processing: Psalm 96 (in Peterson's 'The Message')

Sing God a brand-new song! Earth and everyone in it, sing!

Sing to God—worship God!

Shout the news of his victory from sea to sea,

Take the news of his glory to the lost,

News of his wonders to one and all!

For God is great, and worth a thousand Hallelujahs.

His terrible beauty makes the gods look cheap;

Pagan gods are mere tatters and rags.

God made the heavens—

Royal splendor radiates from him,

A powerful beauty sets him apart.

Bravo, God, Bravo!

Everyone join in the great shout: Encore!

In awe before the beauty,

in awe before the might.

Bring gifts and celebrate,

Bow before the beauty of God,

Then to your knees—everyone worship!

Get out the message—God Rules!

He put the world on a firm foundation;

He treats everyone fair and square.

Let's hear it from Sky,

With Earth joining in,

And a huge round of applause from Sea.

Let Wilderness turn cartwheels,

Animals, come dance,

Put every tree of the forest in the choir—

An extravaganza before God as he comes

As he comes to set everything right on earth,

Set everything right, treat everyone fair.

*Photo is a copy of the speech of Saint Paul at Mars Hill in Koine greek. There is, to me at least, remarkable resonance between the polemic of Psalm 96 and the apologetic of Acts 17. The gods of the nations are idols but the Lord made the heavens! Your god is hypothetical and made by human hands, the Lord is the real and life-giving Creator and re-Creator. Hallelujah!

processing: John Bunyan's 'Who Would True Valour See'

Who would true valour see,

Let him come hither;

One here will constant be,

Come wind, come weather

There’s no discouragement

Shall make him once relent

His first avowed intent

To be a pilgrim.

Whoso beset him round

With dismal stories

Do but themselves confound;

His strength the more is.

No lion can him fright,

He’ll with a giant fight,

He will have a right

To be a pilgrim.

Hobgoblin nor foul fiend

Can daunt his spirit,

He knows he at the end

Shall life inherit.

Then fancies fly away,

He’ll fear not what men say,

He’ll labor night and day

To be a pilgrim.

processing: Tim Keller- The Reason for God: Belief in An Age of Skepticism

Catching up on posting for some of my end of summer reading:

I am intrigued by Tim Keller. He's one of those names that you here again and again as someone doing big things, and seemingly doing them the right way. Keller seems to combine intellectual rigor and appeal with pastoral concern and care, no doubt a proper cocktail for the urban ministry he heads.

While, generally proofs by reasoning and apologetic for God only marginally interest me (one can't afford ignore the Mere Christianity's & Simply Christian's), Keller's accessible and widely-read erudition holds great appeal. I don't know many "hot" Protestant ministers engaging with care and creativity minds and work from Flannery O'Connor to Niebuhr to Foucault.

Various Excerpts:
[referring to the charge of injustice and fanaticism] "What if, however, the essence of Christianity is salvation by grace, salvation not because of what we do but because of what Christ has done for us? Belief that you are accepted by God by sheer grace is profoundly humbling. The people who are fanatics, then, are so not because they are too committed to the gospel but because they're not committed to it enough (57)."

[referring to the response to Jesus' use of miracles in Matthew 28:17] "The most instructive thing about this text is, however, what it says about the purpose of Biblical miracles. They lead not simply to cognitive belief, but to worship, to awe and wonder. Jesus' miracles in particular were never magic tricks, designed to impress and coerce...Instead, he used miraculous power to heal the sick, feed the hungry, and raise the dead. Why? We modern people think of miracles as the suspension of the natural order, but Jesus meant them to be the restoration of the natural order (95)."

processing: At the Helm, Out of My Depth

The following is my second field education reflection group paper, concerning the second half of my Roxboro, NC placement.

At the Helm, Out of My Depth
The age-old image of the Church as a ship has begun to make sense to me. Kind of a “we’re all in this together,” afloat-through-the-storms-&-turbulence type of reasoning. That image is both romantic and frightening. Even more frightening is the realization of pastorally helming such a ship. My turn with the captain’s hat and wheel came over a two-week period whereby my supervisor left the country and left me to steer us down the center.

A couple weeks prior I got my first taste of what, according to Murphy’s Law, could and often does happen. While taking some of the youth (in fact a record number of youth: two full car-loads) to a summer movie special at the local cinema, we got in an accident. I say we, but mean rather four small children and the church matriarch, whom I enlisted to drive. Suffering a vicious sideswipe on a busy separated highway, I watched helplessly in the real-time panorama of a gruesomely violent crash. As I ran to the wreck, my heart pounded and mind raced. No training or preparation readied me for the response required of me. There was a dual awareness in me: a power and certainty, but also a frenetic awkwardness and hesitancy. Like the Platonic horses, I attempted to reign in both competing energies in order to be fully present and helpful in the situation in my midst.

After a day of holding up emergency room walls and wearing ruts into hallway floors, I departed Person Memorial encouraged, but troubled. Encouraged and thankful that none of my charges were seriously or permanently injured, but troubled by what had happened. It seems natural that we get shook up and called to refocus after avoiding an accident. If it was going to be our fault, we reevaluate how we were driving and how we must be more vigilant. If it was to be the other driver’s fault, we let angry thoughts flit across the clarity gained by the mix of adrenaline and awareness. What was troubling here though was that there was an accident. There was a sharpness. There was a momentary disorientation followed by an extreme sense of calm and clarity. But having seen the elderly, Alzheimer-riden antagonist confused in the backseat of the patrol car, there was no anger. That lack of anger was confusing and disorienting in itself.

Fast-forward a couple weeks, past the barrage of rental cars and CT scans, the only remnants of the bruises are now but pale-yellow traces. I am handed the reigns. My supervisor is now six time zones away and I begin an intense battle for both ministerial respectability and my beloved, well-ordered 5-day workweek. That fight began in earnest as I wrapped a 3rd of July barbeque and received a frantic phone call from the aforementioned driving matriarch-turned church liaison. It appeared that, as anyone may assume, the ills and injuries had saved their worst for the worse possibly timing, now. I left the celebration to attend to my parishioner, who suffered an aneurism. The contrast only became more apparent as I reached the bedside: my flip-flops and summer attire accusing the stifling white everything. Why did this aorta, as if on a timer, chose now, a time so festive and light; a time so unprepared and unfocused?

The following ten days featured more visits to Duke Hospital and anxious hikes from Central parking than I would have ever expected. What made the hikes especially anxious was the overwhelming feeling of unpreparedness, the fear of failure, and the nervous tension of not knowing. My visits featured long-periods of silence, awkward prayers, wanna-be tender embraces, over-stayed welcomes, and over-stepped boundaries. Just what to do when you don’t understand the seriousness and risk of the surgery to be performed and everyone else does but won’t admit it? What to do when you can’t communicate with the pacing fifty year-old son long enough to figure out what the family actually needs? To extend the nautical metaphor, wait out the storm. Don’t give up patience, don’t over-correct.

Throughout these varied incidents in my time at the helm, I found great comfort and instruction, perhaps “a peace surpassing understanding,” from the God who both creates and calms storms. Through the turbulence of car-crashes, self-blame, heart surgery and elephants in the room, I was consistently interrupted both by an overwhelming gentle stillness and a certain mantra of, “Peace. Be Still.” It was through these promptings and certainly not through neither some innate ability nor heroic confidence that I was able to offer even a modicum of stillness and peace to these families. Though out of my depth and completely unprepared, I learned my role was to merely offer the peace that I had been given.

Anniversary Part Deux

Over this past week Rach and I nightly completed the what-were-we-doing-2-years-ago-tonight? exercise. It is a precious and peculiar thing for 2 people to be able to account for these things like that. It has become increasingly evident to me that the life and love that we've built and continue to build is special. I look back with pride and reminisce with little or no regret over this past 24 months. Moreover, I look forward with anticipation and giddy excitement over the ways that we will continue to grow together in the love and grace of God. Despite our work, particularly mine most of the time, to selfishly sabotage and hijack what we are becoming and where we are going, we continue to grow, mature, learn, and cling to each other and the Giver and Flawless Lover.

These words of St. Francis are my prayer for us; that in unity and love we continue to grow as divine instruments.

Lord, make us instrument of Thy peace;

where there is hatred, let us sow love;

where there is injury, pardon;

where there is doubt, faith;

where there is despair, hope;

where there is darkness, light;

and where there is sadness, joy.

O Divine Master,

grant that we may not so much seek

to be consoled as to console;

to be understood, as to understand;

to be loved, as to love;

for it is in giving that we receive,

it is in pardoning that we are pardoned,

and it is in dying that we are born to Eternal Life.

Amen.

Father Richard John Neuhaus

I just received this month's First Things Magazine (a fine Catholic monthly). Their long-time leader and editor, Richard John Neuhaus recently died after battling with cancer. Neuhaus was a Lutheran who then became a Catholic priest. He was greatly involved, and remained so to his dying day, in civil rights and advocacy. On the last page of the magazine is a brief reflection written by Neuhaus shortly before he died. It shows the grace, depth, and humour he exhibited throughout his life and public career. How beautiful and challenging to us all as we inevitably face our mortality.As of this writing, I am contending with a cancer, presently of the unknown origin. I am, I am given to believe, under the expert medical care of the Sloan-Kettering clinic here in New York. I am grateful beyond measure for your prayers storming the gates of heaven. Be assured that I neither fear to die nor refuse to live. If it is to die, all that has been is but a slight intimation of what is to be. If it is to live, there is must that I hope to do in the interim. After the last round with cancer fifteen years ago, I wrote a little book, As I Lay Dying (titled after William Faulkner after John Donne), in which I said much of what I had to say about the package deal that is mortality. I did not know that I had so much more to learn. And yes, the question has occurred to me that, if I have but a little time to live, should I be spending it writing this column. I have heard it attributed to figures such as Brother Lawrence and Martin Luther- when asked what they would do if they knew they were going to die tomorrow, they answered that they would plant a tree and say their prayers. (Luther is supposed to have added that he would quaff his favored beer.) Maybe I have, at least metaphorically, planted a few trees, and certainly I am saying my prayers. who knew that at this point in life I would be understanding,as if for the first time, the words of Paul, "When I am weak, then I am strong"? This is not a farewell. Please God, we will be pondering together the follies and splendors of the Church and the world for years to come. But maybe not. In any event, when there is an unidentified agent in your body aggressively attacking the good things your body is intended to do, it does concentrate the mind. The entirety of our prayer is "You will be done"- not as a note of resignation but of desire beyond expression. To that end, I comment myself to your intercession, and that of all the saints and angels who accompany us each step through time toward home. (02/09)

Lessons Sprung from Mundanities

"Speak but a whisper, I'll hear a sermon."- Copeland lyric

There were three small incidents today that taught me much about myself. I spend almost all my waking hours actively pursuing knowledge and insight, but God manages to speak louder in whispers than in the thunderclap of lectures, studying, or classrooms.

I. Expectations
In a normal joking conversation about the merits of teaching/learning languages in the early developmental stages of childhood, I mentioned amid the usual tongues that, "He's gonna learn how to speak Latin [or maybe Koine Greek like his old man]." Aside from it being an arguably dead language and the comment being solely motivated by this week's episode of Lost, I was struck by my presumption that my scholar-to-be would be a boy. I'm unsure whether that (Freudian?-) slip came from me forming "him" in my own image, so to speak, or whether something more sinister is brewing here. While it may be unreasonable in the first place to replace Baby Einstein with Baby Luther and Play-dough with Plato, my expectations of a manchild-from-my-loins presents an even more impossible obstacle for a possible She-Breslin to overcome. How do I combat this 50% failure rate that I am setting myself up for? I try to intentionally and purposely edit my writing these days to be gender inclusive and neutral if at all possible, but has my mind been transformed? Am I shaping idols and expectations unknowingly?

Father, crush my idols and shape my imagination. You are beyond my preconceptions and your plans are higher than man's.

II. Winning is Everything
A little kid and his dad came to the counter to order, the little guy wearing a YMCA basketball jersey and receiving an aparent post-game meal (what ever happened to Capri Suns and Star Crunches?). My first question was the standard, "Did you win?" Not, "How'd you do?" or "Did you have fun?" or "Did Tommy's momm bring the orange slices?" His response was classic: "What do you mean?" Then in a rush of embarrassment, I remembered the little known (and may I add, potentially Communist) policy of not keeping score in elementary and middle school athletics. I must repent for being someone who wavers on my moral ability to like soccer because of its potential for a draw. I need to relinquish my need to win, keep track, strive, and if need be, go to overtime or extra innings to settle this once and for all.

Lord, you don't keep record of our wrongs. You love unconditionally and Love is the fabric of your Being. Teach me to love this way: unresolved, trusting, and unaffected by outcome. Take away my need for control, my pride of victory, and my bitterness of loss.

III. From the Mouths of Babes
Lastly, there was a brief incident involving Girl Scout cookies and the troop's ability to set up shop in front of our coffee shop. To tell a long story shortly, I felt my leadership was question, my authority usurped, and my pride wounded. A barista of whom I am in charge questioned my judgment, and I wished violence on her (Not in a slap in the face kind of way. Rather in a "I could embarrass you in front of everybody, because I'm righter, older, smarter, and better than you" kind of way. You know the real root of violence. Afterward a Brownie (Scout) and her mom glumly came to the counter because they were in violation, not with the authorities, but with an older rival troop that apparently went through the correct channels to reserve the breezeway. Right before getting up to the counter the little girl (bummed as anyone who is forced to pack up shop and head over to K-Mart to set up again would be), found a five dollar bill on the ground. My first instinct in her shoes, would be either to pocket it or to help my cause and buy a couple sleeves of thin mints. Her's was instead, in an excited and purely self-motivated act, to plop a 5-spot into my tip jar. So let's sum this up: I get wronged (or at least perceive being wronged) and respond with restrained rage and inert violence. This little merit-badge clad girl gets booted off the older girl's turf and exiled to K-Mart and responds with generosity and selflessness.

Spirit, equip me for ministry, cloth me with gentleness, and make me a channel of Your peace.

Amen.

processing: Stanley Hauerwas & Jean Vanier- Living Gently in a Violent World

I read this book and really liked it, and think it is really important. The idea and message has really gotten legs around my school. Instead of me neglecting my schoolwork to write a review, I'll link to an NPR interview that aired today:

http://wunc.org/tsot/archive/sot0127bc09.mp3/view

mlk nobel prize acceptance speech

I just heard this snippet of Dr. King's acceptance on the radio.

Beautiful. Hope-full.

"I accept this award today with an abiding faith in America and an audacious faith in the future of mankind. I refuse to accept despair as the final response to the ambiguities of history. I refuse to accept the idea that the "isness" of man's present nature makes him morally incapable of reaching up for the eternal "oughtness" that forever confronts him.

I refuse to accept the idea that man is mere flotsom and jetsom in the river of life unable to influence the unfolding events which surround him. I refuse to accept the view that mankind is so tragically bound to the starless midnight of racism and war that the bright daybreak of peace and brotherhood can never become a reality.

I refuse to accept the cynical notion that nation after nation must spiral down a militaristic stairway into the hell of thermonuclear destruction. I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word in reality. This is why right temporarily defeated is stronger than evil triumphant.

I believe that even amid today's motor bursts and whining bullets, there is still hope for a brighter tomorrow. I believe that wounded justice, lying prostrate on the blood-flowing streets of our nations, can be lifted from this dust of shame to reign supreme among the children of men.

I have the audacity to believe that peoples everywhere can have three meals a day for their bodies, education and culture for their minds, and dignity, equality and freedom for their spirits. I believe that what self-centered men have torn down, men other-centered can build up. I still believe that one day mankind will bow before the altars of God and be crowned triumphant over war and bloodshed, and nonviolent redemptive goodwill will proclaim the rule of the land.

"And the lion and the lamb shall lie down together and every man shall sit under his own vine and fig tree and none shall be afraid."

I still believe that we shall overcome."

nice post...

http://andywhitman.blogspot.com/2008/12/change.html