I wanna be more like my dog

Usually, we put our dog Max in a kennel when we leave the house. He’s a 9-pound, 3-year-old little boy dog, and sometimes feels the need to water things...

We noticed a few months ago that when it came time to kennel Max, we didn’t have to go find him very often. Instead of being burrowed up under a blanket somewhere, he’d be there in the kennel, curled up catlike, looking at us. We hadn’t called him, or put water in the dish, or brought the chew bone; it was a little eerie. Sometimes we were still figuring out “Are we going somewhere or not?” and he’d trot on over there.

Somewhere along the way, by listening to our words, tones and movement patterns, he figured out that this meant it was den time. And he chose anticipatory obedience to our intentions and desires.

Perhaps I should add, he’s been spanked only about a dozen times ever, so it isn’t like we trained him fearfully. I definitely should add that he loves us, loves to snuggle up beside us. And he really isn’t obedience-trained in any way. It’s all voluntary on his part.

I started walking with Jesus about 20 years ago. At first, I listened to other men’s teachings. (Still do.) Then, I started to read the words of the Bible by my self, and with others. (Still do.) Then I started watching what it was that Jesus actually did (and is doing around me today), and the people and situations in which he did those things. I learned that God’s/Jesus’s actions and context teach me more than the words on the paper...and that we can and do worry some Greek word to death and miss the “what he did” message completely.

Max started off without any language as such. He didn’t have a bible we’d written. All he had was the sound of our voices and movements, and the sight of our body language. He learned the language that we didn’t even know we were speaking. And he chose to join with us in our comings and goings, because he loves us.

I want to:

Look more closely for movements of God around me...

Listen to his words, their tone; I want to sense his mood, not mine...

I want to experience his promise that “My sheep know my voice...” (John 10)

...so that I can sense the movement of his Spirit without him ever needing to call me or give me instructions on where to go, what to say. And MOVE in that Spirit, every day, all the time.

In other words, I want to be like Max when I grow up. :)
.

Sarah Hinlicky Wilson

About 2000, I ran across an article that I thought set a new standard for dismantling the "beauty on the outside" schtick of the grocery-store checkout line magazines, notably Cosmo. Then-college student Sarah Hinlicky wrote "Glossy Lies" with incisive wisdom and an acid pen.

Since then she's finished college, completed seminary, been ordained, worked at least one pastoral assignment with her denomination, married, delivered a son, and done a ton of writing for Boundless, First Things and other publications. I Google her from time to time, just to hang around her wisdom a bit. Such things are contagious, you know.

A few years ago, she took a position as editor of a magazine, Lutheran Forum, which is one of the few places where the two major streams of Lutheranism co-operate: The Missouri Synod (generally conservative) and the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA; generally liberal, and her own spiritual heritage). Yes, I hate the simplistic labels, but they set up the story. In her first "here I am; here's who I am" column, she wrote about how church breaks your heart...but this is what we have:

Somehow it feels like telling the punchline before the rest of the joke, but in the aforementioned interest of avoiding hidden agendas, here are some things you may as well know about me now.

The Bible: As I mentioned before, it is my lifeline. I don’t find the doctrine of inerrancy (of the literal-six-day-creation-in-fierce-opposition-to-evolution type) illuminating or insightful. But I do believe that the Holy Scriptures are the Word of God and the norm of the church’s faith and life, as I confessed in my ordination vows. I stand under the Scriptures, not above them.

Some hot-button issues: I do think (obviously enough) that the ordination of women is in keeping with the gospel, but at the same time I am not at all interested in non-theological reasons for ordaining them. I have tried very hard to conclude that homosexual behavior is in keeping with the gospel too, and I have failed; and I imagine that neither the effort nor the failure will win me any friends. I think the much bigger problems are divorce, abortion, and sexual abuse. I find it hard to take seriously invocations of statis confessionis where homosexuality is concerned when it has not been invoked over divorced bishops and non-celibate heterosexual pastors.

Ecumenically: I have no desire to become a Roman Catholic and I do not find the reasons that others have offered for doing so compelling. As you might deduce from my dissertation topic, the eastern church is more appealing to me. All the same, it’s a nice place to visit, but I wouldn’t want to live there. I think Lutheran indifference towards (other) Protestants is a shame and a failure.

Closer to home: I have examined the Lutheran confession of the Christian faith at length and have not found it wanting. In fact, in it I have found life, grace, truth, and my Lord Jesus Christ. I have examined the Lutheran church bodies that confess the Christian faith and have found them profoundly wanting. But I expected that all along because, after all, church breaks your heart.

Well. This is a dire beginning!

I should be asked now, with some justice, why I have prolonged this apparently masochistic relationship with the church; why I have stuck around, gotten ordained, pursued a Ph.D. in theology, and accepted an editorship for a church journal, if the only payoff is heartbreak.

(Read the rest here.)

What I love about Sarah is that she loves God, God's word and the gospel contained therein, and God's people for whom that gospel was lived and written. (All three.) She gives voice to my own experience, and perhaps the experience of many other people, when she writes, "I have tried very hard to conclude that homosexual behavior is in keeping with the gospel too, and I have failed; and I imagine that neither the effort nor the failure will win me any friends."

I have learned that the effort to discern God's written intentions for us produces sometimes-violent reactions; I have learned that the failure to find popular or conventional conclusions produces additional sometimes-violent reactions. I weep for our churches and our Christians who have fallen to such depths. I weep for those who have broken fellowship with us, ostensibly over such differences. And I weep for me.

But of course, as she says while seeking common ground between people, church breaks your heart.

And to reiterate my last post, if we are to live deeply, we will have to risk (our hearts) greatly. To whom else can we go, except to a savior who walks into troubled waters and divided houses and says, "...be still?" Perhaps if we would be still before him, we would know peace.

If you're still with me, please look over her writings. Enjoy; and be blessed.

Subversive Virginity (1998)
Subversive Masculinity (1999)
other writings at Boundless (1998-2002)
other writings at Lutheran Forum (to present)
.

To live deeply...

...risk greatly.

Deeply: When there really are holy kisses in your life; when there are a few beyond your blood-family who are far more dear to you than the many; when another's heartbreak breaks yours; when another's tears of joy mingle with your own.

Risk: to open your heart once again, after it's been deeply hurt in a (you can feel this one coming) previous deep relationship.

***

Since that's actually the point of this whole blog, the book, and my life, it seems like that little tidbit is a fitting 100th blog posting. A few days ago I was talking to a friend who's about to make a huge commitment, and that phrase just flew out of my mouth. I thought, "I sure didn't figure that one out; that one was pure broadband from the Lord. And one I need to look at in my own life, too."

This morning I had another heart catheterization, which I'm glad to say turned out just fine. Wonderful, in fact. But every time I have one of those close encounters, it reminds me again: we aren't here for very long. We don't have time to live badly, or shallowly. At least, I don't.

May you pass through the shallows and enter the deep. You'll never be the same, and you'll change your history. You'll change the history of the others around you, too.
.

The Good Clean Funnies List

In the summer of 1995, I changed jobs and there found my first computer with a thing on it called a "browser." It was NCSA's Mosaic, and DARPAnet had just been opened up to the public as the Internet. So. Cool.

Shortly thereafter, I have no idea how, I ran across a little site called the Good Clean Funnies List (GCFL): A web and email site that would send one good, clean, funny joke a day into my inbox. It's been part of our morning routine pretty much ever since. Here's today's:

***

A young couple moved into a new neighborhood. The next morning while they were eating breakfast, the young woman saw her neighbor hanging the wash outside.

"That laundry is not very clean," she said. "She doesn't know how to wash correctly. Perhaps she needs better laundry soap."

Her husband looked on, but remained silent.

Every time her neighbor would hang her wash to dry, the young woman would make the same comments.

About one month later, the woman was surprised to see a nice clean wash on the line and said to her husband, "Look, she has learned how to wash correctly. I wonder who taught her this?"

The husband said, "I got up early this morning and cleaned our windows."

Received from Doc's Daily Chuckle.

***

The funny part is, this thing originates from right where I used to live, near Huntsville, Alabama. But what a great example of shining some light into people's worlds, one day at a time. Oh, and the verse at the top of the website? Proverbs 17:22a: "A cheerful heart is good medicine..."
.

Churches with walls...and without

Andrew Jones is this amazing global blogger who goes everywhere and seems to find the most interesting things. Here's one that catches my eye, and heart, from the good folks at churchfromscratch.org, provocatively titled "It's time to stop starting with church!"

They come or we go? from Incarnate Network on Vimeo.

Mike Yaconelli video mashup

I've mentioned Mike Yaconelli before...here's a great video mashup of some great Yac talks. Too many to list...but one that was part of my choosing a way-early retirement (read: a lot less income for a lot of years) was his description of how you can tell a Christian: "They're the ones that have time for you." (Whew...how many of us just got zinged on that one?) Was it important to me? You bet; no one else has been mentioned in this blog three times, here, here and here.  Enjoy!

New Prices for "Between the Lines: Christianity for Misfit Christians"

There's just something about "The Dollar Store." (When I was a kid, it was the Ben Franklin store; when my mother was a kid, it was the five and dime. Inflation. But I digress...) It kind of draws us into the wonders of what you can do with just one George Washington.

It would be nice to be a huge-selling author and get rich. (Well, since by the standards of most of the world, and a good chunk of Americans we are already "rich," maybe I should say richer? Although I'm looking with dismay at our economy and future inflation... But again, I digress.)

The point of my first book was always to get a message out. Some hope and light; some encouragement to every reader to let God use you in radical and wonderful ways, without any regard to the numerous pre-scripted roles and expectations around us. Breaking even would be nice. (Not even close yet.) Turning a profit - and doing interesting things with that profit - would be even nicer. But it was never the main objective. The deal was, I always wanted to write this book, and one-too-many people (you know who you are, Perry) had said, "You should write a book!"

So. All that to say, new prices for the book. The ebook versions, on Amazon Kindle and Barnes and Noble Nook, are now 99 cents. My thought is that that price makes it an easy impulse buy. In the strange and wonderful economy of ebooks, I still make a few cents. The new price for the paperback version via Amazon, when it percolates through their system later this week, will be $5.99.

I hope you buy. Even more, I hope you read, are blessed, comment, interact, and of course tell all your friends.

Peace,

JC

.

A passion for compassion?

In English, "passion" is the root of the word "compassion." If only we were passionate in our compassions, and perhaps less passionate in our angers.

The Latin origin means "to suffer together." Now there's a high and holy calling.

The disease of leprosy actually doesn't make your fingers and toes fall off. At least not directly. What it does do is kill nerves; you gradually lose more and more of your sense of touch. You can't feel it when you bump into things, or even other people. You can get hurt and never know it, bump into other people and never know that you've hurt them, either.

Leprosy in the Bible is a symbol of sin. It's as though sin deeply involves numbness, often by choice, sometimes by circumstance, but never by God's design.

I think maybe in America we've become a nation of emotional lepers. It isn't that there aren't some people doing "compassionate" things; it's that mostly our culture disallows the whole idea of suffering together with someone else. I mean, I'm talking tears and wails. Protracted, not temporary. Perhaps if we shared suffering, we might delve further into God's assignments to us, redeeming the whole world one soul at a time, like the rabbinical idea of tikkun olam.

Lord, give me passionate compassion.

***

"Jesus went through all the towns and villages, teaching in their synagogues, proclaiming the good news of the kingdom and healing every disease and sickness. When he saw the crowds, he had compassion on them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd. Then he said to his disciples, 'The harvest is plentiful but the workers are few. Ask the Lord of the harvest, therefore, to send out workers into his harvest field.'"  (Matthew 9:35-38)
.

Will we hear God from "unpersuasive"and "unimpressive" people?

Once upon a time, a mentor found it necessary to write some pretty firm letters to his friends and proteges in another city:

"You'll remember, friends, that when I first came to you to let you in on God's master stroke, I didn't try to impress you with polished speeches and the latest philosophy. I deliberately kept it plain and simple: first Jesus and who he is; then Jesus and what he did—Jesus crucified.

"I was unsure of how to go about this, and felt totally inadequate—I was scared to death, if you want the truth of it—and so nothing I said could have impressed you or anyone else. But the Message came through anyway. God's Spirit and God's power did it, which made it clear that your life of faith is a response to God's power, not to some fancy mental or emotional footwork by me or anyone else."

Then later:

"It seems that if someone shows up preaching quite another Jesus than we preached—different spirit, different message—you put up with him quite nicely. But if you put up with these big-shot "apostles," why can't you put up with simple me? I'm as good as they are. It's true that I don't have their voice, haven't mastered that smooth eloquence that impresses you so much. But when I do open my mouth, I at least know what I'm talking about. We haven't kept anything back. We let you in on everything.

"I wonder, did I make a bad mistake in proclaiming God's Message to you without asking for something in return, serving you free of charge so that you wouldn't be inconvenienced by me? It turns out that the other churches paid my way so that you could have a free ride. Not once during the time I lived among you did anyone have to lift a finger to help me out. My needs were always supplied by the believers from [another country]. I was careful never to be a burden to you, and I never will be, you can count on it. With Christ as my witness, it's a point of honor with me, and I'm not going to keep it quiet just to protect you from what the neighbors will think. It's not that I don't love you; God knows I do. I'm just trying to keep things open and honest between us.

"And I'm not changing my position on this. I'd die before taking your money. I'm giving nobody grounds for lumping me in with those money-grubbing "preachers," vaunting themselves as something special.

The mentor was the apostle Paul, the proteges lived in the Greek city of Corinth. (see 1 Corinthians 2:1-5 and 2 Corinthians 11:4-13, The Message Bible) Corinth was like...us. Cosmopolitan, influential, multicultural, a center of business and power. They liked their visiting evangelists and "special music" people and megachurch preachers, apparently. Paul reminded them that God started them off with his power and presence, not with audio/video/powerpoint flash-bang.

God uses dumb people (that means us, says Paul) to confuse smart people, then and now. Lord, make us stupid.

Lord, forgive me for seeing the spectacular instead of the sacred.
Draw my eyes to you, my ears to your voice;
sharpen my ears to your sound in the stillness, not the fury,
through the voices of the weak, the very young, the plain, the ugly.

Lord, give us new eyes;
communal, not individual,
spiritual, not physical,
seeking, not wandering,
looking instead of glancing.

(Thanks to Chris Cahill of the St. Pete Vineyard for reminding me of Paul's caution to the Americans of his time...)
.

Adopting the unwanted

Now here's a pastor in South Korea who actually installed a dropbox outside his front door for unwanted infants. (Which turned out to be unpopular with the authorites, oddly enough.)

Lee Jong-rak's position: "This is a facility for the protection of life," reads a hand-scrawled sign outside the drop box. "If you can't take care of your disabled babies, don't throw them away or leave them on the street. Bring them here."

Mother Teresa said, "I will tell you something beautiful. We are fighting abortion by adoption - by care of the mother and adoption for her baby. We have saved thousands of lives."

In the rotunda at the US Holocaust Museum are written the words, "I call heaven and earth to witness against you today, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and curse. Therefore choose life, that you and your offspring may live." There's no shortage of holocausts around us, and sometimes it's a little tiny holocaust right in our own neighborhoods.

Read Lee's story, courtesy of the Los Angeles Times, here. Next time you hear the excellent phrase "choose life," think of this guy who's choosing not just life, but the lives no one else wants. And praying for him might be a really good idea, too.
.

So who's encouraging young Christians to do their own new things?

I haven't met anyone yet who's doing this in any systematic (or even non-systematic) way. BUT...

...as unfortunately usual, the business world has an excellent example of mentoring and incubating young peoples' new ideas with attention, experienced and expert advice, and supporting relationships. Oh, and startup money, too.

Wired magazine has an excellent article on the Silicon Valley Y Combinator. Take a look...and imagine, what if we did this instead of all that other prepackaged (here's where you fit) stuff we do in discipleship programs?

We just gotta do this better. Gotta.
.

Becoming a Learning Person vs. "Gettin' yer mind right"

I'm all for learning what God says in the bible, listening to the Holy Spirit (who's our teacher; see John 14:26), and learning the cultural and historical setting for all those amazing stories. The whole purpose of that is to better appreciate God and appropriate his guidance and truth into our own lives.

But way too many people have turned the bible alone into a sort of rote Question-and-Answer workbook, with a kind of mean-spirited "THIS. IS. A. TEST." to "get your mind right" attitude. Kind of like in Cool Hand Luke:

But if you read the Gospels, you see dialog, real-world interaction with people and places who understood Jesus' allusions and references to Old Testament scriptures and contemporary Roman, Greek and Jewish cultures. You see tons of questions, and people looking for the right questions to ask. If you read Paul's letters to New Testament churches (Ephesians, Galatians, Corinthians, Phillippians, etc.) you see church-specific guidance coming from their first pastor, Paul.

Most of all, you see grace.

If you read the Old Testament books, you see stories of a particular community's interactions (many of them dysfunctional) with God. All of them give us useful and essential principles illustrated with numerous examples. (See Paul's comments to his protege Timothy, and us, in 2 Timothy 3:14-4:5.)

You don't see a systematic theology; that notion didn't come along until the Enlightenment, over 1600 years after the last books of the bible were written. You especially don't see a Q&A list. Call to "right living," certainly. But it's all by example, with a living Spirit involved. With Him in the game, we can learn to become learners, learn to seek and ask the right questions, find the answers, and in so doing become a kind of Living Word for other people. You don't have to get your mind right. Just invite God to transform your mind...like he said he would, at least if we let him. Now that's some good news.
.

Do it Yourself Ministry

Another excellent column, "The DIY Foreign-Aid Revolution," from Nicholas Kristof of the New York Times, this one from last fall on DIY doing-good-things. (What I call ministry, God showing up in the world doing good stuff with or without the crdit.)

If you see a cause that needs a champion, go do something. No one will stop you. (Some might try, many from good but misguided intentions.) If someone says, "What you're doing is too small to matter," tell them the starfish story.

***

A man was walking along the beach where thousands of starfish were stranded overnight. He'd walk a few steps, pick one up, toss it in the ocean, walk a few more steps, pick up another one, and so on. Along came another man, who watched this for a while. He said, "You must be crazy; there are a million starfish on this beach, and you can't make a difference here."

The first man stooped over, picked up another, tossed it into the surf, and replied, "Made a difference to that one."

***

Kristof followed it up with some practical details about setting up your own NGO, 501(c)(3), or whatever, on his blog, here.

Thank God for a NYT columnist with a heart! And for those people who just can't walk past one more starfish without acting.
.

Heaven Let Your Light Shine Down - Not a bad prayer...

Sometimes you hear a song on the radio, and it's maybe more than just a song. Sometimes, it's prayer and the doubt that often plagues our prayers. Enjoy.

Give me a word
Give me a sign
Show me where to look
Tell me what will I find (what will I find )
Lay me on the ground
Fly me in the sky
Show me where to look
Tell me what will I find (what will I find )

Yea, Yea, Yea
Oh, heaven let your light shine down (x4)

Love is in the water
Love is in the air
Show me where to go
Tell me will love be there (will love be there )
Teach me how to speak
Teach me how to share
Teach me where to go
Tell me will love be there (will love be there )

Yea, Yea, Yea
Oh, heaven let your light shine down (x4)

I'm going to let it shine (x2)
Heavens little light gonna shine on me
Yea yea heaven's little light gonna shine on me
It's gonna shine, shine on me
It's gonna shine, come on in shine
.