“Can I Handle the Seasons of My Life?”

Sam Harrelson on December 24, 2013

Last night, I had a crisis.

On the way to celebrate Christmas with my wife’s family in Spartanburg, SC I realized that I had made a major mistake. I pounded the steering wheel and had an adrenaline-spurred moment of animal rage followed by the inevitable realization that the deed had been done and the only thing left to do was figure out how to fix the situation.

My daughters had been with us over the weekend and gone ahead with Merianna to the family party while I stayed back in Columbia and worked for a couple of hours. I had too much to do, left the house in a hurried panic to make the Christmas party, and completely forgot their elf. It was my duty to bring along “Leroy.”

Leroy is a four year old elf that has become part of the family in many ways and has transcended the elf-on-the-shelf cliche-ness into something akin to a family member that flies in for a couple of weeks. I suspect my six year old sees through the “Leroy is a real elf that does mischievous things for a couple of days then flies back home to the North Pole” and keeps the myth going for my three and a half year old. Regardless, Leroy isn’t as much as a creepy judging watcher as someone who has a past, present, and future with her experience of Christmas. It’s like advent on training wheels as Leroy and our family look forward to the twelve days of Christmas time that start tomorrow when we celebrate the presence of God in this world and the “at-handness” of the Kingdom of God.

As a dad, it’s insanely important for me to make sure that my girls cherish this time of the year and realize that Advent and expectation are just as important for our faith and family as the actual Christmas event.

So, I knew what I had to do. I had to drive. Drive a good deal.

I left the Christmas party, we dropped the girls off with their mother and they headed back to Asheville. I left Spartanburg and headed back to Columbia. I arrived in Columbia at 9pm, ran into the house, picked up Leroy from his last mischievousness (making smores with a candle) then headed back to Asheville. I got to their mom’s house at midnight and dropped Leroy off in a passed-out pose on the wood pile outside of her house. He and I felt the same at that point. Then I left to drive back to Columbia and finally crawled into bed at 3am.

During my ten hours on the road, I had a lot of time to think and listen. I’m completely fine with long drives. I loved driving from South Carolina to Connecticut when I was in graduate school and I always loved my late night drives in college. It’s been a few years, but I remembered my old tricks to get me through. A few hours on a current Audible audiobook, then a few minutes of silence, then a few songs that I sing/scream along with while on cruise control.

It was sometime around 2am near Clinton, SC that I realized I was listening to much of the same music that got me through late night drives to Wofford College then to Columbia and back to my hometown of Mullins fifteen years ago. There was Willie and Waylon, Johnny Cash and the Beatles, Beastie Boys and George Strait. Finally, I turned to Fleetwood Mac and John Lennon (the two that got me through late night drives in my old Jeep with headphones attached to my cassette player because there was no stereo and that I had recorded myself on a mixtape).

I thought of late night drives to see girlfriends in the past, or to see my best friend and college roommate. Then I thought even further back to my high school mentor who loved Stevie Nicks in an unhealthy but inspiring manner and how much he both changed my life and inspired me to be a teacher (and how many of his tricks I stole when I was a middle school teacher). I thought of what I thought I would be when I was 15 or 20 and how things have turned out.

And then Landslide came on.

“But time makes you bolder
Children get older I’m getting older too
Yes I’m getting older too, so”

I don’t know how or why my subconscious mind knew that I needed those ten hours away from a computer and work and building a company in complete and forced solitude. I was cut off from Twitter or Google Adwords or a CSS file that I’ve been struggling with and forced to focus on a single and seemingly absurd task of delivering a cloth elf.

It was beautiful and it was a great way to end an incredible year of my life. The best present I could have given myself despite my state of sleep deprivation today.

Thank you, Leroy.

O’Connor’s Prayer Journal

Sam Harrelson on November 12, 2013

Parker’s Back is still one of my favorite stories, and I’ll definitely be picking this up:

She sensed that the act of creation in both was not her own. “My dear God,” she wrote, “how stupid we people are until You give us something. Even in praying it is You who have to pray in us.” Like the Psalmist who asked God for words to pray, O’Connor believed that words themselves are a gift from God. She wrote, “There is a whole sensible world around me that I should be able to turn to Your praise; but I cannot do it. Yet at some insipid moment when I may possibly be thinking of floor wax or pigeon eggs, the opening of a beautiful prayer may come up from my subconscious and lead me to write something exalted.”

via Inheritance and Invention: Flannery O’Connor’s Prayer Journal : The New Yorker.

What Happens When You Just Give Money To Poor People?

Sam Harrelson on October 26, 2013

As a Christian (not to mention a human), I think it’s our duty to give to others without stipulations and without strings when we can.

I appreciate the sentiment from people who like to make “care packages” for the homeless or poor, but there’s a balance between dignity and help that has to be walked. Cash does the best job of transcending that line. I also appreciate the effort of wealthy people to give in other philanthropic ways, although those aren’t always what they are cracked up to be and can be more self-serving than not.

I give cash. I’m a sucker. But I’m called to be foolish.

Read the first comment on the article if you have time…

“We don’t see people spending money on alcohol and tobacco,” he says. “Instead we see them investing in their kids’ education, we see them investing in health care. They buy more and better food.”

via What Happens When You Just Give Money To Poor People? : Planet Money : NPR.

I don’t say it often, but George W Bush was on the money here.

(Fe)Male Identity(ies)

Sam Harrelson on September 6, 2013

My amazing friend (and a rare Baptist MDiv/MAR/PhD) Thomas writes this fantastic post:

Admittedly, the overall message of the post seems to be one of trying to teach children good social media practices, but it does much more than that. For starters, there is what appeared to many commenters as blatant hypocrisy: the mother decried certain photos of teenage girls while peppering her post with photos of her attractive and fit sons, bare-chested on the beach the author has since replaced these pictures. But this only scratches at the surface.

via Conservative Christian Slut-Shaming, Boys Will Be Boys, and Identity Formation.

What is a High Church Baptist?

Sam Harrelson on March 2, 2009

 

I’m a Baptist.

That’s not always an easy descriptor to assign to myself because I am…you might say…”high church.” A “high church baptist.” Weird, I know.

What does high church mean to me?

1. High church is an adjective that, to me, helps differentiate my preference and personal theology of worship from “low church.”

2. Neither high church nor low church is preferable to God or general polity of denominations or congregations. One is not better than the other.

3. To consider one’s self high church does not automatically mean one is Catholic or Episcopal (or Anglican) or Lutheran. To consider one’s self-low church does not automatically mean that one is B/baptist, Quaker, Pentecostal, Holiness or Primitive Methodist.

4. High church and low church are descriptors about worship preferences.

5. The distinction between high church and low church transcends a church’s carpet color and includes views on sacraments, liturgy, the lectionary and theology (and anthropology).

So, in this chain of thought, I’m a high church Baptist and there’s nothing contradictory there (at least that’s what I tell myself).

What does it mean to be a high church Baptist?

1. I consider the Eucharist/Lord’s Supper and the Word (Scriptures) to be the two fundamental aspects of worship. Worship, as Robert Webber points out in Ancient-Future Worship: Proclaiming and Enacting God’s Narrative, tells God’s story (it’s not something we do, but something in which we participate). I wish we participated in the Eucharist more often in Baptist worship services. Much more.

Oh, and I prefer wine to Welch’s Grape Juice. WWJD? Just saying…

2. I adhere to the mystical nature of the sacraments rather than viewing them as memorial events celebrating the life, death or resurrection of Jesus. Instead, our ordinances or sacraments are real and meaningful symbols that defy our post-Enlightenment cling to rationality.

3. As a high church Baptist, I hold that the place of the minister is to serve the congregation and creation in order to help a) tell God’s story daily and b) bring about the realized Kingdom of God. Preaching is a part of that, as is daily pastoral care and counseling… but being a minister is much more and includes recognizing the need for sacraments in the life of congregants (and the creation) on a daily basis.

4. High church Baptists recognize the need and responsibility for ecumenical discussions and inter-faith dialogue with Muslims, Jews, Buddhists, Baha’i, and other forms/strands of faith communities. High church Baptists realize, through the Word and Table, the cosmic scale of our faith and are driven by the need to bring the creation into union with the Creator.

5. As a high church Baptist, I live my life in communion with God by participating in the Lectionary. It is an amazing experience to adhere one’s self to a daily and holy pattern like the Lectionary which helps us overcome the confines of a secular calendar and conception of time. Time itself is transformed and opens us to a move closer to the divine.

There you go. That’s my (always developing and always unfinished) conception of what it means to be high church and a Baptist.

Here’s a post that sums up things nicely in general (less specific and subjective) terms.

I’m sure I’ll post more on this as I reflect on these ideas over the coming months.