From Jerusalem to Port William through Eugene Peterson

This video is tremendous, especially the thought that Berry helps us lose the pronoun “me” and welcomes the idea of community.

Peterson’s insight lives and breathes, especially in how the stories of the Bible and the stories written by great writers are bringing forth such simple insights into the Gospel.

I’m working on some thoughts about confession, I’m wondering if we do not insult the idea of confession by simply owning up to an act and not the life of inattentiveness and distraction that creates failure and distance from God. If we are to be true to confession, we have to be true to the individual and community weakness that leads to that act, and in so doing tell a story in our confession. Instead of “Forgive me for my anger” we should be saying “Yesterday I was thinking about how people don’t give me what I need or what I think they should give me, and I lashed out at someone, mainly because you’re not enough to sustain me.”

This is brutal for me to meditate on, which is the point. Y tu?

Why I Love Eugene Peterson…

I think what’s happening with this blog is that I’m having lightning flash moments – thoughts, insights, experiences – and then putting them here. It’s an o-so-subtle change in blogging but I’m finding that it works for me. Perhaps it will continue to work. Now, on to the matter at hand…

A Christianity Today conversation with Eugene Peterson from March ‘05 came up in my RSS and I’m always intrigued to hear what he has to say. Mostly because he doesn’t care – he isn’t engrossed with spin and public persona the way many of the evangelical rock-star crowd is. And the result is you get quotes like this:

“I think relevance is a crock. I don’t think people care a whole lot about what kind of music you have or how you shape the service. They want a place where God is taken seriously, where they’re taken seriously, where there is no manipulation of their emotions or their consumer need.”

He also goes back to how the work of the Kingdom is soul work, which is necessarily “slow work” and I think that’s a reminder I need constantly. That the movement through the dischord and opaque nature of things to some clarity about our motives, desires, and impulses in the light of Christ is more like a disengaged stroll than a sprint, and to try and quantify that stroll – measure it and market it – often results in the process moving faster than the reality and in the end everyone ends up frustrated.

Reading for my next doctoral course on the topic of spiritual direction and I will likely find myself at some point in the next year finishing St. Ignatius’ Spiritual Exercises as I have yet to read any assessments of contemporary spiritual direction that don’t at least refer back to the first Jesuit himself. 

So, off to do the slow work. Slow like my vegetables which are hungry for the heat and humidity that should be here by now, but taking their sweet time growing from seed to plant to fruit. I sometimes wonder if you can truly understand the Gospel or the life of following Jesus if you’ve never planted and cared for a seed…

the experience of being caught off guard for a good reason

This week, even in its relative infancy, has been incredibly constructive and it brought me back to the blog even as I was considering whether or not blogging had any future for me. Too much pride in me, too much conceit, but is there anything to offer? I think the best thing I have to offer this morning is a thought from Leighton Ford from his book The Attentive Life that simply floored me today.

“When I find myself as a being before God, as a physical being in a world irradiated by light, as a moving creature, urged on but able to say ‘Whoa’, I am not ruled by urges, as a temporal being living in the I Am Eternal One, reminded by the clock to live here, now, I can be content with whatever I have. When I am still, compulsion (the busyness that Hilaryof Tours called ‘ a blasphemous anxiety to do God’s work for him’) gives way to compunction (being pricked or punctured). That is, God can break through the many layers with which I protect myself, so that I can hear his Word and be poised to listen.” (137-138)

This week has found me peeling back layers of my own pride, protectiveness, noise, self-promotion and desire to talk and be heard and simply to find the core of who I am in Christ. I hope to want nothing more than that in every avenue of life, but that will take some time. It is a difficult thing to chip away layers that have been laid over the past 30 years, and I don’t propose one author’s words or one time of meditation and prayer will be enough to do so.

That is why it is called “discipleship” or “spiritual formation” and not “spiritual completion”. The state of movement matters o so much more than the final destination. 

That felt a bit heavy. But it is, but it is also very very good. I hope it makes sense.

Thanks to Tom Joad

For this trailer. I found myself moved just in hearing the bits and pieces that were offered, and I wonder how many people need to see this that never will.  

Things are beginning to take shape at the new residence. I made a long-term statement by picking up asparagus crowns to plant, knowing they will not produce for at least two seasons. Once some interior adjustments are made on the house, I’ll be ready to head out and plant my late-but-worth-it garden, build the new compost container, and possibly put a rain barrel in place. 

All in all, life is beginning to look more and more rooted. And it is good. Somewhere Wendell Berry is smiling (hopefully). 

reading: “the enchantress of florence” salman rushdie

Revisiting Rich

I take time on a regular basis to come back to Rich Mullins’ life and music. Most people only think “Awesome God” and some people even think cheesy Christian musician, worked with Amy Grant, etc. That is, however, a gross undervaluation of Rich’s character and contributions to the world. I watch the “Homeless Man” video and am struck by his beauty and simplicity.

I regularly recommend the biography “An Arrow Pointed Toward Heaven” as well. Here’s one of my favorite parts of the “Homeless Man” video.

N.T. Wright: en fuego

Just a snip from Wright’s For All God’s Worth that caught me this morning:

“Just as evil is more than the sum total of individual acts of wrongdoing so Jesus’ victory over evil is more than the sum total of subsequent individual acts of selfless love. Christian faith, faith in the crucified Jesus, is more than my individual belief that he died for me, vital though that is. It is the faith that on the cross Jesus in principle won the victory over sin, violence, pride, arrogance, and even death itself, and that that victory can now be implemented.” (55)

First of all, let’s not miss what Wright is saying – the death of Jesus, a victory over evil, is greater than all the acts of faith we may do. This puts things like the spiritual disciplines into perspective: we do not practice solitude because we think God is pleased with our pursuit – we pursue solitude so we can go there and come back and not only be alive (cp. Exodus 15, 17; Matt. 4) but we can come to understand a new level of freedom from that death (and all of its friends) which Jesus defeated. Solitude then becomes an exercise in implementing victory to become more like Christ, and in so doing find ourselves courageous enough to enter places of silence, hunger, thirst, intellectual dispute, trial, joylessness, etc. and come back alive.

This is the place where spiritual disciplines transcend the moralistic, therapeutic deism (do the right things, feel better, because of God) that we’ve been taught. Disciplines don’t make you holy, at least not explicitly, they create a place where we lose the fear of sanctification. We become courageous enough to step beyond the comfort of knowable God into the blessed distress of a God who moves without our permission and asks us to follow.

Prayer becomes an experience in locating ourselves in conversation with God.

Solitude invokes wilderness where we are not without water or bread, but we are fed on the will of the Father.

Silence invokes the slow death of noiselessness that we all avoid – and I think we might be afraid to hear the voice of the marginalized and oppressed – and brings us under the counsel of God.

Fasting shows that trees of all kinds of fruit are subject to God alone – and that we’ll live without the FDA guidelines and in fact may live better.

The Calm and the Storm

Been a while since I filled the content field of the blog, and for those of you who read I am deeply sorry. Holley and I are still in the midst of transition to a new life and work in Orland Park, IL.

I don’t say that as an excuse, but today it is also a frame for what I’m about to say. Today I didn’t really feel like being a mature follower of Jesus. My head ached from changing climates, my body was exhausted from the rounds I’ve been making lately, and my mind was racing with the many things that need to be done before Holl, B, and I close on our first house at the end of the month (did I forget to mention that?)

Today, I felt like checking out – screaming at other drivers trying to navigate the gale force winds on I-55 south and finding some nice hole to crawl into before anyone noticed. Just me and my copy of “The Memory of Old Jack” with Holley and Bailey at my side.

The point that came ever so quickly to me is this: there is no checking out. My experience today in no way mirrors the oppression or suffering other followers of Jesus go through on a daily basis or have gone through in the course of history, but the reality is that the fairy-tale faith of fluffy Christian bookstores is not truth. Not that it isn’t absolute truth, which is a discussion that is as nasty as it is necessary, but the real root of the Greek “alethia” – it is not REALITY.

The reality is that bad days (which is all that today is, not a crisis of faith) are miniature rounding points that bring us to a place of greater maturity and softer lines of thought.

I’ve got more to post from the Halter & Smay book that I’m reading, “The Tangible Kingdom”, but it’s in my office 2 hours away and I don’t have a photographic memory.

Old and New

The sun came up gently today over Emden, a gentle mesh of purple and darkness, starting my last weekday in Emden with a beautiful vista. I haven’t posted in a while due to the transition that I’ve been going through (as well as a DMin class, but that’s another story) so I finally got clear to do so today. On Monday I’ll start a new position as Minister of Spiritual Formation and Small Groups at Parkview Christian Church in Chicago’s southwest ‘burbs. I’m excited for the new challenges, but I’m also in patient waiting as several things have to fall into place before our family life gets established there. We covet your prayers as we do the house/job hunt thing, especially in the current economic climate. Our intention is to find something that meets our needs and not our wants, but also allows us to be available to the marginalized in the surrounding communities.

I’ll likely continue to post here, but I wouldn’t expect anything for a week or so. Two insights from studying Exodus the past few weeks:

1. The passover event troubles me, as the death of the firstborn in Egypt is a theologically difficult moment. I came to the realization that “firstborn” does not refer to infants only–as Rameses II decree in Ex. 1-2 did–but to ALL firstborn in any family. I am my mother’s firstborn, even though I’m 31. This event took children, brothers, mothers, husbands, wives and fathers. What I have come to terms with is that my view of death is not consistent with God’s view of death and its impact. Why would God cause such suffering–because Pharaoh resisted? Yet Exodus repeatedly alternates between Pharaoh hardening his heart and God hardening Pharaoh’s heart–I’m not sure he needed any help–but is God culpable in the deaths as well? No Max Lucado solutions here, this is a place where I will wrestle.

2. The Passover is an amazing discipline of remembrance. Scholars say the greatest threat to the faith of Israel was to “forget.” The whole point, as articulated in Ex. 12, of the Passover feast and feast of unleavened bread was so that generations later the question would be asked “Why do we do this?” and then the story of the Exodus and God’s graceful rescue (#1 included) and establishment of His people. It makes good sense then that Jesus would choose a symbolic date and symbolic meal (upper room on Passover) to remake the covenant of God in the shadow of His covenant with Israel (rescue, lamb, unleavened bread, blood). This is the place where the story of Jesus becomes so much more powerful, when we remember to root it in what the world was seeing in Jesus at the time. He was re-enacting the Exodus: baptism in the Jordan, wandering in the wilderness, declaring Jubilee in the synagogue, and sharing the blood and bread of Passover in a brand new way.

listening: Bon Iver, “Wisconsin”

Music and Reading

My dad turned my attention to a band I had heard of, mostly because of their two songs “Cumbersome” and “Water’s Edge” from the album American Standard. I thought, “Oh yeah, the roots rock band from when I was in high school.” Not so, I was told, and since Dad and I share nearly all things musical (Fogelberg, Prine, and bluegrass I owe to him) I gave it a shot.
 Tonally, there are many things familiar about this record, but what is surprising is the tremendous lyrical moves they make in the course of albeit brief ballads. They break, in the final half of the album, into a bit more of the driven rock that brought them success with American Standard, but the best moments in the album are crooned over acoustically-crafted melody lines and whiskey-voiced intensity. It’s worth downloading at least the first few cuts and giving it a listen.

Reading now Andy Stanley’s Creating Community, which is written (admitted by Stanley in the introduction) largely by NorthPoint’s community life pastor Bill Willits. After the other readings I have done, this seems light in comparison to Wilhoit and Ogden, but I see the point. The small group program, if it is to be done, must move beyond a “program” into a culture. Yet, Andy Crouch’s great book Culture Making reminds us that to say we can change “a culture” as if it can be defined as just one culture, is kidding ourselves because we all live in multiple “cultures” simultaneously. I think the Stanley book is hitting at their congregation’s practice of small groups and how it has become indicative of their corporate mindset, but I don’t know that it is as pervasive or possible in other locations as it is in theirs. The subtitle, “5 Keys to Building Small Group Culture” is ambitious and perhaps misplaced, but at least they avoid the John Maxwell mistake of saying “THE 5 Keys…”

In all this thinking about discipleship, I think perhaps the one most powerful tool that enters into the process of following Jesus is the opportunity to say NO to the whole thing. I think we need to recapture the idea of giving people the chance to say “I can’t follow Jesus, I can’t make that step” because it reveals the inverse–the strength and pervasive effect of saying YES to following Christ. I don’t mean simply being baptized–we have plenty of soaking wet people who aren’t disciples–I mean opening up the whole picture before them and saying “This is the life of the disciple, this is what it means to follow, can you take this on?” John 6:60-66 is powerful to me, haunting even, because Jesus stands in the presence of people who are thinking about leaving, and He does nothing really for retention. Other places he intimates that this is a decision that should be thought through beforehand, rather than the typical position of “Hey, now that you’re baptized here’s what you just agreed to.” The magnitude of that cannot be missed on the landscape of an impotent Christianity such as the one we’re confronted with. Perhaps there are fewer and fewer disciples because the “bait-and-switch” of evangelism is incapable of producing lasting change?

In other words, the strength of discipleship lies in the option to categorically turn the whole thing down. The decision to follow, with the option to say no, shows the weight of the change needed to follow.

listening: Iain Archer

Reading again

finished Wilhoit’s “S.F. as if the Church Mattered” and moved on to another in my series of readings, this one from Greg Ogden titled Transforming Discipleship. The premise is similar to Wilhoit, that being a disciple and being a “Christian” have become mutually exclusive in our contemporary culture, with many willing to claim to be the latter but few claiming the former. The church will continue to suffer in its ability to image and announce the Kingdom of God until there are more who are seriously entering a life of discipleship instead of a life of “sin management.” Discipleship and spiritual formation have become interchangeable, with the former being a more “conventional” construct and the latter being a “sexier” construct for those who need that. Regardless of the semantic impact, the reality is that there are tons of people calling themselves Christians who have not taken seriously the call to discipleship. Enter the prognosticators to help plan the solution…wait, that includes me so I perhaps should stow the cynicism for a bit.

Ogden’s book is far more conservative and blunt in its approach than my recent readings, saying at one point that “…the reality is that most believers are biblically ignorant people whose lives are a syncretistic compromise” (33). His idea is that SF/discipleship is best done under the conditions of a mutual covenant among 3-4 individuals who share regularly in the spiritual disciplines, Scripture, and pervasive transparency with each other. I’m not sure (as of yet) whether this approach will be as strong or persuasive as Wilhoit’s community based receiving, remembering, responding, and relating pillars but time will tell. I can see the value of a tight-group pursuit of following Jesus, but the hermeneutic of justifying it because Jesus only called 12 and then had 3 really close relationship within the 12 seems to miss the historical and Jewish connotations of calling 12–namely, Jesus was creating a new Israel and the 12 disciples represented 12 new tribes, called up onto a mountain and chosen and given a new covenant to live by (cp. Mt. 5-7). Can you APPLY the smaller group as an image of what Jesus did? Sure, but let’s not put all of our hermeneutical “weight” on that application’s “foot”. That’s all I’m saying.

I will say, and I think this sounds picky but it’s true, the font/page formatting of some books actually affects how I read them. For some reason, IVP tends to have very tight pages and coarse textures, and this may sound anti-intellectual or focused on something other than the content, but that will present a challenge in reading to me. Am I alone in this? If there is a soft page that accepts my pen or highlighter and the reading fits my eye, I will likely have a better retention of that text. That sounds awful…

I think this string of readings for my next class is going to be a gauntlet, with Bill Donahue’s Building a Church of Small Groups, Andy Stanley’s Creating Community,  and a second glance through Willow Creek’s REVEAL study. Definitely not books I would self select (although I had been looking forward to Wilhoit, I must say), but that’s a good challenge.

Listening: Sigur Ros