It’s been interesting to watch you all react to my wife, Marti’s writing. Some of you feel understood for the first time in your life. Others are still scratching your heads.
Take, for instance, that little bit she wrote recently about Jesus coming in through the window. Many readers, both men and women, connected with that picture and responded as if Jesus used windows all the time in their experience, at least the picture triggered something in their minds that enabled them to access their own story to tell.
As for me… I didn’t get it.
As someone who moves forward by sequential steps, each of which has to be justified, and knowing Marti is grounded in biblical truth, I was very confused when she first read to me her story about Jesus coming in through the window. That’s not in the Bible, I thought. I did a word study and the only thing ever coming in through a window in the Scriptures was death (Jeremiah 9:21).
Yet, if you are among the many who are on Marti’s radar, you know she demonstrates in everything she does her belief in inclusiveness with a message of acceptance toward connecting everybody. Marti loves to open her stories for others, allowing for many interpretations so people can follow their own rabbit trails and experience the adventure through their mind’s eye and thus own the story for themselves. She says it is more a matter of connecting to each other than just telling a story.
To this end she is known to welcome – even embrace – the conflict that arises in the midst of diversity as an opportunity to learn, grow and grow closer. She has no problem disagreeing with another while all along extending herself to make sure no one disconnects.
For many, Marti’s behavior is certainly not out of the ordinary and for many others it is down right alarming. I, for one, do not like conflict. I avoid it whenever I can. However, my preference to avoid and not face into conflict may be the one element interfering with my message in the marketplace. Marti believes that conflict can serve a function of connecting us to one another. If we can embrace conflict instead of avoiding it – disagree without disconnecting – our message will hold the one element that is missing in almost all attempts to deliver it – reconciliation.
Toward the hope of reconciliation, I am pleased to issue a challenge for anyone who wants to accept it. I invite the diverse readers within the Catch to share their stories based on my wife’s leap into sideways thinking, and I will do the same. Join me in responding to one or more of Marti’s rabbit chasing one-liners. Remember it doesn’t matter if you are wrong at some stage of your writing in order to achieve a solution right for you. It’s asking a lot of my fellow left-brainers, but Marti doesn’t want us to limit our story to just historical facts or Biblical understandings. With humor, insight, and creativity where no one is necessarily wrong or right, we invite you to enjoy this exercise in connecting with others in our extended body of Catch readers. You may reply either directly to me or post your comment at our website.
Rabbit Trail One-Liners:
Jesus comes in through the window.
Are you brave enough to tell your King, the Christ, something that he does not want to hear?
Do you think that Jesus sees us as children at play when we sin?
We are sinners after God’s own heart.
When we sin we are at war with our own patience.
When we take on another, like the Muslims, as enemies we see that we take them on as lesser men and women and are, by God, proved wrong and end up paying respect to the enemies.
While holding back a hardy laugh God asks, “What in my name persuaded you to take on a giant such as this?”
Lying brings a sense of falsehood to all who listen. Better to always be true to yourself. Otherwise, the consequence is for everyone in attendance including you, to become Godless.
It is better to be brave, honest, and native.
Your own rabbit chasing one-liner.
John Fischer The Catch 
Are you brave enough to tell your King, the Christ, something that he does not want to hear?
I’m one of those engineering types who struggles to understand Marti; sometimes I wonder if we share a common language. Anyway this one spoke to me.
I want to add ” I think he doesn’t want to hear”. He already knows everything about me so why do I keep my darkest thoughts to my self. I act as if I can keep secrets from Christ and make him like me more. Instead the more I tell him the better I feel and the more I feel his support. Recently in prayer I’ve started unpacking things in my past of which I am ashamed, angry, frightened and worried. It took courage to unpack my garbage in front of the person I most want to respect me. Since starting this process life has slowly improved, and I think it has for those around me. We are meant to take our troubles to Jesus. I can tell you actively doing this has been a release, despite my initial fears.
Rabbit Trail One-Liners:
Jesus comes in through the window.–The windows of our mind.
Are you brave enough to tell your King, the Christ, something that he does not want to hear? –Jesus wants us to be fully open to Him
Do you think that Jesus sees us as children at play when we sin?–yes and no, yes is that we do not know any better and no that we stray from Him.
We are sinners after God’s own heart. –we are people after God’s own heart, but in our own way we sin against His way and will.
When we sin we are at war with our own patience. –we cannot really wait upon God and His timing, not ours.
When we take on another, like the Muslims, as enemies we see that we take them on as lesser men and women and are, by God, proved wrong and end up paying respect to the enemies. –All human beings are made in God’s full image and is calling all of us to return to His way and will in love.
While holding back a hardy laugh God asks, “What in my name persuaded you to take on a giant such as this?”–are you kidding?, do you really trust me fully?
Lying brings a sense of falsehood to all who listen. Better to always be true to yourself. Otherwise, the consequence is for everyone in attendance including you, to become Godless. –Lying builds up walls, not build bridges.
It is better to be brave, honest, and native. –God’s calls us to be authentically invisible to Him and others.
Your own rabbit chasing one-liner.–people with cognitive impaired people understand God better than intellectually/academically people.
OK, I’ll play. I’m a predominantly right-brained probably bi-modal INTJ writer-ideator grown-up baby boomer.
I love the play of words in Marti’s billboard-worthy declaration: “We are sinners after God’s heart.” If my brain activity had been mapped, my truth-driven linear left brain probably responded first. However, it was a short burn. Almost immediately, her words fired up the synapses in my imagination-driven right brain. I was able to get beyond the truth of just the words to see beauty in the bigger meaning.
The truth: There is no sin in God’s heart. The beauty: But I am a sinner after (chasing) God’s heart…I am a sinner after (made in the image of) God’s heart…I am a sinner after (chronologically) God’s heart. I am a sinner adrift on a sea of uncertainty, but God’s heart is an anchor of certainty. Not just his words of truth, but his heart toward me a sinner. Yes, I know about his heart intellectually only by his words, but I know his heart experientially only by my spirit-infused imagination.
God has revealed himself to us in analogies (father, son, provider, rock, shepherd, and many more). He explains his nature and character to us using words and images from the created order which he made for us and in which he has placed us. He also gave us an imagination to be able to decode and understand those anaologies. We understand truth propositionally; we understand goodness morally; but we understand beauty through our divinely-designed imagination. I cannot imagine a life without a full and free imagination. We are all sinners after God’s heart.
Sorry to go long. Right brain thing.
Uh oh. Marti’s got a new friend now.
Jesus is not limited in His ability to “come through the window”. I think that Marti is asking us to expand our way of thinking about the limitless ways that Jesus can reach us, not just through the “door” metaphor that is used in Scripture, but through ANYTHING that stands in the way of His message of love for us. Kinda scary that Marti and I might be on the same “wavelength” regarding this particular rabbit trail one liner. Be blessed brother and keep up the good work and give your bride a hug from all of us faithful fans of the “Catch”.
Bob Cooling, Washington, WV.
Nice. Except being on the same wavelength as Marti isn’t scary, it’s brilliant!
I am on “the SAME PAGE” as Marti!
It SEEMS as if we “think alike”!
Thank YOU, Marti! It makes me feel good that there is “someone” besides myself who thinks the SAME way! 🙂
Oh no. You mean there’s two of you out there?
First, let me say Thank You to Ralph for inspiring (in-spire, from the Latin “to breathe in”; literally, to inhale; to stimulate or impel; to motivate by divine influence) me with his way of facing the fears that the past weighs us all down with. I’ve known for decades that I both dread conflict to the point of being the fall guy rather that deal with it, and apparently do (or fail to do) the very things that guarantee conflict in my life. That doesn’t sound like it has anything to do with unloading guilt, but I recently read something that struck me as soon as I read it: “You magnetically draw people and situations toward you that correspond to your subconscious desires and fears. You know that.” It was the “You know that” that got me. I do know it, and I know that God knows it. So, I’ve been ruminating on those subconscious desires and fears and how to recognize them by the corresponding people and situations in my life. Then, while expecting to add my two cents to the rabbit trail club about being brave, honest and native, I learn from Ralph that I’m taking the long way ’round here! Because even though God already knows all about the ugly stuff in my attic, He’s waiting for me to tell him about so He can heal me. Healing comes after revealing, does it not? Light out of darkness. So it makes sense that revealing my ugly secrets to God will be a healing for me — and for the people and situations in my life.
So, about the one-liner that drew me to comment in the first place: “It’s better to be brave, honest and native.” Native? I looked it up. There are 5 definitions of native as the adjective. I like the one that says, “as found in nature; natural” (look it up yourself — those other four definitions suggest umpteen takes on Marti’s line). My mom used to tell me, “Just be yourself.” And I used to wonder, “Who is that?” But, I think that if I try to be something I’m not, I’m not only not brave and honest, I’m not ever going to learn how to be brave and honest.
Thanks! The “natural” definition brings new meaning to this.
I get the windows comment. He comes in through the window sometimes to protect us. Satan tries to sneak in thru the window at night to attack us and Jesus protects us by coming in the window first to block satan.
Just “caught” up on my Catch readings and wanted to share a rabbit trail that I used in college…
“I will survive — even if it kills me.”
I put this on a t-shirt and it was interesting the range of comments I received. I heard everything from “That doesn’t make sense” to a discussion about suicide. It sure gave me an opening to share my faith!
For me it simply reflected both my dogged determination to perservere in the face of physical and academic challenges and my belief that my future was (and is) safe in God’s hands – on Earth or in Heaven.
June