Tod Bolsinger

Basking and Connecting at Laity Lodge

My wife, Beth, says that I need to continually work on my ability to "bask".  Beth thinks that basking is a spiritual discipline and an art form (and admittedly, no one I know basks with as much grace and ease as my sweet love.)

I am not a basker. The motto on my running ID says "Pack a lot of life into living." But because of Beth I am learning to find times and place to slow down, to linger, to do nothing but take in the sunshine of God and warmth of the people of around me.

I just returned from one of my favorite basking spots, Laity Lodge.  I have written about Laity Lodge before, but every time I visit I am reminded of why I love the place.   There is no hype, just substance. It is a solid, peaceful, enduring place that exudes both welcome and possibility.  When I go there I know that I am going to meet interesting people who are like-souled though vastly different than me on the surface.  Mostly, they are Texans, but this Californian (whom I am told was the first person to ever speak at Laity Lodge in flip-flops) is always welcomed with a hug and a joke and usually a prayer of gratitude to God for my very presence (can you even imagine?)

I always meet people from around the country who live such different lives than I do, but are as committed to seeking the Kingdom in their little worlds as I am to mine.  I met Evelyn from Compton, CA.  (She was along with my family the only other Californian.)  She rode the bus across the southwest to come to Laity Lodge the first time and has returned eight times. At communion, she reminded us all that the heavenly banquet would look more like a Laity Lodge communion service than most of our 11 AM Sunday Services.

I spent considerable amount of time with my co-speaker Lauren Winner, a southern-east-coaster whose intellect and cool quotient can only make me more popular with the emergent crowd just because I now know her.

I also met LL Barkat, a writer from New York who over a delightful lunch graciously gave me a copy of her new book (which Beth has taken from me to enjoy in her moments of basking) and recommended several others on Jewish theology of the wilderness (which I am taking to Alaska with me next week for some vacation and more hands-on musing on community, friendship and creation.)

And I spent a lot of time just hanging out and talking late into the night with friends old and new.  Two afternoons, Mark Roberts and I hiked the hill country of Texas through the shade of the cedar trees, and two evenings Mark and Linda and Beth and I sat under starry skies catching up on our lives.  I spent lunch with Howard and Barbara Dan Butt, and an evening with David and Deborah Rogers and a lot of time swimming in the Rio Frio (which wasn't, really, by the way.)  My kids hung out with the Roberts and Rogers kids and explored the place like they were a gang of Tom Sawyers with nothing to do but let their imaginations lead them.  And we ate a lot of homemade bread.

On my first visit to Laity Lodge a couple of years back, I took a morning run up to Circle Bluff to take in the view when I was joined by Grammy winner Ashley Cleveland on a morning walk. She said, "The veil is very thin here, isn't it?"  I nodded in agreement, and we walked a bit together, a new friendship born.

Maybe the key to basking is finding a place where the presence of God shines through the beauty of nature and the warmth of people so clearly that you continually want to linger...and return.

(LL encouraged Jim Martin and Marcus Goodyear and I to write about Laity Lodge in each other's blogs so that others will discover what we have. A fitting, generous, suggestion, I'd say.  After all that I have received there, sharing it seems most appropriate. And as I noted above, I am heading off to Alaska with my family and some friends for a couple of weeks of vacation.  I am praying for one glimpse of Denali, a safe encounter with a grizzly bear and some big fish on the end of my fly line while I do some serious basking...)

(Added: This is a nice photographic, basking-like introduction to Laity Lodge. Thanks Mark D. Roberts)

Hang Out For Christ's Sake

On this Thanksgiving Eve (our church celebrates Thanksgiving Eve with a cool family service, so even the "Eve" seems like a holiday), I want to bring this series on the Spiritual Discipline of Hanging Out to a close by summarizing a few observations for us to consider. 

First, you can’t hang in a hurry.

The problem with everyday life is that we spend so much of it racing to “real life.”  How many of us rarely have breakfast with our kids, or a nightly dinner together as a family, let alone a good lunch, long walk or deep, uninterrupted conversation with a friend?  Does this sound at all familiar? We begin the day after hitting the snooze on the alarm twice so that when we finally get out of bed, we are already late.  We jump in the shower, grab breakfast on the go, race to work, rapidly check our emails, (scan our favorite weblogs) and go headlong all day from one assignment to another, one meeting to another, until we race back home, returning phone calls while negotiating rush hour traffic.  Once home, we are actually not.  There are all manner of soccer practices, violin lessons, (even church events!) to which the kids need shuttling.  Then we squeeze in a meal while helping with homework, get the kids to bed, watch some TV until we doze off in the chair and stumble to bed.  And then it seems like only a minute when the alarm sounds again. Everyday life is lived in a hurry. 

What hanging out requires is slowness. It requires what my Italian cousins call “la dulce de far niente”  (the sweetness of doing nothing).  It requires “white space” (as one comment on this blog called it), “margin” (as Richard Swensen of his book of the same name calls it), or “basking” (as my wife calls it). 

As I finish up this post, I am doing so in a small condo in my favorite ski town of Mammoth Lakes, CA.  While I love the thrill of skiing, my wife is teaching me to love the way that “going skiing” in its entirety (including both the beauty of the mountains and all the hassles of snow chains, rental lines and getting the kids hands into mittens and feet into boots) gives us the time as a family to do nothing but spend time together.  While I am prone to charging into the day to rack up as much vertical feet as possible, she reminds me to “bask,” to slow down, to enjoy the time hanging out together in a beautiful place.

Second, hanging out and commuting don't mix well.

Hanging out is best done with those with whom we can hang regularly.  When we have to travel more than a few minutes to hang out with someone we won’t.  (Instead it turns into an “appointment.” ) We need to have people in our lives on whom we can “drop in” or “stop by.”  This is a lesson that I learned from hanging around a south Hollywood barrio for a few years.  For these folks, their neighborhood was everything.  For what were admittedly economic reasons (at least in part) the people who lived there went to great lengths to have as many friends and extended family members live in the same neighborhood.  They looked after each, helped each other and insured that their little neighborhood was their refuge in the middle of the mean streets of the city.  (Of course, there were lots of dark parts, like gangs, poverty and crime that were rampant in this neighborhood, but what stood out in the darkness was the strength of care they exhibited toward each other. 

This is also why neighbors and neighborhood churches are more important than ever. For ten years I worked at a large “commuter” church.  We had over 4000 members, a television ministry, a world-wide reputation and some genuinely great ministry.  I feel privileged to have been a small part of that great church. But, as church leadership, we were also proud of the fact that people drove up to an hour just to attend our services.  We often commented to each other that “we must be doing something right because people drive by ten other churches to come to our church.” 

Over the years, however, I became disenchanted with the commuter church.  The vast majority of people were only involved on Sunday mornings.  It was difficult to get people to invest any time in any activity, service or even relationship during the week.  It took literally years to find friends and build friendships.  And it was difficult to invite your neighbors to join you for church if it was a long commute every Sunday to get to worship. 

Today, I am pastor of a deliberately “local” church.  Our focus of our ministry is roughly a ten mile circle of local communities and we work very hard to be a neighborhood church.  We encourage those who live a bit further away to instead invest in and be part of a church that is conveniently close to home.  Hanging takes proximity.

Lastly, for hanging out to be a true spiritual discipline, you have to invest more than just your time.

You have to invest more and more of yourself.  I know far too many buddies (both male and female) who golf, ride bikes, take walks, go on play dates with the kids and even spend time in small groups who never get beyond small talk to the larger issues of life and faith.  I am always amazed that a marriage can fall apart and the couple’s closest friends feel as if they can’t say or do anything about it.  I know too many people who have lots of work friends that they “hang out” with at the office everyday but can’t share a health concern.  We build bridges of relationship but we never cross them to a deeper friendship, moal accountability and a genuine spiritual partnership.  Of course, doing this will take not only time, but vulnerability, not only hanging out with another person, but also hanging out with God in prayer for the sake of others in our lives.  The result of our hanging out is that we who hang become more like Christ through the hanging.  Or to put it another way, if we truly want our lives to be different, we need to hang out for Christ’s sake.

Happy Thanksgiving, Blog-world friends.  I am taking a few days off from blogging to run a Turkey Trot 10 K, eat with friends and kick off the first Sunday of Advent.  I'll write again on Monday.

Hanging with Henri in the Barrio

When we honestly ask ourselves which person in our lives means the most to us, we often find that it is those who, instead of giving advice, solutions, or cures, have chosen rather to share our pain and touch our wounds with a warm and tender hand.
Henri Nouwen

Any of my old friends who have sat through my teaching have undoubtedly heard me cite Father Henri Nouwen numerous times.  For about ten years, he was my "literary spiritual director."  I read virtually every book that he wrote and he greatly influenced my spiritual life and my vocation as a pastor.  Long before I understood that Christian community is the center of Christian spirituality, I experienced and became convinced that "presence ministry" is the heart of all ministry.  That is that all ministry is meant to replicate and reflect the ministry of the God who "became a human and hung out with us." (John 1:14, my loose translation.)

For this life and ministry transforming lesson, Henri Nouwen was the lecturer, and a latino barrio in south Hollywood, CA was the lab class filled with experts. 

In the late 1980's I was part of a great group of people who started a residence discipleship program in a poor, latino neighborhood 3 geographic miles (and cultural and economic light years) away from the mostly anglo, middle and upper class First Presbyterian Church of Hollywood.  As the College Director of FPCH, my charge was to create a internship for collegians and graduates who wanted to live in Christian community, grow in faith, and minister in this neighborhood.  That ministry became the City Dwellers ministry of Hollywood Urban Project.  And every year since then a small group of young adults have moved into the neighborhood and offered themselves by their very presence as ministers and friends.

It's the "by their very presence" part that we had to learn the hard way early on.  We started with big hopes and dreams for PROGRAMS--strong, solid, consistent, organized, well-funded programs.  We ended up realizing that programs are always remedial steps on the way to true ministry that is PRESENCE.

Think about that for a moment.  When does a church need small groups?  When they DON'T have strong informal networks of Christian relationships.  When does a church need to start the Stephen Ministries program?  When it DOESN'T have mature, caring Christians who are making themselves available to stand alongside people in their times of pain?  When does a church need a strong Sunday School program?  When Christian parents AREN'T equipped or mature enough in faith to teach their own children the faith?

Now, in saying that programs are remedial, I am not criticizing them (indeed, at my church we have all of the above mentioned programs and more!).  What I am saying is that we use programs to move into areas where the Christian community hasn't developed the "natural" ability to care for each other through their faithful, stable, committed Christian presence.  (And in some ways when the church body as a community learns to be a genuine community that is present to each other in all ways that build and embody faith, some of our programs will go by the wayside.)

For all the trials, foibles and brokenness that was evident in the barrio neighborhood, this "presence ministry" was a profound strength.  These families new how to be present, to be with each other in good times and (a lot of) bad. They knew how to "hang."

Through the writings of Henri Nouwen (whose book Gracias! I link to at right) my eyes were opened to the reality that I experienced.  I don't want a program as much as a presence.  I don't want to go on a Men's Retreat as much as I want and need real friendship with men.  I don't need a "spiritual direction program" as much as I need a genuine, wise Christian friend who is willing to hang out with me and let me hang out with him.

(It's worth saying that, I never actually lived in the neighborhood.  My call was to be on the church side of things pastoring the team members and continually calling the church to join in this presence ministry.  My wife Beth and a number of those who are now my colleagues in ministry wer part the early teams.   But a bunch of my friends like Nancy Walker-Litteken and Jay and Julie Sanders truly embodied this presence ministry.  I just learned how to talk and write about it so that middle and upper class Christians could better learn the lessons from our latino brothers and sisters.  Which is where I will pick up in the next post.)

Bisy Backson disease

In chapter 5 of the simple classic The Tao of Pooh, Rabbit is in the middle of one of his "busy days" and feeling more "captainish" all the time.  This is for a Rabbit a very good day.  A day in which he has important things to attend to, which led him to "feeling more important every minute."  In the middle of all this important, busy rushing around, he came to Christopher Robin's house where there was posted a notice.

Gon out
Backson
Bisy
Backson.
      C. R.

And at that moment, Rabbit felt as if "his morning had gotten spoilt."  Because Rabbit felt very important when he was rushing around until he ran into a note that told him that Christopher Robin was even busier than he was.  (Let me translate Christopher Robin's note for those of you who can't read elementary school writing "Gone Out. Back Soon. Busy.  Back Soon.")

And that ruined Rabbit's day. 

As I have mused the past few days on the Spiritual Discipline of hanging out, I have been preparing to gently tread on the most sacred ground for most of us: our busyness.   Bottom line: we don't hang out with each other--even though we want it, even though we need it, even though it's the best way to live and ultimately most satisfying, even though it is exactly what God did with us and what we are going to be celebrating this coming advent ("God became human and hung out with us." John 1:14 my translation)--because we are too busy and we like it that way. 

When we are busy we feel important.  Some of us are never happier than the exact moment when we are rushing down the freeway with our cell phones in our ears, rushing from one appointment, talking to one client while late for another appointment, and the call-waiting buzzes in with another call from your kids.

Because in our heart of hearts we believe that a full calendar is a full life.

Friends, this is the lie of our age and it is eroding our souls. So many of the friends that I hang out with have "Bisy Backson" disease. (Oh heck, I have it too.) Our busyness and how it makes us feel important is keeping us from what really is important. (Like time to pray, to develop friendships where we can talk about our souls, time to serve others and time grow in faith by eating pie.)   

John Ortberg has written about asking a wise man the question, "What must I do to remain spiritually healthy?"  The man answered, "Ruthlessly eliminate hurry from your lives."

This is a lesson that is at the heart of the spiritual discipline of hanging out. Interestingly enough my first teachers of this lesson were a Catholic priest and a latino barrio.  But more on that tomorrow.

The Ricardos, The Merzes and Pie

Remember the old “I Love Lucy” show where Lucy and Ricky’s best friends live just down the hall in the same apartment building?  Remember how when the Ricardos moved to Connecticut, the Mertzes moved with them.  (Oh you don't?  You are young.  Don't you have cable?  You've never seen "Nick at Nite"?  But, I digress.)

For most of my adult years, living in the city, I was always jealous of people who had their best friends as next door neighbors.  Which is one of the reasons that I am so glad that Beth and I were called to San Clemente.  I have great neighbors and a couple of my best friends are only a couple of blocks away.  But I realize that this idyllic situation isn't normal and that it is even hard for us to have time to hang with the people who are best for our souls.

While the purpose of the posts in this series has been to encourage the “spiritual discipline of proximity”, or (hanging out with people for Christ’s sake), I have been weaving through them some perspectives on camps and retreats.  Partly because I began this series of posts immediately after returning from a men’s retreat where I spoke on Showtime, but also because while there I was struck again that what most of the men most enjoyed was just spending time with each other.  They ate long meals, they talked in small groups, they stayed up late at night, they hiked and played horsehoes, they sat around the fire reading the paper and talking sports, they just hung out.  (Oh, they did listen to a speaker and sang together in worship, but that seemed mostly like grist for the conversational mill.) 

And what I have learned along the way is that while the favorite place for most of us to hang out is at home (we all love our own bed, our favorite chair, etc.), it is exactly when we are in the warp and woof of home life that we spend the least amount of time with people developing the kinds of friendships where we share and explore our souls.  Which is often what we do best “on retreats.”

This is why, oddly enough, we actually need “time away” to develop the abilities and even aptitudes for true deep fellowship.  In other words, the spiritual discipline of hanging out is (oddly enough) hardest to practice “at home.”  For so many of us, our homes are actually quite disconnected from each other.  We don’t often live near our best friends.  Our neighbors are those nearest to us, but our friends are often a long way away.  Even those of us who are blessed to live in great smaller towns have a more difficult time even seeing the people whom we most benefit from hanging with every day. 

At our church we have developed an entire midweek program and ethos around hanging out together one night a week called Big Wednesday.  It’s kind of like a Wednesday evening retreat every week.  We have programs for the kids and teenagers, classes of all kinds from exercise to Spanish lessons to parenting classes to Bible studies, we have a great contemplative worship service, but mostly we have pie.  We encourage everyone in our church to come, have dinner, attend a class or worship service and then hang out and have pie. 

For those who do, it is as if we have a brief moment of being the Ricardos and the Mertzes.  We are neighbors hanging out together, having conversations around tables about the things in our lives or the lessons we have just learned that our forming our souls. 

That is, if we take the time to stop running long enough to eat a piece of pie.  Which is what I will address tomorrow.

The Way Men (and Women) Hang.

In one of my favorite movie scenes, Billy Crystal and Rob Reiner play best friends who are having a hard heart-to-heart conversation.  Reiner tells Crystal that he’s getting a divorce. Crystal is a caring friend who genuinely feels sad.  He says all the right things and tries to cheer his friend up.  But while they talk they both stare straight ahead, their eyes never connecting.  You see, Reiner tells his friend his bad news while they are sitting in Giants Stadium surrounded by 60,000 screaming fans watching a pro football game and doing the wave. 

Ask any guy you know and he will tell you that this is the way men talk.  C. S. Lewis even described the difference in male and female friendship in similar way.  He said that while women become friends talking face to face, men become friends while talking over a chess board.

In my own life this had proved to be truer than I want to admit.  As a pastor, I am actually pretty good and talking face to face.  I literally spend all day every day that I am not studying, writing or praying, talking with people face to face.  But my closest friendships have usually been formed by talking while we looked at some thing in common: hiking on trails, riding on bikes, fishing in streams, sitting on ski lifts, running on roads, sitting next to someone while watching a ball game, or even driving to one of these experiences.  Some of the very best spiritual conversations that have most formed my soul occurred with a genuine “spiritual friend” who I wasn’t even looking at.

For a long time, I have thought that this was a particularly male trait.  But, my wife swears that women who become friends later in life (like after college when you don't have the time for all-night gab fests) use this same “looking at something in common” technique as men.  Whether it is talking while watching their kids at the playground or play sports or taking walks.  Women today also use this same technique.  (She should know, she’s a therapist.  But IMHO, a lot more women “go out to lunch” with their friends then men do.  And when we “do lunch” it’s usually about business things not friendships.)

All of this is meant to be another way of talking about the kind of hanging out that we need to do more often.  As a pastor, it makes me want to encourage more people to spend more time being together doing the things they like.  It also makes me keenly aware of how when I get too busy, these activities that are so enriching to me both body and soul are the first to go.  It’s almost a cliché these days to say that too often we get caught up in what we do rather than who we are.  More than one person has pointed out that we are supposed to be human beings, not human doings.  But maybe the key to becoming a truly good human being, is making a priority and taking full advantage of that which can be found in the doing.

In Praise of Small Talk

"...it is precisely in retreats of short duration that the human element develops most easily."

If you are new to this blog (and a bunch a new people stopped by this weekend because of Hugh Hewitt's kind introduction), then you may either want to check out my "Welcome" blogs or just dive right in to the middle of this series on the Spiritual Discipline of the Hang. 

In his book, Life Together, Dietrich Bonhoeffer warns that when we Christians limit our times of fellowship to "retreats" (or I would add any kind of "fellowship event") "of short duration", the "human element" develops.   By "human element" Bonhoeffer means the very human tendency to idealize people, project your need-issues on people, or otherwise see them as nothing more than an extension of yourself, there to meet your needs.  He wants us to beware of short times of fellowship and instead concentrate on the loving each other in the long, committed, regular, daily discipline of true fellowship.

And this time I agree with Bonhoeffer...sort of. 

Certainly, short, shallow, small talk can never build the kinds of deep connections, intimacy and friendship that come about from years of everyday interaction and experiences.  Certainly we all put our best faces forward when we spend time with new people and even the most pagan of us can find a way to look down-right holy for a brief weekend retreat or at church potluck. Certainly, we will all tend to gravitate to others who are like ourselves whenever we are thrown into new social situations.  Certainly true fellowship, true Christian community takes time.  Not just small talk but "big" talk.  Not just "short durations" but "long durations."

Certainly Bonhoeffer is right.   But...

When was the last time that you had a long, deep conversation of "big" talk? Y'know, when was the last time that you sat down and opened your mind and your soul and experienced Jesus speaking to you through the voice of a friend? If it was recently, I'll bet that it occurred a) because you are in a small group that has been meeting for a long time, or b) because you were talking to an "old friend" whom you have known for a long time, or c) you were in dire straights.  (Desperation and trial often make us cut to the chase and get to the heart of a matter.)

And in a) and b) above you were able to go deep and talk honestly precisely because you spent a good long, slow time developing the relationship over time, through small talk.  I learned in college (I was a speech communication major) that "small talk leads to big talk."  Simple, short, caring conversations that slowly and appropriately go deeper and deeper, with increasing but not sudden or forced depth in intimacy develop the kinds of lasting friendships that truly enrich our lives.  We need to grow closer slowly, over time.  And that takes "the hang."

The Spiritual Discipline of proximity is about spending ample amounts of time near certain people, over a backgammon board, across a tennis court, on a bicycle, while running, over dinner, while stirring a cup of coffee, or in our church's case on our patio after services and at our all-church mid week dinner and education event called Big Wednesday. 

Once we have spent a lot of time in small talk, then the big talk follows. 

All Glow and No Know

My last few posts have taken up the notion of the spiritual discipline of hanging out.  While inspired by the good weekend in the mountain at a men’s retreat, I am also sobered by Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s warning of “the glow of fellowship in a few days of life together” that he declares is actually “fatal” to true fellowship. 

In my last post I said that “slow unhurried conversation over meals and late into the night” was the key ingredient to developing deeper connections and a deeper life in Christ together.  And this is precisely what retreats can best provide.  If we let them.  You see, I believe that much of the problem with conferences and retreats today is that we tend to believe that bigger is always better and that the point of the program is maximum emotional and educational impact.  This means that we tend to cram them full of speakers, music, and activities.  Because we know that people are pretty picky about what they will spend time and money on, we try to get the very best speakers, the best musicians and have the coolest activities.  If all goes well, we come back from a retreat “fired up”, “inspired” and ready to take on the world.  Indeed,  our brains are full of information and our bodies are tired from rushing from one inspiring activity to the other.

But then we find that the “glow of fellowship in a few days of life together” quickly wanes.  Every pastor I know has a stump sermon in his or her pocket to charge retreatants “not to lose their fire when you go down the hill.”

In our church, we finally faced the fact that years of good Christian camps, cool retreats and high profile conferences had not left much “fruit that remains”  (John 15:16).  So we started changing everything about our retreats and camp ministry.  Our men no longer seek out big stadium events, but instead we offer several smaller retreats centered around skiing, fishing, hiking, and even golf.  We have found that the conversations while on  a ski lift, a mountain trail, in a golf cart or even on the drive to and from the weekend, are the very means that God is using to deepen our connection to himself through each other.  Our women have even added a ski trip and our planning hiking and river rafting experiences.  We moved our teenagers from two of the biggest, best programmed summer camp experiences to a smaller camp that we take over for the week.  Now instead of hearing great bands and well-known speakers, our kids have long cabin talks and Bible discussions after a day on the ropes course, wakeboarding, hiking or seeing the beauty of Yosemite National Park.  The mixture of fun, challenging group activities and unhindered time to hang out and get to know each other is the key to opening a young heart to the small still voice of God. 

Our emphasis in all of these experiences is not the content or the emotional experience, but the connection in Christ, the conversation that develops friendships, the small group discussion, the times of shared prayer and the long, leisurely “hang.” Don’t get me wrong.  I am not advocating for doing away with speakers and bible studies.  (As I said, I was the speaker at the retreat last weekend.)  But very often the thing we most need when we get away from the world: time to hang out, develop friendships, to leave the hurried pace and stress of the world behind, is the very thing we don’t get. It’s all “glow” and no “know.”  (Y’ know?)

Hanging Out While Wary of the “Glow”

I began this series on the spiritual discipline of hanging out, by reflecting on how much I enjoyed my time last weekend speaking at a men’s retreat.  However, in my last post I mentioned that no less a theological giant than the Lutheran pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer has famously sounded a blunt note of caution on the benefits of retreats. In his classic work, Life Together, he writes, “Nothing is easier than to stimulate the glow of fellowship in a few days of life together but nothing is more fatal to the sound, sober brotherly fellowship of everyday life.”  (p. 39)

At the risk of demonstrating my sheer hubris for taking issue with a martyr of the church, let me respond with this: I disagree…kind of. 

Bonhoeffer was referring to the way in which people who hunger for community would rather attend a camp, conference or retreat than actually face the day in, day out reality of loving and caring for the people who are right in front of you every day.  Instead of trying to genuinely get to know, love and support the person in the pew next to you, we think that true Christian community is the spiritual high we get singing “A Mighty Fortress is our God” in a stadium filled with people we’ll never see again. 

When Bonhoeffer wrote Life Together, he was reflecting on the communal life of seminarians who were already living in deep fellowship together.  They literally ate, drank, slept, studied and struggled together.  In short, they were involved in the messy, everyday life of close-quarters fellowship.  Think military barracks and college dorm rooms, Christian camp staff and third world mission trips (and maybe I should add, being on church staffs and working in Christian schools, but that might be overstating the issue). 

In situations like these, where people are hanging out together, they needed to be reminded that Christian community and discipleship of Christ is more “real” in every day situations then in ideal and idyllic “retreats” away from the real world.  They needed to beware of becoming bitter that their everyday Christian friendships were not as perfect as the people they met for only brief moments in a spiritual oasis.  (Ask anybody who works on a church staff how hard it is to keep up your Christian ideals when you spend all day “back stage” in the nitty-gritty of church life as a job.)

So, then, what about retreats? 

Let’s face it, except for our families (or housemates if we are single) most of us are never in “up close and personal” experiences of fellowship.  Our situation is exactly the opposite of the circumstances which Bonhoeffer addressed.  Most of us are mostly disconnected.  We rush late into church, we sit in the same pew, we nod at a neighbor whose name we forget, we sing next to them (not with them, really) and at most we “pass the peace of Christ” at the prescribed time.  We may stand around for ten minutes on the patio for a cup of coffee or a cookie, but we rarely have the time to actually get to know the people around us in any deep and meaningful way. 

And mostly that takes time.  Slow, unhurried conversation over meals and late into the night.  And if nothing else, that is the best thing about retreats.  When a retreat can be not an “ideal” setting, but instead a “real and slow” setting, community and spiritual transformation can begin to occur.

I’ll have more on this tomorrow.

Hanging Out at Camp...

I decided to follow up my first series on the spiritual discipline of staying put by starting a new series yesterday on the spiritual discipline of hanging out.  It comes on the heels of a great weekend that I spent speaking on Show Time with some men from Trinity Presbyterian Church in Santa Ana, CA.  We "hung out" together at a beautiful mountain retreat in Idyllwild, below the towering Tahquitz Peak and spoke of living out our faith in ways that even unbelievers could respect.  It was a great weekend.

But what struck me again is the power of time spent together in discussion, prayer and fun (men's retreats always have a good deal of fun connected).  The men spent hours in small groups, on walks, at meals.  It was truly multi-generational gathering of fathers, grown sons, and in some cases, grown grandsons.  It was rich and warm and full of life. 

So why does someone like Dietrich Bonhoeffer warn us that these kinds of gatherings can actually break down community?  Ponder this excerpt from Life Together (a true classic) and tomorrow I'll respond with my take.  Bonhoeffer warns his readers that attempts to make pure "spiritual communities" are dangerous to genuine Christian faith:

A purely spiritual relationship is not only dangerous but an altogether abnormal thing....(and) it is precisely in retreats of short duration that the human element develops most easily.  Nothing is easier than to stimulate the glow of fellowship in a few days of life together, but nothing is more fatal to the sound, sober brotherly fellowship of everyday life."  (p. 38-39)

So, we shouldn't go on retreat?  Or is there an important point here about what hanging out is all about?