In which I am restored

I have to admit to feeling mighty comfortable right about now. I have a cup of peppermint tea, I've just finished cleaning up from baking peanut butter cookies, the fireplace is on, Anne Murray is singing "Nobody Loves Me Like You Do" and Anne is sleeping. And for icing on the cake, it's snowing right now. Big, fat, fluffy flakes that stick to everything. I feel cozy and warm, restored and quieted.

Brian is out in Abby again this weekend, working on my parent's basement (he's building a hallway for them). So it's just been Anne and I for the weekend. I even decided to stay home from church this morning. I just needed a weekend with nothing to do and nowhere to go. We've cleaned up, done laundry, baked, coloured, learned songs and generally had a delightful weekend with snuggles and books and good food. I did try to teach myself how to knit last night. I looked up every knitting video on the internet and worked away with my needles for two hours before finally setting it aside with a profound need for personal lessons. Even that couldn't faze me. I feel very restored by time alone.

I think that part of my lack of coping skills the past couple of weeks has been directly related to my level of busy-ness and lack of quiet. I like to be home. I know that there are folks that are energized by being with people, but baby, I ain't one of them. I need my quiet time. I need to be able to read. To feel like my house is clean and there are groceries in the fridge for suppers. I like being able to spend time with Anne but not be in such a frenzy about it. Just quietly be together, baking or choring around or singing. I like not having to talk for a while.

This afternoon, we'll drive out to Abby through the snow to pick up Brian. Then home for a relaxing evening. Masterpiece Theatre on PBS is showing "Northanger Abbey" tonight and so I know where I'll be this evening.

 

In which Anne is a member of Tragic Cuts

 

One should not cut one's daughter's hair when one is suffering from a sore shoulder due to being wrenched on the SkyTrain, is bleary with lack of sleep, still sniffling over a cold, starving hungry and said-toddler is convinced that you need to eat the pea that she is so patiently holding out to you and trying to shove into your mouth.

At that moment, one should say to oneself, "Put down the scissors. The haircut can wait a day."

But no. You pick up the scissors and start to cut In retrospect, one should simply be thankful that no blood was shed. However, the wee child now has abysmally crooked bangs. Even cute barrettes and ponytail holders do not detract from the sad state of affairs. At that point, one should simply quit while one is ahead.

One should not - I repeat, should NOT - keep cutting the bangs in an effort to somehow make them become straight. Because one's toddler-child will end up with bangs about 5cms long and still crooked.

I'm just saying.

 

 

 

In which my easy Christ has left the building

My Easy Christ Has Left the Building
by Calvin Miller

My easy Christ has left the church.
Who can say why?
Maybe it's because His video-logged apostles all
read diet-books, travel agency brochures
and Christian fiction thrillers
on how the world should end
But none read books on what the starving ignorant
should do until it does.
He left the church so disappointed that Americans
could all spell "user friendly"
but none of them could spell "Gethsemane"

Can we say for sure he's quit?
Oh yes, it's definite, I'm afraid:
He's canceled his pledge card.
I passed him on the way out of the recreation building
near the incinerator where we burn
the leftover religious quarterlies
and the stained paper doilies
from our Valentine banquets.
"Quo Vadis, Domine?" I asked him.
"Somewhere else," he said.

My easy Christ has left the church,
walking out of town past seminaries where
student scholars could all parse the ancient verbs
but few of them were sure why they had learned the art.
He shook his head counfounded that many
had studied all his ancient words
without much caring why he said them.
He seemed confused that so many
studied to be smart, but so few prayed to be holy.

Some say he left the church
because the part-time missionaries were mostly tourists
on short-term camera safaris,
photographing destitution to show the
pictures to their missionary clubs back home.
I cannot say what all his motives were.
I only know I saw him rummaging through dumpsters
in Djakarta looking for a scrap of bread
that he could multiply.
"Quo vadis, Domine?" I asked him.
"Somewhere else," he said.

He's gone - the melancholy Messiah's gone.
I saw him passing by the beltway mega-temple
circled by its multi-acred asphalt lawn,
blanketed with imports and huge fat vehicles
nourished on the hydrocarbons of distant oil fields
where the poor dry rice on public roads
and die without a requiem, in unmarked graves.

Is it certain he is gone?

It is.

We saw him in the slums of Recife,
telling stories of old fools
who kept on building bigger barns,
oddly idealistic tales of widows with small coins
who outgave the richer deacons of the church.

I saw him sitting alone in a fast-food franchise
drinking only bottled water and sorting through
a stack of world-hunger posters.
He couldn't stay long.
He was on his way to sell his
old books on Calvin and
Arminius to buy a bag of rice for Bangledesh.

My easy Christ has left the church.
I remember now where I last saw him.
He was sitting in one of those new
square, crossless mega-churches
singing 2x choruses and playing bongos
amid the music stands and amplifiers
with anonymous Larrie and Sherrie.
He turned to them in church and said
"I am He! Follow me!"
But they told him not to be so confrontational
and reminded him that they
had only come for the music and the drama,
and frankly were offended that he would dare
to talk to them out loud in church.
After all, they were only seekers, with a right to privacy.

I followed him out through the seven-acre vestibule,
where he passed the tape-duplicating machine
where people could buy the "how to" sermons
of the world's most famous lecturers.

He left the church and threaded his way
across the crowded parking lot,
laying down those whips and cords
he'd once used to cleanse the temple,
and looked as though he wanted to make
key-scrapes on Lexi and huge white Audis
and family buses filled with infant seats.

He stooped and shed a tear after
and wrote "Ichabod" in the sand.
In a sudden moment I was face to face with him.
"Quo vadis, Domine?" I asked him.
"Somewhere else," he said.

My easy Christ has left the church,
abandoning his all-star role in Easter pageants
to live incognito in a patchwork culture,
weeping for all those people who
cannot afford the pageant tickets.

He picked up an old junk cross,
lugging it into the bookstore
after the great religious rally,
and stood dumfounded
among the towering stacks of books
on how to grow a church.
"Are you conservative or liberal?" I asked him.
But he only mumbled, "Oh Jerusalem"
and said the oddest thing about a hen
gathering her vicious, selfish chicks under her wings.
He left the room as I yelled out after him,
"Lord, is it true you've quit the church?
Quo vadis, Domine?"
"Somewhere else," he said.

 

 

In which a song takes me back to Remnant

I had a nostalgic moment at church on Sunday. We sang the song "I Surrender All" in its entirety. I simply love that song.
But in that moment, I was brought back a few years. When I closed my eyes, I was 4 years younger. We were in New Braunfels. We were in The Warehouse on a Wednesday night for our high school midweek service at Tree of Life. I had spent the hour before, locked in that dismal red room with a group of leaders as we prayed for the teens of the city and for our service. I had visited with kids that I'd known for a few years, kids that came over every Monday night or just when they felt like it, kids that I'd camped with and wept with and laughed with. I patrolled the building after the service started, chasing in the stragglers, eyeing the kids on the train tracks, sullenly smoking and feeling alienated. I had gone inside and stood at the back of a darkened warehouse/sanctuary, alternately singing and keeping a watchful eye.
And then Caleb, Amelia, Rory, Brandon, Anthony and Natalie began to sing "I Surrender All".
I used to love when we sang that song. The room would become very quiet. I used to love to just keep my eyes open and watch these beautiful young people as they worshipped. I could see them quietly crying or on their knees. I remember stretching my arms wide, wanting to encompass them all, hold them all. I felt such connection with God and such connection with our church. We sang loudly together - some of us *cough* worse than others. I sank to my knees, tears running down my face, arms outstretched. People began to pray together in huddles of two or three, seeking support for struggles or friendship for the journey or the face of God. The purity of the request, the oneness of our hearts and the beauty of our worship combining, proclaiming our corporate desire to "ever love and trust Him".

All to Jesus, I surrender;
All to Him I freely give;
I will ever love and trust Him,
In His presence daily live.

I surrender all, I surrender all,
All to Thee, my blessed Savior,
I surrender all.

All to Jesus I surrender;
Humbly at His feet I bow,
Worldly pleasures all forsaken;
Take me, Jesus, take me now.

All to Jesus, I surrender;
Make me, Savior, wholly Thine;
Let me feel the Holy Spirit,
Truly know that Thou art mine.

All to Jesus, I surrender;
Lord, I give myself to Thee;
Fill me with Thy love and power;
Let Thy blessing fall on me.

All to Jesus I surrender;
Now I feel the sacred flame.
O the joy of full salvation!
Glory, glory, to His Name!

The words would linger in the room for minutes after the song ended. There would be a silence so deafening that I could tell God was clearly speaking to the hearts and minds of these kids. There was a restfulness and a pregnancy to the silence before Brian would quietly say "I think we should keep singing".

And then we would sing all evening long.

In which black and white collide

There have been a few conversations and interactions I've had lately that have made me ask a question:

Is it better to start off your journey of faith as a black-and-white person or not?

Often when someone decides they want to follow Jesus, they are a product of the community they find themselves in. Since most of the people I run with are in the evangelical world (as opposed to mainline denominations which tend towards the more cerebral or social Jesus), this means that there are often a lot of black-and-white rules going on. We have membership classes or Bible studies where we discuss life and often what comes out is a list of "How to Be a Christian" or "How to Grow as a Christian":

This is what a Christian wears.

This is the absolute literal way to interpret the Bible. Anything that doesn't agree with it, is wrong.

This is what a Christian says.

This is what a Christian thinks about social issues (pick any of the following: abortion, gay marriage, tax cuts, war etc.).

These are the books you read.

This is the doctrine you adhere to.

These are the Scriptures we read - pay no attention to the ones that don't support that.

Christianity is simple.

This is the church you attend.

If you're a woman, here are the ministries open to you. We don't want you to preach or lead anything. Men are just better at that.

These are the movies you see.

And so on.

I have seen this result in two things in particular:

1. A burned-out person that thinks Christianity is nothing more than rules to follow; a shallow empty religion devoid of enlightenment, a crutch, narrow-minded etc. Consequently, they either walk/fade away or they begin to battle with these ideas (which results either in walking away from faith altogether anyway or in a new understanding emerging after they've been delivered or set free from those boundaries that results in transformation and incarnational living).

Or,

2. A legalist that feels the need to have everyone serve God the exact same way that they do. I saw this a lot in the Word of Faith circles that I was raised in. We learned to question the salvation of people in "other churches" because they didn't have the "full revelation" we did. We almost distrusted people that worshipped differently just because they didn't believe the way that we did. Like most fundamentalists or literalists, we always had a pack of Scriptures that served as a mighty fine brick for beating down those that said "But what about...?" If you didn't speak in tongues, we felt we needed to "get you saved". There wasn't a lot of room for other believers let alone seekers.

I see this happen a lot amongst young people in particular (maybe my personal experience is limited because we were Youth and College & Career Pastors for a time). I also see it in smaller churches with charismatic leaders and willing people without a frame of reference for their faith. They are incredibly passionate and so when they latch onto something, they often make it their whole life. Which is wonderful.

However, when we are indoctrinated in this black-and-white theology, with little room for discussion or interpretation (let alone differences), we get dogmatic and almost pharisaical, judgemental and harsh. We succeed in driving away those of deeper natures with valid questions, almost preferring to create an overly simplistic version of Christianity that simply doesn't exist either in church history or, to be honest, real life.

It'd be nice if everything was as black and white as "Jesus was a white middle class Republican" and he thinks I'm doing everything right, but that ain't so, baby. (It'd be nice if the Bible was a rule book or answer book, but I see a meta-narrative, a story, filled with poetry, answers (yes), metaphors, symbols, parables.)

When we were pastors, we used to strive to have our kids think and question. It was hard sometimes in the environment that we were in as their parents were often of the "black-and-white" theology of American evangelicalism-with-roots-in-Word-of-Faith. It was hard to preach and model and teach a life apart from rules - a life lived in the Spirit, a Christianity that isn't afraid of questions or differences or boundary-markers. It was hard because it's easier to be black-and-white. It was hard because some of the people wanted rules and regulations to make it easy and simple for people. We didn't always succeed. I, more than Brian, am a people-pleaser to I learned to say the right things, behave the right way, teach the right things and often encourage the narrowness.

It is easier to teach abstinence than temperance. It is easier to say "take that bikini off" than to talk about sexuality and modesty from God's perspective. It is easier to say abortion is always wrong and they are baby killers, than to have compassion. It is easier to home-school or go to a Christian school, than to mix with the "heathen" that might corrupt. It is easier to listen only to Christian music and miss the beauty or truth of other artists. It's easier to barricade ourselves in Christian ghettos than to get out in life where it's messy (where Jesus is waiting?). It is easier, easier, easier to set life up with rules. It is easier to expect our pastors to be perfect and never fail. It is easier to see the church as the oracle. It's easier to be "the Lord's anointed that you shall touch not" bringing down messages from the holy mountain than to be fellow traveller.

But is it better/easier when later - after life has crumbled into a pile that doesn't resemble the nice, neat suburban rules or tragedy strikes or your husband leaves or you don't fulfill the ultimate evangelical goal of getting married and having babies or you get sick or you just start to read more widely - you think "Is this all there is? A list of rules to keep? Go to church (preferably one of "ours")? Read your Bible every day? Pray using these 7 steps? Get married and have babies? Seriously? That's it?" No power. No grace. No transformation. Still dealing with the same issues. Unchanged. If we dare to articulate these questions, we are often told "You need to pray more, do more, serve more, read your Bible more - God doesn't fail so obviously you are failing somehow. Real Christians don't have these questions."

And we find ourselves starting to wonder - is this it? No, it's not. But because we have taught a faith devoid of transformation or grace, we walk away.

We walk away to other religions or to a religion of doubt and we say "I like Jesus but I sure hate Christians" or we feel exiled and ignored, misunderstand and unwelcome.

I have always thought that one thing that distinguished Christianity most from other religions is that it is alive and living. Our "spiritual teacher" or "God" isn't dead or separate. The miracle of the Incarnation (fully human, fully divine, God alive today, in us) means that faith is able to be fluid and malleable, able to handle questions, not tied to dogma but open to evolution and experience (within the confines of orthodoxy - which has also shifted over the years...).

Not really sure where I'm going with this other than to ask: Is it better to make it "simple" for people by making rules? Or is it worse because sooner or later, they are either going to have to be delivered from that (legalism, guilt etc.) or they are going to walk away?

I don't see Jesus in that.