letters from barabbas

The week before I left for Brazil, John asked me what were my expectations, with the assumption that if I didn’t specify any then I couldn’t reap their potential benefits. I shrugged and kept on eating, with the assumption that my expectations would be broad, inaccurate, based upon past experience, and pointless. And anyway, I honestly didn’t know of any to specify. But an hour before landing, looking out the window at the Amazon River winding through verdant wilds, I thought resolutely and unexpectedly, “I expect this trip to be a reference point for the rest of my future.” It is odd how the mind and the will may remain separate until an emotion fuses them together.

What to say of Rio de Janeiro? We worked with evangelist Rick Bonfim throughout the Rio area, traveling with him to churches and praying for people at the altar after he preached. We also helped with various improvements at the mission in Niteroi. He spent a lot of time teaching us how to pray for people and how to listen to the Holy Spirit, and he spent a lot of time ministering to us personally. Short term, I got a lot more out of the trip than I put in. Long term, the things I received will empower me to pour myself out abundantly.
How to explain what I’ve experienced?


I have alluded occasionally on this blog to my struggles to move beyond mind processes and rational thinking into walking in the Spirit and my confusion about gender and masculinity, but in my journals and private conversations these two problems have consumed the bulk of my emotional resources for a very long time. It is amazing how much light has been shed on these things in the past year, and the breakthrough I experienced in two short weeks was astounding.
There in the makeshift office where each team member met with the leadership team privately for healing prayer, He spoke deeply to me. Where wounds of past rejection had taught me to hide behind impenetrable defenses from both God and man, withdrawing into a sharply honed cycle of analysis, self-absorption and resentment, fifteen minutes of the Holy Spirit pouring on my head was enough to reverse much of the damage.

It’s called ectopia cordis. Something went wrong in my development, I became a product of psychology, too much soul and not enough spirit. Walking around with a hole in my chest, how could I breathe life into empty spaces when the sucking wound in my lungs wouldn’t even let me catch my breath? Calla Maria was right—I couldn’t give that shit to anyone.
But He penetrated, somehow, deep inside of me, and was even so good as to patch up the hole. The tears that floated to the surface were replaced by holy winds, cleansing water—fuller and deeper and surer than ever. My puny spirit, so long smothered by a tyrannically analytical mind, was refreshed by the Comforter Himself, allowed to step out in faith and find himself in holy communion. And I saw myself in Technicolor, a reservoir for wellsprings of life, no longer gulping approval in desperate hope of filling the void, finally full enough to spill something out.
But is that all there was to it? I confess I am reluctant to lay claim to wholeness this quickly.

I’ll wait to ring the bells awhile,
till all the light and color
have stayed the whole of spring,
until I believe it.
And if, and if I count on you,
oh do not fly away.
I dare not count on you,
it is too early to say.
-the innocence mission

But it isn’t too early-—and that in itself is terrifying to me.

Therefore, brethren, having boldness to enter the Holiest by the blood of Jesus, by a new and living way which He consecrated for us, through the veil, that is, His flesh, and having a High Priest over the house of God, let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith, having our hearts sprinkled from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water. Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for He who promised is faithful.
Hebrews 10:19-23 NKJV


It is strange to feel so much different, having crossed the equator only twice.