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“You are going to feel like hell if you never write the stuff that is tugging on the sleeves of your heart — your stories, visions, memories, visions and songs. Your truth, your version of things, your own voice. That is really all you have to offer us. And that’s also why you were born.”
Anne Lamott

“You are going to feel like hell if you never write the stuff that is tugging on the sleeves of your heart — your stories, visions, memories, visions and songs. Your truth, your version of things, your own voice. That is really all you have to offer us. And that’s also why you were born.”
Anne Lamott

Category: A Word or Two

Guest posts by Steve Elliott

A Word or Two

Steve Elliott 0 Comments

Poetry 
And while poets are “always telling us that grass is green or thunder loud, or lips red,” as C. S. Lewis once quipped, they are also always telling us that green is more than merely green, thunder more than simply Loud, and lips exceedingly red .
This is another way of saying that the world is more than just empirically classifiable stuff.
It is It is wonder-full  stuff.
It is stuff  that deserves our precious time and our loving attention. 
Poetry . slows us down enough to give God’s world the attention it deserves.  

Open and Unafraid – W. David O Taylor 

[For people who know Steve Elliott, it will be no surprise that he is, in addition to other admirable qualities, a poet. His poem, “The Voice” gives credence to David Taylor’s insights on poetry. ]

The Voice

(Overheard at the Nicholasville Walmart @ 8:15 Sunday night

 … two old ladies leanin’ on their shopping carts, 

shifting their weight off their bad hips and knees from time to time, 

talking about a friend who lost her voice.)

“Her voice just up and left.”

“Away it went … 

life just put it on the R. J. Corman mornin’ train

and ran it right outta town!

(She mighta coulda caught it but she was asleep at the time.)

“Took most of her with it, too …

all the personality and possibilities,

…all her questions that can’t be answered

and all her sassy talk, of course.

(She ain’t one to be tongue tied, know what I mean?)

“Who’s she gonna be with no voice?

If she ain’t tellin’ ya what’s goin’ on inside her

she just might burst into itty bitty pieces of herself.

Mercy, it is bewilderin’!

(But everything about her is bewliderin’, if you get my meanin’.)

But gone is gone …

as gone as that cat what got run over on Main St. on Tuesday

… as gone as that big rain we had last July.

As gone as gone can be … but don’t gotta’ be gone for good, do it?

(All good things have a way of comin’ home again, don’t ya think?)

“‘Cause I told her that there is a 3:10

that gets in on Thursday from Kansas.

But you gotta meet it at the station

or it’ll just roll on by.

(Kansas is always the last place you look for a lost voice.)

She ain’t talking today but I sure hope she’s listenin’.

‘Cause I told her “You best make up a sign” I said.

“Askin’ the conductor if there’ a lost voice on board.

Your hand-waving silence ought to let him know it’s yours.

(The conductor has a soft heart. He’s from Garrard County.)

“And tell him it comes with a big load of ‘in your face’ back talk.

So you just might wanna take your brother-in-law’s pick-up

to carry it home. 

(Just sayin’…)

SVE Dec. 2017

A Word or Two

Steve Elliott 0 Comments

You Never Know

A wonderful thing begins when the rule and reign over your life is ceded to the One who has given you new life, Jesus Christ. You abandon the sense of needing all the answers and needing to be in control and you never know what a day might hold or what wondrous thing might unfold. 

Which must mean that you never know (1) what will come of an everyday conversation. At the end of John’s gospel we find Nicodemus at the foot of the cross, a fearless follower of Jesus who defies the Sanhedrin and identifies fully with Christ. But he doesn’t get there if the conversation doesn’t happen in John 3.

So I repeat myself, you never know what will come of a conversation. You with one of your children, you with a friend at work … you with that guy you meet at the auto parts store all the time. I meet people all the time who say to me, “Pastor, I’ll never forget the time you said…” and I’m too shy to admit that I sure can’t remember having said that.

But words last and conversations matter. Part of what it means to sew the good seed of good news, is to treat every conversation with the possibilities it contains. You never know when it might be the conversation of a life time. 

Because there are times when like a young mom you walk someone toward the right understanding of what it means to be a child of God. Yet on a lot of days, you don’t have the chance to give the gospel explicitly. But folks should be able to read the gospel in you implicitly by what you say and how you relate to them. Every conversation is a doorway for Jesus to be seen through.

And another you never know is that you never know (2) how God might use you. Nicodemus proves that it’s not about credentials or status. It’s about who is reigning in your heart.

I remember a young man who ran a small trucking company, the kind of guy with grease under his finger nails from work and creases in his forehead from worry about work. His name was Gord and I was his pastor. 

Gord was an introvert of the first order. Shy, quiet, a back ground kind of guy. He had a high school education, loved his family, loved golf and hockey… if you mentioned Augustine in a sermon, he’d probably ask you what team he played for. And Gord would often say of himself that he was a just a garden variety follower of Jesus. 

But I always saw him as a great saint. Because he lived in such a way that people were drawn to him…they admired and trusted him. I remember a year or so after he moved out of our area, bumping into a neighbor of his at the grocery store. We knew each other a bit but we both knew Gord well and his name came up quite naturally in our conversation.

And Gord’s old neighbor said to me, “Ya know, the thing about Gord was, if ever I was going through a hard time, he’d be the guy I turned to.” Not to me, a pastor. Not to a credentialed counselor. Not to a lawyer. But to a guy with a grade 12 education who loved Jesus.

Somewhere this morning, Gord is probably wondering if his life really mattered to anyone. He has no idea. And neither do you, because you never know how God will use you. It’s not about your spiritual credentials. It’s about your spiritual life.

Steve

A Word or Two

Steve Elliott 0 Comments

My Marilyn was captured by a bumper sticker that read “Wonder Without Googling“. It gives me pause. Have we lost the wonder? The computer has given us this sense of omniscience that creates the illusion that we can know it all. That we can have dominion over this world, have vice grip control over our world that knows no limits. 

Common cold remedy? Financial advice? Marriage counsel? Google will always have the answer for us, right? And even though it is only an illusion, it is of course, the death of imagination, wonder and mystery.

Barbara Brown Taylor wrote that, “As our ability to control the world around us has increased, our respect for its mystery (of this world) has decreased.” So where is there room in our world for mystery when Wikipedia has all the answers? 

Well, here’s the thing about Wikipedia: the articles written on the site about anyone or anything are literally written by anyone or anything. Anyone can add just about anything to an article on Wikipedia and we read it (and like so many lemmings) we take it for an indisputable fact. 

I heard recently of a scientist who in response to a call from God, left his field of expertise to come to seminary. His field was astronomy and he shared this interest with his son who when they left for seminary was about 14. Astronomy for them became a great father/son bonding point.

Well one day in his seminary studies, he thought about how this certain thing in astronomy would be a good illustration of what he wanted to communicate in a paper he was writing. But just to be sure of his facts, he went on line to confirm his theory. And on Wikipedia he found an article that was exactly what he was looking for and it confirmed his idea completely, down to the last letter. Only after he had written his paper did he discover that the article he consulted in Wiki was written by a 14 year old boy, his son! 

Could it be that what we need to leave behind a Wikipedia view of living this Christian life and what we need to begin is to get comfortable with not being in complete control … not having our every question answered by doing a Google search?

… you never know what will happen when you abandon the sense of needing all the answers and needing to be in control and instead, let the One who is meant to rule your life rule it and see what a day might hold or what wondrous thing might unfold. My best guess is that it holds the kind of mystery and wonder Google could never supply and Wikipedia could never explain.