Tag Archives: NPR

Find your contemplation where you can

I have enjoyed getting to know spiritual direction students and teachers over the past semester. My cohort is a diverse, sincere bunch of people that always remind me of God’s goodness and humanity’s capacity for compassion and hope.

There is only one thing about my new group of friends that is funny. Many of them remind me a lot of the old SNL skits about NPR.

Sometimes that NPR voice is such a wonder, like on my favorite WHYY voice, Jennifer Lynn. Other times the special character of that voice makes me wonder if the sincerity of it is just another act of branding. With everything on ZOOM now, a lot of us now have ring lights and new microphones. And I think a lot of us have started to wonder how to act on screen, including how to sound.

What does the voice mean, now?  My spiritual direction teachers and many of their students seem to have learned to speak with an NPR voice. Is that a thing, or is it just me? I know I’ve been tagged with a “Mr. Rogers” voice, so maybe I learned it a long time ago.

Voice command

Our voice is a powerful instrument. We had four children before the oldest turned 4. I developed their attention to my voice as a high priority, especially my command voice: “Do not step off that curb!” and “Let go of your brother’s neck, now!” Since we were often in a church meeting, I could turn the command volume down very low, “Give me that marker!”

Humanity continues to prove it is hell-bent on emulating the perceived power of God  through its own control and manipulation. This is kind of a leap, but I think the medium of radio does its control and manipulation via voice command. As my children tell me I did, I think NPR commands with an iron fist in a velvet glove. By this time, many of us fans can seem very empathetic and nonthreatening while advancing the same old domination.

I bring this up because my teachers, and most of the authors they suggest, basically move with Eurocentric, privileged assumptions that leak out as “best practices” for spiritual formation and direction. There is usually a candle. There is often Taize music (from France) or classical music (based in Europe), there is aloneness and silence, which, in themselves, are often hard-to-find luxuries. There is often a call to “let go,” which is hard to do if your are barely hanging on. There are often calls to “submit” or “surrender” since they are in charge and conquering something by nature. And when they speak it could be right out of NPR.

I have spent decades perfecting all the spiritual practices practices that come with the dominant culture – and to a good end. I think my teachers last semester were great. Candles, Taize, silence in solitude, and submission are all elemental to my spiritual practice.

reaching for the edge of contemplation

There is another side

I also have enjoyed the luxury of getting to know other ways to contemplate contributed by the nondominant cultures around me. Fortunately for me, my parents came from the U.S. underclass and felt blessed to have clawed themselves into the lower middle class. So when I brought classical music home from college as the first to attend one, it did not go over well. I was called on to let go of the pride of thinking I was better than someone else, rather than called on to let go of the assumption I was better than most of the world, like most world-dominating Americans assume.

Many people from nondominant cultures are invited into contemplation by Eurocentric people and the “hospitality offered may be more stifling than respiting, more harm than blessing…The ways that marginalized groups answer the question of who God is needs to be contemplated in a more authentic way than the ‘average’ contemporary expression of spirituality might expect” (Ruth Takiko West*). So true. Besides, members of the so-called “dominant culture” are also very diverse, so forcing them into learning the Eurocentric practices as if they are “best practices” could be a mistake. Leaders need a lot of intentional introspection if they hope to alleviate the problem of merely dominating instead of liberating. The image of God does not just reside in people such as oneself.

Your culture is fine, as is mine. But Jesus is transcultural, even though he comes from a culture, in a gender, and is born into a family system. He experienced the dominant culture providing some kind of general order. But he insisted on enacting the liberative, reconciling work of the Spirit by giving preference to the poorer or more distant, as well as those yet to be included.

The ever-accepting Savior calls us into a mutually accepting relationship with Him and everyone else. Jesus is the Spirit in a body, the body of Christ is the Spirit making all of us into family: the body of Christ. This works out in all cultures. One does not need to look outside of one’s culture or outside of oneself to meet God. Henri Nouwen said, “Self-rejection is the greatest enemy of the spiritual life because it contradicts the sacred voice that declares we are loved. Being the beloved expresses the core truth of our existence” (see Spiritual Direction).

The presence of the Spirit transcends and infuses culture

We don’t need to act one way or another to develop intimacy with God, and though Jesus came one way, the Spirit of God with which he graced us is as multifaceted as the Creator. If God speaks to you in an NPR voice, wonderful; it is a sweet voice. But it can be a dominating voice, especially when white teachers unwittingly erase other sounds by making it prescriptive.

The rich experience of Black Americans, even those who understand Taize, Thomas Merton, and such, is often run over by the soft tones of people in charge, even though they have a rich tradition of their own that might be even better. James Cone writes, “The spirituals were a ritualization of God in song. They are not documents for philosophy; they are material for worship and praise for the One who had continued to be present with black humanity despite European insanity” (in The Spirituals and the Blues). Solitude in silence is to be treasured but contemplation is bigger. It is purpose, intention and deep consideration. As such it comes in many forms in as many cultures. Takiko West describes the Black experience in community where contemplation is exercised in the singing and the hearing of songs like the spirituals:

The presence of God is evidenced by the movement of the Spirit that causes one to jump to their feet, hands thrown up in the air when the soloist hits that one note and sustains it as if he/she needed to make sure the sound would reach heaven. It is within that moment that there is communal solidarity around the awareness of God’s grace.*

Cone writes, “The certain fact is always that God is present with them and trouble will not have the last word.”

I’ve had the privilege of being invited into this kind of contemplation in cultures other than my own all over the world. I have a feel for NPR’s more Eurocentric contemplation and I have also been blessed by Aretha Franklin’s. In the following video from Franklin’s 1972 live album, Amazing Grace, she manages to lead the moment of contemplation in a setting of a live recording. In it she bridges the societal divides, as she was so good at, by taking a Carol King song and combining it with a familiar gospel tune, in a South LA church. The album is in the Grammy Hall of Fame.

Aretha Franklin demonstrates how the nondominant find their place in the culture and how they keep a hold of their dignity and affirm their identity as the beloved.  The contemplative scene she leads is just as useful as the singular, quiet, secure-that-your-body-will-be-there-when-you-get-back-to-it, Eurocentric contemplation. We don’t need to choose. There is one body, one faith, one Lord. No one is excluded.

* From her essay in Kaleidescope: Broadening the Palette in the Art of Spiritual Direction. Ineda P. Adesanya, editor.

What to expect if your loved one is in the media

The first thing we’ll probably do if our loved one is in the media is have a big emotion, right? — like when the cameraperson in the stadium puts you on the jumbotron.

Most of us will be excited. I was VERY excited when NPR discovered our Debt Annihilation Team and talked about them on two different podcasts, recently.  I hope you saw the notice on the Covenant List:

My loved ones sounded like their brilliant selves and our vision for following Jesus looked pretty great, too.

But sometimes you might feel puzzled, at best, and horrified, at worst, at how your loved ones gets twisted by inaccurate or unscrupulous reporting that will probably be on the internet forever.  The first time I ever got my picture in the newspaper they said my name was “Tod.” They got both the dogs’ names correct, however.

Our most recent relationship with the powerful media was pretty great.  NPR treated us generously. But I also feel disappointed with how the producer of “This is Uncomfortable” summed up  our radicality in a way none of his subjects implied.

Here are two things to expect if your loved one is in the media.

It is going to be depersonalized while looking personal

The segment of Marketplace I heard was the 23rd in a series about “Life and how money messes with it.” “Life” is a thing” and “money” is a force.  You’ve entered the media machine and it has a worldview. The show has a topic and you are being fit into it.

I kind of like the show’s point of view. We need to know that the average amount for people with credit card debt is over $6000. They said our team was “turning to a very ancient text, the Bible, to solve a very modern problem.” That’s all great.

Caroline Butcher sounded like a very charming, sincere person. The story of her troubles, joys, problems, and hopes was inspiring. They said saving, and living within one’s means is a social act.  They showed how sincere the group was about not compromising their Integrity. Caroline said the money helped her finances, but maybe even more profound, the group helped her change her view from “me” to “us.” When the reporter outed her in the Sunday meeting she owned her place on the usually-anonymous DAT — that made her shame lose some power, which might be the most profound experience of all. So that was all good.

I was impressed how love and hope kept leaking through the carefully-flat presentation of the format.

The producer will have a way of inserting their agenda which does not match what you said

There was really only one line in the segment that made me sigh with disappointment and a little bit of irritation. It was this:

“What’s so radical about that church’s system to pay off debt is that God doesn’t actually have to be a part of it. It’s really just a community helping each other out.”

Nobody said anything like that. God was a main player in all of it. It is hard to come to his conclusion from what he presented himself!

On the one hand, it’s true. We would like to help people who don’t trust Jesus and his people. Being mutual with them would be great. Community is powerful. But I don’t think the producer meant to say just that. He was interested in the radicality of having community, not knowing God. He pointedly took God out of the question, for some reason.

So on the other hand what he said wasn’t true and was just plain poor reporting. He tweaked the whole thing on the sign off, after Caroline was up front about her faith journey, after people had allowed him to record them praying, and after Joshua gave a dandy explanation of the Debt Annihilation Team’s biblical foundation in a few sentences. All the people in the piece were open and vulnerable with their faith and the author summed it up with “Faith doesn’t matter anyway; this is all about people getting together, not God.”

Peter Balonon-Rosen | WBUR
The producer

Most of us wake up every day with some indecision about what matters or whether we even matter. So I can give the producer, Peter Balonon-Rosen, a pass on his conclusion. Most listeners probably listened to his summary and wondered what people he had listened to, anyway, like I did. But he would probably be a fine dinner guest.

When you get involved with the media, don’t be surprised if the producers produce what they want with the raw material of your story. They’re running a big machine looking for stuff to process and the machine has  some big assumptions to organize our thinking — on purpose or unwittingly.

Suddenly we were talking about hell again

Suddenly we were talking about hell. Last night after the PM, it came up again, like it often does, because that is what everybody seems to have been taught about Christianity: it is heaven or hell. People don’t really believe in heaven or hell. But they would love to be Christians.

Reading Rob Bell won’t damn you

My friend brought up Rob Bell. He’s reading Love Wins and he thinks that his guilty pleasure in the book might put him outside the faith. No it won’t. This is what Rob Bell says in Relevant magazine:

“I believe…people choose hell now. I assume people, when you die, you can choose hell. So there is no denial of hell here. There is a very real awareness that this is a clear and present reality that extends on into the future. But the real question is essentially if millions and millions of people who have never heard of Jesus are going to be tormented forever by God because they didn’t believe in the Jesus they’d never heard of, then at that point we will have far larger problems than a book by a pastor from Grand Rapids.”

I haven’t really kept up with arguments about Rob Bell. Who is it that quibbles with him about what he is thinking? It sounds like he is just like my friend, getting his head out and realizing that people have been speculating about the afterlife for a long time. These days, people are recognizing that the Renaissance/modern views that have dominated theology for 500 years may not be all they’re cracked up to be – like those views probably aren’t nearly as serious about the Bible as they claim to be.

Ten-year-old faith on NPR

Before I got to the PM it was hell on NPR, of all places! On Snap Judgment a twentysomething woman was telling her lack-of-faith story. It was not as if she had closed the book, she just had other things to do. I am much more interested in what this woman says about heaven and hell than what Rob Bell wrote. I’d love to introduce her to the Jesus she’s never met.

She talks about her ten year old self realizing that everyone is going to die. Her mom tells her that she imagines death as a curtain opening to a white light. But then she goes to the store to pick up dish soap and that is about it from Mom.

This is the character of the piece. Afterlife would be nice, but the necessities and allure of the present: the mundane responsibilities and the boyfriends, are occupying most of the space where faith might reside.

Final Judgment in the Florence Duomo

But she gives faith a try. After seeing a painting of hell in Florence, she imagines an afterlife and decides she has more goodness than sin and will make it to heaven. She learns a prayer from her friend and makes a container for holy water in her bedroom complete with a toothpick cross taped to it.

Ten year old faith is about as far as most of us get, unfortunately, and it proves about as sturdy as you might expect — or maybe as sturdy as your faith has proven to be. I guess whole denominations kind of practice ten-year-old faith, but none of them would say that’s all there is to Jesus.

Submitting to the latest hell

So back to this woman on Snap Judgment. For a week she prays, until a boy puts a love note in her locker. Then she forgets to pray. Love affairs continue to come and go. In high school she learns nihilism and existentialism. Post college she learns insurance claims, automatic bill pay, and how to move your car on certain days so you don’t get towed.

She is so vividly making a commitment all the time. But she is acting like she isn’t! Doesn’t that resemble a lot of people you know? They collect a bunch of thoughts that contradict and confuse them and leave it at that, as if automatic bill pay were real and Jesus a pleasant irrationality they can get to later, maybe. Like Bell protests, people choose the hell of submitting to the latest oppression and succumbing to the mundanity of whether to have a beer or not as their big choice. That’s hell enough.

But sometimes she still misses something to pray to. People die. The piece ends with her at work on a Saturday wondering what to do that night. She no longer believes in hell, maybe not heaven, maybe another dimension, maybe ghosts.  But like her mom was with her, when she asked her about things at ten, she hasn’t gotten far enough to make a choice. The end of her story is clever: “Then I feel a cold familiar feeling run through me, a knot in my stomach that gets tighter and tighter by the minute. ‘Damn,’ I think, ‘I really have to register my car.’”

I groaned out loud as I motored down Washington Ave. Jesus will knock on her door again and she will think He’s from some horrendous painting from Florence. Jesus will knock on her door and she will not even hear it because she fell asleep in front to the TV when she was finishing up The Wire. Jesus will knock on her door and she won’t even be home in her own life because she’s occupied with her list of little demands the system is making on her — as if that were her life. It is a poor worship she is choosing. Her little dish of holy water, as absurd as it was, made more sense than bending the knee to the DMV!

Blessings and Curses from Perky Christian Radio

I was driving somewhere in the Poconos in that other world beyond the Philadelphia city limits during our vacation. I decided to turn on the radio which was set to the usually-blue-state NPR. However, the frequency beaming in from Honesdale was not NPR, it was WZZH coming at us with The Word FM. I don’t listen to “Christian” radio very often, so it is usually rather enlightening for me to dip into the subculture. This dip was unusually so.

Overcomer

mandisa and janeWhen I first heard Mandisa singing Overcomer I was a little taken aback because she reminded me of Jane Fonda’s workout song from the 80’s. But then I decided, “No, this is a very encouraging song and you need to go with the positive flow of this perky radio station.”  Immediately, I could imagine one of my most positive friends doing her signature wedding-reception dance moves to Mandisa.

Take a breath.
Don’t forget.
Hang on to his promises.
He wants you to know
you’re an overcomer!”

Good sermon, and it has a beat.

Good to Be Alive

But Mandisa is not all that is happening out there. I was less impressed by Jason Gray’s Good to Be Alive. Not only is the video terrible, but the catchy chorus is laced with that strange “holiness” theology that makes me kind of crazy.

jason grayI want to live like there’s no tomorrow,
Like I’m on borrowed time.
It’s good to be alive.
Yeah.
I won’t take it for granted.
I won’t waste another second.
All I want is to give you a life
Well lived to say, “Thank you.”

Now before I sound critical, I think there are some good reasons to sing Jason’s song:

1) I  won’t take it  for  granted. You realize how entitled you think you are and you want to live like you recognize that whatever you have is given to you (1 Cor. 4:7).
2) I want to live. You are tired of being low-level depressed, are changing your focus, and allowing yourself to live your life (John 10:9-11).
3) I won’t waste another second. Your have decided to work with Jesus on his redemption project and you understand how brief the time is to do that before he returns or you die (Romans 13:10-12).
4) Say, “Thank you.” You want to be mature enough to base your life on gratitude and receive each moment with praise (1 Thess. 5:17-19).

It is good to be alive and God has showed his goodness by making us and redeeming us!

The curse of bad thinking

There are blessings on the radio to be received from good-hearted people with good singing voices. But there are a couple of viewpoints in Jason’s catchy lyric that I don’t want stuck in my head. They are kind of cursing me.

1) I’m not sure Jesus freed me from death so I would feel like I was living on “borrowed time” (that is, time after one would normally expect to be dead). I was dead in sin, true, but that’s the fact of my old life. Likewise, I don’t think Jesus wants me to live like “there’s no tomorrow,” as if today were all I have. Isn’t that the condition from which I was rescued? I think he wants me to ease right into eternity and fearlessly be eternal. Yeah.

Is there some reason we are supposed to think that we don’t deserve the grace we have been given? Isn’t it a bit insulting to God to think he would come for undeserving creatures who he says he loves but doesn’t really need or respect? Are we redeemed to keep acting like unredemption is a short step off our tight rope?

2) The more dangerous aspect of this song is the promise not to take life “for granted” or “waste” any of it, thereby proving that I am worthy of it. I’m not sure I am supposed to give myself a rubric for successfully operating the Jesus life. I think some people misconstrue the idea of living as an act of worship (Romans 12:1-3) to mean that they are giving their life back to God as a sacrifice – something like: Jesus gives me himself; I give myself back, and we’re even. This reminds me of an even more subversive song covered by Kurt Cobain – he got the problems with the theology.

Is there some reason we are supposed to be perpetually getting over the hump with the amount of thankfulness we are expressing for our salvation? Is Jesus so insecure that he will be offended if you don’t turn to him, as he is walking beside you all day, and say, “I’m walking beside you to give you a life that says ‘thank you?’”  I think he’d be more moved if we just lived with a thankful heart and didn’t think we were proving it by doing something that pointed to how we were doing it. When I hear another “asprirational” song that says “I want to” do something, I often want to yell at the radio, “So just do it! And quit talking about yourself!”

OK, let’s settle down. I just want to object enough so we don’t start thinking that our actions produce the worthiness we long for. We can’t say thanks enough. Let’s accept that, say thanks, and live like we have an endless amount of tomorrows to be our true selves.

Sing as you go, if you like. You’re an overcomer.

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