Shadows and Symbols had the privilege of seeing Greg Mortenson, co-author of the bestselling book Three Cups of Tea, and author of Stones into Schools, speak in Washington, D.C., USA, on December 3, 2009. Mr. Mortenson, who is the founder and leader of the Central Asian Institute (CAI), has been instrumental in building dozens of schools in remote areas of Afghanistan and northern Pakistan. These secular schools especially promote education for girls in very poor rural areas where educational opportunities are usually non-existent. For his humanitarian efforts, Greg Mortenson is the recipient of the Star of Pakistan and has been nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize.

Mr. Mortenson was introduced by New York Times reporter Tom Friedman. Mr. Friedman’s gracious introduction described how he had recently flown by military helicopter into a remote area of Afghanistan with the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) of the U.S. military, Admiral Michael Mullen, in order to be present at the dedication of one of CAI’s new schools. Tom Friedman then described how one of the most powerful men in the world, Adm. Mullen, proceeded to distribute the notebooks that the admiral’s wife and other military wives had given to him for each of the girls on their first day of school.

Greg Mortenson, who is suffering from a weakening heart virus which he had contracted while on his latest trip to Afghanistan, then took to the podium and began to describe his very unique life-story, most of which is chronicled in Three Cups of Tea and Stones into Schools. The presentation included a short video clip of Mr. Mortenson’s daughter interviewing retired NBC News anchorman Tom Brokaw at his Montana ranch. Mr. Brokaw is now somewhat famously known as the only well-known celebrity to send any support money to Greg Mortenson when he was beginning his work in Pakistan back in the mid-90s. (Mr. Mortenson did confess during his talk that his daughter had recently figured out that Mr. Brokaw’s $100 check did not cover the postage cost for her father’s earliest efforts to raise money.)

After the video interview, Mr. Mortenson then explained the societal situation in Afghanistan, and how he works to address that. With a video slide presentation produced by his son shown on a screen behind him, Mr. Mortenson described how various outside forces have broken down traditional relationships between the elders, the spiritual leaders, and the youth in Afghanistan. Rather than working to destroy traditional relationships, Mr. Mortenson specifically seeks to build relationships with local village leaders and show respect and deference towards them.

Mr. Mortenson did not only highlight his own work during his time with us. He specifically praised other charities, particularly ones run by children or young adults. He clearly likes charities like his own that are organic, independent of outside influences, and decentralized in their approach to fundraising and care.

Education is most definitely Greg Mortenson’s focus, and the education of girls is his primary concern. He mentioned an African proverb that says that if you educate a boy, you educate an individual. If you educate a girl, you educate a community. Mr. Mortenson stated how he believes that education is the only long-term answer to terrorism and poverty in the world. It is, in his view, more important than other humanitarian projects in the developing world such as paving roads. He even simplified his efforts towards education in one simple fundraising pitch: one penny buys one pencil.

Mr. Mortenson may be the best combination of gentleness and determination that you will ever meet. His style of speaking was definitely unpolished and even a bit folksy. Yet he also showed the fierce determination that he needs in his work in the one part of the presentation where he specifically addressed his critics: People who dislike his friendship with high-ranking members of the U.S. military. (Mr. Mortenson’s presentation included a three-point summary of the main points of Three Cups of Tea by USCENTCOM commander General David Petraeus.) Yet no matter how you view his relationship with the military, it seems as though Mr. Mortenson is having a lot more influence on them than they may be having with him.

Greg Mortenson’s did not mention his own political views or spiritual beliefs during his presentation. Are they the quiet, motivating force behind his extraordinary charitable acts? That will remain a mystery for the time being. Yet as Mr. Mortenson said during his presentation in the U.S. national capital city on December 3, if anyone can rightly claim that God is own their side, then they need to display acts of kindness and love towards orphans and widows and others in need. And this is a viewpoint that is very hard for anyone to argue with.

The December 2009 issue of National Geographic magazine includes an excellent article about one of the few remaining hunter-gatherer groups in the world, the Hadza of northern Tanzania. Unlike the vast majority of African tribes in the early 21st century, the Hadza have not switched from hunting and gathering to either of the two dominant forms of land agriculture: grazing herds or planting crops. The Hadza, as hunter-gatherers, simply live off the land without any special preparation or maintenance of the plants or animals.

According to the article, there are several interesting characteristics of the Hadza that I think are worth considering:

• They have no real sense of elapsed time, such as a year, month, day, or hour. Because they are not tied to annual agricultural cycles, they perpetually live in the immediacy of the moment.
• They have no concept of warfare and live almost entirely free of any possessions. It is considered inappropriate for a hunter to gloat over a successful hunt, and the game of each hunt is shared openly with everyone else.
• There are no official leaders of the Hadza, although the senior male of each camp has the honor of the best portion of the hunt of the day and has the camp named after him. Each Hadza group (camp) maintains a small number of members, usually clustered around the senior male. Other Hadza are free to come and go between the various Hadza camps.

I would propose that the Hadza give us a glimpse of the genuine expression of the life of the kingdom of God:

• The kingdom is a place where elders are respected, yet no one lords it over anyone else.
• The kingdom is eternal and comes from a realm beyond time and space. It is truly timeless.
• The kingdom’s modus operandi is cooperative and not competitve. Provision is freely shared.

The writer C.S. Lewis once wrote that a true religion needs to be both thick and clear. (Please see: “Thick and Clear Religions” at dangerous idea.)

“Thick” religion is full of symbols, traditions, ceremonies, and mystery. It touches the human heart as per what is extra-rational and eternal. “Clear” religion provides a straight-forward philosophical and moral arrangement for living that even a child can understand. A religion that is thick but not clear is a cult of great obscurity, where only a small priestly class knows (or is allowed to know) the inner secrets of temple life. A religion that is clear but not thick is a perpetual child’s school, where simple truths are never built upon into adulthood.

I come from a faith tradition that had far more emphasis on “clear” spirituality than on “thick” religion. I am seeking a way of life that maintains my clear religion yet lovingly incorporates mystery, shadows, and symbols (“thick” religion).

Any thoughts?

In addition to a visit to Willow Creek Community Church in South Barrington, Illinois, Shadows and Symbols also had the opportunity recently to visit Solomon’s Porch in Minneapolis, Minnesota. (Because Solomon’s Porch is a much smaller faith community than Willow Creek, I’ll be keeping many of the details of the service/meeting at Solomon’s Porch purposefully vague. Since the service at Willow Creek had more than 10,000 attendees, there was really no expectation of privacy for what was said or heard there by anyone present. On the other hand, the meeting at Solomon’s Porch had only 100-120 people present; so, even though their meetings are open to the public, there should be a much greater expectation of privacy for any services that are held there, and I’ll be respecting that here.)

Just walking into Solomon’s Porch is a wonderful experience in itself. Meeting in what used to be a moderately small and traditional church building, Solomon’s Porch has completely redesigned what most of us would expect to see when we enter a church. Instead of pews or rows of stacking chairs, one is greeted by circles of easy chairs and sofas. In the middle is a stool that can be rotated for the speaker to see everyone. The concept is similar to theater in the round. The part of the room that used to be for the choir also has sofas and easy chairs. The only difference with the old choir area from the rest of the room was that it was elevated slightly. Most traces of traditional church building symbols, such as a pulpit or altar, were also not present. A large wooden cross, however, was visible above the old choir area. Solomon’s porch is also an artist’s colony, and several original paintings from that artistic community are visible next to the wooden cross above the former choir stage.

After a period of time, the music band, a group of about four musicians, began to play a set of original songs, each evidently composed by musicians within Solomon’s Porch. The music was great, refreshingly original, and one of the best parts of the service. The lyrics of the songs were definitely original as well and somewhat open-to-interpretation as per exact theological meaning. Periodically, the music stopped and gave way to what I might term “a light touch of liturgy”.

Rather than a sermon from one pastor or preacher, there was a guided discussion time, with readings from Bible on two projection screens on both sides of the church building. This part of the service was led by the leader of Solomon’s Porch Doug Pagitt. The thing that I noticed (and respected) the most about this was that, rather than shying away from controversial subjects, Mr. Pagitt and the congregation took theologically difficult subjects head on.

The pace of the service was leisurely and the exact starting and ending times of the service and the parts within in it didn’t seem to matter or be important. In fact, Solomon’s Porch is really a community experience rather than a church service, as you would commonly think of it. So if you’re ever in Minneapolis on a Sunday night, I’d highly recommend a visit to Solomon’s Porch.

Sorry for no posts lately. Shadows and Symbols has been on travel recently, including visits to two interesting churches. I’ll be describing my impression of these visits in the next two Shadows and Symbols posts.

Willow Creek Community Church is the third largest megachurch in the United States. Its main campus is located in the northwestern Chicago suburb of South Barrington, Illinois. I visited Willow Creek’s main campus recently for its Saturday night service.

The Willow Creek facilities are massive. Just driving up to the parking lot is like driving into the parking lot of a basketball or hockey arena or a large shopping mall. Parking attendants guided our car through each part of the parking lot to our parking space. After leaving our car, we entered one of the large number of doors into the main campus building. We walked down a wide hallway that led into the open air cafeteria. Food service lines, where people could buy cafeteria food, were visible on the right side as we walked into the cafeteria area.

Rounding another curve, we finally approached the main auditorium. And I say main auditorium because there is another smaller, overflow auditorium next to the lake on the left as we walked past the cafeteria. The main auditorium can seat thousands of people in theater-style seating. The very large room is divided into balcony, mezzanine, and main levels, each separated by escalators.

After taking our seats near the front of the main level, the house lights were dimmed and a set of drummers on the stage began a series of energetic beats. After a period of three minutes, two large choirs filed onto the two sides of the stage. A handful of  praise singers or leaders also came onto the stage and positioned themselves at the front of the stage and began leading the congregation (audience) in a series of fairly simple praise songs. Two very large projection screens displayed the lyrics for each song in English and Spanish. The volume of the music was loud but not overpowering. It seemed clear to me that the volume for the music had been carefully considered and calibrated.

The overall experience of the Willow Creek music for me was that it was very professionally produced and managed, but that it was in no way a transcendent spiritual experience. For me, probably the best part of the music service was the scripture reading by the song leaders during a musical pause in the middle of the songs.

After the music, there was a series of announcements and a brief video presentation. After this, Willow Creek senior and founding pastor Bill Hybels came onto the stage to give his message, which lasted about 25 minutes. Bill Hybels, one of the foremost proponents of the “seeker-sensitive” movement for churches (although that’s a term that I don’t think that Mr. Hybels uses), gave what appeared to be a completely scripted message. During the message, Mr. Hybels did explain his approach to evangelism, which is closely linked to local churches. Other than, perhaps, the importance of evangelism and its link to the local church, there was little that was spiritually challenging or profound during this talk. There was some mention of fighting poverty and social justice, but this seemed to me to be dissonant to the ears, hearing it inside of one of the wealthiest church facilities in the United States.

I would like to stress that there is no spontaneity whatsoever during the Willow Creek service. Nothing is given to chance or surprise, and every action appears to be scripted down to the nearest second. The lighting in the auditorium is fairly dark, so it is difficult to see one’s neighbors or read anything (such as a Bible) other than what is on the projection screens. The setting made it impossible to interact with other people during the service time, other than a brief time of saying hello to one another near the beginning of the service.

Shadows and Symbols did appreciate some of the people that I met while visiting Willow Creek, including some of the other congregants and ushers. I also appreciated that people genuinely seemed to be pleased to be there and were positive about their experiences at Willow Creek. Willow also had none of the very visible displays of the American flag, such as Matt Pritchard of At The Margins saw when visiting the largest megachurch in the United States, Lakewood Church, in Houston, Texas. In fact, the Willow Creek auditorium displayed no typical church items or symbols of any kind, such as a cross, a pulpit, or an altar.

However, that being said, Willow Creek appeared to Shadows and Symbols to be overproduced and too large in numbers. A person could both enter and exit the service anonynously, with no meaningful contact with other people within the church community. While respectful of Mr. Hybels’s innovative approached to evangelism, I encountered really nothing that could be said to be a spiritual experience. A completely secular presentation could have been substituted for the Willow Creek service and it might have produced about the same level of spritual transcendence or sense of community.

According to the podcast The Missing Link, Episode 6, when European farmers began to settle southern Africa about 200 years ago, they noticed that the native inhabitants of that region had a completely different way of keeping track of their cattle.

When it came to cows, the Europeans were masters of headcounts. If a count came short by the expected number, then these farmers knew that cows were missing. The native African farmers, on the other hand, had a completely different way of keeping track of their cattle. As far as counting was concerned, the Europeans quickly discovered that most of the African herdsman could not count beyond the number ten.

Instead of counting, the native farmers took the time to know each of their animals personally. For example, the African herdsmen would carve, over the course of a long time, the horns of cattle into distinct shapes and curves. Special care was then paid to the various spots, colors, and patterns of each animal. The native Africans would raise each of these animals from birth and knew which ones would be near certain others in the overall herd. The rich pasturelands of southern Africa allowed the native Africans to live with their cattle rather than having to send them off to distant grazing areas. Another memory aid: Names were assigned to each of the animals that matched their personalities and habits.

The culture of the African tribes also supported the personal care of their cattle. For instance, the Xhosa tribe’s creation story tells of their ancestors emerging from a cave with their cattle. Additionally, cattle were held in high regard and only killed on very special occasions.

————–

So we see here in the difference between these two methods of keeping track of cattle a way of knowing versus knowing personally. And it is knowing personally that is the true spiritual path.

Neil Howe, co-author of the books The Fourth Turning and Generations, recently sat down for an interview to talk about the fourth turning. You can hear this interview here:

http://podcast.streetiq.com/streetiq/?GUID=9987586&Page=MediaViewer

Since I was just writing about the movie “The Time Traveler’s Wife”, … here is an interesting take on the movie “District 9”:

http://mockingbirdnyc.blogspot.com/2009/08/few-half-serious-thoughts-on-district-9.html

Time flows in one direction from past to present to future. Is eternity, on the other hand, essentially non-linear? Or is eternity simply time itself as we know it: linear, but with an infinite past and an infinite future?

Growing up in a Protestant, evangelical tradition, it was implied to me (though,  to be fair, never stated) that eternity is linear. With this view, eternity is simply the straight-line projection of time from infinity past to infinity future.

Yet, does not the Bible say that God created all things? Would this not include time? And if time is present from infinity to infinity, could it not be said that time contains God rather than God contains time? And if time contains God, can God really be said to be God?

As time has progressed, I’ve been introduced to other views about eternity. Views that are implied by biblical books such as Ecclesiastes. With non-linear views of “eternal time”, normal rules about cause and effect don’t necessarily apply. Time can ebb and flow and even loop back on itself again. With this, God could simultaneously touch two different circumstances on earth 1,000 years apart at the same time for him. Such a non-linear view of eternity might radically reshape views of predestination and prophecy. For example, the biblical picture of the Lamb of God being slain before the foundation of the world yet also being crucified on the cross at Calvary here on the earth about 2,000 years ago would only make sense with a non-linear view of eternal time, if that event was one and the same.

A recent movie that explores the possibilities of non-linear time is “The Time Traveler’s Wife”. In this film, a man is born with a genetic defect that makes him involuntarily travel through time. (Viewers of the film will have some issues with determining how old the time-traveler is at any given point in the film, by the way.) When he time-travels, usually to the past though sometimes to the future, he arrives naked without clothing (as per the Terminator movies and television series). So when he arrives, he has to resort to stealing clothes and then waiting for the next moment when he will travel through time again.

I see this as symbolizing the fall of Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden. This time-traveler, like all of humanity, is forced again and again back to this terrible point in time: To the point where our progenitors recognized their own nakedness. Adam and Eve then felt compelled to make clothes for themselves (fig leaves). At that point, we feel compelled to resort to stealing and hurting others to provide for ourselves, rather than simply trusting in our heavenly Father for his constant provision, which was his original plan for all of us.

It is the daughter of Henry the time-traveler, Alba (which is a very rare name in the English-speaking world that means “sunrise” or “white”), who learns to control her time-traveling abilities by singing. After trying to sing, too, Henry gives up by saying tersely, “I can’t sing”. Yet, we know from the very beginning of the movie that he can sing, as he had sung with his mother, an excellent singer, when he was a young boy right before she died. Yet, like many of us, Henry (a common name that means “home ruler”) had lost the simplicity and innocence of childhood when he became an adult. After all, everything that can be spoken can also be sung. Yet to sing something requires reaching deeper into ourselves to something more emotional and primal. Singing speaks of love, joy, faith, and hope. And Henry’s and his mother’s deaths both come on Christmas Days, the day of the choir of angels in Bethlehem. So, the coming of Alba, who seems to be the only completely content character in the film, represents a new beginning for humanity (a new sunrise) where people can control their own destinies rather than be controlled by them.

“Humble submission to Christ’s body, the church”

To say that we are the body of Christ is to say that we are the ones that are inside of him. It is also to say that we are the visible expression of Christ Jesus on the earth. We, the body of Christ, are the conscious expression of Christ in this world.

The word “church” originally meant “called-out ones”. So, to be in the body of Christ means to be called out of the way of life of the world-systems of the kosmokrator and into the body of the Lord Jesus himself. To be his called-out ones, we are called out of …

Darkness
Lies
Hate

… and into …

Light
Truth
Love

By saying that we are submitting ourselves to the body of Christ, we come into complete agreement with God’s plan for the world. A body submits itself to the direction of its head. Likewise, the body of Christ submits itself to the leading of its head, who is the Christ.

And God’s plan for the world is not for millions of individual but separate and disjointed relationships with him. Rather, his yearning is for a fully unified assembly of followers throughout the whole world. Yet this is something much more than a temporary meeting of people from time to time. Rather, it is a living and organic body of followers. It is a state of being where we are in him and he is in us. This is truly what it means to be bodily present.

Ultimately, this mark implies a radical coming-together of the body of Christ in love. This is where perfect love casts out all fear.

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