Tim Keel's Blog

Come to Papa

It must be the time of the month where magazines deliver their newest four-week offerings. This issue looks fantastic and I'm sure I will read it cover to cover and post mightily from it.

This current issue of Wired contains the Rave Awards, profiles on "20 mavericks and dreamers" across a host of disciplines: film, business, politics, medicine, writing...which causes me to pause and reflect that this energy, this life that is created by moving out, moving away from, looking beyond and if not beyond, then deeper...it makes me wonder: do we all have potential to dream and risk in the pursuit of those dream(s)? I think maybe that thing, that wilingness to risk and move out can be what pushes a person from merely being a dreamer to being someone who is catalytic, a maverick.

And by the way, did you happen to notice my boy Petey on the cover? Hmmm?

St. Benedict after September 11

The new issue of First Things came last week. They have the unique design sensibility: to list the table of contents as the cover of the journal. I like that because I can immediately know what I want to read. This most recent issue claimed an article that grabbed my attention right off: St. Benedict After September 11, by John Owens.

As I was reading the article I sunk deeper and deeper into Owen's reflections. In the article he talks about the relation of the believer and the church to the state and how they interact and the complications that ensue whichever path is chosen. Historically, he states that at and after the time of Constantine believers faced the same decision, that is, how to engage (or disengage) with the state, noting that Benedict went the path of withdrawal and began what has survived him for fifteen centuries, namely monasticism.

Into this historical dialogue he discusses the increasing influence of twentieth century theologians Lesslie Newbigin, Stanley Hauerwas, and Wendell Berry (and while Newbigin and Berry might balk at the title of theologian, being first a missionary and a farmer, respectively, in my estimation they are first theologians who have applied their working theology to their specific vocations) and how these thinkers have stressed a sort of withdrawal: a movement away from the generalities and over-arching forms of both modernity and so-called Constantinian Christianity into the specific and localized foci of communities of belief and resistance. This is particularly challenging to me as one who has been discipled through the writings of Newbigin and Hauerwas and more recently (though less extensively) Berry, as well as the monastic order of Benedict.

Owen does a wonderful job, in this very brief essay, describing the tensions facing thoughtful followers of Christ who are struggling to understand how to engage and/or whether or not it is worth doing so. He does not offer any quick answers. I do find it interesting that Hauerwas is presented so sympathetically, given that prior to the war in Iraq he was a member of the editorial board of this journal but due to differences over the merit of the war, parted ways. Thanks to Owens and First Things for a nuanced and provocative essay.

Unfortunately, this offering isn't available online. I may try to scan it for downloading as a .pdf though. For a basic primer on Hauerwas, read this article in The National Catholic Reporter. Click here for an informative and concise biography of Newbigin, as well as an overview of his thought.

This Looks Interesting, in a self-flagellating kind of way

I was scanning movie trailers at the Apple site and came across this.

Saved!

I have to admit it looks pretty funny and who knows, maybe this film will capture something good and true. Or maybe it will be a disaster and offend everyone and cause an uproar that sends studio executives scurrying in the wake of the success of The Passion of the Christ. I hope not.

St. Patrick's Day Parade

Saturday was the annual Brookside St. Patrick's Day parade. We might as well have been in Ireland: gray, rainy, and chilled. We marched with the community of St. Peter's parish, our kids' school. Then we stood to the side and watched until we were too damp and then went for some hot chocolate. I made a little slideshow from our day's adventure.

St. Patrick's Day Parade

By the way, I am reading a nice piece of historical fiction from Stephen R. Lawhead about the man who became St. Patrick. Lawhead is at his best with these kinds of pieces. Check out Byzantium, too.

A Couple of Days Away

I went to San Diego last week for the Emergent/Youth Specialties conference (you can read blogs from some people who attended via a link on this page). It was a quick trip at two days, but I enjoyed the time nevertheless. The weather was glorious, sunny and 80 degrees. Green, too. I am reminded that we are approaching Spring. San Diego was a nice foretaste of what is on its way here (not including the beach and ocean). It was also great to catch up with a group of people with whom I've developed relationships over the last several years. Last year was the first such conference and Mimi came along. The conference was good but, unfortunately, it was cold and rainy for the entire time.

Both last year and this year Doug Pagitt and I did two day seminar on Church Planting in the Emerging Culture. We're doing it again in Nashville in May. Nine hours talking about church planting over two days! It is always good to spend some time reflecting on what has happened in the context of our community and how to talk about it meaningful ways. It is also really good to listen to Doug talk about Solomon's Porch and what drives both him and that community. These are environments that stimulate learning and creativity for me. I am grateful that as a communicator and teacher I inhabit environments where I can also be a learner at the same time.

And I am always grateful and humbled to talk to a group of people who are, in many ways, putting themselves on the line. Some people come to these critical concerns courses for the purpose of exploration - to listen to some people who have gone ahead of them and see if they have a similar spark. Others come looking for tools and language, permission really, to follow their dreams and begin intentional missional communities for the sake of expanding the kingdom of God.

By the way, I ran into Dwight Friesen, a pastor in Seattle who I met six years ago at a gathering for "future church planters" in New Mexico (Doug was leading it). He is in the same doctoral program at George Fox University as Jason Clark. Anyway, Dwight and I were discussing some interesting books (Linked and Nexus) and the notion of how fluid structures are and the way that might affect our understandings of community. Dwight is describing them as "Christ-clusters." I downloaded a paper he is working on that is titled, "Scale-Free Networks as a Structural Hermeneutic for Relational Ecclesiology." If you want to read it, go to his site and hit the "writings" link, then the link for "essays."

Coming Late to the Party

I confess that I have never had a great sense of immediacy with regard to the environment, ecology, and sustainability issues. Many of us coming out of evangelical backgrounds seem to have this legacy, tied to conservative politics: that creation has never been our responsibility, at least not in any meaningful way. This is first-off a theological short-coming that I've been trying deal with for awhile. Tied to that is desire to listen hard to the political debate this election season.

Over the last couple of days I have inadvertently stumbled into a number of different kinds of media dealing with issues of dramatic climate change due to irresponsible human stewardship of creation. I confess that I am no scientist. That should not be shocking. One of these sources is entertainment, in fact it is a movie trailer that exploits the apocalyptic end-game scenarios with which we seem so enthralled (and I confess I find it enthralling). The movie is called The Day After Tomorrow. That this is eco-apocalypse is interesting and follows a recent run of these kind of films including Deep Impact, Armageddon, and The Core. I am also a speculative (science) fiction reader who has been challenged by the likes of David Brin, and his book Earth. I think speculative fiction/entertainment can be an engaging way of assessing the cultural pulse, where issues can be dealt in a fictional format that are not dealt with, for whatever reason, in other more "serious" formats.

In no particular order here are a number of threads I have run across recently. Admittedly, I am on the front-end of a large learning curve. People more intelligent than I am take very different postions than those taken by the people I reference in this blog post. But the more I read, the more I am concerned by the Bush administration's unwillingness to address any of these issues.

Bill McKibben writes a challenging article in the new issue of Sojourners. I've been making my way through his book, Enough: Staying Human in an Engineered Age. The article is in the recent issue, Down to Earth Theology and is titled, Sins of Emission. The same issue has a challenging article written by Brian McLaren about how theology colors how one approaches the environment titled Consider the Turtles of the Field. Tony Campolo has been beating this drum for a long time, though in a different way than Brian.

Finally, there is this article from The Guardian Unlimited discussing a Pentagon report to the Bush administration about threats to national security as a result climate change and the administrations unwillingness to deal with it.

The Daily Dig

The Bruderhof Community has a great daily resource available via e-mail subscription: the Daily Dig.

The Daily Dig is an article written by someone who may or may not be apart of the Bruderhof Community (yesterday's article was by Kathleen Norris who, last time I checked, was still happily a Presbyterian as well as a Benedictine oblate) that arrives every day in your e-mail box bright and early. They subtitle the Daily Dig "caffeine for your conscience." Two friends, our new pastor Bill Wallenbeck and my assistant Laci Scott, make it a part of their day - now it is part of mine, too.

I first encountered the Bruderhof Community in seminary when my Systematic Theology professor Bruce Demarest invited a former student, now a member of the Bruderhof Community, to instruct our class for the day. He talked briefly about the community and I found what he said as well as the way he taught to be very engaging.

This meditation/reading for this morning is an exceptionally good reflection on the Bible called Two-Edged Sword.

Lenten Readings

I am using a Lenten devotional, Henri Nouwen's Show Me the Way to help me focus on Christ during this liturgical season. Someone has edited a number of Nouwen's writings into daily mediations that are simple and profound. Nouwen's awareness of his brokenness and the transparency that accompanies his awareness is almost always medicinal for me. I keep going back to him. In fact, for the last couple of months our staff has been opening our weekly meetings by reading one chapter, out-loud, from his meditation on Christian leadership, In the Name of Jesus. Reading today's entry brought back to my mind many ideas that Jan and Mike Mastin shared about on Sunday night in their message to us about creating sacred spaces in our life.

Here's an excerpt from today's reading:

Finally, listen to your heart. It's there that Jesus speaks most intimately to you. Praying is first and foremost listening to Jesus, who dwells in the very depths of your heart. He doesn't shout. He doesn't thrust himself upon you. His voice is an unassuming voice, very nearly a whisper, the voice of gentle love. Whatever you do with your life, go on listening to the voice of Jesus in your heart. This listening must be an active and very attentive listening, for in our restless and noisy world God's loving voice is easily drowned out. You need to set aside some time every day for this active listening to God if only for ten minutes. Ten minutes each day for Jesus alone can bring about a radical change in your life. You'll find that it isn't easy to be still for ten minutes at a time. You'll discover that straightaway many other voices, voices taht are noisy and distracting, voices which do not come from God, demand your attention. But if you stick to your daily prayer time, then slowly but surely you'll come to hear the gentle voice of love and will long more and more to listen to it."

The last couple days he has been hitting on the nature of our relationship to our neighbor, specifically in the context of hospitality. I believe in these excerpts the editor is drawing from his amazing book, Reaching Out. One more quote (I can't resist):

God wants all of our heart, all of our mind, and all of our soul. It is this unconditional and unreserved love for God that leads to the care for our neighbor, not as an activity which distracts us from God or competes with our attention to God, but as an expression of our love for God who reveals himself to us as the God of all people. It is in God that we find our neighbors and discover our responsibility to them. We might even say that only in God does our neighbor become a neighbor rather than an infringement upon our autonomy, and that only in and through God does service become possible.