Look Beyond

Returning to the Rain

I haven't posted here in quite some time.  Since my last posting I've had inquiries into my abscence in the form of comments here and e-mails.  I want to thank those of you who have thought about me and taken the time to say hello.

I'm making this post to let you know that I've returned to the blog I had been writing for a year prior to launching this one.  It's a blog called Awaiting Rain.  Back in April I felt like I would be walking away from that blog for good.  But God has invited me to pick up the pen once again.

Here is an excerpt from this morning's post announcing my return:

This blog became a chronicle of my odyssey in this place.  If you dig back through the pages you'll find the writings of a man lost in a familiar place.  You'll hear the frustration of a man waking up to find all of the furniture had been rearranged in the night.  You'll read the words of a man who had forgotten his own identity.  Most of all you'll read the thoughts of a man longing for the kindness of God in a strangely foreign, dry and thirsty land where springs of cool, clear water used to abound.

A few months ago I laid down the pen.  I had finally given up on my pursuit of the kindness of God, settled for exile, and turned my attention elsewhere.  Today I am taking the pen back in my hand.  In the last few weeks I have come to see that this odyssey has been God's pursuit of me more than my pursuit of God.  And it is through the revealing and refining of my character that God has shouted his love and kindness to me.

If you are a subscriber here, I want to invite you to subscribe to Awaiting Rain.  If you have A Look Beyond linked on your blog, I would be honored to have Awaiting Rain linked instead.  I hope you will rejoin me at Awaiting Rain as important characters in my odyssey.  Perhaps I can serve as an important character in yours.

Prayer and Spiritual Wellness

I suppose people in every religion pray.  If there is a deity in whom you've decided to place your belief, it would make sense that communication with that deity would be an important component of your relationship with him/her/it.

I can only speak about prayer as someone who believes that Jesus Christ is the deity and as someone who has placed supreme value on being in relationship with him and reflecting his nature to the world around me.  That's a long way of saying that my perspective on prayer is "Christian," however I try to avoid calling myself a "Christian" because that word comes with so much baggage that in no way reflects the Christ whom we worship.

We heard a sermon recently on the power of prayer that left us feeling frustrated and elicited a robust conversation among some in our small group.   Though I'm not so sure that this is what the preacher meant to say, it seemed to communicate that the "answers" to our prayers are contingent upon our performance as people.  God will answer your prayers if you're good enough, if you're fervent enough, and if you have enough faith.  That idea was troubling for some of us because it sets us up for a blow back of self-condemnation and shame when the outcomes for which we pray do not happen.

Someone in our small group offered this illustration.  A godly young man with a young wife and newborn child (they were part of our church for a while) was killed in battle in Iraq last week.  Meanwhile, the 3rd Infantry Brigade from nearby Fort Benning are streaming back home after a 15 month deployment.  Thousands of family members are rejoicing, as their loved ones disembark the plane, that their prayers for protection "worked."  But what about the young man who was blown up?  Did the prayers of his wife and their godly friends not "work?"  And if not, why?  Was his wife not good enough?  Was she not fervent enough?  Did she not have enough faith?

Tying the outcomes of prayer to the quality of the pray-ers character and the quality of the prayers themselves is problematic to me. 

I shared with our small group that my prayer life has changed in recent years.  I no longer spend a lot of time praying for outcomes.  The reason is simple.  As a finite human being I do not have the omniscience to know which outcome is the correct outcome in a given situation.  I think that there is more going on behind the veil that separates the natural from the spirit realm than we could ever comprehend.  And when we locate the time and energy of our prayers in a set of desired outcomes, we're going to be left confounded much of the time.

My prayer life has, instead, become one in which I simply invite God to be present in my life, and in the situations, events, and circumstances with which my heart and mind are occupied.  I want to learn to walk with God through circumstances, rather than simply calling upon him to change circumstances that may be unpleasant or protect me from circumstances that I would rather not face.  Because he has very clearly promised to us that he would never leave us - that he would be with us always - prayer is no longer a request for an outcome that either is or is not answered.  It is a journey together through pleasant and unpleasant places with a God who has promised to never deviate from his character of love, goodness, grace, and mercy.

Why Can't I Find This Vision Statement?

I believe in the Kingdom Come
When all the colors will bleed into one
Bleed into one
Well, yes I'm still runningYou broke the bonds
And you loosened the chains
Carried the cross
Of all my shame
all my shame
You know I believe itBut I still haven't found what I'm looking for.

The annual conference of the denomination in which I am an ordained minister is meeting this week. I've made the choice to not attend. This spiritual season that I've been in for nearly three years is bittersweet. On the sweet side, I believe that I am being freed from some religious attitudes that do not reflect the character of the God I worship. On the bitter end, when much of what you've spent your adult life believing and pursuing is being shaken loose it's like living through a long, violent, 6.8 along the San Andreas...alone. I've spent time looking around at church websites in the Columbus, GA area to see what's out there. And all I find is more of the same: pre-packaged, purpose-driven, Sunday-event-oriented events.

I am desperate to find a group of people who share my belief in and devotion to Jesus Christ and have the following "vision statement."

Ours is a church that will, by design, never grow beyond fifty people in a single gathering. When we reach fifty, twenty of us will be ready to form a new faith community somewhere else in the city with the cycle of multiplication continuing through multiple generations of faith communities being born out of one another.

Because they can be so enslaving, distracting, and idolatrous, we will never own buildings or property. We'll always gather in one another's homes or public places.

We will never employ paid clergy. We will work in the marketplace to support ourselves and bless those around us with the fruit of our labor. We will recognize and appreciate the giftedness of every individual without elevating a few to elite status.

We as a faith community will give generously out of our abundance, but all that we give will be used to make sure that no one in our faith community is without the basic needs of life, that the poor around us are cared for, and that Christ-centered humanitarian work around the world is supported. None of what we give will be used to fund property, payrolls, and programs.

We will devote ourselves to living the way of Jesus Christ amongst ourselves and in the world around us, understanding that the way of Jesus Christ is the way of extraordinarily sacrificial love, kindness, grace, mercy, and generosity.

What is so hard about this? Yeah, I know there are some negatives in there which you shouldn't use in a real vision statement (not focusing on what you're against, but what you're for), but has anyone considered how dramatic of an impact this appoach to "Christianity" could have on the world around us?  Has anyone thought about how so many of the problems in the church, such as clergy abuse, church financial scandal, elitism, and consumerism, could be all but eliminated through such an approach to our faith?

If you're out there, I want to meet you and hang out.

Soul Friends and Spiritual Wellness

For many years now I've had a deep appreciation for the ancient Celtic people of the British Islands who emerged from Druidism to become followers of Jesus Christ.  What was unique about the Celts was that their Christian spirituality emerged and flourished without being impacted by the institutional Roman church (until the devastating 7th-century Synod of Whitby.)  They were distinctly not Catholic or protestant.  They were simply followers of Jesus.  As such, they enjoyed rich, meaningful components of their faith that have since been lost to us in the Catholic or protestant systems.

One such component of their faith was the nurturing of relationships with what they called, "soul friends."  The Christian world around them at the time proclaimed that the most important relationship one could have was their relationship with the church, her doctrines, and the priest who would administer to them the sacraments.  Outside of this, there could be no relationship with God.  The Celts, on the other hand, understood that their relationship with God did not depend upon any institution or clerical middle-man.  But they did find that their relationship with God was deeply nourished through their relationship with a soul friend.

A soul friend was somebody who was as close to you as a brother or sister.  He was a person who you spent time with, a substantial amount of time, working, playing, eating together, talking, laughing, crying.  The relationship between soul friends was one of such trust that either person could freely share the deepest, darkest secrets of their life without fear of judgment or violation of that trust.  In such a relationship the heart could be laid bare for transformation to occur.  Because there were no secrets between soul friends, neither person could hide within an illusion that they were keeping something hidden from God. 

Soul friends are hard to find in our culture.  We Americans are so individualistic, so busy, and so religious that when we do try to find such relationships we end up with something we like to call "accountability partners."  Our attempt at this is a pitiful caricature of what they enjoyed.  Unlike the relationship with a "soul friend," our "accountability" relationships lead to bondage, guilt, deception, deterioration of friendships and a retreat to isolation.  In the Celtic practice, authentic relationship came first, with trust, vulnerability, honesty, and restoration being a natural fruit of that relationship.

As difficult as it is to cultivate in our culture, it is a component of spiritual wellness that I think we need to work hard to resurrect.  I'm interested to know if any readers are enjoying vital "soul friend" relationships, how you found your soul friend, and how that relationship is lived out from day-to-day.

Be

Lost
On a painted sky
Where the clouds are hung
For the poet's eye
You may find him
If you may find him

There
On a distant shore
By the wings of dreams
Through an open door
You may know him
If you may know him

Be
As a page that aches for a word
Which speaks on a theme that is timeless
And the one God will make for your day

Sing
As a song in search of a voice that is silent
And the sun
God will make for your way

And we dance
To a whispered voice
Overheard by the soul,
Undertook by the heart
And you may know it
If you may know it

While the sand would become the stone
Which begat the spark
Turned to living bone
Holy, holy
Sanctus, sanctus

Be
As a page that aches for a word
Which speaks on a theme that is timeless
While the one God will make for your day

Sing
As a song in search of a voice that is silent
And the one God will make for your way

Looking Beyond Religion

There are five facets of wellness, all of which emerge out of a spiritual core.  Emotional wellness, physical wellness, intellectual wellness, relational wellness, and financial wellness are all rooted in and grow out of spiritual wellness with the spirit being the essential being of our being.  I'll spend some time in future posts talking about each of these five facets and their inter-relatedness to one another and their dependence upon spiritual wellness.  But in this post I want to share a little bit with you about my own spiritual core and how I am just now learning to look beyond religion.

I have never not believed in God.  As far back as I can remember I have always had this sense, this knowing, that there is a higher reality from which I and everything around me came.  I was never able to buy into the idea that the magnificence of creation and the miracle of life came about through mere happenstance and mutation over incalculable expanses of time.  That seems quite far-fetched to me.

From childhood I have always been taught to look for and experience God within the context and confines of church (particularly, a protestant, Christian one) and that to look for Him in any other place would be a misguided pursuit leading me directly to hell.  It didn't take long, however, for me to begin wondering how interaction with the creator, sustainer, redeemer, and king of the universe could be summed up with three songs sang poorly to the squawking of an organ under fingertips which should have stopped playing decades ago, before a 30 minute speech, followed by a mad dash to the restaurant for Sunday lunch served by people who dreaded the weekly Christian rush hour because of the exceedingly rude patronage. This was my experience growing up as an indentured child forced to serve a one-hour sentence at the local Baptist church down the road. Even as a child, I knew that if God was as great and majestic as the Bible portrayed him to be, then the sad little weekly routine I endured had to be a pitiful caricature of what it must really be like to know and worship Him.

After a five year departure from church, during which my life went to hell, I began the pursuit once again in a hyper-charismatic "assembly."  There was something there that stirred my soul, awakened in me a desire to know God on a deeper level, and launched me onto a lifelong spiritual journey.  However, it wasn't long before I peeked behind the curtain to discover that much of the smoke and fire was the theatrical product of either deceived or deceitful people pulling levers and turning cranks.  Though there were undeniable moments of God's presence, much of what I experienced around me amounted to little more than the spiritual parlor tricks of religious circus clowns.

Through much of my twenties, my wife and I moved in and out of various non-denominational churches, finding brief moments of life, but mostly something that we came to recognize as religious dysfunction.  The dysfunction manifested itself in quests for control, land-grabs, domination, and facades of piety masking lifestyles that differed very little from the lifestyles of those whom they decried as "lost" and needing to be "saved."

And still, I have never not believed in God.

An awakening to the reality of suffering around me and the church's intentional distancing of itself from that suffering set me onto a path of wanting to be a different kind of "Christian" - one who really tried to take notice and love those around me the way Jesus did.  I became an ordained minister and eventually began a new church with an intentional focus on seeking out, loving, caring for, and doing life with those whom most churches have neither the patience nor the inclination to be in proximity to.  Even in my desire to create what I imagined to be the ideal expression of the Way of Jesus I found myself quickly surrounded by religious people (not all were, but there were many) given to quests for control, land-grabs, domination, and facades of piety masking lifestyles that differed very little from the lifestyles of those whom they decried as "lost" and needing to be "saved."  In the belly of the denominational beast I found myself gasping for life in a barren womb of religion.

Still, I have never not believed in God.

After a slow-motion epiphany over the past three years I have come to recognize religion for what it truly is and I have come to fully understand the disgust Jesus had for it during his time on earth.  Every religion (including the "Christian" religion) is made up of two groups of people, a deity with whom we must find favor, and a set of rules designed to garner that favor. 

The groups of people are the elite and the masses.  The masses are charged with the responsibility of greasing the gears of the system and keeping the elite employed and in power.  The elite are charged with helping the masses to follow the rules and feel good about themselves when, on the rare occassion, they are able to follow said rules.

The deity, be it Yahweh, Jesus, Allah, Krishna, Zeus, etc., is pissed off at humanity and demands, through threat of hell, that we behave properly according to the rules imposed upon us by the elite.

The rules are a complex system comprised of those behaviors which are permissable and those behaviors which are forbidden.  And the overarching, often unspoken rule, is to never question or challenge anything.  The penalty for doing so is excommunication that may come in the form of actual physical removal from the assembly, or a more subtle (and most common) form of excommunication exercised through the intentional relational distancing of the "dissident" from the realm of the elite.

Still, I have never not believed in God.

All that I have shared thus far has served to form my spiritual core, and it is simply this.  I believe in a God who is the creator of all that is.  He is love, light, goodness, grace, and mercy.  I also believe that humanity rebelled against the perfect order in which we were meant to exist with that order being one of love, light, goodness, grace, and mercy.  The God I believe in is intimately involved in his creation and has, since the great rebellion, revealed himself through words - both written and spoken - and ultimately through The Word, Jesus Christ, who was God in human form.  As a human, he again demonstrated the nature of the order in which we were meant to live.  He allowed himself to be sacrificed to atone for the great rebellion and close the relational chasm between God and his creation.  He proved his deity through a physical resurrection from the dead.  And as a result, every human being is now invited to live freely and fully in the order in which we were meant to exist - an order of love, light, goodness, grace, and mercy.

The God of my spiritual core is not the God who is so often portrayed through the "Christian" religion.  He is not a God who is accessible only through the priests, pastors, and practices of the church system.  He is a God who is the life in all that has life.  He is the God who is the goodness in all that is good.  He is the Being of all being.  Where there is truth, there is my God.  Where there is love, there is my God.  Where there is kindness, there is my God.  Where there is grace, mercy, and forgiveness, there is my God.  He is the Beauty of all that is beautiful.

It is out of this spiritual core that I live, and move, and love, and write, and create, and have my being as one who is being perfected by God through the work of Jesus Christ, not adherence to a religious system.         

Tear Down This Wall

Lying Eyes

"Don't believe what your eyes are telling you.  All they show is limitation.  Look with your understanding, find out what you already know, and you'll see the way to fly."  ~Richard Bach

"We do not live according to what we can see.  Instead, we live with an assurance of what we hope for and a certainty in what we cannot see."  ~Early Christians

God's Kind of Religion

"True and genuine religion in the sight of God means caring for orphans and widows in their distress and refusing to let the world corrupt you."

~James, the brother of Jesus

Why Dreams Die

I've been giving a lot of thought lately to dreams. Not so much the dreams that we have in our sleep, but instead, the dreams that occupy our minds and hearts as we go about life doing the things that we wish we didn't have to do so we could do the things we really want to be doing - all along fearing that time will pass so quickly that we'll suddenly wake up and realize that the entirety of our life has passed and we never lived the dreams we dreamed.

I've come to believe that most people are living a life that is distantly removed from the life that once-upon-a-time they dreamed that they could, should, and would be living. Every day they wake up in the morning and wonder how in the world they arrived at the place of having to spend the day doing the things that drain their souls of life. They lay their heads on pillows and as sleep begins to overtake them, thoughts - nothing more than cerebral whispers of a hoped-for life that long ago vanished from the realm of possibility - drift teasingly in and out of their consciousness. Why do dreams die? Why do so many people exist as nothing more than biological entities plodding along from day to day both fearing and longing for the end of their days?

Every so often somebody breaks free.  Like the shadow-man who escaped from Plato's cave to experience the explosive beauty, the cerebral and emotional overload of a world; an existence too marvelous for words and too insanely glorious to be believed by those who chose to kill him upon his return rather than succumb to the risky possibility that something so hopeful could really exist. I know a few of these liberated former cave-dwellers.

There was Ross. He spent his days overseeing a transcription department at a large medical clinic to provide for his growing family. Many times we would meet for lunch and he would talk about how his work parasitically drained the life from him. One day he lost his job. The responsible thing for him to do would have been to send out resumes, go through interviews, and finally land another job that would likely have completed the task of killing his soul. No...Ross ran from the cave and began chasing dreams. He found a handful of impoverished inner-city boys without fathers and spent his days teaching them how to be men of virtue. Today, nearly 10 years later, Ross is no longer chasing dreams. He caught them, or they caught him, and he lives each day with passion.

There was another friend named Kirby who also worked a responsible job to meet the needs of his family until one day he discovered that he was pretty good with some new computer technology with which you could draw cartoons. He quit his responsible job, moved his family to Southern California, and began drawing computer animated cartoons and writing screenplays. You've probably seen his work on television commercials and at the theater. Today he has caught his dreams and is living comfortably as he spends his days doing the things God has gifted him to do.

What in the world would make a guy like Patrick quit his job, pack up his wife and child, and move to Ethiopia to live among starving, diseased, dying people? A dream. A dream that he could spend his days helping a dying child smile.

Mary Lou paid her dues. She worked for years and years as a teacher, pouring her life into educating high-schoolers. It was time for retirement; time for her to take her pension and spend her days sipping tea in the shade of her backyard. But her dreams don't live in her backyard. She has chased her dreams all the way to Ghana where she is serving on a Mercy Ship bringing hope and healing to people who probably have never felt the faintest breath of hope.

I believe that people like this are in the minority. They are exceptions. They are the few who have somehow broken the shackles of reasonableness, common sense, logic, and "responsibility" in order to save their minds, hearts, and souls from the anesthetizing effects of reasonableness, common sense, logic, and responsibility. They have chosen to live, not to simply exist - to flourish, not to simply survive. But what about the rest? Why do so many of us allow our dreams to die? What stops us from dreaming and living?

When we walk through the landscape littered with dead and shattered dreams, we'll probably find that those dreams have fallen victim to one of three causes of death.

• The dreamer succumbed to the fear of failure that always comes wrapped in packages bearing the labels of "what if."
• The dreamer gave in to the thought that he must correct all of his own flaws before attempting to live his dreams.
• The dreamer gave in to the voices of the many "dream-killers" who descend like vultures upon the prey of anyone who would dare to dream that life could be different.

"Beyond What You See" is a blog about dreams.  Dreams that you are indeed special, even when everything around you says you are not.  Dreams that you can overcome the past that haunts your present.  Dreams that your future can be more full of life and beauty and meaning than your today.  Dreams that you can change the world around you through a selfless life of love, kindness, generosity, and creativity.  "Beyond What You See" is a community of believers - believers in the human potential for good - a community of people who refuse to surrender and go quietly into the night of a squandered life.