Belonging Happens Before Believing Happens Before Behaving

As we seek to live in community and serve as a place of reconciliation next year, this short entry by Floyd McClung points out a few things we might keep in mind.

• We ask people to believe in something before they belong to it. Jesus asked his followers to belong to his movement before he asked them to believe. He understood that belief is not a set of propositions to give ascent to, but a person to know, love and then obey. Jesus approached building his community the opposite way that most of us do today. He invited people to join him before they understood his mission or who he was. He was inviting them into intimacy, into friendship with him. They were part of a community.
• This truth reminds us that people buy into the leader or the community before they buy into the vision or beliefs of the leader or community. Belonging precedes believing precedes behaving. Being loved and accepted comes before changing our behavior.
• If leaders lead a life of love and integrity and the community exudes love that is genuine, people will go on the journey, they will walk a pathway with the community that leads to change in their lives.
• The movement Jesus started was radically different from the religious legalism and control of his day. Religion has a nasty way of messing up relationship. Neither top down hierarchy nor rules that govern people’s behavior do not liberate people from the burden of sin nor does it introduce them to the goodness and loving kindness of God.
• On a personal note: I have done both. I have exercised controlling leadership and I have tried to “help” people with rules concerning their behavior. Neither have worked and neither has helped my own soul.
• Jesus invited people to join his movement without their beliefs or their behavior getting sorted out first. Very radical. He wanted them to believe from their heart. He was going to call upon them to die for him, and he knew that no one dies for controlling leaders and legalistic churches for the right reasons. His was a revolution of the heart.

the sound of music

does anyone find the method by which we hear strange? i'm listening to some old school dc talk right now, one ear bud in and the other out. clearly, i can't hear anything in my left ear because that ear bud is in my left hand, my finger over the earpiece. i wondered if i could sense the sound coming out of the small speaker, if my fingertip could feel the vibrations. which granted, doesn't make a lot of sense since it's not so much vibrations as it is sound waves.

still, my fingers, or any other part of my body for that matter, can't detect these sound waves. i can put the ear bud up to any part of my body, my hand, my chest, in my mouth, up my nose, but i sense nothing (i'll leave it to your imagination as to whether this was actually tried). except if i put that little piece of plastic in my ear. then suddenly i become aware of instruments, melody and harmonies.

how strange!

the art of taizé

never before have i experienced such a natural expression of individual creativity than at taizé, an ecumenical monastery located in the rural burgundy region of eastern france.  i spent most of a week at taizé recently, and was more in awe of the art i discovered there than with anything i saw at the louvre or any other museums while in paris.

what is it about art, that can mean so much or so little?  i found the art at taizé to be beautiful because it was personal.  i perhaps saw the brothers whose hands had made the simple pottery, etchings, and stained glass windows, whose minds had written booklets, explaining their beliefs on reconciliation, and whose hearts had overflowed to create simple melodies which were sung at prayer three times daily. they created because we are creative beings, created by God in his image and therefore bound to be creative in our nature.  

many more thoughts to come on this.

taize

in 5 days i'll be in an airplane over the atlantic heading for france.  we'll spend 2 days in paris and then head on to taize, a small rural town in western france.  there we'll be spending the rest of the week at a monastery called taize.  i decided on a whim to go on this trip and i hope i'll be glad i went.

i'm slightly nervous about flying over the ocean...i don't like flying over water.  i'm ok with the idea of crashing on land, but the ocean is a different story.  if you make it out of the plane alive, it's not like you can just go sit somewhere and wait for help to arrive.  you're kind of...well...in the middle of the ocean.  oh well.  france will be france.

i trust that the Lord has something to say to me this next week and so i trust that He will keep me safe.  pray for me...i'm not sure why but this flying thing has me worried more than it should.