Tall Monastic Guy

boundaries, freedom, tension...

God desires that we stay within the boundaries he has set for us. He first voiced a boundary in Genesis chapter 2 when he told Adam that he had free reign over the entire garden with the exception of this one particular tree in the middle of the garden. We've struggled with boundaries ever since. And today things like global warming, teen pregnancy, and alcoholism are nearly a part of our every day conversations.

I'll be 30 years old this September. I'm not sure 30 is all to significant of an age, but with that number approaching I've been assessing stuff. Spiritual stuff. I've been thinking about the brand of spirituality I began my life with and how heavy laden it was with rules, boundaries, and high emphasis on morality. Then, a subtle quarter life crisis took over and the pendulum swung from an emphasis on pristine morality to all the freedoms a follower of Christ can enjoy. All this to say, as 30 approaches, I'm seeking a healthier medium, understanding the beauty and confidence that comes with a healthy understanding of our freedoms as well as renewing my understanding of God given boundaries and limitations.

This last Sunday I shared this aspect of my story and inter-weaved it with the story of Genesis chapter 3. I chose Genesis chapter 3 because of the image of God that the reader can see. He lays down that first boundary and says if anyone chooses to cross it, death will result. Adam and Eve choose to cross the line and interestingly, physical death is not the immediate result. The immediate result is humanity's shame, embarrassment, and self-rejection. And God's immediate response to their self-rejection and the embarrassment of being naked is he makes garments of clothing for them. Not only do they not die right away but God clothes them to cover their shame. And that would be the first of many times throughout scripture in which God would cover us and come to the rescue amidst his bride's shame and embarrassment.

As many times as we see God's mercy and compassion, we also hear of his desire for purity and righteousness. We learn over time that freedom and boundaries are the two sides of one coin that is God's love. When freedom is enjoyed within the tension of a balanced understanding of boundaries and limitations we'll find the harmony and serenity that one would expect in a garden.

I suppose with age comes a better understanding of limitations. I found that out yesterday morning as Angie and I ran the Bolder Boulder 10k race. I didn't train near as much as I did last year and I believed I could get away with it and still attempt to beat last year's time. I figured out that it wasn't that easy. I was passed by kids less than half my age.

I'm learning that running this race takes lots of discipline. It requires that I embrace tension and often times I need accountability and determination to persistently live within this tension. And it takes an understanding that the tension that exists between freedom and boundaries is a purposefull aspect of our triune God's love for us.

No more Lazy Dog...

Last evening I pulled into the Lazy Dog parking lot as I do every Wednesday evening for a good burger and time with the guys and without warning was shocked to find that the Lazy Dog is no longer. The signs are stripped away and the place is gutted on the inside. I couldn't believe it. So, last night we had to go searching for a new Wednesday night spot. I was very very bummed. I loved that place.

I havn't written much lately because we're house sitting right now and I took the occasion to take a rest from blogging as well as cut down on emailing. I needed a little change of pace and like anything else, the blogging and emails can become nothing more than a distracting diversion from much more important things in life.

This week is quite busy. I'm doing the sermon for Adullam on Sunday which adds to an already busy week of writing a grant proposal, 20 Franklin Covey hours, several meetings, and training to kick butt at the Bolder Boulder next Monday. But in my next post, I'll review what I'll be talking about Sunday morning. I'm thinking through ideas of limitations and boundaries that come out of the creation story and the dialogue of Genesis 3. It's been good stuff for my own heart and soul to process through.

Mystery and Knowledge

Yesterday's seminary graduation did bring a bit of closure to this season of life marked by high intensity theological education... in the institutional sense of it. It was ironic and funny how 6 foot 6 inch me got to sit by my 6 foot 5 inch partner in crime, Jason, smack in the middle of the Master of Divinity graduates. Besides our height, Jason and I were 2 of the highly unusual right brained, creative/dynamic learner, emerging/missional church-type guys on the Denver Seminary campus these last 4 years. Yesterday marked the end of an emotional, sometimes lonely, often highly uncomfortable learning experience. Now that Jason and I are here we look back and wonder what God's providence was all about in getting us through. Recently, in my apprenticeship with Missio, I took the Burkman leadership grip evaluation. Through that highly accurate evaluation I further learned that my artistic monastic personality and giftings runs in stark contrast to many educational institutions.

Why is that? Last week I read a great article in Relevant Magazine which contained an interview with retired professor and pastor, Eugene Peterson. I loved what he had to say in relation to this and I'm just going to copy some of that article here...

Relevant: Why do we resist mystery?

Peterson: We hate mystery. We're enamored with knowledge. We have incredible educational institutions, all getting a certain kind of knowledge that has to do with information and function. There is little relational stuff going on in there. If there is a problem, our first response is to find out what's wrong and find the technology to fix it. If we can't do that we've failed. But most of life is mystery... The informational part of languange is about 10%; 90% is relational, with a lot of ambiguity.

Here's my favorite response in the article...

Relevant: Imagination seems to be the key theme to what your about.

Peterson: Because it catapults us into mystery. Imagination seems to be the thing least valued in our present culture. There's a lot of attention given to fantasy, but the difference between fantasy and imagination is that in fantasy, the story has us at the center of it, indulging us. Imagination takes us beyond ourselves. There's not enough of that happening today...

And it's definetly not encouraged at the seminary I just graduated from and if it wasn't for our mentor, Wes, Jason and I likely wouldn't have walked across the stage yesterday. There's definetly a place for knowledge. It's good and necessary when balanced with a proper perspective that for us mortals, mystery will always reign supreme.

Wheat & Weeds...

But why must the weeds remain with the wheat? In recent days, Jesus' parable of the wheat and the weeds in Matthew 13:24-30 is troubling and intriguing me more than ever. This morning I met with a friend that I have the awesome privilege of walking through life with right now and he was, in different terms than mine, talking about this same idea. He was talking about self-absorption and how sometimes in our trek through life we seem to mature and grow knowingly or unknowingly at the expense of others. He said, by our nature we are born and bred consumers as we so often progress while making things difficult for someone else. This deep analytic guy was talking in terms way over my head and so I can't even begin to replicate what he was saying, but we ultimately agreed that he was talking about this ever deepening mystery of the wheat and the weeds.

For most of us who spent our childhoods in conservative christian homes, our parents and our churches spent much energy helping us avoid anything resembling evil or darkness. We upheld this dualistic worldview in which the flesh is bad and the Spirit is good. Then one day we found ourselves in a rut, in the middle of something seemingly so dark and overwhelming and we cried out to God in the injustice of it all. Death, divorce, cancer, a friend's betrayal, something that served to wound our hearts so badly and forced us to face this idea that the world is a hybrid, a mixture of darkness and light. That in our quest for light, we can't avoid confrontation with darkness. What a seemingly impossible place to sit in.

In light of this conversation, I had an interesting learning experience last week during Angie and I's southwest road trip. As we traveled through the land of the Navajo's, i learned that Native Americans do not value this dualsim within their tradition. The Pueblo people create both clowns and kachina's to expose darkness and light together. They had a good mother, the Corn Maiden ready to give blessing and provision typically paired with an Ogre Woman ready to brutally snatch away. It was a similar concept to the Far East understanding of the Yin always being intertwined with the Yang. These people didn't grow up in constant fear and avoidance of darkness or the continual process of carefully attempting to seperate the wheat from the weeds.

So my friend and i didn't come to any resolutions this morning except to further dwell on and find a bit of assurance in the mystery of this parable found in Matthew's gospel. This mystery has been brought to the forefront of my attention recently in reading Richard Rohr's Adam's Return: The Five Promises of Male Initiation. In it, Rohr says,

"We remain split. Flesh is bad and Spirit is good in our terrible dualism. Yet the Christian religion is suppossed to be incarnation--a love affair between flesh and spirit. It is really quite strange." ... "Ours is the only religion in the world that dares to believe that God became flesh."

So, we are told in the Bible that perfection (wheat) had to dwell with imperfection (weeds) so that order would be restored. And now, as his image bearers, we dwell within the same paradox, seeking to grow wheat while allowing weeds to grow along side it. The two somehow belong together for now, which will always confound me.

The end of the parable says it won't always remain like this. That there's hope for a healthy harvest. And Christ communicates this hope by saying the Kingdom isn't here yet, but it's here already. It's at hand, so choose to live as wheat. Choose to live among the weeds cause you can't avoid them anyway. No matter how much fertilizer is applied they'll still pop up. So, can you let them be for now? Can you let the two remain together? It doesn't make sense, does it? But Jesus says that the parable is like the kingdom of heaven in that we can have hope in an ultimate great and holy sifting, that we can truly be still and know that weeds will one day be an afterthought.

What would Jesus wear?

A question for you...

What does what you are wearing today communicate to other people? What will my oxford shirt and khaki's tell people about me as I try to sell them a planner today? Just curious. When I went to a worship meeting growing up I had to wiggle into a decent pair of pleated slacks and a button down collored shirt and most often wore a tie. Why is that? Would Jesus dress up or dress down to go to the meeting house?

When I'm in my preferred, old and sometimes torn and faded jeans and a well worn t-shirt and sandels, what is that saying to you about me? I wear a hoop through the upper cartilage of my ear. Is there ever an occasion in which I should take that out to be more respectable to certain people? Should I be neatly shaven before going into a house of worship? What about when I'm the guy giving the sermon?

And what about name brand clothing? I like this one t-shirt of mine that's bright green and it says Puma across the front. I really don't know who made it or if they got paid a fair wage for their efforts in stitching it together. Puma is a big company and I'm sure they're trying to run their corporation as "cost efficient" as possible.

In my more athletic and single days i didn't mind running around in a shirt with the sleeves cut off to show off my amazingly huge guns. What was that trying to communicate?

So what does what you wear communicate to people?

 

southwest road trip...

Angie and I just returned from our 6th anniversary road trip. We saw ancient indian cave dwellings at Mesa Verde National Park in Cortez CO, then 2 days hiking around Grand Canyon's south rim, and finally 2 days bumming around the plaza in Santa Fe. Lots of miles and memories logged.

There were these refrains that echoed in my mind as we hiked in the canyon...

"remain in me"...

..."be still and know."

A very good trip. I further learned that God is big, diverse, & creative. Enjoy the pics...