I have been considering my age and flaws of late, and thought I would blog a bit on the process and how it affects me and the Uffizi Mission Project.
Here is a stream of consciousness writing regarding my age and flaws – how my mind works: my eyesight is going, I weigh more than I should, my brain is more cloudy and harder to focus, I find it difficult to remember names, more difficult to sit down and work out what I need to train people in, rub my head alot, seem to stall in conversations when I should know what I am talking about… lose a bit of control with my emotions (cry for ten minutes during Toy Story 3, get defensive over my way of life chosen)…
Why do I blog about it – because I am done with perfection. I am through with the idea of the perfect family, perfect life, perfect ministry, becoming the perfect person, having the perfect theology, being perfect in love. I just want to be flawed. It is push back in my own soul.
And yet I am all about becoming like Christ. It is really the direction of my compass.
But what is it to be “fully human?” What is it like to need to be saved yourself, and remain there? To bask in not-knowingness or being a no one? Of no reputation?
I am getting prepared again for the human journey that none of us can escape, though we build up all kinds of systems to be someone in someone else’s eyes.
I will be forgotten. I will no longer be needed. Horrible thing to think or feel – but absolute reality. I can be replaced – and should prepare for it. It is another point on my compass. It is when it all ends.
I have a love hate relationship with success. God is doing something really special now on the West Side and on the Streets – because of the work of all kinds of people. Now people want to know how it happened, or make it better, or have an opinion about it. People are meeting with me with secret objectives – checking me/us out. Are we legit – is our theology right?
Can I say, “I don’t know.” I just simply put the words of Jesus into practice in sub-cultures and let it be? Does it have to be more than that? Because, that is all I really want to do. I want to see what happens when we do what Jesus says to do – it is an experiment.
I don’t deserve a reputation either way. It is not attached to me. It is attached to Him. See if He didn’t ask us to do it?
As everything grows – I decline.