Wednesday, November 26, 2008

What the world needs now

"The ruthless will vanish, the mockers will disappear, and all who have an eye for evil will be cut down." Isaiah 29:20

He pulls out a gun but up comes the sun
As he heads for the door he is out of C4
They lay in wait but get stuck at the gate
On their way to the bang love takes over the gang
He plans to hit her but is no longer bitter
She plans to steal but considers how she'll feel
We plot deceit but end in defeat
Mockers and mobs dissolve into blobs
Rage pours out red, but by noon he is dead
Hearts once ice cold, like flowers unfold

Sunday, November 2, 2008

Of Icons and Saints




Standing in the Hagia Sophia (The Church of Divine Wisdom) in Istanbul (ancient Byzantium, renamed Constantinople) is an experience of both amazement and deep frustration. Built in the sixth century by Emperor Justinian it was a wonder of the world, a thousand years ahead of its time in design and construction. It flourished as a center of Orthodox worship until the overthrow of the city by the Ottoman Empire, which turned it into a mosque. The majority of its amazing mosaics were plastered over by the Islamic prohibition on images. Now a museum they have uncovered a few (like my favorite above) to inspire visitors.

To stand in front of these is to open a window to the theology of early Christians. Jesus is clad in blue (for his humanity) and gold (for his deity). He often holds his right hand in a pose that crosses the first two fingers to convey his two natures, and combines the final two fingers with his thumb to convey the idea of the trinity. The devotion of the early faithful to these images is seen in the loving detail, right down to the gentle color of the cheek and the mournful emotion of the eyes. While Orthodox Christians do not worship these icons, they have for fifteen hundred years used them in worship to be transported from the temporal to the eternal. 

I have been standing before these images in Turkish caves and Romanian churches now for weeks and I am realizing how dissatisfied I am with the casualness of my faith. The strength of evangelical tradition -- of what a friend we have in Jesus -- is also its weakness. It is a comfortable faith that is long on chattiness with the divine, and short on awe. Even if I cannot imagine adopting Orthodox practice or liturgy, I also cannot imagine a deepening of my faith if I continue to neglect the place of the imagination in worship or be so centered on the message and its social or ethical implications that I forget the real presence of God. I have found that great art can help in this process, as if providing a window through which we can glimpse the eternal.


In this (poor quality picture) of a Hagia Sophia mosaic, Emperor Constantine stands to the right of the Madonna and Child and offers to them what is most precious to him -- the city which he has created. On the left, Emperor Justinian stands and offers what is most precious to him -- the amazing church he constructed. The fact that both men were not the most admirable followers of Christ should not diminish an important lesson here. We should live our lives in such awe of God that we should direct the focus of our lives toward accomplishing something beautiful for the Kingdom, something worthy of the Eternal, and dedicate it to the author of beauty himself.

Saturday, November 1, 2008

And some lived in Caves



"They went about in sheepskins ... destitute and persecuted and mistreated -- the world was not worthy of them. They wandered in deserts and mountains and in caves and holes in the ground. These were all commended for their faith ..." (Heb 11:37-39)

In Cappedocia (yes, the one mentioned in the Bible) early monks in the Orthodox tradition formed monastic communities, both men and women, to deepen their faith. These became educational as well as ascetic, and shaped the early life of the church. They literally carved homes and chapels and refectories from the very sandstone, frescoing the interiors in the symbols and stories of the gospel, turning the desert into a faithful city.

Into this environment Ray Bakke, Robert Calvert and I  took our class to examine the influence of the Cappedocian Fathers, St Basil and others who so shaped the faith and practice of the church as Christianity began to deal with the rise of Islam in the fourth through sixth centuries, a very contemporary issue again today.

Thursday, October 30, 2008

Ephesus: They met on our behalf



What does it mean that more than four hundred bishops entered through this arch in the fifth century at what is known as the third ecumenical council? What does it mean that it is now the ruin, as is the rest of Ephesus where the remains of this church sit? Paul ministered in this city -- almost got killed here. He left Timothy in charge of a fledgling church that had to figure out what faithfulness to Christ meant in the context of pluralism. Later, those Bishops gathered from the known Christian world to hammer out some of the most basic doctrines of the church that we take as gospel. What does it mean that they marched through this arch? Though the buildings lie in ruins, the ideas continue to influence the very practice of our faith -- in ways most of us have no sense of. In other words, we stand on some ancient, Byzantine shoulders. Ideas have consequences. The extent to which I know anything at all about God is a gift from those that stood in this once vibrant church and deliberated on my behalf. They are the family I never knew, and now give thanks for.

The Library at Ephesus, once a wonder of the world. Now a fascade. Timothy had to frame his ministry in the shadow of the intellectual tradition it represented.


Did Paul and Timothy step on these very mosaic pieces? Their testimony endures and cries out, just as this pattern perseveres in the streets of the ancient city.

Monday, October 20, 2008

Commuting in Istanbul

The metro in Istanbul is close to Mexico City's, except it's above ground. You stand at the entrance of the train and PUSH to get in. Everybody exhales at once to make more room. This morning I bailed out. Just too crowded. That meant I payed 1.4 lira (about a dollar) to walk a mile or more to my destination -- the Kapa Carsi (Grand Bazar). Students arrive for the Istanbul portion of the course today and I knew I wouldn't have much of a chance to see the place. It is a vast, tangled, indoor bazar full of vendors and merchants, all of whom have a question for you. I paid far too much for the scarf and Ottoman design tapestry I bought, because I invariably start the bargain process with an offer too high. At least I gave them a good start to their day. I had limited time, but I stopped for a glass of orange juice squeezed in front of me. Shop keepers were setting up, and old men with white, Abraham Lincoln beards dressed in islamic hats and western suit coats pulled carts past my table, laden with goods. Their commute was more labored than mine. 

The ride back was easier. There was time and space to observe students on their way to Istanbul University, decked out in stylish, shiny head-coverings, sitting next to elderly women with more traditional, black chadoras, sitting next to business people in western dress. They all seemed comfortable with the differences -- secular muslim, conservative muslim, christian, young, old. 

The traffic out my window starts before 7am, and it is the honking, rumbling, yelling kind. The commute is an unhappy and impatient one. There is no AC where I am staying, so an open window is required, and I hear every engine, every brake in need of replacement, every police loudspeaker, every siren, and every horn.

Everyone is going somewhere. As they go, I want them to know that they are not anonymous. Jesus observes them more closely than I have, knows their name, and loves them. Here in the cradle of Orthodoxy, the birthplace of Christian worship, at one time the city (Byzantium) regarded as heaven on earth, I want them to meet their savior who commuted our way.

Peace in the Middle East, Please God.

Wednesday, October 15, 2008

In Amman: Someone Else's History?

I wish I knew my Biblical History better. I have read it any times -- references to the Ammonites, references to David's conquests in this ancient city, references to the Trans Jordan. But I just can't seem to remember it. Its because it is someone else's history, of course. Separated by time and culture I didn't live it. But now I am here in Amman, listening to a dear brother who is also the archbishop of the Armenian church in Iraq who has seen friends die and countless others leave, listening to a Palestinian Christian activist from the West Bank suffering the daily injustices of occupation and corruption, listening to a student worker from Beirut overcoming obstacle after obstacle for his love of students. And I find myself weeping at their lives, their courage, sometimes my country's complicity, and my disconnection from it all.

And because the hand has no right to say to the foot, "I have no need of you" I am listening with new ears. Their histories, their stories, have begun to merge with mine. Current history is being made on this Biblical earth and I cannot forget it.

Peace on the Middle East. Please, God.

Friday, October 10, 2008

Peace in the Middle East

Its a phrase my kids used to say when leaving the house. It was meant to be ironic, or cool, or random or something. Later they shortened it to "peace out." I never resonated with either. 

And now I am going there. I've been advised not to divulge publicly the countries in the Middle East to which I am headed. Better to not draw attention to the event there, endangering the Christian leaders I'll be with.  I will attend an event designed to help western Christians listen to Arab Christians who are struggling to maintain both their witness and frankly their literal presence in the shadow of Islam. Then from there I will fly to Turkey to help lead a Bakke class from Istanbul to Bucharest, looking at ancient Christian traditions that have survived through centuries of conquest, oppression and fragmentation to a place of quiet influence in the Arab world.

Listening to Eastern Christians? Studying ancient traditions? What does this have to do with Urban Ministry? Byzantium (Istanbul) was regarded as the New Jerusalem on earth and has shaped more of our historic and modern faith than most can imagine. The great Schism dividing the eastern and western churches began there. Monasticism began in its shadow, inspiring other forms that spread around the world. Literacy was saved by these movements during the dark ages, and our best spiritual writers come from these roots. The earliest urban ministers, Catholics like Dorothy Day and Protestants like Luther and Calvin, took their cue from the early Eastern saints that labored in the streets of Cairo and Alexandria, impacting not only individuals in need but also city systems.

Africans have a word that gets at why this trip is important. "Sankofa" -- it means looking backward in order to look ahead. What was learned in the womb of the ME through the first centuries of the church's history will certainly inform how kingdom people move ahead in the context of political Islam. It is naive to live without regard for the rest of the world, as if we were not interconnected in a thousand ways. We need to understand that crucial region. What is happening in the ME affects us here. If we are to avoid the cynicism of those who do not believe in a God powerful enough to bring peace, we need to go and taste, reflect on site, build relationships and make connections. And we need to convey hope to those who are there. They are not alone.

Please pray for the trip. 

Peace in the Middle East

Randy

Saturday, August 30, 2008

Just Another Father's Pride

There's no way of saying this without sounding cheesy. Some things by their nature beg being tuned out or forgotten because of their commonness. If I say, I'm often amazed by my sons, that I cannot explain how they became the good men they are, that their choices and decisions reflect a degree of thoughtfulness and faith that is beyond me, well I'm just another father talking. 

But strangely, I who am used to addressing more esoteric subjects, feel the need to float this most basic of human emotions out in the universe somewhere. I was up at 3:30 this morning thinking of how proud I am of my sons. I see what they are giving their lives to -- that young people in Vancouver and Fresno would know the life-changing message of Jesus the Christ. They have both married women who are in every way beyond our highest dreams. They surround themselves with friends of quality who laugh and serve and provide this amazing extended family. And I am left with a sense of gratitude and the humility to know that, in spite of my fallenness, God has gifted them up to be who they are.

So I guess its not just a run-of-the-mill Father's pride that kept me up. Its amazement that I get to witness the fulfillment of all those prayers in the night a couple of decades ago when they were feeding or teething. Its amazement that someone with my particular set of sins and limitations gets to see the improvement of the species through grace alone. And its amazement and gratitude that they still care to hang out with me from time to time.

OK, maybe its just run-of-the-mill Father's pride.


Sunday, August 24, 2008

In the Forest of Promise

It's raining now, and the forested  hill out my window is  gracefully shedding the deluge into eager rivulets that lead to the creek at the edge of Ray and Corean Bakke's home in northern Washington.  Winding through this land, Ray has crafted a 500 foot "Mission Trail," a soft, pine-needle carpeted pathway under a canopy of Douglas Fir, Red Cedar, and Hemlock. Markers every 100 feet or so celebrate the influence of missional Christians throughout the ages, folks like John of Damascus, St. Francis of Assisi, Benedict of Nursia,  Martin Luther, etc. Ray has produced a guidebook for the trail, helping the hiker to reflect on the way the world is different because those people followed the climb God had them on.  Occasionally there are signs posted that indicate when certain ones of God's people, Luther or John Knox or others 500 years or more previous, were ministering when the tree you are standing in front of had first started to grow. The trail ends in a circle of benches, a chapel in the woods, complete with a cedar pulpit and stone baptismal font.  Here, it's easy to reflect on the amazing legacy of costly leadership that we operate under today, almost like the great canopy of Hemlock and Cedar that dance above that chapel.

I have walked this trail a few times over the years.  It has never failed to raise my expectations of what a life committed to Christ could be.  I walked it again yesterday, when it wasn't raining. Golden sun filtered through spaces in the canopy and, fell on amber colored humus,  sharp shale and granite rock formations, and lacey spiderwebs sparkling across the path.   Ray has planted more than 3,000 saplings on his property in the last four years, and they have been welcomed into the fellowship of older trees.  As I  reflect on these trees, it occurs to me that someone 500 years from now might choose to extend this mission trail and post another sign, which will say, "when this tree began to grow, Ray Bakke taught a generation to love their cities and seek their transformation." 

I am often lost in thought on this trail, but never in danger of being lost in the forest, though the continuous tunnel of green beckons you around corner after corner. Occasionally there are living splashes of color that act as landmarks: a Huckleberry bush with its edible red berries,  a deep plum Japanese maple, or a holly-leafed, Oregon wild grape. One of these splashes jumped out to a startle me as I rounded a bend,  resulting in the following haiku:

Surprise hydrangea
Prankster flow'r of the forest
Blue marks my way home

Part of me wants to be one of those colorful splashes, a landmark.  But in my saner moments, I know that I really just want to be a sapling planted in the company of elders. As I transition to working closely with Ray's international ministry over these next few years, I know that my branches will take on their own shape. I know that I will reach to drink in the sun at the edge of his remarkable shadow. And I pray that I will grow to be a tree that takes its place in the forest of promise.

Monday, July 7, 2008

The Whites stumble into technology

We don't pretend to be good at this ...

Sunday, June 8, 2008

Taking Down the Alphabet

Tina stood on a chair to reach for the alphabet that was strung across and around the top of the tiny tutoring room at the back of our house last night. I couldn't bear to watch the dismantling. But so much of language has been out of reach for the children who filled this place over the last 15 years, it seemed appropriate that taking it down should be hard for us as well. With our transitions to new positions, the Wise Old Owl reading and homework club is shifting to another location and we are clearing out the space. I poked my head in briefly to check her progress. Tina is nothing if not efficient. She had already boxed the books, stacked the attendance posters with names of kids we have grown to love -- Lupita, Bobby, Keeshawn, Victoria, Eternity and hundreds of others. The ancient, donated iMacs were being unplugged. The globe of the world sat leaning in the corner - A Swiftly Tilting Planet.

Not one to instantly recognize my emotions, I turned away -- had to get out of there. If my initial fear was that the faces of the kids who had picked out books in that room over the years would accuse me of abandoning them, I needn't have feared. They are always too gracious and appreciative of any effort on their behalf, and too accepting of what must seem like arbitrary changes to their options for that. What I am feeling is grief.

I ran the program at first, scouring the neighborhood on my moped for any available kid who wanted to come for an hour, read a book, do homework with a college student, play a game, sing a song, pray a prayer and get a snack. I met parents and siblings, got to know some of their stories. Many times I walked walk down a street in the neighborhood and children ran up to me, hugging my legs and yelling "Pastor Raaaaaaaaandy!" It became my primary way of understanding what was happening in Lowell, and a way to ensure that my white, middle class eyes could not avoid the realities of life there, and my whiter, middle class mind did not give in to the tidy explanations of middle class culture as to why the poor are poor.

After a few years we had staff take over the program, and as my work caused me to travel more I would miss weeks. But if I was in town I would make sure to come and play the song at the end, to lead a devotion for the college students who were there as tutors, to share a meal with some of them afterward. Tina would be cooking that meal as the program ended, and the kids would walk through the kitchen, interested in what she was making, and of course drooling over the smell of it. What I loved most was seeing kids matched with tutors, siting on benches together, engaged. Brilliant students from Japan, struggling with their English, helping bright students from the 'hood struggling with their English, and everybody winning in the process. We held cooking demonstrations by professional bakers, folded orogami, had an artist come to display watercolor technique, a physical therapist to talk about kinetic energy. With every special feature, my whole insides smiled.

Our ancient, grafted orange/grapefruit tree forms a canopy over the back yard, and each December as the program entered its last week of the term, the children jumped for the lowest fruit. They held them like prizes, would take a second one home for a Mom or a little brother. We would collect the rest and put it in gift bags to deliver to their families at Christmas. My whole insides smiled.

But lest we succumb to nostalgia, the program was also a major inconvenience, and contained pieces that could act like hidden coral in the shore of our week. The preparation and cleanup, the snack wrappers in the yard, the kids with attitude, the damage to property or the simple wear and tear; any of these things could leave our toes bleeding and sore, and won't be missed.

Yet I still grieve. I feel proud of these 15 years. Glad to have loved these kids with our modest effort. Sorry that we will miss what is next for them, though some of them still come by to check in with us. Perhaps I grieve the loss of that inside smile that hosting this outreach created.

We are making plans for the tutoring room, this old 10x10 sleeping porch wrapped around with seven windows. It has great light, has a bathroom, and is connected to our kitchen and back office. It will make a nice breakfast nook, or guest room, or a place to set up art projects -- stained glass or mosaic, or perhaps Tina's sewing machine. Like any change, it is filled with a combination of loss and possibility, of a death and a rebirth.

The alphabet cards are now in a jumble in a box, along with the books. Out of sequence, I can imagine them reassembling on their own in the half-light of their storage, but in a new order of their own making. My mind's eye says that they now spell out a sentence: "get us to the next room." A part of my heart has been boxed with them, and won't be free until they are.

Monday, June 2, 2008

Of Mirrors and Tears

We turned to go, to leave the cramped quarters of my parents’ downsizing, their unwanted relocation, for our long drive home. I knew I would steer the car without seeing the road as I reflected on their age, their fragility, the increasing ghostlike quality of their presence. The traumas and restrictions of aging are like a tightening noose to them, and their enjoyments are few. But just then the strains of a violin began on the television, and I said, “Is that something from Brigadoon?”

Without hesitation, my Father, who at 90 is finding it harder to express what he means these days, said with certainty, “No, Phantom of the Opera.” Then he pulled us back into the room and urged, “Let’s just listen to the end of this before you go.”

And so we stood there, we four, two couples in a line, watching a man do what so few of us can these days. With the one musical instrument most like the human voice he communicated fully, clearly with my Dad and Mom, through faulty or forgotten hearing aids, right past the latest medical tests, past the corridors of boredom or helplessness they live in. The message found them, like cups of cool water to their perfectly matched pair of parched and grey souls, an oasis found while crawling through the desert that precedes paradise.

As we listened it slowly dawned on me that we were standing in front of the mirror that had made the trip with them in their move. The added angle put me face to face with them, allowed me to witness the power of that melody as it pulled from their frozen faces something I didn’t recognize at first. It was astonishment and awe.

I felt my own breath leave. Was it the glimpse of them at 87 and 90, standing together in their respective infirmaries, together for more than 65 years? Was it the thought that this could be the last time I see this picture? Was it the absolute pathos of the music? Yes, all these things. But slowly, in that regal reflection, I came to know that it was the immensity of the gift that this image was to me that made we weep. That angle allowed me to see them not as my parents but as a man and wife, propping each other up, stiffly, painfully, for nothing but the reward of beauty. It was a too-late realization of how music, and anything true and beautiful, really, was like food to them, and especially if there was someone to turn to afterward and exclaim, “A perfect end to the day.” It was a too-late realization that it had always been that way for them, I had just not understood it in my childhood. It is that way in me as well, but never until this moment in front of the mirror, have I known why I feel it so deeply in my soul. Time is ruthlessly, lovingly, and as a gift to me, insisting that they reach their end with their truest selves on display.

My tears lasted for the first hour of our drive home, silently rolling from under my dark glasses to soak my collar. After a while, I turned to the radio for rest from the poignancy. But it was not to be. It was now my own turn to be astonished – for my own wet face, stiff with the attempt to conceal my tears – to be caught up in amazement by the program I had randomly selected. The strains of Phantom of the Opera had just begun, the melody instantly flooding the car with the images of my parents’ true selves, and peeling back the layers to reveal something of my own, my own equal need for the true and beautiful, and the similar journey I am now on.

The Giver of this gift, the one who spontaneously gathers an audience around a television concert, the one who arranges the right angle in front of the mirror, the one who beckons a driver to turn on the radio at just the right moment, this Giver wants to give only what matters most -- the gift of knowing who we are, the gift of knowing why we are the way we are, the gift of his beauty and truth, the gift of a journey.

The mirror makes their small place seem larger; I am glad we decided to hang it there. But today it expanded my soul as well as the room, and helped me glimpse a reflection of the Giver – the One who planted the soul’s taste for the truth, the One that grants regular feasts of it, the One who causes one traveler to say to another, “a perfect end to the day.”

Thursday, May 1, 2008

red-tailed prophet

Rooster announces a not-yet reality
Red-tailed, Paul Revere prophet of an
Apparently urgent
Urban dawn.
Atop a rusting chassis in a
Cycloned yard
This concrete kingdom deserves advance notice
Of the merciless light
As much as any benign barnyard.
Patriot on his perch
He delights in the warning but
Cannot defend the night.
Let it come, Rooster.
Push the snooze and hug your hen
And I will do the same.
Perhaps the day is kind afterall.

***********************

There, Scott. I only blog these days when prodded.
Keep prodding.

Sunday, March 2, 2008

Remember

I turn the page of a very good book, anxious to know the end of the thought which had so captivated me, and there, lining the margins, like a graded exam, are comments and underlines in my own hand, from a previous day when the same words had first moved me. I had savored them, chewed them even like a juicy tenderloin. But like almost everything I read they had passed through me -- slowly or quickly, who remembers? -- had not taken up residence in my incontinent mind. Having only been enjoyed but never been planted, these seeds of thought could never bear fruit. Now they slap me in the face. I have even re-read sections of books that I have written, and have forgotten that I had ever said such things.

I could worry that this is a foretaste of what my 87 year-old Mother experiences in the throws of her dementia. Unable to remember a conversation past the three minute mark, she experiences over and over the joy of our visit, every time I re-enter a room. But over and over she experiences the panic of my Father's absence, when he leaves to use the restroom.

The command to remember is pervasive in the scriptures. The Creator, ultimate realist that He is, seems to know that the daily beauty and burden of being alive requires an intentionality and focus that consumes us. The command to remember is a prescription for survival -- the lessons of the past meant to provide a more sure footing for the present, a reminder to give ourselves only to things that matter.

But I need more than a reminder. Like my Mother I find myself rediscovering God's goodness every day. While that is a joy, it is difficult to build on my experience, to add to yesterday's joy, to assemble cumulative total of God's goodness in my life. And like my Mother's panic, I must re-learn the falseness and hollowness of sin every hour.

I round a corner and my Mom lights up: "when did you get here?" I turn a page and there are my marks. The joy of first discovery, the frustration of having hiked in circles, of having tread the same ground.

My journal prods my memory. I can at least re-read the most significant lessons. But what I know I really need is a way of embedding these seeds before they pass through me. Beyond the act of underlining, beyond the act of writing them down. What if my mistake has been to treat knowledge as food -- something to be consumed? What if what I really need is to obey the thing I discover-- to turn the calories of truth into muscle, something that can be used, something that must be used to be kept? Every book I read, every passage of scripture I study, every moonlit meadow I see, every shaft of of afternoon light basking my living room with a rich amber glow. Maybe memory is like muscle -- use it or lose it.

Monday, January 14, 2008

The Arithmetic of Blessing

By Randy White on the Occasion of his Dad’s 90th Birthday

32,850 – The number of times you have opened your eyes
To see the room growing light,
Though not always the same room,
And closed them again at rest,
Though not always at peace.

32,850 – The number of days, I am quite sure, you found
Reason to smile,
Sometimes broadly,
Sometimes bravely,
Effortlessly one day,
As a discipline the next.

32,850 Cycles of hunger and filling,
The interruption of inspiration and the tedium of dullness,
Of love as an experience and love as a verb,
Of muscles taught and the bow unstrung,
Cycles of praying and waiting,
Of worry and unexpected wonder.

The Ancient Word says,
“Teach us to number our days and so gain a heart of wisdom”
We are to look ahead and know they are limited, and so use them well.
We are to look back to learn, and give thanks to an invisible hand.
Ninety revolutions around the sun clinging to this divine blue dot
Have taught you the truth of this, the
Unavoidable arithmetic of blessing.

God has been with you, Dad.
All 47,304,000 minutes of your 90 years,
Upholding, sustaining, training;
And now you stand, like those two wooden
Chinese scholars on your dresser,
Wise in the ancient knowledge of His goodness and grace,
Surrounded with love by those with fewer days and less experience Who still watch and learn.

Friday, January 11, 2008

Beaver Tail, O Beaver Tail




O Beaver Tail,
When in the market I look at you
My limbs go frail
My tongue turns blue
As if some beaver stout and hale
Had come and chewed my knees right through

rww c 2008

.