After a very sad week...

Students gathered for a candlelight vigil to honor the victims of the earthquake.

At a student-led event to raise money for the victims--the middle girl is a student from Sichuan. The students presented her with t-shirts that they all signed and wrote notes on. Many tears...

The symbol on the t-shirts that we're all buying to raise money. I'm not sure what the Chinese characters are yet...

It's all because of a piece of fruit.

There are things that happen when you cook a meal or bake a cake or mix a drink. I barely stayed awake through chemistry and physics during my school days (all those many years ago)...but I was awake long enough to learn that there are these changes--scientific changes that occur when you introduce one ingredient to another. They mix---atoms and elements are rearranged and one new substance is formed from all the previous individual substances. You mix flour and sugar and vanilla and eggs together and add heat and you create a cake, or a cookie, or whatever....I think it's called a "chemical change," as opposed to a "physical change" in which no new substance is formed.

So G-- created the earth. And it was good. G--, by His very nature, is pure. Utmost Purity. And just like some elements repel other elements--His purity repels impurity. They cannot mix. It's like pushing two like-poled magnets together--the magnetic charges repel each other and simply cannot connect. So this environment that He created was pure--so that His Highest Purity could mix and move and walk and swirl through it.

Until the piece of fruit.

It was like adding heat to all those ingredients. Before the heat--all the ingredients are intact and whole, but just mixed. I think it's called a colloid or a suspension or a solution or whatever--the elemental nature of all the ingredients are still pure. But you add heat--and the atoms and clusters of elements start moving around--bumping and floating and exploding into pieces that connect with other pieces and a whole new SOMETHING exists.

And after the fruit--a different world existed. The heat had been added and now the whole environment contained a burned-in impurity. The elements were no longer in their pure state. And so G-- couldn't mix with it in the same way anymore. He couldn't connect with His creation in the same way--because His nature repels the impurity of the new post-fruit reality.

And in this new reality--there came the "curses." I've heard the curses described not so much as punishments--but as descriptions. G-- is telling them the nature of life in this new Fallen environment. The fruit was chosen--so now this is the way things work: there is a loss of relationship between humanity and G--. There is a loss of relationship between man and woman. There is a loss of relationship between humanity and the land. It was a "chemical change."

And the Story of our Book is of G-- creating a new environment in which connection and relationship can be regained. He consistently refused to leave us to our impurity. He kept teaching us ways to create a pure space in which He could dwell in this fallen world (the OT). But our flawed attempts weren't letting Him come close enough. So just like the elements of the world were altered with the fruit--another "chemical change" would occur. Another new environment would be created. It happened with a cross and a rolled-away stone--we'll call Him the "Catalyst Element."

And in the mix of this environment--with the introduction of what we'll call a "bonding element"--the elements of our impurities are bonded with the element of His Spirit--which cleans us up--continually--enough to experience a new reality. One in which we are able to experience His Pure presence--mostly--one in which the continual purification helps us to reconnect to Him, reconnect to each other, and reconnect to the land.

Mostly.

We regain the connection. The Bonding Element burns itself inside of us and teaches us how to exist in this new environment--and how to create or spread that reality so that we can get bonded even closer, even tighter, till we're sealed together with the element of His Spirit--both individually within ourselves but more importantly together, as a community.

However--the Story isn't over. Not yet. Because even though these 'chemical changes' have occurred--we still exist within the confines of the fallen post-fruit world. And the nature of that world still exists. So we still see the wars between the will of G-- and the will of humanity, wars between men and women...and we still see the wars between man and nature.

We see waves wash away whole countries. We see fires destroy homes and towns. We see storms break apart the strongest buildings. And we see the ground shake and quake and crack so that everything on it is shaken and crushed and cracked.

And we continue our Fallen fight on our own side--trying to contain waves with concrete and steel; replacing clouds of storms with our own versions--clouds of pollution; cracking and tearing and ripping into that ground for oil or coal or whatever else we want--all the while trying to prove to ourselves that we've got control, that we're winning the war...

It's the consequence of a piece of fruit....or, the decision to take the fruit...to choose relationship with G-- on our own terms rather than His... and these are what our terms brought about.

But there is the hope--the waiting--for the completion of the NEW environment that came with the cross and the rolled away stone. We have the beginnings--the chemical change created with the introduction of a Bonding Element--but we're still waiting for the heat to be added. The heat that will finish the job. The white hot dazzling transforming (i think I stole that phrase somewhere--it's not mine) heat that will alter it all--the heat that will completely purify.

And when the heat is added--those of us who have bonded ourselves to the Spirit, who have allowed the Bonding Element to burn and seal itself into us--we will be able to survive the burning purification and live free of that separating impurity forever.

And we know that the wars will end. We know because when the Catalyst Element was here--His very presence--His very words "Be still" spoken during one storm-- showed us a glimpse of what it will look like when all the storms are calmed, when all the relationships are restored, purified, made whole. No longer will nature cause pain in the life of man. No longer will man rage and destroy nature. This is the new environment that we wait for the coming of.

These disasters happen and we question the "acts of God." I guess what I'm trying to say is--I call these disasters "realities of Fallenness." We live in the midst of the Fallen world--and we cling to the Bonding Spirit that teaches us that the wars will end because the Catalyst Spirit began the chemical reactions that would bring about a brand new purified reality.

Perhaps my metaphor is incredibly clumsy--certainly my understanding of science is. Perhaps my theology is incredibly incorrect. Certainly, my expression of my thoughts is grrr..inept. Like I've said--I'm still learning. In the meantime--I have a blog and it forces me sometimes try to express the swirl of emotions that pass through my mind in times like these. I've comfortable with the idea of learning that my "reasoning" for the question of suffering is flawed.

And after all my rambling, I'll leave you with the coherent, lovely thoughts of Barbara Brown Taylor in her 'lesson' "Out of the Whirlwind" (found in the collection of her lessons called "Home by Another Way"). After this happened over here and I wanted to think about answers to rough questions--I picked up her lesson on Job. Here's her conclusion (abbreviations are mine):

"If there is an answer to the problem of unjustified suffering in Job, then, it is only this: that for most of us, the worst thing that can happen is not to suffer without reason but to suffer without G--; without any hope of consolation or rebirth. All other pain pales next to the pain of divine abandonment (ask JC about that), and what Job wants us to know is that G-- does not finally abandon us. When there is nothing left--when all the flocks have been stolen and all the children have been buried--when there is nothing left but a potsherd with which to scratch our sores, what is still left is the G-- of all creation, who laid the foundation of the earth, who has walked in the recesses of the deep, who has made Behemoth and Leviathan and everything that breathes. This is the L--d of all life, who never runs out of life, and whom we may always ask for more."