The power of love...

A follow-up to yesterday's post re: another type of witness.  The local paper, The Berkshire Eagle, ran this story - and the reactions of the children are worth the price of admission and more!  Huey Lewis once sang about "the power of love" - and he sure got that one right! Thanks Andy, Charlie, Ben, Johnny and Di.

Check it out @: http://www.berkshireeagle.com/local/ci_18125248

Another type of witness...

Today the Jazz Ambassadors played three jazz shows for over 500 hundred children in two of our poorer neighborhoods - and a bunch of adults, too.  It was another type of witness to both the importance of truth, goodness and beauty and the love of God outside the confines of "churchianity." Too many church folk think their pastor should stay in the office - or else confine him/herself to pastoral visits and calls in the nursing homes.  Now I actually love visiting the folk of the congregation in their homes, etc but I have also come to see how important it is to be OUT in the wider community.  A few thoughts are worth sharing:

+ First, the music was so beautiful and fun it was contagious.  Twenty-first century children - especially those without significant resources - NEVER see/hear live music. From the time I was little, I regularly heard live music: the Boston Pops on the Commons, local musical theatre, folk bands and choirs in church; but this rarely happens today.  Therefore, to share the experience of a live band that loves playing music together is a real incarnational gift that embodies how very different people can come together and create beauty and joy through music.

+ Second, Andy was brilliant in weaving together a 45 minute history of American jazz and was entertaining as well as intellectually satisfying.  So many of our children are the product of "cultural amnesia" - they don't know their own roots - and may never hear the story of jazz.  What's more, today was a wonderful combination of head and heart and body as we had the kids dancing and asking questions, singing and listening and rejoicing.

+ And third, as we prepare for Istanbul, today gave the band another chance to play in a way that was simply ALL about the music. Dianne was on FIRE - engaging with the children, helping them beat the cowbell or clap as she danced and sang up a storm - which helped all of us celebrate her sometimes shy gifts in bold new ways!  Andy was in his prime as both stellar musician and jazz educator and Charlie, Bennie and Johnny offered their insights and gifts in ways that took the music up a notch, too.

One of the reasons I gave thanks to God when I was asked to play in this ensemble was that it gave me a way to be out in the wider Pittsfield community in a NON church role.  Not only did I need to be doing something for the community that wasn't just about building up the church, but I think contemporary people need to see Christians having fun and caring for others without any immediate pay-off.  For good reasons, the Church is often held in suspicion because we are often manipulative and even greedy.  Meeting people as an equal on their turf has been very, very important for my soul and continued ministry.

Today there was no other agenda except music and sharing joy in the beauty and I think that was contagious. It not only fed my soul, it gave 500+ children a chance to see that joy and adulthood can inhabit the same space in time.  What's more, it deepens my sense of incarnational living in the Spirit: Like Fr. Richard Rohr once said, "It took me a long time realize this but my LIFE is where I am supposed to find God each day." Today my life put me in touch with my band mates and a TON of Pittsfield children and a whole bunch of truth, goodness and beauty. Jesus was clearly in the house... and it was a blessing.

What is the value of saying bullshit when...?

Here's a question for preachers, worshippers and those who are concerned about church in general:  is there a value in calling bullshit by its true name in worship?  I have been persuaded by the Stanley Hauwerwas and Clarence Jordan school of public speaking that sometimes there is no better word to describe certain reality except bullslhit.  Jordan, the curmudgeon Baptist preacher and founder of the inter-racial Koinonia Community, called those who are rattled by the earthy words of scripture and reality "Kleenex Christians" - people who just can't handle the dirty truths of incarnational living. 

Evangelist Tony Campolo once cut to the chase for me saying:“[According to a profile in Christianity Today entitled] The Positive Prophet, ... I have three things I'd like to say today. First, while you were sleeping last night, 30,000 kids died of starvation or diseases related to malnutrition. Second, most of you don't give a shit. What's worse is that you're more upset with the fact that I said shit than the fact that 30,000 kids died last night.”

So why does this continue to be true in so many of churches at a time when social sin is eating us alive?  Why are we so afraid of naming bullshit by its true name in the church instead of being offended by hunger, violence and fear? In 2005, the moral philosopher, Harry G. Frankfurt wrote the definitive book on the subject with a small volume called , On Bullshit.  I like this summary of what Frankfurt was trying to accomplish: 

One of the most salient features of our culture is that there is so much bullshit. Everyone knows this. Each of us contributes his share. But we tend to take the situation for granted. Most people are rather confident of their ability to recognize bullshit and to avoid being taken in by it. So the phenomenon has not aroused much deliberate concern. Yet we have no clear understanding of what bullshit is, why there is so much of it or what functions it serves. And we lack a conscientiously developed appreciation of what it means to us. In other words, as Harry Frankfurt writes, "we have no theory."

Frankfurt, one of the world's most influential moral philosophers, attempts to build such a theory here. With his characteristic combination of philosophical acuity, psychological insight, and wry humor, Frankfurt proceeds by exploring how bullshit and the related concept of humbug are distinct from lying. He argues that bullshitters misrepresent themselves to their audience not as liars do, that is, by deliberately making false claims about what is true. In fact, bullshit need not be untrue at all.

Rather, bullshitters seek to convey a certain impression of themselves without being concerned about whether anything at all is true. They quietly change the rules governing their end of the conversation so that claims about truth and falsity are irrelevant. Frankfurt concludes that although bullshit can take many innocent forms, excessive indulgence in it can eventually undermine the practitioner's capacity to tell the truth in a way that lying does not. Liars at least acknowledge that it matters what is true. By virtue of this, Frankfurt writes, bullshit is a greater enemy of the truth than lies are.

Today, as I was talking about the belief that we are called by God to suffer so many of our fears and the agonizing wounds of our souls in silent alienation, I said: "BULLSHIT!  The God made flesh in Jesus Christ is NOT about silent suffering into perpetuity out of pride or shame... God seeks our healing,hope and renewal." I carefully chose to call bad theology bullshit - it wasn't a slip of the tongue - but rather a theological affirmation. And all the while I knew that somebody would be more upset with my street parlance than the fact that this bad theology has keot God's people wounded and afraid for centuries.


So I guess I would like to hear from people of faith who take worship seriously:  what's the deal with all the bullshit?  Why are we so afraid to speak the truth of our God in the everyday language most people use without batting an eye?  Are we really people who affirm the docetic heresy and fear/hate incarnational language?  Thoughts?  Insights? Concerns?  Please... talk among yourselves.

Finding hope in all the ambiguities...

People of the Spirit need bread for the journey.  As a mystic, I know that I must feed the inner fire of my soul as well the outward flesh of my body regularly for to starve either is a form of death.  In an overly busy life both types of malnourishment are all too common place.  Murphy Davis put it like this:

So long as the word remains in any way theoretical and is not incarnated by actions and translated into deeds, then it is not faith. It might be theology - not very good theology - but it is not faith. Faith is a combination of conviction and deeds, and it cannot be one without the other. Faith divorced from deeds is as lifeless as a corpse.

This applies to the spiritual life, too and not just the realm of servanthood, yes?  Like Jung taught:  we can ignore the stranger who is hungry, naked, alone and imprisoned within just as easily as we can refuse to see Christ in the least of embodied sisters and brothers. But incarnating the word to feed the soul and the flesh for a life of faith, hope and love takes practice. There is always so much pain and fear within and among us. 

So, it seems I need to replenish body and soul in unique ways.  Feasting, for example, cooking a meal with love and beauty for those I cherish, feeds both body and soul for me.  Baking bread and playing music also nourishes me in physical, spiritual and emotional ways. Sitting quietly with others before Eucharist - and then sharing prayer and song and bread and wine - brings blessings and renewal, too.  And it all takes time...

Joy Mead (isn't that a grand name?) wrote in her book about the spirituality of bread: "O God of small beginnings and rising hopes, may we see eternity in each wheat grain: ours for today's bread and tomorrow's planting; food of life; gift to the future and seed of hope." Fred Kahn wrote something equally satisfying in a hymn text:  "Pray that at the end of living, of philosophies and creeds, God will find the people busy planting trees and sowing seeds."

Tonight my wee family will feast in our Berkshire home as my daughters come back for an evening together. And our simple meal will be a banquet that will sustain me in ways too deep for human words - and I am grateful.

let the great world spin...

Sometimes you just get tired of the same old shit, yes? After fussing and whining for a day or so about "what to read before bed" (a massive problem given the state of the world, I know) I finally resigned myself to something "serious."  In this case, Colum McCann's brilliant, Let the Great World Spin. I bought it a year ago and have been moving it around my bed stand since - choosing various Scandinavian and English murder mysteries and theological reflections on heaven and Eucharist - instead of settling down to a deep read.

Now, there are good reasons for my procrastination:  I like mind candy at the end of the day, right? It helps me let go and drift off into sleep.  And the ordered world of mystery novels, wherein the good guys win (most of the time), is equally satisfying; who wouldn't like the clarity they offer when most of the day is spent in the always ambiguous realm of contemporary church life?  Like cooking or gardening, mysteries offer a clear beginning and end with a clean resolution to the moral quandaries of life. (I used to like to watch Clint Eastwood's "Dirty Harry" movies for much the same reason back in the day when I was doing urban ministry and Cleveland Board of Education politics.  Sometimes you need closure - and the vicarious thrill of an ass-kicking doesn't hurt!)

So I've collected - and read - tons of good level mysteries:  I love the Inspector Rebus series by Scotland's Ian Rankin, Anne Perry  and John Harvey are a ton of fun, too; and Stieg Larsson's "girl" series are a total blast.  Ok, so I am a popular culture mystery snob - I hate the cookie cutter stuff sold in airport shops - and that's ALL that was left in the house after I finished my current spate of theological offerings.  All that was left on my bedside table were Orhan Pamuk's The Red Book or McCann's Let the Great World Spin.  And late at night, Pamuk's 15 page Turkish sentences that build contradiction upon clarification ad infinitum... well, let's just say it was too much for bedtime.

What a blessing... and I am glad I got tired of the same old shit.  Telling the story of two Irish brothers who find themselves in the South Bronx - one a wastoid poet wannabe and the other a Left-wing Roman Catholic servant of the poor urban monk - McCann describes the theology of the street minister like this:

What Corrigan wanted was a fully believable God, one you could find in the grime of the everyday. The comfort he got from the hard, cold truth - the filth, the war, the poverty - was that life could be capable of small beauties. He wasn't interested in the glorious tales of the afterlife or the notions of a honey-soaked heave. To him that was a dressing room for hell. Rather he consoled himself with the fact that, in the real world, when he looked closely into the darkness he might find the presence of a light, damaged and bruised, but a little light all the same. He wanted, quiet simply, for the world to be a better place, and he was in the habit of hoping for it. Out of that came some sort of triumph that went beyond theological proof, a cause for optimism against all the evidence.

That's worth the price of admission right there, yes?  And it keeps getting better. This week has been filled with little clues like McCann's "small beauties" idea: 

+ meeting with a colleague in ministry to encourage her congregation's leaders to live into the beauty of their deepest calling as the body of Christ

+  listening to Paul Simon's new work, "So Beautiful or So What?"

+ trying to get my ideas about Christ's open table botched up and then corrected with the help of kind friends

+ playing a killer jazz gig that was energizing, mellow, experimental and beautiful all at the same time

+ enduring a week of wicked rain only to look out this morning at the lush greenery and flowers that have exploded behind our house

+ my daughters heading to our place this weekend for feasting and visiting

I think of another soul who also - call it the fullness of time - grew tired of the same old shit and put it like this in chapter 8 of his letter to the Romans: For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us... (don't you know that) the Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what to pray for as we ought, but the Spirit intercedes for us with sighs too deep for words.

Today my prayer has to do with looking for the small beauties that are somehow part of the Spirit's as she sighs in way too deep for human words.

Still flashin'...

Still flashin' from an oh-so-sweet jazz gig last night!  Miles was in the house - so was the spirit of Sonny Rollins, Ray Charles, Duke Ellington, Earl Gardner, Ella Fitzgerald, Herbie Hancock, Dave Brubek and just a little bit of Coltrane, too.  Bennie "Fingers" Cohn was the man of the hour - calling most of the tunes - as he transformed his magic keyboards into a full orchestra, Stevie Wonders clav for "Superstition" or a Turkish drum machine with a hip hop soul for a long improvisation.

The great American poet, Carl Sandberg, put it like this in "Jazz Fantasia" which is what I am still flashin on 12 hours later.

Drum on your drums, batter on your banjoes,
sob on the long cool winding saxophones.
Go to it, O jazzmen.

Sling your knuckles on the bottoms of the happy
tin pans, let your trombones ooze, and go husha-
husha-hush with the slippery sand-paper.

Moan like an autumn wind high in the lonesome treetops,
moan soft like you wanted somebody terrible, cry like a
racing car slipping away from a motorcycle cop, bang-bang!
you jazzmen, bang altogether drums, traps, banjoes, horns,
tin cans -- make two people fight on the top of a stairway
and scratch each other's eyes in a clinch tumbling down
the stairs.

Can the rough stuff . . . now a Mississippi steamboat pushes
up the night river with a hoo-hoo-hoo-oo . . . and the green
lanterns calling to the high soft stars . . . a red moon rides
on the humps of the low river hills . . . go to it, O jazzmen.

Another American genius, Langston Hughes, put it like this in "Jazzonia" and I felt this, too.

Oh, silver tree!
Oh, shining rivers of the soul!

In a Harlem cabaret
Six long-headed jazzers play.
A dancing girl whose eyes are bold
Lifts high a dress of silken gold.
Oh, singing tree!

Oh, shining rivers of the soul!

Were Eve's eyes
In the first garden
Just a bit too bold?
Was Cleopatra gorgeous
In a gown of gold?

Oh, shining tree
Oh, silver rivers of the soul!
In a whirling cabaret
Six long-headed jazzers play.

A few more State-side gigs - a day in the schools next week and Patrick's Pub on June 2nd - then... Istanbul, here we come!  The day we land, the Office of the Mayor in Beyoglu (the arts section of Istanbul) and the State Department have asked us to present our official city certificate and play a set at the close of their arts festival.  Things are REALLY coming together!

Oh well...

Tonight we play a jazz gig at Baba Louie's in Pittsfield.  This noon I celebrate a quiet, reflective Eucharist in our Sanctuary.  The weekend, our children will be with us for a visit and dinner. Spring is mostly here - the lilacs are fragrant and the Japanese cherry trees are ripe - and the rains are abundant.

For some reason the old Fleetwood Mac prayer/song keeps going through my head - as do these words from Fr. Richard Rohr about John the Beloved Disciple.


John is not only the archetype of the mystic, the lover, the chosen son; he is also the bearer of the agony of all chosenness. Election is seldom appreciated by others; it is seldom honored as a true touch from God. Our personal insecurity and neediness are too great to recognize and delight in the specialness of anyone else. Others are a threat to our zero-sum existence. Beloved status is almost always mistrusted, envied, judged, and even persecuted. That is the burden of being a chosen son or daughter.

Read the lives of saints and religious founders. Most of their persecution comes from their own families, and very often from church authorities. In the book of Jonah, it is the good and pious men who throw Jonah overboard (Jonah 1:14-16), while covering their attempted homicide with prayer, God-talk, and the making of heroic vows.

I think this is going to be one of those seemingly random days where everything fits but I am just not sure how:  jazz, Eucharist, lilacs, family, marriage, divorce, feasting, prayer and band practice.  Oh well...

Where is God when I hurt - part two

NOTE:  Here are this week's sermon notes - part four of the "LOVE WINS" series - and a follow-up to last week's hard question:  "Where the Hell Is God in my Pain?" Last week, I offered a spirituality to get grounded in God - a necessary counter-cultural approach - rather than focusing on self. This week I explore some of the wisdom about where is God in the midst of our suffering.  And NEXT week, I'll take it deeper, too.  Join us if you are in town on Sunday, ok?

“Life is full of hard things,” writes Sr. Joan Chittister of the Benedictine Community of Lake Erie. “And when circumstances persist even though I bend every effort to eliminate them, then clearly those are the will of God for me – and there is something in them that I must learn to deal with.”

• These words hold meaning and import for us today as we wrestle with the question I raised last week, “Where the hell is God in the midst of my suffering?”

• For those of you who recall I said that I would give you my answer this week – in part two of my message – and while not everybody was paying attention, that’s what I’m going to try to do this morning: give you my best shot at answering the question of God’s whereabouts in the middle of our pain.

Because the answer, you see, is the fundamental reason why we have a local church. God doesn’t need us to celebrate the Mass – participate in Eucharist – or honor the Sacraments of the Church. And in some cases, the space and resources taken up and often wasted by congregations would be better used by daycare centers for children and adults, feeding facilities for the most wounded among us and homes of hospice for the indigent.

But we have been given a calling – a unique and sacred office – for living in the world. St. Peter – often known as the Rock for both his enthusiasm and thick head – described our calling like this after stumbling through most of his life getting it wrong, betraying Christ and pleading for mercy. He wrote these words towards the end of his ministry:

You've had a taste of God. Now, like infants at the breast, drink deep of God's pure kindness (so that) you'll grow up mature and whole in God. (You have been called to show the world the wisdom of the Cross) - the living Stone and the source of life – that many have taken one look at and thrown out. But God has set it in the place of honor and invites you to present yourselves as building stones for the construction of a sanctuary vibrant with life… you are the ones chosen by God, chosen for the high calling of this priestly work… to be God's instruments to do his work and speak out for him, to tell others of the night-and-day difference God made for you—from nothing into something, from rejected to accepted. I Peter 2: 2-10, The Message, Eugene Peterson

Our calling is NOT to be a burial society for the well-heeled or a social service agency for the poor. We are not a free clinic, a school of psycho-therapy or a vaguely religious club: we are those called to bear witness to the Cross – the stone most of the world still throws away – but which we have discovered is the key to salvation. So, let me suggest three different levels where God meets us in our suffering and shows us through the Cross where the Hell he is even in the midst of our pain.

As prelude, however, I have to ask you to give up your notion of the Lord that you first learned and constructed in childhood. When we are hurting or afraid or grieving, it is almost second nature for us to slip into childish thoughts about God – they are our oldest – and our most time-tested. I know adults – sometimes myself included – who sometimes like to keep the light on at night just like we did when we were small.

But a childish sense of God’s nature doesn’t help us when it comes to the harsh realities of human suffering. God isn’t daddy – or mommy – or some hyper-spiritualized concept of your first pastor, priest, Sunday School teacher or cosmic policeman. So if you are serious about finding the presence of the Lord in midst of your pain, St. Paul asks that we embrace these insights born of his experience:

+ First, he writes in I Corinthians 13: 11-12: When I was a child, I spoke as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became an adult, I put away childish things. For now we see as through a glass, darkly; but later I shall see face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known.

What do you get from this? Why does Paul use these words as the conclusion to the most mature description of Christian love in the Bible?  In another passage of Scripture (Romans 12: 2) he puts it like this: do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God. Remember what I told you last week? “We do not think ourselves into new ways of living, rather we live ourselves into new ways of thinking?" To find God in our pain we cannot be looking for daddy – or momma – or even a sacred granny.

The other two Pauline suggestions are equally challenging: Like Sr. Joan, the Apostle Paul believes that after we’ve tried everything else we can to heal, transform or escape our pain, if it still persists then that reality is the will of God:

• Romans 5: 3: By faith… we are able to glory in our suffering, knowing that suffering produces perseverance; and perseverance produces character; and character produces hope. And God’s hope does not disappoint us because hope is God’s love being poured out into our hearts by the Holy Spirit.

• Why is this insight important to finding God in our suffering? Do you sense how profoundly counter-cultural this is? How much it embodies the paradoxical wisdom of the Cross?

First, Paul’s admonishment to grow up and mature when it comes to thinking about God’s love; second, his challenge to acknowledge reality – pain and all – as the will of God. And third, another truth from the Cross that tells us that even ugly, painful and evil truths can be transformed by the love of God just as Good Friday became Easter.

• Romans 8: “We can be so sure that every detail in our lives of love for God is worked into something good…I'm absolutely convinced that nothing—nothing living or dead, angelic or demonic, today or tomorrow, high or low, thinkable or unthinkable—absolutely nothing can get between us and God's love because of the way that Jesus our Master has embraced us.”

• Not that everything is good – we know that it isn’t – there is war and hunger and rape and abuse and stupidity and racism and homophobia and environmental devastation and so much more. NOT everything is good, but… everything can be used for good for those who love God.

• Do you grasp the distinction?

“Life is full of hard things. And when circumstances persist even though I bend every effort to eliminate them, then clearly those are the will of God for me – and there is something in them that I must learn to deal with.” Are you still with me? Any thoughts or clarifications before I go on? Now let’s see if we can go deeper into the hard question of where the hell is God in the midst of my pain? 

• What do you hear when I tell you that in most of the pain of life, God is distant – or silent – or absent? Don’t react too quickly – take a moment to let this simmer – and then see where it leads you.

• And let me amplify just briefly by adding two qualifiers: I believe that most of the world’s pain is caused by sin; and I believe that God has a unique way of responding to human sin.

Think about it: most hunger and starvation is born of greed – most sexual violence is born of lust and a broken need to control and shame – most poverty is born of gluttony, most war is born of hatred and fear. Maybe Gandhi was the most succinct in clarifying the social consequences of sin when he said: Most of the world’s pain comes down to…

Politics without principles - Wealth without work
Pleasure without conscience - Knowledge without character
Commerce without morality - Science without humanity
Worship without sacrifice

This is on a macro-level, I know – and we’ll get to the intimate agony of our personal pain in just a moment – but we cannot leave this component out of the picture for to do so would be childish. Most of the agony and suffering of the world is caused NOT by God, but human sin.

• Industrial pollution and cancer? The epidemic of violence against women?

• Starvation and homelessness in the wealthiest nation in the world? Malaria and foul water in Africa?

This is all human sin – but here is where I take a sharp left turn from the conclusions offered by most of the rest of my other Reformed brothers and sisters. They have taught – and continue to preach in a manner I find cruel and mean-spirited – saying that the consequence of sin is God’s wrath. Hellfire and brimstone – fear and alienation – suffering and the gnashing of teeth – this is what you get because of sin…?

I know that is conventional wisdom in “churchianity,” but it is all backwards and has NOTHING to do with what Jesus taught or even the insights of the Hebrew Bible. Jesus promised that he would be with us always – in every circumstance – including sin and alienation as well as faith and blessing. So could it be that this cruel, old notion of God’s wrath is really just another childish and hyperbolic holdover that we need to retire? I think a truer and more grace-filled statement of God’s wrath is NOT active punishment for sin, but… absence – distance – silence.

Again we turn to St. Paul in Romans where he tells us that God’s wrath isn’t punishment, but absence – which is a punishment of its own making – but very different, too:

God's angry and broken heart erupts as acts of human mistrust and wrongdoing and lying accumulate and people try to put a shroud over truth. Open your eyes and there it is! By taking a long and thoughtful look at what God has created, people have always been able to see what their eyes as such can't see… when we don't treat God like God, refusing to worship him (by caring for one another) we trivialize ourselves into silliness and confusion so that there was neither sense nor direction left in our lives. We pretend to know it all, but are illiterate regarding life. We traded the glory of God who holds the whole world in his hands for cheap figurines you can buy at any roadside stand. So God said, in effect, "If that's what you want, that's what you get." And iIt wasn't long before we were living in a pigpen, smeared with filth, filthy inside and out. And all this because we traded the true God for a fake god, and worshiped the god we made instead of the God who made us—the God we bless, the God who blesses us. Oh, yes! (Romans 1, The Message, Eugene Peterson)

That’s why I said that perhaps in MOST of the world’s pain and suffering, God is both absent and silent. Not in punishment or disinterest, mind you, but in love: if this is what you want, you can have it – and we’ll see if you like it.

You want to act like sharing isn’t important – ok, do you like homeless veterans living under your bridges in the land of the free and the home of the brave? You want to believe you can own and use people like tissue – ok, do you like seeing your sons and daughters turned into whores and junkies and their parents addicted to pornography?

You get my point: so what do you think about this part of my answer to the question: where the hell is God in my pain? Does any part of it ring true? Is it helpful? What are you thinking?

Ok, I know this is a long one but there are two other insights to consider about where the hell is God in my pain that adult people of faith have to comprehend – and I will amplify them NEXT week – but need to get them into the mix today. (Did you hear that: I will go deeper into them NEXT week?)

Is there any type of suffering or pain that helps you grow and mature into a compassionate human being?

• Most of the time we talk about God in the context of relieving our pain and eliminating our suffering – and I don’t think that there is anything necessarily redemptive about senseless pain – but let’s go deeper: have you had any encounters with pain that have helped you mature and grow in any way?

• How do you learn about humility? What about acceptance? How does the Serenity Prayer put it? I know I’ve used this a lot, but think about it:

God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change;
courage to change the things I can; and wisdom to know the difference. Living one day at a time; Enjoying one moment at a time; Accepting hardships as the pathway to peace; Taking, as He did, this sinful world as it is, not as I would have it; Trusting that He will make all things right if I surrender to His Will; That I may be reasonably happy in this life and supremely happy with Him forever in the next. Amen.

Some Christians in the East – St. Irenaeus in particular – have taught that the Western tradition of Augustine and Calvin got it all wrong: God created Adam and Eve in such a way that we learn MORE about sacred living through our mistakes than by childish obedience. The whole point of sin and failure and grace and forgiveness has to do with growing closer to God because of our mistakes; it is how God made us to mature in faith.
Hmmmm… this is another adult truth about sin and suffering that we need to explore more deeply – and WILL when…? Next week, right!

And then there is the pure tragedy of some of our suffering: the senseless death of a baby – random drive-by shootings of innocent loved ones – abuse of any type of a child – the heartbreak we have spoken of together in private and so much more. Where the hell is God in any of THIS pain? The writer, Philip Yancey, once said, that, “Any discussion of how pain and suffering fit into God's scheme ultimately leads back to the cross” – and I think he is right.

• When you consider the Cross not only is their betrayal and absence and suffering, there is also silence and tears, community and compassion, too.

• Suggesting that we cannot make sense of this in isolation – all by ourselves – with only ourselves as a reference point.

We try to do this all the time – we struggle to discern God’s presence from within the middle of our agony – and it always fails us and comes up empty. I’ve seen it over and over with grief or trauma: somebody loses a loved one to death and years later the bereaved is still tied up in knots – a shadow of abundant life – a grim, isolated island unto themselves.

The English theologian, CS Lewis, once described his encounter with the terrible isolation of grief in a personal journals that later became A Grief Observed. He said that when his beloved wife, Joy, died of cancer, at first he felt as if God had slammed a door shut just when he needed the Lord the most. So he screamed and wept, blasphemed and questioned everything he had ever thought, felt or believed; like Job he let himself descend into a barren pit of despair. “Nobody knows what I felt,” he told himself – and as true as this is on one level and as important as it is to do, too – as long as he lived like this was the only truth, emptiness and raw fear defined his existence.

It was only when he started to rest and return to community that his grief was abated – and eventually healed. Not taken away – for such truths are eternal – but other truths are eternal, too. Like the fact that others have lost their dearest loved ones, too and need compassion and a gentle presence in the wake of our pain. Like the fact that Lewis’ own step-son needed a loving and tender father – not a blank shell of man – once his mother had gone to the grave. Like the fact that God, too, had lost his beloved son – that the disciples, too had been reduced to empty despair – that Mary, the mother of our Lord, was perhaps the most bewildered and bereft at the foot of the Cross but chose to stay rather than flee.

• And that’s the clue – engaging with God’s community throughout our pain –is where we can find God in these brutal times. It is counter-intuitive – and we all have a need for solitude – but there is more than our feelings in the quest for God.

• As Lewis himself put it: Gradually, I began to feel that my in my own relationship with God the door was no longer shut and bolted. Was it my own frantic need that slammed it in my face? The time when there is nothing at all in your soul except a cry for help may be just the time when God can’t give it: you are like the drowning man in those moments who can’t be helped because he clutches and grabs. Perhaps your own reiterated cries deafen you to the voice you hoped to hear?

There is more to say – much, much more to say – but now just this: At the end of his life, CS Lewis pulled it all together saying, “When feeling disguises itself as thought, all nonsense is possible – and nowhere is it truer than in the problem of pain.”

Don't let even this throw you. Trust me. There is plenty of room for you in my Father's home. If that weren't so, would I have told you that I'm on my way to get a room ready for you? And if I'm on my way to get your room ready, I'll come back and get you so you can live where I live.

We have been called to consider the Cross and its community as we go through the anguish of our suffering and pain. "I have learned,” said Philip Yancey, “that faith means trusting in advance what will only make sense in reverse." Lord, may we have ears to hear.

My thoughts on Christ's open table...

(NOTE: I modified this posting to be more broadly inclusive based on the comments from some friends and colleagues. Thank you.)

I had an unexpected phone call today from Arizona - a former colleague with a problem to consider in ministry - and when he hung up I thought:  man, we have REALLY different understandings of ministry.  To be sure, there are LOTS of models for ministry - and mine is only one of many options - but it is clear I just don't get or affirm most overtly political theologies of either the Left or the Right.

When I was in Tucson,  for example, my commitment was to Christ's open table and we wound up with a living faith community made up of: gay and straight folk, young and old folk, traditionally churched and totally outside the norm folk, theologically conservative and boldly liberal folk, women and men-type folk, transgendered folk, too, children and families of every type and variety folk, Republican and Democratic folk, pacifist and military folk and just about everybody else you might imagine including rich and poor and middle class folk. 

It wasn't easy nourishing a theology of the open table - it made LOTS of people uncomfortable - mostly because it is hard work getting honest with people that Fox News and MSNBC tells you are your opponents. But Jesus - and not some idea of Jesus - but the Christ of Scripture and the resurrected Lord of life tells us we are not only to love our enemies, but we are invited to come to him.  Not come to a political point of view - or a denomination - or an ideology - or an intellectual construct:  we are called to come to Jesus. And what happens?  "I will give you rest."

One of my greatest joys in that old church was when a gay man with HIV/AIDS and a former Air Force pilot embraced and told their story of love and respect during a stewardship moment.  Once they would have never crossed one another's paths, but in church they found a friendship that turned to love and respect.  To see these two vastly different - and profoundly united - men embrace in Christ's love was the answer to prayer.  And when this gay couple moved on to the Pacific Northwest a few years later - after we had celebrated their marriage - this old Air Force dude rode out ahead to post a banner on the highway overpass heading out of town proclaiming:  WE LOVE YOU GUYS WITH ALL OUR HEARTS!  It was freakin' Pentecost in spades! 

Two passages of scripture shaped and defined the heart of my ministry in Tucson:

+ Matthew 11: 28-30 - Are you tired? Worn out? Burned out on religion? Come to me. Get away with me and you'll recover your life. I'll show you how to take a real rest. Walk with me and work with me—watch how I do it. Learn the unforced rhythms of grace. I won't lay anything heavy or ill-fitting on you. Keep company with me and you'll learn to live freely and lightly.

+ Isaiah 55: Hey there! All who are thirsty, come to the water! Are you penniless? Come anyway—buy and eat! Come, buy your drinks, buy wine and milk.
Buy without money—everything's free!
Why do you spend your money on junk food,
your hard-earned cash on cotton candy?
Listen to me, listen well: Eat only the best,
fill yourself with only the finest.
Pay attention, come close now,
listen carefully to my life-giving, life-nourishing words...
I don't think the way you think. The way you work isn't the way I work." God's Decree. For as the sky soars high above earth, so the way I work surpasses the way you work,
and the way I think is beyond the way you think.
Just as rain and snow descend from the skies
and don't go back until they've watered the earth,
Doing their work of making things grow and blossom,
producing seed for farmers and food for the hungry,
So will the words that come out of my mouth
not come back empty-handed.
They'll do the work I sent them to do,
they'll complete the assignment I gave them.
"So you'll go out in joy,
you'll be led into a whole and complete life.
The mountains and hills will lead the parade,
bursting with song.
All the trees of the forest will join the procession,
exuberant with applause.
No more thistles, but giant sequoias,
no more thornbushes, but stately pines—
Monuments to me, to God, living and lasting evidence of God." 

I had a great 10 years in Tucson - and wish them well - as they explore new ways of serving God in this strange time. I am also very grateful to be exploring a commitment to Christ's open table in our new church and energized by friends who are eager to see where this might lead. So I pray and work for a deeper sense  of Christ's open table that resonates with all of God's people - one that dismantles traditional divisions of Left and Right - and finds blessing in radical hospitality. I believe this is one of the ways the heart of Christ can bring healing to our fractured land. Why spend your hard earned cash for junk food, indeed!  Here's the song we used to inaugurate our new ministry - by the Master, of course - with these great lines...

Thunder on the mountain rolling to the ground
Gonna get up in the morning walk the hard road down
Some sweet day I'll stand beside my king
I wouldn't betray your love or any other thing

Gonna raise me an army, some tough sons of bitches
I'll recruit my army from the orphanages
I been to St. Herman's church, said my religious vows
I've sucked the milk out of a thousand cows

I got the porkchops, she got the pie
She ain't no angel and neither am I
Shame on your greed, shame on your wicked schemes
I'll say this, I don't give a damn about your dreams...

For the love of God take pity on yourselves...


credits: Lee Hodges @ http://www.leehodgesart.com/gallery_Commissioned.htm

SO BEAUTIFUL... OR SO WHAT!?!

Once AGAIN, this brother NAILS it for me: here is the heart of doing what I do at this moment in time - why I get up in the morning, put up with the bullshit and laziness in me and others and keep searching for that unexpected and often hidden place of truth, beauty and goodness.  God bless you, Paul Simon, you nailed it:  so beautiful - or so what?!? 

I'm gonna make a chicken gumbo
Toss some sausage in the pot
I'm gonna flavor it with okra
CAYENNE pepper to make it hot
You know life is what we make of it
So beautiful or so what
I'm gonna tell my kids a bedtime story
A play without a plot
Will it have a happy ending?
Maybe yeah, Maybe not
I tell them life is what you make of it
So beautiful or so what
So beautiful, so beautiful
So what

I'm just a raindrop in a bucket
A coin DROPPED in a slot
I am an empty house on Weed Street
Across the road from a vacant lot
You know life is what you make of it
So beautiful or so what

Ain't it strange the way we're ignorant
How we seek out bad advice
How we jigger it and figure it
Mistaking value for the price
And play a game with time and Love
Like a pair of rolling dice
So beautiful, so beautiful
So what

Four men on the balcony
Overlooking the parking lot
Pointing at a figure in the distance
Dr. King has just been shot
And the sirens long melody
Singing savior pass me not
Ain't it strange the way we're ignorant
How we seek out bad advice
How we jigger it and figure it
Mistaking value for the price
And play a game with time and love
Like a pair of rolling dice
So beautiful, so beautiful
So what

Another St. Paul put it like this at the close of Romans 8: I'm absolutely convinced that nothing—nothing living or dead, angelic or demonic, today or tomorrow, high or low, thinkable or unthinkable—absolutely nothing can get between us and God's love because of the way that Jesus our Master has embraced us. 

Have a blessed day.

Oye Como Va... Sir Duke?

As we get closer to our departure, the pressure is mounting to get tighter as a band:  we have a LOT of tunes that are sweet and loose and very, very groovy - we have some that are tight and in-the-pocket and groovy, too - and... we have a few songs that could use some more practice.  We worked on Tito Puente's version of "Oye Come Va" tonight and it cooked. 

We made some real progress on "Istanbul Not Constantinople" that is pretty hot, too.  (Maybe not for Turkish consumption but for our final USA gigs it is a ton o fun.)  We got into a VERY sweet groove mixing up "Ain't No Sunshine When She's Gone" with "Willie's Shades" (a tune we did in church this morning) that will be smouldering.  And made some good progress on the vocal harmonies for "All You Need Is Love."

Then... we spent an hour on Stevie Wonder's "Sir Duke" - the foundation of which is very solid - but there is an ass kickin' "scat" part of the song with a riff that just won't quit.  Andy and I worked on it for two hours straight.  How did John Lennon once put it?  "I got blisters on me fingers!!"  Not quite, but I have some serious wood shedding to do on this baby to get it fit for public consumption.  And if we nail it... OMG what a rush!