7 Days till Christmas

Seven days till Christmas
Have I got a gift for you.
A tethered rope all tough and spiky
And a journey's worth of donkey poo

Six days till Christmas
Have I ever got a present -
A bit of cheese the texture of rock
and a stinky, sweaty peasant

Five days till Christmas
why don't you extend your hand?
In it I'll place a manger board
and a musty bed of sand

Four days till Christmas
What more have I got for you?
How about a dusty desert town
and a garbage pit for a loo?

Three days till Christmas
and I know you want some stuff.
A close-up view of a horse's rhinde
And a pillow of lamby fluff.

Two days till Christmas
and do you want a token?
How about a dangerous town
in a country clearly broken?

One day till Christmas
And you have an extended hand
Can you smell the blood and dirt and tears?
Can you hear the fearful land?

Now is the day of Christmas
Have I ever a pretty toy.
A bloody mess of swaddling clothes
and a mucous-filled little boy.

It is so wrong, this Christmas song
It has no flow, it doesn't go
It is not clean and is not neat
It hurts to touch and it smells like feet

But we have a holiday,
all clean and pristine,
and it is all wrong and it won't be long
before we see

It is not real.

How the church says sorry

I am the church. I have heard a lot of gossip lately, a lot of chatter on the wire, and it has been increasingly coming accross my radar screen. At first it was just a few blips in the distance, but now almost covers the graphic before my eyes. There has been a lot of talk about me, the church, and much of it goes on behind my back. Say it to my face! Fortunately, there are some who love me, who have tried to sit me down and have a good talk. I feel sorry for them, because that can't be easy. I'm hard of hearing.

But if you think I'm a jerk, you should meet my husband. When we go to parties, often people don't notice him, because I'm on the table, lifting my skirt, dancing the hula. I hate it when they judge him based on my behaviour, but I feel like I can't help myself. I'm always screaming my head off about some crap, while he's in the corner, whispering quietly to a few. I'm drinking too much, and then yelling at everyone else about their behaviour. I'm shooing people out of the club, begging them to stop chasing a false sense of romance, while rubbing my hips on a stranger that I just met. I'm on the corner on Saturdays - yelling at people to change their lives - but when they come closer, I run inside, and when I come out the next day, I've changed my clothes, uplifted my speech, and spoken a language they do not understand.

Some people have been saying I am pretentious. I find money too important, always talking about it, making my decisions based on the accumalation of it. I sit among my posh friends, Government and Big Business, talking about all the things I can do with my money, and how I have earned a right to speak and sway the great and the mighty. I know that I started out in Social work, taking care of the poor and the orphan, and I hear my early words still ringing in my ears. But I didn't ask for all this success - I earned it with my blood and my sweat. Perhaps my husband regrets teaching me how to work. Am I corrupted? Do I really have too many toys? Just think of what I could do with them!

People say I think I'm smart too. I use words I've just learned, and sit in classrooms I've just joined, and talk about sciences that I haven't even read the text books on. I do my own book reviews too. There was a book written about me recently. It had lots of people paying attention to me (it has been a while). Ha! It was for all the wrong reasons. I just did a book review on the Da Vinci Code, glazed over it after hearing all the other people discussing, and then declared my opinion. I didn't even read it! Why should I? I already know what it is trying to say. Because I know in my heart that not everything it says about me is true, I decided none of it could be true. Then that night, I took a good look in the mirror, and remembered my ways. I remembered what I did back then, the trail of destruction I've left in my wake, as I have travelled this world. I've hurt a lot of people, and because of my marriage, brought shame on the In-Laws.

So it is true. I am a hyporcritical, snobby, money grubbing, arrogant, fearful person. If you suddenly found yourself in the sort of marriage that I'm in, don't you think you would act like me too? I was so young! I didn't even know what I was getting into! I was swept off my feet - He just sort of dazzled me. I mean, no one has ever payed attention to me like that. I was a prostitute, a thief, and an unfaithful person. I wasn't even allowed in the market. I never thought somebody from that side of town would ever fall in love with me. He took me places I never dared to go on my own. He treated me like I always had clothes on that I could never afford. He had me over for dinner and I ate things I didn't even know existed. He had all these people at the table that I had only seen in pictures.

He held my hand when we walked down the streets. People would stare, and I would just wither inside, but he would hold his head high. The anger he would direct at them has never come my way. What I saw in his eyes would make gold rust - but he would look at me like I was made of gold. We would walk down the street every day, and the stares never stopped coming. He never stopped walking.

And he knew what I was! He wasn't blind. He could smell the streets, the unwashed flesh, the crust of emotional backage, surrounding my heart and conversation - all that I had picked up on my directionless wandering. He was not stupid. He knew I was ornery, arrogant, snobby, pretentious, fearful, angry, and depressed. But it was as if he didn't know. It was like he didn't see it. Sometimes it makes me forget that it's there. I am, after all, the Church.

I know he saw it because he was teaching me to treat others like that. Like a toddler on training wheels, I waverd and stumbled, working on loving the world, as the quivering legs of a baby find their first steps. You'd think after 40 days of it I'd learn to walk, but I guess we're not all naturals!

I've lost my way, sure, it is true. But you should meet my husband. If you can get past my behaviour, only for a moment, and listen to who I'm talking about, maybe you'd stop throwing out my invitation with the junkmail. Because I'm allowed to invite people over for dinner, and I'm telling you, you'll never taste food like it. I don't get many accepters, but hey, here's to trying.

Maybe it is cold out there, outside the Church. Maybe you haven't smelt roast turkey like this before, all hot and steamy, wafting out of the candle-lit windows of Our house. On a drizzly bleak night, out there, will you not come in to meet my husband, because I'm at the table? If only you would, we could finally talk a little - instead of talking about each other on the backside. You'd find out that - hey, you and I? We're really not all that different after all.

How to know when you are home

You know you are home when they do not care where you are from. You know it when they accept you, not based on what you can do, how you look, or they way you behave. You know it is home when they can put their arms around you, regardless of how dirty you are on the outside - or on the inside. You know you are home when you find the place everyone else is looking for, the place where it is not all about any one individual's ideas, thoughts, or priorities - but truly, truly, about what is important for them all. When it is about you, but just as much about the one next to you, it is then that you know. Home is when you come in and realize that it is much bigger than you, your worries, problems, dreams, and fears - it dwarfs all the inward thoughts you've had for the past 24 hours. It sweeps you away, picks you up, as if in the arms of God, and carries you along. It transcends the dusty grit of planet earth, that which crusts underneath your fingernails. It sweeps you away. And you are home. Say it. Let it sink through you, through the layers of your conciousness, touching the nerve that lies raw, as if the electricity of spiritual pain lay in a pan of water on the bottom of your heart.

When the face of God, as always, is invisible to the naked eye; the evidence that He truly lives is as evasive as the relationships you are always looking for; and all that is elusive about God takes its form and finds its evidential shape within the cumulative expressions on the faces of the gathering of God's people. You know you are home then. For sure. Because it is the one thing you do not find out there, amidst your hobbies and clubs, gatherings and movements. Aren't you tired of looking there? It has indeed been a long, long time.

Get your feet on the sidewalk and open the chapel doors. Open the eyes of the inner soul as the foyer comes into view, as the music washes over your tired being. Take the fears and inhibitions, the tired longing to belong, and zip them in your pocket for an hour, or more. You'll pick them up now and again, I'm sure. They'll be there waiting back at the door.

But for now, for this moment, go in, and see the gaze of God amidst the eyes of all those people. Why are you afraid of them? They are not God. They are broken like you. Isn't it what you are searching for - someone to share it with? The journey may just begin there, at the alter up front. You will not be on your feet by the time you get up there. It is not very far away. Now get going.

What is the Monastic Ideal? Part 2

Please note that the following are rough notes, directly spoken from, at the Emergence Young Adult retreat in August, at Algonquin Provincial Park. They will be turned into literary format soon.

Eusebius and Constantine

- church history leading up to this moment /
glory/power/victory/church meant to rule

On the other hand: Monastic movement

- rejected association with empire
With constantine came:
1. Christian freedom
2. Political benefits package - bishops / army
3. Political interferrence, both at councels and at regional positions (davinci code and Nicea) (some accepted this, some rejected it)
4. Money into church
5. Status quo, apathy, decadence
6. Theological controversy and schism
7. Centre of the marketplace
8. Rise of earthly powerful and wealthy church

The two responses to Constantine - one embraced, brought half of the church very deeply into the empire
- reaching masses, bringing them to "salvation" association with church
- other rejected, and went out to the deserts
- "salvation" stayed a deeper, more personal experience, later became not associated w/church at all

Unpack both of these
- also every shade inbetween --------------------------
- this situation is the same today
- some closely integrated in society, political, wealthy denominations
- some isolationist, separate, anti-governement and wealth
- everything in between ------------------------

Augustine - tricked out of monastic life into bishopric
Ambrose of Milan - taken from public service into bishopric
John Chrysostum - always felt pull to monastic life
Jerome - always seeking solitude away from city church

To say nothing of Egyptian desert fathers, Monastaries later came to be more linked to organized church but always remained seat of challenge

Martin luther was a monk
Q: what were they seeking out there?
What were they trying to do?
Why?

"do not be conformed any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your minds"

Personal devotions: Principles of power/authority/hierarchy, not appropriate in the Christian church, not because it either works, or doesn't work, but because of where it leads, or what it leads to - and where it comes from . . . .

"you are not to call each other Master or Lord . . ." Jesus Christ.

a new community

One thing that is almost certainly not promoted when one thinks of traditional monastaries is the idea of community. We have an impression that monastaries were places where people went to be alone, completely seperate from the world and its people, to pray and meditate. Sadly, the later examples of the monastary, even the more contemporary ones, have reinforced this perception. However, early on it was not like this. A monastary was an attempt to recreate the kind of "committed community" relationship that came so naturally before Christianity had any sort of power. In short, people wanted a Christianity where they were required to give their whole lives to, something much bigger than themselves. The idea of shopping around for churches that we now have, of showing up and deciding if what the church has to offer is attractive to us, treating Christianity like a buffet line (and a cheap one) - all this was a very foreign concept to these people. You gave your heart and soul to Christ and at the same time gave your heart and body to the church community. They owned you, and you were happy to be owned. A beneficial captivity. Imagine that.

What is the Monastic Ideal? Part 1

These are some thoughts I shared at the Emergence Retreat, on Day Two, and some things I thought about during my entire trip.

1 peter 4:12 "do not be surprised at the fiery trial you are suffering, as though something strange were happenning to you."

It is versus like this that cause many to believe suffering integral to the Christian faith - that when it exists in situations where suffering is not present, something central to it all is missing.

Early church and Constantine:

What the early church soon discovered was that the conditions of persecution were purifying to the faith. It was purifying in the following ways:

i. Community. The early church had an outside pressure to develop a tight-knit community and a strong support system. Obviously, this was not always the case (see Galations or Corinthians), but generally it was true, and comparatively, with the secular world, it was very true.

ii. Sacrifice / personal and corporate. The early Christians had a heightened sense of sacrifice. It seemed standard that before accepting the Christian life, one gave serious thought to the sacrifices that, at that time, would come with that decision. Becoming a Christian truly meant giving up your life as you knew it, and at times, no longer valuing it above all else.

iii. Conditions of isolation / being set apart through fire. They were truly anathama. In other words, the Christians were not exclusive by choice, but through the strangness of their message, the odity of it in the Roman landscape, and the anger brought upon them by their moral stand and montheistic belief, they were indeed "different" in the world. Their movement was not closely related to traditional Roman society, or any of the cultures in the outer Provinces. It was very different, and ran, by philosophy, in a very different manor than any other institution it found itself surrounded by. What a novel idea for us modern Christians, no? A church that doesn't operate based on the same philosophies as the institutions around it?

I know that we in general have an impression that presecution in the early church was constant and huge, very dramatic. But that was not usually the case. It was more sporadic, flaring up at times and various places, growing in intensity and then dissipating. The general policy of the authorities was not to seek out Christians, hunting them through the streets. It was rather to prosecute the accused, when a fellow citizen brought forward their names. Therefore, if your neighbor had something agains't you, say a business dispute, and he knew you were a practicing Christian that would never, by the way, fail to confess it, he could solve the dispute very easily by denouncing you to the authorities as a Christian. It was only then that you would find yourself in the arena, getting eaten by a lion. This was generally the case from the time of the Emporor Trajan, all the way up to Constantine.

The verdict is still out on Constantine, and I think it always will be. People really don't know, exactly, what the makeup of his motives were. Here are the main points of his life, that you can find in many church history books:


- influenced by christian women in his family
- involved in civil war for leadership where outcome questionable
- claimed he had a dream of Christ, a commissioning of sorts to leadership
- won his war, became Emporer, and made great strides in the emancipation of Christians in his realm
- began to favor Christians, seek the councel of Bishops in important cities (and give a little councel of his own)


But he was a tricky fellow to pin down:

Why was he doing it? It is a major debate, even to this day. Was his conversion to Christianity genuine, or was he a political opportunist who could see that Christianity's wildfire expansion would soon overtake the Empire anyway? And this question is at the source of the original monastic reaction to the new church that emerged out of the darkness of persecution and stigma.

There is a politician of our day in a very similar questionable position when it comes to politics and Christianity: George Bush. The same question can be applied: Is he genuinely believing and following the faith? Or is he doing it because in the US right now, the religious right has been building its power base politically, over the past few decades, and now it is time to cash in? He did, after all, narrowly win the last election on a platform of very personal Evangelical Christian language. I think he has one thing in common with Constantine: Both the personal and the political motivations are so well mixed together, even they cannot unwind the two themsleves. In other words, they don't even know what their motivations are. All we can then do is take a look at the result of their rule . . . . .