BLOG Revival!

Woot! Woot! Ring them bells...Banner is back on the blog.

I'm a stay at home Dad now and my goodness, I need some way to connect with something, someone outside of the house. So there is at least this space here. Right?

The deets: I put my notice in to the college last December 2013 and agreed to stay on through this past Fall semester so they would have ample time to put someone else in the position. They have just recently hired someone and this someone is a very exciting and interesting pick. I'll let the college make that announcement.

Susanna is now "on the market" applying for tenure track positions. She is a hero and quite brave right now.

The boys are a beautiful, loud, sweet, squirmy mess..

I have been learning much about what it means to be a FOUR on the enneagram, "the individualist" or a "needs to be special" person. I feel everything and that makes leading or overseeing four weekly worship services that put me in front of some 1200 people very demanding. The trouble is that in all this feeling, I am very capable of deep love. And as I have loved those college students so, it is insanely tough to be away from them.

I also need a space to share ideas. So here is something I care about from Jacque Ellul:

Technique has penetrated the deepest recesses of the human being. The machine tends not only to create a new human environment, but also to modify man's very essence. The milieu in which he lives is no longer his. He must adapt himself, as though the world were new, to a universe for which he was not created. He was made to go six kilometers an hour, and he goes a thousand. He was made to eat when he was hungry and to sleep when he was sleepy; instead, he obeys a clock. He was made to have contact with living things, and he lives in a world of stone. He was created with a certain essential unity, and he is fragmented by all the forces of the modern world.

I bought and am now using a smartphone and that is interesting since I wrote this, "Dose of Techno-Pessimism.  More on that later.

I also recently wrote this music piece, "From Miley to Music: How We Listen. Check it.

Conversation w/ Dustin Re: Passion 2013

Dustin, I'm thankful for you as a friend and learning counter-part personage. I might not be able to do my prayers with a koine greek New Testament in the morning like you, but I think I've read at least as much Jeremy Begbie. Ahem....

Your comments on The Twelve guest blog are generous and thoughtful. If anything you demonstrate to those outside of the contemporary worship and evangelical circles that there are some inside who are self-critical and wrestling to get it right. I fear that most on the outside assume the contemporary evangelical scene is a loud, popular-culture-acquiescing monolith. You burst that bubble. I pray I do too.

And I hope that your candid reflections also demonstrate to some (perhaps the students I lead) that my initial reflections on Passion 2013 are not as heavy handed as they might seem. As I've said before to you, how can we love the church enough to critique it?

Thanks again for reading and sharing. Much love!

Thoughts on the Passion Conferences, An Addendum

In the 11^th hour of Thursday night I was asked to guest blog for The Twelve, a blog associated with Perspectives, a Journal ofReformed Thought. In the wee hours I put down some thoughts about the Passionworship movement since I’d been thinking about their conference that day. I want to offer one more reflection on my friend Charlie Hall here that wouldn’t fit in the brief word length of the other piece.

On the last day of the Passion conference I attended in the late ‘90s, I walked down to the stage with the college students who were with me from the church where Charlie and I were leaders. After seeing his face and goatee so massively displayed on the enormous video screens above, it was a relief to watch him turn to us and retreat from the many other conference attendees/fans who were vying for his attention.

The stage was some five or six feet high. Charlie sat down on its edge with his legs crossed to say hello. I have never seen Charlie be anything on stage that he isn’t off stage. The same was true for that conference. Still, it was good to look my brother in the face and know him. The surreality of the stage and the enormity of the venue were finished like waking from a funky dream, and there he was again, a bona fide human being.

While I don’t keep up with him much anymore, all that I know and continue to witness of Charlie’s ministry continues to inspire. He is an honest relief. While my Reformed and Charismatic selves are conflicted, Charlie has pressed on for a couple decades with a simplicity and purity and a thoughtfulness that lends gravity and trustworthiness to Passion. I get overwhelmed with all that can come off as sensational, emotional and sentimental in contemporary worship circles, and then there’s Charlie and Dustin and Quint, still doing their thing.

A Dose of Techno-Pessimism: The Problem(s) With the Smartphones

It's up online here.

I'm glad to get some of these thoughts down. I'm really interested in those who disagree with me and might be optimistic about these things. Please, please continue the conversation in the comments below or email me.

Thinking About Metallica in Church and Other Things

I wrote a response to a piece in Perspective's Journal that was published a few issues ago. My essay, "The Liturgical Question of Metallica: A Response to Jason Lief's "Leave Metallica Alone!" is in this month's issue.

Tonight I'm going to hopefully finish my techno-pessimist essay on the smartphone that will be in next month's issue of The Cresset. I'll link to that when it's available.

It is nice to have some places to publish bits and pieces here and there especially after being at Calvin's Festival of Faith and Writing last weekend. It was great to see old professors and friends and to meet new friends. The festival was a huge gift for Susanna. She was involved in four different sessions, sold a bunch of books and moved lots of people with her workshops and readings. She inspired me. We are exhausted still from the event. Casper is getting over a cold, but Sus and I are both still feeling the goodness of a great weekend.

Also, Susanna has won another award! Her newest book, Entering the House of Awe was selected to with The Society of Midland Authors prize in poetry. If we can make it work out, she'll receive her award at a reception in Chicago on May 8. The challenge here is to see what a pregnant woman can't do.

While time at Calvin was excellent, stumbling upon William Baskinki and his disintegration loops yesterday is probably the best discovery I've made in a long while. Enjoy this please:

Guest Post on eighthdayfarm.com Worm Poop Doesn't Compute

I serve on the board for Eighth Day Farm and wrote this guest blog post for them a few weeks ago:

GUEST BLOGGER WEDNESDAY: WORM POOP DOESN’T COMPUTE

Adam and Kristin's Wedding Homily

Published with permission from the good couple. Written out of love for them. Inspired by the need for us to all live more deeply into our marriages and hopefully to help frame marriage properly for some of you who hope to be married some day.

It is good to be single too. I enjoyed being single for 29 years!
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Read July 22, 2011

“He himself is before all things, and in him all things hold together.” Colossians 1:17

Kristin and Adam, friends and family, Father God, your Son and Holy Spirit,

Let me start by saying that I am extremely glad to be included in this ceremony for at least two good reasons. First, because I love these two people greatly. As our dean of the chapel says frequently about campus ministry, we fall in love often and we have to say goodbye often. I do fall in love with college students regularly. It is difficult to see them leave. So any chance to be involved in the lives of Adam and Kristin post graduation is a soul-warming blessing. My wife and I have had the privilege of offering them some marriage counseling these past few months. And the cliché is true, when you teach you really do receive more than you give.

The second reason why I’m thankful to be a part of this ceremony is because I believe in marriage so fiercely. It is no mistake that the Scriptures use marriage and family as a lens through which we can understand our relationship with God and our participation in the church. So as I share a few thoughts here about marriage I’m speaking first to Adam and Kristin, but I’m also speaking to my own soul, to my own marriage and to the rest of us who have much to learn about our love for God through the context of our love for each other.

We are all gathered here today to participate in one of the gladdest of occasions we can know this side of heaven. There is a delight we experience in witnessing the union of two people that little else compares with.

As I’ve imagined this day for several months, the picture I’ve held in my mind’s eye is of Adam’s grin spread from ear to ear with his face turned that bright red that many of us know well. For those of you who haven’t seen this, any time Adam has become the center of attention these past three/four years that I’ve known him, the fair skin of his face becomes instantly flushed with red. I’ve imagined Kristin’s face no less filled with light, and life and hope.

Yes, here you both are standing in front of all these people who have come from far and near. And we are all here because of you, because of the story of your falling in love, how your love has matured and how you have made the decision to commit your lives to each other and spend the rest of your days together. So I say, let your faces beam red and beautiful. This is most definitely your day.

One of the disciplines of marriage we talked about is choosing to be near and draw close to our spouses. Even though this homily is brief, we shouldn’t rush. Hold each other tight. Take a deep breath. Let’s linger here for a bit. [look around you, gather in this moment, treasure this day, absorb this place, these people, be near each other]

As performing artists the three of us know that it is possible to perform a dance or play a song without really being inside the dance or the song. We rehearse. We know our parts and we simply let muscle memory take over and suddenly the performance is finished and we have not found are way into the moment. We haven’t been present.

A wedding ceremony can be like this as surely as an entire marriage. Will your marriage be a lifelong journey of growing deeper in love? Of discovering more of yourself in the love and life of the other? As the years go by will you discover the particular love language each of you speak? Will you get better at listening and learning with each other?

Or will you let the busyness of life swallow you. Will marriage become a convenient arrangement of two good friends who happen to live in the same house and share a few children? 

The bad news is that there seem to be more reasons today not to get married than to make this commitment. We are surrounded by examples of broken marriages, suffering families, exhausted parents, bitter spouses and indifferent spouses.

Yet, the Good News is always bad news before it is Good. We need to understand what we are being saved from before we can conceive of how much help we need to live our lives.

The Good News is that your marriage has great promise. My wife and I have gotten to know you. We’ve heard you talk about what you love most in each other. We can clearly see that you are in love. The Good News, however, is greater than your own love. The Good News is that marriage has less to do with being in love with each other as it does with being in love with God.

Yes, today is your day. Today you are both on display, but the best News is that it is truly the person and love of Jesus Christ that is on display through you. The Psalmist declares, “look to him and be radiant so your faces will not be ashamed. (Psalm 34:5)” If you are smiling today, if any of us are excited and glad for you it is because we believe that the Author and Perfector of our faith is here. He has brought your stories together. And so we are looking to him. We are gazing at Christ through the beauty of the two you. Adam, you are God’s gift to Kristin. Kristin, it is God’s good pleasure to give you as a gift to Adam. Together, you are a gift to the rest of us and so we join into your joy.

The only way you can be alive to each other in this marriage for several years to come, the only way to grow deeper in love with each other and to be present in each other’s lives is if you maintain the discipline of being present to Christ, looking to him, taking him into your hearts and minds and living through Him.

The Apostle John calls this, “abiding.” “If you abide in me and I abide in you, you will bear much fruit but apart from me, you can do nothing” Jesus says to us in chapter 15 of the Gospel of John.

Jesus tells us earlier in chapter six of the Gospel that we must eat his body and drink his blood. When the disciples heard this, they agreed this was a hard teaching. Indeed, what did Jesus mean? The Lord’s Supper, eating the bread and drinking the wine is the most significant practice where we as Christians regularly set aside the busyness of our lives. We bring our anxious selves to the table and eat, we imbibe, we clothe ourselves, we draw close, we remain and dwell inside of, and we abide in the very person, the very being of God.

In the Lord’s Supper, Jesus is the person who is most brightly put on display. Yet the Lord’s Supper is not just a weekly or monthly practice. This is also our daily sacramental invitation, to sit at his table to eat of him and to abide in Him.

Here is the key of what I want to say to you today: we can abide in each other only if we first abide in Him.

When the Scriptures speak about a man leaving his father and mother and cleaving to his wife so that they become one flesh, we are not assuming that you will dissolve into each other. By becoming one in Christ you do not lose what makes each of you unique. That is adolescent infatuation. We’ve all witnessed relationships where the two people disappear into each other, where neediness grabs onto neediness, loneliness onto loneliness.

Instead, in Christ each of you come to this marriage with a fountain-of-living water-and-life flowing through you. Christ is alive in each of you and here is the Mystery of being one in Christ:

Kristin, I’ve heard Adam describe what he loves about you. You are the trusting friend; the patient one. The friend who believes the best of others. The friend who is kind and easy to be with. We all know you as a hard working artist, a dancer and a dance teacher, but the only way for you to discover more about your particular uniqueness is if you abide in Christ and if you abide in Adam through Christ.

Adam, Kristen has also described what she loves about you.  You posses an integrity and a concern about what is right. You care deeply about important ideas. We know you as the musician and the growing church leader. Yet, the only way for you to discover more about your particular uniqueness is if you abide in Christ and if abide in Kristin through Christ.

I am very close to the Roman Catholic view of marriage. Catholic’s believe that like the Lord’s Supper, marriage is one of the sacraments. And what is sacrament? A sacrament is that which edifies, that which appropriates the life of Christ into our own lives. Through the Sacraments we become more like Christ. The mystery is that through the joyful, fiery furnace of marriage Adam, you will become more you, the fuller and more true Kenneth Adam Nelson as you fall more in love with Kristin. And Kristin, you will become the fuller and more true Kristin Benner Nelson as you fall more in love with Adam.

Of course I am talking about genuine marriage, the real sacrifice of love that no film or radio song can capture. I heard a man from India once say, “In America, you shop for wives. In India we marry and learn the discipline of love.”

You’ll have the opportunity to get to know the worst about each other. You’ll see the darkness and you’ll be tempted to judge each other, to hold grudges, to doubt, to grow apart and let indifference define your days. We charge you today: do not let any numbness or deception, indifference or bitterness take foothold in your home. The discipline of marital love requires the grace of our persistence in loving and especially the love that comes through forgiveness.

This is another glimpse at the mystery of Biblical marriage: while the rest of our society participates in marriage contractually, while many agree to remain in a marriage as long as it lives up to their expectations—as long as it meets their perceived personal needs—the Christian marriage, instead, is empowered by something that no other religion or philosophy offers: you have access to the radical power of forgiveness. You are able to make the covenant till death can part you not on your own strength, not from the resources of your own kindness, or generosity. Christian marriage is radically counter-cultural in the sense that you are both called upon to forgive each other daily. As you abide in Christ, as you fall deeper in love with each other, you posture your lives toward each other through the discipline and indeed the joy of daily forgiveness. You must forgive Jesus says seventy times seven. The fountain of love and life flowing through you is this fountain of forgiveness.

Our confession is that all things were made by Christ. All things were made through him. All things are held together in him. We believe that if Christ were not seated on the throne, all of the cosmos would fall apart. Likewise, your marriage will be held together when the Christ of radical forgiveness remains on the throne of your hearts.

I close with this prayer from Colossians 1:9,10

“For this reason we will not cease praying for you and asking that you may be filled with the knowledge of God’s will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding, so that you may lead lives worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing to him, as you bear fruit in every good work and as you grow in the knowledge of God.”

Let it be so Lord Jesus. Amen.

Revision and Edit Time!

I'd set out to not go to bed last night until it was all finished. I only did one 'all-nighter' in college, so at about 2am this morning I went to bed with just one more idea to flesh out. My eyes were blurry and I couldn't see the computer screen well. At least I tried to go to bed. I lay there for two hours feeling giddy about the whole thing. I'm pretty excited to know I am capable of working out some ideas in an extended way like this. I felt pretty much like an idiot all through my undergrad. I remember sitting in my senior seminars wondering what the heck the discussion was about. It took me almost five years to decide to attempt graduate school. I'm just a slow learner that's all.

I wrote my final paragraph, or at least I found the last page this morning. I have a lot more work to do in terms of re-writing and line edits. But I am so much more at ease now knowing that there is no need and no point in reading and developing the essay any further. I kept referring to it as an "essay." It is now 95 single spaced pages. I didn't know what to call it so I keep referring to it as an essay. I'm not officially submitting it as a thesis. That would mean I'd have to pay for 12 credits when I only need 3 more to graduate. In fact the advising of this thing is still up in the air somewhat. I started writing this in earnest last Spring about this time right after Casper was born and have continued with no supervision. That is largely my own fault since I live in Michigan and not British Columbia. I don't know if I would have handled supervision very well anyway. This has been a very personal experience. Eight years to finish a master's degree? Well, it better be really important to me! And I'll add that I felt funny/shy pointing out the considerable length to some people today. Heck this isn't pride pride, this is joyful pride. It has been a privileged journey. Who gets to sit around and read and write at their leisure like this? I am very aware of how the freedom to do this in this way was a gift and sacrifice for Susanna. I don't know who will ever read all these words, but the thrust of the writing is how we might be better at sharing ourselves. So the internet does provide us with the advantage of self-publishing. Below is another bit from the introduction I re-wrote today. Tomorrow I head out with my friend Andy for a couple days of trout fishing. Let the summer begin.

As I invite here an interdisciplinary conversation about the nature of music as poiesis, I am also practicing an extended act of poiesis. Erazim Kohak believes that poiesis is for the night and science, or techne, is for the day. Philosophia is accomplished in the in between at dusk.[1] While I appreciate the elegance of his positioning of philosophy, his definition of poiesis is too associated with the mysterion; it is too apophatic. I would prefer instead to put poiesis at dusk in the in between what is revealed and what is hidden, between the cataphatic and the apophatic. Poiesis is often associated with the notion of culture-making because its Greek origins invoke a kind of making, the drawing together of connections. I believe ‘interdisciplinary’ is another way of talking about the kind of ‘poetic’ creatures we can become, creatures who can make the connections and feel the resonances between things that may have not been associated before. We do not create ex nihilo like God, but in his image we are destined to be creators and we create by putting together the bits and pieces of the cosmos that he has given to us as his good gifts. Poiesis requires of us an ekstasis, a facing outward from ourselves to see and identify those connections. The question for a Christian practice of culture-making is if and to what extent we share ourselves through poiesis.

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[1] Erazim Kohak. The Embers and The Stars: A Philosophical Inquiry Into the Moral Sense of Nature (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1984)

I'm At The End Of The Final Section! Here's Another Bit

A week of staring at a computer screen will make you a little (or a lot) crazy. Susanna has been a trooper. I've had some more time with Casper than regularly. He is a good excuse for a break.

I'm happy to say I must be 10-15 pages from hitting the end. Then I've got a week or so of editing/revising. The hardest thing for me is to not have an immediate audience, a class of students to share these thoughts with, or a good friend to listen. I haven't bothered Susanna this week with any of this. In fact the other night I spent an hour reading through one of her short stories. I had a great phone chat with Will Lightfoot though on Thursday. He is always curious and it was good to hear myself try to verbally rephrase what I've been writing. That was a good exercise--a way to see if I'm making any sense.

But I can't help myself. I need to think/to know NOW that some of these things will matter to other people. I'm sure other grad students do this. Someone tell me I'm not too much of a weirdo. These two excerpts pretty well summarize of what I'm doing:


From IV.ii Revisiting/Re-framing: Dynamic Obstacles

Let me clarify that proper use of technology is not matter of either indwelling or not indwelling the tool or whether it is or is not meditative. It is impossible to use a tool without indwelling it. Tools will always mediate something. We might say that the technologies form us in their image; technologies are not benign; they are not value neutral; technologies not only encourage certain conversations, they can shove us into a narrowed, specific conversation. The question is how we are indwelling the tool and to what end—how richly we engage existence and how our affections are being formed. In Augustinian terms: “Those things which are to be used help, and as it were, sustain us as we move toward blessedness in order that we may gain and cling to those things which make us blessed.” It is as impossible for us to escape technology as it is to escape culture, and to escape culture would be to escape being human. The question isn’t if we are cultural or technological, but how and to what extent. In order to make sure we use our tools instead of being used by our tools, we have to subvert the capacities of technology and reform its power to order our lives and affections for the sake of “blessedness.” Some of us will decide that certain technologies are a waste of time and are not worth the dangers they pose. Others will find great surprise in renegotiating certain technologies and discover capacities and purposes for those tools that may have never been considered previously. Our posture towards technology depends upon the optimism we have theologically about God’s participation in culture, but it also depends on our faithfulness to actively participate in the work of redemption.


From IV.iii The Uniqueness of Music

I have spent many words arguing against the prominence of science. Is it fair to put music on a pedestal or is this just another type of reduction? Homo musicus instead of homo sapien? Is it unfair not only to single music out among all the sciences and humanities, but also unfair to the other arts? I don’t think so. How can I make so bold a claim? The primary uniqueness of music is its universal appeal, its historical and geographical ubiquity. “There have been cultures without counting, cultures without painting, cultures bereft of the wheel or the written word, but never a culture without music.” [1] Remember that music dates back as early as 45,000 B.C. Of course there are some people who don’t enjoy music, but they are rare. Neurologist, Oliver Sacks, writes about musicophilia, our shared love of music:

We humans are a musical species no less than a linguistic one. This takes many different forms. All of us (with very few exceptions) can perceive music, perceive tones, timbre, pitch intervals, melodic contours, harmony, and (perhaps most elementally) rhythm. We integrate all of these and “construct” music in our minds using many different parts of the brain. And to this largely unconscious structural appreciation of music is added an often intense and profound emotional reaction to music. [2]

Sacks explains that neuroscience has discovered how music is continually running in the muscle motor of the brain; we continually have access to songs in our head. While Walker Percy in a thought experiment imagined that visiting Martians would find speech the most peculiar identifying characteristic of humanity, Sacks points to the fiction of Arthur C. Clarke. In Clarke’s novel Childhood Ends the Overlords, curious alien beings, visit earth and identify music as the most distinctive human behavior. Of course I reconcile the two—linguistic and musical impulses—by assuming that the are both of the same outward impulse of homo colloquens/musicus. Homo adorans extends herself into musical conversation; she reaches out to the other for love’s sake. Yet, I do want to specify an elevated place for musical languages—poetry over propositional prose and poesis over sciencia because these preserve the fuller dignity and extravagance of the cosmos and a robust humanism.

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[1] John D. Barrow quoted from Begbie, 15.

[2] Oliver Sacks. Musicophilia: Tales of Music and the Brain (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2007) xi.

Walker Percy on Violence and Alienation

I'm back at this comprehensive paper. Almost finished with section three. Then on to the final fourth section and lots of revisions and editing. Publishing an excerpt here will perhaps help me believe that this this is really almost finished (and it serves as a distraction). Can't say that I wasn't jealous of all those seniors who graduated on Sunday. It feels good to finish things.

I've selected this bit to share in light of the assassination of bin Laden. I've been struggling to decide what I think about it. Yes I feel a sense of relief, but should I? I was sick in bed at the end of last week with bronchitis and watched Die Hard on Netflix. I felt emotionally worn out afterwards and the next day. I'm not a pacifist, but I wonder if I'm getting close.

My overall argument in the essay is that music at its best draws people together. The argument that follows this section below is that in popular culture we largely use the technology of music according our fallen nature, to separate and alienate rather than to draw near and commune. Admittedly popular music is capable of drawing particular crowds, but how easy is it to gather a crowd? Instead, how difficult is it to form a communion of beings, a fellowship of saints? 

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Comprehensive Paper To Be Submitted to Regent College

For the Completion of the Masters In Christians Studies

Interdisciplinary Studies

By Joshua Banner

From Section Three: Obstacles of Communion

Walker Percy is as insightful into the human condition as any. He articulates alarmingly the questions surrounding what has been known as the “Age of Anxiety.” He wrestles with the conundrums of modern existence, “why does man feel so sad in the twentieth century?” And he follows it with several pages of similar revealing questions.

Why does man feel so sad in the very age when, more than in any other age, he has succeeded in satisfying his needs and making over the world to his own use?

Why has man entered on an orgy of war, murder, torture, and self-destruction unparalleled in history and in the very century which he had hoped to see the dawn of universal peace and brotherhood?

Why do people often feel bad in good environments and good in bad environments?

Why do people often feel so bad in good environments that they prefer bad environments?

Why does a man often feel better in a bad environment?

Why is a man apt to feel bad in a good environment, say, suburban Short Hills, New Jersey, on an ordinary Wednesday afternoon?

Why is the same man apt to feel good in a very bad environment, say an old hotel on Key Largo during a hurricane?

Why have more people been killed in the twentieth century than in all other centuries put together?

Why is war man’s greatest pleasure?

Why is man the only creature that wages war against its own species?[1]

This list of questions continues on for some eight pages as Percy subversively rants about the poverty of our existence. It would not be possible for us to alienate and exploit each other if there was not within us a common thread of violent unrest.  Lasch seems to acknowledge this violence in his sporadic reference to Thomas Hobbes’ reflections on a “war of all against all,” a state of nature where persons have retreated from the culture’s institutional supports. Lasch anticipates this as an understandable reaction to our “overorganized society” with its bureaucracy, its medical sophistication, and psychiatry that can foster a deeper animosity than the raw wilderness of a world Hobbes intended government to preserve us from.[2]

At the end of Percy’s list he restates his primary question: “why is it that scientists have a theory of everything under the sun but do not have a theory of man?” With all of our ‘overorganization’ and sophistication, violence—how we cut ourselves off from each other—turns out to be the most distinct example of our alienation. According to Erazim Kohak’s description of the modern condition, “Grief and remorse are reflected from [the artifacts of modern civilization], ever reinforced, until the human, crazed by pain, strikes out and kills those around him or himself, or both.”[3] The violence of the twentieth century has left us with little optimism and no ability to identify a coherent, unifying theory about ourselves. We can only agree on what is rhetorically present in Percy’s questions, that we are alienated, that what we share most is our isolation, our tendency to separate and even kill.

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[1] Walker Percy. Message In A Bottle. 3,4.

[2] Christopher Lasch. Culture of Narcissism. 49.

[3] Erazim Kohak. From the Embers to the Sky. 45.

Review of For the Beauty of the Church

The good folks at Transpositions have had the mind to review For the Beauty of the Church chapter by chapter. My chapter was reviewed, incidentally, on my birthday. They brought up a good concern about what I'm suggesting. I copied my response below. There is good discourse on each chapter in the respective comment sections.

I don't know if anything could be more exciting than this! Thanks to you guys for taking such care with this book. Your collective thoughtfulness will make us better pastors and leaders in the future.

For the record, I'm aware of the 'cute' factor of my three P's. I had come up with that language back in '98 when I wrote out the initial mission statement for the arts ministry. The P's were a coincidence then. That same language has served me thus far, so I kept it the unintentional alliteration.

Regarding the factory concern: yes, a very good concern. Another reviewer elsewhere suggested that what I'm suggesting is tantamount to turning pastors into "talent scouts." Well, yes indeed. I do believe that pastors are talent scouts but not just of artistic gifts but of all gifts. Those of us who have the privilege/burden of being paid in ministry--I believe--are paid primarily to identify and release the many gifts within our congregations, preaching, teaching, worship leading, outreach, service, intercession as well as painting, poetry, composition etc.... We are called to "equip the saints for the work of ministry." Much of what I do as a campus minister can be called vocational counseling. I help students identify, trust and test their passions. I would LOVE churches to be better equipped to maybe not become 'gift' or 'talent' "factories" but perhaps conservatories, gardens, flourishing farms.

Peace of Christ to you. Thanks again.

Book Review: What Language Shall I Borrow?

 My review of What Language Shall I Borrow? is now printed here in Perspectives.

Review of the Coen Brothers' A Serious Man

"Taking a Serious Man Seriously" The Cresset, Trinity 2010 (Vol LXXIII, No. 5 pp 38-40)

Book Acknowledgements

I know it is just one essay and I may be doing too many acrobatical maneuvers of glee for some of you to bear, but other than a few odds and ends in various journals, this is my first book publication. My essay is published in the company of some pretty hefty authors. So, I'll probably stop making a big deal eventually, but for now, darn it, I'm excited.
It would have been impractical for each contributing author to submit acknowledgements, so I want to mention a few people that I'm thankful for here. Conincidentally, David did mention in his acknowledgements the person I am most indebted to, my wife, Susanna Childress. I'll say more about her in a second.

Most notably I need to thank David Cunningham, director of the Crossroads Lilly Endowment here at Hope College. I knew he was a theologian who cared about the arts when I met him in a book group that was working through Rowan Williams' Grace and Necessity. David not only read the essay, but we sat down for a 2.5/3 hour dinner (my dime as thanks) and he walked me through one of my drafts almost line by line. His feedback was very insightful and gave me lots of confidence.

Steven Bouma-Prediger, religion professor here at Hope, read a very early draft. His comments were both constructive and encouraging.

I also had some friends back in Oklahoma City, from the church that is the focus of the story, give me some feedback too. Thanks to Wendy Shreffler and Lance Humphreys especially.

Thanks also to Charlie Peacock for reading through the essay and helping me believe that my writing did fit in the company of such "august" (his word directly) company.

Now back to Susanna. When I spent my first weekend with Susanna, I was concerned that she not think my writing ridiculous. She'd sent me her manuscript, the manuscript that was later picked by Billy Collins to win the Brittingham Prize. I didn't think that she would think my essays back then were ground breaking. I just wanted to make sure she didn't think my scribbles were silly, so somehow I found the nerve to read some of my writings to her. From then and to this day, she has indulged me by being my first reader of almost everything I write. She doesn't just listen. She gives me real, tangible criticism. Sometimes I have to go for long walks after recieving such criticism, but she has made me into a whole new kind of writer. Yes, writing just comes down to lots of hard work, sifting through draft after draft. I only wish I could be half as helpful, loving and supportive for her as she is for me.

Another Excerpt From For the Beauty of the Church

David Taylor has posted an excerpt of my chapter from the book he's edited, For the Beauty of the Church: Casting a Vision for the Arts. He was just at Calvin last weekend leading a few workshops during Calvin College's annual worship symposium. Susanna and I took him out for some Indian food later that evening. I had to order this dish they called "Rogan Josh" because I wanted to know if something with my name in it could be tasty. Good food with a good brother--something that was good for my soul too. It is really nice to pick up where we left off with David last time. An aside: it was four years ago that we first met with David in Grand Rapids. Susanna was presenting at Calvin's Festival of Faith and Writing and David had just made his contact with Baker to sign a publication agreement. It was also during that weekend that I made my first visit to Hope College and began the interview process to take the postion I now have with Campus Ministries. It is faith building to consider what can happen in four years.

I met with the head editor of Baker at the end of the summer for lunch and we talked a bit about who exactly will be the readers of this book. Of course we want pastors and lay leaders to read it, but the question is how to get it into their hands. Maybe artists will need to read it first and then tell their pastors about it. So, here is another plug to try to get the word out. Less than one month till its release! I'll admit that looking through the table of contents on Amazon gave me butterflies in my stomach. It is hard to believe my chapter is in such amazing company: David Taylor, Eugene Peterson, John Witvliet, Lauren Winner, Jeremy Begbie, Barbara Nicolosi, and Andy Crouch.

Our tragedy and a remembrance

We lost two students on Sunday morning in a terrible plane crash. David Otai and Emma Biagioni were two of our brightest and most beloved. I knew David well and Emma in passing. I'm not ready to say much about the pain we are experiencing here, but since this is Civil Rights Awareness week on campus and since David, a beautiful Kenyan young man, taught me how to sing a song in Swahilli, a song that has helped shape my heart for growing diversity here at Hope College, I want to offer the prayer I wrote for the ending of our march of remembrance across campus today as a remembrance of him too.

This isn't the greatest prayer about these issues of reconciliation and healing. It is my first of its type, but it's been a significant experience for me to write it. I only wish I could have looked back in the group of gathered students, staff and faculty to see David's face. I borrowed loosely from a few prayers found in The Worship Sourcebook put out by the Calvin Institute of Worship, a great resource.



Friends, Brothers and Sisters,

As we gather here at the end of our march, it is no insignificant thing that we end with prayer. As we remember the courage of Yuri Kochiyama, Viola Liuzzo and Irena Sendler, as we remember the suffering of Matthew Shepard and James Byrd, Jr. many of us want to do something, to take action and not to stand idly by while injustices continue all around us in this world, in our country, our own state and our city.

I am reminded of the life and work of the late Henri Nouwen, a brilliant scholar who left his teaching at both Yale and Harvard to serve physically and mentally handicapped adults in the Le Arch community in Toronto, Canada. In his book The Wounded Healer, Nouwen writes about his own experiences of solidarity with the poor in Central and South America. For Nouwen Jesus is our model of a full, complete human being, because Jesus is the consummate activist and contemplative. Jesus is the ultimate ‘wounded healer’ because it is only in Jesus that we see suffering fully answered by justice.

It is in contemplation and prayer that we reflect on our Gospel hope and gain vision for Gospel action.
In this spirit, as we remember these people of action, those who have suffered, it is appropriate that our first response before God is silence.

Would you please join me in a moment of silence.

Father of mercy,
open our eyes, that we may see the pain of others.
Open our ears, that we may hear their cries.
Open our hearts, do not let them be without help.
Let us not be afraid to defend the oppressed
because of the indifference of the strong,
Let us not be afraid of solidarity with the marginalized
because of the indifference of our society
and even the indifference of our neighbors.

Show us where love and hope are needed,
and use us to be agents of peace and givers of love.
Open our eyes and ears, so that today we may
help establish your kingdom upon the earth.

We hear the Spirit’s call to love one another,
to oppose discrimination of race, sexual orientation or gender
We hear the Spirit’s call to accept the other,
to love those we don’t know or understand,
to call the stranger our brother, the outsider our sister
and to share with them our homes,
our marriages, families and friendship,
to share our jobs, our churches and our government
and so to fulfill the love of Christ.

We give our thanks for the men and women
of the past and the present 
who in the face of loneliness,
monotony, misunderstanding, and danger
have persisted in their work of shalom,
to establish peace on this earth.

We pray to you, O Lord, our God and Father,
because we are encouraged by the example of Jesus Christ,
your Son and our brother. By the power of your Spirit
teach us to love as Jesus loved, to go where Jesus would go,
to touch those who Jesus would touch, to listen as Jesus would listen,
to bless as Jesus would bless, to forgive as Jesus would forgive.
And so we fix our attention on him, in who is life and whose life
is the light of all of humanity, unto him be all blessing
and glory and honor and power forever and ever.  AMEN

Another book excerpt/ pre-order/ Sentimentalism defined

If you are so inclined, THE book can be pre-ordered here.

And David recently posted another excerpt this time from Jeremy Begbie. Begbie also addresses the issue of sentimentality in Christian art in another anthology:  The Beauty of God: Theology and the Arts edited by Daniel J. Treier, Mark Husbands and Roger Lundin. The excellent essay is titled, “Beauty, Sentimentality and the Arts.” The gist of the essay is that sentimentality is un-earned emotion or emotionalism when emotion is an end in itself. Begbie identifies three problems with it:

Sentimentalism:

1. misrepresents reality by evading or trivializing evil.
2. is emotionally self-indulgent.
3. it fails to take appropriate action.

I really appreciate his use of a quote from Milan Kundera:

“Kitsch causes two tears to flow in quick succession. The first tear says: 'how nice to see children running on the grass!' The second tear says: 'How nice to be moved, together with all mankind by children running on the grass!' It is the second tear that makes kitsch kitsch.” 

These thoughts can go a long way in serving the discussion on Christian music that I'm developing here on this blog.

Meditation on Isaiah 9

Some people ask for this around Christmas time. I thought I'd already posted it on this blog somewhere. Forgive me if this is a double post. I believe this was first written in 2001 for a service at Bridgeway Church. For those who are curious, I was reading Dallas Willard's Divine Conspiracy when this was written.

If you want some other thoughtful reflections on advent check out my friend Dustin Ragland's several entries here www.okcherbivore.blogspot.com/. He is definition of gentle giant with insight and creativity seeping out each pore (if that isn't too gross of an image).


Meditation on Isaiah 9

Unto us a child is born,
unto all of us.
Unto the widow,
unto the homeless,
the addict,
the AIDS patient.

Unto us the football captain
and the drag queen.
Unto us the politician,
the factory blue collar,
us the single mother,
the crack baby,
and unto us the affluent suburbanite.

Unto us the Goth,
the hippie,
the rocker,
the alternative and underground.
Unto us in Hollywood and on Madison Avenue
and unto all of us in between.
Unto us in the gutters of Calcutta,
unto the Muslim,
and the Jew,
the Buddhist,
the Krishna and the Hindu.
Unto us the fatherless.
Unto the heavenly fatherless.

For unto us a child is born
a son is given
and a secret revolution begun.
This is what the prophets had been preparing for.
They said his name would be,
“Most Beautiful Wisdom,”
“the Highest of Heaven’s Secrets.”

His name would be,
“the God who continually bends over backwards for you,”
“the God who gets down on his hands and knees,”
“the God who would become silly and mis-understood,”
“the God who would be mocked- - the God whose name
would be taken in vain.”

He would be called
“the God of underdogs,”

“the God of the powerless and unspiritual,”

“the God of those who cannot pray or fast.”

And there would be no end to him and his
underdog weaklings or their secret.
There would be no end even
while the nations continue to rage on.
Even as ethnos rises against ethnos,
even as valleys are filled with dead bones
and rivers run with blood.
Even as violence runs through our streets
and schools and hearts
covering us like a thick fog.

Even in this dark land of weak people
the God who bends over backwards
will shine forth like a great light
as the dawning of a new day
letting his secret spread forth with healing and joy.

Drop the mirror and let it shatter
Crush the hourglass and stop the clocks ticking.
Stand still.
Hold your breath.
Anticipate—imagine
your wildest dreams.
Sell everything and buy the farm.
Come with me, cover your eyes and hold out your hands.
Stop your weeping,
stop your groans,
the fast is over.
Let the celebration begin
the father has come.
He has sent his son
Unto us He has been born,
even unto us.

The Book is Coming! The Book is Coming!

I just saw over at David's blog that he is posting excerpts from the book over the next six months in anticipation of the books final release. You can read a little bit by Eugene Peterson HERE.

The book is called For the Beauty of the Church. I'm the no-name rookie author who got a chapter included by the skin of his teeth.

All Good Things Come to an End: Goodbye Summer

I'm very very pumped about school starting up. I don't think I've ever been more excited for Fall, but of course I'm pretty freaked out that the summer will be over for me in a few days. Worship team arrives on Friday. We drive up north on Saturday. Rehearsals are all next week.

So, here is my Zen-like lesson from this summer: in order to have a good summer, you cannot want to have a good summer. After having two weird summers here, I decided last Spring that I wasn't going to think of this as a 'summer vacation' in the same idyllic sense that I have wanted it to be in the past. In the last few summers I found myself panicking as I saw June then July then August all pass by. I kept wondering if I was using my time well. If everything was happening according to expectation. So, I've worked most of the summer. In fact, I've been much more disciplined with a daily routine this summer than I have ever been in my whole entire life. I've even been exercising pretty regularly. A good day for me has been:

waking around or before 7am, time to read, write, mediate.
work on the two classes I've been taking this summer
11am exercise, shower, more reading writing
lunch
reading writing...work until a late dinner with Susanna around 7pm
Read something with her, watch a movie/TV show
to bed by 11pm at the latest

So, yeah, it has been a summer of reading and writing. Lots of Augustine, Teresa of Avila (see below for a sermon excerpt where I reference Teresa), and the history of hymnody. These were my two final courses to finish my master's at Regent. I have a comprehensive paper to write next summer, but for the most part, I'm finished! Kinda exciting and kinda sad. I'll have been slowly hacking away at this for eight years when I turning that final project next summer. It is a delight to learn. I'm very thankful for the gift. I'm considering a DMin as my next step as a way to keep me accountable to reading and writing. We'll see.

I did write two songs for the hymnody course. I'm nervously excited to show them to the worship team and see what they think. Susanna gave me some great help. She pushes me so well. Her ideas are right 9 out of 10 times. And that is a pretty good rate. Trustworthy indeed.

I called Brian Bergman today to ask him about this keyboard I'm buying for the school. It really stirred me up to talk to him even for just a few minutes. My week in Oklahoma City in June was really special. I miss so many good people so much. There is a definite cost to being here in Holland. I've been reading Rowan Williams on Christian suffering. The Apostle Paul often mentioned how much he missed various friends in distant cities. He was always so faithful to send greetings...to encourage people to greet each other with a holy kiss. For some reason I've been created to love and hold onto love for people in a deep way that does cause me pain now when I'm so far away. Rowan Williams draws out how friendship was a consitent theme for Augustine. For those of you who care, it is an interesting theme for Augustine because he has been put to task recently by the late Colin Gunton for having a trinitarian paradigm that was so horizontally oriented that it perhaps does not theologically account for our horizontal relationship--meaning that Gunto believes that Augustine didn't thoroughly draw out the theological model for friendship in a way that the Eastern fathers did.

I bring this up because friendship is such a powerful gift. I want to understand it in light of who God is and how he created it rather than how we might want to have friendship. I want to grow in an understanding of a God-designed friendship rather than a human design. A tricky puzzle that will take some time. I have a few friends who think Gunton's reading of Augustine is completely out to lunch. I need to read it all again to come to my own conclusions.

MUSIC

A few recommendations:

Sunset Rubdown Dragonslayer I'm a sucker for anything that Spencer Krug does ever since we saw him in Wolf Parade last summer. His live intensity is thrilling. I'm holding onto my excitment of loving a band exponentially more after see them live. I've had the opposite happen too many times. This record will either be a love or hate it for most people...but if you want to try out something really eclectic, this record has lots to discover.



The Field Yesterday and Today This is mind boggling electronica, well it is mind boggling if you like something created more for the sake of it's textures and layers. This is a headphones album if there ever was one.







The Besnard Lakes eponymous Again, this is another record you might need to really spend some time with. It starts and ends with a sound that is so blatantly invoking Pet Sounds that it has to be an intentional decision. But the core of the record is very different. I love records most that give me many different kinds of sounds in different ways. If you read through my music reviews, you'll see that I'm almost more interested in the soundscape of records than I am in the traditional song structure.




Fourtet Pause This an older record. Found it used at Zulu. Like what I said above about soundscape...I listen for that stuff in records because of projects like Fourtet and Boards of Canada. I don't think that Fourtet has put anything out that I don't want to own. Joyfully creative in a very detailed, particular way. Beats, noises, acoustic guitars and kids voices chanting about mosquitos (that is the song that drives Susanna mad).





COFFEE

Joel Limpic (to the left here) joined me for a the classes at Regent. He'd asked around about the best rosteries. A place called 49th Parallel has now redefined 'coffee' for me. No more dark roast. No more Starbucks ever. No more burnt roasts. I'm not exaggerating when I say that after drinking that coffee for over two weeks, I returned to Michigan deeply concerned that I would not be able to complete the summer as a happy man. I've started buying my beans from JPs instead of Lemonjellos because JPs gets their beans from Michigan roasters daily and weekly. They've got all their bean in huge jars along one wall and I can go through them all, lids open, smelling away. The 49th Parallel Guatemalan bean I'd had in Vancouver made me a believer in light roast. The smell is insanely lovely. The beans at JPs aren't 49th P, but they are better than I'd expected.

I had the opportunity to preach a few weeks ago at our little bilingual Crossroads Chapel. It was a very helpful opportunity for me. I need to teach and share what I'm learning. I need to see if what I'm growing in can bear fruit for others. I've excerpted an un-edited section from that sermon here below. I didn't read the sermon verbatim, but having the text in front of me helped me stay on track. I decided to preach the lectionary, so I went with the Gospel passage from John 6 as my text.

From August 9

This summer I read the autobiography of St. Teresa of Avila. In these personal reflections she really is hard on herself, even calls herself the “chief of all sinners,” the “most wicked of God’s servants.” Yet, she has no major struggle with what we would today consider taboo sin, no drunkenness, fornication, no addiction to secret sin. But still, she does see her life long struggle with prayer as a kind of secret sin.

When considering the first twenty years as a nun, she considers herself a liar and a deceiver. She had the outward appearance of religiosity. She performed all that was required of her as a nun. She was praised by her superiors. Her confessors affirmed her prayer life and spiritual fervor, yet she confesses that she was running from God the whole time. It was one thing for her to go through the motions, to recite prayers and Scriptures, but she was not answering the invitation of Christ to let prayer become a part of the interior of her life. Those twenty years the door had been open to her to walk in the light, to walk in the Spirit, but yet she continued to live through her own strength.

Now why do we avoid prayer? Why would any of us ignore the opportunity to commune with the Creator of all the known universe? What is it that keeps us from eating eternal bread and drinking everlasting water? The answer that this passage in John chapter six gives us is that we can’t draw near to God because we are too busy grumbling.

The first part of this chapter six is the telling of the well-known story of Jesus feeding the five thousand with a little lunch of fishes and loaves. He’s been performing these kinds of signs and wonders and the crowds following him are getting bigger and bigger. Jesus is so exhausted from all his ministering, his teaching and serving that he leaves the disciples to get some time by himself then we walks across the water to catch up with the disciples as they are heading across the Sea of Galilee. In the morning it appears that the crowds have gotten into boats to chase after Jesus across the lake.

Jesus’ feeding of the five thousand, while an interesting meditation in itself, sets up his teaching on what real bread and what real life is. This chapter six can only be understood in reference to the journey of Israel in Exodus. Here we have very similar circumstances. In both the Exodus story and in this story here in John, we have a large group of people wandering in search of help. Both groups are hungry and both groups are grumbling. What are they grumbling about? Mainly they are grumbling because they don’t like the way that God is feeding them. In the Exodus account God had promised to be Israel’s savior and deliverer. But where do they find themselves? Not in the comparatively safe, predictable circumstance of slavery to the Egyptians, but wandering around in the desert. They cry out,

"If only we had died by the LORD's hand in Egypt! There we sat around pots of meat and ate all the food we wanted, but you have brought us out into this desert to starve this entire assembly to death." Ex 16

In response God sends down this strange food that they will have to go out and gather every morning and every evening. It couldn’t be stored because it would rot quickly, stink and fill with maggots. The food is so strange that when they look at and say, "manna" or “what is it?” But God had provided. And yet right after the manna fell from heaven, Israel continued to grumble and quarrel with Moses about water.

In John chapter six this multitude is grumbling and Jesus responds to them,

"I tell you the truth, you are looking for me, not because you saw miraculous signs but because you ate the loaves and had your fill. 27Do not work for food that spoils, but for food that endures to eternal life, which the Son of Man will give you. On him God the Father has placed his seal of approval."

But the source of their grumbling was that Jesus was talking about a spiritual reality while they were talking about a physical reality. And who was this Jesus any way? Who does he think he is calling himself the bread of life? Isn’t he just the son of Mary and Joseph, those people down the street we know? How can he say he has come down from heaven? While these crowds of people wanted to receive food from Jesus and to be healed by him, they grumbled because they didn’t believe who Jesus said he was. They didn’t believe that he is the “Way the Truth and the Life,” the “eternal manna,” the final bread of life.

So, again, my confession is this: while I have claimed to be serving Jesus, have called myself a Christian, like St. Teresa I have too long ignored the practice of eating my daily bread. I have been just like this multitude that was following Jesus. I’ve wanted his provision but I haven’t wanted him. That is my confession. I’ve wanted him to lead and guide me, but practically and daily I haven’t believed that he is my food and drink. I have not allow him to satisfy my wandering heart.

E.M. Bounds Power Through Prayer “So we come to one of the crying evils of these times, maybe of all times -- little or no praying. Of these two evils, perhaps little praying is worse than no praying. Little praying is a kind of make-believe, a salvo for the conscience, a farce and a delusion.”

The invitation to a life of prayer has kept offering itself to me all these years. My testimony continues to be this: I’ve been responding to this invitation in a new way for several months now. It has become a kind of wakening from sleep. It is nothing dramatic. And it is hard. Here is the strange thing about prayer. We think that it is communion with God and we assume from the outside that since God is love and God is generous, that our relation to him should be something of paradise, something warm and cushy and light. Then we turn to prayer and it seems odd and strange like the manna: we have to go out and gather it. And so we develop a kind of resentment and we give ourselves over to grumbling.

Now here is a very important matter that I have to address before I finish this testimony: we do not pray in order to earn God’s love. Nothing we can do will earn his affection or attention. Jesus is very clear about this when he says,

"No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him, and I will raise him up at the last day. 45It is written in the Prophets: 'They will all be taught by God.'[d] Everyone who listens to the Father and learns from him comes to me.”

The story of Christianity is that God made himself known through his son Jesus. Through Jesus we have access to the Father. Yet when we pray we are not in control of how God responds to us. It truly is the daily work of gathering our bread. Prayer is not a kind of ritualism that we perform in order to conjure up God. We do not earn a week’s worth of gold stars for being faithful to daily prayer. Instead we use prayer to eat and drink eternal food and eternal drink just as deliberately as we would regularly feed our own bodies. My sense of being awakened is then a kind of realization, a daily participation in my spiritual being. It is a re-engagement in a life with God that I have tasted but have often forgotten.

He is that thing that we desire but have forgotten. He is the item that we have tucked into the back of the drawer of our memory. We sweep him under the rug or we stash him away in the attic or in the garage. We can’t come to him just when our stomach are hungry and when our bodies are failing. We come to him when our spirits are failing and we remember that he is the bread of life. He is the drink that if we drink we will never thirst again.

Here, I'll finish with a favorite picture from our time with my parents out in La Push on the Olympic Peninsula.