as i travel this journey, i am still figuring what it is about this story i am drawn by…if i am honest, i’m not that drawn as much as i am just continuosly searching, searching for something, searching for anything. and it just so happens that i was born into a certain place, in a certain time, to a certain parents where christianity was the thing that people were into…as a result, here i am, still wrestling.

though i will say that the upside down invitation to the “outsiders” is a very compelling part of the christian story…it is what makes it, to me, a good story…a beautiful story that keeps happening.

as we sat at the refuge this last sunday, and i got an invitation to participate in the communion, i put my head down, listened to the music playing, and could hear everyone’s name being called. suddenly, my imagination took me to a place where i could feel us all being called/invited by God, by name, to come to his table. i imagined, something like a heaven, where everyone’s name was being called…”everyone’s name”…everyone. and we were only being called by our first names, and we all knew when it was us being called…

maybe i’m some kind of universalist or whatever that means, but i just dig the more absurd implications about the magi, about the none draft picks for church memberships…that in the upside downedness of the way God does things, on earth the “outsiders” are the poor, the marginalized, the misfits, and we get invited…in “heaven” the rich, the snobby, the know-it-alls are the “outsiders” and they get invited too…we’re all invited (as Karl said to me last night)…so yeah, it’s wacky, it’s weird, it’s a baby God in the flesh…what do i do with that…this Christmas, I’ll do some shopping, eat some food, and think about who’s an outsider to me and spiritually reconcile that in my own heart because the Christ child came and i think i believe that, maybe.