Archive by Author

Ash Wednesday

February 22, 2012 in Bible Thoughts, Church, Culture with 2 Comments

Inasmuch as it is Ash Wednesday…

    Because I do not hope to turn again
    Because I do not hope
    Because I do not hope to turn
    Desiring this man’s gift and that man’s scope
    I no longer strive to strive towards such things
    (Why should the aged eagle stretch its wings?)
    Why should I mourn
    The vanished power of the usual reign?

    Because I do not hope to know again
    The infirm glory of the positive hour
    Because I do not think
    Because I know I shall not know
    The one veritable transitory power
    Because I cannot drink
    There, where trees flower, and springs flow, for there is nothing again

    Because I know that time is always time
    And place is always and only place
    And what is actual is actual only for one time
    And only for one place
    I rejoice that things are as they are and
    I renounce the blessed face
    And renounce the voice
    Because I cannot hope to turn again
    Consequently I rejoice, having to construct something
    Upon which to rejoice

    And pray to God to have mercy upon us
    And pray that I may forget
    These matters that with myself I too much discuss
    Too much explain
    Because I do not hope to turn again
    Let these words answer
    For what is done, not to be done again
    May the judgement not be too heavy upon us

    Because these wings are no longer wings to fly
    But merely vans to beat the air
    The air which is now thoroughly small and dry
    Smaller and dryer than the will
    Teach us to care and not to care
    Teach us to sit still.

    Pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death
    Pray for us now and at the hour of our death.

    II

    Lady, three white leopards sat under a juniper-tree
    In the cool of the day, having fed to satiety
    On my legs my heart my liver and that which had been contained
    In the hollow round of my skull. And God said
    Shall these bones live? shall these
    Bones live? And that which had been contained
    In the bones (which were already dry) said chirping:
    Because of the goodness of this Lady
    And because of her loveliness, and because
    She honours the Virgin in meditation,
    We shine with brightness. And I who am here dissembled
    Proffer my deeds to oblivion, and my love
    To the posterity of the desert and the fruit of the gourd.
    It is this which recovers
    My guts the strings of my eyes and the indigestible portions
    Which the leopards reject. The Lady is withdrawn
    In a white gown, to contemplation, in a white gown.
    Let the whiteness of bones atone to forgetfulness.
    There is no life in them. As I am forgotten
    And would be forgotten, so I would forget
    Thus devoted, concentrated in purpose. And God said
    Prophesy to the wind, to the wind only for only
    The wind will listen. And the bones sang chirping
    With the burden of the grasshopper, saying

    Lady of silences
    Calm and distressed
    Torn and most whole
    Rose of memory
    Rose of forgetfulness
    Exhausted and life-giving
    Worried reposeful
    The single Rose
    Is now the Garden
    Where all loves end
    Terminate torment
    Of love unsatisfied
    The greater torment
    Of love satisfied
    End of the endless
    Journey to no end
    Conclusion of all that
    Is inconclusible
    Speech without word and
    Word of no speech
    Grace to the Mother
    For the Garden
    Where all love ends.

    Under a juniper-tree the bones sang, scattered and shining
    We are glad to be scattered, we did little good to each other,
    Under a tree in the cool of the day, with the blessing of sand,
    Forgetting themselves and each other, united
    In the quiet of the desert. This is the land which ye
    Shall divide by lot. And neither division nor unity
    Matters. This is the land. We have our inheritance.

    III

    At the first turning of the second stair
    I turned and saw below
    The same shape twisted on the banister
    Under the vapour in the fetid air
    Struggling with the devil of the stairs who wears
    The deceitul face of hope and of despair.

    At the second turning of the second stair
    I left them twisting, turning below;
    There were no more faces and the stair was dark,
    Damp, jagged, like an old man’s mouth drivelling, beyond repair,
    Or the toothed gullet of an aged shark.

    At the first turning of the third stair
    Was a slotted window bellied like the figs’s fruit
    And beyond the hawthorn blossom and a pasture scene
    The broadbacked figure drest in blue and green
    Enchanted the maytime with an antique flute.
    Blown hair is sweet, brown hair over the mouth blown,
    Lilac and brown hair;
    Distraction, music of the flute, stops and steps of the mind over the third stair,
    Fading, fading; strength beyond hope and despair
    Climbing the third stair.

    Lord, I am not worthy
    Lord, I am not worthy
    but speak the word only.

    IV

    Who walked between the violet and the violet
    Who walked between
    The various ranks of varied green
    Going in white and blue, in Mary’s colour,
    Talking of trivial things
    In ignorance and knowledge of eternal dolour
    Who moved among the others as they walked,
    Who then made strong the fountains and made fresh the springs

    Made cool the dry rock and made firm the sand
    In blue of larkspur, blue of Mary’s colour,
    Sovegna vos

    Here are the years that walk between, bearing
    Away the fiddles and the flutes, restoring
    One who moves in the time between sleep and waking, wearing

    White light folded, sheathing about her, folded.
    The new years walk, restoring
    Through a bright cloud of tears, the years, restoring
    With a new verse the ancient rhyme. Redeem
    The time. Redeem
    The unread vision in the higher dream
    While jewelled unicorns draw by the gilded hearse.

    The silent sister veiled in white and blue
    Between the yews, behind the garden god,
    Whose flute is breathless, bent her head and signed but spoke no word

    But the fountain sprang up and the bird sang down
    Redeem the time, redeem the dream
    The token of the word unheard, unspoken

    Till the wind shake a thousand whispers from the yew

    And after this our exile

    V

    If the lost word is lost, if the spent word is spent
    If the unheard, unspoken
    Word is unspoken, unheard;
    Still is the unspoken word, the Word unheard,
    The Word without a word, the Word within
    The world and for the world;
    And the light shone in darkness and
    Against the Word the unstilled world still whirled
    About the centre of the silent Word.

    O my people, what have I done unto thee.

    Where shall the word be found, where will the word
    Resound? Not here, there is not enough silence
    Not on the sea or on the islands, not
    On the mainland, in the desert or the rain land,
    For those who walk in darkness
    Both in the day time and in the night time
    The right time and the right place are not here
    No place of grace for those who avoid the face
    No time to rejoice for those who walk among noise and deny the voice

    Will the veiled sister pray for
    Those who walk in darkness, who chose thee and oppose thee,
    Those who are torn on the horn between season and season, time and time, between
    Hour and hour, word and word, power and power, those who wait
    In darkness? Will the veiled sister pray
    For children at the gate
    Who will not go away and cannot pray:
    Pray for those who chose and oppose

    O my people, what have I done unto thee.

    Will the veiled sister between the slender
    Yew trees pray for those who offend her
    And are terrified and cannot surrender
    And affirm before the world and deny between the rocks
    In the last desert before the last blue rocks
    The desert in the garden the garden in the desert
    Of drouth, spitting from the mouth the withered apple-seed.

    O my people.

    VI

    Although I do not hope to turn again
    Although I do not hope
    Although I do not hope to turn

    Wavering between the profit and the loss
    In this brief transit where the dreams cross
    The dreamcrossed twilight between birth and dying
    (Bless me father) though I do not wish to wish these things
    From the wide window towards the granite shore
    The white sails still fly seaward, seaward flying
    Unbroken wings

    And the lost heart stiffens and rejoices
    In the lost lilac and the lost sea voices
    And the weak spirit quickens to rebel
    For the bent golden-rod and the lost sea smell
    Quickens to recover
    The cry of quail and the whirling plover
    And the blind eye creates
    The empty forms between the ivory gates
    And smell renews the salt savour of the sandy earth
    This is the time of tension between dying and birth
    The place of solitude where three dreams cross
    Between blue rocks
    But when the voices shaken from the yew-tree drift away
    Let the other yew be shaken and reply.

    Blessed sister, holy mother, spirit of the fountain, spirit of the garden,
    Suffer us not to mock ourselves with falsehood
    Teach us to care and not to care
    Teach us to sit still
    Even among these rocks,
    Our peace in His will
    And even among these rocks
    Sister, mother
    And spirit of the river, spirit of the sea,
    Suffer me not to be separated

    And let my cry come unto Thee.

Shadowing Christ at Lent

February 22, 2012 in Bible Thoughts with 2 Comments

If you read this blog at all, you know that I shade iconoclastic. I have some good reasons (cf. tomorrow’s post on Barth) and some not-so-good ones, no doubt.

With Lent upon us as of today, I want to say a few words of chastened iconoclasm: on observing of days in freedom.

Image: Boaz Yiftach / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

In Colossians, we read warnings about observance of days:

So don’t let anyone judge you about eating or drinking or about a festival, a new moon observance, or sabbaths. These religious practices are only a shadow of what was coming—the body that cast the shadow is Christ. Don’t let anyone who wants to practice harsh self-denial and worship angels rob you of the prize. They go into detail about what they have seen in visions and have become unjustifiably arrogant by their selfish way of thinking. They don’t stay connected to the head. The head nourishes and supports the whole body through the joints and ligaments, so the body grows with a growth that is from God. (Col 2: 16-19, CEB)

A few thoughts here: first, this is probably referring specifically to Jewish holy days: annual observances (festivals), monthly festivals (new moons), and weekly observances (sabbaths). So Lent doesn’t technically find disqualification here, though we might add that if observances given by God in the OT are matters for caution, that those we made up without biblical warrant should be held loosely.

And that’s really the point: there’s nothing wrong with observing a day, so long as we don’t lose sight of the fact that the day isn’t the thing, but Christ is.

There’s nothing wrong with fasting for a season, so long as we allow the fast to point away from itself, to Christ with whose body we are crucified.

For a people whose lives are defined, all too often, by the pursuit of gluttonous feasting (be that on food or on relationships or on social media or on entertainment), the imposition of a fast can be excellent discipline to train us for the kingdom of God.

There could be a strong application of Colossians 2, calling us away from trying to squeeze our faith into an annual set of cyclical feasts and fasts.

But today I want to say, instead, that if you choose to observe Lent, do so in freedom: you are already in Christ, and the observation or the ignoring of a fast will not change that one way or the other.

And, if you choose to observe, do so remembering that the fast is not the thing. At its best, it is a shadow. And that shadow should draw our eyes to the One who casts it. And that is Christ.

In Search of Proverbial Grit

February 21, 2012 in Culture, Fuller with 3 Comments

The Reel Spirituality folks at Fuller’s Brehm Center have posted part 1 of a three part series consisting of my reflections on the Wisdom Literature in Coen Brothers films. This is a lightly touched-up rendition of my SBL Paper, “New Country for Old Men: Qoheleth, Job, and Solomon in Coen Brothers Filmography.”

As the film begins, the viewer is first met with these words: “The wicked flee when none pursueth” (Proverbs 28:1). This epigram provides a first interpretive frame for making sense of the ensuing film. Appropriate to its Old Western genre, the principal antagonist, Tom Cheney, is wicked, and the principal protagonist, Mattie Ross, good. And in the immediately following voiceover we learn that the wicked has in fact fled… (read more)

Be Careful How You Speak

February 21, 2012 in Bible Thoughts with 4 Comments

I remember a moment from early elementary school years. I was in Sunday School at Westwood Baptist Church. It was a combo class, third and fourth graders I think.

I only remember that it was a combination class because my big brother and I were both in the same room. And, I only remember that because of a certain Q & A that burned itself into my mind. (Sorry, bro, but you’re about to take one for the team.)

Delving into some deeply theological passage, the teacher asked us to define the terms we were dealing with: “Who were the gentiles?”

With all the specificity and wonder of fourth-grade sociological insight, my brother said, “Some stupid people.”

This was a great laugh, of course, as the teacher disclosed the great secret that we were all gentiles.

But here’s the point: even though the answer was clearly deficient in some ways, my big brother had shown that he understood quite well the connotations of being “gentile” in the biblical narrative. To be “gentile” was to be outsider to this story. To be “gentile” was to be the “them” that makes “us” nervous or uncomfortable or unclean or endangered.

This is the smallest of pictures of why the language we choose to speak with is so important.

Why do I advocate the use of gender-inclusive language for people? Because when “brothers” are the “insiders,” it creates the impression that one must be brother in order to be fully addressed as one of those to whom the words are written. If we’re not careful, we end up saying Christianity has a masculine feel–and that God wants it that way.

Gendered language can become similarly problematic when talking about God. If we only use the masculine metaphors and shy away from the images of God the bearing or nurturing mother, we create the impression that men are like God and women are “some stupid people.” Outsiders. Inferior.

But of course, this isn’t just about gender. People on both sides of and in the middle of the political aisle, or various theological aisles, can so speak of “them” that everyone listening knows full well that “they” are “some stupid people” in the assessment of the speaker.

In Colossians 4:5-6 reads:

Conduct yourselves wisely toward outsiders, making the most of the time. Let your speech always be gracious, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how you ought to answer everyone. (NRSV)

There’s a calling here to watch our words. In particular, to watch our words with–and I would add, about–outsiders.

But in so doing, we mus also take care that we not create the impression that some of us are those outsiders. Or, that outsiders are “some stupid people.”

Creatio Ex Nihilo

February 20, 2012 in blogging with 8 Comments

Here’s the reality of my life: when I’m engaged in creative work, creativity ideas overflow into every other area. When I’m overwhelmed with administrative tasks, when I’m on extended periods of daddy duty, when my emotional and mental energies are sapped by conflict, when I’m thinking through the same things over and over again–in these times creativity stagnates.

Creativity has a very hard time springing up out of nothing.

Creativity, having something to say, feeds upon itself. It’s one of the few resources we have that increases the more we use it.

Want to have something to say? Start talking.

Want to have something to paint? Start drawing.

Want to have something to sing? Start strumming.

Want to have something to write? Start clicking.

Making something out of nothing is impossible. Really. We ascribe it to God as an action fitting God’s divinity.

So, if you’re not God, here’s my piece of unsolicited advice: wherever it is that you find yourself creating, feed that every day.

Subscribe by Email!

February 17, 2012 in blogging with 1 Comment

You’ll notice that there is a new widget over to the right. Beneath my short bio you can now enter your mail address and subscribe to new blog posts.

It’s a new toy, so there are probably some bugs to iron out. But check it out, and sign on up if you’re so inclined.

Evangelistic Voice

February 17, 2012 in Bible Thoughts with 11 Comments

Evangelism isn’t my thing.

I have vivid memories of trying to pull it off.

One week in college I attempted the “Florida Evangelism Project”: contact evangelism on the beach during Spring Break. Easily one of the top five worst weeks of my life. Mostly because I sucked at it.

Years later, I was about to finish my Ph.D., and about to move into shepherding a core group through the process of becoming a church plant and onto grown-up adult church status. Church planter assessment didn’t go so well. They wanted people who could share the gospel on contact and close the deal with a powerful sinners prayer. Easily one of the top five worst weeks of my life. Mostly because I sucked at evangelism.

Or, at least, I didn’t do evangelism well in the ways that made sense in these contexts.

Something Worth Shouting About?

Last night I found myself speaking the good news. I knew that I was speaking, in part, to people who do not identify with Jesus, and I was perfectly comfortable with my message. I found my evangelistic voice.

I was giving a talk on Jesus Have I Loved, but Paul?. Feeling that this could only be partially a long commercial for the book, I wanted to give an overview of the Story that drives my storied theology.

The story of a very good world.

The story of a world in dis-integration from its good, created order.

The story of a God who would not rest until the blessing, restoring power of God’s reign had been made known in every place where “the curse is found.”

The story of Jesus bringing wholeness to bodies, wholeness to communities, wholeness to people’s standing before God.

Whether it’s my Storied Theology, or Scot McKnight’s King Jesus Gospel, or N. T. Wright’s fulfilled story of Israel, the holistic gospel of a transformed and reconciled cosmos is, itself, the message worth proclaiming, the story worth calling people to.

In the worlds where I failed in my evangelism, I was being summoned to first convince people that they had a particular need, probably one they did not feel before talking to me, and then convince them that I had the cure for the disease I had brought.

I get how deeply engrained this way of proclaiming the gospel is in our post-Great Awakening American context.

But what I experienced last night, and what I hope becomes the new normal, is a different way of understanding evangelism. This different way is to walk in the way, and to tell the story of, the reconciling, redeeming, reclaiming power of the reign of God at work in Jesus.

In other words, there is a beautiful story worth telling–and it is, actually, good news. God cares about the deficiencies and brokenness of our bodies. God cares about the alienation and loneliness of our communities. God cares about the sins that show our distrust of our Creator.

And God acts in Christ to bring healing, wholeness, reconciliation, and forgiveness. Every place where we experience the want of goodness, the want of glory, God sends the Messiah to set the world to rights.

This is the beautiful story, the story that cannot be told without a story of creation or a story of the life of Jesus. It is a story that paradoxically demands the cross for its resolution.

And it is the good news that Jesus himself enacted. With it goes out a summons to join–but a summons to join something restorative, to participate in the work of the God who cares more about the environment than we do, to join in the work of the God who is far more passionate about doing away with our loneliness than we are, to celebrate the work of the God who cares enough about our eternal hope to create a people who can taste its fruit in the present.

Believable

February 16, 2012 in Bible Thoughts with 14 Comments

Communities make things believable.

They are the “plausibility structures” that provide us with the scaffolding we need to integrate what we experience with what we believe.

Given the right plausibility structure, the belief that the earth is under 10,000 years old becomes largely self-evident, the clear grid for assessing every piece of scientific data. Given the right plausibility structure, and the belief that the earth is 4.5 billion years old plays this same role.

Once we become aware of this, we are confronted by the question: what do the communities I am a part of make believable?

I return regularly here to the Story of Jesus as the defining marker of Christian faith and Christian community. The story of Christ crucified and raised is what makes Christians Christian. It is the unbelievable claim that God so loved the world that He gave His Son; that the Son so loved the world that he gave himself; that the self-giving Son was the self-raising son; that the son-giving Father is the Son-Raising God.

My concern is this: it is all too rare that we as Christian communities sustain this narrative as credible by our lives together.

We create communities that grow under the guidance of dynamic leadership and sharp speakers. I did not need the death of Jesus to make plausible that good leadership will grow an organization.

We create communities that thrive under the rubric of a common theological system. I did not need the resurrection of Jesus to make plausible that shared belief, differentiating one political party… er… system of doctrine from another creates cohesion and attracts adherents.

Christian community is supposed to create a plausibility structure, one that makes credible the self-giving love of Christ: “By this all people will know you are my disciples–if you love one another.”

This love is the storied love of our gospel narrative: “Love one another as I have loved you–greater love has no one than this, that one lay down his life for his friends.”

We are called to renarrate the story in our life together, so that our story will be believable.

And, of course, the converse side of this call is that we are just as capable of making our story unbelievable when our communities thrive on something other than our story or become playgrounds for dissension and arguments, self-serving protection and consumption of our neighbor.

Displacement

February 15, 2012 in Bible Thoughts, Quotes with 4 Comments

Christian theology is animated, in large part, by a temporal and textual displacement accomplished by the authority and voice of the biblical text.

Lewis Donelson, From Hebrews to Revelation

Writers and Readers

February 15, 2012 in Writing with 3 Comments

Writes and readers are not the same things.

I heard such a claim from a theologian friend of mine once. He had been told that you could either write or read, but probably not do both. He thought it was lame.

Then he became a writer.

And understood.

I listen to the New Yorker Fiction Podcast. It has confirmed this from a different angle.

The setup of the show is this: a writer reads someone else’s short story. Then the person who read the story talks about it with Deborah Treisman, the New Yorker fiction editor.

It is not uncommon that in listening to the conversation it becomes clear that she is a much better reader of short stories than the storywriters are.

She recognizes meaning where they don’t want to see any. She puts the pieces together to give a compelling reading of the story we’ve all just heard.

Of course, not all writers are the same. Nor are all readers the same. Some readers are fantastic for discovering meaning (David Dark is one of these–his writing is so enthralling because he’s showing you how he reads not only books but also the world) some are fantastic for telling you that your n-dash really should be an em-dash. (I just use hyphens—forget you people.)

Lame or not, I find folks falling more one way or the other. Some are great readers. Some are great writers. (Or, “express proclivities toward reading” v. “express proclivities toward writing.”)

Few do both.

Page 1 of 9612345»102030...Last »