New Year, Old Problems

Today wasn't supposed to be this way.

Actually, neither was yesterday. But here I am, 3 in the afternoon, with nary a thing done at work. You know, the work of God. That stuff I'm totally and completely responsible for.

I'm fooling myself if I think what I call work is really opus Dei. Churning out emails, program creation, and the like. Administration, but not the heart of ministry. And so when I don't get to do that in the way and on the schedule upon which I've decided things should get done, then I'm not a happy camper. I need to make sure these things happen, I need to be in this place by this time, I need to...well, you get the picture. In the pressure-cooker of accountable ministry, I turn into Alexander in the middle of his terrible, horrible, no-good, very bad day.

In short, I hate letting other people down. I want to be, with Paul, all things to all people. I've come to discover Paul either had no life, or he was fudging the truth a bit. Probably some of both. I struggle to find the right balance between church, campus ministry, connectional responsibilities, and--oh yeah--family. Not to mention time for myself to read, think, create, and simply be.

So, I grab drive-thru for lunch and conveniently forget the banquet feast prepared for me. I run around like a chicken with my head cut off...and still sign all my emails with "grace and peace." Is this an area of life where we believe, "Yes, we can"? Or is this an area where human initiative and bootstrap-pulling-up is fundamentally flawed?

So I'm realizing a few things (and have been for some time now): it's not my ministry to make work, it's God's; and trusting in God means letting some things go or giving them away. It's not hard for me to be chief technician manipulating the religious machinery. It is hard to trust in a transcendent God who is willing to share ministry with me, though not on my terms.

Christie and I were talking last night about something else entirely when I made the point that the work of mending our own deep brokenness is work that takes a lifetime (and that's when God's doing the mending). Talk about preaching the sermon you need to hear the most!

The lectionary this week is an invitation to the vocation of disciple. May the living, life-giving God grant me, and you, and the entire church the grace and peace to be shaped by the Spirit into true disciples of Jesus Christ. Amen.

Final Notes about Cote d'Ivoire

A followup Beaumont Enterprise story is available here:
http://www.beaumontenterprise.com/news/local/southeast_texans_help_to_net_disease_in_africa_11-25-2008.html

You can view my Cote d'Ivoire photo album at
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2055775&l=5f9c3&id=3003527

Photos and more are available at http://umns.umc.org and http://www.txcumc.org

Thanks for everyone who followed along with the blog, on Twitter and Facebook, and said prayers or sent words of encouragement! May our Thanksgiving celebrations this week make us truly thankful and extravagantly generous.

Worship

Well kids, the word of the day is “worship.” Why?

Find out at http://www.txcumcmedia.org/africablog/?p=154

And I hope you have read all the posts, not just mine, on the conference blog page, not to mention the wonderful other bloggers listed on the blogroll. Merci beaucoup!

Que c'est la nouvelle?

What is the news? This question is the first one asked upon arriving in a village, especially for an official visit to the chief or the church. It’s apparently protocol for “What are you doing here? What’s your business?”

Read more at http://www.txcumcmedia.org/africablog/?p=129

Hope

Two stories from today: one from the Catholic hospital in Alepe, the other about our Gendarmie (national police) guard who accompanies us everywhere we go.

Read more at http://www.txcumcmedia.org/africablog/?p=126

Simplicity

Simplicity is not a choice here, not for the vast majority of the people I’ve met. One of the team members shared last night about going into a home to see the nets we’ve been distributing all week actually being used. This was a four room house, with each room smaller than the hotel room we’re staying in here. A family was sleeping in each room; 17 total people living in the house.

Read more at http://www.txcumcmedia.org/africablog/?p=85

Beaumont Enterprise article

Here's a link to the article about the trip from the Beaumont Enterprise:

http://www.beaumontenterprise.com/ent-life/net_gains_give_life_in_africa_11-07-2008.html

Priorities

...It's not that I don't like football; but is that really what our highest priority ought to be? I couldn't help but think of the contrast between the Friday Night Lights and what is going on here this week in Cote d'Ivoire.

Read more at http://www.txcumcmedia.org/africablog/?p=79

Travel Update

There's a travel update posted on http://www.txcumcmedia.org/africablog/?p=60 and some nice pictures as well (including one of me!). Please find out about how the past few days have gone, and excuse the lack of posting--it should be more regular from here on out!

Juxtaposition

It’s one of my favorite 25-cent words: juxtaposition: what happens when you place two things side by side. You can’t escape it in Cote d’Ivoire.

Read more at http://www.txcumcmedia.org/africablog/?p=57

Leaving, on a jet plane...

Well, the team has assembled (loosely) in front of our gate at Intergalactic Airport Houston. I can’t speak for the rest of them...

Read more at http://www.txcumcmedia.org/africablog/?p=35

Africa trip information

Well, tomorrow will be a week until I head to Africa. I wanted to let my vast readership know about how I will be keeping up while I'm gone. I highly recommend visiting my comprehensive trip resources page at http://www.wesleylamar.org/africa for that information. You can also download the complete 12-day prayer guide for the time that we are gone.

Please donate to Nothing But Nets, follow me on Twitter and Facebook, read my blog, visit other peoples' blogs, and pray for us. We trust that the Spirit of the Living God will bring us together with the people of God and those doing the work of God so that the Kingdom of God will be revealed and enacted here on earth.

Nothing but Nets

One of the reasons I got into this pastor gig is because I felt the responsibility to do something constructive, creative, restorative with what I’ve been given. A lot of days, I feel like this is a goal that goes, at best, unfulfilled. (Catching up on emails, filing reports, committee meetings, and the like may be necessary, but rarely seem world-changing.) So when I got the call that invited me to be a part of my Church’s Net Distribution Team, I was beyond elated…but let me explain.

The people of the United Methodist Church are partners in the Nothing But Nets initiative, along with Sports Illustrated, NBA Cares, the United Nations Foundation and many more. Nothing But Nets is a grassroots initiative to eradicate malaria in Africa through the use of long-life, insecticide-treated bednets. Malaria accounts for 50% of all hospital and outpatient admissions in Africa, and 3 out of 4 people affected are children under the age of 5. Malaria is a nasty, killer disease, but the most effective means of curbing its spread and effects is through a simple $10 net.

So this November I’ll be distributing these nets to children in Côte d’Ivoire, where Texan Methodists have a relationship with Ivorian Methodists. Over a 10-day period, our 35-member team will be working with NGOs, the Ministry of Health, and the Church to distribute over a million nets (885,000 of which were donated through Methodists in Texas). That will still leave 6 million at-risk Ivorians unprotected, though...

...which is why I’m sharing this with you. It's not so that I can pump my own ego :) but to invite you to participate. If you haven’t already been to http://www.NothingButNets.net, I encourage you to do so to find out more about what this campaign is doing. You can donate, buy shirts & hats which advertise while providing a net, and share media & news. If you would like to help defray the team’s expenses, you can talk to me directly. I hate asking for money considering natural disasters and economic crises, but let’s face it—almost all of us are ridiculously better off than these infants, children, and pregnant moms. It’s an opportunity to be a part of mending the creation—making the world a better place—or being a good neighbor in the global village. And you can read about the distribution as it happens here at The Expatriate Minister.

Spend $10. Send a net. Save a life.

Quote Board

Well, since I don't have any original/inspired thoughts at the moment, I thought I'd bring you some thoughts by others.

"It's not that industry is bad. If we shut it down we do not progress. Greed is the problem. If PG&E had done the right thing morally then we'd never have had this lawsuit, lives would have been saved and they would not have been out of $1bn. That's just bad business. Honesty hurts, but it's at least respectful of people. I see no change at all in industry."

Erin Brockovich
The Guardian

Gandhi lite? Yes, but in a form perhaps more palatable to American/Western ears. Brockovich is an interesting person, and I think well worth listening to because of her wilderness perspective.

From a vastly different corner:

"It is impossible to love a God that we do not see when we cannot love those that we can see."

Joe Worley, Pastor, First Baptist Church, Groves

The Beaumont Enterprise

An excellent exposition of the love passages in 1 Corinthians and 1 John. Enacted, tangible expressions of love are perhaps the only way in which we can both share our faith and worship authentically.

My own thoughts will resume in the near future...

Second Sight

Not to put too fine a point on it, but great minds think alike... :)

The most recent dispatch from Bishop Janice Riggle Huie (Houston area, United Methodist Church) is another exercise in perceiving the presence of God, and worth a read:

Seeing the Presence of God

May you see and feel in a profound way the God who is at work in the world for good!

Post-Ike Thoughts

Well here we are again after the storm. I thought I might offer a few
thoughts on the presence of God in these difficult circumstances.

First, I think God is present in the way that people prepared. Those
who evacuated, the hospitals and nursing homes who arranged transport
for those under their care, the emergency management teams and 211,
first responders, government and non-profit relief organizations--
along with many others--all showed an awareness of the needs in their
communities and constiuencies. As Don Saliers told me in worship
class, "The Holy Spirit never minds good planning."

I also want to highlight the ways in which neighbors are helping one
another out as the long work of recovery begins. Citizens putting
others' needs ahead of their own comfort is a great example of
Christlikeness. Those who have hosted strangers and evacuees, shared
generators, waited with grace and humor in long lines for basic needs,
and more all made God incarnate by their attitudes and actions.

The question of divine will in a natural disaster is one I cannot
answer. But in the response to tragedy, may our communities of faith
keep hoping in a redeeming God and re-present that God to all we
encounter.

On Batman

So, there are a number of folks out there looking for a deeper interpretation of The Dark Knight than just an entertaining advancement of the Batman epic. Sojourners and The Wall Street Journal both offer up their perspectives as they relate to the War on Terror and George W. Bush.

But the hunt for a scapegoat in The Dark Knight hinges upon real wrongs done to real people--some deserving, some not--by the morally-troubling-turned-physically-and-psychologically-damaged Harvey Dent.

Sojourners wants the ending of the movie to be about our hunt for a scapegoat for all of our sins. The WSJ wants the ending to be about the inevitable blameshifting onto a worthy cause. But neither of those are the case. It is about the individuals with real power choosing to create a lie so that something greater doesn't die.

Both Sojo & the WSJ speak of this action as it is inevitable. But it isn't. Gordon has to forego his only real friend (!?) and partner while Batman is pushed further underground and anti-establishment even as he tries to preserve his real work. But it is a choice: not to reveal that Harvey Dent was pushed off the cliff by the horrific violence done against him and Rachel Dawes, and all its collateral damage in the soul.

Of course, one doubts that Gotham City could have understood the truth about Harvey Dent any more than they could understand how close they truly are to moral and social evil (see the ferrboat scene for an excellent example of the precipice). Gordon & Batman know precisely how close to the edge (or over it) Gotham is, which is why they opt for what they believe is the lesser of two evils. But don't mistake it--perpetuating/creating a lie instead of the truth is indeed an evil, no matter how lesser it may be. I don't doubt that Chris Nolan will make good use of this in his 3rd movie to explore the deep ramifications of good people choosing the fictious over veracity. (Chris, if you want help, watch Frodo's assistance of Gollum's descent after the waterfall scene in The Lord of the Rings.)

At the end of the day, what the movie portrays is a choice that has consequences. The scapegoating by the good citizens of Gotham--for whatever reason--is enabled by what Gordon & Batman choose to do. And this is the heart of the Christian story: that the sin which inhabits our world is there because of a choice we have made. It is no one else's fault but our own. Accepting a gracious forgiveness & freedom from God does not, unfortunately, mitigate the consequences of our actions. Batman's freedom to make a decision to save either Rachel or Harvey leads to diasterous consequences which set the endgame in motion: he must now think that the other option would have been the best. Human freedom is always hampered by finitude, if not by sin, even divinely granted human freedom. The Dark Knight is an excellent exploration of moral complexity and the dialectic between freedom and sin, which the Christian tradition knows all too well.

Dancing

Dance, then, wherever you may be;
I am the Lord of the Dance, said he.
And I'll lead you all wherever you may be,
and I'll lead you all in the dance, said he.

Happy People Dancing on Planet Earth

(Astronomy Picture of the Day is a great website to visit, by the way.)

or watch here:


Where the Hell is Matt? (2008) from Matthew Harding on Vimeo.

Archiving Complete

Okay, that's all the old posts for now. Since the housekeeping's done, you'll start seeing more from me soon. I now return you to your regularly scheduled blogging....

Full of Life

Sorry for the bloggus interruptus, but I'm back now.

I've been thinking a lot recently about what is going on at the Student Center: what kind of ministry do we want, what kind of effect should we have at Lamar and elsewhere, how do we get there. The thing I keep coming back to is I want us to be a body that is full of life.

Well that's nice and all, but what does "full of life" mean? A few thoughts have I (saith Yoda)....

+ Full of life means being open to receiving that life from the one creates, redeems, and sustains: the living God, revealed in Jesus Christ, and made present through the Holy Spirit.
+ Full of life means taking care of each other--being there in the good, bad, and in-between times.
+ Full of life means exercising personal responsibility, making decisions that reflect good and not evil, and attempting to live in the pattern of Jesus.
+ Full of life means being an agent of change in our society and culture, using power to serve one another rather than dominate, and to celebrate justice, righteousness, truth, and peace.
+ Full of life means living not out of a sense of entitlement or self-gratification, but rather out of gratitude and service towards others
+ Full of life means inviting others to "come and see" how we as Christians follow Jesus in this time and place...and that even they can be a part of the Kingdom of God.

Originally posted 10/2/07.