In the Spring of  this year I invited 10 pastors to be part of a pilot peer learning community. Using an Appreciative Inquiry model, we set sail on a journey that has been truly remarkable. I have learned a tremendous amount from this group of beloved colleagues over the past seven times we have met together. Some of my learnings are about the layers of crap that enshroud our congregational pastors. These layers wear them down and out. They insulate our pastors from the wellspring of God’s Spirit from which they are to draw their source of energy, inspiration and enthusiasm for ministry. These layers create multiple disconnects from the all the places pastors find renewal, support, and insight for doing their vital work. Trying to do ministry in the 21st century context in North America is extremely difficult work. Our pastors are weighed down by the burden of mid-20th century expectations for being church in today’s context and the blame of not being able to successfully deliver this misguided notion to the people they serve.

Our pastors are attacked by a hostile culture, a fear-riddled constituency, families demanding their fair share of time and a constantly changing understanding about how to do effective ministry in time such as this. It is very difficult to do effective ministry today.

Our clergy peer learning community was created to give pastors a safe place where they would be invited to burrow through the layers of crap and tap the true core of their spirit; to get to that place deep within where their spirits and God’s Spirit intersect in ways that first inspired and empowered their calls to ministry and, now, longs to inspire and empower their ministries in new contexts. Our journey to-date has been like drilling for water, living water, if you will, that has longed to be set free to refresh the pastor and people he or she serves.

Well, praise be to God, the living water is flowing and wow is it refreshing!

Through attrition our group of 10 is now down to six. One withdrew early on. One had life and church issues that always got in the way. Two accepted a call to another region. Those remaining faithful have become “founts of blessing.”

Yesterday, we spent time doing lectio divina on Philippians 2:1-5. The passage that became the focus of our conversation was “Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus…” Leading up to that discussion we spent time talking about the power of stories and how we need to find ways to truly listen to each other’s stories and discover how God is already at work within us. When the conversation shifted to the passage just noted one of the pastors stated that congregational pastors are the “keepers” of the peoples’ stories in the congregations they serve. And, to be the keeper of the stories require you to find time and ways to learn the stories of your people. In essence, the pastor is to allow the same minds of the people to be in her or him. Not equivalent to, but kept in. She went to suggest that Jesus is the keeper of all of our stories and knowing that may explain what Paul had in mind when he said that we are to have the same mind in us that is in Christ Jesus. My story is kept in the mind (memory?) of Jesus. It is in the mind of Christ where our stories become one – my story with Jesus’ story – my story with the stories of those kept in the mind of Christ.

I think this is a brilliant insight. I will be spending a lot more time reflecting on that image all the while giving thanks that I could drink once more from the “fount of blessing” of these treasured colleagues.

Last weekend my siblings and I spent a long weekend in Florida readying our parents house for snowbirds arrival this winter. As part of our prep work there were several trips to the local Wal-Mart. This box store was in full Christmas mode. Carols were blaring over the loud speakers. The Christmas theme dominated every section. I remind you, this is still two weeks before Thanksgiving!

I love Christmas and the whole Christmas season. I’m no Scrooge. In fact there is still a lot of little boy wonder in me when it comes to this time of year. I get as excited about Santa’s arrival as my four grandchildren. Maybe even more. However, I have a great deal to be thankful for each year, especially this year, and do not want the greed driven, commercialized-buying-blitz-wrapped-in-swaddling-clothes-disguise-of-a-holy-event to crowd out this one time when we as a nation at least pretend to be a thankful people for the abundance we enjoy.

To be clear, when the Bible talks about abundant life it is not referring to the junk in our rented storage facilities, basements and attics that we no longer have a use for. It is not referring to our stock portfolios, gas-guzzling SUV’s or homes in gated communities. The abundant life that Jesus has in mind is measured in relationships. It is the amount of love we are privileged to exchange through the right relationships we develop with others. It is the love that flows when we assume the servant role that Jesus modeled so beautifully for us.

This Thanksgiving I will push the Christmas spirit aside long enough to protect the integrity of Thanksgiving so that I can spend the day giving thanks for the abundant life I have been privileged to live. It is not life without loss or heartache or disappointment or uncertainty at times to be sure, but it is a life that has known the power of love to transform, to heal, to set free, to empower and to courageously embrace each moment given by God with a profound gratitude for the opportunity to serve and love abundantly.

This Thanksgiving may I ask that you spend your day giving thanks for the abundant life you have been given.

I don’t grieve well. I shed few tears. Not because I’m too tough, but because I have never been able to shake the “big boys don’t cry” mantra that defined my growing up years. In ministry we are taught to maintain a professional distance when dealing with the needs of others. I do that well. However, it has not helped me move beyond the damaging nonsense of such a horrible male cultural expectation.

I’m normally pretty thick-skinned. I have always been a bit of a maverick in my ministry which lends itself to criticism from those threatened by the non-conventional approaches I take to things. I have always tried to receive the criticism in constructive ways. Looking for any truth that might be hiding in the words of my critics. My point being that criticism has never been a threat to me or to my work.

I am also a person who approaches my ministry with a lot of confidence. I work hard at discerning the path that God would have me walk and then I walk it with a certain sense of empowerment and confidence. My critics would use a different set of adjectives.

Last fall, for the first time in my adult life, I lost my swagger. I knew I was walking the right path, but I began to let my critics get to me. Self doubt came knocking. I noticed that I began to take it out on the people closest to me. I was on edge. I didn’t have any emotional buffers to deal with all that was coming my way. It was new territory for me and I couldn’t get a handle on just what was happening, why I was allowing doubt to cloud my judgment when I knew, truly knew, that the path upon which the Christian Church In Kentucky and I were walking, was right.

I began to withdraw from the world a bit. My energy level diminished. Each day was more of a “going through the motions” then aggressively walking the path God had put me on just the year before. In conversation with a few trusted friends and my spiritual director (especially my spiritual director) I came to see the real issue. I had not grieved my father’s death and his death was demanding its rightful due from me. In November of 2010, my siblings and I spent time together in Florida cleaning out my parents house, getting it ready for whatever was next. We laughed a lot. Reminisced a lot. Leaned on each emotionally has we began the hard task of dividing those things that had value to us from those that did not and got rid of those things we valued the least. Obviously, all the things had some value to our parents.

Through that experience I began to grieve in my own way. The blessed peace of God, God’s shalom, found its way back into my heart and mind and I began to feel like me again, but it was a different me. A better me. A me that had learned to deal with profound loss.There was a new intentionality, a new purpose, to my ministry. I didn’t regain my swagger. I was given something better. An internal confidence in who I am and whose I am. I know it’s a cliche but it is nonetheless true.

In a coming to Jesus moment with my spiritual director he asked me if I truly believed that God had set me on the path that I was on. I said, “yes, I do.” His response, “One would never know that by your actions.” Ouch! Like so many times before, God spoke to me through my dear friend and spiritual mentor, Father Noel. I have not been the same since, thanks be to God.

I’m still learning how to use this wonderful gift of grieving. But I am using it. Both my father and my mother bequeathed me many valuable, relational intangibles. They have been given new meaning and consequently new life. They made me open to God’s story intersecting with my story in new and profound ways. I am learning how to use this wonderful gift as well.

I am not only re-entering the blogosphere. I have made a re-entry into life with a capital “L.” A wonderful old hymn may sum it best for me, “This is my Father’s world.” That is true for me now in many ways, but both my heavenly Father and earthly father have made it clear to me, it is also my world, it is our world and I/we have a responsibility to it and to all who inhabit it. I pray you may know such blessed assurance, too.

How do you say good-bye to the man who taught you to throw a baseball, catch a fish, shoot a gun, turn a mechanics wrench, and most importantly, laugh at yourself? How do you say good-bye to the person who was always there for you when you needed  a hand up or needed to be told to sit down? How do you say good-bye to the one who taught you the basic values of being a man in the best sense of that word and gave you the freedom and support to shape that understanding in your own way?  How does an eldest son say good-bye to his father?

For nearly twenty years now I have been involved pretty significantly in doing ministry with men. I have sat up long nights at men’s retreats offering a listening ear to men who were struggling with the death of their own fathers. I have heard tales of hard fathers and absentee fathers. I have heard tales of fathers who were heroic in the eyes of their sons. I know that regardless of the kind of father any son has the death of his father leaves a void that seems to take for ever to fill, if indeed it ever does.

Now, I stand at that same crossroad.

Since my journey in men’s ministry began those many years ago I have had the privilege of reflecting a lot on my relationship with my dad. He was a great father to me and my two siblings. We never had any excess, really, when it came to the material things in life, but we always had all that we needed. My father was not into organized sports so he was never the one to push me to excel in baseball or basketball but he was always there to support my efforts and interest. He and I never connected around those common themes between fathers and sons.

What my dad did love to do was fish, collect and target shoot guns, and work with his hands, especially when it came to fixing/rebuilding something mechanical. My father always created ample time for me, especially when it came to being part of his interests and activities. My brother and I went fishing with my dad a lot. He and I have wonderful memories around those adventures. I still love to fish and taught my children that same love. We went target shooting a lot. Many Sunday mornings in the winter months we were up and gone before daylight to shoot at a variety of targets with the latest new rifle he had acquired by trade. That was an interest I never carried on. When it came to his mechanical interests I remember helping him in a number of projects especially rebuilding an old army jeep that he bought to restore. And, when I bought my first car at the age of seventeen, a 1961 Ford Falcon, he helped me rebuild the head on the engine. Unfortunately, that old car required so much more than that. It was in doing that kind of work that I learned the art form of using “colorful metaphors” to express myself.

I never remember a time of being unappreciated or ignored by my dad. I remember being taught a lot of practical application to life. I remember a lot of  love, a lot of laughter and a lot of freedom to discover my way in the world. I was never handed a script, only the rules of engagement for living life with integrity. Honesty, hard work, treating every person with dignity, the ability to laugh at oneself, and love of family were the primary virtues that my dad gave me. I could not say, like some, that my dad was my hero. I can say that he was exactly the kind of father I needed, a father who blessed my life beyond measure and filled his role in my life the very best he knew how. His presence in the world gave me a sense of security, a willingness to take risk, the courage to face the unknown just because I knew he was there. Now he is not.

My world, my personal approach to the world, today feels a lot less secure than it did several days ago. That’s the void in me that my father’s death has left. That is my crossroad. That is my unknown territory.

Dad, you blessed my life for 57 years and you will continue to bless it all my days but in new and undiscovered ways. Thanks for being the best dad this son could ever have.

James M. Alexander
7.20.1932 to 6.25.2010

Things calmed down enough this week for me to take a couple of days for spiritual renewal at St. Meinrad’s Archabbey in southern Indiana. I have been coming here now for eighteen years. Next to my home in Nonesuch where my heart truly is, St. Meinrads has been the place where my spirit gets fed in extraordinary ways.

In 2004 I felt led to pursue becoming an Oblate of St. Meinrads. I spent a year in the novitiate learning how to incorporate the Rule of Benedict and the daily rhythms of prayer into my life. In 2005 my novitiate was completed and my oblation was finalized. This experience opened up a new dimension in my life that I did not know was possible. I began to develop the introverted side of my personality. This has given me much greater balance in my life. Grounding my day, my interactions, my decisions, my experiences in God each day has truly transformed me and how I do ministry.

As a part of the process I was given the opportunity to enter into a relationship with one of the monastics who would serve as my spiritual director. Father Noel Mueller agreed to serve in that capacity. We have met eight to ten times per year since that time. 2010 has been less kind to us. Tellingly, five months have past since we last got together. That drought ends tomorrow morning. Father Noel has been an extraordinary blessing to my life. I could never repay him for his many kindnesses to me in the form of his listening ear, marvelous insights, willingness to speak the truth in love, and his depth of faith that just flows like a stream from him so naturally. Everyone should be so blessed to have a Father Noel in his/her life.

I arrived today around 12:15 local time just missing the noon prayers. The afternoon included two 45 minute prayer walks throughout the sprawling grounds, up and down the hilly terrain of southern Indiana. In between the walks time was spent finishing one of the three books I brought with me to read. After evening prayers and a light supper I have spent the evening in a time of reflection and more reading. I know I am truly blessed to have such an opportunity. We all need to drink deeply from the spiritual wells God provides for our well-being. I am thankful that God awakened me to St. Meinrad Archabbey and Father Noel Mueller those years ago to graciously refresh my spirit (along with countless others) along life’s way.

Why the shame? I am doing all this while watching Nora mow the yard. First the back yard. Now the front. Have I no shame? Actually, I do. Mowing the yard on our ZTR mower is one of her favorite things to do. I am not allowed to do anything but watch (and weed eat of course). So, I am just going to enjoy the breeze and the coffee and the gift of having someone else mow the yard.

So, it is time once again to do some deck sittin’, coffee drinkin’, and thinkin’ about life.

First of all, I must admit I really like blogging. I have deep admiration for those of you who have the time and discipline to blog on a regular basis. I find that the demands of life come too fast and furious to maintain a regular discipline of blogging. But I do want to try. It is not so much that I have anything relevant to say (which puts me in good company in the blogosphere) but because I like the way it chronicles my thought processes and experiences in life. Unlike those who have all the answers and try to fit everyone else into their tiny little worlds of one, the only place where those answers make any sense, I approach life with few answers and lots of questions. The pursuit of those answers allows me to see life as an adventure. As a person of faith I have discovered that if you can get yourself out of the way long enough to see life through multiple lenses, through the stories of others, in concert with both the spiritual and natural forces,  I cannot help but experience life with a constant sense of wonder. This sense of wonder runs along a continuum from inspiration to exasperation, from joy to sorrow, for sure, but nonetheless its far beyond my limited abilities to make sense of it, which keeps me in my place as but a creation of the Creator. You see, because it is God’s world, every time you try to substitute your explanation for God’s mystery, you shrink the world down to a world of one. It’s for those folks I grieve the most.

Time to refill the coffee cup!

There is an obvious reason why this ministry is so vital to our congregations today. Men are our congregations’ most notable absentees. Men have found most mainline congregations unfriendly places, at least with respect to meeting the unique needs that most men in Western cultures have. “Full Sail” addresses this reality head on.

There is a more compelling reason why this ministry is so vitally important. Our political system, democracy, is a system of competition where ideologies and personalities compete against each other for the most votes. Our economic system, capitalism, is also a system of competition where corporations and businesses compete against each other for the purchase of their products by you and me. As I learned in Mr. Lehman’s high school Econ class, “the key to capitalism is competition.” Competition is the foundation upon which just about all the decisions that impact our lives are made.

There are many plusses to all this. Competition unleashes creativity and innovation. It stimulates finding solutions to difficult challenges. It improves the products we depend upon. Competition has a lot of upside. It is a necessary stepping stone to our maturation as a people.

There is a dark side to competition as well. Competition, as expressed through capitalism, is destroying our planet and its inhabitants. Because capitalism has no moral compass, no conscience, those who play the competitive game of capitalism do not stop to ask the questions about the long-range outcomes of their decisions. Global warming is a prime example. The burning of fossil fuels (coal, petroleum, natural gas) is causing irreparable harm to planet earth in ways that are just now coming to light. All models of the possible scenarios that lie ahead have a doomsday ring. If capitalism had a moral compass, a conscience, then the corporate energy suppliers long ago would have begun developing and employing clean energy sources to meet the world’s energy needs. We would now be a clean energy economy. Thirty square miles of the mountain tops of Appalachia would still be in place. Obviously, that has not happened.

If capitalism had a moral compass, a conscience, there would be no poverty in our world or epidemics of treatable diseases. Global conglomerates and governments would work together to make distribution of the food and medicines they produce a priority so that all people’s basic needs would be met. If capitalism had a moral compass, a conscience, then the ideology of the board rooms would shift from “making a windfall profit regardless of the long-range consequences” to ”making a profit while meeting the base needs of the world’s global citizens.”

If capitalism had a moral compass, a conscience, the health care debate in the US would be over. The conversation would now start with the goal of “meeting the health care needs of all people in the most cost effective way” rather than the goal of maximizing the “profit needs of the stock holders of the insurance companies.”

It makes me wonder, do the stockholders of these corporations have a moral compass, a conscience? Their actions certainly suggest they don’t. Yet, my guess is that many of these individuals attend a church or synagogue. That these same individuals are regularly exposed to the principles of justice and righteousness upon which the Judeo-Christian tradition is grounded. So where is the disconnect?

The disconnect is found among us, the purveyors of the principles of the Judeo-Christian tradition. We have allowed ourselves to be seduced into believing that the competition-based approach to life is somehow consistent with the teachings of Jesus of Nazareth and the prophets of the Hebrew scriptures. We have made it the normative behavior for all. We have been seduced into believing that the measure of our worth is found externally in what we have achieved or conquered. Yet this way of measuring self-worth impedes our journey to the more mature expectation of God that measures us by the development of the internal qualities of the other-centered life through how we exercise our citizenship in the kin-dom of God. The “Full Sail” ministry goes to great pains to point out that it is from a worldly mentality of competition that Jesus came to save us. It strives to teach us that God’s way is to level the playing field. God’s way is to love all equally. God’s way is to remove the barriers that divide us and the structures, attitudes and behaviors that diminish and demean us. God’s way is to create environments where all the people, all creation within our individual realms of influence can discover their God-given potential and be nurtured and supported in realizing it.  Competition is not God’s way.

“Full Sail” is not designed to remove competition from our world. Far from it. It is a necessary ingredient. “Full Sail” does attempt to create a different foundation from which to live our lives where competition is understood as a tool rather than a way of life. It seeks to ground us in a much more mature understanding of life that helps us see that you and I (men and women) are created by God to be the moral compass, the conscience of our world called to appropriately preserve, protect, and nurture all life and live sustainably within the balanced confines of the world God so loves. I pray it is not too little too late.

One of my favorite things Mr. Cronkite did was the “You are There” series of historic dramatizations for secondary education. He acted as the on-the-scene reporter for all the major events in history. While they taught history in a fun and creative way for that time these dramatizations also showed the more playful side of Mr. Cronkite. I loved it when we went to the movie room (a dark crowded room under a stairwell) to watch those old 16mm reel to reel films. They were just one more way he cemented his significant influence on so many of my generation.

In many ways Mr. Cronkite was a larger than life figure for the generations of people who depended on him to bring the world into our living rooms every evening. No one ever did it better or with more integrity. With his death one of the remaining vestiges of public trust has been taken away.  That truly saddens me along with the loss of a great man and a great world citizen. It seems a period on the final sentence of a chapter of my life has now been penned.

I can’t answer that question for you but I can tell you where God first led me when I  earnestly and faithfully began asking that question, to a campfire of sorts, to God’s conversation with Moses at the burning bush. It is here that the Judeo-Christian saga with God began.

Recall God’s words to Moses in Exodus 3:7-8a, “Then the Lord said, ‘I have observed the misery of my people who are in Egypt; I have heard their cry on account of their taskmasters. Indeed, I know their sufferings, and I have come down to deliver them from the Egyptians, and to bring them up out of that land to a good and broad land, a land flowing with milk and honey…” Here God establishes the foundation for all relationships. It is love defined as compassion.

Like God, we relate to all of creation by: 1) observing the misery of the people and planet around us; 2) hearing their cries; 3) entering into their suffering so that we know the depth of their anguish and the severity of the threats that confront them; 4) doing our part to deliver the people and planet from the source of their suffering, to remove them from harm or remove the source of threat; and, 5) creating for them a new environment where healing and a new life can begin. God created us to be people of compassion who see, hear, enter into and do something about the suffering and threats that seek to diminish, demean and destroy the people and planet God so loves. My discernment has led me to understand that being people of compassion is a prerequisite of faithfulness.

God did not limit God’s underscore of compassion to Moses. The Psalms and the prophetic writings resound with compassion’s theme (check out Isaiah 58 and 61). Jesus himself, leaving nothing to chance, made clear what he was all about when he inaugurated his public ministry in Luke 4 by quoting from Isaiah 61. In that public proclamation Jesus himself tells us that is the lens through which all of Jesus’ ministry must be viewed. Then, to make sure we did not miss the point he concluded his ministry in Matthew 25:31ff by defining the terms upon which our faithfulness will be judged with his famous words, “just as you did it to one of the least of these who are members of my family you did it to me.”

What must we do to be faithful to God? That’s a question only you can answer but it is THE question you must answer to grow in right relationship with God. It is THE question that every congregation is called to answer to grow in right relationship with God.  For me it begins around a sacred campfire, a burning bush. What is foundational for you?