Veritas

Occasionally we find ourselves in places that resonate deeply within us, almost as if they are saying, “You belong here.” For me this has happened in recent days, dwelling in and around Harvard University. (OK, smarty!)   

What comes to mind at the mention of Harvard? Good Will Hunting? Bostonians in scarves? Pontificating professors’ glasses sliding down their noses? I have heard it described as both “liberal” and “conservative.” So going to the Memorial Church for the first time, I was not sure what to expect.

What I found stunned me: neither a bunch of lefties parading causes, nor dry, lofty, academic speeches (I have witnessed both at other academic institutions’ worship.) Instead I found a heartening thing: genuine faith. A real congregation of all ages was engaged in traditional liturgy of artistic and beautiful quality. It was not showy. The sermon was a straightforward explication of a biblical passage in Mark, about intimacy with Jesus’ death and “the price of all love.”

What is truth? (John 18:38) “Veritas” means truth. It is the “sign” of Harvard, reminding me that Pilate’s question is our own. When Jesus remains silent, he draws us forth into this most difficult of questions, this most difficult struggle of life: asking after the truth.   

Draw me, Lord, into places where I can ask after the Truth. Amen.

~~~~~~~~~~~~

Recommend for further reading:

The Cambridge Companion to Christian Philosophical Theology

Edited by Charles Taliaferro and Chad Meister (Cambridge University, 2010)  

 

I came across this volume quite by accident (or not) as I randomly selected a spot in the Harvard Coop (rhymes with soup) bookstore on Harvard Square, one of my favorite places to hang out and study. Charles Taliaferro, as it happens, was my philosophy professor at St. Olaf (and a fan of the Good Minute!) Let me publicly say congratulations to Charles, for a fine volume that represents the best tradition of reason energetically participating with faith.

The compilation covers topics such as the existence of God, prayer, salvation, and host of other central issues for Christian thought and practice. These are subjects that often do not receive attention in philosophical circles. Sadly enough, neither do they find much traction in church and theology circles as philosophical topics. That is to say, these topics need serious rational reflection by Christians as to their foundation and their logical structure, and their possible refutation. Speaking as a pastor, I know first hand the way that we can too easily pan off easy formulas and quick slogans rather than really investigating our positions or encouraging people to ask energetically after the truth. Such serious inquiry is difficult, and this volume is indeed demanding on the reader. However, Taliaferro's essay on liturgy in particular is an example of something truly accessible by most readers and a concise, helpful contribution to something that matters practically to most Christians.

One of my utmost personal commitments is this: active intellectual reflection is vitally important to the experience of one's faith. As I was just reminded of at Harvard Memorial Church, the quest for truth is rigorous in more than one sense: it is intellectual, physical, emotional, and spiritual, and involves one in living out the questions rather than just "agreeing" with a doctrine. It does not have to be showy, but it is never boring because it resonates at the inner level of what it means to be human.

Achievement

"Achievement" is like a man
Old, bent, carrying a broomstick under his arm,
Shuffling through the kitchen late at night,
A shadow passing
In front of the one pinpoint of light in the house
Under the kitchen cabinet. Eclipsing the silver drawer,
As if on some great errand, his ambling purpose takes him beyond
The refrigerator, to the dark alcove of the next room.

He slinks onward, muttering his plans
For How It Will Be! Meanwhile we sit
On a stool, watching the room empty him out
—And fill again with his hulking shape, mad, fitful.
Back to where he came, he crosses back in front
Of the light, the one way we can see him.

As he retreats, his wide round ghost melts
Into darkness. Yet his midnight shade lingers
As we stare down white tiles, black under the stool,
And we know, yes we know, that he, in his stooped
Agitation
Will ruffle forth again, musty slippers scraping
Our attention, saying, "Yes, it's me—
I have come for a bit of bread, cheese, meat!"
And we cannot, no we cannot, do anything
In the dark except help him to eat.

Disorder

The most amazing fact about Jesus, unlike almost any other religious founder, is that he found God in disorder and imperfection.   –Richard Rohr

“Wait, wait, wait!” I called weakly from the hospital bed, as the doctor whisked through the curtain and out of the room. He left mid-sentence, without even letting me ask a question.

That scene rather encapsulates the last few months of my life: disorder. I cannot possibly comprehend or control the things that have swirled around my boat like crashing waves. To top it off, a mystifying infection landed me in the ER, where the formula [5 hours = 5 min w/Dr] seems ever to hold, thus no time for silly questions. 

Were the internal microscopic invaders mirroring the external chaos of my life? Or were they just a random occurrence, part of a brute, unaware mechanism of nature? Either way, sitting alone in the bland inhumane and sterile room, I was the one who had to assign meaning to the event.

This sickness is not unto death. (John 11:4) Jesus teaches his followers to assign a different meaning to disorder. What can come from sickness, pain, evil? Merely this: creation, life, forgiveness, love, redemption, hope, and glory for “the Son of God.” 

As a Son of God, I will fill empty sick rooms with meaning, belief, and love. Amen.

~~~~~~~~~~

Everything Fits

The nine goes here, the three goes there. Now what? I am stuck. I set the puzzle down and come back to it the next day. Eureka! There it is. The solution presents itself, and soon all the boxes are filled.

Sudoku? A waste of time, I used to say. Now I have become a devotee. I am told that we get a boost of positive feeling upon solving a puzzle (thus the popularity of crosswords). It is also good clean escapism from the storms and stresses of life.

Sudoku focuses the mind in a very interesting way. To solve it, you must simultaneously see narrow and wide, relate parts to wholes, and use both logic and spatial awareness. You cannot guess, as there is only one solution ( a good tonic for the unhelpful relativism that says anything is a solution). This process makes creative, lateral thinking work together with strict logical thinking. It marries the right and left brain.

If you can be trusted with little, you can be trusted with much. (Luke 16:10) Doing an activity that is low-stakes and “little,” we prepare ourselves for the higher-stakes “much.” By allowing ourselves a puzzle, can we see the possibility that every number has a place, that everything belongs, and that everything will fit? Could I train myself not to worry in this way? 

Help me to trust that everything in life will fit into Your one solution. Amen.

Resilience

“TIME TO STOP PLAYING GOD,” a very caring friend said to me recently. She was referring to my tendency to confuse resilience with invulnerability. “You need to let some balls drop, and quit being the strong one all the time.” 

Hard words for an oldest child. Hard words for a pastor. Sometimes friends who know us best say just the thing that we need to hear, just the thing that gets past our defenses, just the thing that smacks us in the gut. I was glad she said them to me.

Pharaoh’s heart was hardened. (Exodus 7:13) When we confuse a desire to be resilient with a desire to be invulnerable, we end up becoming hard-hearted, less human. Ironically, that makes us less resilient, because we are moving away from our essence, from who we are. That makes us icy, repressive, and ultimately oppressive to others.

Resilience grows up around pain. When we experience a trauma, or when we see our children suffering, we may think that pain must be avoided. We try to shelter ourselves and others from it. But denial of pain halts the process of developing true resilience.

You are an enclosed garden. (Song of Songs 4:12) Perhaps we are like a circle of grass, vulnerable yet hardy, as we grow up around our pain.

Help me to be resilient and vulnerable, growing around my deepest pain. Amen. 

Sunset

In Sunset After a Storm on the Coast of Sicily, a lone figure (near the bottom middle) wearily pulls a group of people ashore in a boat. As indicated by the waves on the left, they must have been through a harrowing and exhausting journey, narrowly escaping with their lives. The shore looks equally inhospitable: have they survived one trial only to be put through another?

Yet the figures’ dire circumstance is not what you see first. Even though darkness surrounds the figures, it is offset by the more powerful and captivating light of the sun. The clouds seem to be clearing. Night approaches, but the yellow glow is there, indicating hope in the hearts of the people.

If I say, surely the darkness will overwhelm me, and the light around me will be night, even the darkness is not dark to you, and the night is as bright as the day. To you darkness and light are one. (Psalm 139:11-12) A very hard thing for us western Christians to understand. Darkness and light are one. I find it comforting, because it means to me that the evil and good that I have done, and that have been done to me, are all of one whole. All part of a unity of the plan, purpose, and being of God.

Where do I look back and see the unity of dark and light, good and bad, in my life? How might this vision bring me wholeness? 

Be with me in the sunset, O Lord, as I move through the dark and the light. Amen.  

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

As I approach my last Sunday as pastor of Trinity Lutheran Church in Morris Plains, I reflect on the many memories of people serving God together. So much of the journey has been about developing more awareness. Of ourselves as a congregation, of the needs and challenges of ministry in the 21st century, and ultimately, of God's presence and activity in our lives.

This devotional—Awareness: The Perils and Opportunities of Reality by Anthony de Mello—is a new discovery for me. I will be keeping it close for awhile. I just got through reading a section on why, in pursuit of awareness, you cannot make demands. "Someday you will understand that simply by awareness you have already attained what you were pushing yourself toward."

I am aware to very great and deep extent that I contributed to a culture early in my tenure here, and which I never quite managed to escape, of demands and counter demands, of pushing zealously toward goals rather than meeting life with acceptance and grace.

I am grateful to God and to the congregation that despite this, we were given the gift of many fruitful ministries, many great conversations about God's work, and many times of active service together. We grew together, in our understanding of who we are before God and in recognizing our calling as his created people. As the church moves into its new chapter, I now believe it has a bright hope, as the painting suggests, of a good and fortuitous dawn. 

Qian

Surely one of the most sublime and powerful gifts of being human is the power to create. To initiate, to bring into existence that which was not there before, is a power vested in humankind to a much greater degree than any other in nature.

When we offer our own vitality in the service of initiating, we give away our own being. The ancient Chinese had a word for this heavenly energy: Qian. The ideogram (word-picture) for Qian depicts a sun on the left side, with a plant sprouting above it and another taking root below. On the right are the sun’s rays spreading out from the center. Qian means the creative, initiating power of heaven.

Qian is also depicted by three solid lines, often seen on flags and emblems. A Christian might see in the three lines another expression of the sublime: the Trinity. Creation of the truly new comes from convergence and community. Not two sides, not two persons, but three.

In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. (Matthew 28:19) Jesus instructed his followers to initiate in the name of Three, especially when performing that rite of initiation called baptism. We see the power of Qian whenever there is a confluence of minds (at least three!) that results in new action. Where do I see this initiating power currently at work?

Help us to create and initiate, O Trinity, with the same mind as Heaven. Amen.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I have found the I Ching a helpful devotional as well as a deeply profound guide for faith. The concepts in it are mirrored in the Bible, but find different expression here. The visual explanations of the Chinese ideograms in this particular edition by Alfred Huang are vivid and accessible. Essential reading for anyone interested in understanding more about Taoism, eastern thought, comparative religion, or simply dealing with the confusions and changes of daily life.  

Lightning

I recently dreamt that I stood under a bolt of lightning. A searing stream of energy poured forth out of a white globe in the clouds. Amazingly, I was not hurt. Rather than feeling afraid, I felt safe. As I watched it move across the landscape and over me, somehow I knew that it would protect me even as it charged everything else in its path. It felt like God’s powerful presence surrounding me.

As the dream faded into the reality of the day, the vivid memory of it remained. Then several unique things happened that brought great alteration, significant change, and God’s hand upon my life. I kept going back to the imagery of the dream. 

The voice of the Lord strikes with flashes of lightning. (Psalm 29:7) In the forces of nature, we find God. Too often we only hear of how this indicates punishment—as in, “If you’ve been bad, you’ll get struck by lightning!” Even worse is to place blame: “The earthquake was God’s retribution on those wicked ones.”

The whole creation groans.(Rom 8:22) It bucks and heaves just as we do inside of our souls, yearning for peace. My dream reminded me that God’s lightning-strong power is for the world, and uniquely, for me.

Unleash your creative power in our world, God, and in my life. Amen.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Read Bono, A.S. Byatt, and the Dalai Lama's personal repsonse to books of the Bible.

The why and the how of lightning.

How do I capture something like this on film?

Guidance

Around the narrow turn, my bicycle sails through a damp but warm October morning. Downhill over wet leaves, trees in a canopy above, I think, “What a perfect ride.” Just then I see a parked construction vehicle blocking the road. Too close to avoid, I brake, spin out over the leaves, and take a bad fall. My left shoulder takes the brunt of the impact.

Three months later, thinking things are back to normal, I go to the gym. After a couple workouts in a week, my shoulder is worse than before. Another three months, and here I sit, with a physical therapist, still in pain. “You thought it was healed,” he says, showing me a mechanical diagram of the muscles and tendons. “It will heal. But nobody told you, it needs to be guided to heal the right way.” 

The body is a delicate thing, but also strong and able to heal when guided to do so. How much more so is the soul delicate, strong, and able to heal, when guided to move toward healing. Such guidance comes from mentors who understand the why and the how of things better than I do.

The wise listen and find guidance. (Proverbs 1:5) Who are my mentors? What wounds—physical, mental, emotional, spiritual—are not healing well for lack of proper guidance? 

In my wounds, God, help me not to ignore the guidance available to me. Amen.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Albrecht Durer remains one of the world's most influential and creative artists. He wanted to understand not only the how of drawing but the why. He combined a scientific understanding of the body with artistic observation, depth of feeling, and spirituality. Some of his images have become icons the world over, such as "Praying Hands."

Creators by Paul Johnson is an energetic and very readable account of people like Dürer who have left a lasting mark on the world through their art. Bach, Shakespeare, Chaucer, Jane Austen, T.S. Eliott, Picasso, and Walt Disney are among the lives depicted. 

Johnson argues that the kind of creativity they pursued, often under great duress, was of a different degree than most other forms of creativity, but that the creative spirit lies within everyone. Johnson examines whether there is such a thing as a "typical artist," comparing and contrasting their lives, and finding great inspiration in their efforts.

Durer was also a writer and philosopher who wanted to pass along his knowledge to future artists.

Johnson says of Dürer's On Human Proportion, "The conclusion to the third book deals with aesthetics and the relationship between man, art, and God."

Heroes' Feet: One Day Without Shoes

Chapel Address, Concordia College—New York 

April 5, 2011

As she stood behind him at his feet weeping, she began to wet his feet with her tears. Then she wiped them with her hair, kissed them and poured perfume on them. Luke 7:38

Look at your feet. Look closely. What do you see there? What adjective would you use? Large? Small? Calloused? Lumpy? Sore? Painted? Cute?

How about this one—beautiful. I’m not sure we usually think of feet as beautiful. I remember trying to draw feet in drawing class, having to focus on the shapes and contours. I realized that the more you look at them, the more beautiful they are. Like a lot of things, actually, the more you look at them.

How beautiful your sandaled feet, O prince’s daughter! Your graceful legs are like jewels, the work of an artist’s hands! (Song of Solomon 7:1)

Another adjective—heroic. Depictions of Greek heroes going into battle are always barefoot. I wonder why? It is a sign of strength, surely. By connecting to the earth we draw on its power. But we also draw on the connective power of shared humanity, as we walk the same ground today as those who have no shoes. Maybe they are heroes. Maybe you are heroes. When you see your feet, do you think, these are a hero’s feet?

How beautiful on the mountains are the feet of those who bring good news, who proclaim peace, who bring good tidings, says Isaiah.

You are a hero because of the good news you bring today, the solidarity you proclaim by going without shoes. 

But you will also go places with these feet. Places that you never thought possible. You will be a hero in those places, because you will bring shoes to children, you will bring good tidings and love to forgotten places. You won’t bring God, he’s already in those places. But you’ll discover Him there. As you sit at others’ feet.

Jesus washed his disciples’ feet to signify that he was their servant. And to remind them of baptism, that their sin was washed away. But it was also to send them, to say to them, you have beautiful and heroic feet. You will go places with these feet.

There’s one more adjective—loving. Are your feet loving? Can you love someone’s feet? There was a woman who was so overcome with love for Jesus that she washed his feet with her tears and caressed them with her hair. Guys and gals take note: if you love someone, say it to their feet. A little washing, caressing, and perfume will go a long way. Maybe at the end of today especially.

Jesus washes our feet so that we may go out to the farthest corners of the earth, to give of ourselves and become who we really are: beautiful, heroic, and loving. Amen.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Join the Day Without Shoes, Tuesday April 5, 2011:

More at One Day Without Shoes | www.onedaywithoutshoes.com