REVEALed!

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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...

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

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...

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

"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

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.

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.

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

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

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?

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.

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?

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?

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

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

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.