Wide streets and strip malls

I've been visiting my son and daughter in Colorado. They both live with homes all round them with very little interaction with whoever lives near them. They and their neighbors live near ubiquitous 5 lane streets that quickly lead them to strip mall heaven.

To get exercise and my morning coffee at both homes I walk about 5 blocks to either a 7-11 or MacDonald's. This experience is almost surreal because I meet no one else walking. One morning I said hello to the Asian lady who works at the liquor store nearby as she brought her trash container in from the curb, but otherwise I felt that I was somehow perhaps out of sync with the rest of the world by being out there walking.

I do the same routine in Greenfield as well, with the same feeling of being "weird" for being out of my car. I recently read in some novel the opinion that something died when the first Ford car was invented. Somewhat to my surprise I'm finding that I am turning into some kind of reactionary to civilization as we know it. Now I don't want to live back in the woods and grow a beard and not use deodorant you understand, I guess I'm just reacting to the depersonalization and commercialization all around us.

In Henri Nouwen's amazing book, "Reaching Out" he speaks of being able to enjoy a personal sense of solitude even in the midst of this environment. In fact he believes it essential and a gift to those who are trapped without awareness of this for there to be people who can be " in the world but not of it". So I'm realizing that instead of complaining and resisting the culture I am in, I can be in to world really loving anyone I meet and wondering how God is making himself know to that person.

I believe that it doesn't matter how we get into relationship with others, what matters is that we be clear from the start that we know very little or nothing about some one's relationship with God. My assumption is that God is always in some relationship with every person so my task is to effectively come alongside whatever God is doing in that person's life.

Sometimes I wonder if we followers of Christ are more alienated from God than the average person on the street. At least holding that assumption as truth means I enter every encounter with every human from a position of curiosity and respect even to the point of wondering if they might have some healing of the alienation from God that can exist in my life!

It seems that much of what we Christians present to the world is all about our opinions, our judgements, our agendas. If it's the Holy Spirit's responsibility to bring conviction then I'm left with the responsibility to love God and then love my neighbor in whatever way feels like love to them. Even if it means I get over my aversion to strip malls and commercialisation, get out and really be with people.

Old poetry

This is a poem I wrote during a tough time in my life.

Dark Birth

Brown and dark,
Cold and crushed,
Spring’s green glory.
Fall’s red revelation
Moldering down.
Beneath glistening snow
decay, dissolution,
April’s fresh promise passing away.

Passing away?
Inexorable green tips,
Far ranging rootlets,
Potent bulb, restless rhizome,
Leaf mold’s new incarnation.
Life quivering, expectant.


Will there be new life?
Will life’s leafy litter encounter
Incarnation's blood and water?
Leaves to litter, litter to humus,
New growth’s fertile bed.
Weariness to quietness, quietness to surrender
Grace’s deceptive door.
All that now springs up is incarnation's
mysterious fruit.

Uncomfortable living

It’s interesting that people pay money and take time off work to come to Discovery or Breakthrough seminars so that in a very real way they can stop “feeling good, looking good, being right, and being in control".

So why would someone want to pay for the chance to be uncomfortable, out of control, look bad, and allow themselves perhaps to be wrong about something? Well, I think that maybe that’s very much like what Jesus calls us to. Jim Elliot who was killed by the Auca indians he was a missionary to, said “He is no fool to give up that which he cannot keep, to gain that which he cannot loose”.

And maybe it's because we may find that our certainties and belief systems built up in us may not be supporting the life we say we want to live. We may actually have conflicting intentions that we are not aware of.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who choose to go back into Nazi Germany to oppose Hitler and was executed in a concentration camp days before he would have been freed by the allies, writes in “The Cost of Discipleship”,

“ The disciple is dragged out of his relative security into a life of absolute insecurity (that is, in truth, into the absolute security and safety of the fellowship of Jesus), from a life which is observable and calculable (it is, in fact, quite incalculable) into a life where everything is unobservable and fortuitous (that is, into one which is in truth the infinite) into the realm of infinite possibilities (which is the one liberating reality). "

I’m not sure I get all of what Bonhoeffer is saying here but I get that to really follow Jesus and live a life of real freedom, we have to step out of what’s familiar and seemingly certain and be willing to live in the very real question of “what are my hidden motives and beliefs?” as I intentionally consider living in a way that others can experience as love.

As I write this I'm uncomfortably pricked in my conscience about my really being in the "safety and security of the fellowship of Jesus". But then I think that all I really know to do is to fall on him. God is the one "who works in us, both to will and to do".

And I can pray as David did "Investigate my life, O God, find out everything about me; Cross-examine and test me, get a clear picture of what I'm about." Psalm 139;23

Yup, more about the boiling frogs.

"What you resists, persists". Supposedly Nietzsche said that so my pastor may have missed a great opportunity to quote Nietzsche in his thought-provoking sermon recently.
He talked about the Stockholm and Stockdale syndromes. Which is to say he talked about how humans deal with reality when it's stressful or painful. In the Stockholm situation people sided with the oppressors, on the other hand, General Stockdale was fully accepting of what he was experiencing in a Vietnamese prison camp but decided that he also could be above it.
Also Pastor Dan brought up God's ability to make "all things work together for good" which if really thought through means that at some level all things are good. It also means that we can face reality honestly and squarely.
My faith in God's grace is what allows me to face current reality. Anything that may show up is well covered by God's goodness whether it is something about me or circumstances.
And not just passively sit in whatever it is. In Orthodoxy, G. K. Chesterton says

"For our Titanic purposes of faith and revolution, what we need is not the cold acceptance of the world as compromise, but some way in which we can heartily hate and heartily love it. We do not want joy and anger to neutralize each other and produce a surly contentment; we want a fiercer delight and a fiercer discontent. "

Vice Admiral Stockdale passionately lived in what was going on for him... the abuse and humiliation and his deep committment to surviving. This is integrity. He transcended fear and oppression and lived in essence a faith-filled life.
Can we do the same in all of our areas of life? Can we do the same as God who actually doesn't resist anything but in a miraculous way moves into it and converts it. "All things work together for good..."

What kind of sign am I?

"Jesus is taken by God or, better, chosen by God. Jesus is the Chosen One. From all eternity God has chosen his most precious Child to become the saviour of the world. Being chosen expresses a special relationship, being known and loved in a unique way, being singled out. "

"In our society our being chosen always implies that others are not chosen. But this is not true for God. God chooses his Son to reveal to us our chosenness.In the Kingdom of God there is no competition or rivalry. The Son of God shares his chosenness with us. In the Kingdom of God each person is precious and unique, and each person has been given eyes to see the chosenness of others and rejoice in it. " Henri Nouwen

As I considered this meditation from the Henri Nouwen Society, I wondered... are you and I precious and unique because we are chosen, or because we are chosen we are precious and unique?

This I realize is a question of significance. Where and how do we receive our significance? In the play Pygmalion does Eliza's significance change after she had been taught an upper class veneer? What is the difference between significance and impact?

Not much I find as I researched the etymology of the word significance. One of the earliest uses of a root of this word is "signen" which interestingly enough was used to describe making the "sign of the cross", the cross of Jesus being the sign that changed the direction of the world.

Maybe all this boils down to you and I being signs or pointers towards something. Maybe we can chose what we point toward. Maybe even the mistakes and screwups in my life can become pointers for you.

If I'm a sign where is that sign leading you?

Boiling frogs and church life

One of that reasons that I find working with the ministry of ACCD (http://accd.org) so satisfying is their focus on current reality. So much mischief happens in life when I want to avoid what is really happening with me.

Now why would I want to avoid what is really going on? It might have to do with the propensity we humans have to;
1. being right,
2. feeling good,
3. looking good, and
4. being in control.

Thus staying out of touch with reality, at least in my illusion, seems to allow me all four of the above mentioned. The problem is that to support this illusion I have to work harder and harder to ignore signs in the physical universe around me. Thus the gratitude surprisingly that many of us have felt about reaching "bottom" (as 12 step groups put it) and hopefully recovering to some degree.

"Bottom" for those of you who either have lived charmed lives or are still blissfully ignorant of reality is what it's called when our or others blindness, dysfunction, propensity to humanness and evil takes us to a place where consequences finally strip away illusion. Often we're talking really painful consequences that not only do us damage but severely hurt those around
us.

So sociologists have a belief that organizations can exhibit personality much like a human being. So all this to introduce some thoughts about my church, Greenfield Congregational Covenant Church. I am currently serving on a committee that is conversing about the vitality of our church.

I'm wondering if the proverbial frog immersed in the slowly warming up pot of water can really get much of a philosophical, existential grip on his
reality. If there were two frogs in this potential stew and they were contentedly assessing their reality, the whole point of the proverb is the difficulty of noticing where they really are. And even if two frogs should suddenly, inexplicably start to have concerns about the warmth of their environment, could they communicate this perhaps vague concern to a third frog in the pot?

Stand by for more musings from the pot.

First blog

Ok, so this is my first blog. What does it look like...?
Ok, it looked ok, now can I produce some content of value?

Time will tell. Right now I am sitting here with Bill, our new family member chatting with me. He is a delightful, 60 year old guy with mental and physical disabilities.

I have just "tucked him in" opps, Bill says that he does not get "tucked in". For some reason that is highly objectionable to him. Many things are highly objectionable to Bill. It is enjoyable to have him be clear about what works for him and what doesn't work for him.

Maybe like Henri Nouwen who after being a professor at Yale and Harvard, decided that the best thing he could do was to go minister to the disabled folks at L'Arche in Montreal, I will learn from Bill.
In "The Beatitudes, Soundings In Christian Traditions" Simon Tugwell strongly recommends that for our own salvation we hang out with and be comfortable and learn from and love those he calls "anawim". 
These he describes as "...the underdogs, the people who lack social, political, economic power, the people who are not in a position to control their own circumstances, who cannot pull strings. The people, on the face of it, stand no chance whatsoever of inheriting the earth."

This word "anawim" is what is translated "meek" in the beatitude that says that the "meek will inherit the earth".
So in in the culture of 2008 are we comfortable becoming as the anawim?