Fuzzy Thinking

Listening to Adam Hamilton caused me to realize that as United Methodists we need to embrace our theology. It is one that connects the head and the heart. Hopefully I can post more later.

-- Post From My iPhone

"Father in Heaven! What is man without thee! What is all that he knows, vast accumulation though it be, but a chipped fragment if he knows not thee! Thee the One, who art one thing and art all! So mayest thou give to the intellect, wisdom to comprehend that one thing; to the heart, sincerity to receive this understanding; to the will purity that wills only one thing." - Soren Kierkegaard

Grief is a funny thing. As a pastor, I've read about grief, I've studied it and I've watched people go through it. Yet, I am still surprised. I was surprised this morning to find myself in tears after a dream I had about my father. My father died in September. Here it is in May and I thought I was finished with grief. I was wrong.

One of the principles of Adrian van Kaam's Formative Spirituality is appraisal. Van Kaam's science maintains that everything is important. Even the most mundane and boring moments in our lives are pregnant with God's formative potential. So, whenever an event happens, we pause and ask ourselves "what is going on here?" Living out a Formation Theology means not allowing events to pass through our fingers without appraising it in light of formation journey.

I did that this morning. After the dream and the tears I asked myself, "Why?" Why now? What's going on that I would dream about my father who died in September? I thought I was over my grief. I thought it was all in my past. Why would I have such a dream now?

I came across this in John Cassian's "The Institutes" in the section on the spirit of gluttony.

"This same old man declared, based on the following indications, that the devil has ever been the promoter of foolish tales and the enemy of spiritual conferences. For when he was talking with some of the brothers about important spiritual matters and notices that they had fallen into a kind of Lethean slumber and could not cast off the weight of sleep from their eyes, he immediately introduced a foolish tale.

When he saw that they woke up at once and pricked up their ears for the pleasure that it gave them, he said with a groan: 'Up until now we were speaking about heavenly things, and the eyes of each of you were shut in deathlike repose. But when a foolish tale is introduced all of us wake up and shake off the torpor of the sleep that had mastered us. From this you should consider carefully, then, who was the enemy of that spiritual conference and who is the instigator of this vain and carnal tale. It is perfectly clear that it is the one who rejoices in wickedness and does not cease to foster the latter and to fight against the former.'"

Kevin Watson at http://deeplycommitted.com has started an experiment to see how much social capital Methodist bloggers have. This experiment was prompted by the feeling among some Methodist bloggers that United Methodism does not always do as good of a job as it could at getting the Wesleyan message out there, particularly on-line. So, he wants to see how many views a YouTube video can get if Methodist bloggers work together to promote it. The experiment is to see how many hits the video will receive in two weeks.

If you want to participate you can: First, watch the video below. Second, copy and paste this entire post into a new post on your blog and post it. Third, remind people about this experiment in one week.

Here's a quote from Susan Muto's work "Where Lovers Meet: Inside the Interior Castle." This work is a companion or commentary to St. Teresa of Avila's "Interior Castle" classic on the spiritual life. Here Muto is discussing St. Teresa's 'vipers' that one encounters as he or she seeks to draw near to God:

The viper's trick is to deceive us into thinking that temporal affairs escalate in significance to the point where they almost seem the eternal. They try to deceive us into believing that worldly success will grant us at some point ultimate satisfaction. This illusion blinds us to the inherent finitude of earthbound affairs. However splendid our accomplishments may be, their outcomes pass away over time if we do not give the credit to God. The way of the vipers is to hold before our mind's eye the esteem in which the world holds us when we exercise this kind of activism. They make us secretly relish people's praise. Our pride-form allures us into thinking that our worthwhileness rests on the works in which we are engaged rather than in the God we serve. These clever devils also try to convince us that any kind of withdrawal to worship God in solitude is a big mistake. What will the other "worker bees" think of us if we take time to "Be still and know that I am God" (Psalm 46:10)?

I believe these comments stand on their own. For me, it is a point of reflection as I seek to live out my faith as true significance only comes from resting in God.

Someone once told me that a pastor is the only person who has two hundred bosses. That is...if you serve a church with two hundred members. The larger the church, the more 'bosses' you have. Of course I chuckled at that. It isn't nearly that bad, but one of the pressures of being of pastor is a sense that you have different sets of expectations that aren't always compatible, thus the idea of multiple bosses.

In the previous article I listed the expectations the Discipline has. They are varied and many. Yet, there are times when the district has their own set of expectations (that are usually backed up in the Discipline) as does the conference. There are also expectations coming from your church, your community, your family and even yourself. Over and beyond that we have a sense that God has expectations too. So, what is a pastor to do? Who trumps whom? Should we always meet expectations coming from our church, or should it always be the district/conference? Or maybe our family? Where do our own expectations formed in prayer, silence and spiritual practices come into play?

Our life may be imprisoned in functional dispositions. They dim the vision of the spirit. Most harmful in this regard are those of ascendancy over others. To prove our functional potency, we may strive vigorously to outshine other people. This competitive attitude engenders inordinate strife and self-exertion. As a result our bloodstream may be polluted with overdoses of glandular chemicals. Arteries, brain, heart, and other organs may suffer from such surfeit. Disorder results. Problems like these multiply in functionalistic cultures because they are dominated by social form traditions that neglect the unfolding transcendent dispositions. - Adrian Van Kaam (From Formative Spirituality Volume 2: Human Formation pg. 99)

Dispositions are the habits of our life and heart. Some might even say that our dispositions define us. Here van Kaam makes a distinction between transcendent dispositions, or the "more than" part of who we are, and the functional dispositions, or the "what we do" part of who we are.

Okay. I'll admit it. I'm a pastor. It is what I do. It is who I am. I can't get away from it. Every Monday morning I get up and I start the week doing the work of a pastor. I know I'm not alone. There are a lot of pastors out there. Perhaps you are one...or know one. But what does it mean to be a pastor? What is our work really about? How do we know when we are doing the work of a pastor? How do we know if we are doing the work of the pastor?

The Book of Discipline has some things to say about pastoral work. Even though pastors are ordained to Word, Sacrament, Order and Service there are many things that potentially includes. Here is what 2004 Book of Discipline says (I've condensed some of this so it isn't 'word for word' but it does include all of the responsibilities listed in paragraph 340):

Anyone who knows me knows that I am not a fan of the new cluster model being introduced in my conference. On the surface it seems a positive move, but I believe in practice it will not be as beneficial as believed. Why? Geography. The idea is that United Methodist churches will 'cluster' together to do ministry in their community. While that may work with churches in a large city, it will not with those of us in smaller communities. The closest UMC to me is about 20 minutes away in a neighboring town. The communities are not the same. We are suppose to have four or more churches involved. If that is the case, that means we will have churches from four different communities. I could go on, but basically I feel it will be next to impossible for multiple rural area churches to come together and have a cooperative ministry to each individual community. With the price of gas, and the "time crunch" issues I believe there is a potential that individuals will choose either the cluster ministry or local church ministry, but not both.

I guess Google feels the same way. When I opened up this email from my DS about the cluster kickoff, I also noticed that Google had placed an advertisement to "End cluster headaches." How did they know??? Perhaps I can bookmark this site for later use...