Bridled Zeal

Our Ireland journals were due 3 hours ago, so I finally completed it, and here’s what I wrote for my final entry:

How can I put into words the incredible time we had in Ireland? I know that whatever I write here will not do it justice. In reading through my journals, a couple themes emerge: the role of sports in Northern Ireland, theology of reconciliation and reconciliation of theology, and my journey in my personal stance on violence and war. Yet there is so much more.

To try to craft a beautiful summary would be vain. I can only attempt to summarize, not beautifully summarize. We learned so many things in so many ways. We heard so many things. We saw so many things. We met so many people. We encountered so much. We experienced so much.

Even before leaving campus, we heard the quote “If Christians don’t have anything to say about reconciliation, Christians don’t have anything to say.” After seeing how the church in Northern Ireland has dropped the ball and perpetuated the division and violence, I cannot forget that quote. After seeing how the church in Northern Ireland is participating in God’s mission of reconciliation, I cannot forget that quote.

I think many of my friends would not consider me to be a particularly emotionally expressive person, but I can’t think of Northern Ireland without getting emotional. I can’t think of Belfast without having my heart hurt. Since coming back, I’ve replayed in my mind every day the scenes from Derry on the day of the release of the Saville Report. David Cameron calling what happened “unjustified and unjustifiable.” John Kelly and the other relatives declaring their loved ones innocent.

I still am amazed by the hospitality we were shown. The owner of the SPAR in Rostrevor giving us a ride back from her store. Aaron Boyd taking Andrew, Beau, and I on a tour of Belfast, his city, and taking us to CNR neighborhoods, where he’d never been before. MLAs from Stormont taking time to talk to a bunch of college kids from a little college nestled in Santa Barbara.

The stories. Stories of hurt. Stories of loss. Stories of pain. Stories of hope. And telling every story was a human being, somebody made in the Imago Dei. These things happened to real people, who have real families, who have real lives. I’m tearing up as I write this. And I am not one to be melodramatic.

And the Church. Oh, the Church. The Bride of Jesus. In light of the history of the Church, in light of everything we had seen and heard in Northern Ireland, how my heart hurt when some of us could not take communion in Galway. And then I think of Corrymeela, and of the monastery in Rostrevor, and hope enters. And then I think of Westmont. I think of our group worshiping in the Cree at Corrymeela, Catholics and Protestants alike. And yes, Westmont is already a beautiful picture of people coming together, but there is still more to be had.

That brings me to our group. Group dynamics were better than I ever could have imagined. Sure, there were the clusters of people who gravitated towards each other, but we could all get together and have a good talk, in class, at dinner, or over a few drinks. For five weeks, a transformative community was cultivated. Maybe our group didn’t have some of the more dramatic differences in background, providing for some wonderful study in identity and reconciliation, but the group was what we were given, and with what we were given, we practiced what we were learning. Not perfectly, and not always, but I can say with confidence we did.

I don’t think I’ll ever forget our time. I don’t want to. And I’m going to pray that Northern Ireland be able to journey with her wounds.

“Let us say together in the desert of our hearts

Let your healing fountain start.”

I’m frantically trying to finish my Ireland Mayterm journals, so I haven’t had much time to read or blog, but here’s a brief post on Jared Anderson, to whom I’m listening to as I pound out these journals.

Jared Anderson is a worship leader and associate pastor at New Life Church in Colorado Springs, Colorado, perhaps now best known for being Ted Haggard’s former church. Jared has written a couple worship standards, most notably “Amazed.” Along with his work with New Life’s Desperation Band, Jared has also released a few solo records. However, the real gems are found in his “lamp” projects. Independent, stripped down albums.

The lyrics are witty, humorous, and poignant. The music is well crafted. The strings are not cheesy, and Jared’s piano playing is much better than your average pop artist. I think that Jared’s lamp projects are where he really shines because there isn’t the undue influence from his record label, and there isn’t the pressure to write something that congregations will love and can sing along to. Jared really gets to do what he wants, musically and lyrically.

It’s sad but understandable that even among Christian artists things are so political. When I was in Belfast, I got to spend some time with Aaron Boyd, the worship leader who wrote “God of this City,” which Chris Tomlin covered and made famous. He spoke candidly about some of the ugliness of the “Christian music industry.” On the one hand, these artists do need to make some money to sustain their artistic endeavors, but it comes at a price in preserving the integrity of their artistry.

Anyways, if you like Jared’s music, you can purchase his lamp projects on iTunes or at CDbaby.com.

I am back from Ireland. It was a heavy, heart-wrenching, meaningful, formative, fun, exhausting time.

A couple of us were robbed of our hotel room by Rod Stewart. Well, not really, but we’ll blame him anyways. And our traveling companions were redirected by the great ash cloud. And we don’t entirely blame God for the ash cloud (a classic quote from a prayer out of the mouth of Ryan S.).

I fell in love with Belfast. And I hate that I’ve fallen into the typical falling in love while studying abroad thing, but yes, I love Belfast. And I could see myself living there for a bit. I might even go to school there. It’s a vibrant, friendly, progressive, diverse city. It’s a broken, hostile, divided, backwards city.

We were given personal tours of hardcore Catholic-Nationalist-Republican neighborhoods and hardcore Protestant-Unionist-Loyalist neighborhoods by former paramilitary members. And there’s been a lot of healing, but there’s still a lot of sectarianism.

But God is the God of Belfast. And spontaneously, a few friends and I were shown incredible hospitality by the songwriter of God of this City. For a whole day. And he gave us a whirlwind tour of Belfast, both the stomping grounds of his youth, as well as Catholic-Nationalist-Republican areas he had never set foot in before.

We talked to MLAs from both Sinn Fein and the DUP at Stormont (NI’s legislative assembly). And heard first hand some of the theological ignorance that contributes to the division and exclusion.

We spent some time working with organizations that are advancing the Kingdom in Belfast–whether those organizations know they are doing Kingdom work or not.

We were refreshed at Corrymeela–spiritually, emotionally, physically. But we were only there for a night. Far too short.

We tread the same ground where unarmed civilians were gunned down in 1972 by British paratroopers, and heard from the brother of one of those murdered that Bloody Sunday.

I watched as debris floated down following a failed mortar attack right across the street from our bed and breakfast in Derry.

We traced the footsteps of James Joyce and discussed Dubliners in Dublin.

I had a pint of Guinness. At the Guinness Factory. Before noon. On an empty stomach.

We learned that we must respect the fairies.

Some of us were denied communion in Galway, and I understood why, but my heart hurt for the Bride.

We were blown away by the ingenuity of prehistoric people in Newgrange.

I lived in a house with five other men in a cottage in Rostrevor for five nights. And oh, the stories that emerged from that time. We met French (and one Mexican brother) Benedictine monks who live in Rostrevor to pray for Northern Ireland full time.

We played soccer on a tennis court and witnessed one of our companions check one of our professors into the fence in an effort to get the ball.

Jake, Matt, and I huddled around an iPhone outside of Charlotte and Emily Bronte’s father’s church,  listening as the USA held off England to retain a 1-1 tie.

Our house assisted one of us in getting a tick out. And were treated to an… unexpected escapade.

I sat in a bar in Belfast and watched history unfold in Derry as the Saville Report (Bloody Sunday Inquiry) was released and UK Prime Minister David Cameron called what happened 28 years ago “unjustified and unjustifiable.”

I fell in love with Kopparberg Pear Cider. And am incensed that it is not exported to the United States.

I was pushed further along in my ideological indwelling of nonviolence and just peacemaking.

We heard stories. Personal stories upon stories. Of hurt. Of loss. Of torture. Of hope.

I came to a greater appreciation of seventeen other members of the Westmont community.

We were led by two humble, amazing, creative professors who love Jesus and love teaching.

And we only just touched the surface.

For me, summer is the best time to devour a varied diet of books, and this summer 2010 is no exception, and so I present to you the inaugural summer 2010 reading post.

Like the true “J” that I am, I have organized my summer reading into a couple of phases, the first being the reading that we did for Ireland Mayterm. That phase is followed by the days between my return from Ireland and the start of a new week, which initiates the second phase, subdivided into two week periods. My goal is to read five books for every two week period, with Kierkegaard’s Works of Love (my main summer reading project) as the backdrop for the entirety of phase two.

Phase One: Reconciliation In/And Ireland

• Miroslav Volf, Exclusion and Embrace
• John Paul Lederach, Journey Towards Reconciliation
• David Smoch, Ed., Interfaith Dialogue
• James Joyce, Dubliners
• Joseph Coohill, Ireland: A Short History

Phase Two

• Soren Kierkegaard, Works of Love

Week 0 (6/17-19):

• Scot McKnight, The Blue Parakeet
• Banning Liebscher, Jesus Culture

Weeks 1 & 2 (6/20-7/3):

• Brother Lawrence, The Practice of the Presence of God
• A.W. Tozer, The Knowledge of the Holy
• Michael Hurley, Ed., The Irish School of Ecumenics
• Carl Raschke, GloboChrist
• Telford Work, Ain’t Too Proud to Beg

Kierkegaard is my main project so that I can digest it slowly (about 5 pages per day). For Week 0, I had already started The Blue Parakeet in the spring, and Jesus Culture is a light read. For Phase Two: Weeks 1 & 2, Tozer and Lawrence are both re-reads, and I started both Raschke and Work in the spring.

Now for some brief reviews:

Miroslav Volf, Exclusion and Embrace

This is one of the finest books I have ever read. Volf is a brilliant thinker who writes in such a nuanced fashion, making clear what points he is and isn’t addressing. While most books have a good amount of filler, just about every word in this book is essential to advancing Volf’s points. A dense read, but well worth the time, as Volf writes theologically on issues of identity, ethnicity, conflict, and reconciliation, supporting his central thesis that “God’s reception of hostile humanity into divine communion is a model for how human beings should relate to the other” (Volf 1996, 100).

Scot McKnight, The Blue Parakeet

Scot McKnight is a New Testament scholar who teaches at North Park University and runs Jesus Creed, a blog which I read regularly. In The Blue Parakeet, McKnight advocates for a “third way” of reading Scripture. McKnight lays out three ways of reading the Bible: reading to retrieve, reading through tradition, and reading with tradition. He advocates the approach of reading with tradition, and proposes an approach that reads the Bible primarily as Story. Within the Story are “wiki-stories” by particular authors in particular contexts. McKnight uses some of the more difficult passages in Scripture as his test cases for his proposed hermeneutical approach. McKnight devotes the last five chapters to the issue of women in ministry. Those five chapters are a worthy contribution to the discussion on the role of women in ministry. McKnight writes in an accessible style for this book. Highly recommended.

Banning Liebscher, Jesus Culture

Liebscher heads up the Jesus Culture ministry of Bethel Church in Redding, CA. Bethel is a church formerly affiliated with the Assemblies of God that places heavy emphasis on reaching the world through supernatural ministry as empowered by the Holy Spirit. I am deeply appreciative of the ministry at Bethel, but I do have strong reservations and objections to some of the theology and praxis that comes out of Bethel. That being said, I still try to listen to sermons from Bethel and read books by Bill Johnson (lead pastor at Bethel), since I believe that there is still much good to be garnered from there. Now to the book…

In my opinion, this was not a book worth reading. The best chapter is the one on sustaining prayer, but other than that, the content of the rest of the book is not best communicated in book form. I appreciated Leibscher’s call for the younger generation to appreciate the ones who went before them, but at the same time a chrono-centrism is evident, as Liebscher proclaims that we are living in the most important hour in history. Especially for people who are already entrenched in the Charismatic/Pentecostal stream of the Church, I would say this book is not worth the time. However, for all, I think heading over to the Jesus Culture ministry’s website and listening to a few sermon clips can be helpful, not just in terms of spiritual formation, but also for perspective and understanding of one stream of the Church. Furthermore, Liebscher is much more at his best in speaking rather than in writing.

In line with some of what I’ve experienced in the past few months, this blog will be a little more personal than before. I’m still learning about voluntary self-disclosure, and part of my attempt towards practicing that is sharing some things that I enjoy.

Recently I found out about a Canadian rapper named Shad. The title of this post is a line from his song “We, Myself and I.” Check out another excerpt from that same song:

We are

Greater than the sum of us all

Greater than some of us

Greater than each piece apart

We are a body, an army, greater than any single

Our peace and love in our hearts

And we are

Who we are behind doors in secret

In the deep depths recesses we aren’t free yet

We are how we treat our sick folks and widows

There’s a nice article about him here. His official website is here.

This guy is like a dream come true for me. He’s humorous, witty, socially conscious, and educated (he’s in the middle of completing a Master’s in Liberal Arts!). And of course his delivery is smooth, and the beats are hot too. This isn’t some cheeseball, subpar rapper trying to make a quick buck off of dumb Christians swooning over any rapper who doesn’t curse. Before I leave you with a music video, I give you what might be my favorite line in the entire album: “I’m not Chinese but i like me some lychee, iced tea with pearls…”

‘Cause I been here for years…

But seriously, I think it might be time for activity to resume on this blog. It has been ten months.

Due to other responsibilities, I didn’t have time to write much (ok, at all) since August, but I find myself with some time on my hands now, so I suppose now is as good a time as ever to resume.

I just got back from a month in Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland. More on that to come.

I have a massive reading list this summer. More on that to come.

I’ve found a slew of good music recently. More on that to come.

But for now, this grandiose announcement of my return to the blogosphere will have to do.