Philip's Tunnel to Nowhere 3

Over our last couple of Alabama Christian Freaks get-togethers, we’d developed a consensus that we needed to move forward with a different kind of event — “we” meaning S, J and me, since the our last hanging-out occasion came during a violent storm so it was just their family and me.

This time, again, circumstances conspired to keep several key participants away, so I really wasn’t sure how things would turn out. But as it happened, S and J brought their family and a couple of friends, and we had a nice little rag-tag band to do outreach. We looked around some of the standard squatting places around Birmingham, all of them under overpasses. Maybe it’s just that my previous homeless outreach was in Boston and Cambridge with plenty of other nooks to hide in, but the Magic City sure seems to have a ton of overpasses. In the first place we looked, there were a ton of clothes spread all over the place, a couple of mattresses, and a Bible, but nobody was there! We left several pairs of socks anyway. At our second stop we met a nice gentleman with his tent set up next to a friend’s; apparently the friend had started living at the first of a new series of veterans’ shelters. At our third stop we met a couple who told us about their visit to church that morning — the woman seemed very self-conscious about the clothes she’d worn there. This kicked off a discussion about how God doesn’t care about our appearance when we come to worship him. Then one of our group realized that he’d grown up with the guy’s brother.

One cool aspect was that S and Js kids accompanied us when we got out of the car — first the older two hanging around the guy with the tent, then all three including the 2-year-old at the next stop. However, after that stop, the kids were understandably pretty worn out and hard to deal with, so we needed to wind down, and we still had some 20 to 30 pairs of socks. Fortunately we happened upon a church downtown (one that clearly bills itself as multiracial; I would recognize it if I saw the sign again) that had some sort of food and clothing distribution set up in front of their building. Yet despite all the clothes being handed out, everyone still rushed over to get a pair of socks!

So we were able to get rid of all but maybe a half-dozen of the 50 or so pairs we started with. It seems we met a very real need that was underserved by existing outreach efforts. Much credit to S for proposing this idea!

• Yesterday (Sunday) I met with some other folks from Alabama Christian Freaks to distribute socks in Birmingham.
• This was my last activity “leading” ACF, so it’s a natural time to reflect on the lessons learned from this little project, and whether that group has any future beyond a Facebook group.
• On the way back I took an out-of-the-way route through Oneonta, a county seat located roughly between Huntsville and Birmingham.

Stay tuned for wonderfully insightful posts on each of these topics, which I’ll link above as I finish them.

I feel like my life is traveling in circles. I feel like my brain is traveling in circles. It’s not an unpleasant journey, and in some very fundamental ways I’m blessed. But it sure is confusing. God has some purpose in all of it, but he hasn’t really shared it with me, and I’m sure that must be for the best.

Here are some things whirling around in my brain:

• Almost finished with the Chap Clark / Steve Rabey book When Kids Hurt. It’s inspiring and overwhelming. I want so badly to be part of pushing forward their vision, but by the week I have less and less idea how. I’m in their conclusions chapter, and just read the item on youth ministry. They seem to think youth min. people need to overhaul the model. But my old plan of becoming a professor of youth ministry appears to be dead on arrival precisely because I don’t fit the old model (or at least, because my resume doesn’t scream success under the old model). So a professor of youth min. writes a book advocating change, but institutions are apparently resistant to change. Like any other field, I guess.
• I’m looking forward to going to see a few bands I’ve never heard before play at a church in Madison on January 29. The only reason I even know about this show is because they were flyering for it at that benefit show I went to in Athens last Saturday. Still, fun and anticipation.
• I just checked out a new coffee shop in NE Huntsville. Nice atmosphere (except for the smoke alarm that needed a battery), relatively inexpensive coffee, less crowded than Olde Towne. I’d go back, but I’d take headphones and my own mug.
• Heard a patron there, apparently a veteran teacher, say something like, “People don’t realize that teaching is a calling.” Indeed.
• On the way home, heard an NPR story about outrage over the money college presidents make. Maybe higher ed is a great field to be in after all. Michigan, here I come!
• After that, heard an NPR story about a struggling school in Pasadena hoping for California to win some sort of “sweepstakes” grant. So maybe secondary education / guidance counseling isn’t a good field to be in.

Yeah, lots to think about.

How is it that North Alabama can support 500 kids at a Christian hardcore/metal show in Athens, but apparently not half a dozen creative or subcultural-leaning Christian adults? Or do I just not know where to look? Seems to me the Christian church is more conventional and strait-laced here than the population of North Alabama as a whole!

January must be the fourth or fifth month straight that I’ve had a few days of a cold that’s just making me feel lousy. It worries me a bit, although I think it’s partially that my worries are impeding my defenses and partially that the lack of a conventional work schedule is giving me an excuse to sleep 12 hours a day and sleepwalk the other 12.

But I’m trying to use my down-time wisely, and I think God has a way of forcing me to slow down “doing” so that I can focus on growing spiritually. I wouldn’t want to claim that any of the following is special revelation that others should take as a word from the Lord, and certainly none of the following insights supersede Scripture or anything else one might hear from wise teachers. But I do think the following is some insight that I’ve distilled from various passages, sermons, etc. lately.

1. For me dying to self means setting aside my need for accomplishments. I won’t lie. I crave plaudits from others. I don’t spend my life running around after wealth or material toys (as seemed to be a big theme in today’s sermon at Southwood). I run around worrying that everyone considers me a terrible failure and a bum. I blogged about this form of idolatry a couple of months ago, but it’s going to take a long time for me to get away from it.
2. I can’t compare God’s work in my life to God’s work in others. This is a huge problem for me. I have sort of a recurring theme in my conversations with my mom. She’ll say something like, “God’s just got to bring you to the point of total surrender,” and then I’ll flip out in frustration. But it occurs to me, my frustration isn’t because I really think I’ve reached the point of total surrender. My frustration is because I don’t think anyone has reached the point of total surrender, but other people don’t seem to require this same “education.” I resent that they’re allowed to crave approval as much as I do, but still have productive, ego-stroking careers. Actually I just put together that this is the reason for my resentment, as I was typing #1. Well, my subconscious knew why I was resentful, but I just now reached enough awareness to type it up as a list item here.

   I don’t get upset that Mom thinks I’m not at the point of total surrender. I get upset that Mom thinks that God needs to teach me this lesson more than he needs to teach other people. But what occurs to me now — God forbid, maybe it’s my ego speaking, but I think there’s some truth here — is that the mission for my life somehow requires me to internalize this truth more deeply than most people have. At least that’s what I’m going to believe to stay sane.

3. Tremendous freedom comes when we don’t think anyone’s judging us for our accomplishments. I know that, “God helps those who helps themselves,” isn’t in the Bible, but the associated mindset has always been in the back of my mind as I thought about the topic of life-goals and accomplishments. Today I’ve been trying to imagine what it would be like to live an entire life literally not caring about measuring up or not measuring up. It’s really amazing. I think in the back of my mind, I’d always feared that I’d use true freedom as an excuse to just lie in bed all day, maybe getting up to check sports scores or engage in some stupid battle on Wikipedia or something. But I don’t really want to do that. I still want to do something significant to help people, even without the negative reinforcement of imagining God shaking his head saying, “What a disappointment!” to motivate me. Since that negative reinforcement is neither necessary nor helpful to motivate me, I should discard it.
4. Boasting in Christ is healthy, and isn’t the same thing as boasting about following Christ. I think I’ve mentioned how disgusting I find it when Christians make faith into a work and start to act superior just by the basis of their faith in Christ. Perhaps this revulsion has blinded me to just what Paul is saying in 2 Cor. 10 when he talks of “boast[ing] in the Lord.” Honestly, I’ve always thought this passage was a borderline ego trip. Maybe so, but I’m coming to see that boasting in the Lord means filling that craving for accomplishment with wonder about how God is working worldwide. If I’m really taking pride in God, so to speak, then it really doesn’t matter whether my role in that work is large or indetectable. I can die tonight and still feel proud to be a part of redemptive history, because God is still doing huge works.
5. I need to get back to where I was in 2000-01, praying for Harvard Square. Sometimes ignorance forces you to rely on God. Before I had any experience hanging out in the Pit, back when I thought that I was in constant danger of gutter punks beating me down for saying the wrong thing, I spent about six months praying. I thought my prayer was so outlandish that I couldn’t imagine how God could possibly want me to reach out in that context. I certainly had no clue that a few faithful brothers and sisters from another Cambridge church already had a method to reach out, or that I’d be joining with them in a few months, let alone co-leading the effort within a couple of years Reading Clark and Rabey makes the need of youth today seem overwhelming. All I know to do is pray. I need to get back to where I was in 2000 and 2001.
6. God can be trusted in the afterlife. I’m not going to develop this right now, but it’s something I’ve struggled with, and I received an insight today that made me feel a lot better. If this bothers you too, I hope you’ll get a similar insight.
7. Bitterness and other emotional pain is analogous to physical pain. This could be number 2A, because my friend Laura suggested it in an IM conversation after I shared item 2. I certainly don’t want to justify my own bitterness and other unholy attitudes, but they do serve a purpose. They make me aware something’s wrong, and given my tendency toward pensive reflection, it seems likely I won’t really rest until I’ve worked the proximate cause up to consciousness, like a splinter. Anyway, that helped me a lot with item 2 above, and it helps to think that these triggers are triggers for a reason, to make me aware of the underlying issue.

That’s all I got for now. Hope this is helpful to posterity.

My career goal* is to research and teach about youth culture, emphasizing youth subcultures, with the goal of informing the church to help it communicate the Gospel.

This is just a slight rewording of what I’ve been pondering lately, but this isn’t Jeopardy so it probably makes sense to change it from a question to a statement.

*Tentatively.

I’m always looking for thought-provoking mp3s to listen to while I walk for exercise. Lately I’ve been listening to Smart City by Carol Coletta, which i gather is an NPR program about issues of urban development. This particular episode happens to feature Alan Webber, co-founder of Fast Company.

Webber says a lot of stuff worth listening to. One point that’s really grabbed my attention is the importance of iconic projects in moving from a plan to implementation. Since I’m someone who’s much better at devising plans than implementing them, this should be a topic tailor-made for my needs.

Around 20:00 Webber describes an experience working for the mayor of Portland, OR, in the 1970s. As he describes it, PDX back then was nothing like the annoyingly hip place it is now. A key step in its development of a pedestrian friendly, transit-compatible downtown was their success in luring the Seattle department store Nordstrom, which apparently even then had enough cachet to lead the revitalization of downtown.

The point is that one such “iconic project” can be critical to promoting a broader change effort. It’s really something I need to hear. Mind you, on a visceral level I think I’ve realized this before — for example, back in Massachusetts when we talked about getting a place for the Pit kids to hang out, this had the potential to be an iconic project. In more mundane aspects of my daily life, something like getting to where I can beat a live poker game soundly enough to make a modest living at it before I start investing effort to learn how to beat more advanced but potentially more profitable online games would be an example.

I will try to think a bit more about other places I can apply this lesson in my life. Back to the whole underground outreach topic, I think that’s one area where I can apply this principle. I just need to get involved in something local and helping bring it to some modest plateau perceived as “success” (which of course only really comes by the Holy Spirit).

This will be a quick one.

I noticed that they handled visual art much differently at Cornerstone than in 2004. As I recall back then it was just some gallery in a tent somewhere. I didn’t go there, despite what I’d imagine is a strong interest in vis. art relative to the population of Cornerstone attendees, and despite the fact that I thought it was really cool that they had visual art. So i can imagine that whatever it was, it was probably underutilized by the attendees.

In 2009 the visual art was set up as a public art display, not unlike art one might see in a subway station or similar in an urban context. It was set up in the approach to “the bridge,” so i passed through there a fair bit going from the Asylum to the Midway area. Apparently the theme was the parables of Jesus. It wasn’t clear to me whether all the artists were JPUSAns or not. Unfortunately i didn’t catch either of the guided tours at 10 am Thursday and Friday — they conflicted with seminars I wanted to catch. But at least I got to look at the art for a couple of minutes on my way down the walkway.

In general I think this sort of public art display is a very positive development, and I wonder how many years they’ve been doing this. (Perhaps I’m just not remembering something like this in 2004, but I don’t think so — a couple of people agreed that visual art didn’t use to be displayed this way at C’stone.) My only suggestion for perhaps broadening the visual art offerings would be to have another public space for works not directly related to the theme. For example, the woman at JPUSA named Doria (?) who’s done some really great paintings featured on the Asylum shirts probably wouldn’t get her work in something like this, unless she happened to do work on the theme of the year. I really like her work and would like to see it get attention outside the Asylum, so I’d like to see some display of non-thematic works.

That’s sort of a quibble, though, that shouldn’t detract from the bigger point: JPUSA has done a good job of getting visual art out there where the Cornerstone masses can see and interact with it.

Now i turn to one of the biggest disappointments about the Cornerstone Festival 2009. I should state up front, though, that it’s entirely possible that the disappointment stems from some misunderstanding on my part of the nature of the three different prayer tents, of some idealized memories of 2003 and 2004, or what have you. If i’m basing my remarks on misinformation, please feel free to set me straight.

In 2003 or 2004, as in 2009, i had a few moments at the festival where i felt pretty alone, and others where i just felt overwhelmed at the sheer number of different possibilities that God was bringing to mind. At those moments i recalled that there was a prayer tent and ducked in to seek prayer, and to seek to pray for others (which often helps with feelings of loneliness, interestingly). In the past, my recollection was that some individual met me within moments of entering the prayer tent and offered to pray. My recollection is that there was a prayer team of several individuals there, each praying for different visitors and other needs. Maybe most importantly, the general impression received was that prayer was absolutely fundamental to the festival. I’m not naive, and i realize that 98% of the attendees were mostly there for the music and perhaps didn’t really care that so much prayer was going on, but in any case it seemed very prominent for those open to perceiving it.

My impression in 2009 was very different. Both on Friday and Saturday afternoons i dropped by the “24/7 Prayer Tent.” On Friday it was empty, except for a couple awaiting a seminar or something. (They happened to be people i wanted to talk to, in a wonderful divinely-appointed coincidence, but that’s entirely beside the point.) On Saturday, one woman was praying and talking about a confidential matter in the back, and asked me to wait in the front with another couple who looked like they were seeking out prayer. I got to talk and pray with them for the half-hour or so i was there. The confidential conversation went on for that duration in the back, so i never got to talk to an actual volunteer of the tent.

Someone mentioned that the Boiler Room prayer folks were packing up by Saturday afternoon — Saturday was rainy and muddy, and a lot of folks got on the road early — and that seems to be at the root of the issue. Apparently the Boiler Room ministry of Kansas City was the impetus behind this particular tent, and i can hardly fault them for wanting to get back home in a timely manner or for being limited to the volunteer availability of their own folks. But that prompts some other questions. Was there another JPUSA-staffed tent with more prayer volunteers? Why was the Boiler Room tent called “24/7″ if it couldn’t be staffed consistently?

I certainly don’t say this to put down what the Boiler Room people were doing, because any prayer is great and i know they’re the paragon of a prayer-centered organization. But i got the impression that somehow, prayer was less foundational to CS09 than it used to be. If that impression is accurate, it’s a tragedy and it alarms me for the future of the fest.

It would not be wrong to halt all the music at the fest for 3 hours one night and gather at all the stages to pray. Really.

I have a few other of these vignette things to write — I thought about making the next one about the way they handled visual art at CS’09 versus five years ago — but instead here i’ll offer a short observation more at the core of what the fest meant/means to me.

On the trip up i was quite cynical, because of my experience with two previous Cornerstones as well as other similar underground ministry-related events (such as Source’s Urban Ministry Training in 2001). I always get very inspired by these things and come back on a spiritual high where i feel inspired to go do great things. Usually the “great things” is rooted in some form of networking, because i really do believe that half the battle is for underground Christians to know where each other are, especially when it comes to other people in their immediate geographical vicinity. So i come home thinking, “There really out to be some way for those of us around here to connect! I’ll try to reach out to some people and see if there’s any interest in getting together.” And i come home full of other ideas, too.

And then the spiritual high dies down. For one thing, i generally find that others aren’t nearly as interested in connecting or keeping in touch as i am. Well, that’s fine — perhaps i’m just unusually sensitive to the value of such connections or something. But i also find myself losing that fervor very quickly, because i’m just not i patient person. I wish i were, and it’s certainly worth pondering and praying about how i might develop more perseverance in these tasks. Until that happens, though, i know myself, and i know that building up that spiritual high is counterproductive.

So this year i was very tempted to start doing this again. I caught myself with all sorts of “big plans” brainstorms: We ought to get a bunch of Memphis churches together to create an arts center! I should go polling local youth pastors on the needs of young people here! On and on the torrent of ideas came, because that’s just how my mind works. But — call it antispiritual cynicism, or perhaps just pragmatic realism, i’m not sure which — my better judgment kicked in. The ideas aren’t dead, because after all i just documented a couple of the more interesting ones above. But instead of focusing on the ideas, i focused on what God was teaching me about my own role and about praying for stuff to happen, long before trying to act to make it happen.

So yeah. I don’t need to get frustrated with myself for not having the resources within me to drive some of this stuff forward. I just need to pray about it and accept that if God’s in it, the resources don’t depend on me. Cattle on a thousand hills, something like that.