Pinkie Winkie Doo

Any soldier who goes into battle against the Taliban in pink boxers and flip-flops has a special kind of courage. {Secretary of Defense, Robert Gates} from NPR

And ... his shirt said, "I Heart NY"

Wyatt the Brave

Wyatt, our oldest son, turned 7 today - and he's lived every bit of his 7 years, then some. Recently at All Souls, we passed out those little 12 inch wooden manikins, the ones that have joints and can be manipulated any number of ways. The project was simple, for each of us to paint or construct or do whatever with our manikin to represent our sense of what God is doing in us, redeeming in us, calling out of us. This was to be a reflection of our hope, which is to say - this was another way of praying.

As Wyatt worked on his, two of the words he said his manikin represented were "brave" and "strong-hearted." Well, people, let me tell you - there we have a prayer where the answer is already in the works. I see it in him. I live it with him. He's on his way.

One of my favorite stories with Wyatt this past year was from his first semester in first grade. Apparently the discipline system works like this: each student has a paper balloon beside their name; and each time they get in trouble, they have to move their balloon. With each balloon move, the consequences escalate. Much too far into the year, Wyatt informed me that he had yet to move his balloon, not once. That would never do. As one (me) who has often been far too concerned with making mistakes, I hope for Wyatt to be more free with chaos, more okay with not meeting up to every expectation laid upon him. So, I made a deal with Wyatt.

Wyatt, I'll pay you a dollar the first time you have to move your balloon.

It didn't take but a day or two - and Wyatt came home with the news that, sure enough, he'd been reprimanded at school and (shudder) had to move his balloon - and that I needed to hand over a green one.

I did, gladly.

Happy birthday, son. Let's be brave together.

Torture

A survey conducted by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life found that white evangelical Christians are more likely to support torture than people who rarely or never attend religious services. (from CNN)

And we say we live for another Kingdom?

God help us.

Because We Started the Conversation...

Once the act of simply reporting or simply observing is exposed as a fiction — as something that just can’t be done — the facile opposition between faith-thinking and thinking grounded in independent evidence cannot be maintained. {Stanley Fish}

Today, Stanely Fish posted a follow-up article in the Times to his piece last week, "God-Talk." I found this week's installment intriguing, but also - it's just rude to walk out on someone mid-conversation.

I think Fish could have left out the little self-congratulating plug at the bottom, but then again, if someone were taking potshots at me, I'd be tempted to rub it in their face as well. Still, though, the editorial Fish refers to by Paul Campos, even if a bit of defensive hubris, makes a point, several actually. Campos summed up Fish's repeated mantra nicely: "No believer will find his faith shaken by evidence that is evidence only in the light of assumptions he does not share and considers flatly wrong."

If, however, you'd like to read a more imaginative (and I'd say humble) response to all this, check out John Blase's thoughts.

Holy Curiosity Jumps the Pond

It usually take a bit for a book to cycle into the international market. Apparently Holy Curiosity has begun to make its way. Two weeks ago, I did an interview with Premier Radio in the UK - and this month a very kind review landed in Christianity Magazine, a British periodical.

Also, in other international news, this week I'm in the middle of a three week stint where I am doing six 15 - 20 minute interviews for Open House, a weekly radio program airing on 300 stations with 600,000 listeners. Mainly, though, it's just fun talking to a thoughtful guy with a really cool accent. I'll post later when the interview audio is available.

Silence, Shusaku Endo

After I got past the Japanese use of the passive voice ("the scent of the grass was wafted over the white rock"), this simple, haunting story pulled me into a valuable conversation about the character of the gospel: what is the essence of Christian faith? How must the gospel incarnate itself in radical new ways within new, distinct cultures? How much of the gospel has been trapped in Western garb? How much can Christian faith accommodate itself to new cultural forms without surrendering its essence?

A line from the translator's introduction, quoted from another of Endo's essays will be on my mind for a while: "Unless there is in [Christianity] a part that corresponds to Japan's mud swamp, it cannot be a true religion."


From Goodreads.

Holy Curiosity Lands in Delaware

A group from Grace Evangelical Free Church in Newark, Delaware read Holy Curiosity together. Thanks for the picture!

Being You (and me)

On my last birthday, a friend sent me a card. She said some kind things, but two simple words sunk deep: Be you. I've heard it before, haven't we all? But this time I found my heart grabbing at the words, clinging to them, knowing they were more true now for me than perhaps they've been before.

I live in a city with a load of history, an inspiring narrative - but a narrative that also lends itself to some degree of pretense and self-importance. Like any city, we have gatekeepers and elites and those who are "in" and those who are "out." I want to be "in." But I know the truth: Be you. And come what may.

Also, my writing - it's been stuck for a while. The books I have published have been read by a few, but only a few. If I allow myself (and I do sometimes), I take measure by other writers I respect, other writers who seem to me far better at our craft. Then I start to scratch and claw to assert myself as a serious writer, so people will, you know, take me seriously. But I know the truth: Be you. And come what may.

A couple weeks ago, I heard civil rights icon John Perkins speak. This seventy-eight year old man has vigor and wisdom - I could listen to him for days. His passion and his life's work raise vital questions of how the message of Jesus radically alters our views of justice, particularly the rejuvenation of forgotten neighborhoods. This topic pushes theological buttons for me, such as my firm conviction that Christian faith has embedded implications many of us have chosen to ignore. In good ways, this conversation pushes into other places - asking me what my responsibility is to my neighbors and to justice, asking me how my resources and skill will join God's work of making all things new.

But these conversation also go someplace else, someplace hard to describe in words - but a place I know well. Most of my life, I've had an independent streak; sometimes good, sometimes not so much. But I've also had a strong impulse to meet expectations, to "get it right," to not be dismissed by another because I don't live up to whatever it is I presume they want me to live up to. Exhausting.

So, I hear stories of heroic lifestyle choices and noble justice work and radical communal life/integration; and I notice how my life is more vanilla, more middle class. And I feel guilty. Not open or curious or (healthily) wondering if God might be pushing me somewhere new. Just guilty.

My heart must have been moving toward that guilty place as I heard Perkins because of how I responded when, in one moment, he grew emphatic: "This is a call. You have to ask God what your call is. And then live it, whatever it is. Don't live my call. And have some common sense - don't be stupid about all this." And I felt tears. I felt hope. Again, in my soul, I heard these words: Be you.

Not John Perkins. You.

For me, a whole host of names could follow the "Not" and come before the "you," names from my story, from my profession, women and men I respect:

Not Frederick Buechner. You.

Not John Collier, Sr. You.

I'll stop with specifics here because the list could go on and it could get embarrassing.

Truth is, though, God already made a Buechner and a Perkins and a Collier, Sr. They have their story, their path, their gifts (and their demons). The world doesn't need another them. The world needs one (and only one) of me.

Here I pause, shrinking back from my word choice, typing "needs" in the sentence previous. Needs? Perhaps I've gotten carried away. Perhaps a backspace for a few strokes could clear up the damage. No. Needs does just fine. Of course, the world would survive without me. The sun would still shine and the rain would still fall. But (and I'm going to type it loud, if there is a way to do such a thing): without me, the world would miss something particular, something unique that God intended to be here.

And without you (typing loud again) the world would be an uglier place, a hollower place. I'm glad you're here, just like you are - why don't you be glad too?

So, let's make a pact together, what do you say? No more comparing. No more self-cannibalization as we wonder if we are good enough, beautiful enough, generous enough, green enough, witty enough, smart enough, artistic enough, kind enough. Enough.

Let's Live from our heart. Be curious about what God might be up to around us. Step with courage into those places that God and our heart tells us are true. And live.

Be you.

Fish and Eagleton

The recent God-debates (Hitchens, Dawkins, D'souza et al.) have, if nothing else, raised again the question: what is Christianity good for? And that is a question any of us who claim the faith ought care about.

Stanley Fish's recent piece in the NY Times, God Talk, interacts with Terry Eagleton's book, Reason, Faith and Revolution. Without adhering to any version of Christian orthodoxy, Eagleton has little patience for the triumphant, absolutist pronouncements of those who dismiss faith to the intellectual backwaters, certain that there are more productive ways to find human guidance. Essentially, Eagleton suggests that all other options (capitalism, democracy, modernity, enlightenment, liberalism, science, reason - you name it) simply don't deliver. "What other symbolic form,” asks Eagleton, “has managed to forge such direct links between the most universal and absolute of truths and the everyday practices of countless millions of men and women?”

Take a read. Tell me what you think. And if you need another teaser:

A society of packaged fulfillment, administered desire, managerialized politics and consumerist economics is unlikely to cut to the depth where theological questions can ever be properly raised.