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It’s not the policies. It’s not his unlikely ascent to the White House.
It’s not that he’s a brilliant communicator.
It’s not the color of his skin.
It’s for one reason and one reason alone:
We have similar handwriting.
From the LA Times:
The holidays, for many of us, feels like that circus act in which a trapeze artist walks across the big tent on a tightrope. Balance is the name of the game.
How do we enjoy a great meal when we have to sit so close to the people who know best how to push our buttons?
How do we balance the horrors of AmerIndian history with the abundance and blessing of living in the most prosperous nation on the little blue planet?
How do we balance the heartfelt desire to provide gifts to our loved ones with a teetering financial crisis?
Yes, the holidays are a tightrope act. Part of the draw is waiting to see who will make it across to the other side with poise and grace.
Grace. It’s a term tossed around so liberally, I fear it’s lost a bit of its’ newness and shine. It’s an idea that desperately needs a volumizing conditioner — something to remind us of its’ mystery and beauty, something that will get it to bounce off our shoulders and turn some heads. Grace is classically defined as unearned favor. I’m beginning to realize that this, or any attempt at definition is far from adequate. And that’s because grace isn’t really grace until the hot glow of her presence has fallen on your own sorry disposition. Grace is merely a theological construct to well-fed, First-World consumers who don’t give a second thought to the fact that, this Thursday, they’ll literally eat like kings while others in this same world literally starve. Grace is a cheap vocabulary word to Americans who simply assume that they live in the greatest nation on earth and take as a matter of fact that God-shed-his-grace-on-thee without diving even momentarily into the complexity of our blessing and how it came about (largely through plague, genocide, slavery and unjust labor practices).
Being godawful and pathetic, selfish human beings doesn’t disqualify us from blessing. It makes us good candidates for grace – the kind of grace that Jesus was referring to when he said that we’re blessed when we’re hungry and thirsty for righteousness, because we will be filled.
Then there’s what happens when we become recipients of that grace: when we choose to stand in the shoes of “the last, the lost and the least” among us, and recognize that we ourselves are not exceptional specimens of humanity but rather lucky and mostly dishonest, we can appreciate with true humility and appreciation what grace has been afforded to us, and be a little more willing to extend that favor to people with whom we might otherwise feel don’t deserve it.
So the bad news is, you’re a member of the human family. The good news is, you’re a member of the human family. Have a Grace-filled Thanksgiving… remember to love the least like you’re one of them.
Because you are. And Father loves you extravagantly.
So I have a confession to make. Granted, a lot of my sleeplessness recently has much to do with caring for a newborn baby boy. But before this, for about the length of Serena’s pregnancy, the two of us have been helping ourselves to vigorous doses of HBO megahit, The Sopranos, via DVD.
The Sopranos
Before I go any further, I would never recommend viewing this series to anyone who has serious conscientious objections to gratuitous violence, sex scenes, nudity, drug use, vulgar language or general human depravity being displayed in your home. I realize that with that last sentence I opened up a huge can of implication with regard to my own viewing temperament, but know that the show was only on for adult consumption – well after the kids were fast asleep.
Now personally, I didn’t get a visceral rise out of scenes that included topless dancers at the Bing, much less scenes of violence or illicit drug use. Perhaps if I had watched 10 or 15 years ago it would have been a different scenario. Also, the way the show was done made these scenes so commonplace that the viewer can allow such displays to fade into the periphery. Again, big opening for anyone who would like to judge my maturity here.
When the last scene of the final episode of the final season ended last night, I had a moment of deep introspection while the credits rolled. I won’t spoil the ending for anyone who is in the middle of it, but it occurred to me that, in this tragicomedy, life was displayed in a gritty and realistic, if heightened, frame. Too often, and especially in the circles I most often run with, art is only appreciated when it’s free of ugliness, vulgarity, depravity, and deep ethical conflict — and instead reflects a feel-good, sugarcoated version of heightened fantasy. As I thought further about this today, I realized that, while I may take some heat for watching The Soprano family spiral into destruction, the entertainment many Christians consume without a tinge of guilt — those romantic comedies, action movies and a lot of what’s on TV — would be banned without a seconds thought by our grandparents. What does this say about culture and Christianity? Do we slip further and further away from purity as time goes on, or has our sense of propriety and the role of art in communicating ethics and morality shifted? Can the Gospel be preached by reflecting off the morality tale of the Sopranos? Maybe not in most of our churches today. But does that mean such shows and films are bereft of redemptive value? At what point is art impossible to redeem for spiritual discussion?
I’m launching into what I hope will be a semi-consistent treatment of what I consider some of the myths of Christian leadership. This is on top of work, school, family and other writing obligations… so, for those of you who plan to follow this thread, give me a week or so to post.
While still a young adult by any standard, my experience has been rich and varied: I served as an associate pastor at a large suburban church for several years, then spent some time in a college town. I also spent around a year as the youngest lead pastor in my entire district of Northern California and Nevada, serving a small rural community and supplementing my income at UPS. Now I’m serving a mid-sized church in the ecclectic, beautiful and paradoxical city of Oakland, California — and re-thinking the fundamentals of Christian Leadership.
It’s not so much that I have set out to debunk a grand deception of any kind. Unlike Bill Maher, I really don’t think one exists. I do, however, believe that the problem in the church is the same as that outside the church: our systems are corrupt because they are staffed by corruptible human beings.
And that’s not to suggest I stand above the fog of human frailty! Hopefully, my unique vantage point on church leadership can bring something helpful and constructive to the larger conversation in the Body of Christ about who we are and where we stand in the world. As a friend and elder frequently says to me, “it’s important that we talk to each other about these things.” I agree: too often we find a camp of like-minded fellows and pitch our tent there. Birds of a feather may like to flock together, but a strange and beautiful family of different-colored birds we should strive to become.
Next: The Myth of Superiority. Stay glued…
I just received news that a friend was laid off of work. Another friend recently witnessed a horrific and violent crime visited upon a loved one. While I pray and ache with these friends, I know that just beneath the surface there are many others for whom I care deeply who seem stuck: financially, relationally, spiritually. It’s in moments like these I wish I could just reach into my magic bag of tricks and offer a shiny new life. One free of pain and confusion. A life of fulfilled promises instead of broken ones.
It’s moments like these that the tinny, two-dimensional, bubble gum Christianity of fake smiles and tidied-up testimonies leaves a bad taste in my mouth. My life, and the lives of so many who place their trust in God, doesn’t look like what the televangelist is offering on his latest DVD series. The good news is that Jesus never promised that life would be easy: in fact, he said that for his followers, life would be the opposite; and that we’re blessed when we’re at the end of our rope. I’m not sugesting that we serve a masochistic diety, or that we should look forward to or enjoy pain. But I do have hope that pain is not the end, but the beginning of a process that will yield a relationship with God and people that goes far deeper than anything that could fit on a bumper sticker.
In six months I’ll be a new dad again, and my thoughts have returned to what kind of parent I think I’m becoming. This is the fundamental question, more important to me than that of what kind of world we are bringing a new human into; we’re choosing to focus on what kind of human being will be visited upon our world. And the logical follow-up question to “who is my child becoming,” is “what are we modeling?” I’m intrigued as I meditate on this theme that I feel less equipped to parent than I did with the introduction of Gabriel, our almost-three year-old. Maybe its because I grossly underestimated the task (or was it that I grossly overestimated my abilities?), but I feel like the advent of this fresh progeny I am more sober about what’s important, thus more involved in the introspective process of spiritual preparation for a child. I’m sure the time will come when we’ll busy ourselves with paint swatches and name combinations and baby showers, etc., but I am thoroughly immersed at the moment in what it means to be a Dad.
Mark Scandrette, a local artist and spiritual director, writes in his blog about the importance of creating spaces for rites of passage to take place as he unpacks a recent experience with his own son who is in the process of becoming a man. And the two realities cannot really be separated in a healthy way – these realities of fatherhood and manhood. The father invests his very life, from genetic code to wise counsel to friendship and camaraderie, until the point at which the boy becomes a man and replaces him. This transactions is strangely lacking in our youth-crazed world where men, like Peter Pan, refuse to mature into adulthood and experience all the relational and societal complications that result.
A friend of mine named David asked me today what kind of legacy I wish to impart on the next generation. Immediately I think of my son and the mystery child on the way and ask myself if my legacy will be limited to the realm of good intentions, or if I will truly become the kind of man they will want to follow into significance. In other words, can I live the kind of life that will help draw them into the fullness of their own potential? I know some things, like that I want my son to be unashamed and secure in his sexuality. I know I him to be secure enough that he doesn’t have to hide behind empty machismo or bullying tactics, but instead can invest his energy into a deep and authentic respect for self and others. I want him to love his mom and treat women with equity and honor. There’s a lot more that I am completely clueless about, like how to be vulnerable about my own broken humanness when he wakes up to the reality of my mortality. Or what to do when my expectations get in the way of my ability to love and accept him. Or a million other things that come with each new developmental stage or shift in circumstance.
This journey into parenthood is a long march into significance. We don’t get a certificate and a plaque on the baby’s arrival; that legacy instead has to be etched out slowly in the granite, into a lifetime of relationship. My prayer now is that I can learn this time more quickly than I learned the first time around.
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Tags: parenting
