Grow Mercy

Giving Alms and Blowing Horns

2 comments January 29th, 2007

"So whenever you give alms, do not sound a trumpet…" (Matthew 6)

When I was a boy attending a Baptist Church–in small town Saskatchewan–the yearly giving amount of every adult male was published and posted at the back of the church. By my recollection, by the time I was a teen the practise had ceased, but I have some reason to believe that it was the cause of wounds and hurt for years to come.

I’m guessing, but I suppose that some zealous treasurer got it in his head, and convinced the deacons, that it would keep people giving. Perhaps it did. My family was poor and my dad’s name was three quarters down the page. Still more than a faithful accomplishment.

’Envy’ by Damien Jones

Thing is, if I had had the means, I would have loved seeing my name surface near the top of the register; and I would have relished watching the faces scan the annual posting. I would have given alms just because I knew the "trumpet" was going to be sounded for me.

In my weak moments, which come often enough, when I give I want others to know. And same principle–when I’ve screwed up, or when I’m being miserly, I hide as best I can. When I’ve made something I think is good, or done something commendable, my poor heart can hardly stand not having at least a few people know.

But is this really wretched? If it is, why? Why is it wrong? What harm does it do? Why are we warned against it?

Here’s what I think: Jesus was probably sad for having to give the instruction. Because he wasn’t against celebrating the goodness of good deeds done, and praising the people who did them. What he was aware of is the nature of human desire and how this desire is related to human rivalry and violence.

My granddaughter…what can I say?

If it was the case that our "selves" were not formed through contention and competition, no admonition would be necessary. We could all hear that trumpet sound as a call to come celebrate. If our desires were free from distortion, our trumpets would be blown with the innocence of a child who runs to her mother clutching a page full of crayon scribbled sky with a sun beaming down on a stick figure in a triangle dress.

What parent would tell this child to stop "practising her piety in front of others," or to stay in her room and draw "in secret?"

No, the reason for Jesus’ provisional warning here is because our desires are skewed and we aren’t innocent and until we begin moving in that direction, we need ways to contain the demeaning provocation and generation of envy, ways to circumvent any rivalrous response, and to negate wounds and harm.

But mercifully and joyously, it is the case that we can be re-tuned and renewed. We can–all too slowly of course–gain the eyes and ears of a child. We can enter a second naiveté where when someone else’s talent shines like a star it will create in us delight, not envy. Where blowing ones horn has not one ounce of meaning.

Technorati Tags: Matthew 6, Giving, Piety, Envy, Desire, Christianity, Violence

Red-Letter Christians

7 comments January 28th, 2007

It was a secular Jewish Country-and-Western disc jockey in Nashville, Tennessee, who during a radio interview he was doing with Jim Wallis happened to say, “So, you’re one of those Red-Letter Christians - you know - who’s really into those verses in the New Testament that are in red letters!”

If you got one of those Gideon New Testaments when you were in grade school you’ll recall that all the words of Jesus–like the sermon on the mount–were in red.

Reading Don Retson’s interview with Tony Campollo gives you an idea of the scope of this "new breed?" of evangelical, or Red-letter Christian, that doesn’t want to be identified as an "Evangelical."

While not always fond of labels, I think I might be able to live with being labeled something like a Red-letter Christian. And even though I would go farther than Campolo et al on some issues, and disagree on others, I get a sense that I wouldn’t be judged for doing so. Maybe even encouraged to explore the direction in which I’m pulled.

There at least seems to be room to breath here.

Technorati Tags: Red-Letter Christians, Don Retson, Tony Campolo, Jim Wallis, Evangelical

Offenceless

Add comment January 27th, 2007

When John heard in prison what the Messiah was doing, he sent word by his disciples and said to him, "Are you the one who is to come, or are we to wait for another?" Jesus answered them, "Go and tell John what you hear and see: the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the poor have good news brought to them. And blessed is anyone who takes no offence at me." (Matthew 11)

Jesus had been sending out healers not organizers, messengers not managers. And John had heard about it. So John, having been imprisoned by Herod because of Herod’s jealousy, sent a runner to question Jesus. The question he wanted answered was wether or not Jesus was the anticipated one–the One that he had initially assumed was the deliverer, the messiah.

You’ll recall that not long before there was no question in John’s mind as to Jesus’ messiahship. John had baptized Jesus, had said that he was unworthy to tie the sandals of Jesus.

But now, languishing in prison, failing to see tangible progress of the "Kingdom" he envisioned, John was having second thoughts about Jesus’ methods. But Jesus sees behind John’s question, and responds with his list of active compassion and gently adds, "blessed is anyone who takes no offence at me." And that, to me, is the story here.

We count ourselves among the blessed offenceless ones quick enough. We don’t give it a second thought that we might take offence at Jesus. We think there’s no possibility of envy here. That there’s no possibility of rivalry. Jesus, we suppose, presents no acquisitive temptation for us.

But that is our blindness. Our blindness to what the incarnation is about, and our blindness of how we carry on the affairs of life. The deeper wisdom here is what Christ saw going on in John, and so in us all. That perennial slipping into offence-taking.

It is our way. We take offence. It’s where we go to secure our plans, our methods, our beliefs our egos.

I take offence. I take offence at menial things. Worse, I even take offence at the gifts and the goodness of other people.

Every time I grasp at securing something like my reputation, securing a place in a group through scapegoating another person or group, I take offence at Jesus. Every time I disparage charity and talent and good work because it happens to come out of a quarter I’m not in agreement with, I take offence at Jesus. And I am rendered un-blessed.

Being un-blessed is not something pronounced upon me. It’s the sad and natural outcome of separating myself from others through resentment. My only possibility of happiness, that is, of blessedness, is modeling the one in whom there was not one offence-taking cell.

It’s been my experience that when I get down to slowly–always sporadically–adopting Jesus as my model, I find myself taking less and less offence…at whatever or whoever. And here, in the un-resentment, is where seeing and hearing and healing and good news happen. Here in the beyond-offence-taking is where I find myself genuinely delighting with those who delight. And if the gospel hope is real, isn’t this where humanity is heading?

Technorati Tags: John the Baptist, Resentment, Envy, Rivalry, Christianity, Peace

Water - Mercy and Mystery

6 comments January 25th, 2007

…while a wind from God swept over the face of the waters. (Genesis)

All pictures from Grassi Lakes

I’m tamed by tap-water. Water in pipes loses it’s meaning. Until it stops flowing, or is contaminated. Then something of it’s primary-ness returns to memory.

Where there is water there is life. (The Martian probe’s first assignment was to find water.)

Water sustains and destroys. It is creative and chaotic. It is mercy and mystery.

We wonder at the workings and intricacies of water. (The structure of water, its peculiar properties, is still a major question in chemistry and physics.)

Water is holy. With it and through it we are birthed, nourished, anointed, baptized, and cleansed.

Water as symbol is restless. Symbol readily translates a reality.

Some believe water carries ancient memories and present messages. I don’t know.

I do know how walking on an ocean beach with the surf at my side makes me feel. I know how standing by a river or a half frozen pond or sitting by a brook makes me feel. But I wouldn’t know how to describe that feeling except as a kind of deep hopeful melancholy.

But these words also fail.

Technorati Tags: Water meditation, Mystery of water, Grassi Lakes Canmore, Beauty, Peace

Power behind Eyes

2 comments January 23rd, 2007

But if you had known what this means, ’I desire mercy and not sacrifice,’ you would not have condemned the guiltless. (Matthew 12)

Four AM and an argument starts in the alley. There’s words. One that stands out. And there’s various themes on the word, various activities introduced in relation to this word that works hard as verb, adverb, and adjective.

Besides this there’s lots of banging on the dumpster below our window. Not the regular bottle-picking banging. Loud angry banging. And I’m wondering when a neighbour might yell out a window for them to shut-up and leave…a sure way of prolonging the fracas.

After awhile they go away. Voices fade as they move across the parking lot, still wrangling, yelling, interjecting. ’Fuck’ works fine as a noun as well.

I don’t go back to sleep. I stew instead. I accuse them…charge them with disturbing the peace, with dereliction, with having a three word vocabulary.

I get over myself, barely.

What do I know? What brought them to cursing and banging out their frustration in the middle of the night? Were they fighting over bottles? Perhaps. There was a woman. She was keeping up to the squalling. Were they fighting over her? Perhaps.

Is this as deep as I see?

Is there mercy enough in me to imagine them as children? Or do I see them only as projects fit for a program? Do I take up a position about them? Do I sacrifice them through objectification? Or do I show some mercy…and so offer myself mercy?

What were they like when they were five years old? Who did they look to? Who loved them? Who didn’t? Who did they try to love? Who’s desires did they imitate? Who’s desires did they acquire? Did they acquire the ability to love?

And if they never really acquired the capability for charity, for love, can they be guilty of anything besides being noisy and occasionally obnoxious?

What power is behind the eyes that see them as guiltless?

Technorati Tags: Mercy, Love, Guilt, Charity, Beauty, Peace, Dumpsters, Bottle picking

Canmore Nordic Centre - Missing Nature

Add comment January 22nd, 2007

We walked through the Canmore Nordic Centre. Few eyes met us.

Deb and I felt our bulky cotton sweaters, non-coordinated fleeces, and aging hiking boots weigh heavy. Felt…not so much like cross-country-alpine-paupers, more like the vastly-uninformed, or more like aliens.

Yet all around us the brightly woven hats, the raspberry tinted goggles–shielding the eyes we couldn’t catch–the spandex and smart-wool, the flashing titanium poles, the slip-sleek skis slung over shoulders, attested to a kind of surreal alienism of its own. The earth as giant gymnasium. But that’s me…the way I like to frame it.

Still, it is possible to be in nature and not notice. Not want to notice. Because the created earth can crack open a soul. The moving water and shifting light expose our mortality. The rock reminds us of our peculiar permanence. Everything in nature points here and away.

Me, I live in glass and steel and cement, too far from the earth. I walk with my wife in the river valley to reconnect. And on occasion, we come to the valleys and mountains for a terra firma transfusion.

We left the Nordic Centre and headed for the hills.

We met the late Lawrence Grassi. Looking at his hands holding the wood rail, it comes to me that there is divinity in this dirt. I imagine that if he got any closer to the earth he would turn to loam.

He gave himself to it. He scratched out the trails we walked on. Lowered logs over rivulets. And I imagine sat by his ponds for hours. Listening to the water drop away, listening to the rock wall crack on a hot day. Dust to dust. Trust to trust.

Squirrel Midden

Technorati Tags: Canmore Nordic Centre, Mount Lawrence Grassi, Bow Valley, Hiking, Beauty, Peace

Mercy of Mountains

2 comments January 20th, 2007

It’s a short sometimes steep 2 Km hike with a 300 meter climb to the Grassi Lakes…ponds really. Mount Lawrence Grassi and Ha Ling Peak look down on us as we climb. Unfolding to the west is the Goat Range, and across the Bow valley the Grotto and Charles Stuart mountains shade Canmore townsite.

Offering of mountains

Blessing of mountains

Peace of mountains

Message of mountains

Mountains can blossom in any season

Simplicity of Mountains

The silence of mountains unsettle then shelter your soul

Technorati Tags: Canmore, Grassi Lakes hike, Mount Lawrence Grassi, Bow Valley, Ha Ling Peak, Grotto Mountain, Beauty, Peace

Three Nuns

1 comment January 19th, 2007

I was just informed that the "Three Sisters" were originally called the "Three Nuns" because they were "veiled" by snowfall. They were said to be kneeling in prayer, and asking God’s blessing over the valley below.

The last time I was in Canmore there was no Starbucks. Now, happily, there is not only a Starbucks here (forgive me for being a corporate pawn in this instance), but from the Eastern window you can see the Three Sisters.

It’s overcast today. That’s okay, there’s something wonderfully mystical about shifting patterns of cloud at play on edges and faces of mountains.

Three Sisters from Canmore Starbucks

Technorati Tags: Three Sisters, Three Nuns, Canmore, Beauty, Peace

Redeem the Time

Add comment January 18th, 2007

Anticipating a couple days holiday, starting today, I still find myself here…early…with just one other person…in Starbucks. I suppose the routine of coming here, and the coffee, the journaling, is not merely a habit–it’s that to be sure, but it’s also something that puts up a scaffold on my day.

Annie Dillard said something like, "A schedule defends from chaos and whim. It is a peace and a haven set into the wreck of time." Another favorite author said, "So teach us to count our days that we may gain a wise heart."

This is a hard lesson for those of us resistant to schedules, agendas, dockets. But it’s just as difficult for those that have lives over-run by lists and clocks. Uber-schedules and no schedules are both ways to avoid life. Both ends keep our minds off the moment. Keep us unmindful. Keep us living ahead of ourselves, or behind, seldom sunk into the moment, outside of which we are robbed of contentment. Because it’s in the moment where there is enough. Where there is a surfeit of "being."

I came across some lines by Walt Whitman that are in some way related to all this. I wish I could say I recalled them from "Leaves of Grass" but instead I found this quoted in E.B. White’s essay in "The Elements of Style." Such is my life. Rag and bone collector.

In any case the quote is in sharp relief for those of us who fall back into living ahead or behind ourselves, and so wanting more of we know not what.

I have perceived that to be with those I like is enough,
To stop in company with the rest at evening is enough,
To be surrounded by beautiful, curious, breathing, laughing flesh is enough.

I particularly like the laughing flesh bit. It reminds me of my late uncle Mike who lived in Chicago and descended on Saskatchewan every summer. I still see him walking the pasture fence line every morning and sun-soaked afternoon, with that blue polka-dot handkerchief tied to his bald head. On him the thing looked regal.

And in the evening, at the kitchen table, I’m full of something like delight, as I watch his whole body and especially his shoulders shake uncontrollably every time he laughed, which was often. It was like he was created to laugh. It was his vocation. I imagine God joined him every chance he got.

So now Deb and I will take a slow drive to Canmore; and if the sky is clear, we will look for a long time, at the Three Sisters, and wonder at the ancient beauty and breath and laughter that brought them to be.

Live your day. Be well.

Technorati Tags: Annie Dillard, Psalm 90, E. B. White, Walt Whitman, Time, Beauty, Peace

Detoxifying Worship

3 comments January 16th, 2007

Can I be so audacious as to address this to the practitioners of the worship service who in less than two weeks will come to our city to train local worship leaders on the "high and holy art of worship?" Knowing that everyone involved in this event is sincere and good-hearted, and so risking offense, overstatement and misrepresentation, I still want to present a side of worship too easily overlooked.

Pictures are from Break Forth

"If worship is the high and holy art of spiritual architecture, Arlen Salte is one of our greatest living architects." Dr. Leonard Sweet, Author

Now I’m sure, asked the question again, about worship, Dr. Sweet would expand and qualify. (Although I’m not sure if he would see Fadil Fejzic as a true worshiper. See yesterday’s post.) My point with this quote is simply to point out that in practice, contemporary Christian worship is understood to be about producing an atmosphere of high anticipation, a sweep of holy enthusiasm, a spirit of godly unity. Also, while it is theologically acknowledged that the One worshiped is already and always present, what is practiced is producing a mood that helps God show up. Contemporary worship, it appears, needs orchestration, needs an architect.

In a broader sense, we are scarcely aware of how, and how often, we are caught up in the architecture of worship. From the carefully crafted emotional pitches for products that ensure us a correct lifestyle, to the religiously charged political party rally, we engage in worship. It’s a high and unholy industry. And we are all susceptible to being duped by the production of ersatz worship. All susceptible to being duped by the blanketing effect of mimetic fascination. And under this blanket we are scarcely aware of how worship can become a form of exclusion and a prelude to violence.

I remember the irresistible pull of belonging to the right group of Christians. I remember how much I thought I needed this. And at this distance I can now remember moving with a certain self-righteous priggishness that knows itself to be on the inside–countenanced of course by a veneer of humility. It happens.

That’s why distinguishing genuine worship from worship makes all the difference in the world. There is nothing inherently wrong with contemporary styles of Christian worship. Nothing wrong with emotional and spirited celebration of God. But when there exists or when there is encouraged, a sense of moral distinction within the worshiping group a "spirited" worship service can produce a lie. In this case it produces an abstraction, a reduction of particularities, a spirit of sameness as opposed to real unity, an enclave instead of an unfolding congregation. And an enclave is always defined by what its not, what it is against and above.

When Christian worship subtly links itself to patriotism, or leans into pietism and moralism, worshipers can soon identify themselves not simply as believers, but as "true believers." And the category "true believers" is only sustainable as being over and against what isn’t "true." That is, over Muslims, Jews, gays and lesbians, atheists, communists, Catholics, Protestants, and so on. And as Christian history shows, this is tinder for violence. Of course worship, in this sense of group-defining architecture, works for any assemblage and in any direction.

But in real Christian worship no high or holy architecture is needed. There is nothing to produce. Everything has been concluded. Worshiping Christians are nothing more than witnesses to something done and transpired. Witnesses to the forgiving victim. The victim who has absorbed our exclusion and victimizing violence and returned to us forgiveness. And in this forgiveness our ever again needing to receive ourselves by being part of an us against them is undone.

Genuine Worship is a detoxification process. It’s about releasing our fascination with who’s in and who’s out, and letting go of our obsessive competitiveness that reduces us to shadows of each other. It’s about escaping the grip of this acquisitive mimetic fascination with one another in order to truly encounter and be open to one another.

Listen to what James Alison says (in who’s debt I am):

True Worship leads to a slow, patient discovery of being able to like people in their bizarre particularities, and see the beauty in those things, not abstract from them. Just as true friendship requires time and stretching and self-examination, and trust building, and vulnerability and time wasted doing nothing in particular (Undergoing God).

The test of true worship then is finding yourself beginning to like others specifically within their peccadillos and annoyances and not as "loving the brotherhood" as abstracted out of their personalities through a grand unifying purpose, Christian or otherwise.

What this means is that real Christian worship is relaxing, and in some sense entirely unremarkable. It is ascetical. It is the long discipline of removing whatever distracts from inhabiting the hidden, unassuming presence of Jesus who is simply here. It is about becoming unexcited, unaroused, un-fascinated, so as to grow attentive to what and who is around us. And in this restful attentiveness flourishes true hospitality and peace. And this is always contemporary.

Here’s a little litmus test: If you’ve been attending worship for years and still find yourself consistently duking it out at church business meetings, still find yourself wishing not altogether pleasant things upon old irascible Mrs. Smith, then stop going to worship, and begin Worshiping.

Technorati Tags: Break Forth Canada, Leonard Sweet, Arlen Salte, Worship, James Alison, Peace