All the guys were trying to come up with a mission statement and I got a little frustrated and wrote a poem to allow myself to vent. Here it is.
Give Me My Story
You want a statement to sum up the mission of God.
Go ahead.
Find your statement.
Make one up to help you feel secure inside your safety cage of words
belted in by cords of cliches,
locked up by logos lifted from sunday school memories.
But give me a story
Give my friends a story so that they are not sentenced to meaningless lives.
Dont give me a story that I can easily believe in. Give me a script that I struggle to understand, that stretches my faith,
that demands life insurance.
Give me a story that will rip me from my career and pummel me into a quest beyond my capablilties. I need something worth dying for. I have most of my life left to give. But I need a story worthy of my investment.
Give me a story that I can touch and smell. A story with real people . A story with a face.
A story with my face, my role, my place, my script, because I am preselected to be a player in this story that rolls its plot out in front of me like a runaway carpet, unravelling faster than i can run and in more directions than I can predict, and in more colors than I can comprehend. A story that woos out my potential and calls me out of myself to be who I really am.
Give me a story.
Give me THE story.
Give me MY story.
Tell me that God is bigger than you. Bigger than your statements of ink. Bigger than your powerpoint animations and projections of numbers that make you impressed but that make God stoop. Give me a story that makes me gloriously alive to the purpose of God, make me run without breath to keep up with His spirit, and at the same time inviting me to dance slowly, erotically with God in an endless moment of warm passion, nesting me inside a still-shot of peace and safety.
Tell me the story in new words, so that I dont trip over barriers and memories, and lame phrases of impotence, so that my mind does not vanillarize over trivial phrases used mindlessly by millions who use words to steal mystery and the transcendance of a God who speaks freshly, with new mercies every morning , new surprises that awake me from sleep mode and spark in me new thougths and dreams of impossible feats and daring adventures and miracles of the Almighty preformed by the hands and prayers of backstreet backstage people in Goodwill rags.
You want a statement? Go ahead. I dare ya/ Double dare ya to box up the Omnipotent,
to catch the Spirit of God,
to nail the Son on a cross-word puzzle of words.
Go ahead and try.
But I wont hold my breath.
And you wont hold the mission of God on a bumper sticker.
Andrew Jones
Colorado Springs
December 2001
Give Me My Story
You want a statement to sum up the mission of God.
Go ahead.
Find your statement.
Make one up to help you feel secure inside your safety cage of words
belted in by cords of cliches,
locked up by logos lifted from sunday school memories.
But give me a story
Give my friends a story so that they are not sentenced to meaningless lives.
Dont give me a story that I can easily believe in. Give me a script that I struggle to understand, that stretches my faith,
that demands life insurance.
Give me a story that will rip me from my career and pummel me into a quest beyond my capablilties. I need something worth dying for. I have most of my life left to give. But I need a story worthy of my investment.
Give me a story that I can touch and smell. A story with real people . A story with a face.
A story with my face, my role, my place, my script, because I am preselected to be a player in this story that rolls its plot out in front of me like a runaway carpet, unravelling faster than i can run and in more directions than I can predict, and in more colors than I can comprehend. A story that woos out my potential and calls me out of myself to be who I really am.
Give me a story.
Give me THE story.
Give me MY story.
Tell me that God is bigger than you. Bigger than your statements of ink. Bigger than your powerpoint animations and projections of numbers that make you impressed but that make God stoop. Give me a story that makes me gloriously alive to the purpose of God, make me run without breath to keep up with His spirit, and at the same time inviting me to dance slowly, erotically with God in an endless moment of warm passion, nesting me inside a still-shot of peace and safety.
Tell me the story in new words, so that I dont trip over barriers and memories, and lame phrases of impotence, so that my mind does not vanillarize over trivial phrases used mindlessly by millions who use words to steal mystery and the transcendance of a God who speaks freshly, with new mercies every morning , new surprises that awake me from sleep mode and spark in me new thougths and dreams of impossible feats and daring adventures and miracles of the Almighty preformed by the hands and prayers of backstreet backstage people in Goodwill rags.
You want a statement? Go ahead. I dare ya/ Double dare ya to box up the Omnipotent,
to catch the Spirit of God,
to nail the Son on a cross-word puzzle of words.
Go ahead and try.
But I wont hold my breath.
And you wont hold the mission of God on a bumper sticker.
Andrew Jones
Colorado Springs
December 2001
