the personal touch

I spend a small amount of time considering the question of “legacy.” Not in the presidential sense but rather in the sense that everything I do contains a little bit of me, my thoughts and habits and so simply by breathing in the air in a particular place (church) I tend to have an effect on the culture by a) being in a leadership role and b) by portraying to the world my own worldview.

Each end every day I am modeling something, concern, care, selfishness (hey, not every day is a good one) without any intention of doing so as all of us do and so there is the conundrum of being a role model and creating a culture in subtle ways while all the while trying to be intentional about actions and behaviors. There are limits to how much self-analysis I can manage in a given day and so, so much of this behavior is unconscious and unevaluated that is weirds me out to think what it is that might come about because of this fact of life; that we create reality by living in it.

The thing that brought this to mind is that I am feeling a bit nostalgic these days and have struck on the idea of casting back into memory and resurrecting habits and traditions of past years to make Christmas into a moment that we can inhabit not just for the season but also for the whole year. What would it be like to have that kind of child-like anticipation of graces and joys to come? Could we recapture that without turning it into something else, the typical impatience that we all suffer through with the help of the media constantly telling us that we deserve a break today, not tomorrow today!

It could be that since I was raised in a presents-on-Christmas-morning household, that I have simply learned to be patient about those kinds of things. There was no rush, the morning would come when it came and that was all there was to it. The morning could be bleary eyed for my parents, yet joyful exuberance for my brother and me.  Having never owned a cell-phone I was actually happy with new sweaters. Knowing that we were not wealthy (as much as we think that we didn’t know, we all did, we had wealthy classmates and they got different, better stuff) we knew that we got the things that we needed and we looked for that morning to dawn with eagerness.

simple  childlike  free

Did that just disappear with childhood?

Gracious Lord, giver of life and of love and of freedom in Christ have mercy on us. Show us the way to be at peace with our world instead of at war with it, constantly having to seek advantage. Let us know the sweetness of just family and just love and just hope, time spent in community, after all, “it is not good for people to be alone” and we’ve lost that a little bit. Show us the way.

Arrogance and swagger

I wonder how a pastor can assert his authority these days. Tenuous ground to be sure in days when church shopping has made any one church a disposable commodity in people’s minds. Sometimes you must preach the law and instead of finding conviction, you see that backs of their heads as they leave the church, sometimes not to return.

I’m not one to mince words, conviction is conviction and most people need more of it rather than less of it in their lives myself included, and I don’t think anyone could accuse me of being too quick to pardon myself so I guess I just wish that we had a culture that respected honest debate and honesty in the service of the truth a little more. We’re too conditioned to be suspicious of each other’s motives to listen with an open mind. In equal measure, we’re too acculturated to seeking rhetorical advantage to just speak the truth in order to have it spoken.

Isn’t that what we are called to do, please comment, since I can only speak from the position of the one in the puplit, aren’t we supposed to call Bull%$#t when it truly is bull%$#t? And not necessarily just to point and blame, but to accept equal measure of culpability, mostly in the realm of sins of ommission, since they are pretty much the American way. We must have the most advanced necks in all of human histiry the way we turn away so often and so well.

Feeling a little grumpy, sorry about that. Got to get Caitlyn to Basketball, got to do Bible Study this evening, got to, got to, got to . . .

still want to though, which is a blessing beyond measure

We have a new Bishop

It is an odd process, one fraught with questions and yet it seems to nurture a sense of the Holy Spirit working in and through the election and in the end we have a new Bishop Elected in the Sierra Pacific Synod, Mark Holmerud.

I’m not sure that it is a job I’d wish on a dog, let alone a pastor I like and have respect for. Necessarily, like the presidency, there is really no adequate training for the position, nothing is like being bishop and being bishop is like nothing else and so we have what we have and each is different.

And around here they are the victim of what I think of as tragically poor planning in and through the merger way back when which saddled the bishop with 204 congregations spread out over a quite large region, from northern Nevada across northern California and down into the central part, past Monterey. Beyond the geography there is the incredible diversity of the synod, from Humboldt county to Fresno, from San Francisco to Elko, Nevada the disparity in priorities and beliefs is staggering.

And so I find it odd that the thing that makes me feel as if I were truly a part of this synod is the fact that i have a more than nodding relationship with four of the six candidates who were running. It is odd to feel that connected, but I guess that the Lutheran world really isn’t all that big.

Back at home some of the peach Irises have bloomed and so I thought I’d send along a picture:

be well, more about living outside (yourself and your home) later I suppose

Tim

Fear and loathing in Santa Rosa

Why am I afraid of things going well?

Things are going well at church, life at home is busy and complicated yet good in a more profound way than I can explain, and I have Caitlyn as this little bundle of hope and joy running around making me happy. Is it something just with me that I am waiting for another shoe to drop?

The weirdest thing is, I think that it’s theological in nature. I have seen too many ministries which have become stale and comfortable and have therefore become passe and have vanished or at least diminished to the point of vanishing and now that I think about it I have seen marriages and families in the same predicament, I guess that I fear success because it is so-o-o-o-o-o-o seductive to try and never deviate from what got you here and then not realizing that you are going there.

I think this just makes it a great time to gather up my strength, bolstered by good times and happiness, and see what we can do next. What challenges face us in ministry and how can we get there? What can Debbie and I do to make our lives together even better? What can we do to keep Caitlyn growing up the way she is, confident, secure, loving, trusting, capable?

That’s my word for the day, a question this time. What’s next? What can we do better tomorrow than we did today? What can we try tomorrow that we were too afraid to try today? How can we embody Christ tomorrow that is more meaningful than what we have been doing lately?

“the renewing of your senses” sez Paul.

gimme some of THAT!

blessings, Tim

Dissident Discipleship

I’ve been reading this book and I commend it to you. It describes a progression of belief that I’d like to lift up to you, to see if it resonates at all. The book focuses on what the author calls “polarities” of discipleship defined thusly:

• monopolar – self orientation “holiness of the moment and the person”
• bipolar – acknowledgiong God as the “other” who introduces humility into the equation – reflective discipleship
• tripolar – bringing in the other in humanity into the equation, recognizing that our experience of God is defined in our love for other people

All three are lifted up as pieties that we can see out in the world and tripolar spirituality if hailed as the most completely biblical and faithful example. The Anabaptists are given as the main modern adherents of this kind of spirituality (if you want a glimpse of what tripolar spirituality would look like in action, think of the Amish response to the man who came in and killed the schoolgirls in Pennsylvania. That is defining love for God in love for others) and he had once taught at a Mennonite seminary.

He proposes the following sentences as indicative of the progression into and through the various polarities:

• I believe the story of Jesus
• I believe in Jesus
• I believe Jesus
• I believe what Jesus believed

How many of these can you lay claim to?
How do you understand the statements as they reflect your life, your behavior, your hopes for the future?

God of life and light, let us see. Let us see you in all that we do. Let us hear you in our voice as we proclaim your salvation. Let us know and welcome you as we have been known and welcomed.

Christian does not mean schmuck

A man in the neighborhood had a confrontation with one of the preschool teachers the other day. I was in my office so she brought him to me for some resolution of the issue. He was agitated and was seeking to use our playground for his children as he has in the past. That is not out of hand, but preschool was still in session and we couldn’t allow anyone onto the playground because we have a responsibility to the parents of our kids to provide a controlled environment.

Got the lay of the land?

The thrust of his argument seem to be that since we were “in the business of saving souls” (actual quote) that we should be more open and welcoming. I interpreted this as “if you were “really” a Christian, you’d let me have my way.” (my interpretation) Hackles raised instantly.

In one form or another I have heard this argument and I am getting quite tired of it. A child raised in a Christian home pulls it on her mother when she cannot handle her children. “A Christian would take her from me and raise her!” she shouts.

In this case, a wealthy man (he lives in a very nice neighborhood) seeks a relatively private playground for his children and he doesn’t want to pay for it. There is a public park less than a mile away but he prefers our place. His taxes pay for the city park, but he wants access to ours for free. Unless I cave to his demands, he accuses me of being un-Christian. And he says he’s got 12 years of parochial school to tell him what Christian behavior is. (I really wanted to tell him to go and try playing on a Catholic playground) therefore he knows better than I do how I should behave.

Do I need to mention that I was practically shaking with anger at this time? Not proud of it, it’s just true. I just have a hard time having patience with people who seem to deliberately try and manipulate me on the basis of my patience.

Message to the outside world: We are not stupid. We love Christ and we are striving to love you no matter what. But we are not going to let that stop us from standing up to abuse or scorn or worse, manipulation and deceit. We will share but sharing is not always giving outright. We have a right to live also, and to care about ourselves and to have hope for ourselves and for that to sometimes not include you.

Gracious Lord, make us gracious. Empower us to give but not to be taken. We are taken away by you and you alone. Let us now give knowing that we have all that we need.

I hate to be grouchy about the society in which I live, but . . . (pt.3)

It would be so nice to say that we sit in an ivory tower and watch the rest of society struggle through their existence without being marred by that existence but it just isn’t so. (how’s that for an intro after a few months?) <check back through the previous two posts (here and here) to figure out where I was going where this was going originally>

The fact of the matter is, the church is just as susceptible. When the society begins to tell people that their entertainment is more important than their labor, they will bring that idea into the pews and we will have it to deal with. When people are encouraged to think of themselves as islands unto themselves, and that they are the only decision making body that matters in the long run, then they will bring that as well and we will have them “church-hopping” when things do not suit them in the church where they are. They will run and seek individual satisfaction because the televisions tells them that this is what they ought to have <<”You deserve a break today” “have it your way”>> After all, the church is made up of people.
What can we say theologically about the issue of society, individuation, displacement and factionalization? I think we ought to begin where the Bible begins and go from there. “It is not good that (man) should be alone.” Genesis 2:18

God’s concern is that we not be alone, not in the sense that there be no single people, as some of the “defense of marriage” people would have you believe, but that the intended state of humanity should be one of community rather than isolation (Paul, after all, thought that being single was by far the best situation, though he thought that being single in community was the way to go). But the problem comes when we begin to see this being interpreted as “finding the community that suits you” because the central idea in there is you instead of the community. There is no sense of your responsibility to build and nurture community; instead it’s all about what the community has to give you for you to stay. We end up with people “church shopping” to find the place that suits them. If you’re not careful, and people seldom are in these things, you might also tend toward the place that challenges you the least, that asks the fewest hard questions about your life and confirms your judgments about other people’s lives. It’s the easy path, and if we’re focusing on us we usually take it.

But community and society mean more than making things as smooth for yourself as possible. It’s usually true that the minute people begin talking about their church “changing” usually happens about two years after their last active participation in the church’s governance. Church changes when you’re not part of the change because from the inside, it simply seems like progress or evolution because there is discussion and debate and planning and thoughtful process which is missed no matter how hard the church administration tries to communicate. Unless you’re involved, things seem to fly by without you but as soon as you make yourself a part of things, it all seems pretty natural and unless you are in the most ossified of churches, you can make your voice heard and your viewpoint known and you can effect some change of your own. but you have to be there, if you split as soon as it doesn’t “suit you” then you’ll never know what could be built. That’s society, something you take part in, not just join. That is what i think is missing from a lot of the churches, even the mega churches these days which work very hard on making sure that there is something for everyone instead of having something for everyone, one single unifying characteristic that binds them into community.
And so we run the risk of belonging to something without ever being challenged to become a part of it. And in a world hurtling (especially lately) into an uncertain future, that is not a good position to be in, having a woolly wrap against the world that is too insubstantial when put to the test to actually stand the storm because you’ve never been told how to hold onto it and make it your own.

How this all contributes to people being able to divide us along artificial lines. Christians are losing the ability to discuss Christianity, not only because we lack a common language with people outside of the church who no longer have any idea what goes on inside these walls but also because we as a church culture have lost our comfort in talking to people, what they used to call apologetics. We’re not a part of the church we belong to and so we cannot speak about what happens there. We’re connected on the surface, but we’re not involved enough to know what we’re connected to.

Schroedinger said we cannot escape affecting the universe when we observe it, or being affected by it when observed. Maybe we need to be more ready to observe the things going on around us, to get involved with them even if it is only by observing them. There are certainly muscles involved that could be strengthened, maybe enough to allow us the courage to be observed without fear or shame. If we could just trust in ourselves, both as individuals and also as part of the community, as part of something bigger, maybe we could both be guided into a brighter future by encountering Christ in the world, and also guide the world into a brighter future by being Christ in that same world.

The sight of God

I was chatting with a member the other day and I realized that I had been in the presence of Christ the whole time. In both the “When two or more are gathered” sense as well as in the presence of one who brought Christ into the darker spaces of creation and made them light.

Their spouse was in the hospital and in some despondency. This person not only visited in the way that anyone (including myself) would do, but actually made it clear that they were present in the room, available and vulnerable to the person hooked up to the tubes and wires. This was driven home to me in the applying of lotion to the feet. Needless to say biblical images flooded my mind at the time and I couldn’t find words to intrude upon that moment (thank God) but watching one person tenderly anoint the feet of their beloved made the act of Maundy Thursday seem all the more potent to me. I cannot wait for the opportunity to feel that way again, even if only as the shadow of this very personal and true moment.

It came home again when this person missed church one morning. I saw them later and asked if everything was alright and they told me that they had been helping their spouse shower at the hospital. Nurses are available for that kind of thing, but it is so dehumanizing to have to go through it with all of the tubes and wires that the comfort of having someone who truly loves you present to help you, to hold you and to see you through what might otherwise be an embarassing moment is remarkably potent.

I didn’t say so, but I think that this person was in far closer proximity to the love of Christ than any sermon I have ever been blessed with by the Spirit could bring about.

How do you compete with those moments? How can you bring the love of God home any more than the simple acts of devoted love that one person can be to another. The simple answer is that you can’t. I’ll continue to see these moments and feel somehow less than those around me, but also feel that maybe, just maybe continuing to hear the word of life, continuing to hear the love of God made new in the promises preached from the lips of as humble a servant as myself can show that we are the body of Christ, equal in stature and righteounsess and that we have been given the power to bring Christ into whatever darkness presents itself and to trust that the light of Christ can illumine that darkness and make people into what God had intended from the beginning.

When I think it depends on me, Lord, send me an angel. Not a fiery seraph or a burning bush but flesh and bone and heart turned to love by the promises of Christ alive and abiding within them. Send us all such an angel so that we can see the promises being kept in the love of one to another in your name and that we may see freedom for what it is, freedom from the need to surpass or supplant, freedom from envy or hate, freedom from pity or condescension; and freedom for service, love and compassion in this world.

Minnie Roche

It is with profound sadness that I tell you that at 5:45 this evening, Minnie Roche claimed the promise of her baptism and now rests in the mercy of our Lord. She was surrounded by family including many great-grandchildren. We will miss Minnie very much here at Faith.

For I am about to create new heavens

and a new earth;

the former things shall not be remembered

or come to mind.

But be glad and rejoice forever

in what I am creating;

for I am about to create Jerusalem as a joy,

and its people as a delight.

I will rejoice in Jerusalem,

and delight in my people;

no more shall the sound of weeping be heard in it,

or the cry of distress.

 

Isaiah 65:17-19

I hate to be grouchy about the society in which I live, but . . . (pt.2)

The problem of professionalization and depersonalization is, for me at least, most vividly on display in social behavior.

Ken mentioned in Pt 1 that kids these days have at their disposal so many more resources that most people reading this might have. I wonder whether or not this is a good thing.

don’t get all worked up, I’m not saying we should deprive our children of every advantage our society has developed and built.

But what about the things that are not truly advantages? Clearest to me is the video console. Never before in the history of Mankind has there been a device that encouraged solitude and self-modifying behavior. Whittling is as close as I can come up with insofar as other hobbies or pastimes that have not been group activities in the past, but whittling was never really that rewarding and so people either got bored with it or became sculptors, neither of which is a bad solution.

But in the modern context, we have so many things that kids can do, so many activities, so many inputs that there is almost no time in which they are bored. They may say that they’re bored, but as often as not they are seeking a new disc for the game cube or something because the game has become boring, or their movie collection has become boring, or their computer is too slow or whatever. That’s not boredom, that’s just deprivation of instant input.

No, I’m talking about real boredom. Take away the video console, no soccer, no tv no internet for a week and inspire some real boredom and see what happens. Probably nothing other than your life becoming a living hell. And that’s the problem. With so many different avenues of individual entertainment, pick-up games of soccer or basketball, common on the playgrounds and fields of my youth, have all but disappeared. They have been replaced by leagues, this is true, but then it begins to edge out of the realm of play and into sport and it isn’t so much a cure for boredom as it is a way to fill the time between school and dinner, between dinner and sleep, between Friday and Monday. It has preempted boredom.

But what’s wrong with boredom?

The constant barrage of input, the amazing spectrum of scheduled events, the wealth of possibilities is truly the blessing of an advanced society with wealth that would make Solomon blush and yet, so much of it leads us into pursuits that fill our time without bringing us much closer to the people around us, even teammates because the activity is the point not the creative, corporate dispelling of boredom or the spontaneous creation of community.

I think that the most glaring example of too much input and not enough society is the frequency with which I see young people riding around with their parents, staring out the windows of the car with the ubiquitous white wires from their ipods hanging from their ears. Two people sharing a small space, bound by love and family, not interacting at all.

We’re losing touch with each other as much as we’re losing touch with the unseemly bits of the life that we lead. We were made in the image of God for community, mutual support and loving communion with one another and we are fracturing, idividualizing and becoming distanced from one another in an effort to become all that we can be as individuals, without seeing that we were meant to be all that we can be, together.