Excuse me. Can I have the shirt off your back?

I’m going to Lubumbashi, Congo in less than 3 weeks!! I’m going a couple days early to hang out before co-worker Dave Johnson comes and we teach our seminars. So I was feeling a bit nervous about arriving alone in an African airport. But it just so happens (heehee) that my friend Cora who lives here in Minneapolis is from Lubumbashi! Guess who is going to arrange a ride from the airport for me AND a place to stay with her English-speaking brother? I think God loves me. :)

So last night we were at our friend Shana’s house and Cora came over. We were talking about gifts in the African context and Cora told me an interesting story:

She and Shana were at the house of a new Somali friend. They were having a wonderful conversation when Cora complimented the Somali woman’s outfit. The woman lit up and said, “oh good! Would you like it?” Without missing a beat, Cora responded, “Yes! I want that!” The woman smiled and went to change clothes, bringing the outfit back nicely wrapped for Cora, who joyfully received the gift. “I just bought it yesterday,” said the woman. “So it should be clean.” Shana, not believing what believing what her American eyes were seeing, joked with the woman, “Well what about me? I want one too! I like the one you’re wearing now!” “Oh good!” cried the Somali woman and went to change outfits once again.

I’ve come to suspect that most Africans would give you the shirt off their back… and that they might ask for yours too! But somewhere inside, I believed (here’s my racist confession of the day) that they were just being nice to me to win favor with an American. “Not at all,” exclaims my Malawian friend Harvey. “They’re like that with each other too. It’s our culture.

It got me thinking. We American’s stink at giving or receiving anything! We’re out of practice. I mean when we were poorer, we really needed each other. We’d have barn raisings, harvest parties, and more shared possessions. We expected to help each other out and we expected to need the help of others. It was precisely tit for tat, but it was a social safety net that helped everybody survive and thrive. Now we have insurance for everything. No need to call a friend when you can call AAA. No need to ask for help on your house when you have the money to hire a pro. Sometimes we’ll go halfway across the country to see friends or family and stay in a hotel! We’ve done away with full service gas stations and manned checkout lines. Now they make us uncomfortable.

We’ve built (even in the last 20 years) a self-serve society that empowers independence but emaciates our social safety net. So when someone offers something I want or need (whether it’s a hundred bucks or a place to stay or an hour of their time) here’s what goes through my mind: Oh no. If I accept that you’ll resent me or want something in return. I’ll find a way to do it on my own. Well, okay but maybe I can help you pay for that. No? Well I’ll keep track and make sure I return the favor. Are you sure this is okay? Are you SURE?!

Gratitude is cheap for us. We don’t believe that a smile and a “thank you” is enough reward for the giver. We don’t trust that the giver just wants to bring us joy and that our gift to that person is simple, dignified appreciation. When I let someone give me something I want, I’m saying, “I see and accept that you care for me. I trust you not to hold this over my head.” When I ask for something I need, I’m saying, “I think so highly of you and I’ve come to believe that if you can help me, you will. I know that you care for me. Please help.” There is no groveling or apologizing or second-guessing or endearing myself to you.

If you think about it, our attitude toward others easily influences our attitude toward God. If we can’t accept simple gifts from others, how will we accept God’s big gifts? The attitude toward His grace can easily be, “There’s gotta be some way to get God’s favor on my own. Surely, my good works mean something!” We have to understand that we can never pay God back for his kindness and forgiveness. He asks for nothing in return. Nothing at all.

But still, we sense that accepting a free gift as truly free will change our lives and we don’t like the idea of surrendering our hearts or our lifestyles. Accepting grace is like enslaving ourselves to freedom. When we stop viewing love as a quid pro quo affair, our whole attitude changes. We begin a life of no-strings-attached generosity and shameless receiving. If we want a self-serve life, we’ll never really embrace God because everything in Him grates against our Lone Ranger self-reliance.

Somewhere behind the walls of my American attitudes, I think I have an African heart. In college I began to dream that all my relationships could have an easy give and take. I can come to your house and ask simply for a stick of butter, an hour of your time, some help with my kids or my house. And of course, you can do the same with me. Let me come help with your dishes. We’ll talk while we work and enjoy each other. Come mow my lawn. I’m behind this week. Come for dinner. I have plenty of food and I want to make you happy!

For me, there’s a sense of safety in expecting that I will lay down my agenda, my time, and my possessions for others AND (not “because”) they will do the same for me. Maybe its less efficient at times. But it’s joyful to me.

But somewhere along the way, I heard this was all pie in the sky. That it would be healthy to adjust my expectations. I’ve learned it’s normal to schedule with people weeks in advance. It’s impolite to knock on their doors without calling ahead. It’s inappropriate to ask for favors. It’s strange to offer certain kinds of help. Most relationships are uncertain and require a certain level of guarded formality. So when my friend Cora needs help with her stalled car in the parking lot, she’s disappointed when the grocery store guy looks confused and asks if she has AAA instead of offering to help.

In the last 5 years I've learned to stop giving AND receiving. I stopped asking for things because people seemed indifferent or even offended that I asked. The worst feeling is when someone grudgingly gives you what you ask for and then never speaks to you again! 

Ultimately, I’ll have to learn to operate and thrive in both contexts. But I think in my heart, I want the African way, or at least some sort of hybrid. I want to get better at giving, asking, and receiving. (As a support-raised missionary, it’s a require job skill!) And you'd better believe that when I go to Lubumbashi in 3 weeks, I'll go bearing gifts!

White Earth 2012 Recap

Redfeather is the little guy with the pink br

Redfeather son of Redfeather was my camper last year. Stoic, noble, and 8 years old, it took him days to speak a word. Then one day he quietly crawled into my lap and sat there for most of the week. I saw the same attributes in Red Senior this year at the community dinner celebrating the 17^th summer of Hope Camp at White Earth Indian Reservation in Elbow Lake, MN. He stood bemused next to our elastic water balloon launcher mounted to an 8-foot A-frame we lovingly dubbed “The Bad Idea.” I knew “Big Red” was joining fully in our mischief, flinging apples a hundred yards into the lake because he stood there, a single lock of unshaven hair running down his back, regarding The Bad Idea calmly for at least 5 minutes, offering quiet advice on structural upgrades.

Meet "The Bad Idea."

Red senior shows us his eagle wing.

The next day Big Red arrived at Hope Camp with a small handful of eagle feathers: one for each member of our team as a sign of his gratitude for our involvement in his community. He was deeply touched by our team’s 17 years of service, putting on Hope Camp for all the kids of Elbow Lake Village (including his son, Little Red). He had ordered the full wing of an eagle over 8 months ago for ceremonial purposes. Only natives can request them and even then, it can take years. For a non-native to receive these feathers is an enormous honor, a symbol of deep kinship and acceptance in the tribe. “The feather symbolizes trust, honor, strength, wisdom, power, freedom and many more things. To be given one of these is to be hand picked out of the rest of the men in the tribe.” (http://www.indians.org/articles/feathers.html)

"Hip-hip-hippopotamus!"

This is my second year staffing Hope Camp. This year, I was cook, counselor, and worship leader. I’d like to say my 4 teenage boys thawed out over the week and embraced Jesus. To be honest, I think they’re still trying to figure me out. Both their culture and their age prevent them from showing weakness. But small signs of affection and respect emerged amidst the teenage angst, giving me hope for future relationships and softening of hearts.

We built this picnic table for the community with the older boys

We had record numbers (61 kids) and a great response overall. But the huge payoff for me was the ministry within our team. I got to see 2 friends who have struggled with heavy depression this year come out of their shell, smile, and flourish in the acceptance of a group of Jesus-followers working toward a common goal. I watched several of my former disciples express deep pain and begin to accept God’s love and purpose for them. There were impromptu midnight prayer gatherings, outbreaks of worship, and lots and lots of tears.

I’ll admit that a good chunk of those tears came from me. Around bedtime on Thursday, a small group of trusted friends gathered around to pray for my sinus infection (which was becoming a fever). As often happens in the Vineyard, “safe” prayers for physical healing quickly become riskier prayers for deep emotional healing. All week I had been playing spiritual papa and healer. But a tension was building: if I cease to perform, to be a leader, to be profound or fatherly, to be funny or talented or caring… will I still be accepted?

It wasn’t hard for my teammates to pick up on this tension and they constantly reminded to take breaks, relax, receive love. So I think when they had me trapped in prayer, they weren’t going to let me go until I let them care for my soul. Reluctantly I allowed them walk me through some deep roots of fear and grief and anger from childhood wounds. I’m very familiar with inner healing but I still find it incredibly difficult to entrust my pain to a group of people no matter how safe they are. But I realized that this was the safest and most accepting group I’d experienced and if I was going to release this junk, that was my chance.

Our team!!

So I let the floodgate burst at some point. Most of it is too personal to share here casually. But suffice to say I sobbed for an hour and dug deeper than I’ve ever allowed myself to go. There was no resolution, no “nugget of truth” to take away from that moment. But a kind Welsh-American woman my mother’s age dropped to her knees and held me for 10 long minutes while I cried and others laid hands on me and simply accepted me, even though I’m a total mess. Only the experience of acceptance can begin to reverse the expectation of rejection and heal the heart. That’s as much as I’ve got right now: a beginning.

I think the caption was "this was BEFORE the kids arrived!"

But I hope you won’t think we sat around and cried all week.  We also launched Diet Coke cans against trees, blew up fireworks, hit each other with swimming noodles, and initiated epic water balloon fights.  We even made a game out of digging out our backed up septic system! Oh yeah, and we loved on a really tough group of kids, fed them, sang with them, swam with them, and friended them on Facebook. Not a bad way to spend a week.

“Jesus was troubled”: a study in betrayal.

Riding shotgun with my mentor, a renowned charismatic preacher last year, I struck up a conversation about disciple-building. At the height of my ministry to young men in Chicago, I was transferring leadership to “my guys” and feeling good about the strides each man had taken that year. I was deeply proud of them and remarked, “It feels so good to see people you’ve invested in flourishing and growing!” My preacher friend nodded his head, quietly cataloguing decades of ministry experience, and finally replied, “yes… and it’s equally disappointing when they fail you.”

At the time, I felt cross toward his pessimism. But in the last 6 months, I’ve watched a tragic series of moral failures unfold in the lives of these people I believed in. It feels like a personal blow because I’ve walked alongside many of them through deep emotional healing. Turns out the issues ran deeper than I thought. It’s caused me to seriously question myself. Am I too optimistic about people? Maybe I’m just a bad judge of character. And the last stop on that train of thought becomes, “why even try?”

But this morning, John 13:21 stopped me in my tracks. “After this, Jesus was troubled in spirit and testified, ‘I tell you the truth, one of you is going to betray me.’”

I’m really not sure if Jesus knew about Judas’ betrayal the day he said to him, “come follow me.” But the bible says only after Judas agreed to hand over Jesus did Satan enter him. Is it possible that Jesus really thought Judas could overcome his unbelief? Why did Jesus put him in charge of the group’s finances? Was he trying to give him a chance to say “no” to greed? Did he intentionally take risks with Judas, hoping for the best?

I like to think that Jesus believed in Judas. I almost fancy (I might be wrong) that the moment that Jesus was “troubled in Spirit” was the first time he discerned clearly that Judas had gone off the deep end.

Here’s what I’m learning from Jesus’ response:

1.     The betrayal of people I believe in is a crushing blow and the best response is grief. Jesus does not insulate himself with a pessimistic attitude toward his men. He is realistic about their unbelief, but hopeful nonetheless. And when they disappoint him, he feels disappointed.

2.     It’s probable in my mind that even Jesus has had the wool pulled over his eyes. If the Son of God can be fooled about people, so can I.

3.     Jesus moved forward from the betrayal of Judas to reinstate Peter after a similar betrayal. He did not give up on people, even after they failed him.

The bottom line for me is that Jesus allowed his close relationships to impact him deeply. But his relationships did not fundamentally move him from his mission to make disciples who make disciples. There was a deeper, inalienable relationship with his Father that through daily intimacy, served as his source of identity and purpose. That, to me is a picture of health. We need to be realistic about people. But disciple building has always been a high-risk endeavor. And it always will be.

Putting Work in its Place

In my job, quality counts. In a very real sense, my job is to be mature. Without a deep well of personal maturity to draw on, my hypocrisy becomes really evident really fast.  So I set aside an hour or so each day to check in with God, to read the bible, to process what I’m thinking and feeling in this blog or in my tattered black journal. But it’s becoming clear in light of my recent silent retreat and conversations with friends that what I’m actually called to requires a much more radical whole-life orientation change than an hour of sacred time each day.

It’s as radical as the shift from being a “Sunday Christian” to allowing Jesus to call the shots in your life and holding nothing back.

Growing in my faith (my relationship with a loving heavenly Father) can’t just be a priority. It has to be the entirety of my job. And why not? All through the bible, God calls us plants, trees, sheep, baby chicks, and a bunch of other things that don’t have a lot of agency or control! You’d think we’d understand by now that the thrust of the Christian life is actively passive: letting God love me and letting that love spill out onto others. Loving God means letting go, loosening my grasp, opening my arms.

Psalm 1 talks about the person who meditates day and night on God’s law (or in my context, more like God himself and all the ways He’s revealed himself). It says that this meditative person, whose whole disposition revolves around God is blessed in all he does. And moreover, that he is like a tree planted by a river, roots soaking in the life-giving water of God.

I think I’d like being a tree. I think I’d like it if my primary vocation was to grow deep roots into a big river of that truelifewater that Jesus offered the Samaritan woman, and that in fact is Jesus himself.

But what about work? What about (for me) compiling email databases, planning church services, writing thank-yous, raising support, running errands, scheduling meetings, folding my laundry. Those things need to get done and I hope I can slow down enough to do each one with intentionality and gratitude to the God who gave me these duties. But these days, I see them less as my vocation and more like my chores. My vocation is God.

And the vision I want for my life is this:

A tree planted by the river, a “planting of the Lord for the display of His splendor” growing deep roots into the love of Father God day and night. Inviting other thirsty saplings to come drink with me, to graft themselves into my trunk, to be loved by me as I am loved by the Father and to point them to their true Father, to encourage them to grow deep roots of their own. It’s a life that’s less about doing and producing… and more about being and welcoming. It’s a vision of hospitality, of creating super-rich soil where folks can plop their hearts down for a while and be nourished.

For almost a year God has been asking me about my commitment to significance. “Would it be enough,” he’s been saying, “just to be a righteous person? Do you need to be important, to spearhead movements, to build big ministries?” Then yesterday as we talked, I was asking if there was any way I can lessen the pain of the season of humbling I sense is on the horizon. This is what he said:

“Adjust to the expectation that you are not going to build a big or important ministry. Let that be okay. Store up your treasures in heaven. Don’t you see? All my greatest saints ended their lives in obscurity. It’s not what people said about them after they died but what I said about them while they lived that mattered.”

Ufda.

So it’s interesting. I’m a fairly hardworking person from an even more hardworking family. All my life I’ve lived under the fear of the accusation of laziness. The voice inside (not the Father. The other one.) is always saying, “work harder, move faster, produce more, be significant, don’t let anyone catch you being lazy.” But now I’ve actually come to point where I’ve said, “this is insane! I need to work less, not more!” That statement might push your buttons. It sure pushes mine!

But my belief about work is changing. I’m beginning to believe that hard work is good for the soul and should be undertaken with long-strides, intentionality, and constant thankfulness so that even in working, we might nourish our roots with the God-water. But it should be driven primarily by the goodness of labor, not by the desperation of productivity or the threat of the missing paycheck. Because ultimately, our activity dies with our bodies and comes to nothing (Ecclesiastes anyone?). Only the fruit it cultivates in our souls remains in eternity.

Will I really come to my deathbed and wish I’d had a busier life? I think not. Especially if that frantic business compromises the depth of my roots and my ability to grow (which it commonly does) and display the splendor of God to my family and my community. So let my life’s great labor be to love and be loved, to grow deep roots, to be a parent, husband, and child, to simply “abide” in the Jesus. Is any of this making sense? I feel like it’s all swirling around in my head but I don’t really know make it happen in a healthy way. To be instead of do, to relate instead of achieve… it’s all so foreign to my experience, my culture. Like I said, it’s a whole-life change of orientation…

Home from the Hermitage

I realized that I was overwhelmed and burning out. People have been around me constantly since last August. If it’s not my own family or Debra’s parents who we live with, it’s friends, supporters, disciples, colleagues. Relationships everywhere in my life, piled up haphazardly like the boxes of unsorted papers in my father-in-law’s garage. And I needed to get away.

So I made a reservation for a hermitage. Yes, a hermitage. A tiny cottage off in the woods of a Catholic retreat center. And I went to my little cottage on Thursday. Just me and Jesus all alone without books or phones or computers or electricity or running water or… people! Nothing to entertain, nothing to distract.

And it was glorious. Absent of others, I easily shed the identity I derive from others. I took off the spiritual “business suit” I wear WAY too much and put on the comfy clothes of the immature, arrogant, whimsical, 29-year-old that I am. A humbling outfit, but refreshing in its honesty.

There in my one room cabin with the rocking chair before the picture window facing the verdant woods, I began to wind down my marathon-racing mind. Bit by bit, I started to slow down, which was kinda the point. I had nothing else to do, so I sat and zoned out, munching on the basket of bread and cheese left for me, too pooped to be spiritual or emotionally “productive”. Then as the sun sat down under the horizon, I was in bed drifting away to 11 solid hours of sleep.

The next morning, I started journaling, reading scripture, praying, listening. There was a sweet presence, a sort of low “buzz” I associate with God being really close at hand. Strange, but I didn’t once feel alone. I had a very simple confidence that the Holy Spirit was there and we carried on casual conversation all day. That’s not normal for me, but in this place, it felt appropriate. So we chatted about all kinds of things. I expressed my heartfelt gratitude for little things like the grass, the big screen porch, the flowers in the nearby prairieland, my little cup of coffee in the morning, my muffin and banana. So sweet. But just a taste of sweetness really. 24 hours is not nearly long enough for this sort of thing.

Going home, I could feel I had slowed down. People shouting, TV on, music playing, friends texting. And I developed a splitting headache. My mind struggled to jog back up to the pace of “normal” life. All day, I’ve been looking for reasons to be alone, to turn stuff off, to rest. I’ve been zoning out a lot. It’s not like me. It’s not that I feel more sage or monastic. My thoughts are as selfish as ever. It’s just that my affect is lower, my disposition a notch quieter. You might not even notice, but I do. I’m already ready for my next escape to the woods. No wonder the Jews have strict customs around the observence of the Sabbath that help them “unplug”. I’m beginning to feel this keeping pace of life is about as smart as eating McDonald’s for every meal. At least for me, I’m feeling amazed that even driving past a strip of big box stores get my nerves frazzled. You feel that way when you’ve spent a couple months in an African village. I suppose returning from the woods is a similar deal.

I'm leaving the ending of this post unwritten. Because my traipse into solitude feels very much unfinished. To be continued...