Month: March 2012

Prayer, Boundaries, and The Center

This is a long one today, but this stuff from Richard Rohr’s book Everything Belongs: The Gift of Contemplative Prayer is really, really good.

Those who rush to artificially manufacture their own identity often end up with hardened and overly defended edges. They are easily offended and are always ready to create a new identity when the current one lets them down…living only in reaction to someone or something else.

Many give up their boundaries before they have them, always seeking their identity in another group, experience, possession, or person. Beliefs like, “she will make me happy,” or “he will take away my loneliness,” or “this group will make feel like I belong” become a substitute for doing the hard work of growing up. It is much easier to belong to a group than it is to know that you belong to God.

The gift that true contemplatives offer to themselves and society is that they know themselves as a part of a much larger story. Their security and identity are founded in God, not in being right, being paid by a church, or affirmed in the eyes of others. People who have learned to live from their center in God know which boundaries are worth maintaining and which can be surrendered…which, ironically, requires an “obedience,” to listen to a Voice beyond their own.

By contrast non-centered people have boundaries that must be defended, negotiated, or worshipped: their reputation, their needs, their nation, their security, their religion, even their ball team. You can tell if you have placed a lot of your eggs in these flimsy baskets if you are hurt or offended a lot. They are a hurt waiting to happen…in fact, they will create tragedies to make themselves feel alive.

I believe that we have no real access to who we really are except in God. Only when we rest in God can we find the safety, the spaciousness, and the scary freedom to be who we are, all that we are, more than we are, and less than we are. Only when we live and see through God can “everything belong.”

Some Thoughts on Generosity

I taught this weekend at [REUNION] Back Bay on Luke 16. Which is, like, one of the easiest passages in scripture to preach on. Just kidding. This section of the Good News According to Luke includes: the parable of the shrewd manager (is Jesus telling us to use money to buy friends?), some statements about faithfulness/self-justification/forcing ones way in to the Kingdom/the law never passing away/divorce, and the parable of Lazarus and the rich man (with its interesting view of the afterlife). Light stuff.

The big idea, as best I can make out, is this: use everything at your disposal (including your financial resources) to invest in things that last.

Which gave me an opportunity to share one of my favorite stories: the story of the house I grew up in. The short version goes like this: my parents move the fam to Salinas to plant a church…a contractor friend tells them to find a piece of land and he will build a house on it…they find some land…he builds the house!

The pinnacle moment of the story takes place on May 4th, 1985 when 70+ people wearing bright yellow “Boutry’s Barn Raising” t-shirts come pouring out of a bus to frame, roof, and side the entire house in one day.

It’s a great story. This is what it looks like to leverage your time, talents, resources, money, skills, networks, etc for the Kingdom.

But it’s an even better story when you (I) think about this: for the last 27 years my parents have always treated their home as a gift. They call it the “house that friends built.” And they have hosted thousands of people for every imaginable reason: community groups, newcomer desserts and lunches, discipleship, helping people in need, family gatherings, wedding rehearsal dinner parties, my college friends, missionaries, and the list could go on and on and on.

I think this is what Jesus is getting at in Luke 16 (albeit in an interesting way). And so, the story of my parents house, alongside Luke 16, is an inspiration, but also a challenge: am I using everything I’ve been entrusted with for the Kingdom?

Baptisms

[REUNION] held a baptism celebration this week, and it was awesome to watch 5 students get dunked! I always love these moments, but I found each of the stories to be especially moving this time. One of my favorite stories culminated in watching Eric baptize one of our BU students. Eric got connected to REUNION/Sojourn through mutual friends from California (the Derricos) who has become a community group leader with his wife. So great to watch all of that work together for a great Kingdom story!