Micro-saga: On becoming a peacebuilder

In March 2008, Howard Zehr entered my comfortable life as an IT professional climbing the corporate ladder in central Iowa...and he promptly pulled me off. This encounter with Howard led me and my family to EMU, the CJP and seminary, and the dual degree program between the two. To say that I’ve been challenged and changed is a vast understatement, and CJP has had a big say in that process. The notion of “lenses,” for example, has become deeply embedded in my approach to the world. So thanks, Howard et al, for ruining my life in all the right ways!

[The preceding 100 words were written for my "blurb" in the forthcoming (25 more days!) graduation program for the Center Justice and Peacebuilding here at EMU. Sometimes narrating a significant experience in a ridiculously small amount of space is a very good discipline. I provide it here for posterity.]

Subverting idolatrous narratives

Walter Brueggemann,
subversive biblical scholar

This week has been one of these weeks when I've felt absolutely spoiled rotten by being a grad student in a university environment. Monday through Wednesday, the seminary held its annual School for Leadership Training (SLT). This being my last year, it is also likely my last SLT. So what a way to go out, to have renowned Old Testament scholar, Walter Brueggemann, as our keynote speaker for the two-and-a-half day conference. Brueggemann played a significant role in transforming my attitude about the Old Testament from one of disinterest and ambivalence to deep appreciation, as evidenced in one of my papers last year. So this was a big deal for me...

In Dr. Brueggemann's three keynote lecture-sermons during evening worship Monday through Wednesday, he presented two competing narratives: 1) the Narrative of Accumulation and 2) the Narrative of Abundance. The organizers of this event have graciously made these three excellent messages available on the EMU podcast blog:

1. “Conflict from Above: The Drive for Accumulation”
2. “Conflict from Below: The Possibility of Astonished Gratitude”
3. “Sabbath as a Means of Transition from Anxious Scarcity to Grateful Abundance”

Read on for more summary of Dr. Brueggemann's messages and a critique of his theological application of his biblical interpretation to contemporary concerns...

Review: Anabaptist Preaching

Anabaptist Preaching first caught my eye when my friend, Brett, took preaching class last fall, the last time former EMS dean, Ervin Stutzman, taught it before his transition to executive director of the Mennonite Church USA. It was assigned reading at that time and so for a while it was laying around Brett's study carrel which is right next to mine. My church tradition, the Church of the Brethren, has historical Anabaptist roots but as I've recently observed, those qualities have mostly bled out of the denominational consciousness and expression. So I've been going through a process of happily reclaiming Anabaptism these past two years at seminary.  Given, then, my high interest with anything Anabaptist-related, the title to this book itself was enough to get it on my mental “to-read” list, filed away for later. When our new seminary dean, Michael King, was brought on this year I was pleasantly surprised to learn that he was a co-editor of this book, as well as contributing the second chapter. So after a year's wait I've finally had a chance to read it and have put down a few quick thoughts in review...

A graceful dictionary of faith

Kathleen Norris' book, Amazing Grace: A Vocabulary of Faith, is a wonderful narrative dictionary/lexicon for the Christian language (in English, anyway). She approaches the task by taking "church words" that always made her uncomfortable - even helping drive her away from the church for a few decades - and re-narrating their meaning in light of Scripture, Church tradition, and her own experience of re-entering the Christian life. As part a class assignment, but also because I think these tidbits are worth sharing, here are a few snippets out of each story/definition:

• From the preface: "Our words are wiser than we are. And that's a good thing. Language used truly, not mere talk, neither propaganda, nor chatter, has real power." (p. 9)
• Anger: "I wonder if holiness is not the ability to apply one's anger in quietly working against systemic evil, taking care not to draw undue attention to oneself." (p. 126)
• Antichrist: "Each one of us acts as an Antichrist...whenever we hear the gospel and do not do it." (The words of a pastor, p. 15)
• Apostasy/Heresy: "The Christian church has always co-existed with heresy, and with any luck it always will. Contending with heresy is what helps keep orthodoxy alive. But good will and sanity are essential, as Christian history is full of evidence that the vigorous rooting out of heretics is a cure worse than the disease." (p. 202)
• Idolatry: "Maybe God addresses the problem of idolatry at the outset of a new relationship with Israel because human beings are incurable and remarkably inventive idol-makers. And it is all about resisting love. We can even make that resistance an idol, walling ourselves in, physically or emotionally. We can become so safe that, as far as other people are concerned, we might as well be dead." (pp. 91-2)
• "Organized" Religion: "I have begun to wonder what people mean, exactly, when they say they have no use for 'organized' religion. They mean to reject Christianity in an intellectual sense, or to resist what what they perceive as the power structures of Christendom. But as it is the ordinary church congregation that most Christians dwell in, and that defined Christian experience from the beginning, I have come to suspect that when people complain about 'organized' religion what they are really saying is that they can't stand other people. At least not enough to trust them to help work out a 'personal' spirituality." (p. 258, emphasis mine)

I'm naturally drawn to storytellers like Norris. It's the same reason I loved reading Brian McClaren's A Generous Orthodoxy a few years ago. He said he entered the ministry "through the back door of the English department," and at the time I was working on a BA in English and dreaming of seminary. Norris' Amazing Grace is no seminary/lit nerd book, though. It's eminently approachable for a wide audience, churched or otherwise. I'd probably quibble on fine theological points but she's on the right track to correct Christians who have misappropriated the Christian language while simultaneously offering an olive branch to people still wary or downright afraid of it (i.e. the Christian language/"church words").

Basket-weaving the biblical narrative

My introduction to Douglas Rushkoff was the excellent Frontline special, Digital Nation, which Rushkoff helped produce and appears in. This post isn't about that Frontline special, but I'm serious when I say everyone who uses digital, networked technology (and if you're reading this, you do) should watch it. I also saw him in a scary/awesome documentary called We Live in Public, which is about an eccentric visionary in the early days of the internet (whom Rushkoff knew personally). While poking around on Rushkoff's website, I found that a few years ago he wrote a four-volume comic book series called Testament.

Comics were a pretty significant part of my childhood. So were computers. I grew up going to church, too, so the Bible was also in my awareness (although not as prevalent in my consciousness as the other two). I stopped reading comics regularly back in high school but I never lost my love for them. So when I discovered Testament, it immediately caught my attention: Old Testament biblical narratives (Rushkoff is Jewish) are told and then re-told as near-future cyberpunk narratives. A cosmic spiritual battle that happens outside of time (and outside the actual frames of the comic's pages...very clever) rages, with ripples being felt in both time-periods. Spiritual warfare is a topic I've done some thinking and writing about this year, so it thrilled me to see it depicted so interestingly here. The cyberpunk narrative folds in the rampant expanse and corporatization of technology in society, which is a special interest of mine. To top it all off, at the end of each volume, there is about 8 to 10 pages of biblical commentary from Rushkoff as it relates to the comic! Basically, this comic felt like it was written especially for me. Thanks, Douglas Rushkoff!  So read on after the break for a few comments on this amazing comic...

Live a better story

Over a month ago, I met with with a staffer at EMU Campus Ministries, and they had a stack of Donald Miller's book, A Million Miles in a Thousand Years, sitting around for check-out so I grabbed one. I've had it on my shelf for a while since then but I finally got around to finishing it now that the semester is over and May term doesn't start for another week. Rather than plainly review it, I'll try to fold its essential message into some personal reflections, because it is a book that gets you thinking about how you're living your life. Read on after the break for my reflections on this great story...