Life On The Road

I hit the road yesterday.

It was an unplanned last minute solo road trip to Tulsa. I didn't even really expect this, but each mile I drove down the freeway, I could feel new life seeping into my lungs. With Oklahoma City in the rearview mirror, I recalled how much I enjoy traveling and experiencing new things. The point wasn't Tulsa. The point wasn't even to "get away". I think it was more just breaking the usual routine of my life and reminding myself there's a bigger world out there to enjoy. Life happens outside of my weekly schedule. As I drove in the mad heat singing along to Mat Kearney's new tunes on the radio, I was giddy and child-like. I felt free.

Pulling into Tulsa, I decided to head downtown to Topeca Coffee first (www.topecacoffee.com). I had never been here before, but a barista from Coffee Slingers had competed there a few months prior so I figured it would be a good stop. The environment was inviting and the employees were all amiable. I found out they own their own coffee farm in El Salvador and practice the "seed to cup" philosophy. I savored a vanilla latte and read for a couple hours, then headed over to a local organic cafe called Elote Cafe. Unfortunately they were closed, so I grabbed a bite to eat down on 15th Street at Full Moon Cafe. Hopefully next time I make it up there I can eat at Elote... I guess things downtown in Tulsa close pretty early, cause I was going to try to head to Double Shot Coffee before I left town as well, but found out it closes around 5pm.

After my late lunch, I wasn't quite sure what to do with myself. Wasn't sure if I should head down to the Philbrook Museum of Art or head to a movie. I picked Star Trek. :) Star Trek was actually a fun watch and was glad I got to see it (finally). As I finished up the movie, I grabbed a quick coffee at Nordaggio's, snapped a couple photos of the massive praying hands on the ORU campus (I mean massive), and jumped on the 44W heading home.

A few post road trip thoughts:

1) Although I was only gone for 8 or 9 hours (including driving time), I realized I need to do those more often. It's funny how something that doesn't take that much time can be so refreshing and life-giving.
2) As I "explored" Tulsa, I realized I've almost completely stopped doing that in Oklahoma City because I've found "my spots". I need to remember that there is much to still be explored in the place I live. I spent a few minutes talking to one of the baristas at Topeca about good local spots. I should continue to do so in Oklahoma City. There is more discovery around the corner.
3) What are the things that fill your heart with hope and life and joy? Find ways of doing them, even if it is for short periods of time. You'll have much more to offer others in the process of feeling refueled.

"To Make Things New That Never Were" - Walter Bruggemann

We name you wind, power, force, and then,
imaginatively, "Third Person."
We name you and you blow...
blow hard,
blow cold,
blow hot,
blow strong,
blow gentle,
blow new...
Blowing the world out of nothing to abundance,
blowing the church out of despair to new life,
blowing little David from shepherd boy to messiah,
blowing to make things new that never were.
So blow this day,wind,
blow here and there, power,
blow even us, force,
Rush us beyond ourselves,
Rush us beyond our hopes,
Rush us beyond our fears, until we enact your newness in the world.
Come, come spirit. Amen.

The Fiftieth Day

Today is Pentecost Sunday.

Pentecost literally means "fiftieth day". For the Jews, it was related to the harvest festival of Shavuot, the fiftieth day after the exodus where they received the Ten Commandments.

For Christians it marks fifty days after Easter Sunday, the day the Holy Spirit came and visited those 120 fledgling followers in the upper room who gathered to simply wait and pray.

What did they pray? Who knows. It was around nine in the morning, so they probably were practicing fixed hour prayers. Maybe the Shema. Perhaps the Lord's Prayer. It was precisely in their liturgy, "same-ness", and repetition they had done thousands of times before that something extraordinary happened, interrupting their flow (similar to the dedication of Solomon's temple). It was the day of promised power filling each of them, not just the apostles or Peter, but rather every person in that room, male and female, leaking lines from the book of Joel. New tongues unspoken now spoken that all outside could hear in their own language and even dialect. Isn't it beautiful that God didn't perform a miracle and cause all the foreigners and visitors to suddenly comprehend Hebrew as if it were their native tongue? The curse of Babel was repeated, but this time around it came as a blessing, uniting instead of dividing, each listening ear comprehending the truths of God in ways they never had quite heard before. He was calling in a culturally honoring way each tribe, tongue, and nation, reminding them of the dignity of their culture, reminding them the treasures that each unique people have to offer that none else could. This is the birthday of the Church.

Would we also learn to wait. Would we also learn to pray. Would we learn to push through the disciplines and find tongues of fire in them. Would we learn to also go outside our Upper Rooms. Would we also learn to live in a power beyond our own. Would we learn to speak the languages of those around us and affirm their goodness.

Where Babylon Gave Israel A New Song

Found this little excerpt of Alan Jacob's review of a book written by Richard John Neuhaus called "American Babylon" posted on culture-making.com . Some great thoughts on how the Jews time in captivity helped shape them in positive ways (although there was tremendous pain in exile):

"[T]he Babylonian captivity of the Israelites produced social and, yes, technological developments that permanently altered Judaism—that, one might say, made Judaism as a way of life separate from the cult of the Temple in Jerusalem. For it was in that captivity that the synagogue developed—the place for reading and interpreting Torah—and along with it the scribal system by which the debates of the rabbis were recorded, organized, displayed, and passed down to future generations in what we now call the Talmud. And when the Israelites were given the opportunity to return from exile and rebuild the walls of Jerusalem and the Temple, many—among them some leading rabbis and their devoutest students—chose to stay in Babylon. They had come to prefer the new social structures they had made, and the new technologies formed to sustain those structures.

For those of us residing in the American Babylon, this sounds suspiciously like a parable; but it’s important to see that those who chose to stay behind were often neither frivolous nor culpably assimilated into Babylonian life. Moreover, wise historians doubt whether Judaism could have survived its ultimate diaspora were it not for the cultural forms originally built in that captivity."

Katie Herzig & Matthew Perryman Jones "Where The Road Meets The Sun"

KATIE HERZIG & MATTHEW PERRYMAN JONES "WHERE THE ROAD MEETS THE SUN" (LIVE) from SITUATION OPERATION on Vimeo.

Numbering Our Days

"So teach us to number our days that we may apply our hearts to wisdom." - Psalm 90:12

Embedded & Deliberative Theology

Theology = theos (Greek word for "God") + logy (Greek for "the study of...").

Every human being has a theology, regardless of their religious affiliation (or lack thereof). This theology very much leads and guides our actions in more ways than we'd imagine. One of my favorite authors AW Tozer, said this in his book "Knowledge of the Holy":

“What comes into our minds when we think about God is the most important thing about us... The most portentous fact about any man is not what he at a given time may say or do, but what he in his deep heart conceives God to be. We tend by a secret law of the soul to move toward our mental image of God.”

Therefore, theology can be good or bad in so far as it leads us towards truth and inevitably into a truer humanity (or a lesser form of the same). In a book by Howard Stone and James Duke called "How To Think Theologically", they speak of two kinds of theology:

1) Embedded Theology
2) Deliberative Theology

Embedded theology are things we've believed about God without even realizing it. Since we've been kids, we've heard statements about God or about the way he interacts with us that linger in and affect our understandings without us even realizing it. We've heard some people say, "I'm trusting God will provide me with a job," while we've heard others quote Benjamin Franklin, "God helps those who help themselves." Regardless of our persuasion, those little phrases stick with us and without us knowing it, affect us. Some of these snippets are helpful and good, while others aren't true and need refining.

Deliberative theology is the theology that one develops through a "process of carefully reflecting upon embedded theological convictions... Deliberative theological reflection also carries us forward when our embedded theology proves inadequate." This is the process of pruning and growth that each of us experiment with and experience in life. So often we accept thoughts of God and the way we look at things without even examining them. This sort of theology is worked out in the fire, as we ask true questions of why we think the things we do (and ultimately do the things we do).

Here are a few questions that might be helpful:

• What good theological truths have been embedded in you?
• What are some that you might have believed that aren't true of God or the world, and therefore should be eliminated?
• What are some ways you can take time to intentionally seek some of those areas out?
• Anselm of Canterbury said that theology is "faith seeking understanding". How are you balancing that tension? How are you living in faith? How are you seeking that understanding?