The Real Journey

This month's Synchroblog topic is Lighten Up: The Art of Laughter, Joy, and Letting Go, and it hits home with me! I love that the Synchroblog coordinators chose the phrase "the art of" as part of their title, because I think that is exactly what is called for here: an artistic approach!

Humor and entertainment, or alcohol, or time with friends, or any of the other ways we each choose to "lighten up" can be healthy or can be a distraction from doing the things we each need to do and from facing the things we each need to face in order to have a satisfying life. "Healthy" ways of lightening up help us to more effectively see the big picture and to make the big and little choices we each need to make to pursue what we will each wish we had pursued when we get to the end of our lives. "Unhealthy" ways of lightening up cause us to forget (or never see to begin with) the way things really are and what we really want, and cause us to passively choose to neglect the things we could do to pursue the life we each really want. I will leave the negative side of that for a post that is supposed to be serious, and focus the rest of this post on how wonderful life can be if we lighten up without ignoring the things that matter!

When we fall newly in love, life is instantly brighter. The visions we had for our future and the ways we wanted to see ourselves are clearer and we have huge hope of them being realized fully. Then, as we move deeper into intimacy and make our commitments and consummate our relationship, we learn the art of lightening up in the clearest instance of any of our lives: we learn how to be lovers that don't pursue just our own orgasm, but pursue mutual orgasm. And there is no formula for that! It is an art of intensity where the goal is most easily achieved when we are fully present and fully alive but not obsessively focused on either lover's actual climax.

Life is like THAT. We are most full of joy and most fulfilled and most useful when we are focused outside of ourselves and not quite on those goals, and when we are fully present in the moment.

So there is no formula to living well! It is indeed an ART. But as we live it out, we learn how to be passionate, and how to lighten up. We learn how to know what is true and right and to live them out fully, and we DO lighten up as we do that, because we learn that it is not all about me and it is not all about my goals, and it is not even all about my experience of life.

Real joy is not something I pursue head-on, but is something that catches me unaware when I was practicing the art of living as best as I could.

Idolatry is something that calls me to focus on an end I am determined to achieve, through the means that I inwardly believe will get me to that end.

God is the One Who calls me to RIDE.

And I cannot lighten up, because I am too intense to do that. But God teases me and cajoles me into seeing reality as God sees it and as God wants me to see it, and then God surprises me with my own being's response to that reality!

Reality is GOOD, and I was made to climax regularly!

Leaving aside the metaphor of God as the Lover (which I first saw in scripture, with a whole book of the Bible dedicated to the metaphor, by the way!) and life as love-making, our faith is meant to be experienced in the reality of the moment, and not as a cocoon to protect us from real life.  God wants to give us each the tools to enjoy fully the experience of REALITY as we walk it out in each moment, and to train us to be adults who walk it out in intimate communication with the Triune God.  God's own presence to us and for us and through us is the sweetest and deepest experience of life, and -- for many of those who practice it for years -- becomes a much richer and more ecstatic experience than anything merely sexual could ever be.  The metaphor breaks down as inadequate, not as profane nor as exaggeration!

So -- if you will relax into the passionate pursuit of the things that really matter, on the track of the real world you live in, with the Triune God as your perfect coach -- you WILL lighten up, and you will speed up, and you will slow down, and you will experience fully the life YOU were made to experience!

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Here’s the link list for this month’s synchroblog.  Have fun reading through the list!

• Jeremy Myers at Till He Comes – Lighten Up!
• Maria Kettleson Anderson at My Real Journey - The Art of Passionately Lightening Up
• Melody Harrison at Logic and Imagination – {I Don’t Do Joy}
• Wendy McCaig - Lighten Up: Learning to Let Go From A Man Who Lost It All
• Carol Kuniholm at Words Half Heart – Resurrection Laughter
• R. Lee Bayes at Southern Humanist – Loving Light
• Alan Knox – Be Sarcastic With One Another
• Patrick Oden at Dueling Ravens - Truth, Beauty, and Yodeling Pickles
• Tammy Carter at Blessing the Beloved – A Tricky Little Journey
• Christine Sine at Godspace – Lighten Up: It Really is the Best Medicine
• Glenn Hager - Margaritas, Metallica, and A Serious Case of the Giggles.
• Liz Dyer at Grace Rules – A Spoonful of Sugar
• K.W. Leslie at More Christ – When Jesus Made A Funny
• Maurice Broaddus – Why So Serious?
• Ellen Haroutunian – A Laughing God

Those who walked with me at St. Andrew's Presbyterian Church will get "the Kingdom of Me" reference without explanation, but for everyone else, I better explain: Dallas Willard in The Divine Conspiracy talks about the Kingdom of God and the smaller kingdoms we all live within, and so we each have our own little world that is our own life and our own perception of reality, and that, for each of us, is "the Kingdom of Me". Today is a great day to reflect on that for me!

In 12-step groups like AA or Alanon or any of the many other iterations, during open share time, each person sits and listens to each who chooses to share, and "no crosstalk" means that no one is supposed to comment on another's share, but simply share their own story of the week or of life. In social media and in blogging, we have lots of "crosstalk" in our comments and in our posts responding to each other, but we also have a lot of time speaking our own piece and enjoying the love that others show as they "listen" by taking the time to read a post. I have come to realize the huge love that is given me by anyone who takes the time to read one of my posts with real attention, even if it seems that I wouldn't have any way of knowing they did so. We are all so interconnected, and the love that flows from those who give me that consideration is what creates anything good going forward. I am bound to you!

So, after those rambling disclaimers/explanations, here goes this "share":

I am now old enough to know that life is a mystery, and I can't dissect it and examine it and compile my notes and write them up and file them away and control life by knowing. I am old enough to have had a little of my innate narcissism kicked out of me, and old enough to realize that I don't have to be ashamed of my narcissism because it is human and natural. I am old enough to understand what makes life sweet is relationships, and that one of those relationships is between me and me, and that I can forgive myself and love myself and nurture myself with the same grace and kindness that I want to have toward anyone else I love. And I am old enough to have lived, and to be grateful for that life, and to be ready to die even while I am ready to live until 106. I'm also old enough to know that music and fiction and art express reality better than words do!

For the last week I have been hearing words from all of the different songs on the old U2 Album All That You Can't Leave Behind playing over and over in my head, and I realize it is because I am finally old enough to not just like that album but to live that album. It is the track to this part of this journey. I am grateful! So if you are curious, pull it out and listen to it, and you will learn more about this day in my life than I can write in a blog post!

I am grateful for my companions on my journey, and while this blog has been all about church and all about my life here and now, it is many early childhood friends and friends from young adulthood that come to mind now as having MADE me. I am so grateful for each! My family and extended family, of course, and Steve Sullivan and his family and friends, and Don . . . but the ones that jump out at me today in my memory and gratitude are:

The Sarbins (Adam, Sara, Debby)
Alan Maline
Joe Loftschulz
Chris Blake
Michell Martin
Mike Martin
Jean Watt
Stephanie Harlan
Jenny Harned
Nancy Jessen
Brian Borchers
Scott Turnbull
Dave Larson
Irma Jimenez
Wanda Dayvault
Kevin and Keith
Brett Westbrook

and the mental list goes on and on . . .

Many painful memories are just as significant as loving friendships! It's important to WANT to be friends with the people you are attracted to and rejected by, and important to learn to be friends with the people that love you in real ways, and important to learn to forgive ourselves and others for the realities in life that weren't what we wanted them to be. All these lessons have been the lessons I most needed!

So the "State of the State" (of the Kingdom of Me) today is GRATEFUL! Grateful for Omaha, and Burke High School, and Wheaton College. Grateful for my family -- expecially my nuclear family and amazing uncles and aunts and cousins who have given me a rich loving world that I took for granted until I moved so far away. Grateful for God's Grace, which I no longer need to understand to bathe in!

But most of all, the "State of the State" (of the Kingdom of Me) is amazed at what is in my cup and what is pouring out of this tiny little cup that is my own tiny little world. I am grateful that the Kingdom of God is available fully, right here and right now, and see that the Kingdom of God is coming . . .

Even when I am dead and in the ground, the Kingdom of God will be at work to bring beauty out of darkness and despair, whether my burial day is in less than a week or in 60 years from today. Life is good, and today I am alive and aware and grateful for eyes to see!

I AM just a blip on the computer screen, but while I'm here, I get to see each of YOU . . . and THAT is beauty and joy!

This month's synchroblog topic is explained here:  synchroblog.wordpress.com/2011/12/

So Jesus came . . . Did you get what you expected? How has following Jesus led you into strange places and turned your life upside down? Or has it?

I don't have anything new to say on this that I haven't shared with many groups in person, but it bears repeating the story at least once on this blog.

I was born to conservative Christian parents who grew up themselves in Christian families. My dad grew up in a United Presbyterian church in the Twin Cities (Macalester), attended Macalester College (a Presbyterian-affiliated school), and was ordained as a deacon and then an elder early in his adult life.  My mom grew up in a rural Evangelical Covenant church, attended North Park College (a Evangelical Covenant school), and joined Macalaster when she married Dad, also becoming a deacon and then elder in young adulthood.  As they moved, they attended other churches, and ended up spending most of mid-life at the church that was my home church:  Church of the Cross (PCUSA) in Omaha, Nebraska, where they were both active in lay leadership.  They were (and are) very loving and ethical people, have rich prayer lives, a very deep knowledge and understanding of Scripture, and have always had a heart for those in need as well, donating time and money generously.

I grew up believing -- like most kids do -- that my experience was normal, and that my parents' reality WAS reality.  I was very committed to following the Jesus that I'd been led to pray to nightly when I was first able to talk, and wanted to be a missionary (since full-time ministry stateside wasn't within our world-view in terms of my gender.)  I grew up conservative politically and ethically, and was definitely a "good girl' as well as a committed Christian through my teens.  I "followed Jesus" to Wheaton College, and had a rich experience there exploring community with my missions-minded friends as well as learning all I could learn.

I would bore most of you to tears if I gave you a blow-by-blow of the next 20 years, but the short story is that real life with real people led me to rework my theology and world-view in many places.  I abandoned conservative gender roles (the idea of playing the "right" role for my gender in exchange for being protected in ways that men were not) only after trying that path over and over.  I abandoned the idea that capitalism and conservative politics were synonymous with my faith only after trying very hard to reconcile them in the places I found dissonance.  I moved from conservative evangelical toward progressive contemplative with great difficulty socially, because I always assumed that the people around me could see the same holes in our theology and practice that became clear to me, and so I had to suffer a lot of very deliberate active rejection (certainly not by all conservative friends and family, though) before I could let go of the idea that others were also looking for better ways to live the way Jesus taught us to live.

The truth is that most Christians are sincere about following Jesus, but also sincere in believing that those in leadership and teaching positions know and are teaching them the things that will really result in the lives -- individually and in community -- that Jesus was and is calling us to live.  They persist in trusting that leadership and the status quo of the current church culture because they equate unquestioning submission with obedience to Jesus.  This isn't new, of course -- for we are often taught about how the religious people of Jesus day tried to follow the scribes and pharisees in the same way and for the same purpose.  Most adults -- even to death in their 90s -- never question the justice or rightness of what they have been taught since they were little by people they respected and still respect.  That is the reality of community and faith.  (Indeed, if those in leadership themselves question the status quo, they often find themselves no longer in leadership!)

I began my life thinking that following Jesus would make me like my parents, whom I still respect deeply, and would help me resist the parts of me that don't fit the ethic and culture of the conservative churches and families that surrounded me.  Following Jesus would heal me of the "sin" that made it hard to fit the status quo or fulfill my ethical obligations under it. (Following Jesus is healing me of the sin that is actually rebellion against God in my selfishness and fear, as He teaches me His law of love.)

I never stopped following Jesus, even through really brutal times of paying the consequences for not being like my parents, for not fitting the ethic and culture that I thought was based on a good interpretation of Scripture, and for not fulfilling my ethical obligations under all that (meaning the gender- and conservative-culture-specific mores, not the universal truths that most cultures have recognized).  Following Jesus led me to great grief and loss -- especially the loss of my self-image as a "true believer".

These days I know that Jesus loves me enough to want me to know what is true and to want me to live transparently with Him and my community of faith.  He's not afraid of conflict or anger or rejection, and has been teaching me that I don't need to be, either.  He has been teaching me to sort out the voices of family and friends and self, and to live with my focus on the wisdom in the community of faith that He shows me is more closely aligned with His intent and His words and the REALITY that He created and is creating.

The bottom line?:  I followed Jesus because of my deep needs for community and acceptance and affirmation, and found that obedience made me an outcast . . . but that that was the deeper fulfillment of those deep needs.  (I did find community with other followers, of course . . . but only after letting go of the narrower communities that I pursued acceptance from.)

AND there will be a new bottom line as life moves forward, of course.  Because I'm not done, and neither is He.

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Here’s the list of links for this month’s synchroblog. 
Glenn Hager – Underwear For Christmas
Jeremy Myers – The Unexpected Gift From Jesus
Tammy Carter - Unstuck
Jeff Goins - The Day After Christmas: A Lament
Wendy McCaig – Unwanted Gifts: You Can Run But You Can Not Hide
Christine Sine – The Wait Is Over – What Did I Get?
Maria Kettleson Anderson – Following The Baby We Just Celebrated
Leah – Still Waiting For Redemption
Kathy Escobar – Pain Relief Not Pain Removal

This month's sychroblog topic is Down We Go, and is not a book review of Kathy Escobar's book of the same name, but is about our experience of following after Jesus into the crowd who listened to Him introduce the sermon on the mount with the beatitudes, and thus about our experience of breaking with a life of upward mobility.

I do want to recommend Kathy's book!  She does a beautiful job of articulating a wonderful view of faith, church, and ministry!  If you are a regular reader here, you are likely to love her book and her blog.

My perspective is similar to hers, and probably similar to others who will post this month, but I have been led by life to a place that has some twists in the views I held even a year ago, let alone 3 or 5 or 10 years ago. 

I still believe in community and in the bigger community of the CHURCH in the world, and still support my denomination in its polity and local congregations, but I no longer see any of that as being at the center of the action.  Nor do I see wonderful communities like Kathy's, nor our larger communities like Emergent Village, nor our conferences or unconferences or virtual communities as central to what God is doing.

I support my women friends in ministry, and I support the wonderful women theologians and authors and speakers that have finally started to approach real leadership.  I support other groups who have been marginalized as they finally start to get tiny bits of justice and real leadership roles as well.  So I need to qualify everything I write next by saying that it should be practiced first by the WHITE STRAIGHT MEN and isn't intended to be a call to those from marginalized groups to give up newly acquired leadership roles and power.  We each need to hear and follow real wisdom that applies not only to our own situation but to our impact on the larger systems!

But this is the thing:  being able to read and write publicly is a mark of power.  Having a computer and smartphone is a mark of power and privilege.  Being able to use twitter and facebook and attend evangelical and emergent and progressive and denominational conferences is a mark of power and privilege.  Being able to connect to those who organize a synchroblog and interact with other bloggers on a topic each month is a mark of extra time and energy and the ability to connect with that community . . . thus a mark of power and privilege.

Pursuing power and assuming power has its place (when it is done out of a life of prayer and submission in response to the call of God and others), but our ideas of church and ministry are more about career goals and a pursuit of the American Dream than they are about real service.  God and the church and society need most of us to go get jobs where we are not paid for the books we write or the church role we fill or the speaking opportunities we can get, or even for the community of faith we can build from scratch.  We need more people to actually live out a life of service and love in the midst of the daily reality most of America experiences . . . while holding down a job and getting the kids to school in the morning and to bed at night . . . and fewer people to start new churches or try to re energize the old ones.

There are many people looking for a savior, and they aren't going to find the REAL SAVIOR in any of our local expressions of ministry.  That isn't to say that Kathy's church isn't as amazing as she feels it to be, or that I was not ministered to by St. Andrew's in my need, or that St. Mark isn't an amazing community of faith-with-feet.  I wouldn't have just joined St. Mark again last weekend if I wasn't convinced that congregational life still has an indispensable role in discipleship and worship.  But salvation isn't centered there!  Individual, relational, and corporate healing and restoration and worship is not primarily led by those who make their living at it.  God's primary means of grace in sharing the real gospel and infusing it into the lives of real people is through the lives and words and love of those who center their life around the gospel without assuming the role of minister or leader.

I love my friends who have been educated as pastors and preachers and scholars/professors/writers/teachers of theology and ministry and biblical studies, but I have watched the "job market" for them and the church and institutional politics in which they live.  I have watched the competition and the stars and the losers in the game.  And I have watched the economics of it all.

I love my friends who are laypeople and who love our congregations and seminaries and colleges, and support them financially and by many hours of volunteer time.  Many of them have education and giftings on a par with those who earn their living through the church and the schools, but have done what they needed to do economically to be the support to a whole industry of faithful ministry to our generation.  I see their hearts, and know God's love for them!

But to both I have the same message:

Let the church fail.  Let the seminaries close.  Let the denominations die.  Let the old shell of God's power pass into antiquity.

We are called to all the old ideals.  I still love the Book of Order and Book of Confessions of my denomination, and still am passionate about that vision of the CHURCH.  But that's not my primary calling, nor is your primary calling to your ordination or to your vision of the church or of ministry.

Our calling IS down.  We are called out of a pursuit of "the kingdom of heaven" the ways we thought we saw it or knew it, and called IN to a pursuit of loving action in the reality of our lives today.  That means we get to translate a real faith to footsteps and words and hugs in our real homes and real workplaces, and on the streetcorner of the part of town that scares us, and with that guy sitting on the sidewalk by the Del Taco you go to each week.

Kathy has great points to make in her book about inclusion of those on the margins, and that has been a big theme in my life too . . . but we don't have to go to her church to experience that, and it isn't primarily in church that we MUST experience it.  We are called to be people who make friends and who SEE people . . . the invisible people. 

We should be engaging the people waiting for the bus as we jog by.  We should be people who consider the mood we perceive tonight from the checkout clerk at Stater Brothers, and be able to compare it to her mood three days ago.  We should be in prayer for the coworker that everyone hates and wishes would quit.  But none of this should flow from that word I used in each of these sentences . . . that "should" word.  All of this should flow from real transformation, real power.

Following Jesus in an incarnational demonstration of real spiritual power will usually come to us when we are filling the same kinds of roles in society that nonchristians fill.  Following Jesus in a mystical experience of the Triune God will usually come to us when we fit our time of prayer and study into the same daily routines and pressures that our non-religious neighbors live daily.  And following Jesus in fulfilling the great commission will usually be at its most powerful and effective point in our lives when we have learned to live what He taught us to do instead of writing about it, speaking about it, or marketing it effectively.

Anyone else down with me on this?

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The other posts in this month's synchroblog are here:

Alan Knox – How Low Can You Go

Jeremy Myers – Seeking The Next Demotion

Glenn Hager – Pretty People

David Derbershire – Reaching The Inner City

Tammy Carter – Flight Plan

Leah Randall – Jacked Up

Leah Randall (her other voice) – How Low Can We Go

Liz Dyer – Beautiful Mess

Maria Kettleson Anderson – Down

Christine Sine – There Is No Failure In The Kingdom of God

Leah Sophia – Down We Go

Hugh Hollowell – Downward

Kathy Escobar – We May Look Like Losers – Redux

Anthony Ehrhardt – Slumming It For Jesus

Sonja Andrews – Diversion and Distraction

Marta Layton – Down The Up Staircase