Life at the bottom - or - the reality of deity as discovered in the trenches

Avalanches begin slowly, a slight downward shift, perhaps in a single snowflake. But it presses and nudges the flakes immediately around it, until they too are in motion. Almost imperceptibly then, mountains crumble into the plain and the landscape is changed.

So it is with me and spirituality. Great motions of realization are often precipitated by barely perceptible nudges against the hidden parts of me. I haven't written here much, mostly because it didn't seem like I had much to say. I don't want to get locked into always having to have "spiritually" minded posts, but I'm firmly convinced that God is everywhere, so every moment has the potential of revealing the face of our God.

But sometimes the face of God is obscured, covered, hidden, out of sight. It's hard to tell in those moments whether He's hiding or the night is just too black around me or perhaps my eyes have been deceiving me the whole time and the God that I thought I had discovered was not the God who really stood crouching in the shadows.

Here's the doozy for me. I go on for weeks at a time, pretending that things are as they have seemed. I'm the ostrich with my head in the sand, sure that if I continue along in what I've seen and heard before then God will stay the same and be the same and I'll still have Him all figured out. For weeks I'll ignore this nudge in my spirit that says, "you're not seeing Me." I continue on with the trappings of worship or study or connection that used to be filled with life and hope, but are ever waning and losing their ability to move me Godward. But I hold on and grip them as if they were all that was left, all the while God is moving forward into something else.

I also notice that in those times where I'm stuck and God is not, I notice in others first what God eventually ends up showing me. This time is was an authenticity issue. I would sit in church and wonder, "is this real? Are these people 'getting it' or is this a Pavlovian example of conditioned response?"

Today that came home. Am I real, or am I a dog slobbering at the ringing of the bell? In a lot of ways I'm still struggling to reconcile what I'm coming to see and believe with what I was taught to see and believe. There seems to be this widening chasm between where I was and where I am, and it scares the hell out of me to consider the ramifications of that. What I think I've been trying to do was just talk as if I had it figured out, and pretend that I knew what I believed. But that doesn't work.

But even as the chasm expands, I find that my tendency to cast away the past as irrelevant or unimportant isn't healthy or good. It's also interesting to note that I'm much more comfortable with my 'secular' past than I am with my ecclesiastical history.

It feels like the valley. The past few weeks have been hell. Not sure of where I am or who I am or what I'm doing, I sunk in my spirit. Yesterday was a boiling point where I cried out.

God answered

The explanation of how and where and why God met me probably wouldn't make much of an impression on you. I think it's actually a very mundane thing in reality. But in His infinite grace and wisdom, He found a way to connect with me and let me know that even though I'd walked off the path, He knew what I loved, and wanted to share. That was very important. So now I begin/continue this experiment in authenticity. It seems there's another layer of stuff that needs to be peeled away.

In... or Out?

It's been awhile. It's good to be back.

Things are great. Jackson is sleeping much more recently, which means that mom and dad are too. I still feel like crap, but I think it's clearing up so hopefully we're on the mend.

College group is going really well. We're starting to move past the "I dont' want to say anything in front of these people" phase and into the "I hear what you're saying, but..." phase which really excites me. We're slowly dancing through the Sermon on the Mount, and we've had some great discussions. This week we talked about Jesus saying that unless we have a better righteousness we can't be in the Kingdom. What we came to was that Jesus is the better righteousness... we need HIM!! (Yay Jesus).

What I love is that alot of these students don't just hear the words, they go home and wrestle with what it means. One of the things I tried to point out was that if all of our righteousness is insufficient apart from Jesus, we must be very careful about judging anyone elses righteousness. Instead, we should make our aim to spread love recklessly and fervently as long as we both shall live.

This amazing young lady (Jackie... Hi Jackie) who I'm sad to think about leaving really started to wrestle with the implications of this. What about truth? What about people who believe differently than I do? Whose right? Does it make a difference?

When I read her blog I was encouraged to see how this amazing young woman wrestles with truth, because it matters to her. It's also encouraging to know that she not only wants to know the truth, but she's got her eye on the mission. She brought a guy who she's been friend with for a long time. He's grown up outside the Church and has some real, honest questions. He came and I think he enjoyed it. We certainly enjoyed having him. He's a super sharp guy with a razor wit, a great sense of humor, and a comfortable presence. I hope he comes back.

Alright, so that's all I've got. I think I got out of the practice of this... either that or the heat coupled with a head full of sputum has made my thought process less than linear. Whatever the case... here's to life!

An Epic On the Nature of Man: Readers digest version

It seems like nobody blogs anymore. It's summer time. I understand. I don't feel like blogging today much either. I'm sick. Everything is sore. I think I have a fever. I want to go to sleep. Until we meet again...

Go... or the fast way to get there

Here's a revelation for those of you who don't know me, an perhaps the greatest "duh" statement in the history of the spoken word for those who do... I'm an extremely undisciplined person. Really (I mean really in the sense of "truly" and in the sense of "degree").

The sad reality, the absolute truth, and the undeniable fact in the whole matter is that without discipline... I am worthless. Of course of course, I'm somebody to God... He loved me enough to die for me and all that good stuff. Those are all truths that I stake my life on. But it's like my little man Jackson. I love him more than anything in the universe and there's nothing that can change that. But if he's 16 years old and hasnt' disciplined himself to walk or talk or feed himself, it'll be nothing short of mind numbingly sad. Discipline is what makes us able to grow, go deeper, find richness in life that is just below the surface... and way below the surface.

There's this war in my brain though. Part of me wants to think that discipline is the killer of joy and fun. It's like Silas in the Davinci Code - somehow God wants me to feel tremendous amounts of excruciating pain. It's good for me. Builds character.

But on the other side of my brain I realize that training and discipline is good. I used to be a college baseball player. It was hard work. I used to wake up at 5:00 in the morning to run miles after countless miles. Then I'd go to class, only to return to the west Texas sun in the afternoon to run more miles. The goal was to get on the field in crunch time, and it wasn't that the miles run made me more appealing to the coach, or made him like me better... it was that because of the miles I had run, I was in condition to get the job done. The discipline of exercise and fitness allowed me to do what I wanted to do.

One more analogy... A river without banks is a pond. If there are no banks, eventually the water will find it's own level and quit flowing. It becomes stagnant. But when you channel water in a direction, it becomes this amazing force of nature that is literally as unstoppable as any natural thing. The banks give the river its power. Discipline(s) allow me to build "banks" in my life to channel as much of God as He allows me to see and discover. Without discipline, my God experience will be and continue to be one big stagnant pond. It's water alright, but it sure isn't changing the landscape any.

So it is with discipline, or the lack of it in my life. I've spent a good deal of my journey with God waiting for the next mountaintop, or trying to suck every last minute out of it. What I've found is that the mountaintops get shorter and further between. Lately it's felt like the mountain around the Dead Sea...

So tomorrow I'm beginning a fast of Soft Drinks. Namely, no caffeinated, carbonated, or artificially sweetened beverage will not enter my gullet. If I don't die first, I'm sure this will be a great exercise.

My desire is to find God in the crucifixion of my flesh. Paul said, "I have been crucified... and the life I live in the body I live in Christ Jesus." I can quote that verse - name it and claim it and all that - but it's not true for me. It was true for Paul, and in a substitutionary sort of way it's true... but it's not really true. The life I live in the body actually resembles Christ very little sometimes. So this isn't some effort to curry favor with the Big Guy or earn some brownie points through self-mortification. My goal is to strip away something that I rely on, and hopefully to hear God in the absence of me. I read a John Piper book about fasting, and I'll probably read it again (I don't know if I love to hate John Piper or I hate to love him... it's one or the other). So tonight I'm probalby going to go on a soft drink binge... tomorrow I'll be the one with the sugar/aspartame hangover and about 4:00 I'll have the screaming headache that won't go away. We'll see how it goes.

Postmodernism & Willow Creek

I had a great opportunity to get into a coversation on another blog about Postmodernism in the church. While there were only a few voices at the time, there were some pretty good thoughts put out there. I realized was that there's some misinformation out there about what PM is and what it means to the church... so this isn't by any means an educated rant, it's just a few thoughts that I've picked up and put together. I'd love to hear your thoughts...

First... the term postmodernism is more descriptive of an entire generation of thought & philosophy that's presenting itself. It relates to the Church primarily as the Church takes up the call to reach the generations of people who are growing up with a postmodern mindset (note: a similar shift happened during the enlightenment. Copious amounts of new information caused people to change the way they saw the church, God, and their world. Also, the word "post" is neutral, and simply means after. So this new frame of reference is simply the mindset that is taking shape after the "modern" period. Modern doesn't mean "now.")

So, with postmodern children, teens, and others coming into their own, the church must respond. That's where the term "Emerging Church" comes in handy. This new "postmodern" church is emerging out of the modern church and all that it stood for. Again, post doesn't mean bad any more than a Post Script (P.S.) means that everything that came before it was bad. It simply means that there is something else. So I prefer the term "Emerging Church" with an understanding that my frame of reference and mindset is "postmodern," or somewhere on the scale between thoroughly modern and thoroughly postmodern.

This can all sound like a lot of mumbo jumbo, but there are some very real practical differences. For instance, I would say that the period in church history directly preceeding this one (and indeed, still going in in many ways. There's always going to be overlap) would be characterized by the "seeker sensitive mega-church." Churches like Saddleback, Willow Creek, Northpoint, etc. became intensely focused on mobilizing Christians to reach the lost. There was and is amazing fruit from these churches and indeed this whole mindset. One of the hilights of my year is going to Willow's Leadership Summit. But I digress. These seeker sensitive churches aimed at making worship and God more accessible. They tried to talk more in the language of every man, and create experiences that every man was used to. Their values were excellence, growth, multiplication, etc. The goal of making God accessible was and is a good one. However when people started to think and process life differently, te way to reach "every man" changed.

Results of that goal were that some things that might be deemed offensive were removed. Crosses, a lot of talk about sin, many of the historic traditions, etc. The idea seemed to be finding people who had found the church irrelevant at an earlier time and bringing it home to them again. As people re-discovered church, and realized that it didn't have to be pipe-organs and red carpets, they found their way back to church, and hopefully God in the end.

The Emerging church (leaders like Brian McLaren, Dan Kimball, Chris Seay, Leonard Sweet, Kyle Lake, et al) began to see, however, that there was a group of people who were turned off by this, or atleast not attracted to it. They were starting to see a demographic that wanted, needed, and was crying out for a thoroughly spiritual experience. This group was already spiritually minded, seeking answers in spiritual places... eastern mysticism, new age philosophy, wicca, etc. So maybe the answer wasn't to remove all these symbols and ideas of Christianity, but maybe the answer was to bring back the ancient symbols and traditions, and let them find meaning for a new generation that was hungry for a truly spiritual experience. The "Worship Service" moved from 4 songs and an upbeat message to a "Worship Gathering" where the bible discussion, worship music, tangible worship experiences were interwoven and community driven throughout. It became much less linear and much more organic.

There is no such thing as a model for the Emerging Church, because the goal is a gathering that finds God in ways authentic to the people who are gathering. I can't be just like UBC in Waco, because I live in San Antonio. But there is a tie that binds, and this is where some people (I think) get antsy. One of the great (misinformed, I believe) criticisms of the Emerging Church is that it doesn't stand for anything, it relegates truth to relativity, and it's soft on the concept of sin. My experience is anything but. However, what I have seen that really excites me about the emerging church, is that it openly and freely admits that we are all struggling to make it. It's far less likely (in a perfect emerging church, that is) that a pastor or leader or emerging christian will point fingers and dispense "The" prescription to make it all better. Instead, the response would be to say, "hey, we're all struggling with something so I don't have any right to judge or criticize you because I wouldn't want you to do that to me. The things that you're doing are going to cause problems in your life, and God wants you to be able to get past those problems, and He wants me to help in any way that I can. So why don't you and I get together regularly and build a relationship so that we can help each other get where we need to go." The value is relationship, and group discipleship. Beloging before believing.

Alright, now the problem with this is that I've tried to reduce an entire philosophical genre to a blog. It doesn't work that way. There are lots of things that I haven't touched on, and probably lots of things that I've misquoted or gotten wrong. So, I ask for grace, and I ask you to share your thoughts. Thank you for reading, and thank you for being a part of the conversation. If you're interested in more reading on the topic, check out The Emerging Church and Emerging Worship by Dan Kimball, A New Kind of Christian and Adventures in Missing the Point (w/ Tony Campolo) by Brian McLaren, Velvet Elvis by Rob Bell, or An Unstoppable Force. There are also lots of good blogs on the topic, some that I recommend are A Generous Orthodoxy, and The Ooze. These are by no means it, but check them out and they'll atleast be a beginning. I can't wait to hear your thoughts.

Of baby cribs, holy altars, and sacred moments

I'm still getting used to this fatherhood thing. It's an amazing opportunity to be schooled in selflessness. Sometimes, however, if you listen just right you can hear the whisper of eternity in those teachable moments.

Tonight was a tough night for the little guy. He's very easily overstimulated, which always results in hours of crazy, mind bending crying. He gets so wound up that he freaks out. Not that big of a deal really, except that it's time for him to go to bed and he won't. Another thing about babies. They have this sucking reflex. Something about sucking really soothes them... hence the pacifier. The unfortunate thing is that they have HORRIBLE binky control. The thing they need the most is the thing they're most unable to handle. They cry for what seems like forever when the thing falls out. As soon as it goes back, they're fine, but 10 seconds later the thing comes rocketing out of their mouth... lather, rinse, repeat.

So last night I decide that I'm just going to spend some time with the little guy as he goes through the routine. He's cranky and a bit gassy (that's my boy!) but when he's got his passy, he's good to go. So I lay him in the crib, his face is away from me and I just watch. It was probalby 30 minutes or so that I was there, and it ended up being the neatest, most meaningful worship service I"ve had in a long time.

With his face away, we go through the aforementioned process of sucking and spitting the pacifier on the bed. He can't see me (I'm behind him), but every time it comes flying out, I pick it up and put it back in. In those moments, I sensed God tapping me on the shoulder.... "What do you notice here?" I didn't get it for a bit, but in the end, as best as I can tell, I got it... or atleast something. Little Jackson thinks that his binky is the most important thing in his world. When it goes away, life ceases to be comfortable. All the while, just out of sight, there I sat, ready to help and replace the binky if I could. There's no magic in the binky (metaphorically speaking). The power to soothe is in the one who is able to put the binky back.

I wonder what my pacifiers are. I wonder how many times I've sat sucking (figuratively, of course) at what I thought was salvation while the hand of Father was behind me all the time. In that moment I was humbled by Father's love. I was humbled by His grace. Rather than ripping so many of my comfort toys, He just continues to walk with me, comfort me, lead me, teach me. It's not always comfortable, and He's not always immediate in the way that He deals with me, just like I'm not with Jackson. But that doesn't indicate anything about my love for the little guy. I know that in the end, being without binky for 10 minutes isn't going to kill him, and it's probably a good idea to see if he can start to soothe himself without it.

God got bigger for me last night. He met me at the crib side, and showed me a glimpse of how He loves me. He reminded me that I was created for eternity, not just for instant gratification. There's really something to this whole "God is everywhere" thing.

Back from the wild wood...

A week at camp is a beautiful thing. Being a camp speaker is even better. I have two hours a day with responsibility, the rest of the time I get to hang out, play, relax, meditate,whatever it is that moves me most. This camp was a great time for me. It was the youth group that I used to lead, and there were a few that were under my leadership, but most of them were new. I have to say, it is an amazing group of kids. I'm of the mind that God is a gentleman, so most times when He shows up in a big way, it's because people are receptive to Him. Well, this is a very receptive group.

But it was a neat journey for me too. I was looking for God in a new way too. The idea that I've been coming to is that I need to learn to see God everywhere (that was the theme of the camp, strangely enough). So as I prepared, and as I escaped, I started to see God in lots of places. Too many to recount as a matter of fact. But I want to transcribe a section from my last journal entry at camp.

"Tomorrow I head back and dive into the world as I left it. My e-mail will overflow. There will undoubtedly be situations that have come up or will come up. I don't know what's on my horizon at work or at home. Even now as I write that I realize that I've never really admitted that to myself and let it sink in. That's a different perspective. It's out of my hands and out of my control. There's a bit of fear, a bit of trying to rationalize it away, but I can't and I don't want to. I can only play the hand that's dealt, and pretending it isn't coming or pretending it's other than it is doesn't change it. That forces me to God. God is everywhere. God is right now. I read a great line in my surprise me book, 'The surprise me thing is like taking a walk in a storm. It's a quest for potential. It's an intentional wondering. Wondering how the rain will impact us even as we're stepping into it. Wondering what we will find out there. Wondering who we'll find out there. It's stepping out of our comfort zone into the contact zone. It's stepping into the direct line-of-fire with life.' By playing it safe, I'll never get wet. But I'll never know the joy of dancing in the rain either. Father help me see life ahead of me."

The thoughts leading up to that were similar to a thought in The Story We Find Ourselves In that didn't crystallize before. Neo talks about seeing life from the perspective of The Future pushing The Past out of the way. Or something like that. I realize that I'm a bit of a reactor. Rather than dancing with what comes at me, I tend to be slightly backward focused, and then respond to things as they enter my peripheral vision. By that time it's already too late... the future is upon us. I like that. I'm not afraid of wondering what's coming ahead, but I want to wonder that as I step out into the storm.

"Life is like a box of chocolates." Forrest Gump