Holistic Hippies Pt.1

My life is full of extremes. Sometimes I wish it wasn't always this way, but mostly I think I would go crazy if my life was nominal, marginal or highly measured. I always have a sense of something HUGE around the corner, constantly anticipating the next big impossible challenge. Often the thing around the corner ends up being even way bigger than I dreamed it could of been and I'm left wondering how in Hades I got myself into that kind of situation again?

It's terrifying and I'm addicted to the terror.

This is good, mostly. As a follower of Jesus we should constantly be pushing ourselves to live out of the sense of urgency that Jesus left us with when he ascended up into the clouds. He came and did a lot of cool stuff and put into motion the cure to make this world what it was created to be. He himself started it, and he himself will in some way finish it ( bring on the eschatology mysteries). But there is this long awkward pause in between these two moments and the shocking reality is that this stage, the stage we are in now, seems to be completely, 100%, no two ways about it, left in our hands. With that understanding our lives should be to a large degree wild, reckless, abandoned and terrifying. We haven't a second to waste really. The work Jesus started is still an ongoing process that Jesus decides to entrust to US to accomplish.

YIKES! No pressure aye, Jesus?

In my short time in full time ministry thus far I've had the chance to observe quite a bit of other people who, like myself, are really attempting to live completely sold out to the call of God in our lives. Varied results would be a fair assessment, and an even fairer one would be how incredibly inconsistent I am in the midst of all my astute observations on others. As we rise and fall in our ministries and pursuits of being used by God, I don't sense that we don't want to be wildly effective or that we as followers of this amazing Jesus don't have the highest expectations of what he can do in and through us. Even with the most sincere intentions possible, it seems like it's a slippery slope of simultaneous massive success and massive failure... ALL THE TIME! I began to ask myself is this really what God has for us? Is serving him supposed to be such an imbalanced guessing game of blind faith and sheer determination?

One of my new favorite words is the word HOLISTIC. As a teenager I was very confused on what this actually meant. Whenever I saw this word it was usually on a business sign for a New Age massage/grocery store somewhere on Maui (yes, sometimes both services were offered at the same establishment). In my mind I intertwined this word holistic with things like tofu,aloe vera, dreadlocks and girls with hairy armpits. Maui has a shockingly strong Hippy presence with my hometown of Haiku and the next town down the road Paia, being the epicenter of utopian hippy paradise. Endless stories of hippy madness could be told, but that's entirely beside the point. I do feel though that growing up in such surroundings made it difficult for me to appreciate this amazing word... HOLISTIC. It surely has a much larger meaning than a massage technique or way to buy organic household groceries. Here are some pictures of the funky and iconic town of Paia, Maui.

This place is the Mecca of Hippy Living

Fairly self explanatory: Hippies got to get their hemp bracelets from somewhere

This isn't so exclusively hippy, but it's a great mixture of both local and hippy: Paia Laundromat

Main product sold here would probably be happiness

Street view of the Mecca

When God created us, he created us to be like him. He created us with an innate sense of wholeness that comes directly from HIS wholeness. Father, son, holy spirit... ONE, WHOLE, COMPLETE, PERFECT. We obviously don't currently operate in this dimension. We are broken, disjointed, shattered and incomplete. As human beings we have come to recognize more and more the complexity of what it means to be in these skin covered miracle factories called our bodies. We know that we need to look after these bodies in more ways than one. Our physical bodies need food, nourishment, rest. Our brain needs stimulation, challenge and growth. Our emotional well being is constantly being determined by the amount of love and encouragement we are receiving from those around us. Our inner spirit is constantly striving to be restored to its original design of being one with the creator.

When any one of these areas is out of line with how it was designed to function it often sets off a chain reaction that immediately affects the other areas. If we are physically sick it can make us feel emotionally drained. If we are heavily depressed emotionally we can become literally physically ill. In reverse, many studies show that when some people are terminally ill with things like cancer, the sheer power of being positive and full of life in their emotions seems to literally deter the physical ailments in their broken bodies. One of my sisters best friend growing up was a part of a huge family of like 8 other siblings. I remember as a kid hearing that this friends mom just made a mental and emotional decision after her 2nd or 3rd child that she just wasn't going to allow herself to get sick during the pregnancies anymore. No morning sickness or vomiting, NOTHING. The story goes that the next 6 children came completely vomit, discomfort and sickness free! She made a conscious and emotional decision that affected her physical symptoms. Kinda hard to imagine actually.

Jesus lived a FULL life. He lived a PERFECT life. He lived a WHOLE life. From the moment he arrived in a manger to the moment he ascended into those clouds, he was combatting and rectifying this broken and separated reality that human beings and all of creation seem to be completely subjected to. (Pt. 2 coming soon)