In the Twilight

If you need any more evidence that people crave something holy, eternal and life-giving, then go to your nearest movie theater and count the hoards of people in a mad rush to see the new “Twilight” movie. 

The intensity with which these books and movies gather followers can mean only one thing; eternity remains a deep and inescapable desire of the human soul and psyche, and if you don’t find it in religion, your heart will surely seek it elsewhere. Eternity, after all, is the defining attribute of the vampire–or vampyre, depending on your medium. Conflicted and tortured though they seem, vampires remain sexy, exciting, and in some small way, enviable. From Stoker to Stephenie, those who pen these novels understand, in every age, the allure of life everlasting.

Of course, vampire stories also deal with literature’s unholy trinity; sex, death and otherness. Vampires embody the three mortal fears at the heart of all human drama, all human tragedy. Tensions around sex, death, and the Other compel the best and worst of our capabilities, relationships and even our desire to procreate. The best storytellers know these three tales of darkness and light. And when they want to tell all three in one fell swoop of wings and cape, they can only tell it with vampires.

Now, I’m more of a Sookie Stackhouse girl myself; more of the sex and death without all the hormonal angst of high school. Besides, its southern setting gives even more power to the dreaded trinity.  No place in the world is that trio more prevelant and less talked about than in the Bible belt.  The vampires that roam that part of the county don’t terrorize alone. They’re accompanied by centuries of bigotry, sexism, homophobia and general hatred of the other, often in the name of something holy.  

Each series has its own band of faithful disciples who find something deeply needful fulfilled in the vampire story. That need lies beyond escapism and entertainment. To be loved by a vampire is to somehow cheat death, and that has all the appeal in the world to anyone seeking life.

With threats of terror, pandemic and economic disaster on every side, people are desperate for something that transcends the current circumstances, something more lasting than the day.  And most of them seek it anywhere but the Church because of our deep and long-standing failure to deal with the trinity. Not Van Helsing’s trinity, but the big scary one. Sex. Death. Other.

Stephenie Meyer has found a better way to tell the story that people so desperately need to hear: that love can transcend time and place; that life exists beyond what we know; and that nothing–not sex, death, or the most untouchable thing about us–nothing can seperate us from the love, the life, the endlessness that we seek.

There’s nothing wrong with seeking these assurances in fantasy. That’s how great–and even just ok–literature is born. But if the world seeks this fantasy because the Church can’t provide the reality, then we are not long for this world. And not even the dreamiest of undead boyfriends will be able to revive us (call him Edward if you want–he’ll always be Cedric to me…)

In many ways, the mainline progressive Church appears to be living its twilight years. But perhaps there’s an invitation to eternal life, an opening for the story that we long to tell.  When the world is so hungry–or thirsty, as it were–for eternity, for love that crosses boundaries, then opportunity knocks.  But like every undead dreamboat from Dracula to Edward, it must be invited in.  Are we ready to tell the story of how love lives and breathes in the face of our darkest fears? Or will we cling a little more tightly to our garlic cloves and crosses? 

Our neighbors crave a little bit of darkness. But what they’re truly after is the light that refuses to be overcome by it; the light of grace, of sacrifice, and of life everlasting. The light of love that reaches even the most threatening and unlovable among us.  There’s a rush to bookstores and theaters because, most days, fictional, fantastical characters tell that story better than Christians.  Vampires are far easier to love than a body that claims to live forever, but just keeps driving nails, driving away the other.

In the coming decade, the Church’s ability to deal with matters of sexuality, mortality, and difference in a way that reflects the love of Christ will determine our will to live. Our response will mean the final nail in our coffin, or the wide open, empty tomb.  It is apparent that our neighbors seek good news.  They long for love that transcends time and place, that does not die, and that reaches out to every unspeakable, untouchable ill we can dream of. I think I heard a story like that once… Its time we bring it back from the dead.

New Fixtures

With the proceeds from a wedding, a funeral, and a couple of published articles, we purchased new light fixtures for our living room and kitchen.  This was not an impulse buy. Since I’m preaching abundance, simplicity, generosity, etc, in this holiday season, I’d like to qualify that I’ve wanted to replace these features since we moved into our home, nearly 3 years ago. So, we did not just go on a Home Depot spree on a whim. I took advantage of this extra income, (and the fact that Jeremy was having one of his periodic feng shui attacks, wherein he not only cleans like a madman, he also moves all the furniture. i’ve learned this is the time to engage him in any home improvement project i’ve got on my wish list. and i know he never reads this, so i can share my strategy. shhh…)

Anyway, not much of  a profound spiritual insight here; a small change in your environment can make a big difference in the overall feel of the space. any small change can have a big effect. But when you change something to do with the light, the transformation becomes something bigger.

Granted, i don’t much like the new “daylight” bulbs we’re experimenting with. They give the room a kind of post-apocolyptic glow, not quite worth all the energy efficiency in the world. But the fixtures…well, who knew that the mere casing of the light could change everything it illuminates, transforming the very air around it?

In this season of gratitude and abundance, what holds your light? From where do you shine? What’s the casing that the people around you witness? Remember, it is not merely decorative.

Mutual Friends

Do you ever feel like some of the people you love know a different Jesus than you do?  The word “pluralistic” has taken on a whole new meaning when it comes to western religion, and it seems that, within Christianity, we are attached to a number of different Jesuses. (is that the proper plural for “Jesus?” Please advise…)

I’m not going to elaborate a great deal because I know you know what I mean. You know people who share your faith–technically speaking–but when it comes to social, ideological, political and theological issues, you begin to find that you are following a whole nother Jesus than they appear to be. For better or worse, the savior of the world has been adapted and interpreted by said world a few times. When someone asks me if I’m a Christian, I’m tempted to say, “well, not like you mean.”

One of my favorite features on Facebook is the “mutual friends” display. You can go to any friend’s page and see who else they’ve connected with that you also know. Sometimes, there’s a fun suprise. Sometimes, you see that your friend from high school and your friend from college know each other, and you marvel at how small the world is, after all. Your friend from a summer job and your future brother-in-law used to date. Who knew?

So, if Jesus was on Facebook, wouldn’t it be fun to peruse all your mutal friends? Wouldn’t it be fun to call your college roommate and say, “hey, how do you know Jesus?”  Therein lies the answer, I think, to our multiple-Jesus problem. If we could ask of our friends who seem to speak a different faith language than us, “How do you know Jesus?” we could begin to understand the language barrier.

Because, my hunch is, where you met Jesus has alot to do with what you know about him and how you talk about him. Go through your facebook friends and think of all the points of connection that led you to them. Then imagine that you also encountered Jesus at that time in your life.  Or maybe I should say, remember how you met him there. How did the encounter of that time and place shape the Jesus you know now?

Do you find Jesus among the friends you knew in the church nursery, before any of you could speak?  Did he live in your old neighborhood? Did you reconnect with him in college, or meet him for the first time at your crappy just-out-of-college job? Maybe he was roommates with your ex. Maybe you met him once at a party and he remembered you, friended you, and you haven’t spoken since. Maybe he sold you your first house, or guided you through the process of adopting a child. Perhaps he lives next door to you, but you park in the garage, so you’ve never actually spoken. Does he fix your latte at Starbucks every day? Or teach your children at school?

Which Jesus is your story about? Who are the friends that you and Jesus really have in common? You might be suprised.  You might never know, because they’re talking about high school church camp Jesus, and you only knew him in college, when he was bass-player in a grunge band.  Maybe those places and people have little in common.  But faith asks that we seek the common thread, even if pulling at it begins to unravel some things. The Spirit compels us, not to deny the legitimacy of someone else’s faithspeak, but to ask, instead, “how do you know?”

Scoot Over

We are transitioning into stewardship season here at Foothills, and I’m still thinking about the neighbors. Mostly because they have taken over our facility, and there’s literally no room for new church programs. This has been an ongoing struggle around here, but I had an especially unpleasant night of it last night, and seem to be on a rant today.  One day soon, there will be an aerobics class in my office, and a pottery-poetry-cheese-making club gathered in the bathroom. Enough.

I will spare you the details of last evening. What I want to process instead is how well we–all of us–share what God has given us. In thinking about shared space at the church, most of us consider it a real ministry, to share our facilities with neighbors who need someplace to gather. Whether its a scout troop, AA, or a dance class that’s lost its home to city budget cuts, we open our doors wide. We ask a refundable deposit, and a small donation to keep the lights on. Our home is yours.

But that gets more complicated when the donations are no longer enough to keep the lights on, or when, pardon me, our neighbors act like church groups are in their way. I want to say “But its OURS!” I feel like stomping my foot when I say it too, but resist. Because a little voice inside my head says, ”OURS must include God. This is God’s space, and we are its care-takers.”

So, that in mind, how do we use it to be good neighbors? Does it mean sitting quietly in a corner and never starting a new ministry? Well, no. But, if we are living on God’s terms of use, it does mean that we are not just land-owners, but stewards, as well. Perhaps it is time re-evaluate what we give away, and to whom.  The way that we share our space–God’s space–should reflect how we share what God has given each of us.

Here are two good criteria for using your time, talents and treasures in a way that honors the Holy. That which is life-giving…and that which you can live without.

If a group that gathers here changes people’s lives in a way that the church is not equipped to do, then let them come. If a group that gathers here meets in a time and place that we could not otherwise use, let them come. Who’s left? Well, those folks might be getting a phone call from me pretty soon.  And if its some of the same folks who are unplesant to deal with, well, then I will try not to enjoy it too much. 

Now, ask these questions in your own life, of your own “stuff,” your own gifts for service, your own time. What do you have to offer that is life-giving in a unique way? What has God given you that your church or community really needs a part of? And, what do you have that you can live without?

If those questions are not shaping the priorities in where you spend your time and money, it might be time to make a few phone calls of your own. What has God given you that is life-giving? And what can you live without?

Trash Day Discipleship

Try this: put your trash bins out on the wrong day, and see how many of your neighbors follow suit. You will be amazed.  People are looking for leadership and direction all the time, and they don’t even have to know you well (or at all) to try what you are doing. The simple presence of your bins out on the curb suggests that, perhaps tomorrow is trash day after all. Rather than trusting their own experience, or the neighborhood newsletter, many will simply put theirs out just in case.  They will believe that perhaps your way is better; perhaps you know something they don’t.

Well.  That’s an amazing power that you have right there.  What else might you “just try,” to see if your neighbors will do it too?  I’ve seen the same effect with Christmas decorations, or, more recently, the Halloween variety.  One house goes all festive, and the one next door needs to match, or go one better. This is where trends emerge. At least, in neighborhoods with a gracious HOA.  Landscaping.  Yard sales. Political signs.  (although, these days, putting a political sign in your yard is just marking yourself as a paintball target). The selling of girl scout cookies or boy scout popcorn. All these things demand a response from the neighbors, maybe even a sense of competition.  The pattern’s begun. And all you did was forget what day the trash comes.

Can these patterns of call and response build community? A modern-day, real-life litany of connectedness? I think so. But you can make your neighbor put out their trash early without even knowing them. What sorts of change might you effect in your midst if people really know you? If people feel connected with you from a shared experience, a recent conversation, or a common interest they know you share?  What if they look to you for wisdom, not just because you are there, but because you’ve got something they are looking for?

Your neighbors are seeking. They are looking for leadership, wisdom, relationship, something holy that they forgot to ask for. If you are a person of faith, then you have the power to answer the seeking soul next door. If you have made yourself a living light, opened your door, and welcomed the stranger, the next question for you might not be “now, when is trash day again?” It might just be, “what do you believe, and whom do you follow, that makes you seem so peaceful, joyful, and loving?”  And you can answer, “I’ve got good news for you.  And, Wednesday.”

Saving Space

‘Tis the season…not quite for the holidays (although, don’t get me started on the radio station that played “Feliz Navidad” on October 1st). No, in Phoenix its the season when people can finally venture outside after months of hibernating in climate-controlled spaces. Parks are buzzing with activity, grills are smokin’, and all over the valley people are cleaning out closets and garages for that mainstay of community life: the yard sale.

On any given weekend, you can find one on every corner around here. As a pastor, I find this to be one of the best opportunities to get out and meet my neighbors, and I encourage my church folks to take the same approach. For a few weekends every year, you can cruise your block and actually engage your neighbors in–wait for it–conversation. No concrete walls to reach over, no pulling into the garage and putting the door down before you get out of the car. Folks are actually sitting out in front of their homes, ready to greet you and hock their wares.

Anyway, that’s how I think a yard sale should function. However, I have been sorely disappointed in the number of people who sit in their garage talking on a cell phone as you peruse their cast-off Christmas decorations. Or actually GO INSIDE and wait for a buyer to come to the door. Seriously.

People of faith, fight back. Engage your neighbors in conversation, whether they appear to want to speak with you or not. If your new neighbor avoids eye contact at all costs, using the garage door as a barrier to even passing conversation, go to the door. If everyone at the park is wearing headphones, speak to them anyway. My bet is they are only pretending to listen to the music to avoid being spoken to. When every other parent at school, ever person in line at the grocery, every fellow Starbucks junkie is plugged into a laptop, an i-Phone or a bluetooth, do not be ignored! Stop making it so easy for people to disconnect and isolate themselves. Stop enabling the fear of rejection that keeps us from reaching out to others–even when those others are in our driveway, going through our stuff.

Its ironic, really. A garage sale is a very personal thing. You are putting your stuff outside for all to see. You proclaim to the world your shifting priorities, where you spend your money, what size clothes you wear, for heavens’ sake…and yet, we will hold onto our perceived “privacy” till death do us part, if it means we don’t have to speak to anyone.

Enough already. If you are a person of faith, you know that God values all people, and expects you to do the same. You know that God wants you to live in community, not just proximity.  Really, your neighbors know that, too. There’s a too-great love of self, a fear of other, and and even deeper fear of rejection at work in our communities that makes people sink inward. But deep down, even the most inwardly-focused among us long for that great adventure of relationship, perhaps the greatest risk involved in the human experience. Its up to people of faith to make the first leap off the cliff of comfortable lonliness, and invite our neighbors to join us.

When we clean out those garages and closets, its usually an honest effort to pare down to basics, clear out the clutter, make some space for some newness of life that we all crave at the deepest core of our being. And yet, most of us find those spaces filled, all too soon, with more stuff.  Nothing holy, just stuff. In my fall cleaning this year, I’m going to covenant with myself, and my small but lovely house, that the space I clear will be left empty. It will be left open and waiting, not for more stuff, but for new opportunities to connect and grow.  Maybe even to meet those new neighbors, whether they like it or not.

Sacred Space

Sacred Space

Jeremy and I are national park disciples. We visit them any chance we get, and often go out of our way to experience one. It is always worth it. Always.  As we watch Ken Burn’s new documentary, “National Parks: America’s Best Idea,” its fun to say, “hey, we’ve been there!” over and over again.

Just to give you some insight as to the spiritual value of our parks system—and this film—the first episode is entitled “The Scripture of Nature.”

The film is full of historical reference, fact, and dare I say, educational content. But beyond that, this creative venture explores the deeper value of our most beautiful natural resources. These places renew and restore us, call us to venture outside of our yards, our routines, and even ourselves.  What happens when we do that? We are ready to meet the holy. We are ready to encounter God, the Creator, in a whole new way. We acknowledge the potential for the miraculous; having seen it living all around us, we come to believe that it can live within us.

One person in the film reflected how, in these spectacular spaces, we do not need to be reminded that there’s a higher power.  We don’t have to be urged to worship. The presence of God is all around us, and we cannot help but be fully aware of it. There is much truth in her statement, not only about the power of nature, but about the essence of worship.

What could possibly lend our indoor worship services that kind of power? What if just walking in the door of the sanctuary of Foothills, or your church, was to be fully and inescapably in the presence of God? I know we can’t quite fit the Grand Canyon in our buildings. But we can certainly think about how effectively our worship enables us to sit in God’s presence, and whether it invites us to the kind of awe-struck breathlessness that we experience in the great outdoors.  What inspires and uplifts you in worship? What makes you doze off, or wish you’d stayed home to watch football? When are you most aware of the living, moving Spirit in community?

“In America, magnificence is a common treasure. That’s the essence of our democracy.” Its also the nature of our faith, in the sacred trust of the gospel that is ours to share and keep alive, and in the shared experience of worship. If you need to be reminded of how beautiful this life of faith really is, just get outside and look. We have 3 national parks in Arizona, and a whole mess of state parks and national monuments. That leads me to believe that many of our neighbors share our appreciation of natural wonders, and of taking time out to just take them in. The landscape around us is just full of God’s glory, just full of the kind of heart-stopping, transforming beauty that people come seeking from all the world over.

 Wouldn’t it be fun to say that about worship?  If we could quit sweating the proper way to pass communion, trying not to sneeze in the silence, and, seriously, remember to turn off our cell phones, it just might be so. Oh, and if we could just fit Teton Lake in the baptistery… We could send folks home saying, “I’ve been there! Come and see…”

The New West

You had a dream, didn’t you?

Blame it on Clint Eastwood, Zane Grey, or Miss Kitty.  You had a dream about the wild, wild, west. Now here you are, living in Phoenix, your shoes melting to the pavement as we speak, and no way to get the ice cream home before it melts.  Furthermore, you are surrounded on every side by Targets (and not the shooting kind), Starbucks and strip malls. Not cowboy in sight. Nor a cow, for that matter.

What was it all about, anyway, that westward moving dream you had? That we all have?  The frontier movement of the past drew people of faith–that is, faith in the unknown. Hope that something “out there” was better and more life-giving than the way they’d always done things. There was promise out here in fertile land, ample sunshine and unexplored territory. “Out West” became synonomous with adventure, freedom, the good life, and the thrill of wide, open spaces. (OK, so maybe for my generation, the Dixie Chicks fed the dream more than Miss Kitty.)

But at the heart of all wild west dreaming, something else started to breathe. Something else led pioneers and outlaws this far, and draws us still today. In a word, we’re after true community. Those who settled the western territories didn’t just want to surround themselves with stunning and unspoiled landscape. They weren’t just seeking emptiness in which to store all their stuff. At the core of all that freedom and adventure was, and is, a deeper desire to live among people of like mind. To surround onesself not only with the beauty of the natural world and the prospect of new life in it, but to live among people who share the dream, and can help realize it.

This may not be how the west was won, but its certainly how the west was popluated. And maybe you moved here for a job, or to be near family, or because you watched too much Gunsmoke as a child (if there’s any such-a thing as too much Gunsmoke).   Whatever your story though, the western dream is just not complete without neighbors. Unless the people around you are trying to ride the dream too, you’re just holding a saddle.

Now, I’m just guessing here, but I’ll bet your back yard is surrounded by four cinderblock walls.  We’ve taken the largest city at the heart of this west-reaching vision, and fenced it in on every side. Mr. Grey would not be pleased.  If you’ve never thought about what this configuration does to our sense of community and connectedness, take a moment to consider. Are you unable to name the occupants of houses you can see from your driveway? Do you spend more time online and on-phone than in real conversation? Do you complete transactions without making eye contact or speaking to the check-out person, or the people in line with you? 

Its not an accusation. Really, its a question. Is this the life for which you came west? Or, if you’ve been here forever, what is your westward dream? What’s calling you to live more purposefully and joyfully? What’s meeting your need for freedom, adventure, and human connection?

Follow this spot for the “Who Is Your Neighbor” project of Foothills Christian Church (Disciples of Christ). We live in this desert too, but we don’t believe it is wilderness. There is life, hope, and purpose to be found in our neighborhood, and in yours.  Say hello to that person across the fence. Keep the dream moving westward and wild.  We’re all fenced in here together.  And wherever you live, we want to know…who is your neighbor?