Tuesday, May 24, 2005

Yeah....cyberspheric absenteeism abounds here. And even in some of my peeps that I run with. An excellent ensample am I (how 'bout some Middle English for ya?).

Busy. Aren’t we all just that? Aren’t we agendized to the max? I mean, I’m having a love jones for a smartphone right now because I think it’s gonna make my life more manageable. I justify it because my phone is toying with me and my Sony Clie SJ-30 died a miserable and taunting death weeks ago. That’s what I get for being a suckling tethered to the tremendous technological teat central to our society.

Busyness is the devil’s home-boy. Pastor-types are the best to hitch up with hurry for succor because of our unhealed need-to-be-needed syndrome. Arguably, the ONLY real difference in this way between being a pastor in the establishment church and being one in the simple/organic realm is the number of people potentially available to impose upon our relational resources and thereby feed our ego needs and depleted affirmation reserves. Validation is the fake payoff for busyness.

Relational sacrifices have, can and will be made. We choose and we un-choose. It is all risk, pure and simple. What often goes unspoken are the expectations of those in these relationships. Some inevitably assign more worth to the relationship than others and it is entirely possible that some can find what they need elsewhere. But who determines that? Who gets to define the relationship? True, there are seasons where relational spheres overlay. But if God be the mover and we move on, so be it. But if by negation we neglect what we had, was what we had mere novelty among the others we pursue?

I think I will tend to be draining and somewhat selfish with this perspective. I understand that. I am a relational mutt. I am a commitment junkie…..in part because of familial history. I am a communication freak. I know most often how, when and where it’s needed but I do often suck at it where it really counts. I am realizing that I need a constant relational frame of reference to battle a persistent nostalgic/melancholic tendency that permeates my relational foundations and current efforts. I need to know that the tribes I choose are the ordinations of God…..and I know that’s not fair. I emerged from one that at times seemed to be ordained by despair. To know that I can choose and abide with a people is a revolutionary paradigm for me.

I will push the edges in my need for mileposts on my relational journeys. They are not there for retreat-----ever. They are to show me where I’ve been. But sometimes people are slow or they just don’t clarify that the milepost is their own exit sign. That always aches too familiar.

So enuff with the needy-bleedy stuff.

Got a new WalMart Stuporcenter in O-town. You walk in- it doesn’t even FEEL like you’re in Oxford anymore. Tell me that a place like that which can impose upon your spatial sense of reality isn’t spiritual. From miles around, we will pay monetary homage weekly to this retail demigod. I was there today momentarily and was awash with the giddiness to get, to buy…to consume. So I bought my stuff and ran shrieking, “get thee behind me Walton!!”

Comments