TrainTracks and Slavery

Last week I visited my brother and his family in Germany by myself.  I find it particularly rewarding to find your way around an unfamiliar place, not knowing a language, and doing all of that on your own.  It forces you to pay extra close attention to details that you might not have noticed if you were sharing the work load.  In the midst of traveling you are forced to be more available to your surroundings because you do not have someone distracting you.  Once I arrived in Dusseldorf, I took a train to Hamburg, which is where they live.  As the newness of traveling by train faded and I tired of my book; I started to pay close attention to the world whizzing by me outside.  I noticed the obvious things first: the farms were eerily similar to those in the States; the cities were not.  All of the buildings looked old.  I don’t know if that says more about the American unhealthy extreme value of the new or about the rural German lifestyle.  

Then I began to look at the specific things in the landscape: a llama, a cool red truck, windmills and yellow flowers.  (Side tangent – I later discovered that these flowers are named Rape… #worstflowernameever.)  As the hours ticked by, I felt my eyes wander down to the tracks. An instant overwhelmed me with a sense of awareness of my locality.  It was the rocks beneath the railroad ties.  They were worn.  They had been there a while; a long while.  Probably nearly a hundred years.   As the thought began to cross my mind; my breath was knocked out of me.  People were led to death here.  Probably right here.   And I felt changed.  But, I began to really process what I was thinking because, let’s be honest, I had the time.  I realized that no one around me seemed affected by the reality that we were blissfully traveling a track that once saw unthinkable pain. I felt myself judging these Germans for being so blasé about the Holocaust… even though I had not engaged anyone in my thought pattern, and I would have no way of knowing the struggle to absorb and process the state sponsored genocide that occurred less than a century ago.  I don't mean to say they actually are blasé so much as I struggled with projecting that on to them in the midst of my reflective moment.  And then the thoughts turned toward my own birthplace and lifestyle.  I realized that there MUST be tourists that travel to the South - to Georgia who feel a similar heaviness about the sins of the land on which I live my own life. 

This Oscar season brought a rare occurrence for this movie-snob.  12 Years a Slave marked the first time in a long time that the movie that won best picture was both my pick and my prediction.  Most years my prediction wins, but my pick is much less frequent.  I have high expectations for the movie I consider the best film of the year.  I want entertainment, of course; but in addition to that, I expect the movie to exhibit masterful acting, directing, and cinematography.  I want the whole of the movie production to be excellent: costumes, score, set direction, casting; everything.  But, even more than that, I need the content to matter.  I want the audience to be driven toward processing something significant, not necessarily something difficult or unfortunate.  For instance, Invictus was once my pick for best picture.  I think the movie that wins the Best Picture Oscar marks the year and should reflect the people, culture, priorities and values of the time.  Well, at least the culture, priorities and values the people of the time should have. 

12 Years a Slave pushed all of those buttons in the best way possible.  So powerful.  As a white woman from the South who comes from a family that has been in Georgia for hundreds of years, I am forced to wrestle with the blood soaked land I travel every day.  I am compelled to navigate a terrain on which my ancestors owned people.  I sit here struggling with whether or not it is appropriate to discuss the knowledge I have on the degree to which this was true of my family.  It just feels like justifying the unthinkable.  One is too many.  Thinking about oppressing another person in that way is too much. 

This experience of pondering the rocks beneath the tracks that once led men, women and children to unthinkable pain, loss, and death forced me to remember the visceral experience I had in the theater watching 12 Years.  At the same time JD Walt’s words about remembering and re-membering and the cross, the table, and the empty tomb flood my mind.  There is something in our createdness that craves marking powerful events, especially the destructively painful things that dishonored God’s design, His Beloved, and the imago dei.  We can’t let ourselves forget the things that break us.  I can’t help but wonder if it is the part of us that hungers for reconciliation, for wholeness, to be made new. 

May you find renewed hope that God is working to make all things new each time a broken world forces you to grieve and ponder the pain of the past. 

Soundtrack – Brand New Day, Tim Myers; Whatever Thing, Enter the Worship Circle. 

Notably New York

Yesterday Jackie and I ate lunch at Gray’s Papya.  They sell these buttons – “Polite New Yorker.”  Obviously, I bought one, duh.   As we walked around the city killing time until we went to the taping of The Tonight Show starring Jimmy Fallon, it will come as no surprise to anyone that we engaged in conversations with people everywhere we went.    Almost immediately when we would talk to people they would turn to me and say something like, “So, where are you from?”  I am proud of the fact that I have little to no accent.  And none of them mentioned anything about an accent when they asked me.  No, it was evident that actively engaging with strangers is not typical New Yorker behavior. 

 

God wants us to live alongside people from every age, color, race, ethnicity, language, and worldview in a space where creative expression bursts from the seams of the concrete… where the desire to create is nurtured and valued.  The opportunity to love people, to understand them, to see them, to be loved by them and to move in a rhythm of shared experience

is simply spectacular.  That is realized nowhere else on earthy more acutely than right here in New York City, the city that never sleeps.

It grieves me that most New Yorkers don’t appreciate the valuable resource at hand.  But this dissonance is familiar.  Every day I meet people that don’t recognize the climate of the Kingdom around them.  As my hair blows back in the wind, and my cheeks flush from the radiant heat, they stand still and cold. 

The spirit stirs inside of me; as though I can feel the focused attention of our Creator’s love for the 8 million + presently in my proximity humming within.  It washes over me, and I celebrate.   This city is sacred, and I am thankful I have the opportunity to take my shoes off on this holy ground. 

Revelation 21:23
The city does not need the sun or the moon to shine on it, for the glory of God gives it light, and the Lamb is its light.  The nations will walk by its light, and the kings of the earth will bring their splendor into it.  On no day will the gates ever be shut, for there will be no night there.  The glory and honor of the nations will be brought into it. 

It all belongs to God.  It’s all sacred.  Be reminded it can all be yours too.    May you have eyes to see.  Go on; take the red pill.  You might have to fight an agent or two, but you also just might meet the Savior.

Soundtrack - New York, New York – Frank Sinatra, King of New York – Newsies; God of this City – Bluetree/Chris Tomlin.  

I'm closer to God

The summer between my third and fourth years of college I was on a traveling youth ministry team:   Crossfire from the Wesley Foundation at the University of Georgia.  This experienced shaped me in ways that I am still discovering.  There were 3 boys and 3 girls, and we spent the summer traveling between UMC youth groups in all parts of Georgia.  We would drive hundreds of miles cooped up in the Wesley van which smelled like a college ministry van should.  We know things about each other that none of us would like to admit. Even though I don't talk to them very often these days, I love those 5 people as much as I love my own family.  There is just something special about joining someone in ministry that engraves them into your soul.  And, if that ministry occurs through sweat (Effingham County in July), tears, flat tires, late nights and enduring the chaos of hormonal teenagers; then, you find a bond that can never be broken.  These are some of the finest human beings I have ever known, and I would do anything for them. 

That being said, these people are also some of the craziest and funniest people I have ever known.  One night after an evening service with a teeny tiny youth group in rural Georgia; it may have been during a lock-in, we were discussing how things went and what we needed to pray over for the remaining time there.  This was close to the end of the summer, so we were sleep deprived, and serious prayerful moments turned into silly joyful moments without much warning.  Two of the boys began to debate who was "closer to God," jokingly.  And then, they started taking turns standing up, stating that they were closer.  Even as I type this now, I realize it is ridiculous.  But, in the moment, it was the funniest thing I had ever seen.  We were rolling. 

I often replay that moment in my head because it epitomizes the fellowship that we shared and the tone of the group.  We were zealous in our faith, committed to sharing the love of Christ with teenagers, but we didn't take ourselves too seriously.  More abstractly, I think this humorously brings to light something less than beautiful in church culture.  We compete with one another for depth of holiness.   Have you ever observed a difference in reverence given to the peer that served in the middle east rather than going on a domestic mission trip.  Or, have you ever looked at someone's tattered Bible and felt ashamed that you weren't reading the word as often as they must?  Or, have you ever explained (or expected an explanation) from someone because of a church absence.  How odd is that?  As though we somehow can take credit for our righteousness.  Even though we say we don't believe in a works based faith, how often do we live as though we do?

Be reminded that God is so close he is breathing on you.  You can't get any closer, so you can stop competing for his attention.

Soundtrack - Breath of Heaven, Amy Grant; Closer, Charlie Hall.

Already. Not Yet.

I could simply rename my blog this, and it would make sense.  If you read back through previous posts, you will discover this is one of the few abstract concepts to which my brain defaults.   The more I understand the Lord and his wisdom, the more I see the world this way.  The more I let him change me from the inside out, the more I am drawn into a life of both/and.  All of the grievous societal sin, even most of the personal sin can be traced to an absence in the understanding that the Kingdom of God is here.  Available.  Now.  If this were preached more...  If this were understood better... If this was genuinely believed... what would our world look like?  I think this is the root cause to the European post Enlightenment exodus from the church.  I see it in the crusades, I see it in slavery, I see it in women's suffrage, and I see it in America on a daily basis.

We do not live a life right with God today in the faint hope to have eternal life later.  No.  We get to love and be loved by our creator today in order to be made whole and restored to His designed goodness now for the sake of ourselves and others.  Ah-mazing.
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One of my family's favorite stories to tell of my grandfather was how he would load them in the car, head to the mountains to look at leaves.  He would take video of the leaves.  The only problem was that this was the 1950's, and he had a Super 8 that only captured black and white.  We have hours of black and white leaves.  Ridiculous.

He was not alone.  My Facebook news feed tells me that this many believe Fall to be their favorite time of  the year, and the beauty of leaves changing colors has a lot to do with it.  We are at a particularly special moment in the fall, and I found myself marveling at the beauty while having an ah-ha moment.

And so, for those of you that are visual learners, our God has not forgotten you.  Behold:  Already, Not Yet.

Soundtrack:  All Creatures of Our God and King, (as performed by David Crowder) St. Francis of Assisi/William Draper.

Hope Floats

A version of me once existed that was grossly optimistic.  I use that term both to mean an overwhelming abundance of optimism and to mean as a disgusting amount of optimism; a cheerleader known for her big bows and energetic facial expressions.  I was far from dark and twisty.  I was bright and shiny.  There were mean girls who made fun of me because of it, which made me a little less bright and shiny.  

But along the way, I continued, no I continue to experience pain and loss and death, some seasons worse than others.  It's foundational to the human condition.  It's the rust, the corrosion, of Sin with a capital s in the world.  I can't hide from it, and neither can you.   

To be clear here, I am grateful for every ounce of dark and twisty that I've encountered in my life.  I carry the scars that the pain from those events caused like badges of honor.  I am a better person for having felt pain.  I am a better Christian because I know loss.    

I know darkness: the depths of darkness.  And I know how when the tide is flipping you upside down, you feel hopeless.   I happened to have a handful of conversations over the last couple of weeks with some people walking through or just having walked through some devastating loss.   And the relationship between pain and hope continues to return to the forefront of my mind.    

In the times that I felt like I may never be me again, I remember having two very distinct thoughts about hope.  OK, they may actually be feelings about hope.  First, I simply feared that I may never feel hope again.  And for a believer, this can be more disorienting than the pain itself: fearing the loss of hope.  Secondly, a much deeper current of assured peace ran through my soul.  I knew hope would return despite my blindness to its presence.  And here I am, today.  My grandmother, who is slowly losing grasp of so much, can't stop saying how happy I am.  She can't see much, but she sees that.  

I am perplexed by how that happened.  But I know how that happened.  

There's that scene in the first Men In Black movie where Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones go to visit one of the aliens, and Tommy Lee Jones shoots the guys head off.   And immediately it grows back.   It's kind of gross, but undeniably interesting.   It really confronts our whole understanding about death.  His head regenerates.  It grows back.  Regeneration: something growing back from seemingly nothingness.  It's simply a term that we don't understand very well.  

That's hope, for the Christian.  

And this is where we have to talk about the role of the Holy Spirit in our lives.  Even when we think our ability to love, to hope, to feel joy are dead; the Spirit within begins to bubble up.  And He renews us.  He replaces the hopelessness with divine Hope.  It's not something we can work towards.  We have to get out of His way, and be honest about where the death is so he can seed and grow new life again.  But there it is.  Growing.  Regenerated.  New.  Bright and shiny from where dark and twisty used to be.  Amazing.  

This is Gospel, deconstructed: God going to the place of death, and bringing new life.  And He does it every single day.  And He wants to do it for every single person.  Is there anything more beautiful?  

I don't mind being optimistic again because even though I have scars, I've had a front seat view to the love of a pretty awesome God.  

Romans 5:1-5 (NRSV)  - Therefore, since we are justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, 2 through whom we have obtained access to this grace in which we stand; and we boast in our hope of sharing the glory of God. 3 And not only that, but we also boast in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, 4 and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, 5 and hope does not disappoint us, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us.

May you be reminded, or experience for the first time, God's love being poured into your heart through the Holy Spirit.  

Soundtrack:  My Hope is in You, Third Day; Behold the Lamb of God, Mylon Lefevre; What Doesn't Kill You (Stronger), Kelly Clarkson 

Swinging Chandelier

The image of Jesus you carry around defines how you perceive Him.  I don't mean the figurative image, I mean the literal one.  The image that you have seen the most, pondered the most, or even just the one that you filed away as, "THIS is how Jesus looks."  Most people carry one of two images around with them.  As a Protestant, I have seen this portrait or one very similar in most church vestibules and more than a few homes.  He is stoic and composed.  He is regal and reserved.  Very "WASP"y.  He has blue eyes.  He looks like "us" so we can believe our assumption that Jesus thought like we do is true.  He is the Jesus that we have watered down to represent a God that is all knowing and all powerful, but ultimately disinterested in our day to day lives. 

Then there are the people that primarily think about Jesus on the cross.  He sacrificed his life for our sake.  We owe Him everything.  I think this image has a lot to do with the phenomena that people call "Catholic guilt."  He is tortured.  It's hard to relate to this Jesus.  I mean, really, what do you have in common with the guy who takes on the sin of all the world, is beaten within an inch of his life, and defeats Satan in Hell?  He is smack dab in the middle of an experience that no one else can ever share.  

My sister-in-law particularly likes this picture of Jesus.  It's called "Jesus Laughing."  She is a pastor, and she has a particularly intimate relationship with the Lord.  Once you know Him as friend, you revel in seeing him in the same way that you experience Him; loving, free and joyful.   This Jesus represents the person of Christ that  hung out with his friends.  He went fishing and made jokes.  He loved his mother, and he spent hours in the workshop with his dad.  He planned dinners for his followers.  He wants to hear about the mysteries and joys of life.  He lived a big life, and he loved every moment of it.  

When Ricky Bobby's wife in Talladega Nights explains that it is off putting that he always prays to baby Jesus, Ricky tells her that she can pray to  "grown up Jesus, teenage Jesus or bearded Jesus."  He would continue to pray to baby Jesus because Christmas Jesus is his favorite Jesus.   He goes on, "Dear eight pound, six ounce, new-born infant Jesus; don't even know a word yet.  We just thank you for all the races I've won and the 21.2 million dollars.  Woo."  

This movie moment speaks more to the American perception of Jesus than most church goers would like to admit.  We don't want to deal with a grown up Jesus.    We want to keep him sweet, angelic, peaceful, and ultimately controllable.   We want to be able to have the security of an afterlife and yet continue to live as we see fit in this one.  This mindset is why Buddy Jesus became such a big deal when it came out.  We collectively acknowledged that we have reduced Jesus down to a plastic figurine.  We no longer want someone to whom we can relate.  We want him sitting on a shelf like a trinket- a memory of something we once valued but for which we no longer have use.    

When I was younger they didn't have Children's church or coloring pages on the back of the bulletin.  So we just sat in the pews with our families.  It's why I could say the Apostle's Creed in my sleep, and I know the lyrics to most hymns in the UMC hymnal.  I vividly remember sitting in Sunday morning services at Conyers FUMC.   I had a fantasy of what I would do if I was a master gymnast and the physics of it would work.  I would jump from the balcony and catch the enormous chandelier.  I would swing a few times and then drop perfectly to the space in front of the altar.  The gymnastic fantasy would end with me doing back-handsprings all the way across the front.  Later, in my adult life, I discovered that most of my friends were thinking about something similar at the same time.  When I wasn't inside my imagination, I  also spent a good amount of time staring at the stained glass window above the choir loft.  The image is a modified version of this picture of Jesus in Garden of Gethsemane.  He is hopeful, devoted, tortured, burdened, but peaceful.  He is actively seeking the Father, but resigned to the steps ahead.  He knows what must be done, and he hates it, but he is clearly prepared to go to the cross.  

I realized this Sunday that when I sing "In the Garden," and when I pray... this is the Jesus that I see in my mind's eye most often.  He's legit.  He's the real deal Jesus.  This dude gets it.  He's got power, but he's also so human in this moment.  I always feel assured that the Lord knows the depths of human suffering and can empathize with the burdens I bring to Him.  I can expect that the faint smell of wine would be on his breath, and he has the residual peace one has after having been to a dinner party with the people that you love.  This Jesus is fully God.  He's preparing for something beyond what any of us can imagine, but he's also one of us.  

Let's be honest.  Jesus is a complex living person with many facets still unknown by us.  There is some truth to each of these perceptions, and there are significant limitations to boxing him into just one of them.  May you continue to encounter the living Jesus who is looking for a way to reveal Himself to you. 

*Note - throughout this blog entry the word "we" is used often to reflect a general societal collective "we", not necessarily a specific "we" or even a church "we." 

Soundtrack: Picture of Jesus, Ben Harper; In the Garden

Creative Grace

Recently I had occasion to state that I believe the ability to reason and create are the two things that separate us from the animals and thus reflect the imago dei.  We should regularly engage in both.  It's something I've thought for a long time.  And I've been processing this idea since declaring it to this person.

A related thought, but not in a necessarily obvious way, I also often think about the wide range of Christians/denominations and, therefore, Christian beliefs that presently coexist.  I'm particularly interested in just how many ways we understand the same truth and how we find so very many ways to disagree with one another.  I choose to believe that most of it is simply a reflection of how great, complex, and deep the Father's heart really is.  I think we; in our temporal, limited abilities to comprehend His awesome and completeness,  must focus on what we are able to see.  Like standing an inch away from anything that could be considered overwhelming.  A man at the base of the Niagara Falls may describe it as white.  A woman tipping over the peak may call it high.  I would argue, they are both right.  I think most theological debates could be answered with the simple answer - yes.  Both/And.

We Christians debate the significance of grace and justice like it's either/or.  And, even when it isn't being debated... you hear it in the way people talk about God and how they behave toward one another and how they think about themselves.  We become preoccupied with that which is in front of us.  I believe we naturally gravitate toward one or the other, and that some people are haunted by both.  I freely admit I may believe this because I am one of these people who can't ignore either.

Driving home today, listening to a story about the potential stay of execution for Warren Hill, I associated these two meta questions in a way that will never disassociate again in my heart.

In my own life I see a pattern and a relationship between them.  As a younger woman I lived in an academic world that prioritized reason and thinking and logic.  I excelled in these areas, and remember thinking in a very black and white terms of justice.  I remember being so grateful that Jesus took my place on the cross.  My sin deserved punishment, and I understood that.  Inwardly I needed to organize my thoughts on guilt and consequence around the basic tenants of justice.  Outwardly, I was judgmental and legalistic.   As an adult, I look back on those days and I am thankful for the protective cushion my legalism created in my own life.  I avoided countless mistakes because of my strict understanding of right and wrong.

As I grew older, I realized that I both have a natural inclination and deep interest in the creative process and creating things myself.  And not surprisingly, my understanding of grace and disdain for the pride that lingered around my sense of justice have grown as I have given myself room and permission to explore my creative side.

Are these related?  I think so.

Do creative people understand grace in a way that logicians never will?  Are the free spirited cursed to never recognize absolute truth?

Regardless, all of this brings once again to the forefront the mysterious nature of the One I adore.  And for that, I am blessed.  The joy of worshiping a God so big, so good; so interesting can overwhelm in the best way possible.

I leave with the words of Karl Barth  - We are forbidden to take sin more seriously than grace, or even as seriously as grace.

If this great thinker can find satisfaction in the tension between grace and justice, may you too find a way to value both equally.

Soundtrack - Amazing Grace (um, duh); We Will all be Changed, Seryn

Forrest Gump Faith

Dedicated to Wompi J, and Do-Dah; the lovely ladies who used to call me Bean.  

Forrest Gump released the summer between my freshman and sophomore years of high school.  I consider it to be one of the most culturally influential movies of the last 30 years and personally influential movies of my life.   In high school some friends and I even took to calling ourselves the "Gumpisms."  When we hung out we usually watched Forest Gump, drank Mello Yellow, and I remember there being a lot of pixie sticks.  At this vantage point I mostly remember the laughter and the great friendships we formed.  Needless to say between this peculiar relationship and the TBSing of movies, I have watched Forest Gump dozens of times.  I believe that good culture both reflects and challenges society; sadly very few movies ever reach this high bar.  Forest Gump achieved this and so much more.  I could probably write a whole book using truth in Forest Gump to espouse theological truth.  However, today I am considering the theology of Forest Gump the character and his understanding of what happened to Jenny as a little girl.  

The significant relationship between Jenny and Forest dominates the plot, and Jenny's abusive relationship with her father informs her understanding of men, life, trust, self and even her value system.  Eric Roth and Robert Zemeckis manage to explore this dynamic without exposing the audience to the abuse itself.  Three of the more emotional moments are foundational to this exploration.  Early in the movie we see Jenny and Forest run into the field as her father drunkenly hunts her down.  Jenny's prayer is haunting and profound, "Dear God, make me a bird so I can fly far, far far away from here."  

One afternoon after Jenny comes home she and Forrest go for a walk.  When they happen upon her childhood home and she is confronted with hell on earth, her personal demons appear across her face in a mixture of disgust, anger, and bit of a protective instinct for her inner child as she stands looking at the setting of her childhood horrors.  She begins to throw her shoes and then rocks at the house because that is all she can do.  Forrest appears seemingly helpless, but complicit in allowing her to feel her feelings.  When she falls down in the complexity her pain, he simply says, “Sometimes I guess there just aren’t enough rocks.”    

Toward the end of the movie movie Forrest stands at Jenny's grave and narrates the events following her death.  He tells her that he had her father's house bulldozed to the ground, and the audience sees him standing there watching as it crumbles, as fragile as Jenny must have felt on the inside.  We understand what Forest must have pondered.  I could argue that this brief moment is one of the most emotionally complicated moments ever portrayed on film.  

Forrest takes action for the one he loves. As a person with special needs, we can assume that he doesn't fully comprehend why or how Jenny's father hurt her.  He knows that he loved this woman; he knows she experienced deep pain; and he needs to do something tangible to protest the abuse.  She deserves to be avenged.  He is literally moved to act out of emotion with only a simplistic understanding of the circumstances.   Isn’t that what it means to be faithful?  Knowing there is more happening than we understand, being compelled by the emotion present in the situation, and finding ourselves moved to action out of an intense need to participate in making outcome right?  

I often wonder whether simple faith is legitimate faith.   I have a difficult time taking things at face value, and that makes me hesitant to believe that some people are capable of doing so.   But instead of debating who deserves what kind of health care, or what requirements a person must meet to obtain food stamps and the steps they should take in order to leave assistance, shouldn’t we do something for the hungry, for the sick, the mourning, the tired, the weary, the scared, the lonely...the lost?  How often are we distracted away from kingdom work in which God calls us by debating the circumstances around the situation.  What if we simply acted more out of love and compassion?  What would our world look like?  

I confess this question about simple faith originates in the place that houses my arrogantly analytical faith.  I want to think that I am better than they are.  But I am compelled to recognize (because I’m wasting all this time contemplating it) that there is room for both.  Both are indeed legitimate, and neither is necessarily better than the other.  I think the Church needs both to be healthy.  Even with the knowledge and insight I have been lucky enough to receive, sometimes it feels like I’m just holding a handful of dirt and thinking I understand what it means to be a mountain.

I know I will always fall on the side of Paul at Mars Hill: interested to make sense of God Almighty in both the intellectual landscape and cultural context in which I live.  And I will always be like Jacob needing to engage Truth in a wrestling match.   But what if I didn’t need to try to understand every facet of theology for myself?  

Forrest does the very thing Jenny needed out of his naive understanding.  It was sacred; fraught with meaning, meaning that was lost on the one doing it.   Dare I say it was sacramental?  Did he do something more valuable out of his ignorant but earnest understanding?  What weight should we give emotion in our faith?  When do we give reason too much authority?  I can’t help but wonder, if given the opportunity, was Jenny strong enough to have pushed the house over?  Do we complicate and thus prevent ourselves from doing the most righteous things by paying too much attention to the details?   Don't you already know God's heart for the world?  If you don't, it's simple.  He grieves for our brokenness.  He is constantly crying out for reconciliation and Kingdom Come in all situations.  How can you participate in that?   

I’m not saying we need to check our minds at the door.  I could never say that. 

But, no matter how brilliant you are; may you never forget that you’re just holding a clump of dirt.  

Soundtrack:  Famous One, Chris Tomlin; Against the Wind, Bob Seager and the Silver City Bullet

I'm 5

If you ever spend time with children you know that birthdays are kind of a big deal.  And if you've ever been around a younger sibling you'll know that each marker of coming of age, no matter how slight, can dominate that child's life and anticipation for months.  A while ago my niece was turning five.  And she had been talking about it for months.  I happened to spend a good bit of time with her over the course of the celebration.  When I went to my brother's house for the celebration I noticed that as all of her grandparents, parents, sisters and I greeted her we would exclaim, "Happy Birthday!"  Some would ask if she feels older or if she's excited.  And there was this strange slight unwillingness to accept that she was five.  For all the build-up, she appeared disengaged from the exclamations of those around her. We ate dinner, and then the flaming cake walked toward her.   After we finished singing she paused, blew out the candles, and looked up at me saying, "I'm five!"  You see, for her, she didn't turn five until the ritual was complete.  It didn't matter that the day had come marking the anniversary of her birth.   She didn't care that she had eclipsed even the exact time of day that she entered the world.  No, for her, blowing out the candles marked the passage from four to five.  There is something we need in the ritual.  We crave it even as children.

Did you notice during the Olympics how the athletes remain focused and composed during the competition, and they have a sense of celebration when their names are posted as a gold medalist.   However, the tears, the indication that the depth and breadth of what is happening in their life has moved into their emotional identity, they come on the winner's stand.  A medal is placed around their necks, they are handed flowers.  Flags raise high.  The familiar tune of their national anthem begins, and something changes.  

It makes me think about discussions I've had with people about the Sacraments and rituals.  Does one truly have salvation prior to or without Baptism?  Am I reconciled with Christ if I never commune?  Do I know what I believe if I never declare a Creed?  Does the Holy Spirit fail to enter a sanctuary if we don't light any candles?  

I think that any movement toward removing all ritual from our Christian faith is simply dangerous.  The abstractions may still occur, but we miss something when we ignore the ritual.  Ritual without meaning can be death, but ritual steeped in symbolic actualization and spiritual substance gives us more than we realize.  

Soundtrack:  Happy Birthday; Phos Hilaron, Passion

Expatriate.

When Kirk and Nicole lived in Accra their neighborhood included many expatriates from around the globe.  As we drove around the city I noticed the diversity so I asked Kirk about his neighbors.   Of course, Kirk and I had a really good conversation about what it means to be a citizen of one country but to live in another, and then what happens when many cultures commingle in a country not their own.  Having always lived in the U.S., I had never really considered what that would do to your personal and cultural identity.  I remember spending some time thinking about how isolating and frustrating that must be... never fully feeling like you are a part of either culture fully.  Ultimately, I believe it makes a person richer and more complex to carry with them the best of several cultures, but I can also see how it might cause some internal conflict.  An American eating groundnut soup, wearing Kente cloth, or pounding fu-fu does not make them Ghanaian.  A Ghanaian eating  turkey on Thanksgiving, watching MTV, or visiting the Liberty Bell does not make them American.  However when Gifty cooks groundnut soup it reminded her who she is and what she is made of.  Similarly an American can feel the drive for liberty and what that means about who you are and your value system in a way that gets deeper than skin standing there in front of the Liberty Bell or the Declaration of Independence.  

Sitting in a Spiritual Formation class years later I had one of those rare but awesome "a-ha" moments.  In an unrelated, but oddly relevant topic, Dr. Voigts said, "Just because we are citizens of God, doesn’t mean we live there. Our passports should be 'Kingdom of God.'"  

Exactly.  

That explains so much.  I struggle with a lot of the rhetoric that is batted around church culture about this world and how much we should participate in it.  I hate it when people make declarative statements like movies are from the devil and the internet is just for porn.   Really?  Because the Holy Spirit has brought me to tears in a movie theater as He quietly reminded me of the breadth of the love God has for me.  And, I am presently openly sharing my faith on the internet.   

I have that internal conflict.  I am spiritually homeless.  And so are you!  There are things that happen around me that are countercultural to the Kingdom that confuse me, and I have encountered people who aren't yet believers that could not understand my need for prayer or worship or solitude.  

We can appreciate, even value the culture of our host land.  But we are expatriates and must remember to continually participate in the culture of our homeland.  We need to be reminded of who we are and what we are made of.  In the context of that Spiritual Formation class I began to perceive the Christian Disciplines as expressions of our culture.  Praying, fasting, reading the Bible, attending worship doesn't make you a Christian, but once you are, these are the things that connect you with your true nature.  The disciplines don’t make us faithful, they keep us faithful.

Do you live here on earth like your homeland is elsewhere?  Are you gracious to the culture in which you live?  

May you be reminded that your passport says Kingdom of God!  

Soundtrack: Hometown Glory, Adele; I'll Lead You Home, Michael W. Smith