A menagerie of sorts...

I’m listening to Ray LaMontagne’s Trouble.

In addition to listening to music, I also like to read.

Right now, I’m reading Theodore Rex by Edmund Morris. I don’t really know how this strange love for things related to American History started, but I think that it has yielded some spectacular role models. Of course, every man has his flaws (otherwise, he would be no man at all – more of a figment of your imagination), though Roosevelt was a man of supreme intelligence, wit, and progressive thinking.

Do you know who the first black man to visit the white house on official invitation was? Theodore Roosevelt had Booker T. Washington (not to be confused with the wrestler, Booker T) over for dinner during Roosevelt’s first year as President. TR (as Roosevelt will be referred to from here on out) was elevated to the office of Commander-in-chief after William McKinley was assassinated by Leon Czolgosz in 1901. Let’s go back to Booker T. Washington though – because he was the sort of guy that a lot of people did not agree with. You see, Washington believed that for his time, segregation was the way to go. He looked at the relationship between whites, blacks, and the nation at large much like fingers on a hand. Whites were one finger while blacks were another – they were separate but equal.

This led me to think of the body of Christ in an odd sort of way, for, ”As it is there are many parts, yet one body.” Now, the hand that BT Washington spoke of and the body of Christ are completely different, or at least they should be. Washington’s point of view was that power would be accumulated through perseverance and education. From the perspective of the body of Christ, you must believe that the accumulation of power in the vain of which he spoke isn’t all that…important.

The body at large, however, does believe that power is important.
The body at large believes that property is important.

What is seen most often, really, is that the body doesn’t see itself as a body at all. In that, there is certainly no appeal to the head for wisdom or guidance. We are, as I’ve heard recently (if you know the source then let me know as it’s slipped my mind) a group of people who so critical of others that we are blind to the fact that we are all being changed by the same process. The implication is that we demand perfection from others – from other Christians, from those who are not Christians, from our family, from our friends, from our customers and employers, etc.

In my own life, time and time again, I find that I am having to ask my wife for forgiveness because of how I have not let God work out Christ in her life in this process. Time and time again, I become angry and lose this honest sense that all is how it should be now considering the fact that we live in a world whose nature is to be pretty screwed up.

The visit of Washington to the White House was not only momentous, it was also scandalous for his time. Blacks were seen as brutes – they were uneducated and hadn’t evolved into the same capabilities of understanding as the white man. They were believed to be controlled by mere instinct and appetite rather than by reason.

I have to believe that things were sort of the same when Christ came to me.
If I forget that, then I forget or neglect my need for a Messiah altogether.

That’s the beauty of this Christian life, isn’t it? Christ has come and invited this brute of a man who is so often guided by his lusts and appetites to sit at a feast with a group who has moved beyond. He has opened the gates of this wonderful city to me and He has promised that I belong here just as much as anyone else (Just as TR told Washington).

When I think of that, when I think that I belong to something bigger, it’s a wonderful feeling. And when He says that to me, it’s not because He thinks I’ve lived this spectacular life of service – He knows I’m a pretty screwed up guy. No, when I sit across the table and He gives me a glass of wine and says, “This is my blood,” and gives me a piece of bread and says, “This is my flesh,” He is telling me that His blood and His flesh are how I came to belong here.

I know...that’s a long way from Roosevelt.