Mommy Mode

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Thank you all for the congrats and everything. I’m slowly recovering from giving birth and am slowly re-entering the world. Aidan and I are both doing well. I’m still in lots of pain (and rather drugged up) and haven’t slept much, but that’s how these things go!

To give the basic info. Aidan was born last Wednesday June 11 by emergency c-section. I went through the whole labor thing only to discover that he was positioned face up with his neck tilted back. It would have caused him severe trauma to be born vaginally, so I was rushed to have a c-section. I had to be completely put under and Mike couldn’t be in there, but the result was a healthy baby boy. If you are really interested, I posted the full birth story here. There are also more pictures and our reasons for choosing the name Aidan Elessar on the baby blog.

So I have no idea when I’ll get back to posting reguraly here, I’m taking things a day at a time at this point. But I can direct you to a piece I wrote for the Jesus Manifesto blog’s writing contest on Pentecost. I had a great time exploring themes on how the Holy Spirit works.

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Life Update

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So yes I am still alive. No the baby isn’t here yet. Despite near constant contractions (literally all day, everyday…) I am not in real labor yet. But the false labor leaves me so mind-numbingly distracted and in so much pain that I am getting very very little done (unless watching hours of the Food Network and reading Emma dozens of books count as something…).

Anyway, in lieu of a real post, here’s a fun picture I took the other day (from a moving car window of course). Talk about truth in advertising…

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God Uses Disciples

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I’ve been reading through Brian McLaren’s newest book, Finding Our Way Again, an exploration of spiritual practices. I am enjoying his down to earth everyday perspective on the spiritual practices and have appreciated how he has integrated other issues he has written about into his thoughts on these topics. Our spiritual lives must be integrated, so of course one cannot have a theology of the kingdom or engage in changing everything without those things affecting our spiritual formation. It is all part of what it means holistically to be a Christian and must be a lifelong process as well. On that dimension, I was struck by the following passage (sorry for the lengthy quote, I just thought it was good) –

When any sector of the church stops learning, God simply overflows the structures that are in the way and works outside them with those willing to learn. As the old hymn says, God’s truth keeps marching on. God can’t be contained by the structures that claim to serve him but often try to manage and control him.

But then, as soon as the center of gravity shifts and those within the structures are ready to learn again, the Holy Spirit is there, ready to move to the next lesson in the ongoing educational process called history. Again and again through history, although we want to create “right people” and “wrong people” columns into which groups are sorted, God flips the script and sees two rows that cut across both columns: the “proud and unteachable people” row on top and the “humble and teachable people” row on the bottom. Grace flows downward, Scripture tells us, in both columns.

I find this delightful, because it tells the traditionalists that their tradition doesn’t protect them from losing their way, and it tells the revolutionaries that their zeal and courage don’t provide guarantees either. It calls everyone to humility and teachability, and invites everyone to climb up to a higher altitude and look for the larger pattern of God for which God constantly works – the common good.

And this, of course, is essential to finding our way. Practices are not for know-it-alls. Practices are for those who feel the need for change, growth, development, learning. Practices are for disciples. We could say that rituals are practices of learners, and ritualism is the continuation of the practice by people who have stopped learning. Similarly, we could say that traditions are the heritage of a community of learners, and traditionalism is the continuation of the heritage by people who have stopped learning.

The life-and-death question for each of our churches and denominations may boil down to this: are we a club for the elite who pretend to have arrived or a school for disciples who are still on the way? p. 137

I like how this perspective gives all the power and glory to God. When good things are happening, it is all God overflowing who he is into the world. We can draw lines, point fingers, and call names at the divisive or the new, but when God is moving does it really matter?

This ability to be lifelong learners and grow in our practice of faith seems like such a basic necessity for believers, but I have run into so many who think otherwise. I’ve had people tell me that they refuse to read certain books because it may force them to consider new things about God. Others who claim that they are too simple or too old to alter their faith habits. Still others who are assured that they know everything there is to know about the faith so they have no need to engage in learning or spiritual practices. I have always been uncomfortable with such attitudes, but have to admit that in their own way these people still love God even if they are not actively seeking him out. So I like the image of God overflowing (as opposed to abandoning) these stagnant vessels to still move in this world. I’d like to think that I am a disciple – continuing to grow and be used by God – at least that is what I seek. But if anything it is a good lesson in humility to know that God can overflow whatever boxes I create for him and move powerfully in the world.

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Faith and Hope

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Last night we finally got around to watching the movie Children of Men. It was one of those movies we had meant to see when it came out, but given that we hardly ever watch movies anymore that never happened. But in my beached whale on couch stage, Netflix has come in quite handy. I thought the movie itself was engaging – a story of survival and possible hope in a post-apocalyptic world. The story of a world that has destroyed itself where no children are born and prejudice and violence reign of course provided good social commentary for where we are headed as a world today.

But what I found almost more interesting was a short documentary feature included on the DVD. The Possibility of Hope explored the themes of the movie and how close they are to our realities today. Commentary for this feature was provided by philosophers like Slavoj Zizek and writers like Naomi Klein. While the title of the piece implied something vaguely hopeful, I found it to be overly pessimistic. As they presented it, the world is so far past the breaking point that there is little chance for recovery. As some of them put it, even if everyone started to care about issues like the environment, poverty and globalization it wouldn’t matter at this point since we are so far gone. Then they claimed that getting everyone to care would be impossible anyway since caring for others just runs against the grain of human nature. Those who think otherwise were mocked for seeking a fairy tale Utopia. Of course the whole thing ended on a rather cheezy note of – “but we all should continue to have children because maybe they can provide some hope.”

Honestly this is one of those attitudes that I encounter often and that I have issues with. No I am not naive enough to believe that every single person on the planet will one day stop being selfish or that salvation/utopia will suddenly appear if they did. But at least within the bounds of my Christian faith, I don’t see compassion as entirely impossible. Perhaps we are inherently selfish creatures (or perhaps that is partially the conditioning of our individualistic culture), but the whole point of our faith is to be transformed. To assume that just means some magic wand takes care of the economic exchange of sin and forgiveness but does nothing to change who we are as people is a cheap and hollow faith in my opinion. If our faith is real then we should have no problem at least trying to put into practice commands like – “Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit, but in humility consider others better than yourselves. Each of you should look not only to your own interests, but also to the interests of others.” Perhaps outside of religious faith compassion is too hard or a utopian dream, but within the Christian faith it forms the foundation for how we should be interacting with others. So I can’t buy that things can never change or that all hope is lost, not if I still believe in the transforming power of Jesus in people’s lives.

Unfortunately it is often Christians themselves who fight having to care at all. It is within the church that I hear the most prejudice, nationalism, and individualism. Excuses like – “but Jesus said the poor will always be with us so therefore we shouldn’t help them” to “I don’t want to condone sin (or their religion) if I given them aid” are often on the tip of our tongues. Others point blank state that their family’s needs will always come first (needs being a relative term in that sentence). And while the numbers who are anti-environmental are thankfully dwindling, it is still hard to find those who think that they personally need to make sacrifices to care for our world and its inhabitants.

In other words the one place compassion can and should be rampant is just as self-centered as the rest of the world. Even so, I don’t think this is a reflection of the way things have to be. Call it idealism or call it hope, I’m not ready to give up on my faith and the commands of the Bible that easily. I think the church (as in the body of Christ) can be transformed and be moved to love others. I don’t think all hope is lost or that we should just give up and retreat even further into ourselves. I actually do think there is the possibility of hope that things can be better – in both large and small ways. This is the naive utopianism that the documentary was mocking, I know. But it is part of what I’ve discovered I have to believe if I am serious about my faith. What’s the point of it anyway if I’m not following and trusting Jesus?

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Book Review – Jesus Made in America

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I recently finished reading Stephen J. Nichols’ Jesus Made in America: A Cultural History from the Puritans to The Passion of the Christ (IVP 2008). When I first received this book, I was excited to read it. The concept intrigued me – an historical overview of how the cultural sensibilities of different eras in American history shaped our common conceptions of Jesus. This is a theme I’ve personally explored and one that I believe is little recognized by the church. We all to an extent create Jesus in our own image, and reading the history of that tendency in America captured my interest. What I discovered instead though was a book that although fascinating fell prey too often to the author’s personal biases.

In my reading of the book, I discovered early on a major theological difference with the author that effected my encounter with his theories. Nichols sets up the book with the assumption that there does exist one right way to think about Jesus. In a book about how our cultural background influences our perception of Jesus, I found this assumption to be a bit out of place. There was no acknowledgement that this “correct Christology” might have been influenced by cultural factors, just that it represents right belief that everything else must therefore be deviating from. So it is in light of this basic assumption that Nichols examines the history of Jesus in America. His Christology is the standard that he holds everyone else up to. Of course this results in those he examines being either completely right or completely wrong about Jesus. He goes to great lengths (stretching might better describe it) to prove that the Puritans held to this correct Christology, while others (The Passion of the Christ, Veggie Tales, and CCM for example) fail theologically. It’s a black and white world apparently for him when it comes to understanding Jesus.

This emphasis on correct Christology develops throughout the book. He dismisses many of the cultural portrayals of Jesus because they emphasise relationship or practice over doctrine. He asserts that correct Christology must always be primary for believers. While I respect the need to have a good theology, I question his hierarchical approach. I just can’t picture Jesus stopping himself in the middle of the Sermon on the Mount, slapping his forehead, and saying “but what am I thinking! All this stuff I’m telling you to do is great, but what is really going to matter is that over the next few hundred years people are going to debate how best to talk about me, hold councils and votes as to who really is right, and kill those in the minority. Making sure you agree with what the right group says about me will be the primary part of your faith…” Maybe the Bible just forgot to record that part of the sermon.

I honestly agree with many of the critiques Nichols has of popular cultural conceptions of Jesus (I can’t stand Jesus is my boyfriend songs), I am just not as inclined as he is to dismiss them altogether. He assumes that any theory of Jesus is a complete reduction of Jesus to just that theory and so dismisses them as having no redeeming value whatsoever. In what reads as a litany of his personal pet peeves with Christianity, Nichols I believe confuses his personal dislikes with bad theology. His biases against certain groups (hippies, liberals, youth) are strongly displayed. Anything connected to such groups can hold no value for him. So while I don’t believe that Jesus can be reduced to just being a friend, or a revolutionary, or a moral leader I have no problem saying that Jesus does contain those aspects. To ignore those portrayals of Jesus is just as reductionistic and limiting as claiming any one of those encompass fully who Jesus is. And to do so because one is more comfortable with the Puritans than the Jesus People seems like just another case of creating Jesus in our own image in my opinion.

While I found Nichols’ thesis flawed and fairly biased, I do have to say that the cultural history presented in the book makes it well worth the read. The different eras’ portrayals of Jesus are accurate and are useful in helping one to understand what shaped the church today. Knowing that the church hasn’t existed in a vacuum, but has been influenced by culture could possible bring some needed humility to the church (I just wish Nichols had learned from his own writing). I particularly thought that the sections that dealt with faith and politics were the strongest in the book. In those sections Nichols’ historical analysis shines through his personal likes and dislikes and the reader is treated to a well developed perspective on both the Founding Fathers and the contemporary situation.

So I do recommend this book, but with a few cautions. Enjoy the cultural history, but be aware of the author’s presence shaping what you read and in many ways undermining his own thesis. Even so, I found it an enjoyable read.

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Laughing at Ourselves

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So I followed the links recently to Michael Kruse’s Why did the Emergent Chicken Cross the Road. I read it, it was cute, I smirked. Yet as I thought about it later, I realized how odd posts like that are. Think about it. How often is it commonly accepted to simple state the beliefs and practices of a religious group as the punchline of a joke? If those statements had been about evangelical “chickens” instead of emergent, would the response have been the same? Would such outright mocking be accepted if it was directed at anyone else? It’s not that I find the list (or others like it) offensive, it’s just that I’ve noticed that Emergents are expected to take such mocking in stride. In fact if we are offended by things like that we are mocked even further and told to get over ourselves. At the same time if any of us criticize the beliefs of another group (not even in a mocking way) we are derided as unfair and accused of thinking of ourselves as better than others. I’m all for taking criticism and being willing to laugh at oneself, I just find the double standard curious.

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What’s Up With Me

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So I seriously feel like I am in la-la land most of the time these days. I’m not blogging or getting into good conversations anywhere near as often as I used to. I’m not reading nearly as much as I used to either (and I have a huge stack of to review books piling up…). So my apologies (mostly to myself) and as my excuse a bit of an update on my personal life.

Some of you may read my baby blog and know some of this stuff already, but I thought I’d give a more general update here as well. Basically I feel huge, miserable, and could be having the baby any day now. Seriously. Technically I am only at 34 weeks (out of 40), but I should mention that Emma was born at exactly 34 weeks. With all of the preterm labor issues I’ve been having that means that I could be having the baby any time in the next six weeks. While I so don’t want a preemie again or the extended NICU stay, I am also really ready not to be pregnant anymore. When I walk into my doctor’s office and she look at me pitifully and says “what more can this pregnancy do to you?” I know at least she understands as well.

Let’s see. Five months of constant nausea, not eating, and being hospitalized for dehydration. Preterm labor issues for which I have received weekly hormone injections (which really hurt). Serious vertigo and dizziness issues that have restricted my driving and basic standing at all. Heart troubles that sent me for multiple testings by a cardiologist, have me wearing a monitor constantly (which I am having an allergic reaction to), and affect my ability to breathe. My blood tests are all over the place, I have too much amniotic fluid, I am seeing maternal specialists, getting weekly non-stress tests, and taking crazy amounts of pills (something I generally avoid). The specialists don’t know if my body can handle being pregnant past 35 weeks or so. So at this point we are trying to reach a balance of what is safe for me and safe for the baby. It is all a bit stressful and crazy and time-consuming. So while I spend most of my time just at home on the couch, I don’t always feel well enough to do much of anything. I feel really stupid just laying there trying to make the contractions stop or trying to bring my heart rate down enough so I can actually breathe. I can’t take care of Emma any longer and only leave the house if I know I can be sitting at all times (I faint if I stand too long). I’m not sleeping at night, my maternity clothes are all too small, and I lose my breath just walking from the couch to the bathroom. Fun times.

And I feel really stupid and evil complaining about all this and using it as an excuse for why I’m check-out half of the time. Though all of this I’m just hoping and praying for a healthy baby and am very thankful to be having another child. I just hope to be waking up at 4AM to feed a healthy baby soon instead of laying awake struggling to breathe. So much has gone wrong already this pregnancy, but thankfully it’s all been with me not the baby. He seems to be happily growing and kicking along (a lot).

Anyway just thought I’d share, give my excuses for my rather sporadic web presence, and ask for prayers in this last stretch. Thanks.

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Will Blogging Change History?

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So blogging has already changed the face of journalism, the question is, will it change history? This question arose as an aside in an editorial I was reading earlier today. The piece was about the need for more museums that make an effort to focus on what have typically been the marginalized voices in our society. The point was that by having museums and history books that focus solely on warriors, leaders, and inventors we convey rather blatantly what and who we value in our culture. Such things preserve that which society deems should be preserved and so serves to shape the current culture by imparting values. Social history movements take the time to listen to the other voices – those of women, the poor, migrants, the oppressed. These voices often make up the backbone of a society, but are often ignored and silenced. They are not seen as important enough to listen to so therefore their perspective is not written down as part of history. Who they are and what they value slips away in light of the stories of those who have accomplished “great things.” Including their voices and stories will not only demonstrate that they are valued, but perhaps help demonstrate that society isn’t a monolithic structure that values violence and power above all else.

Listening to the voices on the margins and getting a varied perspective are the goals of this broader approach to how we do history. So given that blogging has in many ways allowed the voice of the average person to be heard (and often even respected), I wonder if it will serve to help pave the way for a shift in historical perspective. Such social history approaches have been present since the 1970s, but haven’t gain widespread acceptance in classrooms that continue to see history as a parade of great names and dates. But today it is easier that ever to explore multiple perspectives on a topic. One isn’t restricted to the party line fed to us by the commercial media or the government. On blogs we can often hear from the people affected most by cultural events (or about such events at all). We are getting used to valuing the voices on the margins and perhaps that will eventually help us alter how we approach history as well.

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Living in Tension

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A few conversations this past weekend at our church retreat got me thinking about the tension between pride and servanthood. Of course, such things generally seem to be more of opposites than things to be held in tension. But in discussing the struggles we face in our spiritual journeys I saw that a balanced tension between the two can be needed.

What I’m thinking about here is the tension between the desire to accomplish something great with one’s life and the call to serve God wherever one finds oneself. I know that following God means being willing to serve where one is at. One cannot wait for the ideal circumstances to arise in order to serve and a certain level of being content where God has placed you is needed in order to serve well. But I also see the danger of settling for whatever is easy and never stepping out in faith to serve. That stepping out, while focused on God, requires a basic level of self-pride. A sense that one is “important” enough to do great things for the Kingdom. While it might not be self-centered pride, it is a measure of confidence that pushes one beyond where one is at onto greater things.

I’ve always understood the line from Lord of the Rings that Eowyn answers to Aragon’s question of ‘What do you fear my lady?’ She replies, ‘A cage. To stay behind bars until use and old age accept them and all chance of valor has gone beyond beyond recall or desire.’ To me that isn’t about my need to accomplish great things in my life, but the awareness that I shouldn’t be afraid to actually try. I think I fear complacency masquerading as contentment or “accepting my place in life” more than I fear excessive pride. But sometimes finding the right balance is hard.

I can get too caught up in desiring to “do great things” that I miss out on the opportunities I have right before me. It is this tension of accepting and grasping hold of such opportunities while not ignoring the whispers of the call pushing me out in faith that is the ongoing struggle. It isn’t a bad struggle necessarily, but one that keeps me aware who I am and what I am being called towards.

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