With the season of Lent now upon us one of the issues confronting people of faith is fasting.   The association of fasting with Lent hearkens back to the forty days Jesus spent in the wilderness following his baptism.  As he emerged from the water of the Jordan River, Jesus saw the heavens opened, and the Holy Spirit descended upon him in the form of a dove.  Then came God’s voice declaring, “You are my son, the beloved, in whom I am well pleased.”  Next stop – the wilderness, to wrestle with what it all meant.  The wilderness was the setting for the Temptation Story.  Jesus spent the days in the wilderness in prayer and fasting.

Jesus was able to depart from the wilderness, and begin his ministry without having to fall back on the old excuse, “The devil made me do it!”  The fast undertaken by Jesus allowed him to empty himself to the extent that God so filled him, it was clear to him where his strength, inspiration, guidance, wisdom, and protection were to be found.

I personally never knew anyone who regularly engaged in the spiritual discipline of fasting.  History reports that Gandhi fasted.  Sometimes we may hear of others who face difficult or challenging choices, or who weigh their responses to some given set of circumstances, and include fasting in their spiritual work.  These fasts commonly involve forsaking food during the designated period of time.

Fasts can be declared, though, on other aspects of our lives.  When we eliminate behaviors or activities from our normal patterns, room is created for something else.  For instance, if time spent on the computer writing blogs is reduced or abolished, the writer may find that more fruitful endeavors can fill that time.  When people of faith recognize an inner focus on selfishness and find ways to declare a fast on such an approach to life and interactions with others, then more compassion and service can fill the void.

The idea of a Lenten fast is to get rid of whatever inhibits or detracts from the spiritual seeker’s relationship with God.  Throw out the junk, and let God fill the emptiness.

If one were to identify traits, practices, or behaviors for members of the faith community to unload onto the scrap pile through a fast, one might include:  our take it or leave it attitude toward the worship of God; our aversion to spiritual growth; our reluctance to tithe (that is, to give 10% of our gross income as an offering to God); our fear of change; our suspicion of others within our community of faith; our tendency to associate conventional cultural notions and norms with faithfulness; our thoughtlessness in what we say to or about others; our substitution of busyness for creative ministry – you get the idea.

Maybe the most frightening aspect of this type of fast is that it requires us honestly to own up to who we are in relation to our calling.

Today, Mary and I went to the Florida State Fair.  It was a beautiful day and we enjoyed it, especially when Mary had the opportunity to feed two giraffes.  She always has liked giraffes, and there was a “menagerie” exhibit that had wallabies, a zebra, a burro, some camels, and llamas, along with the giraffes.  For a buck you could get a bag of carrots to feed them. 

When we talked about it later, we recalled a television program we watched on PBS featuring Lynn Sherr of ABC News, who visited friends in Africa that keep a horde of giraffes on their property.  The giraffes come right up to the house and even stick their heads inside through open windows or the front door.  These folks are very chummy with the giraffes! 

Thinking of Lynn Sherr today reminded me of when I invited her to visit William Penn House during my tenure as Executive Director.  She was familiar to me mainly from her regular television reporting on Democratic and Republican presidential campaigns and National Conventions.  She also was a correspondent on the television newsmagazine 20/20.  One day I heard her on the other side of the microphone, interviewed on National Public Radio about her book Failure Is Impossible: Susan B. Anthony in Her Own Words.  Immediately I began devising a plan to bring her to William Penn House. 

I called her office in New York and got her voice mail.  When she called me back I explained what I had in mind:  a lecture and book signing at William Penn House.  I knew Quakers were interested in Susan B. Anthony, and this would be an open event publicized primarily among the local Friends Meetings. 

Lynn Sherr was cordial when we spoke on the telephone.  She also, of course, was all business, and I soon sensed she might not especially be inclined to make a trip to Washington for what I had in mind.  But I didn’t want to let her wiggle off the hook, so when she made some vague comment about “maybe sometime” rather than simply saying no, I said, “when would be good for you?”  She exhaled audibly and said, “Well, call my publicist and set something up with her.”  So, that’s what I did.  I mean, she gave me the publicist’s telephone number. 

We arranged for a supply of the books to be shipped to me at WPH, we paid for Sherr’s transportation between Washington and New York (she told me there were rules, or maybe it was an ABC News policy, against journalists accepting honoraria), we rounded up the local Quakers, and had just a delightful evening beginning with a nice dinner prepared by some of the WPH Board members.   

All the books were sold and appropriately inscribed, we enjoyed anecdotes and insights about Susan B. Anthony, and William Penn House received a few dollars for our trouble.  Following the program I drove Lynn Sherr to her friend’s home near the Washington National Cathedral where she spent the night, and all was well. 

Our day today was pleasant, and so were the memories it invoked.

Now Congress is getting involved. 

Last week I mentioned the NFL’s aversion to churches hosting big-screen football-watching parties.  The idea was that large gatherings of folks in one place to watch the Big Game was detrimental to television ratings, and subsequently had a negative effect on advertising revenue potential based on those ratings. 

Sports bars are exempt from the prohibition of groups watching on televisions larger than 55 inches.  They sell the products of the largest Big Game advertiser.

Sen. Arlen Specter (R-PA), the Senate Judiciary Committee’s ranking Republican, introduced a bill that would allow churches to be exempt from the copyright laws governing the public display of Big Game broadcasts.  He remarked, “In a time when our country is divided by war and anxious about a fluctuating economy, these types of events give people a reason to come together in the spirit of camaraderie.”  The House of Representatives is picking up sponsors for a similar bill.

The NFL is reviewing the matter.

Sen. Specter already let it be known he was looking into the “spying” by the New England Patriots.  They apparently videotaped some signals from their opponents, or taped practice sessions, or something, all against NFL rules.  In a maneuver worthy of the Nixon Administration, the tapes were destroyed once in the hands of the NFL.  Sen. Specter is demanding to know why.  He indicated he would lean on the NFL about the church issue as he investigates the scandal of the missing videotapes.

One wonders how life would be different if the Congress of the United States moved as quickly on matters of poverty, social injustice, and war as they are moving on the issue of churches watching football games. 

One wonders how life would be different if the church put up as much of a fuss about poverty, social injustice, and war as we have about the right to have a big party around our large-screen televisions.

When I saw the online mention of the death of Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, it brought to mind my days as a student at East Carolina University.  One of my teachers was an advocate of Transcendental Meditation.  He was in the economics department, was a calm person who drove a Corvette, and lobbed slow-pitch questions on multiple-choice exams.  For instance, we once had to decide whether Congress actually repealed the “law” of supply and demand, or if another suggested choice applied.

I never really thought of the instructors as “professors” in the same light I would later consider my mentors at seminary, but some memorable ones popped up along the way.  On the disappointing side was my academic advisor in the business school, whose name I no longer recall.  That’s fair, though, because I had the distinct impression he neither remembered my name nor any prior conversations whenever I stopped by his office for another confusing interaction.  Some of us suspected that the head of the accounting department spent her evenings in pursuit of liquid courage, but then, perhaps she was weary, coming to the end of the line, unfortunate enough not to escape the campus scene prior to the upheaval and dismantling of everything sacred. 

Some of my teachers at ECU had distracting idiosyncrasies.  Of course, in those days at a Tobacco Road school, several of them smoked in class, as did numerous students.  My philosophy instructor, in a deadeningly tortuous 3:00 p.m. class in the Spring quarter, no less, forced us to spend the weeks pondering the question, “What is temperance?”

He personally didn’t display temperance in his fumbling with cigarettes and matches, and perhaps it was supposed to be an object lesson.  While we carefully tracked the number of times he articulated the word, “uh,” he lit his cigarette, inhaling thoughtfully as the match flamed longer than necessary.  Then he blew out the match, slowly shook it eight or ten times, blew on it some more, shook it again, all the while lost in philosophical rumination, before finally dropping the match on the floor and grinding it into total submission with his cowboy-booted foot. 

While fragrant spring flowers and bushes gracefully blossomed outside the classroom window attracting rejoicing bees, and every beautiful, great-to-be-young Friday afternoon seemed horribly wasted, I can report there were no fires in the building.

Another teacher spent the class time pensively rolling his shirtsleeves up to his elbows, rolling them back down, and then up again.  My tax accounting teacher advised that we apportion the yellow smudges from our highlighters on the few unimportant sections in the tax code book we used as our text, rather than follow the more traditional reverse practice.  It was a true lesson in minimizing expenses, the inspirational slogan of the business school.

A tragic case ensued concerning my freshman English teacher, Russell Christman.  It also was his first year at ECU and in North Carolina.  He was from Philadelphia, and he and I hit it off from the beginning.  He was appropriately impressed by my polished skills in the “funnel technique” of composition.  It was relentlessly pounded into me in high school honors English classes, and I had it covered:  write an introduction describing what you were going to say, make your points that say it, conclude by summarizing what you said.  Simple, straightforward, satisfying.  I remember writing for him one paper in particular that he held up as an example to the class.  It was a treatise from an 18 year-old mind on ethno-centric interpretation of human events.   He loved it.

A couple of years later, Russ went to Raleigh with some others to attend an event at N.C. State University.  Along the way, the car was involved in an accident.  While others were triaged at the scene and some were transported to the hospital, Russ refused to go, even to be examined.  He felt fine.  Within hours, Russ collapsed and died. 

Life, however, went on, albeit with an ugly hole rudely punched into the fabric.

Cristina McCabe is a 13 year-old girl who took a stand when she was in kindergarten that affected the lives of others and changed the way things were done at her church.  As a small child she noticed that only boys served on the altar of Our Lady of Good Counsel church in Virginia.  When she asked her mother why that was the case, there really was no good answer.

Subsequently, she and her classmates in kindergarten learned the story of Ruby Bridges, the first African-American child to integrate the schools in Louisiana.  Cristina’s teacher asked the class what they would do, if they were brave like Ruby Bridges.  Cristina thought of the situation in her church and wrote, “If I were brave I would get a lot of girls to sign a petition and then we would sit on the altar and not leave until we could serve.”

While Cristina didn’t organize a “sit-in” on the altar, she did write a letter to the bishop expressing her desire to serve, letting him know she felt it was unjust to be excluded on the basis of her gender.  The bishop responded by saying he would prayerfully consider her concern.

Cristina’s family left the area for five years on a Peace Corps assignment, but learned through a friend that the bishop eventually changed the policy and allowed girls to serve.  Upon her family’s return, Cristina signed up to serve, and did so for the first time on her birthday.

“I could really feel God’s trust and love as I helped receive the gifts of bread and wine at the altar.  And I felt like an angel dressed in the white robe,” said Cristina.

To me, it’s remarkable that it was not until the 21^st Century that females were deemed worthy to serve at the altar in Cristina’s church tradition.  As I read scripture, it occurs to me that the faith is about life, freedom, relationship with God, and service in the name of God in order to be a blessing to others.

I don’t understand why we find so many ways to subvert the promises and blessings of the faith we claim is important to us.   Fortunately, people like Cristina come along and point out where we fall short. 

She was six years old at the time.

Fred Phelps and family, who I hear make up most of his “church” in Topeka, Kansas are at it again.  The fine folks of Westboro Baptist Church are the ones who show up at funerals for U. S. soldiers carrying signs and otherwise promote their judgment that God is killing our troops in Iraq and Afghanistan because the U. S. “condones” homosexuality.  I’m not sure what that means, exactly, since gays and lesbians have fewer civil liberties than most others.  Perhaps the good Rev. Phelps and family equate condoning with “allowing to live.”

Anyway, now they have decided that God hates Reno, Nevada.  (God also hates Sweden, Canada, Ireland, and Mexico, in case you were wondering – details are on their official hate website.  You might consult it prior to booking your next international voyage.)   It seems some designated haters (all in the name of the Lord, of course) weren’t especially welcomed in Reno at a funeral service for a U. S. serviceman, so now the whole town has made The List.

Iraq must really be in trouble, because not only are we (or is it God?) killing armed fighters there, but unaccounted-for thousands more civilians have lost their lives since the U. S. invasion several years ago.   Kenya, Darfur, Sri Lanka, and other places have seen terrible violence and death, as well. 

It’s kind of difficult to promote the “God is love” angle of scripture when God is sweeping across the globe in a killing rampage.  At least we have the Phelps family to interpret for us what really is happening.

Personally, I find it astounding that God can love even those who attribute the worst in human behavior to God.  But, when I consider the teachings of Jesus, and I discover his willingness to suffer innocently for his convictions as he trusts completely in God’s ability to create life even in places suffocating with death, well, that’s what I come up with. 

God is better at it than I am.

First they got a trademark on the name so anyone using it in advertising or promotion of their own products and services is required to pay a licensing fee.  Now they are warning churches not to host parties showing their trademarked event on large screen televisions bigger than 55 inches.

The National Football League, a gazillion dollar-a-year “industry” is holding Trademarked Event XLII this Sunday, and Christians had better not get together in multitudes to watch it.  Some very large men will be extremely unhappy if they do.

The idea is if a couple of hundred people get together in a church building to watch the game on a big screen, it will be detrimental to television ratings and will have a negative impact on advertising revenues.  Churches already know enough not to charge admission to their parties.

Sports bars are exempt from this aspect of copyright law governing the Trademarked Event.

I heard somewhere that the price for a thirty-second ad on this year’s Trademarked Event telecast was, I believe, four million dollars, and that Budweiser will be the leading subscriber with several minutes worth of commercials.  Hmmm…Sports bars sell Bud, in all of its forms, don’t they?

The policy in effect for the Trademarked Event actually applies to all NFL games, so Christian football fans only are allowed to gather in minimal numbers (how many can crowd around a 55-inch, or smaller, television?) to share in the fun.

Some folks aren’t taking this lying down (on the couch, or otherwise).  A spokesperson for a civil liberties group in Charlottesville, Virginia that specializes in freedom of religion matters is proposing a lawsuit, specifically on behalf of a church in Alabama that wants to gather its folks around a big screen television for a Trademarked Event Party.  He also is on the hunt for congressional sponsors for a bill to include churches among those exempt from the copyright law pertaining to NFL games.

Perhaps if the NFL is worried about ratings for the Trademarked Event, it could track water meters to get the most accurate data.  It has long been the case that there is a significant fluctuation in water pressure across the country during halftime.

The Christian Century reports that one of the megachurches held up as a shining model for others recently was startled to discover through a survey of its members that about one-fourth of the members felt their spiritual growth was going nowhere.  Some of them were “dissatisfied with the church, with many considering leaving,” according to the article.  The research revealed that, “increased involvement in church activities was not necessarily accompanied by a boost in spiritual growth.”

Some would refer to the increasing activities devoid of spirituality as “playing church.”  It also can, in my judgment, be an avoidance ploy, as the busyness shields folks from wrestling with what it means to be faithful to Jesus in an unrelentingly complex culture and society. 

Feeding the church organization or program does not automatically translate into a faithful witness.  A good proportion of the 17,000 worshipers who gather each week at the aforementioned church are coming to realize all of this.

One of the responses of the church is to post “next-step tools” on its official website, listing resources such as books and videos the people can consult for answers.  On their own.  Individually.  It truly is possible to be alone in the midst of a huge crowd of people.

In all fairness, some small-group discussion groups now are being offered at the megachurch, but it appears that the main approach to addressing the problem of stalled spirituality is to encourage the people to do things in isolation.  Good luck!

The megachurch, as it reacts to the revelations of the survey of its members is working with other churches in its “network” to establish a “fee-based system” for sharing resources and ideas with others.

While the worship center housing thousands of people on a Sunday morning may be gratifying to the preacher, the church bean counters, and those who are pacified by our culture’s “success” model, it appears that something different would be more conducive to the growth of God’s reign in the world.

I once heard of a congregation of twenty-some people who are engaged in big-time ministry to the homeless in their community.  Through a sense of calling in response to the needs around them, in partnership with others, they feed several times their number of people each week at the church.   Without charge.

More and more people are discovering that interpersonal relationships with others seeking spiritual growth lend support, insight, and inspiration to their own journeys, which ultimately become more meaningful as they are shared.

Spiritual practices such as worship, prayer, study, service, and giving engage the power of God and bring new life to the church, its people, and the ministry they share.

It seems we find numerous ways to let people know who we are.  I once knew a person who occasionally tried to perform simple magic tricks.   While he was a bit clumsy in his technique, he still had a yellow diamond-shaped sign hanging from a little suction cup affixed to a car window proclaiming, “Magician On Board.” 

In martial arts, there is a system of rank denoted by the color of a practitioner’s uniform belt.  One time when I mentioned my sons to the Grand Master of the Tae Kwon Do schools in which I practiced, he didn’t ask their ages, he simply queried, “What belt?”

When I lived around Washington, D.C., I often noticed tourists who let others know where they were from simply by clothing they wore:  ball caps, sweatshirts, jackets, and t-shirts revealed the answer to the question on everyone’s mind.  (I also suspect that when they returned home, they wore similar apparel or carried tote bags emblazoned with “Washington, D.C.,” or  “FBI,” or “National Gallery of Art,” so the homefolks would know they made the pilgrimage to our nation’s capital.)

Sean Daly of the St. Petersburg Times wrote a piece about the “I Voted” sticker handed out to those who exercised their constitutional right on election day.  He satirized the pride and the peer pressures inherent in being a good citizen.

In his Sermon on the Mount, Jesus reminds his listeners (and the modern reader) of behaviors distinctive to those who would follow him:  “You have heard it said,” Jesus remarked numerous times about matters such as anger, adultery, divorce, oaths, retaliation, enemies, almsgiving, prayer, and more.  Then, he continued with something along the lines of, “but, I say to you…” and he gave his expectations and instructions.

I think Jesus really cut to the heart of the matter in Matthew, chapter 7:  “A good tree cannot bear bad fruit, nor can a bad tree bear good fruit…Thus you will know them by their fruits.”

Someone else has said, “Great sermons are not preached, they are lived.”

At least one candidate for president has expressed the view that the U.S. Constitution should be amended to be in line with God’s will and intentions.  Good luck figuring out all of that.  Then try and get it ratified by two-thirds of the states.  The process quickly will reveal that not everyone understands God in the same ways or attributes similar thoughts and desires to God.  Who’s correct?

Donald Miller takes the view that the word “Christian” denotes “conservative politics, suburban consumerism and ‘an insensitivity to people who aren’t like us.’”  He got this impression by attending church, and he finally stopped going because it made him so angry.  He subsequently wrote his spiritual memoir to express his difference of experience and viewpoint.  Blue Like Jazz:  Nonreligious Thoughts on Christian Spirituality was the result.  Not everyone likes his book, although five years after publication it reached number 18 last November on the New York Times list of best-selling nonfiction paperbacks.

The appeal of Miller’s book, it seems, mostly is among young spiritual seekers.  Many people, Miller discovered, are weary of the “us versus them mentality” found in a multitude of churches.  One supporter of Miller’s thoughts commented, “The typical judgmental, hate-filled, bigoted, more people knew what they were against than what we were for” approach does not reflect the “real God.”  The faith is supposed to be relevant to culture, not to dominate it, he suggested.

Makes sense to me.

I haven’t read Miller’s book, and have no plans to do so, but this discussion is pertinent as the church struggles in so many ways to find its place and strength.  While I find that the church is hampered by the stereotypes identified by Miller and others who share his perspective, I also am concerned by the trend toward individualized spirituality embraced by many of Miller’s devotees.

It would be one thing if the trend translated into people better equipped, as they interacted with others and with our culture, to witness to God’s love and ability to make all things new.  It’s something else again when the trend means “I’m getting my stuff together with God,” but there is no outward expression or effect.

When I read the Bible, I read about God’s interaction with persons, yes, but I also read about God’s interaction with a people – a people called to make God known and to be a blessing to others.