Jeff Berryman : Christian Spirituality

Wed, 21 Mar 2007 22:50:22 GMT

Springtime

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We got sunbreaks today, and after I went to the store, I stopped by the zoo, the section outside the fence directly to the south just off of Phinney and 50th. I'd been wondering what I'd find to take photos of that would stand for the arrival of spring. I've never been so aware of its arrival. Trembling, buds everywhere crane their necks toward the sun, hoping to finally put winter behind them. Daffodils clustered in bunches caught my eye as I turned onto 50th and I immediately pulled into a space on the street. I grabbed my camera, hopped out of my car and jay-walked. [Macro error: Can't find a sub-table named "radioResponder".] I was hoping for something besides daffodils, but then I thought, let's just pay attention to what's here. Ever noticed (I'm sure you have) how these poor flowers just can't hold their necks up? Beauty is just too heavy to manage. As buds, all floral in potential, they stretch up straight with all the hope of youth. But give them their full clothes and they can't help but lean over, stooping like sad folks at sunset. Today I got the feeling they were watching cars going by, thristy to drink in all they could before the weeks withered them. "Even when it[base ']s here, it[base ']s going by." That's a line from David Wilcox, and I think of it often. The Bible says our lives are like grass, like vapor. And watching the dawn of Spring both thrills and sobers me; I have seen the winter. I know these beauties are here only for a season, and yet, Solomon wasn't arrayed like one of these, either. Yes, I know Jesus talked about lilies, and I'll go find some of those for Easter, I suppose, but just now, I'll bet Solomon couldn't stand up to these either. ...I love yellow...

Tue, 20 Mar 2007 22:11:29 GMT

Taking Pictures, Seeing New

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I blogged a few weeks ago about seeing the world, that the first move of the artist is to see. When Lent started, I felt the need to do something artistic that was different than writing or music, and I was also interested of seeing God in the concrete world. So I got out my little digital camera and have been taking pictures of everything under the sun. Sure enough, I'm not brooding anymore as I drive or shop or walk to Javasti's. My eyes are wide open, looking for what's going to catch my attention today. In the future, I'll share some of them, and perhaps muse a bit about why this image or that. I'm not sure what I'm doing, but it's impacting me. Water is elemental, necessary for life, packed with some vital something that we can break down into scientific terms, but in the end, the life force behind it--the ultimate why is mysterious. Droplets are beautiful because of the way they catch the light, reflecting it off the soft round shape. I've taken lots of flower shots over the past three and a half weeks, many of them with water droplets. The leaf seems to be offering it. A hand of God, perhaps? Maybe I'm stretching, seeing metaphor where there's not any, but then again, the whole idea of metaphor only operates in the mind. So who's to say I don't see water from God in the picture. And at the same time, when I say that, the picture diminishes for me, as if now that I'm looking at God's gift to me, I can no longer see the simple beauty of the liquid hanging out on the green smooth surface of the leaf.

...more to come...

Mon, 12 Mar 2007 17:02:13 GMT

End of the Spear

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I read about End of the Spear when it was first released, but didn't get a chance to get to the theatre to see it. It's a famous story among Evangelicals, the martyrdom of a group of missionaries in 1956 as they tried to make contact with an native Ecaudoran people known as the Waodoni. Jim Eliot is the best-known of the missionaries who lost their lives on the sandbar that afternoon, but this story emerges through the eyes of another man, the aviator of the group with the oh-so-appropriate name Nate Saint. But the story doesn't end with the death of these men, each of them pierced by a pike wielded by these fierce and proud people--their martyrdom is a launching pad for a journey of staggering grace and change. Spoilers ahead The central journey of the film concerns a regal looking man named Mincayani, a Waodoni leader who makes the decision that these foreigners who have landed their "wood bee" (airplane) near the river must be speared. Mincayani and his men believe the missionaries to be cannibals who years before captured, killed, and ate a member of their family (a Waodoni woman still very much alive and who will eventually prove to be the bridge between the families of the slain men and their killers). After the missionaries' death, astonishingly, some of the their family members eventually make contact with the Waodoni and end up living among Mincayani's tribe for many years. Many of the Waodoni come to faith, but the real transformation is in Mincayani, who desperately tries to hang on to his understanding of life and the ways his people have always known. But as he comes to know these foreigners, he finally grasps that they come hoping for nothing but friendship and to teach these people that their God had a son who was "speared" so that they could "live well." Mincayani begins to suspect that killing is not the only way to gather strength. When the aviator's son, Steve Saint, grows up, he and Mincayani forge an unearthly friendship, in which they together face the murder of Saint's father in a dramatic scene on the very ground where Mincayani killed him, some 30 years before. A clunky synopsis to be sure, but its a story sure to haunt me. For courage and grace, and unearthly love, its hard to beat. As a film, it is much more successful than say, Facing the Giants, though from a storytelling point of view, there are still holes. But the production values were high (the musical score was a bit over the top for my taste), and the acting was seamless. The controversy over actor Chad Allen's sexuality (he is a openly gay man who many Christians resented playing one of their heroes) doesn't interest me--I was so thankful his character was so beautifully drawn. The women of the film, the Waodoni and the Americans, were especially affecting, their loss and struggle--and love--palpable and deep. Where the film needs work is in the story telling itself. There is something missing in Mincayani's journey. What I'm interested in is what happened in the years between the missionaries' arrival into the Waodoni life and the encounter with Steve Saint years later. Wisely, the film skirts an explicit attitude of proselytizing, presenting the gospel much as the missionaries initially did, using the language and symbols systems already present in Waodoni belief. But there's something about the soft edge of this presentation that, in my view, undermines the intended emotional impact of the film. Why does Mincayani change? We see him come to regret his action, largely because of the friendship and kindness of these Americans. But because faith in Christ is present only on the level of pre-assumption, the film becomes a testimony to what can easily been seen as something that actually transcends religious faith. In other words, it is a human story, which is its strength (and of course, that's exactly what I want it to be), but in the end, it only points the faithful to God, because we're already in on the pre-assumption. I'm not sure what I'd think if I didn't already believe in Christ. As a film audience member, I'm not satisfied that I've the final piece of Mincayani's journey. I want to see the decision that makes him decide to face his past, take Steve Saint to that sandbar, and beg for a cleansing death. I'm pretty sure I'm not saying what I want, but what I take away is that flawed films well done, which is how I'd classify End of the Spear, can haunt us just as much as the masterpieces. All that said... ...watch it.

Sat, 10 Mar 2007 15:45:22 GMT

Artists Gathering

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One bespectacled gentleman got a great deal on a drum set. A pair of married collage artists are waiting to hear back from a local artwalk show about their respective entries. A young blogger wonders whether anyone is bothering to read her stories, personal journeys culled from journals of years ago. An actor puts a brave face on his deep fatigue, weary from a week's worth of travel and performance. What might a gathered people need to say to God, a songwriter asks, sharing his constant search for a phrase or word that might spark people into dropping their inhibitions, catching fire enough to actually put their minds and hearts where they need to be in worship. Another actor celebrates a coming marriage and yet, the complextity of change fully employed, mourns the loss of old community, old safety. "Done is beautiful" describes another's process, the man chronically shouldering a titan's load of work, a man who inspires me with his grace and kindness and willingness to serve. These people draw girls in dresses, drum Sunday praises, write dramas and live them, too. We make leather and recordings, do graphc design and music, and blog, blog, blog. We are makers of things, sometimes for money, most times not, and what binds us is that we all agree that our making is a gift, hardly of our own volition, at least not in its orgins. The urge to shape form is a card we've been dealt, an ace in our DNA, and we can only respond by pocketing it, hoarding it, thereby lettting it die, or we can throw it out there, play it in hand after hand, hoping someday it combines with the rest our living, our other cards, to finally get a hand that does us and somebody else some good. We laughed, we cried, we told stories of plays and commerce and travel. We wondered how to tell the truth about our work and what to do when we would no doubt be judged and condemned. We wondered what the constants would be in our work, the palette we would continually return to, the stories we would tell over and over. We dipped chips into cowboy caviar and cheese, made faces and cringed as the host harassed folks with his camera, and we prayed. We prayed about our pride, our hunger to do good work, our desire to know what in the world God was wanting to be about in our lives, and we asked Him to please get on with it, this business of leading us, changing us. Finally we trickled out the door, one and two at a time, some three hours after we'd arrived, and then the house was empty, except for a wife, a husband, and a son, gathered in the kitchen, and still, the talk goes to music and dancing and auditions and the return of my daughter-actress this next week, and finally it's time for lights out and welcome sleep. What happened last night means the world to me. How do we grasp the kindness of this God who masks so much in seeming darkness, in impenetrable mystery? Creation, the making of a thing, the shaping of a form that somehow captures my heart in that elegant move of thought we call metaphor...it is nothing but the gift of God. In the end, what we said to each other in our gathering was simple. ...make something...

Fri, 09 Mar 2007 14:04:05 GMT

Coffee, Resurrection

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It's Friday morning. I'm sitting at my coffee shop, Javasti's on 5th Ave. NE, enjoying the noisy banter of the morning crowd. Someone stole their newspapers this morning, and I've heard they're giving free scones to people who ate one yesterday, something about dumping salt into the batter with predictable results. Too bad I didn't get one yesterday--I'd been enjoying a freebie today. Mark the day. It was on this day 2007 that the birds in Maple Leaf decided they'd had enough of Winter quiet. As I sat in my office starting my bleary meditation, I heard them talking--the birds, that is--speaking their foreign language, testing throats too long silent. Spring's here, I guess, and as I walked up the dark street toward Javasti's, they sang me right along. Where were the crows? Still in bed, I guess. Lent is a challenge, but life for me is in such flux, it seems pretty normal. On Wednesday, I saw Tsotsi, a gorgeous gem of a movie about a South African hoodlum who wakes up via one of the great waker-uppers in the world--a baby. The final image of Tsotsi, his hands held high in a haunting image of yielding, has stuck with me. Then there was the episode of Heroes I missed Monday night, and watched Wednesday as well. Peter Petrelli getting his head carved up, screaming, and I think...you know, there we are. Yet, I just know Silar is the Evil guy, so he just can't win. The interesting thing is not whether the world will be saved--it's how. The people involved in the Arts Ministry at the Northwest are going to gather at my house tonight. What will we do? I'm not sure, really, but we're going to look each other in the eye and ask what we're up to, and we're going to care about it. Beauty is arriving in the world even as I write this, and our assumption is that God has drafted us, either explicitly or implicitly, to join the team responsible for various assignments in the necessary midwivery. Nikki and I talked yesterday of frames, empty and filled, and that perhaps we are to be nothing more than frames into which God can pour Himself and the resultant images, love, and life. Makes sense to me. Truth is, I'm moving through one of those periods where life is alternately transcendent and frightening. It's a bracing thing, to walk a street, to write a word, to take a picture, and think God is here on the tip of my breath, waiting for a single word of permission to release resurrection into the world through this moment, this very one. Abstract? Sure. But I believe the concrete finds its origin in an idea, an image, a way of seeing the world. The concrete reveals us to our selves, our world, and our God. You reading this is concrete, as is Your mulling of where resurrection is inside you, and if you will give that word of permission or not. What if Jesus had refused? ...let third days be our daily bread...

Sun, 25 Feb 2007 04:07:30 GMT

Facing the Giants

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Nothing good could come of it, but I did it anyway: I finally watched Facing the Giants. If I hated it, I'd have guilt to deal with, because any film this front and center about wanting to bring God glory ought to be something we laud and applaud, right? On the other hand, if I liked it, I'd be faced with the proposition of going up against people I respect that have, by and large, trounced the film. Either way, it was going to be a tough experience. Warning: spoilers ahead Facing the Giants is a $100,000 movie written and produced by Sherwood Pictures, brainchild of Alex and Stephen Kendrick, associate pastors of Sherwood Baptist Church in Albany, Georgia. The story (which has grossed over $10M so far) of a down-and-out football team from a southern Christian High School, Facing the Giants is a David-and-Goliath feel-good story in which a coach on the brink of being fired turns to God and receives a series of direct answers to his prayers. Lackluster attitude morphs into gut-busting motivation, a barely-drivable car gets replaced by a Texas sized pick-up truck, a weak-legged kicker "gives his best for God" and comes up with a 50+ yard field goal, and scientifically declared infertility melts in the face of a near-miraculous pregnancy. Maybe that sounds cynical--here's a different way to say it. In this inspirational story, a team of apathetic, high school football players gets challenged by a spiritual coach to give their best for God, and they do. That coach puts his faith in God in that most rare of film moments, the sincere evangelical prayer, and God answers that prayer in ways that frankly, many believers have both witnessed and experienced. Far-fetched? Maybe, but even with the bad acting, the bad writing, and my cynicism perched proudly on my shoulder like a preening cockatoo, there were moments when it was hard not to be moved. All that said, Facing the Giants, and the debate it creates, is fascinating. I have no doubt that Christians of a particular ilk weep when they see this film, not once, but several times. Maybe it's just that they've endured so much filth on screen, that to see their own lifestyle and belief so explicitly--if not completely honestly--represented, is as close as they will come to experiencing the miraculous. And conversely, many other-ilked disciples can barely sit through it, their stomachs churning in dismay at this picture of a God who always comes through. In their experience, that's not how it works at all. On the up side, there are things to like about this film. It looks much better than $100,000, and I am frankly amazed that a church was able to pull it off. There are moments in the film that won legitimate laughs in my living room, and that's not easy for film to do, at least not with me. The story has possibilities; Alex Kendrick has the right idea, and though he mishandles all sorts of things--exposition, structure, reveals and reversals--the bones of what he's getting at are there. I suspect those of us moved by the film aren't being moved by the film at all, but rather we are seeing through to what we wish the film were. And talking about acting--I work with non-actors all the time, and it's not easy to get them to just relax and speak, which Kendrick has done pretty well. That doesn't mean they're acting--in most cases, they're not even close--but they could have been much, much worse. Not much consolation, true, but I'll give them what credit they're due. To get more insight into Alex Kendrick, the man who made it all happen, here's a pretty insightful interview at ProdigalSonMagazine.com. Go read Barbara Nicolosi or Dick Staub (also here and here) or any number of others if you want to read the downside of Facing the Giants, and just know that I agree with most of what's said. But I kept thinking of Barbara as I watched, and about her vehemence about this film. I know she believes God answers prayer, and I know she believes in taking whatever there is in life to Him, so theologically, it's not that she thinks God doesn't work in people's lives, delivering all sorts of blessings that we can choose to attribute to him or not. I guess to state it most simply, Facing the Giants falls far short as a work of filmic art. And because of the power of cinema in culture to create images of reality, the life of God portrayed in film is important. Our vision of God and the life of Christ is largely a function of imagination, and by that, I don't mean fanciful thinking. We image a life of Christ both internally and externally, the latter being somewhat dependent on the former. And how we construct those Kingdom of God images will impact everything we do. Is there a film in which an authentic, modern or post-modern evangelical journey is portrayed? A journey towards faith in God, with the particular trappings of the evangelical environment, with all its calls to faith and piety, yet balanced by the inevitable disappointments and confusions that lead to doubt, distrust, rebellion, and perhaps, repentance and reconciliation, all of it done without a hint of dishonest proselytizing? If you know of one, let me know. ...That's a film I'd like to see...

Thu, 22 Feb 2007 14:55:06 GMT

Lent: Hoping to See

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Lent has arrived. It didn't sneak up me. I've been watching its approach the way we used to watch storm fronts come rolling in. "Dread" may be too strong a word, but my anticipation of "giving something up" has been shadowy. Fasting has not gone well the past twelve months, and doubt about my ability to keep the simplest vow to God made me wonder if I wouldn't abandon Lent altogether this year. Then yesterday afternoon, like the first blast of cold air ahead of the front, my throat started tickling, and by nightfall, I felt lousy enough to head to bed early, nursing my achy body and stuffy head. But this morning, still feeling lousy, I rolled out of bed knowing that I was embracing the Lenten season after all. This year's sacrifice is one of my staples, and suddenly, as I start to write this, Jesus[base '] warning about secrecy insinuates itself into my head, and I think I'll just keep it to myself. The point is, Lent is one of the more challenging times of the year, especially if there's much to repent. Nonetheless, I'm thankful for it, thankful that these six weeks roll around each year to call me to a deeper place. This year, I hope to answer. I've appropriated a story of Jesus over the past couple of days. Toward the end of Matthew 10, a blind man makes a lot of noise hoping to catch Jesus' attention. Jesus calls the man to come to him, and then asks the famous question, "What do you want me to do for you?" The blind man's reply is just what you'd expect: "I want to see." For an artist, there is nothing more important than this: to see. Our work begins with our contact with the tangible world through our five senses, "see" here being an analog for all five senses. Beginning with sensory contact, art grows out of the synergy created as we reach out and touch the world alive to our sight, touch, taste, hearing, and smell. As we encounter these sense impressions, we then bring the experience inside our skin, where it is delivered via the imagination to our thinking faculties, where such experience is transformed into idea and image, memory and hope, creativity and warning. Such thinking then informs our next encounter with the sensory world, which then folds back into our unseen selves, only to be spun out again and again in a never-ending process called consciousness. But along the way, something akin to erosion sets in. Our experience dulls down, sense impressions are felt as if through a thick glove so that nothing has the edge of freshness. We've seen it all, felt it all, done it all. The highs of yesterday goad us into upping the ante for tomorrow, and soon we are bloated on empty stimulation, wondering why favorite foods don't taste as good, favorite stories don't move us anymore, and favorite intimacies hold little interest. Meaning gets lost, and pretty soon, we're just hanging on until the ride's over. Simply put: we go blind, sometimes even in our hearts. When books about creativity are pitched at adults it's usually in the context of this learned blindness. The recovery/rediscovery of sight (read creative living) is not something for artists--it strikes me as a core need for all of us. Something has gone missing from our lives. The old Wordsworth poem says "The things which I have seen, I now can see no more." During Lent, as I go about the daily task, I"m hoping to spend lots of time talking to God. And when He asks what I"m there for, and what I want him to do for me, I know what my answer's going to be. ...I want to see...

Wed, 14 Feb 2007 20:16:36 GMT

Decisions...On The Other Hand

Just a short follow up to yesterday's post regarding decisions: I referenced those decisions which come at moments of crisis, but I also mentioned decisions I'd made as a child that could not be traced to particular moments. This morning, I was having a conversation with a friend of mine, and we were talking about the awareness of change. I was saying how I can feel something moving inside me, changing, but that whatever decisions that might entail were still in the future. But then I remembered those childhood decisions, and wondered out loud if a day might come where I simply woke up and knew the decisions were made some time ago, and that I'd missed the moment. Then we talked of seasons, and how understanding can change in an instant, as in epiphanies, and how it can also change over a lifetime, a process of slow, incremental evolution. Seasons are marked by specific days on the calendar, but Spring arrives in the air over time, each new day insinuating the slow exit of Winter, and one day you're walking the block around your house, and the color bursts into your awareness and you know Spring has been coming for some time. The calendar date is not useless, but it is a minor theme in understanding the coming of a season. I wasn't sure Winter would ever end. ...I think it might...

Wed, 14 Feb 2007 03:34:45 GMT

Decisions, Crisis, and Will

This past Friday I taught some playwriting classes for Taproot Theatre's Church Drama Conference. I enjoyed the preparation for the classes mostly because I learned some things, and in fact, had a bit of an "ah-ha" moment as I thought about the relationship between what we call the "crisis" and the "climax" in story structure. My epiphany may or may not "hold water" as they say, but it has opened a new place in my spirit, a place that seems to offer some hope. It makes me think of Yoda's "Try? There is no try. There is only do or not do." (Or something like that.) Robert Mckee, in his book Story, implies that crisis is the most important moment of the story structure. For me, that's a new thought. I've always thought of the climax as being the most important, and indeed, it is usually the most memorable, being the place where the battle is either won or lost for good. But McKee asserts that the action of the climax is a mere (well...not mere) working out of what has been decided at the moment of crisis when the protagonist faces a choice that is a true dilemma. And it is in this moment--not the moment of climax--that character is revealed, and it is this moment that will require the greatest strength of will. What went off in my head when I put this together was simply this: I reflected on all the major decisions of my life and was surprised to discover that there weren't that many. Some I made in my childhood. For those, I can't really point to a particular moment in time when the choice was made. But I know that deep, near-irrevocable choices were made back then, and I can clearly conjure the events that brought those decisions about. But the others, the decisions of adulthood, these almost all have a particular moment attached to them, when I had to reach down and once and for all, decide. And whatever pain came with the decision, it simply was what it was. Because the choice had been made. I take a couple of thoughts from this. First, we decide whether we consciously choose or not. As is often said, no choice is a choice. Another way to say it, and it's brutal, is that looking at my life, I am looking at the sum total of my truest decisions, the decisions that are in fact the basis of my current condition. Secondly, to decide is both transforming and shattering. The only sure path to breaking patterns, habits, prisons, or any number of other bugaboos in our lives is to drop down into ourselves and with the help of God, family, friends, and anybody else who'll stand in our corner...decide. Those decisions are where we are tested, where we must bring the full weight of all we are to bear. These decisions are where--just as in story--the true character is revealed. And most often, they don't happen without deep crisis. Lent is approaching, and I'm tempted to bail on the whole thing this year. My fast days have been virtually non-existent in recent months, and I don't want to fail in my Lenten experience. But then I think back, and I know the freedom of deciding to take a course of action, knowing that it will be difficult, but also knowing that the difficulty is beside the point and somewhat irrelevant. The doors to other paths are shut, the ships have been burned, and there is no path the one we have chosen. Commitment, I suppose, is the word. My pastor once told me, and he was right, that I was afraid of commitment. I wonder if that's a word he ends up giving to a lot of people. Lent. I have another week to decide. "...grace is most often experienced as power..." John Ortberg...

Sun, 04 Feb 2007 15:31:33 GMT

Acedia, Enthusiasm, Cynicism...Super Bowl Sunday

This morning's Bible class will use Chapter 17 of Os Guinness' book The Call to address a topic we've visited before: acedia. Linked in the modern world to depression, the popular word for acedia is sloth, and I blogged about it back in September of 2006, so I won't revisit that territory here. Enough to say that sloth is far more than lazing on the couch watching the Colts and the Bears: it is a complex spiritual condition that kills. Os Guinness asserts that having a deep sense of God's calling is the best antidote to acedia, and I tend to agree, but that's not what I want to talk about. In getting ready for class, I kept encountering intersections with both enthusiasm and cynicism. As an INFP (Myers-Briggs), I am a classic idealist, and you know what they say---an idealist is a cynic in training. Confession time: I fit the bill. Anjie and I were talking last night, and I confessed that one of my chief challenges is that I need to recover my "passion" for the things I'm doing. I've always (I say "always"--probably not so much anymore) been known as a passionate sort of guy. As a teacher, many of my student-reviews have included the word "passionate," and there is usually a sense of gratitude that goes with the description. As an actor, I've been described the same way. Unfortunately, life has a way of beating up the idealist, the world being a generally difficult place to live, and the temptation to cave in to cynicism, despair, and acedia can be overwhelming. But as I said, in this morning's study, two things emerged. First of all, in looking at sloth as the fourth of the seven deadly sins, I came across the seven holy virtues that are guards against the sins, and guess what lines up with sloth? Zeal and diligence, both which have associations with enthusiasm. Enthusiasm--now there's an old friend of a word. I remember all the days of Amway rallies, the tapes and books all trumpeting the idea that enthusiasm comes for the Greek meaning, essentially, "God in you." Well, the cynic in me advises me to turn up my nose at such foolishness, reminding me I didn't very well with all that hype business, but the etymology of the word is just what all those motivators said it was. The Greeks had this notion of being inspired or infused by the gods, and that the state of enthusiasm was a state of possession. I confess, possession by God in service of his chosen task for my life, a possession come by not through coercion and fear but by willing yielding...this sounds very much like Jesus' life, the life Paul describes as being the inheritance of the children of God. Paul said, "Never be lacking in zeal, but keep your spiritual fervor, serving the Lord." (Romans 12:11) But today of all days is a day of unbridled enthusiasm in American culture, and perhaps this is why so many of us creep to the door of enthusiasm with such misgivings. "Hype" is the bastard child of enthusiasm, trading on the word's good name, but in the end, selling us little of substance. Don't get me wrong, I enjoy the Super Bowl, and I'll watch from the kickoff to the final whistle, and I'll even enjoy the commercials. But truth is, it's a football game played in the midst of a big commercial party, and certainly most would agree that the enthusiasm for this event is less than pure, and the amateur's love of sport is not what's being celebrated. Coach Taylor (on Friday Night Lights) tells his wife, "I love football. And I love these kids." His enthusiasm for the game shows, but what it really shows is his enthusiasm for what football does in his own life, how it anchors him, how it gives him a focus and reason for being and giving his best, and how it gives him a means by which to connect with and help his students. For Coach Taylor, football's meaning is certainly something other that the money, the celebrity, and the shared experiential high that sweeps the westernized world each February. Call me a cynic. Fun is not a bad thing--we'll have Super Bowl fun in my house today. But what I really pray is that at the end of the game, I will turn back to my tasks with God's Spirit possessing me, yielding to the call I was given a long time ago. True, organic, child-like enthusiasm points to that which we love ("You should see my children!") and may our love for God and his beauty and presence lift us up off the couches of our cynicism to offer a deeply grounded hope. Was there ever a cynical gardener, a bitter farmer who planted even though he was sure in his heart nothing would grow? ...when the call comes, so does adrenaline...

Thu, 01 Feb 2007 01:59:15 GMT

The Neil Postman Problem

Monday night, Anjie and I went to Hale's Ales in Ballard to Dick Staub's The Kindlings Muse. If you haven't checked it out, you should. Every Monday night, former Chicago radio personality Dick Staub hosts an evening with experts in various fields of creativity, arts, religion, and politics hoping to foster what he calls "hospitable" conversations about Christian faith and current culture. Podcasts of these conversations can be found at The Kindling's Muse web site. Monday night's forum was a discussion of the ongoing relevance of Neil Postman's late 1980's book Amusing Ourselves to Death in which Postman argues that mass media culture--especially the visual culture, namely television--is a detriment to rational discourse, especially discourse on a national level. Staub was joined by Image journal editor Gregory Wolfe, local Seattle artist Scott Erickson, and the producer of The Kindling's Muse, Jennie Spohr. I've been using Postman's book in my classes for the past eight or nine years, which made me curious as to how the conversation would go. Greg Wolfe did his usual brilliant commentary, summarizing Postman's major thesis that everything these days is entertainment, that informed serious discourse is next to impossible in this television age, and that the very medium of television shrinks and distorts no matter how responsibly it is used. For Postman, reading is a higher form of processing information, and even back in those days, he was worried that we were suffering as a culture because we got most of our information from television and celebrity magazines. The idea is that how we process information, and the various technologies that support those processes, impact and change not only what we think, but how we think, how we go about reasoning, and that the sort of reasoning championed by the Enlightment simply cannot be fostered by a mass media barrage of images. Ken Myer argued much the same thing in another great book All God's Children and Blue Suede Shoes. What was curious was that I kept expecting to hear the pushback to Postman's arguments, that mass media technologies--especially television and the Internet--are too new to really assess how they might impact the intellectual life long term. Or that the access to so much new information on a global scale changes the possibilities and make potential connections almost infinite in scope. And certainly no one ventured the opinion that the rapid, never ending process of juxtaposition of disparate images and the endless assembling of those images into self-constructed stories is a cognitive process every bit as rich and effective as the abstract reasoning championed by the Greeks and everybody else in Western culture since Socrates and Plato. I look at it like this: let's suppose we conducted a hypothetical case study concerning two children of comparable intelligence and opportunity. From the age of three, let's say that the first child read almost exclusively, hardly ever watching television, and using the Internet for primarily social contact and research. Let's say the other child spends most of his time watching television, reading only when part of an assignment, never for pleasure according to his own choice, and his use of the Internet was not only for social contact and research, but was primarily for entertainment. Now there will no doubt be difference between these two children. What might those differences be? We can hem and haw all day long, but in the end, I think you would be hard pressed to find many parents who would not prefer their children to grow up with the acquired skill sets of the first child rather than the skills sets of the second. To put it another way, a person can do strong analysis of film and television, be it social, theological, or psychological, but if they only watched film and television, they would never learn how to do such analysis. Is it fair to say that for the engagement of pop culture to be effective, the critic must bring a literary mind to their analysis of the film? I may be wrong here, but does it not take deep rationality to grasp the meanings and truths of post-modern juxtapositions? Anyway, the rebuttal to Postman's thesis was pretty non-existent on Monday night's panel. There were some general statements like "we shouldn't elevate the word over the image or the image over the word," which to my ear sounded mostly like, "Can't we just all get along?" What was stunning to me was how the panel's comments gave us a sort of case study of Postman's point. Wolfe, the panel expert raised in, steeped in, and championing the culture of reading and literature made reasoned, cogent, entertaining, and illuminating points regarding Postman's thesis (one which he obviously agrees with in great degree), while Erickson and Spohr, both younger and extremely intelligent in their own right, were unable to clearly articulate anything in rebuttal. Actually, Erickson seemed to support Postman, arguing for a deeper kind of art that demands work on the part of the audience (far more so that pop culture requires). He also observed that the television culture does not allow for the kind of silent meditation and interaction with reality required to penetrate the spiritual world deeply. Jennie Spohr was the closest thing to a champion mass media pop culture had, and in the end, didn't really offer any strong reasons why Postman may have gotten it wrong. While earnest and sincere in her statements about good films impacting our lives for the good (she and Staub had just gotten back from the Sundance Festival, where they say what they considered deeply impactful films), she did not really have an answer to why the loss of the historical primacy of the word over the image isn't a bad thing. No doubt there are good reasons to fight for the place of image at the table, but we didn't hear them Monday night. I tend to agree with Postman that something deep is missing in the national conversation, namely civil reasoning, politics being driven more by sound bytes, spin doctors, and image positioning. On the other hand, I also suspect that those who point us to the relative youth of the technologies of pop culture are right in suggesting that we have no idea what the long term implications might be. I hope they're all good. But truthfully, I'm not sure--at least on the cultural and intellectual level--that it will be good at all. But here's the really sticky question: does rich cultural life necessarily lead to rich spiritual life and experience? Would we be willing to give up cultural sophistication in order to be closer to God? At what point does the desire to be more fully human culturally interfere with the journey to God? It's not a rhetorical question. I honestly don't know. ...heading off to read a book...

Fri, 26 Jan 2007 12:38:39 GMT

Abstract to Concrete

Whenever I teach the poetry section of my class in Abilene, I always end up thinking about the fundamental move of the poet: to bring the abstract into the realm of the concrete. Having these comparative minds of ours, it is the only way we can understand things. I confess I have lived far too much of my life in the abstractions, thinking lofty thoughts about love and art and faith and what-have-you, knowing all along that it is one thing to talk about love and art, and quite another to actually practice them in daily action and in the process of making works of perceived beauty. I came across a quote somewhere that said something like: "Jesus is form to God's content." It rang in my head like a bell. This is the meaning and importance of the whole notion of incarnation. God knowing that we are concrete people needing form to understand a thing, and that He is, almost by default in terms of how our minds work, an abstraction. So Jesus comes to give him flesh, imaging what humans had, at that point, only known in abstraction. (Except in "shekinah glory" manifestations of God in the OT.) These days I'm seeing the "abstract to concrete" move everywhere. We say "I love you," and the person we're saying it to wonders what we mean. They will only discover it by our action. Abstract to concrete. We say we have faith, but it only has meaning when it informs and forms our action. When we take a concrete action that is based in faith, it enfleshes what we have tried to understand in our heads. Abstract to concrete. Faith (abstract) without works (concrete) is dead. I suppose I'm thinking about this because I'm always considering how fundamental art and poetry is to life, and it seems to me that art making is embedded in our most fundamental moves of mind. A good life well lived is much like a great poem--dominated by the creative use of concrete nouns and verbs and images. So to live poetically is not a romantic notion, it is a notion of action that knowingly points toward an idea. And for we followers of Christ, realizing that for most of the world he is nothing more than an abstracted idea, it is our action that will put flesh on him (or not), thus gaining plausibility for his whole teaching for life. ...to live poetically...hmmmm...

Tue, 23 Jan 2007 23:01:36 GMT

Celebrity Gossip

A Seattle Times article this morning ("Celebrity worship serves a social and political function [~] for real") argues that America's obsession with the private lives of celebrities plays an important social role, namely that of giving us something to talk about like we used to talk about our neighbors. The cite statistics that says this particular "addiction" isn't going away.

"Gossip weeklies like "Us," "In Touch" and "Star" all report substantial increases in circulation since 2003, collectively selling about 50 percent more subscriptions and single copies in the past 2 [product] years. E! Entertainment Television (the go-to network for the latest earful on who's sleeping with whom) reports a 17 percent increase in the average number of viewers since 2001. And that is to say nothing of the gossip blogs like Gawker and Perezhilton that continue to cultivate a cult readership."

The article goes to state that even the hardcore news outlets like the New York Times are paying attention to Britney and K-Fed. I asked this very question of my students a couple of weeks ago: why all the fuss over celebrity private lives? They gave a variety of answers: that we live vicariously through their adventure and fame, that they have want we want--money, that to read and watch news reports about famous people is "fun" and "interesting," that they "distract us from the harshness of reality," that we like to watch powerful people fail and make mistakes, and of course, there's the idea that we all need heroes, and celebrities, due to the sheer power of their media presence, fit the bill. The Times article cites the fact that it makes for easy conversation at parties and around the proverbial water cooler, connecting us, giving us a shared sense of community and identity. And it quotes P. David Marshall, "professor of media and communication studies at Northeastern" as saying that when we follow the lives of "40 or 50" Hollywood types, we are echoing the small town gossip of yesteryear that we no longer have access to because of our move to big urban centers. Marshall goes on to say that celebrities lives become opportunities for us to discuss and determine values and skills, such as parenting, dating, and family relationships. Does anybody really think we end up learning about relationship by deconstructing Angie's and Jen's ongoing tussle over Brad? Do we learn about how to have better relationships by checking up on Trump's latest attack on Rosie? The key word here is "gossip." (Who knew I was climbing onto a soapbox?) I'm not sure I know why we enjoy watching people (famous or next door) screw up their lives, and why we enjoy being in the know about the details. It's essentially dramatic, true, and it probably serves all sorts of psychological functions, but I cannot get over the essentially squalid nature of the whole exercise. I have my guilty pleasures, and I'm sure I talk about people far more than I should, but as a culture, I can't believe all this fixation on the constructed "reality" served up in tabloids and reality TV is, in the end, good for us. If you've ever known anyone famous, you know they're just like us, trying to live their life as best they can. The constant cameras may be a blessing, and they are a horrific curse. I don't mean to be obnoxious, but I sort of like the way Eugene Peterson translates Proverbs 18:8

Listening to gossip is like eating cheap candy; do you really want junk like that in your belly?

...just thinking out loud...

Fri, 15 Dec 2006 16:38:27 GMT

Looking for Power

About 1:35 a.m., we were waked by our applicances making weird dying noises. The power went out, which wasn't a problem given that we were all asleep. But when five o'clock came, I rolled out of bed, hunted down the candles and wondered how in the world I was going to get by without a cup of coffee. I looked out the front door, and there was power just three doors down. "Not fair," I thought, but there was nothing I could do. Turns out, there were about a million of us in the Seattle area in the same boat. By 8:30, we were back on, though, and life goes on. But while I sat in the dark, my trusty battery powered Macintosh hummed away as I kept chipping away at my study of the Holy Spirit. I've looked up every piece of scripture relating to the Holy Spirit, and now I'm trying to place things into context, working to come to some understanding of what Jesus and Paul and Peter were trying to tell us about this power, this entity, this person we refer to as the Holy Spirit of God. I also wonder why in all the years of Bible instruction in the churches of Christ, we rarely, if ever, talked about Him. I suppose we didn't talk about Him because of our church's historical (read hysterical) attitude toward Pentacostals, wanting desperately to avoid what is seen by many as abuses and falsehoods. And while it makes me a little nervous to actually do this study because of the issues surrounding miracles, tongues, and other such outrageous gifts of the Spirit, it seems to me that the Spirit's work in the world, and in my own life, may be absolutely key in the transformation process. The power to change. It is one of the central questions of our time, and probably any other. How does a human being change? Do they change? Are we stuck with who we are? Can we do nothing about innate and habitual things in our lives that haunt us, that hijack us, that end up hurting others as well as ourselves? How do we overcome the faults in us, the sin, the failings and the missings of the mark? There is nothing more profound that the transformation of a human spirit, a human soul: a human being. Rage turning to understanding and grace, hate turning to love, malice and bitterness turning to forgiveness and compassion, not because such turnings are necessary or law-driven, but because of an organic process that ends up flowing from the very core of our being. It seems central to me that this is a primary meaning of Christ's coming to "save" us. He is telling us that the change we seek is divine, that the power of that change is a free gift of God, and that God gives us His Spirit just for that reason: so that we can live out the discovery of our indentity (hidden in God) with divine assistance and power. It seems that those who tells us divinity resides inside are correct. It's just that the divinity is not us, but a gift of the One who resides in us, calling His dwelling a temple. Seeing someone live in the power of the Spirit, exhibiting love, peace, joy, kindness and all those other fruits of the Spirit can sometimes be akin to looking across the corner and seeing power in a neighbor's house when there's none in your own. You know there is power there, and you know you need it, but you have no idea how to get it. Truly, unless the electrician "saves" you, life will not be lived as it might be. Somebody turn on the lights...

Sun, 26 Nov 2006 13:04:26 GMT

A Prayer for Artists and Musicians

From the Book of Common Prayer

God, whom saints and angels delight to worship in heaven: Be ever present with your servants who seek through art and music to perfect the praises offered by your people on earth; and grant to them even now glimpses of your beauty, and make them worthy at length to behold it unveiled for evermore; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

Amen...

Mon, 30 Oct 2006 14:37:48 GMT

Rich Mullins: The Most Important Thing

Yesterday in our Bible class on The Call, we talked about identity, and the centrality of the call to our sense of identity. One of the guys in the class, an artist who does percussion and leather working, sent me this quote from singer-songwriter Rich Mullins. My friend said he thought I would like it. He's right. From an interview by Sheila Walsh:

SW:

RM: At any given moment it might be slightly different, but I would imagine that nothing would be more important than becoming fully who you were supposed to be. You know what I mean? For me, that's what salvation is all about.

Heart to Heart Interview
Sheila Walsh
Heart to Heart, Christian Broadcasting Network
May 20, 1992
Copyright 1992 by the Christian Broadcasting Network

Yeah, I want to be saved...

Mon, 30 Oct 2006 13:17:10 GMT

A Prodigal Son Hypothetical

A couple of thoughts on sin, how we relate to it, and it's connection with story. Let me start with a hypothetical situation growing out of Jesus' prodigal son story. The relationship between the father and the wayward son is broken when the son leaves home to spend his inheritance in "riotous living." The relationship is restored when the son comes home repentant. What I wonder is how the relationship would then have proceeded? What would have been their conversation as they related to the past? Would the father have wanted to hear about the son's exploits? Would they have then shoved it all under the rug? Now that the sins had been forgiven, would the father say, "Let's never speak of them again?" Would the son need to process those sins in some way, seeing as how these experiences were now part of his humanity, his character, and his identity? If he did have that need, would the father have willingly come to know his wounded and reborn son, wounds and all? To put it like that makes it obvious (at least to me) that the father would want to know his son's story, not in order to condemn, but in order to know his son. The father would create a space wherein the son might mourn and grow--better yet, wherein they might mourn and grow together. Here's the problem for those who would reduce the life of faith to moral behavior. What do we do with failure? What do we do with the sin that will mark us? Yes, confess. Yes, repent. Then what? How do we relate ourselves to our histories, the truths of our lives? To use the old language of Thomas Moore (Care of the Soul and James Hillman (The Soul's Code, do we befriend, even honor our experiences, seeing as how they made us who we are? Or do we live in antagonism with our past, keeping it under wraps, denying its place in our identity? Seems obvious, doesn't it? Here's where story comes in. Truth is needed, and story, in one sense, rests on sin's presence. What is story if not battling obstacles, sins, evil enemies, and the evil in ourselves? Artists must tell the truth because the stories of who we are must be told fully, with all their ugliness, if we are to understand who we are. If the father wants to know the son, he must sit and listen to the boy's story, share his pain, mourn alongside, and when they emerge into the daily reconstruction of the restored relationship, they do it with rich, shared knowledge of life. Intimacy...

Fri, 27 Oct 2006 15:50:42 GMT

Puzzles and Mysteries

I saw Seattle Public Theatre's production of Harold Pinter's Betrayal last night at the Bathhouse Theatre at Greenlake. It was great to see Bob Borwick and Heather Hawkins work in this beautiful, but difficult play about long affairs and friendships, and the impact of each on the other. Long one of my favorite plays, I was very happy to see those famous "Pinter pauses" played so well. But before the play began, my friend Nikki and I were talking about life and religion and mystery and stuff, like we always do. And she wondered if she'd sent me a quote about puzzles and mysteries that went something like this:

"A puzzle is a thing to be solved. A mystery is a thing to be experienced."

I'm sure that's not quite right, but that's the gist of it. My response was something like, "Mystery is the experience as you work to solve the puzzle." This morning, I've been thinking about that analogy, and I journaled a sort of metaphor/analogy/parable that I'm finding helpful. I'm going to post the entry to see if any of you have any thoughts about it's validity. It's about honoring the emptiness of a vacancy in the puzzle rather than living with the long consequences of trying to stuff the wrong piece in to its place.

Why not leave a hole of possibility rather than stuff the wrong thing in it?

Living with undone puzzles...

Fri, 27 Oct 2006 13:04:41 GMT

The Wrecks We Are

I'm not going to write a long post today, but I am going to point to one. Here's a long, challenging article from Michael Spenser over at The Internet Monk on the nature of being human in the midst of following Jesus. "When I am Weak: Why We Must Embrace Our Weakness and Never Be Good Christians." Read it. Because of several experiences recently, small surges of emotion and thought in reaction to some innocuous event or word spoken, I'm beginning to think a transformation is in full swing. And it is simply this: it's time for me to re-imagine this whole Kingdom of God business. As I've been known to say lately, "There are so many ways to approach living." One of my themes over the past few years has been the gap that exists between the seemingly powerful spiritual lives of the people of the New Testament and the rather paltry spiritual lives led by me and the majority of Christians I know. Paul and company threw out demons. These days, we're the ones getting tossed around. And maybe The Internet Monk is simply capitulating to the fact that we're such lousy Christians anymore. But I think he may be on to the truth of things: Christians have always been lousy at being Christians, and it's a terrible injustice, not to mention lie, when we run around saying we're "good" Christians. I've always believed that how we view our humanity is critical. And in a sort of underground, quiet way, I've always fought for a central place at the table for our brokenness and sin. Not the sin that's fixed, but the sin that remains, the sin we battle and rage against, praying a thousand thousand times to be delivered from--that life of sin. How we relate ourselves to our brokenness is a key in how we see our identity whether we follow Jesus or not. Francis Schaeffer used to say we should never be shocked at sin in others, because we have an inside track the real problem of human nature. I don't remember him saying we shouldn't be shocked at the sin in ourselves. Read the article and we'll talk some more...

Tue, 24 Oct 2006 15:14:11 GMT

Doubt II

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"Doubt": Heather Goldenhersh, left, as Sister James and Cherry Jones as Sister Aloysius. From the New York Production. Photo by Joan Marcus

The play itself was brilliant. As a playwright, to see each scene so clearly and passionately drawn, with clear, high stakes, conflicts straight-forward and deeply rooted in character, is to get a clinic in the craft. John Patrick Shanley says he started with a title: Doubt. In a play about the virtues of doubt, there must be its opposite, namely certainty. Sister Aloysius, played at Seattle Rep by Candice Chappell, is certainty personified. As head of a Catholic school, she is sure of her fierce and rigid character, as well as the necessity of it. She rails at Sister James (Melissa D. Brown), a sensitive young teacher who obviously, according to Sister Aloysius, coddles her charges far too much. When Sister Aloysius begins to suspect that the local priest, Father Flynn (Corey Brill), is sexually abusing one of the boys, she quickly becomes certain of his guilt and swears to use every inch of her power to run him out of the parish. To her credit, there seems to be little doubt (ha!) that Sister Aloysius' primary motivation is the protection of the children in the school. She is not out to get Father Flynn for personal, vindictive reasons, although she explicitly understands that the patriarichal nature of her world will stand against her when she makes her accusations. But after she bolsters her case against Father Flynn with the flimsiest of circumstantial evidence, her own conviction, and the reaction of Father Flynn to a lie Sister Aloysius concocts to trap him, she finally comes to see the flaws in her own fundamental certainty. The play ends with Sister Aloysius bending in pain at the flood of doubt that is finally assailing her. The brilliance of the play is that Shanley leaves the audience just where the characters are: wanting to know whether or Father Flynn is guilty. And of course, Shanley doesn't tell us. With the sex scandals of recent years coming to light, it is easy to want to lump Father Flynn in with the guilty, but Shanley doesn't give us enough hard evidence to know. And here's the point: the uncertainty that tortures us as we seek justice for these wronged boys is what makes us human. Shanley is arguing that it is our doubt that brings us together. Certainty divides. It seems obvious that the religious wars of history tell us that plainly. We know it even in our own small circumstances. Shanley wants us to see that in acknowledging our doubt, by giving it voice, by making our decisions with doubt plainly in sight, we join the human race in humility. As Father Flynn says in the play (and I'm paraphrasing here), "When you doubt, you are not alone." I left the theatre feeling better than I had when I entered it. It's not that I like my doubts...I'd gladly give them up to know evidentially of all I hope for. But there is a reality in voicing our doubts and misgivings. How the faith to move mountains and the doubt that keeps us humble intersect in our souls is a mystery to me, but in my doubt, I suppose God understands. What do we do with Jamesm who says, "...he who doubts is like a wave of the sea, blown and tossed by the wind..."

Mon, 23 Oct 2006 14:45:10 GMT

Doubt

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Kandiss Chappell and Corey Brill in Seattle Repertory Theatre's Doubt, from the Seattle Weekly's Review

This past Saturday night, Anjie and I were fortunate to see Seattle Repertory Theatre's closing night performance of John Patrick Shanley's Doubt. Doubt, which was running in New York when Daniel and I were there last year, won the 2005 Pulitzer Prize for Best Drama, and no wonder. Shanley, best known in pop culture as the writer of the film Moonstruck, wrote one of my favorite plays, a short romantic piece exploring teenage romance called The Red Coat. I knew Doubt would be good, but it's elegance and power caught me by surprise. Going to Seattle Rep usually gives me a case of the regrets because of my short stint there in 1984. My resignation from an internship in artistic direction there was a turning point in my life, and not necessarily a good one. It was the foolish act of a young man who knew little about the world of professional theatre, and even less about the difficulty of mixing faith and art. As a result, the times I've been to the Rep since have always been laced with notalgia and thoughts of what might have been. Needless to say, this is not helpful when wanting to engage a play. But Shanley's Doubt blew past all of that. When I first sat down, I read his essay-- "Embracing Doubt"--in the front of the program, a piece which apparently he wrote for the LA Times. I'd hoped to find the essay and link to it, but it doesn't appear to be online. For reasons that were clear to me, the essay spoke some healing into me even before the curtain went up.

"We are living in a culture of extreme advocacy, of confrontation, of judgment, and of verdict. Discussion has given way to debate. Communication has become a contest of wills. Public talking has become obnoxious and insincere. Why? Maybe it's because deep down under the chatter we have come to a place where we know that we don't know...anything. But nobody's willing to say that."

"It is Doubt (so often experienced initially as weakness) that changes things. When a man feels unsteady, when he falters, when hard-won knowledge evaporates before his eyes, he's on the verge of growth. The subtle or violent reconciliation of the outer person and the inner core often seems at first like a mistake, like you've gone the wrong way and you're lost. But this is just emotion longing for the familiar. Life happens when the tectonic power of your speechless soul breaks through the dead habits of the mind. Doubt is nothing less than an opportunity to reenter the Present."

"Doubt requires more courage than conviction does, and more energy; because conviction is a resting place and doubt is infinite--it is a passionate exercise. You may come out of my play uncertain. You may want to be sure. Look down on that feeling. We've got to learn to live with a full measure of uncertainty. There is no last word. That's the silence under the chatter of our time."

While I can't subscribe to the "no last word" theory, Shanley's belief that doubt is a humanizing force, creating humility and the possiblity for true diverse community, is a welcome idea. I could breathe easier as I settled in for the opening of the play, knowing that perhaps these are days of growth, as hard as they are. Tomorrow, the play...

Fri, 20 Oct 2006 13:27:28 GMT

Dad's Cousin, and the Passage of Faith

Is there anything better than a long meal with family and friends spiced with memories of people you all love? Last night, around six o'clock, one of my dad's first cousins rolled into our driveway to spend the night. I remember Crain from my childhood days and the few times we've seen each other since I grew up. He is an uncle to me, having grown up next to my father as something closer to a brother than a cousin. He and his wife and his now grown son sat down to a meal of salmon, chicken, asparagus, and apple pie, and stayed at our table until well after ten, telling stories of Dad and their family, stories laced with both joy and sadness. He told us about "Jo-jo" (Crain's name for my father, which was a variation I don't remember hearing before) riding "service-cycles" which were somthing like motorcycles, about Dad being in the drama club in high school, about his desire to be a preacher. He also talked about Dad's determination, that once his mind was made up, that was it, and that though his mother and her sister (Crain's mom) didn't think Dad was ready to be married, there was no stopping him. As we swapped stories about our lives, it hit me like it always does. There is always a point in these conversations when I get overwhelmed with the poignancy of life, its long scope of generations, its heartbreaking depth and beauty. They talked of the old days--this would be the 1930's and 40's--of farms and working the land, eating black-eyed peas and tomatoes for seeming months at a time, of visits to Oklahoma and riding white horses and Shetland ponies, of the thunder of the West Texas storms. And then there was the more recent story of their son-in-law's brother who in his late twenties was tragically killed by a lighting strike, literally out of the blue, even as their daughter was approaching the birth of twins. Death and new life colliding again, just as they did with Dad and Amy. And there was talk of church and the heartache of change. Musical instruments coming into the churches of Christ, new models of ministry, decades of emotional and financial investment discarded at the whim of the newest, avant garde preachers. And in the eyes of these fine people, I can see years gone by, an entire culture of Christ-followers who perhaps did not get it all right, didn't follow in all the ways they'd hoped, but they did their best, and now, with change breaking all they fought to keep sacred, how difficult it is to hold on to the old ways. They want to be graceful in the change, and it is just so hard. And their son sits with them, a beautiful young man who just now is making his life and living in music. And he sees the future, and is instinctively longing for the emergent church, even though, until we talked about it last night, he hadn't really been part of the conversation. Something tells me he will find his way to a group of people seeking to follow Jesus in a much different way than his father and mother, but that in the end, just as as been the case with this uncle of mine, people will experience the presence of God in their lives because of his discipleship, part of another generation of doing-the-best-they-can-with-what-they-know Christians. Missing Dad...

Thu, 19 Oct 2006 12:33:53 GMT

Church Rater

The discussions over at Off The Map are pretty invigorating. This morning I spent some time at Church Rater. These folks are encouraging Christians to find a willing non-Christian to come to church sort of undercover and fill out a ratings form that asks all sorts of questions about the experience. Seems like a good idea to me, if we are looking for honest feedback about how our corporate times are perceived by the very people we are supposed to be reaching out to. It would be fun to know how we rate, and why...

Tue, 17 Oct 2006 13:14:15 GMT

The Jesus Creed

Scot McKnight is a prolific writer and speaker that I had not heard of until this morning. (Read his extensive bio here.) After blogging about my difficulty with various pieces of theology, I read something a couple of days ago about "the problem with the atonement." That led me to do a search on "atonement" this morning, and that led me to McKnight's blog, The Jesus Creed. It's wonderful writing, very scholarly, yet accessible. He's obviously a friend to the emergent church, and just what I've read this morning on the nature of sin and the atonement (his entries on the topic coming in a review of a book by Mark Biddle) has stirred my thinking. I'll be plowing through his deep archives...

Sat, 14 Oct 2006 14:43:40 GMT

Early Morning Walks

My fingers are still cold. The air outside moves in particles big enough to see, the fog drifting by the street lamps. It's quiet out there, and the early morning anxiety I woke with eased as I strolled up and down the sidewalks of 80th, 81st, and 84th. Fighting it out with God over old wounds and wonderings, His quiet reassurance that all will be well, that love is real, that selflessness is a grace to be received, not a goal to be driven toward. Filling my mind with my family, my friends, thinking of their days, their struggles, their dreams. Thinking of my colleagues at church in the arts ministry, each of them wanting to make of their lives art that God enjoys, that He points toward and says, "This is my child." What is accomplishment? There is value to being hailed in the broad market, I suppose, but have there not been hundreds and thousands of voices through the ages that warn us not to listen much to the hue and cry of the street? Our lives are but a mist, a bit of smoke that flees from us even as it arrives. "Prosperity will have its season. Even when it's here, it's going by," says the song from David Wilcox. What is truth, we asked last night. What does it look like in art and poetry and worship? What is this authenticity the postmoderns want? The honesty of my feeling in the moment? Or the character that sets aside the feeling to do the right thing, the thing that is for the greater good? Express the self? Set the self aside for the good of the other? Either/or? Both? With God, there are no worries in the realm of expression and honesty. He sees it all, whether we bid Him to or not. Early morning walks...a good place to learn...