Kicking God out of the kitchen + burnout

Six questions for Jose Luis Navajo

You say that it is possible "to 'cook' so feverishly for God that we end up kicking him out of the kitchen." How do we recognize if we're kicking him out?

It's possible to work so hard for God that we forget about communion with him. Mountains of work and crumbs of intimacy generate dangerous imbalance. We can be very active yet totally ineffective. Our effectiveness has everything to do with balance, joining activity with intimacy, serving God and communion with God.

What are the signs that God has left the kitchen?

Anxiety, irritability, lack of peace, feeling like service is tedious. When God exits, our former delight in serving becomes arduous, bringing no gratification.

Is burnout the only way we know what our limits are?

Not necessarily. A lot of people are prudent enough to maintain the balance between work and rest.

How does burnout compare to depression, despair, and exhaustion-are they distinct, or all related?

Burnout is a form of suffering due to prolonged exposure to emotional and interpersonal stress. Depression, despair, and exhaustion can be side effects, collateral damage, or consequences of burnout. I recommend that a qualified professional diagnose the actual harm a patient may be experiencing.

How do you care for an exhausted colleague?

It's crucial for patients not to feel accused or judged for not realizing what was happening to them. All judgments should be put aside, and we should dole out understanding, empathy, and affection. Offer hope: You will be yourself again. After this crisis, you will be much stronger than before. People in burnout think they'll never be effective again. It's crucial to convince them that's simply not true.

What does the cross mean for you as one who has walked through burnout and despair?

The cross was the ladder that brought me out of the pit of depression. It will be the ladder that leads me to God's presence with my time comes. The cross is the true beginning of life. Life doesn't start at 20 years of age or at 40. Life begins at Calvary, next to the cross where Christ gave himself for us.

Leadership

Postman: techno-fighter

Those who resist American technopoly are people -

who pay no attention to a poll unless they know what questions were asked and why;

who refuse to accept efficiency as the pre-eminent goal of human relations;

who have freed themselves from the belief in the magical power of numbers, do not regard calculation as an adequate substitute for judgment, or precision as an synonym for truth;

who refuse to allow psychology or any "social science" to pre-empt the language and thought of common sense;

who are, at least, suspicious of the idea of progress, and who do not confuse information with understanding;

who do not regard the aged as irrelevant;

who take seriously the meaning of family loyalty and honour, and who, when they "reach out and touch someone" expect that person to be in the same room;

who take the great narratives of religion seriously and who do not believe science is the only system of thought capable of producing truth;

who know the difference between the sacred and the profane, and who do not wink at tradition for modernity's sake;

who admire technological ingenuity but do not think it represents the highest possible form of human achievement.

A resistance fighter understands that technology must never be accepted as part of the natural order of things, that every technology - from an IQ test to an automobile to a television set to a computer - is a product of a particular economic  and political context and carries with it a program, an agenda, and a philosophy that may or may not be life-enhancing and that therefore require scrutiny, criticism and control.  In short, a technological resistance fighter maintains an epistemological and psychic distance from any technology, so that it always appears somewhat strange, never inevitable, never natural.

Technopoly, p183-185

Chester/Timmis: space to think

And sometimes less is more...  We need to give people the time to think.  We are asking them to believe a totally different world-view full of weird and miraculous concepts.  We are asking them to make a life-changing decision.  At least give them the time to think before you unload another heap of strange ideas on them.  Trust the Holy Spirit...

Everyday Church, p131-132

Chester/Timmis: passion and evangelism

My willingness to speak of Jesus arises from my delight in Jesus.  And loving Jesus also counters perhaps our main impediment  to evangelism which is what the Bible calls 'the fear of man' - our desire for approval and our fear of rejection.  A passion for Jesus means that he matters more to us than other people.  His opinion is the one that counts.

Loving Jesus is not a technique.  Do not even think about how you can communicate a passion for Jesus to others. Be passionate about him.  Meditate on him until he captures your heart afresh.

Everyday Church, p109

...part 6 (the end)

Slowly he realised he was back in bed with the covers over his head.  He pushed them back.  Early sunshine was in the room and the sound of penguins passing the window, singing their breakfast song, filled the air.  Nick sat up and swung his legs round for the umpteenth time in the last few hours.

Remember, remember...you must remember.  Remember what you are for... Something was happening in his head, in some dark recess, in a locked attic deep in his mind someone or something had awoken and was banging on the door to get out.

For a second he stared into space,  and then he was up and over  to the window.  He called to a penguin who was loitering a short distance away singing his annoying song with accompanying choreography.

“Oi, you!”  The penguin continued dancing about.  Nick collected some of the snow off his windowsill, formed a compacted,  icy snowball and took aim.  It detonated with such force that the penguin flew head first in the drifts.

“Gosh,” said Nick, in a moment of revelation, “I’ve wanted to do that for years.”   The penguin picked itself up and looked about.  “Oi, you, penguin!  What day is this?”

“Eh?”

“What day’s today?”

“Why, it’s Christmas Eve,” it squeaked.  The penguin was experiencing a strange emotion: Nick had for centuries worn a permanently light-hearted and jolly expression.  And could generally be expected to be able to identify Christmas Eve.  He was unsure how to respond to the amnesia and the alien look of...determination?

“It’s Christmas Eve!  I haven’t missed it!  Right, get round to the stables and tell Rudolph to fire up the Team.”

“But it’s not night-time!  What about night-time? You’ll be seen, people will want to talk to you!  What about the presents?”  The  squeaks were filled with alarm.

“Load up the presents now.  And we’re going this morning while it’s light.  And get me the P.R. Elf.  Change of Policy.  We’re going public.  It’s time to talk.”

“To who?”

“Everyone.”

...part 5

He was up and sat on the edge of his bed in a moment.  All he could hear was the sound of his own blood pumping at speed.  Nothing else stirred in the darkness.

This time he did not try to sleep.  He stood and looked out of the window at the starlight reflecting on the ice, feeling very tired  and disturbed.  The people in the woods were bad enough, but this last dream had involved images of himself, like broken fragments, shards reflecting something...   It made him feel uncomfortable, but he was not sure why.  “This is Christmas,” he said to himself and the Citadel around him, “this is how Christmas looks.   What’s the matter with it?  Nothing, that’s what.  That’s how Christmas is. That’s how Christmas has always been.”  He wiped his brow.  “Isn’t it?”

The clock began to strike twelve.  Nick stopped breathing and waited....nine...ten...eleven...twelve.  The echoes faded leaving only a suggestion of disturbance in the air, and then that too was gone.  He was about to say “Well, come on let’s get it over with,” when the floor vanished.

 “Welllaaaaaaragghgggghhhhh!” he said instead, falling at considerable speed.  There was no light to illuminate his context, and only the rushing of air to let him know he was falling whilst pointing the right way up.

Thump!  He hit the floor, tumbled and landed in something which was dry and crumbling beneath his face and hands.  He did not feel hurt, but that didn’t seem an especially convincing reason to look up and face whatever awfulness lay before him.  So he didn’t and just lay there, taking in data with ears and nose: trees again, and these must be dry needles or small leaves, and a very slight breeze rustling in the boughs of something.  Oh goody, another wood.  

“Maybe I can just sleep here. Maybe it will go away.” Deep inside he knew this was a futile hope, not least because he was already, technically speaking, asleep.  There was a stirring nearby, not the wind but a something.   He looked up.  Okay, this one had obviously read the book.

It was night, but the moon shone brightly enough to lightly silver the dark hood and cloak of the tall figure.  Nick scrambled to his feet, no easy task when one has the proportions of a space-hopper.  He brushed from his beard and hair the dead leaves of the large yew trees which formed a circle around them.  “Right,” thought Nick,  “night-time, Yew trees in a circle, cloaked figure.   Feeling bad, feeling bad...try speaking.”

He cleared his throat. “Christmas future?”

The figure remained silent, and although his face – was there a face in there? – was obscured by shadow, it felt as though  he was staring at Nick.  Nick carried on regardless:  “You will show me shadows of things which have not yet happened, but will happen in the time to come, is that not so, Spirit?”  

It said nothing, but slowly raised its shrouded arm.  Nick’s eyes widened at this gesture, and took a step back from what he feared would be a skeletal hand.  Then noticed at the end of the sleeve was an ordinary hand.  It was holding  a torch, an electric torch.

“You’ll need this!” said a voice from within the hood, which the Guide swiftly pulled down.    “It’s dark!” he said cheerfully, by way of explanation,  “Parky, isn’t it?”

 Nick remained frozen, mouth open, waiting for normal transmission in his brain to resume.  Wasn’t this the bit with open graves and silent terror?  The Guide raised his eyebrows and then shook the torch in Nick’s direction in an encouraging manner. Nick took it  and closed his mouth.

“Long night for you!” said the Guide.  Was he a Cockney?   “Mind you I would have thought you’d be used to that, tearing off ‘round the world in one night.  ‘Ere, how come your reindeer don’t catch fire?”

Nick was staring at the torch as if he hadn’t seen one before and then stared at the man instead.  The head protruding from the dramatic cloak was, in its own way, also dramatic – plentiful black hair and a sharp black beard, with deep, olive  skin and angular features.  The Guide continued, with the chatter of one of life’s individuals who cannot bear a vacuum:

“You’re thinking ‘how can an imposing figure like him  talk like that?” aren’t you?

And why he doesn’t comb his hair, thought Nick.

“ ‘And why doesn’t he comb his hair?’ Well the thing is, I don’t normally look or sound like this. Technically speaking, I don’t look like anything.  I just thought I’d try it out for the night.  It’s been a while, you know.  So I thought: powerful Dickensian exterior, but underneath Merlin-esque imposing looks, with a hint of John the Baptist, plus barrow-boy nuances.  I don’t get to do this kind of thing often these days, so you gotta grab it while its going.  Four for the price of one.”

Nick was not sure whether to feel terrified or just slightly short-changed.  “Where am I?”

“Graveyard.”

He settled for terrified.

“Right, me old ducka,” continued the Guide.

“Mucca.”

“Mucca, that’s what I said. This way.”  He marched off between two of the yews. Nick trailed  behind.  On the other side of the trees was, perhaps unsurprisingly, a lot more darkness.  Clouds had drifted across the moon and all he could see was the vague outlines of shapes, angular shapes.  Gravestones.  He felt depressed.  Jiggling was  now off the menu.  They walked for a few minutes and then the Guide stopped and said, “This’ll do!”

“For what?” Nick’s mouth was dry and he was desperately wishing he was somewhere else.  He did not deserve this.  He knew he didn’t.  He had brought immense pleasure to billions.  His life was about giving, not taking, about lights and smiles and music.  How could this be happening?

“Turn your torch on then.”

The torch became the weight of granite and the switch touch of poison. He didn’t want to switch it on. “If I turn it on, where should I point it?”

“Errr....over here, this one will do.”

Nick turned to the darker blackness of the headstone and pointed the torch.  He did not want to see or feel what was inscribed there.  As slow as death, he moved the switch and the light flicked on.  He stared in horror at the words before him.  The words took a moment to sink in, and then:  “Never heard of him.”

“No?” the Guide peered at the name on the grave, “Oh well.  Try this one.”

Nick swung the beam onto another stone. “Nor him.”

“You’re not very good at this are you, me old miner?”

“China.”

“China.”

“Are you sure you’ve done this before?”

“Course I have!  I’m what you might call a Professional Messenger.”  He drifted off in  the dark a little, “Here’s a likely looking one, I mean look at the size of it!”

Nick followed and played the torch over the impressive tomb.  It was four times the size of the other stones, towering above the two men, with ornate carving down either side, and the words were not carved but inlaid with what looked to Nick like titanium.  He swallowed hard and started to read.

“The whole earth mourns the loss of one we can never replace,” tears started to form in Nick’s eyes, “the strength and security he brought through generations was matched only by his endless generosity – oh that’s nice,” sobbed Nick, “very nice – and we rest our hearts in the knowledge that his sons – my sons!  They take over? It’s what I wanted! – will continue the great work and tradition.  To his detractors – ha! All those whiners about the T-MOC -  we say: you can’t prove anything!  He was nowhere near the betting shop the night Big Jimmy went down...”  Nick’s mental equipment was under a lot of strain, and the air was starting to feel very close and stuffy, but one thing was clear:

“ This isn’t my grave.”

“I never said it was.”

“Well which one is mine?”

“None of them.  You have a timeless existence, you won’t die. Not in the normal sense anyway.”

“Then why am I here?!  All this forbodingness and darkness and graves.  What’s it all about?  If my grave isn’t here, whose graves are they?”

“Everyone else’s.”

“Everyone else? Which particular everyone else? Like who?”

“Like...everyone else’s.”

Nick paused as a number of interpretations suggested themselves.  A particularly dark one was jumping up and down at the back of the queue, but he tried to ignore it.

“Yes, but when you say everyone, specifically who are we talking about.”

The Guide fixed his dark eyes on Nick’s.  “We’re talking about Everyone.  This is Christmas Future.  This is the Last Christmas.”

The air, which had been feeling uncomfortable and odd for a while, suddenly convulsed and a shattering concussion of lightning and thunder hurt Nick’s ears and eyes.  But the shock of sound was nothing compared to the shock of sight.  The percussive flash illuminated ranks of gravestones around him in every direction, for as far as he could see.  In the next flash he looked beyond to the walls of the cemetery: there were no walls, what he had taken for the boundary was yet more lines of graves proceeding far beyond the point where any sensible cemetery would have stopped.  Again the sky arced with electricity, and illuminated the retreating hills that climbed to the distant horizon.  The furthest hill, miles away, was not smoothed in outline by the distance, but serrated with a thousand tiny, angular,  full-stops.  Nick knew in his heart that every tiny point was a grave, and that every hill would be the same. The cemetery was gargantuan; it felt like it was the world.  The lightning ceased, the sound rumbled away and silence returned, a silence Nick now realised that had, until the storm, remained completely unbroken by anything except for himself, the Guide and the wind.

“Everyone?” asked Nick, weakly.

“Everyone.”

“But why bring me here, why show me myself alone in the world?  Did I cause this somehow?”

“No.  This is death at work, this is the curse of the Fall.  I remember it well.”

Something stirred in Nick’s memory, something from the story, the question to the third ghost.  “But is this what certainly will be, or only what might be?”

“Err....both.”  Nick’s slightly reviving hope went limp again.  What did that mean?

“So why bring me here?  What can I do about it? I can’t stop people from dying, I’m Father Christmas – I deliver toy trains and jiggle my belly.”

“But you are powerful. And you are fast. And everyone listens for you. And you won’t die. And, if you don’t mind me saying, you seem to have remembered the what and have forgotten the why.”

“But that won’t make people live forever!  That can’t overturn death.  I can’t bring eternity to a finite universe.  I’m not eternal – I may not die but I had a start, a beginning...sometime...it’s hazy now. But I do know that I’m limited.  I can’t open up a hole into forever and let it flow into the world.  Who can do that?”

“If there’s one thing tonight should do, it’s highlight your memory issues.”

“If someone could do that,” Nick carried on regardless, becoming more agitated, “then they would have done it long ago.”

“Someone can, and someone did.  Think, Nick!  Think!”

There was light from above again, but not from a storm this time.  The sky was clearing, and as the stars appeared once more over the silent world, one star shone more brightly, so brightly that the edges of the graves shone, and he could see the Guide’s features once more. His eyes reflected the light of the great star, at which he gazed with beautiful smile.  “Well, I haven’t seen you in a long time...”

Nick gazed at it too.  “There’s something about it, something long ago...”

“Come on Nick!  Strike a light and push your granny down the stairs, mush!”

“What?!”

“Nick, what are you for?”

“What am I for?”  The star was bothering him. Its light seemed to be inside his eyes, though he was looking at the Guide.  “I...don’t remember...what I’m for...”

“Oh Nick, look, think.”

Nick turned back to look at the star, and in that moment there was a great rustle by his side, and when he looked back to the Guide the cloak was just completing its empty journey to the ground.   In his confusion Nick was aware only of a movement, of a great wing gently brushing his face as it moved upwards. Nick span, but saw nothing, and then looking upwards there was for a moment a lesser light in the sky, approaching the bright star.  It entered the halo of light around the greater brightness, and was gone.  And then the star was gone too. All was darkness.

...part 4

Part 4

It was his room and it now had a ceiling across which reflections chased.  He lay back down, watching his huge belly push the blankets up and down with each  breath.  Gradually his breathing slowed, which is more than could be said for his tumbling thoughts.   The time before.  That was something he had not thought much about in an age.  In fact he did not think about it at all, not on purpose.  Sometimes it was there, at the edge of his mind, but he pushed it away before it could take hold and interfere with memories and uncomfortable questions.  After all, what did it have to do with the way things are now?  

As he thought this, he felt its presence far too close, like a howling dark vacuum beyond the edge of his life, from which he had been moving away for as long as he could remember.  He was vaguely aware that somehow, sometime, he had mentally reset the Beginning to much later than it really had been.  But he’d had to, hadn’t he?  And things worked so well now: why go back and start fiddling with things?  As he pushed the disturbance away, he was  gratified to see the mound before him rising and falling more gently, more slowly, as his vital signs returned to normal.  Just in time for the clock to start striking twelve again...

His eyes snapped to the ceiling but the ceiling stayed exactly where it was.  He waited.  On the periphery of his hearing there was a sound: voices, distant, tinny, jumbling together, and lots of them.  Like a crowd of people stuck in a huge bucket at the bottom of a well.  But getting louder, nearer.  He sat up and looked around.  The sound seemed to be coming from the walk-in cupboard opposite the end of his bed, which had so recently been a forest floor.  At this moment it was reassuringly a vertical cupboard.

 He heaved himself out of bed again, took his coat from where it had replaced itself on the bedpost (no blood stains), in case there was more snow involved, and walked to the doors.  For a moment he leaned close and listened to the sounds from within; definitely voices, lots of people, echoing round.  Grasping the handles, he took a deep breath and swung the doors open.  Trees again.  In the cupboard.  And smoke, emerging in puffs from somewhere towards the back.  He touched the trees.

“ Plastic?  Plastic...Christmas trees, in my cupboard?” he asked  himself.

“This way!”  A man’s voice, definitely British of some sort this time.   It came from further in, roughly from where more puffs of smoke were emerging.  There was only one way to get this over with, so Nick pushed through the scratchy trees, following the ascending clouds which, as he walked through their remains, he recognised  as pipe-smoke.  There was light ahead and then he finally stepped out from the fringe of the ‘woods’.

It was a shopping centre, a big one.  The floor was polished honey-coloured stone tile, the ceiling arched above them to a glass roof dimly showing the onset of a dusky winter’s evening.  Some way ahead was a balcony overlooking the floors below, and receding into the distance down either side of this floor were the flattened conformity of commercial units. A large number of people wandered through the brightly lit hall, entering and leaving shops, brushing past vast and gaudy decorations, savouring the tinny music and responding with the tinny echoes of their myriad voices.  Over the sound-system, tinny Greg Lake sang that he believed in Father Christmas, with tinny cynicism.

“The present, I assume,” said Nick, having taken all this in.

“Oh yes”, said the voice,  “welcome to Christmas present.”  The tone of his voice suggested “and you can keep it,” with a hint of satisfaction, as though the mere sight of the Mall was the final point in a conclusive argument.

Nick turned back to see who his Guide was.  Standing against the rows of Christmas trees ranged before “Discount Christmas”, was someone who did not look much like he should be in Christmas Present at all. More like Christmas-Austerity-After-the-War.  He was dressed in a well-worn tweed jacket and unremarkable, formal trousers that had seen better days, with what looked like stout walking boots of the old kind, protruding from the bottoms.   A chunky tie bound the broad wings of his shirt collar.  All of this combined with his thinning hair and ruddy cheeks, made him look like a farmer out for a Sunday walk, and he certainly seemed out of place here.  He replaced the pipe for a moment and smoke swirled about his face, his twinkling, lively eyes shining through. Nick continued nervously,

“Right.  No sheep...or anything?”

“No, no, no.  No, Christmas here is nice and clean.  Clad in synthetic marble, treated with antiseptic, climate controlled, lights beautifully sequenced.  No.  You would never find blood or lambs here.”

“You sound disappointed. I can tell you it’s no bad thing after what I just saw.”

“No...”, said the Guide, the word laden with meaning though Nick was not sure of what.

They wandered towards the balcony, people weaving around them, even though they had no idea there were two extra figures crossing the walkway.

“Yes, no bad thing,” the Guide continued, “but do you ever think, especially with your many years of observing humanity, that people tend to swing the pendulum from one extreme to another?  Never seem to settle somewhere in the middle.”

“The pendulum can swing as far as it likes from killing cute farm animals in a wood, as far as I’m concerned.”

“A fair point.  But is this real?  Doesn’t it feel like a dose of ether?  Like one big anaesthetic?  To keep you from feeling...something?”

“Yes.  The wrong end of a big pointy knife somewhere painful.”

 They reached the balcony and leaned on the rail, the Guide replacing the pipe and puffing thoughtfully.  Presumably smoking was banned in here, but who would know?   

“And all that running about,” continued Nick, “trying to find something to keep back the darkness – that’s all gone.”

They watched the chaotic rush below:  the multicoloured frenzy of hundreds, possibly thousands,  of people heaving through the walkways; people clutching lists, tensely ticking off successes and underlining lamented failures; the hollow looks of disappointment because the last available one was sold an hour ago; the joyous pride and warmth of heart registering on the faces of those making their way to the car-park, arms overflowing with victory; the occasional elderly person, sat on one of the few, begrudgingly provided benches, watching sadly, alone, only here because it was warm and not their empty home where they knew, eventually, they must return.  Every one of the thronging mass desperate for that one bright thing to carry out into the darkness of the winter night.

“Maybe,” said the Guide and continued to puff, illegally.

“Oh look!” Nick’s heart warmed instantly. “It’s me!  I love it when they do that.”

The balcony formed a large oval, and framed the scene below where the Mall owners had sacrificed some shop-space to erect a large Christmas scene.  Plastic snow banks led up to Santa’s igloo. A large mechanical Polar Bear, swung its head back and forth, and here and there a penguin wearing a woolly hat moved its beak so as to sing a tinny rendition of “Winter Wonderland”.

“Gosh,” said the Guide bleakly, “singing penguins.”

“Yes...it can get annoying after a few years of that outside your window.  At least you can switch these off.  But look, you can’t beat that!”

The top of the igloo was missing so that watchers from above could see what the gaggles of queuing children could not:  Santa, in his igloo-grotto, sat upon his throne, smiling benignly at the child on-a-stool-not-on-Santa’s-knee-because-this-Complex-has-a-child-protection-policy.

“You can’t get much better than that!” sighed Nick.

“It doesn’t bother you that he’s pretending to be you?”

“No!  Goodness no!” and he gave a little jiggle to show how jolly he felt about it. “No, I’m only available one night a year while the kids are all unconscious.  This is a way for them to experience just a little of the uniqueness of the T-MOC.”

“Ah. And what would that be precisely?”

“Well, they meet their favourite person in the world, and receive a wonderful gift, and go away with joy in their hearts.”

“Yes, I suppose they do.  Except, it isn’t really you.  And the gift isn’t a gift,”  he pointed the stem of his pipe towards the ice-encrusted sign stuck jauntily in one of the snow banks.  It read Only £7.50. “And we both know they will have forgotten what the present is by the time they reach the window of Toys-R-Us.”

Nick turned in annoyance to the Guide, who remained passively observing the conveyor belt of children being helped, by elves, in at the front and out at the back of the Grotto.  Nick was used to this kind of fanatical criticism, but it had been a long night and on this night especially, he expected better treatment.

“Look, nothing is perfect in this world.  Why deny these kids a few minutes of happiness, a few minutes with someone who is like me, carrying me in his heart, bearing The T-MOC to these kids. It’ll wear off, I know that.  I’m not naive.  But out there is darkness and a real world they have to grow up in which is going to be hard, so they need something...more than life, ordinary life, offers them.”

“But that is precisely my point.  Do you not think they need something more?  And you are, if you will forgive me for saying so, a supernatural entity, someone who can be everywhere in a night, who has access to power of which mortals only dream.  Do you not think you could do something more than permit these children to settle for a fleeting moment of happiness? Something more for this world of tears?”

“No!  That’s not me!  I get out once a year, shed some happiness, and go home again.  It’s what I’m for.  Not global transformation.”

“I wasn’t necessarily thinking global, not initially anyway.  I was thinking more, one heart at a time.”

“I warm hearts for a few hours, I don’t change them.”

“No, but a man of your considerable ability, do you not think you could use your influence to point them somewhere they can?  Wouldn’t that be more significant than  two minutes in a plastic igloo with a fellow in a stick-on beard who’s desperate for the day to end so he can go home?”

“It’s Christmas Eve!  Why even say things like that!”

“Actually, it’s not Christmas Eve.  This is three weeks ago – there’s another twenty one days of this uniqueness, here under the constellations of  LEDs.  Three more weeks of fruitless searching for something.”

“What is your problem?!  So what if the uniqueness stretches into November, or October?”

“Ah, always Christmas but never winter.”

“And what’s wrong with a bloke in a stick-on beard bringing this uniqueness?”

“Nothing at all.  You misunderstand me if you think I’m against all of this.  I’m just suggesting that it may need something more.  And it all depends on what you mean by unique.”  He pointed again with his pipe to a shop front on their floor, just a few yards to their left.   A hastily written sign proclaimed He’s Here!  There in the window itself, surrounded by polystyrene snow, was another Santa.

It produced a slightly odd sensation to see two of himself at close quarters but Nick did not regard this as a big issue, not really. “He’s just helping to spread it a little more.”

“As is he,” the pipe waved in the opposite direction.  Another Santa had pushed a handcart of toys before another large store.  He fiddled somewhere in cart’s depths and started a tinny recording of ‘Winter Wonderland’.

In the lane snow is glistening sang Frank. A veil of tears for the virgin birth, sang Greg, whose turn on the loop-track had come round again

“And that one,” the Guide waved another trail of smoke. A major department store, whose first floor emerged a little way further down, had now positioned elves at the door that were pretending to play plastic trumpets as Santa emerged triumphantly from within.  His beard was somewhat better than the man with the handcart, who turned his music up in the hope no one would notice.

Later on we’ll conspire, as we dream by the fire , sang Frank.  “‘Till I woke with a yawn in the first light of dawn, and I saw him and through his disguise,” intoned Greg.

Nick was starting to feel dizzy and the competing noises of canned music and kids shouting, and the startling increase in clones of himself was making his legs feel weak.  And then a voice cut through:

“Oi!! I don’t recognise you!  You’re not licensed!”  Another Santa had emerged from  ‘Discount Christmas’ behind him.  He looked very much like a Discount Santa and had the attitude to go with it.  In the process of shouting he had also attracted the attention of the other Santas who were now making their ways toward him.

“They can see me!” cried Nick.  He turned in desperation to the Guide, but he had vanished and nothing remained of him except one small puff of smoke that drifted slowly up towards the glass-encased night sky.  A hand came down heavily on his shoulder – Discount Santa had reached him, and the others soon arrived.  A new jumble of angry not very-jolly voices joined the Mall.
“You’re not approved...where’s your licence?  Come here, on our patches...”  

A small crowd gathered to view proceedings, unaware that they were watching the Genuine Article being attacked by doppelgangers.  It made a nice change from watching competing parents punching each other outside the toy-shop.

The militant Santas swarmed around Nick and all he could see was red cloth and white fur swirling before him, their voices jumbling with Greg’s, The Christmas you get you deserve.  They were on top of him and he could feel himself falling as he struggled against the crimson tide and then finally succeeded in throwing off his blankets onto the bedroom floor.

He was up and sat on the edge of his bed in a moment.  All he could hear was the sound of his own blood pumping at speed.  Nothing else stirred in the darkness.

...part 3

They walked to the front of the crowd forming at the foot of the mound.  Nick relaxed again, and looked up at the entrance of the stable, at the two joyful, grey-haired men in long robes who stood at the doorway.  The people around the mound were murmuring reverently, too quietly to pick up much of what they were saying, but one word he heard several times and he was pretty sure he knew what it was: Yule.  One of the robed men beckoned and, slowly, some of those with animals climbed the gentle rise to the entrance of the building using their staffs for support.  Ha!  Getting the shepherds into position.  Nick elbowed his guide gently in the ribs, which seemed rather physical for a ghost, “You had me going there!  Well I might as well enjoy it, nothing like the T-MOC! When do the dancing puddings come on?”


The first man and sheep reached the threshold where the robed men stood.  They both looked up and smiled and, as they raised their arms to the sky, the crowd knelt.


“Devout lot,” said Nick, impressed.


“Oh yes,” the Guide replied, though he did not look as pleased about this as Nick had expected.  Nick turned back o the Stable in time to see the festival begin.  What he did not see was where the priests had been concealing  their long, jagged knives, which they then used to simultaneously sweep along the sheep’s throat from each side.  Nick took a step back, eyes wide, “Whoa!  What kind of nativity is this?!”  Blood fountained from the struggling sheep, as the men made their best effort to catch the hot redness in a wooden bowl.


“I told you,” said the Guide, “this is not a nativity.”


“But you said this is Christmas past!  I never saw a Christmas like this!”

 Further comment was cut short as one of the men produced a small bunch of twigs, dipped them in the bowl of blood which was held over the twitching, prone form of the ex-sheep, and sprinkled it over the temple doorway, and then flicked large drops out across the crowd.  Nick was too shocked to react and some landed on him.  It barely showed on the red of his suit, but the white fur trimming was dashed now with crimson.  Nick looked down with horror, and started back through the crowd to the fringe of the woods.  His Guide followed looking at the ground, his expression unreadable.  In the safety of the tree, Nick turned on him.

“You are supposed to be the ghost – OK not-ghost,” he corrected himself as  he saw the Guide’s expression, “of Christmas past.  That’s not Christmas past.  That’s not Christmas ever!  What are you doing?”

“You know, for the man who is supposed to be the epitome of the Season, you seem to know as much about Christmas as a donkey knows about playing the harp.  Do you not remember this time?  How it was?  Have you forgotten, has it faded?  Have you hidden it?  As the new decades slide into your soul, do the old ones gradually fall out the back?”

The Guide walked into the woods, to a place where the light shone brightly through the branches creating a pool of white on the frosted ground.  It was clean and pure, and the sounds of thrashing animals became distant

Nick continued, “My memory isn’t what it was, but I know a Christmas tableau when I see one, and that wasn’t it!  Sheep and shepherds, yes;  ‘Away in a Manger’, yes;  but not hey-ho and blood all over the shop!”

The Guide seemed to wince at the mention of ‘Away in a Manger’, but this swiftly passed and he gave Nick the explanation he needed. “This is Christmas past, Christmas before Christmas.  Christmas hasn’t happened yet.  It is yet to come.  But here, in the forests and villages of so called ‘civilisation’ they have their own ideas.  This is Mid-winter, Yule, or whatever you want to call it.  This is how it was in so many places before.”

“Oh, oh..yes.  Well....each to his own.  I mean, they look happy enough...” He was staring at the ground, and was completely unable to square his desperate attempt at Ttolerance with the trauma of the bloody scene.”

“You have forgotten, “ the Guide was nodding with certainty. “Oh, they looked cheerful.  Around the edges.  If you didn’t look at their eyes.  This isn’t your twenty-first century cleaned-up minority alternative religion.  They looked like that because they are desperate – for victory, for the snow to recede, for good harvests, for the evil that lurks in the woods  to be held back, for the dead to leave them alone.  So they bring what little they have and give it to the gods (and you should see what they bring in some places when they run out of sheep). Oh they may have a drink and a feast today.  But when the sun sinks, and the great darkness descends, and they remember winter has yet three months to blow, they will hope that the voices and the eyes in the mist will leave them be.”

“Well, that’s not nice.  But why show me this?  This is millennia ago – Christmas has come!  This...fear of the darkness, this...running about trying to keep out the emptiness, it’s gone!  Christmas has come, I’ve come,” he said proudly, patting his belly and giving a little extra jiggle bonus.

“Oh yes, you’ve come.  But what have you done?  Even in my time, there was fear – fear of the dark, fear of the goblins and elves in the woods – “

“Hey, some of my best friends are elves!”

“Not your green confections.  These were the shadows that waited in the woods.  And Christmas came.  And we didn’t need to throw things at the darkness, because it was defeated.  We didn’t hide in our man-made light to make us think there was hope,  because the Light had come.  We did not build walls of material goods to keep out the voices and the eyes in the mist. The Light had come and filled everything.”

“Oh I see!  I see where this is going,” Nick’s ire was rising at this snub, “You had to pull Back-to-the-Future to get in the usual cheap shot?  There are people all over the world who will wake on Christmas morning with joy, because it’s the best day of the year, because everything is light and warmth, because they will have nice stuff, because for twelve hours it will be OK.  Is that so bad?  Do you really begrudge them that?”

“No.  No, I don’t.”  He took a step nearer and looked him squarely in the eyes, “But is that all? Was it really the lights and the red clothes and the pretty parcels that stopped all that?” He pointed again to the wooden building in the distance.  “Is that all you can do?  Is that really all you’re for?”

“All? All?!  I bust my gut travelling the entire world in twenty four hours, and you ask is that all?!”

Nick turned in order to march off in righteous indignation.  Sadly he had not noticed how he had backed up close to the tree.  There was an almighty thwack and he reeled backwards and hit the ground hard and sat up in bed.

He was panting.  He was sweating.

...part 2

He looked at the door.  Nothing.  The window:  also nothing.  No noise.  For the umpteenth time that night, he restarted normal breathing, lay back and looked at the ceiling.  Which wasn’t there.  What was there was dawn, breaking over a forest of pine trees gently dusted with frost.  His world shifted ninety degrees, as his prone position became  vertical, and the bedroom wall, with its walk-in cupboard, became now the horizontal axis of the world. Mind you, wall and cupboard were no longer visible beneath him, but rather a lot of nature instead.  The bed covers were gone, and he found himself stepping, not into the cupboard, but onto frosty ground.  He turned, but was already pretty sure of what was behind him:  more trees, no bed.  He gave a sigh.  It wasn’t as though he were a stranger to strange things – anyone with a reindeer which can hit 25,000mph without combusting  has seen a thing or two.  But this was magic out of his control, not at his beck and call which was the way he preferred life.  Plus it was on this most inconvenient of nights.  Most disturbingly, if this followed the traditional route, he was about to be confronted with something from his-

“Past!  Correct!” said an accented and abrupt  voice.

Twenty paces away at the edge of the nearest rank of pines stood a man swathed in dark robes with a floppy black beret affair on his head.  He was a little on the plump side, with slightly hooded eyes and an unshaven and...well, a bit of a knobbly face really, if Nick were honest.

“Are you...” Nick began, took a deep breath to cover his unease, and started again. “Are you the, ahem, Ghost of Christmas Past?”

“I don’t do ghosts.” Abrupt and forceful seemed to be his style.  “But this is the past.  Come on.” He turned on his heal and walked into the woods.  His accent was middle Europe somewhere, Germanic perhaps.

“Where are we?  When are we?”

“I have no idea what it’s called now.  It was Saxony once. Or later, rather.  Things change.”

They were crunching through the woods at a good pace, over frosted needles, the light staying bright and crisp even through the layers of branches.

“It’s very...Chrismassy here,” said Nick, hopefully.

“This is Christmas past.  You’re here to see the True Meaning Of Christmas, what it is when all the fripperies are removed”.

“Oh! Like I haven’t heard that before.”  Cynicism and the weariness of the season got the better of any fear. “That’s all I ever hear, why bring me here to hear it again?”  Frosty fronds were poking his face and leaving sparkles in his beard, none of which helped his mood.  “Hang on, it’s not one of those confounded school nativities, is it?  Done outdoors for realism and atmosphere?”  He waved his hands and wriggled his fingers dramatically as he stomped along, warming to his theme. “Same thing every year – half an hour of Christmas-is-nearly-here, dancing snowflakes, crackers singing about presents and damn stupid reindeer falling down chimneys.  Then ‘Ooh, but what’s the T-MOC?’ And wham! Suddenly we’ve time-travelled to Bethlehem via some idiot magic fairy, and “Ooh a kid in a trough, now we know the T-MOC! It’s not about presents after all! Now we can gorge ourselves on cholesterol and empty the industrial output of the Far East into our lounges with a clear conscience!” And then back as quick as a flash to the dancing puddings.”

The man stopped, turned and fixed Nick with piercing eyes.  “I like nativities.” This was delivered as a statement of fact universally to be accepted, not a preference. “And no we are not visiting a nativity”.  He turned and continued walking.  Nick followed, more subdued. He knew he could obliterate this man with one well-aimed belly-flop, but instinct warned this would be a Bad Idea.  

Soon his attention was distracted from his mixed feelings of righteous indignation and impending doom. Through the trees he caught sight of some kind of building.  As they drew nearer it became apparent that a clearing had been formed in the woods, and on a small rise, a wooden structure had been erected.  Rough hewn wood formed a building big enough to provide stabling for maybe six of his own reindeer.  As they neared the fringe of the clearing it became apparent no reindeer were involved, but there were animals.

A crowd of people were forming – ordinary peasants by the look, but here and there someone grander. That is to say their robes were not so ragged, and the glint of gold adornment could be seen.  Nick was unsure on specifics, but he knew this Past was a long way back; he couldn’t remember seeing people quite like this, although his memory was patchier these days.   None of the people seemed to be able to see Nick or the Guide, but this was hardly unexpected under the circumstances.  A handful were bringing animals with them, a few sheep and goats, a pig over there, and maybe that was a donkey coming through the trees.  A wooden building, people gathering with a look of happiness (well some of them), sheep?  Nick knew what this was;  apparently spectral Guides were not compelled to be entirely honest.

Santa and the ghosts...(part 1)

It's that time of year when I drag out my short story I wrote a few years back...it's a monument to the fact that I had a go!  (I haven't re-read or edited it - can't face it)



Nick's Carol

Nick sat on the edge of the bed, in the semi-darkness of his own special room.  The cushioning movement of the mattress was inviting but the creaking and sagging under his considerable weight was alarming, so he sat very still for a moment and just sighed.  This time of year he slept alone, and in all honesty on this particular night he was quite relieved at not having to talk.  He just wanted sleep, now and badly, and he could only afford a few hours before starting work again.

It was tricky pushing off first one boot and then the other using only his feet, but there was no way he was going to risk bending down, for both his sake and the bed’s.  He had hung his coat on the bedpost, but was there any point in taking anything else off?  Not really: he would hardly be asleep long enough, and he’d be wearing these trousers for the next forty eight hours anyway, so a few hours in bed would make little difference.  They’d be fine, he thought, as he pivoted round, raised his legs onto the bed and flopped backwards.  The bed made a sound suggesting that it had been holding its breath at the sight of the approaching mass but was now having its last breath squeezed out,  to the accompaniment of someone cutting taut piano wires.  Nick lay fearfully still for a moment, but the bed, the floor, gravity and Newton, all seemed to be holding a truce, so he relaxed, staring dreamily at the shifting shadows above him.  Outside, the moonlight was sparkling on the ice, and inside the ceiling looked like a monochrome reflection of a babbling stream.  He watched the shimmering light, moving his eyes across the ceiling and down the wall, until the strobing disappeared behind the dark hillock of his own belly.  He gave it a quick jiggle, just to make sure he could, and shut his eyes.  A thirty-six hour shift in the workshop had taken its toll and although his eyes ached with the strain, and the noise of the nightshift just reached the edges of his perception, he was soon asleep.

And then he was awake. Suddenly, and he didn’t know why.  A noise, somewhere, or a song or maybe a word.  Something...

There it was again!  But no song; instead a shuffling, a dragging, and with it a tinkling, a clanking, somewhere in the building.  It was drawing closer, along the corridor towards his door.  No one should be out there at this time of night, not on this night!  Nick’s sleepy mind was back online.  The proximity of the worrying sounds suggested that whatever produced them was now merely a few steps from his room. Where was security?  The Gate-Elves knew no one was allowed anywhere near this corridor, let alone his door.  But it transpired that the door was irrelevant, as first a hand, followed by its arm, a torso, and then the whole figure of a man passed through as though nothing physical stood in its way.  Given the relative transparency of the form now stood before him, eyes shining in the night, it appeared to be the man and not the door that had a loose relationship with physics.  Nick’s hand, which had been on its way towards the panic-button under his pillow (there had been time when ‘fans’ had come a little too close for comfort) slipped away as, at a subconscious level, he realised two things:

First, Security was probably useless in dealing with a man that can walk through walls.

Second, he recognised the figure before him.

By now, Nick was upright on the edge of his tortured bed, staring at the unnerving form before him – through whom he could still just make out the panelling of the door.  Although the details were necessarily hazy, he registered the long, brown, worn robe; the sandals protruding from its ragged hem; the balding dome, with incongruously well-kempt hair over the ears, flowing seamlessly into a long, grey, beard. Hanging low on his chest was a simple cross of grey metal, and in his left hand a small, bulging hessian sack, the source of the tinkling and clanking.

“Oh, really?” said Nick, fear momentarily suppressed by recognition and the long-practised habit of keeping the upper hand when dealing with trouble.  “The bag and everything?”

The spectre remained impassive, but his mouth opened and instead of the dry, dusty and distant voice Nick had been expecting (he’d read plenty of books, he knew how this ought to go) there came the same deep voice which Nick remembered and had comforted so many in years gone by.  Tonight, not so much.

“Are you really in any position to criticise the exploitation of the symbolism of legend?”

Uh oh, he could see which way this was going.

“Don’t start on me. We went through this over 1500 years ago.  It’s not going to change anything tonight.”

“It doesn’t even trouble you that I have returned from Beyond to visit you?”

“I live at the North Pole without freezing, in an invisible citadel, surrounded by magic elves and singing penguins.  Exactly how disoriented were you expecting me to be?”  This was all essentially true, but also masked a deep sense of unease that threatened to spill over into anxiety that something fundamental to his life was coming under threat.  “It’s hardly original, is it Nicholas?”, he continued in a tone that was meant to sound relaxed yet picky, “And where’s your bit of cloth to keep your jaw shut?  You missed it.”

“The trappings of death are unnecessary where I have come from.”  For a moment the gauzy shape held a rich glow, then faded.  This troubled Nick more than the previous few minutes.

Nicholas continued, “I know that the way things have developed were often beyond your control. But you have such resources, such power, such opportunity – and what do you do with it?  You’ve lost your way. You have hidden...you have forgotten.”

“Oh I see, we’re going to have some lessons in the T-MOC, like I haven’t heard them a thousand times before.”

“I’m not sure you would recognise the T-MOC anymore, not if it bit you.” Nicholas, paused and held Nick in his gaze, as if he were considering whether what he had to say next was too painful to verbalise.  “You will be visited tonight by three Guides...”

“You have got to be joking – “

“Three visitors, and they will deal with you.  Watch for the first at midnight.”

Nick opened his eyes.  He was lying in bed.  The ceiling was flickering as usual.  He looked at the door – no one there.   He realised he’d been holding his breath for some time, exhaled quietly, and started breathing regularly; the bed joined in on percussion.   Why tonight of all nights, on Eve’s Eve, would he dream of someone he hadn’t seen in centuries, dead and buried a hundred generations ago?  Well, when he said ‘dead’...technically anyway, to all intents and purposes.  He was part of the past, not the present, in more ways than one.  He had no right turning up in his dreams, not tonight.  Him, with his dogmatic commitment to ethereal hopes, to living forever, now fifteen hundred years six-feet under, dead, dead as a doorna-  no, don’t say that.  And the bag of gold, what was that about?   No academic believed the coins and chimney stuff.

Overwork and too much adrenalin.  Penguin coffee.  That was the problem.

A bell began to strike midnight.  Nick went rigid, eyes staring at the ceiling.  It was not simply that the dream gave the bell an ominous sound - he didn’t own a clock.  Clocks were a pretty vague concept in a place where the only regular event was annual;  the nearest was a quarter of a mile away, and it didn’t have a bell. It had a big flower (in the centre of a dial surrounded by animated carvings of gnomes) the petals of which unfolded once a month, when a clockwork fairy popped out and said “PoopPoop! It’s February!” or whatever.  There was no other clock.

But the bell of the clock that wasn’t there continued to toll.  Nine...ten...eleven...twelve...

Keller: Balanced Ministry

How should the gospel shape ministry methodology?

The fact that we're saved by grace should keep us from being too culturally narrow. Legalism and insecurity, thinking we have to earn our salvation, leads people to take hold of cultural forms and turn them into principles. We really want to be assured we're right with God so we add rules that aren't in the Bible so we can do something to assure ourselves that our salvation is secure. The gospel frees us from that.

At the same time, just as we are saved by faith alone, we're saved for holiness. There's a new desire to please God. You don't just live any way you want. That balance between legalism and antinomianism has implications for how we do ministry.

It should lead us to be both flexible in the way in which ministry is shaped—not rigid, not too traditional—but at the same time still very afraid of offending God, of grieving and dishonoring the One who saved us.

It leads us to be more careful, to honor the past. It prevents us from being either too institutional or anti-institutional. It keeps us from being too contextualized or under-contextualized.

The gospel brings a wonderful balance.

Leadership

Gravitas

It isn't that these students looked bad. They were sharp, pleasant twenty-somethings who I knew had done well in their coursework. They could probably even play the guitar. There really wasn't a thing wrong with them-and that was what was so striking. As far as I could see, they were only lacking one thing, but one thing that is pretty much a necessity for a pastor. The old pastors used to call gravitas. You just cannot be ordained without it.

Gravitas is a condition of the soul that has developed enough spiritual mass to attract other souls. It makes the soul appear old, but gravitas has nothing to do with age. It has everything to do with scars that have healed well, failures that have been redeemed, sins that have been forgiven, and thorns that have settled into the flesh.

It all expands the soul until it is larger than the body that contains it, large enough to hold the truth of the Word of God. And, like gravity, it pulls others not to the pastor but to the holy work that has occurred within the pastor's soul.

This gravity isn't a commodity that can be purchased with seminary tuition payments. It certainly isn't found in a library. A weighty soul has to be developed the hard way.

M Craig Barnes

Postman: the real reason for trivialising religion?

...What we are talking about here is not blasphemy but trivialization, against which there can be no laws.  In Technopoly, the trivialisation of significant cultural symbols is largely conducted by commercial enterprise.  this occurs not because corporate America is greedy but because the adoration of technology pre-empts the adoration of anything else.  Symbls that draw their meaning from traditional religious or national contexts must therefore be made impotent as quickly as possible - that is drained of sacred or even serious connotations.  The elevation of one god requires the demotion of another...

Technopoly, p165

Peterson: prevenience, neurotic cussedness etc

Prevenience is the conviction that God has been working diligently, redemptively and strategically before I appeared on the scene, before I was aware there was something here for me to do. 

The cure of souls is not indifferent to the realities of human lethargy, naive about congregational recalcitrance, or neurotic cussedness.  But there is a disciplined, determined conviction that everything (and I mean, precisely, everything) we do is a response to God's first work, his initiating act.  We learn to be attentive to the divine action already in process so that the previously unheard word of God is heard, the previously unattended act of God is noticed. 

Running the church questions are:  What do we do?  How can we get things going again?

Cure of souls questions are: What has God been doing here?  What traces of grace can I discern in this life?  What history of love can I read in this group?  What has God set in motion that I can get in on?

We misunderstand and distort reality when we take ourselves as the starting point and our present situation as the basic datum.  Instead of confronting the bogged down human condition and taking charge of changing it with no time wasted, we look at the divine prevenience and discern how we can get in on it at the right time, in the right way.

The cure of souls takes time to read the minutes of the previous meeting, a meeting more likely than not at which I was not present...

The Contemplative Pastor p60-61

Peterson: The Reformation

The Reformers recovered the biblical doctrine of justification by faith.  The gospel proclamation, fresh and personal and direct, through the centuries had become an immense, lumbering, Rube Goldberg mechanism: elaborately contrived ecclesiastical gears, pulleys, and levers rumbled and creaked importantly but ended up doing something completely trivial.  The Reformers recovered the personal passion and clarity so evident in Scripture.  the rediscovery of firsthand involvement resulted in freshness and vigour.

The Contemplative Pastor, p56

Quick-reveiw: Out of the Silent Planet

Sadly far less well-known than Narnia, CS Lewis' SF trilogy was one of earliest forays I had into both SF and Christian literature.  And when I say 'Christian Literature' I don't mean a conventional story where someone gets converted; I mean it's part of the weave - if you took the theological thinking out, the story would collapse.

Drawing on his knowledge of medieval cosmology, scientific understanding of the time (late 1930s) and his ability to reimagine Christian thinking in an alien context (as with Narnia) he spins an exciting, page turning and very thought provoking novel.

I enjoyed reading it for the first time in, probably, 30years.  And as he writes elsewhere, on second reading it isn't simply the story you notice but also (in reference to Last of the Mohicans) this time you get the feathers, the details.

Peterson: apocalyptic patience

The grass is not greener in the next committee, or parish, or state.  All that matters is worshiping God, dealing with evil, and developing faithfulness.  Apocalypse ignites a sense of urgency, but it quenches shortcuts and hurry, for the times are in God's hands. Providence, not the newspaper, accounts for the times in which we live.
Impatience, the refusal to endure, is to pastoral character what strip mining is to the land - a greedy rape of what can be gotten at the least cost, and then abandonment in search of another place to loot.  Something like fidelity comes out of apocalyptic: fidelity to God, to be sure, but also to people, to parish - to place. 

The Contemplative Pastor, p48-49

Peterson: pastor poet

The poet is the person who uses words not primarily to convey information but to make a relationship, shape beauty,  form  truth.  this is St John's work; it is every pastor's work...
The pastor's task is to shape the praying imagination before the gospel. This revelation of God is a fact so large and full of energy, and our capacities to believe and love and hope are so atrophied, that we need help to hear the words in their power, see the images in their energy...
Communication is a good, but a minor good.  Knowing about things never has seemed to improve our lives a great deal.  The pastoral task with words is not communication but communion - the healing and restoration and creation of love relationships between God and His fighting children and our fought-over creation...

The Contemplative Pastor, pp44-46

Sophisticated people

I well remember a conversation I had with an elder in our church when I was a young pastor. "It's rather frightening," I said, "to preach to a congregation of people who are much better educated and far smarter than I am. Sometimes I feel intimidated." His response has remained with me throughout the years.
"You'll soon discover, Gordon, that many of these people can help put a man on the moon and build the most sophisticated computers, but they struggle to love their spouses, relate to their kids, and build solid friendships. Smart? Yes. But wise? Not really. Spiritually discerning? Don't bet on it! That's where you can make a contribution. Teach us to be wise and godly. Smartness isn't getting us that far."

Gordon MacDonald

Leadership

Peterson: garden makeovers & apocalyptic prayer

Most pastoral work actually erodes prayer.  The reason is obvious: most people are not comfortable with God in their lives... 

And so pastors, instead of practicing prayer, which brings people into the presence of God, enter into the practice of messiah: we will do the work of God for God, fix people up, tell them what to do, conspire in finding the shortcuts by which the long journey to the cross can be bypassed since we all have such crowded schedules right now.  People love us when we do this... 

If we have even an inkling of apocalypse, it will be impossible to act like the jaunty foreman of a home-improvement work crew that is going to re-landscape moral (or immoral) garden spots. We must pray. The world has been invaded by God, and it is with God we have to do.

The Contemplative Pastor, p43

Peterson: apocalyptic pastor & obese religion

Early church Christians believed that the resurrection of Jesus inaugurated a new age.  they were in fact - but against appearances - living in God's kingdom, a kingdom of healing and truth and grace.  This was all actually present but hidden from unbelieving eyes and inaudible to unbelieving ears.
Pastors are persons in the church communities who repeat and insist on these kingdom realities against the world appearances, and who therefore must be apocalyptic.  In its dictionary meaning "apocalypse" is simply "revelation", the uncovering of what was covered up so that we can see what is there.  But the context in which the word arrives adds colour to the black-and-white dictionary meaning, colours bright and dark - crimson urgency and purple crisis.  Under the crisis of persecution and under the urgency of an imminent end, reality is revealed suddenly for what it is.  We had supposed our lives were so utterly ordinary. Sin-habits dull our free faith into stodgy moralism and respectable boredom; then crisis rips the veneer of cliche off everyday routines and reveals the side-by-side splendours and terrors of heaven and hell.  Apocalypse is arson - it secretly sets a fire in the imagination that boils the fat out of an obese culture-religion and renders a clear gospel love, a pure gospel hope, a purged gospel faith.

The Contemplative Pastor, p40-41

Packer: peace

...God's peace brings us two things: both power to face and live with our own badness and failings, and also contentment under 'the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune' (for which the Christian name is  God's wise providence)...the basic ingredient, without which the rest cannot be, is pardon and acceptance into covenant - that is adoption into God's family.  But where this change of relationship with God - out of hostility into friendship  out of wrath into the fullness of love, out of condemnation into justification - is not set forth, the gospel of peace is not truly set forth either.
The peace of God is first and foremost peace with God;  it is the state of affairs in which God, instead of being against us, is for us.  No account of God's peace that does not start here can do other than mislead....
The peace of God, then, primarily and fundamentally, is a new relationship of forgiveness and acceptance - and the source from which it flows is propitiation.  When Jesus came to His disciples in the upper room on his resurrection day, he said, "Peace be with you"; and when he had said that, "he showed unto them his hands and side" (John 20:18-20 Phillips)...

In My Place Condemned He Stood, p48-49

Thomas Adams: watching the enemy

Let us watch Satan, for he watches us. There is no corporeal enemy, but a man naturally fears; the spiritual foe appears less terrible, because we are less sensible of him, Great conquerors have been chronicled for victories and extension of their kingdoms; Satan is beyond them all. Saul has slain his thousands, and David his ten thousands; but Satan his millions. He that fights with an enemy, whom nothing but blood can pacify, will give him no advantage.

Thomas Adams, A Golden Puritan Treasury, p75

Dying to listen

For me, what most resists dying is the idea from leadership seminars to scrutinize the time we spend with people and do a sort of cost/benefit analysis: Will this person become a key leader, giver, or server? In leading, time is an investment. But in pastoring, time spent with a person is a gift, a grace, a broken bottle of perfume. To listen without filtering is to give our best time and energy to this person, right now, knowing full well nothing may come of it for my organizational agenda, and that's okay.

Leadership

So great a salvation

This has sprung from me reading Hebrews this morning- I haven't looked at the Greek nor checked any commentaries...just wanted to give a disclaimer.

Hebrews 2:1-4  
The writer warns against drifting from the faith and, it seems to me, gives at least two motives for not doing so.

The first is: things will go very bad if we do.  If, under the OT period, departing from God's revelation was punished, just think how things will work out now if you abandon the gospel.   Straight forward, and perhaps a common way of speaking to congregations about the dangers of drifting from Jesus.

But this idea works because it is lesser-to-greater (in one sense): if that's what happened before then how shall we escape with so great a salvation as has been revealed in Christ?  Which means, it seems to me, that the other way we help prevent drift is:

Secondly, by showing the greatness of salvation.  He wants us to concentrate on the details of this salvation (v1) which is great (v3).  We warn of the dangers of drift BUT we also make it harder to permit drift by magnifying the greatness of salvation - it's wonder, splendour, mind-boggling dimensions and costs, and the Man at the centre of it.

We try to prevent drift by telling people not to let go, don't orbit too far from the Star. And by increasing the gravitational pull of that star, so that its sheer attraction makes it a very hard thing to leave behind.

Dyafink?

Peterson: prioritising the central = time for everything else

I can't listen if I'm busy.  When my schedule is crowded, I am not free to listen:  I have to keep my next appointment;  I have to get to the next meeting.  But if I provide margins to my day there is ample time to listen.

"Yes, but how?"  The appointment calendar is the tool with which to get unbusy...The authority once given to Scripture is now ascribed to the appointment calendar.  The dogma of verbal inerrancy has not been discarded, only re-assigned.

The trick of course is to get to the calendar before anyone else does. I mark out times for prayer, for reading, for leisure, for the silence and solitude out of which creative work - prayer, preaching, and listening - can issue.

I find that whenever these central needs are met, there is plenty of time for everything else.  And there is much else, for the pastor is not, and should not be, exempt from the hundred menial tasks or the administrative humdrum.  These are also pastoral ministry.  but the only way I have found to accomplish them without resentment and anxiety is first to take care of the priorities.  If there is not time to nurture these essentials, I become a busy pastor, harassed and anxious, a whining and compulsive Martha instead of a contemplative Mary.

The Contemplative Pastor, p22-23

Community against easy stragglers

Is that struggle something each of us has to do for himself or herself?

No. Satan is best fought within the community of the church. When I've preached on the shield of faith I was told shields in those days were beveled. They were linked together, so that one warrior was next to the other. It was like a wall going into battle. In the same way, I believe that it is in community where there is deliverance. It's in the context of community that we can find help, and where there is intercessory prayer, we fight together. So it isn't just you and the devil. It's you and other believers against the devil.

The other day I was watching the Animal Channel, and I saw something that really struck me. There was a huge herd of buffalo and about six or seven lions. And the lions were plotting to have a buffalo for dinner. Well, they found one buffalo that had strayed from the herd, maybe a couple hundred yards, and they went after that buffalo. So how do a few lions stop a buffalo? Well, as it happened, one lion grabbed the heel of one back leg of the buffalo, the other on the other back leg. And they just hung on until that buffalo slowed to a stop. Then one lion hopped on his back, another went after his stomach. And from there on you can just visualize what happened. It was gruesome.

But here's what shocked me. There were perhaps 100 buffalo, if not more, all standing and staring and watching this go down. I don't know if buffalo can think. But if buffalo could think, you know what they're thinking? Boy, am I ever glad that's not happening to me! Imagine if this herd had decided we're not going to let those lions get away with anything, and together they ran thundering in that direction with their horns down. Those lions would have scurried away immediately. The lions would never have a buffalo for lunch, if the buffalo stuck together.

There's a lesson for us there. First of all, Satan separates somebody from the herd. He makes them mad at the church and Christians, or angry because of some other reason. Once they're away from the herd, he intensifies his attack. And then when we hear of the spiritual/demonic struggles that a person faces we say to ourselves, Boy, am I ever glad that's not me! What we have to do as a congregation is to hang together. We have to close in and say we will not allow the devil to do this to our people.

Erwin Lutzer, Leadership

Postman: the statistician who drowned

We must keep in mind the story of the statistician who drowned while trying to wade across a river with an average depth of four feet.  That is to say, in a culture that reveres statistics, we can never be sure what kind of nonsense will lodge in people's heads.

Technopoly, p132

Prayer: detachment from the insatiable self

I know it takes time to develop a life of prayer: set-aside, disciplined, deliberate time.  It isn't accomplished on the run, nor by offering prayers from a pulpit or at a hospital bedside.  I know I can't be busy and pray at the same time.  I can be active and pray;  I can work and pray;  but I cannot be busy and pray.  I cannot be inwardly rushed, distracted or dispersed.  In order to pray I have to be paying more attention to God than to what people are saying to me; to God than my clamouring ego.  usually for this to happen there must be a deliberate withdrawal from the noise of the day, a disciplined detachment from the insatiable self.

The Contemplative Pastor, p20.

Peterson: first-hand prayer

Peterson asks what would I do as a pastor if no one else asked me to do anything?  His first answer is:

I can be a pastor who prays. I want to cultivate my relationship with God.  I want all of my life to be intimate - sometimes consciously, sometimes unconsciously - with the God who made, directs, and loves me.  And I want to waken others to the nature and centrality of prayer.  I want to be a person in this community to whom others can come without hesitation, without wondering if it is appropriate, to get direction in prayer and praying.  I want to do the original work of being in deepening conversation with the God who reveals Himself to me and addresses me by name.  I don't want to dispense mimeographed hand-outs that describe God's business;  I want to witness out of my own experience. I don't want to live as a parasite on the first-hand spiritual life of others, but to be personally involved with all my senses, tasting and seeing that the Lord is good.

The Contemplative Pastor, p19-20