disruptive grace

Guilt-Ridden Faith from Recycle Your Faith on Vimeo.

I will post somethng of my own soon. I have more some thoughts in my notebook that I’d like to post here. In the mean time here are some thoughts from Henri Nouwen on writing:

Writing to Save the Day
Writing can be a true spiritual discipline. Writing can help us to concentrate, to get in touch with the deeper stirrings of our hearts, to clarify our minds, to process confusing emotions, to reflect on our experiences, to give artistic expression to what we are living, and to store significant events in our memories. Writing can also be good for others who might read what we write.

Quite often a difficult, painful, or frustrating day can be “redeemed” by writing about it. By writing we can claim what we have lived and thus integrate it more fully into our journeys. Then writing can become lifesaving for us and sometimes for others too

Writing, Opening a Deep Well
Writing is not just jotting down ideas. Often we say: “I don’t know what to write. I have no thoughts worth writing down.” But much good writing emerges from the process of writing itself. As we simply sit down in front of a sheet of paper and start to express in words what is on our minds or in our hearts, new ideas emerge, ideas that can surprise us and lead us to inner places we hardly knew were there.

One of the most satisfying aspects of writing is that it can open in us deep wells of hidden treasures that are beautiful for us as well as for others to see.

I’m going to rip this right off my eldest brother’s site, as I don’t think many people who read this site also read his (although you shoud consider it, he’s cleverer than me and conveyes knowledge in a more humble and gracious manner).

[Quoting Tony Campolo] “Sigmund Freud once commented that the Church socializes its youth to ask only those questions he Church is able to answer. Any questions it cannot adequately handle are made to seem ridiculous. By the time the children come of age, the Church seems to have the answer to all the important questions of life, because the Church has taught them which questions to ask and which questions should not be asked.
…
[This] helps us to understand why people who are in the Church think it has all the answers to all the questions and problems that are important, while those outside the Church fell that it has nothing to say about the things that are really important.
…
According to [Paul] Tillich, the place of the Church is not to raise questions, but to attempt to provide answers. the Church should step aside and let the people of the world raise questoins. The Church should be a listening body — sensitive to the deepest concerns of the world’s peoples, intently interested in their problems, struggling to provide solutions to their most troublesome inquiruesm, and endevoring always to serve as their servant. It’s all too easy for the people of the Church to say, “We’ve got all the answers,” without having first inquired as to what the questions might be.” Tony Campolo (from A Reasonable Faith)

[Paul's reflection] If we are not careful, we fail to hear the questions of our culture, the tensions in the stories of those around. We are so socialised to limit our questions to the ones our theology has already answered that we forget that others may have different concerns. And, consequently, there are “areas of life where Western theology has no answers because it has no questions”. Bediako uses this quote in the contrast between the West and non-western cultures, but I think it is equally true from different constituents of one culture.

Somehow, we need to learn to listen to the questions of our culture and of the new cultures we meet. Only then can we be servants and agents for cultural renewal (as Tim Keller phrases it).

Which makes me think what questions is culture asking. I never hear the question, or implication of the question “How do I get to heaven when I die?” Although I have been asked: “Why is it that there’s these people who say they get to go somewhere good when they die just because the others say they hold a belief in something, and the rest of us go to hell, even though they are horrible people?” (This is different to the first question because the implication was that this person didn’t want to be where also those horrible people would be).

But questions of culture don’t always come out as clearly in conversation, but are expressed by cultural artifacts (see Andy Crouch). I think here we can be aware of questions like: “Whats happening with the environment and what are we going to do about it?”, “Who are the real heroes?”, “Am I loved?”, “Is the world getting any better?”, “Whats the point?” and “Does my bum look big in this?”

(….yes, the last one was a bit of fun.)

I had always intended for this to be a place to plan and report on activities of service, love and generally making a positive contribution to the world. So here is a little clipping from the local newsletter. A group of us went down to help plant some flowers and trees at a local water meadow area. It was a great way in my mind to ‘practice resurrection’ (as Wendall Berry put it); by being involved in nurturing nature, making the community livable again, and working along side our neighbours.

Helping at the Water Meadow

You can see my wife and kids if you squint, plus a nice shot of my rear end too!

I’ve been thinking about vocation recently. I would say ‘calling’ but I find that word often gets used in a way which has more to do with an obsession with self. Having said that, I have this phrase ‘calling is context’ spinning round my mind at the moment, and I’m going to explore what that could mean.

Peterson reminds use (in ‘Christ Plays in Ten Thousand Places’) to remember our primary context is God and his action and intention.

“Most of the Christian life involves paying attention to who God is and what he does; but not only the who and the what but the how and the means God employs to accomplish his ends. If we get too interested in what wedo and are, we go off the rails badly”

As I’ve been thinking about this I’m exploring who the story God instigates is then our first context. As a designer and being slightly geeky I’ve been playing around with a diagram to help me think through this.

vocation and context

The story starts with God and his intention for the cosmos. With in the cosmos humans are formed and given the task to “fill, subdue, rule, work” or as Andy Crouch (in ‘Culture Making’) puts it “MAKE SOMETHING OF THE WORLD”. This is the first vocation, this is a significant part of what I believe it is to be human, and in fact to be ‘made in the Image-of-God’. With in humanity, God calls Abraham (and his descendants) with the vocation to ‘be blessed… to be a blessing’, or as I will phrase it here, “LIVE IN CO-OPERATION WITH ME FOR THE BENEFIT OF OTHERS”. As the people of Israel seek to live this out they are benefited by the Law — which we’ll summarize here as “Love God, love your neighbour”, and following that they are encouraged and challenged by the prophets to “act justly, love mercy and walk humbly” (I realize I summarizing a lot here!). Then along comes Jesus of Nazareth who embodies this all perfectly, “responding to what the Father is doing” and as the gospel of Luke likes to remind us “in the power of the Holy Spirit”. Jesus brings this vocation to people “Follow me in this way of life” and [paraphrase] ‘invite others to this life which you are learning from me’. As Todd Hunter puts it this is a life of embodied love and “love is to will the good of others”.

Now the vocation from this telling of the story becomes something like: “Make something of the world, in co-operation with me [God], for the benefit of others, as embodied (lived-out) by Jesus, in the power of the Holy Spirit”

So that is our primary context for vocation, and we can do it in what ever state of employment we’re in or any location. We could be a carpenter from a back water town in Palestine, or a designer in the middle of England.

Our secondary context is the substance of our actual lives, which takes place in the larger context of the story. The This substance of our actual lives includes:

• a specific location and time
• specific relationships and community
• our character/personality
• our resources
• commitments to others (eg: job and family)
• passions, hopes and concerns
• skills, abilities and ‘gifts’
• personal borkenness

So with this I think vocation (correctly understood) is not an add on to the Christian life. As if we can hold opinion-like-beliefs about God and Jesus and then wonder what to do. The vocation of embodied love is what it means to be a follower of Jesus - it is the Christian life. It does involve belief but not merely opinions, but belief as in trust — as in “trust me this way of life is what it means to be human.”

So I don’t think I’m called to my job as such, but I’m called to work and I called to things which I am able to express in my job and of course my whole life. Primarily this is to be a follow of Jesus — learning to be humanity as God intended, and to express that in specific ways, such as: creative communication (particularly in visual terms), to treat others well, to make time for people, to teach, to make something of the world, to make beauty possible in the world, to ‘add to the stock of available reality’… etc.

Now thinking on where I take this (particularly in a less personal way) next I read this today: ‘Everything you need is already there’.

I’m not sure what an arts pastor is, but David Taylor is apparently one. I really like him, and not just for his great sideburns. This video will make it all clear. The subject is close to my heart — art — but the implications are wide ranging.

David Taylor-In His Own Words on Vimeo.

I know only one place and group of people doing what David describes in this video — a café-bar in the center of our city, run by friends of mine — local hero’s who get no fanfare or round of applause, and often misunderstood by many well intentioned believers. But, they are living ordinary lives of creative goodness for the sake of others, particularly the creative community.

I found this video encouraging, stimulating and provoking. Now, I must go now and do some drawing.

I discovered this video today (from another off the map project). This video describes a similar thinking to what provoked this blog, and how I want to be living in a faith community.

There’s some lovely observations in this video, Jeff describes some categories of ‘church type’ people, and as uncomfortable as we all tend to be about being put in to categories, and as limited as that approach is, I think we can see ourselves and friends in the terms he describes. Personally, I think I could quite easily be ‘church alumni’ - if it wasn’t for the fact that the church (organized-structured-church) I’m part of has plenty of opportunities to practice practical ways of loving those in our city, particularly to those marginalized due to economics and addictions.

I have friends who sit in each of the categories Jeff describes, and all who have found ways to practically love others in the manner of Jesus. So, in many ways these friends are my church* — a faith community — we courage each other in this way of life, we eat together, we care for each other. It is a church that intersects organized church structures, yet it is not fully defined by those structures, it works within those structures and without them. This is the nature of the kingdom, you can’t point to it and say here it is and there it is, for the kingdom is among you… in your midst.

So, let us keep practicing this life of embodying the way of Jesus, and let us encourage one another to do good works, let us keep meeting together in whatever context we can: around the dinner table, at the pub, in the coffee shop, in worship gatherings, over games of poker, and in the street.

There are many in the Christian tradition who talk of being ’saved’*. But, I can’t help asking, what do you mean by saved? Saved from what? Save for what? Surely, if ’saved’ is to mean anything it has to at least include, the present, this world and us, as physical bodies, living that out in our actual everyday lives. Many of us are very aware of the need some form of redemption: the world is clearly suffering from the lack of justice and the confusion and corruption of beauty, which we can see that in our personal lives as well as globally. A ’saving’ that only deals with a post-mortem experience is not good enough. Oswald Chambers reflected on a similar thought in the early 1900’s:

“It is not a question of being saved from hell, but of being saved in order to manifest the life of the Son of God in our mortal flesh, and it is the disagreeable things which make us exhibit whether or not we are manifesting His life… .. the thing that ought to make the heart beat is a new way of manifesting the Son of God.”
[from Oswald Chambers, My Utmost For His Highest]

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He took the blind man by the hand and led him outside the village. When he had spit on the man’s eyes and put his hands on him, Jesus asked, “Do you see anything?”
He looked up and said, “I see people; they look like trees walking around.”
Once more Jesus put his hands on the man’s eyes. Then his eyes were opened, his sight was restored, and he saw everything clearly. [Mark 8:23-25 (TNIV)]

Last summer, my friend Nick and I were sitting having a lunchtime coffee in a pub beer garden. We were chatting away when in drove a Ferrari. At least that’s what I thought when I first saw the car, on second glance I noticed it was a modified standard salon, “Boy racer,” I thought. The driver over revved the car as he made several attempts to park the car, and everyone present glanced over at the spectacle. After a lot of to-ing and fro-ing the car finally made it in to the space but over revved a little and… “Crack!” The front spoiler hit the curb. I had a little chuckle to myself.

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A book I’ve been looking forward to for a while ‘Christianity Beyond Belief’ by Todd Hunter has now been released. Todd hunter has been very helpful as I’ve explored thinking and practice as a follower of Jesus for the past few years. I’ve missed opportunities to speak to him personally over that time, but fortunately due to blog’s and mp3’s I’ve benefited from his thoughts and wisdom. Most notably if you can find the talks online of Todd’s presentations of the Kingdom Life with Dallas Willard then do make time to listen to them. Todd has a great way of communicating, with stories examples and drawing on some great sources, so the new book is set to be a winner.

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