Having Bad Days

I had a really bad day yesterday.

Nothing bad happened per se, it’s just everything went wrong. It was a comedy of errors. I was a mistake magnet, and by 6 o’clock at night I had grown really tired and pissed off at the tumbleweeds that were blowing through my life and messing with everything.

Most people who know me think I am a very calm person, but I have my limits and my potential to snap. I think I said I wanted to punch a wall three times yesterday, and the first time was before 9:30 AM. Yet, unlike Amar’e Stoudemire, I can control the angry thoughts before acting on them (that poor fire extinguisher!). The fruit of the Spirit have wonderful effects, one of them is serious patience. So I calmed down, eventually.

We are reading through James as a family at night and we read this admonishment last night:

My dear brothers and sisters, take note of this: Everyone should be quick to listen, slow to speak and slow to become angry, because human anger does not produce the righteousness that God desires. Therefore, get rid of all moral filth and the evil that is so prevalent and humbly accept the word planted in you, which can save you.

Do not merely listen to the word, and so deceive yourselves. Do what it says. Anyone who listens to the word but does not do what it says is like someone who looks at his face in a mirror and, after looking at himself, goes away and immediately forgets what he looks like. But whoever looks intently into the perfect law that gives freedom, and continues in it—not forgetting what they have heard, but doing it—they will be blessed in what they do.

Those who consider themselves religious and yet do not keep a tight rein on their tongues deceive themselves, and their religion is worthless. Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world.

My ears perked up a bit as I read this. I got the message. I am constantly learning to be slow to anger, only to find out that once I have mastered a certain level of slowness that it can always be improved upon.

My prayer in my journal this morning was this:

Gracious God,
I humbly ask
that you honor
my petitions,
that I may do
your will
and be a participant
in true religion,
to see the orphan
and the widow supported.

Amen

We will all have bad days. Let our anger always be slow, and may we remember that there are far more important things than bad days and petty anger: the orphans and widows who deal with incomprehensible oppression each day. May we slow ourselves down long enough to be the Kingdom.

Writing Update: The Cost of Community

Over on GENERATE Magazine I interviewed Jamie Arpin-Ricci about his book The Cost of Community. We discussed St. Francis, missional communities and a little bit about being a Mennonite Franciscan. Here’s a sample:

Thom: In a world that values superficial connection over intimate connections or presence, how does St. Francis teach the church to value real, authentic community?

Jamie: Because St. Francis saw the image of God—even Christ Himself—in every person he met. This approach meant that no person he encountered was incidental—each needed to be treated with the love and respect that he held for Christ.  Francis believed that when Scripture called the community of faith the Body of Christ that it was not simply being allegorical, but instead describing the mystical reality that we experience in Jesus. Again, Francis took Jesus’ teaching very literally.  He especially felt called to live out the teachings in the Sermon on the Mount.  So much of that message speaks to how we relate to others. It is not surprise then that being in an intimate and authentic community was central to Franciscan spirituality (as it should be for all Christianity).

To read the rest of the interview head on over to http://www.generatemagazine.com/interview-jamie-arpin-ricci-on-the-cost-of-community.

Prayer for the Fourth Week of Easter

God Almighty,

We are a broken people.
You alone can make us whole.

We are a scattered people.
Only you can bring us together again.

May our brokenness be used to further your kingdom
as we scatter to our jobs, our families and our friends
to share Christ with all.

We return to you a broken people made whole
through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

We return to you a scattered people united as one body
through the power of the Holy Spirit.

Amen

The Angst of Grading and Joy of Graduation

Grading is hard.

It is tedious and boring. It is life sucking. You hold a semester’s worth of amazing lectures in one hand and hold a red pen in your other, feverishly grading and crossing and placing question marks, all the time wondering did they learn anything?

All I feel is angst at this time of year, over how it seems impossible to manage grading with a full-time job, over how I would rather be outside, over how I would rather be reading a book—any book!—that has seen the wonderful pen of an editor instead of the jumbled hash from students who simply refuse to proofread, let alone use spell check.

Then you get a paper from a student who really gets it and all the angst fades away.

I had a conversation this past Tuesday with a student I had two semesters ago. He was a young veteran back from one of our wars, and he wanted to help people as a counselor.

He got really far behind in his work, as I have come to find out many veterans do. The ambiguity of college life is hard for veterans from war zones who live under the strictest and most regimented conditions to get used to. A college professor who accepts work late for a small deduction is not nearly as threatening as bullets or a commanding officer screaming at you.

Yet he persevered and made a mad rush to get his work done. He passed.

As we caught up before my class I asked him if he had applied to graduate school. We took the same subway after class, so we had discussed how he wanted to go to grad school for a Masters in Social Work (I told him I thought he was intelligent enough to get in, but first he had to turn his work in!). A grin came over his face. He told me he had applied to Fordham and NYU, and to his surprise he had gotten into both! I was shocked, but not surprised. He deserved it, and I am sure he will excel.

I am drowning in papers right now, but I keep thinking about how well this student did, the joy of graduation, and how it really is worth it to be a teacher.

A Christian Vision of Ethical Eating

I had the opportunity to give a special lecture at Nyack College to the Men of Letters group last Thursday. My lecture, “Being Stewards of Creation: A Christian Vision of Ethical Eating,” went well and the Q&A after the lecture touched on such diverse topics as eating kosher, Adam Smith’s economic philosophy and how food relates to Christian hospitality.

Abstract:

If we are to take our call to be stewards of Creation seriously, Christians need to re-think how we buy, eat and grow food. I will argue that food is an integral part of Christian spirituality and needs to be approached as a way we glorify God.

You can download the full lecture by clicking here: Being Stewards of Creation: A Christian Vision for Ethical Eating

An excerpt:

Food holds a central place in our everyday lives. It is essential to our long term health and short term sustenance. We feel hunger or delight or refreshment on a daily basis, all because of food. No matter how much life changes from generation to generation, from new technology to new technology, food will always be necessary.

Food has always been necessary, but it has not always been cheap or plentiful. Food is necessary but not a luxury. It doesn’t just happen. It is the product of a tremendous amount of manpower, horsepower, tractor-power, petroleum-power, water-power and solar power. To borrow from the authors of Scripture, food is toil.