Isn't It Ironic?

For all that challenges me about this “in-between” that my life has found its way into, one virtue is that I have a chance to catch up on reading. So I can say without embarrassment that I was reading the May, 2009 issue of Martin Marty’s Context when I came across his summary of an article that appeared in the September 8, 2008 Christianity Today regarding what the author, Scot McKnight, dubbed “Ironic faith.”

My attention was grabbed by a reference to Brian McLaren. Several years ago I read his book, Generous Orthodoxy at the invitation of my then Associate Pastor, Steve Blackstock. I remembered as I read this article that I felt much of McLaren’s critique of the mainline was a caricature, and that many of the things he was longing for within the Evangelical church were present in the churches those Evangelicals had left behind.

McKnight talks about eight “catalysts” of this “ironic faith” that he sees emerging out of Evangelicalism, and I read the list I wondered if these were not all things that the mainline churches had tried to address as far back as the 1920’s….My quick summary of his points follows, but I urge to you read his article to see if I am being fast and loose with my understanding.

http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2008/september/39.62.html?start=2

1. Biblical inerrancy is not sufficient to express the truth of the Gospel.
2. The radical message of Jesus, often muted by the church, has political dimensions and global perspective.
3. Though committed to the bible, it is not the appropriate ground for scientific belief…when the bible and science offer different stories, science does not have to bow.
4. Authenticity—the congruence of belief and life—is an important marker of Christianity.
5. Pluralism is not a threat to true faith, but a witness to the goodness and wonder of God.
6. Images of a harsh and judging God (sometimes unfortunately equated with the “Old Testament God”) must always be viewed from the perspective of God’s love and compassion (sometimes triumphally equated with “The New Testament God, or the God of Jesus).
7. The hard rhetoric of scripture on issues of homosexuality does not have to be taken literally, and should not overtake a compassionate and loving approach to all people regardless of sexual preference or orientation.
8. I have to quote this one… “Emergents reason that theology is language-bound; language has its limits; the Bible is in language; that means the Bible, too, has the limits of language.”

Maybe it’s just me, but I read this list and it just sounds to me like what Harry Emerson Fosdick tried to argue in the face of J. Gresham Machen in the Fundamentalist-Modernist controversies of the first quarter of the 20th century. For a terrific summary Wikipedia does a real service. Read more at

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fundamentalist_controversy

All I can conclude is that it is not theology, doctrine of scripture, or even sexual politics that is keeping the “emergents” from finding their way back home. Some would argue that it’s all about worship wars, and a desire for a more casual, “contemporary” approach to worship, but again the critiques seem to me mostly grounded in caricature. Worship, at least in the Presbyterian churches I have experienced, is not what it was when the fundamentalists left, and indeed when I’ve talked to “emergents” who have found they way back into the pew, one of the things they cherish is the connection to the musical traditions of their youth…”music you can sign!”

There’s something else going on here, and I would hazard two guesses.

First, I wonder if these emergents who are looking for just what is being served in many mainline churches every Sunday are just a little afraid to walk back in the doors—if they aren’t something like poor Jacob, waiting anxiously alongside the Jabbok for his brother Esau. There is, I suspect, genuine fear that should they return they would not be welcome.

But that leads to the second “I wonder”—if the mainline isn’t just a little bit afraid of letting the emergents back in, unsure how much of their baggage they will bring with them. I, for one, am tired of fighting the fundamentalist wars. If a separate peace is the only peace that will hold, then I embrace it. But if the real longing is for a faith that earnestly addresses these eight dynamics of the “ironic faith” McKnight is trying to tease out, I wonder if we old mainliners could be gracious enough to open our doors wide to all seekers, and hospitable enough to feed them, and then listen to their honest reflections on the common life we seek to share.

Henri Nouwen’s book, The Return of the Prodigal has been immensely important to me, and as I read Marty reading McKnight I could not get the image of Rembrandt’s painting out of my head. With Nouwen’s wisdom I understand that there’s a little bit of older brother and a little bit of younger brother in us all, and that the great challenge of Christian life is to be a little bit of the father, opening our arms wide for that son who was dead but now lives, while assuring the other son “all that I have is yours!”

It’s just so hard to come home, sometimes, and truth told home can make it pretty hard to return. But as I read and reflected on all this, I felt myself longing for just a touch of grace that might help us see each other clearly, not as adversary or foe, but as children of this great God who loves us all, and longs for each of us to know that welcoming embrace.

Daily Advent Gospel Reading December 10, 2009

Matthew 23:13-26

"But woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you lock people out of the kingdom of heaven. For you do not go in yourselves, and when others are going in, you stop them. Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you cross sea and land to make a single convert, and you make the new convert twice as much a child of hell as yourselves.

"Woe to you, blind guides, who say, 'Whoever swears by the sanctuary is bound by nothing, but whoever swears by the gold of the sanctuary is bound by the oath.' You blind fools! For which is greater, the gold or the sanctuary that has made the gold sacred? And you say, 'Whoever swears by the altar is bound by nothing, but whoever swears by the gift that is on the altar is bound by the oath.' How blind you are! For which is greater, the gift or the altar that makes the gift sacred? So whoever swears by the altar, swears by it and by everything on it; and whoever swears by the sanctuary, swears by it and by the one who dwells in it; and whoever swears by heaven, swears by the throne of God and by the one who is seated upon it.

"Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you tithe mint, dill, and cummin, and have neglected the weightier matters of the law: justice and mercy and faith. It is these you ought to have practiced without neglecting the others. You blind guides! You strain out a gnat but swallow a camel!

"Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you clean the outside of the cup and of the plate, but inside they are full of greed and self-indulgence. You blind Pharisee! First clean the inside of the cup, so that the outside also may become clean."

Yep, for those of you accustomed to receiving your Gospel in Sunday-sized portions, that really IS Jesus talking. I’m not sure if Luke or Matthew got it right, but in Matthew the equivalent of these verses will be found tacked right on to the Beatitudes, though to Luke’s credit some of the scorch has been removed. It does give you a sense of why those Scribes and Pharisees might have gotten fed up with Jesus, though. How many times would you have to hear “You cross land and sea to make a single convert, and you make the new convert twice as much a child of hell as yourselves” before you began to fantasize taking this guy out? Blind fools….hypocrites…blind guides…I don’t know but if this is a verbatim speech of Jesus, you might just see the referee pulling out a yellow flag and making the universal sign for “Piling On.”

But then, Jesus has this edginess throughout these Advent readings, doesn’t he? One of the books I’m wading through is entitled The Forgotten Ways. It’s a pretty thorough critique of how we good “mainline” folk have mostly missed the boat when it comes to really being the church in the 21st century. The author, Alan Hirsch, comes from a perspective that is, well, not exactly compatible with my own, yet I find him often making points I have to nod to. Specifically, he wonders whether we have allowed the institutions of Christendom to obscure or derail the church’s mission. I’m still licking my wounds from his critique of “ordained” leadership (he prefers “apostolic” leaders…the difference a topic for another post!) but as I read the Gospel for today, I wondered if Jesus would not be nodding in at least timid agreement.

The line that got me in the Gospel was “you tithe mint, dill, and cumin, and have neglected the weightier matters of the law: justice, and mercy, and faith.” Yep, I thought….bring all the seasoning but forget about the meat! Small wonder that one of the stories I heard more times than I can remember as a child growing up in the church was good old, “Stone Soup.” It did occur to me every now and then when yet another well-intentioned adult decided it was just the right children’s sermon, that it would not have broken anyone’s bank to throw in a little pork, or chicken, or beef. When I got a little older, and offered the same children’s sermon myself, usually around Lent, and usually as a prelude to a soup meal at the church, I knew when the time came to actually MAKE the stone soup it would be a good idea to start off with a few cups of good beef or chicken broth.

Maybe, just maybe, God doesn’t want the spices we can part with. Maybe God wants the meat and bones of this enterprise. Maybe that is why it wasn’t good enough to wait until He could Twitter or IM his Good News—He had to take on true, full humanity if He was to save it…leaving it forever with the problem of addressing One beyond “he” or “she” as one or the other and always leaving someone unsatisfied….

By now, Good Christian, I am guessing you have made at least a dent in your Christmas shopping list. My ears are still burning from Jesus’ tirade and so I have to ponder, and suggest, that somewhere on that Christmas list we should give some consideration to what it is that God really wants this Christmas. Meat and potatoes. Justice. Mercy. Faith.

Just for kicks, give a wonder to what Jesus might have to say as, say, the City Council argues about whether or not churches can allow the homeless to sleep in their basements during the Advent season…can they have cots? What happens if they get unruly? Will the good upstanding Scribes and Pharisees appointed to watch the unruly hoard fall asleep? Then what? Would Jesus sputter and shout? Or would he just sigh, shake his head, and wonder if the next Nazareth down the road might be a little more open to His Presence?

That’s Advent…cleaning the inside of the cup so that it’s ready when the gifts of heaven pour forth. “For unto you is born this day a Savior….” Pray that we are ready!

1, 2, Skip a Few, 99, 100

And it's not even my thought, really, but one that wound its way to me through Fred Gaines, from his son. I file it under an Advent meditation for "The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light."

Fred shared the story in the context of his own walk with cancer. I am honored and humbled to be invited to share the journey...and then I think..."Hey, wait a minute...that's what Advent is about, too. We're invited to share a journey."

Rabbi Nightengale, if your eyes ever light upon this page, Blessed are you for sharing this story.

http://www.aish.com/jw/s/66842652.html

Meditations on the Advent Gospel Readings: December 1

NRS Matthew 21:12-22

Then Jesus entered the temple and drove out all who were selling and buying in the temple, and he overturned the tables of the money changers and the seats of those who sold doves. He said to them, "It is written, 'My house shall be called a house of prayer'; but you are making it a den of robbers."

The blind and the lame came to him in the temple, and he cured them. But when the chief priests and the scribes saw the amazing things that he did, and heard the children crying out in the temple, "Hosanna to the Son of David," they became angry and said to him, "Do you hear what these are saying?" Jesus said to them, "Yes; have you never read, 'Out of the mouths of infants and nursing babies you have prepared praise for yourself'?" He left them, went out of the city to Bethany, and spent the night there.

In the morning, when he returned to the city, he was hungry. And seeing a fig tree by the side of the road, he went to it and found nothing at all on it but leaves. Then he said to it, "May no fruit ever come from you again!" And the fig tree withered at once. When the disciples saw it, they were amazed, saying, "How did the fig tree wither at once?" Jesus answered them, "Truly I tell you, if you have faith and do not doubt, not only will you do what has been done to the fig tree, but even if you say to this mountain, 'Be lifted up and thrown into the sea,' it will be done. Whatever you ask for in prayer with faith, you will receive."

There is an entire Advent’s worth of meditation on this one Gospel reading alone, out of place as it all might seem. I’m not sure about you, but I don’t think I’ve ever really attended to the movement of Matthew’s narrative. In my mind Jesus in the temple has stood as something of a SWAT operation. Part of my image is Jesus fuming off down the road to Bethany while shell-shocked merchants shook their fists at his fury. It’s hard to imagine Jesus tearing through the outer courts of the temple and then sitting down and attending to those who came to him for healing and comfort.

I’m not sure I have ever attended to the brisk confrontation as the chief priests and scribes find themselves caught between fury, fear, and frustration. Their eyes beheld the healings but they knew that the songs of children would make their way to Pilate’s ears and threaten the delicate balances they had forged with the Roman occupiers. There was no room for another King in the land, and there’s no rocket science involved in figuring out how Caesar would respond to any challenge to his authority. It’s a different, defiant Jesus who strides back to Bethany. This was no retreat.

Then there’s that whole fig tree thing…it hardly seems fair that a tree that did not bring fruit out of season would be cursed, and how this all stands as a testament to faith is troubling if you think about it too much. Just who would want mountains lifting up and getting thrown into seas anyway? Are there not some things better left to the hand of God?

So, I reflect a week late and well into this season of waiting I wonder what would happen if it were the REAL Jesus who met us, and not the one we have wrapped a little too tight in swaddling clothes, and consigned to an eternal manger. Yes, of course, the story starts there, but the season of Advent prepares us for the One who is to come, and this is One who will catch us unaware, threaten and challenge us, and even sometimes curse innocent fig trees that are just minding their own business.

I recall the nativity story from John Irving’s A Prayer for Owen Meany, in which Owen, consigned to the role of the baby Jesus but merging the part with John the Baptist, spies his parents in the audience and creaks out in his Owen Meany voice, “WHAT DO YOU THINK YOU’RE DOING HERE?” It’s a question that deserves some attention as we shop and wrap and deck all our halls. Are we really ready for the One we await? Take a minute before you vote, okay?

Reflections on the Advent Daily Gospel Lessons - The First Monday of Advent

Matthew 21:1-11

When they had come near Jerusalem and had reached Bethphage, at the Mount of Olives, Jesus sent two disciples, saying to them, "Go into the village ahead of you, and immediately you will find a donkey tied, and a colt with her; untie them and bring them to me. If anyone says anything to you, just say this, 'The Lord needs them.' And he will send them immediately. " This took place to fulfill what had been spoken through the prophet, saying, "Tell the daughter of Zion, Look, your king is coming to you, humble, and mounted on a donkey, and on a colt, the foal of a donkey." The disciples went and did as Jesus had directed them; they brought the donkey and the colt, and put their cloaks on them, and he sat on them. A very large crowd spread their cloaks on the road, and others cut branches from the trees and spread them on the road. The crowds that went ahead of him and that followed were shouting, "Hosanna to the Son of David! Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord! Hosanna in the highest heaven!" When he entered Jerusalem, the whole city was in turmoil, asking, "Who is this?" The crowds were saying, "This is the prophet Jesus from Nazareth in Galilee."

Odd place to start Advent, isn’t it? One of my favorite prayers for this season comes from Frederick Buechner, in which he calls us to the edge of our seats to watch this most familiar story unfold, “leaning forward to hear what will happen, even though they already know what will happen and what will not happen”. We know about Mary and the angel Gabriel, sent by God. Shake the dust a bit and we remember Joseph and something about being unable to speak. But as we move into the days of Advent, the lectionary plays a trick, pointing us not to the familiar stories of the early chapters of Matthew and Luke, but to the story from the other end of Jesus’ life. It is, I believe, intended to push us into the mood of the Advent spiritual—to “wonder as we wander, out under the sky, why Jesus the Savior did come for to die…”

It is that odd sense of repetition that catches me when I listen to this story in the darkening days of Advent—how Jesus knew what would happen, and what would not happen. “If anyone asks you, just say this…” Matthew is scrupulous in his explanation. “This took place to fulfill what had been spoken through the prophet.” But you have to believe the two disciples would have been a little slower to complete their assignment if they could have seen even around the corner of this week that would be, maybe setting that colt facing Bethany and giving it a good swift swat to send it running away. So you think one of the things those two disciples muttered to each other over their goblets on wine on Saturday night was, “If only we had known!”

Advent is a queer season of knowing and unknowing, of being surprised by exactly what you knew was going to be. It’s a beginning, of course, but an ending as well. Once that child’s cry pierced the night on Christmas Eve, nothing could ever be the same, not even the telling of how it all came to be.

Buechner’s prayer cuts right to the heart of the matter. Even if we DID know exactly what was happening, and what was not happening, it wouldn’t matter all that much. This season is not about recounting events. It is about meanings. Our meanings. And it is about hearing, only faintly at first, the beating of unseen wings.

At least for this year, if we walk beside the lectionary, the parade to Bethlehem starts at the Mount of Olives, beginning with the end in mind. For poor, ornery people like you and like me. I wonder, as I wander….

There is a time when it begins, and therefore a time before it begins, when it is coming but not yet here, and this is the time that Mary was in when Gabriel came to her. It is Advent: the time just before the adventure begins, when everybody is leaning forward to hear what will happen, even though they already know what will happen and what will not happen, when they listen for meaning, their meaning, and begin to hear, only faintly at first, the beating of unseen wings - Frederick Buechner

Reflections on the Daily Gospel for Advent, 2009

Luke 21:5-19
When some were speaking about the temple, how it was adorned with beautiful stones and gifts dedicated to God, he said, "As for these things that you see, the days will come when not one stone will be left upon another; all will be thrown down." They asked him, "Teacher, when will this be, and what will be the sign that this is about to take place?" And he said, "Beware that you are not led astray; for many will come in my name and say, 'I am he!' and, 'The time is near!' Do not go after them. "When you hear of wars and insurrections, do not be terrified; for these things must take place first, but the end will not follow immediately."

Then he said to them, "Nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom; there will be great earthquakes, and in various places famines and plagues; and there will be dreadful portents and great signs from heaven. "But before all this occurs, they will arrest you and persecute you; they will hand you over to synagogues and prisons, and you will be brought before kings and governors because of my name. This will give you an opportunity to testify. So make up your minds not to prepare your defense in advance; for I will give you words and a wisdom that none of your opponents will be able to withstand or contradict. You will be betrayed even by parents and brothers, by relatives and friends; and they will put some of you to death. You will be hated by all because of my name. But not a hair of your head will perish. By your endurance you will gain your souls."

Tummies still pleasantly full, and our minds quietly hazed by the turkey coma, we are jolted to attention as the season of Advent begins. The message is certainly not the one that is captured in the small mountain of department store flyers that fill out the Sunday morning newspaper. It’s difficult to imagine what we might want with a new GPS, cologne gift sets, golf clubs and tennis rackets if earthquakes, famines and plagues are our lot for the near future. Emergency rations, stockpiles of fresh drinking water, and lots of batteries, perhaps. You might make a justification for soft, snuggly stuffed animals to help you make it through long nights of war and insurrection, but Wii’s, if the story is to be believed, are expendable at best.

We know that a part of what we read between the lines of this Gospel for our first furtive steps into the season is the real-life experience of that first century church who took the stories and images from the life of Jesus and fashioned them into a narrative. Times did get terrifying for the generation to follow the One, especially after Nero fiddled away an empire and pacifist Christians seemed a likely patsy for the fall, but that was a long time ago, and Constantine’s sword was fairly effective in forging an unholy alliance that would grow the church into something resembling the first Multinational corporation before too many centuries had passed. From time to time it has been dangerous to claim the faith, and even in the world we share there are corners where a cross around your neck could lead to significant challenges, but if we’re being real, the dreadful portents and great signs that may unfold in the heavens are far more harbingers of the fragile threads of secular promises lost than any reflection of something requiring a defense of our faith. For most of us, believing in Jesus is at worse a quaint reflection of lost innocence. We’ll die of old age long before we might face a sword of religious persecution.

So what to make of it all? I do not pray for any sort of Holy War, but I do wonder if we need to ponder, at least for a few moments, the possibility that the progress of faith is made less on roads of tinsel and bright packages, and more precisely at those moments when we have the most to lose. As I write this, the nation waits for our new President to announce his strategy in the continuing debacle of Iraq, and pundits on both sides are lining up to assure that no matter what he offers will be rejected out of hand. The notion that we might need more American lives put on the line is about as repugnant a thought as you might allow to tarnish your Christmas stars, but it is difficult to deny that the hole we’ve dug for ourselves will demand some filling before we can step out with any kind of dignity. Could it be that the peace we long for will not come in a slow steady arc of “every day in every way we’re getting better and better”? could it be that the princely peace we long for will require loss, and sacrifice, and long suffering?

We live in an age of quick fixes, and so much of the teaching of this One whose birth we await has been burnished and dissected to fit the longing of our hearts for stories that come to a happy ending within an hour’s time, with commercials included. The Gospel reminds us that the coming of the Lord will indeed threaten the lords and ladies who cling to illusions of power in a world gone mad. There is much in this world that longs for salvation that will have to be set aside, wrapped and burned, melted and refashioned if it is to bear the true image of this One who is to come. It will be a fight to bring this child into the world, and once born, it will be a real battle if he is to emerge victorious, which is to say, “crucified, dead, and buried.”

This first Sunday of Advent we are advised that the road before us will demand more of us than we might actually be ready to give. There’s no gentle encouragement in Jesus’ tone—no soothing of our furrowed brow, no quiet whisper in our ear…”Don’t worry, it all looks frightful but cling to me and all will be well”…”You will be hated because of my name!” We do not make the journey like the winning Olympian, wrapped in his flag while the adoring crowd cheers. We make this journey because it is more true than any of the other convenient and comfortable lies we might otherwise embrace. We make this trip because the One who has gone before us has told us it is the only way. “If any would come after me let them deny themselves, take up their cross daily, and follow me.” (Luke 9:23)

Gracious God, we come to this season with visions of sugar plums, voices tuned to Joy, Peace, and Love. We know this is where you lead, but we pray that we might see your promised land where it truly lies, on the far side of our fears and hopes, through trial and terror, beyond, but not apart from the suffering of this world you love and long to save. Still our hearts, and slow our steps, that in the season that stretches out before us we might begin not only to see the One who Comes, but our own deep need for his touch, heart to heart, by the redemption of your precious blood. Amen.

Peublo Pottery

I've been drawn to the black on black pottery since I first saw it on the shelves at Parson's Indian Trading Post in the Wisconsin Dells many years ago. Tucked onto the shleves behind dusty cases filled with arrowheads and sacred pipes, alongside rows of Dells kitsch, my eye was drawn to the shiny black pots inscribed with geometric patterns. It was on my first visit to Santa Fe, scouring the shops along San Francisco Street with Bruce Rigdon, that I got the first inkling that this was not just a pretty object designed to separate tourists from their money. Bruce was in search of a small pot to bring home to his wife as a birthday present, and that day I heard the name of Maria Martinez, though to be honest it did not sink in. The pottery that bore her name was far more expensive than many of the other pieces, and Bruce explained that Maria was one of the finest artists in the genre. She had died in 1980, and her work was valued by collectors. It added up in my mind to "expensive pretty pot."

But this time to Santa Fe, with a little more time to explore beyond the old city of Santa Fe, I had the opportunity to learn more. We were headed back from Los Alamos (a posting for another day!) and had our eyes open for a peublo that we might be able to knock around in a bit, to taste a little bit of the modern Native American culture after climbing about in the ruins of their ancestors at Bandalier National Monument. Denise had read about San Ildefonso, and when we saw the sign, it seemed worth the detour.

We arrived at a little bit before four in the afternoon, and at the museum and cultural center I saw those familiar pieces of pottery, and the name of Maria Montoya Martinez, and the pieces started to link together. The pueblo was closed to visitors at 5, and so we had to decide whether it was worth the investment for so short a time. A few of the shops might still be open, the woman behind the counter said,and our flight left early enough the next day that we knew it was now or never. Plunking down our money, we got a map and started on our way.

The streets and common areas were mostly deserted, and a beautiful church commanded the center of the scene. Valenti-Hein vacations tend to be drawn to cemeteries, and at the front of the church was a quiet place of repose for former residents of the village, with crosses, mounds, and colorful carvings. We made our way around the corner, and into one of the shops that was open...more a room off the kitchen of the artist than a studio, really. And there, on the table, six or seven pieces, several a deep orange-red, and the rest black.

The gentle man in attendance encouraged us to look. They were to be fired the next day, if we wanted to come back and see. The reddish orange pots were the color of the clay, and the black would be created by firing the pots with horse manure. He showed us the piece of obsidian that was used to laboriously buff the pots to their high gloss, and explained how the designs, that looked like bas relief, were drawn on with a fresh slurry of clay, painting in what to my eye was the background.

It was after I got home that I started to scratch the itch of my curiosity. The pottery, it seems, was first discovered in archeological digs in the early part of the 20th century. Edgar Lee Hewitt, a professor of archeology, had found shards of black on black pottery dating to the neolithic era. Hewitt wanted to reconstruct the pottery for a museum exhibition, and heard about San Ildefenso and the artists who worked there. He brought them the challenge--to not only create the pots, but to try to understand how neolithic people could have acomplished such fine artistry.

Enter Maria Martinez, at the time a young potter who spent the rest of her life trying to understand and recreate the work of her ancient ancestors. She knew about the red clay, and her traditions had preserved the cave-like geometric drawings, but how is it that such a fine luster, and a deep black color were archieved before the alchemy of modern pottery?

Smoke was the obvious answer, but it took years of experimentation to find the right temperatures and mixture of heat and manure to fire the pot just so. The neolithic dating gave away the most likely process of burnishing the pots to their lush gloss: stone on stone! And so, for hours on end the pots were rubbed stone on stone, then set into fires banked with manure in order to produce what the Native people of the pueblos had done before recorded time.

So, it seems, my new little pot is a resurrection story of sorts...an art that grew in the villages tucked into the valleys beneath those dwellings I had crouched into earlier in the day. Stone against stone produced the luster that caught the archeologist's eyes, and a modern artist working away in a modest pueblo while not thirty miles away some of the greatest scientific minds in the world were gathered in Los Alamos working their own alchemy with atoms and isotopes in order to unleash a devastation on the face of the earth that would end the war with a force that would for a generation threaten to end the planet.

Why is it striking to me that the critical ingredient was horse manure? That it was out of a smouldering fire, smoking away on the remains of the horse's day, that such beauty would emerge? That at the same time that Western science was unleashing unconcievable devastation, Maria Martinez and her husband were squatting around the fire behind their pueblo in order to bring back to this earth the pottery of a forgotten age?

We live in a world of contrasts, I decided as I unwrapped that black pot I brought safe home--a world in which beauty is the result of hard labor, saving all the parts, smothering the fire with manure, laying fresh slurry in delicate lines that end up looking like the background.

Such, I suppose, is our lives: shaped and shined, colored by what we might otherwise bury and avoid. In its simplest beauty we find ourselves really only trying to reclaim the traditions lost as we stumbled into "modernity" with a ferocity and pride that really can consume us.

If I head back to New Mexico, I'm not sure I want to see Los Alamos again, but trust me, I will want to see San Ildefenso. I might even spring for the photography permit, and I suppose if I really wanted to be the best steward of my gifts, I would make the investment in one of those pots, still rubbed and fired as they were thousands of years ago. Maybe it's in the sheen of that black on black pottery that we learn the most about our humanness.

Minding the Gap

With a traditional church potluck to send me on my way I waded into the Post-Memorial phase of my life on October 25. What better way to mark such a transition than to spend three days in Santa Fe with Thomas Moore....no, not the Thomas Moore of Henry VIII, but the contemporary writer/post-Jungian/mystic known for many books including Care of the Soul. It was an intriguing mental journey into shadows and archetypes, drifting past many themes that have been so much a part of my personal spiritual journey for these past four years. It's pretty nice to be able to do it in Santa Fe, as well, albeit the weather in Wisconsin was much nicer than in New Mexico for most of the days we were there, but the sun shone bright as Denise and I had the opportunity to crawl around the cliffs of Bandelier National Monument, and I climbed into the darkness of the Kiva at the top of the climb at the end of the trail.

Shadows figure prominently in Jung's thought, and for Moore, too. As I wrestled with what to make of the rich mythological imagery that Moore uses to illustrate his understanding of the soul's journey, I realized how much of my personal journey for oh these long years has been a wrestling with shadows, mostly to the end of keeping them in the dark. "Be perfect, even as your father in heaven is perfect" is without a doubt one of the most troubling sayings of Jesus in my book, and it has brought me to my knees more than once. In the last few years it is a saying that has been illumined by the story of Jacob, preparing to be reunited with his brother Esau, who spent the night on the far side of the Jabok, wrestling with an angel. You remember how Jacob fought all through the darkness, until that sneaky angel touched his hip and dislocated it, leaving Jacob holding on for his life, but still pleading for his blessing. He got it--but he limped away.

Shadows, it seems, never go away, at least not in a three-dimensional world. You wrestle, and stuggle, and limp away, but the depth and truth of a soul is not measured by the shadow's vanquish, but by its marks, carried, and forgotten only at great peril. So, yes, I bought Moore's book, and yes, I asked him to sign it for me, and yes, I have the requisite picture of me and him smiling at a camera. And in the book I read more about his understanding of those critical archtypes that shape our soul...Mother, Father, Child...and the disturbing possibility that the telos of this existence is not to wrestle yourself free from your past, but to find the ways in which shadow and light, good and troubling, gentle and hard, are woven of steel cords in order to provide the skeleton on which God's image is hung in mortals. You cannot run from your past, it seems, but if you carry it gently with you, maybe you can make some peace with it.

Darkness and light, gardens of good and evil all growing like wheat and tares, are not the fault of human nature, but the nature of human fault. As we closed out the seminar, we did the unthinkably oogly, holding hands and sharing how what we'd experienced in these past days might filter into our lives, and I found myself thinking of that voice that fills the stations in London as trains come and go: "Mind the Gap." That, it seems to me, is the work of the next months for me, and I find myself wondering if it is not a part of what the church needs to wrestle with as it continues to limp into the 21st century. It's in the shadows, the gaps, the nights of wrestling that our true identity will begin to emerge.

Four years silence is long enough

four years ago I wandered back into ministry after a sabbatical, and hit the ground running in the 21st century church. two years later, I hit a wall, and the two years since have been a time to try to weave some sense back into it all. the journey is taking a wild new turn now, so maybe its time to break the silence and invte your reflections through my own on just how God IS calling us to be the church in this fractured world.

I'll have time on my hands at the end of October, as 13 1/2 years of ministry comes to an end there. wish me luck...not just in a soft landing in the transition, but in finding some orderly way to reflect on it all, what it means for me, what it means for that church on the corner of college and meade, what it means in the larger picture of God's work in this world that we know and love as the church.