Words!

Pictures!

These are the carriers of meaning. They build the concepts that are imagined and distributed by our brains. They conjure up emotions in which our mental responses move life drama.

Cultural influences and media sponsored voices, speaking out of earthy neighborhoods, testify to community supported thinking and behavior that is purported to yield the greatest benefit for a successful life in earthy neighborhoods.These earthy voices are heard and honored in the choices people make in pursuit of their life's drama.

This scenario was played out in Andrew's life. He was going to his father's church and youth group where the Word was well published. Yet, his brain was working out of words and pictures (neighborhood adventures) that caressed him with a flashier rush. He was challenging Mr. Church with buckets of jungle juice, pillaged alcohol from the neighbors' liquor cabinets. He was one of the guys and no one could touch them.

These lies loomed large in his brain. Flying shadows, that guard the earthy brain gobbled up the imperishable seeds before they could take root. He continued his forage into perceived benefits of the drama he was forcing into his earthy neighborhood.

The Father's Way is ignored by people who don't understand its benefits, choose to ignore the Word,or label it as myth. The people who walk the earthy cultural path are convinced that earthy neighborhoods—governed by space, time and matter—are the only life experience that they will have. Their minds are set on what their body-brain understands and demands.(Romans 8:5)

As he was scattering the seed, some fell along the path, and the birds came and ate it up.(Matthew 13:4, NIV)

At his core their was something hidden. As a result of growing up around Christian values he couldn't ignore the feeling that it might be true. But, he loved himself more, a self-love that needed constant radical feeding to cover up an anxiety that lurked in the shadows of his mind. His anxiety was kept quiet with drinking, dope and wild parties.

He'd experienced a brief wink at the Father during his first trip to Jamaica. However, Andrew had some well-hardened pleasure categories that hadn't yet been broken. They didn't allow the Word to take root and grow a new set of words and pictures.

There are many people whose thinking categories are well formed by protective caps, defined by cultural voices pushing out from a large array of earthy sources. When the heat of the majority opinion,which supports perceived reality, makes them sweat any Word roots that might have given earthy guards the slip and produced a little plant are soon scorched away.

Some fell on rocky places, where it did not have much soil. It sprang up quickly, because the soil was shallow. But when the sun came up, the plants were scorched and they withered because they had no root.(Matthew 13: 5-6, NIV)

When Andrew returned to Boston with his revitalized Christian attitude he soon found himself in the weeds. He had reinvested in drinking, dope and parties that fed his body-brain self. Old  mr. self was still in charge and his earthy neighborhood's weeds were choking out the Word he'd winked at in Jamaica.

The best of new year's resolutions are usually chocked out by the weeds that naturally grow in earthy neighborhoods. That is not to say that earthy neighborhoods are filled with weeds only. There are many people who live out of good intentions and come to the aid of people in need. After any outlandish disaster the news media are happy to expound on any number of wonderful responses. That's great. Earthy culture has its bright spots, which are able to give cover to darker movements.

Andrew's life experience was being fed by more immediate desires. These earthy desires were being fueled by the anxiety over the feeling that his body wasn't being fed and the brain's reward centers were not being acknowledged with real earthy food. Word chocking was in progress.

Other seed fell among the thorns, which grew up and choked the plants.(Matthew 13: 7, NIV)

Months later Andrew returned to Jamaica to reconnect with his friends,especially Wendy. Then, there was this retreat in the mountains that moved Andrew's old mr. self in another direction.

It was at this retreat that he finally experienced the end of old mr. self. Another voice found inspiration, supported by new friends, to speak out about something he'd missed.

He called out to God to show up and convince him that this whole Christian thing was real. But, there was something keeping him separated. He pushed in...and there was a response deep somewhere...awareness, like a bad dream...it was the weeds...he had to pull them out. Could he do it?

The answer was no!

The Father didn't give up on Andrew. He began pushing all the ugly stuff—Andrew had neatly pack away somewhere deep in his conscience—to the surface in Jesus name. For the next several hours he repudiated them one-by-one, not leaving out a single detail.Jesus took all this ugly truth away to where he and the Father dispose of it. His life took a turn to a better future in the never-ending way.

Still other seed fell on good soil, where it produced a crop—a hundred,sixty or thirty times what was sown. (Matthew 13:8, NIV)

There is more to life than meets the eye. There are parts of our universe that will take thousands of light years to explore. However our brains are confined to the sights and sounds that our senses feed us.That which lies beyond our senses can only be known by mental speculation aided by advanced technological inventions. Still, all incoming information ultimately settles into the confines of our individual brains and is governed by synaptic connections.

How do we journey beyond our immediate moments of conscious experience? Is it worth our time to venture into unknown relationships and possible realities?

People enter into such relationships frequently. They pick up a book or watch a movie and become captured by an author's word-created reality. The characters take on life and impinge on their sense of what is real and experienced. Words fill their brains with reality created by illusions—thoughts, emotions, pictures of experiences that live only within the confines of grey matter.

There is a Word that purports to have pushed its way into our space-time-material realm of experience. It is a Word that lives in such intense light that no material person has seen or can see its form. (1Timothy6:16).

The Word came into the human realm, the earthy experience, carrying his Father's DNA and revealed his Father's personality and character. He was with his Father, but didn't consider equality with God as something to be grasped. Instead, the Son made himself nothing, taking the vary nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself and became obedient to death—even death on across! As a result of this superhuman expression of love his Father exalted him to the highest place and gave him the name that is above every name, that at that name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth,and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father. (Philippians 2:5-11,NIV)

In Jesus' life we see the example of his Father's love expressed and experienced. He gave up his place in his Father's eternal house and inhabited a human body. (John 1:14) He didn't try to use his Father's power to set up a earthy kingdom so he could boast about his accomplishments. He didn't shut people down when they opposed him. Rather, he put his trust and hope in his Father's plan,and followed that plan to an end, in the death of his human body.Jesus now celebrates in his Father's neighborhood, in a new body given to him by the Father, as an example to all who will listen to why his Father wants to work for good in human expression and experience.

This journey needs our minds to open and allow the Word to speak from its own source, a source that approaches us from deep within the never-ending way. In the Father's Way when we walk toward each other, meet and shake hands, there will be questioning, doubt, debate, but always the potential of an experience of profound acceptance, compassion and joy. When we meet in that way we have all the options, we have the freedom to decide to accept or reject the offer of continuing in the relationship. At any time we can jump away, but we will always be welcomed back.

He was in the world, and though the world was made through him, the world did not recognize him. He came to that which was his own, but his own did not receive him. Yet to all who received him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God—children born not of natural descent, nor of human decision or a husband's will, but born of God.(John 1: 10-13,NIV)

The Bible announces this good news using the environment composed of words and pictures. As we have seen earlier in this chapter, this message is received in earthy neighborhoods by people who are influenced by a variety of earthy neighborhood conditions—cultural bias, category dependence, negative challenges, and productive implementation.

There is another experience with the Bible that is had when the Spirit wakes up one's own spirit (John 3:5-8). A person's search for truth takes on a whole new dimension when the living water, the Holy Spirit, joins in the search. That is when one's body becomes the temple of the Holy Spirit, who is in you and you have received from the Father. (1Corinthians6:19, NIV)

In this grace-mode a person's self becomes integrated with spirit, soul(or psyche) and body-brain. (1Thessalonians 5:23) This is what happens when one decides to live in the never-ending way, the Father's Way.

It's your choice. You can accept the invitation, pray for the Holy Spirit to show you the Way. Or, you can reject the whole thing and accept the end of your life with the final thought: I did it my way.However, the promise of the never-ending way is that your soul(psyche) and spirit will continue living in the Father's neighborhood, while your physical body will decompose in the earthy neighborhood.

I'm not saying that we should dismiss the fact that we will face some unhappy moments in earthy neighborhoods. But in the never-ending way we are given the power to overcome the world. Next chapter.