Duke Summer Institute pt 1

I left Oxford Sunday night and drove till about 3am. I slept for a few hours in my car and then finished out the trip on Monday, arriving at Duke University around 4pm. I was tired from the driving but today was so full that I've barely had time to be attend to the weariness. I also drank coffee.

This week is all about the ministry of reconciliation that has been given to us from God (see 2 Corinthians 4 & 5). In morning worship the speaker made the observation that the scriptures say that "God made him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf, so that we might become the righteousness of God in Him".

It doesn't say " so that we might proclaim the righteousness of God" or "so that we might know the righteousness of God" or "so that we might have..." It says, "so that we might become the righteousness of God in Him".

We become, we embody, we incarnate His righteousness in this world. We are a new creation. And we carry on his mission of calling people back into peaceful union with God through Jesus Christ.

Later in the day, I attended our small group discussion for this week, which is led by Malcolm Guite. He is an Anglican priest, poet, and singer/songwriter. The track I'm in is called, "The Shaping Spirit of Imagination; the Arts and Reconciliation." It was fantastic. I can't wait to get back there tomorrow for more!

Malcolm is wonderful. I've already enjoyed one book of his poems called "Saying the Names" which I stole from the coffee table of Abbye and Jeff Pates several months ago. I'm sure that by the end of this week I will be frustrated to have left with as small of an encounter with him as I will have had.

One point that stood out from the small group time was (and I'm pulling just one little thing among so many wonderful things) the need for 'making' over and against 'un-making'. Malcolm told us of a book written about Amnesty International's archives. A book about the de-humanizing effects of torture on both the victims and the perpetrators. The torture was enacted to 'un-make' the victim's humanity, and in various ways the work of evil in this world is to unmake what God has made and called good. To pervert. To mar. The redemptive work of God is remaking, making new.

Our call is to creatively re-invest in the world so that people who have been un-made by evil can be re-made by the creative, dignity-restoring, love of Jesus. In fact, Jesus came to us as a human to restore us to humanness. Sin un-makes humanity. God re-makes humanity. Jesus shows us what it looks like to be human again.

And there are many many other things I'd like to write, instead I'll wait and sit on your couch or at your table. I'll hopefully be near enough to speak quietly, to hear what you aren't saying, and to wonder with you why sighs given in trust and oceans lulling against sand-shores seem to come from the same depths, both oceans, both mysteries, both attended by the Spirit of the God of new birth.

Like You Said

Confidence in your words, Lord, this is a prayer for my family-
Those born and yet to be born again.
There is a place of springs in the land of exile, the mean-time,
a living seed of hope. Love for the bloom to break open
is strangely watered by the seed itself.

We wait, invested in your words, which are like anchors
in a shifty place. Our survival. Our revival.
Your words came to us over the waters in the late watches
when we were afraid. You spoke to us then and we were created.
Light from the face of the Firstborn, borne still.

The pages turn, they keep me from the Turning-
the weary dream that slithers in a senseless sensual sulk.
Open your mouth, Shiftless One, divide the night from the day.
You and your double-edged sword, the alleviate of your voice.
In your light we see light, the black banners shred and disappear.

You have eyes to see, Lord, and ears to hear.
And we would be like you, groan for us, Holy Unconfused Spirit!
This is my prayer, a brittle-winged thing.
It's grateful for your cradling palms and your warm breath-
Here the Trumpet, the burning bloom from the sky breaks!

It's just like you said. Everything, just like you said.

Life really matters

Yesterday I had a long phone conversation with my dear friend Brian Mulder. He and I toured together last Fall and now he's back in Michigan getting ready to embark on an epic bicyclic exercise of trans-national proportions. He's doing Blood:Water Mission's Ride:Well Tour. If storks (the birds) wore leg garments I could probably qualify to be a trouser model on their behalf. I mean, I just ran a mile non-stop for the first time in my life this past week. I am very proud of that, and ashamed. Brian, on the other hand, will be fine. It is always sweet to be a part of his life and adventures.

Nearly two years ago my roommate Rajesh asked if he could invite his friend, who was in a difficult living situation, to join us here in this house. I really didn't want to say yes. In fact, I said no. Several weeks later, he insisted that his friend needed a better living situation. So I said we could try it if it were only for a little while, since we just didn't have room. So six months became twenty or so months. And now Sashi is heading to California to a new job and I'll be missing a great friend.

When I was in seventh or eighth grade we got our first youth minister at the church were I grew up. Two years ago I flew to East Asia to visit him and yesterday I heard him speaking the spanish that he's learning in Honduras, his new home. A good many years have passed between eighth grade and now. Richard is still a deeply important brother to me, more than I can say.

The middle of June will mean the departure of D. and Corrie Merricks and their two little boys that I love. They'll be closer to their families and new ministry opportunities in Georgia, but four of my 'tent pegs' are getting pulled up from the ground. I begin to realize how I will miss them, how their lives constitute, in part, my life. Things may feel a little strange, a little less secure as they go.

In the bookstore a few days ago, I sat reading book by a woman who interviewed many people -all of them older than one hundred years. One woman remarked that the world was missing the point of life. She said we were too worried about making money, achievement, and acquiring security. The point of life abides in sharing it through relationship.

I am struck by how important the lives of others can become to me. There are many I would love to write about and describe how I love them. We let people into our lives, that vulnerability deserves great respect and care. Love changes us though. And love is real. When I have the patience and the courage to gather attentiveness and wait with Jesus in prayer, I remember how his love is evidenced by a new creation in this frustrated heart of mine. He matters deeply to me. His love is true.

Our lives are a great opportunity to deeply matter in the lives of others. We can take that wonderful risk. Jesus has led the way.

Good News and Fear

I read an account this morning of a guy who became a believer in Jesus when he suddenly realized that for nearly forty years he had been fooling himself into thinking that he was good. He saw in a moment of realization that he wasn't actually good and that he couldn't do anything about it. He remembered what he had heard about Jesus, whom he had previously scoffed at. Only Jesus could make any change in his situation. He believed.

The Gospel is so simple you have to be taught not to believe it.

My two favorite Malcolm Muggeridge quotes:

"We have educated ourselves into imbecility."

and

"The depravity of man is at once the most unpopular of the Christian doctrines and yet the most empirically verifiable."

One of the comments on the conversion account I mentioned above was that a God who threatens people and forces conversion through fear should not be followed. I have found no relief from fear but in the loving invitation of Jesus to be freed from a dependence on myself and the world around me for salvation. As long as my hope lies in anything other than Jesus, all I know is devastating uncertainty. I know better than to trust myself.

My only hope is the payment for sin Jesus made to His Father on my behalf, the ongoing work of recovery from the damage of ruin that the Holy Spirit upholds, and the Home that waits for me.

Without Jesus, my trajectory is fixed on meaningless decay and the desperate dismal fear of helplessness to change anything.

With Jesus, all things are made new and his perfect love casts out all fear.

One of the deepest fears is that, if we really look into it, we'll find that love isn't real. Haven't we seen enough pain to make us doubt that love is possible? We do our best to keep distracted or tangled in intellect. It's too dangerous to look love in the face: what if we find empty sockets and a mocking lifeless skeletal grin? It is frightening. "I'll follow any destructive fancy if I can only protect myself from my deepest fear- the discovery that even God cannot be trusted for his love is a lie!"

I have no magic words, no unstoppable clever turn of phrase. I do believe that the love of God is alive, it's true. The beauty of it will break your heart, the strength of it will carry you to your deathbed, the purity of it will wash away the dark dream of fear. When the morning comes your own face shall shed light enough to lend brilliance to the dew.

Tolkien and the power of Creativity

"The Christian still has to work, with mind as well as body, to suffer, hope, and die; but he may now percieve that all his bents and faculties have a purpose, which can be redeemed. So great is the bounty with which he has been treated that he may now, perhaps, fairly dare to guess that in Fantasy he may actually assist in the effoliation and multiple enrichment of creation. All tales may come true; and yet, at the last, redeemed, they may be as like and as unlike the forms that we give them as Man, finally redeemed, will be like and unlike the fallen that we know."
J.R.R. Tolkien, On Fairie Stories

Verlyn Flieger in her book Splintered Light: Logos and Language in Tolkien's World goes on to say this:

"Both Tolkien and Barfield regarded the Word as the instrument of Creation and words as instruments of humanity's separation from God and from the universe...Both felt that the task of the poet was to bridge that separation, to use words to reconnect what they had severed. For each of them, words were to be poetic instruments of humankind's ultimate and conscious reunion with God." And again, "Poetry reinvests the world with meaning and rebuilds relationship with it." (pg 47-48)

In Tolkien's essay, these thoughts occur after his explanation that the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus, that the Gospel itself is the ultimate case of a true myth. And that myth defines reality, calling us back to a time when the same God who called a dead messiah from a dark grave into the light of Easter morning, also spoke this creation into existence with the words, "Let there be light".

Could it be that God has always used something more akin to myth, poetry, song, and story to bring into realization his creation? For us, these things are considered the less concrete forms of expression. What if for God they are the most substantial means. What if the old stories of the Bible that sound so mythic are closer to reality than any literal language we could conjur? In other words, what if myth is actually more literal?

And finally, what if imagination and creativity are the doors through which we bring into reality a love so fantastic that it sounds like a fairy tale?