Marigold Path Grid Blog: A Dangerous Wonder

Mike Yaconelli was indeed a dangerous man.  It is often said that no practical joke was safe within a 5 mile radius of God's Holy Jester. 

That is not the kind of safe, funny danger that Mike represented for me.  Mike represented the type of danger that is potentially harmful or risky.  He embodied a faith that seemed undomesticated, one that Parker Palmer had in mind when he said that the "inner journey is to know that creation comes out of chaos, and that even what has been created needs to be returned to chaos every now and then to get recreated in a more vital form".

I first ran across the chaos Mike created in the Door, a ray of sunshine in the safe churchianity that I experienced growing up in the Bible belt.  We would exchange our copies of the Door like kids trade MP3 mashups nowadays, like contraband.  Our excitement and private joy at  Mike's musings hits at the core of the word "heresy" which comes from the Greek αἵρεσις, hairesis (from αἱρέομαι, haireomai, "choose").  Mike punctured the oppression we experienced that faith was only right thinking - Mike reminded us of a pre-Constantinian community of Jesus-followers who blew on the flames of Jesus stories, rather than codifying the ashes of that flame into bound doctrines.

When I got the rare chance to work with Mike, I  found myself enthralled by his exuberance, his abundant energy and open-ness to people and ideas (and food & cigars).  It was worth the painful commuting for me, if only to get to work with Mike, Karla, Marko, Tic & the glorious saints who work at YS.

Before he passed away, Mike taught me a lesson, one that I may spend the rest of my life catching up to.  Mike  clearly ran the risk of too much exuberance, but clearly he had learned a life lesson of integration.  You only have to spend a few minutes around YS to see the way that the sum of the whole is much greater than any individual part (or hair style for that matter).  Rather than go for the cookie cutter approach to fostering a community, Mike seemed most attracted to unusual combinations of gifts and skills and tattoos and t-shirts - lots of different t-shirts.  A mis-shapened toy like me was welcomed in, loved, held accountable and made an instant family member - that's just the way welcome worked in the Yac zone.

While this organizational life lesson was a gift, his personal lesson still resonates with my soul.  One only needs to look at  Mike's last reading list to see a person yearning to deepen a contemplative center that marked his Jesus following for the last umpteen years.  His love of Nouwen helped bring a much needed voice of reflection to an evangelical movement fascinated with action (and Powerpoint and Hawaiian shirts).  This profound integration of the contemplative path was and still is truly dangerous in a movement that prizes right thinking (and writing) at all costs.  Mike saw the wonder in this integration, he saw the rivers of Christian traditions flowing together, rather than being channeled into viaducts and managed by men (always men) like me and you.

A contemplative who loved fart machines, a mystic who wore chicken hats, a comic who profoundly needed silence.  Mike taught a fellow exuberant like me the value of integration, the necessity of an "awareness of all the interactions".  Balance is the safe frame that most of us strive for - Mike saw way past that and lived for integration.  What a lesson, potentially harmful, definitely risky, never quite attainable - a lesson embodied rather than understood.

Thanks, Mike - we sure miss you.

Comments

[Kristin]

I wish I could have known him.

[Phil]

Thanks!

[bobbie]

yes we do. thank you.

[anj]

Beautiful.