penny for your thoughts

curious to know what the (small) readership thinks of the following statement:

sunday school does not equal small group.

thoughts in the comments.

still looking

i am still looking for a job.

that is a somewhat depressing sentence to write. i have tried to fill my time each day with constructive activities, i.e. actually looking for said elusive job that is supposedly out there (at least that is what all the media outlets say about ATX), reading books i have come across, working on projects for a non-profit i am on the board of directors for, doing chores around the house, and running on some days. this is all great in theory, but these things become repetitive at best and teetering on boredom at worst. i am not sure it is a universal feeling (probably not, having at least some insight into human motivation from pastoral care work i have done), but any time that i am not looking for a job i get a twinge of guilt. i rationalize this to myself on almost a daily basis that you surely can't look for a job 24/7 or even 8/5.

what i do know is that this extended time seems to have slowly sucked the creativeness out of me. i have found that reading helps to provoke ideas in my head and running helps refresh my mind and soul for both motivation and the beauty of endorphin release. so, i try to be more disciplined about these things as the days pass.

update finished. on to a new idea:

i want to write about food. not only the importance of sustenance and what that means, but the connections to a life lived spiritually and how food plays a role in and impacts that life. but i want this to be communal. so what questions, ideas, quandaries, comments do you have? with questions i will do my best to answer. with ideas, quandaries, comments, i will do my best to respond. use the comment space below to participate.

sharing is fun; my mother taught me that. so share in this idea and exploration with me.

why food matters

something a lot of people don't know about me is that i have a secret passion for food. i love to cook. i love to go to the grocery store. i love to indulge in the beauty and depth of flavor that is a well cooked and fashioned meal. mostly i love the chemical and visual transformation that comes with cooking your own food.

last week i posted about jamie oliver's crusade to change the way public schools, specifically, and the general population eat. i would still encourage you to take the 20 mins. to watch the TED talk he gave. he has seen proven results through his initiatives. he brings an unmistakable passion and excitement to the issue.

indulge me in an aside for a moment. when my wife and i spent the week of easter in wales and england two years ago we stayed with some of her relatives who were living in wales at the time. while we were there, we decided to have a meal that featured a recipe by jamie oliver. the centerpiece of deliciousness was a leg of lamb. being in wales, we went down to the local butcher shop in the town, pictured below, and asked said butcher for a leg of spring lamb. this is an important distinction because you can get meat from different kinds of lambs by asking for a specific type of lamb.

in any event the conversation turned to our obviously non-welsh/english accents and the third generation butcher had some, well let's say strong opinions. he first told us how much he loved the united states. in fact, he told us, he would move there given the opportunity and financial assurance that he would be o.k. once he hopped the pond. in course of conversation he asked what we were doing with said leg of lamb and he was told that jamie oliver had a great recipe for leg of lamb...MISTAKE. so started the 5 min. rant on the cooking misery that is jamie oliver to this fine welsh butcher. the zenith of his argument was the statement, "jamie oliver's a bloody englishman. all you are going to do is ruin this leg of lamb." this was then followed with the explanation of how the welsh disdain the english like americans do canadians. imagine a bloodied and gruff welsh butcher showing his highest level of exasperation and you have the complete picture. we cheerfully accepted his two cents and set off to cook. for the record, the lamb was magnificent. and i don't think jamie oliver is all that bad.

back to the main point: our food culture in the united states is killing us. literally. we have traded in true beauty and the wonder of watching the hidden chemical reactions of cooking for fast food convenience and poor health effects. study after study has shown that our current food and eating habits have resulted in off-the-charts levels of diseases that are killing us at alarming and early rates. add to this that children are suffering astounding levels of diseases directly related to food consumption and epidemic is probably not too strong of a word to describe the situation.

so why care? i eat healthy most of the time. i exercise and i care for myself. i get 7+ hours of sleep a night.

i believe this is more than a compartmentalized issue. i believe this is in part a religious issue. we are mandated to care for our bodies as though they were temples. this is more than filling it with trash and allowing it to devolve into disrepair. caring for our neighbors and loving others is not shown is putting the small farmer out of business in the interest of big agriculture and genetically modified foods. ethically, the issues are deeper than most of us will ever grasp. but more than anything i have found that the more i care about where my food comes from, the more i find myself in relationship with the people and places my food comes from.

in the process of losing the magic of cooking we are sacrificing relationships that can prove transformative and significant, all the while killing ourselves. this seems more costly than even the smallest sacrifice of convenience, processed food, and wasteful stewardship. here's to reclaiming the magic of the culinary arts.

waiting for it

a couple of administrative things to take care of first.

1. you should read jon acuff's blog. at stuff christians like there is much hilarity, but what is so attractive to me is the honesty which seems to shine through in jon's writing. he has written a book...so i recommend that you buy it and read it. i am willing to bet you will laugh while reading. a lot. i don't know jon, although it would be cool if i did, because he seems like a cool guy, but i think more people should read his stuff.

2. an update on my running progress: i have been running a lot and will run a 5k this weekend. more details to follow about that after the weekend.

on to other matters:

i am out of a job at the end of may. this, in some ways, has been looming over me and gives me some pause, at least daily, at this point. way back in august i was able to compartmentalize this without much thought, because...well...it was august and not february. but now it is february and i have few, if any, prospects. while diligently trying to look, enduring many questions about this on an almost daily basis, and generally beginning to despise talking about this fact, i have found that i feel less and less positive about the whole job-hunting prospect as days seem to tick by as though they were seconds.

to be sure, people try to be reassuring to you. i can list a litany of responses given to you, but let a few suffice: "you are so talented, i am sure something will come up for you," or "i would keep you around if i were in charge," or maybe my favorite in the bunch - "you just have to have faith that the right thing will come along."

all of these things are generally accepted by me with a smile and a nod...and a whole lot of internal screaming. at some point you decide, "if i were really as talented as people tell me i am, i should be the head talent scout of all talent scouts." through this i have noticed that our culture is one of niceties. we want desperately for people to feel good about things and ignore the fear, emptiness, and frustration that comes from the vantage point of comfort and luxury of an already assured place. and the last mentioned response simply chafes against my own theology that faith does not get you hired. to be fair, there is nothing inherently wrong with the statement. it assumes that my or anyone's getting hired is a matter of faithfulness and obedience in which i am objectified as an automaton. i digress.

all of this is not to elicit a response of pity from anyone, but rather to point out that our culture is excellent at filling appropriately silent space with words of false assurance. you can note a similar phenomenon when tragedy strikes those close to us. words are used in an attempt to fill a chasm of grief, shock, and confusion, and most of the time those words are pithy. perhaps presence alone is more resounding than words. this is definitely a concept i can literally feel myself learning.

so, i am out of a job at the end of may and the prospects are slim. i have genuine fear about what i am going to do and how things are going to end up. in moments of self doubt i question the paths of life that have led me to this point, or at times whether or not my theological stance is hindering a more comfortable existence right now. what i have learned most though is that neither of these things changes your prospect for a job or allays your fears. what does allay my fears is hope. hope is assurance in the unseen. it is paradoxical by nature, and it resides in a presence of family and friends who hopefully know what to say and what not to say.

changing to remain

some things never change.

the old saying is supposed to give us comfort in times of turmoil or stress in our lives. it supposedly points to a constancy in which there are certain things in this world that remain the same, as though sameness were a prized possession. status quo is worth striving after if indeed we believe that some things never change. because after all those things should be the ones that are most time-tested, true to the world around us, and solidly rooted in reality.

however, heraclitus, an ancient greek philosopher stated: "on those who step in the same river, different and different waters flow . . ." the world does indeed change. those things that we presume to be the same are different, changed by time, place, and circumstance. while we may step in the same river by name, the waters we step into are different as they flow around our legs. the water is constantly changing. i wondered with a bit of marvel what an old ranch house had seen in its years set in a field. and i recognized that it had been changed by the years of weather, growth of crops and grass around it, and the changing landscape of roads that rushed me by.

running gives me a sense of the greatest movements of the earth. it is through running that i find my clearest thinking and moments of discernment. the world seems to be more present to me when i run through nature. as i have rekindled my relationship with running i have had a lot of time to think about what changes and what remains the same. my season of life has been tumultuous. my wife and i bought a house, had kids, i am out of a job in may and have been looking for one since the beginning of the year. and yet through all of these things, no matter how stressful, it is as though when i run these things are simply the way in which the world revolves on its axis and draws me closer to rhythms of being human. and most off all it has reminded me of my belief that we are all created to be in relationship with one another.

although our relationships evolve, our longing for companionship and our need for others to support us remains a familiar call. perhaps the saying should read "all things change, our need remains."

The Certainty of Doubt

I am preaching today in our university's Chapel service. I was asked by a friend to post the sermon here, so it is included below. It is perhaps important to note that it would be helpful to read 1 Samuel 1:4-20 before you endeavored on the sermon. It will help with context and illustration.

The Certainty of Doubt

“What do you do when you’re not sure? That’s the topic of my sermon today. Last year when President Kennedy was assassinated, who among us did not experience the most profound disorientation? Despair? Which way? What now? What do I say to my kids? What do I tell myself? It was a time of people sitting together, bound together by a common feeling of hopelessness. But think of that! Your bond with your fellow being was your despair. It was a public experience. It was awful, but we were in it together.”

Perhaps this is a familiar opening to a sermon. Last year a feature film was made from a play that explores the depths of the psyche and relationship between doubt and faith under the title Doubt. If we had approximately 2 hours for chapel I would simply show the film because of how provocative the film is for not only matters of thought but of conversation. Since we don’t have that time, let it suffice for me to highly suggest that you find the time to watch this film if you have not already done so. In my opinion you won’t regret the time you spend doing so.

Father Flynn, played by Phillip Seymour Hoffman, opens the film preaching on doubt. After his opening refrain I have quoted he tells a story of a sailor lost at sea, coming slowly to the realization that he had set his course wrong and is utterly confused and without bearing, doubting his livelihood in the days to come. He concludes the sermon with these powerful sentences: “There are those of you in church today who know exactly the crisis of faith I describe. And I want to say to you: Doubt can be a bond as powerful and sustaining as certainty. When you are lost, you are not alone.”

“Doubt can be a bond as powerful and sustaining as certainty.” Let those words soak in. They are foreign to our way of life in the West. We still linger in the hangover of Modern thinking that prizes certainty, capital T proven Truth above all other things. If reason alone cannot explain our condition, we cannot yet fully understand our condition. But progress will lead us to that reason that will explain the cosmos, the understanding of the human condition, and the faith we profess. It sounds rigid, harsh, and fearfully complete. But Father Flynn wants to proclaim the truth of the mystery of God. That in doubt we can remain faithful. That doubt does not have to be an anathema or reason to abandon our faith.

Hannah had been the wife of Elkanah for some time. Her womb had been closed by God according to Elkanah and she was barren. Her husband’s other wife, Peninnah had several children, a male heir among them, and she tormented Hannah for one of the only things that reserved her place of power and standing in the culture. Despite her barrenness, Elkanah proclaims his love for his wife, Hannah. He asks her if his love for her is not more significant than the birth of ten sons. But Hannah’s dignity is hanging on her ability to produce children. She sees her inability to have children as an inability to be completely human. She sees it as a reason to doubt.

We are not told that Hannah has any doubt. The word “doubt” is not used in the Scripture, but I would like for us to consider the characteristics she shows in this short story of her life. Year after year she endures ridicule for her condition until one day she finds herself weeping and not eating. She is deeply distressed as she approaches God in prayer and weeps bitterly. She proclaims her misery to God. And she is led to a significant and radical decision in her offering of prayer.

Doubt is defined as calling something into question, mistrusting something or someone, or to waver in opinion. Hannah seems to call her wholeness as a being into question. She sees her inability to bare children as a sign of incompleteness. She has no favor with God, and this results in a loss of dignity, worth, or value. Doubt is expressed most often in our condition as humans through confusion, fear, unhappiness, and radical action.

Consider for a moment the Christian that grows up in a conservative home where they are told that the creation narrative as it is found in Genesis is literal. The world was created in six days and that evolution is heresy and evil of the world. This individual grows up and finds little reason to believe otherwise until they are confronted with the body of evidence suggesting that humans have evolved over time from other animals. It is at this point that if this body of evidence is taken seriously that the individual begins to wonder if the faith as they know it has any real validity if the foundational story of the God they knew is no longer to be understood as literal. They question the validity of the authority given to the Scripture this literal story comes from and radically turn away from the Christian faith as a whole. I have seen this version and many other versions of similar faith stories take shape. Often doubt in ourselves, the stories we are told, and in others leads to radical action. We turn away from those things wholesale, we find and accept new stories to take the place of the old completely without critically examining the new story, and we distance ourselves from other people going to great lengths to avoid them.

Hannah has a similar reaction only she moves toward God. Hannah goes to the temple and prays directly to God. This seems insignificant in our post-Protestant Reformation setting. For Hannah to approach the temple, much less, pray before Eli, the priest, was considered unacceptable. Elkanah should have been the one presenting these requests before the Lord if they were their requests as a family. Instead, Hannah supplicates herself and asks the Lord directly for a male child. To make this even more radical she offers this male child to the service of the Lord as a Nazirite. Samson is the best known Nazirite to us, but they are characterized as those who will abstain from drinking wine, cutting their hair, and they are separated from the rest of the people to focus on service to the Lord. So the child she longs so desperately for, she is willing to give up.

Hannah doubts her humanness. For her, being a mother, bearing children, and honoring God are what preserve her power and dignity in a culture that has marginalized her as a second wife unnecessary for anything but pleasure. But Hannah is empowered by this doubt and approaches the Lord and the Lord remembers her when she returns home and conceives a child with Elkanah.

Hannah, like Father Flynn, teaches us that our doubt is an appropriate expression of faith. That through our doubt we have a bond with one another that certainty does not provide. In our desperation we can claim hopefulness through radical action embracing the grace provided by God in expressing our doubt before God. In our doubt we can experience the mystery of who God is. And for me there is a paradoxical certainty in doubt. That certainty does not come in the form of resolution or cure as though doubt were an illness in us that needs fixing, it is in the abiding presence of God. A God who is not fully known or fully described. A God who cannot be described in words alone or by singular experience. A God whom our doubt does not destroy. The certainty of doubt is that as a form of despair we find a bond with one another as a place where God abides, and to whom we can remain thankful for a God who does not abandon us. As Father Flynn reminds us, “When we are lost, we are not alone.” Thanks be to God.

i am unimportant and insignificant. who are you?

gandhi is supposed to have said quite famously, "be the change you wish to see in the world." this is all well and good, but in my estimation it is difficult for most people to decide where to start that change.

last night in our community gathering we talked about a passage from matthew 25 where jesus tells to some a forlorn story. it seems harsh and as though it rails at people who are on the outside of a certain group. without boring everyone from here to timbuktu, let it suffice to say that jesus talks here of all nations being called to him. in other words, everyone has an equal shot. that is as far as i will go with this bit of exegesis, but if you want further explanation just ask.

perhaps what i think is most interesting about this passage though is that jesus suggests our actions matter. the way in which we treat one another is significant. i have studied the idea of community for the past 6-7 years. what i have learned in that time, both experientially and academically, is that it takes intentionality. so often we believe that it will simply happen. surely our desire for it to occur counts for something, but community does not simply spring up wherever we find ourselves. it is something that is developed.

more interesting still to me is that many people equate the words translated most often "least of these" in the passage to marginalized, homeless, poverty level people. i believe these people are included in this group, however i believe we let ourselves off the hook in suggesting this translation. a more accurate translation of this word in the greek could be the "less significant" or "unimportant." to be sure, any people we have marginalized or deemed beyond redemption have been considered unimportant or less significant than ourselves, but i think the meaning is broader and the implications broader still. i see this as a cultural reminder of the fact that all people are deserving of love and compassion, dignity and respect. it is as though jesus suggests that we are to treat those to whom we have no obligation in extravagant ways. we are to go out of our own way to make sure those people to whom we owe nothing and are not beholden are taken care of.

i imagine that first century jewish and roman ears would have heard this message pertaining to the cultural system set up to remind them that they had no obligation to those below them. they owed taxes to caesar and the state demanded your complete obligation. but you had no obligation to the infirm, those outside your household, and certainly to those you had no business interaction with. in our 21st century haze, the message remains the same. we talk as though we have obligation only to those we see most often, work for, or have a nationalist allegiance to, but the reality is we are called to treat all people with love, dignity, and respect.

for the pragmatists out there who are connecting the dots and want the how-to of the lesson of communal living, i suggest the following: it begins and ends with intention. we must be intentional about how we interact with other people. we too often, in my opinion, fail to recognize the amount of responsibility and creative authority we have as humans in relation to god. we participate in a grand way as co-creators with god. and in america specifically i believe this starts with vulnerability. we must learn to talk about ourselves in unguarded and authentic ways. we too frequently hide behind masks of who we want others to see us as, and then wonder how we never know the needs of our neighbors or friends. we must learn to be genuine in our presentation of who we are in order to facilitate relationships that meet needs and foster change in our communities. and then we can begin to see the change we wish to be in the world.

community vs. communal

many things make up a person's identity, and only some of them are we able to control. mine is made up of parents who raised me well, who taught me to think for myself, and to accept the consequences for my decisions. it is also made up of very surface level things like..i am a male...i am married...i am going to be a father in a couple of months...i am white, educated, and middle class. there a lots of things that i could write, but one things consumes me more than others when i consider what i want other people to see in me.

it is this: i care more about being communal than being in a community.

let me explain. the word community comes from the latin meaning to have something in common or shared. it is a passive word. my favorite example is this: you can move into a neighborhood, apartment complex, or any other place of residence and you are in a community. you will have neighbors, yet it will not matter. you will not be required by anyone to care about who those other people around you are. you won't be required to help them in times of struggle or to provide for them on any level. there is no expectation, other than not wanting to be the creepy one on the block, that you will do more than live peacefully where it is you reside. end of story.

but to be communal is a different story altogether. it is to be active at its core. there is no do-nothing-option, because in reality, that is doing something. striving to be communal suggests that you care about something enough to move toward it, and it is my hope that this is positive. indeed there are plenty of things that are communal and yet destructive. however, at its most basic meaning, communal means to be doing things for the common good. which also suggests that it is leaning towards selflessness. (for a more technical image of this you could think about or read about the tragedy of the commons.)

and this ultimately is what i hope people see in me. and if they don't, i wish they knew that i was striving toward this because i believe in the deepest places of my being, that in doing things communally we will truly make the world a better place.

unChristian

perhaps the most significant book written about the demographics of the church (more on what this means in a moment), in my opinion, is unChristian: What a New Generation Really Thinks About Christianity...And Why it Matters, by David Kinnaman and Gabe Lyons. David Kinnaman is the President of the Barna Group, which does research and produces studies on a range of issues and aspects of the church, and Gabe Lyons is the founder of Fermi Project, "a broad collective of innovators, social entrepreneurs, and church and society leaders working together to make positive contributions to culture" (it's straight from the jacket of the book).

a little book background -- David and Gabe did over three years of research, interviews, and study about this topic before they wrote a book. it was originally an idea that Gabe brought to David as the one who could do the research and that struck a deep chord in David, and so now we have a very significant book to read and make sense of. they didn't write the book and give a prescription for the church and how to live out a more genuine faith. nor do they suggest that there is only one correct way to approach the things that their research indicated were deficient.

so what did the research actually show. without actually re-writing the book here in this space we will suffice for a very short synopsis of the research findings. know that they were researching the perceptions, feelings, and responses of those who are in the age range of 16-29. these are people typically referred to as "young adults" whatever that means. there was a sophisticated questionnaire that was completed in which people ultimately, for the sake of the research identified themselves as either insiders or outsiders in relation to the church. in other words, their responses either indicated that they identified themselves as those who would claim a christian identity or those who would not claim such an identity, and it is the latter group of people whose responses were significant for the study, but only in as much as they played a strikingly different tune than the responses of those inside the church.

from their research the authors determined there to be six broad categories in which the respondents identified the christian faith by. in more plain terms -- if you or they were to hear the term christian and then were given certain questions to answer about christians, this was how they responded. the perceptions were that christians are hypocritical (saying or believing one thing but doing something different), focusing on getting converts (concerned with saving others for the sake of doing so at the expense of a genuine care for the individual), antihomosexual (it's self explanatory except for the fact that the perception was that this was lived out in a hostile way), sheltered (out of touch with reality, old fashioned, stayed in their ways, boring), too political (in as much as christians are overly concerned with their political agenda which is dominantly right-wing conservative), and judgmental (quick to judge others without a loving and caring attitude of concern or even showing the love we proclaim).

the research backs this up, tremendously. and it is disturbing. this is not how i want others to see me or to see the faith that i proclaim. i hope that i live my life in a different way. i suggest that if theses issues concern you, you read the book and think about the creative possibilities of living and relating to other people that might begin to work against these perceptions. i do believe that the church can make a difference. the church is only a functioning organism in as much as individuals make it up and their intentional action makes a difference in the world we live in.

i try to live my life in a loving, life-giving, and dignifying way. no matter who i meet and who they and their circumstances are, i owe that much to them because they are human. that is enough. i do this by trying to be intentional, honest, open, loving, and vulnerable with everyone. this means that i must take risks, but it is ultimately the most satisfying way for me to live, without pretense or masks.

on a final note, i want to say something about David Kinnaman. he is a nice guy. i met him at a conference we were both speaking at. he and i were able to go to dinner together with a group of people and chat for awhile. he is a caring individual. he takes interest in what others are saying and is engaged with what their interests are. in short, he is a normal guy, who is trying to make a difference by alerting people to what his research has shown. and for whatever reason, this gives me comfort. he didn't ask for a lot when he came to speak and he was just a down to earth guy who missed his kids and wife because he was traveling so much. he accidentally stepped into semi-celebrity.