Brandon Woosley

A Day Like Any Other Day

I’m sitting here, in my back yard, enjoying the blessings of technology: plinking away this post on my Super Tablet (that’s the Asus Transformer 300, which I will take over any iPad), streaming new music all over the yard, taking advantage of the waves of wireless internet that emanate from my kitchen.

At the same time, I’m a little bit lo-fi: I’m in the back yard today because I’m the keeper of the smoker. A basic cooking vessel, a little charcoal and hickory wood, some simple spices, and a very ordinary hunk of pork will provide us with a magnificent mountain of pulled pork by dinner time.

It is a good day of Sabbath rest for me. Your Sabbath might look different: maybe you are outside, too, but are instead taking up the charge to care for and cultivate the creation, bringing out the beauty of the flowers and trees, or gathering the good harvest of the garden; maybe you are inside, sitting quietly with the word of the Lord, listening to his voice, savoring his presence, speaking a little but mostly hearing and being wrapped in the divine arms of love; maybe you are walking with your grandson in his wagon, exploring mile after mile, careless as to where you are because you are together, enjoying the gift of each other; maybe you are hiking the trails of a majestic mountain, seeing the wonders of wildlife and feeling your body pushed by the elements. These are fitting ways to take Sabbath (and, of course, there are many more), for God is present with you in every one of these places, and you are able to be attentive to his presence, thankful for his goodness, resting in him. Receiving his gift of Sabbath rest.

Today is Labor Day, and this seems like an appropriate day to take Sabbath rest. Even as we recognize American workers and the labor movements that have protected them from abuses, there is one with an even longer history of putting work in proper context. The God of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Jesus is the one who gave the commandment-gift of Sabbath to his people, telling them and us that Your Work Does Not Own You. The key is understanding that Your Leisure Does Not Own You either. Every day of Sabbath rest, however it is spent, is a day that proclaims that I am owned by my God, my Maker, my Redeemer, my King, who has invited me into his household with all of its blessings. Including rest.

Over the last two and a half weeks I have seen two friends die suddenly. One was 24, still at the beginning of the journey of adulthood, and the other was a grandfather, but both were surrounded by family and friends who longed for more time with them, even just one more day. Every day of this life is a gift from God, and none of them come with a promise that it will not be the last such gift. Which means this is the day that the Lord has made, to love your family and friends, to do what the Lord has given you to do with excellence, to serve your neighbor, and above all to rest in the Lord of this glorious day.

Every day.

Kingdom of the Crickets

I’m in the metropolis of Greenville, NY tonight.

There are virtually no people in Greenville, but as I sit, learning still how to be silent before the Lord, it becomes clear to me that there must be 100,000 crickets and frogs here with me. We are not alone here.

And the Lord is here, too, as I keep silence before him. Not for any impressive period of time, mind you, as I am again re-learning how to shut off the sound of my world and let the voice of the Lord enter into the conversation.

Today is a day that I need in particular to listen to that voice. I need it most every day, but today is a day that even someone as thick as me recognizes my need to quit with easy answers and quick responses. Today is a day to be as silent as Job’s friends should have stayed. Today is a day to barely even ask “why?”, but to simply hear.

To remember that even if I were to ask “why?”, it might just be that the answer would be incomprehensible to my foolish ears and my untuned heart. Before I listen to the Lord, really listen, and let his word enter me in ways I am not accustomed to letting it, even my “why” – let alone the answer I would then turn and offer to the masses – would mean less than the crickets and their chirping.

So, silence it is. Lord, you are, and it is a miracle that you would speak to us at all. But please, do speak to us, even if it strips us bare as the cedars of Lebanon. We need your word, even here, in the kingdom of crickets and frogs.

Losing Focus

I’ve tried several times to write about this cultural moment, and my paralysis is perhaps best exemplified by my problem even finding a suitable shorthand name for all of this – because it is about so much more than Chick-Fil-A, and even the ongoing culture war in America. This moment is a symptom of several chronic ailments, both for the culture and for the Church. I am inclined here to focus on the ailments of the Church, particularly because I think we (the Church) need to start with the log in our own eye before we start to pick at the eye of the culture.

What distresses me most about the Church in this situation? That most Christians I have heard, seen or read regarding this moment are more concerned about defending their First Amendment rights than the Kingdom of God and the gospel of that Kingdom. Lots of talk about defending our rights, and no one (in my circles) asking how we can show or express the Kingdom in this situation. Too few are asking how we can invite the people we are treating like our enemies to come to the Kingdom, or even thinking about the Kingdom. I think that reflects that our Kingdom citizenship is far less prominent in our minds than our present circumstances. Do we take it for granted? Do we not understand its appropriate prominence in our lives? Or, worst of all, is Christ (and his Kingdom) an accessory for us, rather than our identity? We are clearly more concerned about making sure that our understanding of The American Way carries the day than that Jesus Christ would be known and loved. Our attention is on building American Christian Empire, not the Kingdom of God.

What distresses me almost as much about the Church is how stupid and hateful we sound. I have encountered multiple Cultural Warriors in the last week who, on the surface, would seem to be on the same side as me, and after listening carefully to them, I am seriously tempted to move across the aisle. I believe there is a logically-consistent, Biblically-grounded rationale for not following the cultural tide toward redefining marriage, but it is rarely articulated. Instead, we speak out of our emotional insecurity, our visceral distaste for sexuality that doesn’t look like ours, and our patchwork of proof-texts and half-learned lessons from sermons or Bible studies. Our presentation is an overheated, blustery drawing of a line in the sand – rather than an attempt to reason with the person who disagrees with us, so she will see the consistency of our position, or to persuade the person, so he will be drawn to our alternate vision of what is and can be. Our responses don’t actually seem designed to win anyone to either Christ or our side; they are sledgehammers, or cannon fire, intended only to beat back our “opponents”. I cannot see how this is ever a response suitable for a follower of Jesus.

We are fearfully consumed with anxiety about winning, even as we claim to be the people who are standing up for Scripture. These two things cannot fit together! The Bible study group I meet with each Friday morning has been discussing the Revelation of John for 4 years, and the passage we were reading this morning from chapter 20 reminded us vividly that Christ has won the victory over Satan, and sin, and death. He does not need us to fight his battles (this is quite literal, in fact: if you look at Chapters 19 and 20, Christ gathers his faithful in a way that is pictured as an army, but it is only Christ who fights the foe!). If we believe that Jesus is Lord, then he will complete his victory in his time, and the truth will win out. So why are we trying to conquer enemies, instead of trying to invite those who dwell in darkness to see the great light of Christ? Or, if we will insist on seeing them as enemies, when will we start treating them the way Jesus told us to treat our enemies?

Finding Zuzu

My son Zach has 32 Zhu Zhu Pets. For the uninitiated, Zhu Zhu Pets are animatronic hamsters which, when activated, make a variety of noises (coos and purrs, as well as words and nonsense noises) and explore their environment; one can buy a host of accessories, as one would for a real hamster, but they will also zip around the floor, responding to various stimuli they encounter. There are dozens of distinct “characters”, each with a name, and unique coloring, markings, and phrases that they say.

Since I told you Zach has 32 Zhu Zhus, I probably don’t need to tell you that he loves them. He will set up tracks, and then line them up to all go through the track one at a time. He will set them all up on the dining room floor and then activate them, so that the room is over-run with furry, squeaking robots. And, when one of them ceases to properly function (the most common problem is that the button on their back, which activates them, will break) Zach is grieved. We are currently going through a mini-crisis, because Zach wants to replace Rocket (or Rock-it; I forget). Rocket appears to be out of production. Rocket’s not coming back, and Zach’s not happy about it.

But the amazing thing I wanted to tell you tonight is that Zach knows them all, by name. At bedtime, Christy told Zach to pick up all the Zhu Zhus and put them in a new plastic bin we have for storage. Zach dutifully moved from room to room, gathering up pets and putting them in the basket. Christy tried to join in helping him, but this proved problematic, because even after all of the pets seemed to be off of the floor, Zach kept searching, saying “Zhu Zhus. Zhu Zhus.” Finally, Christy showed him the basket, and together they inventoried all of the pets that Christy had added to the basket – he was still looking for those pets! As soon as the inventory ended, Zach went back to searching, now saying “Zuzu. Zuzu.” “We got all of them, Zach,” said Christy. “Zuzu. Zuzu,” said Zach. And then we remembered: there is a Zhu Zhu pet named Zuzu.

Josh remembered what Zuzu looks like (which was amazing in itself, since Josh doesn’t have any affection for the Zhu Zhus), and we all continued to search for a light brown puffball that looks a little like a porcupine. Sure enough, Zuzu was hiding in the bathroom.

Zach still has a hard time forming sentences, and really can only do it for things he wants or needs. Zach can’t always remember my name. Zach forgets basic safety rules, like ” no wandering away,” or “no walking into the street.” Zach has a hard time connecting with new people.

But Zach’s not stupid. He can look at a box with 31 of his pets, and he knows which one is missing, and what it looks like. And he won’t stop until all 32 pets are together in the box. Is that an obsessive behavior, or is he shepherding? I’m going to choose to see the latter, and I’m going to pray that it’s a little bit of the image of Jesus in Zach, a child of God.

A Community For Everyone

I’ve gone dark on this blog for the last six weeks or so, mainly because I’ve been working on a special project that’s been consuming my thinking. The project was taking my free time (which often goes to writing here), but it was also the main thing I wanted to think and write about during the last couple months, and I did not want to put those ideas out here before I had a chance to complete the project.

Well, it’s over now. Last week, I was the camp pastor for the Chicago area Joni and Friends (JAF) Family Retreat. JAF hosts two weeks of Family Retreat each summer, and I was invited to be the pastor/speaker for the first week. In the weeks to come, material related to that project will be showing up in my writing here and my preaching at St. Paul Church. Today, though, I just want to reflect on the challenge to do the very thing that Family Retreat is trying to accomplish.

Family Retreat is an ambitious, sprawling sort of thing – I keep trying to start a sentence with “The goal(s) of Family Retreat is/are…” and I can’t do it. I think it’s clearer to say what it is: Family Retreat creates a special kind of community for 5 days. People who have been marginalized in the institutional Church because of their impairments, and their families, are invited to be together, and at home together. The community is also made of those who do not live with major impairments or disabilities, but feel the call of Jesus to live in community with those who do; many of those people take roles of service and support during the week to make it more possible for people to have the sort of summer camp experience most people take for granted. Together, all of these people share worship, meals, and recreation time for 5 days. This experience reveals something that most Christians don’t see, and probably don’t want to see: most American Christian community leaves at the margins those who are impaired, because the physical and social structures of the Church make it impossible for the impaired to enter in and be at home.

I think of Family Retreat in the terms I’ve put as the title – A Community For Everyone. Of course, even as I type this, sitting in the front room of the house my family has for accomodations during these two weeks of Retreat, my eldest son is in his bedroom, hiding away from all of the opening activities of the new week of Retreat. He is miserable, and insists that he doesn’t want to be here. His social and emotional limitations continue to push him more frequently into isolation, and none of us (his mother and I, his school, his psychiatrist) are succeeding in finding solutions. So even as I am striving to be a part of a community for everyone, I am trying to figure out how to extend that community to a boy who alternates between warmth, joy and kindness and tortured isolation, a boy who isn’t actually sure he wants community.

How does Jesus Christ make a community for a boy like that? How do we?