tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-55925869092807255562024-02-08T06:42:05.555-08:00The Pedestrian MysticExcursions into the Divine OrdinaryDavid M. Bunkerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16437828982115875616noreply@blogger.comBlogger32125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5592586909280725556.post-85484101254899821082014-05-26T20:55:00.001-07:002014-05-26T20:55:46.293-07:00
<style>
<!--
/* Font Definitions */
@font-face
{font-family:Arial;
panose-1:2 11 6 4 2 2 2 2 2 4;
mso-font-charset:0;
mso-generic-font-family:auto;
mso-font-pitch:variable;
mso-font-signature:-536859905 -1073711037 9 0 511 0;}
@font-face
{font-family:Arial;
panose-1:2 11 6 4 2 2 2 2 2 4;
mso-font-charset:0;
mso-generic-font-family:auto;
mso-font-pitch:variable;
mso-font-signature:-536859905 -1073711037 9 0 511 0;}
@font-face
{font-family:"Century Gothic";
panose-1:2 11 5 2 2 2 2 2 2 4;
mso-font-charset:0;
mso-generic-font-family:auto;
mso-font-pitch:variable;
mso-font-signature:3 0 0 0 1 0;}
/* Style Definitions */
p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal
{mso-style-unhide:no;
mso-style-qformat:yes;
mso-style-parent:"";
margin:0in;
margin-bottom:.0001pt;
mso-pagination:widow-orphan;
font-size:12.0pt;
font-family:"Times New Roman";
mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman";}
.MsoChpDefault
{mso-style-type:export-only;
mso-default-props:yes;
font-size:10.0pt;
mso-ansi-font-size:10.0pt;
mso-bidi-font-size:10.0pt;}
@page WordSection1
{size:8.5in 11.0in;
margin:1.0in 1.25in 1.0in 1.25in;
mso-header-margin:.5in;
mso-footer-margin:.5in;
mso-paper-source:0;}
div.WordSection1
{page:WordSection1;}
/* List Definitions */
@list l0
{mso-list-id:15010029;
mso-list-type:hybrid;
mso-list-template-ids:-505112788 67698705 67698713 67698715 67698703 67698713 67698715 67698703 67698713 67698715;}
@list l0:level1
{mso-level-text:"%1\)";
mso-level-tab-stop:.5in;
mso-level-number-position:left;
text-indent:-.25in;}
@list l0:level2
{mso-level-number-format:alpha-lower;
mso-level-tab-stop:1.0in;
mso-level-number-position:left;
text-indent:-.25in;}
@list l0:level3
{mso-level-number-format:roman-lower;
mso-level-tab-stop:1.5in;
mso-level-number-position:right;
text-indent:-9.0pt;}
@list l0:level4
{mso-level-tab-stop:2.0in;
mso-level-number-position:left;
text-indent:-.25in;}
@list l0:level5
{mso-level-number-format:alpha-lower;
mso-level-tab-stop:2.5in;
mso-level-number-position:left;
text-indent:-.25in;}
@list l0:level6
{mso-level-number-format:roman-lower;
mso-level-tab-stop:3.0in;
mso-level-number-position:right;
text-indent:-9.0pt;}
@list l0:level7
{mso-level-tab-stop:3.5in;
mso-level-number-position:left;
text-indent:-.25in;}
@list l0:level8
{mso-level-number-format:alpha-lower;
mso-level-tab-stop:4.0in;
mso-level-number-position:left;
text-indent:-.25in;}
@list l0:level9
{mso-level-number-format:roman-lower;
mso-level-tab-stop:4.5in;
mso-level-number-position:right;
text-indent:-9.0pt;}
ol
{margin-bottom:0in;}
ul
{margin-bottom:0in;}
-->
</style>
<br />
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Century Gothic"; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">Aesthetic
Monasticism</span></b></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Century Gothic"; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">“Art
Monks in the House”</span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Century Gothic";">I am formed by
capitalism & technology to want to buy things I do not need. In the pursuit
of this search, my time and money now come under the submission of desires that
have been surreptitiously formed in me only partly by my doing. How has this
taken place?</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Century Gothic";">I take much of my
daily trek through life for granted. I do not question its impact on my soul
nor do I question its formative power over how I express my very life. Gifts,
talents, and skills are given to all and we are stewards of these giftings if
these gifts are brought under Christ and His Lordship. However, I do not get
off that easy. I am like a frog in hot water. I am slowly becoming part of a
soup of which I think I am outside. I do not question for my perception is one
of distance and autonomy. My free will has extreme powers to separate myself
from the pack and allows me the ability to pick and choose which forces from my
very being. Oh really?????</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Century Gothic";">Society’s materialism and the church’s
complacency towards it.</span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Century Gothic";">In many ways the church in America has found itself not only in complicity to the formative
power of capitalism but a willing participant. How so? The ideology of personal
and corporate success as a sign of God’s blessing have a long and illustrious
history of which this article is not going to address. Yet it is clear that for
many of us, our relationship with God is centrality monitored and assessed based
solely on the acquisition and embracement of our personal and corporate goals
and dreams. Much of our prayer life, or books and articles written in evangelical
circles are written as a templates and guides for personal and corporate
affluence and self sufficiency. This is an implicit value hidden deeply in capitalism
in America. The power to buy is intrinsically tied to the power to define
oneself. I am what I purchase. You will know my inner self based on my outer accoutrements.
My wine cellar, my hair cut, my perfumes, my car, my house…all these things
tell you something very significant about who I am. If you want to know who I
am take notice of the accouterments for they are indicators. Once again we must
ask ourselves if this is how the Bible and the Kingdom describe what it means
to be human and a follower of Jesus.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Century Gothic";">There is much Scripture
and narrative in our story that would say that as a Christian we assess a
person solely on the basis of his or her innate worth as a creation of God.
God’s image is written into their very being thus nothing they could do or own
will intrinsically change this person on any level. This is not to say that stewarding
our gifts and living with gusto are not parts of being human. What we are
clarifying here is that what a person owns or buys actually says very little
about whom the are a deep level. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Century Gothic";">Suburban life
offers many benefits on certain levels of comfort. We have large entertainment
centers in our family rooms. We have stereophonic sounds systems in our bedrooms
that rival a sound stage. Many of us have libraries and reading rooms that allow
us to ponder the beauty and glory of words and stories. Our children have their
own play stations, their own cell phones…I could go on and on.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Century Gothic";">It is clear that
being middle class or better has its perks. Much like drugs or sex, the front
end of that world unbridled obviously brings some pleasure. Do we, however, ponder
the downside of what capitalism and the bourgeois world have done to the
clarity and liveliness of our souls? Do we count the cost of having to earn so
much money to even exist and do we embrace the shear madness that accompanies
much of our financial struggles as we attempt to weather all this terrain on
our own?</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Century Gothic";">As we move
forward into dialogue within our mutual communities, I hope our conversations
would occasionally be directed to the realties of the fallen world as it impacts
our “work” and our need and attempts to survive in this world. Have we
unwittingly cocooned to the point where one or two bad moves and we are heading
for the poor house? Have we allowed our very heart of hearts to be formed and
informed around what we own and buy and trade?</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Century Gothic";">There is an urban
monastic movement taking place in the States. Numerous groups are purposely
taking vows of poverty and using their abundance for Kingdom purposes. Once
again, this is a dialogue and conversation, but I can tell you that since
arriving back in Chicago I have seen the dark underbelly of capitalism and its
impact on how Christians navigate their lives. Is it possible that some of us
will be called to give up some of the privileges to into which we were born?
How can we live faithfully in this host culture that seems to have run amuck
regarding possessions and their place in our lives?</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Century Gothic";">What might be
some distinctives that would guide and direct our communities?</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Century Gothic";">Are we the New
Sub/Urban Monastic???</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; tab-stops: list .5in left 1.5in; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span style="font-family: "Century Gothic"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Century Gothic"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Century Gothic";"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">1)<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span><span style="font-family: "Century Gothic";">Submission
to the larger church</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; tab-stops: list .5in; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span style="font-family: "Century Gothic"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Century Gothic"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Century Gothic";"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">2)<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span><span style="font-family: "Century Gothic";">Living
with the poor and the outcast</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; tab-stops: list .5in; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span style="font-family: "Century Gothic"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Century Gothic"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Century Gothic";"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">3)<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span><span style="font-family: "Century Gothic";">Living
near community members</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; tab-stops: list .5in; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span style="font-family: "Century Gothic"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Century Gothic"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Century Gothic";"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">4)<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span><span style="font-family: "Century Gothic";">Hospitality</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; tab-stops: list .5in; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span style="font-family: "Century Gothic"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Century Gothic"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Century Gothic";"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">5)<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span><span style="font-family: "Century Gothic";">Nurturing
a common community life</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; tab-stops: list .5in; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span style="font-family: "Century Gothic"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Century Gothic"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Century Gothic";"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">6)<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span><span style="font-family: "Century Gothic";">Some
form of a shared economy.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; tab-stops: list .5in; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span style="font-family: "Century Gothic"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Century Gothic"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Century Gothic";"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">7)<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span><span style="font-family: "Century Gothic";">Peacemaking</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; tab-stops: list .5in; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span style="font-family: "Century Gothic"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Century Gothic"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Century Gothic";"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">8)<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span><span style="font-family: "Century Gothic";">Reconciliation</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; tab-stops: list .5in; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span style="font-family: "Century Gothic"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Century Gothic"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Century Gothic";"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">9)<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span><span style="font-family: "Century Gothic";">Care
for Creation</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; tab-stops: list .5in; text-indent: -22.5pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Century Gothic"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Century Gothic"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Century Gothic";"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">10)<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";"> </span></span></span><span style="font-family: "Century Gothic";">Celibacy of Monogamous Marriage</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; tab-stops: list .5in; text-indent: -22.5pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Century Gothic"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Century Gothic"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Century Gothic";"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">11)<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";"> </span></span></span><span style="font-family: "Century Gothic";">Formation of the new members along the
lines of the old novitiate</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; tab-stops: list .5in; text-indent: -22.5pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Century Gothic"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Century Gothic"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Century Gothic";"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">12)<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";"> </span></span></span><span style="font-family: "Century Gothic";">Contemplation</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Century Gothic";">It is my prayer
that more communities would arise that use their abundance for the sake of the
poor and beauty. There are many on the margins of life that will only be
reached and heard as we listen to their cries. Are we the New Friars of this
age? Are we more like a Jesuit Community of Priests that sets up an order in a
particular community? Let us do small things with great love rather than simply
doing great things. Let our advocacy be for the voiceless and the weak not only
outside our community but within it as well.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Century Gothic";">I end this blog
with an experience that to this day marks my heart. Some years back, a group of
us had store front church out of a bar in the near north side of Chicago. Dave
and Angie Carlson were a part of this as well and we had a real impact on that community
despite the fact that urban professionals are some of the hardest “people” groups
to reach. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Century Gothic";"><br />
One Sunday morning I stopped by the 7/11 to get a coffee. Out front a
disheveled gentleman was panhandling as is the case on many corners in
Chi-town. He approached me and as usual I felt a degree of discomfort and
wondered how I was going to either turn him away or reach into my pocket and
wallet and decide just what he was worthy of receiving from me on this given
day.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Century Gothic";">Upon looking into
his face and connecting with his soul, these words came rolling out of my mouth.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Century Gothic";">“I am sure you
prayed today that God would provide a meal or two for you and I can appreciate
that. I have an offer for you. I can give you some money for a few meals and I
am glad to do that. However, I am a part of a family right down the street. If
you would like, you can come and join us and if you do, everything I have is
yours. What do you say?”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Century Gothic";">It was as if time
stood still. This panhandler was not a drunk or a wandering street person. You
could tell this was a man who was down on his luck and needed some money today
just to make it through the day. He could hardly respond as I could tell he
heard what I had said. Finally after what seemed like minutes he responded. “I’ll
just take the cash.”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Century Gothic";">I reached into my
back pocket and pulled out my wallet and gave him what seemed like a reasonable
and yet caring amount. But as I returned to take my coffee back to the store front
church I kept hearing my own words run through my head and heart. “All I have
is yours if you join our family” I realize that those were the words of the
Savior on my tongue. I did not say that. I could not say that. In fact, upon
sitting in the service that morning and pondering what I had said, I was
convicted as I realized just how rhetorical my responses to the poor in my
midst generally are. I talk a big talk but at the end of the day, I am selfish
to the bone and everything I do and say is for my own aggrandizement. That day,
however, I felt the Savoir move inside my own heart and tell me that this was
Him calling me to Him. It is my poverty that my Savior is longing to heal. My
sense of being above or being better than this man are a sham. I am moments
away from being homeless on many levels.</span><span style="font-family: "Century Gothic";"> This day may we
offer up our seeming abundance as baubles to the Kingdom and see the riches of
His love towards us and those who are in our lives.</span>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Century Gothic";">To the revolution!!!</span></div>
David M. Bunkerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16437828982115875616noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5592586909280725556.post-90273740082870748612014-05-04T17:30:00.002-07:002014-05-04T17:30:50.195-07:00When Creaiton Places a Collect Call<div>
<h2 class="_5clb">
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">When Creation Places a Collect Call</span></h2>
</div>
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><strong>The Need to Fully Embrace Nature’s Welcoming Uncertainty</strong></span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><strong>The Peace of Wild Things - </strong>By Wendell Berry</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">When despair for the world grows in me</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">and I wake in the night at the least sound</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">I go and lie down where the wood drake</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">I come into the peace of wild things</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">who do not tax their lives with forethought</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">of grief. I come into the presence of still water.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">And I feel above me the day-blind stars</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">waiting with their light. For a time</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">We
are created beings. Despite our current preference for the “ideas of
life” over its very real presence, there is a place between the earth
and our bodies that is the terrain of our humanness. Daily, without
fanfare, the sensuous reality of this creation offers itself up and over
to us. We neglect its dazzling gestures at our own peril for its
mystifying topography is the language of the somatic soul and thus the
song of humans. The created order communes with us. Do we hear and
respond to its rich and luxurious affluence of beauty?</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">As a
Jesus follower, I grasp the oft felt groaning sighs of a world caught
up in a moral drama. Antagonists and protagonists rise and fall & we
humans dominate time as if it were our own. Is there a much more worthy
cosmology in which to plant our fragile souls clothed in such permeable
and sentient cloth? Might the created order, nay the very Creator
Himself have not merely embedded an inner beauty in this realm we call
life but one much more tangibly mundane, accessible, astonishingly
ordinary and yet extravagant in its embracing glory?</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">As
modernism’s massive under taking & narrative wanes in the West, it
appears to be building steam in the East (i.e. China, Korea). Caught up
in the ways of reason and logic, capitalism and consumption become the
center of humankind’s endeavors and the relegated inferior position of
the created order appears present & honored only in esoteric
conversations & works by so-called radical ecologists or earth
worshipping new agers.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">Dave Abrams, an exquisite reporter
of nature’s etymology sees this penchant for pushing the experiential
world away from our daily lives as tragic and dangerous to the earth’s
future. Whether we wish to step outside of or live above and beyond the
daily realm of the created order, or take charge of its ways through
some technological utopian dream, we still remain hidden from “the
shadowed wonder and wildness of earthly existence.”</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">For
Abrams, this overt disempowering posture is at its core much more primal
and unacknowledged. Science and the promises of a bio engineer and
his/her predictions of “mastery” over the forces of nature have planted
in them a parallel dystopian nightmare as well.He wonders if this
eschewing of nature’s true place in our lives is much more about our
deeply felt knowing that indeed we are in relationship with a powerfully
dangerously beautiful lover. The observable fact that those closest to
us pass from this realm & are no longer here in our presence, is one
sign that earthly reality is overwhelmingly confusing. Abrams
profoundly articulates, “To exist as a body is to be constrained from
being everything, and so exposed and susceptible to all that is not
oneself- able to be tripped up at any moment by the inscrutability of a
pattern one cannot fathom.” For believers, this mystery is sacramental.
However, many of my brothers and sisters in the faith do not acknowledge
this conundrum thusly. Nature is still a bag of candy, a flower shop
with an 800 #. Or it is only a fallen space where powers and
principalities prevail. Thus, the power and presence of the created
order on & in our lives goes underground and unconsciously speaks
from our shadowed pathologies.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">Holding life at bay in some
detached manner allows me to manipulate its offering as if variables in
some equation. I call the earth’s bounty “resources” as if their
manifestation as a tree or a hillside or a far off planet were merely
evolutionary predictability or cosmic whim. Might there be an intended
shared experience our Creator set into the very fibers of our being? Is
there a possible kinship with Creation that calls out of us a much more
gracious and humbled enfolding? Is David Abrams (author of the Spell of
the Sensuous & Becoming Animal) correct when he bemoans how long we
have cut ourselves off from nature’s intention for a "participatory"
life with our senses?”</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">Ancient cultures did not have the
option of the deluded aloofness from nature we moderns have. For us,
long periods of time may pass between a devastating flood like the one
in New Orleans or Japan’s tsunami. Nature’s fury, as the phrase goes, is
made manifest generally in areas more remote than our protected urban
centers. So when something of such magnitude dares to jump the walls,
break down the gates or storm the Bastille, as if were, we are befuddled
and taken aback. How could we not have seen that coming? Who is to
blame for such a catastrophe? Have we not conquered the puny presence of
nature?</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">Dave Abrams comes from a new bread of
anthropologists, ecologists and philosophers who ponder the relationship
between humankind and the environment in which humans live out their
lives. He contends we have taken refuge in the false hope of technology
and science. I am not sure his personal perspective on spirituality but
from his writings it would appear that at the least, he sees monotheism
and its tendencies for a detached all powerful deity distressed at the
mess humankind has made with creation as a less than imaginative way to
engage this world. Religion’s history with science, truth seeking no
matter the cost, and the fear of the frighteningly new, rarely brings to
a people embedded in an ancient story a narrative of grace, openness,
and mercy. So much of Abrams critique is indeed insightful on some
level.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">What is so moving in the works of Abrams is his
venture into the created realm with descriptives that are poetic and
magical. It is clear he deeply honors the created order (my words not
his). Out of this place of deep respect and awe, Abrams prophetically
calls out what has been lost in the Cartesian obsession with thought and
knowing as an epistemology that only comes when one distances himself
from nature. On the contrary, for Abrams, the real is only experienced
as it is encountered in <em>participation</em> with the created order.
There is no experience above or outside the realm in which our bodies
abide. He says that his work is “foremost to the matter of becoming more
deeply human.”</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">As I daily practice resurrection, I am
discovering the resplendent beauty offered to me when I regard myself as
a “part of” something bigger than myself. By acknowledging my smallness
I am able to, like Abrams, to find myself in the rich immensity of the
created order. Let me end with a few lines from one of Abram’s works. </span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">This is from his diary following one of his daily hikes into the wilderness.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><em>For
how many hours have I been stumbling through the folded terrain? Pink
spires leer down at my tiny form as I walk along the edges of gullies,
slipping into and out of fractaled ravines….I’ve seen no trace of
humankind, however, just a jackrabbit darting between the bushes, and
what I think was a kestrel hovering against the cliffs.</em></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><em>I
left the car by the side of the highway this morning, drawn out of the
vehicle by fascination with what my eyes were seeing. I slung a strip of
cloth dangling a bottle of water over my shoulder and wandered out into
this impossible landscape. The longer I wandered the wider the scape
seemed to grow. By noon I was thoroughly , blissfully lost in the
sculpted immensity of this place- a small two legged insect making its
way between the toes of giants…How hopelessly insignificant the human
is-a speck lost and blundering through the limitless depth of the
macrocosm, drinking from the voluminous air, dazzled by reflected rays
and drawn upright by a hundred flesh toned cliffs and slopes…Such
encounters with the outrageous scale of the larger Body we inhabit bring
a shuddering humility, yet they can also release an unexpected
intuition of safety, a sense of being held and sustained by powers far
larger than anything we can comprehend. A safety that comes from being
merely an anonymous part of What Is, from feeling oneself as a clutch of
sodden soil and hollow bones with the same wind blowing through them
that gusts the high ridges. From being in intimate alliance with the
bedrock. It’s the weird security of realizing that one is part of
something so damned huge…And so I‘m in the grasp of this strange, skin
tingling sensation of my own insignificance as I climb the steep slope
of a butte.</em></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">Let me close for now with my poetic mentor.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">“Whether
we and our politicians know it or not, Nature is party to all our deals
and decisions, and she has more votes, a longer memory, and a sterner
sense of justice than we do.” ― Wendell Berry</span>David M. Bunkerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16437828982115875616noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5592586909280725556.post-10176966185367207962011-03-11T05:24:00.000-08:002011-03-11T05:30:02.333-08:00Love as a Vocational Calling<meta equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"><meta name="ProgId" content="Word.Document"><meta name="Generator" content="Microsoft Word 11"><meta name="Originator" content="Microsoft Word 11"><link rel="File-List" href="file:///C:%5CDOCUME%7E1%5Cdavidb%5CLOCALS%7E1%5CTemp%5Cmsohtml1%5C01%5Cclip_filelist.xml"><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:worddocument> <w:view>Normal</w:View> <w:zoom>0</w:Zoom> <w:punctuationkerning/> <w:validateagainstschemas/> <w:saveifxmlinvalid>false</w:SaveIfXMLInvalid> <w:ignoremixedcontent>false</w:IgnoreMixedContent> <w:alwaysshowplaceholdertext>false</w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText> <w:compatibility> <w:breakwrappedtables/> <w:snaptogridincell/> <w:wraptextwithpunct/> <w:useasianbreakrules/> <w:dontgrowautofit/> </w:Compatibility> <w:browserlevel>MicrosoftInternetExplorer4</w:BrowserLevel> </w:WordDocument> </xml><![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:latentstyles deflockedstate="false" latentstylecount="156"> </w:LatentStyles> </xml><![endif]--><style> <!-- /* Font Definitions */ @font-face {font-family:"Century Gothic"; panose-1:2 11 5 2 2 2 2 2 2 4; mso-font-charset:0; mso-generic-font-family:swiss; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:647 0 0 0 159 0;} /* Style Definitions */ p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal {mso-style-parent:""; margin:0in; margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:Arial; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman";} @page Section1 {size:8.5in 11.0in; margin:1.0in 1.25in 1.0in 1.25in; mso-header-margin:.5in; mso-footer-margin:.5in; mso-paper-source:0;} div.Section1 {page:Section1;} --> </style><!--[if gte mso 10]> <style> /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-ansi-language:#0400; mso-fareast-language:#0400; mso-bidi-language:#0400;} </style> <![endif]--> <p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:verdana;"><span style="font-size:85%;">I am called reluctantly to the vocation of love. As a married man I am constantly brought up short with my limited supply of grace, compassion and mercy. Clearly more an act than a feeling, the love that would die for another is beyond my imagination and only reveals glimpses of its radiance in the day to day “small self dying” necessary to be in relationship and community. <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:verdana;"><span style="font-size:85%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:verdana;"><span style="font-size:85%;">The therapeutic narrative offered to Western enlightened folks such as myself has been both liberating and spiritually infantilizing. By being foundationally directed to see my parents as the core creators of both my joy & pain, I inordinately reflect upon my journey as one of discovery through retrieval of my original self. The thrust of this narrative is that I am deeper and truer than anyone including my parents could have ever seen thus I must allow my earliest years of “harm and help” to be sacralized and offered up to heaven or a therapist. <span style=""> </span>I wonder if this therapeutic bent towards the familial bond as central to my spiritual map has inadvertently stifled and stunted my truest calling – and that is my vocation towards and into love.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:verdana;"><span style="font-size:85%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:verdana;"><span style="font-size:85%;">Great stories have staying power. They remain in our corporate memory, are retold by our leaders and spiritual story tellers and over time begin to find their way into the motivations and intentions of entire countries and continents. Christianity is one story and Christ is one man whose life, although short in terms of years, has had profound impact on how civilianization’s engage the very nature of this life. What seems unduly odd to me, however, is the centrality of love and sacrifice in the life and message of Christ and its seeming replacement by lesser truths. If, as most Christian theologians and scholars would purport that God is love, why do we so relegate that truth to sentimentality or obscurity in light of other lesser impactful postures God is purported to display?<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:verdana;"><span style="font-size:85%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:verdana;"><span style="font-size:85%;">Christ’s life finds much of its controversy when we move beyond belief in some historical insight and engagements over who He said he was, or who His disciples said He was towards our findings as to what He did. It was what Christ did that got Him killed. It was what Christ did that led Him to offer His message up to the riff raff edges of a Palestinian countryside. It was His seeming obeisance to a Kingdom unseen and yet pregnant with divine expectancy that threatened Roman authorities and ultimately His assassinators, the professionally religious of His day.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:verdana;"><span style="font-size:85%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:verdana;"><span style="font-size:85%;">I mentioned to my wife that being an expert or scholar in or on love is something I have yet to see offered or displayed in Christian circles. On some level, this is as it should be, but this absence of conversations and engagements with the challenge of love is not born of humility. The absence is due in truth to the shear idiocy of claiming such a status. Anyone claiming such depth and understanding of love and its outworking places upon themselves the onus to act lovingly. There is lies the rub. I can talk of love but those closest to me will surely weigh in with the pretense or outright exaggerations I might offer up as insight when indeed all my observations and insights are borrowed from mentors and guides. I am consistently unloving.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:verdana;"><span style="font-size:85%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:verdana;"><span style="font-size:85%;">Maybe this is how it should be, that my real life silences my arrogant assertions. Talk of love should be presented sacramentally as an offering before one’s community, marriage, or intimate relationships. This allows this “talk of love” to be covered with preemptive confession and amends. As I sit within in heart shot of Christ’s most profound calling “to lay down my life for a brother” I am more than humbled. I am tempted to put away all “talk” of faith and spirituality and spend the day looking outside my head and heart to the otherness of the world. I need to sit in that revelation of my own preoccupation even when I am offering it up a spiritual insight. Love, real love takes me away from my proclivities, my giftedness, my career and ambitions, my need to be desired or praised, worshipped or even considered wise and godly. It is all ”not love.”<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:verdana;"><span style="font-size:85%;">
<br />What makes the acts of love so seldom offered up in teaching or preaching is love’s call to see the other as one that is “not you.” When the soul is a project and spirituality is some kind of evolutionary 2<sup>nd</sup> life, I now take the very presence of others as fodder for my own spiritual friendship profile. I see them as pawns in my virtual narrative, in my induced self projected godlike persona I offer to the world as my audience. There is something potentially demonically insidious in the hidden intentions of spiritual writing and leadership. Freud, whether feared, respected, or derided, none the less lobs a heat seeking device into the heart of deceit most leaders call God’s voice and reveal just how “needy” the human ego is regardless of one’s age, history, and supposed insights. I am constantly seeing life through the narrow lens of my false self and unless and until my truest calling towards love is reintroduced or held before me as not merely a truth to adhere to or admire but the truest representation of what my very being was created out of and is being called towards, the spiritual talk becomes chattering and navel gazing. I was born in love and will return. These are truths to big to know as I have been taught to know.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:verdana;"><span style="font-size:85%;">
<br />Thomas Merton talks constantly about the false self. I have found much Christian doctrine and teaching (in evangelical circles at any rate) on the self and its deleterious energies as lacking in insight and daily outworking in regards to the specter of the false self Merton so powerfully raises in his writing.<span style=""> </span>The oft quoted mantra of “dying to self” sounds good during<span style=""> </span>corporate times of testimony and small group disclosure but in the thick of the daily grind where those closest to me need love, my love, someone’s love, I am often not only an empty vessel but a deterrent to the vocation of love’s calling.<span style=""> </span><o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:verdana;"><span style="font-size:85%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:verdana;"><span style="font-size:85%;">It is love that causes me to sacrifice a present comfort for something the future beckons. It is love that sits heavy on my shoulders when the guilt of some betrayal or deceit peers into my heart of hearts. It is love that demands the truth be the mother tongue of my voice in my marriage friendships and community.<span style=""> </span>It is love that deems conflicts and the distance hurtful speech cause in community to be a priority when we meet for worship. The suffering I do for love is the walking out of my truest calling. To agonize over my choices and their impact on those I love informs me daily of my need for something divine to intercede. When chaos appears to destroy whatever love and trust I have experienced to date, love calls me to empty myself of those presumptions or memories as fond as they may be in live right now in the dying of self I am prone to avoid.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:verdana;"><span style="font-size:85%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=";font-family:";" ><span style="font-size:85%;"><span style="font-family:verdana;">If indeed my truest vocation is that of love, it makes profound sense to my deepest most persistent longings. I desire to belong, to be known, to be heard, to be held passionately as a gift and to be seen as a reflection of a more radiant glory. To that end I submit my self to the school of love and it’s vocational setting – my life.</span></span><o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=";font-family:";" ><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=";font-family:";" ><o:p> </o:p></span></p> David M. Bunkerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16437828982115875616noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5592586909280725556.post-78381853102826857422009-11-17T16:59:00.000-08:002009-11-17T17:39:46.156-08:00The Doing of the Thing<span style="font-weight: bold; font-family: trebuchet ms;">Between the Creed and the Tears</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;">This blog was in part driven by Bob Bennett's song..</span><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold; font-family: trebuchet ms;">The Doing Of The Thing</span><br /><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;">Words & Music by Bob Bennett</span><br /><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;">© 1991 Bright Avenue Songs</span><br /><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;">P.O. Box 1578</span><br /><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;">Cypress, CA 90630-6578</span><br /><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;">Reprinted/Posted by Permission</span><br /><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;">All Rights Reserved </span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;">Fleeting glimpses of you everywhere</span><br /><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;">Like sunlight at dusk</span><br /><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;">Through this ocean of trees</span><br /><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;">And me in speeding car</span><br /><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;">Headlong into the future</span><br /><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;">Your perfume through this poison musk</span><br /><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;">My eye on letter "E"</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;"> Mistake the nodding of the head</span><br /><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;"> And all the words that can be said</span><br /><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;"> Mistake the very song I sing</span><br /><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;"> For the doing of the thing</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;">She in white dress</span><br /><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;">He in rented clothes</span><br /><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;">Bargains are struck</span><br /><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;">And promises made</span><br /><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;">But soon we find those people</span><br /><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;">Are already dead or dying</span><br /><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;">They just exist in photographs</span><br /><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;">That show how far they've strayed</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;"> Mistake the nodding of the head</span><br /><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;"> And all the words the can be said</span><br /><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;"> Mistake the wearing of the ring</span><br /><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;"> For the doing of the thing</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;"> And in that quiet cemetery</span><br /><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;"> Where theories go to die</span><br /><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;"> It's not a question of believing</span><br /><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;"> It's not a question of the lie</span><br /><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;"> It's the distance that we will not cross</span><br /><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;"> For the fear of suffering</span><br /><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;"> Between the creed we speak so easily</span><br /><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;"> And the doing of the thing</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;">Broken souls covered in broken skin</span><br /><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;">No resolution on the video screen</span><br /><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;">And half a world away</span><br /><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;">Somebody does our bidding</span><br /><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;">Because we like to pray</span><br /><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;">With our fingernails clean</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;"> Mistake the nodding of the head</span><br /><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;"> And all the words that can be said</span><br /><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;"> Mistake the sympathy we bring</span><br /><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;"> For the doing of the thing</span><br /><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;"> The doing of the thing</span><br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic; font-family: trebuchet ms;">Though I knew the good, I do not the good.</span><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;"> </span><span style="font-weight: bold; font-family: trebuchet ms;">Paul in Romans</span><br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic; font-family: trebuchet ms;">So why this persistent discrepancy, this gap between intention & outcome? </span><span style="font-weight: bold; font-family: trebuchet ms;">James Hollis</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;">Ultimately we are far more than the fictive fractal stories we tell about ourselves or are told. In the larger Kingdom story we are part of a restoration narrative that can only be done in community. This is the doing of the Church. This doing has an undoing dimension to it as well. Together, the seemingly factitious stories our inner man tells about itself or reveals each and every day, now becomes cohered into something redemptive and beautiful and good and true.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;">In the larger shadow of modernism’s narrative, we have unwittingly submitted our ultimacy to this autonomous assessment via rational means. So indeed, we do have an over arching oracle & story that animates and empowers our defining. It is this constant disaffection with ourselves as reliable sources for any certainty (postmodernity) but remaining in the posture that this assessment is the most accurate of any we may experience.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;">The kingdom doing of the thing offers to us sacredness to our rumination. For indeed we do think we are. (Descartes). But is the miracle that alone, that projection of thought upon the chaordic experiences of each day are not enough to quell the fears that we are not enough? Is this sense of lack a divine message as to our truer nature? May my inner sense of dislocation actually be a message of something greater & truer beyond myself? Could my very questions be the answer?</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;">As we enter an age where our world as whole seems to be facing a reckoning and summons, we are beginning to grasp that the coming together of life cannot merely be the task of an individual for themselves alone. Although moral action and its consequences do indeed rest upon us an individual’s, can the “doing of the thing” ever really be done or sustained by the individual? My holy hunch is no. I cannot do this alone for I am not alone. One could read that sentence many different ways. I am not alone means someone is with me. I am…not alone might also mean that the very ontological nature of my existence cannot be realized without the corporate other. The doing of the thing is not a solitary task. It is s Kingdom assignment. Being is as much about submission as it is obedience. Being is as much about service as it is accomplishment. Being is as much about acts of love as it is acts of presence.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;">We are sitting in the cross hairs of a great smack down between myths. As believers, we are discovering how malevolent the shadow side of the modernism’s penchant for the separation of the observer and the observed. In offering this unique authority to the individual’s task of discovery, we have disempowered the Kingdom currency that animates and projects a truer self upon the cosmos. This is not an "I am" as much as it is a "we are" therefore I am.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;">The Kingdom naming of the “body” cannot be a mere coincidence. We are “parts.” We do not merely function “better” when we work as a body, we are “not” alive and true to or natures when we are operating outside these created portals and designs for humanity. It is not merely a better way but as they said in the first century, “The Way.” It is a mystical and dangerously frightening way for it demands we begin to deposit with others all these fictitious stories about ourselves and our world into and upon the hearts of others. In this depositing redemption begins to take place as we see that we are indeed particular selves. We have never been totally autonomous, however, & this projection upon our deepest parts is in error.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;">In the Kingdom doing we see the shadow stories begin to be dismantled and redeemed. In this dismantling of the shadowed story, we discover we are potentially capable of such beauty and wonder (name numerous grand & wonderful art works and accomplishments of humankind) but simultaneously offering to the world a brokenness that puts forth Hiroshima’s, German Prisoners camps, Poll Pot, slavery in the US, what we did to the American Indians, etc...</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;">In the Kingdom space we see emerging a beautifully bejeweled book with a reader who is the Spirit. When we pause He comes to the center of the room and begins to speak. In this space, even the manifold darkness has no ultimacy over the larger story. In this space where we truly wonder about the doing of the thing (for purposes of integrity) and reluctantly offer up our hidden agendas and deepest darkest heart felt desires. In this space, our singular stories begin to be transfigured, redeemed and a way of knowing re-emerges that not only acknowledges some degree of healing but is healing and wholeness itself.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;">What we discover is that alone, I am incapable of defining my inner world with enough glory to empower the doing of the thing. Deep within my own historic past, the shadow of forgotten and unrealized factitious narratives rule and reign over the very truth I so vociferously proclaim to others on Sunday or in my testimony to the saints. But in honest and open moments of contrition and broken openness, I see that there indeed another within me. This “other” is hidden and yet present. He knows this realm in others and unless and until I acknowledge my deepest yearnings and my deepest lacks, the shadowed part of us all goes unmasked so our story has two powerful themes never acknowledged and the redemptive power and grand nature of this restoration has no real presence in my life for I do not need redemption that deep, healing that profound, restoration that complete. I am an isolated self hoping to get to heaven, worrying about my own salvation, wondering if the “the Divine Other" looks my way. </span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;">In the kingdom doing I spend little time in this autonomous posture absorbing the love of the Father for I am finding it wherever I go. I discover the doing of the thing was never meant to be something I did to accumulate my own worthiness before the Father. The grace I am offered is truly the very “thing” I need to engage this duplicity of shadowed stories even to the point where I see my own righteous projection as part of the story that is yet to be submitted. Could it be that the doing of the thing is my admission of my inability to do the thing?</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;">As I started out with Paul, let's return to the statement, "I do what I don’t want to do." Yes…let us say this daily. "I do what I don’t want to do." Why? I am a being only when I cease to define myself alone. I am only beginning to be alive and true to my very creation when I am a being with other beings. We are here together. I am not here alone. Why? I am not made to sustain this awareness of self without a deep cynical malaise coming over my consciousness. I am too much to bear for myself. As I draw nearer to the core of my being, without community I become a Sartre, a Nietzsche and many others in the last few centuries, full of disgust about my own moral dishonesty. Like Dostoyevsky’s Underground Man, I am an anti-hero. </span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;">The social sciences have in part done what the Church was always meant to do. They have given us humans a glimpse into the inner workings of our fallen natures. They have offered up countless narratives (& anyone studying in these fields knows the myriad of philosophies and perspectives on social sciences) that tell us of our agendas, our own personal sense of the ridiculousness in ourselves. What the social sciences have done is give us a great glimpse into the story of humankind without any real reason to do any better. What is the point if there is no point?</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;">The question now is, “So what is the point?”</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;">How do we live in this tension where we are now able to feel and know on a certain level our inability to know? So we begin to return in some ways to the more powerfully mythic postures of our ancient pre-modern family of humankind. We begin to acknowledge the limits of our rationality and self knowing and possibly sit in awe and mystery of this paradox of knowing.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;">The fact we can know our noble truer selves and simultaneously know our most hideous and fallen selves is overwhelming on some level. Can this ability be a curse or a blessing? The answer may indeed be hidden in the question itself. To know my desire for love and goodness and to do it not is a curse. To be told that indeed there is built within the very nature of creation a prevenient presence and power that undergirds me on a deeper level called grace, that already know this would happen and be experienced is to have a brief respite for clarity of the soul.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">The Kiss of Heaven</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;">Can I take a few moments in my life to ponder this type of story that offers me grace in the midst of this dilemma which begins to rename the life I live from a problem to be solved to a mystery to be lived? And it will always be mystery. How do I name the mystery? How does this naming allow me to live within it ebb and flow with a degree of integrity and noble beauty? I contend it is this submitting of my story to the larger narrative of worship.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;">It is worship’s narrative forming power that offers me the grace I need to be the antidote to modernism’s cynical posturing. It is worship in all its broadness and fullness that coheres a larger story into which I am placed that gives me this grace. The grace I need to exist if only truly offered and manifest in this body. I am not meant to be isolated for I am not truly who I am without placement into this larger narrative of doing. I am not doing things in life to win salvation or redeem myself. This mystery of life appears not to be something individuality can glory in with true gusto on their own. Once again worship is the truest celebration of my being. Worship is my being, along with the whole of creation, honoring, and celebrating our complete </span><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS","sans-serif";">imbededness</span><b style=""><span style="font-size: 18pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></b> <span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;"> into a gorgeous tapestry of nonfiction that celebrates our “unknowing” through a corporate leaning into the paradox. Rather than avoid it, we, like David Dark, celebrate all the questions as an act of worship. This life is sacred. That is what I beginning to know at a deeper level when I am doing the thing with others. I find it is my truest self that is being loved. My acts, although essential to me as they are me engaging the world, I am more than what I do.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;">To begin to grasp that I am more than what I do is to discover the grace to begin to be restored in my inner most parts. This kind of spiritual work is an act of worship and one that coheres me with the body. I cannot do this alone.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;">There is an inner distance in the soul that represents a large chasm. This is the distance between the belief and knowledge of what is true, good, beautiful and loving and the doing of the thing. I am convinced that much of my Christian upbringing has been a highly cerebral experience where much of my beliefs were stuck up in my head. I thought about them daily, wrote them down, took classes to understand them better, talked to my friends countless times about them, corrected those I thought in error of what I knew to be true, and finally assumed by understanding of what I know to be true drew me close to God. I have been in deep error in this regard.In fact, I am convinced that my excessive knowing, discussing, debating, and studying may very well have taken over the very heart of my supposed faith – and the doing of the thing.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;">It is clear that I am able to deceive myself into believing that my awareness of certain truths, my pondering of their impact on my life and their implications for the rest of the world can very well be ruminated over again and again and not once engender a doing of anything. It may be that the excessive pondering is more a byproduct of some inner dis-ease than a real desire for truth and the actions of faith.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;">I am saddened by my detachment from my own body. I thought I was my mind alone. Rather than worship, obey, serve, and love others, I obsessed on the knowing of a truth through rational means, assuming my disciplined inquiry would birth the certainty I needed in an uncertain world. Ironically, in looking constantly outside myself for the truth in teaching, preaching, scripture, and tradition, I detached the very act of doing from the encounter.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;">The doing of the thing involves an entirely deeper part of my humanity. The doing of the thing involves a deeper repentance into my body to discover what parts of my will refuse to budge, refuse to love, are a still unreconciled to what I know to be true. Once again, I have in the past perceived the lack of action to be an issue of an unclear understanding or a need for more information. I now see that space between the knowing & the doing as being. I am more myself when I obey what I know to be true than if I merely ponder or ruminate over it. I am Christ’s in truth when I love Him enough to obey what I believe.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;">It very well might be that a culture that excessively honors the mind and rationality when it comes to spirituality may fall prey to the deception of hypocrisy. Hypocrisy is not some isolated event that a few deluded individuals purposely invent for the sake of power or deceit. No! This is a part of the human heart unwilling to look at the “troubling discrepancy between expectations for ourselves and the consequence of our behavior,” according to James Hollis in “Why Good People Do Bad Things.” </span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;">Why do I avoid in myself what I know to be unreflective of my truest values and commitments? Why do I condemn many of the same sins in others that I know reside within myself? Why do I minimize the impact my sin and lack of love have on my world while pointing out in others their obvious contradictions? What part of my very nature obfuscates the way of wholeness and purity? What lies in the way of such persistent fantasies about the impact of my actual life on my health, thought life, ability to be present and living to others and my actual love of the Savior? The distance between intention and choice does indeed involve my will. As a moral being I am given the ability to act upon certain inclinations and urges and understandings. I am not a puppet. So why would this freedom of sorts become such an existential blemish?</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;">My experience with my men’s group and the ongoing inner work we do has given me glimpse into what appears to remain on some level intractable & persistent in our spiritual journeys. We are indeed beings in the process of either engaging life or ignoring it. As the 12step program says, “What we resist will persist.” The struggle we men have is the hidden strongholds that remain untouched by our beliefs, faith filled utterances and contrite postures of the heart. As Paul said, we want to do the good but…”</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;">It may very well be that the ego’s most grandiose manifestation of hubris is the projection of its own sovereignty on its actions and thoughts. During what we men have come to call "work," it is clear that much of the inner world hidden away from our daily regimen is indeed the very realm in which forces and mandates are being deployed daily without our direct awareness. I say direct because we are aware but this insight does not come through what we have deemed the sovereignty of our ego or what some may call our persona. For those of us who are seeking a higher way or more authentic reflection of our Savior, we are indeed attempting to form a certain “type” of person. We desire others “see” us a certain way, believe our proclamations regarding our faith, and hope that our lives indeed do tell others about our commitments and allegiances.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;">Only if it were that simple that our desired persona was indeed the one that most clearly reflected our deepest selves. But alas, that is not the case. As men go deeper into the discrepancies of will and action, it becomes apparent that we are not a unitary whole in our persona or projected ego we offer to ourselves and others. What we are beginning to glimpse in our “work” during our daily and quarterly weekends, is that the desire for Christ likeness is certainly work and the exertion and toil of the soul needed to integrate the disparate parts of our hearts and minds is our salvation being worked out in fear & trembling.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;">The fear of disclosure has to be one of the most powerful energies hidden behind the confident and often arrogant persona we offer to others and even ourselves. Our daily lives so remove us from these anxieties that we are unaware of their toxic and discrete energy they deploy through our daily lives. The avoidance of humiliation seems to be such a primal force in humans that hiding is an option we take when our outward experience touches an inner un-resolvedness. </span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;">Because we believe the autonomy of our egos and personas are accurate and reflective of our truest selves, any sense of that idea of self eroding or being attacked throws us into a highly defensive posture. We now become defensive and angry. Our initial state of weakness is now being covered over with anger and we get lost in the attempts to correct any discrepancies or flaws another may being projecting on us in the moment or so we think & feel.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;">Much of the denial and avoidance we display daily is necessary to function. To consistently look into the inner crannies of our hearts and emotional lives is more than daunting. It is dangerous & impossible to be done alone. The journey is much like a group climbing a mountain or entering a volcanic crater. Whether climbing to the heights or the depths, we need ropes tied to our hearts and minds. We can get lost in our woundedness and angry at ourselves and others and in the process add to our lostness and anger.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;">Men naturally protect themselves. When that protection has been violated, when that ability to trust and receive love has been deeply scared and wounded especially in early childhood, the projected energies of denial, repression, suppression and avoidance get magnified. These are all mechanisms to avoid the anxiety of viewing our inner discrepancies with clarity. In some extreme cases one may even disassociate from themselves to the extent that they can engage in certain behaviors and nearly be unaware on some levels of the episode. To some degree, our personas our different identities. They are different people we offer to the world as to who we are. As Nate Larkin says, he has the church Nate and the husband Nate. We could probably name countless personas within us if we named them in this manner. The point is that spiritual work is not merely articulating beliefs but drilling down into the very strongholds that animate and energize the aforementioned anxiety management systems of denial, repression, etc. So in our work in NA we create a space for the man to sit in the anxiety. We extend to him a safe container to begin to ponder, express, report, offer up, any details, emotions, and possibly hidden reflections on their life to date. Nothing is off the table. Nothing is deemed untrue or false at initial offering.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;"> Over the weeks and months of work we men begin to hear a story about ourselves that we have been telling others for years. We begin to hear the stories others have told about us. We begin to hear the story we believe God is telling about us. We hear the story, in the case of believers, of the Church upon us. We are a storied people. It is the multitudes of these stories that offer quantum energy to our lives and in some ways adds to the seeming discrepancies of our commitments and our behavior. Why don’t we do what we know to be right? We must find out. We can find out. This is the gift of the Savior's restoration. Salvation is more than a belief system but the very nature of God moving within in us to bring us into wholeness, integration. He desires we become whole and begin to offer this story up to His Holy Spirit for a re-write if you will. This re-write is written by the family of God. It cannot be written alone for much like there are legions within, so we need the power and presence of many to untie these fractal selves within our hearts.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;">Whenever a man enters the weekend retreat with a powerfully animated sense of self, it is clear that it takes much of his inner spirituality to cohere this energy for others to see. "I am powerful. I am smart." And the most difficult one to maintain, "I am holy and good." As the inner journey ensues, it becomes more and more apparent that “life" is inherently contradictory and conflicted, and any view that seeks to finesse these contraries is ”operating in bad faith,” says Hollis. As much as our ideas about our commitments seem congruent and befitting to our ego or personas, they are not powerful enough to touch the deepest inner contradictions or character flaws. No amount of ritual, repetition, reading sacred texts, will replace the work of exploring our hearts in the presence of His people. This is our life time work to grow in Christ tighter. </span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;">The working out of our salvation is what this life offers as the road of truth. The road of religious piety can offer others your persona and all its good intentions. This is not to imply that we are disingenuous or even deceptive when we offer this aspect of ourselves. But, as we grew in grace and in the knowledge of our Lord, we begin to see the subtle hubris that forms these personas and continues to allow them preeminence in our daily interactions with our spouses, friends and co-workers. At some point humility is the inner admission of your admitting the discrepancies are indeed a part of who you are as well. We are this strange mixture of our dreams, our commitments and our humanness full of duplicity and moral weakness.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;">When we remain in the level of our persona that moralizes around certain acts we tell ourselves we are evil, we may indeed have a history of acting a certain way. This is obedience on some level but it is not righteousness formed by deep contrition for my good works and outward persona is what I use my energies to sustain. This is not an outward manifestation of an inner work but an outward energy sustained by an outward persona. This is why we may call it a superficial or surface self. It is shallow for it does not emanate from the authentic self but the self we have concocted in our minds and the persona we actually believe we are. This is delusion and we act thusly on a day to day basis.</span><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;">No amount of haranguing the ego or will can turn this conflicted persona into a whole person. This is why moralizing over sin never works if it is a besetting sin as the Scripture calls it. Besetting sin that it is persistent and powerful in its impact on our lives. On our weekends we are most concerned with these besetting sins for they are a sign of the core voices and stories that are here-to-fore ignored in this man’s inner life. This is the portal for entry into the story that enables and empowers this person he does not want to be but in moments of truth can admit he indeed is.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;">The Church today is challenged to provide safe places for this unveiling to take place. These kinds of inner journeys do not take place during a Bible study or morning Sunday school class. These are strongholds that take an initial weekend and months and even a lifetime in some cases to begin to unravel and reveal the narratives that rule our will and heart. The strategies that many men’s groups’ offer, which is to promise you will not do a certain behavior ever again are on some level noble attempts to obey God’s laws. But the power needed to be restored at a deep deep level does not come from us. This is not to downplay the power of the will to engage in “acting” a certain way. In fact, once again, the 12 Step movement talks about “faking it till you make it” which is revealing the power of the body obeying what the mind knows to be true even when the mind is still playing tricks or recalcitrant. We cannot and will not see or hear the stories that undergird our deepest wounds and besetting sins until we stop certain postures towards life. Denial that our drinking, over eating, addictions to power, religion, lust or other drugs of choice, must be seen for their darkness and poison they are to begin the descent. The admission of and the willingness to engage may mean total withdrawal from a certain action or engagement. This detoxing from sin, allows the heart to begin to feel the anxiety that animates and cooperatives with our sin natures when we fall. We know the sin is sin. We are now looking at the “doing” or the “not doing” of the thing.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold; font-family: trebuchet ms;">The Crisis as Threshold</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;">A crisis is a holy summons to cross a threshold, says Sue Monk Kidd in her seminal work “When the Heart Waits.” The word crisis derives from the Greek word krisis and krino, which mean “a separating.” It is clear that deep inner change only comes about through crisis or profound and enduring prayer. As most of us have not developed such disciplines, crisis is the usual gateway to redirection and a straightening of one’s way. Most of us live in middle class neighborhoods, attend sedate churches, engage in soft hobbies, avoid harshness of any kind and settle in nightly to a routine of television & sleep. Our desire is less for peace of mind & heart and more for comfort. In this anesthetized world of habit and consumption, our inner man is sedated through routine. When circumstances hint that rough road may be ahead, we usually begin to barbiturate ourselves through doing more of whatever is numbing us out, dumbing us down. This is why for men at least, it takes a persistent addiction to reveal the true condition of the soul. The somatic messages of the body herald and rudely name what our minds are unwilling to welcome. And so a crisis describes our inner landscape, our soul’s longing.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;">Humans can only take a crisis every once in awhile. It is clearer that for some, under the moniker of bi-polar syndrome, crisis is ever present at least on an emotional level. What is even clearer from observing this tragic pose is that the very weightiness of one’s humanity is enough for those who contemplate their own brokenness occasionally and this ever present revealing for those with BP unveils nothing long lasting. We are not meant to gaze into the abyss of our own ruined will at length. In fact, standing at the threshold, in the seemingly abandoned space of contrite observation can destroy one without the grace offered by others willing to bear witness. We bear witness to the irrationality of our wayward hearts and obstinate wills. We nod in solidarity as we observe a brother over come with his own imperfection. </span><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;">We know we will undoubtedly be in that same “inbetweeness” once again ourselves.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold; font-family: trebuchet ms;">The Threshold as Reality</span><br /> <br /><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;">Just as the madness of bi-polar ruminations are a curse for so many, so too is the mistake of attempting to live in the tension of our own duality. I like to see myself as one who embraces nuance and subtlety in life. However, when it comes to my own lack of perfection I am tossed between the oppositional forces of self love and self loathing. Ernest Kurtz in “The Spirituality of Imperfection” offers up this healing insight when he observes, “ To pursue perfection because we despise our imperfection-is to find neither satisfaction in successes nor wisdom in failures. Life becomes a constant battle, a never ending struggle to get somewhere, to achieve something, to produce something. Having split our world (and our selves) into either or dualisms- god or beast, angle or devil, right or wrong, left of right, good or evil, up or down- we lack all sense of balance. We tend to sway precariously on the teeter totter of life, running from one extreme to another, missing the point that the only stable place to be is in the mixed-up- middle. In the reality, that is the only place we can be.”</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;">The phrase “reality” is so diminished and bastardized. I am the chief of sinners here in its demise as a God word. Let me vamp a bit here through an idea David Dark’s latest book The Sacredness of Questioning Everything spawned in a late night pondering of “reality.” For me Dark’s book is a poetic rant on the ontological subtleties of faith. His pages are filled with a luminous recounting of just how duped we are to our own convictions of certitude when it comes to truth and in a particular the reading of Scripture. As a recovering Evangelical, I have grown up in the climate of biblical presumption. Part of my heritage if not tutelage involved the projection of snippets of the Bible over life’s conundrums without impunity. This is what we did. We named “reality” quickly and with precision. Dark so powerfully reveals not only the shady under belly of the presumption but the impact on us humans when we deny the anxiety that accompanies these very conundrums. Dark says, “But the pretense of certainty come at a cost.” Indeed it does. This cost is the inability to “do the thing.” </span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;">I need the truth to set me free. I need the in breaking power of God’s Spirit into & upon my very being to be given the power of will to obey. This is being loved into action. What Dark made clearer for me was the “real time” prophetic power of the Scripture being pronounced in the moment of revealing. When Jesus read Scripture in the temple something was indeed happening. When He said, “Today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing” He was pointing to the reality of truth breaking into the moment. So much of my understanding of Scripture remains sequestered in a static recognition of “reality.” I know what I know. Correct? Well no. I don’t know what I know because I don’t know what I don’t know. And, until the moment of revealing, my ability to know may be veiled in my own limited ability to see and grasp the depth and breadth of reality.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;">Many times I have seen a man transformed right before my eyes through what we call “work” in New Adam. After this unveiling of the truer deeper real self, many times a Scripture will be read or recited over the moment of revealing. Today this Scripture is fulfilled in your hearing,” seems to be exactly what is happening here. We were seeing the witness of all the ages manifest right in our midst. A man was ushered into this place where the naming of his very being is now aligned with eternity and the very voice of God as manifest through His holy writ. Now that is bearing witness to the infallibility of Scripture. Notice, however, it is in the in-breaking nature of this truth revealed that we see what lies before us. We did not see it before this time. So life is always revealed in retrospect. We look to the future in faith and see the truth of our beings revealed in the rear view mirror. The doing of the thing is a grand spectacle that involves the fullness of God’s revealing. I can only sit under it in awe and worship. Worship with others who are doing the best thing.</span>David M. Bunkerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16437828982115875616noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5592586909280725556.post-33809968253094476012009-09-07T11:30:00.000-07:002009-09-07T11:33:23.378-07:00The History of My Silence<meta equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"><meta name="ProgId" content="Word.Document"><meta name="Generator" content="Microsoft Word 12"><meta name="Originator" content="Microsoft Word 12"><link rel="File-List" href="file:///C:%5CUsers%5CDavid%5CAppData%5CLocal%5CTemp%5Cmsohtmlclip1%5C01%5Cclip_filelist.xml"><link rel="themeData" href="file:///C:%5CUsers%5CDavid%5CAppData%5CLocal%5CTemp%5Cmsohtmlclip1%5C01%5Cclip_themedata.thmx"><link rel="colorSchemeMapping" href="file:///C:%5CUsers%5CDavid%5CAppData%5CLocal%5CTemp%5Cmsohtmlclip1%5C01%5Cclip_colorschememapping.xml"><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:worddocument> <w:view>Normal</w:View> <w:zoom>0</w:Zoom> <w:trackmoves/> <w:trackformatting/> <w:punctuationkerning/> <w:validateagainstschemas/> <w:saveifxmlinvalid>false</w:SaveIfXMLInvalid> <w:ignoremixedcontent>false</w:IgnoreMixedContent> <w:alwaysshowplaceholdertext>false</w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText> <w:donotpromoteqf/> <w:lidthemeother>EN-US</w:LidThemeOther> <w:lidthemeasian>X-NONE</w:LidThemeAsian> <w:lidthemecomplexscript>X-NONE</w:LidThemeComplexScript> <w:compatibility> <w:breakwrappedtables/> <w:snaptogridincell/> <w:wraptextwithpunct/> <w:useasianbreakrules/> <w:dontgrowautofit/> <w:splitpgbreakandparamark/> <w:dontvertaligncellwithsp/> <w:dontbreakconstrainedforcedtables/> <w:dontvertalignintxbx/> <w:word11kerningpairs/> <w:cachedcolbalance/> </w:Compatibility> <m:mathpr> <m:mathfont val="Cambria Math"> <m:brkbin val="before"> <m:brkbinsub val="--"> <m:smallfrac val="off"> <m:dispdef/> <m:lmargin val="0"> <m:rmargin val="0"> <m:defjc val="centerGroup"> <m:wrapindent val="1440"> <m:intlim val="subSup"> <m:narylim val="undOvr"> </m:mathPr></w:WordDocument> </xml><![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:latentstyles deflockedstate="false" defunhidewhenused="true" defsemihidden="true" defqformat="false" defpriority="99" latentstylecount="267"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="0" semihidden="false" unhidewhenused="false" qformat="true" name="Normal"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="9" semihidden="false" unhidewhenused="false" qformat="true" name="heading 1"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="9" qformat="true" name="heading 2"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="9" qformat="true" name="heading 3"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="9" qformat="true" name="heading 4"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="9" qformat="true" name="heading 5"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="9" qformat="true" name="heading 6"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="9" qformat="true" name="heading 7"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="9" qformat="true" name="heading 8"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="9" qformat="true" name="heading 9"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="39" name="toc 1"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="39" name="toc 2"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="39" name="toc 3"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="39" name="toc 4"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="39" name="toc 5"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="39" name="toc 6"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="39" name="toc 7"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="39" name="toc 8"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="39" name="toc 9"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="35" qformat="true" name="caption"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="10" semihidden="false" unhidewhenused="false" qformat="true" name="Title"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="1" name="Default Paragraph Font"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="11" semihidden="false" unhidewhenused="false" qformat="true" name="Subtitle"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="22" semihidden="false" unhidewhenused="false" qformat="true" name="Strong"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="20" semihidden="false" unhidewhenused="false" qformat="true" name="Emphasis"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="59" semihidden="false" unhidewhenused="false" name="Table Grid"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" unhidewhenused="false" name="Placeholder Text"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="1" semihidden="false" unhidewhenused="false" qformat="true" name="No Spacing"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="60" semihidden="false" unhidewhenused="false" name="Light Shading"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="61" semihidden="false" unhidewhenused="false" name="Light List"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="62" semihidden="false" unhidewhenused="false" name="Light Grid"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="63" semihidden="false" unhidewhenused="false" name="Medium Shading 1"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="64" semihidden="false" unhidewhenused="false" name="Medium Shading 2"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="65" semihidden="false" unhidewhenused="false" name="Medium List 1"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="66" semihidden="false" unhidewhenused="false" name="Medium List 2"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="67" semihidden="false" unhidewhenused="false" name="Medium Grid 1"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="68" semihidden="false" unhidewhenused="false" name="Medium Grid 2"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="69" semihidden="false" unhidewhenused="false" name="Medium Grid 3"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="70" semihidden="false" unhidewhenused="false" name="Dark List"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="71" semihidden="false" unhidewhenused="false" name="Colorful Shading"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="72" semihidden="false" unhidewhenused="false" name="Colorful List"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="73" semihidden="false" unhidewhenused="false" name="Colorful Grid"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="60" semihidden="false" unhidewhenused="false" name="Light Shading Accent 1"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="61" semihidden="false" unhidewhenused="false" name="Light List Accent 1"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="62" semihidden="false" unhidewhenused="false" name="Light Grid Accent 1"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="63" semihidden="false" unhidewhenused="false" name="Medium Shading 1 Accent 1"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="64" semihidden="false" unhidewhenused="false" name="Medium Shading 2 Accent 1"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="65" semihidden="false" unhidewhenused="false" name="Medium List 1 Accent 1"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" unhidewhenused="false" name="Revision"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="34" semihidden="false" unhidewhenused="false" qformat="true" name="List Paragraph"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="29" semihidden="false" unhidewhenused="false" qformat="true" name="Quote"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="30" semihidden="false" unhidewhenused="false" qformat="true" name="Intense Quote"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="66" semihidden="false" unhidewhenused="false" name="Medium List 2 Accent 1"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="67" semihidden="false" unhidewhenused="false" name="Medium Grid 1 Accent 1"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="68" semihidden="false" unhidewhenused="false" name="Medium Grid 2 Accent 1"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="69" semihidden="false" unhidewhenused="false" name="Medium Grid 3 Accent 1"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="70" semihidden="false" unhidewhenused="false" name="Dark List Accent 1"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="71" semihidden="false" unhidewhenused="false" name="Colorful Shading Accent 1"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="72" semihidden="false" unhidewhenused="false" name="Colorful List Accent 1"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="73" semihidden="false" unhidewhenused="false" name="Colorful Grid Accent 1"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="60" semihidden="false" unhidewhenused="false" name="Light Shading Accent 2"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="61" semihidden="false" unhidewhenused="false" name="Light List Accent 2"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="62" semihidden="false" unhidewhenused="false" name="Light Grid Accent 2"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="63" semihidden="false" unhidewhenused="false" name="Medium Shading 1 Accent 2"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="64" semihidden="false" unhidewhenused="false" name="Medium Shading 2 Accent 2"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="65" semihidden="false" unhidewhenused="false" name="Medium List 1 Accent 2"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="66" semihidden="false" unhidewhenused="false" name="Medium List 2 Accent 2"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="67" semihidden="false" unhidewhenused="false" name="Medium Grid 1 Accent 2"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="68" semihidden="false" unhidewhenused="false" name="Medium Grid 2 Accent 2"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="69" semihidden="false" unhidewhenused="false" name="Medium Grid 3 Accent 2"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="70" semihidden="false" unhidewhenused="false" name="Dark List Accent 2"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="71" semihidden="false" unhidewhenused="false" name="Colorful Shading Accent 2"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="72" semihidden="false" unhidewhenused="false" name="Colorful List Accent 2"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="73" semihidden="false" unhidewhenused="false" name="Colorful Grid Accent 2"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="60" semihidden="false" unhidewhenused="false" name="Light Shading Accent 3"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="61" semihidden="false" unhidewhenused="false" name="Light List Accent 3"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="62" semihidden="false" unhidewhenused="false" name="Light Grid Accent 3"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="63" semihidden="false" unhidewhenused="false" name="Medium Shading 1 Accent 3"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="64" semihidden="false" unhidewhenused="false" name="Medium Shading 2 Accent 3"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="65" semihidden="false" unhidewhenused="false" name="Medium List 1 Accent 3"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="66" semihidden="false" unhidewhenused="false" name="Medium List 2 Accent 3"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="67" semihidden="false" unhidewhenused="false" name="Medium Grid 1 Accent 3"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="68" semihidden="false" unhidewhenused="false" name="Medium Grid 2 Accent 3"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="69" semihidden="false" unhidewhenused="false" name="Medium Grid 3 Accent 3"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="70" semihidden="false" unhidewhenused="false" name="Dark List Accent 3"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="71" semihidden="false" unhidewhenused="false" name="Colorful Shading Accent 3"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="72" semihidden="false" unhidewhenused="false" name="Colorful List Accent 3"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="73" semihidden="false" unhidewhenused="false" name="Colorful Grid Accent 3"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="60" semihidden="false" unhidewhenused="false" name="Light Shading Accent 4"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="61" semihidden="false" unhidewhenused="false" name="Light List Accent 4"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="62" semihidden="false" unhidewhenused="false" name="Light Grid Accent 4"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="63" semihidden="false" unhidewhenused="false" name="Medium Shading 1 Accent 4"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="64" semihidden="false" unhidewhenused="false" name="Medium Shading 2 Accent 4"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="65" semihidden="false" unhidewhenused="false" name="Medium List 1 Accent 4"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="66" semihidden="false" unhidewhenused="false" name="Medium List 2 Accent 4"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="67" semihidden="false" unhidewhenused="false" name="Medium Grid 1 Accent 4"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="68" semihidden="false" unhidewhenused="false" name="Medium Grid 2 Accent 4"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="69" semihidden="false" unhidewhenused="false" name="Medium Grid 3 Accent 4"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="70" semihidden="false" unhidewhenused="false" name="Dark List Accent 4"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="71" semihidden="false" unhidewhenused="false" name="Colorful Shading Accent 4"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="72" semihidden="false" unhidewhenused="false" name="Colorful List Accent 4"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="73" semihidden="false" unhidewhenused="false" name="Colorful Grid Accent 4"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="60" semihidden="false" unhidewhenused="false" name="Light Shading Accent 5"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="61" semihidden="false" unhidewhenused="false" name="Light List Accent 5"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="62" semihidden="false" unhidewhenused="false" name="Light Grid Accent 5"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="63" semihidden="false" unhidewhenused="false" name="Medium Shading 1 Accent 5"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="64" semihidden="false" unhidewhenused="false" name="Medium Shading 2 Accent 5"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="65" semihidden="false" unhidewhenused="false" name="Medium List 1 Accent 5"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="66" semihidden="false" unhidewhenused="false" name="Medium List 2 Accent 5"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="67" semihidden="false" unhidewhenused="false" name="Medium Grid 1 Accent 5"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="68" semihidden="false" unhidewhenused="false" name="Medium Grid 2 Accent 5"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="69" semihidden="false" unhidewhenused="false" name="Medium Grid 3 Accent 5"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="70" semihidden="false" unhidewhenused="false" name="Dark List Accent 5"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="71" semihidden="false" unhidewhenused="false" name="Colorful Shading Accent 5"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="72" semihidden="false" unhidewhenused="false" name="Colorful List Accent 5"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="73" semihidden="false" unhidewhenused="false" name="Colorful Grid Accent 5"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="60" semihidden="false" unhidewhenused="false" name="Light Shading Accent 6"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="61" semihidden="false" unhidewhenused="false" name="Light List Accent 6"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="62" semihidden="false" unhidewhenused="false" name="Light Grid Accent 6"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="63" semihidden="false" unhidewhenused="false" name="Medium Shading 1 Accent 6"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="64" semihidden="false" unhidewhenused="false" name="Medium Shading 2 Accent 6"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="65" semihidden="false" unhidewhenused="false" name="Medium List 1 Accent 6"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="66" semihidden="false" unhidewhenused="false" name="Medium List 2 Accent 6"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="67" semihidden="false" unhidewhenused="false" name="Medium Grid 1 Accent 6"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="68" semihidden="false" unhidewhenused="false" name="Medium Grid 2 Accent 6"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="69" semihidden="false" unhidewhenused="false" name="Medium Grid 3 Accent 6"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="70" semihidden="false" unhidewhenused="false" name="Dark List Accent 6"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="71" semihidden="false" unhidewhenused="false" name="Colorful Shading Accent 6"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="72" semihidden="false" unhidewhenused="false" name="Colorful List Accent 6"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="73" semihidden="false" unhidewhenused="false" name="Colorful Grid Accent 6"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="19" semihidden="false" unhidewhenused="false" qformat="true" name="Subtle Emphasis"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="21" semihidden="false" unhidewhenused="false" qformat="true" name="Intense Emphasis"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="31" semihidden="false" unhidewhenused="false" qformat="true" name="Subtle Reference"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="32" semihidden="false" unhidewhenused="false" qformat="true" name="Intense Reference"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="33" semihidden="false" unhidewhenused="false" qformat="true" name="Book Title"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="37" name="Bibliography"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="39" qformat="true" name="TOC Heading"> </w:LatentStyles> </xml><![endif]--><style> <!-- /* Font Definitions */ @font-face {font-family:"Cambria Math"; panose-1:2 4 5 3 5 4 6 3 2 4; mso-font-charset:1; mso-generic-font-family:roman; mso-font-format:other; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:0 0 0 0 0 0;} @font-face {font-family:Calibri; panose-1:2 15 5 2 2 2 4 3 2 4; mso-font-charset:0; mso-generic-font-family:swiss; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:-1610611985 1073750139 0 0 159 0;} /* Style Definitions */ p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal {mso-style-unhide:no; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-margin-top-alt:auto; margin-right:0in; mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto; margin-left:4.3pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:Calibri; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} .MsoChpDefault {mso-style-type:export-only; mso-default-props:yes; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:Calibri; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} .MsoPapDefault {mso-style-type:export-only; mso-margin-top-alt:auto; mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto; margin-left:4.3pt;} @page Section1 {size:8.5in 11.0in; margin:1.0in 1.0in 1.0in 1.0in; mso-header-margin:.5in; mso-footer-margin:.5in; mso-paper-source:0;} div.Section1 {page:Section1;} --> </style><!--[if gte mso 10]> <style> /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin-top:auto; mso-para-margin-right:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:auto; mso-para-margin-left:4.3pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin;} </style> <![endif]--> <p class="MsoNormalCxSpFirst" style="margin-left: 0in; font-family: trebuchet ms;"><b style="">When the “Unsayable” is Spoken<o:p></o:p></b></p> <p class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="margin-left: 0in;font-family:trebuchet ms;"><o:p></o:p>Over the last decade, I have been a part of a men’s community. In this group, our kinship revolves around an ongoing process of what many call “work.” This work, due to our Christian naming, is a process in which salvation and redemption are applied to the realities of our broken lives.<span style=""> </span>Wholeness, which many may see as an essential part of, if not the purpose of salvation, is what we strive for. Integrity means integration, thus all things must be brought into the circle of trust. All things must be submitted to the mind of Christ. All things must be brought out of the silence into a trusting reverent moment where the men are gathered. <span style=""> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="margin-left: 0in;font-family:trebuchet ms;"><o:p></o:p>Over the years I have been blessed to hear hundreds of stories. Many are filled with laughter and light and the blessings of loving families and communities. Scores of others are mingled with a mix of deep anguish and loss as well as the elation of undeserved blessing and enlargement. Occasionally, through the narrative of a particular man, the group steps into a dark shadowy land of malevolent energy that can only be named as evil. In these moments what has been wordless and voiceless begins to find sound.</p> <p class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="margin-left: 0in;font-family:trebuchet ms;">At a very primal level, words are merely sounds. They are utterances to which we apply meaning. It appears that some feelings are difficult to name and thus we hum or sing nonsense phrases. Other sounds are much more difficult to identify because they are rarely if ever spoken and they are off putting in their manifestation.<span style=""> </span>In the book Unsayable, author & therapist, <span style=""></span>Annie G. Annie Rogers tell us that “whatever is terrifyingly present in our body, yet unsayable takes on a coded form in our speech and actions.” I have learned that nearly all the unsayable is a coded poetry, a dance with words that reveal a heinous crime against someone’s very soul. As much as emotionally returning as best one can to the scene of the crime is essential, it is the lifelong trauma that marks the body becoming invisible and inarticulate that makes these stories intolerable and agonizing.</p> <p class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="margin-left: 0in;font-family:trebuchet ms;"><o:p></o:p>The first inklings of some kind of significant brokenness in a man may be a rupture in his speech pattern. People can offer up the most horrendous experience and treatment with cold detachment. When the sense of disconnection between words and emotion is significantly disengaged from reality, it is usually the case that deep trauma has offered up a counter narrative that rules the conscious mind. I hear over and over again, “Well he is a nice guy. He did not mean to do that. She was suffering a lot herself. They were just acting upon a long held prejudice or hatred. As right as those assertions may seem to the logical mind, bringing these wounds to remembrance is challenging.<span style=""> </span>This is due to the emotionally charged repressed knowing which is fighting to tell the truth but is unsure and undecided.<span style=""> </span>How could this have happened? These memories seem so wrong. My father could not have done this. My uncle was a good man. My family had so much going for them. These interpretations could go on a life time and for some they do. Some of us will never ask the deeper questions, look beneath the quandary, or touch the tender and sore spots on the soul. </p> <p class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="margin-left: 0in;font-family:trebuchet ms;">But it is the confounding nature of our experience that forces our souls into ambivalence. Part of this is denial’s gift as facing the shocking realities of our histories can force our bodies into the involuntary sickness of revulsion. For some of the men, this may be their first time that they have admitted indeed what has happened to them. This is the first time they named the pain within. This is the power of silence. Much of what has marked the body is written in invisible ink. It is nigh unto impossible to to detect without an interpreter or a spiritual curator who is schooled in the historically charged world of<span style=""> </span>soulish antiquities. As though ancient hieroglyphics, this offering up of the unsayable becomes a shared language as others who know their own dialect offer up questions to the story teller.<span style=""> </span>Time after time we would watch sounds and words call up something out of the ordinary, plant it in a man’s body and watch it remake his world. This is why we often ask a man, “Where is it in your body?” What we are asking is, “Where has your emotional storage of that experience been located in or on your body? Where do you keep these secrets? What part of your body holds the secret?”</p> <p class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="margin-left: 0in;font-family:trebuchet ms;"><span style="font-style: italic;">What if I told you the truth? What if I could?</span> <span style="font-weight: bold;">Robert Pinsky</span></p> <p class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="margin-left: 0in; font-family: trebuchet ms; font-style: italic;">I might not be able to carry it, Mr. Frodo, but I can carry you!</p> <p class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" face="trebuchet ms" style="margin-left: 0in;">The indicators of something sorely wrong are often first manifest in the voice, visage or posture of a man. <span style=""> </span>There appears a crack in the silence and falling out of this previously hidden place we may hear a muttering or a low pitched whine. His head may slump towards his knees,. He may stare into space for long periods of time and say nothing.<span style=""> </span>When he does begin to speak one can hear sounds nearly animal like. It often shakes the soul and sends chills up the spine.<span style=""> </span>Sometimes the opening crack closes as quickly as it appeared and the man must be asked by another, “Where were you just now?” Over and over again you will hear the man say, “What do you mean where was I? <span style=""> </span>I am right here.”<span style=""> </span>Once again the query from another, “No…where did you go inside yourself. You changed. Your face, your voice, your pose. Where was that place you went?” </p> <p class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" face="trebuchet ms" style="margin-left: 0in;">Usually when one is unconsciously coming upon the unsayable, the body will begin to fidget and show signs of inner terror. In the case of men who see themselves as stoic and strong, it may only appear in slight and hardly detectable body ticks. If you know the man, you may see a tick that usually comes out during stress or intense situations. Now here they are sitting in a circle with men and those same body messages are beginning to rise to the surface. If we are quiet and stay in a position of sacred listening, the man may just begin to utter the unspeakable. This is the place Christ has always been. This is the place He desires to inhabit. For His presence to be acknowledged one can only go there. Go there again. No one who has experienced the unspeakable will ever desire to go there again. In fact, many have made an invisible pact with their most vulnerable childlike self to never ever allow themselves to be in that position again. Thus, all the resources here to date the unconscious has mustered to protect are now fighting the healing. The unconscious has no script to read. It does what it is told. To untell it is to reprogram a number of stories (therapists call them complexes) and listen to and rename countless things.<span style=""> </span>That is why we call it work. It will take a lifetime.</p> <p class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" face="trebuchet ms" style="margin-left: 0in;">I have heard many stories that are nearly unbearable. No! They are unbearable to hear.<span style=""> </span>Often when someone is sharing their horrific past I want to stand up and scream at the top of my lungs. I want to find this person who did this, track them down and do to them what they have done to this person. But that is my work. That is my story. That is how I found myself with these men. I began to name the unnamable and say the unspeakable. That is the history of my silence.</p> <p class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="margin-left: 0in; font-family: trebuchet ms;">But when I quell my own need for revenge or justice I can step back into the hidden & protected language this man is offering up to me and to others. It is in those blessed holy moments that something beyond the group emerges. Sometimes the story has been carried for generations as in the case of those who have experienced racism & genocide. To hear the names men have been called from nigger to chink to yellow man breaks your heart. When it is offered up in true vulnerability it becomes too sacred to ignore. You must embrace any part of that sin that might be yours and silently repent to the brother to remain present and clean of soul. To detach yourself and your own behavior from this man’s story is to assume he is not a part of you. We often say, “Your work is my work.” And indeed this is true. For another man to continue articulating the unsayable, I must take responsibility for his pain be it personal, corporate, or even out of complacency. Justice is not an abstract ethic but my responsibility to protect the other from abuse, sin, greed, or lack. </p> <p class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="margin-left: 0in; font-family: trebuchet ms;">There are occasions where a man’s past and suffering is so repugnant that speechlessness is an act of properly naming the offense. In these moments there are no words to offer up to the suffering of another. Words can often be explanations for the sake of the “talker.” In light of what is being spoken, often for the first time, these expressions can make the story small and inconsequential. When the weight of grief and torture are unimaginable, all the men can do is bear witness to its enormity and cruelty by weeping. Weeping as a family. I have seen grown men fall to their knees and weep and wail for another. This was the only response one could have to such unspeakable atrocities done to people. To hear them is to see redemption in a new light. To hear them is to see evil as more than a concept or some devil in some red suit. You begin to see our own role in the passing on of great hurt and pain. I can become a part of great hurt in another’s life. I can become as well a healing voice with protection an comfort. I choose either way. This is a frightening truth. I have in my own heart such power. The more I name my own brokenness the more I can stand beside those who are yet to name theirs and do so as a sacred calling. </p> <p class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="margin-left: 0in; font-family: trebuchet ms;">This naming, of course, is easier said than done. For some, the darkness is just that. To bring something from another realm is to feel once again the same violence, abandonment, or injustice which formed or informed so much of their lives.<span style=""> </span>The calling up of those darkened events long forgotten or submerged is indeed the loosing of strongholds. It is the unraveling of years and yes, generations of thinking, acting, and naming.<span style=""> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="margin-left: 0in; font-family: trebuchet ms;">In the case of severe trauma, be it physical, sexual, or emotional violence, transporting these shadowy and threatening remembrances is all but horrific. On some level, it is to live them all over again. For this reason many will never go to these places. They will instead hideaway the suffering of the soul, deny its reflexive blindness and wander through life half full or nearly empty. </p> <p class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="margin-left: 0in; font-family: trebuchet ms;">It is said that we cannot be conscious of what we are unconscious. So as good as we would desire to be, something is always in collusion. Something is always complicitous in our acting out, our sin, our projections of pain on others. But we cannot find the root. We do not see the cause. For many that cause is hidden from our memory to such an extent that even when ask we may draw a blank. This blank does not negate the realty of our experience. It merely reinforces the power of denial to shut away the remembrance of painful times. Some of these experiences are so painful we turn to anxiety relief through denial, repression, suppression, or addiction. </p> <p class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="margin-left: 0in; font-family: trebuchet ms;"><b style="">It’s Hidden in the Words<o:p></o:p></b></p> <p class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="margin-left: 0in; font-family: trebuchet ms;">What is the quality of knowing that is hidden in our speech? What can be discerned about a person in what they say and more importantly, what they don’t say? I am a victim. There I said. I loathe that word. I even loathe that posture as I interpret it in the lives of others.<span style=""> </span>For when I encounter a real victim, a deep calls to deep. Just their carriage and pose can trigger rage in me. It can take me to me knees. Just the look in their eyes can cause my breathing to get shallow, my superficial happiness to crash and my head to fill with venomous fatal ruminations that scatter my presence to the wind.<span style=""> </span>In an emotional sense, I leave the room & hide. That is the power of converging silent stories. This is the part of me that reminds me of how weak I was back when my story first began.<span style=""> </span>This is why alcoholics can pick each other out in stadium. The deeper the wound the deeper the frequency of the unspeakable cry. This cry is only heard by another who is feeling or has felt that depth of pain. Many of us go through terrible anguish as children.<span style=""> </span>It always marks us on some level. Who can understand the resilience of one and the seeming fragile shatteredness of another or the violent rage of another that takes their pain and compounds it on countless others?</p> <p class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="margin-left: 0in; font-family: trebuchet ms;">Therapist Annie Rogers, who worked many years as a staff psychologist at a mental ward working with teenagers, remarks as to the uncanny manner in which the body and language are in collusion. “When all traces of history have been erased and the body itself is inscribed with an unknown language, how does a child begin to speak? How is it possible to listen so that that child comes to know something vital, and speaking freely becomes possible, so that living inside one’s own body is no longer a nightmare?”</p> <p class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="margin-left: 0in; font-family: trebuchet ms;">I am convinced we are all experts on our lives. If we can only find a place where people really listen, we can discover a healing not privy to our souls otherwise. Why? Only those who have listened to the unspeakable can hear the unsayable. As Parker Palmer says in A Hidden Wholeness, circles of trust are needed to coax the soul from its tender hiding. <span style=""> </span>A group, be they Christian or therapeutic, cannot shout for the soul to come out. <span style=""> </span>So much of our dialogue is the dialect of listening and practiced silence. So few of us can wait for the soul to check its territory and borders for safety and protection.<span style=""> </span>We are so trained to offer answers we often give the wrong answer at the wrong time. How many Christians have spent years of their lives living the answer to a question that was that of another? Are not most books a configuration of a shadowed projection we writers superimpose on humanity?<span style=""> </span>In our minds we believe the world needs one more book, one more explanation, one more piece of insight. </p> David M. Bunkerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16437828982115875616noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5592586909280725556.post-24586455973478413852009-09-01T16:31:00.000-07:002009-09-01T16:33:58.570-07:00Running in to Our Self<span style="font-family: trebuchet ms; font-weight: bold;">When I am Tired of Being Human</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;">Reality TV has its detractors and rightly so. But if there is an up side it is the unabashed revealing of just how volatile, vulnerable and easily influenced we humans are. In the midst of following any person be they a speeder or a rejected jilted lover, one thing seems clear. We are all looking for something and we need it bad.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;">So what is it that we all need? Love and sex seem like front runners but most of us over 30 in or out of a healing or broken marriage know that relationships are paradoxically rich and fulfilling as well as exhausting and debilitating. No quick fix here. But the search for the beloved goes on. Driven to find that gaze of “the other” reflected back with near worship and adoration, we move from scenario to scenario projecting all this energy into the middle of the room but unaware of its beckoning power we remain aloof & distant.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;">So the paradox of humanness persists. We desperately need & constantly diminish that neediness through hip posturing and distancing. I guess we would all rush towards the shadow, towards what is not being said, what is not being addressed if we only knew it were there. But alas, profound insight into our blindness seldom provides the exotic rush of projecting the beloved or the rescue upon another or another experience. We are unconscious of what we are unconscious.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;">Recently I watched my inner self played out in a relationship. As much as I may have wanted to distance myself from a friend based on my interpretation of life and its challenges, my love and history with them would not allow me to ultimately demonize their actions. I could only see myself, our self. It was me (we). I was him.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;">As I watched the play role out and parties line up to take sides, all I could do was hope some insight might emerge I could offer up. I had a lot of thoughts about what I thought was going on but none of them really sunk deep into a more vulnerable honest part of my soul. What my friend really needed was compassion. What I really had very little of was compassion.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;">As I sat in that lack I wondered why it was so hard to muster up even a sliver of empathy and kindness. What was the glitch in heart on this one? Often when I see others struggle with identity I project my own submerged sense of dislocation and abandonment on them and become cold & mocking. How can this guy or gal be so screwed up and self absorbed? I have unfortunately learned to soften my projection of narcissism on to others by feigning interest, asking questions but at times my heart still remains distant and cold. I have already named them (me) and it is settled at a deep unconscious level. By settled I don’t mean I am at peace with myself. I mean I have spiritually acquiesced to my impotent attempts to be present and authentic so this person’s exposure of the inflated exalted self is especially grievous and offensive to me. My shallowness is being revealed in the moment. My inability to love at a deep level frightens me as I pronounce some verdict in my heart upon them. Now I realize this judgment falls on us all. I do not escape my own inability to be compassionate. What I deny to my friend I deny to myself.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;">I need compassion. As life unfolds and the Father draws me unto Himself, I am discovering that the unfolding of the soul is not merely a personal journey. I practice His love on others. I practice His love on myself. This is the one thought I have so much trouble submitting to. Why am I not convinced of how much I need compassion? Why would I not offer it to others? This is the condition of my own heart. I would rather go without my own <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_0">bestowment</span> of compassion so as to remain arrogant & proud. Rather than see in others my deepest need, I deny my essential nature & loose touch with my own brokenness. </span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;">Today I make room for myself in my heart so as to make room for others. Do unto to others…oh yeah. I’<span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_1">ve</span> heard that before.</span>David M. Bunkerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16437828982115875616noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5592586909280725556.post-19386071486222193732009-07-21T20:19:00.000-07:002009-07-21T20:22:07.626-07:00The Wisdom of Distance<span style="font-weight: bold; font-family: trebuchet ms;">Searching for Hidden Affinity</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;"> We are paradoxical creatures. Simultaneously we long for the expression of our uniqueness and yet yearn for belonging. Given our seemingly oppositional proclivities towards individuality and relationship, it is often the case that we view the distance between ourselves and others with fear and self protection. John O'Donohue reflects on these tendencies of the soul in his book Eternal Echoes – Celtic Reflections on Our Yearning to Belong. He names this space we call distance as “longing.” This longing is a manifestation of the deepest nature of the soul which is relationship. How odd that we are seemingly drawn towards the very thing that reveals this distance. It is O'Donohue's following statement that intrigues me and is the focus of this pondering. </span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;">“Distance awakens longing; closeness is belonging. Yet they are always in a dynamic interflow with each other. When we fix or locate them definitively, we injure our growth. It is an interesting imaginative exercise to interchange them; to consider what is near as distant and to consider the distance as intimate.”</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;">So much of our inner world is unclear & opaque even to ourselves. Why are we are so amazed at how incomprehensible many of the acts and feelings are into which we inhabit the idea of ourselves? As much as we desire transparency, there is at our core a portion of our soul that is inaccessible to those without. Yet community reveals that no one is cut off from others completely and much of the reticence and caution we display regarding others reflects a deeper yearning to connect. Although much of our world is private nothing is indeed exclusive.</span><br /><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;">Scripture speaks of unity over and over again. The Spirit’s advocacy appears to bring with Him a profound sensitivity to discord. Harmony within the Body of Christ is more than group think or unanimity. Surely it is the restoration of what the Creator’s intentions must have been from the beginning within the Trinity. That is a complete awaking to just how much we all belong. Many in our community have read Rohr’s "Everything Belongs.” In this work Rohr points again & again to the powerful awareness that our own center is never discovered alone. At this core reality we uncover the sacramental moment where no one need compete, judge or make comparisons, or seek to dominate. In this present moment God uses everything. In and through the lens of divine foresight nothing is wasted, all is recycled, & everyone & everything belongs. All is grace.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;">It is only the holy fool who walks into this way of being for it is beyond mere thinking. Until I regard the distance between myself and others as an invitation rather than a signal to cut & run, I will name it punitively. In a post modern world where much of our humanity is abstracted and real presence is always tempted to become mere simulation, how do we quell the crisis of belonging and the great divide between us all? Once again we must seek a new designation for this longing? Could this restlessness within our hearts be a voice rising up for form and presence? Are we like the Greek mythological character Echo who sitting in the eerie silence of the forgotten self longed for Narcissus’ love? But alas, mistaking Narcissus words for her own she ran to him and discovered his self absorption and felt her own deep rejection. As Rohr alludes in Everything Belongs, there is a place within the heart that we all share. In this silent depth we are open to love, to touch, to affection, to trust. Out of this place the distance we thought was powerful & real now is transfigured into a guiding vacancy, a divine opening in the soul awaiting the shelter of community. Being is being with. I am fully myself in & through my brother’s welcoming. </span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;">Let me end with another O’Donohue quote as his writing is so powerfully guiding in this piece.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;">“There is something incomplete in purely individual presence. Belonging together with others completes something in us. It also suggests that behind all our differences and distances from each other, we are all participating in larger drama of the Spirit. The life and death of each of us does indeed affect the rest of us. Not alone do we long for the community; but at a deeper level we are already a community of the Spirit.”</span>David M. Bunkerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16437828982115875616noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5592586909280725556.post-89909464329289069832009-05-10T12:00:00.000-07:002009-05-10T12:03:14.510-07:00To the Orphans on Mother's Day<span style=";font-family:verdana;font-size:85%;" ><span style="font-weight: bold;">The Mothering of God</span><br /><br />The most important decision we make is whether we believe we live in a friendly or hostile universe."<br />- <span style="font-weight: bold;">Albert Einstein</span><br /><br />Then he said to the disciple, 'Behold, your mother!'" <span style="font-weight: bold;">Jn 19:26-27</span><br /><br />I have always been inept at physical nurturing. Touch and affection come hard. With the exception of our cat buddy, allowing anyone into my space is daunting and frightening. It is on mother’s day that this experience finds a name.<br /><br />I always dread mother’s day. Church usually offers up a fairly maudlin version of motherhood & for anyone who doesn't fit the mold (most of humanity?), the very presentation & sermon meant to encourage tends to dishearten and depress. As I glance around the congregation and see countless adults wiping away the heartbreak they had buried for years, I find myself wondering why God made us this way. What is it about our relationships with our mothers that speaks so deeply to our being? Why did God create us with such a deep longing to be cherished & cared for?<br /><br />I have read countless times the scriptural teaching on God’s loving character. I catch glimpses of this in the men I walk with at times but the memory of my mother’s gaze is much more painful & problematic. One only needs to ask my wife to discover how difficult it is for me to see my own loveliness. The burden of my broken estate & the subsequent flaw that is my birthright is real & resident to me. Is it possible that God has sent mothers to offer up a small & initial glimpse of how the Father sees & knows us?<br /><br />To be nurtured because one needs it is one issue. To be cherished is entirely different & transforming. For those who have not had the experience of being treasured, this part of God’s character is estranged and distant. We are all orphans from the Father. To know His heart for us is to be able to imagine how He longs for our very presence. We first become familiar with this idea when our mothers welcome us home after a day at school. When our homecoming (not every day mind you) has a high degree of focused love, care & celebration, we can then imagine the fanfare of the prodigal’s father.<br /><br />Today is a day of remembrance. Undoubtedly is will be bitter sweet as is most of life. But for those who long for love, these mother child memories can weigh heavily on the soul. To the orphans this day I say let the Father mother you. Surrender to that ache & let Him touch that profound sense of being unattractive to yourself, to your lover, to your friends & family. Surrender to His unrelenting pursuit. Let His Abba Fatherness be your mothering. Let His welcoming presence be the arms you never felt. Let His tender eyes reveal the pleasure He takes in you. Allow His still small voice to whisper just how much He values your company & looks forward to the intimate times you have together.<br /><br />Remember, Jesus had a mother. She bore the Son of God. She is counted blessed by the entire family of God since her time on earth. So it must be important that you had a mother. So….To the motherless by circumstance or pain, let this day of remembrance find its meaning in the Father’s heart. For you are the apple of His eye.</span>David M. Bunkerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16437828982115875616noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5592586909280725556.post-89389581788168591102009-02-25T14:55:00.000-08:002009-02-25T15:01:32.694-08:00The Imposition of Ashes -Ash Wednesday<span style="font-size:85%;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><span style="font-weight: bold;">We Are Tortured Wonders</span><br /><br />The Church’s practice of Ash Wednesday has become a powerful metaphor for life’s transient nature. The very act of bowing one’s knee and having another human place darkened ashes upon your forehead tells a powerful story to our bodies that we are indeed going to face our end. Growing up in the holiness tradition I was fairly unfamiliar with the sacraments and rituals of the high church. Ash Wednesday and its formative power were missed on me and others like me. What was the point of wearing some kind of darkened ash on one’s forehead? In his book Tortured Wonders, <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_0">Clapp</span> reflects on an experience an Episcopal priest friend of his had during an Ash Wednesday service</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: verdana;">As the priests were offering up prayers and the Gospel, they prepared to offer up the reminder of each and everyone’s frailty in light of the body’s fragile reality. As one of the priests administered the ashes on the foreheads, a stunningly beautiful woman dressed obviously with fashion and panache walked forward and knelt before the priest. Her reticence and awkwardness were obvious and at some point she leaned forward as if she wanted to say something to the priest. He <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_1">instinctually</span> drew closer to her whispering only to hear her say in halting speech, “Father, I am a model. I know I only have a few years, and then I will be too old for this work. My body is aging, and I can hardly admit it to myself. I do this once a year, at this service. So rub the ashes on. Rub them hard.” Page 170 Tortured Wonders</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: verdana;">I bring up the season of Lent for it is the system of time under which we live. We all live under some construct of time and ascribe value to it. We know how we value time by observing how we manage it, how we talk about it, and how we attempt to capture more of it for our use. Time tells us when to go to work, when to rest, when to allow leisure, when to celebrate, when to mourn and on and on. </span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: verdana;">When we as Christians introduce the Church calendar as a lens through which we see and value time, it is going to form and frame our lives differently than clocks set to other standards of value. If one travels at all they begin to see that the perception of time and its presence is defined and expressed very differently from one culture to another. Any time spent in South America and it is clear that smaller increments of time do not exist. Time is measured in hours at best but mostly in days and those days are broken out into things like sunrise, the heat of a noon day son, and the cooler hours of impending nightfall. If one treks down to Columbia or Ecuador, they quickly learn that smaller configurations of time (like minutes and hours) usually are considered porous expressions of intentionality and not literal containers into which life should be lived.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: verdana;">Time is different for believers. The nature of this sojourn demands we regard this seemingly vaporous experience with great care and stewardship. The Church calendar is a value system created by believers that reflects this honoring. We see and value time in a distinctly Christian manner. As stewards of life and its resources, we are not ultimately going to see time as merely a container for our own personal needs and preferences. This is not to say that we do not see ourselves living inside of time as a person but that there are grander purposes into which life and truth, goodness and beauty can be expressed and time is one of those containers.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: verdana;">Lent is a season that takes us into a cycle of repentance and mourning. It is clear that as we approach Easter, our hearts and minds begin to see the impact of our personal sinfulness and the sinfulness of the world. So much of our suffering comes from our unwillingness to embrace our limitations and our <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_2">rootedness</span> in our own agendas for life. Thus, we need a calendar or a clock if you will to tell us to mourn this condition. We must set aside some time to remind ourselves of our own <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_3">finitude</span>, our own limitations, and our own divine confinements.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: verdana;">Divine confinements is a phrase that came to me as I sat in a hospital wondering why the season of illness had befallen me. Wondering is probably a softened term for in fact, I was feeling God’s <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_4">hiddeness</span> and most of my prayers were those of desperation and crying out. As we allow ourselves to fall under the power of the Church calendar we begin to see that our Savior as well entered into this time where the confinements of life and His impending death were looming large on the horizon and overwhelming to His humanness. The wounds of <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_5">overwhelment</span> and insufficiency plague us as humans. This is the space out of which we question our faith, question, God’s existence, question the very thought of a kind and gracious God.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: verdana;">Michael Card makes it clear in his book Sacred Sorrows, that real mourning is different than despair. Despair comes when we do not think God is hearing our cries, when we take our crying out, and like Nietzsche, scream it into the abyss of nothingness to a God that is a figment of our own imagining. It is during times of great lament that the aloofness of the mystery now moves from being merely an intellectual conundrum solved by philosophers and preachers to an emotional necessity that we settle once and for all whether God and us can handle the visceral exchange that takes place during lament.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: verdana;">The Imposition of Ashes (Ash Wednesday) is in many ways the Churches answer to the ultimate question which is, “why do we die and why must I know that I am going to die?” Animals of course don’t seem to have this awareness. This may be open to debate as some elephants do seem to mourn the loss of their mates and many have said that other animals do as wall. Regardless of the level of consciousness of animals, it is clear that for humans, the question of our forthcoming death is a foundational exchange that all of us have at some point or the other. Ernst Becker in his ground breaking writings talked about the power of death as a back drop for much of life’s intensities and challenges.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: verdana;">As Christians we do have a hope and much of the modern church tells us to focus only on the hope side. Real lament seems to me to take hope into consideration but it also allows for the soul to cry out. It allows for the soul to tell a Father that the pain is too much; the feelings of sorrow and abandonment go deeper than they ever imagined they could feel, the seeming sense of insufficiency and <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_6">overwhelment</span> stand like cold specters over our shoulder reminding us daily of our impotence.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: verdana;">Any cursive reading of Scripture reveals quickly that much of the Old Testament writers did not sugar coat their laments. I am fearful that our satiated sense of self sufficiency that comes through abundance, keeps us from feeling at a deep level that this life is just not enough. The perks, the positions, the joys and pleasures in the end do not keep death from our door. Thus, this is a portal through which all enter. Death is the great leveler if you will.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: verdana;">As we enter the season of lent we are being told by our ancient heritage that honoring the lament, repenting over our ways of engaging each other and the created realm, are ways to redeem the time. There are ways to spend our time wisely and mercifully. Any spirituality that does not allow for lament is a cheap religion. It is not what God came to earth to offer us. In Jesus we see that God cares about the suffering of His people. In fact, the rain falls on the just and the unjust implying that God’s common grace is not merely an over flow but intentional in the sense that He wants this part of His character to be preeminently available. Crying out is something He welcomes. Deep questioning and sacred sorrow are things He is familiar with as his own Son questioned the very plan of salvation on some level. “Why have you forsaken me? Why? Why?”</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: verdana;">As we continue to explore our spiritual roots we begin to see that the prayer of abandonment is an entry point into the heart of God. To seek after God is to first of all speak into the darkness with truth. Are you there? Why are you hiding?</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: verdana;">It is during times of darkness and its shadow that we feel the tension of this life with a vengeance. We cannot hold back the tears. We cannot explain well enough to our souls the sense of impending loss. Thus, wisely, our brothers and sisters from times past have said….come under the canopy of this clock. Come under the story of time offered to us by our Hebrew brothers and sisters and then through the atoning story of our Savior begin to see yourself and your relationships to time and space through this blessing of permission. We have a time set aside in our lives to see it as it is. We do not have to deny the seasons of the soul, the journey of the heart. Regardless of what time the clock says, what time zone we are in, what part of the world we are in, there is a moment set aside for us to face the divine confinements of this life and mourn. We can do this without shame and hiding. We can even make this time oddly enough one of beauty. Wear the ashes with humility and grace.</span><br /><br /><br /><br /><span style="font-family: verdana;">A Poem</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: verdana;">The Final Boxing Up of Life’s Things</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: verdana;">Death will peer <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_7">thru</span> the front door window</span><br /><span style="font-family: verdana;">Quietly come in unannounced </span><br /><span style="font-family: verdana;">Only to discover most of my projects in moderate disarray</span><br /><span style="font-family: verdana;">Exposing just how unsettled I really am</span><br /><span style="font-family: verdana;">But alas, the one uncovering my cluttered domicile</span><br /><span style="font-family: verdana;">Will most likely miss any sense of meaning and placement</span><br /><span style="font-family: verdana;">My things will dissolve into their separateness</span><br /><span style="font-family: verdana;">Revealing little about the tapestry I was constructing</span><br /><span style="font-family: verdana;">This <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_8">unwelcomed</span> intruder will box up my things indiscriminately</span><br /><span style="font-family: verdana;">Never to reveal anything to anyone regarding</span><br /><span style="font-family: verdana;">The underside of my life’s weaving mystery</span><br /><span style="font-family: verdana;">Only You see the life we’<span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_9">ve</span> formed</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: verdana;">Ash Wednesday Historical Background</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: verdana;">The imposition of ashes on the foreheads of Christians is an ancient Christian practice, going back at least to the 10<span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_10">th</span> century. <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_11">Biblically</span>, ashes are a symbols of purification and penitence (see Numbers 19:9, 17; Hebrews 9:13; Jonah 3:6; Matthew 11:21, and Luke 10:13 ). </span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: verdana;">In the early church, people who had been separated from the church because of serious sins might seek to be re-admitted to the fellowship by observing a formal period of penitence during Lent. These people were generally sprinkled with ashes or given rough garments sprinkled with ashes as a sign of their sorrow for their sins.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: verdana;">Beginning in the tenth century, the observance of Ash Wednesday became a general rite for the church. The ashes, which were a symbol of purification in the Old Testament, remind us that we are mortal. In many churches the ashes are made by burning the palms from the previous year's Palm Sunday. Ashes are placed on the forehead, usually in the sign of a cross, in a ritual known as the Imposition of Ashes. As the ashes are placed on the forehead, words such as these are spoken: </span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: verdana;">"Remember that you are dust and to dust you shall return," recalling God's words to Adam in Genesis 3:19. </span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: verdana;">The ashes are prepared by burning palm leaves from the previous year's Palm Sunday celebrations and mixing them with olive oil as a fixative. In the Roman Catholic Church, Ash Wednesday is observed by fasting & abstinence.</span></span>David M. Bunkerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16437828982115875616noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5592586909280725556.post-11331331812073895332009-01-12T18:20:00.000-08:002009-01-12T18:25:09.094-08:00The Scarcity of Wonder & Awe<span style="font-weight: bold;font-family:trebuchet ms;" >The Reduction & Domestication of God</span><br /><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;font-family:trebuchet ms;" >Blessed are they that mourn for they shall be comforted.</span><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;font-family:trebuchet ms;" >Matthew 5:4</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">I am called to be sad, confused, and disenchanted. Why? The times demand it. The epoch in which I live is experiencing much chaos and bewilderment. This deep sensation of uncertainty is not merely a passing condition of the soul based on a self ordained distancing from God but an attentiveness to our age. Lord, help my unbelief….</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">My assertions that God is easily accessible, discernable, and approachable quickly disclose my own audacity. As the Orthodox theologian, John of Damascus wrote, “God does not belong to the class of existing things, not that God has not existence but that God is above all existing things, no even above existence itself.” </span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">The assuredness of the past is gone. Those preceding dispositions now speak more of self-belief and self-reliance than faith as all our foundations of knowing are up for grabs. To ignore the seeming domestication of God, His apparent departure from our awareness, the daily skirmishes between faiths and inner battles for power of those leading these various religious camps, makes public the inner barrenness of today’s supposed spiritual practitioners. The caustic banter of the day regarding faith & spirituality belies our glowing claims of piety and points to our overconfidence masquerading as faith. As Heidegger said, “We are in-between gods.”</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">Ironically, it is the very words about God and His nature that reveal our barrenness. We have reduced God to a text. We have diminished the miracle of faith to mere hermeneutics, creed, liturgy and a three point presentation as Peter Rollins says. Rollins goes on to say, “ The Word, if it exists at all, if "existence" is even the right word to describe its mode of dwelling, is not then the patch of meaning that covers over the wound of our unknowing but rather is that which causes the wound itself.” We cry out for a word, a voice in the wilderness and when we encounter this presence deny the very rupture in our beings that lead us to this event and encounter. We babble on and on about the inexpressible. In our attempt to bring our own inner world at one with itself we assault God’s revealing and systematize the text casting the very utterances of God out of our consciousness leaving us with nothing but the letter of the law. We then feast night and day on this dry & lifeless manuscript hoping for God to indwell a copy of Himself.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">For believers, this assessment may sound dark and foreboding if not defeatist and full of unbelief. This is not the intention of this blog. In fact, my intentions, if I am in touch with them on some level, are to make sure I am here now. I want to make sure I do not nostalgically re-present time as if I could bring the former days into the now through wistfulness and longing. I do not want to offer up a picture of God, bloated and assured with His own being but a deity in tears, hidden from Himself, face down in the garden in prayer. This is God being disenfranchised by God. This is God embracing the real condition of humankind at this moment. This is Jesus. </span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">Blessed are those that mourn. It is this overwhelming sense of loss, helplessness, and despair that Robert A. Guelich says expresses the grief of Jesus’ followers. Richard Rohr adds that this notion reveals clearly those who have entered into solidarity with the pain of the world. This is the incarnation. When the world is as it is, how else would Jesus’ followers be? We live in a world where even believers must admit the apparent absence of God. As Heidegger asserted many decades before, "the world of the Christian God has lost its effective force in history.” Christendom is dead.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">There is a deeply personal and previously concealed disclosure to this observance. In fact, my recognition of this condition in the world begins within me. Much of my personal faith walk to date has been an avoidance of my own condition as well as the world’s. I was looking for an antidote that would immunize me to all the drama and pain of this world. I spent much of my adult life looking for this potion presuming my search was for truth. In fact, I was looking for a magic elixir that would get me high and keep me above the fray of life. I was looking for that supernatural buzz that quieted all the beasts and allowed me to offer my doctrinal and theological conclusions as ultimate answers instead of my own body. I honored the idea of the cross and yet denied its reality in my own life. I believed in Christ. I was not a follower after Him and His life.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">I now see much of this search as a need to escape the real world. Rather than walk as my Savoir into the mysterious caldron of suffering and madness, I took the road most traveled, ate fruit from the lower branches, and kept my circle only to those who heartily agreed with all my speculations on the cosmos. I made the Church the Kingdom. The busyness of religion was my vocation. There was no need for a supernatural God breaking into my world. I had captured the essence of the message and was fine tuning its dissemination and calling it love. I had created my own cultural and spiritual monastery. I had successfully cloistered myself inside a bubble of denial that became, in the end, my own demise. For the degree to which I denied the world without was the same degree to which I denied the world within. But there is no escaping my own pain, and my complicity in the pain of the world. I am now tragically aware of my collusion with bigotry, poverty, sexism, phobias on countless marginalized peoples, and the daily blindness that comes with my inordinate desire for things. This admission is not a self flagellation but an emptying of my spiritual pride. How could I truly love when my presumptions of its presence manifest themselves in convincing arguments as to who was ultimately disserving?</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">For me to more fully embrace this tension is to admit to others that which I most want them to ignore in me. To allow others to speak into my arrogance, my selfishness, my glib responses to extreme suffering is to prepare myself for a deeper wonder. I am being formed into the New Adam. I do not simply allow this. It is happening to me sovereignly. I must indeed place myself in a position of possible transformation but to regard this deep conversion of the heart as something to which I requested or sought would be a great exaggeration and untruth. No one walks towards the cross without tremendous misgivings, great doubt, and immense trepidation. The cross appears. It is not something we seek. This apprehension is due to the nature of the encounter. Only a God of love would allow His most loved creation to be offered up to chaos. Only a God whose affections were tragically tied to His Son and the created world would consent to this torturous aching. We will not know this God until we step into this part of His heart.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">I am daily becoming aware of how tight fisted I am with the blessings of grace. My calculations as to who is discerning, who is in a position to appreciate the truth and obey accordingly, is just not the way the Savior encounters me nor calls me to be. I am consistently smaller than my calling. I avoid the truth countless times and return to what brings me personal comfort. Only when I am willing to sit for a brief period in my own inner discord, do I begin to feel the real hunger of my heart</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">I was raised to believe that this transformation came through study, prayer, and obedience. There is truth in those practices. In fact, there is enough truth within those practices and postures to last a lifetime. I now thank God my own sense of inner chaos forced me out of my private contradictions to see the world as it really is. I am living in a time of great change and turmoil. Undoubtedly, any historian worth their salt would point to countless facts that could paint any and all times as those of great turmoil, but indeed, the current age is one of seeming collapse and great disenchantment.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">I have remarked in previous writings as to the impact of the repression of beauty. I would include in that assertion the accompanying inner qualities of wonder and awe. In fact, for Christians much of our struggle is to avoid regarding the presence and immanence of God as comprehensible, easily recognizable and intellectually obvious. Quite the contrary. Until we dwell in the concealment of God, the sorrow of this world, and the seeming absence of a God who should be manifest in power and might, will we begin to contemplate our current estate. </span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">Many of my friends are currently struggling to feel and witness God actively moving in their lives. Although this most recent writing was about my own search (the blog), I do often think about the current disquiet of entire communities who are experiencing great loss and suffering. From those in Palestine to Wall Street, great suffering is come upon this world and we cannot deny its presence and power. As we pursue answers to the misery and affliction of so many we wonder why and how all this can be taking place in a world where God is. Where is He? We discover that He leaves us seemingly strung out in the middle of the cosmos with little to go on. I am beginning to think that this indeed the Zeitgeist of our times and that unless and until we sit in this seemingly emptied space, we will not discover the God who is there. This is a place of contemplative wonderment and awe.</span>David M. Bunkerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16437828982115875616noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5592586909280725556.post-85715653608764261202008-12-20T13:59:00.000-08:002008-12-24T14:11:28.036-08:00The Dark Providence of Suffering<p style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);font-family:trebuchet ms;" class="MsoNormalCxSpFirst"><span style="font-size:85%;"><b><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;"><span style="font-size:130%;">The Beauty of the Flaw</span><o:p></o:p></span></b></span></p><p class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 0, 0);font-family:trebuchet ms;"><span style=";font-family:trebuchet ms;font-size:100%;" >The Wound has left its imprint </span><span style=";font-family:trebuchet ms;font-size:100%;" >John O’Donohue</span></p><p class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="font-family:trebuchet ms;"><o:p></o:p><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">I am enthralled with the Incarnation. Here we have a God wholly other who decides to take on the limited nature of His creation knowing full well the risks in this encounter. Mel Gibson’s picturesque capturing of Christ’s anguish is played out in the Passion and it was so clear the dilemma that God had allowed Himself to encounter.<span style="font-size:0;"> </span>Destruction appeared imminent to our Lord in the garden and in His humanity He could not escape the shawdowlands of pain thrust upon His frame. To know of things to come but also sense the beauty in this flawed universe it to truly be torn asunder.<span style="font-size:0;"> </span>This is dark beauty.<span style="font-size:0;"> </span>This is God being abandoned by God. What seemed a foreign opening to His soul now became the portal into which true redemption could flow. Out of this dark beauty came a new authority, a new way of being, a new kingdom, a New Adam. </span></p><p class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="font-family:trebuchet ms;"><o:p></o:p>Years have a way of blurring if not blinding us to our inner beauty.<span style="font-size:0;"> </span>Inside the seeming emptiness of labor, the weightiness of sickness and loss, and the incomprehensibility of discovering our own complicity in the dispensing of our life and light, we discover a shadowy mysterious destiny.<span style="font-size:0;"> </span>This vocation is only sanctioned and animated through the beauty of the flaw. That which is hidden to all but children comes in later years only to those who have traversed the cold bleak winters of doubt and despair. In this journey they unearth this extravagant barrenness called the sacred wound.<span style="font-size:0;"> </span>Only in this terrain of the soul seemingly emptied of light and heat comes the discovery of this luminescent gift. </p><p face="trebuchet ms" class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">My tradition of faith has taught me much. I am so grateful for the love of sacred writ, the excessive favor of the Father, the assurance of faith, and the fellowship of saints. However, I was also invited to experience God in ways that now seem full of presumption and projected requirements upon God. I prayed. I experienced God in one situation. Why would not all my prayers have some kind of shelf life to them before the seal was broken and the answers poured forth.<span style="font-size:0;"> </span>Time, it now appears, is deeply in collusion with the Healer.<span style="font-size:0;"> </span>Time is a companion that continues to edit and do great surgery to my lexicon of faith and spirituality. Words and descriptions that I wrapped around experience at some point proved to be unable to carry and illuminate the true import of life’s events.</p><p style="font-family: trebuchet ms;" class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">It is not clear to me whether I am genetically prone towards depression or whether I am merely aware of the grandiosity of grace given my true estate. In recent years I had decided to make my secret weeping more public and at times I am haunted by my own brokenness. Why would I choose to chronicle this litany of ashes? What is the motivation that chants the liturgy of mourning?<span style="font-size:0;"> </span>Why remain vulnerable when it appears to preclude the accolades my soul desires? Is it the dark providence released in this vulnerability that continues to bring me to this place?<span style="font-size:0;"> </span>All of life has been an intervention.</p><p class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">John O’Donohue, a recently deceased poet and aesthetic philosopher, speaks of a “refined interiority” that comes with those willing to take the inner journey, the road less traveled. I am so tempted to define myself from the outer most reaches of my soul. I am what I own. I am how I look. I am what I know. I am who I know.<span style="font-size:0;"> </span>If anything, this penchant for excessive yearning must point to a need. A need so profoundly planted within the core of my being that I have only two choices. Live or die.<span style="font-size:0;"> </span>As we enter the limitedness of our form, we suddenly encounter the cold clarity of our ultimate demise and the insistence of the heart to call forth beauty from the flaws. </p><p style="font-family: trebuchet ms;" class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" face="trebuchet ms"><o:p></o:p>The incarnation pointed out this ultimate contingency. This divine embodiment confirmed the glory in the darkness. Millenniums later we return to the cosmos’ ultimate disturbance only to find these hours of darkness shine forth with splendor and wonder. Being drawn to the secret force of this apparent weakness and failure on God’s part gave Satan a false bravado. He still mocks us in these moments of revealing and taunts us to ‘rage against the dying of the light.’ But the incarnation is a much more expansive story. Its unfolding includes even the beautification of death.<span style="font-size:0;"> </span>Our very being is returned to forms that transcend the sadness and we often leave behind to our family and friends hints of the invisible. For those willing to stand with others in the dark corridors of death, they discover something profound and divinely wonderful. As the Chilean poet Gabriela Mistral said “No, I don’t believe that I will be lost after death. Why should You have made me fruitful, if I must be emptied and left like the crushed sugarcanes? Why should You spill the light across my forehead and my heart every morning, if You will not come to pick me, as one picks the dark grapes that sweeten in the sun, in the middle of autumn.”</p><p style="font-family: trebuchet ms;" class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" face="trebuchet ms">Now even our death is embraced in the dark providence of suffering. We often see affliction and death through the awful outer circumstances that usher in the end. But beneath and within is a prevailing grace and a final reminder that we are more than we seem. </p><p class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">Just recently my father passed on to the next realm. Towards the end it was clear to me that his body was engulfed in his soul and not the reverse. After years of discerning primarily through the mind and body, it was now evident that his soul was preeminent in the naming and descriptions of his swan song. The final frontier of death was all that lay ahead of him.<span style="font-size:0;"> </span>As much as his body was worn and weary, his resilience was an anticipation of the final gathering up of things and a welcoming of the crossing. “Behold I am making all things new.” He heard the Savior’s voice and now even the shadows of his final days could not damper his enthusiasm. </p><p class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" face="trebuchet ms">As much as he longed for the new, it was his memories of his life that awakened this longing full bloom.<span style="font-size:0;"> </span>O’Donohue said, "Memory is the place where our vanished days secretly gather.”<span style="font-size:0;"> </span>This final harvesting took all that hurt him, all that diminished him in his own eyes, all that spent his life energy and through his memoires pointed to the resurrection. He did not and could not see suffering and death as the final reversal and unraveling of this mystery called life. Now, more than ever, the shame and condemnation were loosened and he heard the sentries guarding the outposts of heaven chanting his welcoming. He would continue on as himself. How all the flaws would make it into this next land was not a worry.<span style="font-size:0;"> </span>Somehow he and the Savoir had created a life of companionship and he welcomed his own vanishing.<span style="font-size:0;"> </span>I watched him become more beautiful as he neared the Kingdom. I too forgot his flawed estate and limitations and saw the radiance of the eternal blush his cheeks. I want to pass this way. </p>David M. Bunkerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16437828982115875616noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5592586909280725556.post-72154360720881008342008-12-20T07:13:00.000-08:002008-12-20T07:22:10.475-08:00Holy Ignorance<span style="font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 0, 0);font-family:trebuchet ms;" >The Presumptions of Pursuit</span><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 0, 0);font-family:trebuchet ms;" >I have spent my entire life pursuing this desire for more than what is.</span><br /><span style="font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 0, 0);font-family:trebuchet ms;" >Thomas Moore</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">I am a fool. This proclaimed status is not for feigned humility's sake. This is an upfront assertion of the very character of my soul. This is not to denigrate my worth before humankind or God. It is merely to reveal at the outset my inability to speak of the holy and my presumptions in offering up speculations of the invisible. That is what makes me foolish. It is idea that what is beyond can be spoken of with such certitude and bravado. </span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">So I begin with repentance. Forgive me for the parts of the work that lead you away from love truth, goodness and most of all the beauty of the Incarnation. I pray these writings are not an escape but an imaginal door into a world that truly is but only in our hearts.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">To utter speculation regarding the infinite and ineffable is by its nature more poetry than the transference of facts. What is beyond is always beyond. What appears empty to this world is full only in our imaginations that we jump start with the metaphors of faith. These metaphors are the really real as they exist to allow us to even wonder about that which we cannot ultimatley know. In these moments of faith, the inexpressible is more prayer, as suffering, ambiguity, paradox and mystery are always dogging our every move. Thus, this work is more about my doubt and anxious moments than clarity and certitude. This offering is less persuasive acclamation and more lamentation and confession. Much of what resides on these pages is also given as gift and offering. When proof is no longer the dominant posture of the soul, mystery can truly become revelation. If the sublime and transcendent do exist, they do so for the sake of beauty and less so for the sake or argumentation and apologetical proof.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">I cannot imagine a world without God. Yet, His presence is not merely difficult to feel or know it is also hauntingly absent and full of longing and despair. As I have grown older my inclinations towards God have become less needful of things being certain and concretely provable. To some degree, I am leery of the defensive stratagems that make sure all truth is contained in some repeatable formula. Therefore, in this offering I will sometimes discuss the idea of God rather than assume I am discussing God. The difference is in the gaze of the heart and nature of the engagement. Much of this distinction is reflected in the opaque nature of my speech. My diatribes are by their very nature abstractions. God does not reveal Himself merely because I talk about Him or name Him on a page. He is above naming and speculative assertions. He is beyond the metaphors I choose to point towards Him or allude to His possible presence. He is beyond my rhetoric.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">Because of this inability to capture God, I can sometimes imagine Him to not exist. I can feel the despair of attempting to know the unknowable and feeling the absurdity of that attempt. In those moments despair may indeed be a proper response. Like Beckett’s play Waiting for Godot, I have waited for God to reveal Himself upon my beck and call, on my time table, and through my chosen words and descriptions. When He refuses, I can quickly become a cynic and wonder if all my experiences to date have been fictional and make believe. I am agnostic if not atheistic. I am not sure if this disposition is a blessing or a curse. Much like Thomas Moore, however, I find myself caught between the two worlds of suffering and hope. I am, as Moore says, involved in two journeys at once. “Often we have to do two things at once. Affirm and deny, believe and doubt, worship and be skeptical, relate and keep it all empty, Moore contends.” </span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">There are indeed parts of God that are unknowable and if that is the case why endeavor to write about the anonymity of the holy and beyond? Why write about what I cannot properly tell? Is this when my doubt becomes virtue? Is this when my seeking is divine love incarnate, when my imagining manifests itself in faith that which my assertions of intellect were never meant to hold as sacred? Possibly. Who can know these things?</span>David M. Bunkerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16437828982115875616noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5592586909280725556.post-84687559910749225662008-10-15T20:40:00.000-07:002008-10-15T21:07:16.105-07:00Wise Speech<span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">Speaking the Truth in Love </span><br /><span style="font-family:Trebuchet MS;"></span><br /><span style="color:#000000;"><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;"><em>Most conversations are simply monologues delivered in the presence of a witness.</em> </span><br /></span><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;"><span style="color:#000000;"><strong>Margaret Millar</strong><br /></span><br />Here we are at the final debate between presidential hopefuls. Both parties have ignored some of their earlier promises regarding the potential tenor and tone of the campaign and have resorted to unfair, untrue, and unwise discourse. What is the price a society pays when rancor and discord become common place? Why is our speech so important?<br /><br />Speech is a vital part of our day to day lives. One cannot divorce speech from communication. Communication is in part words. We all know words can cause immense harm as well as great good. Skillful speech can open hearts and lead to profound insights as well as promote healing and transformation. Scripture tells us that a soft answer turns away wrath. James 1:19 says, Let every man be swift to hear, slow to speak and slow to wrath. Therefore the practice of “wise speech” is crucial for any person, company, church or community to truly communicate. In community speech is spiritually alive and therefore is in need of great mindfulness.<br /><br />There are four qualities of wise speech<br />1) Truthfulness<br />2) Helpfulness<br />3) Kindness and Goodwill, and<br />4) Appropriateness (including timeliness, non distractedness and clear intention)</span><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;"><br />1) Truthfulness is clear seeing. It simply means not lying. This would include exaggerations, half truths, omissions, and denials.<br /><br />2) Helpfulness deals more with the motivations of speech as to whether our speech is to create harm or enmity. This means looking deeply at the roots of non helpful speech discerning moments of ill will, self <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_0"><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_0">centeredness</span></span>, and subtle disparagement.<br /><br />3) Kindness and goodwill has to do with what might be called harsh speech. For it is possible to to be helpful in some ways while still remaining somewhat cold, seeing ourselves as superior, or lacking empathetic connection. Communication is not merely static information. Communication is carried and received through the conduits of our souls. Therefore harsh judgments and nagging comments will often reveal our cynicism and negativity. When we develop speech that is purposely kind we begin to see the power of words and communication differently. One can be truthful and still speak from the heart. These postures do not preclude being confrontational nor direct. It merely asks what the <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_1">spirit</span> behind the words. How does it feel in my body when I am saying the words? Why do I talk the way I do? Would I want these same words spoken to me in such a posture and tone? The <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_1">biblical</span> mandate to do unto others is <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_2">salient</span> here.<br />4) It is important to note that committing oneself to truthful, helpful, kind and appropriate speech does not mean being overly nice. There is an important place for speech that is direct, firm, and critical, (without being judgmental & personal). When one is being helpful or kind, it will impact the intentionality of the speech and therefore its delivery and <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_2">spirit</span>.<br /><br />So how does one practice these guidelines of speech in the relationships, the public domain and business sector as well as the Church? Wise speech establishes safety. For true honest communication to go down safety is key. We need and want others to be truthful with us and thus we are safe as we know that what is being said to others is also being said to us and said in the same manner of disclosure. Many "concerned conversaitons" are indeed gossip and taint the spiritual water from which the community drinks. All discussions are indeed heard by the heart of the community. That is why the tongue has so much power over life. If we an control what we say, we are now in a positon to begin to get our bodies to do other things that look like servants of Jesus Christ. But without this kind of foundational safety, relationships in the business world and other arenas become strategic rather than cooperative and increasingly are filled with cynicism, skepticism, and even anxiety and fear about other’s intentions and perceptions. </span><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">In settings where community is not being experienced, I tend to look out for #1. Are there some , attitudes, postures,norms, guidelines, or policies individuals and communities can adopt to make wise speech more readily present? We currently live in a culture via websites and media where a growing lack of civility has impacted all public discourse. Spiritually grounded communities will make communication safe and encourage speech that is truthful, direct but also helpful, kind, and appropriate and timely. Can we practice safe and wise speech as we <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_3">engage</span> the <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_4">political</span> decisions that are about to take <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_5">place</span>? Without this intention, no <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_6">policy</span> or law will bring us together as a people. Let us strive to make all areas of our lives safe for the truth to be made manifest. Let us be mindful of the power of our tongue.</span>David M. Bunkerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16437828982115875616noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5592586909280725556.post-48573713953964550962008-09-16T07:24:00.001-07:002008-09-29T05:16:50.118-07:00Oh That Christmas Were Real<span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;"><strong>Angels in the House</strong><br /><br /></span><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;"><span style="color:#000000;"><em>There are nine orders of angels, to wit, angels, archangels, virtues, powers, principalities, <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_0">dominations</span>, thrones, cherubim, <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_1">seraphim</span>.</em><br /></span><strong>Billy Graham</strong><br /><br />Christians must separate the world of imagination from the <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_0"><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_2">imaginal</span></span> world. There are things that are indeed imaginary. However, to know the world at all we must imagine. It is this function of the soul that brings to life the <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_1"><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_3">imaginal</span></span> world that I am referring to in this blog. It is through the lens of our <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_2"><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_4">imaginal</span></span> faculties that we experience the divine. In fact, it is through the <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_3"><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_5">imaginal</span></span> muscles of consciousness that we even regard our experience as real and present.<br /><br />In a conversation about angels one might ask up front if I think angels are real. This means that asking questions about whether something is real means asking what one means when they use the world “real.” The word real is used <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_6">generally</span> to imply <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_7">tangibility</span> both <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_8">in a</span> literal sense and in a scientific sense. Anyone should be able to experience something that is real for it exists <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_9">outside</span> the mind. It is <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_10">concretely</span> <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_11">observable</span> and <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_12">always</span> static in its nature and <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_13">experiential</span> <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_14">engagement</span>. If one cannot expereince it through the senses in an objective manner, it is "not real."<br /><br />To <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_15">believers</span> real is what our faith animates and empowers as handed down through the great story called Scripture and Church history. It is clear that our brothers and sisters have known of and experienced angels for some time. Through the eyes of faith the grand story of Scripture jumps off the page and into our hearts. It is through this capacity to have a felt knowing and seeing that this blog on angels appeared. However, so as not to distance myself from the supernatural nature of their appearing, let me say that I do not separate the natural and super natural worlds from one another. There is only one world. By God’s grace, the story of my brothers and sisters who have come before, and their sense that indeed angels are in our midst, allows me to talk with such seeming abandon and a possible air of wackiness. But..For those who know me…there you go.<br /><br />I am convinced that there are indeed angels. They are unseen for good reasons. Only faith senses their presence. They are God's emissaries to the weak, to those who greatly anticipate the ushering in of the Kingdom. These winged creatures do indeed guard us but not merely from the fallen powers of this world. We as believers get sick, get hit by cars, suffer at the hands of dictators and tyrants and fall prey to the fallen world. What angels do is protect our hearts from becoming part of the cynical world of greed and avarice. Remember the Scriptures about "gaining the whole world and losing your soul," or "It is harder for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven." We gloss over these but Jesus was serious for He knew the power of desire. He knew we were initially created to desire more than this world could ever offer. Thus, we want what we can't have. Everything!<br /><br />To experience angelic presences is only possible to those who become profoundly innocent. This does not mean sinless or perfect. It means totally dependent upon the intervention of God to sustain one rather than our own acumen, cleverness, and calculation. Most of us cannot remain in this state of innocence very long for it is too costly emotionally to encounter the forces just outside this place of the heart. This place is the last gate before death and life. There is a whirlwind of doubt, fear, and despair directly at the entry point of divine innocence. All dross of the soul flows to our heart and we are overwhelmed by our seeming distance from God.<br /><br />Just before the angels appear, the abyss opens up and two voices begin to speak. One is shrill and life draining. This voice mocks our desire to know and enter the Kingdom and drowns out our ability to be present, much like a large airplane sound. However, now all the other senses are in a heightened state. If we sit long enough in the presence of this overwhelming siren sound, it begins to fade and we begin to hear another sound. In fact, this other sound is orchestral in its substance. It takes us up and out into a seemingly different realm and allows for us to have a felt knowing. In this felt knowing we now see these winged creatures. We are not seeing them with our eyes, however. This is all seen only through the lens of faith. These angels are not anything like words or metaphors have described them for language is an inadequate container and pitiful cipher for transcendence.<br /><br />Although not God, these creatures do His bidding and have been sent to show us His heart, give us direction, and reveal His glory. Gabriel is a messenger angel remember so his entanglement in warfare ( getting through the barriers of doubt and fear) causes God to seem absent. There is great warfare going on in this world right now. But....they are moving amongst us.<br /><br />Here are poems that honor this presence.<br /><br /><span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_4">From</span> the movie The Mission<br /><br /></span><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;"><strong>Gabriel’s Oboe & the Musical Warrior Angels<br />Te <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_5"><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_16">Deum</span></span> Guarani</strong><br /><br />The Father’s opus is faintly heard<br />On this side of the veil<br />For it is being played by covert operatives<br />Warrior-like minstrel angels on an unseen mission<br />Out of sight & sound to those<br />Who might attempt to coop these graces<br /><br />These guardian emissaries<br />Using only beauty as their bow<br />Openly bestow these rapturous sounds<br />Daily on those about to enter the coming Kingdom<br />This is the national anthem of paradise<br />This composition accompanies<br />Each new long lost member of this new family<br />As they run to the Father’s ultimate embrace<br /><br />These angels<br />Are the only one’s willing to go into<br />The dark brothels of New Delhi<br />The prisons of Guantanamo<br />The sex slaves transfers in <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_6"><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_17">Darfur</span></span><br />The mosques and churches<br />Of charlatans and cyanide paranoids<br />The shadowy back room dealings of corporate <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_7">America</span><br /><span class="blsp-spelling-error">The</span> filthy convalescent homes<br />Profiting from the final days of our elders<br />The suburban sprawl of resignation and desire<br />To busy to pause for love’s concerto<br /><br />So these angels play for scale<br />No residuals<br />No ownership<br />All is public domain here<br /><br />This masterpiece<br />Performed by seasoned winged creatures<br />Plays round the clock<br />Heard by those who stand just outside this emerging age<br />And greatly await this dispensation of an all encompassing grace<br />For this in their only <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_8">portion</span><br /><span class="blsp-spelling-error">Their</span> solitary delight<br />Their final threshold<br />Their wonderfully anticipated moment of divine welcoming<br /><br /></span><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;"><strong>Oh that Christmas Were Real!<br /></strong><br />In its absence<br />I came upon a room<br />A room full of angels<br />Sitting bored and unnecessary<br />Smoking Pall Malls<br />Playing cards<br />Waiting on the cynic<br /><br />All these grand creatures<br />Feathers of trust and truth<br />Were folded and put away<br />Because of undue holiday nostalgia<br />Standing at the door<br />I felt compelled to weep aloud<br />In hopes the winged creatures<br />Would see their awful estate<br />But I am mute<br />For this room is my heart<br />My protectors have been grounded due to my fear<br />The fear these messengers have no word for me<br />So this absence is my dismissal<br />Still uncomfortably drawn into their presence<br />I reluctantly enter the room<br />Nearly choking on the smoke<br />I walk amidst the angels as though invisible<br />Just a few steps into the space<br />Nearly inaudible<br />I hear this chanting<br />This is no trance<br />Cast upon these beings<br />They see me clearly<br />They are merely waiting<br />Waiting for my return<br />I stop and look down at one herald<br />His gaze transfixes mine<br />His very countenance alive with awakening<br />Startles me into this beautiful surprise<br />So I am Christmas<br />I did not know<br />And now the absence begins to speak<br />Be not afraid<br />I bring you tidings of great joy<br />You have <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_9">been</span> missed<br />Now go and tell others<br />I so hungered for this blessing!<br /></span><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;"><strong>The Color of Soul Making </strong><br /></span><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">Blue fire<br />Slipped into my room last night<br />Sighed heavily<br />Illuminated my labored breathing<br />And the shallow rise and fall of sorrow’s chest<br />As if both color and flame could speak<br />Their words came forth<br />“We are your indigo angels.<br />In this place most call a desert<br />Your sister the white Iris blooms<br />In this dryness the soul flowers<br />Reverie fills the darkened cobalt horizon<br />Lovers held in suspension<br />Melt into each other<br />And weep with longing<br />Here imagination burns a cerulean glow<br />Melancholy marries Kandinsky<br />And all this pondering rekindles<br />A thousand years of exile<br />In the <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_10"><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_18">unreflective</span></span> underworld of black and white.”<br /><br /></span><strong><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">Gabriel’s All Girl Choir</span></strong><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;"><br /><br />I could scream<br />I could cry<br />I could run a naked mile till exhausted<br />Running headlong into my empty estate<br />Now, emptied<br />Not one weighty needless worry<br />Still remains on my back<br />Now with grass and stones still stuck to my forehead<br />I role over<br />With arms outstretched I sing<br />Sing into the universe<br />Sing until I’m hoarse<br />And she is listening<br />I hear this hum hum humming<br />This love love loving<br />I don’t care whose name she offers up to me<br />I am still amazed that in this cage of life </span><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">I can still hear her singing me home<br />Calling me home<br />Loving me home<br />So if this space between us<br />Is a random toss at best<br />Between the earth and the galaxies I cannot count<br />Much more an oddity to me than a prison of my making<br />Is this song that fashions my darkness into this melody of hope<br />And it is sufficient to sing away the nothingness<br />That mocks the mystery<br />And denies the irresistible longing for the song<br />So let the chorus begin…..<br /><br /><strong>How to Paint a Miracle</strong><br /><br />First you take the vapor like membrane between realms<br />And ever so slowly<br />Pull it away from the soul<br />Hold it up to the sun<br />Make sure it is a day<br />Clear and warm with light<br />To the left of the entire sky<br />Outside the world’s frame<br />St. Francis is singing<br />You will not hear the melody<br />But its colors will resonate<br />With your outstretched soul<br />Move your hands away from your sides<br />And prepare to be stigmatized<br />From the wounds<br />Azure blue will pour<br />Retain this sound<br />For it is both tragic and glorious<br />Only the red finch<br />Was made aware of this revealing<br />He is so delighted and will<br />Trumpet your ecstasy<br />As you arise from this enlargement<br />Pay close attention to the sounds<br />Of trees and stones directly in your purview<br />Tears will flow freely<br />At first this may feel disquieting<br />Do not be afraid<br />Angels are withholding nothing<br />From this unveiling<br />As you see now you know<br />It is good<br />These witnesses are sacraments<br />And along with azure blue offer themselves up<br />The veil is now removed……….Your miracle may now be painted</span>David M. Bunkerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16437828982115875616noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5592586909280725556.post-15101256493416598352008-09-09T17:04:00.000-07:002008-09-15T11:56:17.803-07:00Balzac and the Ban on Books Part 3<span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);font-family:trebuchet ms;" ><strong>When Stories are Kept Hidden out of Fear</strong></span><br /><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);font-family:trebuchet ms;" ></span><br /><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);font-family:trebuchet ms;" ><em>I believe our task is to develop a moral and aesthetic imagination deep enough and wide enough to encompass the contradictions of our time and history, the tremendous loss and tragedy as well as greatness and nobility, an imagination capable of recognizing that where there is light there is shadow, that out of hubris and fall can come moral regeneration, out of suffering and death, resurrection and rebirth.</em> <strong>Richard <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_0">Tarnas</span></strong></span><br /><strong><span style="font-family:Trebuchet MS;"></span></strong><br /><span style="font-family:Trebuchet MS;">The last few centuries have fostered philosophical conundrums that are definitely downers at the weekend pub exchange. Who wants to bring up the spiritual malaise of countless friends within our small clique of friends let alone the countries throughout the world that are going through massive shifts in how they configure and understand the world? For many, a return to ancient ways and times is the simple answer. God is displeased and sacrifices must be made. Infidels are amongst us and must be punished and true believers must rise up. This of course is a highly simplistic rendering of a much more complicated issue but <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_1">neo</span>-fundamentalism has become a force in many countries where technology and the <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_2">inclosing</span> world have proven to be more than problematic. They appear to threaten the very underpinnings of a civilization.<br /></span><br /><span style="font-family:Trebuchet MS;">Anyone traveling overseas understands that much of the products the Americas send overseas are media and entertainment oriented. These products are in many ways narrative salvos across the bough of cultures that here to fore knew nothing of these fables. The self made man, the romantic love interest, the dumb and dumber clown that is there for our mocking, the greed that is sanctified through the wounds that lead the antagonist there in the first place, are all novel expressions of being human in these first and second world countries. Many of these metaphors were nonexistent to these people groups or were couched in much more uncontaminated and <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_3">societally</span> sanctioned settings.<br /></span><br /><span style="font-family:Trebuchet MS;">In the wonderful film "Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress," by <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_4">Dai</span> <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_5">Sijie</span>, two boys in their late teens are sent to a small mountain village to be re-educated d<span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_6">uring</span> the Cultural <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_7">Revolution</span>. They both fall in love with an old tailor's <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_8">grand </span>daughter who is known as the little seamstress. During the internment the boys discover a stash of books one of their fellow <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_10">bourgeois</span> transplants has hidden away. They steal the books and begin to read to the young girl. She falls in love with Balzac out of all the choices <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_11">primarily</span> due to the shear freedom of soul she finds in his writings.</span><br /><span style="font-family:Trebuchet MS;"><br />We in the West are so deluged with books and art in the after math of many <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_12">years</span> of free speech we are unable to detect a good read from a bad. Could our <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_13">intellectual</span> oppression <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_14">actually</span> be more of the type of <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_15">barbituated</span> <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_16">presumption</span> predicted in the writings of men like Aldous Huxley in Brave New World? We now have so much freedom we deem our ability to form new stores an <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_17">entitlement</span>, thus, we do not read. This is not due to some ban on books but a ban on the intrinsic power of the soul to hunger after the <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_18">beauty</span> of images and metaphors . We are deadened to the power of story. We are emptied of our need to expand our very being through the sway and vigor of language and heart <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_19">felt</span> accounts of the universe written by our fellow planet mates. Are we not interned as well?<br /><br />Who would have <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_20">predicted</span> that a young <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_21">girl</span> in the far reaches of rural China would fall into the metaphoric arms of Balzac and <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_22">begin</span> to re-name her own <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_23">experience</span> as real and true. Balzac, known for a <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_24">kind</span> of <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_25">post-</span><span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_26">romantic</span> realism <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_27">brought</span> to his readers a desire to offer a perspective on his characters that allowed them to be seen as real; capable of both good and evil. This glimpse <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_28">into</span> the <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_29">characters</span> of men and women of Paris during the early nineteenth century jumped off the page of this banned book over one century later in the outback of China and moved this young girl to see beyond her village, to dream beyond her current life.<br /></span><br /><span style="font-family:Trebuchet MS;">Let’s not fool ourselves. Many a young person was punished or killed for this kind of risk taking during the cultural <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_30">revolution</span>. Why? Grand meta-narratives were colliding. Old stories or oppressive ways of naming were in control. These were as much wars over <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_31">stories</span> as they were over nation states and resources.<br /><br />Those unsettling times of great transition regarding our foundational accounts of life and truth are not battles fought once and for all. These wars rage on and on. Many <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_32">believers</span> feel as though they are in an intervening time as well. So much of what we thought we knew seems to have evaporated. So much of what we regarded as firm and genuine is now on shaking ground. During these story wars, or as many have called culture wars, we are “in-between” stories. Whose story will win? Whose story is the most powerful to define and a refine the conundrums of life? Whose story resonates deepest with the cavern like recesses of the human heart?<br /><br />Research seems to indicate that one actuality lives inside of their account of reality. Experience places us in mundane day to day stories that we tell ourselves so the world seems to cohere and make sense. On a much deeper level we have sacred stories that are not religious in an explicit sense but are sacred in that they offer up levels of meaning that allow us to navigate the vicissitudes of life. Some who study the brain and thought feel that stories may actually be consciousness itself. In other words, we may be aware of what we deem reality by virtue of the stories we tell ourselves about reality. Hence, stories by their nature create the world. Not that they are creation stories in a religious sense but that they create the world of consciousness and the <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_33">personhood</span> or self that lives inside that story and inhabits it.<br /><br />This understanding as to consciousness is different than many psychological readings on consciousness. Most compartmentalize our sense of being human inside a number of neurological and even chemical responses to stimuli. They determine that we are really biological machines that configure and manifest life as a byproduct of our biology merely responding to the outside world. Narrative theories seem to offer up a much more metaphorical construction. In this understanding we name and embody our world. I am the story I tell myself about myself. </span><br /><span style="font-family:Trebuchet MS;"><br />Psycho-drama experts tell us that asking a person “Who told you that about yourself?” is key in the deconstruction of dangerous and unhealthy stories about oneself. We learn about life and ourselves from what and how others name us. In our early years of childhood we are at the whim and whimsy of elders who could tell us anything about ourselves. We hear of horrendous memories from individuals who were told highly toxic things about themselves. Years later that story is almost some kind of <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_34">mobius</span> strip that plays over and over again inside the mind. The dismantling and rewriting of that story cannot be done alone. No amount of positive thinking or recitation of some positive mantra will release a story that is so deeply embedded in one’s consciousness. In fact, the earlier it was deposited, the difficulty involved in disengaging it is daunting and the expertise in dislodging it and retelling it is not for the faint of heart.<br /><br />What is my current story? Where did it come from? What will the new story be? How do I begin to write that saga? If this formation of consciousness is possible, then the nature of the stories we tell ourselves now become much more significant to our sense of living in this world. Contemporary popular psychologies have grabbed hold of this tendency to be able to “speak” our existence into being and have made the power of words and narratives supernatural in their ability to create our world from our thinking. This is a sinister plot twist, however, as the study of narratives on the development of consciousness is not as simple as speaking some mantra of prosperity, wealth and health over yourself. In fact, this idea that the self alone can alter the very nature of reality is its ultimate flaw. Stories are never created nor sustained by the individual. We are a peopled story by the nature of our <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_35">imbededness</span> in time and space. We are all telling stories together at the same time. Occasionally we listen and incorporate each other in love. That is the Kingdom way of story telling. There is a grand narrative. We do not and can not write this story alone.</span>David M. Bunkerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16437828982115875616noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5592586909280725556.post-19782381001157963692008-09-09T02:17:00.000-07:002008-09-12T15:12:10.560-07:00My Story Trumps Your Story Part 2<span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;"><strong>When the Plot Needs a Re-Write</strong></span><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;"></span><br /><span style="color:#000000;"><span style="font-family:Trebuchet MS;"><em>It is the process of writing and life that matters. We are trying to become sane along with our <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_0">poems</span> and stories.</em> <strong>Natalie Goldberg</strong></span><br /></span><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">With the advent of the global village, a phrase coined by Marshal McLuhan, we are discovering that we can no longer be mute to the varied stories in our world that conflict or strongly attack our own accounts. The proximity of the web and the day to day barrage of pictures and sound from the media have forced their way into our minds and there is no turning back. The phrase "what you don’t know can hurt you" could also have added "but what you do know can hurt you more." The daily litany of horrors and banality cling to our souls like existential Velcro and even mindless entertainment only dulls the chatter for a brief period of time. We are now to close to the sounds of “the other” to ignore his or her voice and chronicle of life. I cannot afford to have a story that <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_1">excludes</span> others.</span><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;"><br />For many, this entourage of reports from the edges of the world is used to quicken deeply held beliefs that these people may indeed <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_2">deserve</span> these atrocities. Tribalism is alive and well and even white collars will not remove the war paint hidden in the heart. If we live in a global village, is it possible the resources are limited and if so how far must I go to protect mine? When does all the information cease to inform and now only confuses or reinforces the exclusion of "the other"? </span><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">Part of the challenge of competing stories is the need for points of reference. When and where do we come together and agree? When and where do we disagree and what does that look like? It is highly threatening to discover that others not only disagree with our story but have thought deeply about the same issues and have come up with an entirely different set of cosmic answers. Without a dialogue with "the other" we are prone to demonize the person because their story represents what is wrong with the world. Their story challenges our moral and spiritual values as well as our understanding of how government and society should be lived out. It can also be something as silly amd banal as commentaries on music and films we love or hate. How dare these people assess our world and find it lacking? How presumptuous for someone to call me a bigot, a radical, or left wing or a right wing extremist and not even talk to me before I am named. Now, with Muslim fundamentalsim we have the pathological condemnations of “the other” who desires to see our very presence wiped off the face of the earth. These ideologies and sentiments are varied and nuanced in their degree of impact on us but they deeply impact our own sense of continuity and meaning. In the end we find ourselves asking, "Why can’t everyone leave my story alone? "<br /><br />Ironically this barrage of differing narratives now begins to erode our own personal sense of confidence in our way of seeing the world. The attacks or even occasional engagements with those that differ now begin to make us wonder. Could I be wrong? Are my long held beliefs and sacred stories really as silly and lifeless as these people rage? These moments of self reflective doubt are seldom if ever repeated inside or outside our heads and hearts for they represent the beginning of truly looking at our own story. These questions will surely open pandora's box.<br /><br />As the shear amount of grand narratvies cascade over each other via the web and media, it becomes clearer and clearer how muddy our hearts and minds have become when it involves an over arching story. We, and I speak as if I am talking for humankind right now (a lofty almost silly assertion), have outgrown our older stories and in our looking for new ones have yet to find any worth saving to our favorite sites if you will. We are a world in search of a new way of seeing and naming ourselves.<br /><br />Because all encompassing overarching stories (meta narratives) are not in vogue in academia or artistic circles, the tendency has been to go deeper into the story of self. Let’s peel away the skin of the onion and see just what resides at its core. This process seems to have yielded little as the onion appears to merely be an onion. We were in hopes this search for the self would uncover the long ago forgotten code that realized the power to reign in the universe and hold the malaise at bay. But on the contrary, our search for the “core” of self has only revealed how unable an individual is to assess his or her own experience let alone offer up the deep answers to life’s ongoing conundrums.<br /><br />The story of self, as meaningful and as necessary as it appears to humankind's understanding of being human, has built in limitations in its ability to form a larger narrative. In fact, the very idea of "the self" has arrived on the scene fairly late in the history of intellectual history. The self is a self. It cannot and will not see outside its borders unless it collaborates with other stories. Left to its own narrative devices, the self becomes grandiose and absorbed. Sequestered in the machinations of the unquestioned mind, the self dreams of glory and dishonor simultaneously and offers up the glory of transcendence on one hand while robbing the other of his or her glory on the other hand. This is paradoxical. We have created a way of seeing and naming that have penned a story which is now inhabitable. Many appear to be storyless and yet fulll of self.<br /><br />To write our story we must have degree of narrative input from our own personal narrative (i.e the self). However, we are in times where the exalted account of the isolated self is not only limited and flat but dangerous and <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_4">unreflective</span>. The world can no longer sustain itself on the accumulation of self absorbed hearsay of the glorified ego. This world cannot be about each individual getting what they want or even deserve. Sounds good on Oprah, but in truth, my search for fulfillment may indeed rob you of your search for actualization. We have been offered a path of fulfillment that is proving to be the very road to destruction we have feared. We are following each other into the abyss of self fulfillment and development. We need a bigger story. We need one that invites all to the table to share their part of the ever changing all inclusive story. This is challenging. Stories written in <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_5">collaboration</span> are full or re-writes, long conversations about the meaning of words and the intentions of the heart. This will take time. We must take the time.</span> <span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">We must begin to write these stories together. As Christians we may just have inherited through the incarnation a unique posture for engaging the storytelling challenge. God must have known we would want our re-writes.<br /><br /></span></span>David M. Bunkerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16437828982115875616noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5592586909280725556.post-14693890235664094282008-09-07T13:17:00.000-07:002008-09-12T15:18:51.595-07:00For Those in Search of a Story Part 1<span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;"><span style="color:#000000;"><span style="COLOR: rgb(0,0,0); FONT-STYLE: italic">No story is the same to us after a lapse of time; or rather we who read it are no longer the same interpreters</span>.<span style="FONT-WEIGHT: bold"> George Eliot</span></span><br /><br />Everyone loves a good story. From holiday memories of old Uncle Herbie exaggerating the family into hysterics to midnight fright night legends that scare us silly; we all love a good story. Stories hold the mystery together. They are not really about being right or wrong as much as they are about people and places, about how the world seems to be at certain times. Some stories we remember and retell them over and over again. These usually have something to do with clan or kin or some horrendous tragedy or likewise some outstandingly wonderful windfall. We want to remember those moments when the universe deemed to speak to us, to tell us it was aware of our presence. Most of the time the story of life is lost in mundane activities which even in moments of hyperbole just don’t sound all that exciting.<br /></span><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">And yet there is a story that runs much deeper through our hearts that reveals something about how we see ourselves and others. It is a story that also reveals our role as the omniscient author. We are all writing a novel in which we are the protagonist or antagonist. In this story we are offered a set of options and as best we can we engage the role with a <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_0">MacGyver</span> like zeal. Sometimes things appear to work out and we feel vindicated and even celebrated. Other times we hope the episode is lost in the archives and never to dawn the door of reruns again. </span><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;"><br />The choice of reruns and their viewing, however, seems not to be some arbitrary choice we get to make. The hiding away of stories we find unpleasant or shaming cannot kill our role and our authorship in the scripting of this fiction. In fact, it is the stories we so disparately attempt to hide that are often the one’s that fuel the chapters and episodes we offer up for viewing to the world and our friends. It is like a film with missing scenes or a book with missing chapters. It is the missing chapters that I will be addressing in the next few blogs. We all have those missing Nixon tapes somewhere in our archives.<br /><br />It is believed that what is not said may very well be as important as or more so than what is said. Why is the clandestine so revealing? Why are our omissions so full of meaning? James Hollis said that, “The healing of the world is in what we do not want others to know about ourselves.” Why is this silence or missing information so vital to knowing who we are and what our lives are attempting to say?<br /><br />Entire schools of therapy have centered on the unsaid or hidden slips one makes when discussing his or her life. It is as if much of our life is unknown and buried to even us. This cryptic <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_1">hiddeness</span> is seldom addressed for its very presence is mysterious and enigmatic. How do we describe what our own heart and tongue will not address? How do we name what we will not even speak allowed or even let flow into our awareness?<br /><br />Could it be this silence about our own <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_2">hiddeness</span> is actually a deeper reflection of something we feel about life itself? Are the deeper questions of life still unanswered to us? Are the mysteries of life still alive and well in our hearts and yet we are expected day after day to operate as if the world of the unknown and the mysterious are only for philosophers and saints? Are we unwittingly ask to act as if this big story were easily downloaded as spiritual "Cliff Notes?"<br /><br />Yet this kind of opting out of the deeper questioning is not working or even possible for those who are seeking. The hidden parts are hidden because we choose not to search our hearts. The silence remains deafening because we fill it up with the din of busyness and self absorption. At some level we are all practical mystics. Life gave us this pen and we are writing. Some of our manuscripts are lost from the frenzy of sorrow and happenstance while others are purposely secreted away from all observers. There are stories half written and plays offered up only to the gods. Why all the covert hiding of these messages from the soul?<br /><br />There are so many answers in life that are attainable and accessible. With the advent of the <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_3">Internet</span> many conundrums regarding health, wealth, theories, philosophies and such are only a few clicks away. We are all able to do research on the quandaries of life with great flare. However, most of these quandaries are not existential in nature yet they often plague us day to day and I for one am grateful for the avalanche of accessible knowledge.<br /><br />Knowledge and knowing, however, may actually be different things. I can obtain and record much information that one might call knowledge. But if I were to ask how one knows something then the puzzled look comes over a person’s face. What does one mean when they ask “How does one know something?” We have assumed for centuries that the gathering of information, the testing of certain problems and questions, and the recording of those results, always arrive at some form of concrete knowing. This process that happens day and in and day would lead one to believe that what we know and how we know are the same thing. Is it possible they are not? And how would the issue of how we know impact the way we form stories and retell them to others.<br /><br />There are many stories that exist in the world. The one about my flat tire has a degree of importance in my life but does not resonate in its impact like the death of my father. The account of my run in with the police while speeding does not weigh in as powerfully as the chronicle of my great grandparents coming over through Ellis Island. Stories have different degrees of narrative power based on their impact on my humanness. I am formed by stories and some reflect upon my life in a much deeper more profound manner.<br /><br />We are living in times where the shear amount of stories is overwhelming. As the web offers up more and more conspiracy theories and film and TV push the mundane and glorious into our consciousness, the library of stories grows and grows until, much like the little boy in the Never Ending Story, we are all looking for the magic book, the ultimate story that frees the secret, unlocks the mystery, and demystifies what mystics have kept shrouded for centuries.<br /><br />In recent months, the book The Secret has gained gargantuan proportions. <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_4">Oprah</span> Winfrey’s fickle hand of fate can do that in a world of media giants but why that book and not another? It is clear that we are all looking for some magnificent legend that forms and informs our deeper parts. We long for the wonderfully woven fairy tale that makes sense of it all. </span><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;"><br />As believers, we are part of a grand narrative. Yet for many of us, even that story has come under scrutiny and deconstruction. Even that story has been offered up to pundits, charlatans, and fear mongers. Many of us feel <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_5">storyless</span>. It is for the <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_6">storyless</span> for which I compose. It is for those who sense they are in-<span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_7">between</span> stories that I put pen to the paper. But this story is not just mine to write nor interpret. It is indeed a never ending story of which we all play a part. Let us seek the emerging grander narrative in concert. Let us compose together.</span>David M. Bunkerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16437828982115875616noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5592586909280725556.post-82857911294435772912008-09-03T11:36:00.000-07:002008-09-03T14:31:18.853-07:00The Divine Consolation<span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;"><strong>To be Enlarged by Need</strong></span><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;"><br />It is one thing to see the weak, appreciate their status, and pray for their condition. It is entirely a different proposition to actually be counted amongst the weak. To count ourselves amongst the weak is to walk the journey of descent. To be the weak is to allow the glorious shining sun of our egos to fall from the sky and watch all our attempts at Godlike status to be erased by the shear whimsy of the universe. </span><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;"><br />In recent years God has called many of us to not merely expose our weakness but to walk in the humility that comes from our weakness finally being a grace and not a burden. This means we must not merely share our tendencies towards human frailty and failure but our total inability to accomplish what our destiny demands. We are called to be what only God can accomplish in us. The process is ultimately hindered when we engage life from our positions of strength (i.e. self sufficiency & accomplishments)<br /><br />Jesus tells us over and over again that the weak see things the strong do not. The weak will inherit much in the coming Kingdom. The weak represent a posture and disposition of the soul that allows for the Spirit of God to truly reign. When the Kingdom reigns inwardly we do not merely acknowledge the poor but see all states of sufficiency as roadblocks to this divinely ushered in new way called the Kingdom reign. When walking in and under the Kingdom rule we offer up our neediness and weakness as signs of faith. We understand that God is indeed interested and does not merely feign our essential humanity but created us thusly.<br /><br />As life unfolds much of our fears and concerns center around our ability to stand up to what seems to be required. So much of life appears to demand more than we have to offer. This is indeed what it means to be weak. The weightiness of our humanity often overwhelms us and catches us unawares. We were not prepared to be so so so needy. We didn’t mind having some needs. We didn’t mind asking for a little help. But to find ourselves dependent upon forces beyond the human is to truly walk into the Kingdom reign.<br /><br />Trusting in what man can do is part of our journey. We all have experiences where humankind has let us down. To be hopeful that this will change is part of the burden we bear. But to mistake the presence of man as the presence of God is to be blinded to the eyes of a loving Savior. He indeed sees us in our state of total brokenness. In fact, in and through His eyes, even our supposed sufficiency of houses, cars, savings, and amusements are heavy rocks our soul must carry. To place our hope and ultimate state of security in the things that pass away is to be forced to monitor those things in terms of our worth and endeavors. We constantly refer to that which is passing away and wonder why our souls shrink and fade.<br /><br />To and for what does my soul work and long? When I am stripped of all I begin to see the Allness of the Savoir. I begin to get a glimpse of the Largeness of God’s provision. This of course does include my future story and the final consummation of this Kingdom reign. I am being drawn into the arms of the loving God. This is my ultimate need. This is my ultimate desire. This is my ultimate destiny. When all is gone but the final veil of pride that keeps me from approaching the Father, I can finally stand in the sufficiency of eternity.<br /><br />It is a dark and lonely road to this place. That is why suffering is the only path to wisdom. That is why we hide the poor from our eyes. We do not want to acknowledge the insufficiency of all things but God. This day I not only see the weak but take my place in this group and wear the glory of that position as a part of my true nature and calling. I am blessed. I am close to the Father. He sees my weakness and is moved. This is my divine consolation.</span><br /></span>David M. Bunkerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16437828982115875616noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5592586909280725556.post-7011665163177572242008-08-27T12:30:00.000-07:002008-09-15T20:21:37.671-07:00Deep Confession and the Sacred Messiness of LifeGone from mystery into mystery<br />Gone from daylight into night<br />Another step deeper into the darkness<br />Closer to the light<br /><strong>Bruce <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_0">Cockburn</span></strong><br /><br /><div align="left">I <span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">serve a God who hides. There are times when regardless of my rituals or disciplines, the Father will not reveal himself. During these times of seeming darkness, I cry out for clarity and certainty ironically calling out for instant faith. Sitting in my yearnings and longings are so revealing that I am anxious and distracted by anything that will offer some relief from the unveiling.<br /><br />In the messiness of life comes a sacred imperfection that is not packaged and planned according to my schedules. We usually do not question our direction in life during vacations. We do not mourn the poor decisions we made regarding purchases and opulence in times of abundance. We are full of hubris and confidence when our dreams are seemingly running the universe and surrounded by potential franchisees. Countless times in my short life I have reached the boundaries and imitations of my own abilities. I have reached the confines of anything I could attain. Most of the time I initially seek everything and everyone else other than God and the truth. Why?<br /><br />This is paradox. Part of me aggressively strives for position, power, and a legacy that can be pointed directly back to me and my talents while God is simultaneously doing the exact opposite in my deeper parts. This tension is so powerful at times that I can feel my body being torn between the two worlds-His kingdom and mine. I love and hate simultaneously. I pray and curse in the same sentence. I cry out for justice and rob the widow. This overwhelming sense of my duplcicty can often cause a high degree of ennui and tristitia. I have evolved my broken estate into a postmodern malady of the soul. I equally loathe and love my reflected self.<br /><br />There is, however, a shattered part of me that knows where in my healing resides. There is a deeper knowing that is asking for truth rather than quick fixes and spiritual band aids. This desiring for the felt presence of God does have a price tag. So much of my relationship with God has been defined and run through the grist mill of religion and community. In one sense, I am communally formed and need this family to make myself actually be a self. On the other hand, I can easily rely upon this constructed family to be a God replacement. I can assume that my attendance at religious meetings, my collections of icons or relics, be they actual icons or books or tapes or DVD’s from “well known” teachers, will take the place of God. In fact I often mistake them for Him.<br /><br />My imagination is often agnostic. I desperately hold on to the dusty relics through which I frame the Father. I know Him to be a certain way or so I am told. To experience Him directly myself is to allow a degree of the self to fall away. Richard Rohlheiser, in his book The Shattered Lantern, comments on this agnosticism when he says, “We live in an age of unbelief. What sets us apart from past generations is that, today, this is as true within religious circles as outside them. The problem of faith is especially one of unbelief among believers….Belief in God, for many of us, is little more that a hangover. We feel the effects of the religious activity of the past, but our own consciousness borders on agnosticism and active disbelief. Rarely is there a vital sense of God within the bread and butter of life. We still make a space for God in our churches. He is given a very restricted place everywhere else.” Page 18-19 The Shattered Lantern<br /><br />When my agnosticism is revealed to my own heart I see that I am still directing where I want the Spirit of God to move in my heart. I still want to direct His ways. I want to keep my life. I am not prepared to offer it up as sacrifice. I want to dictate the restoration in my time and on my terms. Because of His very nature, spirituality even in its imperfection is pervasive. I cannot compartmentalize His presence and movement. The Trinitarian nature of God is also reflected in my own nature. I have a body, a mind and a soul (or spirit). These parts of me desire to be in unity. These parts of me desire a kingdom order that allows for real shalom to not only visit my yearning heart but take up a habitation.<br /><br />For this habitation to take place, a space must be readied for the Sprit to come in. This space is a posture and it is one in which I am uncomfortable. I think of the scripture in I Corinthians 3:18 that says..”Do not deceive yourselves. If you think that you are wise in this age you should become fools so that you may become wise.” This divine inversion is what it is that I am so discomforted by. Must I be emptied to be filled? Must I be so weak to see His strength? Must I know so little to be made aware of His mind and knowing? Must I lose my way to find it? The answer of course is yes, yes and yes. The hidden way of the mysterious Spirit is not because He purposely desires to keep me in the dark. Quite the contrary. For me to see I must grow accustomed to seeing my own powers and abilities meet their end. This is what we call darkness. In actuality it is merely the limits of “my” seeing. It is the space outside of my strengths and giftings.<br /><br />Why is it that many of us in the West tend to view the dying of our flesh and the struggles that come with being a vessel of the Lord as an optional encumbrance? Could it be that we have been taught an Americanized Gospel? Could it be that we actually think God is there merely to answer our prayers and merely to make our lives easier?<br /><br />The book of Job is one of the earliest books written. Is it not ironic that Job’s friends as far back in biblically antiquity as this book refers, still were much like friends today that tell us…”if you are suffering it is due to some sin or some principle you have overlooked.” But is this truth the very road we must travel to take on the life of Christ? Could some of our sufferings come with the restoration of the cosmos and the purposes of God in this world? Could our death be a blessing as we begin to see who He is in light of who we are not?<br /><br />I recently ranted to a friend that I could not have one more theological discussion about anything but God’s response to suffering. This of course is an exaggeration on some level but my soul is weary of the life energy that flows from my heart during and after discussions that seem to offer up more of my presumption and confident assertions about God than a practical real life conversation about my neighbor who is without a house payment this month, or a friend who has just found she cannot pay her bills on the Wal-Mart salary as they have cut back her hours.<br /><br />These discussions are too dangerously painful to have and they tell us how little power we have over much of life. It is easier to have a dialogue about things that don’t really matter or if they do, not in a immediate survival sense. I wonder if God is interested in these conversations? Jesus seemed to shy away from dialogue that attempted to set Him up and led to the reproof of those engaging in the diatribe. He knew the hearts of those who ask Him questions to which they already thought they knew the answers. Something happens to my heart and my ears when I think I know. I speak out of turn and seldom listen. Why would I? I already know the answer for I have consciously directed the conversation in the direction that allows me to trump my opponent. So many conversations start out benign and harmless and end up filled with confusion and hurt. We are told to stay away from these kinds of engagements but there is something about how we have learned and been informed on how to articulate our faith that by its very nature seems to lean towards this kind of pontification. I want to believe that my diatribes set the world in order and allow my conjectures and assertions to have a weight that all will acknowledge and honor. This is why so often following one of these kinds of exchanges my own heart seems oddly emptied and feeling less of God’s presence. Am I so unaware of Him when I am so full of myself and so confident life is at my finger tips?<br /><br />There is a divine messiness to life. We must grow accustomed to seeing a portion of our lives unravel. If things are always going well in the sense of order and freedom from pain, we are probably barbituating ourselves with some pleasure, some diversion or merely ignoring the truth of our lives in hopes it will all go away. Of course life never goes away. This fallen world is the one in which we live and with that inhabitance comes much joy and sorrow, much pain and pleasure</span><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">, much fame and dishonor.</span></div>David M. Bunkerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16437828982115875616noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5592586909280725556.post-24454289561300724882008-08-22T20:48:00.001-07:002008-08-23T08:56:23.839-07:00On Not Knowing Everything<p class="MsoNormal">Here You are again</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Hidden so mysteriously in Your revealing</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">I make demands upon You for full disclosure</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">I am not prepared to honor the concealed nor veiled</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">I place You outside the ordinary commonplaces I breathe</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Only in worship </p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Does the immense numinous seizure of beauty capture me</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">And for a few brief moments of sustained appreciation</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">My foolishness becomes Holy and a Gift</p>David M. Bunkerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16437828982115875616noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5592586909280725556.post-8046770850837820942008-08-21T03:57:00.000-07:002008-08-23T09:00:46.561-07:00The Sufficiency of the Day<span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;"><strong>Gratitude and Gift Giving</strong></span><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">These are not grateful times. It is safe to say that these are times of great presumption and possessiveness. We live in a world (primarily the Western advanced 1st worlds) where much of our days are spent desiring. Economies run on desire. Something deep within our being desires.</span><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;"><br />Gratitude is a much more pure and simple form of desire. Gratitude regards the thing as not something to be possessed but something to be enjoyed and even cherished. Is it not ironic that much of what we posses we stop enjoying. How many of us have built some room or extension onto our houses around a desire( a hobby or pleasure like pool playing or wine ) only to find these rooms are now dusty relics that represent desire gone south? We coveted this space and now want something new, something more.<br /><br />The poor teach us how to be grateful for they have been forced by life to allow God to bring things into their life. They have the same desires but have those dispositions formed out of simplicity. A simple meal, an adequate car, a small but cherished home are all gifts. For our<br />gratefulness to be formed by the nature of divine gift giving is to avoid <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_0">possessiveness</span>. To possess something is to truly be controlled by the idea of this object and its perceived power. Advertising knows how to take the innate desire to be, to belong, to be known, and attach things to that desire. Now we are known for our things. We are known for our style. We are known for what we seem to possess within and without us. It is our gift to dispense, our gift to define, our gift to display.<br /><br />Truly grateful people tend to empty themselves of their gifts. In Babette’s Feast, Babette, currently a house keeper, <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_0"><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_1">unbeknownst</span></span> to the town a formerly famous chef in Paris, pours out her gift of culinary beauty upon a small town. They do not know her former status (she is now a mere servant in this community) nor do they understand the power of her gift. Note (</span><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Babette"><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Babette's_Feast</span></a><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">) the film powerfully depicts the starkness of the life lived as thought it were to be safely dispensed and monitored with great care and ownership. In the end Babette (once again <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_1"><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_2">unbeknownst</span></span> to the town) wins the lottery in Paris and decides to stay in Denmark in this small town and uses her winnings to create one glorious meal. In this offering she pours out her gift lavishly and something mystically joyful happens to the entire town who receives the gift given. She was a servant mind you with little to no perceived power in the community. In fact, true gifts are never postured as power. They must by their nature refer to the glory of the one receiving the gift. Gifts are graces. They are meant to pour glory into the life of something else.<br /></span><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">We don't learn the power of gratitude when there is a great absence of gift giving. We hunger for something and we think it is about us. We think we need to work to receive it and work to hold it. Of course Jesus was clear that the Kingdom is upside down. It is better to give than to receive. This sounds so pious but upon deeper contemplation we find its meaningfulness. The act of giving places us in a position to offer someone something we ourselves desire as well. We all wonder if the universe is adequate. Is there enough? Can I trust the power in and through the world to see me and my need? These are natural <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_2"><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_3">ponderings</span></span> and most of the time our answer is NO! God seems absent and so does the thing we so strongly desire. When our posture shifts from giving rather than receiving, we find that God has already set the world up such that the most glorious of gifts are already available in and through this world without effort. They are not possessions and will never be”things.” This is not to say that the poor and the needy (which we all are) do not need food and sustenance. This is our daily bread. The key here is the word daily.<br /></span><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">Unless someone travels to a Third World country the Lord’s Prayer does not make total sense. Give us this day our daily bread, is not a prayer we in the West understand. We have enough bread to last a lifetime and much of it is rotting. Why? It was never meant to be kept in such a manner. Let me qualify here realistic forms of storage and refrigeration. However, you still find that in countries where these are not available, meals are eaten <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_3">corporately</span>, food is shared communally, and the daily bread is not a curse as much as a blessing of what happens when the individual self is lost in the family self.<br /></span><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">We have lost the idea of family in our time. In fact, I have met many whose families were not protective and sustaining but were indeed the very opposite. They refused to share and refused to empower. Thus, there is great <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_4"><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_4">woundedness</span></span> in the West. It comes from the loss of communal families that take care of the weak and elderly. Much of our 401 k’s and retirement programs are really protective mechanisms to hedge against the <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_5"><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_5">aloness</span></span> our society has thrust upon us. We all know that in our latter years we may be alone and forced to die without family. </span><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;"><br />The poor deal with that reality all the time and have few choices. They still must see sustenance as a daily gift. The government offers some help, some churches step in and offer some assistance, but by in large, most of the poor will indeed die empty handed. This may seem sad and overwhelmingly cruel. In some cases it indeed is as their lives could have been healed or restored with so little medicine or so little money. But just as they had to look to the Father for their daily bread, they now have to await His arms in the Kingdom that is being ushered in. This ushering in will take place primarily by those who have need of it to be ushered in.<br /></span><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">We will not usher in what we do not anticipate. We do not long for the new heaven and the new earth for we have created one here now. Disney is not just a theme park. It is a Jungian fantasy that wipes away the dark of life and has us tied into a monorail car in an endless loop of “It’s a Small World After All.” This is humorous but sad. We have become satiated with our desires fulfilled. We have received what we thought we wanted and now there is nothing to long for.<br /></span><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">I ponder much about longing for it can become the sanctification of desire. When longing is recognized as a deeper voice in our souls we begin to listen. To be grateful is to truly listen to our longing. What is it that I want? At a very deep level it is indeed immortality. We have indeed been meant to live forever. Thus, to have my desires for immortality submitted to material things only confuses my soul. My soul knows. My soul reads well the power and presence of things. It is my flesh that is stupid and ungrateful. It is my false fallen self that wants things just for the pleasure of ownership and possessiveness.<br /></span><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">I meant this excursion to be edifying. To talk of death and the afterlife for some may be morbid. The phrase “I want it and I want it know,” is a mantra of many in our culture. Thus, holding at bay the desires in our hearts is a risk that there is nothing beyond what we see. Materialism is not just a malaise. It is a principality that rules and guards our hearts. It gives us the divine lexicon for meaning. It tells us what we are worth and what others are worth. It dispenses power, weakness, glory, and glamour. I was going to say beauty but it cannot really dispense beauty. Glamour etymologically refers to something that tricks us. Glamour is a ruse. But we in the West are caught up in its spell. We hunger for the style and grace that glamour offers. We buy the goodies that fashion and style tells us who we are.<br /></span><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">Let me close with a story. A friend of mine has a friend. This friend of mine has grown up in the middle of the middle class. She has never been without but always known the challenge of hard work and saving. Recent years have added much loss to her life and in the process she came into contact with her “new “friend. This new friend comes from a poor urban background and knows little to nothing about things like music lessons, picnics, Easter dresses, college aspirations, dreams of owning one’s own home. These were never on the table. But this “new” friend was indeed a rich women. What she offered as a gift to my friend was an unencumbered sense of being in the now. She had to. Today was truly today. To live and survive you had to be present. To live and survive you had to believe that this day offered a gift. In that neediness was formed a great sense of gratitude. As my friend (middle class) began to grow in her friendship with her”new” friend, a mutual sharing began to take place. But in the end, it had little to do with possessions, things, power, prestige, or entitlement. In the end the gift shared was the mutual awareness of the sufficiency of the day. Today is sufficient in itself. This is the posture one needs to be grateful. Today, a blessing will indeed be deposited in my heart through the grace of God and His creation. Let me be conduit for that grace. May you be a conduit for that grace.</span>David M. Bunkerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16437828982115875616noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5592586909280725556.post-67247925674161545542008-08-19T14:32:00.000-07:002008-08-20T07:20:52.885-07:00Inbetween Stories<span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">The phrase, “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.” seems to sum up the manner in which all who introspect reflect upon their age as they step back to ponder. Since the Fall, it appears our inner spectacles must always weigh the burden of beauty over against the hideous, truth against the deceit, and love over against the loathing. Our eating from this tree has somehow divided the world into two parts or so it seems-good & evil.</span><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;"><br />I am blessed at this point in my life with some spiritual companions who seem as heaven bent as I to figure at least some of these conundrums. One is my pastor Stan. I seldom see him when he is not embroiled in the larger dilemmas of life and quite frankly, his righteous struggle gives me hope that my own is not <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_0">OCD</span>. There must be some genome that some of us have that thrusts us into the cosmic ping pong of life unable or unwilling to relent to the absurdity and yet so aware of how much floats above and below us all.<br /><br />We are in-between. We are juxtaposed. We are crossing not yet, hearing not yet, feeling not yet but oh so full of longing. So full of a yearning for closure, redemption, love, something to ease the weightiness of this seeming abyss looming up in our sight.<br /><br />I am constantly teased about what I read and honestly, if I mentioned my regimen, much of it may finally prove the <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_1">OCD</span> diagnosis. Truly I am a confused man. I agree with Flaubert when he said, “I read in order to live.” My spirituality is so imperfect, answers so daily revised, my love so incomplete and my story still mostly unwritten. There is sadness in that statement. At this point in my life, all of the grand spiritual paths tell me I should be so much further along the journey. My own faith, Christianity, sometimes is offered in such pristine finely packaged offerings and I find myself still thirsting after the tasting.<br /><br />Thomas has been mythologized as the cosmic doubter but in the <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_2">nowness</span> of life, doubt seldom offers us a spot in the biblical hall of fame. In fact, my thought as I wrote that sentence was to call it the hall of shame. Doubt & suspicion in the world of western peoples is taught at every level in secondary and graduate school, no even in primary school and yet when one matures, they are somehow told to ignore the doubt or satiate it with consumer goods or the will to power.<br /><br />There I go waxing philosophical but it is in moments where the story loses its inner force to move forward and the stuttering ensues that all the classical philosophical questions arise. Who are we? Why are we here? Or here is a good one, how do we even know we are here? I hate all these big questions but they reflect just how big this story is and how small untested dialogue and word offerings cheapen the very narrative of which we believers say we are a part.<br /><br />There is a shift taking place. Maybe “the shift” is the acknowledgment of the beautiful chaos built into the very fabric of this universe. Maybe the seeming shape shifting of truth and lies, keeps us humble or broken. Maybe our need to know this way is why we were told not to eat the fruit. Now we are obsessively longing for the reasons we live when before our eating we felt no burden of proof. We had no shame of comparison and worth. We walked in the cool of the garden for we were loving this story rather than co writing it. Now the chroniclers of our age continue daily to add to the story and much like a stock report is an absurd reflection of life’s <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_3">tentativeness</span>, we can only see the chaos in its aftermath but we cannot predict its movement.<br /><br />I am so prone towards going backward into some form of retrenchment. Moving forward into this never ending story is tiring to the soul but unquestionably the only elixir for doubt and suspicion. But when the disparity between an old story and the new one seems so far apart, the muse becomes a late night harasser of sorts. The 3:00 o’clock “hour of the wolf” appears literal as our very soul can be heard to wail. Is it our late night howling that like the wolf pack bring us back together? Or is like Ginsberg’s lament over the slaughtering of the innocents? Why are many lamenting and baying at the moons of institutions, rituals, beliefs, and well worn ways of being?<br /><br />Is this merely the narcissistic whining of an age preoccupied with self or the spiritual craving for a small portion of some larger plot to be revealed? How much of the story do we get to really know? How much of our art is the soul projecting cinema on life? Neal <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_4">Gabler</span> in his work “Life the Movie” sees much of the formative nature of our story telling as mediated through the entertainment industry.<br /><br />One can read Orwellian fears into that interpretation quite easily. Part of our search for story is a search for place. A search for personal naming and inheritance. Must we fight for a self or is it offered freely? Why are we so confused in these times about our very being? Is this the burden of the fall realized by the masses? Has our suspicion and doubt so attenuated our sense of story that we either despair in the search for narratives that guide and direct us or wily <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_5">nilly</span> pull one down from TV or the <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_6">Internet</span> and try it on. Have we finally blurred the lines between fantasy and reality or have they always been opaque and seen through a glass darkly?<br /><br />Questions come with knowing. Maybe the agonizing believers experience over the desired certainty of their faith is less about certitude and more about the overwhelming sense of emptiness that can grab the soul unawares in fear. All my life, (I am the son of preacher man), I have been in proximity to the dissemination of truth claims. Right belief was offered to me as a spiritual prophylactic from the ways of the world and if I only would capitulate to the ways of the Spirit, I would find myself floating above the mundane struggles of the spiritual proletariat. Now in retrospect I sense, that as a small child, I became skilled at the storing up of claims that bolstered my parents desired certainty. I did not ask many questions. Those matters of course were not on the radar of a small lad but in my teens for sure I was asking a lot. Many of the queries were submerged in teenage angst and pushed through the cipher of my emerging sexuality and individuation. But my questions were real to me. They were less about rebellion and more about a more nuanced reading of the story. It was as if I kept getting the “Cliff Notes” on this exquisite account of life, time, and Father God instead of the more graceful renderings offered by poets, story tellers and novelists. I was asking not merely for the right beliefs but the manner in which I could believe in the right way. At some point in my teen years I began to wonder if all the “talking” about God was the problem. All this incessant debating. Peter Rollins, undoubtedly one of the emerging churches most articulate theological philosophers brings this exchange into focus when he juxtaposes the words of <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_7">Wiggenstien</span> with his experience with charismatic evangelicalism.<br /><br />On one hand our talk of God can become prattle and arrogant chattering void of depth and humility. To this tendency one might agree with Wittgenstein when he said, “What we cannot speak about we must pass over in silence.” An homage to the shear incomprehensibility of the transcendent is alluded to here and my superficial entrance into mysticism tells me this is true. However, as Rollins, I am a child of evangelicalism and the charismatic renewal. Thus, God is one subject of whom I can never stop talking.<br /><br />Are we at a point in the story where a paradoxical dialogue is the language that begins to emerge? Have we on one hand so colonized the name of God as Rollins says or is the “unspeakable” the very place where the story and the most compelling language of description is going to emerge? Is there a secret waiting to be told? Is there a heretical orthodoxy that is articulating the right way of belief rather than the right beliefs? Is this a sacred listening taking place?<br /><br />Gerhard <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_8">Lohfink</span> so aptly states the results of moving away from all our gallant efforts and truly believing one place in time can become an outpost of holy <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_9">eavesdropping</span>.<br /><em>“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 at 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, they can allow themselves to be drawn into the history of salvation that God is creating. Only in that way can their freedom be preserved. What drives them to the new thing cannot be force, not even moral pressure, but only the fascination of a world that is changed.Clearly, this change in the world must begin in human beings, but not at all by their seeking through heroic effort to make themselves the locus of the new, altered world; rather it begins when they listen to God, open themselves to God, and allow God to act."</em><br /><br />Much of my recent spiritual pilgrimage has taken place within what Wendell Berry might call a sacred space. Since my early hippie years I have experienced and longed for community. Not merely a group of people who had <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_10">like minded</span> theology and ideas on the world and its transcendence but a people who truly lived life together. This dream has proven much more formidable in a world where individualism is paramount and even the community called the Church is fairly formed through the ideologies of capitalism, therapy, and technology. Much of this blog represents for me my final willingness to bring presence to my voice, to throw out my poems and stories and add one more hopefully <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_11">unshrill</span> voice to the cacophony. We are destined to converse through these pages if you are this far along. Here is a poem to soften the <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_12">incessant</span> inquiry.<br /><br /><strong>The Color of Soul Making<br /></strong><br />Blue fire<br />Slipped into my room last night<br />Sighed heavily<br />Illuminated my labored breathing<br />And the shallow rise and fall of sorrow’s chest<br />As if both color and flame could speak<br />Their words came forth<br />“We are your indigo angels.<br />In this place most call a desert<br />Your sister the white Iris blooms<br />In this dryness the soul flowers<br />Reverie fills the darkened cobalt horizon<br />Lovers held in suspension<br />Melt into each other<br />And weep with longing<br />Here imagination burns a cerulean glow<br />Melancholy marries Kandinsky<br />And all this pondering rekindles<br />A thousand years of exile<br />In the unreflective underworld of black and white.”</span><br /></span>David M. Bunkerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16437828982115875616noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5592586909280725556.post-55472494483123863262008-08-13T13:53:00.000-07:002008-09-12T15:32:21.705-07:00The Grand Humbling<span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;"><strong>An Invitaiton to Suffering</strong></span><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;"><em><span style="color:#000000;">Once again, out of the experience of suffering, an invitation is found. As our brother Job learned, our presumptive contracts are delusory (our attempted deals with God that is) by the ego to be in control. We learn that life is much riskier, more powerful, more mysterious than we had ever thought possible. While we are rendered more uncomfortable by this discovery, it is a humbling that deepens spiritual possibility. The world is more magical, less predictable, more autonomous, and less controllable, more varied, less simple, more infinite, less knowable, more wonderfully troubling than we could have imagined being able to tolerate when we were young.</span></em> James Hollis / Finding Meaning in the Second Half of Life</span><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;"><br />Some years ago, while pondering the highly mechanistic nature of how the church engaged spiritual growth, it came to me that in many ways the Church has regarded the soul as a project. Spiritual growth as well is often seen as a technical program of ideas disseminated at the correct times and if ingested properly will automatically create the desired results. This idea that God’s Spirit will engage us clinically, objectively, or in a detached fashion is one of the reasons we often think we know something before we actually have experienced it.<br /></span><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">We “modern “Christians have things to do and places to go. We desire that even our spiritual lives be akin to our work schedules and physical lives ( exercise regimens) in the sense we can schedule in exercise and have our doctors and trainers give us instant advice or pills to speed up the results. We are in a hurry and the soul is one area of life where our hurried harried lives are sorely obvious. Gandhi said there is more to life than merely increasing its speed.<br /></span><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">If I have heard it once I have heard it countless times and that is the statement, “God said it so He must honor His word.” On some level the sentiment has enough truth to be articulated with some sense of spiritual fervor. But the darker side of this articulation may really sound more like, “ I have a contract with you God and You are not keeping up to Your end of the deal. What is up?”<br /><br />It is a frightening and spiritually disappointing encounter to realize that God does not make these kinds of deals. Suffering is one of the areas that this hubristic proclamation says more about our presumption than the character of God. God never made such an arrangement that offered Job a painless, suffering free life and the crisis in assumptions was Job’s day of reckoning.<br /><br />I have been pondering the invitation suffering is offering and its weightiness is too much to bear alone. Dealing with suffering with a gracious heart is one of these areas of my walk I feel like such a neophyte and baby believer. I am so poor at nourishing my mind, body, or soul. Wholeness seems elusive as so much in my culture asks me to separate myself up into compartments, and ask me to divide myself up into sub-categories and experiences. Whether it is body or soul sickness, I so often ignore my very being's beckoning calls for nurturance and push myself way beyond healthy limits. I am vaguely aware of this behavior as it is taking place as it impetus is deep in my soul’s story of reality that no longer works. </span><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;"><br />Suffering has been a major challenge to my journey as its presence is ubiquitous and I often feel as though I have little recourse to curb its ultimate verdict. Many of you may or may not know of my bout with cancer. Needless to say its wake is powerful and looming in its impact. Likewise, there is much grief and sorrow that naturally accompanies being human in this day and age. Just because we do not live in war torn countries, or struggle for necessities such as water or bread, we Western Christians often neglect and ignore the deeply hidden maladies that rob our joy and ability to be present.<br /><br />I do not understand suffering. As a believer brought up in the evangelical subculture, I was led to believe that I could somehow avoid suffering or at least have this near heavenly response to its power and impact. I have not learned this in the last decade nor am I currently capable of dealing with or accepting real suffering. I am also confused as to where the art of suffering comes from trying to serve God and the Church and the world and what part of suffering is merely induced by me and my own selfish neurotic will.<br /><br />We all have been told that right conduct, right intention, proper piety, would protect us from the vagaries of life and the inscrutable universe. But prolonged sickness, tragedy, unpredicted death, heart attacks, childbirth gone awry, divorce accompanied by dark and sinister wrangling, quickly inform our souls that these deals were presumption at best and closer to fact, straight out fantasy.<br /><br />As sickness and financial struggles have dogged my heels in recent years, it becomes deeply apparent that certain parts of life are merely out of my control. No manner of domination or fixing changes growing older or being a part of a music industry that is collapsing much like General Motors in Detroit. I am also aware of how often I so ungraciously bear the normal troubles of life and discern which ones come as a byproduct of my faithfulness and the prophetic work God has called me to and discern which ones come as a byproduct of my own lack of stewardship over my life, body and giftings. I have never rejoiced in tribulation to date as far as I can remember. I say this with some shame.<br /><br />I wonder if I should be surprised given the current social climate in Western societies that tell me to pursue comfort and eschew any or all philosophies that tell me my entitlements are not valid. Pascal said centuries ago, “What amazes me most is to see that everyone is amazed at his weakness.”<br /><br />Are there any benefits to suffering and will some forms of calling and service actually even lead to distress, anguish or even persecution? Can I develop a new appreciation for the “gifts” of suffering” that may bestow grace upon my discipleship? This phrase sounds odd in light of our culture’s penchant for health, ease, comfort, and the exaltation of youth ( Marva Dawn- The Sense of the Call). Dawn remarks on how even churches today call for leaders that are “colossal in their skills for preaching, supernatural in their abilities to attract youth, and phenomenal in their ability to grow the church." Never has she seen the phrase (and "are also a model of godliness in the midst of suffering.”)<br /><br />“Why do we try so hard to avoid suffering?” Dawn asks. Is it because we lack a real “theology of suffering” thus we often cannot see that certain calls on our lives will by their very nature involve suffering? One of the reasons we must take care of ourselves (our health-and I am being humbled so much here) is that some prophetic roles may drain us and if already exhausted, all we see are the ever present pains of suffering. One of the reasons we avoid suffering is that we do not have a big enough vision that could actually clarify and define the future such that we can walk into this place with hope. In fact, most of the time I either demonize (literally) or figuratively my sufferings or curse any pain and struggles that enter my life as unfair and unjust. I am so quick to blame others and hold them accountable.<br /><br />It is a heavy message to remember that part of our calling is to lay our lives on the line to serve the Church and the world. Dawn goes on to say that often physical, emotional, and professional, familial, and financial ailments overwhelm us. In these times God seems distant, silent, untrustworthy, oppressive, and even demonic. She remarks, “During these times I have literally felt abandoned and tell God I cannot endure one more hardship.” Dawn responds to this predicament with a deeply moving insight. “The hardest things for us to admit is that when we think we can dig ourselves out of such holes- we are in much deeper trouble than we can imagine. "When penetrating weariness seizes our love for God, we will serve only lesser ends. If our work cannot proceed from love for the Eternal One, we can no longer do any genuinely eternal work…We need a fallow year. A period of time which nutrients are put back into us to make us fit to produce again. We also need is a weekly Sabbath that keeps us aware of the New Creation in us and around us. I am not talking here about Church attendance but the laying down of our busyness as if we held up the universe with our human doings. If we do not seek this Sabbath we become so overwhelmed we lose our capacity to suffer. This is paradox for sure.<br /><br />Dawn tells about her Christian friends in countries formerly under Communist rule who now reside in the States. She was shocked when they told her it seemed harder to live out their faith in Western countries where they had all these freedoms, choices, affluence and technologies than it did in the former Communist block countries. They remarked at how there did not seem like there was any “radical alternative” to the way people lived in the States. Everyone was so accepting of the status quo as it allowed them to live their Christians lives in private. For those who grew up in persecution this seemed to water down the real radical nature of faith necessary to live as Christ followers. For these Communist refugees, communal suffering was part of the calling. In fact, their solidarity in those sufferings involved being a Christian in that time and space which became radical and subversive by its very nature.<br /><br />Eugene Peterson, one of my favorite authors and a long time pastor, says this about our need to suffer and be subversive out of that posture..."If the church member actually realized that the American way of life is doomed to destruction and that another Kingdom is right now being formed in secret to take its place, he wouldn’t be pleased at all. If he knew what I was really doing and the difference it was making, he would fire me. True subversion requires patience. You slowly get cells of people who are believing in what you are doing, & participating in."<br />As my wife and I have dealt with the disappointment of our house not selling one more time (it is almost like a house showing is an operation that causes pain but heals nothing ), we are tempted to not see what God is doing in our midst. We can be discouraged that His work is not going forth through us and in us. The work of authentic community is in some ways quite subversive to me. Sometimes I feel like I am just planting seeds but in recent weeks I have seen a harvest that has convicted my heart. I ( we) must embrace hope and let these Kingdom cells sprout and grow as God wills. We are not alone in the Kingdom work and the community is growing and taking form. Sometimes we must bring Bad News to deliver the Good. Could the Bad News of sorts be- “suffering is a part of our obedience and when it is done unto the Lord we take on the sufferings of our Lord.” We must actually take on His sufferings as He would were He here in the flesh…..And He is. Blessings</span><br /><br /><br /></span>David M. Bunkerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16437828982115875616noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5592586909280725556.post-12765546230950895122008-08-12T17:37:00.001-07:002008-10-15T10:04:25.158-07:00The Larger Work<span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;"><strong>The Deeper Promise</strong></span><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;"><em>We have cluttered our lives with strategies for belonging, trying through some combination of performance & cleverness to make ourselves look attractive and valuable so that those who really belong will let us stay around. But trying to earn our belonging by pleasing others is like shoveling mercury with a pitchfork. As hard as we try, sooner or later it all slips away, leaving us feeling homeless and bereft of a place we can call our own.</em> </span><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">Wayne Muller – Legacy of the Heart<br /><br />It is not an exaggeration to say that I have spent my entire adult life looking for a place of safety, care and belonging. My story has been told over and over again to the men in our community and I am always amazed at how gentle and kind they are. I am sick of my story but I now understand that there is a difference between wallowing in my hurt and shame and sharing my need for redemption. For many of us, even marriage, church and friendships seemed like “temporary postponements of certain exile,” as Muller articulates. Life was merely a backdrop for the inevitable: the revealing of our ultimate judgement-we have little to no worth.<br /></span><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">This cleverness and performance approach can work in the early years of our male rites of passage. People will hook their wagon up to our energies and use our gifts. That is the problem. They use our gifts not to celebrate them in light of who is offering them up. We are merely a <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_0">disseminator</span> of what props up and keeps running the corporate dream. Thus, if you work over time, ignore your family, spend way too much time at work or on line checking out the information running through your job title, then so be it. It is for the greater good which is seldom if ever questioned.<br /></span><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">In authentic community everything is held up to the light. All things are questioned. In that space we are constantly asking ourselves what we really want and what we really need. It is clear that for me, issues of care and belonging will be sacred wounds into which God is pouring Himself continually. When I get caught up in relationships and endeavors that grant me stay only if I produce, I begin to self sabotage. I begin to lose my interest, lose my heart.<br /></span><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">Being allowed to stay is not the same as belonging. All communities will have certain conditions but in healthy communities they are not about performance and cleverness. In fact, these ways of engaging only keep us from finally coming home. We are not spiritual share croppers that work the land on a conditional basis. No man owns our soul. Our sanctuary is always available because of whose Son’s we are.</span><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;"><br />Why do I avoid belonging then? Why do I impose a degree of self exile upon myself? Why do I hide out in books, creativity, consumerism, wasteful time given over to the things I call my hobbies? These are my secret places that keep me from getting hurt again. But they no longer work for me. I have waited too long to belong so I must confess to all my real needs. I hunger so deeply to belong and be cared for. Life seems to be a place of scarcity on so many levels. Why be present and disappoint myself one more time? This is my struggle to be present. To know what it means to belong is to truly open myself once again to rejection and exile. In other words, I must spiritually reenact the very thing my soul knows well is my Achilles heel and see if the universe will once again name me as unworthy.<br /><br />I am so blessed to have heard from my brothers my real name. I am beloved. I am a Son. Praise be to the Father. He is full of loving kindness and mercy. I now know that there is no place of refuge. There is only a people of refuge. No job, no house, no amount of money or lack of money ultimately defines me. I always belong. I am always a Son. I always have refuge. Yet, I forget. To sustain this awareness I must continually bring before the community my insatiable need to be loved. I am ashamed of that need and this I know is wrong. I should glory in the fact that my deepest parts only live and survive on love-unconditional love.<br /><br />I am slowly beginning to discover that real care is not in short supply. My history tells me that care is rationed and that I must either fight for it or live without it. In the past I have chosen to live without it. On paper the shear absurdity of this statement is clear. And yet my soul has breathed in as little oxygen of hope as possible. I have hid my very body and presence in hopes no one would see me and shout, “ <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_1">Hey</span>, he does not belong here!” My sense of scarcity has become so habitual and chronic that only severe mercy and powerful displays of God’s love shake me from my self exile.<br /><br />As God allows this life to wrench from my hands the last vestiges of my self entitled ownership I am slowly beginning to understand the wealth of my community. In this larger family I am a rich man. In a larger family I am cared for and my scarcity posture begins to fall away. Now I begin to see and know that there is abundance if I will come with my real condition and need. I want to cleverly get my needs met. I want to fill up my sense of emptiness without making a place for the infilling. I want redemption without confession and repentance.<br /><br />David <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_2">Steindle</span>-<span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_3">Rast</span>, a Benedictine monk, speaks about this ever flowing abundance that heals my deepest needs for belonging and care. To access this abundance I must realign my posture to receive by allowing myself to be emptied. Real abundance “is not measured by what flows in, but by what flows over. The smaller we make the vessel of our need. The sooner we get the overflow we need for delight.” By walking into the abundance of the brotherhood through my deep fear of scarcity, I find so much is overflowing. There is no scarcity here. And yet, the impulse to heal myself through a job, a home, a clever saying or article all begins to reveal the inability of these endeavors or objects to fulfill. I close with a poem by Wendell Berry. This poem to me is an homage to the bounty of God through His creation and His people.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">Like tide it comes in<br />Wave after wave of foliage and fruit<br />The nurtured and the wild<br />Out of the light to this shore<br />In its extravagance we shape<br />The strenuous outline of enough<br /><br />Our Father has given us to each other. We each carry this precious glory, this brilliance and this beauty of soul in jars of clay. Yes, the phrase works here. We bring “our enough” in containers that appear to be unworthy. That is the divine joke. Oh the beauty of it all! Let us laugh today.</span>David M. Bunkerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16437828982115875616noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5592586909280725556.post-78013758287024797942008-08-08T07:57:00.000-07:002008-10-15T10:08:49.489-07:00Suffering as Community<span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;"><em>Stephen Levine reminds us that when we move from seeing our particular suffering as “our “ pain and begin to experience it simply as “the “ pain- the pain of all creation, of all beings- then we move from being separate and alone and our suffering becomes a doorway into community with the family of earth. The pain we have felt is intimately connected with the pain felt by the women giving birth; by the families torn apart by civil war; by the children dying of cancer, and by the fathers and mothers who hold them as they die; and by all those who suffer hunger, war, or oppression. Every one of us is given some quantity of suffering; some are given more than others, some more violently, some more subtly. But the suffering we feel has never been ours alone; it is simply a fragment of the suffering given us all as children of flesh and <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_0">spirit</span>. The form of the suffering may change from person to person, but the fact of our suffering is something we inevitably hold in common with all sentient beings.</em><br /><strong>Wayne Muller Legacy of the Heart</strong></span><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;"><br />We are all shining cells in the body of Christ. We are valuable members of God’s family. Each time we gather and share our deepest sorrows we begin to see just how intrinsically tied to one another we are. Our naming of life is always a challenge. In Christian circles it appears that much of our time is given over to theological naming. As believers who are attempting to navigate life through the narrative of Scripture, this conversation makes sense to me. However, beneath much of the push and pull of navigating the meaning of the text what we are really asking is “Why do I suffer? Why does God seem so distant? Why does life treat me this way?<br /><br />Is it possible that this seeming ebb and flow of God’s presence in our lives is tied to the naming of things at deeper and deeper levels? Faith for many has been relegated to some once in lifetime encounter (i.e. salvation) rather than a journey. This journey cannot be traversed alone. It is by its very nature a shared pilgrimage. The sharing of this pilgrimage is this constant stopping by the side of the road and wrapping and unwrapping each others wounded bandages. We are as Henri <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_1">Nouwen</span> said “wounded healers.” </span><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;"><br />Why are we surprised to discover in each other unresolved places where to date God’s renaming love has not yet been acknowledged? I find that I am blind to my blindness. I am unconscious to what I am unconscious of. I do not know what I do not know. I will fight against what I am afraid of regardless of how powerless that entity may appear to others. This is my suffering. At some level I think I deserved it.<br /><br />Some have regarded pain as a sign of their special status in the universe. Not special in the sense of brilliance and light, but special in terms of unworthiness and retribution. Their pain and suffering are indeed cosmic signposts as to the very worth of their existence. When this is my posture I must find the person responsible and then place the pain back on them or attempt to understand why they would have even done these things in the first place. This is not to denigrate therapy or looking to our past or the world’s past for that matter to determine how we might avoid pain and suffering in the future. Is this not what learning should ultimately be about? However, to spend the fullness of my time and presence on this earth in search of the perpetrator, the <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_2">victimizer</span>, makes me a foil in someone else’s life. I am playing a bit part in someone else’s story. How do I make this pain “our story?”<br /><br />How do we join our stories? How do we bring our pain and suffering into a place where it becomes teachers and sages for others who suffer much like us? Jesus taught us that our pain is not our punishment. The disciples were so desperate to understand the nature of the blind man’s condition that they asked Jesus a question that by all cultural accounts made sense. For what purpose was this man made blind? Jesus response says so much about how the Father sees things. For Jesus this is an opportunity to bless and heal. It is about compassion, not shaming.<br /><br />When my suffering becomes “our” suffering then my consciousness begins to shift and my vision of life slowly but profoundly begins to find its naming vision through other’s stories. I begin to see that my gifts were meant from the foundations of the earth to be given to my family. I just needed for someone to call them out. The phrase” call someone out” may have some baggage attached to it. It can sound a bit harsh and purposely harmful so as to expose another. In this case our calling out is about the wisdom, love, and beauty we so desperately need in our own lives thus we stand before each other in such beggar like postures. We are all saying like the character Tommy in The Who’s rock opera,<br /><br /><em>“Listening to You, See me. Tommy: See me, feel me, touch me, heal me.See me, feel me, touch me, heal me.See me, feel me, touch me, heal me.See me, feel me, touch me, heal me, heal me, heal me.Chorus: Listening to you I get the music.Gazing at you I get the heat.Following you I climb the mountain.I get excitement at your feet!Right behind you I see the millions.On you I see the glory.From you I get opinions.From you I get the story.Listening to you I get the music.Gazing at you I get the heat.Following you I climb the mountain.I get excitement at your feet!</em><br /><br />Each time we gather together we are listening to each other’s stories. We are submitting ourselves to the narratives regarding our pilgrimage and our search for special status. Why do I get stuck in my own pain and suffering? Why do I rehearse over and over again the recrimination that seemingly brought me to this weakened helpless state? To date it is the only story I have known. I will continue to do this dance of suffering until I allow myself the time and place to grieve. I must allow myself to sink down into the place of pain and abuse. But…I cannot do this alone. This is why the suffering becomes our suffering. In fact, I believe that we Christians are to carry within us the awareness of the entire world’s suffering. As Paul said in Romans, the very earth groans and moans for liberation and rescue. All creation longs for respite in the Father’s arms. In the meantime God has given us His Holy Spirit. He beckons us to be the Bride. He beckons us to activate the one and only antidote to this strange virus called suffering. That is the forgiveness given to us in the very act of the suffering Savior. He has given us an example. He humbled Himself even to death so as to break the cycle of suffering and sin.<br /><br />This day we can be set free in Him. Without His atoning gift our suffering and the sin done to us and the sin we do to others that causes them suffering has no meaning. In forgiveness this suffering is not made to disappear but now becomes compassion, grace, and love. This is the redeeming power of forgiveness. It changes almost like an alchemist the very foundational elements of a substance. What was once only pain and grief now becomes a place of refuge and restoration. In this place of forgiveness all of humanity can find redemption. Redemption does not forget the past but retells the story. In this final rendering we are seen and known as we were in the eyes of the Father from the very beginning. We are beautiful. We are the apple of the Father’s eye. As we say in New Adam, Your work is my work.” Let us add another few phrases….Your suffering is my suffering. Your forgiveness is my forgiveness.”<br />Let me end with a story from Wayne Muller’s book Legacy of the Heart which I recommend heartily.<br /><br /><em>In Vietnam there is a traditional folk tale that describes the difference between heaven and hell. In hell, everyone is given an abundance of food and then given chopsticks that are a yard long. Each person has all the food they need, but because the chopsticks are too long, the food never reaches their mouths.</em><br /><br /><em>In heaven, the image is exactly the same. Everyone is given an abundance of food, and their chopsticks are also a yard long. But….in heaven people use their chopsticks to feed one another.</em></span><em> </em>David M. Bunkerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16437828982115875616noreply@blogger.com0