Reflections on EC 05 and Life

I am sitting right now in the main session room for the San Diego EmergentYS Convention. I have been here before. This is my second year. And I am just now remembering with great detail the year that has passed since the last time I was here.

I am sitting listening to Tribe, an incredible experiential-worship-drum-circle-kind-of people. I heard them last year in this room. I drank wine and ate figs and chocolate with my beloved. We danced. We sang. We worshipped.

Tribe had such an influence on our ideas of what worship integrated with music could look like that we tried to use their "everyone-as-part-of-the-band" approach within the context of Anchor Point. We started a drum circle on the beach that met every Wednesday night. We passed out egg-shakers at our weekly Sunday gatherings for people to be involved with.

But then things happened, you know? People let me down. I let people down. I got hurt. Others got hurt. People stopped coming. I stopped caring. Then surges and waves of passion and confusion intermixed like oil and vinegar, one always overpowering the other, but never truly resolving together.

This past year has been characterized for me by risk that led to failure, expectation that led to re-evaluation of expectation, excitement that led to simplicity. It has been a grand experiment in the dynamics of the human-divine equation, the yin and the yang of our lives.

I have come to understand that whether God is in control or not, we definitely are not at all. The sun rises and sets, the rain falls on the righteous and unrighteous, the greatest attempts can fail at any moment.

So where does this leave us? Longing for a sense of stability? Or perhaps we stop looking for stability and safety and learn to live recklessly and playfully?

You know, earlier in the day I heard NPR say that the Dow was up 84 points and I thought to myself, "I don't give a shit and probably never will." I have chosen a way of life that will not permit me to live by the script of capitalistic-American values... or so I tell myself.

I wonder if I will ever own a house. I wonder if I will ever be a part of a venture that will succeed in the eyes of my parents, my friends, my community. I wonder if I expect too much. I wonder if I expect too little... of people, of myself.

I wonder if we can live in the way of Jesus in any way in this day and age.

And I am incredibly hopeful that as the Kingdom of God comes into the present from the future that we will sense it and allow it in whatever way we can.

Wake up, blind man! Wake up! Wake up and find life beyond self-serving, self-seeking, secure and safe living!

Your love oh Lord endures forever. Yah, the sun also rises. And nations will fall. And fortunes will scatter. But none of this matters at all. Because Your love oh Lord endures forever. Amen.