Letter to Friends, 1

Galatians, 3:26-29

We can allow that the world has written our introductions and asks only that we speak the truth.

What is the truth? To do the will of God. What is the will of God? To do what is pleasing to God. What is pleasing to God? To love each other as God loves us.

Two men laid claim to the same house. I hewed those planks, said one. I hammered those hinges, said the other. Where upon, the door opened and a third man emerged, who said, Welcome to the house of God, and both men entered.

• The fact of the Lord is not where one ends, but the very point where one's life begins.
• Life has always begun at this very point, that Jesus is Lord.
• One's life is in principal part a history or musical score describing a person's movements in relationship to this point.

There is little point in my saying, I love you, if I do not pray. For what is love unless I tell God?

How do I pray? I pray as you pray. I say, am alone.

The prayers we pray in common, they are like knocking on the door of the house of God. But once inside, speak to God. As you move about the house, from room to room, taking stock of its dimensions and furnishings, speak what is on your mind and in your heart. Anything other, or should you lose touch, you are outside the house again.

• And so, turn. Knock once again, and you will enter.
• Knock once more, and again, over and over.
• As often as you fall away, you might rise again.

Turn, turn again, lest one be confirmed in having fallen away, by which you will form habits, such as pointing at the house, from outside the house, professing doubt, or claiming ownership. It is all the same thing. This is not prayer. While doubt can be noble, a sort of trace of the mind birthing the covenant soul - ownership is not the language of God. Perhaps you argue for ownership of the house, or you conceive that you are pleading for the house. But God does not need you to justify the house of God. God does not understand a person who says, I understand God.

You will enter the house of God when you say, I wish to enter the house of God. When you confess that it is the house of God, where one law serves for every law. By one law we abide in the house of God.

• By virtue of the one utterance that is true, that we are one in the love of God.
• By virtue of the one utterance that is true, that we are one in the life of Jesus Christ.

In this, I serve; in only this, do I serve. My life, my work, my family. In the Spirit, all men, women, and children are the Christ. I make no distinctions. I have not been tasked with distinction-making. I do not put aside my Cross to check identification papers, to ask how someone voted on this or that issue, to wonder at their personal history. I cannot express the words to doubt, except ironically, in a turn away from the true utterance which, by its locution, inevitably turns back to point at the house of God, to say...

My lord, forgive me, for I am a terrible sinner. Give me strength, to say, one, and forever...

• I belong to God in the life of Jesus Christ.
• Everything I do, do not do, write, do not write, or say must accord somehow with that simple, central premise.
• My Lord. My life. Do with me what you will.

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, amen.