Mark Scandrette

I recently finished reading my friend Alan Hirsch’s excellent book, The Forgotten Ways. Hirsch offers a missiological reading of many of the major themes in the emerging church conversation (including the kingdom of God, Jesus as Rabbi, experience and action-based spirituality, etc). This book is especially helpful for those who may feel uneasy about emerging theological explorations yet passionate about the opportunity to rethink mission in the 21st century. This well annotated and illustrative work explores the dynamic interactions between the essential message of Jesus, the historical church and emerging culture.I will be recommending it to people as a helpful introduction to the missiological motivations of many contemporary experimental practitioners.

We had the most amazing concert experience yesterday at the stern grove festival featuring Anoushka Shankar & Karsh Kale. Most people know that I love traditional hindi and punjabi music combined with techno rhythms. This concert was a real treat. Sitar player Anoushka Shankar is the half sister of Nora Jones and daughter of Ravi Shankar. At the mid afternoon concert as we were bobbing our heads to the complex tabla beats and crazy sitar solos,a friend turned to me and said, “This music takes me to another level. If this is how worship was in a church or synogogue, I would go every week– but maybe this experience is wordless worship– because it makes us aware of transcendent realities.”  This music deserves to be heard by a wider Western audience.

Before dawn
The streets of the city
Lie silent
And I think of you
Leaving the house
for the lonely places
Where you caressed
The constant presence
of our ancestor

In the quiet of early morning
Only a thin space separates
Earth from eternity
I hear your Ghost-voice
Calling
within my beating chest
Waking me
with the invitation
to be still

I surrender to the whisper
Breathe the moist cool air
Bathe in the mist
that blankets the ground
like a warm, wet kiss.

What I want
Is what you desire
I give myself over
To your voice
and to your touch
opening myself up
to the inheritance of Sabbath rest
that makes this day pregnant
by the fertile seed
of one dream.

Charles Bukowski is one of the best known American everyman “gutter” poets of the 20th Century. My friend Brett turned me on to this Bukowski poem that is a quiet confessional:

Bluebird
Charles Bukowski

there’s a bluebird in my heart that
wants to get out
but I’m too tough for him,
I say, stay in there, I’m not going
to let anybody see
you.
there’s a bluebird in my heart that
wants to get out
but I pour whiskey on him and inhale
cigarette smoke
and the whores and the bartenders
and the grocery clerks
never know that
he’s
in there.

there’s a bluebird in my heart that
wants to get out
but I’m too tough for him,
I say,
stay down, do you want to mess
me up?
you want to screw up the
works?
you want to blow my book sales in
Europe?
there’s a bluebird in my heart that
wants to get out
but I’m too clever, I only let him out
at night sometimes
when everybody’s asleep.
I say, I know that you’re there,
so don’t be
sad.
then I put him back,
but he’s singing a little
in there, I haven’t quite let him
die
and we sleep together like
that
with our
secret pact
and it’s nice enough to
make a man
weep, but I don’t
weep, do
you?