Cronuts

June 12th, 2013

Who doesn’t love a “Cronut” … a mix of croissant and donut?  And why didn’t anyone think of it before?

I believe God firmly centers in creativity.  Art from DeVinci to Beethoven, up until just a few centuries ago, echoed that basic orientation.  Now “art” and “religion” rarely share the same sentence.  And that is our loss.

Art and creativity are not necessarily always about a radical remaking of reality.  They are I would argue more about taking the simple, known parts of the world … i.e. a croissant and donut … and then in turn re-imaging how they fit.

Churches are called on to the same … take the mundane and reconfigure it in life giving ways.  That is the genius of Christ’s sermons, filled as they are with simple references to sheep, lilies, seeds all now bowing to the instructive force of God’s broader world – a life giving reconfiguration.

Where churches and individuals get stuck at times is around what psychologist Daniel Kahneman phrased “a focusing illusion.”  These illusions are not from ill intent.  However they hobble us in unforeseen ways.  As the author describes it…

The focusing illusion [is] an automatic psychological move that substitutes an easier question for a more difficult one when the difficult question has no immediate or obvious answer.

What are those “easier questions” we are tempted to substitute for the harder ones?  Some possible examples… “How do we bring in new people in?” (versus “How do we reach out and serve?”)  ”Have you noticed how much better we are doing than that other church?”  (versus, “How do we align ourselves better with what God is calling us to do?”)  “When will you start a program to ______?”  (versus “How I do create a team to move this project forward?)

When we start asking the harder questions, we actually find ourselves more creative, more aligned, more empowered, and less fearful!  Welcome Cronuts.

 

 

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Waiting to be Picked. Wishing to Choose.

June 5th, 2013

We all want to be picked, to be chosen. We all wish, as well, to choose. There is validity there, coming round to Christ’s words, “You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you so that you might go and bear fruit–fruit that will last.”  (John 15:16)  We are all chosen. Every one of the 7 billion souls.  But do we all “choose?”

That choosing is not about a faith call per se.  I see God’s call much more concerned with being awake … or not.  The awake people I know seem to be ever so completely present not only in their own skins but in their own lives, and as well completely present out to and in to the world around them.

What does it look like to make that kind of choice?  I imagine the words of TS Elliot speak far more clearly to it than I ever could hope.

At the still point of the turning world. Neither flesh nor fleshless;
Neither from nor towards; at the still point, there the dance is,
But neither arrest nor movement. And do not call it fixity,
Where past and future are gathered. Neither movement from nor towards,
Neither ascent nor decline. Except for the point, the still point,
There would be no dance, and there is only the dance.
I can only say, there we have been: but I cannot say where.
And I cannot say, how long, for that is to place it in time.
The inner freedom from the practical desire,
The release from action and suffering, release from the inner
And the outer compulsion, yet surrounded
By a grace of sense, a white light still and moving,
Erhebung without motion, concentration
Without elimination, both a new world
And the old made explicit, understood

We will be  asked to that dance of course.  And what will we choose?

 

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Money and choice is what you want if you haven’t found something better to want.

June 4th, 2013

Try this on. “Money and choice is what you want if you haven’t found something better to want.”   Our job as a church is to live in such a way that we create a living testimony that there are better things to want than solely money and choice.

Our culture is saturated however with the message that money and choice are it … the ultimate cultural achievements, what we are all to ‘want.’  And many of us are good at the game. I have made plenty of money in my life.  It has created a situation where my children in turn have access to educational opportunities and personal connections that clearly give them a leg up in continuing to write a “winner’s script.”   Is that wrong for our 5 kids to have those advantages?  Not necessarily.  After all, dis-advantaging your children is hardly good parenting either.   But it is only good within definitive limits.

What matters, I believe, is can we continually form our lives into a message that there is more to want than just money and choice?  Do our children know that?  In an era with fewer limits and few guarantees, I believe that knowledge is critical.

That something ‘more’ that I pray they want is not just knowledge per se of a religious nature (what many churches mistakenly believe their mission is).  It is living witness in which we draw alongside of suffering and create the human connectedness that is God’s ideal for us. Micah got it right ….

 ”He has shown you, O man, what is good; And what does the Lord require of you … But to do justly, To love mercy, And to walk humbly with your God?” (Micah)

Do I want my children to suffer?  No.  (Though they will).  Do I want them to draw alongside of suffering?  Yes.  (And this will be their heart choice)  And that in the end, I pray, will right-size money and choice.

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Can we really marry the “right” person?

May 31st, 2013

In the midst of wedding season, I want to share again this powerful observation by Stanley Hauerwas.

Destructive to marriage is the self-fulfillment ethic that assumes marriage and the family are primarily institutions of personal fulfillment, necessary for us to become “whole” and happy. The assumption is that there is someone just right for us to marry and that if we look closely enough we will find the right person. This moral assumption overlooks a crucial aspect to marriage. It fails to appreciate the fact that we always marry the wrong person.  We never know whom we marry; we just think we do. Or even if we first marry the right person, just give it a while and he or she will change. For marriage, being [the enormous thing it is] means we are not the same person after we have entered it. The primary challenge of marriage is learning how to love and care for the stranger to whom you find yourself married. For it is through the need of another that the greatest hindrance to my freedom, namely my own self-absorption, is finally not so much overcome as simply rendered irrelevant. It is through the other that I am finally able to make peace with myself and thus have the power to make my life my own.”

Marriage, for many, is an incredible blessing.  For others it falls far short of its promise.  And yet in either case, holding marriage in its proper context appears important.  Marriage does not make one “whole.”  Marriage does not solve all problems.  Marriage is about a struggle, a blessed one, but a struggle none-the-less in which we wrestle with our inherent self-absorption, seeking to put that very self-absorption – seeing it rendered irrelevant – as we learn with the years the gift of unconditional love.

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The Freedom of Genuine Choice

May 30th, 2013

Freedom is the name-of-the-game in a certain sense within New Church theology.   God’s desire is for us to be free.  And we can hold that freedom a number of ways.  Freedom from … fear, anger, jealously, addiction, lust.  Freedom to …. serve, love, connect, relate, live.  Without that freedom – both an end in itself and a means to that end – as Emanuel Swedenborg noted, “How could we co-operate in receiving these things from God?’ (True Christianity 615)

Freedom is more than personal taste. As Seth Godin noted:

Genuine choice involves whole new categories, or “none of the above.” Genuine choice is difficult to embrace, because it puts so many options and so many assumptions on the table with it. There’s nothing wrong with avoiding significant choices most of the time. Life (and an organization) is difficult to manage if everything is at stake, all the time. The trap is believing that the superficial choices are the essential part of our work. They’re not. They’re mostly an easy way to avoid the much more frightening job of changing everything when it matters.

Spiritual choice often presents with just that … the more frightening job of changing everything that matters!   Choices towards life often appear to embrace life-giving danger.

 

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The Crazy Danger Of Fundamentalism

May 29th, 2013

With the election for Iran’s next President about to take place, the leader in the race is outpacing his competition by a wide margin through the slogan, “No compromise. No submission. Only Jalili.”

Such is the crazy danger in religious fundamentalism.   No compromise.  No submission.  Only demagogory.

And the challenges of fundamentalism is far from “over there.”  We face the same forces be that within our churches or within political parties.  Wrap the human propensity for machismo in a flag, add religious language, and label a bad guy, and fundamentalism can rapidly spin a nation into a spasm of reactive violence.

How do we find a way out of that cycle?

That is where we will, in the coming years, need to fully re-dedicate ourselves to answers that heal.  That is a large task, a task beyond purely military answers and one where faith communities can find a place of real service.

A case in point was reading a recent article on the refugee camps in Jordan filled with thousands of displaced Syrians.  Living in a compound without jobs or education is hardly a breeding ground for the kind of enlightened action that leads one along the higher roads of human nature.  With guile replacing an open mind as the modus operandi for many of these youths living in these camps, it is hard to see it ending well.

We can however choose to add our voice to the conversation.  Christ’s voice would not be one of evangelization.  I believe it would be one of love, tolerance, and compassion realized through the service.

What does it look like?  I am unsure of the specifics.  But it would not look like “No Compromise.  No submission.”

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A Walk Through the Anzio Military Cemetery

May 26th, 2013

We spend much of our lives on the surface of things.  Memorial Day is no exception.  It is a day for me that pulls two directions.  One pulls towards a deeper and sober acknowledgment of the heart breaking and often courageous sacrifice made by those in the armed services.  As a former history teacher, graveyards and memorials, from Gettysburg to Omaha Beach, inevitably bring tears.

The other pull wants to say so clearly … we must move towards other ways.  Honoring the fallen and speaking for a world freed from violence are not at odds.  We can, as Christians, speak for veterans and against war.

Fr. Thomas Keating spoke of a profound spiritual experience he had during World War II.  A young Trappist monk during the war, he prayed fervently for those soldiers in harm’s way.  Years later, in a trip to Italy for a spiritual retreat, he toured the American military cemetery at Anzio.  The “thin place” he found walking that cemetery were whispers from the fallen that they had given in their war and that he was called to give in his … a war of love, a war of awakening.  He spoke, with tears, of feeling their presence cheering him on from their resting place.

He will judge between the nations

and will settle disputes for many peoples.

They will beat their swords into plowshares

and their spears into pruning hooks.

Nation will not take up sword against nation,

nor will they train for war anymore.  (Isaiah 2:4)

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Some things are a laughing matter. Others are not.

May 22nd, 2013

As a pastor, I want to note an interesting dynamic.  On the one hand is the failure of many Christian churches.  On the other is the failure of the culture.

The Christian church, including the New Church, has been failing for awhile.  Vibrant, engaged institutions seeking to serve simply do not witness the collapse in numbers that many churches are experiencing.  Rob Bell, in his most recent book “What We Talk About When We Talk Of God” phrased it this way…

As a pastor over the past 20 years, what I’ve seen over and over again is the people who want to live lives of meaning and peace and significance and joy – people who have a compelling sense that their spirituality is some vital yet mysterious way central to who they are – but who can’t find meaning in the dominant conceptions, perceptions, and understandings of God they’ve encountered.

Some churches in refusing to face this collapse and their responsibility in it have chosen suffocating literalism and retrenchment over dialogue.  Others have gone to the opposite extreme … a form of “health and wealth” Christianity whose giddy focus on “feel good” leaves one on a sugar high but unmoved at the level of the soul.  I am certainly guilty of both at different times in my career.

Culture – and that includes you, me, us – has likewise been failing.  Attending  a recent Justice conference filled with some of the brightest minds going in the Christian world of service, it was disheartening and eyeopening to hear the frustrations of these incredible leaders as they noted a drop of “long obedience in one direction” among those whom Eugene Cho called, “The most disappointed generation ever.”  Ouch!  These words were not spoken by curmudgeons intent on adding a grinding critique onto today’s culture but were offered by impassioned, knowledgeable, global leaders in topics such as sex trafficking and wage slavery.

A recent study published in the New York Times backs up these frustrations.  The study looked at language usage from 1500 to 2008, specifically over the last half century.  What specific words were used more?  What specific words less?

Individualism

  1. More Frequent: Personalized, self, standout, unique, I come first, I can do it myself
  2. Less Frequent: Community, collective, tribe, share, united, band together, common good
Morality
  1. Overall, usage of the top 50 general words dealing with moral virtue fell 74%
  2. Bravery, fortitude – down 66%
  3. Thankfulness, appreciation – down 49%
  4. Modesty, humbleness – down 52%
  5. Kindness, helpfulness – down 56%

To restate our building blocks are now “Come and learn how to standout, how to find your unique self in this personalized program of self fulfillment!”   We can expect, “Join with us in a life of humility, kindness, and self sacrifice as we seek to serve the common good” to, on the other hand, fall flat.

That is not really so funny is it.  It shows we as a church have great work to do.  To do that work we ourselves need to take on the same tools we seek to give others … courage, gratitude, humility, kindness, and the common good.

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Power and Love

May 21st, 2013

It is so easy to confuse power with love.  Fr. Richard Rohr points to the core challenge and the new paradigm God calls us to …

Any exercise of power apart from love leads to brutality and evil; but any claim to love that does not lead to using that as power for others is mere sentimentality and emotion. I must admit, it is rare to find people who hold both together in perfect balance—who have found their power and use it for others, or people who have found love and use it for good purposes. I think the Reign of God includes both love and power in a lovely dance. I think that is what Jesus means when he tells us to be “cunning as serpents but gentle as doves” (Matthew 10:16). It is a beautiful combination of both authority and vulnerability.

A loving person then is not as focused on power as they are on empowerment.  There lies a key.  And it is an emancipatory key that takes one out of the crass business of being a gate-keeper.  It moves towards opening doors, not closing them.  Power and love grow then as we give them away.

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Syria, Drones, and Niebuhr’s Prayer

May 17th, 2013

Today’s top right headline feature in the New York Times read ….

None of that should frankly surprise.  The Shia – Sunni divide is centuries old, as are many other contributing rivalries.  Middle East strong men like Hussein and Assad were able to keep that strife contained through simple force and violence.  When that presence lessons however, the tensions underneath bubble to the top and explode in often catastrophic, uncontrollable violence.

This is humanity at its worse.  Easy of course for us in the United States to view sectarian strife as a form of inexcusable barbarity unless of course we come to realize we ourselves fought a bloody civil war, one that to this day remain the most damaging conflict in terms of lives lost in American history.

What is the option here?  Is it to flee from engagement in these war torn areas?  Is it to engage militarily?  Is it to continue the expansion of drone strikes and programs?

There are no easy answers.  Unlike the American Civil War, these groups are able to inflict damage on a far greater scale, reaching distant shores.  There is no moat wide enough, so to speak to protect us.  Even the simple solution of drones which appear so sanitary and detached (and popular among the electorate) arguably engender a whole new cycle of violence.

What is there then to do?  I believe again a pastor’s job is to keep calling all of us to a third way, searching beyond violence-for-violence and calling out God’s tender image of a re-imagined world in which  “He will judge between the nations and will settle disputes for many peoples. They will beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks. Nation will not take up sword against nation, nor will they train for war anymore.”  (Isaiah 2:4)  That is God’s vision, one that will not come easily.

As Reinhold Niebuhr beautifully phrased it …

Nothing that is worth doing can be achieved in our lifetime; therefore we must be saved by hope.

Nothing which is true or beautiful or good makes complete sense in any immediate context of history; therefore we must be saved by faith.

Nothing we do, however virtuous, can be accomplished alone; therefore we must be saved by love.

No virtuous act is quite as virtuous from the standpoint of our friend or foe as it is from our standpoint. Therefore we must be saved by the final form of love which is forgiveness.

 

 

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