Gideon uses Isaiah 42 to invite us to see the presence of God as we walk through Order, Disorder, and Reorder in the journey of our lives. The Order are the containers and structure in which our beauty is called to flourish; Disorder is the pain and darkness through which we necessarily walk in this broken world; and Reorder is the invitation to resurrection, healing, salvation, and transformation.
TEXT
Isaiah 42:5-9
“The first order, where we all begin, is a necessary first ‘containment.’ But this structure is dangerous if we stay there too long. It is too small and self-serving, and it must be deconstructed by the trials and vagaries of life (‘the cross’ or disorder). Initial ‘order’ doesn’t really know the full picture, but it thinks it does.” — Richard Rohr
“Half of all human experience is mediated through loss and disappearance. This is one of the reasons why we won’t have the conversation.” — David Whyte
“First the fall, and then the recovery from the fall, and both are the mercy of God.” - Julian of Norwich
“Quiet friend who has come so far,
feel how your breathing makes more space around you.
Let this darkness be a bell tower
and you the bell. As you ring,
what batters you becomes your strength.
Move back and forth into the change.
What is it like, such intensity of pain?
If the drink is bitter, turn yourself to wine.
In this uncontainable night,
be the mystery at the crossroads of your senses,
the meaning discovered there.
And if the world has ceased to hear you,
say to the silent earth: I flow.
To the rushing water, speak: I am.” — Rainer Maria Rilke
“Sometimes it takes darkness and
the sweet confinement of your aloneness
to learn
anything or anyone
that does not bring you alive
is too small for you.” — David Whyte
“Close is what we almost always are: close to happiness, close to another, close to leaving, close to tears, close to God, close to losing faith, close to being done, close to saying something, or close to success, and even, with the greatest sense of satisfaction, close to giving the whole thing up.
Our human essence lies not in arrival, but in being almost there, we are creatures who are on the way, our journey a series of impending anticipated arrivals. We live by unconsciously measuring the inverse distances of our proximity: an intimacy calibrated by the vulnerability we feel in giving up our sense of separation.
To go beyond our normal identities and become closer than close is to lose our sense of self in temporary joy, a form of arrival that only opens us to deeper forms of intimacy that blur our fixed, controlling, surface identity.
To consciously become close is a courageous form of unilateral disarmament, a chancing of our arm and our love, a willingness to hazard our affections and an unconscious declaration that we might be equal to the inevitable loss that the vulnerability of being close will bring.
Human beings do not find their essence through fulfillment or eventual arrival but by staying close to the way they like to travel, to the way they hold the conversation between the ground on which they stand and the horizon to which they go. We are in effect, always, close; always close to the ultimate secret: that we are more real in our simple wish to find a way than any destination we could reach: the step between not understanding that and understanding that, is as close as we get to [Epiphany].” — David Whyte
WORSHIP SET
I Shall Not Be Shaken
We Will Feast
Nothing But The Blood
Holy Holy Holy
Have Mercy On Me
You Took The Blame