Our Story to Write
I WAS WALKING ONE SUNDAY AFTERNOON several years ago with an older friend. We went by the ruining log house that had belonged to his grandparents and great-grandparents. The house stirred my friend's memory, and he told how the old-time people used to visit each other in the evenings, especially in the long evenings of winter. There used to be a sort of institution in our part of the country known as "sitting till bedtime." After supper, when they weren't too tired, neighbors would walk across the fields to visit each other. They popped corn, my friend said, and ate apples and talked. They told each other story. They told each other stories, as I knew myself, that they had all heard before. Sometimes they told stories about each other, about themselves, living again in their own memories, and thus keeping their memories alive. Among the hearers of these stories were always the children. When bedtime came, the visitors lit their lanterns and went home. My friend talked about this, and thought about it, and then he said, "They had everything but money."
Wendell Berry The Work of Local Culture
I begin this blog with a Wendell Berry excerpt about his friend’s lament. Berry, a radical agrarian localist, has made his life about the small beautiful circle that is his land and town. He has made it his imagination’s service to build powerful metaphors in which to carry the stories of his neighbors and family. He has committed himself to preserving the fragile discussion between creation and economics. He has made his home & village his bully pulpit.
As I have watched the New Adam community grow and change it has been interesting to watch the power of the home in this emerging enclave. From Eric Brown’s dinners to Dave & Angela Carlson’s holiday pageants and celebrations, it is clear that our stories come alive when they are housed. These nonfiction plays are offered a sacred place when we gather together and listen and share and create a larger story.
As I have pondered and ruminated over the current financial struggles of our nation and world I continue to go back to Berry for vision and solace. He is a renaissance man and his engagement of land, labor, and literature represent to me the kind of mentor for which my soul longs. I, as many men, long for leadership that is rooted in a place, rooted in a heartfelt commitment to be truly human with a people.
As New Adam and Samson have begun to offer a context for our personal stories to be told, we are now beginning to see that our personal lives are indeed a tapestry of narratives that create a world be it small and fledgling. E.F Schumacher’s famous work Small is Beautiful was written about economics but it is evident from authors like Schumacher and Berry and now writers like Michael Pollen (The Botany of Desire), that local is reality. Trans local and global are concepts but they are unable to contain and sustain the deepest parts of our humanity. We are world citizens after we are neighbors.
That is why this current crisis in confidence regarding economies is actually a good thing. For the first time in my life time we are beginning to question the power of the expert to oversee and steward our lives for us. Powerful corporate forces and global conglomerates are experiencing meltdown and in some ways this is due to their actual non existence on the local level. Except for political power they do not exist. You cannot have relationship with a company or global enterprise. When I say they do not exist I mean this on an ontological level. Obviously they exist but their inability to be truly human means their conversation with me is always forced, larger and more abstract than my real life is, and finally unable to see and know the impact of their behavior on me and my family. How many of you have a local banker. How many could go to a bank in their town and ask for help from a person who you knew and who knew you. These days are gone.
As money is continuing to go out to support and sustain the financial sector, it appears that many are bracing themselves for some tough times ahead. Many are beginning to sense that they must get their own house in order and one of the primary ways to do that is to take back the power of the local. How might the New Adam community take back that power to write our own story together?
Get out of Debt
One of the reasons many of us do not share our personal stories when it comes to finances is that we are ashamed of the predicaments into which we have gotten ourselves. We realize now the lack of wisdom in many of our purchases and business ventures. Our speculation was often only submitted to those who had little negative feedback and leveraging was the way we got what we thought we needed sooner than later. It has become evident that many mortgage and loan companies, for example, were more than predatory in this most recent debacle of international borrowing. Because they did not really know our “real life situation” they hedged their bets as best they could but in truth hoped the house of cards did not crumble in their life time. Much like corporate polluters, they hoped the barium and lead burial grounds were never found in this lifetime. Oops!
It is clear now that the debt load of many Americans may put them in debtor’s prison for their entire life time. Scripture is revealing in this area but most of us do not or did not want to hear that kind of cautionary wisdom and discretion. We were living within our means as defined by consumer culture not biblical culture. Most of the companies willing to loan us money had little knowledge of our true estate. Most bought into the ever increasing worth of homes phenomenon and believed that borrowers would use those inflated prices to pay off their commitments if worse came to worse. The conversation as to whether one should borrow or not is never local as most of the companies from which we borrow and buy view personal liability statistically and not literally. The impact of you defaulting on a loan plays little into their ability to exist. They view your relationship statistically and feel comfortable in the downside possibilities based on prior economic cycles. However, much like the existence of a black swan or 9/11, it is not what can be predicted that changes everything. It is what seems irreconcilable and chaotic that can alter the landscape of a world, a nation, or a family in a brief moment in time. It is clear that smart and savvy CEO's went beyond statistical caution and much of the world is close to going under due to their caprice.
Getting out of debt will mean rearranging many of our dreams and taking money’s we deemed for leisure, pleasure, the future or just technological up selling to now go to the hidden world of debt repayment. I say hidden because this means our consumption must on some level cease or be greatly curtailed. This is always hard as paying off debts means using “hard dollar cash” or real money for what we have already experienced and in some cases even used up. Credit card money is on some levels not real. Real money is money one earns and has power over how they are going to use that money. Most of us do not even realize the fine print on many credit card applications. We are truly the servant to the lender.
We must make debt an issue of great discernment and be willing to see the American dream as a counter narrative to the biblical mandates given to us by our Lord. As Michael Hudson has said, “No economy can keep up with the burden of debts growing at exponential rates faster than the economy itself is growing.” For many of us, our debt reduction is happening at such a slow rate we are giving away our retirements and children’s college funds. Flat out, we have no more to spend. Our coffers are dry.
See Our Money as “Our” Money
To return to the local is to understand the impact of being unable to help others when they need it. When we are so highly leveraged we cannot allow anyone of need into our space. We must keep them at bay and stand in Pharisaical judgment over their current neediness. In truth, we may be weeks or months away from the same predicament and our stern reproof is that hypocritical tendency to judge the self we see in others more harshly. This is not a problem like drinking. It is more like a food addiction. Just like we must eat so must we work and earn a living. Therefore, what we do with money and what money does to us matters.
For most of us, money has been a powerful force for either avoiding or shoring up our wounded selves. The power and the prestige that comes through the accumulation of things was our sign to the world that “we are doing just fine thank you.” In the game of life we are the winners. In the game of life we are the survivors. We know this game and have figured out how to procure and sustain our stuff in times of down turn and recession. In fact, in most cases we are rewarded for our opulence and wealth regardless of how we got it or sustain it. This is the Achilles heel in American Christianity where we obsess about gay marriage, communism, pornography, divorce, and totally ignore the dark side of absentee fathers, working mothers, latch key children, premature death due to over exhaustion, and the mono personality of the type A working boss we all put on our boards and seek direction for the paying off of our mega church complexes. We have difficulty seeing all this as a malady as we are still not convinced of the down side of greed.
Truly Usher in the Sabbath Rest
Our obsessive work lives reveal our deeper ruminations of how we truly believe the world works. We are capitalists and technologists before we are Christians. We are desiring to usher in democracy and liberty to nations so they too can have the opportunity to buy our stuff and compete with us for goods. We are sharing in a Kingdom but it is not the Kingdom of God.
To move to the idea that money is not owned merely by one person is to see ourselves as a people and to see land, production, food, power, government, and family as entities that swim in the same waters. These groupings and ventures of life are not separated through some theoretical definition of observation. They co-mingle and when we attempt to sever them from one another we get thalidomide cities and deformed families. We are not meant to be so separate that one family can suffer such need while another goes through life with wasteful abundance. When these two families attend the same church the absurdity of that scenario is even more heightened.
If we are to move into a Sabbath rest and truly experience that grace God has given us in and through His Son, we must begin to submit these parts of our lives. This of course is difficult as much of modern American Christianity is actually going in the opposite direction. Much of our discipleship is so highly personal that the impact of our behavior on anyone but our nuclear family is never even addressed. This is my problem with the deification of the family by many specialists in the para church organizations. I have noticed that one of the central concepts our men in New Adam must embrace is the isolation that the cocooned nuclear family is under through TV viewing, Mcmansions that have all the amenities for the family to use alone, and the underlying message for families to keep up with the Joneses. These are powerful formative messages sent to us at every level of our middle class lives.
We have allowed discipleship to be so personal that men are praying without discernment and knowledge. No one is speaking into our lives. We are infants often talking to a concept of God that is highly sentimentalized and nostalgic. We want God the good old dad that offers up whatever we want. When He does not, we stand estranged from Him much like our earthly fathers.
By taking discipleship out of a place (a town, a city, a state, a country, and a world) we make spirituality about only the inner life as it relates to psychological needs. For real community to take place we must have a place where the redemption and kingdom can be seen in all levels of human activity.
Ironically, the attention many evangelicals have given to the political realm has usually involved single issues and has not asked politicians to build stronger communities. Many involved in political debates in the evangelical subculture are familiar with the voting records of senators and representatives as well as Supreme Court judges but do not know the mayors or school board presidents, PTA leadership or farm subsidy representatives in their local areas.
We are not writing our stories with the people in which we live. More to come.
Sunday, November 30, 2008
Saturday, November 29, 2008
The Ushering in of Paradox
The Sabbath Rest as Provision
“The question of paramount significance is whether or not anyone is in control of the political, economic, and cosmic histories of which we are a part. Is human life, indeed all of life, at the mercy of uncontrollable and random forces that care little for our well-being?” Norman Wirzba
How could the resting from labor be the answer during a time of great economic downturn? How could inactivity be the resolution to a seemingly bloated world full of goods with no one to buy? In Wirzba's essay The Idea of a Sabbath Rest: A Theological Framework for Economists” he outlines the Jewish teaching on the Sabbath. He points out that rather than merely be a cessation of work, the Sabbath of God was an invitation to cease from our striving. The Sabbath was a sign to us from God that work, play & production had their seasons and flow. The Sabbath was a devotional time of restoration through which to view all of creation and see it as good. When the Sabbath gaze and experience were missing so too was the delight and beauty of creation. Without a pause in our frenetic pace we see nothing but the morrow and our lack. We are stuck in day six of the creation story.
How might this teaching of the Sabbath impact our world today and in particular our current economic crisis? These financial times for many of us reveal a deep presumption about the impact of our dreams and aspirations. We have been formed out of a highly narcissistic inclination and nearly all in the culture at large bow down to its bidding. It is during a significant downturn like this that we begin to discover that our sadness, our obsessive worry; our endless ruminations over what may come do indeed reflect our state of heart. Once again Scripture tells us something about the ruminations of the Spirit and cycles of birth, death, and resurrection.
Very truly, I tell you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.
-John 12:24.
I have been pondering more and more the deeper intentionality of the Father's Sabbath rest and have been considering my own role in the ushering in of that heart condition and Kingdom reign. Church history reveals that end time scenarios, countless interpretative grids on the moving target of history, and revelation ultimately point to truths beyond a single heart. It is in times like these that our communal heart and prophetic sensibilities must come together to see where "we" are going. This is not a time that the question “where I am going?” holds up under scrutiny. We are a people. Modern consumerism has so fragmented that sense of connectedness that it takes times like these to reevaluate why humans are even brought into this redemption story.
It must be for more than our own personal worth and retirement fund assessments. It must be for more than the seeking out of our own piece of the pie. It is in times like these that my own heart so hungers for more and I am overwhelmed with my own shallow reservoirs and must tell others I feel so emptied. It may very well be that I have been emptied. It may very well be the very nature of creation to pull from my consumptive hands and heart this deeper desire to usher in the Kingdom with my resources be they large or small.
Once again the Kingdom teaching is so clear about the beauty and power of the small empowered by faith to build a mighty foundation for God's next engagement with this world. It appears that God’s created realm does indeed have a voice in this conversation about how we then should live. Even strident conservative economists & environmental globe watchers will admit that creation has been taking a beating of late. Global warming may be controversial in terms of its ultimate impact, but its reality is not questioned by many. We have treated the world as if it were a bottomless pit of goodies. We have treated the day as night and night as day.
Growing up in the conservative Midwest, I was taught from early on that the Sabbath (Sunday in the parlance of conservative Protestantism) was a time of rest. Biblical literalism meant resting. As much as I loathed the stridency of this weekly mandate, I knew that Sunday was a down day. We worshipped and we rested. We did no labor, avoided leisure and spent time with the family of God. In retrospect, the oversight of this teaching became legalistic but its intentions were powerfully reflective of truth that has now allowed me to see firsthand what “stopping” does to a worried, stressed out, overly busy heart. I was frantic and frenetic even as a child. I chaffed under the seeming law and considered it one more repressive legality to push faith down my throat. Now I see it a missing jewel that cries aloud for replacement in the diadem of faith.
Blue laws that used to confine alcohol and the selling of certain goods on Sunday now seem anachronistic and silly. We want our goods seven days a week twenty four hours a day. Once again the environmentalists tell us that we cannot continue to work the same land, dig the same pit, and draw lumber from the same forest over and over again without some sort of diminished resources. Periodically shutting down trade and consumption is more than an anachronism. It is a principle deeply imbedded in the very center of creation.
As I have taken my place in a local community I have begun to see that more than ever how my own economic activity reflects the real condition of my heart. As Wirzba says, “The structure of our economic systems should be seen as the clearest, most honest indicator of religious authenticity, because it is in our economic practices that we can see most directly whether or not we have ordered or lives to be in harmony with the Creator’s intention.”
Recently I told a friend that one cannot usher in what one does not greatly anticipate. This idea of the Sabbath economy is one such idea. Poets, musicians, preachers, and painters need to bring into the communal imagination a yearning and longing for this deep rest we are missing. That means that much of our longing will manifest itself in tears, lamentations and the singing of the blues.
In recent weeks some of my best friends have been laid off from jobs they had for 30 years. Their pensions and medical plans are also in jeopardy. As I watch these erosions of safety and care manifest themselves throughout the universe I wonder if we are too late to usher in this Sabbath. Much has been said about the end times in Christian literature of late. I, however, have never felt comfortable being an alarmist or survivalist. I have never thought that the end times meant a historical outworking of some final plan that would take most of the world out. Yet I am beginning to wonder if that dark apocalyptic dream many have espoused may have drawn us into this chasm out of fear and for a lack of vision. I do not mean that we are responsible for the financial crisis , terrorism, or the "liberal agenda" (whatever that is). What I mean is that much of the American Church has offered up a very narrow selfish perspective on the reign of God and the ushering in of His kingdom. We have been busy building our corporate & denominational agendas, decorating our lives, fulfilling our personal life goals and directives and now feel a bit embarrassed that the universe seems to be ignoring our well layed plans. We are taken aback at God's seeming absence in all this. Why were we not prepared? Why has God allowed so many believers to suffer?
This may very well be the time to reawaken our deeper selves to the real incoming of God's divine "Yes!" This is the time to cease from our sense of material provision and hunger and thirst for heavenly things. Now is the time to deeply anticipate a new way of being. Now is the time to truly enter into this Sabbath rest.
“The question of paramount significance is whether or not anyone is in control of the political, economic, and cosmic histories of which we are a part. Is human life, indeed all of life, at the mercy of uncontrollable and random forces that care little for our well-being?” Norman Wirzba
How could the resting from labor be the answer during a time of great economic downturn? How could inactivity be the resolution to a seemingly bloated world full of goods with no one to buy? In Wirzba's essay The Idea of a Sabbath Rest: A Theological Framework for Economists” he outlines the Jewish teaching on the Sabbath. He points out that rather than merely be a cessation of work, the Sabbath of God was an invitation to cease from our striving. The Sabbath was a sign to us from God that work, play & production had their seasons and flow. The Sabbath was a devotional time of restoration through which to view all of creation and see it as good. When the Sabbath gaze and experience were missing so too was the delight and beauty of creation. Without a pause in our frenetic pace we see nothing but the morrow and our lack. We are stuck in day six of the creation story.
How might this teaching of the Sabbath impact our world today and in particular our current economic crisis? These financial times for many of us reveal a deep presumption about the impact of our dreams and aspirations. We have been formed out of a highly narcissistic inclination and nearly all in the culture at large bow down to its bidding. It is during a significant downturn like this that we begin to discover that our sadness, our obsessive worry; our endless ruminations over what may come do indeed reflect our state of heart. Once again Scripture tells us something about the ruminations of the Spirit and cycles of birth, death, and resurrection.
Very truly, I tell you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.
-John 12:24.
I have been pondering more and more the deeper intentionality of the Father's Sabbath rest and have been considering my own role in the ushering in of that heart condition and Kingdom reign. Church history reveals that end time scenarios, countless interpretative grids on the moving target of history, and revelation ultimately point to truths beyond a single heart. It is in times like these that our communal heart and prophetic sensibilities must come together to see where "we" are going. This is not a time that the question “where I am going?” holds up under scrutiny. We are a people. Modern consumerism has so fragmented that sense of connectedness that it takes times like these to reevaluate why humans are even brought into this redemption story.
It must be for more than our own personal worth and retirement fund assessments. It must be for more than the seeking out of our own piece of the pie. It is in times like these that my own heart so hungers for more and I am overwhelmed with my own shallow reservoirs and must tell others I feel so emptied. It may very well be that I have been emptied. It may very well be the very nature of creation to pull from my consumptive hands and heart this deeper desire to usher in the Kingdom with my resources be they large or small.
Once again the Kingdom teaching is so clear about the beauty and power of the small empowered by faith to build a mighty foundation for God's next engagement with this world. It appears that God’s created realm does indeed have a voice in this conversation about how we then should live. Even strident conservative economists & environmental globe watchers will admit that creation has been taking a beating of late. Global warming may be controversial in terms of its ultimate impact, but its reality is not questioned by many. We have treated the world as if it were a bottomless pit of goodies. We have treated the day as night and night as day.
Growing up in the conservative Midwest, I was taught from early on that the Sabbath (Sunday in the parlance of conservative Protestantism) was a time of rest. Biblical literalism meant resting. As much as I loathed the stridency of this weekly mandate, I knew that Sunday was a down day. We worshipped and we rested. We did no labor, avoided leisure and spent time with the family of God. In retrospect, the oversight of this teaching became legalistic but its intentions were powerfully reflective of truth that has now allowed me to see firsthand what “stopping” does to a worried, stressed out, overly busy heart. I was frantic and frenetic even as a child. I chaffed under the seeming law and considered it one more repressive legality to push faith down my throat. Now I see it a missing jewel that cries aloud for replacement in the diadem of faith.
Blue laws that used to confine alcohol and the selling of certain goods on Sunday now seem anachronistic and silly. We want our goods seven days a week twenty four hours a day. Once again the environmentalists tell us that we cannot continue to work the same land, dig the same pit, and draw lumber from the same forest over and over again without some sort of diminished resources. Periodically shutting down trade and consumption is more than an anachronism. It is a principle deeply imbedded in the very center of creation.
As I have taken my place in a local community I have begun to see that more than ever how my own economic activity reflects the real condition of my heart. As Wirzba says, “The structure of our economic systems should be seen as the clearest, most honest indicator of religious authenticity, because it is in our economic practices that we can see most directly whether or not we have ordered or lives to be in harmony with the Creator’s intention.”
Recently I told a friend that one cannot usher in what one does not greatly anticipate. This idea of the Sabbath economy is one such idea. Poets, musicians, preachers, and painters need to bring into the communal imagination a yearning and longing for this deep rest we are missing. That means that much of our longing will manifest itself in tears, lamentations and the singing of the blues.
In recent weeks some of my best friends have been laid off from jobs they had for 30 years. Their pensions and medical plans are also in jeopardy. As I watch these erosions of safety and care manifest themselves throughout the universe I wonder if we are too late to usher in this Sabbath. Much has been said about the end times in Christian literature of late. I, however, have never felt comfortable being an alarmist or survivalist. I have never thought that the end times meant a historical outworking of some final plan that would take most of the world out. Yet I am beginning to wonder if that dark apocalyptic dream many have espoused may have drawn us into this chasm out of fear and for a lack of vision. I do not mean that we are responsible for the financial crisis , terrorism, or the "liberal agenda" (whatever that is). What I mean is that much of the American Church has offered up a very narrow selfish perspective on the reign of God and the ushering in of His kingdom. We have been busy building our corporate & denominational agendas, decorating our lives, fulfilling our personal life goals and directives and now feel a bit embarrassed that the universe seems to be ignoring our well layed plans. We are taken aback at God's seeming absence in all this. Why were we not prepared? Why has God allowed so many believers to suffer?
This may very well be the time to reawaken our deeper selves to the real incoming of God's divine "Yes!" This is the time to cease from our sense of material provision and hunger and thirst for heavenly things. Now is the time to deeply anticipate a new way of being. Now is the time to truly enter into this Sabbath rest.
Saturday, November 22, 2008
The Rebirth of a Kingdom Mythos
The Merits of a Sabbath Economy
The whole work of creation was performed for the sake of the Sabbath
Jürgen Moltmann
What is played out in the imagination of the artists foreshadows, however dimly, the social reality of tomorrow Daniel Bell The Cultural Contradictions of Capitalism
I don’t frequent the discussions of end time musings nor do I relish the world’s potential demise due to its hubris or faithlessness. In fact, I feel as if my own heart has been revealed in recent weeks and months as the financial worlds of global business communities and governments have been shaken to their very core. The scenes played out in countries as far apart as Iceland and the US disclose a deeper array of images that form the very manner in which we see and know the world. Our economic imaginations are famished and the word is weary from the toil.
The breakdown of trust in the world of commerce is not a mere blip on the screen. This is an erosion of hope and is in part due to revelations that much of the world has been under the same spell as America. Although we now shame the elite of Wall Street and corporate America, in retrospect, we too turned our eyes away from the avarice of undue remuneration. From sporting figures to the cream of the crop religious leaders, we (as a culture) paid them and paid them well. We all thought the world and its coffers were limitless and so we kept on borrowing and kept on leveraging. We too used inflated housing markets to build our dreams. We too partied when our savings were nearly gone. We too toiled well into the midnight hours hoping to hit the jackpot and make it rich. This is not the disease of the privileged and coddled. This is the very dream of America and much of the world.
Why the crash now? What has happened to us lately that reveals the deeper truths? Some have pointed to the ultimate wilting of the modernism’s flower. After centuries of the self being exalted and the individual being regarded as the center, we now are realizing our children and their children now see little meaning in tomorrow. The Protestant work ethic has little spiritual juice to maintain any sense of direction as self preservation and personal survival trump any sense of community. Time itself has narrowed to our private desires and the hero of bourgeois society is the self made man full of himself and impenetrable to other’s attempts to dethrone him. Our very sense of time and space has been so restricted by our own personal dreams and aspirations that our awareness of history has equally shrunk to contain only that which our psychological self can imagine.
Our story has become my story. Our redemption has become my redemption. The salvation of the world has become deciphered through my personal devotions and God’s hand in my personal life. As I said above, our very imaginations are famished and our dreams are fitful nightmares of personal comeuppance. We’ve tried to get God to join our franchise and He has declined. We’ve tried to make true prosperity to mean financial gain. The sense of confusion on the part of the Church in America is due in part to the capitulation of our calling to a foreign understanding of work, rest, and abundance. We have given the very heart of our faith over to someone else’s definition of wealth. Now, in a world of an abundance of things, the very soul of humankind is so so hungry for something more. We are now frightened by our very selves and our own insatiable appetites . As the adage says” We have discovered the enemy and he is us.”
Is there a divine perspective on these economic times? I have wondered why so little has been said by the Church at large. Are we as well totally given over to the whims and maneuverings of the consumer culture? Are we too unable to make sense of all the seemingly indiscriminant and irrational jumps in the stock market and world economy? Some have said this is a crisis “of the system” and not “in the system.” We are not in a time where we should retool or refurbish the old model but totally redefine the manner in which we engage economics. Is this the time for us as a people to offer up a divine point of view on economics and work itself?
This is a great opportunity for the Church to reintroduce the truth of the Sabbath rest. Will authors and poets bring the new lexicon of meaning into our deepest parts or will we go back to worn our concepts and wearisome assumptions about how the world works? Some of this work will involve deep repentance and submission to one another. This is more than a shift but a total turning away from a false God. Are we up for it?
The whole work of creation was performed for the sake of the Sabbath
Jürgen Moltmann
What is played out in the imagination of the artists foreshadows, however dimly, the social reality of tomorrow Daniel Bell The Cultural Contradictions of Capitalism
I don’t frequent the discussions of end time musings nor do I relish the world’s potential demise due to its hubris or faithlessness. In fact, I feel as if my own heart has been revealed in recent weeks and months as the financial worlds of global business communities and governments have been shaken to their very core. The scenes played out in countries as far apart as Iceland and the US disclose a deeper array of images that form the very manner in which we see and know the world. Our economic imaginations are famished and the word is weary from the toil.
The breakdown of trust in the world of commerce is not a mere blip on the screen. This is an erosion of hope and is in part due to revelations that much of the world has been under the same spell as America. Although we now shame the elite of Wall Street and corporate America, in retrospect, we too turned our eyes away from the avarice of undue remuneration. From sporting figures to the cream of the crop religious leaders, we (as a culture) paid them and paid them well. We all thought the world and its coffers were limitless and so we kept on borrowing and kept on leveraging. We too used inflated housing markets to build our dreams. We too partied when our savings were nearly gone. We too toiled well into the midnight hours hoping to hit the jackpot and make it rich. This is not the disease of the privileged and coddled. This is the very dream of America and much of the world.
Why the crash now? What has happened to us lately that reveals the deeper truths? Some have pointed to the ultimate wilting of the modernism’s flower. After centuries of the self being exalted and the individual being regarded as the center, we now are realizing our children and their children now see little meaning in tomorrow. The Protestant work ethic has little spiritual juice to maintain any sense of direction as self preservation and personal survival trump any sense of community. Time itself has narrowed to our private desires and the hero of bourgeois society is the self made man full of himself and impenetrable to other’s attempts to dethrone him. Our very sense of time and space has been so restricted by our own personal dreams and aspirations that our awareness of history has equally shrunk to contain only that which our psychological self can imagine.
Our story has become my story. Our redemption has become my redemption. The salvation of the world has become deciphered through my personal devotions and God’s hand in my personal life. As I said above, our very imaginations are famished and our dreams are fitful nightmares of personal comeuppance. We’ve tried to get God to join our franchise and He has declined. We’ve tried to make true prosperity to mean financial gain. The sense of confusion on the part of the Church in America is due in part to the capitulation of our calling to a foreign understanding of work, rest, and abundance. We have given the very heart of our faith over to someone else’s definition of wealth. Now, in a world of an abundance of things, the very soul of humankind is so so hungry for something more. We are now frightened by our very selves and our own insatiable appetites . As the adage says” We have discovered the enemy and he is us.”
Is there a divine perspective on these economic times? I have wondered why so little has been said by the Church at large. Are we as well totally given over to the whims and maneuverings of the consumer culture? Are we too unable to make sense of all the seemingly indiscriminant and irrational jumps in the stock market and world economy? Some have said this is a crisis “of the system” and not “in the system.” We are not in a time where we should retool or refurbish the old model but totally redefine the manner in which we engage economics. Is this the time for us as a people to offer up a divine point of view on economics and work itself?
This is a great opportunity for the Church to reintroduce the truth of the Sabbath rest. Will authors and poets bring the new lexicon of meaning into our deepest parts or will we go back to worn our concepts and wearisome assumptions about how the world works? Some of this work will involve deep repentance and submission to one another. This is more than a shift but a total turning away from a false God. Are we up for it?
Monday, September 29, 2008
The Death of a Grand Mythos
The Limits of Creation
We would rather be ruined than changed
We would rather die in our dread
Than climb the cross of the present
And let our illusions die
W.H. Auden, The Age of Anxiety
I am a boomer. I have been formed out of the optimism of technology’s bosom. I have grown up in and through the cultural mythos of progress and growth. I have been fed and nurtured on the fantasy that fuels and animates contemporary culture. That is the deeply embedded caprice of limitless power and potential wealth. (See Bill Moyer interview with author Andrew Bacevich)
In recent weeks we all have been privy to a disettling picture of the present and our future in the so called bailout crisis. For many of us this prospect represents the end of a lifelong pursuit of personal independence. We boomers were weaned on the breast of self determination, autonomy, and a lack of restrictions. Choice, unfettered choice was our birth right and our non-conformity was rewarded through our inventiveness, creativity, and an ever expanding national and world economy. We were constantly told by politicians, pastors, and the gurus of personal space that the world was our oyster. We could throw our dreams into the cosmos with abandon for we were meant to enjoy this world of our making with unconfined desire.
I am an optimist. However, I am being forced by my own swampland visits to come to the powerful realizations that indeed there are limits to all things. Not only my personal mythos but the ones that fashion and shape the larger world into which my own resides. We are in unique times. For the first time in my life the chicken has truly come home to roost. The world I have constructed for myself and those I love is quickly proving to be much like a home off the coast of Galveston. It can take certain gale winds but these hurricane forces are not your garden variety wind storm. They are powerful forces that only nature and creation can muster.
Are we in spiritual and existential times of the same order? Are we now realizing that our leaders have given us what we want? And what have we wanted? It appears that what we have wanted is an endless opportunity to consume, purchase, and expand our personal space beyond its limits. We are coming to the realization that the world may indeed have an edge to it. We may fall off. There are constraints to desire. Even the actual frontiers that were so much a part of America’s mythos are now being auctioned off for the fuel we need to run this gargantuan machine of craving we have mistaken for longing.
I have had a longing. I still do. This longing is represented by my desire to be a part of true community. What I am witnessing in this nearly Kafkaesque scene being acted out in national politics and the financial worlds is a collapsing dream that years ago became a trance. This trance was fueled by unbridled desire, ambition and American exceptionalism. We have been told since I was a child that we were the saviors of the world and our form of government and ways of life (Christian and capitalistic) were not merely better but destined to take over the world. The manifest destiny that brought us to the shores of the Americas is a testament to that broad and powerful mythos. It has remained as a part of our grand narrative for centuries.
What we are witnessing is the end of a way of thinking about the world and ourselves. Because we have seen life and creation as commodities that could be exchanged and profited from, we have continued to value those entities to suit our own personal avarice. Whether it is our homes or businesses, we purposed to profit no matter the cost to others and now we are beginning to realize that others were doing the same thing. We are not as clever as we thought. The Chinese have already found us out. American has its Achilles heal-it loves to consume and it is willing to do it all on credit (borrowed time and money)
Now this mythos of limitless craving and profiteering off the needs and desires of others has become a global amusement. In recent years I have sensed from some of my friends at how pleased they were that Russia collapsed along with Marxism due in part to the US sending over our ideology of personal consumption. I too was equally glad the regime came to and end. However, I saw and see much more disturbing reasons for all this collapse. Glasnost, as welcomed as it was throughout the world, was really a moratorium on the cold war so Russians could finally go to the mall like everyone else in the “advanced” first world countries. Now the Chinese as well are being formed by this consumptive narcissism and their need for resources for expansion is enormous. So enormous that their fever could kill us in the States.
How many of us are aware of the money we borrow from China on a consistent basis? How many understand our place in the buying chain between producers and consumers? Everything in the world goes round when credit flows and America can consume. A few weeks or months of no consumption and the entire world economy gets frightened and should as we Americans hold up the house of cards. Our ability to buy more and more allows for our imperial global expansion to continue. Just like our capitalistic ventures into the former Soviet Russian, it is as much contingent on credit as it is on stealth bombers. In fact, war has always proven to put a drain on the entire process but our fears and lack of learning from history lean our expansionistic inclinations towards aggression.
We have offered up and exported this myth of limitless access to power and wealth and now our dream is quickly revealing itself as a fantasy filled with glaring holes and cosmic restrictions that here to fore we have ignored. This culturally shared story is now reaching its maximum threshold as it becomes a global ambition. It has proven to be not merely plagiarized but a fiction. The universe is not complicit with us on this one. There are limits to all of life and those realizations are returning like a tide that has been out to sea for centuries. Creation was meant to be stewarded not plundered.
The emerging threshold is a day of reckoning for many of us. Personally I am having to sit in years of decisions I made about my finances, my career, my personal goals, and finally discern the boundaries of my own humanity. On some days I am overwhelmed with my own personal sense of shame and responsibility. I am morally liable and accountable for my decisions. Ask the bank. Ask my credit card company. Ask my closest friends.I can blame no one. Yet, I must have some grace on my self. There are powers outside myself that impacted those decisions. There is a cultural trance that we mutually agree to induce in one another. Yet my own naiveté and desire has overtly and covertly colluded to push my humanness to its limits and now the confines of those checks and balances are meted out with great pain and stress. I come to community with a lot of baggage. My own personal story of unchecked and uninhibited dreams has a weighty reality to it at this point in my life. I am beginning to see just how much my own aspirations can inhibit the true bounty of this world to be accessible to others. My own consumptive habits purposely kept me unaware of the deepest needs of others. I have wanted primarily for me. Now I must learn to long for "us."
More than ever we need community. However, the communities we are going to need to deal with these impending tides are not yet in place. They will only come as we are forced to identify our real families. I am always amazed when I watch the TV program that gives away a house at how many in great need stick together for all they have are each other. Until all we have is each other, we will continue to ask the politicians and banks to create a larger credit line, an ever expanding economy, a limitless access to cheap fuel, and the ability to stay mobile so our profiteering does not finally come to an end in love for one another. I encourage all who are on the threshold of collapse be it personally, in business, or in your ability to navigate your own small world; there is a deeper net about to appear. It only manifests when the free fall begins. Greater love has no man than he lay down his life for his brother. Some of us are having our world weary hands full of stuff yanked from our clutching only to discover the embrace of our true family. I cannot reach out nor receive when I hold onto what was never mine to own. To the limits of desire in this world and the limitless love of God in the ever restoring Kingdom of the now and forever! May our Lord's name be praised.
We would rather be ruined than changed
We would rather die in our dread
Than climb the cross of the present
And let our illusions die
W.H. Auden, The Age of Anxiety
I am a boomer. I have been formed out of the optimism of technology’s bosom. I have grown up in and through the cultural mythos of progress and growth. I have been fed and nurtured on the fantasy that fuels and animates contemporary culture. That is the deeply embedded caprice of limitless power and potential wealth. (See Bill Moyer interview with author Andrew Bacevich)
In recent weeks we all have been privy to a disettling picture of the present and our future in the so called bailout crisis. For many of us this prospect represents the end of a lifelong pursuit of personal independence. We boomers were weaned on the breast of self determination, autonomy, and a lack of restrictions. Choice, unfettered choice was our birth right and our non-conformity was rewarded through our inventiveness, creativity, and an ever expanding national and world economy. We were constantly told by politicians, pastors, and the gurus of personal space that the world was our oyster. We could throw our dreams into the cosmos with abandon for we were meant to enjoy this world of our making with unconfined desire.
I am an optimist. However, I am being forced by my own swampland visits to come to the powerful realizations that indeed there are limits to all things. Not only my personal mythos but the ones that fashion and shape the larger world into which my own resides. We are in unique times. For the first time in my life the chicken has truly come home to roost. The world I have constructed for myself and those I love is quickly proving to be much like a home off the coast of Galveston. It can take certain gale winds but these hurricane forces are not your garden variety wind storm. They are powerful forces that only nature and creation can muster.
Are we in spiritual and existential times of the same order? Are we now realizing that our leaders have given us what we want? And what have we wanted? It appears that what we have wanted is an endless opportunity to consume, purchase, and expand our personal space beyond its limits. We are coming to the realization that the world may indeed have an edge to it. We may fall off. There are constraints to desire. Even the actual frontiers that were so much a part of America’s mythos are now being auctioned off for the fuel we need to run this gargantuan machine of craving we have mistaken for longing.
I have had a longing. I still do. This longing is represented by my desire to be a part of true community. What I am witnessing in this nearly Kafkaesque scene being acted out in national politics and the financial worlds is a collapsing dream that years ago became a trance. This trance was fueled by unbridled desire, ambition and American exceptionalism. We have been told since I was a child that we were the saviors of the world and our form of government and ways of life (Christian and capitalistic) were not merely better but destined to take over the world. The manifest destiny that brought us to the shores of the Americas is a testament to that broad and powerful mythos. It has remained as a part of our grand narrative for centuries.
What we are witnessing is the end of a way of thinking about the world and ourselves. Because we have seen life and creation as commodities that could be exchanged and profited from, we have continued to value those entities to suit our own personal avarice. Whether it is our homes or businesses, we purposed to profit no matter the cost to others and now we are beginning to realize that others were doing the same thing. We are not as clever as we thought. The Chinese have already found us out. American has its Achilles heal-it loves to consume and it is willing to do it all on credit (borrowed time and money)
Now this mythos of limitless craving and profiteering off the needs and desires of others has become a global amusement. In recent years I have sensed from some of my friends at how pleased they were that Russia collapsed along with Marxism due in part to the US sending over our ideology of personal consumption. I too was equally glad the regime came to and end. However, I saw and see much more disturbing reasons for all this collapse. Glasnost, as welcomed as it was throughout the world, was really a moratorium on the cold war so Russians could finally go to the mall like everyone else in the “advanced” first world countries. Now the Chinese as well are being formed by this consumptive narcissism and their need for resources for expansion is enormous. So enormous that their fever could kill us in the States.
How many of us are aware of the money we borrow from China on a consistent basis? How many understand our place in the buying chain between producers and consumers? Everything in the world goes round when credit flows and America can consume. A few weeks or months of no consumption and the entire world economy gets frightened and should as we Americans hold up the house of cards. Our ability to buy more and more allows for our imperial global expansion to continue. Just like our capitalistic ventures into the former Soviet Russian, it is as much contingent on credit as it is on stealth bombers. In fact, war has always proven to put a drain on the entire process but our fears and lack of learning from history lean our expansionistic inclinations towards aggression.
We have offered up and exported this myth of limitless access to power and wealth and now our dream is quickly revealing itself as a fantasy filled with glaring holes and cosmic restrictions that here to fore we have ignored. This culturally shared story is now reaching its maximum threshold as it becomes a global ambition. It has proven to be not merely plagiarized but a fiction. The universe is not complicit with us on this one. There are limits to all of life and those realizations are returning like a tide that has been out to sea for centuries. Creation was meant to be stewarded not plundered.
The emerging threshold is a day of reckoning for many of us. Personally I am having to sit in years of decisions I made about my finances, my career, my personal goals, and finally discern the boundaries of my own humanity. On some days I am overwhelmed with my own personal sense of shame and responsibility. I am morally liable and accountable for my decisions. Ask the bank. Ask my credit card company. Ask my closest friends.I can blame no one. Yet, I must have some grace on my self. There are powers outside myself that impacted those decisions. There is a cultural trance that we mutually agree to induce in one another. Yet my own naiveté and desire has overtly and covertly colluded to push my humanness to its limits and now the confines of those checks and balances are meted out with great pain and stress. I come to community with a lot of baggage. My own personal story of unchecked and uninhibited dreams has a weighty reality to it at this point in my life. I am beginning to see just how much my own aspirations can inhibit the true bounty of this world to be accessible to others. My own consumptive habits purposely kept me unaware of the deepest needs of others. I have wanted primarily for me. Now I must learn to long for "us."
More than ever we need community. However, the communities we are going to need to deal with these impending tides are not yet in place. They will only come as we are forced to identify our real families. I am always amazed when I watch the TV program that gives away a house at how many in great need stick together for all they have are each other. Until all we have is each other, we will continue to ask the politicians and banks to create a larger credit line, an ever expanding economy, a limitless access to cheap fuel, and the ability to stay mobile so our profiteering does not finally come to an end in love for one another. I encourage all who are on the threshold of collapse be it personally, in business, or in your ability to navigate your own small world; there is a deeper net about to appear. It only manifests when the free fall begins. Greater love has no man than he lay down his life for his brother. Some of us are having our world weary hands full of stuff yanked from our clutching only to discover the embrace of our true family. I cannot reach out nor receive when I hold onto what was never mine to own. To the limits of desire in this world and the limitless love of God in the ever restoring Kingdom of the now and forever! May our Lord's name be praised.
Saturday, September 27, 2008
The Politics of Suffering
Empathy & Compassion as an Embodied Response
To care for anyone else enough to make their problems one's own, is ever the beginning of one's real ethical development.
Felix Adler
“I feel your pain.” This statement has become a bit of iconic humorous presidential lore as delivered by Bill Clinton in recent years but I think its resonance goes unconsciously deeper than its apparent humor. To tell someone you feel their pain says something about you and the relationship you have with another. Empathy is now emerging as a concept that is crossing multiple disciplines as conflicts between individuals, companies, genders, races, and nations continue. What happens when we empathize? How are we drawn into someone else’s experience through our imagination and what takes place when relationships are formed and informed through the lens of empathy? How does empathy produce compassion as a deliberate act to resolve the felt pain between individuals and groups? Is it possible that embodied empathy or compassion is actually an interpretive posture through which one relates to the world?
The media is not a reliable interpretive window on reality but daily incursions into its vortex reflect a world in significant flux and deeply troubled. Much of this has to do with shifting power bases through the globalization of the world economy and the fight over resources. On a much more existential level, however, is the apparent diminishment and failure of the modern enlightenment project to direct the world through reason. For centuries it was perceived that reason and logic would ultimately prevail and that knowledge would always be processed and mediated through the ability of the individual to come to an unprejudiced understanding as to his or her reality. We were assuming that the power of intelligence and good sense would prevail if given an opportunity. Well…it has not happened.
In our attempt to solve human dilemmas we have begun to understand that the desire for understanding and the logical assertions as to how and why cooperation might be advantageous for both parties often does not prevail in the subsequent engagements of differing parties who may have a history of dispute and opposition to one another. Regardless of the ultimate goal of cooperation, understanding, and insight, thoughtful sympathy does not ultimately triumph. Why does difference and struggle reign in much of the world today? Why are many individuals, communities, groups, and nations seemingly locked into the dispirited position of hopelessness? Is it possible we need to create an entire area of study entitled the "politics of suffering"? Is it possible that the locus of that study should be the actual human body? Is it possible that compassion and empathy as distinct human acts give us a different set of interpretive sensibilities in resolving human struggles?
I opened this blog with the statement regarding feeling someone else’s pain. It is clear that certain individuals seem to have highly formed skills and sensitivities to sensing and interpreting another’s pain. When this pain has been prolonged and historic as in the case of endemic racism, only person’s who have had similar experiences or who are bodily aware of the pain the experiences caused can speak into the conversation. It is the old adage of walking a mile in someone’s shoes but on a deeply spiritual level.
One of the reason politicians often get nowhere in solving the apparent misreading of disparate groups and their struggles has to do with the lack of empathy and compassion. It is one thing to see the dissimilarity of perceptions, the history of the dispute and acknowledge both sides or one particular person’s experience. It is another to enter deeply into the experience of pain through which these individuals daily live. In my work with healing retreats I am amazed at how deeply felt injustice is in bodily pain. The idea that the mind is a separate entity floating above the body is a significant misconception. Humans are a whole. The inequity of life is not merely some idealistic philosophical concept discussed in classrooms and courts. What humans experience tells them who they are. Prolonged injustice cannot help but deeply form individuals into whom and what they have become and are becoming. Compassion is a way of seeing that pain.
In the rough and tumble world of men, crying is usually considered a sign of weakness. Strength in needed to traverse the vicissitudes of this life therefore acknowledging injustice through emotional expression is considered by many men to be wasted energy. “What is the point,” they may ask. “My pain is seen as a weakness and thus any open expressions of its formative power on my ability to live only place me farther down the power chain.” This is a highly over simplification of this phenomenon of men’s complicity to affective silence but it is clear that many men seldom if ever emote their present condition as it relates to the psychic pain they are experiencing. You will never know how they “feel” about an incident or issue. You may hear their detached impression or conclusion regarding an encounter; however, this should not be mistaken as this person’s final or ultimate understanding on the injustice or pain to which they are referring.
Suffering always has an implied powerful narrative to it. When one begins to listen to another’s story of pain and suffering, inevitably one will hear about power and governance. Someone controls something someone else needs. This may be actual resources or be more reflective of issues of human spirituality like love and respect. Someone desires to have it and someone else has decided not to give it or gave that impression. The politics of suffering engage this narrative from the perspective of the pain that is felt in the body (which includes all human experiences and emotions). The question ask here is, “And how do you feel about that?” This question is not to deify emotions as the most articulate reflection of truth or reality. These emotions are always riddled with reconstruction, memory’s here say, victimization, and anger. This question is ultimately part of the act of compassion. To be compassionate is to know bodily (in other words in your own body) how another feels or felt when certain things happened to them. This means being in touch with your own encounter with injustice and the ensuing suffering that came as a byproduct of that experience. To be compassionate is to, through the resonate power of your own imagination, begin to make that person’s story part of your own. You are now in divine collusion with this person. This pain is not merely their pain but “our” pain. This is what humans do: listen to each other’s stories.
The act of compassion honors the experience of this “other” as a reflection of the divine creation and desires to see this pain healed and the person restored. Once again this does not deify the emotional suffering. It spiritually brackets the suffering through empathetic compassion. Embracing the impact of certain events on someone else is validating the sense of the injustice through compassion. This does not mean one acknowledges all perceptions as true (ultimate assertions as to who is responsible) but as “deeply felt” and part of this person’s spiritual grid.
To feel another’s pain is to acknowledge as real the suffering this person has experienced. The naming of that suffering, its nuanced outworking, and its impact are ultimately healed through compassion inside of community. This is where these wounds become sacred portals through which healing must come for humans to be more human. When the community does not have the ability, commitment, or space into which this compassion can be ministered, injustices will continue to fester, grow, and even permeate into larger trans local skirmishes. We tell others when we are hurt and we demonize those people. This demonization becomes our history and to a certain extent, “the others” history from our perspective. The politics of suffering asserts that humans can hear these stories of pain and bear them up together. The politics of suffering through compassion offers an interpretive experience through which humans now can bring this disturbing account to the conversation and find empathy and support. This bond now appreciates the insight gained through the empathetic transference of one person’s injustice as seen through the eyes and heart of another. I can speak up now when I see and hear of injustice for I know its malevolent and revolting power to cloud and malform. My empathic experiences now make me a prophetic voice for the weak, lost, abused, and emotionally silenced. Compassion is now not merely an insight, but an ethos and value through which human beings live out their very existence. I feel your pain and you are real.
To care for anyone else enough to make their problems one's own, is ever the beginning of one's real ethical development.
Felix Adler
“I feel your pain.” This statement has become a bit of iconic humorous presidential lore as delivered by Bill Clinton in recent years but I think its resonance goes unconsciously deeper than its apparent humor. To tell someone you feel their pain says something about you and the relationship you have with another. Empathy is now emerging as a concept that is crossing multiple disciplines as conflicts between individuals, companies, genders, races, and nations continue. What happens when we empathize? How are we drawn into someone else’s experience through our imagination and what takes place when relationships are formed and informed through the lens of empathy? How does empathy produce compassion as a deliberate act to resolve the felt pain between individuals and groups? Is it possible that embodied empathy or compassion is actually an interpretive posture through which one relates to the world?
The media is not a reliable interpretive window on reality but daily incursions into its vortex reflect a world in significant flux and deeply troubled. Much of this has to do with shifting power bases through the globalization of the world economy and the fight over resources. On a much more existential level, however, is the apparent diminishment and failure of the modern enlightenment project to direct the world through reason. For centuries it was perceived that reason and logic would ultimately prevail and that knowledge would always be processed and mediated through the ability of the individual to come to an unprejudiced understanding as to his or her reality. We were assuming that the power of intelligence and good sense would prevail if given an opportunity. Well…it has not happened.
In our attempt to solve human dilemmas we have begun to understand that the desire for understanding and the logical assertions as to how and why cooperation might be advantageous for both parties often does not prevail in the subsequent engagements of differing parties who may have a history of dispute and opposition to one another. Regardless of the ultimate goal of cooperation, understanding, and insight, thoughtful sympathy does not ultimately triumph. Why does difference and struggle reign in much of the world today? Why are many individuals, communities, groups, and nations seemingly locked into the dispirited position of hopelessness? Is it possible we need to create an entire area of study entitled the "politics of suffering"? Is it possible that the locus of that study should be the actual human body? Is it possible that compassion and empathy as distinct human acts give us a different set of interpretive sensibilities in resolving human struggles?
I opened this blog with the statement regarding feeling someone else’s pain. It is clear that certain individuals seem to have highly formed skills and sensitivities to sensing and interpreting another’s pain. When this pain has been prolonged and historic as in the case of endemic racism, only person’s who have had similar experiences or who are bodily aware of the pain the experiences caused can speak into the conversation. It is the old adage of walking a mile in someone’s shoes but on a deeply spiritual level.
One of the reason politicians often get nowhere in solving the apparent misreading of disparate groups and their struggles has to do with the lack of empathy and compassion. It is one thing to see the dissimilarity of perceptions, the history of the dispute and acknowledge both sides or one particular person’s experience. It is another to enter deeply into the experience of pain through which these individuals daily live. In my work with healing retreats I am amazed at how deeply felt injustice is in bodily pain. The idea that the mind is a separate entity floating above the body is a significant misconception. Humans are a whole. The inequity of life is not merely some idealistic philosophical concept discussed in classrooms and courts. What humans experience tells them who they are. Prolonged injustice cannot help but deeply form individuals into whom and what they have become and are becoming. Compassion is a way of seeing that pain.
In the rough and tumble world of men, crying is usually considered a sign of weakness. Strength in needed to traverse the vicissitudes of this life therefore acknowledging injustice through emotional expression is considered by many men to be wasted energy. “What is the point,” they may ask. “My pain is seen as a weakness and thus any open expressions of its formative power on my ability to live only place me farther down the power chain.” This is a highly over simplification of this phenomenon of men’s complicity to affective silence but it is clear that many men seldom if ever emote their present condition as it relates to the psychic pain they are experiencing. You will never know how they “feel” about an incident or issue. You may hear their detached impression or conclusion regarding an encounter; however, this should not be mistaken as this person’s final or ultimate understanding on the injustice or pain to which they are referring.
Suffering always has an implied powerful narrative to it. When one begins to listen to another’s story of pain and suffering, inevitably one will hear about power and governance. Someone controls something someone else needs. This may be actual resources or be more reflective of issues of human spirituality like love and respect. Someone desires to have it and someone else has decided not to give it or gave that impression. The politics of suffering engage this narrative from the perspective of the pain that is felt in the body (which includes all human experiences and emotions). The question ask here is, “And how do you feel about that?” This question is not to deify emotions as the most articulate reflection of truth or reality. These emotions are always riddled with reconstruction, memory’s here say, victimization, and anger. This question is ultimately part of the act of compassion. To be compassionate is to know bodily (in other words in your own body) how another feels or felt when certain things happened to them. This means being in touch with your own encounter with injustice and the ensuing suffering that came as a byproduct of that experience. To be compassionate is to, through the resonate power of your own imagination, begin to make that person’s story part of your own. You are now in divine collusion with this person. This pain is not merely their pain but “our” pain. This is what humans do: listen to each other’s stories.
The act of compassion honors the experience of this “other” as a reflection of the divine creation and desires to see this pain healed and the person restored. Once again this does not deify the emotional suffering. It spiritually brackets the suffering through empathetic compassion. Embracing the impact of certain events on someone else is validating the sense of the injustice through compassion. This does not mean one acknowledges all perceptions as true (ultimate assertions as to who is responsible) but as “deeply felt” and part of this person’s spiritual grid.
To feel another’s pain is to acknowledge as real the suffering this person has experienced. The naming of that suffering, its nuanced outworking, and its impact are ultimately healed through compassion inside of community. This is where these wounds become sacred portals through which healing must come for humans to be more human. When the community does not have the ability, commitment, or space into which this compassion can be ministered, injustices will continue to fester, grow, and even permeate into larger trans local skirmishes. We tell others when we are hurt and we demonize those people. This demonization becomes our history and to a certain extent, “the others” history from our perspective. The politics of suffering asserts that humans can hear these stories of pain and bear them up together. The politics of suffering through compassion offers an interpretive experience through which humans now can bring this disturbing account to the conversation and find empathy and support. This bond now appreciates the insight gained through the empathetic transference of one person’s injustice as seen through the eyes and heart of another. I can speak up now when I see and hear of injustice for I know its malevolent and revolting power to cloud and malform. My empathic experiences now make me a prophetic voice for the weak, lost, abused, and emotionally silenced. Compassion is now not merely an insight, but an ethos and value through which human beings live out their very existence. I feel your pain and you are real.
Sunday, September 14, 2008
Holy Discontent as Time
When Waiting is No Longer an Option
The future enters into us, in order to transform itself in us, long before it happens.
Maria Rainier Rilke
The greatest barrier to moving into a new place in God is the comfort we find in the one we are currently living. I am yet to hear anyone say “isn’t this level of anxiety great?” Isn’t it wonderful to move into a place of complete trust that involves walking away from what I know even though it is not working anymore? Humorous but true. We are like the ancients. There may be dragons at the end of the map. Is the world really flat? We may fall off. In truth, whatever fears we cannot not understand or acknowledge, we will feel and feel them with a vengeance.
When does a holy longing become a holy discontent? When our cry of a deeper revelation of Christ can no longer wait. Our souls naturally long for enlargement. We are meant to walk into the full stature of Christ. For that to take place, God will allow our resources to dry up and our ways of coping to no longer bring the peace we previously received through the these experiences. We will feel a “crying out.” It may manifest itself differently from person to person. For some it comes as a sense of emotional deadness. We go to work, we do the chores around the house, we come to church but all the tasks seem like they are deadened routines. For others, those closest to us remark how “out of sorts” we seem to be. Whether it is excessive anger, to much sleep, going through the motions with little joy and an embodied sense of presence, life is beginning to run out of juice. For others the malaise may actually come from finally receiving the thing we have sought, fought and lived for. The job promotion, the new house, the honor in the community, the life long accomplishment finally come to fruition, or whatever and we now feel almost let down. Now we have what we so diligently fought for and somehow the deep hunger for more continues to persist. In fact, now there is an intrusive sense of panic. If this is not it, what is? You say to yourself, “I should be fulfilled with all this. I should finally feel fulfilled and connected. I should finally feel like I am who I was meant to be. Has my ladder been leaning against the wrong building all this time," you ask?
All the protestations seem to only detract us from our daily tasks. We live in a world where we must get up each morning and head out claiming the provision of each day so pondering too much to fast can throw some of us into a deep deep depression. Depending on how long we have held the longing at bay is how powerful it will rise to the surface. There are some things in life that just will not wait for the right time or the correct moment to “handle the situation.” This is not about handling anything. No, it really is the opposite. This is about listening to a part of us that here to fore has either been deadened, missing or just quiet and dormant. This is about welcoming the dawning of something mysterious and walking away from other things that although meaningful and maybe even worthwhile, just do not provide the deeper foundation upon which we daily stand.
It has been said by sages and mystics that all significant rites of passage come through suffering and prayer. Maybe that is why we call them mystics and sages. No one wants to hear these hard sayings. No one wants to be forced into prolonged periods where the only thing that makes any sense is silence, prayer, beauty, innocence, and letting go. We are really addressing what Christ calls “transformation." This is different than mere internal change or the acquisition of some bit of spiritual truth. This is a deeply disturbing yet beautifully scandalous move of the Spirit.
One of the first conditions of the soul Christ will confront during these times is our cynicism. Cynicism is really about hopelessness. When we loose hope, even the simplest acts of devotion are dry and void of sustenance. All those around us seem naive and much of our daily routine seems silly and without meaning. Why? That is the deep question in our soul? Why even try. Nothing I do will make any difference. Nothing I can offer to this life will ultimately change my condition. It is this lack of hope that makes us bored with everything and everyone around us. A fragile as hope is, it is a fuel the soul needs to form a future. Without it we see life as a series of disconnected actions. We are a bit player in a theatrical novel in which our fate has been sealed. Nothing can change that. This is what cynicism does to hope.
Paul J. Wadell so powerfully tells us the foundational need for hope when he says, “Hope is empowered by a vision, the vision of our most promising possibility of intimate union with God and all the saints.” This is why cynicism is a dangerous cancer to community and not just to us as individuals.
As many move forward in conversations about community, closeness, friendship, belonging, and truly being loved, we will most assuredly come face to face with our cynicism. It may manifest itself in a variety of different ways. Here is what we tell our selves.
1) Let’s just wait and see
Although all commitments to living and loving do indeed take discernment and prayer, much of what we consider wisdom and patience before jumping into life is really an underlying inclination to hold at bay any potential for being hurt. We just flat out do not want any more disappointment in life. By the time we reach an age where our personal stories begin to take shape, we surely know the pain that others can cause in our lives. From family and friends to churches and bosses, so much of life comes with a price tag. At times that price seems just too expensive. Thus, we wait until we are convinced that nothing hurtful or dangerous to our souls will come into our lives.
2) Let’s regroup and see if what we are currently doing will come back to life even though we have tried to breathe life into the cadaver hundreds of times
As humorous as this statement may sound, I am so convinced that I am animating hundreds of lifeless bodies in my world. Even though “Elvis has left the building,” I am still hoping against hope that some new source of life will peak its head above the lifeless corpse and bring some joy and meaning. There is so much truth in what many call the definition of insanity. Why do we continue to do over and over again what has ceased to make any sense or difference in our lives for years? Habits die hard and spiritual growth comes with funerals. We must put some old ways of living and being to rest. Let them go to their permanent resting places with honor. But, let them have a place to rest in peace.
3) Loose ourselves in tasks that are meaningful and need to be done but could wait.
I am amazed at how often I will pick up a noble task once again and try and breathe life into it just to avoid the yearning my soul longs to embrace. On some level, I find a sense of purpose in some these tasks, but it truth, it is not what my soul requires of me at this time. This task brings a degree of meaningful information and purpose into my life but does not offer the transformation for which my soul demands.
For many in this conversation, we sense we are on not just on a search for fulfillment but a pilgrimage of sorts. We realize that we are approaching a time where much of the distraction and busyness of our soul must now come under His Lordship and we must embrace the gifts yet unopened. Maybe we should call this journey “The Waiting Gift.”
The future enters into us, in order to transform itself in us, long before it happens.
Maria Rainier Rilke
The greatest barrier to moving into a new place in God is the comfort we find in the one we are currently living. I am yet to hear anyone say “isn’t this level of anxiety great?” Isn’t it wonderful to move into a place of complete trust that involves walking away from what I know even though it is not working anymore? Humorous but true. We are like the ancients. There may be dragons at the end of the map. Is the world really flat? We may fall off. In truth, whatever fears we cannot not understand or acknowledge, we will feel and feel them with a vengeance.
When does a holy longing become a holy discontent? When our cry of a deeper revelation of Christ can no longer wait. Our souls naturally long for enlargement. We are meant to walk into the full stature of Christ. For that to take place, God will allow our resources to dry up and our ways of coping to no longer bring the peace we previously received through the these experiences. We will feel a “crying out.” It may manifest itself differently from person to person. For some it comes as a sense of emotional deadness. We go to work, we do the chores around the house, we come to church but all the tasks seem like they are deadened routines. For others, those closest to us remark how “out of sorts” we seem to be. Whether it is excessive anger, to much sleep, going through the motions with little joy and an embodied sense of presence, life is beginning to run out of juice. For others the malaise may actually come from finally receiving the thing we have sought, fought and lived for. The job promotion, the new house, the honor in the community, the life long accomplishment finally come to fruition, or whatever and we now feel almost let down. Now we have what we so diligently fought for and somehow the deep hunger for more continues to persist. In fact, now there is an intrusive sense of panic. If this is not it, what is? You say to yourself, “I should be fulfilled with all this. I should finally feel fulfilled and connected. I should finally feel like I am who I was meant to be. Has my ladder been leaning against the wrong building all this time," you ask?
All the protestations seem to only detract us from our daily tasks. We live in a world where we must get up each morning and head out claiming the provision of each day so pondering too much to fast can throw some of us into a deep deep depression. Depending on how long we have held the longing at bay is how powerful it will rise to the surface. There are some things in life that just will not wait for the right time or the correct moment to “handle the situation.” This is not about handling anything. No, it really is the opposite. This is about listening to a part of us that here to fore has either been deadened, missing or just quiet and dormant. This is about welcoming the dawning of something mysterious and walking away from other things that although meaningful and maybe even worthwhile, just do not provide the deeper foundation upon which we daily stand.
It has been said by sages and mystics that all significant rites of passage come through suffering and prayer. Maybe that is why we call them mystics and sages. No one wants to hear these hard sayings. No one wants to be forced into prolonged periods where the only thing that makes any sense is silence, prayer, beauty, innocence, and letting go. We are really addressing what Christ calls “transformation." This is different than mere internal change or the acquisition of some bit of spiritual truth. This is a deeply disturbing yet beautifully scandalous move of the Spirit.
One of the first conditions of the soul Christ will confront during these times is our cynicism. Cynicism is really about hopelessness. When we loose hope, even the simplest acts of devotion are dry and void of sustenance. All those around us seem naive and much of our daily routine seems silly and without meaning. Why? That is the deep question in our soul? Why even try. Nothing I do will make any difference. Nothing I can offer to this life will ultimately change my condition. It is this lack of hope that makes us bored with everything and everyone around us. A fragile as hope is, it is a fuel the soul needs to form a future. Without it we see life as a series of disconnected actions. We are a bit player in a theatrical novel in which our fate has been sealed. Nothing can change that. This is what cynicism does to hope.
Paul J. Wadell so powerfully tells us the foundational need for hope when he says, “Hope is empowered by a vision, the vision of our most promising possibility of intimate union with God and all the saints.” This is why cynicism is a dangerous cancer to community and not just to us as individuals.
As many move forward in conversations about community, closeness, friendship, belonging, and truly being loved, we will most assuredly come face to face with our cynicism. It may manifest itself in a variety of different ways. Here is what we tell our selves.
1) Let’s just wait and see
Although all commitments to living and loving do indeed take discernment and prayer, much of what we consider wisdom and patience before jumping into life is really an underlying inclination to hold at bay any potential for being hurt. We just flat out do not want any more disappointment in life. By the time we reach an age where our personal stories begin to take shape, we surely know the pain that others can cause in our lives. From family and friends to churches and bosses, so much of life comes with a price tag. At times that price seems just too expensive. Thus, we wait until we are convinced that nothing hurtful or dangerous to our souls will come into our lives.
2) Let’s regroup and see if what we are currently doing will come back to life even though we have tried to breathe life into the cadaver hundreds of times
As humorous as this statement may sound, I am so convinced that I am animating hundreds of lifeless bodies in my world. Even though “Elvis has left the building,” I am still hoping against hope that some new source of life will peak its head above the lifeless corpse and bring some joy and meaning. There is so much truth in what many call the definition of insanity. Why do we continue to do over and over again what has ceased to make any sense or difference in our lives for years? Habits die hard and spiritual growth comes with funerals. We must put some old ways of living and being to rest. Let them go to their permanent resting places with honor. But, let them have a place to rest in peace.
3) Loose ourselves in tasks that are meaningful and need to be done but could wait.
I am amazed at how often I will pick up a noble task once again and try and breathe life into it just to avoid the yearning my soul longs to embrace. On some level, I find a sense of purpose in some these tasks, but it truth, it is not what my soul requires of me at this time. This task brings a degree of meaningful information and purpose into my life but does not offer the transformation for which my soul demands.
For many in this conversation, we sense we are on not just on a search for fulfillment but a pilgrimage of sorts. We realize that we are approaching a time where much of the distraction and busyness of our soul must now come under His Lordship and we must embrace the gifts yet unopened. Maybe we should call this journey “The Waiting Gift.”
Breaking the Trance
Community as Place of Vulnerability
How does community happen? Down through the centuries many learned and Godly people have asked this question. On some level the answer is always the same and always different. It is the same in that it is always the divine “yes” of Jesus that begins the conversation. It is different in that how that yes comes to us is always in the language of our hearts, in that time and in that place. In other words, God is a missionary and He knows how to speak our language.
As I go from house to house one common denominator seems to arise and that is the trance like state that comes from the isolated self(ves). Biblically we would probably call it a strong hold but it does create trance like states of suspended awareness such that great pain and great truth are mutually ignored. Richard Rohr said it is hard to remain spiritually hungry. We want our answers too quickly and we want the pain to go away. Thus we tend to activities that either hide the pain or dull it or in extreme cases just ignore it all together.
A few months back I had a trip to the hospital. It involved some intestinal track issues in which the pain was pretty excruciating. As many of you know, a few years back I had a bout with cancer. To say I have an aversion for hospitals would be an understatement. On my way to the hospital I realized once again just how fragile I really am. Part of my humanness keeps me from that awareness most of the time or I probably would not be able to function at all. In some ways we are much like that on the spiritual level. There are so many areas of my life that need to come under the scrutiny of the Savior. If He were to reveal Himself in His fullness to me I would surely die (literally). I could not handle the truth of His revealing. However, shame is the word our culture uses for the emotion that hides from the truth because of the fear of being discovered as needy and wanting and unable to deal with the powerful nature of life. Is this such a surprising realzation? On one level, of course I know that life is bigger than me. On the other hand I constantly berate myself for being too weak to handle the ongoing pain and struggles that I encounter. I am ashamed I need anyone for anything. This is one of the primary postures of this trance. I am so ashamed that I need anyone for anything that I will let my sickness, my malady, my pain, my illness, or whatever, just continue on and on so I do not have to reveal my true estate.
What has happened in the church is that we have created a healing place into which no one can check into? When I say we have created” what I mean is that God in Christ has made a way for us to find restoration and safety. He is totally self emptying, totally self giving. And yet we are unable to receive this part of His nature because we see ourselves as unworthy. Our unworthiness ironically is reflected in that fact that we are needy. Do we see the absurdity of this? We theologically know that God in Christ is offering us the fullness of Himself which can and will heal and restore us over time and yet we create a system that only allows us to receive this outpouring if and when we are so defeated and needy that He is our last resort. Let us tear away the shame that keeps us from entering into His rest. Let us tear away the fear of being discovered as imposters.
Issues of leadership and what that means have come to the table for discussion in recent weeks. We have so many models for leadership and being a pastor’s kid, I have been privy to many styles and theories. Recently, Dan Allendar wrote a book entitled “Leading with a Limp” and I must say that this book has revolutionized my understanding as to the nature of true leadership. In “Leading with a Limp“ Allendar takes note of the fact that most leaders see taking charge as an issue of power and control. We lead because we know. We lead because we are where everyone else should be. We lead because we have discovered systems and principles that will allow others to reap the bounty of wisdom that we as leaders can offer. Obviously I am tweaking this point to make a point. Samson Society and the New Adam community has taught me some invaluable things in the last few years. One is the amazing power of organic leadership and the ability of most people to lead on some level at some point. We call it being “fully authorized.” What I have observed is the powerful and beautiful gifts that naturally flow from people as they walk not only in their strengths but in their weaknesses. In other words, it is our wounds that often are the biggest blessing to others. We have been there or we are there and thus we can not only empathize, we can join with our brothers and sisters and walk the journey together. Whether it is finances or health or children or illness or parents or intimacy, we all are human and we all long for healing and restoration. This is the gift we offer to one another.
I opened up this latest blog installment with the question “when can true community happen?” I am convinced that is has been happening for nearly two thousands years and recently we have seen an outbreak of real community in our midst and we are merely following its aroma. Its aroma is sweet. It tastes really good to us once we discover that our shame is keeping us from Him and each other. It is sweet to discover that not only do we not need to hide but that it is our very brokenness that is our gift. It is the fact that we endured or stayed with the struggle or pain or persevered or maybe we didn’t and we saw the Father like a good shepherd come back for us a make sure we were brought back to the rest of the flock. We have memories and testimonies of His love and sufficiency. What a gift to give others.
Pain is a teacher. Suffering is a doorway. For many of us, this is a season of deep pain. I am convinced that once again, the reason this pain is so overwhelming is the trance like power of "the isolated self." We are suffering alone. We are weeping alone. We are waking up so afraid of the future alone and we actually believe that life will not get better. Life is full of ascent and descent. To promise a life of painlessness or a world where there is no struggle would not just be a lie, it would keep us from our Savoir. He knows our broken hearts.
Many communities are on the threshold of discovering this safe place of suffering in public.
We are moving beyond the need for answers alone (we need truth mind you), and beginning to see the Savior in our midst in the lives of each other. Our pride is dieing and we are beginning to see that our life is truly hidden in Christ. We are beginning to see that when Christ is revealed in us, our true glory is revealed as well. Hiding through shame and fear get us no where.
In the end all we have to give away is our journey- our story.
How does community happen? Down through the centuries many learned and Godly people have asked this question. On some level the answer is always the same and always different. It is the same in that it is always the divine “yes” of Jesus that begins the conversation. It is different in that how that yes comes to us is always in the language of our hearts, in that time and in that place. In other words, God is a missionary and He knows how to speak our language.
As I go from house to house one common denominator seems to arise and that is the trance like state that comes from the isolated self(ves). Biblically we would probably call it a strong hold but it does create trance like states of suspended awareness such that great pain and great truth are mutually ignored. Richard Rohr said it is hard to remain spiritually hungry. We want our answers too quickly and we want the pain to go away. Thus we tend to activities that either hide the pain or dull it or in extreme cases just ignore it all together.
A few months back I had a trip to the hospital. It involved some intestinal track issues in which the pain was pretty excruciating. As many of you know, a few years back I had a bout with cancer. To say I have an aversion for hospitals would be an understatement. On my way to the hospital I realized once again just how fragile I really am. Part of my humanness keeps me from that awareness most of the time or I probably would not be able to function at all. In some ways we are much like that on the spiritual level. There are so many areas of my life that need to come under the scrutiny of the Savior. If He were to reveal Himself in His fullness to me I would surely die (literally). I could not handle the truth of His revealing. However, shame is the word our culture uses for the emotion that hides from the truth because of the fear of being discovered as needy and wanting and unable to deal with the powerful nature of life. Is this such a surprising realzation? On one level, of course I know that life is bigger than me. On the other hand I constantly berate myself for being too weak to handle the ongoing pain and struggles that I encounter. I am ashamed I need anyone for anything. This is one of the primary postures of this trance. I am so ashamed that I need anyone for anything that I will let my sickness, my malady, my pain, my illness, or whatever, just continue on and on so I do not have to reveal my true estate.
What has happened in the church is that we have created a healing place into which no one can check into? When I say we have created” what I mean is that God in Christ has made a way for us to find restoration and safety. He is totally self emptying, totally self giving. And yet we are unable to receive this part of His nature because we see ourselves as unworthy. Our unworthiness ironically is reflected in that fact that we are needy. Do we see the absurdity of this? We theologically know that God in Christ is offering us the fullness of Himself which can and will heal and restore us over time and yet we create a system that only allows us to receive this outpouring if and when we are so defeated and needy that He is our last resort. Let us tear away the shame that keeps us from entering into His rest. Let us tear away the fear of being discovered as imposters.
Issues of leadership and what that means have come to the table for discussion in recent weeks. We have so many models for leadership and being a pastor’s kid, I have been privy to many styles and theories. Recently, Dan Allendar wrote a book entitled “Leading with a Limp” and I must say that this book has revolutionized my understanding as to the nature of true leadership. In “Leading with a Limp“ Allendar takes note of the fact that most leaders see taking charge as an issue of power and control. We lead because we know. We lead because we are where everyone else should be. We lead because we have discovered systems and principles that will allow others to reap the bounty of wisdom that we as leaders can offer. Obviously I am tweaking this point to make a point. Samson Society and the New Adam community has taught me some invaluable things in the last few years. One is the amazing power of organic leadership and the ability of most people to lead on some level at some point. We call it being “fully authorized.” What I have observed is the powerful and beautiful gifts that naturally flow from people as they walk not only in their strengths but in their weaknesses. In other words, it is our wounds that often are the biggest blessing to others. We have been there or we are there and thus we can not only empathize, we can join with our brothers and sisters and walk the journey together. Whether it is finances or health or children or illness or parents or intimacy, we all are human and we all long for healing and restoration. This is the gift we offer to one another.
I opened up this latest blog installment with the question “when can true community happen?” I am convinced that is has been happening for nearly two thousands years and recently we have seen an outbreak of real community in our midst and we are merely following its aroma. Its aroma is sweet. It tastes really good to us once we discover that our shame is keeping us from Him and each other. It is sweet to discover that not only do we not need to hide but that it is our very brokenness that is our gift. It is the fact that we endured or stayed with the struggle or pain or persevered or maybe we didn’t and we saw the Father like a good shepherd come back for us a make sure we were brought back to the rest of the flock. We have memories and testimonies of His love and sufficiency. What a gift to give others.
Pain is a teacher. Suffering is a doorway. For many of us, this is a season of deep pain. I am convinced that once again, the reason this pain is so overwhelming is the trance like power of "the isolated self." We are suffering alone. We are weeping alone. We are waking up so afraid of the future alone and we actually believe that life will not get better. Life is full of ascent and descent. To promise a life of painlessness or a world where there is no struggle would not just be a lie, it would keep us from our Savoir. He knows our broken hearts.
Many communities are on the threshold of discovering this safe place of suffering in public.
We are moving beyond the need for answers alone (we need truth mind you), and beginning to see the Savior in our midst in the lives of each other. Our pride is dieing and we are beginning to see that our life is truly hidden in Christ. We are beginning to see that when Christ is revealed in us, our true glory is revealed as well. Hiding through shame and fear get us no where.
In the end all we have to give away is our journey- our story.
Tuesday, September 2, 2008
Being There
The Practicing of Sacred Space
Looking back over nearly fifty years of sprawling suburbia and its veracious appetite for space, green, and peace, I wonder along with the characters in Jurassic Park the movie, “You scientists never ask yourself whether you should build it. You just did it!”
Had we pondered a bit more from our ancestors some of the foundational human propensities, we may have undoubtedly come up with a deep need for people to belong. This belonging is not merely existential or metaphysical. It appears to be hard wired into our very DNA. We feel more ourselves when we are a part of something, somebody and some place.
Wendell Berry has a penchant for what he calls “sacred space”. He has lived in the same small town for nearly 60 years and thus able to clearly reflect on the beauty and sanctity of that place over the long haul. Most of us would not even have a clue how that kind of longevity might impact the eyes of our hearts. To live in one place for 60 years…how could it be?
All this talk about space is really a discussion about the discovery of a common place. I currently lack that sensibility and its lack leaves a hole in my soul. As I maintained above, our ancestors seemed to get the need for a common place and they built that sense into the very architectural fabric of their communities. Now…we cocoon…and we feel isolated…and we are depressed…..and we are ashamed we are depressed….thus we isolate even more.
A few weeks back a friend in East Nashville referred to Franklin as a faux community. Part of me resented the comment but as usual my felt sense of offense told me something of the truth. Many of us have longed for a deeper sense of connection and community in the Franklin area and the proliferation of churches on every block is a metaphor for that desire to be planted in something alive and real.
Our loose knit communities have clearly articulated in the last few years or so the price of isolation. Satan loves to get us away for the herd as it were. Once we’re alone, all our brokenness and strongholds take us to places where no one individual can truly survive. We were not meant to fight these battles alone. So what about this common place? What might these characteristics look like and could this very well be what the Kingdom reign turns into the Church?
What are the characteristics of community around a common place?
1) Spontaneity
I love ritual and tradition. Communities are formed around the deep symbols to which they honor. With that being said, true communities also hold up the value of spontaneity. So much of our daily lives are lived out in the moment. Meals, serendipitous meetings after the “show,” or spur of the moment get togethers, generally reflect that this common place is more about family and relationships and less about programs and meetings. My prayer is that this family will continue to come together because they are drawn and allow the sacred moment to reveal to us the glory of our gathering. We can thank Eric B. for modeling this gift.
2) Availability
It has become so clear to me that as we grow in Christ we become more available to His bidding and to His perception of reality. I can be so self absorbed when I choose to be. Out of that space I demand that anyone entering my life do so on my schedule with my time parameters and needs preeminent in their approach. Messy friendships, time consuming encounters, and confrontational relationships are just not on my radar. I want people around me who allow me to coast, to sleep, to rest, to hide. This, of course, is not something I am aware most of the time but as I have made myself more available I am discovering the wild expressions of human personality and the shear amount of experiences I can have in a day. Just being there becomes its own blessing.
On the other hand, I do not want to feel like I am putting anyone out when I have a need. I like being available for others but shun being “needy myself.” I love to give to others. I struggle much more letting others restore me. Being the strong one is my dominant persona. There are reasons for my reticence about being “needy.” Over the years I have sensed friends who comply and help me out but drag their feet the entire time. I get the shear burdensome nature of my life on theirs. In truth, I am sure I have been that friend.
Now more than any time in my life I am allowing my day to have buffer times where I can just sit and listen and love. The simple gift of one’s presence is glorious and holy. May we allow the playful serendipity of life to bring us together and make ourselves available whenever and however God chooses? We can thank Art Dearmond for “being there” for so many of us.
3) Frequency
Once a week contrived encounters make for friendships that are strained and plastic. I cannot and do not come to the larger Church gathering with my brokenness out in the open. It is not only inappropriate, it is just not what the moment demands. However, to get to know someone is to take the time (frequency) to hear their story, sit in their home, love their children, and listen to them be childlike and silly. Scripture tells us how the early Christians met together daily. What would happen if we were intentional about meeting with one another on a daily basis? The early believers devoted themselves to teaching, breaking bread, and fellowship on a daily basis. Why? Could it be that this sense of camaraderie was so strong and vital that being together was indeed a gift and blessing rather than a burden and purposeful scheduling issue? If I hear one more person say…”Heh, let’s get together.” And not do it, I will scream. I see that now (saying, Let’s get together,” when you do not even intend to do that) as a false sense of community and a need to appear intimate when indeed there is no intention of growing together. Words mean something and the human heart is looking for belonging. Are we willing to plan or not plan for that matter, friendships into our lives? Kyle Rigsby engages in the frequency thing and many are blessed.
4) Common Meal
Was the breaking of bread together in their homes just a formality or was and is there something deeply sacred about the act of sharing food together? We all resonate around the Eucharistic meal and understand its sustenance in light of who Christ is. I wonder if we somehow ignore the communal nature of breaking bread as another manifestation of Christ’s feeding of the human soul. Have restaurants grown in popularity in recent years because this engagement is more than mere sustenance for the body but also for the soul and spirit? I and many others are a bit bluer (you have to have been there to get this one) today because of the many meals we have shared at E. Brown’s home. The Carlsons know how to through a hearty feast as well.
5) Geography
This is the hardest trait to engender as suburbia has divided people into classes by creating subdivisions that reflect financial abilities to purchases homes. That has always been the case on a certain level, but in recent years, certain areas of town are created specifically for those who see themselves as a “gated community.” Is there a point where you move to were you find the most family? Is there a time when proximity is the very thing that allows for availability and frequency? The home has become the ultimate personal choice for middle class families. Where we live says so much about us and our aspirations. What would happen if the issue of where we lived said less about our economic status and more about the friends and families through which we lived and formed life? This is happening more and more and it is impacting architecture. Shared housing and cooperative housing are now on the radar of many who desire community and a sense of common place as much as the accouterments of class, technology and leisure.
These characteristics above truly foster a sacred space or neighborhood in “days gone by” parlance. These challenges will begin to allow us to cut down on the commute, maybe even live off a single income, and finally set some boundaries around who and what we are a part of by freeing up our schedules enough to be a neighbor. Now, playing in the front yard could actually be a part of the kingdom expression and reign. Now, we are identifying our common community not only through intellectual assent and doctrinal unity but through geography, proximity and experience. This is why we need to inaugurate a radical reinventing of what we call the “CHURCH.”
Many of these ideas taken in part from book “The Connecting Church” by Randy Frazee
Looking back over nearly fifty years of sprawling suburbia and its veracious appetite for space, green, and peace, I wonder along with the characters in Jurassic Park the movie, “You scientists never ask yourself whether you should build it. You just did it!”
Had we pondered a bit more from our ancestors some of the foundational human propensities, we may have undoubtedly come up with a deep need for people to belong. This belonging is not merely existential or metaphysical. It appears to be hard wired into our very DNA. We feel more ourselves when we are a part of something, somebody and some place.
Wendell Berry has a penchant for what he calls “sacred space”. He has lived in the same small town for nearly 60 years and thus able to clearly reflect on the beauty and sanctity of that place over the long haul. Most of us would not even have a clue how that kind of longevity might impact the eyes of our hearts. To live in one place for 60 years…how could it be?
All this talk about space is really a discussion about the discovery of a common place. I currently lack that sensibility and its lack leaves a hole in my soul. As I maintained above, our ancestors seemed to get the need for a common place and they built that sense into the very architectural fabric of their communities. Now…we cocoon…and we feel isolated…and we are depressed…..and we are ashamed we are depressed….thus we isolate even more.
A few weeks back a friend in East Nashville referred to Franklin as a faux community. Part of me resented the comment but as usual my felt sense of offense told me something of the truth. Many of us have longed for a deeper sense of connection and community in the Franklin area and the proliferation of churches on every block is a metaphor for that desire to be planted in something alive and real.
Our loose knit communities have clearly articulated in the last few years or so the price of isolation. Satan loves to get us away for the herd as it were. Once we’re alone, all our brokenness and strongholds take us to places where no one individual can truly survive. We were not meant to fight these battles alone. So what about this common place? What might these characteristics look like and could this very well be what the Kingdom reign turns into the Church?
What are the characteristics of community around a common place?
1) Spontaneity
I love ritual and tradition. Communities are formed around the deep symbols to which they honor. With that being said, true communities also hold up the value of spontaneity. So much of our daily lives are lived out in the moment. Meals, serendipitous meetings after the “show,” or spur of the moment get togethers, generally reflect that this common place is more about family and relationships and less about programs and meetings. My prayer is that this family will continue to come together because they are drawn and allow the sacred moment to reveal to us the glory of our gathering. We can thank Eric B. for modeling this gift.
2) Availability
It has become so clear to me that as we grow in Christ we become more available to His bidding and to His perception of reality. I can be so self absorbed when I choose to be. Out of that space I demand that anyone entering my life do so on my schedule with my time parameters and needs preeminent in their approach. Messy friendships, time consuming encounters, and confrontational relationships are just not on my radar. I want people around me who allow me to coast, to sleep, to rest, to hide. This, of course, is not something I am aware most of the time but as I have made myself more available I am discovering the wild expressions of human personality and the shear amount of experiences I can have in a day. Just being there becomes its own blessing.
On the other hand, I do not want to feel like I am putting anyone out when I have a need. I like being available for others but shun being “needy myself.” I love to give to others. I struggle much more letting others restore me. Being the strong one is my dominant persona. There are reasons for my reticence about being “needy.” Over the years I have sensed friends who comply and help me out but drag their feet the entire time. I get the shear burdensome nature of my life on theirs. In truth, I am sure I have been that friend.
Now more than any time in my life I am allowing my day to have buffer times where I can just sit and listen and love. The simple gift of one’s presence is glorious and holy. May we allow the playful serendipity of life to bring us together and make ourselves available whenever and however God chooses? We can thank Art Dearmond for “being there” for so many of us.
3) Frequency
Once a week contrived encounters make for friendships that are strained and plastic. I cannot and do not come to the larger Church gathering with my brokenness out in the open. It is not only inappropriate, it is just not what the moment demands. However, to get to know someone is to take the time (frequency) to hear their story, sit in their home, love their children, and listen to them be childlike and silly. Scripture tells us how the early Christians met together daily. What would happen if we were intentional about meeting with one another on a daily basis? The early believers devoted themselves to teaching, breaking bread, and fellowship on a daily basis. Why? Could it be that this sense of camaraderie was so strong and vital that being together was indeed a gift and blessing rather than a burden and purposeful scheduling issue? If I hear one more person say…”Heh, let’s get together.” And not do it, I will scream. I see that now (saying, Let’s get together,” when you do not even intend to do that) as a false sense of community and a need to appear intimate when indeed there is no intention of growing together. Words mean something and the human heart is looking for belonging. Are we willing to plan or not plan for that matter, friendships into our lives? Kyle Rigsby engages in the frequency thing and many are blessed.
4) Common Meal
Was the breaking of bread together in their homes just a formality or was and is there something deeply sacred about the act of sharing food together? We all resonate around the Eucharistic meal and understand its sustenance in light of who Christ is. I wonder if we somehow ignore the communal nature of breaking bread as another manifestation of Christ’s feeding of the human soul. Have restaurants grown in popularity in recent years because this engagement is more than mere sustenance for the body but also for the soul and spirit? I and many others are a bit bluer (you have to have been there to get this one) today because of the many meals we have shared at E. Brown’s home. The Carlsons know how to through a hearty feast as well.
5) Geography
This is the hardest trait to engender as suburbia has divided people into classes by creating subdivisions that reflect financial abilities to purchases homes. That has always been the case on a certain level, but in recent years, certain areas of town are created specifically for those who see themselves as a “gated community.” Is there a point where you move to were you find the most family? Is there a time when proximity is the very thing that allows for availability and frequency? The home has become the ultimate personal choice for middle class families. Where we live says so much about us and our aspirations. What would happen if the issue of where we lived said less about our economic status and more about the friends and families through which we lived and formed life? This is happening more and more and it is impacting architecture. Shared housing and cooperative housing are now on the radar of many who desire community and a sense of common place as much as the accouterments of class, technology and leisure.
These characteristics above truly foster a sacred space or neighborhood in “days gone by” parlance. These challenges will begin to allow us to cut down on the commute, maybe even live off a single income, and finally set some boundaries around who and what we are a part of by freeing up our schedules enough to be a neighbor. Now, playing in the front yard could actually be a part of the kingdom expression and reign. Now, we are identifying our common community not only through intellectual assent and doctrinal unity but through geography, proximity and experience. This is why we need to inaugurate a radical reinventing of what we call the “CHURCH.”
Many of these ideas taken in part from book “The Connecting Church” by Randy Frazee
Monday, September 1, 2008
Being Human in Public
Community as an Intentional & Sustained Spiritual Conversation
Life opportunities have offered to me the experiential difference between solitude and isolation. Given my need to write, a degree of seclusion is necessary to create the space into which the words will inhabit. The process of entering that space is always wrought with distractions, amusements, and emotional digressions as that which is hidden, is so for purposes currently veiled. Those things out of sight are secrets to me at this point.
However, the concealed for many is wet and heavy with shame making this burial mutually and complicitly a bond the heart makes with the tongue. The contract of the soul is made inside the hiddeness so many are unaware of this pact and wonder why their voice seems so small and attenuated. It is this sense of smallness and mystifying discomfort that causes many to drop out of the human conversation all together.
Wellspring is a loosely held together community of misfits, spiritual wanderers, and those in the process of being broken open. Maybe it is this initial condition of imperfection that offers up the beginning stages of a brand new way for humans to be themselves in public. My beginning declaration offered up the possible distinctions between solitude and isolation.
Solitude it would seem is a much more generative escape into the confines of the soul and goes there for restorative purposes although it might be led through pain and tears. Isolation is a different posture altogether. It is one of seclusion and remoteness. It is an intentional attempt to separate oneself from others and to foster the powerful emotion of loneliness.
Humans are indeed lonely and to push away the experience may close windows on the soul that are opening for deeper purposes. However, when isolation rules the process of disclosure, little to nothing gets in or out. We set ourselves apart, heighten our emotive state and declare to all that no one or anything can remove this mantel of shame and distance we feel from ourselves and others.
Generally we do not think about the distance we feel from ourselves. In fact, loneliness is usually attributed to someone or something else that is not aggressively seeking us out. We are lonely because we do not deserve to be in this state. Someone should see this and offer up their life and gifts to us in grace. We are lonely because others do not see our worth.
Solitude is not a stance that seeks to separate oneself. It is a bearing that comes from a deep desire to unite all things and do so both individually and corporately. There is work to do alone so that community can take place. But if solitude is seen as isolation, our ability to then be human in public is diminished if not made impossible.
The statement made above that we are lonely because others do not see our worth has a ring of truth. Is it possible that the worth of the soul is not ultimately meted out in private? Is it possible that who we are at the most profound level comes only when we are with others and they see what we offer to the conversation. In this setting we are offering up our voice to the mix, our words to the story, and taking our place at the table. The place setting has our name on it after all.
Few teachers or scholars have studied the impact of dialogue and conversation on groups and individuals like the now deceased physicist David Bohm. He offers in his research some amazingly spiritual reasons for making sure real dialogue is taking place in communities all over the word. Bohm contends that “generative listening” is essential for profound conversations to take place. Because life is so multi layered and mysterious, it is vitally important to listen to others with a desire to understand rather than build a case. As the race for the presidency has now taken center stage, it is often observable that this posture or demeanor is lost in many a conversation. I would contend this posture is lost or deeply buried in most conversations.
We talk much about the need for a safe container in our community. We do so in many ways to foster this kind of conversation. It is a great battle internally to hold in tension opposite ideas and allow for someone else’s beliefs, conclusions, and assumptions to rise to the fore. When I begin to be truly human in public I allow my voice to offer up my personal meaning but I do so assuming that there are countless meanings in that space in which I now reside.
To discover the host of differing, contrasting, and even opposing assumptions and conclusions about life, truth, and experience is to begin to see the shockingly and beautifully exquisite assembly called humanity. It has always been this way. Bohm and other scholars tell us this through their research but we want to assume that the group we hang with thinks much like we do and that allows us to feel like a self in their midst.
Is it possible that our fears to express our loneliness in public settings are because we wonder if it will be heard and taken in as valid or real? If our experience in community is that certain voices are stifled and muffled or removed, that is a message to beware of being too open about our thoughts. Could it be that prolonged isolation creates profound loneliness and this is due in part to our inability to be human in public?
I learn how to be me. One would assume that being a self comes naturally but it appears that the dance of life is just that and we learn from one another the blessings and cursings we offer up to the conversation of life. What happens when our listening is deep and generative? We begin to not merely offer a space for others to be human but the container itself offers up this space. This is a divine operation not merely ours. This safe container is what allows for us to live out our meaning and express our voice in public. Who we are was meant to be shared. We are a gift. Our voice was meant to be heard.
Much of life feels like a rehearsal and in fact it is. No one comes to this life the second time around thus none of us are experts. We often want our voice to dominate, or we purposely hide our voice and make the community discover from where its quiet cries are emanating. Is there a brand new way of being human in public and is it essentially connected to our place in the conversation and our solitude? Will all our native giftedness begin to arise and serve others when we allow our voice to be heard, when we step away from isolation and offer up our voice, our meaning?
The Kingdom is being ushered in as we speak. Listen.
1 Corinthians 12
Spiritual Gifts
1-3 What I want to talk about now is the various ways God's Spirit gets worked into our lives. This is complex and often mis-understood, but I want you to be informed and knowledgeable. Remember how you were when you didn't know God, led from one phony god to another, never knowing what you were doing, just doing it because everybody else did it? It's different in this life. God wants us to use our intelligence, to seek to understand as well as we can. For instance, by using your heads, you know perfectly well that the Spirit of God would never prompt anyone to say "Jesus be damned!" Nor would anyone be inclined to say "Jesus is Master!" without the insight of the Holy Spirit.
4-11God's various gifts are handed out everywhere; but they all originate in God's Spirit. God's various ministries are carried out everywhere; but they all originate in God's Spirit. God's various expressions of power are in action everywhere; but God himself is behind it all. Each person is given something to do that shows who God is: Everyone gets in on it, everyone benefits. All kinds of things are handed out by the Spirit, and to all kinds of people! The variety is wonderful:
wise counsel
clear understanding
simple trust
healing the sick
miraculous acts
proclamation
distinguishing between spirits
tongues
interpretation of tongues.
All these gifts have a common origin, but are handed out one by one by the one Spirit of God. He decides who gets what, and when.
12-13You can easily enough see how this kind of thing works by looking no further than your own body. Your body has many parts—limbs, organs, cells—but no matter how many parts you can name, you're still one body. It's exactly the same with Christ. By means of his one Spirit, we all said good-bye to our partial and piecemeal lives. We each used to independently call our own shots, but then we entered into a large and integrated life in which he has the final say in everything. (This is what we proclaimed in word and action when we were baptized.) Each of us is now a part of his resurrection body, refreshed and sustained at one fountain—his Spirit—where we all come to drink. The old labels we once used to identify ourselves—labels like Jew or Greek, slave or free—are no longer useful. We need something larger, more comprehensive.
14-18I want you to think about how all this makes you more significant, not less. A body isn't just a single part blown up into something huge. It's all the different-but-similar parts arranged and functioning together. If Foot said, "I'm not elegant like Hand, embellished with rings; I guess I don't belong to this body," would that make it so? If Ear said, "I'm not beautiful like Eye, limpid and expressive; I don't deserve a place on the head," would you want to remove it from the body? If the body was all eye, how could it hear? If all ear, how could it smell? As it is, we see that God has carefully placed each part of the body right where he wanted it.
19-24But I also want you to think about how this keeps your significance from getting blown up into self-importance. For no matter how significant you are, it is only because of what you are a part of. An enormous eye or a gigantic hand wouldn't be a body, but a monster. What we have is one body with many parts, each its proper size and in its proper place. No part is important on its own. Can you imagine Eye telling Hand, "Get lost; I don't need you"? Or, Head telling Foot, "You're fired; your job has been phased out"? As a matter of fact, in practice it works the other way—the "lower" the part, the more basic, and therefore necessary. You can live without an eye, for instance, but not without a stomach. When it's a part of your own body you are concerned with, it makes no difference whether the part is visible or clothed, higher or lower. You give it dignity and honor just as it is, without comparisons. If anything, you have more concern for the lower parts than the higher. If you had to choose, wouldn't you prefer good digestion to full-bodied hair?
25-26The way God designed our bodies is a model for understanding our lives together as a church: every part dependent on every other part, the parts we mention and the parts we don't, the parts we see and the parts we don't. If one part hurts, every other part is involved in the hurt, and in the healing. If one part flourishes, every other part enters into the exuberance.
27-31You are Christ's body—that's who you are! You must never forget this. Only as you accept your part of that body does your "part" mean anything. You're familiar with some of the parts that God has formed in his church, which is his "body": apostles prophets teachers miracle workers healers helpers organizers those who pray in tongues.But it's obvious by now, isn't it, that Christ's church is a complete Body and not a gigantic, unidimensional Part? It's not all Apostle, not all Prophet, not all Miracle Worker, not all Healer, not all Prayer in Tongues, not all Interpreter of Tongues. And yet some of you keep competing for so-called "important" parts.
But now I want to lay out a far better way for you.
Life opportunities have offered to me the experiential difference between solitude and isolation. Given my need to write, a degree of seclusion is necessary to create the space into which the words will inhabit. The process of entering that space is always wrought with distractions, amusements, and emotional digressions as that which is hidden, is so for purposes currently veiled. Those things out of sight are secrets to me at this point.
However, the concealed for many is wet and heavy with shame making this burial mutually and complicitly a bond the heart makes with the tongue. The contract of the soul is made inside the hiddeness so many are unaware of this pact and wonder why their voice seems so small and attenuated. It is this sense of smallness and mystifying discomfort that causes many to drop out of the human conversation all together.
Wellspring is a loosely held together community of misfits, spiritual wanderers, and those in the process of being broken open. Maybe it is this initial condition of imperfection that offers up the beginning stages of a brand new way for humans to be themselves in public. My beginning declaration offered up the possible distinctions between solitude and isolation.
Solitude it would seem is a much more generative escape into the confines of the soul and goes there for restorative purposes although it might be led through pain and tears. Isolation is a different posture altogether. It is one of seclusion and remoteness. It is an intentional attempt to separate oneself from others and to foster the powerful emotion of loneliness.
Humans are indeed lonely and to push away the experience may close windows on the soul that are opening for deeper purposes. However, when isolation rules the process of disclosure, little to nothing gets in or out. We set ourselves apart, heighten our emotive state and declare to all that no one or anything can remove this mantel of shame and distance we feel from ourselves and others.
Generally we do not think about the distance we feel from ourselves. In fact, loneliness is usually attributed to someone or something else that is not aggressively seeking us out. We are lonely because we do not deserve to be in this state. Someone should see this and offer up their life and gifts to us in grace. We are lonely because others do not see our worth.
Solitude is not a stance that seeks to separate oneself. It is a bearing that comes from a deep desire to unite all things and do so both individually and corporately. There is work to do alone so that community can take place. But if solitude is seen as isolation, our ability to then be human in public is diminished if not made impossible.
The statement made above that we are lonely because others do not see our worth has a ring of truth. Is it possible that the worth of the soul is not ultimately meted out in private? Is it possible that who we are at the most profound level comes only when we are with others and they see what we offer to the conversation. In this setting we are offering up our voice to the mix, our words to the story, and taking our place at the table. The place setting has our name on it after all.
Few teachers or scholars have studied the impact of dialogue and conversation on groups and individuals like the now deceased physicist David Bohm. He offers in his research some amazingly spiritual reasons for making sure real dialogue is taking place in communities all over the word. Bohm contends that “generative listening” is essential for profound conversations to take place. Because life is so multi layered and mysterious, it is vitally important to listen to others with a desire to understand rather than build a case. As the race for the presidency has now taken center stage, it is often observable that this posture or demeanor is lost in many a conversation. I would contend this posture is lost or deeply buried in most conversations.
We talk much about the need for a safe container in our community. We do so in many ways to foster this kind of conversation. It is a great battle internally to hold in tension opposite ideas and allow for someone else’s beliefs, conclusions, and assumptions to rise to the fore. When I begin to be truly human in public I allow my voice to offer up my personal meaning but I do so assuming that there are countless meanings in that space in which I now reside.
To discover the host of differing, contrasting, and even opposing assumptions and conclusions about life, truth, and experience is to begin to see the shockingly and beautifully exquisite assembly called humanity. It has always been this way. Bohm and other scholars tell us this through their research but we want to assume that the group we hang with thinks much like we do and that allows us to feel like a self in their midst.
Is it possible that our fears to express our loneliness in public settings are because we wonder if it will be heard and taken in as valid or real? If our experience in community is that certain voices are stifled and muffled or removed, that is a message to beware of being too open about our thoughts. Could it be that prolonged isolation creates profound loneliness and this is due in part to our inability to be human in public?
I learn how to be me. One would assume that being a self comes naturally but it appears that the dance of life is just that and we learn from one another the blessings and cursings we offer up to the conversation of life. What happens when our listening is deep and generative? We begin to not merely offer a space for others to be human but the container itself offers up this space. This is a divine operation not merely ours. This safe container is what allows for us to live out our meaning and express our voice in public. Who we are was meant to be shared. We are a gift. Our voice was meant to be heard.
Much of life feels like a rehearsal and in fact it is. No one comes to this life the second time around thus none of us are experts. We often want our voice to dominate, or we purposely hide our voice and make the community discover from where its quiet cries are emanating. Is there a brand new way of being human in public and is it essentially connected to our place in the conversation and our solitude? Will all our native giftedness begin to arise and serve others when we allow our voice to be heard, when we step away from isolation and offer up our voice, our meaning?
The Kingdom is being ushered in as we speak. Listen.
1 Corinthians 12
Spiritual Gifts
1-3 What I want to talk about now is the various ways God's Spirit gets worked into our lives. This is complex and often mis-understood, but I want you to be informed and knowledgeable. Remember how you were when you didn't know God, led from one phony god to another, never knowing what you were doing, just doing it because everybody else did it? It's different in this life. God wants us to use our intelligence, to seek to understand as well as we can. For instance, by using your heads, you know perfectly well that the Spirit of God would never prompt anyone to say "Jesus be damned!" Nor would anyone be inclined to say "Jesus is Master!" without the insight of the Holy Spirit.
4-11God's various gifts are handed out everywhere; but they all originate in God's Spirit. God's various ministries are carried out everywhere; but they all originate in God's Spirit. God's various expressions of power are in action everywhere; but God himself is behind it all. Each person is given something to do that shows who God is: Everyone gets in on it, everyone benefits. All kinds of things are handed out by the Spirit, and to all kinds of people! The variety is wonderful:
wise counsel
clear understanding
simple trust
healing the sick
miraculous acts
proclamation
distinguishing between spirits
tongues
interpretation of tongues.
All these gifts have a common origin, but are handed out one by one by the one Spirit of God. He decides who gets what, and when.
12-13You can easily enough see how this kind of thing works by looking no further than your own body. Your body has many parts—limbs, organs, cells—but no matter how many parts you can name, you're still one body. It's exactly the same with Christ. By means of his one Spirit, we all said good-bye to our partial and piecemeal lives. We each used to independently call our own shots, but then we entered into a large and integrated life in which he has the final say in everything. (This is what we proclaimed in word and action when we were baptized.) Each of us is now a part of his resurrection body, refreshed and sustained at one fountain—his Spirit—where we all come to drink. The old labels we once used to identify ourselves—labels like Jew or Greek, slave or free—are no longer useful. We need something larger, more comprehensive.
14-18I want you to think about how all this makes you more significant, not less. A body isn't just a single part blown up into something huge. It's all the different-but-similar parts arranged and functioning together. If Foot said, "I'm not elegant like Hand, embellished with rings; I guess I don't belong to this body," would that make it so? If Ear said, "I'm not beautiful like Eye, limpid and expressive; I don't deserve a place on the head," would you want to remove it from the body? If the body was all eye, how could it hear? If all ear, how could it smell? As it is, we see that God has carefully placed each part of the body right where he wanted it.
19-24But I also want you to think about how this keeps your significance from getting blown up into self-importance. For no matter how significant you are, it is only because of what you are a part of. An enormous eye or a gigantic hand wouldn't be a body, but a monster. What we have is one body with many parts, each its proper size and in its proper place. No part is important on its own. Can you imagine Eye telling Hand, "Get lost; I don't need you"? Or, Head telling Foot, "You're fired; your job has been phased out"? As a matter of fact, in practice it works the other way—the "lower" the part, the more basic, and therefore necessary. You can live without an eye, for instance, but not without a stomach. When it's a part of your own body you are concerned with, it makes no difference whether the part is visible or clothed, higher or lower. You give it dignity and honor just as it is, without comparisons. If anything, you have more concern for the lower parts than the higher. If you had to choose, wouldn't you prefer good digestion to full-bodied hair?
25-26The way God designed our bodies is a model for understanding our lives together as a church: every part dependent on every other part, the parts we mention and the parts we don't, the parts we see and the parts we don't. If one part hurts, every other part is involved in the hurt, and in the healing. If one part flourishes, every other part enters into the exuberance.
27-31You are Christ's body—that's who you are! You must never forget this. Only as you accept your part of that body does your "part" mean anything. You're familiar with some of the parts that God has formed in his church, which is his "body": apostles prophets teachers miracle workers healers helpers organizers those who pray in tongues.But it's obvious by now, isn't it, that Christ's church is a complete Body and not a gigantic, unidimensional Part? It's not all Apostle, not all Prophet, not all Miracle Worker, not all Healer, not all Prayer in Tongues, not all Interpreter of Tongues. And yet some of you keep competing for so-called "important" parts.
But now I want to lay out a far better way for you.
Friday, August 29, 2008
Finding Direction in the Needs of Others
The discovering of God’s will for one’s life is a conversation that is common place amongst believers. Many a verse is offered up as guidance and much of the trajectory of people’s choices and intentions arise from a highly personalized sense of how God directs. Is it possible that we will find a deeper sense of the authentic self when we look at our futures through the lense of those around us or in proximity to our awareness? Could the actual needs of our friends, our family, our community and our world be offering a path to follow?
As the self wanes in its exaltedness, the possibility of relationships and purposes outside the highly introverted sense of choice come to the fore. We begin to actually find meaning & direction by being in relationships. We find our self in the selves of others and in the projections they place upon us. We see the glory of others and this glory causes us to dream and plan for a better world. Our plans, however, begin to take place with those directly in our presence. There is no future home. There is now.
Joanne Vance, a visual artist said the following about her life and work. “The essence of my work is humanity; how we value ourselves and are valued. This goes far beyond brush and canvas. It is my aim to blur the distinction between my life and my work so the two become inextricably linked. Hopefully my life will become my art…maybe eve vice versa.” She goes on to say...” I am an artist, mother, and wife, not in any particular order. I am interested in people, family values, fidelity, integrity and hope. I am passionate about touching the lives of people who feel undervalued and irrelevant, not for my gain but for theirs. Obviously, with that sort of ethic, come great rewards anyway, so it’s a winning situation.”
What causes some human beings to offer up their lives as a gift of service while others make an art form out of self aggrandizement? Is it possible that the template for self discovery and expression as reflected in Western European societies is not merely sub biblical but antithetical to the very story Jesus offered?
Give and it shall be given. You are not your own. Pick up your cross daily. Die to yourself. Serve. These are all parts of our Christian story. Yet for many of us a competing ethos has crowded out our ability to incorporate those truths into our idea of the self and our life direction and work. We have been formed deeply by a narrative that ties so much of our worth around our paycheck, our status and our productivity as defined by economics.We are busy building barns and fences.
Upon closer scrutiny we may find that much of our intentionality about the way we engage life direction depends upon the maximization of our abilities to acquire, spend and protect. Getting, spending and hording now overwhelmingly replace other activities and our very souls become reflections of the consumer that we have become. More always trumps better. Or, we make sure that we have control over the acquisitions and are the sole administrator of the estate we have acquired.
To acquire involves our presence. If life direction is the acquisition of personal wealth then the wealth of others, community and the world becomes of secondary importance if important at all. Wealth (the good kind) in this case is the perception of development of the assets and opportunities afforded us by seeing life direction through the needs and presence of others. This kind of wealth is generally not on our radar. Why? There is an untested consensus in the West that more is always better. There is an unquestioned complicity that individuals must first take care of themselves before they can take care of others.
There is a well known financial guru who teaches in many ways that the biblical mandate for financial stewardship is to first get “your house” in order and THEN help others. As I have watched this man’s disciples of sorts go out into the world I find that they never get their house in order because no one has ever tested the foundational philosophies around what their house should look like. No one is asking them what their life direction is about. It is assumed that the mandate of a society built around financial independence is sacrosanct. It need not be questioned. It is just the “way things are.”
When the needs of others become the possible voice of God, we listen differently. We begin to see their needs not as burdens to bear but opportunities to share. In the sharing we deepen our own humanity and begin to have solidarity with others around their deepest most human parts and not the superficial issues of acquired wealth and status.
The incarnation is more than a theological concept. It is the story and posture of a God who decided that the sharing of Himself was His deepest desire. As love, what else could He do but offer His very best? When we continue to see life direction through the needs of others, the story of the Incarnation is written again in our hearts. The very nature of the world turns towards restoration and redemption. The Kingdom of God is manifest on earth as it is in heaven. We become a gloriously rich community able to see the very Godhead in each other’s neediness. This is a gift. "There is enough when we share." - Jim Wallis
As the self wanes in its exaltedness, the possibility of relationships and purposes outside the highly introverted sense of choice come to the fore. We begin to actually find meaning & direction by being in relationships. We find our self in the selves of others and in the projections they place upon us. We see the glory of others and this glory causes us to dream and plan for a better world. Our plans, however, begin to take place with those directly in our presence. There is no future home. There is now.
Joanne Vance, a visual artist said the following about her life and work. “The essence of my work is humanity; how we value ourselves and are valued. This goes far beyond brush and canvas. It is my aim to blur the distinction between my life and my work so the two become inextricably linked. Hopefully my life will become my art…maybe eve vice versa.” She goes on to say...” I am an artist, mother, and wife, not in any particular order. I am interested in people, family values, fidelity, integrity and hope. I am passionate about touching the lives of people who feel undervalued and irrelevant, not for my gain but for theirs. Obviously, with that sort of ethic, come great rewards anyway, so it’s a winning situation.”
What causes some human beings to offer up their lives as a gift of service while others make an art form out of self aggrandizement? Is it possible that the template for self discovery and expression as reflected in Western European societies is not merely sub biblical but antithetical to the very story Jesus offered?
Give and it shall be given. You are not your own. Pick up your cross daily. Die to yourself. Serve. These are all parts of our Christian story. Yet for many of us a competing ethos has crowded out our ability to incorporate those truths into our idea of the self and our life direction and work. We have been formed deeply by a narrative that ties so much of our worth around our paycheck, our status and our productivity as defined by economics.We are busy building barns and fences.
Upon closer scrutiny we may find that much of our intentionality about the way we engage life direction depends upon the maximization of our abilities to acquire, spend and protect. Getting, spending and hording now overwhelmingly replace other activities and our very souls become reflections of the consumer that we have become. More always trumps better. Or, we make sure that we have control over the acquisitions and are the sole administrator of the estate we have acquired.
To acquire involves our presence. If life direction is the acquisition of personal wealth then the wealth of others, community and the world becomes of secondary importance if important at all. Wealth (the good kind) in this case is the perception of development of the assets and opportunities afforded us by seeing life direction through the needs and presence of others. This kind of wealth is generally not on our radar. Why? There is an untested consensus in the West that more is always better. There is an unquestioned complicity that individuals must first take care of themselves before they can take care of others.
There is a well known financial guru who teaches in many ways that the biblical mandate for financial stewardship is to first get “your house” in order and THEN help others. As I have watched this man’s disciples of sorts go out into the world I find that they never get their house in order because no one has ever tested the foundational philosophies around what their house should look like. No one is asking them what their life direction is about. It is assumed that the mandate of a society built around financial independence is sacrosanct. It need not be questioned. It is just the “way things are.”
When the needs of others become the possible voice of God, we listen differently. We begin to see their needs not as burdens to bear but opportunities to share. In the sharing we deepen our own humanity and begin to have solidarity with others around their deepest most human parts and not the superficial issues of acquired wealth and status.
The incarnation is more than a theological concept. It is the story and posture of a God who decided that the sharing of Himself was His deepest desire. As love, what else could He do but offer His very best? When we continue to see life direction through the needs of others, the story of the Incarnation is written again in our hearts. The very nature of the world turns towards restoration and redemption. The Kingdom of God is manifest on earth as it is in heaven. We become a gloriously rich community able to see the very Godhead in each other’s neediness. This is a gift. "There is enough when we share." - Jim Wallis
Friday, August 22, 2008
Community as Dowser (The Divine Diviner)
In recent years my wife and I have worked with a large village in
Christ's statement as to His status as the living water is a metaphor many of us in the West have highly spiritualized. In
We in the States take water for granted. We do not need to think about what might come from quenching our thirst. We can drink up without fear. Ironically our access to unlimited sources of water is in some ways another metaphor for the over abundance we have in Western societies. We no longer grasp the conditions that many face throughout the world and in that lack of awareness a strange thing happens to the very water we drink. It begins to bring small doses of bacteria that begin to saturate our soul. These small organisms enter our soul and slowly over time alter the very way our bodies and souls engage the world.
Taking this metaphor further I offer up this scenario. Is it possible that because we take one of life’s most vital life sources for granted, we then take the provider of this gift for granted? What is the by product of taking God for granted and how did we get here?
As I enter full fledged middle age I find that discovering spiritual wells is getting harder and harder. Ironically it is not due to my lack of thirst but my awareness as to how I hunt for water. My water dowser (a term people in the backwoods use for one looking for a place to dig a well), has been taken for granted due to the culture in which I thirst. I have dug my well deep into this world and now my soul thirsts for water of a certain kind. My tongue thirsts for increase and growth. I have lived my life from an economic perspective that says I can sell the water that is a gift. My life is available to the highest bidder. This has all been unwitting as I did not know the God of success was enshrined in my heart, in my thirst. I discovered the source of my thirst when I began to discover that I saw myself through this lense of worth, merit and accomplishment. I am what I do. I am what I earn. I am where I live. I am what I have. I am who I know and I know people of power and prestige.
Of late my thirst has begun to change and the very refreshment my soul used to find refreshing now has a strange and even dis-settling taste. I have come to see that my ability to create wealth for myself and others is an elixir that no longer washes over my soul with any sense of refreshment. As I enter middle age I begin to see that life in indeed filled with mortality and limitation and that my thirst for unlimited access to water is not the way the universe works. The water my soul has taken for granted is a myth. I can drink of this water but it is really sugary soda pop or some saccharine version of living water. My tongue did not know the difference but now my heart has begun to inform my bodily appetites and my thirst is changing. I can no longer satiate my thirst with liquids that indeed are filled with salt thus making my thirst a never ending returning to the very things that are making my thirst unquenchable.
Lately I think I heard the Spirit say, “Dig here.” In my heart I am thinking, “What, dig here? There is no water to be found in this location.” As I reluctantly stopped my incessant search for water at the wrong well I began to discover something about the water the Spirit offers. His water is not just for me. He wants to build wells for the village. He desires that this water be accessible to anyone - the just and the unjust. He says the rain falls on all. He seems indiscriminant as to how He offers us this living water. Now my thirst is quenched in the shift in my intentionality as to my digging. Whereas in the past I may have dug for myself, for my own edification, my own personal wealth and thirst, now I have begun to dig with & for others. We are digging. We are dowsing together. We stop and pause and ask corporately, "Is there water here?”We acknowledge together our need of this living water. We are all thirsty beyond our ability to attain anything in this life. The thirst, the real deep down thirst comes in our common humanity. When we begin to see that under our clothes, past our accomplishments, past our marks we have made in this world, we are all the same. This search for water is a communal search and the place of the well must serve many. It is not for my personal private thirst.
I thirst along with others. I dig along with others. I am digging the well along with others. In
I want to offer access to the well to anyone and all. I want to coalesce my searching for water in isolation and bring the process under the community and make it a search together. Help me this day to be a good dowser. Help us as a community of thirst to be a place were people know they can get their deepest thirst quenched. Help us God dig deep into You for the sake of one another.
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