Just Wondering…

A few weeks ago my friend Rick Bayer at Canyon Creek Christian Fellowship asked if I would speak there on Sunday July 26th, 2009. I of course accepted with great enthusiasm but was unsure to what I should speak on. He left the book wide open to me and I was nervous as to how I might speak or what I should say after not having done so for quit awhile. Or so it seems anyway.

It wasn’t to long after that that I was having a conversation with a close friend in our near by Second Cup with regards to our ministry plans in Re:Genesus in the fall. I was explaining a number of the themes and avenues to our gathering and used the word spirituality to describe how we approach themes of faith while reaching out to the people who face challenges or disabilities in our community. It was in that moment that he interrupted me expressing a mistrust or grievance against Christians using or being involved with a word or activity such as spirituality.

To be honest, it took me off guard and I was puzzled by my friend’s fear towards Christians expressing spirituality. The more I thought about it and looked at the number of examples where the church here in North America has become increasingly more resistant to the idea of spirituality being a part of the Christian faith I was alarmed at the loss which we faced in our relationship to Jesus and the disconnect it seemed to have with Jesus’ call to be born again in water and in Spirit (John 3:1-15).

At the same time I could see why so many would be afraid of spirituality when you consider the times religion has been abused as a sense of power and led to horrible misrepresentations of what it means to be a follower of Jesus. My thoughts were of Lee Camp’s statement “‘Jesus is Lord’ is a radical claim, one that is ultimately rooted in questions of allegiance, of ultimate authority, of the ultimate norm and standard for human life. Instead, Christianity has often sought to ally itself comfortably with allegiance to other authorities, be they political, economical, cultural, or ethnic.“

You don’t have to go back as far as the dark ages to see how the church or Christianity has been abused through misplaced spirituality. As near as the 1990’s and early 2000’s we can see the murderous practices and abuses of such powers in such groups as the LRA in Uganda and South Africa.

At the same time here in North America spirituality has been under a different form of social attack; namely the practices of economic abuses and consumeristic excess. To some extent I think we can place the blame on New Age theology where the individual bases his or her “spirituality” on whatever they feel fits. I think of the many experiences Bonnie and I had last September at the Body, Soul, and Spirit Expo here in Calgary and it was not long before we understood; spirituality was based and measured upon how much you are willing to spend. L. Ron Hubbard himself as the founder of Scientology was quoted famously for his statement, “Writing for a penny a word is ridiculous. If a man really wanted to make a million dollars, the best way would be to start his own religion.” (Time Magazine April 5th, 1976 Page 57)

At the same time we cannot exclude the Christian church from there own misrepresentations of spirituality. The health and wealth gospel has had great damages on what it means to be a follower of Jesus. We can look at the great persecutions of the church in China and see how they have neither health nor wealthy church budgets and yet it is considered one of the fastest growing movements of today.

With the consideration of these issues I suppose I cannot argue my friends reasoning for being afraid of or disliking Christianity being involved with such a word as spirituality. Yet I still ask the question if I am born again in water and sprit; what does my spirituality look like? What is Christian Spirituality?

And there you have it. This upcoming Sunday July 26th, 2009 I will be speaking at Canyon Creek Christian Fellowship in SE Calgary on the Rebirth of Christian Spirituality. I would love to have you come along for the journey!

I’ve been doing some writing and planning for next September with regards to the Expressions Community and thought I’d share a bit here as well. I am sure I will put out more of a formal invitation in the next month but if you are interested at all please feel free to send me an email!

Why does God allow suffering in this world? Is marriage really important in the long run? Does Christianity matter on any other day then Sunday? Why do I go to church? What is the church? How should I deal with violence in my life? What is a good parent? Did Jesus really have to die on the cross? Am I a Christian if I consider myself to be Spiritual? What is Spirituality? Where does God come in to the reality of today? What is the truth? Does truth exist? Does God exist?

“Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives, and the one who seeks finds, and to the one who knocks it will be opened.” – Matthew 7:7-8

Ever since I was a kid I struggled with the deeper questions in life and what their relevance was to me. I wanted to understand everything and deeply needed to know that God was really truly involved in this world. In some sense I wanted to know that God thought this world mattered. That I mattered. Maybe you are like me.

The truth of it though was the answer I seemed to always receive was paralyzing as people would turn to me and say, “There are two things you don’t talk about in this world. The first is Politics and the second is Beliefs.” Ironic when you think that it is our beliefs which shape the basis for everything that we do!

So then where can we go to express these beliefs and seek out honest open dialogue? Where might we gather to share and to live out a journey of exploring faith in today’s reality?

Questions for God is an open group which meets at the Starbuck’s in the SE Calgary community of Cooperfield where we gather together on the Friday evening of every second week to seek out, converse, and explore our faith in today’s reality. Each week we take home a new article with some suggested questions for journeying into some of your own self discovery before we will share and explore together as a group in the next gathering. We might not always agree but, together with a practice of grace we can explore with the confidence of knowing God is right there with us waiting, wondering, and struggling for the moments of inspiration to which we will all find.

If you would like to know more or if you would like to join us please email erik@expressionscommunity.org or visit www.expressionscommunity.org.

“Jesus is Lord” is a radical claim, one that is ultimately rooted in questions of allegiance, of ultimate authority, of the ultimate norm and standard for human life. Instead, Christianity has often sought to ally itself comfortably with allegiance to other authorities, be they political, economical, cultural, or ethnic. – Lee Camp

Check it out for yourself: Ecclesiastes 3

“He has made everything beautiful in its time. Also, he has put eternity into man’s heart, yet so that he cannot find out what God has done from the beginning to the end.” – Ecclesiastes 3:11

Time. It is a perplexity of life and something which we seem to never escape. In honesty, I had thought of many things I might want to share with regards to my thoughts of time and the way in which we treat it. Ways which seem to treat time as though we poses it and have the right to use it as we see fit to our own desires. I think often of the statement “Don’t waste my time!”

Likewise, we never seem to exist in the moment of time which we are currently in. When we are at church we are thinking about what we will do when we get home. When we are at home we are thinking about what we will do when we are at work. When we are at work we are thinking about what it will be like to be on vacation. The dichotomy we create between what our bodies are doing and what our minds are doing develops such a rift that I wonder if we ever really truly arrive in the moment to which we are presently in.

It was when I was in this thought pattern that a friend of Bonnie’s and mine wrote an email to us that just seemed to strike right at this thought of time and our inability to see the whole picture to which God was present and aware of. We met Katie about five years ago as she lived in a group home here in the SE side of Calgary while adjusting to living with MS. She has since become a good friend of ours and in many ways an inspiration to following Jesus. A part of the Center Street Church community, Katie is greatly involved with social activism and fights for many of the rights for the disabled community here in Calgary and Alberta. She also is a very talented creative arts painter and promotes her work on her website www.oralart.ca/.

In any sense I felt moved by the timing of her email and wanted to share it with you as part of my devotional to Ecclesiastes 3 and For Such A Time As This… I Have Arrived.

When do you know that you have arrived? Have you arrived when you get married and move into the house of your dreams? Have you arrived when you have your first child? Have you arrived when you get the perfect career and have assured your security? When you have grown old and actualized all of your goals?

I started taking my trip on a bright red, reliable and strong bicycle to get to the ends of the earth and find adventure. I soon came across a Village of Fatigue and crossed over a bridge of Uncertainty. I came upon a dirt road that led to many scary turns and frightening hills. I had to get off my bicycle and I had to stop in a worrisome and unpredictable city called Exacerbation.

My tires started to go flat and I had to lay my bicycle down since my kickstand broke off while navigating around a rock of Depression. While momentarily stationary, I found a place to live, found some work, got a cat, and found love but I never found rest or a sense of direction.

Overnight, my bicycle was stolen, my house burned down, the business went into receivership, my cat died and my boyfriend left me. In desperation, I caught a bus that ended up on the road that was muddied and impassable. It eventually crashed in Suicide Gulch and I became broken. I was lost.

While in the hospital, I was introduced to a wonderful Man [Jesus] who tried to comfort me and heal my wounds. He became my new Map Reader. The road continued to be long and hard and my pain continued. We were unable to find a place to convalesce. There was an Apartment of Despair, a Townhouse of Inequity, and finally a House of Horrors.

We continued to reach dead ends but I think that my misplaced self-reliance kept grabbing the map out of the Man’s hands. I needed to follow. His acute navigational skills found me in a House of Care with a backyard that stretched out for miles. The old house still needs some major renovations but I was safe. In the backyard, I was planted in enriched soil, grew strong roots, and was sheltered from unpredictable storms. My many gardeners fed, watered and pruned me and soon I was able to learn some gardening skills of my own.

I was able to plant bright, sweet smelling flowers of fun, excitement, confidence, perseverance and gratitude. I spread grass seeds of hope that grows lush and green every year, provides comfort when I lie down and its fragrance reassures me. At times though, I still feel sad and grievous when some of the blooms fail to open but I am optimistic some will thrive in the next season.

I grew trees that scattered pollen of awareness that attached themselves to anyone who was willing to listen. I started to paint fences of isolation, with my art, to inspire and motivate those who were weary.

With a convicted spirit, I took the harvest of my garden and shared it with others who were able to change the landscape, pave roads that were once unsafe, to find those lost on their journey and to relieve them of their heavy loads.

I have a new bicycle now. It sits in a sturdy bike rack called trust and I take side trips to build my character. It’s a bicycle built for two because my Map Reader needs a comfortable place to sit. My journey is over and I am now on a mission. I have finally found a new Place — in my heart — called Joy and Contentment. I have arrived.

Check it out for yourself: Ecclesiastes 1-2

“For to the one who pleases him God has given wisdom and knowledge and joy, but to the sinner he has given the business of gathering and collecting, only to give to one who pleases God. This also is vanity and a striving after wind.” – Ecclesiastes 2:26

As a teenager I dreamed of being a pilot. For years I would stick my hand out the window of my parents moving car and day dream of being in a British Aerospace Sea Harrier with the wings carving through the air as my hand drifted this way and that through the wind. I was no Top Gun but I loved the sense of freedom and adventure it brought. There was nothing I couldn’t make that plane do high up in the sky. At least nothing my imagination couldn’t do.

I was thirteen years old when I took my first flight as a copilot in a single prop Cessna 150. It was my thirteenth birthday and my best friend and I were both given the flight at Springbank Airfield as a gift from a family friend. There wasn’t really enough room in the plane for the three of us to fit so I just stood in awe of the other planes on the tarmac while my friend went up first. After a couple of hours it was my turn and we circled the plane a few times on foot before climbing in to do the take off check list.

Being that it was my first flight; the pilot did most of the take off procedures. After being in the air a few minutes he looked over at me and said, “OK, well why don’t you take over the wheel for a little while.” It was then that it struck me. The unrelenting reality of independent responsibility. The rules and gravitational laws which dictated the possibility of human flight. It was an over whelming sense of fear and self doubt. I remember looking over at him and thinking, “Who Me?!”

I gripped the wheel with slow hesitation; scared to push, pull, or turn the wheel the wrong way or too much. I looked at the pilot and said, “Where do I go?” He smiled and answered, “Any where you like!” In that moment my mind and body was paralyzed; transfixed solely on the destination which to me was to land safely back on the ground without crashing. The pilot looked at me again; “Just enjoy the flight.”

The memories of my first flight seemed to resonate with me as I looked at the characterizations Solomon struggled with in the first two chapters of Ecclesiastes. Solomon finds this internal struggle where part of him is striving for the complexities of truth, wisdom, and the legal realities or reason for life. He desperately wants to get it right and arrive safely at the destiny or destination to which his creator so desires for him. On the opposite side he finds himself freeing his imagination in the pursuit of creative desire, passion, and the fulfillment of enjoying his life’s ambitions.

Locked between them he is paralyzed with the thought,

“What has a man from all the toil and striving of heart with which he toils beneath the sun?… For to the one who pleases him God has given wisdom and knowledge and joy, but to the sinner he has given the business of gathering and collecting, only to give to one who pleases God. This also is vanity and a striving after wind.” (Ecc. 2:22;26)

For Solomon it seems that all things both between the legalities of wisdom and the creative pursuits of pleasure; everything comes to the reality of striving after the wind. But why the wind? What does he mean by wind and where do we find this wind so to speak within our own sails?

In English the word wind commonly means “a natural movement of air of any velocity; especially: the earth’s air or the gas surrounding a planet in natural motion horizontally”; but Solomon wasn’t really talking about the earth’s wind. The Hebrew word he used was ruah which in a more liberal sense means spirit. So in a sense what Solomon was trying to say was that all things pertaining to an individual’s life, whether done for wisdom or for pleasure, become an expressionism to their pursuit of spirituality. A spirituality which for all comes to a head when faced by the presence of God.

Jesus had a common saying throughout the gospels. He would often recite that, “the Kingdom of God is near.” (Luke 21:31; Mark 1:15; Luke 17:21) His revelation to the Kingdoms presence though was never meant to place us in a state of fear so as to focus solely on our destination and save as many souls as possible before we go to heaven. The nearness of God’s kingdom was meant to free us with the awareness that ruah is not only in the wisdom of the Holy Spirit but also in our own individual strivings for creative passionate dreams and ambitions.

In essence Jesus is our pilot and is now turning to you saying, “Why don’t you take the wheel for awhile?” Where will you go? How will you express your spirit? What does your imagination tell you that you can do?” However way you choose to express your spirituality and strive for ruah remember… enjoy the flight!

“All the way to heaven is heaven.” – Catherine of Siena