My daughter is awkward. Beautiful but awkward. I know, she is only seven and has just entered second grade. But if you ask anyone who has been around her for any length of time, they will most likely agree. Perhaps the apple does not fall far from the tree. I remember feeling awkward when I was little and trying hard not to be. But I do not even think she notices. The experts say she has a severe case of ADD to the point she struggles to finish sentences. We can see some improvement but a parent will worry.

We worry about friendships. I worry more about her not having any than how well she does at school. On the first day of school she made a friend, Lilly. When she told us, we were skeptical. But then we met her mom and her mom was glad to meet the parents of “Emma R.” I could have taken on the world that day. It’s just one of those things you never expect to have fears about till you are parenting that age.

She is beautiful. And tall. My wife tells me that being tall and female can be hard as she grows older. Her legs stretch from here to Homewood. I assume she will be easy to find in all her class pictures. My hope is since my wife had to deal with the same, my daughter will be cast into her mold.

I say all this because I sat in the library yesterday preparing to teach a Bible Study focused like a laser on our call to love one another. And as I sat there, I watched this one girl walk by. She was not pretty.

She had a severe overbite and walked with a hitch in her step. Her hair was stringy. Attention to what she wore, seemed to be only in the utilitarian sense. Actually, her shirt and jeans were not worn as much as they were placed on her body. She would have had to gain a great deal of weight to fill them. And she carried a Bible. But not a pretty one. No, this was the kind you might see in a pew. The gold lettering betrayed the sacred book had not only been around since the early nineties but it had been used a lot.

Now there is still enough of the mean little boy and hormone-laden teenager to be disappointed in what I saw. But within seconds I thought of my daughter. And my desire for no one to look at her with such disappointment overcame the young boy within. For she was also someone’s daughter. Most likely loved. I imagined a father who longed for her to sit in his lap and laugh and cry like those days which were so long ago and went by so quickly. He probably sees nothing but beauty and love and reasons for affection. He probably has high hopes for her and wants her to know she will be loved regardless of where she ends up.  Her tender kisses upon his whiskered cheek are worth the world though he would trade nothing for them. He is glad she carries a Bible in hand.

If I were more capable there would be some great profound lesson attached to these thoughts. All I know is yesterday not long after I watched this girl pass in front of me, I held in my arms a breathtakingly beautiful newborn girl. It reminded me of my awkward daughter and the spellbinding grip she had on me from day one. And the love. And the wonder. And the fears. And the hopes.

“The reality is we need dissent. Without dissent society would come to a halt; we wouldn’t change or create or innovate,” says Carsten de Dreu, a professor at the University of Amsterdam who specializes in the role of dissent within organizations. But “these dissenters are despised or ignored or persecuted by the majority.”

A few days ago, a friend of mine sent me an article.  It is called “In Praise of Dissent.”

She said she thought of me.

Dissent is tricky. In others, it is usually only laudable in hindsight…after they been shown to be right. And I rarely even like my own dissent. Sometimes I wish I could just get with the program. And the guilt of feeling outside the circle of assent when holding tightly to a dissenting opinion is rarely pleasant.

However, the whole time I am reading, thoughts on the need for dissent in the church, local and Universal are flying through my mind with sonic boom inflicting speed. Not because the dissenter is always right. But, for the very reason, we pastors could easily fall victim to seeing dissenters as only troublemakers. Blinded by our visions, dreams and possibly groupthink, ignoring dissent becomes the shortest distance between two points. Veering off this line extends meetings and derails progress.

So what do you think? Is there a place for dissent in the church? Where? What are it’s limits? Dangers? Benefits? Do you have any stories where dissent was helpful?

Over one thousand albums. Granted I don’t listen to all of those albums regularly and still less very often at all, if ever. But there are a few, a precious few, which I go to often. To call them favorites, would not do. They are more. They are the warmth of a couch and a cup of hot tea on a snowy winter’s day. They are the first warm rays of spring which tighten the skin on into cool night’s laughing with friends. They are the smiles of Christmas and the tears of Good Friday. They are far more than albums of music, they hold memories and heat and light and ideas and thoughts and concerns and moments which echo through the notes…they are not entertainment.

I am sure there are more. But below I have listed ten.

1. Billie Holiday, Jazz Masters 12 – Some realities defy the ability to be explained. Billie Holiday’s effect on me stretches back 10 years and feels like the grip of a warm embrace. My favorite voice, this album is the reason it is part of the furniture of my mind. It starts with “What A Little Moonlight Can Do” and then you’re taken into the depths of the American heart.

2. Bon Iver, For Emma, Forever Ago – Some albums, you listen to, others you swim into the depths of. This album never gets old. Of all my albums, it sits in winter solitude. I cannot listen to it without feeling the whiteness of Wichita snow. There is no album like it.

3. Van Morrison, Hymns to the Silence – Many nights were spent driving through the hills and vales of Birmingham as a young single guy, listening to this album. Gas was cheap then and I would just drive around for hours, for solitude and release. Van was a regular companion. Emotions will get the better of me, if I’m not careful, when listening to ‘On Hyndford Street.” A friend of mine speculated that Van was after beauty like many were after fame and money. This album is full of what he was looking for.

4. Bob Dylan, The Times They Are A’Changin – The first time this album hit my ears, I was driving down highway 31 in Hoover…not far from where I now live. Usually you don’t want to turn up just a guy and a guitar and a harmonica. But he sings with such power, volume feels right. If this was the only album he ever recorded, he would still be a favorite. As it is, I named my son after him.

5. John Coltrane, A Love Supreme – While I was studying in St. Louis, Jazz got a hold of me. Previously it was interesting, but then I started to go deep and wanted to hear more and marinate in most of it. I remember calling a number of stores before I found one which carried this album. So we drove up  170 and when my wife saw the cover of the CD, she wondered why it cost so much for 3 songs. We drove straight from there to Kirk and Debbie’s and listened to it as we ate and drank and laughed. A wonderful album.

6. Bruce Springsteen, Nebraska – It’s an album of novels, full of americana grit and glory. Stories of what was, is and could never be told masterfully. You can feel the midwestern winds pelting your face on deep Winter nights among the words. When no other album suits, Nebraska more than does.

7. Diana Krall, The Look of Love – All my favorite albums involve a place. My wife gave me this album  on my 30th birthday week. It was a rainy, cold, late October Sunday morning. When she sings these Bossa Nova inspired songs, I can close my eyes and see my wife sitting next to me in our Honda as we drive to Church listening. The title track is mesmerizing.

8. Patty Griffin, 1000 Kisses – Another album I bought with my wife in St. Louis. We listened to this till we knew the silence in between the songs by heart. Patty could sing the phonebook and I would buy it. Almost all of my papers in Seminary were written with her angelic voice coursing through my headphones. When she toured supporting this album, I headed up her street team when she came and played at The Pageant on Delmar. Lush, like a southern mountainside in the throes of Spring, no notes should be ignored. “Be Careful” is one of the most powerful songs I’ve ever heard.

9. Andrew Peterson, Love and Thunder – I’d have never bought this one if I had not seen him in concert supporting it. After at least one hundred listens, I can safely say, there are no albums by believers which move me like this one. When he sings, “You sent that telegraph to tell her that you missed her…” geez, there are no words. ‘The Silence of God’ and ‘After the Last Tear Falls’ may be the most appropriately juxtaposed songs I have.

10. Emmylou Harris, Spyboy – One hour for lunch spent at a used CD store on highway 31 in Hoover yielded a copy. When I returned to my work, I put it on and I remember as she began to sing, putting my head down on my desk because it was so wonderful. My wife knows I have a kind of crush on her and she is OK with that. OK enough to wait outside the Ryman in an alley hoping and then procuring an autograph. This is my favorite live album. Period.

OK, so what are some of your go to albums?

The above quote by Charles Spurgeon has been making the rounds on Twitter and facebook recently. I have benefited from Spurgeon’s sermons and writings and life story for a number of years. But at the risk of killing a sacred cow here, I must say, “I disagree.”

Let me start by saying, I am fine with saying every Christian is to be salt and light where they find themselves. And I agree that our speech should be appropriately seasoned with words which betray our faith sooner or later. And contrary to popular opinion on what I have previously written, I am not against missions or evangelism.

If it is true, that every christian is a missionary, then the word really has no meaning beyond what a Christian should be doing, missions. There is no point in calling missionaries to Eritrea, “missionaries” because accountants in Meridian are doing the same thing. The word becomes nearly meaningless. And while most missionaries, who have have cast off the comforts of ours for foreign lands, would be too gracious to be bothered by the idea, it would be understandable if they were just a little put-off by such an idea. Of course, then we would criticize them for pride. “Oh you are a Nurse! Me too! I just told my sister to take some Ibuprofen.”

Nursing your children back to health does not make you a Nurse.

My guess is people love the quote because they are still mired in the paradigm of elevating misionary work as the height of spirituality. Ordinary work that is not vocational ministry is not valuable enough in the kingdom if we are not using it as a vehicle for witnessing to people. It is not dignified by itself as kingdom work, something more is needed. So we call ourselves missionaries to justify our taking up of spiritual space.

However, I think most people mean well. Their thinking about Christianity is primarily defined by evangelism and missions. This is not merely part of the Christian experience, it defines it.

All of this seems to support a paradigm of thinking foreign to the New Testament writers. In other words, the quote demands we see ourselves as missionaries. If we do not, then we are impostors. Also, we must see others the same way. “Are they living like missionaries? Well they are impostors, if not.” The problem with this is that the writers of the NT do not ever talk like this. No one is ever called out for the sin of not being a missionary or witnessing or evangelizing. No one’s salvation is ever questioned for anything of the sort.

So while I understand the need for all Christians to be salt and light I disagree with Spurgeon on this. It confuses the difference between those who go and those who stay. And also it evaluates someone’s faith based on a variable of the christian life which almost goes entirely unmentioned in the New Testament letters to the churches.

Though our senses begin the long process of failure as we age, there are some things we can only see as we grow older. The reckless zeal of young faith yields to a seasoned wisdom. For this very reason I am thankful I am moving further away from my youth. Maybe their are others who could be called ‘wise’ and still be young. However, you could not number me among them.

In the last year, I have seen something I hear little about and something I am sure I could not have seen as a young man. And it has cut me to the core. It could be summed up in just a few words, “Grace for me. Law for you.”

I love how the gospel of grace gives me hope and tells me I have freedom from the guilt and power of sin. I love its comfort. I love how it changes me. I love to simply think about it. And when I sin, I love going to the gospel to be reminded of the forgiveness I have in Christ. But I must confess I love to exact obedience to the law in the lives of others.

My own life is coddled in the bosom of graciousness. For there, nurturing affection can be found. But for everyone else I have traded in the sword of the Spirit preferring the the cleaver of the killing floor. Self-righteous insecurity is the order of the day. My own sins are covered. I want other’s to be revealed and seen for all their horror. I want to be outraged by them and just as well as misery, my outrage needs to draw others in.

There are no excuses for this. But it is the very air we breathe in the land of evangelicals. Actually, no one, regardless of religious orientation, is immune. But my world is populated by a majority of those who define themselves by the ‘evangel.’ The gospel. Good News. And we love it for ourselves but we have the hardest time in doling it out to everyone else. We want our relationships down here and our relationship with God characterized by grace and mercy. But we cannot find it in our heart to be merciful to people and we sure as heck think their desire for grace and mercy is presumptuous.  It’s like some kind of sick spiritual sadism that groans for grace for ourselves and then wants to lower the weight of the law upon others. We crave the velvet touch of grace for our own battered lives but instinctively we want to hammer the struggling lives around us with law.

And I live in this reality. I reside here. And have for some time. The mantle has accrued the dust of years living this way. The furniture has permanently marred the carpet from a lack of movement form this position. I have maneuvered through this space without light for decades. So I do not want to simply wield the very weapon I am just now recognizing and beat anyone and everyone over the head with it. I have seen too much of this life before God to now come down on others with a lesson I have only recently learned.

But it is a lesson we must learn. We are commanded as believers to love one another as we have been loved by Christ: grace, mercy, kindness, love, patience…all these must needs be a part of how we deal with others. These define how we have been dealt with. So we must enjoy the freedom of the grace of God and at the same time long to extend grace to each other and bring the grace of the gospel to bear in the lives of others.

When you study in the library you are exposed to some interesting people. Unless someone gets there first, I sit in the same chair which happens to be situated in an area frequented by women. The Christian fiction phenomenon of Amish romance is alive and well, I tell you, and those seeking it out have worn out the carpet in front of me. There is pretty much always a soccer mom standing a few feet from me, trying to decide which series of rebellious Amish-teenage-pregnant-girls she will run through in the next 24 hours. Usually, I am pretty much ignored unless someone I know happens upon my little corner.

This is a tough question. For I cannot imagine she would have written what she has and done so with such effect, if she were. Her being Catholic seems to be the place she writes from as much as her being Southern. And yet there is this voice in myself which despises so much dogma of the Catholic church, a tension is there.

It’s early in the week and all you can do is wait for the weekend to get here. Well, it’s not all you can do. You can daydream and plan and tell others about the awesome plans you have made. You can trudge through the mundane job before you, with the hope of something better to come; whether it be the lake, the beach, a date or a night out with friends. This is how we live our weeks. Ease of labor is made possible by the promise of a break from it. Monday through Friday we walk through the valley of the shadow of work and school. When Friday comes, we enjoy the good news of the clock, world without end. Till then, we manage by enjoying happy hours, long lunches and a good film but we are wanting something else entirely different from the work week.

Ever said this? Chances are, you have. But not out loud. Out loud you said, “I do not feel called to the ministry or going overseas or…” But down deep the idea of being in ministry or marrying a minister sounded like a particular division of eternal torment you were not so inclined to visit.