when icon or idol is in our hands

I

I'm back in Texas heat, missing the roll whisper breeze that tumbles over the sea in St. Andrews. In midspring, I would leave my flat and walk the forest to town, 'neath a canopy of purple blossoms, take the second ally to the right, the third to the left, and eventually find myself on the beach as the sun lazily rose upon the water, a sea of crystal that taught me to see the line of the liturgy, world without end. 

Once, I gathered stones from the shoreline and built an altar in the sand. I named it Beth-el, House of God, and worshiped there a time.

Do I know if it still stands?

I do not.

Do I know if I should be able to show you the spot, the place, the point?

I don't think so.

But I believe the stones remember, the sand too. I believe the tide coming in remembers, the sun, the wind. I believe the atmosphere of the realm remembers, remembers how it bent and fractures, perhaps however little. The moment when heaven ruptured into earth, because our God is a God who hears, our God is a God who has made habitation in this cosmos, on our planet, and we are, no matter where we are, in His house.

I believe in icons.

I believe in signs of glory.

I believe that God permeates the cosmos.

And I believe we are want to forget that. I believe we think it's easier that way. 

II

The first cause is God.

This is what is known as the cosmological argument, that if we trace the events of being back far enough, the only answer we are left with is the Other. There is an origin of all things, and it is God. 

Whatever flaws there are with the argument, and there are, it does have something to say to us about how we understand our world. 

If the world is created by God and has its origin in God, then the world is inherently good.

A good God makes a good creation. A creation that is not static and apart from Him, but dances out, processes forth, and however far it may float away from its centre, it knows instinctually its rightful place in the middle, is winding its way out and back, is always connected to Source no matter if it turns away or turns back, living in shadow and light, in the gaze of the Eternal, even by the smallest thread of Light.

Some of the stream of thought from the Reformed tradition would quickly want to step in and make claims about the fall of the cosmos rendering it now evil and depraved.

I am too aware of the psalter, the epistles, and the prophets to be so swayed; those prophets who were caught up into the flow of the Spirit, as St. Peter writes.

And if we take care, we can weave the Scriptures together to see it, I think: 

“For in Christ we live, and move, and have our being,”

“And he is before all things, and by him all things consist,”

“All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made.”

and, “He has made every thing beautiful in its time: also he has put eternity in men’s hearts, so that no man can find out the work that God does from the beginning to the end.”

The creation is good. The creation is His.

III

What makes an icon? What makes an idol? 

They are first and foremost created things. They are creature fashioned by Creator.

An idol is something prayed into. Believed into. It is a creature that is elevated to hold a response that rightfully belongs to the Creator. 

But notice the language. The creature itself is not inherently bad, it is the way the creature is regarded that changes it. 

An icon is prayed through. Believed through. It is a creature that is placed in the cosmic drama as a window by which we may glimpse the holy Centre. 

Notice the language. The creature itself is not God, it is the means by which we glimpse an aspect of God we perhaps otherwise would have not seen. 

If we believe this, and I do, then nothing is so secular that it cannot be sacred.

When the first missionaries came to that beach where I built the altar of the House of God, they encountered a people who worshiped the sun. 

Did they call the sun an idol? 

No. 

They said, "See, you have worshiped the sun, but your worship has stopped short. The sun shows you light, points to the Light. May we tell you of the One who is the Eternal Light? May we show you to whom all worship must bend back?" 

The sun, once idol, becomes icon. 

On the turn of a word. 

But isn't that conversion? Do we not say that it is by the turn of a word, spoken or unspoken, that Christ is Lord? That this profession we call enough, ransoming, enthralling? 

I am circling back to the first cause. 

If the first cause is God, then the command to have no other gods before Him must be this: make icons of the idols. Wherever you go, as you go, turn the idols into icons. 

IV

I am an Anglican, or in the process of becoming one, because we are a people who take the point when it comes to signs.

Some time ago I sat in the office of my thesis advisor, talking about the Eucharist.

“I believe in the Real Presence,” I said simply, “But I have no idea what that means.”

It was a silly thing to say, perhaps. How do you believe what you do not understand? (Though I think there’s something of St. Paul’s reasoning in that.) But what I meant was that I had always taken the phrasing Real Presence to sound as true as anything else I had heard or read concerning the Eucharist. What that meant I wasn’t entirely clear on, what that meant I had spent the past three years trying to understand.

“It’s like a drama, Preston. Take a staging of Oedipus for instance. The actor playing Oedipus is standing off stage and someone in the cast announces, ‘Here comes Oedipus!’ and the actor comes out on stage. Is the actor really, in the sense of literally, Oedipus? No. But do we grant, do we believe, do we for the sake of what is unfolding say that in this moment, this actor is unto us Oedipus? We do. In this sense, we say that Oedipus is present to us, is really present.”

The line from Rite I clung to me: and be unto us His body and His blood.

Something from Handle’s Messiah: unto us a Child is given.

If the Eucharist is anything, it is an icon. An icon that ordinary things can become unto us the windows that reveal a reality infinitely other and infinitely beyond. Held by a single thread of Light. Back and back again, samsara. Our lives are circles.

V

Earth's crammed with heaven, 
And every common bush afire with God, 
But only he who sees takes off his shoes;
The rest sit round and pluck blackberries.

VI

I want to make you a sort of invitation, to leave theology behind for a day. 

Impossible, I know, but hear me out. What I mean is that for a day I am inviting you to linger, to not ask for the sake of putting into a category, to not try and cram earth into heaven but heaven into earth. To put aside words like election and feminism and for a day to simply recognise the icon of the creation all around you.

Theology is not God, but we idolise it so. 

Take a day of recovery, of reminding yourself that theology is icon, too. Words are icons, too. This good creation is one vast, dizzying icon. 

For a day, be open to the miraculous ordinary. 

For a day, be willing to see the icons all around you. 

For a day, maybe repurpose some of your idols. 

If the first cause is God, whatever you put in front of God that you cannot see God through has become an idol. 

But do not take flame or sword to it. Not just yet. Perhaps it needs refining, pruning, but first take a moment to see if all it needs is polishing. Slow. Steady. A glass darkly eventually to see through. 

VII

I worry sometimes about making sense.

But then I worry more about making too much. 

A Texas storm just rolled in and soon the street outside my parents' house wil spill with warm water into the ditches on either side and carry along the decayed wood across the neighbourhood, back into the forest.

And here, icon, too. Icon of us, walking into the current of the Spirit, ebbing back and forth, until we are carried, samsara, back to the Centre. 

At least, that is how I am choosing to see it. 

Icon or idol. Only the Spirit and I can know.

But I know this: this is the House of God. 

when you can ask me anything

I'm a bit busy these days.

I'm knee-deep into writing chapter three. (Read: I'm sitting in Starbucks eavesdropping on baristas and taking artsy photos with VSCOcam, which is my favourite app ever now, and pretending to be writing.)

I get on a plane next Thursday to fly to Boston. (Because, you know, that really hot girl.)

And there's a full first season of The Newsroom  to rewatch in anticipation of its return in July. (Real talk.)

Oh, and being an intern for the Anglican Diocese of the Western Gulf Coast in charge of supplying recommendations for communications, marketing, and spiritual formation. (Whatever, I shop at J Crew. I'm an adult.) 

So in the midst of all that, which I have a few posts rumbling around ready to be written, I'm also ready to admit that I seem sometimes to be working a bit on fumes these days. 

Here's where you come in. 

I'd like to turn it over to you. Ask me anything. And I do mean anything. Drop something into the comments or send me an email if you'd like it to be anonymous. It can be big or small. The small ones may get lumped together for a single post, the bigger ones may get large posts on their own, or I may choose to ignore a question because I can and it's my blog I love you.

Ask me my favourite movies, what I think about what happens in the Eucharist, what the last book I read was and if I liked it, whether I have strong opinions about Bombay Sapphire Gin (I do), if I think there actually is a big difference between being Anglican and Episcopalian, etc.  

Sound good?

I'm leaving comments open all weekend. 

Have at it. 

For now, I'm in want of basil lemonade and kale chips.

when i have made altars of sand in want of stone

I

I need to apologise to you, as readers. I have made reconciliation with God, but I must also make it with you.

I have been making altars of sand to false gods--the god of Feminism, the god of Social Justice, the god of Education, the god of Power, the god of Authority. I have mounded the dunes with my hands and sacrificed atop them, have slain the innocent for the sake of an old trickster magic that is but Death in masquerade as Life. I have forgotten the old story, the words of power that called forth all into motion, and have settled for bastard echoes of voice instead of the Voice.

For God is first and first only and it is His kingdom that shall have no end. 

While I made my altars of sand I forgot Him, the One by whom feminism is true; the One through whom righteous justice comes; the One whose Spirit births insight; the One in whom power is yielded in perfect submission; the One by whom all are given a measure of grace for the sake of the whole.

I have lived as if the Gospel is an act of works, as if it is brought forth in word and deed, hauling my putrid sacrifices atop the withering altars, thinking, 'Here, now, I have accomplished.'

And yet. 

These altars of sand are no gospel. Feminism is no gospel. Social justice, education, power, authority. If they are the first then they are a lie. They are demons playing our weaknesses, which I have handed over, again and again, seventy fold. 

These things are only True when they are wrapped up into the One by whom all things were made. 

Without the Incarnation of Jesus Christ, His death that defeated Sin and His resurrection that overthrew Death, there is no gospel. Not one bit. We are still making altars of sand to false gods who do not hear our prayers, to demons who laugh at our mortal hopes, having put faith in the present and the present ruler, instead of in the whole and the One.

And today, I am beginning to topple my altars of sand.

Today I am in want of an altar made of stone. 

II

I have grown weary of blogging. 

I have grown weary of calling out and calling down and claiming authority. 

I believe that words have power, that words change and bring forth, but I also believe in the intentioning of words, in the what comes after.

If I care about women, then I should become a volunteer in a shelter. If I care about poverty, than I should feed my neighbours. 

Prophesy, O mortal, to these dry bones!

I am saying this to myself. I am saying this to my dry bones.  As I am dismantling my altars of sand.

Preston, if you believe that what comes after repentance of sins is the work of the kingdom, the kingdom of God that has no end, then leave the words when the last period falls and go and do. Do not only talk about the marginalised, go to them. Do not only deplore the darkness, walk the flicker of your light into its midst.

III

I am not your Holy Ghost.

This is about me. My altars. My revival. 

But I am apologising to you because sin festers in the communities we walk in. If I have sinned against God, making Him an accessory to the whole and not the Whole by whom all things are, then I have in turn sinned against you. I have presented you with altars of sand and asked you to eat the meat of idols from them. 

Forgive me. 

I should like to say I knew not what I did. But I'm not always so sure about that. 

IV

"First and foremost, the Gospel is hospitable."

A friend tells me this on Thursday night, after I have sat around a table with good country people. People who believe in the old things. People who talk of God in the old ways. We lose ourselves in words and phrases common to my youth, like Kingdom and Holy Spirit and everything of God is purposed.

I am driving in the darkness on my way home and thinking of the centurion who sends his servants to Jesus asking Him to come and heal one of his slaves. When Jesus is halfway, the centurion further sends word that Jesus does not even have to enter his house, for if Jesus but speaks the word of healing, it shall be. The centurion says that he is not worthy to have Jesus come into his house in the first place.  Jesus calls this remarkable faith, moreso than He has seen in all of Israel.

I treat Jesus like He owes me. Like He should just show up in my house. 

I'm not sure when that happened, but when it did, from then on I made my altars of sand, because if He was already going to be around, then why bother paying Him any attention? 

There was work to be done. 

How easily I called that work worship. 

How easily I called that work gospel. 

But there is no good news in dry bones. 

There is no good news in an earthly kingdom full of peace, if Jesus is not the rock upon which it all stands. 

The altar rock. The cornerstone that was rejected. 

V

I want to make my heart and my home spaces of the hospitable Gospel.

John Piper, Mark Driscoll, these names I have scorned and bitterly rebuffed, I want them over for coffee and pie. I want to speak no word to them but peace. I want to speak to them no thing but grace. 

I want to kneel beside them at Communion and even take Bread from their hands and offer them Blood from mine. 

See, I have been pounding my cynicism out for years now, shaping it into earthenware that I called beautiful and called gospel when it is nothing but half-fired pot shards, objects of wrath with no glory in them, dry bones of earth called sources of hospitality, when the wine in them sours fast and slips out of their cracks. 

But I am asking the Holy Ghost to descend now, to rob me of my cynical twisting and burn away the chaff of my self-confidence. If I have a boast it is in the Christ of God, a Redeemer of my own misery making as much as the Redeemer and Finisher of all things. I am looking to be a peacemaker. I am looking to be led, as the psalmist sings, to the rock that is higher than I. 

VI

I am shutting down all my Tumblr blogs, anonymous or otherwise.

I am changing what I say on Twitter, what I say in this space.

I am unfollowing and unsubscribing from places where there is not life, because this mortal tent longs too much for the immortal beauty, and can no longer be choked or held back. 

My promise to you, my promise to myself, my plea to the God of all mercy--let this be a space that gives life. Let my words be words of grace and a vessel of holiness. 

VII

"Daddy, why are there scars on your hands?"

I think she will ask me this, or perhaps he will, years from now in the pasture while the sun hangs low in twilight. She'll be tracing the scars carefully as she walks with me, her hand in mine. 

"Daddy once went to battle and he was cut." 

"By someone you were fighting?" 

And I'll smile slant. "No, daughter. By my own sword. I was fighting a battle that was not mine to fight, and though I cut many, it didn't take long for me to cut myself." 

She'll blink a few times then, pressing the dirt on my hands. "You don't see the scar when your hands are so dirty." 

"No," I'll say, and smile true. "We keep the scars as our reminders, as our confessions of who we have been. But over time your hands are covered by new things, true things, and they tell more of who you have become." 

"A farmer." 

"Of a kind." 

And we'll keep vigil thereafter, near the altar of stone, in the vineyard of the Father, hands dirtied by the labours of peace, while the sand on the furthest edges kicks up into the wind, floats off beyond the terrace wall, and like all that was once thought to be solid, melts into air.