[Rough Draft]

Voices

2019-03-16T18:49:00.000-04:00

Who am I listening to today?
Keller on what gospel-centered ministry looks like
Greg Thompson's "Renewing Ethos" talk

Manifesto

2009-06-18T09:36:00.004-04:00

Love the quick profit, the annual raise,
vacation with pay. Want more
of everything ready-made. Be afraid
to know your neighbors and to die.
And you will have a window in your head.
Not even your future will be a mystery
any more. Your mind will be punched in a card
and shut away in a little drawer.
When they want you to buy something
they will call you. When they want you
to die for profit they will let you know.

So, friends, every day do something
that won't compute. Love the Lord.
Love the world. Work for nothing.
Take all that you have and be poor.
Love someone who does not deserve it.
Denounce the government and embrace
the flag. Hope to live in that free
republic for which it stands.
Give your approval to all you cannot
understand. Praise ignorance, for what man
has not encountered he has not destroyed.

Ask the questions that have no answers.
Invest in the millennium. Plant sequoias.
Say that your main crop is the forest
that you did not plant,
that you will not live to harvest.
Say that the leaves are harvested
when they have rotted into the mold.
Call that profit. Prophesy such returns.

Put your faith in the two inches of humus
that will build under the trees
every thousand years.
Listen to carrion - put your ear
close, and hear the faint chattering
of the songs that are to come.
Expect the end of the world. Laugh.
Laughter is immeasurable. Be joyful
though you have considered all the facts.
So long as women do not go cheap
for power, please women more than men.
Ask yourself: Will this satisfy
a woman satisfied to bear a child?
Will this disturb the sleep
of a woman near to giving birth?

Go with your love to the fields.
Lie down in the shade. Rest your head
in her lap. Swear allegiance
to what is nighest your thoughts.
As soon as the generals and the politicos
can predict the motions of your mind,
lose it. Leave it as a sign
to mark the false trail, the way
you didn't go. Be like the fox
who makes more tracks than necessary,
some in the wrong direction.
Practice resurrection.

Stockholm Syndrome

2009-05-19T14:37:00.002-04:00

Well, this is what I was doing much of the morning.

How do we soar?

2009-05-18T14:22:00.002-04:00

Ueli Gegenschatz is out of his bleedin' mind. But what he's able to do in a wingsuit is beautiful. As I listened to his talk, I was taken by the following quote:

Extreme sports, top level, like this is only possible if you practice step-by-step if you really work hard on your skill and your knowledge. Of course, you need to be in physical, very good condition, so I'm training a lot. You need to have the best possible equipment. And, probably the most important, is you have to work mental skills, mental preparation. And all this to come as close as possible to the human dream of being able to fly.

Is it just me, or don't the same principles seem to hold true for discipleship and the virtuous life? Train, use the best possible equipment, prepare mentally, all toward the end of one day being able to soar. Sounds suspiciously like a self-salvation project, but we do have to pull some of the load in this divine/human synergistic endeavor that is "being conformed to Jesus" and growing into the divine life.

Vid of the Vig

2009-04-14T13:48:00.002-04:00

Happy Easter!

A friend and chorister posted some video from Saturday night's Great Vigil @ ASA. It's about 20 minutes long and runs from the Litany of the Saints in the still-darkened church through the Gloria and the Gospel. Thanks, Chris. Pretty cool stuff.

Crisis/Krisis

2009-03-31T10:04:00.003-04:00

Renee' gave up TV for Lent, which pretty much means I gave up TV, too. But I sneak enough minutes during the day, and I listen to enough podcasts, read enough papers to know that the #1 story on the news is, as it has been for some time now, the "Crisis in the American economy." A mortgage crisis; failing banks; businesses bleeding money; round after round of layoffs; modern-day shanty towns springing up from California to Georgia.

It's crisis time, and people are ticked off.

Fr. Davenport's sermon on Sunday (not up here yet, but it will be soon) talked about the justified anger against the "Masters of the Universe" financial guys who bear a large part of the responsibility for this crisis. He confessed to secretly (turns out it won't stay a secret long after you preach about it) wanting to see them paraded in shame wearing manacles and riding bulls from Wall Street to Central Park, a perp walk complete with jesters, floats and balloons. Or, he'd settle for some of them going to jail. I can't even begin to understand the complexities of the economics involved, but I'll admit I'd like to see some get-back too. I'd like to have some justice; let's have some righteousness raining down over here, thank you very much.

But what are our options, justice-wise, in this crisis?

Off the top of my head, it seems the first option is that nothing happens. No justice @ all, not even a head fake to it. Simply let people walk scot free. Some would say that's the Christian thing to do, right? WWJD and all that? But that's viscerally unsatisfying because it's not fair. No matter how much we believe God = Love, that kind of emphasis on mercy and glossing over wrongdoing offends our sense of justice, so let's ditch that option. The second option is @ least some kind of justice now. Mete something out to somebody -- jail terms, restitution, stoning, the dunking stool, whatever. Get medieval. But the problem is that lots of people (especially rich people) don't get their just desserts in this life, so that's unsatisfying, too. So a third option: Justice not in this life, but in the next one. This is how it goes: The Madoffs of the world die some day, the first sound they hear after it goes dark is the "doink doink" that signals that Law and Order is coming on, and they find themselves 'cuffed up and in a courtroom. God gavels the proceedings to order, hears evidence about greed and Ponzi schemes and fraudulent derivatives (of course, an expert economist would give testimony here b/c probably not even God understands how derivatives work), renders a guilty verdict and sentences the defendants to a gazillion years in Purgatory. But there's a problem w/ that option, too -- If those guys get justice, I should expect to get it, too. And I'm just as culpable, only to a different degree. I haven't bilked investors of billions of dollars, but I've been a user. I've gotten over. I've lied, cheated, stolen, hated. So, if they're screwed, I'm screwed.

But my hope is that there's another option. It's an option w/ justice (God's holiness cannot allow sin, whether it's mine or Bernie Madoff's, to go unpunished), but it's merciful, too. It's an option rooted in "crisis," or, more accurately, it's rooted in "krisis," the Greek term John uses to record Jesus' words just hours before his arrest, trial and lynching. Jesus tells his friends: "Now is the judgment (krisis) of this world; now the ruler of this world be cast out." (John 12.31) There was a time when justice and mercy met. In the "now" of Jesus' death, the sins of the world were judged, and the punishment was meted out on God himself.

It's really the only option that satisfies. And, ultimately, it's the only one that can free my soul from bitterness and hatred toward Fr. Davenport's Masters of the Universe because, when I see the justice of the cross and understand my own implication in it, in short, when I see grace, it drives me to mercy. Instead of being driven by lust for vengeance and comeuppance, we can start to feel something of the mercy that Tim Keller describes as "the spontaneous, superabounding love which comes from an experience of the grace of God, [and t]he deeper the experience of the free grace of God, the more generous we must become." (Ministries of Mercy, p. 63.)

Slack-jawed again

2009-03-28T10:48:00.002-04:00

On the plane to California (Virgin America rocks, btw) I watched 3 TED Talks, all of which were just great. If I could talk the way those guys talk, I'd be a better preacher, I can tell you that. In one talk, ocean explorer Robert Ballard shared his obvious enthusiasm for exploration and his goal to infect kids w/ that same enthusiasm. What caught my attention was the look on the face of this girl @ 17:10 of the talk. Ballard says of her: "When you get a jaw drop you can inform."

Indeed. And the same thing should work for enthusiasm about Jesus, should it not? If people (and by "people," I mean pretty much "me") heard the gospel and got that slack-jawed look, seems like they'd be hungry to know who Jesus is, what God is doing in history, how the redemption of creation in general can sweep me and my neighborhood up in particular.

Anyway, I had been thinking about that look off and on for a few days, and when I couldn't sleep last night after the 4.5 hour flight back to DC, I flipped through Donald Miller's Jazz Notes, which a friend had loaned me. Miller writes about his friend, Alan, who went around the U.S. asking questions of religious leaders. This time, it was the following anecdote that caught my attention:

It all sounded boring except for one visit he made to a man named Bill Bright, the president of a big ministry. Alan said Bill was a big man, full of life, who listened without shifting his eyes. Alan asked a few questions, closing with "What does Jesus mean to you?"

Bill Bright could not answer this question. He just started to cry. He sat there in his big chair at his big desk and wept.

When Alan told this story, I wondered what it was like to love Jesus that way. And I wondered, quite honestly, if Dr. Bright was nuts, or if he really knew Jesus in a personal way, so well that he could cry at the mere mention of his name. I realized that I wanted to know Jesus like that. With my heart, not just my head. I felt like that would be the key to something. (p. 118-19.)

Then I had two images in my head: A middle-school girl awed @ seeing something for the first time, and a grown man reduced to tears @ the mention of a name he'd heard a million times. Somehow they're linked in my brain now. I suspect if I could just get an inkling of the depth of the love of God, if Jesus would "happen to" me like that, I'd get slack-jawed again. And I'd hope the inevitable result would be a swelling of the heart something like Bill must've had. And heart-swelling love like that drives a body to do strange things, feats out of the ordinary, cross-taking-up and loving-thy-neighbor and whatnot.

I don't know that, mind you. But I suspect it.

Paul Soupiset's Lentblog 2007

2009-03-11T16:38:00.002-04:00

Been so busy the past few days that I've had no time to think of posting anything, just to work, be a family man, pray when I can. I remember two Lents ago I was just as busy, but every day I looked forward to opening my laptop and clicking over to the next entry in the "Lentblog" of Paul Soupiset. In fact, Paul's the reason I carry an extra Moleskine and a small set of Faber-Castell water-colours in my bookbag, although I never get to use them (I do have some things I painted when I was on my pre-ordination retreat -- likely the last time I'll ever have blocks of hours when I have nothing to do but pray, think and paint -- that I'll never, ever show you).

Right-brained, left-brained, whatever you are, whatever moves you -- If you're busy this Lent, too busy to pray much or to make it to mass even, you should click through those old sketches. Time well spent.

Booklist

2009-03-07T14:03:00.003-05:00

My friend Robert asked me to jot down a "Top Ten" list of books I would recommend, and it's taken me over a week to actually try my hand @ the task. I think I wanted to make a definitive list, which appears to be impossible, but here's the first draft I sent him. I based my categories on a list I copied years ago from Terry Glaspey's Great Books of the Christian Tradition, and have carried in my bible ever since, not even bothering to read some of the books Glaspey listed (far too much time required to blog about books I think other people should read, I assure you). I tried to limit myself to ten authors (some w/ more than 1 title listed).

Books Every Christian Should Know

Confessions and City of God, St. Augustine
The Imitation of Christ, Thomas a'Kempis
The Practice of the Presence of God, Brother Lawrence
The Brothers Karamazov, Fyodor Dostoevsky
Mere Christianity and The Screwtape Letters, C. S. Lewis
Celebration of Discipline, Richard Foster
The Cost of Discipleship, Dietrich Bonhoeffer
The Resurrection of the Son of God, N. T. Wright
Christian Proficiency, Martin Thornton
Making Room: Recovering Hospitality as a Christian Tradition, Christine Pohl

Books Which Help Develop a Christian Worldview (assuming you believe there's such a thing as a "Christian worldview" -- please don't send me emails about this)

For the Life of the World, Alexander Schmemann
The Gospel in a Pluralist Society, Lesslie Newbigin
The Urban Christian or A Theology as Big as the City, Ray Bakke
Orthodoxy, G. K. Chesterton, or Creed or Chaos, Dorothy Sayers
Knowing God, J. I. Packer
The Problem of Pain, C. S. Lewis
Church History in Plain Language, Bruce Shelley
No Place for Truth: Or Whatever Happened to Evangelical Theology, David Wells
Is There a Meaning in This Text?: The Bible, the Reader, and the Morality of Literary Knowledge, Kevin J. Vanhoozer
The Reason for God and Ministries of Mercy, Timothy Keller

Books I Can't Imagine Not Recommending to Anyone and Everyone I Know

The Prodigal God, Timothy keller
The Ragamuffin Gospel, Brennan Manning, or Traveling Mercies: Some Thoughts on Faith, Anne Lamott
Brother to a Dragonfly, Will Campbell
Peace Like a River, Leif Enger
The Liturgy Explained and On Being Catholic, Thomas Howard
The Rule of St. Benedict
The Spirit of the Disciplines, Dallas Willard
The Seven Storey Mountain, Thomas Merton
A Prayer for Owen Meany, John Irving
Any page of Church Dogmatics, Karl Barth

So, there. A nice distraction during a busy day. Please feel free to admonish, mock and berate me, but please add your own suggestions to the list.

Oh, and the tweeting has already begun w/ Nate weighing in: Flatland, Edwin A. Abbott.

Via crucis

2009-03-05T09:23:00.002-05:00

"[W]e must submit to change if we would be formed into this cruciform faith. We may come singing 'Just as I am,' but we will not stay by being our same old selves. The needs of the world are too great, the suffering and pain too extensive, the lures of the world too seductive for us to begin to change the world unless we are changed, unless conversion of life and morals becomes our pattern. The status quo is too alluring. It is the air we breathe, the food we eat, the six-thirty news, our institutions, theologies and politics. The only way we shall break its hold on us is to be transferred to another dominion, to be cut loose from our old certainties, to be thrust under the flood and then pulled forth fresh and new-born. Baptism takes us there."

William Willimon, "Repent," in Bread and Wine: Readings for Lent and Easter (Farmington, Pa.: Plough, 2003): 9-10.

Thoughts from Azi's Cafe

2009-03-04T10:54:00.002-05:00

A deep dread of opening up my laptop this morning (sermon prep for Sunday is already behind schedule) took me to Azi's Cafe for M/P and caffeine instead of directly to my office. It was there that I read the epistle for today, part of which reads:

Take care, brothers, lest there be in any of you an evil, unbelieving heart, leading you to fall away from the living God. But exhort one another every day, as long as it is called 'today,' that none of you may be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin. (Heb. 3.12-13)

So, it occurs to me to ask, seeing as how it's Lent and all: If I'm struggling to sustain effort toward forming Christlike character (and I am, and so are you, so don't say you're not), what is it that I don't believe, and what deceit is it that I do believe instead? For the "deceitfulness of sin" part, these jump readily to mind:

"I'll make you reeeeally happy"
"Who're you kidding? You can't really ever get free from me; you know that, right?"
"C'mon, just this one time . . . ."
"Look, my ultimate agenda is not to kill you. I swear. I don't know where you got that idea from."

And what is it that I don't believe, @ least not deeply enough? The gospel. God loves me. He loves me when I'm good; he loves me when I'm not so good. Jesus died for us when we were still rebels, and dead rebels @ that. Somebody, I don't remember who, said to me once that Luther carved into his desk (monks have desks?) these words: "I am baptized." Well, so am I. And being baptized, being in Christ, means I've been born of water and the Spirit, born from above, from outside myself, and I've been given to see the kingdom of God all around me. Part of life in that kingdom is sanctification, progressively getting free from the sin that so easily entangles. I know I can see that from here; I just need to keep walking in that direction.

Somebody exhort me, would you?

If @ first you don't succeed . . .

2009-03-03T11:10:00.002-05:00

I told our community group in an email today that, a week into Lent, I've already renegotiated a little w/ God, had some slippage, gotten back on the horse, and find myself most days alternately optimistic and just barely hanging on by my teeth. I'm drawn again and again to a passage from a book Fr. Conner recommended I read a couple of years ago.

No progress in Christian life is possible, alas, without the bitter experience of failures. Too many people start fasting with enthusiasm and give up after the first failure. I would say that it is at this first failure that the real test comes. If after having failed and surrendered to our appetites and passions we start all over again and do not give up no matter how many times we fail, sooner or later our fasting will bear its spiritual fruits. Between holiness and disenchanted cynicism lies the great and divine virtue of patience -- patience, first of all with ourselves. There is no short-cut to holiness; for every step we have to pay the full price. Thus it is better and safer to begin at a minimum -- just slightly above our natural possibilities -- and to increase our effort little by little, than to try jumping too high at the beginning and to break a few bones when falling back to earth.

Alexander Schmemann, Great Lent: Journey to Pascha (Crestwood, N.Y.: St. Vladimir's, 1969): 98-99.

Policy shift

2009-03-03T11:06:00.002-05:00

I've noticed lots of my pastor/priest friends maintain their blogs pretty regularly, so it occurs to me that I should give this another shot. I should make clear @ the outset that the opinions expressed herein are not necessarily the opinions of Ascension & St. Agnes parish, the Episcopal Church, the Worldwide Anglican Communion, my wife, my father or the Boston Red Sox.

Panic button: Check.

2008-09-08T15:35:00.001-04:00

Damn.

Ambivalence

2008-08-13T11:48:00.002-04:00

I honestly didn't know whether to celebrate or vomit last night. Both, I guess.

Thy mighty grasp

2008-07-28T16:08:00.003-04:00

‘Twixt gleams of joy and clouds of doubt
Our feelings come and go;
Our best estate is tossed about
In ceaseless ebb and flow.
No mood of feeling; form of thought
Is constant for a day;
But thou, O Lord, thou changest not:
The same thou art always.

I grasp thy strength, make it mine own,
My heart with peace is blest;
I lose my hold, and then comes down
Darkness, and cold unrest.
Let me no more my comfort draw
From my frail hold of thee,
In this alone rejoice with awe –
Thy mighty grasp of me.

John Campbell Shairp, 1819-1885.

It Changed My Life

2008-07-19T00:16:00.006-04:00

Heather recently posted a list of things (in no particular order) that changed her life. Here are some of mine:

Getting on that boat w/ my future wife @ a Wesley Foundation retreat in Mississippi
Moving back to Oxford and mistakenly receiving a former tenant's CD of Tim Keller in the mail
Being adopted by Maddie and Webb
Listening to "Transit" @ Allan's urging
Dave Roberts stealing second
Going to Sydney Stevens' baptism @ Christ Church
My first dip of Copenhagen
Learning to read
"The Gospel in a Pluralist Society" and "The Cost of Discipleship"
MHD and the original Monday Night Group
Dunkin' Donuts "regular"
Discovering I could manipulate people by singing near them
Cookouts on Bart Stevens' deck
CPE
Some threes: C. S. Lewis, Lesslie Newbigin and Tom Howard; Chris Carter, Aaron Sorkin and David Simon (watch the interview that follows Remnick's to see just a few of the myriad reasons I love David Simon); Michael Card, DWebb and David Wilcox
Finding the Sacrament of Confession
My iPod

These are just some of mine, and the list is likely to grow as I think about this more. Following Heather's lead, I ask: What are some of yours?

Red's Ring

2008-06-18T14:05:00.004-04:00

By Dellplain

17 on the 17th

2008-06-18T01:39:00.000-04:00

The Birthday Girl

2008-05-03T00:06:00.000-04:00

Cake, fairy wings, school friends. What's not to love?

Arrrgh

2008-05-03T00:04:00.000-04:00

Maybe it was Ellie's birthday, but Paddy got maximum joy from his party favor.

Chopper2

2008-05-03T00:02:00.000-04:00

Chopper1

2008-05-03T00:01:00.000-04:00

Peeping the Pope

2008-04-17T10:13:00.005-04:00

Renee' sent around an email last night w/ the details of her bundling off our kids to see the Pope's motorcade yesterday. Pretty much made my week. Here 'tis:

My kids' perspective on the Pope's visit to DC 4/16/08

Me: Get your coats.
Ellie (Age 5): Where are we going?
Me: We're going to the Pope's parade.
Patrick (Age 3): The Poke?
Me: The Pope.
Patrick: The Pote.
Me: The Pope, with a P.
Ellie: The Pope has to pee!

giggles

Ellie: Mom
Me: Yes.
Ellie: Who is the Pope?
Me: He's the head of the Roman Catholic Church.

Silence

Ellie: He doesn't have a body?
Me: Of course he does honey.
Patrick: I'm going to catch some candy!
Me: It's not that type of parade, Buddy. The Pope doesn't throw candy.
Patrick: Because he doesn't have any arms?
Me: He has arms.
Ellie: Why are we going to see the Poke?
Me: Because the Pope is a very holy man.
Patrick: Oh, I'm a holy man!

Silence

Me: It'll be fun. The Pope rides in a funny car called the popemobile.
Patrick: The poopmobile!

more giggles

Me: The popemobile has an open seat in the back so we can see the Pope when he passes by.
Patrick: Mom?
Me: Yes
Patrick: The Pote has to ride in a car seat?
Me: Sort of. It's surrounded by a special glass that protects him.
Ellie: That's why he doesn't throw candy, Patrick. Because it would hit the glass!

You can't make this stuff up.

dc4free Returns!

2008-04-16T13:55:00.003-04:00

This week:

Watching some guy in a car.