Just a few words ...

I was reminded recently about the power of the word "just."  If you are like me the word just tends to slip into sentences without much thought.  Its meaning slowly taints what we mean to say.  Just is one of those challenging words because ironically enough it causes us to make judgements.  I am not talking about "just" as in "the trial was just."  What I am talking about is more along the lines of "the trial was just three days long."  Now if the trial only lasted three days then the trial really was just three days long ... but we can also read that to mean the trial was only three days long and it could have, or even more judgmentally it should have been more.

Where this because real to me is when we start talking about faith.  In The United Methodist Church we celebrate open communion, and there are times I try and define this as saying that "we just ask that you seek God in the breaking of the bread and the sharing of the cup."  Now this might be the only requirement we ask but I would hope we realize it is not a simple one.  One does not "just seek God" in a casual and minimalist way.  It is not like saying we "just ask you to bring yourself" or other statements where just is meant to diminish a require and minimize the cost.  When it comes to some maters of faith, just is not meant to minimize something it is meant to expand it.  Maybe what is closer to the truth is not "we just ask ..." but instead "we ask that you just seek God ..."  Still that same message of only God, but now not in a way to make it easy but in a way to make it hard.

What do we just ask of people ... and how do we limit ourselves with such a simple word ... but those are just my thoughts. :)

Fair Trade

I talked today with Pastor Rory after he returned from India.  He was telling me some fascinating stories about the experiences with poverty he had while visiting a ghetto there.  He talked aabout seeing a sweat shop where workers used modern equipment to make brand name merchandise, except the brand was not applied in the sweat shop, it was applied later so that no one would have to claim they knew it was coming from a sweat shop.

All of this got me thinking about what kind of clothes I buy, when I buy clothes, which is really not that often.  I started doing some research on Fair Trade clothes to see what that would look like.  I found several sites that talked about their clothing coming from union run places, usually in Canada or the US.  On the one hand that seems like a great idea, buy more locally, buy clothes that are made at a reasonable wage level, and do my part to help create a more sustainable economy.

There seems to be a secondary question though.  While on the one hand deplorable buying clothes from sweat shops does have the advantage of providing these people with some sort of income, some sort of job.  Is the community better for having that income lost? Wouldn't there be risk of hurting the economy of India, especially those most impoverished by removing those jobs, even at their poor wage levels from the economy.  I remember reading that Gandhi, when he started a strike on British made clothes in India in favor of locally made products sent money to workers in England who were out of work because India was no longer shipping cotton there for work.  He did not want the effort towards financial independence and workers in India to be won at the expense of workers in England.

I love the idea of buying local, of building up local ecnomies, but I also am aware that we are part of a global a community and our buying decisions have an impact on people everywhere.  Sadly my 9th grade level understanding of economics does not make it easy to parse out the best way to help everyone.  In the end I think we just need to be deliberate, to try and do our best for everyone, and to know that we are going to make mistakes, but to do so hoping to helping everyone, not just ourselves.  At least that is what I think right now.

When I am president ...

I was at Baxter Elementary School this morning and in honor of President's Day they read a short essay one of the kids had written about what they would do if they were president. It was basically work for peace, feed the hungry, care for those in need. It was quite touching. It was beautiful in its simplicity, in the lack of partisanship in it. There were no litmus test answers, what the child's stance on abortion, terrorism, universal health care, any of it. All I heard was a concern for others. I do not like to be negative about politics but I fear that too many of our politicians, maybe too many of us who vote have lost that youthful idealism, that politics is about making the world a better place. I am not saying we cannot disagree, I am not saying we cannot want to do different things to make the world better. What I am saying is that we need to remember that making the world better is what it is all about. This has become quite clear to me as I read the political news lately. Senator Bayd of Indianna, a moderate democrat, is not seeking re-election because he believes the system is broken and he cannot bring the two different sides together. Senator McCain of Arizona is facing a fight in his Republican primary because he is not conservative enough for some people. It seems that both sides forget about making the world a better place and instead become focused on making sure the other side does not get the credit for doing it. First Corinthians has a great line ... "when I was a child I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child, but when I became an adult I put away childish things." Maybe we need to get back to thinking, dreaming, hoping, acting like children, or maybe the problem is that we who are adults are still acting like children and it is time to grow up. Whatever the way you phrase it, I think the bottom line is we need to get back to the basics of politics, serving the people, making the world better, and stop worrying about how is winning when we do it.

Forms of worship

I was interviewed this week as part of the ordination process and one of the things that I talked about was how we were changing the worship style as we launched New Light to better fit with my own personal style. Previously I had always done worship in the form the congregation had. Now we were trying to find the right form for me. It has been nice to explore the ways that I want worship to be and to find the things that fit for me.

All of this raises some interesting questions. My wife recently attended a workshop on worship that talked about different worship styles and different needs people have for worship. It is no secret that worship tends to be attended more by women. One theory for this is that our worship styles tend to be more appealing for women and it probably creates a certain cycle. If we accept the premise that worship appeals to a certain type of people, those are the ones most likely to then be inspired to go into ministry and thus their own style of worship will likely be similar to the one they experienced their call out of. This is not always the case but it seems like it would have an effect.

One of the things people often joke about is how worship for them is on the golf course, or while fishing. Now, as someone who golfs (sort of) and who finds a great deal of worship and beauty in nature, I can appreciate that there is some truth to this, but I also think it is a bit of a cop-out. Still it raises the question, for someone who worships in active ways, what does worship look like?

I think the real question I am wrestling with here, is whether there is something fundamental to worship or is it all contextual. Some people want active worship, some want passive, some want loud, some quiet, some want to be talked to, some what to have a chance to respond. Is there really anything central to worship other than God. Isn't it that the case that everything else is extra, everything else is just personal preference. So how do I find the ways to encourage people to find their own worship style, not as a way to get out of showing up on Sunday morning, but as a way to help them truly experience and relate to God? How does the church, equipped with this knowledge go from centuries of really offering only one or two styles of worship, to basically encouraging infinite variety? Do we even need to offer all of them?

Playoffs

So there is a part of me that thinks I blogged about this a year or two ago ... but it is on my mind right now, so you are stuck with a potential repeat.

As we prepare to launch worship at New Light UMC in Baxter, I am forced to take every Sunday worship like it is a playoff game ... "win" or go home. It adds pressure to the moment, but it also I think brings out the best in a person like me. I take preaching seriously ... after all I am trying to communicate the Word of God. Just the same, I find myself focusing even more on it, and well everything when each service has a greater meaning, a greater impact.

So what I am pondering is this ... why haven't I been like this before now. Why don't all churches, all pastors bring their playoff level play to each week? Is it because we just cannot find the time to do it? Is it because we do not have the same immediacy to drive us? Does it simply not help enough to be worthwhile in the long run?

I think the answer is mixed ... I think for me there were times when I was just too busy, there is also a part of me that does not see the rewards of more work enough to inspire me to try harder. I was hearing on MPR last night about people who scan luggage for guns that as the percentage of bags with illegal items decreases their ability to spot them also decreases, the brain actually gets worse at seeing the same things. I wonder if it is not the same way with worship. There are weeks I slave over the sermon, polish the ideas, and really work at it, and in return get no more complimants or even fewer than usual. Other weeks I struggle with writer's block and end up with a final product that I feel is sub-standard, and people love it. It is hard to evaluate the effects of our effort.

The bottom line however is that worship is not about winning, it is not about being attractive to new members, it is not about anything except the worship of God. If we do that well, nothing else matters. If we do that well, everything else will fall into place.

So I fence, a sport where the object is to hit another person with a sword, and yet largely it does not hurt if done properly. In fact most of the pain caused in the sport is accidentally or the result of poor execution. By contrast, football is a sport where the object is to carry a ball across a goal line and yet causing injury seems to be built into it. While there are ways that you are not allowed to hit a person, and times that such actions are penalized, there are a lot of "clean" hits that leave a person in a great deal of pain.

I have always justified my participation in fencing as being ok, because the intent is never to cause harm. As a proponent of non-violence I would find it hard to be a part of an activity that encourages violence. I spent last night watching the Vikings Saints game. In general it was a very good game, but one thing was unsettling to me. For the second week in a row the Saints went into the game with a strategy that to win they were going to cause as much harm as possible to the aging quarterback they faced. They were not doing it out of malice (I assume) but simply under the theory that an injured person gets a little nervous the next time someone is flying at them and might make a mistake. It all is "legal" and in that sense a valid strategy to win. But for me it is unsettling.

Is it morally justifiable to cause harm under the auspices of a game. On the one hand the Saints could argue they were just as open to being hit, that the Vikings could do the same to them, and so there was nothing wrong with it. But there is a part of me that feels at a deeper level it is wrong to normalize causing harm. In addition to creating an atmosphere of aggression, it can lead to glorifying the very same things. The recent concussion scandel in the NFL can maybe be traced to this same atmosphere that encourages players to slam into each other as hard as possible, to ignore pain at all costs and to do what they can to cause pain to the other side. I recently heard one annoucer decrying a penalty for an excessive hit, implying that some of the players might as well be wearing skirts. Even if you ignore his appalingly sexist remark, the implication that some players just are not tough enough was a problem. The sport needs people who will handle more pain.

Now I am "picking" on football because I just watched it last night, but the reality is that video games, other sports, movies, etc, all do the same thing. They all find ways to normalize harm, to encourage a culture of violence. If a person, such as myself, does consider it wrong to encourage acts of violence should we find other sports to watch, other movies, other games? They exist. Even movies like Harry Potter do a good job of allowing for violence to exist, but showing it in a way that does not glorify it, but instead raises the question if there is not that "still better way."

I like watching football, I like the strategy, I like the excitement, I like the plays. But is that enough ... does the violence seemingly inherant in the game mean I need to find something else to watch? Or is there another way to play?

God of Silence, God of Noise

When you look at the Bible, God seems to be presented in one of two ways, abundant noise, great light, complete vastness, such as how Moses tended to experience God, a God that is too awesome to behold. On the other side of the coin is the God of Elijah, the still small voice, the God that exists not in great fire or earthquake but in the silence behind the wind. That still small voice can be seen in other religious texts as well, such as the Tao Te Ching, which talks about how the Tao is found in the emptiness, the silence, the void. The bottom line is God does not tend to be found in the middle or maybe in the middle we find Jesus, but that sounds like a different topic so I am going to ignore it for the purposes of this blog.

Do we tend to find God in the noise or do we find God in the silence? I imagine it is different for different people. I know people who have heard or seen God in a visual or audible way, others I think find God the most in the midst of noise, hymns of praises, songs that rock with the beat of the spirit.

In general I find God in the silence. When I talk to God I do not hear the answers, but I do get a reply. I find my heart being turned, my mind pushing against something that redirects me, that leads me to look at it in a different way, to me that is the silent prompting of God, a way that God communicates even in the silence, even just in my mind. These last few days I have found God over and over again in streets of glistening white, trees silvered by the frost. In the still and the silence of that beauty, my heart is enlarged with the presence of God.

Where do you find God? Does God appear in noise and in brilliant fashion, or in stillness, silence, peace? Or fine, does God appear in that middle form, that balance of silence and noise that is Christ? Where do you find God? When do you seek for the divine?