Suffering Faith

Earlier this month the news came out that Bart Campolo, son of the very famous evangelical, Tony Campolo, no longer considers himself a Christian, but a secular humanist.

I paid attention to the news because I had met Bart at the height of his inner-city ministry. His message changed how I thought about living out my faith.  And when I read about the journey that led him away from the cross of Christ and towards the arms of humanism, I understood it all too well.

I read the HuffPost article Sunday afternoon after listening to a sermon on Job that morning. We are working our way through the book, examining a biblical perspective on suffering. I listened with tears in my eyes, feeling the light of understanding shine in some very dark corners of my soul.

From the account that I read, it seems that the Church failed Bart by offering a thin theology of suffering. A lifelong Christian, son of a world-renown pastor, and educated in his own right, Bart could not reconcile the suffering he encountered with the loving God he thought he knew. I know that this is where the church has failed me. 

The Church – mainly the American church – has a shallow theology of suffering while the prosperity gospel runs deep.  Too often people dealing with inexplicable pain are left lacking. The prevailing message (in church and in our culture in general) is that good things come to good people—so what does that mean when suffering beats down your door? What is the faithful response?

For Bart, the article says his departure began when a church told a girl who was gang raped that it was somehow God’s will. For me, it began when I was helping some refugees seek asylum in the United States and I read their accounts of torture.

My education about human suffering continued as I worked in the relief and development field. I saw suffering I could not reconcile with a loving God. And when two friends and mentors of mine were buried in the rubble of Haiti’s earthquake, suffered long, and died difficult deaths, the first nail in the coffin of my faith was hammered deep.

My path follows Bart’s only this far. I did distance myself from God for a time, although I knew God did not stray far from me. God’s presence was palpable: when I was married, when my son was born two months early, when the right kinds of provision came to our family at just the right time. I knew God was there; we just weren’t on speaking terms.

I sought help, understanding and comfort in my church and among my Christian friends, and there were only platitudes in response. My pain, my questions made people uncomfortable. I don’t blame them, my encounters with deep suffering left my faith fractured and I wouldn’t want to draw someone else who was ill-prepared down with me.

Do we know how to sit with someone who is suffering – not just from a bad day, but someone whose child has cancer, or loved one was murdered, or has survived atrocity beyond our imagination? Do our wells of faith run deep enough to hear their stories and listen to their questions? Can we sit with them in their sorrow, even when we have no answers? Are we willing to journey with people who are hurting deeply without fear that it’ll shatter our own understanding of who God is?

We need a theology of suffering that goes deeper than platitudes and is rooted in God’s infinite, incomprehensible and unwavering love. Without it our faith is thin and vulnerable.  God did not fail Bart, the Church’s rose-colored glasses did.   

The Pumping Room

It's taken me almost a year to write this--not that it's a perfect work--it's just taken me this long to put a few words behind some of my experiences around my son's birth and his first weeks.  The women I met in the pumping room in the NYU NICU are really special moms.  Most of them have far more harrowing tales than I and they helped me find some fellowship in the very strange and isolating world of NICU.  A year later and our kids who had such a tough start in life are doing fine.  It's so wonderful to see.

The Pumping Room

The mothers whose babies were born too soon,
Like clockwork go to the pumping room.
The pumps, they wheeze and sigh,
Keeping the beat to three-fourths time.

And to this rhythm the mommas chat.
We talk about our babies and where they’re at,
What happened, and why . . . if we know.
And we keep making milk so our babies can grow.

On some days it’s all we can do
To make milk in the pumping room.
Our babies are so frail and small,
And they aren’t ready for the world at all.

Yesterday was good, today it’s bad.
May God bless us all for the trouble we’ve had.
And so we go to the pumping room,
To do what we can and cast off the gloom.

We talk of home and hopes and dreams,
Of what the doctors said and what it means.
And on and on the mommas chat.
We remember what’s been said: it’s three steps forward and two steps back.

We count the days, the number unknown,
When we will finally bring our babies home.
While we sit in the room, tapping our feet
As we wait for our families to be complete.

Redwoods

The trees stood tall and strong
Roots deep
Green limbs reaching to the sky
Unswayed by wind or rain
Living in the fog
A testimony to God’s goodness
God’s creativity

Lightening strikes twice.

The crack, crash, moan of splintering wood
The weight of their being
Plummeting to earth
Clearing a path
Across the stream
Up the mountain

The giants lay in the mossy peat
Their roots, deep below
Still alive
The cords that tied these giants to the earth
That fed them as they pointed boldly to God

These roots give new life
New giants in the making
A circle
A testimony
A remembrance of what they began
Continuing the work to bridge heaven and earth

For Sam and Clint

Advent

The four weeks of Advent leading up to Christmas is all about preparation for Jesus’ coming. It is a seasonal reminder of the work we should be about all year long. We are preparing for the coming of the Christ – the One who ushers in God’s Kingdom here on earth. We are in a life-long season of Advent as ones who are living between Jesus’ first and second comings.

This preparation takes some hard work that is done with unwavering hope that Jesus is coming; God’s Kingdom is coming, that we will be restored in our relationship with God, with each other and with the earth.

These are all big concepts that I’m talking about. But Advent is a big thing.

If I were to take a picture of what I think Advent looks like, it wouldn’t be of a heavily-pregnant Mary, a donkey, or even a stable. It would be this image here. I took this photo a few years ago in Darfur. It’s the tail end of the dry season and everything is as dusty, hot and dry as it gets. Yet, the farmers are plowing the earth and planting seeds in spite of the seemingly impossible.

These farmers in South Darfur have stuck their fingers to the wind and studied the signs of the weather. They know that the end of the dry season is near its end and the life-giving rains are soon to come. So they are preparing what seems like barren ground for a fruitful harvest. In a few months this field will be full of millet, stalks heavy with grain that is a staple of the Sudanese diet.

This is the real story of Advent. Trusting God to do his good work and making way for it to happen.

Seismic Shift

What causes this seismic shift?
When certainty turns into a precipice
Some small thing and feather light tips the balance
And doubt looms large

What turns the future into a question mark?
When those things set in stone disintegrate
Some crack appears in the solid plan
And confidence dissolves

What happens when the trap door opens?
When the rabbit hole is long and dark
Some expectation is blown to bits
And true north cannot be found

What keeps the tree standing tall and full?
When the winds of change are unrelenting
Some small rain is yet to fall
And the taproot of faith sustains it

Enjoy the Ride

I have figured out that I spend anywhere from 2-4 hours a day on average riding the NYC subway. Sad, but true. I’ve been doing this for nearly 5 years, now, and have developed some solid coping skills.

One thing that’s hard when you depend so heavily on something that you have absolutely no control over is the unknown: When will the train come? How crowded will it be? Can I get a seat? Why is the F train running on the A train again? Will I make the transfer?

You get the picture.

I get stuck worrying about the wait instead of enjoying the ride. And that makes me a miserable person. I can literally feel the weight of each wasted second adding to the scale of my impatience.

However, when I set aside my worry and try to accomplish something during my ride, it goes much smoother. When I read, write, listen to music, or even enjoy the garden of people around me, the time flies by.

I learn things from kids, “look Mommy, the pterodactyl and Pink Panther can be friends!” I take in the beautiful Manhattan skyline from the bridge. I enjoy mariachi music. I get a chuckle out of teenage angst, “did you hear that Tom told Claire that I said Linda likes Marc?” There’s a lot to take in on a New York City subway.

I got to thinking that life’s a lot like this. There can be a lot of worry in the waiting and it makes time pass slowly and painfully while we wonder when x, y, or z will come to pass.

And then there’s enjoying the ride. When life gets lived with confidence that the next thing will happen. It’s not ignoring that the work needs to get done, but just living with the knowledge that we’re not the ones driving this train.

Here’s to no more worrying about the wait and enjoying this ride we’re all on.

Ode to Savasana

Yesterday I had a beautiful yoga class. The boundaries of my body are moving outward inch by inch and I can feel myself getting stronger. When it came time Savasana—the pose where you lay there like a corpse and just breathe—I was in my bliss.

In a Bikram yoga class, Savasana comes at a time when you are sure you are going to either spontaneously combust from the heat or drown in your own sweat. It is at that near breaking point that mercifully you get to stop, lay down for two minutes, and just breathe.

It’s harder than you’d think. You want to fidget, bend your knees, wipe sweat out of your eyes and do a dozen different things, but that is not your job in that moment. Your job is to lay still and breathe.

My Savasana yesterday was incredible. The sun was shining and through my sweat-clouded eyes everything was sparkly and I just breathed deeply and . . . relaxed. So good.

If I could paint, I would paint that moment. But, alas, I am not a painter. I am a writer. And so I offer this: a haiku in honor of this most minimalist pose.

Oh Savasana
My sweat-stunned body rests, at last
I have found my breath