The Other Side of Hope

April is the cruellest month, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Memory and desire, stirring
Dull roots with spring rain.

T.S.Eliot


Over the course of the past year, I have witnessed more tears and felt the heaviness of grief more often than ever before in my life. As a chaplain in a hospital, I have sat with patients and patients’ family members in the midst of crushing news time and time again. It is never easy no matter how much time we have to prepare ourselves for it. When it finally happens, when we finally receive the crushing news, it is always crushing whether we have an hour, a day, a week, or years to prepare for it.

Words like hope and hopelessness, vitality and despair, heaven and hell can easily remain little more than words among other words. They can easily remain metaphorical concepts that we move and manipulate in the course a sentence in order to formulate our grand theologies of hope and love. However, when such words remain nothing more than concepts, they are empty of any sort of concrete significance, and when they remain empty of concrete significance, they leave the speaker of such words as nothing more than a parrot repeating useless mantras while watching the rush of lava approach steadily after a volcanic eruption.

If our theological language never touches the ground, if our words never bespeak experience, then they will be as cute as children in the schoolyard discoursing about determination and courage. Those children are not necessarily speaking lies by any means, but when they speak of determination and courage, it is not the same in the least as when a sixty-seven year old migrant worker reflects on his life or when a fifty-four year old Chinese lady tells the story about when she moved to America when she was twenty-eight without knowing how she would begin her new life. When the migrant worker and the Chinese lady speak of determination and courage, their words are colored with their experience. They have a knowing look in their eyes. Determination and courage are not mere words to them. Determination is when that migrant worker would eat only one meal a day in order to save enough money to buy his children shoes so they could go to school and learn English. Courage is when that young Chinese girl got on the plane and did not turn back to her parents waving goodbye. Their words have real concrete significance.

These past months as a chaplain in a hospital I have felt, experienced the theological words so often used throughout my time in seminary. And I must admit that theological concepts such as resurrection have felt distant; victory has been far out of reach. In such moments – and they are many – what is the function of theology? I have asked myself this again and again. In a clinical context and more broadly in a medicated society, what is the role of theology? I have not yet arrived upon a fully satisfying answer. However, I do think that in order for there to be a satisfying answer, it must come in the form of language and narratives that are full of experience, full of concrete significance. It is only when such language and narratives are rich with experience and concrete significance that they will have the capacity to frame our hopeless situations with genuine hope-filled perspective. Imaginary lines do nothing for a bleeding portrait. 

An Early Goodbye on a Sunday Morning

On a Sunday I was called in to the hospital just before six in the morning to be with a family whose loved one had died only a few hours earlier. This was my first on call. On the drive to the hospital I was attempting to do two things: wake up and figure out what on earth to do and say. I arrived at the hospital and went directly to the nurse’s station on the particular floor. The nurses appeared relieved to see me, and I was relieved that they were relieved.

The sister of the deceased was also at the nurse’s station. After making introductions, I invited the sister into the waiting room, and she described to me some of the family’s story. The mother had endured a lot of tragedy and death of loved ones over the past year not least her husband, and she had not processed much of her grief. The sister explained that earlier that morning the mother was visibly angry. The wife and two children were also in the room. The wife was clearly trying to hold herself together. The son meandered in and out of the room, and the daughter sobbed trying to hold back her tears. The deceased man in his forties died of a variety of issues including liver and kidney problems. The sister explained he had a “drinking problem” but continued to drink even when he was warned about his medical condition.

At this point I could not think of the situation becoming any more delicate and complicated. Then the sister said, “I thought maybe a word from you…” She trailed off and assumed that I knew what she wished for me to do. I construed her words and expression to be a request for me to assuage the situation with a few feeble words. Perhaps because I was too tired to be anxious, I felt at ease, and I calmly held the sister’s hand and explained that I was here for them and would remain with them for as long as they wished.

When we entered the patient’s room, the mother was standing over her son’s body, and the wife and two kids sat across from the foot of the bed. The mother looked at me with a blank stare. I introduced myself first to the mother and then to the wife and kids. The room’s silence felt heavy, and words felt like they would be worse than silence; words felt like they would be trivial. After a few moments the mother made a move to sit down, and I helped her to a seat. I held her hand and had my arm around her shoulders, and we sat there for what seemed like a rather long time. Then she looked up at me and began to smile and whispered, “thank you.”

I gathered the family together and offered to say a prayer. It was probably one of the simplest prayers I have ever prayed, though I do not remember the contents of the prayer exactly. With what little and few words they could muster, the family thanked me. The deceased’s daughter’s sobbing turned into weeping, and the deceased’s mother (the daughter’s grandmother) embraced her and said quietly, “Jesus understands.” The mother’s mood seemed to have shifted from anger to beautiful care. I was deeply moved by the mother’s embrace of her young granddaughter. 

The wife of the deceased took her two kids home, and the mother of the deceased returned to the bedside. She began to stroke his face and then kissed his cheek. Tears came to my eyes as I watched her tuck her son into bed one last time.

Through this entire ordeal I was praying, and when I was praying aloud with the family, I was also praying silently for what to say. Questions were roaming through my mind: what could I possibly say to comfort a wife, mother, sister, daughter, and son? I was outside the land where words seemed useful. This relatively young man died only a few hours ago, and he did not die a heroic death. 

It felt like there were probably a hundred right things to do in this situation and ten thousand wrong things to do. I cannot judge how each person understood my presence that morning, and I do not remember everything I said nor could I justify every move I made.

These are occasions when I am reminded that our often-assumed control over life is an illusion. We are vulnerable and fragile creatures. I was also reminded in part why I am becoming a pastor and why I headed into theology in the first place. Our own mortality looms large, and the road leading up to death involves all sorts of joy and heartache and perplexing questions. 

Stories that Shape Us

We have all told a story or two at some point, and so why not share a few jots on an opinion about telling stories.

Writing a story does not begin with a concept or belief or ideology. It begins with a person or two, a place with some dirt, and an event that is just real enough to believe and just fantastic enough to be worthy of telling. Flannery O’Connor claimed that if a writer begins with a person, there is no telling what will happen next.

When he was writing novels, especially The Idiot, Fyodor Dostoevsky was constantly conflicted about who was related and what they would end up doing. His novels are famously ideologically driven, and that is one of the reasons I enjoy his novels so much. But the ideologies are there only so long as people with all their psychological and moral complexity and ambiguity are there.

Where does a person begin? It could begin with a phrase, “Call me Ishmael.” It could begin with a suggestive circumstance. Hazel Motes sat on the train leaning one way and looking another; similarly, Raskolnikov walked down the stairs slowly as if indecisively. A person begins with movement, be it speech or gesture. Oceans and rivers and trains move and define people. Family reunions with all their potential explosiveness can move and define people as much as oceans.

But in any case, why would I be particularly interested in holding an opinion about writing fiction other than wishing to write fiction that is not quite terrible? Telling the stories of the Bible, following the movements of people with all their baggage and strangeness, crafting sermons that follow the contours of the biblical narratives themselves. That’s why. At least part of it.    

Walter Brueggemann has developed the rather interesting description of the preacher as poet, and he explains, “The preacher is called to weave an artistic connection between the text in its elusive, liberated truth, and the congregation in its propensity to hear the text in forms of reductionism” (Finally Comes the Poet). He does not encourage this description of preacher as poet because telling stories is neat. Rather, through narrative the preacher calls the congregation into an alternative reality, a reality that is different than the controlled ideological reality that so often gives shape to our experience. The poet preacher calls the congregation into an alternative reality of God’s promises. God’s promises of restoration involve people and movement, and this movement defines the people.    

Making Mud Pies

As a kid I made mud pies. And then I grew up, went to college, moved to a big city, and forgot about the dirt. I studied theological anthropology in a metropolis; I studied about how humans are dirt people. Though I knew it was true, it was easy to forget. After all, civilization is marked by Starbucks, Barnes and Noble, and MacDonald’s. Humans may be from the dirt and headed back to it, but in a city, we tend to forget such things. It can be easy to forget that from compost we came and to compost we shall return.

About a month ago, Esther and I moved to South Carolina, and over the course of the past few weeks we have found ourselves pruning trees, trimming shrubbery, and reorganizing flowerbeds. It’s been really great. After living in Los Angeles for a while, it feels humanizing to work on the land and in the dirt. It’s material. It’s meditative. It takes time; it takes patience: one limb at a time, one flower bud at a time. 

Countless times I have heard the pros and cons of social media. More often I have heard it disparaged by people who use it and by people who refuse to use it. It may very well be the case that it alienates us from one another, though of course it can be a really productive way to stay in contact when other forms of communication would otherwise prove too difficult for some reason or another. Social media is convenient, and I rather like it.

However, the meditative practice of pruning, trimming, and gardening has caused me to think yet again about the role of technology in my life. How does technology reshape the theological narrative of my life in connection to others? It may well be the case that it only encourages the addiction to immediacy; however, MacDonald’s has been doing that for a while; we have been primed for impatience and immediacy for quite some time, and this has influenced the way in which we engage others; it also can shape our expectations in relationships, especially if a person doesn’t respond to our post within an hour. Facebook and Twitter didn’t do that to us over night.

I’m wondering if gardening, rather than just refraining from social media, would be a productive way to cultivate healthier relationships in general. It may be that because we have grown so distant from the dirt we have subsequently grown rather distant from each other.

I’m not climbing onto a soapbox. I like living in a city, and I rather like social media. But it has felt right to work on the land and in the dirt. It has felt good to work with my hands and not to just do somersaults on Facebook or in my brain. It has felt human; it has felt theological. And it has reminded me yet again that mud pies aren’t just for kids. 

Why the Future Isn’t a Lost Cause

Our lodging for the conference

This week Esther and I spent several days in Montreat North Carolina at a Presbyterian small church conference. It was basically a youth camp for pastors. We stayed in what appeared to us to be a stone castle on the side of a mountain overlooking Lake Susan. Our first evening we sang hymns along with about two hundred Presbyterian leaders and pastors, and after singing hymns, we listened to a sermon given by a Ghanaian Presbyterian pastor currently holding a professorship at Columbia Seminary. His booming voice filled every corner of the conference hall. I don’t need hearing aids, and though many of the wise people around me may have been slightly hard of hearing, I doubt that a single ear in the room failed to hear the words of the sermon that night. His passionate call to gather and feed disciples was awe-inspiring.

During the following days we had the opportunity to glean insights from many lay leaders and ordained pastors. I spent some time talking with a novelist and pastor of a small membership church; he reflected on and explained the process he has endured writing nearly thirteen novels, and he said that unless it is burning inside you, unless it is trying to tear its way out of you, it probably isn’t very good. Esther and I met a Bible instructor who just so happens to have a Korean exchange student staying with his family for the year. Throughout the course of the three days, we also had the opportunity to attend three seminars. For the third seminar, we planned to attend a study on clergy health by Duke University; we entered what was a packed classroom. In fact we had to bring in extra chairs for the very back; however, once the speaker began, we realized that we had attended the wrong seminar. The rooms had been switched. We had actually attended a seminar on prayer. What followed was a beautiful and immensely edifying reflection on prayer that overflowed from the speaker’s own deeply personal spirituality. Esther and I were happy and thankful that God had drawn us “accidently” to the wrong seminar.

Inside that Montreat castle, Esther and I were surrounded by wisdom, humor, experience, and the love of Christ.

We met many other wonderful and insightful people, and in fact on our second morning the plenary speaker reflected on some of the cultural changes of the past fifty years and the consequences for church ministry. He recounted the “shift” from modernism to postmodernism – how many times have we heard people speak of such things? He was a compelling storyteller, though much of his cultural commentary was hardly innovative. However, more significant to me than his words was that everyone was so captivated by what he was saying. Why would that be so significant to me?

The institutional church is of little interest and is hardly attractive to many people my age, not least because in our eyes it has lost its credibility for more than one or two reasons. The older generations know this. It is no small piece of irony then that I am being ordained in and by the institutional church. In any case, the plenary speaker of the second morning challenged those present to rethink ministry and to learn the language of a new day. He used ample humor to ease the bullet, but even still I imagine if I were told that my ways are ineffective and need to be replaced with completely different approaches I would be a bit perturbed. But that is not the response to his words that I witnessed. Those present seemed to hang with excited anticipation on his every word.

The future of the church is not a lost cause. Why? Because many people my age (myself included) long for an authentic existence, which in my estimation involves bounds of faith everyday at least tacitly. And because the living generations that have come before us are not disinterested in us. Rather they want to connect with us, but for the most part they do not know our language; they don’t know where to start – it’s like a few weeks ago I realized that I am an old geezer when I asked one of my nephews if he was “having fun” (what sort of question is that when he is playing a video game?!).

The language and categories and liturgies of those generations before us are largely alien to us. And this is what everyone was so interested in. As the speaker of the second day described without holding back some well-placed humor, many people my age are speaking a different language. For example, we have not forgone the importance of “truth”; rather we are speaking about truth differently, with different categories as it were. Consequently, presenting “the gospel” in the same dusty, worn out ways that institutional churches have been for the past three hundred years will be less than useless and will at best be a lost cause. But. That everyone there was so transfixed by what the speaker was saying about the changing culture and the consequences for the life of the church indicates to me that the future is not a lost cause. The generations that have come before us are in fact interested, but they aren’t particularly sure what to do. And so they are doing what we would all do in their situation; they are doing what they know. But they appear ready to put their ears to the ground so to speak and hear what is coming, though in their case "what is coming" is already in their midst.

The future is not a lost cause, but both sides, younger and older will need to be open to each other. Easier said than done. We young folks look at the grey and balding heads, and we shake our heads because we naively think they are clueless. They look at us and suppose we have lost our map and compass. Collaboration will take a lot of willingness and effort on both sides. And as difficult as this may be, I was greatly encouraged when I witnessed and encountered the older generation’s interest in my generation. This interest is important because I and the rest of my generation need to be discipled. 

The older generations need to learn our language, and we need to cultivate patience. We need to cultivate patience that we might delve into the rich heritage of faith that has come before us. We younger people who suppose our advances in technology and tolerance set us above those who have come before us need to cultivate patience that we might glean from the immense treasure set before us. If we so disregard the older generations and the riches they have to offer us, it will indeed be as though pearls have been cast before swine.

The future is not a lost cause, but it will take sincere effort and patience on our part. Rather than fleeing tradition as though it is a thoroughly pernicious system of tyrannical authority, embracing it as ourselves without relinquishing any of the things that are in fact essential to us can be a path way not only toward collaboration between generations but also toward greater visible unity in the church universal, something that should be the business of every Christian.

What I saw with my eyes and heard with my ears this week at the conference was not a dead or dying church. It was a church with a future because it is a church that still rests its future with the future of Jesus. And with him there is always hope, even for generations that appear to be like oil and water. 

Faith in the Shadows of Doubt

Francesco Solimena’s “The Personification of Faith”

The first time I saw this painting I was with a group of hospital chaplains during my summer internship. We were meandering through the Norton Simon Art Museum, and then I saw this painting and stopped in my tracks and thought, “Yes, that is what faith in an unseen, transcendent God is like, what faith embodied in a world of travails looks like.”

It may very well be easier to write about the troubling nature of faith when doubting and easier to write about the bleak, cloudy character of doubt when gifted with faith. Or is it the converse? In any case, having personally experienced both for prolonged periods of time, today is a day to speak of both, albeit in a brief blog post I will do justice to neither.

To doubt, to be caught in the throes of unbelief, or even to renounce religious faith altogether, particularly Christian faith, may turn out to be a testament to taking faith seriously and thereby a testament to greater faith than the faith so often jangled about in strands of Christianity that boldly vocalize triumphant Christian life void of struggle and unbelief. The lands of doubt and faith may turn out to be contiguous; they may even overlap. They may even be caught up in one another.

One of my heroes, S. Kierkegaard, expressed the rather paradoxical relationship of faith and doubt when he said, “Whether I have faith can never be ascertained by me with immediate certainty – for faith is precisely this dialectical hovering, which is unceasingly in fear and trembling but never in despair; faith is exactly this never-ending worry about oneself, which keeps one alert and ready to risk everything, this worry about oneself as to whether one truly has faith – and look! precisely this worry about oneself is faith.”

Decades later F. Dostoevsky expressed his own life of faith in the midst of doubt when he said in a letter to a friend, “I will tell you that I am a child of the century, a child of disbelief and doubt, I am that today and (I know it) will remain so until my grave. How much terrible torture this thirst for faith has cost me and costs me even now, which is all the stronger in my soul the more arguments I can find against it.” He goes on to indicate that “God sends me sometimes instants when I am completely calm; at those instants I love and feel loved by others, and it is at these instants that I have shaped for myself a Credo where everything is clear and sacred for me. This Credo is very simple, here it is: to believe that nothing is more beautiful, profound, sympathetic, reasonable, and more perfect than Christ.”

Though doubt and unbelief may persist, remembering and treasuring such clear and sacred moments may very well be a way to trek through the valley of the shadow of doubt and then (eventually…) come out the other side.

Like that picture of the personification of faith in the Norton Simon, faith may very well involve all sorts of experiences and reasons to doubt, tenacious tugs in numerous different directions, but indeed it is such experiences that faith entails and will, if perseverant, make faith all the more healthy and strong. The quality of such faith may very well increase with every shadow and quagmire that it endures.

But Christian faith is not merely faith in an unseen, transcendent God; Christian faith is not faith in shifting sands and arbitrary dogmatic formulations; it is faith in the revealed God, in the incarnate God. But where, on days of doubt when we so desperately need to see in order to believe, is God? Where is God today? We might begin pointing at the church and different things the church is doing; after all the church is the body of Christ. However, this may very well leave us feeling more comfortable with unbelief rather than belief, for the church can be a rather messy and horrific place. Looking to the church may leave us hoping “it” isn’t true, for it would be the worst hypocrisy the world has ever seen. Where then do we look to see the incarnate God if not to the body of Christ, the church?

The church is not as it should be. Like the world, the church can be a troubling predicament. The church is by no means removed from the world, and as such the church suffers from similar woes. But this is not, in moments of doubt, reason to abandon the church. Much to the contrary. It is reason to plunge into that community that has been called to hope for and participate in the reconciling work of a poor carpenter. It is towards this horizon of healing and peace that the church is to press, plunge, and leap. Through the shadows and quagmires, the church, bruised and bloodied by unbelief and reasons to doubt, is to press toward this horizon always hoping and praying, even (and especially) in times of unbelief, “Come Lord Jesus!”

Faith is Risky Business

One of the many transitions from childhood to adulthood is discovering that life is uncontrollably precarious, albeit life can hardly be described so simply as supposing there are actual stages such as childhood and adulthood. There remains, however, this discovery that even our parents are mortals. Moreover, in some sense, life requires some sort of faith in so far as living requires trust in much that is not seen or known by us, and faith as such is risky business. We will hardly ever know if the next piece of earth on which we place our foot will collapse beneath us.

As we live with faith in the midst of change, our frameworks and stories according to which we experience relationships, events, and statements often change over time. Our paradigms of believing and understanding will likely change with time and experience. As the tides of life cast us to and fro, what we once held as true may change or be nuanced in various ways. This may sound terrible and undesirable, but I think it may not be too dissimilar from a child maturing and learning to use a language. A child learns the alphabet, some words, grammar, and eventually crafts a high school book report. The high school kid writing that book report has changed since learning the alphabet. Writing the letters of the alphabet all in a row is no longer the primary concern; the child has since discovered new paradigms according to which it makes good sense to write the letters all jumbled and out of order with periodic gaps between the letters. Change can be a good thing, though it remains a bit disconcerting.

It is not at all uncommon for churchy high school students to go to college and then drop out of church. This may very well happen for a variety of reasons, and I will not suppose that I can sum up in a few jots the depth and breadth of why this happens. However, it strikes me with little surprise that it does happen. When I went to college and began studying philosophy of religion it was as if I was encountering a different language that seemed to undermine my previously known language. In retrospect I realize that it may have been a bit like suddenly learning to write my name in cursive after knowing only how to print my name. In any case, it felt at times like the piece of earth on which I was placing my foot crumbled, but as it did, it made me all the more curious. I wanted to know why it felt as though the ground seemed to collapse. Ideologically, I began moving from childhood to adulthood. The world appeared more complex and precarious than before. Not only were my parents most assuredly mortal, their teaching was not infallible in the least.

In the midst of all the change, then, I began asking myself, “are my frameworks and stories according to which I live malleable, supple, and robust enough to live through these changes, these newfound languages?”

To live through change, faith, lest we slip into despair, is a crucial ingredient.

As risky as faith may be, faith is immeasurably rewarding. Memories of packing up a trailer and moving from Paso Robles to Pasadena come to mind. Esther and I hadn’t a clue what in the world we were doing, and similarly when we married each other, we had hardly more than a few hints about what we were plunging into. Even now, as Esther and I move from Pasadena, we are stepping into a shadow-filled corridor. To marry, to move, to live in relationship requires rather irrationally large and perhaps even seemingly naïve amounts of faith, but as enormous and risky as faith may be, to be in relationship is deeply rewarding. Moreover, just how rewarding it is cannot be known; it cannot be even imagined until the risk is taken.

I would feel nothing short of cliché if I were to compare such faith to living into the story of Jesus; however, though there may not be worthy analogs between the sorts of risks I have mentioned, nonetheless, living into the story of Jesus involves both risk and reward, though the sorts of risks and rewards involved will likely not be the same as winning the state lottery. Rather, Jesus calls us to risk our very being that we might discover what it means to be.

In a letter to Mme Fonvizina, Dostoevsky exclaimed, “If someone proved to me that Christ is outside the truth, and that in reality the truth were outside Christ, then I should prefer to remain with Christ rather than with the truth.” This may sound like nothing other than a resounding irrational leap of faith; however, I think it is not merely that. Dostoevsky, of all people, knew of the risks and unpredictable turns life can and will take. He knew. There may very well be times when what was previously known with such conviction crumbles beneath our feet, like sand slipping through our fingers. He knew. He also knew that whatever happened he was completely transfixed, taken captive by Christ, and nothing could change that, even a paradigm of judgment that counted Christ outside the truth.

Dostoevsky’s declaration of devotion to Christ is not childish naïveté; this is experience speaking. This is a declaration of tenacious faith in the midst of uncertainty; however, in the midst of whatever degree of darkness and ambiguity, there is a single core trust according to which other steps are taken no matter how brittle and thin the ground may be, no matter how bleak the grayish hue of light makes our circumstances appear.