to be whole

This week at youth group, two of our youth got in a fight. One black eye, one suspended kid, two hard conversations, and about 53 calls to parents by Mario later, I find myself here. Over the last several months, i have often been too busy to have friends, to care about people, to love anyone. living in dissonance between my calling to holiness and my selfish ambition, I find myself cut off, disconnected and depressed, living in boxes that stand removed from one another. For the fighting youths inside of me, this is phone call number 54, hard conversation numbers 3 and 4, and maybe black eye number 2. But this time, the black eye isn't from myself. Its from the wall I've run into and am beginning to climb over.

We live in such isolation from one another, such distinction in our lives of schedules and boxes on pieces of paper. Clocks rule us, not the sun. Furthermore, and more deeply, we feel we can put our lives and our problems into order, into their place and then solve those problems and make them all go away. For example, "If only I didn't have to deal with all of my friends, I would have time for my girl/boyfriend" or my classes or my work or my church or whatever. These can be flipped and switched around into an infinite number of orders with an infinite number of different nouns placed into this same basic formula. "If only I didn't have to deal with _____, I would have enough time for ______, which is what I really care about." But life is this balancing, this juggling and tensing in so many different directions. It is living with who we are, not disconnected from our feelings and true selves so that we can still function successfully. Who we are is busy and full. It needs learning and growing; it needs reflection and rest; it needs struggle and testing. Removing ourselves from some part of our life--any part--cuts us down and makes us depressed. It disconnects us from ourselves and the work that we do. To do so divorces our labor and our product, our action and our bodies, our speech and our mouth.

And this, my friends, is not good. It means that any proficiency for real relationship is hampered. We are cut short because we are cut off from ourselves so that we become objective to ourselves. We lose even our own self as subject. When this happens, our self-subjectivity is threatened because (and this is a very important because) we have disembodied ourselves from ourselves, leaving ourselves to be manipulated and defined by external factors that are not us and do not bring us back to who we are (usually in the name of letting us express/be ourselves!).

It is not that we are to cut off our friends in order to get our homework right. We cannot ignore our housemates or ministries because we need to spend time with our girlfriends.

We live in the ebb and flow. Some weeks hold one thing in better focus, and some days others. That's the tense, hard motion of it all. That's learning to live in the balance. That's living with all of this good before us. Breathe and know that the gaps will be filled up, so long as you trust.

The only gap that will always last is the one created by a lack of faith.

This is living whole, living in a way that sees all that is happening, all that lies before and seeks to hold loosely each of these people, activities, in a way that is excited and restful. Be Whole.

Fear

I'm afraid of so much--in life, in ministry, in work, in relationships, in the future. I wish I didn't feel so cliche, but graduation really does throw you into a mess of questions, asking what its all about and where its all going.

I have ideas about my future that float, that zing around this little room in my mind like bouncy balls that I've let fly. Sometimes they wack me in the mouth or just zing past my head. I'm generally not in control of them, though. And this produces anxiety which makes me want to check out and leave the room. But where would I go? What would I do? All I have are these bouncy balls which threaten and scare me as much as they make me alive.

I'm stuck with the question, "Who will you be? Who will you be? Who will you be?" and people want an answer based on such different criteria like "I'm going to work at ________" or "I'm going to give my self to this issue or cause" or (worse) "I'm marrying _______."

but I just want to know who I will be in the future, how I will respond to tense situations. I want to know that God is with me, that what I am doing is a faithful response to Jesus' sacrifice on the cross. Lord, guide me and know me! Teach me peace and trust! May I give my life to you in response to your word and call on my life like a monk who offers up all belongings and symbols of self to the abbot, holding on to nothing lest he offer only part of all that he is.

over it, schmover it.

i'm over it.

i remember when Joe Volk told me that he was so excited to have found out that phrase. (he's from Washington. i guess they don't talk valley girl up there.) It is a fitting phrase though. It expresses indifference mixed with some of being irked that anyone would intrude on your life with whatever they are bringing to you at the moment. that's how i feel about school-not because its bad and i hate it but because if i'm honest, i feel ready to go. I feel like I've learned what it is that I really need to learn and am now ready to do the work that God is calling me to do. I feel ready to sink in and begin. But I'm stuck here, waiting and waiting and waiting.

and realizing, as I listened to Kelcey tell her story of Ivan saying he loved her (http://frontrowjo10.blogspot.com/), I realized (again) that this is God's work, that my heart is restless and for some reason always wants to move on to the next thing without seeing God here. i was reminded of my task, of my duty, to take up my cross daily rather than dreaming about taking up my cross in the future. Engagement is important, it is a spiritual discipline. being over it is wasteful and selfish and squanders the opportunities given us to love those that are here and to live with those in our lives.

To live always on the horizon will leave us empty. It will leave us aching for the unknown, stuffing activity and dreams into a hole while the Christ cries, "Peace, peace. Accept my wholeness and shalom. Accept what is before you and own the pain and boredom, the frustration and vanity. Accept it enough to step back and see the swirling, knowing I am the God of the swirling pools.

"And take up your cross and follow me. Leave mother and brother and sister to follow me. Empty yourself into this worthless swirling because I am the Lord of it and I am there."


Always on brinks,
highways that leak fuel
and speak like a craving.

to know that the circle of earth
will always be 'round
hanging from threads tied to vanity space.

sucking into the quietest worlds,
action that's nothing into no one and nowhere
is is is is, is IS IS!

Shalom, my child, and boldness
for the vacuous, reposeless movement circles;
Know I am there, know I Am there.

i pick up the stars
and worlds in between
horizon-breaker valley-shaper,
i empty like a broken pot.

skinny

I was in Balboa Park this weekend and there were all these skinny people riding their skinny bikes around in their skinny pants. They were very tattooed and rebellious-looking, like they wanted us all to know that they did not appreciate the establishment and wanted things to be different. I think they are going to vote for Obama if they aren't too busy sipping skinny cups of coffee to vote.

Part of me wants to be like these people. But I know that I'm not that skinny. What I mean by that is this: I don't really have a great desire to be rebellious anymore. I don't feel like I need to be a part of the generation that is change-focused and full of ideals and a whole new world which is coming up over the horizon. New worlds are so cool! They require a lot of people to get on board with them and start whole movements. So we have this movement of people who are rebellious and trendy and cool, they are artsy and so full of innovation and music and rage. They ride bikes and the bus, they have moved into the middle of the city because there is so much that is good in a close, tight urban environment and they want to take advantage of that. Many of these people are incredibly beautiful and interesting. They are fun and have interesting hobbies like drawing and writing songs which are played on common household items. Some of them probably know people with sailboats and they frequent coffee shops which contribute to them being edgy and innovative.

I am so convicted by my attraction to be like these people. And the trouble is, I want to infuse Jesus into all of it and make Jesus the reason for my cool. But it is all so wrong. I remember lots of stories about the '60s and all the change and innovation, the utopianism and idealism that was so pervasive among young people at that time. It sounds a lot like today. And I remember stories about the '70s. there was some of that left but it led to a more complete spiral down into widespread drug use that ultimately led to a cynicism and disillusionment with the rise of the yuppies in the '80s. Cool does not save. Cool does not fix or transform or make anything better.

We don't need another movement. We need people who will be good and strong and holy despite the coolness of a movement. This means riding your bike even though we're over bike-riding as a culture. It means eating organic and gardening even when we are totally disillusioned with the ability of our diet to affect the world economy. We don't do these things because they are cool or because small is the new big and simple is the new fad. We don't build green buildings on campus because we will be attacked if we don't. We do all of these things because creation is good, because we are Christian. We love the small because we follow a God who entered the small world of humans even though he could have stayed in his heavenly glory.

I heard a story yesterday about Merle Gray. He had been in ministry for 50 years ten years ago. 40 of those years had been spent on the Native American reservations in Arizona. He has had essentially no one thank him or let him know that they appreciate what he is doing. He has lived in quietness and obscurity, loving this people so deeply. He ministers the gospel and preaches the word; he is a sacrament of grace to the people that he comes into contact with. He lives the life of Jesus. He has sacrificed prestige and position in so many other places, he has laid down climbing up the ladders. In fact, his District Superintendent probably hardly knows that he was there. But he was there. He was loving and ministering with so much love and grace, so much humility.

I don't know if Merle Gray is still pastoring or even if he is alive. But I want to be like him. I want to be willing to live in total obscurity, to not be listened to, to minister in the forgotten places if it means that I am following Jesus. I want this life that I think I own to dissipate before the call that Jesus lays on my life. Oh Lord, break my sinful nature that sees the recognition and applause of people as the basis of all life. Teach me to love for the sake of Christ and to see that once I see people as you see them, then I truly see them. I do not desire to be recognized or known or to be part of anything significant. All true recognition is in you, Lord. All true knowing is being known by you. Father, you are the only one that makes this life significant. I offer it back to you in the smallness and loneliness of the crucifixion.

Back to School...and nothing's changed.

I'm officially back in the belly of the beast that is Point Loma Nazarene University.

I don't know what a Christian institution of higher education should look like in the world--namely because I don't think I've ever seen one. Where are the institutions that are striving for excellence but at the same time remember that they can't sacrifice their Christianity in order to get there. In fact, if they sacrifice the process then the result is shot too. So often, we strive for excellence, for being the best we can be and all of those things but we forget about the really important things.

What sort of school would it be that didn't leave out the students that would be a financial burden? What kind of school could we have if social justice was not something that we did in chapel or on missions trips but in the way that the school operated day to day, we brought in people that should have been cast out, that should have been forgotten and we said, "Hey! You with the low GPA! I believe that you are important. I believe you are worth educating. Come to my school and we will teach you to the best of our ability. And we will do it for very little money."
But no. We offer spots to low-priority students if they can make up for it by being good at soccer or by being the child of someone who works at the school.

I got here by visiting the new theology building. I walked inside and I felt so sick. What sort of theology is it that leads us to this big fancy building with a really nice view? Does that help us learn better? Does it help professors connect with students better? Does it help professors do better research? No. No. No. except maybe on the last one. and that's only because we have this big symbol of prestige and success and that may attract some good theologians to our halls. But the reason that people love Loma is not because we have the best theologians. That's not our role. Its because we have professors that are SO passionate about students. They are brilliant and, in many cases, world-class. But they spend time with us and challenge us and push us and care about us.

Until now.

Now, they will try but we will have to seek them out in order to find them. Gone are casual conversations with Pat, the department assistant. Gone is John Wright's shrill voice reverberating down the hall about something that I didn't understand but now do after having class with him. Gone is Lodahl's "Hey, come in here." As you walk by his office on your way to class. Because theology is incarnational. It's worth as an academic discipline only goes as far as it prepares pastors, provides an intellectual ground for ministry, and contributes to the life and work of the church. Which means that when you undercut a theologian's chance to be incarnational, you undercut their ability to be a theologian. So by taking the theologians away from the classrooms, Point Loma (in the name of making the School of Theology and Christian Ministry more central) has taken some of the worthwhile theology away from the church.

Beyond that, I am wrestling with why we really needed a new building. If you want the STCM to be more central on campus, then invite them to board meetings and ask them their opinion. Read their books. Listen to their lectures and try to figure out how that plays out in the life of the University. Don't give them positions of perceived authority and power instead of listening to them. Its a nice gesture but frankly, it smacks of washing the outside of the cup and forgetting that what is inside the walls is what really counts. It feels like whitewashing the walls of a the sepulchre.

the heart of leadership

I've been reading "Imitation of Christ," the classic spiritual guide by Thomas a Kempis. Recently, the chapter that I read had the advice that we should, each of us, seek to stamp out one vice in our life each year and that way we would be continually moving towards holiness (rough paraphrase).

I've been so checked recently by my need to refocus on my Christian life. It is really easy to focus on what it means to do successful ministry or be a "global" Christian and forget how to be a Christian that is faithful in the little things, that is true to the way of Christ in loving people who are not fun to love or in being a good roommate or in listening to people. One of my vices is talking smack. but its unloving. its mean. it makes for an overabundance of competition for competition's sake, not sport for sport's sake.

And the movement toward Jesus in terms of my mouth makes my prayer better. It makes the Scripture more alive. It makes the whole Christian life more full. Jesus moves into the dark and quiet corners, into the pieces of my reluctant heart that are holed up under the bed and that scream out that they are part of who I am and what's the point of getting rid of them? If people are put off by them then so what? They can get over it. Its who I am.

And we wonder why those we lead won't let their lives be changed. We lead by example. To the degree that we let Jesus retransform us every day, those we lead will be filled by Christ and retransformed.

music

I'm no connoiseur of music. I know very little about it in any sort of historical context. I know very little about it at all except how it makes me feel and the people that I see connected to it.

I just bought Nick Drake's "Pink Moon," an album I had listened to in high school by the gracious loaning of a friend. But it hits so deeply, resonates so completely with me. It is truly a grace of God to have these friends to walk with us and remind us of what is beautiful, remind us that in the midst of a failing world, God is going to make something new and good from the brokenness. And when I listen to Nick Drake, I'm reminded that this happens in the whispers and the corners before it happens anywhere else. Good Lord, may we redeem and be redeemed.

The Joy of Gardening

I just ate a plum. Two plums, actually--they were like little purple gems that tingled my mouth and fell apart in sweet sweet goodness on my tongue. Oh boy.

There is just something about gardening, about bringing something out of the ground that is actually full of junk and awful stuff and turning it into food that is delicious and healthy. I love gardening so much. I can't wait to do it for the rest of my life. I can't wait to live in rhythm with the seasons of the year. I'm just excited about it. The corn's getting ready too and I've already eaten a few ears. They are very delicious. Mario bought some heirloom tomatoes at the farmer's market and will plant them soon. They will be very good. Mario is very good at getting things to grow. I'm getting there. I'm good at letting things rot in the compost pile.

I wish I knew how to put pictures up. Hooray for self-grown food!

...................................................................................................

this is a fantastic way to avoid doing Economics homework. Don't you agree?

phew. I just stopped by and talked with Alice Corbin a few minutes ago. She is a gem, maybe the best-kept secret on this campus. We talked of simplicity and the way that the world is getting more complicated. I can't help but wonder aloud if it is a good thing. Connectedness, while nurturing the virtues of relationality and openness of information on the one hand also cuts into simplicity, singularity of purpose, focus, sabbath, and so many other glorious virues. Yet I feel as though I do not belong to my culture, to the people that I love, if I do not operate on these levels of connectedness. My cell phone and email, facebook and myspace, blog and journal--all of these are each one piece of myself that becomes available until I am so available I can't find myself. I am so busy that I quite literally do not know how to rest or be still. I am so caught up in the service to so many gods--most of them claiming to be in the service of the One--that I forget to serve the One God, who made heaven and earth, who knit me together in Donna May's womb, who knows my inmost being, the God who has been content without blogs and cell phones and email for thousands/millions/billions/trillions (pick whichever you fancy) of years. If the silent swirling cosmos which slowly cooled into explosive volcanoes, land forms which separated out into the deep waters and mountain ranges and plant and animal life which have culminated in the zelem of God are enough for God, then I suppose they should be good enough for me.

We're past functionality. We are at a point in human history where our ability to produce more does not create prosperity or blessing. Instead, the concentration of the production in the hands of the few and wealthy creates poverty and waste instead of blessing for all. I can't help but think of the scene from Steinbeck's Grapes of Wrath in which an overabundance of oranges are poured down the hill and then, in order to keep the impoverished workers from taking them for themselves and their children (thus relieving the great need which drives capitalism's production), there is gasoline poured on the perfectly good but unmarketable fruits and they are burned as starving onlookers lament this waste.

Going small but deep. I think I'm scared of it because I seem to get my friends and employers mad at me whenever I am without a cell phone for a week or so. We just don't know what to do with ourselves.

I'm questioning whether "Its the world we live in" is a valid excuse anymore.

"Hear, O Israel, the Lord your God, the Lord is One. Love the Lord your God with all your heart with all your soul and with all your strength. These commandments that I give you today are to be upon your hearts. Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up. Tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads. Write them on the doorframes of your houses and on your gates."


in the thickness of the day,
in the weight of the evening,
in the expectation of the morning,
in the solitude of the still night,
i am known by one who is One.
open to the great mystery

and laid naked in front of the glorious Love.
Oh love Divine that sweeps my being into thine,
that breaks me open, pouring unknown hopes in.
you do not release me to my fear, to my life.
i am yours. i am yours. i am yours.
it cannot be worn out.

i am the fragmented pieces of the mosaic

take all that i am and may i stand alone before you,
willing only that which you desire.

I am a faceless voice, voiceless face in Israel.
I am Israel and I am not even myself.
We are the hearer-obeyers.
and we are alone before You as you are alone before You.
and before us.

before us
before us
ignore us
bore us
store us.
go before and teach us this
Alone.

holy Nazarenes

Pastor Steve asked the question about holiness in Bible study yesterday. he kept referring to Brother Mack and others who have come out of holiness traditions in the South and Midwest and noting that things are different now, that we don't have the same kind of distinctiveness that we used to have. i see three threads coming through this discussion of holiness, but i think that where we should be is somewhere in the middle of all three of them.

First, I see what Olivetians would lament as the Point Loma mentality, which is very much okay with not looking too different from the dominant culture--so much so that we don't really know how to be different from the dominant culture. In this thread, we love to use words like "Love" and "Grace" to define our religious belief. Our piety is most characterized by our permissiveness. We understand that each one is a sinner and that God forgives each one where s/he is at. God meets us and wants relationship with us. That frees us to be who we want to be as God affirms our lives, wants us to be happy and will have relationship with us no matter where we are in life.

Second, there is the stereotypical Nazarene thread that looks like women in high collars, midwestern parents who are concerned with the image of their children. It is connected with refusing to drink, to dance, to do anything on Sundays. In the case of Brother Mack's youth, this even looks like refusing to cook, buy gas (or anything for that matter), or play ball on Sundays. There is no or minimal jewelry: simplicity is highly stressed. But why? to be distinctive. Because all that stuff from which we refrain is worldly and therefore, by refraining, we become other than worldly. It is defined in a negative manner.

Third, there is the reaction to the second that does not want to be so worldly as the first. We recognize the death and the staleness of the second and reject that. but we do not want to lose that distinctiveness. This is where my parents are. So we reject some things, such as drinking, dancing (in certain ways) and being too hyperactive. But there is no premium on simplicity. We comfort ourselves from the stale legalism of the old-time nazarenes with the middle class comforts that we have convinced ourselves that we deserve. we don't party or have sex. But we still look like everyone else. we shop like everyone else, vote like everyone else. we live where everyone else lives. hell, we even watch the same TV shows as everyone else and probably the same movies. We try to define ourselves in a way that embraces both the grace and permissiveness of the first thread and the distinctiveness of the second.

(8 days later)
What bothers me about all of these is that each of them seem to be asking the wrong question. Rather than asking ourselves how we can align ourselves with the world in a way of least resistance, we should begin to look to the Scriptures and the Christian tradition in a way that sees them as normative for our lives and then try to figure out what is okay for us rather than what is not. we need to be stripped down into virtually nothing. We need to be broken, to be forsaken and forgotten by our world. In truth, the complacency and the complicity of the church with the world is something that must be judged. This may look like wandering, but stay with me.

We have lost what it means to be holy, but let us recognize that this is not a particularly Nazarene doctrine or even a doctrine that is particular to the Holiness congregations. Holiness is central to the life and ministry of the Church catholic. It is a part of the doctrine laid out at Vatican II and one only has to read Matthew 5-7 to get the clear picture that a church without holiness is no church at all. It is an organization based on some foundation that is other than Christ. If Christ is our head and Christ is holy, then of course we strive for holiness. Talking with John Wright today, he made the point that the Nazarene church is a renewal movement within the Church. We are not a group that exists to make our particular denomination normative, but in the preface of the manual, even, it says (in less words) that we are a group that exists to call the Church catholic to its greater purpose as the Body of Christ.

There has been some talk about Nazarene monks or something like that. Well, folks, here's the thing--as far as I can tell, Nazarenes started as monks. We may not be called specifically to celibacy but we are those who, with the grace of God, are called to humbly call the church back to its original purpose through holy lives. We are not here to be the denomination to which all denominations should aspire. we are not here to fit nicely into the religious marketplace in America, offering an option for those conservative Americans who need an outlet for their conservatism. We are here to serve the church by reminding the church of what it means to be holy and in that, to return to our purpose as the body of Christ.

From my perspective, not drinking is important because it reminds us that if we are not sharing life with people who have trouble with alcohol (so prevalent in our culture), then we are not living our call faithfully (this even informs the very elements of the Eucharist so that we do not use wine in the Eucharist). Refraining from sex until marriage is important because it reminds us that marriage is a metaphor of the relationship between Christ and the church as well as a creative act. Refraining from other addictions is important because it reminds us that our lives are to be lived under the kingship of Jesus Christ and no other. Watching what we buy is important for the same reason--because we are the people of God, not the people of our nation or the people of the marketplace. Offering hospitality is important because it reminds us that we are not our own, not to mention direct commands in the Scriptures. There is so much more to be said here but for the sake of your time, i would point you to the blog by the Order of Saint Stephen in my links. It says these things more eloquently and more completely.

Holiness, holiness is what we long for.
Holiness is what we need.
Holiness, holiness is what you want for us...

so I had an interesting experience the other day. I came home. Coming home is always an interesting experience but this one has raised some particularly intriguing questions. I hadn't been to church in a while due to travelling on Sundays and so I called up Becca Van Donk and asked her if I could come to her church. I knew her church is charismatic and moves in the healing/"presence of the Spirit" kind of circles. this is new to me. Not in the sense that I couldn't follow what was going on but in the sense that this is not the sort of way that I have experienced God. I've never spoken in tongues. I've never been healed in any way that is miraculous outside of the miracles of everyday life. Its not that I haven't wanted to be. I've made myself available to this sort of healing on a few occasions. I've tried to focus and concentrate and get out of the way enough for the Spirit to move through me. I've witnessed things happen, too. But I've just never quite been in the middle of the Spirit and the flesh, if that makes sense. I've never been the conduit for that sort of flow.

So going to this church service with my prophet brother (no seriously. he is a prophet. this stuff is kind of his deal.) was challenging. I knew it would be.

I was sitting there, drawing and writing and feeling very much a part and not a part of what was going on and the questions and images that kept running thorugh my head were all centering around the images of the first Nazarenes, these unintellectual, compassionate, passionate, camp-meeting types who would hang out with the down-and-outers in the cast-off parts of L.A., who refused to start their denomination until the poor Southerners could join them, who wrestled with the gift of tongues (why? probably because people were doing it), and who would not back away from a holy life.

is there some wisdom here for us? is there something for us to glean here, to remember about who we are? how do we remember? how do we allow this past to be a part of who we are? I'm flipping this around these days. I'm trying to find a way that we can know this to be true: that we are not only the descendants of a church that instituted the Eucharist and other sacraments and that serves with humility, compassion, and love. That we are also the descendants of the church in Acts, whose absurdity is an offense to me; we are the descendants of St. Francis of Assisi as much as we are the descendants of Dorothy Day, of John Wesley as much as Quakers and Shakers (we can't let Quakers' emphasis on silence distract us from their less-than-silent history).

I want to find where this nonsense that may be the greatest sense we know fits into the scheme of who we are as a church. How can we be gifted by the Spirit and not forget the Eucharist? How can we allow God to break through our liturgy (not destroying liturgy, but freeing us through liturgy) to a truly transformative life lived before the Lord in a spirit of thanksgiving and joy, of pouring ourselves out before God that we might be transformed and changed and that we might ultimately be brought to holiness for the glory of God.

whose story are you living?

The world, as much as it may like to think otherwise, is a world at war. One particularly compelling way to parse the world is through the lens of narratology, in which the distinct yet inextricable particularities of Narratives, Polities, Practices, and Virtues are the essential elements in each conception of reality.¹ There is a tension here in that narratology is an academic construction to make sense of something that is real and yet in this particular instance, it is making sense of the Christian Scriptures which are at the bottom of things, the fundamental elements of what is real. That is the methodological tension. Beyond that, there is the tension that is found in the battle between the Story of Faith, the narrative that is interwoven with the liberal-democratic nation-state, and the Story of God, the narrative that is the Christian Scriptures, interwoven with the people of God, the elect, lived out in the Church².

The narrative of the story of Faith comes, historically, from the development of the liberal-democratic nation-state, especially since the 17^th century. The fundamentals of this narrative are that the individual is an autonomous being who has developed distinctly from the forces which surround her/him so that this one can make choices to improve her or his life that will move the individual from unfulfillment to fulfillment, from boredom to excitement, from unhappiness to happiness. These choices that the individual makes will allow that individual to be who that s/he wants to be and therefore find a life worth living. Ultimately, the entire narrative of the liberal-democratic nation-state is collapsed into the individual and that one's choice of how to live his or her life. These choices are means to “the good,” an abstract concept denoting general positivity. From the perspective of “faith,” the individual makes choices which move him/herself from a consciousness of one's own sin (which is really about guilt and shame) to a consciousness of grace that comes from Jesus to and for the individual within the span of that individual's lifetime. Jesus becomes the means to the individual's fulfillment and enlightenment, leading this one to the “good” that is found ultimately in him or herself. Jesus, the perfect consciousness, shows each one the good that was there all along. This denial of Jesus' bodily reality ultimately allows for violence as that supposedly does not effect the consciousness.

However, the great subtlety of this narrative, this Story of Faith, is that while it is supposedly collapsed into the individual, what is really going on is that the polity of the liberal-democratic nation-state takes a hegemonic role in the whole story as the supposedly “neutral” zone in which choices can take place. Hence, the birth of the marketplace. The state is the neutral zone in which the “real work” takes place, which is the choosing of different products to bring fulfillment. However, when someone comes in and challenges the validity of this system by introducing something outside the polity—because despite the genius of the liberal-democratic nation-state, there is something outside of this polity—the state needs to be able to hold power over those individuals. Hence, the state has the ability to used sanctioned violence so that killing is acceptable when it is done in a state-backed uniform or for the sake of upholding the state. It is violence on the fringes of the state so that violence will not happen within the state.

There cannot be violence within the bounds of the state lest there not be free choice but some sort of unhealthy coercion. The power to choose is the central focus of this narrative. You must be able to choose your own best so long as it does not infringe on anyone else's “right” to choose. Hence, voting, free speech, open marketplaces, an emphasis on self-knowledge, and the list goes on. Again, violence is a practice that is reserved for the state but small amounts of violence and violent ways of dealing with each other—blowing each other off, passing by “the poor” as if they did not exist, segregating ourselves into social classes as if to legitimize the existence of the marketplace—each of these are practices which are violent to one another in that they do not recognize that God has created each one and all ones together and treat one another as a gift because of that fact. Instead, the liberal self moves around this supposedly neutral world choosing, buying, consuming, taking in, getting “free stuff,” “thinking,” “changing,” “growing,” etc., etc., etc. And all of this within the confines of one's own personal bubble that is defined by one's preferences and inclinations. All of liberalism is a sucking into the self. And the nation-state supports that wholeheartedly. It is the structure that allows it to exist and these practices perpetuate and legitimate its existence.

In the sucking into the self, the liberal self seeks to find a sense of transcendental peace, of unity with the aggregate, of acceptance in all because “life belongs to life” and ultimately we are found in the “ground of being,” Jesus, who will bring us to wholeness by bringing us to the recognition that we are not ultimately different or wrong. We will be freed from guilt, from legalism, from pain. We will be reunited with Christ, from whom we have been separated. In is in this reuniting that we will find peace, happiness, unity, and acceptance. From our acceptance of others (in hope of our acceptance of ourselves), the individuals of the liberal-democratic nation-state are docile and nice to one another lest they upset the balance of acceptance. Happiness and excitement gloss over the real depression and boredom that surfaces as soon as the members of the liberal-democratic nation-state have enough time to stop and think.

The Story of God is radically different. Finding its expression in the narrative Christian Scriptures, the Story of God is not a story of the individual and that individual's faith which moves them toward God. It is the story of God's faithfulness to and salvation of humans so that God might ultimately be glorified. God is the actant behind the activity in the story of God so that even as individuals live and respond either obediently or disobediently to God's call and action in their lives, all action is upheld and sustained by God, who renders all things intelligible—any faith that is is because God has made it that it might be so. Any good that is is because God has upheld that good and brought it to be. Even time and place have been created by and for and in God, as seen in Genesis 1 as God creates outside of space and time, seen in the exegesis of tobu wabohu. God is the actant behind the story creating the story that happens. Even in the stories of people, God is present in very important ways. In the story of Ruth, an alien, widowed woman and her widowed mother-in-law live faithfully to Torah, responding to God in obedience to his Word. Although God does not show up in explicit ways, booming from a mountaintop, God is present throughout in the realities of Torah. The story is soaked in God, even if no one ever talks about being wet.

Again, this narrative does not happen in a vacuum. God shows up in God's polity, the church, the people of God, the elect. In Ruth, it is in the concrete, bodily, hand-to-mouth and feet-to-feet realities of life. Ruth, Boaz and Naomi and others interact in a way that is faithful to each other as the people of God in the world. As demonstrated in Harinck, Jesus is not an etheral consciousness but an apocalypse, a revelation to the physical world. Jesus really lived, died and was risen and in that bodily reality, the bodily reality of the church is established. The people of God come together and live in a way that forms to Jesus' death and resurrection, a cruciform like that is fleshed out regularly in the Lord's Supper. In that act, the people of God are constituted and made into something that stands apart from the liberal-democratic nation-state. We are made into those that God is saving, grafted into the branch of God's election and salvation that has come through God's faithfulness to us. As made evident in Ruth, Exodus, Acts, Revelation and elsewhere, the elect are often oppressed. This is, in some ways, a necessary practice of being the elect. Jesus was oppressed. Jesus called us to be oppressed, to be persecuted. Oppression is evidence of election because when something is wholly other than the polity in which it finds itself—and the people of God are always in struggle against the polities of this world—there is bound to be oppression.

The practices of the people of God, interestingly enough, look a lot like oppression. Submission, restitution, penance, the ingesting of the body and blood of Christ, faithful and obedient discipleship: these are the practices of a cruciform people, a people who follow the gospel which is the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus. We die to ourselves and before one another that we may be raised to life. We are slain that we may be raised to life. We are “always carrying in the body the death of Jesus so that the life of Jesus may be made visible in our bodies” (2 Cor. 4:10). This is the people of God, constituted in the body and blood of Jesus and in the practices of our relationships with one another, not that there is an inherent value in the relationship but that Jesus has brought us together and we cannot escape relating to one another. One quite distinct practice in the story of God from the story of Faith is that in that of Faith, there is no place for memory unless that memory is subsumed within the individual. The individual takes into himself all that is necessary and all else can be discarded. In the Story of God, in the church, the individual is caught up into the polity of the church by the memory of the Eucharist, of communally reading the Scriptures, of passing the peace of Christ and recognizing that in this passing of peace, there is a participation with the catholic body of Christ, despite the differences and distinctions that the liberal-democratic nation-state may make. Ruth does the preposterous thing of following a frail old widow back to a failing homeland, probably to die. And in her faithfulness, in her practice of following the people of God and making them her own people, of making Yahweh her God, she is caught up and enfolded into this story, ultimately worked into the line of Jesus which God is bringing about. In the story of Faith, there is no need for this memory if it moves past the individual usage of a particular individual. But if one lives in God's story in which time and place are real, yet tensive symbols, catching the individual up into something in which s/he is lost and still contributes to, then this one contributes and participates in something that is greater that that one's self and yet is also who that one truly is, namely the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

In the virtues of the story of God, one finds, basically, faith, hope, love, forgiveness, peace. These values are the goals after which one strives and come in bits and pieces with the recognition that the coming Kingdom of God, when all things will be made whole in and through and for God, is still yet to come. That tension, of the kingdom being here and not here drives the church on to work for these values, to strive to see them in its own life—often a failing endeavor. But God is making it whole. God is taking the good from the activity of God's people and drawing the world to Godself. Transformation is real and is happening; it happens personally and socially, and it is an outpouring of God's self. These virtues come about from the practices mentioned before and from the resources of the church: the Scriptures and the Eucharist, with which Jesus makes us into a glorious being.

Difference

Whether the church follows the story of God or the story of Faith makes all the difference in the world, literally. I will quote Christian Smith from his book Soul Searching about his concept of Moralistic Therapeutic Deism:

“The creed of his religion, as codified from what emerged from our interviews, sounds something like this:

1. A God exists who created and orders the world and watches over human life on earth.

2. God wants people to be good, nice, and fair to each other...

3. The central goal of life is to be happy and to feel good about oneself.

4. God does not need to be particularly involved in one's life except when God is needed to resolve a problem.

5. Good people go to heaven when they die....

Moralistic Therapeutic Deism exists, with God's aid, to help people succeed in life, to make them feel good, and to help them get along with others—who are otherwise different—in school, at work, on the team, and in other routine areas of life” (p. 162-3, 169)

This is where the hegemony of the story of Faith has led North American Christians. Being Christian no longer has anything to do with God. It is entirely subsumed in the individual, and even those who buy into this would not agree that that is acceptable. When the story of God is taken seriously, the church is not a community of common interest. It is constituted by the gospel which blows apart the notions of individual rights. The responsibility of everyone is that the gospel would go on unhindered (Acts 28) from the assembly and within the assembly of the Lord. Also, the Church matters in the Story of God. If the Story of Faith is real, the church is an irrelevant institution. We can change consciousness in a thousand different ways and far more effectively than the church. Jesus and indeed the “community” become choices for us, examples of ways to live our life, but nothing that compels or binds us, nothing that requires faithfulness. All semblance of Christocentrism is shattered. Jesus is merely what I could be. No longer do I lay down my life so that Jesus can work in us. I lay down my life so that I can be as enlightened as Jesus. Finally, in the story of Faith, we cannot love. People become choices, market options. We cannot truly lay down our lives for each other, as in 1 John 3:16. Instead, we lay down our lives for one another because that is ultimately the best option for me. This is not love. This is a self-collapsing hell of a life where each one collapses all that is into him or her self, violently discounting the poor, the disinherited, the forgotten because they cannot help me to succeed, by whatever my rubric of success is. I may even become a social justice type and then use the poor for my success while discounting the rich. There is no good end in this—only death. But if the people who God is calling will embrace the death of God's Son Jesus, they will be raised to life, enabled to love and made righteous in the apocalypse of Jesus Christ who lived, died, and was raised again. There is a good end in this world but it is not found in this world—it is found in the Creator God who is drawing all things into Godself for God's good end. Praise Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. Amen.

1These cannot be spoken of separately, but only in some particularity

2The Church is the people of God, though this should not exclude the Jews who have not lost their election in the institution of the Church.

A long time coming...

Man, it has been a long month and a half. For my reader, I apologize to you for your absence. Your homework and other worthwhile activities have probably gotten way too much attention since March 23.

Finishing up finals, I've been thinking some about the meaning and place of stress in our lives. It is really easy, I think, to try to make stress into this thing that gets in the way of our fulfillment and therefore blow it up or minimize it from what it really is. We have such a strange relationship with stress, much like our relationship with sleep. Is it good? Stress: no. Sleep: yes. But not better than work and activity and busyness. It is good to rest, to shabbat we might say in Christian circles, but we're not going to actually do it if it costs us work. We need to be active, to be working, to be productive. even our Christian lives are this way. if we're not growing continually over the course of our lives, then there is something wrong, right? i think we've let our notions of economics work into our notions of ontology a little too much. In other words, we think about living the way we think about the economy. If our spirituality or our economy is not growing, that's bad. There is little to no room for plateau, for falling off a little bit, for crisis even. Our whole focus is on that upward move that points ever upwards into some supposedly limitless sky. But I am going to say this is false.

first off, the fact that our notions of "personal growth" and "spiritual health" are so determined by our conception of the economy troubles me. it seems that, if anything, there should be a much greater focus on sustainability, on faithfulness, on doing what needs to be done and finding joy in it. We should be looking deeper into how to redeem the various aspects of our lives with whatever currency we have, be that economic, social, cultural, or whatever. Instead, we try to amass some store of personal worth and capital without trying to reach out in that, without recognizing that the purpose of any capital that we have is to spend it in redeeming. And the greatest capital that we can ever amass comes from a long, long time spent faithfully responding to the call to love God and others. But this sort of capital is indifferent to the variables of how we are doing, of how stressed we are, of how successful we are. Indifferent may be too strong a word. Um, it is other than those things. our faithfulness, though often impacted by the other circumstances of our lives, is different from those circumstances. In many ways, our faithfulness is in our adherence to a standard outside of those circumstances in the midst of them. This standard of loving others--of living a cruciform life, of maintaining the core commitment to Christ in the midst of the "rest" of life--is the thing to keep in mind at each moment, in each day. It is why we meet on Sundays, why we continue to take the Eucharist, why we continue to gather for baptisms and remember our own in them. These serve as reminders to us. But not for our own sake. They serve as reminders that we might live for another. And yet they are also the real substance that pulls us up into the reality of God's salvation and redemption of the world.

So...finals. stress. sometimes it feels like i am going to break under all of it and i just want to give up, to lay down my education go get a job in southeast or, better yet, as a pool boy in Cabo. but I know that there is something to the breaking. it reminds me of what life is about, that life is not about me and my wishes or my comfort. it is about how i remain faithful to the call to love in the midst of heavy circumstances. because despite Jeff Carr's institution of "success week" at loma, garbage still happens. i still have to wrestle with difficult things and hard things and ugly things. i still have to be a youth pastor and a stand-in dad and a friend and a host of other things. So I am reminded that no matter how tired i am, i need to pray. I don't necessarily need to have a full day of lounging around, but i do need to pray. And beyond that, I am not my work. My research paper for Kevin probably sucked bad. I'm okay with that. I am more than the sum of my accomplishments and it is good yet hard to remember that in the midst of an ouput/production-oriented culture. So what if i do fail out. it would suck, but i can faithfully respond to that situation just as i can faithfully respond to success. neither is necessarily easier. So whatever situation comes, we can say with Paul that we are "content whatever the circumstances." (Phil. 4)

That said, I'm glad to have a break. I'm tired but I'm going to sleep tonight and that is a good thing. So peace, friend(s). the summer is upon us.

a few brief stories (and no justice per se)

Tonight, we prayed the stations of the cross with the and I was so impressed with how well they handled the silence, at least for a while. They seem to respect and maybe even enjoy that kind of thing. My hope is that we are introducing them to something like this so that silence and candles and prayer are not foreign to them. In fact, i hope it becomes utterly normal. but its a hard fight trying to reclaim these kids from the world.

also, before we started praying tonight, about five punk rock kids--mohawks, bleached hair, gloves, studs, cheek-piercing, skin-tight jeans, "The Clash" T-shirts, the whole nine yards--wandered in. i know it seems silly, but i was really stoked to be able to connect with them. i hope they come back. i think the kids in our youth group could use some discomfort and these and other kids from the streets could use a home.

finally, Ernie stayed the night and Ira, Ernie and I were in the kitchen microwaving corn dogs and emptying the dishwasher when Ira, in the course of conversation, said "Hallelujah! Its Easter tomorrow! Thank You!" I got so excited! he got it! all these weeks of trying to explain that abstaining from sweets was actually worship and the night before, he got it! oh man, i grabbed him by the shoulders and i could have hugged him so tight. it is blissful moment when we see a breakthrough like that. Can you imagine the beauty of someone stumbling upon the truth of Easter, of Lent, of what worship really is? Well, I had to write this to tell someone.

peace to you all. He is almost risen!

it ain't a sin to be on the street

I want to lay out my central question when it comes to justice. Tonight at salvation Army, Kenneth said to me, before launching into a long plan for making the church do the church's work, "It ain't a sin to be on the street. The problem is what you are doing while you are on the streets."

so here's my question: social justice seems to be pushing a very particular vision of what a socially just society would look like and no matter which way i turn, this vision seems to be almost entirely filled with liberal-democratic notions of "the good life" that comes through the pursuit of happiness. I want to see a society that promotes righteousness first and the end of poverty, hunger, the welfare of the city (Jer. 29), and the education of kids comes out of that.

We seek to end poverty so that the poor can seek Christian poverty.
We seek to end hunger so that the hungry can fast.
We seek to educate so that the illiterate can read and seek God in the lives of the saints and in the Scriptures.
We seek to bring an end to the structures of death as an outgrowth of choosing life (Deut. 30).

my point is that we do not become active citizens but that we move people to a standard that allows them to be good (e.g. they do not have to steal to eat) and then do not pressure them to become more wealthy but rather we teach the value of poverty and simplicity. To expect wealth is to lose their personhood while they are poor. Let us recognize that the poor and the wealthy and everyone in between is a gift of God--a precious gift worth celebrating and valuing. Our work should not be neutral to our love of these people but rather, it should flow out of a love for people. If we lose the love, we should take a sabbatical from our organizing and our justice work to fall in love with the people again.

I want justice--justice rooted in righteousness, holiness, sanctification, and love.

justice again.

This is what the LORD Almighty, the God of Israel, says to all those I carried into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon: "Build houses and settle down; plant gardens and eat what they produce. Marry and have sons and daughters; find wives for your sons and give your daughters in marriage, so that they too may have sons and daughters. Increase in number there; do not decrease. Also, seek the peace and prosperity of the city to which I have carried you into exile. Pray to the LORD for it, because if it prospers, you too will prosper." (Jeremiah 29:4-7)

all right. so i was thinking more about justice today and i want to lay some of this out for discussion and to get it out of my head.

There are two terms, i'm told, for justice in the old testament. Mishpat, which essentially means something along the lines of "what's coming to you" and Tzedekal (sp.?), which is more about the character of God and is derived from the word Tzedek or "righteousness." Kevin Modesto was talking about these today and his comment was that both of these seem either deficient (mishpat) or not applicable to us humans (tzedekal). He said he wants "something more than justice. I want shalom (wholeness)." First, my beef with this. Second, my answer to this.

Beef: Kevin agrees with many of the criticisms of justice language that make it seem as if justice is this thing that we can somehow objectively get to or that it is something that is in the category of the "good" or the "bad" which draw on very Platonic dualistic ideas that make these wispy forms of the "good", etc. co-eternal with God rather than finding their origin and life in God. So, God does not do things because God is just. rather, God does things because the act is Just and God is conforming with what is best. God's creation is not good because it is God's. It is good because God made creation to line up with this ultimate Good which God most perfectly embodies. "Social justice" does the same thing. It makes it seem as if "justice" is this place that we can legitimately get to in any sort of substantive way with or without Jesus. Jesus makes it easier, of course, but justice is not dependent on Jesus. It's like saying, "Oh, anyone can love me. But my wife does it the best, so I try to go to her the most. but if other women have something to offer, a new way of loving me, then I don't mind going to them because ultimately, its important that i get loved rather than who is loving me, right?"

Also, the whole concept of Shalom seems to do the same thing. The whole craze around the word Shalom, and i am very guilty of participating in it, makes me wonder why we love it so much. I think we love the idea of shalom because it is not so different from our modern Western liberal ideas of what the point of life is: to seek our wholeness and holistic well-being (no different from "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness"). Now, don't get me wrong. I'm all about the "prosperity of the city." but why are we seeking it? Why do we organize so that kids can get better educations? Why do we push to eradicate AIDS and make the border a safer place for families and individuals? Why do we do these things? I'm not sure yet. But I know that we don't (or shouldn't) do them so that we will win and therefore eradicate suffering. As Christians, I think we seek out those that are suffering so that we can walk with them and part of walking with them is working against these things with them. But we don't organize around issues. We don't jump on social justice bandwagons (on non-bandwagons). we work from and with and through and because of people that God loves and wants to bring to salvation. We go to listen to the wisdom of the oppressed and the forgotten. We go to bear them up SO THAT we both might praise God more humbly and purely, live more righteously, love more purely. In our walking with, both parties are brought more close to the life of the Son, transformed more into the likeness of the Son on the earth. And that is where we end. we are not transformed so that the environment will be saved or so that no one will be poor or any other issue. we are transformed because transformation is the end. To become more like the Son and live more and more in the glorious light of God the Father: these are the goals (the ends, the teloses) that we Christians live with and for. If everything in me is returning to the Father--money, time, gifts, talents, everything--then i am succeeding by the strength of Jesus Christ.

Answer: What if our movements and passion do not fall prey to the whims of a liberal-democratic nation-state but rather, we use all of those resources that we have to create societies where it is easier to be good. this is borrowing straight from Peter Maurin, but i think that's the only place i can legitimately land. I want to work to create righteous societies. Take the language of justice out of it. I don't care about justice. I don't care about equality. The Bible seems to take inequality as a necessary thing. Notice it is not a necessary evil, but rather a sort of neutral quality that brings about a textured sort of church.

Each one should remain in the situation which he was in when God called him. Were you a slave when you were called? Don't let it trouble you—although if you can gain your freedom, do so. For he who was a slave when he was called by the Lord is the Lord's freedman; similarly, he who was a free man when he was called is Christ's slave. (1 Cor. 7)

Paul also writes to Philemon that he really wants to make Philemon let Onesimus go but he won't "on the basis of love." Paul doesn't even fight for social justice in the church! So here is my question. If all that we are to be doing is on the basis of love, ultimately serving one another and laying our lives down for one another, rather than organizing against each other and demonstrating power to get what we want, then why do we think that "justice" is so important? I say that we don't need justice. We need a community of Tzadikim, of righteous ones who live righteously and push others to do so, who are the impetus behind a sort of social righteousness that stands up for each other on the basis of love, that stands up for those across the world, even, on the basis of love--a love found in the self-sacrifice of Jesus, who did not consider equality with God (by all means his right was to claim equality with God!) something to be exploited but who became like a human and suffered and died and was then raised to life. Social righteousness, not social justice. For us Wesleyans, Social holiness. This is something we can hang with.

It strips movements of their power. it takes away our need for peace-sign earrings and "love" t-shirts. but it means that we care less about whether or not people see what we are doing and care more about whether or not we are doing it in the best possible ways. We don't need issues. We need love. We need faces. we give time and money, we make a big stink, we write letters, we even vote and protest at times because of love for those that are in these situations, not because of issues. To care and be involved in the lives of those around us is part of being and becoming righteous. it is part of being transformed into the likeness of Jesus. it is part of becoming a follower of Jesus rather than an admirer of Jesus.

Admirers are only too willing to serve Christ as long as proper caution is exercised, lest one personally come in contact with danger. They refuse to accept that Christ’s life is a demand. In actual fact, they are offended by him. His radical, bizarre character so offends them that when they honestly see Christ for who he is, they are no longer able to experience the tranquility they so much seek after. They know full well that to associate with him too closely amounts to being up for examination. Even though he says nothing against them personally, they know that his life tacitly judges theirs. (Soren Kierkegaard)


let me sum up. I don't want shalom unless that shalom is leading us to righteousness. That sort of shalom will not take us away from suffering and struggle. Rather, it will lead us into it. it will challenge and change us, but we must always live with that sort of willingness to be transformed. We need to long to be made righteous and not long for the trappings of righteousness to become a reality in this physical world. Rather than simply planting gardens and working for the welfare of the city, we need to become those that accept what God has given us and begin to work with God's strength to make good out of it, to love in the midst of hate and to teach those around us to love in a way that comes from the one who is love, who is peace, who is shalom. Ultimately, we need to lead people back to God and the welfare and hope found therein and not to the welfare of the city or the hope of a well-planned and -organized social structure.

more justice

okay, so i'm working out more what justice means here.

justice seems to connote some sort of objective rubric off of which everything is based. The question is, what is that rubric? who sets it up? Who defines what is just? There is a deep belief that runs through "social justice" circles that justice entails something along the lines of equality, freedom to choose one's own good life (usually referring to the poor. I mean, the rich have chosen their good life. Now it's time for them to give up some of that good life--to which they are duly entitled, of course--in order to give someone else a shot.), and other ideals which are, ironically, very much a part of the American dream.

but I don't buy it. I think that placing your trust in a 200+ year old dream is ultimately a waste. What we need is not another verson of the American dream. What we need is God. We need God to begin to define justice. Responding to the call to live compassionately--that's justice. Decrying greed and exploitation--that's justice. Becoming poor yourself so that you can walk with and encourage those who are poor to find the God who became human himself--that's justice. But also, justice is something as simple as forgiving your neighbor and brother, loving those around you even in a hard way (sometimes love looks a lot like throwing someone out of your house knowing full well that they may end up homeless.). Its a matter of loving in a way that is consistent with God's Word and word. It is a matter of not lusting as much as you are not adulterous, not hating as much as you are nonviolent. But at the same time, hating your mother, taking up your cross, decrying the systems of the world that exploit people and paying your taxes on time are all justice as well. We want justice that is restorative, yes. We want justice that does more than punish but that finds the person behind the punishment and seeks to treat that person with love and respect. But more than restorative justice, we want holy justice, a justice that find the image of God behind the person that is behind the punishment and calls out that image to be real, to be true and realized in their life. I am a Wesleyan and i ought to talk about being holy more than i do. i want holy justice. When i am compassionate, when i am hard, when I am gardening or talking or picketing or organizing or punishing or whatever it is that someone might call justice, I want to be seeking the holy in the person and in myself because that is the way of the cross, to seek the holy and live that out in the world. God's kingdom in the world, showing up in places that no one expects it because people don't know what the Holy is. But God wants to show up--to show up in a way that recognizes that God has always been there, moving and shaping things and reconciling the world to Godself. I want to be a bridge for that kind of justice, the kind that reconciles the world to God's self. This is true reconciliatory justice, better than retributive, better than restorative because at its core, it recognizes that God is the end, the telos of the whole endeavor.

if you have thoughts, please leave them here.

Justice

It's funny how the term "justice" carries such disparate meanings.

For Judges, police officers and Israelites, it seems to connote hitting people who have done unacceptable and/or repulsive things with rocks, billy clubs, sticks, bullets, jail time, rocks, fists, rocks, jail cells, or the like.
For hippies, Northern Californians (okay, same thing.) and rock stars, it seems to connote large amounts of food to impoverished [African] nations, not giving anyone jail time and/or refusing to hit them with rocks, sanctions on impoverished [African] nations, the (RED) campaign, community housing, community organizing, community planning, community living and community-anything. Ahh...Life Together.


I think they are both wrong. Pastor Steve preached two weeks ago that "Justice is the application of Torah [and subsequently Jesus] to life." Justice is hard and nasty at times. It is revolutionarily "soft" at times. I think Pastor Steve hit the nail on the head here. Justice can look like sanctions and petitions and campaigns. maybe. But, if we are going to take the Scriptures seriously as the texts that shape and form the people of God, Justice can look like stones thrown at your head until you die. It can look like relational reconciliation that goes from Jerusalem to Galilee by foot to make it up to my brother and then back to finish my offering on the altar. Or it can look like throwing someone out of church for belligerence and disrespect. The question is, for me, are we applying Jesus' teaching and life to our lives? Then things will be just. Then life will be as it should be--is that not the true meaning of justice, when things are as they should be. I'd like to wrestle with the idea of restorative justice a bit later, but not right now. Right now, peace. happy Lent.

Ash Wednesday reflections

"You are ashes; and to ashes you shall return."

These words struck me yesterday and have been sitting with me for a while now. I think the relationship often gets missed and instead we see it as an affirmation of our fragility, which it is, and therefore God's security, which it also is. We feel in the receiving of ashes a particular death as the smooth ashes from last year's strange celebration of Jesus' impending death--Palm Sunday--scrape onto our foreheads in the shape of a cross. But what of the relationship between the two phrases? We know they are about are death. But I think that they are really about our life. We are ashes right now, in this moment. Yet we shall return to ashes? This is truly a mystery, but look at it. If we shall return to ashes, then we are something more than ashes. There is something animating these ashes that we are. Though we are dust, this dust is full of life and potential to be made a tool of the living God, the Easter God. Our God is a God of life, not of death and that is something that we must begin to know. Our embrace of death is a means to life and nothing more or less than that. Jesus shows us that in order to find the life that God brings, in order to be given life by God and not by our mothers and fathers or faith communities or neighborhoods, we must die. We must suffer. we must find that all this around us, all that we see and think that we know to be true is but dust. Jesus Christ is True, is more than dust. but in the symbol of dust upon our foreheads, we see and feel and know that Jesus is behind the dust, holding things up and making them worthwhile. If we do not die, we can still suffer the illusion that our lives are not contingent upon God. If we will not be crucified, we will not be resurrected. The living do not need resurrection--the dead do. So I thank God for the whisper of ashes still on my forehead. It is a grace that reminds me of my life.

But dying does not happen the way we want it to. We live in a world fascinated with death. I read an article in the New York Times today about how male models are skinnier and skinnier these days to the point that it is becoming a concern for those in the industry because the men are showing equally disconcerting signs of eating disorders, etc. that the female models have long been criticized for. What is chic? bulimia is chic. cocaine-induced thinness is chic. sunken cheeks, hollow eyes. even the girls in ads these days. Several ads that I've seen depict what appears to be helpless, strung-out domestic violence victims crammed into a bathroom or onto a couch for some sort of quickie before going back out to take a hit off someone's crack pipe. Yippee!!!! Fashion Rules!!! I need some new jeans because my old ones have room for muscles, tendons, ligaments, and epidermis. What was I thinking? I knew I should have just gone with bones this morning. Point is that skeletons, death, despair--these are "in." Life is rarely celebrated. We numb our pain with drugs, be it weed, alcohol, heroine, television, crack, caffeine or any other of the host of entertaining options available. We watch UFC like sick Romans lining up at the Coliseum to watch early Christian martyrs be devoured by lions, tigers, or other human beings. We entertain ourselves into numbness, into nothing, into dust. At the very best we idealize environmentalism, social justice, community and bike rides at the cost of digging into life anywhere. There is, in fact, an image of life that many purport to be chasing but here's the problem: it only involves life. We are still stuck trying to make castles out of the dust that we know, mocking the reality behind reality by either numbing ourselves until dust is all we believe there is or spinning long tales about the magnificent nature of our dust castles and how they are pointing to the real truth of life. For us Christians (okay, monotheists), we believe it points to God (which it doesn't) and for the others, there is a belief in a sort of mystical goodness that somehow makes things worthwhile.

If I'm honest, this is who I am. Though I am aware of my dustiness, I seek to justify it with all that I am. I seek to make it okay for me to be dust and nothing else. And so, for a long time, I have embraced death with reckless abandon because after all, that is who we are, right? I am caught in the tension of which St. Paul writes in his epistle to the Romans. "What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin so that grace may increase?" Of course the answer is a resounding "No!" In fact, to do so would be to mock the Life to which we are beholden for even the breaths that we take in at this moment. Jesus came that we might be saved from the death of an ash-world, not so that we might enter into it irretrievably. Yet I still find myself sinning so that I might know grace, convinced that grace is the removal of guilt--but how can I have guilt unless I sin? No. grace is the fact that I am here, that I exist at all is a profound gift, a grace for which I cannot utter enough thanks. To sin is to move farther from that grace, not to embrace it more. I must move closer to that grace, by accepting the life in each of my parts, in the lonely and frustrated areas of my heart and life. in the impatient, lusty, ugly nasty places of my inside house, I must invite grace in. Lent prepares me for that. By fasting, by giving something up, I clear out a little space to accept the grace of the Father for me. By simplifying my life, cutting down on the complexity of my meals, I remember that even rice is a gift. even salt, even a glass of water are grace to me--and that grace so fills my life and my existence that I cannot wait for Palm Sunday when I can shout, "Hosanna! Christ has come to Jerusalem! And he is going to die so that I might have a life so full that even the voice that cries out is a gift to me!!! Hooray! Hosanna!" Nothing, not even my self is my own. What a wonderful thought.

Lent is a reminder that, in fact, even my own heart is farther from me than I once thought and that knowledge brings life as the waves lap the shore and wash away the dust castles of this world. in this moment, this castle-less moment, God saves us. As we die to our dusty selves, to dusty sin, to the dusty world, God looks at the empty landscape that is exhausted from human efforts to build and build, to create and make the trappings of holiness, and God begins, piece by piece, to build true castles--out of rocks, not out of sand. Out of mortar and brick and wood and straw. Then God breathes life into those castles which, though different from sand, are nevertheless variable arrangements of dust, and the castles begin to glorify the breather of life in a thousand sundry ways. shouting Hosanna! Hosanna! Hallelujah to the God who showed us the way, who died and was raised again to life. Praise Jesus!

Lord, kill me, I pray. I yearn for your life.

"If the house is messy, they might have said, why not clean it up, why not make it into a place where God might wish to dwell?" (Kathleen Norris)

sustainable ministry? is that the same thing as being green?

ok, so here's my question that i've been asking my own self: how do i reconcile point loma with southeast? good question, jeff. why thanks! and did i mention that i really like that shirt your wearing? me too! my mom got it for me.


on Friday night, I took six SE kids to Yogurt Express. We then went to Balboa Park. These are not particularly uncommon events, either, though they are particularly bourgeois events. My goal is not to turn the kids at youth into little point loma student wanna-be's. But how do we get past the fact that we are all little PL students and doubtless, though subconscious, have a tendency to want to turn these kids into little versions of ourselves. Then we would have really saved them, right? The more they look like us and do the things that we do, the closer to God they must be.

No. Hell no. If anything, I hope to become more like them. Keep in mind that this is a sociological argument, not a theological one. I hope they look more and more like us from a religious standpoint, otherwise we are wasting our time and we should all move back on campus and into the suburbs and live our fat, happy lives raising fat, unhappy kids. Theologically and ecclesiologically, they should begin to look like us as we begin to look more and more like the saints who have come before us. They should learn our religious practices and habits and on and on. That's another issue. What I am talking about here is a relationship between Southeast and Point Loma that keeps Southeast dependent on Point Loma, and keeps a certain crowd at point loma dependent on SE. I want these kids to be able to run their own youth group some day. I don't want them to feel that the way that youth group should be run is the way that pl college students run it. that's not going to change things. I want these kids--I pray that these kids--will take charge of their Christianity so much that they will, though remaining dependent on the church, be able to change and affect their neighborhood. I'd like to see them move beyond the walls that they have right now and into the neighborhood because when they can apply the things that we talk about every week to the neighborhood that they live in, then they've gotten it. When being Christian is such a part of them that they cannot even slough that off outside of church, then they've gotten it. that is what I am ultimately shooting for. That is what I want.

So there's the concept: sustainable ministry. It is ministry that is self-perpetuating and therefore systemically transformative. By creating a climate where ministry begets Christian minsters, the very systems of the neighborhood begin to change and the church is real and authentic to its mission. Then faithful work can be done by all and the walls between server and servee begin to break down. That is what I really would like to see. Without losing structures of authority, I would like to see the walls between who serves and who doesn't fall more.

This requires a radical reorientation of the way that I live my life and do my church work. the way that I talk, the jokes i make need to be made with the sensitivities of the neighborhood in mind. The activities should ideally be reproducible activities for those in the youth so that they aren't stuck in a position of dependency when looking for alternative things to do. They should be able to go to each other and play out those same activities. We are, in a sense, modeling their lives to them to a certain extent. so how do we do this in a realistic, sustainable manner? that is a continuing question that I shall have to continue to wrestle with. For now, peace be on you.

1

the second for tonight. then i have other work to do.

singleness: what's so bad about it? it seems to me that to remain single is to live in a way that respects that God is the one who will regenerate the Church. Children are an incredibly beautiful sign of the life that God brings into the world and the way that we are to live with fecundity before fear, but let us look at singleness. This is not a knock on marriage, but just because marriage is good doesn't mean that singleness isn't.

i said something about singleness being a possibility in my life to my mom over Christmas break and she totally shut down. it was like she didn't even want to hear a bit of it. This is all kind of funny coming from a biblical literalist. I mean, shouldn't she take Paul's words literally? at the moment, i'm not "burning with lust," so from a biblically literal standpoint, maybe it would be better for me to find a nice little monastery in the woods and begin my vocation. now, you don't have to be a monk to be single, of course, but we have so devalued celibacy and singleness that it creates in us this frantic need to be attached, to be married and sexually active. Can we imagine the power of so many single Christians living faithfully and prayerfully in their lives, offering up the needs and concerns of the church and dedicating their lives to service to the poor and forgotten because they do not have a family to take care of. Their lack of family can become their great asset, not downfall. i feel like we should maybe take this a little more seriously and accept the paradigm shift that is going to necessarily come with it. when i think of long-term singleness, i am frightened. i don't want to be. i want to be okay dedicating my life and body to the church and to God without needing to dedicate them to any other person. But i fear this. i can't keep my mind from making me posture and position myself and "keep one in the hopper," as Alec Ellis says. again, marriage is not bad. it is very good. but i don't want to accept a call to be married until i break through the fear of singleness. no matter where i end up relationally, i want to be able to stand before God singly and alone, as a unit of one that can therefore be extended to those outside of me, my family (whatever it may look like), my church, my community. i don't want to find my energy in anything but the life that God makes available to me.

stories, ghettos, and crucifixion.

its been a while since i last wrote and to be honest, that last post wasn't very satisfactory. it was a little mean. that may not be unwarranted but its still a bummer to see all this bold and exclamation points every time you come to this page. sorry about that.

i'm taking a class with Wright right now, so its hard for me to move past these notions of the narratives and form and shape us. Basically, we live our lives according to certain narratives which are given to us by the polities that are over us and our practices sustain these narratives in our lives and allow us to obtain certain internal and external goods that also perpetuate the fundamental narrative. Example: in America, choice is good. When we have the power to choose, we can move from unfulfillment to fulfillment by making good choices. Choice is the medium for us to feel happy. so Colby Caillat can sing her song Bubbly (if you want to vomit from ODing on young love and unicorn sprinkles, youtube that song and watch the real video which is on the second page. all the others are of people trying to sing the song after coming down off of their own highs.) and we all feel tingly and good because she has chosen such a good lover and they live such a fantastic life full of beach bonfires and "tingles in a silly place." but if this lover was forced on her, we would all feel very differently about the song. we would say, "what the deuce? how could she feel so good about a lover she doesn't even like, let alone love. I mean, she didn't even have a choice!" Choice is the means of making us happy. Moreover, the happiness that we are shooting for is a mixture of some sense of contentment, tingles, fun, giggles, relationship, comfort, and a generally positive status quo.

but what if that narrative is vacuous and empty? what if our choice is meaningless, or at least incidental to the larger goings-on of the kingdom? what if the work of the Spirit in the world, the work which Jesus died to make possible is not about our choices being positive or ones that are good for us at all but rather what if God's work in the world is ultimately to bring us under God's authority, to subject us to the will of a God that was willing to die so that we might realize that this truest death was the death of the dearest life, the life that brings us life? And then that this death and resurrection has brought those of us who recognize it together to live faithfully before God and proclaim that this life in Jesus is available for all people. What if life has nothing to do with what we think fun or happiness is but has everything to do with how we bring life forth in the world around us.

Wright started ranting on MLK Jr. friday because we had a chapel that honored Rev. King and his legacy. I agree with Wright's criticisms, although I don't want to throw King out. anyway, the argument goes that King did not do blacks and others who are not white in America any favors by getting them the chance to vote. He merely gave them the chance to choose and that choice, which is supposed to lead them to happiness, is ultimately a sham. King is a profoundly ambiguous character because he calls all people (well, men mostly) to assert their freedom in a country that has slighted their freedom because it was convenient economically, psychologically, or whatever. but more than that, this freedom is endowed by God, which is an assumption shared by the same polity that has forgone said freedom. So we know that this state is not a good place. We know it is false and full of selfish ambition and ultimately self-contradictory. King shows that very well. But then, instead of calling those for whom he is responsible to respond to God and raise up a church that respects the humanity of all, resting his faith in something that is truly solid and true, King calls those for whom he is responsible to rest their faith in the state that we already know is faulty. We already know that the state has failed us but because the state is the means by which we can make choices to improve our lives and choices are what we ultimately believe in, we go with the state. So he is ambiguous.

what, then, shall we do with those who are poor and marginalized? now that we have criticized, how can we build something up that is positive. i'm not sure and this is a mix of Wright and me, but take it for what its worth. the poor do not need to be given a voice. the irony of people that want to be a voice for the voiceless is that they are assuming that the marginalized do not have a voice. the poor don't need a voice. they need someone to listen to them. that phrase voice for the voiceless keeps us from having to criticize the structures of the wealthy and therefore avoid the guilt of having to recognize our own wealth, with which we are profoundly uncomfortable. do not be a voice for the voiceless. listen to the voiceless. find creative ways to do it if you must, but listen to them. It is so easy for us to deny the poor while they are poor and then finally listen once we have made them middle class. when i first moved to southeast and after i got over the initial phase in which i wanted to teach everyone theology, i was confronted with the fact that i did not know what to tell these kids because everything i could think of sounded like, "be more like me when i was your age. don't drink, do drugs or have sex. study hard. get a good job. go to college. these are the things that constitute a faithful response to God's love." HA! don't we see the idiocy in that? why are we so focused on making the poor middle class? let the poor be poor. that is, for now, who they are. if we deny them their poverty, we are missing the gospel. in fact, maybe in our listening we can begin to become more like them. we can learn to be poor ourselves and rest in the poverty of spirit that comes from the very person of Jesus.

but the question remains: what do we do for those who are poor? what do we teach them? what do we say as we try to show them how to live? I'm not saying its simplistic, but i don't think its that original. what do you tell the middle class and the rich? love your neighbor. think of others more highly than yourselves. be hospitable. pray and learn silence. serve one another and live generously, inviting others into your dining rooms and living rooms. help one another out and live with one another in ways that show that you care. do not stop meeting with one another, but share the love of Jesus in tangible and verbal ways, mixing a verbal witness with a visible one. Mostly, believe on Jesus and come be baptized (or, as the case may be, accept and live by your baptism). These are not hard things! in fact, the poor are probably closer to these things than the wealthy. A certain lack of disposable income means, for the vast majority, that it is more difficult to put up walls of entertainment, busyness and worldly concerns.

finally, what if the communities of the poor became such a witness to the wealthy that there is life in Jesus Christ rather than the spinning of our tires in the mud which we are used to in the world. There is life that is deeper and more meaningful than Bubbly. but you must give up your choice to determine your own life. you must do a thing that no one in their right mind would choose to do: pick up your cross. And know that the level of fulfillment is a function of the one who brings it about.