Worldly Holiness

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Bon Nadal can be translated literally "Good Nativity." Probably a more user-friendly version is Merry Christmas! The language is Catalan, which is the regional language of the state of Catalonia, where Barcelona is located. One of the curious things we have come to realize about this country is the strong regional identities in each place. Think of the rivalries between the Huskies and Cougars in Washington, add 10 degrees of intensity, put layers of history, local soccer teams (Barcelona and Real Madrid), other regional tendencies and language and this is what you get in this diverse country of Spain. There are people in both Madrid and Barcelona who will not travel to the other city.

In some measure, this aspect of living between tensions is what we deal with in our lives and describes the unique ministry we have been called to here in Europe more generally. Because we have an American passport and are citizens of the US, we often are engaged in rather interesting conversations about what is going on in the world, especially in Iraq, and our country's role in the world. At these times I feel dissonance. In terms of ministry to our focus people, we sometimes are also challenged whether it is viabile to serve, (love) "those people." A little more dissonace is sounded in my soul. I should mention that for the most part, we are strongly supported by our churches and very encouraged by friends. People believe in what we are doing. I like to think that God does too. Anyway, the questions speak to the provincial nature of us all, and how we often see the world with different eyeglasses. That leads to much of the dissonace we see and experience in our world. I suppose that is what it means to be human.

The Gospel has something to say to this, especially this time of year. Differences will always exist. “Enmity” will often describe interrelations between people, nations, sports teams and religions. Paul in Ephesians refers to Christ (the Christ child of all our Christmas stories) as our “peace, who made both groups into one, and broke down the barrier of the dividing wall, by abolishing in His flesh the enmity…thus establishing peace, and might reconcile them both in one body through the cross, by it having put to death the enmity.” (Ephesians 2:14-16). Luke also notes that God is guiding our feet into the way of peace (Luke 1:79) through the Christ event! Jesus himself calls peacemakers blessed, for they shall be called sons of God (Matthew 5:9). This is part of what we are called to in this world, to provide words and examples that can be the building blocks for making peace, understanding and celebrating the things that make us different instead of ripping us apart with disdain, hate and enmity! How we need this in our day.

I think God craves that his people overcome the provincial things that divide us, or worse, the hate that produces very ugly consequences in our world. This Christmas, I pray the peace of Christ will guard your hearts and minds. I also pray that he may guide your feet into ways of peacemaking wherever you live and relate to those who are different than you.

Bon Nadal! It is not just about how much we can receive, but also how much we can give to others a blessing of peace.

Ciao,

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Contemplation, originally uploaded by papalars.

This new piece on my blog will evolve into an entire section on the "Inward" aspect of the Inward–Outward journey. To begin with I have posted quotes dealing with aspects of the inner life–leadership, contemplation, holiness (not a dirty word by the way), solitude and general aspects of following Christ. Oh, yes there are a few quotes about our culture and suburbia near the end as well. I was partly inspired by friends and collegues Chris and Diane Wiebe to add these to my blog. For many of us, inner reflection is essential to life. I hope to provide tools for reflection and contemplation as this blog matures, and to encourage anyone who joins Christ on the Inward–Outward journey! By the way, all the photos in the mosaic above are mine, taken over a span of many years of interest in photography. God provides a great lab for reflection. Psalm 19 comes to mind.

Western spirituality focuses on upward mobility that has an innate fear of “the fall.”     - Anne Dillard

“If solitude were primarily an escape from a noisy milieu, they could easily become very self-centered forms of asceticism. But solitude and silence are for prayer. The Desert Fathers did not think of solitude as being alone, but as being alone with God.” - Henri Nouwen

“Life naturally provides those moments and occasions of unintentional contemplation, times when the foundations of life seem swept away and we are left with the need to see life from a different perspective.
- Parker Palmer

“Without somehow destroying me in the process, how could God reveal himself in a way that would leave no room for doubt? If there were no room for doubt, there would be no room for me.”
- Frederick Buechner

“I know God won’t give me anything I can’t handle. I just wish He didn’t trust me so much.”
- Mother Teresa

“On the whole, I do not find Christians, outside the catacombs, sufficiently sensible of the conditions. Does anyone have the foggiest idea what sort of power we so blithely invoke? Or, as I suspect, does no one believe a word of it? The churches are children playing on the floor with their chemistry sets, mixing up a batch of TNT to kill a Sunday morning. It is madness to wear ladies’ straw hats and velvet hats to church; we should all be wearing crash helmets. Ushers should issue life preservers and signal flares; they should lash us to our pews. For the sleeping god may wake some day and take offense, or the waking god may draw us out to where we can never return.”
- Annie Dillard, in Teaching a Stone to Talk

In all my experience, I have never seen lasting solutions to problems, lasting happiness and success, come from the outside in. Outside-in approaches result in unhappy people who feel victimized and immobilized, who focus on the weaknesses of other people and the circumstances they feel are responsible for their own stagnant situation.”                                                                                                                                                                                     - Steven R. Covey

“When a leader takes up all the space and preempts all the action, he or she may make something happen, but that something is not community. Nor is it abundance, because the leader is only one person and one person’s resources invariably run out.”
- Parker Palmer

“Repentance is not an emotion, not feeling sorry for your sins. It is a decision. It is deciding that you were wrong… it is a’ feet on the ground’ kind of word.”
– Eugene Peterson

Nouwen finds in the Desert traditions of the 4th and 5th centuries a model for spirituality that can be the source of renewal and vitality for those enmeshed in the busy schedules and interactions with people. The Desert Fathers [and Mothers] sought a new form of witness after the persecutions of the pre-Constantine era stopped. The end of persecutions did not mean the world had accepted the Gospel. This was a time when the prevailing culture of the church began to resemble the world in which it existed, failing to embody the ideals and gospel of Jesus Christ. The “world” was no longer the enemy of the church after Constantine made Christianity the religion of the Roman Empire. - Andrew Larsen commentary from Henri Nouwen

 “Thirty-six references are found in the Gospels with the words ‘Follow Me’ on the lips of Jesus. The word 'evangelical' never appears in the entire New Testament. The word 'Christian' appears once in Acts when it was used by outsiders in derision of the people of the way, the ones that were little Christ ones. In others words, people thought of Jesus Christ when they thought of the early Christians. There was little ambiguity.  How do we talk about who we are? How would others describe us to their friends?.” - Andrew Larsen

Although the church’s recent fascination with spirituality has yielded some positive fruit, the “what’s-in-it-for-me” impulse of our consumerist culture has taken center stage. Spirituality has become an end in itself, serving strictly the needs of the individual along the lines of personal temperament and wants, bordering on a spiritual narcissism.
- Andrew Larsen

“Holiness is the Christian life mature. It’s gathering all the parts and pieces of your life into obedience and response to God, and living with some energy. Holiness is a blazing thing, an energetic thing. Part of the reason the modern church has lost its taste for holiness is that it has become engineered. “
- Eugene Peterson

“According to Jesus, there is no authentic Christianity, discipleship or Christian ethics apart from doing the deeds he taught his followers to do….”
- Glen Stassen

“Holiness is not different action, it is different being.”
– Dallas Willard

“You do not have to sit outside in the dark. If, however, you want to look at the stars, you will find that darkness is required. The stars neither require it nor demand it.”
- Annie Dillard

“The greatest threat to the life of the church is the loss of its gospel substance, and the surest way to bring this about is for the ministry to become a bureaucracy functioning to maintain the structures of the original church, mindless of its subservience to the mission of the gospel to the world.” - Carl Braaten

"Each year, we construct the equivalent of many cities, but the pieces don't add up to anything memorable or of lasting value. The result doesn't look like a place, it doesn't act like a place, and perhaps most significantly it doesn't feel like a place. Rather it feels like what it is: an uncoordinated agglomeration of standardized single-use zones with little pedestrian life and even less civic identification, connected only by an overtaxed network of roadways."
- Andres, Duany, Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk, and Jeff Speck in The Suburban Nation: The Rise of Sprawl and the Decline of the American Dream 

"We Americans want it all: endless and secure energy supplies; low prices; no pollution; less global warming; no new power plants (or oil and gas drilling, either) near people or pristine places. This is a wonderful wish list, whose only shortcoming is the minor inconvenience of massive inconsistency." - Robert J. Samuelson

"We do not want a religion that is right where we are right. What we want is a religion that is right where we are wrong."
- G. K. Chesterton

Cafe con Leche, originally uploaded by papalars.

Larsen Year End Mosaics Prayer & Praise

• We praise God for some amazing connections that are beginning to yield ministry opportunities this month. Pray for a developing relationship and potential discipleship with a new contact. Pray that I may be able to articulate the Gospel that meets his questions and needs.
• Pray also for a series of connections with Pakistani immigrants and groups of people around them that may also be future ministry options. Pray for trust to develop and for clarity in communication and for the News of Christ to be Good to our Focus contacts. Pray also that these new connections do not grow cold over the Christmas gap.
• Continue to pray for the language study opportunity I mentioned last month at the cultural center. I will begin that in January. Pray for good learning and ability to build relationships of trust with my teacher and that community.
• Praise God for a wonderful conference in Turkey last month. It exceeded my expectations in terms of networking, personal refreshment and inspiration. I was tired afterward but truly enriched at the same time. I have several opportunities to continue to network and learn from several people I met at that conference and have more tools for sharing the gospel with our focus group. By the way, I can send a 5 page report if you’re interested in seeing what I learned. Just email me w/ the request.
• Continue to pray for Carol’s role in ministry. She is still trying to find the best place to serve with her gifts and capacities as therapist, counselor and friend of the needy. Also pray for her as a mother, wife, study partner for Erick and travel agent for the entire family. It looks like we will be able to attend a conference together in January which will probably help her network with people in the member care and counseling field.
• Still no word on our visas so continue to pray that we get those ASAP. Pray at least that our stay here is not limited by not having our visas. There is still no word from the consulate in San Francisco. We’d like to establish a more permanent status here in Spain. Keep praying and trusting God with us.
• Pray for our time together as a family for Christmas. Continue to pray for Nicki’s health. She has had a setback and is struggling to manage expectations and her constant desire to be healthy!
• I don’t like to overemphasize the spiritual struggle we find ourselves in because of the nature of our work but I must admit it seems that we are in an intense struggle. I can see God’s hand in much of what we are doing but I can also feel the deep undercurrents that seem to want to destroy us and efforts to share God’s love. Pray that we are wise and know how to pray, love each other and go forward with God’s strength.
• Lastly, continue to pray for our support funds. We still have need for additional support and are trusting God to bring that in.

Bless you all for praying!

A New Kind of Christmas Lights, Boqueria Peppers, originally uploaded by papalars.

It seems like just yesterday we sent our two oldest off to Ecuador and Chicago followed shortly by the rest of us moving to Spain. Now we are pulling everyone back together again to enjoy a few weeks as family in Barcelona. We will probably see snow when we travel over the Pyrenees to visit France but most likely will see more sun and fresh produce at the Boqueria Market downtown. The colors of these peppers began to get me in the mood for Christmas while the rest of the signals have not. Where is the frenzy that most pastors experience right about now? Hmmm, we are not as frantic as we usually are at this point in the year. That is nice on the one hand. However, it shows we are less a part of a community, so far, on the other hand.

God has been very faithful in our transitions and new ministry opportunities are beginning to emerge. I was with a group of pastors and missionaries yesterday on a tour of a local historic town with marks of the Roman Empire. Very interesting to have that influence here in Spain but not necessarily strange. The Romans got around in their day! There were also stories of St. Paul’s missionary journey at some of the Catholic sites we visited. If you remember from your Bible reading, Paul was always eager to get to Spain. That prompted him to write the book of Romans by the way (see Romans 15:24-28). Anyway, it was a valuable time of networking. Around the dinner table I had two couples from Ecuador, another two from the Philippians, a single guy from Mexico and another group of folks from Spain and Argentina. This international flavor seems to be a theme of our lives here in Spain (see story below about the cell group last week). I got them talking about their favorite traditional foods from home. Wow, was that fun. We brainstormed about each other hosting a meal with our new friends. They all said I could prepare hamburgers for them. We all got a good laugh out of that. I seem to be the unique person from the U.S. in the groups I connect with. Carol´s experience is similar, even at the American school where Erick attends. I find that both curious and enjoyable. Not sure why. That is just our situation currently.

Well, as you approach Christmas, remember to….(here I’m supposed to kick into some gooey Christmas sentimentality but I will resist!)… well, remember to have a good time. Don’t get stressed out and try to connect to the simplicity of Christ’s coming and the implications for your life and our world!

Remember, browse my pictures, subscribe to my blog in the upper right hand corner. Leave a comment in the discussion section or drop us an email. We´d love to hear what you are expecting this Christmas.