A Labyrinthine Journey: Soon Coming in 3-D

Strange how one remembers things. For some reason, this skit from Saturday Night Live popped into my head this week. I think it is hilarious. Chris Walken is awesome. Enjoy.
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I was just trying to find the quote and couldn’t, but I was thinking about what someone said that they knew there was a normal, because they see it every time they go screaming past it. This has been one of those screaming past it weeks.

Last week was a good week, fed in silence to contemplate my life, my relationships, my hopes and dreams, as well as my fears and stumblings. I walked, napped, took pictures and prayed. A type of a mountain-top experience: good and enriching, not necessarily high emotion, but good emotion.

Now, this week, has been like tumbling into the swamp in the bottom of the valley. Every evening filled with a meeting and the days wrestling without focus. Frustrating after all the hope and promise of last week.

Yet. Yet, I find myself strangely hopeful in the midst of the frustration and uncertainty and the challenges of the week. When I consider that I have spent this week making some relatively small yet important changes in the routine of my life, a reaction was to be expected. I was just hoping it would give me some breathing space and not be quite so pervasive. If you will indulge me one more comment before I try to clarify things, the fact that my own internal response is as quick and profound as it has been this week tells me that my Inner Depressive Council and my Shadow Cabinet are scared.

One of the things I did at the end of the week of prayer was to try to identify one or two important things that I wanted to take with me beyond the week. There are some attitude items that I will write about a bit later, but there are also some practical things.

The most important one was that I decided to change my morning routine. Isn’t that great? Ho hum, you say? Well, I think that one thing has the been the biggest contributer to my being slung into the valley. My old routine was to get up, come right into the computer room and check the night’s email. Then I have a couple web sites that I like to check in the morning and lately I have been checking out some of the blogs I read. Then I will get around to maybe grabbing a little something for breakfast and then shower, dress and if I have time, spend some time in centering prayer and then off to work.

Beginning Monday, I instituted a new morning routine: wake up, go right to the shower and get dressed, then spend about 15-20 minutes with a little prayer journal praying for the various people in my life and ministry (usually with Orange juice and a little breakfast with Jesus), then about 20 minutes in centering prayer. Then and only then will I head into the computer room and depending on my time frame will check email, websites and blogs until it is time for work.

The reason for the change? Establishing the priority relationship. I realized that my time in prayer was not an important priority, it was a good thing to do and if I could find the time to do it, I would. While I would not have said it that way, that is what I was convicted of during my week of prayer and reflection. I was living it that way. I didn’t like that and it was time for a change to reflect the important things in my life. So prayer becomes the first thing I do in my day (after getting cleaned up and shaved and dressed).

There might be a day when I am running late and I won’t get a chance to check all I want to check on my computer first thing in the morning. Well, that is fine. I and the vast tubes of the internet will survive quite nicely. I will have made sure my day started with prayer though. That primary relationship needs to be an important priority just as I know each day I need to spend time talking and listening to my lovely wife and my daughters (when they are here) to nurture the relationships.

This is only the beginning of moving some very important things from the realm of “That’s a Really Good Idea” to “This is What I am Going to Do.”

I just returned from a 5 day directed retreat, just in case you were wondering where I was. It was a good time. Not really rested, but definitely some new views of God and my relationship with God that will keep me busy for a while. I think I will just drop a few random thoughts before I go to work on tomorrow’s sermon.

It is hot here in Iowa. (One bank sign I saw today said 96, I think I will wait to cut the grass when it is cooler.) So in celebration, I shaved and decided to join the emergent church pastor’s look (I have noticed that almost all the male pastor’s who have been profiled on Locust and Honey have that goatee look). I haven’t shaved my beard in 20 years, so this is going to take some getting used to.

The site of my retreat was a small Benedictine monastery where 2 nuns live and one of them does spiritual direction (and is a licensed massage therapist). They treated me very well, even if I did have to eat off a card table in the retreatant’s dining area (so they wouldn’t bother my reflection and my presence wouldn’t bother them.)

It has been a long time since I just sat and listened to the rain. They received three inches of rain my first day there and since there was no lightning, I sat on their screened in back porch and listened to the falling rain while reflecting on some Psalms about the care of the God of Creation. Way cool.

The last night I was there, we had a thunderstorm. I tried to get pictures of lightning with my digital camera, but instead was able to get a few of a double rainbow. I thought that was a good lesson for life: often we are looking for the flashy, exciting things but God gently provides hope in the storm instead.

Did you know it takes a while to go through about 200 emails that accumulate over the course of a week, especially when you want to spend time with a dear wife who you haven’t seen for five days and a lovely daughter you haven’t seen in three weeks. They are more important then the emails and the blogs to read.

I understand while I was out of touch with the world a new war has started with the Israeli army sadly taking notes from our Iraqi war playbook and using the threat of attack as a good reason to invade both a treaty created Palestinian land and now Lebanon. I do pray for peace in Israel and the whole area, but the leaders of the nations need to help by not breaking peace at the slightest hint of fear. I mourn the loss of peace and reason in that place where the Prince of Peace came to bring healing. Ironically, tomorrow I will be preaching on Ephesians 2:11-22 (I know I am a week ahead of the lectionary) where Paul talks about Christ coming to be our peace and to bring an end to hostility in the name of god (lower case intentional, I do not believe that God any longer wants wars fought in that Beloved Name).

I was wanting these random notes to be fun, but that one just spoiled it, didn’t it.

I better stop before I think of something else that isn’t fun. Hopefully something will come later.

This quote from M. Scott Peck (via Arthur Silber; hat tip to John Amato):

Once again we are confronted with our all-too-human laziness and narcissism. Basically, it was just too much trouble. We all had our lives to lead–doing our day-to-day jobs, buying new cars, painting our houses, sending our kids to college. As the majority of members of any group are content to let the leadership be exercised by the few, so as a citizenry we were content to let the government “do its thing.”

My first question is when did Dr Peck write these words and in what context?

He wrote that as part of a task force of psychiatrists who investigated on behalf of the Surgeon General the context of the soldiers who participated in the My Lai Massacre in Viet Nam in March of 1968. Arthur Silber brings the quote up in considering the situation that has led to the killing of Iraqi citizens in Haditha and other events that are sadly all too similar. I will leave to your own judgment whether or not Silber supports the similarities between what is happening in various places in Iraq today with what happened in My Lai.

I want to apply Peck’s quote in a couple other places though that while they are not part of such disastrous events as Haditha or My Lai, they are still situations for us to be concerned about.

One is the state of citizenship in our country today. All too often, we are too content to do just the day to day things that concern us directly that we are willing to surrender the larger issues to others without a thought until it is too late. Then when we are awakened to things not being right, we then too often spend al of our energy seeking others to blame. Because if we can find others to pin the failing on we can more quickly go back to our stuporous shells and not change our style of living in any way.

I confess that too often I have chosen that sort of apolitical-apathy because it is easier, simpler and not very messy. I am learning that building that kind of personal levy only hides the problems in our world and society until my protection is broken down and I am awash in what others have created.

Yet can I really blame anyone else for that? No, I have to accept responsibility for my flight from appropriate responsibility. When I stop paying attention, when I stop asking questions, when I stop thinking about issues, I will be brought to a place where I no longer have choices and options and opportunities. I have lost my freedom by failing to live the stewardship of freedom. I think I am a long way from being a full-time activist citizen, but I am beginning the journey toward responsibility by opening my eyes to the issues that events that are really a part of my day to day life.

Doubt that those things matter? Consider the price of gas you put in your car. There is no simple answer to why they are that high, but I am convinced that a series of smaller decisions all along the way by governments (ours and others), businesses, and individuals (including me) have all cascaded into the current price of gas. What is next?

The other situation where I want to apply Peck’s quote (hopefully appropriately) is the local church.

I will boldly say that one of the biggest problems facing the church in the United States (and possibly everywhere) is that we have accepted the idea that it is the job of the leaders to do the work of ministry in the church. (There are some churches that are truly alive who have learned that and are changing that self-contained culture.) Could this way of thinking be a part of why leaders (clergy and lay leaders) burn out? drop out? act out? or simply go through the motions of life devoid of vitality?

I will just leave that question with you.

I believe it is true. Our troubles in our local churches can be turned around as leaders and members accept the idea that we are all a part of what the church is doing.

The difficulty and the challenge is that it is usually only the leaders who will hear the idea and see it and want it to happen. Sadly, many of the others will just find someone to fault for the troubles we see.

Today’s Independence Day Video.

Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. August 28, 1968, Washington, D.C. This is the full speech he gave in front of the Lincoln Memorial. I had only previously heard about 5 minutes of the 11 minute speech. It is all worth hearing again.

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A good dream that many are still waiting for no matter what the color of their skin.

I normally don’t just simply link to other blog articles, but this time I will. A view of those events on July 4, 1776 as if a blogger was there to write about it. The blogger in this case is Citizen Smash, an American Soldier, also known as the Indepundit.

Congress Declares Colonies Independent

Yesterday as a prelude to the sermon (on the healing of Jairus’ daughter and the healing of the women with the 12 year old bleeding disorder, which was the real focus of the service and message) I had a few words to say on the upcoming July 4th Independence Day celebration us Yanks in the USA use as a good excuse to grill, play outside and shoot off fireworks.

I reflected a little on our 230 year old experiment in independence, an experiment in freedom. It is still an experiment because we have to keep relearning what living in a free society is all about, reaffirming the principles of true democracy, and recommitting ourselves to being citizens in a just society with each new generation and with the continuous changes in our history and our world. Some times in our history we have done better and some times in our history we have done worse. I will leave it to the historians to later filter out when those times are because it is hard to really see everything when we are in it. Though I will confess that I am more than a little bit worried lately.

I considered the example of freedom of speech and expression. It is easy for us to promote this when it is our own speech and the expression of a point of view which we like, but it is more difficult to trumpet freedom of speech when the views expressed are ones we do not agree with or the means used to relay the message are hard for us to understand.

As another example, I reflected on freedom of worship. For us it is very important when we feel threatened that we cannot worship in the ways appropriate for our faith and belief (for us now in Protestant USA the threat is much less than we might feel) and we are grateful for the opportunity to live out our heart’s choice of faith. Yet it becomes difficult to also honor the choices of others with different beliefs to be true to their own hearts and souls in faith and to live out their own manner of worship and spiritual expression.

There is a lot of tension in the challenge these and other situations present to us in living and continuing to build a society that upholds freedom as its cornerstone. Yet, as we celebrate this Independence Day with picnics and fireworks and time at home or wherever we are (I have a cousin in Baghdad who has more interesting context for this day) we should be thankful for what we have so far, but we must also know that the greater challenges to living out our freedom might come from simply living with our neighbors in our own towns and cities who also desire freedom and who by virtue of being different than how we see ourselves find it harder if not impossible to find. That will be the true acid test for our affirmation of being part of a society based on freedom.

Happy Independence Day USA. May the experiment we are an active part of continue to be truly lived out for many years to come.

Enough preaching for tonight.

For those who are celebrating, have a fun and safe day.