I’m calling it “Look Again” instead of “Learning to Love You More,” but it’s the same deal. I’d suggest we all play along with them, but they’ve wrapped up the project now.

I’ll be managing this at petegall.com, and maybe there will be stuff from the game that shows up here as well.

The deal is this. Every so often I’ll set out an “assignment,” like today’s assignment to make an encouraging banner (this was idea #63 at LTLYM), and if you feel like playing along, give it a whirl and send me pictures of what you do. I’ll add the photos at the other site.

The purpose (because after all we need to have purposes if we’re going to do anything, right?) is to pay attention to life as it passes by us. Sort of like noticing a leaf in a stream, maybe. We spend so much time dealing with the big wounds of yesterday, or the big dreams of tomorrow, that very often we miss the glory in the simple things of today. So, if you were going to make an encouraging banner, what would it say? Who would you want to have see it? Where will you put it?

Let’s play in this great world we’ve been given. If you choose to play along, you can send your images and stories (if you have stories to include) to pete@petegall.com.

So here’s how I learned it.

About a week ago I met my friend, Pastor E, for coffee. As we were talking, a woman entered the shop, I think spotted him, and took a table about ten feet directly in front of the club chair in which my friend was sitting. He was immediately distracted by her (I was turned in such a way that she was only in the corner of my eye, and for some reason she didn’t present a temptation for me).

I don’t know that she ever made eye contact or even looked over at him, but she knew she had his attention. As she did her paperwork, she kept sucking on the tip of one finger. She dropped things onto the floor directly in his direction a couple of times, bending over in her chair in such a way that her sweater fell open (as she kept her chin lifted and pretended to crack her neck). There were other sorts of bait that she used that were exactly perfect for my friend, but I don’t want to give him away by saying what they were. Suffice it to say that he was a very distracted conversationalist, and he had a very hard time making eye contact with me as we spoke.

After about half an hour, the woman packed up her things, climbed into her Jeep, and drove away.

“See how God likes to screw with me?” He said as soon as he could shift his focus back to me. “Tell me that wasn’t too perfect a temptation.”

“How is that God screwing with you?” I asked.

“He wants to show me what a bad person I am.”

I was already laughing, as I had been for most of the time she’d been in the coffee shop, at how completely he got his ass kicked by the temptation. It was such a lopsided fight that he never had a chance, and had no business acting like he could win it.

“Great, now my spiritual mentor is laughing because he thinks this is such a riot.” He said.

There were two other club chairs across from us. He could have moved. But mostly he could have remembered that Jesus was sitting right there with us as the woman (I’m laughing typing this because it really was so funny watching him get knocked around by the temptation – and I’m pretty sure Jesus was laughing, too) trolled with her bait for my friend.

“Man,” I said, “Your salvation is secure. And you didn’t talk to her. That moment of temptation is past, and now you’ll have to decide if you let your memory make another temptation out of it – I mean, she can sure as heck beat your ass again later just like she did now if you let her – but all that you really missed out on was the opportunity to engage Jesus. And me. You were distracted from both of us, and I knew exactly what was going on, and -” I started laughing here loudly enough that people at nearby tables started to take notice, “Dude, you got wasted!”

What my friend could have done was been honest about the temptation that walked in, sat down in his line of sight, and spent half and hour sucking her fingertip in between dropping things on the floor. He could have admitted that she was going to clean his clock, and he could have simply prayed, “Oh man, Jesus – I’m gonna get my ass kicked!” It’s not like his weakness was going to stun Jesus. It’s not like Jesus was going to be angry about having to interrupt some Heavenly board meeting to shoot down to the coffee shop in Indianapolis where his jerk follower was screwing up. He was already right there, and is always right there, and is always mighty to save. And it’s not like the temptation or the demon or whatever it is can ever be more than a flea to the Lord. “Oh man, Jesus – I’m gonna get my ass kicked!” Is probably a prayer, especially when offered in laughter and confidence that Jesus is right there, that gets a laughing response and a “no shit!” So don’t fight – let Him.

I’m pretty sure that’s what abiding means. At least it’s what it’s meant to me lately. I want to look at the dynamics of the prayer and the realities of our living in faith a little closer, but first, take a minute and see what a lopsided fight looks like. As you watch, think of my friend as Eriq in this video. Think of the MMA fighter as the temptation. Think of the victim as the child-like portion of my friend that gets wounded by the tyranny of his bullying tough Christian self. And in some ways, you can see the host of the show, Mayhem, as Jesus.

Did you watch?

Eriq had no business getting in the ring with the MMA guy (love that his name is Man of Faith), right?
My friend had no business thinking he could be tougher than the temptation that swished her way into the coffee shop.

My friend still doesn’t think losing the other day was funny. I’ve urged him to watch this video, though, because…well, it really was. He came in thinking he was gonna “spit some hot fire” like Mayhem joked. Wrong.

How do you think the victim, Linda, felt toward Eriq and the end of the episode? It could just be me, and the fact that I know a lot of weird and broken people, but I think I made some comment about them spending intimate time together within hours of the end of that show being recorded. To me, it sure looked like Linda wanted Eriq to be hers – that maybe she even loved him.

Setting my friend and the people from the show aside for a paragraph, within me there is still a child self – a self that wants security, tenderness, freedom, and to be protected. I think that’s where my drive for justice lives, too. That portion of myself longs to be healed and whole and to not be scared. And the biggest threat to that portion of myself is the macho bully self – calling itself the adult portion of who I am – that insists I can take on any temptation. I’ve heard it said that to err is human, but to keep doing it is just stupid. My bully self is stupid, and each time that portion of who I am takes a beatdown without learning a lesson, the bully grows, becomes meaner and more scared, and the child portion of myself gets driven further into the dark and painful corners of my soul. My child self will only find security, freedom and joy as the adult side of me learns humility, and learns which rings are simply more than I have any business entering on my own. And my adult self will only find true strength as I learn how to win battles by making honest assessment of my situations and turning to Christ so that the child in me can be safe, free and the delight I’ve been created to be and to know.

So, back to the video. The MMA guy with the nickname “Man of Faith.” Good guy or bad guy? For Eriq, as a bully, he was bad news. For Linda, the victim, he represented the tool that could teach the man she loved and wanted to be with some humility – which she needed Eriq to learn so they could have relationship.

For my friend, the temptation that the woman at the coffee shop represented. Good guy or bad? Depends on what the bully in my friend chooses to take away from his experience. And – and this is critical – how he chooses to hear and see the actions and motivations of Jesus (portrayed as Mayhem in the video). Was Mayhem pursuing Eriq’s destruction, or giving him a reality check in love for the sake of offering him a better way to live? I get that in the actual show, it was about something more commercial than all of this, but in Eriq’s life, what did Mayhem actually stand for? I think Mayhem was a benevolent influence in Eriq’s life if he allows the experience to teach him an important lesson. I know Jesus is.

My friend left his coffee shop octagon fight with no cash. But will you join me in hoping and praying that he moves towards seeing that God doesn’t delight in screwing with him. That in fact God was right there with us, and that at any moment my friend could have used my new favorite prayer (and I hope yours) and laughingly called out, “Oh man, Jesus – I’m gonna get my ass kicked!”

I’m looking forward to having finished material to share about what he’s doing. I have been hired to help refine and tell the story and hope to have stuff ready before long.

In the meantime, check out River City Church, where the dance has already begun.

Another friend God introduced me to through my books is writing his Masters thesis on community, faith and the race. Is the race of faith and life a sprint, a marathon, a relay, or something else?

What do you think?

I hear it with nearly every church, ministry, non-profit or recovery client or friend. Some aspect of life, or some gathering, some ministry, some men’s group, some cause – some thing has grabbed the attention of a portion of the Body and become so engrossing and so life-giving that people who aren’t into the same exciting function look like they couldn’t be believers at all.

You’ve known the same people, I’m sure. Sometimes they’re rabid end-time people. Sometimes it’s prayer. In youth it’s often social causes or environmental stuff. Election years generate all sorts of crossover from faith to cause. Suddenly ordinary Sunday morning church, or even a robust congregational life, looks watery and weak.

And it’s not just groups within churches. The same thing happens with parachurch groups, ecumenical gatherings, and movements.

And it also happens for individual congregations within denominations or just the Body at large.

When a specific ministry or fellowship generates scorn among its members towards the larger Body of Christ, it functions much more like a tumor than a muscle or body part.

Tumors feed on the body, but are contained and do not make the body function better.

I’ve been involved with groups that I’ve come to recognize as tumors.

At the time, I felt like the fault rested squarely on the shoulders of church leadership. The very existence of the group proved, I thought, that people within the church were ready for more challenging material – were ready to go from milk to meat. I saw churches and church leaders who didn’t push people into deeper water as an impediment to what Christ could do in this world. To me it made sense that the ministries or groups would step over the church people and keep going.

At the very least, I wanted church leaders to step up and draw congregations into more robust faith. And I wanted denominational leaders to draw congregations of congregations into more robust faith.

The tools for healing exist. Same with marriage salvage. Same with recovery of all sorts. Same with knowing God in intimate, personal and miraculous ways. But the tools seem to be left to collect dust by all but a few people, and those people have a bad habit of getting radical to such an extent that they work like tumors – feeding on the Body and disfiguring it – rather than muscles within it.

And the people who feed on the Body, who create tumors that draw from the Body and cause the Body shame, also weaken the Body.

And a tumor dies without a host.

Do your choices, allegiances and passions serve the Body, or do you – like I have done – relish the “stick-it-to-em” feeling of having your pet passion make some other portion of the Body look lame by comparison?

What if, as we learn our strength, we also insist on loyalty to the Body? What if, as we practice the use of the tools that excite us, we insist on using them within the Body, to strengthen the Body and to honor the One who puts the fire within us?

What if we choose to acknowledge that the face of Christianity is shaped by how we honor its Head?

The ride down was very pleasant. We’ve made our way through the phase in my life where I needed to exert myself to discover myself, or where either of us worked too hard to reach agreement on many things. Today, he’s someone who loves me incredibly, who has seen me for my whole life, and who is just a grown up boy himself. I’m very grateful that we’ve been given the time to work our way to this place – not all fathers and sons are afforded such a luxury.

The ride back was even better for me. I took the back seat, giving Laura the Romanian college student the front seat, and made a point of enjoying the fact that my dad was driving, and all I needed to do was rest in his protection.

It’s weird – I live in such an independence-oriented culture, and spent my youth chomping at the bit for independence from my family, and lately nothing is better to me than finding places of rest while I let love drive.

I’ve been doing a “Bible read through” since September, and the theme that’s really caught me has to do with hospitality, protection and the honor of both the person who offers hospitality, and the dignity of receiving and submitting to it.

Ultimately, the love between the Father and the Son creates an embrace into which we are invited. This is the ultimate hospitality – the ultimate protection inspiring the ultimate honoring response from those who receive their rest in the Lord. But such grand theological truths are hard to see in day to day terms. Along the way the glimpses of God’s hospitality look a lot like submitting to authority (authority bears the burden and accountability for the hospitality it offers), protecting and trusting safe places in relationships, and choosing justice in the world.

On Thursday, in my world, it looked like my dad in the rear view mirror, vigilant and offering me a safe place, while enjoying having me along to spend time with him.

I don’t know about you, but there are many times where the burden of life, the weight of being responsible for my world and my relationships, leave me feeling a bit unprotected. Tired. Like I need to provide shelter, and sometimes like there is little shelter for me to rest in. For the most part, I find a great joy in the burden – something about the obligation feels tied to my identity as a man, and I know that I love driving while my wife sleeps, or in other ways bearing the burden of protection for her. There simply aren’t very many places for me to rest.

As I read Scripture, though, I see how deeply God longs to be my strong tower, my refuge, my protector and my rest. I’ve been testing it and loving it. And as I find that safe protection in my prayers and reading, I have begun finding it in worship, in community, and in new ways in my marriage.

But the easiest place will probably always be to rest in the safety my dad offers me, if I will let him.

I took this picture while I was thinking about the gift my dad’s love was providing me. About five minutes later, he asked if I’d like to drive for a while. We traded seats, and he fell asleep. I drove carefully, evenly, and let him rest.

It was the best I’ve loved him – loved the boy who grew to be my dad and who has very few safe places to rest himself – in my life.

We’ve recently been contracted to revisit the first two books, updating them and making some changes to trim size, etc, and to create a visual edition of Yancey’s The Jesus I Never Knew. The new stuff should be out sometime near the end of 2010.

(I’m doing the first round of excerpt selection, quote gathering, and structure on JINK this week.)

The idea behind the visual approach is to communicate to a younger, more male audience and to give the text room to breathe – to give the ideas space enough for a person to wander around in them.

You can read an interview with Mark here.

From my [brand strategy] perspective, the trick has to do with managing the inevitable backlash that comes when arm’s length, marketing and fashion-driven causes slip out of fashion, and how people who have invested heavily in one cause drum up enthusiasm for the next.

What is the pressing issue today? Darfur? Rwanda? AIDS? Clean water? Teen suicide? The environment? Racial reconciliation? None of these issues have been resolved, but different movements generate enthusiasm at different times, and to different extents. And any one of these causes is worth a lifetime’s dedicated passion. Many efforts to address the challenges are hugely compelling, and hugely rewarding for the people who join the effort. But then the next cause and the next movement comes along, and it’s newer, or shinier, or seems to trump the old cause, or whatever, and people move to the next thing.

At some point, it makes sense that people would start to feel manipulated, and would start to feel like maybe they’re being flaky for not sticking with a single cause.

What excites me about EGM is not the specific cause, nor the specific movie, nor the specific effort to address a problem. What excites me is how EGM has the potential to prevent the backlash by preemptively addressing the flaky-factor by showing how people who move between causes are, indeed, highly consistent.

What remains constant in a person who moves from cause to cause is THEIR POSTURE toward the world. They want to be people who consider the needs of other people, and who work to serve. They go where the need is, and they stay loyal to the call of service – even if they don’t seem to be all that loyal to specific expressions of service.

Part of my role as “salt” in the world is to slow decay. The specific impact I want to have in my work with EGM is to slow the decay of idealism and servant-heartedness in an age of fickle fashion and nifty need.

My design partner, Mark Arnold, and I have been working on a variety of projects with EGM, and while it’s still an emerging organization that’s still getting its legs under itself, I’m very in love with what it can become.

Here’s the vision book we created for the organization. It will be easier to read if you blow it out to full screen. The pages are set to turn every 20 seconds, but you can pause or forward them at your own speed. Also, pages 11a and 11b are fold-out pages in the printed version. (BONUS POINTS: Can you name all of the move posters we clipped from to create page 16?)

And in either case, eventually the giant question arises: why does suffering exist?

If you’re a covenant person, looking to make sense of pain within the relationship without keeping an eye on the exit signs, The End of Suffering: Finding Purpose in Pain, by Scott Cairns, will immediately become a treasured friend, full of gems culled from centuries of monastic wisdom and brought to you in rich, whole grain prose every bit as savory as Buechner or Dillard on a good day. If you’re like me, you’ll read the whole thing in a single sitting, and a few days later you’ll be drawn to read it again. And you’ll be better for it, because you will have found this new friend, and because you will be eager to lean into the mysteries once again, because that is where your Father lives.

If you’re a contract person, pain and suffering are particularly challenging aspects to life with God. At what point does the pain become breach of contract? Is pain something to be solved? Managed? Learned from and made good use of? Is suffering a reflection of God’s displeasure? For as much as covenant people will love and embrace The End of Suffering, if you’re a contract person, this book is really for you.

First off, it’s not written in sermon style. Cairns doesn’t resort to clichés like five-point solutions or cute anecdotes, and there is absolutely no intention to offer an easy, quick fix to suffering and your experience of it. This book treads sacred ground, and it does so with a careful reverence and theological deftness you can trust.

Secondly, Cairns shows his readers a better way of approaching the question, and God. There is nothing “how to” about this different approach – just a quiet discussion that takes its time (one gift of this amazing poet is his ability to take his time and still only need 85 pages to deliver the experience) and demonstrates the depth of life lived in covenant with God, where God is the lover and this life is His gift to us.

There is a richer way to share life with God. There is mystery that can be embraced and explored, where answers don’t always show up, but where God still lingers in the air. There is a long legacy – a cloud of witnesses – standing beside Cairns and the clean musings of his book. If you let it, this book will bring you, and the way your life guides you, closer to a God worth knowing.

While the contact information on the back says to get in touch with Jill, that’s more for corporate contacts, and if you’re interested in JCI, you’re welcome to contact me instead. Hit jci@petegall.com with questions about starting your own chapter or joining what’s already happening. You can also get in touch with JCI directly through their pre-fix website.

The audio file will open in a new window. Click here to listen.

For booking information, contact Jim Chaffee.

The Leper chapter is half-way through the book, but it captures a pretty broad view of the better alternative. You can listen to it here. I’m hoping the full audiobook will be released soon.

You can buy the print version at bookstores, or here.

Peace.

Say what you want about Scarlet Letters, pilgrim hats, and what looks like a never-ending supply of starch in the laundry, I’ve found many of the greatest pearls and passions of the faith in the lives and writings of the Puritans.

I’ve also listened to Rob Bell’s recent sermon (7/26/09) on “why we sing” (the link is an mp3 download, or you can choose from a menu of downloads here) and love the content of the sermon, and am also rediscovering the depth of lyrics in many old hymns.

This music is also big at one of our favorite churches, and has been a passion of brilliant Indianapolis worship leader Bruce Benedict.

O Love That Will Not Let Me Go by George Matheson (lyrics and history copied and pasted without grammatical correction from this site)

1. O Love that will not let me go,
I rest my weary soul in thee;
I give thee back the life I owe,
That in thine ocean depths its flow
May richer, fuller be.

2. O light that followest all my way,
I yield my flickering torch to thee;
My heart restores its borrowed ray,
That in thy sunshine’s blaze its day
May brighter, fairer be.

3. O Joy that seekest me through pain,
I cannot close my heart to thee;
I trace the rainbow through the rain,
And feel the promise is not vain,
That morn shall tearless be.

4. O Cross that liftest up my head,
I dare not ask to fly from thee;
I lay in dust life’s glory dead,
And from the ground there blossoms red
Life that shall endless be.

History of the Hymn

“O Love That Will Not Let Me Go” written on the evening of Matheson’s sister’s marriage. His whole family had went to the wedding and had left him alone. And he writes of something which had happened to him that caused immense mental anguish. There is a story of how years before, he had been engaged until his fiancé learned that he was going blind, and there was nothing the doctors could do, and she told him that she could not go through life with a blind man. He went blind while studying for the ministry, and his sister had been the one who had taken care of him all these years, but now she is gone. He had been a brilliant student, some say that if he hadn’t went blind he could have been the leader of the church of Scotland in his day. He had written a learned work on German theology and then wrote “The Growth of The Spirit of Christianity.” Louis Benson says this was a brilliant book but with some major mistakes in it. When some critics pointed out the mistakes and charged him with being an inaccurate student he was heartbroken. One of his friends wrote, “When he saw that for the purposes of scholarship his blindness was a fatal hindrance, he withdrew from the field – not without pangs, but finally.” So he turned to the pastoral ministry, and the Lord has richly blessed him, finally bringing him to a church where he regularly preached to over 1500 people each week. But he was only able to do this because of the care of his sister and now she was married and gone. Who will care for him, a blind man? Not only that, but his sister’s marriage brought fresh reminder of his own heartbreak, over his fiancé’s refusal to “go through life with a blind man.” It is the midst of this circumstance and intense sadness that the Lord gives him this hymn – written he says in 5 minutes! Looking back over his life, he once wrote that his was “an obstructed life, a circumscribed life… but a life of quenchless hopefulness, a life which has beaten persistently against the cage of circumstance, and which even at the time of abandoned work has said not “Good night” but “Good morning.” How could he maintain quenchless hopefulness in the midst of such circumstances and trials? His hymn gives us a clue. “I trace the rainbow in the rain, and feel the promise is not vain” The rainbow image is not for him “If the Lord gives you lemons make lemonade” but a picture of the Lord’s commitment! It is a picture of the battle bow that appears when the skies are darkening and threaten to open up and flood the world again in judgment. But then we see that the battle bow is turned not towards us – but toward the Lord Himself!

This video isn’t what I heard on the radio, but man does it sound good to me after too many years skewed to the light and fluffy chorus alternatives that I’ve felt unable to escape. I hope you enjoy it too.

** One person, who lost the right to leave comments here, objected to the headline – “Christians don’t live in garbage, a@#$%&@!” was his keen insight. He clearly didn’t read the article, or has more garbage around him than he’s willing to admit. **

I passed through the “Garbage City” of Cairo in 2006, on the way to see the cave church in the mountain above the city. (You will see additional footage of it in the final video below.) When I was there, young Egyptians asked to have their pictures taken with me.

The vast majority of the people who live in the garbage city are Christians. They do the filthy work, while (as I understand it) the Muslims consider it unclean.

Driving through the very narrow streets, glancing into open doorways to see the garbage piled inside the homes, with pigs and children mixed together, and then also noticing the Christian symbols drawn on the walls of the buildings, I had a distinct sense that this was a natural habitat for Christians. The people were living a harsh existence, were outcast, but were also living together and under the grace of God. I remember feeling very proud to be associated with the Zabaleen, the garbage collectors, through our shared faith.

My experience of filth and chaos and outcast-ness has little to do with poverty, and little to do with pigs, but I often find myself feeling similarly overwhelmed by the mess of my own soul, and the messes of the souls and lives around me. And perhaps in a way that runs parallel to the recycling done by the Zabaleen, I am fascinated by, and an ardent searcher for stories of, redemption within the mess and chaos. I believe that God loves – takes huge delight in – being present with people who are buried in the garbage of their own lives, and of the lives of others. I believe His favorite joy may well be the recycling and redemption of the people and situations He finds there. My sense is that the whole deal about “blessed are the poor” has everything to do with the joy God finds in redeeming overwhelmed lives, and with pouring joy even into dark and narrow streets indwelt by outcasts.

The friend with whom I traveled to Egypt recently told me about the Garbage Dreams movie, insisting that I will love it, and I’m looking forward to checking it out myself.

If you can get past the accent and some of the word choices of the narration, I found two other video clips at YouTube that will give you a further view of the Garbage City.

Nothing is more foreign to authentic monastic and “contemplative” tradition in the Church than a kind of gnosticism which would elevate the contemplative above the ordinary Christian by initiating him into a realm of esoteric knowledge and experience, delivering him from the ordinary struggles and sufferings of human existence, and elevating him to a privileged state among the spiritually pure, as if he were almost an angel, untouched by matter and passion, and no longer familiar with the economy of sacraments, charity and the Cross. The way of monastic prayer is not a subtle escape from the Christian economy of incarnation and redemption. It is a special way of following Christ, of sharing in his passion and resurrection and in his redemption of the world. For that very reason the dimensions of prayer in solitude are those of man’s ordinary anguish, his self-searching, his moments of nausea at his own vanity, falsity and capacity for betrayal. Far from establishing one in unassailable narcissistic security, the way of prayer brings us face to face with the sham and indignity of the false self that seeks to live for itself alone and to enjoy the “consolation of prayer” for its own sake. This “self” is pure illusion, and ultimately he who lives for and by such an illusion must end either in disgust or in madness.

On the other hand, we must admit that social life, so-called “worldly life,” in its own way promotes this illusory and narcissistic existence to the very limit. The curious state of alienation and confusion of man in modern society is perhaps more “bearable” because it is lived in common, with a multitude of distractions and escapes – and also with opportunities for fruitful action and genuine Christian self-forgetfulness. But underlying all life is the ground of doubt and self-questioning which sooner or later must bring us face to face with the ultimate meaning of our life. This self-questioning can never be without a certain existential “dread” – a sense of insecurity, of “lostness,” of exile, of sin. A sense that one has somehow been untrue not so much to abstract moral or social norms but to one’s own inmost truth. “Dread” in this sense is not simply a childish fear of retribution, or a naive guilt, a fear of violating taboos. It is the profound awareness that one is capable of ultimate bad faith with himself and with others: that one is living a lie.

…The monk who is truly a man of prayer and who seriously faces the challenge of his vocation in all its depth is by that very fact exposed to existential dread. He experiences in himself the emptiness, the lack of authenticity, the quest for fidelity, the “lostness” of modern man, but he experiences all this in an altogether different and deeper way than does man in the modern world, to whom this disconcerting awareness of himself and of his world comes rather as an experience of boredom and of spiritual disorientation. The monk confronts his own humanity and that of his world at the deepest and most central point where the void seems to open out into black despair. The monk confronts this serious possibility, and rejects it, as Camusian man confronts “the absurd” and transcends it by his freedom. The option of absolute despair is turned into perfect hope by the pure and humble supplication of monastic prayer. The monk faces the worst, and discovers in it the hope of the best. From the darkness comes light. From death, life. From the abyss there comes, unaccountably, the mysterious gift of the Spirit sent by God to make all things new, to transform the created and redeemed world, and to re-establish all things in Christ.

I believe that we succeed not by what we achieve, but by what we come to admit. When we discover and acknowledge that we stand not upon the depths of our reality, but upon the scaffolds of our denial – and then begin to make room for the dismantling of the scaffolds.

As we do this – as we encounter the dread of our existence, the contingency of our being, the fact that our meaning is a derived meaning granted us by a God who loves us because He thought is would be a blast to have someone just like you or me around (not because of any particular adequacy, but because of something woven into who we are) – a different sort of self emerges.

Life on the scaffold is like the new leather sofa that’s comfortable but you have to be so careful not to scratch or mark. Climbing down from the scaffold, encountering the God we meet in our dread, shows life to be much more like saddle leather – tough, strong, unconcerned with scratches, scars or blemishes. And a different sort of self, one that cares less and less about hard truths, scratches or scars, emerges.

And this self has less to prove. This self fears less, because this self has grown familiar with the darkness beneath the scaffolding – deeper into the dread – and this self has experienced light from that darkness. Life from that death. Self from that confusion. The fleeting, gentle, merely scaffolded understanding of self that has no reason to fear new confusion.

This is where the cries turn to sobs, to moaning, to growling, to groaning, to blues, and the song of soul is born. This is where voice comes from. It is the fuel for love (what meets us in the darkness is love). It is what gives us strength, regardless of the authority others may grant in response. It is our experience of truth. Our testimony. How we learn the legitimacy of our prayers.

The work is frightening. But the reward is life.

From Soren Kierkegaard

The Offense

When Christianity came into the world, it did not need to call attention (even though it did so) to the fact that it was contrary to human nature and human understanding, for the world discovered that easily enough. But now that we are on intimate terms with Christianity, we must awaken the collision. The possibility of offense must again be preached to life. Only the possibility of offense (the antidote to the apologists’ sleeping potion) is able to waken those who have fallen asleep, is able to break the spell so that Christianity is itself again.

Woe to him, therefore, who preaches Christianity without the possibility of offense. Woe to the person who smoothly, flirtatiously, commendingly, convincingly preaches some soft, sweet something which is supposed to be Christianity! Woe to the person who makes miracles reasonable. Woe to the person who betrays and breaks the mystery of faith, distorts it into public wisdom, because he takes away the possibility of offense! Woe to the person who speaks of the mystery of the Atonement without detecting in it anything of the possibility of offense. Woe again to him who things God and Christianity are something for study and discussion. Woe to every unfaithful steward who sits down and writes false proofs, winning friends for themselves and for Christianity by writing off the possibility of offense. Oh, the learning and acumen tragically wasted. Oh, the time wasted in this enormous work of making Christianity so reasonable, and in trying to make it so relevant!

Only when Christianity rises up again, powerful in the possibility of offense, only then will it need no artful defenders. The more skillful, the more articulate, the more excellent the defense, however, the more Christianity is disfigured, abolished, exhausted like an emasculated man. Christianity ought not to be defended, at least not on the world’s terms. It is we who should see whether we can justify ourselves. It is we who must choose: either to be offended or to accept Christianity.

Therefore, take away from Christianity the possibility of offense of take away from the forgiveness of sin the battle of an anguished conscience. Then lock the churches, the sooner the better, or turn them into places of amusement which stand open all day long!

A similar thought comes from Herman Melville’s character Father Mapple in Moby Dick:

Woe to him whom this world charms from Gospel duty. Woe to him who seeks to pour oil upon the waters when God has brewed them into a gale. Woe to him who seeks to please rather than to appal. Woe to him whose good name is more to him than goodness. Woe to him who, in this world, courts not dishonor! Woe to him who would not be true, even though to be false were salvation. Yea, woe to him who, as the great Pilot Paul has it, while preaching to others is himself a castaway.

And then I saw the Jerry Garcia quote on a bumper sticker today. Bumper stickers, fortune cookies, whatever.

America is deep in the snares of false dichotomies right now, isn’t it? Choosing the lesser of evils. We’re a very polarized society these days. Does it have to do with trying to process more data than we can handle, or need to care about? Does a strong opinion, defined by its improvement against the alternative, come close enough to good for us to call it good?

Do we do this because of fear? Or is it perhaps exactly the opposite – a lazy sense that nothing we do is going to change much or cost us much?

Three of my favorite movies of the past couple of years seem to overlap on a theme: No Country for Old Men, Gran Torino, and The Wrestler all deal with power and wisdom meeting irrelevance or forces with which they can’t compete. Are these movies, along with our cultural willingness to choose between evils – to sign our names and cast our ballots or our lives with causes we wouldn’t call good – both part of a culture’s decline? Is that why the movies emerge? Is that why polarities emerge, instead of community or conversation or some more sensible apprehension of reality?

How much does our current condition actually plead for us to make choices for good, instead of lesser representations of evil?

What would happen if we refused to cast our lots with evil? How “salty,” or how “light,” can we really be when we’re partnering with diminished evil instead of insisting on goodness?

Why, when I start thinking about topics like abortion (and how people on both sides fight), the war, politics, who can and cannot be ordained, and a litany of other polarized (but maybe not all that complex, really) issues, do I always find myself falling back to that scene from The Big Lebowski where The Dude and Walter are talking:

“Am I wrong?”
“No, you’re not wrong, Walter. You’re just an asshole.”

?

Good is more powerful than evil, but evil will always make good bleed along the way. Maybe if people who want good were willing to pay what evil thieves away, rather than fighting back with a lesser evil, good would be more common, and evil a bit less familiar.

What do you think?

Easter in the Cancer Ward by Nicholas Samaras

Because it has been years since my hands
have dyed an egg or I’ve remembered
my father with color in his beard,
because my fingers have forgotten
the feel of wax melting on my skin,
the heat of paraffin warping air,
because I prefer to view death politely from afar,
I agree to visit the children’s cancer ward.

In her ballet-like butterfly slippers, Elaine pad-pads
down the carpeted hall. I bring the bright bags,
press down packets of powdered dye, repress my slight unease.
She sweeps her hair from her volunteer’s badge, leaves
behind her own residents’ ward for a few hours’ release.
The new wing’s doors glide open onto great light. Everything is
vibrant and clattered with color. Racing
up, children converge, their green voices rising.

What does one do with the embarrassment of staring
at sickness? Suddenly, I don’t know where to place
my hands. Children with radiant faces
reach out thinly, clamor for the expected bags, lead
us to the Nurses’ kitchen. Elaine introduces me and reads
out a litany of names. Some of the youngest wear
old expressions. The bald little boy loves Elaine’s long mane of hair
and holds the healthy thickness to his face, hearing

her laugh as she pulls him close. “I’m dying,”
he says, and Elaine tells him she is, too: too
much iron silting her veins. I can never accept that truth
yet, in five months, she’ll slip away in a September
night – leaving her parents and me to bow our heads, bury her
in a white wedding gown, our people’s custom.
But right now, I don’t know this. Right now, we are young,
still immortal, and the kids fidget, crying

out for their eggs. Elaine divides them into teams;
I lay out the tools for the operation.
I tell them all how painting Easter eggs used to be done
in the Old Country. Before easy dyes were common,
villagers boiled onion peels, ladled eggs
into pots so the shells wouldn’t break.
They’d scoop them out, flushed a brownish-
red, and the elders would polish and polish

them with olive oil, singing hymns for the Holy Thursday hours.
The children laugh and boo when I try to sing. The boys swirl
speckles of color into hot water, while the girls
time the eggs. When a white-faced boy asks from nowhere
if I believe in Christ and living forever,
I stop stirring the mix, answer,”Yes, I do.” I answer slowly
and when I speak, my own voice deafens me.
The simple truth blooms like these painted flowers

riding up the bright kitchen walls. I come
to belief. I know that much. Still, what a man may
do with belief demands more than what he says.
Now, the hot waters are a stained, rich red. The eggs have
boiled and cooled. To each set of hands, Elaine gives
one towel, three eggs. I pass the pot of melted paraffin,
show these children how to take the eggs and dip them in
and out. While the wax hardens to an opaque film, we hum

Christos Aneste and the room bustles, ajabber
with speech. Holding pins firmly, we scratch out mad
designs where the color will fill. Small, flurried hands
etch and scrim the shells. Everyone’s fingers whorl
and scratch in names, delicate and final.
Edging the hall’s threshold, an April’s allow-
ance of sun filters through tinted windows. Faces furrow
in solemn concentration. Looking to Elaine, my thoughts clamor

for what is redemptive in illness, for having
a Credo to hold these people to me. Etchings
done, everyone immerses the waxy eggs in the pooled
dye. We ooh together when transfigured eggs are spooned
out, wiped and dried on the counters. Soft wax
is peeled gingerly, flecked away; more oohs for the tracks
of limned lines, testimonial names.
We burnish the shells with olive oil for a fine sheen

For a moment, the cultivated, finished eggs hush
the room. Then, every child goes wild in a rush
to compare, they show the nurses, each
other. The bald boy taps my waist, Lined up and speech-
less, they present me with a bright, autographed
egg, communally done. Elaine makes me close my eyes and laughs
when small limbs push at my back to follow
her. They shove my hand in the cool, wet, red dye. The hollow-

eyed girl squeals till tears streak from her laughing.
Another child cries, “You’ll never get it off!”
And today, I don’t want to. Today,
we’ve painted eggs a lively color, not caring
about the body’s cells and the cells’ incarceration.
I lift my arms to embrace Elaine and dab her nose and chin.
And my hands are vivid red. My hands
are bloody with resurrection.

and we are laughing.