My friend, Mike Morrell ,invited me to respond to a post and I believe a series of posts he is processing this week on wonderings of post-charismatic/post-evangelical/quasi-orthodox/new-monastic practices.  Here's where Mike is coming from: 

"With that said, I’d like to see some post evangelical/charismatic engagements with East Orthodox spirituality–particularly hesychasm and the idea of theosis, or “divinization,” which I feel is a far sexier (or if that language offends you, more evocative) way of framing “sanctification” for the 21st century. Of course, there probably are just such works out there, and I’m just not familiar with ‘em–input, anyone?"

Here are my thoughts . . .

1. A critique:

First, the reason I put the Alanis video at the forefront on this post.  Earlier this year for my doctorate program, we read Heath and Potter's "Nation of Rebels: Why Counterculture Became Consumer Culture"  and chapter 9 is called "Thank you, India" and it was a jab at Alanis' famous song and it argued a perspective that really got me thinking.  How ingrained is consumerism to us as westerners on this globe that we think all that is out there in any culture is for our picking and choosing for our individual desires and preferences?  The world is our shopping aisle, find what suits us, find what tickles our fancy and gobble it up.  Whatver gives us more pleasure, whatever makes us more happy, as consumers we are on the perpetual treadmill of desire.  When it comes to post-whatever Christianity, emerging-whatever practices, we are actually good capitalists:  we are wanting more and better and we'll seek the world to fleece it of its goods to suit our hyper-individualism (though we all crave more community).  So, thank you, India (all 1.2 billion of you).   

Is new-monasticism really anything like the aescetic monastic communities of the desert fathers in Africa of the first 4-5 centuries of the Church?  Is it anything like their offpsring:  the rugged culture of Celtic monasticism of the 5th, 6th and 7th centuries where the abbots, monks and teachers secluded themselves in the cleft of rock caves or abandoned themselves on islands like St. Cuthbert?  Are they anything like the American versions of Trappist monasticism, like our beloved Abbey of Gethsemani in the rolling hills of Kentucky?  150 years ago, the first monks showed up on that land and began praying the 9 offices of prayer:  Vigils, Lauds, Eucharist, Terce, Sext, None, Vespers, Rosary and Compline.  Starts at 3:15 a.m. and ends at 7:30 p.m., other than that they work and eat meals together.  Is our post-evangelical new-monasticism anything like that?  Hardly from what I've seen and experienced.  It appears more that we have found attraction in what they have done and are doing and borrow from it what works for us.  We are not rooted in their traditions, nor are we submitting to their authority structures, we are consuming their religion and running with it on our terms.

In similar fashion with forms of eastern-orthodox, they in no way want to become an aisle we shop in for our religious consumer goods.  Orthodoxy by definition is "right belief".  Their epistemology is absolute.  They fully reject any form or modernistic evangelicalism, let alone the postmodern forms of emerging post-evangelicals.  Their orthodoxy is not a matter of relgious preference, it's a core part of being Ethiopian, Indian, Russian, Greek etc.  One does not 'kind of' become orthodox or mix in some orthodoxy, you convert to the Orthodox Church and submitt to its authority, giving up your individualistic preferences.  The mysteries of the faith are experienced and pursued within it's historic structures, creeds and ancient traditions, you can't buy a ticket for a one-time show.  (Or I should say, it's not what they would affirm you to do.)  

Having the opportunity this past September to be immersed in the Ethiopian Orthodox Church, meeting it's Patriarch Abune Paulos, listening to lectures from their seminary faculty, sharing meals with their theological staff and observing a service from a distance, I learned quite a bit.  Introspectively, I was enamored with a faith that can literally takes it's history in the Scriptures to the Ethiopian Eunuch conversion in 34 A.D. to the Queen of Sheba and King Solomon of the Old Testament.  At no time can I turn to my house church community and tell them to open to the part in the Bible where Ohio is mentioned.  Being so de-traditioned in the West is a real weakness for us, particularly those of us who grew up in charismatic, non-denominational backgrounds.  I think our affinity for these other cultures shows our desire for something like it.  But are we ready to show up and stand outside the church mass at 5:30 a.m. and remain there for hours as a weekly part of worship, feeling unworthy to enter into the holy place?  Are we ready to admitt our great spiritual need and organize our entire lives around it?  Or does it depend on how late we stayed up watching Netflix?  ;-)

 2.  A response:

This is not a critique of Mike, this is a critique of all of us in the West pursuing our faith recognizing the great shifts in culture, the great chasms within our evangelical/western experiences and our desire to follow Christ in Spirit and Truth.  I am a huge fan of Celtic Christianity and have been deeply formed by practicing Celtic Daily Prayer from Northumbria Community on the coast of north England.  Their holistic and right-brained approach to the faith connects with me.  I have an Irish heritage and the poetry and contemplation leads me to a place of communion with Christ.  However, how I lead that with my community in Ohio I'm sure looks nothing like what St. Patrick, St. Cuthbert or St. Columbanus ever had in mind.  We are not a "Celtic Christian community".  We are an American, suburban, missional-community of sorts that enjoys Celtic Christian heritage.  In a way, we just consume of their religion.  I read the desert monastic fathers because I learn so much from their godly leadership, their zeal for the Scriptures and their sacrifice to pursue the death of their flesh so that union with Christ might become more tangible.  But are my spiritual disciplines anything that really reflects what their brand of true monasticism is?  Not hardly.  But I do learn simplicity from them, I learn to teach margins with my people so that we are more free to serve, love and pray.  I learn that true spirituality, the disciplined kind, happens on purpose and with real intention.  It's not when it pleases me or I prefer it, it's my chosen place of servitude for life.  I pierce my ear to it's door and I choose no other Master than that of the risen Christ.  That much I can learn from them.

The digital world has brought everything to our doorstep, I think that is a good thing.  The fact that we not only 'know of' what the Church around the world is practicing, but that we can 'taste' of it is a real strength in our place and time.  We recognize that we are drawn to the traditioned and mystical practices of others, it is revealing to us the fullness of our faith and what every tribe in the Kingdom is experiencing.  My only warning is, let's be very careful to not co-opt something sacred in another for our own consumption.  (I know I do this, have done this, and I'm just trying to be aware of my own consumerism daily.) 

We harsly critique the colonialism and imperialism of our missionary heritage in the West, let's recognize we can do the same when we practice the consuming of other religious cultures by putting our desires and appetites for something new and cool above the submission of their sacred traditions.  Wherever the thin space is between being learners as opposed to consumers, let's live there. 

Dear India, thank you but I'm sorry we assumed it was all about us.  We are still trying to learn who we are. 

The dark under-belly of society is the frequency and shame of sexual abuse.  I don't know of a culture, tribe or people on earth that is immune to this embodied evil.  It has the power to destroy the personhood of another in deep and lasting ways. 

According to RAINN , every 2 minutes in the US someone is sexually assaulted.  80% of those victims are under the age of 30.  44% under the age of 18.  Often not assaulted by strangers as 2/3 of the reported cases are from someone known to the victim.

The Penn State scandal this week brought the darkness of one man out into the light.  The accusations surrounding Herman Cain add to the topic at hand.  These are the stories that made it to print, there are countless other stories that remain hidden in the darkness. 

I am a father to 3, my undergrad degree is in adolescent development, I have a long history of working with broken teens, I care about my community and culture.  I often wonder what the ramnifcations will be for a generation of boys raised on internet pornography will be like?  The trappings of porn have become mainstream, beauty and  meaning replaced by flippant consumerism.  We are taught in images that what we desire we are entitlted to.  Welcome to the lie of porn, and our kids are raised on it.

I believe in the one God, the creator of the universe and the sustainer of all things.  I believe that He has not left his creation, that He is actively restoring it back to it's original intention and will one day complete that restoration.  But for now, in the midst of created beauty, we have brokenness.  Deep, painful, lonely brokenness.  I don't know how that God sits idle when abuse is present.  He gives us our freedom, and some grossly misuse their freedom in the taking of another.  How He is patient to wait in those instances every 2 minutes as the statistics go, I'll just never comprehend.  Justice and protection somehow look different from His perspective than it does mine, but I recognize that I don't know all and I didn't bring myself into being.  I trust that in the end, beauty will reign.  That is yet my hope.

I sit in deep solidarity with victms of sexual abuse today.  Anytime it makes major headlines, the media shouts its judgments for the sale of it's goods and services.  In many homes, the victims have to re-live their tragedies in stark memory, walk through the next door of shameful emotions and pain.  But each time, perhaps they learn their freedom again, celebrate their recovery, out of darkness and into the hopeful light.  With the voices of the victims out there today, I pray, "How long oh Lord?". 

Street Crossers , by Rick Shrout  is now out and I'm pretty excited about it!   Let me warn you, I'm pretty biased on this one. 

Chapter one is my faith, ministry, life-story of sorts of how I came to be a planter/leader of missional communities.  Rick and I were introduced years ago through some mutual friends at George Fox University and it has turned into a friendship and partnership along the journey.  I am  quite honored that Rick told not only my story, but the story of my spiritual home, Ordinary Community Church. 

As well, I couldn't be more excited than to be neighbored in the book with my brother/friend and co-conspirator in Jason Evans as his story is chapter two.  Jason and I have kindred communities and our stories have long been inter-twined together from the same roots, and now you can see it in book form together.

For many like us, over a decade ago when we embarked on a different journey of church planting, there was little to no one willng to listen to our perspective, let alone take the time to really hear the callings on our hearts.  Rick has become a voice lending credibility and affirmation to missional leaders because his desire is that the Kingdom would continue to come 'on earth as it is in heaven'. 

Much thanks to Rick for listening and telling our story.

Tragedy in La Limonada

I can't shake this story from my friends in Lemonade International.  I just want it not to be true.  This is not the created intention for this 15 year old girl wanting to escape the clutches of evil.  Deep, deep loss.  My heart saddens for her family, friends and community.  Christ have mercy.

What do we think of hope in a time and place of such darkness?  As followers of the Christ, we have only one thought in regards to hope.  Hope is our home, and moment to moment we realize we are not home.  We long, we yearn, we wait . . . we hope.  Our Hope is in a Kingdom that has come, and a Kingdom that is yet coming.  Hope is our home, but we are not yet completely home. 

C.S. Lewis in Mere Christianity puts it this way in his chapter on Hope:

"Creatures are not born with desires unless satisfaction for those desires exists. . . . If I find in myself a desire in which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world. . . . Probably earthly pleasures were never meant to satisfy it, but only to arouse it, to suggest the real thing. . . . I must keep alive in myself the desire for my true country, which I shall not find til after death; I must make it the main object of life to press on to that other country and to help others to do the same."  (p. 136-137)

Today I mourn with La Limonada, and today I Hope with La Limonada.  We are not home, but we don't leave this world as it is. 

What do we do against such heavy darkness when hope feels like a faint echo?  What do we do when the stench and sting of death pierces our senses?  We do what we have always done, we follow the Resurrector.  We do what is written in our soul, we read words of life.  We in no uncertain terms, RISE AGAIN!  We know no other way, we are people of the Resurrection.   

So hear is my prayer today for my friends serving in La Limonada, go in the Spirit of the One who created it all and proclaim your hope this day.  Proclaim the Hope of the One who is Resurrected.  Serve, love, give mercy, sing, dance, worship, feed, educate, clothe, persevere amidst long suffering and all in the name of the Hope that has come.  Show the children what Hope looks like.  They long for the 'other' country, a place where it is as it should be.  Reveal to them the Hope just on the other side of the veil.  Let the light come in and pierce the darkness.  God as you once did, I pray you push away the stone in La Limonada and release your Resurrection of Hope. 

When I have no more words to say in this regard, I fall on the words of my brother who has passed on to Kingdom fullness who knew this hope full well.  These are some of Mark Palmer's final words and I pray them over La Limonada this day:

"When it seems that hopefulness is the least appropriate response in this situation, let it rise up even more. Whisper your hope when you lie down at night; scream your hope when you wake in the morning. Live your hope as if it is the one and only thing that sustains you in this ravaged world. You will not be disappointed."

May Hope be your home today in La Limonada, even though you are not yet home. 

Read this today on this blog: 

"Riots are about power, and they are about catharsis. They are not about poor parenting, or youth services being cut, or any of the other snap explanations that media pundits have been trotting out: structural inequalities, as a friend of mine remarked today, are not solved by a few pool tables. People riot because it makes them feel powerful, even if only for a night. People riot because they have spent their whole lives being told that they are good for nothing, and they realise that together they can do anything – literally, anything at all. People to whom respect has never been shown riot because they feel they have little reason to show respect themselves, and it spreads like fire on a warm summer night. And now people have lost their homes, and the country is tearing itself apart."

Couple this with the dramatic sell off of the US stock market and the economic global unrest and you have a recipe for fear and pain.  When the consumer dream dies, what will it look like?   After we are done blaming, pointing fingers, lashing out against races/classes/parties/establishments, what will we do?  Will we find a stable center to build from or will we deconstruct to unproductive nihlism?  I pray for peace and work towards peace, but I'm afraid this is more than just a blip on the screen, it's our new reality.  Unrest, fear and pain.  Where will our healing be found?  Are there any carriers of the medicine already planted amongst us?  My rebellion is yet for hope and life.

 ¹ Then the angel showed me the river of the water of life, as clear as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb ² down the middle of the great street of the city. On each side of the river stood the tree of life, bearing twelve crops of fruit, yielding its fruit every month. And the leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations.  (Rev. 22:1-2)

peace, Marshall

^"9 He parted the heavens and came down;    dark clouds were under his feet. ¹⁰ He mounted the cherubim and flew;    he soared on the wings of the wind. ¹¹ He made darkness his covering, his canopy around him—    the dark rain clouds of the sky. ¹² Out of the brightness of his presence clouds advanced,    with hailstones and bolts of lightning. ¹³ The LORD thundered from heaven;    the voice of the Most High resounded.^{"  Psalm 18:9-13}

If you are prone to believe in and listen for the voice of One who is the creator and sustainer of all things, sometimes it is just flat out hard to hear it.  Our preoccupations, our anxieties, our muchness, our manyness, our unbelief, our rebellion. . . we are a people who tend to stray.  And when the darkness comes, when it seems all hope has passed, when it feels as if the walls are closing, when light has left the room of your heart; you perceive that you are alone in that darkness.  Reading this Psalm today raises a new question for me:  What if darkness is his covering?  What if he is cloaked in that dusk?  What if that lonely place is actually the canopy of his  presence?  Often when we least expect it, often when we think all hope is gone, often when we come to the end of our rope . . . we find there is more.  Look to the clouds of your heart, your mind, your soul;  see if there is not a radiant light waiting to break through, see that you were never alone.  Listen for that voice in the thunder, for darkness is often his covering. peace, Marshall

[kml_flashembed movie="http://www.youtube.com/v/FDMMwG7RrFQ" width="425" height="344" allowfullscreen="true" fvars="fs=1" /] Autism is becoming an increasingly major US epidemic with little clues to cause nor cure.  Here is an article on how medications are showing little to no effect on helping to be effective against the symptoms.   The number of autistic children in the U.S. alone has risen from just 15,000 in 1992 to 365,000 cases in 2010.  Friends, that is significant.  My son, Zach, is 8 years old and was diagnosed on the autism spectrum around the time he was 2.  We have been fortunate, we got early intervention and the school district we live in had resources to help us with some special needs resources and he has flourished in those.  He is healthy, he is happy, he loves his sisters, he learns about the world by observing and copying others, he can be affectionate, he is intelligent but every once in a while we see how his issues show themselves and we wonder what his future will be like in the real world.  I had a bad dream a few nights ago that Zach was raised in a home that was full of conflict, he was neglected and without nurture for his heart or his issues.  The look on his face was soul crushing to me.  It was as if the "real world" had stolen his joy, his smile and his boyish energy.  He looked hard, angry, agitated and broken.  I wonder out loud if the purpose of that dream is to increase my awareness of what other kids and families are going through without the resources we have been blessed with.  It is a hard road of atypical challenges, judgments from others when your kid  is acting out in public, yearning for normalcy that will never happen, loneliness when your child can't handle your nurturing touch and isolation when your child cannot speak the words and phrases they are thinking.  As a parent you desire connection with your child, but it's painful when that child down deep may want that too, but physiologically they cannot execute it in the real world.  What is the future of autism in the US?  I am not a medical doctor, researcher nor scientist so I can't speak to that end.  But what I am is an architect of community.  Your autistic child needs community, needs people that will love them unconditionally and long for their future.  They need a tribe of belonging that defines their normalcy, not a world of false hopes and aspirations.  Patience is the key to working at unlocking the intelligence that is pent up within them, they need a community that is comitted to long-suffering.  The hope for proper nurturing is community, not isolation.  The rugged individualism of the western hemisphere, particularly in the US, is a fool's gold, it's an empty void of logic.  Needing each other is not weakness, it's a tribal strength.  Our future is bright in authentic community, the future of autism is depending on it.  peace, Marshall

"High King of Heaven, my treasure thou art." Rulers come and rulers go.  Sometimes they are pleasing in your sight, sometimes they are not.  If you place your trust in the hearts of men, you have built a house on shifting sand.  There is only one high King to whom the universe takes its orders.  His name is Yahweh.  Choose your King and align your allegiance there.  Psalm 115:2-9 (The Message)

" Not for our sake, God, no, not for our sake, but for your name's sake, show your glory.    Do it on account of your merciful love,       do it on account of your faithful ways.    Do it so none of the nations can say,       "Where now, oh where is their God?"  ^3-8 Our God is in heaven       doing whatever he wants to do.    Their gods are metal and wood,       handmade in a basement shop:    Carved mouths that can't talk,       painted eyes that can't see,    Tin ears that can't hear,       molded noses that can't smell,    Hands that can't grasp, feet that can't walk or run,       throats that never utter a sound.    Those who make them have become just like them,       have become just like the gods they trust.  ^4-9 God is higher than anything and anyone,       outshining everything you can see in the skies.    Who can compare with God, our God,       so majestically enthroned,    Surveying his magnificent       heavens and earth?    He picks up the poor from out of the dirt,       rescues the wretched who've been thrown out with the trash,    Seats them among the honored guests,       a place of honor among the brightest and best.    He gives childless couples a family,       gives them joy as the parents of children.    Hallelujah!"

Peace, Marshall

Watched "It Might Get Loud" last night on NetFlix with the wife and I loved it.  It's a documentary on the electric guitar from the point of view of three significant rock musicians: the Edge, Jimmy Page and Jack White.  I am a pretty big fan of Led Zepplin, U2 and the White Stripes so I found it particularly tasty.  I give it 4.5 out of 5 stars, the only reason not a 5 is because they tease you when the guys start going off on classic riffs and then cut back to the documentary.  I was ready for a full unplugged concert session in awe.  I was particularly intrigued because I play some guitar, not that well though.  I taught myself back in college and can do enough to get by as a rythymn guy, but I imagine some lessons would have helped.  What I resonated with was not their guitar talents which are legendary, but it's because that art was just in them.  Their craft is theirs, they own it.  They eat it, they breathe it, they bleed it . . . they are the result of the intersection of passion and talent.  I'm a sucker for raw passion, lots of it in this film.  As well, I'm all about living life out loud.  Find what you love, and let it rip.  Why not?  Connect your heart to your art and do some living at high volume.  Life is fleeting, rock it out my friends.  peace, Marshall

A few years ago, early in the morning, I was taking a walk around my American middle class neighborhood and I just began praying for the homes and the doors that I passed.  Not thinking anything of it but just praying for blessing over the hearts and minds all who who dwelled within them.  At some point in my walking and my meditation, I heard the voice of the Spirit say, "Chris, your neighborhood is destitute".  Now, I live dead middle in middle to upper middle class suburban America, nobody is starving, everyone has access to education and services . . . at first this didn't make sense.  Later, I began to realize, poverty comes in many forms.  I was living in an impoverished suburbia. Who are the poor?  What is it exactly that justifies the label of "poor"?  How does one quantify poverty?  How do you help the poor?  Am I impoverished?  These are some of the compelling questions I got out of the first half of Bryant L. Myers "Walking with the Poor". The author gives one of the most comprehensive and holistic treatments of redemptive community development, particularly amongst the poor that I have read.  He breaks down in technical terms what he calls "Principles and Practices of Transformational Development." The author states that the causes of poverty are spiritual and fundamentally relational.  "Poverty is the absence of shalom and all its meaning." (p. 86)  A person that does not know who they are in Christ, who they are in the image and possibility of God, has no hope and remains in impoverished thinking and acting.  Their detachments and entanglements perpetuate broken relationships, holism becomes unreachable.              "When the poor accept their marred identity and their distorted sense of vocation as normative and immutable, their poverty is complete." (p. 76)  Poverty is a broken frame of mind and identity that affects all behavior fundamentally.  Certainly there are cultural and political factors as well of access and systemic evils, but the root of impoverished thinking starts internally before it is acted out externally. Those of us in the West tend to see the poor through our own lenses of reality (worldview).  "We view the poor from a point of view, in terms of our personality, and in terms of the culture from which we come". (p. 58)  "Poverty is in the eye of the beholder.  We see what our worldview, education and training allow us to see."  (81)  This is our blind-spot according to the author.  We walk into a ministry context to help the poor, but we bring our biases.  They must be poor and impoverished because they are not like us:  they don't have access to things, education, opportunity, freedom etc.  We read into it that they need our kind of help and thus put ourselves in the power seat of being the Savior of their needs.  Our story and our blindspot interferes with the story that God may be wanting to write with the poor and leading them to a new kind of freedom in thinking and living.  We play God and can put them in dynamics of dependency.  Myers states that the "non-poor understand themselves as superior, neccesary and annointed to rule."  That is a dangerous and sinful frame of mind. The most powerful idea I gleamed from the first part of this book is to see all of humanity as fundamentally broken due to the Fall of man and thus we all share in a kind of spiritual poverty.  We are the same, we are family in our impoverished hearts and minds, seeking the shalom of God.  The poor and the non poor are lacking, impoverished in different spaces.  When our stories come together, it should not be with one over the other, but as a family, at a round table, working out transformational development before and under the throne of God. So back to the impoverished suburbia.  Myers says that within western capitalism, we have lost our way.  "Capitalism reduces people to economic beings driven by utilitarian self-interest toward the goal of accumulating wealth. . . . In the latter years of the twentieth century, it is becoming clear that the modern world is discovering that it has lost its story."(p. 22)  Where the intent of capitalism was not to acquire wealth as an end, but to access it as a means to support the general welfare.  "The poverty of the non-poor is fundamentally relational and caused by sin.  The result is a life full of things and short on meaning.  The non-poor simply believe in a different set of lies." (90)    This is my impoverished suburbia, these are the poor I am called to serve and proclaim a different story to.   True meaning only comes from seeing yourself rooted in the story of God and His Kingdom. My prayer for our community is that we could look like this:  "A church full of life and love, working for the good of the community in which God has placed it, is the proper end of mission.  Transformational development that does not work toward such a church is neither sustainable nor Christian." (39) peace, Marshall