Word Salad

Today's Topic

Word Salad?! Maybe I'm running of blog ideas? Fat chance! However, this'll go on my testimony site rather than with my more formal theology on desert spirit's fire.

Pondering Word of Life, Bread of Life, Eschatological Feast (manna, milk, honey, wine, figs, lamb, goat, sheep, Lamb, et al.) gets me thinking about the colors, varieties, mixes and textures filling each of our lives--not only culinary events, but every aspect of each day: sound, sight, smell, tactility. But what about my expression "culinary events"? Does the local fast food emporium serve up anything qualifying either as true cuisine or viable event? Or, for another stretch, both event (measurable in time and space) and cuisine (intentionally imagined and passionately created) in a single portion?! In the Church we recognize glossolalia as one of the more demonstratively eschatological Pentecostal gifts of the Spirit, but word salad's not quite the same as glossolalia; the phrase Word Salad also has some currency in the computer world. From a clinical standpoint, word salad...do a search and find out for yourself!

As my Boston friend Nick (there's a pic of Nick's back steps and part of his garden on my blogger profile) would insist, this topic is both a stretch and a shrink, but I'm going with it anyway. Oh, by the way, Nick is a PK and the brother-in-law of a preacher, and despite the fact he doesn't read theology or even spend much apparent time reading the bible, he doesn't often miss Sunday worship and he's astute in matters of the Spirit. However...at times my theology seems far more earthbound than heaven-bound, but I'll assure you that's the Reformation influence! To continue briefly with Word Salad:

Word of Life

Jesus is the Living Word, the Word made human flesh that lives, breathes, walks, teaches and talks! Some of us even get to preach what we trust and pray will become a Word of Life. Word of life has to be something that accompanies our every breath, thought and step; it must be something that generates living! Word Salad points to the variety of interventions and the variety of venues in which the Word of Life acts.

Bread of Life

That's not only Johannine, the idea goes way back to the Hebrew scriptures and probably further back than that into prehistoric times. Close to a million times I've written about Israel receiving manna from heaven in the Exodus Desert.

Eschatological Feast

To conclude, check out my blog for Earth Day 2006.

Resurrection 2006: Easter, Tucson, Arizona

[Ava] April come she will,
When streams are ripe and swelled with rain
May, she will stay
Resting in my arms again...Paul Simon, 1965

Ava April is a 2 ½ year old Husky mix, finally adopted, and just in time for Easter! Now she lives with seven Husky and Husky mix siblings (even numbers of girls and boys), including Easter Angel, adopted four Easters ago, 2002. In nature's realm plentiful newness happens during spring every year; rivers grow beyond winter's seemingly harsh limits, increasing with water--gestation's essential and necessity of sustenance; spring of the year is when trees and flowers bud, bloom and flourish. Always replete with life, though often at least somewhat concealed, during spring desert habitats extravagantly display abundant glory.

On Easter the Church proclaims,

Love's redeeming work is done!
Where, O Death, is now thy sting!

Sadly, again this year I missed having an opportunity to participate in an Easter Vigil, but Easter morning we worshiped at Casas Adobes United Church of Christ--wonderful music, and preaching I needed to hear.

The Lord went before them in a cloud by day and fire by night. This year I missed keeping Easter's Vigil, but I have intense memories of kindling the new fire at Easter Vigils long past. Possibly you can miss a Cloud by Day, especially if you don't look upward or outward, but Fire blazing amidst night's darkness is unmistakable. Baptized with the HS and with Fire? Baptized into the fire of the cross and into the fire of the constant, unmistakable and irrevocable Divine Presence. Baptized with the Holy Spirit and with fire? Immersed in Fire and Spirit? Think about it!