random thoughts on community

I read something last week in a book called "The Shaping of Things to Come" by Alan Hirsch that has stuck with me. He was talking about a secular festival called the Burning Man and using to make a point about the nature of the church.  My paraphrase of his thoughts are this- "In a world fractured by economic disparity, racial disunity, ideological differences, fear and violence, the true faith community should offer solace, welcome, acceptance and hope. Jean Vanier talks about how we are all on someone's list of exclusion - we are too old, too young, too short, too weak, too smart..... Wouldn't it be rather exciting if the church could be a place where we took people off lists and included them? Where everyone had a place?
That is a vision of the church that can get me excited.

passages and pain

An intense 24 hours. At 8 last night I heard that the daughter of a friend in our church was brain dead. I drove our friend to Hamilton (about 5 hours or so) and arrived as the family was gathering. As the long night wore on I slowly got to know the rest of the family as we awaited the arrival of the womans daughter who was flying in with the hope of seeing her mother before she passed.  The plan was that after the girl arrived and spent some time with her mother, the life support systems would be turned off as the woman had no brain activity.
To my surprise, the family who were not religious apart from the woman who was dying and my friend her mother - asked me to join them when the life support was turned off and pray for them.
That was a very difficult prayer.
I was overwhelmed by the privilege of sharing in the intimacy of that moment with them and the hour that followed as we watched the monitor and waited. The emotional atmosphere was very thick.
How does one give soul care and solace in the face of such raw anguish?  Words seemed so very cheap.
Tears and prayers and the occassional tentative hug were all I had to give.
I do wonder how the Lord greeted Laila. She had so many physical struggles in the last decade and kept her eyes on the Lord. I do wonder what still waters He has prepared to restore her soul.

signs signs and smallness of mind

In the middle of preparing a message, I was looking for an illustration and found this picture of a sign that I find rather appealing.

You would really hope that the police, who are sure to be lurking nearby, have their watches synchronized with yours!
I wonder if the sign was made by religious people - I suspect so. The church, when it starts acting all religious and legalistic, is fully capable of creating rules like this. Legalism happens when, for motivation that is probably quite good, we add endless addendums to what God says until the simple becomes mind numbingly complex.
We are not alone in legalism. In order to not take the name of the Lord in vain, which is of course a good thing, orthodox Jews will not step on a piece of paper in case the name of God is written on it. That is a bit extreme.
We worked with a group for a while in Jerusalem that sought holiness in some interesting and convoluted ways. They forbade women from ever showing their heels (among many other body parts). I have nothing against heels but I can't really see myself being seduced by one.
The problem with focusing on controlling the minutiae of behaviour is that it does not deal with the heart. You can cover your heels all you want and still have a defiled heart and dirty mind.
It is simple, and sometimes attractive, to have all of our behaviour codified and regulated. That way we do not have to think.
It is far more complex and I think more satisfying to try to live lives pleasing to the Lord because we love him.  Living out of fear because you might be breaking some law is both sad and hard. Perhaps the key is keeping our eye on Him and looking for his smile rather than worrying about his frown because our heels are showing.
Isn't that a nice motivation - living to bring a smile to the face of Jesus. That sounds more like love to me.

Remembering war and peace

I listened to an interesting interview today about a a piece of music called the War Requiem written by Benjamin Britten. In the interview, one of the men spoke about the incredible cost of war - financially, politically, emotionally and spiritually. He said that the tragedy that most moved Britten was not just the loss of life but the loss of soul. He noted particularly the pain felt by those who were Christians and who had to kill other people.
This is a complication and a pain that I have thought about a lot. My father was a soldier in the 2nd World War who, because of his faith and world view, chose to enlist and also chose a role in the army where he did not have to carry a weapon. He was willing to die to help liberate Europe but he was not willing to kill someone who might not know Jesus.
His faith and those views have been much on my mind on this Remembrance Day. War is a form of hell and asked things of many that should not have been asked for a cause that needed to won.
I am acutely aware that such things have never been asked of me and for this I am thankful. And I am conscious of how deep the painful memories are for many on days such as this and I am prayerful.

walls and freedom

In my office I have a small piece of nondescript grey stone- actually it is mostly concrete with rocks embedded in it. While I was listening to the news this morning I found myself thinking about it a great deal. Today is the 20th anniversary of the breaking down of the Berlin wall and the chunk in my office came from near what was the wall near Check Point Charlie.
I have been listening to a variety of radio commentaries on this today including some interviews with some of the 15% in Germany who would like the wall to be rebuilt. To me the most striking comment was from a journalist from the former East Berlin who said that it took about a year to physically remove all of the wall but that it will take many more decades to remove all of the emotional and intellectual wall.
That line really grips me. Reconciliation is far more that removing the physical obstacles to community or making the first step towards communication. It is a long walk that both sides must take.
The first steps have to taken, and celebrated, but that does not preclude the hard work of dealing with injustices, lies, broken trust and fear.
It is easy to celebrate the first step and get stuck there - leaving the larger, and unseen wall still standing.

Friend of sinners

I picked up Philip Yancey's book - "The Jesus I never knew" last night because it caught my eye and started to read it again.  There is a chapter on "Mission - the revolution of grace" that I really liked. It deals, with Yancey's propensity for story telling  and scrutiny, at the ways in which Jesus was a friend of sinners and how it is often so unlike the church.
The line that really got me was this -"What will it take for the church to become a place where prostitutes, tax collectors, and even guilt-tinged Pharisees would gladly gather"
I would like to think that that is the kind of church I would like to be in or pastor until I realized that I am not a big fan or either tax collectors or Pharisees. In this light my blind spots appear to be showing. I want to be a person who shows grace without picking and choosing to whom I show it. Thankfully Jesus is a good and patient teacher.

Feeding my soul

It is a sunny November 1st Sunday and I went a climbed a hill near my house. Sitting on a mossy rock and listening to Yo Yo Ma play Bach was a rich soul satisfying experience.

Having taken my camera with me as I walk has helped me to notice little things that I might ordinarily overlook. Like the clump of trees above me. The sun was directly behind them so that when I first took a picture, I needed to block out  the sun with one of the trees.
It was peaceful but rather ordinary.





When I changed my settings and shot directly into the sun; everything changed. The intensity and directness of the sun made everything look like silhouettes.

This visual analogy totally fascinates me.



Getting back to my first thought about how much I  miss because I do not look for it. There is a great play called Our Town in which I once acted. In it, the little girl dies and gets to go back and observe one day in her life. She chose her 12th birthday and was overwhelmed by the beauty and the fun of the day;  and, by how no one, including herself seemed to notice. She asked her guide if anyone is fully alive  ever notices all of the beauty around them to which he replied "No - the  saints and poets do some."
I think I would like to be fully alive - and at least either a poet or a saint.