I've been convicted over the last few days about my judging of people. I'd like to apologize here for any judging I did of President Bush, or of anyone holding particular views with which I disagree. My words were not meant to judge his or anyone else's person, even where I actually did so in substance.

I find it very difficult to draw the line between critiquing and judging, especailly when the critique is fueled by the passion of new learning that is not yet restrained by the wisdom of experience. It is my hope that I will learn to offer my views as constructive critiques, rather than as condemning judgments, which I have no place doing.

PhD's

This post's function is an act of memory.

Pursuing a PhD is a long, arduous process. It's not even a rollercoaster ride with ups and downs. It's mostly just downs, survived by an intense concentration on hope - hope primarily for a better self, which is my job to remember, but also for a better future, which is my wife's job to remind me of. One must adore the subject matter and/or have some strong vested interest in it. This adoration and/or vested interest is the bettering of the self. However, the system, which involves the better future, is rough. There is, at least for me, a near constant self-doubt that this paper is not good enough for this professor. There is always a longing for more time, more concentration and more smartness to write better, more thorough analysis of any subject. The supporting material is always endless. There is also the constant self doubt, again - at least for me, that I won't have anything to offer my field of study, and, sometimes closely related, that I won't be able to find a job. I suppose this is a normal fear for everyone, but I think most people's preparation for their job is not so long nor so isolating.

Today, however, I received good news that I feel I must cling tightly to as long as the good feeling lasts in hopes that it will help me rebound from past negative views and provide comfort in dark places to come.

The last paper I wrote was on Wal-Mart. I didn't think it was a very good paper because I wasn't able to accomplish all that I set out to do. I feared a B, which in the world of PhD's is very bad. If you get one or two B's they start asking you if you're sure you're pursuing the right course. Once you have three B's, it becomes grounds for dismissal. I turned it in at the end of the summer, but my very busy professor just graded it yesterday. He emailed me congratulating me that it was a wonderful paper, an A+, and suggested a book that he is working on next year that he would like to (probably) put it into if I were to change a couple of things. Also, he suggested about 6 other publications (mostly journals, also Christianity Today) that he thought I should submit it to.

It's not often that joy so wells up within you that your tear ducts respond, but that just happened as I wrote the last couple of sentences. It has been a dream of mine for a long, long time to write things that would be published to a large Christian audience, challenging them. This is, I suppose, how I have begun more and more to interpret my calling, which I've always known was not a traditional preacher calling, and which I always knew (no, 'knew' is too strong a word - hoped) would involve writing. But despite the deep, rich hopes - not my will be done.

On a larger scale, as I step back from the first half of my PhD studies I find more cause to be happy. My GPA has increased with every degree I've earned. I have finished the required classes for my PhD and received A's in every class. This has been important from a financial standpoint as scholarships at a poorly funded school are very hard to come by, but more importantly it helps build my often fragile confidence that I am doing what I should be doing.

So, if in the coming months I post some dark entries about the sacrifices my chosen path entails, please remind me of this post.

This article from the Washington Post describes how terrorist attacks have greatly escalated in the world since our invasion of Iraq, not diminished, and describes the Bush administration's attempts to keep that information away from the public. How can democracy work when the people, even those in congress, can't even find out what's going on?
Washington Post

Despite misinformation, America is waking up. This is a report from June, and support for the war has dimished more since then:
"For the first time since the war in Iraq began, more than half of the American public believes the fight there has not made the United States safer, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll."
"Poll Finds Dimmer View of Iraq War - 52% Say U.S. Has Not Become Safer"
By Dana Milbank and Claudia Deane
Washington Post Staff Writers
Wednesday, June 8, 2005; Page A01

"And Israel saw the Egyptians dead upon the seashore." - Ex. 14:30

I'm continuing to read a book of Martin Luther King, Jr.'s sermons entitled Strength to Love - a great title. The one I'm reading this mornign is based on the above verse. King recaps the story a bit, telling how evil (personified in the Egyptians) was recalcitrant enough to refuse Moses' pleas, then endure the plagues, and finally to follow the Israelites into the parted Red Sea where the waters then rushed over top of them. King then writes, "The meaning of this story is not found in the drowning of Egyptian soldiers, for no one should rejoice at the death or defeat of a human being. Rather, this story symbolizes the death of evil and of inhuman oppression and unjust exploitation."

I recoiled from this statement at first. How can the meaning not be found in the drowning of the soldiers? Certainly the story symbolizes the death of evil and inhuman oppression, but isn't that necessarily tied up with the historical fact of the death of the Egyptians? Or is he saying it is just a morality tale, a parable, if you will, unhistoric, or at least unimportant in authenticity? Does the historicity of such events in the Old Testament, or the New, really matter? Don't we get the meaning from them the same, just as we get the meaning from Jesus' parables? But even if he is saying all that, doesn't the story, on its own terms, still require the reader to rejoice at the defeat of another human being? These are questions that have always bothered me. The OT is full of rejoicing at the defeat of other humans, by God's hand, no less.

I don't want to explain my view of God's violence in the OT, here, my posts to the blog are too long already. Suffice it to say, for now, that I have some seemingly irreconcilable questons about that. What I want to post is my way of moving forward out of those questions. Regardless of where one comes down on those questions, when one chooses to become a Christ-follower, he chooses a different ethic. The fact is simply that Jesus did not rejoice in the defeat of other human beings. Jesus did not imagine how wonderful it would be to not be under Roman rule, to have freedom of religion and speech and such. He could have rejoiced at that vision. He could have either taken up arms (people around him wanted him to) or taught that one day his followers would have the numbers necessary to take up arms against the evil Roman empire. He would have biblical precident: He could have compared the Romans to the Canaanites. But this is not how Jesus interpreted the scripture, and it is not how he chose to live. Rather, he taught the ethic of love, even love of enemies, and he ended up on the cross. Imaginve not ever having an example of love having power in the real world, having never imagined its transformative power, having only Jesus' teachings that promised love's supreme power. No wonder the early church often understood Jesus' teaching to primarily apply to the hereafter. But within only a few hundred years, the Roman empire had been conquered, not by force, but by love and the way of the cross, and the official religion of the empire was Christianity. How could early Christians have ever imagined they held the key to such tremendous power?

Power, however, corrupts. And the ethic of the most powerful nation on earth is greatly corrupted. When holding such great power, it is very difficult, nearly impossible, to not wield it first. It is so much easier to fly jets over and drop bombs than to wait the long 300 years love might take to conquer. Who can endure evil that long? Don't we have a right, a scriptural mandate even, to act against evil with force? Well, not if we're Christ-followers. Wielding power might win the battle over some current evil, but it never wins the war against evil - only love can do that.

So, in interpreting the above scripture, I agree with King that we should not rejoice at the death or defeat of other human beings (though I think whether or not the Israelites on the seashore could rejoice is another matter). Rather, we can rejoice that in the end God's love for the Israelites overcame all obstacles (after 400 years of slavery), and we can know that the love God has given us for all humanity can have the same overcoming power. After all, the actions of the Black Panthers are not responsible for the victory in the war concerning civil rights. Rather, the Christ-informed love ethic of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. is widely-held as the key to overcoming the evils of segregation. The more we fight, the more we are seen by the other side as inhuman. What kind of civil war might have destroyed America if all blacks had taken up arms against the whites? The more we love, the more our enemy will see themselves in us. How many whites began to see segregation as evil because of the example of love that King displayed?

I wrote about the death of the man in Florida last week, and I've gotten a lot of responses about it, both on the post and on the phone. I'm following up here with some thoughts to expound upon what I meant.

I feel like we've been told that the man's death is THE ONLY thing that could have possibly happened. I'm not suggesting they should have stopped and given the man a mental evaluation before acting. I'm suggesting that we shouldn't be so comfortable with killing someone! I'm suggesting that maybe there is a third way that gives some benefit of the doubt to people's humanity, or at least to the security everyone passes through. I don't know law enforcement well enough to know the answer, but I'm afraid that no one on the inside is even allowed to ask that question. There is an assumption that we must do whatever we think will work to prevent another 9/11. I'm not arguing that we shouldn't try to do that. I'm arguing about what will work. In my opinion, our invasion of Iraq makes it more likely that there will be another 9/11, not less likely. And if we get too comfortable with killing suspected bombers, then we are no longer protecting our freedom but destroying our freedom.

The air marshals are a perfect example of what I mean when I say that we have reacted poorly to 9/11.

What is their purpose? To prevent hijackings. This is fine and good, but in a direct response to the action of 9/11 we have overemphasized any security dealing with air travel. This is like the British army during the American Revolution responding to American guerrila-style warfare by adding additional troops to the front lines of their marching formations. The terrorists are simply going to find another way of attacking, another disguise. Certainly we need stepped up security, but we need limits to that security as well.

We have also stepped up security at major events (football games and such) and at very large office buildings across the nation (though not necessarily the most densely populated). What happens, though, when a terrorist bombs a medium sized, densely-populated building? Will we put "building marshals" in every office building in America? How about a sidewalk cafe bombing? What are our limits? The more of this type of security there is, the more chances there will be for confusion and accidental murders. But even if we could do this, would it actually give us more security? Or would it be a never-ending catch-up game? As far as I can see, security along this line of thinking will only come when Imperial America conquers the entire globe, tracking all peoples' movements and all movements of monies (of course this is taking it a bit too far, but I'm trying to make a point; albeit one that is not too far off the truth of our invasion of Iraq).

I think we responded to 9/11 all wrong from the beginning. I think we should have stopped for a second and asked why these people hated us so intensely and if there was anything we could do to alleviate some of that. Killing tens of thousands of innocent people tends to create more extremists, not lessen their intensity. Israel has been fighting this war for security for decades, and they've not gotten any more security by doing it, and they do have army people walking around everywhere with machine guns slung over their shoulders - and I do mean everywhere, its rather unnerving.

What could we have done differently? We could have listened to what they had been trying to tell us for years. We could have stopped and listened first. We could have reassessed our policy of blind, and often unjust, support for Israel over and against Arab Palestinians (one of the terrorists' major complaints). We could have cooperated with Muslim officials in certain countries to limit the flow of American entertainment, full of drugs, sex, and alcohol, that in their view destroys their peoples' faiths and lives. We could have begun here, listening and responding, and then asking for something in return - such as police forces (perhaps monitored by American intelligence agents) that destroyed terrorist training camps and attempted to arrest and prosecute leaders of terrorist cells.

Turkey adopted this philosophy after decades of failed security against the Kurds, and it worked beautifully. Instead of holding the Kurds down in punishment, they decided that they would begin to spend tax money from the whole country in a way in which Kurdish communities received three times as much per person as did Turkish communities. As soon as the government stopped discriminating against the Kurds and tax monies began to provide necessary infrastructure that pulled Kurds out of poverty and into a normal life, they had very little to be upset about, and they stopped listening to the extremists among them who taught that the Turkish government should be overthrown. The Turks offered a cash reward, and the people actually turned in the top Kurdish extremist. Then, instead of killing him, they offered him a deal. They said they would let him go, though keep a close eye on him, if he would teach against extremist solutions to the problems they had.

To me, that is a more Christian response to terrorism than what the Bush administration has done.

I'm not suggesting it could have been that simple to deal with Al Queda, but I am saying that we went to war unjustly - not as a last resort. I believe that democracy is the most morally superior form of government the world has known, however I question whether it can be forced from the outside. It has worked best when throughout history it has been born from within the populace of a nation as they rose up together against some injustices, as the American Revolution was born, and the French, and even the ancient Greek democracy.

I believe the best way to combat terrorism is to promote democratic voices that already exist within countries where terrorists reside, and to deal justly with those countries, and even with the terrorists. This at least gets closer to the meaning of "love your enemy" than does the dropping of thousands of bombs and blatant disregard for belief systems and worldviews. By doing so we might even turn some enemies into friends, rather than creating more enemies (both the creation of more terrorists and the turning of Europeans and other friends into enemies).

We went to church on Sunday-
Nick asked concerning my last post for a follow-up that suggested practical ways of siding with the oppressed. This post is the beginning of an answer. I think that on one level we all know practical ways of siding with the oppressed, but on another level we have little theological framework for doing so. I hope this post can begin to lay a foundation, even if not any walls or roof. I apologize for its length.

We went to church on Sunday. It was refreshing – a strong focus on the spirit, something most all churches I attend are missing. Most churches are physical places that focus on the spiritual. They attempt to carve open small spaces in the midst of the physical into which they might invite the spiritual. They are places where respectable people are comfortable in their physical bodies though realizing they need hints of the spiritual to gradually make them better people. The church we attended Sunday was a spiritual place uncomfortable with the physical. It was a gathering of socially awkward people, unsure of how to react to the presence of strangers. Some were misshapen, some spoke funnily. There was an abnormal percentage of towering, wide beings that never spoke, the kind that are teddy bears if you know them but slow-moving brick walls if you don’t.

Their singing worship did not simply invite the spiritual into the physical. Rather, they escaped the physical, fully rejoicing in the spirtual. They longed to be raptured. They reached high opening their arms to heaven, now unconcerned with what strangers might think. They reveled in a now safe place. And God was there – not visiting small spaces recently opened, but everywhere, inhabiting their corporate praise. The physical became uncomfortable, distraction abnormal.

There were only about 40 people, and it seemed half of them were involved in the service in some way. They never spoke in generalities. They spoke to each other, addressing people specifically throughout. Announcement time was not a time to zone out and make a grocery list or read the bulletin – there was no bulletin. Instead it was more like a large family gathering where someone yells to get everyone’s attention so that they can inform the group about the gathering’s schedule – ribbing and laughter included.

The sermon, unsurprisingly, was about the spirit man, and how it must reign over the physical man, and that our purpose as Christians was to have our spirit man rule more and more over the carnal man. Examples of life saving spiritual visions and insights were referenced – examples from the lives of the people in the church, not of anyone outside.

The message, the feeling, were similar to the church I grew up in, and there was comfort for me in the focus on the spiritual. The problem, however, was the same as the church I grew up in. The sermon had no mention of the world’s suffering, only their own suffering and how it could be avoided by listening to the spirit more carefully. In fact, I don’t remember any reference to anyone outside of the church. There was a considerable focus on giving, but only giving to the church was ever mentioned. The preacher said there was nothing wrong with making more money, because the more they made, the more they could bring into the church. All references to physicality were disparaging. The physical was the source of suffering. The preacher said our spirits came before our bodies and would exist after our bodies, the world here is merely a testing ground. She then likened our bodies to a car that we would one day open the door and step out of.

Why must a focus on the spiritual be accompanied by such myopia (narrow viewing)? Perhaps as a person focuses more and more on the spiritual, she becomes more and more uncomfortable with the physical. So as long as God is speaking to her spirit about something in her own life, she can hear it, but when God attempts to speak through her to address something in the physical, it gets all jumbled up and confused. Or perhaps it is simply human nature to be self-focused, so we practice listening to what will make us better individuals, but tend to focus less on what will help someone else.

I’m not sure; but it does seem obvious to me that people who focus strongly on the spiritual tend to create a dichotomy between the physical and the spiritual. The spiritual is only elevated at the expense of the physical. This view is, of course, traceable to scripture. Paul, especially, writes a great deal about the spiritual and the physical being at war with one another, and we have assumed that war involve good (spiritual) vs. evil (physical). So those who seek the spiritual do it by denying the physical, escaping from the physical, in essence continually hoping to be raptured out of the physical. The focus then becomes on how I personally can be more spiritual, closer to God, further away from the physical.

I believe, however, that we have misinterpreted these scriptures. The war is between good and evil, but good and evil are both physical and spiritual. Praying can be a good spiritual act that helps overcome an evil physical addiction. However, giving to the poor is a good physical act that helps to overcome evil spiritual problems, as is forgiveness and most of the fruits (physical things) of the spirit. The spiritual world is both good and evil. The physical world is both good and evil. If we seek only the spiritual (assuming it is only good), we are in danger of casting out demons in Jesus’ name, yet arriving in heaven and being told that he never knew us.

We seem to understand well that there are good spiritual acts that war against physically evil forces, but we need to learn that there are also good physical acts that war against spiritually evil forces.

Who is My Neighbor?

The lawyer, trained in Jewish law, asked Jesus what he must do to be saved. Jesus asked what the law taught. The man considered, then responded, “To love the Lord God with all my might, all my strength and all my might, and to love my neighbor as myself.” Jesus thought that sounded good and said, “Yeah, do that.” The lawyer, wanting to move beyond what he already knew, asked, “and who is my neighbor? So Jesus tells a story. “A certain man” fell among thieves and was left for dead. The lawyer, used to the use of stories to answer questions (a common technique in Jewish law argument), begins to ask himself who he is suppose to identify with in the story – at this point in the story he is probably thinking this “certain man” needs a neighbor, so he should act as the person that helps this man. Perhaps the twist at the end would be to discover that the robbed man was a Samaritan, and that he should help even a Samaritan.

First a priest comes by. The lawyer can identify with the priest, because he probably worked with them on a daily basis. But the priest passes by, and the lawyer probably makes an excuse for him in his mind. Perhaps the priest was on his way to do a sacrifice and could not become unclean. Similarly, a Levite comes and passes by. Again, the lawyer can identify and makes an excuse for the man. Perhaps he must remain clean, but plans on sending someone back to help once he reaches the city. If at this point Jesus had stopped the story and pointed out that these men were not neighborly, the lawyer probably would have expressed excuses for them – arguing technical merits of the law. However, Jesus introduces the Samaritan into the story, with whom the lawyer could not identify in the least. Suddenly thrown off his expectations, the lawyer finds that the only person in the story he can identify with is the only unidentified man in the story, the “certain man,” robbed, stripped and left for dead. Suddenly he is in the position of being stripped of possessions and being nearly dead, needing anyone to help just to spare his life.

Instead of learning a sentimental teaching that in extreme circumstances he should care for even a Samaritan, the Samaritan is now caring for him. Suddenly the teaching “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you” becomes much more profound to the lawyer. The person he thought would be his neighbor at the beginning ends up being himself, and so he learns to love his neighbor as himself. Perhaps the greatest power of this story is not simply in teaching us to look beyond our socially constructed barriers of Jew/Gentile, or whatever those barriers may be, but to truly identify ourselves with the hurting. For when we are near death, all those barriers disappear, and we simply want help.

The lawyer’s question was – what must I do to be saved? Jesus’ answer is meant to be a lived ethic – “You should live like this.” One interpretation of the story can be, “You should live life identifying with the oppressed, which melts away all barriers, thereby creating compassion.”

After singing "Come, Now is the Time to Worship" a few too many times one sunday, I sat down during worship and wrote this.

Forward
“Come,” he says,
But I cannot,
Until he removes this self-pity

“Come,” he repeats,
But I am planted
In my self-hate

Still he says, “Come,”
But I cannot believe
That he will accept me.

He whispers, “Come,”
And I weary of the struggle.
I hate the battle.

“Come,”
And I can no longer stand.
My knees buckle.

I fall forward.
And I cry,
“Come.”

A tough mind and a tender heart -

I'm reading a book of Martin Luther King, Jr.'s sermons entitled Strength to Love. The first sermon is on Mt. 10:16, "Be ye therefore wise as serpents, and harmless as doves." King notes that Jesus recognized the need for blending opposites and writes, "We must combine the toughness of the serpent and the softness of the dove, a tough mind and a tender heart."

Concerning a tough mind, as opposed to "softmindedness" - "Few people have the toughness of mind to judge critically and to discern the true from the false, the fact from the fiction. Our minds are constantly being invaded by legions of half-truths, prejudices, and false facts. One of the great needs of mankind is to be lifted above the morass of false propaganda."

Concerning a tender heart, as opposed to "hardheartedness" - "And there are hardhearted and bitter individuals among us who would combat the opponent with physical violence and corroding hatred. Violence brings only temporary victories; violence, by creating many more social problems that it solves, never brings permanent peace."

Concerning a third way - “A third way is open in our quest for freedom, namely, nonviolent resistance, that combines toughmindedness and tenderheartedness and avoids the complacency and do-nothingnesss of the softminded and the violence and bitterness of the hardhearted. . . . Through nonviolent resistance we shall be able to oppose the unjust system and at the same time love the perpetrators of the system."

Concerning a God who is wise as a serpent and harmless as a dove - "The greatness of our God lies in the fact that he is both toughminded and tenderhearted. . . . God is neither hardhearted nor softminded. He is toughminded enough to transcend the world; he is tenderhearted enough to live in it. He does not leave us alone in our agonies and struggles. He seeks us in dark places and suffers with us and for us in our tragic prodigality.”


I love that - toughminded enough to transcend the world and tenderhearted enough to live in it.

I apologize for the 2 ranting posts below. I do not want this to simply be a forum for me to rant. Rather, I want it to be a place for everything that is me, which will sometimes include rants. Maybe I'll put up an old poem in order to balance things out.

Terror in Florida

So they decided to shoot him dead. Certainly, I wasn't there and don't really know what went down, but still - isn't this quite ridiculous? They say that before he ran off the plane he "uttered threatening words that included a sentence to the effect that he had a bomb." As he ran off, his wife chased him, screaming that he was mentally ill. "Witnesses said his wife, Anne, frantically tried to explain he was bipolar, a mental illness also known as manic-depression, and was off his medication." As he ran out of the airplane through the jetway, he "appeared to reach for his bag," which is when the marshals shot him about 5 times.

This in essence is one of my largest difficulties with the Bush administration - the assumption that might makes right. Why isn't killing this guy the last resort? How about trying to shoot him in the leg, then if he continues to reach into his backpack after screaming on the floor, then shoot the arm that's reaching in. That at least gives some miniscule benefit of the doubt to the guy, to his wife, to the security that x-rayed the bag and checked him out before he got on the plane. Why end his life? Why destroy the lives of his family and friends? This is how we deal with any threat? Or better put - this is how we deal with any presumed threat? - like Iraq. We thought they might have weapons of mass destruction, even though the inspectors were saying they hadn't found anything and needed more time. We thought this guy might have a bomb in his backpack, even though the x-ray security didn't show anything and his wife is telling us that he's acting erratic because he's mentally ill.

The man was from Puerto Rico, and was a U.S. citizen, having lived in the States for over 20 years. He was returning from a missions trip to Ecuador. As he ran off the plane, his wife yelled after him in Spanish and in English. Would this man have been shot if he were white? Would the marshals have been more likely to believe his wife? Would they have been less suspicious of the man? Would their actions have been halted by the thought of the horror of killing an innocent, white American?

We have chosen death, not life. We have sided, because we have that luxury, with destruction of the weak rather than with empathy and aid. To the shame of our nation, democracy has not been heeded. Instead, the powerful wield their will with swords. To the shame of the church, we have reveled in our power, mistaking it for blessing, not realizing that our "security" comes at the cost of the death of innocent people both here and abroad.

This man's death comes from decisions that have been made at the top of the power structure. Destruction is not the necessary answer to threat. We have over-reacted to our 9/11 wound, justifying any action as self-preservation. Not even the death of over 2,000 American soldiers (with an additional 20,000 wounded) and the death of approximately 27,000 civilians in Iraq have made us second-guess our approach to threats. The threat has not diminished. The 9/11 commission still warns that it is not a matter of "if" but of "when."

I have seen no out pouring of sympathy for this man and his family. The news treats him as an incidental casualty of the war. Democracy means more than freedom; it also means that we are all implicated in this man's death.

"Let us not be deceived: the great dramatic battle of the twenty-first century is the dismantling of empire and the deepening of democracy. This is as much or more a colossal fight over visions and ideas as a catastrophic struggle over profits and missiles. Globalization is inescapable; the question is whether it will be democratic globalization or a U.S. led corporate globalization (with thin democratic rhetoric). This is why what we think, how we care, and the way we fight mean so much now in democracy matters."(22)

I believe that much of the church, sadly, has aligned itself against deep democratic principles, and has become empire-minded, confusing the U.S.'s material success (and often individuals' success) for God's blessing.

On that note, I'd like to highly recommend the book that the above quote is taken from -
Democracy Matters by Cornell West. West is a well-known professor of African-American studies at Princeton. The above quote is from near the beginning of the book. I was taken aback by the following quote, near the end of the book, with its evangelistic nature and deep truth. Who would have thought that a book could remain on the NY Times Bestseller list for so long while proclaiming Jesus so purely without being aimed at the religious right?

"My philosophy of democracy is deeply shaped by that particular Jew named Jesus who put the love of God and neighbor at the core of his vision of justice and his deeds of compassion. His vision of a just future consoles those who cry and his deeds of compassion comfort those who shed tears. His loving gift of ministry, grace, and death under the rule of nihilistic imperial elites enacts divine compassion and justice in human flesh. The ultimate Christian paradox of God crucified in history under the Roman empire is that the love and justice that appear so weak may be strong, that seem so foolish may be wise, and that strike imperial elites as easily disposable may be inescapably indispensable."

Much of the church has forgotten the connections between democracy and Christianity.

a memory
When I was about 15 years old, I went on a youth retreat to Florida. Shortly before the trip our church received a new pastor, and I was eager to impress him. One evening about 25 of us sat in a circle at the end of a service and our new pastor did what he called "opening people's mail." The mail was from God. We sat with our heads down between our knees, as if bracing for the imminent arrival of a hurricane, or knelt with our noses dug into the seat of our chairs. Our pastor said at the beginning, "God wants you to know that He cares for you, and that is why He is showing me what is in your lives. He wants to heal you." He spent nearly an hour reading our mail. He'd explain some pain in someone's life. That person would raise their hand, and our pastor would pray for him or her. For nearly an hour he spoke words of life into people's hearts and called people out of sin. Then he said, "There's one more thing that God wants to do tonight. This is very special. I want you all to listen closely to the Lord." Long pause. "God is calling four people tonight into the ministry. He is stirring your hearts right now. If you feel God calling you, I want you to respond to that call and let me know He is calling you, because He has some special words for you tonight." My heart stirred, but growing up in a Pentecostal church and home, I knew the dangerous possibility of confusing my emotions with true revelation. No one was raising their hands. The pastor kept calling. Someone raised a hand, then another did the same, then a third. The pastor kept calling. My heart began to race. He said he knew who the last person was. My emotional response was so strong, yet I was terrified of the possibility that it was not me and my hand raising would betray to our new pastor my lack of spirituality. My heart began to pound against my other organs. I wanted to raise my hand just to get it over with, but I was petrified. I felt as if I were a space heater, solely responsible for changing the temperature of the room to be ten degrees warmer. After what seemed like another hour, but must have only been five or ten minutes, my new pastor put me out of my misery by saying my name.. "Tim, it's you. God is calling you." All the heat was released and ran out of me in one exhalation that barely formed the first consonant of "Yes."

I've been a long time trying to understand that Yes.

The life of a kid

Since we've arrived in Frankfort, the overwhelming pressure of the every day has lifted. The small things are easier. We're not walking along the edge of a precipice trying not to fall. There's less yelling. There are, however, bigger things to be concerned about. My mother-in-law Holly had open-heart surgery less than a week after we arrived. All went well, and we thought we were all on the road to recovery, at least a three month process. A couple days later she had to go back in for pneumonia. When she got out 2 days later we thought the relaxing times had finally arrived. The next day she got a phone call: the lump she had found in her breast a few weeks earlier was not benign after all. The question was how long do you have to wait after open heart surgery to have another surgery? Sadly, the cancer had aggressive tendencies, so the surgery needed to be done as soon as possible. A week ago yesterday she had it removed. She came home on Wed. and we celebrated Thanksgiving on Thursday, certain that we had much to be thankful for and looking forward to things being somewhat normal (perhaps even getting fully moved in to our new home).

My brother-in-law Kiel turned 21 on Saturday and had a big party. We relaxed some on Sunday. Monday came and we were finally going to get on a schedule, something our poor children desperately needed. I left in the morning and studied all day and came home to a much cleaner house. Robin had been busy. The kids seemed happy. Yesterday morning I took them to school and they were happy to be there. I went to the library to study. I shortly received an email: Robin's grandma had died. I returned home to be with Robin. We're now leaving tomorrow to drive to NW Iowa. Robin's sister Rachel, who also had surgery 2 weeks ago, and her 4 yr old son are flying in from Little Rock today. Kiel is driving in from Grand Rapids tonight. We're all loading up in two vans tomorrow and driving to Sheldon, Iowa - about ten hours. We'll probably drive back on Sunday.

My heart is heavy today. So many people around me need care - some that I can give, some that I cannot. It's not like I've lived here my whole life. I have a visitor's relationship with my in-laws, yet this is no visitor's burden. It's all rather surreal. Most of the time all I can do is simply be, just keep doing what I have to do - mostly taking care of the kids. Yet somehow, that simple being feels divinely ordained, as though God brought me here, placed me in the midsts of this so that I could simply be.

However, the more I think about it, I'm not so sure my presence here is as ordained as is my childrens'. Their ever-forward-moving liveliness is helping drag the rest of us through all this - ever presently reminding us that Life does not stop. And there's something very good in the forward motion. Something that avoids stagnation, avoids depression, and doesn't let death get the last word.

I hope for all of us that when we look back on this time we will not see a triumph secured by running away from death, but rather a triumph found by means of holding adoringly on to life - at least partially in this case Risa and Karis.

Losing my self

Somewhere between throwing my college graduation hat in the air and entering the library where I currently sit I lost my self. It's like the time I got pulled over by a screaming policeman who asked for my id and I reached into my wallet to get it and it wasn't there. My identity had disappeared and the last time I could remember having it for sure was over a week before the graceless policeman started yelling. But I'd been a million places in that week, mostly in a different state than where I was. Retracing my steps would be impossible.

How did I lose my self? Was I too focussed on other stuff - grad school, marriage, kids - to focus on my inner self? Perhaps I should have been more disciplined in the spiritual art of centering I learned from Richard Foster and yoga while living in Yosemite. Or perhaps I should have invested more into cultivating those aspects of my self that most deeply fulfilled me - prayer, writing, peppermint sticks. Part of my Christian heritage encourages this - focussing only on the relationship between my self and God, or getting the plank out of my own eye before helping another. Culture also encourages this; requiring self-help programs or at least enough self-medication to conform us to acceptable social norms.

Or perhaps the opposite is true. Perhaps as I turned my attention toward things in my own life - grad school, marriage, kids - I lost the magic of fulfilling my self through service to others. Maybe the experience of ethics and theology and culture is necessarily primary and their study can only be secondary if one is to remain grounded in reality. Perhaps serving my own family and the navel-searching of academia is too self-interested or overly laden with duty to satisfy my deeper being, my purpose in life, my calling to go out.

I don't know where I lost my identity. I don't even know what state I was in. But I suspect that if I tried to retrace my steps, I'd spend too much time in the wrong places, searching in the dark with a flashlight low on batteries. Besides, the policeman is here now, demanding an answer to the question of who I am, threatening to throw me in jail until the laws that govern this life can figure out what to do with me. And who knows what identity I'd come out with on the other side.