In one sense we are always traveling,
and traveling as if we did not know where we were going.
In another sense we have already arrived.
We cannot arrive at the perfect possession of God in this life,
and that is why we are traveling and in darkness.
But we already possess Him by grace,
and therefore in that sense,
we have arrived and are dwelling in the light.
But oh! How far have I to go to find You
in Whom I have already arrived!

By: Thomas Merton

I have never been one for apologizing about not posting here on my blog. I typically wait until I have something meaningful to say–at least in my mind–before writing. I have been working through a lot of things in my head the last couple months but I don’t know that any of them are ready for public consumption yet, so I have been woefully slow to publish anything here. Rest assured though I have been doing plenty of writing.

If you’d like to see some of what I’ve been up to, you can check out this series of posts I wrote for the Jolkona Foundation here in Seattle about how their work relates to the UN Millennium Development Goals.

I have also been participating the last few weeks in a writing group based around Julia Cameron’s book The Artists Way. I have been writing three pages a day as part of a “morning pages” exercise for that group. If you’d like to know more about The Artists Way, here’s a link to the book on Amazon.

So all of this is to simply say that I am writing, I hope to return to posting here soon, and hopefully I’ll return with some exciting and inspiring new work and ideas. =]

I watched the documentary WarPhotographer tonight. The movie is about freelance photographer James Nachtwey who is one of the preeminent documentary photographers on the planet. It’s the second time I’ve watched it and it always makes me want to be a better photographer. To take photos that matter. To do something with my life that ‘matters’.

What I wonder about though is why. Why do I–why do we–have this compulsion to do something that ‘matters’? Why am I not content to take photos of trees and mountains? Why am I not content to work a desk job? Why do I want to feel like I’m living my life working toward a goal or a higher purpose that is outside of myself?

I think it is easy to confuse this notion with calling. I’m not talking about what work I feel called to do–I think calling is pretty specific–a specific career or geographic calling. I have no idea what I’m called to do. But I know I want to, no, need to do something that matters.

When I started writing this post I wanted to bring it around to some happy little platitude. Some little theological nugget about God and Jesus. Some answer I can give that makes sense of this little part of what it means to live. The best I can do this a cliche from Nachtwey himself, ‘If we don’t, who will?’

Click here to view the embedded video.

You know all those dreams you have of succeeding in life? Well stop.

Stop dreaming and start failing.

No, seriously. Stop dreaming about the perfect job, the perfect house, the perfect life and go create a magnificent failure. It just might change your life.

Before you do though, read this post from Merlin Mann.

Then, seriously, go and create something so amazingly awesome that even if/when it fails, you’ve found happiness/fulfillment/success greater than you ever could have dreamed.

I’ve sometimes wondered if I have a slightly unhealthy preoccupation with time. I know I’m still young, and I know people are living older and older, but I sometimes can’t escape the feeling that I need to make sure my life is moving in the direction of the work I believe God has called me to. Sometimes that isn’t entirely clear to me–grad school at Northwest was obvious, what I’ll be doing a year from now is still a little foggy–but I have a hard time ‘being still’ for long periods of time. Though I can see now the things God wanted to teach me and show me while I was in California, while I was there was a very frustrating time to me. I knew I didn’t want to spend my life working in Christian camping but I knew that is where God had called me to at that time.

I guess the point of all this is I want to ask if we would live our lives differently if we started thinking now about our legacy, rather than waiting until we’ve spent a career doing whatever it is we do? Part of this is just me thinking out loud. I don’t think we should necessarily obsess about what people will say at our funeral when we’re in our 20s, 30s, 40s, even 50s–we all easily have at least 30-40 years before that point. I guess part of my struggle is against culture that promotes legacy in terms of material goods; climb the ladder, buy the homes, the cars, be remembered for your wealth. I feel like our world needs a kind of Ebeneezer Scrooge moment where the ghosts of our past rattle their chains and remind us of the legacy of empire we have built. I think if we live our lives in a way that strives always to build a world in the image of the Kingdom of God, rather than being preoccupied with our legacy and righting past wrongs at the end of our lives, we can look forward instead to the time when we hear “well done my good and faithful servant.”

“Like the biblical prophet, the artist is often an outsider, one who stands apart and delivers a challenge to the community. The prophets of old employed many of the same tricks used by writers and artists: lofty rhetoric, apocalyptic imagery, biting satire, lyrical evocations of better times, and subversive irony. To be sure, the true prophet came not to proclaim his own message, but that of the Lord.”

- Gregory Wolfe, IMAGE Journal editorial statement

Because in recent decades there has been a push back from artists who don’t want to sacrifice autonomy to be a mouthpiece for the church, it is important to clarify how the artist can help the church community without sacrificing their integrity.  Wolfe’s presentation of the artist as a prophet helps to clarify the role of the artist as a conduit through which God speaks to and moves in the world. Elizabeth Gilbert in a TED Talk related how traditionally the creative ‘genius’ was seen as something outside of the artist—something that came and went—making the artist the conduit through which the final piece manifests itself. I believe artists are in some ways more attuned to the whispers of the spirit and thus are compelled to give voice to those whispers in their work. Artists, like prophets, can be conduits for the Voice of God.

This quote is from an essay I read today. It better articulates the importance of the role of art in relation to faith and justice than anything else I’ve read so far.

‘What happens is that we the viewers assume the role of the witnesses. … We are drawn into a confrontation and now have the possibility for transformation. There is a death to our old understandings and the emergence of a new awareness. Like the parables of Jesus Christ we are shocked into new understanding. Visual art as parable refers to the way it promotes imaginative living, the kind of living which is presupposed by a justice-oriented spirituality. Such a spirituality creates the proper context for the transformation of the world. This is the way that art does justice.’

James Empereur ‘Art and Social Justice’

I highly recommend this essay if you can find it. It appears in the book Art as Religious Studies edited by Doug Adams and Diane Apostolos-Cappadona.

Driving around the other day I was following a car with a license plate frame that read, ‘If you’re living like there’s no God, you’d better be right.’ I had two reactions to that. My first, sarcastic reaction was wondering if anyone seriously thinks that license plate frame has ever caused a non-Christian driver to pull into the first church they see and repent. I mean, really. What that frame is really saying is, ‘I think you’re an idiot–you just haven’t realized it yet–but since I’m so busy going somewhere in my car, I don’t have the time to build a relationship with you and tell you this in person so you’ll just have to settle for this cheap piece of plastic.’ Effective ministry, right?

My second reaction was disappointment. Much for the same reason, it saddens me that Christians feel like we have to define the world in terms of us and them, secular and sacred. I was in a class once at Vintage Faith where the teacher pointed out that there is no such thing as ‘secular.’ The whole idea of ‘secular’ is that it is something outside of God’s creation. Certainly there are evil and bad things in the world that God did not create Himself, but God didn’t create Christians and non-Christians. God created all people and He loves all people. If you’re going to have a license plate frame that proclaims your belief in something why not say ‘God loves you’? Cheesy for sure, but really, who can argue with that? I mean, you’re just reminding them that the all powerful Creator of the universe knows their name and even loves them!

Walking around downtown Edmonds today I saw the above sign outside of a Christian Science church. ‘All Are Welcome.’ Not, ‘Only those who believe,’ or ‘Only those who have it all figured out,’ but ALL. Why do Christians so often make Sunday morning about being right? The right church, the right mission statement, the right pastor… We don’t need church to remind us that we’re right, we need church to remind us of the amazing grace that covers our sins. We need church to remind us of the humility of a Savior who came and took on flesh, bled, and died so that we don’t have to be perfect, so that we don’t have to have it all figured out, so that we don’t have to be ‘right’. If we were perfect and right, we wouldn’t need the Church. We wouldn’t need God. And if we don’t need God, then really what does it matter if we’re right or not?

I had the greatest church experience I’ve had in a long time this last weekend. Know where it was? It wasn’t in any cathedral, sanctuary, or chapel. Nor was it in any amphitheater, auditorium, or high school gym. No, it was sitting in the living room of my family’s cabin up on Camano Island with four good friends from school. We read a devotion, read from the Bible, shared some thoughts, prayed together, and spent some time in silence together. I can honestly say that was one of the most refreshing Sunday morning experiences I’ve had in a very long time.

It’s really kind of sad that in some ways I think we’ve let the structure and familiarity of church get in the way of actually worshiping. Don’t get me wrong, I love the music and the pastors at my ‘home’ church in Seattle, but at the same time, I certainly haven’t experienced the same closeness with God and other believers as I did this Sunday. It’s difficult though to do much different with the institution of Sunday morning church. Changing to a more organic structure will likely cost you parishioners. Lots of people who are church shopping are looking for–or at least thing they are looking for–a church with better music or a bigger youth group for their kids. I think what they are really looking for though is a real and genuine encounter with Christ. And at the risk of going out on a little bit of a limb, I don’t think they are finding it in some of the churches they visit.

I don’t ever want chasing the next God encounter to become like a junky’s search for a new fix. I think we do need to find some kind of routine that grounds our faith. But I don’t want to ever settle just because where I’m at feels good and comfortable. I want and need friends and role models in my life who will challenge me to be more. Sitting in a reclined Lazy Boy on Camano Island praying with my friends this last week made me want to be a better friend and a better follower of Jesus. Does your church make you feel that way?

Good magazine published an article a few days ago titled ‘In the Future, You Will Know Everything You Wish to Know’ on the value and importance of informal online education. Basically stating that we have reached a point where you can become an expert on any given subject simply through culling through various academic sources available freely on the internet. In Western society, we hold formal institutional education in very high esteem. Heck, I’m attending an accredited university masters program after all. But in the development setting, maybe we need to rethink some of how we do education. Certainly at the primary level there are basics of literacy and mathematics that need to be covered and taught. But what about more specific higher level applications such as medicine? Africa needs many, many more doctors. But with the difficulty of not only educating doctors but then also finding those who are willing to live in rural settings for little or no pay, would the small number of doctors who currently go into ‘the field’ have the same impact as a large volume of community health workers with basic skills in midwifery, wound treatment, and nutrition? Sure having 10,000 new doctors in Africa would be wonderful, but what if we could have 100,000 community health workers with essentially EMT level training taught through correspondence or online video? Just a though.

Anyway, I encourage you to check out the article over on Good.

Link