Creating Meaning, Cultivating Craft

 My life has been circling around these particular themes:

WildCraft - Outdoor Ministry, Wilderness Living Skills, Permaculture

WoodCraft - Wood carving (specifically wood spirits, whimsical houses, and kuksas) and have opened an Etsy Store entitled WildCraftsbyRandall

SongCraft - continuing to write and play new music on mandolin, banjo and guitar. Particularly in the Irish and Old-Time Music Traditions. My family is in the beginnings of being a traveling family band as my daughter is becoming quite proficient on Fiddle, my son on Bodhran (Irish Drum) and my wife on hammer dulcimer. 

SoulCraft - Christian Discipleship, Rites of Passage, and Masculine Spirituality.

It's been eye opening to see how God is preparing me for the next half of my life as I immerse myself in these various aspects of life and ministry. I've known for some time that I've been a Renaissance Man and am now better learning how to deeply live into these expressions of my life and I hope that I can be better at blogging and writing as well. 

Speaking of... this blog gets another reboot as I am learning more to cultivate a holy liminality within my own life that will continually remind me that God's Holy Sacred Spirit is found in the liminal spaces in life we are betwixt and between the profane and the sacred. It also hearkens back to my very first post almost 17 years ago. My life's mission appears to be finding ways to create meaning and to be a fire tender in people's life of faith. 

Psalm Slam #67

God’s Mode Made Known (Psalm Slam #67)

Published Living Word Bulletin Series, August 18, 2020 

(To be read in the Slam Poetry style)

Lord God, encase grace,

in this place. Fears erased.

Your guise. Wise.

Beaming, teeming,

still redeeming.

Your mode made known.

Let no-thing go un-no-ticed.

Thank you. No. Thank You.

Nations Awed. Stand. Applaud.

Bursting out. Voices shout.

Your Story. All Glory.

For justice. Not just for us.

For all bodies. Love embodies.

Your mercy reigns. Rain down.

Earth’s fields yield. Your bounty revealed.

Always abundant, never redundant.

In herding us, You have heard us.   

From east to west. Honor expressed.

 

Yahweh! Your Way.

This day. We pray.

Forever endeavor.

Forever and ever.

Always. All ways.

Yay! We'll say.

The Way is to Stay

I’ve been hearing Isaiah 43:19 quoted a lot during the past month or so of this pandemic. So I decided to invest some time re-reading it; 

“Behold, I will do something new, now it will spring forth; will you not be aware of it? I will even make a roadway in the wilderness, rivers in the desert.” (NASB)

I’m reminded that the new thing that God is doing often isn't always seen. 

In fact, we're often looking in the wrong places, or have expectations that it will be like it was before. 
If we’re perceptive enough, we’ll unearth that the ‘new thing’ takes the form of a ‘new way’ or a new path through difficult terrain. Perhaps invoking the imagery of the path through the Red Sea. Only now it is reversed; not a dry path through water but a water way (river) through the desert. And water is metaphor for “life.”

What blots our ability to perceive the new thing? 

As Isaiah would say later that God’s ways are not our ways, perhaps it’s because we can’t see as far up the trail as we’re led to believe. I’ve received countless affirmation in my life that the Spirit of God is simultaneously with us and ahead of us. We just can’t see what new path is being created. Is the Spirit out bushwhacking through the wilderness of a pandemic and our only appropriate response is to stay put while the path is being cleared? Jeremiah concurs that we might have to stand at the crossroads and look. 
Basically, stay put. Discern. Pray. 
But by God do not move. Not yet.

Perhaps this is a time for staying put and allowing the Spirit to work ahead and clear the path. If we say let the Spirit lead, then it means just that. Sit still. Wait. Stay. What if that I the way for such a time as this. Until the river of life emerges through the desert spaces of this pandemic, I’m in no rush.

Emerging Immersion

Immersion: To plunge into. To surround or cover. To engross. To absorb.

This word has been reverberating in my heart lately as well as teaching me new and amazing lessons. Ten years ago, I spent my time on the western slope of the Cascade Mountains near Seattle, WA in a “wilderness immersion program.” While part of that community, I came alive. It wasn't a religious organization but I soon found my faith reignited and awakened a greater sense of calling in my life. It was more real than anything I’ve experienced in my 30 years of being in the church. Quite simply, this way of living and being had become absorbed into my heart, my body and my spirit. The week prior to my graduation, Jon Young the school's founder, shared with us his vision: that there would be an immersion program in every community. 

This vision got me thinking about Jesus, his disciples and the great commission.


In the Gospels, we’ve long understood that Jesus called his disciples to form community, what we haven’t always understood was just what that process looked like. In reading the Gospels, I see very clearly what Jesus was doing was giving his disciples an immersion experience. They didn’t just talk about the Torah without living it and they didn’t just live it without talking about it. What was happening was they were experiencing and practicing Torah in a way that hadn’t been before. An “invisible” school was taking place, quite deliberately, and in the process they began living out the Torah in a way that made it and them come alive! As a result, the disciples and followers were absorbed into Jesus’ way of being.

The immersion model is essentially one of self-discovery, whereby the instructor or mentor guides the student by asking edge-stretching questions that nurtures self-sufficiency, curiosity and fascination. This is the true wisdom found in immersion programs, the school remains “hidden” within the community’s life together.

This is integral to how we live out Jesus’ command to go and make disciples of all nations (Matt. 28:18). We immerse them in an invisible school of love, mercy, grace, peace and justice. We haven’t been very good at making disciples. We haven’t been very good at immersing ourselves and others into this way of being alive. We believe that the immersion of our baptism is enough. So it begs the question… What might an immersion program look like in the church today? 

I would have answered that question differently a decade ago but that hope still lives in me. I've come to believe that all history and institutions wax and wane in various capacities. The modern focus of the North American Church seems to be that of a thrivent institution. That focus appears to be crumbling before us and perhaps charting a course for us to reimagine what an exodus might look like. If that is the case, then I believe it may very well look like the journey Jesus took his disciples on... an immersion experience.