From the Episcopal hymn book

{Hymn #142}

Lord, who throughout these forty days for us didst fast and pray,

teach us with thee to mourn our sins, and close by thee to stay.

And through these days of penitence, and through thy Passiontide,

yea, evermore, in life and death, Jesus! with us abide.

Abide with us, that so, this life of suffering over-past,

an Easter of unending joy we may attain at last!

Riyadh International Airport

In January, I spent two weeks studying in Oman through a graduate program partnership between Hartford Seminary and Al Amana Centre. This is a narrative dispatch.

{Day 1} Where we arrive

On the journey-by-air from Frankfurt to Muscat, I landed in Riyadh on New Year’s Eve. As the plane touched down, a beautiful, serene hint of dusk appeared in the partial vision of the plane’s windows. It was—indeed—the last evening of the year, according to the Western calendar. And surely it was the last evening this American evangelical could say: I have never known the Arab world.

For me, this Arabian moment marked a first trip to the Peninsula—into the cradle of Islam. Looking out through the plane’s windows, I was lost in one of those unconscious reveries. Soon enough a loud voice overhead snapped me back to reality, Saudi Arabia-style: [Paraphrase] If you have any pornographic materials, turn them in, and if you have any alcohol, turn that in as well. I did not have either contraband item on my person, but this was Lufthansa Airlines and the announcement came in a German-accented English, so, somehow, it sounded serious and seriously funny. Ah yes, the long Saudi arm called the Committee for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice was reaching out “to stop the sinning,” as British historian Robert Lacey has characterized it in Inside the Kingdom (2009).

As we departed Riyadh for Muscat, a young man named Ali and I sat beside the exit doors. Ali hails from Salalah, Oman, and teaches Arabic as an adjunct professor at a small college in Iowa. He was on his way home for the semester break, and he was brimming. Eventually the plane took us over Bahrain and near the Strait of Hormuz. Given Iran’s blustery threat to block the strait, pondering U.S.-Iran relations became a foregone conclusion high above land and water. Meanwhile, Muscat was nearing, and I was brimming.

How, exactly, did I arrive here?

My interfaith encounters and relationships with Muslims formally began in 2007, when, as a pastor in a university church in Clemson, S.C., I initiated a meeting with a group of Muslim leaders at the mosque of the Islamic Society of Clemson. Our initial conversation—over Domino’s Pizza—would evolve into a weekly Qur’an study at the mosque. There, on Old Stone Church Road in the relatively deep South, I cut my teeth on Christian-Muslim dialogue and interfaith friendship. Now, I was landing in the so-called Middle East—further inside a continually hoped-for understanding.

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The Song of Machpelah is an interfaith writing project borne out of Christian-Muslim exchanges, experiences and ongoing study. At Machpelah, God willing, in small, medium or large ways a living song will arise. And it is a composition being put together by both Christians and Muslims. Peace by piece. For more on the project, go here.

Photo by Sarah Chang via Flickr

Looking Up

Grill session, a hazy half-moon

It sizzles, I watch

The night come, with hardly a sound

The steak

Makes off for the wine

Clouds shift

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By Roger Sampaio, for Allur, a professional web design resource company

It is not the direct fault of the hymn itself, to be sure. You cannot blame a little old hymn for all the interpretations that have transpired since its birth.

However, on the heels of a recent Sunday worship gathering in what we should imagine as a mostly standard American evangelical church, I found the following vintage lyric ringing loudly in the ears, and, even louder, in between the ears: “Sin had left a crimson stain.”

Yes, I thought. Most definitely, yes.

On this occasion, though, unexpectedly the ringing didn’t take me to any of the usual places where one typically travels in the unfathomable presence of God’s grace and mercy: you know, the dungeon of intense moral guilt and the subsequent corner of remorse followed by the solitary confinement with self-pity and the groveling acts of self-loathing.

Although the 19th-century hymn “Jesus Paid it All” is not the exclusive domain of evangelical Christians, and American evangelicals at that, for anyone (of a certain age anyway) who has grown up American and evangelical this hymn is part of a canon of Christian worship music that is intensely theologically formative. It provides a kind of primary window, as it were, through which to gaze at what theologians sometimes call “the work of Christ” in the context of the unfolding story of God — what God has done and is doing to extend good news and blessing to this flawed and marred human species. Not to mention how he is healing the entire cosmos.

In part, I suppose this hymn’s unwitting sense of functioning like a “Chosen One” in the annals of evangelical hymnology is the natural result of the actual, specific substance of the lyrics themselves, which are indeed beautifully Gospel-rich (“I hear the Savior say/’Thy strength indeed is small/Child of weakness, watch and pray/Find in Me thine all in all’”). Just as important, if not more, the hymn’s evangelical ascendancy seems to arise from the way it gets appropriated by preachers and worship leaders: in my experience, it is often used as a fallback sorrow-mixed-with-joy soundtrack, helping to rehearse the central elements of the Gospel plot as well as to remind us how we should think about those elements in relation to our lives.

To repeat: on this particular Sunday, as on every other Sunday, sin had left a crimson stain.

But the question still echoing for me was and is: In the Christian vision, what exactly is the nature of this stain that sin has so thanklessly left? And the corollary is like it: At the end of every Sunday, or every other day, is our Christian understanding of this stain robustly faithful enough if we only and primarily go on and on emphasizing its theological meaning as “personal, individual moral guilt”?

It is, of course, common knowledge that Western societies are certifiably guilt-based. It’s as if we are truly culturally beholden to guilt. To draw only one simplistic example: the numerous, undying variations of the television shows “Law and Order” and “CSI” — if they culturally reveal anything about American fetishes or penchants — provide us with a healthy (unhealthy) indication that our obsession with individual moral guilt has reached, well, say it: criminal proportions. Having returned from a two-week travel seminar in Oman in early January and having experienced a small dose of Arab culture in the Omani context, it is interesting that our prevailing Western paradigm of sin-as-primarily-guilt stands in stark contrast to a view of sin as seen through the lens of the honor/shame motif.

The point of this lyrical meditation is this: the stain — and the Gospel remedy itself — must necessarily be bigger and wider than individual moral guilt because all that is in serious need of total reconciliation and complete restoration in the world, and in our lives, is a weighty composite of a multifaceted darkness that is bigger and wider than anything that individual moral guilt could dream of. In fact, rather than serving as the defining image of a stain’s sum total, guilt is more aptly akin to one ink spot clinging to a canvas mostly showcasing a sinister and disturbing variety of ink spots.

In the Christian narrative, the Gospel — if viewed through a holistic frame provided by the Scriptures and historical Christian theology — appears to show us that there is far more to sin than guilt, especially a “guilt” narrowly understood. The Gospel powerfully confronts, even as it disarms, our dishonor and shame. The Gospel cleanses that sleepless-night stain called impurity or defilement — a picture that should realistically take our imagination way beyond mere guilt.

Meanwhile, not to be outdone by addressing sin, the Gospel shows us that there is also far more to our human experience of brokenness than our own sin lets on. There are other insidious enemies that go by other dastardly names. There is evil; and there is the Evil One. There is human suffering; and there is the looming figure who casts his haunting shadow above all else — Death.

To sing out and to herald one hymn’s version of one dimension of Christ’s atonement is, we can say, well and good. But however powerful, poetic and personal, to minimize the overall magnitude of the stain, to downsize what sin and brokenness have actually done with our lives and with our world, this is neither well nor good. Nor is it true enough. After all, there is far more to envision and embrace in the paradoxical movements of an agonizing Cross and a triumphant Resurrection than a satisfactory debt payment for my personal sins.

We badly need the whole Gospel (with all its requisite hymns) because we are badly knee-deep in this whole mess, distorted and disordered but yearning for hope. Perhaps we could rightly assert and testify as Christians: through the Gospel, God has provided humanity nothing less than a way to make peace (shalom) with all our worst private and public enemies — sin, evil, the Evil One, human suffering and Death. “I hear the Savior say: Find in the Gospel its all in all.”

And so it is that in another famous hymn, which also rings loudly in between the ears, we find this big, wide, unfettered proclamation: “He comes to make His blessings flow/Far as the curse is found.” To that extent, God willing, there will be no crimson stain left.

Photo: Corbis Images

{Travel & Study}

For the first two weeks in January, indeed, I’m studying Christian-Muslim relations on the Arabian peninsula. This unique opportunity, at the turn of another calendar year, seems as beautifully surreal as it does fantastically crazy.

In November, I became aware of a very peculiar course (within my program) being offered by Hartford Seminary — a two-week travel seminar in Oman called “Christian-Muslim Relations in Arabia.” This tailored learning experience is a partnership between Hartford Seminary and Al Amana Centre, an organization with roots in the Reformed Church of America.

An absolute long-shot, I applied for the course anyway. In early December, through several different scholarships, a path had been made for which I am incredibly thankful.

The Sultanate of Oman is the only Muslim nation in the world that predominantly practices Ibadi Islam. According to the Hartford Seminary description: “Ibadism incorporates an austere piety with an openness to engaging in dialogue with other Islamic schools of thought and other faiths. Due to the guidance of Ibadi doctrine and Oman’s centuries-old status as a cosmopolitan hub of sea trade, Oman has a long tradition of religious pluralism both within Islam and with other faiths.” In fact, Michael Bos, the former director of Al Amana Centre, has said: “One of the marks of Oman’s identity is who the country is able to include rather than exclude.”

Though two weeks is a limited time, the experiences in Oman will be wide-ranging:

• lectures and meetings with Muslim imams and scholars;
• interfaith dialogue with Muslim students in an Islamic seminary;
• interactions with Christian missionaries of the American Protestant Mission in Oman that dates to the 1890′s;
• opportunities to socialize with Oman’s political and religious leaders;
• visiting some of the oldest mosques of Islam and experiencing the culture and beauty of Oman

I am, of course, ecstatic that God has given me this kind of travel-and-study opportunity in the Arab world. Like a good guest, I feel eager to openly receive the variety of gifts awaiting me in Oman. Additionally, as a follower of Jesus, I am especially hopeful to discover how this experience might contribute to my vocational calling and spiritual capacity to educate and empower Jesus-followers to be reconcilers and peacemakers among our Muslim neighbors.

Through it all, I am also longing to piece together another note or two in this desperate would-be song that I am calling The Song of Machpelah.

The Song of Machpelah is an interfaith writing project borne out of my Christian-Muslim exchanges, experiences and ongoing study. At Machpelah, God willing, in small, medium or large ways a living song will arise. And it is a composition being put together by both Christians and Muslims. Peace by piece. For more on the project.

Once upon a silent table. Like the baby in the manger, there is never any crying around this table.

Amie rests for a moment after running her first 5k race — and with the number to prove it.

Spring cleaning in the backyard — where garden implements can quickly become weapons of human warfare.

Jackson celebrates after scoring a cracking goal. Meanwhile, the opponent apparently laughs off losing.

William Nowell, Amie’s grandfather, walks along Omaha Beach in 2004 to commemorate the 60th anniversary of the Normandy invasion. Born in 1922, he passed away in May. “Wisdom is with the aged, and understanding in length of days.”

Courage every time. Camden steps into the batter’s box for the Oakland A’s. In June the A’s won the Richmond Little League Minors championship.

If Kate had her way, we would live beside the ocean. Upon this occasion, Virginia Beach lights her world.

A vintage group photo from my first class in Islamic Studies/Christian-Muslim Relations at Hartford Seminary in Hartford, Connecticut. For the first two weeks in January 2012, I’ll be participating in a travel seminar in Oman through Hartford Seminary and Al Amana Centre.

Our August vacation included an excursion to Gainesville, Florida, to visit my sister and her family. Of course, no trip to Gainesville is complete without setting feet on the same grass that some say God, uh, Tim Tebow, once played football on.

Let the new school year begin. Down the sidewalk and to the right, two blocks away, is Linwood Holton Elementary. Where the kids walk every day; where Amie works as a Title I tutor; where, for us, neighborhood and living-in-community spiritually collide.

In October, we made our annual pilgrimage to Carter Mountain Orchard to pick apples and to rehearse — again — how things grow.

It has been official for 15 years: I am the luckiest.

The day before All Hallows Eve, the kids carve up pumpkins at dusk. Yes, we realize the large knife is within reach of our youngest child.

“Sweet Potato Crunch.” On Thanksgiving, the Elmore Five hosted Amie’s mom and grandmother from Scranton, Pennsylvania, as well as Amie’s sister’s family from Harrisburg.

To the victors, the spoils. Camden and I lay claim to the family Christmas tree.

“The Lord wants to find in you a path by which he can enter into your soul and make his journey.”

{Origen of Alexandria, 3rd century C.E.}

The following piece originally appeared as a feature in the Sunday Commentary of the Richmond Times-Dispatch on December 11, 2011.

When you listen to the British singer-songwriter Adele croon her smash hit “Someone Like You,” it really is as if the whole world – with its inglorious, break-neck speed – suddenly stops. Of course, genuinely feeling the contours of Adele’s masterpiece depends on having enough lived experience to be able to arrange the complex narrative of human love in precisely that way: “Sometimes it lasts in love, but sometimes it hurts instead.”

Although the microphone and the moment are hers, what has the stage and what seemingly gives the song its transcendent appeal is this earthly clash between Hope and Melancholy. Two familiar foes, as it were, they passionately fight for us – pulling and yanking in an undying tug-of-war along the vast landscape we call Love.

This explains, in part, why I found myself at turns smiling and laughing as little Zoe and little Ada covered Adele’s hauntingly beautiful ode on the stage of the school gymnasium at Linwood Holton Elementary in mid-November. How else are we to respond when children sing: “You know how the time flies/Only yesterday was the time of our lives”? That is indeed a very old melancholy to be entrusted to the voices of two third-graders brimming with hope.

Culturally speaking, I suppose you can easily draw a direct line from American Idol (and its sibling talent shows) to the first Holton Talent Show, sponsored by the PTA. Such is the American environment and thirst for entertainment and achievement. Not to mention youth. We simply cannot get enough of performance – especially star-making performances.

And on this night, surrounded by a flash-mob dance number featuring Holton teachers, a groovy cover of Gnarls Barkley’s “Crazy” by an all-white jam band and a stirring rendition of Sam Cooke’s “A Change is Gonna Come” from a fifth-grade African American student, Zoe and Ada’s performance stood out. Eight-year-olds were translating Adele, herself all of 23, for the grown-ups in the room. It was the stuff of child’s play, except it wasn’t child’s play in the least.

I heard that you’re settled down/that you found a girl/and you’re married now

Recently my six-year-old daughter revealed a significant secret: she told me the name of the boy she wants to marry. Naturally I took her decision in stride, given the balance in our savings account and what my daughter doesn’t yet know. But she did emphatically proclaim that this boy has the most beautiful hair she’s ever seen.

Hearing Adele’s rueful sense that “The One” got away, that marriage was involved and that another woman has necessarily left her out of this equation was more striking, more penetrating, because two young girls were relaying the lyrics. Sorrow, which has a tendency to become bigger than our lives, was somehow better contextualized and made to appear more to scale through the medium of a child’s adult rendition. They know not what they sing, right?

Regrets and mistakes, they are memories made/who would have known how bittersweet this would taste

When children begin to speak way out of their league, it is mostly undeniably charming. For instance, the day before Thanksgiving, my five-year-old son shared that he will no longer be responsible for hunting the turkey, killing it and cooking it; the work is exhausting and he is officially retiring. Of course, he’s never had any of those jobs, and when he was asked to recall Thanksgivings past he launched into an impressive yarn in which, as a three-year-old, he walked alone to Bryan Park, shot the great bird, picked off its feathers and later stuffed it into the oven for dinner.

The story had our family thoroughly – joyfully – bemused, which is exactly how I responded to Zoe and Ada. Two children were imploring me to transform my view of regrets and mistakes – consider them memories, if you will. They were channeling the mature realization that broken relationships are often bittersweet. Love’s story was way out of their league, yet somehow the charm worked and I was laughing and smirking – at myself.

I had hoped you’d see my face/and that you’d be reminded/that for me, it isn’t over/Nevermind, I’ll find someone like you

Here Adele’s words are perhaps their most soulful. They cannot help but emit a relentless hopefulness, something that is strong and from a deep place. It is as if these particular words stare down melancholy with a persistent, optimistic glare. Yes, very much like a child.

Listening to Zoe and Ada try desperately to bring the soul from a deep place, I was reminded of those funny E*Trade television commercials. You know, the ones in which an adult’s voice humorously inhabits the body of a baby, who is in diapers but also thumbing a smartphone, wheeling and dealing his portfolio. In the girls’ case, however, they inhabited the adult, and what their voices described in that moment remains more heart-wrenching than stocks and bonds and more substantial than getting rich.

At the Holton Talent Show, in the middle of an otherwise average adult week, it was always going to be about form and content. In the end the children were singing our songs. They were interpreting our difficult longings and ever-present questions.

And how is it possible that their music can have such a peculiar, lingering effect on us? Because they are – this should come as no surprise – someone like us.

{Poem}

As it happened, the following poem by Haim Gouri found me as I browsed the pages of a copy of Tikkun magazine sometime in January 2011. Here I offer this small piece of Gouri’s poem — for spiritual reflection, and for the kind of reflection that might induce constructive action — in the context of a Christian-Muslim relations project called The Song of Machpelah.

“Heritage”

Isaac, as the story goes, was not

sacrificed. He lived for many years, saw

what pleasure had to offer, until his

eyesight dimmed.

But he bequeathed that hour to his

offspring. They are born with a knife in

their hearts.

You can find the full version of Gouri’s poem here.

The Song of Machpelah is an interfaith writing project borne out of my Christian-Muslim exchanges, experiences and ongoing study. At Machpelah, God willing, in small, medium or large ways a living song will arise. And it is a composition being put together by both Christians and Muslims. Peace by piece. For more on the project.

Advent 2011 is upon us — whether we are awake, enjoying the snooze or floating somewhere in between.

What follows below is a small Advent reflection using the imagery of juxtaposition. As in, the placement of two concepts near each other.

During Advent, it rings especially true because divergent elements in the Gospel story have become necessarily juxtaposed. This is the season, of course, in which Christians from among the nations celebrate and proclaim that the One who purportedly created the world, and sustains it by his power and wisdom, has unbelievably juxtaposed himself with humanity. Which must be, as ever, the original shock-and-awe.

Advent Juxtapositions

Mark 13:24-37

Cosmic/Earthy

When we read this text, we encounter a darkened sun and an unlit moon; stars are falling from the sky; angels are collecting certain people from the four winds. W. Somerset Maugham once said: “Imagination grows by exercise, and contrary to common belief, is more powerful in the mature than in the young.” The cosmic imagery in St. Mark’s gospel gives credence to Maugham’s adult admonition.

For the Christ-believer, Advent is that very specific occasion which offers us a meaningful contextualization for the very specific time of Christ’s pending return. In whatever human era we find ourselves, then, it seems we desperately need our faith-based imagination to ready us for the spectacle that is to come. We are reminded, at this point, that we do our waiting and anticipating within the grandiose, mind-blowing context of God’s cosmic narrative.

By contrast, and starkly juxtaposed, there is also this extremely down-to-earth image given to those of us who are waiting and anticipating in the middle of our non-spectacle lives. “It is like a man going on a journey,” the text says. The man makes preparations as if he’ll be a while, but then again, the hour of his return is truly unknown. Only God knows.

So on the one hand, the second arrival is the stuff of big drama somewhere in the unseen reaches of heaven. And on the other hand, there’s a dusty, well-worn trail (from the first time He was among us) left by the master of the house, who has taken a bit of trip.

We are, therefore, told to keep awake. Because you never know what you might see.

For a quick primer on these current events of scandalous proportions at Penn State, here’s a timeline.

{Commentary}

And so it is that Happy Valley will never be the same. Especially the happy part. As for the valley? Naturally, it’s only just beginning. And there are many extraordinary images spilling out from the shadows of this unsuspecting valley of death. (By death, of course, all I mean is: everything that is anti-life in that foremost spiritual sense.)

Undoubtedly you have read and heard so much of the hard-to-read and hard-to-hear things — about those things that have come into plain view, years after happening in the apparently murky confines of Pennsylvania State University. Joe Paterno, head football coach at Penn State since 1966, was fired on November 9th in the storm of the child sex-abuse allegations against Paterno’s long-time defensive coordinator Jerry Sandusky. On the night Paterno was relieved of his duties, he uttered two sentences that will echo through the lives of Sandusky’s victims, the college football landscape and American culture for a very long time: “It is one of the great sorrows of my life. I wish I had done more.”

What follows, here, is an initial attempt to reflect on some of what we’re continuing to encounter through what we’re continuing to read and hear. As this is a kind of personal reflection, it is most certainly interpretive. It is also, as you might imagine, open to discussion as well as re-interpretation as the days turn into weeks and months.

Furthermore, these greater than/less than reflections below are obviously evaluative — from the words and images at hand. They function, as it were, like reminders which arrive every day in society at-large but often more poignantly on unbelievably specific days. Some reflections are desperately hopeful; they are set against the ever-present backdrop of our never-ceasing humanity. Most reflections — whether we like it or not — are rather theologically inclined.

Greater than/Less than at Penn State, and what it might necessarily reveal about the rest of us.

Hidden stories being revealed  >  All the shocking reactions and implications thereof

A public university of higher education  >  Its athletic programs or athletic pedigree

What is the morally responsible thing to do  >  What is the legally required thing to do

The job of a state police commissioner  >  The job of a college football coach

Protecting the weak  >  Defending the strong

Sport  >  The icons derived from it

Resisting the culture of the fairy tale  >  Sustaining the culture of the fairy tale

University-as-human-community  >  University-as-brand-commodity

Tough leadership decisions by flawed grown-ups  >  The ire of kids in their early 20s

A victim’s suffering (often)  >  A perpetrator’s punishment

(In time) The light of truth  >  Corrupted systems of power

To strive for a table clear of regrets  >  To leave a single regret on the table