Smart Phones. Dumb Questions.

I can't sleep.  It's 2:30 a.m. on a school night.

I hardly think that I'm weary with the pain of Jacob's wrestling, but my mind is definitely not at peace.

I've needed wanted needed a new phone practically since I got the one I have now, the first Christmas after I got married.  I got a refurbished phone from the dealer.  From day one, it turned itself on and off repeatedly at will until I had one bar of battery left.  For the first year it would only do it if I wasn't using it.  Since then, it's done it whether I've been sending or reading a text, setting my alarm (usually primary function #1 of my phone), or even a couple times when I have been having a conversation on it.  I should have sent it back during the warranty period, but I never did.  I couldn't exercise the initiative.

My dad at Christmas noticed it and we had a conversation about me ordering a new phone, now that I've had the same phone for quite some time.

To add in some of my internal dilemma, I've said repeatedly that I don't even want a smartphone.  I don't want my e-mail access 24/7.  I didn't even really want a cell phone in the first place.  I got one only because I was going to school so far from where my parents lived and needed a way to stay in touch with them.

So when my dad asked me the other night if I still wanted a new phone (yes, I know, Christmas was a while ago), I automatically got out on the website to see what upgrades I could get for free.  I was surprised to note that there were actually more non-smartphone options than there were when I got the phone I have now.  However, I noticed I could get an iPhone upgrade for free.

I more or less jumped at the chance.  The only hesitation that preceded any action on my part was that we really can't afford to pay for a data plan.  I called my dad and he said don't worry about it, so of course as soon as I got home I got online and had it shipped here.

But in my sleepless state, I'm having second thoughts.  First of all, if I were a government and I wanted to have 1984 / Fahrenheit 451 levels of control over people, wouldn't smartphones be the best way to do it?  I mean, never mind that Google is actually destroying any notion of privacy as we know it, and has been for years.  The internet itself, facebook, whatever, it's all tracking our data.  I was just remarking the other day that I can't imagine political smear campaigns ten years from now, when all you have to do to "dig up dirt" on someone is spend ten minutes surfing through facebook photos.  Yikes.

I know, I know, it sounds a little conspiracy-ish.  I can't help it.

I also wonder: is Thoreau still Thoreau if he has a smartphone?

If I have a smartphone, will I become a consumer of nature, of experience, rather than someone who merely exists?  Will I I always be plugged in (like how I'm writing this lengthy rambling attempt to come to closure online instead of paper)?

The other thing bothering me is essentially this question: Am I really so desperate to conform?  Do I talk a big game (saying I don't want a smartphone) to justify the fact that I can't afford to be like everyone else, but then abandon all my swagger at the first chance to join the crowd?  Do I want to conform, or do I want to be different?  How badly do I want to be just like everyone else, to have nice things like everyone else, to fall at the altar of Apple?

Why do I feel differently about getting an iPhone than I do about my long held plans to get an iPad this summer, or to use frequently the iPod touch I've had for a year and half?  I even said to my wife that having an iPhone eliminates the need for me to get a new iPod touch, which is something she and I have both talked about.  Is having a smartphone really so different than having both an iPod and a non-smartphone anyway?

Growing up in a holiness tradition, I heard NON-stop about the importance of being "set apart."  God has called me to be a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation.   I must and shall live a pure, set apart and holy life.  Non-Chrisians should look at me and see something different and be attracted by my way of life to the God who makes me holy; that's what St. Francis's quote about preaching the gospel without using words means, duh.  "Holiness, holiness is what I long for."

What is a Christian approach to living with technology?  Is there a "Christian" approach to technology?  Should there be?  How different do I have to be?  Does being different mean avoiding what everyone else is doing?  Can I do what everyone else is doing and just do it differently, with a different mindset and different attitudes and different emphases?  I want to make some comment about Wendell Berry here, but never having read more than two of his poems I can't.  But I wish I could.

Is this a matter of faith?  Is this a matter of my identity, of the way that I mark myself out as different from everyone else?  Or is it the weary ramblings brought on by party-food dinner and too much end of the year stress?  I'm not sure how important to let all of this be.  Part of me wants to cancel the order.  Part of me knows I could do that and return it at any time, especially to downgrade.  Part of me is already upset with myself for being so impulsive, the same part of me that remembers a meeting with a psychologist who recommended that I be more impulsive because she could tell right away how cautious I am, who much I need to approve of what I do before I do it.  Do I need more time to think about this?  Would I even come to a different conclusion?  Part of me can't believe I didn't talk all this out with my wife before I acted and ordered it.  I feel judged by her... which says far more about me than it does her.  I feel judged a lot, internally; probably because I unconsciously play the role of judge in most of my everyday life.  I think that my small differences from other people make me a better person.  How arrogant, how ridiculous is that?

Almighty God, to whom all hearts are open, all desires known, and from whom no secrets are hid; Cleanse the thoughts of our hearts by the inspiration of your Holy Spirit, that we may perfectly love you and worthily magnify your holy name, through Christ our Lord.  Amen.

Cincinnatus

In CPE, I was shocked when our supervisor looked at me during a group supervision and said that I was exercising my leadership in the group.  I hadn't thought about doing that, nor had it been one of my goals.  I actually had trouble seeing what she meant until she (and the rest of the group) pointed out that I was the one who started daily Noonday prayer for our cohort and invited everyone to join in, I was the one who suggested that we go out for drinks after Super(vision) Tuesdays, I was the one making sure we ate lunches together.  Those things seemed like common sense to me.  Even deeper, I was doing those things because I wanted and needed the community support.  I'm afraid of being lonely.  But while I was thinking about making sure my own needs were being met, others were seeing me exercise leadership.

My friend Otis hammered away at me, over and over, that more than anything else I needed to work on my own sense of "inner authority."  I got frustrated with him at the time, and still bristle a little bit thinking about it.  I'd rather work behind the scenes, most of the time, on important things.  I'm afraid of public failure.  I'm more comfortable tweaking and adjusting other people's ideas than creating the vision.  I'm happy to pursue goals that someone else has set rather than dream up my own.  It happened a lot in Episcopal Evangelism Network meetings; I was often quiet for much of the meeting, while conversation and different opinions escalated and divisions threatened to slow our meetings to a halt.  When anger started to appear in the room, I would simply raise my hand and wait for someone to call on me.  I'm afraid, usually, of direct conflict.  I'm working on it.  But patiently waiting for the group to allow me to speak, waiting to make sure my own voice would be heard, others were seeing me exercise leadership.

An ancient Roman legend tells the story of Rome beset by her enemies, besieged within her own walls, facing certain defeat from the barbarian horde.  And a lonely farmer, Cincinnatus, came to the head of the military and led the Roman army to victory and the city to a new peace.  When he did, he eschewed power and returned to his farm.

In an effort to meet my own needs as an EC (Special Education) teacher, I'm exercising leadership again.  Only this time, I recognize it.  I'm putting my own personality, perspective and time into fixing a problem that has been systemic and pervasive and persistent within Teach For America: the lack of training that EC Corps Members have received before reaching the classroom.  I pitched the idea to an ENC big-wig, and a friend joined up with me and we're writing out own plan for training materials.  We're hoping to write our first presentation on the basics of Individualized Education Plans next week.  We've sent out our ideas to other EC CMs, and they have given us great feedback and been really excited that we've initiated things.

I have to confess: I like having the control.  I freaked out a little bit (internally) when a document I had created circulated without me knowing it.  I got feedback as a result from people I didn't know personally, which was extremely helpful.  I'm afraid that someone else could do it better than I could.  Scratch that; I know there are several people who could do it much better than I could.

But I'm exercising leadership.  I'm finding my own sense of inner authority, at least a little bit.  And I like it.

I'm trying to hold the reins loosely, to collaborate, to welcome other voices and follow different directions.  I'm making sure I'm not the only one working on this and that I have a partner at all times... which is good, because the friend I am working with is much more practical about actionable steps than I am.  I need that.  I'm learning about new ways of exercising leadership.

But I can't help wondering, as I enjoy this semi-public position of leadership that I know I am exercising: should I, like Cincinnatus, avoid seeking out this leadership and power?  How will I know when the job that I initiated is done?

How fitting, to start with failure

Veni Creator Spiritus
Mentes tuorum visita.

Come mid-November, I struggle to find traction in my spiritual life.  The church year leaves me high and dry, with the great festivals either tantalizingly close but not yet present or too far in the past to provide me any vitality.  When we haven't reached thanksgiving yet I can't wade into Advent and prepare for Christmas... and Pentecost and Easter seem to have vanished long ago.  It's been a perpetually dry season for me.  Dryness is so necessary for a healthy life cycle it comes out good, in the end, but that doesn't make it any easier.

Because I'm so terribly vain, I think I could succeed in lots of different PhD programs.  Probably one of my few ideas worth any merit, however, would be to do one in a field I have no real training in: ethics. I think that a book on "The Ethics of the Fruits of the Spirit" would be entirely fascinating, challenging, and wholly appealing to a broad swath of Christian traditions, if properly packaged.

"The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.  Against such things there is no law."  I suppose I really should say goodness; but I've long felt that the fruit most lacking in my life is self-control.

In this season of Pentecost (and I'm trying to think of it as the season of Pentecost, not the season after Pentecost and certainly not Ordinary Time; no wonder I'm so burnt out by the end of it.  No wonder high liturgical churches suffer, in Pentecostal eyes, from a lack of the freedom of the Spirit.) my BHAG (that's big, hairy audacious goal) is this: to write every day.

Hebel (or thewritingmoment)

I posted recently about wanting to be a writer.  This week I've thought several times: wow, I really should sit and write that down.  It would make a great blog post!  I can't wait to use that idea for a sermon!  And then something else grabs my attention and I move on and don't do anything with it.  The moments pass so fast and I never remember them.  It's like chasing after the wind.  The writing moment is really just a second in my eyes.  The writing impulse is the tiniest tic of a hardly-felt nerve.  If I gave my body more attention I'd notice it, but I can't usually be bothered.  Fleeting and vain is my affinity for writing.  I need a way to capture these moments and give them some attention and effort.

What would appeal to my sensibilities is to carry around a tiny little journal, a moleskine notebook to write everything down in, the way Jamal does in Finding Forrester (one of my favorite movies since I first saw it in high school).  Except for the fact that I loathe carrying things in my pockets, it would work out well.

So, I decided to try to enter the (terrifying) digital age.  I created a Twitter account.  Literally for this purpose: to give myself a place to instantly keep and store some of the ideas that I want to go back to and write about later.  It's my writer's notebook, if you will, a list of topics I need to come back to when I have the time and intention to write about them... at least, that's the ideal.  Twitter is going to be my tool; we'll see if having it increases the labor for which I'm adding it to my toolbox.

Will it work?  We'll see!

If you are truly desperately bored, you can find me on the Twitterverse at @pilgrimbarefoot

I Am a Words Person

One of the books I'm reading right now is Donald Miller's "A Million Miles in a Thousand Years."  Donald Miller's writing has played a pretty important role in my life: "Blue Like Jazz" was one of the three most important books I read in college.

At the end of part three, Don is telling the story about meeting a remarkable man who writes down all his memories.  He has, Don says, more than 500 pages of his own memories.  As I've written here before, memory is extremely important to me, and I was really struck by the idea of writing my memories down (alongside realizing, as I scrolled through pictures recently, that memory is one of the driving forces in what makes the facebook so popular).

Reading "A Million Miles" is pushing me towards something I've known for some time but been too afraid (and too lazy) to admit, even to myself: I think I want to be a writer.

My last semester at Yale I read Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood.  While the main themes of the story lean more towards dystopia, bioengineering and pharmaceutical corruption, one of the things that really stuck with me was when the protagonist is forced to go to a "low-level" university while his friend goes to the highest achieving school there is.  The reason they are split up?  Crake is a science and math genius.  The protagonist is a words person.

I am a words person.  I love to dwell on the resonance and symbolism of words and their meanings and their multiple meanings.  Even though I knew from the start that my preaching class in seminary was taught from the perspective of a preacher who sees himself as a poet (rather than a herald or a prophet, as described in Thomas Long's book) I didn't expect my own style to emerge poetic at all (I don't know what I did expect).  But when I think about my own style, I think of it as the poetic.

I wrote a lot of poetry in high school; you can find some of it out there on the internet without even trying very hard.  It's probably embarrassing.  But it captures my attempts at self-expression, my attempts to put emotion into words.  I won't say it was ever a precise attempt, because it certainly wasn't that at all; again, I'm not seeking to hide from my own laziness at any point in this confession post.  I couldn't even post here once a week during Lent!

This weekend at a TFA summit in Raleigh, I attended a breakout session on Social Entrepreneurship.  It was fantastic.  The presenters talked a lot about hard work.  They talked a lot about reflection.  They talked a lot about ideas.  They talked a lot about possibility, potential, creativity, and even a little bit about joy.  I love all those things (well, again, except maybe hard work).  Even more exciting, albeit daunting, was this: Christopher Gergen, when asked how he became a social entrepreneur and why, said that for most people, their 20s are all about purposeful exploration.  It's when you get to your 30s that you want to be building something.  I'm still in my 20s.  One of the things I know I want to purposefully explore in the next few years?

Being a writer.

To Wash the Feet of a Hurting and Embarrassed World

I was fortunate enough to be asked to preach Maundy Thursday this year at the church that is sponsoring me for ordination.  Below is the text I preached from:

Jesus said: You do not know what I am doing, but later you will understand.

And again,

You also should do as I have done to you.

May I speak in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.  Amen.

I’d like to tell you, just for a minute, about my best friend Ryan.

Ryan is a very clean human being.

He is a neat-freak, a germaphobe, an obsessive cleaner.

He wrote rules for his housemates and put them up by the sink,

Rules for how to keep the sponge clean.

Ryan knows that I’m not going to wear my shoes,

But he still thinks I’m crazy.

Ryan would never go around barefoot.

Ryan is the kind of person who comes to Maundy Thursday and says:

No way - no how - no chance am I taking my shoes off to have my feet washed.

Dirty.  Gross.  Unsanitary.  Weird.  EMBARASSING.

How good of Jesus to be honest,

As he knelt to wash his friends’ feet:

You do not know what I am doing, but later you will understand.

How many times did Jesus say this that we do not have written down?

How many times should Jesus have said this?

When the storm raged all around that little fishing boat,

Jesus took a nap.

When the crowd of five-thousand was half-starved and far from home,

Jesus sent the twelve out with two pieces of fish between all of them.

When the Pharisees, the strictest of all Jews, confronted Jesus,

He told them straight-up that they didn’t understand the Sabbath.

When a hated tax-collector was in the crowd,

Jesus broke everybody’s social rules and invited himself over for dinner.

            You go to the nicest house in Oxford and try that.

When the mob was already holding their stones, intent on righteous murder,

Jesus dropped down and drew in the dirt.

When a voice from heaven announced the start of his ministry,

Jesus fled / into the desert  and disappeared // for forty days.

You do not know what I am doing, but later you will understand.

In Bible study last Sunday morning

Pastor John told us that when we get baptized

We don’t have to turn in our brains at the door.

I’m glad for that.  I’m a teacher!  I’m glad for that.

But I also know something else:

A life that follows Jesus is going to be filled with a whole lot of confusion.

You do not understand what I am doing, Jesus said,

but later you will understand.

Peter did not understand.

Brash, impulsive Peter.

Peter,

Who named Jesus rabbi, master, teacher, messiah.

All Peter could see was Jesus,

Doing the work of a slave.

It was a slave’s job to deal with the feet,

The lowest slave of the low.

Jesus took his job,

Taking sandaled feet that trod the dusty, unpaved roads where the animals ran wild,

And washing them clean.

{Peter did not understand,

 “Lord, not my feed only but also my hands and my head!”

Peter did not understand.}

For all that Maundy Thursday is concerned with our feet,

It says a lot about our hands as well.

Jesus knew, the gospel says, that the Father had put ALL things into his hands.

It reminds me of that song:

“He’s got the whole world, in his hands…”

The Father had put all things into Jesus hands.

ALL things.

Justice. 

            Dominion. 

                        Glory.

            Power.

The Kingdom.

Do you remember the temptation?

“Now Satan took Jesus to a high mountain.

And he showed him all the kingdoms of the earth.
And he said to him:

“All this I will give to you,

If only you will bow down and worship me.”

“Love the Lord your God and worship Him only”

Jesus replied.

Satan thought the kingdom, the power, and the glory were in his hands.

But Satan         does not understand                power.

When Satan in his pride grabs for power

He thinks of ruling and of riches,

            Of fury and force,

            of might and of majesty,

                        of command    and of control.

Satan grabs power to lord it over others and force them to serve him.

The temptation Jesus faced in the desert was a double edged attack:

Jesus dodged one temptation by not taking the power from Satan,

By staying true to the One True God.

The other temptation that Jesus now overcomes

The temptation was to understand power in the way that Satan seeks to hold it.

The battle Jesus began with Satan in the desert begins to reach its climax here,

In the upper room at the last supper.

The Father had given all things into his hands.

Don’t you know that even now the tempter was there,

The echo of his voice whispering in Jesus’ ear:

“Take up the sword with a mighty hand and oustretched arm,

Attack your enemies, force the Romans out of Jerusalem,

Set up a kingdom of great power and glory

Put all the nations under your feet!”

In that moment,

When Jesus had all things in his hands,

He did not stretch out a mighty arm,

But he knelt and took up stinking, filthy feet.

Jesus understands power.

Power is to be used for the sake of love.

 “He loved them to the end,” one translation says,

Or in another “He showed them the full extent of his love.”

He took off his outer robe,

Tied a towel around his waist,

Knelt before them to do the work of a slave,

And used his hands to wash their feet.

And he said to them:

“You also should do as I     have done to you.”

What has Jesus done

                                    With his hands?

He has done the work of the lowest of the low.

He has ensured that they are clean in their body and their spirit.

He has anointed the feet of his friends
            That he knows will flee from his suffering.

I was with my friend Ryan one Maundy Thursday.

The bulletin for that service told us that we were free to have our hands washed

instead of our feet.

And Ryan, germaphobe that he is,

Instantly said “no way am I taking off my shoes.”

I peer pressured him,

Embarrassed him into doing what everyone else was doing.

I understand that many of you may feel now as Ryan did that night.

No way am I taking off my shoes.

Dirty.  Gross.  Unsanitary.  Weird.  EMBARASSING.

I know you may not believe it,

But even I know how hard it can be to accept having your feet washed.

I know it can be truly humiliating to take off your shoes

And allow someone to go so low as to wash off your feet.

One of the most humiliating experiences of my life was having my feet washed.

I was out in the grass playing soccer with my friends,

And of course, I was barefoot.

We played for hours in the mud and the grass.

At one point, a friend kicked me with her shoes on and cut open my foot.

It wasn’t that painful, so of course I kept playing!

But when I went to return to pick up my backpack from a classroom,

I passed by a friend of mine.

She was shocked at the sight of my feet,

Bruised and dirty and still slightly bleeding.

She forced me into a bathroom – a women’s bathroom! –

And made me sit on the sink so that she could wash off my feet.

I was just like Peter:

No!  Stop! 

You don’t have to do this!

I’m not worth this kind of love.

Friends, the lesson from 1 Corinthians is clear:

We must be humble as we come to this altar to receive,

To discern the body and blood of the Lord.

We must proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes.

Friends, we are used to coming to this altar.

But tonight, we are invited to come forward not once, but twice.

One time will seem familiar. 

We come to kneel at this altar,

To receive communion.

But when we do that tonight,

It will be after the first time we come,

When we come to we have our feet washed.

We come to receive communion

After we have been humbled,

Embarassed, and even humiliated,

After we have come to realize

We do not deserve this kind of love.

This is no empty religious ritual.

We are coming forward to meet the hands that hold the whole world in place.

The hands into which the Father has given everything.

The hands that truly understand that

Having power means to love.

That having everything means being invited to serve.

That the true kingdom and power of God is NOT of this world,

But calls us to die to this world.

To come to the altar unsure, confused, and even embarrassed.

Calls us NOT to understand,

But to stretch out our own hands,

Weak, empty and frail,

And to hear the words:

The body of Christ, the bread of heaven.

The blood of Christ, the cup of salvation.

Then we will be called to get up, on our feet, and to go out

To love and serve the Lord with gladness and singleness of heart,

To do to others as has been done unto us.

To be the hands of Jesus,

Seeking not our own power,

But filled with love,

To go out into a world that is confused, broken, hurting and embarrassed,

And to wash its feet.

Amen.

Jehovah Jireh

The last two days have held a number of small, simple reminders for me about God's provision.

I'm not normally an anxious person.  However, all the factors concerning my ordination process have created anxiety for me.  It's easy for me to identify why: I'm not in control of anything.  It's no different now than just before Advent: if progress is going to be made, it's going to come from the whirlwind of God's grace, not from my own feeble efforts to make things move.  I knew that going into "the process;" but I didn't know how much it would stay true throughout the process!

"The process," basically, involves oodles of meetings and paperwork.  I had to get a four page document filled out by my primary physician... but I didn't have a primary physician.  I have to fill out a lengthy (30+ pages) for a psychological exam that ALSO has to be completed by March 15th by a psychologist / psychiatrist who only offers appointments during normal business hours.  The vestry had to approve and sign my application for postulancy.  My Parish Discernment Committee had to go well. I had to get official transcripts from both my educational institutions.

My transcripts went out on the day I faxed the forms to Houghton and Yale.  My PDC has gone exceedingly well; at every meeting someone has said "You were born to be a priest!"  I found out that the deadline for the psychological exam is actually later than March 15th, so I'll be able to complete it during my spring break; I won't have to miss any work to get it done.  Finally, even though the doctor's office I ended up going to told me it could take as long as two weeks to process my paperwork and get my records, they got them over the weekend and my meeting took a scant 90 minutes.

At any point a serious delay could have happened to keep me from moving forward.  And while I'm by no means assured that TBOAPE (the best of all possible events) will take place (i.e. that I'll be ordained by next June), my anxiety decreases with every mini-step that I accomplish.  Whether or not I finally get ordained in the Episcopal Church, I can see with a new clarity that God's grace is guiding my steps and providing for me.

Many of my friends in the Wesleyan church can point to a youth camp or a revival or a sermon experience where they "heard a voice" calling them into full time ministry in the church.  I've never heard an audible divine voice in that kind of context, at least not that I can remember.  But when wonderful people sit in a room with me and agree with me that God's grace has been given to me it confirms the inner call that I have slowly learned to listen to: that all my passions and interests are for God's work, to try to be more like Jesus in the world (or at least exactly who Jesus wants me to be).

Again: I'm not normally an anxious person.  Probably, living at home and then being in college and then graduate school, the number of possible anxieties I've faced is relatively small.  I haven't, if I'm honest with myself, had to look for God's grace that hard.  I haven't had to rely on God's grace all that much: it was everywhere, abundant, the foundation of everything that I had or knew.  Now that I'm an "adult," however, there are so many more things to worry about: the "process," finances (so I should have worried about these a bit more), jobs, automobiles... and fitting faith into all that mess.

I feel like I'm learning a new skill.  Or at least practicing one, on my own, that others provided and exercised for me: the skill of naming and claiming God's grace in my life.  The skill of being able to honestly and thankfully say the words to the song I learned growing up:  "Jehovah Jireh, my Provider, Your grace is sufficient for me.  My God shall supply all my needs, according to his riches in glory.  He shall give his angels charge over me.  Jehovah Jireh cares for me."