no more revolutions

Practice Resurrection

2011-03-08T20:14:00.000-08:00

today is Ash Wednesday in kansas city and you are being invited to be a part of a quiet community of people who, with ashes on their heads, give themselves to a process of exploration and creation during Lent.

forty days in the wilderness,
not for the wilderness
but for the burst of wildflowers
that carpets deserts and heals lepers

the idea behind the project is that you, me, and everyone else will work over the season of Lent to write, paint, compose, draw, sing, bake, play, sculpt, record, build and otherwise create around the theme : Practice Resurrection : and on or soon after Easter, we will gather in a yet-to-be-determined location to explode with Lenten energy on an Easter canvas.

a few premises:
you can write
you can paint
you can sing
you can play
because God is good and resurrection is real. if we're doing these things, then the whole act of being human disintegrates in nothingness and void. further:
the world does not know resurrection because its eyes are closed and christians have too often been content to let the situation stay that way.

so this is an opportunity, along with all your friends, to tear open the eyes of the world and learn what it means to jump into a pot of paint and thrash around for awhile, trusting that that may be the best possible use of your Lent.

pass this on, invite everyone, make some stuff and let's begin to learn the resurrection that is pressing in from the underside of lawns, the flip side of the night, the inside of tombs.

moving on...

2010-10-17T22:25:00.000-07:00

Hey, everybody.

I've been having some issues with Blogger. I can't do things the way I want to do them, as far as indentation and all that. So I'm continuing this blog at

nomorerevolutions.tumblr.com

I hope you all will keep following and reading. Thanks.

2010-10-10T05:36:00.000-07:00

I have done one braver thing
Then all the Worthies did,
And yet a braver thence doth spring,
which is, to keepe that hid.

from John Donne's "The undertaking"

an owl watches all this.

2010-10-09T22:34:00.001-07:00

in this moment when life calms
and peace is here
the way an owl is suddenly noticed
and then is everything,
a shade of loneliness colors the rocks.
and there is a low place in the ground
where two friends could sit, backs against a tree.

if I am about to die, are they poor enough to die with me?

2010-10-09T22:26:00.001-07:00

If the spirit is a pair of feet,
give your people the bare ones
if our hands make our living,
give them carpal tunnel, or stumps.
If dams make the desert wet,
break down their projects
if votes make the powerful
cause your people to be hated.
If its guns and swords that make us rich,
then melt their bullets and blades.
In a place with things to see
make them blind fools
and if tv makes us who we are
smash their screens and cause power outage.
In the kitchen with an unused stove
drop a dining table through the roof, like a meteor.

And, O Father on high who came low
to one like this suffering, stubborn fool,
I am dying, ex-piring, in a clean white hospital
too contagious for company
and my pain runs across the plains
like half-dead antelope
frantic in meaning nothing.
Build your people into this sad life
make them fired bricks
to build a wall to hold my pain
like an offering bowl
like a cup.

my solitude.

2010-09-20T22:30:00.000-07:00

Lord, you have ruined evil
you have loved
before. Before.
And we are in love
with the tv
with love. With love.
With something that stinks
reeks like love
it reeks. It stinks.

In pieces go all our loves
to prostitutes and whores
who we do not know come sticky morningtime
when the sheets are pulled up off'
the corners of the bed.
And the walls are a chalky white
and i can't convince myself I'm me
but its my eyes that are red.

Lord, you make the morning
you rise with the sun,
you will. You will.
Your skill is subtle
to cut into damage
with sword. The sword!
And i am just myself
looking and waiting,
another. For us.

To gather all our loves into
a broken body, a spilled-out blood.
blood soaked into the dirt at the cross
is the sponge for what i've spilled.
is glue between lives.
and my solitude is no loss
when it is of one piece
with the God who died.

travelling companion

2010-09-05T01:34:00.000-07:00

drawing birds onto their shoulders
writing stories on each other's backs
etching trains into the stone floor
and pushing each other down scratched tracks

its been the loss of everything common
they've nothing between them but distance and steam
losing what's lost all over again,
setting out paper boats to find the ink sea

twisting grass into, out of braids
its been in the mountains, the plains, the clear air.
its picking up stones to see how they weigh
putting plucked crowns on heads that aren't there.

writing around the clouds with sea-ink black
and grass-blade pens from under the sky
hell finds an outline in the scribbled tracks
but there's a pregnant lady sitting high
on a bench in the passenger car
rolling down the line.

Pointers, Or Not

2010-09-04T23:20:00.001-07:00

We are the thing
the people
with no thing
with everything
with nothing on our tongues,
everything is in our hands
and our fingers clinched down
so tight
they're screaming.

Point not lest you be pointed at
But look always at those fingers
those fingers that squish our food
it falls on the sidewalk in
pieces, this potato-piece, meat-piece,
veggie piece. juiced, pulpy pigeon meal.
Makes a salad, trash salad-bowl appetizer
fingers garnish like carrots
We're grinding these meals
into our palms
for later,
when our neighbor comes along.
for never,
because we moved our house to a desert.

KC flow

2010-08-29T03:20:00.000-07:00

This is some verse that just flowed on out about my new home. I hope its a little coherent.

Black and White, this
holstein cow-town
old Jazz-town, boulevard-town
marginal city, middle city.
this cold brick town
is a little-brother city,
a city to love and marry
this river-town is a home now
for whoever, wherever
the brick and broken sidewalk
down Troost, down Prospect
are enough carpet
and welcome mat.

That old Conestoga station
River-town
is the thrum for years
lived on top of, beside
each other.
Barbecue this Black-Brown
beef-city, Whitewash this
fountain-city
and sing me these gritty growl-songs.

because its been too long
since i've known one like you
since i've come to love you
so love me
the way real lovers do,

wine-love, dear
And we'll spill each
other out here
on the cold concretes,
your feet
rubbing mine.
so teach me, my new love,
to walk these streets.

Word

2010-08-29T01:49:00.000-07:00

The word bites like a fish.
Shall I throw it back free
Arrowing to that sea
Where thoughts lash tail and fin?
Or shall I pull it in
To rhyme upon a dish?

from Stephen Spender, Selected Poems

I thought this poem was really excellent when I came across it. It is one of those pieces that reminds me of the core of expression, art, and the way that real expression and art is really a mode of authentic living. It also has pretty obvious parallels across poetry/writing and preaching. What do we do with the word/Word? do we tame it and kill it with forced rhyme and inauthentic structures, both literary and philosophical, or do we recognize a sort of ontological slipperiness to the whole endeavor? There is a freedom in "that sea/ Where thoughts lash tail and fin" that holds us over some existential edge of ignorance and faith. Its the edge where you let people go, let them go live their lives without our input. You watch people you have loved walk away for good or bad reasons, you watch a whole former life fade into the background, you preach the Truth with all you have and then all you can do is pray that truth landed somewhere, took seed with someone. That's not your job. you plant your garden, your fields and sometimes it rains, sometimes not. sometimes there are devastating fires and the good is not from you just as the bad is not from you. By embracing the ignorance, the faith, the edge without hedging your bets and building fences, that fishWord lives in the sea like its supposed to.

ok. this one's just about beards.

2010-08-28T22:38:00.000-07:00

Hi, friends and strangers.

i wanted to take a minute to talk about something a little less serious than my typical fare. Its right down the pipe of all those indie hipster-but-not-hipster feelings that I have about myself, but I figure I ought to do it anyway.

I have a beard.

This gets many and sundry responses at various times and places. Mostly, older people ignore it until I make some sort of self-deprecating remark or ask them if I have food in my beard. Then they say no politely and conspicuously neglect to comment further. Some younger people really like it and tell me so, which is kind. Some babies like me despite my facial fur. Some babies (like my lovely niece Aubrial) cry and reach for their mothers as soon as they see me.*

But regardless of people's feelings about my beard, I like it. I like it big and fluffy. I've been thinking about why there has been a resurgence in beard love among the young people. Maybe its because we've just gotten to the point where we can actually grow them. But I think there might be something else to this. I think that beards have come back in part because of the closing gap in the things that women and men are socially certified to do. Women do a lot of things that men used to have exclusive access to. Men do a lot of things that used to be considered feminine. All of this is a good thing. We used to be pretty moronic about our standards. But there are a few things that are exclusive. Let's face it. I'm a dude, so I can't have babies. But I can grow a beard. I can't nurture a human life inside me and give of my very own self until it bursts forth into the outer world to its own independent (sort of) life.

But I can grow a beard. I can nurture a shape and form on my face that expresses not only my own self and the myriad uniqueness that comes with that, but I can find a solidarity with men, great and small, across the world and across time. Karl Marx, Chuck Norris, Abraham Lincoln, the Cabrillo Lighthouse guy, Ulysses S Grant, plenty of my homeless friends, N.T. Wright, Moses, Stanley Hauerwas, Adam (of Adam and Eve fame--I've never seen a picture of him with a beard, but I can't imagine that the Garden of Eden was so prepubescent. Why does Eve have all her lady parts [strategically covered, of course], but Adam looks like a nude metrosexual/15-year old?), Nate Horner circa 2008 and countless other unnamed beard heroes, just to name a few.

My point is, I can't have a baby, but my beard can be my baby. Its the one of the few things women can't do that I can. Mustaches are the same thing. And if you're a man and can't grow a beard, whatever; its not that important because you can find another way to be gender specific. You're creative people.

Meanwhile, all of you--male, female and otherwise--should examine this excellent photojournalistic effort from the 2009 World Beard and Mustache Championships in Bend, OR. Pay particular attention to photo #18. That's Jack Passion. Real name. Real beard. He's a legend, one of competitive bearding's first prodigies.

http://www.time.com/time/photogallery/0,29307,1658835_1439509,00.html

If you read this far, bless your heart.

*Sidenote: It took 2 days, but eventually my superior wit and charm overtook Aubrial and she loved me as much as she would have without our hard times. Maybe more.

**I wanted to send a shout-out to all the bearded ladies from across the years. You've been inspirational and we wouldn't know how to give our categories meaning without your sacrifice and vision into what it means to be who we are. Let's hang out sometime. But not like that.

the twenty third psalm

2010-08-24T21:28:00.000-07:00

the Lord is
so far away, obscured is
my shepherd
in the fog, skin all a leper's
i shall not be in want.
i shall not want a damn thing.

God makes me
so confused, God breaks me
to lie down
'cause i can't run, can't fall down
in green pastures, by quiet waters
but my mouth won't open or my tongue unstick.

God restores
the life i'm living for
to my soul
to my uncaring soul
God guides me in paths
too long and full
of righteousness
for God's name's sake.

even though i walk through
i don't talk with you.
the valley of the shadow of Death
is acedia, is forgetting your next breath.
i will fear
only the absence, the vaccuum.
no evil
is unimaginable
for you are with me
and i still feel nothing.
only your rod and your staff
striking my back
i am not comforted.

a table is laid out by God
with my enemies all around
God lays me out,
covered in a banquet,
many evil men feast upon me.
at the head of the table,
the oil is overturned.
the traitor laughs and purs
out wine to follow it.
waste flows down to the floor.
i am unmoved, unfeeling, unable.

surely goodness and love will follow me
but never catch their prey
all the days of my life
will be spent waiting for the hope,
a groom without a wife
surely apathy will swallow me.
and i will dwell in the house
of mirrors, turns and confusions
bored, insecure, unclever
professing that i will stay
resigned
in the house of the Lord forever.
forever

Abide

2010-08-24T21:22:00.000-07:00

Father, Son
Homemaker, family.
Roots and vines grow up
becoming a table
where everyone sits,
everyone who is here.

Here is a hard bench,
made by the Father
and the Son is the boards.
Those who eat here know
what this means.
"Abide,"
he said
"and we will make our home with you."
Make our home with you.
Out of you.
Now, our faces are suggested
in the knots and grains of wooden walls.
To eat at this table
is to make the same.
Father, Son,
come make your home with us.
Our homes are rotting, molding, rootless pits.
Hollow walls stuffed with
cash, with desire, with weeds.

We need you to abide,
to make your house real
We need your love
to make us the meal.

not sure if this is one or two poems.

2010-08-15T23:02:00.001-07:00

Montana, how does your morning sun
get so big?
Its bigger than the sky
and no matter how long i roll
I am still under
that giant burning face.

Dakota, where are your clouds from?
they would crush my head
But you hold them on your shoulders
so I can wander
around your chest
looking for rest
for rest in Bismarck.

grace

2010-07-18T16:15:00.000-07:00

A kindness given from a prostitute
blackberries plucked off a cold roadside
winter winds that drive the well-prepared
inside warm homes, where sleep is.
A touch from a stranger
someone else's beautiful tattoo
a scab that forms over a wound
where evil has cut through soft skin.
This touch of divine order
causeless, effectless
this cup is the unlikely key
and this wine
is the breaking out of false time
for the rejected.
this window has a scarlet cord
that drips blackberry juice
off chins and bird-beaks

old walls

2010-07-18T16:11:00.000-07:00

in these old walls
everything a routine
a normalcy
i know i am in neutral
we visit burbank's gardens
a million plants
growing on the soft land
but my ground is hardened
when does the plow harrow a line?
how long to wait
till the neighbors say
that this earth is ready to plant in?
in these old walls
i am germinating
full with anticipation
bored with travel
in these old walls

Wedding Poem #2

2010-07-18T16:05:00.000-07:00

Put seeds in the ground
to die
and you pull in the harvest
Put love in every life
you meet
and your barns beg for rest
Open up the barn doors!
Where the harvest is stored
And let's dance on the floor
at sunset, at dusk,
dancing where the harvest is held.

You vowed your lives with the sun in the sky
You looked at each other and cried.
After sun went down, we saw you in the barn
and we--all your friends from years and years,
the fields you plowed, where you went down to die--
And we danced holes in our shoes
to the rotating lights in the sky
to the full moon.
And to star-time,
we pulled in the harvest to the overflowing barn.

big love

2010-07-10T23:39:00.000-07:00

My feet are dripping
with big love.
You knelt in the sand
and dirt of
the unswept floor.
You took in your hands
my secrets
you did not speak out
my regrets
or the lopsided score.
Standing in the mud made
when you washed
I am mercy's child.
We are not lost
to ourselves anymore.
Mud on darkened eyes
we can see.
We let down hair, cry
the eyes, feet clean.
And, feet in hand,
walk through God's Door.

Train

2010-07-10T23:32:00.000-07:00

Rolling over little lines drawn
on the world, the hills
is being known by the dusk and dawn
that lie over the plains.
Dawn and dusk are parallel rails
holding a chugging train
and being alone here quickly pales
the frenzied life.
It hardens the muscles and sets the jaw
callouses the hands in the sun,
burning one side through the window,
crystallizing a road consciousness.
Broken down to the bare pieces
trying to find the way home
The loneliness of these old desert trees
is perfect, perfectly whole.

Revelation as the central question of our lives and liturgy

2009-09-11T05:08:00.000-07:00

So I'm working with this John 2 text for youth group tonight. It hit me new this time around. On the one hand, I'm dealing with the juxtaposition of this text to the miracle of turning water into wine. On the other, I feel like I've been deeper in the ways that we sell sacrifices in the temple than ever before in my life.

What would Jesus do with our church? There is so much hope in his fermenting water, keeping the party going, encouraging the union of this couple at the wedding. But then he breaks into the temple and starts throwing money, animals, maybe even people around. Josh (my roommate) commented tonight that it seems like every episode in John (and all the gospels, for that matter) has the same point: Jesus is the Messiah. Jesus is God Incarnate. Jesus is the Revelation, the Word, Life Eternal.

On Sunday morning this week, we went over Jesus walking on the water in Mark and it is interesting because the text says that Jesus was "passing by" the disciples as they were straining at the oars. He went to help them, but then he just decided to pass on by. Was Jesus being coy? Or was he tired of helping people--he just helped 5,000 men (not counting women and children)! Maybe there's a better answer. Jesus passes by, the way the Angel of Death passes by at Passover, the way God passes by Moses in the cleft of the rock, the way God passes by Elijah in a whisper. Jesus is revealed as the great I Am. In a minor Sea of Galilee squall.

I sometimes wonder if church has anything to do with revelation these days. Are we concerned about revealing the nature of who God is? Do we have it in our hearts to let God reveal God's self in us even as we seek God outside of ourselves? My good friends are searching for a church in the Riverside-Loma Linda area and one of them found herself crying at the emptiness of one of the Nazarene churches they visited. What is the goal of our liturgy? What is the purpose of our free-form worship? Why do we come to the altar and ingest the body and blood of Jesus? What do we do with our time, our interests, our desires? Is it all just a spinning into nothing or is it a search for revelation, for encountering the revealed, passing-by God?

In our encounters, we reflect.

Jesus throws the people out of the temple who have abandoned the thought that God is to be revealed in the temple and have come to use it for other purposes. I remember once at work when a young, confused man came into my office and we talked about his sexuality. He was pretty convinced that he was gay and wanted to know what to think about it. I told him to read John 15 and then we could talk. If he felt like he could remain in Christ and still be gay, then we could start to have a conversation but this whole talk of homosexuality, of capitalism, of feminism, of whatever you want as an issue to be dealt with by scholars and leaders, judged on a spectrum of what the Bible "says about it" leads us into artificial ways of thinking. Even the Scriptures are revelation. Maybe our first question ought to be, "How is Christ revealed in it?"

God is revealed very poorly in exploitative practices, when the marketplace controls the worship place. I'm still really unsure about how God is revealed when two men or two women have sex with one another--committed or not. God is revealed clearly when Jesus climbs into the boat, the winds of opposition dies down, and discipleship takes place. This I know.

These are just some thoughts. Peace and grace.

July 5 sermon--Mark 2:18-22

2009-07-10T17:29:00.000-07:00

Mark 2:18-22

Over the past few weeks, I've found myself looking at these stories that have been coming out of Mark and they keep proclaiming that it is God's time. John preaches and baptizes people as a way of preparing them for God's time. We see that Jesus' arrival on the scene and calling of the disciples comes as a way of proclaiming God's time in the world. Jesus is here to do something different and he does it—he heals people, forgives them, preaches and puts all of this under the rule and reign of God. It is God's time. God has come in Jesus Christ and what we're learning here is that we should respond like the people in these stories. The disciples drop everything they have to follow Jesus. A man with leprosy is healed and he can't keep his mouth shut. The paralytic's friends bring him to Jesus and he is forgiven and then healed—and part of what we are supposed to be getting out of this is that we are to respond like this, to be the type of people who will jump up and follow Jesus, who will cast off everything we have to do the will of the Father, to bring those we love before Jesus, and to receive the forgiveness and healing of Jesus in our lives. This is the coming of Jesus Christ, the Chosen One of God who has brought God's presence and Kingdom into the world that we live in. We should live like we are in that Kingdom, not like we are under the authority and rule of the world.

We've seen that this Kingdom means healing and forgiveness of sins. We've seen that it means Christ's power over the power of the evil one, the dark realities of sin and satanic power in this world. But its here in this passage in Mark 2 that we get a deeper insight into the nature of daily life with Christ. Its all well and good to receive the power of God in our lives one day—but how does that affect who we are and the way that we live tomorrow or in two days or in a week or a year? What is the character of the life lived with Jesus as King? Some people might not want to really give up what they have established for themselves in their lives. They just want to kind of say that now their life is run by Jesus, but nothing really changes. Their lives are too crowded for Jesus. These are people who won't put down their nets and follow Jesus, who hear his call but have trouble letting go of themselves enough to really grasp on to it. But this passage here is focusing on different types of disciples. And so what kind of disciples are we, the church of God? There are a few types shown here. You've got John's disciples and they are the disciples of the prophet, of that extreme guy out in the desert with dreadlocks and animal skin clothing. This guy eats insects for food and is preaching against the heresy of the religious establishment. Its like he's way out there in Potrero and he's crying out that things are wrong, that things need to change. He's this extreme figure. So I'm sure he attracts a certain type of extreme disciple. He attracts someone who wants to be extreme and “out there.” His disciples are probably people who are fed up and tired of the way things are, who are probably a little rebellious and individualist. And they are fasting because, in their view, things are really bad and need to change soon. They want the Messiah to come and save them and so they are fasting for change. If they fast, then maybe their action here will catch God's attention and they will be able to make the world change faster, break oppression and wrongdoing faster, bring God's new Kingdom faster.

On the other hand, you've got the disciples of the Pharisees. The Pharisees are people who generally live out in the smaller towns and they are very concerned that the Jews—God's people—follow Torah. They are not necessarily priests, but they are laymen who study Torah and know it backwards and forwards and who want to see every little detail of the Law followed up on. Their fasting is so that they might discipline themselves to follow every little rigorous detail of the Law. They think that if they deny themselves things that they want—food, entertainment, or whatever it is—that they will be more disciplined and able to follow the Torah. And then, they think, if everyone is following Torah, then that will be the Kingdom of God and God's reign; God's time will come and sweep away the oppression that is on God's people.

So you've got these people who come up to Jesus and they ask him to explain himself. Is Jesus like John or the Pharisees? He's been seen in the desert and he's been seen in the towns. Where does he fit—and why aren't his disciples working as hard as the others? So far, the only hard thing that Jesus' disciples have done is leave everything. They have had it pretty easy, just healing and praying and preaching. And what is Jesus' response? “How can the guests of the bridegroom fast while he is with them?” Jesus says, “Look those other guys are fasting and beating themselves up because they are trying to get ready for the Messiah. But what I've been saying is, 'I'm the Messiah!' You don't have to wait anymore because I'm here and this is God's time, so start living like this is God's time.” So the real question is, What does that mean?

God's time is clearly not being down in the dumps all the time, pious and somber and joyless. Jesus leads us into healing and forgiveness and joy and if we think that we are making God happy by being sad and depressed all the time, then we are wrong. Joy is a huge part of the Christian life. God brings us joy and, especially for those who have just come to know Christ, this life should be characterized by joy. This means that at times, we break out the grill and we pump up some music and we celebrate. We go to the beach and bonfire, we swim and hike and run, play basketball and frisbee and soccer, we bike and jog—and most of all, we always make sure that we are eating. The whole reason for eating together so much is that we have joy and we want to share it. If we just came to church, sang, listened to a sermon and then left here, there would be a lot less joy in this place. And if we came and did what we do and then hung around afterwards but didn't have food, we'd be a lot less happy as well. I'm a lot happier when my stomach is full and happy. I'm also a lot happier when I'm playing soccer and frisbee and basketball. These are fun, joyful things that we do together. And they are part of being Christian. Jesus is saying, “Look, people are getting healed and forgiven and you want us to fast? NO! We're going to go eat!” Notice that they just came from Levi's house—it must have been a huge dinner because it got a lot of people's attention.

But then Jesus says something that reminds us that following Jesus is also a really difficult life. He says, “But the time will come when the bridegroom will be taken from them, and on that day they will fast.” God's time has come here. God's time has shown up and it will rule everything. But its complicated. Jesus is using this image of a wedding feast. Jesus is the Groom and we are the Bride. During and after the wedding is this huge feast, but then he reminds us that there is still darkness in the world. The world is still a broken place and Jesus didn't just come to celebrate victory. He came to fight the battle against darkness. And that means that, like all husbands who go to fight battles of one sort or another, Jesus is going to have to be taken from us. In some ways, Jesus shows up like an invader. He shows up and declares that God's time is here. Then he has to actually fight the battle. And the battle that Jesus fights is on the cross. He fights the battle through self-denial, through sacrifice and love. He doesn't fight this battle by showing himself to be the most violent, but by showing that the power of God is a power that cannot be defeated, even by violence. He shows that God's power is bigger than death, bigger than a Roman cross, bigger than just saying, “I can kill you, therefore I'm more powerful.” Because Jesus goes to the cross and dies but its at the cross that Jesus defeats death. Because even death couldn't keep Jesus dead. Three days later, he rose again and God's power lived fully in him. Its in the resurrection that we really know God's time. God's time is a time where death and sin have no power.

But when we look around us, we know that death and sin still have some power in our lives. So we're left with this complex situation. And that's why Jesus gives the answer that he does. His answer is all about timing. He says, look, you can't fast while the bridegroom is with you. But soon, you will fast. Soon, I will not be with you and you will need to fast. One of the reasons we fast is so that we can change. We fast so that God can change us into the sort of people that live in God's time. Like I said, death and sin still have power in our lives and what needs to happen is that God can heal us, change us, shape us into the sort of people who don't have sin and death in our lives. Now there's the point of conversion, where God works in us and we are forgiven and changed. At conversion, we become a part of God's people. However, we've all still got a lot of business to do. Just because we have converted doesn't mean that everything in us is now right. We still have sin in our hearts, even if it has been forgiven. And so what we do is we do things like prayer, reading Scripture, being a part of Bible studies and small groups where we are honest with each other about how we are doing, and we fast. Change is a long road and a hard one. And it is one that most of us will go kicking and screaming against.

Rescue Mission—my job is basically to hold people accountable. By having all these rules, we hold the men to a level of accountability that they can't hold themselves to. We cut out a lot of the noise of life and the men are left just with the parts of themselves that they don't like and they have to face that. (This being a loose manuscript, this was my note on what I was going to say. I don't know what I actually said at this point--check southeastnazsd.org for the recorded version of this sermon.

This is a lot like fasting. We hold ourselves accountable to something, we cut out noise, so that God can speak to us and grow us and shape us. What happens in Jesus' examples? The new cloth shrinks and the new wine expands. The way I read this, the new cloth and the new wine is fasting. Fasting will grow us or shrink us—but it will change us. We will be different after we have fasted. The world will look different to us. When we fast, which is basically cutting something out of our lives to make room for God in our lives, we are letting God do something in us to be more ready for God's time and God's Kingdom. If you are feeling like you aren't growing in your faith, like God is not speaking to you, I would really encourage you to try fasting. Simply go without food for a meal or two and use that time to pray. God often moves in really powerful ways because of such a simple thing.

But like I said, its all about timing. There are times when we are the new cloth that needs to be shrunk and there are times when we are the piece of broken-in clothing that needs to be worn just like we are. For Jesus' disciples, they needed to be worn just how they were. They were with Jesus and so they needed to celebrate. Sunday afternoons are not the time to be fasting. Weddings are not the time to be fasting. Bonfires and beach parties are not the time to be fasting. But if you need to seek God and need wisdom and discernment over a really difficult decision, then maybe you want to be fast.

A lot of times, we want everything. We don't want discomfort. We don't want anything to challenge us. Sometimes, we talk so much about blessings but we forget to talk about sacrifice and laying yourself down for the people around you. We just want God to fill us up and fill us up and fill us up all the time. We want everything NOW and everything HERE. We're a lot like Mark's audience.

Mark was writing this for Roman Christians, Christians who lived in a huge, rich city full of people who had tons of food and resources. Rome was really wealthy because everybody had to pay taxes to Rome. So Mark is writing about Jesus of Nazareth to Roman Christians and Nazareth is this tiny little poor town in the countryside of Israel. In fact, all of Israel except for Jerusalem is “country” compared to Rome. See, Rome was a place of plenty, a place of overflowing wealth. Israel was small and insignificant compared to this. Most of the people were farmers and fishermen. These were people to worked with their hands, who knew the seasons. They knew about farming and fishing and how the seasons worked into all that. These people understood time different from the way we do. They didn't have punch-cards or clocks or wristwatches. They understood in a really different way that there are seasons in life. Sometimes fasting is appropriate and sometimes feasting is appropriate. But in God's time, we have to find a balance between fasting and feasting.

God wants us to love each other and God with everything in us—joy, sorrow, rejoicing, pity, fear, peace, wonder, frustration. These are all human emotions and God created them in us so that we could live fully with all of them. We have to have these feelings and emotions or we are not loving God with all that we have. In the same way, we cannot love God only with our emotions. We have to live lives of sacrifice and love, of caring for each other and for those who have been forgotten by others. We have to learn to put ourselves away and put others before us. And we need to put seasons back into our lives. We need to understand the give and take, that there are good times and there are hard times and its good that things go that way. Planting, caring, pruning, harvest, dormancy. There are so many times in life and I hope that we see these different times as bringing us a really rich, full life instead of one that is always one way.

As we come to take communion, I think we should see that communion is both a celebration of life—it was the Last Supper that Jesus ate with his disciples—and it is also a reminder that Christ poured himself out for us, that he suffered and died so that we could live in God's full and good life. It is both, emptiness and fullness. I pray that God will lead us as a congregation, as families, as the people of God, and as individuals to respond to God' time. I pray that we will have the courage to live under God's rule in this complex and difficult world.

Cloth, Wine, Berry, and local economies.

2009-07-02T03:40:00.000-07:00

I belong to a vast group of Americans my age who are beginning to realize a few things. On the one hand, we are beginning to see that the old way of doing things (which is really the new way) with impersonal products produced and packaged by completely impersonal entities within the context of an economy based around the created need for these products is very, very false.

Let me give an example. In this old (new) way, I might drive my Honda Civic to the store--let's say it is Vons grocery store--to buy cold medicine, vegetables, and mustard. These are all products which could be just as easily purchased with virtually zero variation in Jacksonville, Florida or Madison, Wisconsin or Brookings, Oregon as here in San Diego, California. They are owned by massive corporations--Pfizer, Monsanto Foods, and Heinz, for ezample. I drive and therefore support oil companies because the Vons is too far away to ride my bike to and I feel that owning a car is important for me so that I can go places and take things with me whenever I need to, no matter the distance (within reason). This satisfies my need for diversity and freedom, for convenience and readily available food and medicine, and contributes to the same economy which provides me with work and therefore allows me to contribute back to the economy in which I find fulfillment and purpose. Except that the ultimate goal of that economy is the deep pockets of those far outside my community.

But my question and the question of so many of us that have been raised right in the heart of all this without even the hint of a question as to whether or not this is acutally the best way to live is, "Is this really the best way to live? Were we really so wrong all along?" In the new way that is being envisioned and acted out on a small scale, which is actually an old way dating back 80 to 100 years (I think) in my part of the country, less and more in others, I would walk or catch a ride on a cart to a store that would be owned by someone I probably know or at least know of. The food that I buy would need to be bought more often--forcing me into contact with people around me--but would also be from nearby farms or industries that served a nearby market. My money and my relationships would be found within a small locale. My life would be smaller, but I would have more say in the production of food and the workings of the local economy, if only because of a closer relationship to the land. This closeness would provide me with my sense of freedom that comes from belonging to a place and a people--not freedom abstracted out from anything that is nothing more than an idea. Life would be more complex as it would be more connected to the actual goings-on of life: growing food, giving birth, witnessing death, working deals, holding responsible, confessing faith.

I've been wrestling with this identity of mine for a few reasons. The first is that I have been reading some Wendell Berry. And the second is that I am preaching Sunday.

Regarding the first point, I will not explain Berry to you--the first few paragraphs are my take on what he is saying translated into my life. Regarding the second point, I have found myself with the passage of Mark 2:18-22. I will post my sermon when I have finished it in a few days, but the way that this has been working in me (Its the passage where Jesus says that his disciples do not fast because he is still with them--that would be like sewing a patch of unshrunk cloth on old clothes or pouring new wine in old wineskins!) is that I am coming to see us as the cloth, wine and wineskins. Fasting grows us or shrinks us and it is in the presence of Jesus--in the celebration of Eucharist, in the acknowledgement of Jesus' presence, that we come to know Christ as fully God. In this knowledge, we ought not be fasting--which is emptying so that God might fill us with Godself--but we stay put so that we can absorb the presence of God as much as possible. This is a sort of not-growing where we are simply the pupils who absorb God, a filling but not a expanding or contracting.

It all connects to Berry, too. I'm still working on that part, though.

Procrastination and Gnosticism

2009-04-03T00:32:00.000-07:00

So maybe this won't prove to be relevant but I believe I have stumbled across something which has helped me immensely in my understanding of ministry and, I suppose, life in leadership. The problem with leadership to me is that there is all of this other junk that comes along with it that I'm not all that keen on. For example, announcing events, collecting money, pulling weeds, filling out forms, etc.

There's no reason in particular that I hate these things, but I do and I hate them passionately. I love hanging out, talking, teaching, researching for lessons and the like, but I hate these bodily, boring, tedious tasks. I was thinking about this recently when it hit me that such a hatred of these things is really a hatred of what it actually takes to be with one another. In other words, I have this great love for the idea of being with people and of transformation and all these sorts of good-sounding things but I hate even the thought of doing the things that it takes to actually be with people. I love the idea of presence in a neighborhood but do not want to deal with taxes and properties and problems. I just want to come into a place and have everyone trust me and we can all get on with our transformation. But it doesn't work like that. In fact, it works nothing like that. Instead, things are messy and don't work the way that we want them to. People sin and leave things out, do things they shouldn't do and neglect to do things that they should. It is important to organize so that people can function together in a way that is healthy and productive. Forms are important because insurance is important; money matters, taxes and all of that matters because these things are the substance of what it means to be in a community with people. To exist is to rub up against others and this friction causes the necessary structures of society.

I put all of these very bodily and not glamorous or exciting things off to the side because I don't want to see the forms or the taxes or the cost or any of that crap which is far from what we're really trying to get at with ministry, right?

Unfortunately (for me), to ignore these bodily and normal everyday events and neccesities is to be a gnostic. What? how can that be? What's a gnostic?

A gnostic was an ancient Greek who believed that humanity is a (good) soul trapped in the (bad) material world. When they interacted with Christianity in the first and second centuries, they had a lot of trouble with the incarnation and their wrong teachings explain much of what is behind the New Testament's writings. How could a good God take the form of a material body, which is obviously flawed and evil? The gnostic tendency is to remove the divine from the actual bodies and materials of existence. This is a constant struggle in the Christian church and in Western society in general. There is always an urge to disconnect, to idealize, to create a utopian society. This, I believe, is the same tendency that makes us desire not to be engaged with real lives and therefore to run away to the academy and read our lives away or to come into a place and expect everyone to just change on their own without relationship or struggle. It is what causes me to put off the administrative tasks of ministry and forget that all of these tedious tasks are the mark of God's redemption of the material reality of creation.

God took on human flesh and entered into the boredom, the tediom and despair of our existence that we might know God's redemption in the fullness of time. Is it mine to reject that redemption and turn to my own desires for fulfillment to define the work of ministry? May it not be so. Rather, faithfulness in the small things will lead to more responsibility and the hope of God's glory pervading all the mundane and frustrating details of the world. I am turning my heart and disposition that I might hope for the glory and redemption of all of creation--even the boring, lame and the inexcusably dull. God took on the form of a human and it is in the fullness of that form that the minister and Christian ought to live.

to be whole

2008-11-17T19:07:00.000-08:00

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

2008-10-29T23:40:00.001-07:00

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.

2008-10-13T19:53:00.001-07:00

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

2008-09-04T13:43:00.000-07:00

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.

2008-08-13T14:03:00.001-07:00

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

2008-08-09T17:45:00.000-07:00

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

2008-07-20T23:38:00.000-07:00

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

2008-07-19T17:42:00.000-07:00

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!

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

2008-07-10T12:31:00.000-07:00

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.

2008-06-15T01:06:00.000-07:00

"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

2008-06-02T21:00:00.000-07:00

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.

2008-05-27T11:00:00.000-07:00

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?

2008-05-17T17:45:00.000-07:00

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^thcentury. 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:

A God exists who created and orders the world and watches over human life on earth.
God wants people to be good, nice, and fair to each other...
The central goal of life is to be happy and to feel good about oneself.
God does not need to be particularly involved in one's life except when God is needed to resolve a problem.
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...

2008-05-12T16:28:00.000-07:00

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)

2008-03-23T02:23:00.000-07:00

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

2008-02-26T23:58:00.000-08:00

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.

2008-02-23T23:50:00.000-08:00

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

2008-02-10T22:20:00.000-08:00

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

2008-02-07T22:37:00.000-08:00

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

2008-02-07T21:26:00.000-08:00

"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?

2008-01-28T22:56:00.000-08:00

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

2008-01-22T22:39:00.000-08:00

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.

2008-01-22T21:30:00.000-08:00

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.

REVEALed!

2007-12-22T11:12:00.000-08:00

I just watched Greg Hawkins' and Bill Hybels' videos on REVEAL, a study that was done that "revealed" that the megachurch way of doing church, of being "seeker-sensitive" enough to take the cross out of the church and rely on the programs that the church has to offer isn't doing it for people. But I'm not here to break it down for you. watch the videos, read the book, go to the website.

http://revealnow.com/story.asp?storyid=49 (Bill Hybels)
http://revealnow.com/story.asp?storyid=48 (Greg Hawkins)

Notice that their answer to the over-programming (and over-commoditization) of church is... (drumroll)...another commodity! "Personal spiritual growth trainers" or something to that effect. Awesome. The consumerism has made church lame. And now, let's get them a personal trainer so that they can then blame their lack of spiritual growth on their trainer. Yep. Sounds like a plan. Sign me up.

Okay, sarcasm aside, the question arises for me, "how do I get this rag-tag group of 25 or so inner-city youth to take the spiritual disciplines seriously? How do i distinguish between those that are ready for solitude and silence and prayer and those that need to be told that they aren't ugly and don't need to do drugs to fit in? What if there isn't so much of a distinction?" These aren't easy questions for someone like me to answer. They're not easy questions for anyone to answer. Anyway, I'm just wondering here. peace to you all. the Waiting is almost over!

one of these days, I'm gonna get around to writing about activism and ministry.

on Faith and Waiting

2007-12-22T00:03:00.000-08:00

What of the unsurety of faith? How does waiting for the Advent of Jesus in this world relate to this fact?

Sometimes faith is so unsure. Sometimes it means standing in the middle of downtown realizing that nothing you are doing at your funky urban church is really doing a thing for all these people (and after all, aren't these the important ones?). And then going back to that little church, to that garden and that house and sweeping the kitchen because in the morning, people will be coming over for breakfast. A quiet assurance that what is happening here matters because God does not look to the powerful, but to the weak. There is joy in that knowledge. It is joy that dances in the face of fear because fear runs everything else--fear of spinning into nothing. But stillness and silence are faith because they trust in something other than ourselves to hold the world up and make it worthwhile. Its like singleness. Singleness as a call and vocation is faith because it trusts that God will regenerate the community of faith, not our own efforts at reproduction. It isn't sure, but it believes. That's why its faith.

the faith of stones that lie,
unmoving in the face of tragedy.
still as all around dies.
the faith of indifference
to the goings-on of the inhabitants.
stones, unmoved in history's silence.
because the stones know that God is moving.

And that is Advent. we wait indifferently because we do not need to know that something is happening now or today or tomorrow or even before we die to know that God is doing something. As they say, "Aslan is on the move." So we wait. We give what we have and no more or less because we know that God is moving and drawing all this world to Godself, working the invisible kingdom into all of the crevaces and crannies. Yet we wait expectantly because we know that this invisible kingdom is a good kingdom and ruled by a good king. We wait expectantly for the time when the world is ruled with righteousness and justice, when power is used justly, and when the nations rally to the banner of King Jesus. Hooray! Leap up and do a jig! Speak in tongues, if you wish! Run, run, run! And also sit and quietly pray. Do whatever you must to be in the presence of the Lord because the Lord is coming.

I don't even know if I really believe this post.

2007-12-19T22:35:00.000-08:00

my body is tired from the semester and all the work that went into it. It has decided that being sick is one of the best ways to spend my break. So instead of working on 20 waking hours like i usually do and would like to continue doing, i'm running at about 14 or 16 waking hours. ah, whatever. Its not like my reading another book really is somehow cosmically significant.

So here's a deep concern of mine: Barnes & Noble's religion section. Borders too, for that matter. Now, B&N has an awful religion (excuse me--Christianity) section. It's pretty pathetic. Borders' religion section is much better. But what concerns me is that every time I'm at one of these megabookstores, I find myself face to face with more and more books on the gnostic gospels and the end of Christianity and things like that. Yesterday, I saw one on "The Other Christianities" or something like that. Now, I'm no fundy Bible scholar. It doesn't bother me that people know about certain gospels being kept out of the canon and certain heresies such as Arianism and Marcion's heresy. The gospel of Judas doesn't get a rise out of me. I understand that there were certain historical facts about how the canon came to be that could get some to say that history, even Christian history, is written by the winners. Okay. I can live with that. Communities of people are trying to work out all this Trinity/Son of God business etc., etc. and some get cut out. I know that there were some fairly unChristian things that happened in the midst of all this, too. Its part of any group of people developing.

What worries me is that somehow, it seems to me like the world is eating all this stuff up. It seems like the everyone is loving it. And this on top of a new spate of atheist writings that are working to dismantle God. It makes me feel weird and sad. Weird because I'm beginning to feel as if somehow being a Christian--and especially a pastor--is going to put me in the minority in the world, and very much so. I mean, the way that practicing Jews or Ba'hais are in the minority. There is such a movement out there against Christianity that I wonder if we are going to see a dwindling in my faith as time goes on. Will there even be people left at the end of my life? I mean, I know there will be Christians, but this Hauerwasian "outpost" mentality may become our mentality out of necessity, not just because it really is true. I suppose that Christians losing popular ground is a good thing because it reminds us that to be a follower of Jesus is not some sort of cultural heritage. It really is, as Muslims say, an inner jihad, a journey of self and community to follow Christ in word, thought, and deed. But at the same time, it makes me sad to see that the faith that has nurtured me and brought me life is losing ground and maybe less people will hear about it.

Then again, no serious presidential candidate is claiming to be anything but Christian. Maybe we haven't really moved so far away from being dominated by Christianity. Maybe we've still got quite a ways to go before the outpost mentality really sets in.

hush.

2007-12-17T12:27:00.001-08:00

the end of things, in some ways. i'm back home in Santa Rosa now and that's always something like the end of things. or the beginning. but life's a circle, really, so i guess that makes sense.

there's a lot to write about here, so i'm just going to put it down as it comes. i've been away from this for awhile. i would have liked to write, but in the midst of finals and the end of the year and our strange cultural conviction that every group of more than 4 people must have a Christmas party, i have missed opportunities to really find anything worth writing for other people to read. i've been journalling a lot more lately and seeking for some silence. silence. the little snatches of silences that we are able to grab in between everything else have been the characteristic of my life lately. it seems the past month has consisted of various activities of mine which i consider more or less worthwhile punctuated by the search for silence. i wake up early for the sake of a half hour of silence before everything starts going. just me and my prayer book and Bible, and sometimes God shows up in a very tangible way and speaks encouragement to me and sometimes not. actually, God usually doesn't appear in any way that i can physically or emotionally feel. its as if i'm talking to God from the living room while s/he decides the kitchen or sometimes the garden is the appropriate place for the morning devotions. hmm. its not that God isn't there, its just that God isn't here. i feel like that more and more these days. God isn't here, like here here. you know what i mean? God is...around. i talk about a God that animates all that we do, that gives our being and existing and doing meaning but that doesn't mean that i sense God in my depths, in the atoms and ligaments of my existence. just because i know that God is the energy that keeps the universe from imploding into nihilism doesn't mean that i feel that all the time like i used to. God is, well, there. faithful, loving me and hopefully appreciating the fact that i continue to pray between 4 and 6 mornings a week despite the fact that i can't put my finger on anything specific that prayer does. its just a sort of sifting process. and i believe that prayer has power, but not in the way that comes to mean that we can manipulate God into believing that we are the power behind God's power.

i used to feel new ideas about God so deeply. they would resonate, these new ideas, but they were so fundamentalist. "God is a pacifist" is a good example. but they were all examples of fitting God into categories that i knew, limiting God to my ideas. but by limiting God's freedom, i kept myself so locked up into those categories that I couldn't be free. so nothingness set in. when even your God is lost in the mess of your own chains and limitations, nihilism is inevitable. God must be free. fortunately (oh to grace how great a debtor...), one of those ideas i stumbled upon was the importance of the Church's traditions and silence is clearly one of those. so i began experimenting in these still waters and slowly but surely, i am freeing God from myself, and in the process being freed.

like i said, its a sifting process. i was listening to a radio program in LA on the drive up here last night and i heard an artist talking about her time at an artist colony in New Hampshire. She said that she found that her mind was like a dryer going around and around only it wasn't full of clothes or bedsheets or anything worthwhile like that. instead, it was full of garbage. that's what silence does. it makes us realize what is inside our head and allows us to really hear what's going on outside our heads. it lets us hear sounds that aren't ours. people, i'm sure, think that monks and other hermits and silent people go to the desert or the monasteries or the prayer closets in order to get away from people and be close to themselves or God or whatever. but that's not true. i mean, maybe for some, but that's not true. solitude is the only thing that lets us really be with people. i heard this before but never even began to understand it until just recently. Silence is the reason that we can even be close to anyone. if you want to be with people, you need to be able to hear sounds that are outside of your head, whether that is your boots crunching on the path, a bird, a deer's footsteps, a crying friend or nothing at all--the kind of nothing that leaves me totally amazed every time and every second of every time (infinity in all directions) that this sort of thing even exists.

i went to the desert on thursday. it was beyond compare. i could only wish for a few more hours. sitting silently for almost 3 hours with one walk and all i could ask for was a few more hours. i'm becoming more of a hermit every day. i long for these moments of blank space. i long to fill them with my prayers and write my stories there, sing my songs there and spin around them. but in the end, i want to realize that all my efforts have not contributed. i want to find out that i've been writing with a white crayon all the while and the page is as i found it. i'm not trying to change everything or break the quiet as a way of reducing my anxiety. i just want to be quiet with the page. in the desert, we (Josh Seligman went with me) weren't so far from the road and there were maybe 3 cars that went by during the course of the 14 or 15 hours that we were there. you could here them coming for about a mile each way. they come like a ufo or a jet in that land. it really is a sort of roaring that slowly builds and you want to stand up and think them away because the deep, ringing-in-the-ear-producing silence has been trod upon. we humans are so foreign in places like this. but i just want to be quiet like the page, like the cactus, like the black ant that crawls and is now significant because i've seen no living animal but Josh and a single bird all day. empty and sifted and slowed down, like a dryer on low with just a few pieces of clothes in it.

the desolation of Advent's hope

2007-12-02T01:37:00.001-08:00

God is the God who meets us in our desolation. As deserted as our hearts may be, as sandy and nutritionless as they may feel, Christ sits silently with us there in our desolation, however deep. I cannot help but imagine the sand of Anza-Borrego: large clumps of sand mixed in with cactus spines and dry sticks in a sort of desert salad. And Jesus is there. God has shown up in the world, in the flesh. In the desolate flesh.

A journal entry from a while ago about Curt's memorial service.

2007-11-27T13:47:00.000-08:00

This is a journal entry from a while ago when i went home for Curt's memorial service. I wrote it on 11/9.

The memorial service was awesome. Curt's life was most certainly unique. It was a life that fought against the status quo with joyful abandon. he broke through the veneer of a world that is drunk on image and presentation (to use David Lawton's phrase) but not simply to snub the world and turn his back on it. Rather, he smashed through image and presentatin in order to reach the real people on the other side. He broke thru his own need for image in order to break thru others'.

For those who have no fear of life, death holds no terror--because even the autumn rot becomes the humus that supports the spring. Cycles, cycles, cycles. things go around and around--but not like tires spinning in mud--no, it is a holistic cycle, not an endless spinning. The autumnal leaves become a moldy carpet--the very basis of life to come. All death is the birth of life. Hold to life loosely and you will find that life has sought you out. The same is true for God. Spend your energies seeking God? It is a waste of time. Spend your energies being found making yourself available to God, and you will find that your life is being swept up into the great journey of Christ.

How can we do this? how can we release ourselves in this way? after all, we are what we have been given responsibility for! To release our selves and our communities to the good graces of the divine seems to be crazy and incredibly irresponsible. But it is in fact a profoundly faith-filled, generous act. In the refusal to hoard anything, including ourselves, we find true freedom.

On the bus, I see so many people who are searching after some sort of God. Tarot cards, people talking of communes and marijuana. I see several ones obsessed with the god of music, or they are devoted to eccentricity. Everyone is, fashionably, a "spiritualist." I think of Busta and his journey. I think of my own journey these past 4 or so years. All of us feeling the oppressive weight of our own journeys. But what is a faithful, generous, trusting response to the search?

I believe it is to take the search off of our own shoulders and lay down in a woods, on the fallen leaves--and wait for spring to come. There are times when we must trek, of course, but if we believe in a benevolent God--if we believe this is a God worth finding--then let us lay down the search and accept what revelation comes to us. When we are always striving, there is much less of God in the struggle than we might think. There is more of us than we may understand. It's as if, when confonted with the blinding light of the divine, as was the Apostle Paul, for example, we spend so much time fumbling to find our glasses (because we know our eyesight is bunk) that by the time we get them on, the light that would have healed our eyes has passed and we--sad fools!--are as blind as ever.

Curt held life loosely. life was to be distinguished and celebrated (no undue tears for Curt!) but one could not look past the holistic and cyclical view of life that allowed all things to be whole.

Walking in Annadel today, the covering of wet leaves on the path softened every sound. A holy silence descended on my heart. I am always amazed at how that place, its familiarity that has come over time and its strangeness that will always exist because nature is somehow always "other" to us humans, never fails to see me for who I am. Rather, all parts of me bubble to consciousness on those trails (and off them). Even when it is late summer and all moisture has escaped, I am drawn there in my wholeness. Even when it is not beautiful, Annadel is the most true place in the world for me. This morning I was engrossed in the silence of wet autumnal leaves beginning to decompose. The whole place is waiting for winter. It is mourning, but with a knowing smile. It is preparing to enter deeply into the winter death when the birds are the only things that seem to move over the frosty morning ground and even their movement seems only to accentuate the stillness. Yet that stillness was coming over the dull roar of the whole valley. When you are truly quiet, you can hear the thousands of cars moving from Sebastopol to Oakmont, from Larkfield to Rohnert Park. Yet my quiet in those moments comes over the dull and muted roar of the valley's activity and I know that my God is present. my very existence begins to pray.

I look back to the beginning of this entry and I am reminded of Curt's life. He was like the prophet with no eyes who calls the whole world blind. On the surface it is, "Image! You say I have no sense of image! Yet your own acknowledgement and fear of me [so much so that we must tell funny stories to ease our discomfort] displays your false image." And even deeper, "Love! You wonder how someone like me can love? Do you not see that the only way to truly love is to cast off those inhibitions that you claim enable you to love?" Curt lived in the twinkling silence, closer to willing one thing than almost anyone I know. Cast off anything that gets in the way and love God with all that is in you. Forget fashion and trappings. Pragmatism's virtue is that we are left with only those things that support our search for God. May I live my life this way. Amen.

ladders, paths, and parables

2007-11-13T22:32:00.001-08:00

at Bread of Life tonite, I stood silently at the clothes table while wealthy Point Loma girls (always in pairs) passed out clothes to some of San Diego's homeless. I was struck by this clash, this mixing of the waters. I was reminded of the deep sense of otherness I used to have in that place--before I had more homeless friends than Loma friends on Tuesday nights--and I wonder what happened to bridge that gap. how do we step across that gap of otherness and touch someone on the other side? we often spend so much time making ourselves comfortable that we forget to listen, to touch the other side. if only i could figure out a way that would allow each one of those people to listen and hear someone each Tuesday night. There is already a lot of good happening in there. An atmosphere of love bubbles up in many places and that's not always the case for places that have served the homeless for long.

but i'm still left with the gap. how do we shuttle people across the gap? how do we let people into the world that is unknown and do so in a way that is loving for all? how do we say, "Come! Come with me and I will show you a world where God is real, although you may not see it at first. I will help you see a world of joy and hope that is very different from that which you are used to. Listen closely to the tracks and you can hear the train coming. put your ear to the sidewalk and you can hear the rhythm of these streets. and it is good."

i want to minister long and hard with all my life. i want to listen well, to touch well, to be an instrument of healing. and sometimes i want to be a ladder for people who are wealthy to come to where those who are poor are and see that Jesus is with the poor in ways he is not with them and that they should listen to those ways because they are at least equal to the ways Jesus is with the rich. i want to be a bridge to simplicity, a path to the silence of Christ. i want to be a parable of Jesus. i hope all those pairs of girls saw the parables of Jesus that were happening all around them tonite. i hope.

i wish i could let myself rot well...

2007-11-07T00:07:00.000-08:00

it is late autumn here in San Diego.

contrary to popular belief, there are seasons here. they are different. they don't look like Rhode Island or Ohio or even Northern California's seasons, but there are seasons. we've moved past early autumn--which is awfully ugly. it's as if the world can't make up its mind and is stuck in limbo. the sky is only half-overcast and it is a cold wind over a warm day. the fact that i commute makes it even worse.

but this is not early autumn. it is late autumn, when the chill sets in and San Diego loses any of its luster. it is hardly the tropical tourist getaway that travel agents have been selling it as for years. i have to wear a sweater lately and maybe even a beanie. the world is, in fact, dying. raking thousands of fig leaves out at Capt. Hirst's today, i saw spiders and beetles as well as moss and mold. and i didn't let them do their work. cleaning out the gutters, i would wipe away the top layer of drying leaves and get down to the bottom where the months that i have been away have led to the development of a rich humus: a deep black dirt that feels like airy coffee grounds and reminds me that life is beautiful and regenerative. and here it is for me! dirt in a rusting gutter is the reminder of what this world is to be.

circles in time, like the path
of a bumblebee flight,
bumbling bumbling and time doubles back.
i am where i was,
though the view is not the same.
it is peace to see the world again.

when i read over my last post, i realize that so much of my frustration with revolutions is in the fact that they don't accomplish anything. they just change the scenery. i want to live in a way that lives something new and old in each moment. held up by the hand of the Divine and transformed in the death of Jesus, i become a parable and a metaphor for Christ. this is good and whole. a hidden wholeness, the kind that is connected to all things in my own solitude.

autumn will come again. the decay will always be taking place. the humus will build and that rot is the most deeply beautiful thing in the world. and we humans--what of us? shall we let ourselves sink down deep into the earth where we belong? shall we let our own desires and convictions rot in order to foster new life? dare we do such a thing? dare we not?

Jesus with a beret and a picket sign

2007-11-05T14:42:00.000-08:00

There was a video in chapel today that, at some point, had words on the screen that read something like, "Be a revolution", "Be like Jesus", and "Join the Revolution." As if they believe that we are young and idealistic and are just looking for a revolution to jump onto.

Well, I have a message for the church and all its para-church organizations that are grappling for our attention, money, time, and loyalty. It is also for all the people who categorize me and my friends into generations and try to define us as something that we are or aren't. Here's the message: Stop it. Maybe my frustration with being defined is something that the Gen-Y/Millenial/late-'80s-early-March-birthday demographic is prone to based on empirical research and years of scientific guessing by more or less qualified psychologists, sociologists and...others, but I'm sick of hearing who I am from someone else. And I'm sick of hearing what the church should be from everyone but Jesus, the Bible and the Church.

Stop caring about getting the college kids involved and be interested in getting people involved. Stop trying to sell yourself as the next movement and the next revolution. Do you know what happens to revolutions? They fail. People get disillusioned and cynical and they fall on their face. I have been hearing about this generation being an Ezekiel generation and a Jeremiah generation and a Shane Claiborne generation since I was in junior high and I'm sick of it. How many times do we have to say it? Jesus is not a revolutionary! He is not Lenin or Che or Claiborne or George Washington!

Do you really want to be revolutionary? Take your possessions, sell them, and give to the poor. Love people who are not like you. Listen to those who don't get listened to. Fast and pray. Help everyone. Give yourself to others in your search for God. And be faithful--above all, be a witness that God is not subject to the whims and flippant desires of this world. Do not be swayed when you hear people saying "the Messiah has come! He is over here! No, she is over there! Oh wait, they were back there!" Be faithful to the God who saves. That is a revolutionary idea because it means that all this shouting is probably a waste.

I'm not trying to knock the church for wanting to be relevant. That's important too, I guess. But our loyalty is not to relevance, nor is it to this world. Our loyalty is to Christ.

If this doesn't jive with you, I'm not that sorry. I'm sure there are plenty of revolutions that would be happy to have your name on their petition list.

i am not my own...

2007-10-28T20:01:00.000-07:00

odd day in church today. unusually emotional and i'm not really sure why. the sermon was fantastic, as usual, but something about it hit me hard. i've been struck by this new life i'm living recently, as if all of this preaching about being on the edge of the promised land and all that that necessarily comes out of Deuteronomy somehow applies directly to my life. there is a new life for me to grasp this day, a new identity for me to take hold of and affirm. what kind of life would it be if we were to really sit and listen to the poor, to the unworthy? to sit with, care for, sing to, love on those that remain forgotten--today i was reminded of that awesome responsibility. and the awesome thing about it is that it has nothing to do with our own desire to fulfill someone else's need. rather, it's about being Jesus, letting Jesus become incarnate in our flesh, in our time, in our ears and eyes and nose. what does it mean to befriend the stranger, to love sacrificially? how much do we give? how much do we save? how do we navigate the incredibly complex and sticky issues of reconciliation? how do we forgive? how do we live wisdom and love right here?

it's beginning to take hold of my conception of what kind of youth pastor i am. for a long time (and still, really), i didn't even want to see myself as a youth pastor. i was a youth sponsor or helper, but i didn't want the responsibility or the title of "pastor." but whether i like the responsibility or not, i have it. so i guess i might as well embrace it. that aside, these kids need something new to define them. they need a new identity. they need more than what the streets and the industries give them. they need their new identity in Christ. so how do we (the church, not us as individuals) give that to them? how do we provide them with an identity that is not ours, not just a different culture's identity, but truly the identity given to them by God? that's a hard question with many and sundry answers, none of which hold all of the answer. in fact, i would not at all mind your input here. but i've got to go. i've got homework to do. even natural disasters can't get me caught up, apparently.

peace.

Fires and Seas

2007-10-24T18:57:00.000-07:00

"The third-century writer Origen of Alexandria explains the relationship between our effort and God's grace with a metaphor: It is like traveling in a sailing ship on the ocean. Our life is like the ship, and we are the captain. All our skill, energy, and attention are necessary to avoid shipwreck and arrive in port, for the ocean is dangerous and inattention is disastrous upon it.. Our ship, however, also needs the wind. It is the wind that fills the sails and moves the ship, and when the two are weighed against each other, the skill of the captain seems very small compared with the contribution of the wind." (Roberta Bondi)

I am tempted to say that this is the answer to questions that I have had for a long time, but although it may be a step in the right direction, I don't want to say that it is an answer. Whatever nice feelings this ship makes me feel, I still have to deal with not so nice events. San Diego is burning right now. I volunteered to answer phones this morning and how am I supposed to deal with all of this destruction? The last report that I heard said that 5 people have died. hundreds or thousands of homes are gone and people are calling because they just want to know if they can go home. They've got animals there in some cases and no doubt wedding pictures, and other heirlooms. One woman just wanted some food. I talked to one 23 year old girl who was scared to go back to her home where she lives alone but she had been evacuated twice already. The National Guard has shown up in several places to help direct things--M16s and all.

It may not seem like there is a connection, but what happens when the winds that fill the sails of our life-ships are hardly the providential or potentially providential breezes of good grace that bear us to hope and warmness but instead are the blasphemous Santa Anas that bring with them not cooling whispers but firey gusts that knock over semi-trucks and burn the homes of hundreds of people, causing 500,000 to be displaced from their homes and move into giant urban refugee camps where they can be "handled" effectively? What happens when the very seas that we are sailing on are rocked by huge swells whose only redeeming value is that they turn our ship toward the heavens to get one last glimpse of the God of dark clouds and thunder before they turn us down, down, down into the valleys and low places of the sea? Sure, my question is, "what happens when the world is literally on fire?" but also, what happens when suffering of all sorts is all around us all the time? What do we do with this grace at that time? At those times, when all our human straining to turn the rudder seems absolutely worthless. I don't really have a worthwhile answer. I could quote some Psalms about "when I go to the low places, you are there" and "when I walk through the valley of the shadow of death..." and maybe those are the only appropriate responses. But how can we trust in the God of dark clouds to bring back the sunshine and breezes of hope and wellness? I don't know an answer to that question that I can fit into a structure with grammar and punctuation.

i believe we can, though. i believe with all of me that we can, that if we trust only in a God of sunshine and smooth sailing, then maybe we are not trusting in a God at all but rather a false construction that we call God but is really our own desires projected onto a cosmic, abstract screen for the divine. I don't have any answer but that.

As I was hanging up the phones today, I kept saying "goodbye" over and over. And I thought of the origin of that word: "God be with ye." Truly. to those that are dealing with fires real, figurative, or both, may God be with you and bring you home.

mountains into molehills

2007-10-21T22:24:00.000-07:00

maybe its not chic to blog about things like work and conflicting allegiances in our work, but whatever. its real--even if the only socially acceptable response is complaining.

school's hard and it should be. but then there's church and youth group and trying to call my family and student ministries and my often floundering attempts at being genuinely present with my friends, if i'm present at all.

i'm okay with the ebb and flow of life. i think its poetic. but my struggle comes when that ebb and flow never seems to drop beneath a certain activity/stress level. i'm rarely ever able to reach the ebb and flow that reaches 7 hours of sleep consistently. or even that approaches consistent rest.

Deuteronomy 10:12, Micah 6:8, Matthew 19:16-26

who's asking the questions in my life? Rather, the Question. who has the authority to determine what i do? God doesn't ask me how I am serving God via the institutions of higher education. God doesn't ask me how my GPA looks or how i am serving God via my own dreams and aspirations. just like God doesn't ask Israel whether or not they think it is a good idea to worship Ba'al in order to get rain in their riverless land (Deuteronomy). nor does God ask Israel whether or not they think it is a good idea to live justly rather than seek comfort (Micah). nor does God ask the rich young man how much he wants to give (Matthew).

God wants me to love God with all my heart, soul and strength, following the commands, decrees, and statutes; to act justly, love mercy, walk humbly; to sell all I have, give to the poor, and follow Jesus.

that leaves me pretty prostrate--and with seemingly very little input as far as which grad program I would eventually like to get into. that makes my life look a lot like studying how to follow God's commands and seeking after God with all I have as well as seeking after people and God's best for them with all I have. It leaves me in a radical recognition of my cosmic insignificance, poor, and wandering after an invisible rabbi. AND...in the midst of this, trying to show others that this is indeed the way to life abundant! i wish i could grasp this. alas, if only i had St. Francis' capacity for paradox! but i usually don't, so i will carry on, I suppose. and rest assured that loving God with all your heart, soul, and strength might mean falling into bed exhausted for two months straight.

Lord, I hope you are doing something worthwhile in all of this. Amen.

2007-10-10T19:35:00.001-07:00

this last sunday, a homeless man named Tim came to our service, thanks to the generosity and hospitality of a couple of my friends who took him out to lunch the other day.

during praises and pains, Tim expressed how grateful he was that he was able to come to our service. Tim isn't like me. Tim has an accent of some sort that i find a little funny. He's homeless--that's different from me too. He has a bum knee and has some trouble walking so he is often leaning up against walls or sitting down. He's a friendly guy, although he has no doubt gone through his set of trials and spent a good amount of time drinking and/or partying. Tim, like I said, isn't like me. He grew up in a different world and has certainly made different choices and had different opportunities.

when the time came for offering, i saw my friend Kelsey, who brought him, walk up to the plate and drop in a few coins. it wasn't until yesterday that i found out that those weren't Kelsey's coins. they were Tim's and he had asked her to drop them in because he couldn't walk up there on account of his bad knee. and we were confronted with the story of the widow and her mites, who gave all that she had despite her situation. but i am nevertheless confronted with the reality of the situation. i am rich. Tim is not. but Tim knows how to give--and yet has so little, we might say, to offer. i think that this is not true, that Tim is in fact the one who has something tangible and real to offer because his offering was not given out of plenty but out of lack.

i wish i could write how profoundly Tim's actions impacted me. i'm checked in my wealth. i'm checked in my generosity (or lack thereof), in my deep sense of entitlement. Oh, Lord. help me in this journey to be like my brother Tim and live generously and hopefully.

2007-10-01T16:01:00.000-07:00

Father God,

What is that we are to do in these places, where we don’t feel you but we know you’re there, almost like some oppressive professor who puts the fear in us and causes us to do work we don’t really want to do. So how shall I respond to you in this place? I almost don’t want to continue working for you in this place. I want to lay down the call and begin to talk of grace and peace again, ignoring the real truth of walls and all the hard things in life. I am tired and unwilling to continue in this vein. Why do you call me here? Why do you have me here?

Then I am suddenly aware of my own choices. Where is my energy going? Is it into the call that I know I have or is it continually into the things in life that I think will bring me joy but that have shown time and time again to be the constructions of a culture that is surrounding me and trying to convince me of my own self-importance so that I might perpetuate said system, even if it leaves me gasping for breath at the bottom of the spiral. I want what is real, not what I think is real or hope to be real. I want Your truth, Your way, and a united heart to fear you, Father.

Teach me Your way, O LORD;
I will walk in Your truth;
Unite my heart to fear Your name.
(Psalm 86:11)

sacred days

2007-09-22T16:17:00.000-07:00

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

a poem

2007-09-21T00:42:00.000-07:00

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.

values: what are we even here for?

2007-09-20T00:05:00.000-07:00

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?

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.

flex and bend, fools.

2007-09-13T23:02:00.000-07:00

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.

where are we trying to get to?

2007-09-09T00:15:00.001-07:00

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.

what are we deporting?

2007-09-04T21:47:00.000-07:00

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?

decisions

2007-09-03T21:33:00.000-07:00

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.

Bonhoeffing

2007-09-02T20:58:00.000-07:00

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.