Truth

Differentiate the slanted bias of the enculturated schisms within humanity from the truth and you are a true genius. Vaccinated- completely vaccinated from the truth. When did it happen? I can't remember going to the clinic to get the shot but it happened to me and the rest of us. Maybe we are 'all in this together' but I am convinced we don't realize what 'this' really is.
So...well...lets face it I am no genius and to be honest I do well enough to clothe myself and not miss too many meetings and requirements week to week. Here's the thing though- I am aware now. It is just like someone turned on a light switch in a dark room and your eyes have seen its contents and there is no going back, no averting your vision, and no hope to regress to your previous state of not knowing its contents.
What is in the room? Truth. Items with labels naming things for what they really are. A few examples:
teenage cellphones- substitute for accountable parenting- what happened to talking with your children face to face
Various slick new items with labels that have the word need crossed out and want scribbled in.
A sign that says MIA- the label reads DAD

I am a Caucasian, middle-class, male- could it get any stereotypic. My 'type' has had the great disease of imposing horrific acts to everyone different than ourselves at times throughout recorded history. I will not be another link in that diseased history. I ascribe to attributes of hope and integrity, justice and courage, service and equality, purpose and nurture, emotionally available and parentally present. I will not succumb to the lies that work is more important than anything else. I will not let the worries of the days and weeks keep me from the sacred space of my marriage and the conversation of your best friend. I will not substitute technology for interaction with my children. I refuse to adjust or even release my parenting from the necessary boundary setting for my children. I will be silly with my family and not buy into the mach non-emotional persona sold to the masses.
I want to be infected with truth- come ravage my body and pervade my life such that it illuminates all the lies I have been sold and reveals their presence. I pray for courageous truth that transcends the world and demolishes the cancer of the enculturated masses.
So I'm not a genius but I seek truth.

Umm...

Poetic impotence I write in vain struggling to grasp even a piece of truth in this mirey world that I dwell. O that truth might seek me out and resound by my living, profound by my path. O gray I do loath. Mystery gives way overwhelmingly to me, to my, to enculturated pragmatism. Ugh! May beauty rise up and color be my days.

Common Miracle

Subtle scandal swept into town
Unnoticed and unambiguously gentle
who would see?

If it were to be in color be it gray
and of clothe be it flannel
who would see?

Subtle scandal swept into town
A crown and a king and a cross
who would see?
ME!

May it be so everyday I walk this world.

Wait wait wait grrrr

Wait... Wait... Wait... Enough already. It is now Sunday and still no baby. I am wholly convinced it ("it" in the sense that we opted to not find out the gender until it enters this world)prefers the comfort of the womb over the inevitable hostilities waiting in the world.
Don't we all at some core level seek out safe havens of comfort. Places where we know that those holding the greatest influence and control in our lives are completely trustworthy? I know this need in myself is filled mainly by the spiritual influence God has in my life. This not as some trite comment about a spiritualized process but rather as a tangible reality where I yield my agenda for one set out for me. It is in the moments that am able to take a backseat that I find assurance. Assurance is a great catalyst for hope. When we are assured in something we can place our trust and dig in our heels to pursue with passion any task at hand.
So here I am- assured at God's love for me and for humanity but doubtful that anytime before the forced arrival into this world this baby will come. Thank God for doctors and for medicine that facilitates this process (miracle). Come tomorrow Andrea and I will be playing man-on-man defense and life will forever be different in the most magnificent way. I am assured by the hope that God might use even me to be about the work and will of the Spirit.
Wait... Wait... Wait...
Pssh just give some potosun and lets get this party started. Shalom Ya'll.

The baby is coming. The baby is coming.

Within one week, Andrea and I will have baby #2- these are exciting times in the Allen household. Having a baby whether the first or any subsequent after- it changes you. These are weird times around the house. I carry my cell wherever I go-even in worship. We know that at any moment things can change and plans must be dropped. It is, in some twisted manner, fun. I love the fact that this week I am making plans with the clause saying I may not be there and if I'm not then carry on without me.
We chose not to find out the sex of our baby. We are both people who enjoy surprise and delight in discovery. There are few people these days who enjoy such things but hey we might be a little weird but let it be know it is a weird by choice. I am hopeful the baby looks more like their mom and can't wait for six months of no sleep. It is an investment in the joy that surely will come from this endeavor. So now- here we are waiting. Waiting on this new baby to get here and break wide eyed into this world so that we can love it as best we know how. Maybe in some miracle of miracles we can through our love investment in them right some wrongs we have caused in days past. It is our legacy. Yes the culmination of a couples effort and investment in a life that with great hope will out-live our lives. It is one of the greatest gift one ever is given second only to the gift of spiritual life.
I am today and everyday- spoiled rotten with blessings that kings could not have imagined. I am rich and joy-filled. I am blessed. I hope and pray that for all those I know and am yet to know that such blessing will spill out into their lives.

Family

To offer this glimpse of me is to unsheathe a bit of the guard I so voraciously defend and eternally adapt for survival. It is of necessity that one must at times reveal a card or two if not for any other purpose than to self-therapize and henceforth self-preservate.

Lets face it all of us have dysfunction alive and well within our family systems- both within our nuclear families and to a greater extent within our regional families. One of my many mantras about family is that "Thy shall ALWAYS love thy family." Lets face it family is hard and there really is no getting around it. They know you at your best and at your worst. There is no facade or cloak to hide in- they know you... the real you. Family is hard for me- my childhood afforded me the privilege of amazing family members who loved me and nurtured me through my childhood and adolescence while I also went through trauma enduring years of abuse. Going home isn't always full of joy and pleasant memories- sometimes it is filled with flashbacks and horror. Family has loved me through it all. Family is supposed to do that- it both the form and function.

My family has roots that run deep- no horror and no storm will uproot the love we share. We are a family of survivors and we are strong. We are prideful for this- we delve merit to endurance and honor to scars. We do our best to be tender- though often we fail. Tenderness is dangerous and borders weakness though it is often necessitated by life.

We are family, blood upon blood. Going home these days gets easier with each trip. God's grace seeps into our horror and heals. It is slow but strong. It is redemptive and freeing. I am only able to live because I belong to the light. God's grace has captivated my life and enslaved me into a life of love and somehow through this slavery I am free. This is a quandary for another day...

I have the best family... because it is MY family. Those are my people. So we will continue to live out life together loving each other even when we might not like each other at times. Over the seasons of our lives, we will love, live, and do our best to "suck the marrow out of life". It is the greatest gift on earth to be given. Our family is our roots, our greatest influence, our greatest legacy, our greatest hope. Aside from God through Christ, our families are our greatest source of love. they are our greatest model of life. They are our greatest well of strength. They are our people and will always be our people.

I wish and pray for church to be this type of family... we still have some growing to do.

Seeing Through a 2X4

I am just recently returning to "normal" life if there is such a thing in student ministry. I have been away for a week and a half for mission service with Ozark Mission Project. It was an incredible time of service and completely exhausting which is always a spiritual event. I think it is because we have to rely on strength from God when we don't have the strength on our own (it has been said that God begins where we end). I always embrace the opportunity to serve in mission and to expose my students to the lives of those in need and see them excel when we heave responsibility and opportunity their way to right even a few wrongs and supply a few needs to others. They ALWAYS rise to the occasion. I love mission trip weeks because I get to see our students at their very best. So much gets accomplished in just a few days of work... rag tag groups of relatively green amateurs get together and through team work accomplish unimaginable feats in a short amount of time. It leaves little room for the unimaginative soul to wonder if there is a God and if He really works in the world. It is faith manifested and revealed. It is a time when awe-filled glory shines forth and scandalous beauty is lived out. It is the good stuff.

It was sort of a week of visions for me. I had two very powerful "episodes" of spiritual revelation. I am not the normal "episode" kind of Christian but it was way real and way powerful. Right now their content will stay between me and the Big Guy at least until I have a better handle on their meaning and direction. I will say however that it was goose-bump filled and plunged me into a type of spiritual euphoria- almost completely indescribable so I won't even dare to try to flesh it out now.

With all of these experiences cumulating I was suddenly aware of the reality that I know nothing. God is all-powerful and all-knowing. I see His ways as well as I see through a 2X4. He is in control and I am humbled by the extravagance of His grace that lets me "approach with boldness to the throne of grace." I am willfully a slave to God's love and work. I am captivated with His movement and inundated with His Spirit to which I cannot hold in. "It is a fire shut up in my bones to which I can no longer hold in." My daily mantra has become the hope that if I rub shoulders with God daily I might become a little more like Him and be used by Him wherever and whenever He wants to work. I want to be a man after God's heart and for this goal I will do my very best to strive. It is a glorious adventure wrought with danger, filled with mouth-agape awe, and completely beyond anything this world has to offer. Isn't life so good? So good? So incredibly good?