All posts by Rod White

I Still Want To Talk

The Mission,

Our dinner party turned uproarious for a little while the other night when we all realized we had something to say about our divided up country and churches.

We were having an easy time talking (and shouting), but, in general, it is hard to talk these days.

Can we talk about anything substantial?

I have been struggling this past week over what to do about that situation. I am a talker. I am writing/talking again right now. My message last night was all about dialogue. But I am increasingly puzzled about how to talk to anyone about anything substantial. For me, “substantial” is all about Jesus; I have a whole Bible that delineates what I am talking about. The place I live seems increasingly hostile to Jesus. While that is unnerving, I think I can handle it. But I am not sure how to talk about it. I keep encountering a strong set of assumptions with which I am at odds. But I’m not sure the “regular Joes and Janes” I talk to are aware of their underpinnings, they are just pinned. They don’t have a “bible” but they have some strong beliefs. We have substantial things to talk about.

So let me test my perceived differences out with you. In general (admitting that nobody is likely to be doctrinaire), the young people of our country are taught three basic things: 1) science is God, 2) profit rules, 3) meaning is all personal, individual. On the other hand, followers of Jesus say: 1) God is creator, 2) Jesus rules, 3) meaning is all related.

Now let’s talk.

At our dinner party we were testing out some of these differences. We agreed we were working out Ephesians 4, where Paul says:

“Christ himself gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the pastors and teachers, to equip his people for works of service, so that the body of Christ may be built up until we all reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God and become mature, attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ.

Then we will no longer be infants, tossed back and forth by the waves, and blown here and there by every wind of teaching and by the cunning and craftiness of people in their deceitful scheming. Instead, speaking the truth in love, we will in all things grow up into him who is the head, that is, Christ. From him the whole body, joined and held together by every supporting ligament, grows and builds itself up in love, as each part does its work.”

not actual dinner guest

We all felt we were getting blown all over the map by the strong winds of teaching from our postmodern and post-Christian world and the deceitful scheming that is coming with it. We were all committed to speaking the truth in love and we all had some issues where that was a difficult thing to do.

For instance, one of us was particularly interested in the area of sexuality, where science is God. An argument about so-called homosexuality uses debatable science to form the basis of a political movement, so one friend said. This led us further into the teaching of evolutionary psychology that influences people to understand humans as, essentially, very adaptable animals whose choices are all about what helps them survive.

Then another friend brought up the school system, where, increasingly, profit rules. Children are supposed to be motivated by a competition with the Chinese for economic hegemony. Poor people are shamed and told they should learn how to profit and not be a drain on society. For-profit corporations are being invited into the school system to exploit the failing situation of inner city education. Huge corporations have invented the “teach for the test” approach that has sapped the creativity of many good teachers.

Then came the Brethren in Christ, where meaning seems inexplicably personal, individual. This was my main topic. I have been talking, a little, about the practical theology of being a denomination. I even wrote a piece for the BIC List commenting on an explanation a leader wrote about what has been going on. What struck me in the replies to my post was that they were mainly individual anecdotes about how people took care of the issues themselves. I was reminded that DIY is now also a communal activity; we are that completely atomized. The deepest response I have received from my leaders about what is happening in our community has been a carefully worded, noncommittal, cable-newslike, two-sided rendition of what individuals might possibly be thinking.

It is very difficult to talk.

Today I am trying to shore up my hope for speaking the truth in love. When it comes to shouting into the big wind coming from the world, I think I want to get better at insisting that people voice their assumptions about how the world works, rather than just resisting the fruit of their unacknowledged/unknown assumptions or just avoiding the dialogue altogether.

  • If science is the fountain of truth, then admit that and defend it; don’t just assume it.
  • If profit is the goal, if that means the invisible hand is guiding our choices, then say that; at least when you are talking to me, don’t assume I believe that.
  • If you believe that the only thing you can really know comes from your own experience, that even when you are listening to me you can only respond with your own experience of the topic, then admit that up front.

We can meet in our love.

On my side of the dialogue I will be revealing God as the beginning and end of reality as we know it. That is God who is made fully known in Jesus, who demonstrates how to choose and makes us able to follow him. I will be assuming that we not only all relate to God, we are designed to work out our meaning together in love, speaking the truth in love and growing up into our full maturity. We may not immediately understand each other. But I still want to talk, no matter how hard it is.

Soak Up Generativity

A life in the Spirit, , , , , ,

At the memorial for Gwen’s mother, I read a portion of John 14 and this was part of it:

       If you really know me, you will know my Father as well. From now on, you do know him and have seen him.”
      Philip said, “Lord, show us the Father and that will be enough for us.”
      Jesus answered: “Don’t you know me, Philip, even after I have been among you such a long time? Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, ‘Show us the Father’?  Don’t you believe that I am in the Father, and that the Father is in me?

Generativity is right before out eyes.

Does it also seem amazing to you that Philip and the rest of the disciples are often unable to see what is happening right before their eyes? Contrary to all the evidence, when Jesus tells them something, they want more evidence. I wish I could not relate to that.

I have experienced so many wonderful things in the past week that bubbled with generativity! They had the Father in them. They were like Jesus showing me the Father. God has been so evidently at work! Yet in each instance of joy and creativity there was a choice to make, because there was also a whisper of judgment and a way to see the situation otherwise. I saw Jesus. But he had to ask me, “Don’t you know me? Don’t you believe the Father is in me?”

List where you have been able to soak it up.

Maybe it is just me, but you might be going through similar challenges. So I thought I would encourage you to list where you have been able to soak up generativity. I make lists and I tell stories, 1) so I don’t lose track of my blessings in some morass of self-centeredness or self-condemnation, 2) so I don’t devalue God by ignoring grace. Today, I have a long obvious list. There were many moments last week that were pleasantly generative.

  • Touch. 1) When Michiko came up out of the water after her baptism, we spontaneously leaned in and touched our foreheads. 2) My grandson lolled on my lap for a good part of the Love Feast.
  • Retreat. I was away with the men last weekend. I had nothing to do but encourage and be encouraged, to soak up the Spirit and the energy of seekers.
  • Direct address. A person went out of their way to talk to me and not about me when they were worried about what I said. This is one of the most countercultural things Christians do.
  • Stories. The stone was repeatedly rolled away as people spoke at the baptism and the Love Feast.
  • Laughter. 1) The cooks at Cosi crashed their tools around so loudly when our cell was talking we could not stop laughing. 2) When Oliver and Nat were dancing on the ottoman to tunes from Beauty and the Beast, that was memorable.
  • Connection. Sixty or so children and State Representative Jordan Harris were at the building for a Childs Elementary art show. It was riotous and full of joy.

Don’t undermine your list, soak in it.

I think many of us gravitate toward seeing the dark side of most situations. A touch can feel painful. A retreat can feel lonely. A direct statement can be frightening. Stories can create envy. Laughter can seem like an interruption. Connecting can be tiring. We could have Jesus promising us eternity and need one more piece of evidence to feel good. Jesus could tell us he is going through death to bring us into life and we would be distressed he is dying. We are like this.

I say you should make your list and try not to even think about all the reasons your list is dishonest, tainted or troubling. Just soak in the generativity. If there is a drop of goodness coming your way, if you can see even a rivulet of grace flowing through the past week, let it reach you, get wet. I think we are in an ocean of God’s favor. It would make sense to take off the wet suit of fear, shame or whatever it is and feel it. This is me unzipping.

Narcissism and Telling Our Stories

Psychological growth, The Mission, , , , , , , , ,

My recent studies in psychoanalytic theory confirmed nicely what my first individual therapist, way-back-when, knew as soon as I sat down. At one point he handed me a book and said, “You might want to read this.” It was titled “Narcissism.” I take some small comfort in knowing that I am not alone in having my psychology organized in that way.

Many people say that the United States is a rather narcissistic society (notably Christopher Lasch). So I felt comfortable talking to the men about it when we were on retreat last weekend; we all know something about it, at some level.  Narcissists are often merely seen as people who are into themselves. But, in truth, what they are into is anything but themselves; they are more into the presentation of themselves – they are consumed by maintaining the image that keeps them safe from dealing with their shameful insides, the things they don’t want to touch or know about. They maintain their self-esteem by getting affirmation from outside themselves. So they can often be driven by repressed rage and self-hatred, and escape into a grandiose self-conception, merely using other people as instruments of gratification even while they crave their love and approval. Something is missing. If they ever ponder what is happening in their soul, they probably feel fraudulent and loveless.

Narcissism poster child

Tiger Woods became the poster child for narcissism that developed into an extreme version; some say he has a disorder. It is no surprise that he might have developed this way; the United States seems to be full such people. Rush Limbaugh and Barack Obama may have at least one thing in common;  they were trained to be narcissistic. Society sets us all up to need to appear special so we can sell our labor. We have all become products in a package. We are encouraged to be grandiose by constant testing and resume-building. The most susceptible of us end up preoccupied with what we should be and perpetually critical or depressed about what we are. Narcissists are terrified of insufficiency, shame, weakness, or inferiority. That resembles the country’s political debate and foreign policy.

Shame is the big motivator for the narcissist — and shame is hard to look at and harder to overcome. Shame is being seen as bad or wrong.  I understand how it can get a grip on one’s heart. For instance, I recently wrote a blog piece that criticized the way my leaders in the BIC were communicating about the crisis in our leadership. I received a scathing letter from one of the general church leaders and it set off a flood of emotion in me. They were trying to shame me, and it almost caused me to stop telling the truth in order to avoid the feeling. Narcissists have a whole collection of ways they defend against shame and the envy they feel of others who seem not to feel it. Here are a few examples:

  • They devalue. They will scorn or ridicule what they envy, or think  they are unworthy of. Watch an episode of Seinfeld.
  • The other side of devaluing is idealization. They have a grandiose sense of self. They don’t merely compare themselves to others; they compare themselves to the best person in their profession and feel horrible in comparison. They need to go to the best school. They know what the best beer is, or can list the top ten microbreweries in the Philadelphia region. They need to wear the best shoes. They read the magazines that reveal the most rigorous workout to achieve the best abs.
  • They end up perfectionistic, which can result in either thinking they have made it or feeling inherently flawed. They have a tough time being forgivably human. They might attach themselves to an idealized, perfect mentor or mate and gain status by being an appendage. But they might also knock them off their pedestal in fury when they prove to be imperfect.

The men’s retreat was full of wonderful stories about growth and pain and Jesus. I told parts of my story of transformation, as well. I said that my story had a wonderful factor in it. I may see my parents as having “whacked” the best parts of me whenever they surfaced like they were playing whack-a-mole. But in my hole I found Jesus. When I was a teen, and all my narcissistic props got knocked out from under me, I remembered Jesus in the deep hole of my depression.

Telling my story was predictably difficult for me. Our whole society is dedicated to flooding the world with idealized stories that create a reality that devalues authenticity. It is hard to figure out whether one is telling a story that is true or “truthy.” We are trained for inauthenticity by watching “reality” shows that have very little to do with reality. As a result, many of us are hesitant to tell a story about ourselves because the best we can do is not be as inauthentic as someone else. When our church decided to call out 100 stories of transformation this year, I don’t think we realized how hard that might seem to people.

Because of the confusing atmosphere in which we live, we are hesitant to ask people to tell their stories. We are hesitant, so why wouldn’t they be hesitant?

  • We are afraid we might turn them into commodities. The 24-hour news cycle is out filming us all the time to provide feed for their image business. Facebook needs all our images and personal history giving to survive. We don’t want to do that to people.
  • So we are afraid that asking someone to tell a story will be exploitive. We’re like a primitive person somewhere who doesn’t want her picture taken because she thinks the camera will steal her spirit. We don’t want to steal others’ spirits.
  • We are afraid that people will feel like they are selling themselves, providing material for a Christian hype machine. The last thing we want to look like is a hype machine!

We try to do things that are “not-unChristian” to be a Christian. We focus on not doing what we are ashamed of, or what embarrasses us in others, or what we envy in others but think will look cheesy when we do it. So it is hard to tell a story about what Jesus is doing and hard to ask someone to do it.

Nevertheless, I think we need to keep trying to tell our stories. The powers that be would like to shut us up. The men at the retreat went into the night not shutting up last Saturday. I think it made a difference.

  • Storytelling helps us to understand who we are and listening to stories gives the gift of understanding to someone else. Vulnerable dialogue is fundamental to love.
  • Our stories are valuable. Even if we don’t really know what we are talking about right now, God thinks our story is valuable because we are valuable to him. We are the creatures he died for, for whom he made a covenant in blood to give us his life. If we receive that gift we are each a vessel in which the Holy Spirit is carried and from which the glory of God is dispensed in this time.
  • Telling our stories is an act of defiance against the powers that sell stories, who want us to be a mere images of some idealized self that is not a gift of God but just a contract with the economy.

Jesus is made known in the human story that acknowledges God with us and that story is continuing to be told in us.

Understanding, restoration, and resistance are in the storytelling. The dialogue is a process of losing one’s false self and taking on one’s true self in Christ.

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What We Dread Is Not Our End

Building community,

On Tuesday of Holy Week, while Art was bringing us into the Lord’s teaching on the last days, I was feeling for our denomination, the Brethren in Christ.

The BIC has had a lot of losses. Last year two of our bishops resigned, including the one for our conference. They resigned under protest and then would not tell us what the protest was about. A financial officer also resigned from our General Church Leaders, which made circumstances even more suspicious; this has also gone unexplained, even in the offical explanation. Now the bishop of the Southeast Conference is retiring, which makes one wonder how those Spanish speakers will relate to English speakers without their mediator. Rumor has it that the Canadian Conference is going to separate, mainly because Canadian and U.S. laws make it hard to stick together; that is a loss, too. Our General Conference Secretary will be gone this summer; the Moderator is leaving early next year. Is this the end of the BIC?

Communication is death-defying

Let’s talk about it. The essence of being a human who is not independent of God is communication. God calls us and we respond. God reveals and we see and listen. God is a mutually-intending trinity who is in a dialogue that defines each member as they relate. People and institutions who are made in God’s image have a character that reflects God, in that they speak the truth in love as a core feature of who they are. Conversely, systems that communicate in monologue and avoid dialogue are oppressive and destined for death.

At our recent regional conference, to which I was not able to go, those who represented Circle of Hope came away uniformly aghast. A consultant was hired to give a speech that was so strangely coercive they could not figure out what he was doing. He was calling for courage in suffering and for a willingness to forgive, and he cried three times while he was calling for it!

But our delegates could not figure out what he was talking about. We haven’t been told yet what we are suffering or what we should forgive!! There was a whopping fifteen minutes allotted for discussing the major changes that have been going on. Our new bishop and the General Secretary were there and stonewalled the whole process. They apparently had a deal to give no information at all! Someone stood up to ask why our bishop resigned and they received no answer. Someone told me they heard that the practice of denuding the conference landscape of dialogue is mainly a BIC Atlantic Conference habit; other conferences actually confer at their conferences. Our contingent was so visibly distressed at the behavior of the conference leaders that a kind heart decided to take them out to lunch to cheer them up! Is this the end of the BIC?

The glory of God will be revealed

We’ll see. At the beginning of Lent, Circle of Hope Broad and Washington explored the healing of the man blind from birth. People asked Jesus, “Who sinned, this man or his parents that he was born blind?” Jesus answered, “This happened so that the glory of God would be shown.” That was a good answer, Lord! Thanks! When we ask the question, out of our despair and confusion, “Who caused the blindness of the BIC? Is this the end of the BIC?” We may want to get an answer.  But, ultimately, Jesus is probably going to answer the same way he answered other short-sighted followers in the past: “I don’t need great circumstances to show God’s glory. Don’t get stuck in your interpretation of the present situation.”

He was saying similar things to us during Holy Week. On Tuesday, Art taught us, in Jesus’  stead, that the “end we dread is not our end.” Jesus has opened a new way. We need to watch, not fear. On the night Art was leading us I was thinking about the BIC. We love the BIC and we dread the end our leaders seem to be making of it. Most of us have never experienced such persistent lack of wisdom — or whatever it is that may be happening once we become privy to it. We have surely not experienced asking direct questions to our leaders and discovering that they have a mutual commitment to not trust us with the truth. It is astounding.

If God wants it all to end, it will end. But it is probably just a time to change. It is time to move with what the Spirit is doing next.  It is a time to see God’s glory displayed in another surprising way. I take heart in what happened last week. On Tuesday things looked confusing and dark. Jesus revealed mysterious prophecies. On Sunday He rose from the dead.

I dread the end of the BIC. But what I dread is not my end.

Five Reasons Holy Week Might Be Hard For Us

A life in the Spirit, ,

Walking with Jesus will be hard this week. It is hard to walk Spirit to spirit every day, but this week is the “discipline week” that often brings up everything that makes it hard to walk with Jesus every day. You may not think Holy Week is going to be hard, but I, and most others I think, will be struggling a bit.

At a conference full of evangelicals last week the worship leader started out a plenary session with “At the Cross” (an example sung robustly here). It reminded me of my childhood experience of Christianity. I can’t really defend our skeptical reaction, but my sister and I always lampooned this song when we sang it (robustly!) in the front row of the Baptist Church. We were tickled because of this line, “At the cross…it was there by faith I received my sight and now I am happy all the day.” Even then, we knew that most of the people in the room were not happy all the day and that the song made promises it wasn’t keeping.

What I mean is that the story of “At the Cross” should have stuck with Jesus and not included somewhat narcissistic declarations of how happy Jesus has made his followers as evidence that his work has efficacy. The burden of sin has rolled away, but I am still rising from my tomb. Dying is still easy and living is still hard. Everyone who knows me, especially my intimates, can tell you that I am generally a happy-all-the-day kind of guy who still shoots himself in the foot all the time. I will be happy to limp through Holy Week, following after Jesus, who saved me and is saving me, with whom I am suffering as he is suffering with me. That’s harder and better than pretending “it’s all good.”

We offer a Holy Week observance that is harder and better and I think that is good. I need it.

Now, I am not writing this to make non-participants feel stupid or bad. The school district has made this week a vacation and some people will take advantage of that and miss the whole thing. Some people work at night, when we are holding our meetings, and there are not that many jobs to be had. Plenty of people have not figured out how to have spiritual disciplines that actually help them connect to God and aren’t merely more things to do; they don’t need more obligation. So don’t take this the wrong way.

Jesus in the Temple. We follow him on Monday of Holy Week.

I am just writing to you in the spirit of Jesus, who tells people to follow him even when they make a lot of good excuses why they can’t do it. He meets people who are honest enough to admit that it is hard to follow him, and Jesus is honest enough to tell them that he knows it is hard and they have to do it anyway. We need to die, too, in order to live. Paul says he wants to share the Lord’s death so he will share the Lord’s life. Our audacious determination to follow Jesus through his last week, in whatever way we can, hopefully using the community’s observances, is the kind of focus serious disciples keep. I think it is life-giving.

Five reasons that it will be hard. That’s OK:

1) You might be called in to work or have classes. There are very few people in power and probably no corporations or universities who will recognize your obligation to follow Jesus through his last week, especially if it costs them any of your time or devotion. They are against such divided loyalty to their money. They will make it hard. The younger you are the harder it will be because the unemployment rate for the young is something like 14-20% according to Sunday’s Inquirer. Holy Week calls for focus on the master, so it brings up the other masters on whom we are called to focus.

2) We will have to work on it. Having devotion that calls for scheduling outside our “ruts” for an entire week is work. That’s why we do it. Some people honestly love the whole thing and not only look forward to Lent but also Holy Week all year. Most people don’t. Most people think good things happen to them, or not; they don’t feel like one should work for them. Their marriages disappoint them as soon as they are “work,” so do their churches, jobs, whatever. Holy Week breeds agency – a sense that we have value, that we make a difference when we show up, that doing something can build something.

3) We will do it together. The way we observe Holy Week, a lot of the process is communal, not just individual. That makes it even more inconvenient and even more subject to being messy and inept. New leaders will lead the meetings and they may be great or awful. We’ll have to deal with that. Jesus, after all, is visibly making himself subject to humankind throughout the week. We need to do that too — we’re even going to follow him as he carries his cross through our neighborhoods and experience what it is like to be observed by the neighbors! Being spiritual as people among other people is one of our greatest challenges. Holy Week breeds humility and patience.

4) The whole idea requires surrender. First, it requires surrender to love. Like David Benner says: “It is possible to know God’s love personally, beyond simply knowing about it. The fact that I am deeply loved by God is increasingly the core of my identity, what I know about myself with most confidence. Such a conviction is, I am convinced, the foundation of any significant Christian spiritual growth.” Living in that love means surrender of time, surrender of attention to other things, other pursuits, maybe even surrender of wages or visits with important people, or pleasure.  Holy Week breeds waiting expectantly for the fullness of love.

5) It is all about Jesus. That makes it hard, in itself. Holy Week makes it plain that following Jesus is not an ideology one can hold in one’s brain, it is an embodied faith that happens in real time. Jesus did not die in the abstract; he died in time and space. We are called to die daily, too. During Holy Week we enact faith that is about our whole lives. Being deeply involved in doing something that is all about Jesus, that is devoted to relating to Jesus and being like Jesus, that even leads us to be public about following is hard and very good for us. Holy Week nurtures a character that can be a true self day by day.

Focusing on the master, showing up because what we do makes difference, developing humility and patience in community, learning to wait expectantly, nurturing a character that reflects our true selves – all those are good reasons to do something hard. I am trying to talk myself into it. Jesus already came to town last night. I don’t want to miss the whole thing for the nothing I somehow consider more important.

I Don’t Want to Zone Out During Holy Week.

A life in the Spirit, Mostly the arts, ,

Last night I talked about my favorite new painter, William Brassey Hole. I am not sure he is the most spectacular painter. But the scenes he paints are the most spectacular ever.

The one on which we were meditating last night is the one called, in short, “Jesus about to heal a boy.” It is one of Hole’s “on the spot” imaginations of what it must have been like to be part of the scene when Jesus descended from the experience of transfiguration on the mountain and entered into a village in which a boy was tormented by an evil spirit.

There is a lot to say about what Mark reveals about that moment in history. But the part of the painting that sticks with me is the man in the foreground zoning out. He is reminding me too much of myself. I can’t help but pay attention to him as we get near Holy Week.

Zoning out in the middle of importance

A few people reading this probably just said, “What is Holy Week?” Wikipedia does not really do it justice. Circle of Hope tries to get into it deep. We spend the whole week walking with Jesus through his last days, in a symbolic way, mainly through our nightly meetings that listen to the scripture and replicate it in some significant way. Our Holy Week observance is intentionally “over the top.” It stakes a claim to our attention and time in a world that would love to shuffle Jesus off into “private time,” which none of us has much of anyway. Holy Week insists that we plan around it, we change our schedule, we do something so Christian that our acquaintances will find out about it and we will have to explain ourselves; it honors Jesus going to the cross, which is still the scandalous basis for our faith. I love it.

That is, I love it theoretically. It is certainly the right thing to do. I am proud to have it in my schedule. I think I should honor Jesus. But I am still way too much like that guy in the painting looking “wherever.”

The most important thing that will ever happen in his village is about to happen and he is looking somewhere else. I can’t quite interpret what he is thinking.

  • He could just be blanked out, like people on the subway waiting for the train to stop, sleepwalking.
  • He could be lost in his own thoughts, slightly depressed; a screaming boy can’t even get his attention.
  • He might be worried, looking up the hill to see if anyone is watching this, like his wife maybe, who wishes they would move out of his terrible village into her father’s village, where there are no seizure-ridden boys.
  • He might be wondering if that dog wandering up there is his dog that got untied and is chasing the neighbor’s chicken.

For whatever reason, his attention is wandering away from Jesus coming to his village and the miracle that is about to happen. I might do that with Holy week.

A lot of my friends will ignore the discipline of Holy Week because they think they carry Jesus with them in their heart, exclusively, like they are the vehicle for his existence. They don’t live in Jesus, Jesus lives in them; and whatever they do, Jesus is privileged to bless. If they let Him out of the cage of their heart, he should feel grateful.

Privileged to follow

I never quite got that Christianity, even though it has been popular for decades. I still feel like I am privileged to follow Jesus around. I expect to be surprised at how he is going to show up. I spend a lot of effort tuning my receptors, so I am ready for him. I am welcomed into his universe, restored to my place in it. I am watching for what my king desires.

So I don’t want to zone out during Holy Week. Yes, it is arbitrary to have a holy week, and no, Jesus is not restricted to showing up during it. Yes, most of it was invented by Catholics, and no, it is not a magical vortex of some kind. Yes, there are a lot of arguments for why one should go to class or wherever instead of the observances, but they are mostly bogus reasons, imho. I think the week will be especially helpful in fulfilling my desire to zone in on Jesus, so I don’t just zone out about stuff that is threatening to overwhelm me.

It is tempting every year for me to tamp down the meaning and emotion of Holy Week, to look away, to let it happen without me while my mind is occupied elsewhere or my mind is occupied with resisting being occupied. I am way too much like that man in the painting. Jesus is going to the cross and I…

  • could be preoccupied with my relationship problems.
  • could wonder if the observances are worth the effort to attend. Some people would think it was radical to ask their boss for time off from noon to three on Good Friday because they aren’t going to work while Jesus is on the cross doing his work. And it is true, some people in charge of the observances might not be all that adept.
  • could be distracted by how weird it is to be a Christian who is so serious. Every day!?
  • could just stay distant. I might go to every meeting and manage to never concentrate on what they mean, or on the Lord’s presence in  the moment, or on my own heart’s struggle.

Those are just a few of my issues.

How are you working with the opportunity?

I think it is the most important week of the year. It is the week that should color all the other weeks. If the year is going to be Christian, it should be like Jesus is coming to heal a boy in our own village, not like a passing thought trying to get into my preoccupied mind.

Ravi and Clementi — Let’s watch out for one another.

A life in the Spirit, , , , , , , ,

Poor Dharun Ravi and poor Tyler Clementi! It is like evil swooped in to their dorm room and carried them both away.

In case you have not been following this tragic case that has been played out in the press for over a year, Ravi found out how to use his webcam remotely and spied on his roommate having an intimate encounter with another man. Days later Clementi told his FB friends he was jumping off the George Washington Bridge with a few words and, “Sorry.” He never read the text Ravi had sent him asking for friendship. The jury found that Ravi’s intentions were not to intimidate, but the impact of his actions did intimidate, just the same, and convicted him on fifteen counts. [Get the whole story in the New Yorker]

Let’s watch out for one another.

1) Even though the TV has shown people being watched on camera to see what funny things they might do for your entire life, it is still not right.

Even though there is a TV show (Person of Interest) that makes a point of noting how we have a camera watching us constantly, their point is that such an invasion of privacy is horrible, not inevitable. Let’s not take pictures of people if they don’t want us to. And let’s never post them without their consent, especially to make fun of them.

2) Everyone is probably more fragile than we know.

Clementi instant-messaged a friend “[I]ts not like he left the cam on or recorded anything. He just like took a five sec peep lol.” But then, after a second encounter with his older sexual partner (after draping Ravi’s camera and preventing another peep), he jumped from a bridge. We’ll never know if he was bullied into it, or if he had other significant problems that no one will ever know. Let’s take one another seriously. Humor is good when it is based in joy and mutual acceptance; heartbreaking when it is based on contempt.

3) The younger we are the more we seem liable to research someone rather than get to know them.

Ravi had a lot of information on his roommate before he moved in to Rutgers with him. He had already researched him and discussed his research with his friends. It did not make for an intimate relationship. Granted, 18 year old men are not known for creating a lot of intimacy, but treating people like they are things is deadly. Let’s be careful with Google, Facebook and all the other ways we impersonally collect data on each other. Loves covers people with grace.

4) We are all having struggles with sex.

Poor Tyler Clementi sounds like he was being as brave as he could be with his struggle. He had a tearful discussion with his parents about his same-sex attraction. He was acting in a risky way by commandeering his room for the night for sex. What hasn’t been widely talked about is that he was part of a church youth group before he went to college. The general repression Christians have in regard to sex may have made his explorations even more difficult. Let’s remember some of the things we think about sex. It is not just a personal expression; it is about partnering and it happens in a context full of relationships. It is almost never kept private. Like everything, it relates to God.

5) We need to keep clear of the authorities.

Not only are they watching us, citizens can be killed abroad [link]; the government has given the go-ahead to fly remotely-controlled drones in our airspace [link]; Dharun Ravi was convicted of fifteen charges of spying for watching a three-minute kiss and unsuccessfully trying to do it again. He didn’t even know it was wrong. He didn’t take a plea bargain because he didn’t think he could be convicted. He underestimated the power of Lambda Legal and other enraged advocacy groups that tend to fuel litigation. I think he also underestimated the reality of being a brown person from India in the United States [comments from India in The Hindu]. I imagine I underestimate just how much trouble I could get into by writing this blog post. In Ravi’s trial they put up instant-messaging trails and chat streams on the screen to validate some point of law they were making. Many of us have not forgotten how our unstable but well-connected neighbor on Tenth St. managed to get us under a five-year injunction for making too much noise when we worshipped. There is not a lot of justice out there, even though there is a lot of money spent on procuring it. Quoting one of Clementi’s favorite musicals, “May God bless and keep the Tsar (Russian for Caesar) far away from us!”

During Lent, if we are with Jesus in the wilderness and not just trying to cram Jesus into our wilderness, we can notice evil better.

Just like Jesus was confronted with the destructive delusions of evil and tempted to join in, we can notice how we are being tempted ourselves. It looks like the poor young men of Rutgers had too few resources to deal with what they were handed, even when society handed it to them with the full expectation that they could, and then came down on them with full social and legal ramifications when they couldn’t. They needed a Savior, and so do we.

Wanderlust, Eckhart Tolle and Autonomy

Doing Theology, Film/TV, Psychological growth, , , , , , , ,

OK. So I am one of the forty-five people who watched Paul Rudd and Jennifer Anniston in Wanderlust, last weekend, before the bomb blissfully sank into the red ink, unexploded. US Magazine will no doubt try to keep it alive for the sake of Jennifer falling for her co-star Justin Theroux. I thought the movie was amusing, even though one character ran around in a prosthetic penis the whole time making normal penises seem abnormal, even though the beloved Alan Alda was inexplicably present, and even though the state of Georgia was accurately portrayed, which isn’t usually a nice thing to do.

Jesus followers should be students of pop culture

That being said, there isn’t much a Christian can receive from the pop culture that isn’t very instructive. There is more philosophy in the typical rom-com than in The Tree of Life. Just looking through the Jennifer Aniston window, herself, is usually a great look at what is infecting and motivating normal people. For instance, I opened up my Facebook page on the same weekend I watched Wanderlust and there was a quote from Oprah’s buddy Eckhart Tolle infecting one of my “friends”:

Life will give you whatever experience is most helpful for the evolution of your consciousness. How do you know this is the experience you need? Because this is the experience you are having at the moment.

Essentially that quote could have been the guiding philosophy being taught by Wanderlust, and is more likely the guiding principle for some people in my church than anything Jesus is talking about or demonstrating. Such postChristian ideas are so common they are the center of little fables on the big screen (or almost immediately DVD in this case).

Wanderlust is teaching the meaning of life

If you know me, you know I think meeting God in the present moment is a crucial skill for having a true self in Jesus. So there is some “truth” in what Tolle says. The people in Wanderlust are having the Eckhart Tolle mystical experience with “Life,” not Jesus, and they get “conscious” and “evolve” before our eyes in ninety-eight minutes. It is a comedy, but you can’t write a script without a philosophy someplace. It has one.

Paul and Jennifer play characters who are sick of being abused by New York (also accurately depicted, which is also not nice). Paul’s high-flying finance company goes bust in a scandal; Jen’s documentary on penguins is rejected by HBO. They evacuate the Manhattan microloft they just got suckered into buying and move in to his brother’s McMansion outside Atlanta – the brother who made his fortune renting porta-potties, of course.

I can feel this. What we learn about them is: they hate corporate America and they hate entrepreneur America; they hate being enslaved and they want to be themselves; everyone is a jerk.

“Life” gave Eckhart Tolle a similar experience. He said in an interview: “I couldn’t live with myself any longer. And in this a question arose without an answer: who is the ‘I’ that cannot live with the self? What is the self? I felt drawn into a void! I didn’t know at the time that what really happened was the mind-made self, with its heaviness, its problems, that lives between the unsatisfying past and the fearful future, collapsed. It dissolved. The next morning I woke up and everything was so peaceful. The peace was there because there was no self. Just a sense of presence or ‘beingness,’ just observing and watching.”

Back to the movie – Paul and Jen return to the commune they stayed at overnight on the car ride down to Atlanta. They remembered their night there as so peaceful they thought they could make that moment last forever. Drugs, sex, nakedness, and sharing toilet-time follow. On top of that, add Justin Theroux as a yoga-esque guru. They have a commune experience.

I can really feel that. I’ve been there, in my own way. They want to feel something. They want to be honest. They want to experience relationships. Everyone should be friends.

Tolle is there too. According to his official website, “At the core of Tolle’s teachings lies the transformation of consciousness, a spiritual awakening that he sees as the next step in human evolution. An essential aspect of this awakening consists in transcending our ego-based state of consciousness. This is a prerequisite not only for personal happiness but also for the ending of violent conflict endemic on our planet.”

As it turns out in the movie, Paul and Jen don’t get to transcendence; The commune doesn’t work any better than the McMansion.

The autonomy industry is powerful

The movie ends up with a much more conventional happy ending than the “next step in human evolution.” Paul and Jen wander, like Tolle, through a narcissistic breakdown and emerge with a new image better suited to their passions. They start a small publishing firm back in New York that exploits all the people they have met on their journey up and down the East Coast for mutual profit.

Their solution to their unhappiness is better autonomy. At the end, they are not beholden to a big financial product company or to HBO; they make their own way, selling media products in a much more hippy-like atmosphere. They couldn’t live with themselves; they had a collapse and epiphany and, like Tolle, created a media company to teach what they learned. John Stackhouse says Tolle “gives a certain segment of the population exactly what they want: a sort of supreme religion that purports to draw from all sorts of lesser, that is, established, religions.” It is a religion of self, and a self that is defined by one’s own interpretation of experience.

So it was not a good movie. But it was an instructive movie. At the end of it I had to say, “That’s it?” What you learned from your breakdown is that everyone is bad in their own way and the only solution is to be autonomous, create a little pod with your mate (assuming you can find this marvel who will stick with you through infidelity and financial ruin) and create a small niche where you can do what you want by selling deconstructive thoughts about the monster you hate?

For a lot of people I know, that is, indeed, their dream. The movies taught it to them, with a lot of help from Oprah.

The Pacific Garbage Patch Inspires the Fast

A life in the Spirit, , , , , ,

The other day I had a rare moment to tune in to a news show and was reminded of the Texas-sized “gyre” of plastic debris that has formed in my beloved Pacific Ocean. The newscasters did the usual treatment of the subject. They brought out the now-famous Charles Moore whose chance encounter with the patch turned him into the “little guy” activist who is effectively tormenting the big plastic producers. Then they brought out the tormented spokesman for the plastics industry, direct from his office with a view of the capitol dome, to say that the whole thing was more hysteria than fact.

Spiritual garbage, too

I offered two responses to this reminder as an introduction to our PM for the second Sunday of Lent last night.

1)     We live in an ocean of spiritual trash. Like poor albatrosses who fill their bellies with bottlecaps and die, we are tempted to fill our spirits (and bellies) with trash. It is deadly.

2)     Like the news show gave me a way to stand back and see what was going on, and also gave me a moment to stand back and interpret the meaning of the Pacific Garbage Patch, I am always in need of places in which to “stand back” and see the reality in which I live – whether it is an environmentally degraded earth or a spiritually-degraded society (which go together, don’t they?).

Finding some distance

In Jesus, we have a place to stand. Paul says it vividly in Romans 5: “We have been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have gained access by faith into this grace in which we now stand.” From the vantage point of grace we can see our situation and interpret it.

Lent is a season for getting some distance from the daily trash and seeing where we live and what we have become. Like researchers, we open up our spiritual stomachs and see whether we have ingested “bottle caps” of nonsense from the world. We need a long season for this practice, since humans are prone to actually believing that filling the ocean with undegradable plastic debris is no big deal.

I had a personal experience of this one time while visiting Eleuthera. Our place came with a deserted stretch of seaward beach, which was spectacular. But the beach was filled with plastic debris and other detritus from ships. We were astounded at the quantity. It took a while before we could enjoy the beach with the debris. But we managed to tune out the degradation. Humans adapt to trash well. During Lent we fast from our adaptation to sin and death and take our brave stand in grace.

Our weekly PMs are similar places to stand. We need to find some distance to find some connection. We need to step away from our daily lives in order to find the meaning of our daily lives. Some people choose detachment, others choose immersion. We choose a rhythm of distancing that saves us from giving up or giving in. On our spiritual ‘island” of grace we can see the debris, rather than eat it. We learn to better differentiate among the bits of data and communication that masquerade as sustenance but are really filling our lives with undegradable nothingness.

Why I Still Read Email

Building community, Leadership, Music, , , , ,

Some days the distance between us as the church is palpable. We are getting forced apart by choices to connect at minimal levels with quick, minimal devices. We keep talking about this, as a church, because we are fully adapted to the devices and the “social networks” that dominate them, and we are wondering if they will quench the Spirit, if they haven’t already.

Technology ambivalence

Some people among Circle of Hope advocate severely restricting all use of machines to interact. I am not judging them when I note, “There are Amish in every age of the church.” Newness is always suspicious. The newest form of the same old evil can be more easily seen than the old evil to which we already conformed. For instance, the fact that the Amish use old school farming practices befouls the Chesapeake Bay watershed. They might feel righteous for not adapting to new ways, but their old ways had some evil in them too.

I am usually more on the other side of the argument. I want the latest technology with which to communicate and work. I can’t get it fast enough. I want to discern what evil it carries and resist it. But I also want to use the opportunity it gives me and use that. As a church, talking about technology is an overwhelming subject. We have been talking about coming up with our “theology of technology” for a couple of years, now; we’ve been totally unable to do it. I think there are two big reasons we can’t develop some lore:

1) We’re too busy mastering the changing technology to think we have anything to say about it. That’s pretty scary since it means that the technology already runs us, we don’t run it.
2) We are too small minded to have a group project like that. We are doing very individualized stuff and don’t see group thinking as possible. Our thoughts can be as small as our screens.

A 25-yearold blogger from the East Village seems to agree with me. He writes about seven things a twentysomething can’t do. Six of his seven things have to do with building decent relationships, mostly communicating. Twentysomethings, in particular, need good ways to connect. They want to do it. The many devices we are being sold to communicate could increase our ability to connect, and in some great ways, they have. For instance, I really like texting about where I am and when we are meeting, and about what laundry detergent to buy. But, my experience is that people who fully commit to the phone screen for communicating are too small to really do it.

A small suggestion. Take the time to read your email

The powers are determined to make us all rats in their cages. They dominate the devices and conform them to proper rat-usage. SO, I think we should sit down and read our email. I don’t mean from all the scammers. I mean sorting out the love.

I admit, I don’t seem to know how to have this discussion yet. The last time the Coordinators talked about it, they had what, for them, amounts to a spat. I said that I need to read my email on a big screen, which gives more honor to the writer and their art. I don’t think we should do major communicating as the body while we have ten seconds at a stoplight to scan an email or blog post. (Maybe the devices would say, “You are so 29 seconds ago.”)

Being behind would not be surprising. Nevertheless, right now, part of my discipline of communicating is to read my properly filtered email, daily. As you know, I send quite a bit of it, as well. Circle of Hope is a major inbox loader. Some people unsubscribe from the Dialogue List because they count it as clutter. Some of the cell leaders don’t even read their weekly info email from their pastor each week, or all the way through. Some of the Leadership Team don’t even take time to read the working agenda email they are using to lead the church with some integrity and vision. It is a challenge to be that disciplined and committed, but it makes a difference as to whether we are knit together meaningfully.

These are four reasons I still read email and don’t  encourage people to use my cell phone for texting, even when I give them the number, unless it is a texting subject (like “tacos or pho?”).

1) I’m trying to communicate.

To me, communicating is about relating, not just data. I want to say something I actually thought about and receive a thoughtful reply. That seems like love is growing in the world. I don’t want to merely pass out info and have data hogs sniff around to see if it is something they want to consume. Dialogue creates deeper community. When we can’t be face to face, heartfelt writing can be a decent replacement.

2) I want to hear more.

It is hard to keep up with my email. I would rather talk face to face or in a meeting or even over the phone (although I’m not always that great over the phone). But those ways of communicating are hard to keep up with too. Communicating is hard. But I still want to hear more and connect more with more people. To be the church, we need to listen to one another and listen to Spirit in one another. That takes quite a bit of listening in quite a few ways.

[The opposite is also true, of course. If you are addicted to checking email because you think some life-altering message is in you inbox, that’s not good. More is usually the enemy of something. Checking email more does not necessarily mean you are listening more. Here’s a link for the addicts.]

3) It is good to slow down and connect.

It sounds kind of strange, I guess, coming from a person who was there for the original email to be sent back in the 70’s. It was so amazingly fast then! Now, sitting down in front of a screen and composing something thoughtful and loving seems like it is kind of old fashioned. Maybe this is my nod to the “Amish” types. The new Amish-types are often people who still know how to write in a language other than textese.

Being alone, concentrating, and writing, are all good, meditative ways to be who we are in Christ and live a life of love. I am writing this with love, too. It takes time. Even as I write, I am facing the cost of acting this way, there seems to be so much to do. But the writing is helping me to be. The way you pause to read and respond is helping you to be, as well, I hope.

4) I am committed to good infrastructure that extends the kingdom.

At this point, email has been a great way to connect the disparate elements of Circle of Hope. Every year, as we grow larger and add more congregations, we have a big challenge to be one church. We are always pushed to be smaller units, if not just random individuals. Holding together by speaking the truth in love is a major counterattack on the powers that want to dominate us. Our cells and PMs are the major ways we express our commitment to being an incarnation of Jesus. But by the time they are over they are “so 29 seconds ago.” We need a daily means of togetherness. Our computers and email help us.

Hey, if you got this far in this blog post, I feel loved. Thanks. You honor me, like I have tried to honor you with my time and thinking. That is splendidly weird and Jesus-like, and it won’t be done for nothing.