A few days ago I posted a picture of a series of items that I’m carrying around with me during Lent. Tracy left a comment that said, “I'm just dying to know the connection between all those things...do tell!”

I wrote about all the things in my Lenten satchel in a piece I wrote for the High Calling Network. I’d love for you to drop by and leave a comment. I’ll be interacting in the comments at that site.

Click image for high res version

The day before Ash Wednesday, I got an old satchel out of my closet and began filling it with things that are spiritually significant to me. Some of these things might be considered “churchy” and others might not. I make no such distinctions. Everything in my satchel has been an important part of opening my mind, expanding my heart, and teaching me to be more prayerful and able to listen for God’s work and words in our world.

My Lenten satchel contains the following items:…

Read this post at The High Calling Blog Network.

rlp

Part One

“Mom, is Mickey going to heaven or hell?”

His mother turned away from her dinner preparations and stared at him. She was silent for fifteen or twenty seconds.

“Foy, you’re in third grade. You and Mickey. You young boys don’t need to be worrying about heaven or hell.”

“Yeah, but where is he going?”

“Goodness gracious, I don’t know.”

“Well what do you think?”

“Foy, I said I don’t know.”

“Well then just tell me what you THINK. Because what you think is always right.”

Foy’s mother exhaled loudly and turned, wiping her hands on her apron. She gestured to the kitchen table.

“Foy, sit down and let’s talk.”

Foy plopped into a seat, put his elbows on the table, and rested his head in his hands with one palm cupping each cheek. His dangling feet kicked back and forth in a nervous rhythm. His mother poured herself a cup of coffee and sat more slowly, watching him carefully.

“Foy…”

Her voice trailed off and she stared at him. She started to speak again but fell silent after two or three words. After several attempts, she gave up.

“You should talk to your father about this. He’s the preacher. He’ll tell you.”

She paused, searching for the right words.

“He’ll tell you what you need to know.”

Foy jumped out of his seat.

“Can I have a nickel to get a Grape Nehi?”

“Get one out of my purse. Just one.”

Keith Snyder has posted the foreword he wrote for Turtles all the Way Down on his blog. The book actually has a foreword to the foreword, so that I could explain Keith’s rather unusual foreword, which came out of his experience at this retreat. I think it’s a fascinating piece of writing. (In our emails back and forth, I misspelled foreword about every way you can. forward, foreward, and so on. I just couldn’t spell this word. lol)

FOREWORD
by Keith Snyder
to
Turtles All The Way Down
by Gordon Atkinson

The oy gevalts ricochet down the halls of antiquity. My great-great-great-grandfather slaps his forehead and gives me such a look.

"Hey," I respond with a shrug. "What can I say, the guy's not full of dreck."

"Not full of dreck," says the patriarch. "Not full of dreck is a good thing. It's a mitzvah. But communion?"

"Yeah."

…Click here to read the rest

People like the idea of getting to the bottom of things. It suits our human desire for stability. We don’t like floundering in high water or high ideals without some purchase we can feel with our feet or hands or minds. Worldviews and paintings should be hung on strong nails sunk deep into the meat of a 2x4 stud, don’t you think?

There are people who will stand up in a meeting that isn’t really going anywhere and say, “Okay now, let’s get to the bottom of this.” These people often call themselves, “No nonsense people,” meaning when it comes to nonsense, they won’t put up with any of it. I like no nonsense people. They’re good to have around if you’re discussing a budget or how many gallons of paint you should buy.

But if we think of nonsense as all the stuff we can’t make sense of, there is an awful lot of it out there. There are a lot of things in the world that don’t make sense. Sometimes there isn’t a bottom to get to. Or if there is, it’s so far down and back that we simply won’t live long enough to find it.

Listen to me now.

There is no bottom to your mind. None that you can find anyway. Most of what’s in your mind is in the unconscious. You can spend hours in therapy and diligently record your dreams for analysis, or you can just play it straight and try to pay attention to yourself as best you can. But either way, you aren’t going to get to the bottom of yourself. You will not know what makes you think and feel and act the way you do. The mystery of your own soul is beyond your comprehension.

I don’t even know why I bite the skin around my fingernails. I’m not getting to the bottom of anything.

I'm trying out a new commenting system over the next few days. Pros: It allows people to login with an Open ID or a Facebook account or twitter, etc. Cons: It doesn't recognize the drupal user accounts that some of you have. On the other hand, people seem to have a hard time with those. Sometimes if you hit home it logs you out. People constantly leaving comments and discovering they aren't logged in.

Anyway, I'll try this one and we'll see how it goes. Let me know what you think. Older comments show both systems to preserve the original comments.

If it's not good, I'll find something else.

rlp

I’ve been asked to keep and maintain a blog for Edge Outreach through April of this year. The purpose of the blog is to tell some of the stories from their ongoing work in Haiti.

In July of 1999, Kelly Fleury was in Haiti attending the funeral of his brother, Dezman, who had worked for a rental care agency and had a passion for helping poor children in and around Leogane. At the funeral Kelly met a poor widow who was weeping because Dezman was the only person who had helped her and her children survive. Inspired by his brother, Kelly formed the Dezman Fleury Foundation that year. They began by building an orphanage. Slowly raising additional funds, they built a clinic and pharmacy, a school, and a bakery. The bakery was used as a business to teach a trade to the girls from the orphanage and to provide funds.

Pictures from their website taken before the earthquake tell the story. The facilities were modest by some standards, but the children were clean and well cared for. The orphanage, school, bakery, and clinic are like many social service ministries in Haiti. They are mostly run by small groups who do the best they can without a lot of resources. What you notice in the pre-earthquake photos is how clean everything was. You also notice the faces of the children. They looked happy.

The earthquake on January 12th decimated the Fleury Foundation buildings, as it did so many others. As usual, the poorest of the poor were the hardest hit…

Click here to read the rest of the story.

This is the final part in a 4-part episode. Parts 1-3 were written in July of last year.
Part one
Part two
Part three

All the Foy Davis stories can be found at FoyDavis.com

***

Part Four

On Monday morning Foy woke an hour before his alarm was supposed to go off. He tried to go back to sleep but couldn’t. He lay in bed staring at the ceiling for a few minutes. Then he sat up, groaning, and went to the bathroom. Squinting under the fluorescent lights, he ran a hand through his hair. He pushed his chin upward and felt the stubble of his whiskers with the back of his hand. Staring straight ahead, he showered with robot-like movements that were deeply ingrained in his muscle memory. Halfway through his shower he couldn’t remember if he had washed his hair, so he pulled it between his fingers to see if it squeaked.

After he was dressed Foy wandered into the small kitchen of his apartment. He picked up the TV remote and turned on CNN. He kept his eyes on the television while he put two slices of bread into the toaster oven. He flipped through the channels methodically, glancing now and then at the bread as it turned brown. When the bread was toasted, he took the slices out, covered them liberally with butter, sugar, and cinnamon, then put them back into the oven until the butter and sugar were bubbling. He got a Diet Coke and ate in the living room, sitting on the couch. Foy glanced down at his left heel, which was bouncing up and down at a furious pace. He took a deep breath and made himself relax. Within five minutes his heel was bouncing again. He looked at it, laughed, and said, “Screw it.”

Now comes the big question for me: What am I going to do with my life in this next season?

This transition is a profound one. I was seventeen when I felt/sensed/thought/intuited/believed that I was called to the ministry. Thirty years have gone by and I feel/sense/think/intuit/believe that the time has come for me to move on from paid local church ministry. Of course there is the rather annoying matter of making a living. I have to replace the income I was making at Covenant. This wasn’t a complete leap of faith on my part. My work at Jethro has increased. I am a contract employee, which means that as long as Jethro has work, I have work. I’m currently getting more hours at Jethro than I did last year, which is nice.

I’ll tell you what the ideal life would be for me. I would average 20 to 25 hours a week working for Jethro, leaving the rest of my work time for writing and Real Live Preacher. Basically half of my life would be web design work and the other half writing and RLP. The problem is that writing does not bring in much money. Nor does blogging. I have a group of wonderful people who kick $5 or $10 bucks a month my way to maintain this blog. That money has been a life saver. Thanks for all of you who do that.

What I’ve got to do now if figure out how to parlay the traffic at rlp, my love for writing and blogging, and the few professional writing gigs I have into something that approaches half of a living.

Jeanene and I have been looking at numbers and talking since the fall of 2009. I did not resign from Covenant without careful thought, prayer, and consideration. We’re taking a pretty big risk, but it seems like the right thing to do. What I described as a “call” to pastoral ministry has been replaced by a “call” to writing and RLP. Everything feels right to us. I just have to work out the details and be willing to admit that I have to earn money as a writer to justify the time it takes.

I wonder if you would be willing to talk with me about this? I’d like to hear your thoughts and ideas. I don’t want to turn rlp into a forum for how I’ll make a living, so I’m taking the conversation off the front page. I’ve set up a forum for discussion. If you have an interest in talking with me about this, you are invited to join us.

NOTE: You don’t have to have a user account to participate in the discussion. But if you do, please do log in so we can see who you are.

New RLP Discussion Forum:
The Future of this Blog

The retreat was wonderful. We humbly incorporated lessons Jeanene and I have learned from the Quakers into a retreat based on listening to each other. REALLY listening. Where you strive to put everything else out of your mind except for hearing another person’s story.

Monday and Tuesday were killer days. Several project deadlines at Jethro. I’m grateful for the hours but no writing time for me. None. Which is okay, I guess. That’s the way of the world when you’re a working man. I did leave Covenant to clear up some writing time. I think what I’m discovering is that when you’re doing 150% of what you should be doing, cutting out 33% of your life is just getting you back to full.

Anyway, I'm back into a Foy story. I'm working at the library right now. Taking a break to post this. I don’t know when it will be done. Next week sometime I suppose.

As for other things:

Journey:
I had a wonderful time preaching at Journey Imperfect Faith Community last Sunday. I visited David’s office, which was sobering. The people were fantastic. And I got a rare treat. So rare that I’ve only done it once before. At “Bible study” between the services, I got to read some of my writing to everyone. Wow! That was fun. It was kind of an indulgent thing to do on a Sunday, but it was a good thing to do. It really meant a lot to me.

I read “Turtles all the Way Down,” and “Childhood Like a Dream.” We used them as a springboard to talk about the two parts of our faith - mental and physical. The part of faith that involves what you think and believe, and the part of faith that involves what you do with your body.

Enjoyed preaching as well. They are doing gardening as a theme for Lent, so the sermon was on the parable of the wheat and the weeds. Gardening for Lent; that is SO Journey.

The Retreat

So, I’m working on a new rlp Drupal theme. You’re looking at version 2.0. I’m interested to see what you think about it. I’ve taken away the little guy holding two worlds apart. I liked him, but I’m not really having to do that anymore. The new banner kind of fits how I’m feeling right now.

Which brings me to the big question at hand, the question I’m hoping you might explore with me.

What should I do with this blog? I think I’ll keep the name Real live Preacher. I’m preaching THIS SUNDAY at Journey IFC in Austin. I know, that didn’t take long. I like preaching and hope to get some chances to travel and preach or speak. We’ll see how that goes. If you’re in Austin and come by Journey on Sunday, make sure you grab me and say hello! – Mark Carter, this means you!

I’m dedicating half of my life to writing and writing related things. That’s the good news. The other news is that I have to figure out ways to make money as a writer/preacher/speaker guy. I have some idea for some fun stuff I could do here at rlp. I’ve had a request to bring back the old chatroom for one thing. I’ll run some ideas by you in the next few days.

Maybe you have some thoughts?

rlp

Let me say for the record that I love the craft and the discipline of preaching. It’s such an esoteric art. There are careful guidelines that thoughtful preachers follow, even if no one else in the congregation knows what those rules are. Individual style and creativity are good things, but they are carefully balanced by tradition and good scholarship with the text. There is a kind of weekly preaching rhythm that you slip into, often after many years of searching and trying. I think it takes a good decade to settle into this strange calling. My wife would say that around 5 pm on Saturday afternoon I would start withdrawing emotionally. I would grow more quiet and want to go home if we were out, as I began making my own introverted and intensely personal preparations for Sunday.

This Foy Davis story was my attempt to put my own sermon process into words.

Several people have asked me how it felt not preaching the first Sunday after I left Covenant. I took to it like a duck to water. Apparently - and this was a surprise to me - most people do not have sermons to deliver each week. Most people do not go to church before dawn and spend hours getting ready for the congregation to arrive before leading worship and delivering a message to the faithful.

Sunday morning was, for me, like taking off my shoes and remembering that human feet were designed for walking. Really, we don’t need shoes. Barefoot works very well. Likewise, the body and the soul remember that we were not designed for preaching. It’s an artificial affectation, like flying in airplanes or scuba diving. It’s fine, maybe even desirable for a season, but NOT preaching is our natural state of being.

Wednesday I cleared out my office at the church. Our church office is a small room, only 12' x 12' with an alcove that has a built-in desk for a computer and shelves above it. I designed this office myself. It's kind of like a tiny library. The walls are all bookshelves except for a giant window. I came to write on Wednesday, but I kept looking at the piles of stuff and decided it was time to clean it out.

What a lonely experience it is, clearing out your office. I don't mean lonely in the sense that I wish someone had been there. I mean lonely in that only you can do this. And probably the experience only holds meaning for you. It needs to be done alone.

Behind the door in the office is a set of shelves that had supplies and piles of things I thought I would deal with but did not. Agendas, papers, books I was going to read, and so on. It was stunning how much of it has no relevance anymore.

Away, all of it, into the trash. The shelves above the built-in desk needed to be clear for Tim, who will serve as the interim pastor. When I was done the only things left were some staples, some decorations given to us by a member who spent some time living in China, a plate with sculptures from a retreat, a 100 ounce soft drink container I got at the Christmas party in 2008 (I didn't want it and couldn't imagine taking it home), and my macabre collection of Chick Tracks, that I left for Tim as a gift.

I'm in the process of a major renovation at rlp. First the back end. Drupal 5 upgrade to the latest version of Drupal (6.15)

Upgrade went okay. The downside with a major Drupal upgrade is having to reinstall and reconfigure modules. My menu system is messed up right now due to significant differences in the way Drupal 5 and 6 handle menus. But I'll rebuild it.

Look for rlp to be a bit wonky for a couple of days.