Shane Life

Today was about as typical of a Sunday as it could be. And that’s really one of the main reasons I love Sundays. They are predictable, sure; but there is a comfort to them like an old pair of sweatpants or your favorite chair.

We woke up and went to church early for a priesthood meeting, I ran around trying to fix computer issues I was having, and we had lunch with some good friends and an awesome 8-year-old.

We napped. I mowed. I showered.

It was a good day. Sundays usually are. And now, as I close out the first weekend of my Every Day in May project, I’m happy. I’m going to go hang out with my wife and dog and enjoy the rest of my weekend.

I was a little hesitant to follow up reading The Shack by reading Velvet Elvis, Rob Bell’s manifesto on “Repainting the Christian Faith”.

I’ve been following Rob Bell’s work since I first saw one of his NOOMA videos, which really do a great job of making Christian ideas accessible to a wide swath of the public. Even his sample videos on the site do a great job of getting across the messages of the videos.

I had a decent idea of what the book might be, but I was still really looking forward to reading Bell’s thoughts on Christianity in long form, rather than in 10-minute video consumption. Even despite what I thought the book might be, I was so thrilled when I read it.

Sometimes, it’s tough to be a Christian. There are people and organizations that don’t exactly give Christianity the best face. However, when reading through Rob Bell’s book, I got a glimpse of what Christianity could be.

Through the pages of Velvet Elvis, I took copious notes in the margins, underlined passages and phrases that I loved, and overall just soaked in the ideas that I appreciated most.

Now, this book will not be for everyone. It treats Christianity and Scripture as a flexible, living, breathing organism rather than a rigid set of rules. This form of Christianity is not for everyone. But I found a lot to agree with and I thoroughly enjoyed it.

The Shack has been sitting atop the bestseller list for much of the past year. William P. Young’s book has been lauded by many around me and after Alli finished it, I thought I would give it a shot. 

The story centers around a man named Mack who has lost his faith in a lot of ways. His family has encountered a huge tragedy (of which I won’t reveal) that he refers to as The Great Sadness. He receives a note in the mail from what seems to be God, inviting him to spend a weekend at the site of his greatest tragedy.

The result of this is a fascinating encounter with God — perhaps the greatest depiction of God that I’ve ever read.

I don’t really want to reveal more. What I’ll say is that The Shack is a very rare book. It is a well-told story of fiction that contains more truth than you expect. You’ll find yourself nodding in agreement, smiling and weeping as you journey alongside Mack.

This was a good book for me to read right now. I’ve had some issues lately that have caused me to question my own spirituality. It’s never been about doubting God’s presence, but more about what my own purpose is as a child of God…what am I called to do?

I’d recommend this book to believers and seekers alike. Each person will gain something different from it, but each person will find whatever they need. If you’re someone who has trouble describing or depicting God, I’d suggest you read The Shack. It might help you on your own journey.

From the Gospel of Luke, Chapter 2:

Now in those days a decree went out from Caesar Augustus, that a census be taken of all the inhabited earth. This was the first census taken while Quirinius was governor of Syria. And everyone was on his way to register for the census, each to his own city.

Joseph also went up from Galilee, from the city of Nazareth, to Judea, to the city of David which is called Bethlehem, because he was of the house and family of David, in order to register along with Mary, who was engaged to him, and was with child.

While they were there, the days were completed for her to give birth. And she gave birth to her firstborn son; and she wrapped Him in cloths, and laid Him in a manger, because there was no room for them in the inn.

In the same region there were some shepherds staying out in the fields and keeping watch over their flock by night. And an angel of the Lord suddenly stood before them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them; and they were terribly frightened. But the angel said to them, “Do not be afraid; for behold, I bring you good news of great joy which will be for all the people; for today in the city of David there has been born for you a Savior, who is Christ the Lord.

“This will be a sign for you: you will find a baby wrapped in cloths and lying in a manger.”

And suddenly there appeared with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God and saying, ”Glory to God in the highest, And on earth peace among men with whom He is pleased.”

When the angels had gone away from them into heaven, the shepherds began saying to one another, “Let us go straight to Bethlehem then, and see this thing that has happened which the Lord has made known to us.” So they came in a hurry and found their way to Mary and Joseph, and the baby as He lay in the manger.

When they had seen this, they made known the statement which had been told them about this Child. And all who heard it wondered at the things which were told them by the shepherds.

But Mary treasured all these things, pondering them in her heart.

The shepherds went back, glorifying and praising God for all that they had heard and seen, just as had been told them.

Merry Christmas.

For this evening’s NaBloPoMo post, I’m gonna do something a little different. Some readers know (as some do not know) that I am an ordained priest in the Community of Christ. I typically attend the Olathe branch, where Alli and I are on several committees and try to serve in whatever way we can.

One of the things that I do is I speak out in our district at congregations that are smaller and this past Sunday, I spoke at the Bethel Congregation off of Leavenworth road. Tonight I’m going to share with you an excerpt from the sermon that I gave, in which I talked about our experience in the summer of 2007 when we visited France and Italy, and more specifically, the Sistine Chapel. Understand that without delivery, it may not be quite as successful, but my sister-in-law suggested that I share it, so I thought I would.

This morning, the scripture I’d like to focus on comes from the Doctrine and Covenants, section 163:

“Faithful disciples respond to an increasing awareness of the abundant generosity of God by sharing according to the desires of their hearts; not by commandment or constraint. Break free of the shackles of conventional culture that mainly promote self-serving interests. Give generously according to your true capacity.”

I want to talk this morning a little about what our is meant by our “true capacity.” I think that our true capacity is probably a lot more than we think. Our true capacity is the capacity for greatness that God placed in each our lives.

David says in Psalm 8, “What is man that you that you take thought of him, and the son of man that you care for him? You have made him a little lower than the angels and have crowned him with glory and majesty. You have made him to rule over the works of your hands; you have put all things under his feet.” God designed us for greatness.

When I married Alli, I made her a promise. Well, I made her several promises, but this one was a little different. It wasn’t really a condition of marriage, per se, more of a goal for both of us to work toward. See, my wife is an artist. She has studied art for her whole life and is a self-sustaining painter now. My promise to her was to take her to Italy before her 30th birthday.

You see, one of the things that Alli never got to do through school was to go and actually stand in front of the masterpieces she had studied for so many years. This was an important life goal for her, so it was an important life goal for me.

We started saving up a couple years in advance and in the summer of 2007, we went on a 3-week vacation that took us from Paris to Venice to Florence to Rome — we went to every major gallery in those cities and stood in seemingly every church we passed.

We saw amazing architecture and artwork — from the Louvre to the Uffizi Gallery — culminating in our visit to Rome. While I might pretend that the trip was for Alli’s benefit, don’t let me kid you, this was one of the greatest trips I have taken in my life. I was particularly excited to visit Rome for a couple reasons. First, I was excited to see all the ancient ruins and history of a world we sometimes are blind to. Moreso, I was thrilled that Alli was finally going to be able to stand in one of the most significant places of art through all of history — the Sistine Chapel.

The Chapel is a part of the larger Vatican Museum — a museum that holds one of the largest, if not the largest, art collections in the entire world. There are 54 galleries in the museum and the Sistine Chapel is the final one — you have to walk through the other 53 just to get to the Sistine Chapel.

I can tell you, as tired as I was from standing in line in the blazing Rome summer heat for two hours and then walking through 53 galleries containing artwork and antiquities from all around the world, the wait, the exhaustion — it was all worth it.

Wow. Just wow. What an amazing testament to what we as humans are capable of with God. You know there are people who would want to claim that there are subtle things in the chapel that Michelangelo placed in there as a statement against the church, but standing in that room with about 2,000 other people, I didn’t see them. All I could see was the clear cut evidence of God’s presence. You can’t stand in the room and look at that ceiling and not feel God.

Alli and I spent more time in the Sistine Chapel than in any other gallery or church that we were in on our entire trip. We studied each wall, we listened to the stories of what the artist intended with each panel, and I watched as my promise to Alli was fulfilled. I saw the tears stream down her cheeks as she stared at the ceiling and mentally checked off that item on her “bucket list.”

Over the next several weeks, we would recount that experience over and over again to our friends and family. But the most insight that I got from the experience was listening to Alli explain the beauty of the chapel to her dad, who has a fear of flying and can only see the chapel through his daughter’s eyes.

She told him that one of the things that was most impressive about the chapel was that “Michelangelo painted all the way to the corners.”

When she said that, it really clicked for me.

It was something that I hadn’t even noticed at first, but yet something that was so crucial to the essence of the chapel. Michelangelo painted all the way to the corners. He probably could have stopped a few feet from the corner and very few people would have noticed. But he would have known. And God would have noticed.

So instead of “good enough”, Michelangelo blessed us with a space that is complete and marvelous — a space that is completely devoted to showing the world the essence of God expressed through paint.

There is a pretty great lesson that we all can learn from Michelangelo. It’s not how to paint buon fresco or to sculpt. No, the lesson for us in the current world is that we should paint to the corners of our life.

Have you ever been in a situation where you thought to yourself, I could have been better…? Have you ever thought that you could have been a better worker, a better partner, a better parent, a better friend? You have to wonder if you’d adopted Michelangelo’s philosophy to paint all the way to the corners of your life if you wouldn’t be asking yourself the same question.

One of the amazing things about a life with God is that the corners are closer and more accessible to our reach. God enables us to see the places we can be better. He shows us the places where we are not being good stewards over our lives.

Now that’s both a blessing and a curse. Sometimes God shines a light on a corner of our life that we might not want to paint. Maybe you have a relationship that in disarray and God’s request is that you heal the wounds. Perhaps God wants you to know that you aren’t reaching your full potential in your career or in your spiritual life. 

Some things like your career and your spiritual life — they aren’t easy to fix. They require of you work, commitment and even some faith. If you put your faith in God and you follow the path of Christ, you’ll find ways to accomplish the things that God asks of you. And God doesn’t really ask a lot of us. He just asks that in all of our life that we serve him first and ourselves second.

II Chronicles 19:9 tells us: “You must serve faithfully and wholeheartedly in the Lord.”

This isn’t to say that we all serve the same way. In first Corinthians, chapter 12, verses 4 through 6, we get some amazing instruction: 

“Now there are varieties of gifts, but the same Spirit; and there are varieties of service, but the same Lord; and there are varieties of activities, but it is the same God who empowers them all in everyone.”

That means that we aren’t all meant to be painters or teachers or graphic designers or accountants or pastors. We aren’t all called to serve in the same way. But our purpose is the same — to spread the word of Jesus Christ. We are all empowered to serve God in a variety of ways and our challenge is to find out the way that we best serve and do our best we can to bring about Zion.

Being faithful stewards isn’t just about money. God calls us to be faithful stewards over our whole lives. He calls us to tend carefully to all the corners of our being so that we might fully realize the greatness and blessings that David spoke of in Psalm 8. 

That means that even though it may be a challenge, in our spiritual lives, in our managing of our resources, in our relationships, we must always reach further than is necessary and paint all the way to the corners.

Sunday, I’ll once again be preaching at my home congregation.

The Phoenix Affirmations
by Eric Elnes
Rating: 9 out of 10

It’s now been almost 2 weeks since Alli and I got back from the Congregational Life Workshop for our church. One of the wonderful things (of many) that was a part of the workshop was that we used The Phoenix Affirmations as a conversation starter for our early morning Living Room Group discussions.

The book is a really fascinating collection of “the new tenets” of Christianity that have been gathered ecumenically from across the country and were ceremoniously walked across the United States to Washington D.C. and “nailed to the doors of all the major religions” Martin-Luther-style.

As a strong believer in a living God, I think these affirmations are a wonderful step toward bringing Christianity back towards its original purpose.

This book is a very easy read, one that certainly will challenge the faith of some, but ultimately is a step in a great direction.

The affirmations are as follows:

1. Being sincerely Christian without denying the legitimacy of other religions.
2. Listening for God’s Word, which comes through praying, studying the Bible, and attending to God’s activity in the world.
3. Celebrating the sanctity of God’s Creation, including Nature, the sacred and the secular, the Christian and non-Christian, etc.
4. Worshipping in a way that is sincere, artful, and biblical.
5. Treating all people as creations made in God’s image, regardless of race, gender, sexual orientation, economic class, nationality, religion, physical or mental ability, etc., just as Jesus did.
6. Standing up for the poor, for the margianalized, for the oppressed, seeking justice and peace for all.
7. Preserving religious freedom and maintaining the separation of church and state.
8. Humbly acknowledging our own shortcomings while sincerely trying to see and bring out the best in others, even if they consider us their enemy.
9. Basing our lives on the faith that Christ restores all things and that all of us are loved beyond our wildest dreams.
10. Recognizing the sanctity of both our minds and our hearts and that both science and faith, doubt and belief, serve the pursuit for truth.
11. Realizing the benefits of prayer, worship, recreation, and healthiness in addition to work.
12. Acting on the faith that we born with a purpose, a vocation that serves to strengthen God’s Kingdom and extend God’s love.

These affirmations match up very well to the latest counsel to our church and provided for some great discussions with a diverse group of people. If you are a believer, I’d suggest this book. It’s a great theological study. At times, the book can be repetitive and it is certainly challenging in sections, but ultimately, it’s a great read.

Every few months I have to remind myself why I blog. Today, I’m here to tell you that I’m not sure I can answer that question to my own satisfaction anymore.

Last week, Alli and I had an amazing time at our church’s Congregational LIFE Workshop, a week dedicated to spiritual growth and helping leaders learn some tactics to implement in their own congregations. I’ve come back with a new look on a lot of things.

In sort-of-related news, I’ve been feeling a strange disconnection to my own blog lately and I’m realizing that I’m not doing it for the reasons I started it for originally. I’m not sure that I want to go back to how it was 4 years ago when I started, but I’m also feeling that I need a focus to my blog rather than it being all over the place. I’ve got some ideas, but nothing concrete yet.

I hope that helps explain my absence lately.

I was exposed to TED a couple years ago when Internet semi-celebrity Ze Frank spoke and pointed his many feed followers toward the TED site. TED is essentially the smartest conference in the world. It stands for “Technology Entertainment Design” and people pay $6,000 just to be able to go to the conference AFTER they get the invitation. The waiting list is about 2 years long to go and you have to be amazingly accomplished in order to become a part of the conference.

Speakers include such folks as Bono, Malcolm Gladwell, Bill Clinton, Frank Gehry, Peter Gabriel, Seth Godin and Al Gore. The motto of the conference is “Ideas worth sharing” so I thought I’d share one today.

The above video is “rock star physicist” Brian Cox talking about the Large Hadron Collider at CERN in Europe. The LHC is a fascinating piece of scientific machinery and to hear someone like Cox describe its purpose is nothing short of remarkable. Cox purports that there is an equation that helps to explain the universe and how it works, but it requires one small little thing – a subatomic particle called the Higgs particle that has not yet been discovered.

I mention this because it is a fascinating piece of science. This Higgs particle is what gives matter its mass. It is a part of everything, yet has not yet been seen by scientists, but is essential to proving all their theories and such. According to Cox, it’s what gives matter its mass. To me, the Higgs particle sounds an awful lot like the presence of a power greater than ourselves.

Part of the goal of the research at the LHC is to try and find sub-atomic particles not yet seen, like the Higgs particle. I don’t claim to be an expert on all this scientific stuff, but I think it’s completely fascinating. Scheduled to be turned on sometime this summer (I think…the date is a bit difficult to find), the LHC will answer some pretty big questions about the universe. Or maybe it will just raise more…

Discuss.