Where i Am

Cherith Brook

I am in the midst of co-writing a series of books on The Spiritual Disciplines for students with my friend Chris.  Two weeks ago, I finished studying for one I'm about to start on simplicity. 

Last night, Page, Elliott and I had the privilege of eating dinner with old and new friends at the catholic worker house in Kansas City named, Cherith Brook.   

This morning I am struck at the contrast of the need for simplicity in the Christian life and the avoidance of simplicity in the Christian life. 

I have been lusting after an iPhone lately.  That obsession weighed heavily on my heart last night as people were going around and sharing praises and despairs to God.  Folks were grateful for job opportunities, food to eat, air to breathe and joy in their hearts.  True empathy seemed to be expressed for the sadness brought up in prayer requests for cancer victims and the current state of The Church.

The simplicity in the room, even though in a way it was something unjustly bestowed upon many of those folks, stripped away life to the core.  That stripping seemed to equip us with the ability to hear and think of the other more than ourselves.  Or at least just as much. 

The time spent there was renewing.

So, I continue to struggle with my own desires for an iPhone 4, new music gear, a better car, cooler clothes, etc. in the midst of knowing that this consumption fills my heart up, leaving little room left for God.

Becoming the Artist You Were Created to Be

Most music in the Christian subculture genre is off-putting to me, at best. Reason being, whether we're talking about the category of worship music or Christian pop, it's all being produced with the same lack of creativity and artisan craftsmanship that didn't start out defining music overtly made by Christians but has come to over the last 25 years. Concerning this, there are three problems I'd like to address:

1. We need to demolish this unnecessary and make-believe line between the sacred and the secular. Everything that is good is good and everything that is not is not. When God created the world, God looked at creation and said, “It is good.” Creation is good because it is infused with the presence of God. The best and most redemptive music out there is often far from the Christian music industry namely because the Christian industry is trying to create a product that fits into an assumed perception about music as opposed to honest art. Create good art. That's it; it's that simple. Art is a reflection of life, so reflect your life. Stop regurgitating tired phrases that don't reflect the tensions and joys of your soul and worldview.

2. Just because the words Jesus/the cross/my sins are forgiven, etc., are included in the lyrics doesn't automatically make it poetry. If anything, the overuse of those wonderful themes makes it suspect before anything else. We need fresh statements of beliefs and worldviews. We need musicians who are reading and practicing theology as well as absorbing the works of T.S. Elliott and James Joyce. For both are needed to produce great art as a Christian.

3. We need honest sounds, real music. I'm not talking about level of technical skill here. New York, L.A. and Nashville have some of the top musicians in the world playing on these records. What we need are the Son Houses, Bob Dylans, Jack Whites and Billie Holidays of this world to step up—people who make music that is real and that sticks to your ribs, not because of their level of musicianship (which is often great too) but because of the weight of the conviction in which they write, play and sing.

As youth workers, we play a big part in the formation of our students. Let's stop encouraging the use of bad art, whether this be in our youth group's worship music or in the encouragement of our students’ personal discovery of music and culture. I understand that because of the context we find ourselves in as Christians, it might be offensive to some families for you to encourage their teenager to take their art serious enough to look beyond the Christian genre. It's worth it, though. Take that risk of offending and being offended for the sake of protecting and guiding the journey your youth are on to becoming the artists they were created to be.

Monks aren't supposed to be complex silly

Last night Page and I went to hear Father Adam (a monk at the Conception Abbey in Conception Mo.) speak on prayer. He spoke at The Immaculate Conception church in downtown Kansas City, Mo. I think we got the time wrong because he was already speaking when we got there and it was done in like a half an hour. So I think he started at 7p instead of 7:30p. He was speaking in classic looking cathedral, with domed ceilings. Beautiful. Except he was using a microphone, which made everything he said harder to hear because of the echo in the room. At one point he told a joke that was apparently really funny, everyone was cracking up. And there I am in the back turning each way frantically, "what'd he say?, what's so funny? I missed that.....". Frustrating.

Anyways, something that struck me about him and then again this morning when reading out of Thomas Merton's "New Seeds of Contemplation" was his simpleness. I am conditioned to expect a speaker to be dynamic and compelling. In short to be entertaining. So that what I'm going to hear is not the material as much as the speaker of the material.

With monks I've interacted with, and read it is just not the case. They say things in simpler, less flashy ways. Yet they contain more of a punch in the face for me most times. It's so simple, it blows your mind. That was the case on something that Father Adam said last night. I went thinking about it and woke up thinking about it. We don't pray all the time or at least a great deal more because we choose to not. We draw a line in the sand and say I do not want any more than that. One other thing was that; prayer is deeply communal and it connects us to others in an intimate way no other thing can. Because at the root, our God is communion. Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

Right now Merton is blowing my mind again with his thoughts on the goodness of God being in everything He has made. I'll post on that later when I wrap my head around it more.

The Immaculate Conception during a mass

A living theology of Thanksgiving

I am about 25 pages from being done with Tim Keel's book: Intuitive Leadership. I've really enjoyed and been poignantly challenged by God through it. As I await my final interview for seminary (or cemetery as my former mentor Keith Robinson called it) I've been thinking a lot about missional living and leadership. The conventional format of seminary doesn't ring holistic enough for me, too compartmentalized and lopsidedly cognitive. At the same time a continuation in the learning of theology, philosophy and history is important to me, especially in light of working out what my life is going to be about.

This is where Tim's book comes in, leading from the bottom up as well as the top down. Looking from within the community for answers that are true to your context as opposed to the silver bullet that's being marketed nationally. Being an environmentalist that helps fosters creativity and leadership to be organically birthed out of the messiness that is humans living life together in the name of Jesus Christ. Leading and living this way would cause us to wrestle with how much importance we put on formalized learning and degrees. This seems like a healthy tension that I/we will and should continue to war with.

Within this conversation is the cornerstone of the emerging church, living theology. Living out what you believe about God is much more difficult than talking about what you believe, and to be honest it makes me a little sick inside to think about what that really looks like played out. I like my camel a lot and the eye of that needle looks pretty small sometimes.

So today I've been trying to think about what it looks like to live out a way of thinking about God that is thankful. How do you live thankful?

Happy Thanksgiving.