amanda keen martin

It’s moving day.

My husband Jonathan and I had been wandering the not-quite wilderness of hipster domain in Charlotte for about four years while starting our church when we realized that a mid-century ranch house, while trendy and well-suited to vintage furniture, did not suit his 6’5″ frame. Our next home choice was not clear. We were either moving further into the city, simplifying life in a townhouse, or further out into a writing retreat. We were evenly split, and so began a now five month transition involving renting a condo uptown month by month until we could figure out what to do.

Thankfully, we realized after only 48 hours on the twenty-sixth floor of the high rise building that this was not us. The view was amazing. The walk to restaurants and basketball games could be addictive. But anything you have easy access to becomes overfamiliar almost immediately. And in the city, you have access to everything, especially people. So people stop seeing each other. People are no longer special and holy. Just people. People walking dogs. People working out. People on the elevator, silently looking at their smartphones even though no one has a signal. People in the garage, leaving nasty notes about how life will be easier for everyone if you can park straight. People in the room next door, so used to movement they don’t even note your novelty when they stick their head out to tell you to stop slamming the door as you move in.

Almost simultaneously, we found a house – our DREAM house – in the neighboring town  of Gastonia, NC.

When I say dream house, let me clarify: 1990, a middle-aged couple decided to go to Salem, MA, buy an 1809 Federal home scheduled for demolition, bring the major architectural components back to NC, and build a NEW house using the original 1809 floorboards, stairwells, windows, trim, brick hearths, granite steps, doors, and hardware. In 1993 after three years of customization, the house looked exactly like a New England Colonial. (Who does that?) It had all the character the sterile landscape of urbania lacked.

The one problem: it was in Gastonia, a town my husband has affectionately nick-named the armpit of America.

Okay, he doesn’t REALLY feel that way. But it does make for good “preaching” as he would say. Our first ministry positions were as youth pastors in Gastonia to a little church called Linwood. Our ministry  time there holds such amazing memories to me, some of my favorite in our marriage. We were naive and optimistic. The people were sincere, passionate, and hard-working. It was no more or less complicated than community Church life anywhere, but the challenges – and people – were more interesting. But Gastonia is a town overshadowed with poverty and haunted by the dominating and degrading culture of textile mill life. For much of the past 150 years, the people in this area of the piedmont were actively discouraged from pursuing education beyond what was needed to either farm or run their machine for the boss-man. And while Pentecost in particular thrives among such impoverished and downtrodden people, the dehumanizing conditions of such an environment make for a depressed culture. Like so many small towns of the South, Gastonia came to be a place of poverty in all forms. Racism thrived right along with Sun-Drop. And “redneck,” a term coined in insult, became embraced with ownership and distinction in an inheritance of the spirit of poverty.

So for two urban pioneers who have “moved on up,”  there’s a little question lingering about our ability to adjust easily. It doesn’t help when I tell my friends about the house and after gushing they ask, “Where is it?” “Gastonia,” I say with a rushed explanation of equidistance from church and airport. Reactions range somewhere between ecstasy (we’ll be closer to them) and incredulity (‘What good can come from Nazareth?’). Even with the transformations taking place as a bedroom community of Charlotte, Jonathan and I wonder what life is going to be like moving back to Gastonia after six years in the hipster-haven of Plaza-Midwood. (Personally, I’m eager for a break from cool culture as a whole. I’m not really a food, wine, or clothing snob, but I am an entertainment, book, bakery, and culture snob, which really just means I’m luke-warm.)

But in this in-between place, as we’ve briefly tasted uptown life, I know one thing for certain: Christ is found in the low places, not the high ones- intellectually, materially, or physically. In fact, hardly any word combinations involving “high” that I can think have positive spiritual connotations:

high horse

high life

high brow

high born

high class

high-minded

high standards

high view

high water

high roller

high on the hog

As I sat looking out at the skyline this morning from “such great heights,” I read about God finding David alone among the sheep. And about Cuthbert, the shepherd orphan who found God looking up at the stars. We can’t even see the stars at night from downtown (or UPTOWN as the city officials have designated it, which reinforces the point nicely, doesn’t it?). If the magi had lived in a modern city, they would have missed the news of Christ’s birth completely. Who needs the stars when you have fluorescent lights in skyscraper windows?

I stared out at the Bank of America tower. How vulnerable it is, so tall and thin. Many times when I’ve passed it, I felt I could hear the very rocks crushed into the concrete structure crying out in terror. If rocks can praise, I guess they could be afraid of heights, too, right? In New York last week, some friends told us about the massive flight of families from NYC after 911. If the tallest towers in New York could be taken down by a handful of humans, I guess nothing felt safe. The appeal of “highness” is so great. I know nothing about survival skills or military strategy, but I know that if you can’t do anything else, get to the highest place. The top of the mountain is a universal archetype for spiritual transcendence. At our deepest place of longing, we yearn for “the heights.” It’s just so easy to confuse material reality and spiritual reality, the self-propelled heights for the Spirit-propelled.

Especially in ministry, where the integrity of everything is measured in “higher”: higher numbers, bigger name connections, flashier buildings, more “transcendent” spiritual manifestations.

In the dark one’s last temptation of Christ in the wilderness, he takes him to the top of the tabernacle, the “pinnacle.”

“If you are the Son of God,” he says, “throw Yourself down from here; for it is written, ‘He will command His angels concerning You to guard you,’ and ‘On their hands they will bear you up, So that You will not strike Your foot against a stone.’”  Jesus replies, “It is said, ‘You shall not put the Lord your God to the test.’”(Luke 4:9-11 NAS)

I’m sure there are fantastic commentaries on what this temptation really means, but as I read it this morning I am struck by one reality: not even Jesus was willing to defy the laws of gravity and spirituality. Even He understood the danger of climbing too high too fast. He walked on water. He certainly could have thrown himself down. But it wasn’t God who had taken him to the pinnacle. And it wasn’t for God’s glory that such a temptation was being issued; it was for Jesus to prove something. When Jesus would finally be lifted up into the heights, no angels “heard on high” would be sweeping down to rescue him. It would look like death, not domination.

The heights are dizzying, dangerous places. The view can be intoxicating. And those heights can appear anywhere. I’ve had friends on the mission field who were higher than I have ever been in UP-town Charlotte. These would likely be the same people who would read this post and say a move into a house you like in the first world is not a descent at all. And I wouldn’t disagree. In fact, I struggle with a lot of self-consciousness about such a move. Given our tendency to exact high-standards on ourselves and others, it is well past time for us all to come down. But the only place I can hear the song of God over the weekend marching band, the only way I see the stars proclaiming his authority over the fluorescent glare, is in obscurity. And from the 26th floor, I have a long, long way down.

So to my hipster and urbanite friends, come down and see me sometime. If not, I’ll drink a Sun-Drop for you.

“What would you do even if you knew you would probably fail at it? What’s worth failing at?”

My friend Jim Driscoll’s words rang in my ears like a grade school fire alarm. Whatever they had set off, my emotions were ringing so loudly I couldn’t even think to find my way out of this conversation. What had started as a confession about my paralyzed life several months ago had evolved into me crying over my Cuban meal on our celebration of Jim’s birthday as he confronted me on what I wanted to do even if I couldn’t be great at it.

Nothing, I thought to myself in disorientation. Jim’s curt and kind reply:

“Amanda, you’ve been doing things right all your life. You’re not going to move forward until you learn how to fail.”

In the continued pursuit of learning how to fail, here is a possibly very bad blog post.

***
This blog (as a whole, not just this post) has become one more incarnation in my life of my inability finish things. It’s not a lack of desire or calling. I just have all the enthusiasm to start and none of the fire for follow through when the purifying fire of the flesh that is “boredom” or “average” sets in. What is happening on that mysterious middle ground between conception and birth? I don’t know but it seems to involve a lot of details and development – not my strong suits.

And the most infuriating thing about that stage is that it’s not something I can do alone (in Christianease “in my own strength”). As an only child, I have very little patience for any activity that requires cooperation with others. I want to be able to see the entire project, from inception to exhibition, through solo.

Like any good Christian girl, I know enough to pray and tell you that OF COURSE I rely on God – that I can do nothing without Christ. But the truth is that has been a lie for a lot of my life. God has given me the grace of a strong mind and body, and somewhere along the I way decided – with the help of many others who flattered me – that was enough.

Until it wasn’t enough, which was approximately three and half years ago when my husband Jonathan and I decided to start a family.

I could say a lot about the pain of our infertility over the last three years: the constant pressure to explain why you don’t have kids to new acquaintances, the sick feeling of God’s rejection when women around you taunt the vocation of “motherhood” as God’s highest calling, the very real and embarrassing symptoms of poly-cystic ovarian syndrome, the paralyzing fear that you have disappointed your husband and family in one of the most important scenes in the script.

But for me, the spiral of self-loathing centered on one simple fact: this was the only pursuit at which I had ever truly failed. I could not make this happen for myself. And the blow to my ego was severe.

And it was exactly what I needed.

The truth is, there have been a lot unfertilized eggs in my life: my love of ceramic pottery, the calling of a holy scribe, the gifting to teach and disciple, a hunger to create new poems and songs for the church just to name a few. But all of these had been abandoned at some point in the last three years. As I compared myself to people doing the same thing and found myself wanting, I began to lie, to myself and others, about the passion I had for these holy vocations. And when I failed at what Evangelical Christianity had always held up as the epitome of my vocation as a woman, the wanting was complete.

But in the dark place of humiliation, I have been given a gift – a reckless one that I’m wholly unqualified for. God has given me the grace of the pursuit. More specifically, the failed pursuit. The fool’s errand.

It seems utterly ridiculous to pursue something we know we can never see to completion. What do we tell ourselves and our children as good old proverbial folk American wisdom? “Anything you do is worth doing well.” “Don’t start something you don’t plan to finish.” And this is good advice. The problem is in how we define “finish.”

In the New Testament, the definition is simply to “continue” -to still be running when my finish line comes and it’s time to pass the baton. I’m not going to see the finish line at the end of the human race. This is a movement that tracks with time as we know it.

Here is the truth: I can’t finish what I’m starting here. And my ego really hates that. I can’t even control the pace of progress. All I can do is sit humbly and be acted upon. I can cooperate. That’s the best I can do.

Here’s a great little Christian cliche that I’m going to start unraveling from my spiritual consciousness: “Your life is God’s Masterpiece.” No. It’s not. The Church is God’s masterpiece. The Universe is God’s masterpiece. I don’t bear the burden of needing my life to be selected for the Louvre of heaven. All I’ve got is a little bit of understanding and a lot of passion to pursue God. And in the end, my life is likely going to be the equivalent of God’s refrigerator art. And that doesn’t mean I don’t keep trying, but I’m a few stitches in a huge tapestry. Probably one of the thousands of dark blue ones in the background that indicate “night sky.” I’m just holding my place in the continuity of things. I’m taking what I’ve been given and passing it on. And I can’t even do that without God’s placement and instructions.

***

I went to Mepkin Abbey to grieve my infertility and seek some kind of direction for what I should be doing with this now completely blank script of my life. On the second day of my visit, I took a hike to the African-American cemetery about a mile from the monastic enclosure. The muddy trail wound through the wetland forest, between huge vines and directly through the middle of an expansive cotton field. When the misty rain and winds began to kick up, I turned around and headed back. But something felt uneasy with this. I was more than a little afraid to be walking in the woods by myself. My dad would be furious. But I thought of Margaret Gaines alone walking home in Tunisia when she was miraculously protected by God from a stalker. No, I had to go on. Small deer tracks led me on and the bare mandible of an unidentified animal gave me a strange but peaceful foreboding of what lay ahead.

The cemetery was small, barely eight graves. If I’m truthful, I was underwhelmed. The graves were not slave graves that I could tell. Any that were there must have been unmarked. The few headstones were not distinctive in any way other than that many had died young, particularly women (childbirth?). I sat there for a while before I felt anything at all – no sympathy for the difficulty of these who had lived and died under such harsh labor and discrimination, still so haunted by the ghost of slavery. I just sat at this peaceful little spot fairly unmoved until one single phrase on a headstone caught my attention: “Lost but not forgotten.”

Not forgotten.

And suddenly, I heard one word from The Voice:

LEGACY

In ignorance, alone and ill-equipped to interpret, I pursued. I sat on one of the small benches bordering the holy plot near this grave and began rolling that word around.

LEGACY

The single wave suddenly became a tsunami:

YOU ARE CONSTANTLY WORRIED ABOUT YOUR LEGACY TO THE WORLD.
YOU’RE LOVED. BUT YOU ARE NO DIFFERENT THAN ODYSSEUS, OR GILGAMESH OR ANY OTHER HUMAN.
YOU ARE TERRIFIED OF DEATH, OF BEING GONE, OF BEING FORGOTTEN.
YOUR ANGUISH – ABOUT CHILDLESSNESS, ABOUT THWARTED CALLING, ABOUT ACHIEVEMENT – IS ALL THE SAME ANGUISH.
YOU DO NOT BELIEVE YOUR LIFE HAS VALUE UNLESS YOU ESTABLISH YOUR LEGACY.

I wasn’t sure how to respond to such affronting and loving words. Because of course the fact that they were being spoken answered all the anguish at once: I didn’t need to worry about being forgotten. Here I was in this isolated corner of the world in a not all that exciting little cemetery (I’m just being honest) fumbling awkwardly with contemplation. Yet The Voice had found me. He found me self-pitying and arrogant, but still He sought and found me.

And even in death, I would neither be lost nor forgotten. In fact, I would be more found than I have ever been. Something in the tone of The Voice told me that.

I wasn’t sure how to build an altar here. I felt like I needed to bury something. Something here was dying and I needed to bury it. I looked around for something that had at least of glimmer of symbolism. A huge magnolia tree had left a collection of its seed cones scattered around the graves. I picked one up. About five feet from the nearest grave, I dug a hole with my hands and buried the thing. It was clumsy and messy.

What was I burying? I’m still not sure. Maybe my unborn children. Maybe my grief. Possibly my disappointments. Maybe – probably – a good chunk of ego. All I know is that from that moment on, The Voice has been speaking other words to me, words of more promise, more mystery and more beauty than LEGACY ever offered.

HIDDEN THINGS

Here’s to the failed pursuit of them and the joy of being one.

***

Isaiah 48:6 (NRSV)
6 You have heard; now see all this;
and will you not declare it?
From this time forward I make you hear new things,
hidden things that you have not known.

“Death and life are in the hand of the tongue,

and those who love it will eat its fruit.” Proverbs 18:21 (NAS)

***

I like this translation of the proverb, the idea of an interchangeability, a requirement for the tongue of an agent of action.

In a recent visit to Mepkin Abbey, a trappist monastery in Moncks Corner, SC, I was surprised at my delight when during the noon meal, I glimpsed a pair of monks communicating in mime. I don’t know why this surprised me. As a retreatant, I had in my short three days already been forced to play charades with several other retreatants and a monk on kitchen duty to express important culinary facts: I was finished with the bread (a hand up to show I was satisfied and shaking my head “no”); it was my bread in the toaster (hand waving and hand up); and yes, I would like a prayer book (eyes open and face expectant with outstretched hand).

But the noon meal, dinner, was the only meal that invited retreatants to use the same food line as the monks, and so it was the closest I came to the robes, leather belts, and toboggan/hoods. Upon arrival, I had been given an orientation instructing me on the strict observance of silence in the monastic enclosure, particularly during the noon meal. So when, after leaving leaving the church from Sext (noon prayer) in silence, the tall monk in front of me began animatedly and jokingly miming something to the short monk on the opposite side of the food line who giggled in appreciation, I couldn’t help but smile. When the large, patriarchal looking monk behind them shook a scolding hand at both to “silence” them, I could only “silently” giggle more. The fatherly monk then turned with a furrowed brow to me, already self-conscious as I was, to forcefully gesture that I should move ahead more quickly in line instead of gaping at the funny men in flowing cotton medieval robes and polar fleece.

This brief observation of hand communication, along with my mime routine when it came to navigate our dinner of condiments with the other retreatants (ketchup, jams, cheese, butter pickles, peanut butter, butter butter, and bread), made me wonder: what was the point of the all the silence at meals if we had to gesticulate? Wasn’t it an unnecessary complication?

In the silence, making small motions so as not be distracting and “noisy,” we are all leaning in towards one another. I felt like I was telling secrets all week to strangers. Such communication requires, in fact, a closer intimacy and observation than speech would allow. And the actions are, in fact, clearer than words. Suddenly, a last-ditch effort – a method employed by me only in stressful contexts like Paris when I’m trying to explain to the frustrated Metro ticket agent that I just jumped the turnstile because the all-day ticket I bought stopped working – suddenly becomes an exchange of great intimacy, chosen closeness. In services, the tall, thin, gray-haired woman who always brings the small prayer book to meals and knows the liturgy by rote guides me gently with a long, pointing, slender finger along with the stooped monk who uses his walker in his kitchen dish duties, to which prayer guide to use and which way I should be facing. Along with the live oaks and cotton fields drooping with sagging, unharvested blooms, I see the special shoes the organ master must use in his six daily leadings of word and sung prayer. I see the tired monk, yawning in the middle of the ” Song of Mary.” The whole process of coming away from people then becomes, like the study of everything else  holy in this place, a contemplation of them. In fact, it occurs to me that they are the holiest things seen here.

Language is a gift and a curse. Especially, it seems, when we believe that word can be divorced from touch, from physicality, from an incarnation. If we have to choose between word and action, let it be the miming monks. Even if the best we can do at times is, like me as a novice in Catholic liturgy, the imitation of life, still our bodies learn a more honest way than words alone allow.

Imitation requires practiced, patient observance. I cannot imitate what I have not studied and study is a kind of love. To truly see one another as Christ saw, as God sees, to know and be known – the desire of all humankind (1 Cor. 13:8-12) –  is to touch. We touch with whatever method is available, hand or word. But word without hand is death. There is a knowing that is deeper than description can convey. It is the wordlessness that invites only meditation and acknowledgement of mystery.

At our church, Renovatus, I once invited the congregation to participate in a silent greeting time. They were to acknowledge one another and spread the peace of Christ without words. The reactions to the this, from the one time we did it, were dramatically mixed. Some loved it and asked if we could do it on a regular basis. Others were totally unnerved. Without the crutch of platitude, they were uncomfortable with the intimate interaction that a silent greeting required. I loved it, and would do it again if given the chance. It acknowledges the mystery of one another, that something unnameable in us, that Presence of Father and specialness of mankind. There is a kind of healing that only can happen in this kind of wordless intimacy, and a kind of health that can only be gauged by our comfort or discomfort in it.

The sign in American Sign Language for “heal/health” shares generally the same physical gesture as “whole,” “brave,”well,” “strength,”"cure,”  and “boldness.”  I don’t believe the connection is arbitrary. If we would go forth boldly, bravely in this world, we must be well. It takes great bravery to be healed, more bravery the more healing is required. It takes others to truly see us as Christ saw, beyond words and platitudes, to see the healing required. And we are bad at this, at best, pointing, gesticulating, miming.

But there is a grace in the imitation.

***

Lord, make as one as you are One, in such unity of purpose and practice that words become sparing and effect becomes evident.

The Enemy has always been an amazing source of inspiration for me. It’s true. I just downloaded the Rolling Stones’ “Sympathy for the Devil” as a soundtrack to get the tone just right in this post. You see I’m not that “Devil behind every bush” kind of girl. I really don’t want to enter that psychological-charismatic roundabout. But then, the Devil goes and hides in my bushes. Literally. And in doing so pulls a blog post out of me after months of creative constipation.

I left today for lunch with a long-missed friend while some landscaping men were doing work in the yard and pressure-washing my house. As I pulled out of the driveway, they were leaving for lunch and would return and finish the job. I went on to lunch and my other errands. Just as I was preparing to check out at the last stop on my list, the landscaper called to inform me that on his return to my house, he and his partner had walked into my backyard just as a random stranger was leaving my utility building.  The man was carrying a backpack and, surprised by them, quickly walked out the hole in the fence at the back of my yard. (This is the same hole referred to in the “Expecto Patronum” blog post. Yes, we know we should have had that fixed and that it was just a matter of time. Now you know why we are looking to move into a condo.)

The workers finished the job and called me to let me know about the man, giving me what little description they had of him. I was surprisingly unruffled and returned home to see what the man might have taken. I walked to the shed with my mom on the phone just in case I needed an auditory witness. (No, I don’t know what I thought she would do.) After doing work in the shed the previous week, a quick glance told me that nothing much was amiss. The toolbox was open but everything else looked untouched. Still talking to my mom, I turned around to leave the shed. I was startled by black spray paint on the interior of the white shed door.  A 400 pt  version of a font I’m calling “Rambling Pilferer” decorated two feet of eye level space on the right. Apparently angered by being caught, the man had evidently returned to the scene of the crime to leave a note. And the message he had taken such risk to deliver? “F#*@ YOUR MOM.” A quick glance at the recently reshelved paint told me he had in fact used my black spray paint recently nestled beside the neon orange and green. Perhaps afraid of fingerprints or maybe just for the nice spray nozzle, he had taken the can with him.

Now I don’t know if this is logical or not, but a recent viewing of the new BBC Sherlock episode “The Blind Banker” gave this effort on the part of my visitor quite the opposite effect than the one he intended. Rather than shiver with intimidation, I smiled and giggled a little as I read the runny message to my mom. (She was, after all, the intended audience.) I imagined a stealth ninja member of the Black Lotus crime gang sneaking back into my building after the landscapers were gone to leave a spray-painted threatening cipher. Only this member skipped the class on ancient Asian codes and so had to resort to plainspoken profanity. Bless him.

Now rewind to two days prior. After weeks of busy distraction, I ended an unseasonal spiritual dry spell by cracking open my well of wisdom which is the Celtic Daily Prayer book. In the Aidan series of readings for that date, I reread one of my favorite stories of the Desert Fathers.

The story is that an Elder who lived in hermitage was visited one day by a pair of robbers. The robbers declared, “We have come to take everything that is in your cell.” The Elder replied, “My sons, take all you want.” So they ransacked the hut and started off. But they had left behind a little bag of money that was hidden in the cell. The Elder picked it up and followed after them crying out, “My sons, take this! You forgot it in the cell.”  Amazed, the robbers brought everything back into the cell and did penance saying: “This man truly is a man of God.”

Whether this story inspired the beginning of Victor Hugo’s Les Miserables or not is anyone’s guess. But the sentiment is certainly the same. The Kingdom is a beautiful, strange place. You never know when you are going to stumble into it. And you are almost certainly never prepared for what you encounter there. What this man doesn’t know, couldn’t know, is that he didn’t invade my privacy. He stumbled into the Kingdom. He was as welcome as the deer into my yard. And I might put a lock on my building just to avoid tempting him to future sin, but a big part of me wants to leave the building unlocked, primer over his message, and spray paint in the neon orange and green, “I love you and so do Jesus and my mom. Take whatever you want.”

Although I might dress as a ninja while I do it just for fun.

Matthew 5:38-42 (The Message translation)

38-42“Here’s another old saying that deserves a second look: ‘Eye for eye, tooth for tooth.’ Is that going to get us anywhere? Here’s what I propose: ‘Don’t hit back at all.’ If someone strikes you, stand there and take it. If someone drags you into court and sues for the shirt off your back, giftwrap your best coat and make a present of it. And if someone takes unfair advantage of you, use the occasion to practice the servant life. No more tit-for-tat stuff. Live generously.

Three days ago, I received the most comments I have ever received on a facebook status update. The post was as follows:

Dear entire world, please stop texting me. I hate texting. It is a way to avoid intimacy, not cultivate it (see studies on the dating habits of teenagers who prefer texting to talking to their crush because it is less “personal”). Also, it takes an hour to script a conversation that should have been finished in 5 minutes. I do text when it is necessary, but I also hate it. If you can, please call me. If it’s not that important, just save it or email me: amandam@renovatuschurch.com. That is all. Thank you.

I knew as soon as I posted this that many people would immediately feel the need to defend texting and why they do it. I was not disappointed. A flurry of posts from friends popped up with explanations about their propensity to shoot out short bursts of information. Some friends called or emailed to suddenly make contact (a funny reaction, as if they thought they were losing me). I tried hard in my post and follow up comments to let people know that I wasn’t angry, just needed to redraw boundaries. Most friends were supportive. Some asked for more information. Others simply felt the need to reaffirm the morality of texting yet again.

Texting has become a perceived first-world necessity. We have as a culture accepted an entitlement to instant gratification in every sector of life, especially communication. I understand this evolution personally. As a writer, I have found myself frustrated over the past months not by lack of inspiration but by the miscarried catharsis of instant expression. Rather than strapping my ideas down in journals or sketchbooks and laboring with them until they are full-term, I spout them in pithy posts. The Spirit-bourne seeds of creative transformation for me and others have only as long as the update rests on the feed to find roots before the thorns of political ranting and tweeting birds pluck it away. I really do enjoy social media as a platform, but I have allowed it to replace the meditation on an idea that can only happen in the slow, thoughtful process of drafting. One needs long, uninterrupted spans of time to honor and extend a moment, to hone observational skills and allow the Spirit to purify and sharpen perceptions. Blurting is the opposite of drafting.

In a Benedictine trappist monastery, the monks are required to spend long spans of time a day sitting in silence. Not praying. Not reading. Sitting. In silence . . . meditating on and listening to God.

To a culture that idolizes industry, that worships time efficiency and productivity, that values a human life by how much work it can produce in the shortest amount of time, this kind of behavior is undesirable if not insane.

The world is not interested in meditation. In fact, the World in the spiritual sense attempts to inhibit reflection in every way possible. I cannot eat a meal in a restaurant with friends without shouting over muzak and being aware of the score of the current sporting event. I cannot even think, let alone honor the person I’m with or the food that I’m experiencing as sacrament. Everywhere I go, my thought processes are being interrupted with the desires of others. Recently on a trip to New York City, I entered a taxi and was immediately greeted by a personal video screen inches from my face telling me what to see, buy, and eat while in New York. So much for the friendly local cabbie. The Enemy (also known as the Man) does not want us to think very much at all, especially in this centered, thankful way that allows us to cultivate worshipping, grateful hearts. Worship and silence are inseparable entities.

The World is loud.

The World is aggressive.

The World is shouting violently.

In stark contrast . . . echoes the interior Voice. The Voice is still, small, and gentle.

And now we get to the point of the matter. Unlike many of my ministry colleagues, I have never been reluctant to give my phone number. Nor have I (as yet) quitted facebook. I trust my community and I want people to be able to contact me if it is necessary. While there have been times I have regretted this decision, I am comforted to know that I have the ability to decline a call if needed and I can answer voicemails and interact on facebook or twitter at my discretion. Texting, however, is a different matter altogether. Texting, for me, feels aggressive. I cannot decline a text as long as my phone is on. The full message pops up on my smartphone screen almost as soon as it is sent. I MUST think about this message. I MUST think about its content. My thoughts are interrupted and my spirit affected with whatever content has just been thrown at me. No one who texts me intends to make me feel bossed into thinking about them. Many times they are trying to encourage me or tell me they are thinking of me. But most of the time this is not the case.

It is degrading when someone I have not spoken to in months sends me a blurt with a request or question without a preface or even good-mannered greeting. I’m not easily offended but this feels to me like the Empire. Only servants have no name and require no acknowledgement. And I am a servant, but I am not entitled to treat others as mine. In these cases, when I do this to others that I am NOT in regular community with, I am commoditizing them. The individual is no longer as much a person to me as a conduit for me to get what I want or need, not unlike the drive-thru window operator. And while no one has written a rule that mandates that texts must be answered immediately, the unwritten rule is clearly felt by everyone. If someone has decided to interrupt this moment with the kind of intensity that calls to mind a telegram, surely it requires a speedy response. And why wouldn’t I respond? I have the same technology and can answer in just as quick a flash. Sometimes this is necessary, such as in emergency situations. But people in emergency-response vocations have device for this kind of communication. It’s called a walkie-talkie. My phone is starting to feel like a walkie-talkie where everyone in the universe is on the same frequency. And they are all shouting.

It may be beneficial at this point to mention that I was raised an only child in the woods in a rural community of North Carolina. I am also, like most writers, an introvert.  I love to perform and interact with people, but I also love and need to feel alone for my most productive self and to feel at my best when with others. (Forgive me if I insist that you, dear reader, need this as well.) I am most grateful for the presence of others after I have had time to become aware of God and myself.

…

Some of the saddest comments among the facebook discussion confirmed the findings of Sherry Turkle, author of Alone Together, and others that many people prefer communicating constantly at a distance to calling or voice communication because they see the required greeting and parting portions of a conversation to be awkward, unnecessary or inefficient. What does this mean about our society that the words which express gratitude for the presence of another or sadness at their parting are to be avoided?

One of my spiritual mentors, Dr. Rickie Moore, said during a very meaningful shared spiritual experience last Fall that “…Many people are afraid of awkwardness. They escape intimacy because they are impatient in awkwardness. Intimacy is awkward.” In the Lord of the Rings trilogy, the characters called Ents, giant animated trees, represent a disappearing world where movement is creeping and thoughts form slowly, where it takes days to greet one another and hours to say goodbye. We see this in scriptural letters where the apostles adhere to cultural structures of formal, prolonged greetings and closings. Fast-forward to a culture that takes the presence of others so for granted that there is no need to acknowledge them. In a world of constant connectivity, we do not perceive ourselves as ever leaving one another’s presence. We truly believe that to be virtually connected is to be together. There can be benefits to this perception, but what I believe is that it is creating people who know neither how to be alone nor how to be together.

Some would argue that I am more concerned with manners than intimacy, that to truly be close to another person means that this kind of lengthy, formal communication is unnecessary and false. I simply reject the idea that to be honest means that one must be base, short, and course. I do agree that there is an intimacy so profound it leaves one wordless. But such an intimacy portrays deep reflection and gratitude. That kind of silence is meditation on another’s presence, like sitting bedside to someone you love who is dying. I want to prolong the presence of the other and this moment. That is NOT what is happening in texting. In fact, when I text, I am actually trying avoid thinking about another person or thing for very long so that I can move and think about something else.

I suppose my biggest fear, for myself and others, is that in this world of the “instant” that those ideas, relationships, and tasks that require time and memory will be rejected. I believe that this concern is at the heart of the spiritual discipline of simplicity. If my life is so busy and industrious that there is no time to notice the world, to observe people, to see with a prolonged look that which causes me wonder, to ponder ideas, to acknowledge beauty and truth, my spirit will die. This is a fact.

…

So I am asking for a wall. Not a tall impenetrable wall like the Trappists where I can never be seen or found but a garden wall, a boundary behind which my soul can hide and find refuge. Even as I write this, I think about the beautiful game we play with children: peek-a-boo. The whole conceit of the game is to teach children that just because you are unseen does not mean you have ceased to exist for them. In fact, the joy of the child with your reappearing face is so delightful that both of you share laughter for the other’s presence that is dense with love and awe.

There is much discussion about the need to periodically “unplug” and many of my friends chose withdrawing from extra communication as their lenten fast. But I am asking for something more. I am also asking, of myself and others, that we resist the compulsion to shout unnecessarily at one another, either in joy or pain. Let us help one another to find that stillness required to let our roots grow deep without disruption. Let us be the alternative to the clamoring, screaming voice of the Empire: still small voices powerfully imbued with truth, patience, memory and the Presence.

I am not saying that I will never text or that no one should send me a text. I am just asking for us to respect one another enough to communicate with the kind of awe to which all creatures are entitled. After all, in the words of Thomas Merton, we are all “shining like the sun.”

. . .

Check out this article from the New York Times which further explores the impact of texting on the American teenager. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/26/health/26teen.html

The conversion of St. Eustace

I came home the first time this afternoon to two police cars in front of my house.  A few moments and a loud knock later, an officer came to the door and informed me that my neighbors had been robbed this afternoon and that the theives had seemed to have come through my back yard. What’s more, he said the criminals were apparently there “a long time.” (What does that mean?) I told him I hadn’t seen anything unfortunately. The officer asked me if I had an alarm system. I replied yes, and he advised me to engage it.

My nerves were understandably a little raw, but I don’t scare too easily. Still, when I had to leave the house a second time for laundry, I was nervous when pulling back in. Flashbacks of coming to my house two years ago and finding the kitchen door ajar, seeing cables where the television should have been, grabbing Cybil and running outside flashed through my mind. I pulled in gently, aware that my fears were ridiculous and that surely the thieves weren’t stupid enough to hit the same street and next house down the same afternoon. Still, I breathed easier when I saw Cybil’s serene face watching out the front window.

I was even more startled, then, when I pulled under the carport to find two deer staring at me from the backyard, about 10 feet away. I couldn’t believe it. I’m about 50 feet from Central Avenue and less than a mile from Independence Boulevard, one of the busiest streets in Charlotte, NC. Yet here stood two deer in my fenced in back yard. I turned off the car and sat there for at least 10 minutes as they, confident I wasn’t after them, nibbled my grass and overgrown bushes occassionally stopping to groom one another.

I had pulled up to my house imagining intruders. Here they were, but there was nothing to fear from them.

The movement of the Spirit was not lost on me. Not four days ago, I was talking to a friend at church who shares my passion for Celtic Christianity. She had a new necklace, one with a Celtic illustration of a deer. When I asked her about it, she explained that the deer was the most powerful symbol for guidance and strength in the Celtic Kingdom. She said that in the legend of St. Patrick, the story is that when Patrick and his men were surrounded by druids who wanted to slay them, Patrick prayed. Then when the druids looked for them, all they saw was a herd of deer. At the time I simply thought, “Wow, cool.” Now the power of the illustration came rushing at me.

In a short time, I will be in Ireland and I have been immersing myself in images and destinations of significance to Celtic Christianity. I came into the house and immediately starting web searching the symbolism of deer.  I  found a flood of images and references: in Christianity, the deer is associated with Christ.

This correlation comes most directly from Song of Solomon 2:8-13

⁸ “Listen! My beloved!
Behold, he is coming,
Climbing on the mountains,
Leaping on the hills!
⁹ “My beloved is like a gazelle or a young stag.
Behold, he is standing behind our wall,
He is looking through the windows,
He is peering through the lattice.

¹⁰ “My beloved responded and said to me,

‘Arise, my darling, my beautiful one,
And come along.
¹¹ ‘For behold, the winter is past,
The rain is over and gone.
¹² ‘The flowers have already appeared in the land;
The time has arrived for pruning the vines,
And the voice of the turtledove has been heard in our land.
¹³ ‘The fig tree has ripened its figs,
And the vines in blossom have given forth their fragrance.
Arise, my darling, my beautiful one,
And come along!’”

In addition, the conversion of St. Eustace is associated with the deer. A Roman general, he was out hunting when he was confronted with a stag between whose antlers appeared a crucifix. From that day forward, Eustace converted to Christianity and never hunted again. From this the stag, and Christ, became known as the “killer tamer.”

Tonight I got an excited facebook message from a young leader at Renovatus Church asking for guidance about a project he feels passionate about. I love those kinds of emails. I love to see dreams waking up and hear them stirring through the lines on the screen. Like a lot of these kinds of requests, he wanted to know if he should move forward with this and whether or not I saw a place for the church in it. My response to him was instinctual – quick and without much reflection or prayer.

What did I say? In essence, start small and see what God does. Don’t wait on Pastor Jonathan and I to fulfill your dream. And keep perspective: don’t be afraid to think big, but don’t get so overwhelmed with bigness that you can’t manage it. Notice that I didn’t say keep it small so that you can DO it all. No, dreams often have a community called to help them be fulfilled. But so many times people come to me with ideas that really are amazing but need to start small, and the dreamer is often too enamored with the bigness and possibilities of the vision to see a small place to stick his foot into the water. (Dreamers, this is an occupational hazard. I should know.)

See we’re all looking for a big “calling,” something to give us a reason to exist, something to prove that the atoms used in our construction weren’t wasted. We often see this calling as “the thing for which I have been created.” But the problems with this kind of thinking are manifold:

1.) We were created to worship God and be in relationship with Him. That’s it. He created good works FOR us to do, yes. But the works were created for us, not us for the work. When we see our life’s meaning in our calling, we are going to hold onto that calling WAY too tightly and likely strangle the life out of it. Our insecurity about the meaning of our life will eventually raise it’s head in another way.

2.) Because we are looking for a “Burn the Ships” kind of call to obedience, we may never get into the boat into first place. Don’t get me wrong, God does make these kinds of requests, but those are not the only kinds of requests He makes and they are usually once (maybe twice) in a lifetime kinds of choices. The rest is just daily grind, garden variety obedience. And if you have mouths to feed and mortgages to pay, you don’t have to sit the sidelines and see your dreams die. Maybe your dream/calling is a little overinflated by number one – your insecurity and need to have meaning to your existence which translates into productivity. Maybe you don’t have the ability or resources right now to quit your job and become a full time urban missionary. But you can start helping a widow in your neighborhood. Or you can start hanging out with someone who always seems lonely because she’s difficult to be around. Or you could volunteer some hours a month to a mentoring program for troubled teens. These may not seem like glamorous, romantic expressions of radical obedience, but they are as meaningful to the kingdom of God as a crusade. And that’s not token sentiment, it’s true.

3.) If you have a family or people who rely on you for care, they ARE your calling. God doesn’t love African children more than He loves your children. That being said, I believe we have a responsibility for awareness and sharing what we have (time and money) but I hate to see people RESENTING their wife/husband/child/mother/father/sister/brother/grandparent/job/house because these things stand in the way of following our dream. We can’t burn the ship if there are people onboard. And sometimes we’re not supposed to burn the ship at all. Sometimes we’re actually supposed to LIVE IN IT (see Noah). God knows where you are in life when He calls. He may call you to the mission field with your family but when He does He will also make the way with provision, resources, opportunity, and confirmation. What ravens is God sending you right now? Where does His provision seem to be coming from? That’s a good indication of where you need to be.

So I told my friend to start with what he could, be obedient as he was able and see how God responded. If a thing is of God, it will be life-giving to everyone around it. It will eventually become self-perpetuating. People with wisdom and discernment will affirm it and more people will be drawn to help. Don’t wait on obedience. Engage in whatever small ways you can respond to the small cry of the dreams God has given you. And if it fizzles (and some things will), no big deal. Your value to God is not found in the fancy presents you make for Him or hard work you do for Him. Another dream will come along.

I read a book called “Art and Fear” that proposed that the main block to creative productivity is fear, specifically fears of failure and rejection. Every creative knows this well. How many of us stop writing or painting because we can’t write like Cormac McCarthy or paint like Picasso. But it translates to ministry just as easily. If you have to make a “grand gesture” to God before it seems worthwhile you will likely never do anything for God. What is in your hands right now that you could do, that thing you’ve been thinking about but doesn’t seem meaningful because it might not seem like a big deal to anyone else? Maybe it’s not something the traditional Church would see as “calling.” Doesn’t matter. If it keeps you inspired (or more like irritated) start feeding it a little bit at a time. You’ll know pretty quickly whether it’s giving life or taking it away (and if you don’t, your family and friends will tell you).

And maybe one day God will tell you to burn the ships. But we’re a long way from that. So right now, with apologies to Steven Curtis Chapman, I feel the need to call some people back from the fleet with those torches. We haven’t even launched yet.