A Generous Idolatry

Worship Me!

I have been thinking about Idols a lot recently (not the Paula Abdul kind).  The second commandment says you shall not make carved image or any likeness of anything that is in heaven or above.

If you go with the narrowest interpretation of the commandment, it would be pretty easy to keep.  I do not routinely carve anything, so I should be off the hook.  Check.  Done.

But what if you take the bigger picture?  I may not carve images of Moloch, but I do a heck of a job creating images of God with my words and writings.  Why is this a big deal?  I think the real intent of the second commandment is not to put God in a box.  Don’t think you have it all figured out, because you don’t and you never will.  The minute you say God is, you are limiting him.  I don’t think the graven image thing is the real problem here.  It is thinking that you have captured the essence of God and you worship that single aspect.

Religious art is ubiquitous in our world.  Is that idolatry?  Our Islamic friends might say, yes.  Me personally, I am not bothered by religious art or even icons, so long as it is used as a metaphor.  There is a big difference, in my mind, between saying God IS and God IS Like.  One is trying to convey an idea; the other is saying it is the truth.

So why bring it up?  Why does this bother me?  Here is the thing.  I am really struggling with what I see as modern religious idolatry.  I see this present in every faith tradition I explore, but I will focus this entry on what I see as Christian idolatry.  And it centers around three words: cannon, theology and orthodoxy.

I am not tempted to worship and golden cow.  But what the golden cow represents is as much a problem for me as it was for those desert wanderers some 3 thousand years ago.  The image limits what in truth is limitless.  No one is making golden cows these days.  But limiting God with words is ramped.

The Christian church, both Catholic and protestant have agreed with some variation, that the cannon or sacred texts have all been written.  Everything we need to know about God is in the Bible and the Bible cannot change.   …so, everything we need to know about an infinitely complex God is contained in a finite book?  Nothing in the last 1700 years is worth writing about?  Changes in science and culture do not warrant new metaphors and new inspired works?  God is no longer allowed to give insight or inspiration to today’s seekers.  If we venerate this book as the end all be all, we are putting God in a box.  That meets my definition of idolatry.

Theology is the study of God.  This in and of itself is not a bad thing.  But theology runs aground when paired with the cannon of scripture.  We have decided that the Bible is “done.”  But clearly people still have questions.  So the theologians try and infer from the finite scriptures the answers to an infinite number of questions.  These inferences vary greatly depending on how you prioritize conflicting passages of scripture.  You can end up with a theology, like Calvinism, where humans are almost robotic and salvation is completely out of our hands.  Or using the same source texts, you can end up with a theology of God as clockmaker who is not really in control of things once the universe was set in motion.  These ideas, in and of themselves, are not bad.  They are ideas.  But when I go to religious discussion groups, these schools of thought are vehemently defended by their disciples as “the truth.” The minute a theological concept is said to be “true,”  it is putting God in a box.  That meets my definition of idolatry.

Orthodoxy or right thinking makes a mess of everything.  There are countless denominations and sects of Christianity.  Each of them claims to have special understanding of what God is or how God operates.  Having preferences is no vice in my mind.  But the second your orthodoxy excludes or diminishes another group of people, it is putting God in a box.  That meets my definition of idolatry.

Idolatry has its advantages.  It puts a neat bow on the world.  Idols are objective.  They can be studied.  They can be measured.  They can be held up against a set of standards.  But they are not God.

I just need to constantly remind myself that I am a seeker.  Once I think I have arrived, my destination is an idol.  I will probably spend much of my remaining years trying to tear down the idols in my life and refocusing my attention on seeking.  The truth may be out there, but I don’t think I will ever fully comprehend it.

Vergence, Part 3, the Practice

I start this entry by describing the best class of my undergraduate years.  It was my final semester and I was taking 19.5 units.  By that time, I had completed all my religious studies and I had only upper division psychology classes, including my thesis left.  Oh, and one pesky general ed. class.  I needed at least one fluff class that did not require much work.  Theory of drama filled the ticket nicely.  As described by my fellow undergraduates, you could take the class for pass/fail, you watch 1 movie a week at the professor’s house and then you had to make one intelligent comment about the movie, piece of cake.

This description had to be a load of crap.  Nothing could be that easy.  But it was.  And it was one of the most transformative experiences of my life.

Now I had always been a movie buff.  I never missed an opportunity to see movies when I was a kid.  Once I could drive, I routinely saw a couple of movies or more a week.  And that continued right into college.  But like most things American, I was a super consumer of movies, quantity not quality.  Actually the class’s professor was the “superest” of super consumers.  The walls of his house were covered with cinderblock shelves of VHS tapes, at least a thousand tapes with 3 movies a piece…but I digress.

Don, the professor, showed the movie and would ask people what they thought.  Here is a typical exchange:

Don:  What did you like?

Student:  I liked the character Eliza.

Don:  Really, what did you like about her?

Student:  She wanted something better.

Don:  Yes, she did.  And did she get it?

Student:  Well not exactly.

Don:  How so?

Student:  Well she ended up getting more than she could ever dream of.

Don:  I see.  Well that was nice.  Then she could go back to her normal life.

Student:  Well not exactly?

Don:  Oh?  Why not?

Student: Well, she had been transformed.

Don:  And have you ever experienced that?  Wanting something small and getting way more than you bargained for and in the process being transformed into something completely different?

Student:  Well, now that you mention it…

This exchange would commonly turn into a tearful gestalt effect where the kid’s whole life was transformed.

Don:  Who else?

Student2:  Well I liked the lighting.

Don:  Oh?…

I bring this up because memory up because as I try and incorporate my past with my future, this class serves as one possible model.

Much in the same way I consumed movies, in bulk, I think a lot of people are experiencing bulk lives.  They work too many hours, they traipse around the cities to attend their children’s activities, they eat out, they may go to church, they watch some TV, they listen to the radio, and they do lots and lots of stuff.  To use an old joke, I think most people hope that in the middle of all this shit, there has got to be a pony.

Church, Religion and spirituality is just one of the many things that we do, like going to the movies.  We go to these tightly scripted services and hope to be transformed.  But 55 minutes into it, we are already thinking about what comes next. “Where should we have lunch?  I hope it is good.”  Well it is never going to be good.  It is just going to OK at best and intolerable at worst.  But wait, in 45 minutes we are going shopping.  I hope we will find something good.

What would happen if after church the following dialogue took place?

Seeker 1:  Did you enjoy church?

Seeker 2:  No, I was bored.

Seeker 1:  Oh, why did you think it was boring?

Seeker 2:  The room was felt like a conference room.  The music sounded like pop music from the radio.  There were announcements like the local news.  And the sermon was an old rerun on TV.

Seeker 1:  Wow, that is a lot of stuff.  It sounds like what you do all week.

Seeker 2:  Exactly!

Seeker 1:  Sounds like you have a pretty mundane life.  What do you wish your life was like?

Seeker 1:  I…I…I don’t know.

Seeker 2:  Now we are getting somewhere…

For many of us Church is one of the many things we do.  It is a habit carried through childhood.  Or it might have been an authentic transformational force in our lives.  But as is often the case with transformational experiences, once the transformation is done, habit kicks in.  If you remain on the consumer side of the equation, it gets stale and becomes just one of the many things you do.

Is that the churches fault?  Maybe.  I thought so in an earlier draft/rant.  But having given it a bit more thought, I am not so sure.  I have known people transformed by Quakers and people transformed by rock concerts.  Different strokes for different folks.  Is one inherently better than the other?

Back to the movies, is the “Elephant Man” better than “My Fair Lady?”  (side note:  My wife would have a definite opinion on that statement.  I get a very different reaction when I say, “Papaplethed to meech chu your majusty” than when I sing The Rain in Spain.)  They are two very different movies with very different views of the world.  Yet both of those movies were in the class that I loved.

What made both of them great movies was dissecting them both and then reintegrating them into our own lives, using conversation.  Now in my class there were a couple of luddites who made consistently stupid comments and there were definitely movies like “Honky Tonk Freeway” that would never make the Theory of Drama Class.  But when quality movies met quality conversation, it was magic.

For the longest time, I was spiritually adrift.  I never missed more than a week of church.  I showed up and good things were happening all around me.  But showing up is not being present.  I sat off to the side.  I only spoke during the greeting time and I departed like a bat out of hell when it was over.  I got exactly what I put into it which was really nothing at all.  I was caustic and sarcastic and basically unreachable while sitting in the sanctuary.

Then one day, over one cup of coffee, I bitched for an hour about god, spirituality and the dismal state of “the church.”  The person listening said, “Your right, now let me show you how to change it.”  That conversation led to another, and another, and another.  Bit by bit, story by story, spirituality has worked its way back into my life.

I am not sure I will ever fit back into the mold of classic Christianity.  During the church services, I still rarely if ever participate beyond going through the motions.  I have become so insulated that very little gets through anymore.  But put me in a room with a dozen people who start telling stories about their lives and I will not shut up.

Maybe my life was too much “Just do it.” And not enough of “Just do it…and then talk about it with others.”  Naw, really it was more like, “Stew about it,” alone and in complete misery.

1200 words and going nowhere fast.  Say goodnight, Benji.

Goodnight!

Vergence, Part2, My Faith

So I am culturally a Christian, but pluralistic in practice.  Can I say I believe anything?  Dogmatically, no.  But here is my best attempt at explaining what it is I believe and how that fits into a Christian context.

There is a force, a wind, the spirit that is the energy at the core of all that is.  At least once and probably countless times, the spirit coalesced around a quantum singularity and it exploded into what we now call a universe.  Entropy was (and is) suspended by the spirit and things instead of becoming less complex, became more complex.  Atoms became stars.  Stars gave light.  At the end of their life, some stars collapsed into black holes that later became the center of galaxies.  Vast unfathomable numbers of galaxies contained vast unfathomable numbers of stars.  Around these stars, discarded bits of matter coalesced into planets.  And on at least one of these countless planets, circling an average star in the outer spiral arms of an average galaxy, the spirit coalesced around a set of complex chemical soup and a new type of energy formed: life.  For countless ages, life existed in the simplest of forms.  Until one day, the spirit coalesced around a specific cell and complexity burst onto the scene.  The planet bloomed into varied and beautiful forms of life.  Over the millennia life was almost destroyed by cataclysmic events.  But after each event, it came back stronger and more complex than ever.

Many of the animals that evolved over time had specific organs used to sense the world around them.  Over time, an organ evolved to regulate these senses called the brain.  And for some species brains evolved to the point that they could communicate and sense the spirit itself.  I am a descendant of one of these species called human.

Though the spirit could be sensed by many animals, humans became especially attuned to its existence and its mission:  loving and nurturing life.  But the fruit of this knowledge was extremely dangerous.  By tapping into the power of the spirit, man learned that he could love and nurture life in all of its complexity.  But if manipulated and twisted for individual gain, the spirit could be used bring about great destruction and even death the very opposite of complexity.

All over the world, people gave spirit names and developed practices to reflect the goodness of the spirit.  Sadly one of the problems with a name was that it was a manipulation of the spirit, which was used to war against those people who gave the spirit another name and again became very destructive.

From time to time, the spirit coalesced around a given person, who was given unusual insight into the very nature of the spirit.  These individuals would gather disciples and religions were born.  If the religion on the whole stayed in tune with the basic intent of the spirit, it, like life itself, thrived and was passed down from generation to generation.

One of these religions was Judaism.  Its basic tenant was to love the spirit and love justice.  Two thousand years ago, the spirit coalesced around one of Judaism’s followers.  His name was Jesus.  Jesus became an outspoken critic of how faith in the spirit had been twisted into a very narrow interpretation of laws originally written to help Jews to live in harmony with the spirit.  But it had devolved into a clannish cult of rules.

Jesus loved the spirit and saw the spirit in all the people he encountered.  He boiled down all the laws and regulations of Judaism into two statements.  Love god (the spirit) and love your neighbor (all life).  So powerful were his words, that upon his death, when the spirit within him was released, his words radiated out and took on a life or their own.  Those words even now can bring peace, love and justice to those who choose to follow them.

Sadly too many individuals chose to turn his words into more laws and sank back into the cult that Jesus so strongly fought against.

Christianity, the religion that formed around Jesus’ teachings, is at its best when his followers love the spirit and love each other with all of their energy.  And I will leave it at that.

Happy Easter

…coming soon, Vergence, Part 3, My Expression

Vergence, Part one, the Journey

So what the heck DO I believe in?  Since joining Imagine about a year and a half ago, I have gone from an ice cold stage, through a period of complete disorientation and now at long last, I think I am emerging into a new spring renewal of spirituality.  But what of faith?  My personal definition is: believing in that which cannot be proven (it really annoys me that there is no good antonym for provable).  Do I have faith?  Yes and no.

While there are vestigial parts of my childhood faith, the faith that I now carry would be unrecognizable to my family.  But really, isn’t that the point of evolution, to use something that severed another purpose in a whole new way?

But I digress.

My childhood faith is traditional Christianity.  Specifically:  conservative, Pentecostal, Assemblies of God.  I have written enough about what and why I no longer follow that path, I will not repeat it here.  Suffice to say, I am no longer a part of that particular set persuasions.

But what am I?

What am I?

I have been struggling to say what I am for months now.  I know what resonates with me, but have been tongue tied when trying to explain it.  But this morning I think I may have stumbled onto of conveying what I do believe and why I have been hesitant to expound on it until now.  The language I use is the language of our greatest modern myth, Star Wars.

I believe in “a” force.  The article of speech I choose is specific in this instance.  I do not believe in “the” force as in The Force as laid out in the Star Wars universe.  My reluctance to use this word is that it carries just as much if not more baggage as the word god.

I have faith that I am not a just a singular entity named Ben.  I believe I am connected to a powerful force that is in all, has always been and ever will be (at least in our universe…don’t get me started).

There is a material point of view that people are individual creatures.  And while they gain energy and sustenance from other living beings, there is nothing more, ”to it” than that simple electrochemical exchange.  When you die, you are consumed and that is the end of you.  I don’t subscribe to that point of view.

I feel that I am connected.  And while I fully understand that it may be a figment of my imagination, I choose to believe it anyway.  I believe that all life is plugged in at some level to a spiritual dimension and that whether voluntarily or unconsciously, we are part of a greater whole.  The purpose of that whole is to love and nurture all that lives.

Now to my real purpose of writing today’s entry:  Where do I express this faith?  Well in my readings and explorations of the last couple of years, two things have become clear.  One, I do not want to create my own religion.  At best that makes me a nut and at worst people will be killing each other in my name 1000s of years from now (but a man can dream…shut up Ben).  Two, buying into another religion (Judaism, Islam, Buddhism, or Flying Spaghetti Monster) is just taking on someone else’s baggage.

So where does that leave me?  Do I “worship” (another loaded word) by myself?  What a better way to recognize the unity and connection of the universe, than to “do it” all by myself.  Nope.  No spiritual masturbation for me.

What I have heard over and over, but could not “fit” into was the idea of finding the mystical elements of my cultural faith; utilize its spiritual practices while rejecting the dogmatic elements of its particular persuasion.

Luckily, I find myself in a pluralistic church where the word “both” is held in special reverence.  I can speak with total frankness and candor with my fellow Imagine peeps and I can participate in a worship service that is not unlike many other modern non-denominational churches (although it is part of one).

End of part one

Human: Individuals or Organelles?

When I was in High School, I worked summers at a day camp.  Most days we went on a field trip of some sort.  On one particular day, we went to a local park.  We started to play kickball and all of the counselors participated.   It was a particularly hot day, so I kicked off my shoes, while we played in the grass.  The grass was freshly watered and it felt cool beneath my feet.

It was good to be out in the sun.  I was not aware of any one part of my body.  I just felt a sense of wholeness and wellbeing.

When it was my turn at the plate, I decided I was going to make the kids run for it.  I was going to send that soccer ball to the other end of the field.  The ball rolled towards me and I kicked with everything I had.  My foot connected, but not with the ball.  My bare foot connected with a sprinkler head that had not fully retracted.  My toe, of which I had been blissfully unaware, suddenly gained sentience. It communicated a singular thought: I hurt!

From being just one of many parts, for days my toe became the center of my being.

I bring up this story to illustrate a thought that has been churning in my head lately.

My toe is connected to my brain via a complex network of nerves and chemicals.  It operates fairly independently (though not consciously), until there is a problem.  Then it has the potential to be the center of my consciousness.  Well what if I extend the metaphor for a moment.  We human beings more or less operate individually.  But we are intricately connected to each other by a myriad of sound, smell and visual cues.

Here is my convoluted point.  The toe and the brain are indirectly connected and yet we consider them part of one organism.  But our connection to each other, to the environment and other living organisms is no less complex.  For that matter Jesus said that the church is his body.  If Jesus in Christian theology God and *we* are Christ’s body, then it is not a huge synergistic leap to say that we are part of a much larger organism called God.

Now let me be clear:  I find Christian theology to be way too confining.  I do not in any sense believe there is a bearded white guy in the clouds dispensing cosmic justice.  But the idea that living creatures are part of a greater whole is not a novel idea.  If there is a greater whole, does *it* have a personality?  Tough to say.  But if there is consciousness that extends beyond the individual, then certainly it would have a sense of self preservation.  When threatened by the actions of any particular part, then consciously or unconsciously *it* would act.  Those actions would impact our actions, changing our behavior.  We see this kind of group think on a small scale in everyday life.

This I think is the agnostic god.  It is the simple acceptance that there is some connection that all living creatures share and that the sum of life *might* be greater than the sum of the individual parts (of which I am one).

OK, my head hurts now.  I think I need a cookie.  If this thought survives the next couple of days, perhaps I will follow up on agnostic eternal life.  But let’s face it, I am a flake.

95 Feces

I was listening to one of my favorite punk groups, The Violent Femmes.  They have a song called “Kiss Off,” that is presumably about O.D.’ing.  At one point the writer lists his grievances as he pops pills (presumably).

I take one one one cause you left me and
Two two two for my family and
3 3 3 for my heartache and
4 4 4 for my headaches and
5 5 5 for my lonely and
6 6 6 for my sorrow and
7 7 for no tomorrow and
8 8 I forget what 8 was for and
9 9 9 for a lost god and
10 10 10 10 for everything everything everything everything

–Violent Femmes, 1983

At the point in the song, the artist definitely has the WTF attitude.  I am bobbing my head along to each of the lyrics. 1 1 1…2 2 2…blah blah…and then 9 9 9 for a lost god.  And I make an odd mental connection.  The song becomes the background music to Martin Luther nailing the 95 theses to the door of Wittenberg.  I take one one one for indulgences…

Welcome to my brain.  It is a disjointed mess of goo.

So I start thinking about what pisses me off about “the church.”  (in the macro general sense…not a specific worshiping body)

I think wow, I wonder if I could come up with 95 beefs with the modern church.  Snort!  Yeah, I am Martin Luther…not!  But I did rather quickly come up with a list of 10 things I hate about the 21^st century church.  For now it is just a list.  If I am ambitious, I may blog on each topic.  But for now it is just a list for the virtual door.

1. Hell…the idea that anyone could deserve eternal punishment.
2. Rapture…F’ off world, I am out of here!
3. Devil…Really?  There is a being that would rival an all powerful God.
4. Politics…Jesus is not a republican
5. Prosperity…I love you Joel Olstein
6. When bad things happen to good people it is a test or because of unconfessed sin…man, I must be a real asshole.
7. The doctrine of the Trinity…OMG could there be a more disjointed theological cluster fuck?  Did anyone proof read this doctrine?  I think they were smoking pot…so he is totally god and totally human…drag…like…like an egg
8. The cannon should be reevaluated…Yeah, um Joshua…not a big fan.  Leviticus really???  I am sooooo going to get stoned.
9. Christianity is the only true religion…God is a trademarked entity of the Jesus corporations.  All violators will be prosecuted and persecuted…void in Wisconsin…damn Lutherans.
10. Mega churches…take 2 cups Jesus…some spotlights…an orchestra…some slick marketing…presto…salvation baby!  See also #5

Interesting…there are dark clouds forming over my head.

Thou or It?

My spirituality has taken a radical shift since becoming a hypocritical agnostic.  I say hypocritical because I am not a very consistent agnostic.  Since entering the winter of my discontent, I have distanced myself from the god of my past.  But oddly enough, I am experiencing a kind of spiritual renaissance.  While I see less evidence of a personal god, I have begun to see life as more than a series of meat and vegetable bags.  My spirituality now focuses on seeing the connections instead of the divisions.

Joseph Campbell in a series of interviews with Bill Moyers talked about the “thou” and the “it”.  When I see the other as an it, the relationship tends to be one of exploitation.  When I see the other as a thou, I enter into a sacred relationship where I appreciate our commonality.

I am trying to be more cognizant of these moments of recognition.  When I see the sacred thou, I am very easily snapped back into “reality.”  The challenge for me is going to be finding a way to hold the moment.

Here are a couple of examples of grasping and then losing the moment.

Friday night I went to Panera to pick up some dinner for my family.  As I exited the house, I noticed that it had just rained.  The birds were chirping merrily and the temperature was in the 70s.  Perfection.  I drove to Panera with the radio off and the window down.  As I  walked up the store, I noticed the sun peeking behind the clouds.  Sublime.  I got in line and gave the cashier my order.  She told me the total and I remembered that my wife had given me a gift card to pay.  The cashier asked if I had a Panera card (reward card).  I said, “Oh, I have a gift card,” and went to grab it out of my pocket.

She gave me an exasperated look and said, “A gift card is not a Panera card!”

(No shit Sherlock).

At that very moment, she ceased being a thou and became an it.  The moment was gone.

Much later that night, I woke up at 3am.  I laid in bed for about 15 minutes until it was clear I was UP.  I went downstairs, fed the dog and made coffee.  As I was sitting on the couch, I had a sublime moment.  The coffee pot and dog crunching sounds mixed in a symphony of the ordinary.  I was alive.  Creative thoughts flooded my mind.  I had multiple topics to write about.  I sat there soaking it all in.

Then for reasons that are unclear to me, I almost automatically got up and took two antihistamines.  Within 15 minutes I was in a dead sleep.  Noooooooooooo, what was I thinking???

I am actually encouraged that I see myself snapping out of thou mode.  It gives me something to work on.  I have a goal.  There is no it.  I just need to focus on thou.

Legacy Code

I had my Imagine meeting this morning.  It was our second to the last meeting.  Not sure what comes next, but I’m open to possibilities.

We are reading the book Naked Spirituality by Brian McLaren.  I had procrastinated all week and as of noon yesterday, I had not read the second half of the book that was being covered this morning.  My Kindle mocked me showing that I had only read 48% of the book.

The book compares the spiritual life to the seasons of the year.  The book is broken into four sections starting with spring and ending in winter.  Somehow I had slogged through the first half of the book.  Normally if a book does not catch me in the first couple of chapters, I toss it and move on.  This book was teetering on the edge of oblivion.  It is not that it is a bad book, but the spring and summer chapters did not really resonate.  My faith is not new, like spring.  Nor am I in the active season of summer.  I claim the name of Christian only by heritage and not by practice.  The first half of the book was full of really helpful practices for active Christians.  For what it was, it was good.  But since I had no interest revisiting that part of my life, it was a bit dry.

Last night I had to finish the book for today’s meeting.  I thought about blowing it off, but I wanted to honor the commitment to my group.  So I did the lazy thing.  I turned on the text-to-speech feature on my old Kindle and listed to the last bits of the first half of the book.  I was only halfheartedly listening and was about to drift off into a nap.  But then I hit autumn.  Bang!  To borrow from a tired old sermon illustration, McLaren came into my living room and started moving all the furniture around.  Hell he was tossing it from one side of the room to the other.  This guy had walked in my shoes.  He knew the desolation of faith lost.  I pretty much read the rest of the book in one sitting.

We discussed autumn and winter in our group.  While I was listening to everyone’s very personal stories of faith and loss a metaphor came to me.

For those of you who do not know, I work in software development.  The particular application I work on is old code…like parts of it were written 20 years ago.  That is an eternity in software.  When you are working on someone else’s old code, you call it legacy code.  It is extremely challenging working on legacy code because all of the original requirements are sitting in landfills or have been recycled into Starbucks heat sleeves.

So the business describes a new feature that they want and it is your job to incorporate it into the legacy app.  Problem is: every time you add new code, you end up breaking old code.  It is an endless cycle of changing one thing and breaking two others.  It can drive you nutty.

At a certain point, the code becomes completely unmanageable and you have to completely refactor the old stuff.  Typically, you toss out all of the section and start from scratch…green field development.  If you are lucky, when you enter a green field, you have new requirements and completely ignore the legacy stuff.

That is my life in a nutshell.  I grew up in the church.  Faith was core to my being.  But over the years, my theology became extremely complex.  I desperately tried to cling to the Christian faith of my childhood.  But when the overarching theme of my life became watching the suffering of a child, the “code” stopped working.  I tried ever more elaborate spiritual practices, desperately trying to make sense of what was completely senseless.

After the suicide of one of my mentors, the whole program collapsed.  Faith was dead.  God was dead.  Heck he was never alive.  Religion, faith and God had failed me.  It was an Atheist.  There was not; and never had been a god.

It was autumn in Benland.  I watch as a lifetime of faith died an agonizing death.

Once everything was finally dead, I was in winter.  But by letting it all die, I had cleared the field.  I claimed the name Atheist.  Only when the landscape was completely barren did I realize that there was a void.  I had severed my connection to god.  But I had also lost the connection to me.  I was a void.  I was empty.  I was powerless.

Only when I surveyed the blank snowy landscape of winter did I notice that I needed something.  I still cannot completely explain what I need.  But I need.  I need.  I am needy.

Gone is the faith of my childhood.  The old legacy software is nonfunctional, inert.  But now there is space.  I can begin again.  I can help write the new program.

I am not sure what is next.  I do not know what will pass for faith in the next phase of my life.  But there is desire and there is space.  I am not in a rush.  I am taking my time.  It would be easy to flip the switch on for the old code.  But it would collapse under its own weight in short order.  This time I am not taking the easy answers.  This time I will not blindly accept the platitudes of others.  This time I will imagine.

Imagine, part 6

Crash!

I preface this post with a couple of thoughts.  It is impossible for me to put into words how much I love my son.  He inspires me daily.  Let me be clear I do not in any way, shape or form blame him for what happened to me.  What follows is purely the result of my ego and a lifetime of bad theology.

My last posting ended with Jenn and me on the road to the hospital to have our son.  We were practically giddy with excitement.  This was the big day.

We got to the hospital and were put in the pre-surgical ward.  Our son was breach and had to be delivered by c-section.  We had to wait for a couple of hours because there were some emergencies in front of us.  But finally they wheeled her back.  I had to wait in the hall until she had the epidural and was prepped.

When they called me into the room, things happened very quickly but I recall them in slow motion.  Jenn was draped so that she could not see the incision point.  They had me sit in a chair right by her head.  I had a greater vantage point, but I could not see the incision either.  They started almost the second I took my seat.  The first thing that caught my attention was the smell of burning flesh (as they cauterized the wound).  I almost hurled because I was not expecting smells.  I kind of chuckled to myself and regained my composure.

It took about a minute to free Ethan from the womb.  What happened next put me in a state of panic.  They silently lifted him into my field of view.  I noticed that one leg had no tone and was significantly smaller than the other.  He was not breathing and was pale blue.  They took him to a nearby table and started CPR.  Time stopped.  “God let him breath.  Please let him breath.”  Eternity passed.

…

…

…

And finally he cried.  The nurses and doctors examined him.  They splayed his butt cheeks and gave each other knowing glances.

My mind was reeling.

They wrapped him (Jenn knew nothing at this point) and brought him for her to see.  They congratulated us and said nothing.  Ethan and were moved into recovery while Jenn was stitched up.

I robotically called my family.  “It’s a boy.  Yes, everything was fine.  Gotta go.”

They wheeled Jenn back and handed her the baby.

“Blah blah blah blah blah blah blah, problem.  Blah blah blah blah no anus.   Blah blah blah blah blah Nonnative Intensive Care.  Blah blah…can’t come until she can sit in a wheel chair…Blah…sir, follow us.

Tubes…IVs…Monitors…What in the hell just happened.  “Dear God, I have the faith.  Heal him now…Now…NOW!!!

“Sir we need to do a procedure…come back later…call family…go to wife.”

Dial home.  “Mom.”  I lost it and cried uncontrollably.  This was the first of many loses of composure.

The rest of the story is well documented in the rest of this blog.  Fast forward…two weeks.

I met with my mentor.  I lost it again.  He consoled me.  It would be OK.  This was our last meeting before I went before the district superintendent.  My mentor told me he had met with many candidates over the course of his ministry.  Never had he worked with a candidate with so clear a calling.  He looked forward to great things.

Fast forward…several weeks later.

I got the hospital bill.  It was over $100,000.  My insurance had not paid anything.  Panic.

Fast forward…weeks.

I got the bill cleared up.  Insurance covered it all.  I wondered what the Methodist Church’s insurance would have covered.  Called my mentor.  “Oh, it is a standard 80/20% policy.”

Hmmmm…

So if I was a pastor.  I would be on the hook for $20,000.  This is the first of many many many bills.  First year, my salary would be capped at $28,000.  What would have happened?  What will happen?  This is the first of many bills.  How will I pay for this?

HOW AM I GOING TO SUPPORT MY FAMILY?

More to come…

Imagine, part 5

TnT, pride before the Called

So after moving to Virginia, we started attending a medium size Methodist Church.  It was such an unlikely pairing; formerly hardcore Pentecostals meet the mainline church.  But as I mentioned in the previous post, we loved it.  I started attending a Bible study.  At the time, I had a skater haircut and a goatee.  The first night of the Bible study, the lady next to me showed me the index in the Bible so that I could find Revelation.  I was polite, but chuckling inside.  A year later, I was running the study.

For the first time that I could remember, I enjoyed going to church.  Jenn and I both became heavily involved, she in the music, me in Bible study and both of us in youth ministry.  Over time, we had our fingers in almost every happening at the church.

Jenn and I were still by far the youngest members of the community.  So the Pastor asked us to start a young adult group.  We tried twice and it failed miserably.  A year after the second failure, the pastor made a big push to have get people to join small groups.  They asked us to give it one more try.  In our previous attempts, we were never able to get more than 3-4 people to show up.  Because the pastor had made such a push from the pulpit, I was hopeful that we could get 8.  I figured with 8 we could make a go of it.  The first night 20 people showed up.  Within a couple of months we had over 40 people on the roster.  We had to split the group in half and sometimes thirds.  Jenn would take a group, I would take one and later we got others to help out.

Though it started out as a bible study, it quickly evolved into a fully fledged ministry.  TnT or Twenties and Thirties was our name.  We had our own outreach projects, social outings and the study.  We had a party at someone’s house most weekends.  We sat together in a section of the church.  And I found myself right smack in the middle of it.

I was elected a lay leader in the church.  On several occasions, I got to preach.  I also lead a couple of retreats.  I had found my niche.

It was in the middle of this faith renaissance that one of my church buddies sponsored me for the Emmaus weekend.  He was a mentor of sorts to me and I really admired his commitment to Christ and our church.  So I thought what the heck; I’ll go.

It was a transformative weekend.  Describing it would be its own post.  Halfway through the retreat (on steroids), I just started crying.  Which was kind of weird.  Most of the guys in my group were just coming back to faith.  I was firmly established at the time (yeah, right).  But I just could not stop crying.  Something powerful was happening to me and I could not figure out what it was.  It was then that I thought I heard the voice of my childhood (figuratively), saying come home.  I thought about it and went for a long walk.  Halfway through the walk, I started crying again.  And I said to myself, “God, do you want me to serve you in the full time ministry?”  It was then that I had the most powerful spiritual experience of my life.  It was as though suddenly my entire life had lead me to this moment.  I felt a very specific calling to serve as a pastor.  As soon as I made that connection, I felt a wave of contentedness that I have never felt since.  I WAS CALLED.

After I got home, I was worried about telling my wife.  She had grown up a PK and I was pretty certain she would not be thrilled about my calling to a new vocation.  But when I told her, she was surprisingly open to the idea.  A short time passed and then I started taking concrete steps towards pursuing my calling.  I started looking for seminaries.  I shared my calling with my close TnT friends and they all enthusiastically confirmed my vocational plans.

I officially approached my local Methodist district and told them of my calling.  They sent me some materials and assigned me a mentor.  Being methodical, the Methodist church had a process for pursuing a calling.  I met with a local pastor weekly and we reviewed a manual on pursuing a calling.

Normally, it takes about 3 months to complete this phase of the calling.  But my mentor and I really hit it off and our 1 hour meetings often went on for 2 hours or more.  It took us nearly 9 months to get through all of the materials.

Meanwhile we had other happy news in our life.  My wife was pregnant with our first child.  We were ecstatic.  My job was going gangbusters and my TnT group was thriving.

Near the end of my candidacy exploration, my mentor and I began putting together a plan.  I applied to and was accepted at two seminaries.  I had a plan and a backup plan.  Plan one was to go to Asbury seminary in Kentucky and work in their financial aid office (I still had skillzzzz).  Asbury was my first choice, but I knew it might be rough on my wife to move to a strange place again.  So I formulated plan 2, which was to go to the local seminary, Wesleyan.  If I went this route, I could only go part time while I kept my day job.  The nice thing about this option was that my work at the time had a benefit that would pay for schooling at any school for any major (that has since been cut back).

My mentor and I completed the exploration process and he strongly endorsed my candidacy.  The next step was to meet with the district superintendant and become a certified candidate through my local church.  These two things were going to be a snap.  I met with the DS and it went well, although he was somewhat suspicious of my Pentecostal background.  It was the spring of 2001.

Life could not be any more perfect.  I was happily married.  I had managed to build some equity in a house.  I led a successful small group ministry.  I was called into the full time ministry.  I had started pursuing my goal with great success.  And I had a baby, a son that was due in June.

It was all coming together.  We would have the baby in June.  I would take some time off over the summer.  I would pick my seminary.  And in early fall I would become a certified candidate at my church’s annual meeting.

Because the baby was breach, we scheduled a C-section on June 12^th.  On the way to the hospital, I commented to my wife on what a blessed existence we lived.  No matter what happened, God had blessed us beyond all of our expectations.

But wait, there’s more…