Jesus Brand Spirituality (pt 4)

Part One: Active Dimension
Ch 4: Healing Along the Way

Wilson begins the chapter with something I’ve felt for quite a while:

My father had a favorite word: bass-ackwards.  Sometimes I wonder if those of us who promote the religion of Jesus have gotten something bass-ackwards.  Have we front-loaded people with so many matters of belief that we are, in effect, asking them to swallow the whole package as a prerequisite for meaningful engagement with Jesus?

He talks about the fact that we can’t crawl into another person’s soul; we can’t know where they are, where they are coming from, etc.  But we hand them a package of belief and expect them to swallow the entire thing whole, all at once, before they can begin to engage God or have any sort of meaningful experience of spirituality.  We’ve forgotten that the Christian doctrinal system has been in development for over two thousand years, rooted in traditions that are even older.  He then speaks to four different aspects of “healing along the way”:

neither bear nor…?

Today was the day of the year we hold baptisms.  We all gather in the field outside the church and sing some songs and those who want to get baptized share a bit of their stories.  The church is right next to the river (where we actually do the baptisms), and so we all walk from the church and across a footbridge to the other side where there is a calm spot in the water.  So this morning, as a bunch of people were crossing the bridge, a bear meandered across the river below and into the bushes updstream from where we do the baptisms.

I’m not sure what people in other places would have done in this situation, but out here in the country, well, we proceeded straight down to the river’s edge without so much as a concern and continued with the baptisms.

‘Cause out here, that’s just how we roll.

well, that was quick.

“I may not have gone where I intended to go,
but I think I have ended up where I intended to be.”  
- Douglas Adams -

I recently came on staff at a local DTS that is trying to open its doors, but even within the short amount of time that I’ve been there, I’ve had quite a few reservations about my decision.  I’ve been wondering if maybe I made too impulsive a decision, trying to just get out of the frustrating situation I was in at my previous church as youth pastor.  Maybe I was just so excited about the possibility of getting out of there that I didn’t see some of the things I should have paid more attention to.  Or maybe they are things I couldn’t have seen beforehand and had to just be in this new situation to see them.  The director and I have a very similar notion of ministry and discipleship and the Kingdom, but when it comes down to putting an infrastructure in place and the regular work of getting something like this off the ground…well, things just aren’t jiving.

A couple weeks ago a local pastor and I got together.  We’ve gotten together quite a bit over the last year, but it’s been a while.  I figured he just wanted to catch up, see how things were going, etc.  But it turns out that he is looking for a ministry partner, and that the church at which he pastors is looking for someone to focus on the youth in the community (a few of the students there actually came to the gatherings that I held while a youth pastor).  In having conversations, and me just laying out where I’m at and how I now go about youth ministry and what I’d like to do…it was all fine.  Actually, he was looking forward to how I would fit in and begin to interact with students.

We’ve had a few more conversations and meetings, and my wife and I decided this would be a great move to make.  In thinking sustainably and the longterm health of a ministry relationship and partnership, it seems fantastic.  The church isn’t perfect, obviously, and it’s definitely not ‘emerging.’  It’s the only church in the town, and draws all sorts of people from all sorts of backgrounds.  But the pastor and many in the church are serious about community and the Kingdom.  This really excites me, although I must admit I am a bit hesitant about jumping back into a more traditional church role and environment.  I was feeling some real excitement and freedom to try out a new experiment in church that a few o us have been talking about for the last couple years, and this would definitely hamper that.  But I can’t shake this feeling that  I need to be workign within the institutional church right now, serving as a sort of cultural bilingual between generations and the Modern/postmodern shift I see taking place, even in a rural area like mine.  Speaking of which…

This move to a new church would require an actual move from the town we have tried to settle into, to an even smaller town.  This new town lies 15 miles outside of the nearest town.  To get an idea of the place…a hardware store is the hub of the entire community.  This place is the very definition of rural.  Podunk, if you will.

How fitting.

“Why should all virtue work in one and the same way?  Why should all give dollars?  It is very inconvenient to us country folk, and we do not think any good will come of it.  We have not dollars; merchants have; let them give them.  Farmers will give corn; poets will sing; women will sew; laborers will lend a hand; the children will bring flowers.”

- Ralph Waldo Emerson

ring-necked

We recently moved into the country.  Although around here, I’m not sure if you ever really get OUT of the country, so the comment is a bit of a misnomer around here.

The place that had previously been a small organic farm that two women in their 70’s used to run and sell their produce to local markets and health food stores.  Evidently it became too much for them and they sold the property.  Their 2-acre lot was recently bought and divided into four 1/2-acre lots.  We managed to get one of them. 

Being spring (and close to Easter) all the local feed and farm supply stores in the area are well-stocked with recently hatched chicks of turkeys and chickens and the occasional duck.  One, however, stocks game birds.  A few days ago we picked up a few chicks of one type: ringneck pheasant.

I originally planned to just leave the store with 3 chicks, but the employee gave us one extra just in case something happened to one of them.  So I walked away with four.  We’re brooding them in a large box in our bedroom’s attached bathroom.  A couple days ago one of them didn’t appear to be doing so well–it was staying away from the other chicks and seemed to be breathing fairly heavily.  I noticed last night that the largest was becoming quite the bully and incessantly pecking at the other three (the one doing the worst had a few bare spots on its wings).  I moved the big guy (or girl…can’t really tell at this point) to his own tank and the other three seemed to do a lot better.  Since the sicker one made it through one night and I managed to remove the bully, I figured everything would be all right.  But this morning when we got up, we found that it hadn’t made it through the night.  So, we’re down to three chicks (thank you feed store employee girl).  The bully is still seperate and probably will remain so.

In a couple weeks, when the weather warms up a bit more, I can start taking them outside to ‘range’ and hunt and peck.  And then they’re going to need a roosting house and a big fenced-in run.  That I’ll need to build.  And I don’t build things.

This should get interesting…

N.T. Wright quote

“Part of the problem, particularly in the United States, is that cultures become so polarized that it is often assumed that if you tick one box you’re going to tick a dozen other boxes down the same side of the page – without realising that the page itself is highly arbitrary and culture-bound. We have to claim the freedom, in Christ and in our various cultures, to name and call issues one by one with wisdom and clarity, without assuming that a decision on one point commits us to a decision on others. I suspect, in fact, that part of the presenting problem which has generated CBE is precisely the assumption among many American evangelicals that you have to buy an entire package or you’re being disloyal, and that you exist because you want to say that on this issue, and perhaps on many others too (gun control? Iraq?), the standard hard right line has allowed itself to be conned into a sub-Christian or even unChristian stance.”

Taken from THIS lecture. 

lookee what I got

My wife told me that my dad had called and said he had something that a great uncle had wanted passed on to me when I was old enough.  I drove over to his house and was greeted by this:

   

Evidently, it was shot ‘back in the winter of 1955.’  As the story goes, the bobcat had been breaking into the henhouse and making off with chickens, so my great uncle sat in there one night and waited for it to show up.  The obvious result of that meeting is now skinned, mounted, and laying on my living room floor. 

As I was driving home, I was struck by a peculiar realization:  I am apart of a family and area where animal skins are passed down from one generation to the next. On one hand, I find it all strangely cool.  But on the other hand…

didn’t this type of thing end like 4,000 years ago?

fire up the generator, honey…it’s Thursday night!

A couple that we’re good friends with don’t have cable, but are fellow fans of The Office (originally the British version, then begrudgingly the American one).  They usually come over to our house on Thursday evenings to watch it.  Tonight was a one-hour Christmas special, and our friends were having dinner at her parent’s house and were just going to stay and watch it there.  Her parents own and operate a pear orchard and live next to said orchard.  Their house lies probably a mile (as the crow flies) from the main highway that runs through the area.  

A half hour before The Office started, we got a phone call from said friends asking if we had a spare video tape.  Evidently, due to some extravegant snowfall today, the power went out at her parents house.  They had cook dinner over a gas range in their garage and were currently eating dinner by the light of a couple candles.  They were hoping to get her parent’s generator up and running so they could watch the show, but just in case they couldn’t, could we record it for them. 

 Starting a generator so as not to miss your favorite show in the middle of a winter storm warning.

Just another small glimpse of life in rural America.

(traffic light correction)

In this post I mentioned that my town had only one traffic light, a statement which now requires correction.

This morning, as I was driving with a friend to go have breakfast, we stopped at the previously mentioned 3-way intersection.  I happened to look up and see a flashing red light above said intersection.

“There’s a traffic light here?  How long’s it been here?!”

“I don’t know.”

“Did they put it in when they installed the stop sign?  It hasn’t been here the whole time, has it?”

“I don’t know.  I don’t think so.”

So, just for the record, there are officially two traffic lights in my town.