Mar | 25 | Some Profitable Postmodern Policing...Maybe?

Key Word:- GOODNESS

Title:- Some Profitable Postmodern Policing...Maybe?

Matthew 6:12  And forgive us our debts, As we forgive our debtors.

‘My heart leaps up when I behold
A rainbow in the sky:
So was it when my life began;
So is it now I am a man;
So be it when I shall grow old,
Or let me die!
The Child is father of the Man;
And I could wish my days to be
Bound each to each by natural piety.’

Wordsworth. Composed March 26, 1802 —Published 1807

‘The Child is the father of The Man;’ So says the seventh line of this Wordsworth poem entitled ‘My heart Leaps Up ’

The poet Coleridge is reported to have commented on this poem by referring to it as an expression of the truth that “Men are ungrateful to others only when they have ceased to look back on their former selves with joy and tenderness. They exist as fragments.” In other words, unless we look back with tender joy and live to express who we are and where we have come from in some measure of thankfulness, then we can be nothing else but broken and bitter, frighteningly fragmented, sharp-edged, surly folk. On this comment, I must say that although I am unsure of the psychology, I am certain about the observation that we are indeed, fragmented people. Like broken and warped mirrors, we have a cracked and distorted view of who we really are. Like people prancing in front of the comedic concave and convex mirrors in the derelict 'House of Fun', we have chosen to look into these false mirrors, which are mostly of our own making and bending and then dress in them, even allow them to rightly judge us. We often do this until we become so ill in living the lie, that sickness forces us to fully capitulate to our own self-delusion and fearfully acknowledge this most terrible truth, that we do not recognize the man or woman in the mirror, not really, and infact, we do not know who we truly are, indeed, we have lost ourselves.

Introspection or self-examination is considered by quite a few in conservative Christendom, to be nothing but “unprofitable naval gazing”. The fact that many who journey into this inspection of introspection, seem to battle with, what is deemed to be, the seemingly self-created invisible and sometimes nonsensical monsters of the mind, and to make matter worse, whilst doing so, emit and exude an often morbid, macabre and melancholic joy to the watching crowd of conservative skeptics, simply brands their introspective efforts as confusing or, mostly just plain weird! Who can blame them?

Postmoderns, on the other hand, (and I speak in general and not Christian terms) supposedly embrace such introspection as profitable policing of the inner self. Maybe Coleridge would be particularly happy in a postmodern, loose and liberal, spiritually diverse Californian type society, where such journeying is expected together with all its consequent level of healing? Maybe?

However, if the introspection of the postmodern spiritual journey is truly profitable, then friend consider this; for if indeed the child is father to the man, then had we not better re-embrace the hurting child; hug and heal him, and love him into wholeness? Some of you guys are already saying “Good grief Charlie Brown, you’ve gotta be kidding me!? Get me a sick bag.” Who can blame you after all, I mean it sounds so, well it sounds so very effeminate and puppy-like really. Well doesn’t it?

However, despite your aversion to the observation and whatever your personal take on such matters might be, true holiness dear friends, must in the end become true wholeness in Jesus. Wholeness must be completeness; completeness must mean defragmentation and defragmentation must mean fixing, and fixing must mean looking, and looking must mean grieving, and grieving must lead to forgiving, and forgiving must lead to embracing, and embracing must mean healing, and healing must mean a move into wholeness or shall we say, true holiness, thus completing the circle. Maybe for many of you, the wholeness you seek lies in the right loving of your self? Maybe it begins in looking back in time? Maybe it does indeed lie in the man embracing the child once more? Maybe in the company of men, this is a courageous journey of introspection that more men and women need to make?....Maybe?

Listen: - I will bring it health and healing; I will heal them and reveal to them the abundance of peace and truth. Jer 33:6-7

Pray: - O Lord, come and make my crooked places straight and my rough places smooth. Heal me into wholeness in You, my dearest Lord Jesus, amen.