one of three options

how do we, who have a faith in an omnipotent and supposedly loving God encounter this?


from the heavens, it seems so beautiful, so perfect, so God-ordained, as though God dipped his finger in the sky and created a picture and a reality.




from the ground, it is devastation. it devastates more than even the people, it devastates faith. it draws me to look at God’s “thou” or “i” and de-vast-ate God by categorizing God as judge, absent, or one to whom I no longer exist.

i went to a weekly church service twice while in boston. both times, two different men named jeff preached in some capacity – one about prayer and another through prayer

one proclaimed that the tragedy is God’s judgment of the wicked. my jaw dropped and I struggled to see him as a part of “we” without categorizing him as “them.” I was afraid that my religion, my God was insensitive, unloving, and deceptive when God claims to love the poor.

I found a “we”, but still stewed.

the other confessed anger, rawness, questions of a God who claims to be loving and to care for the poor. my jaw clenched – if he is uncomfortable with God, if he doesn’t have answers, is my God real? is my God love? is my God true? is my God for the poor?

when I ask those questions of my God, I ask them about God – God is an it. God is already lost to me as i assess God in this historical moment rather than encountering God, being fully present with full sorrow, full fear, full anger and receiving God’s presence as God bestows in that moment – allowing the interchange, the air, the moment between God and me, between God and the world, between the world and me, to be the very spirit by which I live.

I retreat and hide in the objectivity of categorization and, though, the loss of the God I thought I held to, the God it turns out I might not hold to, the God I may not want to hold to is a scary reality, the scarier reality is bringing this fear, openly, undefendedly, bleedingly to God, a “thou” I’m not currently positive that I trust.

I felt “we” with the latter jeff and that scared me, I tried valiantly to run from the suffering, to medicate with philosophy, to escape encounter, ironically, in the pages of a book about counter, and in the circles I can run in my mind without venturing into the world.

I found a “we,” and for that reason, stewed.

it’s tempting to join the one jeff and explain the suffering making God the victim and those that are other than myself the offender. It is tempting to dig your feet into an answer and an ideal that explains the suffering – that justifies it.

it is not tempting to join the other jeff as he sits in ashes and sack cloth morning, tearing his metaphorical clothes in the face of God, proclaiming the injustice, facing how this seems to counter act our faith in a God who is for and with the poor, being openly angry, inviting our community into our suffering.

our choices are three: entrenchment, with the one jeff, encounter with the other, or, the great american way, numbness, ignorance, sitcoms instead of news, diving into a philosophical book, naval gazing, spiritualization: doing everything possible to distract myself from the pain - a path which, though I know it not, like leprosy, leads to death.

i do love God.
i do know that God is good that that God is for the poor.
but as these facts do not answer the questions, the fear, the pain, i must bring all of these to God and to the community of God for encounter, meeting, being present to one another, wounds and all.

thank you, latter preacher jeff, for a calling and a prophetic action to honest, sorriful encounter.