I would like to hear what you think about my new word: intimacity. (Actually, the word is googleable, but they usually mean intimacy). I am working with it this way: intimacity is our capacity for being intimate.
Struggle to connect
During the Advent retreat, I had a moment of clarity on the prayer walk I was assigned to complete. I realized that I and the others I had been talking to were all struggling with getting to the place where we could connect. Most of us were relatively obsessed with it – clinging to life rafts of intimacy (even if they gave us splinters), chafing under the bits of our loneliness, restlessly scanning our horizons looking for moments when we might feel together, touched, or at least relevant. But one of the missing factors in our equations of connection was our own intimacity.
We need intimacy with God and others to stay in the process of growth. But intimacy is exactly what is broken between us. And we never seem to know why. At least I am often a bit foggy on just how I operate. I think we all have a tendency to think all our relationships just mysteriously happened. We might be a bit in denial about what we bring to the situation – namely our capacity for intimacy, or intimacity. Our ability (or usually lack of same) needs to be named. We need to develop.
If we ever get to figuring out what’s wrong or undeveloped with our intimacity, we often spend a lot of time and energy starting at the wrong place: with other people. We lay awake nights wondering why they broke up with us. We minutely (and often wrongly) list what is wrong with us, based on off-hand comments and body language. We dissect the lacks of our parents and how we adapted to them detrimentally. We flood our therapists with stories (thank God for Circle Counseling!) about how we are stuck and stumbling. But our broken relationships with other people are often symptoms of a core issue: our intimacity in relation to God.
God’s great intimacity
During Advent, we get another chance to see God’s great intimacity. God, who is so totally other than us, becomes so totally one with us – in our bodies, in our sorrow and sickness, in our unforgivenness and death! All the tender feelings we feel when we see Mary holding the baby should seem as amazing as they are – God just came out of her womb, vulnerable, open to the mother/father love he IS. The beginning of my own intimacity starts with reconnecting with the source of it. Trying to get there through endless attempts at human relationship repair is kind of backwards.
But I, and probably you, do quite a few things backwards. Just in our small group during the Advent retreat (which was actually rather intimate, even though we’d mostly just met), we all demonstrated our fear of being vulnerable. I know that the whole experience got me pondering how easy it is for me to resist the impending experience of lack of connection rather than resisting what I do to help create it. I am working on seeing my withdrawals and avoidances as sins against the call of the baby Jesus to be trustingly vulnerable.
We can share the Lords ability. Once he was born of the flesh. But what is born of the Spirit is spirit. Post-resurrection, our intimacity with God is even greater. The more we open ourselves to that Spirit-to-spirit relationship, discipline ourselves to receive the love, repent of the sin that has tangled up our relationship with God so far (mainly not being open and receiving), we have a chance to relax enough to explore how we can connect with all the people we would love to love, and would love to love us.
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When the November wind and waves threatened to capsize my little kayak on the Great Egg Harbor, I wondered if I could be taking nonconformity too far. Sunday was not the usual weather for water sports. But I enjoyed it. As Elbert Hubbard said, “Conformists die, but heretics live forever.” As the wind pelted me with spray off the bay, I pondered a weekend full of realizations about how God has opened eternity to me.
Flab rebel
One doorway turns out to be my rebellion against flab. Mind you, I was on a little vacation this past weekend, so I can’t vouch for my present weight. There is almost nothing to eat down-the-shore that is not designed for maximum calorie intake, and I did not search for health-food. But until I get on the scale today, I can report a very successful diet plan that came to fruit last Friday. I called it my “tenya for Kenya” diet. I got the idea that I might lose the last ten pounds I never lose to get to the top of my BMI if I promised myself that for each pound I lost I would get to send $40 to “Kenya” — a symbol of sub-Saharan Africa (that rhymes with tenya) where deadly hunger is exploding this year.
It seems immoral to weigh more than I need to when others are struggling to stay alive at all! Now that the global downturn has rich people scrambling to preserve their huge wealth from further erosion, they are not as engaged with relief. That alarms me. Vanity is not motivating enough for me; personal health does not move me enough; shame is not even that activating. But I discovered that morality could keep me focused (who knew?). I liked earning my donation with pounds. Even more, I found a lot of joy in finding another way to express my nonconformity practically.
I am a fat heretic. I mean, I am a nonconformist when it comes to the national adoration of food. I don’t usually (like ever) watch morning shows on TV. But on vacation Gwen likes to see if Matt Lauer has hair so she turns on the Today show. It is Thanksgiving week so everything was about food and weight loss. The Today show had a segment on how to eat less interrupted by four minutes of commercials about food – I did not time that, but I don’t think I am exaggerating! It is not easy to be a nonbeliever in eating like a rich person – a person who’s main challenge is to figure out how not to eat too much from the dump truck unloading calories onto their table. Seriously, I like an evening watching the Eagles fumbling around while I eat fried things followed by Dibs followed by caramel corn followed by nachos; throw in some carrot cake and Dr. Pepper to top it off. My usual diet consciousness is drinking Diet Pepsi!
Blab rebel
The other doorway to eternity turned out to be my rebellion against blab (this blog notwithstanding, apparently). Over the weekend I heard from a couple of close evangelical friends who make their livings off being influential writers and speakers. They were excited about their opportunities to be read and heard by large numbers of people. They were doing their thing on large anonymous stages. I love them personally, but I am not always sure about the images they create for themselves (but then, I don’t really know their images). They seemed to be talking about ideas they did not embody and situations they did not inhabit. Even though their message was theoretically Christian and, thus, basically nonconformist, their lives were obviously part and parcel of the media machine that runs so much of what we do. They were an awful lot like the Today show, saying one thing about eating with a medium bent on selling another option.
Even though they are great people, I admit to feeling a little embarrassed by my friends – I seem so small, in comparison, like I have not made much of myself, like my blab machine takes up too-small a share of the airwaves. I had just come from my cell meeting when I met with them, totally jazzed about what suddenly looked like a motley crew of sinful, disabled, foreign, faithless, unsuccessful outcasts. I realized I had never thought of them that way at all, until I started making comparisons with my well-accommodated friends and their tall tales! They’d just spent exciting times with people who could afford to go to conferences and make large donations!
Suddenly, I looked like a heretic again. Resisting the blab machine. Unaware of the latest evangelical stuff. Into unmarketable causes — still smarting over the ill-treatment of Afghan women (and other things I’m often surprised to discover are odd), good friends with recovering addicts, leading a strange little church out of a rented space over the check-cashing store and feeling grateful to survive — not even over eating!
To top it off, I realized that one of my favorite moments of the week had been enjoying Henri Nouwen’s unusual translation of Romans 12:2, “Do not model yourselves on the behavior of the world around you, but let your behavior change, modeled by your new mind. This is the only way to discover the will of God and know what is good, what it is that God wants, what is the perfect thing to do. Nonconformity, not just for the sake of being myself, or being different, but for being God’s, is a doorway to eternity.
[In honor of Hild Day, Nov. 17, and in honor of the good women leaders among the Circle of Hope, I thought I’d re-do a piece written in 2008 and share it with you]
Leadership makes a difference
When I say that, a good 90% of us probably automatically tune out. As far as the organizations we understand and the church as it is, we already have a lot of leaders over us and we don’t see room for many more, certainly not room for ME to be one.
When Jesus talks about his right to lead the people of God, he pictures himself as a good shepherd, as opposed to all those false shepherds that lead everyone into misery. Very few of us would sign up to be a shepherd like this, good or false:
My sheep listen to my voice; I know them, and they follow me. I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish; no one can snatch them out of my hand. My Father, who has given them to me, is greater than all; no one can snatch them out of my Father’s hand. I and the Father are one.” John 10:27-30.
Most of us don’t feel like we need to be in the shepherd role, right? I call that leadership on the “macro level,” sometimes. Not everyone is given that role. And I think that makes sense, since we don’t really need that many of those catalysts and guides.
Microleading
But all of us are leading, in one way or another on what we might call the “micro level.” God has given each of us the capacity to make a difference. You count. You are in the father’s hand. You are carrying eternal life. So what you do means something. What you do leads me. You are like an undershepherd looking out for my interests.
I was arguing this out with a person the other day and telling him his immoral life was leading me. He was presenting me a direction for how I should follow Jesus. In essence, I had to think, “Should I do it his way, or another way?” He wasn’t happy to hear me thinking about this. He wanted to make no difference at all. He said, “I live my life and you live yours.” But I told him that was impossible. We get a common life from Jesus, that doesn’t belong to either of us exclusively. We are tied together — if you just live whatever you think your life is, doesn’t that lead me to exercise the same illusion? Besides, we are tied by love. I love you. I cannot deny you make a difference to me. Even if I did deny it, I would still be thinking of how you don’t make a difference to me. I choose not to do that, anyway. Where you are going, in some way, is where I am going too. The question is, “Where are you leading me?”
In some major ways you can tell where a people is going by where their macro leaders are going. But that is not the whole story. Especially in the church, you can tell where the church is going by what the preponderance of the individuals are doing, where the microleaders are going. If we are mostly passionate, visionary, loving, faithful people, things will go that direction. If we are not responsive to the Spirit of God’s leadership, nothing I or another macroleader tries to catalyze will get too far.
I know this is not true of quite a few people who read this blog, but I would say that many of us probably take ourselves much too lightly. You are not leading us where you think we should be going. As a result, you are more like one of the thieves or hired hands that Jesus is fighting than you might like to think.
Hild can help us think this through.
In the era in which the New Testament was written, and in the era that saw the flowering of the Celtic Church, our spiritual ancestors had the very same challenges we do. The work of Jesus always faces challenges to find its place and find a voice in every culture. And it always takes Spirit-empowered people to lead the way. Leadership makes a difference. There are always the thieves and the hired hands, and we pray that there are always the undershepherds listening to Jesus, the Good Shepherd, and following.
So I want to re-tell the story about how it worked out a long time ago with Hild. I think this makes sense because we are a lot like the Celtic church. They were planting the church in a place like Center City Philadelphia, where so many people do not have faith and do not have a clear picture of Jesus at all. Our cells and our congregations are remarkably like the communities that the Celts formed to help people work out a way to live the abundant life Jesus promises and be a part of calling people who can hear the voice of Jesus into the fold to share that life.
Hild’s story center’s on Whitby, on the East coast of Northumbria. She became the famous leader of the Whitby Community about the year 650. That’s nearly 300 years after Patrick’s pioneering work in Ireland. A vibrant faith had spread from Ireland to Scotland and down to Northumbria, and it had also moved up from Kent in the south. At this point the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of Northern England were the most vibrant on the islands. And Hilda was in the middle of it.
The story of Hilda’s leadership in the church begins with King Oswald, who became a follower of Jesus. King Oswald decided to help his people know the Lord so he sent off to the great community on Iona, where he had once lived in exile, to recruit a person who could help people come to faith.
The history of Oswald’s recruiting looks a bit like the last U.S. presidential election. The first man Iona sent was too hot and people did not like him. Oswald sent him back. The next man sent was Aidan, who was gentler and more politically savvy. Aidan found a lot of success.
It was Aidan who spotted Hild. Hild was a distant member of a royal family who decided to become part of an intentional community at age 33. There were no communities exclusively for women in Northumbria at the time, so she was about ready to leave for France to join one there when Aidan persuaded her to stay. He trained her himself and gave her leadership of a household. She eventually moved to Whitby and founded a community where she was the leader for the last 23 years of her life.
Unlike many of the Christian communities at the time, there were men and women at Whitby — Hild lead them all. They began what became a famous school. The community had a lot of influence in the surrounding area for hundreds of years. Hild became so well-known that many people came to her for practical counsel and spiritual direction. If you have recently gotten close to the age when Jesus began his ministry and are feeling a little nervous about what is next, Hild demonstrates that the best is probably yet to come. If forty was the new thirty for you, don’t fret.
Hild the macroleader
Unlike many of the women of her time, Hild ended up a macroleader. Aidan noticed her gifts and she responded to the call. There is a great picture of her at a present-day community near Whitby where she is seated at a round table leading, as she did in the tense and foundational discussion that happened at the Council of Whitby. We are still feeling the after-effects of that meeting.
I think Hild followed the example of Jesus well. A good macroleader sees herself as a gate – an opportunity for people to enter into life, a way in to the community of faith. They are also a protector — they lay their lives down for the people and the cause. They are the servants lifting up the enterprise. They see the wolves circling. The also see who and what is next — like how Jesus talks about the sheep not of the present fold. The macroleader works at maintaining a vision that is beyond the present to help us get where we are going.
Our Cell Leaders, Cell Leader Coordinators, team leaders, and pastors are all doing their best to exercise this kind of transforming leadership. We are blessed with an astounding number of sincere, teachable and faithful leaders! Either they gain and exercise the audacity of Jesus and Hild, or we make less of a difference, as a people, than we hope to make.
When I made a speech at a conference of the BIC last year, I was surprised to find out that they look to us, as a body, to provide some leadership for the whole denomination! They asked, “What have you learned in Philly that we could all apply? How do we live out the gospel these days?” I think I felt a bit like Hild might have felt when she was being recruited by Aidan — I had a much smaller idea of who I was. We have something to bring; we need to bring it.
Hild was also a notable microleader.
Not that all women do this, but they are often better at not missing the trees for the forest. So many men cut down all the trees and pave things over so they can build something new in the name of their domination which they then call “safety!” Women can often lead with better empathy that starts with the trees there are and nurtures the true forest out of them.
This is well represented in the most famous story about Hild that has to do with the cowherd named Caedmon, one of the workmen on Whitby’s large landholdings. Caedmon was at the opposite end of the social scale from Hilda. He was an illiterate farmhand. He seems to have been content with his lot except for one thing. Whenever the guys passed around the harp at the end of the day before bed, Caedmon headed for the door if he saw it coming his way. Songs and stories were valued and he was a tone-deaf guy. He wanted to get into the mix but soon everyone knew how embarrassed he was about his lack of ability.
One night he felt especially ashamed of himself and went back out to the cows, lonely and miserable. He ended up sleeping in the barn. There he had a dream. A man came to him and called him by name,
“Caedmon, sing me a song.”
“I can’t.” he said. “It is because I can’t sing that I am out here instead of with everyone else at table.“
”Can’t sing?” the voice said. “You can and you must.” ‘
“What must I sing about?”
“Sing about the creation of all things.” And Caedmon composed and song, right there in his dream — a poem of praise of Creation. When he woke up, he discovered the dream was true. He sang his song to the cows. In the morning, he told his boss what happened. The boss thought the story was weird enough to tell Hild.
Hild got excited. She and the senior brothers and sisters gave Caedmon a little test. They chose a passage from the Bible and read it to him. He was to go make it a song. He took a whole day, but came back with an excellent song. At that Hild invited him into the community. They didn’t bother to teach him to read Latin, they wanted him to make songs in English for people to sing as they ploughed and did their spinning. Caedmon is the first known English Christian poet.
In this Hild was encouraging microleadership like Jesus also describes in the passage about being the good shepherd. Obviously Caedmon becomes the good cowherd in a whole new way. Each of us are encouraged, I think, to see ourselves as someone with something to give. We get fed in the fold so we can grow into who we are meant to be. We count. Jesus knows us, Hilda knows Caedmon. We are not inconsequential. As it often goes, the least are often given the most because God loves using the least. He likes being the least.
Again, what you do good or bad, is going to cause something. It is sort of a sin to think of yourself as having no responsibility and leaving it all to Hilda. It is not Hild’s job to be you! Caedmon heard God’s call directly. The leaders didn’t even know who he was. The sheep hear the voice of Jesus and follow. The following makes a difference. The one flock is people of all sorts following Jesus, and that gives it its beauty and power.
Surprising responsibility
Hild was ready to go to France. She ended up at home leading a community. Before long she was engaged in one of the leading communities of her area, hosting a synod that included people from Ireland, Scotland, and the South of England. Jesus is always looking for leaders like that who expand his fold and nurture and protect those in it. I’m not sure how Hild felt about her responsibility. I know our president wondered how he got into his responsibility. Someone was testing him when he got started and asked him if he felt ready to be the leader of the free world. He said, “Who would?” I think many of us feel the same awe, like we just got an unusual song to sing, when Jesus calls us to make a difference.
Every one of us, whether we just entered the circle or not, has an opportunity to make a difference by what God has made us and given us to do. I don’t care if you are a big sinner right now, or if you are a women, or if you can sing or not. What you do starts good things and unlocks God’s capacity to transform.
We need our macro leaders to have energy, or like Oswald, we’ll have to go looking for someone who has some.
We need our microleaders to listen to their dreams. Sometimes the movement of God starts with your disappointment about what you can’t do. Please don’t give in to the disappointment and think you are useless. Please don’t let the wolf get you. The Good Shepherd is on our side and will keep working for us to have an abundant life – each of us and all of us.
“Let the peace that Christ gives control your thinking. You were all called together in one body to have peace. Always be thankful.” Colossians 3:15 (International Children’s Bible)
After something like fifteen hours of intense dialogue this past weekend during the Discerning Retreat, I felt like I needed a silence transfusion. But that need did not diminish my joy over the radical thing I got to do. We were definitely called together in one body– for real, not just in theory. And we had remarkable peace.
The art of dialogue
Dialogue is not easy. It is easy to talk (or at least think of what you would talk about if you dared to talk); it is harder to listen. It is easier to speak inauthentically– playing a part, following a line of thinking; it is harder to take oneself and others seriously as expressions of God’s Spirit. In this day, it is hard not to succumb to the prevailing thought that “everyone has a right to their own opinion” and merely “agree to disagree,” as if that thought and action were somehow supremely moral.
In Paul’s thinking, I think he would say, “The good news is that everyone has a restored right to God’s word of truth.” And, “For the sake of living in the peace Christ gives I would gladly give up all my so-called rights.”
A partner came up to me after the retreat was over and was so happy that we managed not to fight. It was the first time she had been involved in our discerning process directly. She had never seen a group of believers talk about difficult things with mutual understanding, patience and hope like we did. Another person said a similar thing. She was amazed that we could disagree so well.
I hope they didn’t think we just had a remarkable affection for each other. That is true. But we have to agree on some basics things in order to disagree well — like the scripture that heads this post. We can’t accept what we discern as practical application of our faith unless we do agree on some foundational realities of that faith. As in the words Paul wrote to the Colossians above, we have to agree that the peace of Christ is more important than our latest brainstorm or our latest desire to rise to the surface. We have to agree that we have been called together in one body and that our fears won’t protect that or our brilliance create it. We do need to be alert for what can destroy us, and we do need to passionately exercise our gifts to be the body, but, at the bottom of it, being called together and lead by God is the basis of any discernment we might have.
Basic thankfulness
I have to admit that when I entered the retreat time, I was at peace, but I was not very thankful, yet. I was more anxious about what was going to happen. The pastors ran out of planning time and wished there had been more; we didn’t get our logistics right and ran into last-minute glitches; significant partners were absent or indisposed – there is always something. But during the prayer walk in the neighborhood, about when I was buying old china from a neighbor’s yard sale (which Gwen actually liked, even though it did not match what she already had, as I’d hoped), I was moved with a great feeling of gratitude. It hit me.
I managed to let Jesus rule the situation. I let my joy over being called into the body and having a real one to live in rise to the top. I listened to the hearts of my prayerwalking buddies as they prayed. I admired the burgeoning neighborhood into which God has plopped us. I realized I was astounded.
Maybe always be thankful is even more the essence of discerning dialogue. Conversation with someone who is grateful for what they have been given and grateful for who they have been given to be is a pleasure. Their receptivity to God’s grace makes them the most able discerners. I long to be one of those kind of followers of Jesus.
As you come to him, the living Stone—rejected by men but chosen by God and precious to him—you also, like living stones, are being built into a spiritual house… 1 Peter 2:4-5
As we come to our Discerning Retreat We find ourselves in the sometimes-absurd-feeling position of taking the verse above with radical seriousness. Let me rephrase that, we are not just seriously considering being living stones; the event presumes that we are living stones being built into a spiritual house. There is a huge difference between merely aspiring to be something and seeing if it works out, and actually assuming one is something and working it out. It takes some courage to be so presumptuous.
Let me lead us in a lament on why it is hard for many of us to presume we are what Peter is talking about:
1) Some of our best potential partners “hover” over the church.
Good people can’t abide denominations; they go parachurch for their mission; they can’t stand relating too long without getting to do exactly what they want. So they hover over the rest of us, dipping in periodically to abscond with what they like and leaving the rest of us to be the church. I compare them to free-radical atoms that cause organisms to deteriorate. They are like high-end shoppers who periodically hold an extravagant fair where they get their goodies; the rest of the time they cast their nets into various groups and scoop up whatever they want to consume and discard the rest.
2) People who were once radical enough to be a member of the “tribe,” no matter what, have a tough time maintaining that once they have children.
It is hard to imagine your child’s needs being met among the living stones when they are in the process of being indoctrinated by the school and their peer group. When your child is having trouble relating or participating, it is hard not to adapt to their leadership.
3) We have quite a few ex-dating, even ex-marriage partners cordoning off sections of the fellowship.
If I am upsetting you right now because I said this, I probably mean you. I feel your pain, but if we organize around you, worry about how your despair is driving you out, or are drawn to see the world in terms of being on your side or not, we are not being constructed; we’re expanding your sense of being destroyed.
4) On the same subject, we have numerous mixed marriages or mixed faux-marriages among us. I mean that people are built together with mates who don’t follow Jesus.
The mates are usually open to faith (at least to their mate having some), and are likely to be nice people. But they often take their mate out of the building materials storehouse. It is hard to be a living stone if you are not really available to be built into the building.
5) Some of the partners really keep their faith in their head.
That’s not all bad – there are intellectual issues to be had. But being built together is physical, emotional and mainly spiritual. We can’t just argue all day. We don’t want to live in a relationship that is like a bad marriage, in which the partners are just out for some kind of justice that matches what they are thinking or meets their demands, instead of being out to build the love of the relationship.
It’s a lament
Don’t take this the wrong way. This piece is kind of a “lament” based on my longing to be all that Peter is talking about – a living stone built into a spiritual house. I am a living stone and I do experience life in the spiritual house. It would have been easy enough to write a psalm of praise about how people are doing the exact opposite of what I have enumerated above. And I could have written a psalm of praise for how people in the conditions enumerated above are dealing with them faithfully. I have plenty of well-founded hope. Besides, the church depends on what Jesus is building. We are being built,Peter says. We, and millions of living stones all over the world, are being built by God into the typically wild array of diverse expressions of grace.
But I like the reality of the stark contrasts that also permeate Peter’s letter. I think Peter wrote the exhortation I’m riffing on today because he was facing the same kind of stuff we face. People in his day, like in ours, just didn’t get the facts of their new lives in Christ or they didn’t accept them or they wouldn’t/couldn’t live out of them. They had any number of good reasons to not be built together into a spiritual house. We have the reasons our world tempts us to apply, too.
The Discerning Retreat is one of our radical antidotes to all that. It gives us a chance to take Jesus and one another seriously, in hope that we won’t be something in our head, just a theory, or merely a prospect. It calls us to be a people in real time, in love with each other, with the living Lord at the center. The retreat is far from the only thing we do, of course, to live out our lives in Christ. But it is such a good opportunity to come to the Living Stone and be built, as living stones, into a great place for him to live.
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Tomorrow is the day we remember Teresa of Avila (1515-1582).
The famous Teresa was a reformer from the center of Spain, along with her protégé, St. John of the Cross. In response to the radicals of the protestant reformation — which was like an earthquake in the Church of their time, Teresa and John wanted to return their order to the ways of the hermits that founded it near Elijah’s well in Palestine, on Mt. Carmel (see 1 Kings 18). They ended up with an offshoot of the Carmelites called the “barefoot” or “discalced” Carmelites. [As a total aside, we stayed in Aylesford Abbey last year when in Kent, the site of the first convocation of Carmelites in England in 1240. They had a yard full of elementary kids when we arrived, befitting the order’s traditional love of children.].
Teresa’s vision
When we were in Avila a few years ago, Gwen and I went to the house where Teresa got started on her remarkable, influential ministry. For some reason we were the only pilgrims at the site and had a great museum all to ourselves. On the stairs there was a mannequin of a little boy, replicating one of the moments of ecstasy that popped up in Teresa’s prayer. One day, as she was preparing to ascend stairs leading to the upper rooms of the convent she met a beautiful child. He asked her “Who are you?” She replied, “I am Teresa of Jesus, and who are you?” To which the child responded, “I am Jesus of Teresa.”
Biographers say that encounter with the Lord, as a child, affected her so deeply that whenever Teresa set out to found a new house (she founded eighteen in all) she always brought a statue of the Child Jesus with her. She did a lot of teaching on contemplative prayer and encouraged everyone to leave their hearts open to visions and mysterious connections with God. But she didn’t want people to seek them or to rely on them.
Who are you?
In Carmelite spirituality there is an ancient custom of choosing a name which uniquely expresses a member’s personal relationship to the mysteries of the faith. Thus there are people like Teresa of Jesus, John of the Cross, and Elizabeth of the Trinity. In honor of these ancestors in the faith, I have been pondering what name I should have.
If the risen Lord were to ask you today, “Who are you?” How would you answer? If you were a Discalced (or other kind of) Carmelite, what new name would you choose for yourself? What mystery of the faith has been central to your life-journey in Christ?
When I pondered this in Teresa’s honor, I realized I have been blessed with so many ways to connect with God it is hard to choose something central (and Teresa cobbled together another name for herself, as well, since she couldn’t quite decide either). Rod of Jesus works for me, too. Rod of the Silence. Rod of the Pioneers. But mainly, I think, Rod of the church. The mystery of the body of Christ in action: restoring people to their rightful place, redeeming the creation, fulfilling what is left of the Lord’s suffering as a living organism of many diverse parts – I have never been diverted from my passion for it. Maybe that is why I have a hard time figuring out a name – I would prefer to be named, by my brothers and sisters, as they recognized Jesus in me, Jesus living through me to contribute what I have been given to share.
At least someone was out on the streets on the anniversary of the Afghan War yesterday.
In the past few years, it has been fascinating to watch the country be muzzled by the new “no news” news which makes every issue a postmodern discussion of equal, red state/blue state opinions. More and more people now get their news from random internet sources who all have a point to push. Dialogue is dead. Everything is marketing.
Where is the outrage?
Meanwhile there was nary a peep of outrage around here yesterday, on the anniversary of the Afghan war — no lament over the fact that the government is still pouring billions of wasted dollars into the war and still wasting lives in their hopeless cause of domination. I am feeling sorry for Obama, since the previous regime alienated everyone who might have helped (like Iran, Russia, China) and decided we had enough wealth, power and the all-important juevos to fight a perpetual war on terror on our own. They propped up a fake, corrupt “democracy” (again) and decided the dirt farmers of the Afghan hills would cower before their faceless weapons. Now what does a president do? A fabulous lack of wisdom, a tremendous act of godlessness (in the name of all that is good, of course) is hard to follow.
My sympathy notwithstanding, I am feeling a bit Jeremiah today, as my prayer book lead me to chapter 6:
I appointed watchmen over you and said,
`Listen to the sound of the trumpet!’
But you said, `We will not listen.’
Therefore hear, O nations;
observe, O witnesses, what will happen to them.
Hear, O earth: I am bringing disaster on this people,
the fruit of their schemes,
because they have not listened to my words
While I do not think we have responsibility for what the country does, no matter how many times they try to convince us that this is a democracy in some remote representative way, I DO think the people of God have a responsibility to tell others to “listen to the trumpet” and to blow it ourselves at appropriate moments of dire warning. I find it kind of scary when we don’t seem to be “feeling it.”
I suggest we take off our muzzles, slough off our apathy, renew our resentment of godless domination, stoke our concern for people languishing in ignorance of God and their plight, and make sure (at least!) to say a few words of outrage to people who need to hear them today. It might be a good idea to remind a few people that our government has sent soldiers to Afghanistan for eight fruitless years, now; and they are still adventuring in Iraq. Politically, it is disastrous; spiritually, it is hard (even on our least-Jeremiah-like day) to even imagine a connection to Jesus.
A friend was telling me about his remarkable triumph over the temptations that accompanied his 30something decade the other day. He reminded me of a series of messages I offered in 2007. Here is an adaptation of one of them I thought might be useful to some of you facing temptations to your fidelity, like Joseph faced in Genesis 39, when he might have been in his thirties….
Part One
Philly 30somethings at El Vez
The Inquirer interviewed Daniel Brook at El Vez, up on 13th St on September 2 about his new book called The Trap: Selling Out to Stay Afloat in Winner-Take-All-America. As they were interviewing, they observed a lot of happy, young professionals enjoying happy hour. Daniel’s take on them? — “They won’t be happy for long.” In his view, the small luxuries, from sangria to Ikea, may come cheap these days, but the ballooning costs of education, housing and health care will soon drive these young people into making the bargain with corporate America they wish they did not have to make. Daniel Brook says, and I imagine you agree, that a great many 20 and 30somethings are in the process of “selling out,” right now. If you just look at everyone’s school debt or at the inequity of salaries between teachers/social workers and lawyers/big pharma workers, it is so striking, who can consider teaching or doing social work or doing anything that isn’t about surviving? Who can live in Center City unless you go for the bucks? In 1970 a beginner lawyer made $2000 more than a beginner teacher. Now the salary gap is $100,000. The corporate takeover of America under the business-friendly policies of Clinton and Bush, especially, is making freedom to choose impossible if you want to have a family and live in a decent house. In some places, like San Francisco or Manhattan there is no middle class at all anymore, and everyone thinks this is normal.
Daniel Brook is talking about teaching, social work, writing for the City Paper or creating an arts cooperative as occupations for people who want to care. He’s lamenting that such a choice is unaffordable. As Jesus-followers, we’re talking about a life that is not merely a matter of choosing a place in the economic order of things. I’m talking about Christians who receive basic directives like “love your neighbor as yourself” and hear demanding teaching like “If you have done it for the least of these, you have done it to me.” Our choice is not just about how big a house we can afford; we have a moral imperative that is stronger than that impulse; the compulsion to love is bred into us. We can’t help but care, if we are following Jesus. But we face the same social circumstances as everyone else. Will we sell Jesus out for a seat at the economic table? I think that is the big question for 30somethings as they continue on the spiritual journey; and as we’ll see, the answer doesn’t just boil down just to economics, but answering might largely take place in that arena.
Jesus describes the spiritual challenge of the 30s with a picture that every 29-year-old might want to display somewhere in her house. Remember what he said in the parable of the sower? “The one who received the seed that fell among the thorns is the person who hears the word, but the worries of this life and the deceitfulness of wealth choke it, making it unfruitful.” Put up a picture of a believer getting choked with worry and deceit. That’s the threat of the 30’s.
The story of Joseph the 30something
Our friend Joseph fell into quite a thorn patch, didn’t he? I am saying he is about thirty by the time we get to the part of the story we’re looking at. That gives him a few years to rise up in the ranks of Potiphar’s employees and become the head of his household. But even if he is not quite thirty, he is facing what 30somethings often face. And if we haven’t gotten over the roadblocks we typically face in our thirties, if there is some arrested spiritual development, he is facing the roadblocks any of us could face.
There are striking parallels between him and us:
Joseph, the boy who had the great coat and the pampered place in his family is now a slave in Egypt. 30somethings around here may have grown up in wealthy, pampered environment, as well — similar to the compared to other countries. Now, those same pampered youths are often as good as slaves. They have first-rung jobs; they are in debt; they are working long hours under threat of dire consequences; they get two weeks vacation and no job security; if they are married they may have a couple of kids tying them down to the house with both parents working to stay afloat.
Nevertheless, Joseph, the youth who had his splendid dreams, who seemed full of potential but ended up a slave, is still very capable. Everything he touches prospers and his boss has noticed how he makes things better. Likewise, the 30somethings we all know are generally more capable than they used to be. They learned from being in their 20’s; maybe they went to school; they have at least been in the school of hard knocks; they have survived. They are bearing the first fruits of coming into their fullness as the person they were meant to be. This fruit will ripen for the next 20 years or so and feed people. It is no surprise that Jesus was a 30something when he died. He was just ready to do what he was sent to do and did it as soon as he could.
So I am mainly talking about the roadblocks to faith that are presented to capable slaves. The roadblock to gaining faith, if you have passed the 30 mark, is often insurmountable, since most people are fully in thrall to some master by then. The master might just be a philosophy, or one’s own entrenched habits of the heart, maybe an addiction, or it may be an actual master, like the job. In my cell last night we named the people who weren’t there because of school, but mainly because of the job – and the absentees assumed that was normal. The job was unadaptable, but their expression of faith was easily pushed to the margins — they didn’t even have a problem with it. So although there are 30somethings who do not fit this description, I think most do and all are going to have their fidelity tested.
For people who have faith, I am still talking about the unfortunate circumstance of basically being a capable slave, caught in some demand that needs to be satisfied and facing serious consequences if the master who is usurping the place of God is not obeyed. Like never before, perhaps, we face the thorns in our thirties. The main roadblock for Joseph is obvious, he literally belongs to someone else! For most of us, it could be more about belonging to one’s employer. Or it could be about belonging to someone else you love. There are serious roadblocks to being faithful to God and doing what God has given you to be and do.
I think Joseph is a brilliant example of what one must do to get beyond the roadblock. His response boils down to two basic questions we will all have to answer, “Do you honor who you are?” And “Will you risk the wrath of the master to serve God?”
Part 2
Joseph was sold to Ishmaelite traders who passed by Dothan on their way to Egypt. They showed up just in time for Judah and his brothers to flag them down. The boys must have shouted over the braying of the camels, “Hey what do you say about buying this fine potential slave we have in a pit over here? We think you’ll find him dreamy, just like we do.”
It is very possible that the main salesman, Judah, is a 30something, or nigh on to it, when he makes the sale. Judah spent his twenties being a jealous, rapacious youth. By this time, he is hardening into a bitter, greedy adult who can traffic in brothers. As we know, God can use anything for good, but that doesn’t mean Judah is going to be spiritually present for the results of God’s grace. His act unwittingly ends up saving his family and he, personally, fathers the tribe that produces King David — God may use you, too. But that doesn’t mean you won’t make yourself disposable after you have pursued yourself or some other master instead of God. Life is meant to be lived in relationship with God. If we don’t do that, we appropriately return to the dust whence we came. God brings the life.
So Joseph ends up in Egypt, delivered by Bedouin Express, perhaps with the shipment of the balm the picked up in Gilead. Potiphar buys him. Some people say they can verify that both Potiphar and Joseph were in Egypt and were the people the Bible says they are, by reading the scarce records of the Egyptian Middle Kingdom during the reign of Pharaoh Amenemhet III
Like many artists have done as Noel Halle did, portraying Potiphar as old and his unnamed wife as young. It is a juicy story. Everyone wants to but a brush to it. It looks like Potiphar may been the head of the secret police, so one could paint the whole picture in 1940’s uniforms. Maybe he is the old, established captain of the guard with his trophy wife. She seems to wish she had a different husband. Maybe she has a reason to wish it — he owns slaves; he may own wives, too.
The artists also like to portray everyone in this story naked, but I like this more chaste rendition by Orazio Gentileschi. It is just so hyper real! — with the beautiful work on the red curtain in the background; it is kind of a “still life with seduction.”
The story is relatively predictable and gets played out on the TV about every night in one way or another. What doesn’t get played out on TV (except on Saving Grace which is a lot like the story of Joseph), is that God is in the middle of this predictable story. Joseph is actually considering God, and that makes all the difference in how this scene gets played out. Joseph is faithful to God; and the story is about how his fidelity is being challenged by his subjection to a master and the invitations of a potential sex partner. If he can maintain his fidelity he will be with God and God will be with him and we can move on to the next challenge.
Considering God, being faithful and moving on seems like just what should happen; the choice is obvious to anyone who follows Jesus — that is, until you place it in the workplace.
In the workplace so many of us are convinced that mentioning Jesus it is impolite, if not illegal – “Better to be put in jail, then,” Joseph might say.
Or put us in a relationship with a sexual partner and we might not think morality makes that much sense any more if “they love me and want me.” Some people would sell out God for a chance at sex or love or whatever it is we are doing since we moved in with each other – “Better to never have sex, than not trust God,” Joseph might say.
Or put the choosing in our social circle in which half the people are ambivalent about Jesus, at best. We are tempted to give Jesus up whenever we are around such friends because it isn’t nice to believe things and we don’t want to seem pushy by being ourselves or thinking we know where being ourselves leads – “Better to have no friends than to trust such friends,” Joseph might say.
But the fact is, 30somethings have been sold out and they are tempted to sell out.
Joseph does two things that are brilliant.
1) He honors who he is. This begs the questions “Do you honor who you are?”
When Potiphar’s wife wants to have sex, Joseph remembers who he is. “No one is greater in this house than I am.”
30somethings are getting hold of their true selves and operating out them, or not. It is their great task.
Listen to Jesus working this out. He tells people who are essentially trying to get him to conform to their way of thinking in John 7:28-30 “I am not here on my own, but he who sent me is true. You do not know him, but I know him because I am from him and he sent me.” Jesus knows where he is from and why he is here. In the face of his opponents he reaffirms who he is and honors his true self, even if others discount him.
It is not easy to be confident about being who we are, especially when we are just learning about that. Sometimes we have a slippery hold on what we’ve been given and what we’re sent to do. That’s why it is so important, during the first fruits of our thirties, when we are feeling our capability, being useful, possibly nurturing a young family and marriage, that we honor who we are. If your faith makes it to thirty, you will be especially challenged to maintain Jesus at the core of who you are. It is the prime sell-out decade for believers.
Joseph was tempted to doubt that what was entrusted to him was worth being faithful to. He was tempted to give up his integrity for an orgasm. It seems that he considered the prospect and then came to his senses. “No, I won’t do this, I am who I am.”
Going through this doubt and staying faithful to our true self is fundamental to overcoming the 30something roadblocks to faith. For instance, if you get married, you’ll face a subset of the problem when you are tempted to doubt the love in your marriage and start over somewhere else instead of going through the problems and letting them refine who you really are, like all good marriages do. The emotional landscape is littered with people who did not make it through that doubt. Many of them are still kicking themselves for giving in to Potiphar’s wife in one way or another. Even if you did give in and you were not faithful or they were not faithful to you, God is much bigger than your faithlessness. But you’ll still have to recognize what you’ve still got from God and go with the maturation of that.
The doubt about who we are, especially applies to our fidelity to our relationship with Jesus. Being 30something is often the biggest challenge to that relationship because the other masters are in full competition for our allegiance. We have something to offer the powers that be and they want us. We can become excellent slaves for their greed or other pursuits. Once they get us in their thrall, we often get re-educated to think about things their way. They pay us to learn their ways. They buy us to do so. They fire us if we don’t. We begin to doubt that following Jesus is worth it. He can tag along if he likes, but He hardly has the stuff to lead. We have to answer hard questions — Do I have Jesus? Is Jesus enough? Who or what owns me and my time? Do I honor Jesus in me?
2. This brings up the other brilliant reaction Joseph demonstrates that saves his fidelity. He risks the wrath of the master. It begs the question, “Do you ever risk the wrath of the master?”
When Potiphar’s wife lures Joseph to go against what is of God, he says one of the phrases in the Bible that everyone needs to put in their knapsack to bring out at the appropriate moment (like 100 times a day), “How shall I do this thing and sin against God?”
The easiest thing to do might have been to have sex. Joseph doesn’t have his own wife, it appears, so having sex would be nice and she wants to do it. But even more, if he doesn’t do what she says (she is the master’s wife, after all), anyone could see that she might get even. She’ll start screaming and enrage the old man, upon whom Joseph’s whole life depends. Damned if you do and damned if you don’t – that’s life, unless you are faithful to God. Joseph hangs on to his faith in God and risks offending the master and his wife!
Jesus is frank with us about the likelihood of these situations. And I don’t think when he was telling his disciples this, he wasn’t telling himself, too (in Luke 12:47ff), “I tell you, my friends, do not be afraid of those who kill the body and after that can do no more. But I will show you whom you should fear: Fear him who, after the killing of the body, has power to throw you into hell. Yes, I tell you, fear him. Are not five sparrows sold for two pennies? Yet not one of them is forgotten by God. Indeed, the very hairs of your head are all numbered. Don’t be afraid; you are worth more than many sparrows.”Don’t you think Jesus was a Joseph? Wouldn’t he also say, “I would rather risk the wrath of the earth-bound people who threaten me than sin against what is from God for all eternity.”
Getting through this fear is the way through the roadblock to faith that comes up in our journey through the thirties. That is especially hard these days, because our whole country has been bending the knee to fear since 9/11. People have been appalled this week that the junta in Myanmar (which our president’s insult-first policy causes him to call Burma), has been surrounding Buddhist monasteries and keeping the monks from going out to protest. It is such naked domination. Meanwhile, the powers that be here in the U.S., have been using the means of domination (mainly the money to buy the air waves and direct the communication) to convince the country to spend billions to pursue Osama bin Laden in Iraq when he is in Pakistan making videos, all out of fear. We’re all reacting to it. Joseph does not react to his fear of the future when he refuses to jump into bed with Potiphar’s wife and that is what keeps him moving toward becoming the man he is destined to become.
More specifically for believers, we have to face our fear of the consequences of following Jesus. Just being a Christian can be a fearsome thing. We have some Joseph–like believers in our cell; I hope they will tell you stories. But, we also have a lot of friends who are really struggling with the fear they have about being a Christian. Simply not doing what others are doing because they go to a cell meeting and a PM each week makes them a weird person in the eyes of their friends and family – that tiny show of devotion gets them in trouble with other masters! What if they did what the Holy Spirit really compels them to do? What if they said what they really believe? What if they doubted out loud about the things that run them, like the things that run them doubt about them? I sent a youtube screed by Bill Maher the other day as an example of what we’re up against.
We’ll see the results of Joseph’s actions in full as the story goes on. At this point we see that his actions get him thrown into prison — where he prospers. The upside-down logic of God is something that 30something Joseph is now fully capable of accepting and living out. All us 30somethings have come to that age and can do it, or not. Now is the time. You’ll either be a slave to an earthly master, committing adultery against God, your husband, or you will honor your true self and dare to risk the consequences of faithfulness. You’ll say right in their faces, speaking the truth in love, “How could I do this thing and sinagainst God?”
Jesus said, “Men ought always to pray, and not to faint.” (Luke 18:1) At least He said that in the King James Version. I think it might be more literally translated: Jesus told them that “they” ought always to pray and not to faint. The overuse of the designations for humans as “man” or “men” is often not warranted; it is just a bad, power-grab of a habit. But I digress before I begin.
I need to pray, and not faint
The word to me lately has been right from the King James Bible verses I memorized as a boy. I need to pray, and not faint — that is “faint” in the sense of faint-hearted, “faint” in the sense that the circumstances make me despair that transformation is possible; my heart breaks, my heart melts within me, I am not stout-hearted. Jesus might have told them: “If you come up against the impossible, my friends, pray with abandon.” I am trying to listen.
I have had such a great couple of years of spiritual experience and growth! I am very thankful. But, you know, a deeper relationship with God does not necessarily make life easier. The more I know the Lord (and so myself), the less I can overlook, avoid, or miss the reasons Jesus chose to die. I may have a greater capacity to suffer well, but I notice more reasons to suffer. I may have a greater capacity to serve, but I understand what I am up against more clearly, inside and out. Fainting becomes a clear option.
Today, the outside seems rather threatening. My friend returned from southern Sudan and reported that leaders there are preparing for war again. My president got heckled in the joint meeting of Congress last week. My governor is pushing casinos on my city. The wars in Afghanistan and Iraq drag on. I am very bothered by these things. But I almost don’t want to bring them up in conversation anymore, because it seems to me that people are so unaware or purposely turned away that they can’t engage.
Some days I feel surrounded by a spirit of disengagement. That’s far from everyone, of course, but so many of us seem to have found a way to survive that keeps us as safe as we can be from other people and the overwhelming facts of gigantic governments and corporations fighting for power, enormous info machines dominating communication, incomprehensible food production and medical care turning us into things we can’t imagine, and in my neighborhood, the constant threat that the thousands of guns will be used when the thin fabric of community finally tears.
We need to pray, and not faint!
I keep hearing that from the Lord and I keep trying to figure out all it means to me, and to the church (one thing it means – this blog post!). My mind is drawn to the strange account of Daniel praying for the restoration of his people. An angel told him,
Since the first day that you set your mind to gain understanding and to humble yourself before your God, your words were heard, and I have come in response to them. But the prince of the Persian kingdom resisted me twenty-one days. (Daniel 10:12-13)
My conviction to pray may be as strangely important as Daniel’s seems to have been. Angels may be deployed when I pray. Even though I speak my prayers into places I can’t fully imagine, I have been designated a key player. How are you working with that assignment?
Rather than giving up and letting the forces we fear drive us into a smaller and smaller boxes, we need to pray. Given how I am hearing the scripture, it makes sense that if just Circle of Hope prays for transformation, amazing things might happen. Since I know this is read all over the country — if we all pray and not faint, who knows what we might release God to do?
If the impossible is crystal clear, the logical response is prayer. Now that we know Who we serve as well as we do, would we faint?
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This is St. Aidan’s day. He came from his comfortable, focused community on the island of Iona to serve in Northumbria in 635. He developed the new community based on Lindisfarne, the mystical island that came to be known as the Holy Island. He lead them into a long, productive ministry of church planting. When I visited Lindisfarne last summer, I saw his name on the wall, first on a list, on the roll of bishops in the old island church.
Aidan is a good example for us, since we are an island, ourselves, offering an alternative to the people of our age. And it will take a long time and a long obedience to make a lasting difference.
As a result of the infighting of the royal families in Northumbria, Prince Oswald had been exiled and lived with Aidan’s community on the island of Iona, off Scotland. He became a passionate Christian there. Oswald’s name came up in the line of succession and he returned to Northumbria as king.
The new king brought a leader with him from Iona to install as his bishop. The man was hard and demanding. No one would listen to him. He ended up returning to Iona defeated and resentful. When Aidan heard the story of his failed mission, he was moved. He asked him why he did not feed the people the truth like feeding milk to a baby.
The community sent Aidan to Oswald, even though he could not speak the language of Northumbria. Oswald installed him on Lindisfarne, which came to be known and is still named on the road map today, as the Holy Island. Aidan’s first forays into the neighboring territory found him accompanied by the king, who interpreted for him. The passion and humility of both leaders had a huge impact.
Today, as I honor the memory of Aidan, I am longing to live with a missional community coming from their Holy Island. Lindisfarne has the unique character of being an island for only part of the day, when the tide is in. The rest of the time you can walk to it. It is a good symbol for people who want to make a huge impact, like we do. We must live on an “island,” in that we nurture our relationship with God and His people and feel our dignity as ones called out and set apart; being God’s people is our only hope and our great strength. But we must not stay on our “island.” There is a rhythm to life in Christ that is as natural and cleansing as the tide. We must spend half the day, at least, accessible to the mainland and crossing over to create new islands of grace.
So many believers I know live on the mainland and visit the island. They love the idea of the Holy Island, but they just vacation there. They even love the vacation. But they have not bought property. They haven’t settled there. As a result, they don’t even know the tide schedule. They can end up living so far away that they find life in Christ to be a memory.
In honor of Aidan, I want to walk with humility among the hungry people of Philadelphia. I will need an interpreter, since I am like an alien to a lot of them — I will rely on my King. If I say or do something wrong, I know he will find another way to express his grace. If I successfully share the limited grace I am carrying, I know he will make more of it than I might expect. If I continue to contribute to building something of a Holy Island of our own, I hope it makes a lasting impact, as well.
in our unforgivenness and death! All the tender feelings we feel when we see Mary holding the baby should seem as amazing as they are – God just came out of her womb, vulnerable, open to the mother/father love he IS. The beginning of my own intimacity starts with reconnecting with the source of it. Trying to get there through endless attempts at human relationship repair is kind of backwards.
Unlike many of the women of her time, Hild ended up a macroleader. Aidan noticed her gifts and she responded to the call. There is a great picture of her at a present-day community near Whitby where she is seated at a round table leading, as she did in the tense and foundational discussion that happened at the Council of Whitby. We are still feeling the after-effects of that meeting.
The famous Teresa was a reformer from the center of Spain, along with her protégé, St. John of the Cross. In response to the radicals of the protestant reformation — which was like an earthquake in the Church of their time, Teresa and John wanted to return their order to the ways of the hermits that founded it near Elijah’s well in Palestine, on Mt. Carmel (see 1 Kings 18). They ended up with an offshoot of the Carmelites called the “barefoot” or “discalced” Carmelites. [As a total aside, we stayed in Aylesford Abbey last year when in Kent, the site of the first convocation of Carmelites in England in 1240. They had a yard full of elementary kids when we arrived, befitting the order’s traditional love of children.].
