Learning

Back from vacation and soon back to writing....

In the meantime you can check out my second message at Hillside Church here:

http://www.hillsidelondon.com/sermons/learning/

War in my head...

Tonight I left to go to work with a lot of anxiety. It was nothing to do with work itself, it was a deep sense of dread that nothing matters in life. It's hard to believe I could walk out the door from a wife and daughters I adore and cherish and still even question life's meaning. But I'm a complicated guy and my intellect and my work as a psychologist have led me to some dark spaces. I have a strong theology of suffering, but the hellish thing I heard this week...well...it reminds me of all the other torture stories I've heard in the past 10 years, and it sucks me into those powerful questions I have about human life being anything more a terrible mistake of evolution. Consciousness allows us to do some amazing things, but it's also an enormous burden.

And at the risk of sounding like I'm coming unglued, I think I heard a voice tonight.

I had a patient cancel at the last minute, and in the mean time I decided to confront my angst with silence.

In the silence I heard that voice I've so rarely heard - probably because I'm such a terrible fucking skeptic.

Oddly, it was a voice that reminded me of something my friend wrote about church.

My friend said that a church is a group of people trying together to learn to have their hearts beat like God's beats. That we learn the rhythm of God's heart, and try to have our hearts beat in time with His.

Beautiful.

If the spiritual metaphor is too vague, what I'm saying is that I think we have to learn to love the things that God loves, in the ways that God loves. That life's meaning is to be found in emulating Jesus...not by being religious...but by loving in those radical ways that overcome darkness and torture and death. We defy the horror of this life and that sick empty feeling that chases a lot of us whenever we slow down, by choosing to love extravagantly.

And as I tear myself away from my own internal battle long enough to realize that I am not the sole decision maker about whether my life is ultimately meaningful or worthwhile,  I'm captivated by the thought that those whom I'm bound to in life - my family, my community, the patients I serve, the God that I wrestle with - also have something to say about whether or not my life is meaningful. It makes me realize that I need other people - that any question about existence is not for me to work out as a private intellectual enterprise - but can only be resolved in the context of who I am in relationship to others. And hesitantly I acknowledge that for me this must include others who believe and doubt this story of Jesus.

But I have a lot bad feelings and thoughts about church. These days fewer of those thoughts are judgemental angry ones, and most are just despair because I can't find an enduring or satisfactory answers about who we are to be as a church.

Yet maybe it really is so simple (not easy, but simple) as learning to pattern our own hearts after God's, and learning to do this together in the context of community. As much as I struggle with Christians, I need them. I need to have them in my life to learn how to love...and they need me...with all my selfish, critical, over-thinking, brokenness. They aren't just the blue section on my Google calendar, they are a part in God's invitation for me to learn how love as God loves. They are God's invitation to a life saturated in meaningfulness, redemption, and hope.

Mindlessness as a form of Privilege

In turning my attention to things in my daily life, I have become aware of this truth:

That being mindlessness (being inattentive) can be a form of privilege.

I've known this is true in certain areas of my life for some time, but I never realized how deeply it runs.

I've learned that not thinking about sexual orientation, ethnic status, gender, socioeconomic status, is a privilege that comes with being a middle-class straight white man, in a culture where these things are dominant. I've learned that being able to "forget" how these things deeply impact a person's daily experience is a privilege, and one that adversely effects others around me.

My intent is not to draw attention away from the injustice of all this, but I'm starting to realize that my inattentiveness starts to pop up in a whole range of contexts where I have the privilege to not have to pay attention or care.

I can ignore the ramifications of my food choices, because of where I live, my wealth, my mobility, and my unfettered access to any kind of food, from any place, whenever, and however I want it. I don't know when certain foods are "in season" because I've never had to think about it - it still just shows up in my grocery store.

Even more problematically, I can ignore how my choices degrade local and far-away ecosystems because my privileges allow me to live in an insulated world, encapsulated from the consequences of my actions. Others do not have this privilege. Others will go hungry, live in war zones, suffer damaged ecosystems, and not be able to do anything about it, while I continue to ignore it and live however I choose.

In the process of becoming a mindful person, a mindful, attentive follower of Jesus, I am learning that the privilege I have had to ignore these issues is vastly destructive in its impact on others.

Recently I bought the cheapest relish on a store shelf, later reading that it came from India. I have no issues with India making relish and exporting it, but it's hard to believe that saving 20 cents over the national brand that was manufactured in the US, didn't come with more than 20 cents of consequences for other people. Not to mention the fact that relish could be made in my own backyard, with no burning of fossil fuels involved, for probably the same price.

But it's been my privilege to ignore these issues. I didn't need to care about where the relish came from, because I wasn't the one facing the consequences burning diesel fuel to ship a jar of relish 7000 miles.

But Jesus teaches us a different way. We learn that all of us are connected - like brothers and sisters connected, and that my deep bonds with the rest of humanity and creation mean that their suffering is my suffering. I may not have been aware of it, but now I am, and I have choices to make in how I respond to it.

Probably going to start with making my own relish.

Why does faith involve acting like a jerk?

I needed a little gentleness this morning. I mean in my own heart, towards others. I was experiencing a "bad church experience" hangover.

Maybe you've had them. They're those times when you go to a church and get so angry you don't want to go back.

For me it was the self-righteous attitudes of some, but not all, of the presenters. I realize I'm a self-righteous jerk on a regular basis, but I get tired of being with other people's self-righteousness.

Maybe I have an unrealistic expectation that others will have grown further than me and be able to help me or inspire me, rather than demonstrate the same ugliness I hate about myself. Maybe it's because I'm trying to find the person of Jesus lived out in other people, and when they fail, I'm disappointed.

It got me thinking, "why do so many of us who claim to follow Jesus, have such a proclivity towards being self-righteous?"

Paying attention to Food

How often do we pay attention to what is in our mouths as we're eating it?

How often do we pay attention to where our food came from? (I don't mean which store, I mean where it actually came from - which field or barn, how far did it travel, what conditions was it grown in)

A couple weeks ago I was in Florida and experienced a moment of confusion. I was in a large grocery store and noticed that orange juice was exactly the same price there as it was at home in London, Ontario. At first it seemed wrong that I should pay such a high price for a local product, but then I started to wonder if the local price was more reasonable, and my home price was being somehow subsidized....was I not paying for the thousands of miles of transportation (not mention the environmental costs) of having Florida orange juice in wintery London?

Truth must shape us

I was flipping radio stations the other day and heard this from a contemporary American philosopher/poet:

"They say what don’t kill me, can make me stronger 
 So two drinks a night should help me live longer"
 (Ludacris, "Rest of My Life")

Ludacris, is of course referring to a statement by the German philosopher/poet Freidrich Nietzsche, who did say: 

"That which does not kill us, makes us stronger".

I snickered a little. Leave it to a popular musician to completely miss the point and make it into a song lyric. Probably thinks he's a real clever lyricist for slipping a line like this in.

Lately I've been trying to be less critical in everyday life. Not by just restricting my behavior, but by finding myself in the behaviors I'm quick to criticize. 

The truth is that I interact with a lot of truth and wisdom in a similar way to Ludacris.

I think about the way many of us approach religious texts like the Bible. Ludacris takes a passage from Nietzsche and misapplies it, in this case making it a universal truth, without hesitation that logic might dictate some limits to the ways in which an idea is true. It is obviously not true that anything that doesn't kill us automatically makes us stronger. Chemotherapy is tailored to kill certain cells but not all cells....it may cause a cancer to remit, and even temporarily stall death, but it doesn't "make us stronger". 

Nietzsche was referring to adverse life circumstances, not providing a prescription to take small doses of poison as a method of building physical health. (Interestingly, it seems small daily consumption of alcohol may have some scientific support for having health benefits, but I'm pretty sure this isn't what Ludacris is referring to).

In a conversation the other day someone quoted me Psalms 37:4 "Take delight in the Lord, and He will give you the desires of your heart". She used it to justify her belief that God should give her whatever she wanted. I gently suggested that maybe she was too broadly applying an isolated text, and that it was both clear and good that we don't get whatever we want in life. I've desired some rather terrible things after being cut-off by another vehicle in traffic, or after my beloved Green Bay Packers have take a bad call from a referee. When I simmer down I realize the desires of my heart often involve things that in retrospect aren't good for me, and I'm glad that God so often saves me from my self and my desires.

But the reality is that we all do this on a regular basis. Like Ludacris with Nietzsche, and my friend with this scripture, we approach wisdom (philosophical, Biblical or otherwise) like a product to be consumed, and consumed in a way that satisfies us. It is our posture as consumers of truth that leads us to ignore the complexity of a truth and apply it ways that render it untrue.

The truth is, Ludacris, if you're drinking two drinks a night, it probably is to avoid some real difficulty in your life, and avoidance doesn't make us stronger, it makes us far weaker.

The truth is, friend who quoted me scripture, that if you read this Psalm in light of the other Psalms and the rest of the Bible, that God is deeply concerned with the desires of our hearts because they are so often destructive and to us and to others. The Bible is filled with a story in which humanity's desire to be its own gods, is rescued and helped to reshape its hearts desires to what is true, and good, and beautiful.

Whenever we approach truth and wisdom from the position of a consumer, we run the risk of shaping it into something that satisfies us or works for us. But ultimately it should be the other way around. Truth should shape us. It should confront us, challenge us, not give us what we want, but call into question the very legitimacy of our desires.

It takes a village to raise a marriage

I had a weird reaction the other day when I took my girls to Disney on Ice. 

Maybe it was the euphoria of thousands of children giving me some kind of energy.

Maybe it was the joy of my own daughters being thrilled by something.

Maybe it was just that old Disney magic.

Nope. I think I figured it out. 

It happened during a scene from Beauty and the Beast. The skating figures were re-enacting the part where various characters from the castle (a clock, a candlestick, a tea cup, a tea pot - all of which are given human qualities and talk) are interacting with Belle and the Beast. What got me was the way these characters were going back and forth between the two young lovers helping them negotiate their way through a typical relational issue. Of course, as is true of so many fairy tales, the issue centers around a simple misunderstanding. But it struck me, that so much of what confounds us in marriages starts with simple misunderstandings and the hurt feelings that follow. 

Wisely, the characters around Belle and the Beast attempt to help them see the misunderstanding that has taken place, and encourage openness to reconsidering how things "really are". 

My emotional reaction to all of this was the beauty of having good friends surrounding a relationship and helping it along the way. When the Beast (fitting character eh?) is full of bluster and blow, his friends remind him of things that soften and open him to re-engaging his beloved.

I know divorce is complicated. I know the studies, and the host of explanations for our escalating divorce rates...most of which have good merit and explanatory power. I witness the ugliness of it in my day job. 

But this  I wonder;  what would our marriages (or our relationships in general for that matter) look like if all of us were surrounded by friends who helped us see, helped talk us down when we needed it? 

How much quicker would I be to break through the insularity of my own assumptions if I had friends intimately involved in my life, helping me to see that things are different than I believe them to be?

How much less time would I have wasted in my marriage being distant or angry, if a kind friend would remind me that my wife is not out to get me when she overfills the garbage bin (again). This doesn't have to be some kind of weird cult-like utopian society. A few months ago a friend of mine made an honest confession to me about his marriage, and it caused me to see how I too make a similar error. He didn't have to be a marriage counselor, just close enough to me, that authenticity could shed some light on my own life.

Beauty and the Beast reminds me of the importance of life together. That marriages might have a better chance in a marriage-hostile culture if we all lived in authentic community with each other. We might come to regard the "Beasts" in our lives differently if a nurturing community was along side of us reflecting on how our assumptions about each other fail us, and cause us to miss the beauty that lives in all of us.