Mark Scandrette

For Ella Elizabeth Stavlund, daughter of our friends Mike and Stacy, read by the waters and flower petals of her baptism on April 15, 2007.

Ella Elizabeth
Who through force of Will
Now graces us
With her presence

May you grow in wisdom
And in stature
And in favor
With God and people

May the seed of the Maker’s good dreams
Leap and sprout inside of you
Nurturing you to become
The woman you were made to be

Last Friday night while Lisa and I were dining at the bar in our favorite Italian restaurant, a young man sat down next to us and promptly initiated a conversation,
“So, what do the two of you do for a living?,” he asks. I explain that I am a writer and teacher with an organization working to help people integrate the message of Jesus into their everyday lives, and then add:
“We are fascinated with what Jesus and his message can offer—as distinct from what many people expect through their experience with organized religion.”
I hope to say more, but he quickly interjects:
“I grew up Catholic and I have no respect for the church. When I was seventeen a priest paid me six hundred dollars to [perform oral sex on him].”

He goes on to tell about a conversation he had in a London hotel with some Christian college students:
“I found them to be very close-minded and judgmental,.” he says. I reply,
“Their intentions were likely noble–they probably just had limited life experience and would become more generous and understanding with age and maturity. In my experience, people who are the most judgmental often struggle with the same issues they condemn in others.”

Then he launches into a sordid tale about his time at prestigious Christian college–where he was on a four-year scholarship. The bar tender leans in to listen.

“So, my freshman year at this college I worked as a male stripper at a gay club. I wasn’t gay—just crazy rebellious. Well, fast-forward three years. I met this girl who was a senior and we started having sex in her dorm room. Her roommates secretly reported this to the administration and we were separately called into a review by the adminis-tration. She had her meeting first and they expelled her from the school. It was against school policy for students to have sex on campus. I was freaking out! I started calling friends all over the country trying to figure out how to get into another school to graduate my senior year. So when I walked into the meeting with the administration and a peer review board the school official behind the desk saw me was suddenly startled. He nervously rechecked the incident report and asked, ‘So, you’re Daniel Flannagan?’ It turned out that the guy was a frequent patron of the strip club where I had worked– and regularly shoved dollar bills down my shorts. He quickly dismissed the charges and reinstated my girlfriend as a student so she could graduate. The students on the peer review board had to have been so confused— no one ever brought up the incident again.”

“What did this experience make you think about faith?” I ask. He replies, “People can talk all they want about morality and ethics, but it’s how you really live that matters.”

“That’s exactly what our organization tries to help people do,” I say. Changing the subject I ask, “How do you spend your time?”
“Well, to be quite frank, the past seven months I’ve been nursing quite a drinking problem. That’s why I’m starting with beer and Sprite tonight. I work as a bartender at an upscale restaurant and get hammered every night.

“Is this something you hope to change?,” I ask.

“My girlfriend is a radiologist and the other day she did a sonogram of my liver. She thought it would be trashed– but was shocked that it appears to be fine. It must be my Irish blood. I can pass out drinking every night and still get up and go running or work-out the next morning.”

I respond with a story: “I have a friend who is a recovering alcoholic and he says that for him it was never about the drinking– the addiction was just a way he chose to mask to deeper problems. Do you find that to be true for you?”

He answers: “It is definitely deeper than the drinking. It used to be worse when it was about sex. Sometimes I would leave my friends at a social event just because I had to go have sex.”
“How serious are you about dealing with these issues?, I asked.

“My drinking is definitely beginning to affect my relationship with my girlfriend—and she and her kids mean a lot to me. I need to find a day job that doesn’t involve serving alcohol. The sex thing is getting better—I’ve stayed with one person for nearly a year now—that is a major achievement for me.”

He offers to buy us each a drink and we politely decline. Lisa has been nudging my knee for some time to remind me that we are out on a date. We exchange contact information and wish each other well and I settle our bill. When we walk outside the air is dusky warm—and I feel energized by this serendipitous and feel the lingering surprise of this intense conversation. When we got home I typed a quick note:

Daniel, You were pretty honest and vulnerable about issues in your life—including alcohol dependency. If I wasn’t on a date with my wife, I would have loved to have stayed to talk longer. One of the things I do is spiritual direction and life coaching for friends and clients. If you ever need someone to talk to about changes you are hoping to make in your life, I’d be glad to listen and offer support—not for pay, just as a friend.”

He quickly replied to my note, “Great to meet you as well. Nice to bump into people that see a different, maybe bigger inter-connected picture than most. I appreciate the life- coaching offer. I can never have too many friends, especially smart ones. I’ll stay in touch and am sure to see you guys again.

I can only imagine how God may be orchestrating a series of chance encounters in Daniel’s life with a chorus of characters who can help him along in his journey toward grace.

In the mail I recently received a couple of copies of An Emergent Manifesto of Hope, a book that I contributed to and edited by my friends Tony Jones and Doug Pagitt. I think it is the best and most diverse compilation of writings by people considered to be part of the emerging church. Tony and Doug introduce the chapter sections in a helpful and friendly way. The articles contributed by 25 emerging church voices provide cautions, encouragements and challenges to us as we imagine and work toward a different and better future. Here’s an excerpt from my chapter entitled: The Messy and Fertile Process of Becoming:

Some among us, like the animals of the forest, have sensed a storm on the horizon, an intuition and murmuring of the torrent of change affecting the general culture and the church–shifts in social consciousness, globlization, economics, increasing mobility, plurality and societal fragmentation. These are examples of the many changes that determine the landscape of our journey to navigate faithfulness in the way of Jesus in the world we live in–changes that are coming and have now come.

People seem to be affected by these shifts in varying intensity dependent on region, personality and social location. A common result is a great desire for conversation with people who are also struggling to make sense of things. The emerging church is a place where people have felt the freedom to explore questions and experiment with new forms of lifestyle and corporate practice. Often these questions have been about the essence of the Christ-message, vocation, the nature and form of the church, cultural and philosophical analysis and the present agenda of God in the world.

We resonate with the story of two friends walking along the road to Emmaus, discussing the significance of the life and teachings of Jesus. During their conversation they were met by a stranger, and in the presence of a stranger their hearts were strangely warmed. Many of us have felt the presence of Jesus in the midst of our conversations with one another. For people in our time, conversation may be the first step toward entering the way. Conversation is also a path towards a greater sense of authentic relationship than some have experienced in more formal structures. Whatever the emerging church becomes, it began as a generative friendship among younger entrepreneurial leaders and seekers—an improvised support system for people desperate for connections with others experimenting with new ideas on faith and community.
We should acknowledge that for many of us the door was opened to reimagine faith and the church through pain, disappointment, failure, fatique, burn-out, public or private humiliation, or a sense of personal alienation. It can be argued that any social movement attracts anomalies, extremists and crazies— and the emergent phenomenon is no exception. We have brought along our peculiarities, unhealthy pathologies and shadow sides. Explorations into emerging faith have caused conflict in marriages. In isolated cases the emerging church community has been the stage on which people have played out their personal disintegration.

At times I’m fearful that permission to be deconstructive has attracted personalities that are prone to criticism, angst and melancholy. Some of us seem to avoid our unresolved personality issues, organic depressive tendencies and relational difficulties by transference to a perceived “spiritual crisis.” Some among us need encouragement and support to face our personal difficulties more directly rather than attributing so much of our struggles to ecclesiological or philosophical issues.

Even healthy rethinking of faith can still produce a profound sense of disequilibrium. My friend Craig Burnett suggests that deconstruction and reconstruction are regular rhythms in a life of apprenticeship to Jesus. We should not be too quick to dismiss or expect people to just “get over” their deconstruction– as if to graduate sequentially onto reconstruction. But concurrently we should encourage one another to imagine and enact proactive communal solutions and reconstructions.

Evan Howard suggests that spiritual conversion, rather than being a singular event is more accurately a series of distinctive epiphanies (ie. a conversion to the role of the Spirit, a conversion to social justice, a conversion to contemplative practices, etc). These are not conversions from one system to another, but represent the gradual complimentary and holistic renewal of the soul. These progressive awakenings can sometimes create a sense of grief and regret. For anyone not in a space of liminality, criticism, doubt and risky exploration may seem pessimistic and deconstructive. When we experience the deconstruction of our faith we are in good company with many of the characters of ancient scripture, whose expectations of what it meant to follow God were constantly being challenged and subverted. Our constructions of faith and practice are dismantled and at times, destroyed, so that we can approximate a more coherent and integrative orthopraxis.

Last Monday I spent time with my friend, Mark Van Steenwyck, a man with Santa Claus eyes and a hearty laugh. Adam and I took Mark on a walk through China Town to North Beach and had coffee at the historic Cafe Trieste, where Francis Ford Copola wrote the screen play for the film, The God Father, at the back table. Mark has a special place in my heart, partly because he lives and works in the neighborhood where I grew up in South Minneapolis– but mostly because he is pioneering a new pilgrim path that is urban, holistic and activist. I’m anxious to see where Mark’s dreams will take him in the next 5 years.

I will be in sunny San Diego February 5-7 to connect with friends who are facilitating the Emergent track at the National Pastor’s Convention.

If I’m a good boy my buddy Doug Pagitt said I might be able to say a few words in his Critical Concerns Course. If you happen to be in San Diego and want to connect drop me a line (mark(at) reimagine.org

Last weekend my son Noah and I went with my friend Charley Scandlyn to Yosemite for four days. Charley was officiating a wedding and we got to tag along and enjoy the solitude of the Valley. I had always wanted to see Yosemite in the winter and it was spectacular! Noah and I had a great time hiking and walking on top of frozen lakes and streams. As a special bonus we were invited to the wedding and to the wedding feast at the fabulous Ahwahnee.

After almost a year apart my friend Justin Dillon and I got to have breakfast together yesterday morning at Tartine. For the past couple of years Justin has been promoting an album with his band Tremolo. More importantly he has used his album, Love is the Greatest Revenge, to promote efforts to end human trafficking through a fund he established. Serendipitously Justin has been networking with record companies and Hollywood film studios on a project to develop a Television special (ala Live Aid) to end human trafficking. While we were eating breakfast the President of Virgin records called and he recently sat down with T Bone Burnett to talk about being involved in the project. I admire Justin’s persistence in being an advocate for the causes of justice in the entertainment industry. When he is not having meetings in Hollywood he supports his family by painting houses in the East Bay– and if all goes well he will be the unpaid executive producer for this television special. Way to be subversive.

After a 3 week hiatus we had a small Seven Gathering last night. Alot of people from our community were either sick or on holiday. Yet we had four visitors from other places, including Deborah and Sarah from Tribe L.A. I met the good people of Tribe when we had them share their drum circle worship at the Emergent Conventions in ‘03 and ‘04. Rebecca Ver Straten-McSparran, the pastor of Tribe, and I both participated in a consult at Fuller a year later. As we talked I found out that Deborah and Sarah had previously been involved in a community in Reseda led by my friend Nathan Clair . Last night was just another reminder of how connected we all are. Deborah and Sarah shared a meal with our community because I know Nathan, meeting on a camping trip 5 years ago in Colorado. And Sarah and Deborah found Tribe L.A. because they went with Nathan to the Emergent Conventions, which I helped organize. When I meet people now, one of my first questions is, “How are we related?” or “who do we both know?” because the chances are that we have people in common. A reminder to be aware of the power of loose connections.

When I arrived in Tampa I drove up to see some shirt-tail relatives in Homosassa Springs. I got to spend some time with my second cousin, Bruce Blauer. Bruce is an actor and painter living in L.A. We saw each other last Christmas for the first time in 25 years and it was good to connect again. I admire his persistence in pursuing his passion for acting and living life from a creative center. Bruce took me out on the river to see a group of Manatee. One came right up to the pontoon and I got to pet it. They were huge– and hairy.

The last thing we did in Seattle was going to a park overlooking the city and then getting a cup of coffee at Cafe Fiore. Very robust yet smooth flavored espresso. Both the espresso and the drip coffee had what I would describe as a foamy mouth feel.

We drove in bumper to bumper traffic from Seattle to Portland– to visit our friends Paul and Elizabeth. Paul is a Greek Orthodox priest serving a large parish in Portland. We always enjoy comparing notes about faith. Paul and Elizabeth grew up Evangelical Christian and after four years at a Baptist College decided that the ancient path of the Greek Orthodox tradition fit their sensibilities better. While we are together we often talk about the differences we find between the traditions we were raised in and what now makes sense as a spiritual path. I think alot of it has to do with personality. It might be easy for someone like me to look critically at more traditional or all american expressions of faith– as if people who find themselves in that realm have a more syncretistic relationship to culture. And yet how much of my own spiritual quest is marked by my particular personality? We all fit the archetype for something.

We weren’t in Portland long, but did get a chance to visit Powells Books– a bookstore covering an entire city block. They still didn’t have Ken Wilbur’s A Theory of Everything.

It was a long drive home. I spent the morning in the car planning our family budget for 2007– noodling with the numbers and trying to figure out how to be the most intentional and sustainable about how we manage our finances. I use to attend more closely to these things, but haven’t been as fastidious in recent years. We’ve been talking about money in our community and sharing our incomes, expenses and budgets. More people cried the night we talked about money than in any other meeting I’ve ever participated in. People embarrassed about debt or wealth– and lots of questions about how to relate to money. Should we act like it doesn’t matter? I believe that attending to one’s financial life is an important dimension to the spiritual life– noticing patterns of need, provision and abundance. I tend to feel like I am never quite comfortable about money. If we don’t have enough I worry. If we have a surplus I feel guilty. I do think it is helpful to talk more openly with one another about earning and spending.