eat do we lack. But watch out lest somehow this right of yours becomes a cause for stumbling to the weak. For if someone should see you who has knowledge reclining for a meal in an idol’s temple, will not his conscience, because it is weak, be strengthened so that he eats the food sacrificed to idols? For the one who is weak—the brother for whom Christ died—is destroyed by your knowledge. Now if you sin in this way against the brothers and wound their conscience, which is weak, you sin against Christ. Therefore, if food causes my brother to sin, I will never eat meat forever, in order that I may not cause my brother to sin." 1 Cor 8

Cows should be made meals, not sacred.