I Need Some Strong Arms
Some strong arms and present hands. I’m wanting to be comforted within proximity, in that special human song called Presence. All thoughts and thinking aside.. the cacophony inside my head longs for the silence of skin engaged with skin, pulses meeting underneath soft cocoons of nerves. Reminding me (and us) of the belonging and healing that comes within arms and hands and bodies. (more…)
I was at a community gathering this last week. It’s in my nature to sit in the front rows of these things, most of the time. However, this time, drawn in by the presence of those I was sitting with and enjoying their conversation; I found myself in the back rows.
You can tell a lot about people and what’s going on in their lives by how they position themselves to the world around them.
Front Row is a mindset that gets close to the action. There’s focus (or should I say, a lack of distraction), energy, a certain wholeheartedness. These are people who embody the ‘Do All The Things’ philosophy of life. They are also, just like in rugby, the ones who take a lot of the hard hits, out there exposed in the frontlines of life. They tend to be the people who get to say things like “Did you see that?!”, because they did from right up close and personal. You’re a witness to the action, so damn close you’re a participant.
Back Row is a different experience. From the back row, you’re less of a witness and more of an observer. The further back you are, the less you feel the need to throw your energy into it. From back there, you’re aware of something coming your way but you still have time to make a move. Dodging bullets is easy from the back row. Sneaking out before the closing act, moving sideways into multiple distractions. It gets busy and noisier in the back row; with so many different voices instead of just one loud voice. Sometimes you’re in the back row without a choice. Life demands you observe for a while.
Then there’s the Middle, stuck in the middle. You notice how people straggle into the front row but they stream into the middle? The safe zone. Too far back to be pulled out by the standup comedian, far enough forward that you’re close enough to the action to ‘count’, whatever that means.
Now that’s just the real life, sitting in the front row vs the back row of your favourite artist playing live or a movie you didn’t want to see in the first place. A town hall meeting to decide on something critical or joining a jury for a two week trial.
The metaphor is simple. You choose where you sit in relation to life. If all of life is a stage and we are merely players on it, a good number of just playing the part of the audience. Even then, we could be better at it.
Are we front row to the suffering of our friends and loved ones? Front row to their triumphs and victories? Do we let others close enough to be front row cheerleaders for us?
Are we back row bandits, or worse – middle row spreaders in light of our many social afflictions? Sitting in the back row; immediately I felt the affect on me. Less expectation, less participation. But I also felt further away – my voice less easily distinguished among the others.
Are you a front row or back row thinker? Proactively engaging in philosophical debate and pushing the boundaries? Finding better answers than what has gone before or sitting back and letting someone else do all the work?
There are an awful lot of people dying of boredom and distraction in the middle-back. It almost doesn’t matter what you get front row on (well, ok, a few things you really, really should avoid) but most of us need to find something that’s worth getting close up on again. Shelving that distraction and the wonder of the back.
‘I have never regretted a front row seat to life. In fact, I find the further back I sit, the less beauty I am able to see, the poorer I am.’
You talk to your young people (the way you used to talk to me).
I spent this last Easter weekend at a Baptist Eastercamp, with 5000 young people, leaders and volunteers. It was a bit of a returning for me. About 6 years ago, you would have found me behind the scenes and on stage, running the programme and writing all sorts of creative experiences for young people.
At writing school, they try and train you to make your point up front, then produce your evidence summarised with a convincing conclusion. They also tell you not to begin sentences with the word ‘but’.
But today, I need to give you the supporting evidence before I make my point, so you have the opportunity to understand why it matters. So you have the chance to know why I can say it, must say it and say it with conviction of honesty, love and hope.
6 years ago, we parted ways from each other, that Eastercamp and I. About 6 months after that, I moved away from my formal connection with the Baptist church. So going back to that place where I have poured sweat, blood and plenty of tears – well, it was a big deal. It was like returning home and returning to the scene of the crime all at once. They were tumultuous days then, they still echo now in the peaceful times.
Here are some things you might want to know:
But this is my open letter to the Baptist church in New Zealand. As one of your born and bred. You trained me, you were my home for many years. I fought you and you fought me, and now I’m happy not to fight about it. But I will fight for you.
Here’s what I love about you, Baptists.
Here’s what I love about the Baptist church in New Zealand, and why when people ask, I still describe my way of following Jesus as being bred in the Baptist tradition. Which, for me, means ‘freedom of conscience’, the ability and invitation for every believer to participate in governance, theological practice and missional engagement. The tradition I grew up in was full of pioneers, ground-breakers, boundary pushers, people who engaged at the edges of society and innovated.
Baptists, please learn to love your boundary pushers again. Don’t fool yourselves that ‘inclusive’ doesn’t also apply to a line of political correctness that easily draws us away from provocative truth. Those who push the boundaries are diving into new territories of what truth looks like in today’s emerging reality.
Learn to love your provocateurs again. Don’t settle for talking to young people about sexuality in a way that gives them all the responsibility and none of the tools. I was horrified when my amazing friends, who worked so hard on the programming, had to swap out a movie choice. Somehow, no one complained about showing The Hunger Games (where children are forced to slaughter each other in a dystopian future) but it was unacceptable to show Captain Phillips, a movie that highlights the plight of Somali pirates in a cycle of economic oppression and slavery.
I’m not arguing the merits of the film, I’m pointing out that you can’t embrace some justice issues (freedom from sex trafficking) and deny the reality of others; like gay marriage, refugee policies or economic reform. You can’t choose the sexy stuff and deny the messier truths. There’s no film rating on the real world.
Eastercamp is just a shopfront window. It’s an insight into who the Baptist church is and will continue to evolve too. Everything you’re doing is good, even great – but you need to keep following through. If you’re going to continue to encourage young people to become agents for justice and social change – please realize you’ll be part of the society they’ll end up changing. You better damn well ensure there’s room for them at the table.
You see, you can read Malcolm Gladwell’s ‘Outliers’, but it won’t make you a change agent. Reading it so you can talk about it, doesn’t make it real. Please don’t settle for the soundbite of philosophy that sounds good but doesn’t mean anything without hard yards and uncomfortable moments. It’s not enough to talk about social justice issues alongside the Gospel. We have to somehow engage with what an expression of these things will look like in our own lives. It requires some provocation to get there because real transformation of people, culture, churches and mission will always be more than a slogan that sounds good and an easy-fix of donation money to a cause.
The Baptist church, nor any church community, cannot thrive on Facebook likes, fundraising campaigns and easily digestible, dualistic snacks of the Gospel alongside justice issues. For more on this train of thought, please read the 2010 commentary by Malcolm Gladwell for The New Yorker, ‘Small Change‘. He argues that social media requires less motivation of those who participate.
Prophets and commentators
Societies need the prophets and commentators who cry out from the edges. Please be careful that you don’t lose too many of us. The way we think, often pushing and arguing with you will not ever be comfortable – but if you lose us all, you’ll begin to realize something’s missing. It’s part of your identity – to wrestle, to provoke, to engage.
The first Baptist church I went to as a young person was started by a group of rebellious 20-somethings. Don’t lose what it means to our history, to embrace the diversity and spectrum of who we have always been. Fight against the gravitation towards middle ground. Treasure the diversity at each end of your theological spectrum. That’s what has powered your ability to be accessible to such a broad range of New Zealanders and to wrestle with complexity in your missionality and governance.
In the last 20 years, the NZ Baptist church has bred and housed some amazing theologians, community leaders, creatives and philosophers. What I noticed last weekend was how they were missing from the shopfront. I saw lots of people excelling in their work – but they used to have prophets and provocateurs around them and beside them. They were the ones I called on, wrestled with and relied upon. Where have they gone?
Well, I know where I am. I still have the phone numbers, blogs, email addresses of many of those provocateurs. So I know where some of them are. It’s not our lack of fortitude that sees us finding other homes and places of respite, nor a lack of desire to engage. It’s that you don’t love us in the same way you used to.
It’s ok, I know (I’m) we’re hard work. We step on toes and speak out all the time. But it’s our role – we provoke, in order to give new ways of being and thinking a way to emerge.
You talk to your young people (the way you used to talk to me) and inspire them to take a stand. To be bold, inspired, challenging. But be careful what you wish for, because if you want us: the outliers, the goalpost changers, the innovators and boundary pushers – the ones our Baptist history was written on – you’ve got to follow through with what you’re asking us to be. We won’t be satisfied with ‘inclusive’ or politically correct, or safe. We’ll want to shape and change you, as well as the rest of the world.
You’re calling a generation of kids to be something you don’t know how to love yet. I know you want to love us, you’ve got to love us; sometimes we’re more Baptist than you.
I’m staring at a powerline, watching a hundred birds in silhouette sit and preen, sing and patiently watch the sun go down. The scene is both hopeful and full of gravity. Hope changes as you get older. In the beginning, possibilities and opportunities seem strung out in front of us, like birds on a powerline, too many to count.
As the years pass; some birds fly away while others stick around, some we pass by and others still, seem to fade from view. But there are always birds on a wire, somewhere in front of us, keeping our eye on what’s to come. Always look up, I say – speaking to the hopeful wanderer within me.
Trouble is, the more birds that fly away, the more important the ones on the wire become. In fact, those little birds start to carry a mighty weight. The weight of expectation, anticipation and trepidation. Even now, looking out my window, I can see the powerlines starting to sag under the pressure. Who ever guessed that hope could be so heavy?
The burden of my hope, once spread on the shoulders of a hundred sparrows, cripples the few now left to carry them.
The longer we live seeking out the opportunities that will fulfill our hopes, the more important each one becomes on the journey of contentment. Being hopeful isn’t just about blind belief – hope is stirred within us once there is a possibility in sight, once there’s a bird on the wire.
Hope isn’t always what you need though. Sometimes hope is a red herring and a distraction. Hope spends all it’s time asking for you to cast your eyes up, to watch and wait, expecting and looking for something to pass into the shape of your dreams on the horizon.
I’ve watched a few birds fly off recently – projects that didn’t work out the way I dreamed, relationships that haven’t turned out to be smooth sailing, things that used to excite me that just don’t have the same energy to them anymore.
Long hoped for places of belonging have become reminders of my alienation, my distinctness and, at times, my isolation. Hope doesn’t have much for me right now – but being grounded does.
Being grounded and looking at the world through eye-level for a while, might just save me.
Be careful where you promote hopefulness as a cure-all to the disease of loneliness and sorrow, to the mother recently miscarried or the lover recently betrayed. Some birds need to fall before they can learn to fly. Carrying on is what we need to learn.
Carrying on for a moment can be enough. One foot after the other on the ground. Taking our eyes off those little birds and grasping what’s in our hands. Right now, in the present.
You can cast your eyes up to the sky some other day, but first maybe you need not to drown in the longing or the waiting. There is a time to mourn and a time to dance. When you’re drowning, it’s not the time to be distracted by thoughts of the birds overhead. It’s time to swim to the other side.
Where there is no love, put love – and you will find love.
– John of the Cross
In other words, where you hope to find love you should surely plant it. Not a romantic, dreamy kind of love. A substantial, broader kind of love that feeds your roots, calms your soul, brightens your life. (more…)