Resident Aliens

I don't always agree with Jim Wallis but his recent editorial entitled "Democrats Getting Religion" from the SoJo Mail (from Sojourners) rang particularly true. In testifying to a Democratic committee that is drafting their national platform, he encouraged them to look to faith and scripture to form policy on economic and social issues. Rather than avoid religious language, he encouraged them to embrace it.

Now I don't know if Wallis is saying this in order to co-opt religion to serve a political agenda, but I don't think so. He concludes by saying: "Religion should not be the exclusive possession of the Republican or Democratic Party, the right or the left, but must be able to critique and challenge both."

I agree. When our Christianity gets too closely aligned with political parties or with American ideals, we lose what it means to be resident aliens whose home is somewhere else.

Deference

Leslie returned to Indianapolis last Thursday and she is still talking about her experiences in Washington DC. Her most famous moment was having her photo taken with Senator Evan Bayh (he touched her shoulder!) (See http://bayh.senate.gov/images/nylc61604.gif). Her most memorable places included Arlington National Cemetery, the Lincoln Memorial, and the National Cathedral. Her most exciting experience--tons of kids from all over the country!

My proudest moment--learning that she stepped aside from making a speech that she had worked on and for so that another person could give one. A person, says Leslie, that simply needed to make the speech for their own well-being. Leslie went on to say, "I could have done it and several chastized me for not me for not making it. But I knew two things, the bill would pass without my speech and that this other kid really had a need to give it a go."

Stepping aside. Not a bad thing to be able to do.

Rethinking Our Place in Life

Erik Weihenmayer's story is an incredible one and he possesses an incriedible spirit. Blind since the age at 13, Weihenmayer is the first blind climber to reach the summit of Mt. Everest. In 2002 he became one of less than 100 individuals to climb all of the Seven Summits--the highest peaks on the seven continents. Listen to his sense of perspective:

My friend Hugh Herr lost both legs in an ice-climbing accident; he became an engineer and developed prosthetic legs and feet made out of rubber, and he's a better climber now than ever. I call people like him alchemists. You can pile a lot of lead on them, but they'll figure out a way to transform it into something good. Life isn't fair. You've just got to take what happens and make it work for you. So when I'm climbing some hard rock 1,000 feet up, I'm not thinking, "If I could see that hold up there, life would be so much easier." I just think, "Thank God I'm up here."

Be Who I Am

Who am I?

Whose am I?

Somehow or another, the second question informs the first. And in working through the second I must be prepared to embrace the truth that I can not be everything and all things. That place has already been taken. And even more humbling is the ever-growing truth that I can not be some of the things that I thought I wanted to be.

Where does that leave me?

I can begin with the inescapable reality that not only has God arranged for my life, God has entered into my life. The presence of God in my daily human existence can be minimized by my carelessness or lack of attention. Yet He resoundingly present.

I am His—by virtue of both creation and sacrificial love. And that beginning place shapes all that I can discern about myself.

All gifts, all passions
All instincts, all knowledge.
My family, my personality,
My likes and my dislikes.

All of it finds an interpretive key in understanding God’s parental and redemptive love for me. And God’s desire is nothing more than for me to become more fully what He intended. To say in a different way, God’s desire is for me to be who I am.

Parker Palmer recounts the rabbinic story of Rabbi Zusya, who in his older years said: “In the coming world, they will not ask me: ‘Why were you not Moses?’ They will ask me: ‘Why were you not Zusya?’

Each of us has a part to play in God’s drama. We are all His. And He desires us to be more fully what He designed each of us to do.

On the Lake

The past two evenings I've been able to be out on the Dumbledore (a Precision 23 foot sailboat) and what fun. If I could get my whole CARE group out on the boat we would go tonight. Alas, somehow I don't think that 17 people would fit.

Being outdoors and experiencing both the beauty and the dynamic nature of the world is fascinating and humbling. Saturday night the wind was steady and plenty strong, blowing out of the north, driving temperatures to 60 degrees and cooler. The Dumbledore came to life, heeled in and driving through waves. Last night, milder, even warm, and the lake was idyllic. Even with main and genoa, we ghosted along. William had the helm most of the time and he enjoyed simply chasing after whatever wind could be found on the lake.

You never know what you will find on the water, anymore than you know what you will find as you walk through a day. But it seems to me that being alive and ready to engage in wind or calm makes all the difference.

Keeping Time or Finding Rhythm?

Travel and a flurry of activity has swept me into a mode of living that has precluded my normal disciplines. However, I'm trying to reform, mostly for my own sanity. Life is best lived with a certain rhythm and order. God created the world with a certain order to it; "there was evening and morning, another day."

Obviously, we don't live in a vacuum. And yet, establishing rhythm creates the foundations for the melody that breezes in and out of our days. A steady beat that begins in the early hours of the day through prayer, quiet, and Scripture sets the pulse that carries me throughout the day. What I find disconcerting is when I allow the busyness of life and ministry to encroach on the rhythm-setting work of prayer and Scripture. What I notice is that it becomes harder to discern the melody in my life. Life's experience's are more likely to be heard as random noises, blasting and blaring away.

What I need is the rhythm--the steady pulse of God's life infusing me with hope and reorienting me to His vision of the world.

Quote du jour

"We are half-hearted creatures fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased." --C. S. Lewis

Staying Young

Children keep you engaged and connected to lots of things--like Shrek 2! Just last night I learned what ten year old girls are doing at sleepovers (a trip to paint ceramics), just how many colleges and universities would like for my 17 year old daughter to attend their institution (could it be about money?), and what 15 year old boys spend much of their time mulling over. Come to think of it, I guess I already knew what goes on in the confines of a 15 year old boy's mind!

Having sons and daughters keep me humble. I realize that I will never arrive. Perfect parenthood is an illusion best discarded early. Rather it seems to me that my job is just to keep on hanging on to the task of being a dad, rejecting any temptation to relinquish the job. Like Jacob and the angel at Jabbok, I keep my hold on nurturing, loving, listening, and challenging them. I hold on to my task so that one day (and it is coming soon) I must and should let go.

So it is off to King's Island this summer, overnights on the boat. . . . and since Shrek 2 is playing at the Royal this weekend I suspect I will be found walking around in Danville on Saturday. I don't think I would want it any other way!

Twisters

Twisters have been really creating havoc across the country. A cousin writes to report spending the evening in the bathroom and ending up with roof damage outside of Edmond, Oklahoma. Local papers are full of photos and stories of floods, destroyed homes, and more. The Reeds were rousted out Sunday night in Ohio for tornado warnings as they passed a few miles to the north. In a moment of time your perspective changes.

This afternoon on my way to the library I receive a call. "Could you go see Ginger (not her real name)? She feeling really depressed." I go and find out that she hasn't ate in five days and is curled up in a ball on the end of a couch. In a moment of time your perspective changes.

To live in the temporal world of everyday happenings and not succomb to the illusion that the world we see is really the most important thing. That is the quest. It is a shame that it takes a twister or a visit to remind me.