"Land Down Under," by Men at Work, arrived on the top 100 charts in 1980. I still remember when the American TV show, Solid Gold (and their amazing Solid Gold dancers) blared this new sound by an Australian rock band that pretty much no one north of the equator had ever heard of. On Saturday night as those same Solid Gold dancers grooved out to the tunes of the '80's, I tape recorded the song with the help of my trusty tape recorder where you had to push both the play and the record button at the same time to transfer the sound onto the cassette tape. At seven years of age, I had no idea what in the world they were talking about, but it sounded cool.
So, I've got this image of Australia planted some thirty-five years ago that resounds in Australian lingo with drug references and Australian stereotypes that would have made no sense to me as a young American boy, but as I grew up and listened to that tape occasionally, it became apparent that Men at Work was speaking about a country and a group of people that longed to be noticed. They want to be recognized for their commitment and participation in the world, not just for traveling outside of their aquatic borders, their amazing ability to ingest the bottom scrapings of a beer vat (vegemite), and their propensity (as the band proclaimed) for glowing women and puking men who are well over six feet three inches and have been pumping iron for years.
It's in the lyrics, I promise
But as a young American boy from Iowa where I didn't even see the ocean until I was thirteen, I couldn't really fathom an island country the size of the United States. I didn't visit Australia until I was twenty-one and that was with the jazz choir from college. We saw some of the sights and did the tourist thing, but the song, "Land Down Under" would continue to haunt me. It wasn't until I saw Crocodile Dundee that I knew that I wanted to experience more than chundering and thundering.
It was in this movie, probably the first American attempt to bring to the forefront Australian culture (however fake it may have been). Crocodile Dundee, in my opinion, was probably the platform from which all American's understanding of Australia came, whether it was the launching pad for the Crocodile Hunter or the Big Red Car of the Wiggles.
Now that Christine and I have been married for eighteen years, we have had various opportunities to travel inside the borders of Australia. We have visited the major cities and all the capitals of the states except Darwin; we have been to Tasmania, to Perth, to Uluru, but staying in a drought stricken Outback Town, that is something we hadn't done...
Until this last week.
Sarah Grayson, a police officer in Charleville, Queensland, invited our family to come out and be part of a drug prevention program in Charleville and the surrounding area. The program, W.A.S.T.I.D., (Wasted Adolescence Spent Taking Illegal Drugs), is a response to the epidemic dis-ease related to the drug, ice, better known as methamphetamine much popularized in the American TV show Breaking Bad.
I'll get into the some of the statistics later and some of the stories that the officers shared with us regarding ice, but I wanted to lay a foundation for the journey, like the Israelites who were heading off into the unknown desert wasteland.
We left our home town of Gatton on a Monday morning. We bustled around the house making sure that all the windows were shut, the toilet lids were up, the power points were turned off. It's still one of the things that I have to get used to in Australia that you don't just turn the lights off, but you actually turn their power sources off too. We made sure that everything was tucked away and we packed into our car like the Australian Griswalds heading off to the Australian Wallyworld of Charleville.
Charleville - population roughly 3,500 about five hundred kilometers west of the nearest big town of Toowoomba. Welcome to the Queensland Outback.
For a boy who came from the Land Up Over, the Land Down Under was about to surprise him.
Sunday, October 11, 2015
Tuesday, September 1, 2015
My Precious
Article in the August addition of the Lutheran magazine that won the silver award for most humorous item in the Australasian Religious Press Awards.
There are three things in Australia that I have learned not
to poke fun at:
1.
Vegemite
2.
Slim Dusty
3.
Cricket
It’s very easy to ridicule Vegemite because it tastes like
someone scraped an oil pan of a rusted out old ute, but I promised Christine
that I wouldn’t make fun of it.
I don’t know much about the country singer Slim Dusty, but
the songs that I’ve heard sound, well… different. Because my musical tastes bend at a different
angle, Slim scratches my eardrums like a wandering alleycat, but I promised
Christine that I wouldn’t make fun of his sound.
Cricket makes little sense and even for a baseball fan like
myself that can watch nine innings of one hit ball, I can’t understand how one
person can bat for a whole day and be rewarded for hitting foul balls while the
rest of his team sits in the stands wearing cardigan sweaters while putting
white sunscreen on their lips and noses.
I didn’t promise Christine that I wouldn’t make fun of cricket, though.
Most Australians would all rejoice at being young and free
to eat Vegemite while listening to Slim Dusty duel a tabby on the prowl during
a cricket match that last forty-two hours, while two people have batted and
they’ve had nineteen breaks for tea.
These three things are precious to them, I think, and as I soak into the
Australian culture, I begin to appreciate them even if I don’t understand them.
It happens in churches, too.
There are some precious things in Lutheran Churches that
‘outsiders’ don’t understand either.
I’ve heard these before:
1.
Why are people singing with an organ? Do they listen to organ music on their iPods?
2.
Why does the pastor wear a dress to church?
3.
What’s with the word ‘Alleluia?’ I thought it was a happy word?
4.
Why do people who read the lessons sound like
they are reading from an Economics text book?
5.
Why do we have to confess our sins every
week? Doesn’t God already know what’s
going on? No use bringing it up again.
Often, when some of these ‘precious’ things are discussed,
there is a tendency to be defensive, but usually I would guess we just do some
things in church because we’ve always done them and we’ve forgotten exactly
why. Perhaps there should be some
discussion about the purpose of music, the history of teaching the faith
through sound. Maybe we could remind the
congregation that a pastor’s clothes should not distract from the service – the
stole is a yoking to God. We should be
shouting the ‘Alleluia’ at the top of our voices and reading the Bible should
be an expression of wonder. Confession
is not for God’s sake, but for ours.
Maybe we just need to be reminded why we do what we do and
why that makes them special.
P. S. Christine
doesn’t like Slim Dusty’s music either.
Wednesday, August 19, 2015
The Helicopters
There were fifteen in my group, all freshly scrubbed in various states of 9th grade euphoria. Some were very excited; some yawned loudly; many were vociferously anxious about having to leave their phones behind. As the bus pulled up, a few parents squished in close for an extra hug or two and a careful word about watching out for snakes and bees and dust and... and... and...
A few of the kids were nervous, but the most nervous were kept home - sick, their parents would say, an ailment that they didn't see coming, but camp brings out the rotor blades in many parents.
Helicopter parents.
The term first occurred as a metaphor in Dr. Haim Ginott's 1969 book, "Between Parent and Teenager." He describes a parent who hovers over their child like a helicopter and others have described this phenomenon of parents being perpetually physically present but emotionally absent. Helicopter parents are hyper-vigilant about their child's physical surroundings but relatively clueless about their emotional well being.
On camp, the 9th graders were, for the most part, ready for a different kind of adventure. It has been described as a survival camp, or something like that, but for the most part, because of helicoptering, most of the survival has been filtered from it and camp is just a four day separation from the helicoptering parents. Georgia researcher and professor, Richard Mullendore, says that the rise of the mobile phone has created the explosion of helicopter parenting - the world's longest umbilical cord. We probably see it every day; parents calling their children during the school day, at their friends' houses, during all hours of separation.
Just to keep them safe.
Ironically, keeping the kids from physically challenging opportunities actually seems to have the opposite effect. Those kids that aren't given the chance to push themselves, or even move through the pain of twisting an ankle, scrapes and cuts, bruises and welts from the outdoors, seem to be more prone to making physical mistakes later in life. Parents, often well intentioned, try to shelter their kids from the physical pain and in essence, stunt their maturation and the apron strings that should long ago have been untied, have created a generation of kids who don't know how to deal with pain and danger.
Frightened of the media's portrayal of abduction, or accidental death, parents don't let their kids walk, or ride their bikes, to school but instead drive them each morning unaware that the odds of their children being hurt in an abduction are infinitesimal as being injured in a car accident. But the online difficulty is where I'm seeing the most tragic pain occurring.
The greatest problem is: often the same parents who have extreme boundaries about what their kids can do in the outdoors have no limitations on where their kids can go online. Given no boundaries or even techniques of navigating the digital wilderness, kids wander aimlessly in the forests of pornography, anonymous social media and drown in the deserts of images and videos. How often do I attempt to constructively allow the kids in classes navigate their assessments using the technology at hand to research only to find them on a thread of youtube.
Blame is not placed squarely on helicoptering, but somehow we, as a community, especially a Spiritual community, must find ways to build the fences within which young people can explore both the physical and digital world. We must give the youth of today guidelines for working through pain and unrealized expectations and in the midst, if our children do feel pain (which they will) we must resist the urge to morph into Apache helicopter parents - not just parents that hover, but now attack.
I am as guilty as anyone else, but I'm trying hard to shut down the rotors and give my children the best opportunity to succeed in all worlds.
I actively pray and encourage other parents to do the same.
A few of the kids were nervous, but the most nervous were kept home - sick, their parents would say, an ailment that they didn't see coming, but camp brings out the rotor blades in many parents.
Helicopter parents.
The term first occurred as a metaphor in Dr. Haim Ginott's 1969 book, "Between Parent and Teenager." He describes a parent who hovers over their child like a helicopter and others have described this phenomenon of parents being perpetually physically present but emotionally absent. Helicopter parents are hyper-vigilant about their child's physical surroundings but relatively clueless about their emotional well being.
On camp, the 9th graders were, for the most part, ready for a different kind of adventure. It has been described as a survival camp, or something like that, but for the most part, because of helicoptering, most of the survival has been filtered from it and camp is just a four day separation from the helicoptering parents. Georgia researcher and professor, Richard Mullendore, says that the rise of the mobile phone has created the explosion of helicopter parenting - the world's longest umbilical cord. We probably see it every day; parents calling their children during the school day, at their friends' houses, during all hours of separation.
Just to keep them safe.
Ironically, keeping the kids from physically challenging opportunities actually seems to have the opposite effect. Those kids that aren't given the chance to push themselves, or even move through the pain of twisting an ankle, scrapes and cuts, bruises and welts from the outdoors, seem to be more prone to making physical mistakes later in life. Parents, often well intentioned, try to shelter their kids from the physical pain and in essence, stunt their maturation and the apron strings that should long ago have been untied, have created a generation of kids who don't know how to deal with pain and danger.
Frightened of the media's portrayal of abduction, or accidental death, parents don't let their kids walk, or ride their bikes, to school but instead drive them each morning unaware that the odds of their children being hurt in an abduction are infinitesimal as being injured in a car accident. But the online difficulty is where I'm seeing the most tragic pain occurring.
The greatest problem is: often the same parents who have extreme boundaries about what their kids can do in the outdoors have no limitations on where their kids can go online. Given no boundaries or even techniques of navigating the digital wilderness, kids wander aimlessly in the forests of pornography, anonymous social media and drown in the deserts of images and videos. How often do I attempt to constructively allow the kids in classes navigate their assessments using the technology at hand to research only to find them on a thread of youtube.
Blame is not placed squarely on helicoptering, but somehow we, as a community, especially a Spiritual community, must find ways to build the fences within which young people can explore both the physical and digital world. We must give the youth of today guidelines for working through pain and unrealized expectations and in the midst, if our children do feel pain (which they will) we must resist the urge to morph into Apache helicopter parents - not just parents that hover, but now attack.
I am as guilty as anyone else, but I'm trying hard to shut down the rotors and give my children the best opportunity to succeed in all worlds.
I actively pray and encourage other parents to do the same.
Saturday, August 15, 2015
Marriage Quality
Different countries have taken a stand on the issue of marriage - well, it's definition, anyway. All over the world wide web, different personalities, celebrities, pastors and lay people alike have dipped into their buckets of theological and secular opinions and typed their fingers raw about who gets to marry whom. But one thing that has been absent amidst the nuptial noise is what marriage is - not just who gets to partake in it.
Our contemporary western culture thrives on its ability to define our lives by the available options. Marriage is no different. We revel in the fact that we have twenty kinds of toothpaste from which to choose and even Australia is famous for the world's biggest selection of car models. As I walk down the grocery aisle, it is not lost on me that I can select from seven different types of toilet paper while thinking about which kind peanut butter will create the perfect PBNJ sandwich for me.
That kind of decision making process, so many choices coupled with our contemporary understanding of time paupery, leads to a diminished view, in my opinion, of what marriage actually is. Instead of a holy promise of life time commitment, perpetual forgiveness and a cohesion of faith, we find 21st century marriage titrated through the pipette of choice culture. Marriage has become disposable, like exchanging a Samsung for an iPhone. It just depends on what model trips your trigger.
In the animal kingdom, there are all sorts of fauna which mate for life. Gibbons (it's kind of like a monkey - I had to look at the picture), swans, black vultures, wolves and even albatrosses (I'm not sure how to pronounce that one) find the perfect mate and stay with them for life while raising a brood of infants (gibbons), cygnets, chicks, wolflets (I know, they are really cubs, but I like this better), and baby albatri. With the divorce rate escalating beyond fifty percent, we find that people are mating for all sorts of reasons other than life. Some marry for money, some marry for 'love,' some marry for the comfort and ease of continuing to share the same space in which they have been living. But the culture really doesn't marry until death parts us - only until choice separates us.
Looking at the statistics for divorce, it seems like our contemporary culture should be much more obsessed with marriage quality than marriage equality. Unfortunately, as the acceptance for divorce seems just another choice in the shopping list of matrimony, we encounter not a vow of faithfulness but a vow of 'like.' What I mean by that is: in this day and age as we strive for the metaphorical 'thumbs up', marriage can seem like that. Conditionally speaking, we stay with our spouses as long as they please us (as long as they keep 'liking' what we do, or we 'like' what they do.) We post messages and videos of the perfect side of life, but when the other half does something that threatens our sense of individual choice and happiness, we react with almost an instantaneous de-friending.
We don't marry our friends but profiles on our own Facebook page.
So, we see that marriage is less about mating for life as it is enjoying the wedding. A pastor I used to work with said it like this: "I find it interesting the more I meet with couples that they spend so much time planning for the wedding that they forget about the marriage afterwards. I liken it to a couple preparing to go on a cruise around the world but they blow their entire financial resources on the going away party rather than the ports of call on the trip." The wedding day with all of its glamor and glitz, invitations and expectations, dances and speeches, overwhelms couples before the marriage and often handicaps the real questions that need to be asked before they say their "I wills."
I think I have incredible marriage quality; perhaps it stems from the fact that we met on a Christian ministry team which traveled for seventeen months before we decided to get married. Romance doesn't usually blossom in a minibus pulling a trailerful of musical equipment, but for some reason, it did for us.
Our anniversary was this last week - we have been married for eighteen years, but every year on August 15th (August 9th is our wedding anniversary) I celebrate the first day I met Christine. Some may find it sappy that I know this, but at the risk of grossing out both my in-laws and relatives, the first day I saw Christine was memorable.
Vikki, my sister, and I were traveling back from the annual trip from Canada where she was going to drop me off at the church where our training was to occur. Since I would be on the road for seventeen months, I had a few things packed, but as Vikki and I drove those endless miles from Thunder Bay to Minneapolis, talked about all sorts of things including my girlfriend at the time (who doubled as a friend of Vikki's also).
We pulled into the parking lot of the church and as Vikki turned the car key to cut the car's engine, a vision of loveliness walked by outside her car. Through the windshield I noticed this long-legged beauty in her short shorts, blue top and braided hair. My mouth must have been agape because Vikki looked over at me and said,
"Don't even think about it."
So I met Christine twenty years ago today. She was the first person I saw on our ministry band and the first (and only) person that filled the empty parking space reserved for 'spouse.'
Marriage quality is not just about sharing all the good things, but even more so all the troubles. What cements a marriage is not the vacations, but the daily grind which smoothes splintery roughness of life. The daily grind is where we spend most of our lives and yet far too often it is the daily grind which seems to be what couples attempt to avoid.
So, as I reflect on my own twenty years of seeing Christine in new and reflected lights, I ponder anew the goodness of God who first instituted the holy place of marriage. I continue to pray that this generation, and the next, find fulfillment of God's love in marriage.
Our contemporary western culture thrives on its ability to define our lives by the available options. Marriage is no different. We revel in the fact that we have twenty kinds of toothpaste from which to choose and even Australia is famous for the world's biggest selection of car models. As I walk down the grocery aisle, it is not lost on me that I can select from seven different types of toilet paper while thinking about which kind peanut butter will create the perfect PBNJ sandwich for me.
That kind of decision making process, so many choices coupled with our contemporary understanding of time paupery, leads to a diminished view, in my opinion, of what marriage actually is. Instead of a holy promise of life time commitment, perpetual forgiveness and a cohesion of faith, we find 21st century marriage titrated through the pipette of choice culture. Marriage has become disposable, like exchanging a Samsung for an iPhone. It just depends on what model trips your trigger.
In the animal kingdom, there are all sorts of fauna which mate for life. Gibbons (it's kind of like a monkey - I had to look at the picture), swans, black vultures, wolves and even albatrosses (I'm not sure how to pronounce that one) find the perfect mate and stay with them for life while raising a brood of infants (gibbons), cygnets, chicks, wolflets (I know, they are really cubs, but I like this better), and baby albatri. With the divorce rate escalating beyond fifty percent, we find that people are mating for all sorts of reasons other than life. Some marry for money, some marry for 'love,' some marry for the comfort and ease of continuing to share the same space in which they have been living. But the culture really doesn't marry until death parts us - only until choice separates us.
Looking at the statistics for divorce, it seems like our contemporary culture should be much more obsessed with marriage quality than marriage equality. Unfortunately, as the acceptance for divorce seems just another choice in the shopping list of matrimony, we encounter not a vow of faithfulness but a vow of 'like.' What I mean by that is: in this day and age as we strive for the metaphorical 'thumbs up', marriage can seem like that. Conditionally speaking, we stay with our spouses as long as they please us (as long as they keep 'liking' what we do, or we 'like' what they do.) We post messages and videos of the perfect side of life, but when the other half does something that threatens our sense of individual choice and happiness, we react with almost an instantaneous de-friending.
We don't marry our friends but profiles on our own Facebook page.
So, we see that marriage is less about mating for life as it is enjoying the wedding. A pastor I used to work with said it like this: "I find it interesting the more I meet with couples that they spend so much time planning for the wedding that they forget about the marriage afterwards. I liken it to a couple preparing to go on a cruise around the world but they blow their entire financial resources on the going away party rather than the ports of call on the trip." The wedding day with all of its glamor and glitz, invitations and expectations, dances and speeches, overwhelms couples before the marriage and often handicaps the real questions that need to be asked before they say their "I wills."
I think I have incredible marriage quality; perhaps it stems from the fact that we met on a Christian ministry team which traveled for seventeen months before we decided to get married. Romance doesn't usually blossom in a minibus pulling a trailerful of musical equipment, but for some reason, it did for us.
Our anniversary was this last week - we have been married for eighteen years, but every year on August 15th (August 9th is our wedding anniversary) I celebrate the first day I met Christine. Some may find it sappy that I know this, but at the risk of grossing out both my in-laws and relatives, the first day I saw Christine was memorable.
Vikki, my sister, and I were traveling back from the annual trip from Canada where she was going to drop me off at the church where our training was to occur. Since I would be on the road for seventeen months, I had a few things packed, but as Vikki and I drove those endless miles from Thunder Bay to Minneapolis, talked about all sorts of things including my girlfriend at the time (who doubled as a friend of Vikki's also).
We pulled into the parking lot of the church and as Vikki turned the car key to cut the car's engine, a vision of loveliness walked by outside her car. Through the windshield I noticed this long-legged beauty in her short shorts, blue top and braided hair. My mouth must have been agape because Vikki looked over at me and said,
"Don't even think about it."
So I met Christine twenty years ago today. She was the first person I saw on our ministry band and the first (and only) person that filled the empty parking space reserved for 'spouse.'
Marriage quality is not just about sharing all the good things, but even more so all the troubles. What cements a marriage is not the vacations, but the daily grind which smoothes splintery roughness of life. The daily grind is where we spend most of our lives and yet far too often it is the daily grind which seems to be what couples attempt to avoid.
So, as I reflect on my own twenty years of seeing Christine in new and reflected lights, I ponder anew the goodness of God who first instituted the holy place of marriage. I continue to pray that this generation, and the next, find fulfillment of God's love in marriage.
Wednesday, July 22, 2015
Running from Shadows
One of the teachers at school approached me at the end of the day. We sat at a picnic table, backs to the bench, overlooking the rugby field at school. The warmth of the sun was still being soaked up by the northern hemisphere and we sat side by side allowing the cold of the aluminum seat to leech through our clothes to absorb what warmth we might have generated throughout the day. I sat with arms crossed, chin pushed into my scarf-filled collar breathing warmth into my neck while Kevin gave a running description of what was occurring during the game. Rugby can be fascinating, but it was difficult to concentrate that day.
After a few moments of undisguised discomfort, Kevin turned to me. He pointed to one of our school rugby players and said, "I've got some really talented nephews who are like those boys."
"Yes?" my muffled voice was filtered through the purple scarf.
He nodded his head enthusiastically. "They're quick. Really quick. Because of their speed, they are being recruited by professional teams already."
"Fantastic," I replied still lost in the wool.
"I've got a funny story about the youngest one. He was playing a game a few weeks ago, one of the first in which he was being scouted, and he stole the ball from the opposing team and started to run towards his goal."
"Mmmm hmmm." I turned towards him noticing his passion for the game and his smile which beamed in spite of the chill.
"I've already mentioned how fast he is, so as he is running, he is outdistancing the other team by a wide margin. He could have stopped thirty meters short of the goal and walked in for a try, but he continued to sprint right up until the goal line where he flopped between the goalposts."
"Isn't that what you are supposed to do?" I asked.
"Sure, but when you are that fast and that far ahead, you can probably slow down a little bit."
"Okay."
"That's not the funny part. After the game I asked him why he kept running so hard to the goal and he said, 'As I was running, I kept hearing the noise of pursuit and I turned a little bit and I saw that there was someone behind me, but it wasn't till I had actually scored the try when I realized that the pursuit was so far behind me and...'"
"And," I said, knowing that he was drawing this out for dramatic effect.
"And... I realized that I was trying to outrun my shadow." Kevin slapped my shoulder and laughed. "He hadn't played under the lights before and as the light was in front of him, he looked back and the flash of his own shadow urged him forward."
Good story.
Perhaps we all do that. As Christians, striving to keep our eyes set and firmly fixed on the Light of the World, we glance back sometimes and recognize the shadow that we are casting. It's easy to let that darkness motivate us; it's a frightening thing what shadows can do. We can make them out into all sorts of boogey men; we can see in them many things that aren't there, but in essence, they are just an outline of who we are in deference to who the Light is.
Knowing there is a perpetual shadow can be a scary thing.
In class the other day, we were discussing social justice versus selfish justice and as we walked the well-trodden road of poverty, I brought up that a 'gentleman' once told me that 'poverty occurs in countries where they breed like rabbits. It's not our job to help them. They need some kind of control - birth control, or get them jobs so they stop breeding all the time.' This is a paraphrase of the colorful language this man used, but my jaw dropped nonetheless. So I mentioned this comment in my Religion and Ethics class and asked them how they would respond.
After a long pause, one student responded, "I guess everyone is entitled to their own opinion."
There, my friends, is the shadow of the contemporary western world. The light that shines on our faces outlines the darkness that is silhouetted in our hearts. Our utter addiction to the justification of selfishness with regards to 'freedom of speech.' Entitlement to our own words, no matter how hurtful; The 'right' to offend as some kind of guarantee for pseudo-progressive society. Everyone's opinion is equally valid even if offensive beyond measure because the greatest sin of a contemporary society seems to be censorship.
In fact, if we dig a little deeper into the shadow that races after us, we find that the word 'sin' is meaningless. Forget, for a moment, the foray into the politics of contemporary issues of marriage, the willful sins of pride, envy, sloth, greed (you know what I'm talking about) are not vices but socially glorified acceptable behaviors.
The dark, shadowed fruits of the human spirit. Opposite of peace, patience, kindness, (you know what I'm talking about) self-control, and we no longer run from them but we embrace them and say, "I'm working on them. I'm visiting my counselor and she is giving me a strategy to live with those 'issues.'" Talking through them with a counselor is a great idea, helpful, for sure, but the great tragedy of our time is that the scriptures actually speak about the cure for this Balrog that we keep summoning from the pit. In the book of Mark, they are Jesus' first words:
'The time has come,' he said, 'The kingdom of God has come near. Repent and believe the good news.' (Mark 1:15)
Jesus first words to the shadowed world are an explosion of light into the darkness. The kingdom has approached - it's a moving thing! It's not a static, far away land that is only the stuff of imagination and DreamWorks, it is hear right now in front of you and it moves and breathes and you can catch it if you stop turning back to look at your shadow! Repent! Recognize that the reason and purpose for your shadow is you (plural). Y'all, in Southern speak.
The entire existence of a shadow is dependent upon the light and we who get in the way of the light. Turn around, Jesus says.
And believe.
So our addiction to free speech, and free will, and freedom to selfishness has come with a dark shadow. Instead of standing up for those who are disadvantaged, we say, "Their opinion is valid because it is their own," and we leave the marginalized in the lurch gazing after our shadow as we run past. We, as a community of believers who stand strong in the promise of the Word, God's light into a darkened world, are called to repent, believe and then to act - act in a way that is cognizant of the fact that when we are baptized into Christ's death we are also baptized into his resurrection and then it is no longer we who live, but Christ who lives in us...
And the shadow disappears.
Surely, it is not that easy. We make multiple mistakes along the way and our 'freedoms' - which in reality can become chains - become idols which need to be torn down at various times. But the more I read Jesus words, I am convinced the more often I turn back to him, I will see the kingdom at hand.
After a few moments of undisguised discomfort, Kevin turned to me. He pointed to one of our school rugby players and said, "I've got some really talented nephews who are like those boys."
"Yes?" my muffled voice was filtered through the purple scarf.
He nodded his head enthusiastically. "They're quick. Really quick. Because of their speed, they are being recruited by professional teams already."
"Fantastic," I replied still lost in the wool.
"I've got a funny story about the youngest one. He was playing a game a few weeks ago, one of the first in which he was being scouted, and he stole the ball from the opposing team and started to run towards his goal."
"Mmmm hmmm." I turned towards him noticing his passion for the game and his smile which beamed in spite of the chill.
"I've already mentioned how fast he is, so as he is running, he is outdistancing the other team by a wide margin. He could have stopped thirty meters short of the goal and walked in for a try, but he continued to sprint right up until the goal line where he flopped between the goalposts."
"Isn't that what you are supposed to do?" I asked.
"Sure, but when you are that fast and that far ahead, you can probably slow down a little bit."
"Okay."
"That's not the funny part. After the game I asked him why he kept running so hard to the goal and he said, 'As I was running, I kept hearing the noise of pursuit and I turned a little bit and I saw that there was someone behind me, but it wasn't till I had actually scored the try when I realized that the pursuit was so far behind me and...'"
"And," I said, knowing that he was drawing this out for dramatic effect.
"And... I realized that I was trying to outrun my shadow." Kevin slapped my shoulder and laughed. "He hadn't played under the lights before and as the light was in front of him, he looked back and the flash of his own shadow urged him forward."
Good story.
Perhaps we all do that. As Christians, striving to keep our eyes set and firmly fixed on the Light of the World, we glance back sometimes and recognize the shadow that we are casting. It's easy to let that darkness motivate us; it's a frightening thing what shadows can do. We can make them out into all sorts of boogey men; we can see in them many things that aren't there, but in essence, they are just an outline of who we are in deference to who the Light is.
Knowing there is a perpetual shadow can be a scary thing.
In class the other day, we were discussing social justice versus selfish justice and as we walked the well-trodden road of poverty, I brought up that a 'gentleman' once told me that 'poverty occurs in countries where they breed like rabbits. It's not our job to help them. They need some kind of control - birth control, or get them jobs so they stop breeding all the time.' This is a paraphrase of the colorful language this man used, but my jaw dropped nonetheless. So I mentioned this comment in my Religion and Ethics class and asked them how they would respond.
After a long pause, one student responded, "I guess everyone is entitled to their own opinion."
There, my friends, is the shadow of the contemporary western world. The light that shines on our faces outlines the darkness that is silhouetted in our hearts. Our utter addiction to the justification of selfishness with regards to 'freedom of speech.' Entitlement to our own words, no matter how hurtful; The 'right' to offend as some kind of guarantee for pseudo-progressive society. Everyone's opinion is equally valid even if offensive beyond measure because the greatest sin of a contemporary society seems to be censorship.
In fact, if we dig a little deeper into the shadow that races after us, we find that the word 'sin' is meaningless. Forget, for a moment, the foray into the politics of contemporary issues of marriage, the willful sins of pride, envy, sloth, greed (you know what I'm talking about) are not vices but socially glorified acceptable behaviors.
The dark, shadowed fruits of the human spirit. Opposite of peace, patience, kindness, (you know what I'm talking about) self-control, and we no longer run from them but we embrace them and say, "I'm working on them. I'm visiting my counselor and she is giving me a strategy to live with those 'issues.'" Talking through them with a counselor is a great idea, helpful, for sure, but the great tragedy of our time is that the scriptures actually speak about the cure for this Balrog that we keep summoning from the pit. In the book of Mark, they are Jesus' first words:
'The time has come,' he said, 'The kingdom of God has come near. Repent and believe the good news.' (Mark 1:15)
Jesus first words to the shadowed world are an explosion of light into the darkness. The kingdom has approached - it's a moving thing! It's not a static, far away land that is only the stuff of imagination and DreamWorks, it is hear right now in front of you and it moves and breathes and you can catch it if you stop turning back to look at your shadow! Repent! Recognize that the reason and purpose for your shadow is you (plural). Y'all, in Southern speak.
The entire existence of a shadow is dependent upon the light and we who get in the way of the light. Turn around, Jesus says.
And believe.
So our addiction to free speech, and free will, and freedom to selfishness has come with a dark shadow. Instead of standing up for those who are disadvantaged, we say, "Their opinion is valid because it is their own," and we leave the marginalized in the lurch gazing after our shadow as we run past. We, as a community of believers who stand strong in the promise of the Word, God's light into a darkened world, are called to repent, believe and then to act - act in a way that is cognizant of the fact that when we are baptized into Christ's death we are also baptized into his resurrection and then it is no longer we who live, but Christ who lives in us...
And the shadow disappears.
Surely, it is not that easy. We make multiple mistakes along the way and our 'freedoms' - which in reality can become chains - become idols which need to be torn down at various times. But the more I read Jesus words, I am convinced the more often I turn back to him, I will see the kingdom at hand.
Friday, July 3, 2015
True Colors
Last week I went to a football game with Greta and my father-in-law, Robert. In Australia, there are four different kinds of football and each of them is shortened to 'footy.' Only two of them use their feet extensively: soccer and Australian Rules Football (AFL) where as the two types of rugby, league and union, or under the same misnomer as American gridiron which the foot is mostly used for locomotion.
I enjoy the AFL; some who are die-hard rugby fans (of one or the other kinds - it's difficult to find someone who professes love for both, kind of like the mythological creature the Yankees/Mets fan), call the AFL 'aerial pinball' with the activity looking like men bouncing around in the air being thrust by the flippers of a pinball machine. AFL players have to be some of the most athletic, agile and fit professionals in the world of sports. On average they sprint over ten miles per game and can contort their bodies to catch a football ten feet in the air, while at the same time absorb full contact tackling without pads.
It's insane, but it takes your breath away when it is done well.
We went to see the Brisbane Lions play the Adelaide Crows. I may have written this before, but choice of mascots sometimes makes me laugh. Unless my assumptions are incorrect, a mascot should be bold and tough; a character one might be afraid of in real life. Here are some of the team mascots that I'm sure instill fear in all who hear them:
Yankees.
Dodgers.
Cardinals
Metropolitans (I hate to say it, but what kind of mascot is that?)
Nationals
Marlins:
And some from here in Australia
Crows
Magpies
Kangaroos
Blues
Dockers
Swans (I'm quaking with fear! The Swans are coming!)
Intimidation factor- negative
But as with each team, the collective fan base has colors associated with it. The followers are identified by the colors they wear and their support is outwardly obvious - any other fan can sidle close if they are in need of commiseration or community.
Even though we live near Brisbane, the Lions are not my team, but Greta is interested in the game and I like live events, so Robert gave me one of his season passes and Christine dropped us off at the game. Like all sporting events, there is a buzz - a low level hum that surrounds the stadium. The smells of deep fat fried things, beer, cigarette smoke and body odor hung like a fog around the exits of the stadium. Robert arrived via the train and as we approached our own entrance, number five, Robert bought a program for the week's game against the mighty Adelaide Crows. Robert was dressed in blue jeans and a scarf - he wore a shirt too, but scarves are, for AFL fans, the real source of identifiable pride in a team. The Lions' colors are maroon and gold, while those from Adelaide are strangely not black, but navy blue, red and yellow. The two sides are close enough in hue that it is disconcertingly difficult to see which person is on your 'team' unless you get quite close.
But that's the thing about sporting your team's colors: once you get close to someone, it is a logical next step to see the other color as the opponent (I'm talking about the fans here). Once one recognizes the true colors of the other, one can make all sorts of non-reality inferences about them - in order to support the team, we good-naturedly rib the opposing side, or in some circumstances avoid them all together. But the more I thought about the Brisbane/Adelaide match, I realized that even though I am not a fan of either, I found myself inching away from Crows fans because I was in the pride of Lions fans. It wasn't until after the match, while standing with the milling crowd at the bus stop, that it hit home.
Directly in front of us were two Crows fanatics sporting the red, yellow and navy blue scarves. The woman nodded at me first - she was in her early fifties (my best guess), with red lipstick and dangly gold loops hanging from her ears. Her partner was standing close to her, in protection mode, I would guess, and Lions' fans had drawn back a little bit. She looked a little worried and when she saw that I was wearing no team color, she approached and asked a question about city bus schedules. I helped her as much as I could, but as we carried on a brief conversation, I got to know a little bit about them, why they were in Brisbane, what they were doing next, why her oldest son was struggling, (once a pastor always a pastor). Then, the buses came and we were whisked away to our destinations.
But both teams colors stuck with me all of this week.
They both looked like rainbows.
It's been a week of rainbows. After the American Supreme Court's decision, at last count twenty-six million people flocked to their Facebook pages to change their profile pictures. Seven colored stripes overlapped faces and pets and whatever else is used as a profile picture identifying them as a person who supports the decision.
Two things struck me when I first saw the rainbows popping up on FB profiles:
1. Identification with colors is a good thing. It offers invaluable and invariable support to those who are looking for commiseration or community. Just like in the football game, the Crows' supporters, small in number, huddled (or should I say flocked?) together behind the poles at the north end of the field. Together they vociferously cheered their team to victory. Identification with color plays itself out every where whether national (flags - I was raised the red, white and blue "these colors don't run."), institutional (corporate logos are full of symbolism and meaning including the colors) family (think of the Scottish tartans) and even personal (tattoos and even melanin). We find comfort in those that sport the same colors.
2. I felt uncomfortable, though, with the rainbow profile transformations on Facebook - not that people stating their opinion through symbolistic colorful metamorphosis, but when one displays their colors, it seems like it immediately creates a sense of antagonism against those who aren't showing the same 'team' colors. As more and more of my FB friends' profiles turned seven hued, I thought to myself, "Does this mean that I am now seen as an enemy? Does this mean that we aren't able to communicate in the same way? Am I now judged because I haven't changed my FB profile?"
As I viewed some of the conversations occurring regarding the Supreme Court's decision, I was dismayed to see terms like 'bigot,' 'homophobe,' 'intolerant,' 'damned,' 'non-Christian,' come flowing from discussions and genuine friendships were strained by on-line discussions. Some of those who profess to be Christian were offering invectives to others making it difficult to hear Jesus' words to love your neighbor as yourself. (even your 'enemy' if you hear the others' colors loud enough.)
Is Facebook the best place to stage active, engaged dialogue on a topic that affects so many people? Does social media encourage the 'drawing of battle lines' where contemporary ethical blitzkrieg is the soup d' jour? Does changing our profile colors do anything? I'm not talking just about rainbows, but I saw a few 'anti-rainbow' people change their pictures to some other color. How can we engage in the lives of all people who look the same and feel the same if we are establishing them and us by our outward appearance? I'd love to dialogue with so many people about marriage but social media isn't the best place for me. I hope that I'm standing in the queue of a bus line with a whole group of people that isn't wearing any other color than the one God gave them and the one God can see.
Much more to write about this. I'll have to wait for tomorrow.
Let me know what you think.
I enjoy the AFL; some who are die-hard rugby fans (of one or the other kinds - it's difficult to find someone who professes love for both, kind of like the mythological creature the Yankees/Mets fan), call the AFL 'aerial pinball' with the activity looking like men bouncing around in the air being thrust by the flippers of a pinball machine. AFL players have to be some of the most athletic, agile and fit professionals in the world of sports. On average they sprint over ten miles per game and can contort their bodies to catch a football ten feet in the air, while at the same time absorb full contact tackling without pads.
It's insane, but it takes your breath away when it is done well.
We went to see the Brisbane Lions play the Adelaide Crows. I may have written this before, but choice of mascots sometimes makes me laugh. Unless my assumptions are incorrect, a mascot should be bold and tough; a character one might be afraid of in real life. Here are some of the team mascots that I'm sure instill fear in all who hear them:
Yankees.
Dodgers.
Cardinals
Metropolitans (I hate to say it, but what kind of mascot is that?)
Nationals
Marlins:
And some from here in Australia
Crows
Magpies
Kangaroos
Blues
Dockers
Swans (I'm quaking with fear! The Swans are coming!)
Intimidation factor- negative
But as with each team, the collective fan base has colors associated with it. The followers are identified by the colors they wear and their support is outwardly obvious - any other fan can sidle close if they are in need of commiseration or community.
Even though we live near Brisbane, the Lions are not my team, but Greta is interested in the game and I like live events, so Robert gave me one of his season passes and Christine dropped us off at the game. Like all sporting events, there is a buzz - a low level hum that surrounds the stadium. The smells of deep fat fried things, beer, cigarette smoke and body odor hung like a fog around the exits of the stadium. Robert arrived via the train and as we approached our own entrance, number five, Robert bought a program for the week's game against the mighty Adelaide Crows. Robert was dressed in blue jeans and a scarf - he wore a shirt too, but scarves are, for AFL fans, the real source of identifiable pride in a team. The Lions' colors are maroon and gold, while those from Adelaide are strangely not black, but navy blue, red and yellow. The two sides are close enough in hue that it is disconcertingly difficult to see which person is on your 'team' unless you get quite close.
But that's the thing about sporting your team's colors: once you get close to someone, it is a logical next step to see the other color as the opponent (I'm talking about the fans here). Once one recognizes the true colors of the other, one can make all sorts of non-reality inferences about them - in order to support the team, we good-naturedly rib the opposing side, or in some circumstances avoid them all together. But the more I thought about the Brisbane/Adelaide match, I realized that even though I am not a fan of either, I found myself inching away from Crows fans because I was in the pride of Lions fans. It wasn't until after the match, while standing with the milling crowd at the bus stop, that it hit home.
Directly in front of us were two Crows fanatics sporting the red, yellow and navy blue scarves. The woman nodded at me first - she was in her early fifties (my best guess), with red lipstick and dangly gold loops hanging from her ears. Her partner was standing close to her, in protection mode, I would guess, and Lions' fans had drawn back a little bit. She looked a little worried and when she saw that I was wearing no team color, she approached and asked a question about city bus schedules. I helped her as much as I could, but as we carried on a brief conversation, I got to know a little bit about them, why they were in Brisbane, what they were doing next, why her oldest son was struggling, (once a pastor always a pastor). Then, the buses came and we were whisked away to our destinations.
But both teams colors stuck with me all of this week.
They both looked like rainbows.
It's been a week of rainbows. After the American Supreme Court's decision, at last count twenty-six million people flocked to their Facebook pages to change their profile pictures. Seven colored stripes overlapped faces and pets and whatever else is used as a profile picture identifying them as a person who supports the decision.
Two things struck me when I first saw the rainbows popping up on FB profiles:
1. Identification with colors is a good thing. It offers invaluable and invariable support to those who are looking for commiseration or community. Just like in the football game, the Crows' supporters, small in number, huddled (or should I say flocked?) together behind the poles at the north end of the field. Together they vociferously cheered their team to victory. Identification with color plays itself out every where whether national (flags - I was raised the red, white and blue "these colors don't run."), institutional (corporate logos are full of symbolism and meaning including the colors) family (think of the Scottish tartans) and even personal (tattoos and even melanin). We find comfort in those that sport the same colors.
2. I felt uncomfortable, though, with the rainbow profile transformations on Facebook - not that people stating their opinion through symbolistic colorful metamorphosis, but when one displays their colors, it seems like it immediately creates a sense of antagonism against those who aren't showing the same 'team' colors. As more and more of my FB friends' profiles turned seven hued, I thought to myself, "Does this mean that I am now seen as an enemy? Does this mean that we aren't able to communicate in the same way? Am I now judged because I haven't changed my FB profile?"
As I viewed some of the conversations occurring regarding the Supreme Court's decision, I was dismayed to see terms like 'bigot,' 'homophobe,' 'intolerant,' 'damned,' 'non-Christian,' come flowing from discussions and genuine friendships were strained by on-line discussions. Some of those who profess to be Christian were offering invectives to others making it difficult to hear Jesus' words to love your neighbor as yourself. (even your 'enemy' if you hear the others' colors loud enough.)
Is Facebook the best place to stage active, engaged dialogue on a topic that affects so many people? Does social media encourage the 'drawing of battle lines' where contemporary ethical blitzkrieg is the soup d' jour? Does changing our profile colors do anything? I'm not talking just about rainbows, but I saw a few 'anti-rainbow' people change their pictures to some other color. How can we engage in the lives of all people who look the same and feel the same if we are establishing them and us by our outward appearance? I'd love to dialogue with so many people about marriage but social media isn't the best place for me. I hope that I'm standing in the queue of a bus line with a whole group of people that isn't wearing any other color than the one God gave them and the one God can see.
Much more to write about this. I'll have to wait for tomorrow.
Let me know what you think.
Tuesday, May 19, 2015
Molting
It doesn't seem that long ago, but it was. It's been almost a quarter century since we moved out of home to attend college. Twenty-five years since I lived on the acreage with my parents, attending high school and...
Doing chicken chores.
There were many mornings throughout my career as a stay at home child where I would have given anything not to feed the three hundred fowl that greedily waited one of us to feed them in the morning and night. The worst time was during the winter when the water bowls would freeze solid and we'd make our way first to the basement to fill five gallon buckets with boiling water to melt the ice in the water pans. As we carried these heavy buckets up a flight of stairs, we had to pry open the basement door and let the Old Man Winter's blast hit us in the face. Maybe my recollections of life are slightly skewed now, but I don't ever remember having gloves and certainly there was never a scarf. If it got that cold, we'd wrap a dish towel around our face and hurry out into the arctic chill. Looking back, chicken chores doesn't seem so bad; but in the full biting fury of Jack Frost's breath, certainly I must have been miserable.
During the summer, though, chicken chores weren't so bad. In fact, there were moments when the poultry seemed affable, friendly to us even if they mercilessly pecked our hands as we pushed them up in their roosts to thieve their eggs. Strangely, I can still recall the disgusting feeling of walking barefoot across the yard and stepping in the chickens' previous dinner and sensing the odd moment when it squished through my toes.
Anyway, summer was different.
One afternoon I walked into the old, rickety chicken house which leaned perceptibly to the north. The pen outside was full of chickens, geese, ducks and a few stupid turkeys all picking up bits of scraps or wayward bugs to grind in their gizzards, but inside the chicken house, a few hens loitered chatting noisily in their coop or near the feed trough. Against the sloping north wall, a chicken, or at least it had a chicken's head, sat miserably by an old wooden door. The chicken had only splotches of feathers on its body; its wings sprouted a few pin feathers and quills.
"Dad," I said pulling on his sleeve. "What's wrong with that chicken? Is it dying?"
My dad noticed the poor chicken abandoned by her more beautiful, full feathered friends. "Nope, she's molting."
"What does that mean?" I had visions of the Wicked Witch of the West writhing under a bucketful of water shouting, "I'm molting! I'm molting!"
Dad busied himself with filling the feed bucket from the converted cattle trough and unloading the contents in the feed pans. "Chickens molt when they need a new set of feathers. Kind of like you and I when we shed skin."
With horror, I looked down at my hand. "You mean I'm going to lose my skin!"
He shook his head. "No, you're not going to lose your skin. The chickens shed their feathers, especially during the summer while it's hot and they can survive the heat, so that they have a fresh set for the coming winter. It actually makes them stronger."
Now I shook my head. "It might make them stronger, but they sure are uglier. Are you sure they aren't going to die?"
"Guaranteed."
As I pondered this episode in my life, I reflected on how much it feels like the Church is molting right now. In the midst of attacks from both believer and non-believer alike, whether sex abuse scandals, financial indiscretions or good old fashioned atheism, the church is shedding its skin. What I mean by that is: the church is beginning to shed the image that it is just a social club looking out for its own due paying members. It is starting to molt, to shed the old feathers that seemed only for the present inability to fly, so that it can grow new feathers reminding itself that the true purpose of Christianity is not simply to speak, but also to act.
The scripture verse from Novo is especially pertinent to the molting church: Philippians 2:13 for it is God who works in you to will and to act in order to fulfill his good purpose. For during this molt, it is a church turning back to God who is doing the work in us - In us! - so that we both will to fulfill his purpose but also be active in fulfilling it.
Perhaps we've all seen a willing Christian, one who feels strongly about God's purpose in his or her life, willing to speak and tell others about who God is, but unwilling to act as if they really believe it. This is the epitome of lukewarm Christianity. And other times, we've seen Christians who are able to act, to volunteer and donate time in the cause of ministry, but were actually unwilling to do it for God's sake, only because they felt responsible to do it. Once the action was done, they grumbled about all that they had to do. Neither one of these Christian experiences is part of the Church molt.
But when we truly find a changed life, one that Paul writes about in 2 Corinthians 5:17 If anyone is in Christ, they are a new creation. We find that will and action become almost synonymous in the new creation. The molting has shed any lukewarm-ness and grumbling.
At Novo, I experienced some of the most amazing young people I have ever encountered, fully molted teenagers and young adults, who are on the verge of growing adult feathers. And these young people are not chickens - they are like eaglets preparing to fly, to soar well beyond the boundaries of their imaginations. Young people were praying and singing, starting conversations about the Bible and finishing with in depth questions about what they had been reading. They were not worried about how their questions might fit into a traditional model of congregational life, only that the questions would actually be the wind that would allow them to fly.
Molting can be an ugly process and God knows the Church has needed to molt and it has been ugly at times, but as I scan the horizon of the future of Christianity, I am actually encouraged. This is no ostrich in the sand moment, but an actual vision for how these young people are taking the name of God to the streets and helping real life people - not theoretical models of what a perfect 'Christian' seeker might be - to hear the name of Jesus and bend their knees. Not just in reverence, but also in prayer.
I am encouraged by this molt.
Doing chicken chores.
There were many mornings throughout my career as a stay at home child where I would have given anything not to feed the three hundred fowl that greedily waited one of us to feed them in the morning and night. The worst time was during the winter when the water bowls would freeze solid and we'd make our way first to the basement to fill five gallon buckets with boiling water to melt the ice in the water pans. As we carried these heavy buckets up a flight of stairs, we had to pry open the basement door and let the Old Man Winter's blast hit us in the face. Maybe my recollections of life are slightly skewed now, but I don't ever remember having gloves and certainly there was never a scarf. If it got that cold, we'd wrap a dish towel around our face and hurry out into the arctic chill. Looking back, chicken chores doesn't seem so bad; but in the full biting fury of Jack Frost's breath, certainly I must have been miserable.
During the summer, though, chicken chores weren't so bad. In fact, there were moments when the poultry seemed affable, friendly to us even if they mercilessly pecked our hands as we pushed them up in their roosts to thieve their eggs. Strangely, I can still recall the disgusting feeling of walking barefoot across the yard and stepping in the chickens' previous dinner and sensing the odd moment when it squished through my toes.
Anyway, summer was different.
One afternoon I walked into the old, rickety chicken house which leaned perceptibly to the north. The pen outside was full of chickens, geese, ducks and a few stupid turkeys all picking up bits of scraps or wayward bugs to grind in their gizzards, but inside the chicken house, a few hens loitered chatting noisily in their coop or near the feed trough. Against the sloping north wall, a chicken, or at least it had a chicken's head, sat miserably by an old wooden door. The chicken had only splotches of feathers on its body; its wings sprouted a few pin feathers and quills.
"Dad," I said pulling on his sleeve. "What's wrong with that chicken? Is it dying?"
My dad noticed the poor chicken abandoned by her more beautiful, full feathered friends. "Nope, she's molting."
"What does that mean?" I had visions of the Wicked Witch of the West writhing under a bucketful of water shouting, "I'm molting! I'm molting!"
Dad busied himself with filling the feed bucket from the converted cattle trough and unloading the contents in the feed pans. "Chickens molt when they need a new set of feathers. Kind of like you and I when we shed skin."
With horror, I looked down at my hand. "You mean I'm going to lose my skin!"
He shook his head. "No, you're not going to lose your skin. The chickens shed their feathers, especially during the summer while it's hot and they can survive the heat, so that they have a fresh set for the coming winter. It actually makes them stronger."
Now I shook my head. "It might make them stronger, but they sure are uglier. Are you sure they aren't going to die?"
"Guaranteed."
As I pondered this episode in my life, I reflected on how much it feels like the Church is molting right now. In the midst of attacks from both believer and non-believer alike, whether sex abuse scandals, financial indiscretions or good old fashioned atheism, the church is shedding its skin. What I mean by that is: the church is beginning to shed the image that it is just a social club looking out for its own due paying members. It is starting to molt, to shed the old feathers that seemed only for the present inability to fly, so that it can grow new feathers reminding itself that the true purpose of Christianity is not simply to speak, but also to act.
The scripture verse from Novo is especially pertinent to the molting church: Philippians 2:13 for it is God who works in you to will and to act in order to fulfill his good purpose. For during this molt, it is a church turning back to God who is doing the work in us - In us! - so that we both will to fulfill his purpose but also be active in fulfilling it.
Perhaps we've all seen a willing Christian, one who feels strongly about God's purpose in his or her life, willing to speak and tell others about who God is, but unwilling to act as if they really believe it. This is the epitome of lukewarm Christianity. And other times, we've seen Christians who are able to act, to volunteer and donate time in the cause of ministry, but were actually unwilling to do it for God's sake, only because they felt responsible to do it. Once the action was done, they grumbled about all that they had to do. Neither one of these Christian experiences is part of the Church molt.
But when we truly find a changed life, one that Paul writes about in 2 Corinthians 5:17 If anyone is in Christ, they are a new creation. We find that will and action become almost synonymous in the new creation. The molting has shed any lukewarm-ness and grumbling.
At Novo, I experienced some of the most amazing young people I have ever encountered, fully molted teenagers and young adults, who are on the verge of growing adult feathers. And these young people are not chickens - they are like eaglets preparing to fly, to soar well beyond the boundaries of their imaginations. Young people were praying and singing, starting conversations about the Bible and finishing with in depth questions about what they had been reading. They were not worried about how their questions might fit into a traditional model of congregational life, only that the questions would actually be the wind that would allow them to fly.
Molting can be an ugly process and God knows the Church has needed to molt and it has been ugly at times, but as I scan the horizon of the future of Christianity, I am actually encouraged. This is no ostrich in the sand moment, but an actual vision for how these young people are taking the name of God to the streets and helping real life people - not theoretical models of what a perfect 'Christian' seeker might be - to hear the name of Jesus and bend their knees. Not just in reverence, but also in prayer.
I am encouraged by this molt.
Thursday, May 14, 2015
The Table
This afternoon, I walked across the school campus, from D block which houses the year seven students, to the Information Hub. They used to call these places 'libraries,' but the word 'library' brings to mind books, and cobwebs and fine smelling, inked pages; but the contemporary Information Hub, nee library, has relatively few books and the shelves that hold them are easily movable. Often, when events are held at the school, they are shuffled out of the way on mobile carts into a back room leaving only computers lining the walls. Information seems to be divorced from books now because it takes too long to find the context of the book - why would I actually read preceding chapters when I can just 'google' the phrase? Books are antiques, right?
I struggle with 'Information Hub' even though it is an appropriately good name for the building. I sometimes long for the days when we could walk into a public library, sit in silence and open a wonderfully old, odoriferous book which smells of past knowledge.
Ah, melancholic nostalgia... Can you smell it?
I entered through the automatic doors which swished open and I was greeted with the sounds of kids playing chess; a gaggle of girls were printing off reports on the communal Xerox machine in the back; a group of boys was huddled around a computer staring at a screen, giggling and pointing at what was probably the ninety-seventh consecutive youtube video that they had loaded. The search probably started with something relatively academic - medieval trebuchets and devolved into Monster Trucks on Outback Roads - ten best fails.
Either way, I was not particularly keen to interrupt any of the groups; I was simply looking for a student I hadn't seen in a while. After scanning the main library, I went back to the study room where four students were postured in various states of idleness. It was the last period of the day and I'm sure that they had already packed their brains in for the afternoon, which, as I find more often than not, gives me a great opportunity to pick the brains of young people.
As what often occurs, the kids small talk until someone looks at someone else and the real question of the day arises. Today it was: Can a person be 'unbaptized?' It took me by surprise as more often than not, they ask the question of relevance of baptism in contemporary secular culture, but the six who were there were like a spectrum of spirituality: One twelfth grade girl wanted to be unbaptized because she 'didn't believe in any of that stuff because there is too much bad in the world for there to be a God.'
I smiled and scratched my head. "When you were baptized?"
"When I was little," she said, pulling her own chair over to the table where I sat now. "I wish my parents would have let me choose."
I leaned forward placing the weight of my body on my arms. "So, can you wash the water off? Does it work that way?"
She laughed which allowed another year twelve student to turn his chair around from his table and add his elbows to ours.
"I'm not really into religion that much either," he said holding up his hands as if surrendering, perhaps thinking that I was going to shoot him with my holy guns, "but I've got nothing against people that believe stuff. Good for them." He spoke as if faith was equated with an addled mind.
Another girl piped up. "I never believed in God until I felt Jesus one night." This surprised me a little bit because this young woman is relatively ambivalent about most things spiritual in religion and ethics class. She must have seen my raised eyebrows. "No, really, one night I was sitting at home, I was watching TV and then I felt Jesus. A real sense of happiness."
"What were you watching?" her classmate at the end of the table asked.
"I don't remember, but I know Jesus was there." Interesting, I thought. It seems like there is not so much spiritual ambivalence in our world as much as there is spiritual lethargy - a laziness that needs to be awakened.
"So," I asked the three now sharing my table, "What are you afraid of?" This is a question I ask almost everyone hoping that they will dive into something deeper. These students had just given me an opportunity, an opening, with which to insert a question that could perhaps take them to another level. What I'm noticing most about people, young and old, is that those that claim spiritual ambivalence are the ones that are most allergic to spiritual change. In other words, they don't want anything to do with God, because the odds are, an awakening in the spirit will lead to an alteration in life.
A sound from the corner - a new voice drawing closer to the table of four. "I'm afraid of spiders." This young man was not usually interested in joining in conversations, but he was willing to pull us up from the inevitable depths that most students, at times, want to swim in. "Big ones. I saw a youtube video the other day of a great big spider that got swept up and when it popped, all these baby spiders exploded from the eggs. It was so cool."
The rest of my spiritual Breakfast Club table nodded in approval. Talking about God requires taking a breath. It's a practice that we are not used to. The other boy chimed in. "I'm not afraid of much - a snake or two, maybe failure..." He trailed off. Good. Submerging again.
Now there were five of us at the table, leaning intently into a discussion that probably never should have taken place, but inadvertently we had stumbled over some of the deep questions of life. Now, the young lady who had started it all off smiled over her chin in bridged hands. "I'm not afraid of anything, really - not even of dying." In my mind, I had already started the words Gotcha. Those who claim no fear are usually the ones who want to talk about it most. I was excited until the other young lady began to lead us through her Christian understanding of reincarnation.
Yeah, it was different. "See, I think when you die, you immediately are transferred to the belly of some pregnant lady, or someone about to be impregnated." We didn't follow that line of discourse to its logical conclusion because the girl at the opposite end of the table was ready with her end of life understanding.
"There's nothing. You live and you die. I want to be cremated and have my ashes dropped from a plane. That way I could finally have the feeling of free fall."
"You mean," I started quickly before anyone else could begin to talk about the birds eating your ashes, or they would be swept up into the clouds where you would reside until the rain dropped you on some foreign soil, "that after you die, you'll be able to feel something."
"No," she said, "There's nothing. You live, you die..." It was almost as if it was a question rather than a statement.
The boy to my right took his elbow from the table and put his hand on his mobile phone which was illegally buzzing during school. Ignoring the buzzing, he searched everyone at the table. "All that I know is that I don't want worms eating me."
The other boy was all. "I don't mind worms as long as the spiders stay away. Nasty things. Legs and teeth and sticky webs and stuff." He fake shivered. I wondered how many spiders that he had actually seen with teeth.
"Seriously," I said, "If there is nothing after this life, aren't you afraid? What if..." Just as I was about to finish the question that would take us from the shallows right to where only whales go, the school bell rang. The students seemed to rouse themselves from almost a dream, look around at each other sitting at the table. There is probably no other time that the four of them actually sit together. They almost seemed embarrassed to be talking about these deep things: Meaningful things. As they gathered their bags I lamely said, "We should continue this discussion next time, right?"
They already had their headphones in.
Stupid bell.
What great kids they are. Just like every other teenager I've ever known: strong willed, rebellious, inquisitive, diffident, unbreakable. I wish discussions like that happened over tables everywhere in the world where people would allow questions to resound like restless gongs and the answers floated somewhere else in the harmonics of life; in the ethereal sphere which can only be grasped by extensive listening.
Reminds me of another table that we all gather around, or should gather around. Not the breakfast table, but the table set for us in the sanctuary. As we all come forward from different places, turning at different times, coming from different understandings and difficult situations, we place our elbows next to each other and reach out for the ultimate answer from God - the final answer in Christ. And, instead of turning people away from the table because of oddities of opinions, we welcome them to the discussion, but even more, welcome them to forgiveness of sins and salvation itself.
That, my friends, is what the real table is for.
I struggle with 'Information Hub' even though it is an appropriately good name for the building. I sometimes long for the days when we could walk into a public library, sit in silence and open a wonderfully old, odoriferous book which smells of past knowledge.
Ah, melancholic nostalgia... Can you smell it?
I entered through the automatic doors which swished open and I was greeted with the sounds of kids playing chess; a gaggle of girls were printing off reports on the communal Xerox machine in the back; a group of boys was huddled around a computer staring at a screen, giggling and pointing at what was probably the ninety-seventh consecutive youtube video that they had loaded. The search probably started with something relatively academic - medieval trebuchets and devolved into Monster Trucks on Outback Roads - ten best fails.
Either way, I was not particularly keen to interrupt any of the groups; I was simply looking for a student I hadn't seen in a while. After scanning the main library, I went back to the study room where four students were postured in various states of idleness. It was the last period of the day and I'm sure that they had already packed their brains in for the afternoon, which, as I find more often than not, gives me a great opportunity to pick the brains of young people.
As what often occurs, the kids small talk until someone looks at someone else and the real question of the day arises. Today it was: Can a person be 'unbaptized?' It took me by surprise as more often than not, they ask the question of relevance of baptism in contemporary secular culture, but the six who were there were like a spectrum of spirituality: One twelfth grade girl wanted to be unbaptized because she 'didn't believe in any of that stuff because there is too much bad in the world for there to be a God.'
I smiled and scratched my head. "When you were baptized?"
"When I was little," she said, pulling her own chair over to the table where I sat now. "I wish my parents would have let me choose."
I leaned forward placing the weight of my body on my arms. "So, can you wash the water off? Does it work that way?"
She laughed which allowed another year twelve student to turn his chair around from his table and add his elbows to ours.
"I'm not really into religion that much either," he said holding up his hands as if surrendering, perhaps thinking that I was going to shoot him with my holy guns, "but I've got nothing against people that believe stuff. Good for them." He spoke as if faith was equated with an addled mind.
Another girl piped up. "I never believed in God until I felt Jesus one night." This surprised me a little bit because this young woman is relatively ambivalent about most things spiritual in religion and ethics class. She must have seen my raised eyebrows. "No, really, one night I was sitting at home, I was watching TV and then I felt Jesus. A real sense of happiness."
"What were you watching?" her classmate at the end of the table asked.
"I don't remember, but I know Jesus was there." Interesting, I thought. It seems like there is not so much spiritual ambivalence in our world as much as there is spiritual lethargy - a laziness that needs to be awakened.
"So," I asked the three now sharing my table, "What are you afraid of?" This is a question I ask almost everyone hoping that they will dive into something deeper. These students had just given me an opportunity, an opening, with which to insert a question that could perhaps take them to another level. What I'm noticing most about people, young and old, is that those that claim spiritual ambivalence are the ones that are most allergic to spiritual change. In other words, they don't want anything to do with God, because the odds are, an awakening in the spirit will lead to an alteration in life.
A sound from the corner - a new voice drawing closer to the table of four. "I'm afraid of spiders." This young man was not usually interested in joining in conversations, but he was willing to pull us up from the inevitable depths that most students, at times, want to swim in. "Big ones. I saw a youtube video the other day of a great big spider that got swept up and when it popped, all these baby spiders exploded from the eggs. It was so cool."
The rest of my spiritual Breakfast Club table nodded in approval. Talking about God requires taking a breath. It's a practice that we are not used to. The other boy chimed in. "I'm not afraid of much - a snake or two, maybe failure..." He trailed off. Good. Submerging again.
Now there were five of us at the table, leaning intently into a discussion that probably never should have taken place, but inadvertently we had stumbled over some of the deep questions of life. Now, the young lady who had started it all off smiled over her chin in bridged hands. "I'm not afraid of anything, really - not even of dying." In my mind, I had already started the words Gotcha. Those who claim no fear are usually the ones who want to talk about it most. I was excited until the other young lady began to lead us through her Christian understanding of reincarnation.
Yeah, it was different. "See, I think when you die, you immediately are transferred to the belly of some pregnant lady, or someone about to be impregnated." We didn't follow that line of discourse to its logical conclusion because the girl at the opposite end of the table was ready with her end of life understanding.
"There's nothing. You live and you die. I want to be cremated and have my ashes dropped from a plane. That way I could finally have the feeling of free fall."
"You mean," I started quickly before anyone else could begin to talk about the birds eating your ashes, or they would be swept up into the clouds where you would reside until the rain dropped you on some foreign soil, "that after you die, you'll be able to feel something."
"No," she said, "There's nothing. You live, you die..." It was almost as if it was a question rather than a statement.
The boy to my right took his elbow from the table and put his hand on his mobile phone which was illegally buzzing during school. Ignoring the buzzing, he searched everyone at the table. "All that I know is that I don't want worms eating me."
The other boy was all. "I don't mind worms as long as the spiders stay away. Nasty things. Legs and teeth and sticky webs and stuff." He fake shivered. I wondered how many spiders that he had actually seen with teeth.
"Seriously," I said, "If there is nothing after this life, aren't you afraid? What if..." Just as I was about to finish the question that would take us from the shallows right to where only whales go, the school bell rang. The students seemed to rouse themselves from almost a dream, look around at each other sitting at the table. There is probably no other time that the four of them actually sit together. They almost seemed embarrassed to be talking about these deep things: Meaningful things. As they gathered their bags I lamely said, "We should continue this discussion next time, right?"
They already had their headphones in.
Stupid bell.
What great kids they are. Just like every other teenager I've ever known: strong willed, rebellious, inquisitive, diffident, unbreakable. I wish discussions like that happened over tables everywhere in the world where people would allow questions to resound like restless gongs and the answers floated somewhere else in the harmonics of life; in the ethereal sphere which can only be grasped by extensive listening.
Reminds me of another table that we all gather around, or should gather around. Not the breakfast table, but the table set for us in the sanctuary. As we all come forward from different places, turning at different times, coming from different understandings and difficult situations, we place our elbows next to each other and reach out for the ultimate answer from God - the final answer in Christ. And, instead of turning people away from the table because of oddities of opinions, we welcome them to the discussion, but even more, welcome them to forgiveness of sins and salvation itself.
That, my friends, is what the real table is for.
Friday, May 1, 2015
The Caves
Everybody has a testimony. A story of how they got to where they are today. When athletes talk about their paths to the major leagues, or professional basketball or football, they share their testimony from infancy to adulthood in their chosen profession - usually including a bump or two along the way and they often thank those who have supported them on the journey.
Paul relates his multiple times, but I really enjoy the way he shares it with the Galatians. For you have heard of my previous way of life in Judaism, how intensely I persecuted the church of God and tried to destroy it. I was advancing in Judaism beyond many of my own age among my people and was extremely zealous for the traditions of my fathers. But when God, who set me apart from my mother's womb and called me by his grace, was pleased to reveal his son in me so that I might preach him among the Gentiles, my immediate response was not to consult any human being. I did not go up to Jerusalem to see those who were apostles before I was, but I went to Arabia. Later I returned to Damascus.
Then after three years... (Galatians 1:13-18a)
The most amazing word in Paul's testimonial story is a little word I have over looked time and time again. Its the word
'in'
"But when God, who set me apart from mother's womb and called me by his grace, was please to reveal his son in me...
Almost always, when I think of testimonial transformations, the terminology used is 'the son was revealed to me,' that somewhere, outside of my normal existence someone told me about Jesus. And, the implication is that Jesus remains on the outside, like a shimmering coat of chain mail, protecting the bearer from arrows, but Paul's description is that Christ was revealed in him, inside his innermost being; the change from persecutor to proselyte was an internal transformation so powerful that he needed three years just to figure it out.
Is this real? Did this really happen to me? How can I tell anyone that I'm changed and that my attitude is different, no longer an adherent of salvation by law, but now by grace? How can I face the Gentiles whose murders and imprisonments I've been supervising?
Paul's inner change is heroic and multifaceted and if any self-respecting adherent to The Way (name for early Christianity) came across him, they would probably throw him out on his ear. He's no superhero. His past is as checkered as a chess board. His past precludes him from speaking or acting on behalf of us.
Paul was not a superhero Christian, but then again, which of our biblical 'heroes' of the faith was? Gideon? Needed multiple different miracles in order to convince him to engage in his 'warrior-like' calling. Joseph? Arrogant, spoiled brat who alienated almost everyone who came into contact with him during his early years? Esther? Beautiful, but hesitant to speak. Mary? Just a young girl with a good singing voice. David? Murderer, braggart, adulterer, stripper. (2 Sam. 6:20)? How can these people be heroes? Why doesn't God choose the strongest, the smartest, the most beautiful, the richest - to lead the people of God?
In my opinion, God is willing to use empty vessels. Those who are afraid, those who are broken, those who are young (if you notice, many of the great biblical heroes are, in fact, young people), those who seem unfit for leadership - they are the ones God uses because he can fill them. In their testimonies, they can speak of the ways that God has revealed himself in them - not just to them. And when God has filled them with himself, they in turn are ready to be changed.
Changed to do what his good, perfect and pleasing will is (Romans 2:2)
Notice how Paul puts it to the Philippians, "Therefore (in light of everything that I've just written regarding have unity and the same attitude of servanthood as Christ) my dear friends as you have always obeyed, not only in my presence, but now much more in my absence, continue to work out your salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you to will and to act in order to fulfil his good purpose." (Phil. 2:12,13)
Heroes are changed from the inside out: first their will is changed and then their action. Will without action is a lazy, lukewarm faith. Lots of hot air but little rising balloon. Action without will leads to a constant stream of complaining which, in turn, actually turns people off from the Christ who is working inside of them. God works in us to transform our will, personal and collective, to turn outwards to those who are in need.
Now, what can the church do about this? How can the collective soul of the 21st century Way be transformed (and re-formed) to reflect God's inner workings?
We can take our time with those who are seeking.
In Tasmania, one of the first things that we did was to take a tour of some enormous cave systems in the Huon Valley. Located just southwest of Hobart, the Hastings Caves park rangers give guided tours through the caverns.
We had an interesting tour guide. With twenty-five other people, he lined us up outside the mouth of the cave and gave us the safety rundown. Stay with the group, don't touch stuff, try not to hit your head. The guide was in his fifties, probably a second job for him; a bit hippy-ish, I think, but as we walked through the caves, it became aware to us that he really did not like his job all that much. He forced us to hurry past some of the stalactites that would have made tremendous photographs; instead of letting us visualize our own pictures in the shapes of the stalagmites (like seeing shapes in the clouds), he told us what we should see. All the while, he kept pushing us forward so the next group could come in. We wanted to go slower, to take in the surroundings, even to meet some of the other people on the journey, but Senor Tour Guide would have none of that. By the end of the tour, I'm pretty sure at least two of the older folks were stumbling back up the stairs just to avoid his biting rejoinders about not being able to stay with the group.
I wanted the tour to change me; he wanted to tour to be over.
It happens at church sometimes. We want to get people through the 'membership' classes. In four weeks, supposedly they can see enough, meet enough people, learn enough to be part of the group. And, be hit up to volunteer for all the committees that are running short of members. We open the scriptures, the doctrines and tell them what they ought to see, perhaps we don't allow them to imagine how their own experience plays into their faith journey. Sometimes we, as congregations, hurry people through the in-filling of the Spirit, not out of maliciousness, but because we want to move the next group into the kingdom.
Perhaps it's time to slow down?
Our theme for the weekend for NOVO was superheroes and learning how God makes changes within us, so that we can make changes in the world outside us. I'm looking forward to perhaps having a dialogue with whomever is reading along about the myths of Christian 'superheroes' and how we view God's continuing activity in us.
Paul relates his multiple times, but I really enjoy the way he shares it with the Galatians. For you have heard of my previous way of life in Judaism, how intensely I persecuted the church of God and tried to destroy it. I was advancing in Judaism beyond many of my own age among my people and was extremely zealous for the traditions of my fathers. But when God, who set me apart from my mother's womb and called me by his grace, was pleased to reveal his son in me so that I might preach him among the Gentiles, my immediate response was not to consult any human being. I did not go up to Jerusalem to see those who were apostles before I was, but I went to Arabia. Later I returned to Damascus.
Then after three years... (Galatians 1:13-18a)
The most amazing word in Paul's testimonial story is a little word I have over looked time and time again. Its the word
'in'
"But when God, who set me apart from mother's womb and called me by his grace, was please to reveal his son in me...
Almost always, when I think of testimonial transformations, the terminology used is 'the son was revealed to me,' that somewhere, outside of my normal existence someone told me about Jesus. And, the implication is that Jesus remains on the outside, like a shimmering coat of chain mail, protecting the bearer from arrows, but Paul's description is that Christ was revealed in him, inside his innermost being; the change from persecutor to proselyte was an internal transformation so powerful that he needed three years just to figure it out.
Is this real? Did this really happen to me? How can I tell anyone that I'm changed and that my attitude is different, no longer an adherent of salvation by law, but now by grace? How can I face the Gentiles whose murders and imprisonments I've been supervising?
Paul's inner change is heroic and multifaceted and if any self-respecting adherent to The Way (name for early Christianity) came across him, they would probably throw him out on his ear. He's no superhero. His past is as checkered as a chess board. His past precludes him from speaking or acting on behalf of us.
Paul was not a superhero Christian, but then again, which of our biblical 'heroes' of the faith was? Gideon? Needed multiple different miracles in order to convince him to engage in his 'warrior-like' calling. Joseph? Arrogant, spoiled brat who alienated almost everyone who came into contact with him during his early years? Esther? Beautiful, but hesitant to speak. Mary? Just a young girl with a good singing voice. David? Murderer, braggart, adulterer, stripper. (2 Sam. 6:20)? How can these people be heroes? Why doesn't God choose the strongest, the smartest, the most beautiful, the richest - to lead the people of God?
In my opinion, God is willing to use empty vessels. Those who are afraid, those who are broken, those who are young (if you notice, many of the great biblical heroes are, in fact, young people), those who seem unfit for leadership - they are the ones God uses because he can fill them. In their testimonies, they can speak of the ways that God has revealed himself in them - not just to them. And when God has filled them with himself, they in turn are ready to be changed.
Changed to do what his good, perfect and pleasing will is (Romans 2:2)
Notice how Paul puts it to the Philippians, "Therefore (in light of everything that I've just written regarding have unity and the same attitude of servanthood as Christ) my dear friends as you have always obeyed, not only in my presence, but now much more in my absence, continue to work out your salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you to will and to act in order to fulfil his good purpose." (Phil. 2:12,13)
Heroes are changed from the inside out: first their will is changed and then their action. Will without action is a lazy, lukewarm faith. Lots of hot air but little rising balloon. Action without will leads to a constant stream of complaining which, in turn, actually turns people off from the Christ who is working inside of them. God works in us to transform our will, personal and collective, to turn outwards to those who are in need.
Now, what can the church do about this? How can the collective soul of the 21st century Way be transformed (and re-formed) to reflect God's inner workings?
We can take our time with those who are seeking.
In Tasmania, one of the first things that we did was to take a tour of some enormous cave systems in the Huon Valley. Located just southwest of Hobart, the Hastings Caves park rangers give guided tours through the caverns.
We had an interesting tour guide. With twenty-five other people, he lined us up outside the mouth of the cave and gave us the safety rundown. Stay with the group, don't touch stuff, try not to hit your head. The guide was in his fifties, probably a second job for him; a bit hippy-ish, I think, but as we walked through the caves, it became aware to us that he really did not like his job all that much. He forced us to hurry past some of the stalactites that would have made tremendous photographs; instead of letting us visualize our own pictures in the shapes of the stalagmites (like seeing shapes in the clouds), he told us what we should see. All the while, he kept pushing us forward so the next group could come in. We wanted to go slower, to take in the surroundings, even to meet some of the other people on the journey, but Senor Tour Guide would have none of that. By the end of the tour, I'm pretty sure at least two of the older folks were stumbling back up the stairs just to avoid his biting rejoinders about not being able to stay with the group.
I wanted the tour to change me; he wanted to tour to be over.
It happens at church sometimes. We want to get people through the 'membership' classes. In four weeks, supposedly they can see enough, meet enough people, learn enough to be part of the group. And, be hit up to volunteer for all the committees that are running short of members. We open the scriptures, the doctrines and tell them what they ought to see, perhaps we don't allow them to imagine how their own experience plays into their faith journey. Sometimes we, as congregations, hurry people through the in-filling of the Spirit, not out of maliciousness, but because we want to move the next group into the kingdom.
Perhaps it's time to slow down?
Our theme for the weekend for NOVO was superheroes and learning how God makes changes within us, so that we can make changes in the world outside us. I'm looking forward to perhaps having a dialogue with whomever is reading along about the myths of Christian 'superheroes' and how we view God's continuing activity in us.
Wednesday, April 29, 2015
Pulvinator
Hadronyche Pulvinator
I thought he was joking. He stood there in his National Parks Uniform, uniformly doing what almost all National Parks people like to do sometimes - scare me with how many things in Australia can, and probably, will find a way to kill me while living in Australia. Can't go in the ocean, Spielberg reminded us of that; walking through the bush is a thing of nightmares, eight of the deadliest snakes in the world slither through the grass and brush; even the cutest kangaroos could be vicious, disemboweling their opponent while standing on their tail. And if that's not enough, they try to scare you with stories of 'drop bears,' ravenous koalas that drop from the sky, giving up their eucalyptus vegetarian ways to feast on the brains of unwary travelers. The last one's not true. Too many people have tried to fool me with that one (but this was after I walked around trees for a good few months looking up just in case.)
But the spiders.
It's well known, I think, amongst the people who know me that I'm not a huge fan of arachnids. In high school, to overcome my fears, Chad, Colin, Ryan and I went to the movie Arachnophobia. Stupid, I know, but when your friends slap you across the face with the glove and toss out words like "Chicken," and "Bok, bok" (while putting their fingers under their arms and flapping their 'wings') one does whatever it takes. So I went to the movie and watched with horror as John Goodman and cohort attempt to take out this rapidly multiplying, human flesh eating spiders which have an uncanny ability to roost inside people's mouths and noses. Eeesh.
Four scariest movies of all time?
4. Spiderman - are there really little blue and red spiders that insidiously inject venom into non-observant photographers? Probably in Australia.
3. Lord of the Rings - Return of the King. Shelob and her slobbering fangs and ram's horn venom spike. I didn't even know spiders could have one of those things. Probably in Australia.
2. Arachnaphobia - Flesh eating spiders - you bet, in Australia, no prey is too large.
1. Charlotte's Web - What kind of sick mind writes a story about a spider which befriends children and saves pigs. And, AND! then the spiders egg sack is carried around in the pig's mouth. What happens if he trips? E. B. White must have spent some time in Australia.
So I have a minor phobia and the more people know about it, the more they send me things on Facebook. Someone sent me a video of a spider egg sack on the floor, which when swept up exploded into a million little spiders. Another recorded opening a car door where a gigantor spider was hiding underneath the handle and testing the outside with its legs (tentacles - that's what they looked like.) Just when you thought it was safe to drive again. People send these to me because they trust me, and they enjoy the reaction when I cringe. It's a sign of love, I think, but it's not really fair because I have no retaliation to send videos to people who are afraid of heights - nobody's going to freak out if I show them a mountain; or even worse, what about those who are afraid of public speaking (the number one fear - even more than death!); do I take a picture of a crowd? Will that cause them to sweat and panic? Nope, I just have to sit back and scroll down for videos of human eating spiders. That's why in Australia one spider is called the huntsman. It hunts men.
Anyway, Tim, the National Park guy, was explaining to me about the Hadronyche Pulvinator. Supposedly it's like a funnel web spider - the most poisonous spider in the world (Yup, you guessed it, has an Australian flag tattooed on its belly) - "But," Tim said as he held up a finger and dropped the level of his voice a few notches, "It's fangs are so powerful, it can actually puncture bone." He sounded like the late great Steve Irwin. Then he sat back and crossed his arms, smugly satisfied with impressing upon me how awesome it is to live in a country where even the insects (I know, a spider is not an insect even though it looks like one) could, and should, be one of the Avengers.
"So what you're saying," I responded as I watched my girls enjoying their time on the flying fox over a beautiful river as I listened to the sadistic National Parks guy regale me with awesome stories, "Is that I shouldn't put my finger in holes in the ground because they could get punctured by true to life Shelobs?"
"Ah, don't worry about it, mate," Tim said in his definite affable Australian way. "Pulvinators have been extinct for at least fifty years." He paused and dropped his voice again. "We think."
I looked around at the ground near my feet searching for coin size holes. "Extinct for a reason, probably. You'd have to shoot those things with a twelve gauge."
Tim laughed. "Not as bad as the Tasmanian devils, though." Here we go, I thought. Now he's going to destroy the beautiful image I have of the cute, cuddly animals who spin in great circles eating trees and talking with cartoon animals in kind of a sbplabedeepblablpeady way.
"We have lost four people in the wilderness of Tasmania in the first four months of this year. Well, that's how many we've recovered. See, what happens is, people go out for a little walkabout in the bush and find that they aren't the bush ranger they thought they were and then they go and die." Tim was staring out over the river at my girls flying at forty kilometers per hour on the wires. "Then, when their corpse is starting to rot, the Tazzie devils can smell that from miles away. They come and eat the bodies." He turned towards me after the hang glider reached the ground. "They eat everything accept," he held up his index finger again, "the top of your skull. They can't get their teeth around them otherwise they'd eat that too."
Dang. And here I thought there was one Australian animal that was not out to eat you.
As much as I paint the picture of fear with regards to spiders, I actually enjoy hearing the tales about these amazing animals on the planet all vying for resources. Australia is full of incredible fauna which brings a real joy to our lives when we see it; kangaroos are still a source of joy (except when they try to play Frogger on the road), koalas, when you spot them, are beautiful in their slow, non-awake way. But the spiders, as much as I dislike their looks, are incredible in their diversity. It's good to experience them in nature. I just don't want to come across the last of the Pulvinators.
As we traveled throughout Tasmania before our NOVO experience, I reflected time and time again the ways in which the land and the context inform how we speak about the gospel of Christ. Throughout the next few days I'll be writing specifically about our time in Tasmania, in my opinion the jewel of Australia, and how it relates to our theme verse from Philippians 2:13...
Read the context in the next few days from the full chapter of Philippians 2, but here is the verse: ...For it is God who works in you to will and to act in order to fulfil his good purpose. Will and action. God's work in you. His good purpose.
It's going to be a fun ride.
I thought he was joking. He stood there in his National Parks Uniform, uniformly doing what almost all National Parks people like to do sometimes - scare me with how many things in Australia can, and probably, will find a way to kill me while living in Australia. Can't go in the ocean, Spielberg reminded us of that; walking through the bush is a thing of nightmares, eight of the deadliest snakes in the world slither through the grass and brush; even the cutest kangaroos could be vicious, disemboweling their opponent while standing on their tail. And if that's not enough, they try to scare you with stories of 'drop bears,' ravenous koalas that drop from the sky, giving up their eucalyptus vegetarian ways to feast on the brains of unwary travelers. The last one's not true. Too many people have tried to fool me with that one (but this was after I walked around trees for a good few months looking up just in case.)
But the spiders.
It's well known, I think, amongst the people who know me that I'm not a huge fan of arachnids. In high school, to overcome my fears, Chad, Colin, Ryan and I went to the movie Arachnophobia. Stupid, I know, but when your friends slap you across the face with the glove and toss out words like "Chicken," and "Bok, bok" (while putting their fingers under their arms and flapping their 'wings') one does whatever it takes. So I went to the movie and watched with horror as John Goodman and cohort attempt to take out this rapidly multiplying, human flesh eating spiders which have an uncanny ability to roost inside people's mouths and noses. Eeesh.
Four scariest movies of all time?
4. Spiderman - are there really little blue and red spiders that insidiously inject venom into non-observant photographers? Probably in Australia.
3. Lord of the Rings - Return of the King. Shelob and her slobbering fangs and ram's horn venom spike. I didn't even know spiders could have one of those things. Probably in Australia.
2. Arachnaphobia - Flesh eating spiders - you bet, in Australia, no prey is too large.
1. Charlotte's Web - What kind of sick mind writes a story about a spider which befriends children and saves pigs. And, AND! then the spiders egg sack is carried around in the pig's mouth. What happens if he trips? E. B. White must have spent some time in Australia.
So I have a minor phobia and the more people know about it, the more they send me things on Facebook. Someone sent me a video of a spider egg sack on the floor, which when swept up exploded into a million little spiders. Another recorded opening a car door where a gigantor spider was hiding underneath the handle and testing the outside with its legs (tentacles - that's what they looked like.) Just when you thought it was safe to drive again. People send these to me because they trust me, and they enjoy the reaction when I cringe. It's a sign of love, I think, but it's not really fair because I have no retaliation to send videos to people who are afraid of heights - nobody's going to freak out if I show them a mountain; or even worse, what about those who are afraid of public speaking (the number one fear - even more than death!); do I take a picture of a crowd? Will that cause them to sweat and panic? Nope, I just have to sit back and scroll down for videos of human eating spiders. That's why in Australia one spider is called the huntsman. It hunts men.
Anyway, Tim, the National Park guy, was explaining to me about the Hadronyche Pulvinator. Supposedly it's like a funnel web spider - the most poisonous spider in the world (Yup, you guessed it, has an Australian flag tattooed on its belly) - "But," Tim said as he held up a finger and dropped the level of his voice a few notches, "It's fangs are so powerful, it can actually puncture bone." He sounded like the late great Steve Irwin. Then he sat back and crossed his arms, smugly satisfied with impressing upon me how awesome it is to live in a country where even the insects (I know, a spider is not an insect even though it looks like one) could, and should, be one of the Avengers.
"So what you're saying," I responded as I watched my girls enjoying their time on the flying fox over a beautiful river as I listened to the sadistic National Parks guy regale me with awesome stories, "Is that I shouldn't put my finger in holes in the ground because they could get punctured by true to life Shelobs?"
"Ah, don't worry about it, mate," Tim said in his definite affable Australian way. "Pulvinators have been extinct for at least fifty years." He paused and dropped his voice again. "We think."
I looked around at the ground near my feet searching for coin size holes. "Extinct for a reason, probably. You'd have to shoot those things with a twelve gauge."
Tim laughed. "Not as bad as the Tasmanian devils, though." Here we go, I thought. Now he's going to destroy the beautiful image I have of the cute, cuddly animals who spin in great circles eating trees and talking with cartoon animals in kind of a sbplabedeepblablpeady way.
"We have lost four people in the wilderness of Tasmania in the first four months of this year. Well, that's how many we've recovered. See, what happens is, people go out for a little walkabout in the bush and find that they aren't the bush ranger they thought they were and then they go and die." Tim was staring out over the river at my girls flying at forty kilometers per hour on the wires. "Then, when their corpse is starting to rot, the Tazzie devils can smell that from miles away. They come and eat the bodies." He turned towards me after the hang glider reached the ground. "They eat everything accept," he held up his index finger again, "the top of your skull. They can't get their teeth around them otherwise they'd eat that too."
Dang. And here I thought there was one Australian animal that was not out to eat you.
As much as I paint the picture of fear with regards to spiders, I actually enjoy hearing the tales about these amazing animals on the planet all vying for resources. Australia is full of incredible fauna which brings a real joy to our lives when we see it; kangaroos are still a source of joy (except when they try to play Frogger on the road), koalas, when you spot them, are beautiful in their slow, non-awake way. But the spiders, as much as I dislike their looks, are incredible in their diversity. It's good to experience them in nature. I just don't want to come across the last of the Pulvinators.
As we traveled throughout Tasmania before our NOVO experience, I reflected time and time again the ways in which the land and the context inform how we speak about the gospel of Christ. Throughout the next few days I'll be writing specifically about our time in Tasmania, in my opinion the jewel of Australia, and how it relates to our theme verse from Philippians 2:13...
Read the context in the next few days from the full chapter of Philippians 2, but here is the verse: ...For it is God who works in you to will and to act in order to fulfil his good purpose. Will and action. God's work in you. His good purpose.
It's going to be a fun ride.
Monday, April 27, 2015
Flush
Sometimes my soul needs an enema.
It's a really bad visual, I know, but the concept is right. In order for a soul to continue to sense its connectedness to God, all the remains of digested life need to be flushed. Sometimes this occurs naturally, or organically, but sometimes it takes an outside source. I.e - an enema.
Let me start with this first: I've never had a real-life enema and frankly, it doesn't sound that wonderful. I've heard that some people actually volunteer for the procedure. Count me out. There's no reason on earth that I want anyone else to witness something like that, but with a soul enema, it's a definite internal process.
It began about a month ago...
I really enjoy my job - I work with some amazing people and each day when I drive to school with my three daughters chirping about which classes they will be attending during the day, which boys are doing idiotic things, listening to them laugh and sing, I think to myself, Life is really good. If there were a pause button, I'd have pressed it already. But, somewhere in the midst of the beginning of this school year, I think I unconsciously began to notice a fire blanket being draped over me. Where once the blaze of spiritual life was uncontained, now I felt somewhat smothered. I found that I was becoming short with people, not focusing during conversations and even falling asleep at importune times in meetings.
To be honest, life felt heavy.
It's not as if I was perturbed, I just felt like I was in a funk and I wasn't even aware of it. Not until we found ourselves at NOVO, the state youth gathering in South Australia. We'd worked with a few of the directors before and we knew of their incredible organizational and faithful abilities, but we'd only done SPIN camp before which is a camp for younger children. This was our first foray into youth ministry in South Australia with high school youth. The camp was held at Cornerstone College, a Lutheran school in Mt. Barker. Situated just outside of the downtown area, the sprawling campus includes beautiful athletic fields, a full sized gymnasium with six basketball hoops and an incredible fine arts center. It was there in the fine arts center that we found a great locus of spirituality for the weekend.
Already in the process of setting up, we met Brad and Paul securing pyramid shaped decorations to the walls behind, and around, the band. Sound, lights, and a huge carved statue of spread-winged Jesus decorated the front. Like most sound and light engineers, Brad and Paul were affable, yet reserved. They let their artistry speak for them.
We were greeted by various different leaders, young adults who invested their own time, talents and financial resources to help high schoolers encounter Christ. Christine probably had the more difficult task for the weekend - she, along with nine others, was called to be a chaplain for the weekend, and I was given the opportunity to be a keynote speaker for the conference. The theme was 'Unlikely Heroes,' a reflection on Biblical people whom God had called to do sacred, often difficult, tasks.
A month before hand, I made a mistake. I felt as if I had been growing a little too big for my spiritual pants, my ego swelling, I think, in believing that I was somehow 'specialler' because I had been asked to speak for various functions. I think the Spirit was interceding for me to pray for humility, but I used the wrong words (in my opinion.) Instead of asking God to give me an opportunity for humility, I prayed, God, humble me. There is a whole Pacific Ocean of difference in the two. When we ask God for moments to practice humility, we can recognize that we've made a difference and we give glory to God. When we ask God to humble us, we allow him free reign to bring about a quite painful, or embarrassing way, to step down a few steps on the ladder of ego.
I had been asked to give a presentation at a statewide event with Queensland leaders. I thought I had prepared enough and certainly, I, as a 'motivational speaker' should be able to download all of my 'wisdom' upon the leaders. As the day unfolded, I felt a disconnection to them (of my own creation, probably); it was almost as I was speaking a different language. It didn't help that the rain was falling so hard that they couldn't hear me and I couldn't hear them, but the telling moment was when one of the leaders put his head onto the desk and promptly fell asleep in the midst of a point that I thought was a particular 'nugget of importance.'
A generous slice of humble pie. Do I want seconds? No thank you.
So, as we traveled to South Australia, I did not ask God to humble me; I asked for an opportunity for humility. But I was nervous... Would they fall asleep again? Could I bring God's goodness and fortitude to 120 high schoolers and fifty odd leaders?
So I prayed, God, Speak your words through me, in spite of me, so they can see you.
I was asked to lead five sessions for the youth on unlikely heroes: Joseph, Esther, Mary (mother of Jesus), David and Jesus. In the next blogs, I'm looking forward to sharing with you my own musings about the NOVO weekend, the discourse on unlikely heroes which lead to, for me, the flushing of my soul.
It's a really bad visual, I know, but the concept is right. In order for a soul to continue to sense its connectedness to God, all the remains of digested life need to be flushed. Sometimes this occurs naturally, or organically, but sometimes it takes an outside source. I.e - an enema.
Let me start with this first: I've never had a real-life enema and frankly, it doesn't sound that wonderful. I've heard that some people actually volunteer for the procedure. Count me out. There's no reason on earth that I want anyone else to witness something like that, but with a soul enema, it's a definite internal process.
It began about a month ago...
I really enjoy my job - I work with some amazing people and each day when I drive to school with my three daughters chirping about which classes they will be attending during the day, which boys are doing idiotic things, listening to them laugh and sing, I think to myself, Life is really good. If there were a pause button, I'd have pressed it already. But, somewhere in the midst of the beginning of this school year, I think I unconsciously began to notice a fire blanket being draped over me. Where once the blaze of spiritual life was uncontained, now I felt somewhat smothered. I found that I was becoming short with people, not focusing during conversations and even falling asleep at importune times in meetings.
To be honest, life felt heavy.
It's not as if I was perturbed, I just felt like I was in a funk and I wasn't even aware of it. Not until we found ourselves at NOVO, the state youth gathering in South Australia. We'd worked with a few of the directors before and we knew of their incredible organizational and faithful abilities, but we'd only done SPIN camp before which is a camp for younger children. This was our first foray into youth ministry in South Australia with high school youth. The camp was held at Cornerstone College, a Lutheran school in Mt. Barker. Situated just outside of the downtown area, the sprawling campus includes beautiful athletic fields, a full sized gymnasium with six basketball hoops and an incredible fine arts center. It was there in the fine arts center that we found a great locus of spirituality for the weekend.
Already in the process of setting up, we met Brad and Paul securing pyramid shaped decorations to the walls behind, and around, the band. Sound, lights, and a huge carved statue of spread-winged Jesus decorated the front. Like most sound and light engineers, Brad and Paul were affable, yet reserved. They let their artistry speak for them.
We were greeted by various different leaders, young adults who invested their own time, talents and financial resources to help high schoolers encounter Christ. Christine probably had the more difficult task for the weekend - she, along with nine others, was called to be a chaplain for the weekend, and I was given the opportunity to be a keynote speaker for the conference. The theme was 'Unlikely Heroes,' a reflection on Biblical people whom God had called to do sacred, often difficult, tasks.
A month before hand, I made a mistake. I felt as if I had been growing a little too big for my spiritual pants, my ego swelling, I think, in believing that I was somehow 'specialler' because I had been asked to speak for various functions. I think the Spirit was interceding for me to pray for humility, but I used the wrong words (in my opinion.) Instead of asking God to give me an opportunity for humility, I prayed, God, humble me. There is a whole Pacific Ocean of difference in the two. When we ask God for moments to practice humility, we can recognize that we've made a difference and we give glory to God. When we ask God to humble us, we allow him free reign to bring about a quite painful, or embarrassing way, to step down a few steps on the ladder of ego.
I had been asked to give a presentation at a statewide event with Queensland leaders. I thought I had prepared enough and certainly, I, as a 'motivational speaker' should be able to download all of my 'wisdom' upon the leaders. As the day unfolded, I felt a disconnection to them (of my own creation, probably); it was almost as I was speaking a different language. It didn't help that the rain was falling so hard that they couldn't hear me and I couldn't hear them, but the telling moment was when one of the leaders put his head onto the desk and promptly fell asleep in the midst of a point that I thought was a particular 'nugget of importance.'
A generous slice of humble pie. Do I want seconds? No thank you.
So, as we traveled to South Australia, I did not ask God to humble me; I asked for an opportunity for humility. But I was nervous... Would they fall asleep again? Could I bring God's goodness and fortitude to 120 high schoolers and fifty odd leaders?
So I prayed, God, Speak your words through me, in spite of me, so they can see you.
I was asked to lead five sessions for the youth on unlikely heroes: Joseph, Esther, Mary (mother of Jesus), David and Jesus. In the next blogs, I'm looking forward to sharing with you my own musings about the NOVO weekend, the discourse on unlikely heroes which lead to, for me, the flushing of my soul.
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