I’ve been working on a website to promote my new book, Practicing the Way of Jesus and to launch the Jesus Dojo Campaign. Check out Jesusdojo.com Huge thanks to my brother-in-law Dave Laird for his support as web developer.
The article originally published in CONSP!RE Magazine. Spring 2011
When I was nineteen, I quit college with the lofty goal of resisting the pull of American materialism to embark on the adventure of seeking God’s justice and compassion. I married my girlfriend, and we relocated to an iron-mining region in northern Minnesota, to work with at-risk kids and families. The mines had recently shut down, resulting in 85 percent unemployment and escalating rates of alcoholism, wife battering, and child sexual abuse. Anyone who could had moved out of the region to look for work.
We quickly set up faith-based children’s clubs in public housing projects and shanty towns and enjoyed becoming friends with many of the struggling families. Neglected kids would wander over to our apartment for meals four or five nights a week, even in sub-zero weather. Families in crisis confided in us and we often sat in their smoke-filled apartments talking and drinking coffee past 1 a.m.
I had what I now term “sophomoric compassion”–emotionally overwhelmed by the stories I carried, though not wise or equipped enough yet to actually be very helpful. At the same time, the intoxication of being vital and needed propelled me like a drug addiction.
Evelyn Paulson, a saint in her late seventies with whom we prayed weekly, warned me: “Slow down! The problems of the people you are working with didn’t develop overnight and they won’t be solved in a day. You need to learn to rest and pace yourself, or you’ll burn out in five years.”
That winter, my wife Lisa’s father died suddenly. Returning from the funeral we resumed our work. A family with six kids from the housing projects wanted to show their appreciation for our friendship by a special meal they splurged to buy with food stamps. Late in the afternoon on the day of the feast, Lisa became overwhelmed by the dark ache of grief that often comes weeks afterwards. I was torn. Lisa was in no shape to be with this family, but I also knew how disheartened they would be if we canceled. It had taken time to build their trust. Reluctantly I called to say that we couldn’t come. I knew we’d made the right choice because Lisa, stricken with grief, cried over the next two hours with me by her side. Yet it bothered me that we had disappointed our friends. After dinner, I called to say that we would still be coming, late, and Lisa wiped the tears from her eyes as we grabbed our coats.
Twenty years later I’m still haunted by the fact that I felt more urgency to please this family than to care for the needs of my grieving wife. But this was part of the learning.Eventually we learned how to say yes and no– and for the right reasons. We developed a system for letting people know when we could accept visitors—a green card on the door meant it was okay to ring the bell; a red one meant we needed time alone.
For me, self-awareness and realism about sustainability has come with time, by trial and error, and with some pain.
While it’s inspiring to see so many in our generation taking risks and making radical new choices to do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly, a surprising number of our experiments are short-lived.
I believe there are lessons we simply can’t learn about life in God’s kingdom by being cautious. We must throw ourselves into challenging and overwhelming situations that take us beyond ourselves. But once we’ve gone over the edge, we have to learn how to fly by finding balance and flow– spiritually, physically, emotionally, financially and relationally. Our faith-inspired activism has to grow into a substantive and sustaining rhythm of life that engages struggle without becoming jaded or embittered.
If we aren’t careful, the call of justice can become as dualistic and disintegrative as the pursuit of the American dream. We are being invited into the shalom of the kingdom of love that promises restoration and at every level of our existence. For me, self-awareness and realism about sustainability has come with time, by trial and error, and with some pain.
In my twenties I was hardly aware of how the mind, body and soul are connected. Flush with the urgency of the work, I would often skip meals or try make do with the KoolAid and cookies we served at our programs. The combination of bad nutrition and lack of sleep made me volatile and susceptible to my most base instincts for comfort and escape.
A friend of mine recently told me, “I’ve noticed that a lot of us activist Christians, including me, are overweight and physically unhealthy. I think this is a poor testimony to our shared values, like simplicity.” Over the past six months he and a small group of other leaders have each lost a significant amount of weight. A healthy diet, regular exercise, and proper sleep can do a lot to keep us motivated and energized for the work we do – and it’s so important to model good practices for the people in struggle that we live and work among.
After moving to San Francisco’s Mission District, I once took philosopher Dallas Willard on a tour of our neighborhood, explaining the challenges of living in a place that was characterized by violence and culture clash. He abruptly turned to me and said, “If I lived in this neighborhood I would limit myself to 34-36 hours of work a week. Your soul will need extra rest to be sustained here.” It’s easy to become conditioned to the place where you live and not realize the subtle effect that is has on your soul. It is tempting to let the subjective view from skid row or the cul de sac skew our perceptions of reality. Not everyone is in crisis or struggle just as not everyone who is wealthy is selfish or comfortable. To be healthy, we probably need a variety of relationships, both in and out of the neighborhoods we live in.
Each year in the extended community of which I am part, we take time to reflect on the rhythms and patterns we each need in our lives to sustain us. First, we spend some time examining how we are directing our life energy, by examining how each one of us is seeking God’s greater wholeness in the following areas: how I live in my body; what I think about and the habits of my mind; how I manage my feelings, sense of identity, and the stresses in my life; where I spend my time and resources; and how I show up in my relationships. From our responses to these questions we each set goals about our next steps towards wholeness in each area.
Second, we create or review a personal rule of life by reflecting on the question, “What are the daily, weekly, and seasonal habits and practices I need to help me keep momentum in my formation as a holistic disciple of Jesus? These might include silence and solitude, Sabbath-keeping, time in nature, exercise, sleep, time away with family and friends, or other nurturing commitments.
All of us must find those disciplines and practices, those rhythms and patterns in our life, through which we are able to walk the path towards what Dorothy Day described as “the long loneliness” of obedience. It is a path which, God willing, we will be walking for many years.
My latest book, Practicing the Way of Jesus, is set to “drop” in mid June. It is now available for preorder on Amazon. In the next week, I’ll launch a new website called Jesusdojo.com that will host the Jesus Dojo Campaign and tour. It will also be a place where I collect stories of people taking risks to Practice the Way of Jesus.
My dream is to see people revolutionized by the life and teachings of Jesus–to experience real transformation by taking creative risks to integrate the vision and teachings of Jesus into the details of life. I’m inviting you to join the Jesus Dojo campaign by making a commitment to do something tangible to practice the way of Jesus during the next year– in solidarity with a friend or group of friends. When you sign up to join the campaign on the new site, I’ll begin sending you regular updates on experiments you might want to try, along with helpful tips and inspiring stories. And I hope you will send me your stories, photos and video clips to post on this site.
Here’s a repost of my ReIMAGINE poem from my book SOUL GRAFFITI. I’ve been performing it for a long time, but it still seems to connect with a lot of people.
In my mind’s
I am flying high across the sky
Swooping in and out and dropping low,
Touching the ground of city streets
Like a spirit of God hovering over primordial waters
Of lump clay earth.
I am waking up
I am daring to dream again
I hear the voice
I hear the voice
I hear the voice over the waters saying to you and to me:
“I am here.
The hidden whisper of love.
That beautiful and terrible story you hunger to hear.
Be still!
Be still sacred scared child.
Awake!
Awake from your stubborn numb slumber
Open those sleepy eyes to my morning daylight
It will not burn away any good it finds in that hungry cracked heart.
ReIMAGINE!
Life with me
Taste and see the splendor of
my blooming spring garden rest weary home
Weep while you can.
While you still feel
While the pain is still real
While my love still heals’
ReIMAGINE!
Nonfiction in full color
Humanity and divinity live in concert together.
The “I” and the “we” making sweet synergy.
It’s the song we all long to hear
Let the aria resound, may the earth shake with the reverberation of your ancient apocalyptic prodigious creativity.
ReIMAGINE! All our voices in harmony with yours, Lord.
Samba, Romba, Rhimba
Afro-Cuban beats
Italian Opera
Salsa Latina
Tai-Chi Mariachi
Three Chord Punk Rock bleats and the symphony
The Trance, Trip Hop, Hip Hop, Do wop, Swing
Big Band Bleeding Heart Acoustic Folk Middle Eastern Dirge
Zeideco, Howling Blues and the Salvation songs of plantation slave spirituals singing:
“We shall overcome.” “We shall overcome.”
ReIMAGINE!
A spiral, whirling miracle, of you and me and us swept up in the creator’s remaking.
ReIMAGINE!
Creator Recreate
Here. Now. Instigate.
A revolution of faith, hope and love.
Spring comes to the California coast, it seems, in January, as the winter rains turn parched hillsides to verdant green. The new year often awakens a desire for newness to come to our lives. Experiments in Truth is a Learning Lab we offer starting next week that is about seeking healing change and a new rhythm of life. Belowyou will find a short description, along with a longer narrative excerpt from my new book, Practicing the Way of Jesus, to be released by IVP in June.
You can sign up to participate in Experiments in Truth here.
David sat at the table with his head down, telling his small group that he had gone on yet another drunken weekend bender. “I feel like I’ve been struggling with the same issues for so long– I can’t tell if I’m making any progress.” The “accountability” David got from his group focused primarily on his mistakes and failures. But being aware of our problems and confessing our missteps can only take us so far. To really get momentum we need support and a plan for what we can do to pursue life in the kingdom of love. Transformation requires intentional new choices that translate our vision and ambitions into bodily actions. This is a spiritual secret that has largely been lost in recent times.
We all have things in our lives we wish to change. The solidarity of a group experiment can provide the resolve to make the changes we haven’t been able to make on our own. Several years ago we began a series of shared practices to address the disparity we often feel between how we want to live and how we actually live. Through a learning lab we call Experiments in Truth we invite one other to make simple but dramatic changes to our normal habits over thirty or forty days. Out of all the experiments we’ve done, participants say this is the one that has brought about the most transformation in their lives.
The first session begins with a provocative question, “Name one thing you could do over the next 30 or 40 days that could change your life forever?” Each person, through a careful process of discernment, identifies an area where change is needed and then commits to a dramatic shift– something they will stop and something they will start to address this area of concern. After we’ve committed to our experiments, we meet once a week to check-in on our progress. Here are a couple of examples of personal experiments in truth:
As a young professional, Kyle was used to working hard and playing hard. Part of his office culture was going out after work for a late dinner and drinks nearly every night of the week. Over time this habit made Kyle feel unfocused, distracted from God and guilty about how much he regularly overspent on entertainment. For his forty-day experiment he decided to abstain from drinking alcohol or dining out and vowed to go to bed every night at a specific time. Over time, Kyle realized that the absence of alcohol made it easier for him to pray and the money he saved by not eating out allowed him to give a full 10% of his income away– and he generally felt more freedom and at peace.
Over the years that Brandon and Rebecca had been married they struggled to make physical intimacy and time together a priority. Their needs for emotional support and sexual closeness often went unsatisfied. They decided that for their forty day experiment they would commit to having sex at least three times a week. What they discovered was that pursuing more regular sexual intimacy required them to communicate better, which had positive effects in many other areas of their relationship. By the end of the forty days they were experiencing more unity, romance, trust and fun than at any other time in during the seven years they had been together.
Kristin recognized that she masked a deep sense of insecurity through an obsession with fashion, shopping and meticulous grooming. For her experiment she made a vow not to shop or wear jewelry or make-up for two months. Shifting her attention away from her appearance and clothes helped her focus on developing peace and inner beauty. People immediately began to notice a dramatic change in her disposition and affirmed her natural radiance. (Note: Other participants have struggled with the opposite issue, a lack of self-care, and have experimented with giving more attention to their physical appearance).
The first step to designing an Experiment in Truth is to examine your life. Spend some time in solitude asking God to reveal where transformation is most needed. A second step is to explore the pattern and root causes for the issues you’ve identified. A third step is to decide what new practices to adopt to address the issues you’ve identified. Once you’ve identified what to start and what to stop, a fourth step is to commit to your plan. This is where the ancient wisdom of vows is instructive. I might want to love God and people and feel a strong desire to do so, but without a commitment to specific practices these are just sentiments. We show what we really believe and value by what we are committed to actually do.
One of the reasons we call these “experiments” is that we are testing what changes actually make a positive difference. The goal is never to create an extra layer of rules that we use to judge ourselves or others by. We need practices of abstinence and engagement that are specific to the places where reinvention is most needed in our lives.
Spirit of the Creator,
we surrender
To the reign of love
In every currency of being
Body, mind, feelings, time,
in purpose, possessions and belonging
Make us alive to the power
that is making all things new.
So many of us want to live in the way of Jesus—pursuing a life that is deeply soulful, connected to our real needs and good news to our world.
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