Ok, so last night at a dinner party we ended up in a conversation about one thing you can never never have too much of.
A certain snr female pastor, who won't be named, went for: "I can never have too many shoes in my wardrobe. "
I, with all my dignity, gramatical carelessness and honesty, chose: "for me, there can never be too much bottom on a woman."
So how about you? Complete the following sentance for you: "I can never have too..."
Doesn't Christmas seem a long way away - already in our talk at work we are forgetting our summer breaks and thinking of how long it is to the next one at Christmas...
In the daily groan and moan of commuting, crowds, chaos (especially with a tube strike on!) the Church of England have published some prayers for people returning to work after the summer break.
My favourite is this one by Mark Greene (for all those annoying phone calls)...
Brrring, brrring
Father, as I talk to this person, give me a listening ear and a gracious tongue.
As a fool, a Star Wars fan and a thinking christian leader/follower, this has long been both my favouite and most apt quote from the orignial Star Wars trilogy. And I love Jon's cartoon!
I confess that my gutter mind also really enjoys these sexual innuendo quotes from the trilogy. My partucular fave: "you came in that thing, you're braver than I thought." Only just ahead of : "pull up Wedge, you're not doing any good back there..."
Speaking of quotes (but not innuendo) It also reminds me of John Wimber, the guy who established the Vineyard Movement that I am part of, who used to say:
"I'm a fool for Christ, who are you a fool for?"
Of course John was only paraphrasing St Paul, who in turn was picking up on on this one theme that runs through the bible...
My answer to John's Q would be - i'm often a fool, sometimes its for Christ. How about you?
Christians should find it easy to consider/acknowledge or even go as far as admit that they might be wrong - was the thought that I had this morning. Swiftly followed by the question: 'ok so why do I find it so hard then?'
I was wrong once [upon a time]...
What do I mean - well I was thinking that the most natural entry point in entering the kingdom of God is the one where we repent, or re-think how we are doing life and come to a crisis of realisation that maybe we are not doing so well - heading the wrong way down the right road as Jason described it in his talk yesterday.
Now however that has been framed in the decision making process is not really the point - the point is at some point I made a decision to follow Jesus - or to put it crudely i said ok my kingdom is pretty crap, small, crowded squalid place where i reign and i've heard/read/felt/experienced something different Jesus which seems to be your Kingdom and therefore I abdicate my throne and my kingdom and instead want to join/be part of/live in your kingdom.
I admitted i was wrong/limited/shallow/oppressed/selfish/arrogant/greedy/cruel/unkind and consumeristic and more than that i participated in a confederation of kingdoms called 'society/culture' where we shared all these things in common - we had a simple constitution which said...
We each have the right to do whatever we want that makes us happy as long as it doesn't mess too much with our individual happiness [and even then it will limited by our historical understanding of protecting my rights to health/wealth/possession]. With that caveat I won't tell you how to live your life and you don't tell me how to live yours...
Your kingdom come - but i'll take the franchise option of my will still being done!
But here is the nub, I wonder after making that initial confession that I was wrong and deciding that I needed God whether I just changed the name on the outside but fell straight back into my old practices - instead of one form of cultural acknowledgement i now had another, instead of moving into God's kingdom I set up shop on the border and took the best of God - he will look after me, sort things out for me, keep me safe, healthy, wealthy, problem free whilst continuing to have the best of my life before - it's about me and my happiness.
Yes of course this living still required pay offs, compromises and becoming fluent in two forms of language/lifestyle and if anyone asked of course i was fully in - look i bashed the minorities who christians were supposed to bash, i had made my confession, i tried to twist a few arms of people to join me but in reality it was still my kingdom, loosely affiliated to God's, mainly in name only.
In my kingdom i drifted away from that original thought that maybe i was wrong, maybe i needed to continue the process of rethinking, repenting, reconsidering and instead I became about being right in my new affiliation - I found a nice comfortable place of doing what i wanted and any challenge to that was met by the reaction: 'who the hell are you to tell me how to live my life, what I should believe and how i should live that belief!'
Over recent years experience has shown me that I have been wrong about many things - that I my own actions are so often rooted in my own insecurity and addictions, my selfish need and more than that i participate in a faith whose systems inherently reinforce that...
I have come back to the point where I started from which is that I am often as wrong about being a christian as I was as about being a secular member of society - i have made both experiences about me and my needs, about doing things that make me happy with a veneer of respectability of doing so in the name of God...
So I wonder....
... if instead of insisting on my own rightness i became open to consider that maybe i was at best only partly right? I wonder if i continued to rethink/repent in my life whether i would be open to letting it be about how i acted in my marriage, at work, who i voted for, what i wore, how i played, who i hang out with, how i care for the communities i am part of including this planet?
...whether that ongoing consideration that I have a tendency to get things wrong would help me be less insistent that MY way was the right way - whether that was my way of doing church or anything else?
...if being more humble would make me more open to advice about how to live my life, would make me more open to sharing who I am rather than who I think I should be, make me transparent as to the pain/selfishness/addiction/stress/tension/hang ups that I have and need help with but also make me more loving in reaching out to people with their own issues/stresses - to care for them as people made in God's image rather than as projects to shape into that of my own and assimilate into my kingdom [so i feel better/smugger/more righteous about being me]?
...that being wrong is an opportunity to be a work in progress rather than have to feel i am a finished article? That life is about learning, seeking, searching for God and he is about finding me in growing depth and transformation?
...that i might have not have all the answers, or even all the questions makes me wonder if rather than seeking to enforce a particular practise/way i should be more open, supportive, encouraging of people who are different to me? To what end am I right is less important to the Q is this helping someone find/connect/express their faith in Jesus in practise rather than per my own preferences/experience/choices? Is polarity - i'm right/you're wrong a concept that should be on the way out and instead maybe something that says where are you right, where can i learn from you?
...what the impact of reflecting on whether we are still being wrong would mean to our gatherings/structures/systems as a faith, how could we change them and how could they help us to be more humble, open, God seeking?
...that being open to being wrong by myself and my tendency to self determine in favour of me is not an invitation to seek to participate in a community? to encourage confession? to support accountability? To seek to make my life not so much about just me but to encourage me to open up to others, to seek to love and care for people and in return to do the same for me - so that we can challenge each other and ask the Q how are we living life? Are we living out what we believe? More are we living out the practise of life, the marks that Jesus suggests that we should? And encourage, love, support and spur another on to do so?
...any more that you can think of/would like to add for you?
I read something yesterday which both so well written and deeply moving - please do go and read Molls' story of her journey with a travelling companion called shame [part one, part two and part three]
Shame, fear, regret, duty, selfishness and insescurity seem to be the things that in my life have tripped me up and held me back. More than that though i feel for the times that I know i have used these dark warped feelings to manipulate others to get what I want or out of a sense that it was for their own good... heh can you see how easy it is for me to get into a cycle on these things, take out my own imperfections on others, reduce people down to my level or lower so I feel good about myself for awhile...
I'm thinking about writing about addiction and some of my own addictions soon - one of the most helpful and healing things has been learning to admit my own secred shames, the power of confession within a community of love, grace and acceptance has been life changing.
But back to shame and the way we as a religion, a community, a society, a ideology cast shame - how we delininiate who is in, who is ok and who is worthless, who should be ashamed and therefore hide... I'm just reminded of the story of the prostiture who washed Jesus feet with her tears which suggests to me that those who cast shame on others, that shame rebounds on them - in Jesus view this woman has taken the honour of the host and leaves with Jesus recognition of her as a person whereas the other guests are revealed to be status concerned shallow people, more worried about wrong associations and their own right image - not aware at all of how great their own need is for forgiveness so instead they radiate ingrattitude.
Jesus again gate crashing through those shame barriers and asking me - can i be pleased that he loves and forgives everyone... more than that, instead of setting myself up in a higher position can i see and appreciate my own deep need for forgivenss and to extend that forgiveness, radical loving, accpeting, embracing grace as a follower of Christ - the liberating King?
Dan Kimball has this great post asking whether all the current interest in social justice is just the trendy thang to be doing at the moment - a great Q which has pricked my conscience to write this response to Dan's thoughts...
The scary thing is that most of us (including me) do care for the poor through consuming an event or a product- so I go watch 'live 8,' wear the white wrist band for make poverty history (or if we have a blog put it in the corner), go buy a red GAP tee using my red american express, give a few $ to some guy collecting on the corner get my sticker and feel suitably smug that I am helping the poor - "heh what did you do?" "I bought the live 8 dvd box set!" Wow that is so awesom, can I watch it after you?" etc...
cont...
I've done another guest spot at Jason Clark's blog entitled Living in sin/living in love: the both/and reality of cultural accommodating Christians? Here's a taster for you:
"We live in a world full of shades of grey where these good/bad characteristics will be interwined. I can also see how christian culture could be bad in the same sense that the culture of the world can be bad (e.g. the hurt men have caused women through blame and opression), even if it is dressed up in more holy sounding clothes. Conversely I can also see how sometimes the culture of the world can/will have good values/norms/institutions/artifacts (closer to God’s heart/dream/longing) than those found in most churches, e.g. equality between men and women or environmantal compassion and justice. In that case ought my response be one of accomodating with the world - or at least going back to bibleview to see whether that has become too constrained and here is God using the world to beckon me on into being part of God’s dream for the world"
...is a question that has been around for a long time and one that I just remember that Pontius Pilot asks before asking the crowd whether they want Jesus to live or not. Infact it is a fascinating exchange, with Jesus saying that is a living testiment of the truth and that all who love the truth are on his side...
It reminds me again that tuth is not an abstraction, an intellectual argument, a set of propostions or even an orthodoxy - truth is not a what truth is a who - a person, Jesus. Therefore for me to know anything about truth it is about having a relationship with him.
My question then is what does it mean to love truth, or be on the side of truth or even to know something of the truth?
First up hello if you're visiting from Jason Clark's site or cos you've been following the 'why men hate church' conversation - have felt its a full time blog the last few days but some awesome conversations/thoughts and reflections going on over there.
Secondly I'm very excited as I've discovered my purpose in life - so excited that i couldn't keep it out of the title - i'm all about modelling imperfection. We had some great friends over for dinner on saturday night and one of them who is a speech therapist was telling us about a case where the mother was really uptight and the kid was scared to do anything - the advice she got was to model imperfection, to show her child it was ok to make a mess sometimes, or be unsure, or to not get things right by doing that exactly herself, recognising those moments when she was a silly mummy. Apparently she did this and the next time our friend saw them the kid was really happy and relaxed.
It struck me that after living a life of 16 yrs of trying to model perfection all i did was look good on the outside and be a total mess on the inside. I just did a rather therapeutic list of good/bad life changing moments for me - what i realise now is how freeing and how hard it is to be honest, to admit my mistakes, failures, weaknesses... not cos i love being so crap, or finding life so hard but cos when i admit these things i am...
So for awhile i have decided to model my imperfections, not to revel in them but just to reveal them...
Ah holiday! 2 weeks off work. 2 weeks with the family. 2 days of being a single parent whilst Debs is taking a mini break - I am more full of admiration for the sheer toughness of looking after 2 boys than ever!
Strange thing a holiday - we're not going away anywhere but we have a few day trips planned. Going to see a few people... and some jobs to do in and around the house... sounds like hard work :)
Am thinking though that this is an opportunity to live life different, its a break from one set of routines and experiences and a chance to live at a different pace in a different way. I love this poem from Howies - gives me inspiration for my holiday philosphy... time to reset myself:
We are creatures of habit.
Of routine.
We are all in our own groove.
So try new. Try different. Try crazy.
Try unexpected.
Like punk? Try opera.
Wear black? Try white.
Love bubbles? Try still.
Speak Spanish? Learn Chinese.
Love to ride? Try running.
Always grumpy? Try happy.
Like science fiction? Try romance.
Never cook? Bake some bread.
Forever cynical? Try love. Try Trust. Try hope.
Take a different route to work.
Say yes when you mean no.
Wear your watch on the other hand.
Leave the comfort zone.
Recent Comments