The Great Wide Open

This is the Meseta:

And so is this:

A year ago, Dad and I were walking through this tremendous expanse of open space.  We had heard it was feared by some, but for the two of us, it was probably the best part of the journey. The wind and the sun could get to you.  The way that you couldn't really track distances accurately was a mental challenge to say the least. It is a lyrical place, where time and distance pass like verses rather than prose.

In the howl of the wind,

And in the song of the birds

Is the voice of God.  

When you first see it, 

It makes you doubt, 

Everything

When it embraces you, 

You know you belong

On the Way.

Clouds and land,

Form a haven

A heaven

For wildflowers,

And walkers.

Haunted, and haunting

Open, and opening,

Holy, holy, holy.

Sing your songs

Pray your prayers

The wind will carry them

To the heart of God.

Maybe This Is What We Deserve

As a life long resident (almost) of Pennsylvania and Maryland, I have never before voted in a primary election that had much meaning.  Both States hold their primaries in late April, when most of the world has gone back to ignoring Iowa and only thinking about New Hampshire as a place to maybe go on vacation.  Yesterday, I got the chance to have a meaningful say in who will be on the ticket in November (define meaningful as you will). Honestly though, as this Primary season lurches on, I'm starting to get a bit of a knot in my guts.  It looks as though we are on a collision course for a Trump v. Clinton race for the White House, with a strong possibility of some of the ugliest internecine hissing and scratching in the GOP since Barry Goldwater, not that I remember that personally.
At this point, I have come to prefer Trump to Cruz.  Not that I would vote for either one of them.  The only reason I would even say which one I prefer is to point out that our candidates reflect something about our nature, and in this cycle, we should probably take a minute to reflect on what exactly our choices are saying about us.
In the Bible, people groups are characterized by their allegiances to both kings and gods.  The way the enemies of Israel are described by the prophets for instance is wrapped in layers of metaphor and artful descriptions. Sometimes these prophetic observations had great truth, other times they were maybe couched in fear and hatred, it's hard to tell, because we don't live in that world.  We do live in this world though, so here is what I think each of the four apparent candidates says about us:

1. Donald Trump: Trump is the bully and the front runner in all of us.  Trump is the voice that calls for change back to the way things were, or at least how some imagine that they were.  Trump is the voice of money and success, and his credibility extends as far as you believe money and power are really the important forces in the world.  He can wield both with fearless (some might say fearsome) confidence.  Trump's actual policies are vague and thus difficult to challenge in open debate.  But he's not selling us his ideas, he is selling us himself, as a cult of personality that says: "Are you angry?  Me too, let's do something about it."  He hasn't, up to this point, had to define what that something might be.  Yet he keeps winning states and delegates, despite harshly alienating large segments of the population.  He is a testament to how screwed up our Government is at the current juncture of history (not our nation BTW, I don't believe we need to "make America great again," America is pretty great, our Government could use an overhaul). Remember when Howard Dean, the Democratic front runner at the time, let loose those awkward (oh so awkward) yells at a rally speech, and basically everyone sort of jumped off the bandwagon?  That's how fragile a candidacy can be, but not Trump, he can weather making positively absurd statements, and have people admire his honesty.  How?  Why? These are soul searching questions America.
2. Hillary Clinton: If Trump is the bully, captain of the football team, Hillary is the student body president.  She is a political beast to her very core, and has been for pretty much her entire adult life.  She is our ruthless pragmatism.  She is the spirit of our nation that accepts atomic bombs and drone strikes as necessary means to an end.  Hillary's greatest quality, and the reason so many don't trust her is precisely her undaunted drive to occupy positions of power.  As Obama has revealed some of the deeply seated, latent (and emergent) racism of our nation, Hillary exposes our sexism.  Even if we consider ourselves thoroughly modern, enlightened types, there are ways in which we negate Hillary because she is female.  Her character does not fit what we think of, deep down in our instinctual thought patterns, as appropriately feminine.  She refuses to sit down and demurely occupy the side stage, even when her husband was POTUS, and that rubs a lot of people the wrong way.  People are torn by Hillary, because many would love to see a woman finally occupy the Oval Office, it's just that many of those same people just don't want THAT woman to occupy the Oval Office.  The why and how of that is also a prompt for some searching.
3. Ted Cruz: Cruz is the zealot.  He is a political zealot of conservatism, he is a religious zealot of Seven Mountains Dominionism, which gives me the shivers, both as a voter and as a Christian.  Now I will admit, despite what I do for a living, I have always been more comfortable with skeptics and agnostics than with true believers. People with doubts tend to be more trustworthy than those who are absolutely sure of everything.  I tend to see the Zealots and the fundamentalists as people who were most opposed to Jesus in his day, and also being a force counter to the Gospel in the world today.  I am suspicious of any religious movement that focuses too much on an end times scenario and some idea that God is all of the sudden going to decide to change the rules and do things by divine magical intervention instead of the slow and painful work of sanctifying human lives.  But Cruz's brand of gnostic-ish Christianity plays pretty well in America, it gives the people what they want: assurance that they are "in" the club, and that no matter how bad things get, Jesus is going to be on their side.  Cruz is with the crowd that sees persecution of the Church coming around every turn, and is constantly on the lookout for the attacks of the enemy, which leads to militancy and a bunker mentality which is really at odds with the multicultural global world we find ourselves having to deal with these days. He seems to be fading, but you never know, the establishment really hates Trump.
4. Bernie Sanders: Confession, if you didn't know it already, I really like Bernie.  I understand all the reasons people have for writing him off: socialism, idealism, impracticality of his ideas.  I get why people feel that way.  But to me, even though he doesn't seem to stand a chance against the Clinton Machine, he is a breath of fresh air in politics: an honest man. More so than any of his policies, Bernie was and is doing the same thing as Trump: selling us himself, his frank, Brooklyn Jewish Grandfather persona, his long years as a political gadfly, his lone opposition to the Iraq war, he's selling us his vision and his integrity.  You may disagree with what he thinks we should be doing, or question whether his policies would ever be feasible, but in an arena filled with so many people who will bend and maybe even break in order to win an election, Bernie doesn't, he hasn't and it would seem he won't.  He could have attacked Hillary on so many fronts, but he insisted that he wasn't going to start flinging poo, and he hasn't.  His only attacks have come on policy positions, voting records, and, well, political stuff.  Bernie is our idealism and our hope.  He is an American story that shows us the best of what we can be, honest, sincere, modest, intent on serving rather than ruling.  He is probably not going to be an option, but his presence and the stir he has caused gives me hope that we might actually be turning for the good.

This is not me trying to tell you how to vote.  That's why I waited until after the Primary to write this.  This is me encouraging all of us to think about our choice of elected officials not just in utilitarian terms of what they can do for us, but think about what they say about us.  Especially when it comes to POTUS, that office is more deeply emblematic of our national identity than it is important to our national policy.  The fact that we may only have bad choices should give us pause to consider what we did to deserve those choices.

When Doves Cry

2016 is shaping up to be quite a year for artists I care about shuffling off of the mortal coil.  First David Bowie, now Prince; just a plea to Tom Waits, Bob Dylan and Leonard Cohen, please keep your doctors appointments.   I have to admit that I am definitely a bit of a shallow fan of Prince's music.  I have Purple Rain like everybody else in the world, but for the most part I sort of admire Prince's music like I admire Jackson Pollock paintings; I like them, but not all the time, and not with complete understanding.
When I was in high school, just starting to play the guitar and basically idolizing Jimi Hendrix, I would often wonder why there weren't any other players out there like Jimi.  I mean we had Clapton and Stevie Ray Vaughn and Eddie Van Halen, all virtuosos, all amazing, but not quite like Jimi.  Hendrix, to me is the definition of a guitar genius because he changed the way guitars were played.  I remember having some level of angst as a budding guitarist and a fan of music, about how there was no one who pushed the level and range of what could be done with an electric guitar.  Mostly because I wasn't paying attention to freaking Prince.
I now recognize that Prince is a guitar god, he also deliberately remained outside the genre where sheer guitar virtuosity is really put up on a pedestal.  Purple Rain was a bit of a clue, a definitely Hendrix-like bit of driving and rhythmic fuzzed out space guitar with a profoundly simple and undeniably catchy hook, just sort of stretched out with some really hardcore R&B vocals.  It is still one of my favorite songs ever, but like Bowie, Prince refused to just endlessly remake the same song, even if it was great.
In my days of going all fanboy over blues artists like BB King and John Lee Hooker, I was missing out on an artist who was pushing the forms and patterns of that music into a new era.  Partly because the artist himself was changing his name to a symbol and seemed more about posturing and cultivating a weirder-than-thou persona that wasn't cuddly or cute at all.  In fact his androgyny and that aloofness made Prince the person sort of an acquired taste.  I always got the impression that he might be about to spit on somebody, or kiss them, or grind on them, or whatever, he just kind of made me uncomfortable in some of the same ways that Bowie did.
Prince had his moments where he stepped out from behind his weirdness and showed the world that he was all about the music, and that the music he could do was, well pretty much peerless.  When he did the Superbowl halftime show, people were like, "What? Prince at football game?  That doesn't seem right!"  And then he appeared in the driving rain and gave perhaps the single greatest musical performance of Superbowl history.  Let's remember that U2, The Rolling Stones and Sir Paul McCartney have all played the Superbowl halftime show, and Prince puts them all in the rearview, with what amounts to a fairly simple set, where he played a couple of his songs and a couple of other people's songs.
See also, the now infamous performance of While My Guitar Gently Weeps (at about 3:25 a dude in a red hat starts making a bunch of guitar type legends look on in awe, the youngish set musician behind Petty, at one point just shakes his head in wonder at what Prince is doing).  This is an example of what Prince could do, but perhaps the most impressive thing about his musical catalog is how little he actually did it.  If I could play like that, I would do nothing but that, all day every day, until my fingers fell off.
Prince was weird, and wonderful, and well, purple, the color or royalty.
Oh and also there is this. (Warning: that video is from Chappelle's Show and has some NSFW, very bad language in it, but if you're a Prince fan... you need to see it, just not with kids or sensitive souls in the vicinity.  Almost as good as the Rick James sketch).

Impossible

When I get to feeling frustrated with the "way things are," and start yearning for something to change, I usually also get a sense of why and how things are resistant to change. In the church, in politics, or in human society at large, one confronts the reality that the status quo is often the result of a rather complex web of decisions and positions made by many people over years and years. The hopelessness of trying to change the system can become overwhelming. I often have to remind myself of what the Scripture says, "with God all things are possible," Jesus said that a few times in different contexts.  I also need to remember that one of those contexts was Gethsemane, when he was really hoping there was another way.
We have been swimming in promises and platitudes from our political overlords for nearly a year now.  All of them, from Ted Cruz to Bernie Sanders are promising to make things different, according to their idioms.  My own inclination is to feel the Bern, but I know that there is no rational reason to hope for him to win the nomination against such a powerful symbol of the status quo as Hillary Rodham Clinton. Hillary, for her part, is practically bound to be the bland, color by numbers politician that she is, because she is trying to break new ground as the first female Chief Executive.  It is in her best interest to market herself as competent and bland, because her gender makes her a target for enough bile and venom, all by it's lonesome, just as Obama's race has done for him.  And HRC has done a pretty good job demonstrating the quality of her armor: enemies are left stabbing at air and shadows as she avoids charges and suspicions left and right.
The stone cold fact of the matter is that the system will eventually sort out and select a candidate who will most closely fit into the machine.  Because systems work like that, as a wise person once said, "Each system is perfectly designed to get the results it gets."  Don't like the results you're getting?  You need to change.  The problem is we hate to change.  That's why having only Trump and Cruz to pick from is a nightmare for the GOP, neither one of them fit the system (in variously terrifying ways).  Neither does Bernie, but he's just the gadfly of the old Democratic left, he's not, nor has he ever really been the presumptive nominee.  Blame the media if you want, but the reality is deeper and more sinister than even a conspiracy of the Illuminati, it is the nature of systems to seek equilibrium, and change is always uncomfortable if it is for any good.
I'm going to switch horses here and talk church, because that's what I actually know about more than politics.  Every day I spend more time than is good for me reading articles and books about how things have changed and how that effects the church. I read lists of things that the church must do, or must never do, or things we used to do that we should do more, or things we used to do that we should do less, or things that we should have never done in the first place, you get the picture.
Very few of these prognostications deal with the fact that the church, as with any system is the way that it is because someone wants it to be that way.  You hear tales of churches that actually had the self awareness to recognize that they were unwilling to change, and so consciously made the decision to simply mitigate the inevitable decline and eventually fade away.  It sounds horrible on the surface, until you recognize that it takes a fair amount of courage and clarity to accept that as the truth.  Most of us would rather believe that we are perfectly willing to change, and we just need to read a few more lists about how to change and what to change into.  We need to know more, understand better, try harder, try differently, whatever.  It's all vanity and chasing after the wind.
What we really need to do is drink the cup that is placed before us. Take care of our simple business as best we can, piece together a vision from our lived experience.  Dreams are good, big ideas can be important, but they can also be distracting and numbing and keep you from doing things that need done right here and now.
We have several nearly impossible tasks as a community of faith:

1. Encourage people to change (in other words, be prophetic) without making them so mad they leave. Failing that try to deal with them leaving gracefully.
2. Insist that repentance is necessary and a transformed life is desirable without being judgmental bullies. Failing that don't be afraid to apologize.
3. Engage people in service and the work of community building when they already have way too much to do. Failing that, try and love people in their struggles, even if they're not ready to headline the next project.
4. Teach with authenticity and authority in a world that rejects authority and has nearly forgotten what authenticity looks like. Failing that, just try not to lapse into peddling fear and hate.
5. Do something, anything really, which most if not all people can sort of agree about, and have that thing be transformative. Failing that, try not to be an insufferable jerk to your neighbor.

Keep in mind that the system we're all operating within wants to stay the same.  Keep in mind that the people who make up your church community do not like change, no matter what they say. These things are only nearly impossible, there's always a window, but I cannot tell you what that window looks like or when or how to open it, I just know we need some air in here.

The Body

I want you to know that I really do love you Church.  Honestly I can't say I love Jesus if I don't also love you, because you are the body of Christ.  But sometimes you're ugly, sometimes you're mean, sometimes you just plain don't get it and I have to hold on to those moments where what God sees in you actually shines through and you're beautiful despite it all.
It's hard to watch someone you love fight cancer, and I feel like that's what's happening right now, at least in the manifestation of Church that looks most familiar to me.  The cancer is, as I have indicated, self-interested and self-involved consumerism. It's weakening the Body to the point of death in many cases, and in some places appears to have entirely taken over, making positive thinking and prosperity into a god of sorts, or on a different tack, establishing rules, regulations and heavily slanted moral principles into a god of another sort.  It's either about what makes me feel good, or what makes me feel superior, and some even manage both at the same time.
Where's my proof? How can I say such things? Who am I to judge?
I'm no one, and I really have nothing to back up what I say other than observations and probably too much reading.  But I have been on this road, one way or another, all my life.  I have seen the way things work behind closed doors, and I have watched you.  I read the things you write, and I listen to the things you say.
You seem angry.  And believe me, I understand anger, I have been angry a lot in my life, but what I have learned about anger is that it is based in fear.  I never wanted to admit that to myself when I was angry, but it is totally about fear, fear of losing something you think is valuable, fear of being left behind, fear that things will change and you will not like the changes, fear that your safety will be put at risk.  These things all make you angry.  It doesn't matter where you vent your anger: liberals, conservatives, fundamentalists, LGBTQ people, Planned Parenthood, President Obama, Donald Trump, ISIS, Atheists, humanists, communists, capitalists, socialists, the list goes on, we're just too darn angry with someone or something, and that means we're afraid of those things.  Dodge that truth if you will, I will not be angry at you, or afraid of you... well at least I'll try.  Why will I try?  Because God is always telling people not to be afraid, and that love casts our fear, and yes I suppose that is somewhere underneath that whole love your enemies thing.
I used to think that there was such a thing as righteous anger, but increasingly I see that going bad more often than not.  I mean the righteous part goes out the window.  Sure we want standards, sure we don't want anarchy, that's all true, but I'm not talking about throwing the baby out with the bathwater here, I'm talking about taking the love thing a little more seriously and strenuously than we do.
I think part of the problem that we run into nowadays is that we want to jump into tackling really big problems before we master small things.  We want to tackle poverty before we learn how to really be generous.  Example: starving children in Africa break our hearts but we refer to starving children (or maybe rather their parents) in our own neighborhoods as moochers and takers.  We want to tackle injustice before we learn how to put others first.  We want to protect "innocent lives" before we have really wrestled with the notion of our own interdependence and see how closely we are connected to each other, innocent and guilty alike.
We want to tackle racism, but honestly we would rather self-segregate into our own little groups, not just by race, but also socio-economic class, like political philosophies, age, favorite sports team, you name it.  And yes this happens in the Church, why else do you think we have thousands of denominations across the globe?  Why, in a fair sized town or suburb, do we have dozens of churches of all different sorts, most of which are struggling to attract enough people to keep the doors open?
Let's face it, we have competition in the form of secular humanism that doesn't have anywhere near the handicaps that we play with, mostly because we haven't learned to control our anger.  I used to know a guy in college who was a pretty decent basketball player, had a good shot and could handle the ball a little, but he had a terribly short fuse, if you hassled him too much he would get mad and start to take risks and put up bad shots.  If he was calm and collected, you definitely wanted him on your team, but if someone got under his skin... forget about it.
The secular world makes few demands on people, they can sleep in on Sunday, or go golfing, or go to the kids soccer game.  It gets your money by giving you things you actually want, like cars and vacation homes, and it never demands that you sing songs you don't like, except when that odd Justin Beiber song gets stuck in your head.
So, given the competition, I go back to my original question, what are we selling?  Are we selling anger and indignation? That's not as silly as it sounds, anger and indignation actually sell pretty well, see Trump.  Are we selling some sort of promise of prosperity and blessings?  That sells too, but it puts us in a sticky place vis-a-vis the teachings of our crucified Lord, who doesn't have much good to say about worldly wealth.  Are we selling spiritual enlightenment?  Well, how do we deliver on that promise?  By inviting people to our little gatherings to sing whatever songs we sing, say whatever creeds we say and listen to one of us talk about stuff that you or we will probably never put into practice?
I'm sorry, I'm starting to sound angry aren't I? See how easy that happens. It's a real problem when you're supposed to be about Good News and love casting out all fear.  Repentance really is an ongoing process, not a one off solution.  Learning to love God and walk the way is the task of a lifetime, which is why a lot of this reads like I'm going in circles: because I am.  I'm not perfect, neither is the church I serve, neither are any of the people that will ever walk through it's doors.  We're not even the best at anything we do.  Charity and service?  Most other non-profits can beat us at that game, because we have to spend money on a big fancy building and keeping the lights on, and paying professional clergy and administrative staff and because most of us are busy with other things.  Being a haven for those who are struggling and broken? Honestly these days the 12 steps programs do that better than us.  Nobody ever got the stinkeye for coming to an AA meeting in ripped jeans and a dirty t-shirt.  A community that brings people together? There are just oodles of groups you can join that do more fun things than a church.
So why? Why do we do this?  Well, for me it is because of what Ecclesiastes says over and over again about the various aspects of life: it is all "vanity and chasing after the wind."  Worship, mission and the community of the church are the only antidote for that, but they are camouflaged to look like they are subject to the same futility.  You can come to church and experience nothing, or you can encounter God, there really is no guarantee though.
Maybe you're fine with vanity and chasing after the wind. Lots of people seem to be.  For me though there's something about Jesus and the Good News of the Gospel that won't let me be satisfied with that.  That's why I go to church, because I need to, and I suppose that is why I also have a hard time "selling" it, because I don't think it should be sold.  On most days I feel like I would be doing people a favor by just letting them be rather than introducing them to this Way that is going to infect them and not let them simply go back to their every day vanity and chasing after the wind.  Perhaps that makes me a poor evangelist, add it to the list of things I do poorly.
All I can do is go back to the fact that I love God, because I am loved by God. I follow Christ, because, somehow or other I am in Christ, and where he goes I must go also.  For all her flaws, the Church is where Christ shows up, and so here am I.

Some Splaining

There's a word I hate when it comes to church-y discussions.  That word is "missional," spell checker gives me a red squiggly line under that word, and I agree it should be there, it's not a normal person word.  It's a bit of the argot used by church wonks and insiders, and it is often used to cover up the fact that we either do not know, or at the very least have little consensus about what we're talking about.  It gets used in vision statements that start off with Matthew 28 citations. It gets used to evoke an idea that is rather important, but then squashes it into a package that no one finds palatable, it's like that Christmas gift fruitcake that dear old Martha gave you, the intention is good, but the reality is just going to fester on your counter until you sadly give up and throw it away.
I may have flirted with it, I may have even cut myself a slice and chewed wistfully on something that "a lot of people" say is a good thing, but I am throwing it away now.  Most of us have not wrestled adequately with what the mission of the church actually is to be able form it into a meaningful adjective.  We need to understand the nominal truth behind the word before we use it to describe ourselves or our activities or especially our vision.
In seminary, we are required to take a class called Missiology, which is the study of the mission of the church.  My teacher was Dr. Scott Sunquist, Dr. Sunquist and another Mission type faculty member, Dr. Don Dawson of the World Mission Initiative (WMI) were also weekly participants in some pick-up basketball games down in the gym at East Liberty Presbyterian Church.  It was through this extra-curricular activity that I got myself and my lovely wife roped into going on a short term mission trip to Guatemala with a local church during one of the summer breaks.
Sunquist and Dawson are veterans of the mission field, and as such they are dangerous sorts to get involved with, because casual conversations have a way of ending with you on a plane to some place where you never really expected or wanted to go. In fact, both of the major mission trips that I have taken in my life started out with a shrug of my shoulders rather than an enthusiastic, "Here I am Lord."  I didn't really know what I was doing or why I was doing it, and that probably was the saving grace of the whole experience.  When I was a junior in High School, I heard about a trip to Alaska with the Synod of the Trinity. I said to myself, "Hmm, that seems cool," and I went, I had no grand vision of saving souls or valiantly serving the Lord in far off places.  I was 16, it was Alaska, for a month, it seemed like a more intense sort of a vacation, and essentially that is what it was.
Guatemala, likewise, it was service of a sort, but there was a very real sense in which we got a lot more than we gave.  On either trip, if I had gone with visions of being the savior or the bearer of light I would have been largely disappointed.  We certainly saw things that broke our heart, but we also experienced things that filled them. For the most part these "missions" were not "missions" in the traditional sense of the word, they were life-changing journeys for us.  By contrast, they were most likely fairly unremarkable for those we went to serve.
As one grows into a greater awareness of the oneness of God, and the true magnificence of grace in Christ, you stop thinking so much about faith as a series of actions and start understanding faith as a state of being. The mission of the church is supposed to help us grow into that awareness, that is what making disciples means, instructing (in word and deed) and baptizing people into Christ.  In other words, bringing them into the kingdom of those who live with the awareness of God's grace and goodness.
In my experience at least, this journey is better started with a certain lack of expectations and more of a sense of general willingness.  It is not thinking that you specifically have some great power to share, but in openly wondering, "why not?"  This is another thing the Camino (in concert with Alaska and Guatemala) taught me: you are most engaged in God's work and most thoroughly on the journey, when you get yourself out of the way.  I know this sounds sort of Buddhist, but they're not wrong about this: letting go of yourself, your expectations, your desires, and simply being present to the journey, to the world around you, and to others along the way is the path of enlightenment.
If you reduce the mission of the church to a program, an event, or even acts of service, you are missing a big idea. The mission of the church is emulation of Christ, do what he did.  What did he do? He went from place to place, sometimes across the Galilee, sometimes to Jerusalem, a few times to Samaria, maybe up to Tyre and Sidon, but for the most part he hung around Capernaum, not too far from Nazareth, in the midst of his supporters and away from the dangers of Judea, Rome, Herod and the Sanhedrin.  The message of the kingdom was constant: God is with us, the reality of that drawing near to us.
It is interesting to me that we often miss the mission, or even worse pollute it with our consumerism by turning it into "mere" charity, or religious tourism. Let's face it, when it comes to charity, we can be outperformed by the Red Cross or FEMA (sometimes) or any number of secular organizations who don't have to deal with messy theological considerations or things like worshiping or living together as a community, they just ride in, do good and go home. To top it off, we often come on the scene pretending we totally are Jesus, rather than his disciples, and this opens the door to all sorts of problems.  We can so often bring our imperial and paternalistic attitudes into the process, not recognizing that we are in need of transformation as much, if not more than the ones we go to "serve," or evangelize. We need to remember that being the Body of Christ means we follow his example in how to meet people where they are.
After the Guatemala trip, I did an independent study project about the religious history of the country.  I had in my mind an experience of profound darkness, night in a village with no electricity, under the heavy tropical clouds.  My original title was "Into Darkness, Bringing Light."  In a discussion with Dr. Sunquist who was supervising the independent study, I realized that I had that all wrong, profoundly wrong, totally backwards as a matter of fact.  I changed my title to "Into Darkness, in Seeking Light."  The darkness that I went into was not a spiritual darkness, I mostly brought that with me, it was simply a darkness of poverty and lack of things most of us take for granted. The light that I found was not in some grand theological statement or cultural insight, it was just that we go where God sends us and try to be fully present for the journey.
That is the mission of the church, whether we are in a foreign land helping orphans, in a church in a little logging town in Alaska, on the Camino de Santiago, or at home making a jello salad for a fellowship dinner, or even sitting in a committee meeting talking about a budget.  The task of being present and in the presence of God is all we ever need to have in our hearts and minds.  Don't get me wrong, that's not easy, in fact, the more mundane the circumstances, the more difficult it is to keep that mindset and that open heartedness.  That's why I think it is good, despite all the valid critiques, to occasionally get up and leave your comfortable nook and go somewhere else, step out of your comfort zone and try something big and bold. It is also important to bring the awareness of your identity to all of the small things you do as a part of the Church, you are being the Body of Christ then as well.

The Why

I'll be honest with you, as much as I might wax nostalgic for the Camino, there were many days and many times that I was just seriously done with it.  But like getting a tattoo, or (so I hear) giving birth, you don't so much remember the pain when you like the result.  Probably more than anything it was the trials and tribulations of the journey that taught me the strongest lessons. This probably comes as no surprise to anyone, but you learn more from suffering and failure than you do from comfort and success.  I would like to spend some time looking at the troubles, and the things that break with regard to this thing we call the church.
If there's one thing that recent history has shown us in rather stark relief, it is that Christendom is failing or has failed.  Christendom is the union between the religion that began with the followers of Jesus of Nazareth, which was known as The Way, and the powers of empires and nations.  We probably should have recognized some of the unholy potential in this union rather early on (some did, but we usually did our best to shut them up). But we didn't, and we can't go back and change that, for better or worse, Christendom was what it was and did what it did, and in the big picture it certainly wasn't all bad.  Art, literature, and yes even science were shaped by the spiritual liberation of the the human soul from bondage to the old gods of blood and fire.  While it was by no means a sure thing, Christian theology allowed us to see ourselves situated in a world where a benevolent and loving God actually desired us to grow and move forward, "striving towards the goal," as Paul puts it, of union with Christ, which is union with the Triune God.  This striving forward beyond what we are now, is essentially the thing described in Genesis as the first sin: eating of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, which was forbidden.
Christianity put all that to bed, all those ideas that God was intent on keeping us in our place. Except, to tell you the truth, that sort of freedom makes us kind of nervous, and honestly we probably shouldn't be given that sort of latitude to just run wild, so we set about tucking in some of those loose ends, and constructing a "safer" religion that gave us more certainty, and less... well less of just about everything else.
Enter the dawn of modernism: the renaissance, the reformation, the age of science, the industrial revolution.  In a few short decades we have gone from candles and gaslights to iphones and solar power.  We have gone from the steam engine to the supersonic jet, with such rapidity that we, I think, have a bit of whiplash.  The church is showing itself to be a casualty of this acceleration, and I'm not just talking about the much ballyhooed numerical decline and institutional stagnation that we see across the board, I'm talking about a failure of vision and purpose. We have become disoriented and we're making the mistake that many an inexperienced person makes upon finding themselves in this condition: we are lashing out in spastic and often illogical attempts at self rescue, and we are probably just making our problems worse.
You may think that I have an answer, but I don't.  Honestly, I'm as lost and prone to these mistakes as anyone.  I have staked my livelihood and my career on the institutional church, I do not want to see her fail.  If I had answers, I might be the pastor of a beatific congregation where everyone loved and forgave as much as they're supposed to.  If I had answers, I might know exactly what to do to make sure that we were always worshiping in a true and winsome manner that would absolutely magnetize anyone who came near it.  If I had answers, all my sermons would leave people challenged and inspired to follow Jesus better. If I had answers, I would never feel like I was just barely holding on and going through the motions.
But I don't have answers, I only have questions.  My question at this moment is, "what are we selling?" Because, as much as I wish it were otherwise, the church is selling something to an age of consumers.  I have railed against consumerism in the past, but I honestly wonder if we can expect anything else out of modern people.  They are born and raised into a world where they are constantly being sold something, and constantly in the mode of acquiring something, or more, or better somethings than they already have.  We are not only sold better things, but better bodies, better relationships, even better lives.  And the church, far from offering an alternative to this scheme, has just jumped into the mud and played along.
I'm going to spend the next couple of posts examining how this course of thinking leads us into mistakes about worship, about mission, and about our very community.
Let's start with worship.  I learned something very important about worship on the Camino.  I experienced many permutations of how human beings do this thing called worship.  There were bible studies and devotions with small groups sitting on the floor by candlelight.  There were discussions along the way that turned into religious and spiritual dialogue.  There were masses, formal liturgical events of varying levels of complexity, from a quiet vespers service to a full scale mass in the Cathedral at Santiago with a 700 pound botofumiere burning a couple hundred dollars worth of incense and swinging to the ceiling over our heads.  As novel as that was, by about the third time through, it can start to be old hat.
Let's be real here, if you can walk 500 miles to reach a cathedral and all the while have this vision of being at this particular place and time, and have that vision carry you through rain, heat, dust, soreness, crowded communal living, and constant moving, and then, the day after you arrive, at your second pilgrim's mass, be thinking more about how you wish you had a better seat than about the glory and beauty that had moved you to tears 24 hours ago (when you had a better seat)... well let's just say there might be a lesson to be learned here: we are never satisfied for very long.
It's a borderline miracle that anyone stays in a church very long, just based on the worship experience.  My more liturgical colleagues are probably saying, "see we told you so, that's why we keep it the same all the time, you can't win the novelty game!"  And my more creative and charismatic colleagues are saying, "see, that's why you need to always keep it fresh and find new ways to worship!"  They're both right.  You can't freaking win.  You will never make everyone happy, as long as they are bringing their same human brokenness into worship (which will be always).
Because so much of our identity as modern American churches is wrapped up in what we do for an hour or so on Sunday morning, we are fragile butterflies of the liturgical arts, always fluttering beautifully along, but always ephemeral and not very sturdy.  Even ancient prayers and practices cannot truly give us roots that will survive the drought of a soul that simply wants to be entertained and provided with a "good worship experience."  No preacher or musician can make you worship, it is not a passive experience.  And even when  you start to see the value in worshiping and taking responsibility for it yourself, you will still have dry times, times where you are too busy, or too angry, or too something to really allow yourself into that space.  There are times when the dust of the way clings a little too tightly for you to feel clean and in the presence of the Lord.  It's okay, there is more than one hour in your life, and more than one church you can enter, and indeed you may experience the same church differently at different moments in your walk. Always remember there is grace for your failures, otherwise you will quickly discourage and fade.
I think the best attitude to have is one of expectation, but not expectation that everything will be as you expect or like it to be.  Rather expect to see God somehow, someway, but remember that The Lord is rather averse to being predictable.  Be open to a surprise, stop always looking for the sure thing or the easy path, try something that's just between you and your God.  In a Presbyterian Church that could be something as simple as raising your hands during a song (you could even try it during a hymn and really confuse everyone).  You will probably feel like everyone is looking at you as you worship, and maybe they are, but the thought and the self-consciousness of that thought are simply warning flags.
Why are you here? What is going on in your soul? What exactly do you expect?  I found that asking myself these questions over and over again along the way allowed me to enter into the sacred places (the ones made with stone and the ones that are simply out there).
The honesty of giving unflattering answers is a sort of confession.
The ability to let go of those unflattering answers is the forgiveness.
What comes after is a place of grace, where you just might be able to worship in spirit and in truth.

Steps

It's empty in the valley of your heart,

The sun, it rises slowly as you walk

Away from all the fears

And all the faults you've left behind.

-Mumford and Sons, The Cave

A year ago, I was having one of the harder physical struggles of my life.  Day two of the Camino, Roncesvalles to Zubiri, over the hills of Basque country, up and down, up and down.  I disliked the downs, I loathed the ups.  My body was not ready for this, my pack was too heavy, I was seriously laboring up every hill, stopping about every twenty steps or so to catch my breath.  Some friendly passerby stopped to helpfully explain that it was better to keep moving at a steady pace rather than stopping on the inclines.  I had no breath for a sarcastic response, I just panted.

To make things worse, my mind was contemplating over a month of this, every day.  Somewhere, I knew it was going to get better.  Somewhere I knew that this was simply the open revolt phase of a sedentary body and life being challenged and broken apart.  But I seriously thought about quitting.  Then I thought of how that would go, what that would mean, and I couldn't deal with that sort of failure, so I kept going.

The first step was mental, I had to stop dreading every little bump we went up and over, from fairly minor hills to what one of our fellow pilgrims from Ireland would call, "a bit of a rise," which means essentially a mountain for those of you unfamiliar with the Irish penchant for understatement.

I had to tell myself again and again, "just walk, stop as little as possible, get over the fact that tourists with daypacks, joggers and wiry old men are passing you on the uphills, this is not a race."  I trudged on, and while I never really got into speedy climbing shape, even at the end, I made every step that was required of me, and we finished the Camino around the same time as people who seemed, at the start, destined to outpace us.

Sometime on this day an old Basque man, out for a stroll with his family, saw me huffing and puffing along the way, and he stopped and said something like, "En Roncesvalles, estas asi (you are like this)," he made a motion with his hand of a round belly, which I had hanging over the waist belt of my pack.  Then he said, "En Santiago, estas asi," and he made the motion to signify that the same stomach would be slightly flatter.  Frankly, he underestimated the resilience of my belly, it may have gotten slightly less over the course of the journey, but it never exactly went away.  I started a fat guy, and ended a slightly less fat guy, but by the end I was a fat guy who could lug a full pack over Cruz de Ferro and up to O'Cebriero without blowing a gasket.

Somewhere along the line, we all acquire this fantasy that somehow, someway our problems are going to be solved all in a big whirl of luck, skill and good timing.  Maybe too many of our stories employ a handy deus ex machina (hand of god) ending where everything works out just when things seem darkest.  Maybe it's just human nature to hope for a miracle rather than slog on up that hill.  I don't know for sure, but what the Camino, and life in general, has taught me is that you can only really ever manage the step that is in front of you.

Yesterday would have been my Brother Jonathan's thirty-fifth birthday.  By some cruel twist of fate, April 10 is now siblings day, an entirely contrived observance that really only has meaning in an age of social media.  Facebook is filled with pictures of people smiling along side their siblings, and it is painfully apparent to me that the only pictures I have of my brother are about 15 years old.  On this day, I look at pictures of my family and see a hole.  Here's me and my sis:

We're all smiles, but we're all grown up (Yes, grown ups wear superman shirts)

Now here's me and Jon at my wedding:

That is a couple of kids in tuxedos trying to act like they know something.

That's all these two will ever be.

The difference between the two is an empty page where there should have been more weddings, and kids and family vacations. And honestly, Jon's skinny behind should have been with me and Dad on the Camino, and not just in spirit. But that step never got taken.

Yesterday, people posted pictures of themselves as kids with their siblings next to pictures of themselves as adults.  It struck me that I only have half of that equation.  It struck me that when people ask me the fairly innocuous question of how many siblings I have, I sometimes stumble at whether to say one or two.  I stop, I pant, because I still haven't learned to to take that step as it comes.

I'm still trying to learn to walk through a contrived, made up day of observance that happens to coincide with a birthday we haven't been able to celebrate in a decade.  I'm not asking for sympathy or advice, I'll take the next step when I catch my breath.

A Man, A Plan, A Canal, and Multinational Shell Corporations

Sometimes I wish I was surprised by this stuff. The revelations that came to us from the "Panama Papers," a deluge of leaked information about the goings on in the banks of Panama.  Panama has been known for years to be right up there with Switzerland and the Cayman Islands in terms of being a solid place to stash ill-gotten gains or money that you would rather not have your government knowing about.  I'm not even going to pretend I know anything about international banking or high finance, because I'm lucky if I can balance my bank account and pay the mortgage on time, but I would like to comment on the rather inevitable reality of the fact that some of the richest and most powerful people in the world have been dodging their responsibilities to their own nations.
The list of notable people is long and growing.
And if you're at all surprised... well I'm so very sorry to tell you that that parcel of land you bought in the Everglades is probably not going to make a very good retirement option.  Being cynical in today's world comes as naturally as breathing, which is kind of a shame, because we really do have some wonderful upside.  Global poverty rates are on the decline, persistent and epidemic diseases are being cured pretty much daily, human rights are creeping along a steady upward path.
But the love of money is still the root of all kinds of evil.
You would think that people who make millions and billions of dollars would find a way to live on the paltry percentages that the government lets them keep, given that what they get to keep amounts to more than I will make in a lifetime, and the approximate GDP of Burma put together. But no, once you find out that having money exponentially increases your ability to make more money and to keep more of that more money, it is probably a bit too much to ask that people do not avail themselves of some "simple" tax shelter plans.
One interesting thing about the Panama Papers is that the US is largely absent from the roles, while China, an ostensibly communist country, has some Bond villain level chicanery happening.  Which illustrates one of the fundamental problems with even the purest Marxist ideal (which China is decidedly not): it does not account for how greedy people can be.  The idea of a truly egalitarian system, economically, politically and such, still remains the stuff of fiction because humans are human.
What goes begging in the breeding ground of cynicism is the common good of humanity.  We stop believing it's possible for us to truly form just societies.  We assume that someone is always gaming the system, and so why shouldn't we get in on that?
By virtue of my profession, I like to use the Scripture to compare and contrast cultural attitudes towards how we handle money and the ethics that are prescribed by the Scriptures.  I have noticed that people generally like to focus on the prosperity angle when it comes to the Bible talking about money, but I think it is rather more crucial look at it from the perspective of what it is trying to teach us, rather than as a sort of cheat code to prosperity (not that it even works that way).  Back in the Hebrew Scriptures, we have the story of Ruth, which paints us a picture of a society where justice was at least a possibility, even if it was always hanging under the threat of someone doing something out of bounds.  We find that Ruth, a foreigner, a Moabite, and eventual relative of Jesus, who has come to Israel with Naomi, her mother-in-law, finds a place and a level of subsistence through the practice of gleaning.  The welfare of these two widows was dependent on a prescribed form of social welfare for the Israelites:

When you reap the harvest of your land, you shall not reap to the very edges of your field or gather the gleanings of your harvest.  You shall not strip your vineyard bare, or gather the fallen grapes of your vineyard; you shall leave them for the poor and the alien; I am the Lord your God. -Leviticus 19: 9-10 NRSV

Now, I have mixed feelings about some of the stuff in Leviticus, but this is something I think we Biblical types could really get behind.  The idea of taking what you have worked for, but stopping with "enough," and seeing the practice of greed (even in the guise of efficiency), is ultimately destructive to God's people. That is the essence of most of the laws given in the Hebrew Scriptures, they are designed to teach people how to be a little better to each other.  We can certainly read some of them with different intent, but Jesus reminds us that the essence of the law is love: love God, love your neighbor, these are the lenses through which we must read the law,
Notice that the law doesn't actually require that you not make a living, or do well for yourself, it simply asks that you leave some room for those who are left out. Trying to get out of paying your fair share would seem to me to be a fundamentally opposed to both the Law and the Gospel. I never really expect that the principalities and powers are going to give a hoot about the Law or the Gospel, but I guess it's just a little schadenfreude-alicious to see this all hit the fan.

Longing for the Way

A year.
A year ago, I was getting ready to embark upon a grand journey.  I was not ready, but I was going anyway. It's a little difficult to wrap my head around the fact that it was a year ago.  Camino visions still flood my mind, and my dreams.  I get this far away feeling whenever I'm driving by myself or walking along a trail.  I have these flashes of faces and places, and I remember that for 40 days the way was my home.
I also remember how hard it was to leave home, and how good it was to return.  I remember the weariness and the grind of the Camino.  I am not forgetting the suffering involved, but I'm missing the experience.  I'm trying to adopt the pilgrim mind in other areas of life, to fully experience each step and each moment, to be open to people and events as they come my way.
It's only working in fits and starts.
I admit, the Camino did not re-shape me as a person the way I thought it would this time last year, but it did change me.  The thing is, I'm not sure it is for the better.  My mind is restless, and my feet itch (figuratively, not with athlete's foot).  I'm not even sure that leaving tomorrow for another Camino would solve it, in fact, I suspect it would only make it worse, it would increase the intensity of the visions and the frequency of the "itch."
Part of the problem is that I have these ideas that I think would scratch the itch, but I can't (or won't) put them in motion.  Part of the problem is that I feel like I need to force my mind and spirit onto the Way, half measures and little applications don't work (or maybe they do, but I'm impatient with them).  The Way taught me how impatient I am, and how I long to be in control.
I never thought of myself that way, but now I recognize it in my wants and in the dreams of the Camino that haunt me, they're all about being stalled and stuck in a place: Madrid, Santiago, random places whose names are fading into the mist of memory.  In the dreams, I can't leave; I want to, I need to, my backpack is ready to go, I shoulder it, and start out the door and something keeps me from walking.
"Freedom's just another word for nothing left to lose," sang Janis Joplin. That's the thing about the Camino, is that you are out of control of so much, that little victories, like hot showers and finding a place to sleep, or a really good meal, or even a chance to get laundry done, they all seem like accomplishments.  You don't think about taxes and mortgages and doctor appointments or any of the things that become necessities of adulting in the modern world.  Your concerns are more vital, and you realize that, for the most part you could do without any of it if you really had to.
We tell ourselves that the secret to happiness is more stuff.  The Way punches holes all in that presumption.  Here, I always want more stuff.  I play my guitars and I think about wanting more guitars.  On the Way, I was overjoyed to borrow whatever beat up old guitar the Albergue might have on hand and wrestle it into tune and pluck away at old beat up strings.  Here, I'm always thinking about the next batch of stuff I want to buy, on the Way, I thought a lot about all the stuff I wished I didn't have in my pack.  You get the idea.
Here's the thing: the Gospel should teach us this stuff, about how things and security and worldly power are all just dross and nothingness.  Most of us don't have the cahones to actually try it on for size.  The Way lets you do that, in what you think is a temporary way, a discrete period with a beginning and an end where you agree to suffer the privations of the road, and live with the discomfort of less.
What you don't realize going in is that there is joy on the Way that you will crave, and which will make the things you think you should value seem like rubbish.  I understand what Paul said when he said, "Yet whatever gains I had, these I have come to regard as loss because of Christ." (Philippians 3:7, NRSV)  The Way teaches you first hand, in your physical, mental and spritual experience, how this works.  You can't weasel out of it, or hedge your bets, the sun, the wind, the aches and pains, the very dirt under your feet, not to mention your fellow pilgrims will force you to confront the Way of the Cross and dying to yourself.
The trade off is that it wakes you up to something else, and that something else is revealed as the truth that is worth more than everything else.  When you wake up to that truth, even for a very short time, you will ache for more of it, always.

Nine and Ten

Amendment IX:

The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.

This means that the the wise men who wrote this bill of rights did not, in any way, think this was the last word on human rights and the rule of law.  It means that the mechanisms of courts, judges and juries are meant to continually define where the lines are drawn.  Therefore, when you hear a politician, or your crazy uncle, griping about how allowing same sex marriage is "unconstitutional," you can immediately call shenanigans on that nonsense.  Learn Amendment IX by heart, it's not that hard.  Think about it, paraphrase if you need to, be able to explain it so simply that a five year old can understand it: your rights to stuff are not more important than other people's rights to stuff.  Just because you have a right to bear arms doesn't mean you can walk into Wal-Mart and terrify the living daylights out of little Suzy, because you think you need to be strapped on the way to getting that bonus sized box of Capri Sun (you hear me open carry people, you're actually the ones who are being unconstitutional, by denying and disparaging the rights of the majority of your fellow citizens to not live in terror when they see you and your Gat in aisle five at the Piggly Wiggly).  The laws "enumerated" by the Constitution are necessarily and by intent, made to be defined, refined, limited and exercised by a citizenry committed to the values of a free and democratic society.  If you wonder how things go so horribly awry, examine whether or not we have a citizenry committed to the values of a free and democratic society.  The Constitution has in mind the expansion of human rights and the ability of a society to adapt it's rules to meet new situations, rather than clamp down on the way things happened to be at the moment.  This Amendment sets the groundwork for some of the most important advances in our collective mindset, by simply stating: this work is not finished.

Amendment X:

Powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.

This one is important too, because we are making an attempt at being a "united" nation, not a confederacy of sovereign states.  The argument over the precise implications of Amendment X were sort of crucial when the "recent unpleasantness" between the Union and the Confederacy came to a head.  If the Constitution doesn't take the reigns on some issue, or prohibit states from doing so, then the States get to choose, which has some unfortunate implications for transgender folk in North Carolina last week or for women who want an abortion in Texas.  State governments are much more democratic than the federal government, which means they are more beholden to the ignorance, bigotry and selfishness of the people.  Democracy is a dangerous proposition, as the framers of the Constitution knew full well.  They knew that there were some people out there, full voting citizens who believed witches could give them the evil eye and curse their crops.  They knew that there were people out there who would believe vaccinations give kids autism.  They knew there were people out there who would willingly believe that global climate change was something a bunch of commie liberals made up to force them to stop driving trucks that get 5 miles to the gallon.  They knew there were people out there who would willingly support and elect Donald Trump or Ted Cruz.  And so there needed to be rules, but they also knew that there was no way the Constitution was ever going to be able to hold all the rules necessary to run a country as complex as even the original 13 could be.
So as they wrapped up this first batch of amendments they turned their eyes towards all the things that still needed worked out, and they set up a system where priorities could be set, and authority could be defined, and responsibility parceled out.  Given the differences that clearly exist between their world and ours, I'm actually rather in awe of how well they did.
But now I'm done playing lawyer.