I've included Donne here before and no doubt will again. As a follow to the 3/14 post, there follows a link to Donne's meditation XVII. This was the one that Hemingway helped to re-popularize by using a line of it as the title of one of his novels.
Beyond that, this is one of the most beautiful things I've ever read. Rather than re-post it directly here, I've included a link that contains some hyper-link cross references of language forms and usage that will likely be obscure. Speaking first to myself, we must never lose sight of how much we need and support each other and of how much we need to support each other. In the case of the body of Christ, this is even more acute (Eph. 4:15-16). God bless.
Nunc lento sonitu dicunt, morieris.
Now this bell tolling softly for another, says to me, Thou must die.
Meditation XVII
Sunday, March 20, 2011
Monday, March 14, 2011
Tough Times on Planet Earth
It's been a rough 6 weeks or so to be a human being on the 3rd planet from the sun.
To recap: 1) Civil unrest and even civil war has broken out all across the middle east and North Africa. Likely thousands have been killed, arrested and tortured as a result (reporting is sketchy due to censorship). 2) One of the largest earthquakes on record hit Japan with about a thousand killed. 3) A tsunami followed closely on the heels of the earthquake, killing thousands more. 4) After the earthquake, a couple nuclear generation facilities have gone very wrong. It's unclear at this point how this part will resolve. 5) Largely missed in all this has been extreme rain and flooding in the North Eastern U.S.
All this has been in addition to the background drumbeats of disease, human trafficking, bad economic news, etc.
Here on the West Coast, other than extensive damage at the yacht harbor and up at Crescent City, we've been largely spared so far. Still, the Loma Prieta quake and the rains of the 80's should remind us that we don't really have a pass or Get out of Jail Free card. It's just not our turn right now.
The only real point I have in summing all this up is that things are becoming progressively more challenging...exactly as we've been told would be the case. I think the tsunami in particular is a helpful physical illustration of the issue at hand. Waves, one following the other, pound and destroy where they haven't before. The sea runs out of it's boundary.
To be clear, none of this is lost on God. In fact, Jesus talked about all this at some length 2000 years ago.
Past the knowing, it can be much harder to integrate this information into who we are. That is, to really trust that God is good and that we belong to him.
I will say this: Recent events represent a great invitation to accelerate our relationships with God.
If you've ever read the bible and thought something like: "Wow. Wouldn't it have been great to be one of the people that knew Jesus or saw him ascend into heaven!" Well, there will be souls for all time that look at us and say, "Wow, they were there when the curtain finally came up. They were witnesses and participants of the end that was the beginning."
Truly our great challenge is not to merely survive. Our great challenge is to grow, thrive and share the joy and hope that is in Christ, even when the earth is moved, the sea overflows it's appointed shores, and practical hope seems only a memory. We are those that are called to deny victory to fear, hate and all greater evil. We do so by insisting on co-authoring our lives with the God who spoke us into being.
To recap: 1) Civil unrest and even civil war has broken out all across the middle east and North Africa. Likely thousands have been killed, arrested and tortured as a result (reporting is sketchy due to censorship). 2) One of the largest earthquakes on record hit Japan with about a thousand killed. 3) A tsunami followed closely on the heels of the earthquake, killing thousands more. 4) After the earthquake, a couple nuclear generation facilities have gone very wrong. It's unclear at this point how this part will resolve. 5) Largely missed in all this has been extreme rain and flooding in the North Eastern U.S.
All this has been in addition to the background drumbeats of disease, human trafficking, bad economic news, etc.
Here on the West Coast, other than extensive damage at the yacht harbor and up at Crescent City, we've been largely spared so far. Still, the Loma Prieta quake and the rains of the 80's should remind us that we don't really have a pass or Get out of Jail Free card. It's just not our turn right now.
The only real point I have in summing all this up is that things are becoming progressively more challenging...exactly as we've been told would be the case. I think the tsunami in particular is a helpful physical illustration of the issue at hand. Waves, one following the other, pound and destroy where they haven't before. The sea runs out of it's boundary.
To be clear, none of this is lost on God. In fact, Jesus talked about all this at some length 2000 years ago.
Past the knowing, it can be much harder to integrate this information into who we are. That is, to really trust that God is good and that we belong to him.
I will say this: Recent events represent a great invitation to accelerate our relationships with God.
If you've ever read the bible and thought something like: "Wow. Wouldn't it have been great to be one of the people that knew Jesus or saw him ascend into heaven!" Well, there will be souls for all time that look at us and say, "Wow, they were there when the curtain finally came up. They were witnesses and participants of the end that was the beginning."
Truly our great challenge is not to merely survive. Our great challenge is to grow, thrive and share the joy and hope that is in Christ, even when the earth is moved, the sea overflows it's appointed shores, and practical hope seems only a memory. We are those that are called to deny victory to fear, hate and all greater evil. We do so by insisting on co-authoring our lives with the God who spoke us into being.
Saturday, March 5, 2011
The Truth about Mr. Rogers
If you know me and cringed when you read the title, read on anyway. I promise to not excoriate "The Sweatered One" here. At least nothing like I might if we were at dinner and we were all laughing way too much.
The "Mr. Rogers Show" was a PBS show that ran for many years. It featured Fred Rogers, who was apparently the nicest human being ever to walk the earth. Fred trained to be a Presbyterian minister. At the time this was happening (the early '60's), he also became disenchanted with the then current state of children's programming.
I've never really had a problem with Mr. Rogers. What I have a problem with is the glorification of coddling to the point that it excludes teaching and coaching. The former is all about avoiding as much pain as possible and feeling warm and gushy in the moment. The latter is about the hard work of supporting someone through the moment and helping them put one foot in front of the other; helping them take the next step.
Mr. Rogers sat kids on his lap, read them stories and told them they were special.
Our oldest son once upon a time, had a little league manager who approached the matter differently. Toward the beginning of the season, the manager started holding scrimmages during the last half of practice for which he was the only umpire. Along about the second or third of these mock games, a kid slid into second base, obviously safe. The manager called him out and the kid went off. (He actually had been really really safe.) The manager let him go for just a bit and then he said: "If you want to stay on this team, shut your mouth now, go back to the bench, AND DEAL WITH IT!" I capitalized that last bit because he actually did raise his voice a good deal.
As the scrimmages continued, this treatment extended to all members of the team. I have to say, it was brilliant. He was intentionally exposing his team to the injustice and frustration of real world games...and teaching them how to handle that injustice. None of that could have been accomplished anywhere near as effectively by teaching them good, warm lessons about unfair calls.
Gratuitous rhetorical question: "Do all these sorts of things have to always hurt?" No, not always, just usually.
At various times over my life as a parent, I've had occasion to pin each of our children to a doctor's table as the doctor did what was necessary in the moment to preserve their health or on at least 2 occasions, their lives. One of these times, a lab tech offered to get an orderly in to do the job so that I wouldn't have to be there and my child wouldn't have to think of me as the person that held him while horrible things happened. In an all too uncharacteristic moment of self control, I told him in a very quiet voice that I would not abandon my child to the mercy of strangers for the sake of emotion, be it mine, my child's or his.
I held that boy through the procedure, as well as for the rest of that day, including his nap. It was extremely expensive. It remains expensive to this day. I cannot think of it without crying and know that I cried hard writing this.
We must love our children and each other enough to allow the lessons of life that are necessary in order to live the life we've been given. We must not deny them this because it hurts us too much to see them hurt. We must not make the absence of all pain the sum of all virtue.
Of course, we must protect children and loved ones from catastrophe where and whenever we can. That's why we set out to intentionally teach about adversity in the first place. The point is that coddling, insulating and patronizing do not accomplish this. These only serve to insulate us from the difficulty of watching others incur difficulty. And for a brief season, to delay greater pain that must now be incurred without benefit of prior teaching.
Finally, consider that this is the love and respect God gives us as his children. The old saying is, "Things that don't kill you just makes you stronger." As children of God we believe nothing really kills us. I think in the end, walking with God makes us pretty strong.
The "Mr. Rogers Show" was a PBS show that ran for many years. It featured Fred Rogers, who was apparently the nicest human being ever to walk the earth. Fred trained to be a Presbyterian minister. At the time this was happening (the early '60's), he also became disenchanted with the then current state of children's programming.
I've never really had a problem with Mr. Rogers. What I have a problem with is the glorification of coddling to the point that it excludes teaching and coaching. The former is all about avoiding as much pain as possible and feeling warm and gushy in the moment. The latter is about the hard work of supporting someone through the moment and helping them put one foot in front of the other; helping them take the next step.
Mr. Rogers sat kids on his lap, read them stories and told them they were special.
Our oldest son once upon a time, had a little league manager who approached the matter differently. Toward the beginning of the season, the manager started holding scrimmages during the last half of practice for which he was the only umpire. Along about the second or third of these mock games, a kid slid into second base, obviously safe. The manager called him out and the kid went off. (He actually had been really really safe.) The manager let him go for just a bit and then he said: "If you want to stay on this team, shut your mouth now, go back to the bench, AND DEAL WITH IT!" I capitalized that last bit because he actually did raise his voice a good deal.
As the scrimmages continued, this treatment extended to all members of the team. I have to say, it was brilliant. He was intentionally exposing his team to the injustice and frustration of real world games...and teaching them how to handle that injustice. None of that could have been accomplished anywhere near as effectively by teaching them good, warm lessons about unfair calls.
Gratuitous rhetorical question: "Do all these sorts of things have to always hurt?" No, not always, just usually.
At various times over my life as a parent, I've had occasion to pin each of our children to a doctor's table as the doctor did what was necessary in the moment to preserve their health or on at least 2 occasions, their lives. One of these times, a lab tech offered to get an orderly in to do the job so that I wouldn't have to be there and my child wouldn't have to think of me as the person that held him while horrible things happened. In an all too uncharacteristic moment of self control, I told him in a very quiet voice that I would not abandon my child to the mercy of strangers for the sake of emotion, be it mine, my child's or his.
I held that boy through the procedure, as well as for the rest of that day, including his nap. It was extremely expensive. It remains expensive to this day. I cannot think of it without crying and know that I cried hard writing this.
We must love our children and each other enough to allow the lessons of life that are necessary in order to live the life we've been given. We must not deny them this because it hurts us too much to see them hurt. We must not make the absence of all pain the sum of all virtue.
Of course, we must protect children and loved ones from catastrophe where and whenever we can. That's why we set out to intentionally teach about adversity in the first place. The point is that coddling, insulating and patronizing do not accomplish this. These only serve to insulate us from the difficulty of watching others incur difficulty. And for a brief season, to delay greater pain that must now be incurred without benefit of prior teaching.
Finally, consider that this is the love and respect God gives us as his children. The old saying is, "Things that don't kill you just makes you stronger." As children of God we believe nothing really kills us. I think in the end, walking with God makes us pretty strong.
Monday, February 28, 2011
Been Gone - Back Now
I've been gone awhile. There have been many changes. Jobs coming and going, death and wild blessing; what a ride. More on that will come but for right now I want to re-post something else. Below, please find a link to a blog by a mom who has a daughter that has Leukemia. It talks about God living out community in his people. See you soon.
http://ericksonall-stars.blogspot.com/p/weekly-gratitude.html
http://ericksonall-stars.blogspot.com/p/weekly-gratitude.html
Friday, February 11, 2011
Henri Nouwen Repost - Words That Create
I often take language for granted. Never the less, it has always been a big deal as Henri describes below.
Words, words, words. Our society is full of words: on billboards, on television screens, in newspapers and books. Words whispered, shouted, and sung. Words that move, dance, and change in size and color. Words that say, "Taste me, smell me, eat me, drink me, sleep with me," but most of all, "buy me." With so many words around us, we quickly say: "Well, they're just words." Thus, words have lost much of their power.
Still, the word has the power to create. When God speaks, God creates. When God says, "Let there be light" (Genesis 1:3), light is. God speaks light. For God, speaking and creating are the same. It is this creative power of the word we need to reclaim. What we say is very important. When we say, "I love you," and say it from the heart, we can give another person new life, new hope, new courage. When we say, "I hate you," we can destroy another person. Let's watch our words.
Words, words, words. Our society is full of words: on billboards, on television screens, in newspapers and books. Words whispered, shouted, and sung. Words that move, dance, and change in size and color. Words that say, "Taste me, smell me, eat me, drink me, sleep with me," but most of all, "buy me." With so many words around us, we quickly say: "Well, they're just words." Thus, words have lost much of their power.
Still, the word has the power to create. When God speaks, God creates. When God says, "Let there be light" (Genesis 1:3), light is. God speaks light. For God, speaking and creating are the same. It is this creative power of the word we need to reclaim. What we say is very important. When we say, "I love you," and say it from the heart, we can give another person new life, new hope, new courage. When we say, "I hate you," we can destroy another person. Let's watch our words.
Sunday, February 6, 2011
Undiscovered Countries
New things, places and people just about always get our attention. Seeing something for the first time usually stimulates our interest some.
Monday, I'll start a new job. It will be covered in "newness." Hopefully, and I do think it's the case, most of the newness there will be fun.
A lot of times though, new things can be a bit jarring, particularly when they're outside our more familiar and comfortable frames of reference. If we're used to forests, deserts can seem stark. If we're used to crowds, being alone can be scary...or the other way round. Big contrasts usually bring big challenges.
Unfortunately, a reflexive response to something new can often trigger a retreat into self. A "retreat into self" is usually pretty camouflaged. It can look like: "That person just rubs me wrong" or "They've got an agenda" or any number of other such write offs. This sort of saying allows us to draw a line someplace that we're comfortable with and then place the uncomfortable person or situation on the other side of the line.
Sometimes this sort of distancing is necessary because people and situations in this world can be quite badly broken. Still though, it does mean we lessen ourselves and others when this happens.
I'm learning this however: Drawing these sorts of lines is a broken response to a broken situation. I'm learning this from Joel Osteen.
Joel Osteen is a TV evangelist. He is the personification of just about everything I recoil against in the arena of commercial Christianity. He smiles perpetually, he has a message that is along the lines of "do good in order to do well," and perhaps worst of all he has impeccably coiffed big hair. And oh yeah, there's A LOT of money involved.
Until fairly recently, he represented an undiscovered country for me. I saw him while channel surfing occasionally and in response would push the change button even faster than usual.
For a number of apparently coincidental reasons, he started to blip up on my radar screen. So, I watched Joel a couple times, listening quite intently as I think most of us do when we think we're going hear a train wreck. Funny thing though: Although I found him putting emphasis in places that I would not and still wearing hair that I wouldn't be caught dead under, I heard him talk about Jesus wanting to be involved personally in the lives of each individual. In this time and culture, even in mainline protestantism, that's way too rare a message. It is often watered down to the point of being drowned in a sea of theological correctness...Maybe it is his hair keeping him afloat but what I've heard him say stands out from the usual "just color inside the lines in order to get to heaven" theology that is the common fare.
I will not listen regularly. I am blessed to have other voices that speak from a closer distance and that have a more direct apprehension of the idea that Jesus through the Spirit is God with us.
However, the experience has taught me to be a good bit more reticent about putting people on the other side of an arbitrarily placed line I've drawn in sand and to not reflexively fear or disdain the as yet undiscovered parts of Christ's body.
Monday, I'll start a new job. It will be covered in "newness." Hopefully, and I do think it's the case, most of the newness there will be fun.
A lot of times though, new things can be a bit jarring, particularly when they're outside our more familiar and comfortable frames of reference. If we're used to forests, deserts can seem stark. If we're used to crowds, being alone can be scary...or the other way round. Big contrasts usually bring big challenges.
Unfortunately, a reflexive response to something new can often trigger a retreat into self. A "retreat into self" is usually pretty camouflaged. It can look like: "That person just rubs me wrong" or "They've got an agenda" or any number of other such write offs. This sort of saying allows us to draw a line someplace that we're comfortable with and then place the uncomfortable person or situation on the other side of the line.
Sometimes this sort of distancing is necessary because people and situations in this world can be quite badly broken. Still though, it does mean we lessen ourselves and others when this happens.
I'm learning this however: Drawing these sorts of lines is a broken response to a broken situation. I'm learning this from Joel Osteen.
Joel Osteen is a TV evangelist. He is the personification of just about everything I recoil against in the arena of commercial Christianity. He smiles perpetually, he has a message that is along the lines of "do good in order to do well," and perhaps worst of all he has impeccably coiffed big hair. And oh yeah, there's A LOT of money involved.
Until fairly recently, he represented an undiscovered country for me. I saw him while channel surfing occasionally and in response would push the change button even faster than usual.
For a number of apparently coincidental reasons, he started to blip up on my radar screen. So, I watched Joel a couple times, listening quite intently as I think most of us do when we think we're going hear a train wreck. Funny thing though: Although I found him putting emphasis in places that I would not and still wearing hair that I wouldn't be caught dead under, I heard him talk about Jesus wanting to be involved personally in the lives of each individual. In this time and culture, even in mainline protestantism, that's way too rare a message. It is often watered down to the point of being drowned in a sea of theological correctness...Maybe it is his hair keeping him afloat but what I've heard him say stands out from the usual "just color inside the lines in order to get to heaven" theology that is the common fare.
I will not listen regularly. I am blessed to have other voices that speak from a closer distance and that have a more direct apprehension of the idea that Jesus through the Spirit is God with us.
However, the experience has taught me to be a good bit more reticent about putting people on the other side of an arbitrarily placed line I've drawn in sand and to not reflexively fear or disdain the as yet undiscovered parts of Christ's body.
Wednesday, February 2, 2011
From John Donne
Donne is one of my favorite poets and this is among his best. This is my soul's prayer:
| XIV.  As yet but knock ; breathe, shine, and seek to mend ; That I may rise, and stand, o'erthrow me, and bend Your force, to break, blow, burn, and make me new. I, like an usurp'd town, to another due, Labour to admit you, but O, to no end. Reason, your viceroy in me, me should defend, But is captived, and proves weak or untrue. Yet dearly I love you, and would be loved fain, But am betroth'd unto your enemy ; Divorce me, untie, or break that knot again, Take me to you, imprison me, for I, Except you enthrall me, never shall be free, Nor ever chaste, except you ravish me. |
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