Looking For The Long Ride

This time of year is one of my favorites and also rates as one of the most frustrating as well. This is due in large part to the fact that the transition from winter to spring and spring into summer is never a process (in the mountains) which can be easily understood or delineated with a simple wall calendar which notes that spring begins on March 21st. Most people in North Carolina will fall into planting zone 6 or 7 but because we are so much higher we find ourselves in zone 5—which in essence reaches from the middle of Michigan down to the tip of the southern Appalachian range. Logistically, there are parts of Washington state that rest in zone 7 even though they are located just below Canada.

So, we always get a few nice days in late February or early March that begin the gardening fever process. It is at this point I unwrap the tiller and see if it will start without a new plug—if it does I move onto the next project which is to rake up all the stalks, stems and other organic debris from fall into big piles that I will eventually get around to burning—no easy task in the windy climate that surrounds us.

I then try and find the seeds from last year that might still be good and look through the garden catalogs that have been laying around since after Christmas. Every year i tell myself that I will order all my seeds early and every year I fall behind or get caught unawares as the ordering deadlines come and go.

This year, most seed catalogs offered a $25 discount on every order of $50 or more. That gives me an idea of the incredible markup that gardening stuff must have attached to it. But the ploy works and I ordered my deer fencing from two separate catalogs in order to take advantage of the free $25 offers.

From one catalog I not only got the deer netting but also received 25 free strawberry plants when ordering another 25. The other cataloger offered me an additional 10 asparagus plants when I purchased 10 at regular price. Plus I got some other stuff but still was not quite ready to order seeds.

It turns out that I had a lot from last year and I hit the local stores that sell seeds and picked up what I thought i might need for early and late planting as well.

Actually, one of the most frustrating aspects of gardening is the fact that the “mom and pop” supply store where I used to go to buy my seeds and plants and fertilizer, went out of business several years ago leaving only Lowes and Walmart and Southern States where purchases can be made. I don’t think I have ever recovered from the loss of that old fashioned, super-customer friendly, garden supply shop—and this is why.

To Walmart and the other “big box” stores, gardening stuff is a commodity that is inventoried early, based on stores that are not even close to our growing season. Because this stuff is a profit center in and of itself, the goal is to sell it as fast as possible and then use the space this inventory took up to sell something else. What I am saying is this: if you don’t buy the seeds and plants weeks before they are ready  to plant, you run the risk of not being able to find any left by the time you are really ready and able to plant a garden.

Whereas the proprietor of the “local” feed and seed store always warned you about buying plants to early to survive in our mountain climate. Plus, when you ran out of lettuce seeds, etc. in the middle of the summer you could always count on them to have a supply left. Yes they did run out of stuff but it wasn’t because they planned it that way. Also, they didn’t sell packages with more seeds than you really needed—but only weighed them out according to what you told them “you” wanted.

When I asked them why they went out of business I was told that it was because they had gotten tired of making money only from March through July and then losing the rest of the year. And I guess I can understand their point of view even though I consider their passing a major event in my life and the lives of many others I know. They were a part of a culture that is dying off in America—customer-centric service and sales with a down home attitude and appreciation of each customer as they pass through the open doors of free enterprise.

Am I making more of this than it deserves—hardly I think. A book could be written about this trend and probably already has been. It is a loss that I live with every time I walk into a Lowe’s or Walmart and see people frantically buying garden stuff way before it is time to plant because they know if they don’t get it now it will be gone in a week or two. To these corporate centers I am just another statistic who may or may not show up on their profit and loss sheet at the end of the year. Once the inventory is gone, I am out of luck until the next year when the cycle starts all over again.

Anyway—I guess I have said enough. I have more than enough seeds to get me through this year and when the rains that have been pouring for the better part of two weeks stop, I will get into the garden and try to do in several days what I would have liked to do in several weeks—the potatoes and beans and zinnias still need to be planted.

Next year I plan on ordering my seeds from a catalog or two—I will see how that goes when the time comes.

In the meantime, enjoy your ride!

This is a story that to the best of my recollection begins about 44 years ago, just after I discovered a young folk singer named Bob Dylan. As many people no doubt found, getting hip to Dylan was just the beginning of what would become a journey into the roots of American music and beyond.

Once I found out that one of Dylan’s influences was Woody Guthrie, I began to search in earnest for other musicians that were in the same genre and quickly ran into Cisco Houston, Leadbelly, Dave Van Ronk and of course, Pete Seeger. Most of these players are an acquired taste, but of them all (many more of course), Pete Seeger is by far the most accessible and one of my all time favorites.

I have collected many of his recorded works on CD and can clearly remember the times I would rock my youngest daughter to sleep listening to one of Seeger’s  many children’s concerts. He was a master of the sing-a-long and rarely recorded an album in the studio.

One of the most magical times in my life was seeing Pete in concert in Detroit, Michigan, sometime in the mid-seventies. The seats I had were way up in the balcony but the moment Pete walked on the stage singing “John Henry” the whole auditorium came alive and you could almost touch the electricity in the air. It was “dream-come-true” time for the next couple of hours as the master and his banjo weaved a web of Americana that I can still feel today.

Pete Seeger’s 90th birthday is Sunday, May 3rd, and his party will be held at 5:00 p.m. at Madison Square Garden in New York City. Lots of popular musicians will be there and tickets are in the $90 to $250 range. It would be great to be there but I guess I will stay in Boone and mow the yard or work in the garden.

A couple of days ago, I was thinking about Pete and burned a couple of his early albums onto my Ipod. One of them is entitled “God Bless the Grass” and features a song named “The Power and the Glory”. As I was listening to it this morning, I was struck by the fact that  even though I didn’t always agree with his politics, Pete stayed true to his vision and that is as American as it gets.

In light of what is happening in the United States at this point in history (swine flu, toxic mortgages, bankrupt car companies, etc, etc.) I thought the text of this song is very apropos to where we are at. So, without further ado (and BIlly Shields too) here is “The Power and the Glory”.

Several weeks ago I wrote about the silence of God and what hearing God might look like and ended the story with an open-ended question about what we are hearing from God today.

As you can no doubt tell, I believe that the creator of the universe is still in process of interacting with His creation—much like the walks He took with Adam and Eve in the garden of Eden. And that statement alone can probably cause as much controversy as the act of speaking in tongues ever has.

Lots of people have done many horrendous things during our history out of the belief that they have heard God speak something to them—in this group we have the schizophrenic and psychopath and other wise disturbed peoples of the world.

In all of this bad stuff people have done in the name of God, none of it was found in the new covenant we have with Him through the sacrifice of Jesus as described in the New Testament. Jesus didn’t kill those who didn’t like Him and thought He was a misfit—he blessed them and prayed for them and even had dinner with those people who were culturally despised for their jobs and/or positions, etc.—taxpayers, politicians, women caught in adultery and the like.

Scripture is very clear on the subject of wrath: Judgment is mine says the Lord—I will repay (Romans 12:19).

Personally, what I am hearing is a mixture of things—some is God and some is what I think He is saying.

The first thing I am hearing is about thinking new. We all remember that old saying which says the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. I believe the church as we have known it is in the same place. It is my impression that many church leaders believe that God has created one painting and only one painting and that we need to paint it over and over again every time we meet. This with the knowledge that no DNA chain is the same as any other and that each and every snowflake is unique as it falls from the sky.

We have all been there at one time or another. As a praise and worship leader for many years, I knew what it took to get to certain places and often repeated myself in order to facilitate this experience again and again. Not that repetition is bad, but using a technique to simulate the presence of the Holy Spirit is something else again.

Thinking new also means thinking in biblical terms—I am reminded of the verse that says: as a man thinks, so he is (Prov. 23:7). It is also interesting to note that while listening to Earl Nightingale the other day, he said the very same thing about becoming successful. The way he put it was that what a man spends his time thinking about, he becomes—clearly another way of saying the same thing as Proverbs 23. His point being that the process of us becoming anything in life requires us to put some brain power to it—to interact with the Creator in a creative way in order that we become the “unique” person we are (my words added to his).

Indeed, the canvas of our faces has changed along with the shape of our bodies over the years we have sojourned on this planet.

Or to sum up this brief line of thought—If you want to be rich, spend time thinking about what it takes to achieve that goal. If your desire is to be “Christ like” the same is true—although it is more through a relationship dynamic that this end is realized rather than a purely cerebral methodology.

I am also “hearing” (my internal/eternal sense) that this is the year to really make our gardens productive. Along with that, through a multitude of witnesses, having 30 days of food supplies available, in case the distribution chain gets temporarily disrupted. It is not a Y2K mentality but rather a be prepared service mentality that drives this thought home to me. We all know that if times get rough for a period that those without preparation will be knocking on our doors—and we need to be ready to invite them in—trusting the rest of what we haven’t prepared for to God—come what may.

Of course, keeping out of debt and paying down your existing debt is something that we have been hearing for awhile now. The only way to do this is to think new. Sandi, my wife, wants laminate wood floors to replace our linoleum and carpet which has seen better days. Her idea was to sell books on Amazon dot com. At first I was sceptical (as I often am) about this idea, but with a few books from my shelves added to hers, we have almost earned the floor money in just under two months—and the basement got a little less crowded in the process.

This is not all that we are hearing but is a start at beginning to understand what is happening around us during this point in our collective and individual histories.

Feel free to add what you are picking up on and in the meantime, enjoy the ride.

I have been gardening in one fashion or another for almost 32 years—mostly since I moved to North Carolina in 1978 with the intent of leaving Michigan’s rust belt and becoming a “mountain man”. Gardens are a lot of work but they are one of the most rewarding endeavors that I can think of—all I have to do is think of fresh, vine-ripened tomatoes or eating corn that has just been picked and all that work is quickly forgotten.

Gardens are also a lot like our lives—we have some successful years and some that are not as profitable. Sometimes we plant to early and that late freeze gets the seed and we have to plant again. Some years you might have more spinach than you can eat and others—even though you have seemingly planted in the same way—you might only get a salad or two from a whole patch.

Anyway, it is spring time in the southern Appalachian’s and the urge to get outside and start playing in the dirt is almost overwhelming—a few days of sunshine and hope are followed by several days of rain and cold weather—but we keep getting ready for the big planting push in small starts and stops.

As I plan this year’s garden I am acutely aware of the fact that for the past two years, all the beans I have painstakingly planted have been eaten by a roving band of deer—deer that until recently have been content to eat what nature has provided for them rather than raid my yearly garden.

So, it wasn’t really all that much of a shock to me to see five deer in the lot next to my garden when I came home from work the other day. Since I had my camera in the car, I stopped for a moment and before they ran away, took this picture to show my wife Sandi.

And it is not just the beans that are on my mind.

Three years ago after planting my sweet corn the weather got warm and there was very little rain. I would go out to the garden every couple of days in order to see if the corn was germinating. It seemed to be taking a long time but I figured that since it was dry, it might take a little longer to begin to see those little green shoots coming out of the soil. Well, one early morning, I noticed a bunch of crows in the back and you guessed it—they were eating my corn for breakfast. I told my buddy Carter about this situation and he told me that I needed to stake each row and pull a string across the row about 3 or 4 inches off the ground—that crows would not go under something in order to eat. So, the next year I tried that technique and we now have corn again.

This year I ordered about 100 feet of “deer netting”  that I plan to put around the beans, the corn and maybe the peas as well. It is a lot of work but in these economic times, not having canned beans or fresh corn isn’t an option—so whatever I have to do I will.

While driving to work this morning I had these thoughts I have just written along with a memory of the first garden Sandi and I did upon finding an old home place to begin our lives in these now familiar mountains.

The house we lived in and in process of re-claiming, had not been occupied for many years. There was an overgrown garden space directly behind the house which we had plowed by one of the older locals we had met. If you have ever seen a freshly plowed field it looks something like rows of big overturned sod patches in between deep furrows of nothing but dirt. From a distance it appears as big welts of soil with the grass turned under and somewhat hidden from sight.

What we didn’t know at the time was that this process was supposed to be followed by discing—a process by which the newly ploughed earth is broken up and made somewhat plantable. Whether or not our farmer friend forgot this process or was playing a joke on us “newbies” I will never know. What I do know is that Sandi and I began to hand separate the dirt from the grass and when we had some earth smoothed out, planted some seeds and waited for our “harvest”.

What we failed to understand was that these little seeds needed nutrients to grow just like our bodies do. It is hilarious to look back on those 3 inch corn plants that failed to get any bigger no matter how much we watered them and checked up on them. It wasn’t until the following year that we learned about discing, tilling and fertilizer and began to have harvests that we could eat and put away for the winter. Gardening, like life, is a learning process—that’s the ride I am on and am looking forward to what this year brings.

How about you?

In the absence of any sound or noise, God is not “silent” as some would define it.

His creative voice still resonates through time and permeates all that He has ever imagined.

Some would say that silence is a lack of interaction or connection. Some would say that they haven’t “heard” God speak to them in a long time—if ever. Yet scripture tells us that, “…all creation groans and travails waiting for the manifestation of the sons of God.” and “… For the invisible things of him from the creation
of the world are clearly seen.”

What do these groanings and travailings sound like? Not like the mountain brook that sends its soft rumbling sound constantly to all who come near—more like the howling wind of a distant tropical storm.

What do these invisible things look like? A new-born baby bursting forth from its mother’s womb! A late evening, full-moon, summertime-walk?

During lunch with a friend the other day, our conversation turned to family type stuff and some of the frustrations that come with parenthood. In the course of this more personal interchange, I asked my friend what God was speaking to him about some of the scenarios he was sharing with me. His comment was quick and seemingly practiced: God created the earth and then left us to fend for ourselves.

This reply from a person I know has felt the hand of God and by faith has heard His voice—heard his voice in terms of feeling to do this or that instead of something else.

At that point I didn’t know what to say and since we were done eating, we left the restaurant and headed back to our respective jobs. Just before my friend dropped me off at my work place, I had this thought which I quickly shared: You may not think that God is speaking to you (that He is silent) but instead of hearing an audible voice on your own as in times past—perhaps God is speaking to you through your friends.

Therefore my conclusion: God is not silent as some would define silence.

In a book of poetry I just finished entitled “God’s Silence” by Franz Wright, he says in one poem that, “…I have heard God’s silence like the sun.” I have really no idea of what he is trying to get me to see in this verse other than the fact that the sun is everywhere and without it we would not be alive. And oh yeah, the sun doesn’t really have a vocabulary other than to say, “…don’t stare directly into me and if you are going to be out in me for a long time, wear some SPF 50 so bad things don’t happen to your skin.”

So, in other words, I would have to believe that even a deaf person can “hear” God. That hearing is not about audibility but a knowing that transcends our very senses. Maybe the term would be sinisthesia or a blending our senses. I can say when I have seen something miraculous that I have heard God speak.

What comes to mind as I write these words is a picture of my wife and I having dinner in some fancy restaurant. Maybe we are celebrating our anniversary or a bonus check—nevertheless, the picture is the same. As we leisurely talk about our hopes and dreams over a glass of wine and a tasty meal, I have often had the feeling that what we are experiencing is somewhat unreal—a scene from a movie caught in time. That there are literally thousands of people all over the world enjoying the company of their mate and a good dinner along with us is somewhat overwhelming. That the supply system that brings the steak or shrimp to our table works as well as it does is almost deafening to me—I am aware of all the people that did their job in order to facilitate my good time with my wife. The bible even tells me that the enjoyment of the fruits of one’s own labor is a gift from God. And I take it as such and wish that that moment could be enjoyed forever—of course the moment passes and we are right back to paying bills online and wondering why our boss doesn’t understand us.

Yet, in all of this, I see the hand of God and feel His voice—it is a silence that almost permeates every fiber of my being—I am so full at that very moment that I could die and go to heaven and not even argue about the timing.

Does the voice of God transcend our senses? I would have to say YES!

I guess then the question remains—what are we hearing and are we paying attention.

And that is a “ride” that will take us down another path for another time.

NOTE: (added 4/8/09) Part two to this thought process is here.

In the future
sometime between now and then
I will wonder—maybe—whatever happened to the time
I spent as a couch potato—watching TV shows I had taped
during the previous week.

Will I wonder if maybe I could have used the time differently—perhaps come up with a cure for cancer or the common cold?

Will I wonder what could have happened had I applied myself differently—put the time I didn’t do much of anything into a time capsule—so that I could dig it up when I need it more—like when my time runs out or there is not much of it left.

You know, there never seems to be enough time to do everything I thought I wanted to do. In the end it won’t be any different than it is right now—I will wish that I had done something different with my time—I don’t know what for sure, but something other than what I did.

Cause it always seems I don’t get done what I later wish that I would have—whatever it was that I didn’t do.

It’s like an epidemic—it’s all over me—wondering where  the time went even before it slowly slips away—washes under the bed—out the door—down the drain.

Time is like lost love—there can really never be enough of it—so we have to settle with what we get.

What we can imagine about time—what we could do if we had just a little more of it—is always more exciting than what we actually do with what time we get. There is always this tension between our dreams and what we do with our lives in the real world—as if one thought drives the other or vice-versa—only I don’t know which one is in the lead today.

The sum of our lives will always be more than what we thought—when we had that thought—and less than what it could have been, had we done everything we ever imagined.

There will always be an imbalance in the teeter-totter of our lives—one side up while the other side hits the ground only to be pushed up until an imbalance occurs again and tries to correct itself. We push until our legs are tired and then we take a short breath and run to the swing set or the slide.

It’s a day in the park—this thought life of mine—once lived and now remembered—take a picture and tape it into a scrapbook—someone will see it one day and smile—remembering their own days on the playground.

I have gone a long time (for me) thinking that I haven’t had anything to say or write about—thinking that I am not a poet or an artist or that everything worth saying has already been said—and if I haven’t heard it or read it I haven’t looked in the right book yet.

Yet creativity or being creative is not about you finding me hidden somewhere on some shelf in some Barne’s And Nobles in some off street strip-mall. It is about enjoying the process of thought or life itself—it is about being satisfied that my life has been worth something—not lost between the weeks and months and years of occupying this earthly space—this mortal coil.

Creativity is really about taking the time to wonder—taking the time to roll around in the tall spring grass of your mind. It is about arranging the moments of each day to include thoughtful wondering/wanderings of lets examine this or that for just a minute or two before it too is lost to memory. Lets recall our life before our recollection of it dims like print upon a yellowed newspaper page.

Lets not be pressured into escape thinking—that we will catch up on everything when there is a little less stress and a lot more time—because that time is like water poured onto a thirsty garden plot—it all but disappears within a few short moments and we are left staring at the face of some dried up soil. You can almost hear it sigh with partial relief when the last drop of water is sucked into God knows where.

Who will water the ground of my soul?

It is interesting to me how memories of people we have known seem to come and go of their own volition. I can be calmly reading the evening news when a person from my past pops up in my mind.

The other day I was looking at a CD that my sister had brought me during her Christmas time visit. It was a Nancy Wilson album that my mother had enjoyed. As I looked at the photograph of Nancy on the inside front cover, the attitude and the way she faced the camera reminded me of my mother and began to stir up recollections of who my mother was and the persona she took on during her life.

At this point in my journey I would say that we all have several personality types that we project onto the flesh of our existence. Most commonly, there is who we really are and who we would like to be—and it is the latter that we want those around us to see and believe that it is the “authentic” us.

Our “real” lives are lived out of the circumstances that our choices in life have created. Yet we carry with us the hopes and dreams of what “might have been” had everything in our lives gone the way we would have liked them to.

In my mother’s case—she saw her mother and father divorced and re-married before she was 20 and then several years later left her hometown to have me “out of wedlock”. From the pieces I was able to pick up on (we didn’t talk about it much) she got pregnant and decided to visit a friend of hers in San Francisco until I was born—at which point she moved back to her hometown and began a life I am sure had its high points and low points. It couldn’t have been easy for her even though I am convinced that I was just a big bundle of joy. I arrived on the scene in 1949 and now know that the late 40’s and early 50’s were still leading up to that period of time where cultural mores would be challenged and replaced with women’s lib and planned parenthood.

Suffice it to say I never knew my biological father and didn’t find out until ninth grade that I was adopted by the handsome sailor my mother was later to meet and marry.

I mention these details only to give the reader some sort of idea as to how my mother’s life was shaped from an early age and perhaps a better understanding of her personality. During her final years I made sure to mention how thankful I was that she decided to keep me and the sacrifices that decision entailed.

Both my mother and father liked music, mostly lite jazz ala Stan Kenton, and I often saw my mother, during a semi-family evening, moving to the beat of the big band sounds that would float from the stereo speakers in the corner of our living room. There was something almost primal about the connection she had to the music as she snapped her fingers to the beat and seemingly for a moment lived out in her mind those other lives that had passed her by.

As a young girl my mother had played the piano some and had had an accordion but had to give both up during hard economic times. I have assumed that because of her choice to keep the baby, college was not an option and finding time to socialize was out of the question. I am somewhat foggy on these details—although I am almost positive that some of these memories are founded in talks we had around the dinning room table during my inquisitive years. As I write these words I wish that I had been more interested in these details when there was time to find out about them.

I really do think that my mother came to terms with the turns her life took—although she would often mention that she had missed out on some of the things that normal people got to do such as going to college or indulging their creative urge in painting and music.

She was an avid reader and as I remember, always had some sort of hobby project going. At some point, when us kids were old enough, she went back to work in a department store as a cosmetics salesperson and made a good income from that. I don’t remember the pantry ever being bare or my mother sitting around watching soap operas.

As I have written this, I have tried to connect to the very thought that began this stream of remembrance in the first place.

My mother was, above everything, a very proud person. There were moments of lucidity where I am sure that she felt as if she belonged in her life—but in retrospect my sense is that she was always somewhat of a stranger in a strange land. She was a romantic and her choice of music fit the popular mold of singing about what should be rather than what is. That somewhere over the rainbow there is a perfect life and if we just wait long enough, it is bound to find us.

Within this existence, my mother displayed a certain dignity that only comes from love. In her own way, she loved us greatly and while she had her heath and a consistent income, birthdays and Christmases were always times of joyful over abundance. She loved to shop and would hit the sales all year in order to have stuff to pack into those gift boxes that would always show up ahead of time, rather than mine which always seemed to be late.

When the money began to disappear and her health slowly evaporated, she took to other ways of  blessing us and also spending her time. It was at this point that she began to cut pictures out of magazines and filled up endless scrapbooks with all sorts of what she saved. When gift time came she would take pieces of wood and use the pictures to make collage plaques and then paste sayings or poetry or history on the backs of the wooden wall hangings. It was in this very creative way that she lived out her days and in turn blessed us with boxes of hand-made items that were carefully wrapped and sent to us with all the love that she knew how to gather.

Even as her dignity slipped away she found a way to be unique. This is not to say that she was perfect and was always full of cheer and self-respect—she had her areas of hardness and unforgiveness just as many of us do. She never quite came to terms with her own divorce and the way things finally panned out.

But what I choose to remember today are all the years that she kept reaching for something that was just beyond her grasp—something that she felt that if she could only hang onto for just a little while—everything else would somehow work out as well. She didn’t let life defeat her although through the course of hers lots of rough edges were sanded off—which as we are aware are not all that easy to bear.

I could say more but I think the time has come to bookmark this chapter and perhaps so doing return to it another time. There are other thoughts to have and other books to read—it’s been a short but pleasant ride today.

I don’t remember how many times in my life I have reached the conclusion that the more it seems I know, the more I seem to realize how little I “know”. It is as if knowledge is never ending and that we will never have a basket full of it—in this life at least.

And each time I have had that particular thought about knowing how little I really know, I have truly felt like I understood what I was thinking. Tonight, as I was reading a book by Carl Raschke entitled “GloboChrist” I was literally overwhelmed with the vast body of knowledge that surrounds our every waking moment like the air that envelops our very being.

Why, just the casual study of how our language has developed over the millenia could consume the next twenty five or thirty years of our waking moments. For instance, did you know that a noun names a person, place, thing, quality, action or idea according to the Perrin-Smith “Handbook of Current English”—itself a tome of over 590 pages of info about the words and sentences that we use everyday and no doubt have taken very much for granted since that 4th grade English class in 1958 (insert year here).

But that, in and of itself, is just a pleasant side trip when juxtaposed against the substance of the GLOBOCHRIST book and its’ story of how the great commission is taking a postmodern turn.

But pomo or no pomo (postmodern), understanding the mystery of the gospel has got me in its’ grip—I am beginning to see just how much of it there really is to see and how little I know in comparison to how much I realize there is to go. But I am not dismayed—rather intrigued by the journey itself and all the stops and starts it has taken over the past 25 years.

It is almost as if I am a man who has eaten vanilla ice cream for many years and then one day begins to really taste the fullness of the flavors that make it what it is—this very sensory revelation doesn’t take away from what has been but instantly adds to what is and what very well will be.

Take the “Incarnation”—a noun which simply means, “…the embodiment of God in human form as Jesus”. As Christians, we believe in the divinity of Christ and the doctrinal truths that surround this belief. Yet believing it and understanding what this means for the global church is another matter in and of itself.

Simply put, “Christ in us” is what will transform us and the world and not the buildings and programs we have built around this belief. These things (buildings and programs) are not inconsequential but are not the substance of “things hoped for”.

What follows this thought for me is the fact that what we export must be trans-cultural and not an American idea of what the world needs.

I have been dismayed in the past, by how—when Americans take the gospel message (the good news) to other people groups—a very American idea of what the church should look like is usually is what transpires. Rather than focusing on the “indwelling” Christ and letting the culture shape that experience, it is often the other way around.

Now of course, I could be totally off base here simply because I have not actually been to all the nooks and crannies where the gospel message has been preached. But if what I have read (and experientially know about American culturalization) is true, we like to take our McDonalds with us rather than the other way around. I mean I thought the whole point of going to Europe was to experience the way other people live their lives. That means eating in their restaurants and using their transportation, etc.

One of my frustrations with even writing about this is, because of my free-flowing nature and lack of outlining discipline, I may not have totally made the point that I set out to make, which is—the power of the gospel and why it is still so very relevant today—is all about the incarnation plain and simple.

So at least I have a place to hang out and explore during these first few months of 2009. And hopefully you will come along for the ride as well.

While showering this morning I momentarily entertained this spontaneous, warm-water epiphany: I am a simple man with simple thoughts—some are “simply true” and some are “simply not”.

And that my friends is a revelation to me. I think that for much of my life I have believed that my thoughts, in so much as they emanate from my brain, are always worth something—even if that something may not be understandable or even manageable.

Lately I have been reading a series of books that in the general scheme of things deal with the Christian church and its “postmodern” phase. This pursuit has naturally raised many questions in my mind and engendered many diverse thoughts.

It is a road mostly traveled by critical thinkers and theologians and is not the type of reading that warms the cockles of your heart—in other words these authors use thirty dollar words and string together church history and global phenomenon in sentences and paragraphs that you almost need a road map to maneuver.

So it is with stops and starts that I attempt to digest these books that I personally feel are worth the effort—if only in order to help me attain a vocabulary within which will help me navigate through to the next level in my semi-eternal quest to understand my faith.

One of the main problems facing me in explaining my recent thought process is that “post-modernism” is still being defined. I can tell you what I think it means to me, but what it really is becoming as it relates to our Christian journey, still remains slightly hidden and undeveloped.

In part, Christian post-modernism is, according to Brian McLaren, author and emergent church pastor: “The Christian faith is understood as a story by a postmodern generation that sees itself as part of the developing storyline. Instead of breaking down the Bible and analyzing it as in the modern era, postmodern believers see the Bible stories as part of a bigger picture and larger story. How we understand the faith as a story … is in some ways relatively new territory because we just haven’t practiced seeing our faith that way,” McLaren said.

“And then understanding how our story relates to other stories and figuring out the role that we all play in this story – because it’s not finished yet – that comes to me as a very motivating and exciting way to understand our faith.”

In this context, popular “Wild At Heart” author John Eldredge is a post-modern story teller. In his 2nd book, “Journey of Desire” Eldridge explains that we are all part of a bigger, God breathed story that is happening all around us. Finding our part and enjoying the intimacy with Jesus that follows, is paramount to a full-filled life and the only way to complete happiness (my interpretation).

Thus, post-modern thought and a process called “deconstruction” work hand in hand to help us understand how Christianity on a global level is being interpreted and subsequently propagated.

The Oxford English Dictionary defines deconstruction as “A strategy of critical analysis […] directed towards exposing unquestioned metaphysical assumptions and internal contradictions in philosophical and literary language.”

To me this means, in practical everyday terms, that our Christian faith is alive and when “de-constructed” might not look like what the American church is defining it as being. Up to several years ago, my church experience was more like unto an artist painting the same picture every week—each Sunday was designed to be as much like the Sunday before it as it could be. We were trained to perpetuate what seemed to work and avoid what didn’t. Seeker friendly meets contemporary semi-prophetic prasie and worship and beyond.

Now in saying all of this, I have tenativly come to the conclusion that there is a lot more to this thing we call Christianity than I have here-to-fore imagined. And that certainly some deconstruction of what I have built up in my mind needs to take place before I can move into the next level of understanding and subsequent intimacy with the Creator of the universe as expressed through Jesus and Holy Spirit.

In other words—some of what I think I know has been built on a foundation that was never meant to hold all the “faith weight” I put on it. I firmly believe that it is past the time where we begin again to fully understand the hope that is in us and what we have believed as the gospel of Christ.

For instance: I believe that we can talk to God and that he is involved in our everyday lives and hears every prayer request that is made. I also believe that there is such a state of being called “walking in the spirit” or “being led” by God. Having said that, I began to consider what I really meant by this the other day while working out on one of the many treadmills at our local wellness center.

Does walking in the spirit and believing that God has a plan for our lives mean that there is a single road map created for us from the fourndations of the world and our job is to discover the plan and walk it out. Or, are there many ways that things can go and each step forward in obediance to what we believe God is directing leads the way to the next fork in the road and so on and so forth.

What I can say at this very moment in time is that I am begining to ask myself the hard questions that I thought were answered many, many years ago, but have laid around, half-formed in some box where we put these ideas and beliefs that are waiting for definition.

Not that we need to know and or understand everything—faith is the sustance of things hoped for, the eveidence of things not seen—but that we really owe it to ourselves and others to examine the foundations of our faith. Have we built upon that which someone else relayed to us in a sermon once upon a time or are we living a day-to-day experience with a living God that is more exciting that we had ever imagined. These choices are ours in a continuing journey to contextualize the message of freedom that was brought to us is the form of God becoming human all those many years ago.

May we have the daring and the strength to persue these and other story lines in the days, weeks and months to come.

Have a great ride in 2009.