It’s Never Too Late to Make Pizza: Paulie Gee’s from SkeeterNYC on Vimeo.

Without knowing anything else about Paulie Gee, I would venture to guess that this is his way of responding to a vocation – that is, a call. I know vocation is not always so clear for many of us, and certainly, many in the world cannot even begin to entertain options because of forces beyond their control and capacity. But nevertheless, I believe that God calls each and every one of us towards certain loves, suffering and work. And I would almost never separate those three. Cause making pizza, at least good pizza, requires it.

In my own discernment of vocation, I’ll just say this. Though I’ve been a pastor for the past decade, the kind of pastor I’ve wanted to be has changed dramatically through the years. That is to say, my sense of vocation within the pastorate has evolved, transformed, maybe even matured over time. This frustrates me in the sense that vocation is not a destination to arrive at but a process to submit to and discern along the way. It also frees me (in light of the previous post) to not have to arrive at all.

If you want a good, quick, contemplative read on vocation, I highly recommend, Parker Palmer’s Let Your Life Speak.

And I would very much like someone to read this to me every morning before I get up and give Luca, my daughter, her milk:

Above all, trust in the slow work of God.
We are quite naturally impatient in everything
to reach the end without delay.
We should like to skip the intermediate stages.
We are impatient of being on the way
to something unknown,
something new.
Yet it is the law of all progress that is made
by passing through some stages of instability
and that may take a very long time.
And so I think it is with you.
Your ideas mature gradually. Let them grow.
Let them shape themselves without undue haste.
Do not try to force them on
as though you could be today what time
— that is to say, grace –
and circumstances
acting on your own good will
will make you tomorrow.
Only God could say what this new Spirit
gradually forming in you will be.
Give our Lord the benefit of believing
that his hand is leading you,
and accept the anxiety of feeling yourself
in suspense and incomplete.
Above all, trust in the slow work of God,
our loving vine-dresser.
Amen.

In thinking through my own spirituality, I find that I’m deeply tempted to use spirituality to fill something deep within. The key word there is “fill”. Reading the account of the woman at the well recently has given me something to think about. She attempts to showcase a personal spirituality before this rabbi by talking about the center of religion in terms of physical location. As it was in the garden, so it is with the Samaritan woman – spirituality is not essentially about specifics of locality. It is about “withness” with God, or covenant relationship with God. Starting with anything else may lead us to a vacant mountain top experience.

Authentic spirituality admits that we’re not necessarily going to be fixed in this lifetime. But it maintains the faithfulness of God come to us in Jesus who entered into our darkness and confusion. And this God doesn’t demand that we get it together for ourselves.

Instead, he leads us to worship.

We are, consequently, left to consider that an encounter with Jesus will not change our circumstances as much as lead us to worship in the midst of them, whatever they may be. Don’t get him wrong – he comes so that we change. Our circumstances may stay the same. But we change. And hope springs from within where things cannot be stolen.

In my mind, it qualifies as a four word summation of the gospel if I’ve ever heard one. Jesus tramples death by dying on the cross. His light cannot be overcome by death, and as a result, death has been converted from a dead end into a door to life.

I’m beginning to think that many who have flirted with death and his cousins (suffering, loss, brokenness, depression, rejection, failure, etc.) have a deeper awareness that death is not what it seems from where most of us stand protected and “safe.” Why is it that those who are nearest to the broken have a story themselves? My guess and hope is that they’ve seen death for what it now really is.

Here’s one such example. I highly recommend it. Watch the video halfway down the page.

I’ve recently been asked several times for movie recommendations. When in the mood, which is quite often, there is nothing that can speak to my soul like a well made movie. Here’s a list of movies I’ve seen in the past year that have made me think and that I can heartily recommend to you. Warning: some of these titles are not kid friendly, dream friendly, can be offensive to some and even offensive to all. I’ll try and make note of it. A good deal of them are foreign.

Departures: Japan. Moving.

The Secret In Their Eyes: Argentina. Disturbing scene of rape. A story of vengeance and forgiveness. One of the best movies I seen – ever.

The Square: Film noir. Australia. Really well done, nail biter to the very end.

The Road: Post apocalypse America. Story of father and son and survival. Another favorite.

Memories of Murder: Korea. Murder mystery. The characters are so memorable. Based on a true story. I love this movie!

Unbreakable: Bruce Willis. Samuel L. Jackson. Top 10.

Looking at this list, I realize I have a penchant for dark movies. Huh. By the way, I took the photo of the Ghostbusters wagon in Park Slope. Another classic.

What’s your list?

This is a follow up to the previous post.

We wear clothes as best we can. What I mean is that unless you have your clothing made to measure (something I’ve tried in the way of a bespoke suit from Hong Kong – but that’s another post), you’re pretty much wearing a dress form’s clothes – the averaged size within your size. Occasionally, we’ll find something that seems like it was made just for us – the joy! For some, that happens more often than not. I’m in the other category (hence my adventures with Hong Kong suit makers.)

I feel the same way about spirituality. For a long time, and even now to some degree, I feel like I’m trying on other people’s spirituality. It seems evangelical Christianity is just starting to take note that one size does not fit all. If that goes for clothing, how are we to assume otherwise for spirituality, spiritual practices, spiritual rules of life, and so on? How long have you been wearing someone else’s clothes? How long have you been wearing no clothes at all in protest? Too tight a jacket, and you’re barely able to enjoy dinner. Too loose the waist on your skirt, and the dance floor is a nightmare waiting to unfold.

Example: I have had trouble my entire life trying to sustain a daily rhythm of reading, prayer, meditation that’s done in a sitting. Some call this quiet time. Sometimes I get to have it. Sometimes I don’t. I used to beat myself up pretty good for not having this be more consistent. The only consistent thing there is that it has never been consistent. So I’m not Jesus. That’s clear. Now – question remains – how do I more fully love James as the spiritual being I know him to be? Well – turns out, every so often, I like to be around trees and grass and not be around firetrucks screaming out of their caves and noise coming from the newest luxury condo gloriously rising out of the ashes of another empty warehouse in LIC. I figured out I need this about once every four weeks. So, I’ve been driving into Connecticut for a day away about once a month. Yes – I get to do this cause my schedule allows for it. But don’t hate on me. Use that energy to be creative with your own schedule and life. A special word to child care givers – please, please don’t beat yourself up cause you have children who keep you immensely busy and don’t allow for the quiet hour or so you used to have before these lovely creatures came along- and when you do have it, you want to sleep through it. Scripture says God gives sleep to those he loves. Sleep away in the freedom of Christ. Ask God to meet you in your dreams and in the faces of those you are loving each and every day.

Spirituality is certainly outlined in Scripture, but ever so graciously – it’s centered set thinking and practice. In other words, there are some core things we are taught to do – pray, read, meditate, sing, rest, gather, give, play, have sex, run like the wind! What that looks like in your life? Don’t ask me. Ask you. Then – try it on.

But the problem for many here – maybe you haven’t heard from you in a long time. Join the rest of humanity. (Wait.. I just got a text..)

In the technocratic world we live in, assessments and inventories have been devised to pop a window into our own souls. I can’t help but wonder if we’re the first in a long line of generations that knows more about 250 other people via media than we do about ourselves. Back to assessments. Here are a bunch that will help you hear from yourself – albeit through the asking of pre fixe questions. They’re tools. Use em. Don’t abuse em. But be warned – this may be your first step towards a real spirituality – a step towards knowing you as God made you and is currently at work within you.

I got these off Jay Feld’s very resourceful and well written website www.doctorjay.net

www.AuthenticHappiness.com (questionnaires from the Univ. of Pennsylvania Positive Psychology Center for determining character strengths, levels of happiness, depression symptoms, etc.)

www.Humanmetrics.com (one “quick and dirty” way of determing your Myers-Briggs “type”)

www.Keirsey.com (another approach to determining your Myers-Briggs “type”)

So I took the MBTI personality test for what seems the eight or ninth time and I came up as a INFP again. I’m not even close to being something else anymore (which used to be the case). I’m not sure how to interpret that.

I think these personality categories are valuable in a few ways:

1. They give you words for things you may have known about yourself but was never able to articulate. Naming it gives you opportunity to accept or reject, and you can go from there.

2. A step towards self awareness is the first true step away from self centeredness.

3. Sometimes, you just want to give someone a quick, even if  incomplete, picture of what’s going on inside your bone helmet. It can help the conversation goes places quicker, deeper. But you risk stereotypes, blah, blah, blue….

4. It’s fun to stereotype types when it comes to personalities.

There is a war on the scale of WW 2 raging right now. But the word “war” may not be accurate – it’s more slaughter or genocide. And for some reason, there is a dearth of coverage given to it. I’m talking, of course, about the civil war in eastern Congo. What’s that? Don’t know what I’m talking about? Well, maybe you’ve heard of Rwanda – or seen the movie Hotel Rwanda. What’s happening to the people of eastern Congo makes Rwanda a paper cut in comparison.  That’s how bad it is. The Hutu militias responsible for much of the more recent violence (killings, rape, slavery, mutilation, etc) are from Rwanda. This is basically a continuation of the genocide from several years ago.

Already, 5.7 million people have died senselessly in the past 12 years. That number does not compute in my head. How? How does this happen in our modern day world, post-Holocaust, post-9/11, post-enlightenment, post-globalization? I’m amazed at the outpouring for Haiti this past month, but as Nicholas Kristof has pointed out, there is no scale that could weigh Haiti against the Congo. This is not to diminish suffering in any way, but the reality of the Congo is so painful, so broken, so out of control, I believe the collective conscious of the global community has chosen to look away. For now.

My roommate in seminary for two years is from the Congo. On his Facebook page, he has a link to Kristof’s article with the entry – “This makes me want to HOWLLLLL!” A pastor friend of mine just adopted three Congolese teenagers from the UN whose parents were murdered – the father in the village – the mother hunted down in a refugee camp. The stories of their lives have completely wrecked my friend’s desire to protect a normative, middle class life. Stories like how the oldest of the three, to send the younger two to school post-being orphaned, used to take the village cows into the jungle with a club to hide them from guerilla militias. He was paid meagerly, but enough to send his brother and sister to school. He was, at the time, only 10 years old! And he was fighting off tigers, snakes, gorillas! With a club.

What elicits a response for Haiti and not for the Congo? Kristof wishes that a earthquake would hit the Congo to effect a similar response. I’m not sure that would make a difference – I won’t get into why here. The issues are complex, the war long, the politics corrupt, the history bloodied and battered. It’s not simple math like: earthquake + people trapped + images + close to our borders = outpouring. I wish it were. The Congo is far away. And Africa is riddled with issues. And the enemy is man.

I’m going to watch Avatar tonight. I hear people come out afterwards feeling blue because of the beauty of the computer generated Pandora – a world that teems with life. Sometimes, it takes a vision of something better, something much better, to get us frustrated with what is. The point of the gospel, in my humble opinion, is not just to get us longing for that day when we’ll be joined to heaven, but to be so captured by the compassion, justice and beauty of God that our middle class pursuits in life would be wrecked. That our ideas of a normative life would be wrecked. That this would free us up to join with those who experience actual wreckage in their lives. Nothing, not even the hatred and violence of the Congo, stands a chance against the power of the gospel and the Holy Spirit that is making all things new through forgiveness, brokenness, servanthood, justice, mercy and grace.