Reconnecting With a Legend

Aiden Wilson Tozer was a legend in his own lifetime, yet he is virtually unknown by today’s generation of students. This is more than unfortunate. Viewed by his contemporaries as a preacher and writer with a prophetic edge, Tozer had a powerful effect on people. When he spoke, they listened; when he wrote, they read. Leonard Ravenhill writes that Dr. Tozer “had an intimacy with God beyond any other man I have ever met.” Speaking of Tozer’s spiritual girth, Louis King, former president of The Christian and Missionary Alliance, writes: “He belonged to the spiritual aristocracy. His sense of God was so awesome it called forth a consummate reverence and adoration. Every day his one great exercise was the practice of the presence of God. Jesus Christ, to him, was a daily wonder, a recurring astonishment, a continual amazement of love and grace. This was not contrived but a natural and ever-present reality.”

Personally, Tozer discipled me through his writings. Growing up with spiritual influences but without a spiritual mentor left a noticeable void in me, but Tozer’s writing helped fill it to overflowing. Few authors slice as deeply or accurately as Tozer. He has no desire to impress, but inevitably leaves an enduring impression on all who read him. As stated so well in the Talmud: “The righteous need no tombstones; their words are their monuments” (Persahim, 119a).

The following are a few brief selections from Tozer’s books and sermons, offered as a “whetting of the appetite,” with the hope that the reader will choose to move beyond the appetizer to the main course. You will find daily readings from Tozer at the following website: http://www.cmalliance.org/devotions/tozer/tozer.jsp. You will find lengthier selections at the following: http://lmi.gospelcom.net/tozer.php3. All of his books are available from Christian Publications, the official publishing house of The Christian and Missionary Alliance (http://www.christianpublications.com/).

“To the absence of the spirit may be traced that vague sense of unreality which almost everywhere invests religion in our times. In the average church service the most real thing is the shadowy unreality of everything. The worshipper sits in a state of suspended mentation; a kind of dreamy numbness creeps upon him; he hears words but they do not register, he cannot relate them to anything on his own life-level. He is conscious of having entered a kind of half-world; his mind surrenders itself to a more or less pleasant mood which passes with the benediction leaving no trace behind. It does not affect anything in his everyday life. He is aware of no power, no Presence, no spiritual reality. There is simply nothing in his experience corresponding to the things which he heard from the pulpit or sang in the hymns.” (The Divine Conquest, 1950, p. 90).

“God made us for Himself: that is the only explanation that satisfies the heart of a thinking man, whatever his wild reason may say.” (The Pursuit of God, 1984, p. 33)

“When the habit of inwardly gazing Godward becomes fixed within us we shall be ushered onto a new level of spiritual life more in keeping with the promises of God and the mood of the New Testament. The Triune God will be our dwelling place even while our feet walk the low road of simple duty here among men.” (The Pursuit of God, 1984, p. 97)

“It is amazing to me! There are people within the ranks of Christianity who have been taught and who believe that Christ will shield his followers from wounds of every kind. If the truth were known, the saints of God in every age were only effective after they have been wounded. They experienced the humbling wounds that brought contrition, compassion and a yearning for the knowledge of God. I could only wish that more among the followers of Christ knew what some of the early saints meant when they spoke of being wounded by the Holy Spirit.” (Men Who Met God, 1986, p. 59).


“The old cross slew men; the new cross entertains them. The old cross condemned; the new cross amuses. The old cross destroyed confidence in the flesh; the new cross encourages it. The old cross brought tears and blood; the new cross brings laughter. The flesh, smiling and confident, preaches and sings about the cross; before the cross it bows and toward that cross it points with carefully staged histrionics—but upon that cross it will not die, and the reproach of that cross it stubbornly refuses to bear.” (The Divine Conquest, 1950, p. 59)

Kingdom Campus: Re-envisioning the Christian College as a Kingdom Resource*

Introduction:
In recent dialogue with the Department of Religion faculty at a Christian, denominationally related university, it became readily apparent that one should not take for granted agreement as to the distinctiveness of Christian higher education, even among faculty of a Christian university. “Christian higher education is one of those categories that people find very difficult to define.”(1) Is it enough to hire academicians and staff members who are Christians, hold prayer before some classes, and require Chapel along with certain curfews and restrictions? Many see these as entirely adequate and the sum total of what defines a Christian university—namely, to graduate students who were taught by Christian teachers. With that mindset, Christian colleges are merely producing a product while attempting to influence that intended product toward Christ. Others argue that there must be much more to the idea of a Christian university than merely producing graduates who’ve had the opportunity of sitting under some excellent professors who are Christians and participating in a really strong BSM (Baptist Student Ministry).
In the book, The Future of Christian Higher Education, Robert Sloan suggests that there are six commonly used, although inadequate, components of distinctive Christian higher education:
1. A reference to the history and tradition of that institution. This may include founding documents, intentions of the school’s founders, and the earliest dimensions of the school’s history.
2. A reference to the composition of the governing Board, i.e., the governing Board members must meet a certain religious qualification for membership.
3. Relationship of the institution to an ecclesiastical body or some Christian denomination. Robert Benne sees this as especially critical. “If full-blooded Christian colleges and universities are those in which the Christian heritage is publicly relevant to the central endeavors of the college, then colleges and universities in which secularization is occurring experience a waning of that public relevance, and find themselves less and less under the influence of the sponsoring tradition’s vision and ethos. If the secularizing process is allowed to continue, that heritage will be increasingly marginalized and will disappear except for its mention in the historical account of the college’s early life.”(2)
4. Reference to the “atmosphere” or the “environment” of the institution. This expected atmosphere may be embodied in the values commonly held, the way students are treated, the way discipline problems are handled, or the presence of certain curfew rules or certain dress codes. “This view focuses upon the moral-relational dimensions of the university as a community but does not necessarily include other issues related to the worldview and/or the intellectual content as a basic resource for understanding and conveying the academic dimensions of the university experience.”(3)
5. Understood in terms of Christian or religious activities. This could be seen as a social definition of a Christian institution—may have Chapel services, some form of Religious Emphasis Week, allow or even encourage extracurricular activities of a Christian nature.
6. Has to do with the curriculum. There are certain clearly identified subject areas that point to a Christian identity, such as required religion courses for all students.
Sloan concludes the list by stating that all of these frames of reference are legitimate but “something that could be called distinctively Christian higher education requires more than this.”(4) If Sloan is on the right track, what is that “something else” that is required of distinctive Christian higher education?
It is the opinion of this writer that Christian universities today are in danger of losing their “heart.” The heart of Christian higher education is more than the atmosphere of our institutions, our ecclesiastical relationships, and compulsory Chapel and religion courses. It involves our worldview; it involves how we think and how we live. It involves how we live as well as how and what we teach. This paper proposes that the heart of a Christian university is to instill a Christian worldview while assisting and preparing students to discover and prepare for their vocational calling from God, thereby equipping them to function positively as kingdom citizens. For example, a nursing student is taught nursing within the framework of a Christian worldview, helped to see his or her vocation as a valid divine call, and equipped to make a difference in the world by means of his or her nursing vocation. In order to do this, the institution itself must model kingdom stewardship and responsibility. “Some may see liberal arts education and a kingdom world view as distinct, while not mutually exclusive. In an attempt to be inclusive and ‘liberal,’ in the best sense of the word, college administrators and faculty members may strive toward raising competency of students in relating to an increasingly global environment, without ever seeing that multi- or lateral-cultural competency should not be separated from the practice of providing a liberal arts education. Globalization and liberal arts education are connected as constitutive parts of the college by the reality of the kingdom of God.”(5)

A Brief History of Christian Higher Education in America
Is the purpose of this university compatible with and as radical as the purpose of the first institutions of higher education in this country? The history of higher education in the United States, from the founding of Harvard, spans three hundred and fifty years, and, unquestionably, the earliest colleges in America were Christian institutions. Brubacher and Rudy state, “the Christian tradition was the foundation stone of the whole intellectual structure which was brought to the new world.”(6) Christian piety was not separated from intellect and early educational institutions set the pattern for all of society. Ganger and Benson identify a three-fold distinctiveness of a Christian college from these early institutions. The first was an emphasis on biblical foundations with the assumption of faith underlying all curriculum. A second distinction was the integration of all truth, with the presupposition that all truth is God’s truth. A final distinctive of the Christian college was an attempt to develop a Christian worldview.(7)

A Christian Worldview & Higher Education
“Cultures pattern perceptions of reality into conceptualizations of what reality can or should be, what is to be regarded as actual, probable, possible, and impossible. These conceptualizations form what is termed the ‘worldview’ of the culture.”(8) Worldview is the system by which cultural members process reality and is also the foundation of values and mores. According to Kraft, “worldview lies at the very heart of culture, touching, interacting with, and strongly influencing every other aspect of culture.”(9) Every member of a given society is conditioned to interpret reality in terms agreed upon by members of that culture. Seerfield defines a Christian worldview as “an awareness on the part of the individual that whether he eats or drinks, plays or studies, whatever he does issues from a heart committed to a true and jealous Almighty God revealed in Jesus Christ recognizing God’s sovereign control on him, and indeed, over the entire universe.”(10) This has particular relevance to the issue of Christian higher education.
Inherent in Christian belief is the discovery of truth, and this leads to a striving for education in order to explore truth. With regard to Christian higher education, what has clearly taken place over time is the separation of Christian faith (piety) from the pursuit of truth (academics). Douglas Sloan calls this the two-sphere theory of truth.(11) This is the notion that one may separate academics from faith. We now encourage initiatives in the integration of faith and scholarship when in reality, separating the two is an artificial cleavage. In other words, effort to integrate faith and learning introduces nothing new but takes us back to the original intention of education in America. If God is truth and all truth is of God, truth should always be embraced with spiritual awareness and moral accountability. “At Christian schools we must believe that there is an underlying unity of truth. We must refuse to separate religion and life. We must refuse to separate the question of meaning from the total academic pursuit of truth… Christian higher education is nothing less than the attempt through the individual and communal activities of thinking, teaching, researching, discussing, performing, and living to understand the totality of life, history, and the universe in relationship to the lordship of the crucified and risen Jesus Christ.”(12)

Christian Higher Education and The Kingdom of God
“At its best, the Christian college … exists as a community of faith and learning that exhibits the prophetic insight, purity, passion and plurality of Christ’s kingdom in their collective life… It is our awareness and conviction of the relationship between the mission of the kingdom and the return of Christ that should shape the mission, educational goals and strategic priorities of our institutions. Our approach should be guided by the fact that the kingdom has already come in Jesus Christ, is coming and will one day come in full public display.”(13) College campuses play a critical role in shaping the student as to the way he or she will relate to God, self, others, and the earth. Slimbach prefers the term “global Christian education.” He uses the term to refer to “comprehensive efforts by Christian colleges, universities, and seminaries to enhance the capacity of students and staff to function competently in an increasingly urban, multicultural, and interconnected environment, and to make personal and public policy decisions that reflect the character and commitments of the kingdom of God.”(14) To shift from Slimbach’s terminology of globalization, ‘Kingdomizing’ a campus is a multi-faceted process, both top-down and bottom-up. It must touch every aspect of the collective campus culture. From strategic planning to student affairs, the configuration of the student body and faculty to the residential environments, the academic curriculum to extra-curricular activities—our campuses can either assist or impede the development of students into kingdom citizens.(15)
Dutch theologian Abraham Kuyper gave us a vision of reclaiming every square inch, every “thumbprint” of God’s creation, for the kingdom. Longman states, “Christian colleges ought to be the ‘holy of holies’ for that action in the arena of higher education.”(16) Christian higher education is the impetus to develop kingdom citizens, and the process of developing kingdom citizens should never be a mere experiment, addendum or addition to an already overcrowded curriculum. This understanding of Christian higher education is not the intersection of the intellect with a Christian worldview but the actual discovery of God’s purposes for the individual in learning to think and live as a kingdom citizen.

The Epic Call
College students today face a dilemma of epic proportion. Living in an age that increasingly rejects absolutes in any form, students face a glaring contradiction. On the one hand, the majority of Americans are convinced that there is no objective meaning in life. According to a poll by the Barna Group, an amazing sixty-six percent of all Americans believe that “there is no such thing as absolute truth.” The percentage is even higher among young adults, with seventy-two percent of those between eighteen and twenty-five rejecting the existence of absolutes. Equally shocking is that the poll reveals fifty-three percent of those who describe themselves as evangelical Christians believe that there are no absolutes.
On the other hand, individuals of all ages are seeking for purpose and meaning as never before. “On the one hand ‘spirituality’ is at a high point; there’s never been a day in the Western world where you find surveys – like the one MTV recently conducted – that say 99.4% of young people believe in God. On the other hand, even with the peak of spirituality, Christianity is at the bottom of the list.”(17) The very language of current American culture exemplifies this search for meaning, most significantly among college students immersed in a postmodern cultural shift. Epic is a favored term of postmodernity and ranks in popularity along with the adjective extreme. Very recently four young men recorded their journey around the globe in search of what they called, “the epic life.”(18) According to Funk & Wagnalls Standard Desk Dictionary, an “epic” is “a long, narrative poem in elevated style, typically having as its subject heroic exploits and achievements or grandiose events.” As an adjective, “epic” means “of, pertaining to, or suitable as a theme for an epic” (Funk & Wagnalls 1983). In other words, the current or postmodern preoccupation with extreme living or the epic life evidences an entire culture’s longing for a higher purpose and clearer meaning in life. According to a recent poll by researched George Barna, today’s college students are motivated by two things: (1) relationships and connectedness, and (2) investing themselves in pressing causes they believe in. Os Guinness underscores this reality when he states:
Deep in our hearts, we all want to find and fulfill a purpose
bigger than ourselves. Only such a purpose can inspire us
to heights we know we could never reach on our own.(19)

A majority of college students could relate to the desire of Danish thinker Søren Kierkegaard: “The thing is to understand myself, to see what God really wants me to do; the thing is to find a truth which is true for me, to find the idea for which I can live and die.(20) In postmodern language, only in discovering this purpose are we able to experience an epic life. The Apostle Paul speaks of the Christian adventure in these terms:
“Not that I have already obtained all this, or have already
been made perfect, but I press on to take hold of that for
which Christ Jesus took hold of me.” (Philippians 3:12)
Benne suggests three necessary components of Christian higher education: vision, ethos, and the Christian persons who bear that vision and ethos. The Christian vision “conveys a Christian view of the origin and destiny of the world, of nature and history, of human nature and its predicament, of human salvation and of a Christian way of life.”(21) Secondly, an ethos that embodies patterns of moral action and particular virtues provides clear guidelines as to how we should live together. For Christians, “the practice of vocation is central; all humans are called by God to exercise their gifts in service to others through specific roles.”(22) For too long ministry professionals have been the only individuals thought to have a divine call on their lives. Finally, persons who bear the vision and ethos must participate meaningfully in the life of the institution. It is this second component that relates clearly to postmodern students. Distinctive Christian higher education in a postmodern culture must take seriously the demand of college students to find a cause considered worthy of the ultimate self-sacrifice. Those Christian schools that stop short of developing kingdom citizens fail their postmodern students as well as the kingdom of God.

Kingdom Stewardship
“Kingdom citizenship is a matter of kingdom stewardship.”(23) An important statement is made in Luke 12:42-48, “from the one who has been entrusted with much, much more will be asked.” These are terms of stewardship. The best commentary on this statement is found in Luke 19:15-19 (Jesus’ parable of the ten minas) and in Mattew 25:20-23 (Jesus’ parable of the talents). The idea is that of capital which is deposited with someone in order that he or she may do business with it, and in return provide the capital along with earned interest when asked of him or her. The original sum may vary and accordingly also the increase that is rightfully asked. What is meant here is plain, all that we are and have are a capital investment from the Lord that we are to invest and return to him with interest. There will be an accounting of our blessings. Blessed is the one who can meet that accounting joyfully, but woe to the one who has proven unfaithful.
Individual believers are expected to use all God has given to yield an increase in God’s kingdom. What we have and what we are was never intended to remain ours. We have not been given a single thing that is to be kept to ourselves and for ourselves. Too many of us have been adversely affected by a consumer mentality in Christianity today. In contrast, each of us is a kingdom resource! Our spiritual gift(s), personality, intellect, physical body, emotional self, finances, etc.—all are part of what makes each of us a kingdom resource.
Institutions should be seen as kingdom resources as well. Too often we lose sight of the real purpose and potential of Christian institutions. Institutions easily become self-centered and self-serving. They become castle-building societies rather than kingdom outposts on the frontier. If we’re not intentional and very careful, we are merely selling “construction tools” to help narrow-minded students build their own egocentric castles. Instead, we should be instilling a Christian worldview in students that encourages them to see themselves as resources to build God’s kingdom. Too often, Christian institutions pat themselves on the back if they have a majority of Christian faculty who pray from time to time to begin class and refrain from identifying too closely with “the world.” Imagine what could happen if Christian colleges re-envisioned themselves as kingdom resources? Think of the kingdom-sized impact that could be made by faculty and nursing students, business students, science students, music students, ministry students, behavioral science students, etc., if these human resources were channeled in a strategic manner to make a kingdom difference somewhere in the world!

Conclusions:
The implications for being a Kingdom Campus are threefold:
1. As a Kingdom Campus we must believe that there is an underlying unity of truth, thereby refusing to separate religion and life into two separate and distinct spheres. We must refuse to remove the question of meaning from academic pursuit. Faculty and students operating as a community of scholars engaged in ongoing dialogue, thinking, teaching, researching, discussing, performing, and living to engage life, history, and the universe in relationship to the lordship of the Jesus Christ.
2. A Kingdom Campus takes seriously the fact that God designs each life as an epic adventure to be guided by a significant purpose. Ultimately, each Christian pilgrim is to travel in a manner that honors and glorifies God. Imminently, each individual has a specific purpose to fulfill that may accurately be termed one’s calling. A “calling” is every individual’s God-ordained role as he or she ministers according to his or her spiritual gifts in and through Christ’s body (the Church) as part of his or her pursuit of Christ as ultimate concern. A Christian university must approach each academic discipline from this perspective and equip students to discover and prepare for an epic call, regardless of what vocational expression that takes, so that students begin even during their college years to develop a worldview and lifestyle conducive to and inseparable from being on mission with God. This cannot be accidental or incidental to our task. Instead, it must become the purpose that drives administration, faculty, and staff to equip divinely called kingdom citizens with a worldview that honors God and a sense of divine call that propels them to make a kingdom-sized difference in this world
3. A Kingdom Campus adheres to kingdom stewardship. Only when the institution takes seriously kingdom stewardship as a kingdom resource does it actually model kingdom citizenship. Christian colleges and universities are blessed with human, financial, and physical resources that, when channeled strategically, can make a global impact and in the process, model for students the responsibility and potential of kingdom citizenship.
* This is an expanded version of an article that first appeared as an online resource of the Council for Christian Colleges and Universities’ website, www.cccu.edu.


End Notes:

1. Robert b. Sloan, Jr., “Preserving Distinctively Christian Higher Education,” in David Dockery and David Gushee, eds., The Future of Christian Higher Education, (Nashville, Tennessee: Broadman & Holman Publishers, 1999), 26.

2. Robert Benne, Quality With Soul” How Six Premier Colleges and Universities Keep Faith With Their Religious Traditions, (Grand Rapids, Michigan: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2001), 6.

3. Sloan, 1999, 28.

4. Ibid, 28.

5. Dane Fowlkes, “Global Christian Education as Praxis,” Council for Christian Colleges and Universities, 2002, 1.

6. John S. Brubacher and Willis Rudy, Higher Education in Transition (New York: Harper & Row, 1958), 6.

7. Kenneth O. Gangel and Warren S. Benson, Christian Education: Its History & Philosophy (Chicago: Moody Press, 1983), 369-71.

8. Charles Kraft, Christianity in Culture (Maryknoll, New York: Orbis Books, 1988), 53.

9. Ibid.

10. Calvin Seerfield, “Relating Christianity to the Arts,” Christianity Today, November 1980, 48-9.

11. Douglas Sloan, Faith and Knowledge: Mainline Protestantism and American Higher Education (Louisville: Westminster/John Knox, 1994).

12. Sloan 1999, 32.

13. Richard Slimbach, “Globalization, the Kingdom of God and Christian Higher Education,” Council for Christian Colleges and Universities, 2002, 2-3.

14. ibid.

15. ibid.

16. Karen A. Longman, “Envisioning the Future of the Christian University,” in David Dockery and David Gushee, eds., The Future of Christian Higher Education, (Nashville, Tennessee: Broadman & Holman Publishers, 1999), 38.

17. The term “postmodern” was first coined by Frederico de Onis in the 1930’s, but did not become prominent in art and literature until the 1960’s and 1970’s. Its meaning was broadened in the 1980’s to cover an emergent comprehensive worldview. Postmodernism has nothing to do with styles but everything to do with an entire cultural shift. Postmodernism is more easily described than defined. Things “modern” are predictable, mechanistic, reasonable, with change being initiated at the center. Things “postmodern” are unpredictable, fluid, uncertain in dealing with the present and pessimistic in dealing with the future, with change initiated at the periphery.

18. Mike Peterson, Matt Kronberg, Jedd Medefind, and Trey Sklar, recorded their journey in, Four Souls: Four Friends Embark on a Worldwide Odyssey in Search of the Epic Life. About their story, Os Guinness writes, “Life is a journey, though we often forget it. So there’s nothing like a real journey for discovering and proving God. Four Souls restores the venture to faith and the epic to life.”

19. Os Guinness, The Call: Finding and Fulfilling the Central Purpose of Your Life, (Nashville: Word Publishing, 1998), 3.

20. From Kierkegaard’s Journal, quoted by Os Guiness in The Call, page 3.

21. Benne 2001, 7.

22. Ibid.

23. From a sermon entitled, “Kingdom Citizenship Bears Kingdom Responsibility,” that was preached in Chapel at East Texas Baptist University in April of 2003.

Grace Is A Way Of Life

Grace is a way of life as well as theological truth. Grace for living is most clearly seen in those unrehearsed moments when life suddenly makes sense. These are the snapshots in time that pass all too quickly but for an instant remind us that life is purposeful after all. For a preacher, pastor, missionary, and teacher of many years one might expect those grace gifts to occur in the warm glow of evening sun filtered through stained glass windows or in the aftermath of witnessing a “sinner’s” life transformed. But for me, such extemporaneoous ecstasy tends to startle me while worshipping in the cathedral of nature. I had just such a grace gift this morning.

Awakening at 7:00 am in a tent to the sound of nothing but birds alerting other birds that morning is emerging from the night was not the moment but the prelude to it. Wrapping up in a denim blanket-lined jacket and frying sausage and scrambling eggs on a propane cook stove with the aroma of camp coffee invading the crisp morning air was also not the moment but a necessary emotional callisthenic in preparation for the moment. Sipping the best coffee ever brewed, I carefully descended the stair-like path from my camp site to the river a mere thirty yards and upon reaching the rock strewn bank I knelt, balancing coffee cup in both hands. It was then that grace happened. With a raucous call parting the morning mist over the water, a blue heron flew the channel of the river and glided to rest on the opposite bank, daring me to move or in any way question its ownership of that stretch of river. In that instant nothing else existed but the heron and the river and the forest and me, and I was standing in the Garden of Eden with whispers from God in every direction saying, “I made all of this for you—enjoy. And in the enjoying, enjoy Me! All that you see are merely reflection pool images of my true beauty. Each time I grace you with a moment of beauty, be refreshed by My Presence for I am in the center of it. You cannot remove Me from beauty anymore than you can separate a thought from mind. Beauty is grace because I am present in it.”

For those who look and see, grace is a way of life. For those who look but never see, grace is nothing more than a trite and hacknied Sunday School definition, something that you learn but never know. God grant us the grace to discern grace and enjoy Him in the living of it.

The Order of the Burning Heart

Fire has an aura of the eternal about it. You may be the one to start it and may be present to watch it fade into a red and orange glow, but in between it appears to have neither beginning nor end. Perhaps this is why fire is one of my favorite images in Scripture. I thrill to Elijah standing strong astride the summit of Mount Carmel at his showdown at sundown with the prophets of Baal. The climax, of course, is when God rains down fire from heaven to consume the altar where Elijah’s sacrifice of faith lay drenched in water, waiting for an answer in flames. I love when John the Baptist refers to Jesus of Nazereth, stating matter of factly, “He will baptize you with water and with fire.” No greater image depicts the Holy Spirit than fire as the Spirit descended upon the early believers at Pentecost and had the appearance of tongues of fire above each of them.

So, I must ask myself, “What is it about fire that captures my attention and liberates my imagination?” Normal responses would include practical reasons such as fire warms hearts, fire cooks, etc. But more than that, fire dances with an energy that is otherworldly. Something about fire declares it is not of this world. Man may start fires, but only God can create fire. Its energy comes direct from the hand of God and altars all it burns. This explains the cry of my heart—“Holy Fire of God, dance in me! Make me to leap at your touch and draw others to You like flames attract insects in the night. Make me useful—yes—but make me more than useful. Make me creative and responsive, daring and obedient, spontaneous and steady. Give me an otherworldly glow. Make it obvious that I am twice-born and twice-baptized, immersed in water and in fire."

Grant me love for the Father that burns so hot I feel it as well as know it. This was the experience of English mystic Richard Rolle who wrote: “I cannot tell you how surprised I was the first time I felt my heart begin to warm. It was real warmth, too, not imaginary, and it felt as if it were actually on fire. I was astonished at the way the heat surged up and how this new sensation brought great and unexpected comfort. I had to keep feeling my breast to make sure there was no physical reason for it. But once I realized that it came entirely from within, that this fire of love had no cause, material or sinful, but was the gift of my Maker, I was absolutely delighted, and wanted my love to be even greater. And this longing was all the more urgent because of the delightful effect and the interior sweetness which this spiritual flame fed into my soul. Before the infusion of this comfort, I had never thought that we exiles could possibly have known such warmth, so sweet was the devotion it kindled. It set my soul aglow as if a real fire was burning there” (from, The Fire of Love, 1290-1349). Even as Richard Rolle felt You burn in his chest, initiate me into the Order of the Burning Heart. Burn away all other passions until all that remains are the red-orange tongues of fire that is a passion for You. Deliver me from wanting to amass knowledge and theological understanding about You. Reveal Yourself so that I will intimately know You. As a branch exists by abiding in the vine, may I be a flame that exists by abiding in the Fire.

The Scarcity of Solitude

Solitude is an almost entirely unknown commodity among 21st Century humanity. Thoreau said, "The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation," but I would beg to differ--the mass of men are anything but quiet in their desperation. Imagine my anticipation of some much needed solitude in a tent camped along the banks of the gorgeous Lower Mountain Fork River in Oklahoma, prelude to a still greater serenity with fly rod in hand while wading toward a record breaking brown or at least edible rainbow trout (fly fishing is a lot like hunting only it is done in water and one uses a baton instead of a rifle). Then imagine the rapid decline of anticipation when it becomes apparant that the couple camping to my right approximately fifty yards through the trees are in the throes of marital distress by day, supplemented by language reflective of nautical life, and disguised loudly at night by "classic" country western music. You haven't lived until you've sought solitude to the background cadence of "I'm So Lonesome I Could Cry," or "Walking the Floor Over You."

Granted, solitude is not equivalent to silence. Nature is anything but silent. Anyone who stands outdoors long enough after sunset encounters the night symphony of creation. But nature does not make noise. Nature makes sound. Waterfowl or insomniatic insects fill the night with music and there is a primal rhythm to it. Each scratch or thrush or squeal or hum is not out of place. In fact, such nocturnal sounds define life as consistent, patterned, purposeful. Then, enter man with man's constant companion--noise. Battery powered radios are the bane of every camper seeking solitude. Engine noise, clammering voices competing for primacy, ceaseless chatter from radio transmission, all of these combine to form a human cacophany that threatens to make nature itself seem noisey, if that were possible.

Why the noise? Why the constant parade of heightened decibels and vitriolic chatter that startles and shatters the serenity of the quiet heart? No possible reason exists apart from this--solitude creates the quiet space for deep reflection, meditation, contemplation. In other words, solitude allows one to think. Herein lies the problem--the vast majority of humanity abhors thought. Thinking is much too complicated an activity for ordinary man. He prefers activity and noise to the quiet pursuit of contemplation. For this very reason Richard Foster writes, "The desperate need today is not for a greater number of intelligent people or gifted people, but for deep people." Depth of personhood comes not from noise but from solitude that makes sense out of both sound and soundlessness. If one creates the space to think, he or she will find him or herself and may indeed be startled at both the brutality and beauty of self. Those who never think never know themselves and those who are never introduced to themselves can never be Christ's disciples as he intended. For, how is it possible to deny one's self in cross bearing if 'self' is an unknown personna? Perhaps the rarity of costly discipleship today (to borrow termonology from Bonhoeffer), at least in the western world, is directly connected to the scarcity of solitude.

"The Opening of Veins"

The following is from Frederick Buechner and explains the thoughts behind my blog heading:

"I think of painting and music as subcutaneous arts. They get under your skin. They may get deeper than that eventually, but it takes a while, and they get there to some extent tinged by if not diluted by the conditions under which you saw them or heard them. Writing on the other hand strikes me as intravenous. As you sit there only a few inches from a printed page, the words you read go directly into the bloodstream and go into it at full strength. More than a painting you see or the music you hear, the words you read become in the very act of reading them part of who you are, especially if they are the words of exceptionally promising writers. If there is poison in the words, you are poisoned; if there is nourishment, you are nourished; if there is beauty, you are made a little more beautiful. In Hebrew the word dabhar means both word and also deed. A word doesn't merely say something, it does something. It brings something into being. It makes something happen... As I am sure you all know, what Red Smith said was more or less this: 'Writing is really quite simple; all you have to do is sit down at your typewriter and open a vein.' From the writer's vein into the reader's vein: for better or worse a transfusion." (From, The Clown in the Belfry, 1992)

My purpose in adding my thoughts to the myriad of others available throughout cyberspace is simply to open my own veins, or provide an outlet for self-expression with the hope that my own bloodflow may enhance someone else's Godward heart beat in the process.

NHim,
Dane