Category Archives: The Mission

The three things that changed my mind about those “other” people

The Mission, , , , , , , , ,

In August, Ken Cuccinelli, the acting director of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, said immigrants legally in the U.S. may no longer be eligible for green cards if they use food stamps, Medicaid and other public benefits. To justify this direction, he cited an 1882 rule intended to undo the words on the Statue of Liberty about welcoming the poor through the golden door by restricting immigration to wealthier people.

Cuccinelli’s intentions are just one of many ways the government is inventing to keep people, especially poor people and people of color, out of the United States. The  administration of Donald Trump (the Nativist in Chief) is so full of enmity and strife they can’t implement most of their threats, but that certainly doesn’t ease the fears of families who are left in limbo and too often separated from each other.

I grew up in a lower middle class family in the 1950s and 60s. My parents bravely clawed their way out of their parents’ poverty. Along the way, they cultured every “white” fear of the “other” possible. As a child, I swam in the nation’s original sin of racism. The family carried a careful disdain for every outsider who somehow managed to get into the white man’s country. This was my father’s creed, even though his grandmother was so poor she tried to get onto the Choctaw rolls in order to receive Native American benefits. As a result of all this training, even now I have a small, inbred instinct that resonates with people who think Ken Cuccinelli makes sense as he protects the nation from “freeloaders” flooding in to steal the fruits of “our” hard labor. I thought “otherizing “ people was just the way things worked until I was in Jr. High.

Friendship

Long about Jr. High I began to wake up to what all this hatred really meant. My mind began to change due to my friendships. I played sports with people who spoke Spanish at home and many were dear friends my whole childhood. I also learned my town’s name was Spanish and the first colonizers of California were from Spain. I had Japanese girlfriends, which really did not go over well, since my dad had fought them in World War 2. California was a major melting pot and I melted in.

The Bible

More important, I began to read the Bible for myself when I was a young man. My parents were not Christians, so they did not have any authority to recast the Bible for me; therefore, I got it straight.  When it came to “other” people, the Bible is clear. Jesus was an “other” and allied himself with poor people and outcasts, all the fancy buildings dedicated to him, notwithstanding. Israel was a nation of freed slaves who were commanded to treat outsiders like guests. Jesus made it clear that if his followers did not go to the ultimate degree with this element of Jewish morality, they were not his followers. “Love as I have loved you” and “love your enemies” are not hard truths to understand. I understood them.

Travel

What sealed my change of mind and helped create new instincts was experiencing other cultures and people first hand. The TV and our many screens makes the world seem small until you are travelling all over it. I’ve been all over. I have five abiding images that continue to stoke my love and reinforce the truth I gained in rebellion from my parents’ manifestly bad example as I followed Jesus.

  • While in Indonesia as a seventeen-year-old exchange student, a legless blind woman appeared in our train car after a stop, a car dominated by our merry band of rich kids en route to Bali. She scared us as she begged. She refused our food, since she was sent for money. Our conductor entered the car and was appalled. He actually had the train stop and they threw her out in a rice field in the middle of nowhere. We cried. I have never forgotten her.
Related image
Homes for the “other”
  • Gwen and I lived in San Diego for a little while before we had children. Whenever we crossed back over the border from Mexico, it amazed us how the air felt different — San Diego was irrigated with water that flowed through California’s expensive water projects and it sweetened the air. When we delivered help to people on the steep, dirt streets of Tijuana, it was our first experience of people all over the world who live on the hillsides without any utility services.
  • My first immersion trip with MCC was to El Salvador and Honduras. It was at the end of the civil war the U.S. financed. More than once our van was stopped by eighteen-year olds with automatic weapons making sure we were doing nothing subversive. We later learned many of them were probably kidnapped and forced to do their duty. In El Salvador we visited some of the “marginalized” people MCC was housing in one-room corrugated homes, for which they were very grateful. We learned the “marginalized,” although they lived in a category, did not officially exist. The territory on which they squatted had no government jurisdiction and they had no citizen rights. They were “others” who lived someone else’s lie.
  • While in South Africa learning mediation from the experts, our group of visibly-Western, wealthy people spent a brief time in downtown Johannesburg enjoying coffee in a sidewalk café. Our handlers began to note the young men who were beginning to circle us. They had warned us that desperate people were on the prowl for unsuspecting marks. It was a bit terrifying to be otherized by the otherized.
“Fumigation” in Colombia
  • In Colombia, again with MCC, we survived a ride through one section of the mountains — where vans had been stopped by kidnappers rappelling down cliffs, to arrive in beautiful Cali. There we met displaced “others” who had been driven off their land by the war on drugs. The helicopters spayed Round-up indiscriminately, so people growing corn to feed their families were punished along with the coca farmers. One of them made sure to tell us to speak to our government about such cruelty. I did.

Jesus makes us safe enough to love the “other”

The government is as cruel now as it has ever been. And a good 40% of the voting population is convinced, as my father was, that there is not a problem a wall could not solve. Purported, Bible-loving Christians are some of the staunchest defenders of people like Ken Cuccinelli.

It is a blessing that I read the Bible, since it has little hope for any kingdom God does not rule and has little hope for any situation that is not seen through the lens of Jesus. Ultimately, being rooted in Jesus allowed me to cherish my cross-cultural encounters with the “others” I have met over the years. Jesus gives me the courage to put my opinions, identity and way of life at risk. Because of Jesus I am ready to be changed by my encounters with others just like God risks to relate to me and you. The process of love is unsettling unless one is settled in love.

David Brooks rightly noted last Friday that millions of Americans are being asked

“to accept high immigration while they are already living with maximum insecurity. Their wages are declining, their families and communities are fragmenting, their churches are shrinking, government services are being cut, their values and national identity feel unstable. Of course they are going to react with suspicion if suddenly on top of all this they begin to feel like strangers in their own place.”

I see what he is saying; I grew up in a house full of those fears. But when have regular people ever felt anything but that? My Dad was just trying to survive, too. He thought it was dangerous to be connected to others and illogical to care about their needs if his own family suffered.

Without that Jesus lens, the points Cuccinelli, Brooks, and Trump make along with their supporters and detractors will be endlessly made, just as the same points have been made my whole life. A friendship may show you another way. The Bible will surely teach us something different. Travel may open one’s eyes. At least I feel I have learned some life-changing things as I have listened to all those things. The big one is: no one is really safe and others are not safe from us unless we are safe in Jesus.

You can’t make me not be a blessing

A life in the Spirit, The Mission, ,

If I heard right, Donald Trump said that although Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi was great at using the internet, he was not as great as “Donald Trump.” Daniel Byman wrote “And of course, the counterterrorism success had to be about him. Trump noted that the Islamic State is ‘technically brilliant’ and uses the internet ‘better than almost anybody in the world, perhaps other than Donald Trump.’” So I guess Daniel heard it, too.

Image result for donald trump baghdadi
The information about the terror leader’s more specific whereabouts, the officials cited in the report said, came mostly from Syrian and Iraqi Kurds who continued to pass on the intelligence to the CIA, even after Trump announced the pullout — a move widely perceived to have been an abandonment of the US’s Kurdish allies. — Times of Israel

Donald Trump inspires me to godliness like nobody else, these days. ‘Take them out” he says about lesser targets, “but what I want is Baghdadi” as if the other deaths were of no account if he could not get the “big win” of the leader.  In a serious moment of military success, he makes sure to thank Russia, disparage the intelligence people investigating him instead of finding further targets, and dis Nancy Pelosi. He lies about what he wrote in his own book and complains about not getting enough credit for identifying Osama bin Laden, while taking undue credit for killing a man the United States death machine has been hunting for years.

Trump is an anti-blessing.  Jesus says, “The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly” (John 10:10). With the best trained search-and-destroy soldiers in the world carried in eight helicopters, backed up by aircraft and ships, the U.S. came in to steal, kill and destroy, and, as the president later said, to secure the oil.

Blessing in the face of anti-blessing

When up against anti-blessings, a song usually comes to my mind, since much of what I know about godliness is derived from music.

We sang one prayer at our amazing Love Feast last Saturday that applies:

“Lord stop these wars where blood is spilt for money!”

And, strangely enough the old song Make Me a Blessing came to mind from my days in the Baptist church as a child. This song came from the Moody Bible Institute in the 1920’s and was a surprise crowd pleaser that made it into all sorts of hymnals. It has all the trappings of an insensitive, us vs. them Christianity in which the “lost” are pitied until they receive the message of Jesus and get into the fold. Being out of the fold as a child, I could relate to that. The song has issues, but it also has a prayer that answers the anti-blessings of the world

Make me a blessing, O Savior I pray. Make me a blessing to someone today.

Related imageI probably should not show this to you, but a quintessential “church lady” sang Make Me A Blessing on YouTube and I found it. She is apparently the woman Dana Carvey was channeling on SNL many years ago.

 

I like this no-instrument Church of Christ group from Alabama much more.

The word “blessing” is a bit overused in the Bible as a translation for several words that have a more nuanced meaning. When one speaks a blessing she calls out God’s goodness to fill a person or situation. When you bless someone on the train after they sneeze, it might seem risky, but it is a little act of sweetness retained from days of yore.

More, blessing is an act of identifying the goodness in someone and praising it, or calling goodness into someone or something  to protect or sanctify it. When you bless the food, you are in that territory. Praising the food and calling it into good use should be the basic behavior it is. Applying the same spirit to your children, church , or country is even more relevant. In my case, when I pray “make me a blessing,” I am talking about a defiant act of being, saying and doing good in the face of people and institutions that are bad, tell lies and do evil and call it good.

Living out of abundance

So a questionable song came to my mind and the Lord encouraged me by it. In relationship to Donald Trump, the anti-blessing, I want God to make me a blessing as long as I have life to live abundantly. Why shouldn’t I, who am so blessed by God, live out of that reality instead of reacting to all the nonsense around me?

Here is the kind of stuff I mean by being a blessing:

When my wife, family or friends are going off because they are too tired, too unprocessed or giving in to their worst instincts, I don’t want to take on their distress and feed it back to them just because they irritate or frighten me. I want to be a blessing to them, understanding, caring and feeding back love in whatever form it is necessary.

When my region if filled with trash, full of addicted and mentally ill people left on the streets, filled with anonymous people who are persistently self-protective, I don’t want to hide out or just clean up. I want to get more personal, turn toward, look for the source of the problems and feed Jesus into them in a way that people can receive.

When my country is self-destructing I don’t want to be threatened into silence or pushed to one side or another that is not beside Jesus. I want to note the goodness that is there and speak goodness into the process wherever I can find a hearing. But more, I want to defiantly be good myself, build a community filled with goodness and resist by existing.

You can’t make me not be a blessing.

Is a political storm coming? : Some help for travelling through it with Jesus

Doing Theology, The Mission, , , , , ,
Image result for political storm
Trump is a storm of his own making.

So who knows what is going to happen next year? The financial markets are getting scared – and you know what fears drive Americans the most! People continue to get more divided as the President masterfully feeds lies to fears.

I keep offering the same response to people who still want to argue about it all. While Donald Trump is monstrous, he is not new. His ilk runs Turkey and Russia. More germane to my topic, his ilk tormented Jesus and lied to get him killed. Jesus did not mince words with them:

Why do you not understand what I say? It is because you cannot accept my word. You are from your father the devil, and you choose to do your father’s desires. He was a murderer from the beginning and does not stand in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks according to his own nature, for he is a liar and the father of lies. But because I tell the truth, you do not believe me. Which of you convicts me of sin? If I tell the truth, why do you not believe me? Whoever is from God hears the words of God. The reason you do not hear them is that you are not from God.” – John 8:43-47

I don’t want to unpack everything in that passage right now. But you probably need to do so. Because Jesus has been lied to death in our era, too. [Aren’t people Lying to you about Christianity?]. Whose desires are you appeasing? Do you believe there is any truth? Do you know what Jesus says, much more believe it? Can you hear what is from God? There are a lot of questions here.

Image result for trump divides families
Families are divided in more ways than one these days.

Why are we so storm-tossed, even in the church?

I mainly want to bring up the social aspect of all this lying that is making it hard for some of us to go home and visit the folks, much more challenge us as we look at the future. Be honest, the folks at home might not be reading blogs. They might not even approve of Philadelphia, or at least what you are doing in it if you were born here. Even if you are feeling uncomfortable with the disconnection you feel, I think we should acknowledge there might be more reasons we are getting divided up than the other side is filled with morons.

The other day YouTube offered a video when I popped in to find something else. I actually  wanted to see it! I guess I have “liked” enough things for it to feed me what I desire. The best thing it came up with was this video of a “liberal” woman discovering why she was having so much trouble with “conservative” people by reading Jonathan Haidt’s book, The Righteous Mind. Here’s the video:

I love how this women opens up her mind to understand how Trump appeals to people who do not share the dominant ethical foundation of her background or territory.

I spent a couple of pages on my dissertation talking about Jonathan Haidt because he can help therapists navigate ethical territory without being appalled by how their client sees things so differently than they do.

Then I spent some time translating Haidt’s social-science-bounded work to help us build our community in Christ. We are generally boundaried by the same kind of bias the woman described in the video. So I wrote a couple of posts to help us think a bit more inclusively:

We could be a shelter in the storm

I offer the discussion to you today because I think we are headed for some big trouble in the country in the next few months. I hope we can speak into it as Jesus-followers, not just go with the turbulent “mainstream.” We need to pluck people out of the maelstrom/mainstream and give them a safe place on our “third way.” Our way is a journey through the future on which we generously accept where people are at with some understanding and offer them the truth in Jesus which will save their lives and give them a new place to stand.

To provide that place we will need to resist giving in to the temptation to despise grandpa as a demonstration of our righteousness and avoid castigating people for being on the wrong side of history. As the women points out in the video, much of what masquerades as a reasonable argument is a passionate defense of unconsidered reactions. They are the same kind of reactions that caused people to call Jesus a liar and caused Jesus to tell them they were following the devil. A simple agreement we might make together for navigating the treacherous waters ahead and saving people from the flood would be to not follow the devil!

Shutting down and not engaging is not loving. Taking political sides and damning the enemy is not true to Jesus. The way of faith, hope and love is the third way and we have already created an alternative space to share it. I hope we will maintain some awareness of one of our proverbs (and the tagline for this blog): Truth without love kills and love without truth lies. We can stand in such a both/and space because Jesus is standing with us. We need to “behold” him there, “full of grace and truth” (John 1:14).

Hungry for equality? Service is the great equalizer.

The Mission, , , , , , ,
The usual motley crew getting ready to trespass into the secret testing site.

At most of the protests in which I have been involved, starting with nuclear testing and El Salvador (and this year moving into climate change, gun control, police violence and immigration), I have often been asked the same question, “Is this protest doing any good?”

This better do some good

I suppose all protesters have to ask that question, at some, level, at least because they had to leave work or miss lunch, most of them, to add their voice to the cries of outrage. And “work” generally cares about itself, not justice, so who knows what it might do to them? So “This better do some good!”

I think “Is this effective?” or “Will this work?” is a typical empire question when asked in the United States. Especially here, people think they have the right and the power to make things happen, to remake the world according to their desires, to effect progress. So, especially here, all public discourse has to do with power — and most private discourse does, too, unfortunately (at least I know a lot of people who are in a perpetual power struggle). Work harder, work smarter, but get something done. Get what you deserve. Control things. Manage situations. Protect your future; it depends on your choices now.

We all seem to think we are in charge of the world and our own destiny. By extension, a protest is generally about exerting enough power to get the government/corporations to change.

Sometimes it works. During my lifetime I have seen pressure influence the government to change. For instance, the government stopped nuclear weapons testing at Mercury, NV in the 90’s after arresting 15,740 protesters (me included). Social action works often enough to keep hopeful, infuriated people in Hong Kong in the streets for weeks. I feel compelled to raise my voice quite often, myself. But there always seems to be some further travesty to shout about, doesn’t there?

Being effective is a secondary benefit

But being effective is not my main interest. My hope does not rest in getting Moscow Mitch McConnell to do the right thing nor rest in Mitch getting canned by Amy McGrath. Obviously, our protests about nuclear weapons have not stopped Putin, Trump and unknown numbers of Iranians and Israelis from plotting a nuclear solution to various problems (like hurricanes!).

People power accomplishes some great things, but it is amazing how often the evil powers beat the people at the game of domination. People who protest and organize to get power are often discouraged. If they think Jesus is all about dominating  the worldly powers or is just as preoccupied with exercising power as they are, they quickly get sorely disappointed with God for refusing to play the power game at all.

Of course, Jesus has miraculous power…

But here is the main thing Jesus shows us about how to get justice and equal rights:

You were called to freedom, brothers and sisters; only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for self-indulgence, but through love become slaves to one another. – Galatians 5:13

In the “empire,” people are constantly jockeying for the best deal for themselves. They become experts in the law in order to protect themselves and fight against people who steal their freedom and their wealth (or the possibility of wealth). Here the freedom to be autonomous is a paramount value and the only ethic is “Do no harm,” which includes harm to identity. Equality under the law is the main thing people hope in and what they protest about.

But I don’t protest just because I want to get the government to do good. I protest as a prophecy because the grace of Jesus gives me the freedom to BE good. I’m not just trying to get something; I AM someone. I don’t hope to get freedom from some evil power; I have already been given freedom by God. I don’t use that freedom for myself, like I formerly used whatever small freedom I felt I had before I rose with Jesus, in order to get more power; I use it to serve. Like Jesus, I use my freedom to become like a slave to others, bound to love. I think that is what Paul’s teaching is all about, and I wish it were a more common teaching today among his people.

Service, given freely,  will make us equal

People thought Jesus was a fool. Paul is quite aware he is a fool, as far as the rulers of his age are concerned. People still think getting out on the streets as a witness to the goodness and freedom of Jesus is foolishness. What does it get done? How can it give the protestor a proper share of the domination? Many people find it fruitless. Why not forget about the whole mess and frantically become as powerful as possible, carve out a piece of the capitalist pie as a hedge against whatever terrible thing is coming instead of trying to change things?

Here are my two reasons to show God’s goodness in the face of the corruption of the world:

Being a slave to all is good in itself. Don’t get me wrong, I think demanding equal rights under the law is a good thing. It is very hard for a traumatized person to feel free enough to serve anything but their self-interest. And the powers that be around here have created the huge injustice of income stratification and privilege hoarding to overlay their traditional racism and rapacious capitalism in the U.S. We’ve got to say “NO,” and loudly. But the freedom of walking into daily life free of its clutches, only constrained by the love that fills us and dominates our reactions is more precious than anything the “administration” can accomplish.

But what’s more, serving one another is the actual great equalizer. Being the family of God in service like our brother Jesus makes us all one in love – at least that’s what He’s hoping. Even when people get so-called “equal rights,” for which Americans think they are famous, even the light of the world, they still face discrimination every day and then a Trump regularly shows up to make it all worse. Does fighting for and waiting for equal rights make anyone free? Does going into denial and pretending Jesus makes me free in some otherworldy way make me free? — more than the former, perhaps. But I think what really makes us free is what Paul says: “Use your freedom to serve” or “choose the slavery of love.” That makes us all equal in character and purpose and gives us the experience of being free we crave.

I have rediscovered this truth repeatedly over my sojourn many times. One of the places it first became clear to me was in Nevada when I trespassed in the nuclear test site on behalf of the world and got “arrested.” Actually, I was just detained by bored policemen,  handcuffed with plastic bands and put in a chainlink cage for a little while because they did not really want to bother with a bunch of people clogging up the courts with their righteousness. Strangely enough, we accomplished something. But more, I accomplished being free. I faced my fear of the power: too little power on my part, too much power on the government’s part. Neither power made that much difference, but faith acting in love just WAS different. Being a locked up “slave” of the state for a while has been educational ever since.

Our common service, mutually compelled by the love of Christ makes us equal. Hopefully the world will come to resemble that truth. But I’m not waiting for a miracle that already happened; I want to live it now. According to Paul, we are free to live it now in Christ, and no other power on earth can give that freedom or take it away.

Don’t lose heart: People are more than numbers on a mass shooting scorecard

The Mission, , , ,
we do not lose heart. West Philly dawn
Dawn in West Philly!

I think this is the verse which everyone who hopes young white men will stop killing people is recalling today:

“Therefore we do not lose heart.
Though outwardly we are wasting away,
yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day”
(2 Cor. 4:16).

During my whole life, which is comparatively long, by now, this has been a go-to verse for the many “lost causes” that go with following Jesus:

  • police killing black people, and, in general, any citizen they are sworn to protect [guns and gun laws];
  • atomic weapons in the hands of Trumps or Putins or ayatollahs, the absurdity of war in general;
  • do gooders around the world tagged as “subversive” and tormented or murdered, lack of caring and sharing in general;
  • evangelism in a post-Christian and increasingly anti-Christian era, generally because the Christians are in the service of oppression, for reasons I have yet to fathom.

You get the idea.

The news reality TV put the death of people on the screen as if they were marks on a mass shooting scorecard, comparing the last murders to the previous, zoning in on Beto O’Rourke crying while they waited for Trump’s tweet.

The Dems blame Trump’s rhetoric for encouraging El Paso (can anyone dispute that?); the White House “pushes back” and blames the “sickness” of the shooter (can anyone dispute that?). Why those two things don’t go together, I have no idea. Surely no one on the street thinks sick people are not the first to be destroyed when the leaders are terrible and fighting with each other. Families disintegrate for the very same reasons, and dead churches litter the landscape because people thought being “right” was better than being reconciled (back to 2 Corinthians).

Don’t lose heart. Act.

Our old friend, Sarah Withrow King, reposted a Facebook entry Sunday from a Philadelphia activist now in Nashville. Her friend is trying to stay in the game, even though it is discouraging to think the country will continue to handout AK47s to anyone who wants one. Here is an excerpt I think will encourage you and maybe keep you motivated to hang on to Jesus and take action:

There was a massacre in El Paso yesterday and a terrifyingly similar attack in Dayton. The El Paso shooter was a white supremacist who posted a manifesto about hating immigrants and the Dayton shooter was also a young white male.

Yesterday when I briefly saw news of a shooting before going to bed, before much was known about it or who the shooter was or the motivations, I saw a comment on the New York Times article: someone wrote, “I don’t think it’s been even a week since the last one. I stopped crying after Parkland.” Something pierced my heart, knowing that my biggest fears are coming true: more and more collective numbness to mass shootings, and likely numbness to mass terrorist attacks by white supremacists.

I remember giving myself some guidance after a major attack a couple years ago. Here’s what I wrote to myself, which I’m repeating for my own benefit and anyone’s this morning:

    1. Feel the enormity. Whatever that feeling is.
    2. Look to people who have been doing work on the ground in the community for years, to those who live and work and are organized there, for cues on action in solidarity (psych: not Democratic hopefuls or others will expect to swoop in as heroes)
    3. Connect to those around you – emotionally, strategically. Remember you’re not alone.
    4. Respond. It’ll be messy and imperfect. Say what you want to say and do what you feel you need to do. …

So repeat it in your heart, and let tears come whether that’s this morning or later or at 3AM: There was a massacre in El Paso yesterday. 20 people are dead. The shooter was a white supremacist who posted a manifesto about hating immigrants. This is real and this is my world. — Margaret Anne Ernst  (Her blog)

As I am sure most of you think, making Facebook posts and blog posts have limited value in the face of daily disasters (like Greenland losing an amazing amount of ice in the most recent European heat wave!).  Although the myth of the echo chamber has been widely debunked, for whatever reason people are not listening to one another, much less promoting healing and creative dialogue. I think one reason many don’t listen is probably “the medium is the message.” You don’t think I am quite real as you read this, and I agree. I am much wilder and unpredictable in person, also a lot more caring, angry, irrational, wise and weird than I am here. We need the face to face.

We must make face to face happen

We no longer live in villages, generally, and spend hours online. The El Paso shooter said he spent eight hours a day there. Face to face is hard to come by. And if you are going for it, like we are in our church (and like restorative justice people are as they upend mass incarceration — listen to On the Media’s Repairing Justice: How to Fix the Internet), then you might get tired. Love can be hard. You’re swimming against the current. The need to keep making real relationships can be discouraging.

But everyday I think something like: “I hope young white men will stop killing people,” and “I hope anxious Congolese people will not kill their doctors,” and “I hope corrupt Ukrainians will not sell out their fellow-citizens,”  and “I hope Moscow Mitch will start legislating for the common good.” I can’t help it. I hope  we will settle down and talk to our children and listen. I hope we will look at our own anxiety and trust God. And I hope we will strategize how to get together when we see our own neighbors. Most of all, I hope we will build a church – the true alternative to the madness, when it is not itself, mad.

Make it a go-to with me in this potentially numbing week: “We do not lose heart. Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day.” Putting our faith in action will always be hard. But Jesus will always be with us every step of the way.

Rejection: The prophet’s dilemma

A life in the Spirit, The Mission, , ,
Image result for trump paper towels
Trump tossing paper towels to Puerto Rican hurricane survivors.

We certainly have a lot of disappointed prophets in the U.S. these days, don’t we?! They told us exactly what would happen if Trump got elected and they were exactly right. He lies. He incarcerates children. He threatens to do something, doesn’t do it, and then says he did it and people believe him. His yet-to-be-uncovered corruption is like an iceberg ready to sink your Titanic. He’s a racist. It goes on.

The disappointed prophets lament like Jeremiah:

So you shall speak all these words to them, but they will not listen to you. You shall call to them, but they will not answer you. You shall say to them: This is the nation that did not obey the voice of the Lord their God, and did not accept discipline; truth has perished; it is cut off from their lips. — Jeremiah 7

Jeremiah 7 is a good read, period. I especially like this line when I read it like an exasperated South Philly native:

“The children gather wood, the fathers kindle fire, and the women knead dough, to make cakes for the queen of heaven.”

Only I might translate:

“The children watch their phones. The parents go to work. And someone orders Amazon Fresh to make money for the kings of capitalism.”

So what’s a prophet to do?

I’m a disappointed prophet, too. But at least I did not think Hillary was going to save the world or Barack had done so. The Democrats are well on their way to offering some other 70-year-old to lead us like some doddering Robert Mueller supposedly dispensing justice.

I feel sorry for all these old people trying to keep up. They are all older than me! And I had to text Rachel last week to get the name of someone I had known for 30 years because I was about to see them and my old brain could not bring it up fast enough! I’m disappointing enough and Joe Biden is 76! (Mark my words).

So what do we do when our prophecy is rejected?

Keep prophesying. You never know when someone is going to listen for God and hear you.

File:Bartolomé Carducho - Death of St Francis - WGA04207.jpg
Death of St. Francis — Bartolomeo Carducci (1593). National Museum of Ancient Art, Lisbon.

A good example, at least for me these days, is what happened with the prophecy of the disappointed Francis and Clare of Assisi. Both of them had a dream that their splendid revelation about simplicity, community and love was so basic to the way of Jesus no further improvements were needed. They went about their passionate lives and communities sprung up all over Europe in imitation of them. People hungered to be connected with something authentic, serious and joyful.

But soon both Clare and Francis were pressed for a “rule”

  • That’s a rule like all the other orders of monastics (which they didn’t really think they were).
  • That’s a rule like the ones priests lived by under Canon Law (priests they never wanted to be).
  • That’s a rule according to the best practices of the experts (to whom they didn’t really feel like relating).

People listening for God heard their prophecy anyway, despite all the distractions.

Prophets speak for the Ruler, not the rules

Clare ended up suffering under a rule imposed on her little community in San Damiano based on the Benedictine Rule, which isn’t a bad rule, it just wasn’t what she had in mind after God called her. If she had wanted to be a Benedictine nun, there were plenty of opportunities.

They made Francis write a rule. The first one was a couple of pages long and was mostly quotes from the Bible. The final one, right before he went off to die, was a little more expansive, but was still more a story than a ruling doc.

Really, NOT having a rule was the point! A prophet speaks from God, they are not interested in refining some thought from the past or applying the best thinking of the present bureaucracy.

Right after Francis died, the new “order” whisked his body into hiding lest Perugia steal it. In an amazingly short time the new leader of the new order, Elias, had a basilica built to house the saint’s bones and all sorts of other intriguing things I recently saw – even Francis’ raggedy brown robe. Ironically, though unintentionally, the basilica attendants made sure I was wearing long enough pants when I entered the church and a priest told me to take off my “Italia” ball cap before I got a peek at the rags, preserved under glass like a treasure. Francis could not have predicted my experience, or that of his robe, either.

The pope codified all the papal bulls regarding the Franciscans so they had a little handbook for how not to get out of control. They got in line. Soon St. Bonaventure had systematized the thoughts and sanitized all the stories.

Governing bodies rarely trust God and others like Francis did — a prophet always thinks something like that. For example, the last oracle of Jeremiah is:

Thus says the Lord of hosts:
The broad wall of Babylon
shall be leveled to the ground,
and her high gates
shall be burned with fire.
The peoples exhaust themselves for nothing,
and the nations weary themselves only for fire.

You might get tired of being rejected

Jeremiah is exhausted, but he is right. I’m not sure the point of saying that is:

  • “Exhaust yourself because you are right” or
  • “Your exhaustion with all these people makes you SO holy.”

But if you don’t ignore the prophetic Spirit of  God incarnate in Jesus and rampant in the body of Christ, you will very likely get tired of being rejected. Because people will keep making cupcakes for the queen of heaven and the nations will keep wearying themselves only for fire. They’ll wreck the heavens and unleash fire on the earth. We need a savior.

Keep prophesying. You never know when someone is going to listen for God and hear you.

Our Savior has no interest in the end of time, as far as we will ever know. The Lord is going to keep us prophesying until it is time. There is no sense imagining when that time is; we just need to keep telling the truth and living the love.

As far as the church goes, the whole enterprise is a prophetic expression of truth and love. The more we exercise our gifts, including some concentrated bomblets of prophecy, the more people get a chance to turn, be freed from the dying nonsense of the world, and be connected to the Giver of All Good Gifts.

People without Jesus know about those gifts, and people who follow Jesus know even more, now that eternity is opened up to them. Looking into eternity and sometimes speaking things that come directly from it is a joy in itself. Being a prophet is innately encouraging, it is just all that rejection that’s tough.

Francis may have died a bit disappointed in his forties, but his legacy lives on and his prophecy is revered while those who despoiled his beautiful dream are reviled.  The despoilers did not listen, but they could not destroy the truth, nonetheless. If they don’t listen to you or respect the church of Jesus Christ, nothing is new – except the prophecy of course, which always feels like it just came right off the delivery truck from the Kingdom of God.

Goose and pig stories: The opposite of what the domination system demands

A life in the Spirit, Film/TV, The Mission, , , ,

I flew to Italy on St. Kevin’s Day this year (June 3). He is another in a long line of “saints” who have shown me the beauty of doing the opposite of what the domination system demands. For more about the “domination system,” here is a summary of Walter Wink.

 

Kevin and King O’Toole’s goose

Kevin lived through the entire 500’s in Ireland, it appears [see this old post for more]. But, of course, people were less concerned with scientific precision at that point, so who knows exactly what happened? Regardless, Kevin’s legacy is still happening, and most people you know named Kevin are, ultimately, named after him. He wandered off into the mountains south of what was not yet Dublin and found a remote cave, an old bronze age tomb, overlooking the upper lake of the beautiful valley of Glendalough. There he entered his hermitage to be with God and his beloved creatures.

However, people found Kevin and wanted to be near him. The story goes he decided to establish a monastery. But the pagan King O’Toole who ruled Glendalough would not allow it. Here we go.

As the story continues, it happened that the king had a much beloved pet goose, which was quite old. As time passed, the goose became so weak it was unable to fly. The king was very upset, for he loved the goose very much. Hearing of Kevin’s sanctity and power, the  king sent for him, and asked him to make his beloved goose young. Kevin asked for a payment of whatever land the goose would fly over. As the goose could no longer take flight, O’Toole agreed. When Kevin touched the bird, it grew young, and flew over the entire valley of Glendalough, and on that site his monastery was established, as well as a settlement that was famous for a 1000 years after Kevin died, the ruins of which can still be visited.

However it happened, the aristocrat, Kevin, having given up all he owned and the prerogatives of his class, made a deal with the domination system on his radical new terms, which included miracle and audacity.

From Rossellini’s movie The Little Flowers (1950)

Juniper and the pig

Likewise, Francis of Assisi, about 600 years later, rediscovered the joy of returning to Caesar what he thinks belongs to him touched with the glory of God (things like a dying goose).  So often the “render to Caesar” account is used to justify the division of the world into sacred and secular and paying one’s taxes on time. But Jesus isn’t even carrying a denarius with which to make his point. And when the system kills him, he makes his point about rendering big time with his resurrection.

Francis and the other children of the budding middle class of Assisi, whose parents were inventing capitalism, got the Lord’s point. It scared people mightily when the returning crusader, Benardo de Quintivalle sold off his extensive estate and gave it all away. The bishop of Assisi told Francis, “Your life seems hard to me; it must be burdensome not to have any earthly possession.” Francis answered, “My Lord, if we wanted to possess anything, then we would also need arms to defend ourselves. That is how all the quarrels and conflicts get started, and they are obstacles to love. For this reason we can possess nothing.” He did not convince the bishop, and the church has been presiding over battles and blessing big business ever since. Lately some evangelicals have even embraced the godless Trump with just such power in mind.

Like Kevin, Francis brazenly confronted people with their excess by begging for it. One gave him his hermitage site on Mt. Subasio, where I had this revelation. Another donated the little chapel in the woods of Porziuncola that became Franciscan headquarters.

The story of Brother Juniper and the pig demonstrates a mentality that flourished among the brothers of Francis before the domination system tamed them all again.  This is how it goes.

One of the brothers was sick and Juniper asked him what he might like to eat to make him feel better. The man answered, “A pig’s foot.” So Juniper went over to a herd fattening on acorns nearby and cut the leg off a pig. He cooked it up and served it to the man as he joyfully told the story of his attack.

The swineherds who had witnessed the deed, furiously marched up to Francis and insulted their settlement as a bunch of thieves. Francis apologized, saying he knew nothing of the incident they reported. Vowing revenge the men headed for Assisi.

This was a serious matter  — the good name of the brothers would be history. So Francis found Juniper and casually asked him if he had cut off the foot of a pig recently. “Si, naturalmente.” With satisfaction he told him all about his charitable deed. Francis was not so satisfied. He said, “Go find the man, throw yourself at his feet, and promise complete restoration.”  Juniper was astounded that someone would get excited about his good deed. “I’ll give the man satisfaction, “he said, “but I can’t understand the fuss over a pig. It belongs to God, anyway, not to the man, and may as well be put to good use.”

When Juniper caught up with the incensed owner, he tried to make him understand how he came to cut off the pig’s foot. He was full of zeal and enthusiasm and acted as if he had done the man a great service. The man flew into a rage. But Juniper just persisted in trying to be heard. He finally threw himself around the man’s neck, kissed him and assured him him he had done it all out of love. Then he asked for the rest of the pig.

This audacity resulted in the miracle. Juniper’s simplicity and sincerity were so credible the man’s assumptions began to crumble. With tears in his eyes, he confessed he had done the brothers wrong. He went and got the maimed pig, slaughtered it, roasted it, and with great emotion carried it to the brother’s table to make up for the injustice he had done them.

Follow the goose and the pig

As opponents try to undo the deceptions and corruption of the Trump regime, they often say, “Follow the money.” That’s exactly what Kevin and Francis, and their many followers, refused to do. They were more likely to follow the goose and the pig, to rely on the Spirit and the work of love rather than stay on the treadmill of acquisition and self-defense – the rule of law, some call it. In Kevin’s day, the Roman Empire was caput. 600 years later in Francis’ day, feudal economics was coming to an end. In our day the American empire, as we’ve known it, and the Enlightenment experiment in general, may be coming to an end. We’ll see. But what is a Jesus follower to do?

The point of goose and pig stories in every era is that God has ways that do not depend on capitalism or power. Jesus demonstrated that in full. His followers have always found ways to make their own demonstration again and again. The formation and constant reinvention of Circle of Hope is a miracle story of people finding more than they bargained for and sharing their pigs in great quantities. We’ve asked and received. Maybe we are afraid sometimes to squat the king’s land or ask for the owner’s pig, to rely on the miracle and act out of love. But many times we aren’t afraid, too.

Francis and Jesus will erode your control fantasies for good

A life in the Spirit, Building community, The Mission, , ,
Jesus spoke to Francis from this cross

Preaching to the birds was miraculous, not cute

A few years after Francis of Assisi (1182-1226) had been quickly canonized (1228), the learned Franciscans who took over the order were already distributing an “authorized” and sanitized biography of him penned by St. Bonaventure. He and his cronies ordered Brother Leo’s collection of stories destroyed (1266). Many of the brothers did not follow their order. When you read the stories his friends told, they present a man who should not have been sentimentalized in Thomas Celano’s Little Flowers and turned into a birdbath  or turned into a soulless moral lesson by Bonaventure.

I’m here in Assisi, which is a lovely, spit-shined shrine to Italy’s patron saint. There is plenty or birdbath Francis to be found in the stores lining the pilgrim ways. There is plenty of Bonaventure’s classier Francis  as well. A street sweeper is rumbling outside my window as I write, making sure the dirty 1200’s and Francis’ Lady-Poverty-loving beggars are not allowed in the city for too long.

Yet Francis and his Jesus do manage to leak through the well-managed 21st century. I met Jesus again on the original San Damiano cross (above) yesterday in Clare’s church. A replica of the one that spoke to Francis is outside the city at the little church where Francis received his life changing call. I heard the message again and, of course, put it on Instagram: “Go and rebuild my church, which, as you can see, is fallen into ruin.”

Statue of Francis and his war horse ready to give up their armor at the entry to the Basilica.

Before there were capitalists, there were butterflies

I first witnessed the scene of Francis’ revelation in Brother Sun Sister Moon, the 70s version of the uncontrollable story . I religiously watch it every October 4. From my first steps of adult faith I felt moved to do my part in the rebuilding. I think we are doing OK, so far. But the church is a bigger wreck than ever in the U.S., preoccupied with sex, trying to control how people deal with reproduction instead of meeting and demonstrating the Alternative: the half-naked Jesus on the cross, speaking more outrageous sermons from his new “mount.” The church not only generally despises voluntary poverty, it persecutes people who don’t get in bed with capitalists and support the huge military it takes to prevent any hint of mutuality. But we keep building.

Yesterday morning, as I began my retreat in earnest, I wondered how many stories from the early days of the Lord’s movement in me, or in Circle of Hope, I have suppressed. Now I have Bonaventure-like credentials, and the financial ability to spit-shine my environment —or at least to buy some more illusion of control, do I present a more socially acceptable version of me and of us? As I wrote that line, a chorus of church bells began to ring, announcing 7:30am. My attention was turned to the chorus of birds celebrating  a beautiful Umbrian day.

I suspect the Lord will be able to disrupt me, and you, no matter how many ways we find to subdue his impact. Later at mass at San Damiano, a butterfly flew through the window and fluttered over the priests just as we sang the Gloria. It was not only a fitting tribute to Franco Zeffirelli (RIP), but to the Lord, who asks us to stop trying to control nature and join him in it, tending it together for glory, not just using it for pleasure or profit.

At the scene of subsequent Pentecosts

A life in the Spirit, Building community, The Mission, , , ,

I’m checking in from my trip in Italy. On Pentecost Sunday yesterday  I took some time to appreciate the places on my pilgrim route where the Spirit touched another person or generation with an outpouring of the Holy Spirit just like happened that first time, reported in Acts 2.

Rome

We stopped by “Paul outside the walls,” the site where Paul was allegedly crucified by Nero. This completed last year’s pilgrimage to Greece. Paul had an unlikely “pentecost” that day on the way to Damascus.  I’ve been surprised many times by how the Spirit finds me, too.

Montecassino

 

We made the climb to the top of the famous hill near Naples where Benedict of Nursia planted the monastery that would influence Europe for good for a thousand years and still inspires pilgrims like me. Being welcomed into these islands of faith and learning provided “pentecosts” for thousands of seekers in desperate times, beginning in the 600’s.

Padua

 

Up in Veneto during the 1200’s, Anthony of Padua helped Francis of Assisi train the many new community members their revival movement was attracting. At his shrine we saw his famous tongue, preserved as a memory of his remarkable speaking career and his ongoing influence.  On a Saturday, one worship time after another was packed!

Philadelphia

Meanwhile our instagrams told of all sorts of moving experiences on Pentecost weekend — from the splash party in the Northwest to blue skies over South Jersey, from intimate times around the piano to the Comfort Retreat. We have bits of Paul, Benedict and Anthony in us. We experience, demonstrate and teach all the “pentecosts” in our own way. It was amazing then and God with us is amazing now. I can’t help but think God will meet us and continue to use us in desperate times. I’m inspired by the past but probably more by our present together.

In Palestine: It is good to be a child caring for children

The Mission, , , , ,

Image result for uncle bobbie's

Donovan and I shared a pleasant hour at Uncle Bobbie’s in Germantown last week. As we were winding down, he brought up how Marc Lamont Hill, the founder of the restaurant, had been fired from his commentator role at CNN for using an “anti-Semitic” phrase in a speech he gave to the United Nations. He called for equal rights for Palestinians “from the river to the Sea.”

When we were in Palestine, I met so many West Bank residents and Israelis who think such rights are crucial for the future health of both Jews and Palestinians, I thought it was a settled part of the ongoing argument about what is next. But in the polarized atmosphere of the United States, Hill’s remarks were immediately characterized as a call for the eradication of Israel! As you can hear in the Al Jazeera report on the incident, most people thought he was just talking about all Palestinians — those who live in Israel or the West Bank, achieving rights equal to Israelis. Others saw the phrase as a line straight from the Hamas playbook.

Donovan and I had wandered into the minefield of Israeli fragility and aggression in our own country, where 27 states have already enacted legislation that targets anti-Israeli boycotts designed to pressure Israel for justice, and where federal legislation against the boycotts is pending. What’s more, the Christians seem to have chosen the side of the Jews (who they identify with the state of Israel) for once. Pat Robertson summed up the radical Evangelical theology that produces super-supporters of Israel who think their support is a matter of Bible-following holiness. That’s as far as I will wander into that.

I just want to pay attention to Palestinian children

I bring up Marc Lamont Hill stepping on one of the landmines spread around the perimeter of public opinion to protect Israel because we were discussing the explosion he experienced right after I had outlined the following exhortation. I would like us to pay attention to Palestinian children and the ongoing injustice Israel perpetrates as they  protect their nation’s right to exist, violate international law, illegally settle the West Bank, operate a police state and divide up the territory they occupy with an apartheid-like system. I would be speaking hysterically if I had not briefly experienced everything on that list in person — a giant wall always in the background snaking along various borders.

I don’t think Jesus followers need to gain the world’s power in order to effect perfect justice. Jesus will bring everything to right in the end. Besides, striving to be on the top so we can help people at the bottom seems to be the exact opposite of the Lord’s strategy. Like Jesus, i think we should accompany those at the bottom, identify with them and see the world through their eyes. We work for peace and justice from that vantage point.

So that brings me to the children of Palestine.

Children play in the kindergarten operated by MCC partner Lajee Center in Aida Refugee Camp next to Bethlehem.

 

They have trauma stories

Jarrah, an 18-year-old Palestinian man, was 15 when he was arrested by Israeli soldiers. He says, “I used to go out with my friends to parties, but now when I reach the end of the street I remember what happened. And I come back. There is no feeling of safety.” The children are traumatized by the occupation and the constant threat of random Israeli arrest. Many of the Palestinians live in territory under military control, which does not have the same civil law structure as other places.

Each year Israel detains and prosecutes 500-700 Palestinian youth in the West Bank. Human rights organizations have documented the systematic mistreatment and abuse of these children, including torture, blindfolding and lack of access to legal counsel. These practices run counter to basic norms and protections within juvenile justice systems. (Like the U.S. government emulates Israel’s wall, it also mistreats detained children).

Obaida Akram Jawabra was detained and is afraid he will end up in prison again. One reason he is afraid is because to get to school he needs to cross Route 60. That highway is controlled by the Israeli military. Here is his story.

Here is another story from Al Jazeera about a sixteen-year-old who’s arrest was caught on video and went viral.

It is good to be a child caring for children

On April 30, Rep. Betty McCollum (D-Minn.) introduced a bill, H.R. 2407, to prohibit U.S. taxpayer funds from supporting the military detention of children in any country, including Israel. This important bill builds on similar legislation that was introduced in the last session of Congress. Do you know how to encourage your representative to sign on as a co-sponsor?

Jesus welcomed and blessed children, saying “whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me” (Matthew 18:5). We are called to care for the most vulnerable among us, including children. I would add that we are to BE the most vulnerable, just like Jesus emptied himself to become one with us in our sin and brokenness. That may always seem like a counterintuitive strategy to us. But the road to transformation is always a step toward the “least of these” as one of the poor, in fact or in spirit.