If there is no Sabbath — no regular and commanded not-working, not-talking — we soon become totally absorbed in what we are doing and saying, and God’s work is either forgotten or marginalized. When we work we are most god-like, which means that it is in our work that it is easier to develop god-pretensions. Un-sabbathed, our work becomes the entire context in which we define our lives. We lose God-consciousness, God-awareness, sightings of resurrection. We lose the capacity to sing “this is my Father’s world” and end up chirping little self-centred ditties about what we are doing and feeling.

• Eugene Peterson, Christ Plays in Ten Thousand Places, p. 117

He is so right.

I easily become absorbed in what I am doing, saying, and thinking. I become consumed with my work.

I start to think that my contributions are what make the difference. God gets pushed to the margins, or forgotten altogether. Of course, I seek his help, but I define that in human terms. I think of a “helper” as an assistant, someone I bring in to help me complete my agenda. When the Bible says God is my “Helper,” it means I’m in desperate trouble and need him to rescue me. I have lost my way with regard to his agenda, and he picks me up and sets me back on course. In human terms, helpers may be optional. In God’s terms, without him I’m toast.

Of course God calls me to work. He does not call me to work autonomously. Nor does he call me to work compulsively, frantically. Even Jesus said, “My Father works, and I work,” putting the emphasis where it belongs. I am not God, and my work is but one small part of the picture. My work is a puzzle piece designed to fit just so within the landscape he’s creating. This means I work in partnership with others also — in no way does this all depend on me! It is God who finds my place and the places of those around me. It is God who fits us together to make something more than any of us could make alone. Also, at times the One constructing the puzzle needs to set a piece aside until it becomes apparent just where it fits. Imagine if puzzle pieces were autonomous little creatures running around trying to find their places in the big picture! No, there is a time and a place for my contribution and yours, and his eyes see it, and his hands fit us in properly.

When I am working, caught up in what I am doing, I find it hard to lift up my head and look around. Nose to the grindstone, I am focused on the task at hand. All well and good. But do I appreciate the larger work around me, the full scope of the production, the end product we’re creating? I cannot unless I take time to step back, come out of my little corner of the shop, and look around to take it all in, to remember the company name, mission, and vision, to take pride in the widgets we make and the good they do in the world; to wear the logo enthusiastically. Without that, it’s just time and a paycheck, and I’m livin’ for the weekend.

And so, I await October. Starting Saturday, and then especially in the middle of October when I will step back from everything for a couple of weeks, I’ll be seeking Sabbath. That is to say, I’ll be seeking Jesus as my Sabbath rest by taking an actual, physical and vocational rest.

This is my Father’s world, and I can’t wait to step out of my cubicle to see it.

We’ve been together for 12 months now, and there’s something I want to say before we go our separate ways. Something special, just for you.

2008…..I know you’re just a way of marking time, and I know there’s nothing all that personal between us. You didn’t know what the year was going to be like. It was as big a surprise to you as it was to me. The writing from day to day wasn’t there when we first met. It unfolded, a day at a time, for you just like it did for me.

But there is something I want to say, and I’m searching for the right words.

OK….here it is. 2008, you were a _____________ year.

(The above blank is to be filled with one of my dad’s favorite words. It’s a “guys” word. It’s actually not really a word. It’s turning an offensive noun into an adjective. But language has a job to do. I can’t actually write out the word, but you can believe me that it’s been that kind of year.)

Oh don’t cry, 2008. We’ve always been able to be honest. I want you to know what it’s been like.

It was my fault. I admit it. When this year started I knew my wife was headed to the Catholic church, and I was out of mind angry about it. As she moved toward actually joining, I got depressed, and I suppose I should say I spent most of this year depressed. I had a dark place in my personality that couldn’t deal with this change in her life. It changed my present and future ministry forever. Everything I believed about us as a couple and a family crumbled into dust. There was no explanation. I couldn’t believe God was letting it happen. I was angry. Bitter. Depressed. In denial. Angry some more. In the dark.

God and I had a good falling out over this one, but one thing I’ve discovered about God: he nods through whatever stupid things I say, smiles while I tell him the way it’s going to be, then keeps on pursuing me in love. He never gives up on me. When I’m ranting, he knows it’s a way of saying I believe but I’m mad that he isn’t on my leash. At the end of all the spit and fit throwing, there is God, hugging me, showing me hope and faith all over again.

He won’t let me throw it away. He’s like that. Even when what he’s doing completely destroys me, he still loves me and acts like it.

Wanna know something funny? I’ve got more faith and stronger, more settled faith now than ever. How did that happen? I don’t know. Somehow, all of this emotional and spiritual tornado has given me the gift of faith and hope in a way I didn’t have it before. I’ve never pictured myself with the faith to believe and be OK beyond what my own plans for the future could support. That’s changed. I may lose my job. I may never be welcome in some churches again. I may lose my health. I may lose the rest of my friends. I don’t want any of this to happen, but if it does, I believe my faith in Jesus is going to persevere, and his plans for our family will be good.

So maybe it wasn’t such a _____________ year after all? Is that what you said, 2008? Hmmmm. Maybe.

In the middle of this year, I received an amazing gift: an 8 week sabbatical grant from the Louisville Institute. It probably saved my life and my faith.

You see, I told some of my friends what I was going through in regard to Denise’s journey. That was a mistake. Someone remind to not do that again.

I soon discovered that a minister having a crisis doesn’t have many supporters and even fewer people who can start to understand what’s he’s going through apart from how it affects them. It’s really unfair to the average person to have to see someone they believe has all the answers sinking into the dark night of the soul. People don’t want to get near crumbling certainties. I don’t know how to ask for help. But God was still there. Seven people- seven- responded to my situation with unquestioned, undemanding, uncomplicated human compassion, making no demands or threats. God bless those seven people who showed me that Jesus is as real as ever.

What? Have I learned that any year in which you learn you have seven friends is a good year? I hadn’t thought of that. I probably should.

My sabbatical wasn’t understood by almost anyone. (It’s still never been mentioned here or in print.) The week before I left was one of the strangest weeks of my life. It was a nightmare of the unexpected and unthinkable. I’m still shaken by some of what happened. (Of course, my sabbatical orientation told me exactly what would happen and why, but I didn’t believe them. Smart guy, I am.) And then, there I was, alone with myself, God and strangers for 8 weeks.

It was just in time. I learned that God was still there….and so was I. My vocation. My faith. Prayer. The Holy Spirit. My marriage and ability to cope and deal. All were there.

Most importantly, I also learned that I could come to grips with Denise’s journey to Catholicism. It would be many more months before I would, but on sabbatical my compass was reset and I began to see that there was light around all of the darkness. The beginnings of a better place and the end of the darkness started on sabbatical.

In fact, I realized that God was doing things for me and for Denise that could not happen any other way except through this pain. It was scary, but it was OK. It is OK.

Now here I am at the end of the year, and I hesitate to proclaim myself “over it,” because that dark place in my personality goes pretty deep. But I believe I have moved on. The anger, bitterness and depression are out of sight in the rear view mirror, and my journey, like Denise’s, is now moving forward. The depression has lifted. My world is different, but I am not raging about the changes. I am seeing some of the new beauty in the landscape and the possibilities.

God has more for me. I can still preach to hundreds of students. I can still teach the Bible to students from all over the world. I am still the campus minister and I still have that vocation. If I lose it all, God is still in control. I have a worldwide audience of hundreds of thousands at IM. I have thousands of friends I’ve never seen. I may be in a painful place in the journey I imagined as a young Baptist preacher, but I am right where I should be on the journey from this world to the Kingdom of God.

So it’s time to say good-bye, 2008. Maybe you were God’s servant and I just couldn’t see it. Maybe I’ll look back on this year and be thankful for it. I don’t know. I’m probably wrong to say you were a __________________ year. You were my year. Like every breath, every day, every moment, you were God’s gift of life to me.

Barring tragedy, I’ll awaken tomorrow, and you’ll be gone. You’ll live in the memory of God and in the memories of all of us. We’ll go on, made different because we walked your path.

I’ve changed my mind, 2008. You were a good year after all. Thanks for being my companion. I’ll see you in eternity.

Many of you know the start of this story, but you may find some new things in the retelling.

In April of 06, I felt God instructing me to resign from the church I was serving. It was the church our family called home for a decade. I’d served them for 12 years. I had no idea that it was the end of almost any sense of spiritual “home” at all, and the beginning of a season of much change.

In May of that year, my son left home for college. In June, my daughter married. A few weeks later she would move to another state and temporarily quit college. (She’s graduating OSU in a few days, and I am very, very proud. But at the time, it was tough.)

In July of 06, my mother, who was living with us, came to the breakfast table and started speaking in a confused manner. Fourteen hours later, she was dead.

In September, I turned 50. The empty nest and the second half of life threw the party. I wouldn’t book them if I were you. Those guys are not much fun.

In these months, I was also trying to begin a home worship fellowship with some hope that, within 2-3 years, it might become the early version of a church. I was trying to preserve what my family had loved about worship in our little Presbyterian church and what I was discovering in the emerging tradition.

Despite many good aspects of that effort, it failed and in the summer of 07, I brought it to a tearful and embarrassing end. Two “church” losses in a year was devastating to my sense of having a spiritual home, and I still haven’t recovered.

In the meantime, God and my wife got together and decided that what I really needed was for her to start down the road to joining the Roman Catholic church. Everything my wife knew about Catholicism she’d learned from me, and she had almost no experience with the Roman Catholic church until Lent of 07. God’s directives to her at that time, however, were so clear that she knew she had to follow them despite the obvious consequences on various levels of our relationship and my ministry.

She told me the news, Pandora’s Box was opened and the Harpies took the keys to my life for the next few months.

Today, she’s somewhere in the RCIA journey and recently thanked me for my “support,” because she has been happier this past year than ever in recent memory. I had to laugh, because my “support” came from an experience somewhere between the rack and a 6 month root canal without anesthesia.

I was literally bombed out of my previous understanding of “the way things are supposed to be in a minister’s life.” It was like living through repeated showings of an imploding stadium, and I was the stadium.

Fortunately, God was determined to keep me in the wrestling ring until I yelled “Bless me.” I don’t have to tell you how that turned out, do I? I can now say “Bless me” in several Biblical languages.

I’ve still got an occasional bit of fight left in me, but the new version of my faith is considerably lighter, more Jesus shaped and – you’re going to love this- quite Shack/Greg Boyd influenced. (Oh calm down. I don’t believe everything Greg Boyd believes, but the last few weeks his preaching has been wonderful in its ministry to my confused heart.)

Oh. Did I mention that God and I are talking a LOT more these days, and I’m learning to recognize the voice of Jesus separate from my own head and the soundtrack of all the religious garbage that’s filled my head and heart for decades?

God provided a sabbatical so that I could have 8 weeks to work on the process of getting down to Jesus basics and knowing who I was in the new terrain of my existence. I appreciate it, because I needed (and need) it.

Simultaneously with all of these events, strange things began to happen to me at my job. Exceedingly strange. For instance, I was criticized for writing in my moleskine during sermons and for going to the restroom. All who live godly in Christ Jesus will be persecuted.

Nothing you’d find interesting, but plenty to make me wake up every day and wonder if someone is filming a reality show about me, with the premise of changing all my certainties when I’m asleep and then watching the confused reaction. If you see Season One on DVD, I’d like to purchase a copy. Maybe I can laugh at the commercials.

Oh, I thought I needed a friend, so I bought a dog. The dog hates me.

When I talk to Jesus about all this recent history, he says things like “It’s all mercy,” and “The only response is to be a servant,” and “What are you here for?” and “Who are the people who simply suffer and pray? Ever thought about them?” and my favorite “Just let me take care of _______________.”

The genuine Jesus, if you can actually get the station, can really be annoying to your natural survival instincts of blame, self-pity and anger.

You see, I’ve been trained my whole life to think like a pietistic Calvinist. There had to be a REASON for all of this. There has to be a LESSON. I get to ask WHAT AM I SUPPOSED TO LEARN? So picture me spending all kinds of mental energy trying to find what was the great lesson at the core of all of this that, when I learned it, would make it all go away.

Riiiiight.

And when I ask what all this means and what I am supposed to learn, Jesus just asks questions back, or says things like “Why don’t you go down that road and see what happens. You’ll never know if you just pout.” Or “Just obey me tomorrow and we’ll find out.”

There doesn’t seem to be some resounding THEME or amazing LESSON. As Greg Boyd says, from my point of view, it just all seems to be hitting the fan. God BRINGS good out of it, but if I want to say that he caused it all (which I still do for lack of any other way to express faith and confusion simultaneously) with some CERTAIN LESSON in mind, I don’t get very far. Like he said, “Go down the road, and you’ll see what’s there.” Kind of God’s version of “When we get there, you’ll know.”

I’m a fifty one year old guy whose days leading churches in his denomination are probably over, whose wife got burned out in the non-existent “spirituality” of 30+ years of Baptist church life and ministry, who has been at his current job long enough for some people to wish he wasn’t, who has been stationed out on the frontier where there are no churches to shop, who spent so many years thinking so many things in his head were scriptural, reformed and right that it really hurts to have to admit he was wrong, wrong and wrong. In that order.

I’m just a guy with a life, and life is full of failure and loss. I wanted MINISTRY to be the ongoing reward. I wanted USEFULNESS to be my satisfaction. I wanted to be SIGNIFICANT. I wanted the contract to be in place and the insurance to protect me because I was the guy with the Bible. Well, that didn’t go very well, did it?

God thought it was time for all that nonsense to stop, and for the lifelong addiction I’d developed to my church as my universe, my wife as unquestioning supporter and my theology as my version of the inerrant Word of God to end. He made an appointment to pull the teeth, and I was not consulted in advance.

Ordinary life, extraordinary events and stuff that just don’t make no sense all combine to rearrange the furniture of my world. Every time I head for a comfortable seat, God sells it. Every time I look for the comfort food, the fridge is empty. Every time I get out my copy of “Things You KNOW Are True,” the dog has eaten it.

My faith continues. Jesus now fills the picture in a way he didn’t before. I realize I have a lot to learn from simple people who never get into pulpits and who aren’t supposed to know everything in the Bible like I supposedly do. My love for my wife and our Christian marriage continues, and there is much good that was not there before. I returned to church today, alone- something that in my anger I said I wouldn’t do. I was reminded that here I won’t ever be turned away from the table. I prayed for the five who were baptized. I was reminded that the faith goes far beyond me, my time, my preferences and my lifetime. I looked, and there were the people of God, and I was one of them. They asked me to lead in prayer, and the words were more careful than before.

I was grateful. I talked to Jesus and he told me it is all going to be all right, that I’m free to walk the new path as I can, and he will not leave me or forsake me. I felt sorry for my sin, and happy to know my Savior loves me.

Life goes on. Losses, gains, light, shadow, confusion, laughter, tears, God, Jesus, Denise, me.

When I look up from the road, I notice that the lights in the distance are closer and the noise behind me is not as loud.

Good journey friends. See you on up the road.

Tomorrow, my eight weeks of sabbatical are over.

Tomorrow I’ll check my voice mail for the first time in eight weeks. I hate voice mail. (Fellow employees reading this- please send me an email, not a voice mail.)

Tomorrow I’ll get my schedule book and GTY lists back out for the first time in eight weeks. I’ll start sending messages, making calls, planning schedules, preparing to preach, being who I am.

Tomorrow people will hand me applications folders to review, questions to answer, problems to solve. I’m not eager for any of them, but they are coming anyway.

I’ll go to my office and my classroom and see what needs to be done to return to normal and be ready for the start of a new school year in a month.

I’ll discover how little my absence mattered and how others have taken chunks of my job as their own. Maybe they’ll give it back. Maybe I won’t want it back.

People will begin asking me questions.

“Did you enjoy your sabbatical?” Yes, very much.

“Did you do everything you wanted to do?” I had a list, and I did almost everything I set out to do. Not a perfect score, but close.

“Are you renewed, revived and rejuvenated?” That’s a complex question.

I’m rested, but rest never lasts very long in the stresses of my life.

Revived? I’ve come to a better place in my relationship with God. When I started my sabbatical, I was bitter, angry and confused. I don’t have any more answers, and the impact of my wife’s conversion to Roman Catholicism is still disorienting and painful. But I’ve been reminded that we can be so hurt and anxious that we don’t receive what God has for us in the moment. God had something for me in taking so much away from me. Over sabbatical I’ve been able to receive some of what God has for me.

I don’t know if I will ever be able to be part of a church alone in the same way I was when Denise was with me. But I do know that I’ve grieved that situation enough to begin moving in some new directions. I’m able to function as a believer and as a preacher/teacher/writer. I’m excited about leading worship with the students at out ministry. I’m seeking out fellowship with the church around me. I believe that God is trustworthy, even if I don’t understand why things have happened as they have, he will lead me to pastures of his choosing. Hopefully, I’ll cooperate.

I’ve spent a lot of time reading Wendell Berry and Abraham Heschel. Each has given me a concept of sabbath, both in time and in space. They’ve reminded me to pay attention to what is here and not to be so anxious about what isn’t here.

I’ve spent a week and a half submerged in the rhythms and liturgy of baseball. For me, that isn’t indulgence in sports. It is soul restoration.

For the majority of these 8 weeks, I’ve backed away completely from the familiar spiritual paths that I work and travel on. I’ve withdrawn into a kind of spiritual wilderness where I’ve become reconvinced of the priority of the Holy Spirit. I’ve emptied so that I could be full, and as a result, I am full in a new and better way.

I’m reminded of how many of my coworkers and fellow Christians are weary, worn, unappreciated, loyal, hard-working and persevering. They should have had a sabbatical as well.

I’m reminded that when my expectations of the church, of leaders and of other Christians get too high, I am predictably disappointed. I should know better, and I’ll remember that.

But I am still me, still have my besetting sins and struggles. What I’ve had is more time to know that God loves me, and that his faithfulness and delight in me are unconditional gifts.

That has all been reviving and rejuvenating in the best possible way.

So I’ll return to ministry and a regular schedule tomorrow and pray that the sabbath comes with me. I’ll mark the place of sabbath in my day and each week, and I’ll fill it with what I’ve experiences these eight weeks.

I don’t expect anyone to understand the experience, but I’ll be grateful for each one who asks. Many have prayed for me, and their prayers were answered.

I’d glad to be home and glad to find my routine waiting for me. I believe God has other surprises for me in the future, and I’ll remember this one when those come along the way.

On the last day of Cornerstone, as I finished my last seminar on “Transparency and Vulnerability In Community,” a woman was waiting to talk to me with several other questioners. I spoke with each one, and then came to her.

She began talking about her husband and, to be brief and to the point, she was basically talking about me.

His church and ministry experiences, his feelings and responses, what he was doing to cope….it was all very familiar.

She was deeply concerned for him, and wanted to know what to do.

It was a poignant moment for me, because it was a moment to see not only if I had learned anything these past seven weeks, but if what I had learned was now inside me, part of me.

I told her that I was on much the same road as her husband, and that I’d had many of the same feelings of panic and confusion at the loss of familiar anchors and markers. I wasn’t sure where it was all going to come out, as I was just beginning to learn how to navigate without so many of the assumptions that had guided me for 30+ years of ministry.

But I told her that I wasn’t afraid. I wasn’t afraid to be myself anymore. I wasn’t afraid of the consequences of following Jesus to the places of honesty and vulnerability. I was no longer afraid of the religious systems and their custodians that had alway promised to give me security and purpose if I would just cooperate. I was no longer going to live my life as the guy who, because he was a preacher, took everyone’s expectations as the script for my happiness.

I was no longer in doubt that my real self, my true self was the one place I could be sure God would meet and love me.

I told her how important her encouragement would be to her husband. That he was probably feeling very rejected and alone after being the center of attention in church for so long and then losing those relationships. I said that I’d learned that God sometimes has to separate us from the things we depend on so that we can understand his love for us. In those times, we can begin to see clearly that what we’ve been holding onto and calling God probably wasn’t.

She started crying. I completely understood why. She loves this man, and she feels like she can’t reach him as he spirals downward out of his certain trajectory toward what appears to be a ministry systems failure resulting in a crash.

In fact, the only way for God to take you in his hand, take away your fear of flying or of falling, to show you that it’s his mercy holding you up, not the plane you’re flying, is to let you fall.

I read it in an amazing, life altering quote from Walter Brueggemann in Barbara Brown Taylor’s book, Leaving Church:

“The world for which you have been so carefully prepared is being taken away from you…by the grace of God.” — Walter Brueggemann

I quoted Brueggemannn to her with my eyes closed. It was hard to say it, because it is so true, it’s like the shining of the sun up close.

God loves your husband so much that he won’t let him draw his significance and identity from all the things he’s depended on before. There is something new in front of him. I have no idea what it is, but this is the path. Yes, the one that leads under the church bus, and out the other side to an actual world where happy people have been living all the time we’ve being in this awful script.

I gave her a hug and told her to write me. And as I walked away, I realized it was for that couple, but it was also all for me. It was me talking to a stranger, but it was really another voice speaking to me and my own journey.

It was time for the long drive home, to face a new day and whatever it brings. To face reality and to be the person God created, loves and delights in. One thing I can be certain of: I’ve left much behind, and what I am bringing with me is not what I took away. There’s been a house-cleaning, and some of what was very familiar is gone.

God has lightened the load, and he’s reminded me that the life he’s given me isn’t the sum total of what others think or what others have convinced me to believe. Life comes as a gift from Jesus, and there’s no apologies for what it does in me. The life God has for me isn’t on tap and it’s not under the control of people. It’s his free outpouring to everyone who is thirsty.

There’s a reason He said “don’t be afraid” more than anything else. Following Jesus is scary, because you can’t hold on to much else except him.

Our sessions have all been in the massive Billy Graham Center. Part of this building is a Graham Museum, which is very interesting.

Wheaton really is a splendid campus. It’s been perfect spring weather and I’ve really enjoyed walking around the beautiful campus. The food service at Wheaton is one of the best of any college anywhere. A classy place.

Tonight I had a wonderful visit with longtime IM reader Scott, who is a pastor here in the area. He treated me to dinner (Corn Beef and Cabbage at a fine Irish establishment) and plenty of good conversation. Scott is one of many IM readers whose story reminds me of just how helpful this blog has been to unknown thousands of people all over the world. God’s blessings to Scott and his family.

Tomorrow I hope to visit the Marion Wade Center, which is the center of American C.S. Lewis study. Much of Lewis’s library is housed there, as well as Lewis and Thinkling memorabilia, such as the famous wardrobe.

Many of the people here at the RZIM conference are laypersons: doctors, lawyers, business persons, scientists. Ministry types like myself are a minority. That’s very encouraging. We need more laypersons interested in apologetics.

If you have been in pastoral ministry for more than ten years, you might consider the pastoral sabbatical grant program at the Louisville Institute who have generously funded my sabbatical. You can find more information at their website.

When I had sabbatical orientation, they told all of us that this sort of thing would happen. No matter how well you communicated what you were doing on your sabbatical, well-meaning (and otherwise motivated) people would make up all kinds of fiction to explain your absence.

So in order to help those of you who are reading this web page and drawing highly fictional conclusions about what’s going on in my life, I have decided to help you put together something that will, at least, be moderately interesting.

Here’s how you play. I’ll construct a few sentences with several multiple choice components, then you can choose what you like and pass it on as you wish. I promise you what you’ll come up with with my help will be far more interesting than saying I’m involved in chaplaincy training.

Here we go.

“Michael is at…..”

a. The Vatican
b. McDonald’s University
c. Yankee Stadium
d. The Mayo Clinic
e. A small snake-handling church
f. the home of an experienced mob hit man

“(action verb)”

a. studying
b. eating
c. sleeping
d. praying
e. swearing
f. hiding

“so he can….”

a. become the head of a major criminal organization
b. be recognized as a super hero
c. DJ
d. write a best-selling novel
e. bat 4th for the Yankees
f. escape the FBI

“Be sure and say that you heard this from….”

a. Bill O’Reilly
b. Leviticus 18
c. A still, small voice
d. Radiohead
e. A White House spokesperson
f. a reliable gnome

“Michael wants you to tell everyone that…”

a. the burnt offering will be Friday night at the campground.
b. you’ll love the hair transplant.
c. they should change the story and whisper it to the next kid.
d. Paul is dead.
e. Todd Bentley is the next Spiritual Emphasis Week speaker, so wear a helmet.
f. Jesus is just alright with you too.

“Seriously, if you want to know the real story…”

a. play this post backwards.
b. pray, then open the Bible to a random page and point to a verse.
c. watch TBN tonight at 9:03 p.m. and pay close attention to the lady with the pink hair.
d. arrange this post without spaces or punctuation, then look for coded phrases.
e. make a monthly pledge to Internet Monk ministries and we’ll mail you the truth.
f. Look on the back of your pants.

I have a “home” in western Kentucky, but I feel like a stranger there. I enjoyed visiting this week, but I really am like a man from another time and place.

I have a “home” in eastern Kentucky, but it’s very fragile. A few bumps in the road and difficulties, and I’m feeling “homeless.”

I have a home with my family, but with the kids gone, it’s a changed place, too. With recent changes in the spiritual directions Denise and I are traveling, it feels different as well.

My tradition says “heaven is my home.” I still have a long ways to go before that statement will make much sense to me.

I believe my home is the journey, and the God who leads me in it. In that way, my sabbatical journey is metaphorical of my life. I’m traveling, and when I get comfortable, it’s time to move again.

I spent this week visiting my old haunts, conversing with friends, eating familiar food, getting good work done in libraries, enjoying a beautiful retreat center and seeing relatives. A typical week home.

I was restless, as I always seem to be when I’m supposed to be restful.

My home town is wealthy, and the Christian community there is wealthy as well. Church facilities are palatial (unless you have lost the ability to know what “palatial” means.) Churches compete with one another for the consumer disciples who want the programs, music and style that make Christianity fit within this culture. There’s little “counter-cultural” in the Christianity in my home town. The Kingdom looks like the culture, not the table of beggars that will be at the party at the end of the world.

I made a big contribution to all of this. At the time, it just seemed like what I was supposed to do. As I drive through the poor sections of town now, I’m ashamed that I didn’t bring my youth groups down there. Not even once. Not for any reason. The other world, the world Jesus inhabited and loved, was right there all along. But I was socialized into not seeing it. I was afraid of my whiteness and my deadness to the reality of poverty and economic sin.

That’s the way it is with suburban Christianity. It blinds you by dazzling you. It blinds you with “science,” as in its own selective reasoning. You know the world of the last, lost, least, little and dead is out there, but you’re part of something so good, so cool, so big, so “nice,”…..you just don’t think about it. You can go to the parts of town made for you and your money and your kind of people, and you never see the other world. You can thank God for his blessings and go on. I do, all the time.

Pete Gall talks about a woman he once helped when he was working in the hood, and he didn’t see her again for months. Then one day he was on his way to a big church board meeting, and there was an accident in the road. When he drove past the accident, he could see that a pedestrian had been hit and killed. It was the woman he’d helped.

She’d had three small children.

But he had to get to the board meeting. Yeah, we all pass by on the other side. And “the other side” in my life is the comfort zone where my deepest assumptions about all of this aren’t really challenged at any level that would mess up my place in the world which I’ve chosen.

I wonder, what does God do to move us out of those comfort zones and to the other side of the road? How does he turn our head? And how have I learned to tune him out as well?

Next week I’m off to another “home” for me. St. Meinrad Archabbey in Southern Indiana. I’ll check in from there. Peace.

I’ve stayed at the Legacy Center on the Campus of The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. Accommodations are outstanding. Great bookstore, coffee shop, cafeteria, library and health center all right here on campus.

I’ve averaged about 5 hours a day writing in the library, and that has been very productive time.

I’ve also spent time with IM friends Ed Brenegar and Tony Kummer. I visited the Christian Book Nook, a wonderful new/used Christian book store started in 2005 which is owned and operated by one of my own youth group kids from back in the long ago, John Smithson. It was awesome to see John again and hear how God has blessed him in this new ministry/business project. His prices and selection are the best. Stop over and mention me. He’ll add 25% to the price and send the money to me. (Just kidding.)

The Louisville Bats are out of town this week, so I’ve been watching Little League games at the St. Matthew’s Community Center. The ball park is always a beautiful and relaxing place to be, and the weather has been heavenly this week.

I’ll be leaving Louisville tomorrow sometime, and starting week 2 in my home town of Owensboro, Kentucky. I’ll be logging time in the new public library and the Brescia University library, as well as at the ball park.

One last note.

Some IM readers have been distressed by some of my recent comments about the “God I no longer believe in.” This kind of rhetoric is a way of describing the Christian’s journey to affirm his faith in the truth of the God who is there; the God and Father of Jesus Christ. Some readers have put so much emphasis on what I said about the God I didn’t believe in they paid no attention to what I said about the God I DO believe in.

Perhaps it would help to pick up Phillip Yancey’s book, Disappointment with God. It’s a whole book that does exactly what I described: sort through what isn’t true about God to rediscover what is true. And it’s a great read. It’s worth your investment of time and money.

The stance of the Christian isn’t to hold on to every idea about God he/she was ever taught as if those ideas must always be true, but a Jesus follower is to let go of every idol and untruth on the way to believing the one incarnate Word alone as the revelation of all we can know about God.

Yancey’s book should be required reading for those who are shocked that anyone’s relationship with God takes place in a tension between what is believed and what is rejected.

UPDATE: I seem to remember some of my OBI friends reading James Dobson’s When God Doesn’t Make Sense, and I’ve often recommended C.S. Lewis’s book A Grief Observed. Both these books sort through ideas about God that come to us during times of loss and grief, and then reaffirm the truth.

Is it really all that shocking to say I no longer believe in a God who stops bad things from happening because I prayed they wouldn’t happen? Finding those of us who wrestle with God to be “confusing” and dangerous is understandable, but are you paying attention to what many other Christians have said and written through the years?

1. Prayer from Celebrating Common Prayer in the morning and the evening.
2. Extended Scripture reading with meditation and notes, probably on Matthew.
3. Reading on my reading list (Jesus books mostly.)
4. Daily Exercise
5. Discipline my eating regiment at breakfast and lunch.
6. Reading poetry each day: Dante, Charles Wright, Wendell Berry.
7. Go to local ball parks, watch games, take pictures
8. Write in my poetry and personal reflections journal.
9. Write letters to Denise.
10. Delete all my RSS feeds and cease reading blogs. Reduce blog posts to one per day on BHT and occasionally on IM.
11. Work on my book ideas every day.
12. Late afternoon and evening- do as little productive as possible. Goof off in nature with my camera.
13. Have no contact at all with work until August.
14. Worship with other Christians from time to time.
15. Spiritual direction conversations with friends/mentors who are available.
16. Visit coffee shops, Irish establishments, cheap eateries, parks, museums and used bookstores.
17. Spend quality time with family: Denise, Noel and Ryan, Clay, my two remaining relatives.
18. Meet some IM friends.
19. Practice silence.
20. Play my guitar again.