(Photo by James Snyder)
consider.. .
a little tree frog
stuck on holiday lights
warmed by their heat,
entranced by their colors,
when was the last time
i felt so comfortable
or alive?
Tuesday, January 5, 2010
happy frogs
(Photo by James Snyder)
consider.. .
a little tree frog
stuck on holiday lights
warmed by their heat,
entranced by their colors,
when was the last time
i felt so comfortable
or alive?
Sunday, December 27, 2009
distracted
a word of poetry
for the ones who think
too much
for the one who feel
too much
for all who feel caught
squeezed
in between the best of themselves
and the fearful chills
of what they cannot become
i dream in colors
i live in black and white
i remember too much
forgetting what is most important
doubting what is best
distracted
for the ones who think
too much
for the one who feel
too much
for all who feel caught
squeezed
in between the best of themselves
and the fearful chills
of what they cannot become
i dream in colors
i live in black and white
i remember too much
forgetting what is most important
doubting what is best
distracted
Tuesday, December 22, 2009
Reflection on Being a Wesley Seminary Urban Fellow
A call to ministry is one of the greatest tensions a person might experience. It is not just an interest in a job, but a deep seated experience of the entire being called upon by a higher power to live in a capacity beyond what most would find typical or even desirable. Even worse, often the calling is worked out over years, sometimes decades, stretching out an already fragile tension with life long questions and doubts in the same basket as visions and hopes.
Jesus began his ministry with a boom. Matthew (4:12-25) begins the story with triumphant callings in Capernaum, quoting Isaiah and stirring up the hope of a new kingdom coming. He practically proclaims, "Let there be light!" in the same spirit of creation. He hooks a few fishermen in the next chapter with the promise of revolution, a brawl that rugged fishermen would be willing to drop their livelihoods for ("fishers of men" didn't mean what it does to us today). The narrative then moves into a sweeping epic of ministry to great crowds from cities and regions throughout Palestine. Epic.
Since high school and on through college, the call to the city bothered me. You see, I'm a product of the suburbs. For a young, wide-eyed teen looking to make a "difference," the prospects of urban ministry are no less revolutionary and aspiring as Jesus' original call. I worked with urban ministries throughout high school, college, but always at a safe distance: the kind that allowed you a few hours to a few weeks in the inner-city at a time before returning to the comforts of a home or campus in the burbs.
Now, years later, I'm working out my original desires at Wesley Theological Seminary in their new Urban Fellows program. I discovered the possibility an ocean away in China. After college I had put the idea of urban ministry on hold for international teaching and development. Here was that old call dressed up in a new, experimental program that sought a praxis engagement of urban DC, the very city I first felt the tugs of God's alluring whispers. With my wife and I set to return to the DC area, I signed up hoping this seminary and program would be the opportunity to bring together my fractured experiences from youth to today. I wonder if the disciples felt the same tensions and opportunities when they heard Jesus' words? Epic.
Luke (4:14-5:17) gives us a less rosy perspective on the call. Jesus' initial message given to town fellows in Nazareth produced the particular response of riot. The calling of the fishermen by the sea accompanied with the inner conflict of a man ashamed. Before the great crowds gathered on the plains to hear the words of the teacher, a long list of healings, controversies, and conflict had already taken place. Luke paints a journey that, though epic, is fleshed out in the realities of the world's religious, economic, and social systems.
As I complete my first semester of work with the Urban Fellows program, I'm realizing the messiness of the process ahead. In the wholeness of life, the calling to urban ministry is not all consuming. I have to work out the tensions of family life, friendships, and work. I've learned that in order to embody the Gospel, there is a lot of red tape to move through, a lot of study and consideration to be fleshed out in the both typical norms and sweeping changes of downtown DC. It has only been one semester. There are many more to come. I'm getting prepared for a little controversy, a little conflict, and hopefully, a little healing as well.
What's my narrative for my Urban Fellows journey? For now, it is the gospels themselves. The story of a rag tag band of men, tricked into following a ring leader full of dreams that, once revealed, seemed less and less like what they had in mind. Following Matthew's epic beginning comes the Sermon on the Mount, a message barely conceivable in the mind and heart much less in action. Where is the place for meekness and peacemaking in revolution? This Kingdom of Heaven is ideal beyond ideal, unrealistic to the core. Likewise, Luke's Sermon on the Plain is a challenge to the high and low to, a great balancing of fates requiring great love and great sacrifice, speaking into the very conflicts that had taken place before.
I believe Jesus' life spoke into the heart of the urban context of his time. As I follow the stories of his followers from a seaside call along the Galilee to a great journey across the Mediterranean to the center of imperial power, I likewise find my own journey from suburban Maryland to China and back. My life, thus far, has been an eclectic mix of experiences and ideas. As the disciples worked out their hopes and visions in conversation with the life of Christ laid out before them, so shall I in my studies at Wesley, DC, Baltimore, and beyond. I believe Christ will reconcile the great diversity at work within and around me during my Urban Fellows engagement. Along the way he'll challenge me with realities and ideals I've never considered or had to face, the same way his own disciples had to process it. These next few years will be anything but planned, smooth, and clear. Maybe... they'll be epic.
Jesus began his ministry with a boom. Matthew (4:12-25) begins the story with triumphant callings in Capernaum, quoting Isaiah and stirring up the hope of a new kingdom coming. He practically proclaims, "Let there be light!" in the same spirit of creation. He hooks a few fishermen in the next chapter with the promise of revolution, a brawl that rugged fishermen would be willing to drop their livelihoods for ("fishers of men" didn't mean what it does to us today). The narrative then moves into a sweeping epic of ministry to great crowds from cities and regions throughout Palestine. Epic.
Since high school and on through college, the call to the city bothered me. You see, I'm a product of the suburbs. For a young, wide-eyed teen looking to make a "difference," the prospects of urban ministry are no less revolutionary and aspiring as Jesus' original call. I worked with urban ministries throughout high school, college, but always at a safe distance: the kind that allowed you a few hours to a few weeks in the inner-city at a time before returning to the comforts of a home or campus in the burbs.
Now, years later, I'm working out my original desires at Wesley Theological Seminary in their new Urban Fellows program. I discovered the possibility an ocean away in China. After college I had put the idea of urban ministry on hold for international teaching and development. Here was that old call dressed up in a new, experimental program that sought a praxis engagement of urban DC, the very city I first felt the tugs of God's alluring whispers. With my wife and I set to return to the DC area, I signed up hoping this seminary and program would be the opportunity to bring together my fractured experiences from youth to today. I wonder if the disciples felt the same tensions and opportunities when they heard Jesus' words? Epic.
Luke (4:14-5:17) gives us a less rosy perspective on the call. Jesus' initial message given to town fellows in Nazareth produced the particular response of riot. The calling of the fishermen by the sea accompanied with the inner conflict of a man ashamed. Before the great crowds gathered on the plains to hear the words of the teacher, a long list of healings, controversies, and conflict had already taken place. Luke paints a journey that, though epic, is fleshed out in the realities of the world's religious, economic, and social systems.
As I complete my first semester of work with the Urban Fellows program, I'm realizing the messiness of the process ahead. In the wholeness of life, the calling to urban ministry is not all consuming. I have to work out the tensions of family life, friendships, and work. I've learned that in order to embody the Gospel, there is a lot of red tape to move through, a lot of study and consideration to be fleshed out in the both typical norms and sweeping changes of downtown DC. It has only been one semester. There are many more to come. I'm getting prepared for a little controversy, a little conflict, and hopefully, a little healing as well.
What's my narrative for my Urban Fellows journey? For now, it is the gospels themselves. The story of a rag tag band of men, tricked into following a ring leader full of dreams that, once revealed, seemed less and less like what they had in mind. Following Matthew's epic beginning comes the Sermon on the Mount, a message barely conceivable in the mind and heart much less in action. Where is the place for meekness and peacemaking in revolution? This Kingdom of Heaven is ideal beyond ideal, unrealistic to the core. Likewise, Luke's Sermon on the Plain is a challenge to the high and low to, a great balancing of fates requiring great love and great sacrifice, speaking into the very conflicts that had taken place before.
I believe Jesus' life spoke into the heart of the urban context of his time. As I follow the stories of his followers from a seaside call along the Galilee to a great journey across the Mediterranean to the center of imperial power, I likewise find my own journey from suburban Maryland to China and back. My life, thus far, has been an eclectic mix of experiences and ideas. As the disciples worked out their hopes and visions in conversation with the life of Christ laid out before them, so shall I in my studies at Wesley, DC, Baltimore, and beyond. I believe Christ will reconcile the great diversity at work within and around me during my Urban Fellows engagement. Along the way he'll challenge me with realities and ideals I've never considered or had to face, the same way his own disciples had to process it. These next few years will be anything but planned, smooth, and clear. Maybe... they'll be epic.
Thursday, December 3, 2009
Reconciliation
What does it mean to reconcile?
As I ease into seminary studies through this first semester of work and reflection, the question rises as the fundamental problem of my spiritual formation. As I look about my classes, my work, my relationships, I see the question staring me the in face. I’ve tried to ignore it by keeping busy, by offering token sacrifices of convenient action to appease it, by rationalizing my actions or non-actions as dictated by circumstance and season. I feel called to a ministry of reconciliation in the name of Jesus Christ, our Lord. I state this boldly and unashamedly. Yet, as time moves on, there is a shame that confronts me. My intentions are pure, but I feel a spirit of hypocrisy in my actions. The longer I sit with myself, the heavier the weight.
What does it mean to reconcile?
Dictionaries offer the following definitions: “to win over to friendliness; cause to be amicable,” “to accept or be resigned to something not desired,” “to compose or settle,” “to bring into agreement or harmony; make compatible or consistent,” “to reconsecrate,” “to restore.”
In all of our lives, there are spaces that require reconciliation. Those spaces might be completely personal and internal, or be so large as to encompass entire cultural norms within a greater society. As I write and reflect, I am trying to discover these spaces, to sit in them, and pray fervently for my Lord to speak to me in them.
My wife challenges my sense and desire for reconciliation. She suggests that I seek it out of fear and insecurity rather than holy conviction. I alluded to this in my first reflection; the desire to be okay with all those around me as to not incur wrath or dislike. Indeed, this is true. But at the same time, I am beginning to understand my overall desire to be a positive thing. To have the world reconciled with itself and with God is a holy conviction. But I am divided in my heart between spaces of fear and insecurity. I pray the Lord to heal and fill these spaces with empowering love as to see my desires incarnate in holy concern. In this way, I shall not be reacting to tensions out of fear but engaging them in true love.
To reconcile requires great love and a greater courage to face fears and discomfort.
In my relationships, there are growing chasms in some of my closest friendships. I’ve alluded to those in previous reflections as well. The painful dynamics at work in these friendships feels similar to Howard’s description of “enemy status” within God’s family on page 92. “To love such an enemy requires reconciliation, the will to re-establish a relationship. It involves confession of error and a seeking to be restored to one’s former place.” For all of us, there has been hurt inflicted without full address. I have yet to find a way to voice all of my hurts, and I know my dear friends have not yet either. In our busy lives, the spaces to listen to one another seem few. Complications of growing families and new niches provide further obstacles. Here I am, rationalizing yet again. Where is my will to reconcile? If I cannot reconcile amongst old friends, how ever shall I reconcile with a true enemy?
To reconcile requires discipline.
Then there is the city is live in and the city I study in: Baltimore and Washington, DC. I’ve alluded to these spaces in my earlier reflections as well. In these spaces the division I witness daily is beginning to eat away at my soul. I can hardly go about my daily business without hundreds of visible reminders flooding my soul of the perpetual division, isolation, and hatred that is produced (and often, sanctioned, or even blessed). I’ve intentionally joined a church planting seeking to reconcile divided neighborhoods in southeast Baltimore, seeking to support its ministries as actively as I can, but it doesn’t seem fast enough. I want to throw my entire self into the work now. In my restlessness, I desire to bring together all many churches in Baltimore city of the same reconciling spirit to greater collaboration. The idea keeps bouncing around my head almost to the point of dizziness. In DC at Wesley, my studies as an Urban Fellow keep me ever in tune with the rhythms of Mt Vernon Square neighborhood.
The texts I read, such as Thurman for this very class, provide the wisdom of ages past for understanding how fear, deception, and hate are systematically engrained into our fledgling environments. When one lives in a city like Baltimore and engages in intentional study on the subjects in a context like DC, the words Thurman share are no intellectual exercise anymore. They are realities that confront me with endless questions, chief of which being, “How shall you serve to reconcile?”? I desire to deconstruct the “enemy status” in us all, to preach and act in all manners Howard spoke of in his chapter on Love. I want to love my enemies (be careful what you wish for.) All this of this is both enlightening and paralyzing. I struggle and question daily how ready I am to put my ideas into action. Sometimes I feel like I’m going crazy.
To reconcile requires a great deal of patience, humility, and the keen awareness that God must move, not I.
All these paradigms lend me insight into what it takes to bring reconciliation. But honestly, I have not had much success in envisioning and understanding what reconciliation looks like on any of the levels I’ve written on. The eschatological “already but not yet,” annoys the hell out of me. I’m not satisfied with the degree of inner reconciliation I’ve experienced with my own fears, within my new marriage, under the approaching circumstances of raising a son. I feel broken by the realities of shaky friendships with my best friends and fuzzy relationships in my new contexts. I’m overwhelmed by the challenge of cities, no, a world bent currently bent toward hell but promised to eventually arc toward love, justice, and a beloved community.
Thurman’s chapters on the three horsemen of hell are filled with personal anecdotes and very real examples of fear, deception, and hatred at work. His response is a chapter on love, a great love exemplified by stories of a living Christ at work alongside his neighbors: his skeptical and judgmental Jewish countrymen, traitorous tax collectors and broken women, the powers of Rome, the possessed and the sick. These were his neighbors, and they are also mine.
What does it mean to reconcile?
To love God and to love my neighbor.
Oh, Lord? How shall humanity ever love as you have?
As a Christian, (not just a deist), I believe the answers come in Christ. Does he not promise us to be the Way, the Truth, and the Light? All my anxieties and struggles call me to sit at His feet. Might I find what I need in my search for reconciliation by applying a greater discipline to follow Him?
Oh, Lord! I believe! Help me in my disbelief!
Howard Thurman offers up the Religion of Jesus is such a way that it seems all but impossible to partake of without some form of supernatural infusion. It is not natural to love as Christ calls us to. All of history testifies to this! Yet in between the cracks are also stories of that elusive Beloved Community. These stories that range from the community of the book of Acts to Koinonia Farm community. These stories generated by dreams from Martin Luther King’s America and Ghandi’s India. Even in my own midst of Baltimore, is there not the story of New Song Ministries of Sandtown.
The Kingdom of God is already bursting forth in such small, seemingly insignificant spaces, but not yet in so much of the inner city, the rural poor, the global sex trade, the hunger and disease.
But I still believe it can.
What does it mean to reconcile?
Follow Christ, be Christ.
Oh God, let Thy will be done!
Amen.
As I ease into seminary studies through this first semester of work and reflection, the question rises as the fundamental problem of my spiritual formation. As I look about my classes, my work, my relationships, I see the question staring me the in face. I’ve tried to ignore it by keeping busy, by offering token sacrifices of convenient action to appease it, by rationalizing my actions or non-actions as dictated by circumstance and season. I feel called to a ministry of reconciliation in the name of Jesus Christ, our Lord. I state this boldly and unashamedly. Yet, as time moves on, there is a shame that confronts me. My intentions are pure, but I feel a spirit of hypocrisy in my actions. The longer I sit with myself, the heavier the weight.
What does it mean to reconcile?
Dictionaries offer the following definitions: “to win over to friendliness; cause to be amicable,” “to accept or be resigned to something not desired,” “to compose or settle,” “to bring into agreement or harmony; make compatible or consistent,” “to reconsecrate,” “to restore.”
In all of our lives, there are spaces that require reconciliation. Those spaces might be completely personal and internal, or be so large as to encompass entire cultural norms within a greater society. As I write and reflect, I am trying to discover these spaces, to sit in them, and pray fervently for my Lord to speak to me in them.
My wife challenges my sense and desire for reconciliation. She suggests that I seek it out of fear and insecurity rather than holy conviction. I alluded to this in my first reflection; the desire to be okay with all those around me as to not incur wrath or dislike. Indeed, this is true. But at the same time, I am beginning to understand my overall desire to be a positive thing. To have the world reconciled with itself and with God is a holy conviction. But I am divided in my heart between spaces of fear and insecurity. I pray the Lord to heal and fill these spaces with empowering love as to see my desires incarnate in holy concern. In this way, I shall not be reacting to tensions out of fear but engaging them in true love.
To reconcile requires great love and a greater courage to face fears and discomfort.
In my relationships, there are growing chasms in some of my closest friendships. I’ve alluded to those in previous reflections as well. The painful dynamics at work in these friendships feels similar to Howard’s description of “enemy status” within God’s family on page 92. “To love such an enemy requires reconciliation, the will to re-establish a relationship. It involves confession of error and a seeking to be restored to one’s former place.” For all of us, there has been hurt inflicted without full address. I have yet to find a way to voice all of my hurts, and I know my dear friends have not yet either. In our busy lives, the spaces to listen to one another seem few. Complications of growing families and new niches provide further obstacles. Here I am, rationalizing yet again. Where is my will to reconcile? If I cannot reconcile amongst old friends, how ever shall I reconcile with a true enemy?
To reconcile requires discipline.
Then there is the city is live in and the city I study in: Baltimore and Washington, DC. I’ve alluded to these spaces in my earlier reflections as well. In these spaces the division I witness daily is beginning to eat away at my soul. I can hardly go about my daily business without hundreds of visible reminders flooding my soul of the perpetual division, isolation, and hatred that is produced (and often, sanctioned, or even blessed). I’ve intentionally joined a church planting seeking to reconcile divided neighborhoods in southeast Baltimore, seeking to support its ministries as actively as I can, but it doesn’t seem fast enough. I want to throw my entire self into the work now. In my restlessness, I desire to bring together all many churches in Baltimore city of the same reconciling spirit to greater collaboration. The idea keeps bouncing around my head almost to the point of dizziness. In DC at Wesley, my studies as an Urban Fellow keep me ever in tune with the rhythms of Mt Vernon Square neighborhood.
The texts I read, such as Thurman for this very class, provide the wisdom of ages past for understanding how fear, deception, and hate are systematically engrained into our fledgling environments. When one lives in a city like Baltimore and engages in intentional study on the subjects in a context like DC, the words Thurman share are no intellectual exercise anymore. They are realities that confront me with endless questions, chief of which being, “How shall you serve to reconcile?”? I desire to deconstruct the “enemy status” in us all, to preach and act in all manners Howard spoke of in his chapter on Love. I want to love my enemies (be careful what you wish for.) All this of this is both enlightening and paralyzing. I struggle and question daily how ready I am to put my ideas into action. Sometimes I feel like I’m going crazy.
To reconcile requires a great deal of patience, humility, and the keen awareness that God must move, not I.
All these paradigms lend me insight into what it takes to bring reconciliation. But honestly, I have not had much success in envisioning and understanding what reconciliation looks like on any of the levels I’ve written on. The eschatological “already but not yet,” annoys the hell out of me. I’m not satisfied with the degree of inner reconciliation I’ve experienced with my own fears, within my new marriage, under the approaching circumstances of raising a son. I feel broken by the realities of shaky friendships with my best friends and fuzzy relationships in my new contexts. I’m overwhelmed by the challenge of cities, no, a world bent currently bent toward hell but promised to eventually arc toward love, justice, and a beloved community.
Thurman’s chapters on the three horsemen of hell are filled with personal anecdotes and very real examples of fear, deception, and hatred at work. His response is a chapter on love, a great love exemplified by stories of a living Christ at work alongside his neighbors: his skeptical and judgmental Jewish countrymen, traitorous tax collectors and broken women, the powers of Rome, the possessed and the sick. These were his neighbors, and they are also mine.
What does it mean to reconcile?
To love God and to love my neighbor.
Oh, Lord? How shall humanity ever love as you have?
As a Christian, (not just a deist), I believe the answers come in Christ. Does he not promise us to be the Way, the Truth, and the Light? All my anxieties and struggles call me to sit at His feet. Might I find what I need in my search for reconciliation by applying a greater discipline to follow Him?
Oh, Lord! I believe! Help me in my disbelief!
Howard Thurman offers up the Religion of Jesus is such a way that it seems all but impossible to partake of without some form of supernatural infusion. It is not natural to love as Christ calls us to. All of history testifies to this! Yet in between the cracks are also stories of that elusive Beloved Community. These stories that range from the community of the book of Acts to Koinonia Farm community. These stories generated by dreams from Martin Luther King’s America and Ghandi’s India. Even in my own midst of Baltimore, is there not the story of New Song Ministries of Sandtown.
The Kingdom of God is already bursting forth in such small, seemingly insignificant spaces, but not yet in so much of the inner city, the rural poor, the global sex trade, the hunger and disease.
But I still believe it can.
What does it mean to reconcile?
Follow Christ, be Christ.
Oh God, let Thy will be done!
Amen.
Thursday, November 5, 2009
Living Simply
My wife and I have recently moved back from a year of relief work in China, helping to implement psycho-social programs to help kids build resiliency and recovery from the trauma of having their school buildings crush them during last year's May 12th earthquake. Today, many of these children and their families are still living in temporary housing projects. Often, a family of 3-5 gets one room along a long row of rooms in a two or three square mile complex. It would appear, at first glance, that they are living a life of simplicity. Disasters can strip anyone down to their bare minimal quite suddenly.
Today, my wife and I are both students, studying for degrees we believe God has called us to in order to continue serving and empowering the "least of these" wherever they may be. Unfortunately, our dedication to studies means a lower income for the household, I currently working part time as an adjunct instructor at a community college. The reality that we will soon be expecting our first child in March is an extra weight and joy that promises to bring as much worry as blessing as we prepare our home.
Naturally, I battle bouts of anxiety and worry on an almost daily basis. There is the strong sense of calling, and with it, security. I trust that in seeking first God's Kingdom in our lives, He will fulfill His promise to provide all that we need. Yet in moments of weakness when reviewing bills or the costs of car maintenance here or travel arrangements to see family there, that sinking feeling can begin to pull me down. Questions of how to make it through the later months when savings is low ambush me in the midst of studies.
There is no question about it; God has provided exactly what He has promised up to this point. We ask for our daily bread and we get it. A surprise scholarship here, an early beginning to part my time work there. More and more possibilities abound as the days go by. I praise and glorify my Lord because He has given my family exactly what we have needed for this season. I believe that He will continue to provide as my family seeks God's will and kingdom. Lord, help me in my unbelief.
"The central point for the discipline of simplicity is to seek the kingdom of God and the righteousness of his kingdom first and then everything necessary will come in its proper place," says Richard Foster. If this is the discipline of simplicity, than the season of life I have walked into are the perfect grounds for practicing it. Not simply an outward simplicity built in cutting down on spending and such to ensure our economic livelihood, but the fostering of the great inner simplicity that builds confidence in our relationship with God as primary. It is the building of a divine center, the refining of a will for but one thing.
There is no question about it; my wife and I feel a call to serve the fatherless and the widow, and believe our lives ought to be prepared to the fullest for such a task. This entire season of life from studies to preparing for a family plus all the daily moments of simple acts of living from eating to walking can be placed in the perspective of Kingdom building. Jesus says that the Kingdom of God is within us. He also says that living streams should abound in us and flow out to others. The life of simplicity then is both the building of God's Kingdom within our souls and the preparation for that inner light to ignite our environments. It is the rejection of fear as well as of the desire for power or affluence. It is trusting with the simplicity of a child toward a loving father.
But what would I do if an earthquake shattered everything I had? What if something took away my family, my home, and my entire pattern of life? How than shall I live? Such possibilities produce a natural and proper concern. Such a question pushes the greatest challenge of inner simplicity right in our faces. Is my family but a gift from God that can be taken away? How will the Kingdom be incarnated in such a tragedy? How shall He speak into the broken world such as this? I have not had to face it, but so many have in so many parts of the world from the inner city ghettos a few blocks from my apartment to refuge camps the world over. Yes, simplicity is a discipline for those who have. I consider my self a "have" and not a "have not." I know my life today calls me to greater internal and external simplicity to reflect God's glory and providence. I believe He is transforming me in this process. But I end this reflection with a new question to pursue: how is the discipline of simplicity to be enacted in the midst of loss, suffering, and pain when what little you already had has been taken? After all, it could be any of us.
Today, my wife and I are both students, studying for degrees we believe God has called us to in order to continue serving and empowering the "least of these" wherever they may be. Unfortunately, our dedication to studies means a lower income for the household, I currently working part time as an adjunct instructor at a community college. The reality that we will soon be expecting our first child in March is an extra weight and joy that promises to bring as much worry as blessing as we prepare our home.
Naturally, I battle bouts of anxiety and worry on an almost daily basis. There is the strong sense of calling, and with it, security. I trust that in seeking first God's Kingdom in our lives, He will fulfill His promise to provide all that we need. Yet in moments of weakness when reviewing bills or the costs of car maintenance here or travel arrangements to see family there, that sinking feeling can begin to pull me down. Questions of how to make it through the later months when savings is low ambush me in the midst of studies.
There is no question about it; God has provided exactly what He has promised up to this point. We ask for our daily bread and we get it. A surprise scholarship here, an early beginning to part my time work there. More and more possibilities abound as the days go by. I praise and glorify my Lord because He has given my family exactly what we have needed for this season. I believe that He will continue to provide as my family seeks God's will and kingdom. Lord, help me in my unbelief.
"The central point for the discipline of simplicity is to seek the kingdom of God and the righteousness of his kingdom first and then everything necessary will come in its proper place," says Richard Foster. If this is the discipline of simplicity, than the season of life I have walked into are the perfect grounds for practicing it. Not simply an outward simplicity built in cutting down on spending and such to ensure our economic livelihood, but the fostering of the great inner simplicity that builds confidence in our relationship with God as primary. It is the building of a divine center, the refining of a will for but one thing.
There is no question about it; my wife and I feel a call to serve the fatherless and the widow, and believe our lives ought to be prepared to the fullest for such a task. This entire season of life from studies to preparing for a family plus all the daily moments of simple acts of living from eating to walking can be placed in the perspective of Kingdom building. Jesus says that the Kingdom of God is within us. He also says that living streams should abound in us and flow out to others. The life of simplicity then is both the building of God's Kingdom within our souls and the preparation for that inner light to ignite our environments. It is the rejection of fear as well as of the desire for power or affluence. It is trusting with the simplicity of a child toward a loving father.
But what would I do if an earthquake shattered everything I had? What if something took away my family, my home, and my entire pattern of life? How than shall I live? Such possibilities produce a natural and proper concern. Such a question pushes the greatest challenge of inner simplicity right in our faces. Is my family but a gift from God that can be taken away? How will the Kingdom be incarnated in such a tragedy? How shall He speak into the broken world such as this? I have not had to face it, but so many have in so many parts of the world from the inner city ghettos a few blocks from my apartment to refuge camps the world over. Yes, simplicity is a discipline for those who have. I consider my self a "have" and not a "have not." I know my life today calls me to greater internal and external simplicity to reflect God's glory and providence. I believe He is transforming me in this process. But I end this reflection with a new question to pursue: how is the discipline of simplicity to be enacted in the midst of loss, suffering, and pain when what little you already had has been taken? After all, it could be any of us.
Tuesday, October 27, 2009
Worship with my Wife
Begin the day for the Lord. Begin with the reading of His Word, celebrating with a Psalm, meditating on the words of the Prophets, refined by the teachings of the Epistles. Begin with a song of praise, a joyful noise. Begin with prayer, speaking words of honesty and encouragement, seeking direction and clarity for the day ahead. Begin the day by fellowshipping together, breaking bread and gaining the sustenance needed for the day. Then go out and work well, praising through our actions, listening with our hearts, until the evening comes when we might return to rest.
What’s more, the daily ritual ought to be done together as a family, a community that seeks to live and reflect God in all of our work. Bonheoffer not only asks for the discipline of a morning routine, but of community. As if the discipline of arising an hour early each day to progress through a holy routine is nothing. Indeed, an hour of individual devotion each morning is easy compared to doing it as a community. When things get collective, they get messy.
I am a newly married man, learning to dance with my life through each days requirements. In the newness of this life, I am having a hard enough time disciplining myself to communicate clearly in fellowship with her, much less bring us together in unity before God. Our worship of our God is restrained to formal gatherings on Sundays, short prayers offered around meals, and occasional evenings before bed. Scripture is discussed on occasion as it applies to the circumstances before us, but rarely is it read together.
There is a dimension of spiritual life together that my wife and I have yet to learn. When it comes to traditional acts of spiritual devotion, we still hear different melodies and dance to our own rhythms. How do we take the busy lives before us and carve out the communal space necessary for family worship as Bonheoffer admonishes?
Since my college years, I’ve tried to foster the Presence of God amongst all the actions of my life: to be always worshipful. I’ve had good seasons when the Spirit’s guidance is steady and I am “in tune.” I’ve had bad seasons when fears and distractions crowd out any ability to perpetuate God’s peace. At this moment of re-settling into life in America and preparation for future ministry and work together, the battle between worship and worry rages. Worship calls me to surrender to God’s presence in trust and joy. Worry begs me to consider what is lacking and what can never be assured. Worship asks me to look ahead in anticipation of God’s glory and tutelage. Worry desires to cover my eyes with a lens of uncertainty that will lead me to further desires of personal control. I’ve felt the battle throughout moments of study, of writing, of driving, of class and work. As I am becoming more aware of them, I must choose to worship. Let His glory be evident in all.
Yet the greatest difference this season is that I am no longer alone. My battle for worship over worry and fear is connected to my wife. Her strength and weaknesses are, likewise, tied to me. As the year continues, my prayer is that our God given gifts continue to merge in such a way that worship becomes ever more present. I pray our individual melodies create harmony that glorifies God and reflects His favor, joy, and peace on us and our neighbors.
For that prayer to be fulfilled, we must learn to discipline ourselves. Mornings of intentionality in praise, Word, and prayer may seem far away, but small steps should be taken now before the waves of work and busyness wash in the months to come. Let us begin to pray through our morning routine. Let us remember some Scripture for our day. Let us try and make our new life together worshipful.
What’s more, the daily ritual ought to be done together as a family, a community that seeks to live and reflect God in all of our work. Bonheoffer not only asks for the discipline of a morning routine, but of community. As if the discipline of arising an hour early each day to progress through a holy routine is nothing. Indeed, an hour of individual devotion each morning is easy compared to doing it as a community. When things get collective, they get messy.
I am a newly married man, learning to dance with my life through each days requirements. In the newness of this life, I am having a hard enough time disciplining myself to communicate clearly in fellowship with her, much less bring us together in unity before God. Our worship of our God is restrained to formal gatherings on Sundays, short prayers offered around meals, and occasional evenings before bed. Scripture is discussed on occasion as it applies to the circumstances before us, but rarely is it read together.
There is a dimension of spiritual life together that my wife and I have yet to learn. When it comes to traditional acts of spiritual devotion, we still hear different melodies and dance to our own rhythms. How do we take the busy lives before us and carve out the communal space necessary for family worship as Bonheoffer admonishes?
Since my college years, I’ve tried to foster the Presence of God amongst all the actions of my life: to be always worshipful. I’ve had good seasons when the Spirit’s guidance is steady and I am “in tune.” I’ve had bad seasons when fears and distractions crowd out any ability to perpetuate God’s peace. At this moment of re-settling into life in America and preparation for future ministry and work together, the battle between worship and worry rages. Worship calls me to surrender to God’s presence in trust and joy. Worry begs me to consider what is lacking and what can never be assured. Worship asks me to look ahead in anticipation of God’s glory and tutelage. Worry desires to cover my eyes with a lens of uncertainty that will lead me to further desires of personal control. I’ve felt the battle throughout moments of study, of writing, of driving, of class and work. As I am becoming more aware of them, I must choose to worship. Let His glory be evident in all.
Yet the greatest difference this season is that I am no longer alone. My battle for worship over worry and fear is connected to my wife. Her strength and weaknesses are, likewise, tied to me. As the year continues, my prayer is that our God given gifts continue to merge in such a way that worship becomes ever more present. I pray our individual melodies create harmony that glorifies God and reflects His favor, joy, and peace on us and our neighbors.
For that prayer to be fulfilled, we must learn to discipline ourselves. Mornings of intentionality in praise, Word, and prayer may seem far away, but small steps should be taken now before the waves of work and busyness wash in the months to come. Let us begin to pray through our morning routine. Let us remember some Scripture for our day. Let us try and make our new life together worshipful.
Saturday, October 3, 2009
Praying through the Nation's Capital
I commute back and forth between DC and Baltimore for classes. As I head into our nation’s capital, I typically veer off the BW Parkway onto New York Avenue. I watch the parkway’s forests merge into the National Arboretum. Trees then become run down buildings, fast food restaurants, and gas stations. As I approach NW, construction cranes and building frames fill the sky. Passing North Capitol, I always glance left at the grand dome of the Capital rising above the row homes. I continue from New York Ave to Massachusetts past torn down housing projects, storefront churches, a revitalized Gallery Place, downtown everything, always-trendy Dupont, rows upon rows of embassies from every other nation on the globe. The National Cathedral towers over the last stretch before I reach American University and Wesley Theological Seminary.
I make this trip two to three times a week. With each trip up and down this grand tour, there are prayers to be said and scripture to reflect upon. Through the noise of the traffic I try to not only commune with God, but with the city I grew up alongside and, one day, hope to serve. I desire to bring all the elements together, fully aware of God’s presence on my internal life and the city from poverty to riches, international spaces to academic campuses.
The city is filled with people, and yet, during this weekly ritual, I am always alone. During this moving tour, I am kept aware of my surroundings in flow with traffic while simultaneously seeking to focus my mind and heart.
Turn off the radio. Listen.
What do the buildings tell you? What do the crowds reflect? Who gathers in the storefronts and the cathedrals? See how the flags of the world blow in the breeze, what are the nations saying? Remember the ragged on the streets. Consider the suits in their meetings. What does God ask of them? What does He ask of you?
Scriptures begin to trickle in…
“And he drew near and saw the city, and wept over it, saying, ‘Would that you, even you, had known on this day the things that make for peace!’”
“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor…”
“Do justice, love kindness, and walk humbly with your God”
“Whoever speaks, as one who speaks oracles of God; whoever serves, as one who serves by the strength that God supplies-in order that in everything God may be glorified through Jesus Christ.”
Look around you. Speak
Breathe in, breathe out, breathe in, breathe out.
Small, short prayers.
Lord, Have Mercy.
Lord, Grant Wisdom.
Lord, Bring Humility.
Lord, Teach Us.
These are moments along the way that are filled with intercession.
Father, bring peace and witness to the nations broken by war.
Father, empower the ministers and leadership of these churches.
Father, open the eyes of the rich and powerful to your will and agenda.
Father, fill the hungry and the poor with good things
Usually, I arrive at Wesley about an hour before class begins, near noon. It’s time for lunch. I usually sit at the picnic table behind the Wesley Bells towering above the trickling pool. As I eat slowly, The noise in my mind begins to fall away. I consider all I have seen, all I have heard, all I have asked and said. When all is said and done, this sojourn across DC is but a training ground for the heart. It is a space to enact simple disciplines to deepen my connection with the Jesus in such a way that I love and weep over the city as he did, to feel the call to service and witness. If the disciplines are a window to grace, then I must sit before them more often.
God is near, beyond me, around me, within me.
It’s not always easy, but above all that comes about in this city, I try and stop to seek the one thing that ought to matter most.
Communion with my Lord.. .
Enjoy the Lord.
I make this trip two to three times a week. With each trip up and down this grand tour, there are prayers to be said and scripture to reflect upon. Through the noise of the traffic I try to not only commune with God, but with the city I grew up alongside and, one day, hope to serve. I desire to bring all the elements together, fully aware of God’s presence on my internal life and the city from poverty to riches, international spaces to academic campuses.
The city is filled with people, and yet, during this weekly ritual, I am always alone. During this moving tour, I am kept aware of my surroundings in flow with traffic while simultaneously seeking to focus my mind and heart.
Turn off the radio. Listen.
What do the buildings tell you? What do the crowds reflect? Who gathers in the storefronts and the cathedrals? See how the flags of the world blow in the breeze, what are the nations saying? Remember the ragged on the streets. Consider the suits in their meetings. What does God ask of them? What does He ask of you?
Scriptures begin to trickle in…
“And he drew near and saw the city, and wept over it, saying, ‘Would that you, even you, had known on this day the things that make for peace!’”
“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor…”
“Do justice, love kindness, and walk humbly with your God”
“Whoever speaks, as one who speaks oracles of God; whoever serves, as one who serves by the strength that God supplies-in order that in everything God may be glorified through Jesus Christ.”
Look around you. Speak
Breathe in, breathe out, breathe in, breathe out.
Small, short prayers.
Lord, Have Mercy.
Lord, Grant Wisdom.
Lord, Bring Humility.
Lord, Teach Us.
These are moments along the way that are filled with intercession.
Father, bring peace and witness to the nations broken by war.
Father, empower the ministers and leadership of these churches.
Father, open the eyes of the rich and powerful to your will and agenda.
Father, fill the hungry and the poor with good things
Usually, I arrive at Wesley about an hour before class begins, near noon. It’s time for lunch. I usually sit at the picnic table behind the Wesley Bells towering above the trickling pool. As I eat slowly, The noise in my mind begins to fall away. I consider all I have seen, all I have heard, all I have asked and said. When all is said and done, this sojourn across DC is but a training ground for the heart. It is a space to enact simple disciplines to deepen my connection with the Jesus in such a way that I love and weep over the city as he did, to feel the call to service and witness. If the disciplines are a window to grace, then I must sit before them more often.
God is near, beyond me, around me, within me.
It’s not always easy, but above all that comes about in this city, I try and stop to seek the one thing that ought to matter most.
Communion with my Lord.. .
Enjoy the Lord.
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