I heard one of my favorite theologian/authors on the radio today — Barbara Brown Taylor.  She’s out with a new book, An Altar in the World, inviting us into the gift of sabbath.  But chapter by chapter she gives us lots of new ways to think about it.  I haven’t read the book yet, but she is always worth the read.  Check it out.   Anita

When I was in my “text study” yesterday, a colleague repeated a familiar phrase: “We’re all ‘buggers,’ but God loves us anyway. He then went on to say that sometimes it’s hard for us to accept that about people whose messing up has affected us, but that we’re called on to do the same as God does. It popped into my head to say, “Is that the same as what we’re doing with this economic mess of our country? Greedy bankers, loan officers and investement firms have messed up and the people adversely affected – we who are basically honest citizens – are being called on to bail them out? forgive their debts as we have been forgiven ours?”  I think it is – and I’m not sure it feels very good to be doing it. Do we have a choice if we want to save our own skins?

Andrew

I kept a friend company at Barnes & Noble the other day. While he perused the aisles, I sat with a cup of green tea reading ‘The Shack.’ Then I went back the next day for a cup of coffee to finish the book without buying it. I’d feel a little guilty about that, except that I give them a regular stream of business, and the book has already sold millions, so the author and publisher are not dependent on chintzy people like me. I read it because of word of mouth (mixed reviews). I have to say that I don’t care for the style of imaginary conversations with God (or with anything else, for that matter). And that’s more than interesting for me, since in my first draft of ‘Crossing Boundary Waters,’ I was using that style here and there. But it didn’t take long to feel that it was too contrived and not authentic to my experience. So I dropped it – and I think it was the best editing decision I made. I don’t think it’s wrong to imagine conversations with God – I often encourage people in meditation to do just that. But where that happens for anyone, it strikes me as both highly personal and often frought with our own projections that don’t work for others. I think the most frequent way I experience the spirit’s voice is in sermon prep … for most of my years of preaching it seems that when I remember to ask God’s help, ideas seem to flow better. I don’t presume to think the ideas are necessarily God’s, preferring rather to think that God helps loosen up my own gray matter and work with what’s already there. After all, there’s not much with anyone that’s an original thought, just different packaging.
One good thing about The Shack – towards the end he prints a favorite quote of mine by Elizabeth Barrett Browning (my oldest son keeps after me to read more of her stuff):
‘Earth’s crammed with heaven / And every common bush afire with God / But only he who sees takes off his shoes; / The rest sit round it and pluck blackberries.’

Andrew

Our church is rennovating its entrance. I was asked to suggest a Bible verse or two to put on a wall opposite the entry. These are the two I suggested: “Do justice. Love kindness. Walk humbly with your God.” (Micah 6:8)  and  “Fear not for I have redeemed you. I have called you by name, you are mine.” (Isaiah 43:1) What do you think?
Andrew

Over time I have learned a few things about my oncologist. Early in our every other week sessions he learned that I am a pastor. He was quick to tell me that he’s an atheist. Growing up in Spain where orthodoxy was strict, he didn’t find any room for his questions – only the standard answers of his church. I suppose that didn’t give him much room to discover that doubt is always the companion of faith. I am not on a campaign to “convert” him. Rather I am interested in hearing his thoughts, questions and struggles with his practice (he doesn’t sleep well.)

I believe that God is no less present in my oncologist than in me. I think that if God had to choose between a person having faith or being a compassionate member of the human race, God would choose compassion any day. This perspective comes from the audacious process that most of us go through – putting ourselves in God’s shoes to try to understand the infinite divine. So I think, “What matters to me, as a parent, is that my child is a decent human being – more than whether or not they turn to me with prayerful reverence.” Of course, I’d like it both ways – but if I had to, I would choose to have a compassionate child, more than a believing child.

I suspect and know from anecdotal evidence that many people within the church struggle with this issue as they experience children and close friends who don’t plug into the institutional church and seem to have little structure to their faith, or like my oncologist have arrived at a conclusion of atheism – and yet who are wonderful people. We want for them to have both, and are a bit flumoxed when they don’t.  Where does that leave us? To love them as they are, give thanks for their goodness, and put the rest in God’s hands.

Andrew