"Exhaustingly joyous": Lee C. Camp on vocation

Lee C. Camp has an invigorating post on vocation. The following excerpt begins with a quote from Evelyn Underhill:

“Our place is not the auditorium but the stage—or, as the case may be, the field, workshop, study, laboratory—because we ourselves form part of the creative apparatus of God, or at least are meant to form part of the creative apparatus of God. He made us in order to use us, and use us in the most profitable way; for his purpose, not ours. To live a spiritual life means subordinating all other interests to that single fact.”

We are not called, she goes on to say, to be amateurs, messy and hap-hazard in our work, but to keep a steady hand on the plow, employing constancy, subordinating our own agendas to a larger agenda one may sometimes not understand.

This liberty—this rigorous, demanding vocation—to form part of the creative apparatus of God, is exhaustingly joyous... It is the sort of freedom and joy that the famed runner Eric Liddel, was trying to get at when his character in Chariots of Fire says, “I believe God made me for a purpose, but he also made me fast. And when I run I feel His pleasure.” Or the well-spoken commentary of Frederick Beuchner upon vocation: “The place God calls you to is the place where your deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet.”

Petra Bosma on dialogue

Petra Bosma has a great piece at Christianity Today, emphasizing the importance of face-to-face dialogue in our technocratic world. She writes:

"Real conversation uses different skills than online communication. It requires the participants to have patience with each other, and to reveal more of themselves than they would online. We dumb ourselves down in online conversation. We depend on sound bites. We expect responses faster and are more likely to relay only the polished version of what we are truly experiencing. Though social media consistently requests status updates, rarely does it require us to post anything of depth... ideas, especially important, difficult, maybe treasonous ones, need time, care, and interaction: around dinner tables, holding cups of coffee, or holed up in burntout bunkers."

Have I won monopoly to forfeit my soul?*

Tim Chester's summary of CB Samuel’s presentation on Integral Mission, Humility and Lifestyle (Sept 2001):

Photo by: Antonio Correia

"The problem with lifestyle is not its theory, but its practice. The story is told of an Indian guru who taught his disciples to live on just the basic necessities of life. One day he sent his best disciple out to make his own way in the world. This disciple owned only two loin cloths – one to wear while the other was washed. And so this disciple lived, each day wearing one cloth while he washed the other. One day a rat ate his spare cloth as it hung out to dry. His neighbors gave him another, but he realized he also needed a cat to keep the rat away. And because the cat needed milk he got a cow. To feed the cow he obtained a small piece of land for fodder. Soon he was hiring people to cultivate the land so he did not have to interrupt his meditations. In time he acquired a large estate and a fine house. One day his guru came by. Seeing the large house, he asked his disciple how this had happened. The disciple said: 'I need all this to protect my loin cloth’.

"When many of us were young Christians we committed ourselves to radical lifestyles. But now we have many justifications for the possessions that over time we have acquired. We need to recover a biblical perspective on wealth and money. Jesus sees money as a spiritual force. He says we need consciously to short-circuit its power in our lives. Jacques Ellul said Jesus was the only one who was prepared to describe money as mammon. We need to define limits for consumption. We evangelicals have a theology for the creation and distribution of wealth, but we need to have a theology of consumption. We need to define what is enough? We need to learn that we do not need own everything. We need to explore the possibilities of sharing with others and owning things communally."

*I have had Switchfoot's "Company Car" stuck in my head for the last couple of days.

DWebb on information overload

A gem on Noisetrade today: Free acoustic download of Derek Webb's new album (limited time offer).

Derek Webb is special to me. In college he guided me into a spirituality of humility with She Must and Shall Go Free (as well as leading me into the folk/acoustic realm). As a college drop-out, his House Show live CD led me into a rich theology of Gospel and Church, while his I See Things Upside Down led me through the necessary lament of having left the Christian community at Kenyon. For awhile I thought it was John Piper who had most influenced me in my understanding of "Reformed" Christianity, but I recently realized that Derek Webb was very much more. His five solas tattoo led to a framed copy on my desk.

Regardless of his weird latest albums (I have my beef with Stockholm Syndrome), he's a genius and prophet in his own right. The acoustic version of his new album captures what he does so well, combining great melodies with songwriting and critical acumen*, and it's good for an old folky fan like myself.

On the album he has a song called "I feel everything" which hints at the struggle for sanity in our age of stimulus and information. It is a quiet song of lament/confession, rather bleak in its outlook, but an honest introspection of the senselessness into which so much of our consumption leads us. In this age of information and entertainment obsession, it can feel hard to think and be. Consumism quickly reduces us into subjects incapable of doing anything but wanting (if even that). Webb captures the pain of that in his song.

Download the album on Noisetrade while it's still available. You can listen to the song here(I Feel Everything). But most importantly, step away from the barrage of information and simply be before God in solitude and silence.

"I feel everything" by Derek Webb

i am not sure i want this to take, what it's taking
but that just seems to be the choice, i am making
mother this is all i ever wanted
now how do i get back to where there isn't everything, only you

i cannot hear because i hear everything
i cannot see because i see everything
i cannot feel because i feel everything

it is not peace i find, it is not satisfaction
it's not the life i always dreamed or imagined
it is not wisdom, it is not strength, it is not control
it is a promise meant to quell my every fear, yet leave me cursed

i've nothing left, no life or death, no will that's free
i have no way now to explain, what's come over me
i'm just a body overwhelmed, and lying still
a casualty of knowing what i want and wanting what i know

* a word I learned yesterday playing the GRE Vocab test at www.memrise.com