Be Still & Still Moving

Coyotes and Trains

2011-12-25T21:45:00.001-07:00

We were in Banff for two days last week after a winter snowfall-white, new and heavy. The Canadian Pacific Railway bisects this well known mountain village in Banff Park, running east-west. The CPR helped forge a nation, the last rail spike driven in 1885. As the train enters Banff its whistle blows three times-long, low blasts as it rumbles through town, its cars loaded with freight headed for Vancouver and the coast, some 1000-kilometres away. Its a slow trip over several mountain passes. But its the whistle that's wonderful: melancholy, lonely, yet oddly comforting because its a sound that reminds us, anyway, of our move to western Canada and its vast and beautiful space over 25-years ago.
But we're not the only ones who like this iconic whistle sound. The coyotes of Banff do too. We stayed at a small motel overlooking the white and frozen Bow river and woods of birch and pine on it's opposite bank, which was the home of a local coyote pack, and everytime the train came through town, their howling began. The first time I heard them I didn't connect the howling with the train. Then it became obvious: first the train whistle, then the coyotes joining in, whistle and howling combined, a quirky kind of harmony.
Now, I have no idea why coyotes would do this. Imitation? Competition? Regardless, mammal and machine joined, the primal with the technological or, if you will, "Zen and motorcycle maintenance." Whatever the reason, the effect was wonderous. Thanks be to God for coyotes and trains this Christmas.

"The Social Network"

2011-11-22T12:52:00.000-07:00

I was watching a DVD of the film The Social Network and like many, was fascinated by it. But I really liked a particular episode in the "special features", which of course includes the outtakes, interviews and 'how the movie was made' bits. Anyway this particular segment shows the director David Fincher directing one particular emotional scene. Its the relational climax of the movie and its a scene of betrayal between Jesse Eisenberg who plays Mark Zuckerberg and his friend Eduardo Saverin, played by Andrew Garfield. They portray the founders of Facebook. But Saverin has just come to the realization that he's been contractually cut out of a very large chunk of cash by Zuckerberg and his legal counsel. In short he's been 'bought out' without his understanding.
In any event Fincher, the director, is explaining the scene to these two actors as to how he wants it played. He turns to them, his face close to theirs and says very intently, with the body language one would expect, "Now listen: this is the 'come to Jesus' moment...” Ha! I was astonished. Here a film director is using a well-known Christian phrase, which, taken in its Biblical context is full of meaning and import, but now is reduced to a slogan and used to make an emotional point. Theology has simply become "phraseology," in the words of Dietrich Bonhoeffer.
And who's fault is that I wonder? Where would Fincher have heard that phrase? Not likely in the film studio. But the contemporary church continues to use the same words so frequently that they have simply become a form of religious propaganda and like any other propaganda, the words become unreal. The church too often seems to think that, "If they [the world] don't understand us, we will just talk louder and longer and they eventually will." The problem is they don't and they won't.

Eugene Peterson writes, “One of the verbal effects of sin is either the destruction of story or the fragmentation of story into disconnected anecdotes… Instead of connecting with more reality, the words disconnect us, leaving us in a litter of incident and commitment.” In this case, "Come to Jesus" has become a "disconnected anecdote," unreal words, because they've been dis-connected from the rich Biblical narrative from which they originally came. Truth has become trivialized.

It seems we have lost our ability to creatively tell the Story of God which is the Bible, in words and terms that our culture can understand. Why? Perhaps its because the Church has lost its ability to really listen to The Story for itself and so we're strangers to the thick narrative of Scripture that not only explains us to ourselves, but the world to itself. But who knows, Fincher may yet have a "come to Jesus" moment inspite of us! One can only hope.

Cutting Firewood

2011-11-16T21:16:00.003-07:00

Some days make you realize how alive life is. Two weeks ago a friend of ours and our daughter's went out cutting firewood for our woodstove. It was the three of us. One young guy, (friend), one old guy (me) and my daughter (young too). The stove for which we were cutting firewood is made by Joytl which our friend calls a stove made for hobbits. He's likely correct: its small and built for comfort. Its one of those Scandanvian inventions that make you want to move to Norway and snuggle up to a Norwegian. My grandmother was a Norewegian, which reminds me of a joke my father told me about Swedes and Norwegians, which I won't tell.
But the day we went out was a day for just drinking, drinking in all that the day gave and gave and gave. The sky was a clear and cobalt blue, the spruce, fir and pine trees a deep green accented by larch trees, which hide behind their green needles all year until the fall, and then leap out at you all dressed in yellow. It had snowed the day previous, a few centimetres-white, clean, light. Everything was jumping out of its skin. The day made you grateful to be alive and be somehow alive to God who made it, for certainly it was a day made, to "rejoice and be glad in."

G.K. Chesterton quipped, "There is something spiritual about material things." Surely he was right. It was a day for smelling the pungent newly cut wood, feeling the tree bark against your hand, and the sun against your skin and snow, seeing your breath hang in the air for just a moment and seeing my daughter laugh and deeply enjoying this place and this moment with our friend and me. It was a time of realizing that we are in fact made for the "tether and tang of the particular" and the "tang" was particularly particular that day.

I know Elizabeth Barrett Browning's poem is often quoted, but it seems too fitting and too good not to say it again:

"Earth's crammed with heaven,

and every common bush afire with God:

but only he who sees, takes off his shoes,

the rest sit round it, and pluck blackberries."

It was a day indeed, crammed with heaven and it was a day that we did see and did take off our shoes...but we were also deeply grateful for the blackberries.

"The Kiss of the Cobra"

2011-10-26T11:35:00.000-06:00

I've been reading Dag Hammarskjold's Markings which was published in 1964 3-years after his death. Hammarskjold was the U.N.'s second Secretary-General, a man of a very different stripe than those who would follow him. He died mysteriously in a plane crash in 1961 in what was then the African country of Rhodesia (now Zambia). He was enroute to some peace negotiations on behalf of the U.N. Markings is most often simply his journal entries of a public figure of a private man. His faith was intentional, real and shaped by the Christian tradition.

He writes, dated August 30, 1956, "The men of the hour, the self-assured who strut about among us, in the jingling harness of their success and importance, how can you let yourself be irritated by them? Let them enjoy their triumph-on the level to which it belongs."

I loved the phrase, "the jingling harness of their success." Its such a great image. But the image reflects a comment of a friend and and former professor of mine, James Houston. Houston once quoted the British journalist Malcolm Muggeridge who said: "The love of the self is the kiss of the cobra" In our narcisstic culture, indeed too often our church cultures, kisses of cobras and jingling harnesses are rationalized and thus we become anaesthisized to not only the self-love of others but of our own. Jesus words haunt us: “Be careful not to do your ‘acts of righteousness’ in front of others, to be seen by them...to be honored by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward in full." To be seen by others is to be invisible to God.

The 401 and 'Eatable' Heroes

2011-09-29T09:03:00.001-06:00

The Ever Popular 401

I've been enjoying reading No Great Mischief, a novel by the noted Canadian author Alastair MacLeod. He writes, "The 401, as most people hearing this will know, is Ontario's major highway and it runs straight and true from the counry that is the United States to the border of Quebec, which also some might consider another country. It is a highway built for the maximum movement of people and of goods and it is flat and boring and as efficient as can be. It is a sort of symbol I suppose, if not of the straight and narrow, at least of the very straight or "the one true way." You can only join it at certain places and if your destination is directly upon it, it will move you as neatly as the conveyor belt moves the tomatoes. It will be true to you, if you are true to it and you'll never, never, ever become lost."
After reading MacLeod's description of the 401, I thought of how often the Christian faith is perceived as, "a symbol of the straight and narrow, at least of the very straight or "the one true way." Thus also, and not surprisingly, received as "flat and boring and efficient." In my view, what often the Western contemporary church has lost is any sense of danger or conflict. Not "out there" in the world, but "in here" in the soul.
The Christian life until recently had been written about as a dangerous journey, The Pilgrim's Progress comes to mind; a bellum intestinum (inner war), a road less traveled, upon which if you took it, you might well end up dead. The always quotable G.K. Chesterton wrote, "To aChristian, existence is a story, which may end up in any way. In a thrillingnovel (that purely Christian product) the hero is not eaten by cannibals; butit is essential to the thrill that he MIGHT be eaten by cannibals. The heromust be an eatable hero. Christianity concentrates on the man [or woman] at thecross-roads.”

Once we lose the story quality of our lives, once we lose our 'eatablity' we've lost ourselves-really lost ourselves. We are not only on the Way, but we're at the crossroads more often than we realize. I guess that is why the symbol of our faith is an awful intersection and why Jesus is, if anything, our 'eatable' hero.

"To be human is to feel inconsequential."

2011-09-29T08:31:00.000-06:00

"To be human is to feel inconsequential." so writes Christina Kelly a young woman's magazine editor. Tim Keller cites her in his recent book King's Cross: The Story of the World in the Life of Jesus. I was arrested by her simple sentence. How much of what I undertake, how much of my motivation is born out of this sense of 'inconsequence' of feeling somehow insignificant and wishing it were otherwise? Where does one find their sense of consequence, that undefineable sense of importance, of belonging, of "being "in", worthwhile, accepted? Certainly in our best moments we realize that 'consequence' is not gained from outside of us, but somehow is grasped from within. But we also realize that is not quite true either, for we also believe that love ultimately makes us important and that love is more than us just 'loving ourselves' or 'accepting ourselves', but being loved by another, from the outside as it were. John the gospel writer and a first follower of Jesus wrote, "How great is the love the Father has lavished upon us that we should be called the children of God!" Of course most often I prefer becoming a person of consequence rather than simply being a child of God, loved for Christ's sake. But that is my problem not His. Consequence or childhood-my choice.

No Heart Rate Detected

2011-08-08T12:57:00.000-06:00

I recently was on a treadmill at the gym. As I was running on the treadmill a small digital phrase emerged on the screen before me, (the screen that gives you the speed, laps, etc.) The screen read 'No Heart Rate Detected." It didn't explain itself. It was up to me to figure out what to do with this bit of information. So I thought, either I was dead and didn't know it or the machine was wrong. I opted for the latter and kept on running and so far I've lived to tell the tale.

Of course lots of us are dead and we just keep on running like chickens with our heads cut off; but there are others of us who are very much alive, who keep listening to their hearts and not to the messages of our culture, which tell us not so subtlely that we are dead because we're not hooked up to the latest technology we've created; 'dead' meaning inefficient, unproductive, unavailable, unknowledgeable. Of course there is nothing wrong with efficiency, productivity, availability and knowledge, but these, in and of themselves, don't add up to becoming a person-becoming truly human and thus becoming truly alive to God, to people and to life. Its hard to discover in the gospels any data that would confirm that Jesus (who it seems to me is the Person who was truly alive in the things that matter) was particularly productive, or always available, efficient or 'knowledeable', in terms of the knowledge that people wanted to hear.

But regardless, I think all of us are hooked up to something or somebody to tell us if we're alive or dead. It just depends what or who that is and whether or not it or they can detect a heart rate.

Things You Don't See in Hong Kong

2011-07-25T14:02:00.001-06:00

After returning from 7-years in Hong Kong you see things here that you don't see there. For instance: Amy was walking home from the store this week and as she passed a friend's house she saw him talking on his cell phone. "Not particularly unusual", one might say. True. However, he was sitting in a canoe, which was sitting in his front yard. Now, one would like to draw meaning from this image, but at the moment it escapes me. Regardless, it was a fine sight on a sunny afternoon.

Living by Hints and Guesses

2011-07-21T13:28:00.014-06:00

Recently I had the opportunity and real privilege to listen to several artists at a conference at which I was speaking, put on by Free Form Arts based in Oxford on behalf of Wayfarers Trust. The conference was held at Lee Abbey on the seacoast in Devon. In retrospect, what struck me as a constant in the many conversations that followed, was the tenuous nature of our calling not only if one is an artist, but simply if one is a Christian. Our calling both as artists and disciples of Jesus is one that requires us to have a "real liking of danger", to put it in the words of Isak Dinesen in her novel Out of Africa. She writes,

"The Kikuyu [a particular Kenyan tribal group] are adjusted to the unforeseen and accustomed to the unexpected. They have real courage: the pure liking of danger. Here they differ from the white man of whom the majority strive to insure themselves against the unknown and the assaults of faith…Amongst the qualities then, the native will be looking for in a master or a doctor-or in God is imagination-the infinite power of imagination…for what they fear most at the bottom of their hearts is dullness."

I love her description. Particularly as a "white man" who "strives to insure myself against the unknown"! However, our longing for security can place our imagination in jeopardy for our obedience to follow Christ requires if nothing else, imagination. For if I cannot imagine, I certainly cannot obey. Obedience always involves risk and risk requires-you guessed it-imagination. There is no genuine Christian existence without a certain "liking of danger." (Ask Jesus.) And we can only like danger if we believe that the God that we follow has the imagination required to get us out of trouble! (Read the Psalms.)

T.S. Eliot's poem captures well where I find myself in my own calling at this point in my life, and if I understood the conversations at the conference, others as well. Eliot, in his poem, The Dry Salvages writes:

These are only hints and guesses,

Hints followed by guesses; and the rest

Is prayer, observance, discipline, thought and action.

The hint half guessed, the gift half understood, is Incarnation.

Eliot reminds us that we see through the apostle Paul's 'glass darkly', that living by faith is not living by Christian slogans or faith formulae, but in part by hints and guesses and the other part, "prayer, observance, discipline, thought and action'- whether I can see my way forward or not. But then wonderfully Eliot also reminds us that the hints and the guesses are in fact a gift-the gift wrapped in Incarnation: our Christ-our flesh and blood and our God, who also had to learn to live by faith. So we're not alone in this journey in which we continue to ask Him and ourselves, in both fear and faith, "What's next? " Greetings to all of you who were at the Wayfarers Arts Conference who find themselves in that place of 'what's next'! And thank you for your gift of incarnation you are living.

Wayfarers Arts Conference July 2011

The Hurt Locker

2010-05-30T22:36:00.001-06:00

I recently watched the film, The Hurt Locker. It won the Academy Award for Best Picture, although some critics thought it didn't deserve it. I can't speak to that, but I enjoyed the film very much. It's a war movie, interestingly enough directed by a woman. The director's name is Kathryn Bigelow. Would I have known by viewing the film that it was directed by a woman? Probably not, but because I did know, I did see a difference which is difficult to articulate, but perhaps its her awareness of the domestic relationships (largely off-screen) and not just of the 'dynamite' on screen.

Regardless, the film left us considering the life of Staff Sergeant William James, the young U.S. Army sergeant, who's military training prepares him for dismantling make-shift, but deadly land mines left by Iraqis to deter and kill US forces in Iraq. He's courageous. Or is he? What does motivate Sgt. James to place himself in this high-pressure, high-stakes assignment of taking apart unpredictable and dangerous IED's, 'Improvised Explosive Devices', (only the Army can come up with acronymns like this), which have accounted for more than half of American casualties in Iraq?

Was it his heroism that made him put himself in harm's way or was it something else? Was it courage that moved him or was it a certain cowardice-a fear not of facing death, but of facing life? The film raises the question, 'Was his behavior, simply heroic (albeit, also reckless in the eyes of the men he served with), or a way to numb the pain of his inability to experience the commonplace of life in its mundane, but complex intimacies? (James we discover surprisingly is a husband and father.) Were his actions a case of engagement with the enemy or an escape from the "tether and pang of the particular"-the ordinary rhythms, roles and responsibilities of domestic life back in America?

In a pivotal and poignant scene near the film's end, Sargeant James is back home. He's now 'Daddy'. He's finished his recent tour of duty in Iraq. He's sitting on his small son's bed, who is surrounded by his favorite stuffed animals and ready for sleep. James quitely says,

“You love playing with all your stuffed animals. You love your Mommy, your Daddy. You love your pajamas. You love everything, don’t ya? Yeah, but you know what, buddy? As you get older... some of the things you love might not seem so special anymore. Like your Jack-in-a-Box. Maybe you’ll realize it’s just a piece of tin and a stuffed animal. And the older you get, the fewer things you really love. And by the time you get to my age, maybe it’s only one or two things. With me, I think it’s one.”

So what is the one thing that Williams James loves? The film allows us to discover the answer to that question for ourselves. But regardless of how we answer it, G.K. Chesterton, the early 20th century British journalist and writer, wrote,

“Happy is he who still loves something he loved in the nursery: He has not been broken in two by time; he is not two men, but one, and he has saved not only his soul, but his life”.

The film allows us to watch a soul and a life being lost, not just on the streets of Baghdad, but in a child's bedroom-a tragedy not only for the father, but surely for the son as well. Sergeant James is not happy; the Jack-in-the-Box only 'a piece of tin'. He has been broken into "two men". A life is coming to an end not in war and not instantly in the deafening flash of an IED, but in the disquieting peace of his own home. He has lost his love, in the words of Joseph Addison, for the 'middle things', for "the common ground of daily life." Chesterton knew that happiness resides and is realized in "those happy moments when you remember that you are alive." Sergeant James' deadlock is that he finds his happiness in remembering death.

The Spiritual Discipline of Living Your Life

2010-04-15T08:53:00.002-06:00

The ‘spiritual disciplines’ are the tools that have been recognized by the historic Church as those reliable habits that continue to nurture and disturb the soil of our hearts so that over time they become fertile ground for the Word of God and the fruit of the Spirit. These habits are well known: silence, solitude, service, prayer and the study and reading of the Scriptures, the celebration of the Lord’s Supper, the gathering in community, fasting and giving.
But there is another less obvious discipline in which all the others are found. It’s called living our life, ‘your everyday, ordinary life—our sleeping, eating, going-to-work, and walking-around life’ (Ro12.1 The Message). Paul Stevens writes in his book, Doing God’s Business, ‘Life and work are themselves spiritual disciplines pointing us Godward and teaching us about ourselves.’

But it’s living our lives in a particular way: attentively. In other words simply paying attention to who and what is around us, created and uncreated, because nothing is insignificant. Paying attention is more than curiosity, its also amazement (if not amusement) at the life around us.   So how does one actually do this? As we might have guessed, Jesus shows us how it’s done.

When Jesus says to us, “Consider the ravens…” He’s thinking about what most of us don’t-birds, common ravens-Corvus corax. And the reason he told us to pay attention to them is that this bird astonishingly reveals God’s deep care for us. “They do not sow or reap, they have no storeroom or barn; yet God feeds them. And how much more valuable you are than birds!” (Of course your average Palestinian peasant farmer had probably considered ravens a lot more than we do-they were eating his crops!)

The Lord also teaches us, "See how the flowers of the field grow.” Of course these villagers to whom he’s spoken had seen-lots of times. They’d seen flowers grow countless times-every spring. But Jesus asks, ‘have you really seen them?’ “They do not labor or spin, so why do you worry about clothes?”   So Jesus draws our attention not to the Bible, but to the created world around us. Without words, these flowers speak of God’s joyous commitment to us: that despite our unfounded fears and insecurities of the future-he will provide those necessities of food and clothing for us. Astonishing.

But most of us live don’t live in an agrarian context, but in large urban centres where unmade ravens and sky, flowers and fields are often hard to come by. Yet these common things in small rural villages find their likeness in the common artifacts of our cities: the signs and shops, streets and structures; taxis and buses among which we live each day.   This medium of routines and relationships; materials and matter, people and places that shape our daily realities-these are the things that God says to be attentive to, because if we don’t, we miss God’s presence and truth.

For example, in Hong Kong, a city of 7-million, I’m always amazed at our utter dependency on total strangers, who clean our streets and parks, provide safe food, transportation, and other countless services and material. There is nothing common about this life reflecting what theologians’ term ‘common grace’. A city and its complex matrix of people, goods and services is indeed a mystery worth our astonishment.

Barry Lopez, the author of Arctic Dreams, writes, “In the simplest terms, if you want to be of use in the world, [as a writer] it's good to pay attention…be discriminating and be discerning about the work you set for yourself. That done, be the untutored traveler, the eager reader, the enthusiastic listener. Put what you learn together carefully…”

Whether we’re writers or not, living our lives as travelers, readers, listeners and learners is a spiritual discipline worth pursuing!

Googling the 'Plan of Salvation"

2010-02-01T06:49:00.000-07:00

If you find yourself bored one evening try Googling, the 'plan of salvation'. I dare you. Who came up with this term? And look what its led to! Can the Jesus story of the New Testament be diagramed? Of course, but what you come up with is a bit shy of a drama, a life in which we're invited to participate-if we dare.

After a fresh reading of John's gospel recently I think calling Christ's salvation a 'plan' is like calling Shakespeare's Macbeth a 'skit'.

A 'Zinger' from Soren Kierkegaard

2010-02-01T06:30:00.000-07:00

Kierkegaard is notoriously hard to understand, but so wonderfully relevant to the 'church-ianity' of which I'm a part and of which I'm a major stakeholder. He was single, died young; brilliant, and a 19th century Danish Christian philosopher-poet-writer.

He wrote among many other things, "It is easier to become a Christian when I am not a Christian than to become a Christian when I am a Christian." After you utter the inevitable, 'Huh?' he's right don't you think?

God knows then, why the Church is so uncomfortable with paradox and mystery, particularly when the God who first reveals himself to the people of God speaks out of a bush in the desert and then centuries later shows up as a newborn in a stable. Really. Of all people we are the ones who ought to be continually open-mouthed and dumb-struck by what's been entrusted to us.

A Tree "Grows" in Tsim Sha Tsui

2010-01-24T22:59:00.001-07:00

The image is of the Christmas tree at 1881 Canton Road, Tsim Sha Tsui. The original site was the headquarters of the Hong Kong Marine Police from the 1880's to 1996. The buildings' unique Victorian architecture symbolizes its colonial background. But in the middle of the small square that’s been created is this shiny ornate metal cone (right). When I saw it I couldn’t really believe it, so I took a quick photo with my cell phone.

First, let me describe to you what you’re seeing. There appears to be a real tree behind that bright aluminum cone which looks like an upside down Hagen Daz ice cream cone. If the tree is real its’ probably a pine or spruce tree, a conifer, and they grow about 1 foot a year under ideal conditions. They are some of the oldest trees in the world and can be found as high as the Arctic Circle. This tree is probably about 30 feet high. And if it’s grown from a seed it’s probably taken 50 years to grow to this height, and was probably cut down in less than a minute by someone with a chain saw. But before it made its way to HK, its endured 50 seasons of snow and sun, rain and wind. It’s grown straight and tall and green despite the threat of forest fires and infestation of insects. It’s been the house of countless birds and squirrels and bugs providing food for as many with its seeds and bark. Its roots have held the soil together and provided habitat for literally millions of organisms. This tree is a remarkable achievement.

And if it’s a real tree, its been breathing for 50 years, breathing in and breathing out. Trees breathe in carbon dioxide and breathe out oxygen. Trees are the lungs of our planet. Trees release oxygen into the atmosphere for other organisms like you and I to breathe in. Without trees we die. A single mature tree can absorb carbon dioxide at a rate of 48 lbs./year and release enough oxygen back into the atmosphere to support 2 human beings.

And planting trees remains one of the cheapest, most effective means of drawing excess CO2 from the atmosphere. If every American family planted just one tree, the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere would be reduced by one billion lbs. annually. But did you know that just being around trees makes you feel good. Yet trees, especially in urban areas, have numerous social benefits. In fact, the University of Cambridge did a study on job satisfaction of employees of businesses with a view of trees from their office. They found that these employees suffered from fewer diseases than workers without a view of trees.

Another example is children with learning disorders. As a form of therapy, children that suffer from Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) can benefit from the presence of trees and other greenery. Kids with ADHD have been proven to be calmer, more responsive, and better able to concentrate when in a space with lots of trees. Yet if the tree behind our metal cone is real, it’s beauty and benefits did not stop someone from first cutting it down and then hanging brightly colored balls on it and then encasing it in a full metal aluminum and glass jacket.

So if your question is the same as mine: 'What the hell were they thinking?" Let me venture a possible answer.
First, I think its obvious that they considered their design an improvement on the original. They obviously thought that if they encased this ordinary, 50-year old tree in this bright metal jacket it would look better than the original tree. And my guess is that I think they thought this was an improvement because the original tree tends to be messy. Trees are not neat. They attract bugs and other critters, the needles are pointy and fall off, pine cones drop, birds get attracted, pooping on the people with cameras; and the tree’s blood, its sap, is also messy and sticky and can get on your hands and clothes if you’re not careful and its hard to get off.

Secondly they didn’t like its color, but valued more the shiny silver; they liked shiny silver over dull green. Fancy and flashy is better than green.

Three, they were probably mathematicians and they particularly liked geometry, because they valued the perfect form of the metallic cone over the less than perfect cone shape of the tree. No tree in its natural state is perfect. Its not that they disliked the tree completely though, they did use a tree and you can see it peeking out from behind the metal jacket, but they used the tree for their own ends. A natural green tree was a means to their shiny artistic ends.

So where to go with this? Lets suppose that the tree hiding behind all that steel and glass represents the gospel-the Jesus story, ‘that old, old story of Jesus and his glory’ as the old fundamentalist hymn goes. The tree is not gone, its still there, still visible, it’s just hard to see, but trees are persistent, stubborn, still growing, still green, because the present English word for ‘green’ comes from the old English word, ‘to grow’. So this Jesus of Christmas is living; the one who, “Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. In him was life, and that life was the light of all people”. Jesus the light and life of all that lives-people and plants.

And lets suppose that the shiny metal cone have been our attempts to improve upon this original story; to shape a Jesus more to our understanding, a Jesus more to our liking and to our tastes; a Jesus more in our image. And after all, which Jesus and which Jesus story do I pick anyway? Matthew, Mark, Luke or John? Can’t these people make up their mind?

For some a ‘new and improved Jesus’ has meant rejecting a Jesus who is too human, too much like a man, this eating and drinking with peasants and prostitutes and then being tortured and dying — very un-god-like. And after all he’s so, well, Jewish, too 1st century. He’s just too local. He’s not cosmic enough; he’s more a man than a beautiful universal ideal; a philosophical concept.

Or others say, ‘No, he’s too much like a god.’ This healing of disease, forgiving people like he’s God; this raising people from the dead, turning water into wine; the whole one-man bakery thingyou know bread for 5000; and this talk of a virgin birth and then a resurrection-after all that’s a little much too swallow don’t you think? I mean really. God?
So we try to improve on this Jesus in various ways, offering our shiny bright alternatives. These alternative stories don’t quite live, don’t quite convince, but they look nice for a while if you protect them from the wind, rain and sun of the evidence of the original documents we call the NT, as they were written and intended.

But suppose that what the early eyewitnesses wrote about Jesus of Nazareth are taken as reliable. And that what they said about Jesus was true and that this Jesus is somehow the God-man is very much tree like Isaiah the prophet said in the 8th century B.C. “He grew up before him like a tender shoot, and like a root out of dry ground. He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him, nothing in his appearance that we should desire him”. Ordinary, common unspectacular. Jesus himself referred to his word and to Himself as scattered seed; fragile, easily trampled underfoot, subject to the soil of the human heart to reject or to receive Him.

There are implications here for us and our worth: we are more like the tree that the cone. We are not shiny and bright and easily cleaned up, because we’re simply alive. That aluminum and glass does not breath. We’re living because we’re made in the image of a living God.

Secondly, like the tree in that we too are not very hygienic; we’re not very clean. Ask any doctor or nurse. We have all sorts of bodily fluids and discharges. And lets admit it, we smell. Even though we try to cover our smells up with perfumes, deodorant and toothpaste, leave us alone for a few days and we smell. And that pine tree smells a lot better than we do! Like that tree, we’re messy and we’re a mess. We’re born messy and inconvenient and we die messy and inconvenient; and in between birth and death we get sick easily and when we do get sick we can die from various diseases-just like a tree. The line between life and death is a fine one and there’s a fine line between that tree and us. We live precarious existences; we live on the knife-edge of life and death.

The Christmas story itself tells us something about how God thinks of us as people when it’s the shepherds who first get the ‘good news of a great joy, which will be for all the people’. Shepherds-at the bottom of the social ladder. They were the untouchables; if you were Jewish you’d never raised your kids to grow up to be shepherds. Shepherds were not romantic; they were unclean religiously and socially; even those pagan Magi who were into astrology for heaven’s sake-the movement of the stars and planets to determine fate and fortune-get in on this Jesus life: shepherds and scholars an odd congregation. The shepherds find their Shepherd and the Magi find the desire and wisdom of all peoples; they meet their end and purpose in this stable.

We may not like the story we find in the gospels. It may offend our sensibilities. We may wish it were something else. But its this story that protects us as human beings and elevates us as princes and princesses; even sons and daughters of God if we are willing to receive him as he comes to us. We are taken in as we are; in all our messiness and yet we don’t remain as we are as we begin to take into our lives-this living Christ-this life-giving tree, through the power of his life-giving Spirit.

GK Chesterton wrote, ‘The place that the shepherds found was not an academy… it was not a place of myths… it was a place of dreams come true.’ Dreams come true for both shepherds and scholars, the low and the high. The place the shepherds found is not to our liking; the revelation of God was not according to our expectations. But, be that as it may, the shiny, but dead alternatives to the original Jesus story will die and are deadly. They will kill us. The Tree still gives life.

Life from the Air

2010-01-24T22:12:00.000-07:00

In Michael Ondaajte's novel, The English Patient, one of the characters says, "If you could see life from the air, life would be very simple." Indeed. But we don't and any attempt to live life 'airborn' is doomed to fail. To live airborn is to pretend we don't live on the road, where we actually live-unable to see what lies ahead, what turns, detours and hazards await us. Life on the road isn't even riding in a car, but walking, which is the favorite Old Testament metaphor for living in the presence of God; as in, 'Enoch walked with God' or as in, 'Blessed are those who walk in the light of your presence, O LORD'. But walking in the presence of God does not shield us from creation, but 'baptises' us into it. We're subject to the elements, to the wind, rain and sun and to danger, lots of it, most of it man-made.

Jesus walked. Mark's gospel records that, "As Jesus walked beside the Sea of Galilee he saw Simon..." (Not only it turns out did he walk beside the Sea of Galilee he walked on it!) At any rate, Jesus put a lot of kilometres on his sandals walking on the roads and paths of Palestine. One of Mark's favorite words is 'hodos', the way or road. Jesus walked lots of roads which was, more often than not, interrupted with people and problems. He walked to his own execution. But even after his resurrection, we find Jesus still walking, catching up to a couple who were headed to a small village of Emmaus some 10km away from Jerusalem's cemetary in which they thought Jesus had been put to rest-permanently.

All this to say is that we should be suspicious of any preachers or teachers who teach or write as those we are somehow seated in an airplane at 35,000 feet untouched by all this-the people or the problems, the awful deaths and the surprising resurrections. We live immediately, incarnationally, through what happens to us directly, body, soul and spirit; not through the abstract grid of simply 'applying' Biblical principles and precepts. Its the Word made flesh that we live by as well as the Word written. Its the word 'near you; it is in your mouth and in your heart," as Paul writes in Romans-closer to us than our own breath.

Growing up... "before the dark house of reason grows."

2010-01-19T07:37:00.000-07:00

"Childhood is measured out by sounds and smells and sights before the dark house of reason grows." So writes the English poet John Betjman. It doesn't take a poet to reminds us of this-although it surely helps. What do we remember of our childhoods? I remember the awful sounds of my parents arguing that both terrified and angered me; the smell of the pine trees around our green shingled house and their sticky sap that oozed from their bark in spring. When I was still younger I remember the sight of a huge ant hill that occupied a place on our street, behind which stretched a horizon of flat hills, endless sagebrush and rabbits. Sounds, smells and sights.

Thats why putting kids in a classroom or Sunday School room is a challenge of cosmic proportions. "What's there to hear, smell and see?" our little souls cry out? And our little souls tell our little bodies, 'There must be something!" And thats why we can't sit still. Picking our noses, slapping our friends; crossing our eyes; doodling on anything we can get our hands on- looking for something sensory, imaginative-alive!

Perhaps that is why Jesus stubbornly told stories, for its story that calls forth the 'sounds and smells and sights' of our imaginations. They come unbidden when told a good story. For example, when Jesus' adult followers asked him, 'Teach us to pray' he gave them 4-sentences on prayer beginning with 'Our Father'. He then told a story about three friends which takes up 4-paragraphs! And as Jesus spins out this 'yarn' we discover that one of these friends is fast asleep in his own house and the other won't take 'no' for an answer at 2AM in the morning in request for some bread, because it seems another friend has arrived unexpectedly and has developed an appetite after a long day on the road. Will the friend get up and get the bread or not? Three friends, one Father and an argument over bread after sensible people are asleep. And this is the answer to 'Teach us to pray?"

Reason makes lists; logic requires order, but our imagination yearns for story, because our little souls know that we don't live by lists. We live storied lives; lives that cry out, 'What's next?' If we're halfway honest with ourselves we know we live lives that are not particularly logical or reasonable in a world that certainly isn't. As Bilbo learned in Tolkien's The Hobbit, "Its a dangerous business going out your front door." And only being alive to our stories within the story of God will prepare us for the danger and wonder of that business.

Naaman's Surrender

2010-01-10T21:20:00.000-07:00

Naaman Story-2Kings 5

The climax of this story, the healing of Naaman, an Aramean, polytheist and military general-an 'outsider', is summed up in one sentence."So he went down and dipped himself in the Jordan seven times,the man of God had told him, and his flesh was restored and became clean like that of a young boy. But perhaps if we were to place ourselves there, Naaman's healing in the Jordan may have gone something like this:

Naaman, his advisors and servants had camped along the Jordan River, but before the sun was up, before anyone had awakened, Naaman quietly left his tent. He was barefoot as he walked quickly to the banks of the Jordan, clothed only in his linen night shirt. The purple morning air was sharp and desert-cold, the sun only a weak amber glow behind the eastern hills of Israel. No birds are yet singing.

Naaman stands silent and for a long time stares into the dark meandering river. 'God, what am I doing?' he mutters. There is so much at stake, nothing else has worked. A common slave wouldn't trade his skin for his. So he stands like a great blue heron, immobile at the water’s edge. Naaman then takes off his linen tunic and quickly descends the bank of the river through the reeds. A turtle scuttles away from his feet. Now naked in the water he begins to walk slowly towards the river’s centre. He begins to feel the cool current against the scale and roughness of his skin. The river soothes him and he remembers that it always feels this way when he bathes, because if only for a few moments, the rawness and the itch disappear. He thinks as he always thinks, "If only this could last."

He continues to wade into the slow current, allowing it to take him quietly downstream away from the camp. He then stops, securing his feet against the rocks on the river's bottom and begins to methodically lower his body into the Jordan, its silent green waters sweeping over him. He submerges himself, once, then again, then 5-more times. Seven. Complete, full, it is finished, done with. And then inexorably, a giving up, a final surrender, a letting go of his life into the hands of his enemy’s God. He had never known surrender in his life, but this surrender, this defeat was different. This defeat felt like a victory.

Naaman then emerges from the water and climbs onto a sandstone ledge. The river is now glistening, burnished bronze, in the dawn’s first light. Naaman lays there on his bare back, flat on that broad rock listening to the Jordan make its way steadily to the Dead Sea; aware of the sound of the current on the rocks and reeds; aware of the first bird of the morning amid the branches of the olive tree above him, seeing the sunrise as though for the first time.

Naaman slowly raises his right arm above him. He looks at it, curiously, as though it was the arm of someone else, for it doesn’t look like his-no scales, no roughness, no sores. Gone. And so Naaman begins to feel his way around his battle-scarred body and then to weep, for he is clean, all of him: chest, legs, back, buttocks. Then through tears flowing through his dark and wet Aramean beard he begins to laugh, snorts of great joy and deep repentance. So Naaman returns from the Jordan a changed man: skin and soul, soul and skin, like one born new; himself, as Elisha had said, 'a young boy'.

An Athiest, Africa and Aid

2010-01-08T20:59:00.000-07:00

As an atheist, I truly believe Africa needs God | Matthew Parris - Times Online

Turning

2010-01-08T20:28:00.000-07:00

How do you turn around a life?

This repentance of later-years is hard.

How do you regret yourself without a death?

This life of lost patterns plans and plot.

A story of characters gone missing.

With whom and where do you begin?

Which chapter, place, time, now forgotten?

How do you make it right, you right again?

How do you turn around a life?

Neighbor

2010-01-06T07:44:00.000-07:00

These neighbors place themselves before me, mute. They go neither left to Middle Road nor right to Nathan Rd. Nor to the MTR or the Peninsula Hotel. They just lie down, there, before the stairs I ascend to go to my work. G.K. Chesterton once wrote, 'We make our friends and we make our enemies. God makes our neighbor." Surely he is right.

Citizen of Babylon

2010-01-06T07:24:00.000-07:00

He swept into the hotel lobby seemingly out of nowhere. He was tall, dark-haired with a neatly trimmed beard. He was expensively dressed; a grey sport coat, silk shirt; delicate gold chain around his neck and a large watch on his wrist. His physical presence was imposing, a head taller than all of them. He was in a hurry, impatient and unhappy.

He strode towards a small group of men gathered to meet him; two were Chinese and two others, middle-eastern. They all greeted him with the Arabic ‘Salaam Alaykuma'. He returned the greeting without enthusiasm as he walked through the little knot of men, as though they didn't exist.

He then turned to one of those gathered, took him aside and gave what seemed to be an order which was accompanied by a nod of his head towards the Chinese who looked anxious and clearly wanting to please. The man to whom he was talking then joined the little group; followed by a worried discussion and then, with what seemed like a resolution, they all left the lobby towards the big glass doors and a waiting limousine; the big man in front, the others following like so many hurried and harried ducklings.

I had watched the 5-minute proceedings seated in a leather hi-backed chair barely 10 feet away. I had a book in front of me, hiding, but I was fascinated. So I watched, eyes peering over page and I listened. I thought later about this brief encounter. My conclusion: although I didn't know what kind of passport he was carrying, but here, before me was a loyal citizen of Revelation's "Babylon"-the global "free market' consumer, capitalist community-at its worst: nominally religious, self-important and self-satisfied, doing business, treating people as means to his ends. The rich win, the poor lose.

But one day God may, or will strip him of his position and wealth and those who want a piece of it and then who will he be? I don't know. But I do know he's somehow another human being created in the image of God, made in love for love-for love of neighbor and of God. But it was difficult to see that image and that end because of the arrogance that clung to him like a shroud. I hated what I saw.