Wednesday, April 4th. The 43rd day of Lent.

Two books I commend to you.

Einstein, a biography by Walter Isaacson. I loved this book so much that I decided to read it again in a year. That will be sometime in 2012. There is much about Einstein’s life that is charming. He was apparently a delightful man in many ways. Not a good husband. A somewhat absent father. But for a man who had such a mind and who lived so committed to his work, he was apparently a person that you and I would have enjoyed knowing.

Late in life he was working at Princeton. He was very old and became forgetful about everyday things. His mind remained sharp, though most of his stunning and seemingly intuitive breakthroughs occured in his 20s. But he would forget little things. One day while walking home from Princeton he became lost. He knocked on a door and asked a woman to call his wife. She was shocked to find Einstein on her porch. He was a world famous figure by then. She went to the phone and came back to find him at her kitchen table helping her daughter with her math homework.

Kind of a cute story. Continue reading →

Friday, March 30th. The 38th day of Lent.

I’m at Laity Lodge this weekend. I write for this retreat center in a secret way, which I greatly enjoy. I rode up with Paul Soupiset, who has become such a close friend over the last couple of years. Somewhere between Boerne and Kerville, a funny sound started coming from the right front wheel well of Paul’s car. We stopped so that Paul could take a look at it. While he was under the car doing manly repair stuff, I wandered over to the place where grass met pavement and became intrigued with a cute little scene I found there.

At my feet was a tiny rock, embedded in some soil that settled into a small clearing at the last rainfall. Miniscule weeds looked like bushes to me. And the only sign of human existence in the tableau was a bit of shiny metal, perhaps a link from a small chain, discarded by someone and looking as mysterious and out of place as the Monolith in 2001 A Space Odyssey. Continue reading →

Tuesday, March 27th. The 35th day of Lent.

Okay, technically it wasn’t Welfare, but it was government assistance so let’s not split hairs.

In November of 2007 Jeanene quit her job because Shelby was in a crisis and we needed an adult at home. Like many Americans we had health insurance through her job, but we thought we’d just call up some insurance company and get different insurance. I was working three jobs at the time to make the money we needed. Pastor, writer for the High Calling, and I was working for the Christian Century setting up their blog network. I’m not counting Real Live Preacher as a job, but I was doing that too.

So I don’t want to hear anyone say that this stuff only happens to lazy people. I’m a hard working guy. Always have been.

But then a series of bad things happened. Continue reading →

Sunday, March 25th. The fifth Sunday of Lent.

This morning I was in the Episcopal 101 class at Saint Luke’s. The priest teaching it came into the room, and I immediately sensed that something was wrong. I can’t tell you what made me think this. Something about him seemed heavy. As if he was carrying a burden of some kind. Of course, he has to go ahead and teach his class, not matter what’s going on. And he must lead several worship services on Sunday, regardless of what is happening in his own life.

I was instantly alarmed and concerned for him. I kept watching him closely throughout the class. He read from his notes and talked to us as if everything was normal. But I continued to have a sense or feeling that something was not right. Later, in worship, I watched him at the front. It seemed to me that his head hung a little lower than usual. Something seemed amiss. Continue reading →

Tuesday, March 20th. The 28th day of Lent.

Of course, one of the dangers of writing from the unconscious and writing every night without much time to edit yourself is that everyone can see your shit. Take me for example. Something like twenty-five straight days of writing during Lent and how many of those are about how I used to be a minister but now I’m not? Or how I’m looking for a church but it’s weird sitting in the pew after all these years.

For Christ’s sake – and I mean that literally; Jesus is probly up in heaven rolling his eyes right now – stop talking about that shit.

I know. I’m sorry. It’s obviously on my mind. I try not to think about it, but it’s right below the surface, so if you scratch, you know, it just comes out is all. Continue reading →

Sunday, March 18th. The fourth Sunday of Lent.

This morning Jeanene and I were attending the beginners’ class at Saint Luke’s. It’s a simple course on the Episcopal Church that is taught periodically for people who are new to Saint Lukes and possibly considering joining. It’s very strange being a novice in church. In my own tradition I would have taught courses like this. Now I don’t know anything. And there are a LOT of details to know in this tradition.

John Badders, our associate rector, is teaching the course. Today he handed out a three page summary of Anglican sources of authority. I knew what I was getting. A ridiculously simplified version of a complex subject. I know this because I used to make similar little handouts for various courses I taught at Covenant. “Historic Baptist Distinctives and Principles,” “Interpreting the Scriptures, “Church history,” etc.

But one of my disciplines right now is to be a novice. I need to let go of any sense that I know a lot about Christianity and embrace a more child-like point of view. So I got the paper and paid careful attention as we went through it. Continue reading →

Saturday, March 17th. The 25th day of Lent.

I never gave my mind to the Church. Never. Even when I was a small boy and every adult that meant something to me was some sort of authority figure in the church, when someone would read a Bible story and it was clear that everyone believed it simply because it was in the Bible, a quietly defiant voice in me would say, “That never happened like that.”

I was happy to give my body to the Church. And even my words. Lying came pretty naturally to me. Not cruel or mean lies, but the kind of lies kids tell to get along with adults. The desperate, fearful lies a boy will tell to keep the big people he loves happy. And maybe because he is wonders if somewhere up in heaven, Jesus will be happy with him too. Those are the lies I told. Continue reading →

Friday, March 16th. The 24th day of Lent.

What an amazing thing this Lenten writing discipline has been for me.

The story so far:

1. Depressed and desperate, I launch my anonymous Salon blog in December of 2002. I wasn’t sure why I did it. I had a sense that in this medium I could tell the truth about myself. I was tired of the filters that came with being a pastor.
2. To my surprise, people seem to like my writing. I feel so proud. Maybe I could be a “real writer.” For some reason I have obsessive thoughts of that phrase. “A REAL Writer.”
3. January of 2003, Eerdmans sends me an email asking if I want to do a book. (Those were the golden years of blogging. Not that many of us, so things like this actually happened.) My head explodes with shock and delight. “?Does this mean I am a real writer?”
4. Book comes out in 2004. Yay. Bit of a let down though, as it doesn’t really sell that many copies.
5. Start writing essays for Christian Century in 2005. By then I had decided that I was indeed a writer, and it had nothing to do with being published.
6. I wonder if maybe I could write for a living. Write Write Write Write Write Write Write. Somehow years go by. Continue reading →

Wednesday, March 14th. The 22nd day of Lent.

I suppose there are numerous ways this could play itself out, but the point is that you and I cannot know what realities exist beyond our feeble powers of observation. Voyager has been traveling for 35 years and is just now leaving our solar system. And it’s not like Voyager has done a thorough job of mapping things along the way. Once you get a little ways out beyond earth, our ignorance is laughable.

Let’s face it. We don’t know much. We can’t see very far. And the farther away we look the farther back in time we see, which sounds cool until you realize that there is simply no physical way you and I can keep up with current events even in our own galaxy. And there is a LOT more out there beyond the Milky Way.

So okay, like I said, I see a few ways this could go. Tonight I’ll mention just one of them. Continue reading →

Tuesday, March 13th. The 21st day of Lent.

A few weeks ago I slipped into a worship service on a weeknight at a church that is not one I frequent. I thought it was going to be a Taize service with the expected chant songs and a more contemplative feel. As it turned out, the service was a contemporary service with “praise and worship” music, which is the kind of thing you hear on Christian radio stations.

It wasn’t what I was looking for. But they were brothers and sisters in Christ and I had no reason to think anything but the best about them. These days I find myself at peace with many different kinds of people.

I find it helpful not to sing songs that are not meaningful to me. Instead, I listen to the sounds of the people who love the songs singing them with passion. Since I can now meditate to just about any sound, including the murmurs of large numbers of people talking or traffic, it was no problem to sink into my own thoughts while the people around me sang a few choruses of “Our God is an Awesome God.” Continue reading →

Friday, March 9th. The 17th day of Lent.

It’s been an interesting thing for this lifelong Baptist to be attending an Episcopal Church. I can’t say if we will join. I have a lot of ambivalence about church in general these days. I wonder what percentage of what goes on in churches is anything Jesus would care about. I’m not sure what the answer to that question is.

I do know that Christian worship is so deeply rooted in my heart that I don’t know how to live without it. And the beauty of high church music and liturgy continually breaks my heart. Seriously, anyone with an aesthetic sense could appreciate the worship event at Saint Luke’s. I am being seduced by this church. Her beauty draws me back again and again, even though I fear joining the church or making any move that might bring me in contact with the organization behind it. Do I want to see the cogs and wheels that turn and grind to make this kind of production on a Sunday morning? I don’t think so.

Is it okay to just sit and meditate and listen and let her romance me for a little while before I’m pushed to make a commitment? Continue reading →

Saturday, March 3rd. The 11th day of Lent.

There are two common paths to writing for me. One is to open a hatch in my basement and reach into the soupy liquid of my unconscious mind. I move my hand back and forth until I find something with enough solidity for me to grab. I drag it up and look at it. Then I tie it to a pole and dip it back in, sweeping it back and forth to see what sticks to it.

Eventually I end up with a central idea and some ancillary thoughts clustered around it. The thoughts themselves are usually familiar to me, though occasionally they are complete surprises. I am surprised more when I write my Foy Davis stories because I make such a conscious effort not to control those narratives. But I usually at least vaguely recognize what I pull up from below. I might recall when a thought first occured to me or remember thinking about it and puzzling over it in the past.

The big mystery is why this idea solidified in my hand and not some other. Continue reading →

Wednesday, February 29th. The 8th day of Lent.

I heard Ian Cron read from his memoir last year at Laity Lodge. He described a mystical experience he had on a Saturday morning when he was ten years old. He was riding his bicycle along a street lined with trees waving in a blue sky. Suddenly he knew that he was “the object of a terrible and awe-full love.”

What would we see if we could travel back in time and stand beside the road on that Saturday when Ian pedaled his bicycle and received his beatific vision? His description in his memoir is so detailed and compelling. How much of it happened as he remembers it? If we were there would we see the trees and the sky as beautifully as he now describes them? What if we saw a boy ride by without any outward hint of inspiration? How has a lifetime of reflection on the events of that day influenced his memory? Continue reading →

Tuesday, February 28th. The 7th day of Lent.

This post is a follow up to some things I wrote about on Saturday.

If the mythic framework of your childhood world no longer satisfies, you can hit the highway and seek your metaphysical fortune in the wide world. These days, with the internet and global news, people are less isolated and provincial. The worldview highways are, therefore, filled with lost children.

You may have had secular parents with a strong empirical outlook. They may have been victims of close-minded religious abuse and left their own childhood myth years ago. Or perhaps the classic myths of religion just didn’t appeal to them. So you were raised with a healthy skepticism and a suspicion of all things religious. But then one day you wandered into a church and saw the ancient rites and heard the archetypal stories. Your heart was filled with joy, and you do not know why.

The ancients say that the Holy Spirit somehow chose you and gave you a mystical encounter. Or maybe you have the so-called religious gene, it having skipped a generation in your family. What does it matter? This thing happened and now you find yourself seeking God. Continue reading →

Monday, February 27th. The 6th day of Lent.

There was this moment in 2009 when I knew for sure that I had to get out of the ministry. It was on a Wednesday night and a woman came up to me and told me there was a problem with a door knob on one of the Sunday school room doors.

A wave of despair washed over me and I said to myself, “I can’t do this anymore.”

Shortly after that I began to have fantasies where no matter what people said to me, I responded by saying, “I don’t care.”

Baptisms are down? I don’t care.

Advent is in 6 weeks and we don’t have a theme? I don’t care.

We’re under budget and probably need a stewardship sermon? I don’t care.

Your aunt Matilda has cancer you say? I don’t care.

You think we need to put together a comprehensive ministry plan and schedule our goals for the next 5 years? I don’t fucking care. Continue reading →

Sunday, February 26th. The first Sunday of lent.

A very literal translation of Mark 1:12-13, part of today’s gospel text:

“And immediately the Spirit cast him out into the wilderness. And he was in the wilderness forty days being tempted by the satan. And he was with the wild animals. And the angels waited on him.”

Mark 1:12-13 from a parchment created by a Cyprian monk in 1305 CE – click to see the whole manuscript

The gospel of Mark is the earliest account of the life of Jesus. The language is simple, almost crude at times. The story of Jesus’ forty day temptation lacks the detail of Matthew and Luke, but there is a compelling power in its economy of words. I do love the strong verb the evangelist uses here. Jesus is “cast out” into the wilderness with the wild beasts and Satan. The verb is the same one used throughout the gospel when Jesus casts demons out of afflicted people. Continue reading →