50 years – The Fifth Decade 2004 -2014 – The One with the Sabbatical

I turned fifty last month and wrote 4 blogposts looking at each decade of my life. I got as far as 2004, when I was well-established in field administration. This is the installment that brings us up to the present and then “to infinity and beyond”.

Places lived: Mali, Cameroon, Côte d'Ivoire, Burkina Faso, USA. 

Verse:

Jeremiah 6:16
This is what the Lord says: “Stop at the crossroads and look around. Ask for the old, godly way, and walk in it. Travel its path, and you will find rest for your souls. But you reply, ‘No that’s not the road we want!’”

Life-Shaping events:

In 2004, due to political unrest and its aftereffects, I ended up going from being assistant director over one country to full director over two countries. The day before I was elected, we had some sort of group mixer in which we pasted bits of cardboard to a map to represent the different parts of our work. For some reason, I had to carry it home for the night and bring it back the next day. As I picked my way carefully through mud puddles, I had a fear that I would drop the poster in the mud and mess it up. And then I realized that I had a much larger fear: “What if I drop the BRANCH in the mud while I am director?”

It was a difficult time to be director and as the years went by I wondered why I could not be director at a time when all was normal. We were losing staff and the financial resources that went with them. Work in both countries was threatened by instability.  We joked in meetings about making “more bricks with less straw”.

Key verse:

You keep track of my sorrows. You have collected all my tears in your bottle. You have recorded each one in your book. Psalm 56:8

There were a lot of difficult things during this period, so many, in fact that I was overwhelmed by “unexpected tears” during my sabbatical (2011) when I finally took time to enumerate and grieve over them:

Senseless court cases, civil unrest, threats of terrorists, sickness and medevacs of key people, a suicide, personal and family crises among our staff. So much that might have been, that was thwarted for reasons I cannot now see. So many cases also where we were forced to rely on God instead of our own capacities

 I’d like to say that this was a time that I did rely solely on God, but much of the time I relied on my own ability to multi-task and stay on top of a multitude of things. I am someone driven by duty and the work was without end, with not enough people to do it. People often commented then (and still do) on my seemingly limitless energy and my job became one that no one else could imagine doing.

By 2009, I was nearing burnout. I was dry and thirsty and in exile spiritually.

 But God was seeking after me putting books and sermons and verses in my path. I actually memorized:

“I lie in the dust completely discouraged. Revive me by your word.” Ps 119:25

My furlough was due in mid-2010 and my boss suggested that rather than doing a normal “home assignment” in administration, I consider a Sabbatical. This was a window of hope that was opened to me, that somehow things could get better. But even as I planned things to do during my sabbatical, events combined to delay it until early 2011. Read here (in the first post on this blog) about how God began inviting me to healthy practices of reading and meditation and scripture memory in that time of “delayed gratification”.



In the summer of 2010, when I should have been returning to begin the sabbatical but could not, I went ahead and did a trip to Northern Ireland which was truly a drink of cold water to me in a very dry time.

Read: northern-ireland-and-color-green

This was also a time where I was challenged to begin thinking about Sabbath and what it really means for me, the gift that it is. (See here my “Prezi” sermon on Sabbath, which I have given three times.)

Coming back to Mali, I began getting serious about Sabbath and that is literally what carried me through to the Sabbatical time in 2011.

As that time is mostly detailed in this blog, I will not repeat it here, or this could become very recursive. I've included lots of links to specific blog-posts.

Highlights of the Sabbatical would be

• The time at the Boiler room in Kansas City.



Boiler Room Building in Kansas City 

• A month at the retreat center on Lake Thunderbird

• The Oklahoma Freewheel 500-mile bike ride across Oklahoma. 

 

In this Sabbatical time and beyond, God is teaching me the importance of

• Removing distractions
• Creating space for quietness and contemplation.
• Sabbath
• Creativity – including blogging, making candles, music.
• Reading
• Journaling
• The Liturgical year: Lent, advent. . .
• Living in community and interdependence
• Living in simplicity without a lot of stuff. Being evacuated and then having to liquidate your household in short order will do that to you.
• God’s work is Unhindered by what appear to us to be major setbacks.
• The Responsibility for Getting the work done is God’s not mine.

“Do not feel totally, personally, irrevocably responsible for everything. . . That’s my job. Love, God.”

 After the Sabbatical

God knew what he was doing in arranging the sabbatical before one of the most difficult times in my life: the coup d’état in Mali and our evacuation [March-April 2012]. (Read “In the Pressure cooker” parts 1, 2, 3 and 4). I really do not know if I could have survived this time without the Sabbatical preparation.

God prepared me and resourced me to lead our group in this very difficult time, using the unique gifts he had given me. He had taught me that I needed to take time for myself, for reflection and contemplation and planning and rest:

“Get up and go! Come back and wield your sword in the part of the kingdom where you can wield it best.” [see blog post]

The time during the coup is one where God sustained me and where my unique giftings came together for that time. People commented that it seemed like I was truly “in the zone.” It is

During my sabbatical, God introduced me to the idea of being a nomad, living simply and relying on God. 2012 was the year of being a nomad. When I did my taxes for the year 2012, I honestly could not say where my tax home was. In this year, I made 15 border crossings, hopping back and forth between Mali, Kenya, Burkina Faso, Thailand, France, and Cameroon. From March to December, I averaged 2.5 weeks per country and was truly “transient” in this time.

And it was during this time that the Lord led me to accept a regional role which would involve setting up in Cameroon and traveling significantly throughout Francophone Africa. This, too, was a step of faith, but God has been good.

It is interesting to see how the administrative skills as well as my crisis management experience in the past years have prepared me for this role.

“These 40 years . . . “

As I was reflecting on the five decades that make up my first 50 years, I began thinking of theme verses for each decade. The week of my birthday, I kept coming back to Deuteronomy 2:7 which was a key verse for my 3rd decade

“The Lord your God has blessed you in all the work of your hands. He has watched over your journey through this vast wilderness. These 40 years, the Lord your God has been with you and you have lacked nothing.”

And then I heard a podcast the week of my birthday and it centered on Deuteronomy 8, which had such a similar theme that I thought it was the same passage until I looked it up.

8.2 Remember how the Lord your God led you all the way in the wilderness these forty years, to humble and test you in order to know what was in your heart, whether or not you would keep his commands. 3 He humbled you, causing you to hunger and then feeding you with manna, which neither you nor your ancestors had known, to teach you that man does not live on bread alone but on every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord. 4 Your clothes did not wear out and your feet did not swell during these forty years. 5 Know then in your heart that as a man disciplines his son, so the Lord your God disciplines you.
15 He led you through the vast and dreadful wilderness, that thirsty and waterless land, with its venomous snakes and scorpions. He brought you water out of hard rock. 16 He gave you manna to eat in the wilderness, something your ancestors had never known, 

This really seems to be a perfect description of the past 10 years especially but also the entire 40 years I have been a Christian.

[To follow - 5th Decade - part 2, people, bikes, music, books, etc]

Thoughts on Medevacs – Part II

 Flash forward 11 years, through five other medevacs. One other has involved a special plane and the rest have been on commercial flights, but each stressful in its own way.

All focus and energy for several days is on getting the person out of Mali and to a place where they can get the help they need. People chip in from all sides, much like people do everywhere when someone is in the hospital or has a long illness.

This time around our evacuee was hanging something on the wall at school last Thursday, (Nov 11) and fell off the chair. She broke something in her foot that will require surgery in the US.

So we began the medevac process on Tuesday morning. This was a relatively "easy" medevac - no special plane and no one’s life hanging in the balance. But still stressful, for me calling and emailing folks around the world – and trying to manage the tiling project begun in my apartment that same day.  Others were driving our patient hither and yon to the clinic [thankfully better than the one we had in 2000].

On Wednesday Nov 16, they got the "okay to travel" letter from the local doctor, which specified that we needed a wheelchair at the airport. Then they did the pre-check in at Air France in town (drop off bags, get boarding pass). They were told there’d be a wheelchair at the door of the airport.

So our patient, her roommate and I headed for the airport at 9:15 pm for the 11:40 flight. Wouldn’t you know it, no wheelchair at the door of the airport? The others were waiting in the car and so I went in to the Air France counter and they said, "Oh yeah." They called someone and said it would be coming. But they told me that we could in no circumstances take it TO THE CURB or even outside the front door. If the patient couldn't walk at all, the doctor would have ordered an ambulance. So there!

While we waited, I got our patient and she walked on crutches through the crowd up to the front door. There was a chair just inside where she sat with her roommate, while I went running around to Air France trying to get someone to pay attention.

“Aw ka chaise ma na fɔlɔ?” ("What? Your chair hasn't come yet?") They kept calling someone but never seemed to be terribly concerned about finding it.
I did eventually confirm that the wheelchairs were indeed at the airport and not at someone's house.

Eventually, when they started calling Air France people to the departure lounge, I went up to the nice policeman, Mr. Dembele, at the front door and asked if he could help us. This is where it pays to speak some Bambara. He very kindly left his post, and took me and my passport back through ALL the security checks, saying all the while in Bambara, "His wife is at the front and needs a wheelchair." I did not correct this misassumption. 

We went out the back of the airport and walked right past 3 Wheelchairs. [Note to airport staff: Why not keep these by the front door instead of out on the tarmac?] We went into some sort of operations control room with bright lights and the policeman asked about a wheelchair. They said, "Oh yeah, Air France has been asking for that! It hasn't come yet?" So they got on the radio and called someone named Boubacar.
We went back inside, past the 3 wheelchairs, past all the security points, to the front door and in a few minutes Boubacar arrived with the wheelchair.

The rest was fairly straight forward. With the wheelchair, we were escorted through all sorts of lines. Eventually they took her outside and about 3 blocks down to the airplane and into the little metal room that they put the food in. It has an elevator and gets lifted up to the plane - the only way to avoid the steep metal steps up to the plane.

The good news is that she made it to the US without further incident, and had surgery on Monday November 21. Do pray for that!

All of this got me to thinking about medevacs.

Deep Thought #1: How do we spell “medevac”, especially when you conjugate it: Medevacking? Medevacing? Medevacked? Medevaced? Sometimes I settle for “medevacuated” but that is just too long.

Deep Thought #2: We mobilize the infantry and move heaven and earth to get someone out of the country and to proper medical attention.  But how often do we pay so much attention to the spiritual health of our friends, family and ourselves?

We have the image of the Good Shepherd and the Good Samaritan, who bind up the wounds of the sick and the broken hearted.

Ezekiel 34:16 “I will search for my lost ones who strayed away, and I will bring them safely home again. I will bandage the injured and strengthen the weak.”

If you think about it, what is a sabbatical if not a time of convalescence for the soul?

Sometimes with a medevac, the person is fully conscious and able to make decisions and so there is much less intervention on the part of those helping out.  Sometimes, we come to the recognition on our own that our soul needs some help and we cry out to those around us.

But other times, those being medevacked are unconscious and the spouse is too shaken up to make decisions and so the administration has to help make those difficult decisions to evacuate or not.

Who do you know that needs someone to come alongside and shake them up a bit to their need for help?

Do you have any wheelchairs sitting tucked away at the back of the airport, far from those who need them? What resources and help do you have that is hidden away, far from those who need it?

We all need help sometimes, someone to take us by the hand to throne room where there is help for the broken-hearted.

The image of the Mr. Dembele, the Policeman, lingers with me. I had a passport but he took it in hand and led me past the immigration check, the yellow-fever check point, the security scan (we beeped going through the scanner) and even out the back door onto the tarmac and into the control room where mere mortals do not go. All that was required was a word from his mouth and we were waived through.

I could not help but think of Jesus who is our high-priest and who takes us and leads us directly before the throne of God. He is there to help us and to intercede.

Counterbalances to our Natural Impulses (Disciplines)

As I have read and reflected over the past 7 months on my sabbatical journey, the spiritual disciplines keep coming up, something God is calling me back to, or in some cases, to do for the first time. As I read more about various ones, I find that they almost always seem to be a counterbalance against some aspect of our nature, which when left to itself leads us far away from God. The disciplines are like course corrections, guiding us back to center.

It might seem that without these, you will keep going straight, but our sinful natures pull us off to the left, further and further off course, without us even noticing. These disciplines pull us back to the right until we are heading straight on course again. Like a rudder they counteract the winds and currents pulling us off our heading.  

In evangelistic Christian circles, we have a tendency to question certain disciplines as being legalistic and binding. The October monthly reading in Common Prayer: A liturgy for Ordinal Radicals ( p. 462) speaks to this:

“Growing up in a legalistic Christianity” many of us have developed a suspicion a discipline and order that can lead to a pretty sloppy spirituality. Reacting against the institution’s sickness, we easily find ourselves with little to help us heal from our own wounds, create new disciplines and carve out a space where goodness triumphs. People who are afraid of spiritual discipline will not produce very good disciples.”

So here are some of the disciplines I have run across. Not an exhaustive list, and perhaps better called Practices.

[1-4 are time oriented, operating on daily, weekly, annual or even longer cycles. The other ones are not really tied to cycles in the same way]

1.      Daily prayer at set times in the day - “the office” as practiced particularly in monastic communities. As protestants, we resist scheduling times to pray, but if we don’t, we often forget. Oddly enough, we don’t have to schedule daily meal times. We just stop and eat as a matter of course. Stopping to pray at set times regardless of what else is happening reminds  me that the work I’m doing in the kingdom is not paramount. I bend the knee to something that takes priority over what contribution I happen to be making at that moment. Prayer reminds us of our dependence on God and that the real fruit comes from him, not our efforts. It’s a way that God chooses to involve us in the outcomes, even though He is sovereign. St. Igantius says, “Work as if everything depends on God and pray as if everything depended on you.”

2.     Weekly Sabbath keeping is a counterbalance to the idolatry of control through work and technology and the quick pace they bring. Sabbath keeping – it provides a detachment from the workplace, from the world’s way of doing things, from our compulsion to take things into our own hands. Or as Eugene Petersen puts it ‘a weekly housecleaning’ that allows us to enter the week “uncluttered with idols”. It “erects a weekly bastion against the commodification of time, against reducing time to money, reducing time to what we can get out of it, against leaving no time for God or beauty or anything that cannot be used or purchased. It is a defense against the hurry that desecrates time.” (Christ plays in 10,000 places, p. 111)

3.      Lent is an annual time to look at our habits and weaknesses. We examine our habits and lifestyle for areas that may seem harmless but may not be and abstain from them. It is also a time to remember Christ’s suffering in the month leading up to Easter.  

4.      Pilgrimage – As mentioned, the first four disciplines take their place in daily, weekly, annual and higher cycles. Pilgrimage is on a very slow cycle, perhaps something you do only a few times in your life. It is also one that few people actually do. The book, Sacred Journey posits that pilgrimage is a counterbalance to Gnosticism, a heresy that says that the spiritual is “good” and the body and all things physical are “bad”.  Going on pilgrimage calls us away from the many aspects of our lives that we control (lodging, meals, who we interact with), to follow God where he leads us, out onto the periphery of society, rubbing shoulders with whomever, depending on the kindness of strangers, etc.  (See Journey's End, Wielding the sword for more from this book).

5.      Fasting is a way to take the focus off of things that distracts us from Jesus. In A man’s guide to the spiritual Disciplines, Partick Morley says “Fasting releases the participant from the confusion of competing voices. Your personality and temperament will affect the kinds of things that distract from your relationship with God. For me, it’s work. I’ve discovered fasting as a way to slow down my RPM’s protecting my focus on Jesus Christ.“ p. 121.

 

6.      Living in Community is a balance to living centered on self. The Benedictine monks placed a high-value on “Stability”: staying put to get somewhere. That is staying with the community of people God has called you to, rather than flitting from church to church and job to job when we come across someone or something we don’t like. If we wander from place to place, we become slaves to our wills and appetites.  God has placed us in communities and has called together “this particular constellation of people to speak and hear from each other what is needed for their mutual growth in Christlikeness.” (Monk Habits for Everyday People, Dennis Okholm, p 91)  Community forces us to practice our gifts, and roots out our selfishness, and develops character in us as we learn to love others, even the difficult ones.

7.      Lifestyle of Poverty – Intentionally living with less, sharing or having things in common. This can be a balance to our protestant work ethic and the materialism around is in the wider culture.

8.      Eucharist – The Lord’s Supper – communion. I keep bumping up against the mystery of the Eucharist, realizing its importance and reality on a level higher than just as a symbol. As someone who grew up Baptist, this is one of the disciplines we regularly do –not often enough, perhaps, but we do hold to it as a practice (ordinance) to be done as a church body.

Communion, as the name implies, is always taken in community, and thus is a counterbalance to our desire for independence, to experience God on our own terms – “just me and Jesus”.  You can’t to communion by yourself. You HAVE to have a group, and it is not even a select group of just folks you like. Everyone gets to come to the table, rich or poor.  Rob Bell calls it a “public display of solidarity wherein we come together and carry each other burdens, elbow to elbow.”

Thomas Merton talks of being “nourished by the sacraments”. What does this mean? The Eucharist seems to have a deep mystical meaning to so many, a mystical meal that nourishes us spiritually, but how? Rob Bell says it is a “time of centering ourselves on where our real strength lies. It is the center of the Christian experience, trust in Jesus crucified.”

It reminds us of Christ’s sufferings, God’s solution to our sin problem: “the fellowship of sharing in your sufferings and so somehow to attain to the resurrection from the dead”.

At one level, the Eucharist very obviously replaces the Passover meal, which was tied to the first covenant. Jesus established the Lord’s Supper as he ushered in the new covenant, sealed with his own sacrifice. The first meal was to be “a memorial day, keep it as a feast to the Lord, an ordinance forever”.  Exodus 12:14.  If Passover is no longer to be observed forever, then it must be only because it is superseded by this new meal.  And so we do what believers have done since that first Lord’s supper: Eat the bread, drink the cup. Receive Christ crucified.

Petersen says participating in the Eucharist “keeps our participation in salvation healthy and not just ‘our thing. It prevents salvation from “being dominated by our feeling and our projects”. (Christ plays in 10,000 places, p. 170, 202). We are tempted to make salvation about what we do, but communion is not about what we do, it is just about reenacting in the meal a picture of what Christ did for us. We proclaim the Lord’s death and receive over and over again what we cannot take or perform as our own.

Finally, the Eucharist keeps Christ before us as central to salvation. Otherwise we might think of Jesus only as our Great Example, Great Teacher, or Great Hero. When we take communion, we are not receiving just ideas ABOUT Jesus, but rather receiving life from Jesus.  (Peterson, p 202).

Okay, there they are -  8 practices or disciplines, among others. Lord, grant me the grace to practice these and stay on course to destination’s end.

Journey's End, Wielding the Sword

 

On Saturday at 1 a.m., I arrived back “home” in Mali after my sabbatical journey and more normal furlough activities in the US. It is hard to say whether I feel more at home in Mali or in the US.  After 18 years or so of going back and forth, it is almost like slipping back and forth between different realities that are both valid, but very different. When you arrive in one, it’s like putting on an old comfy pair of shorts that fit nicely and feel great. It’s like you never left. And then you go to the other and pull out the clothes that go there and say, “I love the way this sweater feels on a cold day.”

But there is a real sense in which you are never QUITE at home in either one.

I’ve just finished reading a book called, “the Sacred Journey” by Charles Foster, which looks at the ancient Christian practice of pilgrimage. I kind of bought the book on a whim, since I had a few other books in that series, and was about to set off on my bike ride across Oklahoma, which I didn’t think really qualified as a pilgrimage. However, there is much in the book that has rung true with my spiritual journey this last year.

Certainly being on furlough this time was a time of travel. I counted that I had slept in 38 beds over the 8 months I was in the US. I was on the road from March to mid-july, averaging about a week in each place I stayed. My car was so full, it looked like I was someone who had lost his home and was living out of it: summer and winter clothes, two bikes (one for each leg), books, some food, tools, speaking materials. . .

A pilgrim travels light. Jesus sent his followers out two by two and tells them not to take anything for the journey. “Don’t take a walking stick, a traveler’s bag, food, money or even a change of clothes.”

My luggage, the first time I packed it!

Oops! I tend to think I live rather simply compared with what a lot of people have, but I did have to repack my bags both in Denver and in Houston because they were overweight. I ended up with a trunk, a suitcase, a duffel and a carry-on and some hefty excess baggage charges. Now that everything is all unpacked, I wonder if all I brought is really necessary.

Foster says in his book

“We ask Jesus to be realistic in the constraints of the real world. We don’t have the luxury of wandering luggage free around the world.”

Jesus replies:  ‘WHY NOT? Come. I never said it would be easy. Try my system instead. Few ever have.’ ”

Foster argues that pilgrimage helps us leave behind pain, work and the humdrum of life. “It makes us vulnerable and different. Do something heroic and completely empty ourselves. Leaving things behind and discovering things, destroying things. Vomiting out the old!”

For me, this was very much the case on my sabbatical. There was healing of pain, laying aside of work concerns and distractions, and allowing God to speak through the people and places I encountered.

On the road, there is a stripping away of the things you thought you’d need. You find you really can live with a lot less. The things you thought that were a central part of your identity end up being fripperies.

You learn to depend on other people and to accept hospitality. When you are not living somewhere – not settled, you give up a lot of control, about where and when you will sleep, what you will eat, even where you will go to church.

 Jesus was a traveler and asks us to follow him – and not just on twitter. He traveled the margins of society and mingled with the marginal.

Jesus says: “The Kingdom of God is among you. Get up, get out, wake up, walk on, open your eyes. Ask for new eyes: you’ll see it if you are really looking for it… It’s on the road. I’m walking. Walk the road, too, with me. Reclaim the ability to be taken by surprise, and you’ll see it there, glistening, so brightly you will never believe you could have missed it.

The Kingdom of God “is all happening at the edges, in the forgotten places, in the places you can’t get to by car or where your auto insurers wouldn’t let you drive, among the people you’ve put out with the trash.” (Sacred Journey, p. 78).

Foster reminds us, as did Captain Jack Sparrow, that, “It’s not the destination so much as the journey.” Historically pilgrims seldom have epiphanies when they finally get to Jerusalem or Rome or wherever. “If epiphanies happen, they tend to happen in the anonymous no-man’s land en route.”

And then, eventually, you must return home, as I have. This should not be the end of the journey, but a beginning, a time to put into practice what you have learned on the road, to reintegrate that into your life and create something new and better.

RS Thomas says,  

“The point of traveling is not to arrive, but to return home laden with pollen you shall work up into the honey the mind feeds upon.” (p. 178 of Sacred Journey)

Foster tells the story of a man who was given a special sword. It disappeared suddenly and he was sent on a quest. He presumed the point of the quest was to find it, but really it was to get him to the point of asking “What am I going to use my sword for?”
Once you figure that out, THAT is why you have to go back home.

“Get up and go! Come back and wield your sword in the part of the kingdom where you can wield it best.”

This talk of wielding your sword resonates with one of my first blog posts where I wrote about my time in Dallas at the beginning of the journey. I learned that I needed to take time for myself, for reflection and contemplation and planning and rest, so that I could leverage my strengths (my sword) to serve others and advance the work in Mali.

Pray for me as I try to put into practice what I learned on the journey for the daily journey ahead.

It was the Worst of Times --> It was the Best of Times!

I just celebrated my birthday on Saturday. Friday night I was sitting in a concert with friends listening to their sons and others play music and got to thinking about the year that had passed from June 2010 to June 2011 and I realized what a great year it had been. 

The backdrop was the year before that - one of the hardest years of my life, following on some other hard ones. Dry, duty-bound times full of “Martha work” and not “Mary joy”. Dragging in at 7:30 or 8 p.m. each night thinking not uncommonly how I hated my job. Yes, there were bright spots – mountain biking, moments of celebration in our work, visits from friends, Single’s Bible studies.

But if I wasn’t burned out by the spring of 2010, I was certainly on a downward trajectory. When my regional director suggested a sabbatical for my upcoming home-assignment, it was like a window had been opened, with light shining in but for some time in a few months. I envisioned a “rebooting” of my spiritual life. (Hey, if they can reboot “Star Trek” and “Batman”, why not? Seems like a great modern metaphor).

In spring 2010, I started planning a sabbatical: books to read, verses to learn, disciplines to follow ONCE I got away from it all in June 2010. However, God’s plan was different – and better. Two different colleagues were prevented from returning to Mali in June last year and so I had to delay my furlough. When news of this came, I was disappointed, but like Homer Simpson, was slapped around by the Epipha-tree: Why do I have to wait to do those things? Why can’t I start doing them here in now in Mali. I did and God honored that.

In June 2010, I decided to go ahead and take the trip to N. Ireland that was to have begun my furlough. There the window began cracking open wider. The guy at the retreat center encouraged me to just ride the bike out along the cliffs and sea and NOT take books with me to read.  Just see what God might have to say. Very freeing for a protestant work-ethic bound person who felt the need to have something constructive planned all the time. I was also challenged to be serious about Sabbath rest and that flowered into a time of delight and rest that began wonderful transformation in the fall of 2010. Ask my friends and colleagues.

Perhaps I could have learned that lesson in the US on a proper sabbatical time, but it made a lot more sense couched in the weekly cycle of work (6 days) and sanctification of Sabbath time (7th day). It’s hard to “give up work” when you are on a time of sabbatical when you have no structured work duties. Not unlike starting a diet when you are already doing Lent.

Flash forward to February 2011 – home to the US. Sabbatical time begins formally in March. Lots of making space for God to speak in whatever way he might choose: reading in coffee houses, listening to music, visiting museums, walking through parks and cemeteries, meeting new friends, living in community, writing and blogging, cycling, cycling, cycling, Cycling across Oklahoma – call it a quest or pilgrimage but it was icing on the cake.

There was a stripping away of many of the extra things that we so often use to anchor us: familiar places and people, TV, work, regular internet connection, constant surroundings. And guess what? When you clear those things away, it’s easier to hear God speak. 

It’s been a time of God lavishing his love on me as His adopted son. It took me a while realize that this thing I couldn’t put a name on was what they call “Grace.” As I was writing this, as has happened so often, a song came on my computer that seemed hand-picked: 

This is what it’s like to be loved. This is what it’s like to be forgiven. This is what it feels like to be alive. To be living in a way that you don’t have to fear being zapped by God ‘cause you don’t measure up. After all. . . . that’s the point.
Charlie Peacock, That’s the Point, 1996

There was also healing (see blog post “unexpected tears”) and tears and grieving for those hard things of the past years. Someone said the tears are like vomiting – not pleasant when it happens, but you sure do feel better afterwards. And I can say that as I go back and review those things now, the scars are there but the soreness is drained out.

So as I was thinking of this past year, June 2010 in Ireland to June 2011, I can say it is probably the best year of my life. A great time of God following after me, pursuing me, bring me back home, rebooting me. Life 2.0 – that may be a bit extreme, but that is how it feels.

I went to sleep with this on my mind and woke up on my birthday. The Common Prayer for Ordinary Radicals Liturgy for that day had a reading from Ezekiel 34:16 that was a great birthday present:
I (the Good Shepherd) will search for my lost ones who strayed away, and I will bring them safely home again. I will bandage the injured and strengthen the weak.

Unexpected Tears

Mid-way during my time in Kansas City, I went to see "Soul Surfer" which is a good, christian movie with some quality actors: Helen Hunt and Dennis Quaid. I am not so macho that I can't admit that I sometimes cry at movies, but in this particular case, I cried through a good deal of the movie, so much so that I was glad that it was 4 pm and there was only 2 other people in the theater.

The odd thing is that I have found myself crying a LOT since I began the sabbatical - reading books, listening to songs, in church, during dramas at conference last week, during other movies, but thankfully not during "Thor" last week, as that would have totally messed up the cool 3D effects. 

I've been trying to figure that out - the crying part. Last fall, I read Dan Allender's book "Sabbath" and he says that noise in our lives 

"masks a far greater cacophony that will seldom be heard until we choose silence. The problem is the underlying noise is louder than the masking sounds we use to cover what we don’t want to hear.” 

If we are silent, we are forced to deal with things, to being deeply disturbed. When we are quiet we can confront and hear the voice of  loss - dealing with grief that will surface when we are silent. A grief we fell too impoverished to invite in as a guest, so we send it away as an unwanted stranger. We have to turn up the volume on Loss/Grief, or it will keep calling us back and not allow joy.

Apparently when Dan Allendar went on his sabbatical, a friend asked him, “Are you ready for what will come?” True to form, he found himself awakening from deep sleep weeping, but was unaware why.

He says that "grief is like vomiting. It exhausts, nauseates, and relieves. Empties us, weakens us, but prepares us for food again." Or as Jesus puts it : "Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.”

Back to Soul Surfer: Why did it affect me so? This movie started out with them singing "Blessed Be Your Name" (Matt Redman) which we sing ALL the time in Mali. There is a reason we sing it a lot as it deals with praising God when things don't seem to be going the way we think they should be:

"You give and take away. . . . When the darkness closes in, still I will say. . Blessed Be Your Name". 

I think I decided that is why the movie resonated so much with me. The surfer girl had a lot of promise and then had that taken away inexplicably and then dealt with the loss.  The things that could have been were shattered, and then they were redeemed, remade into something better.

And that made sense set against the relief of so many things in Mali and Ivory Coast: senseless court cases, civil unrest, threats of terrorists, sickness and medevacs of key people. So much that might have been, that was thwarted for reasons I can not now see. So many cases also where we were forced to rely on God instead of our own capacities. And being quiet has allowed me to grieve those things.

In this time of Sabbatical and unexpected tears, God has given me this verse, which has been meaningful:

You keep track of my sorrows. You have collected all my tears in your bottle. You have recorded each one in your book. Psalm 56:8

An atheist friend of mine recently lead me to this verse:

 I form the light and create darkness,
I bring prosperity and create disaster;
I, the Lord, do all these things. Isaiah 45:7 (The french says "prosperity and adversity")

God is sovereign even when adversity and disaster come our way. 

Last week's sermon by Harold Bullock was on Celebrating the Tapestry of Life. When looking at a tapestry, you can not see the pattern that is being woven from the back. It is not clear until it is done and you flip it over. You need those dark threads to provide contrast.  Harold closed with: "I can't see the pattern in the Tapestry, but i know the weaver."

Pray with me as I am about to head off to the lake for a month. This will be a time for silence. Pray that I can still my heart and sit silently.

Let's Dance! (A Psalm of David ....Bowie??)

Over the past 2 weeks I have driven 24 hours, spread out over 5 days. That's a lot of time in the car and I have been listening to sermon podcasts but also a lot of music piped over the speakers from my phone.

Part of Sabbatical for me has been just being open for God to speak in unexpected ways, ears to the ground, eyes open in wonder. Eugene Peterson talks about cultivating wonder: "surprise, puzzlement, astonishment - GOD at work. and right here - in Jesus, in you, in me!" I would add: noticing God's creative image in those around me, joy at being alive, wonder at God's love lavished on me. . .

So anyway, I am driving along somewhere between Austin and the brown nothingness of Midland that makes the desert in Gao, Mali, look like a garden paradise, and I come across the David Bowie 80's classic "Let's Dance." I actually had this as my ringtone fairly recently because it just has such an awesome groove.

But the more I listened, I began to hear it as a song, a psalm perhaps, with God singing in joy and love over us and inviting us to join in. Wonder, in odd places. I doubt that is how David Bowie intended it so with apologies to him:

Let's Dance
Let's dance put on your red shoes and dance the blues

 Like most psalms, we start out with "the blues" - hard times. But there is intentionality to find joy (red shoes) and dance in spite of the blues.

Let's dance to the song
they're playin' on the radio

 God meets us where we are - with the song that is already playing on the radio.

Let's sway
while color lights up your face
Let's sway
sway through the crowd to an empty space

God invites us away to an empty space, alone with Him.

(Our response to God in submission and trust:)

If you say run, I'll run with you
If you say hide, we'll hide

 (God's declaration of overflowing love for us):

Because my love for you
Would break my heart in two
If you should fall
Into my arms
And tremble like a flower

This last bit reminds me of Rich Mullin's line "Hold me, Jesus, cause I'm shaking like a leaf".

Let's dance for fear
your grace should fall
Let's dance for fear tonight is all ...

Let's dance put on your red shoes
and dance the blues

Let's dance to the song
they're playin' on the radio

Let's dance, Let's dance, Let's DANCE!

--------------------------
Okay, sorry to anyone for whom I have ruined this most excellent song. I had doubts about posting this at all, but then last night I was reading the reading on Sacred Space devotional online and found this reflection of Jesus coming alongside us, as he did on the Emmaus road with downcast disciples:

Yet all at once there is someone, a seeming stranger, alongside … and what a change then takes place! And can it be the same with me, as I travel on my way, downcast and lifeless? Someone always alongside, who never gives up on me? Perhaps even he is my partner on what might be called ‘my dancing day’ – for, crazy as it may sound, he seems to dance, dance before me, so I find myself alive once more, and with vibrant movement coming back into my limbs. ‘He dances so that you may dance. He shows you what beauty is, his body awakens yours. He’s there to be your partner and everyone’s; sometimes you’ll see him opposite you, sometimes not … He gives you the fusion of his mind and imagination and flesh – his glorious body’ (Rowan Williams, Open to Judgement, p. 74).

 And then there is this verse, which is slightly more Baptist because God is just singing over us, not dancing :-)

Zephaniah 3:17 For the Lord your God is living among you.
He is a mighty savior.
He will take delight in you with gladness.
With his love, he will calm all your fears.
He will rejoice over you with joyful songs.”

Eternity, planted in our hearts

Eternity
This one has been rumbling around in my head for a while, beginning with my wrestling with Sabbath issues last fall (see my Sabbath sermon presentation.) where I learned that our Sabbath rest is just practice for eternity - a time to nourish the seed of eternity in our souls. (cf. Abraham Heschel's book "Sabbath")

And like so many things during this season of sabbatical, God just keeps weaving this theme in and out of whatever I read or listen to.

Thoreau in "Walden"

Time is but the stream I go a-fishing in. I drink at it; but while I drink I see the sandy bottom and detect how shallow it is. Its thin current slides away, but eternity remains. I would drink deeper; fish in the sky, whose bottom is pebbly with stars.

and elsewhere in Walden:

 As if you could kill time without injuring eternity.
The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.(Thoreau)

"Quiet desperation" - that sounds a lot like the Teacher in Ecclesiastes who says that "Everything is Meaningless"
The word "meaningless" is from the Hebrew Hevel = vapor, breath. In a Rob Bell sermon on Ecclesiastes, he says that we can try our best to manage the vapor in our lives. Normal wisdom literature tells you that if you do wise things, you will succeed. And those who do foolish things will fail. But in Ecclesiastes, the Teacher says none of it matters. The rules that you thought worked before, the way you were working before, they do not work. It is all "vapor". At least that is true for all that is "under the sun", e.g. created by God or created by us.

The counter balance to this is "eternity" which shows up in Ecclesiastes 3:11

Yet God has made everything beautiful in its own time.He has planted eternity in the human heart, but even so people cannot see the whole scope of God's work from beginning to end.

In part 2 of the Ecclesiastes sermon series, Shane Hipps says that this experience of eternity is independent of time. We all experience time dragging out (waiting for a package to arrive or in line at the airport) or speeding up when we are fully engaged in an activity we enjoy. When time "speeds up", we experience joy and peace.

How do we get to this point of eternity? We get there by "seeking first the kingdom of God", entering fully into the current moment with Jesus.

Everything else -past, future, mourning, dancing, gathering and throwing away - is transitory, vapor. We can do "vapor management" to try to control all those things, but when we get tired of playing "musical chairs" we can return to this place - this eternity in our hearts" with the help of the master. Just don't forget where the chair is when the song ends. Ask the Master to help you find it! (Musical chairs metaphor: Shain Hipps)

Peterson's book "Christ plays in 10,000 places" also touches on this (p. 108ff).

"How do we live so that the wonder and astonishment that so often comes to us unbidden and spontaneously isn't dissipated in trivial pursuits?" He says we need a focal practice which "focuses on eternity in a culture that is increasingly depersonalized and alarmingly fragmented". That practice is Sabbath keeping. 

"Sabbath creates a weekly bastion against the commodification of time, against reducing time to money, reducing tiem to what we can get out of it, against leaving no time for God or beauty or anything that can not be used or purchased. It is a defense against the hurry that desecrates time."Peterson, p. 111.

 I guess for me, this boils down to making time to nurture the seed of eternity in my heart, the presence of God, the kingdom of God, abundant life. 


At the Christian Leadership Alliance Conference last week, I went to a seminar on building a "Personal Rule of Life" by Steve Macchia (Gordon Conwell Seminary). The PRoL is

a holistic description of the Spirit-empowered rhythms and relationships that create, redeem, sustain, and transform the life God invites you to humbly fulfill for Christ’s glory.

To create a Personal Rule of Life you look prayerfully at your gifts, role, call, vision, mission, desires and then figure out
the "Rhythms and relationships" you want to to focus on for this season in your life: particular use of your time (spiritually), talent (missionally), temple (physically), treasure (financially), trust (relationally) in each major quadrant of life.
then  you map out activities and limitations for each day, week, month, season, year each of these areas.

Anyway, i am looking forward to having time to process this when part 3 of my sabbatical resumes in May 12. 

Sabbatical year - not just for farmers and pastors anymore

I haven't blogged much this week since I have been at the Christian Leadership Alliance Conference in Dallas. Hope to pick up some of that content and merge it with some of the stuff running around in my head. 

This morning before checking out of the hotel, I watched the Royal Wedding highlights, I went downstairs and got breakfast and read the Common Prayer: A Liturgy for Ordinary Radicals scripture passage for the day. 

It was , Leviticus 25.1-17

 :3 "For six years you may plant your fields and prune your vineyards and harvest your crops, but during the seventh year the land must have a Sabbath year of complete rest. It is the Lord 's Sabbath. Do not plant your fields or prune your vineyards during that year. And don't store away the crops that grow on their own or gather the grapes from your unpruned vines. The land must have a year of complete rest. But you may eat whatever the land produces on its own during its Sabbath. This applies to you, your male and female servants, your hired workers, and the temporary residents who live with you. Your livestock and the wild animals in your land will also be allowed to eat what the land produces." (NLT)

Not sure why I had not hunted out this passage on sabbatical at the beginning of my sabbatical time, but here it is. 

What jumps out me is that this talks about a Sabbath for the LAND. 

But if you are not working the land, then that becomes a sabbath for the farmers, too. And this is extended to pretty much everyone else: their servants, employees, and visitors. And even their animals. 

This was every 7 years. Bible scholars say that the Israelites never really DID this nor the Year of Jubiliee every 50 years. That's too bad for them - and for us if we don't do it. What would the world be like if everyone lived out this Kingdom Sanctioned Rest?

Another thought - I had been thinking how privileged I was to have the opportunity to take a sabbath -and it IS a privilege to have that freedom in today's world, even for someone working in christian NGO/mission. But in this passage, the year of sabbath rest is not optional. It is not a suggestion but a command. (vs. 2)

Finally, note the element of faith involved. No sowing and reaping during that year. God will provide and you will eat what the land produces on its own. You are not allowed to save any of that for the 8th year. In fact, verses 18-22 answer the question of "what will we eat" saying that when you plant in the 6th year, you will harvest a triple harvest to allow you to live in years 7 and 8.

While in Kansas City, I met up with a guy there who felt that he should quit the corporate job he had recently taken elsewhere and move back to KC for a while. This involved living off his savings for several months and waiting on God. 

For me it is a bit easier, as I have ongoing financial support, but I do note that God provided graciously through my donors in December, January and February, to allow me to truly enjoy this time without nickel and diming myself. 

So is anyone game for taking a several months (a whole year?) off from your work, relying on God and enjoying his rest?All I can say is that God offers you this season of delight and rest.

Life in Community, Hospitality, the Body of Christ

I have been living in the Kansas City Boiler Room community for over 2 weeks now.
And it has been a really great experience even for someone who lives in a fairly small missions community in Mali, it is different to live day in and day out with people, to share living room, kitchen, washing machine, to rub shoulders in the morning when you just woke up or to see them at the end of the day when they are coming in from somewhere.

One of the things about the Boiler Room community is that they are intentional about living in community. Obviously this is great for singles and provides space for God to rub off the hard edges. But they also do it with married people and couples sharing the same house.

The Boiler Room Rule (not unlike the Benedictine Rule) says that
"At the heart of every Boiler Room is a living community committed to being:

1. Authentic: True to Christ
2. Relational: Kind to People
3. Missional: Taking the Gospel to the World. 

Dennis Okholm in his book "Monk Habits for Everyday People", which I have only just started, says that monastic communities demonstrate the significance of Christian community to an individualistic society. 

This is the same society that is focused on self  instead of soul. (see my blog post below on this).

I am finding that living in community gives me a chance to practice the spiritual gifts I may not be strong in. I was taught that we all have one or two spiritual gifts that we are gifted with, which will be motivational for us. Mine are serving and administration. But I was also taught that just because we have certain gifts, we are not absolved from practicing others: mercy, generosity, hospitality. . .
Living in community has given me a chance to do this.

• Lots of opportunities to serve but then that is a natural one for me.  
• Opportunities to share freely my food and other things - working on selfishness. 
• I see someone with a need that I have the financial resources that I can help with. So great to be on the giving end after receiving support from so many for so long. And this is different somehow from having random Malians come to my door and say "you are my only hope."
• Opportunities to practice hospitality. 

This last one is one of the Boiler room practices: "to offer simple hospitality to strangers wishing to stay and pray." In a sense, I am very much receiving this hospitality and it has been great to be welcomed with honor. But I have seen other examples.

1. We have a weekly "roommate meal" that everyone contributes to. And often outsiders are invited in. Afterwards we may sit and talk or might have a time of prayer.
2. We had two "couch surfers" come and stay on the couch in the prayer room for the night as they traveled following a band as 'groupies'.
3. The other day one of the guys here ran into two "travelers" on the street and invited them in for the night. They came with their guitars, and their dog "My Dog". And stayed for a few days. They are hitchhiking and riding on trains and dumpster-diving their way across the US. They "busk" to earn money (play guitar on the street) and also do odd jobs. Against all my preconceived notions, it ends up that they are Christians and pretty neat guys! I was honored to share food and conversation with them.

Part of hospitality is recognizing the Image of God in the other person and celebrating and honoring that.
Chesterton says: "It is because in the total stranger we perceive man himself; the image of God is not disguised by resemblances to an uncle or doubts of the wisdom of a mustache.

Living in community also expands your horizons and thinking about the body of Christ.
I keep meeting people who are very obviously are Christians but have tattoos and want to get more more, smoke clove cigarettes and pipes, hang out in bars, make very loud but awesome God-honoring "storm the castle rock" music, folks who do the whole vegan thing and even eat "raw" foods only.

Being in SIL and traveling widely, I already rub shoulders with a pretty wide diversity of people: folks from various christian traditions, different nations and ethnic groups, folks who drink wine and beer, folks who do advent and lent, charismatics and "smells and bells", those who don't watch TV, those with huge families, those who have no kids, those who have chosen singleness, those who are liberal democrats, those who are conservative republicans, the social justice folks...

The body of Christ is a wonderful family - even if I don't agree 100% with everyone, we have great fellowship together. So when you meet those folks our there who are different from you, look for the image of God in them before you judge and celebrate with them what God is doing in them and through them. And see what you can learn from that.