Moving North

Several months ago, when quoting Steven Furtick's comments about Samuel, I knew we were on the way somewhere. Now it has become apparent that the path is going to require some winter clothing!

This summer the Pyne family is moving to Green Bay, Wisconsin, home of the Packers, where I will be Director of the Peace and Justice Center at St. Norbert College. I am thrilled with the opportunity, which will have me teaching in the Peace and Justice minor, working with other faculty members to integrate themes of Catholic Social Teaching into their courses, and overseeing a team of enthusiastic student interns to cultivate awareness of international justice issues and champion human dignity on campus. St. Norbert College is a wonderful community of hospitable and passionate people. I am delighted to be joining them! 

Bob

"Be on your way"

A couple of months ago, I came across a good word from Steven Furtick, a pastor from North Carolina. Quoting from 1 Samuel 16:1, he wrote,

The LORD said to Samuel, "How long will you mourn for Saul, since I have rejected him as king over Israel? Fill your horn with oil and be on your way; I am sending you to Jesse of Bethlehem. I have chosen one of his sons to be king."

It broke Samuel's heart to realize that Saul's reign as king was coming to an end, even though he knew it was for the best. When God brings a season, an initiative, or a relationship to an end in our lives, it can be devastating, even if it's for the best. 

If God is currently bringing something to an end in your life, your church, or your business, consider what God said to Samuel: "Fill your horn with oil and be on your way." Move on. Receive a fresh anointing and continue making progress. 

You lost a staff member? Learn from it, be gracious, and be on your way. You lost your job? Adjust the family budget, draw near to God, overhaul your outlook and be on your way. . . . 

The oil of God flows freely to those who make a conscious decision to stop mourning for what God has rejected, fill up, and get moving. Be on your way today.

When I first read those words, I mentally filed them away for a day when I might need them. That day came sooner than expected when I left my job about a month later. It has indeed been a grief, but we are now seeking and receiving that fresh oil and moving on to something new. The long term plans remain pretty uncertain, but for the moment I know about as much as I can and need to know—about as much as Samuel knew—the next direction to head on a journey of faith. 

Bob

Dilemma

So...God...help me find the perfect Bible verse. The senior daughter has a tribute page in the high school yearbook. I, the parental unit, must produce the page with a winsome picture of the girl and some pithy words of wisdom to launch the woman-child into adulthood. Tradition places a Bible verse at the bottom of the page. How to pick one? What if I choose poorly and launch her only as far as the city limits versus all the way to college in Tennessee?

Some acquaintances walk around with Bible verses for every occasion on their sleeve. Like a poetry slam, they can whip out a nugget of truth that sounds written for the moment. I operate more in the grand narrative realm. Getting my scissors and cutting out the perfect verse makes me cringe. I have to read into a verse and out of a verse and hold it in its context. No pulling out that Jeremiah passage of “the plans I have for you” and applying it carte blanche to my most recent decisions. Lovely verse but I am not a Jew in exile under slavery to the Babylonians.

So what verse? Is there one that says “fling love widely and wildly”? Or “err on the side of grace”? Or how about “just breathe”? How cruel to expect all my hopes for my child to fit at the bottom of the page! Is there a verse about a mother latching onto a child's leg to delay the launch? Does the verse mention the mother's sobbing?

SURF'S UP!

We deliberately set out for the beach described as “one of the last unspoiled spots in the world where the horizon goes for eternity.” I readied myself to absorb the crashing surf and bask in the unsullied view. Imagine my surprise when I encountered these signs at the entrance to the beach.



We tout the gospel of Christ as the travel guide hawks the beach. Pure and unspoiled. Freedom as it was meant to be. Horizon of possibility. Then we box it in just as these signs vainly attempt to tame the untameable. Watch out! Fraught with danger! Be safe! Stay on the sand! Keep your lifejacket on!

Nothing about Christ as incarnated God speaks of safety. Lose your life. Die daily. Love those who hate you. Give everything away. Surf’s up, my friend. Grab your board and ride! Joni

Advent Spirituality

Following God in the way of Jesus has been called messy, incarnational, or embodied. In LifeSpace, we speak of being fully human. However you describe it, the practice of life with God cannot be separated from our humanness. In God with Us, Eugene Peterson recognizes the draw of a spirituality focused on nature:

They get a satisfying sense of the inherently divine in life itself without all the complications of church: the theology, the mess of church history, the hypocrisies of church-goers, the incompetence of pastors, the appeals for money. Life, as life, seems perfectly capable of furnishing them with a spirituality that exults in beautiful beaches and fine sunsets, surfing and skiing and body massage, emotional states and aesthetic titillation . . .

Unfortunately, such an approach is "considerably deficient in person."

If we want to look at creation full, creation at its highest, we look at a person—a man, a woman, a child. There are those who prefer to gaze on the beauty of a bouquet of flowers rather than care for a squabbling baby, or to spend a day on the beach rather than rub shoulders with uncongenial neighbors in a cold church—creation without the inconvenience of persons. This may be understandable, but it is also decidedly not creation in the terms that have been revealed to us in Genesis and in the person of Jesus.

A Poetic Priest on Dorm Duty

Jim Crosby, a priest at St. Stephen's Episcopal School in Austin, finished reading LifeSpace late one night on dorm duty. Reflecting in the quiet, he began to write:

Duty Night / Gestation Suite

I breathe less deeply.
My chest collapses,
bends in upon itself.
I grow afraid.
Accusing of cowardice my challenger,
I feel my own faith flag,
take flight.

Divine breath,
fill my lungs.
Expansive one,
explode me.
Be the power that kills this me,
that I may live anew.

Pounding heart, ravaged nails,
eyes tired and itchy,
this is not where I want to live,
or who I will to be.

Raise me to relationship,
and service, risen one.
Joy, I know, rests in hearing your voice,
seeing your face,
shouldering your easy yoke.

Creator, recreate me.

And yet . . .
I sense the darkness of this night,
the breaking of this heart,
softening of my soul . . .
all is meant,
in accord with your good purpose.

I offer you shards.
Make a vessel for your use . . .
your joy.

* * *
Eyes close toward sleep.
Seven score and ten minutes remain of the day.
Dreams must wait.
Deference to duty subdues the body.
Desire denied, discipline is donned.
Teach of faith, of lasting.
Speak, your servant listens.

* * *
Quiet descends,
with scholars at their books.
The night grows deep.
Fruit of human labor is dubious,
ambiguous,
seen and unseen,
constructive program,
ready destruction . . .
and who, God knows, will win the day?
With scholars at their books,
quiet descends.

* * *
Tears well behind my eyes,
dammed,
ready to flood.
This sadness in me nears its end . . .
its end in joy when tears descend.

* * *
May minutes, hours,
days, and years,
time become oblation,
looking back show
providence,
loving revelation.

* * *
Granite grooved by use and time
beautiful and smooth,
your every reason, sundry rhyme,
each smallest, quaintest move,
is known, familiar, gazed upon,
and fondly spoken of,
where all that's good is focused on,
seen by the eyes of love.

—Jim Crosby (9/9/07)

Joni

Attentive Spirituality

From Jurgen Moltmann's In the End—the Beginning: the life of hope . . .

What are we seeking when we pray?

When we pray, what we are seeking is not our own wishes; we are seeking the reality of God, and are breaking out of the Hall of Mirrors of our own illusory wishes, in which we have been imprisoned. That means that we wake up out of the petrifications and numbness of our feelings. We burst apart the armour of the apathy which holds us in an iron grasp. If when we pray we seek the reality of God's world (as with the first petition of the Lord's Prayer), then prayer is the exact opposite of 'the opium of the people'. On the contrary, prayer is more like the beginning of a cure for the numbing addictions of the secular world. . . .

Pray wakefully—that is only possible if we don't pray mystically with closed eyes, but messianically, with eyes wide open for God's future in the world. Christian faith is not a blind trust. It is the wakeful expectation of God which draws in all our senses.

The person who prays, lives more attentively.

The early Christians prayed standing, looking up, with arms outstretched and eyes wide-open, ready to walk or to leap forward. We can see this from the pictures in the catacombs in Rome. Their posture reflects tense expectation, not quiet heart-searching. It says: we are living in God's Advent. We are on the watch, in expectation of the One who is coming, and with tense attentiveness we are going to meet the coming God. . . .

'Watch and be sober' (1 Thess. 5.6, 8). That is the next charge we hear. Sober people are not intoxicated, and don't suffer from hallucinations; they are under no illusions. When sobriety is added to the wakefulness that comes from praying, we shan't fool ourselves, and shan't let ourselves be fooled, either by political propaganda or by the consumerism thrust on us by the advertisers. We shall accept reality for what it is, and shall expose ourselves to it both in its workaday guise and in its surprises. Then we shall discover that reality is far more multi-coloured and fantastic than all our fantasies. But we shall perceive too that the pain which reality imposes on us is still, at all events, better than the self-immunizations with which we try to protect ourselves, but through which we in fact wall ourselves in.