Cultivation – Freeing ourselves from “the latest and greatest”

February 29, 2012 By Richard Dahlstrom 4 Comments

I normally teach in Germany at the end of November, when the harvest has just come in and the farmers are taking a break.  This year, though, I’m privileged to be in this agrarian region of southern Germany (wine, apples, honey, plus much more) at the end of winter and the farms are anything but sleepy.  The vines are being trimmed.  The soil is being tilled, as I encounter numerous tractors on my morning run.  Folks are in their yard gardens, prepping, planting, trimming, cleaning, turning the soil.

I ponder, while I run, that this work, more than any, sustains life for all of us.  We can do without most things in our lives – bankers, i-phones, facebook, sleek new jets, lawyers, preachers, bloggers, even the internet itself.  But trying living without the harvest that comes from the soil and see what becomes of your life.

In spite of how vital the work is that’s going on all around me as I run this morning, the truth is that this is wholly unspectacular stuff these people are doing.  They’ll never end up sitting on piles of cash because of it.  They’ll never know the adrenaline rush of an IPO or new product launch.  They wake up each morning and get on with it, each day a familiar rhythm, each season with its own unique chores – the sun comes, the sun sets.

“Dwell in the land and cultivate faithfulness” is what David invites us to do in Psalm 37, and wiser words couldn’t be spoken, ever.  The words make more sense here, among the farmers who are dwelling and cultivating, than they do in my urban home where buying, selling, mobility, and words like “extreme” and “fastest” and “biggest” elicit admiration from a culture where the price tags were changed while we were all sleeping.  We digest Tebow mania, and then the Super-Bowl, and then Lin-sanity, and in between we argue about church discipline, and the roll our eyes when Romney coos about Michigan because their trees are just ‘the right height’.  I sometimes think we’re addicted to distractions – on an endless quest for the ‘next big thing’.  Yuck.   The whole pursuit leaves our souls barren.  Meanwhile, farmers everywhere are waking up and doing what needs to be done; without fanfare or adulation.  They have a word for that, and its a word we’d all do well to build into our lives as a priority:

Cultivate -

I’m reminded, as I run through these fields, that crops don’t grow themselves.  A fine red wine, enjoyed with friends over a lingering supper, is the climax of a process that began years, even decades earlier, when someone married vine to soil.  You can bet when they did that, nobody was there to cheer them.  Neither was it “extreme” or “epic” when the first shoots were trimmed, so that all the energy could be challenged into the ultimate goal of it all, which is fruitfulness.  The sun comes up.  The sun goes down.  Another day in the vineyard.

I think about what it means to cultivate my life with God and my calling, and I’m reminded of Hosea’s exhortation to “sow with a view to righteousness, reap in accordance with kindness; Break up your fallow ground, For it is time to seek the LORD Until He comes to rain righteousness on you”  The thing about breaking up soil is that it requires focus on what’s right in front me in the moment – this heart, this family, this calling.  Thomas Merton warned that our attempts to magnify our influence and sphere of influence would backfire on us.  He wrote:

“To allow oneself to be carried away by a multitude of conflicting concerns, to surrender to too many demands, to commit oneself to too many projects … is to succumb to violence. The frenzy of our activism … kills the root of inner wisdom which makes work fruitful.”

“the root of inner wisdom” I love that phrase.  It reminds me that Christ has been planted in the soil of my heart and that I’m the farmer.  I need to cultivate the soil of my heart so that the root of inner wisdom (which is the spirit of Christ in me) can grow.  Merton reminds me that a diffused life, torn in a million different directions and pursuits, cultivates nothing.  Such is world, too often.  We’ve become a people addicted to trivial knowledge, but lacking wisdom; acquainted with multitudes on social media, but known by too few.  As a result, we’re often bored with the daily-ness of living, because we’re unable to see that it’s this glorious rhythm of cultivating faithfulness that creates the conditions for us to be people of blessing and hope in our world.

Am I willing to show up faithfully, nurturing relationships with God and others, using my gifts in small unnoticed ways, serving without fanfare, praying in my closet, giving in secret, washing windows and dishes, listening to a student in need during my week of teaching, turning off the computer to say a prayer of gratitude to God during a spectacular sunset?  I hope so.  I pray it will be so.

God of the soil;

Thank you for this season of preparation, with farmers caring for their fields faithfully, day after day.  Bless the work of their hands.  May their testimony of faithfulness, their delight in faithful nurture, their fidelity even when nobody is looking, shape us as we care for the soil that is our hearts and lives.  Forgive us for our addiction to the spectacular, for our insistence on big results and impact.  Grant that we, yoked with your life, might learn that value of faithfulness for its own sake, leaving the scope of fruitfulness entirely in your hands.

Amen

 

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Solitude – Antidote to loneliness

February 23, 2012 By Richard Dahlstrom 1 Comment

learning solitude means never being alone

As we enter the Lenten season, I’m happy to offer some practical advice on the various disciplines which will enable us to grow in our intimacy with Jesus, as we follow in his footsteps, learning to subject our will to the will of Another, for our own good and the good of the world.  I’ll start with solitude.

Years ago I had a conversation with someone about trust.  It was quickly apparent that we’d both fallen off the trust wagon, but in different directions.  She’d felt that God had let her down too often, too unpredictably, too painfully.  In response, she’d turned to people, finding huggable, visible, flesh and blood, far easier to access and trust than a God who allowed horrible seasons of trial and darkness in her life.

I on the other hand, didn’t trust people.  Maybe it has something to do with adoption and rejection by birth parents, for though there’s nothing but profound admiration for my adoptive parents (who I never thought of as anything less than real parents), the soul is shaped early, and my early days, I’d come to discover, were marked by rejection.  Then, when I was in high school, my dad died. Then a friend of mine from band was hit and killed by a drunk driver when he was 16.  Then my favorite grandma died.  Then my aunt, unexpectedly, during a minor surgery, after I’d turned down her offer of a pre-surgery supper at her house while I was in college, then my sister, of a heart attack, at 43.  People?  Are you kidding me?  They’re here today and gone tomorrow.

For some strange reason, rather than blaming God for all this loss, I’d come to accept that loss is part of living in this messed up world.  This isn’t Disneyland after all, where Mickey, and Goofy, and Cinderella are ageless, and the only things that change on main street are the prices.  This is the real world.  Stuff happens.  My early suspicions have, of course, only been confirmed as I’ve grown older.  I climbed with a friend one weekend.  The next weekend he climbed with someone else, and died.  What kind of world is this anyway?

It’s an unstable one is my answer.  Yet, in the midst of that, at a retreat, I heard someone offer the hope that God is knowable and, by virtue of God’s unchanging and eternal nature, a steady, predictable being who loves me and wants to walk through all the messes of life with me.   God was caste as the one being in the universe who’ll always be there for me, and let me tell you, as one who’d lost more than his share of people he loved during his young life, that sounded pretty good to me.  I prayed at the retreat, in the snow, and told this God that, per God’s declaration in Jeremiah 9, I wanted to make knowing God the main pursuit of my life.

That moment was a turning point for me.  It’s not like I became of monk or a hermit, but it did mean that solitude became, slowly, a place of comfort, because it wasn’t a place of isolation.  Instead, as God became less of an ethical system, or theory, or basis of a philosophy, and more of a real being, solitude became a place of withdrawal from the uncertainties of life into the one relationship upon which I can count.  Withdrawal into the wilderness (often literally in my case) became a context where I could pour my heart out to God authentically, without fear that God would ever be ‘too busy’ to see me, or that God would be having a ‘bad day’ and thrash out at me.

My guides in this journey to the companionship of solitude are many:  Abraham, Moses (40 days), David (with the Psalms being perhaps the very best pouring one’s heart out to God), and of course, Jesus, who rose early and went off to mountains for a little time with “the Father”.   When people accuse those who make time for solitude of self absorbed narcissists, I respond by pointing to this friends from the Bible who, by the way, include God in human form, the ultimate servant of humanity.  Far from being narcissists, it’s clear to me that those who faithfully pursue time alone with God are building a foundation from which they’ll serve humanity.

I don’t have time, in a single blog post, to name the challenges that make the companionship of solitude real for people.  I’ll address them, though, during this Lent season, in subsequent posts.  For now, though, I’ll note the basic mindset and tools you need to make solitude your source of endless companionship.

1. Remind yourself that you’re not alone. Even though there’s no other physical person with you during your moments of solitude, you are not alone.  You’re meeting with Jesus.  “Thanks for meeting with me Jesus” might be a good opening line.

2. Flee technology.  E-mail pings, phones, and facebook posts kill solitude.  If you can’t look and not respond, then turn it all off.  It’s rude to ignore company to answer the phone, and that includes invisible company.

3. Listen to God. This is my favorite book these days for helping me on this listening journey, but our church does a seasonal booklet as well which is marvelous, and it’s available here on our website or phone app (both free).

4. Respond. Speak out loud to God, or write things down.  Sing a song of praise.  I respond to what God’s saying by writing prayers in my prayer journal or just talking to God.  The important thing isn’t the method, it’s that your relationship with God becomes dialogue.

5. Take it outside the devotional time, so that red lights, good powder, long drives, night flights, airport delays, become places of companionship – little gifts of grace, rather than stinking delays that cause us to fret and get type-A angry.

The point of solitude isn’t escape from life’s demands.  The point is to deepen our connection with the source of life which enables us to live well in the midst of those demands.  Ironically, this source is teaching me how to love and trust people, though I’m a slow learner.  Knowing the “Source” is a life of faith, which means a life of companionship with one who is “present… yet not seen”.   Once I get beyond the challenge of “not seen”, even just a little bit, the “ever present” part becomes one of life’s greatest gifts.

 

 

 

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Branding & PR vs. The Way of Jesus

February 21, 2012 By Richard Dahlstrom 1 Comment

As I prepare for Lent, I’m struck this morning by Jesus’ admonition in Luke 8:56.  Having entered a house of mourners, and raised a little girl from the dead, he orders everyone not to tell anyone what happened.  This is one of those little bits of the Bible that is either overlooked or explained away.  When I read it though, I wonder if Jesus is trying to warn me, and others who do things in his name, of the dangers inherent when good things start happening in ministry.  Rather than blow our horn, capitalize on our momentum, develop our brand, I wonder if we’re to be more covert.

The dangers of our age, and the dangers of marketing in general as it relates to faith, is that Jesus will become just another commodity, the best product every for your health, well being and happiness.  And of course, an equally great danger is that we’ll substitute the centrality of our particular church, denomination, youth work, non-profit, or NGO, for the centrality of Christ.  Do this and we run the risk of not making Christ followers at all, but instead making followers of Paul, Apollos, Cephas – following the leader rather than the one to whom the leader allegedly points.  Such misguided loyalty is dangerous at best, idolatrous at worst, but so saturated (in Christian circles) with God language, as to be nearly unavoidable.  If this kind of idolatry is the wood, I sometimes wonder if all our podcasts, apps, facebook pages (and likes), isn’t the gas we’re pouring on the fire.

Of course, there’s another side to this problem.  We’re also called to spread the word, to go into all the world and make disciples.  If Paul’s any indication, he utilized every means of communicating the gospel at his disposal during his ministry, including big ships, cultural literacy which helped him communicate more effectively, copious writing of letters that he asked be circulated among wide audiences, and more.

Utilizing these tools makes sense.  After all, he was called, just like you and I, to go into all the world and make disciples.  He chose to do this through whatever means available, I believe, because he understood that ultimately the issues wasn’t the tools used for communicating, but whether or not his work had its origin in God’s spirit. This, in the end, is what matters the most.

I can flee to the desert in the name of holiness, but in reality just be feeding the longings my flesh has to get out of all the complexities of community, a growing church, and the inevitably clashing demands of working with lots of people.  The fleeing can be framed as spiritual, but it’s really disobedience.

I can run ads, create phone apps, write blogs like this one, books, do and a PR campaign, all in the name of “making disciples of every nation”.  It can look like holy ambition to some, but in reality not be holy at all.  To other outsiders it can look unholy, like selfish pride, and be exactly what God wants.  In the end, it’s all about whether this stuff grows out from desire to follow God or from our desire for greatness.  The one thing I do know is that no action stems from both desires at the same time.

I certainly can’t know the motives of other ministries or personalities when it comes to this kind of thing, and thankfully, I’ve been told not to worry about them anyway.  Paul though, says in I Corinthians 4 that he doesn’t even “judge himself”, which is his way of saying that he seeks to live in Christ, allowing God access to his conscience as a means of directing his life and ministry.

I’m convinced that we’re called to do the same.  Sometimes this will lead to withdrawal into the wilderness, and eschew all publicity like these guys. (though even they have a web site)  Other times God will expand our ministry and affirm our use of tools to do so.  The important thing, I think, is to acknowledge both withdrawal from publicity, and use of publicity as legitimate or dangerous, depending on whether it’s God’s plan for our particular situation.

The crux though, is to acknowledge how easily our own human ambitions, either for a wide influence, or more meaningful work, or just a cabin in woods, can muck up the clear waters of guidance.  One of the values of Lent is our intentional withdrawal, with Jesus, into the wilderness, so that he can show us the way forward because I can promise you that there’ll be times when His way runs counter to mine, and if I’m not listening to Christ, I’ll miss the turnoff and end up “on my own”, either in the wilderness when I’m called to the big deal, or in the midst of a big deal which has more the marks of my own making, than of the simplicity, gentleness, and joyful life that is Christ.

O Lord Christ….

You are the light of the world truly, but also the light for each of us on our particular paths.  Sometimes we long for more, whether it be money, fame, influence, or ‘meaning’ in our work.  Sometimes we want to run away from it all.  May this Lenten season enable us to hear your voice with greater clarity, so that our yes’s, or no’s, and our silent waiting are all bathed in the peace of knowing that we’re in your will.  And we will thank you for the fruit of peace that comes only when our ambitions are aligned with yours.

Amen…

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Love Ingredients: Truth, Grace, Proportion

February 14, 2012 By Richard Dahlstrom 6 Comments

“full of grace and truth” John 1:14

“Who can pull that off?” is the question I ask with all the urgency I can muster because I’m more convinced than ever that this is perhaps the only possible solid foundation upon which genuine intimacy can be built.  Look at any relationship where love continues to ripen and deepen, year after year, and you’ll find that the couple has managed to express both truth and grace.  But there’s more.  The couple has also found a way express these elements at the right time, and in the right proportion. Tools, without a sense of proportion or propriety, can be destructive.  I may need a cutting tool, but if the object to be trimmed is my fingernails and my tool is a chain saw, the results can be bloody painful. Here’s what I mean:

Too Much Truth: “I’m just being honest” is perhaps one of the most dangerous phrases in the English language.  It’s usually the preface to some truth that will, in the end, benefit the truth teller much more than the truth receiver.  In the name of honesty, we run the risk of inflicting great damage.  For all of us, it’s not just a matter of delivering the truth.  It’s matter of learning to deliver the timely word “in season”, which means that it’s possible to say the right thing, in the wrong way, at the wrong time, and do terrible damage.

This is my complaint, sometimes, with honest people.  They leave a trail of damaged relationships in their wake because they haven’t learned the wisdom of staying quiet.  In contrast, consider Jesus:  He chose disciples that he knew had tempers, doubts, petty jealousies, selfish ambitions and, at times, slow minds.  Still, he chose them.  And, rather than offering a pre-emptive assessment of all their strengths and weaknesses, he created an environment where, over time, the light of revelation would expose those areas in need of transformation.

In other words, Jesus didn’t (and still doesn’t) feel the need to change every element of personality in a single day or week.  When someone makes me and my transformation (God knows I need it), their personal mission, and major relational focus, I promise you that I’ll find a way to build a wall and prevent you from entering in.  As a result, that someone is shut out and frustrated, and my weaknesses  remain unchecked.  This is using a chain saw instead of nail clippers.  After 32 years of marriage, I’m convinced that one of the greatest gifts my wife and I are able to offer each other is timely, proprotional truth – offered in a way that’s tailored to favor maximum receptivity on the part of the other.  This way of loving is rooted in the belief that while truth is needed, truth that’s not received is of no value whatsoever, and so truth needs proportion and timeliness, both of which require wisdom and grace.

Too much grace:  Ah, but too much grace is damaging too.  Drugs that are good for moderating inflammation can also kill you, if served up in too high a dose.  There are people in this world who are terrified of either speaking or receiving hard truth.  They flatter in the name of grace, but what they’re offering isn’t grace at all, it’s just plain dishonesty.  They overlook deep failures and character flaws, refusing to bring issues into the light for fear of what might unfold if the status quo is upset.  Counselors call it “enabling”.  Because of it, spouses stay in abusive relationships.   Addictions go unchallenged, even by the addicts closest so called friends.

Grace in proper proportion provides space and time for transformation, and a place of safety for confession.  Too much grace provides space, not for transformation, but for hiding.

Too much truth seems to presume that the time is always now, and the messenger is always us.

Too much grace seems to presume that the time is never now, and the messenger is always someone else.

We could nit-pick here and argue whether too much grace is really grace at all, or too much truth is really truth.  But that would miss the point, which is to say that unless we know when to encourage and when to confront, when to speak and when to be silent, when to say the hard thing, and when to let the hard thing go – we’ll make a mess of our relationships.  Messes are made by people on both sides of this problem, of course, and each of us would be wise to consider how we need to recalibrate our proportions for each relationship and situation.

Having said that, I’ll observe that I’m more concerned than ever with the fallout I’m seeing from situations where truth is used as a chainsaw.  I really don’t care if you can quote chapter and verse about why you’re right and I’m wrong, unless I know that you love me, and I’ll know that you love me because the chapter and verse truth has been delivered (to switch analogies) as an IV drip, in a place of safety and nurture, rather than by sticking my head in a bucket of truth and holding me under, waterboard style.

Sure; I know that I need to receive truth from all sources.  I need to recognize my tendency to shoot the messenger when I don’t want to hear the hard word.  But if we could all respond perfectly to truth when it’s delivered, we wouldn’t need a savior.   That we do need one reminds us that we’re flawed, and as flawed people we need to remember that truth and grace, in just the right proportion for a particular moment or relationship, is what God calls us to pursue.

My valentine’s evening will be spent with someone who knows me better than any person on the planet – knows my doubts, failures, shame, pain, fear.  That I know she loves me anyway is why, when she has the hard word to deliver, I will, in the end, listen and respond.  This truth and grace in proportion thing is, I believe, not only an important conversation; it’s the very reason I need Jesus.  After all, He’s the one who gets this right, and it will be by living in intimacy with that I’ll learn how to do it too.

What do you think?  More truth? More grace? Just right?

 

 

 

 

 

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