Service: Learning About Ourselves.... and others

If I am not who you say I am, then you are not who you think you are - James Baldwin 1968

How do you know who you are? Probably in part because people told you things about yourself and the group of people that formed the "we" and "us" to whom you belong. In part, that identity was probably formed in contrasting relation to those who were not part of that group.

All experiential or contextual learning implies something "other" than the normal experience the classroom. In reality the classroom provides a context and experience but the creation of these "new" teaching approaches ("pedagogies") imply that something different can be done to expand learning. The idea is to create a context of difference; something that forces the learner to pay attention to different things. Often the goal is ultimately self-knowledge, a crucial part of development as a human being.

In adventure education, the "outdoors" or "wilderness" is a major part of the context. By encountering the created world more deeply, or alternately, by presenting "participants" with uniquely disorienting challenges and problems in an outdoor context, we teach them something about themselves individually and as a group of people. The isolation and unique subdivison of the groups as well as the unique problems that present themselves (or are presented) create a unique social environment (thanks Dave Tanis). We may learn about nature ("the environment") and survival skills, but for the most part, outdoor skills are for the educator. Minimal competence and experience is an advantage to the learning experience because the learning relies on UNfamiliarity. If a "participant" is familiar with a particular challenge, they are also familiar with how to overcome it and thus, their capacity to learn something "new" is diminished, though not eliminated. This reality (as well as a playful sadistic streak) is what drives the amazing creativity of outdoor educators.

What about service-learning? The context may be rural or urban, national or international. Since most student (in the college environment of Messiah at least) don't serve where they live any of these contexts may be sufficiently "other" to provoke new ideas. However, service-learning faces a unique problem in the way identity can form in service. "Service" always implies a "served" other. Rather than "participants" who are there to learn something by finding and pushing against their own limits, one is the designated "servant" and it is implied that there is a need out there that the servant can meet.

A dichotomy is set up:
On one side is the "servant" - competent, responsible, theoretically need-less.
On the other is the "served" - they are uniquely marked as possessing a need that they lack the capacity to meet themselves.

Thus, "servants" are prone to approach the "service" context looking for problems that need the application of their existing competencies. Things that are not a problem (community assets), or not a problem that we the servants can remedy right now (systemic inequity), may be overlooked, but these MAY be the exact things that would provoke LEARNING. Those of us involved in service learning are obviously intent on the needs of the "servant," many of which correspond to and complement the needs of the "served." The dissolution of the dichotomy I described above and a growing sense of reciprocity and role-swapping is the key to learning.
We might begin by assessing our own deficits and critiquing our assumptions with questions like this:
Does MY community need service? Why or why not? What needs do I and my community have? Why do I think THIS community "needs" service? What could I learn from the community I serve? What strengths does it possess?

Christians are called to be disciples of Jesus. A disciple IS first and foremost, a LEARNER. One cannot be a disciple without the humility to admit that one has needs, even if they are only a deep-set and inarticulate sense of deficit in one's soul. Maybe we need to learn something about ourselves to figure out what that deficit is, and maybe we can't do it alone. God may intend to teach us these lessons through other "needy" people.
The irony of the whole arrangement of being a disciple is contained in the parable of the sheep and the goats in Matthew 25. Jesus calls his disciples to serve the most "needy" and he tells them that when they serve the "least of these," they will be serving Him. Jesus also communicates that this is something we "need" to do to experience the salvation of the kingdom of God. So when we serve, we must be mindful that there in the one we serve is the one to whom we attach ourselves as LEARNERS. We need to become the disciples of the "least" of these, in order to understand who we really are.

Christian Manliness

Here are some excerpts from my talk for the Messiah College Men's Breakfast:

I think a lot of guys struggle to figure out what mature Christian manhood means….  I do think it has something to do with responsibility and being able to handle responsibility. I like to think a real man is someone you can count on. But if “responsible” means being serious, I don’t want it, because I like to have fun. If it means just following the rules, I don’t want it, because some Jesus was not a blind rule-follower. Responsibility MIGHT mean that you don’t follow the rules but you accept the consequences without whining or trying to get out of it. In short - I want maturity that has something to do with living a vital life!

G. K. Chesterton, the British Catholic writer said that “Jesus promised his followers only three things – that they would be fearless, absurdly happy and always in trouble.”

As I think about what it means to be a man, I’d like to think that these are qualities that fit our general conception of manhood (not that they aren’t qualities of women) but they are admirable for most men.

Still, as I look around campus, around my church which has a thriving men’s ministry, and at myself, I don’t see these things a lot of the time.

I see a lot of men who appear to be lazy,insecure, fearful, stoic, bored and relatively tame. Not really alive.

As Christians we know we can’t be violent jerks or womanizers so it’s like we have to choose between being a sort of nice, bland, non-entity who follows the rules, or one of the guys from the show "Jackass."

Another problem I see is the extent to which guys trade in real masculinity for vicarious or fantasy masculinity. It’s like guys are saying: “I can’t be the kind of man I admire (be it James Bond or Maximus) so I will enter a fantasy world where I can pretend to be that guy or watch movies that allow me to vicariously experience a life of action and vitality.”

Porn and first-person shooter games are stimulating and addictive substitutes for action, adventure and romance.

I think that real manhood, as well as being “absurdly happy” and “always in trouble” really flow out of the freedom from fear.

The fact is that people fail to achieve what they are capable of and fail to live life to the fullest because of fear.

In Matthew 13 – Jesus tells the Parable of the Sower

The one who received the seed that fell on rocky places is the man who hears the word and at once receives it with joy. But since he has no root, he lasts only a short time. When trouble or persecution comes because of the word, he quickly falls away. The one who received the seed that fell among the thorns is the man who hears the word, but the worries of this life and the deceitfulness of wealth choke it, making it unfruitful.”

Fear has to do with a person’s sense of security.

Fear includes worry and anxiety, stress, shame, embarassment etc. 

I generally think that what we should aim for is courage, not fearlessness.

Courage says, “I AM afraid, but I will not allow my fear to knock me off the path that God has for me, today, tomorrow or ever. If it ever does knock me off, I will take the most direct route back to that path and keep going.”

Sometimes we try to fake fearlessness, because sometimes the thing we’re most afraid of as guys is being exposed as a fearful person.

“The only thing we have to fear is…_____.”?

Fear of failure keeps some people from even trying, in every area. Whether it is making a bold move on the athletic field (and for some people, just stepping on the field is scary), making a bold move with a woman you’re interested in, getting a job, or talking honestly about what’s going on with you, fear can stop you. The truth is that “If you’re not failing regularly, you’re living so far below your potential that you’re failing anyway.”

If courage is among the most manly attributes and can only be exercised by doing something we are afraid of, and the thing we are most afraid of is being vulnerable with other men, then the most manly thing we can do is that!

It is also a tool for God's redemption in our lives. James tells us to confess our sins to one another...

the unlikeliest missionaries

The 15 member punk-rock marching band entered the Student Union in mismatched uniforms with individual loudspeakers strapped to their hats. They marched in front of the stage and then turned to face the audience; playing loudly. In a single broad line, they advanced toward the 70 or so students in attendance, who appeared to not know what to make of this spectacle. When they got to the edge of the "crowd" they didn't stop. They marched. Stepping up onto tables or anything that was in front of them and stomping their way into the audience while tactfully avoiding fingers and toes. Everyone laughed. The performer/audience barrier had been breached.
Being on the "sending" end of the missions experience for college students I am deeply aware that we need missionaries as badly as the people and countries we are sending teams to. Mother Theresa used to speak of the spiritual poverty of the West. Sometimes I see spiritual poverty at Messiah too. It manifests itself in insecurity and complacency among other things.

Mucca Pazza played at one of Messiah's Wednesday Night "B-Sides" concerts that showcase artists that haven't quite "made it." Its not hard to see why on one level. MP could have a unique appeal. I was at the Union talking with representatives from Food for the Hungry when they marched in. I only stayed for 10-15 minutes, but I was delighted with what I saw and heard. Here's what happened...

Mucca Pazza continued to play (loudly) and to intermittently march around the Union. They were always making music together, but sometimes they were literally together and sometimes members of the band would take off through the crowd on solo missions. One fellow was the "cheer-leader." He wasn't cross-dressing. He just had pom-poms. This guy would get in people's faces, shake his pom-poms, dance, and grin like a maniac. At one point he was standing on top of a wall, by himself, 15 feet up, shaking the pom poms like crazy (I heard about this later, I don't know how he got up there).

At first, 5-10 students moved to the front of the stage and sat down. Other students were texting and twittering away and the Union filled up. So did the area in front of the stage.
People were laughing and smiling.

NOW, you have to understand that at the few "B-Sides" I've been to (the concerts start at 10, so unless I'm on campus for a missions meeting... I'm out) the usual protocol seems to be 5 enthusiastic fans up next to the stage and everyone else hanging back. Their mouths are rigid horizontal lines. Their heads bob slightly in rhythm. It's like everyone is too cool to show that they are enjoying the music. Mucca Pazza blew that apart.

They were so fearless about what they were doing that students seemed to drop their own insecurities. By the end of the show (this is hearsay again) EVERYONE was on the floor in front of the stage, jumping up and down and dancing with enthusiasm. The whole spirit of the thing was positive, communal and free without being rebellious or hedonistic and Mucca Pazza set the tone for that. These crazy people were ROLE MODELS.

Christians need to be as fearless, uninhibited, joyful and encouraging as Mucca Pazza was that night. We need to break down the us-them barrier and involve people in the Christian life, even if they aren't "part of the band."

After they finished their second number, one of the band members got on the mike and said:
"Thank you Messiah College, for inviting us and having us here. We really like you. And thanks for being SO into us!"

I shouted back: "NO! Thank YOU!" and walked out of the building.

Come back any time Mucca Pazza, you were the unlikeliest missionaries, but I was blessed by your coming and by what I saw happen in the student body.

The special effects of loving rightly

There's a parable about an ancient people that had a prophecy. Their prophecy told them that one day, a hero would come to them who would right all the wrongs in their civilization and restore them to their proper place in the world. They were to recognize their hero by his resemblance with a mysterious face carved in stone in the woods outside their city. No one knew how or when the face in stone had appeared. More than anyone else, one young boy yearned for the prophecy to be fulfilled and so he spent all of his spare time (and some of the time others thought he ought not to have spare) studying the face in stone. He wanted to be sure that when the hero appeared, someone would recognize him. As time passed, he became somewhat of an oddity in town. Due to his obsession, he didn't quite fit in, but the people recognized that perhaps his obsession would some day serve the common good, so they let him alone. The priests that left offerings at the stone and polished it once a year largely ignored him. At the stone, he became more of a fixture than an oddity. Over time though, he developed a certain wisdom and when people became especially desperate for some out-of-the-ordinary advice, they sought him out. Those who followed his advice found it peculiarly helpful. When he was 30, a new king came to power who was especially inept and the people began to suffer. The kings advisors and priests became increasingly frustrated until finally one old priest was appointed to bring their distress to the young man. He walked slowly out to the stone to find him. He had personally never paid the young man any attention, but as he was the only one there, he found him easily. As he approached, he was struck by the young man's appearance. He stepped close to him and stared into his face. Then he hurried away, returning quickly with all the priests, the king and his advisors and the elders of their people. He instructed the young man to sit at the foot of the face in stone as everyone stared. Then he snatched the crown from the king's head and placed it upon the young man. It was now obvious. Over all his years of studying the face in stone, he had grown into the exact likeness of the face that had held his attention.

In the world of theology these days there is an renewed buzz about the idea that we become like what we love and worship. As far as I know, St. Augustine first stated this idea clearly and James K.A. Smith's Desiring the Kingdom has put it back on everyone's radar.

Most recently, my father-in-law's battle with cancer (lost yesterday evening) has reminded me of this truth. For a long time, I have been impressed with how Dan Crabtree loved God. My cynical nature occasionally brought to mind the accusations of Satan in Job: "Does Job love you [God] for nothing!? Have you [God] not made a hedge around him and all that he has?" Doesn't he have a loving and stable family, a good paying job and a great house on the beach?

In the past two years, there has been ample opportunity for his love for God to wane. There have been innumerable trips to the hospital for measured and beneficent torture. A healthy and active guy, he has had to cope with stretches of physical uselessness. A kind and attentive physician, with a new and exciting practice, he has had to give up his vocation. An extremely knowledgeable doctor, he has had to deal with a roller-coaster of the unknown and unknowable. He has had to prepare for death long before any of us would have expected it and he continually modelled Job's response to his trials: "The Lord gives and the Lord can take away. Blessed be the Lord." We lost the battle with cancer yesterday. I can imagine him now, with all the perspective he undoubtedly has, laughing loudly about that last sentence. Through his devotion to God, Dan has been winning the war for his whole life.

His sincere love for God and his courageous confrontation with death demonstrated to everyone that as intimidating as death might be, it is a feeble enemy when one has been staring intently at the face of Jesus. With more time to devote to this practice, and perhaps identifying more with the crucified God than ever before, Dan only became more gentle, more gracious, more loving and more courageous. In short, he became more and more like the one he loved and worshipped. Assuming we are loving and worshipping in like manner, may the same be said of us.

MATThematics

One of the most horrible things I did in elementary school was to throw my math work in the trash in my first grade class out of frustration and when the teacher saw it and got mad, I blamed this really unpopular girl for it.  Pretty evil for first grade I think.  The teacher scolded her and I think she cried.  I haven't seen her in over 25 years and I still pray for her.  Math (and insecurity) makes me do horrible things... I've always hated it.

Math has also been a source of great irony in my life:

In high school I was the dunce in my math class.

Somehow, I went into the final with a 65 in the previous quarter and busted a 100% on the final. I still remember the looks of disbelief on my friends' faces.

I had to RE-learn it all for the GRE (graduate school acceptance exam).

The process infuriated me, but I worked my butt off and scored higher on the math than the verbal.

I was also the dunce in my high school accounting class and I never learned to use EXCEL until a couple years ago. Now I have to manage 8 different budgets.

A few weeks ago I had to multiply 20 times 15 to determine a figure for an unusual $ situation.

I came up with 3000. I gave this figure to several people.

15 hours after my original calculation, as I was laying in bed, it came to me that the correct answer was... Well, you probably know.

I can't multiple two 2-digit numbers in my head and come within 2000 of the correct figure!

I and a few other people got a good laugh out of this.

I hope to earn a PhD this year.

I hate math.

The Flip Side of Judgement

One of the wisest people I know pointed out that my concept of judgement (last post) could be misconstrued into a guilt-driven mania to "do more" or a despairing paralysis because there is always more to do. The point I was trying to make is that maybe it is how we "judge" our own lives that may make the most difference, but the critique is solid.

Bob Pierce, the heroic founder of World Vision declared that he wanted to "burn out for God" and essentially drove himself to ALWAYS try to save that "one more" (that Schindler had missed).

In the process, he essentially abandoned his family, failing even to respond to a daughter's suicide attempt (she later succeeded) and left a broad swathe of other broken relationships and deeply wounded people in his wake. He founded one of the world's largest relief and development organizations while always striving to do more. I think he could have done more. Pierce ran World Vision for 17 years, before he was essentially forced to resign and he died 11 years later at 64. If he had been less desperate to save the world, spent more time with his family and delegated more of his overseas work, he might have achieved the same results and left fewer damaged people behind.

Even Salvadoran martyr Archbishop Oscar Romero wrote:

It helps, now and then, to step back and take a long view.

The kingdom is not only beyond our efforts,
it is even beyond our vision.

We accomplish in our lifetime only a tiny fraction
of the magnificent enterprise that is God's work.
Nothing we do is complete, which is a way of saying
that the kingdom always lies beyond us.
No statement says all that could be said.
No prayer fully expresses our faith.
No confession brings perfection.
No pastoral visit brings wholeness.
No program accomplishes the church's mission.
No set of goals and objectives includes everything.

This is what we are about.
We plant the seeds that one day will grow.
We water seeds already planted,
knowing that they hold future promise.

We lay foundations that will need further development.
We provide yeast that produces far beyond our capabilities.

We cannot do everything, and there is a sense of liberation
in realizing that. This enables us to do something,
and to do it very well. It may be incomplete,
but it is a beginning, a step along the way,
an opportunity for the Lord's grace to enter and do the rest.

We may never see the end results, but that is the difference
between the master builder and the worker.

We are workers, not master builders; ministers, not messiahs.
We are prophets of a future not our own.
Amen.

In reality, few of us appear to have messiah complexes. Few of us try to save ONE, let alone "one more." Why DO we make so many selfish decisions instead of trying to save one more? The simple answer is, "because we're all sinners." Sure, but maybe it's also because we fail to take the long view that Romero recommends, and the paralysis of the problems have already set in. Taking the long view is one prescription for selfish paralysis.
There is another prescription that seems counterintuitive. Howard Thurman wrote: "Don't ask what the world needs. Ask, 'What makes me come alive?' and do that, because what the world needs most is people who are fully alive."

It sort of sounds selfish on one level, and Christians are supposed to be more concerned about magnifying God's reputation rather than our own "self-actualization," but Thurman was a contemplative, mystical lover of God. He imagined people taking the time and space to search out the answer to this in their souls with their creator. Is it possible that the things that would make us come alive are also the things that would bring God the most praise? Someone should be shouting now: "Jesus! Jesus makes us fully come alive and is the answer to our selfishness!" Once again, (and not at all flippantly) sure, but many followers of Jesus (including myself many days) don't exactly seem to be living lives of joyous abandon, humble self-evaluation, and diligent endeavor. Why?

I think a part of that problem is that we haven't figured out what makes us come alive and pursued it! Maybe we think God or Jesus would never be that indulgent. Maybe we think they don't care. Maybe we think God is only interested in seeing us come alive in church, or when we read our Bible. The problem is that for all the times we aren't in church or reading our Bible (95% of our week?), we've accepted someone else's answer for what will make us come alive and pursued that! Not only are many of those "golden rings" selfish, but their emptiness in the long-run keeps us grasping after one more thing, instead of getting off the merry-go-round and taking the time to reflect on our lives and what we were created to do. Or, on the contrary, we don't believe that what might make us "come alive" is compatible with security and stability and so we pursue a lesser good (and a lesser God?) for the sake of those things (didn't Jesus say that those who try to preserve their lives and those that give up their lives will find the opposite results?). These are manifestations of our cultural captivity. We worship the God-king of Zion but are oppressed by the forces of Babylon.

I confess that in the hunger for that thing, whatever it is, there may be a bit of my generations sense of entitlement (that seems like a pipe-dream in this economy). I really do believe that with a long-view and a God-centered attitude, we can be full, satisfied and relatively unselfish in the midst of empty and unsatisfactory circumstances. However, I also think that we all ARE uniquely fashioned toward different purposes and if we took the time with God to find it (the thing that we were made for, that makes us truly come alive) and took the chance of pursuing it I really do think, we might find the joy and fulfillment that would make us less apt to make selfish choices in other areas of life. And I think God would revel in seeing our joy at living the way we were designed to live!

Judgement and Empathy

This is SO NOT "Christmasy."
Christians think quite a bit about the afterlife. I'm teaching "Intro to Judaism" right now and we've had a lot of conversations about the Jewish perspective. Most of my students can't comprehend the idea that Jews are frequently agnostic or not that concerned about the afterlife. In addition, Christians mostly think about the afterlife exclusively in terms of heaven and hell. The Bible actually talks a lot more about judgement. It's not clear. God is portrayed as the supreme judge, but Paul also implies that humans may act as subsidiary judges. Also, while the criteria for "salvation" is faith, the judgement is generally described in terms of what one has done, or hasn't done (see Matthew 25, Romans 2). Now, I know Christians have lots of different ways of reconciling all this but I'm less interested in that. C.S. Lewis wrote a little novelette about heaven and hell called The Great Divorce. Lewis was clear that he didn't want it to be taken "literally" but it should also be clear that it wasn't intended to be frivolous or meaningless.
I write the following imagination of judgement with the same intent.

I imagine the experience of judgement to be something like the experience of 20/20 hindsight portrayed at the end of Schindler's List. If you watch that scene, you see Oscar Schindler, a man who rescued many Jews from the fate of the concentration camps come to some tangible realizations about his life. The simple idea is: "I could have done more." Oscar Schindler was a hero, but he didn't do everything he could've done, even knowing that lives were on the line. He stares at a host of people he saved and is broken by the realization that he could very easily have saved more.
What if judgement is like 20/20 and 360 degree hindsight and empathy? I suddenly arrive at a sweeping and accurate assessment of my whole life. It life flashes before my eyes. I see, not only the things that I did and didn't do, but their actual effects on other people, the created world, society... For instance, I don't just see the time I was rude or said something inconsiderate to someone in 7th grade (let's call him Joe), but I see the ripple effect of that on Joe's interaction with his little brother, friends and parents. What if judgement involves receiving the curse of retroactive empathy for everyone I could have had a positive effect on and didn't. What if I could feel what that student felt when he was anxious, lonely and needed someone to give a crap and I didn't. What if I could feel what the panhandler felt when I was the 1000th person to ignore him that morning in Center City.
Will anyone escape judgement? I'm not talking about hell now. I'm talking about judgement.
I don't know. I imagine if I could feel what I describe above for even a brief moment right now, after 35 years of life, it would feel like an eternity of anguish. Maybe on some level this would be a gift, preparing me to experience the deepest mercy and grace and to freely live the life that God has in store for us. Maybe there is a deeper mercy too.

"God humbles the proud, but gives grace to the humble"

Maybe the judgement I recieve will correspond to the manner in which I present my life to God.
Perhaps if I have learned the lessons of empathy and humility now, I will present my life (as I understand it) to God as a paltry thing and God will show me the opposite.
Or maybe God presents it all to us, like a performance appraisal.

Suppose we are given a box and the truth of our life can be seen glowing inside it.
The proud one is thrilled, imagining the rewarding experience it will be to open the box and see all that they have accomplished. They firmly and confidently lift the lid and breathe deeply before wilting, curling up into fetal position, gasping and weeping as they are emotionally and psychologically dismantled by the magnitude of their deficiencies.
The humble ones shake and stutters.
"No. I know what's in there. Please just take it away. I can't bear it."
Perhaps to these, God still responds, "You must open it."
They brace themselves and tear it open with gritted teeth, like ripping off a band-aid, but in their humility, their contribution to life is what shines forth. They experience empathy with those who were blessed by their kindness, however small.

I know some people will try to fit all this in to their theological boxes, and others will dismiss it as pious drivel. That's fine I suppose and yes, following Jesus is at the heart of this for me. But my point is that if the heroic Oscar Schindler could take a "do over" he might... I'd like to try it myself. Maybe I'll start now...