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What I Have Lived For

Preface to Bertrand Russell's Autobiography: What I have Lived For

Three passions, simple but overwhelmingly strong, have governed my life: the longing for love, the search for knowledge, and unbearable pity for the suffering of mankind. These passions, like great winds, have blown me hither and thither, in a wayward course, over a deep ocean of anguish, reaching to the very verge of despair.

I have sought love, first, because it brings ecstasy - ecstasy so great that I would often have scrificed all the rest of life for a few hours of this joy. I have sought it, next, because it relieves loneliness - that terrible loneliness in which one shivering consciousness looks over the rim of the world into the cold unfathomable lifeless abyss. I have sought it, finally, because in the union of love I have seen, in a mystic miniature, the prefiguring vision of the heaven that the saints and poets have imagined. This is what I sought, and thought it might seem too good for human life, this is what - at last - I have found.

With equal passion I have sought knowledge. I have wished to understand the hearts of men. I have wished to know why the stars shine. And I have tried to apprehend the Pythagorean power by which number holds sway above the flux. A little of this, but not much, I have achieved.

Love and knowledge, so far as they were possible, led upward toward the heavens. But always pity brought me to earth. Echoes of cries of pain reverberate in my heart. Children in famine, victims tortured by oppressors, helpless old people a hated burden to their sons, and the whole world of loneliness, poverty, and pain make a mockery of what human life should be. I long to alleviate the evil, but I cannot, and I too suffer.

This has been my life. I have found it worth living, and would gladly live it again if the chance were offered me.

Environment

It's too bad that such a poor word has come to refer to something so rich. The forests, the rivers, the mountains, the oceans, the deserts, the beaches, the fields, the flowers, the rain, the sky, the air. To speak of them collectively as the environment is to suggest that they are somehow lifeless and abstract. It makes it almost possible to forget that what we are in danger of ruining through our rapacity and folly is the mother who bore us and the green grave that awaits us. Is our hearts' delight. Is home.

~ Frederick Buechner, Wishful Thinking

The Object of One’s Contemplation

The goal and point of the Eucharist...

The place which Jesus takes in our soul he will nevermore vacate, for in us is his home of homes, and it is the greatest delight for him to dwell there. . . . And the soul who thus contemplates is made like [the one] who is contemplated. ~ Julian of Norwich, Showings

The One Good Reason

“To anyone looking for good reasons for being a Christian, let me suggest the only really good one that I know...What does the faith mean by taking this man who was really a man, perhaps the only man, and calling him the Son of God, the Word of God, the Christ, all these metaphors so alien to our whole way of thinking? What is the reality about him other than the reality of his manhood that these metaphors are so clumsily, hopelessly, beautifully trying to convey? Just this, I believe, and it is much: that in this man there is power to turn goats into tigers, to give life to the half-alive, even to the dead; that what he asks of us when he says "Follow me" is what he also has the power to give, and this is the power of God that he has, that he is, and that is why men have called him the Christ.”

Frederick Buechner, The Magnificent Defeat

Beauty in the Shadows

Novelist Robertson Davies once wrote, “One always learns one’s mystery at the price of one’s innocence.” (It’s worth noting: the word innocent comes from the Latin for unwounded or not harmed.) So the “innocent” one has not yet learned crucial spiritual and life lessons from his or her wounds. He or she has much more to learn along the way and doesn’t know his or her full reality yet.

The life lessons that last, and stand the test of time, only develop in the shadowlands, not in the successes nor the comforts. If success and comfort are our gods and we never live in solidarity with the sufferer nor embrace our own, we will know very little about our own soul.

When we’ve stumbled, and the guilt, loneliness, and fear come at us and assaults us, if we don’t have at least one good friend or if we have not developed a prayer life where you know how to find yourself in God instead of in your feelings, we’ll either simply double-down and reassert our correctness or we’ll go to an unhealthy coping mechanism and miss an opportunity for growth.

Our pain, that thing we try to avoid at all costs, can become our pathway into new life. Therefore, take courage. All of life can become an opportunity for wonderful things. As Federick Buechner once penned, “Here is the world. Beautiful and terrible things will happen. Don't be afraid.”

Learning to Trust When Lost

“My Lord God, I have no idea where I am going. I do not see the road ahead of me. I cannot know for certain where it will end. Nor do I really know myself, and the fact that I think that I am following your will does not mean that I am actually doing so.”

“But I believe that the desire to please you does in fact please you. And I hope I have that desire in all that I am doing. I hope that I will never do anything apart from that desire. And I know that if I do this you will lead me by the right road though I may know nothing about it.”

“Therefore will I trust you always though I may seem to be lost and in the shadow of death. I will not fear, for you are ever with me, and you will never leave me to face my perils alone.” ~ Thomas Merton, Thoughts on Solitude

Jim Carrey on Grace + Suffering

“We have to embrace our suffering and then we make one of two decisions. One is the gate of resentment, which leads to self harm which leads to harm to others. The other is forgiveness, which leads to grace.” ~ Jim Carrey

Love that quote. So true. Watch the interview here...

https://youtu.be/MzyaQ0H5D74

Buechner on The Lord’s Prayer

The following thoughts are from Fredrick Buechner...

In the Episcopal order of worship, the priest sometimes introduces the Lord's Prayer with the words, "Now, as our Savior Christ hath taught us, we are bold to say..." The word bold is worth thinking about. We do well not to pray the prayer lightly. It takes guts to pray it at all. We can pray it in the unthinking and perfunctory way we usually do only by disregarding what we are saying.

"Thy will be done" is what we are saying. That is the climax of the first half of the prayer. We are asking God to be God. We are asking God to do not what we want, but what God wants. We are asking God to make manifest the holiness that is now mostly hidden, to set free in all its terrible splendor the devastating power that is now mostly under restraint. "Thy kingdom come . . . on earth" is what we are saying. And if that were suddenly to happen, what then? What would stand and what would fall? Who would be welcomed in and who would be thrown the hell out? Which if any of our most precious visions of what God is and of what human beings are would prove to be more or less on the mark and which would turn out to be phony as three-dollar bills? Boldness indeed. To speak those words is to invite the tiger out of the cage, to unleash a power that makes atomic power look like a warm breeze.

You need to be bold in another way to speak the second half. Give us. Forgive us. Don't test us. Deliver us. If it takes guts to face the omnipotence that is God's, it takes perhaps no less to face the impotence that is ours. We can do nothing without God. We can have nothing without God. Without God we are nothing.

It is only the words "Our Father" that make the prayer bearable. If God is indeed something like a father, then as something like children maybe we can risk approaching him anyway.

~ originally published in Whistling in the Dark

Benedictory Aspirations

This is part of our weekly benediction at Grace Church. As we speak and pray these words aloud, I often think: If people around the world actually began to live like this, our world, within no time at all, would be drastically better.

So, may we dare to be PEACEFUL in a violent world, KIND in a competitive culture, FAITHFUL in an age of cynicism, GENTLE amongst those who admire forcefulness, and may we dare to LOVE even when it may not be returned to us.

The Learner

The purpose in our learning and in our theological discoveries is to experience more of the Divine in our life and become Christlike, not to become information databases. In our theological pursuits, let us not simply acquire information about God but skills in faith. And let us not exchange discovery and becoming for redundancy and spiritual stagnation.

Everyday Resolutions for 2017

A new year is upon us. Here are some everyday resolutions which can help make 2017 a year of personal and spiritual growth...

1. Choose to take your soul seriously. It is easy to pretend that what we watch and listen to have no effects on us. But a big part of who you are will be the sum of the influences we choose. Life is a gift and a continuous journey of soul-shaping. So this year, resolve to give more attention to your soul-care. Unplug a bit more. Enjoy stillness. Spend more time meditating, reflecting, exploring theology, and/or praying. We only get one soul; resolve to not squander it on things unworthy of its majesty.

2. Choose to connect more deeply. Look to engage people with more than pixels and 150 characters. Don't just click "like," set aside some time to really connect. Looking at a screen can be quick and undemanding. Texting is easier than talking. And there is a rightful place for all of this. But this year, resolve to practice being more present. Resolve to spend more time looking into people's eyes and having actual conversations.

3. Choose to be kind. Rather than our joy leading us to smile, it's our smile that can actually lead to our joy. That's right...if you desire to feel good, do something good. Practicing kindness and generosity will not only create great habits, but also a more robust and genuine kindness will take shape within you. This year, resolve to practice kindness and to be more generous - charitable contribution, a gentle word, helping the less fortunate, etc. Simple acts of kindness go a very long way.

4. Choose to forgive. Let's face it. We all have legitimate grievances in our lives. But if we are not careful, a corrupting and internalized bitterness can take root within us if we choose to hold onto those grievances. Some people are very hard to forgive and you need not begin with the toughest cases. Just like kindness, small acts of gracious forgiveness will grow. This year, resolve to forgive and to pursue peacemaking. Choose a place to begin and courageously forgive.

5. In choosing to forgive, include yourself. Fight against a belittling perfectionism. Allow yourself the latitude of mistakes and shortcomings. God is perfect, not us. Have expectations of yourself, but don’t beat yourself down with them. God is full of grace. So this year, resolve to be more accepting of both your imperfections and God's grace.

Happy New Year!

The Only Hermeneutic

“I have come to feel that the primary reality of which we have to take account in seeking for a Christian impact on public life is the Christian congregation. How is it possible that the gospel should be credible, that people should come to believe that the power which has the last word in human affairs is represented by a man hanging on a cross?

I am suggesting that the only answer, the only hermeneutic of the gospel, is a congregation of men and women who believe it and live by it. I am, of course, not denying the importance of the many activities by which we seek to challenge public life with the gospel– evangelistic campaigns, distribution of Bibles and Christian literature, conferences, and even books such as this one.

But I am saying that these are all secondary, and that they have power to accomplish their purpose only as they are rooted in and lead back to a believing community.”

Lesslie Newbigin, The Gospel in a Pluralist Society

Look Up + See

The splitting of the Red Sea, according to Jewish tradition, is the greatest miracle ever performed. And yet we have one midrash that mentions two Israelites, Reuven and Shimon, who had a different experience.

Apparently the bottom of the sea, though safe to walk on, was not completely dry but a little muddy, like a beach at low tide. Reuven stepped into it and curled his lip. “What is this muck?”

Shimon scowled, “There’s mud all over the place!”

“This is just like the slime pits of Egypt!” replied Reuven.

“What’s the difference?” Complained Shimon. “Mud here, mud there; it’s all the same.”

And so it went for the two of them, grumbling all the way across the bottom of the sea. And, because they never once looked up, they never understood why on the distant shore, everyone else was singing and dancing. For Reuven and Shimon the miracle never happened.

Source | Shemot Rabbah 24

The Journey

One day you finally knew what you had to do, and began, though the voices around you kept shouting their bad advice – though the whole house began to tremble and you felt the old tug at your ankles. “Mend my life!” each voice cried. But you didn’t stop. You knew what you had to do, though the wind pried with its stiff fingers at the very foundations, though their melancholy was terrible. It was already late enough, and a wild night, and the road full of fallen branches and stones. But little by little, as you left their voices behind, the stars began to burn through the sheets of clouds, and there was a new voice which you slowly recognized as your own, that kept you company as you strode deeper and deeper into the world, determined to do the only thing you could do – determined to save the only life you could save.

~ Mary Oliver

A Better Way

The early followers of Jesus Christ were not called "the people of the right doctrine," or the people of "moral values," or even the people of "the church."

They were called the people of “the WAY” (Acts 9:2).

They were known for the WAY they lived, not only for what they believed or valued.

Christians were associated with a particular and discernible way of living and relating to culture and others that grew both out of their faith and gave testimony to that faith. More than just individuals who had a changed religious position, they were now a new people, a new community, and embarking on a new way of life.

Their proclamation, that in Jesus Christ God was reconciling all things and making everything right, was more than just an intriguing idea, it had become visible…it had become a lifestyle. It had become “the firstfruits” of a new social order intended by God for all of creation. To be people of “the way” means to live in the way of Jesus. In the words inspired by Stanley Hauerwas, the christians were dared to be PEACEFUL in a violent world, KIND in a competitive culture, FAITHFUL in an age of cynicism, GENTLE amongst those who admire forcefulness, and ones who dare to LOVE even when it may not be returned to them (Against the Nations). And when we dare to live in the way of Christ, the very way he lived himself, the very way he died and rose to procure, like Christ, we become a visible and tangible invitation into a better way.

Flood Geology?

With the recent launch of the Ark Encounter, I've received some questions about young earth vs. old earth and Genesis' flood account.

As usual, BioLogos does a superb job answering the questions (and recommends a great book for the curious)... http://biologos.org/blogs/archive/science-vs-flood-geology-not-just-a-difference-in-worldview

Our Life + Death For/With Our Neighbor

The above text, attributed to Anthony the Great, captures an ethos from The Desert Fathers and Mothers, monastically living together in the deserts during the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th century.

Reiterating the ancient Christian idea of living communally and for the well-being of the neighbor, whoever he or she may be, Rowan Williams recently wrote: “Living Christianly with the neighbor, living in such a way that the neighbor is ‘won’—converted, brought into saving relationship with Jesus Christ—involves my ‘death.’ I must die to myself, a self understood as the solid possessor of virtues and gifts, entitled to pronounce on the neighbor’s spiritual condition. My own awareness of my failure and weakness is indispensable to my communicating the gospel to my neighbor.” The Christian life should revolve around putting the other in relation with the blessings of Christ. And this is a death to the self because it sets aside one’s desires for the sake of the neighbor’s flourishing.

Again, to quote another Desert Father, “A house is not built by beginning at the top and working down. You must begin with the foundations in order to reach the top. The foundation is our neighbor, whom we must win, and that is the place to begin. For all the commandments of Christ depend on this one” (John the Dwarf).

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