What's the ugliest part of your body?

What's the ugliest
part of your body?
What's the ugliest
part of your body?
Some say your nose.
Some say your toes.
I think it's your mind.
- Frank Zappa

[The following is something I've thought for years now. This specific post was triggered by a blog posting I read the other day which I can no longer find, in which the person wrote "I have killed thousands", meaning in their mind, out of anger, hatred, etc. If someone wrote or knows the post I am talking about, can you please send me the link so I can attribute it here?]

I believe I know why sin causes us to feel such a division from God, when He does not want us to turn away. It is because God is inside our heads. In Christianity we are reminded over and over that God knows what we think and that motivations count.

To my knowledge no other religion posits this. Some religions deal in psychological and experiential terms - if you practice to get your mental state just right you will escape samsara and attain nirvana. Some seem almost purely works based - if you pray five times a day and do everything "just right" and perform pilgrimages and so forth and so on, then heaven is assured.

I think as a religion Christianity suffers from some of those aspects as well, brought on by ignoring the word of our Saviour and thinking that if we can just come up with the perfect doctrine and do the right things (and worse, punish and ostracise those that don't), then we will be right with God. Even as we're constantly reminded that Christ is about grace, not works, and certainly not about being able to fix ourselves.

But there is an important difference in following Jesus, and that is that God knows what you are thinking. Mere works don't get you off the hook because no matter how good your effort you were still committing sin, even if just in your own head. And God knows that. And we know that, and we know that He knows. And in our shame it causes us to turn away from God. And that is the real sin.

Weirdly enough, I think this aspect of our faith gives rise to a bit of paranoia, especially among "immature" Christians (like me); because if God knows our thoughts and feelings, our mind and our hearts, then He knows just how bad we are. And how can we ever face Him knowing that He knows that?

But of course the Good News is He does know our thoughts and feelings, our mind and our hearts, and He still loves us. It is only when we realize that we can do nothing but confess to Him our inner sins as well as our outer acts, ask for His forgiveness and turn back to Him that we are on the right path. We cannot try and fix ourselves before we allow ourselves to commune with God. That is like wanting to get in shape first before going to the gym. We all know how that works - we end up doing nothing, and feeling worse about our ever fatter selves. Similarly, if we keep trying to get in spiritual shape before talking to God, we simply fall farther and farther into sin.

In an article about six-word short stories (that's right - six words), one of the "very short stories" was this:

Lie detector eyeglasses perfected: Civilization collapses.
- Richard Powers

Similarly, my friend Aaron and I once had a conversation in which we posited what would happen if there were a device invented that allowed us all to know what we were each thinking, all the time. We decided that at a minimum it would be the end of all marriages, and probably most friendships, and certainly all jobs. "Civilization collapses", indeed. We all keep secrets in our heads. We all think things best kept buried. Even in our most intimate relationships with those we love the most, there are things left unsaid, and rightly so.

But to God nothing is unsaid. By thinking it, we say it to Him. We are exposed, naked, and it makes us want to hide. But we can't hide. So what to do? I think this questions needs more than the typical pat answer of "Open ourselves to God". Because we don't know how to do that. We don't have that type of openess with anyone else in our lives, so how can we just suddenly "do it"? We've never been "shields down", or at least not since we were maybe two years old. Everything we've learned - everything - has taught us to keep a certain part reserved to ourselves. And hence my point that I actually think there is an aspect of paranoia involved - to suddenly find out that our defenses are not just down - to God those defenses themselves are yet another way to sin, to hold out on Him and not be intimate with Him. This is the Fall I am talking about, if you haven't figured that out.

As I work through this myself, I have come to the conclusion that as with so many other things, the only thing we can do is pray for help. Ask God to help us be open to Him. Recognize when we are holding out on Him and seek His forgiveness. Fall backwards into His arms and trust He'll catch us and love us. Scary. But if you don't believe God will catch you and love you regardless of your sinful nature, why are you a Christian?

Here's the even scarier part...I believe that another point in the Gospel is that once we begin having that kind of relationship with God, Christ calls us to have it with each other, too. For it is only by being truly open and honest and unguarded that we can experience true community, true love. It can be scary enough with a spouse. But what about with everyone else? Again, I think the answer is to ask God to send the Holy Spirit to free us from ourselves. We certainly can't do it alone.

Comments?

I call this child abuse...

...and I am ashamed this is being done in my country, with my tax dollars, by my government, who is too chicken to even do it themselves, but are hiring it out. On Chuck Warnock's blog Amicus Dei he posted Why are we putting children in prison?, about the T. Don Hutto detention facility in Austin, Texas:

This prison, complete with barred prison cells measuring only 8' wide, now holds women and their children, picked up in immigrant sweeps by the US Border Patrol.

...

Here's what we are doing in America to these little children:

1. Children are forced to wear prison uniforms.
2. Children over 5-years of age are kept in prison cells separated from their mothers.
3. Children are allowed outside for recreation only 1-hour per day.
4. Children are being treated like prisoners in violation of federal law.
5. Children are being denied access to education, healthcare, and their families in violation of federal and international human rights laws and treaties.

Go read the rest of the post. Then do what Pastor Warnock suggests and call, write, email or fax your congresscritters and voice your outrage over this.

[Update - the following is what I wrote to my representative and senators.]

I have recently discovered that our government is contracting with a private prison firm, Corrections Corporation of America, to detain in a prison setting not just people being held while their immigration or asylum status is being determined, BUT THEIR CHILDREN AS WELL.

As part of the detention:

1. Children are forced to wear prison uniforms.
2. Children over 5-years of age are kept in prison cells separated from their mothers.
3. Children are allowed recreation only 1-hour per day, and often are not allowed outside at all.
4. Children are being treated like prisoners in violation of federal law.
5. Children are being denied access to education, healthcare, and their families in violation of federal and international human rights laws and treaties.

As an American and a Christian I am OUTRAGED. Our country is declining, and our government is leading the way in its spiral downward with its continual lack of regard for the rule of law and individual rights and freedoms. As my representative I call on you to help put an end to this heinous practice immediately.

Brother, can you spare some time?

Today was the inaugural day for a new "mobile food pantry" here in our town. It is being sponsored by the regional food bank and a local Methodist church. I learned about it at a meeting on Thursday. There are four local food pantries in our medium-sized city (population ca. 50,000, area population probably around double that), but all of them are open only during the work week, and only one of them has hours in the evening (which is when I volunteer). But the thinking of the Methodist pastor whose church runs one of the other three pantries is that many of the working poor can't take off during the work week to get to the pantries, and that many volunteers (like me) can't volunteer then, either. So the idea is to have a mobile food pantry in the local newspaper parking lot the third Saturday of every month from 9:00 a.m. to 12:00 p.m. to meet the needs of people who can't otherwise get to a food pantry.

I showed up at 8:30 and the food bank staff and Methodist church volunteers were already there. It was a pretty simple operation - people had to register (this will help track who is using this new service that wasn't being reached by the four permanent food pantries to make sure it is serving its need), and then the clients walked to the seven tables around the truck with shopping carts provided by a local grocery store. Each table had items from one of the seven pallets in the truck (pasta, meat, sweets, pizzas, canned goods, etc.), and each person got to take so many of each item depending on how many people were in their household.

[Edit: I forgot to mention how many people, so I am correcting that with the following paragraph.]

The new pantry was quite successful for its first day. We handed out food to over 80 families. Compare that to the other established food pantry I volunteer at, where in an average two hour period we hand out food for 40-100 families. So it appears the need is there!

We volunteers simply helped distribute the food and keep the tables stocked. It was hot and humid but other than that it was a pretty easy gig - easier than carrying food to people's cars, which is what I do at the other food pantry. Besides the food bank staff, Methodist members and myself, a women dropped by whose husband was attending jury duty orientation at the courthouse next door. She had gone out walking to pass the time, found us, and when her husband was done with orientation he joined us, too. The Methodist pastor had hoped this would end up being an ecumenical operation, and with myself and the other couple, three denominations were represented on day one. And I plan to push this at my church to see if we can get some more hands on deck for the next one. This feels like exactly what I was looking for.

My wife is lucky - as a nurse in long-term care, her very job is mission; caring for people who cannot care for themselves, being their advocate to an insensitive corporation that wants to maximize profit at their expense, loving them, crying when they get sick or die. Her job has meaning even as it has frustrations. All I do is program a computer and thereby help a big company make money. Not much meaning in that, other than being able to feed and house my family. And we have so much. God blesses my family with riches - food and health and shelter and clothing and transportation and access to doctors and dentists and on and on and on. And yet all I do some days is complain and whine and moan and gripe. What a hypocrite I am!

There are so many worthy causes to care about, but to me the core two are hunger and shelter. And out of those, I personally rank hunger the highest - if you are starving, all else pales by comparison. But I also applaud Habitat and all the work it does, and am glad our church supports the local Habitat program both monetarily and with volunteers. But since I am not handy with my hands, and since I feel so drawn to helping the hungry, I concentrate on helping at the food pantries. I don't care why or how the clients got to the circumstances where they are - so many people are so judgmental about that! It doesn't matter to me a whit, especially when there are children involved. Those children cannot help their circumstances, and it would be mean of us as a society to punish those children for the transgressions of their parents. The children will have a hard enough life as it is. But regardless, if people feel the need to show up for food, I think they've been "means tested" enough.

Every time I help giving out food, it reminds me just how lucky, how blessed, I am. I have done some pretty dicey things in my life, some of which, if they had turned out in any other way could have put me on the other side of the food tables today, or in prison or the cemetery. I can never repay God for my life, let alone my salvation. All I can do is try to help as much as I can. When I first started I thought I could help represent Christ to others. Ha! Instead, I have discovered I meet Christ in the people I help. Just as He promised.

Care to join me?

How to give a damn about your fellow man

I am weeping. Really crying. I came home from volunteering at a new mobile food bank today feeling pretty good about the experience (more on that later), and then while catching up with my blog reading I came across this post by Brant Hansen. Which led to Kat Jacobs's blog and her "40 Day Fast" program. One blogger per day will fast and write about it, then at the end of the 40 days everyone who cares can fast. The goal is to change the world by motivating people to sponsor children to end hunger everywhere. My family will be doing this. I stand convicted in my heart, even while I try and help, that I am still not doing enough. I will never be doing enough. But I must try. And so should you.

Here's the picture that started it all. Kat pleads for you to not look away. I dare you to look away. And if you do, don't ever come back here, because you and I have nothing in common.

"This picture was particularly gripping. It won the 1994 Pulitzer Prize. It depicts a small girl (about the age of my girls) crawling to a UN food station about a half mile away. A vulture waits behind her."

Read the blog posts every day. But more importantly, DO SOMETHING. NOW. People are hungry in your community. People are hungry around the world. Cry for them. Then feed them. Christ commands you to. Obey your master's call.

If you'd take the train with me
Uptown, thru the misery
Of ghetto streets in morning light,
It's always night.
Take a window seat, put down your Times,
You can read between the lines,
Just meet the faces that you meet
Beyond the window's pane.

And it might begin to teach you
How to give a damn about your fellow man.
And it might begin to teach you
How to give a damn about your fellow man.

Or put your girl to sleep sometime
With rats instead of nursery rhymes,
With hunger and your other children
By her side,
And wonder if you'll share your bed
With something else which must be fed,
For fear may lie beside you
Or it may sleep down the hall.

And it might begin to teach you
How to give a damn about your fellow man.
And it might begin to teach you
How to give a damn about your fellow man.

Come and see how well despair
Is seasoned by the stif'ling air,
See your ghetto in the good old
Sizzling summertime.
Suppose the streets were all on fire
The flames like tempers leaping higher
Suppose you'd lived there all your life,
D'you think that you would mind?

And it might begin to reach you
Why I give a damn about my fellow man;
And it might begin to teach you
How to give a damn about your fellow man
- Spanky & Our Gang, "Give a Damn"

Saturday in the park(ing lot)

Well, yesterday I attended my first "Christian Ministerial Fellowship" meeting. This is a group of mostly pastors that meets once a month to discuss various opportunities and programs for helping others in our small community. My pastor has asked me to attend for our church, and even though I am a lay person I was graciously accepted (although some acted a little surprised when introducing themselves and finding out I am not clergy - but nobody pulled back and washed their hand or anything :-).

It's a pretty interesting group - pastors from churches large and small as well as the Salvation Army and the prison ministry here in town. The featured speaker was the chaplain at one of the two local hospitals, and his talk inspired some interesting discussion about pastoral care in that setting. I may post more on that later.

Anyway, I joined this group in the hope that it would lead to other opportunities to volunteer and help in the community, and God was listening to my prayers because I get the opportunity to help at a new "mobile food pantry" that is just starting out this Saturday. It is being supported by the regional food bank and one of the larger churches in the area which also serves as one of the four area food pantries (I volunteer at one of the other three). The minister from that church was at the meeting yesterday and announced the plan.

The four area food pantries are all open during weekdays. Only one is open during a weekday evening (that's where and when I volunteer), but even that's only 4:00-6:00 p.m. The idea is that we are probably missing some working poor who can't get off work during the week but still need assistance. So they've converted an old beer/soda truck to hold seven pallets of food, and every third Saturday it will show up rain or shine at the parking lot of the local newspaper from 9:00 a.m. to 12:00 p.m., set up tables and hand out groceries. As with all such programs, the people will have to register with photo id and income information. This is to help forestall double- and triple- dippers, that is, people who hit all the food banks in town (and there are some). In fact, if only those that are already showing up at the other food banks are the only ones that show up at the mobile food pantry, they will probably not keep the program going. But the hope is there is a set of new people we will reach that need the food and have no other time to get it.

I personally have less problem with people coming more than once - if they are truly in need, then feed them. But I also see the other side - with limited resources available, there must be the ability to help as many people as possible, and some small number of people will not work for themselves if they can simply get everything handed to them for free. Whatever. I will leave such decisions to people making these programs happen. I just want to be there to help others.

I approached the minister sponsoring this after the meeting and said I was interested, and he immediately said, "Can you show up this Saturday?" I am excited, because this seems to be exactly along the lines of what I have been wanting. He was excited because while his church is providing most of the volunteers to get this going, he wants it to be a community project, not just something his own church does.

Please pray for the success of this new program, for the people running it, and most importantly for the people who need it.

Smile when you pray that

I usually don't pass along those ever-forwarded emails with no attributions, but the following did make me smile. I searched the Web (no chance of finding the original author) and it's a popular blog item, so here I am piling on. But whatever, enjoy anyway, and if you've read it before, my apologies.

Dear Lord,

So far today I am doing all right.

I have not gossiped, lost my temper, been greedy, grumpy, nasty, selfish or self-indulgent. I have not whined, complained, cursed or eaten any chocolate. I have charged nothing on my credit card.

But I will be getting out of bed in a minute, and I think that I will really need Your help then.

Amen

It's a beautiful world we live in

I am going to crib my comments from a post by Lyn and out myself.

"I'm Jim, I'm a Christian, and I 'believe' in evolution."

("Gasp! Stone him!")

Following are my (slightly-edited - I wrote the original in haste at work) comments on evolution:

I think the whole Creationism/evolution argument is a red herring that takes much of the energy away from where it is important - following Christ and His teachings - and wastes it, creating a bunch of ill will in the process. Every time creationists win election to the state school board in Kansas and want to teach creationism in public schools, they've just turned off thousands upon thousands of people worldwide from ever hearing the Good News about Jesus.

I read the Bible as divinely inspired truth. I believe it is the sole map necessary to find not just salvation, but communion and fellowship with God. However, I do not believe the Earth is only 6,000 years old. Jesus spoke in parables all the time - who's to say the creation story at the beginning isn't a parable? Especially since we're told Christ was the Word that created everything. So maybe we're just all part of one big parable Jesus is still telling (I like that idea, actually). There's lots in the Bible that's mysterious - our triune God leaps to mind. That's OK. I don't mind the mystery. Nothing says my tiny little brain would ever be able to hold the whole Truth that is God in it anyway.

Here's how I read the God-given truths in Genesis:

• God created everything. The universe, the Earth, and everything on it.
• That includes you, too.
• God provided everything we need. He has a plan for the world, and a plan for us in it.
• God is active in the world. He did not just create it and let it spin on from there.
• God gave us free will because he wanted friends, not robots. He wanted to give and receive love, which can only come from choice.
• With our free will, we created sin.
• God wants us to reconcile with Him. He didn't create us to then be angry with us, even as we continue to give him reasons to be (repeat this last point over and over again and you end up with the rest of the Bible).

Me, personally? I believe evolution (which does not necessarily mean "survival of the fittest" - see Stephen Jay Gould's writings for how it could actually be more along the lines of "survival of the luckiest") is probably the mechanism that got the flora and fauna on Earth to the state is at now. That includes us. It doesn't bother me to be "descended from a monkey". Because if I believe God made everything (and I do), then I am a lot less worried about the how of it all - after all, He is God, He can do it however He wants to. To me, the real miracle in there is our intelligence and free will. I believe that is divine in origin, an outcome of God's plan.

People get hung up on weird points in and about the Bible, and then ignore other parts completely. Nobody I know who had cancer, heart disease or any other serious ailment would go see a "doctor" (shaman) from the time of the Old Testament - they would want the best modern medicine (read as, "science") could provide. I don't think people want to see a return to the Mosaic law system, either (shall we stone people for adultery?) Hence, people pick and choose which verses in the Bible they "believe" by showing which verses they're willing to follow or fight over. And there are a lot of commands we ignore in the New Testament, let alone the Old, and I think those in the New Covenant are much more important.

God commanded the world to be, and it is. We should leave it at that. Because God commanded us to be, too, and specifically He commanded us to be and do specific things, and we don't. Isn't that what's more important? The world is doing what God commanded it to do. Perhaps we should worry less about it and more about doing what God commanded us to do. Dunno if that makes sense or not.

"We are stardust
Billion year old carbon
We are golden
Caught in the devil's bargain
And we've got to get ourselves
Back to the garden"
- Joni Mitchell, "Woodstock"

How to feel like a second-class Christian, part 2

Well, after a week since my first post on this, everything's worked out and the local "unmet needs" ministry council is going to allow my attendance. Which makes me happy - I hope it leads to my being able to help more in my local community.

When I emailed my pastor about it, he replied, "That's good news...I was afraid I was going to have to put you on the payroll." :-)

So much to say

In a recent email comment about my blog, a (non-religious) friend of mine said in passing, "I had to look that term up (just like every eighth or ninth word on your blog :)". Which sorta startled me, because even though he's not religious he is very intelligent, culturally knowledgeable, world travelled and well-educated/well-read (and has even read some books about Christianity such as "Mere Christianity" - which isn't what makes him well-read, I just say that to point out he has been exposed to some discussion of the religion). But as I think about it and look over my blog, I realize I do use a lot of "God talk", a bunch of religious jargon.

Part of that is because as I write I have tended in my mind to aim these posts toward an audience of other believers - not necessarily traditional Christians, because I'm not, but people who would know what I am talking about and struggling over. So when "talking" to that audience, the jargon serves as valuable shorthand, a way to save time on both the writer's and reader's sides, and to save some typing as well.

Another perhaps subconscious reason is I have always (always) had an attraction to and propensity for jargon and "private languages" of various types. I pick up such things quickly, and like knowing the history, inside jokes, nuances and dense information transfer such condensations of language allow. As a "techie" (a programmer), I am privy to a lot of jargon - perhaps as much or more than any other profession (although the military would rank right up there).

But neither of those points means that it is necessarily a Good Thing. I've read a lot about how we need to talk to those who are outside the faith without using God talk, which can create boundaries and distance without our even knowing it. I did some searching and found that while there doesn't appear to be a Christian equivalent of the hacker's jargon file, there have been a few attempts to translate churchspeak into English.

But here's an interesting issue I have with those - if I am talking/writing to someone who is not a Christian, it may be very good to attempt to demystify any conversation about my faith, to make sure my words are clear and not laden with hidden meanings or negative contexts that may cause someone to shut down when they hear it. And yet for the most part I find the substitutions and definitions proffered to be very wordy and awkward. It would be as if every time I said/typed the word "democracy" instead I had to say "a representative government wherein the officials are elected by popular vote" or some such. For someone who lives in (more or less) a democracy, after a while that approach would get very redundant and irritating, especially when there's a perfectly good word just sitting there to describe it.

Similarly, when talking about Christianity with other Christians, it seems to me that the "code words" like grace, salvation, legalism, Gospel, sin, intercession and on and on allow for the conversation to progress quickly and clearly (or more clearly) because all Christians "know" (dangerous assumption!!!) and "agree" (even more dangerous assumption!!!) on the definitions of those terms. It is easier to write in "flow" mode when you don't have to stop every sixth word and wonder, "Does everybody know what that means?" Yet when blogging, where anyone anywhere may stumble upon my scribblings, do I owe that potential audience the effort to make myself clear - not just to other Christians, but to everyone?

A question to my readers who are also Christian bloggers - how do you handle this? Do you blog to a specific mental audience? Do you make conscious word choices based on a perception that non-believers may read your blog? Or do you write exclusively in the deep and nuanced (and to an outsider, impenetrable) language of churchdom?

All apologies, part 2

I have written before that I am not a big fan of apologetics, of trying to "prove" God exists. Apparently I am not the only one. Jacob writes a good post about the same subject. Here is an exerpt:

One significant problem is that followers of Jesus implicitly set modern scientific practice (testing words/concepts against empirical evidence) as the standard the Bible and its Words must pass before its validity is affirmed. Let me say this differently: testing the Word against empirics is akin to making God into a hypothesis. The result is that God and the Christian faith are framed as either “true” or “false” propositions that are ultimately affirmed or denied on the basis of empirical evidence.

...

In other words, religious truth is of a different order. Saying that “God is love,” for instance, is not about finding and testing “God” and “love” against the empirical record. That’s absurd.

I recommend reading the whole post. Thanks, Jacob!

How to feel like a second class Christian

A lot of people blog about problems with their pastors, but I have to admit we're pretty lucky. We fled a church where the senior pastor caused a lot of conflict to which we were intimately exposed, given my wife's family's multi-generational membership there. Les and all of her siblings and her mother all went to the parochial school there, and Les's dad is still an elder there. So we got the blow-by-blow, play-by-play gossip on all the machinations and maneuverings. Considering that I had just recently returned to the faith it made me want to turn and run away again. In fact, my post We are the prodigals was really much more aimed at that church than anything I've found since we've landed in our new church home.

That isn't to say I find our current pastors perfect. I do not. I think they are both good, Godly men, but they are also products of their denomination and training, and so seem very much into the "command and control" form of church. For example, Sunday school Bible study tends to be 10% study and group discussion and 90% pastoral declamation (OTOH, there are a few people who attend who would otherwise monopolize that 90%, and not necessarily in a good way, so perhaps it's pre-emptive). Whatever. They are human. I am human. I don't think I'm better than them or know more than they do, and so for their "sins" I forgive them, as they hopefully do mine. It is what Christ commanded us to do. At some point, the right attitude we Christians should have toward each other and the world at large is to remember the old Firesign Theatre album and realize "We're all bozos on this bus".

But I didn't come here to talk about pastors, other than to relate a story about my search for more missional involvement. To recap, I volunteer at the local food pantry, and if they had more time slots that were open when I wasn't at work, I would simply volunteer there even more, and there'd be no issue whatsoever. In the mid-sized city in which I live, I believe they are doing the most pure "mission" of anyone around. Anyway, I am still wanting a bit more in terms of helping others without preaching to (at) them, and I can't fit more of my schedule into the pantry's. So I've talked with the worship leader at our contemporary service about it and then recently went in to discuss it with our senior pastor.

He totally got what I was saying and understood how I didn't want to be out handing out pamphlets, working on "church growth", or focusing on "the church as a club". Per the latter, I told him that as the church Webmaster it appears to me as I post news every week that we are predominately focused on that. He disagreed a bit with the terminology, and said that for many of the people attending our church they are still in need of "internal mission" because they are barely in the faith yet, and so his focus must be there. I am not sure I agree, but I didn't argue - that is his view of his calling, and who am I to judge?

Anyway, he did understand what I was looking for, and after some discussion, he suggested that I represent the church on a local ecumenical "unmet needs" council, which looks for people, programs and projects in our community that need help and that aren't getting any (or enough). While I had said I wasn't looking for committee work or any other sort of "back room" volunteering (I get enough of that with the Web site), he thought it would be a good way to network with the other churches and ultimately find something that I could then become involved with. I decided that sounded like a good idea and said "yes", and meant it. In fact, the more I thought about it, the more enthusiastic I got, because it fit in with some ideas I'd posted here, which I had shared with my pastor. He then forwarded me an email from the president of the council announcing the next meeting later this month. All was well - I felt I was following the Spirit's pull (push) toward helping more, and was happy.

I emailed the president of the council and introduced myself, saying my pastor had asked me to represent our church at the upcoming meetings and would she be so kind as to send any literature? I got a nice reply including minutes from the last meeting and a "mission statement" ("Danger! Danger, Will Robinson!"). For your perusal I include it here, because it has bearing on this story:

Christian Ministerial Fellowship
Mission Statement

The Christian Ministerial Fellowship is composed of churches that are Christ-centered and that have come together to serve the community in which we live. In doing so we cooperate in the areas where we find "common ground" and recognize and respect the individual doctrines and theologies of our various member churches and ministers. In coming together, we desire to serve each other and the community in the following ways:

• Promote the visible unity of the Body of Christ;
• Work together in a way that gives Glory to God and presents a tangible witness to the gospel of Jesus Christ;
• Share resources for a corporate ministry of mercy to those in need;
• Provide support, mutual encouragement, and fellowship for those who serve as pastors and other leaders of Christian churches within our area;
• Participate in unified prayer for our community;
• Provide mutual encouragement to one another as servants in our community;
• Encourage communication between our churches in a manner that enhances our knowledge of, coordination and participation in community ministry; and,
• Promote, plan and enjoy Christian fellowship through joint worship services and other Christian events.
• Serve as a voice of our Christian community.

Sounded good. I liked the emphases on "unity", "work together", "share resources", "support, mutual encouragement, and fellowship". There's not as much there on "mission" as I was hoping, but hey, I am willing to check it out and see what they think "ministry of mercy" entails. If it is all talk and meetings, well, then, nothing lost, I can move on. If there are some cool programs for helping the poor, ill and unhoused in our community, then it will totally be worth my time.

Except...

During one of the few email exchanges I had with the president we exchanged contact information and I passed along my place of employment, since that's the best way to get in touch with me during business hours. What came next was unexpected and has left me saddened and unenthusiastic about the whole thing. I will just outline the entire exchange, since it is brief and says it all pretty clearly.

From the council president:

Jim:
Quick question. Are you a Pastor?

My reply:

Nope. Just a volunteer at [church elided], who Pastor [elided] has tagged to attend these meetings. Is that a problem?

Her response:

Jim: I don't know. Let me ask. The group was originally intended to be for clergy...but we may have others attending.

Huh. I then forwarded the email thread to my pastor, who had a good response (at least it made me feel better):

Jim - I think that's very tacky, but, hopefully, they'll see the light. Let me know what they tell you. If you want, we could dub you a Human Care Minister ... which, after all, you are.

While ministers, pastors and priests deserve their own clubs and organizations if they want them, I guess, the whole thing has left me feeling rather outcast - a "second class Christian" whose ability (and frankly, desire) to participate in this group and help with its mission may be dead before they even met me (the verdict is still out as I type this - I have not heard back, and the exchange was just yesterday). Sure, my pride is wounded here (always a danger point), but it really feels like, "Sorry, boy - only graduates of seminary are able to really come to grips with the mission needs of our community. This is our job. Run along and play, and when your church needs a grunt worker bee, I'm sure they'll call you."

Again, I don't fault my pastor at all in this. I think he was trying to match my sincere want to help with something in the community that he thought would be a good fit. And I am probably over-reacting, given that the "verdict" (which is how it feels to me) isn't in yet. But I still do feel a bit wounded over the whole thing.

Has anyone else experienced this sort of thing? Trying to help and being told "You don't have what it takes?" or "You aren't qualified?" Any suggestions?

Welcome back my friends to the show that never ends

This is going to be somewhat of a compare-and-contrast post. I am not sure I have landed totally on one side or the other, so by writing some of this out and (hopefully) getting comments from others, I can more firmly decide how I feel about the matter. If nothing else, it will clear out a bunch of disjointed notes I've had in my "blog ideas" notebook for a while now.

First, let's take a quote from C.S. Lewis, whom we ignore at our peril:

I think our business as laymen is to take what we are given and make the best of it. And I think we should find this a great deal easier if what we were given was always and everywhere the same.

To judge from their practice, very few Anglican clergymen take this view. It looks as if they believed people can be lured to go to church by incessant brightenings, lightenings, lengthenings, abridgements, simplifications, and complications of the service. And it is probably true that a new, keen vicar will usually be able to form within his parish a minority who are in favor of his innovations. The majority, I believe, never are. Those who remain - many give up church going altogether - merely endure.

Is this simply because the majority are hidebound? I think not. They have a good reason for their conservatism. Novelty, simply as such, can have only entertainment value. And they don't go to church to be entertained. They go to use the service, or, if you prefer, to enact it. Every service is a structure of acts and words through which we receive a sacrament or repent or supplicate or adore. And it enables us to do these things best - if you like, it 'works' best - when, through long familiarity, we don't have to think about it. As long as you notice, and have to count the steps, you are not yet dancing but only learning to dance. A good shoe is a shoe you don't notice. Good reading becomes possible when you need not consciously think about eyes, or light, or print, or spelling. The perfect church service would be one we were almost unaware of, our attention would have been on God.
- C.S. Lewis, Letters to Malcolm (p.5)

So, we have Lewis saying that in order to "dance" with the Lord, we must know what to expect - the music, the rhythms, the steps. I think there is something valid here. After all, we have probably all been in a service where everything was so new that all we were doing was trying to keep up. Reading responses without comprehension. Wondering when to stand or sit (or kneel). Trying to figure out the tune to a new song put up on PowerPoint slides with no musical notation whatsoever.

And yet...And yet...

When everything becomes fixed, static, it takes a superhuman effort to keep it from becoming rote as well. And I don't think most church goers are superhumans. We simply stumble, sleep, yawn, scratch or daydream through the "dance" steps, which in my church goes like this:

Song
Convocation
Confession
Peace
Bible readings
[Collect]
Song
Sermon
Prayers
[Responsive Readings]
Offering
Communion
Blessing
Song

Those items in square brackets are in our traditional services, but were missing from our "contemporary" 5:00 p.m. Sunday service until recently, and now they're there, too. I don't think they were brought back by popular acclaim, however. So even the supposedly cool and hip service becomes just like the others, except we get to wear shorts and t-shirts and listen to music with guitars and drums. At the end of the day, it still ends up being the same ol', same ol', and it is very hard to maintain attention, "mindfulness". No wonder kids find church boring. It is boring, when it is always so predictable that, minus the homily (and depending on whether your pastor preaches according to the liturgical calendar, even then), you know exactly everything that's going to be said and sung weeks and months and years in advance. That is not joyful worship - that's a life sentence.

And yet...And yet...

From my comments on Tina's post Living by the Spirit or living by routine:

We all get way too hung up/attached to spiritual tools and symbols. We think the tools and symbols are the important thing. They are not. It is the same as people who mistake money as having intrinsic value when it is simply a tool.

I can think of countless examples large and small; Liturgy. Doxologies. Hymns. Memorized prayers (Lord’s prayer, Jesus prayer). Contemplative prayer. Rosaries. Bowing to the cross/alter/Eucharist. Crossing oneself. Kneeling. And on and on.

When done in a mindful way, all those traditions and more can enrich our lives and open us up to hear the Spirit. But the difficulty is keeping the mindfulness alive over constant repetition. Worse is when we divide and argue over these tools rather than keeping them in their proper place - they are to serve us, not us them. It is better to lose the traditions than it is to lose the meanings behind the traditions, which are almost always aimed at trying to help us stay mindful of Christ and commune with the Spirit.

I would like to relate a story. Back in the day when I was dabbling in Buddhism I worked with a Buddhist named Howard. He remains one of the most calm, centered people I know, and also one of the most interesting, with a life and spiritual history worthy of a book or three. Anyway, while interviewing him one night over dinner for a comparative religions class, he commented that there are some branches of Buddhism that have a seemingly "primitive", almost animistic approach. They believe that everything has a spirit - as he put it that night, "This table has a spirit. And this chair. And the door." Howard went on to explain that to an outsider, and perhaps to even the vast majority of people actually practicing those beliefs, that was simply the end of it. They are taught "the table has a spirit" and that was that.

But to those that delve a little deeper, there's an interesting outcome. Because Buddhists believe that anything with a spirit, with anima, must be shown respect. One must be mindful of them. Aware. Focused. And suddenly, that "primitive" belief becomes a very powerful spiritual tool for bringing about mindfulness, the practice of which is, after all, the core of Buddhism. Apropos of all this, one of my favorite "Howard quotes" is, "Boredom is not boring."

And neither does liturgy have to be. Even when it's the same liturgy as last week, and next week, and next year. What is important is keeping up a mental, spiritual practice to remain mindful of each and every piece. To cherish each symbol in worship and in the church itself and remember that none of them are the end goal, none of them are there because Christ mandated it (well, other than the Eucharist). They are all simply a means, a tool, to help us focus, to help us reach for, find and maintain a relationship with our Lord.

And yet...And yet...

I don't know about you, but if I do the same thing over and over and over and over again, I start zoning out. I don't know how many of you remain mindful while brushing your teeth, for example. I know I don't. I'm usually thinking about my day, or something I need to do, or I am not thinking at all, bleary-eyed and going through the motions because I just woke up.

In a dinner discussion about mission with another church member a few weeks back, I noted that one thing that helps me is to appropriate the tools and symbols from another denomination. Because they are "new" (to me), I then am able to appreciate their symbolism and meaning, and when I practice them, that freshness helps keep the ultimate goal of worshiping God and following Christ in mind.

For example, when I was in England all the time in the earlier part of this decade, I would attend Anglican services (from very high church cathedral services to very emerging services). One thing I noticed was that whenever someone was crossing the center aisle of the sanctuary, they would pause, turn toward the alter and bow, and then continue on their way. I liked that. I have lost the habit, but want to pick it back up. Since it is not done in my church it is fresh, and that helps remind me of what is important there - the alter, and above it, the cross, both representing the sacrifice of my Saviour. Perhaps to the Anglicans it is just rote - something to do because that's what they were raised to do. But to me, it has meaning.

There are other examples. Some in my church have started crossing themselves at specific points in the service. This is not unheard of in our denomination, but it is not too common, either. I am sure the newness is what is paying off for them, to keep them mindful. Perhaps we should all trade practices, rotate them through all our churches, to maintain both regularity and mindfulness. What do you do to keep yourself engaged, to remember why you're there? How do we make that "liturgical dance" a tango, and not a sleepy slow dance, or worse, the awkward square dances we all were subjected to as part of third grade? How do we use those spiritual tools and rituals, like the rituals in our own lives with our family and loved ones, to keep our love affair with Jesus fresh, awake and alive? I am not too sure. I haven't found the right dividing line between "everything must stay the same" and "everything must be different, every time". But I am looking, because my relationship and communion with God counts on it. Just as in a marriage there are meaningful traditions and yet still the need to keep things alive and changing, so too our relationship with Christ requires an effort to be both constant and enthused.

Shall we dance?

[Comments appreciated.]

Blogga non grata, redux

Received the following email from the Googleplex today:

Hello,

Your blog has been reviewed, verified, and cleared for regular use so that it will no longer appear as potential spam. If you sign out of Blogger and sign back in again, you should be able to post as normal. Thanks for your patience, and we apologize for any inconvenience this has caused.

Sincerely,
The Blogger Team

So, apparently, I have passed the Google clean bill of health. Of course, I am still curious as to why this blog was tagged as being a spam blog in the first place, and it has made me consider other hosting options. On the positive side, I've now set up a script to back up all the content here nightly. :-)

We now return to our regular programming.

Blogga non grata

Suddenly, Blogger, a.k.a., Blogspot, a.k.a. Google, has decided this blog is suspiciously like a "spam blog". So now, every time I post I must enter a word verification (you know, those pictures with squished up letters), plus I have had to send in a request to be "reviewed" by whoever does such things in the "Brazil"-like depths of the Googleplex.

Anyone know how such nominations for spamdom work, and more importantly what I did to deserve it? I've tried to be a good citizen of the blogosphere, so let's just say this came as a surprise. And an unwelcome one at that. Depending on how long it goes on, I may have to move the blog over to my personal Web site. I would have done that from the start, but when I set this blog up I was originally anonymous, so I chose Blogger. Now that I am no longer anonymous, I may have to reconsider their "hospitality".

Any suggestions, anyone?

Tag, you're it!

I was tagged by Lyn today with a meme that asked me to list seven random facts about myself. Since I have worked for something like the last 14 days in a row ("I love deadlines. I like the whooshing sound they make as they fly by." - Douglas Adams), I have not been posting here as much as I want, even though I have made some notes for a couple of entries. This seems like a good time to do something fun and light. So here goes.

1. I am a high school dropout. Being a young long-haired hippy type in Boulder, Colorado in the mid-1970s meant that there were just less important things to occupy my time with than school, so I left. I went ahead and took my G.E.D. (high school equivalency test) and eventually went on to college (er, read as "university" for you folks in other lands) and did quite well, since by that time I actually had a goal and wasn't bored any more.
2. I (we - my wife and kids as well) have not watched network or cable television since 2000. We don't have an antenna nor cable hooked up to the TV - just DVD and VCR players. I have never seen Survivor, or Lost, or American Idol or any other "must see" TV over the past seven years. And I don't miss it at all. In fact, I can't imagine how we would get everything done we need to get done if there was that distraction added alongside the eight computers in the house. :-)
3. Green is my favorite color. Perhaps because of that, when I was traveling a lot between 2001 and 2005 I got into a superstitious habit of always wearing green on travel days. Don't know why - just did. It was like the plane was going to fall out of the sky if I didn't have a green shirt on.
4. When I was growing up I wanted to be an architect. I started designing quite complex floor plans and elevations around the age of 10 or so, and kept it up all through my teens. In fact, the practice gained from manipulating fractions with an architect's scale helped me skip a grade in math in junior high. Ironically, while I did not fulfill that dream, I have had the job title of architect three times (each time with "software" in front of it).
5. I have lived in Iowa, Colorado, Texas, Missouri, Kansas, Missouri, Colorado, California, Colorado and Missouri, in that order.
6. I cut my own hair. Mostly because I gave up on trying to have any "style" with it well over a decade ago (it's much easier to take care of now - I can "comb it with a towel"). So I just keep it short with a clipper set (#6 on top, #4 on the sides, for those of you who know what that means). I also cut it myself because I'm cheap that way - if I am going to have my hair cut that short, I am not going to drive somewhere and pay some ex-Marine barber $8-$12 just to run clippers over my head.
7. I have been to England 16 times between 2002 and 2005 (Norwich, Chelmsford, Basingstoke, Colchester and London). I have been to Montréal, Quebec, somewhere near ten times between 1996 and 1999. I have been to Amsterdam four times since 1998. Add one 1985 crossing into the border town of Matamoros, Mexico, and that sums up my international travel.

The hardest part of this meme was selecting the seven to pass it on to next. For one, I just don't know that many people who blog, and I didn't feel comfortable tagging people just because I happen to like their blog - so I had as minimum criteria either knowing the person personally or having commented on their blog. So here goes, and as always, these people are free to ignore this completely.

Les - my wife as well as best and most patient friend. I'm selecting her, for one, because she needs to have more than four pages on her blog after a year! (hint, hint ;-)

Aaron - one of my best friends, and the funniest human I know personally. And yes, he really does have only one name!

Tina - who always makes me think.

Gregory - doesn't know me from Adam, but I love his blog, Sippican Cottage. At least twice a month he writes something that just knocks me down or makes me well up. If you're not reading his blog, you are missing out.

John - hey, I reviewed his book here, I think he owes me something, don't you? :-)

David - I love his posts and cartoons. Some day I need to buy him a beer.

Dan - I stumbled across his blog a while back, and keep coming back. There's just something there that projects through as someone I would like to know.