Freedom Haven

I published a new story on the Village Half-Wit blog, entitled "Freedom Haven". It is a retelling of the very first story I ever told. It was originally told at the Triana SDA Church just outside Huntsville, Alabama, when I was a ministerial student at Oakwood College. The pastor, I remember fondly, was Michael Faison, a professional actor and all around wonderful personality who really nurtured the theatrical intuitions in me. As close to a theatre arts professor as we had at OC, he allowed me to help him with a few of his shows, and he had invited me to share with his small, Southern, salt-of-the-earth congregation. (Man, that's 14 years ago--wow! I've got to find him. If I remember correctly he was from Bermuda. Great memories :-)

I told it again most recently at Faith Community Church of God in Snellville, GA, over the MLK, Jr. weekend at the invitation of my friend, Pas. Pat Hannon. Very different congregation, but equally embracing. I am grateful to both congregations for the roll they've played in my journey.

I pray the tale will hold meaning for you.

Better Than Poker

This is an article I published at Re-Inventing the Adventist Wheel back in November 2006.

I have heard that the emerging church is a white, middle-class, American, momentary digression. Well, I don't fit but one of these categories, and regarding that one, I often wonder to what degree. Notwithstanding, I find myself in the thick of this growing, generative and, I believe, God-sent Emergent conversation about God's dream for the entirety of God's good creation. One of my greatest hopes in all this is that, as those caught up in emergence enact our creative commission of pulling God's future into our present (thanks to NT Wright for such a beautiful image), we might finally embrace a vision of a present worthy of God's kingdom [Mark 9:14-37].

Now some of you may be asking, "who am I to determine what's worthy of God's kingdom or not?" Please, don't get it twisted, I'm not. I just know that the organized church puts good money and effort and other resources into making absolutely clear where it stands on pro-life vs. pro-choice, homosexuality vs. heterosexuality, civil unions vs. marriage, liberalism vs. conservatism, works vs. grace, traditional vs. contemporary, and whatever other either-ors, who's-in-or-who's-outs, labels or lines we like to assign or draw. On the other hand, who can deny that 2000 years into this thing the better part of the organized church has yet to embody simple, kingdom-come realities like "love hopes all things, believes all things, endures all things" in contrast to the prevailing norms of society. Wasn't it Christians leading the charge to retaliate after 9-11?

Having grown up Seventh-day Adventist, I am uncomfortably familiar with all the ways we let ourselves off the hook from even attempting to die to our own self-interest in similitude to Jesus. After all, isn't sanctification (becoming more like Christ) "the work of a lifetime?" Notwithstanding "whomever the Son sets free is free indeed," if we who believe don't take the challenges of Jesus seriously, why should anyone else?

Still most move through life endorsing this-or-that false alternative of the ones presented to us, hoping God will accept our good intentions as meaningful. After all, wasn't it God who chalked our righteousness up to nothing more than filth? So what more could God expect?

One possibility comes to mind as inherent in the contexts in which Jesus use to whisper, "The kingdom of God is at hand." I must admit I often missed it reading scripture, but I caught a glimpse of it talking to a friend about a blog he posted. He helped me to understand why I am so awful at poker.

Now, I know some of you Adventists, or others of the Wesleyan ilk, are thinking (or working real hard to suppress the knee-jerk response) that you already know why I'm no good at poker. I shouldn't be playing it, that's why, you might say. Gambling is a sin, isn't it? Not to mention the whole cultic, satanic or otherwise nefarious history behind a standard deck of playing cards. Well, if you just can't stomach the thought of using poker as a springboard toward a metaphor for a life well lived, substitute Uno or Rook (a game I truly don't get), but come with me.

The reason neither my friend, Troy, nor I am any good at poker is that we suffer from the affliction of being able to see the possibilities in any hand. If only we were more cynical! To use Troy's words, "I will play a 7/2 suited because of a possible flush. Even after a flop with only one of my suits, I might stay in. Any good poker player will tell you that the best move in poker is 'fold.' The key is to see the flop when possible but not tie all your money up in playing bad hands. You have to wait, some times several games, to see the hand that is either a sure bet or worth the gamble."

As we sat in a park one day commiserating about our shared ineptitude in poker, we wondered whether it might also prove a liability in life. Our attention soon turned to where exactly grace comes in (how all these things flowed together God only knows). Is grace the ability to risk smartly or the patience to hold or the foresight to know when to fold or the ability to survive loss or the vision to see possibilities (in life, even when it doesn't serve well in poker)? Then something came to me that I know I'm not smart enough to have figured out. What if grace is none of these things metaphorically? Or what if it's all of these things progressively? What if grace breaks into our experience creating new possibilities on whatever terms we can conceive them, yet what if ultimately it ends up subverting the entire game of life as we understand it? Maybe Troy and I suck at poker simply because it’s the wrong game for us. What if poker—metaphorically speaking—is too small a game for life as God dreams of it? What if grace is the imagination to see the game of life in "new and living" ways that make not only believable, but possible, kingdom-come realities like "pray for those who persecute or despitefully use you?"

This is where the poker metaphor becomes especially telling, because poker's an entrepreneur's game, and we live in a country convinced of the entrepreneurial myth that those who achieve are primarily those who work the hardest at it. Uno, on the other hand, is a child's game—no risk, no consequences, no gains, no losses, everything's just for fun. Rook, though not as frivolous, is equally as inconsequential (what's the ante?), yet is the type of poor imitating we church-folk like to do that doesn't reach for kingdom-come, but makes more 'Christian Correct' some superficial aspect of a thing.

Poker, however, has all the stuff we've been told real life in a market-overrun world is made of: wager, risk, raising the ante, profit, forfeiture, winners, losers, holders and those who can't even afford to buy in. It's the perfect metaphor for late-modernity—love it or hate it. 'Such is life,' we hear with a simultaneous twitch of the cheek, shrug of the shoulders and raise of the eyebrows, and we believe it. Still I can't help but wonder why. When did Christians become so cynical or pessimistic? Perhaps its owing to some sort of Calvinist, original sin/total depravation, theological fatalism working in us. If one follows the doctrine all the way out, how can one avoid it? Or maybe, closer to home, it's the natural expectation of a self-righteous legalism that insists that even in God's economy people get what they deserve. "According to their works," right?

Part of what makes Jesus such a polarizing figure is that He challenges the validity of this narrative (story) we've all bought into: he subverts its appeal as the only game in town. Today, those who claim the name of Christ number in the billions. But what's the use in claiming Christ just to domesticate his hopes for what life can and should be?

The imagination to envision diplomacy as the primary if not only acceptable response to terrorism, or "enough for all" as an achievable economic structure, or a society where abortion is the least viable option as opposed to legislated against in a regressive act of female slavery is the grace that has been afforded us. Karma or the admonishment to do good because "what goes around, comes around," which clearly has a self-interested motive to it, is the best that good-hearted people can come up with and is a worthy aspiration for any human kingdom. Grace, which theologian Miroslav Volf describes simply as "giving more than one expects in return," is totally others-interested, and something that only a deity could have dreamed up. However now that it is. Now that we've been shown the possibility of a more beautiful game, where the stakes are higher, but so are the rewards, isn't it high time that followers in the way of Jesus aspire toward it?

"Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven."

"Not Yo' Mama"

Okay, so its been a while since I published my last post. In fact, I haven't posted on this, my main blog, at all in the new year. Periodically, a thought would come to me, and I would keep telling myself that I needed to sit down, but I wouldn't, and the thoughts kept piling up, and then I would forget what I was thinking, and I've been trying to type out a new story that I told King weekend, and... and...

Then Barak Obama announced his official intention to run for President of the United States, and I had to say something. Could I be more excited?! No! To borrow a quote from a fellow Democratic candidate ''I mean, you got the first mainstream African American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy... that's a storybook, man.''

(Yeah, folks took potshots at Biden, but we all know he meant no intentional disrespect to Sen. Obama or his Black political predessesors who also sought the top office of the land: Shirley Chisholm, Jesse Jackson, Carol Moseley Braun and Al Sharpton. What's more telling than his use of the innocuous adjectives "clean," "bright" and "articulate"--although they may betray Biden's heretofore hidden affinity for the occassional OutKast "So Fresh, So Clean"--what's more telling is Biden's use of the modifier "mainstream". I believe Biden's comments are not so much historical inaccuracy as Sen. Obama has suggested, but rather cultural confession. "Mainstream" as used in this instance is no less code than the negro spiritual "Deep River" or "Swing Down Sweet Chariot" must have been for the soon to be runaway slave. What Biden was confessing in the use of the term "mainstream" was that Sen. Obama is in his opinion the first Black candidate that the average white person might see themselves supporting--and "that's a storybook, man!'')

2 things strike me right off the bat about Sen. Obama's candidacy. First, its a testament to the power of and difference between the heritage of one whose ancestor chose to immigrate to America, rather than being forced to as a captive in chains. Choice creates a whole different psychology. This simple truth, I believe, explains the difference beyond a dissimilarity in complexion (still we can never completely discount how that factors into opportunity) between the immigration experiences of Irish, Italian and Jewish migrants--who each had their share of undeniable difficulties--as oppose to those of most Blacks. It may also account for the less drastic yet significant differences between the experiences of Latinos (for whom the immigration process is woefully inadequate) and Asians (against whom the first immigration 'laws' were written) and that of those decendent from former slaves.

As Sidney Poitier articulates in his book The Measure of A Man: A Spiritual Autobiography, there is something empowering about having a language to call one's own and a land to call home that one can go back to if things don't work out. Yes, African-Americans like myself who have heretofore resisted resignation can and may in the post-modern world ultimately, consciously accept America as our home of choice, but its difficult to choose so by default, that is to say because we believe (or have been led to believe) there are no other sensible options. Maybe after Obama is President, and I can begin to see real possibility for the reorganization of power. Still I am glad I have waited, for I've recently come to believe that partnership, togetherness or collaboration completely on someone else's terms is employment at best and slavery at worst, but more often than not exploitation. It's the very thing the original 13 colonies chose to rebel against, and I'd be a fool as one seeking to claim that heritage as my own to submit to the vestiges of such colonialism.

The second thing that strikes me about Obama's candidacy is that, son of an immigrant by choice or not, he turns out to be the very thing advocates of slavery and segregationists feared most. How's that for poetic justice ;-).