Jim's blog

If Jesus Taught Kindergarten

Mon, 01 Jun 2009 10:11:07 -0400

Violence upon violence today. Heart ache upon heart ache.

Sometimes I think we need to return to kindergarten.

If Jesus taught kindergarten he might say something like this….

Now sometimes when your neighbor does things that make you say: “He shouldn’t do that…It scares me when he does…” you should close your eyes and pray for your neighbor.
And when you feel angry toward your neighbor try to think of good things you can do for him and do them.
Let’s resist ‘getting even.’ Instead let’s pray even for that one who hurts our feelings or makes us cry.
Let’s ask God to do good things even to those who do bad things to us and others.
And if your neighbor says, “Pick up that toy and bring it over here”, go ahead and help your neighbor and then ask, “Anything else I can help you with?”
And even when we feel like calling your neighbor a terrible name like “poopy pants” or “dumbhead”, let’s just lean over, turn our heads and let those words fall out of our ears instead of our mouths.
When your neighbor does something bad to you, something that hurts your feelings try not to hurt them back. Bring that hurt and that neighbor to me and then tell someone who can help you with that neighbor.
Pretend that when you look at your neighbor- the ones you like and the ones you don’t like- you cannot even see them without looking through your “magic window”….ME!
Oh…and when your neighbor is mad at you…don’t hide from your neighbor. As you can, go to him and see if you can work it out before you bring others into it.
When your neighbor threatens to tell on you for something you may or may not have done, walk with your neighbor while he’s on the way to tell on you and see what you can do to make things all better. Maybe you can work it out before you get to where you are going.
When you are playing with a toy and your neighbor wants it, go ahead and give it to him. Maybe you can play with it together…or maybe you can just wait until he’s finished playing with it to play with it…or maybe you can tell him to ‘have fun’ while you are handing it to him…or maybe you could hand him that toy and give him another to go with it!
Don’t forget to say “good morning” and “have a nice day” to everyone- those you like and even those you don’t like.
When you can…do something nice for your neighbor but don’t tell her you did it…and don’t tell anyone else either! It will be our little secret!
Be careful so you do not get to thinking too highly of yourself. You are a prize to me so don’t worry about trying to tell your neighbors what a prize you are.
When you see your neighbor being naughty, don’t look down on your neighbor. Just think to yourself, “oh that reminds me of that time when I was naughty.”
Don’t forget that your toys will break and wear out and you will lose interest in them. And don’t forget that sometimes your neighbor might actually take one! Take care of your toys but remember “all toys are here today and gone tomorrow!” That’s just the way toys are.
Don’t worry too much about what “might happen”. Instead listen to the birds sing and watch the flowers bloom. When you are scared run your fingers through your hair and try to count each one. See if you can guess how many you have. (I know!)
Don’t look down on your neighbor. He may not have toys like you or clothes like you. He may not look like you. Just tell him “good morning” and try to think of some good things you can do for him today.
When you get up in the morning think about one of your neighbors and ask yourself: “what could I do for her today that I would like done for me today?” Do that nice thing for her whether anyone does a nice thing for you or not.
Keep your eyes open and listen. Not all neighbors are nice neighbors. If your neighbor gives you a funny feeling then just back up, walk away and tell someone.
And always, always, always remember…that I will only tell you and teach you and show you things that are best for you.

Preparing for Prayer

Fri, 15 May 2009 10:50:59 -0400

We all prepare before we pray. Some of us give more thought to prayer prep than others of us. Some set aside a particular time and place for prayer. Some of us play some music to help us transition from the madness to the moment. Others of us engage particular rituals.

Just about all of us assume some posture: we bow our heads, we close our eyes, and we fold our hands just before we pray. We often step aside from life to pray. We close our eyes to shut out the distractions. We turn our hearts inward or upward behind drawn blinds.

That’s all well and good. There’s not a thing wrong with any of it. Jesus himself often went off by himself to pray. I am sure that sometimes he closed his eyes and others he kept them wide open. He also taught a prayer prep practice that many, if not most, of us neglect.

In his book, Missional Rennaisance: Changing the Scorecard for the Church, Reggie McNeal advocates a practice called “Prayer-Scaping.” Prayer-Scaping does not look like prayer. It entails no drawing apart, no drawing of the blinds, no withdrawing from the hubbub. Prayer-Scaping involves getting into a very public place- a mall, a restaurant, a bookstore, a park- and asking of God one simple thing:

“Lord, help me see what you see.”

He tells the story of a church staff who decided to go to a public place that was close to them, pray that prayer and then listen to God for one hour as he instructed them on how to really see. After a time what was once a forest of anonymous faces became trees with particular bark, leaves, and fruit. Where they once saw…well…nothing, they now saw worry, anxiety, brokenness and yes, joy and laughter. (Not everyone that Christians call “lost” feel “lost”) Where they once saw a “mass” of humanity, they now saw people in all their richness.

They also saw a lot of folks who would no more enter a church building than walk on the moon.

The exercise was so powerful for them that they actually sent the whole congregation out (on Sunday no less!) to do the same thing. “Go to a public place close by and pray: ‘Lord, help me see what you see.’ That one exercise revolutionized the congregation into becoming a force for positive community transformation in the name of Jesus.

Jesus said: “The works my Father does are the works I do.” While that is a very thick word repeated in different ways in the Gospel of John, I think it is safe to say that it at least means that Jesus saw (and sees) people just as God saw (and sees) people. God sees us. God sees you. God sees me. Our unique identities are not lost in this dumbed-down, homogenized and franchised world!

If God sees people just as they are (and without the judge’s scorecard!) then for us to pray appropriately we need to see people too…just as they are, without judgment, without condemnation. Just see them.

When we do that another of Jesus’ words will crack open like an egg, a word that specifically addresses preparation for prayer. “Lift up your eyes and look! “ (I’ll stop the quote there. That’s a plenty.) Before you pray, lift up your eyes and look. Think about that. Why would Jesus tell his disciples to lift up their eyes?

I suspect he told them that because, like most of us, they had their eyes cast down just enough to see themselves. I believe he is calling them out of their self-absorbing downward gaze to the whole world of folks before them. “Lift up your eyes!” What do you see? The anonymous mass or people in various conditions of being people?

Why did he tell them to look? Well, I guess because he noticed that they weren’t. As Yogi Berra quipped: “You can see a lot just by looking…” “Look!” Not with judgment. Not with the comparative eye. Not on the surfaces. If anything, try to read the surfaces as expressions of the depths.

If each person’s dress, posture, expression, hair style, ornaments, and pace were works of art, what message would the artist be conveying? Joy? Rebellion? Fatigue? Hopelessness?

We can retreat in prayer. We can close our eyes. We can go to the inward chamber. That’s all well and good.

But every now and then we really should go out into the light of day, pray for the eyes of God and just look before we pray.

A Side Order of Hell

Thu, 14 May 2009 08:57:36 -0400

In his new book, Missional Rennaisance: Changing the Scorecard for the Church, Reggie McNeal recounts how he often encourages churches to replace their so-called “evangelism strategy” with a “blessing strategy”. His challenge is simple: “take upon your self to bless three people per week and make sure at least one of them doesn’t deserve it.” (That last bit is tongue-in-cheek) He asks those he teaches this to live out their covenant with God by blessing those around them.

He tells the story of a young man who took him up on his challenge. This guy decided that his daily Starbucks visit would occasion his new ministry of blessing. So, whenever he went by for coffee he would ask his friendly barista: “How can I ask God to bless you?” At first the wait staff looked at him like he was a whack job. However, over time they began to open up to him not only about the blessings they needed, they began to share with him the burdens of their particular lives.

When he shared this experience with his church homies they decided they would do the same thing. As it turned out, between the members of his circle, they visited every one of the Starbucks in town. Each would do as he had done whenever they visited Starbucks. They would ask baristas: “How can I ask God to bless you today?”

After a few weeks of this, one of the people involved in this little exercise wrote to Reggie McNeal and told him that upon his last visit to Starbucks the barista handed him his coffee but pulled it back just before he grasped it and asked: “Are you one of those blessing people?”

Imagine that: someone who is not a part of the church club characterizing one who is as one of those blessing people! (Compare that to a cartoon I saw once. Two lions are resting in the Coliseum licking their chops. One looks at the other and says: “Burp…Christians give me heartburn.” The other lion says: “Christians give everybody heartburn.”)

Reggie’s suggestion is not new to me. I went to lunch with a fellow pastor one day. After the waiter took our orders my pastor friend said: “Oh, listen…before you go. We are going to pray over our meals when you bring them. Is there anything we could pray about for you?”

I almost did a spit take.

The waiter took it in stride and said: “Yeah, pray for my family. We are going through a really rough time.”

I told that story in a sermon a few weeks later. My old friend and daughter-in-faith Jamie thought that was just a splendid thing. So that day when we went to lunch following worship, which we do almost every Sunday, Jamie looked up at the young waitress and said, “Sugar…we are going to pray over our lunch in a minute and I wanted to know if there was anything we could pray about for you?” (Now you have to read that with a Paula Deen drawl. Jamie makes Paula Deen seem like a shrinking violet…and Jamie, if you are reading this that’s a compliment. I love me some Paula Deen.)

Again, I almost did a spit take. (“What the heck…I just preach this stuff. I don’t mean for you to do it! Lord have mercy!”)

Well, that little old girl had a whole lot going on in her life. She had dropped out of high school, was living with her boyfriend, and was estranged from her parents and generally struggling to cut her path in the world. Jamie befriended her and keeps up with her to this day.

Jamie does this all the time now. I don’t do the spit take so much because I have seen nothing but positive responses to it. (I finally identified my struggle with the practice…I didn’t like the idea of catching people off guard in front of an audience.) Sometimes folks give you the gentle brush off but most of the time they open up right there on the spot.

One girl opened up about her mother’s struggle with breast cancer. She couldn’t get the words out of her mouth before the tears welled in her eyes and her throat knotted up like a fist. Another one shared her difficulties with working and finishing school. A young guy with a too-cool-for-school vibe took the prayer offer in stride but came back before we left and asked: “What church are y’all from?” (The Alien Church…woooo…)

One thing I have learned from this little practice is that the smiling face who stands at your table and says, “Hi, my name is Wendy and I’ll be your server today” may be bringing more than your lunch back to the table…she may be carrying a side order of hell.

That smiling mask may just be dying for someone to ask God to bless her.

Death Be Not a Stranger

Thu, 30 Apr 2009 09:39:26 -0400

Many people in the corporate world dread the annual performance review. As the appointed day draws closer many managers and employees feel an ache in the pit of their stomachs. The face-to-face of it, the inherent judgment involved in the process, the knowledge that someone’s livelihood is on the line and a host of other factors contribute to the anxiety of conducting the annual review.

The common wisdom in the world of Human Resource Management (another horrid phrase that) is that the anxiety associated with the dreaded day could be lessened if the importance of performance, the criteria by which performance judgments are made, and the actual performance of the employee was made a matter of regular discussion rather than being pushed off to one anxious day of the year. Making the topic of performance a regular subject of workplace conversation helps to lessen the anxiety on the big day.

Parents dread having “the talk” with their children…you know the one about “it”. The thought of having to sit down with their child to describe the “birds and the bees” is almost more than some parents can bear. (Indeed, it is a topic that many never bear because they never have it!) More than a few children learn about sex through the process of “working on mysteries without any clues”.

Not a few educators suggest that the reason parents find it so difficult to talk about sex with their children is that they push the topic off to one “big day”…one big dreaded, nerve wracking day. Contemporary advisors suggest that if bodies, in all of their wonder, were more a matter of daily discussion, actual talk of sex between parents and children would be less an occasion for the ingestion of benzodiazepines.

The principle applies when it comes to the discussion of death. We would all find it easier to discuss death and dying if that inevitability was more a matter for regular conversation. If the topic of death and dying came up more regularly in our families we might find it a little easier to discuss “final preparations”.

I have to give credit to my mother on this score. While there were many things she was not prone to discuss, death was not one of them. That made life a lot easier for me after she was diagnosed with leukemia in 2001 and given only a few months to live.

I remember one day in particular after I had taken her to Emory Hospital to meet with a leukemia specialist. He did nothing to soften the initial diagnosis. Without treatment she might last three months, with treatment she might last eight months.

As were driving to my house, I asked her if she understood what the doctor had told her. In a matter of fact way she said, “I am going to die”. There was no fear in her voice, no anxiety, no trepidation. “I am going to die.”

I have thought a lot about those four words and that conversation since that moment. How was it that my mother could be so matter of fact about the impending inevitability of her death? And how was it that we could have such a matter-of-fact conversation about it?

Certainly part of her calm could be laid to her Christian faith. She believed that death was a step into the next phase of life. However, I do not think that her peace was only because of her faith. I think it was because death was not a stranger to her and therefore not a stranger to us.

My mother had some advantages that most of us do not have. For one thing, she grew up in a farming community. Although her family did not own land, they farmed cotton fields and grew their own crops. When they needed meat for supper, my grandmother would walk into the dirt yard, snatch up a chicken, and wring his neck. In the winter they would slaughter a hog, a bloodbath if there ever was one.

Funerals were a way of life. Having a large extended family within walking or wagon distance meant that death was often only a mile or two away. Feeling sorrowful was a way of life as some great uncle or great, great grandma or second cousin was always standing on the banks of the Jordan casting a wistful eye.

Circuit preachers washed down death in the precious blood of Jesus. The threat of hell was only a taffy pull or dance away. Dancing led to sex and sex led to death and death led to hell. (My mother often commented that had she come home pregnant when she was a girl, her daddy would have killed her. See the connection?)

She brought those country values into town. I remember her sage comment when I was a little boy, weeping over the death of my little Easter chick: “James, these little deaths will prepare you for the big ones.” (That sounds funny to me now, but I think it’s true. How we are ushered through the little losses of life prepares us for how we navigate the big ones.)

Every morning through my elementary and high school years I awoke to the sound of droning organ music and the “Obituary of the Air” on WLBB radio. While the station’s Wurlitzer moaned “Rock of Ages” in the background the solemn announcer would say, “Mrs. Sally Johnson of Roopville passed away on Tuesday. She was a life long resident of Carroll County. She is survived by her children.” And my mother would say something like, “I grew up with her. She could run fast.”

On an annual basis she and I would visit the cemetery so she could remind me where all of the relatives were buried. On days I would visit we would take a ride out "into the country" to find someone who had been misplaced over time. Only four days before she died she walked my brother through the graveyard for one last visit before she joined that beloved band. (I think to her the thought of being forgotten was a far more fearsome prospect than dying.)

Of course we had to get through our own obituaries and funerals. Great grandfathers, grandfathers, grandmothers, great aunts and uncles, and cousins. I grew up between the fact of death and grief in the old ways and the contemporary obliteration of it. Given the distances between us, I barely know my relatives outside my immediate family. Chicken comes in cellophane and nobody but nobody talks about death outside of mob movies and horror flicks. To visit a funeral home is to visit a Chevrolet showroom.

It seems to me that these important discussions, which we must have, would be made much easier if we quit pretending that death is not inevitable and that its arrival is altogether shocking. My mother and I could honestly face her end because we were not strangers to the topic.

More next time…

Talking About Death

Wed, 29 Apr 2009 17:00:23 -0400

A couple of days ago I updated my status line in Facebook to report that my wife and I had taken a walk in the woods and spent the better part of our time talking about “end of life” issues: living wills, trusts and what we would prefer in terms of “the disposition of our remains”- a non-poetic phrase if I ever heard one.

We weren’t discussing that because either one of us is planning on checking out anytime soon. I brought it up because I love my wife and daughter too much to leave those decisions up to them when I am on my way out or dead. And… I love me enough to not put myself in that position should-God forbid- I be on the decision-making side of the matter.

I received several positive comments and a couple of jokes in response to my post. I appreciated the jokes and the comments. I also received a couple of emails from people who asked me how we went about getting into that discussion. More than a couple of people suggested that those kinds of discussions are difficult to broach because one or the other of the parties involved suffers from what I call “inevitability phobia”- an irrational fear of the inevitable.

So, I thought I’d write about this topic for a bit to get my thoughts down on paper and maybe help a few other folks have “the talk”.

First, note this: you only have three opportunities to talk about it. You can talk about it while you can still pretend that you are only speaking “theoretically” (“Uh…dear, on the off chance that you should ever die, how should I ‘dispose of your remains?”). You can talk about it as you are dying (“Uh…dear, the doctors say you only have a day or two left, do you think it would be a good time to have ‘the talk’”?) Or, you can let others have “the talk” after you are dead. (“Well…what are we supposed to do now?”)

In my humble opinion, holding off until you are gone is unfair to your loved ones. To refuse to “have the talk” or to act as if you don’t care or are never going to die or that it’s “just too hard”…in my book…is all the same thing- a cop out. Buck up.

Waiting until you are dying to have the talk is no good either. Think about it…do you think you are going to feel like making final preparations at the same time that you are sick, trying to get well, or otherwise barely conscious?

I have been on the slow boat to glory and trust me…when you are close to dying you don’t really want to talk about it. And, the folks with whom you are finally making plans don’t want to talk about it either. Chances are they want to talk about the opposite- about how you are going to make it and dance with you great, great grandchildren at their weddings in 2090. The thing to talk about when you are dying is not death but life and memory and love.

I found out the hard way that the time to discuss death is not generally while you are hanging out with it. When I was laid up in the hospital with a damaged heart that was trying to decide whether it wanted to cooperate or punch my ticket for the glory train, no one in my family wanted to talk about it. And, while I was lying there with my head spinning and nauseated from medications, I wasn’t real wild about the idea either. Trust me: when the Grim Reaper is riding a pink elephant through the room no one wants to talk about anything but the elephant.

The time to talk about dying and all that goes along with it is while you can have a bit of emotional distance from the event. Linda and I didn’t have any problem discussing it the other day in part because neither one of us anticipates that it is going to happen anytime soon. We know it could happen anytime but we didn’t anticipate it while we were doing something so “lively”. We were walking in the woods, listening to the birds, and laughing at the dog. Seemed like a good time to talk about dying. No biggie.

Now why are folks so afraid of talking about dying?

I think part of the reason is that they have not ever witnessed someone dying. As a parson, I have been with folks in the hours and minutes before they died. While I have had a few conversations with people who were terminally ill in which they shared their fears about dying, I have never been in the presence of anyone who was actually dying and exhibiting fear. Admittedly, on a few occasions that has been because they had “been made comfortable” with morphine or some other drug. However, on other occasions when that was not the case, no one that I have ever seen in their final hours sits there with eyes as wide as pie pans railing against the dimming of the light.

I think part of the reason for that is that no one really knows what it’s like to die. We have our metaphors (“It’s like falling asleep.”) and some of us have had our near death experiences.

I have had some extended runs of ventricular tachycardia, which is what often precedes sudden cardiac arrest, and can tell you that that is like taking the down elevator into a dark space. I’ve never found it frightening because I am too busy thinking something like, “Where’s the ‘up’ button?” (And, no, I have never seen a light or a fire...thank you very much!)

Since we do not know, nor can we know, what it is really like to die before we actually do it (‘sort of dying’ doesn’t count and neither does being resuscitated since both of those are not ‘death’) we cannot really fear death. What we can fear is our image of death; our expectation of what death is and what death will be like. What we can fear is the little film we run in our heads about “what it must be like to die”, which is another way of saying is that we can fear our selves and the little horror shows we write, produce, direct and perform in the theaters of our minds.

I think another reason we fear discussing our deaths is because we believe that talking about it somehow brings it closer. We seem to believe that if we talk about it, “it” might happen. We have probably heard people say things that underwrite that fear. “Why Harvey and I were just talking about Doris and she called on the phone!” Somehow we think that thinking about something or talking about it will make it so. Perhaps we have enough such coincidences in our lives to suggest that it’s true.

However, we think about and talk about all kinds of things and they never happen. While I have no way of proving it, I venture to guess that most of what we talk about or think about happening does not happen- or at least not on the heels of our talking or thinking about it.

Death comes when it comes and not because “we were just talking about it!”

There may be a host of reasons as to why we do not want to talk about our deaths or make any plans around them but I’d bet that those are two good ones: (1) we are afraid that talking about it will bring it about and (2) we think we know what it is well enough to fear it.

I think if we could admit that (1) we have no idea what death is like (and therefore have no real basis for fearing it) and (2) thinking something does not make it happen, we might be a bit more open to discussing it with those we love and who love us.

The Veil of Dignity

Fri, 24 Apr 2009 07:55:54 -0400

"You're familiar with the command to the ancients, 'Do not murder.' I'm telling you that anyone who is so much as angry with a brother or sister is guilty of murder. Carelessly call a brother 'idiot!' and you just might find yourself hauled into court. Thoughtlessly yell 'stupid!' at a sister and you are on the brink of hellfire. The simple moral fact is that words kill.” (Matthew 5:21-22; The Message)

"You're familiar with the old written law, 'Love your friend,' and its unwritten companion, 'Hate your enemy.' I'm challenging that. I'm telling you to love your enemies. Let them bring out the best in you, not the worst. When someone gives you a hard time, respond with the energies of prayer, for then you are working out of your true selves, your God-created selves. This is what God does. He gives his best—the sun to warm and the rain to nourish—to everyone, regardless: the good and bad, the nice and nasty. If all you do is love the lovable, do you expect a bonus? Anybody can do that. If you simply say hello to those who greet you, do you expect a medal? Any run-of-the-mill sinner does that.” (Matthew 5:43-47; The Message)

Yesterday I made the harsh comment that I hated pedophiles. The context for that comment (which you can see if you read below) was a post in which I asked what it means to be pro-life. Specifically, I was addressing the matter of which lives are worth defending. Pro-life folks are fond of saying that they defend the lives of the unborn because they are the most innocent among us. I was wondering whether “non-innocent’ life is worth defending.

See…I am not innocent. Is my life worth defending? How does one decide? How “non-innocent” does one have to be to become indefensible? Where do we draw the line or on what basis do we draw the line when it comes to the question of defending life? And again, what does it mean to be “for life”? I assume that defending life is the least we can do. It seems to me that being “pro-life” means that we do things not only to defend life but to enhance it.

I slept on my claim of hatred last night. Much depends on how you define that term. I think I will back off that claim. After all, it seems to me that “hatred” suggests something far more sinister, far more active, and far more relentless than I know. To my way of thinking, hatred entails not only harsh feelings toward people you take to be despicable but also actions to blot out the despicable. I am not interested in taking anyone out and, truth be told, time and energy constraints prohibit sustained harsh feelings.

I’m too busy and too tired and not nearly organized enough for hatred.

I repudiate myself. I do not hate pedophiles. If I am guilty of anything I am guilty of a million little murders. (Whew! Do I feel better!)

“I'm telling you that anyone who is so much as angry with a brother or sister is guilty of murder.” -Jesus.

Thankfully I am not guilty of a hate crime. My little murders are rapid fire assaults on those who I find repugnant, despicable, and so “non-innocent” as to deserve death-by-Jim. So, like Elvis, who allegedly shot up his TV in a Las Vegas hotel room, I sit in the comfort of my living room, watch the news with a bowl of popcorn in my lap and pull the trigger on my 9mm heart.

I fire hollow-point-word-bullets out of rage. (If only my words were as dignified as “Raca” or “fool”!)

I spoke to my congregation on Sunday about what it might mean to be “pro-life”. After the service a couple of men approached me to further the conversation. They were thinking about whether they were truly “pro-life” after what I had said. They confessed that, based upon what I had said, that maybe they weren’t so “pro-life” after all. One of them held his newborn daughter while he talked.

I confessed right back at them. I confessed that I find it very easy to talk about being “pro-life”, even to hold up “peacemaking” as a central Christian practice, but that I did so as one who is guilty of a million little murders.

As I talked with them I could hear faint words in the back of my mind. A favorite professor was speaking:

He said: “Jim, never forget how easy it is to offer God our dignity rather than our repentance.”

Am I 'Pro-Life'?

Thu, 23 Apr 2009 10:39:49 -0400

I have the hardest time answering the simplest questions. Someone can ask me what appears to be a very straight-forward question and I stutter and stumble to answer them. For example, not long ago someone asked me: “Are you pro-life?”

On the surface, it seems like a fairly easy question to answer. As a matter of fact, it seems so simple that the questioner could easily follow it with a set of possible answers: “Decidedly Yes”, “Yes”, “Tending toward Yes”, “Undecided”, “Tending toward No”, “No” or “Decidedly No.”

In other words, the question is so simple it could be an item on a survey, an item that could be scored and averaged.

Whenever I am asked a question like that I think back to the days when I taught Psychology in college. After having taught for several years, I came to question the whole enterprise and ended up, as a colleague of mine put it, teaching myself right out of a job. (No, I wasn’t fired; I just got to where I would spend the second half of class telling students why they should be very leery of what I taught them in the first half of the class. Since professors “profess”, I decided to find another line of work.)

I am not interested in making the world safe for the social sciences. I will not allow my life to be pressed into some neat set of categories to the end that my categories can be counted up with your categories such that we all are reduced to an average or a tendency or a “standard” deviation.

The person who asked me if I was “pro-life” was not conducting a survey. She was simply acting like one. Had I given her a straight forward (scalable) answer (that is, had I let her set the agenda for the conversation) she could have decided quickly and superficially whether I was just like her or not like her or moderately like her. She could then make judgments about my political affiliations, my zip code and my dreams for the future. Maybe she could even have tried to sell me something based upon my psychographics and demographic.

I refuse…unless…

Now if someone will take the time (fat chance!) to explore the question then I might be more amenable. However, I find most people aren’t interested in that. If you seize the agenda and turn the question into a non-scalable conversation then the questioner’s eyes tend to glaze over. I suspect that is because the questioner is more interested in pegging me than in knowing me.

Am I pro-life? Hmmmm….Well that depends…. What does it mean to be “pro-life”?

Not everyone who claims to be pro-life is in fact “for life.” Some who say they are pro-life are actually simply “against abortion.” The lunatic fringe of that group will kill abortion doctors in the name of being pro-life. Clearly they are not “pro-life”.. They are simply rabidly anti-abortion. However, if you asked them they would say they are “pro life.”

Some in the anti-abortion movement are opposed to abortion but that’s about the extent of it. They know what they are against but have no idea what they are for.

Some in the anti-abortion movement think they have done the world a service by being against abortion but they do not lift a finger to help babies who have been born or single mothers who feel overwhelmed by the children they have.

So, if I say I am “pro-life” am I aligning myself with people who are violent, vapid, or apathetic?

And what do we mean by “life”? Is life simply biology? If I say I am “pro-life” do I mean that I am simply for people being born? Does being pro-life mean that we say to newborns, “Hey we got you here, kid. Now you are on your own!” Is that what it means to be pro-life? Is there nothing more to “life” than breathing and eating and pooping?

If I say I am pro-life am I aligning myself with people who could give a rip for children 2 seconds out of the womb? Or three years? Or sixteen years? Or 85 years?What if “life” is not only made up of biological functions but also consists in something on the order of the “fullness of life”? Am I pro-life if I only privilege the body? What about the mind? The emotions? The spirit? The quality of family life and relationship? And community?

If I say I am pro-life does it mean that I am principally about biology?

And how far do I extend this? Is all human life equally sacred? Is the life of a pedophile sacred? (I hate pedophiles for the record.) Is the life of a murderer sacred? Is the life of my enemy inviolate? Where do I draw the line in this matter of whose life is sacred and whose life is not?

Is being pro-life simply a matter of defending the innocent? In that case, what would constitute innocence? For sure, the most radical ideas of original sin included, few of us would say the unborn are not innocent. Certainly children are innocent.

I am not innocent. By the standards of Jesus I am at least a murderer. Is my life somehow less valuable because I am not innocent? Is yours?

And really…am I the best judge of whether I am “pro-life”? Maybe you would be better off to ask my friends if I am “pro-life”. They would certainly have the better vantage because they could judge by my actions whether I am pro-life. See, I may say I am pro-life but I may only be saying that because there is some reason I want to please you or avoid you.

But then what would my friends look for in making that judgment? How would they judge beyond my claims that I am pro-life? Would they judge that based upon my reported voting record, my membership in various pro-life organizations, on the basis of my bumper stickers?

Would they judge that I am pro-life based upon my way of assisting children (or not?) or single mothers (or not?). Would they judge it on the basis of my across-the-board actions relative to the enhancement of life?

Is it conceivable that I could be pro-life if I gave my every waking hour to the enhancement of life in a holistic fashion while supporting so-called “abortion rights”? Would that be pro-life?

See what I mean? Life is not so simple as to be made safe for survey questions- even if the person asking them is not conducting a survey.

While I have been writing about being “pro-life” my point is not really about being pro-life.

My point is that we would all be better off if we did not let other people set our agenda for us with their narrow definitions. Or, even better, our lives would be better off if we fully embraced our convictions and became truly “FOR life”!

The Eddie Arnold Way

Thu, 19 Feb 2009 13:49:19 -0500

My interest in playing the guitar came on the heels of seeing Eddie Arnold play and sing "The Cattle Song" on TV. I was 6 years old and lying under a chair my dad was sitting in when I saw Eddie strumming his ax and wistfully "hoo, doo, doo-ing" about his cows. After that, I started hounding my parents for a guitar.

My dad finally gave in and took me down to the local pawn shop. (There were no music stores in my hometown back then.) We ended up picking out a Harmony arch top guitar, the kind with the "f" holes in the body. We didn't know a thing about guitars. I guess we just bought what my dad thought he could afford. I remember it cost him $15 and looking back now I realize that was quite a sacrifice for my parents to make in those days.

Somehow I found out how to play a couple of chords..C, F, and G as I recall. It didn't really matter because every time I tried to play they sounded the same..."thrump, thrump, thrump." I might just as well have been strumming a wash board.

I could not get my fingers to press the strings down hard enough. Knowing what I know now, I suspect Dr. Manhattan could not have gotten those strings down to the fret board. The distance between fretboard and string was the same distance you see in that painting of God and Adam by Mickey Angelo.

So there I sat, holding my Harmony wash board, straining with all my might to play a chord and all I got was the very same sound my mom was getting when she washed our socks on the scrub board.

I started crying.

Now I would not have cried had I known anything about what I was doing or what to expect. All I knew then was that I wanted to play the guitar like Eddie Arnold and get on TV as soon as possible.

I remember my dad, who knew even less about the contraption than I did, suggested that I bring my left hand over the top of the fretboard, that maybe that way I could get a better grip. Geez! Anybody knew there wasn't but one way to play the stupid guitar and that was in an underhanded way...something I learned a lot about later on in some pretty seedy nightclubs.

Well..I finally wrestled that sucker to the ground and have been happily picking away for the last 50 years.

I wish I could apologize to my dad for thinking his idea was stupid. It was only stupid insofar as the boundaries of my 7 year old knowledge base would allow. I only knew what i had seen Eddie Arnold do..and Elvis too. A right handed picker always played the guitar with an underhanded left hand. Period. End of story. I had an Eddie Arnold paradigm and that paradigm was reinforced by every guitar player in the world.

All God's children had an Eddie Arnold paradigm.

Our paradigms, our mental models, often conceal alternatives from us. We see the world as we see the world and that's the way the world is. Period. End of story.

Now our paradigms serve us well as long as they serve us...well. However, every so often something happens or some dreamer comes along and suggests, "you know you might go over the top or come around from the side or go back to the directions or..." We usually kill them or criticize them or snap their fool heads off.

Many of us are in the fight of our lives economically. Our businesses are sucking wind. Our churches are straining to make it from one month to the next. We think the problem is the economy...and maybe it is to a point. However, the problem may be our paradigms.

Take the church..which is where I find my center. We have this paradigm that a church is only a church if... If it is in a building with a steeple, if they give you an order of worship when you walk in, if you sit and stare and the back of someone's head while folks on the stage do the heavy lifting in terms of singing, teaching, preaching and praying.

We think being a church requires a building and a paid staff and programs and curricula. We think things should happen in a certain way at a certain time every time all the time or we aren't doing church.

We get hung up on our paradigms as the right paradigms and can't even see that not everyone in the world shares our model of church.

A while back I asked a young African church planter what the churches he planted looked like. He stared at me for a moment- you could see the confusion in his eyes- and then he said: "It looks like a group of people in a field."

The social, economic and cultural conditions of this young man's world had not so shaped the minds of the people with whom he ministered that they believed that HAD to have X, Y, or Z to call themselves a church.

A lot of folks are wondering these days...Given the tremendous needs in the world and in our communities..heck...given the cost of doing business...given the assumptions of the New Testament...given the "what this is supposed to be about" are there not better ways to do this? Less expensive ways to do this? More appropriately generous ways to do this?

Of course there is a lot of push back. After all, everybody knows that you play the guitar in an underhanded way.

Oh wait...I forgot...check this out.

And oh...check this out...neither one of these seem to know what they are doing.

Then ask yourself: "Are there other ways?"

A Great Cloud of Witnesses

Tue, 27 Jan 2009 16:31:08 -0500

Last week, during the inauguration of Barack Obama, I could not quit thinking about the souls who peopled my life when I was a kid. I wanted to write about them but feared that in doing so I would sound condescending or mire myself in sentimentality or somehow romanticize people who lived in wretched circumstances. If I do any of that, forgive me. I only intend to point to that great cloud of witnesses who played a part in shaping my life.- Jim Street (www.jim-street.com)

+++

My grandfather's little hole-in-wall grocery store was my favorite place to be when I was a kid. A little concrete building not much larger than the first floor of my house, "the store", as we called it, was a place of peace in a world of domestic tension that defied my capacity to understand.

Although it was just a tiny speck of a place, it was visited by customers who were, to me, nothing short of exotic. Some of them were old. Most of them were poor. Some of them were as rough as a macadam road and a couple were as mean as snakes.

"That man spent time in Milledgeville because moonshine drove him out of his mind," my grandfather said about old J.D., whose eyes sat almost on the side of his head and who swore like the antichrist.

"That fellow lynched a man," he said about a round man whose name I never knew but whose white-stubbled chin was perpetually stained by tobacco juice.

"That fellow's brother had his skull crushed when he poked with his head out of the window of a pulp wood truck in a fog and was hit by a truck coming the other way."

Looking back it seems to me that about the only people who ever "traded" with my grandfather were people who were too Southern, too country for Flannery O'Connor stories.

However, these were not the folks I was thinking about last week during the inauguration of Barack Obama. I was thinking about all of the black folks who traded with my grandfather, people like Thelma, Jeff and Martha Shack, Julia and Dawnie and Mattie and Buck Brewer.

Thelma called my aunt "Ms. Newt" because her husband's name was Mr. Newt. He had a severely retarded and palsied son who road and writhed in the back of his beat up pick-up truck while Thelma came into the store and picked up salt pork, salt fish and snuff.

Jeff and Martha Shack knew Methusala. I have no doubt that they were the children of slaves. They lived in a shack way back in the woods and would come to town every so often to pick up some groceries from the store.

I remember that Martha never said a word but always had a slight smile and about a half a pound of snuff tucked beneath her bottom lip. I also remember that she had one gargantuan tumoruous knuckle on one of her hands.

I enjoyed it when Jeff and Martha showed up because, if my dad was around, there was bound to be an argument about who grew the biggest watermelons. (My dad was a gardener but never grew a watermelon in his life.)

"Jeff, I grew a watermelon so big you couldn't tote it in a cotton sack," my dad would say.

"Mr. Buck, you ain't never seen tell about the watermelon I growed. Big man like you'd look like a boy in short pants next to it." Jeff would say.

And on and on....

Dawnie always showed up at the store dressed in the white uniform of a maid. She once told my uncle Newt that she did not believe they had put a man on the moon because she "looked up there and didn't see no flag."

And Julia, a large smiling joyful soul, would buy her groceries while devouring a pound bag of hard candy and polish that off with a diet drink. (The theory at the store was that Julia thought the two would counteract each other...but maybe she just liked that combination.)

And then there was Mattie. Mattie worked every now and then for my grandmother when my mother was a child. And then, after my mother and father brought us into the world, Mattie ironed for us one day a week and got paid two or three dollars for her efforts.

We were poor but Mattie was destitute. She lived in a shack with her old husband Tom who did little more than sit in his old slouch hat and stare. She'd often tell us how once again she had to throw a snake out of her house.

I won't play the old Southern game about how much "we loved our Mattie." We did love her. But what is more important is that Mattie loved us. Even in later years when I had left Mattie in the dust of my childhood, my mother would tell me that Mattie worried about me when she heard I was driving "up in Atlanta", a city not 60 miles away but which Mattie had never seen in all her ancient days.

Buck Brewer would stop by the store every now and then. He worked for my dad at the concrete plant. He was drunk or planning for it most of the days of his life. I can still remember him standing outside our house and waving as he tried to get my dad's attention. My dad would go out and before long a dollar or two would cross from Buck Street's hand to Buck Brewer's hand. My dad would come in and say, "He needed milk for the baby."

Somebody threw Buck Brewer off a bridge one time and almost killed him. One night "he fell asleep on the train track" and was killed when the train came barreling through.

Buck Brewer died of euphemism poisoning.

These people might well have been described as the "wretched of the earth." I mean that in only one sense and that is the deepest sense of the word "wretch".

They were "exiles". They were all the children of people who had been snatched from the land of their birth and brought to a place where they were treated as nothings, nobodies and no-counts.

They were "exiles" because they lived in a land not of their choosing and treated as unwelcome in any place other than the place to which they had been assigned by the principalities and powers in straw hats and white church-going gloves.

They were the "crushed", the "poor in spirit", indeed, the "poor".

And they were to me, a child in the late 1950s, a wonder to behold.

They had no idea the effect they would have upon my life as I navigated the deep south "pre-integration" years of the 1950s and early 1960s in middle west Georgia.

I was as pressed into the mold of the old South as the next kid and schooled in the rubric of "place". I was taught that "they are alright as long as they stay in their place" without the postmodern rejoinder that everything that is said is said by a "somebody" who is bent on maintaining his own place in the social hiearchy. (Imagine that! A people pretty low down on the social ladder taking pride in how much lower "they" were than us!)

Like I said...I was a kid when these people traipsed in and out of my life. I didn't know that I could love them. I knew I wasn't supposed to. My feelings for them are complicated by longing, by regret, by wishing to feel better about myself in the present, by wanting to be more than I know that I am.

I confess. I have spit the poison of racist words in my time. I have concealed fear in racist humor and sought acceptance by ignoramuses by speaking words I didn't mean. I have been silent when I should have spoken and spoken when I should have kept silent.

And all the while this great cloud of witnesses has peopled my mind, and yes, my heart and have said by their simple and sad presence, "Son, you are created in the image of God and destined for better than that."

While Obama was taking the oath of office, I was thinking of them and finding that in spite of everything, indeed I did and do love and appreciate them. They could not know nor could I the wonderful influence they had on my life.

I could not see Obama without seeing that great cloud of witnesses and I just wanted, in some small way, to remember them to you.

From the poem "Sabbaths 2005" by Wendell Berry

Tue, 13 Jan 2009 20:24:45 -0500

I have been too busy to post lately but did find this wonderful stanza from Wendell Berry's poem "Sabbaths 2005." It just seems to fit with what I was trying to get at when I was writing about the sensual encounter with God.

"The painter Harlan Hubbard said
That he was painting Heaven when
The places he painted merely were
The Campbell or the Trimble County
Banks of the Ohio, or farms
And hills where he had worked or roamed:
A house’s gable and roofline
Rising from a fold in the hills,
Trees bearing snow, two shanty boats
At dawn, immortal light upon
The flowing river in its bends.
And these were Heavenly because
He never saw them clear enough
To satisfy his love, his need
To see them all again, again."

Some Real Fleshy "Stuff"

Sat, 22 Nov 2008 14:33:53 -0500

I visited with Stanley Hauerwas several years ago in his office at Duke. He was kind enough to take some time with me to talk about whatever I had on my mind.
I cannot remember everything we talked about that day but I do remember that I asked him about something I had read. Someone recounted the story of a hospital stay the very active Hauerwas endured.
In the article he spoke about how Duke seminary students came to visit him but only showed up as "shimmering masses of availability."   At the time I was teaching seminary students about pastoral care myself so I asked him what he meant by that.
He told me that they came prepared to do whatever it was he needed doing but didn't come prepared to render ministry to him. In other words, they didn't know what to do but only waited for him, the sick one, to tell them.
I asked him what he would have preferred. He said that he would have preferred it if they had brought him some of the bread and wine that was used the previous Sunday in the worship service at his church.
He went on to explain how isolating a hospital stay can be and how cut off from ordinary life he felt during that time. Partaking of part of the bread and wine his community had used the Sunday before would have helped him feel joined to the community.
He went on to tell me that he went every Thursday to the Duke Chapel for Eucharist. And then he said something I'll never forget: "Jim, this business of being a Christian is some real fleshy sh*#!"
He went on to remind me that we lived in bodies, that Jesus had 'in-caranated', that we were part of the BODY of Christ and that we love best when we love in the flesh...i.e. body to body, face to face, person to person.
I've never forgotten that conversation and only in part because of Hauerwas' colorful way of putting things. I've thought about it many times as I have spent more and more time online...casting disembodied messages into cyberspace. (Oh, how I love it though!)
I've been thinking about this idea of the sensual experience of God.   If Christian faith is "some real fleshy sh*#", then why is so much of it shoved up into our heads? Why is so much of it about words and arguments around words? Why isn't more of it sensual?
I'm going to riff on that a while. However, until I do that think about the words of Hauerwas and the words of this old hymn by Bonar (1855) and then ask yourself: "Is there a place for the sensual encounter with God?" (emphasis mine)
Here, O my Lord, I see thee face to face;
here would I touch and handle things unseen;
here grasp with firmer hand eternal grace,
and all my weariness upon thee lean.

This is the hour of banquet and of song;
this is the heavenly table spread for me;
here let me feast, and feasting, still prolong
the hallowed hour of fellowship with thee.

Here would I feed upon the Bread of God,
here drink with thee the royal Wine of heaven;
here would I lay aside each earthly load,
here taste afresh the calm of sin forgiven.

I have no help but thine; nor do I need
another arm save thine to lean upon;
it is enough, my Lord, enough indeed;
my strength is in thy might, thy might alone.

Mine is the sin, but thine the righteousness:
mine is the guilt, but thine the cleansing
here is my robe, my refuge, and my peace;
thy Blood, thy righteousness, O Lord my God!

Feast after feast thus comes and passes by;
yet, passing, points to the glad feast above,
giving sweet foretaste of the festal joy,
the Lamb's great bridal feast of bliss and love.

Intimacy

Tue, 18 Nov 2008 11:31:05 -0500

Intimacy with God.
We hear it all the time. Perhaps that is part of the problem...we hear it in the same way that we hear sound bites and cliches.   We hear it like we hear the beeping of a horn, a distant siren, so much Muzak.
Intimacy with God.
We would do better to savor it. We would do better to roll it around on our tongues while we purse our lips and draw in streams of air until the aroma of it fills our heads.
Intimacy with God.
We would do better to sink into it like a hot bath...to immerse ourselves in it...to inhale the steam of it until our passages are clear and enlarged.
Intimacy with God.
We would do better to wrap ourselves in it...to be warmed by it...to be snuggled in it.
Intimacy with God
We would do better to bask in it like a just-right-sun on a slightly breezy and cool April day.
We would do better in so many ways if we would just get over simply "hearing it".   To only hear it is to avoid encountering it. To only hear it is to avoid engaging it, embracing it and being embraced by it.
To think of intimacy with God in terms of the above metaphors is to think sensually about our friendship with God.
The thought of that scares us to death...at least some of us.
To be sensual is to be attuned to the senses, to get out of your head (and maybe even out of your mind!) and to actually sense something.
But that's the rub!
How can the senses pertain to God? The senses connect us to the physical world, the world of apples and rocks and birdsong and texture. How can the senses pertain to Spirit, to God, to this intimacy with God?
Our struggle with that problem is part of what keeps us locked up in our own heads...thinking about God, postulating about God, wondering about God.
Since we assume that God does not pertain to the senses, how else are we to understand God if not with our heads, our minds?
Perhaps this bias against the sensual when it comes to God is why Christians have generated far, far more theology than they have art...at least in that last few centuries.
Words, upon words, upon words.
Words to be parsed and to be analyzed.
Words to be debated.
Words to be systematized.
Words to launch wars large and small.
We'd rather talk about God than know God.
Our bias against the senses in matters of the Spirit are not only based on the disconnect between sense and Spirit. They are based on something far more "sinister."
Sensuality, which again is about celebrating the senses, has been merged with sexuality.   We cannot speak of being 'sensual' without also being drawn into the 'sexual' and, sadly, we cannot be drawn into the sexual without being drawn into the lurid.
You need go no farther than the dictionary to see this.
Here's a quick cut 'n paste from dictionary.com:
Sensual....

1. pertaining to, inclined to, or preoccupied with the gratification of the senses or appetites; carnal; fleshly.

2. lacking in moral restraints; lewd or unchaste.

3. arousing or exciting the senses or appetites.

4. worldly; materialistic; irreligious.

5.
of or pertaining to the senses or physical sensation; sensory.

The basic meaning of sensual is shoved all the way down to definition number five!
Somehow sensual
hooked up with
sexual
and sexual
hooked up with
carnal/fleshly and
carnal/fleshly
hooked up with
lewd and
lewd
hooked up with
materialistic (anti-spirit) and irreligious.
God!
No wonder we are scared of our own bodies, our own feelings. No wonder we distance ourselves from ourselves by way of all kinds of substances.
Could we be filled with more self-disdain, more self-hatred?
We content ourselves to think about God, to hold God at some cold and calculated distance, to observe God from afar, through a microscope or a telescope. We satisfy ourselves with discussions over tea or coffee- depending upon denominational affiliation.
We do so because we dare not draw God too close to the body, which we claim God made, lest God become tainted!
And all the while we become the most sexually marketed, sexually addicted people on earth. Wonder if that is what comes from divorcing the sensual from the spiritual?
When Abba Joseph invited Abba Lot to become "all flame" he invited him to a spiritual life that was about as sensual as you could get.
How could anyone burst into flames and not "sense" it?   How could anyone burst into flames without "getting hot?"
I back up and ask myself: whose agenda was served by this project to de-sensualize the people of faith? Whose agenda was served by freezing the people of faith and shoving them up into the freezers of their own minds?
I have my suspicions but I'll keep those to myself.
This much I know: whoever it was did so because they knew that a people who dabble in God are far more easily controlled than a people who burn.

We Do It OUR Wayyyy!

Mon, 17 Nov 2008 08:30:13 -0500

Twelfth in a series of reflections on a story from the Desert Fathers)
"Abba Lot went to see Abba Joseph and said to him, 'Abba, as far as I can I say my little office, I fast a little, I pray and meditate, I live in peace and as far as I can, I purify my thoughts. What else can I do?' then the old man stood up and stretched his hands towards heaven. His fingers became like ten lamps of fire and he said to him, 'If you will, you can become all flame.'"
"If you will, you can become all flame."
This morning these words of Oswald Chambers from My Utmost for His Highest caught my eye.
"God’s revelation of Himself
to me
is influenced by my character,
not by God’s character."
While I could quibble with that, there is truth there.  My character - the history, the patterns, the convictions, the underlying way-of-being that I am- must play a major role in how I relate to God, especially in terms of how open I am to God.
Paul said as much about the Jews and the gentiles of his day. "Jews demand miraculous signs and Gentiles demand wisdom..." (I Corinthians 1:22) Each class of folks had their own criteria by which to determine what was of God and what was not of God.
Each one of us do too!
I look back over my years of searching the Bible, reading books and asking questions and see how often I have tried to construct some system of criteria by which to measure the presence or the will of God.   "If this, then God...If that, then not-God."
I read somewhere once that baseball managers study the "proneness" of opposing players. Their minions scout other teams and keep a record of how the oppossing players tend to hit. Player A may be drawn to certain kinds of pitches under certain conditions. He may be prone to hit into left center but not into right field. Some managers have extensive data to support their views. They want to know the opposing player's "proneness."
We tend to do that with God. We search out God's proneness.
"I know it is of God when there is a miracle for God tends toward miracles!"
"I know it is of God when it is esoteric for God tends toward esoterica!"
"I know it is of God when it makes sense for God can only be a reasonable God!"
Isn't it interesting that we seldom hear anyone say: "I know it is of God because it is ordinary"?  How often do we hear anyone say: "I know God is at work in me when all people notice is the work in me but not me at all!"
Here is another of Oswald Chambers' insights:(My Utmost for His Highest: 11/16)
"But to do even the most humbling tasks to the glory of God takes the Almighty God Incarnate working in us. To be utterly unnoticeable requires God’s Spirit in us making us absolutely humanly His."
"To be utterly unnoticeable requires God's Spirit in us..."
Our own desires, our needs, our self-at-war-with-self tendencies, our agenda influences God's work with us and in us.
Abba Lot seems to have had a great deal of practice in this all-too-human practice of dabbling in self-selected spiritual practices.   While I cannot get into his head, I wonder if perhaps he engaged those practices as a way to hold God at bay while, at the same time, striving for deeper intimacy with God.
I try to imagine what my marriage would be like if I approached my wife with a recipe for marriage grounded in my expectations and convictions about how she works.
I wonder how it would have gone over with her if I said: "Let's see. Today I have pencilled in 10 minutes of conversation with you...three hugs...one kiss and one chore.   After that, I am done with you for the day."
I take it back.  I don't need to imagine what my marriage would be like. I know what it would be like. It would be like being...unmarried.
Yet isn't that exactly how we approach God?
"Let's see, God. Today I have you pencilled in for a morning devotion, 5 minutes of prayer and a quick read from the Psalms."
And we wonder about our spiritual life?
We cannot "Abba Lot" our way to God.   We cannot assume that our way, based upon our character, is sufficient for that encounter with God.
All we can assume is that our way suits us.

The Firestarter

Sat, 15 Nov 2008 10:36:38 -0500

Eleventh in a series of reflections on a story from the Desert Fathers)
Again...here's the story:
"Abba Lot went to see Abba Joseph and said to him, 'Abba, as far as I can I say my little office, I fast a little, I pray and meditate, I live in peace and as far as I can, I purify my thoughts. What else can I do?' then the old man stood up and stretched his hands towards heaven. His fingers became like ten lamps of fire and he said to him, 'If you will, you can become all flame.'"
"If you will, you can become all flame."
What exactly is it that we choose? Abba Joseph presented Abba Lot with two alternatives: stay the way you are, do what you currently do or become all flame.
The choice between those alternatives was clear. However, if Abba Lot selected the "all flame" option how would he embrace it? "I want option two...so how do I embrace it? Having selected it, how do I engage it?"
Abba Lot may have decided to become all flame. However, he could not set himself on this-kind-of-fire.
A long time ago when I was studying family therapy I learned about a phenomenon called the "Be Spontaneous Paradox". The BSP is a relational pattern wherein one party in the relationship commands, orders or directs the other person in the relationship to do something which, by definition, cannot be commanded, ordered or directed.
"Fall in love with me!"
"Like me!"
"Catch fire."
What is the other to say: "Okay, I'll do that at 2 o'clock this afternoon?"
If the other does as commanded, the commander can never be sure that the other has really obeyed.
"Fall in love with me!"
"Okay!"
"Wait! How do I know you aren't just saying that or just 'falling in love with me' because I told you to?"
The BSP always sets up the one to whom it is directed for failure. If the commanded does as told, the commanded is suspect. If the commanded does not do as told, the the commanded is disobedient, uncaring and unresponsive.
Abba Joseph could order Abba Lot to "become all flame." And Abba Lot could have command himself to become all flame. And both men could have experienced failure!
If you don't believe that, just try it. Tell someone close to you to "catch fire." (Many a preacher has commanded the congregation to do just that!) Or, tell yourself right now: "Catch fire!" (Many a Christian has told himself to do just that!)
The flame about which Abba Joseph spoke could not have been set by the one to whom he spoke. On top of that, the flame about which Joseph spoke could not have been set by Joseph either. He did not own a spiritual match.
We cannot order another or ourselves to "spontaneously combust." If we cannot order that or even will that into being ("I will now spontaneously combust!") the choice we make to become "all flame" cannot be a choice, by effort of will, to burst into flames.
I think about the many times I have felt frustrated to the point of despair in my spiritual life. I have wanted to burst into flame. I have tried to burst into flame. I have brow beat myself because I could not do it. I have spoken with many people over the years who have shared that same despair.
We all must come to terms with the fact that we cannot do that which cannot be done. To bemoan the fact that I cannot catch fire and to blame myself for it is like bemoaning the fact and blaming myself that I cannot flap my arms and fly.
That I have wanted to and that you have wanted to exposes something deep in us...
somewhere
in the recesses of our hearts and minds
we believe that we are
God.
What else could we have believed when we thought that we, in our own power, could do that which is by nature impossible?
But we do it all the time. We play God.

Have you ever tried to make someone love you?

Have you ever tried to control another person?

Have you ever tried to remodel another person?

Have you ever tried to root out a deep prejudice?

Have you ever tried to make yourself feel something you just didn't feel?

Have you ever tried to believe something you did not believe?

Have you ever tried to not think a compulsive thought?

We cannot do the impossible but God can...and does.
Abba Joseph's offer to Abba Lot- "If you will, you can become all flame"- was an invititation to abandon his self-determined, dabbling, task oriented approach to matters of the Spirit and to embrace a relationship with the one who specializes in flame...
the one who might just as well be called The Firestarter.

In the Crossroads

Fri, 14 Nov 2008 09:14:42 -0500

Tenth in a series of reflections on a story from the Desert Fathers)
Again...here's the story:
"Abba Lot went to see Abba Joseph and said to him, 'Abba, as far as I can I say my little office, I fast a little, I pray and meditate, I live in peace and as far as I can, I purify my thoughts. What else can I do?' then the old man stood up and stretched his hands towards heaven. His fingers became like ten lamps of fire and he said to him, 'If you will, you can become all flame.'"
"If you will, you can become all flame."
Now this is the challenging part, this "...if you will."
Abba Joseph put Abba Lot into crisis with those words. He offered him a pair of alternatives that, depending upon the choice he made, would set the course of his life.
He could continue with the usual way of living: self-directed, dabbling, and task centered spiritual practice or he could choose to become all flame. The choice was either/or not both/and.
The English word 'crisis' is a transliteration of the Greek word 'krisis', which means to judge, to decide, to separate. The meanings of 'krisis' form a little narrative. In crisis, in krisis, we make judgments, we decide, we choose- this vs. that.
Insofar as a story is comprised of a beginning, a middle and and an end, krisis is its own story. While krisis may last only a couple of seconds, the tension is palpable.
Jesus moved along and first one then another came to him. "Follow me," he said.
To encounter Jesus is to enter into krisis:

Lord I will follow you but first I must bury my father.

Lord I will follow you but first let me sell my property.

Lord I will follow you but let me say good-bye to my family.

Our 'buts' don't fit in a krisis. We cannot have it both ways. We cannot put Jesus on hold.
We judge. We weigh our options. We consider the outcomes. We hold each up to the light of scrutiny.
We choose. We take the step knowing that nothing in the past, even the most recent past, can ever be taken back.   Our choices are irrevocable.
We live with our choices. We follow the path we have selected. We float in the stream into which we jumped.
We can change our minds but we cannot change our history. We can change our minds but must live with missed moments. We can change our minds but to count on that is to count on hours that are not (h)ours to count.
"If you will..."