Why "Deformed" Musings?


I realized after I just posted on Face Book that I might end up with some new readers who might be wondering why I called my blog , "Deformed Musings."  Here's the story:

When I first started up this blog, I was in a Presbyterian micro denomination called the Reformed Presbytery of North America.  I was trying to self consciously think and express myself from a Covenanted Presbyterian Christian worldview, so I called my blog, "Reformed Musings."  If you go back far enough in the history to 2006, you will see how this eventually all unravelled ending with my excommunication (along with my entire local congregation) and my disenchantment with reformed churches.  Hence the name change.  I was feeling a bit cynical at the time.

When I think back to the amount of fear, angst, and emotional turmoil that I lived in around this time, it is like reading the story of someone I knew but who no longer exists.  It's like it happened to someone else.  Except I probably won't be darkening the doors of a reformed church any time soon.  I still have a number of triggers that need to be disabled and in time I will get to all of them.  In the meantime, the name will remain until I can think up something I like better and which is more indicative of where I really am and want to be.

Divine Appointments

Today was my last day on the job for cleaning the home of one of the local doctors. They were truly a delightful family and cleaning their home was a snap. No toilets were involved!

Today I spent close to an hour and a half visiting with their guest who was there babysitting while my employers were working. It had the feeling of being yet another of those divine appointments that God apparently likes to set up for me. In fact, the number of divine appointments seems to be proliferating lately.

I attribute a lot of that to the type of work I do. When you know how to de-stress people from their various issues, including those from the past, inevitably you fall into discussions about things of the heart and soul. And inevitably, core issues about the nature of God and man get discussed.

I wish I was more competent at sharing my faith. Since having the bs and religion beat out of me by life and my own poor choices, I no longer have the comfortable vocabulary of evangelicalism to fall back on any more. It doesn't feel organic to me any more. What does feel organic is just loving people enough to let them talk, asking the questions I am led to ask, and passing along lessons learned through hard experience. More than anything, most people just want to know that they can share what needs to be shared without fear of judgement. In short, they want to know, "If I screwed up, do you still love me?" Having learned experientially that this is how God loves me (and has always loved me though I didn't realize it), it's much easier to say, "Yes, I do" and mean it. Unconditional love works miracles of healing, so I've found.

God knows our flesh and remembers that we are dust. We would do well to remember that of each other. Blessed are the merciful for they shall receive mercy.