I jokingly asked my sister how she felt about me becoming 'granola'—washing my scalp with honey and making my own toothpaste with four simple (safe) ingredients. The more I hear about what ends up in our food (even in the flesh of produce, which should be 'clean' but is poisoned), the more granola I become. My sister's reply was that she was fine with my granola-ism, as long as I wasn't becoming [politically] liberal.
My working hypothesis is that everyone who loves and serves God should be both conservative and liberal...not in the realm of politics, but in many areas of life:
Be a liberal giver of time and money and love.
Conserve water and electricity and land.
Liberally feed your neighbour—feast in times of joy, and in times when joy seems too far away to recall.
I'd like to say we should be conservative when it comes to how often we give our opinions and complain... But the thing is, while it's fine to have varying opinions, absolute truth still exists and should be our standard—and the Bible talks about doing everything without arguing or complaining.
Something I've been thinking about in recent months is discerning truth from lies, knowing a genuine, untainted product from something cheap, imitation, or poisoned. It seems harder and harder to find candles, clothes, toys, furniture, textiles, or even food made from sturdy, real things—things untainted by plastics, poison, heavy metal, toxins, etc. I can't just go to a different store to find clothes made out of real fibres—woven, pieced, and stitched by someone who was not forced into labour as a child or as a religious/political slave. Even if I could somehow sew my own clothes (trust me, no one wants to see how that disaster would go), where is the fabric coming from? It feels impossible to find solid, real things in our ever-shifting world.
The same goes for those in governments, agencies, big tech, big pharma, media, education, etc. It seems that their native tongue too often is lies—to the point that they can't stop themselves from believing their own deception. Who can we trust? Are the people we trust in giving us the whole truth, or just the portion of information they want us to see to paint a certain image of a person or our world? It all feels surreal.
So I find myself coming back to what I know is true and real and beautiful: Jesus the Messiah is King and Lord. Of all of creation itself. Of individuals. Of His Kingdom in Heaven which is breaking into Earth... Jesus is real—the Son of God the Father, co-equal in power and majesty with Him and with the Holy Spirit. When we say the Nicene Creed at church every week it is a moment of time that transcends clock time, rooting me and those all around me into reality. There is real wood. Real earth. Real flesh. Real blood. Real Truth. Realest of real Life.
It's been a long while since I've practised the spiritual disciplines, and my soul feels it. I need solitude. I need simplicity. I need quiet. I need prayer. I need to meditate on Scripture—to savour it, not just to hear it and have it snatched away by the cares of each day.
Ephesians tells us to dig our roots down deep into the soil of God's love, being filled with the fullness of the Father:
Ephesians tells us to dig our roots down deep into the soil of God's love, being filled with the fullness of the Father:
"...that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith—that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God." (Ephesians 3:17-19 ESV)
Let us be rooted and built up in Truth. To rest in the Real. To cultivate depth. Let us meditate on God and who He is...
We believe in one God, the Father, the Almighty,
Maker of Heaven and Earth,
of all that is, seen and unseen.
We believe in one Lord, Jesus Christ,
the only Son of God, eternally begotten of the Father,
God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God,
begotten, not made, of one Being with the Father.
Through Him all things were made.
Who for us men, and for our salvation He came down from Heaven,
And was incarnate by the Holy Spirit through the Virgin Mary,
And was made man.
For our sake He was crucified under Pontius Pilate;
He suffered death and was buried.
On the third day He rose again in accordance with the Scriptures;
He ascended into Heaven and is seated at the right hand of the Father.
He will come again in glory to judge the quick and the dead,
and His kingdom will have no end.
We believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the Giver of life,
Who proceeds from the Father and the Son.
Who with the Father and the Son He is worshipped and glorified.
He has spoken through the Prophets.
We believe in one holy catholic and apostolic Church.
We acknowledge one baptism for the forgiveness of sins.
We look for the resurrection of the dead, and the life of the world to come.
—Amen.
