Its hard for our prophets.
They don’t come in packs. They come as ‘singles’. Criticism is inevitable and they get tired.
Its tough to stay the course. Its easier to shut up and blend in, but prophets aren’t made to fade to grey. If you’re a prophet then do your thing.
We need you!
At the last federal election I voted for the Greens. I don’t think that makes me a ‘Green’. It does mean that I felt – on the whole – their position best depicted the stuff of the kingdom.
What disturbed me was the way some folks concluded that I obviously wasn’t a Christian because I held this point of view.
Next time we have an election and we need to decide how to vote I’ll be using some of the content from this book to help people think through their approach to such a complex question.
Its an easy read, but I recommend it to any pastors who know there isn’t a ‘Christian’ position and are looking to equip their people to make intelligent decisions. I thought that given it is American in origin it might be a bit lacking in relevance, but not at all.
I don’t know who I will vote for in the next election, but I do know what will be shaping my thinking on the issue – and it will be the same principles as last time. Perhaps if we can develop a framework for making decisions and appreciate that no choice is without its problems then we can avoid this nonsense of declaring people ‘out’ because they don’t tow the party line we have ignorantly decreed as ‘Christian’.
Today was a cold, wet, grey day in Perth, one of the first signs we have had in a long while that winter is on the way. I actually find these days can be pretty depressing and my inner pessimist starts to bare his teeth.
I was working at home but had to duck out for half an hour and as I left home I noticed the ocean was like glass. There was barely a breath of wind, and just a steady drizzle, but I found myself thinking ‘perfect day for a surf…’
My favourite local wasn’t breaking. It was an outside chance that The Spot would be happening, but still worth a drive. So I threw ‘big mal’ in the back of the 4bie and shot off up the road. It was cold, grey, drizzly, small… but breaking… glassy… and there was no one out… There is never ‘no one out’ at The Spot.
I guess most folks may have looked out the window and saw a cold, grey, drizzly, ugly day… Not a day to go to the beach…
I certainly wasn’t thinking ‘surfing’ when I got up this morning, but it turned out that way. In my haste I forgot to pack the wetsuit so it was a pretty chilly hour in the water, sitting alone as shark bait, but nevertheless it was worth it.
I find life is often like this.
What you ‘see’ often determines how you behave. And sometimes we just can’t the hope in our situations because the gloominess is overwhelming. Maybe its just that we are ‘wired’ that way, but if we intentionally step back or look from a different perspective we can often see stuff that we didn’t realise was there.
The last couple of years have been a time for us to do that in our own lives. When we came back from our round Oz trip we had to pick up the pieces after being taken for 250K. That was pretty ‘grey’… Then we found ourselves in a very difficult church situation and life just wasn’t coming together as we had hoped.
But we have been blessed with some great learning in both of these situations and can now look back and see much of the good that has come from the last few years. I think some of it has come from being able to see the glimmers of hope in the sometimes overwhelming grey. I think part of it is knowing that God never abandons us and walks with us. Ok, part of it is down to being an optimist…
But chances are no matter how dark life looks for you, there will be something to get hope and joy from.
You might just need to change perspective…
Quite often we ask ourselves hard to answer questions, like, “What is a bastard?”
And we wax philosophic with metaphysical postulations, incomplete aphorisms, and inconsistent sophisms that make one more and more sure that the only true thing is that a picture is worth a thousand words.
In the photo below, the guy on the right is a member of a bomb squad in the middle of a deactivation.
The guy behind him, well, he’s a bastard.
I began watching this movie on the way home from Sydney in January, but the plane landed before I got finish it, so I’ve been waiting for it to come out on DVD. Last night I picked it up on iTunes and managed to watch the whole thing.
It’s a quirky, raunchy, funny, but very potent movie. If you want to follow the journey of a family coming to grief with terminal cancer then this might be the movie to watch. Its hardly ‘fun’ viewing, but it is insightful and powerful.
Its shot in a completely non-linear way so the timeline shoots back and forth and its up to the viewer to work it out. I did better the second time around. Matthew Goode does a great job of being the grieving husband and as you watch his life spin out of control in the early scenes of the movie you find yourself wondering ‘what could have caused this?’
If you didn’t watch the rest of the movie you’d think him a screw loose, accident waiting to happen but as you get to see his life fall apart around him, interspersed with memories of the ‘good times’ you can’t help but feel compassion.
I loved this one. Its full of very clever cinematography, a believable and tragic story and just raw emotion that doesn’t resolve nicely in the end.
Don’t watch if you’re faint hearted or disturbed by breasts… lots of them…
I don’t know how many books I’ve read or conferences I’ve been to that have inspired me as to the potential of the church to be an amazing and dynamic community.
I have read so many books that tell stories of amazing transformations and offer insights into ‘how to’, but invariably when you go back and try to implement them either others haven’t read the books or been to the conference, or its just not as easy as it sounds in the books.
Maybe you’ve had that experience of ingesting an idea, feeling that rush of hope and vision only to try and make it work and discover that either you’re all thumbs, or people are too busy, or just plain disinterested – or the ideas were never meant to be transferred! After a while you don’t believe the books or the conference speakers… Or you may lose faith in your own leadership, or in your church community.
Or maybe reality is that life, faith and mission are pretty much a case of ‘keeping going’, of living in the mundane, often uninspiring and seeing the moments of beauty when they are present, while other times just walking on.
Much of what we read in books is what I’d call ‘highlight reel’ stuff – the kinda stuff that makes good stories to tell other church leaders, but reality is that most of life is ‘steady as she goes’. Its that constant quest for ‘more’ that can make us inappropriately dissatisfied with the beauty of what we have and can then undermine what God is actually doing in our midst.
Perhaps reality disturbs us because it doesn’t seem all that exciting, yet ‘reality’ is the ground from which all hope filled stories come. If we accept that, then we won’t miss the moments when they do come around.
Over the last few weeks we have been helping a young Iranian guy find his feet in Perth. I always smile at how helping ‘asylum seekers’ can be made to sound like cutting edge / sexy work, when in reality it can just be hard work because language is difficult and everything is slow and clumsy.
This morning our friend bought us lunch after church – a quarter of his weekly income went in one hit. It was a beautiful expression of thanks and one we couldn’t refuse. Then as we chatted in our home I heard Sam tell him that he had been praying for him. My 9 year old son wanted him to know that God cares for him as he struggles with loneliness and anxiety.
These are small things and probably not the stuff that most people get excited about, but in the ebb and flow of ‘real life’ they are God moments and they really are worth cheering for.
Maybe one day I’ll write my own book that will tell stories of the very real and ordinary stuff that really ought to be celebrated a bit more. Rather than being disappointed that 2000 people didn’t get saved last week if we begin to savour the golden moments of God at work we might find that hope that so often seems illusive.
Just a thought at the end of another ordinary – yet often inspiring week…
Last night we watched Higher Ground, a well made and quite believable movie about the challenges that come to faith as a person matures.
Set in the Jesus / Hippie era it tells the story of a woman who grows up in a devout and fairly fundamentalist church community. She is happy enough until she begins to ask questions. A good friend gets a brain tumour and becomes a virtual vegetable, her role as a woman is constantly being scrutinised and her marriage falls apart in the process of her faith questioning.
Its a pretty accurate portrayal of that kind of church life and is doesn’t suffer from being a caricature, a cyncical jab or from presenting everything as rosy. I found myself recognising some of the characters from my own upbringing, and recognising the issues from my own childhood.
Corrine is both believable and likable and the movie depicts what many experience but don’t know how to articulate – a real faith struggle by someone who isn’t seeking to exit faith, but is seeking better answers than they currently have. And yet the quest for answers has her bouncing out of her tight knit community as her only way of grappling with the issues. Sad.
I have met plenty like her and I have had some of her experiences. Some days I still have them and that can be disturbing for a leader. Her pastor in the movie is a man with faith like a rock. Towards the end she tells him that she admires his faith – and I think she genuinely does – but I don’t think she wants his faith. While there is something attractive about a simple faith, to anyone who has asked questions there is also a strong degree of dissatisfaction and little desire to go back there.
These days I find myself with very strong convictions on what I consider core issues, but I am also open to new ideas when it comes to questions that don’t have easy answers.
In some ways Higher Ground was a trip down memory lane and yet not an unattractive one. The genuine love for God and desire to follow him from the people in the church wasn’t cheesy or awkward and in that the church looked attractive. But the issues that go with a more fundamentalist approach to faith, were noticeable and did grate on me.
Its not a ‘wow’ movie, or a dud, and it does move quite slowly, but for those who are in that place of asking questions it could be a helpful story to engage with.
I can’t say I have experienced this, but maybe it will give us compassion for those who seem to lose their way, ‘stop coming to church’, or just seem to ditch their faith. Its pretty damn gut wrenching and the post script is that the poet actually took her own life in 1974. Sometimes its easy to frown upon people who seem to give up faith and not feel what they feel. If it feels anything like this then its a tough place to be.
Found on Frosty’s facebook via Cruciality
God went out of me
as if the sea dried up like sandpaper,
as if the sun became a latrine.
God went out of my fingers.
They became stone.
My body became a side of mutton
and despair roamed the slaughterhouse.
Someone brought me oranges in my despair
but I could not eat a one
for God was in that orange.
I could not touch what did not belong to me.
The priest came,
he said God was even in Hitler.
I did not believe him
for if God were in Hitler
then God would be in me.
I did not hear the bird sounds.
They had left.
I did not see the speechless clouds,
I saw only the little white dish of my faith
breaking in the crater.
I kept saying:
I’ve got to have something to hold on to.
People gave me Bibles, crucifixes,
a yellow daisy,
but I could not touch them,
I who was a house full of bowel movement,
I who was a defaced altar,
I who wanted to crawl toward God
could not move nor eat bread.
So I ate myself,
bite by bite,
and the tears washed me,
wave after cowardly wave,
swallowing canker after canker
and Jesus stood over me looking down
and He laughed to find me gone,
and put His mouth to mine
and gave me His air.
My kindred, my brother, I said
and gave the yellow daisy
to the crazy woman in the next bed.
– Anne Sexton, ‘The Sickness Unto Death’, in The Complete Poems (New York: Mariner Books, 1981), 441–42.
My friend Andrew Dowsett has some excellent thoughts here on why we should focus more energy on culture formation and change than on vision.
This has been one of my own learnings over the last few years but Andrew has articulated it much better than I could so go and read his thoughts here and here.
Andrew lived in Jindalee right near us about 5 or 6 years ago and we got to hang out a fair bit. He’s well worth reading (for an Anglican…) Chuckle… 
I’ve made a few changes and launched a whole new blog which will run parallel to my existing one as a way of trying to get back up the google rankings.
If you have a website/blog and can throw me a link then I’m sure it won’t hurt to get things firing again.
I’m not sure all of how to regain the ground I’ve lost but I’m going to try a few things and see what comes of it…