If Big Bill doesn’t come up today… Ellen and I will probably head up to the Lake Cottage… do an overnight… and watch the 3rd of the Lord of the Rings DVD’s…. “The Return of the King”… at the moment though… I am thinking about the first two… “The Fellowship of the Ring” and “The Two Towers”…. Today I have something stirring about “The Fellowship of the Ring”…. I’ll leave the Towers for another posting.
I love it when Bill comes up…. he is part of my personal fellowship of the ring … those people who walk along with me in our corporate quest to destroy the power of the ring… we need people to walk along with us … some are closer than others…. each is essential… each part of the small band of brothers…. that care about us… cover our backs… pray with us… I could rattle off a dozen names right now of guys who do that in my life… all on different levels …. based on our proximity to each other… but they all care… they all help me in my personal quest as a ring bearer… to destroy the power of the ring in my life…
We need each other… we are not designed to make it alone… just on our own… I like what Eldredge said: “When we feel that life is finally up to us, it becomes suffocating. When we are the main character, the world is so small there’s barely room to move. It frees our souls to have something going on before us that involves us, had us in mind, yet doesn’t depend on us or culminate in us, but invites us up into something larger”
There are a whole bunch of us “Fellowships of the Ring”…. small “Bands of Brothers” … all of us part of a much larger story… all knowing that nothing depends on us individually… just our relationships with the One who has written the story… with each of us connected relationally with others… each with our own individual stories…. playing out our parts in the much much greater story.
Our relationships no longer tainted with lust, control, fear, guardedness, manipulation… free now to be what and who we were intended to be… not what the Dark Lord Sauron tells us we should be…. not what the Systems this side of the door…. those under the Power of the Ring… tell us we should be.
We were designed to live in the Garden of Eden…… but Evil came…. darkness came…. the door opened….men were driven from the Garden…. where we now live in the “East of Eden”.….. where Sauron rules….
There was another award winning movie many years ago with that title…. “East of Eden” …. it demonstrates what life is like under the Power of the Ring…. guess I’ll have to talk about that…maybe next time.
Once the door was opened…. way back when Adam decided that he “would be as God knowing good and evil”… evil poured in through that open door and Satan became the ruler of this world…
Ever since then… until the Lord finally ends Satan’s time here by shutting that door for all time and forever… for eternity… until then… it is up to us to realize that Jesus came and shut the door a couple thousand years ago… providing a way for us to also shut that door for ourselves…
We must live in Him in order to be able to even make the decision to shut the door …. and then continue to live in Him in order to keep the stupid door shut… no simple task… no simple task because we live in the world of the open door … which is under the dominion of the ruler of this world… under it’s power…. under what I am calling the Power of the Ring….
In Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings… the dark Lord Sauron (aka Satan) has created this one ring which has the power over all the other rings… this one ring that all the kings want for themselves…. for the power is in “The Ring”… they see it… they feel it… they want it…
That power is constantly drawing us to the source of the power… the mighty Dark Lord Sauron. I desperately want what the Ring tells me I can have… power… control… riches… importance… influence… adulation… recognition… I can be somebody… I can… I can…. I can.…
There is only one way out of that spiral… walk away from the Ring… go back into Jesus… choose to shut the door … die to all that the Ring is holding out to you… walk with Him instead… do only what He tells you to do… out of your love relationship with Him…
Suddenly you will begin to discover that the Ring has lost its Power.
The same thing that happens all the time…. that’s what happened… same old same old…. doesn’t matter if it’s 40 years ago or two thousand forty years ago… it’s same old same old… we recreate the model we know… the early church recreated the synogogue system… every time God blows a fresh wind of His Spirit thru the existing structure… the folks that come out re-create it from that same old model… only this time… we have it straight…. we’re gonna do it right…. a little read thru Church history will tell just about anyone that they didn’t get it straight either.
Remember this is not the pot calling the kettle black… this is Philip the Pastor of the Perfect Church in 1977 … when we finally saw how we too had done the same old same old just like everyone before us… we repented… and… of course…. started over again… this time absolutely determined to get it right… yes sirree Bob… and then started again… and again.. each time absolutely convinced that this time…. this time… I finally saw it….
But I never understood I had to go back and shut that stupid door… you know the one I didn’t even know was still open….
That fresh beautiful thing back in 1970… that move of God that was so alive…. then the anointing started to come off… never knew why until this week. We made all the usual rationalization… like… you know… everything has a time and a season… the season for the Tuesday Prayer Rap is over… God is taking the young people on now and growing them up in the Lord.
No…. that’s not what happened… men came in… governed by what came thru the open door… started applying the principles of that system… organized it… first with forming a Ministry… called the Mustard Seed… which opened a coffee house… the dialogue and exchanged stopped… it changed to music, food and entertainment… I mean that is how you reach young people… ask any youth pastor… they will tell you that… the kids were now brought a message… from the front... from the educated ones…
It didn’t take long before the Mustard Seed Coffee House became an outreach of the Mustard Seed Church... and death came with it… as it always does…
I want you to understand that this is not negative… it is very positive… the Lord is patient beyond any definition we can dream up for the meaning of that… What God would really like is for us to stop recreating that same dead old model… it is a part of this world’s system….
It is all under the Power of the Ring…. think about the trilogy of The Lord of the Rings….
Think about it. I will suggest some answers to all this that I said today.
Many many years ago…. in a galaxy far far away…. there was a word…“rap”…. the meaning has changed over the years… but waaaaayy back then in 1970… it was a very simple word… it just meant to talk! You know… like talk… interact… have a conversation… back and forth… discuss things… chat about them… your thoughts… my thoughts… our thoughts… freely and openly just talk!
We have progressed (?) over the years to soliloquies… lecterns ( as in lectures)… pulpits… and rap is now music (sort of) where somebody is stringing a bunch of words together that sometimes rhyme in an attempt to project some message somebody wants to project that I am totally incapable of understanding….
Sorry… somehow I prefer dialogue… exchanging ideas… building relationships…. I could care less if anyone talked at me again ever… it’s about communicating… not pontificating…not entertaining me … not manipulating me…. not persuading me… not selling me… or telling me…. what I should think or believe or do…
I want very much to share what I think and also want just as much to hear what you think… goes two ways… you know how I learned that… I finally got it when God showed me that He wanted to communicate with me… talk with me not at me…. dialogue… both ways… back and forth…
One of the more powerful experiences of my life was back in 1970… rapping …. exchanging ideas like that… in an open forum… a couple of those older than 30 … you know…. old guys that young people couldn’t trust…. those 2 guys printed up a flyer announcing that on every Tuesday night at this particular location and time… we would sit down with teens and twenties and just rap… just talk back and forth about Jesus… we called it the Tuesday Prayer Rap…. we offered no extras… no music… no coffee… no entertainment… no stand-up comics… just shared our thoughts…. and listened to theirs…
For 2 years we rapped with 200/250 kids every week….about Jesus… we prayed with them and loved on them… astounding things happened… it was an amazing time…We just…. rapped… we were rappers…. it used to be ok to just talk…. :)Lives were changed…. maybe mine more than anyone else… back then I was just… Philip the Rapper…
Now I’m Philip the Muser.…would love to rap about the musings… anytime…
So why did our daughter Jennifer have to say this the other day… “just went dancing in Kigali - yes, I did, really, and it was quite the experience. So what if we’re almost 40 “…..
I mean really…. here is our daughter… still only 37…. hinting that … after 40 it’s like all downhill or something… aging has gotten a really bad rap… thinking back 40 years to 1970… the younger generations of teens and twenties were shouting …“don’t trust anyone over 30!”…. c’mon now… let’s give it a break… that was before our daughter was even conceived!!!!!
I was talking with a buddy the other day…. who is 60 …. at one time… in another galaxy… he was actually one of those 20 year olds of 1970 who didn’t trust old fossils like me… I mean… egads… I was 35!!!!.… Anyway… we were talking about a couple friends of his that he taught with…. that both died in their 60’s….
Back in the 50’s there was forced retirement at 60… obviously management understood that one would be too decrepit to work any more at that age…. so….put them out to pasture …all those useless ones… I remember our neighbor’s dad being forced into retirement at 60… given due honor at the retirement dinner and presented the famous “gold watch”… he died within two weeks… proving that management really understands these things about…. about useless old men… who are just about to die…
It’s a bad rap… I’ve said it for years… what on earth does the system want me to retire from…? …. Life?…. working gives us motivations… goals… a reason to get up every morning… work out… stay in shape… stay healthy… I have absolutely no plans to retire… ever… I may change what I am doing at some point… but right now… I intend to just keep on keeping on …doing what I love doing… right here at the B&B…. and today… I even talked the doctor into letting me come off this one heart med…. that I am convinced is sapping all my energy… we shall see what it is like in another week…
Right now… skipping the second dose today…. I have energy and motivation to write … which I haven’t had for a couple days…
I was even thinking about how the word “rap”… as in bad rap….has changed since 40 years ago… back in 1970 I was rapping all the time… had nothing to do with music or singing… rap music wasn’t even around then….just barely hit its stride in 1979…
More on all that next time…. I’m gonna go back…. to 1970…. where you can meet…. “Philip the Rapper!”
What does that mean?…. work ethic…. remember the story I told about my friend Steve interviewing a 30-something guy for an executive position in his company… asking him for a response to some one liners he threw out… “what does this expression mean to you?” … the expression he threw out was “work ethic”… the response to the question was a blank stare… “could you perhaps rephrase that, sir?” I mean like the young fellow was totally clueless as he climbed his ladder of success… he stuttered and fumbled… he just had no idea what “work ethic“ meant….
The thing I miss most in my journey over these many years… is that I never had a real relationship with my father… just never could get him to open up with me… talk to me….instead I spent too many years just trying to prove to him that “I had what it takes.”… unfortunately, I never was able to do that… but the main thing I did get from my dad was his incredible work ethic…. he taught me…. by his example… what a work ethic is… all of my kids picked it up.. I have 8 of the hardest working kids on the planet… they don’t sit back and take… they give… they contribute….they don’t try to just work the system… get something for nothing…. they do it the old fashioned way…. they earn it…
I am so proud of my kids. They do what they do in the same system of the open door as everyone else… except they haven’t given in to it…they haven’t given themselves to the horror of how the world somehow owes me something… I don’t need to contribute… I’ll just take whatever I can get… get whatever I can that I don’t have to work for… the age of entitlement….
We were put here to work… to be givers not takers…. to contribute… to help… to serve… to love….
Anyway I was thinking about that today out of yesterday’s posting… so I thought I would try to contribute today… hopefully help somebody to rethink this one… maybe at least give us something to chew on….
Hope so…
The other day I decided it was time to end my annual attempt to grow a beard for the winter…. this year it lasted about 10 days… Ellen was very good… no comments about her scruffy looking husband… or how much older I look with fur on my face… none of that stuff…
So I decided to just bless her and get rid of the scruff… trim up my hair, my mustache and goatee… well…. she gives me this neat hug and says thank you… then says…. “you know… you look 10 years younger!” Gotta luv it!
I was so excited that I decided to put my youthful visage on facebook today as the next of “the many faces of Philip…”
Then I am suddenly thinking why is it that I feel so good whenever someone tells me how young I look. Why do I enjoy telling people how old I am…? Could it possibly be that Philip is looking for a response like…. maybe something along the line of… “no way are you 75… thought you were around 60 maybe…” Who me? Philip? Bait somebody for a response like that? May it never be?
Truth is…. I have asked the Lord to forgive me for all that stuff. I am very thankful for my health. For the ability to be able to work out and stay conditioned… to be able to continue to work… to be able to encourage others to lose weight… stay trim… exercise… eat right… drink your water… get off the junk food… work hard….get a relationship with God. All these things will go a very long way in staying young… as well as looking young… but the goal has to change… the goal is not to look young… not even to feel young… the goal is to stay fit so I can accomplish God’s plan for my life as I live here for Him.
Our society is obsessed with staying youthful looking…. as long as I can get it from a pill… have a face lift… color my hair… buy the right outfits…whatever… as long as it doesn’t take any effort… or as little effort as possible…
It doesn’t work that way… takes lots of effort… lots of discipline… we need help from others… we need help from th Lord… it’s just the way it is…
I just wrote this little blurb on facebook…. about the days when I was always hiding…
“I never used to be able to just be myself… just be real… always had to wear a mask… I mean… who is this masked man????? “
I’ve been having fun posting a different picture of Philip on facebook every day… where I am wearing a different outfit or some kind of different hat… this has all been for fun but each time it has triggered something very real about me… about us… about humanity…
Like wearing a different hat is just fine… we all have to put on different hats during the day… like the “I must deal with today’s business” hat… husband hat… wife hat… father/mother hats… chef’s hats… Mr./Mrs fixit… clean it… pick it up hat… whatever kind of hat… The problems only come when we get our identity out of the Hat we are wearing… or really good at… or let’s pretend I am really good at hat… like my golf hat…
A mask is never ever a good thing to wear… when I wore my masks it was because I was always pretending to be someone or something I really wasn’t…. it would be very dangerous to let people know the great Phil Wolff… know who he really is… they might think I am not quite as great as I think I am… they might shatter the legend…they might not like me… they might put me down like all those other people did when I was still vulnerable as a young fella… when I was still honest… when I was still just being me… the wounds came… I was safe only when I put on my mask…. who am I? Who is this masked man?
Back then I was a lot of things…. at 19 I was Marlon Brando… the great actor… then there were the great businessman years…. while still pretending to be Marlon Brando for 15 years of little theater… then the 32 years of being God’s man of “faith and power for the hour”…. some 12 years of that 32 as the pastor of the perfect church… then the almost 9 years of being Philip “the great restauranteur”…. 5 other years of changing the way to educate autistic children as I worked one on one with a very special young man… that thing…. that “changing of the systems” was the hardest to take off… all the others died at the fence… the Lord just took them all off that day back in 1999… all but Crusader Rabbit who is determined to change every unrighteous system in the world…. that one is huge… it is off one day and back on the next….didn’t matter whether it was political… economic… or religious…
I am done with the political and economic…. except for the way that people run their businesses… especially when the way they run it affects me… other than that… the ones that still grab me are the religious systems…. so many wounds from them… locked in prison by them for 32 years… and I see so many people in that same place…. in one bondage or another… one prison or another… so many I would like to help in some way…
So I have had trouble getting free from that one…. old Crusader Rabbit…. but it is better now than it was… and the story isn’t over…
He has not… and I know that He will not… ever stop working on it…… and all I have to do is keep that old door shut… that one that opened so long ago…
There are times my poor wife must think I have totally lost it…. like this morning… when I put on this ladies red hat and a bola… took a picture and posted it on facebook with the comment that I dressed up that way to serve some food at one of Ellen’s Tea Parties… it was for the Red Hatters... so I came out all dressed up and asked if I could join….
Ellen just rolled her eyes this morning… shook her head… then walked away…. Maybe that’s what my friends on facebook did too… what is it with this guy?… doesn’t he have anything better to do with his time?… get a life big fella!….
Maybe they are all right… philip is this very strange dude… but I gotta tell ya…. I am just enjoying the adventure…. enjoying the journey… and certainly no longer want to take myself too seriously… laughter is good for the soul… even if it’s laughing at myself and all the silly things I say and do… granted I have this strange sense of humor… some friends have told me I’m weird… but that’s ok…. in the midst of the war…. in the middle of all the attacks and the daily battles… it is an incredible break to just do some zany things… have tons of fun… and laugh a lot… so with Philip… what you see is what you get….
Fortunately most of our guests seem to really enjoy all my carrying on… often times writing something really nice about it in our guest books…. gets me mushy … and it does encourage me to simply keep on keeping on… being who Philip is… and not trying to be someone else or some thing else…
That list of all the stuff going down in our lives this past couple months… plus feeling pretty crappy most of the time these days from all the meds in preparation for my electrocution… hopefully next month… all of that stuff has me working at breaking things up with a touch of crazy several times during the day…
Things are supposed to change big time once my heart goes into a normal rhythm… when that happens… I am sure I will not stop being crazy Philip… egads… I can’t imagine how much zanier I will get when I have my energy back and feel good all the time…
That’s what it is really… this thing we call life… one great adventure… once we understand it…. we begin to see how life is just one continuous great incredible adventure… we have to go back and close the door of course… otherwise it will look like one disaster after another…. like that list I went thru the other day… they are either the next great adventure that lies just around the corner… or the disaster that we fear may be around that same corner…
I hope we have already established that things just do not work out quite the way we plan them…. the Ski Resorts in Vermont did not plan for it to go up over 50 degrees today… it has done just that… presently 51 degrees and raining… that rain wasn’t planned either… flood watch is in effect throughout the area…. this is not what we call Winter in Vermont…. it messes up a lot of plans…
Before I had my encounter with the Lord back in 1968… I was absolutely convinced that my destiny was in my hands… and that I was totally in control of everything…. I was the great Phil Wolff….what a joke…that required a lot of mind games…. a lot of blame shifting… a lot of playing “Let’s Pretend”…. after all… I am a legend in my own mind… here’s an example….
Take the games yesterday…. Vikings/Saints in particular… I was really pulling for Brett… I thought the Vikings were going to put it away… then Peterson and others started playing dropsy….
The following scenario was being played out by Viking fans everywhere… not to mention all the put downs from the Saints fans… and I personally refused to listen to the commentators who make their living telling us about how stupid and terrible every person is who messes up and how wonderful everyone is who gets it right … (at least for today)… just like I would have done if I was out there on the field…. the biggest joke being Mr. Smooth commentator that never even put on a uniform….who keeps it rolling for all the “use-to-bees” sarcasm… always implying that they always do it right… never ever messed up when they were on the field.
Of course… the rest of us fans… like me… who never made it even to the High School team… I can sit there vicariously being thrilled every time there is a great run or catch and play my little game of “Let’s Pretend”… that was just the way I would have extended and pulled in that throw… yes sir… I am still the greatest… or chime in with the negative something like… “Peterson must have put butter on his hands…sure hope they don’t put him back in… they did… I don’t believe it…look at that… that jerk couldn’t hold on to a…. (fill in the blank)…. and poor Farve…. “you know I never would have done anything as stupid as that… the great Phil Wolff will always make the right decision… no idiot would have thrown that ball… I would have just run it down there as far as I could… then slid… before I got my brains rattled again yet one more time…I would have gotten the ball in perfect position for a chip shot with 4 seconds left on the clock… the great Phil wolff would say… “See ya at the super bowl.”
Things never work out quite the way we think they should... it’s quite an adventure… sometimes we win… sometimes we lose… go close the door and it won’t matter which… then you can relax and enjoy the journey… enjoy this great adventure…