A Scallop Shell

I arrived with nineteen others to Spain yesterday. We are here to hike the last one hundred fifteen Km from Sarria to Santiago de Compostela, a famous pilgrimage hiked by tens of thousands every summer on the way to see the bones of St. James and follow in the footsteps of millions of others who are all on a journey for some personal reason, many of which are spiritual. I have been struggling to figure out myself why I am here and why I feel called to this walk. I hope I have a better idea in five days time but know that it could be revealed to me much later if ever.

We pilgrims hike with scallop shells around our necks. The scallop shell is the symbol of the pilgrims on the way to Santiago and we are beginning to see the shells. I knew the shells were used to drink water for thirsty pilgrims but what I didn't know was the greater metaphor of the shell. A scallop shell has many lines that all lead to the same center just as many roads and many pilgrims travel from all over, all on the way to Santiago. Some come from their homes in Norway or Italy and hike from their doorsteps. Some hike along the route in Portugal. More start in France and many take different paths yet they all end in the same place. Am I to learn this pilgrimage that my way is not the only way? Am I to become more sympathetic, compassionate and understanding of the different ways and paths in life?

A Thin Place

As soon as I walked into the sanctuary of Christ Church in Bay St. Louis, Mississippi, I felt I was in a “thin place.” A “thin place” comes from Celtic spirituality and is a place where you are closest to God. The idea of a thin place is that the veil between this world and the other world is thin. The structure of Christ Church was destroyed and all that is left today of the physical plant is the original bell tower. In place of the old church stands an air-conditioned Quonset hut and the original concrete floor. The inside of the church reminds me of a down comforter. One of the original stain glass windows rests upon the only window in the hut. Besides that, there is very little to decorate the church. Instead of pews, there are fold up metal chairs and instead of an organ, there is a PA system and an electronic keyboard.

Yet as soon as walked into this church, I felt I was in one of my own “thin places.” Goosebumps came over me and I started to tear up as I sat down in the church. Almost every spiritual home I have stepped foot in before has been in some way or another very elaborate. So I was surprised to feel this way in an air-conditioned Quonset hut.

I wonder sometimes if I fail to be connected with God in a world filled with accessories. My experience traveling to Christ Church continues to reaffirm that my God doesn’t need all of the lavish and ornate decorations, the old buildings, and fancy pews. When we strip off all of the decorations in life, and are left with nothing but what is underneath, raw, uncovered, we have God. I have spent the majority of my adult life acquiring things, goods, status, and of course money. Yet I am reminded today as I reflect on my time in Mississippi, that it is underneath all of this that I connect with Christ. Do I really need the big screen TV, the art, the Wii, the Vineyard Vines bow ties, or could I do without?

An Attack on Spirituality

I was reading a blog yesterday about one hundred simple ways to improve your life. There were two points out of one hundred which touched upon spirituality.

26) Go to church: Make new friends and get in touch with your spiritual side at church or temple.

31) Consider religion: If you’re not a spiritual person, consider becoming more involved with religion to improve your emotional well-being.

Being what I call a professional Christian, I couldn’t agree more with the writers point. These two points out of one hundred are just tips on how to possibly improve your life. I continued to read after the blog at all of the comments people had posted. Over one half of the comments were targeted at these two suggestions. One reader even commented that he or she was so offended that they would never read another post by the writer. This person obviously feels very passionately about religion and my guess Christianity.

In a blog about improving our lives, why does the suggestion of finding faith anger so many people? What is it about the Christian message that upsets so many others? If being a Christian is about loving others as we love ourselves, seeking peace instead of violence, and treating all people with dignity, could this really be that bad? I mean would our lives not be improved if we could do just this?

The Road to Santiago de Compostela - 4 Months Away

There is a road that leads to the mortal remains of the apostle St. James. He was buried in a field where a shepherd had seen a bright star. Legend says that not only did St. James, but the Virgin Mary travel here shortly after the death of Christ. This place known as Compostela, Spanish for the star field, has been one of three major pilgrimages for Christians for over 1000 years. This summer I will travel the last 115 kilometers of the road to Santiago de Compostela with twenty youth and their leaders from the church I work at in Memphis.

Something is stirring inside of me that draws me to this place. Every summer thousands of people walk this path with scallop shells around their neck all on their way to the Cathedral in Santiago. As I have been preparing for this journey, I wonder even now what it will feel like as I gather for the pilgrims mass with others who have taken this sacred walk. Destination is what I am concerned about four months before I get on a plane and fly to Madrid.

Yet, would I feel the same way about Santiago and being in the Cathedral if I didn’t take the walk? Would the pilgrim's mass be as important if I was invited to attend it without first taking the walk? Sometimes in my life, I focus so much on the destination that I forget about the beautiful journey that leads me there.

I have become I cycler over the last year and half and even bike the six and half miles to work sometimes. Moving so much slower than before, I begin to notice the wonderful sights that I take for granted each day as I stare straight ahead on my way to work. I miss the beautiful houses along Tuckahoe, or the students quickly crossing the street to get to their classes on time at the University of Memphis. And then I find myself lost in memories of my college days at Purdue and rushing to class across Northwestern Avenue. I see people working in yards and the care and love it takes to have a beautiful yard, and the enjoyment I get from someone else’s hard work.

All of this I miss when I drive to work. The journey is beautiful, and when I finally get to work I am ready to embrace the day and once again fall in love with my work. As I prepare for my little hike along the Camino de Santiago, I am trying to pay more attention to the journey that I am already making, because without a journey, arriving at a destination is not nearly as meaningful.

Life as a Musician

I think of myself as a musician. I love playing music. I have been playing piano for almost twenty years, guitar for fifteen years, and I attempt to play every other instrument my hands touch.

So I was watching this sermon by Rob Bell a few weeks ago called Rhythm. In the video, a symphony is playing in the background and he starts to talk about how he believes God to be like the music of the world and that it is our job to listen, hear the song, and play in harmony so that we can grow into the person that God has in store for us. As a musician this rang true and I have been thinking about this metaphor ever since.

But something has been bothering me for these few weeks as I think about this metaphor and as I try to better articulate my understanding of God. I believe I have been making the same mistake in my spiritual life that I have been making with music. Since I started playing piano and guitar, I have been focusing on getting faster, learning more complicated rifts, and learning fancier scales. When I played in bands in college, often I found myself playing too many notes and trying to do too much. I only listened to music that was theoretically complicated and never would have caught myself listening to simple songs such as I enjoy listening to now.

Something has shifted in the way that I hear music and my hope is I find that same shift in my spiritual life. I am listening a lot to a band called Iron & Wine which their early stuff is played on guitar alone and is very simple. To me their music is absolutely beautiful. What I am beginning to realize is that there is nothing wrong with sitting down at the piano and practicing for hours and hours, and for many years, until I can play complicated jazz or classical music. In fact until I do that, I won’t be able to. But the point is even at my own skill level which is closer to the level that Iron & Wine plays, I can make beautiful music. I can play in tune with the songs and in rhythm and do things that other people find more beautiful than any fancy jazz tune I might be able to play down the road.

This gives me much hope. Let us go back to Rob Bell’s image of music. God is playing a song and it is our job as musicians, or more importantly as humans, to stop and to listen to the song and to play in harmony. For any of us who have played any instrument at all even if it is the recorder in your third grade music class, we know that we are not always going to play in perfect harmony. But at this moment, wherever we are on our spiritual journey, we have all the gifts and skills to play a beautiful masterpiece. There is nothing wrong with wanting to get better at this thing called life, to practice and practice and maybe one day we will do something extraordinary, but it doesn’t mean that right now we can’t change the world. It doesn’t mean that a single and simple random act of kindness towards someone won’t be a beautiful masterpiece that changes their life.

For me this image has transformed the whole way that I embrace ministry. I don’t worry anymore about building some big, super youth program at the church I work. And it’s not that I don’t try to learn more and get better at my job, but I have embraced that sometimes less notes on a scale sounds wonderful. When I meet someone new, that single encounter might be more important than anything I could ever say in a sermon at a church or school or to my youth group. Sometimes the simplest actions we produce can lead to making a beautiful masterpiece and if we are aware of this, we can be better prepared when it happens.

A Lesson from New Orleans

I have always been a collector of things. When I started 5^th grade I was in the midst of building a Lego empire. I loved legos and had an extensive collection that now, 16 years later, I am devastated I sold at garage sale. At the time, I was building an empire of lego castles and spaceships with every new set helping spur my creative energy and convincing my parents from an early age that I should be an architect. I had amassed quite a collection of little lego treasures by the time I entered the sixth grade.

As I entered sixth grade, Shaquille O’Neal was entering the NBA. And I fell in love with professional basketball. Shaq was my hero although, even in sixth grade, I was acutely aware that I would never be seven foot one or wear size 26 shoes. I started collecting basketball cards and tried my very best to acquire every Shaq rookie card I could, each card become a real treasure in my collection of NBA unknowns and no names.

In seventh and eighth grade, I began to play golf. My Aunt Brenda moved to a golf course in Florida and mailed my family some of her old clubs. We went to visit her one summer and my little sister and I spent our afternoons hunting for old golf balls around the course. We noticed that some of the golf balls had advertisements and logos printed on the sides of the balls. And always being in direct competition with my sister, we spent the entirety of our summer vacation building our collection of specialized golf balls. Several shoe boxes of golf ball resided in my room for years, never once being used by me in a game of golf.

I collect things. I am still guilty of collecting things but I want to skip a few years from my time in Jr. High School to this past summer. I traveled twice to New Orleans this summer. During my second visit, our group had the opportunity to completely gut a house. After spending a couple of days cleaning brush and debris out of peoples yards and delivering welcome baskets to returning residents, we were all thrilled to have the opportunity to do some different work. Most of the gutting work in the area had been completed, but one resident who lived a block from Lake Pontchartrain finally signed a waiver giving a local ministry permission to go into his home and throw away all of his possessions, his life collection of material treasures. Our fourth afternoon in New Orleans and twelve of us grabbed a water cooler, some dust masks, and headed up towards Lake Pontchartrain. We were given specific instructions:

1) everything is trash

2) No matter what you do, do not open the refrigerator.

We were given duck tape to wrap the fridge, a few shovels, and a wheel barrow. Water sat in this house for two weeks. And then it left. And then everything in that home was damp or completely soaked, and it sat there in the sweltering New Orleans heat for two years. Every single thing this man owned was completely ruined. And everything was in his house.

He was a police officer. Several plaques were nailed up to the wall in the living room. He had been a New Orleans Police Officer of the month in 1984 and 1994. His television and his Playstation 2, complete with several NASCAR racing games, were covered in a thin layer of slime that had slowly grown in place over two years. The closet was full of the officer’s clothes, his partner’s clothes, and several pictures of the two of them from the past few years. Make up, shampoo, and deodorant rested in the bathroom, eager for its rightful owners to return.

Yet we were not the rightful owners. And I completely became aware that I was pilfering through someone else’s private life. I had entered a place they did not mean to leave, a place they had expected to return to on the day they left. Dirty dishes were still in the sink and the pantry was full of old food, paper products, and household cleaners. The closet was home to hundreds of Mardi gras beads, a bowling ball, and a few coats for the month or two in the winter when the weather was a little less miserable. Load after load, old electronics, a broken computer, clothes and personal belongings were piled high into the wheelbarrow and carted into the street. Not only did I feel guilty for throwing away the material possessions that defined a man and his partner’s life, but I began to look at my own life and what I truly hold as important.

The images of this home have been haunting me ever since I returned from New Orleans. I wonder a lot about what is truly important in my life and what are my real treasures. I try my best not to focus and center my life on material possessions.
This memory reminds me of this scripture from Matthew: “Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust consume and where thieves break in and steal; but store up for yourselves treasures in heaven where neither moth nor rust consumes and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. "

My whole life I have been waiting for “The Great Memphis Earthquake.” Who knows if it will happen in our lifetime, but things happen, whether it is nature, bad luck, or our own negligence, we can easily lose everything we own. Would I be able to walk away from my house? And never return? What about my awesome TV? What about my bike? What about all of the pictures I have collected over the years that tell my story of growing up? What about the music? I still collect things. I have a 10,000 song music collection that even the thought of temporally losing music, terrifies every bone in my body. I collect art. I am slowly building my home one piece of nice furniture at a time. Have I put my treasures in heaven? Do I cherish the friendships that I make every day, or the times when I do something nice for someone else? Honestly, are my greatest treasures my friends, my family, my relationship with God? For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.

The Kingdom of Heaven

At first I was a little upset that my parents decided to go out of town for Easter. Easter is one of three major holidays where my parents, my sister and I gather around the table for a wonderful home cooked meal. I assured my mother that my feelings were not hurt, yet harbored a little resentment for their little vacation to Heber Springs. And as positive as I tried to be about Easter, watching families and friends leave for glorious Easter brunches and family lunches after church left me feeling alone and abandoned.

After church, I met with three youth from my church to cook a meal at a local soup kitchen. To be honest, I was glad there were three young people who were willing to come and cook. Most of the active youth in the parish were enjoying family meals and big Easter celebrations, so to have three youth willing to work at a soup kitchen on Easter made the event more special. And only having three, we had to work so hard in the kitchen that I didn’t have time to feel sorry for myself.

The three hours that we spent together flew by and when we were ready to leave, we all walked out together. One of the regulars at the soup kitchen, Lee, approached the three youth and begin asking them questions about their lives, where they went to school, what sports they played, and what they enjoyed doing in their spare time. And to my surprise, all three answered in detail and even began asking Lee questions about his life. In my work in ministry, I have found it very easy to serve the homeless and a lot more difficult to truly treat each person as one of our brothers or sisters. I have come to expect people, regardless of age, to be standoffish and hesitant to engage in real compassionate conversation with those who seem different, especially the homeless. Although I always enjoy working at soup kitchens, if I am walking in downtown or midtown Memphis, I will stray away from homeless people and try to avoid them. This afternoon, I expected answers to be short and abrupt and a feeling of general discomfort to linger in the air.

As I was experiencing something new for Easter, these three youth helped me to see the true meaning of Easter. Easter is the celebration of the resurrection of Christ, and in my eyes that means bringing his kingdom of heaven to earth. I believe that for fifteen minutes, as I stood outside with these three youth and our brother Lee, they showed me a glimpse of the kingdom of heaven, a place where all people eat together at the same table and each person is respected, loved, and embraced. Conversations run free and people would not hesitate to share all they have to offer with each other. And to catch a glimpse of that kingdom of heaven made my Easter more special and meaningful than ever before.