Tod Bolsinger

Tasting Grace

“People need wild places.  Whether or not we think we do, we do.  We need to be able to taste grace and know once again that we desire it.  We need to experience a landscape that is timeless, whose agenda moves at the pace of speciation and glaciers.  To be surrounded by a singing, mating, howling commotion of other species, all of which love their lives as much as we do, and none of which could possibly care less about our economic status or our running daily calendar.  Wilderness puts us in our place.  It reminds us that our plans are small and somewhat absurd.  It reminds us why, in those cases in which our plans might influence future generations we ought to choose carefully.  Looking out on a clean plank of planet earth, we can get shaken right down to the bone by the bronze-eyed possibility of lives that are not our own.” 

(Barbara Kingsolver, cited in Brady and Neuzil, A Spiritual Field Guide: Meditations for the Outdoors, 143.)

“We need to be able to taste grace and know once again that we desire it.”

Tasting Grace…
•    My daughter so excited about our RV trip that she made me sleep out in the RV with her, the night before we left home.

•    Seeing my children with their grandmother and great-grandmother all together.  Four generations all in one place telling stories together.

•    Get up early with Charlie to do another half-ironman even though we haven’t trained nearly enough this past year.

•    Riding my bike through 50 miles of vineyards lined with coastal redwoods.

•    Running 13 miles with a new friend who is my age and doing a half-Ironman to celebrate surviving a heart attack.

•    Sipping cocktails in front of our RV with friends both old and new while the kids play track ball on a meadow.

•    Driving up Highway 1 with my family, listening to hymns with tears in my eyes as I take in the beauty of the landscape. 

•    Searching for sea glass and old shells on a windswept beach.

•    Looking for geocaches with my kids, a GPS scavenger that led us to see sea lions, unworn trails and silly treasure that was more fun than gold.

•    Seeing deer in the morning, huge Roosevelt Elk on the side of the road.

•    Swimming in three different rivers.

•    Finding wild blackberries and making a huge dutch-oven cobbler.

•    Finding two huge jump rocks (20-30 feet?) and watching the kids leap off the top scared, thrilled and proud as the splashed into the gin-clear water.

•    Walking through a grove of old-growth redwoods that made a soaring cathedral all around us and a soft path under our feet.

•    Driving beautiful roads and exploring, brand new territory in my home state.

•    Exploring the Oregon Caves, 250 feet under ground.

•    Camping in beautiful places, eating good, hearty meals cooked over an open fire and playing games, singing songs, telling stories and looking at stars until late in the night with our best friends.

•    Dutch-oven cinnamon rolls.

•    Campfire lattes made in the early morning over a campfire.

•    Fishing with Brooks on Manzanita Lake as the sun goes down.

•    Exploring Sequoia Trees and looking for bears with Beth and Ali.

•    Not one email in almost two weeks…

“We need to be able to taste grace and know once again that we desire it.”

I spy something green…”

My daughter Ali was asked by one of our church staff what she’d seen on vacation.  She answered, “Trees.”  She wasn’t complaining, at all.  She said that it reminded her of “Brother Bear”, an animated movie where two Moose voiced by “Bob and Doug Mackenzie” play a game of “I spy” through the Alaskan Wilderness as they float down a river. 

“I spy something green.”   
“Tree”
“I spy something brown.”   
“Tree”
“I spy something large.”   
“Tree”
“I spy something tall.”   
“Tree.”
“I spy something..”
“Tree”
“I spy..”
“Tree.”
“Man, you are good at this.”

Our 2007 RV trip has been wondrously, wonderfully about trees.  Old oaks, stately pines, arching firs, soaring coastal redwoods, and massive Sequoias. 

Wendell Berry tells of walking through a grove of trees:

“There is a thought repeating itself in my mind: This is a great Work.  This is a great Work.  It occurs to me that my head has gone to talking religion, that it is going ahead more or less on its own, assenting to the Creation, finding it good, in the spirit of the first chapter of Genesis.  For no matter the age or the hour, I am celebrating the morning of the Seventh day, I assent to my mind’s assent.  It is a great Work—begun in the beginning, carried on until now, to be carried on, not by such process as men make or understand, but by ‘the kind of intelligence that enables grass seed to grow grass; the cherry stone to make cherries.’” 

(Wendell Barry, cited in Brady and Neuzil, A Spiritual Field Guide: Meditations for the Outdoors, 48)

Vacating with a purpose...

I wonderfully, wondrously dropped off the treadmill of living and entered into the blissful space called vacation.  Two families, two RVs and a lot of tooling through beautiful terrain has been the order of the past two weeks. Past years led me to blog on the positive impact that vacations, done purposely, can have on family life.

These kinds of trips do get me thinking about what's important in life.  I'll share some posts (now that I have internet access for a bit) and then we'll see how this most recent adventure leads to other insights...or not.

Just some of the runners...

While I am off on vacation for two weeks, I am going to leave up this picture and a link to our San Clemente Presbyterian Church Marathon for Malawi Team.  This previous post will tell you all about us.

And this is where you can go to sponsor one of the runners. 

I'll be back after the first week of August rested, refreshed and ready to get back to the church and the blog.

Tod

"See How They Love..."

In a recent editorial about the growing challenge to publicly state a conviction about biblical sexual ethics without being considered "intolerant", Christianity Today offers this historical tidbit to consider in terms of strategy.

Emperor Julian the Apostate (361-363) complained that Christians were impious—they rejected Roman gods—but worse than that, they undercut reliance on the empire. They "not only feed their own poor, but ours also," he wrote. "See their love feasts and their tables spread for the indigent. Such practice is common among them and causes a contempt for our gods."

Julian complained that Christians were demonstrating something better than what the empire had to offer. Facing mockery and lies, early Christians didn't back down from the beliefs and practices that set them apart from their neighbors.

Christians feed the poor for the same reason they reject sex outside heterosexual marriage. Following biblical teachings, we love our neighbors and don't want to see them enslaved to poverty or broken sexuality. It's that love and compassion that sent Jesus to the Cross.

Still not too late for birthday presents

I received a birthday present Friday.  It was really great.  Just what I wanted.  I was thrilled...and surprised, too.

You see, I turned 43 on March 8. That is almost half a year ago.  But my sweet sister-in-law and her family sent in a contribution to support my marathoning for Malawi.  Which, as I said, was just what I wanted for my birthday. 

Currently, our team of 20 runners (give or take a couple as we await what injuries will do to them) is enjoying getting together for long runs on Saturday mornings (this morning's run was 11 miles) and then on some days, eating breakfast together. We always start with a prayer together that God would keep us thinking about why we are running.  And then we run. 

Doing this Marathoning "for" something means both running the miles and raising money.  And most of us are trying to get more earnest about both right about now. 

So far, I am a bit over 25% toward my goal of raising $10,000. 

Feel free to send "me" a birthday present, if you like.  It's really not too late and it will actually be an even bigger gift to some kids in Malawi than it is even to me.

Bringing Africa to you.

Readers of this blog know of my experiences in traveling to Malawi, Africa. It was a life-changing experience for me and my son, as well as the beginning of a larger partnership with Y-Malawi and World Vision for our church.   We have now sent three teams and committed over $100,000 seed money and have over 350 children being sponsored in Nkhoma, Malawi.

Even more, a group from our church are even running the Chicago Marathon to raise money for our Malawi Ministry through World Vision.  (To get info on sponsoring our team, click here.)

But even many those of us with great passion for the plight of our brothers and sisters will find it hard to travel to Africa.  So, between today and Wednesday, July 18, our church is hosting the Aids Experience from World Vision. The local paper ran a front page story and people from the community our joining other churches and our own church Community going through the exhibit. It takes about 20 minutes and it immerses you in the life of one person: a young woman, a child, a boy, and then tells you of both the heartache of a continent and the hope of Christ that is being offered.

If you are anywhere near San Clemente in the next few days, please just drop in.  It is not the same as traveling to Africa and meeting the people, but it may almost touch your heart as much.

Why the Church?

I am off tomorrow afternoon to Denver Seminary to teach a Doctor of Ministry class in Interpersonal and Corporate Spiritual Formation.  I am looking forward to spending a week with pastors talking about forming the kinds of Christian Communities that form true Christians.  While my students will be writing reflections on several books and incorporating our discussions into case study projects, I want to reflect on my time with the pastors here publicly.  I'll prime the pump with a few quotes from various writings and excerpts of my own work that stimulated my interest in the church as a "transforming communion."   This has and remains the center of my life's calling and it is a joy to spend some time with some kindred souls caught up in this most important discussion. I'll begin with two  excerpts.  A pithy one from Bill Hybels, that is far more disputed today than ever, and then an excerpt from my book that certainly puts my cards on the table.

"The local church is the hope of the world."  (Bill Hybels)

For most Christians, the local church is usually regarded as nothing more than a personally helpful but basically benign reality.  Oh, sure, we honor the Church the way we honor our Mother’s on Mother’s Day or Veteran’s on Veteran’s day—because we have some genuine affection and mostly because we think it is the right thing to do.  The more traditional of us, may even use exalted language in declaring it a "means of grace."  But most often we think of the Church as nothing more than an optional "strategy" or a "system" for local evangelistic efforts, social change, or a dispenser of resources to help the individual on his or her Christian journey.  Churches are offered like different shops are offered at a mall. Indeed, the largest churches offer themselves as a kind of spiritual mall in itself, bidding the seeker: Come here and choose from our wide array of Christian classes, teachings, activities, that which you need to live out your individual Christian life. 

In this model the church is a repository of spiritual goods that assist the individual Christian. It is a vendor of religious services.  It is The Home Depot for the spiritual do-it-yourselfer who wants to build a Christian home. 

But that is not the Church of the first century.  The Church of the first century is “a people.”  And the transformed and transforming quality of “the people” serving as the flesh and blood witness to a life-transforming God is the point. As 1 Peter 2:9-10 says:

"You are a chosen people. You are a kingdom of priests, God's holy nation, his very own possession. This is so you can show others the goodness of God, for he called you out of the darkness into his wonderful life. 

        Once you were not a people;
        now you are the people of God.
        Once you received none of God's mercy;
        now you have received mercy."  (NLT)

This is what the Bible teaches: The Church is God's incarnation today.  The Church is Jesus' body on earth.  The Church is the temple of the Spirit. The Church is not a helpful thing for my individual spiritual journey.  The Church is the journey.  The Church is not a collection of “soul-winners” all seeking to tell unbelievers “the Way” to God.  The Church is the Way.  To be part of the Church is to be part of God—to be part of God’s Communion and to be part of God’s ministry.  To belong to the people of God is to enjoy relationship with God and live out the purposes of God.   This is why the Church is the only true means to be transformed into the likeness of God.  (From, It Takes a Church to Raise a Christian)

The local church as "hope of the world"?
The church as the "only true means of being transformed into the likeness of God"?

What do you think?

Happy 4th of July

My apologies to all of you for the unexpected month off of blogging.  Lots of excuses, mostly "the dog ate my homework" kind.  But I'll be back at it again.

Since today is the 4th of July, I'll refrain from posting anything of substance except to say that once again I am grateful to live in this "land of the free."

And to my pals at Camp Pendleton and other places that are serving to keep it free, like Todd, Jon, Ralph, Brad, Stew, Agur, Aaron, Jeff and the rest...Thanks especially.