Wounded Stories III: Wounds As a Source of Healing

One of my favorite essays I’ve ever read was Brian Keene’s Bleed With Me. It was about what artists have to do for the sake of their art, which is essentially to bleed for others. Our pain, our hearts, our souls laid bare in order to convey the truth of art. Put another way, it is the vulnerability and transparency of the artist that is the source for the best art experience.

Admittedly, there are varying levels of transparency. Sometimes the emotional truth is easier to get to through the distance of fiction. Even on my blog, it’s still fairly safe, after all, it is my platform with moderated comments (though that doesn’t stop the occasional troll). Encountering people in the real world is an entirely different matter because be it blog or story, once it’s sent off, it’s in the hands of the readers for them to experience as they will.

Transparency is a learned skill. People might be born open, but we learn to protect ourselves, to shut people out, and build walls. Personally, I’ve been blessed to have a half dozen pastors who get in my face, hold me to account, and walk with me (not engage in CYA meetings to say they have checked in). I am also in a recovery program. And let me tell you, I’ve had to confess that I suck at transparency. In fact, I’m convinced that I need an introductory program of steps to make it to the first 12, just to get me to the sharing part.

As much as we may sometimes want to, we can’t live alone. We have blind spots. We’re biased to our own stories, positively and negatively. Live life outside of our paradigm. People who grow up abused may consider that the norm until they develop relationships with people outside their experience. We live from a place of fear, wanting to protect ourselves from pain. For many, that means suppressing emotions or otherwise leading a flat emotional life. We have a distrust emotions, for some it’s a Charismatic paranoia, afraid of letting emotions sweep us away as a part of the faith experience. Step outside of our mindset of how people ought to behave and deal with how they do, meet them where they are.

So how do we begin to access our heart? How do we begin ending that awkward dance of disconnectedness? We long to feel close to another, be it intimacy with God or simply a connection with others, yet live in the shadows of not knowing what to share, or fear over-sharing and chasing people away. It’s funny, some people need conflict to access their hearts while others are so conflict averse, they find it easier to walk away from relationships. We have to come to a place where we learn how to listen and know ourselves. Sometimes we’re so numb we have to begin by praying to have our hearts woken up, to have the fear broken, and be released to be the real you. And that’s risky: people may not like the real you. Start with what you know. The power of confession is admitting our failings. There is a power to putting our feelings to words through prayer, sharing our stories of woundedness, and finding healing as we push one another forward.

Moving forward is the key. Some people become stuck and need help to not suffer needlessly for the wrong reasons. Some days it hurts more than others and people cry out. For some, in the superficial sharing, pain can become romanticized, An openness about woundedness brings with it the danger of exhibitionism—an emotional Munchausen syndrome—as if the superficial sharing is the end of the process. While people don’t need to be categorized as being drama queens seeking attention, open wounds don’t heal, so we can’t stop with just airing problems.

Sometimes a person in pain can’t recognize their hurt and nor diagnose a treatment. All they know is that it hurts. We’re all afraid of the pain, none of us wanting it in our lives. We want it to be fixed, ended, to be made better and while we wish we could go back to the way things were or snap our fingers and make everything better, it is a process. One which requires time. The proper community plays a role in this process. Cries for help are met with care, compassion, understanding, forgiveness, fellowship, and in all things, love; all the things that make and should characterize a community. Shared pain stops being paralyzing. In the sharing and bearing, community is build as they carry one another in shared hope, in their common search for Christ.

Learning to stand and walk (not hide) midst of pain and misunderstandings involves allowing the opportunity for people to speak into your life, to walk beside you, to break through our fears and loneliness. To allow others to know what’s going on and pray for you. For those with similar stories to find you and lead you. It allows community to spring up in a time of need and do its job and in so doing the community acts as witnesses and agents of grace and love and peace.

Wounded stories become opportunities in peoples lives. Moments of confession, to reflect on and live out our faith, and to build community if we’re bold enough to wade into another’s pain and story. To do so means we have to move outside of our own preoccupations and agendas and needs and worries. It means a withdrawal of self to allow room for another. It may mean allowing them room to vent, cry, be angry, be silent, rest; in short, to be a safe place.

While we have to move forward in our pain, wholeness can’t be given from one to another. Not a friend, not a romantic interest, not a well-intended seminarian, but only through the blood of Christ. It means washing our own wounds and past, giving them up and letting go of them. It means finding forgiveness, for ourselves as well as others. In so doing, our wounds become occasions for new visions. In our weakness we have a reminder that we can’t do it alone, that we have to move forward while clinging to God’s promises. We need to let the light of His amazing love work through us, holding us together, holding marriages together, dispelling the lies of isolation and abandonment.

We need to know and own our own pain, our own story. Being authentic, raw, and vulnerable is risky. Being a wounded healer means allowing others to enter our lives, connecting their story with yours … without having any idea where this will lead or what it will look like. We can only hope that life on the other side of the journey to wholeness—the journey our of our dark places—will be a much better place.

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Wounded Stories I: Wounded Story Tellers
Wounded Stories II: Suffering Servant
Wounded Stories III: Wounds As a Source of Healing

Wounded Stories II: Suffering Servant

We all carry around hurts with us, pain which, left untreated, has a way of settling in and rotting us from the inside like a festering wound. Sadly, hurts and lies have a way of shaping us as we carry them around inside us like an infection. Be we wounded by parents, having felt the cold indifference of friends, the sting of a careless word from a pastor, a sense of abandonment at a critical time, or just the tragedy of life in a fallen world, our stories of what carves out pieces of us are all too similar. As much as our American culture teaches us to “suck it up”, pull ourselves up by our own bootstraps, eventually we come to the realization that our own strength will only take us so far.

The walking wounded run a risk when we choose to encounter another’s pain. Our instinct may be to flee, find a way to distance ourselves from them, even ostracize them. After all, it’s an emotional risk to put ourselves out there in order to be arms of comfort, ears of compassion. Ultimately, we’re also faced with a two-pronged tension: we can’t find healing in one another, yet who can alleviate suffering without entering into it?

“He was despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows, and familiar with suffering. Like one from whom men hide their faces he was despised, and we esteemed him not. Surely he took up our infirmities and carried our sorrows, yet we considered him stricken by God, smitten by him, and afflicted. But he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was upon him, and by his wounds we are healed.” Isaiah 53:3-5

Christ identifies with us in our pain and woundedness. Our stories are His stories from a life He experienced alongside us. Leading us by example, making our story His, knowing our hurts and fears. He lived with eye to hope, no matter how dark it got. Hope provides a glimpse of the destination we wish to reach. Home.

We don’t take away one another’s pain. There’s no way for us to. What we can do is share one another’s pain, bear one another up. It’s messy, there are no universal steps because life, like the people in it, is creatively individual. So we also have to give each other room to move. It’s also from this place of brokenness that is a starting place for a profound journey.

Entering the complexities of our inner lives, our inner journey, involves sifting through and dealing with the muck of transformation. We all want to lead safe and protected lives, yet we aren’t called to safety (another tension we have to live within). Still, we search out a safe place to confess, repent, and heal. Seek those who are safe, possibly those who can relate to our pain, our woundedness. Those who are willing to be raw and failing yet be at one other’s disposal. Muddling through the faith and doubt, light and dark, hope and despair, that often comes with the real inner work of transformation.

And we continue to let Christ in as we pursue an emotional intimacy with Him. Continuously learning to give ourselves over to him. Continuing to wash our past and brokenness in the blood of Christ.

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Wounded Stories I: Wounded Story Tellers
Wounded Stories II: Suffering Servant
Wounded Stories III: Wounds As a Source of Healing

Wounded Stories I: Wounded Story Tellers

"…I have found that the very feeling which has seemed to me most private, most personal and hence most incomprehensible by others, has turned out to be an expression for which there is a resonance in many other people. It has led me to believe that what is the most personal and unique in each one of us is probably the very element which would, if it were shared or expressed, speak most deeply to others. This has helped me to understand artists and poets who have dared to express the unique in themselves.” –Carl Rogers, On Becoming a Person

We are called to be wounded healers taking care of our own wounds, while prepared to treat the wounds of others. The idea of wounded healers led me to Henri Nouwen’s book, The Wounded Healer which I’ve been meditating on for the last few weeks.

A lot of folks don’t know what to do with folks who are truly hurting. They are quick to label them crazy or drama queens, accuse them of self-aggrandizing behavior. To be fair, condition not always easily recognized, hidden behind walls, retreated to caves to lick wounds (ironic that our instinct is to withdraw from those who would help us). On the flip side, people who are hurting aren’t always the most cooperative of “patients”, often scared or indifferent and stubborn, or whatever else their posture of woundedness, unable to give voice or words to their state of despair or hopelessness. Burdened with the weight of guilt and shame, and self-contempt, they might pull away from people, not wanting to let others see our wounds believing them to be too ugly.

They have a sense of being lost, believing themselves without family or friends or anyone to understand or relate to their plight. As they bottom out, not knowing whether they want to live or die, unable to give any direction (or even perspective) to their story, they become prisoners of their own existence. People feel alone when no one seems to be around to walk through your pain with you, to simply be there to pray with, talk to, comfort. That’s part of the healing power of being present.

A desperate cry demands a response from their brother. Not indifference or isolation, not intellectual platitudes of a well-intentioned seminarian. These are easy emotionally, safe responses, sometimes betraying a hubris and insensitivity, an aloofness to the pain and suffering of others. As Larry Crabb said, “the solution to the problem of disconnection is connection.” To become present to one another means that we have to encounter each other in a very real and very human way. The comfort of presence allows us to smell, feel, hear, and see another. It’s a connection through each other’s story that puts a lie to no one being there, the lie that no one cares. It lets the wounded know that there are people waiting on the other side of the dark time.

We are human and we will fail one another. We can’t and won’t be there perfectly for one another, despite the well-meaning promises between parent and child, spouses, boy/girlfriends, friends. It’s all a part of the mystery of people. They’re so individually … peoplely. It’s easy to point out the failures to draw near to others. We forget, they’re people too, wounded in their own ways, and like the rest of us, have to work through their own fears, hesitations, self-preoccupation, and self-protections in order to reach out to others. It’s why the idea of dealing with people who are deeply wounded and hurting leaves them befuddled, not knowing what to do.

We’re all called to be wounded healers, but it’s hard to lead another out of pain if you’ve never allowed yourself to deal with your own pain. Sometimes you have to head straight into the pain to come out of the other side

Our own emotions—anger, fear, disappointment, resentments, distrust—may keep us from drawing near to our “neighbor” when they are wounded (by themselves or by life). Healing can begin with a simple forgiving embrace, a confession of failure, not justifications and rationalizations. Few people want to keep screaming in the face of their pain. They want someone to listen, to truly listen. Few people don’t hope for recovery, don’t want to be restored or find wholeness, who’d rather find temporary shelter in the attention of their stories. We’re not called to camp out in our woundedness or brokenness, but it is the hope of that promised wholeness keeps us pursuing the way of Jesus.

The gospel story isn’t that we sin and God forgives, or that we’re just sinners. We’re children, heirs, called to a life of joy. We are to make his life our own and be transformed. He is the source of healing, the Balm in Gilead. We are to grow to look like him, not just as the suffering servant, but becoming fully human. And making the journey to become fully human and return home.

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Wounded Stories I: Wounded Story Tellers
Wounded Stories II: Suffering Servant
Wounded Stories III: Wounds As a Source of Healing

Finding Our Way Home

Thinking about my relationship with my wife has—running it through the filter of Henri Nouwen’s The Return of the Prodigal Son—has made me realize a lot about my relationship with God. And vice versa. When you wander down a dark tunnel, the longer you walk in that darkness, the longer it will take you to find your way out/back again, pure and simple. It’s a long, self-exposing journey.

Whether we realize it or not, we’re all looking for a home where we could feel safe. A place of belonging and rest. Home. God has made His home, a place for us to return to, a place He calls us to. But God is also a jealous love, wanting every part of us all the time.

I know that I struggle with the idea that someone wants to know me, sees me, and still accepts, loves, and pursues me. So the words to that familiar hymn, “prone to wander”, ring true as over and over I have left home. Thoughts, feelings, passions, busyness all take me away from home, from God. Trying to stave off the travails of the human soul, the loneliness and sorrow; fill a hole, desire, and thirst only God could satisfy. Looking for affirmation, validation, appreciation, affection from friends, family, or fans. Not realizing that I can’t look for my true self, my true home, there, I have gone off to find somewhere else what I believed what I couldn’t find at home.

It boils down to we don’t trust in love. It’s hard to. It’s difficult to believe in a love that doesn’t compare, that doesn’t reward, that meets you where you are, as you as, because that’s not what we do and isn’t how our world operates. The world teaches us that love is conditional. That striving for success, popularity, power, denying that love is free, is all part of buying into the belief that you have to earn it. It feeds our doubts about our self-worth.

A lot of people live their lives never fully convinced they are loved as they are. Never be able to love or unable to receive love, or allow ourselves to feel and accept love without strings attached or pre-requisites. Their stories have an eerie similarity to them: their parents may not have given them what they needed, their teachers may not have believed in them or otherwise tore them down, they were abandoned at a critical moment (by parents, peers, or even a church). Whatever was their bedrock for stability was shaken or removed and they learned not to trust.

In God we have an invitation to intimacy, to a safe place to call home. We have a nearly instinctual resistance to him. Our independence, our need to control, prevents us from coming to our senses and falling to our knees. Unwilling to dare to let myself kneel down and be held by a loving God. To believe in the promise of forgiveness. Healing. Wholeness. As the Good Shepherd, God goes out and looks for His lost sheep. With God not content to let us stew in our sin and brokenness, we have to confront the question: if God is trying to find, know, and love me, how am I to let myself be found, be known, and be loved?

Ignoring the place of true love, combined with our need to fill our inner hole, causes us to look elsewhere. The deepest cravings of our hearts demands to be filled, enabling addictions. Our lostness makes us cling to different things to find (self) fulfillment. Chasing after lust confused with love, admiration, food, drugs, sometimes even a friendship can call you away from home, all are deceptive ways of finding self-worth. If we’re running around asking “do you love me? Do you really love me?” of those around us, we’re defined by the world and the loud voices who want us to buy into the lie about ourselves. If we’re hurting and chase a high to numb ourselves from the pain or feel a sense of peace, we’re unable to full experience life. And these have inner consequences as we end up running further and further away from home and the less we’re able to hear the voice of the one who loves and speaks love to us.

Stepping into the kingdom of God means giving up a sense of control. As our lives spiral out of control, as we come to, but haven’t quite arrived at, our end of self moment, we want a sense of control over the burgeoning mess of our lives. The difficult path begins when we let the situation inform and teach us, a process of letting go, dying to fear of not knowing where things will all lead. When we begin to hear a voice that could only be heard when you are willing to feel. When we’re willing to do the hard work of staying in the pain of this world, while in pain, and dealing with the pain.

Accepting love, forgiveness, and healing is often harder than giving it because giving it means we’re in control. Anything else means that we are entering into a scary place, like much of faith, and becomes about surrender and trust. We enter into a place beyond earning and deserving. A place of grace. Home.

Coming home is a long, self-exposing journey, part of the spiritual adventure.

And I’m praying for the strength to live out that journey.

God Doesn’t Have Writer’s Block

I’ve written about the church’s uneasy relationship with art and spoken before of how story impacts my Christianity, but I’ve been thinking lately about how the many in the church have an uneasy relationship with story. Which is ironic considering that a good chunk of the basis of our faith is rooted in lessons provided by a collection of stories.

Our imagination is an amazing gift. Our ability to conceive ideas and construct stories is beautiful. It joins us to our Creator and is part of what makes us human. Its dark side, however, is that it can be used as a destructive device that can distort reality and is why so many inherently trust any sort of metanarrative. Story is a powerful thing, rife with potential, and because we were created in God’s image, we want to write our own stories.

I write by outline. When I’m plotting out a novel, there’s a story I know I want to tell. So I can spend pages creating characters, laying out plot points, describing different scenes, jotting down snippets of dialogue to capture each character’s voice, and generally plotting out the overall story. But I leave the end of the outline, the climax of the story, open. If my characters are real, they aren’t always going to cooperate with the story I have in mind. If they were created as living, breathing, fully fleshed out characters, they have freedoms and will make choices. They have their own story to tell and I need to give them room to allow them to write it themselves. If I impose my plot at the expense of their character arcs, the story I’m writing will ring hollow. I am not being true to them or the narrative.

I wonder if this is how God operates?

Stories can sometimes be painful and take dark and unexpected turns. When situations, crisis moments, rise up, we want to impose out plots on them. As a church, we can get tempted into wanting to write our own stories, trying to create "look what God did" tales—wrapping things up in time for our Thanksgiving service or next sermon series—that we overlook the people involved and the story HE's writing. Stories proceed at their own pace, moving along their own timeline. Sometimes when faced with a painful or overwhelming story, we want to get to the end quickly (sometimes any ending), not allowing time or any sort of narrative process to unfold, simply to get over it and feel better. Trying to manage the story rather than being true to the story and characters.

I had a story once where the words were coming easy, the characters fully imagined in my head, and then I tried to force a story onto them. Instead of dealing with the characters in front of me, as they were, I moved the story at the expense of them and their needs. Shocker of all shocks, the characters quit cooperating with me. It was like they opted out of the story. So I had to scrap the story I was trying to do and start over.

We also have a way of trapping people in stories, not just as a people, or as a church, but also as individuals. We are quick to label people—“that’s the crazy one”, “that’s the drama queen”, “that’s the villain”—defining them into roles that they aren’t free to grow out of. Similarly, we can sometimes do the same damage to ourselves when we believe lies about ourselves.

Similarly to losing focus of the characters, we can lose focus of the story and end up forcing stories, locked into the endings we want. We end up trying to salvage a story:

-if we can just get this person saved
-if we can just get these people to reconcile
-if we can just change this person’s thinking or way of life

All good ends, but mixed in with an inherent hubris: as if we’re the author’s of those stories. What it reveals is that we don't trust narrative. or the Ultimate Author. Our need to control locks us into creating “an opportunity for a miracle” (you know how we like to give God a helping hand with the situations we encounter), wanting to have a good “look what God did” story to tell, as if we need to provide Him crib notes to help the story along.

But God doesn’t have writer’s block.

As much as we would wish or act like it is, life isn’t a choose your own adventure story. Stories happen on God’s script and on His time table. As such, narratives are uncertain and should be prayerfully written. Narratives aren’t safe and require faith in an ultimate Author and asks us to surrender our narrative to Him and the story He wants to write. Our stories are ones of continued surrender.

We need to encounter each other as stories, bumping up against and connecting to others as fellow participants and co-authors of a story of reconciliation and healing. Pain and suffering is our universal language, our great uniter. Our collective sin, our response to that sin, requires that we walk through the pain of a fallen world with a willingness to enter into one another’s paralyzing situations.

The story isn’t that we sin and God forgives, but that we’re children of God’s, co-heirs with Jesus, called to a life of joy. We are to make His life our own, transforming us, sometimes through the refining fire of pain, to look like Him, as children come to resemble their parents. That’s the story we find ourselves in.

God’s Failed Ambassadors

Or Don’t Trip … He Ain’t Through With You Yet

While I was thinking through what I was going to say about “The Story of (My) Christianity”, I was left with a bunch of issues that I struggled with. It's the whole idea of God sending us to be His ambassadors and then seemingly not being able to equip us adequately for the job. I see it in my church. I see it in my life. I see it in my heart. Shouldn’t there be a more demonstrable difference between “us” and “them”? Why are we still so broken?

A friend of mine put it this way: “If God is to be the all powerful diety he is, why does he not do more to change us when we confess his Lordship over our lives? Yeah, yeah, free will and all that, but still what are we saying when we are calling him "Lord"? Isn't part of that an invitation for Him to change us? Sure, it takes work on our part, but I could use some help and, if you believe the surveys, so does everyone else. When I look at the Christian community, I see epic fail and it's really hard for me to just say that it's all our fault. If we are to be representing Him, and if we are calling Him the Lord of our lives, then I would think we would get more help...and if He isn't then how can we say the blame is all on us?”

We were created in the image of God and declared “good”. Good. We forget that part of things, that as image-bearers, we have inherent worth. We don’t always live up to that potential, what we were created to be. We could look at our place in the greater scheme of things as a matter of us not being able to save ourselves, but that’s not the whole story. We’re invited into a way of life, a life of transformation. We don’t have to remain as we are, mired in the mess of our lives. We can seek a path of wholeness, become humans to be restored in all the dimensions of humanity.

Probably points more to our misunderstanding of God and our relationship with him. We don't have to be perfect to be dispensers of God's grace. Martin Luther spoke of Christians as being simultaneously saints and sinners. It has taken me quite a while to understand that God’s not interested in fixed vessels. We have it in our heads that we need to be perfect, have our act together, be the “best” representatives that we can be because how else can we be used by God.

This idea of perfection has crippled my spiritual walk. The Bible seems to not only demand perfection, but it seems to imply that perfection is attainable now. Then someone pointed out to me that I had a screwed up view of “perfection.” When we read the word “perfection” through our modern mindset, we see the Greek ideal of perfection. We can’t attain that. Yet for most of my spiritual life, I was tormented by the guilt of failure because I couldn’t reach this goal of perfection. My life was littered with seemingly endless failures. But when you read perfection more through the eyes of the original audience, you find the Hebrew idea of wholeness. Being complete is something that we can attain.

We are no more immune to sin and temptation than our neighbor, as much as I (and many in the churches) would like to believe otherwise. We’re sick and we need resurrection, divine healing. He calls us to join with Him, to be set free of the lives we’re imprisoned in into a new world, a new way of living. In our imperfection, in our brokenness, we know each other’s pain and weakness—without room for judgment—and can best be there for one another. We can be the consoling arms of God for one another.

Our actions define our eternity. The strongest, most impactful message you can have about your faith is the one we speak with our lives. If we aren't living it out, it invalidates anything we have to say on the subject. If what we say and how we live don't match, we've probably already lost the battle. There’s the heart of my struggle. I’ve tried to follow Jesus and it’s hard. There’s nothing simple about it. It’s paradoxical. It’s counter-intuitive. Often I feel as if I know the truth, but have no experience of its reality or fail to fully live it out.

God is engaged in a gentle dance with us, wooing us to Him not wanting to force Himself on us, but rather wanting us to freely choose to love Him; to join with His redemptive mission for each other and for creation. He chooses to work through a failed people for reasons we may never understand. We are cracked vessels, works in progress. God doesn't give up on us … we give up on ourselves. We aren’t defined by our failings and stumbling. We’re defined by how we get back up, bruised knees and all, dust ourselves off, and keep on our journey.

The Faithful Wrath

I don’t know why Wrath James White can’t simply say “Hey Maurice, I miss you. Why don’t you give me a call sometime?” Noooooo, instead he has to go all passive-aggressive on me and write a blog specifically designed to pick an argument with me. (Right, because we all know Wrath’s passive-aggressive … when he’s not being, you know, aggressive-aggressive.)

In the foreward of Orgy of Souls, I wrote that “faith is that sometimes tenuous, sometimes stronger than we think thing that keeps our world in order. [Wrath and I are] both men of faith in our own way, be it faith in ourselves or faith in God. We each are on our own spiritual journey. My faith follows a story, something that especially resonates with me as a writer. However, Wrath’s faith is every bit as rich and varied as my own.”

Why have I described both Wrath and I as men of faith? Because of one of the definitions of faith he cites: complete trust; something that is believed especially with strong conviction. Faith is an intuitive leap to what you choose to believe and how you choose to process the world around you. Any choice of a worldview requires a leap of faith, to believe that your worldview is the “right” one. I believe quest/knowledge journeys begin with a leap of faith, that is, what we choose to put our trust in. For some, it is ourselves (the individual or humanity). For some, it is science (the determination of our senses). For some, it is the spiritual (under the assumption that there is more to this life than presented, both in terms of the spiritual and in terms of after this life). To quote from the blog of my friend, Rich Vincent:

“Christianity does not consist in a series of verifiable and interlocking hypotheses. Nor is it a philosophical system consisting in satisfactory, mutually consistent propositions… the way that truth is sought and engaged with is not through detachment but through a living relationship of faith and love with the object we seek”. The Christian seeks more than “objective truth,” facts, or information. “The goal is not to find information, or even to discern fact, but to bring ourselves, as living subjects, into engagement with reality, culminating ultimately in a participation in the ground of what is real”.

Also, Christians don’t have a monopoly on truth. As Christ himself says, “Everyone who is of the truth hears my voice” (John 18.37). In my faith worldview, Christ is the universal truth and all truth leads to him. Faith doesn’t always make sense to me, I think that’s one reason why we’re told to work out our faith in fear and trembling (Philippians 2:12). I can only work out my faith in the doing. I have always seen myself as a soldier, someone who dives in to do the work. Your faith should drive you to action. It has its own dangers as I’m prone to working hard FOR Him, or doing good works for their own sake, rather than working hard to KNOW Him. And it’s the knowing of God that’s at the heart of my faith. Again, to quote from Rich's blog:

An authentic encounter with the living and eternal God touches both our hearts and our hands. God calls us to nothing less than complete spiritual transformation. Those who desire to simply dabble in religion will get nowhere. Only thoses willing to submit to the rigors of regular acts of self-examination, confession of sin, and deeds of repentance can know deep and lasting change.

An authentic encounter with the living God will never leave us as we are – it will challenge our lifestyles, attitudes, actions, and motivations. The reason is simple: God regularly calls us to change – to repentance. If we are unwilling to change, we harden ourselves to spiritual transformation. Only a humble heart, open to God, ready to admit mistakes, willing to start again can know the fullness of what God desires.

Religion needs to be more than a get out of hell free card and church needs to be more than a collection of folks who huddle together to debate theology and revel in their rightness. The point of Christianity isn’t to make it into heaven, but rather the story we find ourselves in: we’re lost, dying, and in need of new life. Through Christ we’re found, saved, and given a model for a new way of living.

I believe that we’re all people of faith in our own way, it’s just a matter of what we choose to put that faith in, be it in ourselves, science, humanity, or in God. As such, each of us are on our own spiritual journey. There will be times when science will clarify matters of faith just like there will be times when faith can temper our sometimes irrational admiration for the rational. I think we can do more than just make “a” decision and hope that we’re right. We can continue to test what we believe and say we’re about and live out our lives accordingly.

Mo*Con IV: The Story of (My) Christianity Part II

(Continued from Part I)

There are two kinds of writers: those who can sit down in front of their keyboards or with their pad and pen and simply start writing, letting the story and characters go where they go. I hate them. I’m the other kind, the ones who outline because we have to know where the story is going or else we’d get lost. Me viewing my life through the lens of a writer had implications on how I viewed the Bible. I started to read it as a storybook, a collection of stories. The story of God’s interaction with His people and a collection of stories I choose to live my life by.

A story has to have a beginning, a middle, and an end. With the Bible, the beginning starts with ... the beginning, the creation. The act of creation provides not only the setting, but also the characters. But who is the central character, the protagonist? Who is the hero of the story? God? Humanity?

So we start with God. I believe that there are things we can’t/haven’t measured, a spiritual transcendent dimension to our reality. There is something wholly other, a complex other. If you’ve ever tried to get to know someone, you know that it requires work, trust, intimacy, and time, and that’s for people. God is ineffable (beyond words) and incomprehensible. God would not be God if this were not the case. And we’re handicapped by having only limited perception.
There is mystery and paradox, involved in getting to know him.

If there is a God, he has to have revealed himself or else he might as well not exist. We would end up endlessly wondering what “the Universe” wants. On faith, I believe Christ is not only the bridge to that other, but also the full revelation of that Other. But I’m skipping ahead in the story.

The protagonist (for that matter, all the characters) has a long-term goal for the duration of the story, so in this case, it is God interacting with humanity for a purpose. God creates, for the same reason we echo in our lives, because he has to. It’s a well spring of who he is. The Creator loved world he made, wanted to look after it best possible way so he created care-taker creatures modeled on Himself, embody his characteristics (though not fully).

The action that propels a story is some sense of conflict, in the form of the Fall: the sin of Adam and Eve. Moving beyond a literal interpretation of the story, let’s look at what the sin represents. Adam’s sin represents man seeking his own way. Sin becomes its own undoing. We’re left with a fear of death and end up spreading further sin and destruction in light of that fear. Our pursuit of what we hope to create out of rebellion (the lie of independence), attempting to write our own stories; all the while ignoring the grand story of which we’re a part. The Fall also gives us the main themes of Story. Relationships are broken and look at what we arises from this conflict: man vs. man; man vs. God; man vs. self; man vs. Creation. One of the things that makes suffering so bad is the sense, the part of us that knows, that things aren’t as they’re supposed to be.

In a way, the story is part romance, about God wooing humanity back to him. Meeting us where we are, messy and broken. And I mean romance in the best sense of the word (and wouldn’t it be great if Bibles came with covers of Jesus with a half ripped open pirate shirt or something?)

Yet with any good story, something stands in the way of the protagonist achieving his goal.
The story of God putting things right, isn’t that he just woke up one day, decided to pay attention, and suddenly decide to do something to fix the mess by condemning Jesus to a cruel fate to satisfy some blood thirst. Nor would his passion to put the world right, fulfilling this idea of justice involve swooping in, waving a magic wand, and cleaning things up. That would be him forcing himself on us. Instead, His plan has always been to work through people. From Abraham and Israel to Christ and the Church, he stirs our spirits and acts from within creation.

So the story builds to a climax. The climax is the point at which the story goes from being an interrelated, deliberately arranged, set of scenes to a cohesive story. It provides a fundamental meaning to events. That’s what the incarnation (birth in human form), life, death, and resurrection of Christ did for human history.

I’m not a God apologist. I can’t argue philosophical points. I can only speak to what forms my faith. I tend to subscribe to a “something happened” brand of apologetics. Christianity is the story of something that happened, centered around to and through this Jesus of Nazareth person. Something happened more than a guy coming along laying down some moral guidelines and teaching or else we’d see people worshiping Oprah.

Something happened which changed the course of history. I know that Jesus was not the hero they were looking for. Those waiting on a messiah were looking for someone to overthrow their Roman oppressors.

Something happened which caused massive transformation as people saw that they could be saved from an empty way of living, if they choose to accept that. That we may be lost, dying, and in need of new life, resurrection could be had. That the rule of death had been broken, freeing us to live for others. Something happened which gave them the sense of mission to the world to be a blessing.

It’s a story of big ideas with big characters who often make big mistakes. It’s a love story of a Creator rescuing his creation from rebellion, brokenness, corruption, and death. It’s a story we’re a part of and a story we’re invited into. It’s the story thus far, as we live out and work toward the ending. We propel the story, invited to become fresh, new characters.

And that’s the point of the story. We’re invited to join in God’s mission, to be a part of reconciling the universe. We’re called to heal it, to bring restoration, redemption, and reconciliation. We needed a new way of life and living to fix it and Jesus modeled a new way of living and people chose to conform their lives to his example. We need to be continually renewing this example, because it’s easy to fall back into old patterns and old ways of living. We need to be a part of the solution, not the problem. What good is faith if we don’t put what we say we believe into action, living it out as best we are able.

Where there’s a story there’s a plot, there’s a plotter. Not the best proof of the existence of God, but it works for me. We connect with story because we’re a part of a grand story. The story comes full circle as Christ undoes the way of Adam, showing a new way (as high priest and intercessor), and recreating community and relationship with God. In short, He redeems Creation. In turn, we’re all called to live in light of this story, aligning ourselves with this truth.

The one true overarching story of Christianity is that all stories are finally brought not only to fullness and completion, but redemption in Christ. In Christ, all stories are finished. If I had to guess Wrath’s reaction, it would be to say that what I’m saying is that I cling to a fairy tale I hope is true, because what I’ve said isn’t logical. And he’s right. It’s as logical as falling in love. You can’t help who you fall in love with, you do have a choice about what to do about it.

Me? I’m just a man searching for truth and trying to work out his faith. Stories can take you to a deeper reality. My stories are one way I work out my faith. The world is good, but broken, a paradox stories can help us understand. I see the reality of evil and darkness. Sometimes I see how love and relationships can become twisted and selfish. I look into the heart of humanity, into my own heart, and find it wanting. I question, I doubt, I often miss the point, and I fail.

Faith is confidence in the goodness of God remembered on how he has shown goodness to you in the past. Remembering and re-experiencing the way God has touched your life. It leaves you with a sense of hope, that you have a future. Doubt is useful for a while ... but we must move on. We can deconstruct our beliefs all we want, but after awhile, we have to construct something.

I have hope and I cling to it. Darkness may win battles, but light win the war. Justice is real, if sometimes slow in coming. Love, true love, forgives, heals, and triumphs. And humanity, even me, can find redemption.

Stories can show us possibilities. Stories can let us have glimpses of a future hope. Stories can encourage and sustain us. For me, it comes back to the recognition that "we are imperfect people living in a very imperfect world and worshiping a perfect God in an imperfect church." What I want is to truly experience, the true prayer of my heart, is to truly feel God, to truly know God. Until then, I can only cling to my faith and continue to pray my favorite prayer found in the Bible:

“Lord I believe. Help me with my unbelief.”

Mo*Con IV: The Story of (My) Christianity Part I

Faith hasn’t always come easily to me. I’ve always been intellectually curious, things had to make sense for me. I’m trained as a scientist because I’ve always been about searching for answers. For truth. But it’s also why I don’t hold to a “everything can be explained in nature” sort of worldview. Facts only take you so far. You can assent to a set of facts, but you can’t disprove my faith with facts. You can’t argue someone into faith with facts. Plus, facts equal certainty and certainty is the opposite of faith. It’s the frustrating thing about faith: it’s an intuitive leap that isn’t always logical. I do, however, believe one can think critically and logically about one’s faith.

For the record, I didn't grow up in a faith-filled home. My father and his father before him were about as God neutral, even anti-God as you can get. My father, in one particularly chilling conversation, once told me that he understood fully the choice he made living his life the way he wanted. He recognized the consequences and if that meant an eternity of hell, then so be it, but he at least got to live his life his way.

My mother talked about God on occasion, but I had no sense of her having a spiritual life until the last ten years or so. I grew up in the church, however, and our family has a history of spiritualism, such as the obeah people, the practitioners of the Jamaican form of voodoo. My first major sale, “Family Business” to Weird Tales, was about wrestling with that branch of the family. [But I've detailed this part of my journey before.]

Faith is what you choose to believe in. You have to have some system of belief, something to hold onto, or else you end up just flailing about through life. Just like it’s easy to have faith when everything is going well, when life chugging along pretty much as expected, going along the way you want. But what happens when things go off the tracks?

Any followers of my blog know that I have failed: as a man, as a husband, as a father, as a friend, as a leader. And in light of the mess I’ve made of my life, it’s left me asking a lot of questions about what I believe. I’ve wondered if there’s any truth to the Christian story? Why does it feel like I’m not close to the person I should be by now? I’m left wondering what’s real about it and with doubting eyes, I have to re-examine what I hold to be true.

So here’s what I know, or rather, what I believe to be true. I firmly believe that this life has meaning and is heading towards something. If this is all there is, I feel sorry for us, because then we truly aren’t any different than any other animal.

We’re hard-wired with certain longings, certain base ideas. Like the idea of justice. We have a passion for justice. We have a sense pretty early on of what’s fair and what’s not, like a dream written onto our hearts. We know there’s something like justice, but we can’t seem to get there.

I also firmly believe that the human heart longs for fellowship, love, and communion. We’re wired for relationships. We want the comfort of an embrace, we want to be known and loved. It’s as if we were designed to find our purpose and meaning in community: family, friends, co-workers, or nation. Yet there is a pain and brokenness to our relationships. What should be so natural is often difficult to navigate.

And the world is full of beauty. Now, I’ll admit, where some people see mountain vistas, lakeside view, a sunset, all I see is why God created tv and air conditioning. There is truth and goodness in beauty, one that we recognize without having to be told. Beauty calls us out of ourselves, is outside us, and appeals to something within us. Beauty touches a primal chord within us, captivates us, and spurs us to adoration, even worship. Beauty is in our art. We know it in music, we interpret it in dance. The idea of beauty points to something greater. It’s a longing we want to express as we try to capture an ineffable quality, an indefinable … truth.

And we have a quest for spirituality. One of the reasons I started Mo*Con was because I believe most of us are on a spiritual quest, a search for truth, and we don’t have enough folks to ask our questions to. We may embrace the western mindset that right-thinking people give up their silly superstitions, and see religion as little more than a runaway imagination, misguided feelings, mixed with wishful thinking, foolish and unsophisticated. A cultural neuroses. Yet we can agree that we all want more for ourselves and our lives. We want meaning, for all this, our struggles, our pain, to have been for something. To me, that very human experience and longing points to an exploration of a spiritual dimension to this life.

So we have this nebulous idea of the need for faith which becomes shaped by personal experience and intuition. I’m a scientist and a theologian (in the way that all spiritual seekers are theologians). So how do I make sense of it all? I’m also a writer.

I love story. I was the kid in class who instead of having a comic book in my text books, I had Bullfinch’s mythology hidden in them. Okay, comic books too. I love all stories. I believe we’re caught up in a story, Wrath and I at different points in it. We connect to a story. We choose the stories that ring true to us, each choice is a leap of faith. The story of evolution doesn’t move me, doesn’t give me purpose and sense of being. It doesn’t take me outside of myself and connect me to others. So the story of evolution couldn’t be the complete story for me.

The Christian story claims to be the true story about God. It’s the story with the recurring themes of going away and coming back home again, of slavery and exodus, of exile and restoration, of death and resurrection. Yet, as Wrath has pointed out, The Church and its people have never gotten it all right, sometimes doing as much harm as good. It’s easy to take any story and do bad things with it.

(To be continued... )

Courtesy Flush for Jesus (Or, On Being a Stepford Christian)

One of the things that made me absolutely miserable about my Christian walk was the guilt of it all. It was like the church body I was a part of had this singular idea of how a Christian life should be led and any deviation from it and you were made to feel like you were a bad Christian. It was a whole culture of thought and deed. Life was to be lived according to a rigid set of rules, clear cut dos and don'ts (heavy on the don'ts because the don'ts were what separated us from "the world"). Books weren't to be trusted unless they were written by MacArthur, Piper, or a few select mini-popes. Music, movies, any entertainment really, had better have been purchased at a local Christian book store (CHRISTIAN bookstore, not one of those Catholic ones).

Forget the idea of trying to be genuine, there was a set of rules you had to live by, all within the greater context of a culture and mindset. You had to get up and do “devotions” (which meant 30 minutes of Bible reading and prayer). Lord help you if you didn’t “get your day started right.” It got to be so that folks made each other guilty and miserable, robbing each other of the joy of their spiritual journey, by making each other feel like you were not loving God if you weren’t spending that critical 30 minutes in study. I know folks who’d end up reading the Bible during their “morning sit down” in order to squeeze in their time while getting ready for work, calling in their spouses to discuss applicable verses. (Thus the lament for a courtesy flush for Jesus.)

If you were a woman, you were expected to be a wife (sorry, no single Christian women allowed; you could only be fulfilled as a Christian as a wife. Technically you had to be a wife AND mother to fully be in the club). You were expected to homeschool, because what right thinking Christian would dare allow their kids into the public school system. And, since you weren’t expected to hold a job, you had to otherwise make the most of your time, I don’t know, threshing wheat or something.

It was a game of keeping up with the spiritual Jones’ enforced by the mega church mafia.

It got to the point where I felt like I had to put on a show, rather than be real with other Christians. Mind you, it’s not the discipline of Bible study and prayer that I’m down on. It’s the guilt-laden coercion into it. Basically, folks were being made into Stepford Christians, or other people’s idea of what a Christian should be. It is ironic that in Christ we’ve become free from the law and sin, only to become slaves to one another. To quote Michael Yaconelli in his book, Messy Spirituality:

“Spirituality is not a formula; it is not a test. it is a relationship. Spirituality is not about competency; it is about intimacy. Spirituality is not about perfection; it is about connection. The way of the spiritual life begins where we are NOW in the mess of our lives. Accepting the reality of our broken, flawed lives is the beginning of spirituality not because the spiritual life will remove our flaws but because we LET GO is seeking perfection and, instead, seek God, the one who is present in the tangledness of our lives. Spirituality is not about being fixed; it is about God's being present in the mess of our unfixedness.”

Christian spirituality should be about encountering the person of Christ, and then a living out of that interactive relationship in every moment of life. It’s about knowing God, not knowing about God. We don’t need hyper-regimented, guilt-filled lives to call ourselves spiritual. God sees you. He knows you. You might as well be honest, authentic, and interact with Him in the midst of how you are … not how others think you ought to be. Each relationship is different. There shouldn’t be any Stepford Christians.


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Church Eats Its Own Part I: Devouring our Pastors

I’ve discussed the idea of how the church typically responds to fallen leaders. It's a tough thing to wrestle with. There are some behaviors which should "disqualify" you from leadership. On the other hand, you still have gifts and you are obligated to use them. Being close friends with pastors, and now having fallen into a church leadership role despite years carefully avoiding such a role, I can say that it’s amazing more pastors don’t “fall.” Or at least burn out at a rate similar to public school teachers.

They are set up to fall and we create the bullseye. For a start, protestations aside, there is a trap for them to be perfect. We tend to put them on a pedestal or in front of us rather than beside us or allowed a measure of grace. I understand that part of that is the role they play of speaking into our lives. Any time we grant someone the right to speak into our lives with authority, there is an assumed elevation to them. Ironically, as intuitively natural as that may feel, we don’t do that with our friends. My friends have earned the right to course correct me if they see me going astray, but it doesn’t mean that they have to pull some sort of rank in order to do it.

Speaking of friends, I’ve been stunned by how lonely the role of pastor can be. They don’t seem to be allowed to have close friends. It’s like they can’t effectively pastor people who know them too well. The corollary to that is that folks don’t really allow their pastors to be real around them. Even in my role as “facilitator”, I’ve had to distance myself in some of my relationships because some folks, usually the more “churched” people, have very restrictive ideas about how church leaders should be and act (the two big complaints leveled against me: 1) I’m too fun. Apparently there’s something inherently not to be trusted in someone who’s having too good a time within his religion. And 2) I’m not afraid to have a drink. Look, you deal with church people all day and see if you don’t want to toss a couple down).

So now we’ve created a situation of isolation among the leadership so they are operating on a high wire without a net. Then we chew them up when they fall. Let’s take a “lesser scandal”, for instance, say a pastor becomes addicted to painkillers after an accident. We are quick to shoot our wounded and turn our backs on our fallen brethren. As if any sin automatically disqualifies them from leadership and exercising their gifts. You would think that if the church’s greater mission is to be a part of a ministry of reconciliation, there would be more of an emphasis on being about forgiveness and restoration.

Don’t mind me. Just venting, I guess. Had to hear from too many “I’m not gossiping, I just had a few observations” folks today. And now need a drink.


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Starbucks Spirituality

People keep trying to strap a label on what it is I believe. Somehow, that’s supposed to determine “how” I believe or how I live my life. But I firmly believe that the days of your beliefs being summarized with a word (e.g. Baptist) are numbered if not already past. Something without a denominational label and all the baggage that comes with that label.

People are often guilty of relational laziness and need these sorts of labels rather than engage the people around them. Yet our faith walks defy easy categorization even though we may have a lot in common. We may begin in similar places, maybe an end of self or something else which causes a person to realize they should be living life differently. Up to their full potential/how they were meant to live. They are moved to change their lives and be better people. In turn, they are moved to reach out to others, to help the poor or otherwise live for others.

I can’t be pegged down with words like Baptist or Calvinist or Emergent or post-Protestant. Sometimes even Christian (relax, Interwebz, before too many of you start sending me letters. That wasn’t a renunciation of faith, merely pointing out that as adjectives go “Christian” often comes up as fairly useless). In fact, when Matt Cardin described himself along the lines of him being a Christian Buddhist with a streak of agnosticism (at Mo*Con), he was right in saying that a lot of our spiritual walks are kind of like a Starbucks order.

I think I’d be a bit of a mocha missional Christian (follower of the way of Jesus), with a double shot of historical tradition, topped with a half and half of community. With a dash of Buddhism and agnosticism (again, Interwebz, relax. I’m merely commenting on my seeking of peace and use of meditative practices as well as having a spirit of “not knowing”). What about you?

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Profound Simplicity – A Few Questions

“I have set the LORD always before me. Because he is at my right hand, I will not be shaken.” –Psalms 16:8

It’s easy for us to slip into autopilot and call it our lives. The busyness of our routines blinding us, even if it’s good work. We still need to find that quiet place, that Sabbath, when we can direct most of our thoughts toward God and abide in him. So a few questions:

-Where do you find yourself most aware of God?
-What do you think is your greatest distraction?
-What hinders you from noticing God in the every day?
-Has there been a point in your life when God seemed to communicate with you?
-What was it like? How did you respond to it?

“You have made known to me the path of life; you will fill me with joy in your presence, with eternal pleasures at your right hand.” –Psalms 16:11


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Humanist Quandry

Every now and then, I’m prone to thought experiments. It’s an attempt to relate to other perspectives as a lens to examine my own thinking. Most times it eventuates in intellectual naval gazing, but I have time to kill. This one started as a way to be less judgmental of people.

I’m quick to glance at a person’s life and pronounce “how can you call yourself a Christian?” I’m quick to rationalize such a pronouncement under the heading “I’m as hard on them as I am on myself”, since even a cursory glance at my own life makes me shudder anytime someone describes me as a Christian. So I’ve been allowing the grace of “where would they be if they weren’t a Christian to temper my thoughts/judgments.

(Including with myself: a friend of mine, an agnostic, thanked “whoever I’m suppose to thank” that I was a Christian, otherwise, I’d be the fifth horseman. He went on to describe me, in love mind you, as a wolf in sheep’s clothing, which was an odd bit of spiritual truth when you take Christ as the Lamb in question).

So now I'm coming at this from the perspective of my belief of how I'd be without religion. So let’s say that I've removed religion from my worldview lens (note: I HAVEN'T. THIS IS A THOUGHT EXPERIMENT), what would be the ramifications of a humanist worldview for me? Basically, I’m trying to think of why I’d want to be a “good” person and the lofty idea of "for the betterment of mankind" isn't cutting it, so I'm going to need some of the ideas fleshed out a bit.

The quandary of my little thought experiment is that as problematic as faith in God can be, I have no faith in humanity (other than my faith in our ability to use any idea—race, religion, nation—as a weapon/destructive force).

For the humanists in the house, would you describe yourself as a humanist (with the idea of a belief in humanity and its ability to progress as a whole) or an individualist (meaning that you believe in yourself, the power of the individual, with enough individuals empowering themselves humanity progresses - which may take us into Ayn Rand territory)?

And then, two more questions, one on an individual level one on a social level:

-how would a humanist philosophy attempt to shape and form me as an individual? I understand do not steal, murder, lie, rape as universals in order to run a society; but for me as an individual, how would it address an idea like "greed" or what would be the motivation to be loving?

-on a social level, how would this shape social mores? Even an idea like monogamy or being married til death do us part, seems like things we've decided to buy into, but don't—humanistically—have a good reason to do.

[I’m in a real questioning mood. There’s an ongoing conversation on the message board about how would atheists react if God was incontrovertibly proved and on the flip side, for Christians, what if the resurrection was incontrovertibly proved to have never happened. All merely thought experiments, but the discussion’s been interesting.]


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Road to Mo*Con III: Interview with Bob Freeman Part I

One of the dangers of being my friend is that not only am I prone to playing cell phone lottery, but when I have questions I’m likely to call you just as randomly ... and I take notes. In this case, my friends have no one to blame but themselves: Louise Bohmer and Bob Freeman were talking about their spiritual beliefs on a message board, so I had to stick my nose in it and ask Bob some follow up questions. One of the great things about having conversations with people is that you can find a lot of common ground with them. First, go read Bob defining his beliefs and then you’ll be caught up (then suppress your urge to go see Beowulf and 300 again and read my interview):


Would it be right to say that you embrace the principles represented by the pantheon rather than worship the pantheon itself?

One of the more appealing aspects of Odinism is that it is not enabling... Odinists are free to shape their lives to the extent allowed by their skill, courage, and might. There is no predestination, no fatalism, and certainly no limitations imposed by the will of any external deity. An Odinist does not need salvation. All they need is the freedom to face their destiny with courage and honor. An Odinist does not fear the Gods, or consider themselves their slaves. We do not bow or cower before them. On the contrary, we share community and fellowship with the Divine. We break bread with them and join them in drink because we are family... of shared blood. The Gods encourage us to grow and advance to higher levels because we are their offpring... We are the Children of Odin. Odinism/Asatru is often referred to as "the Folkway". We see ourselves as being connected to all our ancestors. They are a part of us as we in turn will be a part of our descendants, but we are also linked to all our living kin - to our families and to every man and woman rooted in the tribes of Europe. They are, in a very real sense, our "greater family." The Gods are an intregal part of that family. It is Odin who sits at the head of our table He is our All-Father, and we are his children.

Could you go over the relationship of the Asatru to your beliefs?

Asatru is reconstructionist Norse polytheism. The word itself is Old Norse meaning "Belief in the Gods". My problem with modern Asatru stems from the fact that our numbers are small. Add to that an even smaller element of the White Power crowd who have filtered into our ranks. This vocal minority sounds even louder when you consider we are a fledgling movement.

I am constantly at odds with this, one part of me wanting to remain more or less solitary, exploring my spirituality outside the politics of the movement... While there's another part of me that thinks I should be screaming from the rooftops, shouting down those who dishonor the names of our Gods. It's the one thing that weighs most heavily on my soul.

Part of your religion being defined by a loud minority that embarrasses most of you? Can't relate to that at all. I understand where you’re coming from: part of my spirituality is quite personal (the spiritual disciplines like prayer and fasting for example), which appeals to my introverted nature. YetIi have to balance that against the calls for community, for learning, worship, and fellowship (which appeals to my extroverted self). Is there a "scripture" that informs your faith or do you hold to the ancient Norse stories? How do your ancestors inform you today?

Probably the most important source would be the Havamal which is an epic poem that comes to us in four parts.

1. The Gestapatrr's main focus is that of hospitality, offering up maxims on good manners and how to treat guests.

2. The Loddfafnismal deals with morality and the code of ethics one is expected to adhere to.

3. The Runatal instructs us in the history of and use of the Runes, the sacred alphabet brought to us by Odin's self-sacrifice.

4. The Ljodatal deals with the deeper mysteries and of magick.

The Havamal is but one part of the Eddas which is the collection of stories and myths of our gods and heroes. These include The Ring Cycle, popularized I guess by Wagner...And we mustn't forget Beowulf. I learn from these works, but more importantly I trust in the guidance of that inner voice, which is the voice of my line of ancestors that stretches back through time, back to the beginning.

Again, the focus of one of Odin's Children is being true to one's orlog, which is one's True Will (hence my Thelemic leanings). We all have a "special purpose" (cue The Jerk) ... Our journey is divining that purpose and being true to our wyrd (think non-predestination fate), which we cultivate and examine as a unfathomable mystery, as it ebbs and flows like the tides, forward and back through time.

Confused yet? The concepts make more sense in one's heart than they do when writ out... lol... It's the great Northern Mystery Tradition

[to be continued]

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Road to Mo*Con III: Interview with Bob Freeman Part II

To catch up, go here for part I of this conversation. So we also share an appreciation for mystery. What sort of traditions and rituals do you have?

As a solitary practitioner I lean toward a more eclectic approach. I perform a personalized ritual during full and new moons, the eight holy days of the wheel, Leif Eriksson Day (which is also my son's birthday) and my birthday. I also perform a libation and sacrifice during each of the twelve days of the Yuletide honoring Odinn and the Wild Hunt.

Additionally I honor Aleister Crowley's birth and death, the nativity of the Scarlet Woman, and the anniversary of the three days of the writing of the Book of the Law.

What are the best ways for you to connect/commune with your ancestors?

Meditation. Trance. Ascending to the Astral Plane... Every ritual I perform, I invite my ancestors into my circle. They are always with me. Blood will have blood.

Is it too personal to ask how your faith journey is worked out practically? Like what a worship time would look like?

Generically speaking, at midnight I would purify my sacred space, conjuring a magic circle about me and whatever tools I might be working with. By will and sacred word I would cast out negative energies and invite in my ancestors and whatever gods I intend to work with that night. Then I'd go to work, either reciting poetry or weaving magick... Most often it is a relaxed atmosphere, unless I have a major undertaking planned.

I know you've said that you practice your religion in a solitary way, but are there occasions where those who share faith similar to yours can gather as a community?

Asatruar gather locally in Kindreds (think Covens, though they would balk at that comparison) while nationally, Kindreds are invited to The Althing, which is akin to a "gathering of the clans". Non-solitary Thelemites can join, for example, the Ordo Templi Orientis, or Kenneth Grant's Typhonian OTO...

Does your family hold to your religion or is it just you? How do you pass it down/along or do you?

My wife is a Christian, though she doesn't attend Church or read the Bible. She believes what she was taught by her mother and that's good enough for her. She thinks I'm a nutter, as my British friends say.

My son is only four so everything is still a mystery to him. He believes in everything... from Santa Claus to Giant Alien Robots. I have read to him some of the Norse myths, just as I've told him the Nativity story. He will get to find his own path. It is my job as a father to lead by example. His mind is his own, and if he comes to view the world as I do, then I will be thrilled, but it is his journey. All I can do is show him where the road begins...

Could you explain "the nativity of the Scarlet Woman" a bit more? It reminds me of a passage in the Book of Revelation.

The Scarlet Woman, or Babalon as she is known in Thelema, represents the liberated woman and the full expression of the sexual impulse. From Chapter I of The Book of the Law:

15. Now ye shall know that the chosen priest & apostle of infinite space is the prince-priest the Beast; and in his woman called the Scarlet Woman is all power given. They shall gather my children into their fold: they shall bring the glory of the stars into the hearts of men. 16. For he is ever a sun, and she a moon. But to him is the winged secret flame, and to her the stooping starlight. —AL I:15-16

How do you (or do you see yourself doing this at all) work out your faith in your fiction?

I cut my teeth on Robert E. Howard and bought into the whole "barbarism is the natural state of man" that was such a large part of his fiction. What I try to impart in my work is a sense of wonder, coupled with, at times, a savage brutality that is often but a heartbeat away. I always try to look at the light and the dark and how they dance with one another, the beauty and the beast, if you will. I think you'll find that, in my stories, I bring an air of "power, mystery, and the hammer of the gods" to every tale. And that is indicative of the conflict that rages inside of me, and my faith in the elder gods, the primal forces, are played out in my characters more often than not, because that's what's boiling inside of me, seeking release. If my writing were a stew, the ingredients would be comprised of the sword and sorcery of Robert E. Howard, the paranormal mystery of Algernon Blackwood, the gothic romance of Dan Curtis, all tied together with the historical resonance of Katherine Kurtz. But in the end, the defining ingredient, the spice, if you will, is the heart of my ancestors that is beating strong inside my chest.

Speaking of similarity, one of the rituals of Kwanzaa, the pouring of libations, is about remembering my ancestors.

I've always felt it important to meet over the common ground, rather than to become mired in our differences. Those differences are, more often than not, superficial at best.

That's my guiding philosophy. That and mutual respect and you can have meaningful dialogue about religion and spirituality. I thought I’d leave you all with a peek at a book trailer for his latest project, Keepers of the Dead. What else can we be looking forward to from you?

The sequel to Shadows Over Somerset, Keepers of the Dead, will be released this coming Spring by Black Death Books. I'm very excited about the Indiana Horror Writers anthology, Dark Harvest, that we're both a part of. It's very strong, filled with some truly fantastic fiction. I'm honored to be a part of it. You can also read a non-fiction article on my paranormal investigations of the Eastern Woodland Carvers Building that will be in the March issue of Doorways magazine (which also features a short story by a certain "sinister minister", if I'm not mistaken). You can also catch me in a few upcoming anthologies, including Michael Knost's Legends of the Mountain State 2 (which again, you're a part of). I also have some artwork gracing the covers of two of Dr. Kim Paffenroth's works, Orpheus and the Pearl (published by Magus Press) and Dying to Live 2: Life Sentence (published by Permuted Press), as well as some art that has found its way into various private collections by some rather prestigious Occult Orders that I have become associated with.


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Growing Through Disillusionment*

The other night a group of us were out together: Maurice Broaddus Rob Rolfingsmeyer, Rich Vincent, and Lauren David. We hate to shatter any illusions, but during the course of our discussion we came to the startling conclusion that we can be asses (except for Lauren). It’s not like any of us set out to be the Dr. House of the theological set, it’s more of a resignation to the facts. We’re not going out of our way to be an ass, we simply know we can be asses. And yet the question comes up “do we have any business attempting to model what the church should be about, much less the love of Christ?”

We have a certain idea of what a saint is and are too quick to label people saints without considering what we mean by the term. After all, even the best of people are but flawed vessels, yet flawed vessels are the only kind of person God works through. To quote Miroslav Volf, “I am not a Christian because of the church, but because of the gospel. However, it was only through the broken church that I received the gospel. Because of the gospel, I participate in the church.” Think of some of the greats. Mother Theresa of Calcutta was known for her temper and how mean she could be. Francis of Assisi hated lepers despite talking about how much we should love everyone. Yet God manages to continue His work through us.

It’s easy to fall into cynicism. A cynic is a frustrated idealist, with the emptiness they so often experience being a symptom of their inability to let go of their idealism. Most people are idealists at first but there must come a time in everyone’s lives when your ideals and your dreams must be measured against reality; where “what could be” and “what ought to be” is measured against “what is.” The false facades begin to crumble and those things which had been so solid and so true are not able to withstand the crush of practicality. What do we do when this happens? How do we handle our disappointment with the truth of life itself? It’s what we do with these questions that end up fundamentally shaping our mature selves. Do we hide in a corner and deny those things that seem to be crushing defeats? Do we toss up our hands in frustrated resignation and give up on whatever it is that we’d dreamed of for so long?

Such profound disillusion is often wrestled with the transition from childhood to adulthood (and thus probably a contributing factor to the condition of being a spiritual teenager). Starting with your parents and moving onto the institutions you want to hold dear (school, the government, etc.), it becomes a struggle to survive nothing, and no one, being as you thought they were.

There is an option that allows for growth and maturity in our lives. From its very foundation it is frightening and tends to take a lot of work (some of which may call for sacrifices which you’d never imagined). Fusing your ideals with the reality you have to work with. Hunting down those parts of your ideals that are able to be sacrificed without losing the whole and learning to integrate new ideas and new thoughts which previously seemed foreign and even counter to what you held so dear. Sometimes it calls for a delicate shifting of boundaries without sacrificing the core of your beliefs. Sometimes even the core must be discarded.

It’s not so easy to make the changes in our lives necessary to balance reality with ideals. It’s an uncertain time fraught with error and simply speaking, those mistakes must be made. If there is to be any room for growth you need to be unashamed of your own fallibility. Your mistakes are what mold and shape you if you learn from them. The lessons rarely come easy and at times can be quite frustrating.

We have faults and we make mistakes, so we’re going to need your grace as we journey together. We keep in mind the words of a friend of ours: “Instead of talking about what horrible people we are, why don't you go out and try to be the people you wish we were? If we do such a horrific job at loving people, why don't you go show us how it's done? If we are incapable of meeting hard to like people where they are at, why don't you go meet them where they are at?”

*A Maurice and Rob tag-team blog effort. With Lauren as the cheerleader.


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Holding to Nothing

We’re in the midst of a generation that has what I have diagnosed as “acute failure to believe.” It’s a mental and spiritual malaise about politics, religion, and social issues because they has simply disconnected. Few take stands on issues if for no other reason than stands are easily discredited amounting to “I don’t have a position but here’s why your position is wrong.” Don’t get me wrong, this is a stance I take when folks are talking about stuff I don’t care about, which may be the problem: we don’t care about much.

Too often, I feel like my friend who ended up in this conversation:

Person A: Here’s why your job sucks.
Person B: Hang on, do you even have a job?
Person A: No.
Person B: That’s why you have no money and you’re treading water in life.

We lack passion about ideas, cast adrift on a sea of self-interest, not committing to much. If you hold to nothing, there’s no point in you arguing with me. It’s like talking to quicksand. Some folks want to run their mouths on topics they don’t care about, willing to argue in circles because ignorance knows no fear (I think I just described most message board discussions).

I like talking to people who hold to things, especially if they’re open in their thinking. They challenge me, sharpen me. Sure, there are issues I don’t care about just as there are issues I’m still searching on. We need to nurture our intellectual question which too many have squelched in our respective journeys.

Be they a political party, a religious belief, or even a social issue, we need to live in hope that we can come along and do better. That our ideas matter. Let’s face it, most of our ideas amount to our best guesses about how to live and work out solutions to the problems and questions we face. We are all on a continual journey of searching. It really is okay to lead a self-examined life.


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What’s In It for Me?

I’ve been wondering why I try to be a good person. As a friend of mine recently pointed out, morality is not the point of religion. I’m no Ayn Rand-ian, but if I remove God from the equation of my life, then the question I’m left asking about existence is "what’s in it for me?"

When I ask "what’s in it for me?" I’m basically outlining what my philosophy of life would be without Christ. I know because I know me and it’s the question I most naturally ask before I remember that life’s not about me. At my core, I’m basically a selfish person. It’s not like I have a fear of breaking laws. It’s not like I have a natural bent towards fidelity or even monogamy.

I’ve called myself a Christian for a long time. Twenty some odd years later, I just now feel like I’m getting the grasp of some of it. Which means that I cringe when I look back at some of my previous stances and beliefs, things I KNEW with absolute CERTAINTY.

It’s one reason why I find it difficult to point to a person’s failings and say "some Christian (Muslim, Buddhist, Wiccan, what have you) they are. They are just another hypocrite." On one level, that’s true. However, I try to allow the grace of "where would they be if they weren’t trying to pursue their spiritual journey?" Some people are lousy Christians, I say as I look in the mirror. Some people are louse "-ists" of all stripes.

Sure, to some I seem to be pursuing "being good" because of some imaginary guy in the sky tells me to. When all is said and done, I’m little different than them. Pursuing an idea, an ideal, larger than myself – and doing the best I can with as much as I understand.


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On Communion

When I was asked to say a few thing about communion, the first thing I asked myself was why do we do it? Is it simply a part of the weekly ritual of The Dwelling Place: we sing, recite creeds, pray, listen to "He Who Would Be Head Pastor", do communion, and eat? Or is there a unifying essence to each of these rituals as activities that help shape and form us?

I know people are going to get sick of hearing me say this, but I believe that people like the idea of community, but they don’t like putting in the work to build community. Communion is part of our work, both our easiest task and our toughest.

It is a source of unity for us, drawing us together as a body, binding us to the historic and universal church, and reminding us of who we are as a family (and I do see church as a family and our Sunday morning gatherings as a family reunion). It’s a living remembrance of why we come together and points to our future hope.

At the same time, it’s one of the toughest parts of our gathering. It’s a time of reflection and soul searching. Time between each of us and God as we examine our hearts and our relationship with Him. We examine our relationships with those around (and there are times I can’t take communion because of a relationship not being as it should). In this way, communion continues God’s mission of reconciliation: first between us and Him then between us and each other.

While they were eating, Jesus took bread, gave thanks and broke it, and gave it to his disciples, saying, "Take and eat; this is my body." Then he took the cup, gave thanks and offered it to them, saying, "Drink from it, all of you. This is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins. I tell you, I will not drink of this fruit of the vine from now on until that day when I drink it anew with you in my Father's kingdom." –Matthew 26:26-29

In remembrance of Him.

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The Preaching Trough

There is an aspect of Evangelical Christian culture that is pure delight and that’s the idea of being hooked on the idea of "being fed". Being "fed" is insider lingo referring to how much information you take in (as infants in Christ "I gave you milk, not solid food, for you were not yet ready for it. Indeed, you are still not ready." –I Corinthians 3:2). So surely the mark of a maturing believer is their capacity for solid food, real meaty sermons.

Yes, ladies and gentlemen, we’ve become knowledge crackheads.

In the extremes, some churches have trouble getting volunteers because their members don’t want to miss their fix. The real shame is that a lot of the time it’s a matter of being pumped up about things that they already know. Much like the conservative radio phenomena, folks mostly just want to be affirmed about what they already know and think. Challenged by way of reminder. For some folks it’s a matter of being creatures of habit and when searching for a new church, "being fed" is what they’re used to.


Don’t get me wrong: you NEED to be fed. My issue is with pew potatoes: people who simply consume more and more information, being entertained by preaching that tickles their ears, growing fat in their seats. It leads to a head knowledge based faith that tends to make us self-focused ("What did I get from this?") and gives us ammunition for our judgmentalism (conceit, laziness, and intellectual snobbery).


How good is more facts for the promotion of fellowship, building the body into a community, spiritual formation, or otherwise being transformative? These are the kind of things we have to examine. Because a lot of the time, we aren’t really even getting the knowledge: after ten bullet/application points, we barely remember what we’ve been taught, we’re rarely diligent enough to apply it, and a lot of the evidence around us shows that we aren’t living out what we know. So we have to keep asking "how do we keep people in the process of being formed into disciples of Christ?"


Our culture has turned folks into consumers, in this case, of religion and our churches have largely obliged them. We’re to be cultivators of the spiritual life, in the process of continual conversion to be the people who are the Gospel. I’ve found that when you are living out your faith, you don’t have time for the intellectual preening that gets us spiritually slothful and judgmental. Instead, we’re more fit, that is, fit to serve.


So quit treating church like a buffet.



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Spiritual Teenagers

I’ve never been good with teenagers. I live in a state of constant dread of the day I have to raise them, which is why I’ve been laying the groundwork early with my two boys (starting conversations now that we can continue to have until they lose their minds in their teenage years). Whenever ministry opportunities come up where I have to work with teens, I generally eschew them.


I think that’s why when folks reach the "teenage" phase of their spiritual walk, I tend to get a little frustrated with them. I know, I know, we don’t often read of the teenage phase of our spiritual walks. We are told we’re to be child like ("He called a little child and had him stand among them. And he said: ‘I tell you the truth, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. Therefore, whoever humbles himself like this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven.’" –Matthew 18:2-4) not childish ("When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put childish ways behind me. Now we see but a poor reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known." --I Corinthians 13:11-12). But there’s got to be some sort of transitional steps between being children (though keeping the child-like sense of awe, wonder, and appreciation of mystery) and having a mature faith.


I’m dubbing these knucklehead times our teenage walk.


As a child, your parents know everything. Then as you get older, become a teenager, your parents don’t seem to know anything. As you mature into adulthood, your parents suddenly seem to know a little more again. Or, to quote Mark Twain: "When I was a boy of fourteen, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be twenty-one, I was astonished at how much the old man had learned in seven years."


So as we grow about maturing in our faith, I suppose there must come a time when we are in our awkward teen years. Possibly marked by


-an attitude that plays out in a practical way as "I don’t truly want to think through my faith – I just want to rebel against everything I’ve been taught"
-general issues with authority, from pastors to the Bible to anything resembling leadership or accountability
-cynicism to the point of abandoning
-a chip on the shoulder aspect to their interactions


It would be easy to dismiss it as the equivalent of a spiritual temper tantrum. However, being reckless in so many things, wanting to experience everything, jumping off cliffs (often landing on rocks) is sometimes the only way many of us can learn.


The journey inward is part of the progress. You have to stick to it. Some people compare this time to God actually "giving" you more responsibility by not guiding you by the hand any more. Kind of like a parent with a teenager, how dealing with them is akin to handling a wet bar of soap: you want to keep them in your hand, but the best way to do so is in a loose grip because the harder you hold onto them the more likely they will just squeeze out. Discipleship present traditions of faith. Help people think through faith not tell them what IS the faith.


Give them room to go and explore where they need to go, but continue to be present in their lives (in order to be a guard rail). We know the signs of maturing: an increase in humility and teachability; the acknowledgment of the need for help. In the meantime, we need to keep the lines of communication open. Let them come to you and, more importantly, be there for them when they do. At least that’s the theory I’m going with.

Not that I've ever been one or anything.


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