California Whispering "You are a Writer"

A California Vacation Whispering

“You are a Writer”

Written by Dan McDonald

 

            I began writing this as my vacation in California was coming to an end.  I shared it with the evening hotel personnel as well as another story.  For this reason I am writing the first of what will likely be several blogs that will be connected to my vacation in California.  For that reason I am dedicating this blog to the personnel at the Doubletree Hilton hotel in Brisbane, California.  I am the kind of person who becomes easily discouraged in new settings.  The staff was always helpful when I had questions.  Sure they get paid to be helpful, but still I want to honor them because always they were helpful.

            I am also writing this blog for other writers I know online.  Some of you are writers that I am learning from when it comes to writing.  Others of you whom I know, you seem to struggle against something that holds you back, when I feel as though you may have more to offer our world than I do.  For me a vacation in California seemed to whisper to me and give to me this moment of confidence that I am a writer.  I am a writer even if only a few ever read what I have to say.  My days of vacation in California seemed to convey to me a sense of my being a writer.  I told my friends on Facebook:

       “My California vacation is in its last hours.  I will be flying back Sunday afternoon.  I felt this week like I belonged here.  Not to live, no feeling that I am meant to move here; but a sense that for these past few days, at this time in my life I absolutely belonged here.”

       I don’t expect to feel that way often, because we are of those people who are looking for a city not of this earth; for we are aliens and strangers, citizens of a city above.  But every once in a while during our journeys and sojourns on this earth we truly call home, we sense that we are in the place where we are meant to be at this precise moment in space and time.  That was a prevailing feeling while I spent a precious few days in California.

California

 

 

            I have always liked to write since sometime in junior high school.  When other kids complained about writing essays, I found the liberation of my soul as I took up ink pen and paper and began putting together words, thoughts, phrases and saying something I had thought over and struggled to make it sound beautiful.  I like writing but I am not sure if I am a good writer or simply one who loves to do something even if he never does it well.  But here in California I felt my desire to write being confirmed.

            I was moved by the things I saw, smelled, tasted, heard, experienced and thought about.  California with its mountains, coasts, hills rising out of the waters; with its Redwoods, Giant Sequoias, its city by the bay, and the fertile Central Valley; seals and gulls to deer and squirrels, it was all here.  With each sight, sound, smell and taste I thought of what I would want to write about all this.  That is how California whispered to me "You are a writer."  It whispered to me with each time I saw something and thought instantly that I could write about that.  That is what makes a writer a writer.  He or she experiences something and instantly begins to consider how they would write about it.  At that moment life is whispering to you, "you are a writer."  It does not guarantee you will be a good writer but it lets you know that you have heard the call to write and that it resides in your soul, your heart, your mind and strange as it may seem you feel the call to write.

            But that is only the opening scene of the initial story of the making of a writer.  Then one having seen a sight, thought out an idea, smelled a smell, or imagined a wholly composed story to create; following this initial venture into writing one has to begin imagining his or her audience listening like ancients around a bonfire for the story you are about to tell them.


           For me, a few weeks ago a new thought came into my imagination because of Ascension Day.  Jesus is about to ascend into the heavens.  He will be leaving his disciples upon this earth.  But he promises them that he will make them witnesses so that they would witness to him.  Did you catch that?  Jesus told them they were going to testify to him.  But how do we speak to God, to Christ when he is unseen?  Do we not speak to the unseen God by speaking to the man, the woman and the little child we can see.  For if we must speak to God who is unseen we can do so only by speaking to those made in his image that we do see.  If we are speaking to fallible human beings that we see sometimes through impatience even detesting what we see; do we not become more compassionate when we realize that that these we see are also those the unseen sees and loves with an endless love?  So if we speak to him who is unseen while speaking to those who we see, we must see them in the love we have for him.  In this way the blasts of human arrogance we too easily express while claiming truth being on our side, falls to the dirt when we speak to those we see as we testify to him who is unseen.

        I hope these thoughts are helpful for some of you who struggle with your desire to write.  Some of you speak of spiritual matters while you struggle with doubts.  You want to speak of your doubts but a part of you doesn't want to speak against the God you want to believe exists.  I would encourage you to speak of your doubts as if you are speaking of them through yourself to the very God whom you cannot see.  Speak openly of your doubts but speak of them with the ear of God included, and thus you will be writing words matching the madness and method of the Psalmist.  You will be speaking of your doubts but you will be speaking to the very God whom you doubt.


        Another may write while in the heights, singing praises that tempt someone in their cynical hours to imagine you to be expressing some form of insane escapism.  But perhaps you ought instead seek to sing your praise to the unseen God through the weak brother crying out in lamentations.  As you praise the unseen God through the seen man in pain your praises will inhabit a new dimension in which you seek to lift up your wounded brother or sister so that they are lifted up in your praises rather than feeling as if your praise was never meant for one as discouraged as he or she is.

            I am saying that we write in a way to speak both to our fellow human beings we see and the God who remains unseen but loves those whom we see.  We believe we are God’s hands and feet in Christ; thus are we continually connected to him in heaven and also we are connected to those he loved even to death here on this lowly visible world.  The mystery of the incarnation tells us that we cannot speak to him who is the unseen without our speaking to him and her who are seen.  But also we write to those we see by giving testimony to him who we do not see.  We make our words to be bridges from our souls that will embrace, encourage; and sometimes warn and question those who are seen as the same words are heard by Him who is unseen.

          The task of the writer is to use his words to build a bridge expressing thought, feeling, emotion, and truth so that it simultaneously moves from a place within our souls to a place within another's heart, to the joy of the one who created and loves both of us.  The writer creates a bridge to a seen and unseen audience.

A writer seeks to build a bridge to the soul of the seen and unseen audience

 

            Once we know to whom we write we begin to become ready to figure out how we shall write.  If we speak to a seen audience in order to testify to the One who is unseen, then we aim to speak in the language of beauty and kindness as well as goodness and truth.  We may not be poets but we wish for words to convey the beauty and reality of the mystery that we experience of the unseen in the seen.  No words suffice, but we seek to imagine a way to help another sense that the words are lofty because the sentiment of knowing the unseen through the seen is beyond the measure of our pitiful words.

Thank you California, hotel employees, taxi drivers, and people whose paths crossed mine somewhere in the days of this vacation.  Thank you California: your mountains, trees, hills, valley, deer, squirrels, seals and gulls I met while in your boundaries.  You have joined together to bless me beyond all I could have imagined; and I know that I owe the unseen for the mystery of blessing me through the kindnesses of you whom I could see.

My Father's Stories of an Unhurried Farmer

My Father’s Stories of an Unhurried Farmer

Written by Dan McDonald

 

            My Dad was Amos McDonald.  He had no middle name, and wasn’t fond of his first name.  There was a story behind his name, that I only found out about after he had passed away.  He’s been gone for twenty-five years this month.  He was born on January 4, 1915 weighing around four pounds.  His mom and dad didn’t have a name ready for him, and several days passed and they couldn’t agree on one.  They had a neighbor in their community that was a bachelor, and he asked my Dad’s parents if they would name my Dad after him since he would never have a son of his own.  My Dad was named Amos for a fellow down the road and because his parents couldn’t agree on a name.  My Dad preferred being referred to as “Mac.”

            Earlier this week a minister gave pastors his opinion that if pastors preached a father’s day message without speaking of the Trinity on this “Trinity Sunday” then they were contributing to a secular mindset.  I have sympathy for that perspective, so fortunately I can say I wrote earlier this week about Trinity Sunday.  But Sunday is also Father’s Day and I have been thinking about the values my Dad seemed to set forth in the stories he used to tell of a certain unhurried farmer.

            My Dad had his share of faults and one of the biggest was how if he was doing some work even with his children, he would be impatient to the point that one wasn't likely to learn much from him in any on the job training.  But when he was finished with a day’s work, he belonged to us kids.  If I asked him a question about life, he would probably answer me with a story.  He only had an eighth grade education, but I think he was something of a sage and I have tried to learn to tell stories like he could ever since I grew up.

            Some of my favorite stories told by my father were told of a farmer I never met named Mark Likens.  Our farm was located in north central Illinois and the area was a blend between farming and industrial cultures.  Our city had railroads, glass factories, at one time coal mines, and in a not too distant past one of the biggest hardware stores anywhere in Illinois outside of Chicago.  But my town’s glory days are now pretty much in the past.  But when I grew up it was an area of prosperous farming with a feel of life lived at an industrialized pace.  Mark was an older farmer my Dad knew.  He was from Kentucky and his pace was a bit slower than most of those around us.  He was the last farmer in our area to farm with mules.

A story my Dad told about Mark was how one farmer asked him, “Mark, why do you still farm with mules, half the time those stubborn critters won’t do anything you want them to do.  Why don’t you get a tractor?”  Mark replied speaking sort of slowly, “I’ve never had any trouble with mules.  There is a trick to working with mules.”  Mark finished his reply saying, “The trick to working with mules is you just got to be a little smarter than the mules.”  I imagine one also needed to be more patient than the mules as well.

There was another story about Mark Likens my Dad liked to tell.  Back in those days; farmers often had farm hands.  Sometimes farmhands would have a past and farmers would be careful not to pry into their farmhands' past.  But Mark’s farmhand didn’t likely have a past he was fleeing.  But he was challenged when it came to his learning and education.  Mark’s farmhand only counted to seven.  He had never learned to count any higher than that.  Mark would pay him according to how many rows he finished.  At the end of the day the farmhand would say something like "I finished seven rows, seven times and four more.”  Everybody that knew Mark; knew he watched out for his farmhand and never took advantage of him.  I think my Dad admired Mark for working with the farmhand.  A lot of people would have dismissed him as having an insufficient level of intelligence.  Mark thought the farmhand had enough intelligence to do the work, and besides like Mark this man was a little smarter than Mark’s mules.  That couldn’t be said for everyone.

I’m thinking back on what my Dad’s stories said to me through the story without words having to tell me what he was saying to me.  I think he was wondering as he told these stories if the world wasn't getting to a place where there would be no room for people like Mark Likens and his farmhand.  I think my Dad wondered about that, as life got more complex, faster, and called on us to have more education and more technical expertise.  I wonder about that sometimes.


I am wondering also about one more thing.  Have you ever wondered if a culture that has no room for people like Mark Likens and his farmhand, has room for any of us?  How long does it take for a world to go from where some of us are no longer needed to where none of us are any longer needed?  There was a story teller once who told stories near the Sea of Galilee.  He sort of figured that if people didn't have room for the least of people around them, then they really didn't have room for him either.  He felt like you knew what was in a person by how they treated the least of people.  Everything else was probably an act, but you let everyone know what you thought of others by how you treated the one who was the least around you.  So I wonder if the culture around me, and also if I have room in my busy hurried life for an unhurried farmer and his farmhand.  How about you?

 

Looking Forward to Trinity Sunday

A Meditation on understanding the Holy Trinity

Written by Dan McDonald

 

            Earlier this week I put my two cents into a conversation about the benefit of celebrating Trinity Sunday.  I withdrew when I began to believe an argument or debate about the value of Trinity Sunday was going to take place.  I am glad I withdrew for we do not learn of the Holy Trinity through doctrinal debates, or by the power of reason, or by analogies from nature.  We learn of the Holy Trinity by being brought into the presence of God through Jesus Christ by the power and influence of the Holy Spirit.

            For those of us who do make a yearly journey in the life of faith under the tutelage of the church calendar, the recognition of the Trinity in Trinity Sunday follows all the proclaimed events of the Gospel and the gift of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost.  It is after the calendar has presented us the events of Christ’s life; from his promise in advent, to his birth at Christmas, to his being made manifest in Epiphany, to his going into the wilderness in Lent to his sufferings, death, burial and resurrection in Holy Week to his lingering with the disciples and his ascension and then after the giving of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost.  Only after these events we celebrate Trinity Sunday.  I submit to you that this is for good reason, for it is only as we journey through life discovering the promises of God the Father, the fullness of Jesus Christ the Son, and the blessings of the Holy Spirit that we come to recognize the truth of the Holy Trinity.  For we do not learn to believe in the Holy Trinity by philosophical logic or by analogies from nature, or by discussions and debates with theological texts; but we learn the Trinity in truth only through our communion with the life of God in Jesus Christ by the Holy Spirit.

            We begin to learn this truth of the Holy Trinity even in advent.  In advent, it is as if we are the people of the Old Testament who have heard the promise that through the seed of the woman the serpent would have his head crushed by the promised descendant.  We look forward from that promise for the coming of that promised Son of the woman, the seed-bearer, she who would be most blessed among women.  Our hopes focus on a son born in Bethlehem to Mary who has agreed to let the word of God come upon her and form a new child in her womb, a new beginning for humankind.  He is born on Christmas Day.  Then through the season of Epiphany we are given glimpses of who he is; the promised Messiah and the Son of God.  We learn that this son of Man is more than a man, or a prophet, but that he is the Son of God.  We are amazed at his boldness when he says to religious leaders “I and the Father are one.”  They pick up stones to throw at a blasphemer, but another kneels down to the ground in prostrate worship; wrap his arms about him and says “Depart from me for I am a sinner” even as he will not let go of him.

              Then one night around a table he prepares us for his death.  It is a death we don’t want to believe.  We vow to be strong but we prove to be weak.  He says something strange about how it is better for him to leave us otherwise we would never receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.  We don't want that.  We want him never to leave, to always be in front of our eyes.  Surely nothing could be better than seeing him, touching him, hearing him, walking with him throughout life.  Even after he has suffered even to death we do not understand.  We feel so alone when he ascends out of sight.  But we make our way to Jerusalem for we obey but do not understand.

            Then on the Day of Pentecost, the great signs take place, the Spirit descends and the Gospel is proclaimed.  Men and women by the thousands believe.  The Spirit descends upon us, upon the Church of the Living God.  We begin vaguely to understand that to have the Spirit of the Holy One indwelling our very beings is an even greater presence than simply walking beside the Savior or even touching his wounds with our fingers.  The Spirit of Christ has taken residence within our own beings.  We learn that Christ is present within us by the Spirit and we are in union with Christ.  The only better way to understand someone than to walk beside him throughout life is if somehow his spirit and mind could take up residence in our being.  This is the advantage we now have in the Holy Spirit.  We pray for the Lord to make us tender to the least presence of sin, for we learn that the Spirit can be quenched or insulted and so his presence must be honored with our reverence, godly fear, and yet in his presence we know not fear but joy.

            A weak has gone by after celebrating Pentecost on the calendar.  We begin to realize that we have waited for God's promise in advent, have received the promise of the Son at Christmas, and have been granted the indwelling of the Spirit at Pentecost.  We therefore confess our belief in “one God the Father Almighty . . . and in Jesus Christ his only begotten Son . . . and in the Holy Spirit, the Lord and Giver of Life.”  We have believed upon Father, Son, and Holy Spirit because we have been granted to be given glimpses of God as the Almighty never seen, as the Son come into our world, as the Spirit hidden from sight but always present.  We have been introduced to this Living God who is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.  We have come to believe in the Trinity because this is the Living God whom we have known in the life of faith.

            We begin to understand that this doctrine of the Holy Trinity enables us to see the world differently.  We begin to see that in the Eucharist we partake of Christ by the Spirit in holy agreement with the Father who loved the world and thus gave us his Son.  We understand or at least vaguely sense that the persons of the Trinity are always in unity both in essence and purpose.  There truly is but one God.  We cannot explain this mystery of the Trinity, and can understand that others will not be satisfied with our descriptions, but we are given the bread and the cup.  We are reminded that we in the Church are also one.  We are many members, but we are one people, one body, one blood, one living Church partaking of one bread and one cup.  We are partaking of the divine nature and as God is one in the unity of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost; so are we who partake of the bread and cup one in Christ, by the Spirit to be presented complete and whole to the Father.  The I residing in me is discovering his oneness with brothers and sisters of every nation, tongue, and tribe.  We who have been created in the image of God are many members united in one body.  We who were created in the image of God have been created for unity in our redeemed humanity.  We discover that being created in the image of God means being one in body with a brother and sister who shares from the cup the divine and human lifeblood.  One and many; God and man, Holy Trinity the Church as his body.  Mystery surely, truth surely, our faith and our hope.  We confess we have learned the Trinity not from logic of reason, nor from analogy of nature; but by the life we have been granted by the Spirit in the Son unto the glory of God the Father.  This is the new life of Him which we partake in the Holy feast.  Thus we believe in God the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.  Amen.

           

If I could write a book on wisdom

If I could write a book on wisdom:

 

If I were to write a book on wisdom

It would be a large folio bound in leather

able to float on the wind as if a feather

on its first page something I heard

“If I had the power of God

            Things would change

And If I had the wisdom of God

            They would be as they are"

I believe in mystery

 

And then I would write in my large folio

bound in leather, light as if a feather:

T H E   E N D

 

Praxis Conference - Blog 2

Experiencing the First PRAXIS Conference

Blog # 2 on the Conference

The Church Calendar and Spiritual Formation

 

            Prior to the Praxis 2014 conference that I attended and am blogging about, this article about the conference appeared in the Tulsa World.  Pastor Ed Gungor, a pastor of the Sanctuary Church hosting the conference described how the Evangelical Church of our day, in many quarters is facing a sense of bankruptcy.  He specifically described the sort of bankruptcy being experienced as one in which the enterprise is facing reorganization.  Evangelicalism has large numbers of followers and numerous resources; but there is also a sense of needing corrections to move forward from the present to the needs of the future.  He believes that part of Evangelicalism’s need is to reclaim elements of the ancient church calendar.

            He described at the conference, and other speakers reiterated from their own perspectives how helpful setting forth some elements of the ancient church calendar could be in the spiritual formation of Christians in an increasingly secular age.  Pastor Gungor described in the Tulsa World article and in speaking to the conference how Evangelicalism is often producing better Americans more than better Christians.  He believes part of the problem in modern Evangelicalism is that American holidays like New Year’s Day, Memorial Day, and the Fourth of July receive more attention in many Evangelical churches than Advent, Epiphany, and Pentecost.  We end up having services geared towards remembering soldiers who have served our country while having no remembrances days for saints or notable Christians who paved the way for a robust expression of the Christian faith.

            The church calendar observed by the early church, prior to Constantine’s involvement with the church had such seasons as Advent, Epiphany, Lent, Good Friday and Easter, and Pentecost being expressed even before the New Testament canon was completely decided.  That is not to say that the Church was without the Scriptures, but only to say that a handful of books of Scripture had not been universally accepted yet as part of the Scriptures.  But the Gospel was being presented as the stories of Christ and his redemption were told in connection with a church calendar that highlighted within the ongoing lives of God’s people their connection to the things of Christ in the Advent, when the Church like the people of the Old Testament waited for Christ’s coming; or in Christmas when the babe born to Mary was in his infancy already the light and hope of the world come to redeem us from our sins.  The season of Epiphany highlighted that God made manifest who Christ truly was; so that shepherds worshipped who saw him, or he was understood to be the hope of Israel when as an infant he was brought to the temple, or how John the Baptist recognized who he was at the River Jordan.  God was manifesting that this one come in the flesh was the hope of humankind.

            The church calendar helped create a sense of how history had meaning because in history God had acted to bring redemption into our lives through the life of Christ and through God’s great and wonderful redemptive acts.  The worship of God’s people in the Old Testament had revolved around the great redemptive acts.  The seven day week was a remembrance of God’s creation of the world in six days and his resting on the seventh; whether one sees the creation as a literal six day creation or as a metaphorical six day creation.  The redemptive history of the Exodus was expressed in the Passover, while the blessing of God’s people in the land God gave them was celebrated in the festivals, perhaps especially in the Feast of the Weeks otherwise known as Pentecost.  A similar calendar emerged almost immediately in the forming years of the Ancient Church.  A yearly journey through a church calendar gives a congregation of Christians an opportunity to pause at sacred moments of observing how the world waited for Christ to come in an advent season, how Christ came as an infant to be God in the flesh at Christmas.  We pause during a season of Epiphany to contemplate how God revealed to men and women the uniqueness of Christ as seen by Simeon in the temple, by shepherds in the field, by the wise men, at the temple when he was twelve, or as he arrived one day while John the Baptist was baptizing in the Jordan.  During a season like Lent we pause to reflect upon Christ going out to the wilderness to suffer, to give up meat and drink on our behalf.  We seek to meet him in the wilderness to be emptied of ourselves and to be subsequently granted greater fullness in him.  Then we pause to celebrate his coming to Jerusalem on Palm Sunday, but quickly we see him prepare to face the agony of the cross, burial in a grave, but ultimately to gain the triumph of resurrection and ascension.

            The Evangelical leaders gathered at the conference did not necessarily want to keep the calendar the exact way the ancients did, or how Roman Catholics, Eastern Orthodox, and Anglicans and Episcopalians do so today.  But what they have been learning is that there are blessings for congregations that have elements of the milestones of God’s redemptive events posted along the journey of a Christian’s life passing through a year of following Christ in their church’s worship services.  A congregation's active remembering of these milestones of God’s work of redemptive acts through a church calendar helps explain our present situations in life in accord with what God has done for us in the great redemptive acts.  It is enough for us that we live with a secular calendar in our jobs, maybe we need a calendar in our worship that marks the milestones of the acts of redemption.  Then throughout the year we will pause at the markers, the milestones, the sacred places where living water is handed out to tired men and women making their sojourns in a dry and weary land.

Whether one “follows” the Church calendar or uses it simply to highlight the great acts of redemption, the Christian plugging away at life year upon year can find so many blessings pausing along the way at the milestones of redemptive history.  These pauses along the yearly journey through a church calendar serve to form us around those redemptive acts of history even as we make our way in the course of life in our daily jobs and in our often mundane assignments in life.  The highlights of the church calendar serve to remind us that what we see of our lives, like an iceberg tell only a portion of our lives.  For in Christ we are redeemed and the milestones of his redemptive acts are meant to be understood to be also our stories into which our lives have been placed, so that as we see the milestones of Christ's redemptive work we are to write in childlike manners our names for this story, the Christ story is meant to be owned by us as our story, the story of our redemption.  A church calendar helps to create in our life the sense of how our journeys in life are always connected to Christ's journey taken for us in the glorious work of God's redemption of us.  This life of Christ expressed in the church calendar serves to bring us into the story, and then to reshape our lives around the story of redemption.  We gradually learn that our stories are part of his story and that the ancient past wherein he walked upon the earth for our redemption is the story into which we have been recruited by grace even if we live two thousand years into the future from whence he sojourned upon the earth.  It is his story marked on the pages of a church calendar that is shaping our story, directing us in time and giving us the future course of our sojourn from infancy to death, burial, and resurrection.

Praxis Conference - Blog 1

Experiencing the First Praxis Conference

Written by Dan McDonald

 

            I attended what was named the “Praxis Conference” in Tulsa.  It was sponsored by Sanctuary Church in Jenks, Oklahoma just south of Tulsa.  Sanctuary Church is a union of two former churches in Tulsa that were and may be identified as Charismatic, but also have discovered lessons from the ancient church and its ways of encouraging spiritual formation.  I attended the conference as one who has not been part of the Charismatic movement, but has come from a different Evangelical background to appreciate similar lessons of spiritual formation that are valued by those who organized and presented the conference.  I will try in this blog and an undetermined number in a short series of blogs to present some of the themes presented at the conference.

            A number of speakers described how they reached points in their Christian ministries where they sensed a need, sometimes a desperate need for something more to offer their church members.  The desire for more led them to discovering the ways of the ancient church.  They found enrichment recognizing that the modern Church was a continuing part of a Church that has been alive for the entire two thousand years since the first Pentecost Sunday.  The modern Church is they learned part of something bigger than our own time and era.  It is often common among Evangelicals and Charismatics to view the word “tradition” almost like a cuss word.  But these speakers learned to differentiate a “traditionalism” which tends to be the dead faith of living people from “tradition” which is the passage way by which faith is passed from one believer to another and from one generation of believers to another generation through the words, lives, and ministries of the men and women participating in Christ’s body – the Living Church.  The discovery of a living church that spans the centuries has implications for how we can envision the church of our own day.  A number of the speakers reached a place where they realized they were not the first to build, plant, and minister to churches.  They began to learn that there was something to be learned from the ancients who had been too easily ignored for too long.

            I am pretty sure that most of the speakers would agree with one of the speakers who pointed out that in looking to the ancients’ one was not trying to rebuild the past, but that the goal was to reintegrate what the Church learned and practiced in the early centuries with modern practices in our own days and situations.

            The goals of the conference are set forth in this conference website page.  On this page the organizers of the conference listed as the goal of the event: “An event designed to explore, collaborate, and discover how using the ancient practices of the historical church such as communion, creeds, and common prayer can actually manifest encounters with the Holy Spirit and resurrection in our local church communities.”  One might add “the ancient church calendar” to that list as conference speakers expressed agreement with one another the discovery that congregational life is enriched by participating in recognizing at least the main events of the historic church calendar that had spread throughout much of Christendom by the end of the second century.

            Perhaps one of the things central to the matters discussed in this conference was how the ancient church managed to express and experience the faith as gathered congregations as well as individuals experiencing the grace and mercy of God.  For example if we take seriously praying in the manner and form of the Lord’s Father, praying “Our Father” reminds us that we never truly pray alone.  We pray in and through Jesus Christ, and we pray with His Church, the Church which is one in Him.  Evangelicals and Charismatics as Evangelicals have highly valued the need for individuals receiving and acting upon the faith they receive through their hearing of God’s Word.  But the experience of hearing the word and of being enlivened in the faith was an “us” experience in the ancient church with “one another” before “our Father” in fellowship with God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.  I will try in these blogs to give expression to the general expression of the conference speakers.

            The conference was well thought out and planned.  It was a two day conference with speakers on June 6, 2014 primarily addressing historical, philosophical and theological concepts regarding the worship ideas to be reintegrated into Evangelical and Charismatic congregational experiences and then discussions of concrete ways this was being done by the speakers on the following day.  Speakers addressing those attending the conferences came from a wonderful mix of congregations from those of the church in Tulsa, along with speakers from churches in small towns, and in the metropolitan Burroughs of New York City.  The mix of speakers helped to show that reintegrating worship concepts of the ancient church into the milieu of modern and post-modern Evangelicalism could be done in a wide array of congregations.  The speakers at the conference believed the introduction of the practices of which they spoke could enrich congregational life across the entire spectrum of church life in America’s Evangelical and Charismatic communities.

            For me participating as a non-Charismatic, but also as an Anglican who had made a similar journey from an Evangelical background I found myself with people with whom I felt a sense of fellowship.  The conference organizers, and from what I could see the attendees for the largest part, were also desirous of seeing this platform be used to build bridges with churches from other denominations and traditions rather than to further divide Christian congregations.  As an Anglican I felt appreciated by those I met.  The Roman Catholic Church was represented at the conference by Father Stephen Vrazel who was well received and offered a simple blessing to as many as wished to receive it.  So for most in attendance considering the practices of the ancient Church was a bridge towards understanding the divisions of modern Christianity for in almost every instance those practicing the modern faith are divided over differing emphases that were often joined together in the experience of ancient Christianity.  Hopefully we will be able to express some of these things in days ahead, because what was being discussed has been a blessing to many already and will hopefully prove a blessing to many more in the future.

Wind that Shakes the Barley - Movie Review

The Wind that Shakes the Barley

A Movie Review

By Dan McDonald

 

The Wind that Shakes the Barley

 

            “The Wind that Shakes the Barley” was a globally acclaimed movie which won the Palme d’Or at the 2006 Cannes Film Festival.  Unfortunately most Americans have never heard of it, let alone having seen it.  The movie captures in the microcosm of a small group of friends, the emotions and events of the Irish Revolution of 1919-1922; and then beyond into the divisions that exploded into something akin to an Irish Civil War following the peace treaty of 1922.  Some knowledge of the Irish history exposed by this movie may well help some watchers of this movie see and feel with greater depth the story being set forth in this powerful movie.

I suppose that most of us realize that British and Irish relations had been strained for centuries.  Some of you surely know the reasons better than others, and the truth is that centuries of remembered offenses erupted into the revolution of the Irish people against the British Empire.


One of the offenses had been committed by Cromwell after his victory over the Royalist forces in the English Civil War in 1648.  Cromwell saw Ireland and its Catholicism as trouble for the future of the Protestant Republic established with the defeat of the monarchists.  Cromwell rewarded Scots Presbyterians with lands and estates to be turned over to Protestants in order to dilute Catholic strength within Ireland.  From that time forward, larger and larger chunks of Irish land and property began to be possessed by non-Irish.  This would lead to demands for economic redistribution in the Irish Revolution.


Another reason for stormy relations between Ireland and the rest of the regions of the United Kingdom was the wounds Ireland had suffered with hardly any help from others in Britain during the time of the Potato Famine in the 1840's.  None of the major British political parties chose to intervene as tens of thousands of Irishmen, women, and children died from starvation or the effects of malnutrition.  The Tories would not support a relaxation in laws limiting grain imports into Britain; and the Liberals intent on having an economics based on free markets would not intervene in the free markets by principle.  For the Irish, who did the dying in the hundreds of thousands before the famine was over, the real reason the rest of Britain did nothing was because they were Irish.  The Irish wanted an end to British rule.  Following the Potato Famine there was a growing sense within Britain that Irish Home Rule was needed.  In 1912 legislation was passed to establish Irish home rule.  But before the Irish home rule could be established World War I began.  Irish leaders were divided.  Most were in favor of giving Britain time to battle Germany.  But some were fearful that the British would use their war with Germany to renege on the Home Rule legislation.


In 1916 a revolution was declared by a few leaders who did not trust the British.  The Easter rebellion of 1916 gained only a small group of followers around Dublin and the revolutionaries were defeated and executed.  Most Irish had not supported the Easter rebellion of 1916 but the British angered most of Ireland by its brutal treatment of those captured following the brief rebellion.  Britain had easily won the fighting but afterwards destroyed any hopes of creating a chance at peace.  There were parliamentary elections in 1918, and the Irish people voted in accord with their anger at Britain's harsh treatment of Ireland.  The Irish were especially angered by the arrogance of the occupying "black and tan brigades Britain brought into Ireland in order to quell any potential uprising.  In the 1918 elections the vast majority of Irish seats in Parliament went to members of the Sinn Fein Party, which was the party which most supported Irish independence from Britain.  Elected to represent districts in Ireland, the Sinn Fein representatives instead announced they would not represent Ireland at Westminster, but that they would form an independent Irish Republic and would rule from within Ireland.  They notified other nations that Ireland officially recognized the 1916 Irish Declaration of Independence and that until British soldiers were removed from Ireland the two nations were in a state of war.

The war for independence lasted from 1919 to 1922, when some of the leaders of the revolution accepted a negotiated treaty with the British Empire.  The resulting free state did not include the northern region of Ireland where a Protestant majority existed.  Nor did the treaty do much to address the large amount of Irish land owned by non-Irish persons.  Finally the Irish independence included an agreement for the Irish to continue to pledge allegiance to the British sovereign.  Large numbers of the Irish Republican Army refused to abide by the treaty.  The Free State of Ireland was declared and instituted according to the agreement made by the Irish and British leadership in 1922.  For all practical purposes a civil war broke out between those loyal to the original demands of the Irish Republican Army, and those willing to settle for the compromise established in the Free State of Ireland.

All of these realities are pictured in microcosm in “The Wind that shakes the Barley”.  The movie is often violent.  Some scenes are painful to view.  The movie while showing in cinematic form the violence of the times, does not seek to glorify the war.  I was deeply moved by how the film's creators seem to have presented this view of history to raise the question regarding whether war could ever really end injustice?  On the one hand the presence of injustice seems to justify the creation of forces to eradicate the injustice occurring in the land.  But on the other hand, armies fight with discipline and codes of punishment for those whose faith in the cause waver on the battlefield.  There are scenes when men's will power fail them and they betray their just cause.  What does an army do with traitors?  If the Black and Tan were vengeful, so could the Irish Republican Army be vicious, and so could the Irish Free State stand its ground when its authority was tested.  It seems to me that the film's creators brilliantly pose the question whether injustice can ever be defeated by an army, or if the use of armies simply eternalize the powers of injustice through the use of violence.  It seems to me that “The Wind that Shakes the Barley” does a brilliant job presenting us the scenes that demand us to consider whether war can ever dislodge injustice.  It succeeds I believe in forcing us to consider the question without giving us the answer which we alone must provide on the basis of our own rational and conscientious considerations.