On Language and Transcendence

This is just a quick post, but is a snapshot of a massive thought I've been pushing into.

I've talked a lot lately about love - the kind of love that Jesus described when he said "Love your neighbor as yourself."  I often say that it means caring for another person the same way that you care for yourself.  I say that it's the foundational virtue, that it's the greatest commandment, that God is love.

I'm always thinking of new ways to describe it because I build understanding through description.  The other day I was describing what I meant by love and found myself using the term "transcendent."  Love, I said, is transcendent; its goal is for someone to transcend himself so as to see himself and others in their natural equality.  And having said it, I was a little taken aback at how 'eastern' I sounded.

Transcending the self is of prime importance in Hindu and Buddhist traditions.  In my understanding, "Nirvana" can be passably defined as transcending the self.  And here I was describing Jesus' teachings in the same terms, and being very impressed by well how those terms embraced his message.

In fact, my current favorite description of love is: the transcendent virtue.  To love is to act upon the observation that those around you deserve your care as much as you do.  Love is transcendence.

If transcendence, the means and ends of much eastern religion, is so similar to love, the means and ends of much western religion, I wonder how many other similarities we aren't seeing.  I wonder how many of our differences, which we feel must be solved through persuasion and debate (or worse), could be aptly overcome by a good translator.

Experiments in Creative Action

Monday evening, Memorial Day evening, I sat with an older couple whose vitality blurred the marks that times leaves on most people. He’s around 80, I think, and she’s probably a bit younger. He was a pastor for decades. I listened as he voiced a dissatisfaction with the American church, and specifically his local church, that was strikingly similar to what my friends and I have been discussing.

And I listened as he said that, in his decades studying the church from all angles, he had not come across anything much better than what this local church had to offer. He had not found a good model of what faithful community should look like.

80-years-wise and what was this man’s response? Try something new. Start something outside of the box.


Creative Action!

I’ve heard it now from every generation – we are not satisfied with the easy demands of Sunday morning church. We can see that people living the way Jesus taught would create a strikingly different kind of community, and it’s clear that if the story is true at all then it calls us to follow that way with vigor. And the church has taught us to trust the story.

But we haven’t seen what this different way of life or its community looks like, at least not firsthand. We haven’t seen it modeled. We can read about it in Acts, and we can follow different experiments that are emerging around the country and the world. But eventually we come to the edge of what we know, what we have seen, desiring the next step but left without a clear path.

The way forward is creative action: to embed the principles that Jesus taught as deeply as possibly in your paradigm – love for God, love for neighbor, generosity, hope, service, equality, etc. – and to remember the best of what we’ve seen, then create things to do that seem to follow and fulfill those principles and examples.

Do experiments in love; do experiments in generosity; do experiments in hope. Test everything. If it works, repeat it with improvements. If it doesn’t figure out why not and try something new. Test, learn, apply, repeat. Create new ways of loving God and of loving the people around you. Try a new way of serving the poor. Test a new way to apply the idea of equality. Give someone something you’ve never thought to give, or give to someone you’ve never given to. See what happens. Write it down.

And tell me how it goes! I want to know. I’m going to be sharing and discussing different stories of creative action, wherever they happen. Send me stories that you find, or stories that you create. And I’ll share mine as well.


Let’s figure out how to live.

OBEY

Jesus was pretty clear. He told his disciples that if they loved him, they would obey his commands. My challenge for myself recently, and for you, is a question:

Which one of Jesus commands have you made a point to obey?

Blessings and Woes 2

It was a turning point. I had just climbed to the plateaued peak of a mountain in central Ethiopia. Fears and insecurities had been pierced for the moment, and the cold air of elevation was fuel in my lungs, powering the countless microscopic pistons of my brain. My mind's eye focussed for a moment on the few verses I had read in the Bible the night before, from Luke, chapter six.

"Blessed are you who are poor," Jesus had said, "for yours is the kingdom of God. Blessed are you who hunger now, for you will be satisfied. Blessed are you who weep now, for you will laugh. Blessed are you when men hate you, when they exclude you and insult you and reject your name as evil, because of the Son of Man. Rejoice in that day and leap for joy, because great is your reward in heaven. For that is how their fathers treated the prophets."

These were blessed, I had always heard, because the poor and the hungry and the weeping will listen to Jesus, become his disciples, and go to heaven.

Jesus goes on, but the message seems to change. "But woe to you who are rich, for you have already received your comfort. Woe to you who are well fed now, for you will go hungry. Woe to you who laugh now, for you will mourn and weep. Woe to you when all men speak well of you, for that is how their fathers treated the false prophets." These poor souls, I had been taught, were being read their sentence. Jesus was saying that those who are rich, who are eating and laughing, they won't heed his message, won't become his disciples. They will go to hell.

A simple juxtaposition it seemed: the saved and the damned, Jesus' disciples vs. Jesus' ignorers. But as I had read those verses the night before I had seen something rather curious. Just before Jesus launches into the blessings and the woes, Luke reports that he is speaking to his disciples. The whole unbroken monologue was spoken to the people who were already following Jesus, who were heeding his message. Blessed are some, woe to others. They are all his disciples.

The night before I had put down my Bible in puzzlement, and as I descended this Ethiopian mountaintop a new synthetic understanding of this passage crystalized in my mind. It wasn't about heaven and hell. Jesus is telling his disciples what it feels like to continue on the path that they have begun.

The bulk of Jesus' teachings are about how people ought to live, about loving their neighbors and praying for their enemies and walking an extra mile. And a big part of this was how to live together in community, even saying that his disciples' love for each other was the greatest proof to the world that they were his disciples.

I stopped in my tracks on the mountain. I'm pretty sure I spoke aloud, my voice falling over a nearby cliff. "It's not about salvation and damnation, it's about now. It's about now. It's about a great leveling."

Track with me for a minute. Jesus' was teaching a radical new way of life in which the first were last and the last first. When he says that the poor are blessed for theirs is the kingdom of God, he's saying that their needs will be taken care of by this amazing new community. And to the rich entering the community, woe to them, it's going to hurt. Their money is needed to care for the poor, they are going to have to do without the luxuries and comforts to which they've accustomed themselves. They've "received their comfort in full."

And blessed are those who are chronically hungry because their new community will feed them, but it means that those who are used to having all they need might have to go without every once in a while, so woe to them.

And for you who are mourning, you are blessed because your new community is going to take on that suffering with you. They are going to bring you back to a place where you can laugh again. But for those who laugh through life, it's going to be tough because you are going to have to embrace the mourning of your new brothers and sisters.

Can you see it? It's a way of life. It's the great leveling of community, where the troubles and successes of each are the troubles and successes of all. The good news is that this is how it was always meant to be. But need and greed, capitalism and communism, life and death taught us a new and primal way of living, one in which our own survival and success is our only concern, in which sweatshops and oil wars and predatory lending are not only acceptable, but expedient.

Jesus showed us, and continues to show us through the four written accounts of his life, how to live like we are sons and daughters of God. It is deep community, a great leveling, an association so thorough it's as if we are a single organism. For some it will be a relief to enter it, for others it will be a test of their commitment. For everyone who chooses it, it will be an abundant life.

As I wound my way down the mountain I descended into a world whose flaws were more plain, and whose hope was as great as the mountain.

Blessings and Woes

Those who have been around me lately have probably heard a bit about Luke 6, when Jesus says that some are blessed, but says 'woe to' others.

"Blessed are you who mourn now, for you will laugh... Woe to you who laugh now, for you will mourn," said Jesus.

Then, from an address given by Gareth Higgins at the memorial service for the late writer John O'Donohue, quoting O'Donohue:

"If you need to be in your own space to be depressed, I totally understand, but if all you’re going to do is be depressed, then come and spend the day with me, and we can be depressed together. Because I love you today, and I will love you forever."

It's about now my friends. The kingdom of God is full of blessings and woes. Sometimes it will hurt to be a part of it, like taking up a cross; sometimes it will be a joy, like when your cares are cured. Most of all, it will be abundant. And it starts now.

Thanks Mike.

Back in the brilliant tumult

Back in America, back for Christmas and New Year's and families and get-togethers and small talk and resolutions and overeating and finding the funny in suburbia because suburbia is all we have. I'm in Phoenix for a short spell with good friends Aaron and Christen, and their son Xavier.

For those who might wonder, here's what I'm doing now:

Acholi Beads: My family and I are defining a new type of business - the compassion of the NGO merged with the strength and longevity of a business. It's the beginning of something big.
Invisible Children: Though my time in Uganda is finished for now, I may keep working for them on a new project stateside. Or I'll find other creative ways to support the incredible work they're doing.
re:tithe: I'm formulating some thoughts and many questions about the economy of community and compassion. This is going to be a serious pursuit ASAP.

For those who might wonder, here's what I'm thinking now:

So much must change, and so much is changing. Faith and action are synonymous unless you are a fatalist. Jesus' teachings and commands are much more applicable to tomorrow morning than most people will acknowledge. Unless someone takes the first step, we won't have anyone to follow. Life is about stepping into the void between the familiar and the impossible. Those who live with a reckless disregard for what is possible are the only ones who do great things. Impetuousness is the seed of greatness.

The theme of 2008 thus far is Action. It's been in the air and on the web and in my head and in the expectant, impatient rhythm of time.

So far I've been resting, recovering, readjusting, and I've been slow in getting in gear and in contact with many of you, but look for that to change soon. Happy New Year!

Outliving Yourself

Changing the world.

It’s about changing people, right? It’s about millions, even billions of people changing the way they treat each other. But then, all of them are going to die. And the world will be left with the next rebellious upstart generation that wants to change the world.

Maybe that’s the significance of the Biblical story where God knocks down the life expectancy from 900 to 90. Whether you take it as history or myth the meaning is the same: any changes that we make are erased in 100 years. We live in perpetual cultural upheaval.

So how do you change the world for generations? What lives on after people pass away? Two things come to mind – ideas and organizations.

There’s a lot of talk these days about viral ideas – ideas that spread from mind to mind the way that a virus spreads from body to body. Once it plants itself in a host, the host spreads the idea to others, almost involuntarily. The idea takes on a life of its own. Some even have the power to jump generations.

Organizations can also last – look at The Red Cross, Ford, the Mormon church. And it seems to me that the stronger the commitment to an organization’s ideas, the more likely it is to last. (And its ability to make money. That helps too, for a time.)

The collision of ideas and organizations is what gives religions their amazing longevity. They are organizations built completely on ideas, or perhaps they are ideas that people perpetually build organizations on. Either way, they have staying power.

The ideas that Jesus talked about were archetypically viral. Viral ideas have spreading mechanisms built in. Like an email forward that promises you a new iPod if you send it to enough people. The idea is spread by virtue of its contents.

Jesus’s ideas had a different spreading mechanism. His ideas were about life change, and his life was their first showcase. When they spread to a new host, I mean really took root in her like a virus, her life changed. And when people saw the life change they were introduced to the ideas in a powerful form. If actions speak louder than words, then a new way of life is a sustained shout. Jesus’s ideas were shouted from his and his followers’ lives.

The reason his ideas spread so powerfully in the years immediately after his death was that the change they created in his followers was overwhelmingly attractive. These hosts of Jesus’s ideas loved each other, provided for each other, transcended extreme difficulties with joy and patience. Who wouldn’t want to know more? The virus multiplied.

I wonder about today’s Christian church, though. Is it founded on Jesus’s viral, life changing ideas? Or are there new ideas at its core? Or is it more like an organization (or group of organizations) that propagates because it has learned how to make money? Perhaps, like one of my last posts, it's a mix.