Month: June 2012

Adventure, Love, Suffering (RePost)

From Alan Hirsch and Michael Frost (The Faith of Leap)

“To love is to suffer…and that’s probably why we generally don’t do it well. Unwillingness to venture, plus a desire to be safe, holds us back from love. To be sure, most of us do have a vision of what makes a good life, and as believers we know that it involves growing in the love of God. What we seem to lack, however, is the will to attain to this good life of love. Most of us prefer to skip over the pain and the discipline, to find some easy, off-the-shelf ways to sainthood. Christian self-help spiritualities are a classic dodge of the real issues and manifestly do not produce maturity. We do well to be reminded of the cost of shortcuts in Carl Jung’s penetrating statement, ‘Neurosis is always a substitute for legitimate suffering.'”

Layers (RePost)

I think that if you do life right you spend your first 25 years accumulating layers, the next 25 peeling those layers away, and the last however many years you live just letting it all hang out.

This is an oversimplification, but I do think the central idea is true: maturity is all about delayering.

Maybe another way of putting it is this: I think we equate maturity with more…more patience, more kindness, more joy, more love.

But I would argue maturity is about less busyness, less attatchment to things, less clutter (physically and spiritually).

I can sense already some push back to this “negative” stance (sounds too buddhist!). But I think scripture supports this (for example and foranother) and I know my experience certainly does.

The delayering for me began with marriage (in my humble opinion it has to start here, if it hasn’t already, or you are in for a short marriage). Then it became vocational. Then it started to affect the way i dress, which is pretty superficial…

…but I can feel it getting deeper and deeper. Soul delayering. I know that I am in the middle of a moment of significance in my story but I can’t put my finger on what that means quite yet. I do know that it feels like getting rid of layers. That I am identifying less and less with external sub-cultures and other markers, and more and more with inner convictions.

Sthere’s that.

Older (RePost)

I’m 30 and I still quote from dumb and dumber quite often. But I work with a population that was not even in grade school when this movie was in theaters!

They say you are most effective, in ministry, with those ten-years older and younger than you. I think about that from time to time, especially when kids are talking about some youtube video, or a new gadget that I have never heard of and for sure will not know how to use.

I also grow weary with some of the drama that comes with the territory. Whether you take bio 102a or 103b, or whether or not so and so dropped you as a facebook friend, is not always the most interesting conversation for me. However, at one point, I was that student, consumed by what I was supposed to be doing with my life and all emo-ed out with girl problems and the weight of the world.

I find myself wanting to tell students all the time: “It’s ok, this is the easy part, enjoy it, everything is going to be fine.” That’s me at 30: Mr. Cliche.

But I don’t want to be mr. cliché. I find myself circling back to the wise words of Henri Nouwen. In his excellent book, In the Name of Jesus, Nouwen tackles some of the common temptations of leaders. One of them is the temptation to be relevant.

“The leaders of the future will be those who dare to claim their irrelevance in the contemporary world as a divine vocation that allows them to enter into a deep solidarity with the anguish underlying all the glitter of success, and to bring the light of Jesus there.”

I love the line “the anguish underlying all the glitter of success,” because that describes the condition of the modern college student so well. Nouwen prescribes contemplative prayer as the antidote to the temptation of relevance. It is in listening to “the voice of love” again and again and that we find the answers to the issues of the day, to the underlying anguish, to the pain.

The best thing about getting old, at least so far, is that you realize that what you have offer the next generation is not coolness (you will never out cool them), is not stuff, is not even life lessons, but hopefully love. Nothing that I do or create or think up will be as cool as what they can find on tv but who will love them well?

As I get older that’s the question that keeps me up at night.

New Is Always Better (RePost)

Amy and I enjoy the show “How I Met Your Mother”. (For those not familiar with the show, it’s a sort of “Friends” for millennials). One of the main characters is an extreme philanderer named Barney. Barney is prone to outlandish statements and proclamations of ridiculous rules that explain the world from his perspective. One of his favorite sayings is “new is always better.” (I try to invoke this rule with my wife when I get tempted to buy some new piece of technology…it doesn’t really work).

A few weeks ago someone was telling me about a situation he was dealing with. Another someone had a brand new “theological” insight regarding a controversial issue within the church.

As I was listening my intellectual side was tracking with the argument…even though it was new, it kind of made sense, and I could follow the logic (to a degree) that had led to the conclusion.

But something didn’t sit well with me.

I couldn’t figure it out for a while, and I felt like the only response I had was “well that’s wrong,” or “we don’t do it that way.” The issue came up again recently in a conversation about the passage in Luke on new and old wine skins.

Admittedly, I gravitate towards the new most of the time. I like new ideas, new gadgets, new books, new music, etc.

But the rhetoric that goes along with new (i.e. progressive) ideas is often one of convenience. As in: how convenient that you found this new idea that justifies your world view, that’s awesome! 

But convenience is never the path that Jesus took, and that is ultimately what didn’t sit right with me as I listened to my friend. The new idea was cool and interesting and definitely worth a serious conversation.

But it lacked sacrifice. There was no laying down of lives or taking up of crosses. Stories of convenience lack any kind of power. Stories of sacrifice stir the soul and inspire action.

It wasn’t even about whether the issue at hand was right or wrong (at least for me)…the serious point that was being missed was the exchange of sacrifice for convenience.

There is a part of me that wants to declare “new is always better,” but I am learning to weigh the “new” with a lens (a hermeneutic) of sacrifice and cross bearing. Of course, on this point, I can always be accused of spiritual masochism or a joyless theology, so I will acknowledge that danger. But I will always trust “new” ideas that have passed through the crucible of suffering and sacrifice and life-laid-down-experience over a theology of convenience.

Vacation!

A week off, woohoo! This is going to be an interesting kind of vacation: 2.5 days in western massachusetts celebrating four years of marriage…2.5 days in southern california at a conference…2 days in Boston working on “projects”.

I’ll let you know how it goes. But, seriously, I don’t know that I have ever looked more forward to time off. There are other vacations/trips I’ve been more excited about, but this vacation is the water/aid/food station at mile 75 of an ultra-marathon race. I need it!

I will not be posting new material until next Friday (if then), so I will be running some of my favorite posts from the “old” illumination dilemma next week. Enjoy that!

I am sure I will have much to report back on when I return!

Identity, Work, Time, Seminary, Lost Things, and Baseball

Check these excellent articles out:

  1. The Pew Research center recently published some interesting findings on “Hispanics and Their Views of Identity” (interesting period, but also given the nature of out neighborhood and family)
  2. Seth Godin with more wisdom…this week it’s about protecting and defending your time so you can do the things that are important (and I would add life-giving)
  3. Scot McKnight (who recently made the jump from North Park University, teaching undergrads, to Northern Seminary, teaching grads) gives us 10 Reasons to Attend Seminary
  4. My friend Ryan on “the things we find”…God has a habit of finding things that are lost!
  5. A baseball article. I love Joey Votto. Watch him hit if you get the chance. Plus some of the stuff in this article is so amazing I don’t even believe it.

Some Thoughts on Grief (or how not to be helpful)

I spoke on Grief at REUNION on Sunday, part of our series called “UnDone”. You can listen to it here. I was able to spend a few minute talking about how those who are on the comforting side of the grief process can fall into a couple of dangers.

One of those is dangers is to default to clichéd advice like: “everything will be ok, time will heal all wounds.”

I think we have spiritual ways of sending a similar message. Not liking the messiness of the middle of the grieving process we say things like: “I’m sure God has a plan for all of this,” or “He will work it all out in the end.” That stuff sounds nice, and yes there are moments when we need to be reminded that something bigger than our situation is in control, but most of the time it isn’t very helpful in the moment.

And even more insidious is when this kind of advice gets thrown back on us later on down the road. Maybe things did sort of work out. Maybe you lost a job and ended up with a better one, or a relationship ended and that opened the possibility of something new and deeper. What happens here is that a helpful friend comes along and says: “See this is how it was supposed to work all along, isn’t God good.” They slap God’s approval on the whole thing, and suddenly you have no way to respond to that. Can’t argue with God.

But, that situation, whatever it was, HURT. And yes, things are working out and that is worth celebrating, but what ends up happening here is that those feelings become invalid. Now you have to pretend like that never hurt in the first place. Somehow you are less spiritual and in tune with how God works if you continue to name the pain and call it what it is.

But to truly heal (and to be fully human) you have to be able to say: “that hurt.” And if even something beautiful comes on the other end of it, it is all the more beautiful because it was born out of pain. But that thing was still painful…it doesn’t just disappear.

And, that, I think, is really important to remember.

Weddings and Other Updates

A couple of quick updates:

  • I’ll have more to say about this later in the week, but I got to speak yesterday at REUNION on grief. Fun topic! Amy and I shared part of our story of the last year…it was pretty powerful and I think it opened up a lot of stuff for people in our community.
  • On a totally different note: Friday and Saturday were dedicated to preparations and the actual wedding of Dustin and his new bride, Rachelle. Dustin’s been on staff with Sojourn for two school years now, and he’s been an incredible team member (helped get us started at Northeastern and off the ground at UMB). Love these guys and so happy for their marriage. They chose well!
  • Lots of writing and prepping to do before Friday, which is when week one of vacation starts!