Making My Brain Sweat

Back when Andrew was at Hugh Mercer Elementary School in Fredericksburg, he had a teacher who said, “Make your brain sweat!” She meant for her students to work hard at thinking, imagining, innovating, and more. Well, this week our professor, Lew Parks, is definitely making our brains sweat.

For most of us, it is the final class of our doctor of ministry program. The next step is the project each of us will do to try and make a difference for the church. Then we have our project paper (re: dissertation) to write, re-write, and write yet again until it is deemed acceptable. After that, we get to make the walk to receive our degrees.

Back to that bit about making the brain sweat. In preparation for our project and the paper, we are in the Project Class, writing, re-writing, and writing yet again the various parts of what will be the proposal. We share our work not only with the prof, but with the whole class as well, with folks weighing in on helping us to refine and strengthen our words. One of the hardest parts has been writing the theological component of our project in forty words! Yes, you read that correctly—40 words. Can you imagine a roomful of preachers trying to get it down to forty words?

That’s what has been making my brain sweat, but it is so helpful to take the “grand” scale of my project and define the theological underpinnings in clear, precise language. I have known that this project is something I have felt strongly about for years, but the clarity is so much better now. So thanks, Lew, for making my brain sweat.

Ephesians 4:1-3

I therefore, the prisoner in the Lord, beg you to lead a life worthy of the calling to which you have been called, with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love, making every effort to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.

Role and Person

This week and next, I am in the midst of my last two classes for my Doctor of Ministry program in church Leadership Excellence. We are immersed in examining the role and person on the church leader. Sometimes these go hand-in-hand; other times, there can be a discongruence. There are moments of joyous epiphany, as well as deep, uncomfortable vulnerability.

I ask for your prayers: for me, for the members of my DMin cohort, for our congregations and places of ministry, and for the faculty.

This is an important quote for all of us to consider:

"Don't dress your soul in someone else's piety."--Samuel Miller (a president of Harvard Divinity School in the 20th century)

Mine, or Yours, or Ours

Happy New Year!

On board our flight to TX, I was really sleepy and would have liked to lay back in my seat for a full nap. Then I thought about how annoying it can be when the person seated ahead of me reclines their seat. I could choose to also lean my seat back to regain the space, but then I would be impinging on the person seated behind me. I could simply say, "Someone did it to me; it's okay for me to do it too." Or I could say, "I choose not to pass on the affront,"and remain seated upright.

This line of thought brought back some of the conversation during Christmas dinner with part of our "chosen" family. Kevin, the new son-in-law, is working on his PhD in Psychology, while Sara his wife is a practicing therapist. We talked about how the tendency in dealing with children or teens who have behavioral issues is to try to "fix" them as though the problem is theirs. More often than not, the "problem child" is more like a canary taken into a mine. The small bird will be the first to succumb to bad air, alerting the human miners that they need to leave, or take measures to clear the air. Too many of us who are parents are reluctant to admit that the issue is our own, and our child is acting out to ease the family anxiety.

From here, my thought process moves out into our society where we tend to point fingers, or more, at others who are the cause, at least in our minds, of the problem. We want them to repent, or turn around, to the "right" way of thinking and acting. Then all will be well, leaving us in peace, and some prosperity. We do not want to admit that we are part of the problem, and that we too need to turn around in our thinking.

As I move into this new year 2015, I want to do a better job of owning my own part of a problem or issue, and working to become a better part of the solution. God's grace is abundant through the Spirit to help me in this, and God's mercy is more than enough to help me when I falter. Thanks be to God.

Matthew 7:3-5

Why do you see the speck in your neighbor’s eye, but do not notice the log in your own eye? Or how can you say to your neighbor, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ while the log is in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your neighbor’s eye.

Joyeux Noël!

In a week that was a flurry of activity to get ready for Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, and traveling to see family, I had a few really low hours on Tuesday. First, my dermatologist, at my annual checkup, decided that a small place on my forehead needed to be biopsied. Since I have had one small basal cell spot removed 8 or 9 years ago, it was worrisome for me. Then I discovered that I had lost one earring from my favorite pair; they were a gift from Jeff. These two bumps in the road were enough to knock me off-balance.

In fact, I was headed for a full-on pity party, so I took the dog out for a long walk. The cool night air was soothing to my spirit. After we got back in, I really dived into the second half of a great book by Joan Chittister, Scarred by Struggle, Transformed by Hope. This helped me gain some perspective.

Perspective deepened as I learned that Zachary, Jeff’s great-nephew, has to have surgery on Friday to repair some factures of the bones around the eye resulting from a head collision in soccer; and that Charlie from church had emergency surgery, and would be in the hospital over Christmas.

While I would truly like to find the earring, it is a very small thing. It does not take away my memories, or any love. Its loss does not diminish my hope in that which is beyond all possessions—the grace and mercy of our God who has chosen to shelter with us, not grasping at divinity, but emptying God’s own Self that we might have life.

So in the name of the One who came to be born among us, the Prince of Peace, I bid you a gift of holy Joy for this day and all days that come after!

Joyeux Noël!

Luke 2:13-14

And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host, praising God and saying, “Glory to God in the highest heaven, and on earth peace

Chi-mas

Back when we still lived in Texas, I remember my father complaining about a sign on a store. It had “Xmas” on it. He did not like that they had replaced “Christ” with an “X.” Years later, when I was more fully submersed in theological studies, I knew that the practice was not new by any means, and did not originate out of disrespect. In Greek, the title “Christ” begins with the letter chi which looks like a “X” to us: Χριστος.

It is important to keep aware that Christmas is about celebrating Christ, the Incarnation, the embodiment of God. Probably the best way is expressed by a meme on Facebook that says: “Want to keep Christ in Christmas? Feed the hungry, clothe the naked, forgive the guilty, welcome the stranger and the unwanted child, care for the ill, love your enemies.”

What would it be to look into the eyes of an alien stranger and gaze as tenderly as we would upon the eyes of a beloved baby? I remember holding my boys as babies for hours and looking so deeply into their eyes that I when I saw my own in the mirror and I would be surprised that mine were green and not brown like Andrew’s or blue like Max’s. Could I possibly look upon a stranger with that much love? I think that is how God looks upon each of us.

Matthew 25:40

And the king will answer them, ‘Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these who are members of my family, you did it to me.’

No One Can Make Me

Yesterday, as I was on the Chain Bridge heading over to a meeting at Wesley Theological Seminary in DC, I had plenty of time to read a bumper sticker on the car in front of me. It read: Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.

Some random thoughts quickly followed after reading it:

·      yes, people can end up committing atrocities because of what they believe—we have seen ample evidence of this in our world;

·      what are absurdities to one person may not be to another—I find it absurd to believe that life has no meaning, while others find my belief in God absurd; and

·      but atrocities are atrocities—enslaving is enslaving no matter what the belief; abuse is abuse no matter what; killing for the sake of power is killing no matter what.

Suddenly that train of thought ran smack into what I think is a guiding principle for me: no one can make me believe anything; no one can make me do anything.

I have a choice regardless of what others might think. In each moment of each day, I have a choice as to what I will do or say. I cannot fall back on Flip Wilson’s excuse, “The devil made me do it.”

When teenaged Harry Potter thought that the prophecy determined his fate, Albus Dumbledore told him that he is not bound by the prophecy. Harry has a choice. He can choose to walk away. Of course, that does not mean that Voldemort will not still hunt him down. In the end, Harry chooses to place himself in the gap in order to protect others.

In real life, a young Jew imprisoned in a concentration camp is severely beaten because he dared eat the lettuce put out for the pet bunny of the wife of the camp’s commandant. He dreams of killing her. When liberation happens, he picks up a gun and goes with his friends to her house. He points it at her with his finger on the trigger. She begs for her life. She had had him beaten over lettuce. His friends urge him to shoot. Finally, he lowers the gun. To kill her would reduce him to the level of Mengele and all the others who tortured, abused and annihilated. He chose life.

When we endure suffering, we have a choice of becoming bitter or trusting. When we face struggles of disappointment, grief, loss, failure and more, we have a choice of whether we curl up and die or move through the struggle and allow something new to grow.

This is not an easy choice by any means. It does not deny the depth and anguish of suffering or struggle. It does not belittle what we have lost. It allows us to build on the loss and move into something of new meaning, new beauty—into hope.

No one can make me believe or do anything; I have a choice. I choose life; I choose hope; I choose love.

Joshua 24:15

Choose this day whom you will serve…; but as for me and my household, we will serve the Lord.

It's Simple Really

           Why do I seem to make complicated that which is truly simple? I can find lots of big words, and grand visions to say what I want.

But if my mission is to be a disciple and make disciples of Jesus Christ for the transformation of the world, then how do I see someone who is a disciple of Jesus? Simply, I think it is to become as much like him as possible. I do that by spending time with him.

Who else do I spend time with? I spend time with people I can enjoy, and with whom I can find enjoyment in myself when I'm with them. I don’t think the original disciples knew what they were in for when they responded to his call. They responded out of a desire to spend time with him. As they spent time with him, their lives were transformed, shaped by their relationship with Jesus. These disciples whose lives were changed by spending time with Jesus eventually helped transform the world—relationship by relationship.

While we are several centuries down that relationship path, the transformation still takes place person by person, relationship by relationship, by spending time together—like a boy who offers a police officer a free hug in the middle of protest that could turn violent.

I still do not know every step of the journey that is ahead. All I know is this one step that is right here. And it’s far more simple than I can ever imagine.

Psalm 133:1

How wonderful, how beautiful,

    when brothers and sisters get along!