The Corner

I pray to put myself aside

I fell last week.  I was running when I should have been walking, not looking at the trail in front of me, not respecting the risk of the trail and the random-ness of the act of running.

A few days later, not much hurt - except my pride.  Given that my pride is such a big muscle, one that I flex often and depend on, even a minor bruise really hurts.  This time, I find that it is hard to get up and walk - every stride pulls at my pride.

Pride (or vanity) is the excessive belief in one's own abilities that interferes with the individual's recognition of the grace of God. It has been called the sin from which all others arise.  If pride is the root, then for me at least, arrogance is the trunk.  Arrogance is the act of obtaining rights or advantages, including merely rhetorical advantages, through violence or threats of violence, or through verbal violence. Arrogance is as much an aspect of aggression as it is of pretension, which is unwarranted pride. An arrogant person is not merely unjustifiably confident in their own ability and value, but one actively seeking to cow or belittle other "lesser" people in order to achieve their ends.

As much as I wish it were not so, pride and arrogance are typically the potholes that trip me up.  As I've limped along the past few days, I've found myself coming back to Philippians 2.3:

Don't push your way to the front; don't sweet-talk your way to the top. Put yourself aside, and help others get ahead.

In Christianity, humility, or meekness, is seen as a virtue, encompassing three skills:

   1. yielding ones rights and possessions to God,
   2. earning the right to be heard rather than demanding a hearing, and
   3. responding properly to anger when others violate one's personal rights.

Meekness is NOT something I find myself aspiring to - humility is something that I've practiced with great raity.

As I go back to the trail the next few days, I pray this prayer for humility and guidance:

HUMBLED LORD, through your violent love we are brought to confession; Only you can help us face up to our pride, only you can force us to acknowledge our unworthiness, only you can keep us from playing at being faithful. LORD OF THE FLOOD, wash us everyday, drown us in your healing baptism. We as a church pray for a renewed call to discipleship. Please calm us with your spirit, and teach us how to live lives of tacit holiness. Makes us your hands to feed the hungry and tend the sick, give us the strength to persevere in suffering. Father we do pray for suffering among us, that we might grasp the wisdom of the cross and learn to live lives obedient to your spirit. Lead us to your kingdom and humble us at your feet Lord. Teach us your smell, and let us not forget the voice of the master. We praise you Almighty God -- you spoke the cosmos into being and reclaimed our existence through the death and Resurrection of your Wisdom. May the Holy Spirit continually create an appetite in this royal priesthood for the sacrament of your body and blood. May we as a people rejoice in the friendship of your kingdom. Help us be truth-tellers, lovers, and feeders of the poor. May your goodness be seen in the land of the living Lord, in the name of the father the son and the holy spirit, AMEN.

Prayer for Humility  By Tristin Hassell

Clown Jesus & The Circus

One of the more challenging, and ultimately meaningful, threads of my seminary education has been living into understandings of how I and others view Jesus, a person who is at the center of the lives of Christians.  I grew up with a lot of "buddy" Jesus, as well as a dose of white, angelic Jesus.  A prof of mine spent a lot of time grouding Jesus in the idea of Jesus as trickster, a mythical character who shows up in so many different culture.  I found myself really captivated thinking about a Jesus who re-claimed a sense of the holy circus, pitching a big top here on the Earth, upsetting the order and the assumptions of the powerful, bringing comfort and hope to the afflicted.

When I saw how Trinity (Wall Street) celebrated their naming feast this past Sunday, I thought a lot about the power of the circus coming to town.

Thank God for Sports !

I am really restless today.  I am still de-toxing from the end of the seminary term last week.  I am anxious about a big ordination process milestone that takes place soon.

This past year, it has been fascinating for me to notice where I can find some space to unwind.  Sports is one of those spaces - watching a game, listening to sports talk radio, checking stats.  Today, it was watching the end of a Europe Cup soccer game - yea Liverpool !

Tonight Is The Night

via

Wisdom of The Ages, Indeed

Yesterday was fun

Parties are ocassionally fun for me.  A lot of times, I have this running soundtrack in my head - are people having fun, do we need more seltzer, is it time to leave - that keeps me from unclinching my teeth and just having fun.  Every once in a while, I just want to run out of a party.  But, as I said, ocassionally they are fun.

Yesterday was fun.  7 8-9 year-olds, my wife and my older daughter went to Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk and rode rides in the sun.

Yesterday was fun.  101 bloggers aaround the globe posted on Pentecost - so much posting, we made DAYPOP.

Thank you, Spirit, for allowing me one more morning upon this beautiful planet. Thank you for the sunrise. Thank you for my beating heart. Thank you for my body. Thank you for the air that I breathe, the food that I eat and the water that I drink. Thank you for all of the gifts of love which await me today: My friends, my wife, my children, my family, my co-workers, and all whom I encounter. Thank you for filling my heart with endless love and gratitude, and thank you for the Earth beneath me. Thank you, so very much, for everything that I have now, in this moment, and in all moments past, present and future.

:: pentecost 2005 grid blog - Spirit

One of the joy of studying theology this term has been the chance to be introduced to new voices.  One of them - Jim Perkinson - writes movingly about the Spirit:

Spirit is that which will forever tease and tantalize, trick and  telepathize
It is the anti-name that enamors evry tongue tripped by love, seeking not a word but a kiss
It can not be chained in a word

it is ever the moan, the first blush of bloom in the desert when rain comes
the shiver in the newborn flesh of shark,
the jolt of joy when a jazz note finally leaps off the map of meaning
into the improvisionational nowhere of insanity
It is before langauge and after time

to be baptized eith the Spirit is to be overtaken in one's tongue,
loosing a holy Babel,
a tower of torrential praise and reproof,
querying quiescence in God and human alike

the spirit is laughing as Many
living underneath the book,
between the lines,
outside the margains in bellies and berries and bullfrogs and blizzards

 

:: pentecost 2005 grid blog - birth

Today is a day to remember birth - the birth of the church.  And the birth of my daughter Katie, who turns 9 today.  The term birth is often used metaphorically to refer to a beginning, especially of a natural phenomenon, one that is impressive in its scope or complexity, or one that is viewed favorably.

The first birth had been difficult - so much screaming, so much fear and pain.  As visitors came, we were in a daze, scared of what would happen to our child.  Seeing my wife give birth was an experience of powerlessness - I served as a totem of worry and un-necessary strategies to distract and delay.  Exhausted after 28 hours, our first child burst into the world, coaxed out by wily Puetro Rican midwife who seemed like a cross between a snake charmer and a drill sergeant.

Eight years later, having tricked ourselves into thinking birth could be "safe", we entered fearfully and humbly.  And the Spirit rose.  Honestly.  My wife took on the strength of millions - I have never been so aware and in awe of life force that existed, almost magically, in another person.

After several hours, Katie Grace Carlton made her appearance in the world - and every day since, the world has been a little more energized, a little more amped, a little sensitive.

As we celebrate the Spirit birthing the church, this is what I know of birth.

 

 

Dress Up Jesus

this is just what I need in the midst of the last 10 days of this term

via mefi

*****  warning: it is possibile you might find this....um...ah... not very respectful   ******

I speak __________, but it’s not my mother tongue. (insert noun here: patriarchy, church, modernity, left brain…)

I once heard Mike Yaconelli preach on his love of the word audacity - the fearless daring, the intrepidity that is part of the God with us life that we so often choose not to follow.  This type of daring is not cheap, it is not tame, it sniffs out where the hedgehogs are buried even in the midst of a fox hunt (I think I just channeled a landed English gentry).

There is orthodoxy, not always generous, in almost all groups of humans - a code book of what to say and how to operate.  Prophetic voices have the audacity to speak and question and dream and rant and fume and hope.  They inhabit that orthodoxy so much, they trust the God with us life so much, that they give voice to the prophetic yearnings that often exist in those whose voices are muffled.

Rachelle posts with that type of prophetic voice:

I don’t want to be a part of building something so permanent, so inflexible that the only way to let it morph with the ongoing, unfurling process of time is to destroy it. Can’t there be another way to help people who are floundering around in the waters of postmodernism other than building a structure? Because if you build a structure someone has to pay for it. And if you have to pay for it, only certain people can get in on it. And if only the moneyed can get in on it, well then you can’t lead from underneath, or from the margins, or from the fringes, because those folks ain’t got no money. And if you create a structure, if you institutionalize something, then there’s a piece of paper on the wall that you have to have in order to play, in order to have a voice, in order to have power. And only some folks can access that, in the face of structure, and then where are we at? Right back in white guy, modern, patriarchal, class structure land.

I keep thinking about an acquaintance of mine saying; “Every time women design something successful, men take it away.” Spencer Burke said, “I don’t want to give something to you to shrink wrap.” Last night I told Holly, “I feel like I’m about to give up my virginity to some guy who’s going to turn out to be a jerk in the morning.” These sentences ring with me, like the vibration of a gong.

Please go read it all