Prayer

I was re-listening to a favorite talk from a few years ago by Mark Oestreicher, then-president of Youth Specialties (YS).  He called the talk "A Rant from a runt on what the church is doing wrong in America."  You can read the text version here if you like.

He reminded me again that prayer can be aided by silence and time.  One way that has been used in the history of Christianity is to have things like prayer walks, stations, gardens and such.  One that shows up in architecture is the labyrinth, which is a path with designated locations to pray about specific things.

Two years ago I walked through a labyrinth at a YS youth workers' convention.  They had assembled a quiet place, with an audio "tour guide" and relaxed background music to lead you from station to station.  It was a wonderful time between  me and the Lord, where just for a season he made an ordinary place into a holy space.  (If you think this sounds a little creepy, it wasn't.  Actually, the creepy New-Agey stuff is mimicking Christian tradition, not the other way around.)

There, the idea crystallized for me that we are held, and beheld.  Held by God, in his arms; beheld, as in gazed upon with love and acceptance.

I also heard the phrase, "Living as the body of Christ hasn't been tried and found wanting; it has been tried and found hard."  It's hard in the sense that living as a no-kidding inter-dependent community is counter-cultural.  But it's very, very rewarding.

Perhaps it isn't a coincidence that two of the major themes of the book are along those same lines.

Having told you a little of why I think labyrinths are a good thing, I'll suggest you consider learning a bit more.  Maybe you need a way to help yourself get alone and quiet with God.  Maybe you need encouragement to be quiet and still, in the midst of our noisy and busy worlds.

The one I walked was developed by Johny Baker and a very small but very creative group of Christians in London.  The details, including an online version, are here.

If you're feeling stuck and prayerless, perhaps using a new-old format will help.  I hope so.

Obviously, I overestimated my abilities...

...at incorporating edits in the book manuscript, doing layout, etc.  It'll be a couple of days, because the lady who edited/reviewed this for me did a wonderful (detailed) job.  (Thanks, Christina!) I needed this!

Hope for the desperate

He looks and acts kind of like the postman he was; tall, quick-talking and moving.  He hasn’t handled mail for ten years now.  He’s been too busy.

The Clearwater Center of Hope (aka Clearwater Dream Center) exists for the purpose of helping men escape drug and alcohol dependence.  But it never exactly had a master plan.  You could almost say it crept up on Dale and Vicki Hendry.

Dale went to Countryside Christian Center in 1993 after a rough divorce because he thought it would be a good place to look for a new wife.  (Hey, you’ve done some funky stuff, too.)  There, Jesus met him and saved him.  The wife, Vicki, came later, in 1998.  She too was newly Jesus-found.

They started helping people who needed help.  Dale started giving people groceries, eventually handing out 6000 pounds per month.  One person led to another, and another.  By 2000, Dale felt like God was asking him to quit the post office and go to school (Bible, etc.) full time.  I’m pretty sure people said he was crazy.  I’m pretty sure he said he was crazy, a few times.  And more people kept coming.  Somehow, God kept providing enough housing and food for them.

There’s never a shortage of people who need help escaping their chemical prisons.  Even today, partnering with over a dozen other churches and organizations, there’s always a shortage of resources to help them: people, housing, money, and so on.  These men are addicted to powerful drugs.  It takes the strongest drug of all, God, to overcome them.  But God works miracles.  Strangely enough, we’re usually surprised.

God raised up a ministry in the rough High Point neighborhood.  He raised it up independent of traditional churches, but connected to them.  He didn’t insist that the ministry sit under a particular label or franchise.  He just gave a couple a calling, showed them one step at a time, and kept building.  One step at a time.  One man at a time.

The Dream Center program is intense; Monday through Friday are 12-14 hour days.  Study, work, study some more.  Other activities and work fill the weekend.  Accountability is very high.  Not everyone makes it.

Men come in with multiple DUIs, arrests, and often years of jail time.  Many are homeless.  Desperation is pretty much a prerequisite.  Men who choose the God-drug often graduate from the program and stay clean.  Those are the stories that make your heart sing.

Sometimes the stories don’t end so well.  Jason was a major-college graduate, with lots of potential and a crack addiction.  He cycled in and out of the program several times.  While out the last time, he said, “Pastor Dale, I’m going to die out here!”

A few days later, he jumped off a 13-story building.

Those are the stories that break your heart, leave you asking how to go on.  Dale’s buried 9 men who died from their addictions; about one a year.  But God’s call on his life is why he keeps on.  That, the graduates’ success stories, and a couple of core beliefs.

“If you fall, it’s just another step to your recovery.”

“I think of us as standing between these guys and the world; we show the world how we oughta be loving these guys.”

That’s the kind of Good News I need to hear.  And do.  Thanks to all the people who work in and with the Center, a whole bunch of people get to hear and do it, too.

Book status update: post this week?

The book manuscript came back from the editor today. Reading it tonight, incorporate edits/revisions tomorrow, format for paperback, final print/look, then off to CreateSpace for them to produce proof copy. Post on website for download Wed/Thursday. 

Optimistic schedule?  Yes, actually. Why not? :) I love electronics!

Vantage points

“Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited to all we now know and understand, while imagination embraces the entire world, and all there ever will be to know and understand.”

– Albert Einstein

I lived for 50 years in a community devoted to learning and dreaming big in the world of missiles and rockets.  Learning was valued.  Technical imagination was encouraged.  How about non-technical?  Well, we might not be as good at that, necessarily.

Engineers are stereotypically organized, straight-line people.  I once saw an engineer sighting down his row of beanpoles, making sure they were all the same angle and height.  Maybe we’re sometimes too busy making things look alike, to recognize something “outside the lines” as a good thing, not an aberration.

Is your imagination limited by what you see around you?  Limited to what you have already seen?  Limited to who you know?  If so, embrace a different vantage point.  “Jesus often withdrew to lonely places to pray.”  Lonely, desert places of the body and soul can rejuvenate a tired, canalized imagination.  

Leave enough “white space” in your calendar that you can look around and see, and imagine.  Get off alone, regularly.  Change vantage points, physically, environmentally, emotionally.  It’s more important than “doing it all.”  The whole world’s waiting for you.

Tomorrow, the interview with Center of Hope leader Dale Hendry.  “If you fall, it’s just another step to your recovery.”

Shaped, Imago Dei

(pre-publication excerpt from Between the Lines: Christianity for Misfit Christians)

 

“God created man in his own image. In God’s image he created him; male and female he created them.”

– Genesis 1:27

Michelangelo left an unfinished sculpture of the disciple Matthew, the former tax collector (a Jewish traitor to the Romans).  He became a Jesus-follower.  The statue shows him looking up toward heaven; his body hasn’t fully emerged from the stone.  You can see the ragged places where the sculptor is still chiseling away, still revealing the man from his native rock.  You can see the longing in the man’s eyes, seeking his creator, while being revealed by his creator, reveled in by his creator.

The sculpture is shaped like a man, like the sculptor himself.  He has expression, personality, and depth.  He’s wearing clothes.  He’s pretty husky; he looks quite the athlete.  He’s carrying a tablet in his left arm.  And he’s made from rock – the earth.  Like Adam, whose very name means “earth.”

We’re made in his image, but we’re unfinished.  We’re longing; we’re seeking.  We’re being revealed by our Sculptor.  We’re being reveled in by One who said, “Let us make man in our image.”  And the kickin’ thing is, unlike Michelangelo and the stone guy, he’s alive and still sculpting us in real time, all the time.

Early Christians who spoke Latin referred to “Imago Dei,” the image of God.  Our ways are like his, distorted but recognizable.  Emerging.  Like the saying about kids who resemble their parents, “That apple didn’t fall very far from the tree.”  Different, still-forming, yet the same in recognizable ways.

Bagel shops, God-kisses, and Zephaniah

Talk about a between-the-lines day...

Three days ago I had a bagel with my friend Mike.  I asked if he knew of any people who were doing reputable between-the-lines ministry in our area that I should interview for this blog.  (Between-the-lines:  Christian, maybe just Christian-ish but passionately doing God’s stuff, and not affiliated directly with a particular church group.)  He said, “Sure, what are you doing on Friday night?”  (Knowing the plan already was to go worship in Dunedin with visiting musician Dennis Jernigan.)  Seems his friend Jeff was going to be there, and he was involved in something along those lines.

“Oh, and there’s this guy, Sol Pitchon, you ought to track down sometime; he’s very involved in a number of unwed-pregnancy ministries in the area.”

I jotted down the name, then lost the note.  Found Sol on internet, put him on my go-do list.  That was Tuesday.

Last night we had a long conversation, supper and prayer time with the near neighbors, something God dropped in our laps in September.  We meet with them once a week, about – they can’t make it to conventional Sunday church services due to some really serious health issues.  So we have church on our own schedule.  Good times.

Anyway, that left me getting to the DJ event quite late, which was ok.  My main focus was to meet Mike and his friend, although worship time with DJ is a wonderful thing.  A secondary desire was to thank Dennis for thousands of hours of musical companionship, and no I’m not making that up.  (I sing when I walk...and I’ve walked an hour a day since 1998.  Do the math.)  Of course, the DJ handshake might not happen; this guy is world-famous in the Christian music community, and he’s in gigantic churches all the time.  Odds were, big crowd, maybe-handshake, conversation unlikely.

I walk in, and there are about 45 people in the room.  I count.  Wow.  Intimate.  And just in time for a favorite, “This is My Destiny,” which is an anthem of all the good things God calls you, and calls you into.

After, Mike and I talk in back.  Jeff comes up; turns out he’s the guy who made the phone calls to DJ in the first place.  Jeff has quite the story, and I hope to share some of that here in the next week or so.

A guy walks up and greets Mike by name, who replies, “I know your face...”

“I’m Sol Pitchon.”

Mike had no idea he was going to be there, in fact, Sol almost wasn’t there, because he’d forgotten and then oops-remembered.  Turns out Sol and I have a few things in common: his daughter lives in Huntsville, where we lived until this year.  He knows the pastor at our former church up there, Murray Wilton.  And he is very much a between-the-lines guy here in the Bay area.  We’ll have a go at meeting after the 1^st of the year.  Stay tuned.

And I got to shake DJ’s hand and thank him for being my walking companion with the Lord for so many years.  His transparency about his journey from wounding and sin into God’s grace and ministry is quite the picture, as is his independent (not big Nashville, LA or NY labels) music. For those who think he's just another guy pushing an agenda through your computer/TV screen so you can analyze it at arm's length...I wish you could have had the 5 minutes of face-time with him that I had.  His authenticity, compassion and acceptance are impossible to push away.

At the end of the worship time, DJ said, “The question people ask me the most is, did God deliver you all at once, or was it more of a process.”  (Long pause and a slow smile.)  “I tell them, yes!”

One of DJ's life-changing verses, and one of my themes, is Zephaniah 3:17:  "The LORD, your God, is in the midst of you, a mighty one who will save. He will rejoice over you with joy. He will calm you in his love. He will rejoice over you with singing."  (WEB translation)

Exactly; "yes."  Miracles and process.  Mike befriended me, a new guy in town, just 7 months ago.  I don’t even remember who introduced us.  Probably Dave.  Biweekly bagels led to another kiss from God for me last night with four men who are walking the unmarked paths God takes them on.  It’s nice to see some others out there.  Here’s hoping you see some of your own path, and your own kiss from God, today.  Listen, and maybe you can even hear him singing...