there are just some days that drip holiness and the corners fill up with the sacred. I guess its not surprising that one of those days would be the high holy day Yom Kippur, but the chronological predictability of holiness doesn't ever seem to diminish the personal importance.
i've been to synagogue several times before. but never on one of the high holy days. today, the front entrance was shut and we (my friend Rebecca, or Riv'ca, and I) had to walk around the back and show photo id to the guards, lest we be some sort of malintentioned anti-Semite. today, when I walked in, I received a kippah like always but I also received prayer shawl so that I might appropriately mark the solemnity of the occasion. I was taught the prayer and had never been more glad that I had taken Hebrew. "Baruch atah Adonai Eloheynu, melekh ha-olam..." and that's all I can remember. But even that constantly repeated bit, in the context of a faith community that so honestly struggles with God was a wonderful witness to me of the reality of the life that God gives God's people. "Blessed are you, Oh Lord our God, ruler of the universe..." over and over again. before and after selections of Scripture, before and after age-old prayers.
There are a lot of things I could say in criticism of my own tradition (or non-tradition), but I don't think that's appropriate. The point for me this morning was the great blessedness of tradition, even if that is a tradition that we don't feel does justice to what is true and right. Rabbi Scott Meltzer spoke about the tension between the schools of Shammai and Hillel, about 100 years before Christ. He spoke about their two vastly different, though technically correct interpretations of the Torah and how it was in their difference of opinion that the real bottom of things was found. Hillel and Shammai would disagree about virtually everything, carrying on discussions for up to 3 years at a time. Eventually, though, it was the school of Hillel that came to be predominant in the tradition. Why was this? Rabbi Meltzer taught us that it was because those that followed Hillel would, with humility and respect, defer to Shammai, even stating his argument before their own in the long discussions. Hillel's followers were not more influential because they argued better. Rather, they ended up influencing things more deeply because they showed the Jewish community "derek eretz" (?)--the way to live. Even so, let us not discard Shammai. Both Hillel and Shammai were respectful of one another, even overlooking some aspects of the law for the sake of respecting the others' authority and continuing to keep the community together. the Rabbi spoke of the ugly and hard parts of community, of us not being able to agree on major things even though we think we have the same fundamental beliefs, values, etc. How can 5 people start at the same place and use the same materials and tools yet come to 5 different products? that is a mystery but anyone who has paid attention to any sort of community knows that it is true. here, in the community, is the real life of God lived out. the community gathers on Yom Kippur to recognize its sinfulness, to plead "ha-melekh ha-olam" for forgiveness and restoration. Our community is to gather together at times that we do not want to for reasons that we do not want to. We are to do things together that do not seem attractive for the sake of being one before God, of coming to God as a community and recognizing that our lives create a tremendous tapestry before the Father above. There is a prayer that is not prayed on normal Shabbats that was prayed today. It includes the repetition of the phrase "Avinu Eloheynu"--"Our Father, our God"--that indicates a very personal relationship. Daddy. I hear that at times in Christian circles and often think it cheesy and borderline disrespectful. but here, it is not one person invoking the Ruler of the Universe as their Daddy. Rather, we come together and pray, in the fashion of the Lord's Prayer, "Our Father, our God..."
I sat among several hundred Jews of varying levels of observance and read the prayers, listened to the selections and the Midrash of Rabbi Meltzer. I sat wrapped in a shawl, and, like an awkward junior higher in his first pair of stylish jeans, couldn't help but play with the tassels, fingering the knots and patterns of strings and hoping that the veteran Jews around me considered this sort of activity pious. I was awkward. My Hebrew is awful. I had to ask for help to even put the shawl on. But as much as I didn't belong, this was my God. These were my people--even if I mean that in the sense that a disenfranchised cousin means it at his first family reunion back after a 25 year absence. I sat near the back of that synagogue, wrapped in the prayers of my long-lost family, fingering the edges of my tassels and wishing i knew the words being spoken.
But even here at a Yom Kippur service, i was not so disenfranchised. the sacredness of God's redemption was in this place. prayers for forgiveness, for redemption were a distinct reminder of my own sin. I was reminded that the covenant of God is not something that I can put a limit or a time period on. my (our) conceptions of God must not be constrained to our own definitions of redemption. Jesus came to fulfill the Torah, not abolish it.
i'm learning to let the sacred whisper and move into the corners of my life. my life is a home with many corners. the question for me is how do I let God move into those corners instead of filling my life with my own cobwebs and unused junk? Blessed are you, O Lord our God, Ruler of the universe.
we watched Planet Earth today after temple and I was reminded, again, of the holiness of this life. to see creation and watch the sacred movements of creation returns me once more to this deep yearning to see the LORD move into my house and take over even the corners with sacred moments. i sometimes wish i could express this feeling i have, but right now i think i'm more content to let it sit and not be explained. to be sacred, set apart, in the silence of the knowledge of the LORD on high.
Baruch atah Adonai Eloheynu melekh haolam...
Amen
Sep 22, 2007
Sep 21, 2007
a poem
in between valleys and mountains,
on paths that wind both up and down the hillside
(but ever onward--ever, ever forward)
i find myself in streams of time and wind,
each stitched with scents of pine needles
and of granite; of cement and smog.
in the knitting of time and on the fabric of wind
there is a knowledge
that these places are beyond me,
and they shape me
and the thinness of this moment, its sacred scents on textile streams,
remind me that though my weary self may yearn for death at times,
there is no greater death than life lived in this awareness
of the peace, of the pain in the world
and the soul-wrenching feeling of being a bridge.
on paths that wind both up and down the hillside
(but ever onward--ever, ever forward)
i find myself in streams of time and wind,
each stitched with scents of pine needles
and of granite; of cement and smog.
in the knitting of time and on the fabric of wind
there is a knowledge
that these places are beyond me,
and they shape me
and the thinness of this moment, its sacred scents on textile streams,
remind me that though my weary self may yearn for death at times,
there is no greater death than life lived in this awareness
of the peace, of the pain in the world
and the soul-wrenching feeling of being a bridge.
Sep 20, 2007
values: what are we even here for?
So what is it that we believe in? What are our values, our very reason for being? I think the better way to frame this question is to ask what is at the bottom of things, where is that point where we can no longer ask why?
but now i'm no longer so opposed to the idea of God being revealed in those first two groups of words. i'm not against the idea that God is God amongst and with God's people, in the messiness of the church, in the joyful hope of the incarnation, even an incarnation that led to the cross. if you like theology, keep reading. if not, skip to the next paragraph. I've been reading David Hartman for my Judaism class and he is responding in large part to Soloveitchik and Leibowitz who, for the sake of this blog, represent a rough parallel between Lodahlian humanism/ pluaralism and Wrightian radical orthodoxy (if you're not from Loma, i apologize for the inside reference). At the same time, I'm reading Hauerwas and trying to understand the possibility of a life that is completely devoted to God and the church as the bottom of things--as the final "because"--but that isn't willing to throw out human agency and ability to legitimately affect the world and even God! I just can't accept a God who created people to live like automatons on this planet, going through the motions of religion without the power to act upon their surroundings in a meaningful way. maybe that's reductionist and modernist of me, but there has to be a third way that finds something like human free will--but not based out of abstract Enlightenment notions of "freedom," "liberty," and "rational beings," but rather out of the creative and redemptive theologies of the creation narratives and, more importantly, the passion narrative (complete with the resurrection as more than a postscript). why would God redeem robots? i can't imagine that that would ever be worthwhile for God. if God is God and there is no particular worth to humanity choosing the good, God did not need to create humanity at all, but rather could have just remained God in God-land, happy for all time. But if God really did create from an outpouring of the internal love of God, then there is something to us. And I want to learn to affirm that properly, without throwing out the church, but rather recognizing the church as the primary mediator between God and the world, and therefore the locality from which we, as individuals, go to gain true life in God and God's Son, Jesus the Christ.
i'm being trained in social work which, for one called to ministry, is quite interesting. with whom does my allegiance lie? the suppressed 8th grader in me wants to say, "F the man!" and claim that i have no responsibilities to the state, but only to the church. but basing my decision on that sort of undealt-with anger is probably not a very mature way to choose one's life position (i think i just made up that term). as a minister of the gospel, i have a responsibility to people, and people live in liberal nation-states and those states define much of their reality. So, though i may owe Uncle Sam no official allegiance, though i may not feel the need to hum "America the Beautiful" in my spare time or say the pledge to the flag, at the same time people live here, in the world where taxes and traffic lights and evictions and immigration injustices, not to mention capitalism, commercial warfare and voting are all very real things.
so where does my allegiance lie? clearly, it lies with God as revealed in Jesus Christ above and beyond all else. But Jesus lived under Roman oppression. I shall live under American oppression. I shall recognize that although the American system is false, it may be the best way to go about living the gospel with people. until Jesus returns to set up his Kingdom, i am stuck here in this idolatrous kingdom and i can find the good in it and use the good with the knowledge that i do not use that good for the sake of the state or the betterment of American society, but rather for the sake of Jesus who calls me to minister to real live people. So, when i help people to sign up for Section 8 housing, i'm not selling them out before God. When i ask a person who comes to me (client) what her goals and dreams are, there is a sense in which i am facilitating a futile desire. but, i pray, at the realization of this desire, she will see that there is more to life than, say, housing vouchers. she will see that Jesus is the way to real life. not self-actualization.
my goal as a social worker is to enable people, not towards self-actualization (whatever that means) but rather toward a recognition that our spirituality permeates and defines much of our total reality, though is clearly not the basis for all reality, e.g. the borderline-homeless mother who would rather work on Sunday mornings than go to church so that she can have her "reality" defined for her through the Eucharist (notice that those who write about our absolutely spiritual identity do so from the comfort of their homes or offices, provided by the system they hate). My goal as a pastor is not so different and i actually see the two as mingling together. it is to offer people concrete hope in the example of compassion lived out by Jesus Christ, of which my and their life is (should be) a parable.
this got real long and, i fear, convoluted. i apologize. i guess that's what happens when your emotions throw up on a keyboard.
shalom to you all. May Jesus shine from within you as he works to transform you.
- it used to be freedom, democracy, justice (loosely defined), liberty.
- then it became freedom, peace, justice (as opposed to injustice), and civil liberties.
- then it became God. and the church--and nothing else.
but now i'm no longer so opposed to the idea of God being revealed in those first two groups of words. i'm not against the idea that God is God amongst and with God's people, in the messiness of the church, in the joyful hope of the incarnation, even an incarnation that led to the cross. if you like theology, keep reading. if not, skip to the next paragraph. I've been reading David Hartman for my Judaism class and he is responding in large part to Soloveitchik and Leibowitz who, for the sake of this blog, represent a rough parallel between Lodahlian humanism/ pluaralism and Wrightian radical orthodoxy (if you're not from Loma, i apologize for the inside reference). At the same time, I'm reading Hauerwas and trying to understand the possibility of a life that is completely devoted to God and the church as the bottom of things--as the final "because"--but that isn't willing to throw out human agency and ability to legitimately affect the world and even God! I just can't accept a God who created people to live like automatons on this planet, going through the motions of religion without the power to act upon their surroundings in a meaningful way. maybe that's reductionist and modernist of me, but there has to be a third way that finds something like human free will--but not based out of abstract Enlightenment notions of "freedom," "liberty," and "rational beings," but rather out of the creative and redemptive theologies of the creation narratives and, more importantly, the passion narrative (complete with the resurrection as more than a postscript). why would God redeem robots? i can't imagine that that would ever be worthwhile for God. if God is God and there is no particular worth to humanity choosing the good, God did not need to create humanity at all, but rather could have just remained God in God-land, happy for all time. But if God really did create from an outpouring of the internal love of God, then there is something to us. And I want to learn to affirm that properly, without throwing out the church, but rather recognizing the church as the primary mediator between God and the world, and therefore the locality from which we, as individuals, go to gain true life in God and God's Son, Jesus the Christ.
i'm being trained in social work which, for one called to ministry, is quite interesting. with whom does my allegiance lie? the suppressed 8th grader in me wants to say, "F the man!" and claim that i have no responsibilities to the state, but only to the church. but basing my decision on that sort of undealt-with anger is probably not a very mature way to choose one's life position (i think i just made up that term). as a minister of the gospel, i have a responsibility to people, and people live in liberal nation-states and those states define much of their reality. So, though i may owe Uncle Sam no official allegiance, though i may not feel the need to hum "America the Beautiful" in my spare time or say the pledge to the flag, at the same time people live here, in the world where taxes and traffic lights and evictions and immigration injustices, not to mention capitalism, commercial warfare and voting are all very real things.
so where does my allegiance lie? clearly, it lies with God as revealed in Jesus Christ above and beyond all else. But Jesus lived under Roman oppression. I shall live under American oppression. I shall recognize that although the American system is false, it may be the best way to go about living the gospel with people. until Jesus returns to set up his Kingdom, i am stuck here in this idolatrous kingdom and i can find the good in it and use the good with the knowledge that i do not use that good for the sake of the state or the betterment of American society, but rather for the sake of Jesus who calls me to minister to real live people. So, when i help people to sign up for Section 8 housing, i'm not selling them out before God. When i ask a person who comes to me (client) what her goals and dreams are, there is a sense in which i am facilitating a futile desire. but, i pray, at the realization of this desire, she will see that there is more to life than, say, housing vouchers. she will see that Jesus is the way to real life. not self-actualization.
my goal as a social worker is to enable people, not towards self-actualization (whatever that means) but rather toward a recognition that our spirituality permeates and defines much of our total reality, though is clearly not the basis for all reality, e.g. the borderline-homeless mother who would rather work on Sunday mornings than go to church so that she can have her "reality" defined for her through the Eucharist (notice that those who write about our absolutely spiritual identity do so from the comfort of their homes or offices, provided by the system they hate). My goal as a pastor is not so different and i actually see the two as mingling together. it is to offer people concrete hope in the example of compassion lived out by Jesus Christ, of which my and their life is (should be) a parable.
this got real long and, i fear, convoluted. i apologize. i guess that's what happens when your emotions throw up on a keyboard.
shalom to you all. May Jesus shine from within you as he works to transform you.
Sep 13, 2007
flex and bend, fools.
i realized today that in the last several months, i have lost most of my internal rhetoric. i don't think i ever planned or expected or hoped for that to happen. i wouldn't have known what to call it. but i think i like being at this place. agendas aren't so important anymore. knowing my next rant isn't so important anymore. defining things becomes more difficult and there is a constant wrestling with God, but the anger that drove me for a long time is fading away.
i realized this in the context of a discussion about ministry i was having with my friend Maddie who is one of those people who continues to ask good questions in life, no matter how good the answer was. she seems to be wise enough to not be satisfied with an answer or even two, but she asks deeper and deeper questions without letting them consume her in an unhealthy way. point being, i was realizing that i don't know what ministry is except to walk with people and let all else flow from that. faithfulness. joy. being salvation to others and letting them be salvation to you. people being Jesus to one another, like a big divinely incarnational food fight. that's the best i can do. its not about walking with the poor anymore. its not about living out democratic ideals that i "found" in the Bible and helping others to live those out. its just about living and learning to define each other as God defines us. well, not "just." lets not get too reductionist now. everything is flexy and bendable and stretchy. nothing is sound. but isn't that beautiful? anyway, as i continue to live these days in between and (through great failures...) realize my own limits, i'm experiencing the world differently too. i'm not sure the reason for this post. blogging as journaling always seemed the epitome of what i dislike about the internet world, but here you have it. i hope this reflection helps you.
grace and peace.
i realized this in the context of a discussion about ministry i was having with my friend Maddie who is one of those people who continues to ask good questions in life, no matter how good the answer was. she seems to be wise enough to not be satisfied with an answer or even two, but she asks deeper and deeper questions without letting them consume her in an unhealthy way. point being, i was realizing that i don't know what ministry is except to walk with people and let all else flow from that. faithfulness. joy. being salvation to others and letting them be salvation to you. people being Jesus to one another, like a big divinely incarnational food fight. that's the best i can do. its not about walking with the poor anymore. its not about living out democratic ideals that i "found" in the Bible and helping others to live those out. its just about living and learning to define each other as God defines us. well, not "just." lets not get too reductionist now. everything is flexy and bendable and stretchy. nothing is sound. but isn't that beautiful? anyway, as i continue to live these days in between and (through great failures...) realize my own limits, i'm experiencing the world differently too. i'm not sure the reason for this post. blogging as journaling always seemed the epitome of what i dislike about the internet world, but here you have it. i hope this reflection helps you.
grace and peace.
Sep 9, 2007
where are we trying to get to?
i just left my friends' house, who have moved into Southcrest, a block from my house/Southeast Nazarene Church. excusing my assumptions, they have moved into the neighborhood with the intention of being a light in this place and to this place and with the willingness to be changed by this place. as i walked out of their apartment complex, a lady passed me who was walking fast and seemed to be going somewhere. she looked like an old-timer. as she passed me, she said,
"How you doin'?"
"Good. (brief silence. i think i'm usually kind of awkward with this particular question.) Yourself?"
"I'm tryin' to get the hell out of this 'hood as fast as I can."
I thought, that's funny. because me and my friends have spent the last 8 months trying to get in to "this 'hood" with varying levels of success. I guess it all depends on where you are going.
"The coming of Christ has cosmic implications. He has changed the course of things. So the theological task is not merely the interpretive matter of translating Jesus into modern categories but rather to translate the world to him. The theologian's job is not to make the gospel credible to the modern world, but to make the world credible to the gospel." (Hauerwas and Willimon, Resident Aliens)
The day after tomorrow, there is great potential of the fit hitting the shan at work because we've tried to do our best. But to whom are we accountable? the modern world or the gospel? At youth last night, i let myself get walked on too much by a couple of the kids. who am i accountable to, the world or the gospel? who is shaping me? where does my justification come from? TV or the Sermon on the Mount? George Bush, pop culture, Bono, my favorite band?
or Jesus?
I thank God for those that I see in my life who consistently live as if Jesus is their definer and therefore remind me of my responsibility to let Jesus be the one who shapes what I do and believe and say. there is an ancient Jewish prayer that reads:
Return us, our Father, to your Torah [instruction], and bring us near, our King, to your service, and resore us in full repentance before you. Blessed are you, Adonai, who is gratified by repentance.
Amen and amen.
"How you doin'?"
"Good. (brief silence. i think i'm usually kind of awkward with this particular question.) Yourself?"
"I'm tryin' to get the hell out of this 'hood as fast as I can."
I thought, that's funny. because me and my friends have spent the last 8 months trying to get in to "this 'hood" with varying levels of success. I guess it all depends on where you are going.
"The coming of Christ has cosmic implications. He has changed the course of things. So the theological task is not merely the interpretive matter of translating Jesus into modern categories but rather to translate the world to him. The theologian's job is not to make the gospel credible to the modern world, but to make the world credible to the gospel." (Hauerwas and Willimon, Resident Aliens)
The day after tomorrow, there is great potential of the fit hitting the shan at work because we've tried to do our best. But to whom are we accountable? the modern world or the gospel? At youth last night, i let myself get walked on too much by a couple of the kids. who am i accountable to, the world or the gospel? who is shaping me? where does my justification come from? TV or the Sermon on the Mount? George Bush, pop culture, Bono, my favorite band?
or Jesus?
I thank God for those that I see in my life who consistently live as if Jesus is their definer and therefore remind me of my responsibility to let Jesus be the one who shapes what I do and believe and say. there is an ancient Jewish prayer that reads:
Return us, our Father, to your Torah [instruction], and bring us near, our King, to your service, and resore us in full repentance before you. Blessed are you, Adonai, who is gratified by repentance.
Amen and amen.
Sep 4, 2007
what are we deporting?
I talked tonight for about 30 minutes with a woman at Salvation Army who is a "legal" Mexican-American. Her boyfriend is in Tijuana right now after being deported and she is still here in the States, although in San Diego now instead of her native Ohio. She is in San Diego so that her kids can be in the States but close to both parents.
the question that keeps running through my mind is: what are we deporting? you may want to get me to say "who," and it is of course true that we are deporting people, but we are deporting families, too. People are more than themselves. they are all the systems that make them themselves--as the South African saying goes, "People are people through other people." So are we deporting individuals? no. we are deporting fathers and mothers and income sources and emotional attachments. we are telling those who need a job desperately that they are not allowed to work here. They have to work in a place where they can only make 100 pesos a week.
What should the church's response be to this? I wish i knew of options for the church, of ways for the church to engage in a response to the immigration crisis. this fence that we are building in between our brother country is destroying lives and families, not to mention the environment (there are actually severe environmental impacts from the construction of the fence. just goes to show that this fence is built on land that does not belong to nation-states or governmental agents, but to the Creator of the earth). how do we engage? how do we help? what actions can we take? does anyone have any helpful suggestions or thoughts?
the question that keeps running through my mind is: what are we deporting? you may want to get me to say "who," and it is of course true that we are deporting people, but we are deporting families, too. People are more than themselves. they are all the systems that make them themselves--as the South African saying goes, "People are people through other people." So are we deporting individuals? no. we are deporting fathers and mothers and income sources and emotional attachments. we are telling those who need a job desperately that they are not allowed to work here. They have to work in a place where they can only make 100 pesos a week.
What should the church's response be to this? I wish i knew of options for the church, of ways for the church to engage in a response to the immigration crisis. this fence that we are building in between our brother country is destroying lives and families, not to mention the environment (there are actually severe environmental impacts from the construction of the fence. just goes to show that this fence is built on land that does not belong to nation-states or governmental agents, but to the Creator of the earth). how do we engage? how do we help? what actions can we take? does anyone have any helpful suggestions or thoughts?
Sep 3, 2007
decisions
what is the way that we make decisions?
convenience or sacrifice? greater good or our own good? i suppose that these are the questions that lovers and humans and christians and young people have asked for centuries. how did abraham decide it was okay to leave Ur? how did he even know it was the right thing?
my relationship with God right now is somewhat reserved. i am afraid of talking honestly, of listening truly, because i am afraid of the answer i will get. i fear the silence because it echoes my own insufficiency back at me. is God in that silence? i once preached a sermon that said that God was in the silence. but how can the God of justice and mercy be so damn silent all the time?
God of silence, who speaks non-words and avoids definition except what we can say you are not, speak your silence to me. i ask for the mercy of your silent heart. i need your empty voice to hold me and define me. my only prayer is that you would know me, and in knowing me, that you would shape and form me as you will.
may i die. may the holy Son of God live in me. Amen.
convenience or sacrifice? greater good or our own good? i suppose that these are the questions that lovers and humans and christians and young people have asked for centuries. how did abraham decide it was okay to leave Ur? how did he even know it was the right thing?
my relationship with God right now is somewhat reserved. i am afraid of talking honestly, of listening truly, because i am afraid of the answer i will get. i fear the silence because it echoes my own insufficiency back at me. is God in that silence? i once preached a sermon that said that God was in the silence. but how can the God of justice and mercy be so damn silent all the time?
God of silence, who speaks non-words and avoids definition except what we can say you are not, speak your silence to me. i ask for the mercy of your silent heart. i need your empty voice to hold me and define me. my only prayer is that you would know me, and in knowing me, that you would shape and form me as you will.
may i die. may the holy Son of God live in me. Amen.
Sep 2, 2007
Bonhoeffing
Here's my first go at this. I hope its not too lame, but just lame enough.
I just watched a documentary with a few folks from my church on Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Man, is that guy cool or what? but afterwards, we sat around and instead of talking about the implications of his life on our life in a place that is full of violence (let us ideological pacifists take a moment to recognize that the Diet's plot to kill Hitler was actually an expression of his commitment to Christian nonviolence, not a lapse in his theology) or see where his life could match up to and challenge ours, we compared Hitler's regime with "the terrorists" (and somehow made the jump to Saddam Hussein), and eventually ended up in Africa where "those people" and "those countries" are more corrupt and messed up than us and it is just so sad.
we didn't make the connection to learning to suffer with Iraqi Christians and Muslims and being willing to die for the cause of life and commitment to the Word of God.
I go to a church that (i think) is fairly good at walking with those who suffer and living a life that is in solidarity with those the world would rather toss out. it just saddens me.
we went backpacking yesterday and today with a bunch of the youth and most of them (against my wishes) brought their cell phones. my church is in the ghetto and those kids couldn't live without their cell phones for a day and a half. we could talk about the sociology of this until we're blue in the face, but my point is that it doesn't seem like we can get away from this incredibly pervasive need to not let things shake what the way we act and live (whether that is Bonny's life or the quasi-wilderness). We can't get away from our own wealth, even if we want to. its on every side of us and even when we try to run from it--without forsaking the community (just to overuse that word again)--someone brings it with them. so how do we do this? how do we stand as a symbol of poverty? where are the poor we can even stand with?
I'm confronted by Jean Vanier's lucid phrase that those in poverty are those who have an inability to cope with their life. under that paradigm, i'm left to realize that my conception of poverty is entirely material. yes, we are called to the suffering, as they are more often unable to cope, but what this shows me is that the more pertinent question is a) how do i become poor and b) how do i help others to become poor? it is a poverty of spirit that we read about in Jesus' most important teaching. lepers are poor. prostitutes are poor. but so were tax collectors (and they were rich!). This is not about physical lack, but about poverty. Spiritual poverty is an equal opportunity reality. It is not concerned about class or continent or race. in fact, it is not even concerned about whether or not you have been poor in the past! it will take whoever it can, when it can, for as long as it can. But now I'm making poverty sound like a bad thing. But Jesus says it isn't.
Matthew 16. "Whoever loses his life for my sake will find it. to be poor, incapable of coping with one's life, is a loss of control. it is a loss of the ability to hold and put boundaries around one's life. but it is in the hope of Christ that life is found. losing one's life is easy. simply do everything that you think will bring you life and then, 1, 2, or 5 years from now, analyze whether you have more life now or then. it is Christ that brings life, that puts a bottom to our abyss and gives us meaning. It is in Christ's life that we find our own path. It is in Christ's death that we find a resurrection.
So the question is, how do we find poverty? how do we help the everyone to realize that they are poor and then how do we stand with the poor in our own poverty?
i cannot cope with my life. i am unable. every bit of celebrity in my veins is false and pretentious and hideously ugly. i want to be on the side of the God who suffers because that God was on my side but i fail. i continue to try to cope with my own life. my prayer is that we are able to lean on the Christ, on the one who saves us even though we have no reason to be saved. That is my hope and prayer for this world, for my own life and for the life of the church. But that is going to look like maybe throwing a spoke into the wheel of an evil regime at times. if may even look like becoming an outcast. but it is good and true and I see no other options.
that's all for now.
I just watched a documentary with a few folks from my church on Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Man, is that guy cool or what? but afterwards, we sat around and instead of talking about the implications of his life on our life in a place that is full of violence (let us ideological pacifists take a moment to recognize that the Diet's plot to kill Hitler was actually an expression of his commitment to Christian nonviolence, not a lapse in his theology) or see where his life could match up to and challenge ours, we compared Hitler's regime with "the terrorists" (and somehow made the jump to Saddam Hussein), and eventually ended up in Africa where "those people" and "those countries" are more corrupt and messed up than us and it is just so sad.
we didn't make the connection to learning to suffer with Iraqi Christians and Muslims and being willing to die for the cause of life and commitment to the Word of God.
I go to a church that (i think) is fairly good at walking with those who suffer and living a life that is in solidarity with those the world would rather toss out. it just saddens me.
we went backpacking yesterday and today with a bunch of the youth and most of them (against my wishes) brought their cell phones. my church is in the ghetto and those kids couldn't live without their cell phones for a day and a half. we could talk about the sociology of this until we're blue in the face, but my point is that it doesn't seem like we can get away from this incredibly pervasive need to not let things shake what the way we act and live (whether that is Bonny's life or the quasi-wilderness). We can't get away from our own wealth, even if we want to. its on every side of us and even when we try to run from it--without forsaking the community (just to overuse that word again)--someone brings it with them. so how do we do this? how do we stand as a symbol of poverty? where are the poor we can even stand with?
I'm confronted by Jean Vanier's lucid phrase that those in poverty are those who have an inability to cope with their life. under that paradigm, i'm left to realize that my conception of poverty is entirely material. yes, we are called to the suffering, as they are more often unable to cope, but what this shows me is that the more pertinent question is a) how do i become poor and b) how do i help others to become poor? it is a poverty of spirit that we read about in Jesus' most important teaching. lepers are poor. prostitutes are poor. but so were tax collectors (and they were rich!). This is not about physical lack, but about poverty. Spiritual poverty is an equal opportunity reality. It is not concerned about class or continent or race. in fact, it is not even concerned about whether or not you have been poor in the past! it will take whoever it can, when it can, for as long as it can. But now I'm making poverty sound like a bad thing. But Jesus says it isn't.
Matthew 16. "Whoever loses his life for my sake will find it. to be poor, incapable of coping with one's life, is a loss of control. it is a loss of the ability to hold and put boundaries around one's life. but it is in the hope of Christ that life is found. losing one's life is easy. simply do everything that you think will bring you life and then, 1, 2, or 5 years from now, analyze whether you have more life now or then. it is Christ that brings life, that puts a bottom to our abyss and gives us meaning. It is in Christ's life that we find our own path. It is in Christ's death that we find a resurrection.
So the question is, how do we find poverty? how do we help the everyone to realize that they are poor and then how do we stand with the poor in our own poverty?
i cannot cope with my life. i am unable. every bit of celebrity in my veins is false and pretentious and hideously ugly. i want to be on the side of the God who suffers because that God was on my side but i fail. i continue to try to cope with my own life. my prayer is that we are able to lean on the Christ, on the one who saves us even though we have no reason to be saved. That is my hope and prayer for this world, for my own life and for the life of the church. But that is going to look like maybe throwing a spoke into the wheel of an evil regime at times. if may even look like becoming an outcast. but it is good and true and I see no other options.
that's all for now.
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