Month: April 2007

Categories
Spirituality Theology

The Jesus Way

Thank God for Eugene Peterson. In the middle of our overprogrammed, sometimes canned Western Christianity comes an honest, gentle breeze. Peterson’s latest, The Jesus Way, is vintage, refreshing Eugene. Herewith just a few quotes:

the Christian way cannot be programmed, cannot be guaranteed: faith means that we put our trust in God — and we don’t know how he will work out our salvation, only that it is our salvation that he is working out. Which frees us of anything.

The fatal thing is to reduce faith to an explanation. It is not an explanation, it is a passion. To tell the story of Abraham is to enter a narrative that throws self-help, self-certification, self-discipline — all our paltry self-hyphenations — into a junkyard of rusted-out definitions.

Faith has to do with marrying Invisible and Visible. When we engage in an act of faith we give up control, we give up sensory (sight, hearing, etc.) confirmation of reality; we give up insisting on head-knowledge as our primary means of orientation in life…. we choose no longer to operate strictly on the basis of hard-earned knowledge, glorious as it is, but over a lifetime to embrace the mystery that ‘must dazzle gradually / Or every man go blind'”.

The way of Jesus is not a sequence of exceptions to the ordinary, but a way of living deeply and fully with the people here and now, in the place we find ourselves.

But the temptation is to reduce people, ourselves and others, to self-defined needs or culture-defined needs, which always, in the long run, end up being sin-defined needs — and use Jesus to do it. . . . The devil wants us to use Jesus . . . to run our families, our neighborhoods, our schools, our governments as efficiently and properly as we can, but with no love or forgiveness. Every man and woman reduced to a function.

Categories
Spirituality

Another Seizure

My youngest son has epilepsy. His seizures are mostly controlled with medication. Every now and then, however, the seizure reflex wins out over the medications.

It’s impossible to describe how it feels, as a parent, to watch your child have a seizure. The body goes rigid; the eyes roll up; breathing is constricted; and the torso and limbs rhythmically contract, rapidly at first, then slowing to a stop. When the seizure is finished, the body is almost completely limp. At this point, you pick up your little boy, like a rag doll, and all you can do is hold and reassure him until he’s fully awake.

You know in your head that this will happen now and then, that as an occasional thing it doesn’t present any immediate danger, that in a little while your boy will be running around like he always does. Yet in your heart the world is turning in slow motion around the feeble, helpless minutes during which a little boy’s mysteriously unruly brain waves assert themselves over everything else. Surely there are lessons in those minutes about the brevity of life, the flowering and withering of the grass, God answering Job with non-answers — but surely there are easier ways to learn them. Or maybe not. Meanwhile, there’s a little boy whom you just want desperately to be ok.

Categories
Spirituality

The Dawn Treader and the Best Talk I Ever Heard

When I was a student at Gordon College many years ago, each year a faculty member was selected by the students to give a special address to the student body. I forget exactly which faculty member it was, but I still recall vividly, twenty years later, one of those addresses. The professor spoke from a text in what has become one of my favorite books, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, one of C.S. Lewis’ Narnia Chronicles books. I just finished reading Dawn Treader for about the tenth time, this time, most delightfully, to my two boys.

The passage my college professor spoke from involves Reepicheep the mouse. Reepicheep is following a dream to sail all the way to Aslan’s Country (the Dawn Treader is a boat; if you don’t know who Aslan is, start with The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe ;-)).

At one point, the Dawn Treader comes across a “blackness” over the sea. All the brave sailors and royalty of Narnia are afraid to sail towards it. When Reepicheep speaks up in favor of exploring, the captain of the Dawn Treader asks “what manner of use it would it be plowing through that blackness?” To which Reepicheep replies:

“Use, Captain? If by use you mean filling our bellies or our purses, I confess it will be no use at all. So far as I know we did not set sail to look for things useful but to seek honor and adventure. And here is as great an adventure as ever I heard of, and hear, if we turn back, no little impeachment of all our honors.”

How do you think of your future, my profesor asked. Is your goal to fill your bellies and purses, or is it to seek “honor and adventure,” to live richly in pursuit of Aslan’s Country — the Kingdom of God?

Later in the story, the Dawn Treader has come near the end of the world. It’s unclear whether the crew will be able to continue further. Once again, the crew becomes afraid of what lies ahead. There is talk of turning back. Reepicheep again rises to the occasion:

My own plans are made. While I can, I sail east in the Dawn Treader. When she fails me, I paddle east in my coracle. When she sinks, I shall swim east with my four paws. And when I can swim no longer, if I have not reached Aslan’s country, or shot over the edge of the world in some vast cataract, I shall sink with my nose to the sunrise….

One of my heroes is that college professor who gave me the gift of this story. Another is Reepicheep. God give me the grace to keep going until Aslan’s Country!

Categories
Spirituality

My Private Beach

This poem was written by my twelve year old daughter (he sighs with tears welling up in his eyes….):

To: Daddy
My Private Beach
When I walk on my private beach…
I feel the breeze in my hair
And smell the salty air
On my private beach.
I can feel the cool sand between my toes
As I walk underneath the shade of the swaying palm trees
On my private beach.
The ocean is as blue as the deep blue sky
I can hear the waves crash on the silent beach
I hear a seagull cry
On my private beach.
At nighttime I see the millions of twinkling stars in the
Milky Way
The crashing waves put me to sleep
On my private beach.

Categories
Humor

Thoughts on Blogging

Here are some great quips about blogs and blogging that I sumbled across today on Millinerd.com, a witty site mainted by a Princeton art history grad student (as the banner says: “Millinerd.com – quality internet website”):

“The anatomy of a blog makes serious conversation all but impossible.” -Alan Jacobs
“Blogs are not as significant as their self-endeared curators would like to think.” -Joseph Rago
“Blogs are the crack cocaine of writing.” – Richard Starr
“Blogging is as melancholic and illusionary as Don Quixote tilting at windmills” -Michael Keren

I also love this guy’s Blogger profile:

Millinerd is a student in Princeton U’s art history PhD program. In a previous life he graduated from the same town’s Theol. Seminary. In the life before that he was a Youth Director at Media Presbyterian Church (PA). In the life before that he went to Wheaton College (IL). In the life before that he went to Haddonfield Memorial High School (NJ). In the life before that he was born and raised mostly in Jersey. In the life before that he did nothing, because Origen’s doctrine of the pre-existence of the soul was condemned in 553AD.

Categories
Spirituality

A Good Friday Thought

At tonight’s Good Friday service at church, the chairs in the sanctuary were arranged in a circle around a large cross. The sanctuary was mostly dark except for lights that illuminated the cross. A sign outside the sanctuary said “Please enter the sanctuary in reverent and worshipful silence.” It felt a bit like entering a funeral home for a viewing — but a Christian funeral in which the grief is limned with hope. It was a beautiful scene. During the service the each person congregation had the opportunity to approach the center of the sanctuary and drive a nail into the cross, as a symbol of our sins being nailed to the cross of Christ. We then took communion and filed out quietly, with the nail-studded cross sending us on our way.

There are so many wonderful layers to this, but one that struck me is how I would like people to see things at my own funeral some day. I hope they enter the sanctuary in reverent silence and see the cross at the center of the room. I hope they will see that a lifetime of sins have been absorbed by that rough wood. I hope they will see a way of life in sacrificial love, the way of Jesus. I hope what remains when I’ve left the room for good is not my words or work, but rather the overwhelming presence of the God who became like me to set me, and the whole creation, free.

Categories
Historical Theology Spirituality Theology

A Call to an Ancient Evangelical Future

I guess I’ve been living under a rock or something, but I hadn’t seen the Call to an Ancient Evangelical Future before today. All I can say is, wow — this captures so much of how my thinking has developed over the past few years — indeed, of how my thinking has developed ever since I was exposed to ideas like this at Gordon College more than 20 (gulp) years ago.

Here are some excerpts:

On “The Primacy of Biblical Narrative”:

We call for a return to the priority of the divinely authorized canonical story of the triune God. This story—Creation, Incarnation, and re-creation—was effected by Christ’s recapitulation of human history and summarized by the early church in its rules of faith. The gospel-formed content of these rules served as the key to the interpretation of Scripture and its critique of contemporary culture, and thus shaped the church’s pastoral ministry. Today, we call evangelicals to turn away from modern theological methods that reduce the gospel to mere propositions, and from contemporary pastoral ministries so compatible with culture that they camouflage God’s story or empty it of its cosmic and redemptive meaning. In a world of competing stories, we call evangelicals to recover the truth of God’s Word as the story of the world, and to make it the centerpiece of evangelical life.

On the Church:

We call evangelicals to take seriously the visible character of the church. We call for a commitment to its mission in the world in fidelity to God’s mission (Missio Dei), and for an exploration of the ecumenical implications this has for the unity, holiness, catholicity, and apostolicity of the church. Thus, we call evangelicals to turn away from an individualism that makes the church a mere addendum to God’s redemptive plan.

Individualistic evangelicalism has contributed to the current problems of churchless Christianity, redefinitions of the church according to business models, separatist ecclesiologies, and judgmental attitudes toward the church. Therefore, we call evangelicals to recover their place in the community of the Church catholic.

On Theological Reflection:

We call for the church’s reflection to remain anchored in the Scriptures in continuity with the theological interpretation learned from the early fathers. Thus, we call evangelicals to turn away from methods that separate theological reflection from the common traditions of the church. These modern methods compartmentalize God’s story by analyzing its separate parts, while ignoring God’s entire redemptive work as recapitulated in Christ. Anti-historical attitudes also disregard the common biblical and theological legacy of the ancient church.

Amen, amen, and amen!

Categories
Justice Law and Policy

Immigration Reform

I just received the following in an email from Sojourners / Call to Renewal. I agree with it 100%. In fact, I’m very excited about something I’ve just gotten involved in to help poor immigrant families in New York City. I can’t say yet exactly what it is, because the initiative hasn’t yet launched publicly. It will be something that is outside my comfort zone a bit. However, over the new year’s break I prayed that God would give me a specific ministry to the poor in which I could use my skills and position as a law professor, and a chance to be on the policy committee of this immigration initiative just sort of came to me.

From Call to Renewal:

With Congress on the verge of rewriting our nation’s immigration laws, too many of the loudest voices on the issue are politicians and pundits who seek to scapegoat immigrant workers , falsely blaming them for many of our nation’s social and economic problems.

As Christians called by scripture to welcome and care for the strangers among us, we must seize this moment and raise our voices in a debate that is too often tainted by prejudice and fear.

Tell your representative to fix our broken immigration system with reform that is fair and compassionate.

From the law in Leviticus to the words of Jesus, our faith is very clear about our obligations to the “strangers” and “aliens” in our midst . That’s why Christian leaders from across the theological and political spectrum are coming together to support immigration reform that lives up to our moral and theological principles.

It is entirely possible to protect our borders while establishing a viable, humane, and realistic immigration system, one that is consistent with our American values and increases national security while protecting the livelihood of Americans.

But we must act now in order for our voices to be heard – legislation has just been introduced in the House of Representatives, and we have a very short window in which to act.

Stand up for comprehensive immigration reform by sending a message to Congress today.

Specifically, we must demand that any immigration legislation includes:

Border enforcement and protection initiatives that are consistent with humanitarian values;
Reforms in our family-based immigration system that help to safely reunite separated families;
An opportunity for all immigrant workers and their families already in the U.S. to come out of the shadows to pursue an earned legal status, leading up to citizenship; and
A viable guest worker program that creates avenues for workers and their families to enter our country and work in a safe, legal, and orderly manner.
Tell Congress: immigration reform must be fair and compassionate.

With so many immigrant families living in poverty, we must acknowledge that discussion of immigration cannot be separated from our understanding of poverty – and is thus central to achieving the vision for overcoming poverty found in Sojourners/Call to Renewal’s Covenant for a New America.

That’s why we’re hard at work advocating for comprehensive immigration reform – organizing a broad coalition of Christian leaders to raise up a prophetic voice in the media on this important issue, and developing a toolkit for grassroots advocacy.

I hope you’ll join us as we seek to respond to Jesus’ words: “Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these who are members of my family, you did it to me” (Matthew 25:40).

Categories
Photography and Music

Old Song — "While the Morning Stars Sang"

Here’s another ambient sketch. This is from an ambient project I started called “Answering Job.” It is supposed to invoke God’s response to Job in chapter 38 of the book of Job. This one refers to verses 6 and 7: “On what were [the earth’s] footings set or who laid its cornerstone — while the mornign stars sang together and all the angels shouted for joy?”

Categories
Photography and Music

New Song — "Fides Quaerens Intellectum"

Here’s a new one — at least new in the sense that I haven’t made it available publicly before. This isn’t really a “song” — it’s an ambient sketch. I love the ambient genre and have some pretty cool software synthesizers for making it (the guitar here is “real”, however).