Tall Monastic Guy

juxtaposition: competition and poverty

As a young hoosier in our bible church's children's program I was awarded a rather impressive trophy. It was handsomely wooden with a little golden cup that sat on the top.

The prestigious Timothy Award was the top prize awarded within the fundamentalist youth program called Awana. They didn’t hand out these treasures for nothing. At the end of the year I was one of only two young christian soldiers standing on that podium. I was the Tim Tebow of scripture memory straightarming my way through the competition on my way to achieving this goal. Hundreds of King James Version scriptures were memorized and recited and my Wednesday night attendance record was unstoppable. 

Reflection: Americhristian Subculture = Competition?

From a lifetime of reflection on American christian subculture I've recognized that the relationship between christianity and competition feels as normal as fireworks on the 4th of July. Practically inseparable. 

We have been both consciously and unconsciencly conditioned to compete...

With other faiths. - Mormons, Muslims, etc. (My first seminary class was called defending the faith)

With other churches. - Better attendance, better music, better preaching, better parking, etc.

With friends. - better dinner parties, better looking families, better fashion?, etc.

With other value systems. - this is where we co-opt political agendas and claim them as "christian" 

...Just to name a few.

Speaking of Tebow... This past NFL season Americhristians discovered the perfect spokesperson for our competitve brand of christianity in quarterback Tim Tebow as he mowed down the competition on his way to the endzone while publicly giving all the glory to his Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. I like the guy. He is a spectacular athlete... who happens to fit our competitive brand of christianity quite nicely.

Within our Americhristian subculture, competition along with our sad addiction to winning isn't quirky or weird, it's normal... and encouraged. 

All the while, outside the subculture we appear like (drum roll please)...

 

Our attachment to the spectacular... to the winner is embarrassing. 

And it's precisely due to this embarassment that Jesus pointed toward a lifestyle of proximity and genuine friendship with the poor.

Why do competitive christians need the poor? Because we require special guidance in order to de-spectacularize our lives. The poor allow us to recognize and heal from a religion which throughout its history has been inextricably bound to dominance and one-uping our neighbors outside of the christian set.

Ask any Gen X or Millennial not affiliated with a church which words best describe the christian. It's most doubtful that you will hear, humility. Along with increasing one's theological greyness and producing endless questions, presence among the poor and lonely certainly brings with it a distinct humility and increased openness to the expansiveness of God. 

What if we actually considered the poor our spokespersons? 

When we are mentored by the poor, a profound humbling takes place. Befriending the poor -- not as a project but as mutual learners -- leads to being poor in spirit and cultivating relationships of mutuality. People who identify with the poor desire to become poor -- not in a romantic sense of being poor just for the sake of being poor, but to simplify and live less for things and more for people. ~ Albert Nolan

So, if there is any sense of competition associated with the Good News perhaps it is to out love our neighbor or competing to become smaller and less noticeable like mustard seeds or children. Of course, in our push to out love the other we'd soon realize in God's strange economy of radical grace and love until death, there really is no such thing as competition. 

gardening, sorrow, transformation... stuff like that

At the conclusion of my sermon at a small mountain church this past Sunday, a man swiftly approached clinging for all my attention for several minutes after the service. Just as I was stepping out of the door toward my car, he grabs my arm and pleads, "You know I'm not well. I really need you to pray for me." 

In his voice and his words I heard Christ as he was entering the Garden of Gethsemane, "My soul is overhwhelmed to the point of dying. Stay with me and keep watch." 

Practical spirituality means continually staying alert and awake with Christ who still tangibly dwells among the poor and lonely right now. This is a often a lonely and burdensome place to stay and keep watch. And undoubtedly we, like Christ, will plead to not have to drink from this cup of sorrows. This bitter cup contains our own unique compost along with the physical, mental, and spiritual anguish of the entire human race. 

While this difficult piece of the Christ story is set in a garden we also recognize that gardens are places of transformation and renewal. 

Speaking of which...

Here's a few images of my garden so far this year...

Focus: moralism or missional

What we focus on often determines what we miss out on. My focus on the urban poor and contemplative spirituality means I miss out on things such as best practices of Alpaca farming or stock market forecasts.

This is a short post to mention the ongoing dichotomy I experience between moralism and missional. 

I continue to see committed christians who feel as if they need to get their porn addiction or financial debt under control before they can seriously consider following Jesus into redemptive relationships with the marginalized poor. 

The biblical notion of righteousness certainly includes personal moral purity but it is a far less individualistic endeavor than how our american christian culture has made it appear. 

To truly unplug from the god of individualistic moralism takes courage. It takes a shift in focus. It likely will entail a certain experience of death...

And I also see how easily one could unconsciously allow social activism to become the new moralism.

Holding both - Personal spiritual formation and growth alongside the value of loving my neighbor and my neighborhood are not separate ministries of the church, so let's do ourselves a favor and stop thinking in linear terms or using categorical language in order to distinguish between them. 

"Long ago I became convinced that the seeing see little."

Helen Keller

 

A lament Psalm for Denver's proposed 'urban camping ban'

The Lord is my Shepherd, I lack nothing.

 

He allows me to lie in green pastures...

 

...but rather than rest and restoration a police officer disrupts my sleep saying, "You can't lie in these green pastures. They're not for you. Pack up your belongings and 'move along.' Or you will face a fine or imprisonment."

Thus, I am forcibly provoked to gather my things and move to a far more dangerous place - the valley of the shadow of death - where I will surely be threatened, harassed, fearful that I won't see the next magnificent mile hile dawn.

Who is watching out for me?

The Talk: the difference is black & white

At a point in our awkward adolescent years many of us found ourselves sitting on a couch or the dining room table across from our parents in order to have a conversation simply known as The Talk. Even if you didn’t experience the talk in that manner I'll bet you're assuming correctly that what I'm referring to is the uncomfortable conversation between parent and child about the birds and the bees, male and female development, how to responsibly handle those strange urges brought upon you by something adults called raging hormones. 

This week it's been brought to my attention that within many black families there is an altogether different version of The Talk. Beyond issues of sex, black parents often feel compelled to share with their adolescent young men the hard racial realities that come with being a black man in America. This talk may involve the necessary lessons in appropriate behaviors to assume when aggressively approached by white male authority figures, especially law enforcement. This unimaginably tension-filled conversation is one that a loving black parent painfully recognizes could literally result in life or death. 

The Trayvon Martin murder case and the subsequent response by my black male friends, along with prominent public figures such as the Miami Heat basketball team has placed an international emphasis on the ongoing systemic issue of racism within America, an issue that many white males like myself simply have not often been forced to consider.  

As a lanky teenager growing up in a Norman Rockwell-esque Indiana farming community it was common for my friends and I to stay up late, sneak out and run around our small town fearlessly playing pranks on classmates or throwing toilet paper in the trees of our teachers. If the police or a grouchy neighbor would have discovered our "criminal" activities the realistic worst that we could expect was our parents being notified and possibly minor privileges being temporarily taken away.

John Wesley on 'Love of the Other'

The following is from John Wesley, the most eloquent, prolific, and influential evangelist of 18th century England. The title of this sermon is "The Way to the Kingdom,"

Thou shalt love--- thou shalt embrace with the most tender goodwill, the most earnest and cordial affection, the most inflamed desires of preventing or removing all evil, and of procuring for him every possible good - thy neighbor - that is, not only thy friend, thy kinsman, or thy acquaintance; not only the virtuous, the friendly, him that loves thee, that prevents or returns thy kindness; but every child of man, every human creature, every soul which God hath made, not excepting him whom thou hast never seen in the flesh, whom thou knowest not, either by face or name; not excepting him whom thou knowest to be evil and unthankful, him that still despitefully uses and persecutes thee: Him thou shalt love as thyself, with the same invariable thirst after his happiness in every kind; the same unwearied care to screen him from whatever might grieve or hurt either his soul or body.

(Source: The Sword of the Lord by Andrew Himes)

the invitation of the wilderness...

At the moment I’m afforded a couple hours to write and read while sipping my americano in one of Denver’s massive sea of coffee establishments. Technically, I am working. It just looks and perhaps feels different than the job that occupied my father’s time and far different from the job and sense of desperation experienced by his father.

I’m among several coffee-consuming peers in this place who are pressing keys on laptop computers, checking and sending email or leisurely updating our favorite social media, which of course we can also do on our mobile devices when we walk out the door. 

A window separates me from a cocktail of local and non-local tourists walking alongside a noticeably increasing population of the wandering poor. I fully inhale this scene with its distinct urban rhythms and tempo. I observe the obvious crescendo of technologies and a mobility by which folks seem to relate to few things and often times few persons for very long periods of time.

do you see the implications? (updated)

Last week I visited a good friend who is serving time in the Denver detention center for a regrettable decision. The weight of his words as he was struggling to describe his stay in the jail continues to lay heavy on my mind.  "Ryan, nobody sees me here. We get herded around like cattle to slaughter. I’m just a number and nobody cares to know my name.”

At the end of our 30 minutes of assigned time I did my best to deliberately look into the windows of his soul and call him by his name, but the implications of his pain soaked words unsettled me and they serve as a poignant reminder during this 2012 Lenten season.

The jailers have a job to do. Their very occupation is to display authority and power without much of a priority on seeing and valuing the basic humanity of the individuals they've been placed in charge of. 

Sadly, this normative lack of consideration and critical reflection isn’t just a standard trait of correctional facility workers. The reality is the same brutal perspective unconsciously characterizes most of us within the privileged Christian middle-class matrix.

We don't have to understand the Trayvon Martin case with perfect clarity to recognize that we, the privileged, have severe issues in regards to inconsiderate profiling according to economic class, race, and even style of dress. To say it differently we have issues with compassion. Conversations get too awkward and unproductive. Time feels wasted and therefore we cannot pursue the necessary journey of getting to know and eventually suffer with another in the way of Jesus.

The hard truth? I become so accustomed to daily middle-class activities such as filling the gas tank of my car, meeting a friend for specialty coffee, and stopping at the market on my way home for an avocado that I easily overlook the fact that these quite ordinary mundane activities of mine of which I unconsciously feel entitled to make up the unique lifestyle of a privileged minority. The very ordinary routines and expectations within my lifestyle of privilege become toxins that lead to my blindness and prevent me from truly seeing my marginalized brothers and sisters.

Philoxenia: a posture of parenting

These thoughts arrive after a pathetic night of sleep due to Josiah’s cough along with his apparent lack of consideration for his dad’s mental and physical health when asking if I could retrieve a bowl of cereal at the ridiculous 3am hour. Isn’t it reasonable to expect a three-and-a-half year old to share concern over how much quality sleep his dad receives? 

These days I'm learning just how hard and humbling parenting actually is. More often than not Josiah and Micah don't instinctually do what we've asked of them. They cry and whine and demand of us and as referenced, at the most inconvenient of times.

After a few years of working with the street community of Denver, the mentally ill, chronically homeless, and addicted much of the same things can be said. Many of those friends of mine cry and whine and demand of me and often it seems they do it most when I'm tired and emotionally and physcially drained. But they - those 'others' - often get a gracious pass from me. They're the poor and we've been told it's good and right to care for the poor.

our symbolic hedge: low or high?

A couple quotes here... first:

Earth is crammed with heaven,
and every common bush afire with God;
but only he who sees takes off his shoes.
The rest sit around and 
Pluck blackberries.

~ Elizabeth Barrett Browning

I love this and believe it to be true. The following comes from Ronald Rolheiser in his book, The Shattered Lattern, and perhaps part of the reason for our lack of everyday burning bushes is what he would call a "low symbolic hedge."

Access Denver: film project

The following was a class project for students at Grace Prep Academy in Durango, Colorado. These awesome students spent a week in the city with me last spring which left significant impact on us all. They returned this past November asking if we could spend another week together in order to develop a film as part of a class project. 

Their expanding heart for the marginalized coupled with their amazing creativity points to the kind of Kingdom collaboration that humanity is capable of and leaves me hopeful for our future...