Thanks for the Dialogue

Aerin, thanks for the dialogue. I wrote this last week about today...

The Day After

As the 2008 Presidential campaign draws to a close, I've become increasingly less concerned about the specific outcomes of election night and more concerned by what we will have positioned ourselves to accomplish the day after. What are our prospects for success in meeting the tremendous challenges we as a country now face, when we've painted our countrymen and neighbors out to be devils and villains? How do we commit ourselves to meaningful action for the good of all God's creation and not become immobilized in our bickering over who is most right? I'm almost afraid that too much damage has been done: the fear mongering and race-baiting and name-calling and prejudice rationalizing. How do we begin to engage one another and work together if indeed I am (by your definition or my own) a tree-hugging, homo-loving, abortion-permitting, other-embracing, terrorist-empathizing, socialist-leaning un-real black man, whom you've been socialized to resist at all costs?

As I write, a song invades my consciousness, refusing not to be heard. I believe it echoes a way forward through this mess we’ve made for ourselves. The song is "Belfast to Boston," by James Taylor (listen). It's been my prayer for peace for about two years now…

There are rifles buried in the countryside by the rising of the moon.
May they lie there long forgotten, 'til they rust away into the ground.

It's a song of grace: blood bought, divinely inspired, blessed assurance that as followers in the way of Jesus we are not condemned to give as good (or as poorly) as we get. We can give better. Yes…

Who will bend this ancient hatred: will the killing to an end?
Who will swallow long injustice: take the devil for a countryman?

We can. This is the grace that is ours. "Freely you have received; freely give," Jesus says.

continue reading on GP>>>

A Better World is Possible

I have a new story online. It was written in support of the Faith House Manhattan project initiated by Samir Selmanovic. Faith House Manhattan is an experiment in God's hopes and dreams that will create space for Christians, Jews and Muslims to seek God together for the good of the world.

The protagonist of my new parable, "Faithful Houses," pens these words about such interfaith love and life:

People of faith change the world, and it is, I believe, for the good of the world that we discover the commonality inherent in our hopes, instead of living out of the disparity between them. If our religions remain sets of exclusive, immutable propositions, then of course they will exist in contradiction and conflict with one another. In such a climate, war seems inevitable. However...

I'll let you read the whole story to hear the rest.

I am proud to be a friend of and co-conspirator with Samir. He is a visionary and has the heart of God for the city of New York. May God bless the efforts of everyone involved in Faith House. Please check out the Faith House website sometime and discover how you can lend support. It is well worth your imagination and resources.

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."

Nutrition for the Soul... from an SDA Kitchen No Less

Back in August I posted a rather sad review of the junk (self-interested, superficial, escapist, etc.) food served up from many pulpits week after week. Well, its easy to deconstruct what doesn't nourish, particularly if it no longer tastes like anything to you. The more difficult part is to begin to reconstruct something that's better. (I think the whole local, organic, sustainable foods movement serves as an instructive metaphor.)

A friend of mine, Ryan Bell, is (in my humble opinion) reconstructing a thing of beauty. I encourage you to check him out. His ministry is missional, it's contextual, it's prophetic. I'm really diggin' his fall series on Jesus' Journey to Jerusalem (beginning 3 Sept), taken from the New Testament gospel of Mark; it's real kingdom-come stuff. And should you visit his blog, pay attention to the types of things he's involved in.


The Skill to See

Last Thursday I had lunch with a dear friend and partner in imagining and being the change we'd like to see in the world. Troy and I spent much of our time together conversing about his newly confirmed post as pastor of the St. Andrews Presbyterian Church in Sandy Springs, GA (a newly incorporated city that sits right up against North Atlanta). He was bouncing ideas off of me and asking for my feedback, which I shared for what it was worth.

One of our brainstorm exchanges involved how best to inspire new imagination among his parishioners about what it means to be church, which for the many would require the development of previously unused muscles. Though under-developed, Troy explained, such imagination is very much a part of the Presbyterian tradition and, in fact, are the same intuitions that led to previous innovations in the Presbyterian tradition now recognized among congregants as "the Confessions." Of course, one seldom thinks of tradition handed down to her as innovations of the past, but that's what Troy wants his congregants to see: that it is faithfully Presbyterian to re-imagine and re-form routinely what it means to be church.

He asked what I thought about how best to go about teaching this. I asked what was wrong with the way he had just articulated it to me. I went on to describe what it might look like from week to week: him finding a particular confession that he could use as justification for an act of innovation today. And his response was, "No, because that would develop the wrong muscle."

His response, like getting the wind knocked out of one, stunned me for a moment. The insight was just so keen. He reckoned immediately what that practice would produce fully formed.

Upon witnessing it, I recognized that being able to project what the fruit of a particular course of action might be is a skill lost to many leaders. Many are either too arrogant to even want to consider the possible unintended consequences of a proposed action or their vision is too immature and experience too limited to forecast accurately that far out. One forces plans forward that should have been interred on the drawing room floor. The other clings to the familiar because it is so easily predictable and, thus, perceived as safe or puts her energies into pseudo-innovations toward status quo or worse ends.

We see daily in the national political news the results of an agenda that under estimates then disregards its negative impact on the lives of people—even now that it has almost fully formed—"none is so blind as he who would not see." Yet, maybe sadder still, one is left to wonder what good is missed when other leaders don't innovate simply because they can't see how.


The Difference the Point Can Make

Anyone who has ever heard me speak knows I love stories (villagehalwit@blogspot.com). I particularly love allegories. I have grown up reading and re-reading The Chronicles of Narnia and Lewis' space trilogy. In college I discovered Langston Hughes' Jesse B. Simple stories, and I fell in love with the art form all over again.

Over the years I've read or listened to many wonderful stories, but the ones that have intrigued me the most bar none are the parables of Jesus, primarily because they have seemed so packed with a meaning whose surface I always felt I was barely scratching. What has been particularly frustrating is that it has always been said that Jesus' parable were intentionally simple so that peasants could understand them. Now I'm no peasant (any wisdom I've ever stumbled into has never been as earthy or as profound), but I've always hoped one day to make the pieces and parts of any one of Jesus' parables read as a cohesive whole, instead of having certain phrases in each stand conspicuously out of place with my most recent interpretation.

Today, on a friend's blog (Ryan Sharp) I found a link to an article that was able to make sense for me of two of the most commonly invoked of Jesus' parables. When I read it, my heart leaped for joy in my chest. For the first time stories I have heard recounted in fragments over and over finally came together as a cohesive whole. It was amazing. Check it out for yourself. I promise you will be delightfully unsettled.

For more, check out Ched Myer's book Binding the Strong Man: A Political Reading of Mark's Story of Jesus.

The Buddha Had It Right...

The Buddha had it right: desire is the root of suffering. The modern Christian apologist might immediately respond, "Well, the desire not to desire is a desire in itself," and thus dismiss the power of this ever so pivotal truth (thinking he has once again defended the faith against the creeping compromise of acknowledging the light found in other faith traditions). But I have dared to reconsider the Buddha's exhortation.

That isn't to say that all desires, aspirations and hopes are bad. To think that would be down right... unAmerican? It all depends what one aspires towards. The way of Jesus teaches that the moment we aspire toward our own self-interests we're headed for trouble—and are going to cause the suffering of others in the process. There is absolutely, positively, unequivocally no way to escape the consequence (suffering) of self-interested aspiration, yet we put good effort into it. We've constructed economic systems, construed theologies, manufactured art and institutionalized curricula in an attempt to enshrine our desire to aspire towards our own self-interest in hopes that what accrues to our benefit would one day somehow take the evolutionary leap of becoming the good of others.

I was talking with a friend about all this last night. It would seem to me that if we desire a better world (which is an other-interested aspiration) we must start by living toward that which serves other than our own self-interests. It's the ethic of preferring others over ourselves. That doesn't mean that nothing we do ever benefits us personally, but our own benefit becomes a serendipity of becoming our brother's keeper. Such thinking may be counter-intuitive, but it's a damn bit more sustainable than this get-as-much-as-you-can-for-you-and-yours ethic that even people of faith now practice. What happens when those who consistently come up with the short end of the stick get sick of suffering or simply slaving in the interest of those who devalue them?

Pilgrimage to Where?

Somewhere along the way Christians seem to have decided that the goal of a consecrated life was to escape this world. What's that about? Didn't God create this world and us as a part of it?

As I've started to grow in a missional way of seeing things, I've gone back to re-evaluate some of the familiar metaphor that has shaped my life to this point. One in particular is the metaphor of pilgrimage.

My fore-parents sang the song "I'm on My Way to Canaan Land." The song admonishes that even "if my mother don't go I'll [need to] journey on." They also told me that "this world is not my home." It is with these presuppositions that I set out with John Bunyan's Christian, leaving behind the City of Destruction, which I interpreted to be "this world and all it has to offer me," in search of the Celestial City, which I assumed would be Heaven. With a theology such as this, no wonder escape-the-world, ignore-the-world or exploit-the-world's-resources seems consistent with the save-the-world calling most Christians also claim.

Nowadays I don't interpret things quite the same way, but instead of dismissing my former conceptions as total bunk (which seems to me even more ridiculous) I've chosen rather to reframe my understanding of this pilgrim metaphor that has been handed down to me. What if "Canaan Land"—our metaphoric Promised Land (as pledged by God to the Jews)—is not heaven but the earth made new? It's not such a novel idea; the biblical canon ends with this thought. Taking it a step further, what if the journey from this world to the next that Moses and Mohammad and the Buddha and Confucius and (in my estimation most fully) Jesus embodied is not an abandonment of the world as it is but an embrace of all she was created to become? Our pilgrimage then would be in our hopefully ever-expanding ability to perceive and understand and embrace and appreciate this new world... and to help bring it into existence.

I don't know about you, but I find such thoughts wonderfully liberating and pregnant with possibility. It also makes me wonder whether my previously more narrow and flattened interpretations of the truths hand down to me hasn't been a diminution of my forebears wisdom: my own self-serving ideas of what was meant and not actually what was being communicated to me.