Our family is traveling to Gulf Shores Alabama this week (to visit Kari’s parents).  Once again, my blogging will probably be more intermittent than usual – no laptop yet – but maybe my father in law will let me use his computer once in a while. 

While I’m looking forward to getting out of town and unplugging for a week, I have to admit – vacations aren’t what they used to be…

Continuing the Conversation

Continuing the Conversation recaps some things we talked about on Sunday and invites continued engagement with the conversation.  Hopefully, it’s one more avenue for Beggar’s people to keep engaging as well as an invitation for folks not with us on Sunday to join in.

Yesterday we continued the conversation regarding prophetic imagination.  The main role of the prophet is to stir the collective imagination in alternative directions from the dominant culture.  What a task!  We discussed the prominant role of grief in helping to let go of the dominant culture and begin opening our imaginations to something new.  Grieving is a powerful way of condemning what is and also of crying out for what can be.  We need to be a people that allows for grief. 

Considering that grief is a powerful emotion, we have to learn ways to penetrate the collective numbness that we aquire living in empire.  Perhaps this is the greatest challenge of the prophet.  We noted the weapons/tools that Jeremiah used to penetrate the collective numbness of Judah – lyric and poetry.  What a stimulating challenge for the artist and the artistic role of the church in today’s culture!

Movies – Father and Son style…

I had an incredibly significant and gratifying movie watching experience with my son the other night that I’m compelled to share.  I consider one of my parental responsibilities as nurturing a true love of story and narrative in my children.  In our culture this activity is largely consumed by movie watching.  One of my favorite shared experiences is watching good movies together.  As any father of five and seven year old children know, however, the idea of a “good movie” in the world of films made for children is a highly contested notion.  In other words, I have spent the last six years taking in films wholly targeting my children.  Although I have an appreciation and often have fun sharing the adventures of talking fish and animated mermaids with the kids, I long for another kind of experience. 

I was a child in the days before DVD players (and even VCR’s).  Some of you may also remember this archaic time.  Watching movies at home was relegated to whatever one of the three networks offered on a Saturday night after the ten o’clock news.  Needless to say, these usually weren’t children’s movies.  But they weren’t the latest blockbusters either (one had to wait for years for theater movies to finally make their way to the commercial filled airwaves – and these were always prime time slots).  The movies that came on after the news, rather, were older movies…movies I had never heard of…black and white movies…in short, movies my dad loved. 

My dad would stay up late watching his old movies, and I would usually stay up with him.  There was nothing else to do.  No computer, no second television with TiVoshows, no Wii. 

My choices were pretty much to go to bed, read a book, or lay on the couch next to dad watching actors I’d never heard of in old fashioned CinemaScope or spotty black and white.  The world I was introduced to through these movies, however, was invigorating.  The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, Shane, Ben Hur, Stalag 17, etc.  I don’t think my dad was intentional about this at all, but I credit those Saturday nights to really contributing to my love of movies and story in general. 

Reflecting upon this experience, I gave my son the choice last Saturday to stay up with me if he wanted to (a no brainer) and watch a movie.  The catch – it was a movie I wanted to see.  A film from my past that I was excited to see again.  It wasn’t a kid’s movie.  It was Steven Spielberg’s World War II epic, “Empire of the Sun.”  I’ve always thought this film was drastically underrated, and I believe it is Spielberg’s second greatest movie (next to Jaws).  By the way, it stars a young Christian Bale who is the current Batman – although this was never pointed out to Palmer as an incentive to watch.

      Some of you may remember, this film is about three hours long.  Anyway, to summarize the experience, Palmer stayed up for the whole movie.  I know he didn’t understand much of it, but part of formation (artistic as well as spiritual) is learning that you don’t  have to fully understand something to enjoy and experience it.  Sharing a movie from my past that I love with my son – instead of merely pandering to his immediate tastes – was truly enjoyable.  After the movie I was tucking him into bed and he whispered to me (we were keeping our voices down to not wake anyone up), “dad – that was one of my favorite movies.”  I know it sounds crazy, but I was excited.  Now I’m thinking of the world of older movies that I can begin to unlock for him…very fun.   

Continuing the Conversation

Continuing the Conversation recaps some things we talked about on Sunday and invites continued engagement with the conversation.  Hopefully, it’s one more avenue for Beggar’s people to keep engaging as well as an invitation for folks not with us on Sunday to join in.

Sunday we began examining the role of prophetic ministry.  There is a general impression that as we grapple with changes and move forward in our increasingly turbulent culture the church needs to understand and cultivate the prophetic role in its midst. 

Basically we examined three ingredients that always seem present and integral to God’s great movements in history.  These three ingredients are as follows:

1. Empire – “empire” is a metaphor for the dominant culture that shapes the popular imagination and provides meaning for the masses.  With help from Walter Brueggemann we noted that empire usually includes affluence, oppressive social policy, and static religion. 

2. Marginal People – people who live in the margins of the dominant culture.  Usually where you find God working.

3. Prophet – a person or people who function in the duel role of criticizing and energizing. 

When marginalized people empowered by the Holy Spirit are combined with prophetic ministry, history changes.  New social realities are created and God’s Kingdom is made more visible.  We look forward in the weeks ahead of exploring more how God worked through the Old Testament prophets as well as through Jesus himself in a highly potent prophetic role.

My server was having problems over the 4th…here is a prayer I wanted to share as we celebrated national identity:

“Almighty God, who has given us this good land for our heritage: We humbly ask you that we may always prove ourselves a people mindful of your favor and glad to do your will.  Bless our land with honorable industry, sound learning, and pure manners.  Save us from violence, discord, and confusion; from pride and arrogance, and from every evil way.  Defend our liberties, and fashion into one united people the multitudes brought here out of many kindreds and tongues.  Endue with the spirit of wisdom those to whom in your Name we entrust the authority of government, that there may be justice and peace at home, and that, through obedience to your law, we may show forth your praise among the nations of the earth.  In the time of prosperity, fill our hearts with thankfulness, and in the day of trouble, suffer not our trust in you to fail; all which wwe ask through Jesus Christ our Lord.  Amen.

- Book of Common Prayer

Continuing the Conversation

Continuing the Conversation recaps some things we talked about on Sunday and invites continued engagement with the conversation.  Hopefully, it’s one more avenue for Beggar’s people to keep engaging as well as an invitation for folks not with us on Sunday to join in.

For the past two weeks we have been looking at the idea of living in liminality (in transition; on the edge of process) as a culture and how to approach the growing anxiety and insecurity that accompanies things like an unstable economy, rising gas prices, threatening unemployment, etc.  One helpful insight is the fact that God’s story is a story of living in constant liminality.  God always seems to be moving his people toward insecurity and the unknown (while his people are constantly striving for stability).  Why does God do this?  Why does he move his people into painful and anxious situations throughout history? 

There is easily more than one answer to this question, but last night we observed and “unpacked” the relationship between growth and change.  The idea is that God is moving his story forward and we can’t afford to be stagnant if we take the mandate to move history to its consummation seriously.  The story of the Babylonian Exile is one tremendous example.  Through this incredibly long and difficult shared experience, ancient Israel emerged as a new people expressing their faith through new ways that exercised major influence throughout the nations.  This growth simply couldn’t have happened in Jerusalem under the old temple system.   

Of course the most challenging question is what role does the church play in our current condition?  We want to avoid imaging pre-exile Israel who made a habit of ignoring Jeremiah’s forewarnings of economic, social, and political upheaval.  Our hope is that we will avoid the trap of living with blinders and promising stability to an insecure people.  Our desire is to engage our world and embrace where God is moving.  What a crazy and challenging time to be the church!