Advent Abdication 2015

Wrong species, wrong side of the fence.

Church in my life, in many ways, has been a disappointment.

I don't seem to be giving up on Jesus. As I get older and more experienced, I am ever more deeply committed. But churches, oh boy, if only I could do without them.

Somewhere in the distant past, I got the idea that church was where you went to get loved and accepted. Over and over (with a couple of notable exceptions) church has been instead where I've gone to get marginalized and blown off.

I'm weird and needy. I get that. But that's kind of Jesus's niche, right? He didn't come for the well people, right?

We're going to try somewhere new tomorrow, for the first Sunday of Advent. And it occurred to me tonight to try something new too: to just not try to find friends at church. To not hope for acceptance or love by the people I meet there.

That doesn't sound like a winning move, but at least it's different. Different than smiling and shaking hands and trying to remember names and going to activities with hope of making connection and still getting blank looks and uncomfortable silences after months of effort.

Starting tomorrow, I'll go to meet God. Frankly, he's challenge enough. I'll make relationships if they come. But I won't hunt for acceptance and friendship. Just be cool with what is, not stricken by what I don't get.

Seems paradoxical to try this tack on the very first day of the season of expectant waiting. But in here, it seems like a new direction. Let's try it and see what happens.

Trust in the Lord

I am told that God loves us, and rescues us from our sins and enemies.

But God also leaves us to suffer the consequences of our insistent foolishness, and to suffer other people's foolish consequences as well.

This is one reason why I don't trust God. Even when I ask him to save me, he might not. How can I trust that?

Anticipating Advent

Advent is coming up again in a couple weeks. Last year, as you may recall, I decided I didn't have much faith, and that Jesus didn't seem to be doing much for me. Not that it's Jesus's job to "do things" for me, but I hit that same old wall of feeling fine, but essentially alone, footprints in the sand be damned.

I decided not to stress out about it, and just keep showing up. As a result, this year has been pretty unspiritual, but not wracking. I've gone to church events and participated, sometimes wholeheartedly, sometimes skeptically. But there was still the nag in my head that I didn't get it. And I didn't feel like banging my head to try.

So I didn't. I didn't even think about it most of the time. I just kept showing up, but I'd drop out of things that felt false.

I don't think anything has been resolved, as such. However, I do find myself rested, willing to try again.

Sort of. Once or twice, I've been tempted to think along worn lines, and it's interesting how quickly I recoil, like I found a snake in my bedroll. That gives me the most confidence that I'm headed somewhere real. My built-in bullshit detector is firing.

There is a divine aspect to detecting and rejecting bullshit. God is the arbiter of reality; bullshit is not of God. When something feels fake, it is good and right to find it and excise it.

I've been reading a book by David Benner, The Gift of Being Yourself, which addresses some of the same ideas.

Here's another idea in the book I've been playing with: Benner recommends a meditation where you imagine things about Jesus. You read a passage from the Bible where Jesus is doing something, and you just imagine details into the scene. Details about Jesus. The point is to imagine some personality and life into guy who is supposed to be the incarnation of God, but often comes up as a cryptic weirdo.

Since you can only imagine what you already know, I 'm wary of the line where that you start imposing your own limitations on Jesus. But I can trust that the Holy Spirit is riding herd on the exercise, and keeps me from wandering off.

So I did that every day last week. Some days more vividly that others. No epiphanies, but it did help me to feel like Jesus was realer, closer, and that's what I'm after. Intellectually, I'll continue to have questions, but if I can find a feeling of trust, of humanity... well, that's what I've been missing, isn't it?

I'm looking forward to seeing what happens when Advent trundles by this year. I'm hoping for something imaginative.

Advent 2008

Advent for us is more involved this year than last year, when the observance sputtered and died just out of the driveway.

This year, M and I are getting up a little earlier in the morning to read and contemplate scripture for the Advent season. No lightning bolts this year either, but I'm glad we're doing it.

This year, Circle is focusing more on Christ coming to the city (Philadelphia if you're local), rather than coming to Earth or humanity or you in particular.

The picture is from a Flickr set. Our friend, Ben, took pictures of lil' Mary and Joseph in various photogenic locales around the city. (Note that "photogenic" does not necessarily equal "pretty".)

In our small group this week, we talked about how celebrating Advent, especially for a bunch of American Protestants, isn't in our traditional bag of tricks. Some of us are wrestling with making it feel/seem meaningful.

Especially after last year's experience, the best comment I have about the whole thing so far -- God is not your monkey. He wants to give you good things, and he cares very much, but he doesn't flip when you clap. Sometimes you show up and you pray and ask and cry and flail, and God does not seem to do anything.

That doesn't mean he's not doing anything -- which can be frustrating and suspicious. Those feelings, they are also part of the waiting.

I suspect we'll be plenty happy when Jesus does come back. Even if you're not a Christ follower, when the living embodiment of mercy and just plain give-a-damn shows up and says, "Okay, that's a wrap, everybody!", that's going to be a good day. Until then, it's not time yet. I don't know why. I wish I did. Oh God, I wish I did. I want to know why more than I want to know when.

Instead, I get to wait with everybody else. There's no musical number at the end of Advent telling you it's winding up. We might blow right on through Christmas and New Year's and next Arbor Day, and still not get a sense of doneness. Advent is the time we make a point to remember that we're waiting, not a signal to stop waiting.

Advent Update 4

Advent is turning into a shipwreck. No piety, very little contemplation. M and I haven't even wrenched the time out to sit and talk about it regularly.

One reason is that other good things are happening. My day job is suddenly demanding, and Unda Water has taken off like a VTOL craft.

We just got the thing out of the hangar, and I'm already running behind it, waving my arms at its silhouette. And I'm supposed to be the pilot. (The link to the Web site was added unobtrusively in the links column a couple of days ago. Check us out!)

Lately, it seems like Yoda's bon mot is reversed:
There is no do. There is only try.

But it's cell night again, and I'm leading again. Time to try again.

Tonight's reading is from a guy named William Willimon, whose name M and I titter at ("Willimon, I choose you!") , though he's pretty impressive. He preaches in Birmingham, Alabama, where I lived for 8 years, and had no idea such an august personage set foot. Willimon was named by a 1996 Baylor University survey as one of the 12 best preachers in the English speaking world.

Which leads one to wonder how they stack up against the non-English speakers.

Either way, the thrust of his essay, that we just kind of have to suck it up and accept grace -- we are none of us self-made -- is timely for me, if no one else. And his blog is pretty good too. That man can think. Check him out.

Advent Update 3

Advent lopes along, with none of the rising action you'd hope for in a good story. This is life. Poor drama, but still compelling to the protagonist.

Tonight at cell, I am leading us in discussion around a piece by Karl Barth on Zechariah, the father of John the Baptist. This week in Advent is sort of "John the Baptist week," so this is my loose tie-in.

Here's the intro I cooked up to give some insight into Barth. Wikipedia is quoted liberally:

Karl Barth (with a silent "h") was one of the big movers in neo-orthodoxy, which basically says that we know about God thanks to revelation from God, as opposed to knowing about God from observing nature and using reason. God is transcendent. Just because God showed up as a human for a while, doesn't make him just a big human. His theology points to the radical challenge of Jesus Christ, and the impossibility of tying God to human cultures, achievements, or possessions.

In the '30s, Barth argued that the Church's allegiance to the God of Jesus Christ gives it motive and resources to resist the influence of other "lords"—such as the German Führer. Barth mailed this declaration to Hitler personally. He was eventually forced to resign from his professorship at the University of Bonn for refusing to swear an oath to Hitler.

Barth has been criticized because he doesn’t embrace Biblical inerrancy. Barthians respond by saying that a theology based in Biblical inerrancy is based on something other than Jesus Christ. Our understanding of Scripture's accuracy and worth can only properly emerge from consideration of what it means as a true witness to the incarnate Word, Jesus.

Quotes:

• "Belief cannot argue with unbelief, it can only preach to it."
• “Jesus does not give recipes that show the way to God as other teachers of religion do. He is himself the way.”

Advent Update 2

I talked yesterday about busyness putting me off my game for Advent. Part of that busyness is spending time with my wife -- which, I hasten to add, is no burden.

It's just that I'm used to solitude and silence on tap. I don't know how to be contemplative with someone else around all the time.

Meredith asked me how we might celebrate Advent together, and I blanked. What I was expecting this Advent was my usual rhythm of thinking hard, and then walking around with ideas on simmer, until something becomes increasingly clear or relevant to me. Then I say, "Huh! How about that?" and fold it into my meager roll of wisdom about how to love God and my neighbor.

The idea of doing that in concert with another person is so unlike what I've done before, I had to stop to think if it was even possible.

Of course it's possible. That's what pastors do for a living. But the idea was tire screechingly new to me for about 12 seconds.

So I have to do something different this time. I have to be more communicative about the process. I might have to be more intentional about destination, or I might have to say every couple of days, "Okay, I still don't know where I'm we're going, but here's an interesting rock. What do you see?"

Well, it's a time of waiting for good things! This is the latest good thing to come along.

Advent Update

Advent is harder to celebrate than I expected, because it's hard to pay attention long enough to celebrate it. (Also, I loaned out my book of reflections that I was planning to read – an impressive display of lack of foresight.)

That's disconcerting because I'm used to being able to contemplate on demand. Something has happened in me that makes it harder to hit that switch.

To an organized, "get stuff done" person, I'm sure my life still looks like a casual stroll by limpid pools. But to me, I am really busy right now. And it's not all checklists and externals. The emotional work of marriage and maturity have seized me like an ocean wave.

I'm far from drowning, hell I even body surf a little. But it's work. The whole time, it's work.

I hope tomorrow to get my book back and use it to impose some structure, help me focus for the rest of the month.

The Waiting Game

Although I grew up thoroughly religious, and occasionally Christian, Advent was a non-issue. I remember people lighting funny-colored candles during Sunday morning worship service, but so often some song-and-dance routine was going on down front: baby dedications, handbell choirs, lay people solemnly trudging up to read the Bible. The rituals around Advent seemed part of the showbiz, keeping things interesting. Is what I would have thought if I had any conscious thoughts about it.

I'm more curious and skeptical about my religion now. Once I started poking around, I discovered an entire year-long calendar of stuff in the official Church orthodoxy, of which Easter and Christmas are just the standouts. But there's more.

Like Advent. Advent formally starts the fourth Sunday before Christmas. Some years that can be as early as November 24, but this year it's December 2. Advent is meant to be a time of anticipatory waiting, not just for Christ's first coming, but also for his next coming.

I've become increasingly aware of Advent in the last few years, and this year I'm making a point to... care, I guess. I have a book of Advent readings, and with startlingly little thought, I volunteered myself into leading Advent reflections in my weekly small group (which starts tomorrow, which is why I'm ruminating on this four days before go time).

As with many of my religious dabblings, I don't go in with a lot of expectation. I don't know what I'm doing, and I don't have a goal other than to fiddle with the knobs and see what happens. Sometimes that turns out to be meaningful, and sometimes I get done and feel no less bewildered than when I started.

Is that a dumb way to do religion? I can't tell. It might be. But I like experimenting, and I like simple hope, free from disappointment.

Which I suppose is a very Advent-y thing to be doing.