Writing

No longer can I avoid it. The time has come to write.

I keep a journal, sometimes, sort of. I write a weekly sermon. Far too occasionally I blog here. I used to write newsletter articles but don't anymore, at least not often. Email less and less. No missives to church leadership in years.  I do write texts (up to 300 per month, to avoid overages). Facebook too often.

I am, simply, out of the habit.  Changing one's life emerges from changing one's habits, and I am interested in my life continuing to change, through my efforts and God's grace.

Last time I saw DW, he advised me to write daily.  I don't think he meant Facebook.

Between now and January 15, I have two reflective papers to write, my Sabbath routine, and my Rule of Life. None of this should be hard, except that writing requires reflecting. And, of course, actually writing.

I am not good at barfing on the page (see "lack of journaling" above) even though I strongly advise it to writing students and the blocked. It's not evident from the product, but I am composing these sentences as I go. The idea of sitting down and writing these papers - and a Rule and a Routine! -- is enough to make me give away my computer, almost. 

This may be the issue: the things I have to write are not head-things (unpacking scripture, academic research). They are "reaching toward my bowels, pulling up reality, and committing to it publicly" things. (see also "why I avoid therapy").

Perhaps both reality and habit can be developed, with God's direction and help.

Gehenna

Fall-Winter 2010-2011 Homework List
Class	Type	Description	Time	Due Date	Done
Institute	Reading	Scougal Chapter	00 : 00	07-Nov-10	Yes
Institute	Reading	Wilberforce	00 : 30	07-Nov-10
Institute	Reading	A Serious Call to a Devout and Holy Life	02 : 00	14-Nov-10
DMS-817	Reading	Merton: Wisdom of the Desert	04 : 00	19-Nov-10
Institute	Project	Get a spiritual director!	00 : 30	21-Nov-10
DMS-817	Reading	Chryssavgis: In the Heart of the Desert	04 : 00	24-Nov-10
DMS-817	Project	Establish Sabbath routine	00 : 30	28-Nov-10
DMS-817	Study	Memorize Ps 130 & 131	04 : 00	29-Nov-10
DMS-817	Assignment	Personal Retreat Day	08 : 00	30-Nov-10
Institute	Reading	Letters By a Modern Mystic	03 : 00	05-Dec-10
Institute	Reading	Bernard of Clairvaux	00 : 30	05-Dec-10
DMS-817	Assignment	Pilgrimage to Criminal Court and reflection paper	10 : 00	07-Dec-10
Institute	Reading	Brothers Karamazov	02 : 00	12-Dec-10
DMS-817	Reading	Laird: Into the Silent Land	05 : 00	17-Dec-10
DMS-817	Reading	Barton: invitation to silence	05 : 00	22-Dec-10
DMS-817	Reading	Hougen: Transformed Into Fire	05 : 00	29-Dec-10
DMS-817	Reading	Peterson: Under the Predictable Plant	06 : 00	01-Jan-11
DMS-817	Reading	Guelich: The Critical Journey	05 : 00	01-Jan-11
Institute	Assignment	Theological reflection paper	04 : 00	02-Jan-11
Institute	Assignment	Practices Reflection Paper	04 : 00	02-Jan-11
Institute	Assignment	Rule of Life	02 : 00	02-Jan-11
DMS-817	Assignment	Reflection Paper on Sabbath	02 : 00	03-Jan-11
DMS-817	Assignment	Reflective paper on Life Journey or Vocation	04 : 15	07-Jan-11

Chas. Phoenix invents the Cherpumple

The holiday season is upon us. If you're trying to figure out what to take to all those potlucks and dessert events and office ho-ho-hos, do watch this video. It will get you right into the season, and make you glad you're an American to boot.

My Utmost for today

After sanctification it is difficult to state what your aim in life is, because God has taken you up into His purpose by the Holy Ghost; He is using you now for His purposes throughout the world as He used His Son for the purpose of our salvation. If you seek great things for yourself - God has called me for this and that; you are putting a barrier to God's use of you. As long as you have a personal interest in your own character, or any set ambition, you cannot get through into identification with God's interests. You can only get there by losing for ever any idea of yourself and by letting God take you right out into His purpose for the world, and because your goings are of the Lord, you can never understand your ways.

I have to learn that the aim in life is God's, not mine. God is using me from His great personal standpoint, and all He asks of me is that I trust Him, and never say - Lord, this gives me such heart-ache. To talk in that way makes me a clog. When I stop telling God what I want, He can catch me up for what He wants without let or hindrance. He can crumple me up or exalt me, He can do anything He chooses. He simply asks me to have implicit faith in Himself and in His goodness. Self pity is of the devil, if I go off on that line I cannot be used by God for His purpose in the world. I have "a world within the world" in which I live, and God will never be able to get me outside it because I am afraid of being frost-bitten.

My Utmost for today

"If ye love Me, ye will keep My commandments." John 14:15 (R.V.) Our Lord never insists upon obedience; He tells us very emphatically what we ought to do, but He never takes means to make us do it. We have to obey Him out of a oneness of spirit. That is why whenever Our Lord talked about discipleship, He prefaced it with an IF - you do not need to unless you like. "If any man will be My disciple, let him deny himself," let him give up his right to himself to Me. Our Lord is not talking of eternal positions, but of being of value to Himself in this order of things, that is why He sounds so stern (cf. Luke 14:26). Never interpret these words apart from the One Who uttered them. The Lord does not give me rules, He makes His standard very clear, and if my relationship to Him is that of love, I will do what He says without any hesitation. If I hesitate, it is because I love some one else in competition with Him, viz., myself. Jesus Christ will not help me to obey Him, I must obey Him; and when I do obey Him, I fulfil my spiritual destiny. My personal life may be crowded with small petty incidents, altogether unnoticeable and mean; but if I obey Jesus Christ in the haphazard circumstances, they become pinholes through which I see the face of God, and when I stand face to face with God I will discover that through my obedience thousands were blessed. When once God's Redemption comes to the point of obedience in a human soul, it always creates. If I obey Jesus Christ, the Redemption of God will rush through me to other lives, because behind the deed of obedience is the Reality of Almighty God.

Michael Franti & Spearhead - Say Hey (I Love You) - Giants Version

World Series Champs 2010

So what's the bad news?

I just found out that I have been accepted into Denver Seminary's Doctor of Ministry program.

First thought: Whew.
Second thought: $$
Next thought: Wow, that was fast....wonder what's wrong with them....

I clearly have a way to go on this self-esteem thing. 

The song in my mind

Give thanks to the Lord, our God and King, his love endures forever! 
Sing praise! Forever God is faithful, forever God is strong!
Forever God is with us, forever and ever.


God is so faithful that he even woke up when I did this morning.  That's even better than my dog.
Thank you, Lord.

Consolation

Saying goodbye to Dallas Willard is always hard, and I miss him immediately.  The consolation is knowing that I will live with him forever and ever in God's kingdom.

And, with God's grace, will see him in March.

Renovare Institute, evening one

It's 7:30 at home and just 8:30 here (outside Colorado Springs, CO) and I'm beat.  Sleepy, dry-weather congested, but mostly just awed and humbled by the graciousness of God and the majesty of individuals' stories.

It is easy for me to forget that everyone's story has tragedy, comedy, dark, light, and searing boredom.  But tonight we laid our altar for the week. Each person brought an object that symbolized his or her current relationship with God.  They didn't all actually symbolize that but that was okay. We each rose, gave our name and city, and told why we had brought what we'd brought.

The tenderness and determination flowed:
the woman with stage-4 cancer whose body will die soon but who describes herself as fully recovered;
the man whose wife's death forced him to choose a soul-strengthening viewpoint;
the woman whose daughter fought a terrible blood disease (which bankrupt them), only to be killed in an auto accident;
the man who has decided to stop being hard, dark and broody and become a teddy bear.

And:
the young woman trying to get published;
the young lawyer learning truth isn't found in books;
the man learning delight from his kid;
the woman whose garden this summer swarmed with Monarch butterflies.

After the hour talking with the young man on the plane about life, relationships, and God, it was quite a lot.  But awe-some. I couldn't help but pray after almost every one, thanking God for hope in the kingdom and for the glory of lives worth saving.

To bed at 7:42 pm. It might be a awe-full day tomorrow too.  DW, after all.

I brought a bungee cord, because after all these years I'm finally really accepting that no matter how stretched my relationship with God gets, if I let it it bounces right back where it should be.

for all the broken souls yearning for God

Self-denial is self-centred; denial of self is Christ-centred.

George Eldon Ladd,  Gospel of the Kingdom, p. 104

My Utmost for today

From Oswald Chambers, especially for Debra:

Who now rejoice in my sufferings for you, and fill up that which is behind of the afflictions of Christ in my flesh for His body's sake." Colossians 1:24
We make calls out of our own spiritual consecration, but when we get right with God He brushes all these aside, and rivets us with a pain that is terrific to one thing we never dreamed of, and for one radiant flashing moment we see what He is after, and we say - "Here am I, send me."

This call has nothing to do with personal sanctification, but with being made broken bread and poured-out wine. God can never make us wine if we object to the fingers He uses to crush us with. If God would only use His own fingers, and make me broken bread and poured-out wine in a special way! But when He uses someone whom we dislike, or some set of circumstances to which we said we would never submit, and makes those the crushers, we object. We must never choose the scene of our own martyrdom. If ever we are going to be made into wine, we will have to be crushed; you cannot drink grapes. Grapes become wine only when they have been squeezed.

I wonder what kind of finger and thumb God has been using to squeeze you, and you have been like a marble and escaped? You are not ripe yet, and if God had squeezed you, the wine would have been remarkably bitter. To be a sacramental personality means that the elements of the natural life are presenced by God as they are broken providentially in His service. We have to be adjusted into God before we can be broken bread in His hands. Keep right with God and let Him do what He likes, and you will find that He is producing the kind of bread and wine that will benefit His other children.

Christianity for Grownups

I once heard a priest say that it was only when he went to seminary that he realized that his Christian education had ended in fifth grade, and only when he was assigned to a parish that he realized everyone else’s ended in fifth grade too. It makes sense, since after fifth grade parents often stop urging their kids to be part of their church, and churches tend to forget about teaching teens and young adults.

The priest’s point wasn’t to argue for compulsory religious education. Rather, he had realized just how immature Christians’ religious beliefs can be.  With secular topics, such as math and baseball and logic, we all know that a fifth grader simply cannot have the education and experience of an adult versed in the topic. But when it comes to studying God, we often limit our learning to whatever in popular culture seeps into the cracks of our understanding.  All too often, what we wind up with is an understanding of God that is part Christmas angel, part strict (and perhaps abusive) father, part distant star, and just a smidgeon of Real. 

No wonder very few of us actually nurture our relationship with God, much less make it primary in our lives!

What do you believe? Not “think”, but believe: we think thoughts but we act on beliefs. We may think “God is love” but be afraid of His punishment. We may think “Jesus is wise” but not invite him into our daily deliberations.  If you really dug into your beliefs, what kind of God would you find there?

God is a person. We get to know people by getting to know them, as well as talking about them.

The easiest way to know God (who is immaterial) is to study God-made-flesh: Jesus. To study Jesus is to observe him constantly, closely, regularly, and to spend time in conversation with him and about him, and to do what he does, especially in his relationship with his father God. We have easy resources: four first-generation accounts of his life and teachings, plus 2,000 years of letters, dreams, dialogues, and prayers, plus the lives of those close to him, in our own time as well as in his.  We have at least 14 spiritual practices that have stood the test of time and have drawn millions of people into intimacy with God through his son.  

It can help to hear why our more simplistic fifth-grade views just don’t cut it.  “Christianity for Grownups” is our fall series, and it is designed to uncover a few of those childish beliefs we may not even realize we hold.  Christianity for Grownups is for everyone whose faith is blocked or stifled, including people who don’t even believe Jesus matters at all. Come alone or invite a friend. I guarantee you’ll have something to talk about when you leave, and it may even actually be God.

I’m glad to be back with my church and am praying to see you soon.

Pastor Elane

No Jew nor Greek, no slave nor free

Lately I've been learning about my own beliefs: whether I really believe God is trustworthy, what worship is for.  Yesterday I had a brief but enlightening conversation with a new worship environment volunteer, who was preparing to create her first prayer spaces in our Sanctuary.

She wanted to use a picture of Mary, but someone said that would be "too Catholic". She also asked me about why we don't have rainbow flags or other symbols to represent our welcome to gay and lesbian people. I've never had to think about those two questions at the same time before, so I answered them separately. ("Wasn't me -- feel free." and "We don't have any representations of any particular group of people inside the Sanctuary -- notice there's no flag, either.")

Together they raise bigger questions: What does it mean to welcome and actively invite everyone while keeping our focus on God? What do I believe about inclusivity, whether of theology or background or sexuality or class?

1. One's own Christian tradition should be cherished and learned from, and to maintain it as a tradition may require some favoritism toward it. No tradition has a monopoly on truth, however, and none is particularly destructive to one's own. If we refuse a detail of worship or theology just because it's "not ours" or is too "theirs", we risk losing the opportunity to know God better and differently, as well as a piece of truth.
2. That said, not all details of worship or theology are either good or useful. My forcing glossolalia as a practice of our church would be more alienating than illuminating. Teaching that sanctification and beatification are functions of the church meant for particular heroes of the faith (especially martyrs and virgins), would, I believe, undermine everything we understand about the universality of sin, the abundance of grace, and the attainability of Christlikeness.
3. Once you enter the Sanctuary, there should be no Jew nor Greek, nor slave nor free. All of the liturgy -- the work of the people -- should point toward God, glorify God, clarify God. If the chancel is the place of focus for all that -- if it is the visible "location" of the kingdom of God -- then placing a flag of any kind makes the people represented (Americans, gays, Greens, Scouts) equal in importance to the kingdom of God. Anywhere else in the Sanctuary and it singles that group out as especially worthy and welcome.
4. That said, if we truly believe in equality in the Spirit, then we must acknowledge that some groups have been historically and systematically rejected by the body of Christ, and that it is our task to extend the invitation and prepare a heavenly welcome.  So we regularly use non-white-straight-able-middleclass-Americans in our examples, as well as the non-hyphenates.  We may and should designate particular efforts of attraction and affection toward those who would otherwise assume (for good reason) they weren't welcome.  Youth, for example, as well as gays. Working class, as well as white collar. Extraverted, as well as introverted. But that is not the point of worship itself, nor of the meeting of the body of Christ.
5. And, because of 1 and 2, we may decide not only to welcome the stranger, but to celebrate the family: to recognize where we lose sight of the "majority" and to recall them into both liturgy and activity.  So, if we've been talking about "partnerships" we need to work on "marriages". If we've set our sight on the homeless, we need to be sure we're considering the real spiritual needs of the wealthy, and not merely scorning them in our "inclusivity".

We are all broken. We are all sinful. We are all enslaved until we are not. We are all about Christ.

I have seen the enemy

Those of us with eating disorders take a perfectly good plowshare and use it as a sword.

Application done

Now into the mail and back to the work at hand. Whew.

3600 words

I now have 3600 words in my autobiographical essay for Denver Seminary. Whew. Now I can start cutting!

5 years

Just realized my first blog posts were in Feb 2005. And I still believe most of them.

Why do lists make me feel better?

Sabbatical over.  Household projects not done. Pain a l'ancienne not perfected. Same weight and cardio health. Not up to level on sleep. So what the heck did I do for 13 weeks?

Well, I "be"d, and I read/heard:
2 "You" books (didn't do anything about them but did read them)
The Great Omission
The Divine Conspiracy
Mudhouse Sabbath
Living the Sabbath
The Sabbath
The Sabbath World
The Gospel of the Kingdom
A Testament of Devotion
Acedia and Me (in progress but nearly done)
3 academic articles
CS Lewis sermon
8+ hours of lecture
not nearly enough Scripture
random magazines and parts of books on healthy and intentional homemaking
couple of other books in there from the library and stacks but darned if I can remember what they were
And, sadly, not the rest of The Clinton Tapes, which was just too boring, even for me.

Now, if I can just get the other 2000 words of my DMin application done...

Happy Feast of St. John Chrysostom

http://orthodoxwiki.org/John_Chrysostom

A misused and misunderstood father of the church, brilliant liturgist, foundational homilist. Want an Easter sermon? Try this one on for size: http://www.ancient-future.net/chrysoseaster.html