Relationships

Being American on the 4th of July — Somewhere Else

July 4, 2020 0 Comments

For me being American is about a people, a place, and the promises and dreams that were nurtured there. This combination has the potential of nurturing hope.

My favourite places were lived in without much thought in my younger years of their promises. I was just living, enjoying, and experiencing the life I lived as normal. In fact if questioned at the time of this picture (see above) I would have probably thought everyone’s life was like this. But upon reflection I think my sister and I knew even then that the regular weekend and summer trips to camp on land that my mother’s parents had farmed was not everyone’s norm. But once there, we were having a grand time anyway!

Nor was it normal in my neighbourhood at the time to have an immigrant father who solemnly put the flag of the United States in its holder as a reminder of the journey he had taken and the promises he had made and the promises a country had made to him. Even when he was disappointed that these promises would not be fulfilled in the highest court of the land to the degree to which law and merit would have warranted, he continued to be thankful for the freedoms we enjoyed in this place and with these people. I believe my dad treated his movement of appreciation, flying the flag, what some would call patriotism, as a civic act of thankfulness and of hope.

For even when personal advancement and success did not meet all his dreams, my Northern Ireland, Irish Catholic father was grateful for the freedoms he enjoyed with us. These freedoms were measured out in society in such a way that we could pick up the newspaper and read the news and the opinion sections without fear. Where we could attend religious services and assemble with any people and in any church, on any given day as we desired. Where we could access the legal system and seek justice as needed. Where we could vote and generally expect that the elections would be fair. Where we could walk down the street without worrying that our neighbours or the police would track us with guns drawn and fingers on the trigger.

It does not escape me that what I have described above is now being tested and has been tested all along.

But are these aspects of liberty what made me an “American?” 

Yes, but not by themselves.

Being American for me has in large part been about a society infused with hope. It’s strange to me but hope seems dangerous. Roger Williams, founder of Rhode Island, knew his hopes were dangerous to others. But, when the full ideals of our hopes cannot be fully met in this place, people, and it’s promises, I know, even as Roger Williams knew, that we must look elsewhere. Disappointment of hope can be crushing. That’s why I look ultimately look to Jesus and His Kingdom for my hope. “Hope we have as an anchor to the soul.” (Hebrews 6:18-19)  I have now lived half my life outside of the United States of America  because of the promises and dreams fuelled by Jesus. No matter where one lives or started life the allegiance to Jesus supersedes all others and some allegiances of the soul must be renounced in order to be free in Christ. (If you don’t know Roger Williams, b. 1603 — d. 1683, please get to know him!)

Yet every follower of Jesus has a body and lives in a land so I do carry some tension in my body. Participation in the life of the land can be limited to “our neighbour” but most followers of Jesus I know at least still choose to vote locally and federally as participants in our common governance. Some even choose to participate in politics with the ambition of serving others and not just themselves. I have been thankful for the immense liberty I have enjoyed as an American and now as a Canadian where we celebrated “Canada Day” on July 1st. Both countries share a “freedom construct” that seeks to share liberties broadly. And so I am thankful that I enjoy civilly many of the liberties only once afforded to kings and queens.

Yet, not all people in our lands are getting to participate fully in or enjoy the fruits of our most noble ideals. The blindness and the inequities created by self-interest work against some people and their places. When dreams fuelled by promises remain unrealized hope decays and the accompanying despair can be a crushing burden. It will be replaced by raw self-interest so people are enslaved to false loyalties and governed by fear. That’s what racism and classism does. Every meme and cheap news story becomes a physiological reinforcement for finding identity in what we are against or what we fear rather than in the higher ideals of what we could be for.

I hope for my friends and family in the States that we would insist on creating favourable conditions in which the most noble ideals are extended and even re-formed in all neighbourhoods across America (and Canada) socially and economically. That’s what hope inside our liberty seems to demand. 

So thankfully our calendar arrives again with me still living on the 4th of July. To celebrate I had grits for breakfast! Butter, salt, and pepper. Want some? I had coffee with almond milk, no sugar, in an “Ole Miss Civil Engineering” mug given to me by a dear person who prays for me. But does any of that make me an American? Today I’ve been asking myself, “how do I know I’m an American?” What do I carry in my body, beside grits, that tells me I’m an American? 

Here’s what I’ve discovered: I carry in my body more than memories, I carry hope.



Pictures:
1. Me and my sister enjoying “the camp.”
2. The Seal of Rhode Island created by Roger Williams.

Relationships, Society

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Our No Name Life

July 1, 2020 0 Comments

I have a friend who found life in Vancouver and particularly life in the UBC campus community disturbing. Her move from a country in Eastern Africa did not prepare her for just how economically segmented life can be here. It is possible to go about life in Metro Vancouver unaware of economic disparity and the impact of poverty. It’s possible to not the know the stories of people and families bearing up under the weight of scarcity. One could live in the campus setting of UBC without getting to know the poor and sharing life with them. 

While one might speculate that my friend’s participation in the apparent uniformity of university life only cloaked the poor, that would belie the reality: it is possible to believe that one has no relationship with the poor or to live as if the poor do not exist or matter in any neighbourhood. But she is right, for many of us in Vancouver we live very segmented lives. Our homes and hospitality are not graced with the poor. We are not doing life “with” each other.

Yet, Jesus believes we have a relationship with the poor. He said as much in the story of Lazarus and the man with no name. Apparently the quality of our relationship with the poor reflects whether or not we have a name in Kingdom of God. Do you have a name? (Read Luke 16:19-31)

19 “There was a rich man who was dressed in purple and fine linen and lived in luxury every day. 20At his gate was laid a beggar named Lazarus, covered with sores 21and longing to eat what fell from the rich man’s table. Even the dogs came and licked his sores. 

22 “The time came when the beggar died and the angels carried him to Abraham’s side. The rich man also died and was buried. 23In Hades, where he was in torment, he looked up and saw Abraham far away, with Lazarus by his side. 24So he called to him, ‘Father Abraham, have pity on me and send Lazarus to dip the tip of his finger in water and cool my tongue, because I am in agony in this fire.’

25 “But Abraham replied, ‘Son, remember that in your lifetime you received your good things, while Lazarus received bad things, but now he is comforted here and you are in agony. 26And besides all this, between us and you a great chasm has been set in place, so that those who want to go from here to you cannot, nor can anyone cross over from there to us.’

27 “He answered, ‘Then I beg you, father, send Lazarus to my family, 28for I have five brothers. Let him warn them, so that they will not also come to this place of torment.’
29 “Abraham replied, ‘They have Moses and the Prophets; let them listen to them.’

30 “ ‘No, father Abraham,’ he said, ‘but if someone from the dead goes to them, they will repent.’

31 “He said to him, ‘If they do not listen to Moses and the Prophets, they will not be convinced even if someone rises from the dead.’ ”

My friend — she does have a name, but in respect to her I am not calling her here — found it strange that her daily life did not obviously intersect with the poor. She was disconcerted with the fact that daily life was not shared communally across economic lines. Her disturbance has stayed with me all these years. Why aren’t more of us disconcerted too? How can we read the Bible and feast on the teachings of Jesus without being disconcerted by a no name life? How can we know Jesus the Risen Saviour and have no real passionate movement toward the poor?

This week I had two encounters with a poor man called Alex. In my heart as I pray for him, he is Alex the Great; he could be my son. The ravages of drug addiction are apparent and hunger stalks him. In our first encounter after a conversation about how he was doing, where he was staying, and how he felt about the day, I asked his name and told him mine. We chatted a bit more and then I made to leave. I was a few steps away, and praying for him, when he called out to me, “Hey what’s your name?”

Ah, that question stirred up life in me and my soul rejoiced as I answered, “My name is Craig.”

Relationships

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Slow Reflection Required

June 16, 2020 0 Comments

For a week I’ve been processing the prophetic vision God gave Bob Ekblad. He writes about it here, “Exposing and Repenting of Racial Injustice.”

Then Timothy Dalrymple from Christianity Today writes a painful call for churches to face the painful realities of slavery and their complicity in theft. He writes,

“Two original sins have plagued this nation from its inception: the destruction of its native inhabitants and the institution of slavery. Both sprang from a failure to see an equal in the racial other. As Bishop Claude Alexander has said, racism was in the amniotic fluid out of which our nation was born. There was a virus present in the very environment that nurtured the development of our country, our culture, and our people. The virus of racism infected our church, our Constitution and laws, our attitudes and ideologies. We have never fully defeated it.”

How could anyone read that and not want to be repentant? 

What is the Holy Spirit saying to the churches?

So after watching the Giglio, Cathey, Lacrea video, The Beloved Community, I’m asking myself, “Why is the church so weak?” Lord have mercy we are ASTHENEIA! How can we land in the language of “blessing” for slavery? ever. It’s awful!

Then I’m finding a whole segment of white Christians who still want to argue about personal responsibility as if America is a great moral vivarium and experiment in the exercise of individual rights. These days we’ve been invited to a funeral and all they can talk about is who’s fault is it and all they can say is stuff that basically equates to “Well everybody dies.”

And then I stumbled on the posting of a friend that was normalizing the language of extermination. Vile and wicked so it was. I walked around for an hour deeply grieved. How could this be in a brother’s heart? What cesspool did he dive in to find this stuff?

I think slow reflection is needed.

So if any video or summary of history has moved you a bit, even if it is by Phil Visher from Veggie Tales, please read a book. If you aren’t ready to read a book, at least read some testimonies of what it’s like to Breathe While Black. I’ve been moved by these.

I know you were hoping you could just go ask a co-worker. Don’t do it. Don’t ask them to be your counsellor for change. You are exhausting them.

Slow reflection is needed so read a book.

Some changes are coming quickly for some policy, but in the time that it takes you to read a book, some change could happen in you. Language expresses the heart. And we need some changes at the heart. Reading is marination of the soul.

There’s a lot of gospel work to be done. 

From my own reading list:

Stamped from the Beginning. Ibram X. Kendi
How to be an AntiRacist. Ibram X. Kendi
The Christian Imagination: Theology and the Origins of Race. Willie Jennings.
White Fragility. Robin DiAngelo 
Between The World and Me. Ta-Nehisi Coates
Through the years I’ve read the works of Toni Morrison and Maya Angelou

Slow reflection is needed. Read a book. You will find The Christian Imagination to be especially taxing. Reading slowly and seeking comprehension is good.

I’m forming an opinion that part of the reason we (the white-ish churches of North America) are so weak is that we have narrow emotional veins and our vision of Christian maturity is utterly malformed. Maybe a slow work through The Emotionally Healthy Church could be helpful for learning how to grieve. The lack of empathy still confounds me. But where empathy is lacking perhaps there has been unmetabolized griefs. 

At the end of the day without slow reflection there is no love and no repentance. 

There’s a lot of gospel work to be done. Read the Bible and read a book.

(I know, there’s a lot of podcasts to listen to as well. That’s not my realm. I’ve got one chorus in this post: Read a book.)

Update, 16 Jun3 2020. Louie Giglio has posted an apology for his “blessing” statement.

Change, Relationships, Society

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To understand — Breathing While Black — Some testimonies

June 6, 2020 0 Comments

This is an artist’s rendition of Joseph, The Carpenter, entrusted with parenting Jesus with Mary. We don’t know a lot about him. But, I find Christians are able to imagine a lot about his life and feelings; they are even able to put themselves in his shoes and wonder what it was like to be him. Unfortunately I don’t find this kind of Christian imagination comes easy among some white people to imagine what it’s like to be black in North America. So, I’ve gathered up some of the articles by black men in North America reflecting on their experiences and the deep feeling of menace that accompanies them everywhere.

Breathing While Black.

Here in their own voice and script.

I invite you to pray with me before you listen:

Ô Maître, que je ne cherche pas tant
à être consolé qu’à consoler,
à être compris qu’à comprendre,
à être aimé qu’à aimer…

Willie Jennings —
My Anger/God’s Righteous Indignation. 2 June 2020. Listen to the podcast or read the transcript.


Shai Linne
George Floyd and Me. Gospel Coalition 8 June 2020.


Timothy Peoples —
Ahmaud, Breonna, Christian, George, and The Talk every black boy receives. Opinion article in Baptist News Global, 29 May 2020


LeAlan M. Jones.
Breathing While Black. 28 May 2020, The Nation


James Ellis III —
A lowdown, dirty shame: Ahmaud Arbery’s murder and the unrenounced racism of white Christians. Opinion article in Baptist News Global, 15 May 2020.


Steve Locke —
I fit the description. Personal blog 4 Dec 2015.


A growing list of events and stories —
Absurd America, collated by Sergio Peçanha. Washington Post, 5 June 2020.




I will continue to add to this post so we can listen.

Note:
The picture above is a small inset of “Joseph The Carpenter” from Annunciation Triptych, by Robert Campin on display at The Cloisters. What do you know about Joseph? Not much right? We don’t have much of his story but we have been able to imagine plenty. Unfortunately many of us have not been able to imagine what’s its like to be black in North America and then be angry about our common situation.

Prayer, Relationships

Passion Week Lessons — All at once

April 8, 2020 0 Comments

Passion Week Lessons

Every attempt at writing or creating video about the “lessons” in each day of this Passion Week has so far fallen flat. Neither I nor my products could escape the inner critic. I couldn’t push publish. So I’ll just summarize the “lessons” of Monday – Wednesday and give your Thursday’s as well.

To call these days between Palm Sunday and Good Friday, Passion Week is to emphasize the passion of Jesus — His suffering emerging from who He is and the love permeating all His relationships: with His Heavenly Father, with Himself, with people, and with the stuff of earth. Suffering extends to the depths of soul beyond the flesh and the nerve endings. Jesus was not detached; he was deliberately engaged. So, Jesus loves and His love is what He taught.

The lessons I have been drawn to in His teaching in this week show us the way of Jesus’ love.

May these lessons bear the fruit Jesus intends.

Monday — Impressed with the image of God.
Reading: Matthew 22:15-22

Our obligations to the crown and its coin do not exceed the greater obligation to the image before us in humanity — the image of God. “Give back to Ceasar what is Caesar’s, and to God what is God’s.” What is God’s? What must be given to God? The body and the person meant to flourish there. The bodies of humanity and the communities taking root here. I’m sure the rest of our relationships will follow when our value for giving God what is God’s is moved to the top. The secret of giving and I suspect the secret of loving is to give ourselves first to God.

Tuesday — The greatest commandment
Reading: Matthew 22:34-40

 An expert in the law tests Jesus with a question, “Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?” I’m not sure which options for great commands the expert thought might compete for the top spot. But Jesus chooses the first and second commands and then says “All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.” Here you go — let’s organize our lives around these beginning with our closest relationships (starting at “home”).

“‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.” This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbour as yourself.’”

Love God with your all.
Love people as yourself.

So much growth required!
So much grace necessary!

Wednesday — Humble service flowing from the inside out
Reading: Matthew 23:1-12

Jesus finds no fault with the Law and the Prophets nor with the teaching that might emerge from their teachers on how to live in relationship to God, to self, to people and to the stuff of earth. But Jesus does find fault with the teachers who do not practice what they preach. He says, “be careful to do everything they tell. But do not do what they do.” Jesus does find fault with teachers who do everything for people to see so as to garner honour and adoration.

Humility among the communities of Jesus is founded on allegiance to Him.

So in the communities of Jesus no one needs to be called “Rabbi;” we are all brothers and sisters and we have one Teacher.

No one needs to be called “Father” because we all have one Father and He is in heaven.

No one needs to be called Instructor because we all have one Instructor, The Messiah.

If anyone needs to be great — become a servant by humbling yourself.

Thursday — The urgency of loving now with integrity
Matthew 23:13-39, Chapters 24 -25

Jesus sees ahead and he sees into the hearts of people who claim the name of God. He knows what has been entrusted to us and he discerns our spiritual complacency and inertia.

Jesus is direct and then he moves to what I call the parables of disturbance. These parables are meant to disrupt our complacency and generate urgency for relationship with God and for responsive living in all our relationships.

Wisdom, stewardship and service flow out of our worship of God as participants in Jesus’ Kingdom.

Wisdom: The urgency of time. The Parable of the Ten Virgins.
“Therefore, keep watch, because you do not know the day or hour.” Matthew 25:3


Stewardship: The urgency of wealth. The Parable of the Bags of God
“For whoever has will be given more, and they will have an abundance. Whoever does not have, even what they have will be taken from them.” Matthew 25:29


Service: The urgency of people. The Parable of the Sheep and The Goats.
“‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did not do for one of the least of these, you did not do for me.’ Then they will go away to eternal punishment, but the righteous to eternal life.” Matthew 25-45-46


Quotes

“A common usage of the word neighbour today locates the neighbor as one who lives “next door” or close by. A “next-door” neighbor is one with a special degree of intimacy, in this understanding, and there is something to that. But in this understanding my most important neighbour is overlooked: the one who lives with me—my family, or others taken in by us. They are the ones I am most intimately engaged with in my life. They are the ones who first and foremost I am to love as I love myself. If only this were done, nearly every problem in families would resolved, and the love would spread to others….

“As we go about these exercises it will become increasingly clear how necessary it is to practice a range of what we think of as standard disciplines for the spiritual life (silence, solitude, fasting, prayer, study, and so forth) in order to receive the compassion, grace, and growth required to live a life of neighborly love. We may never feel adequate to such a life, in view of the depth of need that surrounds us. But it is right and good to understand that we aren’t adequate to love as we should and could! Instead we are to stand with others in the fellowship of disciples of Jesus Christ and under the presence and resources of the kingdom of God.”

Dallas Willard, “How to Love Your Neighbor as Yourself,” Renewing the Christian Mind, p. 132, 133-4.

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“Freedom is a terrible gift, and the theory behind all dictatorships is that ‘the people’ do not want freedom. They want bread and circuses. They want workman’s compensation and fringe benefits and TV. Give up your free will, give up your freedom to make choices, listen to the expert, and you will have three cars in your garage, steak on the table, and you will no longer have to suffer the agony of choice.

Choice is an essential ingredient of fiction and drama. A protagonist must not simple be acted upon, he must act, by making a choice, a decision to do this rather than that. A series of mistaken choices through the centuries has brought us to a restricted way of life in which we have less freedom than we are meant to have, and so we have a sense of powerlessness and frustration which comes from our inability to change the many terrible things happening on the planet.”

Madeleine L’Engle, Walking on Water: Reflections on Faith and Art. p. 103

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“The walk of Jesus as He lived among people was not an aimless walk. He was more or less constantly touching people, and they were conscious of that touch. Do we need to emphasize again that as Jesus’ followers, our walk, our lives should not be aimless? We who have been brought into union with the resurrected Christ should be so responsive to His touch on our lives that naturally and inevitably we will unconsciously seek to live the kind of life He lived. We will permit Him, more and more, to touch the lives of others through our touch with and on them. Also ‘others’ will be constantly enlarging, including family, friends, neighbors, church members, casual acquaintances, and total strangers.”

T. B. Maston, To Walk As He Walked, p. 129

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“When we decide that the weak are not only objects of our charity but also subjects who teach us needed wisdom, it makes new relationships possible. After all, people sense when the time you spend with them is a chore. They might smile and say thank you ‘onstage,’ but you can be sure that the poor will cuss a patronizing church like a sailor as soon as the members are out of earshot. When we enjoy the time we spend with others and honestly value their wisdom, we don’t gain only new knowledge. We gain something far more valuable: a friendship that wasn’t possible before…

The tactic of eternal investments involves learning to entrust our future to God, believing in an economics of providence. The tactic of economic friendship is similar, but it emphasizes this: God’s economy comes to us as a community of friendship. Though Jesus made it clear that miracles happen, it’s not God’s standard operating procedure to rain bread from heaven or provide money from a fish’s mouth. Instead, God invites us into the abundance of eternal life through economic relationships with other people.

Some of us might be slow to call this friendship. Friends, we think are people we connect with on a deep level—people who understand us and with whom we can share our most initiate thoughts. ‘You can’t have many true friends,’ we sometimes say, thinking about the time investment these special relationships require. I have a few intimate relationships like this, and I’m deeply grateful for them, but I don’t think these are the sort of people Jesus is talking about when he tells us to use money to make friends.

Economic friendship is a lot more like being a good neighbor.”

Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove, God’s Economy: Redefining the Health and Wealth Gospel, p. 146, 147-8.

Discipleship, Relationships

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