My Greatest Embarrassment as a Christian

A CONFESSION

I am going to step out on a limb here and talk about one of my biggest embarrassments as a Christian.

It can be summed up in a word that militant atheists like Richard Dawkins and Dan Dennet use to slam Christians.

It is the term "Sheeple."

You know, as in "Sheep People."

Our haters take an image that is used throughout Christian and Hebrew holy scriptures to ridicule our characters. They see "Sheeple" as mindless, blind followers of a faith that is just a front for power hungry manipulators.

CAUGHT CHEWING THE CHRISTIAN CUD

"Sheeple" line up at the feeding trough and bleat helplessly until someone comes to feed them.

"Sheeple" wander around directionless, guided only by their most basic needs, depending on a nonexistent Deity to show them where to go and what to do.

"Sheeple" moan pitifully when the pastures are not green and the Shepherd didn't show up or the fodder was not to their liking.

"Sheeple" can't do anything on their own. Their lives are run by fear and superstition and ignorance. They need someone to tell them what to do , where to go, what to think.

"Sheeple" abandon their own, moving on to the next clump of green grass while their fellows who have been caught in danger and mired in muck bleat helplessly for someone to come extricate them from their circumstances.

WHEN THIS SHOE FITS . . . GO BAREFOOT

Why am I embarrassed? Not because some blowhards who make their living off of intellectual bullying call me names.

I become embarrassed because far too often, the shoe fits. 

In far too many cases that term "Sheeple" is a perfect description of the attitudes and actions of those of us who call ourselves "Christian."

When was the last time you picked up a Bible to learn something about the God you worship?

When was the last time you stepped up to actually do something that you know Christ wants you to do but that was inconvenient, or made you uncomfortable, or that you were afraid you might fail at?

On the other hand, when was the last time you complained because the worship service didn't "feed" you, or the church's ministry wasn't "dynamic" enough or God forbid, the people you worship with don't suit your taste?

Or the last time you shunned someone who doesn't believe what you believe or live the way that you live? Or because their choices made you uncomfortable?

When was the last time you passed up a fellow church member, let alone a child of God who was unknown to you, because you were too busy or afraid, didn't care for the circumstances, or didn't like the other Christians you would have to work with in order to HELP SOMEBODY??

I AM NOT ASHAMED OF THE GOSPEL

Listen, I am not ashamed of the fact that I am God's lamb. I am a sheep of his pasture. Dawkins and Dennet will never understand how the term applies to me.

But they sure understand how, far too often, I don't live up to the Lamb's vision of me, of how often I live down to the Hater in Chief, the Devil's, estimation of me.

I want to be Christ's lamb, I want to be a member of his fold, to be protected and loved and nurtured by a gentle Shepherd who says to me, "come unto me all you who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest."

Washing Feet of a Homeless Woman
Photo Credit: Mark Grace

I REFUSE TO BE SHOVED INTO SOMEONE ELSE'S STEREO-TYPE

But I also want to be a member of God's Chosen Generation, A Priest of the Lamb, a warrior fully clothed in the armor of God, a leading citizen in that Holy Nation, a one-percenter among the people of this world- not merely of the US of A- but a unique, fully called and completely actualized Child of the Christ who showed me what the abundant, royal life is all about.

I do NOT want to be counted among those whose sum and substance was to only ever graze contentedly in green pastures and lounge by still waters while somebody else did the work.  I don't want to be the one who constantly criticized the work of other Christians and bleated helplessly about how we should be doing better while doing NOTHING to live UP to God's calling on my own life.

When Christ comes back, I know that I will not be able to say that I lived a perfect life.

I just don't want the Alpha and the Omega to wrap his arms around me while I bleat helpless excuses about why I was not able to have done better. I want to hear my Savior say to me, "Well done thy good and faithful servant."

What about you? What embarrasses you about being a Christian?  And what is your personal vision of the kind of stereotype busting follower of Christ that you want to be?  Leave a comment!

Words, Words, Everywhere Words & No Relief In Sight

Photo Credit: www.123rf.com

We did the consult thing today, with the specialist, well one of the specialists.  Dora was so starved for some kinda news that I thought she was going to fall down and kiss sunny jim’s feet.  

He talked more than my preacher does. No offense, chaplain! You know how preachers can be. They think they can solve anything by throwing words at it.

Anyway, every time I asked a question he got that, ‘Children should be seen and not heard' look in his eyes.

Aw, heck,there wasn't anything wrong with him.  Other than the fact that he talked for most of a solid hour, and didn't say a doggone thing. 

‘Maybe this, maybe that, maybe this other thing.”

Made me weary to the bone.  Why do they waste your dang time if they don’t have anything to say?

I know he thought he was doing a bang-up job because Dora was just about to cry from gratitude.

He didn't say one thing that had any certainty to it. If he had only said what he knew for a fact, we woulda been out in seven minutes. 

Heck, he could’ve taken an extra ten minutes to show us how much he learned in school and I still woulda felt all right. Instead we get a truck load of pig manure.  And I can tell you right now that pig manure is not what we need more of at this point.  It may have its place in this life, but we got an overabundance of it in our corner of the world.

And by the end of the day Dora is depressed as all get-out.  We were eating supper, having a great time joking back and forth, like we used to do, and all of a sudden she looks at me and says, ‘We didn’t find out anything today, did we? We still don’t know what they can do because they don’t know either.’ 

There isn't much that gets that woman down. If I told you everything she’s been through in her life, it would make you cry, and I know you've heard some rough things.  ‘She eats pressure for breakfast,’ is what I have always said about her.

Now she is all jumpy. Her knees have started hurting all over again, from out of nowhere, and she gets these headaches. 

She’s never had headaches before.

When she tells them they just stare back and say, “That ain't related to this,’ like that is a goll-dang answer.  It don’t concern them, like that kinda pain ain't any of their business because it ain't related to what they are studying on.  

I can tell you for sure that it concerns the heck out of me.

Aw, there is nothing wrong with that guy.  I know he’s doing his best, if for no other reason than he’s too proud to do a bad job. You can tell that about him.

In a way we are both alike because right now, I get a lot of pleasure out of making Dora smile.  And I am of less use to her than that bloomin' doctor is. 

It is so easy to please her these days. It feels so good to do some little thing for her.  And you would think I just worked some kind of a genuine New Testament miracle.

But I feel like crap for feeling so happy while she is suffering.  Some days I feel positively happy because she needs me so much right now. 

Dora has always loved me but there has never been a day in our marriage when I thought she actually needed me.  Now she needs me and the way it makes me feel is kind of scary.

OK, well it is time for me to shut up. I'm talking more than that dang doctor.

Will you pray with me? Right now it feels like that is the only kind of talking that is gonna help anything.

Photo C redit: www.crosscards.com

Please Share This With Your Colleagues, Friends & Family Members: The Boston Marathon Bombing

PHOTO CREDIT: The United Methodist Church, Praying for Boston Marathon Victims

You don’t have to be a children’s organization to realize that the most vulnerable among us in times of horror like the Boston Marathon bombing are, in fact, children. 

For starters, very little helpful news and information is oriented toward children. It is often surprising to me how little time or energy is devoted to constructive efforts to help children deal with the crushing onslaught of images, sounds, and words that are primarily oriented toward the sensational.

In a world in which most adults have become desensitized to images of horror and the constant flow of the panicked and obsessive repetition of intense emotions, it is easy for us to forget that the children we love most- our sons and daughters, grandchildren, nieces and nephews, god sons and god daughters, and children of friends- may have precious few cognitive and experiential resources to deal with what is coming at them.

Please take some time to view the message below and pass it on.  As adults, our greatest resource in times like these is our ability to step back for a moment from our sense of helplessness and ask what we ourselves can do to help someone else.  Here is one thing that you and those you love can do. In the process, it is entirely possible that you may find something of real help to you.

http://fci.org/FRC/par-tragic-events.html

thanks,

Mark

Inspiration for the New Year

Dorothy and Megan Grace, circa 2005
Photo Credit: Mark Grace

Well, 2012 was a banner year by any standard of judgment.  We managed to dodge several apocalypses.  Now at year's end everyone seems to be more or less in the same place they were when the year started.

Of course this game of The-End-of-the-World-As-We-Know-It appears to be one of the few trends we human beings manage to sustain year in and year out.  

No Armageddon?  Well, step right over here.  How about a nice high Fiscal Cliff to jump off?  If nature or God won't oblige, we'll build our own mini-apocalypse. 

Though I am as overly anxious and prone to panicky obsessions as the next person, in my middle age I seem to have discovered unexpected resources for dealing with the constant excessive preoccupation with disaster that culture and politics keeps throwing my way.

Two of those resources are embodied in the persons of the women pictured above: my daughter, Megan and my mother, Dorothy.

Now 82 years of age, my mother survived the dust bowl years in the Panhandle of Texas and managed her way through the near death and year-long hospitalization of my grandad, Miller Cason.  Though fortunate to survive his milk truck being struck by a train, his body took a long time to mend from its injuries.  Mom and her mother Lena traded 12 hour shifts sitting with him in his hospital room and my mother took on many of the chores of looking after her siblings.

Now she manages a very challenging life with my father, who has mellowed nicely in his old age, but who also suffers from Parkinsons and functional blindness.  Their biggest desire?  To continue to find meaningful ways to serve Christ.

Megan is working hard in Austin, Texas, hustling jobs to make ends meet in an incredibly tough economic climate.  In spite of disappointment and delays on the job front, she brings her best on a daily basis to a very challenging life.  In midst of it all she copes with humor and passion and a deep commitment to learning and growth.  In so many ways I see her carrying forward the legacy that Dorothy is leaving all of us.

Both of these women remind me in different ways of a very basic truth.  Though I can't predict or control what 2013 brings my way, I have more than enough love, determination and faith to deal with what comes.

2013 may or may not be my year to find wealth and fame, to live up to my full potential-whatever that may be.  It may bring disappointment and delay.  Who knows, really? 

I can tell you, however, that because of these two women whom I love and admire more than words can tell, I know that with God's help I have the resources to deal with whatever the New Year brings.

What about you?  Who reminds you, on the cusp of  a new year, that you can meet the challenges that may come your way?  Leave a comment!

Photo Credit: www.crosscards.com

Is There Room In Our Hearts for the Whole Story?

Rome Violinist and Family, March 2001

Photo Credit: Mark Grace

One of the most frequent questions I hear people being asked around Christmas time is, "What is your favorite Christmas memory?"  

I love that question.  It inevitably invites us into the worshipful rooms of our lives, often connected to our sense of childhood wonder and personal experiences of having been loved deeply.

That is why it is striking to me that every Christmas season seems so filled with a kind of desperate frenzy to escape anything unpleasant and to eat and drink ourselves into a kind of forgetful stupor from which we only wake sometime after New Year's day.  I don't mean this as a judgment on others because I seem to be as easily caught up in the sickness as anyone else on the planet.

THE CHRISTMAS STORY IS ABOUT ABUNDANCE CHEEK-BY-JOWL WITH SCARCITY

The sometimes disruptive reality of this season is that the family in the picture above have lived closer to the real story of Christmas than many of us will ever imagine. 

Indeed, that story is being lived out every single Christmas all over again.  It shouldn't take a Sandy Hook elementary to call our attention to it.  The fact is that more people die in the U.S. on Christmas and New Year's Day than at any other time of year, and not just from auto crashes, drug overdoses or family violence.  More people succumb to nearly every kind of illness on those two days of the year than at any other time.  

There is nothing new to the reality that death and deprivation attend us at every step, even into the heart of our most holy of celebrations.

THANKS FOR BUMMING ME OUT, MR. COMFORT AND JOY . . .

As a matter of fact, I have been known to display my fair share of angst-ridden moodiness, and not just on Christmas.  I'm a year-round equal opportunity depressive.

But wait just a bit before you turn away toward your second helping of turkey and tamales.  Don't grab that third bottle of beer just yet.  Give me a minute to make my last point.

You see, if anything at all should give us comfort AND joy this year it is just this fact.  What we are celebrating is the birth of God Almighty INTO the worst possible circumstances to deliver us to peace.  

Jesus wasn't born to create this confusing, stress inducing festival of turkey and cranberry sauce or to make possible a big giant tree with mounds of presents under them.  

Christ came into the world to be with us at the most difficult time.  To assure us that NOTHING can separate us from the love of God.

Somehow that seems to me to be the most important part of this story- more hopeful than new possessions, more reliable than even good fortune and the absence of pain. So many people on this planet right now are living in need, facing despair, crossing the threshold of death.  I believe they belong in our Christmas as much as Santa or tinsel or a new iPad.  In fact, our ability to see them as part of this story is what makes this holiday a holy day.

Christmas Blessings,

Mark

Comfort and Joy

Photo Credit: Mark Grace

Did you ever have one of those days when you thought, "It just doesn't get any better than this."

I had one of those days yesterday.  It started with Daniel Solis knocking on our door at 8:00 a.m. with pots and pans and a good two pounds of chorizo in hand.  He fixed up the best meal I've had in a long time for our monthly men's breakfast.  Cafe con leche, pan dulce, huevos con chorizo, tortillas and great fellowship.

One of the attendees was another Daniel, Daniel Alonzo, who has been to hell and back this past year.  He lost something like fifty-five pounds on account of a mystery illness, and in the middle of that he and Rachel took in one of their sons and three kids below the age of five.

But here he was healthy again, enjoying breakfast and receiving congratulations on having been named "Grandparent of the Year" by a local Spanish language newspaper.

Photo Credit: Mark Grace

We left the house to go to church where we bowed our heads while the names of 20 children and six adults from Newtown, Connecticut were read.  We all prayed and wept as though they were family members of our own.  While we wept for them we remembered our own children cut down by illness and tragedy over the last few years.

We shared food boxes with everyone in attendance.  We rejoiced with new church attenders who came to tell us how much our church had come to mean to them.  "My life is so much better now that I am worshipping with you all," one said, "I am happy now, free of habits that were killing me.  I thank God for this church.

Later in the day we listened as our children taught us the Christmas story all over again. 

They lifted our spirits as they acted out the nativity drama. Iglesia Bill Harrod's annual Christmas pageant is a one-of-a-kind experience that never fails to make us proud, gives us hearty laughter-- sometimes in the most unexpected points in the program-- and renews our sense of God's presence with us.

Afterward we crowded around to see our newest star, one month old Joel, who debuted in his first Christmas pageant as the baby Jesus.

When the service was over a large group of us caroled all over Ledbetter neighborhood, blessing and being blessed by our ancianitos y los enfermos (elders and the sick from our congregation) who let us serenade them.

Finally we drove to Daniel and Debbie Solis' house for a feast.  We watched the Cowboys pull off an over time victory, then we listened to the President do his best to console family and community members in Newtown.  

Then we consoled one another with our love and hugs and prayers for a blessed Christmas season.

May your Christmas be half as blessed, one-tenth as sacred as the time our church spent together yesterday.  

Blessings,

Mark

Photo Credit: www.crosscards.com

How Could I Forget Mel Torme?

Photo Credit: Old Town Roasters

As we sit here among the millenials 

And the hip hop happy nexters 

a velvet fog comes floating down 

From the speakers hidden up there,

startled, delighted, suddenly thirty-five 

years younger, I look happily around, 

expecting other faces to register

the same ecstatic recognition,

but Torme is not Mogen David, 

Mel doesn't even run in that crowd 

he's Dom Perignon in a Waterford flute, 

which explains the complete lack of 

attention this crowd is giving to 

the mist wrapping its cool 

around their feet.

Photo Credit: www.crosscards.com

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Conspicuous Consumption and What We Owe Our Neighbors

 About twelve years ago I had the privilege to get acquainted with a Russian psychologist and professor at the university in Samara, Russia.  She was in the United States courtesy of Dr. Doug Dickens, who had been conducting clinical training with her students on the clinical pastoral education model (CPE).  

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Yes, you read that right.  Doug spent a significant amount of time in Samara educating Russian clinical psychologists on the model of education that we use here in the U.S. to train chaplains and other pastors.

His Russian colleague was so impressed with the CPE model that he succeeded in convincing her to take a trip to Dallas and work for one unit with Clinical Pastoral Education students in our CPE education center at Baylor University Medical Center.

For BHCS' faculty and students it was an unrepeatable experience.  

On the one hand, Doug's colleague fulfilled every cold war stereotype of Russians that I grew up with as a child of the sixties and seventies.  

She was a committed atheist and a Marxist. She was thoroughly versed in what is known as depth or analytical psychology, and she approached us from a rather brusque, no-nonsense point of view.  I had to regularly check my temptation to deal with her as a caricature rather than as a real person.  

On the other hand, my encounter with our visiting Russian professor taught me two profound lessons.  

The first lesson had to do with the experience of being taught what it means to be in serious dialogue with someone who came from directly opposing religious and political convictions.  Our Russian friend immersed herself in the spiritual, pastoral and thoroughly Western Christian atmosphere of CPE.  She managed to do so with sincerity, integrity and a commitment to avoid imposing her values on our students.  

The result was an unusual educational and spiritual opportunity for our faculty and students to learn how we might establish meaningful and healing relationships with people who have no religious frame of reference.

The second lesson occurred at a deeply emotional level.  It happened on the first occasion when we took her to lunch.  We sat down in the restaurant, and after some explanation of items on the menu, we ordered our meals.  

I noticed our friend openly staring at the plates of food that were being brought to other customers in the restaurant.  When our orders arrived, the storm cloud that seemed to be building on her face broke.

"This is obscene," she said angrily. "I cannot eat this."  We fairly tripped over one another inquiring as to her difficulty with the food.  She responded by saying, "There is too much here.  I could never eat all of this, not even if I made three meals of it.  How much of this food will be thrown out today?"

Photo Credit: www.123rf.com

Her outburst reminded me of a similar incident in which I was touring a visiting Kazakhstani businessman, also an atheist, taking him through a small shopping mall in Lycoming county, Pennsylvania.  That gentleman literally broke down and wept as he looked at aisle after aisle of goods.  

"If I took you to a store like this in my country, you would find most of the shelves empty," he told me through his tears.

I've never gotten beyond that second lesson.  While my life continues to be riddled with inconsistencies and failures, a great many of the decisions I have made since then have been influenced directly by those two conversations.

When you put it in plain language the personal challenge has been just this: as a follower of Jesus I feel compelled to waste less, consume less, share more and share more wisely.  

I don't want to face Jesus when he comes back and explain how I wasted so much of the abundance that was given to me while my neighbors did without.

Here are just a few facts to consider: 

• Americans eat 815 billion calories of food each day - that's roughly 200 billion more than needed - enough to feed 80 million people.
• Americans throw out 200,000 tons of edible food daily.
• The average American generates 52 tons of garbage by age 75.
• The average individual daily consumption of water is 159 gallons, while more than half the world's population lives on 25 gallons.

Here is one prophetic warning from Jesus to consider: 

"As he taught, Jesus said, “Watch out for the teachers of the law. They like to walk around in flowing robes and be greeted with respect in the marketplaces, and have the most important seats in the synagogues and the places of honor at banquets. They devour widows’ houses and for a show make lengthy prayers. These men will be punished most severely.”  Mark 12:38-40

Now we have several choices about what we can do with the facts above. We can dismiss them as part of the grand socialist conspiracy. We can laugh uncomfortably and defiantly refuse to be "guilted" into better behavior.  We may even point indignantly to the left-over spoilage we share from our collective table even as we studiously ignore the tons of food and other goods that continue to pile up in our landfills. 

Whatever we may do to dismiss the issues, however, will not change the facts.  It will not change the facts that demonstrate the massive amount of finite resources that we in the U.S. take from the world and that we literally and shamelessly waste. 

Nor will it change the fact of what Jesus said to us about our personal and collective responsibilities as his followers.  It won't change what Jesus clearly said about the consequences that we will reap on account of our gluttonous over consumption and waste of the resources that have been given us by God.

You see, I don't think that the U.S. has become a weaker nation on account of the drop in church attendance or because of the godless behavior of people who have ceased to believe in the traditional church.  

In fact, I am convinced that church attendance is dropping almost exclusively due to the godless behavior of people who call themselves Christian and who refuse to follow Jesus' teachings- prominently among them, his teachings about loving our neighbors as ourselves.

Blessings,
Mark

Photo Credit: www.crosscards.com

CHANGE

Photo Credit: www.123RF.com

Here we are huddled around 
tables ten by ten, dutifully 
inspired, gently scolded, vigorously exampled and relentlessly teleprompted toward a triumphant future,

needing to surface for air,
I rise and find the exit, 
squeeze through mammoth ballroom doors like
Dorothy tip toeing away from the wizard's presence,

stepping into bright lights, 
I stumble upon one hundred
tables set for lunch by a battalion of brown skinned, black pantsed and vested waiters, casually

hablando el uno con el otro talking easily, camarada con caballero, comadre con cuñado, La Raza right here mere feet outside the land of Oz; 

inside, we cluck our tongues over 
the uninsured and the under-served, 
whose numbers so awkwardly and 
insistently impinge upon 
net operating margins,

later we will lift food from the plates
carefully placed in front of us
by uninsured hands, efficiently
served by the under-served,

Occasionally someone will lift 
her gaze halfway, eye a 
vest button and murmur 
"Thank you."

Photo Credit: www.crosscards.com

A Blessing from the Mountains: God's Sovereign Love

Annecy, France Looking Toward the French Alps
Photo Credit: Mark Grace

Our friend Francoise drove us to Annecy-by-the-Lake one brisk March day in 2008.  It was only one day out of almost 21,000 days that I have lived in my lifetime, yet it stands out in memory from nearly all the others.

French Alps
Photo Credit: Mark Grace

I remember walking in the shadow of the French Alps, casting my gaze toward those imposing, snow covered giants and thinking that if only I could live in Annecy, I would never lose sight of the fact that "the Lord is in his holy temple, let all the earth keep silence before him." (Habakkuk 2:20)

Then I looked around me and the sad thought came to me that it probably would not take very long for me to become accustomed to this breath-taking landscape.  How long, I thought, would it be before this awareness of God's transcendent majesty became just another taken-for-granted part of my daily routine?

It is true.  We human beings seem to be hard-wired to accustom ourselves to the most terrifying and breath-taking experiences.  With time, even Moses' face ceased to shine from his encounters with God.

I think that is why God constructed memory to work in the particular way it does. We may forget, but we are also and always capable of remembering.  And that remembering has the power to bring us back to our forgotten experiences of awe.

My blessing for your weekend is this: may God's majesty overshadow your work, your rest and your worship.  May your soul grow silent before the transcendent power and compassion of the Almighty and bless you with a deep awareness of our Redeemer's sovereign love.

Blessings,

Mark

Photo Credit: Mark Grace