I have always been glad that I was born in September. First of all, the cool morning temperatures and warm mid-days are incredibly inviting. Another great characteristic of September is new beginnings. I think even if I weren’t involved in school year cycles, I would still be trained to see September as a start. This summer I’ve been thinking a lot about the apostle Peter when I think about starting anew. I’ve been thinking about how Peter gets a new beginning with Jesus. He goes from being a fisherman to being a fisher of men. He goes from being the disciple that denied Jesus three times to be being bold and renewed in the Holy Spirit sharing the love of Jesus all over. I think Peter shows us that we have time and grace. That it’s okay to stumble and fall but still be bold. Especially now at Circle of Hope when we are planting congregations and thinking about our future, it’s some thing to keep in mind. I think at this time it is okay to be a little apprehensive, it is okay to be a little bit nervous, and God will work that out in us. If you have never heard the story of Peter walking on water with the help of Jesus, I encourage you to read it (Matthew 14). A lot of people remember it as Peter having too little faith and sinking. What always impresses me about that story is that Peter had the courage, even when no one else was trying, to walk out to Jesus, to defy all laws of physics and try to be closer to God. Maybe that’s some thing to aim for in the month of September.
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Turning 40 is around the corner for me in the coming year. I’ve never been one to lament the “big birthdays” (My 30th was a big party involving a grill, a DJ, and a giant Twister board - some of you were there!), but this one is giving me pause. It feels like I am coming around a bend in the trail, and I’ve found an awesome but unexpected rock outcropping where I can see both the path I’ve just hiked and the path extending ahead. I am a little surprised at how far I’ve already come and how much is behind me. I want to linger a bit right here.
Even with the “protective layer” of my parents’ generation, I am grasping my own mortality in a way I didn’t get it before. At the family reunion, my uncle said, “I am the oldest of the Swartzes!” and I realize I’m not so far behind. I see the ripples of the choices that my parents, grandparents and even great-grandparents made playing out, passing through the generations in a way you can only notice with the perspective of time - especially choices about their marriage partners, finances, vocations, and ways of serving God. I realize now that my own choices have the same import. My own father died young at 40, but I realize now that as young as he was, he still left a legacy of faith and love for his family. As well, I am grappling with a caregiver role for my mother, and this is a constant lesson in trusting God that she will have enough - money, health, support - over the next however many years, and believing that, novice that I am, I can actually be an instrument of God’s care in the situation.
Yet some (I hope many) chapters of my life remain unwritten. Looking at 40, I still struggle with God about who is holding the pen of my life. But a new, almost involuntary prayer has begun to emerge for me that I find myself repeating without even knowing it. It’s not very eloquent, and usually it comes out like, “OK, God, use me. Please do what you want in this situation!” This is not easy for me, and I fight it. But I’m trying to yield more and more control, and I think I am starting to glimpse a wider view than I’ve ever been able to see from my path before.
Lately my mind has been floating, unable to write anything lately. so I decided to make a list of what I would write about.
here is a glimpse at my heart lately:
content being single
the whole “idea” that all you need is God is a good idea if my body and spirit truly believed it
believing Jesus’ life, his message vs. Trusting
would I die for Christ, or does it just sound good? you repeat “love thy neighbor as yourself,” “forgive those who have trespassed against [you],” ect, ect. Do you live it? Do I live it?
family is beyond heredity
what does it mean to truly love God with all your heart? being holy like God is holy
why are some christians worried about insignificant pronouns like he/she/jehova referencing God?
isn’t God more mightier and glorious than our human developed language?
what is joy in Christ?
i find myself doubting my love for God and presence of God when i don’t feel joyful.
do i really grasp onto how much god loves his children?
i want to be a blank canvas brought to life by God’s love
i share all this wisdom that uncontrollably flutters from my lips…it makes me wonder why I don’t follow some of it.
what is suffering for Christ?
Is it natural? Is it something we should strive for? Is it relative?
what is my next step?
i already left school, want to start a coffee shop, lovin my job, am without corporate health insurance, school loans tapping my shoulder, boys, want to volunteer, need to rest, guilty about not pursuing some relationships
what does alcohol and other drugs look like in the eyes of Christ?
will I always have this feeling of helplessness…
wanting to cure everyone’s sign of pain, scars, weakness
maybe that’s my fault of not trusting
i need to realize i’m not Jesus.
how beautiful God is to show me his face in precious animals, children, and strangers with so many stories…through their scars, hands, eyes..
Why have I cried so much lately?
Jesus and later peter talk about “being nothing” what does that mean? what does that look like?
hm…maybe we are nothing, only in Christ we are something.
why do people hold so much importance on this shell of a body, yours, his, hers?
sometimes I think it would be beautiful to be blind
what does being set apart really mean?
shouldn’t we, as a part of the kingdom of God, hold trust in our kingdom rather than the kingdom of man?
are extremes bad?
sometimes I feel numb..
…..Lord all i want is to close my eyes and trust that each footstep is fully embracing Your Truth.
I have been enjoying the latest work of N.T. Wright called , Surprised By Hope, Rethinking, Heaven, the Resurrection and the Mission of the Church. I recommend it to you.
He does a lot to clarify our thinking about what is really going to happen at the end of time. He does a good job at undermining the BAD thinking that has crept into Christianity from other philosophies and religions that does not fit with the revelation in scripture of what we’re looking forward to.
For instance, here is a quote: “The resurrection, both of Jesus and then in the future of his people, is the foundation of the Christian stance of allegiance to a different king, a different Lord. Death is the last weapon of the tyrant, and the point of the resurrection, despite much misunderstanding, is that death has been defeated. Resurrection is not the redescription of death; it is its overthrow and, with that, the overthrow of those whose power depends on it. Despite the sneers and slurs of some contemporary scholars, it was those who believed in the bodily resurrection who were burned at the stake and thrown to the lions. Resurrection was never a way of settling down and becoming respectable; the Pharisees could have told you that. It was the Gnostics, who translated the language of resurrection into a private spirituality and a dualistic cosmology, thereby more or less altering its meaning into its opposite, who escaped persecution. Which emperor would have sleepless nights worrying that his subjects were reading the Gospel of Thomas? Resurrection was always bound to get you into trouble, and it regularly did.”
There may be some thoughts in that quote that are new to you. But I pass it on to encourage you to think things through about your future hope. A couple of years ago, The DaVinci Code again popularized the ideas of the Gnostic “gospels” that got some followers thinking, a long time ago, that they were a spirit trapped in a body and that their spirit would be freed at death to go to heaven where they would be like angels. When we sing, “This world is not my home,” we can take it too far! We are the beloved creatures of our Creator. God will restore our home and will bring those who love him back to live with him, just like he raised Jesus. I’m not sure how it will all work, but we could be sitting on the porch with Andrea in a restored Fishtown one fine day. I’m looking forward to that.
Sometimes when I’m driving at night on the highway, it’s hard to see clearly on a clear night. I believe this is not inherently due to the darkness of nighttime, but to the brightness of the headlights on cars nowadays. I don’t know for sure, cause I try not to pay attention to advertisements and commercials, but I think that lately car companies have a “brighter is better” approach that they try to sell us on when it comes to headlights. To me, considering the basics I know about the human eye and how vision works, this doesn’t make any sense.
I will sum up briefly and simply what I’ve learned about dark adaptation. Basically, fully functioning human eyes are amazing and complex and can adapt to seeing in a wide range of lighting situations. This adaptation from seeing well in bright lighting to seeing well in dim lighting happens gradually over the course of about 20-30 minutes (about the time that the change in lighting during twilight lasts). I was really aware of experiencing this for the first time when going on a night hike through the woods on a 7th grade overnight class trip. We were specifically told not to bring flashlights, and to trust that we would be able to see in the darkness in time. And soon enough, the “absolute darkness” took on shape and form, and details emerged right before our eyes as they adapted to the dark! But this wonderful dark adaptation that our eyes work up to attaining can be ruined immediately with the presence of a bright light. Exposing our eyes to a bright light, and then trying to have the same level of vision as previously when our eyes were adapted to the dim lighting, is impossible; the bright light has basically resulted in temporary blindness.
Basically, brighter headlights are great for the individuals who have them, but so detrimental to everyone else coming their way. If we all relied more on dark adaptation and tried to consider each other, the answer would be dimmer, not brighter, headlights. But doesn’t it sometimes seem that once the precedent is set, the only way for you to survive is to continually try to outshine everyone else? And this way of thinking can be found in so many different areas of life as well- how quickly this escalation can occur! Lately, I have really been feeling the sorrow of a culture where everyone seems to be trying to outshine each other. I am blessed to be a part of this community, and to explore counteracting the “brighter is better” mindset together.
I am sharing a story about Jesus, joy, and time. (Five years ago) I am on a surf trip to the Outer Banks with some close friends, and for the first time since I began this “non-productive, non-depleting pursuit” I am connecting to the flow of what a wave is already doing that I am paddling into. This has taken some time to arrive at, and it is lasting no more than 3 or 4 seconds (in linear time), I think, but I am experiencing in a very different way right here and now.
Life is really long, slow, detailed, extended…In the moments before this moment I am calling ‘here,’ I was unbalanced, awkward, feeble, struggling, and tired from all the trying, from all the dig-dig-digging in the water I was doing all day. But now it is all so slow; this extension of moments. And here I am (and there I go, in a way). I won’t forget this.
A lump in the ocean approaches. Can you see what I am seeing?
I have been waiting for this. I see a kinetic mound of Creation rising to meet me out of the vastness of the sea. Three friends are here with me at Kitty Hawk at this late hour on this spring day, and this peak is coming to see me.
How far has it come to meet me here? How shall I respond? I spin my feet under the water, grab my rail and twist around to see the shore, lie on my belly, chin humbly planted to waxy deck. I am paddling as hard as I can, so why I am I moving backwards? As gravity takes over I leap to my feet and stand erect on the plank below, and, then it happens. Here I am, locked in…in trim. I am here. There I go…no, I’m still here. Balance…Harmony…Awareness…Joy. I am present, and every bit of minutia is meaningful. I can hear the hoots and hollers of my friends, but it’s slow, muffled. I can see Chris paddling back out. Yes, there he is, waving madly at me, making noises. What is he yelling about? Seems like he has a good view of what’s happening. This is so slow. What is going on with the sound right now? There is a foam-ball immediately behind me, making all kinds of racket hitting the glassy shallows, so why can’t I hear it? All the hoots are dying out, like white noise.
pit…
pat…
pit-pit……
pit-pat…
Pit-pat-pat……
That’s all I hear, this delicate, still, small, lapping flutter. My board is planing across the growing, banking face of this little wave, and all I can hear is this lapping. I am moving forward but I am still. I am here right now. It is that good. It’s ending now in a way.
I’ve been told that a wave in the ocean is no more than pure energy expressing itself through that particular medium (water). When it breaks it’s just the final expression of what it’s been moving towards from its fetch thousands of miles away. Once initiated wind, it happens relentlessly over the surface of the ocean for weeks on end. Ironically according to Wikipedia, “There is little actual forward motion of individual water particles in a wave, despite the large amount of energy it may carry forward.”
I’m really glad my friends got a picture of the scene:
I’m having the embarrassing realization again that I can often connect meaningful times in my life with some scene from the Wizard of Oz. My sister and I watched that movie every year of our childhood and basically memorized it, chapter and verse, like it was the “Letter of Dorothy Gale to the White Children.” It happened again as I was sitting with my able summer understudies, Nate, Tracey and Ben, a few nights ago teaching them a few arcane details that make up some of my work as pastor.
You may not have seen the movie, but there is a scene in which the Wizard is making a speech before he takes off in his balloon with Dorothy for
Here I go on my pilgrimage. I don’t know how it works. Goodbye folks!
I’m not really scared too much. After all, my balloon basically dropped in Philly just a few years ago, and that had a very pleasant result. So I like the idea of taking off and seeing what God has in mind. In truth, on pilgrimage is the luxurious way we Christians get to live all the time — and the ultimate destination is guaranteed to be nice. A deliberate pilgrimage is a disciplined way to take hold of that nice and trust it.
So I am regarding the four months you have granted me for sabbatical as a long pilgrimage. I’ll be on a trip. We may run into each other, maybe even in
Please take care of the
(If you have ten minutes, I found another person who has traveled with Dorothy through the last few years and wondered about how anyone in
I work as a project manager for a CD/DVD manufacturing company. Last week I had 116 clients with open orders. That sounds like a lot and it is. These clients keep me very busy answering the phone, replying to email, communicating with other departments and it requires a lot multi-tasking. My mind is racing all day going from one thing to the next trying to stay on top of the work. I realized after a cell meeting a couple of weeks ago that my mind never stops racing. I leave work, but never allow my brain to slow down and think about things that are happening now. I’m constantly thinking about what’s next. What’s for dinner? What am I doing tonight? Should I watch a movie or read or clean the apartment or play video games? What am I doing tomorrow? This weekend? I’ve trained myself to make quick decisions and move on to the next thing as efficiently as possible.
At the end of that cell meeting we were praying together and saying out loud a word or phrase as a request for ourselves or others. Someone said the word “rest” and it hit me like a ton of bricks. Rod described a similar experience he had in his cell during one of the recent Public Meetings. Rest. I imagined myself alone in a room. No computer, no TV, no work or any distractions. Just me and my thoughts. Resting in the moment. The idea of dwelling in my thoughts and recognizing the moment makes so much sense, why don’t I do that? It’s really unfair to those around me. A lot times people are talking or sharing things with me and instead of listening to what they’re saying I’m preparing my next statement or thinking about the other things I have to do that day. This false sense of urgency causes me to miss things that I might normally take in if I could just slow down. Not only does that make me unaware of what the people around me are going through, but it makes me unaware of myself and of God and of where I am with God. This seems like really basic stuff and the fact that I’m just now getting it frustrates me and makes me want to master it. Quickly. Right now! Then I have to remember to slow down again.
During that same PM Rod mentioned the importance of being aware of who God is in our lives. It’s so easy to overlook this! I’ve been doing it for a long time and have never really figured out how to make that a constant awareness. Combining rest and awareness has finally made this a little clearer for me. I’ve been keeping 2 Corinthians 10:5 in mind. “We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ.” I learned this verse in high school for an apologetics class, but I don’t think it only applies to defending the faith. I like the idea of taking a short break after every thought and considering where it came from and how I should react to it before actually doing so. That’s a discipline I want to have. So, far I’ve found that this practice grants me patience, which is of great benefit both at work and at home. I’m really looking forward to the other things I’ll learn about myself and others and how God relates to all of us through more of this rest and awareness.
Now people are afraid of the Chinese. They are outdoing the U.S. in business, bailing out our banks. And pretty soon all of the millions of newly-able consumers of South Asia will be driving around some tiny car and polluting everything to high heaven! It scares people.
But the poor Chinese! They had a record snowfall in January which meant that everyone trying to get home for the New Year festivities (around February 7) was messed up. Not least of the problems was the fact that government-controlled electricity prices created a disincentive for electricity producers to bear the cost of rising coal prices, so they just stopped producing, contributing to the cause of the power outage in Guangzhou that stranded hundreds of thousands factory workers who were trying to get back home to spend what little holiday they got. To top it all off, there is a pork shortage (60+% of Chinese protein comes from pork, and it is integral to what mom makes for New Years)! The government had to open up the pork reserve (yes, they store frozen pork in case of emergency) to keep from having another Tiananmen Square episode.
It’s always something. The Chinese are scared, too. It is not like things are working great over there. There is always something to be afraid of.
Lately, I seem to have talked to a lot of people who are feeling a lot of fear. I think the climate of our country since 9/11 has contributed a huge amount to our sense of being threatened by unknown forces. Maybe the U.S. is just catching up a little with what the rest of the world has been facing all along. Regardless, we’re feeling it.
There are political, economic and relational things that can be done to add to our sense of safety. But let’s be Christians about it. We should know that all those solutions are not enough. And we already know that the best we could hope for has already been given as a gift.
1 John 4:18 “There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear.”
Luke 12:6-7 “Are not five sparrows sold for two pennies? Yet not one of them is forgotten by God. Indeed, the very hairs of your head are all numbered. Don’t be afraid; you are worth more than many sparrows.”
Maybe if we all sat down for 30 seconds upon reading those truths again and let God tell us whether he really means it or not, we could cause a fear-reduction in the climate. Give it a try and see if it does anything for you. Ask Him. “Do you love me or not? Are we OK?” And make sure to ask, “Am I worth something to you? Do you really mean it when it says you look after me?” When I am most afraid, it is usually helpful to get my feet replanted in Jesus before something else tries to rip the rug out from under me. It’s always something.
As I approach my second year as a Philadelphian, I’ve begun to realize that winter here is nothing like the winters back in the woods of North Central Pennsylvania that I once called home. In fact, at times it doesn’t seem like a winter at all.
Don’t get me wrong; it’s cold. The people in this city do not keep their homes warm. In the beginning, I just thought that my landlord was a penny-pinching masochist. In the rare instances that we weren’t curled up in bed, we could see our breath freeze. Then I moved to South Philly and I realized that people in this city don’t prefer being half-frozen; most just can’t afford to heat their homes well due to a combination of poor insulation and ridiculous oil prices.
Then there’s the snow. More so, the lack of it. I’m not going to claim that I know anything about global warming, or anything like that, but in the two winters I’ve experienced here, I’ve been left wondering where on earth the snow went. This is still Pennsylvania, after all. And when the snow does come, it takes all of fifteen minutes for it to become a disgusting nuisance. People don’t know how to drive in it, even the widest roads are poorly plowed, cyclists basically risk their lives daily, and every day where one has walked down the sidewalk without major injury is cause for celebration.
Those who know me probably know that I see the benefits and joys of living in this city as far outweighing the pleasures of having the sort of winter I’d prefer. To be honest, I’d endure six months a year of this crappy winter just to live here. But I can’t help miss the quiet way that blankets of snow surrounded my house and the woods surrounding it. Aesthetics aside, it felt safe and quiet, lonely but beautiful in its starkness. Sure, you can do things in the city. There is art to enjoy, there are friends to love, and there are even people in need whom I care about. But the winter is outside, and it is ugly and keeps me in.
For a long time, I saw my depression in the same way that I think about those winters back home. Isolating, alone, cold, dead… but beautiful somehow. In the times that it would come and envelop me in its icy grasp, I would let go without a fight. The place I went, though vastly inferior to summer, was safe. But summer was coming less and less. It got to a point where I was sleeping fifteen hours a day, and still waking up feeling listless and hopeless. Finding a home and an identity in being sad and alone was a pretty bad state to be in. But it’s such an easy place to be comfortable. In a society torn between self-loathing and self-worship, the former seemed (and still sometimes does seem) morally superior, even austere.
And then Jesus came and stirred everything up. That’s always the way he seems to work. Whenever I get comfortable in something, whether it’s a good or bad something, he always busts in and rattles me all around. I suppose that’s the way I change and grow, but I’m not going to lie, I still hate it. Anyway, situation after situation brought me to the conclusion that the place I was in wasn’t that great. Here I was, wallowing the winter of my depression, when it was just as disgusting as the ash-crusted gray piles of snow in the Target parking lot. But I never would have seen it if I hadn’t been thrust into a community that showed me the two things I was missing the most: love from others, and a way to love back. The only way I could enjoy those things? Force myself out into the cold of winter and experience them, even if it was uncomfortable.
I’m no psychologist. This is my metaphor, and maybe it won’t work for anybody else. But here on the verge of Lent I can’t help but think about what this coming season means to me. I’ve been thinking for weeks about things that I should “give up” for the season. But I realize that maybe it’s not the giving up that has ever gotten me anywhere, but instead the “taking on.” New relationships, new habits, and, most importantly, a renewed relationship and connection with Jesus Christ; with these things in my life, the things that I would “give up” are slowly pushed away.