Listening to the Wind....

As I sat on the patio out front of our house, the fussy southeast wind tossed the trees all around...bending the palms in our neighbor's yard, swishing the leaves of our live oak. While I sat there, I began to hear more...the 'little' sounds that the wind was bringing. The laughter of a child three houses up floated down to me. The rattly 'clunk-clunk' of a discarded beer crossing the street came to me. Across the street, a bit of loose Christmas decoration flapped in the wind. In the distance, the siren of first responders rose and fell with the intensity of the wind.

Wind is air moving...and it moves in a particular direction. As I sat there listening to the sounds on the wind, I realized that I was uniquely placed to hear what the wind brought me that evening. The lady who lives on the street behind us heard none of these things. Oh, she heard the wind in the trees—the BIG noise, but I was the one who heard the laughter of that child . The couple who lives six houses east of us would not have heard the can skitter across the asphalt—they were up-wind. The old fellow who always sits out in his carport watching the world go by, some five houses west of us, would not have heard the flapping decoration that caught my ear even though he was down-wind—the noises just weren't loud enough for him to hear. Yes, the wind brought these sounds to me...and I had to hear, reflect and/or act on them....

Jesus teaches us that God's Spirit is a wind...or maybe he was teaching that God's Wind is the Spirit? “Wind” and “Spirit” are the same word in Jesus' Aramaic and the Gospel-writer's Greek. Perhaps God's Spirit-Wind brings 'little' sounds just for you and just for me. Where we stand in life may position us to hear something that no one else is going to hear. Maybe the cry of that child (or teenager or adult) comes only to your ears...maybe that irritating 'flapping' or 'clunk-clunk' of something out of place, of something not right, of something calling for rightness or justice comes only to your ears.... And, you—the only one who hears these small sounds in our roaring world—you are the one who must act.

If the Spirit indeed works this way, much would be explained. How many times has someone—after hearing a sermon or reading a Scripture passage—come away having heard or read something that completely eluded us? Could it be that a particular breeze was blowing in their direction?

This calls me to realize that God's Spirit may speak to us in a way that no one around us hears. When I sit in worship and the pastor calls on the congregation to help feed a village in Malawi, I can no longer say, “Oh, there are plenty of other people 'hearing' this—they'll give.” No, now I realize that God may be blowing a message, a call that only I can hear, that only resonates in my heart. Now I realize that a song that fills me with joy can bring another to broken tears; a sermon that grabs my heart my leave others only curiously interested; the images of a child in Ecuador may call me to open my hands generously but may call a young couple on the next pew to sell it all and move to South America.

Finally, to hear the 'little' sounds in the wind, we have to be in the wind. If I stay in my home with the windows closed up tight and the TV on, the sounds on the wind would pass my by...along with the opportunities to respond. To hear the small sounds, we have to be in the wind...and listening. Even if I sit in a house of worship, I may only hear about the wind or only hear what others have heard...and not really hear the wind for myself. Yes, I need to get outside, sit in the wind, let it surround and caress me...and open my ears to hear what sounds of life and need and opportunity and possibility and purpose are being brought to me, in my particular place and time.

The wind blows wherever it pleases. You hear its sound, but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going. So it is with everyone born of the Spirit....

Since we live by the Spirit, let us keep in step with the Spirit....

~Jon~

I Got a Feelin'...NOT!

I often find myself sitting to write when God has revealed something new to me, when the Spirit has helped me through a hard time, or after I have come to new understanding of an old truth.  Not so today.  I write today because I feel that God is far from me.  The metaphor of the desert—of being in a ‘dry and thirsty land’—is more real to me now than it has been in a long time.

When I pray, I feel I am talking to myself.  When I read the Scriptures, I feel completely disconnected from that world.  When I attend worship, I feel like an outsider.  I hope beyond hope that I’m not the only Christian to feel this way.  And, as I intimated above, it’s not the first time….

But wait.  There IS good news in all of this.  How?  Well, it all comes down to the “I feel…” element of my confessions.  I have often told my students that we simply cannot trust our feelings…that our feelings change more frequently than the weather.  (Oh, feelings aren’t bad; we just tend to put too much emphasis on them.)   How often have we gotten out of bed smiling in the morning, glad for a new day…but leave the house or apartment scowling just an hour later as we head to work?  Or, how often have we been feeling down, beat-up, worn…and a phone call comes—from ‘him’ or ‘her’…and suddenly we’re all happy and smiles and “all is well with the world”?  Fickle—that’s what feelings are. 

How many times have I heard people say upon leaving a worship service, “Well, I just didn’t feel the Spirit there today….”  I’ve heard supposedly “mature” Christians (I’m beginning to think that means they’ve lost their ‘child-like’ faith!) talk about how they “feel the Lord moving them” in this direction or that.  Feelings--don’t trust ‘em. 

I learned long ago not to rely on feelings…and at the same time, I learned the importance of spiritual discipline.  In one of our classes in the seminary in Mexico, my students and I decided to develop a practical, imaginative definition of ‘spiritual discipline,’ and here is what we came up with:  Spiritual discipline is the constant preparation of the spiritual soil—weeding, plowing and hoeing in expectation of the coming rains; it’s putting one’s self in that path or road that Jesus usually walks so as to increase the likelihood of an encounter.  The spiritual disciplines of prayer, Scripture reading, worship, fasting and the like involve doing what is good and right and necessary to prepare the soil of our lives, to put us in that spiritual place to receive God, to hear God…even to be Christ for others in their moment of need.  It means praying, reading, worshiping, singing, listening—whether we feel like it or not. 

Whether I “feel” God hears me or not, I pray—I speak the words of thanksgiving, of care, of need.  Whether I “feel” a part of the Biblical conversation, I read—I open myself to words of life, words of hope, words of grace and guidance.  Whether I “feel” the Spirit or God’s Presence, or not, I gather with other Christians for worship—I receive communion, I sing the songs (sometimes only softly, under my breath!), I hear the Word read and proclaimed.  And I may walk away from all of these feeling unheard, disconnected or empty.  But, my life of faith is not based on feelings; it is based on what I know.  I have the promises:  And we know that He hears us…I will never leave you or forsake you…I am with you always, to the end of the age…[nothing] will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus….

Meanwhile, I tend the soil…I go through the motions…I do what I know is good and right, I put myself in God-pleasing places—and I await the encounter that will refresh me and perhaps even bring feelings to life again within me. 

~Jon~

(Note:  Attesting to the power and effect of writing…the act of writing, I have found a new sense of faith and purpose for having written this piece!  So, when something troubles you, write about it…and see what happens.)

People of the Book...the Address Book!

In the last few days, I’ve been organizing the address book for our e-mail account.  As I engaged in that tedious project, I came to an interesting realization.  Too often, we are on the receiving end e-mails, and we don’t really realize what we may be a part of....

In our address book, I find friends from high school, college, grad school, seminary and beyond; I find men and women and teenagers and even children.

There are people who live in Georgia, South Carolina, Virginia, Missouri, Texas, Alabama, Florida, North Carolina and…Venezuela, Mexico, Costa Rica, Peru, Ghana, England, Kazakhstan, China, Egypt, Grenada, Dubai and more!

A lot of the folks are Methodists…but there are also Baptists, Presbyterians, Anglicans/Episcopalians, Quakers…and certainly agnostics (of which a few might even claim to be atheists!) 

Some of the folks in that address book are people I worked with in school…others in churches…still others as part of mission teams. 

There are family members there—parents, siblings, children, cousins, aunts and uncles…and then some. 

Some of the email addresses belong to the very wealthy…and some to the very poor…and many to that broad group called ‘middle class.’

Some are Republicans...some are Democrats...some are Independents...some are other lands and the parties there...and some are "I-don't-know-and-don't-care's!

Some of the people there I have known for over 40 years…some I’ve met only recently, in the last few months. 

Some have helped us by supporting our work in Venezuela and Mexico by sending money…some have helped by sending us encouraging emails…some have helped by praying for us…and some have helped by doing nothing and not saying anything!

The wonderful and amazing thing is that we really do know almost every single one of you who are in our address book.  We’ve met you and know you and you know us.  When I see that there are some 800 names in my address book, I realize that we are truly blessed…and we thank you for keeping up with us, for supporting us in various ways, for tolerating too few or too many e-mails!

When you receive that e-mail from us next time, realize that you are part of a huge, beautiful, multifaceted, international, group of people that somehow share at least one commonality--probably more--and that we are so grateful for you!

Some Thoughts on the Church...Carretto

I found this modern "desert father" about seven or eight years ago.  He just keeps on pushing me to love and to understand and to grow.  Enjoy!  ~Jon~

“How baffling you are, oh Church, and yet how I love you! How you have made me suffer, and yet how much I owe you! I would like to see you destroyed, and yet I need your presence. You have given me so much scandal and yet you have made me understand what sanctity is. I have seen nothing in the world more devoted to obscurity, more compromised, more false, and yet I have touched nothing more pure, more generous, more beautiful. How often I have wanted to shut the doors of my soul in your face, and how often I have prayed to die in the safety of your arms.

No, I cannot free myself from you, because I am you, though not completely. And besides, where would I go? Would I establish another? I would not be able to establish it without the same faults, for they are the same faults I carry in me. And if I did establish another, it would be my Church, not the Church of Christ. I am old enough to know that I am no better than anyone else. …)

The Church has the power to make me holy but it is made up, from the first to the last, only of sinners. And what sinners! It has the omnipotent and invincible power to renew the Miracle of the Eucharist, but is made up of men who are stumbling in the dark, who fight every day against the temptation of losing their faith. It brings a message of pure transparency but it is incarnated in slime, such is the substance of the world. It speaks of the sweetness of its Master, of its non-violence, but there was a time in history when it sent out its armies to disembowel the infidels and torture the heretics. It proclaims the message of evangelical poverty, and yet it does nothing but look for money and alliances with the powerful.

Those who dream of something different from this are wasting their time and have to rethink it all. And this proves that they do not understand humanity. Because this is humanity, made visible by the Church, with all its flaws and its invincible courage, with the Faith that Christ has given it and with the love that Christ showers on it.

When I was young, I did not understand why Jesus chose Peter as his successor, the first Pope, even though he abandoned Him. Now I am no longer surprised and I understand that by founding his church on the tomb of a traitor(…)He was warning each of us to remain humble, by making us aware of our fragility. (…)

And what are bricks worth anyway? What matters is the promise of Christ, what matters is the cement that unites the bricks, which is the Holy Spirit. Only the Holy Spirit is capable of building the church with such poorly moulded bricks as are we.

And that is where the mystery lies. This mixture of good and bad, of greatness and misery, of holiness and sin that makes up the church…this in reality am I .(…)

The deep bond between God and His Church, is an intimate part of each one of us. (…)To each of us God says, as he says to his Church, “And I will betroth you to me forever” (Hosea 2,21). But at the same time he reminds us of reality: 'Your lewdness is like rust. I have tried to remove it in vain. There is so much that not even a flame will take it away' (Ezechiel 24, 12).

But then there is even something more beautiful. The Holy Spirit who is Love, sees us as holy, immaculate, beautiful under our guises of thieves and adulterers. (…) It’s as if evil cannot touch the deepest part of mankind.

He re-establishes our virginity no matter how many times we have prostituted our bodies, spirits and hearts. In this, God is truly God, the only one who can ‘make everything new again’. It is not so important that He will renew heaven and earth. What is most important is that He will renew our hearts. This is Christ’s work. This is the divine Spirit of the Church.”
― Carlo Carretto

Found here: http://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/64433.Carlo_Carretto?auto_login_attempted=true

Impact vs. Impact

This week, I had the opportunity to participate in a planning committee for a project that has the potential to affect over 10,000 high school students in our area.  The project is huge, impacting multiple public school districts and their students.  The ultimate impact on the communities of these students is beyond our prophetic abilities, but the data indicates that the impact will be huge.  Being a part of this committee as we plan and plot and move forward is quite exciting, as one might imagine.

                            

Yet, something even more exciting happened this week.  As I sat in my office one morning, I was surprised to hear the shuffle of feet outside my door…and then a light knock.  When I looked up, Raul’s smiling face was peering around the door frame…and Thalia followed him in to my office.  Raul enwrapped me in his huge bear-hug…and Thalia embraced me as well.  The joy of seeing these two former students of mine is beyond words I can pen.  We sat and talked together for half-an-hour.  I listened as they recounted their summer adventures and travels, and I encouraged them as they told me of their dreams and hopes for the months and years to come.  We laughed together remembering times in class last semester.  And, when they left, it was with the promise to come visit again.

After these two experiences, I began to think about “impact” and what it means.  In both my teaching career and in my new administrative position, lives are impacted.  People are changed, bettered.  But, “impact” simply does not mean “impact.” 

Last semester as I taught a writing course on the Weslaco campus of STC, I had 16 students that I met twice a week, every week.  We dug into the excruciatingly painful (for them!) elements of grammar, examined and practiced various modes of writing, learned how to do research both on-line and in the library, and prepared for the exit exam that would come at the end of the semester.  Every week, we sent multiple e-mails as I sent assignments and the students responded with questions.  At the end of the semester, we knew each other—I knew about Raul’s immigration as a child from Nicaragua when his family fled the violence and unrest of the 80’s that were going on in his native country.  I learned about Thalia’s family…her work…and her dreams.  They knew when I got my motorcycle…new my children by name, and which one was studying where.  I had impacted their lives…and they had impacted mine.

                                            

The committee that is putting together this up-coming project may ‘impact’ far more than just 16 young adults—it would impact some 10,000+ students in six school districts!  Wow!  That is amazing…and it’s a good thing.  But….

…But, those 10,000 students will never know me…and I’ll never know them.  Lives are ‘impacted’…but in a distant and dispassionate way.

I now know what teachers go through who move up into administration.  We can affect so many more students, we can ‘impact’ so many more lives.  But…. 

Pastors and church leaders go through the same…more often in the growth of the church than by ‘promotion.’  The small, intimate, sharing group of believers grows…excitement builds…outreach happens…then the church builds…and numbers grow…and at the end , the now “successful” pastor finds that he or she is ‘impacting’ so many more lives…but there is a distance, dispassion and disconnect that these kinds of pastors may have a hard time putting their fingers on.

If these pastors and church leaders hope to keep their balance and joy in life and ministry, they are going to have to do something.  In a worst case scenario, the pastor will seek intimacy and impact in the wrong place, in the wrong kind of relationship.  But in a best case scenario, this pastor will seek a small group—a discipleship group (high school, college, young adults), a mission/church plant—where he or she can form again those intimate, life-changing bonds that will leave all involved forever and positively changed…impacted.

                                    

So, I’ve moved from being a teacher in our college to being a part of administration.  Thankfully, our college leadership makes administrator participation in the teaching arts a high priority.  Therefore, this Fall, I’ll be in the classroom again—an evening class, two nights a week.  I’m SOOOO excited to be heading back to the classroom, to connecting with students, to pushing them, challenging them…and to their pushing me, their challenging me. 

I’ll stay in administration, thank you—I’m having a blast in my new job.  But, I’m so thankful that I’ll be able to continue to impact the individual lives of young men and women, that I’ll be able to share my life with them, and they with me.  This is where the real ‘impact’ happens.

Sweet Relief....

I’m reading Carlo Carretto again (Letters from the Desert), an intimate work that follows Carretto’s feet and mind into the desert of North Africa. 

He had been very active in the Church for many years, and quite suddenly he hears God call him to leave it all behind in his homeland of Italy and follow God into the desert.

At one point towards the beginning of the book, he is contemplating his earnest, dedicated labors and activity in the church back home, his practice of running “continually from one project to another, from one meeting to another, from one city to another”.  While involved in all of that, he had been operating on a worldview that went something like this:  God created the world and then stepped aside to rest; Christ founded the Church and then disappeared in to heaven to let the Church save the world.  Carretto says he imagined that his frenzied life and work were somehow part of the column that was holding everything up and everything together.

I drew back suddenly, as though to fee myself from this weight.  What had happened?  Everything remained in its place, motionless.  Not a movement, not a sound.  After twenty-five years I had realized that nothing was burdening on my shoulders and that the column was my own creation—sham, unreal, the product of my own imagination and my vanity.

I had walked, run, spoken, organized, worked, in the belief that I was supporting something; and in reality I had been holding up absolutely nothing.

The weight of the world was all on Christ Crucified.  I was nothing, absolutely nothing.

What amazing relief…to know that it does not depend on me.  May I never again be suckered into the “sham, unreal…product of my own imagination and vanity.”

(All quotations taken from:  Carretto, Carlos.  “You are Nothing.”  Letters from the Desert. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2002.)

How to Joyfully Survive an ‘Economic Down-Turn’ (or Recession, Depression, etc.)

Some thoughts on our present state of affairs...and times to come....

http://herrin-horizon.blogspot.com/2012/07/how-to-joyfully-survive-economic-down.html