Loyal priorities…

My fraternity used to hold our annual initiation ceremony in a nearby cave. The setting proved moving to each initiate. We’d begin before sunrise, so newbies walked into the ritual cloaked in darkness. The cave was a tourist site, so it had lighting along the walkways and walls, which we used to dramatic effect. The facility’s caretaker had been a fraternity brother during college, hence our use of that cave. And we loved it! It’s added gravitas and perspective, plus a big helping of cheesy melodrama, but hey, it was college…

After my junior year, however, we stopped using that cave after its owners informed us we were no longer welcome. The reason was simple. During our ceremony that year, one brother arrived intoxicated and caused problems. While everyone else got organized, he stumbled around sections we’d been told were off-limits. He broke a precious stalagmite. He defecated on the floor. The caretaker who’d vouched for us was justifiably furious. We were embarrassed. What happened next, however, has remained with me as an incredible lesson in ethics. My fraternity had a decision to make: What should we do about this brother- and friend- who’d cost us so dearly?

Some immediately demanded he be expelled from the fraternity. It was a serious moral failure, they said, not to mention misconduct covered by our by-laws. Others, however, believed we had a deeper commitment- loyalty to our brother- and that priority trumped all. “Make him pay a fine,” they said. “Or do community service. He’s apologized, after all. Isn’t that enough? Plus, he’s our brother. We can’t be disloyal.”

This popped to mind recently for several reasons. First, the US Senate produced a report detailing America’s use of torture in the aftermath of 9/11. Some were horrified and outraged by that behavior. Others said we shouldn’t disparage CIA patriots just trying to keep us safe. That would be disloyal, they claimed, and in the face of continued threats by brutal lunatics like the (so-called) Islamic State, we must remain staunchly, unmovably loyal. Whatever moral failure this torture represented- this thinking goes- is secondary to loyalty.

In roughly similar fashion, the (to my mind) more repulsive behavior of those in the (so-called) Islamic State- sex slavery, beheadings- is often done in Islam’s name, an ethically demanding religion that historically condemns such acts. Nevertheless, IS fighters do it, explicitly targeting folk they consider threatening, yet described as apostate or heathen, aka “not in my tribe.” Thus, they’re being loyal to “their own” by terrorizing others “not like them.” And so they justify practices that, in other contexts, even they would deem morally abhorrent.

The point is that in those, and other diverse situations, a tension develops between loyalty and other virtues, with loyalty competing among goodness, respect or compassion for top billing. Use that idea to reflect on the behavior of some police and protestors in recent stories about Ferguson, Staten Island or other killings of unarmed black men, and it helps explain many strident responses. Loyalty is powerful, and for some it’s the highest- or only- moral priority. Always.

My fraternity, ultimately, decided to forgive our brother, and expel him permanently. I lived with him off-campus my senior year, but never advocated his return. He was wrong, after all, in both his cave behavior and his argument that loyalty should be our chief concern. There’s another standard of goodness beyond that, we believed, and I still affirm, however difficult sometimes to discern, or hold ourselves accountable to. It’s even what makes forgiveness possible. Without a higher moral priority, only those most power win, along with whomever they deem most loyal.

What does that mean regarding recent news? Well, you’ll surely decide for yourself! But as you do, consider asking yourself the following: Would I hold myself- or my child’s attacker/torturer- to the same standard I’m holding others to now? Or am I simply being loyal to people who look like me, vote like me, or post on facebook like me? If the latter- and that’s a temptation Everyone faces!- remember there’s a beautiful place in God’s Kingdom for loyalty, but it’s not first place.

Grace and Peace,
Shane Read more!

Saying grace…

Here’s the prayer my family says every meal now that a foster child joined us last month. You may recognize this deceptively profound supplication; it’s rather famous. It goes, “God is great. God is good. Let us thank God for our food. Amen.” Note, that when saying the Ah in amen, it’s traditionally held for several beats: Ahhhhhh-men.

You can guess why we pulled this out for a five-year-old. The short sentences form a rhyming, easy-to-remember couplet. And sure enough, by week three’s end, he had it down pat. Thus, now he’s dogmatic about him leading the prayer, leaving us to catch up. But initially, while Tab and I introduced it, we spoke slowly, precisely, in a tone and rhythm that resembled melody so the rhyme would stick in his mind. The strategy worked. Wahoo!

However, it led to me not really praying, simply saying the words. Know the feeling? Like during the Lord’s Prayer, have there been Sundays when you’re thinking about speaking in the right words in rhythm with everyone else, but not really about what they mean? That’s a perpetual temptation for me. So I created a counter-strategy several years ago: recite the words until one line jumps out as particularly relevant that week, and let it be my focus. When I do this, of course, it means I don’t think through the prayer’s full gambit of meaning. But that’s fine. I say it often enough, I’ll get to the rest eventually.

Anyway, that’s how praying this “God is great” prayer had become for me- recitation and not devotion. So now that he’s memorized it, I decided to invest more spiritual energy in truly praying to God. Which means recognizing that when I say those words, God’s actively listening, actually present; that when I “thank God for our food,” a spiritual “You’re welcome” may come. The feeling was great! Plus, I further discovered that, oftentimes, my pre-foster table prayers were suspect too. In a way peculiar to adults, I hadn’t thought much about how God was hearing my prayer, but more about what clever words I could string together. Ugh. That’s also compromised praying, not fully effective. The eloquence of prayer should be in our hearts, not in our tongues, amen?!

Besides, while beautiful, poetic prayers are wonderfully useful in many situations, the mammoth proclamation of what we’re saying with the foster kid has bowled me over the deeper I’ve listened. I mean, consider the heavy freight those apparently “simple” words actually carry? They present the #1 conundrum monotheists have ever faced, in just two sentences- “God is great,” and “God is good.” WHOA! Ponder that pairing, and try to make it simple. You can’t.

“God is great” is a claim about the power, prestige and primacy of God. It’s akin to the label “Creator,” that one who made the heavens and earth, hurricanes and tornadoes, who, in Job’s words, controls the Leviathan. That same one, we then suggest, is “good,” meaning worthy of praise, love, and devotion. And so doesn’t mistreat God’s creations, doesn’t use them as playthings. Honestly, that’s a hard-to-justify supposition at times, like when facing cancer, or making sense of a tornado destroying your neighborhood, or when mental illness enslaves a loved one. The goodness and greatness of God seem to contradict.

Which is another reason I’m glad that’s become our table prayer with the five-year-old. Not only are we, together, cultivating a practice of routine devotion, but we’re ensuring it’s more than fluff. It’s substance. I want any child I’m blessed to influence to learn that faith well-lived is faith deeply considered, that our posture before God shouldn’t be blandness, but toughness, doubt, and striving. That will help the child- it helps me!- craft a truly strong spirituality, the kind that’s reliable in hard times, not simply a comfort when life is already easy.

Not that he understands this now! But one of you recently told me something right: kids learn from what we do, more than from what we say. So if I want to be effective, I must pray these words, and not just say them. Lesson learned, and learning.

Grace and Peace,
Shane Read more!

Little wisdom…

I saw a parody headline several years back that’s come to mind in recent weeks. Written above a picture of a young adult preacher on some fake news website, the headline read: Pastor Looks Forward to the Birth of His Second Sermon Illustration. Nice. Now that I’m a foster father, I plan to get in on that gig. But rather than clutter our pulpit with cuteness, I’ll expound here on some little wisdom the kid recently delivered.

We were driving near downtown, talking about everything God made. He mentioned the trees, and I said, “Yep, God made those.” He brought up birds, and I was like, “Them too.” He pointed out buildings, and declared, “God made everything.” I responded, “Well, we humans make buildings. We’re kind of like God in that way. God created the world. We create stuff too.” He pushed, “So God made you, me, every tree and bird, but not the buildings?” I decided to backtrack on my earlier claim, and replied, “Kind of. I mean, God started the process. Watched birds, animals and us evolve over millions and billions of years.” He was like, “Whoa! That’s a long time!” I said, “Yeah. Evolution was how God created, and that was very slow.” He observed, “God must’ve been being very careful. God didn’t want to make a mistake.” I answered, “Brilliant.”

And it was, amen?! I mean, I figured that wasn’t the appropriate time to mention natural selection and the extinction of Neanderthals. Evolutionary biologists certainly wouldn’t endorse an idea that we evolved in some linear, orderly way. That nuance aside, however, people of faith have long included in our idea of God the characteristic of Creator. However life came to be, we’ve claimed, God had a hand in the process, guided it somehow toward life.

Personally, I like to imagine God in constant partnership with life’s building blocks, nudging new combinations this way, then that way; allowing the chaos, brilliance and indeterminacy (a fancy word for Freedom) of ALL matter to work its magic. In other words, the notion that God had reality on puppet strings from second zero doesn’t fit for me. Rather, God’s always been improvising with our universe’s possibilities like Jazz musicians with the key of A major, discovering along the way what beauty emerges.

And what I find so insightful about the kid’s response to the length of that “jam session” (to use another Jazz term for what we boringly call Creation)- i.e. that God was being careful, not wanting to mess up- was his intuiting the purpose of it. I mean, we could imagine a god who created without concern for those things that were created. Perhaps making the world was a simple act of self-exertion, a cosmic showing off of, “Let’s see what I can do.” Indeed, many of the pre-Biblical Creation stories that the Bible drew upon and adapted thought of their gods in that way. Those gods had little care for humanity; we were play things, existed mainly to serve them. We were made for the gods’ sakes, not our own sakes, and those divinities couldn’t care less about us.

By contrast, the great religious genius of the Ancient Israelite storytellers was their understanding that within the created order was a plan for love, companionship and goodness. Others put it this way: There’s a moral reality to reality. We were created by and for Love. So the idea from modern science, that we evolved over eons and weren’t made whole in six days, adds an incredible dimension of depth to that religious insight. God took so long because life needed careful attending, patient development. We- life itself!- matter so much to God, God didn’t want to mess up.

Consider that the next time you hear the flawed claim that somehow religion and science are opposed. My five year-old foster child understood how the two can work in tandem, how religious folk needn’t be defensive when confronted with other methods of discovering truth. Indeed, if we were all as open to discovery and hope as children can be, the music we’d make together would sound much sweeter, the harmonies more true.

Grace and Peace,
Shane
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Waiting game…

Blessedly, the weather broke this past weekend from its below zero funk and snow from my roof melted completely. Along with it drained the ice that was clogging my gutters and downspouts, and forming a small, growing ice dam. Last winter, I became familiar with the joylessness of ice damming. They formed in both front and back of my house. Fixing the damage that caused once spring arrived cost us more money than I’d like to admit. This year, though, we found a solution in front; a heating element installed in the gutters I’d hadn’t before noticed and now leave plugged in. No such opportunity for battling ice exists on our rear-facing roof, alas. So as winter began recently, I waited.

And this waiting may be the worst kind; when you suspect something problematic might happen, but you don’t know for sure, though if the cold continues, and more snow falls, and ice keeps forming, that uncertainty ends. You will know. And I mean, KNOW, that it’s only a matter of time before the feared outcome happens - in this case damage to our first-floor ceiling plaster. A word exists for that type of waiting- dread. And praise the seasons’ spirits for extending above freezing temps for two recent days, thereby eliminating our ice dam, for now. My dread receded too.

Another form of waiting also entered my mind of late. Hopefully, it entered yours too. This waiting may be the best kind, on the opposite spectrum end from dread: Expectation. We’re entering Advent soon (or by the time you read this, we may’ve entered) and, of course, that’s the Christian season for waiting, for preparing to honor the annual remembrance of Christ’s Christmas birth. What an interesting decision our religious forebearers made, Amen? Devoting one whole month to waiting. Or perhaps I should be more specific; Advent is devoted to practicing waiting, of the best kind- Expectation.

Expectation is that waiting when you highly suspect the thing you desire will come. You don’t know for certain, obviously, since the future isn’t set yet, but barring unexpected calamity, the wait will end well. I expect a joyful end to our Advent waiting again this year. Christ will arrive. Joy will be born anew. And that expectation helps me fill my inner, emotional space with hope, rather than dread, as this active Advent waiting continues.

As I said, this was an interesting - and smart – decision by those who built Advent into the Christmas calendar. Because the truth about most waiting in our lives is it falls elsewhere on the waiting spectrum. Rarely are we overcome with dread, I hope. Ice dams looming shouldn’t produce the same emotional experience as, say, desiring to upgrade your phone. Nevertheless, many modern Christians aren’t well practiced at good waiting, at turning expectation into hope. Indeed, as technology has improved so rapidly in recent decades, I think we’ve gotten worse at waiting, worse at filling our emotional spaces constructively.

So Plymouth Creek intends to take that reality head on this Advent, and embrace the season of waiting like a friend. In worship- through choir and scripture, sermon and candle lighting- we’ll reflect on the insta-fication of modern life, lamenting its excesses, honoring its gifts. What do you encounter regularly, and except immediate satisfaction or resolution to? Bill paying disputes? Social inequities? Emotional turbulence when you don’t get your way? Some of that’s fine and good, but I worry we’ve all gotten too good at self-righteously, impatiently shouting, “But I don’t want to wait!”

The wisdom of Advent, by contrast, makes the audacious claim that we can deepen our lives by celebrating waiting. Or, at least, we can become better Christians by understanding its contours enough to distinguish between good and bad kinds of waiting, dreads and expectations, problems to abide or solve immediately. So join me in trying to play this waiting game well, in worship, in daily devotionals (if you want ideas, call and I’ll help out!). And please pray for my roof! Or maybe that its owner learns enough to head his dread off, so all will be well.

Grace and Peace,
Shane
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Way, Way Up…

My inner seven-year old boy came rushing out in gleeful giggles last week. It began when I heard that the European Space Agency was landing a probe on a comet. All my dormant astronaut dreams bubbled to the surface, and I marveled loudly, “Wow! A comet!” I’m sure Tabitha got annoyed with my constant, dramatic enthusiasm. I didn’t care. This was Too Cool.

Sadly, while the probe landed safely, it also bounced, settling under a small cliff face. Because it’s solar powered, the resulting shadow means it probably won’t be sending info for long. Nevertheless, that we encountered something so wildly Outer Space seems a wonderful achievement! Next thing you know, we’ll be mining those comets, or sending them Bruce Willis to take selfies.

Again, this is very exciting to me, in a youthful, mouth-gaping way. But I didn’t grow up to pilot space shuttles; I’m a pastor. So it’s my job to think about (cue cheesy music) what it all means… Fortunately, I received a prompt last Sunday, when one of our youngers said- “Shane, your next sermon should be about alien life and God. What do you think?” Awesome question! But since I’d already chosen my next (several) sermon topic(s), I only had this letter available to answer.

I think the comet mission provides a good framework for considering that theological quandary. Because at one level, what space agencies do, and what religion does are incredibly similar. Don’t get me wrong; there are obvious differences! For instance, one reason for launching the probe was determining if comet mining is economically viable. Call that “Exploring reality to see how easily we can exploit places we don’t live.” Religion has done some of that before, of course, with tragic results. But it’s not our core mission, nor what we do best.

Still, another aspect of this story should sound familiar. The probe was also sent to gather knowledge of unknown places. Call that “exploring reality to learn more about what we don’t know.” Another way of putting that is- We’re searching for truth. And isn’t that search also critical to worship, spiritual growth, faith? I think so. Jesus didn’t call himself The Truth so we’d become less curious. We’re described in Genesis 1 as “made in God’s image.” In other words, we’ve created to be co-Creators with God, participants in the exploration and truth-mining business.

And I bring that up because astronomers claim our planet is one among many millions. The universe is massive, and our solar system exhibits no discernibly unique quality. Therefore, the law of averages begs for the conclusion that our earth isn’t the only place life exists. Perhaps even conscious, intelligent life. Indeed, it would be most surprising, given the numbers, if we were alone among the stars. The question isn’t if we’ll encounter life elsewhere, then, but when and what kind.

To which the religiously less-imaginative might shout with horror, “That impossible! It’s not in the Bible!” But neither are solar systems or black holes, and both are real. Or maybe they’d say, “Jesus saved humanity!” Absolutely true, but why couldn’t God reveal Godself to, even redeem, alien civilizations? After all, God reached out already in multiple ways on our earth- Islam, Hinduism, Judaism, Christianity. And more important than all that is the mission we’ve always had as religious folk: searching for and celebrating truth. Why does that matter? Because every truth teaches us more about this God we worship and claim created all.

Thus, my answer to our younger one’s question- What do I think about alien life and God? A) I’d bet some kind of life exists beyond this planet, and b) we’ll encounter it eventually. And most important c) that won’t be a problem for religious folk, for it’ll be a tale as old as time. We’ll be discovering new truths about Creation, and by extension, the Creator, who we’ll still believe loves us and guides us with grace. As long as we don’t revert back to those exploitative ways, in fact, we might learn enough new things about life we’ll sustain ours longer on this fragile planet God gave us to cherish, and protect.

Grace and Peace,
Shane
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Foster Caring…

Tabitha and I welcomed a foster child into our home for the first time last Friday. He’s five, energetic, fun, and apparently, I’m older than I once was. My upper lip is scratched from an accidental elbow during an enjoyable game of “Let’s Flip onto the Couch!” My knuckle is scuffed, my wrist a bit prickly (though that one’s from our other post-toddler, Fawkes the Dog). Crawling around the basement floor didn’t use to light up my knee’s nerves. In short, I’m becoming my father, which- all things considered- would be a blessing. But it may mean I have hip surgery in my future. Ugh.

But so goes life, from generation to generation, right? Passing on the torch, creaky joints, and with them, (hopefully) some wisdom. It’s suddenly my turn to play a part in that drama, however small and temporary as a foster care dad. Thankfully, we’re not alone on the journey. We have community around to help solve problems, discover unknown options. Family and friends, neighbors and church, people like you- generous, compassionate, empathetic (if it sounds like I’m sucking up, well…a little pre-emptive goodwill never hurts).

Besides, one funky thing about church is we don’t always choose our “family.” When the Isners (Johnson’s, etc.) welcome another, in some way, you do too. Perhaps some heads up, then, about several things would help our mutual transition go smoothly. Before you ask, please know I can’t tell you the backstory of why he’s in our home. For starters, I don’t know it all. Besides, as I told a dear friend last week, “I’m not allowed to divulge. His story is his story; he gets control over when it’s told and to whom.” Such a standard is basic respect, I feel. Particularly when the topic involves something so vulnerable as what trauma disrupted a child’s family. Similarly, it’s probably helpful to know he calls us “Tabitha and Shane.” We’re not Mom and Dad, after all, just temporary guardians; opening up our family, but not replacing his. Indeed, our main goal is to love on this little rascal, keep him healthy and growing, until he can rejoin his family, if that’s possible. We’re not sure how long those determinations will take. 6 months?...8? That’s ultimately controlled by the parents, courts and social workers.

In the meantime, we’ll be playing together, dancing goofy, reading books, eating macaroni and cheeses, and learning about life- him and us! For example, already in the past few days I’ve discovered something you parents (or adult caregivers) likely figured out long ago. Namely, that caring for another can lead to the caregiver experiencing a perpetual state of catch up. I noticed this while taking a brief break after Tabitha got home from work. I opened my email, twitter feed, etc., and all had backlogged more than usual. And I knew there were dishes undone, laundry loads to attend, a dog walk I should’ve gotten to, a filling TV show watch-list (anyone else love Sleepy Hollow?!?), plus games to play and play with the youngster. I’ve been stressed about to-do lists before. This weekend felt different. Perhaps because another relied on my ability to get things done. Perhaps because my priorities were shifting real time; those ‘tasks’ that just last week were about personal enjoyment seemed less critical.

I didn’t even watch the Broncos game. Calm down. I listened some on the radio. Which leads to Obvious Observation about Parenting #1: Caring for another makes what you care about less important, but shouldn’t eliminate it entirely. I mean, if I don’t read every tweet I’m accustomed to, I’ll be fine. If, however, I never watch the Broncos play, I’m doing something wrong. That’s the wisdom embedded in Jesus’ commandment- Love your neighbor as yourself- i.e. be less selfish, life will improve, but don’t neglect yourself entirely. Or thus I’m thinking during week one of foster parenting. If that conclusion seems rushed, well, so does my life these days!

In anticipation, then, thanks for your patience. And for foster caring with Tabitha and I. You’ll enjoy the young man; we certainly do. If we do it together, we may even keep up!

Grace and Peace,
Shane
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Sweet Expectations…

I wasn’t expecting to find an Advent Calendar for sale at Starbucks recently. Honestly, I don’t anticipate seeing them peddled most anywhere these days. They strike me as artifacts from earlier eras, when Church had more sway over American pocketbooks. But society has changed. Religiously, we’ve grown more fragmented, diverse, and less invested. To discover, therefore, that cosmopolitan Starbucks chases profit from Advent Calendars seemed odd, though also lovely, in a quaint, nostalgic way.

My first Advent Calendars were gifts from faithful Grandma Ray. Sure like seasons, every November a package would arrive from Chicago with my name on it. I’d open the seal with delight. Inside was a card, perhaps five whole dollars, and my new Advent Calendar, typically a decorated sheet of cardboard with perforated windows. All were numbered. Each corresponded to one day in the season of waiting for Jesus’s birth. Occasionally, Grandma outdid herself, and the calendar wasn’t flat and boring, but a 3-D pop-up house, or castle. 

Yet the instructions were always to open one window per day – no peeking! – until Christmas arrived. I loved those calendars, and not only because their annual arrival re-communicated Grandma’s love.

The daily discovery enhanced our seasonal waiting, beyond simply distracting from dreams of Santa’s sled. You see, the windows, when opened (and we usually did it together as family), told part of the Christmas story or said something affirming about God, or life. Reading those messages, then, focused attention on stuff like meaning, not that I thought about “meaning” at age seven. Rather, I’d talk with Mom about love, or with Dad about joy, depending on what we found behind the window that day. This Advent Calendar ritual helped us wait for Christmas less greedily, more significantly.

The Starbucks calendar, as one might expect, wasn’t decorative cardboard destined for family kitchen tables. It was a wall hanging, twenty-five tins of various sizes glued on, each numbered…and taunting. Because behind every lid, the Advent devotee found a chocolate, or a candy. The advertisement explained, “Something sweet for each day,” promising to make your holiday waiting more bearable.

The Grinch in me wants to call that cheating. It’s like having your Christmas candy and eating it too early. It’s like replacing the season of waiting with twenty-five days of Christmas, gifts consumed before the pear tree’s partridge even arrives. Sure, a tiny toffee on December 15 isn’t a Christmas gift on par with the soft sweater I hope my wife surprises me with (Honey, you reading?). Nevertheless, replacing the meaningful words I experienced in childhood with tangible things changes an Advent Calendar’s function. It doesn’t prepare one for Christmas, or do something different than Christmas, really. It merely extends Christmas earlier.

But the Grinch in me isn’t the only part of my admittedly multiple-personality soul. In fact, as a pastor and Christian- and, more basically, a human- I should want more Christmas, more often, for more people. Not in the sense that I want everyone to be Christian. Interfaith diversity remains an American development I celebrate. Rather, it’s that infectious hope, that optimism, that abandonment of cynicism that arrives annually during the holidays that I’d love to discover more often in my neighbors’ attitude, in my own mind and heart.

Indeed, snide observers in recent years have disparaged “Christmas Creep,” as if it’s an obviously bad phenomenon. Holiday sales starting ever earlier. Cards arriving sooner. Festive sweaters worn longer (well, perhaps that’s a problem). And much of their criticism’s valid, given crass commercialization of religious observance and family tradition. But I’ve sometimes noticed too a sneaking encroachment of holiday cheer into our oft-depressed culture. What of when seasonal love crowds out the sadly hip detachment that threatens our collective well-being? A sweet-a-day from Starbucks during December won’t solve those dilemmas. But they may longer delay a return to dreary normal. And I’d like to think that’s a valuable contribution, one Grandma Ray would celebrate, were she still around to send me packages. Preferably, another cardboard castle would arrive. But I’d take sweets-holding tins. And since I don’t like chocolate, I’d share that joy with neighbors, like Christmas arrived already.

Maybe it would linger awhile.

Grace and Peace,
Shane
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