This year for father’s day I was taking the kids off to the local Chapters store so they could spend some gift cards that had been burning a hole in their pockets, when my wife, on the way out, suggested I buy myself a book. It’s a bit of a long story. We’d agreed not to do father’s/mother’s day gifts this year, but at this last minute she thought a little something couldn’t hurt, and told me to treat myself. So my kids came home with the next installment in the Warrior Cats series (or some such), and I came home with The Book of Awesome, a book I stumbled across on the “staff picks” table.
It was a serendipitous stumble. The Book of Awesome is the book edition of a blog called 1000 Awesome Things which author Neil Pasricha launched back in 2008, after a divorce and the tragic loss of a good friend left him in a dark place and he felt he needed to nurture a more positive outlook on life. 1000 Awesome Things is just that, a running list of simple pleasures and overlooked blessings we tend to take for granted, but when you actually stop to think about them they turn out to be awesome. The smell of rain on a hot sidewalk, giving a baby a high-five, peeling an orange in one shot, arriving at your destination just as a great song on the radio ends, all get their turn in the spotlight, along with your first shower after not showering for a long time, and hitting a bunch of green lights in a row. By turns hilarious, thoughtful, heart-warming and wise, The Book of Awesome was (wait for it) awesome.
No, really. His entry on the colon had me laughing so hard I thought I was going to split mine; and I was reading it in public, at the Swiss Chalet, with the kids wondering what had happened to their Dad.
The reason I’m talking about it today, though, is because it struck me while reading The Book of Awesome, just how much I take for granted, how many profound pleasures pass me by every day without my notice, how big a sense of entitlement I really carry around with me, and how much it all sucks the life out of things, my ingratitude. Before The Book of Awesome, I wouldn’t have thought of myself as an ungrateful wretch, but then again, before The Book of Awesome, it never occurred to me just how awesome photosynthesis is, or laughing so hard you make no sound at all, or gym pain, or salt.
I remember a theology prof of mine once pointing out how thankfulness is the fundamental posture of the Christian life. He was preaching on Ephesians 5:20 at the time (“always give thanks to God the Father for everything”), and he had grander things in mind than illegal naps and high tens (both entries in the book). But then again, maybe gratitude for the lofty things, the weighty things, the deep things, grows in our gratitude for the simple things, the light things, the surface things: dancing with your children and weeping with good friends and a well written poem and the smell of a Russian olive tree off in the distance. (I’ve been working on my own list).
In 1 Timothy 4:4, Paul tells us that “everything God created is good, and nothing is to be rejected if it is received with thanksgiving.” I don’t want to put words in his mouth, but I wonder if the reverse is also true, that nothing should be received without thanksgiving. And perhaps the strongest evidence of our commitment to the doctrine of creation (even more, maybe than what we say about the best way to interpret Genesis 1) is the degree to which we move through this creation with deep gratitude for everything the creator has made.
At any rate, I’m working on gratitude this fall. It is, after all, a very good world; even marred by the worst of human ingratitude, it still bears the fingerprints of a perfectly wise, breathtakingly artistic and even, at times, beautifully playful Creator who deserves only praise and thanksgiving. Adrenaline (#934) and and the sun (#66) and the smell of freshly cut grass(#838) were all in his mind before any of them came to be, and are each awesome if for no other reason than that.
On Gratitude and Awesomeness
The Luxury of the Gospel (or, What Would Jesus Drive?)
How to explain this? Twitchell wondered. Denominations, churches, and movements that place the bar high tend to grow, whereas those that place few or no demands on their adherents don't. Twitchell, you have to remember, is not a believer. He was just looking at what he took to be "market data." To make sense of it, he suggested the analogy of a luxury car. The high cost of a Jaguar, he argued, is actually, ironically, one of the reasons people who drive Jags are willing to pay the cost for one in the first place. A Honda Civic may get you to work just as easily and reliably, but it's hardly a luxury item, and there's nothing about it that sets you apart for driving one. To be sure, the Jag has all-leather interior and precision engineering and what not, to make it, arguably, worth the $100,000 (plus) you gotta shell out for one, but the real selling point, for the aficionado, is that only those who can shell out for it, do. There's something about luxury items--the way they only belong to those who really recognize their value and are actually able to make the sacrifice to acquire them-- that triggers something deep in human nature. Perhaps, Twitchell mused, the same psychology is at work when people, counter-intuitively, sign up for churches that require so much commitment of them. Could "high-cost churches" (in the spiritual sense) be the "luxury item of the faith"? he wondered.
Again, Twitchell was not writing from a perspective of faith. He was actually a bit sardonic about the whole thing. He didn't tell any stories about pearls of great price or treasures buried in fields. He didn't quote any first century Jewish holy men about entering in by the narrow gate, or counting costs before building a tower. He didn't reference Mark 8:34 or Matthew 10:38. But still, I couldn't help thinking that Jesus had beaten him to the punch: following him is, in fact, the most luxurious thing of all, an extravagance that costs nothing and yet demands everything.
Dancing with the Wind, a song
Not that I think I'm necessarily the best judge, but I feel this is one of the best songs I ever wrote. I wrote it about 7 or 8 years ago for my daughters, two of the loveliest "children of the prairies" I know. We don't live on the prairies anymore, but just being with them still reminds me sometimes of bright blue skies all dappled with white and swaying yellow canola fields laughing in the sunshine. But I wax poetic...
When I first wrote sang it for my wife she asked me about the chorus: what does "loving is knowing and knowing is leaving" mean? And I said, "I'm not really sure" (any song-writers out there will understand) "but I think it means that, to really love someone, you have to be willing to know them for who they really are, not who you think they are or want them to be. And to do that, you have to be willing to leave behind the false impressions or assumptions you've made about who they are so you can discover their true selves... loving is knowing and knowing is leaving (and leaving is coming back again)."
I'm posting it here today because I'm missing them immensely (they're out on the prairies even as I write, probably dancing with the wind right now, while I'm home alone in Oshawa, waiting for the family to get back from vacation). May it remind you, too, of people you love, and miss, and are waiting to be reunited with.
PS. If you listen to the last chorus, you'll hear my girls singing back-up (they're a lot older now).
PPS. if you listen to the very end you'll hear some audio of all three kids jumping on the trampoline when they were 3, 5, & 7 (or so) which I recorded surreptitiously one afternoon. Good times, good memories.
Dancing with the Wind
[listen]
Being a child of the prairies, she seemed to me
A stalk of swaying wheat
Earth born and golden
Burned brown before the coming frost
Like all the summers I had lost,
And dancing with the wind
Gilded with auburn,
with winter’s white expectancy
When keeping is impossible,
But time is rich and lingering
Eyes wide, blue and wondering,
and dancing with the wind
‘Cause loving is knowing and knowing is leaving
And leaving is coming back again
Until then I’ll take your hand,
I’ll hold you till you understand
Until then keep dancing with the wind
Being a child of the prairies, you are to me
A stalk of summer wheat
Earth-green and growing
Face turned towards the summer sun
A taste of seasons yet to come,
are dancing in the wind
‘Cause loving is knowing and knowing is leaving
And leaving is coming back again
Until then I’ll take your hand,
I’ll hold you till you understand
Until then keep dancing with the wind
First Song, a poem
Speak to me softly with voices ancestral,
Whisper tongues ancient and dripping in mead:
The smoke-pop, and sap-hiss of hall hearth your hymnal--
Shield clash and lute wind and snorting of steed.
Unlayer the dank earth of archetypal digging:
Marsh mist and peat moss and thyme-mottled wolds
Chant drumlins of darkness, shift dolems in singing
And wend with the oak-root through Earth's clinging folds.
Or flutter a whisper by ancestral moon-light
With air-tremor, wing-shudder, heron ascends
The soul-mousing owl and thrush-knock and rook-flight,
From distant horizons the merlin descends.
And older than all, the seeping of water:
The scarring deep fissures through granite of time.
The wave pound, the rain-tap, a well spring of wonder
The hoar weight in winter, a burden of rime.
So come: with the rhythms of three-in-one dancing
To earth-songs, and star-hymns, laments of the sea.
With trees clapping hands and hearts rising on eagle-wing,
Carry me there to the hall of the First King,
Who chants me the lay of the hill, cup and tree--
A very First Song for our very first mem’ry:
To hear it and know it and join it and sing.
In Ordinary Time, a poem
But nothing I've discovered
is ordinary in life with you--
the depths that you've uncovered
reveal the hope of all things new.
So as we count the weeks
after that fleeting glimpse of Triune Love
may everything my spirit seeks:
wings & flame & voice & dove
be but the waiting penult of your perfect rhyme--
You make nothing ordinary in its time.
Lift Up Your Head, a song
A gidjak is a musical instrument from Central Asia that is a little bit like a violin (inasmuch as you play it with a bow), a little bit like a cello (inasmuch as you play it upright) and a little bit like a banjo (inasmuch as it has a skin that vibrates with the strings). It's hard to describe, but here's some YouTube footage of someone playing a gidjak.
My Aunt and Uncle worked as missionaries in Tajikistan for a number of years, and, knowing my penchant for exotic musical instruments, they brought me back a traditional gidjak. Mine actually looks almost identical to the one in the video above. Of course, I had no clue how to tune it or play it, but thanks to the wonders of YouTube technology, I was soon underway. I won't be playing Carnegie Hall anytime soon, but I did write a song (2005) with a couple of parts in it for the gidjak, and even a gidjak lead break. I posted a rough recording of it a couple of years ago, along with some theological musings about ethnodoxology and the travesty of musical homogeneity in the church. You can read all that here. Last fall I re-worked the song and made a new recording of it, which I'll post here for your listening pleasure. See if you can't pick out the gidjak in the arrangement.
Lift Up Your Head (prayer for Persia)
[listen]
Brown land, like a cracked and calloused hand
Dry land, flesh of stone and bone of sand
Lift up your head
Long night, like the ash of phoenix flight
Dark night, red the dawn the longing light
Lift up your head
Lift up your head and see, the lamb was slain to set you free
The phoenix flame will rise again and perch upon the holy tree
Lift up your head behold, the child you welcomed once of old
With myrrh and frankincense and gold
Is now the resurrected Lord
He comes to heal your land
Lift up your head
Ancient place, like a lined and noble face
Antique place, mist of myrrh and tear of grace
Lift up your head
Night skies like the gleam of veiled eyes
Eastern skies, see afar his star arise
Lift up your head
Lift up your head and see, the lamb was slain to set you free
The phoenix flame will rise again and perch upon the holy tree
Lift up your head behold, the child you welcomed once of old
With myrrh and frankincense and gold
Is now the resurrected Lord
He comes to heal your land
Lift up your head
Will One Thing, a song
Soren Kierkegaard, the Danish existential philosopher, wrote an essay back in the 1840s about spiritual simplicity called, "Purity of Heart is to Will One Thing." Rob Bell riffed on this idea-- that the path to spiritual maturity lies in spiritual simplicity-- in his Nooma video "Shells." I riffed on the idea in this song, "Will One Thing." I wrote it a while back, but this is a brand new arrangement and recording. Enjoy.
[listen]
Purity of heart is to will one thing
Want one thing, need one thing
Purify my will that I may seek one thing
Let that thing be you
Wandering the heat of the desert sun
Parched for you till my course is run
Slaking my thirst with a stone beneath my tongue
Until I’m quenched in you
A servant of two masters, trading one for another
Not knowing what I am after, loving one despising the other
Purity of heart is to seek one thing
Let that thing be you
You have set eternity in my heart,
Burning there in the secret part
You have set me seeking right from the start
Let me seek for you
A servant of two masters, trading one for another
Not knowing what I am after, loving one despising the other
Purity of heart is to seek one thing
Let that thing be you
When Shasta meets Narnia and the World meets the Way
There's a scene in the third Narnia book, The Horse and His Boy, that has always sort of spoken to me.
To set the stage, let me explain that Shasta is a young orphan boy who grew up in Calormen, a proud and cruel Empire across the desert south of Narnia. All his life he has believed he's the only son of a hard-handed fisherman named Arsheesh. At the start of the story, however, he happens to meet Bree, a talking horse from Narnia who was raised in captivity in Calormen. Bree points out to Shasta that he is obviously northern-born, too, and convinces him help him escape to Narnia.
Tashbaan is the capital city of the Calormene Empire, and they must pass through it on their way across the desert and home to Narnia. Shasta, you must remember as you read this scene, has grown up surrounded by the sombre and arrogant Calormenes, and is completely acculturated to their ways. Aside from Bree, he has never encountered a true Narnian before. But while they are wending their way through the crowded, labyrinthine streets of Tashbaan, this happens:
It was in a splendid street very near the top of the city (the Tisroc's palace was the only thing above it) that the most disastrous of these stoppages occurred.
"Way! Way! Way!" came the voice. "Way for the Barbarian King, the guest of the Tisroc (may he live for ever)! Way for the Narnian lords."
Shasta tried to get out of the way and to make Bree go back. But no horse, not even a Talking Horse from Narnia, backs easily. And a woman with a very edgy basket in her hands, who was just behind Shasta, pushed the basket hard against his shoulders, and said, "Now then! Who are you shoving!" And then someone else jostled him from the side and in the confusion of the moment he lost hold of Bree. And then the whole crowd behind him became so stiffened and packed tight that he couldn't move at all. So he found himself, unintentionally, in the first row and had a fine sight of the party that was coming down the street.
It was quite unlike any other party they had seen that day. The crier who went before it shouting "Way, way!" was the only Calormene in it. And there was no litter; everyone was on foot. There were about half a dozen men and Shasta had never seen anyone like them before. For one thing, they were all as fair-skinned as himself, and most of them had fair hair. And they were not dressed like men of Calormen. Most of them had legs bare to the kneee. Their tunics were of fine, bright, hardy colours -woodland green, or gay yellow, or fresh blue. Instead of turbans they wore steel or silver caps, some of them set with jewels, and one with little wings on each side of it. A few were bare-headed. The swords at their sides were long and straight, not curved like Calormene scimitars. And instead of being grave and mysterious like most Calormenes, they walked with a swing and let their arms and shoulders free, and chatted and laughed. One was whistling. You could see that they were ready to be friends with anyone who was friendly and didn't give a fig for anyone who wasn't. Shasta thought he had never seen anything so lovely in his life.
A bit of background might help here. In C. S. Lewis' books, Narnia (and the North) is, in a general way, symbolic of the Life of Faith-- the Christian Life, the Christian Community, the Christian Church. Tashbaan, by contrast, grave and noble and mysterious as it is, is roughly speaking a symbol of the World. Shasta, as a refugee from the World, is encountering here, for the first time, authentic Christians living in authentic Christian community.
And now, hopefully, you'll understand you why this description of Shasta's first encounter with the "Narnian Lords" is so compelling to me. The bright colours and sparkling joy, the easy gait and springing step, free camaraderie and open-armed peace with the world that radiates from this band of brothers and sisters is one of the most poetic pictures of Christian community I know of.
A friend once said, in passing, that he felt Christians should be the most interesting people in the world. I've mulled that over a lot since then. He wasn't speaking about holiness, per se, when he said that, or Bible knowledge, or any of the typical stuff we associate with the Christian life. He just meant that, if we really are the Redeemed of the Lord--set free from the power of sin and death and experiencing the on-going renewal of the Image of God in us--if all that's really true, our lives ought to be more fully engaged, more filled with wonder and creativity, more curious about the Creator's world, more free with our friendship and more spendthrift with our love than any other way of living on offer.
We ought to be moving through this world together like a band of Narnian Lords through the crowds of Tashbaan. And if we did, I think, more than just Shasta would be left wondering if they'd ever seen anything so lovely.
taken/blessed/broken/given, a song
In Life of the Beloved, Henri Nouwen uses the communion table as the central image for the Christian life. In the same way that the Communion Bread-- which is the Body of Christ-- is taken and blessed by the minister, then broken and given to feed the faithful, so too Christians-- who are the Body of Christ--are taken and blessed by God, then broken and given to feed the world. I have always loved this image and it has become a central theme for my understanding of Holy Communion.
I wrote this song a number of years ago, but re-recorded last fall. It sort of riffs on this idea from Nouwen. I hope it takes you and blesses you this morning.
Taken/Blessed/Broken/Given
[listen]
Song for the road, give us a song for the pilgrimage
A song of healing and hope
Fill our mouths with a song for the journey
And we’ll sing it wherever we go
Chorus:
Let our lives be taken and blessed and broken and given
Like the bread that came from heaven above
Taken and blessed and broken and given, Lord
Teach these clumsy hands how to love
Dream for the road, give us a dream for the pilgrimage
A dream of healing and hope
Be our guide and our destination
And we’ll follow where ever you go
Bridge:
This bread is my Body, broken for you
This cup which I pour out is poured out
To make your lives new
Now you are my Body, alive with my grace
Go now, I'm sending you out there
To show the World my face
Chorus:
Let our lives be taken and blessed and broken and given
Like the bread that came from heaven above
Taken and blessed and broken and given, Lord
Teach these clumsy hands how to love