Prophetic voice

Meditation on Isaiah 58:1-6

Proclaim the injustice to the church. They act like their nation has been chosen by me. They act as if their going to church and their religiosity, their work ethic and moral certitude was what I desired. They sing their songs loudly to me. They quarrel over whose worship feels best. And they pray to me for revival. As if they could stand my Spirit's Holy presence! As if they actually wanted me to show up!

Is this what I desire? Merely a morning sitting bored in a pew? Merely their acquiescence to my word? Is this what I desire, while they consume the vast majority of the world's resources and ignore the cries of the hungry, the barren, the maimed by war? When their comfort is foremost in their thoughts and not my ways - my compassion, my justice, my loving kindness?

No first repent of your hubris. Face the dark plight of the world and your own part in it. Grieve with me the loss of life and dignity. Then you may rejoice in the reconciliation I have planned for you! Then you may participate in my justice.

Simulation and Simulacra

In other words there is a great danger in facile and thoughtless verbalizations of spiritual reality. All true spiritual disciplines recognize the peril of idolatry in the irresponsible fabrication of pseudo-spiritual concepts which serve only to delude man and to subject him once again to a deeper captivity just when he seems on the point of tasting the true bliss and the perfect poverty of liberation. (p. 114)

Twenty years before Jean Baudrillard wrote his philosophical treatise Simulacra and Simulation, and nearly forty years before the Wachowski brothers crafted the ideas into The Matrix, Merton, in his genius, was already there. Merton asserts that we tend to create a pseudo-reality built on the symbols, absolutes and pseudo-events of our day (152).  Man is in danger of living in this crust of unreality where there is only black and white and those who do not share the same cracked worldview are vilified and tensions lead to violence and war.

I was fortunate enough to read Merton's thoughts on Simone Weil while at St. Gregory's Abby.  I had access to their extensive library which has a theological and philosophical leaning.  I was able to consult Weil's writings and read the article that was the subject of Merton's reflection. She writes of the way we create concepts with capital-letters that loose their meaning, being hollow husks that serve to divide good society from evil.  In her day it was words like Capitalism, Communism, Security, in our day we could add Terrorism and Socialism to the list.  She asserts that all of these words are incorrectly invoked as reasons to war. The only real reason for war left with any meaning is the state's capacity to wage war (83).

In the light of this dangerous tendency to false realities, which lead to violence, Merton offers the curative of contemplation.  It is only as we face the true Reality, are immersed in the true Reality, that we can face injustice and violence down with Christian non-violence. We Christians must avoid the danger of the quote above of letting our Christianity become another layer of unreality - law unto itself.

Janitor style leadership

Spirituality and work

How can I lead people to find the spirituality of work from the ivory tower of vocational church life?  How can my spiritual formation matter to people in the real world when I am seen as an oddity? Spirituality is my work. I am paid to pray, to study scripture and sit and think for long stretches.  How can I say anything of substance to Marv about finding Jesus in the oil and gears of the engine I barely understand?  How can I ask Jeff to find Jesus in the electricity flowing in the lines he is repairing at the sugar factory on a Sunday morning, keeping him from joining us at church?  What does my intimacy with Jesus do for the retiree struggling with meaning after putting in years of labor at the steering gear plant while I haven’t loaded my “sixteen tons?”

These are just the questions I live with in a blue-collar community. I’m not sure I would be any better equipped to minister to them if I were shackled to an industrial job – especially if I was thrown off balance and couldn’t manage to continue to explore my spiritual formation. No, a pastor is what they need, but how to make it real to them that work can be more than what we do? Spiritual direction would be a wonderful place to explore this.  Most of my working people aren’t seeking the spiritual let alone direction. Perhaps informally, doing direction with out them realizing I am – allowing my own deepening in grace to form questions and conversations that would get them thinking and looking for the presence of God at work.

What does God need?

In our ministerial group we have on occasion batted around the question: does God have a real needs? Does God need us? Does God need companionship? Does God need our service?

In thinking so about God's nature the thought occurs to me that if God has a deep inner need, it is the need to reveal himself.  God's self-revelation is a gracious mystery.  We have no explanation for it.  Indeed by creating the universe and human beings to observe it, God has made a vehicle for communication of the Divine nature. God's self-revelation is also necessarily transformative.  One cannot gaze into the awful abyss of God's nature and not be changed - from glory to glory.

As a human being I am created to not only search out God's personhood but to proclaim it, to worship.  God invites me to participate in this revelation of the beauty of God's being, leading others (in the end all of creation) to transformation.  To me that is the spirituality of leadership - firmly rooted in the Boundless.

Reflections on In the Name of Jesus by Henri Nouwen

The central question facing Christian leaders today, I think, is: Are we going to be led? Nouwen rightly points out that the cure to the temptation to relevance is mysticism. The Christian leader must be a mystic rooted in the reality of the living Christ to navigate the waters infested with sharks of ego, power, efficiency and world-success.

The central question for me as I face leadership in the coming future is how can I lead people into a desire for the mystic reality of Christ in the intimacy of the Lover. How can I be a part of the Spirits drawing them to the depths? Year after year, as a pastor, I feel like I am treading water. People seem to make little movement toward desperation and hunger for the transformed life. If they so successfully resist the wooing of the Spirit, what does my leadership stand to offer?

I am frightened that I will fail as a leader. I am scared to death that I will not be relevant, or popular, or significant. And I am scared that I too could succumb to those temptations and in the end be unfaithful.

***

Since writing the above I’ve changed. I honestly didn’t see much that was exciting about the future. I was in a funk (not the good kind, like p-funk, but the kind that sucks the spiritual life out of you). Fortunately the last Tuesday night of every month is like a mini retreat for me. I have friends in the city of Saginaw who have been getting together to have a Taizé style service. I came away, as I usually do, happy, content, and brimming with love. I reflected on the drive home on why the change.

One of the things about this gathering is the strong sense of community present. These are friends I trust, and much like with my cohort, I can really be at home in Christ. Nouwen was right to cite the communal disciplines of confession and forgiveness as the curative for the temptation to be popular. In true community, as I find in these services, I don’t need to be anyone special. They don’t need to know that I am a pastor in another town. I don’t need to be a leader.

The other thing that these gatherings offer is the contemplative access to the heart of God. I come away in love with people everywhere again. As I lovingly looked at this group of friends, and even down the street at the strangers hanging outside the Red Eye coffeehouse, I felt encouraged about the future. There were people who experienced Christ in community with me. If that was true, then perhaps my love for Christ, and my renewed love for the people God loves will rub off on those whom I lead.

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Eternal Summer

Anxiety threatened to steal my day
Oppressed me like the mourning
A freight train whistled
Delivering me to
The eternity of an Indian summer