::return to morbidity::

I'm re-reading through some old journal entries this morning. They are simultaneously encouraging and destructive: destructive in that they challenge my current mode of thought and are pulling up some hideous weeds from my soul, weeds that I was trying to call flowers. Do you ever do this? I do...I have weeds and I try to convince myself that they are flowers so that I won't have to call the Landscaper to come in and clean me up. Silly me, they're obviously thorny and full of thistles, and they are choking the good flowers. Anyways, that's not the thought for the morning.

Before DTS I got stuck on this "morbid" idea, but a very biblical one, and that is that we are both living (in Christ) and dying (to ourselves) every day. In the last months of 2006 I wrote numerous poems declaring that for me, going to DTS was a form of dying because my life here in Ohio would be dead and I would be re-born in California. Obviously, Christ calls us to come and die day by day to sin, to our flesh, and to the world, and to be alive to Christ. But this theme of death hasn't been at the forefront of my mind for a long time.

In my journal from 2007 post-DTS, I'm reading from the entries corresponding to my silent retreat of that year. Some lines that are striking to me:

"if I am not willing to die, I cannot live. And if I cannot live, I must die."

"But for now, I am young. I am growing always upward first, and must learn responsibility over lenght of days. For how you spend your days is, of course, how you spend your life."

"My experiences must be tested and prove to remain true through death before they can be used to give life. I cannot give what I do not have."

The fact of the matter is: we are called to die. This world is NOT our home, far be it from us to live as though it is all we are expecting to receive from the Lord. There is too much at stake for me to be wrapped and wound so tightly into what is happening around me, as far as I can see. I'm kind of short...God can see way farther than I can.

May I submit my sight always to the See-er...and may we be part of His people described in Revelation 14.1-5:

"Then I looked, and behold, the Lamb was standing on Mount zion, and with Him one hundred and forty-four thousand, having His name and the name of His Father written on their foreheads. And I heard a voice from heaven, like the sound of many waters and like the sound of loud thunder, and the voice which I heard was like the sound of harpists playing on their harps. And they sang a new song before the throne and before the four living creatures and the elders; and no one could learn the song except the one hundred and forty-four thousand who had been purchased from the earth. These are the ones who have not been defiled with women, for they have kept themselves chaste. These are the ones who follow the Lamb wherever He goes. These have been purchased from among men as first fruits to God and to the lamb. And no lie was found in their mouth; they are blameless."