Finding God Under the Hood of a Car

The last couple of days have really been a test of my patience. My car(s) have been having major difficulties as of late, my Blazer has a problem with the fuel line and my old Cavalier (which is as good as a lame horse) has been leaking antifreeze and overheats the engine. Therefore, I am reliant on others for my transportation to get to and from work. I hate being in this position. I hate dealing with car troubles. I hate working on cars. Even while I am in my home at this moment I feel stranded due to my lack of vehicular mobility. I hate that feeling. I didn't realize how uneasy I was until I was lying under my car trying to find where the leak was in the Cavy.

My father and I had been working on the car for a good three hours and I was tired. I was tired of trying to find that damn leak that would not show itself. And I never found it. Yet, in the middle of all of it, in the midst of my feelings of anxiety and being stranded, I felt a calm wash over me. Maybe it was just the cool wind that rushed under the car and over my head. It could have been the way my skin felt against the cool ground as I laid under the hood. But then I moved out from under the hood and laid down and watched the sky. I watched the clouds disperse and break to reveal the blue that was above them. In that moment today, I felt like a kid again. I was able to lay down and watch in awe and wonder. I was inhaling the creation. I was sensing the God of this creation. I felt the rest that I had been searching for, the longing of feeling at peace with God and myself.

 The thing about these moments is that they cannot be initiated. There is no five step program to creating these moments with God. The felt presence of God comes and goes whenever He pleases. It is God-revealed, God-centered, and God-timed. I think this is so frustrating for most of us to comprehend. Especially for us North Americans, who have come to understand everything as ready for the taking as long as you are motivated, we have a hard time reconciling ourselves to a God who will not bend to our assumptions and expectations. God will not make things comfortable, moving aside the material "stuff" in our lives so that we can have a completely spiritual moment. God moves and acts in our lives which are embedded in creation and history. The things that we often believe hinder our lives, our setting and experience, is often the very "stuff" that God uses to change our perspective and our outlook on reality.

At CITY Kids on Friday night, I walked the kids through the resurrection story found in John 20. Part of my retelling involved the children dressing up and acting out the characters in the story. What I emphasized the most was the interaction between Mary Magdalene and the risen Jesus (who at this point she believes is the gardener). I let the kids know that no matter what they were dealing with in life, in the hardships and in their times of joy, God is in the midst of it all even when we do not recognize him. Funny that the lesson I teach is the one I learn two days after the fact. God is in the simple tasks we do, in the moments of frustration and weariness, in our joy and in our pain. Sometimes we don't feel Him there, but we must live with the knowledge that He is there and wants to be known.

Yet another simple lesson learned by this inept pilgrim. Be in peace.

A Ghost is Born

If anybody is interested, I will be at the John 3:16 Youth and Family Center tonight at 6pm to help with their C.I.T.Y. Kids program. It is a good opportunity to help out and interact with kids who need a lot of positive roles in their lives. I will be giving a little talk with the kids about the resurrection in John 20. I had originally thought about juxtaposing N.T. Wright’s idea of a “transphysical” body  to Marcus Borg’s “spiritual resurrection” but I decided against it in the long run! Instead, I am opting to have the kids “act out” the characters: Jesus as the gardener, Mary, Peter and John, the disciples, and doubting Thomas. I think it is going to be fun!

Hope to see you there.

Rest

Ok

 It has been way too long since I posted something, and it is not for a lack of material, because a lot has been going on and I have been doing some serious thinking and reflecting. You know, I enjoy writing, I really do… and yet I hate reading my own writing! Besides all this, I just haven’t felt like blogging lately. I just don’t want to take the time to do it. If there is one thing I am learning during this Lenten season, it is that I need to take care of my time. Spend more time being generous and helping others, spend time in peaceful reflection and meditation with God, and simply rest for awhile. I know I can blog and do this as well, I am just trying to rethink how much time I spend doing those things. So I promise I WILL BE BACK, BUT NOT YET. I am going to take a couple more days off and post again. I hope you will be there too. And I promise that I will comment on others sites more, I don’t take time to do that either.

 

 In the meantime, here are a couple of websites I have been checking lately:

www.civa.org

www.followtherabbi.com

www.urbanseed.org

www.restoringeden.org

Be in Peace

Derek Webb: Modern Day Prophet?

Derek Webb has a new album out called Mockingbird, and it is really good. Here are some lyrics to his song, A New Law, which is simply awesome, convicting, and brutally authentic:

A New Law

(vs. 1)
don’t teach me about politics and government
just tell me who to vote for
don’t teach me about truth and beauty
just label my music
don’t teach me how to live like a free man
just give me a new law

(pre-chorus)
i don’t wanna know if the answers aren’t easy
so just bring it down from the mountain to me

(chorus)
i want a new law
i want a new law
gimme that new law

(vs. 2)
don’t teach me about moderation and liberty
i prefer a shot of grape juice
don’t teach me about
loving my enemies
don’t teach me how to listen to the Spirit
just give me a new law

(pre-chorus/chorus)

(bridge)
what’s the use in trading a law you can never keep
for one you can that cannot get you anything
do not be afraid
do not be afraid
do not be afraid

For more of Derek Webb, check out http://www.derekwebb.com/music/#

Gravity

“And then I looked up at the sun and I could see
Oh the way that gravity turns for you and me
And then I looked up at the sky and saw the sun
And the way that gravity pulls on everyone
On everyone…”

Gravity, by Embrace

Gravity is a controlling factor in our lives. We move, we sit, we stand, all in relation to gravity. Yet many of us do not realize its effects or think about it on a daily basis. As I type, this laptop (hence the name) rests comfortably on my lap, it is not floating about in any other direction. I am writing and sitting in a chair at the same time, if the chair were to mysteriously break, I would instantly fall to the ground. Thus, gravity positions and gives direction. It pulls and it places. As much as we fail to think about it we also take it for granted. Babies test gravity, they hold out a spoon to the air and drop it, as if expecting a different outcome. We know it will drop, we don’t expect it to rise up or float about. 

Much of this reminds me of how culture effects our ability to interpret and to communicate. We take for granted our context, the reasons why we come up with the outcomes that we do. Some wonder why when we communicate the gospel for people in a postmodern context, why they don’t respond to propositional truths that “are inherent in the Bible” but instead question the very foundations that have funded modern Christianity. Some wonder why people want story over told truth. We scrap for ways to communicate the gospel that will fit the square peg. Yet, we fail to realize that what positions people, what gives them direction and a sense of security, is not some truth that must be cognitively conveyed and cognitively accepted. Instead, people are enmeshed in story, and story is truth. Stories (aka narratives) give truth to people. It gives them a deeper context, a deeper sense of belonging.

Many critics have failed to make the connection. They see narrative as unruly, chaotic, unfounded, and subjective. What gives postmoderns a sense of direction they believe is a “loss of truth”. To them, narrative is not gravity but a loss of gravity, a floating thing that gives no one placement or connection. Yet, for many this is the opposite, stories can offer a place where we can live faithfully and adhere to the past and see beyond to the future. Moreover, the Bible in its Old and New Testament forms is story. Not always a unified or composite story, it is multi-faceted and complex, seemingly contridictory and paradoxical. Yet it is moving in a direction, it is revealing more and more, telling a deeper story about humanity and God, love and grace, truth and mercy. Many who have interpreted or sysyematized this great story have become reductionists, simply extrapolating doctrines to build a religion, to give a new moral code, to signify and conceptualize truth in its shortest form. (Note: I do believe in doctrines, and I consider myself mostly orthodox with traditional Christianity, yet I fear that we have reduced the elemental form of story and the drama that I believe is “inherent” to the text). Narrative can be truth, it can articulate the deepest truths that are incoherant in propositional form. “God is love” is both a statement conveying truth but also a story that is told in the Bible. We cannot thrive without both. The Bible is gravity for the Christian. It is direction, placement, connection. The story pulls us, makes us fall to our presuppositions, it humbles us by guiding us, it protects us because it gives us a place to be, it does not let us to float aimlessly.

I believe we must recover story, to remember the truth of story and compare and contrast its truths to the narratives of other cultures. We (as Christians) will only be meaningful and coherant if we let our alternative reality speak to other cultures, other realities. We will not be offering them a leave of gravity, but instead a realization of gravity’s true pull, and thus it will help them realize their placement and connection to this world.

 

For more discussion and for better analysis and articulation, see:

Bloggers…

Paul Littleton

Dino

Writers…

Walter Brueggemann, N.T. Wright, Lesslie Newbigin, and Brian McLaren

Sabbath

I have never really experienced a sabbath. This is not to say that there haven’t been days where I have just relaxed and done nothing, because trust me I was extremely adept at doing that back in the day. Instead, what I really mean, is that I have not spent a day in which I did not have to work and used my time for being at peace, joining others for community, or simply meditating on life and what God might be doing with it. I have not set out a day of relaxation, transformation, and peace… ever. You can come up with your best intellectual and psychological answers: maybe my Western mindset doesn’t allow for me to practice dutifully the spiritual disciplines it takes to enjoy sabbath, maybe I respond better to Max Weber’s “Protestant Ethic” than I do to Thomas Merton’s “No Man is an Island“, maybe I feel guilty now about just relaxing and being in peace. All I know is that at times, I come to the conclusion that I am not at peace, that I am in a constant state of unrest and feel that I standing at the precipice and I conclude two things: One, I cannot face this problem alone. Second, in dastardly fashion, I want to turn and run for fear of consigning myself over to God and other people for them to help me with my uneasiness.

Yet I realize that humans need sabbath. We need a break from the constant cycles of our lives and we need to take time to end those cycles, not permenantly in most cases, but doing so in order that we may regain perspective. I feel as if I have lost perspective, lost sight of the things in life that give joy, that sustain, that really permeate an aroma of goodness in life.I have been increasingly anxious and frustrated by all of this, and in turn I have lashed out on others who had nothing to do with my problems. Last night, as I was playing basketball with my best friends, I had an outburst, a fit of rage on my friend for not calling his own fouls and for elbowing me in the side as I was defending him. I got so angry, composed of both competitive spirit and my aforementioned troubles, I chewed him out and other friends had to come in and play peacemaker. It wasn’t until that happened, my friends intervention, that I realized my depravity in this situation. I am usually the peacemaker amongst my group of friends, I am usually the voice of compassion and peace in this group of hotheads and competitors. Yet here I was, being humbled by them.

I have thought much about sabbath the last couple of days. I think I might just take a day off to listen, relax, meditate, and enjoy God, and at the end of the day, I might have dinner with some friends, to enjoy the peace that community brings as well. I hope that this Lent season can help bring about ways in which you think, pray, and act on God’s call.

Be in peace

 

ALSO: For those of you who wonder if you must retype all info for commenting here, I believe you can do it just once and it will remember all the info the next time you want to comment. So keep that in mind. Take care

Posts

I have a couple of new posts over on my other site, concerning cultural context/narrative and peace/sabbath respectively. Also, some have asked about commenting on the new site. If you type in your info to comment once, it should remember it the next time you comment on the same computer. Hope that is easier for you, if not, you can comment on this one and I will receive it anyways, but I hope that many enjoy the new site, cause I do! It is more artistic I believe. Take care.