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I didn't mean to post all these thoughts from mostly dead Russian literati. But I found this quote yesterday and thought given our Christmas celebration, hearing a little something from Leo Tolstoy would round out our Russian trinity and the season nicely. Merry Christmas.
"Love is life. All, everything that I understand, I understand only because I love. Everything is, everything exists, only because I love." - from War and Peace
"These men do not understand that the sacrifice of life is, perhaps, the easiest of all sacrifices in many cases, while to sacrifice, for example, five or six years of their ebulliently youthful life to hard, difficult studies, to learning, in order to increase tenfold their strength to serve the very truth and the very deed that they loved and set out to accomplish - such sacrifice is quite often almost beyond the strength of many of them." Narrator, Dostoevksy's The Brothers Karamozov
The Mormons have been sending missionaries around the world for decades. Now the U.S. military is knocking on their door, seeking recruits with foreign language skills.
National Public Radio aired a fascinating story this morning about the Mormon community and how the military is recruiting heavily from the ranks of its foreign language specialists. Listening to the Mormon officials talk, I thought about how different their tone and posture seems to be from how Christians often come across in the media. There is this great verse in Colossians, especially when rendered in the KIng James, that came to mind in listening to this piece: "Walk in wisdom toward them that are without, redeeming the time." I wonder if we don't have something to learn from their approach? Also intriguing was the declaration that Mormon missionaries are not sent to countries were governments are hostile to Christian proselytization, namely Arab countries.
"The world is changed. I feel it in the water. I feel it in the earth. I smell it in the air. Much that once was, is lost, for none now live who remember it."
Alas, Galadriel is right. With the today's release of the final extended edition of the Return of the King, the end of era is upon us (COME ON! It's Tolkien - grandiosity required). For over five years I have been an online geek, following every spoiler alert, looking for pictures, reading stories, waiting with bated breath for the eventual release of the next installment of The Lord of the Rings. However, this December marks the first holiday season in which Peter Jackson didn't deliver a new film to those of us dwelling in Middle-earth nerd-dom. It's hard not to be let down.
But as I mentioned, we do get a little precious, The Return of the King with 50 minutes of additional footage added into the theatrical release (and which will be viewed on the big screen this Friday night @ JW). Like its predecessors, this extended edition will round out an already packed narrative and build greater depth into the characters. We will also finally get to see the final confrontations between not only Gandalf and Saruman, but Gandalf and the Witch King. The Mouth of Sauron and his revelation at the Black Gate will ratchet up the emotion, particulary as it relates to Frodo and Aragorn's last, desperate charge. I can't wait to see it. For a preview of the DVD, go to the official Lord of the Rings movie web-site.
The other thing that I will miss though is the way Peter Jackson allowed fans like me to participate in the movie-making process. Jackson himself is a fan and has not forgotten how important it is to include people in the telling of the story - and not just the movie narrative, but the story that happens as the film is being made. I enjoy watching all the extras on the DVD as much or more as the films themselves. Of course, this is not over because Peter Jackson is still making movies. To be exact, he is re-making King Kong. In re-making this movie, he has partnered with the best Lord of the Rings fan-site, The One Ring.net. They have created another great fan-site, this time for King Kong called Kong is King. Here's the amazing thing. If you go to that site, posted on the right site of the page are five-minute movies that Jackson has been filming called production diaries. By clicking on them you can actually watch the film itself being made as it is happening. Gone is having to wait for an after the fact DVD. Of course, these diaries will make it onto the DVD, I'm sure...but I gotta say, Jackson is a genius. What does this say to us about our desire to be included, to go behind the curtain and get involved. This is kind of a non-sequitur but what do our churches and leadership structures have to learn from this man?
Finally, one more bone for you fantasy geeks out there. Here's a link to a short-clip taking you behind the scenes of the making of The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. The clip features Richard Taylor, the man in charge (with Peter Jackson) of Weta, the New Zealand special effects company responsible for LOTR, King Kong, and now TCON. Amazing stuff.
Well, I made it home (obviously). I had a great time, all told. Ocean's 12 was good, not great. I will tell you, though, the experience of seeing Ocean's 12 was great. I went to a tiny little theatre called the Roxy so small and nondescript that I walked by it the first time. I was convinced that I would be watching the film by myself and because I was early and they only accepted cash, I went in search of another cup of coffee and an ATM. When I came back there was a line out the door and every seat in the theatre was packed. The crowd was mostly young, diverse, and urban. And everyone was really friendly. Philadelphia lived up to its billing as the city of brotherly love.
I probably walked three miles that day (Friday). It was amazingly foggy (hence my cancelled flight) and rainy, and when it became dark, the city really did have a Gotham City feel. At one point I looked up and there were spotlights shining into the night fog. I expected to see a costumed man standing atop one of the surrounding gothic structures staring down at me, cape flapping in the wind. Alas, not so.
Standing there, dodging traffic, I began to hear a pulsing noise that got my attention though. I walked through a cool civic structure (of which the foggy clock tower is a part) and when I came out the other side of the tunnel, there was a snow-boarding exhibition going on. The organizers had erected a ramp, covered it with fake snow, and then set-up two grinding poles just at the end of the ramp (and not pictured here). The group I watched were amateurs and while some were clearly just this side of killing themselves, others were pretty good. One of the guys next to me said a number of these amateurs were hoping to make it to the pro-circuit. The pros, I was told, would be making an appearance around eight o'clock. I missed them.
I was amazed by the life pulsing in the downtown of this city and loved being a part of it for one afternoon and evening. I hope Kansas City, in the coming years, can get its act together and create some spaces that live like the Center City of Philadelphia. I hope we can get some kind of public transportation system to speak of as well.
Getting to the airport around noon today, the line at the Northwest Airlines was packed. When I finally arrived at the counter I was told my 2:35 flight through Detroit was cancelled due to weather! What's more, no getting to Kansas City until tomorrow at 6:30 a.m. So I am in Philadelphia for another day. I'm in a cheap Ramada Inn that is pretty sketchy - I'm not normally like this but I thinking about sleeping on top of the bedspread. After I stashed my stuff I took the hotel shuttle back to the airport and rode the train downtown, into Center City.
I love walking around strange and unknown towns. I'd rather be home with my wife and kids, but if I have to be away, then spending a day by myself riding public transportation and trying to get lost is a pretty great second choice.
Highlights so far: a huge line running down the length of Market Street (pictured here). I went up and asked someone what they were doing (maybe I'd get in line, too) and they said it was an audition for the television show, The Biggest Loser, and sure enough, it was. I guess it's a show where people compete with others to lose weight. I flipped by it one night and watched a pretty emotional scene where kids were seeing their parents looking healthy for the first time ever. I also observed a street rally complete with a bull-horn. There is a group of people in front of the the Philadelphia Public Works protesting the turning off of power, I think. And I think everyone with issues dropped by to add to the din. Mostly I saw posters protesting Iraq and a few media folks interviewing different people.
Now, I'm taking a break in a Starbuck's where I'm hoping I can connect to the Internet (and warm up with a cup of coffee). I'm pretty wet. I've also been on the hunt for a phone charger but it's been elusive. I consoled myself with a chocolate French Crueller from Dunkin Donuts. This is what we are missing in Kansas City: a Dunkin Donuts with a walk-up window.
In a minute I'm going to venture back out. Now I'm hunting a movie theater. I think I'm going to see Ocean's 12 tonight.
I spent most of the day listening, talking, taking notes...then eating great food. Now I'm sitting in my bed at the Best Western in Hatfield, PA watching two shows continuously: "The Bourne Identity" on the USA Network, and then on commercials, the eleventh episode of "Lost" that just finished downloading onto my computer (I love this show). I'm looking over my notes for the day and reflecting on a very stimulating environment that had me scrambling to scribble down the spontaneous flow of images and ideas that came from our dialogue.
Alan did a great deal of content about issues of emergence; not capital "E," emergent, but how structures emerge organically out of the contexts where they originate. This kind of leadership and system development runs counter to almost everything that has come out the Christian leadership culture of the last two decades. To be fair, the context is much broader than that. Alan went on to share a simple diagram describing the organizational context of the 20th century as one of less complexity, a system characterized by high stability, continuous change, high predictability, and high control. That our present context is radically different is news to no one. When Alan described a 21st century organizational context of greater complexity and characteristics that in some ways are in diametrical opposition (high instability, discontinuous change, non-predictability, and chaos) to what has come before, I thought, "Yeah, you've been to Jacob's Well." But almost any organization that is seeking to exist with any degree of real life lives in the midst of these dynamics.
It is also ironic that what has become normative to dynamic and living systems behaviorally were the very things that most organizations spent a great deal of energy and resources to squash. Think about how hard we've had to work to kill organic life without knowing that was what we were doing - the law of unintended consequences and all that. Now many organizations are having to work in ways they've never imagined trying to either generate new life or resuscitate life in systems that have finally submitted to our master plans...and are dying and in hospice care.
A lot of what we processed reminded about another intensive learning experience I had when Joe Myers spent five days in our community the week before Thanksgiving. Joe talked about how critical it is to develop spaces that truly live and the need to have a dynamic means of diagnosing which relational spaces are living and which are dead: he went on to say that if a thing isn't telling stories, then it is dead. More on that later.
It's cold and rainy here: my favorite kind of weather. For as stimulating as the day was for my brain, it was hard on the body. Like I mentioned above, my day consisted of sitting, thinking, talking...then getting up, climbing into car, driving, sitting down and eating...repeat. I'm going for a walk.
I hit the road today for Philadelphia. I'm here with some great people: Alan Roxburgh, Brian McLaren, and George Hunsberger. We are in conversation with some of the faculty and the staff of Biblical Theological Seminary about the way they are seeking to transition their Masters of Divinity from a more traditional tract to a center for emerging leadership. This is the second time we've been here. The first was last July and the time was very productive and the conversation incredibly stimulating.
Many of you might not know Biblical, but might recognize John Franke, whose book Beyond Foundationalism: Shaping Theology in a Postmodern Context has been significant in some of the early framing of the Emergent dialogue. He is a professor of theology at Biblical. As I have written about before, I think seminaries face a number of challenges. There are many different forces that are in play as it relates to the dynamics of theological education in today's cultural environment. I am encouraged by the way Biblical is seeking to not just do some tweaking but re-imagining, within constraints, how they do theological formation.
I came in a little early to hang with a friend I've made over the last year-and-a-half. I met Meredith Wheeler at the first emergentYS conference in San Diego almost two years ago. We had a good couple conversations. Then he showed up at Jacob's Well last December and we had another great conversation. When I ran into him again in San Diego last year, he showed a great deal of compassion for me: one of my kids became quite ill and I had to leave the convention early - he prayed with me and for me and then continued to call me and ask about my family. I was really disappointed when I had to turn down an invitation to join him on a trip to the Sudan last June.
Anyway, this is one aspect of what I love about the space that is created in, by and around Emergent. It is hard for me to fathom doing what I am doing without the very real connections I have made over the last seven years. And through Meredith, I made another today: he hooked me up with a church planter from urban Philadelphia, Geoff Bradford (both those guys pictured above). The three of us hung out, shared stories, ate lunch, and walked around some of the streets where one of the two communities they have begun meets (inside a Russian Orthodox Church -- who supposedly has a killer bar in the basement). Geoff shares the leadership of Liberti with Steve Huber, who is in the Sudan. It was a great day.
"After the Western ideal of unlimited freedom, after the Marxist concept of freedom as acceptance of the yoke of necessity—here is the true Christian definition of freedom. Freedom is self-restriction! Restriction of the self for the sake of others!"
I remembered that quote this morning as I continue to process through the passage of Scripture from Luke's gospel that informed our worship yesterday, Luke 3:7-14.
7 John said to the crowds coming out to be baptized by him, "You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the coming wrath? 8Produce fruit in keeping with repentance. And do not begin to say to yourselves, 'We have Abraham as our father.' For I tell you that out of these stones God can raise up children for Abraham. 9The ax is already at the root of the trees, and every tree that does not produce good fruit will be cut down and thrown into the fire."
10"What should we do then?" the crowd asked.
11John answered, "The man with two tunics should share with him who has none, and the one who has food should do the same."
12Tax collectors also came to be baptized. "Teacher," they asked, "what should we do?"
13"Don't collect any more than you are required to," he told
14them. Then some soldiers asked him, "And what should we do?"
He replied, "Don't extort money and don't accuse people falsely--be content with your pay."
It is so easy to read that passage and be tripped up with guilt, but I really see it as an invitation into freedom. But it does involve a different kind of repenting, and I think this is what Solzhenitsyn is getting at in the aforementioned quote. Solzhenitsyn is inviting us to see that love is the willing restriction of ourselves for the sake of love, specifically the love of others, which is akin to our love for God. I believe repentance is not simply an invitation to move away from personal sin, but a wake-up call to resist the flow of the dominant life of the culture away from the life of God. What might it be like to repent of our rights? What am I talking about? Read this warning Solzhenitsyn has for the West.
In Western civilizations - which used to be called Western-Christian but now might better be called Western-Pagan - along with the development of intellectual life and science, there has been a loss of the serious moral basis of society. During these 300 years of Western civilization, there has been a sweeping away of duties and expansion of rights. But we have two lungs. You can't breathe with just one lung and not the other. We must avail ourselves of rights and duties in equal measure. And if this is not established by the law, if the law does not oblige us to do that, then we have to control ourselves.
When Western society was established, it was based on the idea that each individual limited his own behavior. Everyone understood what he could do and could not do. The law itself did not restrain people. Since then, the only thing we have been developing is rights, rights, rights, at the expense of duty.
You can read the whole thing here.
A number of people asked me about the video we showed during worship today. The song is called "World on Fire" by Sarah McLachlan. You can view the video here on her web-site of the same name. If you go here she provides a listing of the actual relief agencies she made donations to.
One of the coolest and most effective agencies that I've come across (and admittedly, they are few - not agencies, but ones that I've come across) that seeks to connect people like you and I to real need in the world through very practical means is World Vision. Through World Vision you can support children as well as purchase commodities like goats and medicines for families, villages, etc. We ordered 250 copies of their Christmas catalogs for people at Jacob's Well to have as we approach the celebration of the Incarnation of the Christ and seek to respond with generosity to our world. Our kids love buying goats for people (no pun intended).
I am filled with the hope that comes from experiencing the generosity and mercy of God. I am hungry to see my life as a means of demonstrating that same generosity and mercy in whatever way God would stretch me. I am even more hopeful that our community might begin to have a vision together of ways in which we can steward the enormous creative and material resources with which we have been entrusted.
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