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Whispers Seem Louder In Dark Alleys

December 2, 2019 0 Comments

“Because this people has rejected the gently flowing waters of Shiloah…”
                                                                                                   Isaiah 8:6

Send me to the gentle flowing waters of Shiloah.
I would flee these tall halls reeking of despair,
where men move like ghastly shadows
and women are chased by whispers in the air.

O, the normal people with eyes that do not see.
They ascend in cages to empty rooms
but are no better — hearts without space for keys
and glassy views staring back with gloom.

Anxiety stalks us equally no matter the hour.
No enemies are required for this disease.
We yearn for an eternal healing flower,
yet no peace is found in a lonely ease.

Whispers seem louder in dark alleys.
Send me to the gentle flowing waters of Shiloah
and I will consider your grace in all my valleys.
I will drink deeply of your spring, Yeshua.

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Thanksgiving as my culture

November 28, 2019 0 Comments

We the people by Danh Vo on display at the Guggenheim

It’s Thanksgiving in America. I am thank full. I’ve been celebrating Thanksgiving twice each year now for 25 years. My Canadian day comes in October and the American day comes — well today in November. That’s half my life, yet I still miss the way life is organized around this holiday in November — in America. At least I miss how it was organized in my family.

I realize that in 25 years even Thanksgiving in America has changed. The anticipation of shopping on Friday after Thanksgiving has given way to a whole week of ads and sales meant to agitate us because we are missing out, or there are new gadgets we really need, or our stuff is wearing out, and the special persons in our family need to know they are special to us and that is only possible if we buy them something — a lot of things. It’s not Thanksgiving in Canada, but this script is the cultural language of this very week in November!


So now I find myself asking, how do we make this week a genuine set of holy days?

Reckoning

I find the mythology of Thanksgiving to be insufficient for the demands we experience today to reckon with history as it’s told to children and to reconcile with peoples whose ancestors experienced the rush to occupy the land by whatever means. As hopeful as some settlers may been that settling could be a peaceful endeavour, their venture was often prepared through some kind of violence.


I don’t bring this up to generate guilt. Rather I bring up the rough centre of our history so as to generate humility and mercy.

The wealth enjoyed today came at someone’s expense. Not only did someone work hard, but someone else may have been displaced or denied an opportunity. The belief that we are each a self-made people is fundamentally flawed. Our economy has a context. For there is in our enjoyment of liberty in America (and in Canada) an idealism formed of complex thought and fundamental views of human rights. The ideals have many sources and can be traced to indigenous people in North America, to British and European philosophical streams, to the tradition of decision-making councils of North Africa and to biblical ideas extending back to Jesus and then to Israel. Yet, this idealism is fragile; it can be overtaken by blindspots, and it may even be dismantled. Our ideals have been selectively applied. If we are to name the blindspots one of them would be hubris.


When hubris and amnesia runs it course justice gives way to dehumanizing language and then oppression, slavery, and exclusion. Thanksgiving days have become for me an inescapable marker for hubris and selective amnesia and a counter play: the deliberate and desperate attempt to treasure what is more important in our relationships to God, to self, to people, and to the stuff of earth. These plays take shape as reckoning, receiving, repenting and remembering. And then hopefully rejoicing.

Receiving

Last night at a birthday celebration for one of my children we reviewed the gift that is in each person’s name. Two of my children have names that are derived from Micah. The question generated in the name “Micah” is “Who is like God?” The question is meant to generate humility and an attentiveness to God’s call by a people who historically had journeyed from a place of enslavement to a place of liberation:

He has shown you, O mortal, what is good.
And what does the Lord require of you?
To act justly and to love mercy
and to walk humbly with your God.
Micah 6:8

Early in the history of Israel God warned them of the deathtrap created by hubris and its accompanying amnesia. In Deuteronomy he says, “When you have eaten and are satisfied, praise the LORD your God for the good land he has given you. Be careful that you do not forget the LORD you God… Otherwise when you eat and are satisfied, when you build fine houses and settle down, and when your hearts and flocks grow large and your silver and gold increase and all you have is multiplied, then your heart will become proud and you will forget the LORD your God, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery. He led you… He brought you… He gave you manna to eat in the wilderness, something your ancestors had never known, to humble and test you so that in the end it might go well with you. You may say to yourself, ‘My power and the strength of my hands have produced this wealth for me.’ But remember the LORD your God, for it is he who gives you the ability to produce wealth…” (Deuteronomy 8:10-18)

Repenting

Hubris is a terrible burden. It has many sources. One of its sources is greed. Some in our congregation were recently surprised by the power of four words, “greed which is idolatry.” Writing to the church in Colossae, The Apostle Paul assigned greed as one of the powers of our earthly nature that we must put to death, otherwise it will dominate our lives (Colossians 3:5). One of my friends was stunned by connection of greed with idolatry. But that’s how it is — our hearts will follow our treasure and our treasures will define our hearts. Our relationship to the stuff of earth is fundamentally a question of worship. It has been noted by others that you know some thing is an idol the moment someone tries to take it from you and you feel crushed at the core of your person. Such idolatry leads to the death of justice.

Sadly our histories and therefore many of our collective holidays are shaped by greed and by hubris. When holidays are shaped like that humility and mercy and then justice will slip away. Let’s redeem the holy days.

Remembering

Perhaps a good way to start is the very way we see Jesus dealing with the temptation to meet the desires of his body with a self-directed act of power. You may recall Jesus was compelled by the Spirit of God to go from His baptism in the Jordan to meet with God in the wilderness. After a long season of fasting and prayer we get to listen in on the devil’s temptation, “If you are the Son of God tell these stones to become bread.” Jesus defeats the devil by recalling the work of God in the wilderness, “Man shall not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God” (Matthew 4:3-4). What has Jesus done? He has remembered.

The context for Jesus’ quotation of Scripture is Deuteronomy. He recalls the call Moses gave to the people of Israel to remember God when they are no longer pilgrims but have become settlers. The call goes this way:

“Remember how the LORD your God led you all the way in the wilderness these forty years, to humble and test you in order to know what was in your heart, whether or not you would keep his commands. He humbled you, causing you to hunger and then feeding you with manna, which neither you nor your ancestors had known, to teach you that man does not live on bread alone but on every word that comes from the mouth of the LORD.” Deuteronomy 8:2-3

Three questions to evaluate our memory

Thanks giving requires remembering.
Who are we remembering?
Who are we forgetting?
Does humility and mercy and then justice flow from our thanks giving into our relationships?

And then comes rejoicing.


Notes on the picture: For more on Danh Vo’s work, We The People, read his story in the notes provided by The Guggenheim.

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Love the Whole Creation

November 26, 2019 0 Comments

Moltman, in his book The Living God and the Fullness of Life, reminded me of a beautiful call in Dostoevsky’s novel, The Brothers Karamasov. I’ll include a brief portion of Moltmann’s set up and then the Dostoevsky quote:

Participation in the life of the earth leads to a feeling for the universal life. This new earthly spirituality awakes cosmic humility, which takes the place of the modern arrogance of power, and which is reflected in the dominance over nature. Every serious scientist knowns this cosmic humility in astonishment over the unexplored mysteries of nature (as long as he or she does not intend to “market” his or her discoveries). Another characteristic is cosmic love, which the Starez Sosima expresses in Doestoevsky’s novel, The Brothers Karamasov,

Love the whole creation, all of it and every grain of sand. Love every little leaf, every ray of God’s light. Love the animals, love the plants, love every single thing. If you love very single thing, then God’s mystery in them will be revealed to you. Once it is revealed to you, then you will perceive it more and more every day. And in the end you will love the whole universe with an all-comprehensive love.

Jurgen Moltmann, The Living God and the Fullness of Life, 2015, p. 84-85.

Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov I, book 6.

Note: Moltmann is also noting Richard Bauckham’s work Bible and Ecology: Rediscovering the Community of Creation and his concept of “cosmic humility.”

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My Awkward Attempt at Splaining Indigenous Silviculture

November 21, 2019 0 Comments

Recently I awkwardly interrupted a table conversation that I felt was rapidly deteriorating. Yeah, it was really awkward. After my “lesson” no one said anything, stared at me for a moment and then everyone changed the subject to other things all at once.

I’m sure no-one expected a pastor to talk about indigenous history and care of the land. Nor did they expect a call out on racism. It was really awkward. I’m probably not all that good at “splaining” silviculture as it was historically or is currently practiced by indigenous people or anyone else for that matter!

I shared a little of what I had been learning in regards to regenerative agriculture and specifically of indigenous silviculture practice on the West Coast. Knowledge has been suppressed by our disrespect and violence. There is long history of planting and pruning along a lengthy system of paths, maintaining forests along fields, and caring for the forest around homes. And then there’s localized firelighting, another aspect of silviculture and the relationship we can have in stewarding God’s Creation and living mutually with the land. The romantic vision held by some of a wild outdoors pristine and untouched by persons is really mythical. We all live with the land; we just have different postures toward it, some helpful and some destructive.

Early this morning I was delighted to read this fascinating article about the people living in California who are seeking to reintroduce local indigenous silviculture practices. Some believe it’s essential to turning local environments around in California. “When you have colonization removing native people, disrupting that social structure around fire use, outlawing fire, and then actively using every construct in a militaristic way to suppress and exclude fires, then we have the conditions that we have now,” said the research ecologist Frank Lake.

Read more.

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What is supposed to be weird?

October 31, 2019 0 Comments

Everything, Alain Emerson, 247Prayer #Belfast19

Today is Halloween. It has become one of the largest and extravagant expenses in Canada. Perhaps we are seeking something to break up the on-coming dreariness of our winter? Perhaps we are looking for something that seems weird, different, and other-worldly? It’s the only time we give ourselves permission to be weird.

But is this what “weirdness” is supposed to be?

I’m getting comfortable with a different kind of weirdness and I hope there is more of it in our lives: the weirdness of a life dependent on God and moved along by the Spirit of God. I’m convinced that in our bodies and in our life together there is supposed to be a kind of weirdness discovered in the activity of prayer, justice and mission. And Yes I experienced this again in Belfast during the 247 Prayer gathering this last week.

But my reflections of weirdness have not been driven by the pursuit of “weird” experiences. Rather they were sparked by Dallas Willard — a person on the surface who didn’t seem very weird — a professor of philosophy. I’ve spent this year slowing reading through Dallas Willard’s posthumously published meditation on Psalm 23. It’s wonderful. I suggest you get the book, Life Without Lack: Living in the Fullness of Psalm 23. Here are his reflections on what is supposed to be weird. This is a long- read, but it’s worth it!

From Living without Lack

by Dallas Willard

If you’re thinking this is weird, you’re right. There actually is a direct relationship between weird things and holy things. One use of the word weird is to indicate that an experience is strange, uncanny, or has a sense of the supernatural about it. From that perspective, everything I have been describing–from Moses’s shining face to Jesus glowing on the mountain–is truly weird. It’s supernatural, out of this world. That is what holy is, something otherworldly.

Remember that the second of the Ten Commandments states “You shall not make for yourself an idol, whether in the form of anything that is in heaven above, or that is on earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth” (Ex. 20:4 NRSV). God is so “other” that he is literally “out of this I world” and should never be identified with any physical thing in this world. It is this total otherness, this holiness, this weirdness that makes most people not want to get close to God. They want to have just enough of God to make their little train chug on down the track, something to fix them up, a cosmic aspirin to help them get on with their own business. So when they see the light and smoke coming out from around the door and the walls shaking, they say to themselves, “Maybe this is a little too big. I don’t think this will fit into my plans.”

And, of course that is exactly right. While we may talk fervently about how we want to be close to the Lord, he does not take us seriously because it’s only talk. We often don’t really mean it. That may be because we have not had the magnificence and grandeur of glorious reality of God’s being brought to our attention. God is not something to be toyed around with. He will not fit into our plans. But we can fit into his, and they are glorious I plans indeed.

The Israelites had a hard time learning this. Not long after their liberation from Egypt, as God led them through the Sinai desert, lots of very strange things were happening. Water flowed from rocks and massive flocks of quail appeared, but the Israelites could only think of their former  lifestyle with its leeks, onions, garlic, and nice soft beds, forgetting that they were slaves. So God responded with more weirdness in the form of manna, which was quite a strange phenomenon. 

Moses reminded the Israelites of this as they were getting ready to cross over the Jordan into the promised land:

And you shall remember that the LORD your God led you all the way these forty years in the wilderness, to humble you and test you, to know what was in your heart, whether you would keep His commandments or not. So He humbled you, allowed you to hunger, and fed you with manna which you did not know nor did your fathers know, that He might make you know that man shall not live by bread alone; but man lives by every word that proceeds from the mouth of the LORD. (Deut. 8:2-3)

The Israelites knew all about the food of Egypt, but no one knew anything about manna. Ask them about Cairo stew and cornbread, and they could tell you all about it. But manna was a mystery to them until they trekked across the wilderness. It was strange stuff: the congealed word of God. According to Exodus 16, it did not grow on any shrub; it was not an animal that could be hunted down and served up; it was not a crop that could be sown and harvested. It just appeared every morning lying on the ground for the people to gather before it melted in the sun. They were instructed to gather a one-day supply for each person in the family on Sunday through Saturday each week. And water they gathered more or less than, they always had exactly the right amount. That’s weird.

If they tried to save some of it for the next day (just in case God didn’t provide), it rotted and had to be thrown out. Then on Fridays they were told to gather a two-day supply to last through Saturday, the Sabbath day of rest. The extra day’s manna didn’t rot. That’s weird too. But the Israelites tired of it and whined to Moses, “We’re sick of manna! Take us back to what we were used to in Egypt! At least the food was spicy!” (Num. 11:4-6 PAR).

Of course, this was a litmus test of their hearts, to gauge whether they did, in fact, want nothing more than the God who had rescued them. They didn’t. It is the same with us. We are going to be living on weird stuff if e draw near to God. One of the promises Jesus gives, in the book of Revelation, to those who are faithful is that he will give them “hidden manna” (2:17). This connects with the discussion Jesus had with a group of people who were pressing him to prove his credentials as one sent from God (John 6:22-59). They brought up the example of the ancestors whom, under the leadership of Moses, God had provided with manna in the wilderness. The implied question was whether Jesus measured up to Moses, to which Jesus responded:

Moses did not give you the bread from heaven, but My Father gives you the true bread from heaven. For the bread of God is He who comes down from heaven and gives life to the world. (John 6:32-33)

When they said, “That sounds great; give us some of that bread,” Jesus made his disturbing claim:

I have the living bread which came down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever; and the bread that I shall give is My flesh, which I shall give for the life of the world.” (v. 51)

And if that wasn’t audacious enough, he went on to shock them with this bit of weirdness: 

Most assuredly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink His blood, you have no life in you. Whoever eats My flesh and drinks My blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day. For My flesh is food indeed, and My blood is drink indeed. (vv. 53-55)

This was over the top. Even some of his own disciples essentially said, “Yuck!” They concluded they could not longer follow someone who talked like act (vs. 66).

There is no denying it: this is high unusual behaviour. But Jesus as talking about being transformed into a completely new reality, a world of complete sufficiency, where all our needs are supplied by God. If you go to work tomorrow and declare, “I don’t need anything,” people will probably think you are weird…very weird. You are supposed to be in need. You are supposed to lack. That’s one of the things that people can use to manage you. But if you go there complaining, griping, groaning, even cursing God, making it known just how much you lack, they will say “Yes!” They are likely to call you a really good person, the salt of the earth, because complaining is the way of this world.

I am not saying that is it is always wrong to complain: each of us need to work this out in our own way. I am saying that there is a life to which there is no lack. Jesus is the example that proves this claim to be true. The good new is that, by his grace, it is a life that each of us can move into by faith. If, by faith, you can now declare, “ I have no lack,” you will increasingly experience the Shepherd’s sufficiently in your life. It will be as Paul described:

But we all, with unveiled face, beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, just as by the Spirit of the Lord. (2 Cor. 3:18)

The more we place our minds on God’s greatness and self-sufficient (“beholding…the glory of the Lord”), the more we will be transformed from one degree of glory to another. And because our faces are “unveiled” (that is, they have had the lampshades removed) others will see a difference; we will radiate generosity, peace, and contentment. And the reverse is also true; as we associate with others whose faces are “unveiled” and who are growing in the experience of God’s sufficiency, their “glory’ enlightens us, encouraging us in our own journeys of faith in the Shepherd. It becomes a matter of one person reminding another of the full sufficiency of God.

Notice the word reminding in the sentence above. It should really be written re-minding, because in the first two chapters we have been talking about getting new minds. Minds that are “on God.” In 2 Corinthians 3:18, Paul wrote that we are being “transformed” into the image of Christ. The word translated transformed is the Greek word from which we get the English word metamorphosis. It literally means a change (meta) of form (morph), as in changing from caterpillar to butterfly, except we are talking about the form of our minds. They are meant to be God-formed rather than world-formed. That is why elsewhere Paul instructed us to avoid being conformed to the ways of the world (or being “normal” rather than “weird”), but that we should rather “be transformed by the renewing of your mind” (Rom 12:2). This is the key to a life without lack, that we would have the mind of Christ — our Shepherd, who knew first-hand the complete and perfect sufficiency of our magnificent God.

Dallas Willard, Life Without Lack: Living in the Fullness of Psalm 23, p. 42-46, 2018. 

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