Presently, one lamb neck and one lamb shank are simmering merrily on the stove in a good deal of wine, on a bed of aromatic vegetables.  I have already imbibed half a six pack of the Red Menace and feel just a little guilt at the money I will drink before the night is over and we retire.

     Lauren's shift at the cafe ends in a little less than two hours.  I have the exclusive privilege of picking her up when she is done.  The simple truth that she is my wife has done more to convince me than any theology text that providence and not human will determines our lot.  It is absurd to think that my human volition could ever engender beauty and pleasure that so obviously transcends the human realm.

     How remarkable is it that this divine blessing is so empirically enjoyed and not some spiritual vibration?  Passionate, covenant marriage is incarnational.  No wonder Paul used it to convey the mystery of Christ's unity with the church.

     Isn't it strange that Paul in Eph.5, after all that practical guidance to married couples, says, "This is a great mystery, but I speak concerning Christ and the church."  It is as though he was not giving a session of marriage counceling, as our bible headings would have us believe.  Perhaps he was developing an allegory and perhaps we are too quick to read didacticism into the passage.

     Indeed, we are too often prone to think that the Bible is about us and making our lives better.  Not for a moment do I suggest that we should not take practical ques from this passage.  Rather, I question whether or not allegory and description are separate from didacticism, teaching and counceling.

     I have always thought that counceling today is so distasteful because it is artless.  How can people expect to learn anything, much less grow in any way without soulish inspiration?  No one will change their lives for bullets on an outline, but beauty has launched a thousand ships.

     And what is more beautiful than sacrifice?  I submit that there is nothing that pulls at the heart more than the narrative of willful sacrifice... and damn good delivery.  Unfortunately, we cannot separate the two: good material and delivery.  It is futile to give twig-boy Shakespeare and expect not to fall asleep, but give a Cherios box to Richard Harris and you will weep.

     Does this imply that the content is inefficacious?  Is not the Bible good enough on its own to inspire absolute obedience?  We feel as though we are comprising the worth of scripture if we even hint that art sharpens its edge.  Sola scriptura means it doesn't need anything else, right?

     Perhaps the problem is on our end.  We have stripped the art from scripture in the name of reformation theology.  Refusing to acknowledge it as a text, written in numerous literary modes and subject to the vagueries common to the written word, we have impoverished its message.  It has been reduced to an impotent history textbook and ten step guide.  Its correlation with what we have determined is real and historical has obfuscated its transcendent authority over the "real," in our estimation.

     And what is authority if not the very act of defiance?  And what does Eph.5 do if not defy our convenient delimitation of that passage to the category and application of marriage counceling?  Perhaps it is a great poem and given the delivery worthy of its origin, it would not be some useless bible study topic that no one else in the world cares about.

     If your church shut down today, would the nieghborhood it is in even notice, much less suffer the loss?  Eph.5 has in this way been shut down.  It is irrelevant; it means nothing to your nieghborhood because ultimately, it only means to us, the Christians.

     We have relegated it to informative meaning, expressly limited to the abstract because we cannot fit poetry in a bulletin or a bible study outline.

     Speaking of the which, I must go now and pick up Lauren at the cafe.  When we return, the soup she has been simmering all day and the lamb I have been braising will be our feast; his body and his blood our meat and our wine.  This is intoxication.

M

Lay the Axe to the Root

     I have nothing profound to say.  I used to have the luxury to read and blog for hours.  I could organize abstractions in my head and then communicate them in a way that entertained and stimulated my readers.

     That luxury is gone from me now.  Work has replaced it.  Lauren and I build our home on our weekends and during the week, I work 10 to 14 hour days.

     The temptation for me is to think that there are two kinds of living: the contemplative and the active, Il Penseroso and 'L Allegro, as Milton would have it.  Life and material necessity have driven me to the field and to toil.  I am tempted to think that my mind is now less active than my body.

     All of these thoughts, however, are false.  They are the alluring call of discontent.  They are complex because there is a brilliant ideology inculcating them.  I know that such an interpretation of my circumstances is untrue because it would corner me, it would ostensibly victimize me into being discontent and unhappy.

     We know, however, that circumstances are indifferent and irrelevant.  Obedience is always possible and blessed.

     We know also that my mind is part of my body.  The stimulation thereof is no less sweet in the field than it is with a text.  The field is a text.  I read it everyday to see if it will yield the pasture to sustain the lambs and the cows.

     My mind is no less fed by food than by propositions.  I know that the meat from the industrial slaughter plant and the irradiated, dead milk from infected cows will sap my energy and leave my mind and body vapid and ill.

     It is a cruel trick for a human to feel that relearning how to grow and prepare food is a blue-collar, lesser concern than the cloistered luxury of contemplation and the deceptive ease of shopping at a grocery store.  To confuse convenience with prosperity is an illusion.  To subsequently equate freedom with convenience and ease is crafty tyranny.

    Convenience and ease create dependence and precipitate the loss of the ability to be truly independent.  To be the master of your own material existence, that is freedom.  To raise, slaughter, prepare and consume your own meat is independence.

     Do not be deceived.  Your right to affordable, quality food in the supermarket is not a right all.  It is coached in the language of entitlement so that you think it is in your best interest.

     We heard this after 9/11.  We were told to go and consume.  Our great retaliation to the terrorists was to go to the mall to spite them.  Shop, buy and trade, and you will be a freedom fighter.  Go, you courageous American, and fly in an airplane to prove to those bastards that you do not fear them.

     This lie functions only to lull you into impotence.  To rob you of your God-given dominion over his creation and turn it over to those who would exploit it for filthy lucre.

     All of these structures of consumer comforts serve only to lift the burden of sustaining life off of our shoulders and thus transform us all into children.  We do not know what it means to be responsible to produce our own food.  The Lord's prayer suddenly becomes obsolete when our daily bread can always be found on the supermarket shelf.
 
     The worth of a man is placed in the management of his debt.  Of course, it is not expressed this way.  Rather, our phraseology conceals how shallow this standard is.  We say instead that owning a home is a mark of maturity.

     Is it?  Is it really ownership if you pay an institution every month for the privilege to inhabit your own home.

     Does this not sound more like a monarchy?  How is a mortgage any different than a property tax?  Instead of the government, we pay the bank.  Recently, the banks and the government can scarcely be distinguished.  The Federal Reserve determines your worth by inflating or deflating the currency with which you exchange your material goods.

     The fruit of your labor is exchange value, not food and sustenance.  It is an abstraction whose pith is measured by a few men telling you how much you can sell it for.  We think that by determining an hourly rate or by setting a price on goods we sell that we control the value thereof.  But the unit of exchange, the dollar, is not under our control.  Our food, consequently, is given to us rather than being produced by us.  We are all reduced to beggars, being alloted our rations if we bring enough green food stamps, a welfare state indeed.

     We are estranged from the work of our own hands.  It is mediated to us by fiat currency.

    A revolution would serve to delay the implosion of this empty value strategy.  The lasting remedy, however, that can see fulfillment in this life, I have yet to fully grasp though I know from whence it springs: The resurrection of Jesus.

When He had disarmed the rulers and authorities, He made a public display of them, having triumphed over them through Him.
Col 2:15.

Outlawed Meat

     I woke up this morning to our rooster crowing louder than I have ever heard him crow before.  His voice is developing.  We took away his competition a couple days ago and braised him.  He is now free to express his chicken soul without being pecked by a more dominant cock.

     Today I work on the farm.  This afternoon I will pack my box truck for the long weekend of farmers' markets ahead.  We sell lamb, pig, eggs, broilers, milk, cheese, charcuterie and wine, all raised and perpared on Vashon Island.  I work with the animals when I am not at the markets.

     The Health Department shut us down a couple weekends ago for selling fresh meat (we are the only source of fresh meat in Seattle) unwraped in an outdoor market.  The inspector and his sidekick surprised me.  I did not think that adulthood allowed humans to develop into chronic tattlers.

     I realized later what made my gorge rise at their presence in utter disgust: smug immaturity.  They, as government officials, assume authority over everything we do as a farm, yet they have never farmed or sold food at market.  Still, they march into your stall without asking and make fiat pronouncements regarding its worth.

     Is this not the epitome of inexperienced childishness?  There is something about obsessive adherence to the rules that smacks of abject dependence.  The rules themselves are absurd.  Europeans have been selling unwrapped fresh meat in open air markets for centuries.

     The inspector wore a fanny pack.  I instantly percieved a batman complex.  His skin was pale, the same color as his graying hair.  He was the most sanitized human I have ever seen.  I think he bathes in alcohol every morning to sterilize his existence to the sheen of a white lenolium counter top illumind by phlorescent lights.

     Because we value our customers over the inspectors, we of course continued to sell illegal meat after they left.  A few of our customers actually yelled at the inspectors.

    Illegal meat.  The MacDonalds in the city can sell fecal burgers with their approval.  In fact, the inspector's role is to eliminate competition for the industrial meat processing plants who buy the legislation with their lobbyists.

    The most troublesome part of this is that the inspectors are convinced of their own great worth.  There is no wink.  No nod.  No gesture to let us know that, yes, this code is ridiculous, but I must follow orders.  They believe in the code.

     This, above all, frightens me.  How far would they go to enforce the code?  If I continue to disobey, would they eventually come with guns?  The liquor control board officers are armed and wear bullet proof vests.

Is the evil of our government a secular distraction?

What does this have to do with Jesus?

Is it a temptation to shift our focus as Christians?

These are the questions I have encountered from Christians.  My family has been ordered to leave a church because we have invited people to dinner and discussed what we believe about 9/11.

These are the questions we need to ask:

Why is the church siding with the government?

Why are our pastors promising to keep their people submissive under marshall law?  These are FEMA pastors:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NrypChFrcSk

     I submit to you that you do not have the choice.  Whether or not you think this is a secular distraction, it will come to your front door.  Isn't it obvious that even the question ("what does this have to do with Jesus?") is only the luxury of a people who do not have marines invading their homes?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VOU934hhuEQ&feature=related

     It is easy to speculate about the propriety of involvement when involvement is a choice.  The question becomes irrelevant when they make that choice for you.