wicks
-Church of St. Andrew, Christmas, 2006

1.
Until pews are dandelions
–sprig leggy levers–
catapulting young minds into kingdomcome;
sweeping elderminds like dreamseeds of evervision.

Until songs take wing
stretching strong like the arrows of migrating Juncos
lending lift, everloft, and standard.
Tail feathers slicing
tomorrow unto tomorrow.

Until prayers shovelset us into the red Georgia clay
sinking our toes like the magnolia’s roots
breaking open bone-earth’s chapped tongue
making our hope particular and rooty
tangling us here, now, to daily bread

2.
Until our aviary,
a loose canopy tabernacling for us,
meets the winds of intrastators
and price-per-acre
and towers catch-and-releasing invisible information;
until the long carving frenchdrains spoon away at its stature
(walk humbly with your God)
until the pieces of our umbrella
–the very stones and mortar of this sanctuary–
must join their sister elements
that groan and clap to the song that sang  us all into

existence.

3.
Until then,
inhale;
receive Spirit here.
Spirit who practices this all like Moshe’s bush on Horeb
who sings that song to which our ears belong.
Take the cup,
raise her,
exhale the gratitude of
carbon dioxide and moisturedrip for the forest,
lick your lips and dig your teeth in
to heaven’s sweet ‘what-is-it.’

4.
Today is a Tuesday,
December’s light is late as usual.
Slipping past the commute
into this morning’s eye,
I sit in my study,
a place of words, walls, and a solid oak desk that all precede me
and I watch this candle devour the cold room
and flicker
hotter than any coal placed on my lips.
And I remember,

we are already lit. Burning
but not consumed.
Set to flight.
Racing but not exhausted.
And this building already sings
and breathes
and joins creation.
And the dead are raised in Christ,
worship already working,

and the old and the future are part of today’s
firelight.

We’re preparing our house and family life for our second kid, due September 28. I’m cultivating the early years of Neighbors Abbey’s work in SW Atlanta and the emerging church planting that is a part of it.  Joshua Case and I have been teaming up on some Church as Art emerging worship coaching projects for this fall. I’m still working with the Village Counsel of Emergent Village as we live into our being a Village green. And I’m in the middle of curating worship for Clayfire, writing a chapter for an upcoming festschrift by Ryan Bolger about hyphenated emerging projects, curating music for City Church Eastside, and writing my first full length book for Paraclete Press about the intersection the Aesthetics and God’s Mission. This book (provisionally titled, “Getting Drawn In”) is about the creative nature of God’s mission, and our own awakening to God’s calling as we step into creative and intentional lives. In researching all this I came across an old book of poems called The Singer by Calvin Miller referred or given to me by my friend Ty Saltsgiver in the 90s. In it I found this chapter XII entitled”In hell there is no music—an agonizing night that never ends as songless as a shattered violin”:

“Sing the Hillside Song” they cried.
There were so many of them. He
wasn’t even sure he could be
heard above the din of all their
voices. He walked among them
and looked them over. In his
mind he knew that the Father’s Spirit
wanted each of them to learn
his song.

Someone in the sprawling crowd
stood and handed him a lyre.
“Sing for us please Singer—the
Hillside Song!”

“Yes, yes,” they called, “the Hillside Song”

He looked down at the lyre and
held it close. He turned each
thumb-set till the string knew
how to sound, then he began:

“Blessed are the musical,” he
said, “for their’s shall be
never-ending song.”

“Blessed are those who know the
difference between their loving
and their lusting, for they shall
be pure in heart and understand
the reason.”

“Blessed are those who die for
reasons that are real, for they
themselves are real.”

“Blessed are all those who yet
can sing when all the theater
is empty annd the orchestra is gone.”

“Blessed is the man who stands
before the cruelest king and
only fears his God.”

“Blessed is the mighty king who
sits behind the weakest man and
thinks of all their similarities.”

“Earthmaker is love. He has send
his only Troubadour to close
the Canyon of the Damned.”

Then they broke his song and cried
one with one voice, “Tell us
Singer, have you any hope for us?
can we be saved?”

“You may if you will sing Earth-
makers’s Song!”

“Is there another way to cheat
the Canyon of the Damned?”

“None but the Song!”

The beauty of Miller’s language here, to me, is that there is a song that wants to be played. There is a way out of loneliness and despair, that comes with willfully listening to the song within…  And that you can’t short cut that listening pathway with some kind of formula or group membership.  We have to keep listening, and singing.

Wildest Imagination (Bass)

Wildest Imagination (Guitar Capo2)

Oh Blessed God

Bring Forth

I’m excited to be collaborating with Paul Soupiset, Tim Snyder, and Makeesha Fisher, among others, on this long awaited project. I will be editor of visual and performing arts.

HERE’S THE SCOOP…

GENERATE Magazine has been an open, collaborative project in the works for more than six years now. And after many casual conversations — and the 2009 convening of an editorial team — we are ready and eager to involve you, the larger community, in helping realize this dream with us.

The seeds for GENERATE Magazine were sown sitting around a fountain in San Diego in 2004 — a few writers, poets, artists and designers explored and dreamed about launching a print publication that would embody the ethos and tell the stories of the growing, generative conversation that some have called the emerging church conversation.

Again at the 2007 Emergent Gathering, another planning group was convened to discuss logistics, bring some leadership to the dream, and get things rolling. GENERATE Magazine is the fruit of many months of their planning.

VISUAL AND PERFORMING ARTS?

Art provides resistance and lift to what the Spirit of New Creation is generating. The beauty that artisans fashion, sing, and perform can testify to what is possible and evoke imagination for what is yet to come. We are drawn to paintings and songs that put us “in play.” GENERATE aims to fashion a synthesis of such works of art, and to celebrate the lives of their creators, in order to put our readers in play as well.

WHY GENERATE?

GENERATE exists as a forum to retell the stories of the grassroots communities and individuals who are finding emergent and alternative means to follow God in the Way of Jesus. We hope to create an artifact of this historical conversation. These stories will be transmitted through narrative, works of visual art, documented performances, verse, fiction, non-fiction, essays, and interviews.

We/you are the conversation; our art, our lives, our hopes and failures all meet up with God’s approaching dreams for creation. We converse and in doing so spread the news that we are not alone — that joy is found in our generative friendship.

GENERATE Magazine is a grassroots-organized, independent publication affiliated as a friend of Emergent Village, but not affiliated with any publishing house. We are currently exploring ways to distribute GENERATE Magazine via the Emergent Village Cohorts and wider friendships. More on that in the days to come.

So, Kelley and I have been married ten years as of June. And each time I do a wedding it is a chance to remember how much it meant for our friends to participate (grooms men, bride’s maids, Ty Saltzgiver- my Young Life trainer who married us, Ryan Long- the singer-songwriters who played for nothing but a hotel room). The premarital counseling, service design, and the prep for whatever homily I offer- they all give me a chance to revisit the compelling thoughts of love shared by everyone in God’s World.

I was struck this time around by Paul’s choice to place the theme of “incompleteness” inside his ode to love in 1 Corinthians 13. Peterson’s paraphrase puts it this way:

We know only a portion of the truth,
and what we say about God is always incomplete.
But when the Complete arrives,
our incompletes will be canceled…

We’ll see it all then,
see it all as clearly as God sees us,
knowing God directly just as God knows us!

But for right now,
until that completeness,
we have three things to do to lead us toward that consummation:
Trust steadily in God,
hope unswervingly,
love extravagantly.

And the best of the three is love

Ten years ago I didn’t know half of what I know about love now. Because love requires locating ourselves in the unknown. It requires mystery and unfinished-ness. People are naturally relational- we understand ourselves in relationship to others and our contexts, and have a consciousness about that relationship. Love requires us to leave that consciousness open for edits. We leave ourselves vulnerable, accessible. Love edits our memories (forgiveness) and our dreams for the future (hope).

Love of God, and our beloved-ness as children of God… does a similar thing. True knowledge of God-is-love-ness requires receptiveness, and it “softens” us. True participation in this Love-of-God-ness casts out fear (memories) and makes all things new (future).

So asking having strong enough ‘faith’ to be featured on CBN, or being the greatest political orator of our time, or making poverty history… without love is nothing, gets us no further along, and starts to sound like a creaky gate or a bent cymbal.

I don’t need none of your bad news today
You’re a sad little boy, anyone can see you’re just a sad little boy
That’s why you’re carrying on that way
Why don’t you burn it all down, burn your own house down, burn your own house down
Try to kill your own disease
And leave the rest of us, there’s a lot of us, leave the rest of us
Who wanna live in peace to live in peace

I’m gonna find me a man, love him so well, love him so strong, love him so slow
We’re gonna go way beyond the walls of this fortress
And we won’t be afraid, we won’t be afraid, and though the darkness may come our way
We won’t be afraid to be alive anymore
And we’ll grow kindness in our hearts for all the strangers among us
Till there are no strangers anymore

Don’t bring me bad news, no bad news
I don’t need none of your bad news today
You can’t have my fear, I’ve got nothing to lose, can’t have my fear
I’m not getting out of here alive anyway
And I don’t need none of these things, I don’t need none of these things
I’ve been handed
And the bird of peace is flying over, she’s flying over and
Coming in for a landing

I’ll be speaking in October at an Atlanta event organized by Progressive Christian Cooperative, called The Beloved Community: From Formation to Action. I met Kimberly, the inventor behind this, through the Emergent Cohort and have begun to learn from her passion to bring innovative practice of spiritual formation into the human right advocacy circles as well as advocacy into spiritual formation circles. So, though the event is in October our conversations this summer and my talk are simmering on one of my back burners along with what I’ve been reading by Wolfe.

In Wolfe’s article “Silence Cunning and Exile” (quoting James Joyce) I was stuck by the fellowship between beauty and suffering. Almost in a vin diagram sense, these two vivid themes, beauty and suffering, overlap in the costs to access them and the effect the evoke. They have an admission and an affect. They both beg a question that is never answered until the spirit/body s t o p s and in silence hears/feels/knows LOVE. Eyes to see and ears to hear…

And so beauty and suffering, the teleological signpost of the artists and the prophet, are met in silence. These are not “the ends” they are the signs. But signs are how we see, they are the things that compel us when we see through glass dimly, when we only have a lamp for our feet and light on our path, while death valley’s shadows remain. No activist can afford to stay plugged in at every movement to her iPhone, and the ticker at the bottom of CNN, and the moving messages of injustice and need outside the MARTA window. No artist can afford to stay transfixed as a doer, maker, striver. Artists and activists both require love. Their trades, sans love, will CLANG worse than a bad drum track. The access to an inner rhythm, to beauty that does not tare you away from humanity in endless pursuit of nirvana, to a righteousness that rolls down mountains in liquid inevitability–the access to this ineffability requires us to s t o p and listen to…

It is in silence that we hear our belovedness. And silence, like white space, is also a place, it is the spacial environment where our imaginations are taught/shapes/formed. Silence, though, is not a commodity to be traded. Like manna it will turn to worms should you return to it apart from an open receptive posture (maybe this is why acquisitiveness, self-aggrandizement, or scarcity rarely characterize true artists and activists). Artists and activists are shapers, whether pragmatic or romantic, we move real things into new places and lop off the corner of one thing fastening something to its other side until a new thing emerges. We are shapers, and it is in silence the we let go of our brother’s heel, and unbuckle our holster, and lay down our birth-rite as shaper… and we climb up onto the easel, the wheel, into the kiln, and place our necks under the callused fingers to be shaped by…

Love.

Here are a few of Wolfe’s lines and citations that have shaped me today…

There is nothing behind [silence] to which it can be related, except the Creator Himself (sic.) -Max Pickard, The World of Silence.

Out of silence emerges the creative act, both in the ’sub-creation’ of the artist and in the creation of God. but there is also a sense in which the created artifact itself is something set into silence…

The space that Christ gives us to respond to him is similar to the space the the artist must give to us to respond to his or her work…

The art that emerges out of silence–the art the experiences human life and our fallen world as a place of exile–forces us to ask the question “why.” -Gregory Wolfe

There can be no answer to the ‘Why?’ of the afflicted… The only things the compel us tot ask the question are affliction, and also beauty; for the beautiful gives us such a vivid sence of the presence of something good that we love for purpose there, without even finding one. Like affliction, beauty compels us to ask: Why? Why is this thing beautiful? But rare are those who are capable of asking this question for as long as a few hours at a time…

He who is capable not only of crying out but also of listening will hear the answer. Silence it the answer.

The speech of created beings is with sounds. The word of God is silence. God’s secret word of love can be nothing else but silence. Christ is the silence of God.” -Simone Weil

The Beloved Community is the nexus of action and formation. We are formed in the silent act love. And we act as ones (in)formed into lovers. This mutuality between God and creation begats mutuality between humanity in our creative ventures, in response to both beauty and suffering.

Raising Sand: a duet album of Robert Plant and Alison Krauss produced by T-Bone Burnett

In a very short review: the album needs to be played loud. Its one you need to listen to more than twice and then it will haunt you. At first, Plant sounded less Zeppeliny than i expected but after a while you recognize the violins of Krauss, her haunting shrills and Plant’s mood building swells as part of the old Zepplin greatness. And Krauss’ willingness ot bring her whole self into rock-feeling songs like Let Your Love Be Your Lesson, is unmistakably what makes the album work. Two unlikely paired together to remind us why we love them both and to host an entirely different project. But the real flair is Burnett’s ability to pull the best repertories for these two.

Here’s some lyrics from my favorite song writers who’s songs are covered by these two legends:

Passing the hat in church
It never stops going round

You never pay just once
To get the job done

What I done to me,
I done to you,
What happened to the trampled rose?”

from trampled Rose by iconoclastic jazz great, Tom Waits. Waits can make anything haunting, but who would have guessed that sweat Alison’s voice could be mixed to match Wait’s bowed saw and rake.

Standing in my broken heart all night long
Darkness held me like a friend when love wore off
Looking for the lamb that’s hidden in the cross
The finder’s lost…”

from Sister Rosetta Goes Before Us by California female songwriter Sam Phillips (also known in old CCM circles as Leslie Phillips).

Being born is going blind
And bowin’ down a thousand times
To echos strung
on pure temptation

Sorrow and Solitude
these are the precious things
And the only words
worth remembering…”

from Nothin’ by Texas songwriter, Townes Van Zandt

if you have not heard it yet you need to! And if you don’t know these two great songwriters, stay tuned I’ll post more of their stuff.

There is, we discover late and often,
an arresting quality about your word to us.
We do not want to be arrested or even pause,
for our days are planned out…

Minister to us in our cowardice and timidity.
Set us to be as bold as you are true,
to meet the authorities who resist and arrest . . .
our ancient mothers,
our old convictions,
powerful ordaining communities
and last, even, city hall.

(from “We do not want to be arrested” by Walter Bruggemann, Awed to Heaven Rooted to Earth)

Stank is in his early fifties, and except for his balding head and pachy beard you’d think he was late twenties. Dark black, chiseled muscular physique, and tattooed by the sun that follows him every day as he works odd jobs for cash. And a contagious grin- always smelling like the cheap Black-and-Mild cigar that he is almost always smoking. He helped me build my deck, effortlessly lifting by him himself the 14 foot long 2 X 8 that I needed help lifting.

Stank has lived with his mom and nephews in this neighborhood for over 30 years. He is annoying, at times, with his inconvenient knocks on the door looking for a quick job or errand he could run for a few bucks. And then impossible to find when you do need help. But he’s also the very guy you want watching your house. The guy who can give you the scoop on trouble in the neighborhood.

‘Turns out he got close enough to the trouble a little while back that he is facing 5-30 years. Drugs and drug related burglaries and assaults are a problem in our neighborhood. And so the Georgia Bureau of Investigation (GBI) and the Atlanta Police Department (APD) and the District Attorney’s Office got together to build a plan. GBI and APD investigators would set up a series of drug purchases and deals, record them on tape, and build up cases on the dealers and users in our neighborhood. This covert operation would help them get to the real kingpins bringing the drugs in, catch the kids before they are caught in cycles of using, and clean up the streets of those habitual users who are nearly always the thieves and perpetrators of domestic abuse and assault. One officer told me that the whole thing is like a season of The Wire. The cases were built for as long as four months and then near memorial day they were all brought to a grand jury and bench warrants were issued for over 100 of our neighbors. The APD set up a road block a few weekends around memorial day and they would grab the suspects, over 70 of them we know for sure.

This detective work and police enforcement was met by a second judicial process designed by the DA’s office called Project Turnaround. The DA’s office appointed a community prosecutor to each of the police zones involved and that prosecutor gave the men (its all ‘men’ that we know of) under 25 an option of a year long rehab program and expungement of their record. And those who did not choose this deal or any born before 1983 would be recomend for the maximum sentence and banishment for the neighborhood.

Banishment, totally medieval, huh? It has been used in limitted courses in Georgia, and though it simply shuffles our problems on to another place and another neighborhood’s problems over to ours, it does have some benefits in the case of repeat offenders like house robers and drug dealers. But the community prosecutor is asking for banishment with every defendant over 25, including Stank.

And then add to all that what the court system in Fulton County has set up called the “non-complex” system. With all non-violent arrests the defendant is scheduled to go through hearning, arraignments, pleas, or go to trial in under 9 weeks from the arrest. Well this system has gotten bottle necked with the influx of the pick ups done by APD and GBI. This bottle-neck has also been worsened by the decision to eliminate 16 attorney positions in the PD’s office. So Stank and those picked up with him do not stand a chance, if they are over 25.

Stank got in trouble when he was supposedly doing work for a neighbor a few streets down (the 10 of us in my house were among Stank’s many landscaping/odd jobs clients). This client of his allegedly asked Stank if he knew where to get him $30 of cocaine. As the story goes, Stank obliged, took the man’s money, and returned with $30 of cocaine. They supposedly have it all on tape and are charging him with possession and selling cocaine. Now depending on the tapes and other court details this may be exposed as some sort of entrapment, but the short of it is that Stank may have a chance becasue we found him a good defense attourney.

So this is the background of what was going on in our house last night, learning about the justice system, learning about authorities, and saying to our neighbors, brown and beige, young and old, that we belong together with Stank in this issue. We had to determine that, though the District Attorney’s office and the federal justice system does not have good local ways for us to advocate for Stank, and though his age excludes him from access to any type of social support, we would be his representatives and we would be his suport. Some of his elders were able to nod and look him in the eye as one neighbor said, “We want to help you Stank, but you have to lean into this and stay away from that stuff.”

But, overall, it was a huge act of imagination- to collectively risk being for a neighbor who was being mistreated by the authorities. To join in Jesus’ Isaiah-inspired vocation “to proclaim freedom to the captive, and release to the prisoners.”

Because of the readings of Wendell Berry that I have been doing I was reminded of the importaince of such intentionallity. Many in our neighborhood might not have know about this. You might not have know about this. And instead of learning about the unfair systems we would receive them blindly. The resurrection of the crucified lamb reversed this. It placed the authorities in check. This kind of neighborliness requires the risk and hope and forgiveness and imagination of communities.  These kind of practices keep your head from opening into a future-less passive window.

Love the quick profit, the annual raise,
vacation with pay. Want more
of everything ready-made. Be afraid
to know your neighbors and to die.
And you will have a window in your head.
Not even your future will be a mystery
any more. Your mind will be punched in a card
and shut away in a little drawer.
When they want you to buy something
they will call you. When they want you
to die for profit they will let you know…

So, friends, every day do something
that won’t compute. Love the Lord.
Love the world. Work for nothing.
Take all that you have and be poor.
Love someone who does not deserve it.
Denounce the government and embrace
the flag. Hope to live in that free
republic for which it stands.
Give your approval to all you cannot
understand. Praise ignorance, for what man
has not encountered he has not destroyed…

As soon as the generals and the politicos
can predict the motions of your mind,
lose it. Leave it as a sign
to mark the false trail, the way
you didn’t go. Be like the fox
who makes more tracks than necessary,
some in the wrong direction.
Practice resurrection.

Wendell Berry, Manifesto: Mad Farmer Liberation Front

I was interviewed by Thomas Turner of Everyday Liturgy, an quarterly journal, about the impact of Wendell Berry on my work as a pastor, community organizer, and artist. I can’t believe he used as much of the interview as he did. I’m by no means a literurature critic or expert on Berry. Thanks Thomas for the chance to share my story!

The interview is entitled: The Art of Being in Atlanta

This issue includes other book reviews, several more articles about Berry and great reflection for folks looking to see the beautiful and divine in the everyday. And the previous isue includes interviews with Brian McLaren and a beautiful artful piece by Paul Soupiset.