Faces give expression: eyes shine, eyebrows go up and down, ears wiggle, cheeks puff in and out, noses snort and mouths shout, whisper, smile, grumble, and wobble. They say the eyes are the window to the soul, well the face is the front door to the whole. There are typologies and theologies: for peoples faces will betray their beliefs, and we read a face to expect the type of embrace. Just like church services. Some people go around unkempt, dirty, smelly, and drunk, their faces soured by a pain inside. Not likeable, not easy to befriend. Or there are the fashionistas, deeply devoted to their statements. Made-up and groomed, models and metrosexuals at all the right parties in fashionable places. Their faces smile a façade that hides piled possessions balanced on debts of desire: aspirational, fickle, and hollow. Look through their face and its hard to find the person behind. Others wear a stern expression that belies the humanity inside. From years as children of repression, their body is held rigid under a face behind layers of crusty paint. A careful look into the eyes reveals the sadness of joys held securely inside. But there are a few who hold life lightly, like a beautiful flower they know it is only for a season, and so they flow with the river swimming freely to their destination. Their faces are relaxed and filled with a joy that comes with a freedom of expression. Their attractiveness is not in carefully constructed beauty, but from the naturalness of nature - a delight to know. We all know people like these. And because people make the church, so the faces of the church reveal the values inside. Each type of church - I'm sure you know them - each is (un)attractive in varying degrees, for like all typologies the boundaries can be fuzzy. But each face shows a family expression. Some are with the furrowed brows of resignation from those who stay together because the rules say they must. Some families pay no attention to how they look, and the result can be an unholy mess. Many families follow fashions, and so just about anything goes. Yet a few are simply well grounded in what's real, and as a result are fun to be around. Church services are a face of the family. Mention "church" and most people think of a building and the Sunday service - at least most people who are outside the rarefied atmosphere of those formally trained in the principles and praxis of religion. Services of course have components, and the theologically-trained will gladly give you the theology for all forms of worship, the value of liturgy, the necessity of confession and communion, and of preaching the word and power in prayer. But Jesus did not come to make a church service recipe - relationship is not rigid. Although these elements surely reflect the essentials of a dynamically expressed and vibrant relationship with God, they are not critical ingredients to bake into a mass produced product. Pattern is beautiful, moulds are repetitive. In fact, Jesus said that there are only two things on which hang all the law and the prophets: love God with all that you are, and love others as yourself. That's worth an eyebrow raising, sparkling eyed and open-mouthed expression! I know you left me standing there Out of the calm of the coldest air I don’t believe the words you said But I can’t find the words I want Oh, I can’t find the words I want If you were gone in another life I don’t believe I would just survive I could feel you next to me An escape from the world I’m in Oh, I’m afraid of the world I’m in One day I will see Heaven’s reach I’ll find the one who left me sleeping Every war was another seed That could feed every soul in need Oh, I’m worn by the war in me Somebody found me here Somebody held my breath Somebody saved me from the world you left If you’re gonna cry my tears If you’re gonna hold my breath If you’re gonna let me see the sun you set Oh, I am lost and found Oh, I am lost and found Somebody found me here Somebody held my breath Somebody saved me from the world you left If you’re gonna cry my tears If you’re gonna hold my breath If you’re gonna let me see the sun you set Oh, I am lost and found Oh, I am lost and found
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After dining alone I'm home alone ...
9 645.65 kilometres away. That's how far GoogleEarth says it is from the front door of my house to the chair I'm sitting in. There's a couch in front of me, other chairs all around, and the chatter of inner city residents. I'm visiting a church, and I feel more at home here than I do in my church back home. Why is that? This church is not perfect - there are technical glitches, the sound is a too reverberant for my taste, the roof has damage, it has all the signs of wear and tear from being actively lived in - like a family home its where normal people with a common connection gather without pretence. Here today its the young (mostly) and old, male and female, black and white, the well-dressed and the shabby, all mixed together. Real people who've come in from the streets and brought it all with them: not to be conformed by the church, but to be the church. The reason I feel at home is because of this. Let me explain. For a visitor this service has the potential to be very awkward; not only am I a stranger to them, but they're having their annual focus on giving – if there's ever a source of embarrassment in church, its when they start talking about money. But I don't feel awkward. The singing is simple and clear, encouraging reflection on a few key thoughts (quite unlike some hymns of yesteryear which try to pack a seminary’s worth of odd theology into 6 verses without repeats). The talk is based on Jesus' story of the man who went travelling and left three of his employees with the task of managing large sums of his money. These were not trivial amounts; to one he entrusted the equivalent of 100 years of a typical labourer’s daily wage! To another he gave 40 years equivalent, and to a third he gave 20 years worth. Does the absolute amount really matter? Not really, but because we are people so irrationally impressed by big numbers, I think its worth pointing out that for the recipients this must have been a fearful responsibility. The real question is, what did they do? The one with 20 years worth of wages quite understandably took the low risk option, he hid it. I might well have done the same. In today’s world I guess that would be like depositing the money in a bank account where it only earns inflationary interest in order to preserve the capital. But the other two, now they took risks: they understood that not only had they been given charge of a resource, but that handling resources comes with a great responsibility. So these two managed the money! In today’s world I imagine one might have invested in property, the other possibly started a business – but in time both doubled their initial capital outlay. They took risks … it must have been scary … ! It required courage to accept a responsibility and not shirk from risk! They engaged in good risk management, not risk avoidance. Imagine if you had custody of a million dollars, and you took a risk knowing you were accountable for the outcome! In due course the owner returned from his travels, and the employees submitted their reports. Two were highly commended and invited to share in the benefits (a performance bonus?). The other was soundly criticised – hauled over the coals and then fired may be a better description. He had simply not understood the core business and lacked the necessary courage – he was scared, and he did not trust his employer. It is not about how much you have at the start, nor about how much you have in the end, its all about whether you do anything. Do I run from risk, or do I understand the trust that had been placed in me? This is why I felt at home in this church, for homes are places of trust that allows us to take risks … what an amazing combination that is, trust and risk. I took a big risk when I married (and it was an even bigger risk to marry me). We risked together; we knew we would change for we all grow into different people. We could have ended up fighting, divorcing, or worse. But with work, with thoughtful risk management, and with trust in the rightness of a shared purpose, our investment of who we were and what we had brought change, growth, peace, sanctuary and joy; the investment built a home. This is why I want to join this church I'm visiting. Their attitude, albeit imperfectly expressed, tries to be one where they are partners together in the grandest of adventures, and this makes it feel like community, a home. Resources are contributed by each to be used for a purpose that is far bigger that any one person can imagine. This is the expressed desire by this imperfect church, for as they themselves proclaim:
Soon I will head for another plane, and there are church events awaiting me when I return. Will they require courage and risk? Am I headed “home”? I'm sitting in Italy, far from home, alone. Walked down a tiny side street and into a quintessential Italian restaurant - who but locals would know it's here. Pink tablecloths, a wonderful pizza of simplicity supported by house-recommended Chianti, chased home with a sweet crème caramel. Alone, enjoying pleasing solitude. But I had a wonderful dinner companion. I could only read his words, yet we spoke of stars in the universe and of other worlds. I would suggest "... who can look at those millions of worlds and not feel that there may well be wonderful universes above us where reason is utterly unreasonable? Yet who knows if in that infinite universe—?" But wisdom prevailed. "No," he responded; "reason is always reasonable, even in the last limbo, in the lost borderland of things. I know that people charge the Church with lowering reason, but it is just the other way. Alone on earth, the Church makes reason really supreme. Alone on earth, the Church affirms that God himself is bound by reason." "Reason and justice grip the remotest and the loneliest star. Look at those stars. Don't they look as if they were single diamonds and sapphires? Well, you can imagine any mad botany or geology you please. Think of forests of adamant with leaves of brilliants. Think the moon is a blue moon, a single elephantine sapphire. But don't fancy that all that frantic astronomy would make the smallest difference to the reason and justice of conduct. On plains of opal, under cliffs cut out of pearl, you would still find a notice-board, 'Thou shalt not steal." Dining alone can be such fun. I only wish others knew my dining companion. Today we "did church". For me it was fairly miserable. Let me explain.
I grew up with tunnel vision during apartheid in South Africa, and it remains an embarrassment. As a teenager much of my life was consumed with staying out of (more) trouble at school, a passion for hang-gliding, various diversions from the opposite sex, many other self-centred interests, and making sure I didn't look too closely at the Christianity I supposedly professed. This tunnel vision was in equal parts due to a lack of awareness of what was happening in my country and a fixation on things that brought me pleasure - driven in part because my early childhood included a solid dose of misery. This lack of awareness was helped along by my sheltered life (we were shielded from the harsh realities of oppression), but that was something I could have consciously challenged. Likewise, my fixation on a few selfish foci only served to reinforce my tunnel vision, and could also have been addressed if I had only chosen to do so. The consequences of being unaware and fixated took many years to overcome - and will likely forever leave a scar. As I've aged I've learned how to see a bigger picture - my job requires it, and learning this skill has brought benefits in so many ways. Tunnel vision means you fixate on tiny detail - its all you allow yourself to see. This is satisfying because it limits your concerns, gives focus to ambition, drives success, and shields you from all sorts of distracting concerns. It can make you selfishly successful, and so we tell our children "you can be anything you want if you only focus and try hard enough" - what a web of lies we weave. Tunnels only exist because there is a mountain of context to tunnel through - and that context defines the values of what we focus on. Miss the context, and you end up missing the values. Skip forward to today. We "did church". It was not great. We're in a season of change and while we have a vision, we have jumped from that straight into the details. But translating vision requires three things:
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Why?
Probably the best therapy is to express yourself. Why do you think psychiatrists make you lie on the couch and talk, while all they do is murmur "hmmm", "uhuh", or "go on"? Archives
May 2017
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