Category Archives: Following

Learning to Listen

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That was the title page I flipped past this morning.

And it took ONE sentence to know that I was about to encounter some significant words.

“The preparation for listening to God is listening to others.”

The writer went on to clarify that this is not to say that listening to others is the aim of our life.  Let’s face it, some listening to others feels like a waste of time and energy.

But consider it this way:

“Welcoming our neighbour in this way (listening) will train our hearts to become silent, in order to be ready to receive the secret of the Other.”

It then goes on to clarify what listening to someone is really about in the first place:

“In whatever circumstances, our main concern (in listening) must be not just to receive some message or other, but, through the message, to discover the depths of the heart of the one who is speaking to us.  If we are not able to do this with the brothers we can see, how will we be able to do it with God whom we cannot see?”

Saying it another way, when we listen, we learn to turn our attention from merely grasping what he says to an actual attending to the person-ness of the speaker.  We tune in to him.

That’s sound advice for any of us who agree that the world lacks good listeners.

Such an observation takes on even more weight when if the “him” in question is spelled with a capital H.

Go and listen well, my friends.

God of the Squared Circle

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boxing gloves in ringApparently, I have no quality thoughts of my own today.  So allow me to keep posting great things from other minds.

A fellow named Conrad Gempf says this:

“The God of the Jews and Christians is unlike any other god.  Dispute with Jupiter and you’ll have one of those yellow-painted wooden lightning bolts shoved down your throat.  Talking back to Allah is likely to get you into even more trouble than talking back to my sixth-grade teacher, Mr. Davidovitch.  Try arguing with Buddha and he’ll laugh at you derisively for treating any conversation as it it referred to something real.

But when you start arguing with Yahweh, he smiles, rolls up his anthropocentric sleeves, and starts to look interested.  The strangest thing is that he likes losing the arguments even more than he likes winning them.  Jacob, the trickster, is beloved of God.  And Abraham didn’t just get away with asking, ‘What about if there are only twenty righteous men in the city?’

The God of the Jews and Christians is the only God that allows his followers to hear him say, ‘Oh, all right, you win.”

That imagery makes me think that life isn’t meant to be lived in the bleachers.

The ring is calling.

Called to be Prophets

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prophetThere’s a line from a church song that’s always stuck in my mind.  It goes:

“We are called to be prophets to this nation, to speak the word of God in every situation.”

Part of me loves that thought.  Another part of me fears that some religious folks will take that call to speak as an invitation to speak unlovingly and irrelevantly to the world around them.  (If you didn’t know already, some people view church people’s talking in that way.)

So that prophet thing is about more of us than old bearded men whose names end with -iah.  In fact, it might be something that you and I should pay attention to.

Rabbi Abraham Heschel puts us on to something of this sort when he says THIS about prophets:

“To us a single act of injustice–cheating in business, exploitation of the poor–is slight; to the prophets, a disaster.  To us injustice is injurious to the welfare of the people; to the prophets it is a deathblow to existence; to us, an episode; to them, a catastrophe, a threat to the world.”

The prophetic part of seeing the immense power of goodness and the deep danger of evil… that’s a “prophet thing” for each of us to pick up.

Bring Down the Rich… and More

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UPC in TrashI’ve become kind of taken with a magazine called AdBusters.  Magazine subscriptions don’t seem worthwhile to me, but I pillage the library’s stock frequently.

If you’ve never flipped through an issue, let me describe it this way: I’m not sure I’d let my kids read it, but I’d definitely talk about its content with them.  Add to that the astounding creativity of the editors (they routinely spoof corporate ads), and I’m intrigued.

In a recent stack of back issues, here’s a few things I found:

  • An article entitled “The Rich Stand Accused“, in which the memorable line for me was, “We must bring down the rich rather than bring up the poor.”  Cue the discussion on socially responsible consumption.
  • A quote: “One strange secret that I learned is that a great deal of human interaction is rather bad acting.”  Cue the discussion on what real and genuine mean, and how we get there together.
  • An “advertisement”: It depicts a 50-ish couple dressed to the nines and decked with sunglasses and a few gawdy pieces of jewelry, looking at a cell phone.  Below it is a text titled “The All-Consuming Self”.  Here’s what follows:
    • “Never before have our emerging environmental crises been laid out so clearly before us.  Rather than shouting from the fringes, respected economists, scientists, and politicians are sounding the warnings in high-profile journals and the halls of government–warning that our oceans are dying, that the ice shelves are melting and that we are setting ourselves up for the most massive and devastating market failure humanity has ever seen.  /  So we recycle our garbage.  We vote greener.  We buy sleek, new hybrid cars and fill our houses with energy-efficient light bulbs.  And we put our money and faith in the brave and ingenious technologies that will rescue us from the whirlwind.  /  But it won’t be enough.  Because this is not, fundamentally, a technological problem.  No is it, fundamentally, a political problem.  This is a problem of appetites, and of narcissism, and of self-deceit.  The planet is breaking, and it is breaking under the weight of our hunger for more.  To reform the world, we must first reform ourselves.” (Cue a whole bunch of discussion.)
  • Another “ad”: The picture shows three women near a beach.  There’s a concrete, half-completed building behind them, and the nearest woman is in her 50’s.  Her bathing suit straps are down (wouldn’t want a tan line, you know), but she’s wearing several gold bracelets and necklaces with her pricey-looking sunglasses as she puffs on a cigarette.  The caption: “The more you consume, the less you live.”  I’ve been pondering that sentence for two weeks now; cue discussing that sentence with a friend over coffee.
  • A quote: “On your mark, get set, kill each other!”  That’s the phrase shouted by a Wal-Mart greeter right before 2000 people trampled each other to get cheap X-Boxes.  Yes, nothing shows Christmas spirit quite like pushing someone down and stepping on their face to get that special gift for your special someone.  Cue the planning ahead for how THIS Christmas COULD look in your life.
  • A few links: To check out a few campaigns that Ad Busters spearheads, go HERE.  The page is currently being updated, but mark it for later when it’s filled out more.  The three that grab my eye are “Buy Nothing Day”, “Buy Nothing (or Less) Christmas”, and “Mental Detox Week”.

    • And since it’s my blog, let me say what I’ve thought a thousand times… I don’t understand why these are not messages that I’ve heard more loudly in the churches of my life.  Why it is that a slightly enraged, ready-to-protest, politically-voiced, neo-hippy kind of publication speaks to my spirit in ways that my faith community should?  THAT is a challenging thought about which I am trying to do something.  Cue another cup of coffee.

Donkeys and Oxen

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Every so often, I find myself reading parts of the old Jewish laws (Exodus-Deuteronomy). While I enter feeling confident that I’ll find something of value, I confess to a fair bit of shrugging when I read about what could or couldn’t be eaten, how it should or shouldn’t be prepared, and what objects were considered “holy” and how they were to be handled (or not handled at all!). I don’t know what to do with most of the laws about house-cleaning or skin conditions. Simply put, a lot of these laws are about things I’ve never even seen.

Take donkeys and oxen, for example.

I’ve SEEN them. But never in these circumstances (Exodus 23:4-5)…

4“If you come across your enemy’s ox or donkey wandering off, be sure to take it back to him. 5 If you see the donkey of someone who hates you fallen down under its load, do not leave it there; be sure you help him with it.

No, I’ve never been in that situation. But the gist of it… yeah, I can catch that.

Passive living isn’t for us.

Seeing something loving to do and doing nothing instead… not an option.

Having the power to act but looking the other way… can’t do that.

Caring for others and doing what we can to right things that are wrong… that’s the direction.

See you on the donkey trail.