Time management

I admit it, I am addicted to the urgent. I tend to go with the flow, and do what needs to be done when they need to be done. I am helped by having certain routines, that I do on certain days, and my google calendar helps me keep all that straight. I have also found it interesting in order to have an integrated life I must compartmentalize. This means I have certain places for different activities. My friend Rich also taught me to transition from one thing to another by putting my hands together and offering a quick prayer.

Covey presents some interesting thoughts in his “First Things First.” I find myself mainly in generation one, which is to use reminders and list to keep track of what’s going on and go with the flow. Though I do sometimes prioritize things. I really do appreciate his attempt to create a fourth generation that flows from met needs and inner fire.

Covey says, “Fulfilling the four needs in an integrated way is like combining elements in chemistry. When we reach a “critical mass” of integration, we experience spontaneous combustion-an explosion of inner synergy that ignites the fire within and gives vision passion, and a spirit of adventure to life.”

This week has been a good example of what my time management can be like. Monday we unexpectedly needed to take a friend to another town so I couldn’t do my normal Monday office duties. Tuesday we had friends over in the afternoon. Wednesday I made it to the office. Thursday we had our grueling ordination exam. When I came home all I wanted to do was sleep. I woke up very frustrated and irritated with myself. Especially when I read my assignment for my masters. It was on time management!

There is a song by Jim's Big Ego that we ran across on a new computer, I quickly fell in love because it so appropriately described my life.

JIM'S BIG EGO lyrics

Any time I have a lot of irons in the fire I can manage things pretty well because some of my needs are being met. I feel like I am accomplishing goals and must be doing something worthwhile. When I don’t have things going on I feel like I am failing myself and God and I languish until I find some new activity to fill the void.

I just finished a summer play, “The Musical Adventures of Oliver Twist.” I was musical director and played the roll of Fagin. Practices were nights four days a week all summer. It was a long haul and I am relieved to have it over, but I miss the activity and this week shows what happens. I lose my rhythm and everything falls apart. I become frustrated, irritable and unproductive.

Last night, about 10 I went to the church to get some milk that I had left in the fridge (I was craving a bowl of cereal). When I got outside, I was greeted with crisp fall air, and a starry night sky and bright moon. I went to the labyrinth I have mowed into the church lawn and walked it in the dark. The moon light struck the tall grass and made the path a dark furrow. When I couldn’t see the path I could feel the tall grass with my feet. It was a whole body prayer, each step deliberately moving me to the center with God, and then back out to minister in the world. The time of meditation and prayer was the perfect cure for my time management slough of despond. It took me back to the fire within.

hellfire and blogstone

Recently Elaine has gotten some hate mail, (or in Christian circles should it be judgment mail, or you're-going-to-hell mail). I got one of those earlier in the month. I guess we have both arrived as bloggers now.

I have found it difficult to practice the principle of not resisting evil. When I was dealing with a guy who misinterpreted my intentions and beliefs and assumed he knew me, I refrained from engaging him, but I secretly relished the posts that came to my defense.

When Elaine is told she is going to hell for being a minister, something God has called her to do, I was restless until I put some thoughts down in the form of a comment. (Literally restless. I was trying to take a nap - no go.)

I said:

I am afraid not, you have done what is required by the Koran, not the Bible. The Koran declares that we are so responsible for our brothers that we must censure them for their incorrect beliefs and behavior, this can range from reproof to insult, to the radical islamist’s suicide bomb. The New Testament gives quite a different requirement. The law of love.
Jesus commanded us not to judge, for we are then in danger of being judged with the same measure. He also says that we cannot try to remove a speck from our brother’s eye and ignore the plank hanging out of our own eye. I am afraid that sjonss has allowed a black and white fundamentalism to become a 2X4 hanging from her eye. She’s become blind to the law of love and decided to take the roll of the Holy Spirit upon herself.
It is the Holy Spirit who has the responsibility to convict of sin. We are forbidden to take his job from him. And there’s good reason. God’s ways are higher than ours, his thoughts are greater. As much as it comforts fundamentalists to think they understand God and his ways, they cannot. For man sees the outside of a man, but God judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart.

Her detractor replied,

Chris,
wait! If I cannot judge, then neither can you! I’m judging redhead, but you are judging me. Are you being a hypocrite? Yes, I think you are.

Ok fair enough. With the measure I judged, I have been judged. Am I a hypocrite? Sometimes. Am I a sinner? Yup, saved by a pretty powerful grace.

It is so hard to sit back and let evil attack, especially when it is in the name of the God I adore. These arguments with black-and-white fundamentalists make me sick. I don't know why I get drawn into them. Is it pride? Is it a sense of trying to correct those who would correct me?

Lord, lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. Amen

Spikes

Last night we watched X-Men 2 and as I got up to turn off the tv, I stepped on a small foam pillow that came with Elaine’s pilates set. It felt like pins and needles were literally piercing my foot. I fell to the ground screaming wondering if the pillow had grown adamantium fingernails. I turned it over to discover the kids had placed a couple dozen straight pins through the pillow, as a sort of a booby trap. My left foot sports many puncture wounds this morning.

Resisting Evil

I drove over to the court house in Bad Axe Tuesday morning. I had received a subpoena to testify against the peeping tom we had a couple months ago. I didn’t know what I would say, or what I’d be asked. I didn’t even know he was there until the police knocked on the door near midnight and told me our neighbors had caught him looking in our family room window. Thank goodness everyone was asleep but me. I dragged myself out of bed early and drove the half hour to Bad Axe. I went in to discover the man had plead guilty the day before, no plea deal, just plead guilty. The prosecutor’s office had tried to get a hold of us, but since the phone is in the church’s name, we’re hard to find.

The prosecutor shook my hand, thanking me for making the trip out there for nothing, and said, “If it wasn’t for people like you, cases like this wouldn’t happen. I really mean that.”

Now I assume that he meant that with out people taking the legal process seriously people wouldn’t just plead guilty. But I could be wrong. Perhaps if it wasn’t for people like me there wouldn’t be peeping toms. That either means I am pretty darn attractive, or some how otherwise inviting evil.

So having traveled all the way out there, and afraid I’d fall asleep on the way home, I went over to the little coffeehouse in bad axe and had some Kenya AA while I read Tolstoy’s “My Religion”.

Tolstoy tells that one of his great revelations was in Matthew 5:39 “Ye have heard that it hath been said, An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth: But I say unto you, That ye resist not evil: but whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also.” He had never seen “resist not evil,” there before. His culture and ours highly values resisting evil.

Tolstoy even suggests that as Christians we ought not sit in judgment in courts and tribunals as I was supposed to do that morning. I’m still trying to process the tension between this principle and the stream of social justice. Foster writes about how Jesus embodied the social justice tradition.

Yes, says Jesus, the messianic kingdom of perpetual Jubilee is indeed coming, but in a way that no one would have guessed. People, especially the Zealots, had been looking for military conquest. But Jesus flatly rejects the Zealot option and shows instead another kingdom and another power-the kingdom of love and the power of divine community.

So we aren’t to resist evil, but rather we are to overcome it with a new kingdom. This is what Willard calls the divine conspiracy, and it does not come through legislation, force, opposition or power but through love, vulnerability and righteousness.

Transparency and vulnerability

What discipline is required for the future leader to overcome the temptation of individual heroism? I would like to propose the discipline of confession and forgiveness. Just as the future leaders must be mystics deeply steeped in contemplative prayer, so also they must be persons always willing to confess their own brokenness and ask for forgiveness from those to whom they minister.

Vulnerability and transparency can help keep me from the temptation to be spectacular. I need to take my journaling in the form of this blog more seriously. It is a discipline that puts myself out there for comment. That isn't always easy but it is humbling.

Henri Nouwen - "In The Name of Jesus"

Yesterday I received some materials for my master's course. One was this amazing little book. I read it in one sitting, so the truths about Christian leadership are resonating in me right now with a multitude of harmonics. It will take some time for me to fully appreciate the melody. There is one note, perhaps a chord, that is really sticking with me tonight.

Nouwen cites one temptation to Christian leaders as being relevance. Relevance is certainly a word we hear a lot about these days, so my interest was piqued. He takes relevance out of its buzz context and talks about our personal desire to feel relevant - to feel that we have something to offer.

I recognize how I often feel small when my perceived relevance isn't having any real impact (that's not really very relevant is it.) Nouwen declares that I can give up this worry. To the world, I am completely irrelevant. That is how it should be. That is not to say that the Church or the gospel should be irrelevant. But I am irrelevant. Anything I have in myself in no way useful to the world. I must rely on God. Nouwen give a powerful weapon to dismantle our habit to seek relevance: contemplative prayer. O how I love this! This is why I long to identify with the Christian Mystics of old. O to only love Christ, and focus all through that lens!

I have been dealing a lot lately with discussions of politics, both church and state. I am trying to hold on to my Love in all these. In that spirit I keep longing for a less pragmatic stance by my brothers in Christ. I feel affirmed and challenged by these words:

"Christian leaders cannot simply be persons who have well-informed opinions about the burning issues of our time. Their leadership must be rooted in the permanent, intimate relationship with the incarnate Word, Jesus, and they need to find there the source for all their words, advice, and guidance. Through the discipline of contemplative prayer, Christian leaders have to learn to listen again and again to the voice of love to find there the wisdom and courage to address whatever issue presents itself to them. Dealing with burning issues without being rooted in a deep personal relationship with God easily leads to divisiveness because, before we know it, our sense of self is caught up in our opinion about a given subject. But when we are securely rooted in personal intimacy with the source of life, it will be possible to remain flexible without being relativistic, convinced without being rigid, willing to confront without being offensive, gentle and forgiving without being soft, and true witnesses with out being manipulative.

"For Christian leadership to be truly fruitful in the future, a movement from the moral to the mystical is required."

For the record.

Yes I know that blogger can automatically calculate my age. I have today chosen to remove my birth date information so that blogger's automatic zodiac information does not appear. It has come to my attention that some people assume I implicitly support astrology. I do not wish to be a stumbling block for anyone.

If you wish to get me a gift for my birthday, click on my wishlist, it contains my birthday and gift ideas! Thanks for your understanding.

My fear revisited

I just read a comment left on my post, The Future of the A/G, which played upon my fear of no longer fitting in with the fellowship of my childhood, my heritage, and my experience. Even after I sorted through the commenter's reasons that the A/G should get rid of me, and found them baseless and uninformed, I still was left with that burning feeling in my veins as though my blood was thawing and the ice flow of little crystals was playing needle to my *sewing project of your choice*. He tells me not to speak for my generation, that not everyone is apostate and a heretic like me, but he missed the point of my post. That is precisely my fear, though I hold out hope that I in the end will be viewed as embracing a wide orthodoxy rather than being a heretic.

I have to admit my fear is so great, that as soon as I found I had a comment, my heart began to race. Lord I do not feel condemned before you for the beliefs you have brought me to. Help me not to fear men. My only desire is to know you and please you. If being authentic even as people reject me pleases you, or even if my damnation to a more tangible hell would bring glory to your name in some way, let it be my love, let it be!

The body of Christ

Today as I was praying the rosary, my mind began to wander to all the rich symbolism of the Catholic church. I remembered a healing service I went to at Holy Family last year. The Franciscan friar leading the service took a host, and put it in a special display called a Monstrance. It is for them a way to look at the real body of Christ and adore him. The priest then held the monstrance in front of his face, hiding behind it and a shawl that represented Christ. We were then invited to pretend we were touching the hem of Jesus' garments as we touched the shawl and asked for healing.

The Catholic view of the bread being the real body of Christ is so compelling. In it's presence you are literally able to be with Christ physically like the first disciples were. What if we viewed the church, the body of Christ, as being his real physical body in that way? O Lord so indwell and transform our bodies, so that if someone wanted to see what it was like to touch you, they only need to touch us, or to hold on to you they would only need to embrace us!