Rain

Religion can be a magnet for extremism. Not only the kind we read about in the paper but really all kinds of human expressions of strong feelings or opinions. The splintering of the Church into a myriad of denominations has not helped this much. Because we generally associate ourselves with people who think a lot like we do, it is easy to walk away from communions that do not consistently reinforce our most cherished beliefs.

While there is a degree of common sense here--it makes sense to worship in an environment where you feel comfortable and you enjoy the company--it can be potentially dangerous as well. If we surround ourselves only with people who think like we do, then we are more susceptible to self-deception. Purposely avoiding other visions or even other emphases can lead us to an irrational intolerance of those who hold them.

This is true of anything but it seems particularly true when it comes to religious conviction. By definition, religion reflects our strongest feelings and opinions. When God's name gets associated with strong feelings and opinions, the neighborhood can become a potentially explosive place. In other words, there is no extremism like religious extremism.

Now chances are, if you have read this much, you are already fashioning images in your mind about what I am writing about here. And while those images might well be fitting, I actually want to take this in a slightly different direction.

When I first entered the ministry, I remember having a conversation with a friend of mine. He was also a pastor but he was about ten years older than I and had been in the ministry for that many years longer. We were talking about the environment and the pressure that 5 or 6 billion people are now putting upon it.

I made a statement about some of the irreparable damage that humans have done through strip mining, oil spills and the like. I was speaking passionately--partly because I felt strongly about what I was saying but also because I assumed that he would agree with me. But to my surprise, my friend did not jump in to fuel the fires of my passion. He rather spoke a word of temperance--offering me an alternative perspective to my religious diatribe.
He said, "The earth has been around for a long time. It's pretty resilient and it's been through a lot worse than us. I think it has a greater capacity to heal itself than we realize."

I was taken back. I was surprised that my friend did not agree with me. But I was even more surprised by the fact that he felt no need to support what I was saying. Of course, the truth was that my claim was probably over-zealous and probably self-righteous. It might have otherwise hurt my feelings except for the fact that there was great wisdom to what he was saying. His comment did not necessarily change my feelings--I still find myself passionate when it comes to our brazen disrespect for the environment. But at the same time, I now can see a little better my own arrogance in all of this. The earth is probably far more capable of taking care of itself then many of us give it credit for.

A year ago, Charlotte had just finished one of the driest summers in recent memory. We were under water restrictions and we were reading that the city of Atlanta was even worse off. Remember the alarms--all the apocalyptic imagery about what it would be like if a city the size of Atlanta was suddenly without water? Remember the blame game between Atlanta and the state of Florida? That was last year and that same drought continued throughout this past year well into the early summer.

But eventually it started to rain. And it has actually rained quite a lot. We're still not entirely caught up. But it's close. In the past month, we have had a lot of rain and it looks like we will be back to normal soon enough.

Banking in Sarajevo

Oh what a week. I have been in the ministry 19 years. I preached the Sundays following the start of The Gulf War, 911 and The Iraq War. I have spoken at many funerals, some of which were very difficult. But I don't think I have ever been as anxious about my words as I am today. I suspect the reason for this is that the economic meltdown that we have been experiencing over the last year or so is not some distant disaster that we get to safely watch on T.V. This is happening right here and the present and future impact is likely to reach us all.

Charlotte is the home to both Bank of America and Wachovia. [My spellchecker is telling me this isn't a word. I hope it's wrong...] Banking has always been a mystery to me. But judging by the houses around here, it must be a lucrative mystery. When I was growing up in Clear Lake, Iowa, there were four banks in our town of 7,000 permanent residents. Of these, I think only one still carries the same name. It is Clear Lake Bank and Trust. As a kid, I learned that the bank was "owned" buy one of the prominent families in our town. I always thought this must be a mistake. How could anyone own a whole bank? Years later, I moved to the High Country of North Carolina and watched three or four brand new banks being built at the same time. This was in addition to the five or six that we already had. Each of the buildings were nicer than most all of the other buildings in Boone. I often wondered where they got the money to build them. Did they borrow it from themselves?

Most recently, I have noticed that people don't much work in banks anymore. They work in banking. If I go to the bank closest to my house, I have to wait for a long time in a single line while one or maybe two agents work the counter and the drive through at the same time. Meanwhile, many many people who live in Charlotte work in what is called "the banking industry." These are the people that I care about because I have actually met some of them and I know them by name. I don't want them to lose their jobs.

I understand that people outside the United States can purchase stock in publicly-traded U.S. companies. I understand that foreign governments as well as private and public entities within this country have a great deal invested in Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Things have changed a lot since Clear Lake Bank and Trust was owned by a single family.

You can see now why I am a bit anxious about my words. I just don't know much about what is going and this makes me nervous because I don't know how to help my friends or myself. I noticed the president took a couple of minutes today to tell the American people that he canceled his travel plans to "keep a close watch" on the markets. But I don't even know what that means. Is there something he might be able to do to help my friends here in Charlotte? If so, that would be great because I think helping them would help me too.

Pursuing Threads

I recently drove an hour north to attend a retreat sponsored by the district here in Charlotte. I turned off the main highway, meandered down a winding driveway and arrived at a very peaceful setting in the middle of the woods. I was greeted by a kind woman outside a newish looking farmhouse. The front door opened to a large room with several large windows sponsoring visual access to the woods around the house. There were already a number of other pastors drinking coffee and catching up. They were standing in the midst of twenty or so chairs that circled the living room. This was clearly the central location for the retreat.

Within a short period of time, we all took our seats and the convener began to speak. She spent the first ten minutes or so laying out the ground rules for the house and setting. She was basically reading the bullets from the green sheets that had already been placed on the chairs. After declaring that we needed to wipe our feet upon entering the house and assuring us that it was probably too wet for us to go out anyway even though their were several nice paths that led about the property, the convener turned to the task at hand. She told us that as pastors we were probably very busy people who spent entirely too much time with words. The remedy--the point of the retreat--would therefore be listening...in part, to one another; in part to her; and through all this, in some part to God.

We were told that the purpose of the retreat was to help each of us discover what it was that we are truly thirsting for. "After all," the convener said, "you cannot get filled until you understand what it is that you need." She then made the fatal mistake of giving us (or at least me) an out. She told us that we could choose to participate in this process or not. We could engage in the retreat as it had been so thoughtfully and purposefully planned...or not. "Maybe you will hear something this morning" She boldly proclaimed. "and that will be all that you can handle and you will want to chew on that the rest of the day."

This was the opening I was looking for. I didn't care what I might hear, it was definitely going to be as much as my poor, weak spirit could handle. I would therefore have to be off somewhere else chewing it over for the rest of the day. This seemed a fair enough compromise. I just could not bring myself to imagine anything renewing about spending a retreat inside a house, sitting quiet and still in a circle of strangers. With each passing minute, my straight-back chair further evolved into a torture device. I figured it would be wrong to just get up and leave so I decided that I would stay for the morning session. I wasn't sure where I would go but I knew that it wouldn't be atop one of those chairs.

Apart from the quiet time, the morning session consisted of thrice reading a poem called "The Way It Is." This is not the Bruce Hornsby song of the same name. It is rather a short poem written by William Stafford. I have included it toward the end of my blog.

It turned out that this poem was a gift in the midst of an otherwise uncomfortable and unhelpful event. It spoke to the very thing that was churning inside my stomach. Ah, that's it. I don't want to be here! With all due respect to the convener and those who were excited about the retreat, this was just not my version of spiritual renewal. Wherever it was that I belonged, it was just not in a semi-circle in the middle of a house in the middle of the woods where the most pressing message seemed to be a reminder to wipe my feet.

It's a freeing thing to know ourselves or even something about ourselves. But that freedom is not especially helpful until we are willing to act upon it--to say yes to who we are and say no to who we are not.

It's not that I look down on people who enjoy the kind of thing that I have just described. I just don't want to be someone who pretends to. And so, empowered by Stafford's poem, I left at the break. I tore out a sheet of paper and left a note for anyone who might get anxious over the empty chair. "Please do not be alarmed or bothered if I do not return. I am pursuing a thread."

There’s a thread you follow.
It goes among things that change.
But it doesn’t change.
People wonder about what you are pursuing.
You have to explain about the thread.
But it is hard for others to see.
While you hold it you can’t get lost.
Tragedies happen; people get hurt
or die; and you suffer and get old.
Nothing you do can stop time’s unfolding.
You don’t ever let go of the thread.

Stafford's poem and the picture above appear together here http://www.panhala.net/Archive/The_Way_It_Is.html

Back On The Road Again

It is time for confirmation here at Saint Francis. As I have been working on the curriculum, lining up the mentors and scheduling the classes, I've been revisiting all the familiar metaphors--the confirmation Journey... The Path to faith... The Great Adventure of the Christian life.

As compelling as these images might sound, I wonder how well they echo the spiritual life of the average Christian in our time? We can perhaps appreciate the suggestion that faith is a journey but an adventure? That's a strong word for people who have been raised on the likes of James Bond and Indiana Jones. Besides, hasn't the Army secured the media rights to that word for the next hundred years?

Of course, I get it. I know why we feel the need to hype. We're trying to reach adolescents. These are kids who can't bring themselves to wait for a song to finish on an IPOD. We figure we've only got one shot at 'em so we pour on the same glamor and hype that they are getting from everywhere else. The problem is that sooner or later these kids are going to discover some of the more sobering aspects of THE JOURNEY.

Adventure does have meaning in the Church but that meaning is different from the militant assaults of personal fulfillment promised by the peddlers of the world. By the time they reach 14, excitement and happiness have been so over-promised to these kids that they might actually be sick of it. Perhaps they're even hungry for something a bit more grounded.

So why not tell them the truth? Why not explain to them that following Jesus is a journey but it is a journey that sometimes leads to very grown up places. After all, part of confirmation is the acknowledgment that these young people are growing up. This is a time of transition for them--a point at which they begin accepting responsibility for their confession of Christ. So why not dispense with all the fanfare and simply tell them the story of Jesus and the Church?

Besides, following Jesus really is a journey. Trying to live a life of faith in a world of disbelief actually is an adventure. Having our lives transformed by the life, death and resurrection of Jesus should probably be enough to get our juices going...even without the hype.

Back to School

Life is cyclical and it works well that way. An interesting example of this is the annual pilgrimages to Target or Staples each August. Kids who three months prior would have pulled their own teeth if it could get them out of even a week of school are now giddy over things like pens and notebook paper. Having forgotten completely the drudgery, students cannot wait to get back to see their friends and find out what's new in the world of schooling.

Even though it seems a little juvenile (imagine that) to get excited about school, there is something refreshing about it as well. School somehow reflects both what is wrong and what is right about the American experiment. It takes so much from our children, especially in terms of freedom and creativity. And yet, it must also give something back as well. Not merely in terms of data and social formation but in terms of the location and identify that it provides. If kids know nothing else, they know school. It is their thing. It is their place in a largely placeless world. Of course, as a pastor, I would prefer that our children's place would be the Church. But while we are working to reclaim such an honor, there are certainly identities worse than school.

Increasingly, we hear discussion of "year round" schooling. The phrase is somewhat misleading because it does not really mean more school. It is rather a reallocation of those other 180 days. The traditional three months of summer vacation do not disappear. They are simply broken up over the course of the entire calendar.

The arguments on either side are generally compelling. Personally, I don't like the idea of doing away with summer vacation but its probably just because it is what I know. And I like the thought of at least a couple of months in which kids don't have to sit still for six hours a day.

If there is anything at stake here beyond mere preference, it might be that renewed look of hope that we see on those faces in Target come August. Somehow, there is a genuine sense of newness spawned by each successive school year. Despite everything that takes place between September and May, all (or at least much) seems forgiven by the time it all starts up again. There is even a sense of anticipation--an incalculable hope that this year things will be different!

We all need this, I think. Room to get over what happened yesterday... Space to re-imagine the world... Time for hope to be reborn. Of course, we know this in the faith. But perhaps the earth itself needs this. Perhaps cycles and seasons are more than simply a way for us to measure time. Sunrise and sunset, plant and harvest, work and rest... Are such things purposely woven into the very fabric of Creation? And might this be for the very purpose of rekindling hope?

Oh The Humanity

On my way to bed last night, I stopped in the living room where my wife was watching coverage of the Olympics. Two commentators were hyping the upcoming 4 X 100 Meter Relay. This is always an exciting event. With four distinct swimmers finishing the race in just over three minutes, it fits well our average attention span. Even people who don't generally enjoy swimming can sit still long enough to watch four men burn 120 calories in an all-out thrashing of the pool. Nevertheless, I went to bed without watching the race. It wasn't that I didn't want to see it. I simply couldn't sift through all the analysis to figure out when exactly the race was going to take place. The last thing I remember was the voice of one of the commentators. "I have calculated this a hundred ways, and it just comes out that this race goes to the French."

I knew what he meant because I used to do this. I never swam competitively but I ran track. On days in which we had meets, I could barely pay attention in class. I was too busy anticipating splits for my friends and I. If we each run a personal best, together we should post a...

Anyway, the commentator's reference to his calculations was a heads up. This was not going to be another Gold for Michael Phelps. This, after all, was what the story had become. It was not that these young men had worked hard enough in their respective art to reach the Olympics, or that they might have a chance to be competitive and maybe even win a medal. The news interest resided in Michael Phelps' outside but conceivable chance of winning his 8th gold medal and thereby setting a new record--not for swimming but medal winning.

I will pass on the easy fare here and simply get to the light in all this.

I woke up to find that despite all preliminary calculations to the contrary, the U.S. ended up beating France by a finger in a race in which five of the eight teams surpassed the previous world record. The race was nothing short of incredible. Every one who swam in it--indeed, everyone who witnessed it--will have a memory to cherish the rest of their lives.

All this, in a little more than three minutes. Of course, we will now have to deal with all the post-race hype. The event will take on mythic proportions and be capitalized until the last penny has been wrung out. But happily that will take a while. Today, it will simply be enjoyed.--a glimpse into what is good about athletic competition and the wonder of the human spirit. People all over the world will talk about those three minutes in a way that truly honors what these young men from these eight different countries had worked for and accomplished over the course of the last several years.

Earlier this summer, I had gone to Florida for a national youth basketball tournament. In addition to seeing a lot of basketball, I enjoyed the conversations that I had with the parents who had gone along. During one conversation, a man was telling me about his experience of seeing Michelangelo's "David." He listed the sculpture as one of the three of four most amazing things he had ever seen in his life. I found this surprising for the man had clearly seen a lot. He went on to explain some of the story behind the work, including the time it took Michelangelo to create it and its remarkable durability. He also explained the rationale behind the creation of the replica of "David" in 1910. He noted the time, technology and attention to detail that went into that work as well. He then told me that while for all practical purposes the works are identical, there is nevertheless something distinctly powerful and majestic about the original. I've yet to see either sculpture. But witnessing the look on this man's face as he was telling me about all this made me want to...

Hats-off to all the men and women who reached the 2008 Olympics. May their effort and the memories they inspire endure our appetites.

Therapeutic Moralistic Deism

A friend of mine recently returned from the Duke Youth Academy for Christian Formation. He was allowed to observe what turned out to be a rather ambitious program. For two weeks over the summer, high school youth from all over the country were brought in to talk about what it means to be the Church. As my friend explained the details, I was amazed by the quality of the event, especially the leadership. Remarkable leaders in art, theology and ethics took the time to sit down with these young people.

"This is a chance of a lifetime really." My friend explained. "These young kids essentially live together for two weeks. They hear inspiring messages and are given the room to ask all kinds of questions. The program allows them a rare opportunity to experience community in a very intensive and meaningful way."

He then went on to explain the challenge. Namely, what happens when the youth return home to share the experience and insights gleaned from their time together?

They encounter something that my friend terms "Therapeutic Moralistic Deism" (quoting Christian Smith, Soul Searching: The Religious and Spiritual Lives of American Teenagers). While we may not generally use these words, I suspect that we are fairly familiar with the meanings behind them.

Therapeutic refers to the self, particularly in regard to helping or healing. The point is that young people today learn to understand God primarily as some kind of personal helper: God is the one who helps me pass the test...God is the one who helps me make the basketball team...

Moralistic refers to the general values that we encounter at every juncture of the society. For many young people, there is nothing unique about Christianity. There is no distinction between Christianity and the general morality of the larger culture--no notable distinction between following Jesus and obeying the rules...God wants me to be a good person...

Deism refers to a belief system that was common during the foundational period of American History. It acknowledges a Creator but rejects the claim that God is as an active agent in the world. The common image for the Deist is a Great Clockmaker. God winds up the world like a clock and then sets it down to run its course: I believe in God but I really can't see God working in the world...

The purpose of the Youth Academy for Christian Formation is to allow high school students to experience Christian community. As they spend time together discussing their faith, the Church and the larger world, they experience God as more than a personal helper or maker of rules. The time together, the friendships and leadership create a space for God to be included in the conversation.

As my friend explained the details, I was struck by the commitment and outlay required to make such an experience even possible. (Thanks God for the Duke Endowment!) Recreating this experience in our own churches sounds like a steep task to be sure. And yet, at the same time, is it really that difficult? Is it really so hard to make room for God in our conversations?

The problem with Therapeutic Moralistic Deism is that it denies God an authentic place in our midst. It repels God's voice in our conversations by imagining that God is either impossibly distant (deism) or overly personal (therapeutic). Part of making God relevant to our lives is acknowledging that God is a living presence distinct from us and yet close to us. Can we imagine God as a distinct but very interested party to our conversations? We live in a fascinating world, God might have some interesting things to say about it.

Or to put it another way, perhaps Christian community is fundamentally organic. Maybe our life together is akin to a living organism of sorts. Living things logically dry up when they cease to be connected to quality (living?) sources of water and nourishment.