Small

I was going through some papers and found something I had written down awhile ago. I don't remember why I wrote it, if there was something specific that spurred it, but I still believe what I wrote.

*

If God cares at all for people in general than he cares for (every) individuals. It is easy to be committed to a cause, a movement, social justice, whole foods, etc. But what is really radical is not vast sweeping change of a society, but the single moment when one person begins to see another with empathy and appreciation. If God cares about BIG he cares about SMALL.

Disrespecting God

Yesterday we were out of coffee, so as part of Father's Day, Caryn drove to Starbucks and bought me a caramel latte. This was right before church, but I really wanted to drink it, so I brought it with me as I walked the four blocks to church.

Now, you may attend a church that encourages people to drink coffee, smoke a pipe, or wear their swimsuit during corporate worship, but I don't. In spite of a slow shift toward casual dress, people still wear "Sunday clothes"; clothes that are just a little nicer than what they wear the rest of the week.

As I carried my coffee, knowing that some people might frown upon bringing coffee into the sanctuary, I thought about what I would do if someone said to me, "I don't think it's respectful to God to drink coffee during church." (You could fill in whatever else you want: wear ripped jeans, dance, laugh, use videos, etc.)

This is when it occurred to me: It is ridiculous to think that we can disrespect God.

God is not on our level. Can we be disrespected by a bunny? (Maybe.) It's a silly question to entertain. God is not disrespected if I wear shorts to church. God is not disrespected if drink coffee during worship. God does not take in personally if don't sing along with "Shine, Jesus, Shine". My kids don't disrespect me, they just want to keep playing with their toys. In the same way, the things we do don't disrespect God because God is never trite enough to take our actions as a personal affront.

This makes it even more amazing that somehow, God does care about what we do. Little me, acting in my little corner of the world, going about my business, has cosmic importance. In the eyes of God, my life is just as important as Napoleon, Martin Luther King, Mother Teresa, Carrot Top, Osama Bin Laden, my next-door neighbor, Bono, Warren Buffet, Steven King, and my kids. The choices we make matter to God.

These aren't just the choices like who to marry or what job to accept. These are only the decisions that we tell ourselves are the most important, but size doesn't matter to God the way it matters to us. There are no small decisions to God. There are no big decision. There are only daily decisions about how we spend our time (and money), follow the leading of the Holy Spirit, and reflect back the love we have received.

The Good News: God cares about me.

The mind-blowing next step: God cares about what I do.

The Most Important thing I've Read in A Long Time

I just read an amazing book. It was short enough that I read it quickly, but am now going back and re-reading it, even though I know it is already over-due and is costing me 10 cents a day to continue to have it in my possession. It is called The War of Art: Break Through the Block and Win your Inner Creative Battles.

I know, great title, but awful subtitle.

It is written by Steven Pressfield who's only other work you may know is The Legend of Bagger Vance, because it was made into a movie a couple of years ago starting Matt Damon and Will Smith.

Anyway, there is one chapter (all the chapters are only a page or so) that I read several times because I thought its implications might be far reaching. It is not over-stating it to say that this one chapter, titled Resistance and Fundamentalism is one of the most important things that I have ever read. Even as I read it again as I typed it out, I was stirred.

I'm going to quote it for you here and I hope that Mr. Pressfield doesn't mind. (I emailed him to say I liked his book and he send a grateful response, so I hope he's nice enough to overlook any copyright infringement I'm committing.)

***

The artist and the fundamentalist both confront the same issue, the mystery of their existence as individuals. Each asks the same questions: Who am I? Why am I here? What is the meaning of my life?

At more primitive stages of evolution, humanity didn't have to deal with such questions. In the sates of savagery, of barbarism, in nomadic culture, medieval society, in the tribe and the clan, one's position was fixed by the commandments of the community. It was only with the advent of modernity (starting with the ancient Greeks), with the birth of freedom and of the individual, that such matters ascended ot the fore.

These are not easy questions. Who am I? Why am I here? They're not easy because the human being isn't wired to function as an individual. We're wired tribally, to act as part of a group. Our psyches are programmed by millions of years of hunter-gatherer evolution. We know what the clan is; we know how to fit into the band and the tribe. What we don't know is how to be alone. We don't know how to be free individuals.

The artist and the fundamentalist arise from societies at differing stages of development. The artist is the advanced model. His culture possess affluence, stability, enough excess of resource to permit the luxury of self-examination. The artist is grounded in freedom. He is not afraid of it. He is lucky. He was born in the right place. He has a core of self-confidence, of hope for the future. He believes in progress and evolution. His faith is that humankind is advancing, however haltingly and imperfectly, toward a better world.

The fundamentalist entertains no such notions. In his view, humanity has fallen from a higher state. The truth is not out there awaiting revelation; it has already been revealed. The word of God has been spoken and recorded by His prophet, be he Jesus, Muhammad, or Karl Marx.

Fundamentalism is the philosophy of the powerless, the conquered, the displaced and the dispossessed. Its spawning ground is the wreckage of political and military defeat, as Hebrew fundamentalism arose during the Babylonian captivity, as white Christian fundamentalism appeared in the American South during Reconstruction, as the notion of the Master Race evolved in Germany following World War I. In such desperate times, the vanquished race would perish without a doctrine that restored hope and pride. Islamic fundamentalism ascends from the same landscape of despair and possesses the same tremendous and potent appeal.

What exactly is this despair? It is the despair of freedom. The dislocation and emasculation experienced by the individual cut free from the familiar and comforting structures of the tribe and the clan, the village and the family.

It is the state of modern life.

The fundamentalist (or, more accurately, the beleaguered individual who comes to embrace fundamentalism) cannot stand freedom. He cannot find his way into the future, so he retreats into the past. He returns in imagination to the glory days of his race and seeks to reconstitute both them and himself in their purer, more virtuous light. He gets back to basics. To fundementals.

Fundamentalism and art are mutually exclusive. There is no such thing as fundamentalist art. This does not mean that the fundamentalist is not creative. Rather, his creativity is inverted. He creates destruction. Even the structures he builds, his school and networks of organizations, are dedicated to annihilation, of his enemies and of himself.

But the fundamentalist reserves his greatest creativity for the fashioning of Satan, the image of his foe, in opposition to which he defines and gives meaning to his own life. Like the artist, the fundamentalist experiences Resistance. He experiences it as temptation to sin. Resistance to the fundamentalist is the call of the Evil One, seeking to seduce him from his virtue. The fundamentalist is consumed with Satan, whom he loves as he loves death. Is it coincidence that the suicide bombers of the World Trade Center frequented strip clubs during their training, or that they conceived of their reward as a squadron of virgin brides and the license to ravish them in the fleshpots of heaven? The fundamentalist hates and fears women because he sees them as vessels of Satan, temptresses like Delilah who seduced Samson from his power.

To combat the call of sin, i.e., Resistance, the fundamentalist plunges either into action or into the study of sacred texts. He loses himself in these, much as the artist does in the process of creation. The difference is that while the one looks forward, hoping to create a better world, the other looks backward, seeking to return to a purer world from which he and all have fallen.

The humanist believes that humankind, as individuals, is called upon to co-create the world with God. This is why he values human life so highly. In his view, things do progress, life does evolve; each individual has value, at least potentially, in advancing this cause. The fundamentalist cannot conceive of this. In his society, dissent is not just a crime but apostasy; it is heresy, transgression against God Himself.

When fundamentalism wins, the world enters a dark age. Yet still I can't condemn one who is drawn to this philosophy. I consider my own inner journey, the advantages I've had of education, affluence, family support, health, and the blind luck to be born American, and still I have learned to exist as an autonomous individual, if indeed I have, only by as whisker, and at a cost I would hate to have to reckon up.

It may be that the human race is not ready for freedom. The air of liberty may be too rarefied for us to breathe. Certainly I wouldn't be writing this book, on this subject, if living with freedom were easy. The paradox seems to be, as Socrates demonstrated long ago, that the truly free individual is free only to the extent of his own self-mastery. While those who will not govern themselves are condemned to find masters to govern over them.

Problem Solving

I'm passing along this little rubric from Seth Godin because when I read it I knew that I needed to write it down on a note card and post it at my desk. My brain usually has one or two things bouncing around inside that could use a run through these questions: goals, problems, difficult people, or future scenarios.

I'm sure that I'll soon adopt it as my own and the next time I'm leading a group I'll throw it out as if I've invented it.

-Adam

*

Which of the four are getting in the way?

You don't know what to do

You don't know how to do it

You don't have the authority or the resources to do it

You're afraid

Once you figure out what's getting in the way, it's far easier to find the answer (or decide to work on a different problem).

Stuck is a state of mind, and it's curable.

Speak Up

Why are we afraid to speak up? What is so frightening about saying, "I don't understand what you're talking about?" Why do we let physical, verbal, political and theological bullies push us around?

Why do we sit in church and think to ourselves, "Is this all there is?" and not stand up then do something about it beyond complaining to others?

Why do we choose inaction because we don't want people to label us: post-modern, socialist, liberal, universalist, hipster, vegetarian, artistic, or touchy-feely? We don't want to be boiled down to a single thing and put in a box labelled "those kind of people." Why do we care what people (who are willing to de-humanize us) think about us?

Why is it that, even though when we do ask a question and ten people come up afterwards and say, "I was thinking the same thing," the next opportunity to speak up we feel the same sense of fear and believe that we are the only person who feels this way?

No more.

The Confidence to Tear it Apart

When I began work installing windows I was hesitant to rip out the old windows. I was afraid of taking out too much exterior wood, or removing the wrong pieces. I knew I wouldn't be able to put it back together once I had made that first hammer strike or made that first crowbar pull. It was that point of no return. It was scary and thrilling at the same time.

But Caryn's uncle Joel, who had been doing this for years, knew exactly what he was doing.

Sort of.

It wasn't that he knew exactly what he would find every time he took out a patio door or ripped a gaping hole in a house. But he knew he needed to take the old one out before the new one went in. And he knew that, one way or another, he would be able to get the new one where it needed to be. It may not always go smoothly, it may take longer than expected, but he had the confidence that eventually he would figure out what to do. He had internalized his craft which had the affect of pushing out the fear I felt every time I started on a new job-site.

This concept is not restricted to construction.

I was recently doing some writing and realized that the plot of my story was fundamentally flawed. I had spent many hours on this project and realized that only a small portion of it was what I wanted it to be. I knew I could leave it as is, because it still represented a significant effort (around 100 pages) and I was proud I had made myself sit down and do it. Or I could take my metaphorical hammer and smash it to pieces, confident that I would be able to put it back together. Happily, this is what I did. It is still taking a while to reassemble, but the project is already tighter, smoother, and better.

Sometimes an entire organization needs to change the way they operate. There will be people who are afraid of letting go of the stability of tradition. They may see the need to restructure but they cannot bring themselves to push against that crowbar of change. They may doubt that once the glass has cracked, that they'll be able to install the new way of operating. They know there will be a moment (experienced even by the professional) when the demolition is done, before they begin the install, when they stare at a big gaping hole in the wall and ask "What had I done?" And this is enough to stop them from taking the first step toward change.

Likewise, I have had many friends move away or get married and I have had to smash apart these relationships so that I can rebuild them with more realistic expectations. This doesn't mean we're necessarily closer, but it does mean we have a better relationship because it fits into the situations of our lives. This can be scary because relationship are very important to us.

But not as scary as smashing apart God. Or at least our idea of God.

I think that one of the hardest things to do is examine our view of God and see that there is a little dry rot at the bottom, that the paint is peeling, and that in a million small ways, our experiences have forced us to expand and deepen our view of God.

God is constantly saying to us, "I'm bigger than the box you put me in. I'm more. I'm other. I'm mysterious and deep and close to you in ways that you have not yet discovered." And (from time to time) the question we face is, "If I smash apart all I claim to know about God, the tradition, the liturgy, the theology, the history, do I have the confidence in myself and my creator, to rebuild into something better?"

Any other ways this concept applies to life?