It occurred to me lately that the way I have been reading the bible doesn’t connect with who I am as a person and the ways in which I learn. I think this comes from the way we tend to read or study the bible in community. We tend to look at scripture one verse, one section, or one chapter at a time.

A related thought that keeps coming up is that the bible is not a collection of timeless truths or nuggets of wisdom. Although such things can be found in scripture, I think it is much more. It is about a story. A story of love, history, and the interaction between God and his people.

I have been longing lately to read scripture looking at the people, places and conflicts. Isn’t this what great stories are about in the first place? You don’t read the Brothers Karamozov or War and Peace sentence by sentence and follow all of the cross references (partly because there aren’t any cross references). You read them for the story– the drama, the characters, the time and the place. It takes you somewhere. You engage your imagination.

Similarly, I think if I read the scriptures for it’s verses, sections, and chapters, I’m missing something. I’m not engaging my imagination. I’m not considering the people, the relationships, the conflicts and the story. I’m missing the deeper message. Maybe I’m missing the point.

This reminds me that maybe the Kingdom of God is more like a cosmic story than an ethical framework or set of intellectual propositions. And maybe reading the scriptures as a story helps you to find a greater understanding of the story that is yet but not yet. A story where God is involved and still has characters, places, and conflict– the stuff that makes up our daily lives.

I keep trying to come up with an analogy for how we engage with the story through the scriptures. Reading the scriptures as verses, chapters and cross references may be like trying to convert it from an analog to a digital signal with low resolution or only a few bits. Reading it as a story is like taking in the music and feeling it. Like finding the rhythm and dancing to it.

Tags: spirituality, bible

Sometimes we want to break out apprenticeship to Jesus into two class. The first class followers are the seminarians, pastors, and missionaries. The second class is everyone else. Those that consider themselves second class see those they consider to be first class as being more spiritually mature and doing more for the kingdom of God.

Unfortunately, it seems that sometimes this thinking can have the consequence of leading us to believe that if only we go to seminary, become a pastor or a missionary, then all of the other struggles in our life will come together. Our relationship with our husband or wife will be healed, we will be freed of our destructive behavior, and we will have a greater capacity for love. Maybe our longing for greater wholeness begins when we surrender our personal kingdoms to the will of our creator.

We also need to be reminded that all work that is consistent with God’s vision creates value and furthers the kingdom. It can be the humble work of a janitor, the creative contribution of an artist, or the advocacy of a lawyer or social worker. This work isn’t limited to that performed by clergy or missionaries.

Related: A talk from Nancy Ortberg on the gift of work.

Alice and I took a shuttle from the airport to the hotel when we were in LA last week. Our driver was a fascinating gentleman who loved to talk. He told us a lot about the LA/Anaheim area and about the local night life. He also knew a lot about the traffic laws and was good at predicting the times and distances to different milestones along our journey.

Like many Californians, he wasn’t originally from the LA area. He grew up in Chicago and has a lot of family in Pennsylvania. He was trying to make ends meet while he finished up his doctorate in music. He told us he only has to take one more class and finish a symphony before he is done and can start teaching.

While we were driving, he described how he and his friends are always on the look-out for celebrities and movie sets. He told us someone famous had been seen in downtown Disney after their golf game the day before. He also mentioned that he sometimes frequented a bar owned by Johnny Depp and would see him there. The driver and his friends like to visit a local second-hand clothing store that specializes in designer apparel that has been worn once by actors for a film shoot and discarded. He casually mentioned that there were some recent arrivals from a science fiction movie set after a quick phone call to a friend. He has a shirt that was worn once by Tom Cruise. They are about the same size he says.

Our driver and his friends lived expectantly. They expected to see, experience, and maybe even own a small part of the celebrity mystic. This reminds me of the description of Joseph from The Message translation of Mark 15. It describes Joseph as “one who lived expectantly, on the lookout for the kingdom of God.”

Should we live our lives the same way, always expecting the kingdom of God to be revealed and experienced? What do you think?

Two weekends ago, Alice and I took a trip over the Santa Cruz mountains to RSV trees to find a Christmas tree. We could have just stopped at a street side vendor, but I thought it would be a lot more fun to make a trip out of it. You get to cut your own tree down when you go to RSV trees. When you get out of the car, you are greeted with a saw and a map. All of the trees cost the same. Check out their web site for more details.

It was a lot of fun. We walked most of the farm before we finally found a tree that we really liked. Alice held it up while I cut it down.

We also got to enjoy some marshmallows by the fire while we were there and Alice built a wreath. They have a wreath making station. You pay $5 and you can build a wreath with whatever you find on the property. Alice did an amazing job. Here is a picture of the wreath she made after we put it up on our front door.

The woman who was helping us was impressed with Alice’s first wreath. The picture probably doesn’t do it justice. She spent some time asking around for the best advice from the other families that were building wreaths. I think it paid off. It smells great too. Fresh.

The trip was a lot of fun. We are thinking that it might become a tradition.

Alice and I were also asking the question “Does a Christmas tree have anything to do with the baby Jesus?” I think there likely is a connection between Christmas trees and pagan festivals. I don’t think that means we can’t celebrate Christmas with a tree though. See also the wikipedia entry for Yule and the connection to Christmas.

Perhaps the celebration of Christmas around the time of the Winter solstice was an attempt at contextualizing by early Christians. I wonder how they went through the process of deciding what to encourage and what to discourage from the local culture and the established traditions. It seems that at the time, the Pope was open to recasting the pagan rituals as a way to subvert them. It makes you wonder what really is ‘Christian’ and what is cultural. In this country it seems that one might think that consumerism is part of celebrating Christmas. While the act of gift giving and remembering a greater gift is good, it seems that we have taken a good thing and taken it to a whole other level. Maybe the ritual has been recast yet again in a different direction.

The idea that God did some similar recasting with the ancient Israelites and their pagan sacrifices raises some interesting questions (see the Yule entry and the connection to modern Christmas). I’m think specifically of the practice of sacrifice as an atonement for sin. Was God working through a long process of redeeming our inclination towards ritual violence by forever siding with the victim through Jesus? Does God really approve the practice of ritual sacrifice? I desire mercy and not sacrifice he says. If not, why would he enter into it through the law and ultimately in Jesus?

Maybe God was slowly recasting ritual sacrifice in an act of love meant to transcend violence once and for all. Maybe the birth and death of Jesus wasn’t about atonement for sin but identification with the victim and the redemption of murderers by enduring the violence. Maybe God was putting an end to all mythologies of violence once and for all. This brings new meaning for me to the peacemakers being sons of God.

For more info on this idea, see Was Christ Just Another Scapegoat and the wiki entry for Rene Girard.

While I was reading Subversive Orthodoxy this week, I encountered a definition of faith that was new to me. The definition was quoted from Northrop Frye. It goes like this:

An active faith is a continuous sequence of committed actions guided by a vision.

I like Northrop’s definition because it brings faith into something tangible and intentional. It also reminds me of the role of our imagination and it’s power to guide and shape us.

Our community is trying to determine what rhythms and practices are need to help keep our vows. Over the past few days, I have been trying create some material to facilitate a discussion on this topic. My hope was to try and get some input from some of the other religious orders that we have connections with. Thus far, I don’t think I will be able to get more input by the time we have our meeting, but I did stumble upon someone else who provided me with timely and very wise input.

During some of my search for more information about how other communities keep their vows, I found a blog called A Nun’s Life that is authored by Julie Vieira. Today she has a post about religious life not being a popularity contest. I really appreciated her thoughts and the subtle nuance that she sees from the concern about the size.

Here is a quote from her post about interest in numbers:

Jesus himself said, “For where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them” (Matthew 18:20). He did not say, “Where institutions, buildings, and popularity abound, there I am.” Certainly, Jesus is there wherever and however many we are. No question about that. But size was not the criterion for following the gospel, being a viable community, or pursuing a mission that God planted in people’s heart.

The more subtle point that she makes is about the focus of the thinking about numbers and size. Instead of paraphrasing, I’ll quote her directly:

When the focus of religious life becomes the religious community itself or the individual herself/himself, then something has gone terribly wrong. Religious life is not about any one of us or our community. To get caught up in such navel-gazing is to neglect the whole reason religious life exists: to serve the world and Church. It’s about MISSION. Without mission, it doesn’t matter how many people come through the convent doors or how consecrated you look or what lofty ideals you subscribe to.

It is about MISSION. This is the input that I was missing. I think in trying to create a community it is easy for us to lose sight of our mission. Thank you Julie for reminding me.

So what is out mission and how do we focus on it? Maybe that should be held to tightly as we try and create practices and rhythms for keeping our vows.

For the sake of communicating more about our community and to follow this thought maybe I should mention a few words about or mission. We see our mission as modeling and teaching an integrated way of life that is leveraged for the good of the world and is inspired by the life and teaching of Jesus. A life of love for our creator and creation.

So what should be the measure of our community? I could take Julie’s lead (it’s a good one), but I would like to hear from others what they think. Any input?

Our community decided to take vows last weekend to try and make our commitment to following the way of Jesus more specific and accountable. We want to seek a way of life that we believe moves us closer to becoming like the master. To do this, we feel that it is necessary to create some accountability and solidarity with our community. We hope to accomplish this by taking vows around the seven rhythms we have come up with.

Simplicity Service Prayer Creativity Obedience Community Love

Many people are longing for a more committed and accountable way of life that is consistent with their values and the teaching they receive. The typical model followed by most churches tends to focus primarily on teaching with little or no connection between the doctrine or ideas and how they are integrated into our daily lives.

We long for wholeness and integration. We long for our lives to be lived out in a way that reflects our values.

Maybe Friday is a good day to reflect on the thoughts of the last week. Or maybe Friday is just lazy and I’m reluctant to be productive on some of the things I know I need to get done. Here are some thoughts from the past week.

Wedding planning is in full effect. Planning and preparing for a wedding is crazy. A friend recently told me that him and his wife didn’t know what to do with themselves after they got back from the honeymoon. I’m looking forward to that space.

### Work thoughts
Large public companies are generally focused on three things: profits, returning value to the shareholders, and their customers. As an employee of a large company, your role and tenure at the company are for the most part controlled by people you don’t know and forces you can’t possibly comprehend. My experience has been that large companies sometimes behave like empires– they attempt to define reality for everyone involved and sometimes they loose the ability to distinguish between the world they are creating and the one they are trying to manipulate. Maybe I’m cynical… If you think so, show me a public company who’s primary focus is something other than profits.

### Dorothy Day
I was struck by an commentary I was reading about Dorothy Day. Here is the summary that he put together about her philosophy on insolvable social problems.
> To change your life, change the way you process experience. To change the way you process experience change the way you live. We don’t think our way into a new life, we live our way into new thoughts.
I thought this was a fascinating insight that also applies to formation. The quote comes from Robert Inchausti’s book Subversive Orthodoxy: Outlaws, Revolutionaries, and Other Christians in Disguise.

### Advocacy
Finally, Alice and I have been trying to think through how we can be advocates for family, friends, or those who are in need as we make the transition to a married couple and care for each other. We were both struck by the language that Jesus used in Matt 25 in the parable about the sheep and the goats. It seem like Jesus was taking things very personally when he says “whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me.” Maybe as advocates we should take it personally when those for whom we are advocating are not cared for or treated with dignity.

The work that we have been doing over the past 6-12 months is coming together in a more tangible form. We have been gathering to explore what it would look like for a community of people seeking to live in the way of Jesus to make some vows to further their commitment in this direction. I’ve written a little about this journey here, here, and here.

The meeting this weekend marks a milestone for us. We feel like we’ve come to a place where we can put a little more structure around operationalizing the vows we are taking. We’re calling the group Seven. Here is a little history on the name.

A NAME: SEVEN

For a while we were calling what we were doing “common life” and some of us have spent hours brainstorming different names and approaches to a name for the community of people who are exploring vows together. We looked over the six vows and realized that the intent of all of them is to LOVE—God and people. If we added love, that would make seven vows. There were seven days of creation and there are seven days in a week and we seek to live the way of Jesus seven days a week through the seven vows we make. (As an added curiosity, many of us live in or near a principle city that is 7 by 7 square miles.)

We decided that it might be better to use a name that requires some explanation, because a lot of our attempts at a name that fully explained things was cumbersome or had the wrong connotations. So we are proposing SEVEN as a name to describe the activities and gatherings of our community.

And here are the vows:

Service:

1. We account for and leverage our time to serve others through evaluating our commitments and developing a written schedule we share with one another that reflects our most important priorities.
2. We give priority in our schedules to seeking the presence of God with orphans and widows and people who are hungry, thirsty, naked, sick, lonely or in prison.
3. We seek to do work that provides income and fulfills our true vocation with dignity and in ways that promote equality, sustainability and justice.

Simplicity

1. We keep careful account of our personal finances and live budget that reflects sustainability and intentional conscientious priorities, and we share our income and expense budgets with one another in a yearly members meeting.
2. We give away 10% of our income; (5% to the common work of Seven Society and 5% to the charities of our choice).

3. We seek to live lives that are focused, content, sustainable, and generous. As a general principle we are mindful not accumulate possessions and, once a year, (on the day after thanksgiving) we collectively take an inventory of our belongings and evaluate what to keep, share, sell or give away.

   Creativity

4. We cultivate divine imagination by reading the scriptures daily with our family or household.

5. We seek to find God in all of creation and our humanity through intentional and reflective interactions with nature and cultural artifacts.
6. We create cultural artifacts (recipes, poems, paintings, songs, stories, etc) and share them with each other once a month leaving a trail for others to discover and learn from. (The fourth Sunday evening of each month)

Prayer

1. We begin and end the day with 15 minutes of prayer.
2. We take an annual three-day silent retreat.
3. We participate in cooperative morning-prayer the second and fourth Fridays of every month.

Community

1. We are active in a Jesus dojo cohort excercises.
2. We participate regularly in Sunday night SEVEN gatherings.
3. We practice hospitality on a weekly basis (Thursdays suggested) with neighbors, coworkers, travelers and strangers on a weekly basis.

Obedience

1. We keep our vows.
2. We meet with a trusted mentor at least once a month to talk about personal growth. (either someone within SEVEN or another local person.)
3. We seek community discernment on major life decisions (change of vocation, marriage, relocation, personal crisis, etc) through a listening meeting (scheduled for the 4th Sunday of the month).

Love

1. We seek to meet one another’s needs.
2. We seek to be reconciled one with another and with all people.
3. We seek unity, cooperation and goodwill with all groups and people locally and globally seeking God in the way of Jesus.

Update 9/11/2006: I updated Simplicity and Community slightly to reflect the updates from the Saturday night meeting.

It is more difficult for me to put words to this vow. For this year cycle of the dojo, obedience will be the last rhythm we explore (probably about 2 months from now). Maybe it is hard for me because I haven’t spent a lot of time wrestling with it with others.

I think the place for me to start is to acknowledge Jesus as something more than the price that was paid for us. I think it is easy to focus on this narrow perspective of Jesus because it is very personal. But I think obedience calls us to acknowledge Jesus as much more. It calls us to also acknowledge Jesus as our teacher and guide and to recognize that Jesus has been given authority over all of creation. 

It is through his Son that we have redemption– that is, our sins have been forgiven. He is the visible image of the invisible God. He is supreme over all creation, because in connection with him were create all things– in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones, lordships, rulers or authorities– they have all been created through him and for him. He existed before all things and he holds everything together. (Col 1:14-17)

I think in many ways, this is a little hard for us to grasp. We don’t know what it is like for someone to have "supreme" authority in the west so maybe it is a little difficult to imagine what that means. For me, it has been both comforting and arresting to think of presidents, prime ministers, CEO’s, and other rulers as no-rulers but as stewards of earthly power that has been given to them. Or, to put it another way, Jesus is Lord, and you are not.

But what about Jesus as teacher in the ways of the Kingdom and the way of Love? Do I trust what he tells me in the scriptures? As Paul mentions in 1st Corinthians 1, do I trust that God’s "nonsense" is wiser than man’s "wisdom"? Am I willing to follow it?

So much of what Jesus did and said was counter to the way our world and culture works. He was mysterious,  subversive, and elusive. He was radically compassionate and embracing while simultaneously critical of the rulers and authorities. He was a healer, mystic, companion and a traveler. He was the Son of God.

How do we go about obeying him and not all of our "isms"– capitalism, liberalism, conservatism,  technicism, and so on?