Excerpt from "Being and Doing" (More from Merton)

A man who fails well is greater than one who succeeds badly.

One who is content with what he has, and who accepts the fact that he inevitably misses very much in life, is far better than one who has much more but who worries about all he may be missing. For we cannot make the best of what we are, if our hearts are always divided between what we are and what we are not.

The lower our estimation of ourselves and the lower our expectations, the greater chance we have of using what we have. If we do not know how poor we are we will never be able to appreciate what we actually have. But, above all, we must learn our own weakness in order to awaken to a new order of action and of being - and experience God Himself accomplishing in us the things we find impossible.

We cannot be happy if we expect to live all the time at the highest peak of intensity. Happiness is not a matter of intensity but of balance and order and rhythm and harmony.

Music is pleasing not only because of the sound but also because of the silence that is in it: without the alternation of sound and silence there would be no rhythm. If we strive to be happy by filling all the silences of life with sound, productive by turning all life's leisure into work, and real by turning all our being into doing, we will only succeed in producing hell on earth.

If we have no silence, God is not heard in our music. If we have no rest, God does not bless our work. If we twist our lives out of shape in order to fill every corner of them with action and experience, God will silently withdraw from our hearts and leave us empty.

Let us, therefore, learn to pass from one imperfect activity to another without worrying too much about what we are missing. It is true that we make many mistakes. But the biggest of them all is to be surprised at them: as if we had some hope of never making any.

Mistakes are a part of our life, and not the least important part. If we are humble, and if we believe the Providence of God, we will see that our mistakes are not merely a necessary evil, something we lament and count as lost: they enter into the very structure of our existence. It is by making mistakes that we gain experience, not only for ourselves but for others. And though our experience prevents neither ourselves nor others from making the same mistake many times, the repeated experience still has a positive value.

- Thomas Merton, "Being and Doing" from No Man is an Island

Merton's Response

Thomas Merton must have spent some time musing on hypothetical outcomes, too. I imagine that his response to my earlier questions about choosing between different possibilities might run something like this (from No Man Is An Island):

In planning the course of our lives, we must remember the importance and dignity of our own freedom. A man who fears to settle his future by a good act of his own free choice does not understand the love of God. For our freedom is a gift God has given us in order that he may be able to love us more perfectly, and be loved by us more perfectly in return.

Love is perfect in proportion to its freedom. It is free in proportion to its purity. We act most freely when we act purely in response to the love of God. But the purest love of God is not servile, not blind, not limited by fear. Pure charity is fully aware of the power of its own freedom. Perfectly confident of being loved by God, the soul that loves Him dares to make a choice of its own, knowing that its own choice will be acceptable to love.

At the same time pure love is prudent. It is enlightened with a clear-sighted discretion. Trained in freedom, it knows how to avoid the selfishness that frustrates its action. It sees obstacles and avoids or overcomes them. It is keenly sensitive to the smallest signs of God's will and good pleasure in the circumstances of its own life, and its freedom is conditioned by the knowledge of all these. Therefore, in choosing what will please God, it takes account of all the slightest indications of His will. Yet if we add all these indications together, they seldom suffice to give us absolute certitude that God wills one thing to the exclusion of every other. He Who loves us means by this to leave us room for our own freedom, so that we may dare to choose for ourselves, with no other certainty than that His love will be pleased by our intention to please Him.

No Man Is An Island

Thanks to a thoughtful gift from my friend Kadie, I've been slowly chewing on the first chapter of Thomas Merton's No Man Is An Island. The beginning of the chapter has been especially poignant for me this week:

A happiness that is sought for ourselves alone can never be found: for a happiness that is diminished by being shared is not big enough to make us happy.

There is a false and momentary happiness in self-satisfaction, but it always leads to sorrow because it narrows and deadens our spirit. True happiness is found in unselfish love, a love which increases in proportion as it is shared. There is no end to the sharing of love, and, therefore, the potential happiness of such love is without limit. Infinite sharing is the law of God's inner life. He has made the sharing of ourselves the law of our own being, so that it is in loving others that we best love ourselves. In disinterested activity we best fulfill our own capacities to act and to be.

Yet there can never be happiness in compulsion. It is not enough for love to be shared: it must be shared freely. That is to say it must be given, not merely taken. Unselfish love that is poured out upon a selfish object does not bring perfect happiness: not because love requires a return or a reward for loving, but because it rests in the happiness of the beloved. And if the one loved receives love selfishly, the lover is not satisfied. He sees that his love has failed to make the beloved happy. It has not awakened his capacity for unselfish love.

Hence the paradox that unselfish love cannot rest perfectly except in a love that is perfectly reciprocated: because it knows that the only true peace is found in selfless love. Selfless love consents to be loved selflessly for the sake of the beloved. In doing so, it perfects itself.

The gift of love is the gift of the power and capacity to love, and, therefore, to give love with full effect is also to receive it. So, love can only be kept by being given away, and it can only be given perfectly when it is also received.

I love this passage of the book, but there's this little skeptical voice that wants me to buck Merton's assertions. Specifically, that voice asks me, "Is such selfless love humanly possible?" Merton is, no doubt, presenting an ideal, but he's presenting it as if it is within reach. Is it? Or, perhaps some of us learn to love in a completely selfless manner - how likely is it for those two persons to meet and love one another so that their love "perfects itself"?* This is an ideal to be lived into, but maybe it is not perfectly achieved until God completes his good work in us (Phil. 1:6).

Merton goes on to nuance his discussion of selfless love: it doesn't just consent to everything the beloved wants. Merton explains that we sometimes fool ourselves into believing that we are selfless when we give in to everything the beloved wants. In truth, we can be enslaving the beloved to ourselves. Also, selfless love desires what is good for the beloved, and that is not always the thing that the beloved wants.

* Note: Merton and I are both referring to all kinds of love, not merely romantic love.

Thanks, Billy.

I'm working on this paper. I'm not quite sure how it'll turn out, but I have a hunch that it'll be a mixture of the following components: excerpts from 2nd and 3rd century church fathers concerning the New Testament canon, insights from the epistemology of testimony and virtue epistemology (whew!), and Christian catechesis. Maybe. How that'll all fit together is still a mystery to me. (But it needs to all come together in the next 24 hours or so. No worries - it'll work out somehow.)

Today I picked up Canon and Criteria in Christian Theology by William Abraham. The first two chapters (all I've read so far) are fascinating! I wish I had more time to dive into this material. Abraham challenges the notion that the Bible is primarily a source of epistemic justification. In other words, Scripture should not be used as a trump card in religious discussion and life. (That's too simplistic a description, but it'll have to do.) Abraham describes the Christian Scriptures as just one among many canons of the church. Scripture is a means of grace which gives us access to divine revelation. It strikes me that this is quite different from the way that we tend to view Scripture in the church - in a refreshing and life-giving way. Although this seems to run counter to a lot of Protestant Christianity's teaching about the nature and function of Scripture, it actually provides a more balanced, respectful view of Scripture. Here's an excerpt that I found particularly moving:*

We might sum up by thinking of the varied canonical traditions as different elements in the production of a grand symphony. The music which results is the music of salvation, which naturally transposes itself into hymns of praise. Some of the canonical traditions, like the water, oil, bread, and wine of the sacraments, represent various instruments in the orchestra of the Church. Some, like Fathers and bishops, represent various players. Some, like liturgical material, represent the scores, which are best followed according to the programme notes which accompany them. Everyone involved in the orchestra must approach his or her role in a spirit of humility and dependence, joy and praise. Most important of all, everyone must heed and be open to the leading of the great conductor, the Holy Spirit, who, through the use of the canonical traditions of the Church, creates within the participants the melody of Christ the Saviour, a music which leads ineluctably into the unfathomable, unspeakable mystery of the living God.

When I first learned about the historical formation of the New Testament canon, it was somewhat disorienting. It took centuries to fully flower, and it was a messy, ad hoc process. I'll never see Scripture in the same way again... and I think that's a profoundly good thing!

We spend a lot of our religious lives trying to avoid disorientation. We sing happy-clappy (theologically bankrupt) praise songs and pretend that the lament psalms don't exist. (No wonder people fall away from church when they're struggling.) We make up ridiculous, snappy slogans to slap on our bumpers. Sometimes we turn a blind eye to things that might pose a challenge to faith. On the other hand, I've had friends drop their faith like a hot potato when times of disorientation come. These moves are two sides of the same coin - they seek re-orientation at the cost of serious inquiry. (Although the second of the two reactions seems more intellectually honest than the first to me.)

I suggest living into disorientation for a while - even (especially) when it comes to central assumptions in our faith. Unrushed re-orientation is worth the uncomfortable wait; at least, that has been my experience in struggling with the formation of the Christian canon. Disorientation gave way to new appreciation for the church, despite all of its short-comings and foibles. Most importantly, I think got a tiny glimpse of the great conductor, the Holy Spirit, leading us along through confusing tangle of human history. I heard the soft strains of the melody of the Saviour... could it be that in the midst of disorientation I stumbled unawares into the mysterious presence of the living God?

* It moves me partially because of the musical imagery - I'm such a sucker for symphonic metaphors!

Recollection

Enough whining - here's an excerpt from a reading that I found insightful earlier this week. It's from Spiritual Disciplines Handbook: Practices that Transform US, by Adele Alhberg Calhoun. (Thanks, J. W. C.) The brief chapter on the prayer of recollection offered these insights:

"The Psalmist recollected his soul with this prayer, "Be at rest once more, O my soul, for the Lord has been good to you" (Ps. 116:7). A recollected soul is the opposite of a distracted, fragmented soul. It is a soul collected and at rest in God. Because it is natural for the mind to make random associations and wander off in a million directions, we need a prayer that recalls our soul to its center in God. The prayer of recollection reveals where our distracted hearts are going... Distractions reveal our attachments. Attachments reveal what in our heart needs recollecting back to God once again...

"... [T]he flood of distracting thoughts in prayer can be received as a gift! What you want to recollect your soul and end up rewriting the agenda for the next meeting in your head or when you begin praying for a colleague and end up imagining where you want to go on vacation, don't push these thoughts aside. Notice them. You cannot collect what you know to be scattered. You cannot abandon what you don't see. The way to a heart at rest in God comes through confessing and abandoning our limited, preoccupied heart. ...

"Confessing our attachments before the holy One, we return to our true root identity in God. We abandon the false self to embrace the true one. Remember, the self caught up in worry, power plays and image management is not the true self; it's a self that creates its identity through attachment to secondary things. But God has given you an identity. Receive it. Recollect your Christ-in-me identity..."

The chapter goes on to suggest a couple of ways to practice the prayer of recollection. This one resonates with me, perhaps it will with you, too:

"Find a quiet place where you can sit comfortably before the Lord. Take some deep breaths, relaxing your body and quieting your mind. Offer yourself to God. Ask [God] to gather up the fragments of your scattered life and recollect your soul. Rest before [God]. When distracting thoughts come up, write down one word that expresses your distraction. Let the thought go and return to your rest in God. After ten minutes look at the words you have jotted down. What stands out to you? What anxieties do you see? Where is your identity centered? Confess that you are not called to control all that disrupts your life. Return these concerns to the Lord. Let [God] hold the concerns of your heart as you rest in him."

Recollection

Enough whining - here's an excerpt from a reading that I found insightful earlier this week. It's from Spiritual Disciplines Handbook: Practices that Transform US, by Adele Alhberg Calhoun. (Thanks, J. W. C.) The brief chapter on the prayer of recollection offered these insights:

"The Psalmist recollected his soul with this prayer, "Be at rest once more, O my soul, for the Lord has been good to you" (Ps. 116:7). A recollected soul is the opposite of a distracted, fragmented soul. It is a soul collected and at rest in God. Because it is natural for the mind to make random associations and wander off in a million directions, we need a prayer that recalls our soul to its center in God. The prayer of recollection reveals where our distracted hearts are going... Distractions reveal our attachments. Attachments reveal what in our heart needs recollecting back to God once again...

"... [T]he flood of distracting thoughts in prayer can be received as a gift! What you want to recollect your soul and end up rewriting the agenda for the next meeting in your head or when you begin praying for a colleague and end up imagining where you want to go on vacation, don't push these thoughts aside. Notice them. You cannot collect what you know to be scattered. You cannot abandon what you don't see. The way to a heart at rest in God comes through confessing and abandoning our limited, preoccupied heart. ...

"Confessing our attachments before the holy One, we return to our true root identity in God. We abandon the false self to embrace the true one. Remember, the self caught up in worry, power plays and image management is not the true self; it's a self that creates its identity through attachment to secondary things. But God has given you an identity. Receive it. Recollect your Christ-in-me identity..."

The chapter goes on to suggest a couple of ways to practice the prayer of recollection. This one resonates with me, perhaps it will with you, too:

"Find a quiet place where you can sit comfortably before the Lord. Take some deep breaths, relaxing your body and quieting your mind. Offer yourself to God. Ask [God] to gather up the fragments of your scattered life and recollect your soul. Rest before [God]. When distracting thoughts come up, write down one word that expresses your distraction. Let the thought go and return to your rest in God. After ten minutes look at the words you have jotted down. What stands out to you? What anxieties do you see? Where is your identity centered? Confess that you are not called to control all that disrupts your life. Return these concerns to the Lord. Let [God] hold the concerns of your heart as you rest in him."

Today I’ve been reading The Preaching Life by Barbara Brown Taylor and loving it. In her chapter on calling she recounts her spiritual journey – and this passage about the impact of a minister who befriended her at the age of seven is particularly poignant. It made me think of all those people who taught me to seek and find God in the ins and outs of my every day life. (There are too many to name, but special thanks go to my parents, Shannon and the backpacking crew, Ike, Vann, Karen, Jay and Anita.)

The pastor was a kind young man with no family of his own, who soon became a regular guest at our supper table. I grew to adore him. He was vital and funny and could catch an airborne fly with one hand. He listened to me when I talked and let me lead him on tours of my projects around the house. He seemed able, when he looked at me, to see a person and not only a child, and I loved him for it.

One Sunday he asked me to sit up close to the pulpit. He wanted me to hear his sermon, he said, and as I listened to him talk about the beauty of God's creation and our duty to be awed by it, all of a sudden I heard him telling the congregation about a little girl who kept tadpoles in a birdbath so that she could watch over them as they turned into frogs, and how her care for those creatures was part of God's care for the whole world.

It was as if someone had turned on all the lights - not only to hear myself spoken of in church, but to hear that my life was part of God's life, and that something as ordinary as a tadpole connected the two. My friend's words changed everything for me. I could no longer see myself or the least detail of my life in the same way again. When the service was over that day I walked out of it into a God-enchanted world, where I could not wait to find further clues to heaven on earth. Every leaf, every ant, every shiny rock called out to me - begging to be watched, to be listened to, to be handled and examined. I became a detective of divinity, collecting evidence of God's genius and admiring the tracks left for me to follow: locusts shedding their hard bodies for soft, new, winged ones; prickly pods of milkweed spilling silky white hair; lightening spinning webs of cold fire in the sky, as intricate as the veins in my own wrist. My friend taught me to believe that these were all words in the language of God, hieroglyphs given to puzzle and delight me even if I never cracked the code.

But the story doesn't end there. He goes on to show that the way of Jesus can be as difficult and complicated as it is beautiful. It costs something, sometimes a great deal:

I was a willing student until the day I lost my teacher. At first all I knew was that something was wrong. Threat hung in the air as it had on those dark afternoons in Kansas, only this time it was not the weather. "Civil rights" had come to Ohio, a phrase that made adults talk loudly and lose their tempers. They chose sides and defended them; they wanted my friend to chose sides too, and he did. The doors of the church were open, he said. He would stand there to make sure they remained open, he said, so that is where they hung him - in effigy - a grotesque stuffed figure that bore no resemblance to my friend, swaying in the heat as he packed and left town.

That was when I began to understand that God's call was not only wonderful but also terrible, that the bright gleam I pursued through the woods and fields behind my house had another dimension I knew nothing about. It had sharp edges to it. It was capable of cutting deep, and those who reached out to grasp it has best be prepared to bleed.

A good prayer for anticipating a new semester:

In the name of Jesus Christ, who was never in a hurry, we pray, O God, that thou wilt slow us down, for we know that we live too fast. With all of eternity before us, make us take time to live - time to get acquainted with thee, time to enjoy thy blessings, and time to know each other.

- Peter Marshall

separate and apart

Today I've been reading a few chapters of William Willimon's Pastor: The Theology and Practice of Ordained Ministry. (Summer break's not over yet... but it might as well be. Still, it's a great read so far.) One of the most fascinating parts of the book so far, oddly enough, is a short discussion of place of the weekly offering in worship. I grew up in a church where the offering always closely followed communion, but I often heard these words sandwiched in between them: "Now separate and apart... ." That's the cue for everyone to reach for their checkbooks. This is, to my knowledge at least, a strange turn of phrase unique to churches of Christ; I think it's meant to disassociate the icky "hand in your money" part from the more holy elements of the bread and the cup. I've always wondered what I would say if I had to introduce this part of the service - what's a good transition from celebrating the Eucharist to passing the collection trays?

But maybe a transition isn't what we need here. What if the way we use our finances actually has something to do with Kingdom living? What if it is actually transformed by the cross of Christ, and so it is indeed the most appropriate action to follow our participation in that salvific event? Where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. Jesus doesn't seem to consider our money to be "separate and apart" from our spiritual lives. What if our contribution is really an expression of our loving, faithful response to God, a testimony that we are citizens of a Kingdom where the property lines are quite a bit different from those of the rest of the world?

Now the company of those who believed were of one heart and soul, and no one said that any of the things which he possessed was his own, but they had everything in common. And with great power the apostles gave their testimony to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus, and great grace was upon them all. There was not a needy person among them, for as many as were possessors of lands or houses sold them, and brought the proceeds of what was sold and laid it at the apostles' feet; and distribution was made to each as any had need. (Acts 4:32-35)

I found Willimon's reflection on this passage inspiring:

"Here is the church's strongest visible evidence of the truth of resurrection - a resurrected community in which old, deadly economic and social arrangements have been overturned. Here is truly "testimony to the resurrection" in this transformed people. Here is the world recreated as God meant it to be, where "there was not a needy person among them," and all things are seen as gifts entrusted to us by God rather than possessions to be tightly grasped. Each Sunday's offering is meant to be a revolutionary, countercultural, and prophetic act for the church. There are few more inflammatory and potentially disruptive acts than when the pastor stands and announces to the congregation that it is now time for the offering. Here embodied before the congregation on Sunday is what the pastor ought to be doing all week - demanding that we give God what is rightly God's, that we show that our money is where our hearts are (Matt. 6:21), and that by God's grace we are able to feel the needs of someone other than ourselves, that we are being transformed from takers into givers, that we give material, visible, monetary testimony to the Resurrection."

Pass the plates! I'm ready!!! But please don't tell me that it's "separate and apart." I don't want anything in my life to be held separate and apart from the death, burial and resurrection of Jesus Christ. I want that to shape every part, including my pocket book!

a paragraph I keep coming back to

"It's funny: I always imagined when I was a kid that adults had some kind of inner toolbox, full of shiny tools: the saw of discernment, the hammer of wisdom, the sandpaper of patience. But then when I grew up I found that life handed you these rusty bent old tools - friendships, prayer, conscience, honesty - and said, Do the best you can with these, they will have to do. And mostly, against all odds, they're enough."

- Anne Lamott, Traveling Mercies

sparkles and atoms

Today I started reading The Cloud of Unknowing. (Check it out here.) The anonymous author wrote in Middle English in the 14th century. Before I'd always dismissed it as one of those weird Medieval contemplative texts: you know, maybe an interesting read, but probably loopy and irrelevant. Uh, wrong! It's surprisingly insightful (but it takes me a while to catch on with its King James-ish language and mystical subject!). No wonder Christians throughout the ages have considered this a classic work - turns out they actually knew what they were talking about!

Apparently, this mysterious writer has me pegged - Anonymous knows how much I wring my hands over my use and misuse of time. (Maybe I'm not alone in this?) After a short description of how time is made up of tiny units called "atoms" and how we will give account to God for our use of our life's "atoms," the author anticipates my distressed interjection (my paraphrase):

"How can I give an account of every single moment I've spent - I, who have to this day never taken note of how I spent my time during my 24 years of life? [Dude, Anonymous even pegged my age! Well, at least for a couple more weeks.] ... Help me now for the love of Jesus!"

And then the author relieves my distress (again, my loose paraphrase):

"You said it well: "For the love of Jesus!" For in the love of Jesus is your help! Love is such a power that it makes all things common. Therefore, love Jesus, and then everything that is his will be yours. Because he is God, he is the maker and giver of time. Because he is human, he is the very keeper of time. And because he is both God and human, he is the most just judge and the one who asks for an account of how time is dispensed. Therefore, knit yourself to him by love and by belief, and then because of that knot you will be able to see time alongside him in the way that he does, and alongside all those others who are also knitted to him by love: with Mary who was full of all grace in keeping time, with the angels of heaven who can never lose time, and with all the saints in heaven and on earth who by the grace of Jesus rightly heed time because of love."

In all my years of hand-wringing over my poor time management, never has anyone suggested to me that maybe the answer isn't really establishing boundaries, buying a new day book (which I use for about 2 weeks and then lose), or mapping out a schedule. Maybe instead I'd better concern myself with something altogether different: simply loving Jesus. The Cloud of Unknowing offers an alternative way to measure time: not by hours, days and years, not by tasks completed and tasks left undone, but simply by "sparkles." These are the moments, the "atoms" when the soul leaps toward God out of love for God alone, like "a sparkle from the coal." That, I feel, is the best, most appealing way to orient my time and measure the quality of my life: by every momentary blaze of love toward God.

Just can't get enough Bonhoeffer!

I love this part! From Bonhoeffer's chapter on ministry in Life Together:

"The first service that one owes to others in the fellowship consists in listening to them. Just as love to God begins with listening to His Word, so the beginning of love to the brethren is learning to listen to them. It is God’s love for us that He not only gives us His Word but also lends us His ear. So it is His work that we do for our brother when we learn to listen to him. Christians, especially ministers, so often think they must always contribute something when they are in the company of others, that this is the one service they have to render. They forget that listening can be a greater service than speaking.

"Many people are looking for an ear that will listen. They do not find it among Christians, because these Christians are talking where they should be listening. But he who can no longer listen to his brother will soon be no longer listening to God either; he will be doing nothing but prattle in the presence of God too. This is the beginning of the death of the spiritual life, and in the end there is nothing but spiritual chatter and clerical condescension arrayed in pious words. One who cannot listen long and patiently will presently be talking beside the point and never really speaking to others, albeit he be not conscious of it. Anyone who thinks that his time is too valuable to spend keeping quiet will eventually have no time for God and for his brother, but only for himself and his own follies…"

Truly listening to another - what is it that makes this so hard? Why is it that I place more value on the thoughtless words tumbling from my own lips (or the half-formed ones rolling around inside my mind waiting for an opportunity to spill out) than on the intimations of my sister in Christ? If I truly want to know my brother, I must learn to listen attentively to the "overflow of his heart." So often I listen with only half an ear, all the while evaluating what is said and composing my own response. Sometimes it's little more than waiting my turn. Why do I think I have to prepare a witty response or decide whether I agree with what is being said? I think there's more value in receiving whatever another says in a spirit of openness and goodwill without immediately assigning it my own "expert opinion." We share something more than mere words and information when we speak and listen to one another - in a way, we lay bare pieces of our souls. It's delicate and vulnerable, worth more than the sum of the words exchanged and deserving far more than my half-hearted attention.

Lord Jesus, you were ever ready to listen to those who cried out to you. You gave us ears to hear: help us to hear. May we listen to all we meet, and to those who come to us in trouble. Remind us daily that there is a time for silence and a time for speaking, and show us when to speak and when to hold our peace. Never let us miss a cry for help because we are too busy talking about ourselves. Make us ready to listen to others, because we listen each day in silence to you, O Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

- Michael Counsell

More Bonhoeffer

Insights on humility, again from Life Together:

“Only he who lives by the forgiveness of his sin in Jesus Christ will rightly think little of himself. He will know that his own wisdom reached the end of its tether when Jesus forgave him. He remembers the ambition of the first man who wanted to know what is good and evil and perished in his wisdom. The first man who was born on this earth was Cain, the fratricide. His crime is the fruit of man’s wisdom. Because the Christian can no longer fancy that he is wise he will also have no high opinion of his own schemes and plans. He will know that it is good for his own will to be broken in the encounter with his neighbor. He will be ready to consider his neighbor’s will more important and urgent than his own. What does it matter if our own plans are frustrated? Is it not better to serve our neighbor than to have our own way?”

Wow - these words are good news to me today. I tend to have a pretty high opinion about my own schemes and plans. I hate to admit it, but I generally want the Lord to do it my way. That's crazy, really. I know how fickle my plans are: they change according to my whims on a pretty regular basis. My pride and self-importance is sin on two levels: it denies Jesus his place as Lord in my life and it assumes that I know better than everyone else who might will something different. So, it's rebellion toward God and maybe an attempt at tyranny over humankind.

Another thing attracts me to Bonhoeffer's words. Humility is not passive, it's active. It doesn't imply willing nothing - as if being the constant doormat of the world were a virtue. (Lack of will - this seems to be cowardice more than anything else.) No, it's the willing sacrifice of my will, however good it seems to me, for the sake of my brother or sister. And humility is sacramental. Here the passion of Jesus, his great acting out of "not my will but Yours" merges into the gritty reality of my life. Who knew that disappointment of my own dreams and desires might actually be participation with Jesus Christ in a very real sense? It's hard to believe in our "may your dreams come true" world. But to meet Jesus in the dark corners of life where all other hope is extinguished by a broken will and discarded dreams - this is good news.

"'Roses and Lilies' of the Christian Life"

These excerpts from Life Together by Dietrich Bonhoeffer really resonate with me today. Affectionately dedicated to my roommates, old and new!

Between the death of Christ and the Last Day, it is only by a gracious anticipation of the last things that Christians are privileged to live in visible fellowship with other Christians. ...

The physical presence of other Christians is a source of incomparable joy and strength to the believer. ...

The believer feels no shame, as though he were still living too much in the flesh, when he yearns for the physical presence of other Christians. Man was created a body, and the Son of Man appeared on earth in the body, he was raised in the body, in the sacrament the believer receives the Lord Christ in the body, and the resurrection of the dead will bring about the perfected fellowship of God's spiritual-physical creatures. The believer therefore lauds the Creator, the Redeemer, God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, for the bodily presence of a brother. The prisoner, the sick person, the Christian in exile sees in the companionship of a fellow Christian a physical sign of the gracious presence of the triune God. Visitor and visited in loneliness recognize in each other the Christ who is present in the body; they receive and meet each other as one meets the Lord, in reverence, humility, and joy. They receive each other's benedictions as the benediction of the Lord Jesus Christ. But if there is so much blessing and joy even in a single encounter of brother with brother, how inexhaustible are the riches that open up for those who by God's will are privileged to live in the daily fellowship of life with other Christians!

It is true, of course, that what is an unspeakable gift of God for the lonely individual is easily disregarded and trodden under foot by those who have the gift every day. It is easily forgotten that the fellowship of Christian brethren is a gift of grace, a gift of the Kingdom of God that any day may be taken from us, that the time that still separates us from utter loneliness may be brief indeed. Therefore, let him who until now has had the privilege of living a common Christian life with other Christians praise God's grace from the bottom of his heart. Let him thank God on his knees and declare: It is grace, nothing but grace, that we are allowed to live in Christian community.

The Point of No Return

[No, as much as I like the Phantom of the Opera, that's not what this post is about. Sorry to disappoint any Phantom fans out there. Also sorry to those who don't get the reference to Phantom and just wish I'd get on with the post...]

I'm writing a paper on the history of the Taize community for Church History, so I thought I'd read some of their primary documents before checking out secondary sources. I'm enjoying it so much it doesn't feel like school work. Yea! The following excerpt is from The Sources of Taize, by Brother Roger, the founder of that community. Enjoy!

Committing ourselves to the point of no return

When Christ asks you, "For you, who am I?" suppose you were to reply:

"Christ Jesus, you are the One who loves me into the life of eternity.

"You open for me the way of risk. You are expecting from me not just a few crumbs, but the whole of my life.

"You are praying within me, day and night. My stammerings are prayer; simply calling you by the Name of Christ Jesus fills the empty places in my heart.

"You place on my finger the ring of the prodigal son, the ring of festival.

"And for my part, might I have 'exchanged the radiance of God for half-heartedness? Have I abandoned the source of living water and dug myself cracked cisterns that hold no water?'

"Christ, tirelessly you were seeking me.

"Why did I hesitate, asking for time to look after my own affairs? Once I had put my hand to the plow, why did I look back?

"And yet, though I have never seen you, I loved you, perhaps not as I would have liked to, but I did love you.

"Christ Jesus, you were suggesting to me, 'Live the very little of the Gospel that you have understood. Proclaim my life among humanity. Come, follow me.'

"Until one day, returning to the source, I understood. You were asking me to commit myself to the point of no return."

Sabbathizers

One of my classes last semester experimented with practicing Christian disciplines as a way to better communicate the Gospel of Jesus Christ. We split into groups and our final project was to create a one-hour evangelistic presentation about our project and how it illuminates salvation in Jesus. My group chose the discipline of keeping the Sabbath. Tonight we had the opportunity to present our project again for a Lectureship crowd in a sort of "coffeehouse" setting. After we shared about our own experiences of Sabbath, I got to wrap it up. I thought I'd share the final speech with all of you out there in Blogland (especially you, Mom - I vote you "Most likely to make it to the end of this rather lengthy post!"):

"We’ve told you some about the experiences we’ve had with Sabbath. We’ve mentioned how Sabbath gives work meaning without making it the meaning of our lives. I don’t think that you need further convincing about the need for a period of rest – just feeling the tension in your back and shoulders and thinking about your lengthy to-do list is probably plenty.

"What we’re speaking about is vastly different from the kind of rest you might read about in a self-help book or O magazine. There’s more to this than fragrant bubble baths or a steamy mug of chamomile tea. Quite frankly, Sabbath is more about self-sacrifice than self-service; it’s more about recognizing my humble state than getting something that I deserve. Sabbath, in some ways, is a form of death to self. It is essentially self-denying.

"Dying to self: it sounds harsh, even masochistic. But our central claim as Christians is that this is actually Good News! Our hope is anchored in the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ and that event has dramatically transformed our world, in a way that we can’t totally fathom or express! In the practice of Sabbath, we’ve caught a little glimpse of what his death and resurrection means – this isn’t all of the story, but it provides some insight into what we mean when we say that Jesus saves us in this counter-intuitive way. We want to share that tiny glimmer of insight with you.

"Our society tells us that our worth as human beings is measured by the things that we do, by what we produce. And so, we rush around, we fill our schedules, we manage our time. When we consider how our day's been, we often enumerate the items we’ve checked off our to-do lists (or cringe over things left undone). We boast about our accomplishments to anyone who will listen at our high school reunions, special receptions,... or lectureships. Quite frankly, we’re led to believe that we are nothing more than the things we do, the job we hold down, and the prestige we acquire.

"In the death of Jesus, we hear a dramatically different message about human life. Dying is the exact opposite of productivity, and yet it is through dying that Jesus brings salvation to the entire universe. Instead of exalting himself, Jesus submitted to death and trusted God to do the exalting. We believe that God did indeed exalt his humble servant – to the highest place as Lord over all creation!

"When we turn our lives over to Jesus, we identify ourselves with his way of life, his death, and his resurrection. We have tasted a morsel of his kingdom, and we await the fullness of his reign in the world. We have also learned that it is not easy – it is a major shift to orient life around such radical hopes, and letting go of controlling life is always difficult. But we’re here to tell you that we think it might just be the best story to live by that a person can find in this world.

"Imagine what the world might be like with a Master like Jesus! Suddenly we’re able to honestly acknowledge our smallness in the universe, yet with a sense of hope instead of despair. After all, God thought enough of our smallness to take on human flesh himself. Instead of working our fingers to the bone in vain, we find joy in recognizing that we are a part of creation and not the Creator. We realize that we're receivers of life instead of feeling the need to make a life for ourselves. The poor, the sick, the outcast – all these are no longer pushed to the margins of society, but become those who are blessed. Those who rule the world in tyranny find their power to oppress stripped from them, and their captives find freedom. People stop merely seeking to get what is best for themselves and start caring about the welfare of others. God, who once felt so distant and out of reach, now lives in close communion with us. What an appealing alternative to the empty busy-ness of the life we see in our Mad World!

"Well, it’s clear to see that this new kingdom hasn’t completely emerged yet. Even the church, which is supposed to be a community that reflects the reign of God, continues to experience hardship, division, sin, and failure. Yet in participating together in the death and resurrection of Jesus, even in small things like keeping Sabbath, we think we’ve caught a glimpse of a hope that's worth holding onto, whatever the cost. And if you’re interested in talking to us about it, we’d love to continue the conversation. For now, we invite you to join us in a few minutes of silence, rest, Sabbath. Thanks for lending us some of your time."

A Prayer for Time

I was only looking for a research topic for my church history paper. While searching for academic inspiration, I also ran across this prayer by Michel Quoist in a delightful volume called 2000 Years of Prayer.

And so all men run after time, Lord.
They pass through life running -
hurried, jostled, overburdened, frantic, and they never get there.
They haven't time.
In spite of all their efforts they're still short of time,
of a great deal of time.
Lord, you must have made a mistake in your calculations.

There is a big mistake somewhere.
The hours are too short,
The days are too short,
Our lives are too short.

You who are beyond time, Lord, you smile to see us fighting it.
And you know what you are doing.
You make no mistakes in your distribution of time to men.
You give to each one time to do what you want him to do.

But we must not lose time
waste time,
kill time,
For time is a gift that you give us,
But a perishable gift,
A gift that does not keep.

Lord, I have time,
I have plenty of time,
All the time that you give me,
The years of my life,
The days of my years,
The hours of my days,
They are all mine.
Mine to fill, quietly, calmly,
But to fill completely, up to the brim,
To offer them to you, that of their insipid water
You may make a rich wine
such as you made once in Cana of Galilee.

I am not asking you tonight, Lord,
for time to do this and then that,
But your grace to do conscientiously,
in the time that you give me, what you want me to do.

Wordsworth

Today I took a break from my normal academic fare to read a little poetry. I picked up a volume of The Essential Wordsworth, and only got through a few lines before I hit this remarkable passage from "The Ruined Cottage, Second Part":

A while on trivial things we held discourse,
To me soon tasteless. In my own despite
I thought of that poor woman as of one
Whom I had known and loved. He had rehearsed
Her lonely tale with such familiar power,
With such an active countenance, an eye
So busy, that the things of which he spake
Seemed present, and, attention now relaxed,
There was a heartfelt chillness in my veins.
I rose, and turning from that breezy shade
Went out into the open air, and stood
To drink the comfort of the warmer sun.
Long time I had not stayed ere, looking round
Upon that tranquil ruin, I returned
And begged of that old man that for my sake
He would resume his story.

For one of my classes this semester, I've been reading Brueggemann's Biblical Perspectives on Evangelism. Brueggemann states that there are three basic stages that take place every time the Good News is shared: the initial salvation event, the creative pronouncement of the event and what it means, and the transformed life of the one who hears that pronouncement. Here Wordsworth poetically relates the tragic tale of a woman who once lived in a now ruined cottage. The old man speaks with such passion and love that the poet is captivated by the tale of poor Margaret, to the point of getting chills and being anxious to hear more. The old man's words and genuine enthusiasm about his encounter with Margaret are cast in such a powerful way that they alter the life and perspective of another.

I wonder how our evangelistic speech compares with the old man's story about Margaret. Strictly speaking, the old man's was a tale of great suffering, loss and decay. Ours, rather, is one of triumph over the powers of darkness, the ever-coming Kingdom of God, the entrance of God onto the human scene, a new family that is bound by the Spirit and love ... I could go on and on. Said simply, we have as much a story of hardship, pain, and rejection as the old man's, but with the renewed life and resilient hope found in the resurrection of our Lord Jesus. Lord, help us as we learn to passionately, creatively tell the story of what you have done for us, and may lives be transformed because of that story.

Augustine

Tonight I started reading St. Augustine's Confessions - it's my second shot at this particular work. Last time I didn't quite make it through before school attacked. I'm glad to start over - I think I'm taking a little more time to really "hear" the musings of this honest, seeking, belatedly godly man this time around. Sometimes I do this "binge-reading" thing and skim right over statements which would otherwise inspire.

Tonight I thought that the most delightful thing about Book I of Confessions is the opening prayer. Augustine begins his book - which is really one long prayer itself - with a prayer that seems to have more questions than statements or requests. Moreover, these are answer-less questions, meant more as wonder-filled praise than confused query. Even this quotation, with less questions than the rest, evokes a sense of worshipful perplexity:

"What are you, then, my God? What are you, I ask, but the Lord God? For who else is lord except the Lord, or who is god if not our God? You are most high, excellent, most powerful, omnipotent, supremely merciful and supremely just, most hidden and yet infinitely present, infinitely beautiful and infinitely strong, steadfast yet elusive, unchanging yourself though you control the change in all things, never new, never old, renewing all things yet wearing down the proud though they know it not; ever active, ever at rest, gathering while knowing no need, supporting and filling and guarding, creating and nurturing and perfecting, seeking although you lack nothing. You love without frenzy, you are jealous yet secure, you regret without sadness, you grow angry yet remain tranquil, you alter your works but never your plan; you take back what you find although you never lost it; you are never in need yet you rejoice in your gains, never avaricious yet you demand profits. You allow us to pay you more than you demand, and so you become our debtor, yet which of us possesses anything that does not already belong to you? You owe us nothing, yet you pay your debts; you write off our debts to you, yet you lose nothing thereby.

"After saying all that, what have we said, my God, my life, my holy sweetness? What does anyone who speaks of you really say? Yet woe betide those who fail to speak, while the chatterboxes go on saying nothing."

Atonement

I'm pretty sure that not even my parents read this blog, so I guess there's not really anyone out there to whom I should apologize for my long silence!

Lately, I've been thinking a lot about the atonement and how Jesus' sacrifice delivers us. While we were at camp about a month ago, some of the girls were asking me questions about this. I'm a little embarassed to say that I was stumped about how to explain my thoughts in a short amount of time (it was 5 minutes until lights-out). It's not that I've never thought it through, but I don't think that I've actually put my thoughts and beliefs into words before. One thing that I love about working with teens is that their insatiable curiosity drives me to dig deeper into my faith and my relationship with God. (Thanks, Katy and Sarah!)

After many weeks of thought, I've come to a conclusion that is hardly an answer at all, but it is more than enough for me. Ultimately, I keep coming back to the same, simple thing: worship. The whole question centers around this mysterious thing - something that cannot be neatly defined and easily understood. Most of the "theories" of atonement are built around metaphors, and while each of them hits on some part of the truth, they are limited too. Our triune God and the salvation found in him is too great, too "wonder-full" for mere words to express! Perhaps Christians might argue about which metaphor is the best, but I think we'd be wasting our breath (one of our favorite pasttimes); the truth is that none of them does justice to the jaw-dropping, incomprehensible thing that happened - no, happens - at the cross.

Mystery - it is mystery that finds me on my knees in complete awe as I try to understand even the tiniest measure of what happens to us as we share in Christ's death and resurrection. Paul's poetic words from the end of Romans 11 ring in my ears: "Oh, the depth of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable his judgments, and his paths beyond tracing out!" Oh, I'm not trying to get off the hook easily - for the rest of my life I'll keep searching out what it means for Jesus to save us and how best to describe it. But I don't think that I can ever have it clearly defined and completely straightened out. I think it's best that way: you don't worship a definition or have a relationship with a bullet list.

An interesting fact: in Christian history (as far as I know at least) there has never been an official creed about how atonement works. The thing that we are to believe is that it does work. (However, I did stumble across a couple of Christian websites that referred to any view of atonement other than the one they prefer as "heretical" - apparently a word they enjoyed throwing around a lot.) The following quote from C. S. Lewis's Mere Christianity expresses what I'm trying to say better than I can:

"… The central Christian belief is that Christ’s death has somehow put us right with God and given us a fresh start. Theories as to how it did this are another matter. A good many different theories have been held as to how it worked; what all Christians agree on is that it does work. …

"We believe that the death of Christ is just that point in history at which something absolutely unimaginable from outside shows through into our own world. … [I]f we found that we could fully understand it, that very fact would show it was not what it professes to be – the inconceivable, the uncreated, the thing from beyond nature, striking down into nature like lightening. You may ask what good it will be to us if we do not understand it. … A man can eat his dinner without understanding exactly how it nourishes him. A man can accept what Christ has done without knowing how it works: indeed, he certainly would not know how it works until he has accepted it.

"We are told that Christ was killed for us, that His death has washed out our sins, and that by dying He disabled death itself. That is the formula. That is Christianity. That is what has to be believed. Any theories that we build up as to how Christ’s death did all this are… quite secondary… [and] not to be confused with the thing itself."