Tall Monastic Guy

1,300...

That number is a low estimation of the amount of sermons I have heard in my lifetime. I spoke with a woman about twice my age who has listened to around 3,000, but can't remember anything from any of them other than one in particular which spoke about God's wrath and what hell would be like.

Next time you find yourself listening to a sermon, have a look around at who sits in the room with you. Most likely the other listeners look eerily similar to you. Most have the same skin color, similar income bracket, theology, perhaps similar political leanings, and education level.

How much are all these sermons converting us to be like the poor Galilean man we claim so adamantely to follow?

trust

For the past 3 weeks I’ve been leading a few people from Adullam in what we’ve called, Soulace, a 6 week dialogue concentrating on our core values of community, communion, and mission. This past week’s focus centered on consumerism and more specifically how our preoccupation with stuff creates major issues in living full lives as God’s missional people. Although we came to no conclusions about how exactly to counter-act our consumer saturated existence, the experiment for the next two weeks is to spend 30 minutes a day doing nothing but offering yourself silent before God… Way easier said than done. It’s amazing how programmed I seem to be to busy myself making some type of perceived transaction. It’s my job as a good capitalist to appear productive, right? Expending energy on something and expecting to receive something of value in return.

God’s message to and through me for the past several weeks now has been flashing in neon. “Can you trust me?” I’ve heard it repeated over and over as if God’s saying, “I don’t think you get it, yet, so I’ll just persistently and gently keep asking.” As I work with young leaders in the MCAP or with others locally I hear them being asked the same, “Can you trust me?”, sometimes said and interpreted a bit differently.

If you’ve read much of this blog since I began it a year ago, you’ve probably read several quotes by Franciscan friar, Richard Rohr. So, it will come as no surprise that I post another Rohr paragraph that speaks well to this, “Do you trust me?” thing.

“Thus the central issue is always trust. It is “allowing” God to give Himself to me apart from being worthy of it. As wonderful and unbelievable as that is, it also very humiliating for the ego-self. Thus the natural temptation is to find methods to make ourselves “worthy”. It is almost the only way that the capitalist mind can understand reality at all. We make everything into buying and selling. We naturally operate by “the performance principle.” We can’t believe that we’re loved with nothing in exchange, absolutely nothing. Our real value depends on what we are and not what we do. We continually try to be good people, whatever that means. In reality we are not always good, but we are holy. Being good is something that we earn or acquire or achieve, but we’re holy because we cam forth from God.”

(p.93 Simplicity)

Sacreligion

What is a healthy level of sacreligion?

I believe Jesus was the ultimate sacreligious person of faith. Healing people on the Sabbath, keeping the wedding party going by making several casks of fine merlot, having dinner with Zacceus, letting a prostitute wash his feet with perfume, or advocating for another so she wouldn’t get stoned by the pious. The gospels are full of “you’ve heard it said, but I say…” ... sacreligious kind of ideas to the orthodoxy police who cared more about the law than loving their neighbor.

log on

This is an "old timer" photo that my friend, Dan, took this past Saturday. Several Adullam dudes, spent the day peeling logs for a friend's log cabin in the hills. Very manly activity.

healing through wounds...

Lately, life has taught me that we are a wounded people and no one gets exemption. Some wounds appear more severe than others and perhaps some require extra care to heal, but nobody weasles their way out of this basic human crappiness that is our condition of woundedness.
An abusive family member, fundamentalist religion, soured relationships, bad coaches or teachers, we’ve all been beaten up by something and the majority of these beatings leave a wake that lingers whether we allow ourselves to be cognizant or not. And we respond creatively to liberate ourselves from life’s varied monsters. Some of these responses involve clever illusions and other fascinating forms of covering wounds in order to make a reasonably content way with life.

Congrats Angela!

After doing the 9-5 for over 7 years, getting me through grad school, etc., Angie's done working... for 2 more months.

Congrats, dear!
... and an early Happy Mother's Day!

Transferring the Excess

Interesting interview with some Seattle college students who are taking radical steps toward simplicity and communal living. Conducted by the folks at Mustard Seed Associates.

Transferring the Excess