Walker Percy

I wish he were still alive ...

Percy was a southern Catholic novelist and very acute in his ability to see around him. He understood that one of the large problems with Protestant Christianity ... maybe particularly in America was its enlightenment duality ... its distrust of mixing spirit with things ... with the body.

"she mistrusts the Old Church's traffic in things, sacraments, articles, bread, wine, salt, oil, water, ashes."

But he was also very aware that this distrust was not Christian. In fact, he saw the great work of Christ as uniting man within himself by uniting him to God. All Catholics have a better appreciation for the Incarnation and the great meaning that gives to the world of things ... and it has always been a part of the Hebrew understanding with their poetry of trees clapping and fields singing.

In Love in Ruins Percy's character thinks he has invented technology that will reunite man with himself. "my lapsometer, the first caliper of the soul and the first hope of bridging the dread chasm that has rent the soul of Western man ever since the famous philosopher Descartes ripped body loose from mind and turned the very soul into a ghost that haunts its own house."

and toward the end ...
"For the world is broken, sundered, busted down the middle, self ripped from self and man pasted back together as mythical monster, half angel, half beast, but no man. Even now I can diagnose and shall one day cure: cure the new plague, the modern Black Death, the current hermaphroditism of the spirit, namely: More's syndrome, or: chronic angelism-bestialism that rives soul from body and sets it orbiting the great world as the spirit of abstraction whence it takes the form of beasts, swans and bulls, werewolves, blood-suckers, Mr. Hydes, or just poor lonesome ghosts locked in its own machinery."

"Some day a man will walk into my office as ghost or beast or ghost-beast and walk out as a man, which is to say sovereign wanderer, lordly exile, worker and waiter and watcher."

At another point in the novel the protaganist's wife asks her Roman Catholic husband: "My God, what is it you do in Church?" More explains, "What she didn't understand, she being spiritual and seeing religion as spirit, was that it took religion to save me from the spirit world, from orbiting the earth like Lucifer and the Angels, that it took nothing less than ... eating Christ himself to make me mortal man again and let me inhabit my own flesh and love her in the morning."

I heartily agree. It is eating Christ in the bread and wine and loving my wife and my children who are real ... it is acknowledging God's presence with me now as my fingers hit these shiny keys and my eyes look upon technology--technology surrounded by human mess an empty glass containing watery lime (my new experiement in drinking fruit every day) and the multiple papers covered in messy ink and the flower-laden sheep that dance around my coffee mug and the tattered postcard from Iran in 1994 and the smooth wax candle handmade by Ryan ... it is all these things and these things present to God, God present to them, God praised through them, God given to them ... that make me a man and make me whole.

The last line of my book makes me cry when I read it ... I don't know if its because I have been through this novel a couple times or if you will get it reading it ahead of time ... but I write it anyway as the profound beginning of redemption in a fallen world. It is a domestic scene where the hero, finally married to one women, denies his old temptations and goes home to his wife.

"To bed we go for a long winter's nap, twined about each other as the ivy twineth, not under a bush or in a car or on the floor or any such humbug as marked the past peculiar years of Christendom, but at home in bed where all good folk belong."

Amen.

Waiting dinners

About two weeks ago I had a Thursday night to myself and so I decided to read some scripture and try and ready myself for Christmas. I read Luke 14 a couple of times because of the upcoming Lazarus dinner with the homeless. I also read Isaiah 25 a couple of times ... I am fascinated with that text and Kenneth Bailey connects it to Luke 14. So here is my results ... my new art form is poetic sketches. Or maybe they are just first drafts ideas to be taken up by someone more sure with the pen and paint than I am.

"Distance is the soul of beauty." (Simone Weil)

I came across this quote a while ago, but thought about it again this advent. It seems to make a lot of sense and be hard to grasp at the same time. It has something to do with desire and the place of desire in life and hope and love. The 12th century monks used to spend a lot of time in the Old Testament and would say that desire was one of the key themes there. It taught them to wait and long for the messiah, for peace, for the promised land. When they finally opened the gospels, the desert bloomed.

But what if waiting creates anxiety of abandonment? What if waiting never feels secure, only painful. Bonhoeffer said that only the uneasy can wait. He said that celebrating advent was only possible to those who are "troubled in soul, who know themselves to be poor and imperfect, and who look forward to something greater to come." It is important to have a troubled soul. It shows you that your eyes work and your heart hasn't been cauterized or dulled or frozen. And so we wait.

In this waiting, I can't help but put together the picture of the future banquet where the Lord will swallow death and wipe away tears as one filled with the kind of people Jesus wanted to invite to his table. This is really the inspiration for my poetic sketch. It speaks of uneasy waiting and returns us to the longing of the early church which cried Maranatha, Come Lord Jesus.

The Banquet

There will be weeping and chattering of teeth
when you see Abraham and Isaac and Jacob
and all the prophets in the kingdom of God,
and you yourselves thrown out.

And they will come from the East and West
and from the North and South
and sit at table in the kingdom of God.

And then there is Isaiah 25 where God sets down a fat banquet, a wine banquet. The people swallow the banquet and God swallows up death.

I just think this is incredible and intense. But I really wanted to write about Luke 14

Jesus said:
"Whenever you give a lunch or dinner,
do not invite your friends
or brothers or relatives or wealthy neighbors.
They might invite you in return and thus repay you.
No, when you have a banquet,
invite beggars
and the crippled,
the lame
and the blind.

and you will be blessed,
because they cannot repay you.
For you will be repaid
at the resurrection of the just."

These are the words of Jesus and I am thankful to be able to have the slightest participation in their fulfillment this Saturday.

Marcello

It was very challenging to hear the stories again that I heard long ago ... almost at the beginning of my own Christian walk. The picture above is from a postcard Marcello gave me the first time I met him. It was to remind me to pray for the country of his heart and the people he loved. He still loves those people and still has a heart for that country more than thirteen years later.

I had many thoughts listening to Marcello tell his story. That he was a man who spoke with his life. I know these stories to be true and have known about his brave quests for a long time (and been challenged by them). God has watched over him all this time and it is ultimately because God does care about the forgotten church in the middle east. I saw this again last year when I was reading the scholar Kenneth Bailey. He says "there are more Arabic-speaking Christians in the Middle East than Jews in the entire world. This demographic fact is generally unknown in the West, where all Arabs are often assumed to be Muslims. The result is that even though there were Arab Christians in the Upper Room on Pentecost (Acts 2:11), millions of Arab Christians today are almost invisible to the Western world."

The one thing I don't want to, especially after hearing Marcello speak, is forget our brothers and sisters in this part of the world. That really is a huge way for us to grow is by becoming more aware of the rest of the earth.

Reflection on Sign Four from John's Gospel

I think my favorite part is right after it says that the Great Passover Feast was near ... John describes Jesus looking up and seeing a great crowd coming toward HIM. The hungry pilgrams are going to their yearly feast in Jerusalem and man they look like they are starving ... and there is so many of them. So Jesus' sense of humor or maybe just playfullness kicks in and he says to Phillip: "Where should we buy bread for these people?" They are looking for a feast right, well, how are we going to provide it for them?

While Phillip is expressing his dumbfoundedness, Peter's brother speaks up, "There is a little poor boy who has offered his meager barley loaves and small fish ... but I don't know what that means." Do you think Jesus smiled about the young man who has more faith than his disciples? There is a lot missing here for me ... did they talk long enough for the boy to get that they were trying to come up with the food. Who was this young boy anyway and why was he so close to the disciples (not with the great crowd of people).

Jesus provides from this boys lunch a feast for over 5000 people with plenty left over (all that they want). Jesus is definitley pointing to his ability to feed our hunger. This always make me think of the verse in the Old Testament that "Man cannot live by bread alone, but needs the word of God." I think Jesus is setting up to teach about how he is the bread of Life ... the word of God that will cause us to live.

Reflection on Sign Three from John's Gospel

I think this story is one of the more interesting and mysterious in the whole gospel. Jesus is reported to have healed massive amounts of people (Mark writes multiple times of Jesus healing many), but here we have Jesus entering a place packed with sick people and just walking around. The place itself is like a hospital with no doctors ... maybe, like some commentaries suggest, this is some sort of early government welfare program. The government spreads a story about an angel, offering the people the comfort of a false hope (and keeping them off the city streets). However they got there, Jesus walks into their midst. I get the impression that no one recognized him and so he is just looking.

This is what strikes me first. Jesus is there among "a great number of disabled people ... the blind, the lame and the paralyzed" simply looking. Simply taking in this place full of sickness and old stories, maybe even urban legends. And then he sees the man we read about. Something about him makes Jesus curious about him and so he asks someone ... maybe a guard or maybe just one of the sick people. They say something like, "Oh that's Harry. He has been here a long time, 38 years is what I hear."

Thirty-eight years! Really trying to imagine that is difficult. Thirty-eight years of sitting idle in hopes that somehow you will be touched by the angel and be made whole. It reminds me of poor people buying lottery tickets every day. Thirty-eight years of daily playing lucky seven, but never winning. I wonder how old Harry was, did this happen when he was a teenager or when he was in his twenties?

John repeats the length of time he has been in this state and John is careful with his words. Twice we see that it has been a long time ... the repetition helps it to sink in before we see what Jesus says. "Do you want to get well?" This question helps me to get it. The people who come here have given all hope of having the money for a doctor, or having someone who would care for them. This is a hopeless place and so coming here is a good sign that you actually don't want to get well.

Harry replies with an excuse. It is almost impossible for me to not read this as whining. Jesus asked him a question about healing, the man offers no belief this is possible, but complains about not having any friends. His resopnse gives us a further picture of this place and what it does to a man's soul. We hear of sick people fighting to jump into bubbling mineral water which will offer no cure. False hope inciting pathetic violence ... a very sad place.

I actually don't think Jesus took that as a yes. I haven't read the commentaries (Kris did for his sermon), but my gut impression of their dialogue is that at this point Jesus grows impatient with this place and with Harry and so he forcefully says (maybe even shouts) "Get up! Pick up your mat and walk."

But what does that mean for me as a Christian? What does that reveal to me about Jesus? First of all his anger (if I am reading it right) is not so much directed at Harry personally, but really at sickness and its affects on humanity, the way it can reduce someone to such a pathetic state, someone that God created in his image, someone who is meant to be great. In this way the sickness is much deeper than physical. The physical sickness has led this man to spiritual sickness ... in this story defined possibly as passivity and hopelessness. Harry pathetically says, "No one will help me" and Jesus respends by commanding him to action. Later in the story Harry says "I didn't decide to carry my mat, somebody told me to" (passive) and finally he decides to obey the conspirators by taking them Jesus' name (passive). I think that is the meaning of the strange word from Jesus "Stop sinning or something worse may happen to you." in verse 14. Jesus knew that there was something worse than being cripple.

The anger Jesus shows is the same kind of anger he shows at the funeral of Lazarus. There he is angry with death and its effects on human beings and here he is angry with sickness and its effects. Jesus came to heal, but he also came to repair human dignity. So where are the hopeless places I go and what drives me there. I know in the past I really struggled with the typical existential question of "Who am I?" Evidentially this is what everyone asked nowadays. The hopeless place was a mindset where I said to myself "I don't have anything to offer to God ... God didn't give me anything I am good at ... I must have messed something up because I never hear from God or see God work through me."

Slowly I learned that what I was really doing was pathetically bowing out of my responsibility to be in the image of God. I was inventing inner illnesses (suburbantitis, opportunity paralysis, etc.) But slowly God and my wife and my friends called me to walk after God and with a lot of inner striving I feel like I have responded yes to the first question and am walking along. But there are still times when I start to question everything again. When I want to return to the place of no responsibility (because I am unfit for any of it or not really good enough or whatever), but I think praying responsively (even as a mantra) is probably not a bad idea: "Lord Jesus Christ, YES, I DO WANT TO get well." May this prayer keep me walking.

Reflection on Sign Two from John's Gospel

There are two things in this section (4:43-54) that really shine out to me as I read it again. The first is Jesus' initial response. "Unless you people see miraculous signs and wonders, you will never believe." Out of context we might take that as a truth statement ... maybe that is what some charasmatics believe. But it is clear in context that this is connected to a feeling of anger and frutration. Jesus even lumps! He says "you people." I imagine it as, "You people always want something from me ... You people are insatiable. Are you people listening to anything I am saying? ... Do you people care at all about who I am and what I came to do or are you just clamoring for spectacle and handouts?" Well, I say to myself, what is it? Do I care about Jesus and his purpose or am I just clamoring for my own needs and curiousity. I think sometimes, unfortunately, I approach him with unbelief, demanding a sign.

Let me give you an example. Right now I am really trying to work on developing a prayer life. I know, I am a pastor (maybe most people won't read my blog and see how much I need to grow). But when I set aside time in the morning to pray to God, am I really ready to face him and believe his presence and sit with him. Or do I just hope that he will answer a question I have, grant a prayer request or just give me a good feeling. I wonder sometimes in those early mornings if Jesus isn't heard saying, in frustration, "Unless, I do this for you Jason, you will never believe." And the thing is he won't do that for me because he knows that kind of belief (believing in Jesus so he can make my plans come to pass and give me good feelings and meet my curiousity demands) is not believing at all ... its using. Remember that Peterson quote, when we believe, we are at our most personal and intimate with God and other people. That is only true if I stop making all my demands and trying to manipulate God. I think what the crowd was ultimately saying that drove Jesus to make that statement was "I don't believe you! And if you want me to, then prove it by making a second miracle happen." There will never be enough miracles for that kind of proving.

And that brings me to the next thing that is really powerful. The royal official is not approaching Jesus for spectacle because he needed Jesus to prove himself. The official already believed Jesus, that is why he persisted. He was willing to follow, he was willing to meet the real Jesus. That is why it says "the man took Jesus at his word and departed" or in the NRSV "the man believed the word that Jesus spoke to him and started on his way." Its not about never needing Jesus to help us in this life or when someone we love is sick or dying. Maybe some people could develop a wrong spirituality that thinks that asking for help in those areas is bad ... I think the real issue at hand is believing Jesus enough to take him at his word. Believing him enough to believe the word that he speaks and start on our way. Believing him enough to stick with him and listen closely and obediently to his words whether specatacle or good feelings come.

Reflection on the first miraculous sign in John

One thing I can't get over is that this is "the first of his signs." It is an incredible thing that he could change water into wine, but doesn't it seem like a major healing or a massive food miracle would have been the more natural opener. But Jesus begins turning water, something that meets our needs for cleanliness and thirst, into wine, something that makes our hearts glad and reminds us that life is good and worth celebrating. This whole scene is about celebration of life.

Another thing I don't quite understand is that it really seems like Mary had a major hand in this happening. It is clear that Jesus was not forced into a miracle. He had a healthy break from the mom-hold that some men struggle with, but it does appear that if she hadn't brought it up, he might not have begun with this miracle. Does this speak to prayer and the value of human involvement with the divine will of God? It appears to me that Mary' concern made the opportunity for Jesus to reveal himself.

And that is the big question we are supposed to be asking this week. What does this miraculous sign reveal about Jesus? Kris encouraged us to not get lost in the gallons of wine but to try and see what is being signified. One large thing I see is that Jesus' values are incredibly different than ours in America and really in every human community. We are always self-promoting. More and more that is the only way to get ahead in our ever changing economy. We learn self-promoting because our world values all forms of promotion: advertisement, packaging, even propaganda. We are constantly choosing new products based on fashion and slick design and in turn we become consumer goods, constantly aware of our own press and dress.

But Jesus doesn't mind that no one really notices his first sign (at least none of the important people). It doesn't even describe Jesus telling the disciples ... we must assume he did or perhaps they were awkward at the party and so stuck close to Jesus and witnessed this miracle themselves. Mary sees it, but she is already a believer. She shows us this with her serious command, "Do whatever he tells you." And the only other witnesses were servants. The people who carried food around and washed feet.

Jesus seems very content to do work that goes unnoticed and that gets me. If we are his disciples and not disciples of America, or worse amoral global economy, then we must turn away from self-promotion and all the worries and frenzies entailed. And honestly, that doesn't sound easy. Especially when I realize how constantly I am bombarded with the American way. I think for me, and maybe for a lot of us, we are getting very confused about how to feel affirmed in life. For so many of us life is about being liked. We self-promote because we want compliments ... but that so easily becomes our driving force since fashion is always changing (good for the clothing and tech industry, not so much for us individuals).

For me, the trouble surrounds a crazy desire for knowledge. I love books. I really love authors but in order to interact with them I have to read their books. This love is not a bad thing, but oftentimes, for me, it comes with a frenzied and worried sort of striving. Yesterday someone was leading me in prayer and they asked me to picture Jesus from the scriptures. Pretty quickly I began to imagine another feasting moment from the scriptures, one of Jesus and his disciples sitting at an earthly table having a long conversation. I thought about how that was the conversation where Jesus called his disciples friends and so it was Jesus with his friends at the last supper. In my mind I saw Jesus there with the others around him and even though I know there was a soberness to that night, in my moment of prayer it felt more like a feast. It really struck me to imagine Jesus coming down from heaven to feast with his earthly friends. And then I was asked if Jesus was saying anything to me. I saw myself sitting with him and my friends (you know, John, Peter, Thomas, etc.). I was sitting at the same table, but reading a book. I knew they were present and I was enjoying their presence, but nonetheless I had my nose in a book. And Jesus was calling me to join the party. It was a sweet invitation.

And that is the other part of this first sign that really affects me. So we are called away from self-promoting and constant manipulation of our packaging and reputation. But the man who calls us and the man we want to follow and learn from, is truly the life of the party. "Wine gladdens the heart of man" is what the psalmist writes. According to some scholars, Jesus had the servants draw wine from a well and it was some of the best their wedding coordinator had ever tasted. What we really want is glad hearts and the world says we can achieve this through purchase and self-promotion. Jesus knows that is a lie and a false path. Jesus knows that way only leads to a weary heart. But if we follow him, the wine is in endless supply. It is a sweet invitation.

is everything about love?

So there is this life we all get to live, each of us in our own skin. Our spirit and skin are never seperate and so the place where our feet trod and our head hits the pillow is the place where our eyes communicate to our brain and our heart surges with thought and emotion and our spirit embodied decides which step to take and what words to speak.

And I wonder if every relationship becomes of vital importance. And more than anything we need to hear words that applaud our existance. It is almost that as obvious as our need for daily bread and sleep ... we need to be loved. We need to be dear to someone. Life quickly becomes meaningless when no one seems to care we are alive ... isn't that almost the definition of clinical depression. But there are no quick fixes. Modern day sexuality only hastens our loneliness. "The mere sex partner does not come into focus as a personal being ... where the playboy is concerned, the fig leaf has merely been moved to another place; it now covers the human face." and futher "Ricoeur points out, 'Everything that makes the sexual encounter easy simultaneously speeds its collapse into insignificance. What can be had on demand necessarily loses both its value and its attractiveness. .. 'so much sex and so little meaning or even fun in it.'" (These quote are from Josef Pieper's essay on Love).

I know that was a bumpy jump to leap from love to sex, but these words are often so entangled.

In another line Pieper refer's to love as the only "green thing" in "the grayed world of a work-oriented society geared to output." But this love must be partaken and build with a great deal of commitment whether through friendships or the bond marriage. The love that will last will be one that summons us to sacrifice and change and growth. It will be a love that takes courage. It will be a love worth living for and so we will take up the surgeon's blade and cut away all that distorts and corrupts.

And so if you are young take very seriously the friendships you have ... love in such a way that you are constantly saying, "I care that you exist, I am so happy that you are alive and here, I laud and celebrate your being by my side."

And if you you are in a dating relationship, take it seriously and know that you have a chance to build something that will last your whole life ... that will be a well of life and a summons to remain fully alive. It will take sacrifice ... this is a concretely connected to Christ's admonition that if you are to find life you will have to lose it first.

And if you are struggling, do everything to hold on.

These are pretty random thoughts ... I don't know that they hold together and I am certain this is no comprehensive encouragement. (Again .... blogs are always incomplete right?)

Jazz music (and art in general)

"Jazz music is like real poor people in the country on Sunday. People get dressed up and they don't have any money, but just that little hat with a flower on it. Just what that flower represents. Just a little something to make you special and make you sweet. That's jazz music." ... Wynton Marsilis

I just wish you could hear him say it.

Thank you all for helping me find good love songs! I am very slow in the creative department (probably finding the time once a month and usually then, I don't think to go back and work on something old) ... but I do have a vacation coming up pretty soon, so who knows? If something happens with my essay, I will share it with you all.

My list

To inspire more input ... who doesn't like reading these lists ... I thought I would put what I had going into all this. (PS I talked with someone the other day who said he likes heartbreak songs ... that totally counts as a love song! Those are some of the best love songs).

Van Morrison - Old Old Woodstock (the whole family makes it into this one) & Tupelo Honey
Leftover Salmon - Lovin in My Baby's Eyes (this is the only song I know by them)
Nathan Mayberry - Nine Pound Hammer
Old 97s - Valentine
Nick Cave - Are you the one I have been waiting for? & Into My Arms
Bob Dylan - Visions of Johanna
16 Horsepower - Coal Black Horses ("just as sure as that dogs gonna whine, in my heart no longer will I pine, just as sure as by evil you are torn, the sky will open up and an angel blow his horn and down comes Jesus, lookin so fine, just as sure as that gal she is mine)
Innocence Mission - Going Away


There may be more ... but that is all I have for now ...

Best Love Songs

For the last 2 years (off and on ... ok really just once or twice) I have been trying to write an essay called the Transcendence of a Love song. I began it when I heard the Nick Cave's spoken word essay called the Secret Life of a Love Song. I really didn't agree with some of what he said, but I love how he thinks and talks. One of the great lines was that a love song is our attempt to throw a blanket over God so we can see his face.

Anyway, in order to write this thing ... which is about how real transcendence and meaning has almost completely been lost in our kitch, temporal, tinsal age and one of the only places left where we are actually hit upside the head by such things is in radio love songs. Not that this works everytime.

But, in order to write this, I need to get some help with finding these gems. They can be as old as the blues, as old as jazz ... or as new as indie rock. If you can burn them on a cd, that would be amazing. My plan has always been to write the essay and burn a cd of the greatest love songs ever ... put them together and give them away. That may still be a ways off ... but since I finally have a blog I wanted to get some help.

SO, at the least ... comment with your favorite love songs of all times (track titles and band/artist name).

thanks

PS ... here is the start of the essay ... I have more that is even better, but I will hold back.

"There are many things missing in our tiny modern days. These days feel like walking on shattering glass and hoping to stay ahead of the breakline. So many things have been discarded there is grave danger that our sheet of time won’t hold much longer. Or speaking of glass in another way, one might say that our time is one where a plate of glass has been laid over life, so as to preserve it and display it before our eyes like old dead things in a museum. Either way, one of the many things missing is transcendence and without it our society will continue to shatter into meaninglessness antiquity.

The absent transcendence produces in us a stiffening business that restlessly moves about without encompassing ideas or purpose. “Nothing large can be true or we couldn’t know it if it was,” we say with a cold rationality as we commit vivisection to another helpless animal, hoping to see the electricity of life so we can bottle it and drink it in our Rock Stars and Gatorade. But we at least still sing about something that lifts us from this empty economy of modern life. It is love. There is a little transcendence left in love."

Plantiga is good

Here is another quote from a different book (the last one was the one he wrote for students at Calvin College where he was president and it was called "Engaging God's World. This one is from his famous "Not the Way It's Supposed to Be: A Breviary of Sin".)

"All idolatry is not only treacherous but also futile. [Idolatry is best described as anything our "heart clings to" whether its fame, success, happiness or whatever]. Human desire, deep and restless and seemingly unfulfillable, keeps stuffing itself with finite goods, but these cannot satisfy. If we try to fill our hearts with anything besides the God of the universe, we find that we are overfed and undernourished, and we find that day by day, week by week, year after year, we are thinning down to a mere outline of a human being."

Jason's mind: "Well, that's something to think about, Jabez." [my new nickname for my heart]

Mind rental

This is from a book by Cornelius Plantiga "We ordinarily think of a prostitute as someone who rents her body. But a person can also rent her mind for a high hourly rate, and she perverts it if she rents it because she wants to feel superior to the people who bag her groceries and park her car." Whoa to us in our world ... doesn't the vast majority of America prostitute their minds for just these purposes? By foregoing any ambition to education of character, isn't this all that we are left to do ... educate prostitutes who will be willing to pleasure the modern day kings. Ok, the image is getting to graphic for a normal blog post.

God help us incredible creations to accept and understand our highest purpose ... serving the one and only King of the whole earth. May our minds and bodies and hearts be given to you and used for beauty, justice and right relationships. Arm us with prudence, courage and self-control so we might see justice done and thank you that because of Jesus there is faith, hope and love.

Education

"For educating characters you do not need a moral genius, but you do need a man who is wholly alive and able to communicate himself directly to his fellow beings. His aliveness streams out to them and affects them most strongly and purely when he has no thought of affecting them." Earlier he defines character as "the link between what this individual is and the sequence of his actions and attitudes." (Martin Buber in a speech called The Education of Character)

This is one of my all time famous quotes. It gives me hope and directs me in my pursuit of knowledge. Knowledge of many books and skills of rhetoric (quick mind and smooth tongue) are not central keys. When I read about a man "wholly alive" I imagine someone totally engaged in life, loving and caring for his family, meeting and seeing real people, taking care of responsibilities, actually praying and meeting with God. These are the things I am working on and pursuing.

(PS I do intend a second part to the beach walking ... just don't see myself having the time for another week or so).

TWO WAYS OF WALKING ON A BEACH

Part I

This morning I was walking on the beach with Cate, my 2 year old and here are some of the things I saw.

1. Undeveloped male body (skinny, maybe 15) and an over-developed female who were awkwardly flirting with the waves and each other.
2. Underdeveloped male body who had likely wasted hundreds of hours with weights so his body could be covered in tiny, but firm looking, muscles. He was playing dance music and talking with four bikini women.
3. A shirtless man wearing black cowboy boots and black jeans with a brown paper covered bottle at his side. His sunglasses hid his eyes, but I did wonder if he was alive, he was so deep in the sand.
4. Club La Veda with "party with thousands" on the sign and for some reason, the kind of ad billboards that you see at baseball games. I am disturbed at what games might be played there ... the main supporters were Trojan Condoms and American Eagle.
5. I saw other things not so bad, family playing together, leathered old people stretching out for another smoke, more bikini women.

It wasn't until we started back that I realized my daughter never saw any of these things. She was completely transfixed with delight and fear and wonder at the ocean waves. Or was looking down at her feet walking on the soft wet sand. There was something incredible and unusual before her eyes and feet and so she directed all attention toward the beautiful curiosity we call the beach.

I followed her lead and stared into the vastness of blue water and down at our wandering feet and down at her brown head. Wonder began to do its work and I felt more childlike. My daughter and I were both walking along the beach, but it took me watching her to be pulled into the present moment, a precious moment that would be over and done with within the week. The sea is vast and always moving. The waves roll and toss in joyful patterns, lapping at our feet and it took my daughter Cate to show me how to enjoy them.

American Problems (are my problems)

A theory I have of late is that economy and capitalism, or more precisely the greedy men making all the money, are quite happy to push Americans (and maybe the whole world) toward more and more autonomy and individual choice, labeling it freedom. They have reason to do this on both sides of the equation. First, this creates loads of new business, not only through overbuying due to choice, but the service economy is booming due to the impoverishment of "relational capital." As more of us seek to increase our financial capital we do so at the expense of friends and family which increases our need to buy dinner, entertainment, sex, counsel and even kindness.

And on the other side of things, if we are split off from any deep human connection, specifically our spouse and children, even in a philosophical way, we are of better use to the companies of employment. With no one staying home with the children (that is another booming service) we have nearly doubled the work force. Beyond that, with no philosophical or religious lines drawn to protect the family, coupled with our desperate need to own all the new technology and services, the new cars and new houses, we will overwork and travel and relocate and are at the mercy of the companies will. All this we call freedom and democracy.

Wendell Berry comments that feminism may very well have "liberated" women from the home, but it has enslaved both men and women to the heirarchy of corporations. The average woman of the past was never as inhumanly treated as the typical employee and also was never as unquestionably obedient.

But before you (or I) let American capitalism form itself into a demonic giant pulling strings and drunk with power, consider this: Capitalism is not such an all encompassing philosophy and the business men are not that interested or capable of that level of control. They just keep an eye out for any opportunity to make a buck.

But what is all this rambling anyway. I have only cleverly asserted manivolent ideas about a pejorative entity. I have just capitalized on the cheap amen that America has gone way wrong and that big business (i.e. Whitie or The Man) are the source of our problem. I have not offered one shred of insight into the real problem, us, human beings. Why do we do these things? Why do we create such a culture? How can we see it change or be part of the change?

This is the point that I think too many modern writers are unwilling to concede to Jesus and the Bible and the secondary sources that stream from it. Jesus usually doesn't seem that concerned about these clever assessments of the larger problems. Instead of getting high fives for seeing through the Roman Empire or even the system of priests, he was able to cut right to the human heart of the individual and by doing so is able to cut to our hearts as well. Let us be clear, Jesus did want priest's to stop eating up the widows and orphans, but he knew that the real problem was the evil sea rumbling inside their chest ... that evil systems weren't evil systems, but the creation of fallen men.

I imagine he would turn and chastise all of us who continue to serve "the man" so we can have everything for ourselves. It is us that have the problem in that we don't lose our lives to save it ... we are all spending money trying to save our lives and so we find them completely lost and enslaved (to sin and system and systems of sin). We are all in need of repentance if the world is to change ... we must give our lives to community and family in order to serve Jesus.

Oscar Arnulfo Romero

Oscar Arnulfo Romero was appointed archbishop of San Salvadore in 1977. It was a country of instability and civil war. By 1980, 3,000 people were dying every month. One of the priests serving under Romero was murdered because he was speaking on behalf of the poor against the landowners. This enraged Romero against the authorities and he began publicly denouncing their policies. He wrote President Carter, pleading with him to stop sending money and weapons to the El Salvador government. Every week, Romero made radio broadcasts in which he condemned the use of terror and government death squads and called on soldiers to disobey immoral orders. “Romero believed that the task of the church is to challenge sin in the world, which must involve attacking institutions that perpetuate sin. To ignore that sin is to be complicit in it and take the sin into the church itself.”

“On March 24th, 1980, he preached a sermon on 1 Corinthians 15, where Paul states that before the body can be raised it must die, like a grain of wheat being planted into the ground. He told the congregation that those who dedicate their lives to the service of the poor are like the grain of wheat and are promised a bountiful harvest. Finishing his sermon, Romero stepped up to the alter to say Mass and was shot through the heart by a sniper.”

(This story is from What Has Christianity Ever Done For Us? By Jonathan Hill; P. 167-168)

Tenant Farmers

So Kris spoke on the parable of the tenants on Sunday and it really made me think about a lot. Here are some of my notes while I was listening. Kris said that even though the Israel listeners would have wanted to assume the vineyard was them ... Jesus was, not so subtly, pointing out that the vineyard was the whole earth and the life of God at work, God's promises and that Israel and now the church are only tenants or stewarts.

He went on to point out that hypocracy cannot stop the life and promise of God. All it leads to is empty hands and hell-bound christian leaders. God will wrench the vineyard from their hands and kill them. But the vineyard will thrive and change the world. Definite wake up call on reality and who is in charge.

If Israel is the tenants and now the church is the tenants ... we are to be caretakers of the life and promise of God in the earth. This connects right back to the beginning. Adam and Eve were stewards and caretakers, leaders on the earth, farming leaders of living things. But when they chose to self-serve and eat what wasn't theirs, the garden (the promise of a blessed world) is wrenched from their hands. It had to be wrenched from their hands, they were killers who would go on to gut the whole world in order to feed their hunger to be God, instead of embracing the reality of being a tenant farmer.

And now Jesus has made another change of hands. The others are all of us, but we must continually remind ourselves that we are stewards, that is reality and what is most profound is that we are stewards who are made in the image of our master ... we are created to follow him and see the life and promise of God go out into the earth.

Another take on the prodigal story

I was thinking about posting some more thoughts on the parable that I preached on this past Sunday ... there was so much there I couldn't get to it all, but this morning I read what my friend Bethany wrote to support the small group leaders and thought it was amazing. She leads the small group ministry at our church and writes weekly prompts with questions to help the groups to converse over the text and ask good personal questions. Her retelling of the story is definitely worth reading. The only change I have made is taking out the questions. The text is Luke 15.

I. Jesus is slandered (in mutterings) by the Pharisees. It's an understandable muttering. They don't say he smells or that he goes against God, but this time they are concerned w/ his company. To them, he hasn't drawn a line in the sand where people for God stand over here, and those that don't stand over there. I can see how they perceive him as a 'fence-sitter'; the worst kind to those devout. His behavior is a slippery slope. And somehow I can hear their nagging parental threat, " you'll turn out to be like the friends you keep."

I don't think they are muttering out of pure concern for Jesus' future. I think somehow they are upset that they, the faithful and the reverent to God, aren't being affirmed by this holy man. I mean, really, they've been putting in there time here! And instead of getting to be his buddy, he wants to be buddies w/ people who haven't put their time in at all!

(Note: this is the same heart of the older brother, the heart of the entitled and the presumedly jilted)

II. Instead of giving the brats a good talking to, Jesus tells them some stories. He never ceases to amaze me w/ his patience. And these stories reveal his heart. His heart is something that the Pharisees were missing. They got His law and His morality, but it was his heart (where he loves from) that they were missing - explains why I think they were so hungry, and therefore cruel.

III. So, there's a father and two sons. The youngest son, not entitled to a lot, asks for what he is due. He sees that he can get something out of being in this family, and he decides he wants to get it now; to cut and run. He sees the immediate benefit of the temporal gift and wants it, not seeing or understanding the heart of what it means to be given his portion. His portion is the composite of his father's life. His father's toils, his honor, his wisdom. To ask for it in cash contradicts the very gift. The gift is getting his father, not the material wealth that comes along w/ it.

The father gives it to him. Not gives it to him in a lecture or a swift beating, but merely, gives him what he wishes. The whole time the older brother stands by. The younger brother goes and loses it. He sinks lower than any good jew. He compromises what is important. And in the throws of starvation, he remembers his father. He remembers that maybe his father would take him back as a hired hand. He doesn't expect anything more, nor does he show signs of mourning for having lost his father to only potentially gain a new employer. He makes up a speech, a deal, a compromise.

IV. But God isn't a god of compromise and he doesn't make deals. The father in this story doesn't either. Before the younger son can speak the proposition, the father runs to him and embraces him. There is no room for the employee relationship. There is only the father/son relationship. A regal man of wealth, a man of respect in front of the whole village makes passionate spectacle of himself. There is no withholding. There is no pride that separates the two of them. Seeing the compassion that his father has, the son for the first time recognizes that it wasn't the money that he wanted and then lost, but it was his father, his relationship that he squandered. Here, the son understands the heart of his father, not one to hold something over his head, but a father who only cares about reconciliation.

VI. And then there's the older brother. The one who was obedient, and who never left. The one who put his time in. He comes home from working and there is a great party. Right there there is a contradiction for him. He is a worker, he sweats his faithfulness and somewhere there's a party that started without him. And then he finds out it's for his loser little brother who humiliated his father and his family. And he gets rewarded w/ a party! So the older son refuses to join in the celebration on principle. Just like the Pharisees, he is standing on that side of the line, indignant that his father is partying w/ a man who blasphemed the family.

But when the father comes out to him (notice the father searched both of them out into reconciliation) we find that it's not that the brother is back, but it's the private feelings of the forsaken that are revealed. It's not about the little scoundral, it's about the older brother not feeling celebrated enough. He feels he deserves affirmation. He misses the heart of the father as much as the little brother.

And instead of giving it to him, he gives the older son what he desires: affirmation. And then he invited him to be reconciled to him, and his brother.