Gil Bailie handed me a line that deals with the coming into being of the eschatological imagination. I will use I often - I think. He says that this imagination 'is nothing other than Jesus' mind-fixed on the utterly effervescent goodness and vivaciousness of God.' Nothing else. Stop looking back. Forget about the pay-backs. Ignore the insults. Drop the guns. Put out of the vocabulary the words that blame and abuse and destroy others.
As Jesus moves toward Jerusalem - actually as he moves in and through all the tales of his life - he resides in and invites in the fullness of God's Reign. Nothing else is on his plate and it is always a plate he offers to others without price. Within the imagery of Bailie's statement I imagine the Creator of all things dancing - singing - and completely involved in the life that is unfolding as each bit of creation springs forth out of the fullness of this creative genius.
It is not easy to have our minds fixed on that utterly effervescent goodness and vivaciousness of God - at least not for me. There are just so many ways to fall all over the stuff that has a way of turning one person against another. When that takes place, we tend not to keep note of God's goodness and vivaciousness - which is essentially ours also. Instead of living within the God's peaceable Reign that is meant to be the promise of the future busting into the present, we go to war - we make sure the war we fought is greater than the one you fought - we detest those who did not fight in the war - we cannot see the beauty of service not linked to warfare. Most of all, acts of reconciliation are too often simply excluded from our lives because we have come to fool ourselves into believing that word and actions of reconciliation - in regard to any and all enemies - is a show of weakness. So, we fight and are left with the dullness and mean-spiritedness that helps to build the hell we say we hate but cannot continue on without it.
I work as a part-time Uber driver and I have been finding that I like driving and I like the people in the car when I am able to honor them and attempt to listen to them. I also find my first task is to make their trip in time one that is pleasant - engaging - simply restful. I have picked up a wide variety of folks. Some have pulled me out of my boxed-up world and helped me see how wide open a life well-lived can be even if it is not my own. I have come to think that it would be wonderful for everyone in the car when those times come in which I am able to be a witness the God Bailie describes. No preaching - no attempt to convert, simply that creative presence that whips through the day - any day within the garden of God's vivaciousness.
TRRR
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