Tall Monastic Guy

ethics of the empire: how do you protest?

This weekend the frigid temps meant the boys couldn’t play outside so in order to burn off some of that relentless energy we landed in a convenient indoor spot, the Cherry Creek Mall. When the stores opened I decided to stroll into one that I recently vowed never to buy from again.

I walked by the racks of shirts that caught my gaze and there they were looking up at me seductively, … the elusive tall sized garments.

A few years ago, I thought I had put an end to my life long clothing dillema. I had finally found a store that fit my style and most importantly my lanky 6’6” frame. This store is located less than ten minutes from our home, so without giving it much thought, when I needed clothes, this is where I’d go.

After a while, a little voice in my head invited me to take a closer look at the tags to see where these clothes were made. Mexico… Pakistan… China… This then led to an internet search and sure enough, if I’d want to keep shopping there I’d need to be ok with the idea that the shirt on my back was likely constructed by an underpaid, underage, overworked, individual in some third world situation.

Jenga Theology

Before moving out to Denver ten years ago I was a case manager for mentally and physically disabled adults. Throughout the two years invested in that job, I played many board games with my clients. There was one particular individual who demanded we get at least one game of Jenga in before getting to any serious conversation. He loved to play Jenga, but this man was hopeless at the game. His hands were gnarled from birth. His tremors were such that he’d be lucky to remove two or three blocks before the entire tower would come crashing down time after time after time.

How are you, Jack?

More often than I’d like to admit I fantasize about my basketball days. I relive those glorious (and inglorious) moments of high school and even my short college career through ridiculous dreams, which often involve me hitting last second game winners or going off for 40 or even 50 points.

It seems these dreams are indicative of the universal desire for more – more achievement, acclaim, and notoriety. And while one half of us enjoys these silly dreams the other half of us recognizes that fame is usually more burden than blessing.

The way we see time...

Tragedies such as the stunningly horrific one played out in Aurora early last Friday morning tend to make most of us measure our time a bit more precisely. We can’t help but view these alarming events as personal wake up calls reminding us of our core longings and inviting us to create deeper meaning with our remaining breaths through kindness to strangers and a more generous way of living in the world.  

Although there’s great reason for a heightened awareness of time in moments like these, through sundials and pendulums we’ve pursued the measuring of it since the beginning. The elusive sand pouring toward the bottom of the hourglass has a simple way of reminding us of our finitude and so measuring, naming, and calculating time perhaps offers at least a slight sense of comfort regarding something so seemingly other and outside of our control.

Reflections on Gethsemane

One of the most searing seasons of loneliness for me was experienced during my time in seminary. Nine years ago we packed up a big yellow moving truck and transitioned to Denver from the Hoosier state with a seminary degree as the primary motivator. Sitting in that first class (Defending the Faith) I began to painfully see that I’d be a circular peg in the traditional square seminary hole and yet somehow through prayer and key friendships I managed to grab the degree. As a creative, a futurist, and an Enneagram 4, those seminary years nearly did me in as I plumbed the depths of liminal space with hard questions and confusions. 

I don't attribute the despair of that season solely to Denver Seminary. It just happened to be a fertile context in which I'd set off on a journey to mindfully consider the cup that I've been given to drink. As Henri Nouwen described so well, 

Holding the cup of life means looking critically at what we are living. This requires great courage, because when we start looking, we might be terrified by what we see. Questions may arise that we don't know how to answer. Doubts may come up about things we thought we were sure about. Fear may emerge from unexpected places.

In frequent moments throughout those years while carefully examining what I began to see as my unique cup, there were moments that I'd strongly echo the words of Christ in Gethsemane, "Let this cup pass from me."

I've often wondered what it was that Jesus actually felt in Gethsemane.

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. As the Tim Tebow of scripture memorization I straight-armed my way through the competition on my way to achieving this sought after goal. Hundreds of King James Version scriptures were downloaded 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 Independence Day. The two are practically inseparable.

Despite a gospel narrative in which Jesus repeatedly sides with those who are too poor to compete...

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 fashion? etc.

With friends. - better dinner parties, better looking & performing families,  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 competitive brand of christianity in quarterback Tim Tebow as he mowed down the competition on his way to the end-zone while publicly giving all the glory to his Lord and Savior - Jesus Christ. I do 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 its subsequent addiction to winning isn't quirky or out of place, 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 embarrassment 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. 

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...

 

 

Steps to move forward...

The following image has had significant meaning for myself and others the past couple weeks as I've used it to help me consider what I'm heading toward in 2012.

Where do you find yourself in the image?

Perhaps you are standing at the bottom of the steps indecisive having yet to enter into the challenges ahead...

Or maybe you see yourself within the walls safely running around child-like in the forrest on the hill...

Still... Many of us will see ourselves between the two arches... Within the tension of liminal space having left one dimension of life although not yet ready to enter the next. 

An interesting image and question to say the least...

What determines where we see ourselves and the ensuing movements that take place in our next season is inevitably impacted by our addictions.

Waiting with...

What are you waiting for?

The idea of waiting seems like such passive, finger tapping on the table, empty space. But the type of waiting modeled by folks like Joseph, Martin Luther King Jr., Simeon (the guy who waited to die until he sees Jesus at the temple) or Rosa Parks (pictured above) points to the difficult paradox that God’s people deliberately practice a peculiar way of active waiting.

The Hebrew word for “to wait” - Qavah - is defined as “a binding together”. (Similar to the latin root of the word “Religion” also defined as “binding together”). That root definition in the Hebrew provides some helpful perspective for me to be reminded that amidst all the waiting that apparantly is so essential in growing up with God perhaps there is a quiet sacred union taking place… an intimate binding between me and the Creator of the cosmos.

"How to Follow Jesus without being Shane Claiborne" (I'm borrowing this one!)

I'm unashamedly copying and pasting a blog post from one of my favorite peer thinkers of recent days. Her name is Rachel Held Evans.  What you'll see below hits the tension within my faith journey in a very very relevant way. And for some of you that find Access provokes your spirituality in healthy ways yet you end up frustrated in attempting to tangibly live it out I'm hoping you find Rachel's honest and practical thoughts helpful. (and I'd love for you to respond to her final question!)

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So I’ve recently discovered that my Christian faith tends to fall into a sad and predictable cycle, complete with five phases:

Phase 1: My commitment to Jesus is primarily an intellectual one.  He is an idea I believe in, not a person I follow.  

Phase 2: I read through the Gospels again and realize that Jesus doesn’t want me to simply like him; he wants me to follow him.

Phase 3: I buy the latest Shane Claiborne book, read it in two days, and resolve that following Jesus means selling all my things, sleeping with the homeless, and starting a monastic community. I begin looking into the cost of apartments in inner-city Nashville.

Phase 4:  I remember that I have a job, a mortgage, and a spouse (who hasn’t read Shane Claiborne).

Phase 5:  Heavy with guilt and overwhelmed by the insurmountable nature of my own convictions, I give up and revert right back to Phase 1. Following Jesus, it seems, just isn’t realistic.  

This cycle has been repeating itself for about three years now, but I think I may have figured out how to stop it…or at least make the ride a little less bumpy.