Steve Slater: Ex-flight attendant, Prophet

I watched the news story about the flight attendant who had had enough and decided on the spot to simply quit his job on Tuesday with a huge grin in my heart and on my face. It was gutsy, impulsive, and stupid, which is why I found myself responding the way I did. The cut on his forehead has become a badge of honor that screams, "People have been shoving their crap in my face like I didn't matter for too long, and I say to hell with them, you can shove this job."

Commentators have commented on the irrationality of Steve Slater's impulsive behavior. "Caving to impulses in the moment feels good, of course he had a huge grin on his face, even though he was cuffed", I heard one news person say, "but what happens when he is serving jail time and then later can't find employment again? Who would hire him?" I find myself saying, irrationality all depends on what you think is real.

I find myself among the many overnight fans of Steve Slater, for reasons of my own. I know I should be saying, he should have turned the other cheek...err, other side of his forehead, but I think the reason people are responding to him is because his stunt exposes the inhumanity that people suffer daily. In fact, his actions bring attention to our collective and individual spiritual blindness. Blindness to the humanity of others simply because I think my concerns are more important than yours. I matter more than you do right now. You're just a "service industry employee", aren't you supposed to shut up, smile and take care of me!

Whenever I lose sight of what is real I'm spiritually blind. That Steve Slater matters, has a soul, and is worthy of respect and dignity, regardless of his job title, level of education, or social class is real. This matters. While it may be true that if Steve had been doing his meditation and prayer that day, he might have been able to stay centered in his true self created in God's image, the true self that doesn't desire affection, esteem and approval or need pleasure. He might have looked with pity and compassion on the numb skull passenger who thought that by getting out of his seat while the plane was still taxi-ing was actually going to get him to where he wanted to go any faster.

But if I'm honest with myself for a moment, the reason I say it was stupid of him to flee the plane, beer in hand, down the emergency chute, is because I live with the basic human needs for security, control and social approval of others, especially those in power over me. This is the small, false self with its perspective which is limited by its instinctive need for self-preservation. The same self-preservation instinct to which Jesus calls us to die to.

Perhaps impulsively, not well planned, or with much foresight for his own immediate future employment options, flight attendant, and now folk hero, Steve Slater, made a much needed statement. Schedules, deadlines, budgets, business plans, job titles, financial security, the ability to control my life, ...these are just illusions.

A friend prayed this prayer with me yesterday, and so I post it here as an encouragement to embrace God in every moment:

"Welcome, welcome, welcome. I welcome everything that comes to me today because I know it's for my healing. I welcome all thoughts, feelings, emotions, persons, situations, and conditions. I let go of my desire for affection, esteem, approval and pleasure. I let go of my desire for surivial and security. I let go fo my desire to change any situation, condition, person or myself. I open to the love and presence of God and His action within."

A God You Can Taste

If you're like most people I know, you're probably busy enough just trying to balance the demands of your job while trying to have a social life, and oh yeah, take care of yourself too, that time for spiritual renewal is left to fit into the occasional unscheduled Sunday morning. Between long office hours, paying off loans, long commutes, continuing education, dating or spending time with your partner, staying in shape, mundane chores and social obligations, having the time or energy for regular a life of spiritual practice seems like just another item to check off the to-do list.

I should know. I'm a "professional Christian", yet there have been lengthy periods where the idea of prayer seemed like an "ought", and left me with a sense of inadequacy instead of renewal. Similarly reading the Bible devotionally was often folded into the weekly teaching preparation.

In fact, most people I know who claim the Christian Bible as their sacred text, and even those who defend it fiercely, rarely read it. For many Christians prayer happens perhaps when they feel overwhelmed and need a little divine intervention.

Why the disconnect?

I have an idea, because I know these feelings personally. In our highly educated, fast paced and noisy world, our minds are processing huge amounts of information daily (it seems our educational system is geared to produce exactly that...information reciptcals and processing machines). It doesn't come as a great surprise that our approach to the spiritual practices of prayer and scripture are more influenced by the legacy of Greek influence on our western culture than the eastern mindset of the Jews who wrote the Bible, and, incidentally, Jesus himself.

If I had to compare the two mindsets, the western mind approaches scripture the same way many people eat lunch. Emphasis on big portions over quality, preferably from a drive-through, or in a microwaveable package, eaten in an uninspiring office cubicle setting in 10 minutes or less. Whereas, in some parts of the world, food is considered sacred, and eating is almost a religious experience for which time must be taken, and the dish must be fully appreciated. The setting must be pleasant, talking about the deliciousness of the food is expected, and part of the enjoyment. The chief concerns are not the calorie count or the fat or sugar content, but the freshness of the ingredients (preferably seasonal), the marriage of the flavors, and the resulting overall culinary experience.

Similarly, the Greek/western mind reads the Bible to extract the correct information from it (presumably in hopes gaining some kind insight that might help one's standing with God). Whereas, the Jewish/eastern mind reads the Bible to experience God within the pages of the text. The Greek mind wants to travel through the a passage of scripture, while the eastern mind is content to take its time, finding renewal by savoring each portion of scripture.

Similarly, prayer in the eastern mind is an experience of divine Presence rather than a kind of personal progress report to God and request for favors. For the Early Church, the Desert Fathers, medieval mystics and recent contemporaries like Thomas Merton, prayer was a way to experience God's naked presence, rather than a discursive exercise. The Bible too, though certainly useful and necessary for guiding us through story, poem and instruction, was seen as a container of God's presence within its words and pages...something to be spiritually tasted and savored in addition to being intellectually processed.

In the words of Judith Kunst, "In Judaism, scripture is not a signpost pointing to truth but a portion of the truth itself--not just a promise to be fulfilled or a commandment to be obeyed, but a real-time serving of scriptural food to be tasted, chewed, and digested into the body, mind, heart and soul."

In Untitled we're in the middle of looking at the ancient practices of Contemplative Prayer and Lectio Divina. If prayer and scripture reading sound uninspiring, draining, difficult and frustrating, these two ways of experiencing God through prayer and scripture might just be for you. More to come . . .

Really knowing

Call me cynical, but if you haven't taken your own advice for a test drive yourself, then I don't want it. I will gladly listen to anyone who has learned what they know through the pain of real world experience. What an enormous difference there is between degrees and scars!

Mark Scandrette in his book Soul Graffiti makes a good point along these lines. He contends that if the average Christian stopped reading the Bible for the rest of their life and just started acting on what they already know of Jesus' teaching, they would mature far more than they ever would by looking for the next best book or Bible study. He says, "In Western society we are also culturally conditioned to assume that intellectual assent to a set of propositions is an adequate substitute for obedience." And so we feel that reading the Bible more, or understanding Greek and Hebrew, or more teaching will help us grow.

I find myself having to admit more and more, that I don't need a new book, or more knowledge. What I need is to find more time to put into practice the things I already know. I find myself making a mental list of the things in Jesus teaching that especially challenge me, and struggle as I ask how can I implement this?

If you really want to know Jesus, start doing the things Jesus did, and you will. You might say that this is the difference between believing in Jesus, and believing what Jesus believed. I dare say that merely believing a set of propositions about Jesus never put food on the plate of a hungry person or a roof over their head.

The question is, will we make the leap from consumer in the religious services aisle to an employee for the Kingdom of God?

Lenten Reflections

I'm feeling the withdrawal symptoms of my TV fast. It's the way my hand instinctively reaches for the remote when I'm on the sofa and not talking or reading a book. It's the urge to have more stimulation when I'm feeding Sascha in the morning. Why is it hard for me to just sit in silence? Why do I find it appealing to read while the TV is on in the background? I've become the very kind of person I tried not to become.

I grew up without a TV in the house. (It was a practical decision on my parents part. You don't have to control TV viewing if you don't have one. Kids are more apt to do their chores when not tempted to catch up on their TV viewing. Pragmatic Germanic thinking.) I was happy, content and very stimulated for all 18 years of my growing up without it. Now it seems I can't imagine life without the boob tube.

As I reflect on my desire for stimulation, I realize that what I'm settling for is convenience and distraction. I want to feel more connected. I want to be entertained. I want to experience adventure, so I'll settle for a vicarious experience. I'm facing up to the fact that I'm probably spending hours a week wasting opportunities for real connection and adventure by settling for the fake stuff.

As you ingest the daily portions of Scripture during this Lenten season, let your interaction with it expose what it is that you're really hungry for. Whether you might think of your fast as a trial or test as James 1 says, allow the unfamiliar cravings and discomforts lead you to discovering what it is that you really desire. Let's not settle for less than that which is truly life-giving.

Christmas Confessions

OK, it's confession time. For a long time I dreaded the entire Christmas season, with it's cheesy tunes being piped through retail store speakers, all that horrible fruitcake (does anyone actually like that stuff?) and artificially flavored eggnog, the dreadful holiday sweaters, useless gifts people will pretend to like then re-gift, tacky plastic decorations which end up in countless landfills, all those less-than-sincere "merry Christmases" wished. The only upside for this grinch was that mercifully here in the US the brainwashing starts closer to Thanksgiving, unlike Canadian retailers who launch their attack-campaign just as the Halloween jackolanterns are being tossed on the compost heap.

Looking back, I see that period of disillusionment as my growth out of my childhood Christmases into something bigger. Like all real growth, there was some discomfort from the transition out of a shell that is familiar yet too small, into something roomier. It's the in between period that left me feeling a little disillusioned and vulnerable, having left behind the Christmas of childhood and not yet having found something deeper and more satisfying.

On the first, rainy Sunday of Advent this year, I decided to subject myself to the newly released apocalyptic movie The Road. The film begins with some unspecified disaster which brings the world to an end. All plants, animals and humans are wiped out except for a few human survivors. The color palette is gray and brown, with a constant drizzle which falls out of a permanent blanket of cloud cover, which might as well be liquid depression. There is a sense of hopelessness in the first half of the film that is deeply disturbing. Houses abandoned, dead trees falling over, many survivors banding together and reduced to cannibalism.

An unnamed father and son become the center of this strange, unlikely film which turns into a plot of hope. Throughout the film, the father reminds the son that they're the "good guys", who would never stoop to cannibalism. Father reminds son that they carry the "fire", as they struggle on foot, with little nourishment southward and coastward. At no point does the environment look anything less than completely devastated, and one is left to assume that it's only a matter of time before the survivors will succumb to the inevitable. And yet father and son continue to speak of the fire, not giving up, continuing southward, not stooping to the lowest common denominator. I wanted to believe that they were right to hope, that they had good reason to continue carrying the fire, and yet it seemed almost dishonest to keep hoping when the seemingly obvious trajectory was towards complete extinction. And yet, the film ends with just a little hope that real humanity can survive even in a world where the survival instinct of humans could easily reduce them to vulture-like savageness.

Strangely, I found myself inspired and full of hope as I walked out of the theatre. At times I feel that the hope of Christmas can seem almost as delusional to someone who doesn't carry the fire. Jesus' fire was all about this Kingdom of God, which was and is right here, right now. Perhaps you could call it the Big Picture vision...and Jesus wanted us to catch it, to see reality with it. Without Big Picture vision, without the fire, we all operate at the lowest common denominator: self-interest. With Kingdom of God Big Picture vision, we see hope where there is hopelessness, good where we are told there is just evil, a third way where there is just two, and life where our hopeless eyes see death.

(Author's note: I do once again enjoy Christmas carols, Christmas trees and eggnog with real rum. I do however still avoid tacky decor and useless gifts.)

On Faith and Hell

Recently, I had a conversation with someone struggling with the challenge that the idea of a non-literal hell presented to her long held worldview. (Literal hell as in a pit with burning sulfur, conscious eternal torment…light-hearted stuff like that.) When I asked her why she needed to believe in that kind of a hell I was impressed with her unflinching honesty: “Because I need to know that people who have hurt me and my family aren’t going to be in heaven.”

I believe that most people who need to believe in a literal hell, believe it precisely because they need to know that there are real (i.e. eternal) consequences for hurting me, disagreeing with the Truth as I understand it, hurting people in my family or my country, church and so on. Many people, including myself, begin in our spiritual journeys with such a clear, neatly divided view of God’s judgment. In fact, it may even be helpful at a certain point in our journey to have such clear absolutes…think of them as training wheels that we eventually realize we don’t need once we learn how to simply have faith in God. Ah, but faith doesn’t offer us certainty by virtue of the fact that it requires trust…and it’s hard to fully trust Anyone you don’t believe to be completely good.

I’m not saying, let’s sweep human evil under the carpet. It’s impossible to go through a single day without noticing the consequences of our failure to live in God’s love. Jesus did just that: he used the present reality of Jerusalem’s town dump (gehenna) as a very effective metaphor for what happens when we choose not to walk in the way of love.

Instead, let’s take a look at ourselves. It’s been said, that when we are not changed by God, we pull God down to our level. In fact, any change of mind is preceded by a change of heart…and our hearts can be very egocentric. I wonder how much of the need to believe in a clear “in” and “out”, is simply a function of the ego’s need for security? It’s not hard to understand really…we’ve always had to identify the enemy if we were going to avoid being killed, robbed or otherwise violated. In sports we have to be able to clearly identify who’s on our team and who’s not if we’re going to win the game. We learn this lesson early on: there are winners and there are losers, and you don’t want to be a loser.

It shouldn’t be a great surprise that if our hearts are not transformed by this mysterious God who sends rain on both the just and the unjust, that it becomes too difficult to live in that tension, and we resolve that tension by making God more like us. Once we're honest about our own dark side (which we often use religion to cover), and the fact that God loves us and accepts us despite it…it makes the whole question of hell much less interesting. Perhaps we could simply say this: our need to be certain about eternal consequences is a reflection of our need for control, and our inability to fully trust in the goodness of God.

Power of Story

People don't act based on reality, they act based on the stories they believe about reality. If facts and numbers form the skeleton of our understanding of reality, stories are its flesh and blood. We become characters in the plots of the stories we believe in, often without being aware of it. In recent history, because of stories that Nazis told about Jews, and Tutsis told about Hutus, millions died. We hear stories everyday that shape our attitudes and determine our actions towards the poor, immigrants, gay people, people of other religions, and the list could go on.

I see the Bible as the Story of God, written by people imperfect as they were, who experienced a Reality that profoundly changed their understanding of the story in which they lived. The Story of God has often been over-simplified and interpreted into lists of rules meant to bring humanity into religious conformity. It sometimes gets reduced to a compilation of facts about reality which fail to inspire. The Bible is, however, mostly story. A story the reader is meant to enter into. A story we are meant to find ourselves in.

Judith M. Kunst in her book, The Burning Word, a read I highly recommend for its ability to draw the reader into God's story with playfulness, curiosity and imagination, has helped me experience God in a very real way within the pages of Scripture. With suggestions for personal practice The Burning Word invites the reader into a very engaging relationship with the God found in the pages of Scripture, a God to be wrestled with, reverenced, argued with and savored, just as the authors of the Bible themselves did. For me, it has reminded me of the fact that God continues to speak today just as God always has. The Story isn't finished, and just as the authors of the Bible wrote their parts of the Story, we are invited to write the next chapter with our communities.