Holy Content

When the inevitability of my divorce had only been confirmed for about a month, I went to a friend's wedding. At a moment when a group of women I knew from my church were crowded around her asking to see her ring and making that joyful conversation that makes brides feel so special and that makes wives remember their youth, I stumbled in and stuck my hand out saying, "Look, I have a new ring, too." I showed them the silver geometric ring with a blue stone that I had bought so that the indentation on my left-hand ring finger did not remind me all the time that it was naked.

I can't tell you when I became ashamed of myself for stealing that moment from my friend. I don't know if it was immediate or if I realized it later. I was in such a fog of grief that I couldn't control my behevior nor could I reflect on it very well.

When I told this story to my mother eventually, she said in a tone that communicated sadness, compassion, experience and wisdom: "You'll never be able to take those moments back."

I didn't ask her to tell her own stories. I walked away from that conversation and held onto the words. It was enough to know that someone else knew the mortification I felt and believed me that it was big enough to ache for a lifetime.

Tonight at my book group that is discussing Eat, Pray, Love, we talked about the search for contentment, which the author says is the goal of yogic practice. Tim didn't like this; pointed out that Jesus would not have said this. I agree with him, if we define "content" as almost synonymous with happy. But I talked a little bit about The Spirituality of Imperfection and its advice that we must learn to live in the moment of our emotions. Beating ourselves up for feeling sad when we have so many nice things or for feeling jealous when we don't really want him anyway doesn't make us stop feeling that way. It simply adds another layer of emotion on top, which increases our chances of satisfying our own needs before the needs of others since they seem so voluminous. By being content with our emotional responses, we acknowledge them and they lose control. We can not think about them without thinking, "I'm not thinking about that," which is otherwise entirely futile as anyone can attest who has raced to get to their destination when they had to pee.

Also, when we are content with the chemical/animal responses we have to stimuli, we are experiencing the life God intended for us, instead of trying to experience the life we think we should have. As the rabbi of Porissover said, "When God sends bitterness, we should feel it."

Interestingly, when I got home I found that Baraka had posted on this same topic.

Deepening the obsession with Iceland is Eric Weiner. After spending a year traveling to nine countries in search of the good life (including Bhutan, Thailand, and Qatar), Eric Weiner, the author of The Geography of Bliss: One Grump’s Search for the Happiest Places in the World has this to say about Iceland:

If you had to choose one of those happiest places to live in that you visited, which would you choose, and why?

I’m tempted to say Bhutan, but I’m going to go with Iceland, actually. It’s just a remarkably cozy, creative, crazy place. And it’s a place that embraces failure — you can just do whatever you want, and if you fail, they might like you all the more because of it.

The capital, Reykjavik, is just sort of the perfect-sized city of about 120,000 people, so you can get anywhere you need to go by walking for 15 minutes. And they are happy, but they are also in touch with their sadness. One local musician told me: “I’m happy, but I cherish my melancholia,” which struck me as kind of profound, this notion that you can be happy, and yet, especially if you are an artist or a creative type, have this part of you that’s melancholy at the same time.

Living in Prozac Nation, that is pretty profound. The search for continuous happiness, for a life wholly without reflection, melancholy, or pain strikes me as unrealistic and, well, sad.

A French friend of mine pointed out that melancholy has a negative connotation here in the US, whereas in France “mélancolie” is considered a necessary and natural cycle of reflectiveness between life’s ups and downs, essential to experiencing it fully.

Plus, I rather like the longing in my heart for a permanence which is impossible in this life and only possible in the next. I wouldn’t want any pill to blot that yearning out.

I am trying to be content with one of those moments that you can't take back right now.

On my way home, driving on the expressway, I was so caught up in my thoughts that although I registered that a mother was walking through the snow on the shoulder away from her hazrd-light-blinking car, getting her three-year-old daughter through by holding her up by one arm, I did not think to help them until I had passed the exit they were headed toward. On this cold night, surely they would have accepted a ride to the gas station and possibly one back to their car. I said, "I'm sorry, God," when I realized my lack of servant opportunism, which is a posture commanded by Christ. Although I took the next exit and backtracked, I was unable to help them.

Just as you can't take gaffes back, neither can you go back and pick up missed opportunities. You just have a loose end hanging off you that can't be tucked in. I am trying to be content with this fact and learn from it.

Do you like candy?

Baraka posted the words to a graduation speech that I've known for awhile but properly identified its source as a Chicago Tribune columnist and NOT Kurt Vonnegut.

I was struck the instruction that we should do something that scares us every day.

I think that's a good idea but I don't do it. Sometimes people tell me that I'm being courageous when I do things, but usually those things seemed like my only option if I didn't want to be disappointed with myself in the long-run. That's right. It's all about avoiding guilt, people. :-)

Yesterday, though, I did something that scared me a little.

While walking into the Dunkin Donuts to buy a bagel and orange juice for breakfast at 7:00 in the morning, the man standing outside asked me for change on my way back out. Good tactic, that one. Give people a chance to mull over the possibility while waiting in line. Saturday and Sunday were two of those days that were so cold you would slap your grandma if that would make God give us just 5 degrees. It's been awful. With the memory of that on Monday morning, I actually considered what I could do for this guy even thought normally I choose not to purchase their services (feeling good about myself for helping someone out). So, I bought an extra bagel for him.

However, on my way out the door, he was standing in line behind me. I was so flustered by this unexpected turn of events that I just kept walking.

Damn! Now what do I do with this bagel? Leaving it in the atrium at school with a note is kind but doesn't quite count as "good" in the same way. And I know that if I waste this opportunity, I'll regret it later. So, I remember that men sleep on the steam grates by my school. It's still early enough that they'll still be asleep.

But what if the hypothetic homeless man wakes up while I'm trying to leave it anonymously? What if he talks all crazy at me? What if he wants to talk normal with me? What if he's insulted by my charity? What if it's even too cold for the guys that sleep on the grate to have avoided the shelters and there is no one there?

So, I parked the car, walked over to the grate and confirmed that there was a leg poking out of the dirty sleeping bag mound. I laid the bag with the bagel on the concrete next to him and hurried back to the car.

My heart was pounding.

When I was an annoying teenage Christian, I always balked at the idea of approaching strangers on the street to see if they wanted to talk about Jesus. I didn't have any theological problem with it. It just scared the hell out of me. What if they talk all crazy at me? What if they wants to talk normal with me? What if they're insulted by my evangelism?

Tonight, a sweet young woman asked me nicely, "Have you gotten one of these yet?" She had a cartoon-y religious tract in her hand. She continued somewhat feebly, "It's just a story with some fun cartoons." I smiled at her and told her I wasn't interested.

I'm really not. I'm horrified that God's desire for us to live in relationships with one another has been perverted to handing out tracts blindly to trick people into saying that they prefer Jesus to Hell. The ones aimed at children are particularly horrendous. I'm not good at relationships and will avoid them altogether often but at least I don't pretend I'm in them by handing out tracts.

The girl walked away and I pulled out my quilt that I'm working on. I experienced a slight tug on my heart that might have been God telling me that I should engage this woman in conversation to help her down the path toward emerging Christianity but the only things I could think to say to her were snarky, so I ignored the tugging. Now that I think about, those are ignoble goals since it presumes that I have some truth that those silly evangelicals don't, which is not at all where I want to end up on this spiritual journey. What God probably meant was that this woman needed to be loved and possibly I could show that love by being willing to listen to her and that in listening, God's light might shine through me. But I didn't realize that until now.

She came back to ask me what I was knitting. Ugh. Still, she was sweet, so I explained that it wasn't knitting but quilting and I explained the concept of a charm quilt.

And then I got into a conversation with her.

She said she was a grad student, too. At Moody Bible Institute. There's a big surprise. I told her I was studying Education policy and the policy of Poverty and Inequality. She's getting a degree in Discipleship. She wants to use that to help churches teach people what to do once they've converted. I don't actually remember how she phrased the idea of "converted" but it was totally non-confrontational so people (myself included) wouldn't notice it. She wanted to help them learn how to read the Bible and how to love God more.

(On a side note, although I can think of a lot of ways "how to love God more" is valid theological and practically, when she said it I was totally creeped out because I'm sure that to her it means following a bunch of rules.)

Of course, the irony is that although she wants to do all of these things, she's spending her time in the train station handing out tracts, which is all about the conversion moment and not at all about spiritual growth. I asked her what denomination she came out of. "Moody or me?" In my head I thought, "You, sweetheart. I know all about Moody." She explained her family's journey from Catholicism to Baptists to non-denominational. Then, she finally asked me if I went to church. I felt like saying, "I already told you that I'm studying how to eliminate poverty and inequality on a systemic level! Isn't that church?" Instead, I told her that I was part of the emerging Christianity movement. Figured I'd blow her mind a little if she went home and googled it. I told her she could look up my church at wickerparkgrace.net, Before I finished, she clapped her hands a little and repeated, "Wicker Park!" She was excited about the hipster neighborhood that is quickly becoming another land of the bohemian yuppies. I didn't know that she could lose any more cool points. Then, she realized that wasn't what I meant and asked me to repeat the website.

My train pulled up at that moment. I'm glad I was nice to her. Not heaping on additional abuse to that she is likely to receive if she keeps up what she's doing can only make the world a better place. At least, it keeps my soul cleaner. Lately, I've been admonishing myself, "If you don't feel gracious on the inside, act gracious on the outside. You're more likely to be right." It respects the fact that she might very well be doing something that scares her while I'm heading home to watch another episode of Buffy.

Bread and wine

It’s astounding how much we fumble when left to our own devices to administer the sacrament of the Eucharist to each other rather than being allowed to simply take it passively from the deputized lay-people of the church or the pastor.

When I was at my conference, we took communion Iona style, which meant that there was a long table in the middle of the room with 20 or so settings of wine glasses and plates of communion wafers. We walked up in a polite mob and served whomever stepped up to the table across from us. So I joined the mob, a little concerned that I wouldn’t get served in time to get leave the service early to get back to the hotel and check out, then catch the airport shuttle by noon. This was not the best state of mind in which to become one with the body and blood, but I was full of Father Richard’s admonition that we are never truly ready for that.

But in this state of anxiety, I zoned out and kept the woman across the table waiting for me to snap out of it and step forward in an open space. I hadn’t been able to see the table before this point and in my embarrassment, I didn’t get a chance to assess the logistical situation. I must have been looking a little lost because the woman kindly offered me a plate and told me it was the body of Christ something something something. I popped the wafer in my mouth, said, “Amen,” then realized that now I was expected to offer bread to her with a statement of welcome. I should have waited until she was served and we would partake together. Now, I would have to talk with my mouth full of Christ’s flesh, since this was a Catholic service and they go for that whole transubstantiation thing. So, I did a basic mastication, shoved the lamb of God in my cheek with my tongue and hesitated again when I couldn’t figure out whether I should take the plate from her or pick up the one that was on the table in front of me. I ended up taking it from her and offering her the body of Christ, broken for her, Score! I had thought briefly while waiting my turn that it would be good if I used one of my liturgical traditions in offering the sacraments, which are different from the Catholic ones, as far as I knew. I thought it would make a good metaphor for all of our traditions coming together. Of course, when I offered her the wine next, I screwed it all up and didn’t use the parallel, “This is the blood of Christ, shed for you.” I mixed it up with, “This is the blood of Christ, cup of salvation,” which goes with “This is the body of Christ, bread of life.” This eliminated any poetry since that was what my partner was prepared to say, also.

She touched my arm consolingly, which distracted me from drinking with the proper dignity, eyes cast down into the glass and instead I watched her while I drank then felt weird about it since that’s what I do at parties ever since I heard when I was in college that Bill Clinton did it. Then, she walked away before I had finished my sip and wiped down my glass, so I had to return her gesture awkwardly to her retreating form.

I left the conference with a dissatisfaction in my soul, a dry mouth from the communion wafer and a slight warmth in my stomach from the wine.

Now that I’m over my initial mortification, I realized that she must have fumbled, too, or she would have waited until after I had finished partaking to make a gesture of friendship and we would have left the table simultaneously. Also, at the very beginning, she held onto her plate even when I had one in front of me. Later, she looked uncertain as she wiped the wine glass, rubbing down only the outside and not folding the napkin over the top like the professionals do it.

This is, of course, the great metaphor of human relationships.

We try to say namaste to each other and mean it. The god in me acknowledges and honors the god in you. We try to feed each other and hope that we will be fed in return.

And we fuck it all up. Yeah, food ends up in our mouths, but usually there is no style or proper ceremony or romance. It's just clumsy and anti-climatic.

This week has been an awful one in this sense. One on my friends was a total asshole to everyone over the weekend and now I'm just getting to the point where I can pick up my pieces that were shattered by his explosion, although I've had to dodge and catch the debris that others lost all week. Also, I had to negotiate a trial separation with one of my best friends because we can't stop hurting each other: I make her feel unworthy and she makes me feel unimportant.

I come out of all this feeling like I'm not very good at this thing called community. That I never will be. That's there's something fatally flawed within me that prevents me from being able to close to people. That I will be lonely forever.

The wisdom of the metaphor provided by my faith is that regardless of how it gets there, food and wine ends up in our mouths. God is within us and sometimes we can see her in each other. That I'm not supposed to be anything other than broken. That I am loved anyway.

It is enough.

I wish there were more.

I believe. Help my unbelief.

The least of these

My friend Mike recently did an interview for a conservative Christian magazine that turned out really well about formerly conservative evangelical Christians who have left the Republican party . I was reading it this morning and got sucked into the online comments. Luckily, I pulled myself free without losing too much of my morning.

I was really struck and disheartened by one exchange, though, that is worth mentioning.

This is a paragraph from the article:

“I couldn’t square the ‘pull-yourself-by-your-own-bootstraps’ ideology of the [Religious] Right with Jesus’s words that whatever we did for the least of these we did for him,” Clawson told WoW.

In the fourth comment, someone said:

Third, perhaps it should be explained to Mr. Clawson that the passage having to do with ‘the least of these’ belongs in the context of individual accountability on the Final Day of Judgment.

Wow.

The comment ended with that sentence and I think it's pretty clear that the writer meant, "and therefore has nothing to do with how we live on this earth."

I spend my days interacting with Christians whose lives have been transformed by the found knowledge that since God loves them just the way they are, then they must be worth loving. For the most part, they want to help other people feel that same love.

Although most of them think issues of heaven and hell are important and lots of them work towards the conversion of the unchurched as one method of sharing God's love, more of them believe that we are human vectors for God's love and that the best way we can let it shine through us is to love our "neighbors," using the verse that Mike cited as one of the main ones that command this.

The Sheep and the Goats

31-33"When he finally arrives, blazing in beauty and all his angels with him, the Son of Man will take his place on his glorious throne. Then all the nations will be arranged before him and he will sort the people out, much as a shepherd sorts out sheep and goats, putting sheep to his right and goats to his left.

34-36"Then the King will say to those on his right, 'Enter, you who are blessed by my Father! Take what's coming to you in this kingdom. It's been ready for you since the world's foundation. And here's why:

I was hungry and you fed me,
I was thirsty and you gave me a drink,
I was homeless and you gave me a room,
I was shivering and you gave me clothes,
I was sick and you stopped to visit,
I was in prison and you came to me.'

37-40"Then those 'sheep' are going to say, 'Master, what are you talking about? When did we ever see you hungry and feed you, thirsty and give you a drink? And when did we ever see you sick or in prison and come to you?' Then the King will say, 'I'm telling the solemn truth: Whenever you did one of these things to someone overlooked or ignored, that was me—you did it to me.'

41-43"Then he will turn to the 'goats,' the ones on his left, and say, 'Get out, worthless goats! You're good for nothing but the fires of hell. And why? Because—

I was hungry and you gave me no meal,
I was thirsty and you gave me no drink,
I was homeless and you gave me no bed,
I was shivering and you gave me no clothes,
Sick and in prison, and you never visited.'

44"Then those 'goats' are going to say, 'Master, what are you talking about? When did we ever see you hungry or thirsty or homeless or shivering or sick or in prison and didn't help?'

45"He will answer them, 'I'm telling the solemn truth: Whenever you failed to do one of these things to someone who was being overlooked or ignored, that was me—you failed to do it to me.'

46"Then those 'goats' will be herded to their eternal doom, but the 'sheep' to their eternal reward."
Matthew 25 (Thanks Biblegateway!)

I don't think that Mike or I or any other Christian would disagree that this passage is about individual accountability on the Final Day of Judgement, although we might quibble about what exactly the Final Day of Judgement may or may not entail. However, I also think it is very clear that this passage says that to be viewed favorably on that day, one must not have expected people to "pull themselves up by their bootstraps" but to have given them a hand up as they tried to stand or even a hand out when they couldn't even begin contemplating yet rising from where they had fallen.

It seems like the commenter has segmented passages that have to do with the afterlife into a category of not-to-worry-about-since-I'm-saved and that makes me very sad because I believe that we are capable of living in the Kingdom of Heaven right now by doing the things that we're commanded to do (namely, love). We don't have to wait to receive it as a reward. He's missing out now and by choosing to submit himself to God's authority but misunderstanding the commandment, he might never experience the joy of knowing that he is worth loving, which is the ultimate reward.

We are all alcoholics

Jim Findley, the Buddha scholar who presented half of the sessions at the conference I went to last weekend said, "There is no belief system in Buddhism. The Buddha said, 'Don't believe me. Listen to me and examine whether or not what I said agrees with your own experience. "

I think that this has always been the way that I've approached church and that is why I used to feel so out of place. I remember reading Walt Whitman my sophomore year in college and underlining the following passage because it spoke attitude out loud so that I could recognize it in my own life. I used it in the paper that I wrote for the class and when I was in office hours with Professor McGowan, he said in his sweet, somewhat mumbling monotone, "This is a nice passage." Very high praise from a quiet, and very Modern, poet. He was not given to hyperbole.

This is what you shall do: love the earth and sun and animals, despise riches, give alms to every one that asks, stand up for the stupid and crazy, devote your income and labor to others, hate tyrants, argue not concerning God, have patience and indulgence towards people, take off your hat to nothing known or unknown or to any man or number of men, go freely with powerful uneducated persons and with the young and mothers of families, read these leaves in the open air every season of every year of your life, re-examine all you have been told at school or church, or in any books, and dismiss whatever insults your soul and your very flesh shall be a great poem, and have the richest fluency, not only in its words, but in the silent lines of its lips and face and between the lashes of your eyes and in every motion and joint of your body.

(from the 1855 Preface to Leaves of Grass, emphasis mine)

Richard Rohr said later in the conference, "Christians have never had to have much self-knowledge. All you had to have was a system of beliefs. That is why Buddhism is attractive to so many people." He was talking about contemplative prayer and meditation and how it tends to bring up the negative experiences in our life but that we should carry on for the sake of what we will learn. This is the first of the four noble truths of Buddhism: the recognition that suffering exists and subsequently understanding our suffering. The seond noble truth is that there is an ignoble way that leads to suffering and the perpetuation of suffering and it is wanting life to be something other than it is. The last two noble truths have to do with how to alleviate suffering by accepting it.

Richard made the distinction between a system of beliefs and a life lived in awareness of our connection to God frequently throughout the conference. This is so emergent. He talked about the dualistic mind a lot. This is the person who has all or nothing thinking. To this person, if something is not entirely true, it must be entirely false. My alcoholic friends tell me that they think this way and it is only in working towards tempering this black and white view of the world can they stay sober. I have a sneaking suspicion that most of us have a tendency toward this type of dualistic thinking and that this is why we make mistakes and feel unhappy so much of the time.

The teachings of Jesus require us to turn our world on its head. The first shall be last and the last shall be first. The meek shall inherit the earth. This is not how the world seems on the surface. It seems like the pushy get what they want and people that can't speak for themselves get screwed. But if we look deeper, as the Buddha tells us, we see that people with more power, fame and money actually seem to be the least happy people and that when regular people live lives of self-sacrifice, both they and the people they help get closer to having everything that they need to be happy, which turns out to be much less than anyone expected.

But we cannot really understand the teachings of Jesus until we give up our alcoholic, all or nothing thinking. We will never be perfect. Never. But this doesn't mean that we're completely bad, either. We're human. We are not God, which is the first realization that recovering alcoholics have to make before they can begin their healing. We can only be, like the noble truths teach us. Part of this being can involve working toward being better but that should never be done by denying who we are right now. The gospel (good news) is that God loves us exactly as we are right now, so our self-knowledge and self-love of this state at bring us closer to aligning ourselves with God's perspective.

Buddha did not set forth a system of beliefs that people had to accept in order to be Buddhist. This is why people can be both Christian and Buddhist at the same time. He set forth a way of thinking about the world that would bring about peace of the spirit. Buddha also didn't talk about God in any specific way, although he came out of the Hindu tradition. In regards to this, Richard said, "I wonder if the Buddha wasn't making the same decision Bill Wilson [the founder of Alcoholics Anonymous] made: Let's just call it the higher power. Let's address the issue at the level of addiction, at the level of the ego. Because everyone's addictions and egos are the same." By this he meant that simply by being human, we all have addictions and egos and that both get in the way of experiencing God.

We have to experience in order to believe. (Notice I didn't say "seen." We can experience lots of things without engaging them with our senses.) Therefore experience must come before we can even begin sharing with other people what we believe. Richard pointed out that "when you have not experienced the formless, you will be pre-occupied with the forms," which is the problem with most churches these days. Additionally, so many people cannot experience the formless because their egos need to be acknowledged for having created appealing forms for God. They have alcoholic thinking and insist that God is one thing or another. But the reality is that God is so big, we really can't comprehend her. Jim Findley compared it to Groucho Marx saying that he could never respect a club enough to join it if it wanted him for a member. I couldn't worship a God that I could actually contain within my limited cognitive capacity.

This is a lot of big brain kind of stuff and I don't necessarily have a satisfying conclusion to it all. However, I wanted to share it with you because it all resonated with me and changed my orientation a little as I keep walking forward on this path to God.

Jesus and Buddha with Richard Rohr and James Findley

Everyone at this conference is old. Seriously. Out of 950 people, I've only seen 5 or 6 other people my age (and they were in couples) and another 20 who are younger than 50. There are lots of men wearing cardigans like the one my dad wore in prison: chunky with a big collar and either wooden buttons or a zipper. The women wear funky, boxy jackets with expensive embroidery or applique and big chunky jewelry. Lots of turtlenecks are in evidence.

This reality plus the fact that I'm from Chicago cause people to ask me in wonder why I'm here. I tell them that I'm active in the emerging Christianity movement and that I want to make sure that we don't get insular so I'm attending events of different kinds of Christians. Usually, I have to give a definition of emerging Chrsitianity at that point. My definition goes a little like this:

It's a movement that is trying to follow Christ in new ways. Most of the traditions of the church were formed during the Modern era when people believed in conquering one another, either bringing enemies into the fold through victory or relegating them to hell if they could not be co-opted. But now we're in a post-Modern era in which the overwhelming amount of information makes us realize that we can't conquer everyone or even most everyone. Thus, we realize that we might not have the only access to Truth and have to live accordingly.

For the most part, people seem to understand what I'm saying. I know that the emerging church has other definitions (Mike has the best here) and that my definition leaves out some pretty salient characteristics of the movement, but mine is a definition of why I'm involved in the movement. Even more gratifying than folks' responses to my description in what I'm doing are the messages being taught by Father Richard Rohr (a Franciscan priest) and Jim Wilkins (a scholar who studied with Thomas Merton in the sixties). It is almost identical to the messages that resonate with me from within my movement.

Let me give you a couple of quotes, so that you can get a feel for it.

"Maybe the world will not survive a religion that is based in tribal consciousness." JF

"What we call globalism is also affecting religion." RR

"What you don't know anything about can be kept in a ghetto. That's not possible anymore." RR

"Instead of letting Jesus be a teacher of wisdom, we spent all of our energy insisting he was God." RR

"We have to stop thinking that Jesus spent all of his time making dogmatic statements about heaven and hell. I am convinced he was teaching us how to live here." RR

I spoke with Richard briefly when he was standing in a hallway by himself between sessions. I thanked him for the event and talked about why I was there. He told me that he had met with Brian McLaren recently and that they were planning to do some events together (Ricahrd has also recently hosted some events with Jim Wallis). That was on Friday. On Saturday, he spent about 15 minutes in one of his sessions talking about the emerging movement. He outlined what he saw as the three major aspects for this crowd of grey-hairs.

1. Honest Jesus scholarship.
2. Honesty about peace and justice.
3. Recovery of the anceient contemplative tradition which in great part has not been taught for 400-500 years. He calls this the ability to think in a both/and paradigm.

He then said that we all needed to find a practice that helps us achieve these three "pieces of the Emergent pie."  It's not just that he agrees with me that excites me. It's that this whole group of people who are so different demographically from the emerging folks agree with him. So often we associate our elders with an unwillingness to change their thinking. But no one in this group blinked an eye when he talked about the church's over-insistence on the divinity of Christ to the neglect of his teachings. Imagine how the evangelical spot-lighters would blow up at the implications of that. But Doug Pagitt made exactly that same statement at the Midwest Emergent Gathering, quoting Acts 28:30-31, the last chapter of this book on the actions of the creation of the church after Christ's resurrection and ascendency to heaven: "Paul lived for two years in his rented house. He welcomed everyone who came to visit. He urgently presented all matters of the kingdom of God. He explained everything about Jesus Christ. His door was always open." (Thanks Bible Gateway!) There were two things that Paul taught, but for the most part, the Modern church only teaches the latter. We're considered radical for pointing this out and are becoming darlings of the media who present us in bemusement to a population that has come to believe that all Christians think that loving their neighbors involves bombing them. But here is this group of people in their 60s and 70s quietly working towards the same revolution.

Sometimes the emerging church is criticized for being just another denomination. This is because the roots of the movement are post-evangelical and the evangelical church's rigidity forced a lot of people to leave and start new churches. But in the last 15 years, the post-evangelical folks have met people like me who come from mainline protestant traditions and who are able to stay within those denominations to work change form the inside. From all of our different paths, we are converging on this journey towards the Divine. That is why we call it a movement and not just a new denomination. It is so powerful to see this convergence in this group of Catholic senior citizens as well. We need elders for their patience and their wisdom. They are not so twitchy or impulsive. I feel privileged to be here among them.

Unveiled gazes

When I was a little girl, I read books about Betsy, a plain girl with brown hair who liked to read books. I like to read these books by Maud Hart Lovelace because not only did Betsy read books, but she also had friends. I lived vicariously through her.

I used to recreate many of the things that she did in her life, except I did them by myself. I built a little seat in the crook of a tree in the backyard with a cigar box to keep my treasures in. I tried to peel apples all in one swoop to see if I could figure out the name of my future husband from the shape of the peel once it fell to the table. I wrapped my hair in rag curls. I made my own calling cards from my father's old business cards.

And I walked through the house pretending that I was walking on the ceiling by looking down into a mirror as I walked around.

I am currently at a conference being hosted by Father Richard Rohr about Jesus and Buddha. As a result of the subject matter, he talks a lot about non-dual consciousness. I think what he means by that is that we are not really separate from God. "I am in you and you are in me" kind of stuff. He says that as Western society, we spend all of our time reading books and having conversations and going to school to learn about God with our heads. But he says, "It's a different medium in which you access spiritual things. God id unable to be known as an object of consciousness." At this point, he made a gesture with his hands to indicate an object and then pantomimed stuffing it into his head. He keeps saying that we need to know God at a cellular level. He calls it participatory knowing. (Incidentally, e also mentioned that women tend to be better at knowing on a bodily level.) He says that we give and take communion to remind us that you are what you eat. "When Christ passed the bread to the disciples, he didn't say, 'Take this and think about it.' The body of Christ is medicine we keep feeding you so that one day you'll believe" that you are not separate from God.

To help us know God a little better in this way, all 900 of us were sent out on a walking meditation through the neighborhood, traveling wherever the spirit led. He gave us mirror medallions: circles of mirror about 2 inched in diameter strung on a cord to go around our necks. One side was purely reflective and the other side was also reflective but also had a picture of the inner eye and the words of a verse from 2 Corinthians: "Our unveiled gaze receives and reflects the brightness of God." He took us to wear the medallion with the blank side facing out and the inner eye facing in towards our hearts. A mirror can only take in what it sees, without bias; this represents the unveiled gaze. While we walked, we were supposed to meditate on the image of God coming in through the mirror and being transferred into our hearts, then reflected out of our eyes. Knowing God bodily.

I found myself meditating on what constituted an unveiled gaze, practically. I think it means that we should try to be objective in our observations but I also think that unveiled means that we should be open to others. Vulnerable. Honest. I also found myself singing a meditation song from a particularly powerful experience on the island. "There's a river of birds in migration: a nation of women with wings." I also repeated the verse like a mantra while I walked. I thought about much my dad would like Albuquerque, with it meandering park paths, little streets, public sculpture and museums. I looked at the mountains and relived playing basketball and looking at the same mountains with my friends Dan, Doug and Bill in high school when we were here on a mission trip. I also remembered wandering into the foothills after dark to find the Native American cemetery, which is one of the only times that I have felt truly sacrilegious. I forgot that I was was even wearing a mirror until I saw the setting sunlight flash onto a cactus next to the sidewalk. I was a little shocked at its unexpectedness.

This made me look down at my mirror which made me remember walking through the house all by myself looking down into a mirror, pretending I was walking ont he ceiling, just like Betsy, Tacy and Tib. But as I dropped my head to look into my mirror that lay flat on my chest, the muscle memory brought up the words that my yoga teacher uses every week. When you bow your head, raise your chest up to meet it because this is symbolic of the seat of the mind bowing to the seat of the heart: the intellect giving way to the spirit.

So, I raised my chest, bowed my head and walked on the ceiling to learn bodily that I am in God and God is in me.

30 Sermons You'd Never Hear in Church

In Shane Claiborn's book Irresistible Revolution, he recommended a magazine called Geez. I investigated the website and promptly spent my share of Grandma's Christmas present on a subscription. I have not resented that decision for a minute. They speak with my voice and by that I mean
-they have the same sense of humor combined with
-a desire to be fair (with a somewhat guilty partial motivation that the added value of objectivity is the ability to take the moral high ground in the ultimate argument) combined with
-a real sense of anguish for the way that the traditional church has treated me and people I love combined with
-a post-modern ironic tone combined with
-a need to live out Christ's teaching in an authentic and relevant way.

They have sent me an email outlining a contest they are sponsoring, seeking sermons that we wouldn't dare to actually give. I share it with you here in case you have something you want to say.

Dear friend of Geez:

For our summer issue we're holding a contest. We want short, 750-word "sermons" that you'd never hear in church. And we want photos as well. First prize is $500, 2nd is $400 and 3rd is $300 for each category.

We'll publish the winners (and others) in the summer issue, Geez No. 10. Enter as often as you like. Usually it's $33 for the first entry and $15 for subsequent entries. But current subscribers are eligible to enter for $15. See details below.

Please forward this notice as far as possible.

Happy sermonizing,

Aiden Enns, Will Braun
Editors, Geez magazine

-----------------------------------------------
A CALL FOR CONTEST ENTRIES
Geez magazine, Issue 10
----------------------------------------------

30 Sermons You'd Never Hear in Church and Photo Contest

The pews are filled, the preacher is out of town, and the pulpit is all yours. You step up to the old wooden bulwark. Everyone is quiet. You've been rehearsing this in your mind for years. You pause, steady your voice, let a slight smirk spread across your lips, and begin. . . .

Here's your chance to pound the pulpit. In a world of super-powered faith, extremist religion, extremely commercialized church and atheist resurgence what word shall be spoken to the faithful? In a world of polarization, energy addiction, disparity and restless souls, what word do the faithful have for the rest of humanity?

Whether you're an amateur prophet, ranting atheist, wily Buddhist, social gospel evangelist, caring shepherd of the flock or a bona-fide preacher with something too hot for Sunday morning, Geez issue 10 is your soap box.

You've got 750 words to exhort, inspire, pontificate, dream, console, convert, instruct, encourage, admonish or beseech. If you wish, suggest a brief lectionary reading-Biblical or other-to accompany your sermon.

If the pulpit isn't the place for you, Geez is also looking for your best photos from the fringes of faith and the front lines of social change. Think: holy mischief, holy grit, holy kitsch, or just plain holy. Remember that in Geez there’s room for reverence and irreverence, from both within and beyond the realm of Christendom.

Sermon Prizes:
1st: $500
2nd: $400
3rd: $300

Photo Prizes:
1st: $500
2nd: $400
3rd: $300

We'll include the winners and a selection of runners-up among the 30 sermons in the Summer '08 issue of Geez magazine.

Entry fee: $33 (per sermon or up to three photos)
Includes a one year subscription to Geez, or extension of your current subscription. Multiple submissions accepted: $15 for each additional entry, subscription applies to first entry only. Geez subscribers are eligible to enter for $15 (does not include a subscription extension).

Deadline: March 31, 2008

How to enter:

1. Send sermon/photos and bionote
Send your sermon/photo entry (750 words max.) and a paragraph about yourself (judges won't see this, but we need bio info on winners). Include captions for photos, send low res JPGs (1 MB max), we'll ask for hi res as needed.
Reply to email above, send to contest@geezmagazine.org

Or send here:
Geez Sermon/Photo Contest
264 Home Street
Winnipeg MB R3G 1X3
Canada

2. Include payment (three methods)
- pay online at http://geezmagazine.org/orders
- by check to "Geez magazine" (address above)
- by phone, call our office at (204) 772-9610, have credit card handy

Notes:
1. Since we'll receive many payments separate from entries we will send you an email to confirm we've received your entry and payment.

2. Only previously unpublished sermons and photos are eligible. If you preached a sermon and want to enter, that's okay, just tell us the history of your entry.

Questions? Contact our Contest Coordinator by email, contest@geezmagazine.org
or phone, (204) 772-9610

I will definitely enter. I have two totally different perspectives floating around in my head so I think I'll try to put both down on paper if school doesn't burn out my writing circuits first. Let me know if you enter and we'll compare stories.

only the Absolute Truth, if you please

Christy (one of my favorite readers because she comments) shared this anecdote with me in an email and then gave me permission to share it with you all.

Yesterday I had an interview for a job for a faith based poverty relief org, and it only lasted 10 minutes, because I couldn't say I believed in all the stuff in their bylaws about theology - including the "personhood of Satan" and the infallibility of the Bible. It was funny. I wish they had said something about that stuff before I showed up though! They actually asked if I was ok with the salary before the interview, but they didn't ask if I was a fundamentalist Christian.

The story makes me laugh because of the irony involved in the manifestation of the company's viewpoint. They understand capitalism and that different agents will have different demand curves for salary. However, they are so stuck in their own faith-system that it never occurs to them that someone might have a different set of beliefs than they do about how to be Christian .

Doesn't it make the truth that one has discovered stronger each time one considers an alternative and rejects it?

We are not alone

Several months ago, I attended an evening with Spencer Burke and others (find summaries of this meeting here and here) and we talked about whether or not this emerging Christianity thing is getting "shrink-wrapped" because it is now marketable. In other words, have we gotten too popular for our own good? Will the possibility of making money off of our conversations begin to bind us into a certain form because that is what is expected of us?  

I think that one of the things that will save us from that fate is maintaining awareness that we're not the only ones who think this way now and we're not the only ones who have ever thought this way.

This point was driven home to me over the holidays when I got to have a 15 minute conversation with Phil Jackson, a nationally-recognized innovator in the field of urban youth ministries.

I like Phil a lot. He's terrible with names but he wants to get it right and every time he sees me, he tries out a new white-girl-suburban name to see if it fits. Elizabeth. Jessica. Jennifer.  Maybe even once Veronica. I love it and mock him for it all at the same time.

While we were talking, he began to ask me good, solid pastor questions about the church that I'm attending.  Or, maybe he didn't.  I'll talk at length about Wicker Park Grace at the drop of a hat lately.  I also talked a little about the emerging Christianity movement.  He did ask me good questions about that.  Finally, he asked about whether urban churches were part of the movement because "they're been emergent for a long time because they had to be."

You best believe I'm going to figure out a way to sit that man down for lunch to get him to talk about that more.  I'm seriously more interested in the potential of a partnership between CCDA and the emerging Christianity movement than I am in the things I'm studying at school, which are supposed to be my future.  Here's hoping I can apply my policy skills to  fostering conversation and action if it turns out that God wants me to follow up on my interests.

On the similar theme of not becoming insulated within the dominant circles of this "movement,"  I'm going to a conference in two weeks in New Mexico, led by Father Richard Rohr about Jesus and Buddha that involved much contemplation, information about how to live more spiritually and even some yoga.  Nothing in the description uses any word that starts with "emerg . . ."

The ulterior motive of the trip involves giving me some space to re-set my spiritual center through worship and study.  I know.  I know.  I should have done that over break.  But apparently, I didn't.  I keep making bad decisions.  In the resultant emotional turmoil, I keep fucking things up.   Little things that I normally have control over.  Like parking.  Or planning a morning with more than two activities.  Or sharing a lane at the pool.  I just can't get it right. I feel like I've lost my center so I can't catch the balls that are flying at me unless they come right to my glove. I'm trying to balance on one leg so I keep falling when I don't want to let the ball that's a little over my head get past.  

Finally, I was jolted into this final realization that my network doesn't have a monopoly on postmodern thoughts about the Divine.  I was reading The Spirituality of Imperfection, a book that has made a profound impact on my soul to the point that it sits in my bathroom to give me daily reminders about how to look clearly at this adventure we call life. 

This is what I read:

Those who think of themselves as "spiritual rather than religious" tend to equate religion with belief, and therefore with doctrine and authority; with worship, and therefore with the organization of community and its boundaries; with rewards and punishments, and therefore with greed and fear. Such negative consequences need not always follow from the religious impulse: they are indeed perversions of it. But as historian of theology Jaroslav Pelikan confessed with more than a little pain: "Religious belief is notorious for encouraging a sense of 'us' against 'them.' . . . The words of the hypocrite in the New Testament, 'God I thank thee that I am not as other men as,' are, unfortunately, a prayer that has been uttered, or at any rate felt, everywhere."

How does spirituality differ from this? In the first place, spirituality has nothing to do with boundaries: Only the material can be bounded, and the first thing that "the spiritual" is not is material. The term spirituality was first used in ancient times as a contrast to materialism and signified attention to spiritual as opposed to material realities. "Spiritual realities" were understood quite simply as those that, like the wind or the frangrance of the rose, one experienced but could not literally see, touch, or especially, possess in the sense of command.

Look at that distinction between a set of things that must be believed and living in a way that gets us closer to God's intent for our lives.  Look at that description of the modern world in which everything needs to conquer (command) everything else versus the postmodern world in which discovery is the objective.  Did Brian McLaren write this?

This book is actually written by Ernest Kurtz and Katherine Ketcham and is about the underlying theology that is celebrated in Alcoholics Anonymous meetings.  In watching my brother and his friends, I have often said that if more churches were like AA meetings, everyone would go to church.  Recovering alcoholics know and continuously remind one another that they are broken simply because they are human and therefore, they need to submit to God, even if she is represented by that doorknob over there.  They find strength to work towards being better (at everything) in their mutual admission of not being very together in the first place.

People in churches often talk about being broken before.  But then they found Jesus and now everything is shiny.  But that's not the truth.  We continue to be broken even after we realize God's grace exists.  But we don't find strength in that truth because we don't admit it. 

 

When you glue things together, often you rough up the two surfaces before applying the glue so that the glue has something to grip.  If you try to glue two smooth surfaces together, the glue often peels off.

When we try to create community by only offering our shiny and smooth sides, the bonds we form with other people are not very strong and can be broken easily by applying pressure from a different angle.

In the emerging Christianity movement, we have a lot to learn from the experience of others: urban churches, Catholic contemplatives, and recovering alcoholics.  I'm excited to get started.

Cheerleader

An interesting post over at Hemant's Friendly Atheist blog.  A woman had a fairly heated opinion of the non-profit that I used to work for, so my friend Mike asked me to poke my head in and share my experience.  I guess I went a little over-board, but I believe in supporting what's working rather than letting the small imperfection (i.e. humanity) of something negate everything.

Check it out and leave a comment if you want.  Hemant's pretty cool.

December up/rooted.city meeting

On Monday, December 17, 12 of us gathered at Wicker Park Grace to drink mulled cider, eat a variety of cookie that involved cinnamon and create a safe space for discussion regarding the use of liturgy (The Lord's Prayer) in these meetings and our unique characteristic of being attractive to agnostics, atheists and folks of other faiths. That last category included Menachem, who identified himself as part of the emerging Judaism movement, which was super-cool to hear about, in my book. We also spent a good portion of time telling the stories of our lives to strengthen the community that we're creating.

It has been awhile since the meeting (almost a month), so this summary will lack a certain immediacy in the retelling. Helen wrote about it in a much more timely fashion here. I haven't read it yet because I didn't want it to color my own report, but Helen's always interesting and reliable in her perspective.

These are the quotes (possibly paraphrased) that I wrote down during the meeting. I think they represent well the flow of the conversation.

"A concatenation of words can't offend. It offends as a symbol." -Steve about the Lord's Prayer
"We're pursuing truth. It shouldn't surprise us that atheists come." -James
"The word truth, I try to stay away from because so many Christians use it to describe absolute belief rather than their experiences." -Helen
"What if we called it the Lord's Poem?" -Lyndi
"Liturgy inevitably draws a line. Why do people recite words together?" -Nanette
"How can we better serve each other and love God? How can we be human together?" -Lyndi
"I want to say, 'Your church would have a really hard time with me,' but I shouldn't because you're [indicating the group] part of your church." -Helen

The major ideas that I got from the conversation were that we all valued the group for creating a space for theological conversation but at the same time, many Christians liked that the conversation could tie together it's loose ends at the end of the meeting with an affirmation that something, probably God, connected us together in a common purpose. The atheists, agnostics, and others present were extremely gracious in their desire not to "take that affirmation away from us" but in retrospect, I personally don't like the divide that creates in the group. I have a real desire for the group to be organic in its purpose, forming naturally around the people that compose it. And the reality is that although up/rooted has some very Christian statements of purpose as it's founding principles, this city branch of it is composed of people that are not necessarily Christian. Doug Pagitt talked at the Midwest Emergent Gathering (audio here) about how the adoption of two Hispanic kids into his family changed the family as well as the lives of the kids. He used this personal anecdote as a metaphor for the emerging church. I think that if we believe in a generous orthodoxy, we must not simply tolerate and make space for those that do not claim Christ as a leader, but embrace them as truly family, changing each other as we meet and are vulnerable in telling our stories, expressing our opinions and asking our questions. (Did you notice how many of the quotes that struck me were questions?)  If we believe that a loving God is at the center and that we're all simply on different paths heading toward the same goal, we should be able to trust that -through our thirst- she'll keep us traveling in the right direction regardless of who we find to travel with on the journey.

So, some suggestion of possible alternatives to reciting the Lord's Prayer at the end of meetings involve:

-acknowledging that not all present necessarily agree but asking their indulgence as the rest of us pray

-ending in some sort of silent, personal prayer

-reciting something else

There were probably others but grad school is really getting in the way of my ability to remember them.  I'm really sorry.  Please add what's missing in any comments to this post.  

We tried the silent prayer and although we didn't discuss it, I was personally dissatisfied with it.  It didn't give quite the sense of "tying up the loose ends" of the discussion, as James said.  I'd love to try the recitation of other words.  Please suggest possible texts (secular and religious) that are more inclusive either in the comments section of this post or in an email to me.  I'll figure out a way to let the group vote on which ones are best once I've received some suggestions.

I am so thankful for the role this up/rooted.city group is playing in my life.  I am itching for our next meeting, which won't be until Monday, January 28 because of the MLK holiday.  We'll be meeting again at Wicker Park Grace, which is located at 1741 N. Western and we'll start at 7:00 with the intent that folks will be able to start heading back home around 9:00.

Daniel in India

My brother Daniel and his fiance Meena are in India now, visiting her family and shopping for their wedding. He has recently sent an update letter and a couple of the things he has said really intrigue me. One is worth sharing with you.

"There will be poor always." I think somebody famous said that. In India (from my 48 hours of exposure) there appears to be a different mentality of the poor in juxtaposition to the U.S. They are a part of life, as are the wealthy, and they must play their part in this life. There is not the mentality that they should pull themselves up by the bootstraps and make something of themselves, or that god has punished them.

There is something appealing about this mindset. He has found the opposite of what is most objectionable about American attitudes towards poverty. Absolutely, I think it's awful that so many Americans both resourced and under-resourced would agree that poverty is a punishment. And certainly, Daniel is quoting the words of Jesus correctly. I feel a little itchy with this view, though, because it feels a little conflicting with my interpretation of Christ's commandment to love others as myself. I would want to be taught how to pull myself up by my bootstraps. I would not want my place in this life to be one that required charity for survival. It's a difficult tension that I'm not sure how to resolve.

Of course this is just funny:

I have enclosed a few photos (hopefully), the first is of me touching Divinder Mama and Indu auntie's feet. They are my host's as well as my new aunt and uncle. In India you touch the feet as a sign of respect and then you receive a blessing and in some cases money (notice my left hand). I'm in the black so far on this trip because I keep touching everybody's feet, but I think that well is gonna run dry soon.

Trying Not To Be Boneheads

I'm not sure if I have mentioned this before, but I have been fortunate enough to be offered the facilitator's position to begin and run gatherings of a city branch of the up/rooted cohort, which is basically a monthly meeting of any folks that need to bounce themselves off of other folks who are trying to figure out how to follow Jesus (or just what they think about him) when they don't feel comfortable in traditional churches.

This month's meeting of up/rooted.city was definitely a balm for my soul. I had spent the day cranky and living inside my head, replaying angry thoughts and worrying about the future. However, once I arrived at Wicker Park Grace, I was pulled out of my head because the other folks that were there invited me into their hearts as they told their stories.

Twelve of us shared apples, celery, caramel sauce, peanut butter and apple juice for a little over two hours as we talked. Four of us had attended the first meeting but eight of us were brand new to the gathering and the new dynamic was interesting and good. I liked hearing that all of the attendees were brought to the meeting through the internet somehow and that many folks were meeting with each other independently for lunch.

The long-distance award goes to Bill, Helen's dad, who came all the way from Oxford, England to meet with us. Bill said many interesting things, but I was most intrigued by the logic of one of his statements. He pointed out that since church attendance is so much higher in the US than in the UK, it's reasonable to assume that Christians have a fair amount of influence on the policy that the US makes. He then talked a little bit about our continued use of capital punishment, which he believes is barbaric. He pointed out that capital punishment must have the support of Christians in the US since we are such a large majority and he questioned how that could be when God commands us to have mercy as we have been shown mercy. His voice was an intriguing addition to the group.

The group included an atheist, an almost atheist, an agnostic, a former neo-gnostic, a couple of pastors, former and current evangelicals, former and current mainline protestants, and folks who are still looking for a way to describe their faiths. Beautifully, all of us are actively examining ourselves and the world for God. Over the course of the evening, we built trust with each other, telling stories and asking questions. I particularly appreciated Helen's good questions. We talked about literalism in biblical interpretation, the use of Christian music in schools as an art form, manipulation as evangelism, the teaching of some churches that "doubt is bad" and the funding of church plants, in addition to other topics.

The best question asked, in my mind, came from Steve, the self-proclaimed "atheist husband" of Lainie, who asked, "Wouldn't it be a more enjoyable world to live in if the Christian message that was heard came from Christians who weren't boneheads?"

Amen, brother. I think that's probably something everyone can get behind.

The Gods Aren't Angry Tour

My brothers don't go to church.

Interestingly, though, when they do go to church, they have very specific expectations for what happens when we get there. There are specific rituals and songs that they want to sing. Since it is usually Christmas or Easter when they plunk their skinny little asses into the pews, their desires are often met. That's right, my brothers are Creasters. Creasters are folks who only come to church on Christmas and Easter, usually tagging along with family members (parents) who go more regularly but often independently out of some vague sense like my brothers' that there are certain rituals that need to be attended to on a somewhat yearly basis. I think there are other people that show up out of curiosity or yearning and the fact that the country recognizes the holidays gives them a push to explore. Actually, I shouldn't speculate. There is probably a rich complexity of reasons why people can be classified as Creasters. I'm a little intrigued by it.

So, anyway, my brother Daniel believes that the pastor who preaches on both Easter and Christmas should only preach on one topic: the Good News. When Daniel wants the pastor to preach the Good News, he means the good news that "No matter what you've done, God loves you. See, he sent his son to die for you." He gets very upset if a pastor tries to get fancy and preach on some other topic, like the history of Easter celebrations or the four women in Jesus' lineage. He thinks it's a waste of a church full of people for whom that message is not run-of-the-mill and familiar to the point that they require something more innovative in order not to be bored by hearing the same thing again and again. It is a waste of an opportunity to tell people who don't know that God loves them that God loves them.

This is a man who doesn't go to church.

He wants people to know that God loves them.

Adamantly.

Trust me, it's adamantly.

He wants people to know that God loves them.

So, a search of my blog will indicate that I've been pretty attentive to Rob Bell over the last year or so. OnMonday, I went to hear him speak when he came to town on his The Gods Aren't Angry Tour. The tagline for this talk is "Part anthropology, part history, part deconstruction - this is new material that Rob hasn't taught before, exploring how humans invented religion to make themselves feel better." From that, I expected a somewhat academic lecture (that's the report about how his last tour went) aimed at a mixed audience of Christians and any non-Christian co-workers they could arm-twist into coming. Certainly, I tried to get some of my secular friends to come with because I felt like I could assure them that it wouldn't be a bait-and-switch. I trust Rob to give them the freedom to think about what he said without trying to scare them into conversion. Unfortunately, we have a mid-term tomorrow so none of my school friends could come and another friend is two centimeters dilated and could give birth today or two weeks from now.

I suppose this is a reasonable place to talk about how I feel about evangelism.

Generally, I'm against it.

The Christian community has made such disgusting historical display of evangelism and the almost inevitable prostelytization that I would prefer to sacrifice it altogether than risk the harm it can cause to even a few people. Now, this is easier for me to say because I don't think the afterlife is the payoff for spiritual people. But, I know that there are a lot of people out there who will disagree with my priorities because eternity seems like such a long time and I really respect a lot of those people. Bob Lupton responds to this better than I ever could in his book, And You Call Yourself a Christian: Toward Responsible Charity:

"Do you believe in a literal heaven and a literal hell?" one sharp young theology student retorted. I knew the rationale behind his question. If you believe that either eternal bliss or eternal damnation await every person after death, then the most loving act is to present the truth of the Gospel to as many people as possible and thus save them from everylasting destruction.

It's a compelling argument. The problem, of course, is that it leads to viewing others as souls instead of people. And when we opt for rescuing souls over loving neighbors, compassionate acts can soon degenerate into evagelism techniques. Pressing human needs depreciate in importance, and the spirit becomes the only thing worth caring about. Thus, the powerful leaven of unconditional, sacrificial love is diminished in society and the wounded are left lying beside the road."

My church interacts a lot with people who have been wounded by sometimes well-meaning Christians who saw them as a soul rather than a person or who were just looking to add to the notches on their batismal fonts or who counted how many people showed up on Sunday morning rather than whether the people that showed up were getting closer to Jesus. (Yay to Bill Hybels, by the way, for addressing that last particularly difficult problem in his own church.) Spencer Burke talks about those folks as being innoculated against Jesus by being exposed to only a token amount of Christianity injected by an often cold and sharp needle. Often, what they hear from the evangelism message is that Jesus will only love them if they change to be more like the Christians in that particular church. That is not the Good News. So, if the evangelists' goal is to save souls, their work is counter-productive in a huge percentage of cases.

However, there are a lot of people out there who are lonely. Who believe they are worthless. Who want to talk to God but flinch because of the previous times the Church has slapped them. They are leading the lives of quiet desperation that Thoreau talked about.

I want them to know that God loves them.

I don't care if they go to my church.

I don't care if they call themselves Christian.

I don't care if they say the magic words and get baptized.

I care that they have a community.

I care that they believe that they are valuable.

I care that they be able to talk to God when they need to.

I want for them life in all its fullness and I don't care how they find that.

So, although I don't evangelize, I do talk about God a lot and I talk about going to church and I tell people that they are always welcome to come with me and I invite them to go see Rob Bell. Because I think I have found ones of the ways to have life in all its fullness and if my machete-hacking through the jungle of experience that has been my life makes someone else's life a little easier, I shall not have lived in vain, to paraphrase Emily Dickinson. I also usually tell them that I believe they're going to Heaven no matter what, so they should feel free to refuse or accept my offers without worrying about how it will affect our friendship. I hope I'm treating them like people and not like souls to be bartered and traded by doing this.

So, enough with the aside about evangelism. I was talking about Rob Bell. And my brother's expectations as a Creaster. And my desire for all people to know that they are valuable enough to be loved.

I wish that more lonely, anxious people had been there because it was a slam-dunk Easter sermon.

Now, I could be wrong. But the Vic certainly looked like it was full of young, hip Christians, many of whom I knew and myself included. The theater seemed to hold the proverbial choir that was being preached to.

It's a weird feeling. I don't want Rob or this emerging church movement to become a Billy Graham tent revival, but he speaks so eloquently, and with such respect for the humanity and intelligence of his audience that it's like I feel the reverse of my brother's Easter morning disappointment. Instead of the pastor missing an opportunity to look people in need in the eyes and to tell them without doubt that God loves them, I feel like people in need missed an opportunity to have their eyes looked into because all the seats were taken by folks who didn't know their seat would be better sacrificed to someone else.

Although I didn't realize it until now, I guess my response to that has been to talk about it a lot. You know, "I went to see this cool speaker last night." It's created some interesting conversations with folks, especially over the drinks we needed after our last mid-term. I suppose hearing the Good News from a friend while putting back a Long Island Iced Tea (yuck) is probably better than hearing from stranger who just seems like any other televangelist on the surface except for the funky glasses and allusion to Gordon Gano (which absolutely flopped, pretty much proving my hip young Christian theory). "I hope you know that this will go down on your permanent record." Perfect rhythm and and inflection.

I can only hope to be so cool.

An Emerging Manifesto of Hope

I have just finished reading An Emerging Manifesto of Hope, which is a compilation of essays by a variety of people engaged in trying to create a new kind of church. For instance, my pastor wrote the third chapter. One of the beautiful things about the emerging church is that one truth that ties most of us together is that following God in the context of the current culture is less about everyone agreeing about what is "right" and more about having room to ask questions and to hear God's voice for ourselves. God is so big that s/he doesn't fit into anyone's box, right? So, all of these different essays create an overview of how people are thinking about church, rather than a core set of doctrines. Because of that, I found that some authors resonated with me more than others. Some topics seemed more important than others. I think it's the kind of book that everyone who reads it will come away remembering different ideas. With that in mind, I typed out the passages in the book that I underlined as particularly true. You know, those passages that - when you read them - make you think, "Damn, there is no way that I could ever say it better than that." Also, they make you think sit back in your chair with a little bit more peace in your chest because you realize that you're not the only one who has had that same experience. That, by the way, is my definition of art. Objects of creation that make us feel less alone because we know through them that some parts of human nature are universal.

So, here are the parts of the book that I consider art. I'm sure that if I read it again years from now, there would be different parts that spoke particularly to me. I'm also sure that the recurring themes in these quotes will be revealing regarding who I am and what I think is important. I'd love to get some thoughts in the comments about how these ideas affected you. Choose one quote and write a couple of sentences regarding your response. Agree? Disagree? Laugh? Cry? Why?

Mark Scandrette, "Growing Pains: The Messy and Fertile Process of Becoming"

I give you this unsolicited advice. Make your own life. Host your own emergence. Stop reading so many books and blogs. Start your own conversations, and be a caring friend. The most important conversations happen between people who have the potential to live out their story together.

Heather Kirk-Davidoff, "Meeting Jesus at the Bar: Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Evangelism"

Relational evangelism is not just a change in tactic. It is a change in the reson we engage in evangelism, shifting the focus from recruitment to the cultivation of relationships that are an end in themselves, indispecsable to our spiritual journeys.

If we took these experiences seriously, we would soon realize that developing and tending to relationships are perhaps the key spiritual disciplines of many adults in their twenties and thirties (and often beyond). While we may also pray and read Scripture regularly, while we may chant with monks or do yoga or go on a silent retreat, our relationships with others give us the most insight into who God is and where God is leading us. . . And it is often through learning to love each other that we find ourselves opening to God in new and deeper ways.

Nanette Sawyer, "What Would Huckleberry Do? A Relational Ethic as the Jesus Way"

Thinking back on that pivotal interaction with my childhood minister, I believe the whole conversation missed the mark in a big way. He was defining Christian identity as assent to a list of certain beliefs, and he was defining Christian community as those people who concur with those beliefs. This didn't leave any room for questions, doubts, or growth in faith. It made community acceptance of each other completely conditional on having already arrived at a particular intellectual destination. In asking me if I was a Christian, and accepting my preteen answer, he essentially told me that I wasn't part of the community. I wasn't in; I was out. And so I found myself spiritually homeless.

I like to call it paradoxology - the glory of paradox, paradox-doxology - which takes us somewhere we wouldn't be capable of going if we thought we had everything all wrapped up, if we thought we had attained full comprehension. The commitment to embracing the paradox and resisting the impulse to categorize people (ourselves included) is one of the ways we follow Jesus into that larger mysterious reality of light and love.

If we can come together and eat and live and serve together, then we will be changed.

Carla Barnhill, "The Postmodern Parent: Shifting Paradigms for the Ultimate Act of Re-Creation"

Indeed, parenting is about more than raising children. It is about investing in our hopes for the world. It is about joining in with our Creator in the ultimate act of re-creation. It is about pointing our children toward the work God has for them and giving them the resources to do it. It is about celebrating the goodness of life with God, a life that looks more like the kingdom with every generation.

Sherry and Geoff Maddock, "An Ever-Renewed Adventured of Faith: Notes From a Community"

Paul reminds the church at Philippi that they must work out their salvation with fear and trembling (Phil. 2:12 NIV). The language he uses here is plural. In the South we might use the word "Y'all" to get the same effect - "work out y'all's salvation." It is our contention that salvation is more than personal renewal; it is at best a collective experience.

We believe that when we live in missional ways, we discover God most intimately where we encounter other kinds of intimacy.

Many of us had to weed out the desire to wear exhaustion and busyness as badges of honor; somehow we imagined that these proved our commitment.

Thomas Malcolm Olson, "Jailhouse Faith: A Community of Jesus in an Unlikely Place"

Each time I attend, I'm struck by the posture of humility and vulnerability people willingly adopt with one another. It's contagious. There's an attitude of "I don't have it all figured out and I need your help," which seems like good theology to me. Recovery groups are the easiest, most natural way people can "bear one another's burdens, and thereby fulfill the law of Christ" (Gal. 6:2 NASB). The dynamic of the group becomes the catalyst for living faithful lives.

Every person needs one safe place where he or she is able to stop pretending, a place of ruthless honesty and unconditional love where no one is allowed to fly underneath the radar.

Adam Walker Cleveland, "Presbymergent: The Story of One Mainliner's Quest to Be a Loyal Radical"

One of the things I appreciate most about these friendships is the unspoken understanding that it is acceptable to question, critique and deconstruct much of what we think and believe.

Brian D. McLaren, "Church Emerging: Or Why I Still Use the Word Postmodern but with Mixed Feelings"

We are rich in resources gained at the expense of the colonized (money, technology, time, freedom) that can be used to serve them and to foster a more equitable and collaborative future.

Will Samson, "The End of Reinvention: Mission Beyond Market Adoption Cycles"

Even when explaining a very real event, such as a car crash, each person interprets the phenomenon through his or her own lens. How much more do we interpret God, a deeply metaphysical entity, through our own lenses?

It is helpful to have a common understanding of belief to which all who claim to be Christians can subscribe. But it also may be true that councils like that of Nicea set a precendent for the notion that people can be a part of the story of God through their belief in Jesus, regardless of how they act.

Individual conversion is vital and small-group involvement and church attendance are good things, but perhaps these metrics tend to be emphasized as measurements of the health of the church because they are easier to evaluate than the hard work of asking if the people who are following God in the way of Jesus are, in fact, becoming more and more conformed to the way of Jesus.

Barry Taylor, "Converting Christianity: The End and Beginning of Faith"

One thing that it does signify, almost universally, is the rejection of traditional faiths as a primary source of connection to the divine. I would argue that traditional faiths are no longer the first resource that people go to for developing and nurturing their spiritual lives. Instead, traditional faiths function more as secondary archives from which new spiritual permutations are created.

The future of faith does not lie in the declaration of certainties, but in the living out of uncertainty.

This is not a slide into relativism but a commitment to nondogmatic specificity. We can tell the gospel story without resorting to competition, exclusivism or elitism.

The concerns of religion are different from those of faith. Religion is concerned with right belief, faith with believing in the right way. This was somethng that Jesus confronted continually in his encounters with the Pharisees.

For too long we have gone out into the world to tell people what we think they ought to know rather than seeking to discover what they are interested in and where they are looking for answers.

Sally Morgenthaler, "Leadership in a Flattened World: Grassroots Culture and the Demise of the CEO Model"

. . . There is no irony here. Machine parts don't have minds or muscles to flex. They don't contribute to the process or innovate improvements. Machine parts simply do their job, which is, of course, to keep the machine functioning.
The mechanical paradigm or organization largely explains why modern church leaders are trained as CEOs, not shepherds. Sheep have their own ideas of what, where, and when they want to eat. They may not want to lie down by quiet water and go to sleep at eight. They just might want to check out the watercress down by the streambed. Or they might want to head out over the next ridge and see if there are any other flocks out there. Conveniently, machine parts don't get ideas. The just get to work, and they work according to specification.
Church members who don't comprehend this three-decade shift in leadership paradigms are frustrated that their CEO pastor is so self-absorbed. They were loking for a shepherd - albeit one with a big name and a big flock. Instead, they ended up with a "my-way-or-the-highway" autocrat - a top-down aficionado whose ecclesiastical machine whirs only to the sound of his own voice and functions tightly tightly within the parameters of his own limited vision.

Samir Selmanovic, "The Sweet Problem of Inclusiveness: Finding Our God in the Other"

This choice between accepting the name of Christ and being Christlike has been placed before millions of people in human history and today.

It is worth being reminded that Christ never proclaimed, "Christianity is here. Join it." But Christ did insist, "The kingdom of God is here. Enter it."

In the Old Testament, God repeatedly rebuked his followers for treating him as a manageable idol, someone they could actually avoid through the means of religion. Christians can conceive of things like money, sex, and power being idols. But the Christian religion itself being an idol? Certainly, if we proclaim that Chritianity itself is immune from idolatry, then we have come to believe that, finally, God has become "contained" by Christianity.

The question begs to be asked: would God who gives enough revelation for people to be judged but not enough revelation to be saved be a God worth worshipping? Never!

Dwight J. Friesen, "Orthoparadoxy: Emerging Hope for Embracing Difference"

Jesus did not announce ideas or call people to certain beliefs as much as he invited people to follow him into a way of being in the world.

The hope is not to defeat, debate, condemn, or even convert the other; rather the hope is to live reconciled with the other, not avoiding differences but seeing them as an expression of the largeness and diverse beauty of God.

Anyone with access to the internet, television, radio, and newspapers encounters more information than has been availalbe at any other time in human history, but we risk ignorance because we tend to receive information passively, relying more on experts than on our own experiences to make sense of what we take in. Talking with others is a way out of this bind.

Conversations matter because the people with whom we converse matter; thus, conversations offer a human face - created in the image of God - to what otherwise might be reduced to a abstract idea. This kind of engagement is less about knowledge and more about wisdom.

Orthoparadox theologians seek not to defend their claims as much as present the fullness of their convictions and beliefs as an act of service.

Developing a life of orthoparadoxy, which fosters relationships by allowing strong conviction to remain in dialogue and surrenders the will to exclude on the basis of those same convictions, may sound impossible. Let there beno doubt, seeing connections where we once saw difference will require nothing less than divine intervention; may it be so.

Dan Kimball, "Humble Theology: Re-exploring Doctrine While Holding On to Truth"

Yes, we have the Spirit to guide us, but even so, there are many godly, wonderful, Spirit-filled people who sincerely study and pray and ask the Spirit to guide them, yet they come to different conclusions.

Chris Erdman, "Digging up the Past: Karl Barth (the Reformed Giant) as Friend to the Emerging Church"

I wonder if that's not what many of us sense and hope for - the freedom of God and the church from the ideological captivities that make God a commodity to be bought and sold, and the church an institution that gobbles up resources, panders to cultural whims, and resists the renewing, emerging winds that feel like life to us.

Rodolpho Carrasco, "A Pund of Social Justice: Beyond Fightig for a Just Cause"

Perhaps justice, in the end, is giving a person everything that God wants for him or her to have, not just material or social goods but the quiet assurance that, "Before you were born, I knew you - and loved you. I still do."

Deborah and Ken Loyd, "Our Report Card in the Year 2057: A Reflection on Women's Rights, Poverty and Oppression"

We would like to suggest that homogeneity is the curse, rather than the poverty.

Randy Woodley, "Restoring Honor in the Land: Why the Emerging Church Can't Dodge the Issue"

An understanding of shalom has been one of the most neglected concepts in the modern church. The rendering of this word as "peace" in most translations of the Scriptures is anemic and inadequate. One should not underestimate the importance of shalom, for without this base of understanding, it is impossible to understand God or humanity.

Doug Pagitt, "This is Just the Beginning: Living Our Great-Grandchildren's History"

If our grandchildren speak of our time as characterized by a cultural niche expression of faith specially formulated for Gen-whatever, we will have left them very little. No one is 2140 will need examples of trendy cultural tricks masquerading as missional innovation.

If our grandchildren are forced to speak of our day as a time filled with those who saw faith as the prized possession of the insider with member benefits, we will have failed. If we leave a version of the gospel that is ultimately for the benefit of the faithful and not the whole world, we have missed something. Our grandchildren must be able to say about us: "They did not see themselves as end users of the gospel. Faith was not value-added living, but life-giving to all the earth."

Well, there you have it. If you made it this far, I'd definitely love to hear what your response to my abridged version of the book is. What do these writers communicate about the emerging movement that I haven't written about yet? What was new to you or reinforced to you? Or like I said above, choose one quote, copy/paste it into the comment section and write a couple of sentences summarizing your response. Agree? Disagree? Laugh? Cry? Why?

Let's build a little community, shall we?

My first meme

So, although I've been blogging at this site for just a few days more than 3 years and participating on the blogs of others, I've never been tagged by someone to continue a meme. There are many of you out there for whom my blog is the only blog you read. So, the word, "meme" probably seems weird to you. I wish I could define it but I can't. It's amorphous to me because the word has meaning to me outside of the blogosphere and I can't make that meaning connect to it's meaning to this sub-group of people: basically, it's a chain letter but with a topic that you write about on your blog.

So Julie tagged me for this meme which was begun by John Smulo.

The rules of the meme:

1. Apologize for three things that Christians have often got wrong. Your apologies should be directed towards those who don’t view themselves as part of the Christian community. Alternatively, apologize for things you personally have done wrong towards those outside of the church.
2. Post a comment at the originating post so others can keep track of the apologies.
3. Tag five people to participate in the meme.
4. If desired, send an email with the link to your blog post at the Christians Confess site, giving permission for your apologies to be added to the website.

So, I'm choosing the "alternatively" option of #1

Lorinda, I'm sorry for letting someone goad me into telling you that you were going to hell while we were hanging out on the girls' locker room, supposedly creating an aerobics routine to Donovan's "Mellow Yellow" and the Eurythmics' "Sweet Dreams."

To the number of people who kept parts of their life secret from me because they thought I would judge them and tell them it was wrong, I'm sorry. I probably would have.

To the kids in my Sunday School class whose asses I whupped in Bible trivia games, eat it. Actually, though, Christ knew his scripture and probably would have beat the whole class at Bible hangman, too. I think he might have been a little more gracious about it. Since most of you were dragged to church without getting a chance to discover a faith of your own, I think it's appropriate to apologize to you here, also.

And I tag -

Arloa
Dave
Erika
Nanette
and you, the Christian blurker

Thanks, Julie.

Here's mud in your eye

In the DR Congo, Jim, Tedde, Chuck, Arloa and I went to visit a woman who was HIV positive. World Vision assists her by providing ARVs, nutritious food and other help. When we arrived, we were welcomed inside a mud-brick house that was about 8ft by 12 ft. There was no running water or electricity and so the door was left open for light. To accept her hospitality, all of us were given a seat and she stood by the door, which was the only space left. Bedding was located on the other side of a curtain hanging from a string at the end of the room. We were able to ask her questions about her condition and what life was like. It was terribly awkward because none of us wanted this woman to feel like she was on display for the visitors and, at the same time, most humans having trouble breaking the ice even when they speak the same language and the gap between their classes is not quite as glaring. But she was gracious and willing to answer our questions. Although quiet, she was not guarded, and we began to loosen up. Her 3-year-old daughter stood with her the whole time. The mother held the comb she had been using to tie the girl's hair in little tufts, a hairstyle that was unique to the DR Congo out of all the countries we visited. We asked if we could pray for her and she allowed us. Arloa, the pastor in the group, laid hands on her and we prayed. While we conversed through a translator, many of the local children gathered at the doorway to get a glimpse inside. When I went to take their pictures, they held up their own hands, as if taking my picture. Once I got outside afterwards, I saw that many of them had made little clay cameras. I asked the translator to have them show me their cameras again so I could take a picture.

Before we had left her house, though, I asked her why she thought the staff members of World Vision helped her.
World Vision is very clear in its policy statements about the fact that they do not proselytize and that they serve all people in need, without discrimination and without requiring that do anything religious to receive that aid. They believe that when they serve simply because they are commanded to by Jesus, that is enough. Often, receivers of aid get curious about why someone would help them and ask. Only then do they talk about Christ. I like that about World Vision and I wanted to see how the reality of this played out in the field. She responded, "World Vision is caring, loving and compassionate."

John 9:1-7 says:

Walking down the street, Jesus saw a man blind from birth. His disciples asked, "Rabbi, who sinned: this man or his parents, causing him to be born blind?" Jesus said, "You're asking the wrong question. You're looking for someone to blame. There is no such cause-effect here. Look instead for what God can do. We need to be energetically at work for the One who sent me here, working while the sun shines. When night falls, the workday is over. For as long as I am in the world, there is plenty of light. I am the world's Light."

He said this and then spit in the dust, made a clay paste with the saliva, rubbed the paste on the blind man's eyes, and said, "Go, wash at the Pool of Siloam" (Siloam means "Sent"). The man went and washed—and saw.

I love the disciples because they are just like me: totally clueless most of the time. They just don't get it.

But they think they do.

They're so sure that they know what's going on that they don't ask open-ended questions. No simple, "Why is this man blind?" They are so shaped by their culture that they believe that the question is multiple-choice. Ha. Like God ever fit inside the boxes we create for him, even the ones that can be filled in with a number 2 pencil.

Christ ignores the two possibilities that the disciples hand him and presents a third option that has nothing to do with what they offered: This man is blind so that he may be healed and show the world the Glory of God.

I love the theories of community development. I read book after book about them, attend CCDA conferences, participate on community development blogs, and will talk at length with anyone that's willing about why the poor stay poor and what can be done to achieve equal opportunity for God's people. I'm starting grad school at the University of Chicago in the fall so that I can effect systemic change in this world, rather than simply applying band-aids. Plus, thinking about the cause-and-effect relationships of our world just feels good to me. Like scratching an itch or watching baseball or holding small babies. It's entertainment and joy, wrapped up into something (my head) that I carry around with me all the time anyway.

This makes me, at times, ask questions like the disciples: framed in such a way that Jesus will give me an answer that I expect, or at least, one that I can process. Throughout my trip in Africa, I was thinking about how the resources of the world got distributed so inequitibly and how I could be involved in the remedy. Basically, I was asking God whose sin was being punished by Africa's blindness, what societal sin caused the situation to arise that this woman, her husband and their 5 children should be suffering from AIDS.

I was also desperately trying to dispell my own bias that secretly believes that I am entitled to my wealth and privelige, that I somehow earned them and that this makes me better than people who have little.

In three of the four Gospels, Jesus asks the disciples, "Do you have any idea how difficult it is for people who 'have it all' to enter God's kingdom?" He goes on to say that it is easier for a camel to fit through an eye of a needle than for people of privelige and wealth to enter God's kingdom.

This is a troubling verse. I know several good men that have spent the last 20 years trying to figure out how it applies to them. But I have recently begun reading several biblical scholars who believe that "God's kingdom" or "the Kingdom of Heaven" refers to our mortal life here on earth in addition to the afterlife. They believe that it describes the parts of this world and our lives that align with God's original plan for us. This means that the Kingdom of Heaven is anywhere people are in real community with one another, loving and taking care of each other, even in the midst of conflict that inevitably arises. People who have wealth and privelege usually don't have true community. I certainly fit that description, having spent the last several years of my life looking for it after not finding it in the drive-through suburban life I had been living. But time and time again, when I engage with "poor" people, they have what I lack. For their survival, they must know and cooperate with all of the people that live in their neighborhood, even those they don't particularly like. It is Christ's commandment to love our neighbors lived out of necessity.

So, when she said, "World Vision is caring, loving and compassionate," I realized that I was asking the wrong questions. Although it is important to figure out what causes poverty in order work towards systemic change, what is more important is being caring, loving and compassionate. Africa is blind so that when it is healed, the glory of God will be known. I am a child of wealth and privelige not because I am better than those who aren't but because when I am healed of my isolation and finally release myself into true community, the Kingdom of Heaven will grow larger, having brought one more person into its sphere of influence.

I thanked her for giving me the opportunity to be caring, loving and compassionate. Without her suffering and the suffering of her beautiful children, I would simply be dry dirt on the side of the road. Instead, through my association with World Vision, she offered me the chance to be mixed with the spit of Jesus and become mud in her eye.