And so it begins

I'm going to write these next three days in shifts, split shifts.

We’ve begun this march toward toward who knows what with a trip into the rooms of a hotel. The rooms are at the Place D'Armes, which looks like it wandered into view somewhere right after the French Market was established as a place to go to for fresh veggies and such. We're in boot camp. You've just learned all I know about what we're doing. We're going to be talking quite heavily about quite heavy subjects -- about planting churches, about re-starting churches, about putting the ER heart equipment on churches, United Methodist churches, and seeing if we can indeed give hearts a reason to re-start after the death of them seems imminent.

To do so, we've dug into a hotel somewhere in the French Quarters that has left the impression we are about to go down to the strip of land right off Decatur and sell some goods to the gutter punks that frequent the streets of this old noble center, the homeless, the helpless in some situations, those who walk the streets each night with their dogs beside them.

But this hotel goes beyond  first impressions, as should we. In other words, this place looks and feels, well, old. Old like some vastly unfortunate person was dragged off the slave ships right past here. Old like some French person gave everyone a reason to think less than highly of the French people by doing something, well, French. The walls radiate an old flavor, though they do anything but smell old.No, a crisp, fresh smell radiates from carpet that appears old but is not, from walls that appear old, but are not.

 One of the leaders of this boot camp is in a room that one has to literally slide sideways down a hall the width of LeBron James' foot. Then one has to push open a door, go down a half-flight of steps to land in front of the room. Then one has to stop using one as a noun before one gets beat up on the streets of New Orleans.

We're just two blocks off Bourbon. A few nights ago a shooting left several injured. We're here to get spiritual, to dig deeper than one, er, than I have ever dug. I'm here, waiting on everyone else, hoping against hope that this is worth whatever it is we're paying for it.

I'm taken by the image, the juxtaposition of the brilliant lights of Bourbon Street and the darkness of someone's life being taken from them by a shooter that still is not caught as we eat at Sinners and Saints.Yeah, we ate at Sinners and Saints. And we lived to tell the tale.

In Isaiah's writings, the prophet talks about the incomparable God. He writes, "Who has measured the waters in the palm of a hand or gauged the heavens with a ruler or scooped the earth's dust up in a measuring cup or weighed the mountains on a scale and the hills in a balance Who directed the Lord's spirit and acted as God's advisor?"

My favorite is this line: "whom did he consult for enlightenment, who taught him the path of justice and knowledge and explained to him the way of understanding."

And the answer, of course, is well, not I Lord. No. Not. I.

I am the least of these. I have surveyed the best, the brightest, the most meaningful, the ones who make me seem plumb dumb as they say where I grew up.

But what I am, what all of us are, is secondary to what and who God is. That's the take away. And that brings us all the way round to the notion of the hotel looking old, and being young.

That's us. We might not look as if we can walk the next block, or be the next good hotel for the masses for the decade. But inside, we can be. When I first saw the house we are renting, I was certain I needed to keep riding, certain this house was a dump. But they led me inside, and after two rooms, I was certain this could be our home. I'm still certain of that.

God is supreme, incomparable, without blemish or without lack.

As the prophet writes, "Look, the nations are like a drop in a bucket, and valued as dust on a scale."

To Him, we are as nothing. To others, we might e something great.

The truth is we are somewhere in between. And we'll always be, no matter the teaching, no matter the learning, no matter the discipline.