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

Curiosity Kills the Closed-Minded

To quote John (Cougar?) Mellencamp, I was born in a small town. There are a lot of great things about growing up in a community with a relatively small population. For instance, as a kid, I very rarely needed a ride to go somewhere; I could just as easily walk to a friend's house as ask my parents to drive me. Also, I have experienced the benefits that are described in the phrase, "It takes a village to raise a child." I realize now that, as I was growing up, I was watched after and cared for by people all around me. What I'm trying to say is this: there are wonderful things about growing up in a semi-rural community, and I would not change a thing about where I was raised.

However, as I grew older and approached my high school graduation, I felt an ever-increasing ache to get out. It's a pretty common thing for kids in small towns to feel this way, but I've never really been able to articulate what, exactly, I was trying to escape. At least, not until recently, as I read Chuck Klosterman's Fargo Rock City (which I've mentioned a couple of times in blog form). In the book, Klosterman explores his own experiences in a small rural community in North Dakota. As he explores the various facets of his growing up and his eventual move to New York City as a journalist, he writes something that opened my eyes to my own experience:

"What the culture lacked (and still lacks) is an emphasis on ideas--especially ideas that don't serve a practical, tangible purpose. In North Dakota, life is about work. Everything is based on working hard, regardless of what it earns you. If you're spending a lot of time mulling over the state of the universe (or even the state of your own life), you're oviously not working. You probably need to get back to work. And when that work is over, you will either watch network TV or you will get drunk (or both). Even in moments of freedom, you're never dealing with ideas" (38).

He continues to say...

"We are products of our enviornment, even if we like to pretend otherwise. So let's say you are the smartest sixteen-year-old in town; let's assume you're creative and introspective and philosophical. You still have a finite number of social tools to work with. You're only going to apply those espoused intellectual qualities to the redneck paradigm that already exists. You may indeed be having 'deep thoughts,' but they're only deep versions of the same ideas that are available to everyone else."

When I first read this, I felt like I had had some sort of great breakthrough. Speaking as someone who grew up in a small community, I can say, without any reservation, that Klosterman is 100% correct. And, the more that I have discovered about myself, I realize that this was (for the most part) the source of my desire for a quick exodus.

I am insatiably curious. I have a serious problem of wanting to buy every book that I haven't read (this is also the reason that I can't afford new clothes); I subscribe to over 60 different podcasts; I want to see (almost) every movie that comes out; if someone that I know has an interesting experience, I have to hear every detail. I'm currently in graduate school and, while I complain about having to go to class and doing the homework, the truth is that I've grown to actually love the educational process. I love the act of going somewhere that my only responsibility is to learn something new.

I'm not saying anything about my own intellectual prowess or aptitude (I'm actually lacking quite a bit in that department); what I am trying to say is this: I love a new idea, and the greatest levels of frustration that I have experienced in my life have been a result of a stifling of this impulse.

I wonder how many of us have lost our curiosity. I was watching an episode of the televised version of This American Life (which, if you're not aware, is basically a program that consists of miniature documentaries about various people in the U.S. and around the world). This particular program centered around an Iraqi citizen who had moved to the United States for the purpose of going to school. At some point this man had an idea: he would travel the country and set up a booth that hosted a banner that read, "ASK AN IRAQI." The idea was that people could just walk up to the booth and ask this man what his life in Iraq had been like and to get an Iraqi citizen's perspective on the current war. As I watched I was impressed with people's curiosity and open-mindedness. I was also amazed at how closed-minded some people could be. One man actually spent over thirty minutes lecturing the Iraqi about the conditions in Iraq and how great the American presence was for his country. He asked no questions and sought no common understanding; he only wanted to speak his mind and move on. He had no curiosity.

This can be very problematic when it comes to our ideas about God. I would argue that fundamentalism is born out of this same impulse; that when we stop being curious and questions are no longer a part of the conversation, then we get very rigid and closed off very quickly. When we stop being interested in new and unfamiliar ideas, we are at risk of becoming out touch with the God who is, by any estimation, greater than our own understanding. I wonder how many religious people we've encountered who, at the very mention of a new idea, might become very uncomfortable, to say the least. I wonder how often I've been this type of person.

The great Jewish mystic Lawrence Kushner (who has been quoted a few times on this blog) writes this:

“Again and again we trade infinite wonder for a handful of statue; we barter the limitless…for the short-term bird in the hand. And when the deal is done, we have become what we serve: things rather than children of light" (from God Was In This Place, And I, i Did Not Know It)

We have become so uncomfortable with the mysterious that we have actually grown hostile to it. The idea of a new idea actually frightens us. We have made ourselves at home in our small communities of limited ideas and have grown quite leery of anyone who might suggest something new.

Often, we forget how small we've allowed God to become in our own eyes. We have allowed fear to conquer our curiosity, and so much of the wonder and beauty and mystery of God has tragically been left unexplored. And when we stop asking questions, we can no longer grow into the people that God has ultimately made us to be.

May you reclaim your insatiable curiosity.

And may you be empowered to explore and be totally confused by the endless beauty and mystery that created the universe.

Doubts and Questions

One of my most vivid memories from college is of my first week in a class called "Intro to Philosophy." I was very excited to be taking this class. In high school, I had never had the opportunity to study Philosophy (although, I had plenty of chances to try my hand at Agriculture), so I was eager to learn how to think like a real-life intellectual. I looked forward to being at parties and being able to drop in a quote from Aristotle or some other great philosopher during a normal conversation ("Why yes, I would like a re-fill. Thank you for offering. You have re-invigorated my faith in Immanuel Kant's concept of the Categorical Imperative!" or, "Wow, I can't imagine what it must be like to need to work three jobs. You must feel so much like the mythical figure of Sisyphus from the writings of the great Albert Camus." I know what you're thinking: "Awesome.").

Anyway, so I'm in this philosophy class, and it doesn't take long to realize that my professors (there were three philosophy profs teaching the intro class) were bitter and angry old men. And, of course, in a philosophy class it never takes long for the class discussion to veer toward the topics of religion, spirituality, and the existence of God. Now, something you should know is that I had come from a VERY conservative community in rural Oklahoma and even if you didn't believe in God, you never expressed that opinion in public, and you were probably even a member of one of the many local churches in the community. So, you can imagine my intellectual whiplash when, in the midst of a conversation about the existence of God, one of my professors--the one with the ponytail--started to pace the classroom and ask rhetorical questions: "So, how can we truly ever have confidence in anything, let alone the existence of some ambiguous divine entity? How are we supposed to come to any conclusions about this?" Then, he looked across the room with a cocky smile and said, "I mean, should we trust the Bible?" Half of the people in the room laughed. He grinned with satisfaction. I didn't know how to process this. I'd always heard of people who don't take the Bible seriously, but I'd never met one. Who did this guy think he was? I doubted that God looked kindly on his cynicism and doubting. I silently thought, "See you in hell, Professor Ponytail." (I'm just kidding. I didn't think that. I wasn't that clever as a freshman.)

I walked out of class with such a deflated sense of doubt. I had never really doubted anything so basic as the existence of God. But now, I began to wonder. This professor was clearly intelligent (except for the choice about the ponytail). Maybe he had discovered something that I had not had the wisdom to see. I really felt disoriented. On top of this, I felt guilty for the doubting. That was probably the worst part. I thought I had somehow stopped being a Christian because I was doubting some stuff that I had always taken for granted. Through talking to a few people who are much smarter than myself (mainly my uncle Sam. Not the ominous government entity that wants to send you to Germany to fight the Nazis. I have an uncle who's name happens to be Sam.). I realized that my doubts were actually forcing me to come to terms with what I actually believe. Not what I had always been taught in Sunday School and assumed were true simply because all of the adults in my life believed them--but what I really believed. I discovered that doubts and questions can be some of the most healthy parts of our own journeys.

That's really why I started this blog. In the past two years or so, I've been going through my own personal renaissance (except without the painting) in regard to my own believes and worldview. This has forced me to examine each conviction and idea and ask, "Okay, what do I really think about this?" Some things have been reinforced and I believe them more fully than I ever have. There are other issues toward which I have absolutely changed my opinion. And still, there are others that continue to be loaded with questions and confusion. I have found that the doubts and the questions have given me a renewed sense of confidence in the things that I claim to believe.

I have found that this is something that is deeply rooted in the Christian faith. When we examine the life of Jesus, we have to remember that he was someone who was deeply rooted in the Jewish culture and religious structure. Within this, doubts and questions are a highly valued concept. The great Jewish writer, Lawrence Kushner has written a book called Jewish Spirituality: A Brief Introduction For Christians, which I highly recommend. In this book, he exposes the idea of doubts as a central part of our faith and growth:

"When Jews disagree or argue about the meaning of Torah, they are actually helping one another to become better Jews... Trying to understand the Torah is an endless search. No matter how many times we reread it, or how many times we are sure we understand it, a new interpretation will arise to challenge our understanding" (45-46).

In Judaism, the idea is that anytime someone asks a question that tests or challenges someone else's paradigm, it is a thing to be honored and even celebrated. The idea is that these question can help all of us be better at being who God has made us to be. They keep us moving forward. I have not found that this has been a value that has been preserved for many Christians. I knew some Christians who, after the day that Dr. Ponytail made his crack about the Bible, dropped the class. The fact that this professor was willing to put some of our most sacred beliefs up for discussion was more than they could handle. But shouldn't we look at a situation like that and say, "Okay. He's making me doubt some stuff. I don't like it. But is it at least possible that he's making some fair points? And if I truly disagree with him, then why? What makes me so confident?" Shouldn't we relish the opportunity ask questions and determine what we think and why we think it?

In his book The Gospel According to Moses, Athol Dickson writes, "God loves an honest question." I truly agree with this. I think God has made us curious and inquisitive and had given us the ability to come to conclusions because he truly wants us to be confidence and to understand more and more of the reality within which he has placed us. As if he were responding to one of my classmates who chose to leave the class, Dickson writes this:

"Asking is not doubting. It is trusting…It takes more faith to ask than it takes to fear the asking. It takes faith to be ready for whatever answer comes, and faith to persevere with more questions if the answer is not understood. Asking an honest question means being ready to change in response to the answer and short of martyrdom, change may be the ultimate act of faith" (page 19).

If I am afraid to ask question because I fear what I might learn, isn't this a greater lack of faith than the one who can face a question and wrestle with honesty and curiosity? I often wonder if people resent questions because they really have less faith than even my atheistic professor (who's Doctoral Thesis was titled: "All Of Life Is A Waste Of Time" and to which I ascribed the subtitle, "A Love Story.").

And so, in the words of the writer Paul, who seemed to have a great amount of faith, "Test everything. Hold on to what is good." (1 Thessalonians 5:21)

I wonder how many of us would have a greater confidence if we could simply stop being afraid of questions and the people who might disagree with us.

Awareness (part 2)

Several years ago, I was sitting around watching TV with my good friend Chris when his wife, Michelle, called. She was out of town visiting her parents.
"Chris," she said. "I need you to pick up my sister at the airport. She was connecting at DFW from South Bend, and her connecting flight was cancelled because of the weather. She's sitting at the airport right now. She's really frustrated and upset. Can you go get her?"
Of course, Chris is an excellent husband and brother-in-law, so we paused whatever it was that we were watching (I believe it may have been older episodes of The West Wing; none of that newer crap), got into his car and began making our way to pick up Michelle's sister Natalie (who, by the way, today is a nun in Tennessee. So, now anyone can legitimately call her "Sister Natalie"). I know Michelle didn't specifically ask me to go with Chris to the airport, but I just assumed that it was implied. I'm good for morale.
It was a late and rainy night in the metroplex and we were driving all the way from Burleson to the airport (about a 20 minute drive with no traffic). About halfway into our journey, we found ourselves behind someone who was driving erratically. He was speeding up, slowing down, and veering into multiple lanes. The two of us, having watched plenty of television in our lives to enable us to think as a law enforcement professional might, determined that this person was clearly drunk and driving (which we both hate). So, we became a perfectly equipped crime-fighting duo. We decided to follow the guy and call the police and alert them of this public safety issue. He was driving, so I dialed 911.
"Fort Worth Police. What's your emergency?" said the operator.
"I'd like to report a drunk driver who's currently on the road," I said with as much authority as I could muster.
"Where are you?"
I gave her the mile marker number and the direction that we were going. I also gave her the license number and model of the car in front of us.
"Okay," she said. "You're going to be out of Fort Worth soon, so I'm going to transfer you to the Hurst police."
She did. I had to give the new operator all of the same information. Chris was still on his tail. Because of the construction of the suburbs and city limits, we ended up being switched two more times to different departments: Bedford and then Irving.
Eventually, the operator concluded that they had enough information and that the Irving police would pick him up. Well of course, we had to see that. So, we continued to follow the perp.
At some point, he figured out that we were following him, because he slowed to a crawl and then instantly accelerated to about 90 miles an hour. Chris drove as fast as he could to try and keep up and was doing very well until we both simultaneously had a realization: Natalie was sitting at the airport.
This epiphany brought our pursuit to an abrupt halt and u-turn (thank God for Texas highways). In the midst of our playing some adult version of Cops and Robbers, we had gone well beyond the airport exit. By the time we actually found Natalie, it had been almost an hour since Michelle had called. Thankfully, she was very gracious and understanding (all the makings of a great future nun). She even laughed when we told her the story of our brief career in free-lance law enforcement.
Here's why I tell this story. When we left Chris' house, we had no intention of doing anything besides picking up Natalie and taking her back to the house. However, we were easily distracted and completely forgot why we were out on the road in the first place. I wonder how often we set out to do something yet become completely consumed with something else. I wonder how often God sets us on a path to do something and our distraction takes us miles away from God's intended purpose. Then, we complain that God didn't help us enough.
This goes along with my last post about awareness and allow God to "surprise me" in all kinds of ways. But I wonder how often God is waving his arms in one place and my mind is elsewhere. If that's the case, what am I so consumed with? It's probably nothing as noble as ridding the road of dangerous drivers. I would say that it has a lot to do with simple self-involvement. Many theologians and rabbis would say that narcissism and self-involvement are the biggest hindrance to an awareness of what God has to say to us. In his book God Was In This Place, And I Did Not Know, Lawrence Kushner says this:

“The great insight of religion is not that we can find God in everyday life; it is that finding God returns us to everyday life. Forgetting one’s self, making the self as nothing, gives us life beyond thinking and theology, beyond the incessant self-reflecting that renders us voyeurs of our own lives"(86).

The more able I am to lose my self, the more I will discover God and, paradoxically, the more like my true self I will actually become. Kushner is pointing out that so often we become so consumed with ourselves that we become spectators and commentators of our own lives rather than simply becoming aware of the source of who we are in the first place and living with that level of awareness. He's basically telling us that, to use the analogy of Chris and me, the drunk driver is me, and all I want to do is follow myself around and think about myself and comment on myself and have other people tell me things about myself when there is something bigger that I was originally meant to be pursuing. Kushner goes on:

“Living in ‘the presence of God’ does not mean that we have lost self-awareness; we are just too busy being alive to bother reflecting on ourselves. We are so focused on living that we do not have any leftover awareness to remind us that we exist. We are not aware that we are doing anything, because all our consciousness—even the part reserved for self-reflection—is busy being alive. We are so fully present, unbounded, and un-self-aware that we are not even aware we are present” (101).

The goal is not be ignorant of ourselves or in some sort of denial of who we are and what is happening with us. The goal is simply to live with an awareness of something greater. The goal, as he puts it, is to be fully present and aware that God is never absent. We are, quite simply, meant to be too busy being alive in the presence of a God who was in this place, whether or not we are aware of such a thing.

I've probably said enough about that particular book. Next time, I'll move on to something else.

Awareness

One of the books that I've read recently is God Was In This Place and I, i Did Not Know... by the great mystical Rabbi Lawrence Kushner. For the next post or two, I'm going to reflect on some of the concepts that he proposes.

About two years ago, I read a book by Terry Esau called Surprise Me. It was basically a journal about his desire to see God in the ordinary experiences of life. He would simply begin each morning by simply praying, "Surprise me, God" and then see what happened. He discovered that, when he was paying attention, he was able to discern the reality that God is constantly on the move and at work in the midst of the ordinary. What I didn't realize was that this concept had already been written about by Kushner. Not that Esau stole the idea or that I believe the rabbi should sue him. On the contrary, Terry Esau's book was instrumental in preparing my mind for eventually finding and understanding Kushner's masterpiece.

Kushner's book is an exhaustive exploration of the scene in Genesis 28 in which Jacob goes to sleep in the wilderness and had a dream involving God and a ladder. He awakens from the dream and exclaims, "Surely God is in this place, and I was not aware of it." The book explores eight different interpretations of the text by eight different Jewish rabbis. While each rabbi gives a completely different interpretation, all of them seem to work in concert with one another to create a rich and flourishing understanding of one single passage that so many of us have never thought twice about. Ultimately, the question we are left with is this: "Has God been in this place all along without my realizing it?"

He goes on explore the significance of the scene in Exodus where God calls Moses from within a burning bush. What Kushner explains is that it must take several minutes for a bush to be fully burned up by fire so for Moses to "see that the bush was not consumed" would have required several moments of simply staring at the bush. He could not have simply glanced at the bush and had this realization. He would have needed to stand still and stare to realize that something odd was indeed taking place. Kushner says this:

“The ‘burning bush’ was not a miracle. It was a test. God wanted to find out whether or not Moses could pay attention to something for more than a few minutes. When Moses did, God spoke. The trick is to pay attention to what is going on around you long enough to behold the miracle without falling asleep. There is another world, right here within this one, whenever we pay attention" (Kushner 25).

These words are so profound. I wonder how often in our age we miss the fact that there are burning bushes all around us? I wonder what we would see if we would simply pay attention and quietly pray, "Surprise me, God." (in case this is sounding familiar to anyone, I preached a sermon titled "God Was In This Place" back in November. This post is a continuation of that discussion)

Kushner goes on to say this:

"The beginning of knowing about God…is simply paying attention, being fully present where you are, or…waking up. We realize, like Jacob, that we have been asleep. We do not see what is happening all around us. For most of us, most of the time, the lights are on but nobody’s home" (Kushner 26).

This is brilliant to me. Even as I type this, I'm listening to music (it's a cover band called Shaw Blades, if you're curious). When I'm at home, my television is almost always on. When I'm in the car, I've got my Sirius radio. When I've got free time, I read. And regrettably, often when I am in conversation with other people, my mind has moved on to the next thing on my list. While I certainly feel that I've gotten much better in regard to these things in the past few months (since the good rabbi was gracious enough to tell me about this concept), I still feel that I have a long way to go. I need to learn to watch for burning bushes. I'll leave you with one final quote from Rabbi Kushner:

“If God was here, and I didn’t know, then perhaps God has been other places also" (Kushner 27).

Where has God been without my knowing it?