We'll Shake the Nightmare Free

In a non-Gnostic, purely illustrative way, I think people function with three layers. Superficially, our skin is what we show to the world. It’s this outer garment we cake with makeup and drape with clothes. We carry it when we walk and present it as we wish to be viewed. It is the pride of our youth, and what the simplest forms of beauty call home. But beneath it is our flesh and bones… the blood and truth of our thoughts and emotions. Our skin heals, albeit with scars, but our sinews and tendons are not so easily mended, leaving us with Jacob’s limp that asserts itself every step of the way. It is our flesh and bones that move our feet down a path, and joints and ligaments that bend our fingers in creation or destruction. Being the substance of who we are, there is no ignoring its depth. It's cut with the jagged blade of the fall, and woven together with generational sin. It’s patched with all the wrongs done to us and laced with all the wrongs we have done to others. It is, for most people, the driving winds and currents propelling our lives, in light of or in spite of our awareness. Our flesh and blood is what we attempt to escape from at the edge of sleep, what haunts our dreams in the early hours of morning, and the invasive sharp that pries our eyes awake like light from slotted blinds.

But even further beneath the rolling tumult that animates our breath lays a dark core of stillness… the center of who we are and what we truly know. In those rare moments when our flesh and blood are at ease and our skin is translucent, our soul, what the ancient Jews would call “Nephesh,” can be heard whispering its steadiness and truth.

More eternal than the broken bones and pain of bruises, my nephesh simply says, “Yes, He is worth it. His Kingdom is worth it. Greater than your past and past your future, It is worth it.” Like strings on a sitar, my nephesh resonates when it hears the vibrations of grace. It quells my shaking bones long enough for the flesh to ponder an existence beyond itself, beyond the idolatry of its own hands and mind, beyond the myopic dreams turned sour… long enough to hope that deep in my marrow, I will one day know the truth my nephesh claims.

It will innervate my tissue, forcing out the angry red poison I have known all my life. Flowing through my veins, redeeming all it gives breath to, it will not heed the threat of pain. No longer will my passions be crooked or my heart be broke. No longer will the oscillating waves throb behind my eyes or pummel my mind… my flesh and bone will be moved by the depths of what my nephesh knows. My soul and flesh and skin will align and be an unruly mustang no longer, but with its head bowed low, carry the Lord like humility once did.

Innocuously Insidious

It seems innocuous enough, even laudably romantic, to say that despite others’ opinions, one sees glimpses of some greater beauty in another person. It would make (and probably has made) the skeleton plot of many movies… the person who is patient and suffers all sorts of abuse in the process of bringing out that greater character in the other. After all their hard work and persistence, their faith, hope, love, and an undying belief in never giving up, the other character’s true selves are able to flourish, and everything ends happily ever after.

Such stories make us sigh wistfully, echoing within us the hopes that perseverance pays off, that ugliness succumbs to beauty, that pain will be redeemed, and that love conquers all. Each of those things, in their purest forms, are true in their deepest sense and can be found at the core of our Christian story. Those things are true of our Father and displayed in his son. Even today, we catch reaffirmations of them through his spirit in our lives.

But I wonder what happens when each of those good truths are slightly distorted as we place ourselves at the center of those statements. We try to become the ones who redeem pain. We try to conquer all with our version of love. We want to be the ones to bring out the beauty in others, whether or not it is our rightful place to do so. All the while, we see the entire situation with our convoluted and cracked lenses. We tell ourselves that we are living the Gospel story, loving our neighbors as ourselves, when in fact it is our neediness, brokenness and emptiness that is trying to play God. We want to be the beneficiaries of our own “unconditional” love. We want to be the redeemers of our own pain that we created, and the one who plants, waters, grows and reaps seeds in the lives of others. It is not the Lord’s work in their lives that we are after, but *our* version of the Lord’s work according to *our* ideas of who we want them to be, which inevitably revolve around ourselves. It is our own corruption reading itself into a narrative that desires to be true.

So in the end, though it seems innocuous, we may be playing into the most insidious of sins by stringing together our distorted version of those truths. Namely, we cast ourselves as the role of God, even as we attempt to “love.” Sometime ago, in speaking of relationships, Bonhoeffer says that Christ must mediate our relationships. If Christ bids us to speak or act in love, we speak or act. If Christ bids us to stay silent and still, we rest and hold our tongues. If he calls us to greet and embrace, we do so in his name. But he may also call us to bid adieu and depart, and that too is in his name. Therefore, tenacity and persistence are only values so long as they are in Christ and his will. Love through actions is only God’s love so long as he calls for it. Since in him, there is a season for everything, and love in obedience, even if it is in silence, is far truer to his purposes than a seemingly innocuous romantic story.

Red Ink Black Ink

Don’t you sometimes wish that you could balance memories like a checkbook? Red ink and black ink, positives and negatives. For every crappy one you have, a positive one of equal strength would cancel it out, putting you at a net of 0. Having a bad day? No worries, go make some good memories with friends and cash them in. Plan on having a rough year? Stash the laughs up now, or dig yourself out later. But instead of being equal parts of sour vs. sweet, we weigh lead against helium and blow our hot air in hopes that we live more than a zero sum game. Instead, we are left with the full spectrum of our broken selves and our strange functioning 3lb glob of neural connections, keen to fire at the most innocuous of triggers, resigned to survive on a word that simply says, "This way that it is, it is good."

So it is, the difference between what we wish and what is real… trusting, praying, hoping that Grace is a reality redeeming the red, ceasing our striving, granting us reprieve, and putting us over the top.

Chitown

When I left on my four wheels
across interstates and
demarcations of time
you begged for rest like
a child denied
his dreams painted upon his mind
by green summer afternoons
on his back picking clouds
Now
facedown
upon a sponge of transference
materializations of hopes deferred
But rest,
as wakefulness was no friend
unkind to hope
inhospitable in youth
Sleep because you must
through this déjà vu
and ponder what might be made new
when
you rub the sand from your dry eyes.

Visceral Grace

We live by bold statements. We try to take lessons from the mouth of Jesus and the pens of prophets, and graft them onto ourselves. Our grafts try to bring peace, they try to move in love, they try to speak words of truth. We make grand gestures with our arms and try to embrace those who have been cut by misplaced touch. But every once in a while, if we are keen to those tumultuous unspoken currents that pulse within us, they sometimes spill out and reveal that no matter how many branches and leaves we tape to our bodies, a slab of cold granite is incapable of accepting grafts. The fear that wells up from prejudices we deny, the anger that blinds from wrongs we have forgiven, the bitterness that should have gone with the times…we are no tree of life.

I believe visceral reactions often reveal truths we bury under layers of ideals we deceive ourselves into believing. Before those well-rehearsed truths are able to do damage control, our beating hearts and short breath betray another reality, one that says anger is lurking outside our door, that our fear merely wears masks, and that bitterness is no lover of God or men.

Years ago in high school, I listened to a speaker talk about “bitter root syndrome,” as he spoke out of Hebrews 12:14-15. The verses say, “Make every effort to live in peace with everyone and to be holy; without holiness no one will see the Lord. See to it that no one falls short of the grace of God and that no bitter root grows up to cause trouble and defile many.” He warned strongly about the potential for bitterness to dig its tendrils deep into our being, tainting our thoughts and actions, and warring against our call to be the new creations that we are. Living at peace is intrinsically connected to holiness, and holiness to seeing the Lord. This bitter root, this growing poison chokes not only our own love and holiness, but according to Hebrews, it threatens to cast its curse upon others as well.

I’m not certain what it means to possibly “fall short of the grace of God.” But I assume that it means somehow granting grace by living up to that same grace given to us, in line with, “Forgive us our trespasses AS WE forgive those who trespass against us.” The granting of grace or forgiveness does not require bilateral reciprocation, since we were redeemed unilaterally, while we were still sinners. Plastering ourselves with Christian truisms does not necessitate transformation. Somewhere deep inside, where tangled roots of bitterness innervate our visceral reactions, this is where grace weeds out anger and fear. What controls us is our idol. What dictates our steps, thoughts, words, who or what we avoid and embrace… this is what we worship.

I do not serve a god that succumbs to fear or bitterness. Anger has no permanent address here. I serve a Lord who prayed with grace, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.”

A Rejection of Focus on the Family's "Letter from 2012"

I recently started a Facebook group to protest Focus on the Family's "Letter from 2012." The link can be found here: http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=30055124462&ref=mf

This is what the group info says:

Focus on the Family Action recently put out a hypothetical letter that outlined what America would look like from the perspective of a Christian looking back on an Obama presidency from 2012. The letter starts off by saying, “Many Christians voted for Obama – Younger evangelicals actually provided him with the needed margin to defeat John McCain – but they didn’t think he would really follow through on the far-Left policies that had marked his career. They were wrong.” Here are just some of their scenarios Focus on the Family paints for us:

- The Supreme court leans liberal, 6 to 3.
- Terrorist attacks have occurred in 4 US cities.
- Christian doctors, nurses, counselors, and teachers have either been fired or quit.
- Iran perpetrated a nuclear attack on Israel, drastically reducing the size of is borders.
- Pornography is freely displayed.
- Inner city violent crime has dramatically increased due to gun control.
- Russia has occupied 4 additional countries.
- Gas tops $7 a gallon.
- Euthanasia becomes commonplace.
- Blackouts occur throughout the country.
- Homosexual marriage becomes law in all 50 states.
- Campus ministries, Christian adoption agencies and Christian schools nearly cease to exist.
- Home school families emigrate to Australia and New Zealand by the thousands.
- Bush officials are jailed and bankrupt.
- Taliban oppression overtakes Iraq and death of American sympathizers reaches millions.
- Homosexuals are given a bonus to enlist in the military.

As you can see, Focus on the Family has abandoned all reasonable appeals and resorted to shameless tactics of fear mongering. They have abandoned the belief that voters can make informed decisions and have instead appealed to fear as their fundamental motivator.

As Christians, we stand appalled and ashamed at such tasteless demagoguery. We believe that civil, educated, and compassionate dialogue should and can occur with the active engagement of our faith, but believe that Focus on the Family Action has, in this letter, stepped far outside of reasonable boundaries into pure sensationalism. We believe that such thoughtless expressions coming from an organization that purports to represent Evangelicals continues to mar our legitimacy and voice in the public arena, and damages our basic Christian witness.

Please let Focus on the Family know your thoughts by contacting them through email at citizenlink@family.org.

The original letter can be found here:

http://focusfamaction.edgeboss.net/download/focusfamaction/pdfs/10-22-08_2012letter.pdf

Please encourage your friends to contact Focus on the Family and to join this group.

Release

When it is a prayer we speak to
grant reprieve, we are instead
granted sleep to ease the pull,
a constant stress upon the cords holding
what is
and what is not yet.
Grant instead
a distaste for opiates, cheapness, and
the quiet waiting that walks what is
toward the glaring silence of
what is not yet.

A Penny For Your Thoughts: Everything Must Change

I have just finished the book “Everything Must Change: Jesus, Global Crisis, and a Revolution of Hope” by Brian McLaren. I wish to hear thoughts from those of you who have read the book, but mostly challenges and critiques. However, before I do that, I want to state as honestly as I can the assumptions and biases from which I speak.

I do not function from a position of a socially conservative Evangelical. I fully affirm the ancient creeds about the Trinity, the work of Christ, and hold Scripture to be the word of God. However, I am unapologetically affected by post-modernity and its critiques of old dominating meta-narratives and its recognition of modernist arrogance. In the same vein, I hold loosely the exclusivity and absolutism of the specific strain of Protestantism of which I am a part. I want to recognize the development of theology and thinking in light of a given historical context. As cultural creations, I do not believe that people can view truth objectively, even though Truth exists in the person of Jesus Christ. We look through a glass darkly and await the day we will see clearly, face to face. Given such assumptions, I desire to view my own tradition with humility, knowing that it was not shaped in a vacuum nor bestowed in a pure untainted form from on high. In the same breath, I seek to listen to the voices of those from other Christian traditions with the belief that God is not a tribal God. I am inclined to give a hearing to women and non-Western traditions, because God is not a white Protestant male. I desire to listen to the voices of the poor and oppressed, to see how the Gospel manifests itself among those who do not have money and power behind their words, because these are people God favors. I believe that left unchecked, our cultural waters have and will continue to inform our understanding of our faith more than our faith will change us. I believe in listening to those of different faiths or non-faiths, because God can use whomever he chooses to give a clearer perspective of his realities.

With that said, “Everything Must Change” is built upon the work of post-modernity’s understanding of dominating meta-narratives, a la Foucault. McLaren first establishes and names the narratives that our culture lives by, and then proceeds to discuss why such narratives are fundamentally dysfunctional, referring to people as disparate as Rene Padilla, Jim Wallis, Philip Jenkins, Wendell Berry, Cornel West and our own Dr. Bruce Benson. He then appeals to the scholarship of people like N.T. Wright and Dominic Crossan in the understanding of a Historical Jesus and how the historical Jesus spoke to the dominant (and equally corrupt) narratives of his day. McLaren draws a parallel between what Jesus said and did in the 1st century and what we he says to our global context today. He uses people like MLK, Pope John Paul II, Archbishop Desmond Tutu and Nelson Mandela to illustrate the true power of what happens when Christians undermine faulty narratives with the [reconstructed] Christian one. He doesn’t hesitate to critique the religious structures in their perpetuation of the fallen narratives, and challenges the church to reform itself according to Jesus’ narrative, one that truly subverts the massive powers and principalities at work in the world.

I appreciate McLaren’s willingness to listen to many different voices. Undoubtedly, his association with liberation theologians, left-leaning Evangelicals, economists critical of globalization, Christian pacifists/tree hugging poets and the simple mention of "post-modernity" will turn off a more conservative reader. However, as I’ve stated from the outset, such things do not count against him in my eyes.

I ask for a critique because I am predisposed to accepting what McLaren says. This book was referred to me by a man I respect, its contents contain authors, theologians and philosophers that I tend to agree with, and even the book’s specific contents aren’t so much an exposure to new ideas as it is a clarification, connection, or reframing of certain ideas I’m already open to. I appreciate a good deconstruction and am interested to hear if anyone has other thoughts.

Ivy and Ivory Towers

Driving from Linwood, NJ to Princeton, NJ was like driving from the sprawling utilitarianism of suburban American wastelands into some transplanted European town in the midst of shedding its green and revealing its glory. Narrow streets intended for horses were paved over and forced to accommodate cars, but tall white columns in front of colonial homes still guard olde money. If it weren’t for the college students in Uggs, I would swear the campus ivy screamed London.

As I marveled at massive theological tomes housed in old European architecture, I joked with my friend who attends Princeton Theological Seminary that it felt far removed from the rest of the America, and his response was simply, “Just like the oasis of Wheaton.” It’s isolated quaintness, streets lined with gnarled trees in gold and red, and Asian families with cameras vicariously dreaming for their children belied the fact that it was a mere 10 miles from one of the most dangerous cities in the country (Trenton). Meandering its streets, I did not feel the dirty grit of reality.

I have no doubt about the importance of theological studies. If I were made of sterner stuff, I would have contemplated it as possible steppingstone in life. I pondered at certain moments what my Chinese grandmother would think walking through these streets, a women who has lived her entire life in the tumultuous country of her birth, from one historical desolation to another. She would have found it incomprehensible that such a beautiful and entirely different place existed on the same earth she knew. And yet, here it stands, buildings and streets that were built to facilitate theological and academic pursuits, intended from its foundation to be a place where those who knew God intimately would be sent out to shepherd flocks and lead the country.

Is theology, or the pursuit thereof grounded in reality? Perhaps I shouldn’t draw such a line. Some would undoubtedly say that pursuing theology *is* pursuing reality. I would like to hope that such a notion is true, that theology is indeed the attempt at understanding the workings of God in a world of brokenness. However, I can’t help but to think of the books housed in one of the greatest theological libraries outside of Oxford and wonder how this entire town, swarming at every coffee shop, bar and corner with intelligentsia, an antithesis of what the rest of the world experiences, can possibly say to suffering, hungry and struggling people in the midst of wars, disease, and death.

I wonder, though not in a condemnatory way, why the study of God and reality seems, by most appearances, so insulated from it.

In no way am I disparaging academic pursuits of God through theological studies. However, I am wary of the simple pursuit of theology. The former (as I understand it), is an attempt to better love the Lord. The countless hours and late nights of classes, readings and writings will multiply into true bread for the hungry. It seeks to better understand the heart of the Lord, and how to love what He loves. It is a means to His ends. He is the end. But the pursuit of theology for the sake of itself seems to be as useful to the world as an unread thesis gathering dust underneath the basement shelves of a converted anachronistic cathedral in a beautiful isolated town of New Jersey. I wonder how many brilliant minds throughout history have settled for the fiddling of words.

For my friends in various seminaries and ivory tower institutions around the country, I pray that all those days behind Greek and Hebrew books, systematic, philosophical and historical theology classes, all the homiletics and exegesis practices will indeed bring you to love the Lord more, and draw you to the ghettos of this earth like Trenton, 10 miles away from the insulated comforts of Princeton. And if I ever get there to join y’all, call me down to earth once in a while.

A Thought Exercise: Race and Evangelical Politics

I'm curious. I really am. I wonder what the conservatives (and especially Christian ones) would say if Obama was the one who had left his first wife after she got into a car accident and became handicapped, cheated with other women while still married, and then married a rich young heiress. I bet they wouldn't be silent about it, that's for sure.

I'm also curious what the conservatives would say if it was Obama who had a pregnant teenage daughter. I wouldn't be surprised to hear Focus on the Family talking about how he has no family morals and no control over his children, and why he has any right being president of the United States if he can't manage his own household.

Now, at the end of the day, we will never know for sure what would happen if that were the case. This is why it's a hypothetical exercise. However, I don't think it would be a stretch to say that somewhere in there, Obama would find himself having to defend his entire race for his actions (which McCain certainly doesn't have to do even if people pointed out the outrageous inconsistency of values voters supporting him). Somewhere in there, I wouldn't be surprised if the stereotype of promiscuous black women was subtly hinted at, or the unfaithful black male was conjured to attack him.

Sadly, I have a hard time believing that the voice-boxes of Evangelical righteousness would say, "Oh, everyone sins. Let's stop attacking his family and history! God has forgiven them. Who are we to cast the first stone?" I could be wrong, but my mind has a hard time imagining that as a possibility.

Under My Umbrella [ella ella]

under an uncertain street light
amber in its glare
do not cower from the rain
for its threats against your being
are moot.
upon bare flesh it refreshes
jogs a memory of life alive
and umbrellas serve only to impinge
upon the improbable knowledge of
an unceasing current like
a wet static upon the skin from
an impregnable dark.
unlikely reminders that we are more
than the sum of our weight
in minerals.

do not cower from the rain or
the silence dripping through your bones.
far too long is spent being
far too dry.

There should be a rule that says for every one thing that you deconstruct, critique, challenge, or destroy, another thing should be planted, built, created, or cherished.

If passion is always negative and discouraging, it will certainly leave us with ulcers.

Enough: Where America and McBama Are Wrong

“In a nation that was proud of hard work, strong families, close-knit communities, and our faith in God, too many of us now tend to worship self-indulgence and consumption. Human identity is no longer defined by what one does, but by what one owns. But we've discovered that owning things and consuming things does not satisfy our longing for meaning. We've learned that piling up material goods cannot fill the emptiness of lives which have no confidence or purpose.”

That was a quote from Jimmy Carter in 1979, from what is known as his “Malaise Speech” during the energy crisis. Certainly, that cannot be true? President Bush’s speeches following 9/11 told people to do more shopping. The economy will be remedied, it seems, if people went out and bought more. In fact, there is no ceiling to growth, we must merely strive forward with American ingenuity and creativity, creating more jobs and products, and find more markets to sell to. Is the American market saturated? No problem, let’s export. Let’s take all our surplus, created with fertilizers, hormones and environmentally destructive practices, which is a result of our “more is better” mentality, and dump it at cut throat prices around the world, because, after all, who doesn’t want more for less? (Everyone has our values, right??)Who cares about the national interests of the other countries… once globalization is king, it will all be international interests (for anyone but us, of course). The poor will be uplifted if companies are given more breaks so the wealth “trickles down.” If we simply consume more, we will be a nation of happier people, satisfied and secure in life. I mean, look at us now! We are so content, with our McDonalds and 3 car garages. The world is a happier and more peaceful place because of us, even if we are dehumanized, commercialized, and transformed into a mere source of consumer revenue in the process. How the face of God shines upon this Christian nation, anointed to be the example of justice and prosperity for all the world to see.

This is the American dream, is it not? The right to pursue happiness becomes the right to pursue unlimited growth without an awareness of costs or effects. This is what we have grown up with. This is the air we breathe and the water we swim in. More is simply better, therefore, the consumption and accumulation of more must be the pinnacle of best. “More is better.” This is the fundamental, unquestioned and unquestionable assumption that drives every aspect of this country, especially its politics and economics, and even its religion, when it sleeps in the same bed.

The statistics are damning. Our wealth and lifestyles consume 24% of the world’s energy even though we are merely 5% of the population. I literally laughed out loud when a commercial during the nomination conventions reported the statistic of our energy consumption, yet had the shameless audacity to suggest that we need more. The way that conservatives systematically deny our role in Global Warming is unforgivably callous. In the name of growth, we will continue to destroy not only God’s creation (and lest you don’t believe in a God), the very systems that sustain and give us life. We live as if we are above the wrath of a world that has bared its teeth at us in the forms of increased hurricanes, disease and destruction. And truth be told, most of the white middle class Americans are, for the time being, above the wrath. But the poor and the weak are not (New Orleans, Indonesia, anyone?). It is no secret that the scales of an unbalanced ecosystem are unfairly weighted against those who have the fewest resources to protect themselves. (But it doesn’t matter, since it doesn’t affect us). We don’t even need to get into the astronomical amount of waste we produce or where that goes (which, coincidentally, just happens to be where minorities and those lower on the socio-economic ladder are located). No, there can be no questioning the doctrine of growth and prosperity. Whether or not we say we believe in unlimited growth is irrelevant (because anyone with any sense can tell you, in a closed system that is Earth, there is no such thing as unlimited growth). The truth is that we live like it, raping and destroying whatever needs to be raped and destroyed, with little regard for any long-term consequence. Even for those who recognize the warning signs of impending disaster, I’m confounded by their absurd willingness to do further damage via the savior of Scientific Progress instead of working to curb our consumption (see posted item on Geo-engineering). In the millions of years that this planet has supported life, the two great lies have been, “The day you eat from the tree you will not surely die,” and “We live in a world of unlimited growth where more is better.” (A tip of the hat to Derek Webb.)

And yet, We. Need. More.

Richard Foster, and I suppose others, locate 6 great streams of tradition within Christianity, each offering an important perspective: Contemplative, Holiness, Charismatic, Social Justice, Evangelical, and Incarnational. He argues that for holistic spiritual development, we must be aware and seek to develop in all of the 6 areas. As I’ve argued in the past, our theology heavily influences the way that those 6 streams merge in our lives, if at all. If one has a dualistic view, then Evangelism comes into conflict with Social Justice. If we don’t have a healthy understanding of the affirmations of the Incarnation, then the world is simply for us to abuse at will.

I do not believe that the pervasive, assumed and unquestioned ethics of unlimited growth and “more-is-better” is a Christian ethic. What I do see in Scripture is a model in which those with more bless those who have none. I see an ethic that demands a love toward our neighbor that is equal to the love we have towards ourselves. Both in Jesus’ words and in Paul’s example, I see an emphasis on not worrying about our material needs but having a contentment that comes with less or plenty. In Scripture, I see a heavy emphasis on the poor, the aliens and strangers, the widows and fatherless, those ostracized by the status quo, which are our neighbors around the world who support our decadence and wastefulness with their blood and sweat. In fact, in the early churches, I see an extreme subversion of empire and status, so much so that believers were seen as a threat worthy of capital punishment, not a co-option by the government’s political machinery. What seems much more in line with the Biblical witness is an ethic of “enough,” as seen in Proverbs 30:8-9:

“Give me neither poverty nor riches; feed me with the food that is needful for me, lest I be full and deny you and say, ‘Where is the Lord?’ or lest I be poor and steal and profane the name of my God.”

There is no universal line that states, this is “enough.” Such ambiguity has never rested comfortably with legalists. It is true that many do not have enough, in this country and around the world. However, having been saturated with “more is better,” what is truly enough is probably drastically less than what we assume we need. I cannot, and do not need to detail all the reasons why “enough” is biblically and more practically feasible than “more is better.” There are plenty of authors who vocalize the arguments of simplicity far more articulately than I (Richard Foster, Wendell Berry, Cecile Andrews, and Henri Nouwen being a few of them). But it cannot be understated that our current lifestyles are unarguably globally unsustainable and a flagrant disregard for our neighbor. For some, more will indeed be better, since they do not enough. But for the vast majority of us living in this country, the rest cannot have enough if we simply have more. To make it all the worse, America, with its flippancy towards consequences and blind pursuit of growth, is the model towards which so many struggling countries strive.

This election, unfortunately, has shown me that despite the rampant rhetoric on change, the foundation by which they make their appeals are still grounded in the concepts of unlimited growth and “more is better.” Though one party seems to care more about some issues (McCain didn’t mention the poor once in his speech, not to mention the fact that his running mate doesn’t “believe” in global warming), I will, at the end of the day be voting for the lesser of two evils.

In the book “Ishmael” by Daniel Quinn, the author likens societies to “flying machines.” We sit in these flying machines and take off from a cliff. We are in the air, and are paddling with all our might trying to soar to new heights, yet still find ourselves falling. On the way down, we see the ruins of other flying machines, and think, “Surely, we are better than those flying machines, if we only paddle harder.” We think, “Yes, we will make it, because look at us, we are still in the air!” But the reality is that we too will end up like those other flying machines; all too abruptly, all too painfully, and without any further recourse once we’ve crashed.

If we continue in this direction, the question is not whether we are falling, but how fast we are falling and how much longer before we plow into the ground. It will not simply be a question of the War or outsourcing. The potential problems will make us wish we were simply living the good ol’ days of $5 gas and a housing crisis.

By the way, after Jimmy Carter made that speech in ’79, his ratings plummeted. When it is popularity that buys one’s path into office, how can a prophet speak with integrity?

[I’m not a political analyst. I didn’t major in international relations and I’m not an economist. I’m not a sociologist, I’m not a theologian or philosopher, or a scientist, or even a psychologist (yet). I’m 22 years old, what do I know, right? I don’t intend to talk as if I have mastered each of those fields, as if they could be “mastered”. However, by definition of being a living breathing human being who interacts with the world around me, I am all of those things, in the lowest common denominator of those terms. Undoubtedly, many of you who have been trained in the above are far more knowledgeable than I. Your arguments will be more sensitive to information I’m sorely unaware of, and your experience will direct you to have a more nuanced understanding of said issues. You will undoubtedly find my sentiments crass and unrefined, over-generalized and perhaps simultaneously too theoretical and anti-theoretical at the same time. However, I will not be dissuaded from wrestling with such things simply because I’m a layperson. By living in this world, we have a responsibility to be as faithful as possible with the knowledge that we have, no matter how limited it is. I write, unquestionably and unapologetically, as a Christian with a bias towards my understanding of Scripture and worldview. I welcome your thoughts and comments.]

Truly, I'm Not Trying to Be Insensitive...

... But the cosmic irony cannot be missed here.

A few weeks ago, I posted a video that Focus on the Family tried to be funny about asking for rain to disrupt the Democratic National Convention. (See below)

With all due respect to the seriousness of Hurricane Gustav and the lives it will affect, I think the torrential rain came a week too late. Sorry Republican National Convention. Sometimes plans backfire.

Focus: Maybe God didn't get the joke. I'm just saying.



(Don't taze me, bro.)

Prodigal

Embrace
The emptiness
Like a prodigal child returned
One for whom I have prepared a bed
And kept tidy a room.
Every fortnight
A familiar tap tap tap
At the gates.

I don’t bother to ask anymore
Where he’s been
Or if I should make some tea
To keep us company
To keep me warm.
He drapes his silence like a flag upon my door.

My, how you’ve grown.

And like a good father,
I do not ask when he will leave again.

Biting the Hand That Feeds Me

I listened to Obama's speech today. I don't think he's a god or agree with the media's messiah complex for him. I don't think he has all the right answers. I don't agree with the people who are 100% sold out on any politician, even Obama. No matter how much one pushes for change, the realities of running for government office means that one cannot alienate too many people, even if that means compromising one's own convictions. It's unfortunate, because that just means that vested interests still have their say, and the same old oppressive stories of "us" and "them" are still being appealed to as reasons for the candidate to be in office, even Obama. I didn't appreciate all of that rhetoric about how great America is, but I don't suppose you can be elected as the US President while being an unpopular prophet (unfortunately).

With that said, the truth is that I tenuously agree with those who say that by the nature of who Obama is, he is a catalyst for a sort of healing and reconciliation greatly needed within this country as well as with the rest of the world. I think the compromising that I personally am weary of is a necessity in a two party system dogged with pettiness and partisanship. (This is why I can't be president....... apart from the part that I wasn't born in this country.) I believe that despite my reservations on some of his policies, I find a large proportion of them far more palatable and in line with the ethics of the Kingdom than that of the line of the Republican party.

However, I am not an average American. I appreciate much of what I have been given here and do not want to downplay the privileges I have been afforded, but realize that it has often come at the expense of others. Nor does my appreciation and indebtedness force me to stay silent about the ways in which we have fallen short. I have a great amount of disrespect for our cultural superiority complex, both in words and in deeds. I think nationalism is folly, especially when it's used in the name of injustice and appealed to as an untouchable and unquestionable ethic. I have no issues with the idea that "chickens come home to roost," and have no illusions of God somehow being a de facto American patriot Himself, as we seem to make Him out to be. I do not hold the Constitution as holy and infallible, and see no point in pretending to walk humbly with our God when we fail to act justly or love mercy. But, in my ignorance and lack of life experience, there is much I do not know and am probably wrong about. What I do know though, is that the "American Dream," the one that says we are "free" to enslave ourselves in vapid anesthetics is neither dream nor freedom, but a nightmare that is lived in every city, ghetto, suburb, and rural corner of this country. It has spread like an infections disease, abetted by human falleness, to every city, ghetto, suburb and rural corner of the world. We are not satisfied in merely deluding ourselves, but have participated in a pandemic of death by the things we have done and left undone. The worst of it might be that our collusion with the political, social, economic (and by definition) spiritual powers and principalities have gone unnoticed by us, its very perpetrators, much to the satisfaction of the father of lies.

At the end of the day, I will probably vote for Obama despite my reservations. I'll vote, because I want someone to prove me wrong and show me that we are not as hopeless as my rhetoric makes us sound, that it is still possible to have a country rooted in compassion, justice, and reconciliation, where the poor, oppressed and alien are not completely trampled upon by the rich and powerful (eg, us). As much as I instigate, I would like America to stop doing so. My hope is not quite as teary-eyed as some of those I saw in the convention, but it's there, holding out for a possibility.

Today is a historically monumental day, no matter how you cut the pie. Cheers to America for being a place that has taught me how to think critically and a place that allows me to speak. Cheers to Obama for how far he's gotten, and cheers to McCain for being a good sport in this big game, at least for a day.

A White Line in the Sea Grass

I fixed my crab traps last night, and decided to watch the tide rise today. It sounds just about as interesting as watching the grass grow, eh?

If my prison is this house, with its beige walls, wireless bars that chain me to everywhere at once, and walk-in closets of man-made junk, then my salvation comes to me through my backyard bay with its deep unmistakable fragrance, in the vehicle of an aluminum boat and a 5 HP motor. However, if my imprisonment consists of this empire, with its oppressive meta-narratives that have us purchasing lies that keep us subservient and docile, then watching the tide rise is radical enough to be part of my salvation.

I’ve been reading a lot. (Not being employed allows for that.) Writers that insist on something more, something different then what is, or has been in place. Thoughtful and articulate Christians who look at Scriptures, peer through history, at church and our lives, and fearlessly accuse us not only of complacency, but also of idolatry and heresy. Thinkers who do not think for an ivory tower’s sake, but for the sake of our wholeness and a complete Gospel. Farmer-turned-poets who write manifestos in a mad attempt to reignite our imprisoned and emaciated imaginations. Ascetics who, in their unique experiments, have attempted to know the fullness and presence of God through the still and silent whispers of solitude. Broken healers who embrace, and in the process are simultaneously broken and healed by their communities.

A friend and I recently engaged in a discussion on “being,” the idea that our doing can only be authentic if it proceeds from our being. He talked about how there is far too much striving and faking, of chasing after and appeasing false gods, no less idolatrous than ones made of wood or stone. One writer claims that we have become turncoats towards God’s Kingdom. Whereas we should be living the lordship of Christ and the reality of His Kingdom, we have wholeheartedly embraced and whored ourselves to the Empire instead. If this is true, who are we to be? Another claims that our conclusions of the world going to hell in a hand-basket is full of old pagan philosophies and tenuous misreadings of proof-texts. If this is also true, what then are we to do? Old desert fathers gave it all up to hear a Voice in the silence, and ended up fighting against bad theology (See Anthony the Great and Athanasius vs Arius). People today give it up to fight a dehumanizing consumerist theology that allows for blind complicity in worldwide abuse and slavery, and end up hearing a Voice in the stillness of what’s left.

Now is the time to be. Silent, aware, and in awe. “Be still, and know that I am God.” As I sat in a creek and watched the tide rise, I realized that simply reading about all of creation moaning for redemption isn’t quite the same as partaking in it, since it is not only we who worship the Creator, but all of His good creation who sing as co-worshippers with us. It is as different as merely reading about babies, and finally participating in the joy and birth of your own child (not that I would know the latter...). The solitude gave volume to the silence, filled with sounds we have lost the ability to hear. For a moment, I believed that if people would stop fearing silence, stop inundating their senses with noise, stop their repression of questions and doubts, to live life as it comes, with a simplicity dictated by need and not excess, there would be a much smaller market for psychologists.

There is something intangible to being still. Perhaps stillness allows us to listen, to both the discord in our own hearts, and to God’s response and assurance that His love is greater than our fear. Perhaps the stillness allows us to see the fluidity and beauty in His created order, as well as how abusive and oppressive our dealings are to that peace. And if adage “time is money” is a creed of the empire Jesus came to overthrow, then reclining in a boat, watching the wind and listening to the tide rise for no particular reason on a Wednesday afternoon may just be the first step in seceding from and subverting the powers and principalities.

For once, I marveled at how everything fit together so well. It’s like getting pulled out of the Matrix and freed from its pervasive illusions, but instead of finding the real world to be full of gunmetal grey, tasteless slop and burlap rags, it was right here, all along, and beautiful, if only we have eyes to see, ears to hear, and One who will make things clear if we are willing.

I have so much to learn and live. (I believe. Help my unbelief.)

McJesus

Satan: "Welcome to McChurch, home of the Status Quo. How can I help you?"
Dehumanized Consumer: "Hi uh... I'll have a prosperity Gospel with some good feelings, hold the sin and justice. Also, I'll take a side of bad theology and a large cup of dualism please."
S: "Anything else?"
DC: "Yea.. umm.. mix me up some national and cultural arrogance. Put that on top of my globalization."
S: "Your total cost comes out to be Orthodoxy and True Life. Others will help you pay too. Come around to the pickup window."

Remember

[In the act of writing, I hope to bring about that which I lack. In transcribing my thoughts from jumbled electrochemical activity to the English language, I want to give animation and memory to the realities which do not yet exist, and in some way, usher it in.]

Faith, hope, and love.

We are not patient, our eyes are dim, our minds are slow, and our imaginations dull. We can build only so many stairs to climb in our search for leverage over the landscape of our experiences. God knew that our statures are short, our memories vapid and adulterous, prone to wander and in league with the Accuser. We distort our realities and squeeze our pasts through the mold of our ever-vacillating emotions. When set under pressure and fire, our self-serving versions of faithfulness evaporate to leave the ugly stains of bitterness and blame.

"Remember. Remember. Remember my faithfulness, even if you do not feel it now. Remember my healing, my goodness, my presence and my love, even in the midst of darkness and loneliness. Remember, not your uncertainties and selective memories, interpretations or assumptions, but remember me, my Kingdom and my righteousness."

Hope. A biblical hope in the person of God and His character. When all our attempts to usher in the New lay futile and hollow under the spotlight of silence, there can be but one virtue that holds the weight of being. Hope becomes the quintessential anchor of our hearts, especially when our most sincere efforts at love and faithfulness are not enough.

Mute

If I let my legs wander, and my thoughts walk,
Chasing a setting sun, fighting to ward off a lonesome dark
Will I, can I
Be bestowed with the bright hues that conjure tonight?

Will you point for me a direction,
Speak to me, with certain secrecy, of a goodness forgotten,
The food of gods
Of a stuff that will mute silence and turn off the night?

The Prophets of God v. Barack Obama

Courtesy of Focus on the Family. 'Nuff said.



(Common now, if you're gonna try to be funny, at least do it well. You're good at making us look stupid, but who said you had to be bad at humor too?)

Realists Anonymous

Those who seek justice from the powers that be, those who do not have an off switch in their minds for questions and analysis, those who attempt to hear the voices silenced by oppression, those who are not satisfied in perpetuating the status quo and are not afraid to speak words to bring it down, those who feel the wounds of the abused as deeply as they feel their own… what will become of us if we cannot find a hope that’s more tangible than every problem we draw out, every sin we condemn, both in ourselves and in the world? The frailty and fragility of a person cannot possibly accumulate the burden of both personal scars and the wounds of others. With buckled knees and hunched backs, our eyes, which have already tended to gaze at the dirt, will be drilled closer to the ground, and soon we will lose the ability to stand straight again. Our heads will no longer fight gravity, and our eyes will see nothing but darkness, whether or not it is actually there. Whatever gifts we have used will become like trying to do surgery by swinging a machete by the blade; altogether useless and rather painful.

Cynicism is not and cannot be the end point under which we are crushed. For those of us who are self-described realists, when we fail to acknowledge and revel in the beauty and goodness that is found intertwined with the brokenness we spend so much time pointing out, we have failed to live up to our name, for beauty, love, and hope are more enduring and immediate realities than the brokenness we see. Not only do we become as blind as those who ignore suffering, but we forfeit a potent method by which we are encouraged, energized and blessed by the one who has already borne these burdens... the one who, by His resurrection, has inaugurated a new reality.

His Kingdom is His, not mine. And if I am part of His Kingdom, then I am entirely His as well, as are these scars, both the ones I have given myself and the ones I have taken on. If He has indeed risen, as I professed today during Eucharist, then my burdens and the cries of this world are not my own to shoulder, for His yoke is easy and His burden is light.

NT Wright Smacked Me and I Asked For More

A friend shared an experience with me once. He was staying in a home of a Christian couple, and had just finished a can of soda. Upon asking for the recycling bin, the couple’s response was, “As Christians, we don’t recycle. Jesus is coming soon anyways.” When all attempts at detecting some sort of sick humor failed to turn up any results, my friend stood speechless and dumbfounded at such a remark. Their comment sounds absurd, but is a safe conclusion if many Christians take their beliefs of the afterlife to the logical end. Why bother with the environment or social issues if it's all going to hell anyways? Why not just spend our time saving souls for heaven instead? Didn't we have enough of those mainline liberals and their Social Gospel in the past? The question of why sweep the deck of a sinking ship is often a response to the way we understand the progression of history into the "End Times." (Cue thunder cracks and dramatic orchestral music.)

I haven’t really written a book review in a while, and don’t intend to do so here, but there are many books and experiences that push me towards the river, and a few books that have been the Rubicons of my faith. I give credit to Lee Strobel (Case for Faith/Christ) in my early days, Mark Noll (Scandal of the Evangelical Mind) and Philip Jenkins (The Next Christendom) during my college years, and now, NT Wright for his work “Surprised by Hope.”

His work for me, was the pulling together of the Gospel that I’ve been trying to understand these last four years. Drawing together history, theology, ontology, spirituality, and a plethora of other related things ending in ‘y’, he synthesizes why the mainstream Christian understanding of the afterlife is wrong at worst, or misplaced at best, and how a corrected understanding of the crucial doctrine of resurrection is key in how we are to reorder our lives around the Kingdom and why it brings us hope. In it, he explores why the common held notions of dualism (separation between soul and body or spiritual and material) are weak in light of Christ’s resurrection and the greater picture of redemption, and why sentiments shared by the Christian couple above are completely misguided. It beautifully exposes the shoddy Biblical foundations of many mainstream versions of the end times (*cough* Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins), and how damaging such theology is to the witness of the Church.

Basically, it’s frickin awesome.

It’s not a difficult read, though the concepts are heavy and mind-blowing, especially to those who have grown up in a Western dualistic Christian culture. I hear it’s an abridged and compiled version of a few of his other works. Any way it happens, READ IT. If you understand the points he tries to make, it will change things from the way you read Scripture to the way you understand yourself and God’s interaction with world.

Orthodoxy: Coming to a Church Near You!

As much as I love critique and deconstructionism, and have an inherent distrust of the powers that be, I have to remember love and hope in a world that desperately needs it. It might be true that there are lots of legitimate things to criticize about western mainstream Evangelical Christianity. We’re so busy pointing fingers at other people, at post modernism, at evolution, at those baby killers, liberals and homosexuals that I’ve felt the need to point the fingers back at ourselves for all the things we do wrong according to our own standards. I get excited when I hear someone thoughtfully articulate, attempt to explain, and critique our own actions and beliefs in a theological and historical context without abjuring the possibility that we could actually be wrong, as opposed to simply propping up platitudes to legitimize what exists. I shake my head and agree with the “enemies” when their observations about us are keener than our own. I hear stories of our churches, our sanctuaries and lighthouses, and am hardly surprised when people don’t want anything to do with us. It’s a much needed in-house sweep and challenge when an entire guard of thoughtful, prayerful and contemplative brothers and sisters are standing up to say that all is not right within the family.

And perhaps it is true; certain things must be torn down before they can be replaced or rebuilt. How do we preach a gospel we ourselves fail to grasp? How can we be transformed holistically when dualism, individualism, and anti-intellectualism are the lenses through which we view the world?

But the difficulty, for me at least, is how one does the critiquing not only in a way that is humble, but is done in faith, filled with love and gives hope. For me, there is an arrogance that I pray will be removed with intentionality and age. There is an inexperience that presents my convictions as untested and hollow, and a naivety that forgets the inevitable suffering of prophets. However, beneath it all is a desire to see God’s kingdom lived out as it should, in my own life, in the life of His saints, and in all of creation.

Orthodoxy (correct belief), I think, is a prerequisite for orthopraxy (correct practice). I wonder if it is possible to have all the faith, hope, and love in the world and be useless, even doing damage, without orthodoxy. I don’t know. Perhaps it’s possible, as I believe much has done as a fervent church with stray beliefs (it always amazes me at how God redeems things). But what I do know is that orthodoxy that does not manifest itself in faith, hope and love is no orthodoxy at all. As I strive to see the world as God sees it and desire to see the Gospel alive in today’s world and context, orthodoxy needs to be inseparably wed with faith, hope and love, as inseparable as our “souls” are to our bodies, even as inseparable as Christ is with His church.

Sing to Our Hearts' Discontents

More than writing or a melody, I want infusion.
More than currents of knowledge to flashes of light, I seek life.
More than busyness to forge my path, I crave shalom.
More than novelty to stoke my fervor, I desire grace.
More than you could ever give, I need love.

The Road that Leads to Hope

Walter Brueggemann, in a recent sermon, says that hope cannot come unless first there is mourning. Mourning, in this world of ours, is the prerequisite, the pockmarked and tear stained path that leads us to hope.

The Biblical definition of hope is grounded in the certainty of what is to come. The hope that we have, for ourselves and for the world, is rooted in the promised future just as much as it is rooted in the experienced and historical past.

When we think of who we are, we often frame ourselves in reference to our past experiences, perhaps naming key events or situations that have had a formative influence on our development. But how often do we let the promised future be a defining factor in our lives? In Philippians, when Paul speaks of “forgetting what is behind and pressing on towards what is ahead,” he models the practice of allowing his future reality (full redemption in Christ) to infuse his here and now. He is defined not by the kingdom and accolades he left behind, but by the full lordship of Christ that is yet to come.

In speaking about hurt and suffering, Nouwen says that we must let our own personal experience of pain transcend the individual and unique experiences that gave birth to it. Our pain is not to be relegated to the realm of particulars, lest we play mind games with “if only’s”, but eventually generalized and removed from specifics so that we are better able to empathize in the suffering of others. For as long as we bury our hearts in the specifics of a situation, our mourning is of limited fruitfulness to those we are called to minister to. But when we view our own cups as sharing in the greater suffering of those around us, that same hope we obtain from being sojourners on the road of mourning can then also reverberate with the mourning experienced by the world. The same staff that comforts us in our troubles will also then comfort others. And as we learn to hope in what is not yet here, so too will we be agents in bringing hope to a creation groaning in the pains of childbirth for its consummation.

This is the act of turning our eyes outwards to a hurting world even when we ourselves are licking our wounds. As the world lies broken, so we mourn as if for ourselves. As we look forward to the hope of transformation, restoration and renewal, so we take our hope and lavish it as freely to the world as love was lavished freely upon us.

And so we mourn, knowing that we mourn not only for ourselves, but for those who have much more reason to weep. And as we slowly traverse the steep paths of mourning, we somehow find ourselves walking next to others, with faith, afraid but undaunted, towards a hope that reveals itself just enough say that when all is said and done, these three remain: Faith, Hope, and Love.

I Miss the Wheaton Bookstore

Figures.

I had to go to a non-Christian bookstore to pick up the book I wanted. NT Wright was nowhere to be found in my local Christian bookstore. Their paltry theology section had titles such as "Why I'm a Baptist" and looked anemic next to the Christian romance and apocalyptic-themed fiction. On the other hand, I know where to go if I ever want to plaster my walls with puppies, inspirational Kinkade calendars, preview Avalon CDs, or eat Testa-mints (for those who want to preach the Gospel but have bad breath).

I don't know if I should laugh or cry.

$120,000 and 4 Years Later...

The curse of introspection and self-awareness is that the self becomes that which consumes the entire field of vision. There are certainly times where the ability for macro focus is helpful. But the thing with macro is that foreground detail comes at the cost of background clarity. This is problematic if we believe that we are not the end all be all to life. Indeed, this is problematic as Christians, since Christ has come, among other things, to take the center of the universe off ourselves and place it back on God. We are no longer singular amoebas, amorphous in purpose and identity, but grafted into something bigger than ourselves, which includes everything around us that Christ desires to redeem and heal, ironically, through near-sighted closed-minded broken people like ourselves.

It is not that we lose our individuality, nor that God no longer cares about our struggles. On the contrary, we are affirmed that He indeed knows every hair on our head and has the best for us. However, our lives, identity, growth, and purposes are now fed, nourished, and tied with this new Kingdom we are adopted into. As children of God, the common theme that threads itself through every decision and action is how our lives are in line with what the Father is doing with redemption, both in and around us.

I have long neglected, with a few exceptions, fostering a sensitivity and awareness to the way the Spirit moves outside of myself. If I were to paint my current understanding of God, I would have myself in the middle squeezing most everything else off the canvas. This hardly makes sense, given that His work in my life is not in isolation from His work in the world. My purpose and direction cannot be found outside of learning to first see Him, and to secondly see the world around me as He sees it, both of which take my eyes off myself.

Speaking of worship and the other disciplines that draw us to the heart of God, Mark Labberton in “The Dangerous Act of Worship” says, “This means living a vision of life in which we are not at the center. God is. It means turning away from a vision in which we and our issues are the primary focus of the day. God is. In a life of faithful worship, our life is not about us. It’s about God.”

The new paradigm for me is actually living in a way that reflects the reality of losing my life to actually gain it. In a time where we are all scrambling around trying to figure out why we spent $120,000 over 4 years, it would do us well to understand that we cannot find its course by looking for it. In the field of psychology built upon analyzing behavior, determining problems and providing solutions, it is sometimes difficult to remember that our lives are more than what we can plan or fix. Rather, we can only find it by seeking the heart of God, having our passions resonate with what He cares about, and losing ourselves in the process, trusting that His love and promises for our wellbeing are true. Seek first His kingdom and His heart, and I have a hunch that the healing, growth, love and provision He knows we need will be given to us as well, along with immeasurably more than we can ask for or imagine.

Perhaps our futures and lives fall under that strange category of phenomena that cannot be found by looking for it, but will be given to us in fullness and abundance if we learn to seek something else. What is left to be done is living the process and disciplines that bring us to a place where our eyes can be pried open, where we can be roused from our complacent sleep and our dreams can be bigger than ourselves. The disciplines are merely tools that bring us into the throne room of the living God. It is in meeting the living Christ that our faces are also transformed to shine with glory, and our hearts enlarged and aligned with His.

This is the goal as much as it is the process for the rest of our lives, as we learn to live the ways in which the Spirit blows.

Indeed, everything will be alright, if He becomes our vision.

Thinking of ya’ll.

Thanks CBN, for your deep Christian insight.

Speaking on the recent scuffling between Dobson and Obama, CBN's (Christian Broadcasting Network) Senior Correspondent David Brody says, "There is frustration in conservative Evangelical circles that the traditional bedrock biblical issues of abortion and marriage are starting to play second fiddle to new issues like climate change, genocide, poverty, etc."

Wow. As if creation care, genocide, and poverty weren't bedrock biblical issues as well? Really?? Are we reading the same Bible? That's news to me.

Matthew 6

On my trip to Mongolia, one of the focuses for the students was “knowing what’s true, then acting on it.” On the high ropes course, we told them that the harness and safety rope were strong, and that they could trust them. I told a student that at the end of the day, sometimes we just have to make a decision to believe, because that’s what faith is.

In my narrow ways of thinking, I always try to figure out what percentage of an issue can be affected by a given factor. In this case, how much of our lives can simply be traced back to decisions we make? Can we, in fact, simply decide to move forward and count it as done?

I wish difficulties were simply speed bumps in the road; gather enough inertia to make a decision, then clench our teeth, close our eyes, yell at the top of our lungs and lunge forward before we change our minds, something like skydiving. But as if the willingness to make the decision itself isn’t difficult enough, one discovers that there is no free fall after the speed bump, but rather just the first in a series of obstacles on an uphill climb. When we lose the strength to move forward, the only direction to go is down, hitting every rock along the way.

“Simply” make a decision. Make a choice. Perform the action. The sentiments and feelings will follow the actions. Be like Joshua and Caleb; step into the river before it parts, and miracles of old will be performed. But what happens when the water simply turns our boots into sinking boats and the torrents continue as they always have? What happens when instead of parting, the waters sweep our feet from under us and mock us for thinking that a simple decision could stop the current that carved canyons from granite?

As an aspiring psychologist, I believe in self-fulfilling prophecies and the power of decisions and concepts like fictional finalism. As a Christian, perseverance trumps the culture of instant fixes. But in the end, I must recognize that the will of God trumps all, no matter what virtues I try to live. It’s not the first time I’ve tried to fashion my own deliverance with dismal results. When do our good ideas, insights and self-awareness turn into things that should be considered “shit” (that’s the Greek) compared to what the Lord intends to do?… a Lord that doesn’t always keep us on dry ground along our own trajectories but uses raging torrents to carry us places we could have never imagined.

I want to learn how to love the Lord and to seek the Kingdom, Matthew 6 style. I thought that other distractions needed to be weeded out before there was space to do so, as if I only had a certain amount of emotional and mental capacity, and that the sum expended energy was limited. That may or may not be true, but it seems that we are called to love and seek the Lord in spite of and in combination with everything else that demands our strength. There will forever be suffering, busy-ness, and needs. For as long as I have warmth in my veins, brokenness will masquerade as red blood cells. Perhaps it is in the midst of it or even through it, and not the removal thereof, that I must learn to love Him with all my heart, all my mind, and all my strength.

Faithfulness is not a virtue if it turns you into a dog.

1/Midas

What we are called to, I don’t fit in.
My dreams have cataracts,
And deflated noise
Reverberates with far too much meaning.
I cheapen all that I touch.

There is a Kingdom closer than the hands in front of my face
And I can almost smell the grace it’s built upon
But my eyes, my eyes,
Cedar forests grow therein
And who needs demons when I have thoughts?

There has got to be more than hunches
Because premonitions have no grip.
Glimpses last as long as my eyes remain closed.
I’m here, but not yet.
You’re here, but not yet.
It’s here, but not yet.
What am I to think,
For surely,
Someone must be to blame for what is not.

[I Can't Keep] Five Paces Ahead of My Thoughts

Out of the overflow of one’s heart the mouth speaks,
which is why this verse finds itself empty.

Sleeves are the best places to wear broken things,
but maybe God can’t see through hotel room ceilings.

Matthew 26

The irony of Matthew 26 slapped me in the face. Here were the Pharisees, people who had dedicated their lives to serving and worshipping the God of Israel, packed into the Sanhedrin with a bunch of rabble-rousers making a mockery of justice by trying to accuse Jesus. These people, who knew the stories of their fathers and waited anxiously for their Deliverer struck and spat at Him when He finally arrived. Here was their God they had been anxiously awaiting. Instead of embracing Him, they accused their own God of blasphemy because He did not conform to their expectations.

I wonder how blind we are sometimes. We spend our time in the temple saying we want to see God and that we want Him to move, when so often, He is right in front of us, doing things His way, on His own terms. It is we who are unwilling to see Him as He is. Are we really that different from the Pharisees?

Ponderings on the Trail

I believe love, by definition, is an act of vulnerability. In essence, love is taking all the frailty, brokenness, goodness, and darkness out of our own hands and placing it in the hands of another, giving them access to the core of our very personhood. In giving them this access, you have also given them an extraordinary amount of power in your life, to discover places that others cannot reach and to speak into the depths of your being. However, with this vulnerability comes the potential of an equally deep damage that comes when those whom you have given yourself to swing their words a bit too carelessly or tread a bit too roughly. In the narrow and hidden corridors of flesh that wind about in the heart, the scars etched in the walls remain long after the damage is done.

When we say that we love God, we are allowing Him into the darkest catacombs that support the structures and facades we show the world. In faith and vulnerability, we allow Light to scatter the darkness in ourselves, and give Him the authority and power to tear down and rebuild as He sees fit, oftentimes causing the buildings on the surface to come crumbling down. The vulnerability of loving God is felt in every intentional cut of His refining blade, as well as the words He speaks of life and restoration.

In truly loving someone else, we are also giving them the same access into our depths. Oftentimes, the Spirit guides people into those corridors to act on His behalf, whether they know it or not. At times, they are the ones who do the breaking down in His name, are the voice to His words, and His arms that embrace.

Bonhoeffer says that true love for a person is always first and foremost mediated by and through Christ. He says that it is easy for us to believe our love for a person is genuine when in fact it is really a distorted version that is tainted with our own brokenness and neediness. Because of the oftentimes more tangible and immediate results of our limited human love, what we give is often laced with subtle forms of manipulation, and reflects our insecurities more than the love given by God.

Nouwen reminds us that we are unable to truly love others freely until we allow ourselves to be loved by God. Until we internalize the unchanging truth of our status as beloved children of God, we will continue to look for the approval and affirmation of others when they cannot ultimately provide it. Our actions will not come from a desire to bless or to love, but will arise from the deep insecurities that come from the unhealed dark places in our being.

We cannot give to others that which we have not received. We cannot learn to love properly unless we accept the love from God. It is hard for us to be healers if we have not known hurt and healing. Until we embrace ourselves in the name and by the grace of the Lord, it will be difficult for us to embrace a friend, let alone a stranger or an enemy. “Those who fall upon the Rock will be shattered, but those whom the Rock falls upon will be crushed (Matt 21:44).” As we are shattered, may He become both the new bedrock and the new architect, and may our attempts to love others be empowered by and submitted to Him.

Bed of Needles

For a few short breaths
I find myself nestled in the bed of needles
beneath frayed umbrellas smelling like that first week of December
when the Christmas tree paints the living room green.

Here, far north of man-scapes and concrete dreams
unbesieged by a muddle of petty anesthetics and miniscule grandeurs
the thunder cracks louder off every unmarked path and speckled rock and root
and the show I watch from beneath my pine helps wash old dust off my feet.

The signs in the skies change like the whims of a woman bearing new life
E’n so, the chant of the wind has carried the death of all that I could not leave behind.
Be still, as all the world rages around,
to know that He Is, if only for a breath.

The Mongols Are A-comin'!

Let's see what happens when you stuff your heart into a backpack and drag it across the rolling expanses of Mongolian fields, while attempting to make sure 12 inexperienced teenagers make it back to their parents alive (and with some sort of growth to show).

Ta-ta for now.

All It Takes

In the attempt to forcibly move
(Because the world will not move for me)
Relativity becomes a testable theory.

Every arbitrary threshold,
Every zone of time and mile staked therein,
My resolve is harnessed and clipped
Lest I falter, stumble back,
And find myself crumbled like pillars of salt.

City streets will be redeemed
As I peer beyond the silhouette of my own nose.
O Death, where is thy victory?
O Damien Rice, where is thy sting?

老天津

Airports are existential places. They funnel the most eclectic and diverse people from around the world into one building, only to wait impatiently, sit awkwardly together for a few hours, mixed like a humanity cocktail. Then, just as randomly as they came, they are herded into airplanes like lemmings, and shot out to equally exotic places, to live our unimaginably disparate lives, never to interact again. On one hand, we are so minute, another face in a crowd of different shades. But the stories and lives behind the faces screams Imago Dei, and stands as a bulwark against dehumanization.

On the bus ride from the new Beijing airport (which is quite impressive, by the way) to Tianjin, I sat next to a man from Sierra Leone who worked for his country's Department of Transportation and Infrastructure, here to participate in a development seminar. He shared about the rebuilding of his country and African politics, and we lamented people like President Mugabe and histories like colonialism. I couldn't get diamonds, wars and child soldiers off my mind.

Unlike me, who squirmed for a mere 14 hours, it took him 3 days to get to China. He was so other to me, black as the night and wide-eyed in a city that was twice his country's population. And yet there we were, hamming it up, with him as a Brother as well.

Today, I will walk out onto the street and fill my lungs with pollution, order an egg inside a biscuit for breakfast, hug familiar friends at Fellowship, massage away the economy class aches, and find myself greeting the lamb-kabob chefs with an "Assalamu Alilkum," only to sit alone and continue entertaining the thoughts I had for 14 hours by myself in the sky.

Hello, Tianjin. It's good to be back.

Redemption of Place

In my town, there is a small dirt road that leads into creeks coming in from the bay. In an open expanse and solitude rare for suburbia, one can look across the bay and see the glowing lights of Atlantic City reminding me, “all that glitters is not gold.” Here, throughout high school, I’ve written countless stanzas of angsty teen poetry and learned the freedom of cursing at God. When I come back “home” to New Jersey, this is still my haven of solitude, a place that simultaneously accepts my mourning and reminds me of God’s faithfulness and promises.

For an overly sentimental bastard like me, there is a lot of power in a place. Psychologists who’ve done research on environmental cues say that our surroundings have enormous strength in helping us recall habits, thoughts and events, sometimes against our conscious will.

So, today is my last day in America for the next few short months. I’m returning to a place I spent most of last year in. With the place come all the people, activities, smells and thoughts that made the experience what it was. The thoughts that accompanied me alone on crowded buses will show their face again. The wanderings of a heart when I saunter the humid night streets, looking for 羊肉串, will return. But speaking of a place he revisited, a friend recently said, “I felt like I left a part of myself back at Wheaton when I left. But I picked it up and ran with it when I visited again.”

This is my hope as I return to that dusty dirty city, that I will participate in a redemption of place. Perhaps something has changed between December of last year and tomorrow, when I sit cramped by a window seat watching an ocean of clouds wash by. Perhaps the change will allow me to face those memories that spit in my face, and take back from them the pieces of me they should’ve never been given. Perhaps, when I leave again this time, I will fly back more healed, more whole for facing this place.

Eventually, like my friend, I’ll go back to Wheaton and run away with the pieces that I left there as well.

The Prophetic Tradition

I was never one who had a lot of beef with Jeremiah Wright. In fact, when I first heard his comments, I was glad that someone had the chutzpah to speak such poignant words to the rest of us. I look at the Old Testament prophets, John the Baptist, and Jesus, and am grateful for those who refuse to let us sit comfortably in our self-satisfying, conscience-appeasing illusions. I remember driving through a city and listening with amusement to a Christian talk show as the white hosts, who apparently had very little understanding of the life and plight of minorities in this country, evoked the name of Christ in condemning Obama for being associated with Pastor Wright. Though these thoughts are a little after the fact, I believe they remain pertinent, as the Church will forever need voices who are bold enough to challenge the powers and principalities, both inside and outside the Body. In the end, I'm sad that Obama had to leave his church because of politics. He made a dignified effort to try and remain true. Unfortunately, it will continue to be used against him. But I'm glad to know that his pastor wasn't afraid of pushing for change or speaking the truth, and that for so many years, Obama listened to him preach.

(Found on Rich Wu's Blog, for full version, see here.)

"It may surprise many in white America, for whom Martin Luther King, Jr. is the only black preacher of whom they have ever heard, to learn that there are a lot of Jeremiah Wrights out there who week after week give expression to that classic definition of prophetic preaching that is to “comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable.” What would one expect of a black preacher whose Christian name is Jeremiah?

While I could not possibly agree with everything that Jeremiah Wright says, I do know that when a preacher, especially a black urban preacher, fails to speak truth to power and refuses to speak of what is wrong in the ardent hope of making it right, that preacher is, in Milton’s words, a “blind mouth,” and a repudiation of God’s solemn call to him. Preachers, despite much evidence to the contrary, are not called to celebrate the status quo, even an American status quo, and when they do their job properly they call us all to a higher standard. Preachers are not perfect, nor are they the only people allowed to be credible critics of our time and place, but they are among the very few whose vocation it is to make us aspire to something other than the status quo. For too long we have made God an ally in the American way; the highest standards of preaching in America require that we should seek to be God’s ally, helping God and one another to create a world in which we seek to live as God would have us live. To criticize America is not a sin, but it is a sin to mistake America for God, and it is both sin and dereliction of duty to fail to note the difference."

Speaking about the the dangers of how our worship lies to God, Mark Labberton, a pastor in Berkeley and another modern day prophet, writes in his book, "The Dangerous Act of Worship":

"In another lie about God, we make the Lord of heaven and earth our tribal deity when we try to make him serve nationalistic ends. Whether we think of Constantine or the British Empire or American Manifest Destiny or more recent instances, religiously instigated nationalism diminishes God and subverts his mission. This is never how the Lord presents himself, but it is a frequent lie we tell others by our actions. We perpetuate this lie by making God out to be our nation's God, the One who has a preference toward us-- deservedly, some say! God can be represented as the servant of our wishes, a vending-machine-type fulfiller of the desires of our hearts (Psalm 37:4), which are sometimes little more than Christmas lists."

Preach!!

Obama-rama

Ok Obama, you got the nomination. Congratulations on bringing about a historical event... a black presidential candidate. You have the charisma to get people dreaming about change. You have the rhetoric and the sincerity.

The question is, can you really deliver?

All in a Day's Work

Today,

I rubbed the scars on my knuckles and remembered you.

I bought 5 ripe avocados and smiled.

I saw a bumblebee on my dashboard and thought of you.

I turned the radio off, drove with the windows down and felt your silence blow through my hair.

Here's to Giving Up

Giving up well is like trying to gracefully eat spaghetti while wearing a white shirt; …one wonders if it’s ever been done successfully.

When the sour sting of bitterness starts lingering in the mouth after the teeth are brushed at night… when anger is found systematically speckling your blurred consciousness in the mornings, all is not right. Moving forward should not be independent of Agape, and true healing cannot take root in hatred.

Mending, at the cost of love, is not mending at all.

Material Triptic

I am a gear whore,
a consumerist dog sniffing technological feces.
A brand-name wolf in synthetic wools,
A gluttonous monk practicing the presence of Mammon,
in an abby of wireless steeples,
glinting stained glass digitals.

Come.
Live compassionately and simply
in comfort and style.

Blessed are those who comparison shop,
for they will inherit the newest weights,
the flashiest shackles
at a fraction of the cost.
Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for more,
more,
More,
MORE,
for their prayers will be recorded faster,
10.2 Megapixels in quality,
and of superior tone.

Hello, Memorial Day.

I find it a great irony to be sitting outside enjoying the sun around a place named “Patriot Lake” on Memorial Day writing this, given my disgust for blind nationalism and unaccountable patriotism on account of belonging to a different Kingdom. I question the premises and pride upon which patriotism and nationalism are based, which are often ones of superiority and exclusivity, ones that draw artificial lines between “us” and “them” and divide rather than unite.

Turning onto my street the other day, an oversized pickup truck drove in front of me with two boisterous American flags obnoxiously flapping themselves behind the cab. I about vomited in my car, as every negative association of American consumption, arrogance, and over-indulgence found itself carrying the official representation of what countless millions of people worldwide find oppressive.

I am irked by our tendencies to graft the Gospel into our pre-existing comfort zones and culture, affirming our complacency and status quos instead of overthrowing it. As I sat in my old church, I watched a video commemorating the fallen soldiers, hailed as those who died to “protect our freedoms,” wondering where the prophetic voice of the church was in saying, “No, most recently, they died to protect our oil. Our foreign interests. Our culturally insensitive and ethnocentric version of ‘freedom’.” The psychology behind war and the military is interesting. It takes a construct like honor and pride and convinces young men and women that such are things worth giving their lives for. It glorifies the flag and the country that it represents, so that any criticism of the country’s policies or actions becomes an indictment upon the sacrifice of the soldiers, lives taken by the very country they fought to defend, for reasons obscured by self-serving national interests and political games. Like dogs, we are so blind to it that any critiques will illicit a violently patriotic visceral response, as such conditioning is intended to do, since we are terrified of believing that the deaths of our friends and loved ones were inane. I listened to the pastor talk about the worries of life, listing not having a “Biblical candidate” this November as one of them, as if the Bible only ever talked about abortion, homosexuality and family values, and that the poor, justice, and being peacemakers weren’t topics Christians should trifle with in politics.

It’s ironic, because as I sit here criticizing such things, if I am to be fair and honest, I cannot deny that I would be unable to post this if it weren’t for the actual freedoms we do have. I know that in many ways, the church I critiqued is doing the work of God. I cannot say such things without offending those who really have served God and lost their lives in "legitimate" wars. I can’t say that America hasn’t done good in the world, or that there isn’t support for Just War theories. I wouldn’t be writing this on my Macbook if I didn’t participate in American consumerism, and I have to admit that the car I drive contributes to this country’s selfish quest for energy, magnifying the misery of those around the world affected by our greed, just as much as the pickup truck in front of me. I do not speak as one without blame, but as one who is trying to fight self-deception.

So, “happy” Memorial Day, for what it’s worth. Things just aren’t so Bible-thumping black and white.

Eileen's Garden

On an early morning far too crisp for May, I drove by my old pastor's house, surprised to find him bent over turning dirt in his front yard. There was a colorful little sign planted in the ground, staking claim to it as "Eileen's Garden".

Eileen, his faithful friend, companion and wife for so many years, got to see her Jesus recently.

What did God say, when the pastor begged Him to work a miracle and raise the dead? Which parts of his seminary textbooks and theology ran through his broken heart, washed in sorrow? What did all those sermons he preached on suffering and death mean now? What does God think, when we are on our knees, trying to change His mind with speechless tears?

I could only wonder what he was thinking as he squinted under the morning sun, what memories were being dug up, what loneliness was being buried as he breathed the perfume of compost under his shovel.

"You can spend your whole life working for something, just to have it taken away... There ain't no reason things are this way... that's how they always been and they intend to stay, I can't explain why we live this way, we do it every day... but love will come set me free, I do believe, love will come set me free, I know it will... " -Brett Dennen, Ain't No Reason

"Let's come back as better people."

[For the full sensory experience, this is to be read while listening to “Homecoming,” by Kanye West :)]



I’m under the impression that transitional periods of life, artificial time markers and cultural rites of passages are wonderful excuses to reflect, refocus, and redirect. (Perhaps to reduce, reuse and recycle as well?)

A quote was given to us upon receiving our HNGR certificates:

"Remember your Creator during your youth when all possibilities lie open before you and you can offer all your strength intact for his service. The time to remember is not after you become senile and paralyzed! Then it is not too late for your salvation, but too late for you to serve as the presence of God in the midst of the world and creation. You must take sides earlier - when you can actually make choices, when you have many paths opening at your feet, before the weight of necessity overwhelms you." -Jacques Ellul, from "Reason for Being: A Meditation on Ecclesiastes"

As I crossed over the bridge to Jersey, it felt as gangster and skank as ever. My home felt countless hours of silence and thoughts away, scattered with the ones who shared the bread and wine of my brokenness with me. A flurry of hasty packing, subdued looks, and a few unvoiced grievances later, I drove across lines that were more than just state borders.

[Now, how can I pretend to be an adult?]

All I have figured out is this: Grow where you are planted.

I could ramble on about chasing dreams and being true, about being thankful and living with no regrets, but you have pop-psychologists and crappy Christian authors to parrot those truisms for you. Instead I will ask myself to fight the lies of individualism (in community) while resisting thoughtless acts of conformity (apart from the world). I will remind myself that life is a process and that we are omni-nothing. Faithfulness is valued above whatever shackles the world calls success, and that people, whom we are called to minister to, loved and breathed in God’s image, are found in every corner of life. We are placed where we are for a reason. There are no shortcuts here. We might as well learn to thrive.

Trust, amidst the uncertainties and paradox, because there are many.

“I have come that you may have life, and have it to the full.”

When I jumped out of an airplane with a piece of fabric to save my life, I realized that I wasn’t afraid of death. Death is easy. It’s quite passive. What I’m afraid of is a passive life that is more disheartening than death. Living life to the full is what’s hard. Remember the Beatitudes, the upside-down Kingdom, and the beauty of loving Jesus more than you love your husband or wife, your job, your children… “For your heavenly Father knows that you need them… Seek first His Kingdom…”

“Remember your Creator in the days of your youth, before the days of trouble come and the years approach when you will say, ‘I find no pleasure in them.’”

Maybe all of this is like a photo with the light flooding in, where the sun is brighter than it should be, and where the details and difficulties are bleached out in a glowing brilliance. Maybe. You can accuse me of forgetting about making ends meet, of glossing over moribund 9-5’s and of coming home without the strength to hope. I could be guilty of baseless idealism. But this is my point exactly… the Gospel was always counter-intuitively brilliant to me, absurd and unrealistic in this cold world, yet I believe it because of its inexplicable contrast against hopelessness and death.

If we are not light and salt, hands and feet, if we are not the hope we profess or the love that dies to give life, if cynics like me can’t look beyond our naval and hold onto something other than our stark existentialism, well… I would be lost.

Friend, don’t you dare wake up one morning and not know how you got there. And if you ever considered me a friend, don’t let me slide obliviously down that path either.

Faith, hope, and love. Always love.

["Now everybody got the game figured out all wrong. I guess you never know what you got til it's gone.... Do you think about me now and then?..."]

Dear Chicago:

Tonight was my last night with you, wrapped in blankets on the roof of my house, staring at your moon with my friends. It's the second half of May, but you're still so damn cold. I guess some things just won't change.

I sometimes catch myself wishing you were different. That I was different. I sometimes wish humility could have come without the humbling, that friends didn't come with the drama. Sometimes, I wish that your streets were gentler to my thoughts and your songs kinder to my heart. I wish you would have taught me to love rightly and to forget myself more often.

Maybe tomorrow, when I spend my night driving through Ohio listening to Over the Rhine, or next month back under the lights of Tianjin 羊肉 vendors, I won't be so bitter over your painful winters. Maybe, as I look up and see stars under Mongolian skies or neon towers across Victoria Harbour, a smile will greet the thought of my brothers and sisters who all have '08 after their names. After all, however imperfect and odd we were, however fleeting our joy was, you made us beautiful, if only for a moment.

Tomorrow, I'll squeeze the last of Wheaton in my back seat, packed in paper boxes. I'm sure I'll find pieces of you with every familiar face.

I'm leaving you with a broken heart, and I'm not coming back until He fixes it. I'm not coming back until I'm a better person, and your winds no longer cut so deep.

Until then, ciao, buddy. My friends here will hold you down.

Yea, here's to the nights we felt alive.

Love,
Chuck

Remember?

If I slide your picture underneath a frame,
I can grasp within my two hands
the moment we chose to leave our regrets
like muddy shoes at the door,
and let the whites of our teeth,
the creases at the corner of our eyes
select the memories I choose to recall.

Forget
In that moment, anything
but the lilacs lingering on a breeze
that never seems to leave this windy city
Unlike us, who,
with our patchwork hearts,
begin to drive, fly, walk,
RUN.
away from all that we chose not to frame.

If I slide your picture underneath a frame,
We will fossilize our smiles,
reignite our conversations with,
“Remember that time in Chicago...
That night... on spring break...
... Remember?”
We will dance around the demons slain by the Holy Ghost,
and will toast to the amnesia outside the frame.