Change

Following Jesus and Becoming Human

October 5, 2018 0 Comments

What is your vision of maturity? I have often returned to this question from Willie James Jennings over the past year. The process has forced me to grapple with the  powerful squeeze of culture and context on me. From early on we have absorbed a vision of being a person from our families, friends, teachers, professions and politics that remains largely unchallenged. It’s so unchallenged that our churches find it difficult and at times even impossible to challenge the individualism in which we have been steeped. We all want to be kings and queens; its our divine right. Being in control, being powerful, is driven largely by fear covered in a veneer of pride. All the while our souls are hollowed out and the name of God is taken in vain. And so, a vision becomes a myth shaping us and yet remaining elusive. To step out of that cultural or family mythology of identity though is to risk exile and alienation from someone and some body of people.

 

Recently I have delighted in watching my children and myself react to brothers and sisters in Christ coming to Vancouver from around the world who have a different vision of mature human persons. Sometimes their vision lived out means that they show up in Vancouver without knowing where they are going live. Like live tonight. What a gift! They are following Jesus and living into what my friend Miller says about Jesus. His mantra goes something like this: “Don’t you know, Jesus runs the largest hotel and accommodation chain in the world! Craig, why are you staying in hotels, when followers of Jesus have space in their homes?”

 

To actually read the words of Jesus and adopt them as our vision of a mature person, as a vision for ourselves means we risk humiliation, shame, and rejection. It means we may become taken up in the needs of other people for a time. It means the transgression against our agenda is going to inconvenience other people. Jesus was totally aware of this. For he said things like, “Blessed are those of you who are persecuted for righteousness sake.” “Blessed are those who are persecuted for my name’s sake.” And, “You cannot be my disciple unless you deny yourself, take up your cross daily, and follow me.” “You cannot be my disciple unless you hate your mother, father, brother and sister.” In spite of these “cannot’s” Jesus fully expected that it was possible to have an identity rooted in Him and flowing from belonging in HIs family. He fully expected that He was forming a people who would be able to do His will. He says, “Who are mother and my brothers? Here are my mother and my brothers! Whoever does God’s will is my brother and sister and mother.” Jesus fully expected to reclaim persons and create a people who were human.

 

I have found my best mentors are the ones who encourage me to be more human as Jesus envisioned being human. This week is our annual Kindness Week at UBC. So, in honour of the UBC Kindness Week, I invited Jean Vanier to be my companion on my drives across the city. I’ve been listening to his 1998 Massey Lectures: Becoming Human. The five lectures form an awesome and challenging vision of being human. He speaks of

Loneliness
Belonging
From Exclusion to Inclusion: The Path of Healing
The Path to Freedom
Forgiveness.

You can check out the audio CD’s from the library or listen at the links above. (The CBC Audio Player only has four links available.)

Or, you can order the book based on the lectures, Becoming Human.

Change, Discipleship

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Mountain trails and the fears that bind us

July 15, 2018 0 Comments

This past week Douglas Todd wrote succinctly on seven issues he believes arise in the work of some diversity journalists. He was responding to a CBC piece exploring why minorities are not likely to pursue outdoor recreation. Also this week, The Guardian published the stories of three African Americans who have faced their dread of “hiking while black.”


My reflections follow Wendell Berry’s observations of entering the “big woods.”

 

“Always in big woods when you leave familiar ground and step off alone into a new place there will be, along with the feelings of curiosity and excitement, a little nagging of dread. It is the ancient fear of the unknown, and it is your first bond with the wilderness you are going into. You are undertaking the first experience, not of the place, but of yourself in that place. It is an experience of our essential loneliness, for nobody can discover the world for anybody else. It is only after we have discovered it for ourselves that it becomes a common ground and a common bond, and we cease to be alone.

 

And the world cannot be discovered by a journey of miles, no matter how long, but only by a spiritual journey, a journey of one inch, very arduous and humbling and joyful, by which we arrive at the ground at our feet, and learn to be at home.”

— Wendell Berry, The Unforeseen Wilderness: Kentucky’s Red River Gorge

 

 

To enter the wilderness is to embark on a spiritual journey. 

 

When we enter it, even when the territory is familiar, we enter into the danger it possesses, a danger that may be masked by our familiarity. As one friend cautioned me soon after moving to British Columbia in 1994, “Always respect the river. Always respect the mountain.”

 

The wilderness exposes us to elements beyond our control. And here in BC we can get into the wilderness quicker than we realize.

 

All spiritual journeys generate anxiety. The moment we realize we have stepped out of cell range, may be the moment of intense relief, or perhaps its one of severe anxiety.

 

“If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?”

 

I have a friend who trains for marathons on the trails of the North Shore Mountains. One morning he almost kissed a bear. He turned the corner and there was the bear, large and menacing on the trail. Amazingly my friend had the presence of mind to take out his phone and record the bear as it lumbered towards him. My friend retreated slowly. On the video you can see the bear coming toward him and hear his soothing words being offered between shallow breaths, “Whoa bear. Whoa bear. That’s a good bear. Whoa bear.” And then when the bear turned away and moved off into the bush, he turns the camera to himself and says, “That was close.” 

 

Ridiculous right?

 

I asked him, “Why did you take the phone out and record the moment?” He laughed and said, “I wanted to make sure that if the bear did something to me, my family would know what happened.”

 

Does the wilderness contain a real and present danger?

 

I grew up in the foothills of Appalachia and was a frequent visitor to the valleys and towns seen from the Appalachian Trail’s ridges in Georgia. I don’t remember being anxious that my mere presence on the trail would invite violence. However, as an adult I have learned from black friends that they would never venture alone or without the company of another white person through those places, even today.

 

To enter the wilderness, an unfamiliar territory, is to enter into what Wendell Berry calls “a little nagging of dread.”

 

But, what if the wilderness magnifies a dread fomented at home in urban and even rural landscapes? What if it calls out a dread that always lurks around the edges of one’s psyche? What if your body has a history of attracting domination and violence that strives to eliminate you from certain spaces? What if others have turned your body into a permission slip to question your right to be “there?”

 

Then, as you might see we do have a problem in the wilderness. And I say “we” purposely. When my family hikes, we hike as a racialized family. But my concern on the trail is the same concern I have for my daughter on Fraser street or even at her school — will she be respected by others as a person?

 

Really I can’t imagine the full extent and the awful pain a full-bodied dread curated since the slave ships crossed the seas can create.

 

But I do know this: such dread is real enough for the souls who venture out. The fear on the trail then, is not that we might meet a bear. Well honestly, I don’t want to meet a bear and if I do, I want to be prepared. The fear, hanging just behind the joy of being in God’s creation, is that we might meet some de-humanized folk for whom the great outdoors is a space in which they feel free to act cruelly without restraint on their baser, yet finely nurtured, racist impulses. 

 

And then, who would be there to help us?

Change, Discipleship

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The Danger of Despair or What We May Feel After We Give

June 22, 2018 0 Comments

22But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, 23gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law. 24Those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. 25Since we live by the Spirit, let us keep in step with the Spirit. Galatians 5:22-25 (NIV)

 

Have you ever felt as if your giving was accomplishing nothing, except making less of you? Here’s a contemplation for you from Miroslav Volf and The Porter’s Gate Worship Project.


Miroslav Volf, Free of Charge, Giving and Forgiving in a Culture Stripped of Grace, 118-119.

We are good trees who bear good fruit, wrote the apostle Paul, because “we live by the Spirit”, whose fruit our gift giving is.

 

The Spirit counters our indolence as givers by molding our character to conform to Christ’s and employing our talents for others’ benefit. The Spirit also gives us hope. Often we experience a sense of futility in giving. We give, and recipients seem none the better off for it. Unscrupulous people insert themselves between our gifts and the recipient’s benefits, and gifts seem to disappear together with their intended benefits. Or recipients seem to receive gifts like a black hole sucks in light. Giving doesn’t make sense, not so much because we lose by giving but because the world doesn’t gain much. We give, but it seems to us that we aren’t mending the world.

 

What is the relationship between our gifts and others’ benefits? We tend to think of it in terms of cause and effect. The gift is the cause: the benefit is the effect. As causes produce effects, giving should produce benefits. Often that’s not what happens, so we despair of giving.

 

But in fact, our gifts and others’ benefits are not related as causes and effects. They are related as the cross and the resurrection. Christ gave his life on the cross — and it seems as though he died in vain. His disciples quickly deserted him, his cause was as dead as he was, and even his God seemed to have abandoned him. But then he was resurrected from the dead by the power of the Spirit. He was seated at the right hand of God and raised in the community of believers, his social body alive and growing on earth. Did Christ’s “gift of death” cause his own resurrection and its benefits for the world? It didn’t. The Spirit did. So it is with every true gift of our own, however small or large.

 

Like Christ’s healings or feeding of multitudes, often our gifts offer immediate help. We give, and the hungry are fed, the sorrowful comforted, and loved ones delighted. We are like a tree, laden with fruit that only waits to be picked. At other times, we give, and the gift seems less like a ripe fruit than like a seed planted in the ground. For a while, nothing happens. Dark earth covered with cold winter holds the seed captive. Then spring comes, and we see new life sprouting, maybe even growing beyond our wildest imagination.

 

Sometimes it seems as if a fate worse than lying in the dark earth befalls our gifts. It is almost as if some evil bird takes away the seed we planted before it can sprout and bear fruit. We labor in vain. We give — and it seems that no one benefits. Yet we can still hope. The Spirit who makes a tree heavy with fruit and who gives life to the seed that has died will ultimately claim every good gift that the evil one has snatched away. Just as the Spirit resurrected the crucified one and made his sacrifice bear abundant fruit, so the Spirit will raise us in the spring of everlasting life to see the harvest of our own giving. Our giving is borne by the wings of the Spirits’ hope.

7Do not be deceived: God cannot be mocked. A man reaps what he sows. 8Whoever sows to please their flesh, from the flesh will reap destruction; whoever sows to please the Spirit, from the Spirit will reap eternal life. 9Let us not become weary in doing good, for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up. 10Therefore, as we have opportunity, let us do good to all people, especially to those who belong to the family of believers. Galatians 6:7-10 (NIV)

 

Listen & Watch: We Labour Unto Glory, Porter’s Gate Worship Project

 

http://https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cRuPZCXShg4

 

Change, Discipleship, Giving, Leadership, Quotes, Work

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Institutional Amnesia and the Justification of Dominance

June 7, 2018 0 Comments

Genesis exists because of Exodus. 

 

We might not observe this readily as our minds are captured by the chronology of the Bible as “the books” have been arranged. But, with a bit of reflection you may arrive at the same conclusion. Genesis exists because of Exodus. 

 

The redemptive work of God forming a people as His own reveals Him as Creator and the One who has ultimate claim on the lives of men and women created in His image. 

 

As I read the first five books of the Bible, the gift of the Torah, is God’s gift after His redemptive work displayed through the exodus of Israel from Egypt. The work of the Exodus pre-dates the revelation of the Torah but not the work of God.

 

Even as the Church we must not forget that the substance of our faith resides in the redemptive work of God through Jesus Christ in a body, from this people, on a cross, and in a grave, to form a people from the nations as His own. He endured the cross “for the joy set before Him.” (Hebrews 12:1-2)

 

Exodus begins with power and its institution nurturing amnesia.

 

“Then a new king, to whom Joseph meant nothing, came to power in Egypt.” Exodus 1:6

 

This new king, a pharaoh, systematically begins to dismantle the worth and the place in society held by the descendants of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Just as Joseph meant nothing to him, the people of Israel, would mean nothing to him unless they served as cheap labour, for his projects, and for the projection of his dominance. He needed them around so he could show his greatness. The Pharaoh needed Egypt to forget that these Israelites were persons. In fact, Egypt would have to forget that the God of Abraham, Issac, and Jacob and Joseph, had organized their own rescue from famine. Indeed they tried to forget, but they could not, so their contempt turned to dread.

 

The pursuit of amnesia is meant to excuse Egypt’s shameful treatment of bodies. This historical amnesia is framed by the pursuit of national security. Egypt might be embarrassed someday to discover that the Israelites had joined with an enemy of Egypt in order to take autonomous action for their own lives. Shame, even the threat of shame, holds in it not only the loss of honour and respect but also the loss of economic security. Pharaoh would not be the first man or the last to exercise language and a “divine edict” in order to justify, not just justify, actually blind others to his quest for greatness.

 

“Look,” he said to his people, “the Israelites have become far too numerous for us. 10Come, we must deal shrewdly with them or they will become even more numerous and, if war breaks out, will join our enemies, fight against us and leave the country.”

11So they put slave masters over them to oppress them with forced labor, and they built Pithom and Rameses as store cities for Pharaoh. 12But the more they were oppressed, the more they multiplied and spread; so the Egyptians came to dread the Israelites 13and worked them ruthlessly. 14They made their lives bitter with harsh labor in brick and mortar and with all kinds of work in the fields; in all their harsh labor the Egyptians worked them ruthlessly.  Exodus 1:9-14

 

Exodus gives birth to Genesis.

 

The glorious revelation of God as Creator, personally involved with His Creation, is rescued from a sea of forgetfulness. To read Genesis from this side of the Nile is to bask in the light of revelation: every child of ‘Adam and Eve, is of immense and equal worth. To read Exodus with the light of Genesis is to see what extraordinary lengths God will go to free His Creation from death’s domination and its fake promises of life animated by structures that seem so real and so necessary in the ordering of things… and persons.

Institutions that want people to forget are often led by persons who need everyone  to forget their connection to a redemptive past. Why? I believe its because they are plagued by the threat of shame and perhaps anxious about the economic insecurities accompanied by remembering and honouring the redemptive work fully.

Change

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Craig’s List for Reading in Summer 2018

April 20, 2018 0 Comments

 

As students in our crowd head out I’ve usually made a recommendation of some books that may prove helpful for growth.

 

Read a book. I’m shocked still, and perhaps I should not be, but I keep hearing from students who get to graduation and haven’t read a book.

 

Did you know people who read books live longer?

 

Change

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