Rob Bell’s UK Book Tour
For my UK friends, Rob Bell is coming to your town. I’ve always loved hearing the brother speak live.
One week to go. London, Manchester and Edinburgh, check out the video and book tickets at https://www.facebook.com/whenwetalkaboutgod
‘Tonight’ by Richard Wu
I just stumbled upon this poem on my old blog. Although it was written in 2007, it remains remarkably pertinent to me now.
—
Tonight the night is young,
and so is the day,
the month,
the year,
Each bringing an unexpected guest,
beating surprise,
Joy like the thump of the drum,
Or a newborn baby’s heart,
Come, sing to me!
Sing me the song I never knew,
Love born to me again,
Peace with her raised fists
I have come
bleeding and free,
The last night did not hold me
And it never will.
I didn’t really know, even when writing the book, that many Christian communities in times gone by would have said “Oh, this is normal, this dark night of the soul, this doubt. This is part of the expected choreography of a Christian life.” If I had known that, while writing Still, there probably would have been a chapter: “dark night choreopgrahy,” or somesuch.
It is only in the last year or so that I have begun to read and study and learn that many, many wise saints from times gone by would say, about a season of doubt or alienation from God or despair, “This is not an aberration. This is one of the well-established patterns of Christian life.” Not every Christian lives through such a season, but for many people, it is simply part of the architecture, part of what we can expect along the path to God, the path to true intimacy with God and self and neighbor.
Somehow knowing that has allowed me to read my own experience, my own years’ long (four? six?) sojourn into that alienation with a bit more—well, appreciation. And a bit less anguish. And it has allowed me to say to friends and parishioners who are in the anguish that they are companioned by saints, and by a whole tradition of wisdom for the dark nights. Knowing that does not make the dark seasons any easier. The dark seasons are, simply, awful. They are awful. But the knowledge that they are actually part of the warp and woof of Christian life may make our abiding in the darkness, our presence to the darkness, more bearable, perhaps less alone, perhaps even rich. Perhaps the place we know as a place of God’s removal becomes a place of knowing God more.
Lauren Winner. One of the most difficult, yet rewarding parts of my work was comforting people who were going through such a season.
(via wesleyhill)
Holy Week 7: Easter morning
Sunday’s excerpt from Francis Spufford:
Early Sunday morning, one of the friends comes back with rags and a jug of water and a box of the grave spices that are supposed to cut down on the smell. She’s braced for the task. But when she comes to the grave she finds that the linen’s been thrown into the corner and the body is gone. Evidently anonymous burial isn’t quite anonymous enough, after all. She sits outside in the sun. The insects have woken up, here at the edge of the desert, and a bee is nosing about in a lily like silk thinly tucked over itself, but much more perishable. It won’t last long. She takes no notice of the feet that appear at the edge of her vision. That’s enough now, she thinks. That’s more than enough.
Don’t be afraid, says Yeshua. Far more can be mended than you know.
On Mission Statements
Generally speaking, I have seldom liked the mission statements of Christian organizations (*cough cough*). They have often felt like a capitulation to the notion that Christian communities must be productive, efficient, and — God forbid — “purpose-driven.” I certainly believe in purpose, and I certainly believe in mission (that is, in God’s mission of renewing his creation). But I find so many of these statements to be more attuned to the anxieties of market-capitalism than to the shalom that Jesus wrought for us on the cross. The cry “It is finished!” ought to liberate us to do our work in a spirit of trust and weakness, rather than in one of competition and strength. Christ, after all, is risen indeed.
But here in Canada I have been pleasantly surprised by at least two mission statements which seem uncharacteristically measured, patient and even secure. Obviously, I study at Regent College, and one of the things that I first noticed about the school was its mission statement. It seemed alive, buoyant, and most of all, grounded in confident joy:
Regent College cultivates intelligent, vigorous, and joyful commitment to Jesus Christ, his Church, and his World.
Beautiful, no? Succinct, inviting, and strikingly human. You can almost feel the warmth coming off of it. The language of “cultivation” is, I think, a stroke of genius. For we can plant the seed, but only God gives the growth. The pressure, then, is rightly off of us. This is a statement that I can get behind.
The second surprise came to me this morning when I visited Vancouver’s legendary Grandview Calvary Baptist Church for the first time. It’s famous for its good work in the neighbourhood, for its hospitality to those who are marginalized, and for its heritage in the arts. (One of its pastors, Joy Banks, is a relief print-maker whose pieces Sarah and I have purchased. They are incredible.) After browsing through their bulletin (the highlight of which was an ad for a “non-substance abusing vegetarian/vegan-friendly” roommate) I stumbled upon their mission statement:
Grandview Calvary Baptist Church is a community of people who receive and extend the radical welcome of God in Christ through the power of the Holy Spirit for the transformation of ourselves and our neighbourhood.
For those of you who know me even remotely, or who have had a taste of twe12th, The Rooftop Church, or the Church in the Park, you can probably imagine what happened as I read those words. Something in me lit up. This, really, is what I am about. I never thought I’d say this, but here it is: sign me right up.
Trying to Remember
I suspect that I am not the only one for whom Easter can easily slip by, unnoticed and under-appreciated. One can hardly ignore Christmas — but Easter, the centre of the Christian faith, often gets crowded out by the ordinary fuss of everyday life. This is just as true for me here in theological college as it was for me in Hong Kong, when I was working in a church.
And so every Easter I need help — usually of the literary sort — to keep the events of Holy Week from slipping quietly out of my consciousness; to keep them, somehow, in this small heart. I stumbled upon such help today in the form of Francis Spufford’s book, Unapologetic, which recounts in stunning prose the final events before Jesus’ crucifixion.
I have posted three excerpts from the book below, which you can read in full on his blog. Really, the whole aim of this post is to send you there. So if, like me, you find yourself struggling to remember Easter, yet also desiring to plant yourself in its narrative, then these excerpts are for you.
—
The evening sees Yeshua and the friends celebrating the festival in a borrowed upstairs room. His mood is strange, and they keep looking at him, perturbed, as they eat the roast lamb and yeast-less bread with bitter herbs, and they share the cup of wine, and tell the story of how the one God long ago brought His people out of captivity. He doesn’t seem like a person whose plans have failed; he is not confused or despondent at all. Yet he is full of trembling intensity. Everything he says seems deliberate and effortful, as if this dinner-in-lieu-of-a-revolution were a part of something terrifying he was making himself do, step by step, word by word, action by action. After supper he does something that isn’t in the festival ritual. He picks up one of the flat loaves they haven’t touched yet. This is my body, he says, and he snaps it in half, using both hands. He asks for the winecup. This is my blood, he says. Do this when you remember me.
He isn’t especially maltreated; he isn’t singled out for particular cruelties. The ordinarily bad things that happen to prisoners happen to him, that’s all. He gets punched a few times to keep him moving, and worked over a bit to encourage contrition and co-operation before his conversations with power. Maybe he loses some skin, some teeth, has his nose broken, gets a few cracked ribs. But it’s routine, it’s perfunctory, it isn’t the inventive horrors of a torturer really going to town. It’s just a consequence of his new position as an object, a still-living being which is already pretty much a thing as power acts on it. This body is already beyond human consideration; it need not be treated gently, or with an eye to its future survival, because it has no future. The whole process is marking it out quite clearly for death, and so it does not matter what happens to it.
Daylight finds him in a procession again, but this time no-one could mistake him for a king. He’s stumbling along under the weight of his own instrument of execution, a great big wooden thing he can hardly lift, with an escort of the empire’s soldiers, and the bystanders who’ve come blinking out of the lodgings where they spent the festival night don’t see their hopes, or even the possibility of their hopes, parading by. They see their disappointment, they see their frustration. They see everything in themselves that is too weak or too afraid to confront the strapping paratroopers; and much though they hate the soldiers, they hate him more, for his pathetic slide into victimhood. Word of his loose living, his impiety, his pleasure in bad company goes round in whispers. And just look at him. There’s something disgusting about him, don’t you think? Something that makes you squirm inside. Something… furtive. He’s so pale and sickly-looking, with that dried blood round his mouth. He looks like a paedophile being led away by the police. He looks like something from under a rock; as if he doesn’t deserve the daylight. He’s a blot on the new day. Someone kicks his arse as he goes by, and whoops, down he goes, flat on his nose with the cross pinning him like a struggling insect, and let’s face it, it’s funny. Yeshua is a joke. He’s less a messiah, more a patch of something nasty on the pavement. And as he struggles on he recognises every roaring, jeering face. He knows our names. He knows our histories.
Brilliant work (as always) from McSweeney’s:
I am writing to apply for the position of Pope. I recently received my Bachelor of Arts, or “artium baccalaureus,” from Dartmouth College, with a major concentration in Theatre Studies and a minor concentration in Computer Science. While I have been focusing on the technology and financial sectors, I have recently decided to widen my job search to include top non-profits, such as your organization. I became aware of the availability of the position of Pope through the Dartmouth listserv; I am greatly impressed by the achievements of The Catholic Church and share many of its goals. I believe my qualifications and outlook make me a unique and interesting candidate for Pope and I would be enthusiastic to grow with The Catholic Church.
(via ayjay)
Okay, Canada. We get it: you’re beautiful. Now this is just getting ridiculous.
(Note: All these places are a ten minute drive from my home.)
Alan Jacobs on Lewis, Auden and Maritain:
In a time of unprecedented total war, and in the face of what they perceived to be an encroaching military-industrial technocracy, these three intellectuals concerned themselves primarily with a renewal of Christian humanism in the schools of the Western world. Why?
I cannot wait to read this book.
