So Is This Faith?

From my June 20, 2007, journal entry (edited to protect the guilty):

God, since things got crazy this past February, I don't know if I've been close to You or distant from You. It's felt like both, all at the same time. So which is it? And that's the enigma--I'll never truly know the answer to that question. Perhaps living in that truth--in that enigma--is faith.

I trust that You are close to me. No matter how I or the people around me mess things up, I trust that You are close to me, to us.

That's my only hope.

God, please help me to never stop listening for Your voice. I'm seldom sure when You're speaking to me at the time, but I know You speak to me and guide me. Please, please God, never stop doing this!

Father, Clothe Me

Father, clothe me with Christ.

Clothe me with humility.

Clothe me with righteousness.

Clothe me with vocation, not just occupation.

Clothe me with friends and community.

Clothe me with purpose.

Father, clothe me with Christ so that I will not be ashamed.

A Little Is Enough

In my previous post, I stated that I have very little.

I have a little money.

I have a new marriage.

I have some friends.

I have an education.

But right now, starting over in Chicago, this doesn't seem like much.

This morning, however, I thought about how often in the Bible God made something out of very little.

David slew a giant with a little stone.

The widow made a lot of cakes with a little oil and flour.

Jesus fed a huge crowd with a little fish and bread.

I guess with Christ...a little is enough.

Stripped Naked

In his book True Self/False Self, Basil Pennington writes that our false self is comprised of 1) what we do, 2) what we have, and 3) what people think of us.

I am unemployed, so I don't do anything.

I have very little.

People don't think about me all that much.

I am stripped naked.

That is scary. But it is also freeing.

This morning as I thought about being "stripped naked," I felt the need to be clothed.

Then, I thought about when the Bible talks about being "clothed with Christ."

I am buck naked and desperately in need of a new wardrobe. And I don't want to clothe myself. Whenever I attempt to do this, my prideful accoutrements always devolve into tattered rags.

I need Christ to clothe me.

I hope He schedules a fitting soon--it's getting a bit nippy.

Community as Sacrament???

As I recently mentioned, I've been thinking about such things as "church" and "community." As I got out of bed this morning, this question popped into my head: Is being a part of a "local church body" a sacrament?

I've never considered encountering the community of people at church as a sacrament. I mean, you have the sacrament of baptism and of communion (Catholics include some additional ones). But going to church--is that in itself a sacrament?

I was reading a book that referenced Thomas a Kempis' The Imitation of Christ. The way the author spoke, I sensed that reading this booked helped him such that more of Jesus got inside him. I liked that idea. And I ordered the book.

But this morning, as the craziness of life has begun to settle and I'm re-entering the sacred space, I see that I am spiritually "scattered." I've been in church detox for over three years now. This was a good and necessary season, and my relationship with God has grown stronger because of it. But, I feel scattered in a way I don't think I'm supposed to be.

And the question God gave me this morning to help me "chew" on this was: Is being a part of a local church body a sacrament?

The answer, I think, is yes...it is. The sacraments are all about marking the reality of the crazy fact that Jesus somehow "gets more in us." And by not being an active part of a "local church body," Jesus is not "in me" to the degree that He wants to be. Hence, the "scattered" feeling.

So, it appears I'm in transition time, yet again.

Jesus, thank you for your nearness to me through every season of life. Thank you for how you've pruned me during my time in church detox. But thank you for showing me how I now need to be in more active relationship within a local expression of your Body. Holy Spirit, please lead me and the missus to the place where we need to both be nourished and to nourish. Please help us "get more of Jesus inside us." Amen.

Community, Shcommunity...

Community. What a rich word. It conjures up thoughts of meaty connection and interaction with other people--relationship that is deep and true. And how incredibly elusive it is for me! This drives me nuts!!!

Of course, wise ones say that those who seek so hard after community are the ones who never can find it. And that would be me.

The wise ones also say that if you can't find the community after which you seek, you possibly are being called to create a new brand of community. But quite honestly, that idea has always intimidated the hell out me! That, and I simply have no idea how to do it.

As a Christian, to me "community" equals "church." Of course, I have come to realize that church isn't something you "go to" or "do"; you can only "be" the church. I sense that the same is true of community. It's not a matter of "finding" but instead of "being" community.

The missus and I are learning to "be" with one another, and I like it. We "are" community, I think. But we both want to share ourselves with others--to expand our community.

We've been attending a wonderful Catholic Mass on Sunday evenings. The singing is sweet, the building is beautiful, and the homilies are short and generally very pithy. But one thing is lacking: we never have a sense of community. Hell, during the Our Father, no one holds hands--even if you offer! And of course, since the missus and I aren't Catholic, we don't partake of the Eucharist. So, we always leave feeling a little flat.

We considered taking the RCIA class so that we could "join" the Catholic church, but when we gave it some more thought, we resented the idea that we would have to agree to uphold various beliefs to which we simply don't adhere. Integrity can be such a pesky thing.

Last week, I came across a blog of a local church here that is comprised of three pastors from three different denominations: American Baptist, Episcopal, and Evangelical Covenant. Intriguing.

It always has ticked me off that in order to "join" a church and experience its community, I have to align myself with a portion of the Body of Christ, and in doing so simultaneously align myself against other significant portions of that same Body. This is blooming ludicrous!!!

Perhaps we'll find a solution at the Church of the Holy Amalgamation.

It's Been A While

As a contemplative, it seems life is either/or: either I live a life of contemplation or a life of action. It's hard for me to do both at the same time, which is the whole point of being a contemplative in the first place. OK--so I have room to grow.

Well, the last few months have been nothing but action, action, action!

A synopsis:

Feb. 2007: Boss' off-balance mental state got to be a bit too much, the powers that be were very understanding but not very helpful, and I resigned. My own mental state was saved.

I decided to explore returning to Chicago and called up a wonderful couple in Evanston who agreed to host me for a while. Girlfriend approved. The idea was that I would go up to Chicago, get "established," and we would marry back in OKC in October.

Apr. 2007: Was hired to work at a ministry in Chicago that I adored when I had previously lived here. Within two days, saw that the culture of the inner workings and I were not a fit. Stuck it out for two months; couldn't make it fit. This is what the missus and I call a "false start," and that's OK.

Missed girlfriend immensely, proposed over the phone (OK--so I'm not a creative contemplative) that we move the date up to June. She liked the idea.

June 2007: Traveled back to OKC, got married, loaded up the truck, and we moved to the Ravenswood/Lincoln Square area of Chicago. Love it, love it, love it!!!

July 2007: Spent a couple of weeks fixing up our place then started looking for jobs.

Sept. 2007: The missus started her job, allowing us to breath a little easier! I'm still looking.

As I said, this is just a synopsis; a million little details have been left out. But suffice it to say, I have not been very contemplative of late!

But I sense that is changing. With the wife out working all day, for the first time in several months, I have space. Not emptiness, mind you. But space. Sacred space.

During all the busyness, I sometimes worried about my not "sensing" God. But I always knew God was there. We have way too much history between us for me to have ever asked the question, "God, have you abandoned me!?!" I knew he was there. And, I knew that He knew that I knew He was there. And for the time being, that was enough.

That "knowing" between us was really all that we shared since February of this year (7 months!): no Bible reading, very little church-going, no other reading (except of online news, of course!). And that was OK. He's OK, and I'm OK. And that is wonderful!!!

But now, the activity has died down, and the sacred space has returned. The fall air is cool; I can be still and breathe deeply. I feel like I've been swept up in a tornado, tossed to and fro, and now gently placed in a calm meadow.

Ash Wednesday at the Jesus House

I didn't get ashes smeared across my face this year. At first, I was kinda bummed about missing an official Ash Wednesday service.

For the past several weeks, I've been leading a Wednesday night class at a local rescue mission. While it's been a rich experience, the class hasn't been well attended. Tonight, nobody showed except one of the men I picked up who used to live at the mission.

We decided to trundle over to the Jesus House to see a mutual friend of ours who got kicked out of the mission because he twisted off his check (i.e. blew his whole check on drugs).

When we arrived at the Jesus House, we saw a lot of people crammed into a small room. They were having an AA meeting. The windows were open and the fan blowing. It was the perfect ventilation for all the cigarette smoke rising into the air.

We went in and found our seats. I listened intently to the addicts as they talked out their struggles in doing life with addiction. I was especially touched by one young woman. I don't know if she had always been mentally ill or if she had just been badly damaged by druggin', prostitutin', gettin' beat up, bein' raped. But God she was precious.

She shared how her "boyfriend" had stolen her bank card. The first of every month, several hundred dollars in government aid comes in. The boyfriend pays their $250 rent, and the rest of it is gone...poof. Then she has to sell her body to make up for it. Wow.

The people at the Jesus House were red and yellow black and white. They were jovial, happy, and so incredibly positive and supportive of one another. And they smoked like chimneys; ashes were everywhere.

It was indeed Ash Wednesday at the Jesus House.

And Now For Something Completely Different

Several different lines from Leonard Sweet's Out of the Question...Into the Mystery hit me right between the eyes:

To transform the world, you have to enter it and engage.

To this, my idealistic self says, "Oh, yeah!" And my realistic self says, "Oh, shit." So, all I have to do is enter in and engage, eh? Do you know how incredibly overwhelmingly big this world is. And transform it!?! What in the heck does this look like? How does anyone do it!?!

Absence of beauty is a sign of absence of Spirit.

That's just great. I'm a bare, white walls kind of guy. Get some Spirit--hire a decorator.

So, welcome to the curmudgeonly side of the Contemplative Okie.

Strange Tastes

More from Leonard Sweet's Out of the Question...Into the Mystery:

"Jesus really did have strange tastes. He especially liked being around the poor, the marginalized, the forgotten...For Jesus, it was not 'Poor people and other outcasts, find yourself a church'; it was 'Church people, find yourself the poor and the outcasts."

"We are called to be--like Jesus--the friend of sinners. That means building relationships with people who reside outside the orbit of our moral universe. It means becoming their friend and loving them. It means accepting them and their differences and being willing to be enriched by those differences."

I was enriched yet again by the two repeat visitors to the "Spiritual Journey" class at City Rescue Mission. Two homeless men of color. So much separates us, but more unites us. One of them asked me, "So where do you go to church?"

"Uh...well...uh...I attend a Catholic Mass once a week...But I'm actually in church 'detox' right now." He knew all about detox. And he knew exactly what I was talkin' about.

It turns out he's a soon-not-to-be-homeless-anymore (he's getting his own place at the Pershing Center in two days--yeah!!!) person who's as "emergent" as Brian McLaren. He totally gets it. Well, maybe not totally, but darn close.

But like so many others, it feels weird to him to eschew the institution, even though most of the institutional churches this precious brother visits won't give him the time of day. The pained expression on his face told me this is so.

Yet despite this, he still talks in terms of wanting to "go" to church. We talked about the difference between "going" to church and "being" the church. I think it's going to be quite a feat to get people to transition from "going" to "being." But I want him and me to learn how to "be" the church together.

And you know what? I think this just might be starting to happen.

You Mean You Don't Own a TV!?!

With a co-worker today it happened to come up in conversation that I haven't owned a television since 1995. I could tell she thought I was a total freak! She said I was the ONLY person she knows who doesn't own a TV. She truly could hardly believe it.

Isn't it funny how something so simple can seem so counter-cultural, that because you don't tap into the drivel delivered by cathode rays, you're an oddity. Ha!

Tell Us Your Story

I've been reading Leonard Sweet's Out of the Question...Into the Mystery. He said some interesting things that went along with my previous entry regarding God grafting me into His story. His words, however, focus on the fact that we can encounter God through other people's stories.

"We are not called to fit someone else into our own story, but to encounter and experience the ways that God is in the other person's story...The critical test of any faith thus becomes 'does it make space for otherness?'...The key to evangelism is to be receivers of others--ushers to the Other, not users of others. In receiving others, we enter into their world of abundant otherness--their experiences, their thought patterns, their stories."

Then he pens this amazing sentence: "One can receive others and celebrate their stories without buying into their every perspective."

Wow! What a healthy, whole, balanced, right-on-the-money perspective!!!

One of my favorite Merle Haggard songs is "Yesterday's Wine." It's about strangers finding community with one another in a bar. After a stranger shares some initial pleasantries with some of the "regulars," the regulars invite the stranger to "come sit down here with us and tell us your story."

God, I LOVE that line. Why? Because I long for someone to invite me to sit down and listen interestedly to my story. I don't feel like anyone knows me until they hear my story, and I don't really know someone until I hear their story.

I'm so guilty of asking people questions, not to try to get to know them, but to "peg" them. Then, I can judge them. What a shitty way to treat people! I'm starting to believe that all any of us really want is to be heard, understood, and accepted. Like Sweet--and Haggard--says, we do this by sharing with one another our stories.

Are We One Body?

At Mass tonight, we sang one of my favorite songs. It's called "We Are One Body." The refrain is: "We are one body, one body in Christ; and we do not stand alone. We are one body, one body in Christ; and he came that we might have life."

What a beautiful image.

I just wish the image was more readily transformed into reality.

So often, the body of Christ seems like it was hit by a Mack truck, and pieces are scattered everywhere. As I read theology books, I get frustrated at how the church divides itself over and over again, based upon each particular "stand" on various issues.

A central question for me has arisen: Is my taking a firm stand on a particular belief more important that preserving unity with my brothers and sisters in Christ?

For me, the answer is almost always an emphatic "No!" There is ALWAYS a spectrum of belief on everything from the significance of the sacraments to church governance to yada, yada, yada. I'm not saying that these things have no importance, but I'm coming to believe that being "right" on any one of these things is just not that big a deal.

In its most simple form, it seems to me that the church is supposed to be a community of people centered around Jesus, with the intent of being formed to be like him and of serving the poor and the outcast of society.

You can baptize infants or not baptize infants. You can believe the bread and wine are the body and blood of Christ or represent the body and blood of Christ or signify that Christ is our spiritual sanctification or are just a memorial meal.

But for Christ's sake, why can't we hold these things loosely enough to maintain fellowship with one another?

Where are the people of God who get this?

Calvin Klein's a Sell-out

You know Calvin Klein has sold out when he makes jeans for butts as big as mine!

Grafted Into His Story

Today's devotion in The Word Among Us referenced Paul's belief that, "It is no longer I who live, but it is Christ who lives in me" (Gal. 2:20). I asked myself, "Do I believe this is true for me? If so, why?"

As I pondered these questions, I reflected over the last couple of days of my life with Christ. One of the answers that came to mind is this: I know that Christ lives in me because His story is merging with the story of my life. My story is caught up in and intertwined with His story.

In the past, if someone would've asked me how I know that Jesus is really alive and living in me, I would point them to "what the Bible says"--the facts in the Bible. But in that situation, it's like the events of the Bible are a movie, and I'm a disconnected observer of the story playing out on the screen. But now, I'm realizing that Christ has somehow come out into the theater and grafted me into His movie. He's most certainly the star of the show, but He's acting with and through me! In doing so, He has blended my story into His story. This intertwining of our stories becomes the basis of our very real relationship. And this very real relationship is how I know He lives in me.

Blogging Under the Influence (BUI)

Tonight, I'm blogging under the influence and well deserving of a (BUI). Which can mean only one thing: I've been to an emergent church gathering. Tonight was my first connection with the emergent scene in OKC--and I LOVED it!!! Being good Okies, we were a very balanced group, and I liked that. Felt very at home. Of course, the fireplace, leather chairs--not to mention the Belgium beer--helped very much in that respect. But most of all, it was the people. People who love Jesus AND are honest about the constricting confines of the "institutional church." The bias of the people tonight seemed to be to stay within your respective institution; change it from within. I, however, am rather thankful that I'm still in "institutional church" detox--a rather permanent place for me, I'm starting to believe. I feel free of the need--or perhaps it's a call--to be an "agent of change" in any institution. I feel free 2 b in okc.

Christ Is With Us

Tonight's City Rescue Mission group consisted of a couple with five kids and two single men (including me). We talked about events we experienced as kids that produced woundedness in us that we're still recovering from today. The married man shared how his mom severely abused him physically and how, as a result, he has problems disciplining his kids. Disciplining his kids feels, to him, like he's abusing them.

This led us to talk about how our tendency is to try and "control" a situation like this by doing the opposite of what we encountered as kids. But, this seems to make us wind up in yet another "bad" place. I shared how I saw this playing out in my own life and how I discovered that moving to an opposite extreme--or even finding a "happy medium"--is not the solution. The solution is to discover the Third Way.

The Third Way is the solution Jesus provides as we accept our brokenness and take it to Him. Sometimes we feel like we're in a small room, without any doors or windows--there's no way in and no way out; we're trapped. But if we open up to Jesus in that place, we enter into Him and He into us. And He becomes the way--the Third Way.

As my friends and I shared tonight about how Christ is filling in and patching up the broken places of our hearts, I realized that He was really and truly present, right there with us. The single man I've known for only three weeks, and the couple I just met tonight. But it felt like we shared a deep, rich family bond. The single man was aware of this, too, and expressed as much.

We were sitting in a tight little circle. The center looked empty. But Christ was there with us, healing us, uniting us. And everyone of us in that room knew it, deep in our bones.

My Debut

About a year and a half ago, I moved back to OKC after living in Chicago for about 5 years. I snooped around for an "emergent church" scene locally, but could find almost none.

I have been in church "detox" since that time, but I'm feeling challenged to find community. I've recently come across some bloggers with whom I feel a connection. So, this is my attempt to enter the scene.