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Runaway Sheep and Straying Shepherds

Christmas Costume Ideas for (Kids and Teenagers)

Wandering lambs…
Shepherds in bathrobes with belts…
A petrified young Joseph, and a serious Mary holding an ugly baby-doll…
Three wise-men sporting amazing tape-on beards…
Little angels in white chiffon wearing tilted halos…

I love the Children’s productions at church during the Christmas season. You can’t help but smile, and when they go off script, well…that is the best part.

While parents might cringe, to me, this is the purest essence of the story of God’s incarnation. Over the years we have sanitized the story, put it on a Hallmark Card, and in many ways lost the earthiness, and chaos of how God chose to enter the human story.

Kids are honest…
Thoughts come out of their mouths without editing…
The Christmas story is worthy of unedited expression.

If you have never read the book “The Best Christmas Pageant Ever” I highly recommend you put it on your holiday reading list. It tells the story of the Herdman family (and we all know a Herdman family or two, it is probably even our own!) and their invasion of a church Christmas pageant. Here is a bit from the book:

The Herdmans are the worst kids in the history of the world. They lie, steal, smoke cigars, swear, and hit little kids. So no one is prepared when this outlaw family invades church one Sunday and decides to take over the annual Christmas pageant.

None of the Herdmans has ever heard the Christmas story before. Their interpretation of the tale — the Wise Men are a bunch of dirty spies and Herod needs a good beating — has a lot of people up in arms. But it will make this year’s pageant the most unusual anyone has seen and, just possibly, the best one ever.

In the Nativity, God enfolds Himself with humanity.

Darkness meets light…
Brutality meets mercy…
Ugliness encounters beauty…

This Christmas, may you be freed from a neat and tidy encounter with God.
This Christmas may you realize that the best way to celebrate the season is with honesty, craziness and abandonment to the unpredictable God who shows up most profoundly in a Christmas pageant where the actors have all lost the script and roll on with whatever it is their soul produces.

God smiles at moments such as these.

 

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Bedraggled, Beat-Up and Burnt Out

“Because salvation is by grace through faith, I believe that among the countless number of people standing in front of the throne and in front of the Lamb, dressed in white robes and holding palms in their hands (see Revelation 7:9), I shall see the prostitute from the Kit-Kat Ranch in Carson City, Nevada, who tearfully told me that she could find no other employment to support her two-year-old son. I shall see the woman who had an abortion and is haunted by guilt and remorse but did the best she could faced with grueling alternatives; the businessman besieged with debt who sold his integrity in a series of desperate transactions; the insecure clergyman addicted to being liked, who never challenged his people from the pulpit and longed for unconditional love; the sexually abused teen molested by his father and now selling his body on the street, who, as he falls asleep each night after his last ‘trick’, whispers the name of the unknown God he learned about in Sunday school.
‘But how?’ we ask.
Then the voice says, ‘They have washed their robes and have made them white in the blood of the Lamb.’
There they are. There *we* are – the multitude who so wanted to be faithful, who at times got defeated, soiled by life, and bested by trials, wearing the bloodied garments of life’s tribulations, but through it all clung to faith.
My friends, if this is not good news to you, you have never understood the gospel of grace.”
― Brennan Manning, The Ragamuffin Gospel: Good News for the Bedraggled, Beat-Up, and Burnt Out

ragamuffin

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25 Great Books To Read This Fall

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People ask me for good book recommendations on a regular basis. I love books. I admit, I have too many. I also admit checking books out at the library has never worked for me. For whatever reason, I need to own, to possess, to write in the books that mentor, entertain and form me. I would probably be a millionaire if I could merely check them out at my local library.

When I am asked for a recommendation, I tend to ask questions in order to find out where a particular person is at on their journey; what they are hoping the book will do for them; or what deeper work they sense God is up to in their lives. After I ponder their answers, I have multiple good ‘old friends’ whose clothing of worn, aged pages might be a potential help or new love.

As Fall approaches, and you have visions of entering into the pages of a biblio-journey that will change your life, while savoring a steaming cup of dark roast coffee on a chilly misty morning next to the warmth of your crackling fire, then read on. Here are some offerings that you may not have read.

Here is my disclaimer. I read widely. I read critically. I don’t always read books that I agree with, in fact I generally find ideas that I disagree with in almost every book. So there will be authors in my list that you might think, “Really Monty? I can’t believe you recommended that book!”

It seems we have lost the ability to discern, critique and think for ourselves. We tend to read books exclusively by people we like, or who think exactly as we do. We dislike being stretched, or heaven forbid, challenged in what we think or believe. We need to learn to read, ruminate, ponder, dialog, disagree, stretch and ultimately grow. To that end, we all need some authors who cause us to ask tougher, deeper question freeing us from tribal dominance and the status-quo.

A final disclaimer, the books are not in any order, just some titles you might not have encountered yet.

Having said that, here are some books to consider reading this Fall:

  1. Bonhoeffer, Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy. by Eric Metaxas
  2. Sabbath as Resistance: Saying No to the Culture of Now, by Walter Brueggeman
  3. Strengthening the Soul of Your Leadership: Seeking God in the Crucible of Ministry. by Ruth Haley Barton
  4. The Way of a Pilgrim (Russian Spiritual Classic). by anonymous
  5. The Normal Christian Life. by Watchman Lee
  6. The Complete Stories (FSG Classics). by Flannery O’Connor
  7. The Prodigal God. by Tim Keller
  8. Disunity in Christ: Uncovering the Hidden Forces that Keep Us Apart. by Christena Cleveland
  9. Ruthless Trust. by Brennan Manning
  10. The Singer. By Calvin Miller
  11. Tip and the Gipper: When Politics Worked . by Chris Matthews
  12. The Sparrow. by Mary Doria Russell
  13. The Cure. by Bill Thrall
  14. The Go-Giver: A Little Story About a Powerful Business Idea. by Bob Burg
  15. Tattoos on the Heart: The Power of Boundless Compassion. by Gregory Boyle
  16. What Got You Here Won’t Get You There: How Successful People Become Even More Successful.by Marshall Goldsmith
  17. How God Became King: The Forgotten Story of the Gospels. by N. T. Wright
  18. The Alchemist. by Paulo Coelho
  19. The Jesus Creed: Loving God, Loving Others. by Scot Mcknight
  20. Wisdom of the Sadhu: Teachings of Sundar Singh. by Sadhu Sundar Singh
  21. Pilgrim at Tinker Creek (Harper Perennial Modern Classics). by Annie Dillard
  22. The God of Small Things: A Novel. by Arundhati Roy
  23. Night (Night). by Elie Wiesel
  24. The Shack. by Wm. Paul Young
  25. Bonus book: Sacred Space. by MC Wright 🙂
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The Problem With Binary

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I have said it, written it, responded with it many times…”you are missing the point because you are stuck in binary thinking.” There are many reasons for binary thinking, and not all binary is wrong. However, those who have a rigid black and white view of everything very often miss the point of a conversation because life tends to find her roots in shades, mystery and truth.

My daughter Emma, wrote a post recently titled Binary that caught my eye. As I read her words I thought, “Well done Emma, I like what you are saying and the voice you are writing in.” So enjoy reading through Emma’s thoughts on Binary. You can keep up with her on http://emmaelizabethwright.wordpress.com

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Binary

What is a word that describes the middle ground between black and white? What about a word that describes the middle ground between big and small? To me, at least, the answers were obvious. Black and medium. When I thought about other opposites though like relaxed and anxious or love and hate, I couldn’t find an indisputable answer.  There are many shades of love, and many shades of hate, and no one clear place to land in the middle.

I like to think of myself as this incredibly complex person, who hovers over the median lines of issues and debates. I like to think that politically “I’m a moderate,” and that I don’t have brown hair, but I also don’t have red hair, so it must be somewhere in the middle. (Which I call auburn). I like to believe that I am a sweet person, but that I am also intimidating and commanding to appropriately suit the situation. Yet, I like to think of Mother Theresa as a good person. I also like to think of her as a Christian. I like to think of her as a woman. For some reason, I do not like to think of her as not a perfect representation of a pair of opposites. In my mind she isn’t a good person who could potentially struggle with something, she is strictly good. Its not just her that I do this for, though. For example,  Ted Bundy is evil. My dentist is nice. The lady behind me in line is impatient, and the barista at Starbucks is bubbly. I polarize people’s traits and then define them, which made me realize that perhaps people do the same to me. I got quite afraid of the reality that I am I able to be so easily boiled down to concrete, binary elements.

Thinking in binary terms can cause you to manipulate, incorrectly define, and limit yourselves and others. It then provides the increasing opportunity to fail and the inability to meet expectations. It is obviously detrimental to ourselves to think like this, but it also can cause damage to those who care about us who just cant jump through our hoops.

It frustrates me when people think that I am so easy to figure out. I’m not. I am not black, and I am not white. I am not simple and easy to define. Trying to explain me will make you miss out on getting to know the actual me. By limiting me to your schema and stereotypes, you chose the me that you get to know, and you miss out on who I really am. People don’t crave to be defined, I believe that they seek to be understood. I don’t want someone who can tell me that I tend to overreact, I want someone who will look at my overreaction and understand certain things make me short tempered. When you think of me in binary terms, you can also manipulate me into something I’m not. You can make me be better than I actually am, or much worse. Either way I am set up for failure. If it is decided I am perfect, then the disappointments will pour in because I’m flawed and I will undeniably fail you. If you think negatively towards me, then I could fall into a perpetual cycle of trying to please and prove myself when it is already settled in your mind that I am concretely bad.

This happens to me, but I engage in the cycle and I do it to others. He is a good guy, or a bad guy. I like them, or I don’t. When I have made my decision, it is made and it would take much earth shaking to make me change. I put people into the perpetual pleasing cycles by having higher than possible standards. By trying to define other human’s actions, I have limited them as people, and made the environmental context the sole reflection of their personality. I have also decided to only see the good in people and ignored the pain and hurt that they cause in my life. I am beginning to see the beauty in the gray, though. I am beginning to see the beauty in saying things like, he is unkind when he needs to feel guarded, instead of  just labeling him mean. I am beginning to see the beauty in the opportunity the middle ground gives me when I am getting to know people.

I challenge you to also lessen how much you think in binary terms.

emma