on a day when i feel uninspired i refuse not to be proactive.
being proactive means turning on music and probably the volume, it means digging through books, sometimes diving online, often it means coffee, maybe a used bookstore, or most recently it could mean going to the fuller seminary library.
it is difficult to be a pastor who feels uninspired when the masses expect and sometimes demand expertise, motivations, passion, high flying exegesis that feels like the trail of a narrative; someone who walks on water without being pretentious, someone who is eloquent, caring, steadfast, and can tell a good joke.
i had that commom frustrating sense of being uninspired so i proactively headed for fuller looking for something that touched on the wonder of God in the wondrous glow of a manger scene - when God became human flesh.
there is a point in john's gospel in chapter one where it speaks of those who believe in the "Word" that dwells among us (pitched his tent), as the children of God. and the story of a child in a christmas pageant provided the inspiration and made it into my message.
"A little girl dressed as an angel in a Christmas Pageant was told to come down the center aisle by the director. The child said, 'Do you want me to walk or fly?'"
her imagination caught my attention.
wonder added a dimension to her experience and might be able to add something into our experience. wonder has a capacity to transform.
christmas without wonder is a lonely, sad, commercialized experience.
wonder has a place in the life of a believer.
it is the wonder of God working in the world, in our hearts, and entering the world and our believing hearts that provides an inspirational truth. this is what the angels were singing about, what the shepherds believed, what mary treasured in her heart, and what amazed the people. God with skin on, born in a barn, and the whole scene is covered in wonder.
i want to fly.
i don't want to be someone who meets expectations.
i don't want to be the pastor everyone dreams of.
i don't want to be the buzz of a crowd.
i want to fly.
Tuesday, December 21, 2010
swanson
i recently attended some sessions at fuller seminary with a topic: the narrative of life, faith and visual art - that featured a speaker from vanderbilt university and an artist from here in l.a.
i found myself in a handful of conversations with the artist - john swanson. when i first encountered his work that was displayed it would have been difficult not to see the different influences he speaks of that makes his work what it is. the color is brillantly infused and the depictions are iconic. but the thing that most got my attention was the narrative text within his work. his art takes you into a story that must be told.
i have not seen anything quite like his work (or maybe also quite like him).
in the very first moment of a very first reaction to his serigraphs i found myself being physically drawn closer and closer. the work draws you into the story. it demands proximity in the encounter. i kept trying to step back for a different look at the work and it kept drawing me closer as the work spoke and the drama of it's value-laden narrative. like a fire it was warmer up close. up close one encounters the merging of voice, color, story, image, perspective, and word. but you have to get close to encounter the art that fills, collides, overlaps, and spills off the edges.
i felt like my eyes were dancing and dizzy the closer i stepped forward into the space between.
while i struggle with the point of the lecture about art in the service of an agenda - a practical, utilitarian focus on faith...i did enjoy the artist and the work that invited me into proximity. i am still thinking about the relationship to the art the same way i have felt while sitting in front of a room full of rothko at the tate modern...
i found myself in a handful of conversations with the artist - john swanson. when i first encountered his work that was displayed it would have been difficult not to see the different influences he speaks of that makes his work what it is. the color is brillantly infused and the depictions are iconic. but the thing that most got my attention was the narrative text within his work. his art takes you into a story that must be told.
i have not seen anything quite like his work (or maybe also quite like him).
in the very first moment of a very first reaction to his serigraphs i found myself being physically drawn closer and closer. the work draws you into the story. it demands proximity in the encounter. i kept trying to step back for a different look at the work and it kept drawing me closer as the work spoke and the drama of it's value-laden narrative. like a fire it was warmer up close. up close one encounters the merging of voice, color, story, image, perspective, and word. but you have to get close to encounter the art that fills, collides, overlaps, and spills off the edges.
i felt like my eyes were dancing and dizzy the closer i stepped forward into the space between.
while i struggle with the point of the lecture about art in the service of an agenda - a practical, utilitarian focus on faith...i did enjoy the artist and the work that invited me into proximity. i am still thinking about the relationship to the art the same way i have felt while sitting in front of a room full of rothko at the tate modern...
Tuesday, December 14, 2010
?does God need the church
i have been reading too much lately and some of it is about the church and the role of the church in the world. i pulled a book off the shelf by gerhard lohfink. he is advocating that the salvation of God demands a concrete place in time and history. he values the work of God as a revolution that needs a place inside history, in the lives of people and cultures. the revolution of salvation is not an abstract ideal, it is a "radical alteration of the whole society..."
"It can only be that God begins in a small way, at one single place in the world. There must be a place, visible, tangible, where the salvation of the world can begin: that is, where the world becomes what it is supposed to be according to God's plan. Beginning in that place, the new thing can spread abroad, but not through persuasion, not through indoctrination, not through violence.
Everyone must have the opportunity to come and see. All must have the chance to behold and test this new thing. Then, if they want to, then can allow themselves to be drawn into the history of salvation that God is creating...."
with that quote i think of what God is up to. i think about the church. i think about living a dream to reach others with the message of salvation and the way it is lived and portrayed as salt and light. i think of incarnation. i think of how he uses people and uses communities who try to be Jesus in concrete places in tangible ways. i think of the word becoming flesh and a baby born in a barn.
with that quote i think of what God is up to and i still want to be a part of it all.
"It can only be that God begins in a small way, at one single place in the world. There must be a place, visible, tangible, where the salvation of the world can begin: that is, where the world becomes what it is supposed to be according to God's plan. Beginning in that place, the new thing can spread abroad, but not through persuasion, not through indoctrination, not through violence.
Everyone must have the opportunity to come and see. All must have the chance to behold and test this new thing. Then, if they want to, then can allow themselves to be drawn into the history of salvation that God is creating...."
with that quote i think of what God is up to. i think about the church. i think about living a dream to reach others with the message of salvation and the way it is lived and portrayed as salt and light. i think of incarnation. i think of how he uses people and uses communities who try to be Jesus in concrete places in tangible ways. i think of the word becoming flesh and a baby born in a barn.
with that quote i think of what God is up to and i still want to be a part of it all.
sayers' jesus
dorothy sayers was a writer i ran into years ago at a place where faith and creativity meet. i loved the way she awakens the familiar with a perspective that screams in the dark...so i paid attention and read her work and wondered what it means.
"The people who hanged Christ never, to do them justice, accused him of being a bore - on the contrary; they though Him too dynamic to be safe. It has been left for later generations to muffle up that shattering personality and surround Him with an atmosphere of tedium. We have very efficiently pared the claws of the Lion of Judah, certified Him "meek and mild," recommended Him as a fitting household pet for pale curates and pious old ladies. To those who knew Him, however, He in no way suggested a milk-and-water person; they objected to Him as a dangerous firebrand.
True, He was tender to the unfortunate, patient with honest inquirers, and humble before Heaven; but He insulted respectable clergymen by calling them hypocrites; He referred to King Herod as 'that fox'; He went to parties in disreputable company and was looked upon as a 'gluttonous man and a winebibber, a friend of publicans and sinners'; He assaulted indignant tradesmen and threw them and their belongings out of the Temple; He drove a coach and horses through a number of sacrosanct and hoary regulations; He cured diseases by any means that came handy, with a shocking casualness in the matter of other people's pigs and property; He showed no deference for wealth or social position; when confronted with neat dialectical traps he displayed a paradoxical humour that affronted serious-minded people, and He retorted by asking disagreeably searching questions that could not be answered by rule of thumb.
He was emphatically not a dull man in His human lifetime, and if He was God, there can be nothing dull about God either. But he had a 'daily beauty in His life that made us ugly,' and officialdom felt that the established order of things would be more secure without Him. So they did away with God in the name of peace and quietness."
"The people who hanged Christ never, to do them justice, accused him of being a bore - on the contrary; they though Him too dynamic to be safe. It has been left for later generations to muffle up that shattering personality and surround Him with an atmosphere of tedium. We have very efficiently pared the claws of the Lion of Judah, certified Him "meek and mild," recommended Him as a fitting household pet for pale curates and pious old ladies. To those who knew Him, however, He in no way suggested a milk-and-water person; they objected to Him as a dangerous firebrand.
True, He was tender to the unfortunate, patient with honest inquirers, and humble before Heaven; but He insulted respectable clergymen by calling them hypocrites; He referred to King Herod as 'that fox'; He went to parties in disreputable company and was looked upon as a 'gluttonous man and a winebibber, a friend of publicans and sinners'; He assaulted indignant tradesmen and threw them and their belongings out of the Temple; He drove a coach and horses through a number of sacrosanct and hoary regulations; He cured diseases by any means that came handy, with a shocking casualness in the matter of other people's pigs and property; He showed no deference for wealth or social position; when confronted with neat dialectical traps he displayed a paradoxical humour that affronted serious-minded people, and He retorted by asking disagreeably searching questions that could not be answered by rule of thumb.
He was emphatically not a dull man in His human lifetime, and if He was God, there can be nothing dull about God either. But he had a 'daily beauty in His life that made us ugly,' and officialdom felt that the established order of things would be more secure without Him. So they did away with God in the name of peace and quietness."
xmaspoem
we always put our tree up at the end of thanksgiving weekend. i like christmas. i was thinking about this poem a few weeks ago as we finished getting a tree selected and distingushed for the season.
the poem says something about simplicity, about the importance of place, about humility, and about the birth of a savior. these are some of the important themes of the season. it is a poem by wendell berry and it is from A Timbered Choir...
Our Christmas tree is
not electrified, is not
covered with little lights
calling attention to themselves
(we have had enough
of little lights calling attention
to themselves). Our tree
is a cedar cut here, one
of the fragrances of our place,
hung with painted cones
and paper stars folded
long ago to praise our tree,
Christ come into our world.
the poem says something about simplicity, about the importance of place, about humility, and about the birth of a savior. these are some of the important themes of the season. it is a poem by wendell berry and it is from A Timbered Choir...
Our Christmas tree is
not electrified, is not
covered with little lights
calling attention to themselves
(we have had enough
of little lights calling attention
to themselves). Our tree
is a cedar cut here, one
of the fragrances of our place,
hung with painted cones
and paper stars folded
long ago to praise our tree,
Christ come into our world.
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