It is Well with my Soul

Shalom! Mah-Shlom-chah?

This is how almost every conversation starts in our Hebrew class. It’s a wonderful group of people and a lovely elderly couple who teach it. We look forward to going each week and as we’ve moved from Hebrew 1 to 2 over the last few months, we’ve become rather invested in one another.

Shalom is a pretty standard greeting, “Peace.” And the question that follows is one we typically understand as, “How are you?” As we have come to care how each of us is doing each week by that evening, we usually answer pretty honestly with how we’re feeling or how the day has been. Answers like Yah-feh (tired) and Rah-ev (hungry) are common (a few of the students are pregnant).

However, Moshe, our professor, explained some new grammar to us this week and in doing so taught us something culturally significant. The question is not quite, “How are you?” but closer to “How is it with your being?” In other words, not how are you this moment, but how are things with you or how are things with your being, your soul? This is an entirely different question, not just because it’s deeper or broader in its inquiry, but because the responsibility for answering it is also greater.

When we ask someone how they’re doing in the United States, we really mean how they’re doing recently, typically in this very moment. And we answer accordingly. Maybe we’ve had a good week, month, year or even lifetime on the whole, but we answer for the moment. “I’m doing horribly! I had a bad morning at the DMV followed by a parking ticket.”

Ask the same person how it is with their being, how it is with their soul? Their answer may have to put that lousy morning into perspective with a bigger picture. “I’m doing ok really. Lousy morning, but doing well, you?”

We live in a culture now where our every emotion, stray thought, insult or commentary on every person, action, political position or event can be broadcast instantaneously. Why ask how someone is doing? Follow their Facebook status updates or Twitter feed. You’ll have a blow by blow of their emotional status and mental analysis of everything they’ve encountered recently.

The problem then is that you are possibly well-informed about the general status of their being, but none of us has had the opportunity to reflect each time on our being as a whole, how our soul is doing. Our reflection is shallow, our analysis narrow. Twitter doesn’t ask you how you’ve been or how your life is going. Facebook doesn’t ask you how content your soul is or how your being is. They ask how you are this moment, what you’re thinking. And so do we.

I think the importance in the question, “Mah-shlom-chah?” is not merely to be a more deeply concerned friend or family member, but that answering it requires reflection and perspective. So in case I’m the only person to ask you this today, “Mah-shlom-chah?”

The Power of Words

Not long ago, I blogged on the power of words. I reflected mostly on their power to do harm. However, just as importantly, they can do good. Here Morgan Freeman introduces a great video that reminds us what GOOD words can do...

God's Children

...and as the Israelites watched, the waters of the Red Sea came crashing together, drowning Pharoa's army. The Israelites danced and cheered and rejoiced. And God said to Moses, "Why do you rejoice?"

"Our evil opressors who have kept us slaves to them and to fear all these years have been slain!" Responded Moses.

"Yes," said God. "And they are my children too."

That story has been told to me at least twice and is supposedly from the Talmud, the body of non-canonical Jewish stories that help to explain and illustrate moral lessons of the Hebrew Bible. It is the first thing that came to mind last night as I saw people celebrating the death of bin Laden.

Now, I recall that tragic day ten years ago very well. I was a senior in high school. I recall how poorly our school handled the news and its dissemination. I recall the national uproar when my university chose Approaching the Qu'ran as our summer reading. I recall the serious talk about a military draft being reinstated the following year and that I was of age to be among the first in line for that, those turning twenty that year.

I recall not only the events, but those emotions. And I am a man who has always had a deep sense of justice and a need to see it brought about. I deeply believe that my God is a God of justice and as in the story, I believe God moves in our world to help bring justice. I do not believe God is always happy to do so. And I do not believe our God calls us to be either.

I do not wish to say it is wrong to rejoice when evil men are brought to a just end. In fact, we should be a people who are resolutely dedicated to justice and grateful for leaders and soldiers who seek it and bring it about. We should, however, be careful never to rejoice in the death of one of God's children, lest we believe or suggest to others that we believe that God does not love a single one of them or that we have not loved our enemies and prayed for those who have persecuted us.

CHAT - What It's All About

I spoke about my job with CHAT (Church Hill Activities and Tutoring) in Richmond, VA during my Maundy Thursday homily. This news story just ran recently there. Percy was my mentor during that summer and largely responsible for the interpretation I shared from the John passage...

Green Day

Sharing is caring, or so they say. Community bikes are nothing new. Many large cities in Europe and Asia have had them for years. It's a relatively new concept in the States and DC's program is really catching on. With over 1,000 bikes currently and expected to expand to 1,300 soon, this program is working out for a lot of commuters who are eco and health-conscious. The following video is on Capital Bike Share's main website...

The Lost Cause

Last night was Maundy Thursday. Our scripture was John 13:1-20. This is the homily I preached... (You may be able to hear it here)

The Lost Cause

The Gospel of Luke has been called the Gospel of the Lost. It contains parables about lost sheep, lost coins and lost people. In Luke, Jesus says his mission is to seek and save the lost. However, I think it could just as easily be said that the Gospel of John… is the Gospel of the Lost Cause.

The Bible is full of tales of bad men and women, evil deeds and awful circumstances. Cruelty and betrayal are common themes. Perhaps one of the greatest examples is Judas. At this time of the year, we are pretty tough on Judas. We’re pretty tough on Peter too. And yet we find when we read the Easter story… Jesus… is not. Judas betrays Jesus. Peter denies Jesus. Jesus knows they are both going to let him down tremendously. In Chapter 13, we learn Jesus knows Judas will betray him. He knows Peter will deny him. He knows they will all abandon him.

And yet, does Jesus spend his last night lecturing his disciples, his merry band of screw ups and cowards? Does he spend it begging them not abandon and betray him? No. As the writer of John tells us, he loves them till the end. Jesus spends this time sharing a meal and washing their feet. Jesus spends this time serving them. He spends this time loving them.

After leaving seminary, I worked as a summer school teacher for an inner city ministry in Richmond, teaching Math and English. This neighborhood, Church Hill is one of the ten most dangerous neighborhoods in America, having improved in recent years from number four to number eight on that list. The ministry with which I worked had two main goals: to educate and encourage the kids and families in Church Hill, helping in any way possible… and to work toward racial reconciliation. The kids in the school and tutoring programs and camp are kids who would otherwise fall through the cracks, most of whom would never complete high school, let alone attend college, and many of whom would fall victim to drug and gang violence. There was a murder every day for our first two weeks in the neighborhood that summer.

With so much need and so few resources in time, money and manpower, it was tempting to feel overwhelmed. It was tempting to affect a sort of emotional triage. It was tempting to do what so many before us had done, to focus on the kids with the best chance or even those with the worst chance and devote our time and energy to those few. It was tempting to identify the Lost Cause and to steel ourselves for the inevitable failure, the countless let downs, the ongoing disappointment.

That was the temptation. The reality, most days, was that the people in this ministry knew we’d never make any progress, if we succumbed to that mindset. Our example is Jesus, and triage was a foreign concept to him. He loved them to the end. Jesus didn’t suspect that Peter would deny him. He knew it. Jesus didn’t suspect that Judas was a Lost Cause. He knew he was. And yet… Jesus washed each disciples’ feet… even… Peter… and Judas.

In that ministry in the heart of Church Hill, they knew that example didn’t let them off the hook. The example Christ gave us in knowing what he knew and loving them till the very end is our example in every moment of our lives. Because the real hook is this… Jesus knew who was a Lost Cause… and he served them just the same. No more, no less, with no exasperation, with no defeat or surrender. And brothers and sisters, as wise as we may believe ourselves to be, we do not know who the Lost Causes are. And we cannot. And Jesus shows us that even if we did, we are to serve them… to love them… in spite of this.

My mother, a lifelong school teacher, has always told me that, “you cannot reach someone you don’t love.” And it’s far too difficult to love someone you believe is a Lost Cause. And yet, this is precisely what Jesus does. Our Lord, our teacher and our example doesn’t abandon or vilify those who will betray him. We completely vilify Judas. And if we didn’t read all the way to the end of our Gospel, we’d string Peter right up alongside Judas. How dare he?! But Peter, Lost Cause number two… he becomes the rock upon whom Jesus builds his church.

How different is Peter from the convict who sits on death row or the college dropout heavy into drugs or the unwed pregnant teen or any one of us in our darkest hours? He isn’t. The Peter of our Gospel accounts between this night, Maundy Thursday, and Sunday morning is a story whose ending has not been written, whose hope is not in this day, but in the Jesus who comes looking for him, the Jesus who comes to seek and save the lost. What are we, each of us, if not lost? Who are you? Who am I, if not a Lost Cause who Jesus has refused to give up on, no matter the outcome? And who are we, if not a people called to go and do the same?

“A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another; just as I have loved you, you are also to love one another. By this, all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”

Benediction:
As you go forth in silence tonight from the Chapel, go forth in the knowledge that no one you meet is a Lost Cause, not one. God has only granted one person the knowledge of who is a Lost Cause, and his example to you is that this knowledge is irrelevant. Go forth loving and serving, knowing that no one’s story is finished yet.

Green Day (Special Edition)

I'm aware it's 4/20. So if you're gonna grow something in a pot and go green this April 20th, try a Solar Plant. The Solar Plant is a little electrical potted plant that looks little and cute in your window sill and can charge your portable electronic devices. The eco-friendly energy produced by the Solar plant can be used to charge your gadgets whenever and wherever you want. Just don't water it.

Green Day

On Palm Sunday this year, Wellshire will dedicate its new Solar Panels. We're very excited about this. These panels will reduce our dependence on the grid, though not fully power all of Wellshire's energy needs. It is one of many steps Wellshire is taking toward better stewardship of our earth and the resources of God's world.

In honor of this, for the next several weeks, we will take a look at the latest inventions that are helping to move us away from such extravagant energy consumption and toward better stewardship. This week... the amazing new nearly-waterless washing machine!

Researchers at Leeds University have designed and tested a washing machine that uses only one cup of water for a load of laundry. That's 90% less water than a typical washing machine. How is this possible? A technology by Xeros uses nylon polymer beads to attract dirt and lock it up, reducing the need for water. If that's not exciting for you, think about reducing your water bill by 90% every time you do a load of laundry. For now, this in production for commercial use, but with the hope of following it with domestic shortly. Stay tuned.

A video of the latest prototype could not be embeded, but a link can be added. Go see the prototype here.

Quality of Life

A friend and colleague of mine from seminary is an assistant professor of medicine in the Department of Internal Medicine at VCU Medical Center and neuro surgeon who specializes in those with various forms of dimentia. He has also worked on a Sunday school for curriculum that teaches young children about how to interact with grandparents with dimentia.

He recently wrote a piece for the Richmond Times Dispatch in VA and I'm providing the link here for those of you who would like to read it. It outlines some of the natural prejudice we all have about quality of life and who should determine it.

Absolutely Tragic

Amidst all the recent tragedy and suffering, I didn't think the news could get any worse. But I have to say this latest story moved me to absolute nausea. As we approach the anniversary of the Columbine shooting 12 years ago, which is still keenly felt here in Colorado and the Denver area, this story hits home especially hard.

A new video game is being released. It's title... School Shooter: North American Tour 2012. That's right. As the name implies, it is a violent first-person shooter game that allows you to roam school buildings and murder your classmates. It promises to be "the best school shooter" ever, as if this is a real and normal video game genre.

Creator Jaime Lombe had even more disturbing things to say about his game. "Nobody has ever tried create a proper game about a school shooting," he told reporters. Then he told them that he was not particularly moved by the tragedy at Columbine. "The way the news victimized the victims and overplayed the evil of the shooters disgusted me more than the actual shootings themselves."

The only thing as tragic as this school shooting is glorifying the actions that took place here out of depression and anger and frustration. And even more unbelievable is that no one person can program, advertise and release a video game. It takes teams of people. And apparently none of them have the sense or compassion to say no to this ghastly idea. It's not a new idea to capitalize on tragedy.

There are hundreds of games about WWI, WWII, Vietnam and so on. What seems unique is how recent, how raw, and how evil the intent and motivation is behind this game, as well as what sort of message it sends. These days, the measure of resolve about any issue seems to be how many and how big is the Facebook group for/against something. I was unable to find any such group when I searched. There's a page with 0 likes. Is it not well known or have we become that complacent?

As he approached Jerusalem and saw the city, he wept over it and said, “If you, even you, had only known on this day what would bring you peace—but now it is hidden from your eyes."

Luke 19:40-42

Green Day

A promising new way to use salt water as fuel has been discovered by accident. A man studying ways to cure cancer serendipitously discovered a means to pull apart the hydrogen and oxygen in salt water and ignite them. The news story...

Confession Time

We (as a denomination, the PC(USA)) are in the process of considering the addition of a new confession to our Book of Confessions. This, of course, is a difficult process and one which opens the doors to many questions... Why do we need more than twelve good solid confessions? Why do we have twelve already? Do we need confessions in language we can understand? Should we add confessions if they don't say anything new? What if they do say something new? Should we measure them against the Bible? Against the old confessions? Should we include or exclude confessions written for a specific time and place? Is there such a thing as a confession NOT written for a certain time and place? Does that matter, if it still teaches?

Many of these questions and more have been asked recently about the new Confession of Belhar. It's certainly not "new" except in being decades newer than our last addition, as Belhar was written in 1986. It was certainly written for a specific time and place (Apartheid in South Africa), though so was every other confession, the Declaration of Independence and the book of Isaiah. It is modern language and would be the first confession in our book not to come out of a very European and very pale background. Though none of those are reasons in and of themselves to add this confession, what is most important and convicting is that it does say something new.

Rather than being measured against our world, the Church and our denomination with the guidance of the Holy Spirit, this Confession seems to be largely measured against the Confession of 1967. So let's start there. Someone at our Presbytery meeting said that we don't need Belhar because '67 already says racism and discrimination are evil and sinful. So who needs more? We do. Belhar goes farther. Belhar says that mere separation is sinful and not the full body of Christ. You see, in our denomination (and many others in America), we aren't practicing outright discrimination and racism. We don't have laws or rules or regulations saying that if you're of a certain skin color or ethnic background you cannot join us for worship, we just do it because it's comfortable. The studies say over 90% of our PC(USA) churches are more than 90% one race. So we have white churches, black churches and Latino churches and Asian churches... but hardly any "mixed" churches. Our sin isn't racism, it's separation.

Another colleague quoted II Corinthians. When Paul was asked for his brothers and sisters in Corinth for a letter of recommendation, he responded... "You yourselves are our letter, written on our hearts, known and read by everyone." My colleague said that we are the letter and therefore we don't need a new confession. However, if we truly were that letter, we wouldn't look like the church these studies see. 11am on Sunday morning wouldn't be the most segregated hour in America. We do need to be that letter. And I believe the Confession of Belhar points us there.

I would encourage you to go and check it out here. If you've never read the other confessions, give them a whack too. If you find them hard to read or confusing, don't worry, everyone does. The Denver Presbytery voted in favor last night, but it was close. It has to pass in 2/3rds of our Presbyteries before it can be voted on at General Assembly this year. If you'd like to talk more about it, drop me a line.

Why we go off the deep end

The following excerpts are from an article by David McRaney on the concept of deindivduation, or the concept of doing anonymously in a group what you would ordinarily not even consider. After recent events in the news, it seemed like a good time to discuss how we think about riotous behavior and how closely related it is to problems here at home…

The Misconception: People who riot and loot are scum who were just looking for an excuse to steal and be violent.

The Truth: You are prone to losing your individuality and becoming absorbed into a hivemind under the right conditions.

In San Francisco, in 2010, a man stepped onto the ledge of his apartment window and contemplated dropping from the building. A crowd gathered below and soon started yelling for him to jump. They even tweeted about it. He died on impact fifteen minutes later…

…Police and firefighters are well aware of this tendency for crowds to gather and taunt, and this is why they tape off potential suicide scenes and get the crowd out of shouting distance. The risk of a spontaneous cheering section goading a person into killing themselves is high when people in a group feel anonymous and are annoyed or angry. It only takes one person to get the crowd going. Those are the three ingredients – anonymity, group size and arousal. If you lose your sense of self, feel the power of a crowd and then get slammed by a powerful cue from the environment – your individuality may evaporate…

…Halloween is a fantastic playground for cultural norms to clash and crack. Costumes and candy, parents and children, the revelry and irreverence directed toward evil and death and hauntings – it is a day to pull back from standards, the rules of proper and normal behavior, and experiment with surrogate selves…

…Still, it’s always fun to role-play and hit reset, and Halloween is one of the few widely accepted times you get to do this in front of everyone you know. In many ways, it is a holiday celebrating anonymity through experimentation with individuality.

It was this muted sense of self which, in the late 1970s, led a group of psychologists to turn Halloween into a controlled study of the human mind.

Arthur Beaman, Edward Diener and Soren Svanum travelled to a nice neighborhood in Seattle, Washington, and picked out 27 homes which would become makeshift laboratories. The researchers wanted to see if the anonymity of Halloween costumes would affect the behavior of children as they gallivanted from secret lab to secret lab.

The researchers placed inside the entrance to each home a bowl of candy, a mirror and a festive Halloween decoration in which a scientist watched through a peephole as children arrived throughout the night…

…A woman greeted children throughout the night, and when the tykes presented their trick-or-treat bargains she told them each could have only one piece of candy. She then walked away, leaving them to sort out their tiny moral codes. Half of the time the woman at the door asked the children to say their names and where they lived before leaving them. If the children arrived with adults, they were omitted from the results. The psychologists wondered if the kids would take only one piece thinking there were no adults around to exact punishment or express disappointment in their gluttony. Would they react differently when alone or in groups? Would saying their names remind them of the people behind the masks? Once the kids were primed to remember their identity, or if they saw their reflection in the mirrors, would it remind them of who they were?

In the end, the mirror wasn’t the determining factor. What made the most difference was whether or not they had said their names and whether or not they were alone or in a group…

The results*: Children who were…
Alone and had to say their name… less than 10% disobeyed the rules (took more candy)
In a group and had to say their name… about 20% disobeyed the rules
Alone and anonymous… a little more than 20% disobeyed
In a group and anonymous… nearly 60% disobeyed

…The results suggested the power of their anonymity was magnified in the presence of others. Left unmasked, the cheating rose a bit in a group. With the masks on, it was turbocharged. The kids who felt most anonymous and the most protected by the shared anonymity of the group were also the most likely to break the rules and take more candy. With anonymity set to maximum, many kids tried to take all the candy they could.

This study is one of many which shows your identity can spring a leak in the presence of others, and the more others there are, the more you dissolve into the collective will of the group. Looting, rioting, lynchings, beating, war, chasing a monster with torches – the switch is always there, and it doesn’t take much to flip it.

Psychologists call this phenomenon deindividuation, it’s fun to say and one of the more straightforward terms in the scientific lexicon. In certain situations, you can expect to be de-individualized. Unlike conformity, in which you adopt the ideas and behaviors of others for acceptance and inclusion, deindividuation is mostly unconscious and more likely to lead to mischief. As psychologist David G. Myers said, it is “doing together what you would not do alone.”

*I compiled the chart of results based on the article. You may see the full article here.

Escaping Reality

A new report from the UK is showing some interesting (perhaps alarming) statistics about young people. In studying a group of several thousand teenagers, they discovered that fully 45% were sometimes happier in their online lives than in real life. Some teens reported they only felt comfortable revealing that they were gay in anonymous chat rooms.

The study found that among those who spoke to strangers online 60% lied about their age, and 40% lied about personal relationships. And just as telling, 47% of all the teens said they behaved differently online than in real life. One teen said, "You can say anything online. You can talk to people that you don’t normally speak to and you can edit your pictures so you look better. It is as if you are a completely different person."

Psychotherapist Peter Bradley was quoted as saying: "These findings suggest that children see cyberspace as detachable from the real world and a place where they explore parts of their behaviour and personality that they possibly would not show in real life. We can’t allow cyberworlds to be happier places than our real communities, otherwise we are creating a generation of young people not functioning adequately in our society." To say nothing of the conserns in a community of faith.

But teens aren't the only ones checking out. Many adults feel more comfortable in the virtual world than in the real world, interacting with real people. Released this past week... The Confessions App. This new iPhone App allows you to plug in all your info about age and when you last confessed, allows you to make your confession and even recommends up to 7 acts of contrition. At $1.99, it's not quite an indulgence, but it has been blessed officially by the Catholic church. One has to wonder if it's better to be tempted by a shiny apple or a shiny Apple device...

It's Just a Word

“It’s just a word.” I heard that this week, not for the first time. In fact, I hear it often. There are few statements with which I could possibly disagree more. Words have power. Words represent ideas and ideas have shaped the world and changed the course of history. A story like Beowulf could not survive over a millennia, if words did not have the power to move people.

If you doubt the power of a single word, you’ve never seen an angry young black woman call a white man a “cracker” or an infuriated white country boy call an old man the n-word. The fact that I can call it the n-word and you know what I mean is proof by itself. It could even be argued that the central issue of the last election was one word for many people, though maybe a different word for some than others, hope or race or change.

In recent months, one of the f-words, repeated often enough and with enough vitriol has been responsible for many tragic young suicides. And the word homophobe has stifled at least as much dialog as has been started by those deaths. If you doubt the power of words, ask the mother of a young college boy if she believes in the power of words.

Maybe the n-word doesn’t phase you. Maybe you don’t find the f-word offensive. Maybe you would call someone a homophobe without a second’s hesitation. But I guarantee you those words mean something very deep and powerful to someone else. I believe the context in which I heard, “It’s just a word,” this week was about obscene language and its harmlessness. I’d have to disagree. A word may not offend you. It may not offend me. It may not offend anyone in earshot. But if you do not believe that words, even a single word has power, you’re utterly mistaken.

It is no accident that our creation story is that of a God who speaks the world into existence. Everything that exists was spoken into our reality by our creator. In fact, our scriptures tell us that everything that exists was made by and through Jesus, who again by no accident, the Gospel writer calls, The Word. Words have great power and convey so much more than the sound they produce or the recognition they display. They carry meaning. They carry ideas. My prayer would be that your words convey love and hope and may you know the depth and the breadth of them for all those with whom you speak.