The Great Simple Moment

I was rushing off to visit with one of my friends. I was rushing because I decided to squeeze in returning a DVD before my visit. As I turned onto Dulles Road, I joined the slow procession of vehicles caught behind a mobile home being transported to its new lot. So much for being on time.

Like everyone else in the line, I was thinking, “Please turn onto a side road soon.” We all got our wish but not in the form we hoped for: the trailer stopped in the middle of the road and began the long process of backing onto a side road. As I thought about turning around and taking another route, I looked in my rearview mirror and saw about half the vehicles behind me (including a concrete mixer, not exactly a model of quickness itself) start making U turns in the road. It was a defeated army in retreat, overcome by the might of one oversized trailer.

I glanced to my side and saw flowers. I looked a little longer and saw three different species. I looked even longer and realized that the entire field at my side was ablaze with the kind of beauty Monet tried to capture in his paintings.

I killed the engine, rolled the windows all the way down, and basked in the moment.

My friend, John, came over for a farewell dinner the other night. He has been a great listening ear to talk to and I’m going to miss him as he moves to Temecula, CA next week. I was catching him up on some events he had missed at work, mainly a new employee leaving because she wanted a job “with more dignity” (read: more money and less manual labor). She left work that day carrying a designer purse and got into her new car to leave. What made me feel sorry for her was that she was torn about leaving… she knew that she could find fulfillment in ways that didn’t require nice things but she loved having nice things. Her love won out. (Aside: It reminded me of Jesus’ interaction with The Rich Young Ruler )

At that point, John and I started talking about how money can buy you happiness. The catch is that the happiness money buys is subject to the Law of Diminishing Returns. I told John about my moment of presence and discovery of beauty behind that mobile home from the previous day.

“That’s what I’m talking about, man!”, was his response. “You can’t buy richness like that. You can only accept it as a gift.”

Well, said, John.

Every desirable and beneficial gift comes out of heaven. The gifts are rivers of light cascading down from the Father of Light. – James the Apostle

Lent 2007: The Journey

Carrie and I just watched The Motorcycle Diaries. It is, without a doubt, the best Spanish language film I’ve ever seen. I owe Ian Uriarte a huge thank you for talking about this film two years ago during Lent at Ecclesia .

The Motorcycle Diaries is based on a true story about two men who ride a motorcycle up the spine of the Andes Mountains from Argentina all the way to Venezuela (12,000km +). In the middle of the film, the two main characters face an obstacle that is large enough to make them question the feasibility of continuing their journey. I identify with that right now in Lent.

I opened up cracks in my life’s flooring, hoping to air myself out during Lent. Instead, hard questions and statements are working their way up through those cracks. My mood is starting to change, much like the mood of the film changes after the main characters decide to press on.

Lent, much like the film, has its heart in the second half of the journey.

Lent: Decompression

We’re now 1 1/2 weeks into Lent.

I remember a communal experience the Mad Liturgists at Ecclesia chose to incorporate into our services a couple of years ago during Lent. We didn’t have communion during the entire season, which at first I welcomed as a break from tradition but soon grew to realize the significance of: Christ bound us together. His blood and resurrection, specifically, bound us as one People. Without him, Carrie and I had little in common with the people in that space. Anyway, the first week we ran our fingers through grape and wheat seeds. The next week, we stared at tiny seedlings. Every week from there on, we watched the seedling grow until, on Palm Sunday, we had a bunch of grapes and a bundle of wheat on the communion table… Christ in his maturity on earth. Eating the bread and drinking the wine on Easter Sunday after the experience of watching the elements “grow” was quite powerful.

Currently, I feel like the elements on the first week of Lent that year: I have been dropped into soil (much like the seeds sitting in flats and newspaper “pots” in my back yard). I’ve made Lenten sacrifices –as well as taken up a few things– and awoke a few days ago to the reality that I’ve decompressed. The feeling of tension and tightness is gone from my daily rhythms and I now face something I didn’t expect: a decision.

Will I allow these spaces I’ve cleared for The Divine to be filled with the busyness of life –the way my friend who gave up TV for Lent describes how he now vegges in front of the radio and computer instead of vegging in front of the TV– or will I co-create with God divine moments.

Holy pauses.

Mini Sabbaths.

Lent 2007: Ash Wednesday

Lent is upon me again and I stare at the question as I already miss what I have given up: Why? Why sacrifice?

I find the answer in Eugene Peterson’s words:

[Voluntary confinement] is voluntary disaster. We look at the way in which all these various [personal] disasters serve as advances in spirituality among our friends and in people we admire across the centuries, and say, “Why wait? Why wait for an accident, an illness, a failure? Why not take deliberate steps now to rid myself of the illusions of being a god, study the limits of my mortality, and sink myself into the quite marvelous but sin-obscured realities of creation and salvation?”

When I gave up caffeine last Lent, it was a quick study of my finite nature. Suddenly, my strength had an end. However, so did my chattiness. I listened more. I was less nervous.

Again, I face the question, on my first day of sacrifice: Why?

Because, I need to become less, that God may become greater.

Here’s a few lines from today’s readings that jumped out at me.

Joel 2:1-18
Blow the ram’s horn trumpet in Zion! Declare a day of repentance, a holy fast day.

Psalm 51:1-7
Have mercy on me, O God, according to your unfailing love; according to your great compassion blot out my transgressions.

2 Corinthians 5:20-6:10
The old life is gone; a new life burgeons! Look at it! All this comes from the God who settled the relationship between us and him

Matthew 6:1-21
Be especially careful when you are trying to be good so that you don’t make a performance out of it. It might be good theater, but the God who made you won’t be applauding.

Crafting Joy

We live within an economy that expects us to mimic its ruthless efficiency. The skills that we’ve honed over the years aren’t enough… machines may replace the need for that skill set or, just as true and just as frustrating, our skills may be sent overseas to someone who will work for one quarter the rate we make (And they, like us, will likely eek out a subsistent living on that wage).

The answer we’ve been given is that we need to adapt. To learn something new. To give up what we do and evolve into something different, even if that means we have to give up a career we love.

When I started working at Great Harvest, I was given a gift that has slowly dawned upon me with the increasing beauty of a sunset. I have been given the opportunity to step out of that economy and into something archaic: a craft.

As long as humanity has pounded wheat down to flour and had fire and a little water, we have made bread. Yes, there are machines that can do my job, which means my pay is lower than it used to be. Yes, it is a “simple minded” job that anyone can do. However, I find it to have an honor every job I’ve had before –jobs with more prestige, power, and money– can ever boast.

Baking is life-giving.

Every day, as I make dough, knead it into a loaf, decorate that loaf, and bake it, I am creating something that will have a tangible, felt result in someone’s life. This bread that I co-create (with my coworkers, the farmers, miners, bees, yeast, and the God who made the wheat, honey, and salt) will give life and strength to everyone that eats it. I find a holiness in my work that looks like Jesus. It is an easy connection to make since he called himself the Bread of Life. At some point in the creative process, I pray a silent prayer over these loaves:

God,
Thank you for so abundantly providing these ingredients.
Thank you for the strength to prepare them.
May all who touch them be blessed.
And may Jesus, the Bread of Life, nourish me this day.
Amen.

This is one way that my calling –who God is shaping me into– bleeds into my vocation –the work that God has set before me– and it is silent and subtle and invisible to everyone around me.

Another way my calling is bleeding into our bakery is in the joie du vie that being a follower of Jesus produces. I love pulling my coworkers, and myself, out of the monotony of the work and into laughter. [Aside: That is quite easy. As I've moved "down" into the blue collar world, I've discovered that there is a comraderie and joy that the white collar world lacks and cannot reproduce.] One of the ways that I’ve done this is by instituting Sing Along Saturday. It started as kind of a joke in which I blurted out, “Hey, let’s only put songs we like to sing on the playlist!” and eveyone agreed. We’ve been doing Sing Along Saturday for about a month now and it is a blast . I mean an absolute blast.

This past Saturday, I was belting out some song at the top of my lungs, grinning from ear-to-ear as I iced King Cakes. As I put the orders onto the order rack, one of the customer service staff told me about an exchange that had just happened. “Someone offered me five dollars if I could make you stop singing while he ate. The people behind him said, ‘That’s why we come here every Saturday!’” I died laughing, as did all the other staff who heard the story.

I’m amazed at how much life there is simply in singing and dancing like an idiot to songs like Tom Sawyer, Hey Ya!, The Love Shack, and Benny and the Jets. It is even more funny to watch a customer start singing and dancing with us. The act of celebrating good music turns a drudgery like the one day I have to ice three different kinds of King Cakes into my favorite workday of the week. Today, at my church’s gathering, I felt it again while I sang the ancient truths about our God and what he has done. I didn’t dance this time, though.

Wow. That’s A Giant Pink Elephant.

Let’s begin by petting the elephant: January 2nd, 2007 is the last day that I spent as a vocational minister. Drew affirmed the decision and we finalized it inside Chick-Fil-A while a light rain fell on Lafayette.

Two days earlier, I sat under the shade of a huge oak tree outside Mission Burrito with my friend, who is an Elder at Ecclesia in Houston, and ran through the situation. “I’m tired, Paul. Really tired.”, is the quick-and-easy summation of our hour-long conversation.

When I said it, he kind of smirked –not at me but at the situation– and said, “You’re two months removed from a sabbatical, Dallas. What does that say about how you fit this role?”

It said a lot.

I thought that the word Pastor would allow me to speak into people’s lives in a way that I couldn’t before being given that title. I thought that people would come to me with their questions and faith (or lack thereof) and I would be able to affirm that the pain their souls felt was real and speak the reality of Jesus into that pain. The exact opposite seems to be the reality I experienced. I became a kind of novelty act. A Rev-In-The-Box where you could crank the handle and I would pop out and say a “nice” prayer before a meal.

That’s not a totally fair description. I will admit that right now. However, I found it true more often than not. The title… the office… separated me from people. It instilled a heirarchy with me being Man Who Hears From God and my friends and neighbors taking on the role of Me Who That Man Makes Uncomfortable. A perfect example of this is what my friend, Chris, calls “the rewind”: You say you’re a pastor and watch the person mentally review every word they’ve said since they met you to see if anything they said is something they wouldn’t have said in a church building. Some people love the conversations that happen after that. I never did.

I pushed against their mental boxes as hard as I could. No matter how hard I pushed, though, I couldn’t get outside of the preconceived notion. It is a situation I know quite well after spending two years as a foreigner in China. I was an outsider in that land by race. Now, I found myself an outsider in this land by way of career. Jimmy Swaggart, Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, and Robert Tilton were my peers in the minds of my non-christian friends. I was a pervert, a thief, a hypocrite, and a bully all rolled into one. To my christian friends, I was the junior varsity version of Joel Osteen, Billy Graham, and Rob Bell. I was supposed to entertain and comfort. Friendship was allowed, as long as I, The Pastor, didn’t have to appear imperfect.

In the middle of my time as a vocational minister, I was directed towards Eugene Peterson’s stories of pastoring in Under the Unpredictable Plant. They were transparent and inspiring but, in the end, I realized that I’m not one of the people that loves the challenge of Vocational Ministry. Nor am I called to it. In the end, however, I lined up totally with one of Peterson’s excerpts:

Every few days or so another pastor gets out of bed and says, “That’s it. I quit. I refuse to be a branch manager any longer in a religious warehouse outlet. I will no longer spend my life marketing God to religious consumers. I have just read over the job description the culture handed me and I am buying it no longer.” Every few days another Jonah, realizing that his or her vocational disobedience is endangering everyone else, that this careerist professionalism is in large part responsible for the wretched character of American religion, says “take me up and throw me into the sea.”

One of the more poignant things I’ve internalized over the last year, as opposed to just reading and knowing the concept, is that a calling is bigger than a vocation [Aside: vocation's root word is vox, meaning call.]. Abraham wasn’t told, “Go start a big flock and get some employees.” His identity –his call– was bigger than that. He was the father of a nation and that impacted everything he did.

I’m still not sure what My Grand Calling is but I do know that I feel like I am living it out more in a bakery than in the confines of ministry. I feel it when I start a veggie co-op. I feel it when I talk about environmental stewardship with people. [Another aside: John 3:16 says that God loved the cosmos and gave it his son when you read the original Greek. If that's the case, I think it's safe to say that the way we treat the planet he gave us to rule over is a deeply spiritual, deeply christian issue.] I feel it when I tell stories, like this one.

I am out of the boat, swimming in the sea, and absolutely love it.

Sabbath – Starting Is Easier than Ending

As the color creeping through the cracks in the windowblinds faded from red to blue to indigo, the candlelight became more necessary and more welcome. We’ve only done three Shabbat but the routine is becoming more familiar: set out candles, pull out bible, read the commandment to keep the Sabbath, light candles while I pray, rest.

Look at my family as we sit together around the table.
Eat in relative quiet.
Savor each bite.
Read to my boys.
Go to bed at 8:30 because I can’t keep my eyes open.

Waking up the following morning is nice- I get to sleep in and either Elias walks in and wakes me up or Carrie brings Deacon in bed with us when she feels that I’ve slept long enough. Drinking coffee while I read Wendell Berry essays by the yellow rays of early morning sun is great.

However, I start getting restless at about 3pm. I keep checking the time on the clocks. I think about what CDs I want to listen to (Amos Lee this past weekend) after sundown. I can’t wait to check email. The nagging feeling within me is that my necessary rest is completed. “Enough!”, my mind screams at me, “You’ve had a good break but now you’re just being unproductive!”

Taking an evening to hang out with the family by candlelight isn’t too hard. Resting the entire following morning and afternoon is. Christopher just blogged on a chapter in his book that talks about how Sabbath begins at sundown… a set time that is out of our hands. It ends that way, too. That ending is harder to deal with than the beginning.

The Art of the Commonplace

I’m reading a book by Wendell Berry called The Art of the Commonplace and it is totally rocking my world… and I’m only through the Introduction.

What disappoints me is that so few USAmerican christians know of this guy’s work, much less that he is one of our great voices. Check out this quote where he totally bares his soul and frustrations all in one fell swoop:

[Questions about how to know and care for the environment] are also, both in origin and effect, religious. I am uneasy with the term, for such religion as has been openly practiced in this part of the world has promoted and fed upon a destructive schism between body and soul, Heaven and earth. It has encouraged people to believe that the world is of no importance, and that their only obligation in it is to submit to certain churchly formulas in order to get to Heaven. And so the people who might have been expected to care most selflessly for the world have had their minds turned elsewhere — to a pursuit of “salvation” that was really only another form of gluttony and self-love, the desire to perpetuate their lives beyond the life of the world. The Heaven-bent have abused the earth thoughtlessly, by inattention, and their negligence has permitted and encouraged others to abuse it deliberately.

The paragraph goes on and its indictment is both scathing and pin pointedly accurate. Amazingly, though, I don’t feel like a wagging finger and furrowed brow are pointed at me as Wendell writes. I feel like this man is talking with me and, while he is deeply passionate in his convictions, they are tempered with the understanding and patience of Jesus.

Another thought from the introduction that has stuck with me is simply this: in the time since Columbus landed in the “New World”, not once have white men in power said “What is this land?” “What is its nature?” “How do we live in this environment?” “What must I do?”. The total lack of these important questions, coupled with half a millenia of subjugating the land to our wishes, whims, and desires, means that we have turned large swaths of this great place into a shadow of their former selves. Worse yet, if we never stop to ask how we live in this place, we may rob ourselves of the joy of harmonious living within Creation.

The Idea Behind The Onyx House

The seeds are ordered, people have been invited, and the layout of the garden is being drawn up. The Onyx House is hosting a Co-Op. We’re growing Organic-Certified, Heirloom Species vegetables from Seeds Of Change. Lettuce goes in the ground next month, followed in March by Snap Beans, Cucumber, Eggplant, Tomato, and Squash. Rounding out the Spring will be Peppers, Okra, and more Tomatoes.

I’m looking forward to this for a variety of reasons: (1) we’re decreasing our ecological footprint by growing some of our own produce, (2) we’re creating a hobby that makes us go outside (3) we’re enriching our community by creating a space we all get together once a month, (4) we’re preserving biodiversity by growing dying species and (5) we’re opening our home to our friends and family.

When Carrie and I bought our home, we talked about how we wanted it to be different. We wanted to live out some of the beautiful realities we saw in ancient christianity (people giving away possesions to others in need, opening their homes to others, living a life that found Jesus in every moment and place). I felt like we needed to communicate that in the way that we talked about our home, which is why I coined the phrase “The Onyx House” (Why Onyx? We live on –surprise, surprise– Onyx St). It’s not named after us, “The Begnaud’s House”, which connotates the exclusion of others.  It’s a name that I hope conveys a spirit of openness. Maybe it conveys that I’m a pompous ass. Who knows.

The image I have in my head of kids sitting on blankets or running around playing chase while adults labor and laugh in the garden while a clear blue sky overhead gives life to our plants might not be realized but I hope and pray that the backyard co-op is the start of a posture of generosity towards coworkers, friends, and neighbors.

Shabbat

“Do you know what the longest of The Ten Commandments is?”, Dennis asked me as I sat in his office. He answered his own question for me, “It’s the command to keep the Sabbath. Murder only get a couple of words. Idolatry only gets a handful. Look at how many words are given to taking a day off of work! I think they’re there because it’s so hard for us to do.”

Dennis planted a seed in me with that thought. Around the same time, one of my friends started blogging through a book he’s reading on Sabbath. Then, to cap things off, Postcards from Buster visited with an Orthodox Jewish family right before and right after Shabbat (no electronics, so the cameras couldn’t be on in their home).

My interest peaked, I went over to Wikipedia and looked up Shabbat, the Hebrew spelling and pronuciation of Sabbath. One of the more eye-opening details on the Wikipedia page was this:

“the Hebrew word for ‘strike‘ (as in work stoppage) is shevita, which comes from the same Hebrew root as shabbat, and has the same implication, namely that the striking workers actively abstain from work, rather than passively. … When it is understood that God ‘ceased’ from his labor rather than ‘rested’ from his labour, the usage is more consistent with the Biblical view of an omnipotent God who does not ‘rest.’“

Let me tell you why this was a big deal to discover.

One of my friends who grew up in a very conservative christian home talks with dread about how her parents made her spend Sunday (the Christian equivalent of Shabbat): she’d wake up early to go to Sunday School and Morning Services, spend the afternoon reading or taking a forced nap, and then go to Evening Services to round out her “Sabbath” day. In other words, the focus of the day was on church events and forced rest. It seems that a correct biblical view points towards a violent removal of one’s self (ceasing) from the workweek and not a violent forcing of rest and church events upon one’s self (even though Jewish men and women did try to go to Synagogue events more during Shabbat).

Enough about the theology. Let’s get into the practicality of what Carrie, the boys, and I did last Sunday night and Monday. Yes, Sunday night to Monday night. We chose that time because I’m off on Sundays and Mondays. We chose sunset-to-sunset because a traditional Hebrew day starts and ends at sunset. [Aside: David Capes, an elder at Ecclesia, pointed out the beautiful change in perspective this view causes: You begin the day with your family. You share a meal and talk about life. Then, you calm your kids and usher them into sleep. Maybe you make love to your spouse after the kids fall asleep. After the beginning of the day, you sleep until your body is ready to complete the day. You wake up and use the stored up strength God has given you to work. As the day ends, you return home to be with your family. It's an absolutely beautiful way to start and end the day, isn't it?!]

Sunday afternoon, Carrie put candles all over the living area of our house and we turned off all the lights. At sunset, I read the commandment to keep the Sabbath and lit the candles. We ate by candlelight. In the middle of the meal, I pointed out to Carrie that I was paying more attention to everyone than I normally do. She agreed with me and we noticed that the candlelight was bright enough to see our meal and each others’ faces but not bright enough to illuminate the distractions around us. Outside of Elias occasionally asking us to turn on the lights, it may be the most peaceful meal my family has ever shared.

After dinner, we sat on the floor with the kids and read them books. I played guitar for them. To end the start of our Shabbat, I read them a Psalm and we all crashed. Candlelight is like a campfire… fun to stare at and emotionally warm but not bright enough to stave off sleepiness. Unlike my normal thirty minute mental unwind, I slept almost as soon as my head hit the pillow.

The next morning, like every morning I don’t work, we woke up to Elias announcing it was time to get up. Carrie told him that the TV didn’t work during Shabbat, so we couldn’t watch anything. I think the fact that he had our undivided attention helped to keep him from being fussy over the loss of His Precious. We still didn’t turn on any lights, any music, etc., so we had to throw the blinds wide open in order to see well. We went to my grandmother’s home and did a few odd jobs around the house for her and then came home for naps. Elias and Deacon both slept a full hour longer than normal! I fully credit a morning filled with Carrie and I’s attention plus a total absence of the TV and CD Player for that.

At sunset, we ended our first attempt at Shabbat with an ancient christian prayer as I turned on the light at Amen:
Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit.
As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, world without end.
Amen.