I Survived the Rougenacht

I just want to let everyone know that I am ok.

Be not afraid for my safety. I have survived the attacks. The Rougenacht is over. I remain unscathed.

Friday, apparently, was Kick the Ginger Day in California, a day when middle school-age Facebook users were encouraged to physically assault those of us blessed with red hair. Thankfully, I do not frequent places where such juvenile delinquents congregate. I'm glad I decided to forgo my jaunt into Old Town Friday night, a place teenagers are often spotted in gang-like force on the streets.

I'm honestly shocked at this state-wide observance. I thought that perhaps in California, a state known for tolerating just about anyone, I could escape the social stigma that has haunted be from birth when I emerged from my mother's womb with a head full of lovely red hair, and the doctor, in his racism, refused to bring me the rest of the way out. I mean, even Carrot Top has friends in California. I thought I was safe here. (Though perhaps this "holiday" is why Carrot Top recently decided to bulk up.)

In any case, I now know to be on my guard. You won't catch me unaware, you pimple-faced blond and brunette supremacists.

And I won't be hiding my true colors either. Though I'm sometimes seen donning a fine fedora or becoming baseball cap, I will only assume such accoutrements out of my surpassing sense of style, not ever out of fear.

And I won't be dying my crimson locks either. I will bear my God-given pigmentation proudly. And one day, though they fade to gray, the gray will come with wisdom, not with worry, for I am unafraid.

I dream of a day when such discrimination becomes a thing of memory and legend, like tales we tell of darker times when giants roamed the earth. But until then, remember, all you would be juvenile assailants, Goliath was felled by a red-head, and should you mess with me, I will fell you too.

Read more...

A Taste of Things To Come

In Texas, there are three food groups - Tex-Mex, barbecue, and chicken fried steak.

Mmmmm! Chicken fried steak, how I love thee! Battered and tenderized, deep-fried and smothered in (cream) gravy, clogging my arteries and warming my heart. Is there any food finer? I think not.

You know that common question - "What would you want for your last meal?" My answer is simple: chicken fried steak (blanketed in gravy), mashed potatoes (one part potato, one part gravy, one part butter), green beans (drowning in butter), warm rolls (soaked in butter), an endless glass of lemonade, and a piece of the finest, warm pecan pie in creation. Why wait to die to go to heaven? Heaven is a well prepared meal away.

(And incidentally, consuming said feast might put one a step closer to heaven anyway.)

I love chicken fried steak, and I don't eat it often. There are two reasons for this. First of all, I don't want to weigh 300 pounds. Second, many Californians don't even know what chicken fried steak is. Isn't that sad? When I speak of the dish, I'm often rewarded with blank stares and puzzled questions. "What are you talking about, and why is it 'chicken fried?'" Poor West coasters. The tofu wool has been pulled over your eyes.

(And if the juxtaposition of the words "tofu" and "wool" doesn't turn your stomach, nothing will.)

Maybe it's because of the upcoming holiday of thanks which sees me still separated from Texas and, more importantly, from the friends and family who reside there, or maybe it's because my blood was flowing a little too freely, but last night I just had to make chicken fried steak.

So I did.

And I shared it with a fellow Texan (Drew) and three friends who had never had it before - a native Angeleno (Chris), a Frenchman (Simon), and a Chinese Canadian (John) - and one Montanan (Dustin) who had only had it once at a restaurant and wasn't impressed with the restaurant's fare.

Of course, because I don't get out of class on Mondays until 9:30 PM, we didn't get to eat until around 11 PM. While I cooked though, Drew injected a little more Texanity into the evening. He taught everyone how to play 42.

For those of you not from the motherland, 42 is a domino game and the national game of Texas.

That's right, I said "national."

You see, this is all part of my plan to spread Texas goodness to the ends of the earth, and slowly but surely, convert everyone to the better way. My method is simple: invite people in, feed them, and begin teaching them how to live as citizens of God's country. Before you know it, the world will be Texas.

It's already happening. Last night, as the dominoes clicked on the table and the aroma of chicken fried steak filled my apartment, we had a foretaste of things to come. Last night, though clearly not yet everywhere, Texas was already here.

And it was good.

Little glimpses of the kingdom like I had last night give me hope. I might just be able to make it until it's time to go home.

Read more...

Birthdays and Not-Yet-Lived Histories

Last night we celebrated my friend Janice's birthday. Janice is dating my friend Matthew, and so I am blessed to count Janice among my friends as well.

I've known Matthew since the beginning of this year, I suppose. I don't remember exactly when we first met. I do remember the first time I spent any substantial time with him though. I was invited to a small worship gathering by Courtney at Andre's apartment, and Matthew led us. He is an accomplished guitarist and a skilled worship leader.

But more than that, Matthew is a wonderful man. He is as joyous a person as I know. He exudes enthusiasm and optimism with such intensity, I suspect dourness is repelled from his presence. His is a light which fills whatever room he is in, a light before which darkness cannot stand. His is the light of Christ within him.

And Janice is a fitting match. She is as joyous as Matthew, and she matches his intensity with warmth. Where Matthew is bubbly and effusive, Janice is steady and deeply compassionate. Together they shine like the sun - bright, warm, and life-giving.



Does anyone else ever have moments where you feel like you can see someone well into the future, like when you look at them, you see them years from now? It's not like seeing their future; it's like seeing the history they haven't lived yet. The future is a series of events. History is the impact of those events. Sometimes I feel like I see not-yet-lived histories. I see who people are becoming given who they are now, and seeing them then, I see them better now.



Last night, as Matthew led us in worship to celebrate Janice's birthday (Could anything be more appropriate, by the way?), and as I looked from where I was sitting and saw the two of them, I saw them down the line. I saw the two of them, streaks of grey in their hair, full of wisdom gleaned from years of faithful Kingdom service, the joy that is so attractive in each of them aged into a peace this world finds odd, with young Christians gathered around them learning how to trust and love Jesus with as much passion as they have.

In that moment, I felt humbled to be in the presence of such faithful disciples. They shined like the Son of God - bright, warm, and life-giving in every way.

I am honored to be called their friend.

Read more...

A Constant Sunrise, Part 6, "No Angels"

Is nothing really impossible
I don't see Gabriel here
No heavenly intervention
No angelic "Do not fear"

I see no sure salvation
From this winepress floor
Only falling chaff
No angel of the Lord

I could use an angel today
Someone to come and say,

"You'll make it through
Eventually.
Listen to me.
God is with you."

Yeah, God is with you.

Was that the warmth of Eden
Or the fury of a flame?
Still somehow I can't enter
Though no angel guards the way

So still I stand here staring
Where I last saw You appear
Waiting for some comfort
But there are no angels here

I could use an angel today
Someone to come and say,

"You'll make it through
Eventually.
Listen to me.
God is with you."

Yeah, God is with you.

I've been waiting by these waters
I've been waiting for a change
But there isn't any movement
There are no angels here today
Lord, can You hear my voice
When I call out to You?
I don't see and angel
I need an angel to see the through

I could use an angel today
Someone to come and say

"You'll make it though
Eventually.
Listen to me.
God is with you."

You'll make it through
Eventually.
Listen to me.
God is with you.

Yeah, God is with you.

Yeah, God is with you.

Read more...

Esther, Inglourious Basterds, and the Absence of God

Three things:

First, my Fuller blog is now linked over on the sidebar. As with the Brehm Blog, there's no way of differentiating the bloggers, so the post might be from me, and it might not. In any case, following the link will take you to a place where I do blog occasionally. (If your RSS, a feed is available.)

Second, my post today (below) is an edited version of the paper I wrote for my midterm for my Writings class. Have I mentioned how much I'm loving my classes this quarter? Because I am. A lot. Maybe too much.

Third, have a fantasmic weekend! I will go to REI and help some friends move and who knows what else? (I do. I know what else, but I daren't spill the beans on my blog.)
_____________________________________

One might argue that conflict and suffering is the thing that most binds us all together. Heartache is our great shared experience. Tragedy is our common tale. We all sing, “Nobody knows the trouble I’ve seen,” and the irony is, we all sing it. In distress, we cry out in anguish, and we hear the cries of everyone else and indeed all of creation crying in mournful harmony with us.

Turmoil draws us out of our own selfish worlds and awakens us to what is beyond us. We cry out to God. We beg aid, because faced with worlds outside our own, we need someone outside our world to order things. We need someone bigger than and beyond the brokenness to set things right. Affronted with a bent world, we appeal to one unbent outside the broken to enter in and straighten all things.

Why is it then in those moments of deep desperation that God so often appears absent? Why, when we most want answers, is God silent?

Faced with God’s apparent absence, our other problems dissipate. The question, “Why is this happening to me?” pales before, “Where are you, God?” If God is absent or ambivalent or non-existent, what hope do we have? If all that exists is this mess, that fact is much more troubling than the mess.

Faced with the absence of God, how is one to react?

The psalmists wait. “Wait for YHWH,” Psalm 27:14 reads. “Be still before YHWH, and wait patiently for him; do not fret over those who prosper in their way, over those who carry out evil devices,” writes the psalmist in 37:7. Psalm 131 reads, “O YHWH, my heart is not lifted up, my eyes are not raised too high; I do not occupy myself with things too great and too marvelous for me. But I have calmed and quieted my soul, like a weaned child with its mother; my soul is like the weaned child that is with me. Oh, Israel, hope in YHWH from this time forth and forevermore.”

But there is another option for how to respond to evil besides waiting on God. One can fight back.

If God will not act and wipe away the injustice in the world, perhaps we should. If God will not raise a hand against evil, we can. In the absence of God’s justice, we can enact our own, or at least this is one possible answer, and it’s an answer contemplated by our world and arguably by the book of Esther.


In Esther, God is silent. The Jewish people have been displaced. Their homeland has been overrun. They are aliens and outcasts in a hostile land. Hadassah is forced to hide her identity to survive. She calls herself Esther, gains the grace of the most powerful man in the land, and is made a queen. Soon however, her secret people are in grave danger, but using her wiles, she saves them. Faced with genocide, Hadassah turns the tables on her people’s enemies, and the Jews slaughter seventy-five thousand people in a single day, a day that was supposed to be a day of triumph for their enemies, and bring an end to their oppression. Through all of this, God is silent. YHWH’s name is never even mentioned.


Similarly, with his characteristic cinematic flourish, Quentin Tarantino gave audiences a modern version of the same tale in his 2009 film Inglourious Basterds. The film is a reimagining of the end of World War II. It is two and half hours of Jews brutally killing Nazis. Even Hitler himself isn’t immune to Tarantino’s fictitious circumcised vengeance. In the film’s main plotline, a young Jewish woman hides her identity, ingratiates herself with the Nazi glitterati, and uses her power to annihilate her people’s enemies during what is supposed to be a celebration of Nazi prominence, bringing an end to World War II. Inglourious Basterds is more than WWII remixed; it is Esther retold as only Tarantino can tell it.

Inglourious Basterds isn’t about World War II. It’s about the problem of evil in a world seemingly devoid of God. (This next bit is speculation, but from what other context can I write?) The Holocaust was an atrocity unlike any other, and God let it happen. Where was YHWH in the midst of that? Was God absent? For many Jews, I would imagine the answer is yes, God was absent. And if God was absent, if God refused to save them, perhaps they should save themselves. Perhaps they should enact their own justice and destroy their enemies. They weren’t able to do that then during the Holocaust, but Quentin Tarantino has given them their justice now much like the book of Esther gives narrative victory to the displaced and trod upon Jewish people in a land and time when God seems silent.

However, Quentin Tarantino isn’t as brave as the writer of Esther. Inglourious Basterds does indeed revel in the violence of killing Nazis, but the film is ultimately ambiguous as to the worth of that violence. Yes, the great Nazi evil is eradicated, but justice comes through strange channels and means. The film does not celebrate the eradication of evil via violence. It simply presents it to the audience to judge for themselves whether good was done.

Esther makes a claim. Esther calls the violence and victory “good.” The book closes with a celebration of the Jewish victory over their oppressors and commends the greatness of the Jews. Inglourious Basterds does not provide that release. The film refuses to make that claim. The book of Esther hates evil enough to call its eradication “good” even when it comes by shockingly violent means. The book of Esther hates evil more.

Because God hates evil. God hates injustice. And God loves people. Unflinchingly. Unfailingly. Even when God seems absent, God’s love never fails.

Here is where Inglourious Basterds falls short of Esther. Tarantino’s film cannot rejoice in the demise of evil, because it cannot call the evil wholly bad, because it will not call God good.

The writings of the Old Testament are built on the foundation of YHWH’s unfailing love. The psalmists wait on the Lord because they know the Lord will come. The Jews in Esther can institute a festival commemorating their victory because they know God also rejoices to see justice done.

And they are all proved true. Time and time again, God answers the psalmists’ cries and delivers them. The transplanted Jews thrive under the auspices of Queen Esther and her benevolent cousin Mordecai, God’s proxies in a foreign land.

Yes, sometimes God is silent. Sometimes, God seems absent. Everything we know can be falling apart, and we can look to the One who is supposed to be holding it all together, but our Help is nowhere to be seen, and I don’t know why that is.

But I know that God is good, and God’s love never fails. So while it may be true that tragedy is the tale common to all humankind, that is only a temporary truth. One day a greater truth will take its place: God is making everything new. And the absence of God will become the ever shrinking space between us.

And the silence will become peace.

Read more...

Sunset and Hot Tea

The house has a wrap-around porch, the wooden kind that sits three steps up from the hard packed dirt that dominates the landing and fades gradually into a barely maintained downward slope of grass. The lawn changes abruptly into high grass where the mower's circle ceases, and the high grass runs all the way down alongside the driveway to the ditch by the dirt road that leads back out to the main road and into town, the nearby cities, the rest of the world. There is a simple wooden table and a pair of comfortable chairs on the porch on each side of the house where one can sit and watch the sunlight greet and bid farewell to the rest of the world each day. The porch echos hollow beneath one's feet, and the chains of the porch swing down on one end creak when the wind blows.

Roger sits at his desk which faces out into the living room and lets the falling light of the afternoon illuminate the page in his typewriter. He likes the way the orange light hues his words giving them character they'll never possess once published. He listens to his wife singing softly to herself in the kitchen. The click-clack of his typing mixes with the clinking of cups being set on saucers, spoons stirring tea, a kettle being placed on a tray. "Ahhh! Sunset," he thinks, "Sunset and hot tea." He types a few more words, stops in mid sentence, and waits for his wife to emerge from the kitchen, vitals in hand. He hurries over to help her as she does as if the thought just occurred to him to do so. They push through the screen door and out onto the porch.

"Look at those clouds," Cora says, "It's gonna be a good one."

"Hmm. I bet you're right," he replies.

They watch the sun slip slowly down, sipping their tea. They used to keep a camera close when they first moved out here, but they soon learned that sunsets don't need to be captured. They come back every day, ever the same, ever new. Now they simply watched. Together.

"Jamie called this morning," she says, "While you were out."

"Oh," he says.

"Her and Frank are doing fine. Kids are too. She said Frank and Simon would be out on Saturday to look through a few boxes they've got out in the shop. Something about some project Simon's doing for school."

"Well, that'll be alright," he says.

"She sure is good one," she says, "We're blessed Frank found her. Where he'd be without her I'll never know."

He smiles, thinks for a moment, and reaches over and puts his hand on top of hers. The sun touches the horizon.

The sun settles into its slot. The shadows of the trees on the lower part of their property creep up the hill toward the house. The sky fades blue and orange and purple and red. The clouds are gold then grey.

Roger gently rubs the thin skin on the back of his wife's hand with his thumb. He takes a final sip of tea and sets his cup back on its saucer as the sun disappears in the distance, and the light and color begin to drain from the sky following behind their source.

They stand up. She places the dishes back on the tray. He picks up the tray, and she holds open the screen door for him as he carries the tray back into the house. He stops at the door to look at her for a moment as she looks to the West.

"It was a good one," she says.

"Yes it was," he says, and he bends down to kiss her cheek.

Read more...

Switching Teams, Or Maybe "Switch-Hitting" Is More Appropriate

I love church. So much. I love God's people gathered to love God and to love each other together.

I love to hear them sing. I love to hear them pray. I love to hear the "Amen" arise spontaneously in the midst of a good sermon. I love the communal laugh (or groan) when the preacher tells a good (or bad) joke.

I love Sunday school and youth group and lock-ins. I love Christmas dinner and Easter breakfast and pot-luck lunch. I love Saturday spruce-ups and 24 hour prayer vigils. I love Simon Says and Target Practice and rooms decorated with fish and hearts and heaven. I love libraries and conga drums and pie fights and bowl-a-thons.

And call me crazy, but I even love sound systems.

I love it all so much. I love that my life growing up revolved in many ways around church. And not just any church, but a church. Cross Timbers Church. I love my church. So much.

I want everyone to have what I had growing up, and it breaks my heart to think that people my age aren't looking for the good I was given in Cross Timbers in similar churches.

My loyalties are divided. My heart isn't wholly devoted. While I love church as I have known it - the form, the rhythms - I love my generation more. I love people my age, and I want all of them to know the Jesus that I was introduced to by the people of Cross Timbers Church. I can't imagine spending my life for anything else.

And so I came to seminary, and not just any seminary. I came to Fuller Theological Seminary because Fuller, unlike all other schools I looked at, has a culturally focused arts program.

You see, I think that our culture, and my generation especially, looks to the arts to make meaning of their lives. I think we largely find in movies and music and books what I was given in church. I think we wrestle in the cineplex with the questions I was asked in Sunday school. I think we shop en masse the Friday after Thanksgiving to prove to ourselves that everything is ok the way I knew everything was ok because we shouted "All glory to Jesus!" at the close of every service every week as a congregation.

I want to engage in the conversation happening all around us in our culture by creating alongside everyone else. I don't want to be part of a sub-culture that speaks its own language. I want to be in the world offering the answer I have to the questions everyone is asking just like the world is doing. And I want to question the world's answers.

And so I came to Fuller to begin learning how to have that conversation. I wanted to take the greater culture with one hand and the church with the other and introduce them to each other. And so I came here to pursue a master of arts degree in Worship, Theology, and the Arts.

Until yesterday.

Yesterday, I gave up my pursuit of that degree.

And I switched to a new one.

Yesterday, I became a student in the School of Intercultural Studies. I am now well on my way to obtaining a master of arts degree in Intercultural Studies with an emphasis in Worship, Theology, and the Arts. Before, I was an SOT (School of Theology) student. Now, I am SIS.

Why?

Well, for all the same reasons I came here in the first place. I just have a better focus now on how I want to introduce the church to my generation (and vice versa). I think I'm beginning to understand what kind of party to throw that might get them talking to one another, and I think this degree with this emphasis will better prepare me to be that sort of host.

What kind of shindig am I talking about? What will that look like?

Well, I could tell you here and now, but then we wouldn't have anything to talk about, would we? One thing I've learned over this past year is that while my blog is very good at initiating some kinds of conversations, it's also very good at squelching others.

I don't want to tell you what I want to do. I want to talk about it. It's too easy to be a consumer. Of things. Of information. Of other people. I want to participate together in the work of the New Reality of Christ.

I want to be part of the church. That's all I've every really wanted.

Read more...