1.  The Museum Glass of Heaven

I went to Juárez, Mexico with a church group in January of 1994.  We were there to build a house.  By "house" I mean concrete structure that may or may not have had any holes in the floor or walls for plumbing and electrical (I don't remember; probably it did), and which was being built in a neighborhood serviced only by dirt roads.  A neighborhood in which people put tires on the rooves of their houses, so the rooves wouldn't blow away.

I remember walking around the neighborhood with the other gringo college kids, balancing on the tiny strip of dry ground between the dusty brick wall and giant mud puddle that covered the road.  I remember buying snacks at the tienda, and marveling over how the place was a concrete bunker, rather than a shiny, bright convenience store.  I remember the list of goods painted on the outside wall.  The words "leche," "pan," and "cerveza" painted in dust from 500 years ago, the remedial, artless drawings of these items, the dark and cavernous opening that served as a door.  We bought our Mexican sodas and went back to the single-story concrete house we were sleeping in, which was probably a church.

We slept in sleeping bags on the floor of a large room, and there was a curtain or sheet set up to separate the men from the women.  We'd wake up, eat breakfast, and go pour concrete and build walls under the direction of the people involved in the project who knew how to do such things.  I took my guitar into the streets at dawn one day, and someone snapped this photo.

It's an interesting pic, but I had obviously been infected with the party demon by this time.  The group took a day off to go into downtown Juárez, and I broke away from them to go exploring.  While I was wandering around the main square, some guy asked me if I wanted a beer.  I was 20, and the novelty of buying a beer legally was a temptation I couldn't resist.  I wandered back toward the group with my long hair and mild buzz, and we got back into the church van and drove back to our cozy, righteous hovel.

I don't remember the ride back, but I remember the first ride into town, after crossing the border.  It was a carnival of dust and dusky light.  The main road didn't seem like a road at all, but rather a dry concrete riverbed upon which vehicles swerved like projectiles in a pinball machine, bouncing off the flashing lights illuminating the floor of the giant casino that was the city.  It was the Mexican road of dreams, because I can't find it anywhere on Google Maps.  All the giant interstate riverbeds have been turned into normal streets.  Freeways even, according to Google. 

It's not believable.  I clearly remember driving on a dry concrete riverbed, and the nonexistent view of the city on the embankments up above.  The air was thick with candied smog.  The sun was going down, and bicycles and buses bounced around in a strange world of cartoon physics.  Everything was fast and loud and colorful.  My lungs felt like 2 cardboard cones, covered in pink cotton candy.  I watched the guy from the eternal carnival form them in the hot, spinning sugar machine.  He spun my lungs like a spiderweb from a hair dryer full of sugar, and gave them to some sticky children, who disappeared into the streets.  I filed a report with the missing candy organs police, to no avail.  The missing candy organs police are notoriously corrupt in Mexico.  If you don't give them any candy, you will never find your heart.  Or your lungs, which I know from personal experience.  Since then, I always hold my breath when walking past a cotton candy machine.  For fear of having it stolen.  But I'm telling you, we drove through a dry, empty river.  It was the main thoroughfare into town.

This isn't it.  It's way too wide and clean:

Perhaps the driver got lost on the Rio Grande itself.  Or maybe it didn't happen the way I remember it at all. 

Perhaps memories exist behind the museum glass of Heaven, where they belong.

In any case, even though I think these scenes were filmed in Mexico City, there weren't any piñatas humanas hanging from any bridges when I was there.

My experience in mid-90s Juárez was nothing like that.  It was dusty, the plumbing was sketchy, and nobody drank the water, but there were no morbid human chandeliers glowing with the unholy fear of death, hanging from any kind of ceilings, bridges, or low-clearance, concrete heavens.  There were no moons or stars or other spatial bodies under which it was necessary to duck.  We didn't wander far, and we didn't do it at midnight, but we gringo college kids walked around the neighborhood without fear.  We befriended the local children, and gave them helicopter rides.  They would clamber around and over and on top of us, yammering incomprehensibly in Spanish, until we picked them up and spun them around like a helicopter.  It was no small amount of fun.  There are pictures of us standing together, me and the kids and one of the gringo girls on the trip with whom I shared a magnetic vibe, and with whom I entertained the children, but this isn't it.  The kids are off to the side, doing something else, while I'm playing guitar in my work clothes.

It was a great trip, even if I hadn't yet repented.  For reasons of not perceiving the urgency of the need, most likely.  Which need has never been small, and which has never gone away.  The urgency has in fact increased.  Exponentially.

But it was a good trip.  I remember the colorful "Ruta 3B" buses, which means "Route 3B," bouncing down the streets in the morning like giant slices of mechanical fruit.  I remember talking to some of the Mexican guys who were watching us build the house, even though neither of us spoke the other person's language.  They were Christians, and there was a camaraderie there that transcended mere culture, race, and language.  I remember the walk down from the work site, the winding path of dust, the cactuses and bright sun, and walking down past the concrete houses with tires on the tin, corrugated roof.

I also remember the writing on the mountain, which is still there today.  I've only been to Juárez once, but I've driven by it a thousand times on I-10.  The mountain clearly states, "The Bible is the Truth, Read It," though I think the "read it" part has been added relatively recently.  For years, I thought "Leela" was a girl's name, and somebody had signed somebody's name under the bold proclamation of the veracity of scripture, writ large in giant white letters on the side of one of the mountains overlooking Juárez.  Since coming to Mexico, I have learned that "leela" means "read it."  It really is an interesting place for such a bold, unflinching proclamation.

Considering, y'know, how unbelievably dangerous the city has become.

2.  Window Into Hell

“Knowing therefore the terror of the Lord, we persuade men;"
2 Corinthians 5:11

I have always thought that the Bible was like a window into hell.  The word "Bible" itself has always been encased in flames for me.  Metaphorically, of course, in the sense of being an urgent, desperate warning.  The word itself, encased in flames.  The Bible is a book that can never be burned, because it has always been burning.  Which is why so many people hate it.  The Bible doesn't affirm anybody in their natural inclination toward pleasure and destruction.  It brings the true nature of this destruction to the light, the fact of it, in all its horror and despair.  It illuminates the darkest corners of the soul.  The light it shines is unequivocal.  It leaves no doubt.

It's horrifying, really.

Because it is.  It's not horrifying because, like a horror film or rollercoaster, the fear in it can be manipulated by an editing technique, or reduced to something you experience at an amusement park.  If it's horrifying, it's horrifying... because it's true. 

Which it either is, or is not.  Regardless of what anyone believes.

Including you and me.

"There's a Bible in a bottle at the bottom of a well
after everything you've been through,
how can you not believe in hell?"
Diamonds in the Dust

If it's true, and the Bible is the truth, a window into Heaven and Hell alike, what kind of window must the people of Juárez be looking through, to feel the need to write THE BIBLE IS THE TRUTH in letters 150 feet tall on the side of a mountain overlooking their city?  Is the world witnessing what happens when the rich-people's luxury of believing in the goodness of the human heart has been entirely removed?  When this luxury is removed from other parts of the world, will people whine like rich kids about the perceived "negativity" of the flames, rising at their feet?  Or will they realize that the soul is the only thing that anyone can truly lose, because it's all they're left with after everything else has been removed?  In sorrow and desperation, will they hike up the side of a hill and write THE BIBLE IS THE TRUTH on a mountainside, for everyone to see?

What kind of window are the citizens of Juárez looking through?  Is pre-emptive misanthropy and a "fear" of people who engage in illicit sex keeping them down?

Or is it something less opulent than that.  Less optional.  A problem, perhaps, that hasn't been chosen. 

Is it something fundamental?

According to BorderReport.com, "Eight migrants have been victims of homicide in Juárez in the last nine months, with the bodies of seven found within walking distance of the same street.... The remote south Juárez neighborhood is propitious for abandoning a body after the person is killed in a home or warehouse elsewhere....  He described the manner of death as sadistic, with people being victims of extreme violence and then strangled with a rope or the cord of an electrical appliance."

In another article from BorderReport last August, "When the body of a murdered man wrapped in a blanket turned up in front of her children’s elementary school early Sunday, the only thing Yvonne G. could do was keep them away from the TV all day."

I'm not telling you not to protect your kids from transgender demonphoria, which is at least as important as protecting them from the news that a headless body was found next to their school, but taking a moment to appreciate the fact that things aren't this bad in the U.S., yet, is probably not the worst way to start the day.  The lost art of gratitude, etc.  I'm not saying your problems aren't real; they are.  But at least you can still show your face to the camera without being afraid of the police coming to your house to beat you up and steal your car.

What's that you say about the cops?  If they cannot do their jobs (for whatever reason), will they turn to crime themselves?  

The same article states that an "air-conditioning technician said he doesn’t want criminals leaving body parts in the park, but the last time he saw police officers they roughed him up."

Not wanting to find human remains in your local park or outside an elementary school seems like a reasonable expectation to impose on the day, but if the idea of assigning more cops to the area to solve a problem as serious as that is met with hesitation.....

How corrupt can Mexican cops be?  Yet another article on BorderReport says that, "Chihuahua state authorities have suspended 86 municipal police officers and confiscated their weapons in a town 87 miles south of the U.S. border.  The actions came a day after a drug cartel allegedly castrated and murdered a suspected rapist in Casas Grandes and hung his naked body upside down along with a hand-written sign from a metal arch at the entrance of the city."

The human piñatas I mentioned earlier.  Horrific:

Of course, who knows.  He might have actually been guilty.  Maybe he raped somebody.  Maybe it was justice, to hang him over the highway. 

Maybe not.  Whatever the case, a window into hell, it absolutely is.

3.  Birthday Song For The Dead

While the trip to Juárez in '94 was great, my hindsight view of the trip is not particularly joyful.  While nothing bad happened to anybody, and there was no drama or falling out, the church group didn't bring me back to Mexico with them the following year.  I was interested, and wanted to go, but they wouldn't have me.  They were right to deny me.  Surely somebody noticed that I had a slight beer buzz after coming back from my wanderings around the town square, and by that time my band had become more well-known around campus.  We weren't into anything demonic, but we were known for partying, and no group of true Christians who are working to be obedient and serve the Lord ought to invite known party animals anywhere, except to church.  To, y'know, repent.

"What fruit had ye then in those things whereof ye are
now ashamed?  For the end of those things is death."
Romans 6:21

Am I ashamed?  Do I feel the need to throw myself prostrate before the court of you, to the point that I don't want to tell the story? 

No. 

But fundamentally, yeah.  I am ashamed.  If the church group had accepted me on the return trip to Mexico, I would perhaps be less likely to look back on that season with shame.  God forbid.  But it's possible.  Unwittingly, I was the "raging waves of the sea" described in Jude 1, the "wandering stars, to whom is reserved the blackness of darkness for ever."  In fact, the concept of "shame" doesn't begin to express how I feel about it.  Extreme visceral horror, is more like it.  Thank God they didn't enable me in my deadly, ignorant mistakes.  Presuming to assist God by building a house made of candy corn and righteous crickets, before repenting.  Though, thinking about it, in all honesty I was there for the trip as much as anything else.  So there ya go.  Not a servant's heart, not really.  Something in my soul was surely magnetized toward purity and holiness, but my feet were sliding all over the map.  Slipping on the ice here, falling face-first into the mud there.  Maybe just to see what it felt like to slip in the mud, to drink a covert beer on a mission trip, I'm not too proud to admit (what a waste of time!).  But I could never close the door on God.  I could never close that window.  I knew that the warning behind the pages of the Bible was true.  I knew the flames were real.  I could see them through the glass.  Always have.

Maybe you can't see them yet.  Maybe you're still stuck believing in the colorful illusion of a city of sugar rising like a dream behind the museum glass of Heaven.  The deceitful vision of reality that tells you there is hope in this life.  Hope w/o God.  No need for the Bible.  No need to heed the horrifying warning, no need to avoid the non-negotiable flames.  No such thing as sin, nothing to repent of.  That the vision of Heaven in your heart can be achieved in a world without righteousness.  That the city of sugar can be built

By an army

Of humanoid piñatas, or

Headless bodies in the street.

If that's true, and there's nothing to be afraid of, what are you afraid of?  Open the window, let the air and light in, thank God that there's an out, and die to your self-righteous visions of sugar clouds behind the museum glass today.  Today can be your birthday, even if you die.

Especially if you die.

“For ye are dead, and your life is hid with Christ in God.”
Colossians 3:3

Look behind the paradox, and meet me on the streets of gold.  The vision of sugar will melt in the fire, but the gold will last forever.

"Therefore shall all hands be faint, and every man's heart
shall melt: And they shall be afraid: pangs and sorrows
shall take hold of them; they shall be in pain as a
woman that travaileth: they shall be amazed one
at another; their faces shall be as flames."
Isaiah 13:7-8

Time is short.  Do it now.  

Thanks for listening.