Tod Bolsinger

Marathon for Malawi

For the past three years, I have been running, cycling and swimming.  Last summer, my pal Charlie and I completed Ironman Canada. It was my six triathlon and it meant the completion of my second full marathon (I ran the first one WITHOUT first swimming 1.2 miles and riding my bike 112 miles.)

The elation and camaraderie of the day has lingered these past months as I have reflected on some good lessons learned, slipped into a good season of rest, recuperation and returning to exercising like normal people (which is not all that much, honestly).

But that couldn't last, now could it?

Charlie, his brother Ted and I are already signed up for the Vineman  Half Ironman in July and we begin training in earnest on March 1.  But now something even more meaningful has come my way. And so Vineman now becomes a training day for another goal.

While speaking to the national development staff for World Vision a month ago, I was challenged by one of the staff guys to put a team together to raise money for our Nkhoma, Malawi, Africa Area Development Project by running the Chicago Marathon on October 7, 2007.  I thought and prayed about it...for about 56 seconds.

I'm in. I'm doing it.  I plunked down the money for the entry fee, will pony up for the plane flight and hotel and will pound the pavement for the next seven months.  It's going to be great.

I also put out word to some folks at our church and we have an informational meeting scheduled for next week.  It looks like somewhere between 10-20 of us are going to give it go. 

So, want to be part of something really cool?  Join us.  (You thought I was going to say "sponsor us" didn't you?)  Really you can.  Go here and register as part of our "SC Marathoners for Malawi" team.  If you live near to San Clemente we'll keep you posted on group runs and team get-to-gethers and travel plans.  If you don't, well join us anyway, sign up as part of the team, meet us in Chicago and consider yourself part of the family. We'd love to have you running with us.  We'll be the slow group in the back with big smiles knowing that we are running for a really good cause.

Can't put some marathon training into the schedule?  Then, okay.  Sponsor us. Here. We are setting a goal to raise $100,000.  I already have my first $100.  (The "first giving" button on the left works, too.)

Want to see why we would do all this?   Read here.  Or look at these pictures. or watch this short video.

Come on.  You know, you want to  do something. My friends and I are willing to do the running. We are just asking you to do what's on your heart.

Hasten Slowly

Reposting another entry from a past Lenten season to remind myself (and anyone else) of the kinds of spiritual disciplines that make for a holy Lent.

"Hurry is not of the devil; hurry is the devil."—Carl Jung

“If you must be in a hurry, then let it be according to the old adage, and hasten slowly.” --St. Vincent de Paul

Hasten slowly.  Here is a paradoxical spiritual discipline that I want you to consider practicing with me this Lenten season: Practice hastening slowly.

So, what do I mean by this?  I mean that we should pay attention when the race of life turns into the rat race.  (As Lily Tomlin said, “Even if you win the rat race, you’re still a rat.”)

We should pay attention to the difference between hastening to what is important, and hurrying after what is not.  Between hastening to hug, to care, to forgive and to serve and hurrying around frazzled, distracted and spent.  Between being busy as an outward reality and being hurried as an inner state of being. As John Ortberg has written: “Jesus was often busy but he was never hurried. Being busy is an outer condition; being hurried is a sickness of the soul.”

So, let’s consider how we add breath to our haste, how we create a rhythm for living--even when busy--that includes slow, focused, lingering moments of prayer, of attention, of love.

First, begin the day slowly…

Many of us start our days by hitting snooze.  By the time we get out of bed we are already 15 minutes late.  The rest of the day is nothing but a rush to catch up.  I have begun thinking about my day ahead.  And if it is particularly busy, starting it even more slowly.  I begin most of my days a good hour before any one else in our house wakes up.  This is my time to putter, to pray, and to ponder.  I get up, I make myself coffee, I check my email.  I then settle into my favorite chair to read, pray and doing some writing.  This slow start is the key to my whole day.  When I skip it, I spend the day rushing from one thing to another.

This idea of beginning the day slowly was reinforced for me when I started doing in endurance training for triathlons, marathons and century bike rides a few years ago.  I soon learned that longer you are going to ride or the harder you are going to run, the slower and easier you needed to begin that ride or run.  In endurance training the rule is if you want to go fast later, go slow earlier.  Build a strong base, warm up, start slowly. In many ways, that is what the group of us who fill our church's Stephen's Chapel each Friday morning in Lent are doing.  One day a week, we are coming together in a candlelit chapel, spending 30 minutes listening to music in prayerful contemplation.  And then for 30 more minutes we practice Lectio Divina together, considering the sermon text for the following Sunday.

So, here is the first thing to practice: begin the day slowly.  And let me add, even if you have to start the night before.  Start slowing down as the sun goes down.  Think of your day as starting at sun down the night before.

This is, as some of you know, the Jewish way of counting a day.  Sabbath starts on sundown and continues until the next sundown.  It is a deeply biblical way of thinking about our days.  It means that the day begins with going to sleep.  The day begins with resting.  God is the one who works all day and then stands guard all night.  Only God.  Humans have to have a rhythm of rest.  Indeed, when God became a human, Jesus slept just like the rest of us.

Psalm 121:3
He will not let you stumble and fall;
       the one who watches over you will not sleep. (NLT)

Psalm 127:2
It is useless for you to work so hard from early morning until late at night, anxiously working for food to eat; for God gives rest to his loved ones.

Dirty Foreheads, Right Minds

Dirty Foreheads, Right Minds

I am re-posting my traditional entry for Ash Wednesday today. May we all observe a holy Lent. If you are in San Clemente and would like to join us, our Ash Wednesday service is at 7 p. m.

"Teach us to realize the brevity of life, so that we may grow in wisdom." Psalm 90:12

Today, we begin Lent.  May this season of spiritual reflection and learning be used by the Spirit to so work within the Church that it may be said that in each gathering, big or small, high church or low, that the prayer of Jesus was being fulfilled: "Thy Kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven."

“Remember that you are dust and to dust you shall return.”

With these words, a small bit of ash is rubbed in the sign of the cross on the forehead of each person.  A mark of humility, a sign of mortality, an acknowledgement of repentance.

While for many protestants the idea of imposing ashes or even attending an “Ash Wednesday” service is too, well, Catholic, for them, the truth is that what we acknowledge on this first day of Lent is nothing more or nothing less than being human.

Ash Wednesday marks the beginning of Lent, a forty day period of “fasting” and spiritual attention that is intended to commemorate Jesus’ own forty day wilderness period of preparation at the beginning of his earthly ministry.  During Lent, Christians prepare for the sublime feast of Easter by spending a protracted time in the fast of Lent.

At San Clemente Presbyterian Church, we will begin Lent with a dinner together in our fellowship hall.  Then after dinner, an Ash Wednesday Service where two invitations will occur: 1) Everyone, young and old, whatever age and stage of life will be invited to come and receive the imposition of ashes, and 2) Every Christian, young and old, whatever age and stage of life, will be invited to come forth a second time and receive the Lord’s Supper.

By coupling these two moments—one a tradition, the other a sacrament—we wish to convey a clear message: the starting point for all spiritual progress, all spiritual attention, all spiritual discipline, is in the acknowledgment of our own genuine humanity and receiving God’s generous mercy.  Like two blades of a pair of scissors both are needed: humility and grace, the truth of our mortality and the gift of eternal life, remembering that our bodies were fashioned of the dust and that the God of the universe took on the same creaturely form in order to bring us to life eternal.  And in receiving both the ash and the sacraments, we complete our first act of repentance.

The focus of Ash Wednesday and Lent is repentance.  Again, many of us are confused about repentance.  Some of us think of it as “penance,” that is, atoning for our sins with acts of contrition.  But that is not repentance.  We can’t atone for what we have done and need not try.  Jesus’ work on the cross is our atonement.  Some of us think of repentance as sorrow and shame for what we have done, but that is also inaccurate.  Indeed,the bible has a different Greek word for sorrow.

Repentance is literally to “change your mind.”  In the famous words of Dallas Willard, “To reconsider your strategy for living based on the news of God’s Kingdom that is available in Jesus.” And that is what Lent is for, to reconsider your strategy for living.  To begin a new process of deep consideration and reflection about your life.  To reconsider what it means to follow Jesus, to plumb the mystery of Good Friday and Easter Sunday.  To reconsider what your strategy for living should be, based on this good news.

And it all begins with this:  Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.  You are not an angel.  You are not a mere soul or disembodied spirit. You are human, you are mortal, you are deeply dependent on the God who formed your body from the humus of the earth and breathed life into you with his kiss.  God has come to you, in Jesus, O Creature, and called you to have life eternal with him.  And so, with ash on our foreheads and the taste of bread and grape on our tongues, we begin a holy lent.

A Christian Hero Too Many Do Not Know

It would a wonderful thing if the church got behind both this film...

And this cause...

Another "President" Post

Another post for "Presidents' Weekend" but this one is from the President of Fuller Theological Seminary Richard Mouw, musing on whether Gandhi was saved and responding to a Baptist who is "damn sure" that he wasn't (pardon the expression, but pun definitely intended).

I am no universalist. I believe that refusing to put your faith in Jesus is something that imperils your soul for all eternity. There is no salvation apart from Christ. But how Jesus gets ahold of people and how he brings them into his heavenly Kingdom is surrounded–for me at least–by a lot of mystery. I’m glad the verdict on who is in and who is out is not up to me, but to the Spirit who is described by the Westminster Confession as the One who “who worketh when and where, and how he pleaseth.”

You'll want to read the whole post.

For President's Weekend

The best speech ever by an American President.

Both read the same Bible and pray to the same God, and each invokes His aid against the other. It may seem strange that any men should dare to ask a just God's assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men's faces, but let us judge not, that we be not judged. The prayers of both could not be answered. That of neither has been answered fully. The Almighty has His own purposes. "Woe unto the world because of offenses; for it must needs be that offenses come, but woe to that man by whom the offense cometh." If we shall suppose that American slavery is one of those offenses which, in the providence of God, must needs come, but which, having continued through His appointed time, He now wills to remove, and that He gives to both North and South this terrible war as the woe due to those by whom the offense came, shall we discern therein any departure from those divine attributes which the believers in a living God always ascribe to Him? Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray, that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsman's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said "the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether."   
  With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation's wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.

A New Blog from an Old Soul

Rev. Pati Toole is a fine pastor, a gifted communicator, a loving wife and mother.  She is also a courageous woman with a rare perspective on the beauty and fragility of life and this world.  Her life and ministry is about, as she says,"Embracing God's Beauty to enrich our every day lives."  It is my privilege to introduce her to the blog world.  I am her pastor and considerate a privilege to call her a friend. 

In 2004, just weeks after we had celebrated her call to and ordination at SCPC, Pati was diagnosed with an aggressive form of breast cancer.  With a husband, Jim, who is also a pastor, and two beautiful, energetic boys, Pati faced cancer like a mother bear protecting her young.  But she also allowed herself to be surrounded by, covered by, and cared for by the very people she had been called to pastor. For our congregation, Pati has become a source of wisdom, perspective, grit and passion for the life and mission of Christ in this world.   

After some considerable prodding, Pati, has started a blog "Pati Toole Unplugged."  I encourage you to read along with her raw, heartfelt reflections that come from a faithful "old" soul.

"Drop" by, read some selections and leave a comment encouraging her to keep going.  We need her voice in the church today. 

City Church of San Francisco

This weekend I am speaking for City Church of San Francisco at their All Church Retreat in the Santa Cruz mountains.  This is a most interesting church: Urban, multi-ethnic, mostly young professionals and a growing number of families.  They are affiliated with the RCA and are deeply interested in being a missional church for the city. 

I have several friends who have been part of the church who speak of it warmly and well.  I will be speaking on some material that I am looking at putting into a book in the months to come called "Heaven Here Now: What your life and your church is meant to be."

A Prophet Ponders the People

Michelangelo's "Jeremiah" was the "picture of the day" on my Google home page.  Something about the power of his version of the prophet from the Sistine Chapel tugged at my heart.

What's at stake with this church stuff...

Recent conversations that I have had with a seeker, a skeptic, an atheist, an agnostic, and a couple of people who find themselves beginning to leave the church behind reminded me of this passage from Francis Collin's, The Language of God.  Collins, director of the group of scientists who mapped the human genome, is a committed Christian who has squared off with many of his professional ilk who stand firmly against faith. (See the Time Magazine Article with him and Richard Dawkins.)

Collins writes about atheism and the enlightenment:

A more powerful force (than Enlightenment thinking and materialism) giving rise to atheism in the eighteenth century was a rebellion against the oppressive authority of the government and the church, particularly as manifested in the French Revolution.  Both the French royal family and the church leadership were seen as harsh, self-promoting, hypocritical and insensitive to the needs of the common man. Equating the organized church with God Himself, revolutionaries decided it was better to throw off both. (Collins, Language of God, 162)

More next post on why Meyer's thoughts about hospitality as doing something "for" in stead of "to" people is right in line with the  church's mission  and could, if practiced consistently  head off some of the kinds of things that Collins points back to and we can see all around us in our own culture today.