Week 4

During orientation we have examined a different spiritual discipline
every Tuesday and Thursday. Thursday's topic was solitude. Needless to
say, after living in a house with 15 people for two and a half weeks, I
was ready to get back to the basics, which for me is being alone in a
large city.

A good friend of mine once said that there is
hardly anything more rewarding then being connected or "in touch" with
one's self. For 6 months earlier this year, I had the opportunity to
practice this discipline nearly every day. Living in a cabin on the
Puget Sound near Seattle, WA, I found a connection with myself and God
through nature. I tried to explain it to the Radical Journey group,
only to feel glum at my failure to express the experience in words.
That's probably the only negative part of the experience, the lonely
feeling that comes when you realize that solitude can't be shared, not
even through mutual understanding, because the experience is personal
to the point of being bittersweet.

But sweet it was. It didn't matter how much TV I watched, how much I read the Bible, how much I surfed the internet.
None of that had any affect on me simply being there, surrounded by
nature. Bald eagles and seals outside my window were reminders of this,
filling me with a new and euphoric freedom and zest for life.

Also, it was in the cabin that I decided to come here to Radical Journey. I
always have to thank my friend Katie for the phone conversation that
caused me to realize what I wanted and needed from the next step of
life. Challenge, travel, community, putting selfish ambition on hold.
It was in the harmonic silence of the cabin where I determined that
becoming a baseball announcer would have been empty. Certainly there
was something else, something very different, a key piece of my own
puzzle that couldn't be traded for all the money in the world.

I had been missing solitude. Between moving out of the cabin on July 31st
and
last Thursday, there were few moments of alone time outside of my cross
country road trip (in a car and in cheap motels, which isn't exactly
high end solitude). Having lost a bit of mycenteredness
through all the transitioning, I fondly relived what it was like to put
on my favorite jacket and jump on a train to explore a city. I took the
El to Division St and walked several blocks until I reached Lake
Michigan. Located there is Oak Street Beach Park, a boardwalk complete
with out-of-place palm trees and a fantastic view of the Hancock Tower.


I strolled along as the waves smacked against the man-made
wall. I reached the sandy beach. I stood and gazed at the dark evening
water and let the wind blow. In a sense I was back in Washington, just
me and the water. It was all I needed to get back what had been fading,
a strong and positive sense of myself. There was power in hearing the
waves come in, just as there had been as I drifted off to sleep in
Seattle.

There are so many people that would wonder why
spending all that time alone over the past two years was a good thing.
I'm fortunate that the only opinion that matters is my own.

Our guest speaker today and tomorrow is James Kraybill of Elkhart, IN. Kraybill
is a veteran missionary who owns a staunch Mennonite viewpoint. He
manages to hang on to traditional beliefs while always keeping an eye
on potential problems that the church may encounter in this unsettled
world. While I agree with him on many points, I am tempted to question
how vitally immovable his stances actually are.

For example, Kraybill cites 4 Biblical texts which he believes capture the 4 critical elements of the Christian faith. The first text, Colossians
1: 17-20, contains the cosmic notion that God created the world and
rules all things. Secondly, Romans 5:1 speaks on the notion of personal
faith being peace with God and ourselves. Ephesians 2:13-18 focuses on
the social aspect of community and peace with others. Finally, 2
Corinthians 5: 17-20 asserts the importance of the church as a model
and its members as messengers. Cosmic, personal, social, church.
According to Kraybill, "This is what God is doing."

I have a problem with the assertion that these 4 points sum up what God is
doing. At this point in my life, I am not seeing eye to eye with anyone
who attempts to sum up what God is doing in a balanced, easy to
understand diagram. I have a lot of respect for Dr.Kraybill , his
experiences and the well-constructed theology that it has obviously
taken him years to construct. But this assertion so fully contradicts
my current personal faith outlook.

I'm simply trying to separate what I believe from what I was taught.

God as a creator, a God to have a personal relationship with, to show us
the way of peace with others, to go to church and worship and to go out
into the world to preach about. This pretty much sums up everything
I've ever been taught about God. So the very personal issue for me has
little to do with how much of this theology is actually right; it has
more to do with the attitude that accompanies seeing God as a mystery
that we can never fully understand versus the attitude that accompanies
summarizing God's purpose in 4 points.

Beyond this basic question of theological boldness, Kraybill
also warrants some questioning on the fact that all 4 texts are taken
from Paul. If we interpret our understanding of what God is doing
exclusively from Paul, then in my mind Paul becomes almost equal to
Jesus in our faith because he provides the entire interpretation of
what God is doing through Jesus. It's on the interpretation of one man,
according to Kraybill , that our interpretation of God is built. Paul
was a brilliant man, there is no doubt about it. But he was only a man,
and he lived 2,000 years ago. Would it be rebellious to consider other
opinions? Are we afraid to lose sight of Paul?

On that vein, Kraybill argues that one of the biggest challenges for today's church is
countering the argument that the Bible is outdated and has beensuperceded. Kraybill talked about how "other stuff is circulating around" because of those
who believe that the Bible doesn't relate to our reality and is
unintelligible to 21st century people. I think an interesting question
to ask would be why Paul's interpretation is necessarily better than
any 21st century interpretation. Paul worked soon after Jesus' death
and was appointed by God, according to the Bible. I'd simply question
by what authority we rule out what anyone else has to say. Paul's?