The Message says that “God became man and moved into the neighborhood.” This may be difficult for us to grasp because it doesn’t seem like Jesus moved into our neighborhood. Rather he moved into a small ancient town on the other side of the world, about as far removed from the intersection of South Limestone and Alumni as possible; in land where donkeys and camels were far more popular than “Wildcats” and people greeted one another with Shalom instead of howdy. So you may wonder “Why all the fuss about Christmas?”

The truth is that God becoming man was the most significant event in the history of the universe. Not only did God join us in our humanity but the Almighty was born to a poor, minority, unwed teenage mother, not in a house, but on the floor of a barn, in an occupied territory during a genocide, which they then had to flee as refugees. He was then wrapped in scrap fabric and laid down in the feed trough; his first breaths took in the scent of manure and musty hay, his ears first heard donkeys braying and his eyes first focused in on the gnats and flies buzzing around his face. His first visitors were not world or religious leaders, but working class loners who led animals around the wilderness just to make ends meet. This is the way that God entered the world, as a baby, powerless and totally dependent on humanity for survival. So again you may ask “Why all the fuss about Christmas?”

Perhaps the best answer is found in a single word, love. God loved, so God risked, risked it all. In order to understand the profundity of this we must grapple with the eternal nature of the Son. “Without the premise of preexistence there can be no talk of incarnation or Christmas.” (Oden, p 66) Jesus, had to be God, for his becoming humanity to have any efficacious power. God who has always existed, who created, decided to join his creation as one of us, knowing that we would not accept him and that we would ultimately kill him. “God never did anything in history more revealing of the divine character than to become incarnate and die. By his coming the poor were blessed, the hungry satisfied, weepers brought to laughter, the excluded embraced, and the reviled welcomed. (Luke 6:20-23)” (Oden, 86) Perhaps you are stil asking, why all the fuss about Christmas?

In the birth of Jesus we can pinpoint this one totally unique event that God decided to reverse the curse of our history of sin and restore humanity to its intended place as the pinnacle of God’s creation. Classical theology teaches us that Jesus became a man to redefine humanity; he took on our image to give humanity his image. This is the greatest gift that God could give us, himself. Our only reaction should be humble praise and thanks because “Humanity is incomparably honored in the incarnation for God made flesh divine, without providing occasion for the worship of the creature.”(128) Still asking why all the fuss about Christmas?

Humanity’s enemy, the damned deceiver, has made it his mission to drag us with him to hell, to invade our space and whisper lies in our ears, but he is unwilling and incapable of joining in our experiences, knowing our joys and pains. But in Jesus “God came closer than the enemy. The devil came close to us; but he did not come so close as to assume our nature… (he) did not come so close to us as did God’s Son, who became our flesh and blood.”(130) At Christmas we recognize that God would rather join humanity than see his creation destroyed; He would rather have our experiences, demonstrate his intimate closeness and move into our neighborhood than let us wander hopelessly toward our own destruction. God did all that we could never do. He came to us when we could not come to him. That is why we make all this fuss about Christmas.

Pg numbered quotes are all from Thomas Oden’s book The Living Word.

As we search for a ‘new’ car we have been blessed by God, through our church family, to have access to two different cars until we find one we can afford to buy. The first of the two was a comfortable and reliable ride, nothing fancy, but still decent enough. However, the second, which I have been driving for the last few days, resembles the residence of Oscar the Grouch. It is a rust-brown Buick station wagon from the mid 90′s with busted windshield, barf-colored interior, mismatched wheels, and no rear view mirror. The engine rattles and bangs, that is when it even starts and stays running, the driver’s door makes a horrible hiss when opened and shut, it smokes a little and certainly does not have ‘that new car smell.’

As I was filling it up with gas today across the street from campus, I couldn’t help but want to keep my head down so others wouldn’t notice me with this hideous beastmobile. When someone I know has seen me driving it I feel compelled to explain to them that this isn’t my car or to make jokes about it to distract their attention from the fact that I am cruising, if one could call it crusing, around in such a ‘ghetto’ ride. Damn, am I really that shallow?

Two things stand out to me about my attitude regarding this car. First of all, I am an ungrateful jerk. God and my church family have provided me a way to get around, which I really needed since Rachel and I work in different cities and public transportation is virtually nonexistent around here, and the best I can do is be self-conscious about how ugly the car is. Second, and the focus of the rest of this post, is the fact that I even care so much about what others think about my appearance. Wasn’t I supposed to get over that crap sometime in college?

I have been particularly aware, perhaps because of the car, of my self-consciousness. I spend a lot of time wondering what folks in restaurants are thinking about my clothes and hair, and what the folks next to me at the stoplight are saying to each other about the car I am driving. I want to tell them all about my achievements, my education, my travels – anything to prove my worth to them. But, who really gives a damn what others think about my clothes or my car? Should my focus not be on what folks think about my character, and more precisely my character itself?

The bible doesn’t say much about what Christians are supposed to wear, instead it says to clothe ourselves “ with the Lord Jesus Christ, and do not think about how to gratify the desires of the sinful nature.” Yet all I seem to do is try to gratify my desire to be liked, to be valued. The bible gives one more exhortation about what we ought to cover ourselves in, it says “clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience.” In other words, clothe ourselves in the kind of character that supersedes the kind of shallow junk that keeps you from being like Christ.

In my case, perhaps I could put it this way, drive around in the car of Christlike character and quit worrying so damn much about what others think about insignificant things like a beat up station wagons with broken windshields. If you only think of Jesus and the needs of others, your mind cannot be occupied with your own superficial desires for affirmation.

More confessions to come…

I have watched the sun rise over Mt. Sinai, walked on the Great Wall of China, waded in the black sea in Ukraine. I have climbed the great pyramid in Giza, rode a donkey up the cliffs of Santorini and watched the changing of the guard at Buckingham Palace. I have explored tiny villages in the mountains of Switzerland, hiked a glacier in Alaska and been lost in the grand Bazaar in Istanbul. I have devoured fried plantains in the Dominican Republic, gorged myself on sausages in Munich and munched on prosciutto as I meandered my way through Venice. I have ridden horseback through the jungle in Belize, held a giant stingray in Grand Cayman and scaled Mayan ruins in Mexico.

I have sat at the foot of the Parthenon in Athens, strolled under the legs of the Eiffel tower in Paris and perused the ancient Angkor Temples in Cambodia. I have ridden a camel along the Nile, motor biked the coastal roads of Vietnam and caught the river taxi in Bangkok. I have toured the Guinness brewery in Dublin, wandered the canal lined streets of Amsterdam and had a waffle in Belgium. I have traveled back and forth across the United states by car, plane and motor home, stopping to see Mt. Rushmore, the Golden Gate Bridge, the Statue of Liberty and countless more historic landmarks.

I have experienced the terrible sadness of Dachau, realized my own insignificance at the edge of the Grand Canyon and witnessed my religious heritage in Corinth. I have contemplated faith at Haggia Sophia, the Vatican and Westminster Abbey, imagined evangelism at the Blue Mosque, muttered prayers at the Buddhist temples of Thailand, longed for reconciliation at an ancient Jewish Tabernacle in Thessaloniki, and shared my love for Jesus in small apartments in China.

I have studied theology in Searcy, AR, Nashville, TN, and Wilmore, KY, ministered on skid row in Los Angeles and stayed at a hostel in Harlem. I have gazed at the Austrian Alps, skied in the Rockies and ridden my go cart in the foothills of the Appalachians. I have walked laps around the Coliseum, sat on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial and crouched terrified in the top of the St. Louis Arch. I have been welcomed by the Statue of Liberty, stood in the freezing sea breeze of Kowloon Bay in Hong Kong and surfed the North Shore in Hawaii. I have snorkeled in the Virgin Islands, scuba-dived in the Florida Keys and floated leisurely in the Aegean Sea. I have had meetings with power brokers at the White House and Capitol Building, and shared meals on the streets with my homeless friends under the bridge. I have exchanged vows with a woman whose beauty is only rivaled by her character, and someday we hope to have kids together.

I have been saved by grace, washed by blood and called by name. I have been sealed by the Spirit, treated with grace and mercy, and loved beyond measure. I have been beckoned by Jesus and I have chosen to follow!!!

This church, where many of my good friends attend, seems in many ways to be a wonderful family seeking to love God and the people around them. They are involved in the community, even meeting in a local bar. The worship service was creative and contemporary, but not shallow. It seemed to be “seeker sensitive” without compromising the truth of God’s word or neglecting the needs of the members. But, one important detail was so glaring, so conspicuous that it was impossible to miss, yet so subtle, so plainly hidden that it could easily by overlooked; the church, like many others, completely lacked diversity. I have come to expect this from traditional, institutional churches, but this church has made a concerted effort to overcome the other shortfalls of more conventional church gatherings. Yet, most of the church body was made up of young, middle class white folks from the suburbs. This just goes to show how powerful of a force our desire is to be with folks like us.

I see it everywhere now. Our home church in Kentucky almost entirely lacks racial diversity, as does the organization where I did my internship in DC, though both are deeply concerned about helping the oppressed of all races and classes and nations. Somehow though, we have found ways to “help” those who are most different from us without joining them in their struggles or inviting them to join us in ours. I don’t mean to be overly critical of the church we visited tonight or our home church, but I do hope that we all become more aware of the diversity that exists in the body of Christ. One of the best pictures I have seen in recent years, or maybe ever, of what I understand the Kingdom to be is the annual international potluck at the seminary; people from all over the world make their favorite foods to share and we all feast and fellowship, praise and party. During the festivities we take communion together and celebrate the slaughtered and risen Lamb. After all, heaven is described as a banquet table at which people from all nations, speaking all languages gather together to share in God’s abundance and give him praise. Shouldn’t we seek such a communion here and now as we pray that God’s will be done on earth as it is in heaven?

I heard a sermon in which the speaker asked a silly, but profoundly important question. He asked the chapel full of seminarians where the most important location was in the small town in which the school is located. Is it this chapel with its beautiful stained glass and singing? Is it the building that houses the classrooms where you learn theology and philosophy? Is it one of the local church congregations? No. It is Cluckers (the local gas station). The speaker went onto to posit that he believed that Cluckers was important because it was where the world collided in our small town to refuel, talk about the goings on, grab a drink and eat the best baklava this side of the Mediterranean.

Things are different for me now. I’m living in a major world city, where I often use public transportation. Like Cluckers, public transportation, in such a metropolitan city, is where the world meets. Rich and poor, powerful and powerless, young and old, all pile into buses and the metro. This is a great place to people watch and think and pray. One day as I was doing this I was reminded of the Joan Osborn song, “What if God Was One of Us?” There is a line directly following the title line, ‘just a stranger on the bus, trying to make his way home.’ I got to thinking about what Jesus would notice, and say and do if he were riding the metro. I began to think he would be pleased to see societies’ hierarchies and barriers temporarily removed as nearly every socio-economic background, religion and race huddled together trying not to fall down as the train jerked forward.

Though the more I ride, I notice something I believe would disturb Jesus and should disturb us. As I rode certain lines in certain directions the demographics changed. Instead of a multicultural mélange, the faces on the metro became more homogenous. One could almost know which stop was theirs by looking at the number of people in the car who did or did not look like them. I wonder how Jesus would react. Would he start flipping over the turnstiles or would he stand on a seat and preach? Would he heal the blind man standing by the door or would he multiply the amount of money still left on everyone’s ticket? I don’t know, but I’m sure that he would do something, perhaps something crazy, certainly something creative, to let people know that they were loved and cherished by God.

As people interested in reconciliation, the way of Jesus, this modern day segregation should sadden us, inform us and challenge us to keep working for a world where love and justice are the norm; a world where skin color, your country of origin or the language you speak don’t have to play a role in deciding which area of town you should live. I am not suggesting that there is anything wrong with wanting to live with people who are most like you. There is however a terrible evil lurks just below the surface of this desire that works its way into our lives when we get too comfortable with where we live and with whom we associate. This evil is complacency and apathy towards the struggles of the ‘other’ and it is a structure, a principality in which individuals are content with being walled off with folks like them and failing to join in the journeys of others for more than a short metro ride.

What if our whole lives looked like the line for baklava and a soda, or the trip on the red line metro train? What if we were intentional about meeting people most unlike us and participating in their lives, helping them when they needed it and sharing our food, our journeys and our lives together? The moments we share when our paths cross on the metro, subway, or bus look more and more to me like our local church congregations ought to and the way heaven appears in Scripture. If we can get together to share our journeys to work and school and to restaurants and stores, why can’t we get together and share our journey into eternity?

I’m not trying to make anyone feel guilty, especially because I am complicit in all of the above, well except the drinking coffee part, but that’s only because I just don’t like the stuff. However, if you get a bit convicted as you read this perhaps you should assess the changes you may need to make in your life, just as I have to do in my own. Perhaps you are like I was only a few months ago, relatively unaware of the gargantuan problem of modern day slavery that seeps its way into every part of our daily lives. Its not popular to remind people that the food they are eating, the clothes they are wearing and the luxuries and comforts they are enjoying may very well be ‘stained with the blood’ of innocent men, women and children who are forced to produce those goods for companies looking to save a buck and consumers demanding those same savings.

Now there is another, often more sinister, part of the modern slave trade that has gotten some attention in the media, the sex-slave industry. I have to emphasize ‘some’ as I write because last century’s American idol runners up get more attention. Unfortunately it seems that when stories about these abuses air we seem to have moments of conviction that soon get overwhelmed by the grand scale of the issue at hand or by our own apathy and acceptance of the status quo that suits most of us so well.

So what are we to do with a problem of such a monumental scale, with so little public attention and such an ability to blend in to its surroundings? Well there are the usual routes of writing your congressman or protesting certain brands, but I want to encourage us all to try something a bit different. My suggestion is that we all, for one month, try to fast from any goods made by slaves. In tandem with this, I admonish each of us to start educating ourselves about the problem so that we can in turn educate others, and that instead of just boycotting brands that are notorious for their ‘bloody’ production line, we actively seek out ways to support businesses and non-profits that are working towards the new abolition. And assuming that none of you are sleeping with prostitutes, which I sure hope you are not, then a good way to help those in the sex slave industry is to buy jewelry and other goods made by women and children rescued from brothels. And most of all, we need to pray, to cry out to God as a people, the spiritual descendants of the Israelites, who were rescued by God’s almighty hand from the clutches of a tyrannical slave master.

Educate yourselves by checking out this list of resources and ideas, and  join the movement of modern day abolitionists. Also, keep the World Equestrian Games in your prayers as it is expected that thousands, maybe tens of thousands of people will be forcibly brought in to the Lexington, KY area to be sex workers for those attending the games.

Updates to come soon about my time in DC and the exciting things happening at Sojourners.

Over the past few months I have been reading, mostly through a book called Love is an Orientation by Andrew Marin, and half-heartedly praying to meet a gay Christian or gay couple (I say half-heartedly because if that prayer were to be answered who knows how it might affect my worldview.) Well, I guess even half-hearted prayers can be answered by God. Last week when I came to Wesley Theological Seminary in Washington D.C. to do a special study about the relationship between faith and politics I met Joey. As a few of us were riding back to the main campus after class when we got on the topic of gay marriage and Joey told me he was gay. We talked a bit and I could totally sense his passion for the Lord, and yes my worldview may very well be in a moment of flux… Here is a bit of Joey’s story in his own words…

Called By God – Joey Heath

To have a prophetic voice. To speak with the authority of God. To speak the truth of God. To show the love of God in everyday. These are part of who a pastor should be.

I have been learning about the reformation in my church history class and how the people hungered for the word of God. One woman stood up because she was called by God when others were not willing to stand up and speak out with a prophetic voice. This woman was a contemporary of Martin Luther named Argula von Grumbach and if you ever get the chance to read her Letter to the University of Ingolstadt I highly recommend it. In this letter she took on the corrupt Roman Catholic establishment of the time and the persecutions of the reformers and used scripture to back up everything she said. In doing so she preached the word of God. That is what I call prophetic voice. She spoke out because she felt called by God to speak out.

God calls us all to do certain things. For some it may be to be a teacher. For some it may be to practice law. For some it may be to be a stay at home parent. And for some they are called to preach and share the love of God from the pulpit on Sunday mornings and wherever else they might be throughout the week. A calling from God, particularly to be a pastor, is a high calling to follow.

I have a calling and I hope those who read these blogs or hear me speak hear the prophetic voice of God coming through. I am called to be a pastor, an ordained elder in the United Methodist Church. Sadly I am not sure I will be able to become one at least for now. You see, because of the things I write about on here and my openness about who I am and the fact that I refuse to stop trying to be a prophetic voice particularly on the issues of sexuality and gender identity my candidacy will most likely be rejected. Sadly the United Methodist Church recognizes the call of many but not all. You see if you identify as lesbian, gay, or bisexual (thank God there are no rules against being transgender, though some protection would be nice) then your candidacy is in jeopardy. The United Methodist Church actually actively rejects these that are called by God. They will recognize the gifts the person has and acknowledge they would be a great pastor and then reject them based on their sexuality. How can we a church who follows God reject those called by God? If a person is called by God shouldn’t that be good enough for us to accept them?

Right now the church is losing good pastors who could have been the future leaders in the UMC. I know of several who have left the UMC for other denominations for this exact reason. They love the United Methodist Church and they feel called to be a pastor but because the UMC views them as a person of sacred worth who is unfortunately “incompatible with Christian teachings” they are rejected and in order to live out their calling they have left. Why are we letting this happen? When are we going to reject this notion that some how because someone loves a person of the same gender that they are damaged and unworthy? When are we going to stop riding the fence on this issue and speak as a church with prophetic voice claiming that all are equal and truly of sacred worth because they were created by God and called into God’s service? When will we recognize the calling that God has placed on so many of the lives of LGBTQ people?

If you would like to know more about Joey, he blogs at the Reconciling Ministries Network blog. I especially implore you to please, please, please read this post in particular to get a glimpse into Joey’s heart and mind.

For now, always remember that Love is Kind!

While I am here I will also be doing an internship at Sojourners, working specifically with Dr. Chuck Gutenson. Sojourners, probably best know for their magazine, has long been working for social justice in various arenas and has a fairly comprehensive list of issues in which they are currently involved. This will hopefully give me a great deal of insight about the operations of a Christian NGO working for social justice.

Finally, I will be doing an independent research project under the guidance of Dr. Shaun Casey. Dr. Casey has long been affiliated with my own denominational fellowship, and was hired by Obama as the senior advisor on religious affairs. I will most likely be investigating understandings of political engagement in the early American Restoration Movement.

I apologize that this particular post is fairly boring, but I anticipate more exciting ones in the future as I chronicle my experiences here in the nation’s capital.

(Also, I think at this point it is appropriate to note that my ramblings here do not necessarily reflect the views of any institution or organization with which I am affiliated; they are simply my attempts to process my life as I live it)

An alien and stranger in a the heart of a foreign land…

I thought I would start with this powerful song by Derek Webb.

This concise non-voting manifesto by Professor Tripp York is also a useful resource, and generally sums up my position.

Mark Van Steenwyk also offers his ten reasons for not voting at Jesus Radicals.

This is an excerpt by Andy Alexis-Baker from the book Electing Not to Vote.

I wrote a fairly popular series of posts a while back entitled Would Jesus Vote? The basic idea was to chronicle some of the reasons I believe Christians should be wary of participating in the government on any level. So here they are:  One, Two, Three and Four.

One of my ethics classes required that I write a paper about Christians and political engagement. It was one of my favorite papers of my scholastic career so I thought I would share it with you here.

The term Christian Anarchy understandably makes a lot of people uncomfortable  so I have this post trying to help people have a better understanding of the phrase. After all, as Tolstoy said, “The Kingdom of God is anarchy.”

For those of you who arent quite convinced, then at least consider this post before you vote.

I also have several posts that more indirectly get at the issues around the Christian Anarchy stance including this one on True Freedom which lists some of the most important basic understandings of being a part of God’s Kingdom. In a similar vein, this post attempts to demonstrate the radical differences between God’s Kingdom and the nations of this world.

Finally, there are some other issues such as war, abortion, immigration and poverty that play an important part in this discussion so I offer this post of some resources about these issues and this post specifically about war.

My request is that you prayerfully consider these ideas and search out God’s will in your life and in the world, and above all, declare with your life and words that Jesus is King!

Pursuit of the Beloved
Sarah Bronson

I saw myself in a field covered in rags running from God. I was terrified. I knew that He had every right to kill me. My life was worth nothing and He was coming towards me. I had tried and tried to scrub myself clean, but it only revealed more dirt. I couldn’t let Him see me like this. But He was coming for me, and getting closer.

Suddenly I felt His arms around me. “NOooo! I can’t let Him touch me! He is perfect and I am unclean.” I struggled to get away. Like a little kid who knew they had done wrong, I didn’t want to face the consequences. His hold hurt as a tried to get away. The more I struggled the tighter the hold became. He wasn’t going to let me go. I stopped struggling and stood in his arms turned away from His face.
I was terrified, but the truth was punishment didn’t scare me. I knew I deserved death. But I couldn’t bear to look at His face. I wanted more than anything to please Him and to earn His love. If I turned, I knew that I would have to face the disappointment in His eyes. THAT was what I could not handle.

I stood rigid, vulnerable, and overwhelmed. His hold softened and became warm and gentle. He whispered into my ear, “I love you. Please, turn around.” I didn’t understand. How could that be? He had no reason to love me. I was uncertain and couldn’t turn around. He continued “I love you. Turn and see…I love you turn and see…” Could it be?

Trembling I turned my head towards Him, eyes closed. “Open your eyes, beloved”, He whispered softly. Slowly I opened them to see a face filled with light and life and more love than I ever could have imagined. I was transfixed by His face. I don’t know how long I stood there amazed but when I looked down at myself I was CLEAN!!! I was seeing myself through His eyes. I began to walk with him. When I strayed I saw myself dirty again, but He would always call me back.
On the walk we came across many people. He would wrap His arms around them as He had done for me. They were all afraid. I would try to encourage them and tell them my story. It was an amazing experience when they finally turned and saw themselves in God’s light. They really came to life! We rejoiced together.

But others we came across would not make that choice. He held them the same as He had held us. I saw the love in His eyes as he spoke to them. He longed for their hearts to be whole. They refused to turn, refused to believe. I don’t remember any specific point that He released His hold, but He when did, they ran into the wilderness, into the darkness, into death. I saw Him crumple to the ground weeping at the beloved He had lost.

Nouwen’s opening  section, after the introduction, is particularly valuable to me because I have long been struggling with the need to be relevant in my own life and ministry. Like Nouwen I am caught up in the lie that “I” have something to offer; I mean who really gives a damn if I have some higher level degrees, or preach at congregations around the world or have an above average IQ? No one cares about that, they care about being loved so that they can open themselves up to be loving. Like Nouwen, I have found that this is most apparent when I am with the poor in Spirit; when I am sitting the park with my homeless friends, or hanging out with inner city kids. I am drawn to the truth in Nouwen’s words, “These broken, wounded, and completely unpretentious people forced me to let go of my relevant self – the self that can do things, show things, prove things, build things – and forced me to reclaim the unadorned self in which I am completely vulnerable, open to receive and give love regardless of any accomplishments.” (28) I said that “I” have nothing to offer, but perhaps it is exactly “I” or grammatically correct, me, that I must offer in all vulnerability as Jesus did. As Nouwen astutely points out, this can only happen when I have “an ardent desire to dwell in God’s presence, to listen to God’s voice, to look at God’s beauty, to touch God’s incarnate Word, and to take fully God’s infinite goodness.”(43)

Another insight that Nouwen offers throughout the book, especially in the beginning of the second section, is that when one is willing to move from Harvard to L’Arche, suburbs to inner city or from heaven to earth then one must face the pain of loss, maybe of death, to gain the reward of renewal and resurrection. I hate pain, but I love gain. This is a terrible condition to have if one wants to be like Jesus, yet it is this reticence in the face of potential suffering coupled with my prevailing desire to be noteworthy that I have found to be at the very core of my own being. Again Nouwen expresses my sentiments in a much more poetic and brilliant way, “I came to see that I had lived most of my life as a tightrope artist trying to walk on high, thin cable from one tower to the other, always waiting for the applause when I had not fallen off and broken my leg.”(53) I want the applause, I crave it, but I will avoid the fall at nearly any cost.

Nouwen says, “The way of the Christian leader is not the way of upward mobility in which our world has invested so much, but the way of downward mobility ending at the cross.”(81-82) In reply, out of my own frustration I say “dammit.” Like a child I whine, “I don’t want to” or “you can’t make me.” Though I know he is absolutely right in this assessment, and some part of me wants to cheer for this truth; I can’t help but wonder just how much ‘everything’ Christ really means I need to give up to follow him. I am learning that a life of simplicity in the Western world in which I find myself may only be possible as a result of miraculous divine intervention. I struggle more because Nouwen suggests that deep theological reflection is the key to living such a life, but he goes on to say that seminaries and divinity schools should be the primary place where this takes place. To me that seems somewhat contradictory, because most seminaries only take the best and the brightest, and those that have enough money for an education. How does this in any way look downwardly mobile? Yet, this is exactly where I find myself as I try to know God more; as I try to understand Christ and his cross and what it means to take up my own and follow him.

I am at a bit of an impasse as I consider how I may keep these insights in front of me, because there is some way in which they are all already in my heart, yet there is another sense in which I am well aware that my life will often crowd them out. I believe that Nouwen’s insights came from a life, as he suggests, of prayer, theological reflection, and service. This leads me to believe that I must dedicate my life to these very practices in order to keep them in front of me. The only way to keep these truths present in my life is to live them, but the irony is that it is living that usually pushes them away. May God have mercy on me!

I dont recommend too many books these days, perhaps because I read so many that they get all jumbled together, but I implore you to pick up this short yet extremely moving book. Nouwen’s words have blessed me and I trust they will bless you too.