Sacred Playfulness

"Rejoice with me; I have found my lost coin."
                          Luke 15:9

 I thought long and hard about what I wanted to name this blog before I settled on "The Sacred Adventure."  Although I like this theme very much, I was a bit concerned with the word "sacred."  For many, this word seems to evoke ideas of something that is very serious.  Describe something as a "sacred task" and the impression is given that it is something about which you absolutely must not fail, something to which you must give your most serious attention.  For many, the practice of religion is profoundly serious.

The parable of the lost coin, one of the most familiar of the parables of Jesus, suggests to me a different possibility.  After her ardent search, the woman in the parable exclaims to her friends and neighbors, "Rejoice with me; I have found my lost coin!'   I believe the faith of Christians embraces, at its very center, the joy of God in finding us.  I also believe that where this is so, we are free to be a great deal more playful in our response to God, to one another, to the world.    I don't mean to suggest for even one second that our faith is frivolous. I do mean to say that when we enter into the joy of God over finding us, we are free to become more creative, to brainstorm new possibilities for our lives, to dream new dreams.

I have observed the phenomenon at work many times in groups of people:  When a group, whether a family, a committee, a Bible study, a class or a church is overly serious, it sees very few possibilities.  What was done yesterday must be done today and tomorrow.   The group is stuck in its own ruts.  When persons in a group become more playful, on the other hand, the process of brainstorming is let loose, imagination is generated, the group is free to look out and beyond to new horizons, new possibilities, a new day.  What if God's action upon us is a generative action, a power that frees us to be more creative, playful and imaginative?  It seems to me that such a thing is no stretch to children who participate in God's joy over finding them.

New Dreams

"We need new dreams tonight."
             U2, from their 1987 single, "In God's Country"

Welcome to the Sacred Adventure: A Blog Exploring Christian Spirituality and Adventurous Living.  Because this is my first post under this title, I'm going to ask you to set aside five to ten minutes to read this post in its entirety.  This will probably be the longest blog entry I will make.  I think you'll understand as you read along why I need a little extra space today.

This blog will explore something that has become a deep concern of mine, best expressed, I believe, in a question:  What is required of us to live our lives as a sacred adventure?

The last two words in the preceding question are carefully chosen.  The word "sacred" suggests to me something that is rooted, filled with mystery, and profoundly important.  "Adventure" implies a journey, fraught with risk, requiring courage and discernment.  Together, these two words--sacred and adventure--speak to what I think our lives can be and are called to be.  As the title of the blog suggests, I will be drawing (deeply, I hope) from the well of Christian spirituality as the primary source for my thinking and writing.  This is not to suggest, however, that this blog will always (or even usually) be overtly religious.  I hope to draw from the world of sport and entertainment, from the writings of poets and novelists, from my journal writings and the Comics page, and, yes, from the lyrics of rock music.  I hope this blog will be playful, curious and thoughtful.  I also hope that it will be a conversation.  I believe that the sacred adventure can only be undertaken in community.  That's where you fit in!  I hope that you will lob your thoughts into the discussion from time to time, ask your questions, stir the waters--and let's see where this conversation might take us. 

My plan will be to post a blog each Monday morning.  Then, as the week progresses, I'll attempt to respond (as I'm able) to some of what you've written.  Some Mondays I may write longer posts, at other times very brief ones and sometimes I'll just ask a question.  I'll try to mix it up and keep things interesting.

Allow me to begin my sharing a recent experience.  Several months ago, while running the dirt trail not far from my house and listening to my I Pod, I heard the five words quoted at the top of this post from U2's song "in God's Country."  I had heard these words dozens of times before, but somehow this day I heard them.  "We need new dreams tonight."  What happened to me next was strange and unsettling.  As those five words registered in my mind, I heard another sound, something emerging from within me, a sound that I can only describe as a groan.  It was as involuntary and immediate as a knee-jerk, and it nearly stopped me in my tracks.  Those five simple words had connected with a longing in me, a longing I did not even know I had until that moment.  The groan seemed to say, "Yes!  We do need new dreams tonight!  I need new dreams tonight.  I need new dreams for my life, for my relationships, for the world in which I live.  My dreams are old and boring and limp, like a balloon, emptied of air.  I need new dreams to empower me to love more deeply and live more vibrantly.  Yes, yes, we do need, I do need new dreams tonight!"  All of that, and much more, expressed as a groan.

The experience was disturbing.  I'm a 51 year old man, a husband and a father, the pastor of a faith community in central Michigan, a self-described follower of Jesus.  The pursuit of Christian spirituality has been a passionate and consistent theme of my life for more that three decades.  I came to faith at a time when it was often said that "Jesus is the answer."  In those early days of my journey, I believed that to embrace faith was to say good-bye to longing, and to embrace contentment.  And yet here I was, thirty-plus years later, wending along the dirt road between the corn fields behind my house, hearing a groan emerge from my soul that expressed my longing for more.

The U2 moment that I've just described has brought into sharp focus some ideas I've been considering for several years.  While I'll be the first to say that a life centered in God does, very often in my experience, grant a sense of being deeply and profoundly at home, I believe there is another side of Christian spirituality, often overlooked and under-thought:  God is also the source of longing, of yearning, of groaning.  The Apostle Paul suggests as much in Romans and Galatians.  To be united with God is to embrace God's joy, but it is also to embrace God's suffering, God's groaning for the world.  Could it be that the groan I encountered between the cornfields was simply an encounter with the love of God?

I decided to recount this story in this, the first Sacred Adventure blog, because I suspect that living our lives as a sacred adventure begins with longing.  It begins with a longing that our lives might somehow be different and better, that our relationships can be truer, that our world can be more whole.  I don't think there has been nearly enough said in our churches about the importance of this longing, this groan.  (I have heard many groans in churches, usually during the sermon, but that's a different thing altogether.)  I fear that in our efforts to point people to Christian faith as "what works," we have given the impression that Jesus is like the aspirin you take to calm the headache.  He fixes all, so that we can get on with our better lives.  But could it be that Jesus the risen one also wishes to evoke in us his groan, his groan that compels us to live differently, to protest all that is sickening and ugly about our world, his groan that compels us to long for more.  My hunch is that there can be no sacred adventure unless we have the courage and freedom to listen to the groan, and then, dream new dreams.

New Blog

I'm taking a temporary vacation from this blog.  Please check back on September 6th when I'll be launching a new blog called, "The Sacred Adventure."

A Franciscan Benediction

May God bless you with discomfort
at easy answers, half-truths, and superficial relationships,
so that you may live deep within your heart.

May God bless you with anger
at injustice, oppression, and exploitation of people
so that you may work for justice, freedom, and peace.

May God bless you with tears
to shed for those who suffer from pain, rejection, starvation, and war,
so that you may reach out your hand to comfort them and turn their pain into joy.

And may God bless you with enough foolishness
to believe that you can make a difference in the world,
so that you can do what others claim cannot be done to bring justice
and kindness to all our children and the poor. Amen.

If, Rudyard Kipling

One of my all-time favorite poems. I'd love to hear your thoughts...

IF

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you
But make allowance for their doubting too,
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don't deal in lies,
Or being hated, don't give way to hating,
And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise:

If you can dream--and not make dreams your master,
If you can think--and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build 'em up with worn-out tools:

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it all on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breath a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: "Hold on!"

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with kings--nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you;
If all men count with you, but none too much,
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds' worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And--which is more--you'll be a Man, my son!
--Rudyard Kipling

Broken Jesus Everywhere

One of the reasons I believe that the season of worship called 'Lent' is vitally important is that during Lent we must confront our own idolatrous ideas about God. In Lent, we pay special attention to the cross. To some, that may sound sadistic. I can understand why they might feel that way. But for me, the cross of Jesus confronts my tendencies to form God in my own image. Or, more accurately, the cross of Jesus confronts my propensity to form God as what I would be if I had all power and glory. I would crush my opponents and coerce their obedience. I would enforce my will and insist on lock-step submission. I would be the ultimate winner. What we meet in the person of Jesus is quite different: he comes in love, suffers among us, works with persuasion rather than coercion, shares our common lot, bears the world's anger on his shoulders, submits to the powers-that-be, and, incredibly, he dies. It is here, at the cross, that Paul the Apostle said that we see "the wisdom and power of God."

In the Gospel of Mark, the final week of Jesus' life encompasses approximately 33% of the Gospel. While most of the stories of Jesus' life and ministry are told quickly and with little attention to detail, the movement of Jesus toward the cross in the final week is told slowly, carefully, with great attention to detail. In fact, the Gospel of Mark has a great deal more to say about the crucifixion of Jesus than it does about his resurrection. One gets the impression that Mark (and Matthew, Luke and John, for that matter) is trying to make a point here.

Why is all of this so important? I believe that we live today in a culture that is obsessed with power. We live in a nation that is, arguably, the most powerful nation in history. We pride ourselves in a military that is larger, better equipped and more--here's that word again--powerful than any other on the planet. We brag of powerful financial markets and our powerful influence in the world. We admire powerful people, like those who have the authority to say, "You're fired." Is it possible that our obsession with power belies a deep idolatry at work among us--that we have fashioned idols that look more like Caesar than like the God disclosed by Jesus? Is it possible that this is a profoundly different way than the way of Jesus, who came not with an army but with a towel, not with a sword but with a cross? And is it possible that our character will be formed by that which we worship?

I desperately need Lent, this time of contemplating 'broken Jesus everywhere.' I believe that the world desperately needs a church that is willing to be formed by the God we meet at the cross.

A New Thing

"Do not remember the former things, or consider the things of old. I am about to do a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it? I will make a way in the wilderness and rivers in the desert (Isaiah 43:18-19)."

When Isaiah prophesies that God is doing a new thing, he is not suggesting that what has come before is unimportant. The Bible consistently reminds God's people to remember the stories of God's faithfulness throughout the ages. Memory is a crucial dimension of faith. But the memory of God's faithfulness is also what equips us to embrace the "creative transformation," as some theologians have called it, in this present moment. We remember God's creative work in the past in order to embrace it in the present moment. God is acting, right now, in this moment, to do something new, to cause springs to break forth in the desert and rivers to run freely through the wilderness. The beauty of that for me is that I don't have to go on doing what I've always done, living in the ruts that have held me up 'til now. There is some way, small or large, that I can step forth as one raised from the dead and live differently, even in this present moment. For me, the greatest disappointment of all is not a human being who has done some bad things in their life. The greatest shame is a human being who is not growing. May God forever strike from my lips the words, "That's just the way I am."