3rd Week of Advent, 2006

He was barely three feet tall. That may explain our affinity for him when we were children. His name was Leo Beuerman. He lived in rural Douglas County, Kansas just outside my hometown. Each day of the week he would ride his tractor into on main drag, Mass. Street, His speech was almost unintelligible and he was unable to walk. To overcome this handicap, he would use a homemade pulley system to hoist him from the tractor to a seat near a wooden box where he sold pencils and pens.

I was young but I remember him. I’m sure it was hard not to stare, at least in the beginning. He made such an obvious figure on the corner outside the bank. But eventually, Leo would become a fixture to me and my childhood as he had long been a fixture on Mass. I just found a quote from his autobiography which shows his spirit:

"One of my greatest wishes always was that I may get into some very profitable business and use my surplus money and help others that are too poor to have something to eat most of the time ... through the teaching of Christ you will see that a helping hand for one's unfortunate brothers is a Christian's highest duty."

Simeon and Anna are the guides for this, our 3^rd week of Advent. Oddballs, we’ve called them. Local legends. Leos in Jerusalem. They were both as old as dirt. One claimed the Holy Spirit has given him a special message. That must have provided much gossip for the town. The other never left the Temple. No trips to the outside for any reason. She was always there. That’s just a little strange, don’t you think?

Strangeness has never been a deal-breaker with God, especially when the strange offer blessings.

This week at Soul we think about some of our local legends as we warm up to the idea that oddballs may be outside the camp but fully engaged with the blessing of God. Blessings are not simple niceties; God’s blessings are full of truth and power as well as kindness and grace.

Making Him Room,

Advent: Enter the Shepherds

Now to the Shepherds.

A story: In 1991, Shari (great with our first child) and I ventured to Romania as part of team sent to encourage a woman pastoring a new church. This was only two years after the “Velvet Revolution” in Eastern Europe. Our pastor friend had miraculously escaped the reigning terror by rafting the Danube. She made it across; her husband did not. He was caught and killed. She returned a widow to nurture the faith that had been so oppressed. As she educated us on the now visible church, we mentioned the gypsies we had seen by the roads on the way in. “Gypsies,” she spat, “are all thieves!” She went on to tell us that they try to come into church services to steal. She wouldn’t dare take the offering with them present. Not exactly the romantic figures of legend I’d imagined.

The shepherds of the Nativity were the gypsies of their day. They were all liars and thieves. They couldn’t be trusted with anything beyond sheep. The Temple, the synagogues, the townies were all suspicious of everything they said and did. As we point out in the guide, they couldn’t even testify in court. These are our spiritual guides for Week Two.

The shepherds move us to consider two themes in our own life. First, we consider simplicity. We look at the shepherd’s lifestyle and, yes, we will romanticize a bit. They were simple folks with simple needs.

Urban Skye Soul began three years ago in the same living room we meet in today. We began with Advent because I had begun to despise Christmas. Not the “reason for the season”, of course - I was a pastor after all. But, I despised the season of Christmas. I hated the rush. I hated the pressure to consume and accumulate even if we are doing so for a loved one. I couldn’t wait for it to be over. So, this week we consider a life more attune to holy simplicity.

Second, we consider the “outcast”. They represent so well our theme of “outside the camp”. We’ve been there and we know others who live there. We will turn our attention to the outcast in our midst. Like Van Gogh who found himself an outcast, our faith can be nurtured on the outside. And who knows, maybe such outcasts will be chosen once again to herald good news for the world!

I leave you with the prayer from our Guide (click here for the PDF). I’ve personalized it for our own Advent journey:

May I have the courage to befriend my longing for eternity,
May I have a sense of something absent to enlarge my life,
May I live in the neighborhood of wonder,
May I know that they I am ever embraced in the kind circle of God.

Blessings upon us as we simple shepherds find ourselves outside the camp but inside the kind circle of God.

Advent: More on the Magi

I’ve opened a different Starbucks this Sunday morning, Week Two of Advent. Avoiding the guilt of opening a paper I didn’t plan to purchase, I glanced at the top half of the NY Times headlines awaiting my americano with room. It had “religion” in the title. Not surprising this season, I thought.

Paragraph one told me that inmates at a Texas prison got preferential treatment – occasional pizza and live music, nicer toilets - if they signed up for an evangelical, religious program. The writer snarled at those damn evangelicals with money who coerce others and talk about sin and God and George W. This injustice happened on his watch and with his blessing, of course. Religion and politics, page 1.

Call me crazy, but I want religion and politics to live in different rooms rather than share the same bed. I hate the type-casting, the fight-picking, the chosen misunderstanding. Religion and politics. Maybe the sweet Nativity Story would take us away from all that?

Nope.

Those lovable Magi of our Week One went straight to the heart of religious and political center by naively seeking out Herod, the self-titled King of the Jews. Paranoid Herod, in turn, sought out the Jewish priests in his pocket. Together the religious and political powers were “disturbed”. That’s how Matthew puts it. “Disturbed” that Nature herself was pointing to another King. This was a threat. “His star” was seen in the heavens by these well dressed strangers and By God, we aren’t going to give up our power without a fight!

Religion and politics and power. It always gets bloody even with a Baby Jesus on stage.

As you can see, I’m having a hard time leaving the Magi and moving on to the Shepherds who guide us in Week Two. I’ve been entranced by the Magi’s seeing following His Star. I’ve loved their innocence in wanting to worship the Baby King. I’ve wondered all week about God speaking “outside the camp” of religious centers.

We talked at our Soul gathering last week about some of our own stars. Eagles and foxes and the sun on a tearful face have been vehicles of God’s grace. These “stars” don’t end our journey toward Jesus but are necessary to further it.

Look around. Look up and down. His Stars appear on the cloudiest of nights.

1st Week of Advent, 2006

It’s Sunday morning, Dec. 4 and I sit at a coffee shop thinking about practicing Advent this year. I glance around and see a few dressed for church (one parent shushing her loud kids, “You’re in your church clothes!”) and many more dressed down for their own version of Sabbath.

I feel anxious for some reason. I always hope for some infusion of unearthly peace during special seasons like Advent and want it to infuse me from Day 1. Well, it’s Day 1 and I stumble about looking for peace and trying to practice Advent.

I think, for me, I’m tired of stumbling about. I want to know that everything I do, every moment of my precious time I take to be centered on God will pay off immediately and obviously. Okay, I’m practicing Advent; I want peace now, thank you! I’m such an American.

So, I’m stumbling about as you can tell. But even as I write something begins to loosen in my soul. I think it simply feels good to begin. And, it feels good to write something down and send it off to someone else. I need some version of conversation in order for most anything to be real to me. Writing you has that quality for me. So does our Wednesday Soul gatherings. It helps center me.

I opened our Urban Skye Advent Guide and began to think about the questions we created and the directions we set. I’ve included the first week’s text as an attachment if you need it (or you can get to it in all its beauty from our web page, www.urbanskye.org. )

Our theme is “God outside the Camp” and our story begins with the Magi. We’ll talk more about them Wednesday. What captured us when creating the guide was that the Magi saw. In their passionate search of the stars, God unveiled his star and they saw it and recognized it as a revelation from God.

The question posed is, “Recall one place from your past where God made something of Himself known to you.”

That was part of my journaling this morning. I don’t have a defining “God moment” where all the stars aligned (so to speak). What I found were a few impressions, some places where I tasted transcendence. I choose to believe these tastes to be God unveiling Himself to me in some way.

I first thought about my home. I knew only one address growing up and it is still in the family. We stayed in the house my dad built just last weekend. What struck me was that I do not remember God making Himself known to me in my house! Conversations that had that sense of transcendence, for example, didn’t happen in my house. When I began reading my Bible in high school I can’t picture myself doing it in my house. (This “aha” thought was not lost on me as I left home this morning for an hour to journal and write to you!)

Here are two memories that helped me “see” God. As you can see, they are somewhat vague but it is where I went when I prayed and begin searching for responses to our question:

I was walking around the most beautiful lake with a friend. There were cliffs on one side and the lake on the other. It was fall, my favorite time of year, and we were doing what all boys do – throwing rocks. I don’t remember the conversation or the destination; I just remember never wanting it to end. It still tastes of heaven.

I remember a day in high school. It was a weekend and I spent the whole day with three other friends. It was a simple day: we drove and walked around my little town, ate a bunch of ice cream at Baskin Robbins. We also volunteered for a couple hours on a service project. Throughout, I remember talking about God off and on throughout the day. This wasn’t normal. I remember feeling like God was not just the topic but somehow a part of the conversation. I remember falling asleep feeling “holy”. That’s the best word for it.

These are vague, but I plan on continuing to think more on these this week. It does the soul good to consider places, days or conversations of transcendence that we never wanted to end. We’ll talk about what you remember on Wednesday night.

I’ve got to get home now (as I glance at the time) and I have a few more things to tell you about Soul this week but I’ll do that tomorrow.

Blessings upon you as you dare to believe God makes Himself known to all His creation.