Free the Children

This seems like a really great organization.

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Peter Rollins Cracks Me Up

One writer/speaker that I really enjoy is Peter Rollins. One of the coolest experiences I had last summer was that I was sitting in a pub in Grand Rapids, Michigan with a bunch of guys from Texas, and Rollins came and joined us for a few minutes. We were in town for a preaching conference, and Rollins was one of the speakers. As it turned out, he was friends with the guy sitting directly to my right. It was an amazing thing to get to simply sit and listen to him talk. He's incredibly dynamic and brilliant.

Last week on his blog, he talked about putting the finishing touches on his new book. Then, at the end of the post, he wrote this:

In the mean time don’t forget The Orthodox Heretic, she is very lonely in the Amazon store house and is being picked on by the Mark Driscoll books. Please consider giving her a good home!

It's even funnier if you imagine the words being spoken in Rollins' Irish accent.

If you want to read Peter Rollins' blog, click here.

Humanity Sounds Like...

Back in June, I was walking out of a hotel in Chicago and spotted a group of guys unloading a van. It was clear that these were musicians. It's about as easy to spot a band as it is to notice when someone has accidentally caught themselves on fire. People in bands tend to have a specific look. If you see five guys hanging out together, and they all appear to be strategically disheveled, you are probably looking at a band.

I was with my boss, Doug, who walked right up to one of the guys and said, "Hey, what band are you in?"

"It's called Augustana," the guy said.

I geeked out a little bit. Not because I'm a big fan of Augustana (although I do like their music), but because I knew that they were touring with Counting Crows, which is my favorite band (even more than Springsteen). I asked if Counting Crows were in town, and he said that they were all playing together that night at the Taste of Chicago festival. So, later that night, I ditched Doug and attended the (free) Counting Crows/Augustana concert in downtown Chicago. While the entire set was amazing, the best parts of the show were when every member of both bands were on stage. During the Crows' set, Augustana reappeared on the stage for seven songs on the setlist. They did some amazing cover songs including Bob Dylan's "You Ain't Going Nowhere" and "Caravan" by Van Morrison. There were no fewer than twelve musicians on the stage, all doing something different than everybody else. And while each person was doing something independent, it all came together to make beautiful music. If one person had started playing the wrong song, everybody would have gotten off. Each part contributed to the whole, and the whole was greater than the sum of its parts.

This is what it means to be a part of the human race. Each of us, in a thousand different ways, does something different than everybody else. However, each person's contribution informs the result of the whole.

I just finished reading a gut-wrenching book called Beautiful Boy by David Sheff. It's a memoir about a father who struggles and journeys through his son's drug addiction. One of the striking details of the book is how many times, when he is confronted with the destructive nature of his choices, the son shouts, "It's my life!" In other words, "My choices are mine alone. They only affect me, so I should be the only person who has an opinion about it."

As I read through the book, it became intensely obvious how false this claim really is. The father, the mother, the stepmother, the stepfather, the younger brother, the younger sister, family friends, and so many other people are deeply wounded and suffer at the hands of the boy's addiction.

This is a powerful example of how we are all connected. The consequences of my choices are not isolated to me. It's like being in a band. When I stop playing good music, the whole band suffers.

Perhaps this is what it means to be truly human; to understand the connectedness of all other humans. The realization that my choices have profound and endless ripples. Every choice leaves a fingerprint on all those who surround us, whether we realize it or not. We do not live in an isolation chamber. We live in a world filled with people making thousands of choices every day.

Dallas Willard says it like this:

"Anyone who says, ‘It’s just between me and God, or ‘What I do is my own business,’ has misunderstood God as well as ‘me.’ Strictly speaking there is nothing ‘just between me and God.’ For all that is between me and God affects who I am; and that, in turn, modifies my relationship to everyone around me." (from Renovation of the Heart).

Perhaps being human means making choices and interacting with people in such a way that brings good into the lives of those within my sphere of influence. There is a deep level of naive self-absorption that accompanies the claim, "It's my life." Perhaps at some level, this is true, but my life leaves a mark on hundreds of other lives. So, my life is not just about me.

In his book Jewish Spirituality: A Brief Introduction for Christians, Jewish mystic Lawrence Kushner says it like this:

"We are joined not only to people who have lived long before us, and who will live after we have died, but to people now living and to people we do not know…Nothing is ever detached, alone. We are all parts of one great living organism."

Each of us is part of the same band. When one person stops playing the music, everybody suffers. It's a train wreck.

But when everybody is playing their part, it's a beautiful sound.



**********

Here is the set list from the Counting Crows concert at Taste of Chicago on June 27, 2009:

Caravan (with Augustana)
Omaha
Mrs. Potter's Lullaby
A Long December
Colorblind
Hanging Tree
Catapult
Washington Square (with Augustana)
Hard Candy
Mr. Jones (with Augustana)
Why Should You Come When I Call? (with Augustana)
Rain King/With a Little Help From My Friends (with Augustana)
Cecilia (with Augustana)
You Ain't Goin' Nowhere (with Augustana)
Holiday in Spain

Memoir Fever

Recently, I've read two books that I feel are worth recommending.

The first is called The Guinea Pig Diaries by A.J. Jacobs. I've talked about Jacobs before. This book is a compilation of several short experiments that he has put himself through over the past few years. I'm amazed at what I've learned about the human mind and relationships as I've read through his experiences. There is one experiment in which he chooses to abandon all multi-tasking for a full month. In another, he relinquishes all decision-making ability to his wife, which she refers to as the best month of their marriage. This is one of the most interesting and entertaining books that I have read.

The second book is a memoir by Mishna Wolff called I'm Down. It's hard to explain what makes this a good book, but it is. In her own description of her upbringing, she describes being one of the only white kids in a mostly predominant African-American neighborhood and living in the home of a white single father who desperately wanted to be black himself. If you're looking for a good memoir, I recommend this one.

Texas

A couple of months ago, I was in Michigan for a pastor's conference. At the beginning of the event, the main speaker asked the crowd: "Do we have anyone here from another country?" And after one person yelled, "Canada!" and another, "Ireland!" one guy near the front shouted, "TEXAS!" Everyone laughed.

Not originally from Texas, I've been going this whole time thinking the idea of Texas existing as its own country was just a running joke. That is, until I saw the following bumper sticker on my way home from church yesterday:



This was the only bumper sticker on the car. On my car, the only bumper sticker says, "Love Wins." I put it there because it's something that I really believe in and I don't want to just put anything with text on my car. I think this guy feels the same way about his sticker. I took a look at the driver, and he's definitely not the kind of guy who uses irony in his choice of bumper stickers. This guy is seriously ready to declare Texas independent from....well, everything.

I didn't know people were making these stickers.

I didn't know people were buying these stickers.

I'm not saying I wouldn't buy one. I would. I would buy one right now if the opportunity presented itself. But I would immediately place it in my office somewhere near my Transformers-themed Mr. Potato Head and my Jesus CelebriDuck. In other words, I would put it somewhere that, when people see it, they would think, "Oh that Rob. He loves silly novelty items that nobody takes very seriously."

As I was staring at the back of this guy's car (and subsequently missing my turn), I had a little conversation with him in my head:

Me: "So....secede?"

Truck Guy: "Yup."

Me: "You know, the last time someone wanted to do that, it started this huge war and hundreds of thousands of people died. Not only that, it didn't even work. By the end of the war, the secession had failed. And they had 11 states and a couple of territories. You're talking about just Texas. That would be Texas vs. The Other 49 States. How do you feel about that?"

Truck Guy: "We can take 'em."

Spiritual Practices

I have been doing a lot of study on the concept of spiritual practices. I think we tend to think of spiritual practices in terms of Bible study, prayer, and fasting. If you were to ask most church-goers to talk about spiritual practices, you probably wouldn't get much more than this. But there is so much more to be considered.

Taking a Sabbath is a spiritual practice.

Listening to music or a sermon can be spiritual practices.

Reading a book can be a spiritual practice.

Spending time alone in silence can be a spiritual practice.

Eating can be a spiritual practice.

Breathing can be a spiritual practice.


My Sunday night small group is going to spend this semester considering what it means to engage in spiritual practices, so I've wanted to get through as much research as I could. One of the best books that I've found that speaks to this is Sacred Rhythms by Ruth Haley Barton.

I'm curious about something. If you're reading this, what are your thoughts? What are some things that you have learned to engage in a spiritual way that you never would have previously categorized as "spiritual" before? How big does this category of spiritual practices get?


*EDIT: Just after I posted this, I read this quote from Henri Nouwen: "Precisely because our secular milieu offers us so few spiritual dsciplines, we have to develop our own. We have, indeed, to fashion our own desert where we can withdraw every day, shake off compulsions, and dwell in the gentle healing presence of our Lord. Without such a desert we will lose our own soul while preaching the gospel to others. But with such a spiritual abode, we will become increasingly conformed to him in whose Name we minister." (this is from The Way of the Heart)

Once again, Nouwen brings the thunder.

Experimenting on Yourself

I have recently gotten into a few books that would all fall under the category of "Self Experimentation" (I don't know if this is really a category, it's just something that I said). I think the true pioneer of this kind of writing (at least recently) is a an Esquire Magazine columnist named A.J. Jacobs. A few months ago, I read his first book, which was titled The Know-It-All: One Man's Humble Quest To Become the Smartest Person in the World. The basic premise is that he sets out to read the entire Encyclopedia Britannica in a year's time. He has written a second book entitled The Year of Living Biblically, in which he spends a year (you guessed it) living strictly according to the laws of the Old Testament.

Jacobs has taken curiosity to the next level. He has found things in our world that he is fascinated by, and then he fully engulfs himself in them. There are two books that I've recently come across that could both fit this same description (and both have Jacobs' endorsement on the front cover). The first is called My Jesus Year about the son of a Jewish rabbi who experiments with Christianity. The second is The Unlikely Disciple about a non-Christian college student who spends a semester at Liberty University (former institution of the late Jerry Falwell).

I love this trend in writing. People seem to be more and more curious about things that they don't fully understand, and this type of writing allows us to vicariously take our curiosity to the next level. I've begun asking myself, "If I did this kind of thing, what would I do?" My brother-in-law said that he would "go green" for a year. That sounded interesting.

What about you? What would you do? If you were going to experiment on yourself with a sub-culture or a lifestyle, where would you start?