Lineup

Sunday Bar Church.

Nuff said.

“Hang on to your butts”

“It’s all there”

The safe haven (hole and home)…the hunger for more…the realization that you live in two worlds…even as a tit mouse.

Okay the mouse was staged but don’t you feel like that often? Don’t you feel that sometimes you are simply asking the wrong questions?

I do.

I got schooled (again) by Baby Sean the other day. Dude sat in his bed the same exact way he did at 3 when I came home at 2 am from a u2 concert and he grilled me.

Of course he is bigger now. And smarter. That might as well have been me (the mouse) with no helmet. He out-Mac’d the Mac.

Did my old trick from 1980 where I simply went three fathoms deeper than any opponent. Uprooted them from the depths. Game over.

Same deal. I watched in both horror and delight.

I never stood a chance.

Then I shut my cakehole and listened to a man who has much to share.

His view is clearer and with far less history. We have come to the same conclusion (LOVE and GRACE) but his view is less cluttered…more direct…more sweet…even a bit timeless.

My generation was the transition. Our fathers were the “lost generation” meaning they were caught in the arrogance of modernity and creating the self (the Causi sui” project… the self-creators). They had been abandoned by their fathers and grew up alone in the greatest single boon of prosperity the world has yet known.

They were good men…better than their fathers but still lost. And selfish.

I often meet the sons and daughters of such men and I try to tell them the one thing I know. “They did more with less than we will ever know”.

And like all of us..we are caught in our own time. They were…we are.

I go back to my son’s words “Dad, we are agents of love”

He never accused me of anything but I became aware that I was cynical.

So somtimes you meet a person who has just spent a lot of time with Jesus. Sure, they are flawed and lost in their own ways…but also found and real. That is my understanding of grace. It also why others are off the hook and I can see beauty in every single person in my family no matter how screwed up we are.

“Oh death…where is your victory…oh death where is your sting?”

I died last night

I died

I died in my sleep

I had wagered well

Not in Pascal’s way

(he did not do the real math)

No

My poor heart just

Gave up

Stopped.

As my long body

Colded down

I was with Him

I expected this.

I wagered well

Not like Pascal

Whose blood ran cold

I woke up in a house

Hot yet not haunted anymore

An immense library

With all my favorite books

That live inside me

Daily like children

Who say “tell me the story

Again!”

It’s a good story

It is the one true story

And the coffee was good

And creamy sweet

And Lori laughed

As she reached for

Her favorite book

Like a daughter

And Fred read me his

Latest editorial

And my oldest son taught me

About grace

And Tosco-B held me

With such love

My death was

Sweet

No regret

All sorrow swallowed

Whole in His Love

Love

Love

The Church in Little Rock…well a few

Before I flew into Little Rock I possessed a typical NorCal ignorance of the South.  Sure I had spent time in lush Memphis twice; a few weeks in Atlanta (which I love) and 30 minutes on the tarmac in Birmingham Alabama (which gave me the willies).

As far as I knew, Little Rock was flat fields and tumbleweeds.

Like I said ignorance mixed with perhaps some arrogance (a deadly mixture indeed).

Little Rock is gorgeous. It is a bit like a gigantic greenhouse. Hot and humid, but everything is growing at a beautiful rate. And unlike the cacoonish nature of Norcalifornians (who must fence off everything and are over-protective of parking places on the street as if they owned them), the houses in the south are generally unfenced and open.

My friend Rick Luoni, who now lives in Charleston,  South Carolina commented that to get me to Little Rock it must have involved both “a woman and God”. True on both counts.

If I play things out God’s way,  it will be my final union with the former and I will also fulfill my callings in Christ here in Little Rock.

To that end, I went (uncharacteristically) on the offense researching the top 50 churches in the greater Little Rock area. Out of those I chose the top ten (mercilessly setting aside any church that was either dead-end theologically liberal and relativistic or overly self-congratulatory, overly and unbiblically charismatic (tongue happy to the exclusion of greater gifts) and certainly any church that was Bible-belt legalistic.

Forget that nonsense. I am done as a Reformer. I wanna grow and be in a community that is healthy.

Moreover, on the positive side I wanted a church that overtly loves Jesus and sees the reality that He is alive NOW and notat all commemorative.

I was not basing my search on “amenities” at all. Could be a big church, or a church plant. No matter. IT is all Christ’s Body…so the question is “where do we report Lord?”

Jan and I visited four churches…the four churches out of ten who actually responded to me query letter. I think that fair. True, I threw fastballs and a few hard curves, but with good humor and without any personal axe to grind. Genuinely open.

The first church we went to was a Calvary Chapel church plant up in Cabot. Wonderful worship and service. The pastor and I had a good conversation and I knew I would want to know him regardless. While the church is too far away the fellowship was sweet and we have since met for lunch and prayer. I think we will be good friends and I greatly appreciate him. We will visit regularly.

Next we went to a Mega-Church nearby. Unlike many such churches this one was very unpretentious. My only problem was a topical sermon on “fathering” that was foreign to the text being used (Abraham’s sacrifice of Isaac!?? Um…er…no).This is what “topical” teaching can do all too easily. A simple mistake. I am sure he kicked it the following week. Certainly his heart was in the right place and what he taught was biblical…just not from that passage.

Next a church plant meeting in a bar down on President Clinton Ave. Short set rock concert, then another message on fathering (it was father’s day)..but far more biblical and followed by a deeply touching testimonial by an elder about his own dad and the legacy he had been given, followed by his son sharing how that legacy had been handed to him. Beautiful and rich.

The next Sunday we hit another Mega-Church. This one was to the other Mega-Church what IKEA is to Home Depot. The teaching pastor, who I had corresponded with,  gave a deeply biblical sermon on LOVE. With a directness and clarity that is often hard to do topically. But as is often the case, the worship team (pros) were so good that most people were not singing and just watching. I have seen this elsewhere.

Back to the Bar Church (can you imagine the Macman taking in two services a week back-to-back?).

I had met the pastor for breakfast at my unofficial Little Rock office (Boulevard Bakery and Cafe at River Market) and we had a warm, fun and deep meeting. Mostly I just wanted to hear his calling and learn about this church plant.

Well those of you who know me fairly well will get the focus on Jesus, looking for urban ministry, biblically conservative yet socially liberal and non-legalistic. Kingdom stuff.

In closing, every one of the churches held an overt love for God and a focus on Christ. These were all healthy churches and any one of them would work for us. The real question is never amenities but the same question that each church must face: Where is Christ leading us, and where does the Holy Spirit want us to serve with the gifts and abilities He has chosen for us?

This article is more about US than I prefer for SPOKE…but behind the curtain is Jesus, Lord of the Universe and the Bridegroom of His Bride, the Church. Every one of the pastors I met and listened to are “Kingdom” guys. You will not hear them badmouth another church, but rather rejoice in Christ’s being exalted in this city.

Good News in Little Rock.

So where do you think we will end up?

Bay of Pigs… Part Two

Hog Statue at the River Market on the Arkansas River.

Hogs were a big business in the Decapolis,  just as they are in Arkansas. That and chickens (Tyson foods). Jan says that sometimes chicken trucks also overturn resulting in a foul mess on the interstate.

As Jesus approached the Gerasene shoreline in the Decapolis there was a man possessed howling, screaming and gashing himself among the tombs there with rocks. Like a man on crack who has a burst of unbelievable adrenalized strength he was violent and untameable. Some part of the man wanted freedom because he tore at himself to no avail. The swine, a good head of 2,000 grazed nearby not paying much attention. Certainly,  in a sense the Demoniac acted as natural security for the herd as no poacher would easily get past him.

The dialog between the unclean spirits inside the man known as “Legion” and Jesus is wildly instructive. It is obvoius who is in control and who is scared.

The pigs pay no mind as Jesus grants the demonic request to inhabit them.  Not unlike the melee that ensued on I-430 when a truck going 60 mph tipped over and scattered huge  swine in every direction…the pigs panic once inhabited and rush to their own demise in the sea.

Do pigs float once dead? I wonder (I’ll go ask ask.com)… Okay, they do not initially float…they sink like stone. Later they bob up to the surface like bloated and blanched baloons which are inedible (can you say Decapolis Swine Flu?)

The townsfolk,  in their wisdom,  recognize Jesus’ inherent power to heal and deal with deadly spiritual situations. So they do what any good commerce-driven town would do in light of that and beg him to leave.

Jesus is bad for pork-belly futures. At perhaps 250 pounds  worth of meat per porcine quadroped, the locals lost 500,000 pounds of prime swine in one mad dash to oblivion.

Do they blame the demonic spirits that use to inhabit the now calm and sane man? No…they blame Jesus.

Some things never change.

Later,  after Jesus had left the area and the former Demoniac had been sent to tell his story throughout the region the pigs would start to bob up to the surface (say a day or two later, creating the original “Bay of Pigs”.

Quite a sight and a reminder of Who had been there, of His power and that their pigs were not only lost and their profits gone…but now they had an even bigger mess on the horizon.

The Original “Bay of Pigs”

Hogs graze lazily on the 430 freeway in Little Rock, Arkansas. June 22, 2009.

Traffic was still backed up at 11-ish this morning, stalling commerce out of Little Rock to all destinations North, and possibly East and West.

Jan and I saw it on the way in at 6:30 a.m.

According to Hogs 4:10, 90 hogs were spilled onto the I-430/I-40 interchange at 4:10 am this morning. The swine slogged in at up to 800 pounds a piece and it took state troopers hours to round up the docile swine and keep them from becoming sausaged by oncoming traffic. The cleanup took over 8 hours and no pancakes were serving or substitutions allowed.

“Welcome to Arkansas Mac.”

In all fairness, I remember on more than one occasion overturned trucks of tomatoes in Sacramento creating a thick red sauce just begging for a thin crust and mozzarella in the hot August sun.

Still, this is the “Hog State”.  There are statues to Hogs everywhere…and the Arkansas Razoracks are world reknown. Little Rock is also known (as is the whole South) for “BBQ”, which is something Californians have no concept of.  One of the hot spots for BBQ is the “Cross-Eyed Pig” establishment. I wisecracked to Jan that being a cross-eyed pig was the easiest way to become BBQ. But I was wrong…apparently it can happen on any freeway exchange.

The obvious Christocentric text on swine is Mark 5 where Jesus travels to the Decapolis (ten Gentile city-states) and is met by the infamous “Demoniac” filled with “Legion”.

It’s comical in the Greek because the Demoniac rushes Jesus and cries out (in the Greek) “What do WE have in common!!??”

(Shards of Rush Limbaugh when faced with logic)

Flattery and naming come next.

Now you have to remember that “naming” is the most potent gift that God gave humanity in the Garden.   The animals were brought before them and they “named them” and whatever name they gave even God went by.

Wow!

Yet if you look at media even casually you will see that it is solely about naming (i.e. “branding” etc… no duh?) .

So to “name” is powerful. Was in the Decapolis in AD 27 or 28 and is today.

Legion inside the tortured man names Jesus as “Son of the Most High G0d”. It is the ultimate bad press.

Jesus, in turn asks the name of those inside the tortured man. “Legion” and name for sheer force of numbers and malice”

More tomorrow…The text of Mark 5.

Death, Jesus & The Hidden Life

When a man feels he is dying..legitimately or otherwise…he cries out to God and to Woman.

That’s the truest sentence I have ever written.

But as Hemingway says, every story if told to it’s completion ends in death. It does not end in Woman. I’m not gonna bother proving the point that is so obvious. Turn on your TV to our death denying woman-using culture.

Let’s move on.

Jesus

A close friend noted an NPR program with Dawkins. What a pathological prick. Muddy thinking, bad exegesis and pomposity to boot. He reminds me, strangely of me at my worst. No wonder he sells books. Remember 51% of Americans bought Bush. We are a stupid people easily scared and enticed.

As usual Dawkins would make Jesus plastic and safe.

Let me turn our dime. Your very existence is patterned in the Word: Jesus Himself. You were created in, through and ultimately for Him. He is the pattern you have been searching for your whole life.

Hidden

I don’t get this. Fundieheads like Dobsen grab headlines (this morning) and wars are made Christianized along with greed and usury. Jesus weeps, the Holy Spirit is shunned, the Father chain smokes. It’s a Trinitarian mess if you buy into their mess.

Okay…sighs…I get one thing. The spiritual life is a “hidden life”. You know this. You sense this in others who choose love and faith and hope against all odds. They are connected elsewhere. It’s not easy. In fact, it’s often brutal for them.

Death is real. Jesus is Risen. We live a “hidden life” that will not be fully revealed until He is revealed in glory.

Life

In one way or another you awake with this question about “life”.

A wise man wrote a group of ruffians saying “When Christ, who is your life is revealed…you will be revealed with Him”

It’s not easy to find our feet through the “blind surf of events”…to find the “stone levels”. But He is our life.

(as I write this I hear Bono…”one step closer to knowing…” It could not be more appropriate)

The new U2 album is out and people are howling because they have no “reinvented” themselves again. As if that was the deep human crises and need (for 10 bucks on iTunes).

Read the lyrics…this may be the most important album since War. “Eyes to see” not ears to hear.

~!Mac

Colossians 3:1-4

Dear brother and pastor Rod has to preach tomorrow on the most beautiful and potent of passages: Colossians 3:1-4.

Four verses than can change everything…penned to Gentile converts with no more education than your average second grader (at best). Still Paul shoots high and hard.

Read it for your own. It will take less than 2 minutes.

Here is my reflection. It’s a typical modern gloss that may detract from the raw power…but I did my best.

“I have heard many complain that they did not want to be “so heavenly-minded that they were no earthly good.” But they are usually in no personal danger of this; in fact I have yet to meet a human being who was. I have met people who were in danger of being so “religious” that they were no earthly good; but never too “heavenly-minded.”

When people speak of heaven they often wax eloquent as if heaven were an ethereal dreamland. But heaven is more real than you or I. While we are but a vapor upon this earth, we speak of the throne of God as if it were a wishful wisp of smoke from our great-grandfather’s pipe. Not only is heaven our future, it is to be our present. We are to “seek the things above” - present tense - “where Christ is” - now – “at the right hand of God” . The closest I can come to interpreting the meaning of this verse is that we are to seek the reality of the Kingdom of God in our life.

Jesus Christ is the most heavenly minded, yet the most earthly good. Can you name one man who has ever been more earthly good than Jesus of Nazareth? Now can you name one man who has ever been more heavenly minded than Jesus of Nazareth? The truth is, the heavens themselves reflect the eternal glory of Christ, yet no man has ever been more earthly good than Christ, the “Second Adam,” God in the flesh.

The Christian who is heavenly minded, will always be the most active, Why? Because he wants company there, and will not be satisfied for any to be left out. To be “heavenly-minded” is to have the “mind of Christ”; and it is unfortunate that many of us want the old mind back. The eternal perspective is to be taught by God to see a bit from His vantage point.

Mac

The Deer, the Lion and The Lamb

I’ve been through a lot. My twin brother died the day we were born, My parents checked out, I blew through two marriages, lost an ordained ministry, all my money and have been fired more times than the deYoung’s collection of Ming vases. To that, add a laundry list of enemies, ex-girlfriends and creditors whose sense of passion seems to almost be synonymous.

But it’s easy to laud my successes.

I also once lived for a year (in my 40s) in a shack with no car and had to hobble 2 miles to a minimum wage job with no benefits every day and work for Republicans. To make matters worse, it was November and the shack had no hot water and was situated next door to the two houses I had formerly owned while making great money as a dot.com exec. My ex-wife lived in the second house, I would often be sleepless at 4 a.m. and sit on my shack porch only long enough to see her sneaking her Nazi boyfriend out before the kids woke up.

Still, why do I commend myself?

Okay…here is why. Because 7 years later (no doubt to the day…God has a vicious and cyclical sense of humor) I found myself in utterly the opposite situation.

I live in a fortress, not a shack. I have the world’s best girlfriend and she has no hangups or anger-issues at all. My kids are powerful and sweet; I have $60 in my wallet and creative work everyday. I have new friends and a great pastor. I have a future…and hot water. I have written four books in the last 5 years, all of which I will publish. MY view is panoramic and spectacular every morning as I drink fresh-brewed dark french roast and my commute is 17 feet.

I could go on till you put this down. I’ll stop.

Let’s just stick with last Saturday where I went haywire.

The weather is perfect (as it often is here in paradise). I have everything any man could ever want including sobriety, great work and no effing bosses. I go to sleep when I please and wake up when I’m ready. I eat healthy and well. I have a cat that is better than your cat. My dog lives upstairs with my ex-roommate and I can walk her anytime. I have three finches.

So I sat in the chair and pondered such good fortune. Such a reversal…such grace. Then two deer came grazing (I kid you not) up on the hillside and looked at me.

“That’s a bit of overkill” I said quietly to God. “What’s your point?”

“Augustine.”

“yeah okay. I’ll go with you on that…both generally and even now. I am restless.”

“Restless?”

“Hell yes Lord, I buy flowers at the garden center and hurry to plant them so I can feel at peace in a garden but it never takes…I just want more garden. I never ends…you have no idea…”

God became quiet and the deer looked at me like a fallen vassal. I shrugged.

Pascal

Now Pascal is right and calling his “deal” a “God-shaped vacuum” is as inglorious and inaccurate as calling Dante specifically-scientific. Poetry is way ahead of science and always had been.

It is true there is some type of coldness and mathematics to Pascal’s statement that the “infinite and immutable abyss can only be filled by an infinite and immutable object…that is to say,. only by God Himself.”

But add that to Augustine’s restlessness and your are closer to a heartbeat.

You always have to go to the “next” statement. Do you know what Nietzsche said after he said the infamous “God is dead”?

“…and we have killed him.”

Kinda makes a difference huh? Context is everything.

Pascal says “abyss”…Augustine “restless”…the deer simply asked “do you intend to kill us?”

“Why would I kill you?” I thought to the deer. “I have everything I need. Besides I’ve been marinating nice cuts of cow flesh for two days in a really good sauce.”

They moved off slowly.

Why could I not be happy with all of it?

Think of Maslow and his hierarchy of needs. Worse, think of Mrs. Maslow’s list. It would surely be longer.

I’m not sure I am saying this just right. Let’s say you wake up from a nightmare into a hallmark card with deer grazing on the side of a hill, good food and friends on the way and love and security and your first thought is of your own emptiness and lostness?

Is this the reason that Ernest Becker said that we as modern humans are “drinking and drugging ourselves out of awareness..or we go shopping…which is the same thing”?

Is this why William Law’s Serious Call to a Devout and Holy Life, while stodgy and semi-puritanical somehow rings true despite his whitened wig and quasi-asceticism?

What is it about us that is unlike the deer, yet like the deer?

That was my question.

Why are the deer more at ease in their young skin than I am as a human after 50 years? Why do they graze in my garden freely while I try and produce some artifice and wrestle to daily keep some plants alive?

To be sure, the deer is not plagued with Internet access, but then 100 years ago we only wrote notes on paper…and then not all of us. Some of us just sat and thought about what their lives meant and knew that they had limited time. Some embraced their restlessness and questiuoned their emptiness.

Some prayed.

Part two: The Lion.

Brueggemann on Descripting

Palms up.

From Brueggemann’s 19 Theses:

“7. It is the task of ministry to de-script that script among us [note: see prior posts]. That is, to o (sic) enable persons to relinquish a world that no longer exists and indeed never did exist.”

Given that “naming” is such a core gift, for good and ill, it should not surprise us that the world is about “scripting”. The schizophrenia of the Modern and Postmodern ages is that there are just too many scripts in competition.

The depiction of the world as a stage and we as actors (Pascal, Shakespeare, William Law and others) who enter and then fall one by one is fairly straight-forward as are the simple ways in which inculturation takes place if not like a riot then at least often like organized chaos.

The problematic part is the illusion of real clothing our various social fabrics bring. Naming and human language used creatively in so many ways is also our greatest way of evading and co-opting God and the spiritual. In fact, when people say we have “created God in our image” this is exactly the point and why real rationale behind Nietzsche’s famous edict that “God is Dead.” Few know the next line…”and we have killed him.”

The scripting then is to create a world and gods in our own image rather than allowing that we are created in God’s image and need de-scripting and then to be immersed in the alternative script rooted in the Old and New Testament texts.

As I have “Johnny-one-noted” before, the these texts are inherently “sub-versive”. They are the true “verses” that are like the “stone levels” that William Everson says lay beneath the “blind surf of events.”

Events interpreted by a “world that no longer exists and indeed never did exist.”

For the world’s texts are an utter fiction and madness. As Ernest Becker points out, this madness is “agreed madness, shared madness…but madness all the same.”

So while living in the world we are not to become of it. In the past, this has often been interpreted in shallow fashion in a modern “Christianized” Epicurean/Stoic dialectic, both of which miss the point every bit as much as their ancient predecessors did.

In other words, not being “of the world” is not an invitation to become either a money-grubbing televangelist or Amish, In both vases “mammon” is the primary concern with God ’s self-revelation as secondary.

Sheesh.

To be “of the world” is simply to reject all other scripts as secondary at best when presented with the Living Christ and his subversive ways and words.

So, to end with an example, the word “ministry” is packed with all manner of pork-barrel add-ons, diversions and expectations. It simple means “service”. The biblical role of minster is one who equips others to do the actual work…not a professional who is hired to do it for others.

Imagine if part of our ministry was to first de-script the “ministry” as belonging largely to “a world that does not exist and never did exist”. Then what if we allow ourselves to be re-scripted by the alternative script via the Word.

It would be a nice start.