Reflections and Explorations

Not long ago I stood on some rocks and looked out over Lake Ontario, resting in the sights and sounds of the waves, wrapped up in a warm blanket, and bathed by a setting sun.  It was a precious time of becoming quiet before the God who made both me, a finite being, and those waves that stretched back to a seemingly endless horizon.  It was a rich communion of the Creator and his creation, and as I stood there, I knew who I was, and whose I was and I enjoyed the freedom of that knowledge. 

In that peace-filled space, another sound broke in on my thoughts – a distinct and gentle voice – asking me if I would be open to moving in directions and stepping into things I have not anticipated nor even thought of.  I didn’t know if it was a preparatory question or just exploratory, but I decided it didn’t matter.  What could I say?  Of course – yes – I would walk with him into whatever.  A quiet settling moment of agreement.

Three weeks later I sit here reflecting back on that moment, realizing the unfolding of that “yes” has just begun and yet it is already full, challenging, and very unsettling.  I have talked with many since that day and I am struck by how unclear the truth of who we are, and whose we are, has become to so many.  In fact, as it relates to truth, I have found that the very concept of “truth” is being challenged so that a question that escaped one man’s lips roughly 2000 years ago, still echoes loudly in our generation, “What is truth?”

And if truth itself can be in question, then our very identity is in question because if we cannot name what is truth, then we cannot name with any certainty the truth of who we are.   And if we cannot be sure about who we are, how can we know that we are being truly loved because love is never in question until the full truth of who we are challenges that love?  How many times have we said, “If they really knew me, they wouldn’t love me”?  This statement betrays that we long to be known and loved as we truly are. 

So truth, identity and love walk together.  We need truth in order to be certain of who we are and to know that we are being truly loved.  And that love needs to be rooted and fed by a truth that is secure, something that we can hang onto, something that isn’t going to change with the circumstances of life, or from one relationship to the next.  It needs to come from somewhere…really, someone, who is beyond us…who stands apart from us as a faithful and loving friend by whom we measure all things as true or not, especially who we are.

Are we open to being as welcoming of the words of another man who lived at the same time as the first man who asked “What is truth?” This second man named truth as a person, and he named God as love.  If we are open to this, not only can we know truth with certainty, but we can know who we are because we can know whose we are, and we can know that we are truly loved as we are.  Thus, truth, identity and love come together and our deepest longing is met.

When I was a child one of my favourite toys was my kaleidoscope.  I loved looking inside the little opening at one end, twisting the chamber, and watching the brightly coloured pieces at the other end fall into new ways of being together and reflecting off mirrors to create a symmetrical wonder.  A little nudge here, a shake and turn there, turning the whole thing more toward the light…the outcome was always different and I loved the mystery and surprise of it.  It was a simple toy that brought much pleasure.

I was reminded of this toy the other day as I walked with a friend, and shared a bit of my journey into a deeper embrace of love.  The word kaleidoscope came out of my mouth and I was caught by the complete fit of that word when thinking about love. 

There are so many different ways to enter into and receive the wonder and mystery and surprise of love.  There are so many different aspects and expressions and presentations to love, that really, to try and define love, or to put words to it in some way, seems almost shameful…seems to rob it of the fullness of its essence leaving it somehow “less than”.

As I think about this, I am struck by the risk of doing anything more than just abandoning ourselves to love; that the best and most freeing thing we can do is to simply embrace and enjoy it.  Too often we attach definitions and meaning to love that quickly turns into heavy baggage for ourselves and for those we seek to walk in love with.  Expectations form within us betraying love’s full essence, reducing it to certain expected evidences that “prove” its existence and too often blinds us to its gift.

That is not to say we should never speak to love and try to name the creative ways it is expressed in word and deed.  It is to say that we should do so with humility and care, recognizing that we are only capturing a snapshot of love in that expression for that moment.  Trying to experience love in a certain way or the way we did “last time” can leave us missing out on new and beautiful expressions of it “this time”.

I feel like I have crossed over some invisible yet very real line to the side of freedom where I can increasingly simply enjoy love’s various presentations in relationship with each person I participate in life with. 

It is a freedom that allows for people to come together and to rest in new and wondrous ways, enjoying the simple gift of love without locking in the experience to being a prescribed and defining evidence that must be present each time.  Like the pieces in the kaleidoscope coming together and creating a unique expression that is to be enjoyed, any expression of love reveals that all of its elements are also there.  It is for us to discover and enjoy how those elements are coming together and being reflected in the present, and to receive or offer love freely, trusting that it is the essence, more so than the specific expression, that matters.

A final note:  this is not to elevate love for love’s sake.  There is much in the world that speaks to love as if it stands on its own.  Not so.  Love, in all of its kaleidoscope essence, is itself an expression. It is not “love is god”, but rather, “God is love”. 

Last year I cut back our tulip tree.  As beautiful as it was in all of its fullness, it had grown to massive proportions and hidden underneath were all kinds of excess and wild growth that would eventually choke out that beauty if left alone.  And, it was starting to kill off other, independent growth at the ground level underneath and around it.  I had to cut it back for both its own sake and for the sake of the life struggling to continue near it.  My husband would have preferred I just ripped the whole thing out.  I wanted to give it a chance to be what I thought it could be.

One might say I was rather severe, using a hacksaw to cut back a good two thirds of it, yet in the process I discovered a natural shape and beauty flowing from a strong trunk and branch system.  Clearing away all the excess and undergrowth gave a chance for it to burst forth with life – last year it produced three rounds of beautiful blossoms; two this year (cooler weather).  And other new growth has had a chance to grow under and around it, no longer smothered by its insistent presence; in fact, now protected by that presence from the scorching sun, growing safely in its shade.

This summer, I have been the tulip tree at the mercy of the Gardener.  And he has been severe…but not unkind.  Back in February, I was reading Chris Heuertz’s book, Simple Spirituality and his section on “Brokenness” caught me like a deer in headlights.  He writes, “There’s a concept in chemistry called the “limiting capacity”.  An eight-ounce cup can only hold eight ounces of liquid.  That is its limiting capacity.  If the bottom of an eight-ounce cup is broken off, however, the limiting capacity is no longer a factor; that cup is capable of holding an entire ocean poured through it.”

Back then, I was already being courted by God to grow in my capacity to love.  I realized then I would need to be broken – I thought I knew all too well my limited capacity.  And even as I began this summer and was challenged from so many different directions, I again thought I had a good picture of my need and was ready to go.  Illusions die hard.

Almost 3 months into a “sabbatical” year and I can say, God has begun to unfold things in ways I never expected yet are clearly in line with his invitation to “take the fences off my playground” and learn to love in ways beyond what I have already known.  Once again, in the beginning, I had the vision of “adding on to what was already good”. You would think given the number of rounds I have gone with him, I would remember it really doesn’t work that way – but I seldom do.   God, in his usual kindness, corrected my vision and reminded me that new and abundant fruit never comes without first cutting back the foliage. 

Through pressing and pain-filled circumstances, I am now in a space of facing, with God, a lot of undergrowth hidden within me, at times blinding me, at times choking life before it can reach others, at times choking life out of others.  Wild branches twisting in and around, overtaking the natural shape and beauty of God’s design and expression of his loving presence through me.

It has not been easy.  But the consequences have been graciously countered with the consolation of learning what genuine love looks like.  This summer I read Thomas Reynold’s Vulnerable Communion.  I like his simple definition of love – “welcoming the presence of another”.

He continues, “Genuinely welcoming others calls for something different, a moral disposition – love…In love, people become sympathetically attuned and vulnerable to one another, considering each other not from a distance but up close, compassionately.  Furthermore, love keeps the joy of the other in mind, respecting his or her own way of being, working to nourish the capacity for joy that he or she embodies, and remaining faithful to it over time.”  

He also shares a bit of his own journey of how difficult it has been for him at times to truly welcome another: “…how my own needs, expectations, and ideals have closed me in on myself and limited my capacity to be open toward him, to be there with and for him in his struggles as well as joys.” 

Dan Allender talks about relationship patterns and how we all struggle with what is ultimately a quest for power in the face of our fear and unmet needs – either through oppressing others by trying to control or manage them (or worse, by abusing them) or by excluding others in a move of self-protection and excessive attentiveness to our own needs, expectations and ideals.  It is the common lot of a humanity that has lost full sight of its natural, God-given dignity.  He, like Heuertz and Reynolds, says the answer lies in brokenness and shared vulnerability.  Coming to a place of claiming our dignity as one made in the image of God and also agreeing that we are totally unable to reflect that dignity or respect the dignity of another without complete surrender to the grace of God.

So now, I sit in the sorrow of consequences and dying illusions… and in the hope of consequences and dying illusions.  God never exposes the power-plays in our lives to just “rip us out”.  He does it to give us a chance to be what he made us to be.  As we trust in his welcome of our presence, and in his provision for our relational needs, his love is free to flow through us to others in unlimited capacity, providing safe places for others to flourish along with us in the shade of his presence.

My journey is far from over; in fact, it has just begun and I am still deeply in the midst of even finding all the hidden, wild growth – never mind clearing it out.  I suspect it will be a life-long journey.  My prayer along the way is that somehow, in whispers of redemptive activity, Love will have His way and I will indeed learn to love in ever deepening ways beyond what I know at any given point in time.

So…it has been awhile since my last post.  That’s what happens I guess when you take the fences off your playground (see  A Different Church for more on this).  You think you are going to head out into great adventures, new visions and ways of doing things.  And it’s true..but not the way imagined or expected (even if you were trying to not have an agenda or some sense of what things should look like).

First thing that happens?  A bit of time to reflect on what you have just done and to decide to stick with the plan…not go in retreat.  Like taking the fences down from around your house, suddenly now you are more exposed and vulnerable than you were before.  You are no longer within certain boundaries – now it feels like the whole world is watching even if no one is watching…and like anyone can come into your space and there is little you can do about it.  And what is beyond is both strangely familiar and yet also so different. 

You could leave the fences down or you could rebuild.  Actually, really…you can’t rebuild.  You know you have to leave them down.  You don’t want to live a safe life at the expense of missing a full life…of discovering the gift beyond that first tugged at your heart and gave you the motivation to tear that fence down in the first place.

Next?  You start to look at where you have been with different eyes…new light from “beyond” is shed on what is near.  You have room to take a step back now, with a different perspective, with different things at stake and for me, it has been rather awakening, not always pleasantly so…in fact, some days I feel like I have been rather unceremoniously dumped out of my bed, landing with a thud on the floor. 

Not that things were so bad…but definitely a need to “put my house in order” or do some serious “spring cleaning”, however you prefer to describe it.

The light from “beyond” shines from a number of different places challenging me to rethink and/or revisit many different things:

Who have I been and what have I withheld or offered in my marriage?

Who have I been and how have I offered myself in any relationship?  What patterns of life and light need to be celebrated?  What patterns of darkness in my mind or soul have taken root that need to be dug out or starved to death?

How do I respond to kids on the streets…homeless, jobless, and involved in many different “questionable” activities (especially in light of the fact that I was once there myself)?

How do I respond to those who just want to “help those kids”.

How do I respond to my own children ready to take the next step toward their own soon coming into adulthood? How do I respond to those who are facing the possibility of not seeing their own children reach this stage?

How do I respond to the gap between the church and the gay community? 

How do I respond to the elderly who are wondering why they are still alive? or what use they still have? or who can’t remember what you just said a minute ago?

How do I respond to the injustices and systems and people (real live people) of this world that sustain things like the sex trade and child slavery and poverty, some of which happens in my own “backyard”, as in, in my city, my province, my country?

How do I respond to those labelled as disabled or impaired or in some way not fitting the norm?  Along with that, how do I respond to mental illness, challenge, or injury and its long term consequences?

How do I respond to those who are unemployed?

How do I respond to the structures and systems of religion and culture?  Just what do I believe anyway about God and life and humanity and sin and death and guilt and hope and so on…?  How has that changed?  And how do I respond to those who believe differently?

These are not benign, academic issues.  Each of them has touched my life in some direct way at some point in time and since taking the fences down, I have been graced with the challenge to revisit them all with added or different perspective, experience and intentionality.

I am compelled to ask, “Where is God in each of these things…and where am I?”  I wanted over the next year to learn to love beyond what I had already known.  I am becoming acutely aware of some of the breaches in my capacity and orientation to love and that ultimately, each of the above issues is about love. 

It’s not that I do not have love at all…I do.  But it is no small thing to me that by God’s grace and leading I have set aside this year to grow in love…you have to be with people to love people and I have been “reintroduced” (if you will) to people who, not so much in physical terms but in terms of priority, had slipped, not receiving from me more intentional, life-giving relationship…some more so than others.

Mmmm…and this is just the beginning 🙂  It will be interesting to see how things continue to unfold in the days, weeks and months ahead. 

I just received an email from a friend…he finished with these words,

“Blessings as you love your husband and kids and lead courageously.”  If he only knew how fitting those words were right now!

So, I’ve been in a bit of a slump…thinking lots of different things…feeling lots of different things…wishing I could figure it all out…name it, put it in a box, and put it on the shelf labelled, “case closed”.  But I can’t.  Life has not been that neat and tidy of late.  Not that it ever really is.

Margaret Wheatley writes in her book, Finding Our Way, “…we are being called to encounter life as it is: uncontrollable, unpredictable, messy, surprising, erratic.”

Yeah…that about sums it up.

In the midst of this, I am feeling called to think about what it means to fully engage in life and I am struggling.  There are so many that call us to live out our dreams, as if the only things stopping us are our perspectives and choices.  The thought is, our dreams can become reality if we want them too.  I’m not so sure.  There are limits and a certain emptiness to reality witnessed to by the innate sense within that says things are not as they should be, and will not be, no matter what we do.  We are forced, by the nature of this world and of the human condition, to live in a creative tension between what life is and what we wish it to be.  We live with a groaning in our beings that will not be answered…not now.  In the Greek scriptures Paul writes to the Christian believers in Rome, “We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time.  Not only so, but we ourselves…groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for our adoption, the redemption of our bodies.”

Sometimes, there are no words, no neat categories, no nice labels, to explain life.  Just groans. 

I’ve been meditating for weeks now on a recitation titled I Arise, one line at a time.  I was stuck for the longest time on, “Christ on my left”, not sure what to do with it.  As I spent time in review today, I came across what I had finally written, and it still fits for where I am at now.  I had the picture of one who is strong helping another who is weak and wounded.  The strong one comes in on the left of the wounded – their own right side, the side of strength, upholding the side of weakness.  Christ on my left means his right side is nearest to my left side – his strength meeting my weakness.  I like that.  I need that.

I live in a world that I don’t really know how to respond to most days.  Sometimes I feel so incredibly vulnerable and out of control…which is good, because that is reality.  We are incredibly vulnerable and out of control and a reminder of that is brought to us at the end of everyday when we go to bed.  The act of sleeping is a complete relinquishment of control even if getting to sleep first means fretting and anxious thoughts and attempts to resolve things in our minds, only to finally fall asleep out of exhaustion.  Once asleep, we are completely unaware, completely out of control.  Sleep is a simple grace given to us everyday to remind us of the lack of control we really have.  And somehow the world keeps going while we are asleep.  Makes my daytime struggles seem so foolish…comical even.  If I could learn to rest in my vulnerability during the day, I would truly know living a life of rest.  That would be amazing! 

I’ve been talking about taking the fences off my playground…seeing life beyond the familiar…and it has struck me that the first thing that happens when you take down fences is seeing what the fences helped you forget…life is  uncontrollable, unpredictable, messy, surprising, and erratic.  This has been unsettling and the dust is still flying and my vulnerability looms large…but I have “Christ on my left” – his strength meeting my weakness.

There are a lot of people looking for change in the church.  I’m one of them.  But what does that look like?  What is the fundamental beginning place? Too often the change we adopt is merely a reaction to what we don’t like and we tend to go in the opposite direction.  I responded to someone’s blog a few days ago in which that very reaction was found amongst the comments and I asked:

“Why do we make it an either or?  Programs or relationships…institution or unorthodox gatherings…theological or spiritual…structured or unstructured…out there or in here. 

All of this “either or” is a smokescreen for saying, “we don’t want to do it your way”.  Because no matter what we do, and how we do it, when people gather, there is structure…there is program…there is theology…there is spirituality …there is relationship – healthy or not…there is someone “in” and someone “out”.

Unfortunately, what the whole church has missed in our generation, in all of its expressions, is that we are called to a ministry of reconciliation both amongst us and beyond us – a ministry that begins when we come into covenant relationship with Christ and one another, is fed only by the common and primary language of prayer, and must be pursued, even if it costs us our “lives” (our precious positions, standing, influence, etc). 

We are called to love…to allow Jesus to pray us into relationships with people we would rather avoid (as Peterson would put it). 

All of the new forms of church may be exciting, even somewhat effective for a season, but they do not answer what most desperately needs answering…why do we avoid the ministry of reconciliation?  Why don’t we name sin in the church?  Why don’t we name those who sin?  Why don’t we love those who sin?  The kind of love that says we do life together…discover redemption together through each other’s need for it…that removes the “us vs them” that has no place in our hearts, especially in the church.

I like what Peterson says:  “We will never get love right if we don’t get sin right and the looming difficulty in getting sin right is our propensity to minimize or deny it…when improvements need to be made in our communities, sin is not ordinarily targeted as the place to start.”

Are we called to the radical and non religious?  Absolutely!  But until we do that within our walls, we have no credibility beyond our walls.  We are like the man who is successful in business but goes home and abuses his family. 

We need real change – not reactive change, and that change must begin within our own hearts – as I wrote in an earlier blog, quoting a common phrase – we need to be the change we are looking for. 

We need to learn a complete new way of doing things – a way to which we have no reference point other than what Jesus did.  We need to look at him and his ministry again – not to figure out what made him such a great leader (he didn’t come to be an example of great leadership) but to see, really take a good long look and see, the people he ministered to – they were his focus.  Why? 

Because, what is completely unorthodox and what alone will bring the change so many are hungry for will not be found in the ways and places we gather together.  It will be found when we prefer the wisdom of a child.  It will be found when we listen to the voice of the one we would rather not hear.  It will be found when we learn to love the people we would rather avoid.  It will be found when leadership becomes hidden because we would rather identify the forgotten and marginalized amongst us as “the greatest in the kingdom”.  Did you notice that is what Jesus did when his disciples argued about who was the greatest?  He didn’t point to himself (which he alone could rightfully have done) but brought a young child into the midst…a virtual nobody in his day…and said “unless you become as one of these you won’t even enter”, and we could add, “never mind be great”.

To pursue this kind of change requires a radical reorientation of our hearts.  And that reorientation will include becoming aware of the sin within us that blocks love for others and love for God.  There is no other way.  This is not denying that we are new creations and that the old has passed away.  It is reinforcing these things – only those who know a covenant relationship with God through Christ have the courageous orientation to allow God to expose their hearts so that he can remove the sin and in its place make room for love.

I am taking a sabbatical this year to explore new ways of gathering, and to come before God to learn to love in ways beyond what I have learned to this point. It is not so much to leave what I have known, but to take the fences off my playground…to not limit God to place and time and familiar ways…it is to give God intentional access beyond what has already been my experience.  It is to allow him to lead me to people he wants to walk with through me…people who aren’t going to show up in our various gathering places whether at a church building or someone’s living room or in a coffee shop.

How about you?  What will your role be in discovering a different church? What would it look like for you to take the fences off your playground?

Peace

So I’ve been thinking lots about my time at the river. I had wondered what would come of it – how things might be different. No surprise, the most distinct difference is within me.  That’s usually the way it goes.  Go ahead and seek change, and invariably, the change begins with you.  “Be the change…” is a well known phrase that articulates this well.

Anyway, I have noticed rather clearly since that day, just how often I mitigate mine or others’ actions in order to protect peace, or personal agenda, or personal security (or to hide insecurity).  Not that it’s always wrong to find reasons for people’s behaviour that seem to lessen the consequences, or give somebody the benefit of the doubt.  But when it becomes the pattern, I think we set ourselves up for some rock throwing in the future. 

I have also noticed how complex it is to be deeply authentic with myself around relationship stuff , never mind with others, because it means getting to the inner places in my own soul that are tapped into…especially when I find myself reacting negatively to someone.  (It’s not that this is new to me…it’s just lately the truth of this is striking a little deeper).  Just what is that inner irritation really all about, anyway?  Honestly, sometimes I don’t want to know – I just want to get away from the person who stirred it up as if it would go away once that person was out of the picture.  The problem is, as many have discovered, it never does go away…the irritation, or negativity, or anger simmer just below the radar screen, like when you take a boiling pot off a hot burner, waiting to bubble again at the next “stimulating” moment.

Another aspect to this is the question of reciprocity…when the stuff in you gets stirred up by another…are you in a space with that person to figure out together what’s going on.  For me, that’s where my rocks came in – they symbolised a lack of reciprocity – there was no working stuff through together as two people on equal ground.  I have tasted the beauty of true reciprocity – there is nothing like it; and once you have known it, there is nothing like its absence .

On a somewhat related note, I read a phrase this week that stuck with me:  “I can’t be myself by myself”.  It’s true.  I am not fully me unless there are others who can reveal aspects of me I would never have known otherwise.  Ask any parent who, before they had children, thought they were pretty patient.  But kids have a way of showing us just how impatient we really are.  They don’t make us that way – they reveal what is already true of us. 

It isn’t always about the junk either.  I have a friend who has a way of creating space for me to express a rather diverse creativity that pretty much anyone else would be surprised to hear about.  It has been there all along, quietly finding outlets at different times and in different places, but this particular friend sees it, celebrates it and encourages it, challenging me to release it more and more. 

So, I have worked hard recently to get real honest and open; to stop mitigating stuff in order to avoid anticipated conflict or to get what I want (even if it’s a good want); to treat others as if there would be reciprocity, but not get hung up if it turned out to be lacking, knowing I did my part, and to be thankful for what gets revealed in me as I am with others.  The result?  A sense of personal freedom; power – not over others, but from others; and a growing integration between my inner world and what I offer to others in relationship.

I anticipated none of this that day at the river – but I celebrate all of it and welcome the change it is bringing in me and through me.

Over the past few weeks I have been pondering “relationships”…learning some new things, bringing back to mind forgotten or neglected wisdom, and stepping forward to create space for a healthier orientation in some of my own relationships.

I guess what strikes me as I reflect is that our world is built on relationships whether they are relationships of love or hatred, acceptance or rejection, empowerment or oppression, tenderness or abuse, intimacy or intimidation. 

I have also been struck by the realization of just how much freedom I have to decide how I will respond.  Many years ago I was challenged by a friend to consider how much power I was giving to other people  – there were some who seemed to be able to yank my chain whenever they wanted and I felt powerless to do anything but suffer the consequences…after all, who was I to stand up to them?

This all came to a head for me as I reviewed some of my journal this past week and still felt strongly the words I had written just a couple of weeks before:  “I am tired of being a prisoner…to how others respond or don’t respond to me.” 

I was reading this while sitting on a large boulder by a river, having spent the last hour or so, selecting different rocks, and on each one writing with a black marker, a name and then all the things that person had done to wound me.  I chose only those people that I still seemed to be struggling with, unable to move freely in other situations and relationships as a result. 

Sometimes I would hold onto the rock, swinging it back and forth, feeling its weight which seemed fitting for each person.  Then, when I was ready, I threw the rock into the river, releasing each person from the debt they owed, handing the debt over to God, affirming that I believed he would repay me, and restore to me what I had lost and even more. 

The exercise did not allow any mitigation – “they did this because…”; or “it’s okay, it turned out for good”; or “they really didn’t mean it”; or “who am I to point fingers?”  It was simply to intentionally call what was wrong, “wrong” and then give God access to bring healing and trust and to lead me in a different way. 

As I sat on that boulder, I didn’t feel any different…there was no sense of lightness, or suddenly feeling free or clean or rejuvenated or hopeful.  I did not now have renewed energy to try again in some of the relationships.  In fact, the largest rock of all also represented  a funeral of sorts…walking away for good, burying that person in the river bed.

As I took note of that I thought, “good”.  Too often we look for a specific feeling to decide if something was real or effective.  But from deep within, I did have the sense that what I had done would bear fruit in the days and weeks to come.  I wasn’t sure what that would look like…and didn’t want to form any expectations about what that should look like.  But I did anticipate something would come of it.

Since then, I’ve had two intense and intimate conversations with people, each of whom were also deeply wounded by relationships, some horribly abusive, many still present and unavoidable.  It seemed appropriate to share about my time at the river, and as I did, I watched hope come into their eyes – they couldn’t change the people or circumstances, but they could trust God to restore what was lost in ways they couldn’t imagine right now.  That was cool – to be a messenger of peace and hope for others who were hurting.

I’ve since had other situations that would normally have triggered in me some kind of defensive or negative or avoiding response and I have noted the absence of these in me.  I am inclined to believe that I am experiencing the freedom of the prisoner’s shackles having been thrown into the river along with those rocks.

Relationships are revealed every time you cross paths with someone, whether that someone is intimately close to you (for better or for worse) or merely a stranger.  How we relate to people is the stuff of relationships…and it seems that in this world the fruit of relating is as full of, if not more so, the stuff that wounds as it is of the stuff that heals and enjoys and celebrates.

I have no doubt that I will return to that river some day, to throw a few more “marked” rocks into the water, handing over the losses to God to repay and restore as he sees fit.  It is our way – there are no human relationships that are free from wounding.  But while I will get wounded, it’s my choice to stay free or become a prisoner again.  For now, I’m oriented to leave my shackles at the bottom of the river along with the rocks I threw in.

I’ve been thinking about the systems and structures that reflect the coming together of people and the activities we engage in.  In a post-modern world, (and there is research to suggest that Canada is even more post-modern than Europe), one of the first things to be challenged are the established systems and structures that have defined how we come together, how we make decisions, what “truths” we will uphold and how we will uphold them.  I’ve put “truths” in quotes because another challenge by post-modernism is to seriously examine what we have held to be true, and to be open to the possibility we might be wrong – this is a good challenge worthy of our attention.

Perhaps the most obvious systems crumbling beneath our feet are those related to economics and finances.  As the financial world deteriorates around us, it would seem the only thing true is that we were desperately wrong.

But the question of systems and structures must move beyond faceless entities and ways of doing things.  They are always about people – how we come together, how we stay together, and what we do while together.   Systems and structures are established, upheld or broken down by people with names and faces.  They are the framework of our strategy for doing life together – they are  a means of due process.

And much to the chagrin of those who want to throw out what has been and not have systems and structures at all, we can reject the established ways all we want, but it is naive to think we can live without something in their place…the reality is we will establish new systems and structures to come together that will be just as susceptible to corruption, contempt and at times, cold advancement of personal gain and agenda.  This becomes more insidious when we do these things all in the guise of protecting unity and community; of exercising trust; of respecting leadership. 

Peterson, in his book Christ Plays in 10,000 Places, writes about how the norm is not for us to escape the systems that have violated these things but for us to merely move up the ladder, so that if we were once oppressed, should we be freed from that, we will quickly become oppressors…such has been the case in every sphere of man, including family, government, business, and…sadly…church. 

It is in this last sphere that I most struggle.  God’s people are called to a different system…a different structure, to be purged of the ways of the world and to learn God’s ways, his kingdom orientation that has no comparison in this world, and that cannot be measured by any tools or standards of this world.  Yet churches, our ways of gathering and being together, too often don’t look a whole lot different than anything else around us.

I’ve been reading the book of Lamentations this week, struck by the raw reality of suffering described in its pages, a reality that remains for millions today.  At the root of it all was the failure – the sin – of the leaders; the priests and the prophets.  They were deeply imbedded in systems and structures that worked for them, that paralleled what was happening in the world around them (sadly, they were incredibly culturally relevant), and that they propagated as good for the people.  Any challenge to what they were doing was tenaciously rejected as an assault on unity, community, leadership, trust, obedience – things dear to many people’s hearts and thus causing many to shrink back from protesting.  This only served to make things worse, and to deepen the gap between the powers that be and the people subject to them – the very people who could also provide the necessary accountability designed to prevent such a course.  It also served to set the stage for increasing violations both in number and in depth against “due process” – the things God had put in place to prevent such violation.

I came to a point this week of thinking systems and structures need to be the servant of unity, trust etc.,  not the master of these things.  In other words, we follow due process to provide an environment for, and to protect, unity and community and trust.  Too often we deviate from due process and we  appeal to unity and community and trust to make that deviation okay – after all, we trust each other right?  I have come to realize that as soon as I pull the “trust me” card, I have perpetuated a system that is more about protecting my leadership and my decisions than it is about protecting unity and trust – and that puts me in the camp of the priests and prophets of Lamentations, imposing upon others, creating an environment where suffering can begin to have its way.  I also then deny the witness of a kingdom where it is done much differently – not just another kingdom, but a better, completely other kingdom and in so doing, deny God himself.

One of the tangible expressions of living in a place of rest…of simplicity…is learning to live below our means…not just within our means…but below.  It’s interesting to hear the economists and governments suggesting that the key to economic recovery is to free up credit markets.  I wonder, how does freeing up credit so that people can spend money they don’t have help to stimulate the economy?  Isn’t that what got us into trouble in the first place.

The writer of Proverbs warned the community that “The borrower is slave to the lender”.  It is one thing to owe money for something that when sold will actually cover the loan – like a house.  It is another to owe money for anything else that once purchased isn’t worth what you paid for it.  We have created a culture of access and entitlement that has done nothing more than turn us into economic slaves.  The result is that we are prisoners of our own lack of simplicity.

We still have amongst us an entire generation that knew what it was to not have unless they could pay for it first, and somehow managed to also save – that meant they were living below their means.  Would that we would open our ears to hear their wisdom about how to do life that way – they were economic geniuses in their day.

My mother’s parents have both died, but when they were alive I used to visit them quite often.  I was always amazed that the refridgerator in their kitchen was the original one they had purchased, with cash, back in 1939.  That fridge was still there when my grandfather died in 1998 and my grandmother moved into a nursing home.  Their thinking was, it worked so why replace it.  Yes, I know, it didn’t run as efficiently as the newer models, but that’s not my point.  My point is this – they were very clear on the difference between need and want. That is one of the lessons we so desperately need to relearn and embrace today. 

And it goes beyond material possessions.  It speaks to our sense of value and worth (exactly why do we need “new” when the “old” is working just fine) as well as our capacity to be generous with our lives for the sake of others.  An orientation of simplicity is not just for our own sakes – for the “rest” we carry in our own souls.  It is for the sake of those we know, or know of. 

Chris Heuertz refers to a quote often ascribed to Ghandi, “Live simply that others may simply live.”

Mark Kielburger spoke to thousands of young people at the “Me to We” gathering in Toronto last fall and said, “We don’t have a money problem, we have a priorities problem.” 

Chris echoes this as he writes about the questions we ask as we try to move to simplicity: “…most of the questions, and most of the typical answers, are about what we have, want or need.  I wonder if the questions shouldn’t be more about what others don’t have, still want and desperately need.” (97, Simple Spirituality)

As I look around my home and consider financial commitments we have made and will be facing soon (post-secondary costs are just around the corner for two of our children), and the push we are making this year to be free from “lenders” so that we can be free to be generous to others, the call to simplicity in both its material (what we have and do) and immaterial (what we value, and what is our prevailing orientation) expressions is a constant that helps to prioritize our needs and wants in such a way that we live below our means and thus live truly free with the hope that we might be better positioned to help others “simply live”.