disruptive grace

I just discovered this in the archives of my old blog, the original post was dated September 2006. It seems worth while to post it again here (with typos and grammar corrected):

One idea which as captured my imagination in recent years, is the idea of seeing time as us being drawn into God’s future. This thinking moves away from the idea of “God as first cause” or a God who creates a clockwork universe and simply sets it going. Rather, it maybe more helpful to imagine God at the end of time (as we know it), beckoning creation on into His future, like the father of a toddler encouraging his child to walk across the room to him. Following this line of thought leads us to completely re-think about many concepts including what it means for God to be in control or even what it means for God to know all things. In fact those categories seem completely in appropriate, they are not big enough to hold the reality of God’s being.

Thinking through this reminds me of an interview with Chief Rabbi Jonathan Sacks. Concerning where we are in today’s culture, Sacks spoke about how he was struck by the analogy of a car sat-nav [satellite navigation system]. If you driving to a place you know well and the sat-nav suggests you go right, you may think, “well actually I think its best to go left”. Once you have done this the sat-nav will pause and then offer new direction as if say, “well in that case you need to now go straight on”. Sacks spoke of how this reminded him of the story of the Exodus and Children of Isreal’s time in the wilderness. And perhaps this is how God calls us on today with the unique circumstances of our time.

As we look around the world we see beauty but we also see nature and nations in turmoil. Earthquakes and economic collapses destroying families, cultures and individuals. We still long for a better future, the future God beckons creation into. For like us he sees the goodness of creation but also its pain. Perhaps the universe was created good, but not complete. Perhaps it was meant to change and evolve until it reaches its fullness in God. Lead us on into your future, may your kingdom become our present.

We have now entered the season of Advent, the time of waiting before Christmas. It’s an important time to remember that we are waiting for the completion of what Jesus has started and is doing in the world, whilst also remembering that initial waiting for the coming of the Messiah. This is not a passive waiting but a hopeful waiting, and an active waiting. I was challenge by this thought from Henri Nouwen recently, (it also seems appropriate as the Advent period also contains my birthday):

The Challenge of Aging
Waiting patiently in expectation does not necessarily get easier as we become older. On the contrary, as we grow in age we are tempted to settle down in a routine way of living and say: “Well, I have seen it all. … There is nothing new under the sun. … I am just going to take it easy and take the days as they come.” But in this way our lives lose their creative tension. We no longer expect something really new to happen. We become cynical or self-satisfied or simply bored.

The challenge of aging is waiting with an ever-greater patience and an ever- stronger expectation. It is living with an eager hope. It is trusting that through Christ “we have been admitted into God’s favour … and look forward exultantly to God’s glory” (Romans 5:2).

Prayer
?The following is a liturgy I put together a few years back. It’s not my own words but a reflection of Henri Nouwen mixed with Psalm 130.

Waiting for God
v1: Waiting is not a very popular attitude.
v2: Out of the depths I cry to you, O LORD;
v1: Waiting is not something that people think about with great sympathy.
v2: O Lord, hear my voice. Let your ears be attentive to my cry for mercy.
v1: In fact, most people consider waiting a waste of time.
v2: Out of the depths I cry to you, O LORD;
v1: Perhaps this is because the culture in which we live is basically saying, “Get going! Do something! Show you are able to make a difference! Don’t just sit there and wait!”
v2: O Lord, hear my voice. Let your ears be attentive to my cry for mercy.
v1: For many people, waiting is an awful desert between where they are and where they want to go. And people do not like such a place. They want to get out of it by doing something.
v2:  I wait for the LORD, my soul waits, and in his word I put my hope.
v1: But there is none of this passivity in scripture. Those who are waiting are waiting very actively
v2:  I wait for the LORD, my soul waits, and in his word I put my hope.
v1: They know that what they are waiting for is growing from the ground on which they are standing. That’s the secret. The secret of waiting is the faith that the seed [the promise] has been planted, that something has begun.
v2: My soul waits for the Lord more than watchmen wait for the morning, more than watchmen wait for the morning…
v1: Active waiting means to be present fully to the moment, in the conviction that something is happening where you are and that you want to be present to it. A waiting person is someone who is present to the moment, who believes that this moment is the moment.
v2:  I wait for the LORD, my soul waits, and in his word I put my hope. My soul waits for the Lord more than watchmen wait for the morning, more than watchmen wait for the morning…..
v1: …. But Zechariah, Elizabeth, and Mary were not filled with wishes. They were filled with hope. Hope is something very different. Hope is trusting that something will be fulfilled, but fulfilled according to the promises and not just according to our wishes. Therefore, hope is always open-ended.
v2:  I wait for the LORD, my soul waits, and in his word I put my hope. My soul waits for the Lord more than watchmen wait for the morning, more than watchmen wait for the morning…
v1: I have found it very important in my own life to let go of my wishes and start hoping. It was only when I was willing to let go of wishes that something really new, something beyond my own expectations could happen to me. Just imagine what Mary was actually saying in the words, “I am the handmaid of the Lord…let what you have said be done to me” (Luke 1:38, JB). She was saying, “I don’t know what this all means, but I trust that good things will happen.” She trusted so deeply that her waiting was open to all possibilities. And she did not want to control them. She believed that when she listened carefully, she could trust what was going to happen.

I’ve been reading Thomas Merton this week and found both helpful and challenging. I love this quote in particular:

“… in the the spiritual life there are no tricks and no short cuts. Those who imagine that they can discover spiritual gimmicks and put them to work for themselves usually ignore God’s will and his grace.”

This reminds me of a poem I wrote a few years back, earlier on in my journey of contemplative prayer. It contains a beginners wisdom that I been in danger of loosing, and perhaps have already allowed to fade.

Clearly there is an influence of Eugene Peterson with in this poem who I continue to find helpful with his timely wisdom on the spiritual life. Spirituality, Peterson reminds us, is interested in what God is doing not what we are doing. What we do has some importance, but it is not the focus. A good spirituality asks “What is God doing and how can I get in on it?” To do this is to cultivate a beginners mind. “We do not want to be beginners.” Merton notes, “But let us be convinced of the fact we will never be anything else but beginners.”

Richard Foster recommends an exercise which fits well with this. He suggests spending time listing your personal list of ’spiritual tricks’. He asks; “Which magical methods have you relied on in the past, or used as a way of manipulating God?” Could it be that we even manage to use good practices in manipulative ways? “Look God, I’m saying this, singing that, reading this, doing that! Meet with me!” Merton reminds us that the life of prayer and meditation is not one of ‘methods’ and ’systems’ (though we may learn many helpful ways), but rather is is the cultivation of an attitude of: faith, openness, attention, reverence, expectation, supplication, trust and joy.

Guard your steps when you go to the house of God. Go near to listen rather than to offer the sacrifice of fools, who do not know that they do wrong.

Do not be quick with your mouth,
do not be hasty in your heart
to utter anything before God.
God is in heaven
and you are on earth,
so let your words be few.

Ecclesiastes 5

Paul posted a provocative quote from Dan Siedell this week. It offers a helpful continuation from my last post. The discipline of hidden-ness is important, but not to the extent of mediocrity, hidden-ness may be unseen, but it can still be a life will with love, passion, and compassion (‘to suffer alongside’) . The stories of old (and in fact all great art) stir our souls because they contain, as N.T. Wright puts it, ‘the echos of a Voice’ — echos that whisper of justice, relationship, spirituality, and beauty. Dan Siedell suggests this:

Let me suggest that neither “Christianity” nor “culture” per se make modern society uncomfortable. It is the self-sacrificial and uncompromising pursuit of greatness and quality in these practices, a life singularly devoted to them, which condemns the virtues of contemporary professional and personal life: compromise, mediocrity, and personal comfort that makes modern society uncomfortable.
…
Are we now too sophisticated, too enlightened, too iconoclastic to believe in the myths of great art, great culture, even the possibility of a great life devoted to Christ? We’re not humble. We’re cowards.

We need courage in this journey of culture making, just as we need humility, for we are never fully aware of the implications of our actions or our artifacts. What we do may be noticed by thousands, or by only our closest friends. We must continue to have to courage to continue and create. Dan Siedell again:

The production of great culture, great art, cannot be separated from the risk of failure. Most writers, musicians, poets, and artists do not produce great art, great culture, even if they enjoy successful careers. And even those poets, artists, and musicians who have, do not produce it very often. Do we have the courage to fail, to push ourselves to the point of failure, to assume we probably will fail to produce great art, great culture and still try? … Do we have the courage to produce culture that transcends those rules, which perhaps even changes the rules of the game, or render conventions irrelevant?

Herman Melville died convinced that Moby-Dick was a failure. And most of the literary critics of his time agreed with him. As we curry the favor of contemporary critics and book reviewers, bristle at negative reviews or fawn over those who praise us, it would be a useful exercise to read those initial reviews of Moby-Dick.

“Herman Melville died convinced that Moby-Dick was a failure.” – Yet he produced and published and allowed his novel to exist. He died, (I speculate) with perhaps many believing he had “no great thing… only small things with great love.” We must live likewise.

On that line, I stumbled on this prayerful poem attributed to Sir Fancis Drake this morning:

Disturb us, Lord, when
We are too pleased with ourselves,
When our dreams have come true
Because we dreamed too little,
When we arrived safely
Because we sailed too close to the shore.

Disturb us, Lord, when
with the abundance of things we possess
We have lost our thirst
For the waters of life;
Having fallen in love with life,
We have ceased to dream of eternity
And in our efforts to build a new earth,
We have allowed our vision
Of the new Heaven to dim.

Disturb us, Lord, to dare more boldly,
To venture on wilder seas
Where storms will show Your mastery;
Where losing sight of land,
We shall find the stars.

We ask you to push back
The horizons of our hopes;
And to push back the future
In strength, courage, hope, and love.

This we ask in the name of our Captain,
Who is Jesus Christ.

Here’s to dreaming. Here’s to failing. Here’s to being unnoticed. Here’s to continuing anyway. Here’s to hpoe. Here’s to courage. Here’s to love. Here;s to lying in gutters and looking at the stars.*

“Not that I have already obtained all this, or have already been made perfect, but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me. Brothers, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining towards what is ahead, I press on towards the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenwards in Christ Jesus.” **

* – with thanks to Oscar Wilde.
** – from Philippians 3

Every so often you read a book that you just love, to the extent that it seems a waste to rush it, but all the same to chug through it. Then you tell everyone about it, and then even that’s not enough and you start to think of who you could buy copies for. Culture Making by Andy Crouch is such a book. It’s well research and also include plenty of the authors own wisdom and experience, it challenges mind, heart and body, and inspires new ways of thinking, being and acting.

The book starts with a sociological and anthropological take on culture before moving on to a narrative theological overview, both of these I found very helpful. Finally Crouch moves on to some practical outcomes, including some fantastic thoughts on power and grace. Crouch reflects on his time as a campus minister at Harvard. He note how he met students that fell roughly into 3 camps, i’ll briefly mention them here, before moving on to a prize quote. One group were the strives, or children of crisis (never fully at home, always working hard, never seeing a fully reward of their efforts), another were the children of privilege (walking about like they owned the place but achieving little), the last group were the children of grace, who walked around in wonder that they got to study at Harvard, quietly brilliant savoring every opportunity. But in reality: “Every student I met, anxious, confident, or otherwise, had been the recipient of a gift. Only few of them knew it.” Really I’d love you to read the whole book and this section makes more sense in light of that, however this section really moved me and I want to quote it here, and allow you to spend some time with it too.

› Continue reading

Guilt-Ridden Faith from Recycle Your Faith on Vimeo.

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.

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.

› Continue reading

There is a great deal to lament as we look around the world, with conflicts all around: from the small places with in ourselves and the communities around us to the more tragic and dramatic unrest in the middle east and further to Sudan, the Congo and Zimbabwe. It can leave us feeling overwhelmed and unsure on how to respond.

Seeing this video [below] gave me hope today. There’s something about the beauty of the music and particularly watching the dexterity of the musician that speaks of the goodness of God, and holds out for a future where God puts the world to rights. Beauty in truth and truth in beauty. “Let justice roll on like a river, and righteousness like a never-failing stream” [Amos].

Following our entering through the ‘door of sanctuary’ with virtue, Abbot Christopher suggests we need to lay a floor of silence. The Abbot recommends a period of silence in the morning and another at night – effectively book ending our days with silence.

Catherine de Hueck.Doherty has this to say about silence and the ‘desert place’:

“If we are to witness to Christ in today’s marketplaces, where there are constant demands on our whole person, we need silence. If we are to be always available, not only physically, but by empathy, sympathy, friendship, understanding and boundless caritas, we need silence. To be able to give joyous, unflagging hospitality, not only of house and food, but of mind, heart, body and soul, we need silence.
“True silence is a suspension bridge that a soul in love with God builds to cross the dark, frightening gullies of its own mind, the strange chasms of temptation, the depthless precipices of its own fears that impede its way to God.
“True silence is the speech of lovers. For only love knows its beauty, completeness, and utter joy. True silence is a garden enclosed, where alone the soul can meet its God. It is a sealed fountain that he alone can unseal to slacken the soul’s infinite thirst for him.”
[from Poustinia by Catherine de Hueck.Doherty]

The need for silence and holding our tongue is prevalent through out the ancient scriptures, particuarly in the Psalms and Proverbs (and also the book of James).

O LORD, you have searched me and you know me.
You know when I sit and when I rise; you perceive my thoughts from afar.
You discern my going out and my lying down; you are familiar with all my ways.
Before a word is on my tongue you know it completely O LORD.
[Psalm 139:1-5]

We do not need to prove our existence with our many words, or prove ourselves to God with our mouths. We are free to be silent in his presence. As wonderful as it is to produce sound and meaning with our bodies, we are not defined by these actions.

When asked about how she prays Mother Theresa replied, “Mostly, I listen”.
The frustrated interviewer then asked “Well then what does God say?”
“Mostly he listens.” She replied.

Be still and know the LORD is God.