Stillness vs. Idleness

Because I often feel either afraid of stillness or guilty for spending my time in it, I'm writing this blog in case the struggle is familiar. I think it is a primary battle in our world: to have ears to hear and eyes to see.

Stillness is a discipline of faith. Stillness is believing that God's words and presence are worth paying attention to. Often we are afraid to be truly still before God in case we find that he 1. doesn't speak or else 2. speaks things we do not wish to hear. What if his voice is absent or cruel? It is an act of deep trust to truly cease our activities, our striving, our own filling of space and wait in stillness for Jesus' voice.

I remember reading that the purpose of all the spiritual disciplines is to empty ourselves completely so that there would be living room for God to speak into - to inhabit. In spiritual disciplines we intentionally create a void that our false-selves and all the voices of the world have previously inhabited. That void, once allowed, hungers for the Creator's voice to speak. Psalm 104:30 says, "When you send your Spirit, they are created, and you renew the face of the earth."

How many other voices are competing to 'create' the substance of our lives? And what good have all those voices done for the work of renewal or redemption in this world?

Idleness, on the other hand, is an act of faith-less-ness. Idleness is believing that nothing can be done, there is nothing worth believing in or fighting for, no vision of hope worth working toward. So in hopeless apathy we stagnate or indulge in all the destructions of mere distraction. When life loses all lustre we sink into lust. It is when we loose all sensitivity that we become captives of sensuality.

"But I feel irresponsible when I try to be still. I feel like I should be doing something." I've spent much of the last ten years struggling with this question of what is valuable to God and what it is to be truly responsible toward the call to follow Jesus. I've found that being still, creating space, gathering attentiveness, listening, waiting, dwelling, prayer and the like are actually quite hard work - especially in our culture where we tend to qualify the validity of our lives by the degree to which we can keep up with machine-like productivity and efficiency (the emptiness of so-called success).

All truly worthy work is borne forth as an embodiment of the small, slow, whisper of God found only in stillness. It may be that even when God speaks at his loudest we can fail to hear him. Are hard-heartedness and lack of stillness the same thing?

Stillness or Listening is a response to a God who is speaking. I've been noticing the past several months the incessant emphasis throughout the Scriptures to listen to God. Yet we feel irresponsible when we 'stop getting things done' so we can listen. If that's the case, then 'getting things done' is what's irresponsible. That is a life of failing to respond to the Speaking God. Idleness then may actually manifest as busyness. They might as well be the same thing since they are both ways that we either disbelieve the value of anything God might say or avoid communication because there are things that feel more productive (important).

The values of God are moving in the complete opposite direction from the values of the world. That's why repentance (completely turning around) brings us face to face with the Kingdom of Jesus. Isaiah 30:15 says:

"This is what the Sovereign LORD, the Holy One of Israel, says: 'In repentance and rest is your salvation, in quietness and trust is your strength, but you would have none of it.' "

If we were machines there would be no real need to do much listening. There would also be no need for beauty, tenderness, laughter, craftsmanship, poetry, song, embracing, aromas, moonlight, kindness, weeping, dancing, and on and on. Busyness doesn't make us more human, neither does idleness. Stillness, listening, losing track of time in love for something True, the deeply beautiful inefficiency of relationship - these are some of the reasons God spoke lovingly into the eager, attentive void.

Hutchmoot, shaping, hello again Middle Earth

Once upon two weekends ago my dear friend Abbye Pates and I drove up to Nashville, TN, sadly leaving her husband Jeff behind in Memphis, to attend Hutchmoot. What the heck is Hutchmoot you say to me? Well, it's a gathering of rabbits. Or.. um... a meeting of people who read books that rabbits like, or a meeting of rabbit-people.

Well, it's a meeting of people who follow the Rabbit Room blog community, which is Andrew Peterson and friend's website (www.rabbitroom.com) that's named after the room at the Eagle and Child pub in Oxford, England where C.S. Lewis, Tolkien and the rest of their buddies met and discussed their creative work, sharing their lives and faith. Coincidentally, it is where Brian Mulder and I met one year ago this next week to kick off our European galavanting expedition. The shepherd's pie was delicious and I signed the guestbook, perhaps sitting where some of my literary heroes sat in that little pub.

So Abbye and I went to Nashville to immerse ourselves in Story and Song in an effort to grasp a vision for the Kingdom and what it means to live in it and help others find it by using the life and gifts God has given to us. It was a refreshing weekend and too short of one as well.

Walt Wangerin, Jr. was a keynote speaker. Have you heard of him? I read "The Book of the Dun Cow" earlier this Summer and was amazed. It's a beast fable that will surprise you with it's whimsy, intensity, and depth. I'm looking forward to reading the two follow-ups in the series. I should write a string of blogs based on reflections from his talk, but for now I will simply include my favorite quote. This quote drew in my focus to a sharp missional vision for life and art, for Kingdom living and Gospel Story communication. It was preceded by a story of a boy who, through an encounter with deep trauma, had become entirely dislocated due to the destruction of his world. The boy lost all sense of context and meaning for his life and slipped into a nearly comatose reality of despair and lovelessness. But Walt, as his pastor, surrounded the boy with stories of the True. Walt creatively rebuilt a world around this boy by telling the Bible story.

And we, who are poets, shapers, writers, crafters of many kinds, people- who at any and every point of life- express the truth of God's Story are, "for those who have no world, weaving the world around them".

Our lives and work are always creatively expressing this True Kingdom and the identity of the True King Jesus. We choose to live a contrasting story. We embody His righteousness, we incarnate the tale, we sing the songs of Zion in a foreign land. We shine light from an invisible sun.

I grew up reading "The Lord of the Rings" by J.R.R. Tolkien. I've read it four times. Immersing myself in that myth as a child prepared me to commit myself to faith in God's Kingdom that still sometimes feels like a myth when I find myself facing the veil of this world. As a child, Tolkien somehow helped me peek underneath that curtain, smell a scented river from another world, or feel a light in my heart that I knew had a source beyond this creation.

So last night I stepped into Middle Earth for the fifth time. I'm excited to go there. I'm excited to remember that "faith is being certain of what we do not see" and to search again as one who longs for his true home country with Jesus. I pray to lead a life that lifts the veil and invites others to enter into that true Kingdom too.

Duke Summer Institute pt 2: Lament

Ah, my dear angry Lord,
Since thou dost love, yet strike;
Cast down, yet help afford;
Sure I will do the like.

I will complain, yet praise;
I will bewail, approve;
And all my sour-sweet days
I will lament and love.

-Bitter-sweet by George Herbert

This afternoon I let my own face carry the wet and the salt of lament till it made little red roads down from my eyes and spread across my lips and salted my tongue. I watched a middle-aged Sudanese priest put his face to the floor in tears while praying for the middle east, where Muslims, like those persecuting Christians in his homeland, live apart from the peace of Jesus Christ.

I sat amazed at the table with two African American women as they listened to Bob Dylan sing about Medgar Evers' killer and the senseless murder of Hattie Carol. There is pain that doesn't fit my understanding, or my manageable categorizing. I am convicted by the words of Dylan that I have "philosophized disgrace". There is a time for tears.

Phileena Heuertz, from Word Made Flesh, told of what she has been learning among the poorest of the poor around the world. That God is breaking her from her habit of wishing to fix people. Instead, like Jesus, she is learning to enter into brokenness and lament in order to love. We go with the broken, ourselves broken. Like Psalm 126 says, we

go out weeping,
carrying seed to sow,
and return with songs of joy,
carrying sheaves with us.

I saw paintings, heard poems, listened to songs all created from places of deep grief and lament today. All exhaled into stunned and somehow hideously happy societies, laments carrying seeds to sow. I say 'hideously happy' because when there was hurt that needed to be grieved or suffering that needed to met... the gravesites were paved over and an amusement park built on top. The word 'hide' is in hideous. Jeremiah speaks:

They dress the wound of my people as though it were not serious. 'Peace, peace,' they say, when there is no peace.

Jesus entered into our brokenness, he wept, he bled. He did not ignore or belittle. Jesus is not embarrassed.

Let's not be afraid to let our hearts break. To call evil what it is, to name the pain. May our tears be seeds sown in the tired, trampled ground. And when the weeping is done, Oh Lord, when the fallow-rest has been enough, let the ground birth laughter - Light and Breath playing through the leaves of the Tree of Life.

Duke Summer Institute pt 1

I left Oxford Sunday night and drove till about 3am. I slept for a few hours in my car and then finished out the trip on Monday, arriving at Duke University around 4pm. I was tired from the driving but today was so full that I've barely had time to be attend to the weariness. I also drank coffee.

This week is all about the ministry of reconciliation that has been given to us from God (see 2 Corinthians 4 & 5). In morning worship the speaker made the observation that the scriptures say that "God made him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf, so that we might become the righteousness of God in Him".

It doesn't say " so that we might proclaim the righteousness of God" or "so that we might know the righteousness of God" or "so that we might have..." It says, "so that we might become the righteousness of God in Him".

We become, we embody, we incarnate His righteousness in this world. We are a new creation. And we carry on his mission of calling people back into peaceful union with God through Jesus Christ.

Later in the day, I attended our small group discussion for this week, which is led by Malcolm Guite. He is an Anglican priest, poet, and singer/songwriter. The track I'm in is called, "The Shaping Spirit of Imagination; the Arts and Reconciliation." It was fantastic. I can't wait to get back there tomorrow for more!

Malcolm is wonderful. I've already enjoyed one book of his poems called "Saying the Names" which I stole from the coffee table of Abbye and Jeff Pates several months ago. I'm sure that by the end of this week I will be frustrated to have left with as small of an encounter with him as I will have had.

One point that stood out from the small group time was (and I'm pulling just one little thing among so many wonderful things) the need for 'making' over and against 'un-making'. Malcolm told us of a book written about Amnesty International's archives. A book about the de-humanizing effects of torture on both the victims and the perpetrators. The torture was enacted to 'un-make' the victim's humanity, and in various ways the work of evil in this world is to unmake what God has made and called good. To pervert. To mar. The redemptive work of God is remaking, making new.

Our call is to creatively re-invest in the world so that people who have been un-made by evil can be re-made by the creative, dignity-restoring, love of Jesus. In fact, Jesus came to us as a human to restore us to humanness. Sin un-makes humanity. God re-makes humanity. Jesus shows us what it looks like to be human again.

And there are many many other things I'd like to write, instead I'll wait and sit on your couch or at your table. I'll hopefully be near enough to speak quietly, to hear what you aren't saying, and to wonder with you why sighs given in trust and oceans lulling against sand-shores seem to come from the same depths, both oceans, both mysteries, both attended by the Spirit of the God of new birth.

Consuming (life-eating) vs. Creating (life-making)

First off let me admit that I'm ripping this idea off from an article I read written by Andy Crouch which you can find here: http://www.qideas.org/essays/from-purchases-to-practices.aspx

Andy says, "When we purchase, we are simply freeloading off the capacities some other person has developed, and our own capacities change very little or, most often, not at all. But when we practice, we change."

I'm a musician, songwriter, worship leader, storyteller, etc. and I love to record music as well. In short, I love 'making'. I love creating. It's the same reason I love to cook or have conversations. It's a process that ends in an effect which you have been personally invested in over a length of time. It always sounds self-centered but some of my favorite music to listen to is the music I make. Rich Mullins said you shouldn't make music you don't like. It's like lying. But I think the reason I like it isn't because I think it's the best music in the world, but because I'm personally invested in it. I breathed my soul into it and even if it's a little out of tune, the lyrics halting, or the performance messy it remains dear to me. It represents the always moving life-story within me, a sort of index of transformation.

When we consume a mere product there's no personal investment. We are feeding off of the investment of someone else. We experience a sensation of having gone through a process but it soon fades and we hunger again. Andy Crouch's illustration is when we learn an instrument we do not get instant gratification. We slowly develop an ability over time. We really do live through a process wherein we invest ourselves in making something.

That joy lasts, even grows over time.

I thought about reading the Bible and following Jesus.

At first it's like handling a guitar, you don't know how it works, you can't get much out of it, but you keep practicing. You keep reading the Bible. Over time you begin to see how it fits together, the stories resonate and come into focus (or in tune) with each other. So like learning an instrument, you begin to be able to hear a coherent music, a certain song develops. As you continue to work and practice hearing the song, the voice of Jesus lifts above the tune and you begin to realize you are holding in your hands a thing that is calling you, as your abilities grow, to sing this song for others. Over time your skill and joy increase as you practice living and participating in the ongoing creation of the Song of God.

But there was no instant gratification. You had to go through something. Had to deeply invest yourself even though you thought you'd never be able to get a single sweet chord from that guitar. Your fingers got sore and maybe bled on the steel strings. Now you can make it sing, now you can make your own contribution to the Music. And others will sing along in the mighty chorus.

May we commit to deeply investing over long years in the practice of reading the words and living out the call of Jesus! That's life-making and life-giving!

Tolkien and the power of Creativity

"The Christian still has to work, with mind as well as body, to suffer, hope, and die; but he may now percieve that all his bents and faculties have a purpose, which can be redeemed. So great is the bounty with which he has been treated that he may now, perhaps, fairly dare to guess that in Fantasy he may actually assist in the effoliation and multiple enrichment of creation. All tales may come true; and yet, at the last, redeemed, they may be as like and as unlike the forms that we give them as Man, finally redeemed, will be like and unlike the fallen that we know."
J.R.R. Tolkien, On Fairie Stories

Verlyn Flieger in her book Splintered Light: Logos and Language in Tolkien's World goes on to say this:

"Both Tolkien and Barfield regarded the Word as the instrument of Creation and words as instruments of humanity's separation from God and from the universe...Both felt that the task of the poet was to bridge that separation, to use words to reconnect what they had severed. For each of them, words were to be poetic instruments of humankind's ultimate and conscious reunion with God." And again, "Poetry reinvests the world with meaning and rebuilds relationship with it." (pg 47-48)

In Tolkien's essay, these thoughts occur after his explanation that the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus, that the Gospel itself is the ultimate case of a true myth. And that myth defines reality, calling us back to a time when the same God who called a dead messiah from a dark grave into the light of Easter morning, also spoke this creation into existence with the words, "Let there be light".

Could it be that God has always used something more akin to myth, poetry, song, and story to bring into realization his creation? For us, these things are considered the less concrete forms of expression. What if for God they are the most substantial means. What if the old stories of the Bible that sound so mythic are closer to reality than any literal language we could conjur? In other words, what if myth is actually more literal?

And finally, what if imagination and creativity are the doors through which we bring into reality a love so fantastic that it sounds like a fairy tale?

Thanks Wendell, I keep forgetting

How to be a Poet

by Wendell Berry

(to remind myself)

i

Make a place to sit down.

Sit down. Be quiet.

You must depend upon

affection, reading, knowledge,

skill—more of each

than you have—inspiration,

work, growing older, patience,

for patience joins time

to eternity. Any readers

who like your poems,

doubt their judgment.

ii

Breathe with unconditional breath

the unconditioned air.

Shun electric wire.

Communicate slowly. Live

a three-dimensioned life;

stay away from screens.

Stay away from anything

that obscures the place it is in.

There are no unsacred places;

there are only sacred places

and desecrated places.

iii

Accept what comes from silence.

Make the best you can of it.

Of the little words that come

out of the silence, like prayers

prayed back to the one who prays,

make a poem that does not disturb

the silence from which it came.

--------------

ps. Thanks Kristen Sayres. I scooped this up off your old blog.
pps. Now I will close this laptop, lay on the ground in the sun and read a book in my friend's backyard in Memphis, TN. Amen.

Going to Church

Today I went to church at 1:30pm on a Saturday. There were only five people there including me. Only one person had a guitar and there were no song sheets or projected slides or anything. And we only sang two songs. There was no preacher, we just read 1 Cor 2 aloud about how the Holy Spirit brings to our minds the very mind of Jesus Christ. We talked about it for a few minutes. We noticed that things that had seemed stupid and worthless in the past had actually become very precious to us and we remarked at how good and wise the foolishness of God really is. Then we told each other what we were worried about and everybody prayed for everybody else. Then we ate some food together.

I went to church at 1:30pm on a Saturday. I didn't even know I was going to go to church when I woke up today. Neither did any of the other four people who were there. We didn't have time to print bulletins or plan an order of worship. We didn't take up an offering. But we did take care of each other.

I went to church at 1:30pm on a Saturday. In Abbye and Jeff's living room. I sat on the couch I'd slept on the night before with two old friends beside me.

I really like going to church. I like going on Sunday morning in the building north of town. But that's not enough... and here's the point... it's not supposed to be enough. Sunday morning is supposed to be insufficient.

"We loved you so much that we gave you not only God's Good News but our very lives as well."
1 Thessalonians 2:8