Category Archives: A life in the Spirit

Pay attention! It’s Lent.

A life in the Spirit, , ,

Last week our pastors focused on the definitive story of Lent: Jesus in the wilderness being tempted by the devil. We are in the thick of our own wilderness right now. We are emulating the Lord’s forty days of development before he launched into redeveloping creation. Mark succinctly recounts what happened:

The Spirit sent him out into the wilderness,  and he was in the wilderness forty days, being tempted by Satan. He was with the wild animals, and angels attended him.

Has been in desert - Vasily Polenov
Vasily Polenov, 1909

The pastors are trying to get us to make the journey with Jesus. I am taking their lead.

Along the way, I have been struck, again, that Jesus deliberately attends to the process of his suffering and development in the wilderness and in the process he is attended to. A big theme is attention. The Spirit drives the Lord into the wilderness and he submits to the necessity. He turns his attention to that empty space. Sure enough, the devil presents the deepest temptations that might deter him. He learns to defeat them, is ministered to by angels and returns to claim his place in the world and participate in the miracle of redemption. We need to pay attention to the Lord paying attention. We need Lent every year so we can begin to scratch the surface of the deep movement he endures that is also moving in us — and attend to it.

One of the big temptations Lent presents is whether we are going to attend to it at all. It is better if we decide to move with the Spirit, if we give our attention and so learn to be generally attentive to God. But just being around Lent has a tendency to develop us anyway.

For instance, last week a friend called me with some significant feelings about what was going on in the church this season. I finally said, “You are experiencing Lent. The feelings and thoughts you have are exactly what people attending to Lent experience. Great!” He wasn’t too sure I should be celebrating his difficult feelings. But he eventually realized I had discerned the situation fairly well. He felt better.

Likewise, the other night I had a dream that woke me up as I screamed at some dark presence that frightened me. I realized that whether I attended to my inner life during the day or not, when I was less-defended in the night my dreams might try to wake me up to attend to the movement inside me. Whether I wanted to be aware or not, something was happening.

The biggest temptation of Lent might be to not pay attention to the temptation, or to avoid the circumstances in which we might have to deal with something — to pretend we are not moved by the Spirit, not looking toward a new expression of our gifts and mission, or not attended to by God, sought and loved.

The thought of deliberately turning our attention to something deep or hard just seems exhausting to many of us, and for good reason. We are naturally limited, and if we don’t rely on God and others to have a life, we will quickly be overwhelmed.

This reality surfaced again last week when I contacted the Leadership Team (30 great people, thank God!) to find out what communications they gave their attention. I sent a survey out after the iced-out Imaginarium and over half of them filled it out that night! That is some good attending! Others took a couple of days to get to the email and then the survey. But all in all I felt attended to and found them to be attentive.

I learned a lot from the process: risking a test to see who would respond, daring to find out things I might not want to know, imposing on people who have to make an effort to connect, etc. The process was unwittingly Lentish and good. A few things:

  1. We have a good, growing Leadership Team. Thank God! We need them to keep growing. They have a lot to which to attend and they need to be good at it.
  2. Attending is hard. If you write an email to your team member, you need them to answer it or there is no team. Some of the people I polled can’t read email at work. They might read it first on their phone and realize they’ll need to sit down at a computer later. But they come home to the needs of their house and maybe a baby or two. Plus they are tired. It is hard to keep up.
  3. If someone does not attend, the system brings up the rest of its inadequacies to make sure they are noticed. It is a bit like my dream. What is unattended is going to find a way to make itself known. You might think other people are making up for your lack of attention, and that might be true at times. But more likely, you are more important than you admit and your inattention is creating trouble. That trouble will make itself known.

You undoubtedly relate to all this. Attending to people we love is hard for all of us. That is astonishing, but it is true. We are so limited, we might feel put upon by the need to love God or the ones who love us! — much more those we don’t know yet, or our enemies! A simple email can make us feel like we are in the wilderness with wild beasts!

I am not sure Jesus was completely conscious of what he would face in the wilderness when the Spirit drove him into the first Lent. Like we need, he needed to have courage to attend to whatever was coming. His attention to his Father and his true self is a great example for us. Not attending like Him will deform us. Our avoidance won’t save us from having to face what we fear, as we hope it might; our fear will find a way to dominate it unless attending to Love casts it out.

One way or the other, we’ll meet up with our temptations. We’ll be inexplicably mad at those dearest to us. Or our dreams will be disturbed. Or we will be the problem in the functioning of our team. Or something. I think we would like to never be led into temptation, like the Lords’ prayer has us pray. But chances are we can’t avoid it and we will need to learn how to be delivered from evil, as in the very next breath of the same prayer. We are in the middle of being delivered right now. Lent is helping us to see what it is in us, as individuals and the church, that needs God’s help and teaching us how to participate in our deliverance – for some of us, whether we want to see or learn or not! Some of us are leaning into it with Jesus. Some of us are learning to sort out what we attend to like the demands are wild beasts meeting us in the desert! Either way, we are driven by the Spirit to get ready for what is next. I think giving what attention we can muster is our crucial part.

Four blue words about making the most of your money

A life in the Spirit, Building community, Doing Theology, Life as the church, The Mission, , , , , , , ,

The death of Antonin Scalia has people talking about his legacy. Most of the comments start with “love him or hate him, he made an impact.” An oAntonin Sclaiap-ed in the New York Times says: Justice Scalia’s most important legacy will be his “originalism” and “textualism” theory. But it also says his attitude of calling opponents “idiotic” or worse may also be as memorable. He often made a point that recycled a 19th century slogan about Native Americans:  “The only good Constitution is a dead Constitution” — that may also be the kind of thing history recalls.

Scalia and ReaganWhen Ronald Reagan nominated Scalia in 1986 I was not thinking too clearly about my legacy. I was creating one, but I was a bit in denial about being actually responsible for it. I was the father of toddlers and in the throes of planting a church, so I had a lot to influence. But I consciously left the future in God’s hands and lived as radically as I could imagine. I am sure I also thought my opponents were idiotic at times. As a result, a lot of good happened and no small amount of bad. I think I could have used some more consciousness about what I was trying to build that others might live in.

I always say things like “We’re not building the pyramids here,” meaning that we know we are being shaped by God all the time; what we do is temporal and subject to development, like we as people are subject. But that can be taken too far, since we are made to influence one another and what we do also has eternal value, or at least long-lasting ill-affect. So I am glad we have a seminar coming up this weekend that will teach us about considering our legacy a little bit. It is called The Color of Money: Blue. Blue is the color of water, the season of the Way of Jesus devoted to people who are exploring the depths of being a Jesus follower. What do mature Christians do with their money? What legacy will they leave?

Last year the Capacity Core Team did some good thinking about money. Some of it will be worked in to the upcoming seminar. They came up with four words that I think we all have to ponder when we are making decisions about what to do with our money and what our money might do for others.

Four words to ponder when making money decisions

Character. How we use our money is a sure indicator of whether we are acting out of our true self in Christ, or not. Our goal is to become a sharer, like God. Most of the time, if we have a twenty in our hand, a choice is being made. That might be why our creditors love paperless, automated systems, so we never see that money at all and can’t figure out what is going on! We like not knowing, too, since it is hard to be responsible and the machine makes us think everything is taken care of.

Community. Having a common fund with the other believers is such tangible faithing that it is irreplaceable. It might shape us more than anything else; sharing like that quickens latent discipleship. Not sharing like that is also shaping everyone staying on the outside, right now. Being a sharer implies that we have a personal connection with someone. Bill Gates is a sharer too, but mostly with spreadsheets, with masses. We are sharers with each other, first. Our common fund is the basic tool of our love since it is built with love. Building one makes us something even as we are making it.

Resistance. We’re taught a lot about money in this society/economy that oppresses us. Basic money management rules never change: Spending less than you earn will always be beneficial. Investing your money will always be better than doing nothing with it. And planning for the future will always be better than blowing your paycheck as soon as you get it. But in the U.S. those management ideas are usually applied to becoming wealthy not pursuing God. Some of us resist the pursuit of wealth by refusing to seriously deal with finances. Some of us resist resisting and try to Christianize the pursuit of wealth, or at least avoid talking about our preoccupation with it. Alternatively, we want to have a godly resistance, not just resistance of some sort. We need to address the use of money (which is a subject often laden with taboo or fully enslaved to some godless philosophy) with love and in the presence of God.

Investment. This is a very “blue” word, since it implies that you have something to invest: a character that makes godly choices, a community that is worth your heart, a conviction that frees you from slavery to the world’s ways and an imagination about what might be growing. Investing money is about creating wealth for most people — that is the goal of capitalism, right? But investment should be about one’s spiritual legacy: What we are given to give to the world? What is our best shot at moving transformation along? Investment is about building something that is bigger than just our own wealth. Our church is our most immediate “something” that we build together. But that tool we have builds something bigger than itself, too. We can see what it builds when we explore what our investment in MCC does, or when we can dare to spend our savings to plant another congregation, or in how we invest in the lives of our leaders and staff and manage to maintain our properties.

Sharing money is where we answer two of the most important questions in life: “Where do I belong?” and “Am I important?” Sharing what we have expresses our unity within the body and in our common purpose. What we have matters because we each matter. We need each other. Without each other we wither.

Antonin Scalia spent his whole life trying to get the cap back on the societal bottle that blew its top in the 1970’s.  Most Christians have been doing the same thing, in vain, right alongside him — no doubt some with great motives. We, as Circle of Hope, have been trying to do something else. Like our song says, we like that “new wine.” It is not new like it is an innovation. It is new because the world is, like Scalia said, a bit “idiotic” and life with God seems new to us. Each generation needs its own taste of the new life Jesus is bringing to an ever-dying world. How we handle our money is a great test of the faith we bring to living in that world. How we share is one of the most tangible ways we get to demonstrate that something new in the world is not only possible, it is being built.

Introduction to Lent.

A life in the Spirit,

This year’s Lent theme from Circle of Hope’s pastors:

Here is the first of four posts I collected to help people who are less-experienced with the discipline season called “Lent.” It begins tomorrow with “Ash Wednesday.”

Slow, reflective, imaginative: the spiritual discipline of Lent

These are a few basic thoughts distilled from our Ash Wednesday ritual. Lent begins on February 10 this year.

Slow down

We need silence to find the spiritual place where Jesus is with us in our suffering and we are with Jesus in his suffering. Lent is the season of silence and solitude — and suffering. Some people will even “give something up” to cause some small suffering to make some space where they can experience something more than their usual anesthesia, avoidance or denial. Ash Wednesday is the beginning of our yearly, disciplined journey of repentance and renewal, the beginning of the concentrated season of self-denial and self-giving that feels like suffering but points us toward joy.  Wednesday we enter the great forty-day fast with millions of other Jesus followers – those living and those who have gone before. God bless you as you take your steps along the way of Jesus this year!

The interior journey too
The interior journey too

Let’s go as slowly as possible. We need to be quiet, thoughtful, and restful. We must not be impatient. We must not worry if we don’t feel or understand things right away — there are no expectations of Lent except that we seek after Jesus, explore the meaning of his death, and die with him. Paul shares our goal: I want to know Christ—yes, to know the power of his resurrection and participation in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death,  and so, somehow, attaining to the resurrection from the dead.  Lent in not the imposition of some demanding God, but it might feel like it, since in solitude God’s presence will be compelling. One of Job’s friends has it right when he says: God is wooing us from the jaws of distress into a spacious place free from restriction. Let’s see how much we can cooperate.

Reflect

Examine yourself; admit the truth about yourself to God; sense the conviction of God’s Spirit pointing out what is self-destructive or what amounts to an alliance with evil. Lent begins with an honest self-assessment. We pause to consider whether we have strayed from home, whether we have gone our own way, whether we are squandering our inheritance, whether we are feeding pigs in some way. The discipline of Lent dares us to be aware of our prodigal sides. We are looking for an awakening like the child in the Lord’s parable: “I will set out and go back to my father and say to him: Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you.”

We consider whether our lives sadden the One who gave them. When Paul teaches us about sin he says, “Do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, with whom you were sealed for the day of redemption.” Do not break God’s heart. Do not break up with God, who loves you. Do not turn your back on your lover. Do not live in fear as if you are not loved. Do not hold on to condemnation when you are freed from it. Do not violate the Spirit of love. Ash Wednesday is all about seeing God’s grief and sharing it. Lent is a season for turning back to love and rebuilding it.

Imagine

We have become so unrelated in the world today that the early church rituals like those associated with Lent: ashes on our foreheads, fasting, communal spiritual disciplines all seem quaint to many of us. People of the past seem so tied up with God and one another! They were not anonymous or autonomous. They did not keep their distance. They did not know how to be absently virtual.

mourning, transforming black pines
mourning, transforming black pines

For instance, it is said that very early in the history of the church, it had become a regular practice to have people who had been caught up in serious sin to come to the community of the church seeking a way to re-enter the fellowship in good conscience for the main celebration of the year: Resurrection Sunday (Easter). They would be sprinkled with ashes and then sent off in “exile” from the church, “into the wilderness” with God – sent off with the expectation that they would be restored. Their forty-day period of repentance was called their “quarantine,” from the Latin for forty. It soon became common for friends to come with the penitents to receive ashes in solidarity with them and to express the truth that we are all sinners. The leadership of the church finally saw the wisdom in what was going on and encouraged everyone to repent and fast in preparation for the resurrection. By 1050 a pope had made it a requirement.

It makes sense to use this tradition as one with all the other Christians throughout history who have gotten the same point: we need a time to be sick with sin and to get well, to let ourselves experience the grief of being separated, the desperation of our sorrow, the difficulty of having been far away in sin. We need to hope to be restored by Easter. We need to get into the truest story there is: we are the child of the grieving father; we were dying; we need to come back to life. The essence of the discipline of Ash Wednesday is to acknowledge that sin, brokenness and oppression. The call is: Remember from dust you are and to dust you will return.

We are so disconnected from nature and the seasons of the year nowadays! Even in a hard winter we expect to get our unseasonal fruits and vegetables, to travel without restriction, to go about our business as if nothing is happening, surrounded by our artificial environments. The people of the past seem so primitive, forced to live according to the changes around them.

Moving the couch toward the Lent bonfire
Moving the couch toward the bonfire

For instance, in the villages of medieval Europe it was common to mark the beginning of Lent with a huge bonfire in the village square. The fuel for the fire was all the detritus left over in everyone’s house after people were cooped up all winter. In any number of ways people would use the fire to symbolize that winter was soon to be over, the fire was a statement of passion in direct confrontation to the numbness of the cold. It was time to look forward to spring.

Simple, physical symbols like that help us on our spiritual journey through time. Lent is a yearly season for spring cleaning. Ash Wednesday is the day to light the bonfire to burn what needs to be cleaned out. May your garbage be turned to ash. May we rise from our ashes. May we be transformed in a furnace of God’s Spirit burning in us and refining us. May sunrise come to your heart and spring touch your bitterness.

Let something burn. Let it go. Be freed. Be received. Use Lent for spiritual housecleaning. Turn around and remember who you are. Let yourself go. Let something grow. Let the consuming fire of God’s Spirit transform you. Have a vision of what can be.

Go slow. Begin with reflection – the Holy Spirit will help you. Proceed with imagination —  Jesus has made us each a new person.

Other Posts about Lent:
Lent Did It’s Job

At times, I felt a little guilty, because my self-imposed suffering was bearing delectable fruit: some of it tasted new and some of it tasted of well-loved flavors I had been missing. Meanwhile, some people were blowing off the discipline…for what? At times I felt like I was having a feast while strangely invisible to starving people.

Survival vs. Lent

All this makes me wonder if Lent will be ignored this year because we’re too busy surviving the way we do when we are not living.

Lent, the Teen Whisperer, and Skins

It seemed like people were into it. But given the typical attention-span of most of us, it will probably take an uninitiated person about five years to understand what is going on during the season of Lent. I hope they stick around that long. A lot is going on.

What prevents me from getting out of the bed I’m choosing?

A life in the Spirit, ,

I am thinking today about the wonder of being with God. I am pondering the pleasant problem of choosing to love God and to express my love. Jesus found me and here I am longing for God’s “courts.” That’s amazing! — and requires some meditation.

I have a commentary/translation on the Psalms sitting by my prayer chair at home. I often turn to it when I am spending time with God in the morning: The Book of Psalms by Robert Alter. I like his de-Europeanized translation and how he helps me understand how to sing the songs. This morning he got me thinking about a famous verse we sometimes sing in a song:

Better is one day in your courts,
better is one day in your house,
better is one day in your courts than a thousand elsewhere.

To be honest, I don’t know what we are supposed to be thinking when we sing that song. I usually just wait until it is over. (To keep being honest, I sit through a lot of songs my leaders present to me with no explanation). Is it about the courts of heaven and I am a courtier? Is it about the “temple courts” and I am supposed to think this worship time in “God’s house” is the best thing ever? Is it just a metaphor for being with God, like I am being hosted in His beautiful courtyard?

In most versions Psalm 84:11 is translated something like: “One day in your courts is better than a thousand elsewhere.” The focus seems to be on duration: I’d rather spend one day with God than a thousand days somewhere else. I can sing that.

The original context is about being a pilgrim to Jerusalem.  It is all about feeling excitement over being at the end point of a pilgrimage to a holy place — “I am actually going to spend the day in the Temple! This is the best!” Even more specific, it is being like King David going to the Temple, and feeling what he feels about that.

Robert Alter translates the line from the song we sing more specifically and brings up a small nuance that translators argue about. His translation is,

“For better one day in your courts than a thousand I have chosen.”

Alter’s is probably the most literal translation. Other translators who try to translate strictly  have gone with an emendation to some of the Hebrew texts that allows the English to read,

“Better one day in your courts than a thousand in my bedchamber.”

Both these more specific translations make more sense to me than a simple “a thousand elsewhere.” And I think they make sense for us, too, for two reasons:

For one thing, many of my friends prefer their bedchamber to God. Either their laziness or their sexual immorality is keeping them there. So they don’t get to the courts of God too often, privately or publicly. I think Alter’s preferred translation hits the nail on the head when it comes to these people: “Better is the one day I have turned my attention — mind, body and soul, to God than the thousand I have chosen to be free of the Lord. Better is the one day I got up out of bed, or got out of bed with the person or thing controlling me, than the thousand I spent avoiding the soul-choice I need to make.

The main thing is brought up by Alter’s translation: “Better one day in your courts than a thousand I have chosen.” Our problem is in the choosing. Normally, most of us think choosing is “freedom.” We think we can’t even help what we choose, that it is genetically determined. We want the right to choose above all things. I think many of us would automatically think that being in God’s courts is like having to “show up in court” to account for something we have done wrong, to be threatened with “lock-up” and deprived of the choice that makes us who we are. We spend our days “on the lam” when it comes to God!

How tragic it would be to miss the joy of this psalm because we are afraid our choice would be stolen! — the appreciation of God’s splendor, the anticipation of intimately experiencing his favor, the ennobling confidence of standing in God’s presence and feeling welcomed, even called, and the promise of life forever, freely given to a being who can freely love it. I can’t get my heart to stop feeling for people who never get there and just long for their bed. What prevents us from getting out of the bed we have chosen?

I am not the best example. But I am glad God got me out of bed, somehow, so I could spend some time meditating today about the wonder of being with God and the difficulties I face in choosing to be there. I am pondering the pleasant bondage, the frightening but comforting inevitability, the alarming but invigorating, overpowering draw that I can’t deny when it comes to knowing God.  Jesus has come and found me and here I am longing for God’s “courts.” How amazing to have journeyed this far!

Knowing God is better than all the things I found for myself (and often continue to think I ought to find). I was telling my friend yesterday that being real is all I want. In the “one day” I know God, I know me. Better is that one day. One moment of knowing God is better than the rest of what I could choose, and certainly beats the mess I have often chosen.

[A few of you may recognize this from a few years ago — I reconsidered it]

“I can’t see you in it” : A heart is more than a performance

A life in the Spirit, Film/TV, , , , , ,

Sorry to talk about Heidi again. But I learn so much from reality TV – like Project Runway. The producers are certainly not trying to teach me how to live in Christ, but they just can’t help it. For instance, one of the things the judges on PR frequently tell designers is this: “I can’t see you in this dress.” Or “You seem to have lost your voice. I can’t tell what you are saying. You’re collection does not tell a story.” I have watched enough clever people on this show by now that I totally know what Zac Posen is talking about when he is frustrated like that (God help me).

He is talking about insecure or lazy people doing what the design book says, or mimicking something they think will please the judges, or channeling someone else’s brilliant idea. That’s not good enough. To win the show, you need to be a creative designer who takes something in a new direction, hopefully one in line with the latest zeitgeist or your own aesthetic that you hope will become fashion. You need to show up, not just sew things. You need to create with a vision, not just plug what you’ve been taught into the design you imagine someone else thinks is right.

Fortunately, I never have to sit in the judge’s seat and rate the work of people in our church, or the church in general. (I’m plenty judgmental, but that is a sin, not an obligation). Because if our work got on the runway, I am sure I would need to say about some of it, “Your heart is not in this. Where is your inspiration? What makes this as creative as your creator?”

It is the age-old question to ask oneself, isn’t it? Some Pharisees came to Jesus questioning why his disciples did not bother to ritually wash their hands before they ate. Their question was not about hygiene, it was about keeping the rules for how to be ritually pure. Jesus did not answer, but asked them why they scrupulously kept other traditions that violated the law itself. More to the point, he quoted the prophet Isaiah

“These people come near to me with their mouth
and honor me with their lips,
but their hearts are far from me.
Their worship of me
is based on merely human rules they have been taught.
Therefore once more I will astound these people
with wonder upon wonder;
the wisdom of the wise will perish,
the intelligence of the intelligent will vanish.” Isaiah 29:13-14

Like failing Project Runway designers of religion, the Pharisees were running out a collection that looked well-sewn and skillful, but it did not have any heart. They could apply the rules someone else had made up, but they could not create any rule-breaking new rules that reflected a heart-to heart relationship with the creator.

Jesus was trying to teach them to do that, just like he is trying to teach us. We live in a very rule-oriented society right now. For instance, Spectre which is all about who makes and follows the rules. The most recent James Bond film, is all about a shadow organization (like an ISIS that will sneak into Paris) which is out to destroy Democracy and the hero who breaks out of the bureaucracy to thwart it.

Box office could be half a billion worldwide by yesterday.

Spectre , the fictional organization, appeals to  fictional people who want tough laws and armed forces that enforce them. James Bond is all about breaking the rules to protect the heart of democracy — and at the end he finds his own heart this time around! Not to be too judgmental, but there are plenty of people in our church who would love a little more Spectre. They ask things like, “What are the ‘best practices’ for doing this? What are the regulations that apply to this? What is the protocol for doing that?” Or they are afraid of the people who might ask those things. Organization is good, but the organism is a lot bigger than what organizes it — especially the church, since it is held together by the Spirit of God!

People can do a “program” like the Sunday meetings or caring for children or even debt annihilation and not really be an effective, living part of what they are doing – nothing requires them to apply their heart. They could come to the meeting and not really even inhabit it.  I think some people perform the roles that keep the church organization going so they can stay committed to it in theory — but they don’t create it or inhabit it. The Project Runway people say “I want to see you in it” — and they are just talking about a dress! How much more would God say, “I want to see the true you in my church” since the whole point is for us to become more like Jesus all the time.

It has always been a temptation to follow the rules and not the Ruler, so we will need to deal with that just because we are human. In this day, however, it is even more tempting  to get better rules when we are all scared about getting blown up by a barbarian. Rather than growing an expansive heart like God’s, we can hide behind a big wall of laws and law enforcers until we can’t even see ourselves as anything better than law abiding.

Confession: I am ready to move

Spiritual direction, ,

I feel like I have a secret to confess: I am glad to move out of my office.

I will miss my titanic window, for sure, and those great bookshelves my friends built for me (and some of the books I am leaving to Rachel!). But I am glad to move on. True, I don’t get too attached to places (except Philadelphia, apparently), but it’s more. It is time for a second and third act of this great play God is writing with my life. I am looking forward to it.

For some reason, when I say something like that, I feel like a traitor to the good memories that the office holds in my mind and others’. Even though I am excited to move into what is next, there are reasons for feeling a bit guilty:

  • We shared a lot of emotions in that office — it was good. We fought, confessed, imagined, revealed, rejoiced and wept. The emotions made it a sacred place where I trusted someone and we loved. How could we not want to stay in that?
  • We are spatial — we don’t transplant that easily. We don’t float around in the air, we need our feet on the ground. If we don’t plant somewhere, we wither. After I posted the picture above on Facebook the other day someone said they finally believed I was moving out. Before they saw the evidence, my move (and my changing) seemed surreal; but now it is real. I feel the same way at times. I sat in one of my nice, new chairs in my new place the other day and I did not know where I was yet. It was a little scary. But we don’t want to get so planted that we can’t replant, do we?
  • We remember — those memories make our identity. These days it is popular to say that we get our sense of self by being “storied.” Whatever narrative we tell about ourselves, that is who we are. I don’t believe that, but it has some truth to it. I think I am part of a much larger story than the small one about me. But what we remember about the time we shared in my former office will always be part of who I am. Someone also posted on Facebook wondering if my move meant I was finally returning to California! Memories can last a long time. If we let God knit them into his love and truth, I think they have the eternal value we like to give them.
  • We experienced God in that office — it was convincing and convicting. Our experience of the Lord’s presence made the place special. One of my therapists gave me a book one time to explain away my Christianity (really!). It explained how people experience the “numinous.” He would say our experiences of spiritual things in a place make us think the place is sacred (which is why rocks end up getting worshiped). What we experienced in that office is more than that. I had many experiences that made me think of that oddly-painted place as a “thin” one, which makes me very happy to have been there when God was humble enough to be proved to us.

You can see why old men often die “in office,” especially pastors. Their physical offices begin looking kind of seedy and worn like their physical bodies and the clothes they won’t throw away — like professors at Hogwarts. But they hate to move. The place becomes so magical or at least so familiar, they can’t bear to leave it. I have to admit I feel some of that, too. I have loved the work I got to do in that office! And I especially love the people I got to laugh, cry, strategize, learn and pray with there.

But they can find their way to the new office. It is a block away and the chairs are better. And they will get used to the new me – not that new, of course, but newly deployed and inspired. We will enjoy sacralizing a new place. (It used to be a dance hall in the 30’s, so it probably needs some of that). I hope we all enjoy the freedom of moving with God and the Spirit moves us — even if it means planting in the next places the Lord extends us.

Seven mental ruts where unhappiness runs: Offramps from the Bible

A life in the Spirit, Psychological growth, , , ,

There are things we think and do that everyone knows lead to anxiety and depression. Even though they are somewhat obvious, we still need to list them periodically so we can retrain our rutted brains. If you feel stuck in self-destructive behaviors, unhealthy relationship patterns, behaviors dictated by fear, or you feel like changing your life is a hopeless cause, then one place to start is meditating on changing your mind. If you are a cell leader or a people helper, sympathizing with what is making you feel uncomfortable around someone rather than reacting to it might help them find an alternative way of life.

Our minds can be just as rutted

Here are seven things we might say from the depths of a mind rut for which we need an off ramp. Following each statement are some of those basic things the Bible writers teach as good for making our ways straighter and smoother.

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Lack of sincerity: What to do when your words get twisted

A life in the Spirit, The Mission, , ,

Last week Rachel played a video of Jerry Seinfeld receiving the 2007 Comedian Award that 1.2 million of you have already seen on YouTube. In it Seinfeld makes fun of the award he is receiving. “I really don’t want to be up here” he said, “I want to be in the back over there or over there saying something funny to somebody about what a crock this whole thing is.”

I appreciate his honesty. In his own way, Seinfeld has been a prophet. One line from his recent Clio Award speech kind of sums up his message: “We live in the world and we know everything stinks.” He has been standing in the back of our rooms talking about how stupid everything is for a couple of decades now. Even more, he drew the so-called Millennials into the back-story of the comedian lifestyle and encouraged most of them to have their own self-conscious lifestyle of being comedic. As a generation, they are prone to standing back and observing how stupid everything is. What’s more, as an “audience” they are so tuned in to people doing “bits” that they are also aware of how you are doing a bit in the middle of a conversation, and are likely to be observing you observing and critiquing how well you are critiquing. Always performing, they might be more interested in how you say something, or how they can make fun of how you said something, than in what you are actually trying to say.

Sincerity is hard to find

So it is no wonder that our pastors suffer so. They are all from the Seinfeld generation and they know that some (if not most) the people their age have been trained by Seinfeld to stay removed and cleverly observe what they have just done. Even if they get a compliment or some affirmation it may be accompanied by a joke, “That’s a really great speech for someone who makes speeches for a living.” Sincerity is always suspicious. If you are putting yourself out there for anything but a self-deprecating joke you are not to be taken seriously.

It is no wonder we have cells full of cell leaders who don’t want to get in line to be the next leader. I don’t think their inhibition is about their conviction or hope or even their supposed fear of commitment. I think it has a lot to do with the requirement to be publicly sincere. Once you come out as someone who cares about Jesus and others (“No, really, I mean it,” we have to say) they fear they will run into “that guy standing in the back” who is going to start observing everything they do and twisting everything they say. In the old days, people would throw the liar out. But these days, self-consciously lying for effect is a respected art form. Like Seinfeld said in his Clio speech, “I love advertising because I love lying.” Then he looked at the laughing audience and dared them to figure out whether he meant it or not.

Jesus vs. Jerry

So leaders of the church need to learn a lesson from Jesus that may be more relevant now than ever. One place to start is John 8, where Jesus has an amazing dialogue with people who are standing back, observing and then attacking him. In one of the funniest moments in the Bible Jesus says “Whoever belongs to God hears what God says. The reason you do not hear is that you do not belong to God.” His detractors immediately say, “Aren’t we right in saying that you are a Samaritan and demon-possessed?” Whoever is going to stand for God is likely to get similar treatment, only it will not be as straightforward or as unintentionally funny. It will be about twisting what you say for a moment of amusement.

Jesus’ words were most famously twisted by the devil himself. His response provides a good example to follow by anyone who is enduring the same, relentless attack by someone not interested in hearing what you say but very interested in mocking it. Someone was talking about their fear of being mocked the other day, and I suggested they at least begin responding to their fear by trying on the mentality of Jesus.

  1. He doesn’t live by what people say about him. The devil tempted him to make bread from stones, a bit like Seinfeld admittedly makes a living from doing nothing. ”If you are the Son of God” the devil began accusingly –- he’s always good for making every moment conditional rather than true. Jesus told the tempter he could live off what God says. Just avoiding this temptation by never taking on the mantle of leading or caring won’t make it go away. People will keep twisting. Our response either exposes them or saves them.
  1. He knows he is being tested. It is OK to see someone’s snide remark or sarcastic, meaning-diminishing comment as a temptation or even as an attack. They may as well be telling you to prove your worth by jumping from the pinnacle of the temple. Jesus told the devil not to test him. Perhaps you should speak back to a Seinfeld-trained person and tell them not to test you. We can at least not facilitate an atmosphere of insincerity by letting everything be undercut by people trying to convince us that everything is a joke, including us.
  1. He is ready to confront the tempter. “I don’t mean anything by it. We’re just talking. Don’t be so serious.” There are a lot of ways to make something nothing, and people expect us to conform to the nothingness. Practice saying it so you are ready: “Why are you twisting what I am saying?” The pastors and cell leaders, especially, need to discern how to say, “I am giving you my heart and you are not receiving me. I am telling you the truth and you are undermining it.” It might be kind to add, “Is that what you meant to do? Or do you just do it because Seinfeld taught you?”

How to recover from bureaucraseizure

A life in the Spirit, Leadership, , , ,

The whole Pope thing came with a giant bureaucraseizure. It is no wonder we had our own temptations to bureaucratize last week. To bureaucratize is a “tendency to manage an organization by adding more controls, adherence to rigid procedures, and attention to every detail for its own sake.”

Being from the land of bureaucratization, I am subject to a malady: bureaucraseizure.

Bureaucraseizure means:

  1. I can be seized by the need to bureaucratize. I might obsess over getting things to work out according to their assigned procedures and I can make more and more procedures in order to make sure nothing uncomfortable happens.
  2. More ominously, bureaucraseizure means I can be seized by bureaucracies, by giant, faceless processes run by “the great other.”  The tendency of our society is to add more controls on us, make us adhere to rigid procedures and provide endless details for us to consider as if they were crucial.

I am not alone in being subject to this malady.

Stories of bureaucraseizure

1) We decided to get new water meter at our project the other day. I was given the mission to procure one. So I called the Water Department, home of fascinating bureaucracy that is usually inscrutable to them, too. Four phone calls into the mission the meter shop told me to go to 1101 Market, 5th Floor, to get a permit. I did. That address is the Personnel Department! But the clerk called a number on my notes and found my contact who said I needed to talk to Vincent Brindisi who was her boss, but he was out on the road. I called him anyway. He answered and happened to be in the neighborhood! He went to the property and personally explained to my plumber why he should already know how the whole process works. I had a bureaucraseizure. All I wanted was a discernible process that did not take me two hours to discover. Instead I got Vinny.

2) Then the Pope showed up and I got bureaucraseized with the rest of us. There were National Guardsmen patrolling Broad and Washington. (Now you know what the government is prepared to do!). I was in Allentown on Thursday, listening to the last static-filled gasp of WHYY when I saw an alert sign telling me about Pope traffic (in Allentown?). At the same time a New Jersey bureaucrat was lamenting  on the radio that only 50 of his 1700 parking spaces had been sold for $44. All I wanted was to be uncontrolled and unterrified for a minute. But I think we have been on orange alert, at least, for ten years. We are seized by forces who can shut down the city for four days.

It is no wonder we become bureaucraseizers. We are constantly being trained. We are trying to navigate some inscrutable bureaucracy that holds the keys to what we need and then some giant bureaucracy rolls over us and floods the whole city with road closures for four days.

Tangled in procedure

At the Imaginarium, l was leading the council of the church, asking for general agreement on direction for quite a number of items. As soon as I laid some things out people immediately became entangled in procedural questions. Almost everyone gave a pass to the ideas — they appeared to be not nearly as interesting as the procedures that might follow their implementation. I was kind of Vincent Brindisi, bumbling around thinking I was fronting the system and they were me wondering where the procedures are!

Afterward, I met with the Cell Leader Coordinators. They wanted better data on the weekly reports they get from the pastors. I finally protested that I did not think there could be enough data to satisfy their itch for assuredness. “At the end of the day,” I said, “you’ll have to feel it.” Organizing data can’t really quell anxiety or achieve wisdom. They felt a bit like big government demanding that everyone fall into line and be justified by filling out the form properly.

Recovery from bureaucraseizure

So everyone is having bureaucraseizures and being bureaucraseized. How to we recover from the trauma?

Pray. Yes, that is the number one Christian answer to everything. Thank God some of us do it. If we don’t pray, we are too weak to withstand the onslaught of bureaucratizing and we begin thinking it is central to how the world works. Jesus upends the powers and sustains us as they flame out.

Relate. It is so wonderful to relate face to face rather than rule to rule, isn’t it? We do well at this. Sometimes we do too well, of course. The Pastors are going through a sea change right now, so they had a four hour meeting on Tuesday. Much of it was about the injustices of recent procedures, I understand. When do we just go ahead and trust God in each other rather than needing to be constantly reassured that nothing bad will ever happen again? It is a hard answer to discern in the moment. Trusting the rule can be easier than trusting a person.

Serve. – We are getting better and better at this, don’t you think? The other day I washed the steps for our tenants. Kind of unexpected for everyone, me being a relatively unlikely washer and the owner. But I overcame the seizure coming on to do what is expected and make them wash their own steps or at least get mad a some worker somewhere for not having it clean already. It was so tempting to ask, “Who’s job is it to keep these things clean?” What bureau is in charge of serving the needy and redeeming the world?

Was Jesus ever tempted with bureaucraseizure? Not in the first century. But every time he calls the water department with you, he gets what it is like to live in 2015 Philly. I imagine he found the popocalypse somewhat ironic, at least, as well. I imagine he agrees that hope comes by praying, relating and serving as the body of Christ assured by the Spirit, not just relatively comforted by how well everything is controlled.

What if health is reduced to redefinition?

A life in the Spirit, ,

Our family brunches are usually educational. Yesterday, the family brushed the issue of gender assignment in children and did not think too much more about it. But the snippet of our conversation stuck with me. I realized something: people do not have a right to be ill anymore! Their suffering is discarded by redefinition

In the quest to provide people comfort with who they think they are and with the condition they are presently in, we force them to be “well.” We increasingly take care of things that were formerly considered disordered (or sinful) by accepting them as they are. In effect, we redefine them as “well.” Even if the person experiencing them feels unwell, they must function under the redefinition. These days, if you feel unwell, you may be pressured to accept yourself, even if you can’t really affirm your wellness. It is soul DIY to the nth degree. (This is not really a post about transgender children, but here is a discussion from the Globe with one of the experts, Ken Zucker).

Part of the push toward this new phenomenon, where 1.6% of San Francisco high schoolers will identify as transgender, stems from all the postmodern philosophy that is gradually reshaping assumptions and law. While I have no doubt that some teens have a fascinating and troubling discomfort with their own bodies or gender assignment (and usually their families!), I also know that they have less choice all the time other than accepting invasive and expensive reassignment techniques to make them comfortable with the selves they can (or now should) affirm.

Christians have similarly fascinating and troubling expressions of this same mentality. They are quickly becoming unable to experience the sin and suffering so basic to their redemption because redemption is being redefined as self-acceptance and, by “legal” extension, the demand that others accept us. For instance, when a fifty-something parent wants to talk to their daughter about moving in with her boyfriend, they may feel so uncomfortable bringing the issue up that they will not even talk about it. The rule is: self-identified comfort trumps any lack of acceptance from someone else. The parent knows they are subject to a redefinition.  Their daughter may, actually, feel secretly less-than-comfortable with following the new rules, but she might hesitate to let that be known because she is supposed to be able to affirm what is right for her without entertaining being unacceptable, which is wrong.

As a result of this quest to “find out who I am,” it seems to me that people jump into things about which they are unsure in the name of being true to themselves. They may actually be following a whim or a trend. Or they resist doing anything because they are frozen by anxiety-producing indecision. They may actually be deluded or over-confident in their data. I sound like I am describing an episode of Girls on HBO.  Maybe I am, since the twentysomethings on that show are super self-affirming, uniformly unhappy and resolutely, it would seem, godless, except to say “Jesus Christ” periodically in moments of frustration (Marnie). They do not have the right to be as ill as they are, or to deal with the problems they have. They are stuck saying, “That’s not me” all the time when they don’t know who is me.

As we are wandering through the exploration of this new era, usually latching on to work as a substitute for mentalizing, what are Jesus-followers going to do, who are enjoined to find their new selves in Christ? That true self is not going to arise from some predetermined brain function or innate genetic code, alone. It comes from relating to God who presents the fullness of God’s personhood in Jesus. “The Spirit gives life; the flesh counts for nothing” (John 6:33). Someone may happen upon themselves by saying “That’s not me” enough until they trip over an inkling of who they truly are. But that seems unlikely to me if they cannot accept their illness, if they cannot deal with sin, and are committed to defining it away. If they accept all their illness or sin as “That’s just how I am” and seek all the help they can get to affirm it, they will be subject to such a deep lack of acceptance of their true self that they may never find it. As Jesus repeatedly said, “If you save your life, you’ll lose it.” Perhaps it could now be said, “If you subject yourself to the latest redefinition, you might not be definable at all.”