I do, too, Ryan. I do too.

Saturday, April 21

9:30 a.m. to 12:00 p.m.

13154 Coit Road Suite 104

Dallas, TX 75240

Cost for the workshop is $20/person or $30/couple.

To register for Care, please send an email with your name and phone number to dgshroyer (at) gmail (dot) come.

On Maundy Thursday of Holy Week, we remember the Last Supper Jesus shared with his disciples and friends, breaking bread and sharing wine. And in John’s gospel, we also encounter Jesus as servant, kneeling before a wash basin and washing the feet of his students. John 13:12-15 says:

After he had washed their feet, had put on his robe, and had returned to the table, he said to them, “Do you know what I have done to you? You call me Teacher and Lord–and you are right, for that is what I am. So if I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another’s feet. For I have set you an example, that you also should do as I have done to you.

We talk a lot about the Golden Rule at our house. It’s one of the many mantras my kids endure far more frequently than they’d like, I imagine. And frankly, most days the Golden Rule is a good enough benchmark to set. It’s tough to love someone as you love yourself. But I hope at this stage in my spiritual practice as a follower of Jesus I’ve also become someone who is also attempting to love others the way Jesus has loved me, which is to say unconditionally, with unending mercy, with a love that conquers all. As Jeremiah says, God “has loved us with an everlasting love.” If I’ve learned anything this Lent, it’s that I have a long, long way to go before I get there. But it’s one mountain I find worth the climb. And I actually believe it’s more reachable than most of us allow ourselves to believe. (What do we think Jesus was showing us the example for? Guilt?! Or transformation?!)

This Holy Week, I’m trying to die to my sense of “fairness” or my own personal “rightness” and even my internal justifications of “that’s actually pretty kind, that will do nicely” in the hopes that what will be resurrected is the kind of compassion that has and will always change the world.

The theology of surrender is misunderstood and perverted into the very opposite unless it is grasped as being the theology of the pain of God, which means the theology of the divine co-suffering or compassion…If we abide by our conviction that Jesus is the messiah and the Son of God to the point of his death on the cross, then he brought the messianic hope and the fellowship of God to all those who have to live in the shadow of the cross, the mean and women who suffer injustice, and the unjust…But God does not cause Christ’s suffering, nor is Christ the meek and helpless victim of suffering. Through his surrender God seeks out the lost beings he has created, and enters into their forsakenness, bringing them his fellowship, which can never be lost.”

Jesus was not cast out into suffering by an angry God. He entered into suffering as God and with God, that all might be brought in. This is the com-passion and fellowship of Christ, our brother. And it creates the kind of community which can never be lost. If there is something for us to ponder this Holy Week, it is this great com-passion made manifest in the journey of Jesus to the cross and to the tomb.

I actually wrote this piece a number of weeks ago, but if it were possible to believe it more now than I did when I wrote it, I do. This past week, a childhood friend took his life. And after something like that, there is no place for a theology of glory. It mocks my friend, and it mocks those of us who are grieving. Before we can arrive at our own Easters, we need the Jesus who knows suffering, who knows grief and loss and sadness. We need the Jesus who knows what it is like to want his cup taken away. We need the Jesus who stays anyway, the one who says “Father forgive them because they have no idea what they are doing.” Because we don’t.

But because of that Jesus, I can find a hope that says his kind of love for me and for this world and for all of us who are lost and don’t know what we are doing may actually be enough.

I hate the cross, but I absolutely trust the Jesus who bore the cross and made a way for resurrection. That’s really the only gospel I know, and the only one I care to know.

My thoughts on the lectionary texts for the first Sunday in Lent are up at The Hardest Question. Go give it a read and share your thoughts in the comments!

Michigan State University surveyed more than 700 employers seeking to hire recent college graduates. Nearly one-third said parents had submitted resumes on their child’s behalf, some without even informing the child. One-quarter reported hearing from parents urging the employer to hire their son or daughter for a position. Four percent of respondents reported that a parent actually showed up for the candidate’s job interview.

In case that didn’t sink in: FOUR PERCENT of parents WENT TO THE INTERVIEW–the ADULT JOB INTERVIEW–with their child. As in, they got dressed and accompanied their 20+ year old to an office building and proceeded to sit across the desk from a potential employer and next to their grown adult child.

The study did not say whether the parents in this scenario answered the interview questions, but I can just imagine they may have added an extra tidbit or two at the end of each sentence.

I’m beyond baffled.

Have a good weekend!

Look, I know this is not about theology, or Moltmann, or the church, or even parenting. So feel free to abstain from reading my rant-y post.

On Friday, I read The Hunger Games on the flight home. On Saturday, I bought the next two books in the series and finished them over the weekend. Clearly, I found the story compelling. And certainly, I appreciated the escape into a different kind of world…even if that world was confronting all the same problems that haunt us here (power, violence) in ways that were often grotesque. Maybe another day I’ll blab on about what I thought about the actual content of The Hunger Games. However I have a much bigger concern that could not help but creep up over and over as I read these pages: why is teen fiction worse than children’s fiction? How can that possibly be?!

If you don’t believe me, I submit the following:

Exhibit A: Teen fiction often does not use complete sentences. Do you have any idea how many choppy, weird phrases and words are littered on every page? It’s like a grammatical bomb hit it, and pieces lay all over the place, splayed out here and there. I seriously cannot understand why the authors cannot bring a few of these sad little fragments together by using perfectly nice things called conjunctions, or commas, or semicolons. I honestly had to read a few paragraphs over again because the grammar made such little sense.

I will spare you a rant about how Twitter and blogs and text messaging is ruining our ability to communicate in complete sentences. However, I am TERRIFIED that it’s also ruining our ability to THINK in complete sentences.

Exhibit B: I honestly think the characters in teen fiction are far less nuanced and complex. I think this is almost exclusively because the authors, rather than showing you something about the character through actions or dialogue, just flat out TELL you what the character is thinking. This may be the most jarring thing of all, this straightforward, knock-you-over-with-my-authorial-intent sort of style. It’s the difference between sitting down to dinner with someone and inferring thoughts about him/her based on the flow of the evening and sitting down to dinner with someone who just tells you who they are, straight and without break, all the way through dessert.

I realized that I could skim The Hunger Games, because the words didn’t really matter that much. I was using the words as a means to an end, to get to the next plot twist and find out what happened to Peeta. There was no savoring, or paying attention. You didn’t need to feel the cadence of the thing. You just needed to know what happened next. Maybe this is why sometimes these books are improved upon in movie form (which is never, ever the case for good literature, in my estimation). At least you see a sideways glance or sense a mood when you watch it on screen. The book practically barks military orders of action sequences at you.

In contrast, the children’s books I’ve read this year (The Invention of Hugo Cabret, The Mysterious Benedict Society) are well written. The stories are rich and the characters are three dimensional. I did not feel, as a reader, beaten over the head with the author’s intent. The world that was created was more full and whole and lyrical.

So why is it, when it would seem to make good common sense for books to become more complex as the reader gets more mature, do we see such hackneyed, flat and prosaic teen literature? Well, clearly they sell just fine. (I mean, honestly, Stephenie Meyer would likely fail English class in college but she’s made millions…as an AUTHOR.) And obviously, even adults are willing to read them. But when I think about my ten year old graduating up from Hugo and Harry Potter to this brand of shove-in-your-face, grammatically choppy literature, I’d just as soon convince her to stick with the classics. Later, when she’s old enough to know how to spot truly good literature, she can take a foray into The Hunger Games arena for kicks. But Lord, let’s not send our teens there without giving them a good rule of thumb for judging a book: if you’re reading it to enjoy the story and the way the story is told, it’s literature. If you’re reading it not for the words itself but for the basic plot, it’s teen fiction, and should be consumed sparingly.

On the plane ride home, I mentioned on Twitter that my conclusion for now is that I’m a process thinker but not a process theologian. Here’s what I mean. After the first day and a half of the conference, I was trying to sort out what it was that wasn’t sticking for me. If I agree with the content, for the most part, what seems out of place? I think it’s the fact that process began as a philosophy, not a theology. And you can tell the difference. That’s not meant to be a judgmental statement; it’s meant to be a clarifying one. Because a whole host of questions arise when I consider process theology. We seemed to bat around a number of them, with no real conclusion, such as Christology and eschatology. (Granted, it’s a lot to cover in a few hours.)  Mostly, my inner nerd theologian was dogged by questions about how they could prove this or that by the narrative of Scripture or the tradition of the Church or where and how, exactly, process flows out of the history of Christian thought. Honestly, I felt that much of what was spoken as process theology could not be discerned as much more than a hunch or a hope, or maybe both.

I found I could sidestep much of my dis-ease simply by classifying it a philosophy. Far less categories that need mental filing and a particular kind of treatment. Far more room for consideration and exploration. This may be simply because I was trained over a good set of years to think theologically in a certain kind of way. I’ll grant you that. But I know from talking with a number of other attendees that I wasn’t the only one who would find this distinction really helpful and also necessary.

I’ll have to do a lot more reading before I’m willing to classify myself as a process theologian. But I’m happy to say I’m inclined to process thought, and that it informs the way I hold and understand my theology.

On another note entirely, John Cobb is a dear, dear man. Eighty-six and sharp as a tack, he came into the sessions holding his wife’s hand and helping her into her chair. He talked without notes and could weave his answers and responses through seventeen other things before finally concluding with the question at hand. (If I could have one wish, it’s that his session on metaphysics would have lasted a few more hours.) He could not be more humble. Multiple times during the conversation he asked for help and feedback from others in the room…even though Cobb could obliterate all of us with his intellect. And even when he was discussing the possibility of human extinction and environmental armageddon, he never once raised his voice, or frowned, or lost his center. It’s perhaps the only reason why we could hear him talking so blatantly about it and not run trembling from the room. This is my favorite thing about the Theological Conversations. We are given the opportunity to be in the room not only with great thinkers, but with great human beings, from whose wisdom we can learn so much. Do you think we’ll be that centered and wise when we’re 86?!?! Here’s  hoping.

Simplicity and frugality become all the rage in a recession. In the last year, the cultural landscape has exploded with magazine articles and blog posts boasting how-to articles on making (and keeping) a budget, the secret to grocery coupon shopping, and fifteen free activities to try next weekend. For a nation that has forgotten—or worse, never learned—how to save, these tips and tricks are much needed…even if they are for many people too little, too late. Enter Adam Hamilton’s book Enough, released in 2009 and now expanded and re-released this year. Hamilton’s book also includes common sense suggestions on how to spend, share and save, but they’re placed within a theological argument for simplicity and generosity. In his book, readers get not only the how, but also the why.

I hope I don’t sound too pessimistic when I say that without the why, without a true and clear look at how we structure our lives and how we approach what we do with what we have, this temporary fad of cutting out our cable subscription and eating in more often isn’t going to last. As soon as the economy picks back up, we’ll land up right where we were before, with problems Hamilton references such as affluenza and “credit-itis.” Because the truth of the matter is, at its heart this book shouldn’t be read because we’re in a recession. It should be read because as Christians, it is our responsibility and joy to be mindful about what we do with what we have.

If you have a friend who is beginning to think about his/her relationship to money and stuff and what that means for the practice of faith, this is a near perfect starting point. Hamilton describes the problem and addresses a number of practical (and feasible) solutions that portray what has been a consistent Christian ethic of simplicity and generosity. The feasibility aspect is important, too; Hamilton doesn’t demand readers to get rid of their cars or take up vows of poverty. He’s realistic about where most readers find themselves.

If you’ve been around the simplicity conversation for a while, take note this is definitely an introductory book. I’d also mention this does seem to be a book geared toward the middle class or upper-middle class. As the title inadvertently suggests, it’s for people who have enough. Those who struggle to pay the bills may find Hamilton’s anecdotes about convincing himself not to get an iPhone or learning a lesson after buying a PlayStation that doesn’t get used off-putting, to say the least. But for those who situate themselves where Hamilton resides- in a middle class America that is slowly weaning itself off one massive money binge- Enough may be just the remedy.