I-YOUniverse

At the Day of Judgment,

we shall not be asked what we have read,

but what we have done;

not how eloquently we have spoken,

but how holily we have lived.

The Imitation of Christ I.3

This is our son Jim in his brand spankin’ new Mazda 3, approx 30 mpg on the highway. Good lookin’ rascal isn’t he? Takes after his old man. The car is a bit shy.

60

Cherish the past,

Embrace the present,

Welcome the future.

My son’s birthday card—it makes a nice mantra, doesn’t it?

Dr. Jean-Emile and Sophie Ngué

7 a.m.

It’s been two weeks of great fresh French bread from Panera. Add rice, fish, plantain, and spinach and you have a diet familiar enough to Africans. Then, trips to Costco for fancy granola, fruit tarts and other goodies for a brunch type buffet.

The days when Sandy can spend the week cooking are a distant memory. Although it gained an exceptional counselor (in her husband’s unbiased opinion), the world lost a cook. As the apostles said, “It’s not right that we should neglect the word of God to wait on tables” Acts 6.2.

Quiet morning

A CD is playing: Sing the Journey 2, by Ken Nafsinger and the Journey Musicians of Eastern Mennonite University. Wistful, jazzy, profound. It’s been repeating all night.

Either that, or a M*A*S*H DVD on tv, volume at 5 or 6, so as not to disturb others. Klinger is on trial for stealing a Polaroid camera.

I believe in the gateway theory of pain: the brain can process only so many stimuli, so keep it busy with relaxing messages and it will not pay so much attention to pain. It works for me. I seldom sleep without something playing through the darkness.

Out the door before 6 a.m., our African guest Dr. Jean-Emile Ngué is spending much of the day in Washington DC, and the evening at Richmond Hill, an urban retreat center here in Richmond. Sandy went on to work, to put a dint in the interminable insurance paperwork that suffocate so many helping professions these days.

Grace of children

Last night we hosted a young couple with two small children. They provided me a delightful break in a pretty tough spate of pain due to atmospheric conditions. It’s been a long time since we child-proofed the house.

The young boy Roger was fascinated with my reacher, the long stick with a grabber on the end people with arthritis use. He used it to pick up tonka trucks, small wood pieces of a puzzle, ray guns, and walking sticks. The latter took a lot of practice.

His younger sister enjoyed our rocking chair. Both played the piano. And I got to be a grandpa type for an hour or so, while parents discussed the African Counseling Center (ACC) with fewer interruptions.

I think we’ll see these young people in Africa in the next several years, perhaps to build the roof of the ACC.

Automated upgrade

11 p.m. The house once again dark and quiet, I checked the blog. For some reason I looked into the wp 2.5.1 upgrade and believed the offer of a tool that automated the whole process. Sure enough! It worked without a hitch, and I uploaded my favorite family photo, the icon Savior of Zvenigorod.

Henri Nouwen introduced me to it in To Behold the Beauty of the Lord.

I ended yesterday with good French bread, toasted, slathered with I can’t believe it’s not butter.

 

 

FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 29, 2008

Two a.m. I feel like I’ve been kicked in the gut. News from Cameroon reports rioting and violence everywhere, including Yaoundé, where our friends live.

Divine appointment

Jean-Emile and Sophie Ngué have stayed in our home. Jean-Emile was a student in the 1990s, which is how we met. Dr. Sam Roberts, then of Virginia Union University, called my wife Sandy, who untypically had an open hour to meet him and a pastor from Cameroon interested in pastoral care.

We immediately realized Jean-Emile was unique. Cameroon pastors sent him to the US on a one year scholarship. Discovering pastoral care, he stayed for three more years. There was nothing sticky about him; though in need, he never let on. He’d been swindled out of his money by persons who posed as landlords.

I invited him to preach at the church I served; that would put a $100 honorarium in his pocket immediately. In the weeks that followed, the deacons made it clear no black man was to be permitted again in the pulpit, and I resigned. As a result, we became close.

Student days

Jean-Emile and I began going to Richmond Hill, an urban retreat center which has a community meal on Monday night following worship. At least, he’d get one good meal there. I provided transportation when I could for various errands.

Jean-Emile proved to be a gifted, eager student who studied clinical pastoral counseling at Virginia Institute of Pastoral Care (VIPCare) while completing a DMin at the School of Theology, Virginia Union University. His doctoral research concerned adapting Western psychology for the African context. He said that he came to value his African identity.

Return to Africa

Despite pleas from friends and teachers to stay in the US, Jean-Emile returned to his homeland, in the grip of poverty, corruption, and suffering on a scale those of us in America can hardly imagine. He cobbled together several positions to support his family, and founded the African Counseling Center in 2000. Although Executive Director, he declined a salary to make it possible to pay staff, college graduates who could not secure employment. Since people do not marry if unemployed, this problem created stress for several staff.

By now Jean-Emile was director of the Protestant Council of Churches in Cameroon, and occasionally worked for the United Nations. For example, he went to Gabon in response to a spate of child ritual murders.

Companions in Hope

He invited staff of VIPCare to visit Cameroon and present a seminar in 2002. See africancounselingcenter.org here for a roster of those who went. Incredibly, they raised the money and made the trip. One Board member got out his checkbook and wrote a large donation, challenging others to do the same. The missioners and staff of African Counseling Center adopted the name Companions in Hope. It was a life-changing experience for staff and Board of VIPCare.

Planning for 30, Sophie Ngué and her team cooked for 70 pastors who attended the seminar. Sandy asked, “How do you manage?” Sophie answered, “You’re not poor here unless you’re alone.”

Real Followers of Christ

I’ve never met Christians like Jean-Emile and Sophie and their colleagues. For them sometimes daily bread is the next meal. Critical health care is not available. In addition to their own family, pastors in Cameroon often raise three or four AIDS orphans.

Jean-Emile has taught me about living with pain, because he lives with illness that has plagued him since childhood. We talk on the phone every week. We sing and pray together. Jean-Emile is my brother in Christ.

At the moment he’s in France, meeting with supporters of the Protestant Council. He helped write the Voting Rights Act and advised the President on human rights issues. His wife and four children are dear to us.

Outside North American white privilege

Knowing him has changed me profoundly. The North American bubble of privilege and prejudice in which I’ve always existed has burst. Suddenly, it’s like I’m sitting at a table enjoying a fancy steak dinner while my brothers and sisters have little or nothing. The same is true in all essentials of life.

But when it comes to spiritual life, the situation is reversed. My African spiritual brothers and sisters are rich, while I live in Laodicean poverty.

O God, bring them through this crisis safely. Glorify yourself in us as we partner together for the sake of the least, the last, and the lost. Amen.

THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 28, 2008

Hitting a Wall

I’ve walked through posting a comment with two people wanting to support africancounselingcenter.org. What an absolute hassle. I’m skittish about anonymous commenting, but for now with blogger that seems to be my only option for making it EZ to comment. I’m leaving the word verification in, but risking anonymous. So maybe that’ll simplify a gosh-awful process. If there’s a way to require name and URL even though non-published, on blogger, I’d appreciate somebody cluing me in. Thanks. jlh

Urgent Prayer Request

News from allafrica.com here reports rioting throughout Cameroon, including Doula and Yaounde, where our African family live and work.

TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 26, 2008

A companion to Hineni, the previous post

You don’t hear many sermons about the end of David’s life at about 70 years. But I’ve always found 1 Kings 1-2 especially tragic: a man whom we remember for the psalms, vibrant with emotion, unable to get warm, which at least suggests that he’s emotionally and spiritually freeze dried.

Two Ways to Grow Old

Abraham, who married and fathered six children in his later years, “breathed his last and died in a good old age, an old man and full of years, and was gathered to his people” Gen 25:8 (NRSV). Moses was “120 years old when he died; his sight was unimpaired and his vigor had not abated” (Deut 34:7 NRSV).

David, however, is unable to get warm. This is not ED, in modern advertising lingo, but spiritual wasteland, an I-It terrain relieved only momentarily by a flash of You. His advisers find a beautiful young woman Abishag to “lie in his bosom” (TANAK), recalling with more than a bit of irony the prophet Nathan’s parable of the poor man’s little lamb who nestled in his bosom (2 Sam 12.4).

My Father’s error or his joy

Abishag means something like, “My father’s error” from a root related to error (BDB p. 4, or 922 “go astray” for Hebrew buffs). At any rate, it’s not complimentary. Compare Abigail, an exemplary woman from a more positive time (1 Sam 25), whose name means something like, “My father’s joy.” How much grief David could have spared himself by turning to Abigail, rather than Bathsheba!

David might have answered this question that Martin Buber asks, “Take the much discussed eroticism of our age and subtract everything that is really egocentric-in other words, every relationship in which one is not all present to the other, but each uses the other only for self-enjoyment-what would remain?” (p. 95). Buber insists we build authentic marriages only in I-You mode of existence.

Emotions at the end

David’s sons aren’t grieving as their father lies near death. Adonijah is busy feasting himself as next king, while Bathsheba connives for David to designate Solomon his successor. In addition to the obligatory Deuteronomic admonition to keep the Lord’s statutes, commandments, and ordinances, David urges Solomon to take vengeance on two men against whom David had long held grievances.

David’s end shows the consequences of mishandling emotions. David failed to confront dysfunction among his sons, not least because they were just taking after the old man. But by stuffing emotions, ignoring conflict, playing favorites or at the other extreme giving his impulses free rein, David insured his premature emotional demise.

Buber calls feelings, cut off from the You of self and God “a fluttering soul-bird”; the severed It, the daily grind apart from God, he calls “a golem, an animated clod without a soul” (p. 93).

Healing Emotions through Worship

In the psalms worshippers do not indulge in a tabloid-style exhibitionism. Rather, they share the dynamics of their feelings without blow-by-blow detail. As such, they exemplify the proper role of feelings in worship.

Had he done what the psalms do, express emotions-all emotions-in a healing, disciplined way before the Lord, David could have ended his life able to express as vital and appealing a range of feelings as did the shepherd boy, the young friend of Jonathan, or the ecstatic worshipper who brought the Ark into Jerusalem.

I find myself grieving what David lost when he became heir apparent, then king of Israel. In a sense he’s one answer to Jesus’ question, “What does it profit you if you gain the world but lose your soul?”

MONDAY, FEBRUARY 25, 2008

Hineni, Here Am I

A Meditation on 1 Samuel 16.1-13

See also next post The Golem and the Flutter-bird

Prophet on the move

“Hineni,” the old man muttered.

More agile than most men his age, he clambered among the rocks, leading a docile white mule. He was small in stature, wiry of frame; a tangled beard obscured the lower part of his face. A thick lock of hair fell across his forehead. Only a little of his face, brown and tough from sun and wind exposure, remained visible. Quick black eyes seared through the mass of hair.

Rocks skittered underfoot. “Hineni,” he repeated, unaware of doing so. “Hineni.”

He hammered away at the word, restless, unsatisfied. Such moments were rare for the prophet. Old Eli had taught him as a child to say, “Hineni, here am I,” when the Voice spoke. In the years that followed, his life lay open to God; he struggled to obey, in part because his mother Hannah taught him each year when she visited the sanctuary, and in part because he saw the tragedy of disobedience in Eli’s sons and rejected it for himself.

The people demand a king

He judged Israel, wisely, fairly, for the most part-yet the people demanded a king. He warned them how royalty abuses its subjects, but nothing would do: Israel must have a king like other nations.

When God chose Saul, Samuel’s hopes soared. This strapping young fellow could lead the nation well. But Saul acted rashly, at times grandiose, at times insecure, moody, hostile, deceptive. The last time Samuel saw him, he had violated herem, the holy war ban, saving the best loot for himself and his men rather than sacrificing it all to the Lord. Sparing Agag. Samuel himself had to hack the evil king to pieces before the Lord; spattered with blood, he turned his back on Saul.

“How long will you grieve?” the Voice asked. “Fill your horn with oil, go to Bethlehem; I’ve found me a king.”

“Hineni,” Samuel answered. He set out early the next morning, avoiding Gibeah, Saul’s village, by circling to the west before turning south to Bethlehem. “If Saul gets wind of this, we’re all dead,” he thought.

Hearng the Voice

By mid-afternoon, needing rest, he found some rocks jutting from the grasses and sat with his back against one of them. He fell asleep. Jonathan! The tall young man stood beside him, asking about Yahweh. How did Samuel hear his Voice? Did he speak to ordinary men? What’s his will for me Jonathan? Samuel awoke, looked around for the crown prince, but his strong sweet voice faded with the dream. The red evening sun glared in Samuel’s eyes. He heard hissing; his body tensed.

There before him, a mountain lion crouched. The cat screamed and jumped, but fell beside him dead. He lay stunned with fear. A shadow blocked the sun. A very young voice asked, “Old man?” Hands shook him gently, and the boy repeated his question: “Old man? You hurt?”

Samuel wasn’t sure, but he moved carefully to see. The boy tugged a sharp stone from the lion’s skull. “I’m glad I was here, old man. Or you’d be dead.” He spoke, almost in a whisper, like one used to gentling skittish lambs. “Old man” he meant as a title of respect.

By a shepherd boy’s fire

“C’mon,” he said, helping Samuel to his feet. “I have fire, you can warm, while I find my stray, and there’s bread and goat cheese for supper.” He left the prophet and returned with a lamb in his arms.

“Who are you, boy?” Samuel asked.

“A nobody who keeps the sheep, cause my brothers don’t want to,” the boy answered. “If I was anybody, I wouldn’t get left out here all the time.” He spoke without bitterness, but the prophet sensed fiery longing in him.

Samuel wearily let the moment pass. The boy toasted flat bread in the flames and spread the cheese for him. Beth lehem, house of bread, the old man thought; moments later, he fell asleep.

Cold that lies in wait

When he woke, stars filled the sky like flowers in a spring meadow. The fire had died to a bed of embers; beyond it the bone-numbing cold lay in wait like a wild thing. The boy’s high clear voice rang out:

The God of life tends me, there’s nothing that I need,

he makes me lie in soft green grass,

he waters me in still pools.

The sound pierced Samuel’s heart. He remembered a night many years ago, when he first heard the Voice, calling “Samuel! Samuel!” He’d answered as only a child can, simply giving his whole heart: “Speak, Lord, for your servant hears.” He wished he could be a child again, knowing nothing of Agag, nothing of warfare and murderous kings, nothing of the cold within that comes of too many battles, too many buried memories. Cold of soul not even the most beautiful virgin in Israel could warm.

He chuckled, the gloom evaporated. He hadn’t thought of beautiful virgins in some time! Listening to the child’s innocent voice, he felt glad. If that mountain lion or its ilk was the worst he ever faced, he’d be blessed.

SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 23, 2008

Mind if I sound off?

There’s apparently a new TV show about spirituality: a man has a vision of George Michaels singing in his living room. It pisses me off that our culture thinks it’s discovered spirit ex nihilo. A doctor investigates prayer. He begins by going into his office and shaking prayer gourds. Wonder what would happen if I investigated medicine by taking a knife to my neighbor?

It’s as if Lao Tzu, the Buddha, Brother Lawrence, John Woolman, St. Francis, Evelyn Underhill, William James, Gustavo Gutierrez, Malcomb X, Mother Teresa never existed.

So here are some TV pilots I recommend to the networks and studios:

• adventures in tithing
• neighbors study the Bible together
• politician tells truth
• young person enters religious vocation
• Muslim, Christian and Jew seek peace teachings in their scriptures
• tobacco company quits, gives assets to cancer research
• corporation refuses military contract
• gringos learn Spanish to worship with undocumented workers

Wonder what shows you’d recommend?

FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 1, 2008

The race for the American Presidency reminds me of that contest in England, where people launch home-built flying machines off a pier and splash into the water. You know they’re going down; the only question is, how far they get before doing so.

George Bush’s flying machine has crashed in a mushroom cloud worthy of the Apocalypse; the only question is, how much will go up in flames with him?

He came to office, literally anointed with oil by religious conservatives, standing in that long line of succession we used to call “the divine right of kings.” In the US, of course, we don’t have kings; we just have the federal government, at its head, the successor to George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, and John F. Kennedy.

The presidency of George Bush constitutes, not a failure of an individual or a party, but of an entire system which has lost its way, has bowed down to idols of power and money, and is sacrificing chunks of its own body in vain hope of supremacy.

Here no Moses stands on holy ground, only a Bush burning in effigy; I confess, those of us who dance around the flames offer unholy fire like Nadab and Abihu.

Buber diagnosed our situation keenly: we are a vast amalgamation of Its-the economy and the state, the It-district of material hoarding and the I-district of emotional emptiness-being manipulated by whirring machinery which we mistake for civilization.

The solution? Harry Potter calls it remorse; the Bible, repentance; Buber, returning.

Feeding husks to the swine, the runaway boy came to himself and decided to go home. While he was still a long way off, the waiting Father saw him, ran and embraced him and welcomed him home. Returning, coming home-nothing less can redeem our culture from its suicidal course; returning, not by “the other guys” who are responsible for the mess in Washington, not by religious extremists who have hijacked our faith, not by liberals and secular humanists who will be left behind, not by everybody else.

But by me.

Just as I am, without one plea,

but that thy blood was shed for me,

oh lamb of God, I come.

“Every great culture that embraces more than one people rests upon an original encounter, an event at the source when a response was made to a You, an essential act of the spirit… But only as long as [man] possesses the essential act in his own life, acting and suffering, only as long as he himself enters into the relation is he free and thus creative.” I and Thou, p. 103.

Buber conceives of culture as arising from moments when one human being stands before the countenance, or when one person relates to the Presence at the heart of Being-another way of referring to an I-You encounter between human and God.

Life is a melancholy alteration between the actuality of the I-You mode of existence and, at best, those moments when life takes a deep breath, the latency of I-It. When actuality fades in a more lasting way, however, a demonic power usurps the place of the hovering Spirit, shoving matter and people about in an It-world without a soul.

Cultures escape from this zombie-like state only when a human being again steps before the countenance. The human stands without possession, without even clothing, like St. Francis in the marketplace of Assisi renouncing his father’s goods, called to build Christ’s church.. The Spirit hovers over the relation, empowering the human to fashion a human cosmos of houses of worship and dwelling places. The culture escapes from its sarcophagus, the person from her chrysalis, and the I-You of Being emerges, wet and trembling in newness of life.