11 posts tagged “christianity”

Soon, I will go out for my interview at Mars Hill Graduate School. Emily and I will look at various houses and apartments while we are there. We are packing all our belongings starting, for the moment, with things we won't need over the next few months. We are continuing to plan our whirlwind tour of the country this summer. The Brewers tickets came in the mail, bringing the total of in-hand tickets to 3 games. I recently found out I will most probably be able to go see The Police this summer with my uncle, who amazingly got me a ticket.

Yes, things are looking up in the world of Scott Small. Of all these awesome things that are happening, the greatest of all is the reality that I have recently felt the rumblings of purpose rising up inside me again. It has been a while. There have been a number of things that have happened over the last six years or so that have led me to seriously question my ability to do any good in this world. I have trouble discerning any gifts in myself a lot of the time, I have trouble believing I could have the grace and patience needed to love people the way I should, my selfishness often overwhelms me and it leaves me wondering what on earth I can do to be a part of the solution for a hurting world rather than continue to be a part of the problem. The lack of purpose and vision leaves me empty.

There is a half finished movie theater out near my wife's old house. The half completed shell of a building sits in the middle of town, no purpose, just an eyesore. Ground was broken with great excitement, the project made headway, but then money ran out, or perhaps it was discovered the location was no longer suitable, and now the project has sat in arrested development for years and will continue in that state indefinitely until finally someone decides it is time to demolish it altogether. At times I feel like I have a lot in common with that ridiculous Quasimodo that was meant to have a purpose. I was going somewhere, my plan was in place, someone had created me for a purpose and I was moving towards it, but then it all went to hell and I was left alone, unfinished and ridiculous. I couldn't go back to where I had been before, ground had been broken, foundation had been laid, a shell of what was to come had already been erected, and yet for some reason I also lost hope of moving forward. Now the empty shell did nothing but mockingly point to what could have been.

Yet lately, just as we've been able to notice the faint smell of spring on the breeze, I have noticed a faintly discernible trace of purpose in the air. I feel like my time in suspended animation is ending, I am moving forward again, I'm going somewhere. I haven't even been accepted yet, and still this strange pull I have felt to Seattle, and to Mars Hill, has reminded me that there is more for me. Passion stirs within me. I feel a tug on my heart that I have been lazy and apathetic and that the time has come for me to awaken from my hibernation and remember that it is time to lay down myself and my life and move into the mystery of tomorrow, which is both terrifyingly beautiful and beautifully terrifying (there is also a good portion of good old fashioned terrifyingly terrifying mixed in there as well.)

I've been sleeping for too long. I've allowed myself to retreat further into the warmth and safety of my covers, hoping my slumber would fend off my feelings of fear and self-doubt. It didn't, it just dulled them a bit. I finally feel moved to wake up, to face the daylight. And I'm not saying the last few years have been all twilight. There are always glorious moments where I sense God and His love for us in a way so real it brings tears to my eyes. It's just that the sense of purpose that I've noticed recently, in very faint traces, has been the type that I haven't felt in a long time. I feel like I am moving out of the wilderness, like the windows have been shut for too long and once opened the breeze is quickly replacing the musty warm air with gloriously cool and refreshing fresh air.

I don't know, perhaps this rambling stream of consciousness doesn't make very much sense. I just feel new movement in a place that has long been still. My hope is that by attempting to articulate it, even if I do so at 11:19 with no time for much correction or improvement, I might help someone else who shares my sense of stifled purpose. It isn't the purpose that has left us, it is our ability to notice it. Purpose is all around us, meaning permeates our existence. Every encounter, every relationship, every moment, it is all full of the Sacred. I just hope someday I might no longer be foolish enough to miss it so often. I pray that each of us would have eyes to see, ears to hear, and an uncanny sense of wonder at how beautiful this life really is. Maybe that is all our purpose is anyway, to notice the beauty, the sacred, the meaning all around us, to point it out to everyone who will listen, and to try and love ourselves and the world closer toward what we've noticed.

Eh, I don't know. What I do know is that my 12:00 deadline is approaching, as is the sound of my alarm clock in the morning. So, for now, these thoughts will have to wait to be pondered another day.

 

     

There are times after being away from something we love for a long time that we wonder, "Why the hell have I stayed away so long?!?" Perhaps in our time away from this love we even forget just how beautiful and remarkable and rapturous our absent love can be. Upon our reunion we are overwhelmed with the loveliness of this object and also with a puzzlement as to how on earth we might have decided to stay away from it.

This is the experience I had today as I read A Grief Observed by C.S. Lewis. To come face to face again with his uncanny genius was the highlight of my day. I would highly recommend this book to anyone, and for those of you who don't like to read I would point out that it is terribly short and can be read in a single sitting.

The reality that Lewis was overcome by grief for much of the writing of this short volume leaves one dumbfounded that his game is so sharp even at its dullest. His desperate mental flailing comes onto the page as profound and articulate truth. It gives anyone who has ever tried to write pause by reminding us that to read an author like Lewis is to be a mere mortal in the presence of something somehow greater. Lewis certainly isn't alone in this category, but in some beautiful way he is able to see with eyes that perceive more clearly than the rest of us.  Even in the areas I disagree with him (and clearly in these areas there is a remarkably good chance that I am horribly mistaken) his writing is thought provoking and insightful and leads to irresistible fits of reflection and meditation on the greater truths of our existence. To me the writings of Lewis are sacred and redemptive in every sense that can be imagined of written word.

Yes, to read C.S. Lewis is always to feel like less of a writer. And yet, as Brian McLaren says about Frederick Buechner in the forward of Buechner's book of sermons Secrets in the Dark, to read Lewis is to feel like less of a writer and thinker and theologian, and yet in some profound way to feel like more of a man, more of a child of God. It also creates in one, or at least creates in me, the desire to strive to be more that what I currently am. I for one will take the tradeoff any day.

I still haven't watched Crash again yet, but I promise it is still coming.

I don't really have a traditional Sacred Sundays post to make today but instead I just wanted to add my voice to the chorus of people praising Rob Bell's first book Velvet Elvis.

For a long time now I'd been hearing quite a few good things about Mr. Bell, and now that I'm a little more than half way through the book I certainly understand why. I'd heard a few of his sermons before and really enjoyed him as a preacher, and his book is more of the same. In Velvet Elvis, as in his sermons, he has an uncanny knack to be able to lay stuff out in a way that is accessible but not shallow. He never talks over anyone's head, but he also doesn't resort to dumbed down nonsense to do so.

I'd say the reason that it has been sacred to me over the last few days is because of the connection it makes with me. Once in a while I'll read someone's stuff and it will just feel like we are on the same wave length. It feels like we sat down and talked things out before they wrote the book, and this is one of those times. He says some things and it is stuff that's been rattling around in my brain for years, and then other stuff I may have never thought of before and reading it for the first time is like a breath of fresh air.

His desire to strip things down to their essential elements, to live out the Kingdom without getting into all the extra garbage that so often gets in the way, it is all just beautiful to me. Most of all because of the fact that it is working in his particular setting. I have been questioning my call to be a pastor for a long time, and if it does ever reignite to the way it was in times past I think this little book Rob Bell has written may just have a part in my restored hope in the possibility that church can be done in a way that isn't detrimental to what we are trying to do in the first place.

His desire to be honest, to be himself, and to follow where God is leading has me excited to read the rest of the book and to (once I have the funds available) pick up his second book Sex God to give that one a read as well.

"Who said anything about safe? 'Course he isn't safe. But he's good."
                                            -Mr. Beaver  The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe

I’ve been following Jesus for a long time. I trip and fall down as often as I am able to put two or three consecutive steps together, but by His grace and mercy I get back up and keep following, and I will continue to do so as long as He’ll have me. I mention this only because even after all this time, the Bible is just now becoming something I can relate to consistently in any meaningful way. Thanks in no small part to N.T. Wright and Eugene Peterson, the fog of Scripture is finally lifting, although I have a feeling it will still rear its head as often as not.

Don’t get me wrong, the times I have preached on Scripture has been from a real desire to get behind the text and point out the life in it for the people I had the privilege of preaching to, but often in my own personal study I found much of the text cryptic, puzzling and at times troubling. However, regardless of how hard I have tried at times, I have been unable to deny the very real encounters I have had with God and with Jesus Christ. In Leaving Church Barbara Brown Taylor talks about the reality that she knew God was there, but had trouble finding a church whose language about God was big enough to describe both her encounter and the God she was encountering. In a similar way, I looked to find a description big enough to resonate with the character of Christ I had brushed past in my encounters with Him. Oddly enough, the place I have probably learned the most about Jesus, where I find a description that lines up the closest with what I have seen in those times that I’ve been near enough to get a glimpse of Him, is in a series “children’s books.”

The reality that I have fallen in love with the person of Jesus Christ is thanks in part, and no small part at that, to C.S. Lewis’ allegory in The Chronicles of Narnia, through Aslan, the Great Lion, King of the fictional, fantastic realm Lewis cooked up somewhere in that legendary genius of his. 

Now, don’t get me wrong, I’m not intending to imply that the allegory is by any means perfect, such a thing is impossible. I’m not saying that at all, what I am saying is that in some strange, mysterious, beautiful way the character of Aslan, to use the language of Wesley, left my heart feeling strangely warmed.

Each of the seven books has something wonderful and profound to offer my understanding of God, and while The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe may be the most direct and blatant in its allegory, that doesn’t mean it is the richest or deepest of the lot. The character of Aslan consistently delivers the goods when it comes to meaning and symbolism, pointing to the reasons behind Lewis’ own affection for the King.

There is so much about the character of Christ that cannot be described in simple descriptions. Definition simply cheapens the divine truth into something no longer recognizable; but in story, in allegory, in symbol, we can interact with the Truth in a way that is profoundly transformative.

The Chronicles are so full of rich imagery that I could write an entire book on the character of Aslan and the responses the characters of the stories have to him, but many have already attempted that, often in the name of ‘easy money.’ Today, I only have a single post, a post I try to keep shorter rather than longer because if anyone reads this to begin with, I doubt I’m engaging for more than 1,000 words. Normally I attempt to stay well shy of that mark, but believe me… I could go on for much longer than that (proper thanks for not doing so can be sent in the form of monetary donations, directly to me).

So, being that I simply don’t have the time to go into any great detail on the moments of the story I felt were particularly moving, I’ll simply point you in the direction of the books, hoping that if you haven’t already, you’ll read through them with an eye on the beauty just beneath the surface.

I’d encourage you to interact with the allegory of Aslan, who is both gentle and fierce. His breath turns stone back into flesh. His anger is terrible but his forgiveness is final. Sometimes his ways are scary and hard to take, but they are always good, always full of love. Being in his presence means feeling boldness and courage coursing through you like never before, yet also feeling the sweaty palms and knocking knees that come from being so close to one so terrifyingly powerful. His kiss is full of grace and love, his bite and claws are full of pain, but also redemption.

I think that in a time where the person of Christ has been hi-jacked by those who would make him a toothless kitten or else a rabid monster, the reminder Lewis offers in Aslan is timely and important. As always, be careful in discarding or ignoring what at first appears childish or frivolous, in such things we might find our redemption. 

It is official, Advent is here. The season in the church calendar spent in anticipation of the birth of Christ is upon us now. Various churches all over the world will shape their services, liturgy, sermons, and events around Advent, some without even realizing what Advent is.

I've decided it makes good sense to spend the Sacred Sundays blogs during Advent talking about Christmas related topics, it will probably also make it a tad bit easier on me to get this thing broken in, given the obvious connection between Christmas and the sacred. That connection being that Christmas was sacred, if ever there was a time when the veil between the 'how things are now,' and the 'how things ought to be' got thinner, this was it.

So, this Sunday, for Advent 1, I've decided to talk about the silly little decorative practice of putting up Christmas lights. It's a cliche little habit, as a result we often look outside one evening to find our neighbor has turned their house into, as Reuben Tishkoff called Terry Benedict's casino, a 'gaudy monstrosity.' We see houses lit before Thanksgiving, we see unlit lights still hanging off our neighbor's trees when Easter rolls around in April. There's no stopping it though, so you may as well either learn to ignore it, or join in.

There is a myriad of choices one is presented with when desiding the degree to which we will decorate our homes with lights. Perhaps just a solitary lit Christmas tree in the livingroom? Or would you prefer to up the ante with fake candles in each window? Maybe 'icicles' hanging from our gutters is a nice touch, or blinking lights wrapped around the trees in our front yard? Or, one might pull out all the stops, we may even find the desire to turn our front lawn into a veritable 'Winter Wonderland,' complete with Santa Claus, moving reindeer, a nativity scene and good old Frosty the Snowman for good measure.

Lighting can be a solo job, like the tiny tree a newly independent bachelor might find himself bringing home, only to discover that the weight of the lights and his lack of gardening (read: watering) prowess have combined to turn his small tree into a hollow shell of its former humble glory. The bachelor's tree, having lost the majority of the characteristics that qualify the difference between a tree and a stick, would now find itself compared unfavorably even to poor Charlie Brown's Christmas Tree, in fact in comparison to this poor tree-stick, one might find themselves referring to Chuck's tree as 'quite green,' or 'having an abundance of needles.'

In other circumstances, the lighting can be a group effort; like the examples of entire neighborhoods placing small candles along the roadway so that long lines of families can drive thru the neighborhood with their headlights off to better admire the lovingly created displays of warm glowing bulbs.

But why would I decide to make Christmas lights my first real Sacred Sundays post? I mean, sure, they can be great and all. Instant nostalgia on Christmas eve, a distraction to keep the kids from killing each other in the backseat for an additional 35-40 seconds, heck, on the more aesthetically pleasing side of the scale one might even say some of the displays are even beautiful... but sacred?

Well, for me, living in an area that experiences seasonal changes, where days get shorter as nights greedily take more ground than they ought, where the wind and cold penetrate the most carefully planned bundling to torture the joy out of its victims, yes, Christmas lights are sacred. Sure, they can seem a bit silly, but like so much of what we would classify as mundane or simple, if we look a little closer we might find something far more profound than we'd previously noticed, perhaps even something salvific in nature.

The deeper we move into the Advent season the more we notice that long gone are the warm kiss of Spring and the hot (sometimes smothering) embrace of Summer. Taking its place is the cold angry bite of late autumn and early winter. Most years in the Hudson River Valley, by Christmas, snow hasn't fallen yet, at least not the kind to accumulate and last, so the beautiful foliage of fall has given way to the lonely emptiness of death; the vibrant shades of yellow and orange have been replaced by the muted brown of dirt and the lifeless gray of pavement. The chill gets more and more difficult to escape, my time outside is spent trying to get to my car and from my car as quickly as possible. Like 'station to station baseball,' one's thoughts are consumed with making it 90 feet more, just get to the next sanctuary of warmth and plan the rest later.

This time of year the darkness makes certain we all understand it is in charge now, each day that passes we see the sun for fewer precious moments before night retakes its hold. For many, the drive to work in the morning is undertaken in darkness, and the drive home is dusk at best, if not as void of light as the morning's commute. The cold and dark causes many to slow down, seasonal depression wreaks havoc on those in its taloned grip, the end of autumn is a lonely, dreary time for many. The world becomes a bitter, dry, dark place, and feels like it will be evermore. And then it happens... it happens for me at least.

Perhaps I'll be on my way to the store, or coming home from a friend's house or a random trip to Starbucks and in the  corner of my eye I'll notice those silly, tiny little lights. Perhaps it is a classy, well planned outline of white lights on a large 4 bedroom home with an HOA looking over their shoulder, or perhaps it is the haphazard chaos of lights that indicate the tired work of a single mother who'd have skipped the lights this year, if not for the way her ten year old lights up when they turn on the first time each day. Lying to herself that perhaps this year the lights and presents will be enough of a distraction that she won't have to wipe away another year's tears when Daddy doesn't show up again.

Regardless of the rhyme or reason, the pattern or backstory, when I see those lights something inside me stirs. The muck and dirt loosen, nostalgia reaches its newly warmed fingers out of the depths. Memories slide around just out of focus before slowly sliding into view; memories of hot chocolate and the smell of warm cookies; of the prick of the fake pine needles from our Christmas Tree as Matt and I adjusted and manipulated lights and branches until the balance looked just right, and the blinkers were sufficiently spaced amongst the solids; of the smooth feeling of the wrapping paper, and running my fingertips along the creases and the clear tape that had earlier been smoothed down by loving fingers; of using shape, size, weight, and personality of the gift-giver to be able to predict what was in each package with deadly accuracy, and of the wonderful tricks the gift-givers had to divise to keep my gift a secret next year. Each memory makes the whole in the dam larger, allowing even more to flow in; thieving Grinches, dentist elves and abominable snowmen; a crotchety old Scrooge who learns that Christmas is indeed very good news; an extremely lovable (yet largely unpopular) blockhead and his horribly pathetic, wonderfully redemptive Christmas tree; that beautiful old Building and Loan, with its Divine intervention, the beautiful proclamation that 'no man is a failure who has friends,' and the happiest a man has ever been to see his car driven into a tree. All these memories and more come flooding back to me and I feel something I often haven't felt in a while... anticipation, hope.

When my world is at its darkest and coldest, after the leaves have fallen, before snow has come to make everything clean and new, it is these Christmas lights that fight back the night. For me, this is a profound metaphor for the reality that the event of Christmas is our answer to the cold, dark winter of death. Christmas is when God whispered to all Creation "There is a light in the darkness, I am with you." And as we remember this fact each year, we light up the darkness with our celebration, refusing to allow winter's shadows to overtake us.

Christmas lights are as varied as the people who string them up each year; some are meticulously organized and planned, some are mismatched and haphazard; they're in trailer parks and gated communities; some are meant to instill consumer greed while some are meant to inspire childlike joy; there are cheap lights and ritzy lights, pretty lights and ugly lights... beautiful lights and hideous lights; some set our homes aglow with warm light, others light the way for Christmas eve pilgrims seeking refuge from the cold and dark; and while all this is true, while some work like new and others have seen better days and barely make a spark, they all make a light in the darkness just the same.

I just hope this year, if only for a moment, they might remind you of the same truth they remind me...

"There is a light in the darkness, I am with you."

I decided I would post today after all, although technically 'today' refers to Friday. My attempts at repairing my old PC have proven ultimately futile, so tomorrow I'll be taking a trip to the Apple Store in Danbury to make my conversion from PC to Mac final and complete.

I'm extraordinarily melancholy today, not a dark melancholy but more of a relaxed variety. It was darker earlier, but for some reason tonight it's given me a level of clarity I find refreshing. So, I am listening to the beautifully autumn shaded music of Nick Drake and embracing my melancholy for the evening.

I really just needed to write because I'm reading a book for class about the relationship between art and theology, and it made me decide to re-articulate my reasons for the 'Sacred Sundays' idea. I hope this is an acceptable substitute for last Sunday's noted refrain.

One of the earlier chapters in said book is devoted to a few different theologians who have taken on discussing art in theological terms, most of them failing miserably due to some plutonic dualism that deems anything material to necessarily also be evil. However, things take a turn for the better when Austin (the author) gets to the final theologian in his discussion, a guy named Hans Kung.

Kung had a beautiful way of articulating the reality I could only hint at when I talked about my reason for starting my 'Sacred Sundays' blog.  He sees art as being a symbol that helps us percieve the mystery that surrounds us, what he calls "the still hidden, incomprehensibly great mystery in us and around us: that is, the suprasensible ground of meaning of all our reality in the midst of the world of sense." A single sentence that beautifully articulates what I spent an entire blog (two counting this one) futilely attempting to describe, thanks to my own middling, mediocre, lazy writing (although I must admit that in my melancholic state, I am trying harder today).

I wish I could get closer to this idea of mystery being the ground or foundation of reality. I feel like it floats there, on the edge of my brain, just out of reach. Then again, being Mystery, that seems to be how Truth works; we see it only out of the corner of our vision, it floats past, artfully dodging the ability of our eyes to focus on it. We recognize its power when we brush past it, humbly realizing we have no claim to it, but once we arrogantly try to tighten our grip, it slips thru our fingers like so much sand.

So once I actually start writing my 'Sacred Sundays' blog, I hope to write about the moments I've felt like I've seen the Mystery out of the corner of my eye. This is a dangerous thing for me, I realize that the mystics had it right when they warned that using words to give an account cheapens an encounter with the transcendent. Words, reason, principles; none of these could ever hope to describe the Mystery, that is why we need art and experience to act as symbols to aid our perception.

Modern, post-Enlightenment Christianity tends to reject anything other than rational argument and doctrinal statements of truth. Yet Christianity is meant to point to Jesus. When God wanted to reveal Truth, He didn't give us a doctrine or a principle, He gave us a person, He gave us an incarnation.  Jesus didn't use three point arguments to reveal Truth, He used parables, He used stories and riddles, He used symbols. The Mystery is incarnational, we could never hope to turn it into a set of principles or beliefs with any success, but we can interact with it, live in relationship with it.

So, with an understanding of the risk involved, I will try to rein in some of those ideas that hover out there on the edge of my thoughts (something that, in the past, has proven illusive). I hope to use whatever comes to mind to bring to light the times that, while I was neck-deep in the mundane, I felt Truth brush past. Hopefully, if only once in a while, Grace might have its way with me and I might help somebody feel the same sense of renewed wakefulness and resurrected life that I've felt because these thoughts, these experiences, these symbols. With any luck, I can get them out of my mind, and once out in the open they might help light the way.

Is there anything we can really do to save this dying world? I'm pretty comfortable here in America and I allow myself to be appropriately shielded and separated from the suffering of the majority of humanity.

Fundamentalist religious violence is acted out every minute by Christians, Muslims and Jews alike. Somehow, faith in a God of Love leads people to do the most hideous, most disgusting things imaginable. A grandmother loses that which is most precious to grandmothers, and sees the best response to be strapping explosives to her body in an attempt to take the lives of someone else's grandchildren. People are taken after leaving a worship service and burned alive before their fellow believers. Tiny, individual microcosms of a world in pain, a world dying.

AIDS is ripping apart an entire continent, and while it is clear drug companies and Western governments are taking some steps to help, if it were white victims, white orphans, white corpses, then the problem would have had all the considerable might of the Global North pointed toward it long ago and things would be different.

A great number of children don't have clean water to drink. I, with a fridge full of Poland Springs, fail far too often to remember that this Christmas many children won't be worried about gifts under a tree, they'll be worried about surviving the weekly journey thru a war-zone for a few sips of water that has literally been tainted by the excrement of animals and humans alike.

One can't even expect to list the number of realities that make the world an inhospitable place for most of its inhabitants.

I'd ask where God was in all of this suffering, why is He silent in the midst of this horrible pain? But is that really the question to ask? Do we really have the moral authority to level any sort of accusation in the first place? Will we really point angrily at the heavens from our food courts and drive thrus to criticize a God who allows people to go to bed hungry? Will we set down our shopping bags long enough to spew rants against a God who lets children live in extreme poverty? Will we roll down the windows of our SUVs and Passats to give God an earful about a Creation that is dying all around us? Will we put away our American Eagle credit cards long enough to ask God why there isn't enough money for Africans to have clean drinking water and AIDS medication? Maybe God will hear our blame more clearly if we would step outside Hot Topic or Best Buy for just a moment, if we postponed the next Target or Wal-Mart pilgrimage, if we put down our remote control and turned off the radio for once. 

Perhaps it wouldn't be so bad to get angry at God after all, at least then it would finally indicate we give a fuck. I suppose it would be a better use of our time than spending hours in lines at shopping malls to buy presents our loved ones can pretend to enjoy, in order that we wouldn't appear cheap or uncaring and that they wouldn't appear ungrateful. Oh my God, if we could just stop being such a huge part of the problem!

Maybe God wouldn't mind our accusations, because at least we'd be speaking to Him honestly; perhaps He wouldn't mind our hypocrisy because at least we'd finally be noticing there was a problem. And you know, I think that if we paused just a moment to listen before we spoke, if we would resist the urge to consume everything in our paths for just a few seconds, if we could mute out the sounds of our constant amusements and entertainments, we might hear that God isn't silent in the midst of this pain at all, we've just been too damned busy to hear Him speaking. And if we paused long enough to hear God weeping over His broken Creation, we might be moved by His heartbroken love long enough to start weeping with Him; and while this whole blog might not make any sense, I think weeping might be the first step in saving the world.  

I'm discouraged today. I won't waste too much time trying to articulate why. It probably has more to do with chemicals than with actual realities, but I'm discouraged none the less. Nothing happened, my life's circumstances today are identical to my circumstances yesterday or the day before that. I just feel aimless, like I forgot how to steer but wouldn't know which way to turn even if I remembered.

I feel like the world is so large and I am so small. Things are so complex, infinitely so, and yet all around me, everyone thinks themself an authority on every subject they happen to trip over. Everyone thinks they are right about everything, and there are various, intelligent experts to argue every imaginable side of a given argument. I would never deny the existence of absolute truth, I just find it hard to believe that everyone thinks they have absolute truth tied up in their basement so that they can choose to interrogate it periodically for the answers to all of life's more difficult questions.

Normally, it doesn't bother me to be in the dark. I don't usually mind knowing that life will always be a bit of a mystery. It is a lot easier to love people in mystery than it is in certainty, and in my better moments I like the idea of loving people. Questions usually bring people together, it's the answers that start driving them apart, drawing lines in the sand, determining who is in which camp. How can we give our kids a better future? How can we make sure hungry people get food? How can we make the world a safer place? Poll 100 of our country's politicians about whether or not these are good questions to ask and I bet you'll get a clean sweep of affirmation, regardless of gender, political party, or religious affiliation. However, were you to actually ask them those questions you'd get a wide variety of answers, each one claiming all other possible answers are ignorant, discompassionate, stuttering lunacy.

I know, I know, I've written about this before. I write about it today because I'm struggling to find the foundational answers I need to stand on to ask the right questions. It is hard for me to figure out what in the world I am supposed to do with my life, and when you combine that reality with a tremendous predisposition toward laziness and illness you get... well, a giant lifetime supply of nothing. So I will tell you some of the things I'm thinking and perhaps it will help me gain some clarity, for the purpose of order I've just (and when I say just I mean 'as I write this sentence') decided to make it a list of things I need to be held accountable to in hopes it might actually help me figure out how in the hell I can actually be of some use to anyone.

1. I need to pray every day: Not the conversational, half assed, thinking to God while I am doing other stuff (although that is really important too). I need to be setting aside time to go somewhere quiet and honestly devote my energy toward talking/listening to God. Jesus did it, (not to mention Moses and Muhammed) so it is probably something I should devote some time to myself.

2. I need to interact with Scripture every day: I'm going to go out on a limb and be transparent enough to tell you that I am a complete and utter failure in this regard. And by interact with Scripture I don't mean that I need to do what most people do, which is look for something that makes them feel nice or proves one of their previously held points. What I mean is that I need to try to be in some sort of conversation with God's Word, which I believe to be alive. It isn't a science text-book, it isn't a way to feel morally superior to people you disagree with, and it isn't a how to book on saving your sorry ass from being burned and poked for all eternity by a guy with a pitch fork and horns. It is the living, breathing Word of God and I believe that honest, humble interaction with it is transformational and life-giving. I won't be reading it to find the 10 important steps to having the life I've always wanted, I'll be doing it in hopes that I might find the courage to be obedient and let go of everything to love and serve the world.

3. I need to figure out where the hell I'm going to go to seminary: At this point Mars Hill Graduate School in Seattle, WA is looking like the frontrunner, but your thoughts and insight into this process would be greatly appreciated.

4. I need to become invisible: I think way too much of my life is an attempt to get people to look at me, and like me, and think I am cool or smart or... whatever. I want to be able to learn to make decisions without it being about me. I want to be able to love people without worrying about whether or not they like or love me back. At this point in my life I think that I am still the center of my reality and I want that to change. I may not ever say 'What's in it for me?' when evaluating a decision, but practically if you look at my life you'll see that I ask 'What's in it for me?' without ceasing. I'd like to mature enough that I move towards the frame of mind where I think less about my rights and what I deserve and think more about how I can love people more and give more of myself away to others.

If anybody actually read this, thanks. =) Also, as far as typos and such go, there are probably a ton because I'm feeling down and don't feel like proof-reading, so... my apologies.

Have a great pre-Thanksgiving Day everyone.

   

Having recently made a commitment on this blog to use every Tuesday to sing the praises of something that makes me smile, the last thing I should do would be to make another, very similar commitment, on another day of the week. Now my adversary Waldo has done just that, having created 'Tuesdays with Big Brother' and 'Personal Finance Fridays' (as an aside, both of these 'columns,' if you will, are quite enjoyable [my favorite being 'Fridays'], and if you don't already use my neighborhood link to read them then you should). Sure, Waldo may have committed to two themed blogs a week, but Waldo has several advantages that give him an edge in his ability to maintain this commitment. 1. He is a better writer, 2. He is better looking, 3. He decides against using valuable time performing silly hygienic activities the rest of us take for granted, i.e. washing his hair.

Yet still, in spite of the arguments against a decision to create a second themed blog day, I find myself compelled to do just that. Let me explain:

I believe that the material world we find around us is not all there is to reality. There is more to the universe than can be perceived with our natural senses. Now, what sort of face or name you give to this reality; what language you may use to describe it; and what sort of faith statement, doctrinal convictions, or theological nuance you may hold dear are huge issues that we could never imagine coming to full agreement on. So I'll simply have to go out on a limb to explain my own beliefs a little further, in the hopes of better explaining why I'm making this new addition.

I believe that there is Truth that surrounds us all. I believe that this Truth points us toward the space and inconsistencies that exist between who we are, and who we were meant to be; between how the world is, and how the world ought to be. I believe there is Love and Grace in every ounce of matter, every atom in the universe, every superstring that theoretically forms the smallest building blocks of our existence. I believe that this Love and this Grace fill in the gaps between what is and what should be, that they form the foundation on which Truth exists, and that while they sustain this Truth they are also the end for which this Truth is sustained. I believe that this Love, this Truth, and this Grace find their center in a Loving God by whom the universe was created and toward whom all Creation moves. I believe that the full nature of this God, in all of His Love and Grace was revealed in Jesus Christ who in some mysterious way displayed the true character of God and also acted as God's vessel of atonement and redemption for the world. Yet while I believe this, I do not believe that Christians have any sort of corner on the Truth. Some of the ugliest, disgusting, most deplorable acts in the history of humanity were carried out in the name of Jesus; and some of the most beautiful, gracious, loving, life-giving acts in human history were carried out by those with no connection to Jesus, or even any God, far from any Communion Table, Holy Book or place of worship.

I believe that the way things ought to be is a presence that surrounds us, that it is already here, but also, in some mysterious way it is not yet here, and it isn't hard to look for reasons why things aren't as they ought to be. The language I use for this 'already, but not yet' reality of how things should be is the Kingdom of God. I use this language because it is the language Jesus used, although I'm also fond of the traditional Jewish language for this reality which is Shalom, an all-consuming peace that will exist when all things are set to right and the world is finally turned right side up. Shalom and the Kingdom of God also share very much in that Jesus, being purely Jewish in faith, tradition and heritage, had Shalom as the foundation for his metaphor of the Kingdom of God.

As I said, I believe that this Kingdom of God surrounds us; that it mysteriously hangs in the balance of paradox by being already here, yet also being a future reality to be longed for, and I say all of that to explain my recent addition. You see, in my mind there are times when the veil that separates how things are and how things should be gets thinner, more transparent. There are times and instances, particular circumstances when we get a little closer to the mystery, when we can see what is hoped for more clearly, when it gets a little easier to lean into the reality the world was created for. The language I use to give a name to the things, people, places and events that foster the thinning of this veil in my life is 'the sacred,' which comes from the Christian tradition from which I've received my faith.

For me, the sacred can be a great number of things. Places that feel like home in some way, movies that catch my heart with inspiration in a way I can't shake, people who seem to somehow have the sight to see farther into the mystery than the rest of us, a great number of things count as sacred to me. So with this said, every Sunday I want to start sharing with you the things that are sacred to me.

There are a number of reasons I'd like to do this, one being that it is a blessing to notice those things that foster a connection to the sacred. Continually, I get caught up in the tyranny of the urgent in a way that blinds me to this, so, much like the Props blog on Tuesdays, I'll be doing this to practice noticing beauty in the world and exercise my sense of wonder. Another reason (again, much like the Props Blog) is that I would hope to share something with you that you might find helpful or beneficial. Each of the things I'll write about has been a means of grace to me, and much of it may have, at different times, been the only light I could see in a moment of darkness; so since we all experience moments of darkness in life (and we all understand that these moments can sometimes last far too long) my hope would be that perhaps in your next moment of darkness they might be a light to you. Or perhaps in a mundane moment these things that have meant something to me might be a guide to help you toward a better understanding of Truth, like many of them have been in my journey. Also, I need to be noticing the Sacred on my own more than ever having recently left my faith community (although it would be inappropriate for me to go into the details of why for a myriad of reasons).

I know that in many ways this is very similar to the Props Blog and for the first few weeks it may end up looking much the same, but my hope is that in time they will each take on their own unique character. My hope is that even if you don't agree with my beliefs, that I might share something that will still be helpful to you.

Here is to hoping this isn't a huge waste of time that everyone knows to steer clear of on Sunday evenings. =)       

It seems everything is a mixed bag, and often times I'm foolish enough to forget that. Recently, I had a bit of a falling out with Relevant Magazine. Not a falling out with any actual people at the magazine, I've only met one person who worked for the mag and I met him after he had left (and he is a great guy). I really just got tired with some of the content of the website/magazine/podcast. It wasn't any sort of moral problem, I just felt like they got a bit pretentious at times, or at least something like that. You see, there were several times when a CD review would make some statement knocking an album or band, or they'd make some joke about a celebrity, or something along those lines; they weren't exactly gracious and often they wouldn't have even gotten the facts right when they did it. I guess the breaking point for me was when one of the writer's for the magazine wrote an article on the website (which is almost always fueled by entries from the users and this was an exception) about Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt as they brought a child into the world. It slammed Jolie, implied she adopted babies as accessories, and presumed to know the motives of Pitt and Jolie in their social activism (and it wasn't a positive presumption). The article made me angry, I think Pitt and Jolie have done a tremendous amount of good (along with Bono, Clooney, DiCaprio, and many others) and that it isn't our place to decide whether or not they are doing it for the right reasons, especially when they've given us no reason at all to suspect them. It was the straw that broke the camel's back and I finally got to the point that I couldn't see the good stuff in the mag thru the stuff that rubbed me the wrong way.

I'd just lost my taste for the magazine. However, I'd mentioned to friends that I'd definitely read the magazine if something in it interested me. It turned out to be ironic timing. Less than a week later the new issue came out and Muse was on the cover (it also featured articles about Barack Obama and Arrested Development's Tony Hale). Add to that a story I just read on the website (I'm not even sure what led me there but the content of the story was a breath of fresh air), and I guess I wasn't done with the magazine after all.

Clearly, the whole thing had a whole lot to do with my personal issues. I really just needed to remember that Relevant, like everything else, was going to be a mixed bag. I think my frustrations about that stuff was valid, the problem was simply that in my frustration I'd done the same thing they did to frustrate me in the first place. I felt that in order to keep up with popular culture the magazine had a tendency at times to get critical at the expense of the grace and humility I'd expected from a magazine with faith at its center. Whether or not this was true is beside the point altogether because in response to these frustrations I had lost my grace, my humility.

It reminds me why one of my favorite 'posts' talked about in the whole 'post-modern' or 'emergent' church conversation is 'post-critical.' I love the idea of leaving 'critical' behind in favor of somthing better, leaving 'debate' behind in favor of 'dialogue,' leaving 'arrogance' behind in favor of 'humility.' I'm not saying there is no place for 'critical thinking' (although it certainly gets abused); what I'm saying is that we should discern a difference between 'critical thinking' and 'being critical.' Often times, to be critical we need to take the stance of having all the answers. To be critical of a film we imply we know exactly what 'a good film' is. The same is true across the board, to be critical of a song, an idea, a culture, a way of life, a magazine, or even a person, we often unintentionally (or perhaps intentionally) imply that we have all the answers and thus the authority to be critical in the first place. Usually when we are critical of something all we end up doing is putting up walls between us and people who see things differently than us, while our alliance with those who agree with us gets stronger. Where does that really get us? What benefit comes of that? I think the current polarization of our country is a clue. Wouldn't it make more sense for us to be less critical and instead learn to humbly ask the right questions?

There's more I want to flesh out here but this post is too long already so for now I will put an end to it. I'll think some more on it and take a little farther later, perhaps tomorrow. I just decided to get a little of it out now as it rattled around in my head.

Any thoughts?