life in the suture zone...

believing in a good way....

2007-06-12T14:17:00.000-07:00

Back in January I went to a leadership session where the speaker contrasted belief in the post-modern age in which we find ourselves with belief in the now-passing modern age of the last 500 years. I haven't done enough research to know if he actually has spoken on this at his own congregation or written this list on his blog. And since he is employed as a preaching minister for a church, I'm not going to mention his name lest someone with nefarious purposes does a name search on him in order to convict him of some supposed heresy. Several of you may have heard him at a conference some of us attend in Nashville or in Fresno and he may have mentioned the points there. If so, you know who I'm talking about. If not, don't worry about it. If you need to write someone up, write me up. Besides, I was writing fast and I certainly don't want to misrepresent him. If I lost you somewhere in this paragraph, just ignore it.

These are not my points, though I wish I had come up with them. Admittedly, I massaged them a little since one point had just one word written in my notes. I offer them as a point of departure for discussion with the thought that nearly everyone believes in something.

Believing in a good way...

-- allows you to remain open to things outside of your belief system and, most importantly, open to new ways of seeing things within your belief system

-- exhibits a curiosity about life and its mysteries

-- allows no question to be "off limits", no matter how it challenges my belief system

-- exhibits a humility and teachableness even though you remain grounded in your own belief structure

-- is comfortable with uncertainty (I wrote "certainty" in my notes, but I'm sure in writing fast it was supposed to be "uncertainty" and I just missed it; so I have changed it)

-- produces good "fruit", by which I think he means it turns you into something other than the human equivalent of a junkyard dog. One more editorial note in this regard, and this sounds quite judgmental. But I have noticed a greater proclivity to junkyard dogness in churches than just about anywhere else. It makes you go hmmmmmm.

Many of the above points center around not allowing ourselves to be set in concrete in regard to our beliefs and not placing so much weight on systematic intellectual constructs rather than how we practice life. While I have met some people who are convinced they have it all figured out, I've never really met anyone who has, myself included. There is profound mystery in the world. Of that I am sure. How's that for certainty? ;-)

One more thing.... It doesn't really matter whether you are religious or irreligious in this regard. To believe you have it all figured out is to put your complete faith not in the Bible or Koran or Bhagavad Gita or Torah or Yoga or Science or whatever. It is instead to place your faith totally in yourself and your own intellectual abilities to conquer such mysteries. I'm not advising that we all abandon critical thought. But, while I don't know about you, my three-pound box of brains is too small to figure all of that stuff out. This is one of the reasons I have adopted a more contemplative, experiential approach to and practice of life. Besides, at the outside, in 120 years what you thought about this that or whatever won't matter. Unless you are one of the "big name" philosophers, your thoughts will have dissipated into the ether of the universe (unless quantum physics discovers otherwise). Your three-pound box of brains will be decayed and gone.

How you lived? Now that's another story.

But that's just me.

What do you think? ;-)

Grace and peace,

Owen

P.S. My wife is doing better all the time. I am quite thankful for your thoughts and prayers.

explanation....

2007-04-11T17:54:00.000-07:00

Well.... It's like this. (Some of you already know.)

Dorothy's ears were assaulted by some very loud sounds this past November/December that resulted in a condition called tinnitus (ringing in the ears), followed by a hypersensitivity to sound (which most doctors don't recognize as a legitimate condition, but I can assure you it does exist!).

Many of you know that my wife is a lifelong musician who makes her living by playing the piano as an accompanist and by teaching private and group piano lessons. Though she has continued teaching, she hasn't been to work as an accompanist since before Christmas. This has put a real damper on my being able to post on my blog and on worshipforum.com.

So, that's why there has been nothing here since before Christmas.

She is improving, so that's good. I'm hoping to post occasionally now and then.

In the meantime, just one note of interest...

In January of 2006 I posted several times regarding my visit to Mt. Calvary Monastery and Retreat Center in Santa Barbara. One of my posts, that dealt with the Grand Silence that begins after Compline and lasts all night until breakfast (or after breakfast one day), has been picked up and linked to in a Wikipedia article on Compline. You can go here to find it. It is the link entitled "Great Silence" in the second paragraph.

One small (and probably fleeting) moment in the sun.....

Grace and peace,

Owen

a blessed Christmas....

2006-12-25T08:16:00.000-08:00

May the blessings of the God who came to earth be yours today and through the coming year. Wherever you are on your journey, may your steps take you on a path toward peace, health and good purpose.

Grace and peace,

Owen

"not by prose alone"....

2006-12-20T07:50:00.000-08:00

I ran across this snippet this morning in a book called Alternative Worship by two guys in the UK who are leaders of the emergent church there. The title of the chapter (the book is really a resource of worship rituals, liturgies, readings, stations, etc) is the title of this post: Not by Prose Alone. And it adds, I think, to the conversation that Marshall and I have been having regarding poetry and worship. (You might want to read our as yet incomplete discussion by referring to the comments to the post immediately preceding this one.)

Theology is sometimes called "Godtalk." Worship embodies styles and habits of talking about and to God. The nature of this speech or the tone of language is vitally important. Some critics of church tradition argue that our capacity for speech has been vastly reduced in the modern era. The poet Les Murray contrasts the terms "narrowspeak" and "wholespeak" to illustrate his thinking on ways of talking about God. He suggests that in recent times (modernity) Godtalk has been severely reduced to narrowspeak, the voice of reason--rational and didactic ways of talking, the discourse of prose. Narrowspeak has to "make sense," be explainable, and be easily understood by everyone. It is communication reduced to just words, words, and more words.

Wholespeak in contrast is a poetic discourse, mystical speech, a language which is "truly dreamed." This is very similar to Walter Brueggemann's appeal to the church to rediscover poetry rather than living by prose alone. Both Murray and Brueggemann argue that the church needs to rediscover wholespeak or poetry, rather than feeling obliged to adopt the language of modernity. We might call this the re-enchantment or re-mythologization of speech, where speech reflects the Christian imagination, recognizing the importance of symbols, images, "myths," and metaphors as well as sharing space and time with music and the visual arts. Truth can be carried or opened up just as effectively (or maybe better) by this kind of language.

What do you think?

(Not to detract from the main point of this post as expressed by the authors above, but I would add that the modern church is much more dependent on its poetic imagination "underpinnings" from the past than it knows or would dare admit. I would suggest that the same is true of modern science, and that both the western religious and scientific worlds are just beginning to wake up to the fact that the emperor has no clothes. That doesn't cause the emperor to have no value or validity in either realm. It just leaves her/him very cold and exposed. But let's leave that for another discussion.)

Grace and peace,

Owen

a poet's view of worship....

2006-12-08T17:48:00.000-08:00

I have been reading the book The Cloister Walk (Penguin) by writer and poet Kathleen Norris. (It won NYT Notable Book of the Year when it came out.) Given the loss of metaphor in the modern world view, and the corresponding lack of value attached to it, the impact on Christian worship (and other areas of Christian practice) and especially faith has been quite profound and devastating. At least that's my opinion. I include below a some paragraphs--rather lengthy, I know--where she explores worship from a poet's perspective. Let me know what you think.

The ancient understanding of Christian worship is that, in the words of the liturgical scholar Aidan Kavanagh, it "gives rise to theological reflection, and not the other way around." We can see the obvious truth of this by shifting our attention to poetry, and entertaining the notion that one might grow into faith much as one writes a poem. It takes time, patience, discipline, a listening heart. There is precious little certainty, and often great struggling, but also joy in our discoveries. This joy we experience, however, is not visible or quantifiable; we have only the words and form of the poem, the results of our exploration. Later, the thinkers and definers come along and treat these results as the whole--Let's see; here she's used a metaphor, and look, she's made up a rhyme scheme. Let's stick with it. Let's teach it. Let's make it a rule. What began as an experiment, a form of play, an attempt to engage in dialogue with mystery, is now a dogma, set in stone. It is something that can be taught in school.

Let's return to our classroom setting, only this time we'll be exploring faith as well as poetry. A poem, as Mallarme´ once said, is not made of ideas but of words, and faith also expresses itself through that which is lived, breathed, uttered, left silent. If faith, like poetry, is a process, not a product, then this class will be messier than we can imagine. To make the poem of our faith, we must learn not to settle for a false certitude but to embrace ambiguity and mystery. Our goal will be to recover our original freedom, our childlike (but never childish) wisdom. It will be difficult to lose our adult self-consciousness (here the discipline of writing can help us), difficult not to confuse our worship with self-expression. (All too often the call for "creativity" in worship simply leads to bad art.)

(Skipping a paragraph)

Poets are immersed in process, and I mean process not as an amorphous blur but as a discipline. The hard work of writing has taught me that in matters of the heart, such as writing, or faith, there is no right or wrong way to do it, but only the way of your life. Just paying attention will teach you what bears fruit and what doesn't.
But it will be necessary to revise--to doodle, scratch out, erase, even make a mess of things--in order to make it come out right.

When it comes to faith, while there are guidelines--for Christians, the Bible and the scaffolding of the church's theology and tradition--there is no one right way to do it. Flannery O'Connor once wisely remarked that "most of us come to the church by a means the church does not allow," and Martin Buber implies that discovering that means might constitute our life's work. He states that: "All [of us] have access to God, but each has a different access. [Our] great chance lies precisely in [our] unlikeness. God's all-inclusiveness manifests itself in the infinite multiplicity of the ways that lead to him, each of which is open to one [person]." (skipping the rest of the paragraph)

The first time I went to a monastery, I dreamed about the place for a week, and the most vivid dream was of the place as a chemistry lab. Might religion be seen as an experiment in human chemistry? And the breath of the divine as the catalyst that sparks reactions and makes our humble institutions work as well as they do, often despite ourselves? Imagination and reason, those vital elements of human intelligence, are adept at dismantling our delusions. Both bring us up against our true abilities and our limitations. But we've gotten ourselves into a curious mess in the modern world. We've grown afraid of the imagination (except as a misguided notion of a "creativity" granted to a few) and yet are less and less capable of valuing rationality as another resource of our humanity, of our religious humanity. We end up with a curious spectrum of popular religions, a rigid fundamentalism at one end, and new Age otherworldliness, manifested in "angel channeling workshops," on the other. And even religious institutions--I'll speak here of the Christian churches, because they are what I know--often manifest themselves as anything but Christ's humble body on earth. What gets lost in all of this is any viable sense of the sacred that gives both imagination and reason room to play.

Can poets be of any use here? I believe so, though I'm not sure of the reasons why. I may be doodling. But the sense of the sacred is very much alive in contemporary poetry; maybe because poetry, like prayer, is a dialogue with the sacred. And poets speak from the margins, those places in the ecosystem where, as any ecologist can tell you, the most life forms are to be found. The poet Maxine Kumin has described herself as "an unreconstructed atheist who believes in the mystery of the creative process," while my husband, who is both a lyric poet and a computer programmer, declares himself to be "a scientific rationalist who believes in ghosts." If, as Gail Ramshaw has said, "Christianity requires metaphoric thinking," if, as a Benedictine liturgist once said to me, the loss of the ability to think metaphorically is one of the greatest problems in liturgy today, maybe the voices of poets are the ones we need to hear.

I know this is long, and I want to type even more. (I've probably already gone beyond the limit allowed under copyright law. Forgiveness please, and thanks to Ms. Norris and Penguin.)

But what do you think?

I think the modern church and modern science are both suffering from the same problem.

Let me know.

The next several paragraphs are stunning. Perhaps I'll post them later. In the meantime...

Grace and peace,

Owen

on philosophy and postmodernism....

2006-11-28T18:28:00.000-08:00

Well, again, it has been a while since I posted. Life has been, as normal, in the fast lane for the past number of weeks, leaving little time to think, much less write a post for my blog. But, excessive guilt has won out. And I've been saving up, so grab your beverage of choice and get ready for the plunge.

I just finished reading a book by the late Stan Grenz, a theology and ethics professor who suddenly passed away last year of a massive heart attack at a relatively young age (in his 50s, like me -- makes one think). Called A Primer on Post-Modernism, I found it a fascinating read, though certainly not light at all. He begins by surveying Enlightenment Philosophy that provided the foundations for the modern view of the world, including the holes and weak spots in the presuppositions that supported it. He looks at pre-Nietzschean philosophers whose observations began to pull down those foundations. He surveys Nietzsche's strong critique of modernism and the Enlightenment, which in effect pushed the button that exploded the foundations of modernism and laid the groundwork for the post-modern world view(s). Then Grenz surveys the three chief philosophical spokespeople for the post-modern approach to life.

To Grenz' credit, who comes at the task from a post-Evangelical Christian viewpoint, he does a fairly good job of describing each philosopher's thoughts without critiquing them from Grenz' viewpoint until the last chapter. So in that way, it is a good survey of the path of philosophy leading to current postmodern views (though several of the philosophers would object to there being any "path" to it). Plus, Grenz identifies ways of looking at things from a postmodern viewpoint which would be beneficial to people of Christian faith. If you want to wade into the current Suture Zone in which we are living I would highly recommend it. Just don't expect to breeze through it, especially if you have no background in modern philosophy.

I've had a number of "aha" moments while reading this book. Here's a list of those points, some of which I may elaborate on in future posts:

First of all, I am astonished at the power of philosophy to affect how people think in the regular world. We often consider philosophers as dusty relics (even current ones) who inhabit the ivory towers of universities speaking in unintelligible gibberish about useless, or certainly impractical, ideas. True? Not so. I was floored by the ideas I hear commonly on the tongues of even marginally educated people that seem to have originated with Nietzsche. Philosophy has a grossly underestimated impact on society. I don't know why I'm surprised by that, but I am.

Second, I am also astonished that language and literary theory are at the heart of the post-modern enterprise. In many ways, science has been abandoned by post-modernists as simply another, perhaps useful at times, but wholly inadequate epistemology when one considers the world. The exception to this (though Grenz doesn't cover this in his book) is the post-modern philosophers who have adopted an acceptance of scientific assumptions for the sake of having a what they see as a pragmatic view of the world (Searle, et al).

My third observation, though not a surprise, is how well some pieces of classic Christianity align with some of the post-modern rejections of the modern view. It was almost as if we Christians abandoned (or forgot?) what we are really all about when we encountered the modern world and world view. To a large extent, though, Christianity has always tried to adapt to the culture and world view in which it finds itself. I've often made the point in the past that to the rationalist of the 17th/18th century, God was a rationalist. To the empiricist, God was an empiricist. To the existentialist, God was.... irrelevant? Anyway, I think you get my point. But there are criticisms of the Enlightenment enterprise made by post-modern philosophers that should resonate strongly with Christians who have some understanding of their ancient roots. One example: the place of community (as opposed to the Enlightenment elevation of the individual as center).

My fourth observation is that the greatest threat Christianity faces is the wholesale rejection of meta-story by postmodern philosophers. But that leads to a critical question. On what basis can we claim, as Christians, that the overarching story of mankind is God's redemptive story as represented in our sacred texts? Is this simply one assumption, among many available, as the world scratches around for something other than quicksand or illusion to stand on?

Finally, and this doesn't exhaust my observations on the points raised in this book, it is quite obvious to me that postmodernism is a reaction to the categories established by the Enlightenment. Though I don't know of any other way to see the world except through the lenses we've inherited, even by reacting to them, it seems to me that the very fact that we are reacting to the modern world view as we deconstruct it, that modern viewpoint is in large part defining where we end up. A friend in ministry once said about those in my denomination, "We know what we don't believe, we just don't know what we do believe." That is as true, from my perspective, of those who have rebelled against my denominational heritage as it is of the dyed in the wool fundamentalists who have perpetuated its doctrinal "purity". For example, my grandparents didn't believe in dancing. Those in my generation don't believe in not believing in dancing. The argument with the previous generation/mindset/worldview largely determines and limits the path that one can take in reacting against it.

What if no one is asking the best questions? What are the best questions?

One last thing.... Grenz points out in his final chapter, almost an epilogue reflection on postmodernism and the implications for Christianity, that although our perceptions of everything may be invalid, they are not all necessarily equally invalid. My friend Marshall has pointed this out about science. If one eats something known to be poisonous to humans, they will suffer the consequences -- sickness, death, etc, no matter the literary categories we attribute to the experience, to life, or whatever. They will no longer respond to us in the same way they did (if at all) prior to ingesting the poison. Some of us are going to be hanging around burying or cremating or otherwise noting the cessation of mortal existence for that person. Though Foucault rails against history as being invalid (if you don't know who he is, read Grenz' book), JFK was assassinated on November 22, 1963, dying the same day that C.S. Lewis and Aldous Huxley did. Who assassinated JFK, the precise cause of Lewis' death or the effective legacy of any of the three are open to argument, perception and clouded validity. But all three stopped breathing the same day. Martin Luther King, Jr. delivered his "I Have a Dream" speech that irrevocably set the path for Civil Rights reform. Even the lost "a" in Neal Armstrong's communication from the lunar surface (or wherever he was, if you believe it was a hoax), has been rediscovered in the NASA recording. And maybe when I went to Costco last night, they really were out of something that was there only a week ago that I was going to get someone as a Christmas present. And maybe over 20 years ago, sitting in my 100-year-old kitchen by myself praying, and suddenly finding myself no longer in the kitchen but somewhere else in the very real presence of Someone else, maybe that wasn't the product of an overactive imagination? I don't know why it hasn't happened to other people. I don't even know why it happened to me. I wasn't looking for it. What makes this "figment" any more invalid than any other perception of the world?

Who knows? Maybe even this guy Jesus actually lived and spoke and died, and, yes, even rose again, all to reestablish relationship with people. And maybe, in spite of the way that his followers have screwed up the message and the focus and the meaning of his story so badly over the millennia, maybe, just maybe, God is still trying to use the story to connect with us, and through us to make the world a better place.

Now, I certainly haven't worked through all of this. I have more questions than I have answers. I figure the rest of my life will surface even more questions and quite probably even fewer answers. But I am intrigued by the Story. Life for humanity is a story of shared (and broken and strained and dysfunctional and enduring and infinitesimally complex) relationships with others, with our environment, with ourselves. Is it all a grand, yet irrelevant, tale, or a series of disconnected tales that have absolutely no common relevance? Is everything meaningless as pointed out by the writer of Ecclesiates? I hope not.

I hope not.

Grace and peace (and two Excedrin if you have a headache like me now),

Owen

taking up the cross and following....

2006-10-17T18:53:00.000-07:00

A friend on a forum I read regularly asked:

"If anyone would be my disciple, he must deny himself, take up his cross, and follow me."

According to this statement of Jesus, self-denial is either prescriptive to discipleship (must happen in order to become a disciple), descriptive (it is a necessary, ongoing part of the life of a disciple), or both.

Ironically, self-denial seems hardly to play any part of my life. How about you? If you will, ask yourself, when was the last time you denied yourself anything for any reason, let alone for the sake of Jesus? Is it possible that our surrounding abundance inhibits our admission into the school of Christ?

What do you think? And please share if you have any recent experience of self-denial.

I wrote this answer but didn't post it there. Thought I would put my response here:

I don't think Jesus is talking so much about the cross aspect of things as he is about us following him. The cross is at minimum a warning that where he leads may not be pleasant, nor where we want to go nor lead to what we want to do. But implicit in the statement is that he is the one doing the leading, and that his leading is not from some remote location, but right there next to us or just ahead of us. Our self-denial focuses more on letting him direct our paths. In other words, I read this set in the context of relationship with the living Jesus. At least, that's how those he was speaking to would have taken it, right? I sort of imagine the following dialogue:

Jesus: So, have you decided to follow me, sign on to my mission to rescue the world?

Me: Yeah, I guess so. So where are we going?

Jesus: No telling. You can never tell where these things might end up or what we'll encounter. I have pretty good instincts, though, when stuff happens. Guess you'll just have to trust me, huh?

(a pause)

Me: Yeah, I guess so. So what is it we're going to do?

Jesus: Well, it kind of depends on the situation, but it'll be God-come-near stuff, Kingdom stuff, like valuing everyone. You know, widows, poor people, the uneducated and hungry, the mentally ill. Those kind of people. All kinds of people, really. The self-absorbed, the addicts, the successful and unsuccessful. We'll look them in the eye, listen to their stories, ask their opinions and value and try to understand their answers. In short, we'll live with them in their world. Of course, all of this is sure to upset the power brokers, and we'll have to stand up to them, sunshine their abuse of or apathy toward the powerless, show it to be the devil-stuff it is. And I'm not just talking pagans here. There are probably more of these folks who are religious than not. By the way, you especially don't want to fall prey to that kind of attitude. If you do, I may have to slap you a bit to wake you up, get your attention. In fact, if you do stuff that hurts one of my little ones, well that's really bad.

Me: Got it.

Jesus: Do you?

Me: Okay, I think I get it, but you are probably going to have to straighten me out when my zeal leads down the wrong path. So what's going to happen if we stand up to these in-charge people?

Jesus: Well it won't make them happy at all. That's for sure. They have a tendency to get quite nasty. In fact, God may have to send a number of our community into the situation before the power brokers lose their grip.

Me: Oh, so you'll lead in a crowd of us so that we'll be safe and win in the end?

Jesus: Who said anything about safe? I was thinking more that if these abusive power brokers chew enough of us up and spit enough of us out, they eventually will lose their teeth.

Me: You mean I could die from it?

Jesus: Well, that's how it happened for me. Not that it will happen that way for you. Who knows? You might be at this a very long time. But even if it happens the other way, it's not the end of the world, you know.

Me: I know. (a long pause) It doesn't sound like much fun.

Jesus: Suffering is never fun. But that's missing the point, isn't it? Think of the company you'll be in, the community you'll be going through this stuff with, the joy of being in partnership with God for that which is truly good and valuing and rescuing. The good news is that the community only gets tighter and better and bigger. Hopeless, angry, abusive and used-up people get rescued from themselves and each other. People start loving each other like God does. Nuts, we could march straight into hell and there's nothing they could do to stop us. God's God-come-near Kingdom-way-of-living is never going to be snuffed out. Quite the contrary. (a short pause) Most important...

(at this point Jesus looks straight into my eyes)

Jesus: ... I... will... always... be... right... here... with... you.

(a very long pause)

Me: Okay. I'm in.

Jesus: Good! So are you ready to get started?

Me: Sure. What do we do first?

(Jesus puts his arm around my shoulder and we start off)

Jesus: Okay. First, you know all that stuff in your house? You don't need it all. I'm envisioning this huge garage sale, maybe Ebay. And the money you get for it.... Remember that guy at the freeway offramp? Well, he's been pretty hungry lately, and you could.....

(sound fades as we walk off together)

I know this doesn't speak to everyone who reads my blog. But it's a dream I think God has for the world. At least, that's what I think.

Grace and peace,

Owen

the blessing way....

2006-09-28T13:15:00.000-07:00

I like the novels of former AP bureau chief Tony Hillerman. He writes mysteries -- a modern fiction genre, actually -- but with the added twist of setting them in the very pre/post-modern setting of southwestern native American spiritual beliefs. He has written his works in settings that include the Hopi (a favorite of mine, since one of my unpublished novels is set in that same environment) and the Pueblo Indians. But most of all, Hillerman focuses on the Navajo. The Navajo Nation has named him "friend of the Dineh" ('the People'), and so I would assume that Hillerman does a fairly respectable job of reflecting their beliefs in his work.

I say all that to call attention to the value in the Navajo world (learned from my reading of Hillerman) of harmony with all of life. All of life is looked at from this perspective. If someone commits a crime, such as murder, there is more to the offense than just the legal ruling. There is the restoration of harmony that is needed for the perpetrator, because if it is not re-established, the discord of the original act rolls out in further waves of discord (alcoholism, family strife, even physical sickness). They even have ceremonies that their sacred men learn to sing to restore harmony. One of those ceremonies is called the Blessing Way.

As I was considering my last post and the various responses to it, I thought of Hillerman and his novel of that title. It made me think how like the kingdom of God as referenced in the Christian Bible this blessing way is. McClaren has suggested that the term kingdom has lost much of its meaning for us today. He has suggested a new metaphor: the dream of God. I like that. I like that very much. God's dream is for the restoration of harmony for all peoples, both with himself and among all peoples. When we live into the dream of God from that perspective, we are really living out of the heart of God as expressed in the life of Jesus.

The best part of Jesus' good news of the dream of God is not so much what I have focused on for so many years. In other words, the substitutionary atonement theory -- Jesus' blood to satisfy some legal hangup God has with us so we can go to "heaven" when we die -- is not, in my opinion, the best expression of the good news he came to preach. Atonement (not just substitutionary) is part of it, certainly. But his message, rather, was more simple than that: "God has come near and is very close and available. You might want to rethink your outlook on this and accept that God is indeed near." (Mark 1:15; my paraphrase, of course) This message has all kinds of implications, but its main focus is not do's and don'ts or laws about how we should live or theories about how it all works or even the historical facts of the matter (though I am not discounting them). Rather it is joining and owning the story of God's living, dynamic, two-way relationship with humanity (and, I would add, the rest of his creation).

I find it very sobering that this message failed to resonate with most of the religious people Jesus came into contact with. Instead it was the losers of society who seem to have understood and accepted it much more readily than their pious neighbors. Prostitutes, tax collectors, rebels, dock workers and fishermen, marginalized women, those under the power of demonic addictions and the poor, among others, seemed to be the ones who "got it" and ended up living it. They were his greatest success stories and ended up having a profound impact on their world (not that the echoes of that impact have always been "good").

A little over a week ago, I ate Wednesday evening dinner with my friend, Wade, and another young man, whom I assume was about to attend a Narcotics Anonymous meeting. He had questions about the Revelation (who doesn't?) and the end times. I briefly explained the genre of apocalyptic literature, and how it is very dangerous to take those things literally, that the Revelation was written to people for whom hope had evaporated in the face of severe persecution, etc. Then I suggested that focusing on end times really misses the point of Jesus' main message: that God is present, that he wants to enter into dynamic relationship with us, and us with each other; that he is calling us to rethink how far or near God really is, and start living into the reality of God's nearness. I could tell this was something completely new to him. That disturbs me in a way. But I am also hopeful.

Call me a deluded dreamer, but I'm praying that this "seed" germinates. If it does, we may see more of the blessing way, the way of Jesus.

Grace and peace,

Owen

exhausted lives...

2006-09-18T12:13:00.000-07:00

I've been puzzling over why so many of us live exhausted lives. It seems to be epidemic in the western world, where our Puritan roots have yielded for many a strong sense of responsibility and an out of kilter, killer work ethic. I know this is disappearing in many of our younger people (not all), and that disturbs me. But it also disturbs me that it disturbs me. Because there is a fine line between giving an honest day's work toward our employment, or parenting our kids, or supporting our churches and service clubs, and becoming messiah for whatever situation we are involved with, whether with work or with avocation.

This is especially true of some in our churches, which offers quite an irony, doesn't it? Someone considering themselves indispensable when the church already has a Messiah? Don't get me wrong. I'm not suggesting an attitude of irresponsibility either, nor am I suggesting that self-sacrificial love on behalf of others is wrong. Not at all. And I, for one, certainly believe the the call of God to specific tasks happens, if for no other reason, just because of personal experience. I'm just of the opinion that something other than self-sacrificial love or the "call of God" masquerades as such much more often than we realize.

How do you spend your time? I used to worry a lot about money, how we were going to pay for this or that, or how we were going to financially absorb this or that disaster. Though I still worry about it, it has taken a distant back seat to the issue of how I use my time and what time I have available. In the past, I saw an "open door" as God's direction to enter it. No longer. I am surrounded by open doors when it comes to my time. Too many open doors.

Then there is that incessant voice (demonic, I'm beginning to believe) that drives me to productivity every waking moment (and in some moments that I shouldn't be awake, but am). Because of age (I know a lot of people older than me who would scoff at that self-characterization!), I can't stay physically active that long. Fatigue, especially due to lack of sleep, forces me to collapse once in a while (as I did last night in my recliner). But even then, unless I am literally falling asleep--and sometimes even then--my mind is racing, analyzing, playing with how to say something, dealing with human crisis, and worst of all worrying about this or that situation or person, over which I obviously have no control. And I ask the question, "Isn't there some kind of off switch that I can flip? Preferably one that's not permanent! Wretched man that I am? Who will deliver me from this work ethic of death?"

I have lived an exhausted life too long.

This is one of the reasons I am participating in the Zoe Group Growing Deeper program this year. I can proudly say that I am learning (in very, very small steps) to waste time. And since the new cohort doesn't begin until sometime next spring, here's my advice:

If you are living an exhausted life like I have been, stop reading my blog, or anyone's blog for that matter. Turn off the computer. Don't open your email program. Inventory what your time is committed to every week. And ask yourself whether anyone (including Jesus himself) could reasonably expect themselves to keep up that schedule and still have any kind of energy left. If you are waffling about the answer to that last step, ask yourself if you've read the job description for messiah.

Get out your calendar (written or electronic) and erase some things. Make some blank places. Don't use them to fix the sink, do taxes or balance your checkbook. Find a quiet place where you can be alone for awhile. Sit on the front porch and count the trees in your neighbor's yard across the street and marvel that you've lived in your home all these years and never knew how many trees he/she had nor what kind. Sit outside and listen to all of the sounds that you miss because you are in such a hurry. Watch your children play. Sip a diet SOBE peach tea (or whatever you prefer) and just sit. Go fishing. Make a list of all the ways you could waste time, especially with God, and don't revise the list until you've tried them all. If you believe in God, find a quiet place every day and practice some form of meditation, contemplative prayer, etc. Practice mindfulness. Or just sit quietly. Do something like this even if you can only manage five minutes a day. Just do it.

If you do nothing else, I at least think the Serenity Prayer used so effectively by 12-step groups is rather appropriate here (yeah, I know this thing has confounded some of you -- sorry):

God grant me the serenity
To accept the things I cannot change,
The courage to change the things I can,
And the wisdom to know the difference.

This may seem heresy to you, this slowing down, this wasting time. Rather, I would suggest most of us have been practicing a rather destructive heresy in the way we've packed our calendars. I know I have.

Think about it.

Grace and peace,

Owen

coloring outside the lines...

2006-09-13T09:08:00.000-07:00

A thought tangent (common occurrence with ADD people--that's Attention Deficit Disorder... now, let's see... where was I?) that came to me in reading a friend's blog....

We are generally known as a species for our ability to invent, create and otherwise manipulate our surroundings (or elements found in our surroundings) into works that are recognized as beautiful. While it may be true that beauty is in the eye of the beholder, it is still common for any given beholder to recognize what for them is beauty. Even to create it.

We are not all Rembrandt or Rodin or Dali. Not all of us have a fast ball like Sandy Kolfax had. A cello in my hands is laughable compared to Yo Yo Ma. But nearly all of us are creative in our own way.

So, are traditional thoughts of heaven skewed? Will there be creative outlet for God's creative creatures? What of a writer of stories who finds an audience by exploring conflict?

I have found the ancient concept of perichoresis, the Great Dance, quite beautiful. It is an intricate picture of all of creation moving in exquisite harmony in a complex dance that is impossible to imagine in its complexity. But if I have a part in that dance, will that be the equivalent of dancing prepared steps? Will freestyle fit? Will there be an ability to color outside the lines?

And especially since I am a writer of fiction, what of conflict, the root of all good stories?

Just wondering....

Grace and peace,

Owen

P.S. Still working on exhausted lives.

reflections....

2006-09-07T18:01:00.000-07:00

This has been a tough year. When I recount to myself the story of all the things that have happened, all the things I've been asked to carry, all the stuff I've stupidly taken on in addition to everything else, I'm amazed I've not caved in under the weight of the stress.

But there have been good things, too. Probably most important is that Dorothy and I celebrated 31 years of marriage on the 23rd of last month. We spent the weekend in San Diego at a very upscale resort. How wonderful to have that time alone with her without the distractions of "chores" and other responsibilities popping up every five minutes. Okay, I confess I did a little bit of office email on my Treo. Just a little bit.

Proverbs says a good wife is from the Lord. She is one, and I acknowledge it was his doing that I married her. Believe me, I married way above me in multiple ways! In that way I am an incredibly blessed man.

There are as many blessings that I could recount as there are trials, struggles, disappointments and worries. It's just that the latter have claimed center stage in the recent year.

One blessing that I will reflect on in later posts is turning out to be a true gift... the Zoe Group's Growing Deeper spiritual formation program. If you are a follower of Jesus and you are not aware of the ancient and deep practices of spiritual formation, I would encourage you to get with someone who is. To say that this process is unifying and stabilizing to my crazy life would be an understatement. If you don't know someone (or better yet some small group) that can help you as you explore this area (or with whom you can explore), try reading Marjorie Thompson's Soul Feast or Gary Holloway and Earl Lavender's Living God's Love. I would be happy to respond to any questions you have about this.

I must admit, though, that I've puzzled over this a bit, wondering how a single mother of preschoolers, much less a married one, could dedicate even five minutes a day to such a thing. I don't know that it's possible. That is an admitted weakness in this (or in the demands we place on ourselves, even as parents). All I know is that this has helped me. I'll talk more about it in later posts. Check back in the next week or so. There may be a new post tentatively titled exhausted lives.....

Grace and peace,

Owen

back in Bako....

2006-07-05T06:33:00.000-07:00

Sorry to keep you all in suspense.

Well, Steven and I made it back to Bako. That's short for Bakersfield, and an especially appropriate moniker. The high temperature has been over 100 since we got back Sunday, and I understand it was around 105 a couple days while we were gone. One thing Colorado Springs has over Bakersfield (and Los Angeles, where my parents moved from) is certainly the summer weather. Another is the view. But, hey, we've got Central California coastline just two hours away! Beat that, Colorado!

My parents are moved in and most of the "essentials" have been located amidst the 500+ boxes (not counting furniture) that accompanied them on the move. Me? I'm exhausted as I knew I would be. Besides the 1200 mile drive, rearranging the location of devilishly heavy boxes up and down the basement stairs, and doing such mundane tasks as removing and installing a toilet on Independence Day (there ought to be a law!), I'm still dealing with all the rest of the stuff "life" has thrown my direction.

I keep thinking of things to write about on the blog. Unfortunately, my time is pretty much sucked up by dealing with the multiple "fires" burning around me. To switch metaphors, I told my boss one time that I'm in a period of life where I'm in the batting cage with a pitching machine gone wild. It never runs out of baseballs and it keeps firing them toward me faster and faster. The art of it, I guess, is to try to get wood on the ball, both out of a sense of self-preservation and also pride. If you keep fouling off balls, you get to keep standing in the batter's box.

But for now, just one observation....

It seems that most of the challenges I am facing lately are not of my making. In other words, most of them are coming from decisions others have made and over which I have little input and no control. It doesn't help that I find myself in the midst of this huge paradigm shift that is occurring in the Western World. Life on the suture zone is no picnic! Being the born worrier that I am, I'm having to pry my fingers away from the responsibility that I am assuming for these people and situations, and just do the next thing set before me. Unfortunately, what I am finding is that my fingers have assumed the default position of a death grip.

If you are a praying person, you could pray that God would give me the strength to "let go". Sounds oxymoronic, true? But that is evidently what I need in order to get through all of this.

From my end, blessings to you and yours, and...

Grace and peace,

Owen

P.S. Thanks for the notes, Nina and Shane.

life....

2006-06-15T15:10:00.000-07:00

Well, it's been forever since my last substantial post (if ever there were any :-) ).

I appreciate your patience. My work calendar this winter/spring (and, yes, now the summer) has been somewhat overwhelming with many more hours required than normal. Plus there have been a number of other things to deal with that I can't really blog about because they involve other people.

For anyone wondering (and I know that some of you check this blog regularly), I'm okay. Not great, not fantastic, just okay. My latest project is helping my parents prepare for their move to Colorado Springs in a few weeks. Among other things.

I will probably get back to blogging when things settle down a bit, if they do settle down. No timetable suggestions. Sorry. And thanks for checking back so faithfully.

Anyway, wishing you grace and peace (and health)....

Owen

swirling....

2006-05-09T17:47:00.000-07:00

Well, I’ve had more than enough to choke a horse going on in my life for the last six months. Second time in two days I’ve used that hackneyed phrase. Yikes! It’s a pretty apt metaphor, though.

Many of these things have caused multiple questions and issues to swirl around in my small head. About the time I reach out to grab one to blog about, something else goes “WHAMMO” and I’m off dealing with some other crisis or change.

As I think of swirling, maybe I ought to reverse the metaphor. Maybe I'm the one swirling and not the ideas. I’ve watched fall leaves floating down a stream and caught in an almost perpetual loop in some eddy in the current. Maybe I’m that leaf right now. Or maybe that leaf keeps floating with the current, bumping into different rocks, bouncing off in different directions. Maybe that is a better metaphor. I don’t know.

Anybody out there ever feel that way? Right now I do.

Or maybe like a pinball bouncing off the bumpers never quite knowing what’s going to happen next or what direction you’ll be shooting off in a second from now. This has been the winter/spring of surprises, some of which I know will have long-term implications for my family. Not that all of them are bad. Some have the potential of being that, or at least burdensome. Some were burdensome (the death of my mother-in-law, for instance), but not all. But it’s just so many all at once.

I can’t list them here because they involve other people including my family and ongoing issues (not our marriage, lest any ugly rumors start!). But it just makes you want to scream out, “Will somebody take something off my plate!!!”

I spoke with an acquaintance this past Sunday, someone whom I usually see once a year. He’s planning a move from his home to another country in October of this year. His comment? “If the Lord wills it. It looks promising, but....” and he shrugged and left the sentence unfinished. I told him (and he concurred that his experience is similar) that God seldom, if ever, consults with me on these matters.

I guess one could say all this is happenstance, random, the bad luck of the draw, a series of unfortunate events (a la Lemony Snicket). I choose to think otherwise. Now, I’m not blaming them all on God. Some of them are my fault for overextending myself and thinking that I must become involved in situations that I really didn’t need to become involved in. (I know, how arrogant of me!) But...

One other metaphor before I close this post. This period of rapid change with so many things changing and happening could also be compared to a fractal. It remains to be seen what will appear from all of these unrelated things. Fractals seem to eventually evolve into some kind of beautiful pattern, if we wait long enough. Beauty ex nihilo (out of nothing). Seemingly complete randomness that resolves over time into some kind of self-organization, or Self-organization.

Maybe this is just the mystery of creation, of human experience, of the divine fingers mixing and applying the fingerpaint. Despite the chaos, that’s what I choose to believe.

"And God said, let there be...."

It's just painful in moments like this to be the fingerpaint.

Peace,

Owen

blogging absence...

2006-03-31T19:25:00.000-08:00

Thanks to all who have been checking back here regularly.

I have been quite inundated at work for the past six weeks, working many long hours, many days out of town and, including tomorrow, at least one day for four of the last six weekends.

Hopefully, when I return (though this is still the busy season) from all of these out of town trips, I'll be able to post more. Things continue to roll around in my head and it's not that I don't have something to say. I do. It's just finding the time to say.

So, thanks for stopping by. If you keep visiting once in awhile, you just might find a new post.

Grace and peace,

Owen

apology...

2006-03-01T09:42:00.000-08:00

An apology to everyone who has left a comment here since Dec. 31. I must have clicked a radio button to enable comment moderation sometime in December without knowing I did. I have taken off comment moderation now. I went back and published all the comments that had been left since 12/31 without accounting for those that are duplicates. (It was just easier that way.)

So sorry for this problem. I just thought no one wanted to reflect on what I had written. ;-)

Silly me!

Special thanks to Tony who identified the issue.

Grace and peace,

Owen

bumper sticker theology...

2006-02-28T11:08:00.000-08:00

I saw a bumper sticker on the way to work this morning that made me laugh. Then it made me sad. It said, “Militant agnostic... I don’t know and neither do you!”

You can hardly blame this person for defending their position, and I am certain that they’ve had cause to become militant about not being able to come to a conclusion about God’s existence. You kind of wonder how many Christians have tried to argue them into the Kingdom of God? You wonder if they were accused of stupidity or dishonesty or rebellion in the process? Makes me wonder about us and shake my head.

I see the same thing in those little fish magnets, the ones with legs and the name of Darwin inside. Whatever you think of Darwinian evolution, I think maybe those showed up as a reaction to our browbeating efforts to convince those folks that their view of the universe is somehow ungodly and that they are bound for hell all because of their view on the origins of life. You think that perhaps they are just being honest about what they’ve observed and truly think? You think there might even be some of Jesus’ followers who agree with them? You think a respectful, humble and honest conversation (heavy on the listening with a few mea culpas thrown in) might be in order rather than the complex and strained argument that some “Christian scientist” has come up with to protect the sanctity of the very modern verbal plenary inspiration view of the Scriptures? (If you didn’t know, that’s really what the whole argument is about underneath it all from the “Christian” perspective.)

The saddest and most devastating response I’ve seen to those Darwin magnets is the one that has a Christian fish swallowing the “Darwin” fish. Is this what the inbreaking Kingdom of God is all about, what someone believes about origins? And isn’t that picture of a “Christian” fish eating a “Darwin” fish a bit ironic when you think about it? Doesn’t that prove the point of Darwinian evolution, that the fittest survive? (Have the people who have those Darwin-eating fish even thought about this and how it is perceived by the world???)

Back to the militant agnostic for a moment.... Do you think that maybe they’ve come to that conclusion honestly and with a great deal of thought?

There needs to be a lot more humble listening in this world, in my opinion, especially among Christians. They ought to be leading the way in humility. Sadly, I think many of us at the back of the pack when it comes to that.

God opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble.

Seems I read that somewhere lately.

Sorry. My rant for the day.

Grace and peace,

Owen

silence 4...

2006-02-22T07:21:00.000-08:00

Paul Simon, one of my favorite composers, wrote a song that he and Art Garfunkel sang on the Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme album called The Dangling Conversation. A couple considers shallow topics and doesn’t deal with the deeper questions about their relationship, or lack of it. “And I only kiss your shadow, I cannot feel your hand, you’re a stranger now unto me lost in the dangling conversation and the superficial sighs in the borders of our lives.”*

I think of this song sometimes in relationship to silence and the Deity. Is that descriptive of my relationship with God? More pointedly, is that descriptive of God's relationship with me?

There is another side to silence, though. Though relationship cannot exist easily in total silence, there is a place for silent companionship in relationship.

I’m wondering if the noise of our world (and it is noisy) has caused us not to seek the disciplines of mindfulness and silence that are necessary not only for our mental health, and not only so that in the silence we can actually hear God (both of which are worthy purposes), but also so that we can spend silent companionship in the presence of God himself?

I could write a lot more words about this, but I’m just going to leave it there for now.

What do you think?

Grace and peace,

Owen

*Copyright © 1966 Paul Simon

silence 3...

2006-02-20T21:37:00.000-08:00

silence 3…

My friend, Tim, teased me several weekends ago about this series on silence. He noted the irony of spending so many words in pursuit of the subject of silence. Seems kind of oxymoronic, right? Oh, well. It is in part the subject with which I am occupied at present. (Aren’t you proud of me for not ending my sentence with a preposition? I don’t talk this way normally [as you can see by my adverb placement].) ;-)

Here I continue from previous thoughts...

One thing that silence can mean is that there is nothing there. I want to get that out on the table first. That is a challenge I have struggled with and that I know a friend of mine is struggling with. What can we say about that? In the silence we can say that there is a possibility that this conclusion is true. It is possible that nothing is there. Those who are of faith don’t like to consider that possibility, but it is a possibility nonetheless. Lack of audible or other indication of divine presence can mean that nothing is there. Let me quickly add, though, that silence in no way is conclusive in the matter.

I think of the SETI project that constantly records the background noise of the universe, the echoes of the Big Bang, the radio sounds of pulsars and quasars, hoping to hear something other than random radio signals, some indication that there is other intelligent life out there in the universe. So far, nothing. But does that mean there is no other intelligent life? Possibly. Then again, possibly not.

Silence is inconclusive.

Back when I was at Mount Calvary I decided to take a trip down one of the hiking trails that led to Rattlesnake Canyon. It was a warm day, high 70s, low 80s. A perfect day for a January hike. I got to thinking, “You know, the rattlesnakes are normally hibernating this time of year, but it’s awfully warm today. Wonder if any of them might be out for a mid-winter sunbath?” Then I thought about the proliferation of California mountain lions. If you know anything about mountain lions, you’ll know that they can see – and stalk – you without your ever knowing they are there. That made me stop and think. “Lions and tigers and bears, oh my!” Besides, I was out of shape and I didn’t want to get myself in the position of not being able to get back up to the road. Halfway down the trail I turned around and started climbing again. It was surprising how quickly I made it back.

The point? Just because there is no audible or sensory evidence of any other presence does not mean there is no one or nothing there. Granted, one can make up their own completely imaginary world and believe it is there, act as if it is there and thus create it in their experience. But it is a wishful world, not one that is authentic. I think many of my post-modern friends are honestly trying to avoid that. Besides its irrelevancy to their lives, they see Christianity as “maybe fine for you, but I just don’t get it.” Above all, we don’t need a faith that is inauthentic.

I want to get back to silence in a moment, but let’s switch senses for a bit. What about the sense of sight? What about the nature of darkness in relationship to sight? Is darkness in and of itself a thing? Does the inability to see something mean it is not there? One of the main reasons that I was afraid of the dark when I was a child was that I couldn’t see what was out there. There could be something there that could harm me. As it turned out there never was. Almost.

Once, when I was a teenager, I stayed home to work while the rest of my family headed to a weekend church function. Sitting in my father’s recliner watching an intense movie, I suddenly heard someone step into the flowerbed just outside the window next to the chair. Internally, I freaked out. Action-wise, I quietly eased over the arm of the chair away from the window and belly-crawled to the front door where I switched on the porch light. A few seconds later, I heard a car door on the street close and the car drove away.

When my step-grandfather came up from the back house a few minutes later (I called him), we went out to the side of the house with flashlights and found the plants crushed in two places where that person had stood not three feet away from me, listening through an open window. Now, granted, I heard this person. But I didn’t see them. What if I had not heard nor seen them? Would that have made this an exercise in vivid imagination? Not at all.

So far, all that I’ve suggested in terms of example deals with sensory experience. Hearing, seeing, and, as you know, there are three more.

But we don’t discover all things with our senses. Some things we posit from reason. The existence of subatomic particles has largely been a theoretical pursuit. Those who study advanced physics work using complex math and predict what may or may not exist, as they attempt to describe subatomic “reality” and the relationships between forces and matter in our universe. They have a pretty good record. My friend, Marshall, is excited to live in such a time. It actually seems possible that in our lifetime these theoreticians may come up with a unified theory of matter and energy and whatever else there is, etc. I share Marshall’s excitement and hope.

Sometimes the math is right. Sometimes it is wrong. Mostly it seems to get closer and closer to describing reality. We’ll see if they succeed. They have, however, gotten to the point of frustration when it comes to some aspects of physics. They cannot predict, for instance, any potential reality outside of our observable universe. Well, they can predict it, but they have no hope of experiment that will verify their predictions, or for that matter, the math capable of exploring those questions. For instance, where does all that matter and energy go that is sucked into a black hole? They don’t know and they have no way of finding out.

Does that mean there is nothing outside our universe? On the contrary. Many of these same scientists are frustrated because they are convinced that there is indeed some kind of physical reality beyond what we can observe. But they can’t know. And the math frustrates them. Perhaps, some day they will figure it out. That is certainly possible. To posit that we are near the extent of what is knowable, or even observable, is foolish indeed. The truth is, the more we know, the more questions we have about what we don’t know. While explanations of physical existence as we currently know it (and may know it in the future) may be elegant, they are not simple. What we find more often than not is that we are simple creatures with simple minds that can easily be awed.

So what does all of this have to do with silence?

Good question. I would just point out that just because we don’t have observable, verifiable “evidence” of the existence of a deity, is no comment on whether that deity exists. In fact, if we posit that deity has had something to do with establishing what we observe, it is not at all surprising that evidence for that deity would be different than and not verifiable in the same way as other things “created” by that deity. Silence might be the norm. Or, communication might be accomplished, if it happens at all, through other means. And perhaps it requires listening on my part? Perhaps it requires silence in the Presence on my part?

I could write a lot more, but I’m already almost three pages into this post. I will continue to post on silence, though, because there are other questions to be asked.

But these last questions about silence, first..... In what way would God have to speak in order for us to know it was God? And how often? If the doubt that comes with distance and time makes us question those moments that happened in the past, is that later doubtful reflection more relevant or real than what we knew when we first experienced the communication from him?

Perhaps my complaint is not one of total silence from God, but the infrequency of experiencing that communication from God. I have, after all, had some experience with what I have claimed (and still claim) to be his direction. (Either that, or I am a paranoid schizophrenic and am hearing voices.....) The last time I saw The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe, I was struck and disturbed by the penultimate scene of the movie, where the high kings and queens of Narnia were crowned at Cair Paravel. Lucy, watching Aslan walking away from the castle along the beach, is distressed that Aslan is leaving and begins to cry. Tumnus the fawn observes that Aslan is not a tame lion, and that he comes and goes as he pleases. I’m wondering if that is not a better, even more biblical, description of our experience of God’s voice and direction than what I have come to crave or expect. The verse in John’s gospel about how blessed we are who have not seen and still believe comes back to me here.

I don’t know.

Anyway, for now....

Grace and peace,

Owen

back to posting soon...

2006-02-18T09:52:00.000-08:00

Thank you for your prayers. Dorothy's mom passed away in her sleep just three days after my last post. Though grieving, the family would never want to bring her back to the suffering she endured in her last days even if they could. It is a hard blessing, but it is a blessing. And though there is grieving at her absence, it is not a grief without hope.

Speaking of hope (a different kind), I hope to be back to posting sometime in the next week.

Grace and peace,

Owen

posting delay/family matters...

2006-02-04T14:09:00.000-08:00

If it seems like I left you hanging and dropped off the face of the earth, it's because my mother-in-law is going through the very painful and long process of dying.

She is a sweet person and it is hard to see her going through this. Dorothy has been down here in Santa Paula everyweekend and sometimes during the week. I have been down here nearly every weekend.

While today is not a good day, she has been more expressive today than we've seen her in weeks. It has helped me today to know that she very much doesn't want to drag this out. That has been very clear. Though she can't speak more than one or two words a day, if at all, today she seems to be aware and communicating her desire to be done with this. My wife and her brother amended their mom's comfort care order today, choosing to no longer allow oral antibiotics. This will probably hasten things, since she has been constantly fighting infections. She is now strictly on pain meds and oxygen, if needed. She is in such pain, and the doctor said the antibiotics are just going to prolong that pain until the inevitable comes. She is ready to go.

Please pray for her, if you would, and for my wife, Dorothy, her brother, David, and the rest of the family.

Thanks,
Owen

P.S. There is at least one more part of silence coming, probably two. Plus I still have a number of things to share from the monastery experience. Just please be patient for awhile.

Grace and peace.

silence 2...

2006-01-17T07:04:00.000-08:00

(Note: Steven and I had a harrowing journey from Texas back to Bakersfield Friday through almost Monday. Don't be surprised if Fort Hancock, TX, no brake lights for 1500+ miles, and Volkswagon's anti-shift locks show up in future posts!)

My experience at Mount Calvary has made me begin to think about the nature of silence and how there are many ways to look at it. Much of our view of silence, I suspect, depends on the way we were raised. Some of us were raised in noisy or moderately noisy homes. Some were raised in sedate environments where anything above a whisper was frowned on. I was raised in a rather free, moderately noisy household without a lot of restrictions in the noise area.

Sometimes experiences in life change your perspective, such as my encounter with silence at Mount Calvary.

Personally right now, my attitude toward silence has completely changed. I am in the noise avoidance mode as you can tell from my last post. A television left on grates on my nerves. The constant blather of talking heads makes me irritable, and I want to shout, “Will someone please shut that guy up?!?” I know, I know. There are important things being talked about on the news.... for example, the weather. But what you have to sit through to get to that point can be quite frustrating.

Theological attitudes toward silence also vary. What does silence mean anyway?

I come from a Christian denomination that has read much into silence, but the reading was all negative. “If the Bible doesn’t say you can do something (usually used in reference to worship practice or church organization--funny how it only dealt with that), then you shouldn’t do it.” Silence was (and still is in many places in my denomination) considered restrictive. One doesn’t have to dig deep to see the inherent dangers in such an approach nor flex the imagination much to discover the path to irrelevancy in such things. As I have often said before on this blog, sometimes we ask the wrong or unimportant questions. I think God may often say such things as, "C'mon people! Who gives a rip!?! What about the poor, the addicted, those with different opinions and all the rest I expected you to bless??? Remember Jesus?!?"

I don’t know that the opposite view of silence is any better: silence is completely permissive in terms of practice. This view leads to the same misdirection, IMHO, that the previous view leads to. In other words, we focus on the wrong question or questions.

I would ask the question, “Does silence from the deity have anything to do with behavior?” Actually, I have more questions than that, and more important ones based on where I am in my thought process right now. Certainly enough to lead to another few posts on this subject. Questions such as, “Does silence indicate absence or non-existence?” and “Is silence an appropriate expression of companionship?” and “Is silence a recognition of the failure to communicate?” There are even more floating around in my small head.

Hmmmm. Not too silent, eh?

Stay tuned in the next several days for more.

In the meantime…

Grace and peace,

Owen

out of town...

2006-01-13T05:24:00.000-08:00

Just a note to let you know that I will be out of town/state for a few days. Next post will probably be Monday. It may be silence 2... or it may be holy eucharist... Check back to see.

Grace and peace,

Owen

silence...

2006-01-12T07:27:00.000-08:00

One of the things I worried about when I was getting ready to go to Mount Calvary last week (see previous two posts), was their practice of grand silence.

Grand silence is a monastic tradition which includes significant portions of the day/night where the whole community, visitors included, observe silence. That means no talking. At Mount Calvary for the days I was there grand silence began at 8:30 p.m. and lasted through breakfast the next morning. (Breakfast began at 8 a.m.) Granted I slept during part of that time which made it easy to maintain silence (unless you snore). Still, I don't normally go to bed at 8:30 at night or stay in bed until 8 in the morning.

Personally, I was worried that I would run into someone and just strike up a conversation, totally forgetting that I was supposed to keep my mouth shut. And it is an effort to keep my mouth shut at times. (And there are many times in my life I would have been wise to do so! See the last paragraph of this post for one example.)

My fears were totally unfounded. It was a wonderful experience, one that would be difficult to attempt at home, but just delightful there. Why was that?

Our world is a very noisy place. You discover that after spending some time in silence. It has been valuable for me to notice that because of my experience. Noise is quite distracting. The incessant talking when the television is on – talking heads, commercials pushing our consumerist philosophy, pundits alternating between decrying our political woes/solving our political problems – just drives me nuts now. I find very little of value there. (Actually, I found very little of value before I visited Mount Calvary. In fact, most of what Dorothy and I watch of late is the Food Network. Hmmmm.) And television is just one example.

Anyway, being the distractable kind of guy I am (ADD), it has come home to me rather audibly the amount of noise distraction that exists in my world. I had the same experience as a student in Germany many years ago. There was an Arab oil embargo on and fuel was at a premium. The German government passed a law that there would be no driving on Sundays (2 a.m. Sunday to 2 a.m. Monday). I awoke that first Sunday to the thunderous pealing of church bells from all over the city. Wow! And when the bells weren't ringing it was quiet, so quiet that I could hear the tweeting of the train whistle from miles away. I enjoyed that silence as I enjoyed the silence at Mount Calvary.

The second thing that I found quite ironic was my positive experience with grand silence, when at the same time I am decrying of late my experience of the silence of God. Though I haven’t to my mind resolved all of those issues, I have decided to seek God in the silence and have begun sporadically practicing silence as a spiritual discipline. That certainly reflects Elijah's experience. I don't know that it is the same thing as mindfulness (a Buddhist and Christian practice from long ago), but perhaps similar in some ways. I don't know. I'm a neophyte. But I've decided I want to embrace the silence instead of complain about it. I want to join God in his silence rather than criticize him for it. Does that make sense?

One more note.... I actually miss grand silence and told Dorothy so. (One of those times when I should have kept my mouth shut ;-) ) I tried to quickly to cover up by saying that I didn’t mean for her to be silent! You guys out there, if you ever have the positive experience I had with grand silence, you probably won’t want to enthusiastically gush about that to your wife. Not a good idea. Lots of room for misunderstanding, you know. You guys out there, you understand, right?

Grace and peace,

Owen

a long obedience...

2006-01-08T21:23:00.000-08:00

I have been professing Christian for over 40 years now. (No applause, please. None is deserved.) One thing that comes with that length of time is the gift of perspective. For those of you who have been reading this blog, you know that I have struggled mightily of late with the current “moment” as I wrestle with the God who appears at moments not to be there. I think this is a struggle in part with trying to break out of the functional deism within which I was raised. And wondering if God is even there. (I thought I was long past this, but I guess not.)

Please forgive my weakness in that struggle. I do not mean to shake your faith. But I do mean to be honest about my own struggles. Be assured that I have not lost my hope in God.

But as I look back at the last several years, a part of that gift has been to recognize that the “now” is not the “all” of life. The moment is in fact just a moment. This moment in no way negates the moments past nor future. They are each pieces of the journey being woven together as our story. Sometimes they cause us to leap ahead with profound new insights. Sometimes they draw us back to the simple, grounding realizations of childhood. And sometimes they lead us right through the proverbial fire and out into the desert. While we may live “in the moment”, I’ve realized that we also live within the memory of moments past. And if we’ve gone down the path for a long enough time, we live within the expectation of moments in the future. More of our story is yet to be written.

This is a gift not to be ignored or treated lightly. And it is a gift, I am convinced, that is not just (or even primarily) for us. It is rather a gift for us to pass on to others who are gripped by the first episodes of doubt. Not the assurance that we have all the answers. Not the assurance that everything is okay and they'll be fine once we understand everything (as if that will ever happen!). Instead, it is the assurance that they too will make it through the path of trial; that though their questions may remain unanswered, they will survive the questions; that God is indeed faithful, though perhaps different and more and deeper and perhaps wilder than what they have experienced or are experiencing now (not to mention the sometimes long periods of silence).

I am convinced that what matters more than anything is a long obedience, by which I mean taking another step on the path set in front of you. I’ve heard of it as a long obedience in the same direction, but my experience with the labyrinth this past Thursday morning (see earlier post) has shown me otherwise. The path can indeed turn from the face of God. It is not pleasant, nor necessarily healthy when we do. But, let’s face it. We do that at times, don’t we?

And I don’t think God is offended by our questions. I have questions still, in spite of the few days at the monastery. The epiphany for me there was less a dramatic experience of God’s presence nor even his still small voice recognizable beyond all doubt. Either or both may happen in my lifetime, I don’t know. Rather, the epiphany I experienced was more the sense that this life with God is a process, a journey, a continuing saga. (I’m old enough now that I can call it a saga, don’t you think?)

I will always have unanswered questions. Always. It is my nature. If I wait to take the next step until all my questions are answered and I have things "figured out," I will never take another step in any direction.

My choices are simple. I can choose to imagine I am walking the path with – or at least toward – God. Or I can believe that I am walking it alone. All that I am called on to do is to set one foot in front of the other on either path. It’s still a path. Either God is still at the center and will reveal himself to me or I am alone. If he is at the center, there is no question that I am and have always been mistaken about him and his nature in at least some of my understanding, no matter how much I’ve thought or studied or experienced. I just need to make peace with that.

I choose to walk believing that he is there and having at least some small confidence that he will reveal himself to me again in his time. At least I trust so.

And so we keep walking....

Grace and peace,

Owen

labyrinth...

2006-01-07T18:10:00.000-08:00

What follows is an edited version of one section of Thursday's journal while I was at Mount Calvary Monastery and Retreat Center in Santa Barbara, California. I will be posting some of my journalings during that time over the next several days, as well as some thoughts about the experience. For now, suffice to say it was a very profound experience!

I walked a prayer labyrinth this morning (Thursday) for the first time. What a rich experience!

First, there was the joy and trepidation of entering it. This is not something that is part of my heritage. In fact, people coming from my heritage would largely wonder about me for participating in this ancient practice. Plus, I had no clue what I was doing there. I asked Brother Robert, one of the monks, if there were any guides or instructions or anything. No, he told me, just let the Spirit lead you. I didn't tell him he was talking to a hyperrationalist. Oh, well. There's no one quite so desperate as a Restorationist with no written instructions!

Part of my trepidation, though, centered more on whether I would find God in the labyrinth, or at least find some kind of meaning there. Perhaps, coming from the background I do, my greatest fears center in discovering the absence of God, rather than his presence. A worthy subject to explore some other time, and, I am sure, one that is heavily influenced by my religious upbringing, not to mention the scientific method that was both part of my high school science classes and my post-graduate religious training.

Anyway, I found in this labyrinth a metaphor for my life and relationship with God. You begin by entering toward the center, but that takes you only so far into the circle before you hit a big rock. Exhilarating to enter at first, to be sure. I remembered when I was first baptized, when I first committed myself to the way of Jesus. Lewis talks about the cloud of joy that surrounds you for a time. It seems that indeed nothing can separate you from God. Consciously enveloped in that fog of divine love, it is almost as if you have died and gone to heaven.

But soon the path turns and we become distracted. Life interferes. There is work or school, family, children, the struggle of relationships, the stresses of life. Lewis suggests that God removes the cloud of his immediate presence for purposes of maturing us. As one who has experienced the silence of God for awhile – the painful silence of God I might add – it is an extremely uncomfortable experience.

I paid particular attention to the turns in the path, pausing as I reached each one, contemplating what significance the turn might represent in my life. I noticed as I was walking the labyrinth pathway that some turns took you toward the center and some took you away from the center, the thing you were focused on when you first entered the maze. How like life that is! In our darkest moments, we think we are turning from God, or we cannot see him, feel him, sense him in any way. That is certainly true of the periods of silence I have experienced.

You look for God but you are facing away from the center.

What I realized is that God is still there, guarding my back, or at least still well aware of me. I also realized that even with my back to the center, I am still within the circle of the labyrinth, representing his love and care and even relationship. I am still within the sphere of his influence. He is there whether I see him or not, sense him or not. And if I will but keep walking the path, I will end up in the center.

But I get ahead of myself.

Most of the path in a labyrinth is directed not toward or away from the center but in orbit around it. That too was meaningful to me. Most of my life is not directed toward the center, but in orbit around the center. I saw various vistas rather than just the center. Sometimes the vistas represented people, sometimes the environment, sometimes the community of faith. I realized that often we see God best when we look at others.

This is not a new concept to me, by any means, but reminded me that sometimes I see Jesus best in the face of my brothers and sisters in community, or in the people I encounter in life who have no observable faith. The least of these, Jesus called them. How often I miss seeing Jesus or God simply because I don’t see the least of these. God forgive me!

Another thing about those “orbits” around the center.... Sometimes they are farther from the center and sometimes closer. And you can never quite see around the bend either. What is there before you if you are looking ahead is a path that reveals itself as you walk. The next step or two, that is all. Until you face a turn. Then it is a turn of faith because you can’t see round the next bend. Sometimes a turn closer to the Presence, sometimes farther away. Isn’t that how life with God is, though?

As long as you don’t “jump” the outer wall, as long as you don’t sit down in the path and stay there, you are still under the influence, within the sphere of the power of the Center. All you must do is keep walking.

Finally, after walking the path that alternates closer to the center and then farther away, you actually do reach the center. What a glorious thing to bask in the glow of God’s presence. But what I realized while standing in the center of the labyrinth is that the only place left to look or go is outward, toward where you entered. You can’t stay in the center forever. Just as surely as the entrance faces inward toward the center, the center looks outward toward the rings and entrance.

I guess that’s what you call God’s viewpoint.

I think I get the idea.

Grace and peace,

Owen

next post coming Saturday...

2006-01-04T08:48:00.000-08:00

I'm heading in a few minutes for a few days of quiet retreat at a monastery. Your prayers are coveted.

I'll be back in time to post something here on Saturday. That is the current plan. Thanks for sharing in my journey as reflected by this blog. Lord willing, I'll be back to reflect on this in a few days.

Grace and peace,

Owen

key questions...

2005-12-30T10:39:00.000-08:00

Okay, so I said check back after Christmas, or around New Years, right? And this qualifies, I think.

I’ve debated back and forth whether I’m going to continue this blog or not. I’m going through some particularly trying times right now. And it does take a good bit of time to keep it up. But... guess I’ll try it for awhile.

I’ve spent over two months now on Sabbath. (Marshall and my side conversations don’t count, right? Nor does facilitating the A Generous Orthodoxy class on Sunday morning, correct? Or leading worship every Sunday? Or rehearsing the praise team weekly? Hmmm......) Anyway, I don’t know that I have much to show for it: a partially-read Grisham novel, finishing of the novel Princess Bride, a greater recognition of my adult ADD, and, well, I guess I’ve been able to better see the questions that are currently occupying my thoughts. Here are a few....

What is the gospel? I have spent time reading Storm Front (as recommended for the Zoe conference last October). It’s tough reading and a bit more than my ADD can currently handle without more concentrated/dedicated time. I’m taking it with me next week on retreat (see below).

If the gospel is the active presence of God in human lives/history and his inbreaking kingdom, why is my experience of him so lacking? In other words, why does our conversation seem so one-sided? I’ve read Blackaby some years ago and find that his Experiencing God book peters out toward the end IMHO. I’ve picked up Dallas Willard’s Hearing God and am on my second fitful pass through it. Again, my question is why do I have to feel like a contortionist?

I know, I know... I had these questions before I went on sabbatical, right? True, but now they are more focused, and more acute.

Getting me to a monastery (see previous posts) has taken some time. But, for now, I am scheduled to spend next Wednesday, Thursday and Friday in Santa Barbara at an Anglican Benedictine monastery on retreat. I am hoping that the brothers there can assist me in the beginning of the pursuit of answers to these questions. At least it is a good way to begin the new year.

This trip was almost sidelined by another necessary trip. My son and I fly to Abilene on 1/13 and will be driving home from there. He’s coming home for a Sabbath from school, at least for this semester.

Anywayz, I will try to post a few articles here as time allows. It won’t be every day. But I do have some other things to say, besides dealing with these questions.

Grace and peace, my friends!

Owen

a time for sabbath...

2005-10-20T09:56:00.000-07:00

Hey, everyone.

I made a suggestion to a friend recently that he take a Sabbath from all God-talk. It seemed to be making things worse, not better. I don't think that is what God intends.

I think I'm going to take my own advice as well. At least here.

This is a particularly busy time for my work calendar (this is my 11th straight day of work). Even trying to think about posting is keeping me from a more positive mental outlook, and makes me more tired than I already am. And, personally, I have areas arising from this discussion that I need to wrestle with God over.

So, forgiveness, please... I'm going to sign off for a couple of months. (At least until Christmas.)

Thanks to all who frequent this blog. I wish you well. You might want to check back in around Christmas or the first of the year.

Grace and peace,

Owen

enter into the joy...

2005-10-17T14:56:00.000-07:00

Sorry (again) to be so long in getting another post up, but I’ve been working many extra hours and have begun a month-long stretch of out-of-town work trips. (I had to reintroduce myself to Dorothy last Friday after the most recent trip and take her on a date that night! Whew! And Saturday I was off on another one to Santa Rosa, where I am now!) I keep hoping that while I’m gone I’ll have some time to reflect and to write for the blog, but, alas, that seems almost never to be the case. There is more than enough for me to do from the time I pick my head up from the pillow until the time I lay it down. Please bear with me! Anyway…

The post that follows is all Dallas Willard’s fault.

I started thinking about Jesus’ story about the three servants and the money their master gave them after reading a paragraph in Willard’s book, Hearing God. We often call this story the parable of the talents, since a silver talent was a significant amount of capital one could invest. Once we do that, our interpretation takes a funny turn since talent means something else in today’s English. Or we see it as work-oriented investment of capital, which is the metaphor Jesus uses but IMO focusing on the subject of the story misses the point of what he’s trying to say. But, enough of debunking poor interpretations of the parable.

What I’ve been thinking of in regard to this story are the various communications between master and servants, and the attitudes with which the servants took those communications. First of all, the master never tells them what to do with the money/capital. Have you noticed that? All three make certain assumptions about what is expected, but the master himself never says anything. Two of the three invest the capital and make earnings. The third misinterprets the character of the master and fearfully hides the money to keep it safe. In response to the stewardship of the master’s capital, the first two are invited into the joy of the master. Peterson’s paraphrase has the master saying, “From now on, be my partner.”

Sounds like a simple investment “success story” and that the guy who had no guts, gets left out.

But Jesus prefaces this story with his common refrain, “The kingdom of heaven is like....” How does that affect our understanding? I think if we see this as simply reward for gutsy investment acumen, we miss what he’s trying to say.

The first two servants understood the heart of the master. The master was all about investment, all about gain, all about entrepreneurship in playing the business game. The servants understood that. They were, in a way, already entering into their master’s joy.

If the kingdom of heaven (God, in Luke) is the presence of God himself breaking into the world, isn’t God overjoyed when we enter into that interchange alongside Him with people in a way that brings him and them near to each other? I’m not talking about slam-bam evangelism (or what sadly passes for evangelism today). Rather I’m talking about the pure joy of not only relationship, but common work along with God as we join him in his breaking into the world.

Aren’t we entering into the joy of our Master when we do something as simple as offering a cup of cold water in his name? Isn’t the joy of our Master something other than parsing doctrinal fine points and winning arguments and drawing lines? Do we degrade God and lower his character by doing these things, rather than entering into his joy? Is Jesus not saying that this is not about fear at all?

Grace and peace,

Owen

catching up...

2005-10-10T12:30:00.000-07:00

I’m still processing this past weekend at the Zoe Conference. We did get back from Nashville okay. I was wondering whether Becca was going to make it back or not. I dropped her off at the airport yesterday morning only to get a somewhat frantic call from her that the ticket I had reserved and paid for was for last Friday, not yesterday. I was stung by the American Airlines website. When I was making the reservations and changed her departure date (before reserving) it reset the return date to 10/7 instead of 10/9. So, no ticket slots available until 5 p.m. today in the same class of what I had ordered. She’s in school and had to get back yesterday. They offered the only thing open – first class seats for either $800 or $1100. I---don’t---think---so! (Shane -- this is what I was doing during early service at Otter Creek. Sorry!)

Anyway, we found a ticket to L.A. on Southwest at a more reasonable price (sorta) and a ticket from L.A. to Fresno (for approximately the same cost as the Southwest trip to L.A. from Nashville!). Only thing was that, once she reached Los Angeles, Southwest Airlines had managed to lose her suitcase. Major trauma! Everything she had of any value in terms of clothing, toiletries, hair stuff AND her MONKEY were in that bag!

Good news, though. She called them this a.m. and found out her bag caught up with her. It’s in Fresno at the airport waiting for her to pick it up tonight.

At least everything worked out... until I get the credit card bill! Oh, well... it's just plastic.

Don’t be surprised if you see a few things on here in the next few days about experiences I had while in Nashville. Like I said above, I’m still processing. Welcome to my process!

Grace and peace,

Owen

brush fires...

2005-10-05T21:48:00.000-07:00

If you have been following the news of California lately, you are probably aware that we are in the midst of brush fire season. There have been several fires burning. One this past week nearly jumped Highway 101. If it had, as all the fire officials noted, it would have burned all the way to the Pacific Ocean. (This is the challenge faced by my alma mater, Pepperdine University. I recall not too many years back seeing video images of the palm trees outside the Hughes Research Lab think tank just up Malibu Canyon Road burning like huge torches.)

Part of the problem with these fires is that they are not only natural, they are part of the cyclical clearing of the land in Southern California. These fires have been happening for centuries, perhaps even millennia, as new growth from abundant spring rains dries out to tinder status. Some of the native plants even rely on this cycle to reproduce. Imported weeds make the fires hotter than they would be otherwise, sometimes even facilitating the permanent destruction of indigenous species.

Now what does all of this have to do with the suture zone?

Put a house in the path of a cyclical fire zone, build a house on a flood plain, erect a house on unstable cliffs above the beach and what’s going to eventually happen? The view can be great, but when the fire sweeps through, when the dam breaks, when the ground saturates with rainwater, then watch out. Tragedy is going to strike.

As my wife and I drove down to see her mom this past Saturday, I noticed that, on the northern part of the San Andreas Tejon hook suture zone, a fire had recently cleared away the weeds and brush that had previously covered the scattered hills. It made me think that not all of what happens on the suture zone happens below ground level. Sometimes other forces, perhaps forces that are cyclical in nature, also ravage the landscape. In the case of the California hills, we had way too much water in last year’s El Niño. Weeds and brush have overrun the hills, overburdening the ecosystem. It is ripe for fire. Unfortunately, something ignited the tinderbox brush and the fire gorged itself on the excess fuel. Several houses were lost.

Maybe the paradigm shift in our world is causing some to deconstruct modernism in the same way that fire clears away the brush... so that something new might emerge. Sometimes the tearing down of the old can be helpful. Sometimes useful structures go up in flames, though, and not all that survives is good.

Now, as with all metaphors, there is a real risk if we push this one too far. As Marshall correctly noted in one of his comments, post-moderns are not turning their backs on science and the knowledge that has been gained through it. Rather, they are not putting all their eggs in that basket. They know, either instinctively or through their observation and experience of the failures of the modern (two space shuttles in pieces, for instance or the rapidly growing incidence of bird flu that could erupt in a pandemic), that science is not, in itself, sufficient to explain the meaning of life nor the mystery they have encountered in the midst of modern failures. Aerodynamics and the explosive properties of jet fuel do little to explain the “why” of the twin towers. It’s as if these paradigm shifters have taken off the blinders and leveled a more realistic gaze at the world and each other. I don’t know. Maybe that’s too optimistic. Maybe we’re still just tearing down the old and nothing new has emerged yet, at least nothing recognizable by most of us.

Anyway, back to my point. (I’m tired. Can you tell?) Not all is burned away. Instead, enough is cleared away (and enough has withstood the flames) to allow our vistas to expand and new imaginations to take root.

Reminds me of the very biblical idea of burning away the dross in the flames. Maybe we’ve had a dross infection in the modern paradigm and it has to be burned away.

I suspect we're in for a very bad fire season in California... and in the world, metaphorically speaking.

For what it’s worth....

Grace and peace,

Owen

October...

2005-10-05T05:32:00.000-07:00

Well, folks. We have arrived at October, which for me this year is a very busy month! I am traveling a good bit through mid-November, and that will certainly impact when and how often I post. But, please, do keep checking.

Today, I'm in the air, so unless I'm able to post tonight (which might happen!) there will be no post today.

Just wanted you to know.

Grace and peace,

Owen

so what is the good news...

2005-10-03T18:25:00.000-07:00

To add to the questions already raised on this site, let me throw another one into the mix. This may seem very basic, so basic that I might seem either an idiot or a simpleton (what’s the difference?) or uneducated in the most basic understandings of what we have defined in modern times as Christianity. But despite that, let me throw it into the mix....

So, what is the good news? And depending on what you answer, how is that good news?

I was raised in a denomination where we did not at first even use the term “good news.” We used the term gospel. Since no one in the pew knew the etymology of that word (or the Greek which it transliterates) we contented ourselves with believing our mission to be to convince people of the need to hear, believe, repent, confess and be baptized. We called it the “five-fingered plan of salvation,” and labored long and hard with logical arguments with our evangelical neighbors. Somewhere along the line, we learned about grace, or at least the evangelical concept of what grace was. It focused on the unmerited favor of God in regard to our legal status before him. Now it was more than that for many, but it was still very individualistic in application.

I’ve been down both roads. I know the Bible pretty well, having been trained in it at the collegiate level and having spent at least ten years in the pulpit. I’ve read numerous books on all aspects of systematic theology, have written lengthy, learned papers on various aspects of the doctrines which were important to my fellowship. (Somehow soteriology [the study of salvation] seems to be the equivalent of the North Star for those from my fellowship as we struggle with our denomination’s standard doctrines on how one responds to God. I’ve done my share of papers on baptism.) And still I ask the question....

What is the good news?

I believe this to be a very critical question that everyone is assuming we already have the answer to. I am not satisfied with the answer. I read Isaiah 61, and Jesus’ self-proclamation to the Nazareth synagogue where he grew up of that same text, applying it to himself, and I ask the question whether our description of the good news is adequate to his description... even more whether it is adequate to his subsequent message and life. (See the Sermon on the Plain in Luke or the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew and tell me where you see what we’ve traditionally called the “good news.”) How does going to heaven after you die, having lived through hell on earth, adequately address what you see in the life of Jesus. (I know, I know. He suffered on the cross. But is there no hope in what he says for people in this life?)

I also struggle with the social justice answer to that question. I understand though don’t know what I think about things like liberation theology, a radical understanding of good news that has Central and South American pastors advocating for armed rebellion against corrupt governments. Is that the good news? Or a part of it? I’m currently struggling with a more local definition in an effort that is inviting me to participate in organizing for social change. I’m struggling very hard to see that in the gospels and Acts. So far, I’m not finding it there, though I heartily think justice for the poor, the alien and the dispossessed of our world enters the picture somehow. It seems more a critique of our have/have not society. But I don’t know that the change will take place by applying current theories of fomenting social change. Jesus seems to be concerned with something that may lead to the result of social change, but goes more to the heart of what is wrong in man and in society.

I don’t have an answer to my question yet that I’m happy with. I’ll throw this meager, inadequate attempt on the table and let you beat up on it for awhile.

So far, the good news of sight to the blind, freedom for the prisoners, good news to the poor, etc, seems to be wrapped up in the simple message that God in Jesus has come near. As a result, if we want to experience that nearness (or maybe because we are experiencing that nearness), we need to change how we think about just about everything. We need to let God redefine our reality about what is truly important in the world and what we give our life’s energy to. We need to allow God to completely recast how we look at the world, especially at people in the world. We need to take seriously the character of our God as we live with, love and deal with each other, even those who are in no sense Christian at all. The good news to me appears to be that the world was never intended to go on by itself. Rather people were intended all along to walk with God and each other in an honoring, fulfilling, loving, others-serving, justice-seeking way. Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done, On earth as it is in heaven. That’s the dynamic process that is supposed to be going on, the good news that brings hope. Or such is the trail I’m currently on.

Now, I may be all wrong. Or I may be just way too simplistic about this. I don’t know.

But here’s my dilemma.

If I am close to what the good news as defined by God/Jesus really is, then God’s nearness and communication with and empowerment of his people in their mission to join him in spreading his realized presence in the world and the justice that comes with him is vital.

Do you see why I’m so focused on the knowing god and the voice of god posts?

I don’t think God wound up the clock and is just letting things run down until he says, “Enough!” and zaps the world with intense heat. Or that as deists might claim today that he will allow the universe to collapse in on itself again into one instance (or whatever you want to call it) that recreates the big bang all over again, complete with a new universe and new physics, etc. (This is not a critique of the Big Bang, by the way. I happen to believe it happened as the astrophysicists up in the Owens River Valley are saying it happened. There is a lot to be said for scientific observation, as flawed as it is, and for the current higher mathematics, which are useful but equally flawed.)

But if God is at all personal, if Jesus Christ was God in the Flesh, then what is the good news? And, more importantly, why is it good for me, for us, for all peoples, for the world?

It seems to me the most critical question to be asked today. And I don’t hear many people asking it.

What do you think?

Grace and peace,

Owen

the voice of god...

2005-10-02T14:37:00.000-07:00

I’ve been thinking about listening to God again. I’m thinking of a particular time in my life when I was convinced that God had spoken to me, asking me to do something that I didn’t really understand. I don’t know that I know the full import of it still. Here’s the story....

Most of you know that I lead worship for Central Church in Bakersfield, California. Some years ago, when we were still in the old building, I had just finished leading and Mark Turner, our then pulpit minister, had gotten up to preach. I remember this clearly for a number of reasons. When I sat down, I sat on the left side of the building rather than the right. Being a creature of habit, this magnified my memory of what happened. Sitting there just felt different.

Well, Mark had started the introduction to his lesson while my mind was otherwise occupied getting settled in this “new” place. Suddenly, I can’t say that this was characterized by words per se, but a strong compulsion came over me that I was to wash Mark’s feet. It came out of the blue. Consider, we are not into foot washing in my denomination. We have traditionally intellectualized the practice, extracting the “message” that Jesus wants us to learn from it. As far as I can remember, my immediate reaction was to ask myself, “Where did this come from?” Mark wasn’t preaching on John 13. None of our songs had a hint of water in them that I could remember. But this compulsion had a weight to it – I don’t know how else to describe it except weight – that I couldn’t ignore. My first question to God was, “Right now? I don’t have any water. I don’t have a towel. No soap. It would be terribly disruptive at this point.” Seeing no opportunity to do what the heavenly imperative commanded, I spent the rest of Mark’s sermon puzzling over this. I have no clue what Mark said that morning. I was struggling with a much more personal dilemma. Or was it so personal? Hang onto that question for a moment while I finish the story.

I told no one of what had happened, not even Dorothy. Convinced I had heard from God (and I’m still convinced of it), I began trying to find opportunity to complete the task that had been given me. Several months went by and no opportunity arose. I remember that a bunch of us, including Mark, went to Promise Keepers in Los Angeles at the Coliseum. I thought prior to going, “Maybe there, maybe I’m to wash his feet there.” No opportunity arose.

Back to Bakersfield with no resolution. Working. Leading worship. Dealing with kids and other family obligations. Life kept rolling along and still no opportunity.

Finally, and this was probably six months after this had been presented to me, it was time for all of us to go to camp. When our family does camp, we take a lot of stuff. The car was packed to the gills. the kids were buckled into the back seat. Dorothy was getting her seatbelt arranged on the passenger side. I took the opportunity to sneak – unbeknownst to them – a plastic basin, towel and soap into a small void in the back of the station wagon. I did it with a silent prayer. Something along the lines of, “Okay, Lord. If you really want me to do this, you need to make it very obvious to me.” Then we headed to camp.

I think I was leading worship that year and helping with music at campfire. I know I wasn’t teaching. It was a kind of family encampment. We had just lost a number of people and families due to the closing of a Christian school. Anyway, days went by. Nothing. It must have been Thursday of that week. I was taking the quarter mile trek from the Green House where Dorothy and I were staying up to the cafeteria. Walking along the baseball field, I was having this long internal and very intense conversation with God. “I brought the basin. I brought the towel. I brought the soap. If this is really from you, I need to know. And if it doesn’t happen now, I’m going to attribute this thing to temporary insanity or something.”

I was late for the morning session. Our then youth minister had begun leading the worship already, which was fine with me. I was still struggling with that internal conversation. I honestly can’t remember who said what, but someone began reading the opening lines of John 13. “Just before the Passover Feast, Jesus knew that the time had come to leave this world to go to the Father. Having loved his dear companions, he continued to love them right to the end. It was suppertime....” And so unfolded there in the cafeteria that two-thousand year-old story of Jesus washing his disciple’s feet. My friend Wade, I believe, was to speak on that very text at the evening worship.

It hit me like a truck. I don’t think God could have made it much more obvious than that. As we walked up the sidewalk to Cabin High, where the men’s class was being taught by Mark, I began a new line of questions in my mind. “How am I going to tell Mark? Is he going to think I’m nuts?” Again Mark taught. Again, I don’t think I heard a single word of what he said. I hung around after class was over. On the sidewalk back to the cafeteria, I asked to speak with him. He was very gracious, didn’t question my sanity, though I certainly was.

That night, in the middle of Wade’s sermon, I walked from the back of the cafeteria to the front carrying a basin and a towel and some soap and washed Mark’s feet. There was a hush in the room. A number of tears were shed that night. God showed up.

Now years later, I am still told this had a long-lasting influence on a lot of people that were and are part of our church. There is no glory in it for me. None at all and none deserved.

It began with God’s direction.

One more point... isn’t it interesting (perhaps more than?) that this directive from God (for so I still believe it to be) seemed to be intended to be witnessed by the community? I’m wondering again if the voice of God is primarily concerned less with us as individuals and more with us as a community of faith intended to bless and break into the world as the living kingdom of God?

What do you think?

Grace and peace,

Owen

café dolce 5: the menu, the meal...

2005-10-01T22:35:00.000-07:00

Well, here is the latest in the Café Dolce series of posts. It was a long time coming, partly because the summer was so busy with work and kids. But the truth is that every time I sat down to write it I could barely get two paragraphs out until the dissatisfaction was so strong that I couldn’t go anywhere with it.

Suddenly, on a morning several weeks ago (and after only one cup of coffee) I had an epiphany of sorts. A small one, but still an epiphany. You can judge for yourself if I’m overstating the case when you’re done reading.

One of the problems of the modern generations (I’m speaking of myself, my parents and older) is that we have become so skilled at slicing things apart into individual and separate pieces, and thinking, by doing that, we understand what we have dissected. (In another post, I may explore how our post-modern children have done the same thing in deconstructing modernism – that’s a hoot! Modernism hoisted aloft on it’s own petard!) Anyway, the same could be applied to this Café Dolce metaphor, or to the experience of eating itself.

As someone who has been in business before, I can guarantee you that the owners of the restaurant I’ve based these particular posts on (or any restaurant that wants to stay in business) have given significant and ongoing thought to what’s on the menu. They know that their stock in trade depends upon convincing as many of those as possible who like relatively inexpensive fresh-made hamburgers, or hot and cold deli sandwiches, or bagels and espresso or whatever else they have on their menu, to stop by and spend some bucks, hopefully on a regular basis.

You could say, in one way, that the owners of Café Dolce are very modern in their approach. It’s all about burgers and bucks and capturing market share from the competing nearby food vendors. Though profit is their motive, if we use this as a metaphor for the church, isn’t it true that there is much more going on in Café Dolce than just the menu and the results of ordering from it?

I remember being there for breakfast once and seeing a woman I know and her husband having a very intense, yet quiet and private conversation. Isn’t that something more than menu? What things have been rejoiced over or struggled with at the tables of Café Dolce? What bonds have been formed and broken over their food? What deals struck and partnerships dissolved as people ate their meals? What gladness of heart?

While the food from the menu is certainly part of the meal, the meal is more than the food. Does that make sense?

Have we so focused on the menu that we’ve forgotten the meal, the fellowship, the relationship?

No wonder Jesus invited us together to table.

Chew on that awhile and see what you come up with.

Grace and peace,

Owen

Good news!!!

2005-09-29T10:52:00.000-07:00

On a personal note.... I spoke with one of our insurance people yesterday. My health insurance company has again reversed itself and decided that my daughter’s surgery last March is covered! She said it is a final determination, and that if the insurance company again reversed itself, the chief administrative officer would settle it in my favor and tell the company what to do. Yahoo!!! That’s a $36-38K load off my mind. Thank you, Lord!

Grace and peace,

Owen

beauty and death valley...

2005-09-28T14:37:00.000-07:00

Please continue to add your comments to knowing god 2: questions...

Marshall has co-opted my blog! :D (not really) But he asks some good questions for the discussion. If these stories he has requested are too personal for you to share on this blog publicly, you can email them to me at suturezone@gmail.com and let me know that you want to participate in the discussion at a deeper level. I’ll create a mailing list from those who respond and forward to that self-selected group. I’m trying to be sensitive to those who want to do their struggling in a little less public place. Then again, if no one is worried, have at it on the blog. Plus, keep your eyes open. I may be taking the tail end of someone’s comment and putting it in a new blog post so we don’t have to go so far back in my blog to see the latest discussion. We’ll see how this goes and adjust accordingly.

Last April, I made my first and only trip (so far) through Death Valley. I am a lifelong resident of California and am surprised it has taken this long for me to make the trip. And it wasn’t really a pleasure/sight-seeing trip either. The road through Death Valley was the shortest route from Shoshone and Death Valley Unified School District to Lone Pine Unified School District (directly west of Mt. Whitney – what an incredible view!!!). It was actually the end of April. Not yet blazing hot, but still long desolate stretches of highway, seemingly barren landscape, dry salt lakes and pretty inhospitable environment.

Amazingly, Death Valley is quite an attraction for wild flowers. You wouldn’t think in such an environment that you would find any kind of beauty. But it’s there, at least for part of the year. And I was told by locals that hotel rooms are booked up for weeks as far away as Pahrump, Nevada, with tourists anxious to catch sight of the carpets of bluish-purple and yellow and red/orange and all the other colors that are part of this incredible palette in the springtime.

Now these are not your normal flowers. The locals and long-time initiated know this. Some of these plants are quite poisonous. Lay down on the ground to get the perfect picture and you will likely end up with a rash or welts on your forearms where they touched the stems of these beauties. One would expect that here, a kind of self-protecting feature built into their short existence. But beauty nonetheless.

Why do we find beauty even there? Have you ever asked that question?

Going across the continental divide once in central-western Colorado, we stopped off the highway at a place that was above the Alpine timberline. It was summer. There is a kind of tundra up there, up where the snow has not yet melted (and probably never melts). I crouched down on the nature trail to view dozens of separate types of vegetation, all bedecked with tiny flowers in multiple hues. Viewed from standing height you miss the flowers. It’s a carpet of vegetation with the barest hints of color to it. But get close and you can see some incredibly beautiful geometrically balanced flowers, complete but miniature.

Is that God’s way of saying, “I can make beauty anywhere and in any life?”

It rained in Bakersfield Monday of this week. On my way home I stopped at the market to get some things we needed to complete our dinner. There was an incredible rainbow to the east. Bright colors and very distinctive. I walked from my car to the door of the market as slowly as the rain would allow (I didn’t want to get all that wet!) looking back to marvel at that rainbow for as long as I could see it.

Most people didn’t notice it. Most people walked with heads down. Too much rain falling. Too many worries. It’s just the refraction of the sunlight through a million prisms created by raindrops at the correct angle, right? There are more important things in life.

Maybe. Maybe not.

I’m wondering if experiencing beauty is much more important than the time and place we give it? Perhaps God speaks in it more than we think?

Maybe the poets are right. And the psalmist....

The heavens declare the glory of God;
the skies proclaim the work of his hands.
Day after day they pour forth speech;
Night after night they display knowledge.
There is no speech or language
where their voice is not heard.
Their voice goes out into all the earth,
their words to the ends of the world.
Psalm 19:1-4 NIV

Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death,
I will fear no evil.
For you are with me;
your rod and your staff,
they comfort me.
Psalm 23:4 NIV

Grace and peace,

Owen

life on the edge of the raft...

2005-09-27T20:51:00.000-07:00

As a graduate student many years ago (before I became ill and had to give it up), I read a journal article entitled Life on the Edge of the Raft. The writer of the article suggested that life with God, as she observed it in the sacred writings, was a bit of a lonely, topsy-turvy experience. You didn’t know where you were going. And you were going wherever the raft and the currents pushing the raft decided you should go.

She wasn’t arguing for randomness in direction. She was just suggesting that God -- along with his purposes and directions -- was difficult to understand. If not impossible at times. Even most times.

I have found that to be true.

Years ago, as I was going through Experiencing God by Blackaby with my friend Wade, my sister gave me a CD of the same name. One of the songs on it likened God, and especially the movement of the Holy Spirit, to a rushing river. All we can do is jump in. Or not.

We can stay in the raft. Or not. (This was before the movie Jaws, which just goes to show how truly ancient I really am. ;-) )

Those are two very frightening metaphors. I don’t know that they are completely adequate. In fact I know they are not. But I have been discovering their truth over the past nearly 30 years since I first read that journal article.

With only the chutzpah and ignorance of the young, I did my best to preach a sermon with the same title. People endured it, I’m sure. I didn’t know what I was talking about. It seemed to ring true, even then. But, truthfully, I had no clue. None.

I think I would preach that sermon differently today. Same metaphor. Different conclusion. Maybe no conclusion yet. Just leave them hanging for the moment....

Life on the edge of a raft. Sounds about right.

Grace and peace,

Owen

knowing god 2: questions...

2005-09-26T15:20:00.000-07:00

Warning: this post asks some very honest but troubling questions. I ask them as a person of faith, but also as one who still struggles with doubts. In this post I am struggling pretty hard. If you are not mature enough to handle that, please don’t read this one. I'm not trying to shake up anyone's faith.

I have been thinking a lot about the “knowing God” post, as well as the conversation that Marshall and I had in posted comments to it, and have wanted to go back and pick up a few threads from that post. (For those that just joined us or want to refresh their memories, you can find the post by clicking the July archive link to the left. It will be on top, July 28. Then, to see the comments, click on “Comments” just below that post.)

In the middle of his first comment Marshall says the following:

Yet do Elijah, Lamott, and my own experiences have anything in common? – yes, the belief that God will respond. And the belief that, in the end, he has. I need to stipulate, however, that both Elijah and Lamott have stronger faith in this arena than I do. In what are perhaps my healthier moments, however, I feel as they do. But, then, “I, or any mortal at any time, may be utterly mistaken as to the situation he is really in.” – C. S. Lewis, A Grief Observed.

(He is speaking of Anne Lamott, author of Traveling Mercies and Plan B on Faith.)

I’m especially interested in the phrase, “the belief that God will respond. And the belief that, in the end, he has.” But before I just leap into the conversation I would like to share some of the background, my background, in regard to this.

I truly do feel like I live on the suture zone. I grew up in a church for whom that expectation and reality that Marshall refers to was not really true. For all of our prayers for the sick and dying, we usually expected God to respond, if at all, through the skills of the physicians or pharmacists. Strangely, there was and there wasn’t an expectation of response. If it happened, it had to happen within very narrowly defined parameters in order to be attributed to the deity, which parameters today to me seem more akin to a modern scientific viewpoint of biblical texts rather than the way they have been historically understood. As I said on worshipforum.com recently, I am a neophyte when it comes to matters of the Spirit’s work today (that’s what I would see as God responding from a Christian perspective). So this is not territory I grew up easily navigating. Honestly, I don’t know whether it is ever easy to navigate, no matter how you grew up.

I grew up in a denomination that denied its identity as a denomination, whose single goal was the restoration of the pure, first-century church with all of the apostasies and human additions (read traditions) stripped away. I grew to call it lowest common denominator Christianity. My thoughts about God and Jesus and the Holy Spirit are strikingly different today, though I remain in a local church that maintains its connections to that movement. I mean no disrespect by this at all, nor is it my purpose here to spend time critiquing that American restoration plea. But as I grew older and became more familiar with the Christian Bible, I began to see a large number of differences from the church we thought we had “restored” and the church of the first century as revealed in the texts themselves. I clearly remember a discussion about tongues and other so-called “miraculous” manifestations of the Spirit with some “new converts” when I was a teenager. This was at the height of the exploding Jesus People movement. Why, they asked, if we were truly trying to restore New Testament Christianity, did we deny the Spirit’s presence in gifting the church? I remember a church elder whose daughter contracted Multiple Sclerosis, who, all standard arguments against modern-day miracles aside, asked me if I thought he wouldn’t be at the door begging one of the traveling faith healers to heal his daughter of this horrid disease if he thought there was any hope of it? They didn’t want her at their door, he informed me. It was said as one who had tried, and I suspect he had, God bless him. (Sadly, I sang at her funeral some years ago.)

As my world opened up and as I grew to know more and more people who were not from my background, who did not share the same view of God as I did, the safe, logical system I was cocooned in while growing up began to unravel.

I have not had the same ecstatic experience of the Spirit that some Christian friends of mine have had. Nor has God appeared to heal anyone by giving me that gift. But I have cried out to God to respond. Some of what has happened in response to that could be characterized as either divine response or happenstance/wishful thinking. Having gone through those experiences, I would fall on the “response from God” side of things, all factors considered, but that is certainly a judgment call on my part. There have been other responses – and even what I would call deity-initiated intrusions – which would be difficult to explain in any other way than to say that God has knocked on the door and said, “Jump!” Either that or at least to a certain extent I am insane.

Now, having given all of that background, I have an assumption to suggest and some resulting questions to ask:

Assumption – God desires at least to communicate with people, if not have some kind of relationship with them.

Why is this so hard? Why are we filled with doubts so often? Why doesn’t he just come out and make it clear, speak up, knock us into the dust with our nose pointed the right direction? Why don’t we have an adult two-way conversation?

I’m not trying to be disrespectful. The deepest desire of my heart is to know him at least in part as he knows himself to fully be. Not that I expect God to hop to it and meet my demands. Not at all. But it would just be nice to have more than a long-distance, mostly one-way conversation full of riddles and speculation about the subject of the communication from him.

Is there anyone else out there who feels the same way?

If he is (and I believe that he is) and if he desires to communicate, then either:

-- he talks to others but is not talking to me and I should drop this expectation; he is the great determinist God of the machine that the Deists believed so strongly in; or

-- he is talking to me and I have the modern equivalent of cotton in my ears and Ray Charles sunglasses on my face, both of which I only seldom remove; or

-- God speaks so softly or so seldom that I ought not expect to encounter his voice except maybe a few special times in my life; or...

...or what???

What should my expectations about this be? Why are my experiences so different from those who appear to have it all together? Or are they so different from me really?

One other thing... I believe strongly that it is not the super-educated, super-intelligent folks that God values relationships with. I believe strongly that God loves and wants to communicate with the digger of ditches just as much as he loves and wants to communicate with me. If that is so, it can’t be all that complicated, can it?

Yes, I know that God will not be manipulated. He made that clear to Moses at the bush. Should I just shut up and be satisfied with what I get?

I know I’m treading on ground that many may feel is threatening. Worse news... I don’t intend to answer the questions here. I don’t have answers with which I am satisfied. Welcome to the suture zone. The ground moves regularly.

Tones is leading (mostly) young adults (I snuck into the class, so...) from our church in a Sunday morning conversation on Christianity in the post-modern era. I almost said this yesterday: many of our crises of faith come about because we are forced to let go of inaccurate or incomplete views of God. I suspect we have many of those views that need to be pried from our hands, certainly from mine. Is that why?

All I will say is that my bet is on God talking all the time. We are just too busy, too occupied, even with kingdom business, or not spiritually attuned enough to be able to hear. If you didn’t read the post on lectio divina, this may be a good time to back up on this blog and familiarize yourself with this ancient practice. I would especially recommend that you practice it with others, if at all possible.

On the way back from lunch today, I passed a Buddhist charity society building. There are Chinese words in symbol form mounted on the side of the building. I have no clue what they say. They could be cussing me out. They could be a blessing on my day. Mostly I ignore them since I don’t understand them. When I saw them today, it made me want to learn Chinese. Maybe we are like that with God? Let me know what you think.

As the deer pants for streams of water,
so my soul pants for you, O God.
My soul thirsts for God, for the living God.
When can I go and meet with God? Psalm 42:1-2

Grace and peace,

Owen

earthquake...

2005-09-23T06:49:00.000-07:00

Well, I missed posting the last two days. The first day I overslept. My taxi ran off without me. The dispatcher was surly in ordering another one. I was surly back. I was late to my meeting. I ranted some at lunch with my fellow-workers about the state agency we are contracted with, bemoaning the lack of sequential planning and preparation that we often see in rollouts. Then yesterday morning I had to repack all the junk I had brought with me.

And other things. ;-)

Anyway, it was just a difficult four days away.

Enough whining. Onto the blog post for today...

Don’t know that it made the national news or not, but yesterday in the early afternoon PDT we had an earthquake near Bakersfield. Actually, we had at least three quakes: the first at magnitude 4.0, the second at 4.9 and the third at 3.0 on the intensity scale. I haven’t checked out the USGS website to see if any were aftershocks, but it doesn’t really matter. The ground rocked and rolled.

And I wasn’t even here.

Don’t you just hate that?

Some felt it, some did not.

Where I would normally be is on the 7th floor of our building in downtown Bakersfield. We feel all of the feel-able nearby earthquakes. Being up seven stories magnifies the sense of how big the earthquake is. And so I am told they evacuated the building for a short time. This happens two or three times a year. My wife, who works less than a mile away at a school site, didn’t even feel the quake. I’m not surprised at that with a 3.0 quake. But a 4.9 does a good bit of shaking and the epicenter was only about 30 miles away. Sometimes people are distracted, or they are driving and don’t notice (if the quake is small enough as these were) or they are asleep or otherwise occupied. And they miss the quake though they were right in the middle of it. There are actually hundreds of earthquakes in California each week that no one but the USGS and earthquake researchers know about or pay attention to. They are called microquakes. No one can feel them. It takes a lot of very sensitive equipment to even detect them. But the landscape, and most importantly the foundations of the landscape deep below the surface of the earth, are constantly changing.

Besides the fact that I’ve named this blog Life in the Suture Zone, why all of this about quakes?

Isn’t this a pretty good description of what is going on with society and within the church in regard to the changes from the modern to the post-modern?

Some say there are no earthquakes. They don’t feel them therefore they don’t exist. Or they name them something else (e.g., the consequences of sin). Others feel them but accept them as a fact of life and don’t acknowledge the changes or the need for change that come with them. They continue to live in unreinforced masonry buildings and refuse to keep an emergency kit with water and blankets and such somewhere where a falling house or fireplace won’t crush them. Some seek psychotherapy in order to deal with these unsettling events. While still others recognize the change in landscape, and most importantly the foundations beneath it, and learn to live within it. Finally, some just move to Florida or Mississippi or Louisiana or Texas where they don’t have earthquakes.

There are a number of responses to earthquakes. Hopefully, you are able to discern the metaphors above without further explanation.

I believe we are living on the suture zone. There are earthquakes.

So how are you responding to the movement of the land?

* * * * *

On tomorrow’s post (I hope), knowing god 2.

Grace and peace,

Owen

on the wagon again tomorrow...

2005-09-22T21:23:00.000-07:00

Well, folks. Thanks for all who have been visiting and checking to see if there is anything new posted here. The last four days in Sacramento have left little time for me to add to this blog. I had one partly done this morning but did not have time to finish it. This is in spite of getting up at 5:30 a.m. Tuesday - Thursday. (Fishing for sympathy here. :-D Just kidding about the sympathy bit!)

Anyway, there was truly no time to write (or at least when there was time I had no brain cells left), though I came away with some new thoughts that I hope will end up here.

Tomorrow (Friday), I hope to have another post up and running, the one I began with hopes to post this morning. We'll see what happens during the night, but hopefully I can finish what I started.

Hope you have (had) a blessed night!

Grace and peace!

Owen

forks in the dishwasher...

2005-09-20T07:49:00.000-07:00

Not much time to write this morning. It’s off to training. But just a quick thought....

I read an interesting article in Education Week by Laura Thomas in the August 10 edition. She uses the experience of her and her husband in regard to how forks are placed in the dishwasher’s flatware holder. Do the tines go up or down?

This argument has gone on for some time in her family. Years even. Decades. And still no consensus on which is the best way. Place the tines down (as her husband argues) and no one gets stuck when they are emptying the dishwasher. Tines up, and at least the forks get clean.

She likens this to arguments that educators have with each other. We argue generally about the things that are least important, because if we can exert control over them, we have the veneer of control over our lives. Power. Stability. But there are incredibly important questions that no one wants to address. Mostly, that’s because they are the harder questions.

I wonder. Is that not our problem in Protestant Christianity? And maybe with Christians generally? Do we argue about the things that, at the end of the day, bear little consequence as a way to avoid the harder issues?

She asks educators the following. I ask it of us as well.

What will it take for us to engage in the real discussions of the big issues? Whose permission do we need? What, exactly, are we afraid of?”

Any takers?

By the way, some of the harder questions we need to deal with are the ones that Jesus raised. They, of course, can lead to some very interesting questions that relate to our cultural situation today.

Something to think about on the suture zone.

Grace and peace,

Owen

back to Sacramento...

2005-09-19T05:25:00.000-07:00

Well, it was a nice weekend. Short, but nice. For now, it's back to Sacramento for me. It's 5:30 a.m. west coast right now. I leave at 6 and will be staying until Thursday afternoon. While I'm there I hope to visit Cafe Dolce a few times. Who knows what will pop up here as a result?

I hope -- as long as I have connectivity -- to keep posting while I'm there. So check back.

Blessings to you all.

Finally, here's something I posted on an online webforum that I frequent.

Disciple making is about forming people into spiritual apprentices of Jesus. Period. It is learning and imitating the art and rhythms of life a la Jesus. It is experiencing this as holy community in communion with the triune God. It is owning and leading others to own the mission of Jesus, which is to spread the yeast of such a life and kingdom out into the world, changing the world for the better and being a blessing to the people in it. It is about standing for justice and mercy and humility and about seeing and owning as our life purpose what is truly important.

Grace and peace,

Owen

day of prayer for Katrina victims...

2005-09-16T10:05:00.000-07:00

Today has been designated as a day of prayer for the Katrina victims. I offer the following prayer from the suture zone:

O God, we cry out to you
Because of this great devastation
Visited upon those who are
Our sisters and brothers
And mothers and fathers
And sons and daughters
All.

And though we are told by people
who seem to know that we are not to ask
Or be so bold as to demand answers,
We cry out with your servant Job, “Why?”
And we wait.

O God, we reel like drunken men from the images we have seen,
Of devastation and destruction,
Of desperation and abandonment,
Of selfishness and class judgment,
Of privilege and poverty.

We have seen them, the people
With hollow faces and empty stares,
And desperate cries for help unanswered.
For the first time, O God, we have seen them,
For the first time – God forgive us – for the first time.
And we cry out to you, O God, for their distress is great.

For those who have lost all,
O Lord, show your mercy.
For the children who have lost parents,
O Lord, show your mercy.
For the parents who have lost children,
O Lord, show your mercy.
For those who have lost anyone or anything dear to them,
O Lord, show your mercy.
For those who perished, forgotten by our society, not missed nor mourned,
O Lord, show us mercy.

Deliver them, O Lord.
Deliver us, O Lord.
Give them strength to find hope.
Give us strength to offer hope;
Bring healing and grace in the midst of devastation.
Bring justice in the midst of neglect.
Bring our eyes to see as you see,
As we pray, hope against hope, that you see.

O God,
May your kingdom come among and through us again.
Make your face to shine upon us again.

We wait for you, O God.
We wait.

Amen.

Grace and peace,

Owen

lectio divina...

2005-09-15T08:08:00.000-07:00

Another quick post this morning...

Here is another ancient jewel.

You may never have heard of lectio divina before. Coming from Benedictine practice, it is a very ancient (early last millennium?) method of encountering God through the reading of scripture, usually in community. Translated literally it means “divine reading.” But it does not reflect my heritage’s view that all you have to do with the word of God is to understand the logic of it. Rather, it stems from the belief that God desires to speak to us through his word right now about him, about us, about our lives, about his desires. It is more prayer and meditation in nature than Bible study. It has also been called “the embrace of God.”

The practice is simple...

First there is reading/listening.

Fr. Luke Dysinger of the Order of St. Benedict calls it “deep listening,” akin to what Elisha practiced in the desert – a quiet, humble listening for the still, small voice of God. It is not so much focusing on a long passage, as it is finding a phrase or sentence in which we sense the voice of God to us. Once we have found that, we move to the next step.

Second, comes meditation.

Taking the word into ourselves we ruminate on it, repeating it slowly, savoring it, letting it melt in our hearts and melt our hearts. As a child, when I went fishing with my grandfather, he would often bring along some beef jerky. It was not so plentiful back then. You couldn’t find it at Costco. He bought it at the local butcher shop in South Whittier. He would hand me a small piece and tell me to chew it slowly and get all the flavor out of it. He wasn’t going to give me another piece because I swallowed quickly and missed the lasting sharp flavor of that treasure. So it is with meditation. Intimacy takes time, no matter the lies the television commercials feed us. And I do mean intimacy. All of us carry around baggage, painful moments, broken or strained relationships, illness, rejection, and all sorts of other “stuff” over which God desires to speak his healing and affirming word. It is in meditation that we begin to experience God’s embrace. This takes some transparency and vulnerability before God. The “all together” I-am-in-control mask won’t cut it. Meditation brings us into the next phase.

Third, is praying.

Think of this prayer as more than one-sided conversation. You have begun to listen to God. This is dialogue time. That’s the first part of prayer in lectio divina. Conversation. I have prayed so many prayers in my life that are one-sided, hardly ever giving God a place to speak. Lectio divina is rather about conversation. And that conversational prayer should also lead to the second part of prayer: consecration, consecrating the parts of our lives to God that he has called us to consecrate as we have encountered this intimate embrace. In the words of Dysinger (see above), “we allow our real selves to be touched and changed by the word of God.”

Finally, we spend time contemplating.

This is a time to simply rest in the presence of the One who has spoken to us, called to us, through His word. Dysinger calls it “wordless, quiet rest in the presence of the One who loves us….”

In some ways, this ancient method is foreign to our rush-rush world. People on the suture zone recognize the inability of science and modern religion to fully meet the deepest needs of their hearts. Eastern religions seem to value these same things and there are many who have no concept that Christianity was at its beginning an eastern religion.

Also, though this art can be practiced as individuals – and should be – I believe its value to be even greater in sharing the experience. One can turn the contemplative step into a sharing of what we have heard from God. I have done this with Tones and his wife Zee where all three of us heard the same thing. Might this keep us from making ill-advised decisions about which direction God wants us to go in our churches? Novel concept, listening to God.

For more on this ancient art, check out Dysinger’s article at:

Valyermo

Well, this turned out to be not so quick, eh? Maybe I should slow down? ;-)

Grace and peace,

Owen

the exciting church...

2005-09-14T08:00:00.000-07:00

Last spring I saw a bumper sticker that said, “Such-and-such church... the exciting church.” (Name not included to protect the guilty ;-) )

You can bet I wrote a reminder note to myself on this one!

Well, a conversation I had with first-time visitors several Sundays past has resurrected this experience. It’s not the first time I’ve had this conversation, but it’s the first time it hit me exactly this way.

First, some background...

I lead worship at Central Church in Bakersfield. We have roots in the Church of Christ and still maintain a cappella music (i.e., voices only – no instruments) in our Sunday morning worship. We have, however, moved to a more contemporary expression, using many of the new praise choruses, some dramatic readings, once in a while a participatory experience, even communion at smaller round tables once a year. We also have a vocal praise team of about 12 people every Sunday.

On the Sunday I am referring to, four women who were first-time visitors approached me after service saying that they enjoyed everything about the experience except the music. It was… well, too sedate for their tastes.

I guess it was.

And I guess this was one of the more blatant examples I’ve seen of the consumerism that is so rampant in our culture. There is a drive to find what excites, what titillates, what fires the heart and raises goose bumps, even in church. And this becomes the focus of worship – how can I become “excited” and “fulfilled”?

Now I have to be careful here. For the longest time in my tradition we’ve squeezed every last ounce of emotion out of our worship experience until it has become as dry as Death Valley in the middle of summer, leading some of us to ask God’s question to Ezekiel as to whether “these bones can live.” I’m not decrying our return from that desert wasteland. What I am saying is that a close encounter with God – which is what worship at its heart is in my definition – involves all of me – heart, mind and will – as I am caught up in the story of God’s ongoing activity in a clearly fallen world. The focus of worship, from my perspective, is a focus on God, not us, and on his presence and activity in the world, not only inside the four walls where corporate worship is occurring. For it to become simply about my becoming excited or moved or whatever, smacks of manipulation AND places the focus squarely on me and “my needs” as opposed to God. Reminds me of St. Paul’s description of fallen humanity in Romans 1 when he says they have been worshipping and serving the created rather than the creator.

Tones and I have had this conversation many times. Executing the Soul’d Out service (generally) once a month is a lot of work, and we don’t get much help to do it. People come and experience it and leave. I’ve told him a number of times that it is easy to make religious consumers, but quite hard to make disciples.

When we as churches get caught up in becoming an “exciting church,” we seem to pander to religious consumerism. I think that is a very bad direction to be going. No question that we need to allow people to encounter God in their own heart language rather than in words and ways that suited people in the 1850s. But that effort can easily degenerate into feeding an experience addiction. And like any addiction, the craving grows voraciously, while what is supplied grows more and more unable to fulfill it.

On the suture zone, there are people who are searching for authentic meaning in their lives, trying to make sense of their world and of themselves, “searching,” as Donald Miller has said in the title of his book, “for God knows what.” A whooped up and hollering, head-banging music experience is likely not going to answer their deepest questions and longings as they try to fill what I believe is a God hole in their lives. (BTW, I’m not against any kind of music – except perhaps country ;-) )

I believe what they are truly looking for has not much at all to do with what happens on Sunday morning for an hour or so. I think they are looking for authentic conversations with other people who don’t have all the answers, who, like them, get up on Monday sometimes and look in the mirror and wonder what in the hell all of this is about and why they should continue, who experience things gone wrong and constantly nagging questions about life and the why of it all. And, most importantly, they are looking for those people, who in spite of the descriptions I’ve just given, have a firm faith in a living and present God who provides at least some sense of direction and purpose in life. Some are so jaded in the search because they haven’t found such people that they are nearly despairing.

There is a place for religious experience. I believe that place is in the company of God and each other. At least that’s the way the writers of the Christian Bible have put it. (Take a look at 1 John.)

As patiently as I could, I explained to these four women that it was unlikely that we were going to vary from our tradition on Sunday morning in the near future, that we valued our tradition for a number of reasons, that the challenge musically was that we lose the eighth notes supplied by a drum set, bass and guitar strum pattern, and that, yes, we were relatively sedate in our approach to worship most of the time.

They haven’t been back.

I hope they find what they are looking for. No, rather, I hope they find God in the process.

Grace and peace,

Owen

a short note on Katrina

2005-09-13T12:50:00.000-07:00

Two posts in one day! How about that!

I pretty much ranted awhile back in a comment regarding the political nature of how things are done in this country. Everyone is so focused on money and power and reputation. No one seems to be focused on the people except as political weapons in their party’s arsenal.

I still feel the same way I felt in that comment. I think I called the FEMA director Mark Brown instead of Michael Brown, but the feelings are still the same. Likely as not, he is incompetent and deserves to be fired (or to resign in lieu of...). I’m sure more heads need to roll. But, please, someone address the problems that caused this tragedy to be worse than it had to be.

The political hay that is being made of this somehow loses sight of who this tragedy is really about and how we are going to address it in the long-term.

More importantly, how are the people of God, the apprentices of Jesus, and all those of similar attitude, going to address the global crisis of the poor, the elderly, the sick and otherwise disenfranchised?

More on this in a future post, but for now just a reflection from when I was finishing my shower this morning. I was reflecting on how nice it would be to have a softer towel. You know, the big fluffy ones. Sometimes I get them in hotels. Sometimes when I stay with friends I get them. Anyway, as I was reflecting on this, a thought occurred to me. It seemed utterly ridiculous to be giving thought to soft towels when so many people are going hungry, dying of AIDS, enslaved in the sex trade, poor and homeless.... Somehow or other, I couldn’t imagine Jesus longing for soft towels in this moment.

Something to think about....

Grace and peace,

Owen

phos hilaron...

2005-09-13T12:34:00.000-07:00

The Phos Hilaron (literally – hilarious light) is an ancient Christian prayer-song. First recording of it occurs in the 4th century (that’s 301+; one source says 3rd century or even earlier), and sources say it was considered ancient in the worship of the church even then (St. Justin the Martyr quotes a fragment in 150 A.D. in a letter to someone.)

If you’ve ever sung the hymn Hail, Gladdening Light, you have sung some translation of this confession. It is a confession filled with hope. Here is a more modern translation:

O joyful light,
from the pure glory of the eternal heavenly Father,
O holy, blessed Jesus Christ.

As we come to the setting of the sun
and see the evening light,
we give thanks and praise to the Father and to the Son
and to the Holy Spirit of God.

Worthy are you at all times
to be sung with holy voices,
O Son of God, O giver of life,
and to be glorified through all creation.

The setting, I am told, is for evening prayers (Vespers). It is dark in the room where the worshipers are waiting, as a single candle enters the room as if coming from the empty tomb of Jesus. Worshipers respond by singing or chanting or saying the Phos Hilaron together. Some sources suggest this was the practice for Vespers in the Church of the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem in the 4th century and was adopted into the Byzantine liturgy.

The symbolism is so thick and rich… you can feel the weight of nearly 2,000 years of faith hanging over it. It is suspected that ancient Christians sang this hymn while worshiping in the catacombs (those are tombs cut out of the rock) during the second century. How long did this jewel lay covered in dust in the ancient world? More importantly, why didn’t I know about it? (It actually became part of the Greek Orthodox liturgy and survives there to this day, though Roman Catholics never knew of or adopted it.)

One thing I do know. Such symbolic things resonate with many post-moderns. They certainly resonate with me. Maybe the setting changes… someone’s living room among friends in a small house church, candle coming from the hallway carried into the room by one of the women or girls (they were the first good news bearers, remember?) as those assembled recite the Phos Hilaron, everyone lighting a handheld candle from that one, softly singing Tim Hughes’ Here I Am to Worship, transitioning into a song that focuses on us being a reflection of that light in the world. You get the idea.

Why does worship change? Because the wine of Jesus is too rich for any one wineskin. How much more powerful for people in the midst of wilderness wandering as we are today than the mindless, easy liturgical order we’ve fallen into?

While worship is not the end all and be all of what it means to be a Christian, having pointed us to the light who is Jesus, it can also then direct us to what is truly important: becoming an apprentice of Jesus in the larger world.

Anyway, perhaps more blathering and of little to concern to those who are reading, and, if so, thanks for your patience. There will be more for you here soon.

Grace and peace,

Owen

quick notes and worship...

2005-09-12T07:26:00.000-07:00

Well, as I promised several weeks ago, here is my first blathering post. Please forgive. It’s just the discipline of the thing I’m trying to achieve. These kinds of posts are going to be short and sweet. Perhaps even meaningless.

My fingers are sore as I type this. I played last night for our Soul’d Out service. (I play guitar) and had let my callouses go during the summer by not playing much. So it is painful to press down on these keys.

Yesterday morning’s worship centered around becoming a living sacrifice. It included an offering on behalf of the Katrina hurricane victims. We sang Still by Reuben Morgan (from Hillsong in Australia) with pictures of the tragedies and heroic rescues of victims showing on the screen. Though my back was to the congregation while I directed the song, when I turned around, many were wiping their eyes.

Last night’s Soul’d Out worship was focused on adoration. We used the Phos Hilaron at the beginning of the service. I’ll explain more in tomorrow’s post.

Quite the contrast between the two services, even though we sang a few of the same songs. I believe people were moved in both, hopefully moved to be better reflections of Jesus in the world this morning and tomorrow and the day after.

So why has worship changed over the millennia? I was taught – and now reject – that worship changed because of the unfaithfulness of the church to the approved biblical examples (as if there are any!). That is a bit naïve, especially when you consider that we don’t do ancient chants in my heritage.

But back to my question… why has worship changed over the millennia? What have we left behind us to gather dust that we might want to reach back and dust off? What is newly emerging?

There is more to this sea change that I refer to as the suture zone than just worship. But I want to explore this a bit. And what is it that calls me as a post-modern person to acknowledge that which is greater than myself? How does that look? Especially, how does that look for people on the move, on this journey? And how does it look to someone who has rejected the modern view of Christianity and God?

Questions, questions.... Pesky questions!

Grace and peace,

Owen

a ray of hope...

2005-09-08T10:36:00.000-07:00

My wife spoke with her brother in Southern California last night. We’ve been following the story in New Orleans carefully, since our sister-in-law’s sister and family live just south of Lake Pontchartrain near New Orleans. Though the water came up only to their porch, and they had decided to stick it out, advice has been to relocate. In fact, their church had raised enough money for four plane tickets, one for the mom and one each for her three daughters. (Dad is staying unless forced to leave, and I’m not sure mandatory evacuation applies to them where they live.)

Two of the daughters were sent by plane to a friend’s place in Texas. But mom and daughter number three stayed at home. This daughter is medically fragile and is tube-fed. By the time they realized that it would be wise for the two of them to use the plane tickets, the airlines would only allow one of them to go. Obviously, mom wasn’t going to go off and leave her daughter, nor send her by herself on the plane. So it was back home for the both of them.

All of that background to get to the real story.

The handicapped daughter had attended special education classes in her local school system and was transported there by a man who owned his own special education transportation bus. Evidently the district would contract with the man to provide these services to remotely located students.

Anyway, sometime after arriving home from the dilemma at the airport, they saw him driving his school bus around the neighborhood. The hurricane actually destroyed his house completely. All he escaped with were the clothes on his back and his small yellow school bus. He noticed that they were still there and stopped to check on them. When he heard of their dilemma, he came up with his own solution: he would drive them halfway to their friends’ home in Texas if the friend would drive the other half and pick them up. He did. They met in the middle of the journey, made the trip the rest of the way with friends, and I assume he made it back to his home, or what was left of it. (Please also note the irony that he still has his school bus, but no pupils to transfer and no school to take them to. That all equals no job or paycheck either.)

All he had were the clothes on his back and his small yellow school bus. But he didn’t grasp them to himself as his only assets. He used them in service to someone in need.

If that’s not kingdom living, I don’t know what is. It certainly puts me to shame.

Anyway, just thought I would share this.

Grace and peace,

Owen

devastation and desperation and life under the scab...

2005-09-02T08:03:00.000-07:00

Note: I don't know how I feel about the following post; I feel it strongly, but welcome your dialogue (as always).

I had a hard time going to sleep last night. I should have.

Since our daughter got her television fixed and went back to school, we’ve had our television back in our bedroom. I left it on the floor for awhile, reluctant to put it back in the armoire on its swivel platform. Seems more peaceful without it. For one thing, I like to read and I can’t read with the television on. I especially can’t read when the television is spewing out words of desperation and accusation from people who have been abandoned in New Orleans.

So just before bed, after having ridden the emotional rollercoaster of the all news channels with interspersed forays into the Food Channel and A&E and the Family Channel looking for relief (and finding none – not even Whose Line Is It Anyway? sufficed), I sat down on the bed. Dorothy asked something like, “Do you mind if I turn this on? Is this going to bother you?” (If you’ve been married you know the answer to the question, right guys?) But I picked up my book and walked into our family room. I couldn’t take it anymore.

I don’t know how many of you have spent time glued to your television set with the Katrina disaster, but it has been heart-wrenching to say the least. I was nearly apoplectic last night to hear the phone call to one of our local news stations from the daughter of one of our local families, who, with her husband, an older woman (grandmother?) and several others caravanned in two cars to one of the open bridges out of New Orleans only to be turned back – with gunfire making the point – by of all groups the National Guard!

The natural devastation is horrible. But we’ve had horrible natural devastation before – two huge storms in Florida last year alone. We’ve seen the heroics before. Remember the stories from Florida and the twin towers in New York?. And this story started the same way shortly after the hurricane passed through. But it began to take an ugly turn two or three days after. To say that the local, state and federal response has been inadequate is to master the height of understatement. Obviously, they never expected such magnitude in the crisis. And I’m not trying to pretend the answers are simple ones. Shutting down a city of more than 1 million people and trying to find a place for all those displaced people is no small project (not to mention housing the forgotten victims of this tragedy – Biloxi, Gulfport and to a lesser extent Mobile, plus all the farms and little towns; Waveland, I understand, was ground zero for the hurricane).

What we have not seen before, at least to this extent, is the ineptness of the response and the dark underbelly of our society. This is going to rest uneasily on the national psyche of the United States for a long time. Fellow citizens of US America, welcome to the real world.

Sadly, we are used to seeing these pictures from some sub-Saharan African nation run by a dictator plagued by a militant rebel bent on coup. We are used to seeing the desperation of people caught between a corrupt South American government on one hand and the drug lords on the other. We can see that on the evening news when television news editors deem it more important that the latest scandal surrounding the latest Hollywood star. And we can go to sleep.

But in the United States? No, it can’t happen here! Our threats are from outside terrorists, not our neighbors. We cannot descend into such anarchy. Well, we have. The scary thing is that it is not very far below the surface. Scratch a festering wound and it breaks open to reveal much hidden below the scab. That which unites us is frayed and worn, stretched and oozing. This shows us just how much like the rest of the world we are and how quickly we fall into anarchy when something opens the wound.

I in no way blame the desperate people trying to find a way out of the nightmare that the aftermath of Katrina has become. I ache for them. I wish I could do something more for them. New Orleans is not a safe place. This nation is not a safe place. The world is not a safe place. Makes me value once again David Lipscomb’s distrust in any government to bring about the kingdom of God. Guess I’m a true son of at least that part of my heritage.

Truth is that our middle class is disappearing. The rich get richer. The poor get more desperate. It takes such a disaster as Katrina to open our eyes to it.

I guess the question for those on the suture zone… and those still not there… is how do we respond to such a world as people of faith? What does it mean for the good news of the kingdom of God to break in into such a fragile and desperate situation? Certainly not doctrinal systems and finely parsed dogma. Is it words? Is it money and volunteering? Is it cooperation with others with whom we may disagree religiously or politically? Is it joining people from the Big Easy in crying out to God in desperation, demanding to know why such a tragedy should befall them?

The news is not all bad. The initial crisis, though prolonged almost a week now, will subside. There are people opening their homes up to complete strangers who have been displaced by Katrina; strangers that they are fearful of, and yet they open their homes. Churches of all stripes (and I imagine synagogues and mosques and temples, etc) are opening their doors as shelters for the displaced. The scab will reappear soon and we will try to pretend that what is beneath it is not really there.

Last night, God saw beneath all the scabs of the world. He saw the desperation of the people in New Orleans. He saw the desperation of the people in Darfur and Columbia and a million other desperate places. He saw the desperation of your neighbors, the homeless in your community, the addicted. And he couldn’t sleep. He hasn’t slept in millennia.

Open our eyes to what you are doing, O God, and give us grace to join you.

Grace and peace,

Owen

thanks...

2005-08-31T10:46:00.000-07:00

By the way, thanks to Adam Cooper for linking from his blog to this one. If you would like to visit his blog, it is found at http://treadingh20.blogspot.com

justice and mercy and the kingdom of God...

2005-08-31T10:45:00.000-07:00

Well, I received what might be good news about the insurance situation last night. Maybe. Evidently, someone along the line gave an additional diagnosis code which is not covered (and which my daughter does not have) and that has held up the entire works. It is still not resolved, but at least there is some hope that resolution is possible. The insurance company hates like thunder to allow changes in diagnosis code, but this appears to be a clerical error. I hope. This has been very scary and very frustrating for me. It represents a very large sum of money (to me at least—one-third of my annual gross salary). Having said that, when I look at the images and hear the voices of those from New Orleans and Gulfport and Biloxi and Mobile and other devastated cities/areas on the Gulf Coast, my problem is a pimple compared to that full-blown stroke.

I would point you this morning to Larry James’ post of two days ago (see my “Links” in the left-hand column). He has made me think about how many of those who are really suffering there were already near or below the poverty line. I also heard in yesterday’s news that we added another 1.1 million people nationally to the poverty rolls last year. Yet the rich get richer. Personally, I don’t think God is happy about this.

If you are like me, you probably sat in front of your television when Katrina was bearing down on New Orleans and wondered out loud about why people were staying. I am sure that the word “idiot” and other words perhaps a bit stronger were used by some of us.

Consider this (as Larry James points out). Some of them had no transportation, nowhere to go, no one to stay with, no money with which to rent a motel room or pay for food. Nada. Hard for some of us who are well-provided for to comprehend. That we can’t is even more scary than my insurance fiasco. True?

I’ve also watched the scenes of looting. Have you noticed how many folks are stealing diapers? People are also grabbing food off of shelves. I’m not trying to defend looting. But I would point out that there are no neighborhood stores where these people can get the supplies they need to survive right now. And relief efforts are being hampered by all the flooding.

Of course, some of the looting comes from hooligans. But still. It’s something to think about.

On the suture zone, the church is going to have to reexamine how it engages (and serves) those in poverty. Part of the in-breaking kingdom of God involves good news to the poor. In the words of an old His Players vignette that echoes a passage in James, that doesn’t mean patting a needy little girl on the head and saying, “Be warmed and filled little girl.”

The real question is to respond to the poor in a way that is transforming for them... and for us. “Oh, trysting place where heaven’s love and heaven’s justice meet,” is the line from the old hymn. It speaks of the cross in more juridical terms. But I would suggest that the kingdom continues to break in at the meeting place of justice and mercy. That goes for the poor, the sick, those who are enslaved, prisoners, the desperate, the widows and orphans, the hungry and thirsty.... You get the idea.

How the church engages the poor and disenfranchised is a measure of how much it resembles (or doesn’t resemble) its avowed Lord.

Sobering. Much to chew on. I wish you good chewing!

Grace and peace,

Owen

patience...

2005-08-29T12:58:00.000-07:00

Has anyone out there been praying for me to learn patience or something?!? Would you please stop!!!

Friday night when I got home I opened an estimate of benefits letter from my health insurance company. They were informing me that, after six months of deliberations in a dark, smoke-filled rooom somewhere in Los Angeles, they've decided to deny the claim for my daughter's surgery last March. Well.... Well....

There's a whole lot I could say, as you can well imagine! But there is probably an equal amount of what I should not say, directly corresponding to what I could say.

Please be patient with my posting. It seems that another major circumstance/distraction has blown up in my face and interrupted my ability to post here. There are letters to write and attorneys to see as I pursue the ERISA appeal process. Oy, vey! (Again, only Yiddish suffices in these moments!)

By the way, rather than adding a comment to those on the last posting, I wanted to say out here in the open that I think Marshall is a marvelous poet! If you haven't read them, you might want to check out the comment sections of the last several posts. He has graciously added the poems there. There are a lot of people struggling with faith on the suture zone of our times. I appreciate his honesty and lack of pretense with the questions -- and the God -- he is struggling with. This is something we very much need, IMO.

Just reading some of the posts on other blogs/forums of people that I know who live in Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama, I have already seen people trying to make sense of this in relation to their faith in God. Does the struggle reflected in poetry help us? Yes, most definitely. It may not give us the black and white answers that modernists crave, but poems are often more honest about the struggle and lack of resolution of all the tensions. Again, my opinion.

Anyway, the people in those areas are facing a challenge much greater than the one I'm facing. Mine doesn't compare... but it's mine.

Grace and peace (said through gritted teeth in the direction of Los Angeles!),

Owen

this God-forsaken place...

2005-08-26T08:13:00.000-07:00

Okay. So I’m working on Café Dolce 5, but it’s taking a long time. And this is the first week of school, which means that Dorothy is back at school. Her first class starts at 6:55 a.m., so she has me up at 5 or just before to walk. I’m on my third cup of coffee this morning and the brain has yet to click on.

With your permission, I’m just going to start blogging a little bit each day. It may be blather. It may contain a tidbit here or there. But at least it will get my juices running again.

On our way back to Texas, Steven and I drove past a wide spot in the road called Desert Center. (Actually, he was driving and I was whipping out my Palm to record the images I was seeing.)

I said, “This is a God-forsaken place, isn’t it?”

There was a double row of date palms parallel to the highway, but half were missing their tops, chopped off by high winds or some crazed man with a chain saw and no sense of artistic balance. Most, if not all, the buildings were boarded up and abandoned, except for an apparently non-brand gas station. I saw dust billowing up behind a car that was driving up its dirt driveway.

That is pretty God-forsaken, isn’t it?

As the words came out of my mouth, it hit me. Is there any such thing as a God-forsaken place in this world?

Perhaps one of the things the suture zone has taught me is that God is a whole lot more active “out there” in these god-forsaken areas and with these god-forsaken people than he is in the cloistered environs of church and family and communities marching in religious (and political) lockstep.

I’m reading a book right now that is definitely a good read. A bit difficult to get through because of the blended writing style of its four authors, but I would recommend it. It’s called StormFront: The Good News of God (William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company), and is on the recommended reading list for the upcoming Zoe conference in Nashville. One of the things the second chapter author refers to is what missiologists call the missio Dei, or mission of God. They contrast the typical approach to missions characterized by “Let’s go on this mission for God” (in other words, let’s do this for God) with “God is on a mission. Let’s see if we can recognize the work he’s carrying on around us and see if he will let us join him in it.” It seems a subtle difference, but it is really quite profound. One is what we do for God, which I’ve said for a long time isn’t worth much. The other is finding ourselves in the midst of his story and his action and his love, and being used by him as he accomplishes his purposes around us.

There are no God-forsaken places in the world. There are no God-forsaken people in the world. God, in love, is working as hard as he can – within the bounds of the free will he has given us – to turn it around. That’s what Jesus was about. Not some mental salve for my conscience. Not some magical hocus-pocus wielder that turns us all into God’s Stepford Wives. Rather he was yeast in the dough. Salt on the food (and in some cases wounds). Light in the darkness. A treasure hidden in a field. Healing for the afflicted. Good news to the poor. Freedom to the prisoners. A cup of cold water. And many, many other metaphors, all of which are meant to bring us back to loving God and loving each other; doing justice, loving mercy and walking humbly with God; God setting the world right again, no matter what race, ethnicity or religion we are, and asking us to join him in that work.

It’s tense work, what God is doing. It is not for the faint of heart. It’s eye-opening. It’s dangerous. Many have ended up crushed by the overwhelming evil that infects the world. But God is an optimist, isn’t he? Why else would he send Jesus, if he didn’t think his mission stood a chance in hell?

One last thought… God did not send Jesus into the world to provide us with the correct belief system or doctrinal structure or faith community organization or any other such thing. God sent his son into the world that the world might be saved through him. We need to read that word “saved” with new eyes, I think.

So, what’s happening in your God-inhabited piece of the world? May you (and I) join God in what he’s doing today.

Grace and peace!

Owen

Word verification for comments

2005-08-22T06:42:00.000-07:00

Hi, everybody...

Well, Steven is back in Texas at school now, and Rebecca is heading to Fresno tomorrow. So, you'll probably start seeing a bit more action on my part on this blog in the next week or so.

IMPORTANT

If you comment on this blog, I need to let you know about a new feature. A number of blogs that I a read have begun to receive computer-generated blog spam in their comments section. Blogspot.com has created a word verification process for comments similar to what they have in place to create a blog. It will show a word or series of five or six letters that must be typed into a box prior to your being able to post.

I apologize for having to do this but I found a computer-generated ad-related comment this morning when I checked my blog. With what I've seen with other sites, I thought I should take care of it now. Please let me know if you have problems with it and I'll try to explain how it works in more detail. If you have a blog and this is happening to you, too, I would be glad to direct you to the place in your dashboard where this feature can be turned on.

Thanks for reading...

Owen

the poor...

2005-08-06T09:58:00.000-07:00

Something has been bugging me for awhile. In my opinion, it’s an illustration of how our culture can influence or tweak our understanding of things that Jesus said, turning them into something he never intended them to mean.

We live in a society that values bootstrap efforts to improve yourself. Find yourself growing up in a family with not enough food? Wearing hand-me-downs all your life? Dead-end job? No job? Then get with it. Take advantage of the opportunities that are out there to pull yourself out of that situation.

It’s the American dream.

Mind you, I’m not against personal responsibility nor do I question the necessity of self-motivation. But I do believe we have a responsibility as a society to create opportunities for things like that to happen. And to create policies when dealing with poverty that offer healing rather than perpetuation of the cycle.

First, the phrase from Jesus... “The poor you will have with you always....” Where our bootstrap ideology has led us in interpreting that phrase... “Poor people are not our priority since they’re always going to be here. There’s nothing we can really do to effectively address poverty, so throw a little money at it, relieve a little suffering, and that’s it. Poverty is a result of personal attitudes. They have a way out if they have enough gumption.” Now, I don’t believe any of what I just said. But I’m afraid that churches in general have looked at poverty in that way based on a misunderstanding of what Jesus was trying to say to Judas.

The way I read the text, Jesus is providing for an exception rather than creating a rule. The story revolves around a woman, perhaps of questionable reputation, who breaks open a very expensive jar of perfume and anoints Jesus with it. It is an extravagant expression of love and thanks. It acknowledged God’s work in this woman’s life through Jesus. And it, according to Jesus, anticipated his own life sacrifice only a few days off. In addition, he is responding to a less-than-forthright motivation – theft – that possesses the soul of the complainer (Judas), according to one of the gospel writers.

Somehow, this phrase has been subtly used to disengage much of evangelical and free church practice toward poverty, other than just throwing money at the problem, a tactic that, used as a sole component in addressing the issues, tends to perpetuate poverty rather than heal it. I would credit Mennonites, socially-conscious Catholics, some old-time Protestant liberals, Jews and some Muslims with attempting by their actions to refocus on the plight of the world’s poor in more constructive ways. There are others, too. A growing number of emerging churches have taken this up, and even some evangelicals are beginning to hear the call.

Jesus valued the poor, those who are "insignificant" in the world's eyes. His mission was to "seek and save that which is lost," a perfect description of those caught in poverty. And are they ever caught! I have had friends who are recovering addicts, who have a "record", and I'll tell you that the hole they have to dig themselves out of is incredibly deep. The hole is filled with poverty, temptation, rejection, mistrust and all kinds of other sludge that they must swim up through. One could almost say there is a societal plot to keep them down, unemployed, and incarcerated, even the ones who have taken ownership of their lives, followed 12-step principles (which I heartily endorse, by the way), and have wholeheartedly committed themselves to pursuing sanity.

I’m not trying to solve the complex cycle of poverty in one blog entry. I certainly think the church at large needs to cooperatively weigh in to a greater extent in seeking just and compassionate solutions to this crisis. But, I do think it is also a warning that the interpretations we have on the modern side of the suture zone are perhaps more products of our modern culture/society/worldview, than we might have thought. Assumptions are dangerous things, especially when it comes to the inbreaking kingdom of God.

Am I misreading this about us? What do you think?

Grace and peace,

Owen

P.S. Check out the link to the left to Larry James' blog. He is much more on top of this stuff than I am.

knowing god...

2005-07-28T00:02:00.000-07:00

Wow! Great comments to the last post! If you didn't read the comments you may want to in order to understand my response here. I decided to put it on as a post instead of a comment.

Hey, Tim! Welcome to my blog! Good comments. I think you are right. Modernism cannot completely describe God. Our knowing is imperfect. Our experience of him is imperfect. Glory to God that he desires (and accomplishes) relationship with us in spite of our lack of knowing or full experience. I think this is what drove St. Paul's comments in 1 Corinthians 13, by the way. We "see in a glass darkly" right now. We would all be better off to admit it.

Judy, the quote was sent to me by Marshall after a wonderful day of fellowship, talking, exploring and saying a lot of I-don't-knows.

Speaking of Marshall... great comment. Thanks for the literary landscape of how post-modernism has sprouted up there, echoing the sciences, philosophy and the other arts. I knew there was a reason I liked Garcia-Marquez! Thanks for introducing me to him years back.

Since you used me as an illustration regarding "knowing" someone, let me note a couple of things about just one thing you said (peripherally) and then expand a bit on it.

First of all, when we speak of knowing people, we are speaking in terms that may include some of but go well beyond knowing about them. True knowing as you have spoken of it comes in spending time with, in honest discussion with, in good and frustrating moments with, walking a life path with the one we are coming to know. I remember back when Dorothy (my wife) and I were first dating. We spent hours upon hours talking together about tons of things. We were finding out about each other, but at the same time we were coming to know each other in relational terms. Deeper relationship began forming when we went through experiences together, clashed, learned to understand more through experience, etc. To intellectually know about God or even surmise about him is not the same as knowing God. I'm reading a book right now about experiencing a conversational relationship with God. The premise is that the conversation, as in any good friendship, is intended to be bi-directional. (Mother Theresa's quoted answer to the question, "What do you do when you pray?", paraphrased poorly by me is said to have been something like, "Mostly I listen." Seems appropriate here.) I'm still working my way through the book but I'm sure I will post on it sometime. The point is that one way conversations where we do all the talking and none of the listening yield poor relationships in the end. Ask any woman that has married the "big, silent type." It would be nice if God didn't seem such the "big, silent type". No offense or disrespect meant toward him, but that is often the extent of our prayers -- and consequently of our relationship. Or can be if we aren't careful to learn to listen to our beloved.

Second, there are different levels or textures of knowing someone. Your knowing of me is different from Dorothy's knowing, or my parents' knowing, or Rebecca and Steven's (my children) knowing of me. But I am not defined by them. I am the same me. Their experience of and relationship to me makes a difference in how they perceive me, but I'm still the same person. How they see me is defined by how they view me and what role I play in their lives.

Which leads to my third point. I am not unknowable. But I can and do have relationships with friends and family, some of them quite deep, in spite of the fact that they cannot fully know me. (Nuts! I don't even know myself fully!)

This is where I think our analysis of post-modern thought thus far breaks down. We have not fully allowed for a God who desires to know and be known. Nor have we allowed for people who desire to embrace the mystery of such knowing.

Just as "language is inherently limited", so experience is inherently limited. Thus the wonder of something like love. How ironic that in the midst of the inherent limits, the misunderstandings, missed communications, cross purposes, self interests, etc, there are actually bonafide, valuable, valuing relationships. Certainly not perfect, but beautifully ironic, none the less.

If such relationships can exist in such a world of irony, how much more ironic (in the way we traditionally use the word) to not believe that kind of relationship is possible with the one who created all of this. Maybe that is what St. Paul was trying to say in his prayer for the Ephesians that they may know the love of Christ which surpasses knowledge (Ephesians 3).

The caution to those of us living in this age is not to so crystallize our conception of God and what he will and won't do on the one hand, or decry on the other hand any kind of knowing of him whatsoever.

Some of the greatest biblical scholars I have known have been, above all, incredibly humble. I think that may be because they have learned to live in the tension of knowing and not knowing (with the "tilt" growing much heavier on the not knowing side as time goes by), and while doing that, as Micah says, walking humbly with their God. They were pretty honest with him, too.

Enough for now. But I'm intrigued, Marshall, with how you talk about being freed by the relationship with God to actually walk with, discuss with, argue with Him (my words, not yours). I think you're onto something there. It sounds much more like what I read in the biblical narratives, though, I must say, that Samson is certainly not the poster child for faithful relationship with God. ;o)

Still working on two cafe dolce posts, but these interesting thoughts (and family duties) keep getting in the way. Another post, unrelated to all of this and dealing with the poor, is simmering just below the surface, too.

Blessings to you all, folks. Thanks for reading and commenting on my blog.

Grace and peace,

Owen

holy imagination...

2005-07-22T20:42:00.000-07:00

You can thank Judy Thomas for the genesis of these thoughts if you like them. (Please blame me if you don’t, for I wouldn’t want to blame her for my ramblings on a theme.) But something she said on her blog several weeks ago got me thinking about the lost place of imagination in the modern Western world. If you would like to check out her blog go to Musings. I try to go there most days.

In a response to something she wrote, I said…

“The absence of imagination is the failure of knowledge.”

Sometimes, when I am writing I just pop out with statements like that. I don’t know that I fully think them through (and this blog post is probably the beginning of my wrestling with whether I believe that statement or not.)

When I was growing up, the first Dragnet episodes were being taped and broadcast. There’s a signature line from that show. “Just the facts, ma’am.” One can’t find a better description of the pinnacle process of the modern era, in my opinion. We have been consumed with facts and their construction into what we would call “truths”. Truths are assembled to create systems and systems into worldviews. It’s just our way. Or at least it has been.

It’s not that the post-moderns I have had conversations with are throwing out reason. Nor is it that moderns during the modern era stuck with one objective scientific truth for all time. We have all been told of two of the scientific/philosophical bookends of the modern era, Sir Isaac Newton and Albert Einstein.

As Brian McLaren has noted, until Newton, Ptolemy’s view largely held sway, at least as a system. Newton looked at the discoveries of Galileo, Copernicus and others, and, when Ptolemy’s world was crashing down around everyone else’s ears, Newton created a metaphor for science – the laws of nature – which largely resolved the issue for most of the modern era. Einstein’s reflections, upon imagining something other than Newtonian physics said it seemed as if the rug had been pulled out from under him. His eyes were opened to a new world.

There is a lot more of significance that could be said in regard to what each of these men discovered and how they characterized those discoveries. But, what I want to note is that both of these men had incredible imaginations that allowed them to think of the world in ways that no one else had thought of before. Both men, dealing with the same world, came to very different conclusions about physics, how the world began, what matter and energy are. The world did not stop because Newton didn’t imagine quantum mechanics. Quite the contrary. His view of the world enabled not only science, but government and society and religion and all other facets of human interaction and encounter with the world to continue. But it failed to fully describe the world and how it worked. Most of all it failed to ascribe meaning or value to existence. (Remember Jean Paul Sartre? Pretty depressing plays, aren’t they?) Einstein and Planck and their heirs have pushed us back toward mystery. The math of quantum mechanics fails those who wield it as they struggle to explain the complex relationships between the different forces that exist in our universe and matter. Take, for instance, that illusive unified theory. We still don’t understand gravity (though there are some scientists who believe they are close to a breakthrough).

It proves the axiom that the more you know, the more you know you don’t know.

For all those whose heads are swimming (like mine) right now, please note this simple truth: imagination makes the difference. From Ptolemy to Newton to Planck and Einstein, now to Sagan and Hawking and others, the ability to imagine the “facts” in different ways and relationships has allowed us to transport a single photon from one location to another. It has allowed us to look below the surface of protons, neutrons and electrons that were the smallest building blocks of matter when I was going to school (I know, this dates me!) to quarks and neutrinos and so forth. And below that? Some scientists postulate super string theory.

We’re still searching for appropriate metaphors, but a few have already developed. How about “the fabric of space and time”? How about this quote from a current scientist struggling with how all of this could be:

At the most fundamental level, all of the most important physical processes are, in part, determined by “factors” that have no detectable presence in the physical world. A range of possible outcomes are determined mechanically, but untold numbers of decisions are being made by “something” that from among these possibilities selects every actual outcome. And furthermore, each time a decision is made, all other probabilities are instantaneously adjusted and altered so as to keep the whole system within certain bounds. This is not a philosophical concept. This is a description of what has been shown, to the shock and horror of many scientists, in actual physical experiments. The only way to talk about it metaphorically is that there’s “something” that is not part of the physical universe, which sits outside it, and simultaneously orchestrates all events throughout the entire universe, according to principles we can’t know. My own particular angle on this is that if there is this effect that is sustaining the universe in an ongoing way, causing results, but itself has no prior cause, well, that is one of the oldest definitions of God.
-- Jeffrey B. Satinover

(Thanks to Marshall for this quote.)

So where is this post leading?

The only real point I want to make is that imagination is behind all of these thoughts we call facts.

While, in religious terms, imagination on its own is not infallible, knowledge without imagination is deadly. In my experience with the modern era, the loss of imagination and the dependence on “knowledge” has led to religion that is based on so-called “facts” that have little to do with God’s character and much to do with a closed system of beliefs, complete with checklists that help us avoid hell. All of this bears little resemblance to God’s interaction with people as recorded in the Bible (at least as I read it). Certainly behavior is important, but it is a byproduct of relationship, or at least the desire for relationship, more than something in and of itself. Also, the results of that closed system in so far as how it attempts to make us into better people are mixed at best and absolutely evil at worst.

Don’t get me wrong. I do not believe that God is unknowable, even in the midst of our religious systems. God has always revealed himself in the midst of human imperfection, if the Bible’s accounts can be trusted. Even Jesus, many of whose followers consider him to be God in the Flesh (yes, I am a committed Trinitarian after many years of waffling on it), lived among people sporting numerous imperfections, not only in behavior but in understanding also. As I said when I began this blog, I am a struggling, but mostly joyful, apprentice of Jesus. Since I also believe he is God revealed, I certainly believe God is knowable. However, “seeing God” in some kind of religious belief system of rights and wrongs and facts and checklists is difficult, sometimes impossible IMHO.

Well, this has become a ponderous post.

Enough to state my premises… first, imagination is sorely needed as God's people try to figure out what it looks like to be God's people in a post-modern world. There's a lot more that could be said about that. Second, imagination has an incredibly important place in a walk with God. Not imagination as wishful thinking. Instead, a faith that opens its eyes beyond the jail bars of systems of theology to its infinite God, who, though not observable in the same way you and I are, is still very much real, very observable, very close, and very much in love with every single person, every sparrow, and every wildflower that exists, has existed or ever will exist.

As with Leonard Sweet, that’s something that is too much for me to get my two-pound box of brains around.

Might take a good bit of imagination, you think?

Grace and peace,

Owen

catching up...

2005-07-21T19:52:00.000-07:00

Thanks to all who keep visiting my blog. I haven't given up blogging. In fact I have four or five posts nearly ready to go. Check back. Probably tomorrow I'll be posting something. Sorry to be so long between posts.

Grace and peace,

Owen

links...

2005-07-03T22:08:00.000-07:00

Hey, everyone. I finally added links to the left. Unfortunately, the title typeface is unlike "Recent Posts" and other sidebar titles that came with this template because they are really jpegs that load from the blogblog.com server. I haven't researched whether there is a "Links" jpeg in the same format... I figure if there was the person who created the template would have included it in the template as a possible add on. So this is the way it will look unless I figure out another way to do it.

Anyway, here are my first few links. I've included Larry James' blog at the very top because he does such a good job focusing us on the kinds of things Jesus found important when he was here rather than all the stuff we seem preoccupied with. Zoe Group is the blogsite of Brandon Scott Thomas, the leader of that a cappella group and the worship leader at Otter Creek Church in Nashville. The Ooze and Next-Wave are good sites if you want a taste of what people in the emergent conversation are saying.

I'll be adding other links as time goes on, but this is a start. As I said earlier, if you have suggestions for links, let me know by email (see my profile link above).

Enjoy!

Grace and peace!

Owen

to the dump...

2005-07-02T13:28:00.000-07:00

Warning: this is going to be a long post. Guess I’ve been saving up for the last couple of weeks. So grab a cup of coffee (or do the Dew) and let me know what you think when you’re done reading.

A few weeks back I made several trips to our local landfill. I parted with an old friend there and several of its cousins. It was an IBM clone. A Lazer XT. (Anybody remember how fast the XT machines were in their day?) MS-DOS. My first DOS machine. Not my first computer, but the one on which I wrote two novels, finished a screenplay, wrote umpteen other sermons, scripts, plays, magazine articles, treatments and picture book texts and the computer on which I honed my writing skills. I learned to think through my fingers on that computer. And I spent many nights falling asleep at that keyboard.

Mind you, I haven’t used that particular computer for probably 15 years. But it was somewhat hard to part with it after all that time anyway. In its day it was fast. Much faster than the Atari 130XE that started my journey in computer land. Faster even than my dad’s IBM PC, which was quite impressive at the time next to my Atari (and whose keyboard, by the way, would have made a great boat anchor). The Lazer was among probably five or six old machines we dumped that day. But I was the one to toss it on the pile. I waited as long in its life as I could to do it. But the time had come. I needed the space for other things in our “collection.”

It made me think.

This computer was long, long past its prime. Pre-windows of any kind. It required all kinds of special knowledge in order to operate effectively. No GUI (graphical user interface) on this puppy. No easy buttons that launched macros for every little thing. If you wanted to use this machine, you had to know the code. Else it was pretty useless. But for me, it was the lifeblood of writing.

Writing as an art has changed very little over the last fifteen years. But the latest and greatest computers have. They are faster, easier to use (my opinion), more intuitive than ever (even the non-Mac computers, grudgingly admitted by me, a Mac aficionado). You don’t have to use just text anymore to communicate. You can include pictures, movies, music. You can mix the media up and with a certain amount of skill come out with something akin to lower-priced Madison Avenue presentations. Anyone can publish these days. They can publish it to the world on Blogger or some other online sharing vehicle using today’s hardware and software and the ever-present World Wide Web.

Funny thing is that I can still get a command prompt line on both my Mac G4 Powerbook and on my Windows XP machine. I don’t do it often, usually only when I’m struggling with Internet connectivity and need to ping a site. But I can still get it. It’s there, underlying all of the new gadgets and gizmos. Today’s latest and greatest computers stand on the shoulders of those that have gone before.

Even the very first groundbreaking computers stand on the shoulders of the primitive abacus.

I’m saying all of this to make a point. Or two.

First point. This is for people who are leaving things behind. There is an appropriate time to dump a computer. That time was probably long before when I did it. I held onto that Lazer XT because it was what I “grew up” with. It was foundational. It was my introduction to computing. It was almost a funereal event when I tossed it on the junk pyre. That may seem overly dramatic, but more importantly there are beneficial ways and reasons to dump a computer and less than beneficial ways and reasons to dump a computer.

Seow Choon Leong is a college friend that I haven’t seen since Pepperdine days. He is a brilliant Biblical scholar who has gone on to Princeton Theological Seminary as a professor of Old Testament. I heard years back that his beginning Hebrew students give him standing ovations at the end of class. I bought his religion library from him before he left Malibu years ago. One book in particular he took great care with and spoke to me specifically only of that one. It was a beaten copy of a basic introduction to the Bible, very few pages, almost an outline. Not of much use to me. And Leong was well beyond it by this point. But, for all its simplicity and even mistakeness, he treated it with great respect. It was his first introduction to the Bible. It was foundational for him.

There is much talk in emergent church conversations about the failure of the structure of the modern church, about mistaken focus on organizational survival rather than kingdom outbreak, much of which I agree with. Most of it is critical, some very vehement. And the conversation on the side of those who are not convinced of the validity of the emergent leaders’ conversations is equally strident and growing more so all the time.

Might I suggest that the church has always been flawed, from its very beginnings, and will always be? A fair reading of the gospels and letters would certainly admit that, wouldn’t you say? But for all its warts, challenges, stumbles and faux pas, the early church changed the world as it changed people’s outlooks, attitudes and purposes. There was an underlying kingdom theme through it all. God has broken into, and continues to break into, the world through his son Jesus in his apprentices, whether modern or emergent.

So might I also suggest that if we choose to leave behind what was before, what even may have been toxic to us, that we recognize that for all its toxicity (as we see it at least), that good has come from and through it? Some people stubbornly hang onto and even use DOS computers. It may make no sense in the larger world around all of us, but it makes sense in their world. God bless ‘em. Truly. Leave them alone. In the words of St. Paul, “Who are you to judge the servant of another?” If you are “dumping the computer” because it no longer makes sense to you, or for the sake of the kingdom or whatever your reason, is it too much to ask to be respectful of the people that are not ready to do so, whose worldview is still defined by modern structures and strictures? Whether you want to admit it or not, you stand on the shoulders of those who have come before you.

Second point, for those who are not ready to dump the computer. When I dumped my Lazer XT, I was not dumping what had been done on that machine by me. I was not dumping what I learned in the process of using it (except perhaps the codes, etc). I was not dumping my purposes in what I wrote on that machine. I was dumping an outmoded way of working. It was a tool that had become ineffective. It would no longer allow me to communicate with anyone else. Had I insisted on staying with it, I would only have become more ineffective and isolated. And perhaps I was also dumping one construction of the data so that I could build another. I don’t know. This metaphor is getting clumsier by the moment and way too mechanistic, but I think you get what I’m trying to say.

I believe very strongly that a transition must be made in our conception of church. Like clock speeds on microchips that double every how many months, the world has rapidly changed around us. The way people think and what they value is different today. The whole worldview of the western world has become post-modern, post-Christian and post pretty much everything. The structures of church that made sense when I was a child, for many no longer make sense. We perhaps became distracted at times during the modern era with the “computer codes”, from a modern viewpoint of course, rather than the timeless kingdom purpose that Jesus preached. Perhaps we were more concerned about how “clean” and precise the computer code was rather than building the relationships between God and man that Jesus worked for while he was on earth. That having been said, there was a lot of kingdom work accomplished during the last 500 years. A lot of Jesus has crept in through the church as it was experienced during the Modern Era. We should celebrate that. And at the same time, we should not be so wedded to modern “hardware” that we cannot see another way (or more likely multiple ways) that the living Jesus can work through his people to bring the kingdom into today’s (and tomorrow’s) world. Because, truth is that we have become ineffective. We have become isolated. We have become anachronistic.

So do we close all the institutional churches? Toss out modern expressions of somewhat spiritually-motivated social structure? No. But we need a rebirth of imagination. And I think we in the institutional church need to very carefully examine what hills are worth dying on. Perhaps, claiming to be followers of Jesus as we do, we ought not to die on any hill that he wouldn’t die on. You think? Chew on that one for a while.

The church of Jesus Christ is not a building. It is not even a group of people agreed for the most part on a list of doctrines, and working on their implementation to some extent, nor is it a group whose “correct” belief structure insures their eternal outcome. It is not even necessarily a social organism structured in certain forms, practicing certain rituals, etc.

No.

In the words of St. Paul the church is the Body of the living Christ, and we are each interlinking pieces in the ongoing work of Jesus in the world. It is less about systematic theologies (a problem that the Pharisees of Jesus’ day had honed to a fine art) and more about living presence, God and man, the ones who wrestle with God (and each other).

Personally, I think it’s time to take a few trips to the dump. But it is never time to look down on those who don’t. Nor is it time to arrogantly declare our old ways or new ways or modern ways or post-modern ways as The Way.

Perhaps if we shed some of the baggage – new pride or old structures – we can start becoming what he is trying to form us into: people who lived and acted and loved like him.

Grace and peace!

Owen

a report on my health...

2005-07-02T13:17:00.000-07:00

Thank you for all those who have expressed concern over my health. All indicators have come back negative for disease. I have been told by the doctors to eat right, get the proper amount of rest and exercise prudently (unlike I did during the treadmill test). Unspoken this time (but oft repeated in the past by them) is the expectation that I not overcommit myself to any activity.

Of course, I am procrastinating in implementing all of these advice points. My intentions are good, though. (Why is it that a song my mother used to sing is coming to mind right now? "Mañana, mañana, mañana is good enough for me....")

I truly do intend to implement this stuff very soon.

Honest!

Grace and peace!

Owen

holy moments...

2005-06-19T19:05:00.000-07:00

It was a particularly vulnerable moment in my life. My Grandma Rubye (actually step-grandmother, but she was just like the real thing and a very precious soul who deserves her own blog post) had just died. My mom and dad planned to drive back to Texas nearly straight through in order to get there in time for the funeral. I decided to help them drive. And I thought that since there was bad blood between my mother’s family and Rubye’s sister, who had been charged with her care in later years, I had better go in order to run interference. It’s amazing how much tension one can find at funerals. Some of the best and worst of human behavior sneaks out of the closet at times like that.

So there was the long drive back to Texas, the stress of the funeral, the eggshells one walks on when around family one hasn’t been around for awhile. Oh, and one more thing. My cousin and her friend from Austin were recruited to drive me from Hillsboro right after the funeral meal to the airport so I could catch my flight back to Bakersfield that evening. I had to be in Sacramento the next day for meetings. That was a very wild ride down I-35.

I got to the airport and checked in (I think it was the spring just before 9/11 but there was still security, of course). Had some time. Ate some barbeque and waited at the gate for my flight. When I checked in, something about the tiredness in my eyes, or maybe it was just a God thing, they slated me to sit in the window seat of the mid-plane exit row. This was a flight where the seat in front of me was removed for safety reasons. Oh, was I happy! Thank you, Jesus! If there is one thing that is difficult for me when flying, it’s the lack of room to stretch out my legs. My knees ache for days after long flights because I can’t flex them.

Anyway, I boarded the flight home, settled myself in the chosen seat, shoved my perpetually present briefcase up under the seat two rows in front of me and sat staring out the window with a book in my hands as the plane began to fill.

A few minutes later, this tall guy with a long black pony tail set a backpack in the middle seat between me and my aisle neighbor and headed to the back of the plane. And he didn’t come back for awhile. The lady sitting on the aisle and I began to exchange glances, looking from the backpack to each other and back again. I was about to call an attendant when the young man returned.

His name was Sasha. He was a student doing graduate work at UCLA, Jewish in ethnicity, he was trying to find his religious roots in Judaism on that Westwood campus. Growing up as a secular Jew, Sasha had a lot to discover and sort through. To make matters worse, he had just graduated not long before from a conservative Baptist school in Texas where he had met a wonderful Baptist girl. Please don’t stone me. I don’t have anything against the Baptists, but Sasha was confused. He didn’t get this “Christian” thing, even after four years at a fundamentalist school.

Now, remember, I was tired. Bone tired by this point. I could see where this conversation was leading. I’m one that questions the effectiveness of airplane conversations about religion. I just wanted a moment to rest and recover from all the stress that had come before. But, as I said, I could see where this was heading. I spoke a silent, somewhat reluctant prayer to God at that moment. “Lord, if this is something you want to happen, you are going to have to do it because I am totally spent.” Or something along that line.

The conversation lasted from take-off at Austin until we landed in Phoenix. I listened, I counseled, I challenged his assumptions, I left plenty of room for him to keep on his journey of discovery. We talked about mikvot and how one who follows Christ can be a mikvot keeper as well, about how Paul was a practicing Jew as well, about the fact that Jesus was Jewish, too. About the nature of God, how he defies all boxes that we attempt to put him in. Whatever comfortable thought we have of him, he is what he is despite what we think.

And that he loves us.

It was a long and intense conversation, too long and too detailed to go into here. And that’s not the point of what I’m trying to say anyway.

Up in front of me, to the left since there was no seat directly in front of me, was a young couple. As happens with such conversations, I was concerned that we might be disturbing those around us. I noticed her glancing back toward the carpet at my feet several times and tried to quiet my voice. Understand, I wasn’t shouting or anything. I was just wanting not to disturb anyone.

Sasha got off the plane at Phoenix and headed for the restroom after I wished him well. I left him with my email address. He has never emailed me. Anyway, I was even more wiped out and looking for my gate to Bakersfield, when I noticed the young lady who had been sitting in the seat in front of Sasha. She established eye contact with me, walked up and said...

“I want you to know that I heard everything you said to him. You said everything he needed to hear. And I want you to know that my husband and I were praying for you the entire time you were talking.”

Then she walked away.

I was stunned!

It was a holy moment. Even now I get chills thinking about it, about God’s faithfulness to my silent prayer, about his tap on my shoulder through this young woman’s words, about his use of empty and cracked vessels. About how we are not alone. Even when it feels like it.

You might see coincidence in this event. If so, it is a fault of my telling of the story. I cannot communicate it adequately enough. God was there in a way I couldn’t comprehend and I didn’t even realize it.

He is there for you, too. May God open you up to holy moments.

All glory to him!

Grace and peace!

Owen

blogging frequency...

2005-06-19T09:50:00.000-07:00

Hey, everyone...

Just so expectations are lowered, plan on my posting on the web during the summer once each week. I think I'll make the posting sometime on the weekend, either Friday, Saturday or Sunday.

News regarding my health... actually no news. So far the tests don't show anything. I had a stress test (treadmill) yesterday that just about killed me (not literally) because I pushed it too hard. Story of my life. Refusing to act my age, I told the doctor to leave it at 4.5 mph at a 14% incline for the whole 3 minutes when he offered halfway through it to slow it down. My heart did fine, but I nearly fainted after I was done. He said my blood pressure dropped really low. Affected my vision. Thought I was going to pass out. "You are a tough man," he told me. Thankfully he left off the "and stupid" part.

Anyway, expect posts about once a week now.

Part of it is my health. And part of it is that Rebecca and Steven are home for the summer.

My expectation is to begin blogging two to four times a week beginning in Sept. But for now, once a week.

Thanks for visiting. This week's post will be up shortly.

Grace and peace!

Owen

café dolce (four): community...

2005-06-11T20:51:00.000-07:00

Well, I'm back to blogging again. Thank you so much for your patience. We still haven't figured out what I have but we started the exploration process on Thursday afternoon. Today I can actually think. I'm not so thick-headed as I have been for the past couple of weeks. Well... I guess you can decide whether or not I am after you've read the post below. Here's the latest, with hopefully at least two more café dolce posts to come....

café dolce (four): community...

Tones just gave me back the copy he borrowed of Brian McLaren’s latest book in the A New Kind of Christian trilogy. It is called The Last Word and the Word After That. Besides the head-spinning deconstruction of hell that he does (at least my head is still spinning – whoa! not as in The Exorcist though; does that date me?), there is one section of the book that is incredibly attractive to me. Found in chapters 21-25, it portrays Neo’s invitation to a deeper church community experience of a group of somewhat likeminded people once a year. McClaren calls it deep ecclesiology.

Neo, it turns out, has been attending this conclave with a small number of other mentors for many years. It is a time of questioning and discussion and worship (not in the traditional sense) and true fellowship. It is the group that Neo “knows with,” a fascinating way of looking at things. (McLaren believes that knowing is a social event… from October’s lectures at Zoe: “You can’t kiss alone, you can’t reproduce alone, you can’t know alone. It’s hidden in the etymology of the word conscious – to ‘know with.’”)

Most of all, it allows the group to ask and hear in depth honest answers from each other in regards to five important questions; he calls them “the five queries”:

-- How is your soul?
-- How have you seen God at work in and through your life since we last met?
-- What are you struggling with?
-- What are you grateful for?
-- What God-given dream are you nurturing?

I have to tell you that of all that he says in this book, this is the single most attractive piece of what he says. When I gave the book to Tones I told him that there was one thing in the book that would really resonate with him. I didn’t tell him what. That’s the piece he first commented on.

When I think of Café Dolce, I think of it as a gathering place, a watering hole, where people can come to know, not simply in theory or syllogism, but in experience as well. I dream of community where one doesn’t drift in and drift out, where there is some open, honest sharing, where the emphasis and direction is actually geared toward becoming a spiritual apprentice of Jesus Christ, rather than a Bible know-it-all. I dream of it being a place where true kingdom living can break out so that all people in the world could be blessed, no matter what their religion or nationality.

By the way, kudos to the G8 nations in canceling that $55 billion in debt for the poorest nations. That’s a good first step. Now, let’s figure out some next steps and get this thing going.

Grace and peace!

Owen

fatigue...

2005-06-07T07:25:00.000-07:00

Hey, everyone.

Sorry for the infrequent posts. I actually have several in process (including two more on Cafe Dolce), but I have been experiencing an unusual amount of fatigue lately. I've planned a trip to the doctor later this week to check out what's going on. I think I may have something called Valley Fever, a spore-borne fungal illness somewhat unique to the San Joaquin Valley. It causes fatigue and lack of energy, among other symptoms. I was particularly sick back in February with something that could have been Valley Fever onset. We'll see once the doctor checks it out.

Anyway, there will be future posts, God-willing and if I am able to get enough rest. But I thought you should know why things have dropped off of late.

Thanks for visiting!

Owen

café dolce (three): homogeneity...

2005-06-02T11:34:00.000-07:00

About ten years ago, after I left pulpit work for fulltime education employment, my wife and I began to search for a church to attend. We tried to stay where I had been preaching, but honestly it wasn’t a very good fit even when they were paying me to say what I said. Rather than cause confusion or division if I said anything (or total implosion if I didn’t), we decided to look elsewhere. Our intent was not to stay in our denomination for several reasons.

You need to know at this point that I grew up in Los Angeles. My best church friend in junior high and high school was Mexican-American. My next best friend at school was 100 percent Winnebago Indian. In later high school years, I developed a close friendship with the quarterback from Duarte High School in Compton. He was African-American. One of the deacons at our church was African-American. I grew up where the barrio met the ghetto and traveled the city bus from 1970-1972 to Florence and Vermont, about a mile or so from where the Rodney King riot started.

So I have always been attracted to diverse churches and communities.

I remember visiting a large Baptist church in Bakersfield when we were on the church hunt. It is an up and coming place and some of the pillars of our community attend there. I remember looking around the large sanctuary filled with people, then leaning over to my wife and whispering, “It looks awfully white in here to me.” Since I’m Caucasian, that might sound like an odd statement. But I truly felt out of place. I do need to tell you that we have friends who have since moved to that church who are of color. They hired her on staff. Go figure! I’m not criticizing that church at all. We have other friends as well who go there, and we know some of the people on staff. But when we visited, it just wasn’t right for us. It felt to us a bit exclusive.

Well, God didn’t want us to leave our denomination anyway, something I’m still not happy with him about at times. And I didn’t have the time, energy or emotional strength (not to mention the call of God) at that time to plant the church that I’ve always wanted to plant. So he put us at Central Church.

Central Church is diverse and that diversity is expressed in our racial, socio-economic and even religious makeup. The choir director at the high school my kids went to visited our church several years ago. Recently he remarked to my wife (who is his accompanist) that ours was one of the most diverse churches he has ever attended. He’s from the Bay Area, is quite progressive and loves teaching multi-ethnic students when it comes to education. He thrives in that environment with kids on the margins. So I guess that’s a high compliment.

The reason I bring this up is that several weeks ago my daughter, Becca, who is interning in children’s ministry at a medium-sized church in north Fresno reflected on the makeup of the church she is serving. She has been there long enough now to realize that for that church (which is a fine church with a fine staff doing some fine ministry, by the way), some people fit there and some people don’t. She has looked around, so to speak, and found things quite homogenous. And she is not comfortable with that. I told her that she was raised in a church with a great gift of diversity and that not all churches are like we are in that way. Even we struggle with our homogeneity in worship style and don’t take best advantage of all of our gifts.

But I wonder at this sometimes. What is it with our homogeneity? To say that it’s natural is probably so obvious it doesn’t need to be said. Human beings have a tendency to group and exclude, sometimes to the point of genocide as seen in Rwanda. That is part of the nature of human beings. But what of the supernatural? Does that call us to something without question more difficult, but higher and better as well?

All of this ought to call us to be very cautious and hesitant to draw lines. I’m not just talking race here. I’m talking any kind of lines. Culture and heritage are equally divisive. Or language. Or socio-economic status. Or, how about this? How many times have we divided over religion or denominational flavor, hermeneutic, theory of inspiration, atonement, control, etc. Maybe our homogeneity is inevitable. But I don’t think it is good. It calls us to associate on the basis of commonalities that may be rooted in something other than God rather than on the basis of our universal humanity called into one by the Spirit of the indwelling Christ.

Perhaps it is a perpetual problem against which we must strive. If the kingdom as described by Jesus was topsy-turvy from what the world, and especially the religious leaders of the day, thought in Jesus’ time, perhaps it is the same today. Paul certainly had the same problem with the churches he planted back in the first century. Jews and Gentiles. Romans and non-Romans. Men and women. Slaves and free. Oy! What a mixture!

What problems! What headaches!

What potential!

Diversity brings great opportunities for the in-breaking Kingdom of God. In my opinion, the church is the poorer for ignoring it in all its varieties.

Grace and peace!

Owen

the fish is here...

2005-06-01T00:40:00.000-07:00

Okay, so I’ve been writing about the suture zone and everything serious. This is off-topic. I know if I worked at it I could turn this into a metaphor too, but frankly I’m too tired to do that. I told you earlier on this blog that a time was coming (and now is) when you might have to extend me some grace if you think fishing is horrible and cruel and other worse adjectives. If that’s you, you might not want to read this post. (Sorry if you’ve already seen the picture. Not much I can do about that.)

I love to fish. It’s my grandfather’s fault (the one who didn’t think we would make it to the moon). He started me off fishing when I was about four years old, maybe even earlier. I became his fishing buddy. Other family members would get bored when there was no action. My grandfather would start up the old green 10-horsepower Johnson outboard and guide the 14-foot aluminum boat back into shore. He would drop everyone else off. I would stay in the boat and go back out and fish with him as long as he wanted to fish.

Those memories are hazy now, just a few snatches here and there. But he instilled in me a love of fishing that I have yet to recover from.

The past two summers I have taken my dream fishing vacation to Alaska, first with my son Steven, and then last year with my father. We fished for halibut, silver salmon (coho), King salmon, and last year we did a little bit of flipping for reds (the flavor jewels of the salmon world—oh, has Alaska spoiled me on wild salmon, especially reds!). Truly the best part of the trips involved spending time with these two very important people in my life.

King salmon is a very frustrating sport. Even with a guide, it can take upwards of 19 hours of fishing – on average – for someone to hook one of these giants. Two years ago my son and I had between us maybe one or two strikes for three days of fishing for them. We were fishing right at the end of the season and there had been 21 straight days of emergency orders for the commercial netters in Cook Inlet. That effectively choked off the rivers. In fact, no kings that were caught came out of the rivers without net marks on them.

There were some trade-offs of course. One of the days we floated down the Kasiloff River in a fishing dory and I played all kinds of praise and worship songs on our guide, Leif Jacobsen’s, old beater guitar. This is a pristine river, no motor boats, and surrounded by some incredibly beautiful scenery, including bald eagles and many other creatures. But, alas!, no king salmon. Oh, yes! I remember now that I actually caught, netted and released a small female (maybe 18 lbs.) about 9 a.m. the first day. I regret not keeping her now. From then on we were skunked on kings. (Steven was really bummed! No bites whatsoever!!!)

Last summer, we had another three days of King salmon fishing lined up, this time with my dad. I was pretty sure that if I didn’t catch one this time I would probably swear off fishing for the giants anymore. Even told my dad such. First day on the Kenai River? Not a thing. We even came off the river early. Again, emergency orders had effectively shut down the river’s fishery. Even our guide was exasperated.

The next day of salmon fishing was on the Kasiloff again with an 18 year-old guide named Mark from Santa Barbara, California. He and his family had bought a cabin on the river and had been coming up since Mark was a youngster. Leif spent the summer before teaching him to fish the river and Mark was guiding solo, I think, for the first time this past summer. Very bright and talented young man.

About a third of the way down the river, I hooked a fish. Mark made me wait a long time to set the hook, but finally he gave the go-ahead and I jerked hard on the line. The fish started peeling line off as the drag sang out. Mark had the reels loaded with 80 lb. test monofilament line. This fish just took off downriver with it. When the run stopped, the fish started heading back up the river. I actually pumped him in toward the boat a bit. Then he took off again. I pumped him back again. I’ve forgotten exactly how many times he did this, maybe only twice, maybe more. All I really remember is that Mark had rowed us out of the fast water and into some slack water below the point of an island just above the place the guides call Hog Troughs. The fish kept coming our way but wouldn’t get out of the fast water. He was almost parallel by this point to the side of the boat. If he kept going he would spool the reel and I would lose this fish. I strained and strained to turn his head into the slack water. Finally he came in. It was quite a battle.

Mark netted the fish and asked me if I wanted to keep him. In a split second I had to decide. The fish had a lot of color to him. He had been in the river already a day and a half, so the quality of the meat wasn’t going to be great. Still, we could tell it was a very big fish for that river. Do I leave him in the river for the sake of the gene pool or do I keep him for the meat? I love salmon! I said, “Yes,” and Mark tried to lift him into the boat. No going. Mark asked me to help him. It took two of us to get him over the gunwale.

The fish was just over 48 inches in length, 35 inches in girth at the widest point. He weighed 51 pounds on the nose after being bled, drug around in the boat box for several hours, carted around in the back of a pickup for an hour, and had his picture taken in two locations. For his length and girth, the charts suggested he was about 57 lbs. when he came into the river and probably closer to 53 or 54 when I actually caught him. For the Kasiloff River, Alaska Fish & Game says any fish over 50 lbs. is considered a trophy-sized fish for the state. They were closed by the time I got him into Soldotna, so I never turned him in for the trophy certificate. But he was big enough to qualify.

My son told me before I ever left for Alaska with my dad that he would shoot me if I caught a big one and didn’t have him mounted. So, I did something I never thought I would do. And he’s here now. His mounted picture is below. Maybe sometime I’ll include a picture of him not long after he was caught, but for now, this is what is going on our family room wall. If you are wondering, I was able to keep and freeze the meat from this fish and we have been eating it since last summer.

Sorry if this grosses you out. But it reminds me of some very special time I spent with my father last summer. It was probably the last time that he could possibly have gone with me since my mother needs his almost constant attention for some medical issues. It’s going up right across from my chair so I can look up there and remember.

Oh yeah, I imagine I could come up with a meaning for this metaphor. I’ll let you suggest them, though, if you would like to.

Grace and peace (and a prayer for forgiveness. if needed)…

Owen

2005-06-01T00:37:00.000-07:00

Owen's King Salmon

the trees of California (one)…

2005-05-29T08:06:00.000-07:00

I like walking through Capitol Park in Sacramento. Not only is it filled with interesting people (which I should address in another post sometime), but it is also inhabited by trees of many different varieties. Though I don’t know the history of the park itself, I imagine that someone years and years ago decided the park would make a great repository for examples of the wide variety of trees and bushes that grace California’s various landscapes. If I named them all (which I cannot), this would be a very long post.

As I was staring toward the Capitol building during my last trip up there, I noticed something I had never noticed before. There is a row of queen or fan palms along L Street, just inside the sidewalk. They are old trees, these palms. I know this because we used to live in a 100 year-old house in Riverdale that had three 80 year-old fan palms in the front yard. Fan palms of that age are big around for palm trees, tall and solid, not graceful and slender like the coconut palms you see in the movies (or in Florida).

Anyway, it was one particular palm tree that drew my attention. All these trees are the same height except this one. It is about 20 feet shorter than the others. Some kind of pine, probably a coastal Monterey pine, has grown up and around it, providing a kind of protective canopy that has stunted the palm’s growth. Funny that I had never noticed it before. Surrounded by that canopy from every direction except on its northern exposure, it would be very easy to see the world in a different way if one lived atop that palm tree.

I am thinking that this is the way most denominations (I first typed the word “sects” here then replaced it, but I’m still thinking that may be the more appropriate term) in Western Christianity have grown up. We have been surrounded by the enveloping canopy of Western culture unable to see beyond our cultural interpretation of our faith. That’s not said the way I would want to say it exactly. Perhaps, “wedded to our culture” or “woven together with our culture” would be better phrases, but they would ruin the metaphor (smile), and I intend to use the metaphor a little more before I put it down.

What’s happening in my opinion, as I look at our culture, is that our culture is losing branches, is undergoing grafts, is experiencing a change of soil. You can say it many ways.

On the way up to Sacramento on this particular trip, I had read a story in the paper about the turmoil going on at Hollywood First Presbyterian Church. The senior pastor has been relieved of his duties – administrative leave with pay – for some financial mismanagement issues. At least that was the overt reason. But the reporter noted that the church is very divided over worship and direction and class. Yes, I said class, and I’m not talking Sunday School here. It seems the pastor, noticing the ever growing decline in the church’s fate decided to start a new worship time catering to the younger set in Hollywood First Pres’ neighborhood. It was very successful to say the least and brought in all kinds of folks that didn't look like the staid and proper denizens of that historic church. It wasn’t a pipe organ and formal crowd. It was guitar and ancient-future. And it concerned some of the board of elders enough that they put the brakes on the pastor’s work pending an investigation. It made the papers, even the AP wire. One of the elders who was quoted in the paper (and from what the reporter wrote, seemingly the one who was the ringleader of the reactionaries) seemed a nice enough fellow. Mild and measured in his words, I couldn't help but think that actions do indeed speak louder than words.

Culture has changed around the church. We bemoan it. We decry it. We do everything but listen to it and understand it. We even try to paste the branches back on the tree in order to preserve our view of “the way things are.” But they are no longer that way and we find ourselves staring at the world through dead branches with green sunglasses on. I have to wonder. What has happened to the people at Hollywood First Presbyterian who were coming to know Jesus and the in-breaking of his kingdom? How many times has that replayed across US America the past 20 years? How many more times? The suture zone is a rough place to live.

It’s not just Hollywood First Presbyterian. It’s all of us.

“This is our church, and if we want organ (or a cappella or guitar or whatever)....”

When I was growing up that phrase would never have been uttered in my denomination, at least not publicly. It was a point of our church doctrine that the church belonged to Christ. While we weren’t always that great at implementing that belief, it was a strong tenet that we tried to honor. I think we got it right as a tenet. I just think we need to let Jesus direct the church in whatever direction he wants since it belongs to him. We need to let him make it relevant to the culture in which we find ourselves.

As McLaren has noted in various places, this doesn’t mean we let go of Jesus or God or the Holy Spirit or the gospel. But it does mean that all of these may be different and much bigger and more serious than we ever imagined.

Finally, a question…. Could it be that God is the one stripping away the branches of our past culture so that the tree can actually have some sunlight and grow as he wants it to?

What do you think?

Grace and peace!

Owen

in the park...

2005-05-27T13:06:00.000-07:00

I am beginning five days of rest today. I have been working a lot of long days and weekends for the past month or so and it has been catching up with me. I finally told my boss I just had to take a little rest time off. You might see a few more posts over the next five days as I have a little time to recover and reflect. Hope you have a great weekend! Now, here is in the park...

in the park…

This past Sunday afternoon, our church participated with people from four local churches from other “tribes” and “non-tribes” to hold a day in the park at Central. But it wasn’t church-focused. It was neighborhood focused. Billed as a block party, we had Christian rap artists driven by a whole lot of watts, a low-rider car show, two bouncy houses for the kids, hot dogs, chips and drinks, and an inflated pool with maybe three feet of water in it. The kids loved it. It was a warm day.

I don’t know how many of these were South Chester neighbors, but I have never seen our parking lot so full, and my wife and I came towards the tail end of the party. The crowd certainly reflected the diversity of our neighborhood. Lots of tattoos, lots of machismo, lots of smiles from fellow followers of Jesus representing all races and socio-economic levels, heads and bodies swaying with the strong, vibrating beat of the rap music. Not your usual church gathering.

I never could have dreamed of such a thing when I was younger. A congregation affiliated with the Church of Christ associating with and ministering alongside congregations coming from other perspectives. And all of it focused on our lower-class neighborhood. It was a wondrous thing!

And, we had a kind of merged theology of salvation process and this is where the pool came in handy. I was told some 14 or 15 people were baptized. Music to a Campbellite’s ears (Alexander Campbell was one of the “fathers” who began the American Restoration Movement from which Churches of Christ sprang). Guess I’m not a true Campbellite, though. I was actually fearful, overburdened with the sense that we may be leading these people down a path that promises them all their problems are gone, they’ll live in heaven with Jesus forever when they die and they need no longer suffer with guilt for what has come before. While all of what I said except for my first statement is true (and I’ve heard that first statement way to many times to pretend I am raising up a “straw man”), there is more to the story without which even the true parts of that statement become things that lead away from God and not to him. I’m not arguing for a works-based theology. It is a story of a journey with God, one on which they have taken only the first faltering steps. I fear that these who have responded need someone to walk alongside them on the uncertain path. That the path of discipleship is a difficult one, I’ll not argue. It is not a path for unaccompanied children.

At the same time – and please hear this – I sensed the seeds in this event for the discipleship that needs to come next. Seeds among his people that are ready to sprout. The Jesus-following that people need to be called to. And accompanied along the path with. The unity of his followers was one of those seeds that can make this possible. Encountering where people in our neighborhood truly are and what they truly are. And now from this point, continually encountering the real needs and lives of those in our community, instead of retreating to the safety and calm of our church walls as we think ourselves successful tools in God’s hands, is what he is calling us to, I think. The greater and harder and truer work is ahead. God lead us that way and empower us for the work!

But, even given all of that, thank you, God, for the moment. Now help us and possess us to walk the suture zone with those who surrendered to you last Sunday.

I sensed an awful lot of Jesus in Central Park last Sunday.

And it was glorious!

Grace and peace!

Owen

the great I AM (two)...

2005-05-24T15:18:00.000-07:00

I have been struggling of late to get my arms around this concept of relational theology. I know that’s a great way to begin a blog post and it has you salivating to see what other pearls lay further into this tome. (That last sentence was written with a bit of self-deprecating sarcasm, if you can’t tell.) But relational theology is completely different than the systematic variety on which I was raised. Thus it is difficult to navigate. “So what’s new on the suture zone?” you may be asking.

If you are wondering what I mean by relational theology, I am speaking of the Story. Brian McLaren calls it The Story We Find Ourselves In (see his trilogy with that as one of the titles). That’s an appropriate description from my point of view. God has involved himself in the lives of people and we’ve been in an ongoing wrestling match ever since. The point of the narratives (and even the instruction portions of the Bible) is to describe the ongoing Story of God as he relates to humankind. There are all kinds of touch points in this ongoing saga. The one I would like to focus on is the call of Moses.

If you don’t know the story, Moses has left a privileged position in the royal court of the Pharaoh of Egypt to become a hunted murderer. He has spent 40 years in the desert tending sheep, finding a couple of wives, having children and basically forgetting his past life as royalty. In a strange God-encounter event, he spies a bush that burns but is not consumed. As he approaches the bush to investigate, he hears a voice claiming to be God. There follows an interchange between the two, some negotiating, some attempts at control and a call to mission. As often happens with these God-man wrestling matches, Moses ends up negotiating himself into a somewhat worse position than where he started out with God’s first request. This bargaining ends up plaguing him the rest of his life. (There’s a lesson just in that, I think.)

Then he (and his brother Aaron) lead God’s chosen people out of Egyptian slavery and toward the “Promised Land.”

That’s the story.

In the interchange between God and Moses at the bush, Moses asks God for his name. My understanding of that ancient culture in regard to gods and such, is that if you had the name of the god in question, you had at least some kind of leverage or power over the decisions that particular god would make and the interventions on your behalf that the god would perform.

Aside from the infinite claim of God’s name as I AM THAT I AM, is the recognition that this phrase could equally be translated “I will be what I will be.” In other words, God is making fun of Moses’ cheap attempt to gain an advantage over this God who calls Moses to this lifetime task. In short, God refuses to be manipulated. That, IMHO, is at least one of the things going on in this story.

How long has man been trying to define and manipulate God?

“Bless me and I will let you go,” Jacob told God at Peniel. Jacob lost the wrestling match that day and limped the rest of his life. (But he wouldn’t let go, to his credit. Nor did God choose to leave him. That’s relational theology.) Following up on the name thing, Jacob admits defeat by giving God his name, Jacob. He gets a new name out of it, one who wrestles or contends with God.

What does it mean that you cannot manipulate God? How many times have we tried? “If you will (fill in the blank), then I will (fill in the blank).” If you make sense to me, God, in my world, if you will act as I think you acted back then, then I will put my trust in you. It is the same as saying, “God, I want you to be this way because it suits me and my situation best.” For the most part, as I read the story, God is resistant to such attempts.

If you have been reading the comments to my posts, you may remember that Marshall reflected on his daughter’s struggle with the question as to why God appears to be different in the Bible than he is in her experience. She asks a very perceptive question. I have the same one. And I don’t have a satisfactory answer. I know that the miracles and other signs I read about there are less than evident in my experience. (That may be more a comment on me than on God, admittedly.)

But it appears to me that what God desired back then and desires still is to walk along side of us in the same continuing story, being who he will be despite our misunderstandings, our attempts to control him and our narrow focus on the outcome of our world. He keeps walking there, wanting the relationship even if it is one of struggle. Probably one of the most defining things about Christianity is its claim that God’s Holy Spirit is one who walks alongside his people, even entering them, cohabiting with them on the journey as the Story unfolds.

God who walks alongside us still, even in us, being who he will be, not necessarily who we want or expect him to be. Hard to get your arms around that one. (My arms are just not big enough.) Not real predictable, nor is it very comfortable. I’m afraid it’s all we get, though, other than exploring, “How does God interact in this story as reflected in the Bible? How is his character demonstrated, especially in the way Jesus interacts with people in the Story? How does his rescuing us through Jesus change us? How does it change the world?”

I know I’m no Moses. And I have yet to encounter any burning bushes out in Last Chance Canyon in the Mojave Desert. I could no doubt be accused at times of trying to manipulate him. The bush wasn’t Moses’ last attempt. Yet, as the story played out, God walked with Moses. Moses walked with God. In so doing, he grew and changed and became more humble and his face more and more reflected the presence of the living God. He stopped calling fire down on the heads of others quite as often as well.

Even Peter, James and John -- Jesus' closest associates -- were different men by the time they died. They walked a long time with God, who knocked off the rough edges. Hmmmm.....

May God in Jesus walk the same way with us, no matter where it leads.

Grace and peace!

Owen

just a note...

2005-05-23T12:45:00.000-07:00

Hi, all --

Just a note to let you know I haven't dropped off the end of the world or anything. (Of course, upon reading what precedes this post, some of you may have thought I have lost my mind, my faith or both. Neither is true.) I had to work this weekend and have been trying to recover from an overly busy schedule and too little sleep. Check back tomorrow or Wednesday and you will find another post or two. I do have some things in the works but have had little time or mental focus to bring posts to completion.

Thanks for your patience!

Grace and peace!
Owen

café dolce (two): competition...

2005-05-20T09:30:00.000-07:00

There are probably a half-dozen restaurants within shouting distance of Café Dulce. Of those, the Broiler is the swankiest. All the power lobbyists take their clients and the government officials they are lobbying there for lunch or dinner. I’ve eaten there before for lunch meetings and it’s a veritable who’s who of Sacramento (except for the governor).

The Broiler serves high quality concoctions with prices to match. Café Dulce is different. There is a variety of food available, but it is relatively plain compared to the Broiler. So they largely attract a different clientele.

The Joy of Cookies next door to Café Dulce has closed down since I was last in Sacramento. Looks to me like the Chinese place, Stix, several doors to the west, may do the same soon, if lack of crowds is any indication. Across from Sacramento Convention Center is another up-and-coming restaurant like The Broiler that has begun competing for market share.

We should not be surprised, I guess, by that. It is, after all, the American way of business. Our economy thrives on competition.

A guy I work with spent most of his life working in the newspaper business. He has a mind like a steel trap and smells a story 10 miles away. He is cast in the old-fashioned journalistic mold with language and demeanor to match. And he has some interesting views of life reflected in pithy “sayings” that he often holds forth with. One is germane to this discussion, and it’s one I can actually print here. (Some are not printable in such a blog.) “It’s a dog-eat-dog world, and I’m wearing Milk Bone™ underwear!” I’m sure it’s not original with him, but it pretty clearly reflects the competition we find ourselves in. Economically, we’re all trying to make a buck. There are only so many bucks to be made. The buck I make is a buck you didn’t. It’s a kind of economic Darwinism… survival of the fittest.

This is a bald generalization admittedly. I have observed a lot of compassion for especially older employees in some circumstances. (This unfortunately is becoming more rare.) Now, I’m not saying capitalism is a bad economic system at all or arguing for something different. It seems to survive better than most. My question is whether the church of Jesus Christ in its various institutional forms has sold out to this competitive drive so characteristic of our economic system? I think it has.

Brian McLaren pointed this out last October at a lecture I attended. We may talk evangelism and winning souls and saving the lost and such. But what we are really after is more of the church pie. “Fill these pews, Lord!” is an oft-uttered prayer isn’t it? (Or fill these chairs or bean bag chairs or floor or whatever.) We’re bent on institutional survival. Reflect on this for a moment.

The church in Ephesus is no longer there. (Neither is Ephesus as a living city, by the way.)

How does that make you feel? Are you asking questions such as, “Were they unfaithful? Did God remove their candlestick?” (See The Revelation of John chapters 2 and 3 in the Christian Bible if you are looking for a context to what I just wrote.) Are you thinking, “Dear God, don’t let us go that same direction?” Let me ask this: Is God still at work in the world around you? Yes, sometimes even in the institutional church. Sometimes.

The survival of God’s church doesn’t depend on the survival of your institution.

Oh, God, if you could only get that into our heads and our hearts, how different the world might be!

Back to Café Dulce for a moment in order to make the point for which I have spilled all this electronic ink. At the risk of seeming to identify another potential market share or interest group, let me ask this question: what about the people who have chosen to bring their lunch to work?

When you look at things from a spiritual perspective, there are a lot more of these folks than anyone else. And they will never attend your church. They are not interested in your institutional survival. What happens within your walls on Sunday morning (or Saturday night or whenever) interests them not one bit. The language you speak is foreign and the view of the world you have chosen to take doesn’t correspond with theirs.

What about those people?

Are they searching for God? Many are, sometimes many more of them than others.

I guess this is a plea. Let’s drop the “what works to get people to church” (or at least what we call “church”) and begin taking the view that forming spiritual apprentices of Jesus (and being one ourselves) is probably the most important work we can do. I call it Kingdom of God work. We can do it anywhere. We can’t do it without the direction and empowerment of God’s Spirit. And, I am convinced, we cannot do it if we are spending all of our efforts to save the institutional church.

Now you may disagree with me about that. I could be wrong. Maybe you want to have a discussion about how we define “church”. Maybe that would be profitable. For us. Perhaps, though, we ought to focus on our mission of spiritually forming disciples and then this other discussion will take care of itself.

“Go and spiritually form apprentices…” words of Jesus, Matthew 28:19, my paraphrase (under influence of McLaren).

Wishing you grace and peace today, and just a small foxtail stuck in your sock…

Owen

a short note...

2005-05-19T09:35:00.000-07:00

Just to add a short note to today's post....

life in the suture zone has just passed its one month point. I appreciate all of you who have visited. You are free to remain anonymous, but you are also free to post comments any time. All are welcome.

If my ramblings have blessed you, please feel free to talk about and share the blog address with anyone. If you would like to link to this blog from yours, please feel free. Sometime soon, I plan to figure out how to put links in my margin, too, so if you have a blog or read someone else's blog that has been especially helpful to you, respond to this post with a comment and let me know the address. I'll take a look.

Now, if my ramblings have cursed you, I apologize. I'm not trying to create earthquakes for anyone. I fear, though, as my blog's title suggests, that we live in the land of earthquakes today, no matter where we live.

Marshall posted a very thoughtful and challenging comment to the "locked in Manzanar" post. You might want to read that. It will give you something else to chew on.

café dolce (one): diversity...

2005-05-19T07:19:00.000-07:00

As mentioned a few days ago, I spent time in Sacramento again this week. It’s a pretty amazing and diverse city. I had a little extra time before my meeting, so I walked by Church of the Blessed Sacrament (that I thought was the Church of the Resurrection – did they change the name on me or am I that unobservant?) I think I may have already mentioned this in my post “stuff from on high,” but the porta-potty is gone. Guess no one needs it now way up high. But there was a sign hanging from the scaffolding catwalk. “Habemus Papem” it proclaimed. Right across the street is a microbrewery. I don’t know if the Holy Father drinks beer or not. (He’s from Germany – I think they disown you there if you don’t.) But I reflected that Jesus would probably think that was pretty cool, not meaning any offense to anyone who thinks otherwise. I would also remark that the church is only one block from California’s capitol building. This is good. California needs prayer right now.

I walked from the church down the mall that used to be K Street to Café Dolce. It is a small breakfast and lunch place frequented by lobbyists, support staff, business people, tourists from the Hyatt Hotel nearby, and a number of very interesting folks that daily make their way through the mall. I observe a great deal of diversity when I sit at Café Dolce. There are actually two parts to the restaurant. One is the line you go through to order whatever it is you want to eat. That’s farther back in the café, and is the line that you use if you are going to sit at one of the tables in the restaurant and eat. Most of the deep conversations go on at those tables. Then there is a register up front just inside the door where they sell espressos and fruit and other quick things to eat.

There is no physical wall between the two. But there is very definitely a wall.

What I noticed this time was how some folks only come in far enough to get a quick latte inside the door and then are off. The socio-economic and ethnic background of these people varies widely. While I was sitting there I saw three upscale lobbyist types stop for Café Dolce’s version of Starbucks – you know, where you have to link about seven or eight words to describe what you want? Triple-grande mocha with soy milk and no whip. They wore expensive business suits and assumed an air of self-importance with little thought for anyone else in the restaurant except to demonstrate that importance. Then there were the two women of color who ordered a banana, obviously on their way to work. They wore loose-fitting sweats. No “putting on airs” or anything with them. They were real. Not unpleasant at all. But it wasn’t hard to imagine that they wouldn’t be too comfortable going much farther than the first register.

There are tables outside Café Dolce, too, for people who don’t like the close atmosphere inside its depths. They need the open air. That’s where the smokers sit. I imagine the conversations out there are sometimes a bit saltier. I’ve seen the occasional street person sitting at one of those tables as I’ve walked by, sipping his coffee, hair unkempt, unwashed, sitting alone and not really bothering those around him, focused on the coffee cup, the table, locked inside his own world.. A completely different world.

And I wonder.

I wonder about the incredible diversity in our world. I wonder at the hit-and-miss flyby visits we in churches get from people who are so diverse from us.

Perhaps it is an innate characteristic of humankind. We like people who look like us, talk like us, smell like us and think like us. We’re not too tolerant as a species. Like bees from a particular hive we’ll even attack other bees that look exactly like us but are from a different hive. God help the beetle that walks by on accident.

Anyway, there are a lot of people who don’t want to sit inside in the “holy of holies” at Café Dolce. Occasionally someone might venture in and sit who is different. But they are just visitors. Like the older Japanese couple last Monday. They sat at one of the tables closest to the door and they appeared to feel quite uncomfortable. Or at least they were very quiet about things.

My friend Miller often remarks on the failure of the attractional church model. We assume that if people don’t want to come in and be a part of us that they don’t like what’s on the menu. So we change the menu. And we post signs outside the “café” that herald the new menu… or the new management… or whatever, hoping to attract more “clients”, people who will come in and consume our offerings. And they don’t. Or not many. And they don’t stay when they do come in and consume. And we worry about the future of our “café”. Will it survive? And we redouble our efforts to attract more.

Perhaps the issue isn’t menu at all, or at least not mostly. I’m thinking we’ve overdone the attractional component a bit.

This is a diverse world. US America is probably the most diverse place on the planet. We’ve thrown together people from every culture and language group known to humankind. And everyone we pass every day has a story of how they became the person they are. All the stories are unfinished. The stories told in the back of the café are remarkably similar. But all you have to do is look out the open door to see people whose stories vary widely. Some people are walking by with purpose, some meandering, often with coffee. I saw one guy in very casual clothing in a state of very minor disarray with a leatherbound Bible stuffed with papers under his arm. He walked toward the capitol, staring at the gutter on 12th Street as he walked along as if looking for something. He wore dirty athletic shoes. His eyes looked up as he neared L Street and he bounded across the street to Capitol Park, as with purpose. I passed two older women strolling down the mall holding up Watchtower publications.

How diverse are our ideas of God. And life. How rich and tragic and varied and human are our stories.

Perhaps McLaren and his friends are right. Perhaps the greatest valid currency today is not the church menu or the American dollar. Perhaps it is a pair of listening ears and hushed lips as we discover the diversity of the world that God has called us into. The people whom God has called us to love. And not judge as worthless by our apathy and inattention. Or to totally miss because we’re clustered and cloistered in the back of Café Dolce staring out the door praying that people will come in.

Maybe the best charge I could give all of us today is get out of the “sweet” café, and go forth and listen.

Grace and peace!

Owen

drink coffee...

2005-05-17T22:27:00.000-07:00

I saw a sign on a drive-through espresso place that said “Drink coffee!” Please understand that I have some sympathy with the sign writer. I got up at 4 a.m. yesterday for another early flight to Sacramento. It took about five cups of strong coffee and two triple-grande mochas to keep me at least semi-comatose through the day. So “drink coffee” is an admonition that I understand.

But it reminded me of the cartoon character in vintage 1940s Warner Brothers offerings. A guy, obviously affected by the depression, walks around with a sandwich sign that says “Eat at Joe’s”. It’s sort of a direct attempt at influencing behaviors, I guess. We’ve gotten better since then. We have million dollar commercials, pop-up ads, licensed products displayed in movies. We’ve even used subliminal advertising to try to influence behavior.

I wonder. Is this the same as our “come to church” and “come to Jesus” messages? The little games we play to get people to come so we can blast them with the message? Or?

Maybe I don’t want to drink coffee or eat at Joe’s or go to church. Maybe I’m mad at God sometimes. His arms may be open but I may not be in the hugging kind of mood. Maybe I refuse to be manipulated. Maybe I don’t want to cut my hair. Or, more accurately, I don’t want to cut my hair because you want me to cut my hair. (Those who know me know what a ridiculous argument this is since I have no hair. But you get the point, right?) It’s a control issue. It’s manipulation. The modern church is very much into that kind of thing. “Do this,” we say, “or God is going to do that to you.”

Randy, our preaching pastor, talked about this on Sunday. He made the point that God, being God, has a right to demand certain responses from us. Randy wasn’t being mean at all. He was just saying that kings such as God have a reasonable expectation of being obeyed. I wouldn’t argue with that. But, though that may be true, that’s not how I’ve seen God work. God has often been more subtle than that. If he wasn’t, we would live in a world filled with thunder as God reacted to our constant missteps. And zap would be a more common word in our vocabulary, I think.

The great Christian thinker (and writer) of last century, C.S. Lewis, experienced this with God. The more he tried to run away as a committed atheist, the more God confronted him, until in the end he describes himself as the most reluctant convert in all of Great Britain. It was as if, he says, he and God stood facing each other with guns drawn and God said, “Put your guns down. Let’s talk.”

I’m afraid the church has told the world to “Drink coffee!” Then when the world has not responded, we have followed up with the words of the Queen of Hearts in Lewis Carroll’s fairy tale. “Off with their heads!” I know that’s an overstatement. But is it really that much of an overstatement?

Maybe, instead of “Drink coffee!” God simply wants to look the world in the eye and say, “Hey, wanna go to Starbucks?”

It’s worth a thought.

Grace and peace!

Owen

journey (five): just where exactly are we going...

2005-05-16T22:49:00.000-07:00

When I reflect on my life, it hasn’t exactly turned out as I expected. Despite the expectations of an idealistic college graduate, life has been somewhat of a mixed bag. First of all, it took me until I was about 35 to discover what I wanted to do when I grew up. So now I know. All I have to figure out is how to get somebody to pay me to do it. For another thing, I know God has a sense of humor. Once when we lived in Riverdale we were passing through Bakersfield and saw a sign that said “Greenacres – 4 miles”. I looked at my wife and said, “At least we don’t live in Green Acres… ba dum ba dum dum… dump dump.” Guess what church he called me to next? We called it Rosedale, but we really, truly lived in Greenacres. (There are a lot of nice people living in Greenacres, by the way. And a number of methamphetamine dealers if the sheriff’s helicopter is any indication.)

Don’t get me wrong. I’m usually not depressed about how my life has gone. Dorothy and I are celebrating 30 years of marriage this summer. (We were married as infants.) As difficult as some of the life experiences we have shared have been, I wouldn’t trade sharing them with her for anything. But things haven’t really turned out quite as I expected.

The senior class at my high school named me “Most Likely to Succeed”. I think I’ve been living under that curse ever since. So, where’s the target? What’s the goal? How do I know I have arrived?

My faith has been no different. Now, could I live during the time of the Great Revival? No. Could God call me into a time when things are stable in terms of faith? No. Where do I find myself? Atop the suture zone between two ages. Tones is convinced that I’m a post-modern. Maybe. But I grew up in a modern world. None of this faith stuff has been easy!.

Think about the examples.

God called Abraham. “Follow me,” he told him. “Leave your home behind and I’ll show you where to go.” Abraham’s response to God’s call was to follow. No wonder he was called father of the faithful. I don’t know if I could have done it. He lived as a foreigner in the land God said he was going to give this guy for most of his life. In and out, in and out, in and out. And he died hundreds of years before the deed was delivered.

Jesus’ call isn’t much different. “Follow me,” he tells us. Then he heads for an executioner’s cross. It doesn’t exactly inspire confidence at times.

Don’t know about you, but I like to know where I’m going. I used to have a five-year plan... back in the 80s. I got rid of it after a year or two. Nothing ever turned out quite like I expected. Usually, when I tried to follow the plan it only messed things up for me. I know there are people who are different than me. There are some warped personalities who know they want to be a doctor when they grow up. And they know it in sixth grade or so. They have the horses to do it, too. So they pursue their dream and go to med school and graduate with honors and do heart surgery at UCLA’s teaching hospital. They save the world or the President or something really tremendous. Then there are others. Like me.

I talked to a doctor once who, after he achieved his goal and went into practice, regretted ever having gone that direction. He didn’t like the kind of person he was turning into. He didn’t like that he couldn’t just spend time home with his wife and kids. But he couldn’t stop. His college loans were astronomical. He had to pay for that choice. Someone told me (and this may have no statistical validity at all), that the highest rates of suicide by profession come with dentists. I can imagine why. Sometime in their career, they realize that the only way they are going to survive is to have their hands in someone’s mouth for the rest of their lives. Sometimes you get where you are going and you wonder what possessed you to make the journey.

Me? I just wake up somewhere new every day, and like some kid that went to sleep in El Paso, I wake up in Los Angeles hours later and wonder what happened.

This is dangerous talk for me to engage in. I’m not innocent in all of this. I have one foot planted solidly in my professional “promised land” (though it wasn’t my chosen profession – truthfully, I resisted it as long as I could!). With a good retirement and lifetime health benefits beckoning (after the kids college loans are paid off when I’m 90), perhaps I’m a bit too settled. I don’t know. What I do know is that I’m on a journey with God. The path has almost never led where I thought it should. I haven’t always been too impressed with the landscape, frankly. He hasn’t paid a lot of attention to where I’ve wanted to go. And when I’ve headed out on my own... yikes! Those times have been corrective experiences, shall we say.

I don’t have all this figured out. If I could give you a recipe for determining God’s will in five easy steps, I would. But I can’t. (I’ll talk about this aspect of God’s character in a later post.) God won’t be manipulated that way.

This uncertainty goes beyond questions of career and marriage and those kinds of everyday life things. It extends to questions like, “Who is this God?” and “What does he want from me?” or “Hey, are you there or what?” and sometimes listening to the echo.

If you can’t tell from this blog, I’m going through a time of particular spiritual ferment. I seem to wake up in a new city every morning. Or at least once a week. I keep reading writers like McLaren and Sweet and Lamott and Miller, and God keeps messing with my head. My friend, Tim, said in the comment section of my second post that all this talk gave him a headache. I know how he feels. It seems to be the way I’m living my life.

But I have to press on. (Isn’t that what we say at times like this?)

I didn’t ask to be born into this time of tremendous Christian religious upheaval, but here I am. What are you going to do?

So just where exactly are we going, God?

Follow me, comes the answer.

If you’ve ever watched The Visual Bible’s movie of The Gospel of Matthew, at the very end, Jesus is heading away from the camera. But he turns at the last moment with a twinkle in his eye and beckons me to follow. What you might not recognize if you don’t look closely is that he is heading out onto deep water again. Suture zone stuff.

So here we go….

Grace and peace!

Owen

locked in Manzanar...

2005-05-12T21:39:00.000-07:00

Early in World War II, President Franklin D. Roosevelt issued Executive Order 9066. It ordered all Japanese immigrants and Japanese-Americans to internment camps located throughout the U.S. for the duration of the war. It happened on what would later become the day of my birth, February 19, not something with which I am proud to share a birthday. Much of this was at the prodding of then California Attorney General Earl Warren (who later became Chief Justice of the US Supreme Court – go figure!) and several others including the Los Angeles Times, who stirred up the public hysteria regarding invasion, especially among the west coast population who were very afraid after the attack on Pearl Harbor. It was the era of yellow journalism. (Have we ever left it?)

This was a very tragic event in our country’s history, an action that as early as a year after the war was recognized by historians and other observers of our society not to have been necessary at all, not to mention the violation of constitutional liberties it represented on such a massive scale. One can only hope that we have learned something from this regarding our current circumstances

I travel by one of these camps at least twice a year on my way up Hwy 395 on the eastern side of the Sierra Nevada. Called Manzanar and now a National Historic Landmark, the camp was one square mile of barb-wired Japanese society in the middle of the cold, high desert of eastern California. Tens of thousands of Japanese nationals and Japanese-American citizens were housed there… against their will. I have often wanted to stop. Late this last March I finally had enough time to visit for a few moments.

The day I visited the wind was blowing hard. Please understand, the wind always blows hard on the eastern side of the Sierras. But even the National Weather Service had noted that these winds would be exceptionally strong. They were. Though there was only wind on the valley floor, you could see it snowing on the peaks. The snow was blowing nearly sideways, eastward toward me. So hard was the wind that you could not see the clouds from which the snow was coming. Gusts were predicted to be 50 mph where I was, and had to be much stronger on the peaks. The snow blurred and obscured the edges of the clouds that dropped it.

Though some of the Japanese children housed there it remember it as a happy place, much of that is probably attributable to the efforts of the community to protect the children, to make their lives as normal as possible in such a remote and desolate place. For the adults, it was different. And so the mood of the place now is somber. I sat and watched the mountain peaks from the high desert valley below, looking into the heart of Manzanar framed by the peaks behind it. I imagined the barbed wire, the machine-gun equipped guard towers, the armed soldiers, the sad funerals. The cemetery is still there. And I remembered a huge wrong perpetrated on many innocent people of Japanese descent. I remembered wondering if there were any Italian or German war relocation centers. That’s what they were officially called. Roosevelt privately called them what they were: concentration camps.

As I sat there, I became sad.

After awhile, my thoughts turned to the church. Without any disrespect for the Japanese people who suffered this injustice, I couldn’t help but wonder if this is a kind of picture for today’s evangelical and fundamentalist churches.

Born in modernity, our churches, many at least, have circled the wagons. The winds of change are upon us. Today’s new paradigm cracks and roars and shifts like the snow in an avalanche and grinds into small pieces whatever is set before it. As the threatening snows of post-modernity or post-colonialism tumble toward us, driven by 50 mph gusts, we had to do something. We had to protect ourselves some way.

“Come out and be separate,” we quoted to our neighbors and each other. “Remove yourselves from this evil generation.” And just as surely as the Desert Fathers did so long ago, we’ve chosen to cloister ourselves in a world of our making that makes sense to few besides us. We’ve raised up the barbed wire of intellectual elitism as protection. We have concocted intellectual schemes to deny what is readily observable to those not coming from our faith perspective, all in an attempt to protect the Bible. We have turned God into a capricious Greek character whose heart would deceive rather than love. When challenged, we have raised our voices louder than those who question, drowning out the issues that plague our children and teens. We have vilified anyone who dares question our orthodoxy and brandished our Sword menacingly. And little by little, we’ve watched our numbers dissipate.

Not only that, the machine guns of the church have pointed inward. The Japanese children were told that Manzanar was for their safety, to protect them from the angry hoards who were upset by Pearl Harbor. They, however, were very bright and very observant and very honest, as most children are. They asked their parents, “If we are here for our protection, why are the machine guns in the guard towers pointed at us instead of outside?” The church, too, has self-appointed protectors of the faith that would just as soon “shoot their own” if they stray outside the barbed wire of evangelical or fundamentalist orthodoxy.

Is our orthodoxy so precious, so critical, so fragile that it cannot endure the test of questions and thought and challenging dialogue? And what about the Kingdom of God that Jesus preached? Does it bear much resemblance to what has become our orthodoxy? Or to him? Do we treat people like he did?

These are some of my thoughts as I sat there and observed. Ironically the driving snow leaves the eastern Sierra breathtakingly beautiful. It will soon turn to water in the snow melt. Will come down the canyons and valleys to the river. It will help slake the thirst of Los Angeles further south. Even the camp will come to depend on it.

I know. Being trapped in those mountains in that wind and snow would not be a good thing. But looking at it from a distance, getting a broader perspective, there is a rugged beauty to it. And honesty. And most of all, future hope. Even though you can’t see the clouds behind the snow. True, not all of what comes with post-modernity is good or harmless. But might there be something about it that causes us to question our modern view of being Christian to our health (and the health of the world God says he loves)? Might we not ask questions of ourselves – and be asked by others – that will turn us from assenters to dogmas and mere practicers of rituals into something better? Like Jesus followers?

Interesting thing. Much of the compound has been taken over by some kind of yellow wild flower whose stalks are just about to burst open. There are thousands upon thousands of these stalks. They cover the ground in places. They are spreading beyond the confines of the barbed wire and guard towers. In fact, there are many more beyond its borders. Ready to explode into bloom.

It’s going to be a glorious blooming!

Grace and peace!

Owen

the great I AM....

2005-05-11T22:20:00.000-07:00

Just a short post tonight.

I took a preaching class at Mennonite Brethren Biblical Seminary in Fresno many years ago. You know, one of those where you practiced preaching to each other? I was already preaching twice every Sunday, so it was easier for me than the others I think.

One of the things it convinced me of was to shave off my mustache and beard. I'm bald. When they videotaped my sermon, I noticed that as I looked down at my notes, my face disappeared. There was hair above and hair below but a totally blank face -- no eyes, nose, mouth. So... off went the beard and mustache.

What is redemptive about a preaching class, you ask? Well, surprisingly, I remember vividly part of one of my classmate's actual sermons. I think it was his main point. If it wasn't it should have been. He said, "I don't believe in the great I WAS, I belive in the great I AM."

While I know that God's name indicates eternal being--past, present and future, this has had a profound impact on my life and outlook. In modernity, we conservatives have believed too long in a God who acted in the past, but who is totally absent (or nearly so) in the present day.

So what do you think?

Grace and peace!

Owen

journey (part four): the moveable feast...

2005-05-10T11:45:00.000-07:00

Hemingway wrote a book called A Moveable Feast, published posthumously several years after his death. I’m not sure if he invented the title or if it was the clever scheme of some early marketing maven associated with his publisher. (Or was it Shakespeare’s title first? I tried to find the answer on the web and couldn’t.) I suspect he titled it for it is a clever word picture. Accordingly, I have borrowed the picture from his excellent title. Other than that, though I admire his terse writing style (and obviously fail to emulate it), this post has nothing to do with his story.

I am in the air between Los Angeles and Dallas as I begin to write this, on my way to Abilene, Texas, to help my son drive home from university for the summer. As I mentioned in the last post, that’s a long road trip, somewhere between 1400 and 1500 miles. I imagine on the way we will stop several times because of the very human need for food. Whether you are on the road or at home, you pretty much always need to eat. At least I do. And when you are on the road these days, you have a number of choices.

My son, for instance, is looking forward very much to stopping at the first available In-N-Out hamburger restaurant. (If you don’t know about In-N-Out, it’s mostly a California/West Coast thing.) We’ll hit the first one around Phoenix. One of his across-the-hall dorm neighbors, probably someone from California, had an In-N-Out bumper sticker on the door of his room when I visited last January. It has been a constant reminder of what he is looking forward to on the trip home. While they may not be all that healthy, a double-double burger with fresh-cut fries and a drink is an addictive meal. And he has been without one since the first of the year.

Fast food is great for a quick meal. But most need and long for something a bit more than fast food. They want food that reminds them of home. Not only that, they want food they can share with someone else. Even though I find solitude and silence more and more attractive the older I get, I still hate to eat alone. Many people these days are eating alone in a lot of ways…

…which is why I believe there is a terrible hunger today for table.

I am using “table” in a very general sense for what happens when people spend time together in close community. It stands for the communication that goes on while together, for the shared sense of acceptance of mutual weakness, for the need for community that we all experience, and more. Being “at table” recognizes and helps build the interdependent relationship that we all need. It can happen in many ways and doesn’t always involve food. It can be healthy or unhealthy. But, with the exception of some who have become bitter, curmudgeonly and disillusioned, it is one of the necessities of life.

First of all, let’s look at what table is not. Table is not just about technology. Whatever you think of the movie, The Passion of the Christ, there is a scene that to me is totally out of place. It is the flashback of the young carpenter Jesus who has just formed what is very obviously a modern day table with long legs. He pantomimes sitting in a chair. I have no idea why Gibson would think that appropriate in such a movie. Perhaps he thought such a scene would connect us with this strange Aramaic-speaking Jesus he portrays in the film. I don’t know. The point I’m trying to make is that using table simply as a meal-taking aid is to totally miss what table is about. The same is true of our technological ability to communicate and form community. Table as I am conceiving of it can happen online, but it doesn’t necessarily follow that if you are online, it happens.

There are and have been many kinds of “table”. I suppose that nomads crossing the desert used some kind of animal skin stretched out on the ground on which they spread their food. Tones and Zee just escaped from their boys for several days to take a backpacking trip on Santa Cruz Island off the coast of California. It’s hard to drag along a table in a backpack. But I know they enjoyed their meals together.

While it may be difficult to unscrew the legs from your modern kitchen table, haul it up on your back and head on the road, the concept of table is fairly portable. I can imagine some of the discussion as Israel prepared to leave Egypt.

“I don’t care how heavy it is. That table was a gift from my great-grandmother, God rest her soul, and if we eat Passover next year in Jerusalem, it will be on that table!”

“Yes, dear.”

David envisions table in Psalm 23 in common nomadic style. We may be mortal enemies, but when it comes to table, we lay down arms and eat together. There is something sacred about table, especially what I would call “Kingdom table”. Don’t confuse this with the Lord’s Supper or Eucharist or Communion or whatever you call it in your tradition (if you do). Though one can find table in that ritual, one does not always find table there in the way we practice it today.

Jesus seemed to enjoy table. For him it was a celebration of the redemptive nature of God. So the folks at his table were sometimes the kind you wouldn’t ordinarily invite if you were in the “in” religious community. He was sharply criticized for his selection of table companions, and he evidently spent enough time at table that it made an impression. (He was also very good at inviting himself over for dinner – Zaccheus and Matthew come to mind here, as well as Lazarus in Bethany.)

In the days of Jesus, the traditional way to eat meals was to recline in the same direction around a low table, leaning on one elbow and eating with the free hand, feet stuck out at an angle in a kind of pinwheel effect with the table at center. It was a relaxed posture that enabled deep, and at times intimate, conversation, and from all evidence that I’ve seen, people took their time. (Personally, I don’t know how they kept their leaning arms from going to sleep, but that’s just me, I guess.) In other words, eating was a social event. But Jesus made it more than that. It was a celebration of the coming of the presence of God to everyone, collectively, no matter their caste or religious status.

I think it is safe to say that Jesus endorsed “table” in that sense. In fact, I think he presented it as essential to the journey, a place where we can constantly remind ourselves that God is present among us, in each other and in us collectively. The Kingdom of God is here, Jesus said, and shared table evidenced that presence. We need such moments on our journey atop the suture zone. This world is dizzying and perplexing enough even when times are not changing. But when we have huge upheaval as we do these days, table is critical.

Consider how removed we all are in the world today. In all of this isolation and silence and independence from group, a terrible and holy hunger is growing. I may not be able to relate to the thousands of people I encounter every day, whether personally or on the television. I may find myself in sensory and relationship overload. But I need the companionship of at least a few. Table may be about eating, but it is more. It is about companionship and listening and sharing and valuing and .grieving and laughing and celebrating all of the other very human characteristics we share, all in the environment of common human need and weakness. We all need to eat. We would die if we did not eat. And in companionship, we tacitly share in our admission of weakness, we share with each other our stories, our food and ourselves.

Why all of this rambling? IMHO, table will be one of the more important metaphors for our future. Perhaps as this blog wends its way into that future, we will explore this more. For now, simply imagine what it would be like to spend a little time at table with those whom God has called you into community. And once you’ve envisioned it, type out an email invitation, pick up your cell phone. Life is too short to miss out on table. By the way, don’t forget to invite Jesus. He loves it!

Grace and peace!

Owen

back in California...

2005-05-09T00:17:00.000-07:00

Hey, everyone...

I've made it back home safely with my son. Give me a day or so, and you'll see some new posts being added to the site. Sorry for the lull here, but I've been involved in important family things.

Thanks to all who have commented on and read these offerings.

And keep a lookout for updates on this site very soon....

Grace and peace!

Owen

journey (part three): enduring the silence...

2005-05-04T00:21:00.000-07:00

I am about to fly back to Abilene, Texas, to help my son drive home from his first year at university. There are somewhere between 1400 and 1500 miles of asphalt between Abilene and home. That’s a lot of time to be together. A lot of conversation. And a lot of silence for purposes of reflection, sleep (not the driver!) and just a sense of needing some mental space. I miss my son and I’m looking forward to it. I treasure these times.

I don’t think he’ll mind me sharing this (I hope). But when he was younger, he used to talk a lot. I’m ashamed to admit it, but I often didn’t hear what he said back then as he explored his way through his imagination by means of these one-sided conversations. My son creates wonderful fantasy stories in his head. And back stories. And languages. And environments and cultures and such. (And, as you may have noticed if you read his comment earlier, he’s a deep thinker and well-spoken. An honest assessment, I think!) It’s a wonderful gift that I hope will allow him some means of income in the future. But it was hard to listen. And he knew that. But he would say, “That’s okay, Dad. I know you’re not listening but I just have to say this.”

I thought of this last Sunday afternoon as Tone’s oldest son, Griffin, still a preschooler, manipulated his Power Ranger action figure through flips and various other gyrations from chair to chair in our worship center. And Griffin is an imaginative talker, too. He came up and explained all of what was going on to Tones and me. I lost the last half of the conversation. Didn’t understand his words and his thought process either one.

As he double-back-flipped his Power Ranger off on another adventure, Tones turned to me and asked something like, “Do you think God ever feels this way with us?”

We are a society that cannot stand silence. We even use noise to counteract other noise. If ever you doubt this, reassess your position the next time you pull up to a traffic signal next to some punk kid with head banger music blaring and with the bass rattling your lungs (and his trunk lid) through the $500 sub-woofer he’s mounted in his trunk. Tell me you don't turn up your stereo louder! Uh-huh....

Have you seen the new ad for Bose headphones? They were developed for those who spend time on airplanes who want to escape from a talkative neighbor and the sound of jet noise and the yipping lap dog whose owner keeps trying to set it down in her carry-on kennel during the red-eye flight from Los Angeles to Fort Lauderdale. They use sound to cancel out other sounds, usually background noise. But the escape is usually into loud music or some droning lecture recorded for posterity and burned onto a CD. Or, it’s books-on-CD where you can listen to your favorite author as you travel through the air or down the highway. Then there’s the iPod, complete with unassuming ear buds with the distinctive white wires hanging down and connecting with that technological marvel, a hard drive on steroids. Full of music or pictures or video clips or whatever you want to take with you. It’s big enough to hold a complete CD library. A big one.

It’s wonderful for long car trips. You never run out of something to listen to. Put it on shuffle mode and you’re set for a cross-the-USAmerica roundtrip. You’ll never be bored. And you’ll never hear the same song twice. It is the smallest and most impenetrable wall ever created. A wall of sound that holds people at a universe’s length.

Isn’t this true, also, of DVD players in minivans? No offense, parents. Just asking…..

Whatever happened to silence?

This is one reason I like the remote outdoors. When my son and I were in Alaska two summers back, we took the bus into Denali National Park where Mt. McKinley is located. (The locals call the mountain Denali, it’s native name.) The guidebook I read suggested that one get off the bus on the return trip, out in the middle of nowhere, and wait for half an hour for the next bus to arrive. During the 30 minutes of waiting, you could enjoy the sounds of silence that you can find nearly nowhere else in the world. I went up there expecting to do that, but I chickened out. When we got to Eilson Visitor’s Center some 60 miles into the park, the silence was still incredible. And frightening. Enough to convince me not to follow the guidebook's suggestion. (In part, I was afraid of not having room on the next bus. No way did I want to spend the night in Denali, stranded with the bears and moose and caribou and wolves!) All you heard was nature. No ambient sound of cars on freeways or trains screeching into town or forklifts moving pallets from this place to that… no unloading of trucks or train cars… no whine of electric transformers or fluorescent light bulbs… no sound of the refrigerator compressor kicking on and off… no sound of the automatic ice-maker dropping ice cubes into the nearly empty reservoir… or any of the rest of the 24-hour per day dull roar that dampens our existence.

Did you know that silence is an ancient Christian discipline? It is seldom practiced, however, in these days of frenetic searches for something to fill the time and sound and activity void. Because silence is hard to take.

I just spent a week in Bishop, California, on business. Stayed in a hotel. Did you know I didn’t even turn the television on? True, at night I fired up iTunes on my Powerbook as I was drifting off to sleep (City on a Hill songs, folks… good stuff!). But much of the time I spent with no radio, no television, no CD or iTunes music – nothing but silence. I am growing to love silence. Very much.

The truth is that often there is silence on the journey with God. Not our choice, but his. And often we fill it with chatter, non-stop chatter, about this care and that concern and this Power Ranger chasing Spiderman. And I have to wonder if Tones’ question isn’t very appropriate for us. Perhaps God is saying, “My child, if you would just shut up long enough, we could enjoy some silence together. Then, finally, you just might be able to hear me. Really! I’ve been waiting for you to shut up for a long time, to relieve yourself from the chatter addiction to the noise of life and Bible text systems and systematic theologies... and simply be with me in my presence.”

Do you think God may ever think that about us?

Anyone who has done any kind of backpacking knows that one does not have conversations with one’s neighbors when hiking up switchbacks on an uphill climb. Let’s face it. Much of our Christian walk is uphill. (Anyone want to dispute that?) Silence is preferred. But it's good to do the journey with someone else. And, hopefully, your journey is conducted with other Christians and other kinds of God-seekers. May you at least hear the collective crunch of your companions' footsteps on gravel.

But what do you do when you can hear an echo? When your voice is all you hear echoing off the ceiling, chattering away as you try to scatter the fearful ghosts of abandonment, loneliness and total irrelevance, as you hum (or more likely sing at the top of your lungs) a chase-the-ghosts-away graveyard song. Comedians call that silence “walking the room,” a euphemism for being so bad that people get up and leave. In cartoons it’s characterized by the sound of crickets. No one is listening, they say. That’s the conventional wisdom.

Perhaps Someone is listening. Perhaps Someone just wants us to shut up long enough to hear the echoes of God.

Our journey is not always on level ground, is it? If you’re traveling uphill right now, even with a group, perhaps it’s time to hear the rhythm of your collective footsteps… and God. In the silence.

On your journey this week, this month, this year, may God bless you with times of good, uncomfortable silence.

Grace and peace!

Owen

journey (part two): navigating the fog...

2005-05-03T00:46:00.000-07:00

I live in Central California in the San Joaquin Valley, the land of Tule fog (pronounced TUU-lee). Some of you that read this blog have lived in it all your lives, so you understand the metaphor in the title very well.

We rather fondly call the San Joaquin “THE valley”. We do have some justification for that pride in that it is one of the largest and certainly the most fertile of valleys in the United States, stretching for several hundred miles on a northwest-southeast line through the heart of California. THE valley meets the great Sacramento River Valley at its northern terminus. Between the two, most of the almonds, most of the table grapes (at least in the heart of the summer), pistachios, walnuts, cotton, kiwi and literally hundreds of other fruits, nuts and vegetables that you eat come from these two valleys. In Kern County alone where I live, most of the carrots, especially the packaged “baby carrots” sold in stores all over the United States and throughout the Pacific Rim countries come from two processing facilities less than 10 miles from my home. (Look on the back of the package for Grimmway Farms or Bolthouse Farms. Grimmway produces seven of the eight juices that Campbell uses to make V-8 for all V-8 sold west of the Rockies.)

Fog is of great benefit to our valley. I’m told by farmers that fog, in part, is what enables our fruit and nut trees to produce so well. I’m not an arborist so I don’t understand the mechanism involved, but we do produce a lot of good food.

Good food is one thing. But if you’ve ever driven in Tule fog, you know how hazardous that can be.

I remember one especially foggy Sunday evening when we lived in Riverdale, a tiny agricultural community in the heart of the valley. I had preached for the evening service at our church and wasn’t feeling very well. (Sermons sometimes make me sick.) By the time we were ready to leave, the fog was incredibly thick. It was the Sunday before Christmas and the Methodist Church in town was performing their Christmas cantata. Our neighbors were involved, plus I love choirs, remember? (see earlier post) Dorothy drove the few blocks to the Methodist Church in fog so thick that by the time we were halfway there we discovered we were on the wrong side of the street. That was only two or three blocks into the trip!

We couldn’t imagine it any thicker. We were wrong. That night as we caravanned home from the cantata with neighbors (we lived two miles outside of town on a dairy inhabited by an extended family—wonderful people!), we stayed maybe five or ten feet from the bumper of the car in front of us, close enough so that we didn’t lose sight of their tail lights. We were traveling five miles an hour, maybe a little faster. I have no idea how Parke Halvorsen, who was in the lead car, knew where we were going. Once we made it into the long driveway and split off toward our house, we drove right by our neighbor’s Christmas lights that had to be no more than 15 feet away. You couldn’t see them. And, yes, they were on.

That’s thick fog.

To use this as a metaphor, that feels like what it’s like to navigate on the suture zone. It’s not just that there are no familiar landmarks around. In some cases you can’t see even those things that are nearby.

Have you ever thrown a rock into the fog? It just swallows the rock. Or seems to. Unless, of course, there is a window hidden behind the fog you threw your rock into. Then you hear the sound of breaking glass. Sometimes when you’re in the fog, somebody hidden out there in the dimness is the one throwing the rocks at you. Rocks hurt. So do telephone poles. When you are driving, an unseen telephone pole is as real as a seen one if you run into it, fog or no fog. When the fog is thick, you worry about what you can’t see, because what you can’t see can hurt you. And sometimes does.

Funny thing, though. If your points of reference keep disappearing, pretty soon you are focused on the only ones that remain. You can’t afford to worry about anything else. Shoulders tense up, your head begins to throb and your hands are welded to the steering wheel. And your eyes? Your eyes literally hurt from staring so hard at things that are barely there. If at all.

Once on the way to Fresno, I couldn’t see the telephone poles. All I could see was one yellow stripe in the middle of the road. Occasionally I had to stop and open my driver-side door to see the stripe. When that one disappeared I could just see the next one coming up a few feet in front of the car. I used the stripe to orient myself. To point the way.

How does one navigate in the kingdom of God in the midst of this foggy transition period from modernity to whatever is coming next? Where is the cloud? Where is the flame?

Perhaps we’re in the cloud.

I’ve always pictured the children of Israel marching through the desert with the cloud and flame well ahead, leading the way. What if the cloud and flame were much closer? What if they wanted to watch the horizon instead, but God was just right next to them? All around them. Blocking the view of anything but the cloud. Would it have been frustrating? Would there have been a tendency to want to “just get on with it!” Build a golden calf that we can get our eyes and hands on? Or to retreat back to the comfort of a warm clear house and just stay home?

Perhaps the God of the cloud says, “Trust me. I’m going to remove all the signposts but me. You don’t need the distraction, children.” Perhaps he only shows us where to put the next footstep. Perhaps he shows us only the next yellow stripe on the road. Perhaps all we are given are the taillights of his car just in front of us. And we have to keep up lest the dim taillight disappear altogether and we be tempted to turn around and go home where all appears so much safer, but isn’t.

I think, at least in some ways, this is us. Cold, uncomfortable, fearful, staring and listening as hard as we can in the Cloud of God. So that we can take one more step.

More later in Journey (part three)…

In the meantime,

Grace and peace!

Owen

journey (part one): following the flame...

2005-05-01T07:56:00.000-07:00

Do you fantasize about being with Moses and the children of Israel in the wilderness? I do. Yeah, I know. We’re wimps today compared with what they had to put up with. But still. Can you imagine waking up every morning not knowing which direction you are going, and there before you is a cloud leading the way? Or at night when you are dead tired and can hardly put one foot in front of the other, you look up and there is a bright orange flame out ahead of you beckoning you forward?

It’s a comforting thing to be led by the Spirit of God. It’s exciting! It's frightening and challenging, too. In fact, I would say it is absolutely essential, especially when you find yourself journeying on the suture zone.

Perhaps one of the things that has handicapped God’s people is the feeling that we are not on a journey. Instead, we have felt that we have arrived in the promised land. That has not always been true of my particular heritage. Early on there was a real sense of being pilgrims in a foreign land on the way somewhere. But somehow having gained a sense of respectability in the world (not to mention a higher socio-economic level denomination-wide), we lost that sense.

Moses warned the people when they were about to enter the promised land that they would have a tendency to forget how they got there and where all these milk and honey blessings came from. I wonder if we haven’t experienced the same thing in the modern church and are now suffering from the souring of the milk and the spoiling of the honey that Israel did. I know the promised land had to be a good thing. After all, God was leading them there on purpose. Somehow, though, it always appears the good that God leads us to eventually sours in our own hands. Perhaps it is better to always be pilgrims, always on the journey. I don’t know. But I get the distinct impression that Christians today are being called on a journey into the future, not to a comfortable place on the homestead. In fact, I don’t think we have much choice in the matter. God is on the move. Either we follow or....

Now, I’m not trying to romanticize wandering around in the desert. I’ve just driven through Death Valley this week for the first time. I know it is not someplace I want to be wandering around in any time, much less during the summer months. And I’ve been on some pretty long hikes when I was (much) younger. I’ve gotten my share of blisters and sore backs. The older I get, the less appealing sleeping on the ground appears to me. But like I said, I believe that God is on the move.

So where is the cloud and flame?

I believe that question is very much worth exploring for those of us who have ventured out, however gingerly, onto the suture zone. Personally, I’m not satisfied with the answers of my modern heritage. “The Bible is our guide. The Spirit speaks through the word. Just obey the word.” Well.... I’m not denigrating God’s ability to speak through what has been written down. I just don’t trust my ability to clearly see exactly what is being said. Nor do I trust the mechanistic means that my modern colleagues and forbears have used to "decipher" the text. And the word bears witness to the fact that God doesn’t abandon people who are looking to him and willing to follow. It says he's actively involved In their lives.

So where do we go? Where do we head next? Into what is Jesus leading us? How do we know how to follow?

Do we find God and his direction in the disciplines? Silence? Lectio divina? Centering prayer? Do we find it alone or in community? Do we seek the "still, small voice"?

More on the next post, with navigating the fog...

But feel free to share any ideas you have in the meantime.

Grace and peace!
Owen

there has to be a choir...

2005-04-29T23:05:00.000-07:00

My daughter is taking a class for her Contemporary Christian Ministries major called Music in the Church. She called me yesterday to see what ideas and resources I could offer. Frustration oozed through her words as she described her final project/paper for the class, not because of the work, but because of the parameters she was given within which the work must be accomplished.

Part of the task is preparing a worship service thematically, choosing songs, sermon title, readings, etc. Not a bad project at first glance. Perhaps this conversation related to me by my daughter (and probably quite paraphrased by me) will serve to illustrate the problem:

“I want you to prepare this service, and I want you to include a choir in the service.”

“What if we don’t have choirs in our churches?”

“I still want there to be a choir.”

“What if my particular church has a thing against choirs?”

“I still want there to be a choir. And I want you to use a choral piece, not just a song that the congregation would sing. And using the reasons I gave you for using and not using particular songs, I want you to tell me why you would use the songs you choose and why you would leave some others out.”

Funny thing is, this particular instructor has been touting how this is to be a non-denominational worship approach, either liturgical or non-liturgical, and yet she does not allow flexibility beyond what she (the instructor) imagines as the ideal. She has very precisely and narrowly defined worship and carefully circumscribed the "proper" worship forms and theology. Imagination is out the window with the other "garbage".

I call it worship in a can. Or a box.

And it illustrates a problem that we all face that goes far beyond just worship. We define the world by our imaginings of it. Worse, our imaginings become the canon by which we judge the actions and directions of others. We say it's God, but it's not. It's us. It's our failure of imagination.

God's imagination however is not limited by ours. Nor are the limits of his work defined by our expectations. In fact, my greatest hope is that God is working in me in spite of my mistaken apprehensions of what needs to be done or how it should be done. And he's doing exactly the same thing in another person of faith somewhere who has a much different picture of what God is doing than what I believe.

Part of this failure of imagination is being too focused on what is immediately near. The older I get, the more credence I give to the story of the seven blind men of Hindustan, who, each having hold of a different part of an elephant, are convinced they know what they are dealing with. How appropriate for our time.

Personally, I’m glad to see the Holy Spirit working in all kinds of ways. IMHO, the more the better. Somehow or another, we just have to stop putting God (and each other) in a box. My great confidence is that God can work in all times, in all circumstances, in all paradigms, in all ages, and especially when we find ourselves living in the suture zone where nothing is settled or normal.

Do I believe he is leading believers in a certain direction to accomplish the in-breaking kingdom? Yes, generally speaking (do you like my specificity here?). Do I believe things are going to coalesce down the line? Yes, in a somewhat diverse way (do you like the tongue-in-cheek way I put that?), but probably long after I depart this mortal frame. In the meantime, pursue the work you are given and empowered to do by the Holy Spirit. And leave everyone else alone. God is quite capable of multi-tasking and he is quite creative in how he interacts with incredibly diverse people.

I'm for imagination run wild! Sounds dangerous, doesn't it?

Like I said in an earlier post. He just won’t stay in the box. Why don't we stop trying to force his people into one as well?

By the way, this isn’t about choirs. I happen to like them. Anyone who really knows me knows that. I just don’t think handcuffs hidden behind our backs are an appropriate way to approach either God or his people.

Canned worship? Sheesh! Somebody grab a can opener!!! (Do I really have to have a choir?)

Grace and peace!

Owen

we will never make it to the moon...

2005-04-27T23:22:00.000-07:00

My grandfather didn’t believe that man would ever make it to the moon. For some of you, that accomplished fact is ancient history and you have never lived in a world where the imagination of traveling to other planets was not an accepted possibility all because of the moon landings, which happened before you were born.

The reason my grandfather held this particular belief had nothing to do with science or technology or any of the things that occupied the engineers and scientists at NASA’s Dryden, Kennedy and Johnson centers. No. My grandfather was convinced that we would never make it to the moon precisely because God would never let man make it to the moon. Obviously, he was proven wrong and mercifully the proof came after his death.

He never went into his reasoning on this and I couldn’t understand his hesitance to imagine such a thing. Perhaps it was harkening back to man’s pride at the disaster at Babel or a strong identification with Psalm 8:3f or something like that. I don’t know. But the reality is that it was a totally misplaced belief that was later proved wrong. And his imagination of the world and how God related to the world would not allow this thing to happen.

Why would I bring this up?

This kind of thinking infects everyone stuck in the modern paradigm. It is especially true that Christians of all stripes follow such reasoning. And it is precisely in such thinking that we are able to see just how imbedded our faith can be in modern constructs.

One example... miracles. True liberals denied the miracles of Jesus on the basis of modern mechanistic explanations of the universe. Miracles were an a priori impossibility to them, therefore they were “metaphorical stories” or mistaken apprehensions of primitive peoples or some other thing that explains away what happened. Conservatives on the other hand would defend the miracles of Jesus to the death. Funny thing is that most Evangelicals and Fundamentalists take the same mechanistic view of today’s world as their counterparts from the liberal persuasion. (Obviously, this example doesn’t apply to Pentecostals or charismatics. Other examples could.)

Someone has said that our major problem is a crisis of imagination. I’m beginning to believe that. We have reasons why or why not things are so or not so. All of these conveniently fit our pre-set ideas about the world. We have a picture of reality colored by someone else’s crayons and it is too hard, too exhausting, too emotionally threatening to dig through the morass of imaginings so that we might color outside the lines or with different media. In fact, it is often impossible to do in any kind of depth. We lack the imagination to envision our world and God’s Kingdom in any other way.

This is truly a crisis.

I just read a friend’s blog. He is trying to be on the cutting edge of the Kingdom. He is totally frustrated with people who are a part of what he is doing who want to hold back and drag the old paradigm along. While I’ve cautioned him and others about throwing out the baby with the bath water, I understand his frustration. While we can’t separate ourselves completely from what has come before (my posit, not his), we need some kind of drastic divorce from the imagining of it. The old imagining is infected and dying and decaying. Most of the rest of the world has left it behind. It is dragging the Kingdom in its old expression down with it. How hard it is, and yet how vital in our time, to peel the vestiges of the Kingdom which we have lumped in with “church” away from our former way of approaching life and ministry and what it means to “do church” and “be church”. How hard it is to step onto the suture zone and head for the further horizon, though we cannot yet imagine what it is.

Lord, have mercy. Christ, have mercy. Lord, have mercy.

If you hadn’t noticed, man made it to the moon... several times. We’ve cloned animals. We’ve altered genetics. We’re even exploring suspended animation as a reality. We’ve created real-time news, instantaneous communication and can travel anywhere in the world in less than 24 hours. People have imagined these things. They have become part of today’s imagined world.

What are you up to, Lord? Where are the imaginers of your Kingdom?

God, give us dreamers, give us poets, give us storytellers and artists that can lead the way! Holy Spirit of God, only you can accomplish this! Please!!!

Grace and peace!

Owen

The Communion of Apprenticeship

2005-04-25T22:38:00.000-07:00

Hey, everyone... I wrote this for one of our Soul'd Out emerging services. It was the written instruction that accompanied a communion station set with bread and red grape juice. (Tony printed it out on parchment using a really cool font he has. I can't remember the font name. He knows.) Communicants approached the candlelit table and presumably read these instructions. Not sure if it is helpful for anyone else, but if it is, please feel free to use it.

Owen

* * * * *

The Communion of Apprenticeship

“23Then he told them what they could expect for themselves: “Anyone who intends to come with me has to let me lead. You’re not in the driver’s seat—I am. Don’t run from suffering; embrace it. Follow me and I’ll show you how. 24Self-help is no help at all. Self-sacrifice is the way, my way, to finding yourself, your true self. 25What good would it do to get everything you want and lose you, the real you?” Luke 9:23-25 (The Message)

Jesus calls us to abandon our own pursuits, our own directions, our own pleasures and follow Him. He is the Master. We are the apprentices. It is a call to self-abandonment that we might truly find ourselves. It is a call to live as He lived. It is a call to recognize our weakness and to live instead in His power. It is a strong and demanding call.

The Bread

Tear off a piece of the bread. Recognize that, as the bread to us is Jesus crucified and risen, so taking it into yourself is asking Him to recreate His life in you. He, the Master. You, the apprentice. If you are willing for that relationship, place the bread in your mouth. If not, replace the bread on the tray. Whatever your choice, spend some time reflecting in prayer.

The Cup

Pick up a cup of the wine. Being an apprentice is demanding. Being an apprentice of Jesus, without His power, is impossible. Blood is the very empowering force of life. Recognize that, as the wine to us is the blood of Jesus crucified and risen, so taking it into yourself is accepting His power for the journey of self-sacrifice. Recognize that, as Paul says, “He is faithful and He will accomplish it.” If you are willing to rely on His power rather than yours, drink the cup. If not, replace the cup in the tray. Whatever your choice, spend some time reflecting in prayer.

stuff from on high...

2005-04-24T12:43:00.000-07:00

First, a quick aside... I'll be out of town this week working my fool head off in the Owens River Valley on the eastern side of the Sierra Nevada. I know I'll have connectivity Monday through Thursday nights, but I'll be out of touch probably until then. And I may be too wiped out to post anything this week. We'll see.

And now, stuff from on high...

About two or three months ago, during one of my trips to Sacramento, I noticed something peculiar outside the window. I was sitting in a guest cubicle in our satellite office on the sixth floor of the historic Senator Hotel across from the capitol. (By the way, as much as I’ve stared at the capitol building, I have yet to catch a glimpse of Arnold.) This window doesn’t face the capitol. It faces a multi-storied parking garage. But just beyond the top of the garage you can see the southern spire of the Church of the Resurrection. It’s another historic building in downtown Sacramento. And as happens with older buildings, this one is being... well, resurrected. They are doing a complete facelift/restoration.

Anyway, they were working on the upper sections of the bell towers and had scaffolding built up to the top of this spire. That’s not unusual with these kinds of jobs. What was unusual was the bright blue portapotty that was perched at the very highest section of the scaffolding.

I actually wrote something in my journal that day to remind myself of what I saw. It was a striking image. I can imagine the conversation between the workers and the foreman about the need to lift a portapotty up to such heights. And I would have hated to be the guy responsible for getting it down. (It’s gone now.)

Anyway, I’ve been thinking about that image for a while. I knew it meant something, was a good picture of something. Maybe this suggests some things to you other than what I’m about to say. If so, please feel free to comment. Please remember also that we like to keep portapotties (and blogs) clean for all those who avail themselves of the facilities.

But what it suggested to me was that no matter how high up you get, no matter how structured and well-thought-out your theologies, no matter how good your questions, there is always stuff that you need to deal with, better, that God needs to deal with.

If you can imagine, too, if someone tipped the thing at the wrong moment, anyone standing beneath would be... well, it wouldn’t be pretty, would it? Perhaps it’s a good thing that it was out in the open like that. People walking underneath or staying underneath at least know that those they look to for guidance still don’t’ have it all together. And people who use that portapotty way up there can remember that they are human like everyone below. All God’s chillen’ got stuff. That’s probably one of the reasons I like reading Anne Lamott’s writing. She doesn’t window dress it at all. She lays it all – good and bad – right out there in the open.

It’s a beautiful group, the church of the resurrection, just as long as we remember that we all got stuff.

Grace and peace!

Owen

in between... more about the suture zone

2005-04-23T23:37:00.000-07:00

Well, I couldn't go to sleep just leaving a rant hanging out there. So there are two posts for today. Maybe this one will bless you more....

The San Andreas earthquake fault pretty much runs the length of California, more or less on a northwest-southeast line. It’s famous. Many are scared of it, and would rather live in Tornado Alley or brave hurricanes on the gulf coast or southeastern seaboard than to live in California, the land of earthquakes and the looming Big One (right, Tony?). Which is why the San Andreas is so famous. It is the meeting place of the North American and Pacific tectonic plates. And all up and down its length we find what is called the suture zone.

I was born and grew up in California. I’ve been through several major quakes. Sylmar in 1971. Coalinga. Loma Prieta. Northridge. Baker. Sometimes I’ve been closer to the epicenter. Sometimes farther away. But always knowing when I feel a gentle rolling motion of the earth that someone somewhere is frightened out of their wits and in some cases scrambling for their lives.

Sometimes it hasn’t been gentle. During the Coalinga quake I thought my entire religious library was going to come down on me. The ultimate irony for a preacher, I think. Killed by his books. Earthquakes aren’t tame. But they happen. You don’t get used to the big ones. But there are hundreds of small earthquakes that people never even feel that happen deep underground every day. And the San Andreas fault and all of the others of greater or lesser significance are part of what it means to live in California.

Most people don’t even think about it. In fact, the San Andreas is obvious in several places if you know what to look for. Driving Interstate 5 south from the San Joaquin Valley (say, from Bakersfield or Fresno or San Francisco) across the mountains to Los Angeles, you are driving for a number of miles atop the San Andreas suture zone itself. Fifteen or so miles of scrambled hills evidence the fault’s ancient presence and bear witness to the turmoil of these two plates colliding, one slowly but surely being driven under to the magma below while the other encroaches fraction of inch by fraction of inch over the millennia in constant change. Sometimes change takes place more rapidly than that. The Big One earthquakes happen and the land above the fault turns to soup and completely re-forms into scattered hill fractals in an area called the suture zone. Funny thing is, thousands and thousands of people drive atop the San Andreas every day and most of them don’t even know.

If you’ve gotten this far in my post, you may be wondering what earthquakes and suture zones and the San Andreas fault have to do with our world, the church and the in-breaking kingdom of God. Let me suggest – as the title of this blog indicates – that you and I are living through a time when we are experiencing life on the suture zone. A life between paradigms. A life in between ways of looking at, knowing and experiencing the world. A life where change is so rapid that it strains our ability to keep our footing. The ground keeps shifting. We live in between. In the suture zone.

I spent Saturday of Passion Week this year driving to and from Santa Paula.. The day before was Good Friday, remembering the execution of Jesus. (The world must wonder at our terminology – the Roman instrument of torture and death was anything but good.) Easter was the day after and celebrated Jesus’ resurrection from the dead. But that particular day was Holy Saturday. I heard it called Holy Saturday this year for the first time. It’s probably been called that for a thousand years, but, hey, I grew up in a denomination that didn’t follow the church calendar. So, it’s new to me. But it must have been one hell of a day for the disciples Jesus left behind. Literally.

That’s how in between times can be sometimes. Hellish. Solid ground turning to soup under your feet. Hundreds of random hills caught in a slow moving fractal, waiting to resolve and as yet showing no pattern. Reference points appearing and disappearing like mirages. In between.

When my wife and I traveled from Bakersfield to Santa Paula, I looked at where the suture zone starts. I thought about things as we drove over it for probably fifteen miles. We made it without incident as usual. The next day was Easter, so we stopped in Santa Paula at a Rite Aide to buy some chocolate for my mother-in-law who lives in a skilled nursing facility waiting to die. She’s 91 years old, wracked by tremendous pain, the loss of her independence, hours upon hours of little reason to live and questioning God as to why she’s still living. Seemingly trapped in between life and life.

On the way into the store I noticed a young woman, probably 15 or 16, maybe older, sitting on the sidewalk with an old dog. She had a bad case of freckles, and I could imagine other kids making fun of her at school. Her clothes were dirty and the hems of her jeans were tattered. But she sat on the sidewalk and calmly watched people as they went in and came out of the store. On our way out she asked if we could help her out with any money. I told her I would buy her some food at a nearby fast food restaurant, but she said she was collecting money for groceries. She needed dinner for three other people. I politely declined. I have made it a point not to give cash away for fear of supporting someone’s addiction – for which I should probably repent. But that’s another story. Anyway, I didn’t help. She wished us “Happy Easter” as we walked to our car. But it gnawed at me as we visited my wife’s mother.

Since I was also in between the old way of eating and the new way – one of those low carb diet induction times – not long into our visit I had to leave and get something that I could eat. I had resolved to stop and ask this young woman for her shopping list. But daylight had begun to fade and she wasn’t there. The coffee shop I was going to was in the same area as the market she had pointed to. Didn’t see her at the market as I drove by either. Saw her later in a gas station with her boyfriend, who was comparing the price of malt liquor to what they might find at a liquor store. “Are you from around here,” he asked me. “Do you know where there’s a liquor store?” “No,” I answered. “This is a pretty good deal,” he told his girlfriend. They seemed to be in between, too.

On our way home, we traveled the highway through Fillmore, and took a moment to drive along the main street of this small agricultural town. By the time we got there, the normally bright “Welcome to Fillmore” sign across its main street had turned dark, an obvious victim of small town rhythms and the soaring cost of energy. As we drove up the street the only storefronts still open and lighted were the bars and other nighttime venues. At the top of the street, all of the churches were completely blacked out. No lights at all. Appropriate, I thought, for Holy Saturday. Descriptive also, perhaps, of what the world sees on the few occasions it does look our direction. Just darkness.

Suture zones. Holy Saturday. Induction phases of low carb diets. The chasm between a 91 year-old woman and a 16 year-old runaway in between whatever it is she is running away from and whatever it is that she is running to. A town in between daylight and daylight, caught in a time when it seems nothing is happening and everything is changing and there is little or no light shining.

Sometimes the metaphors just slam me in the face. I was (and am) literally overwhelmed by what I experienced that day. As if God were making it very obvious that my world has changed. And that the context with which I as his follower approached the world when I was growing up is no longer valid. Dark. Nearly nonsensical to people who have grown up and live on the suture zone.

The tendency of course for those of faith is just not to live there. We like certainty. We like routine. We like predictability. We like comfortable sermons about how God is in control. And we repeat that to ourselves, almost as a mantra when times grow hard and unexplainable. We pull into our exclusive enclaves, cloistering ourselves so that we might maintain some sense of Christian nation or some other comfortable fiction with which we can hold back bleak reality. Our worship focuses on praise and denies lament. (You may not know this, but about two-thirds of the Psalms are lament, nearly two-to-one lament versus praise.)

There are no permanent landmarks in a suture zone. What is there today to give your world definition may not be there tomorrow. True, some of us demand to live on one side of the fault or the other. But in active times, as folks in Sumatra are discovering right now, sometimes it doesn’t matter how far away you live, you still get hit by the effects of a moving world.

Now I ‘m not saying all of this to depress you (though I may have succeeded in doing just that). Rather, I’m trying to say that God’s people have often found themselves in between. When the Israelites left Egypt their ongoing whine all the time in the desert (roughly paraphrased) was, “Moses, why did you lead us out into this God-forsaken place just to die? Didn’t we have enough to eat back there? Work wasn’t so bad back there, was it? Come to think of it, I liked it back there. Brick-making was a pretty decent job. And now look at where we are!” David spent years after being anointed as God’s chosen king before he ever ascended to the throne. And his boss, King Saul, did everything he could to prevent it. David turned out to be pretty good at the ancient game of dodge spear. Abraham never even got to possess the promised land. He lived in it all of the last half of his life as a foreigner. Christians have been living in between the first and second incarnations for 2,000 years. I would think we would be used to it by now. Behold, the old is gone, the in between has come. Again.

“So, what do we do?” you may be asking me.

I don’t know. Just hold onto God as he reveals himself and learn to live in between. Trust in the power and presence of God in his Holy Spirit. Allow Jesus to break into our in between world through you and your faith community. And recognize God’s hand by the fruit that results rather than anything else. Beyond that, I don’t know what else to say except, “Buck up, Bucko!”

Not a lot of help, I know. But neither is going back to Egypt. You think?

perspective...

2005-04-23T21:40:00.000-07:00

A lot of what one thinks is wrong or right with the church today depends on perspective. I just read a comment on another blog (not yours, Miller) that basically said planting house churches in marginal communities is the only thing Christians ought to be about today. Or at least it could be read that way.

Please don’t think that what I’m about to say means I am against house churches or against planting churches of any model. Because I am very much for that. I do believe we need to be about planting churches everywhere we can, especially among those marginalized by our society (and even by the church at times), and in whatever models we are led by God to use.

But I am incredibly grieved when I hear usually younger people state emphatically that theirs is the direction all Christians should be going, that authentic Jesus ministry can only happen in this way or that…. I’m sorry folks, but I’m just truly, truly grieved.

Do we need more house churches? Yes. Do we need emerging churches? Yes. Do we need established congregations to make the transition to missional churches? Yes. Do we need traditional churches? Yes!

To devalue the godliness and expression of Jesus represented by those who have gone before us is a grievous sin! It smacks of the judgmentalism against which so many of us are reacting today. To focus on what are obvious warts within the tradchurch is sort of like Jesus’ story about the optometrist trying to clear dust specks out of people’s eyes when there’s a log hanging out of his.

I’m sorry to be so harsh, but I know some precious, precious souls who would never make it in a house church or an emerging church or any of the newer models of church that are popping up. But if I read my Bible correctly, God loves them just as much as he loves those of us who are looking at different ways of ministry, and who understand the black eye that the tradchurch has given “church” in much of our society, and who absolutely know Jesus wants us to (fill in the blank here). Maybe Jesus wants us to stop judging. Maybe he even wants us to stop judging those who are judging us. How can mutual castigation further the kingdom of God?

All I beg of you is to have a bit of perspective. If I am right (and of course I think I am ;^) ) we are currently living through the greatest change in world view since the Enlightenment. Even if you don’t grant that, you must admit that change in communication, lifestyle, mobility, mechanics, medicine, technology, biogenetics and a hundred other things has happened more rapidly today than perhaps at any other time in man’s history. However you want to describe them – pre-modern, modern, post-modern, or any other moniker – it’s clear we have people who live in different worlds, even though they live on the same earth. They have different perspectives.

Is it too much to ask that we don’t jump to the conclusion that because God is in what we are doing, that God somehow isn’t in what someone else is doing who is doing it the old way, or a different way or whatever?

Well, now I’ve ranted. You’ll find me doing that here occasionally. If I over-reacted, I’m sorry.

I just have to ask, though. Whatever happened to grace and mercy?

Grace and peace!

Owen

skiing from an anchored boat...

2005-04-20T07:40:00.000-07:00

My last post focused on treading water in a quickly moving tide. I want to suggest another way to use the same metaphor. (I know, these first few weeks are going to be heavy on the metaphors -- Tones told me last night he was about to crown me king of the metaphors or something like that. Brace yourself! There are more coming!)

Two summers ago as my son and I fished in the waters of Katchemak Bay, Alaska, a crew that we fished with anchored the boat at slack tide. That particular day had a relatively short slack tide, and before long the tide began to turn. Yet the boat stayed anchored. Too long. As the speed of the tide increased water began flowing quickly past the boat as if we were moving. Faster and faster. Fishing lines with two and three-pound weights stretched out at oblique angles from the back of the boat. A wake appeared. We seemed to be under way. But if you looked at the shore it was obvious we were not. We were staying in exactly the same place relative to the shore.

This was when I made the comment to the captain about being able to water ski behind this anchored boat. (see last post)

I remember hooking a halibut. I knew it had to be a monster. I had visions of a 100 lb. plus fish, one that we would have to tow behind the boat to get it in. (Just so this won't seem quite so selfish, I also had visions of the wonderful halibut bake I would be able to put on at the church.)

It took all of my strength to bring the fish close to the boat. In fact, it just wouldn't come close. This halibut surfaced a good 50 feet out. I was shocked at what I saw -- a five-pound baby (compared to the minimum 20 pounders we had been landing). It skimmed easily now across the water's surface as I brought it in so the deck hand could unhook and release it.

I thought it was amazing that such a small fish could fight harder than the 40+ pounder I was to land later that day. But it wasn't just the fish I was fighting. It was the current, too. The tide.

Some of us as communities of faith operate from anchored boats. When we as God's people recognize the massive changes taking place in society, we sometimes react by digging the anchor deeper and resisting the flow of the cultural current. This is true whether we come from a liberal or conservative bent. I don't know that that is such a bad thing at times. The church, after all, should be countercultural. But I have to wonder if there isn't another way. And if perhaps our focus is on things that are not quite as important to God as other things may be.

We have three choices when going through massive cultural change (something that I am assuming you agree with; if not, maybe we need to discuss). One choice is to simply go with the flow uncritically and accept the philosophies and mores and values of the world. We could become the Church of the Areopogas, the famous hill in Athens, where people spent their days in arguing new philosophies and beliefs, driven by every wind of philosophical speculation. We could float with the tide. This is an attractive alternative for some, especially among those who are cognizant of the church's modernity affliction. It is perhaps the course that takes the least energy. But this leaves us at the mercy of the tides and is not true engagement.

Mind you, I am not recommending that we avoid the environment (see option two below). But the hyper-relativism of our day, especially the prejudice against overarching stories that tie humanity together, is, in my opinion, just an over-reaction to modern thought by some post-modern people. Many post-moderns have thrown out the baby with the bath water. (Perhaps in their defense we should note that for many the bath water was so filthy that they couldn't see the baby.) Most are pretty reasonable (there's that word again!) when confronted with the absurdity of absolute relativism. It's just that they don't buy the equal absurdity of some of the conclusions reached by religious people in the grip of modernity.

There is a second obvious alternative that most conservative churches have chosen. The church must refuse to accept cultural precepts. It must refuse to swim in the cultural milieu around it. Instead, the church buries the anchor deeper and sails in place against the rushing tide of post-modernity. (Hence, the title... skiing behind an anchored boat....) There is something to be said for this approach. The church is to be countercultural in its kingdom life. But I think Jesus' way was not to simply anchor in the past either, drawing a line in the sand across which he would not go. Rather, that seems to have been the reaction of the religious leaders of his day. The ones who had it right. Instead, Jesus seemed to go wherever he wanted, talk to whomever he wanted and have parties with people that the religious establishment of the day found scandalous. Today’s Evangelical establishment, as an example, has not only taken an oppose position against the tides of our world, but has created insular communities to stand against the pagan flow of the tide. It has worked hard to politically influence the tides in an opposite direction. It has argued for strict enforcement of selected moral precepts as part of society. Unfortunately, in its pursuit of “righteousness” the church has run roughshod over moral issues of a global nature, such as the environment and the recognition of the basic humanity of every soul, and often has been absolutely hateful to anyone who disagrees with it. (I could use examples from a liberal Christian bent as well.) In short, Jesus hung out with the lepers of society. We largely don’t. Or if we do, we want to change them into people just like us. (Shudder.)

Perhaps, though, there is a third alternative.

For all of our warts as communities of faith, it seems that more than 3,000 years of combined Judeo-Christian values has had some positive effect in our world. The fact that people seem to care about curing injustice, demonstrated in such efforts as the abolition of slavery and apartheid and the championing of civil rights, seems to indicate that some of the message of the prophets and of Jesus got through. There's a shadow, an echo of godliness, a heartening hint of pre-dawn kingdom glow. Of course, it hasn't helped that the church in some venues supported slavery, created apartheid and fought against civil rights. We do have mixed reviews. But at least someone in the world was listening to something the synagogue or church said or did. At least it lit a small spark of humanity that calls for these injustices to be corrected. Astonishingly, this has often come from the hearts of all kinds of people who would be offended if we called them Christians. Could it be that in some ways the kingdom of God is breaking into the world, but not through the church as we know it? Do you think there might be conversations we could have centered around something other than doctrine, that could be other than judgmental or manipulative? Do you think we might even gain some perspective by listening in that conversation mode?

I am more than ever convinced that Jesus didn't send us into the world to convince people of some set of doctrinal facts, whether of salvation or atonement, heaven or hell, or any of the other systematic doctrines which are so precious to us Protestants. Instead he broke into the world to make it different, to make us different. People who would love God... and each other. Who would stand up against injustice and lovingly affirm anyone simply because God loves them too. Sometimes (not always) I find more of that in the world than I find in the church. Why is that?

I decided long ago that I was a poor judge of people's motives and actions. (Why do I seem to be making a judgment now? Sometimes I forget what I decided! Yikes! I know I've been somewhat judgmental of some of my Christian peers in this post. The critique is offered humbly and with full recognition that I may be wrong.) I am a poor evaluator of my own behavior, much less theirs. But I can engage people with respect and a sense of common humanity and a listening ear. I can establish relationship bridges. I can recognize commonalities between their goals and actions and the in-breaking kingdom of God, not for purposes of manipulating them, but for awe at God's work in and through people. I don't have to agree with them. They don't have to agree with me. But collectively we might be able to join forces to right injustice and to find value in those whom the rest of the world (and sadly sometimes the church) has given up on. In the process, who knows? Maybe they'll get to know the more authentic Jesus.

My advice for boats sailing in place against the tide? If you stay anchored as the tide rushes in or out, at least get out your water skis. Even better, cut the anchor rope but leave the motors running. In fact, abandon ship and dive in. Swim with and against the tide. Learn to navigate in it and to authentically engage those you find there. That is where Jesus would be, I suspect.

Brace yourself! The water is cold!

Grace and peace!

Owen

treading water in an Alaskan tide...

2005-04-19T18:29:00.000-07:00

First, a confession. I love to fish! Hang around this site long enough and you'll read a blog (sometime in May, probably) dealing with that. Just to anticipate... it will involve confession, regret, great joy and memory. (Some would also say bragging, but you can judge that for yourself when the time comes.) If you think fishing is anathema, you'll need to read that post with a heart of forgiveness.

The past two summers I have been blessed to sport fish in Alaska. It is a place of breathtaking beauty and constant change. I stayed on the northern coast of the Kenai Peninsula in a very old wide spot just off the highway called Kasilof. Across Cook Inlet to the north are around 10 active volcanoes. The peninsula itself is sinking inches every year on its northern coast due to so much seismic and volcanic activity.

Then there are the tides.

There is only one place on earth with higher tides than Alaska and that is the Bay of Fundy in Nova Scotia. The differences between low and high tides can be over 20 feet in Cook Inlet where I fished for halibut. There are two tidal changes a day (on average), which means, generally speaking, in a 24-hour period, the tide has come in and gone out twice. Can you imagine how massive a change that is?

What does this have to do with our world today?

Imagine that you are treading water in Katchemak Bay in Alaska. (Imagine at the same time that you are not dying from hypothermia within minutes of entering the water!) If you are treading water next to an unanchored boat with your eyes focused on it, nothing seems to change from your perspective. You are simply holding your position steady.

If it is during slack tide when the water is not moving, you could even look at the horizon and see very little change. But once the tide begins to move, if your focus remains only on the boat you will not realize that the horizon is moving past you very rapidly, that the bottom below you is changing depths very quickly, that you yourself are moving and that if you are not an experienced captain (or swimmer) who knows how to navigate these waters, or if you don't take your eyes off the boat and look toward the shore, you will end up on the rocks dead.

I could be wrong, but I think this is a good metaphor for the church today dealing with the shift from modernity to post-modernity. We have so focused on ourselves, we don't even realize the environment in which we exist has changed drastically. We want to believe that nothing has changed, that our perspectives from modernity are correct. If we keep staring at ourselves through our special modern glasses, we can make that argument quite well. But we run the risk of fulfilling Jesus' dire prediction that salt might lose its saltiness and end up being good for nothing.

The water in an Alaskan tide moves very, very quickly. I kidded with one of the captains I fished with suggesting that one could water ski from an anchored boat. This is not far off the truth.

Our world today seems to have been in a major "tidal" shift, moving very, very rapidly.

As communities of faith, what are we looking at to gauge the times we live in? What do we see when we look beyond ourselves and our fixed ideas? How do we learn to live on and negotiate the tides? How important (or unimportant) are views from outside the Christian worldview in this environment? How do we engage the horizon with faith? Any ideas?

I'll say more in a later post about Alaskan tides because I think there is more to reflect on in this metaphor. In the meantime...

Grace and peace!

Owen

posting plans...

2005-04-18T23:50:00.000-07:00

I just wanted you to know that I will probably be posting two or three times a week. Sometimes more often, sometimes less, depending on my schedule. (This is my busy time at work.) It will probably be less at first as I adjust to the discipline of writing posts, but please check back regularly. And feel free to comment, disagree, lurk or whatever pleases you.

Grace and peace!
Owen

…more on the name: the suture zone

2005-04-16T23:37:00.000-07:00

This is going to be a long post. I hope you’ll bear with me on this. If not, just skip this one and wait for the next.

Life used to be very simple for me. It still would be if my parents hadn’t taught me to question.

I grew up in a good family that was part of a church in the American Restoration movement. The conservative wing. A bit too much to explain here if you aren’t familiar with it. But it was… well… modern.

Now that will sound strange to anyone who comes from this movement. Because in many respects the better term among some critical insiders might be “antiquated” or among the “faithful” the highest compliment: “first century”. But in true modern-era terms you might say the Churches of Christ were really hyper-modern… or hyper-rationalistic. One of the pinnacles of a cross between Lockean rationalism and early American frontier Christianity.

And in many ways, I was a child of that movement. I learned all the rational arguments about how we were the “true church” and about how all of our practices were “right”. I learned the greatest tool in our arsenal: reason. And I used it relentlessly in my pursuit of pure New Testament-era practice.

Funny thing about rationalism. It helped me see that not all rationalistic thought was welcome or appreciated in my denomination. I began to see holes in our doctrines and practice. And I am afraid I used my handy tool to put some people (one preacher in particular, as I remember) in a very difficult public position. I have nothing but regret for that now and see it for the expression of pride that it was. But I was heady with my intellectual and theological rebellion and, though my hair remained somewhat short, I was a true child of the 1960s.

I mean no offense to those who come from the same tradition. Truly, none at all. There were and are still many absolutely wonderful people in this movement and my memories of people during my growing-up years are, for the most part, wonderful memories of people bonded together by unusual beliefs… a real extended family. Very close, yet, a very exclusive family.

The university – one associated with our denomination, yet on the edge of it – added challenges to how I thought. I was taught by many of the “cutting edge” professors in Christian thought represented in my denomination, some of whom were not welcome at other denomination-sponsored schools.

And then I began to preach.

I thank God that he put me in a small town in the middle of nowhere. First of all, they were wonderful, loving people. They were gracious and let me slog my way through the swamps of modernity. By his grace, I became one of the town pastors and got to know many people from different Christian denominations. I preached on occasion at the Methodist Church in town. Sang with my wife for the Southern Baptists. Delivered a chapel to a Seventh-Day Adventist academy. (Talk about some nervous teachers and administrators in the back row!) Even participated in a Catholic funeral mass. I found faith in many places I never knew it existed and discovered people of profound faith outside my tradition, much of it stronger and deeper than my own. I came to realize that God was much bigger than I had ever imagined. No reason could ever wrap its arms around a God as big as the one I encountered in that remote and simple place.

That’s when I left my rationalistic tectonic plate and ventured onto the suture zone of the post-modern world. I wouldn’t have known to say it that way back then. But that’s what happened. I stepped off of the surface of my systematic ideas about God and woke up to the fact that he was here, involved in my life, and I couldn’t explain or control him. He just would not fit back into that box I had inherited. And he kept breaking out of every new box I tried to construct. He still does!

You might want to call it an epiphany that God is alive, near and involved in the world around me. Okay. It’s an epiphany. But while there have been times of wonder and praise and mystery and awe, there have equally been times of frustration and doubt and downright fright, too. The ground keeps moving. The landscape keeps changing. As Alan Roxburgh and Brian McLaren said at a recent lecture series in Fresno, Jesus keeps moving. And he expects us to move with him.

If you don’t come at this from the same perspective of Jesus (or with no perspective of Jesus), that’s okay. But can you identify with the wonder and confusion and fear and ecstasy of living in a place where everything keeps changing? Where your explanations of yesterday keep shifting?

Maybe I’m just strange. Let me know either way, okay?

Grace and peace!

Owen