Responding to Trump

There will be no shortage of reaction to the US election over the coming days and weeks. I spent a good chunk of Tuesday night holding a week-and-a-half old baby and anxiously refreshing my news feed as the results trickled in. Sleep deprivation and paternal emotions didn’t exactly help, but as the night wore on and the outlook got bleaker, I found myself, like many others no doubt, moving through a whole cocktail of anger, despair and fear.

While the consequences of a second Trump presidency will be unavoidably global, not being American, I don’t exactly have skin in the game. The voices of those who will be far more directly impacted ought to be listened to far more attentively than mine, writing from the comfort of distance. But writing is the best means I know of processing, so here are some raw reflections on how I want to respond. Grief, perspective and resilience.

Grief

I’m recognising already a desire in me to move to activity and solutions. But I don’t want to move too fast through the grief of this moment.

I don’t think that Harris was a perfect candidate and there’s plenty about the Democratic party that I don’t love. Like everyone else, I’m bringing all my own biases and preferences into this election, but this isn’t grief because my team didn’t win. I spend my time cultivating young leaders of character, faithfulness and integrity, and Trump is the antithesis of just about everything that we teach. And worst of all, he does it with the blessing of the vast majority of white evangelicals.

So, grief is, I think, an entirely appropriate response and one which I don’t want to move through too fast. It is right, in this moment, to give voice to the suffering of those now living in heightened fear. It is right to grieve the cultural captivity of white evangelicalism and the many factors that created a discipleship culture willing to compromise biblical and moral integrity for a taste of power.[1] It is right to grieve the social dislocation that has left so many feeling left behind and aggrieved. And it is right to grieve the inability of urban, globalist ‘anywhere’ progressives to empathize with the predominantly rural ‘somewheres’ who are drawn to Trump.[2] Like so many left-leaning political parties at the moment, the Democrats seem to be guilty of treating their opponents with dehumanising and condescending derision, all the while failing to tell a better story than the populist, nostalgia-ridden nativism of MAGA. 

Perspective

One thing we don’t need right now is another straight, white, male, middle-class Christian leader telling us that it will be ok. That’s why we mustn’t deny or avoid the grief. But just as the psalms of lament are directed at God, perspective in the midst of grief is important. 

I need to remember that my loyalty is not ultimately to a party, or a nation state, or even to liberal democracy. I prefer certain parties to others, I’m grateful to live in the UK, and I certainly would choose liberal democracy out of all the options available. But my life is centred on the life, death and resurrection of Jesus, and that means that my allegiance is to him and my hope is in his Kingdom. That faith propels me to join in with his mission to push back chaos and darkness and work for peace, justice and fruitfulness in the world. But it also protects me from buying into the secular mythology of progress – the idea that history is moving up and to the right. My faith teaches me that we are living in the overlap of the old world of death and decay and God’s new world of justice and wholeness – what theologians call the ‘now and not yet’. With this perspective, I shouldn’t be surprised when power ends up in the hands of those who ought not to be trusted with it. Of course, we fight to elect leaders who will serve the common good. We grieve, we intercede, we hold to account, and (where no other options remain) we non-violently resist when that is not the case. But we also acknowledge that for as long as Sin, chaos and evil are on the loose, any political progress this side of new creation will be compromised and provisional at best. We work and hope for the flourishing of our neighbours, but we’re also realistic in our expectations. We can’t build the kingdom without the King.

Resilience

Resilience isn’t about grit, or optimism, or stubborn idealism. It’s a gift we receive. It’s about a sure and steadfast hope that charges the struggle with resurrection purpose and allows us to adapt, to grow and keep going even when things are dark and hard and costly.

We mustn’t move too fast into activity. We need to allow the space to grieve. But what if we choose to see this moment as a summons?

If crisis precedes renewal, then could this moment of cultural captivity, theo-political idolatry and evangelical hypocrisy be a barren dessert poised for springs of newness and rebirth? I want to be careful – there are no easy answers or silver linings here.

For those of us convicted that Jesus is Lord (and not any president, nation state or ideology), for those of us that see love of God expressed not in the in puritanical policing of boundaries but in how we treat the most vulnerable in our societies, and for those of us who trust that the kingdom comes not through might and power but through suffering love, there is work to do. 

The antidote to the bad is the practice of the good. If there is much within white American evangelicalism that has contributed to the ethical incongruence of electing Trump a second time, then it’s on us not simply to call out all that is wrong, but to tell and live out a better story.

That’s not a call to frantic, restless activity. That will get us nowhere. It’s a call to devote our lives to the slow, patient work of becoming the sorts of disciples capable of seeking justice faithfully, sustainably and holistically. That means rooting ourselves in the full, redemptive story of the bible. That means living out a politics which cares for the most vulnerable, which refuses to allow ends to justify means and which cannot be co-opted by any party or ideology. That means the unglamorous daily decisions to choose the way of suffering love over comfort, convenience and self-promotion.

[1] Soong-Chan Rah, Prophetic Lament: A Call for Justice in Troubled Times (Downers Grove: IVP, 2015)

[2] David Goodheart, The Road to Somewhere: The Populist Revolt and the Future of Politics (London: Penguin, 2017)

Cynicism and parenting

‘I’d rather be gullible than cynical’

Sometimes you hear a phrase that feels a bit like a punch to the gut – striking unexpectedly and leaving you reeling. I had that sensation a bit over a year ago, listening to Pete Greig reflect on a podcast about the Asbury outpouring. It has stuck with me since.

The slow dismantling of a weary cynicism was a major arena where I experience God’s gentle grace during my sabbatical last summer. It was a fight I then carried into the months that followed as I returned to ministry with all of the frustrations, stresses and tensions inherent to all meaningful work this side of new creation.

I long to be more buoyant and less reserved. I long for more delight, laughter and play. And I long to worry and brood a whole lot less.

I want to live with the unspeakable, effervescent joy of someone who believes in the resurrection. But all too often, I live deflated, turned inwards, pre-occupied by my little concerns and hurts, frustrated at things that don’t go exactly how I want them to, or just a bit scared and worn out by so much in our world that is not right.

I grow cynical.

I grow old.

Now, there is a type of growing old that I long for – a maturation, a softening of hard-edges, an uninhibited intimacy with God and others, an eroding of ego, a confidence in who I am and a disinterest in trying to be anyone else, a depth of peace and poise – the kind that comes not from comfort and ease, but from the long obedience of showing up and giving yourself away. Some people call this sort of holy aging a ‘second naivete.’  

But holy aging is rare. It does not seem to be a given. More often, growing old seems to come with unresolved baggage, festering wounds, a narrowing of horizon and a raising of drawbridges. A turning in on oneself rather than out to others. Cynicism.

Right now, parenting feels like it presents me with a daily choice. Which sort of aging do I want? The way of cynicism, or the way of the second naivete?

It could wear me down, I could despise the monotony and seek refuge in escapism, I could lick the wounds of my exhaustion, cultivate self-pity, fantasise all the ‘what-ifs’ of different life decisions, and see these years as a struggle for survival. Honestly, this feels like the pull of the tide.

Or… or I could see these precious days before the routine of school as opportunities to nurture attachment, to attune with and delight in this awesome gift of a boy who God has entrusted to our care. And I could see the monotony itself as a deep invitation.

A child kicks his legs rhythmically through excess, not absence, of life. Because children have abounding vitality, because they are in spirit fierce and free, therefore they want things repeated and unchanged. They always say, “Do it again”; and the grown-up person does it again until he is nearly dead. For grown-up people are not strong enough to exult in monotony. But perhaps God is strong enough to exult in monotony. It is possible that God says every morning, “Do it again” to the sun; and every evening, “Do it again” to the moon. It may not be automatic necessity that makes all daisies alike; it may be that God makes every daisy separately, but has never got tired of making them. It may that he has the eternal appetite of infancy; for we have sinned and grown old, and our Father in younger than we.

GK Chesterton

Another punch to the gut.

But a good one. A welcome one. One that I need to hear over and over.

I don’t know if it will get easier over time. Perhaps. But right now making this choice to become the father and the man that I want to be, not the one that my apathy and lethargy drag me towards, is hard. I’m very much not nailing it.

But if being clear on the destination is a big part of the journey, then I am at least progressing. As always, it’s a long obedience in the same direction.  

Christendom Nostalgia

Either I’m hearing it more or I’m just becoming more sensitive to it. Probably a bit of both. In this volatile, polarizing age I am increasingly noticing among Jesus-followers what I call a ‘Christendom nostalgia.’

A quick definition of terms – ‘Christendom’ refers to the historical period where Christianity enjoyed dominant political and social power.  It usually refers to the period in western Europe following Constantine’s adoption of Christianity as the official religion of the Roman Empire in the fourth century. The political dominance looked different in varying times and location, but one trend is clear: across the western world over the second half of the twentieth century, this historic political and social power eroded. Most western countries can now be accurately described as Post-Christendom.[1] While the established church continues to wield a degree of power and while the influence of centuries of Christian thought can be seen everywhere in our ‘secular’ culture, identifying as Christian is no longer particularly socially advantageous, nor are Christian values (of some variety) the assumption in public life.

When I refer to Christendom nostalgia, I mean the sense of grief for a lost past, and the desire to return to some form of Christendom – for Christians to take back power. We’re seeing a particularly ugly form of this with Trumpian Christian Nationalism in the US but I want to focus particularly on my own context here in the UK.

People bemoan the fact that ‘we used to be a Christian country.’ They celebrate and vote for Christian politicians, with the assumption that if we can just get Christians into positions of power, that will be good news. And before we write this off as the preserve of the elderly who fondly remember the good old days of Billy Graham crusades, full churches and ‘traditional’ values, think of how many contemporary movements and worship songs use the quasi-militaristic language like ‘winning the nation back.’

I want to be careful here. I think the vast majority of people who express opinions like this are well-intentioned and fearful about what they (with plenty of justification) see as an increasingly chaotic, contested and dangerous world. The attraction of wanting to return to the stability and safety of an old order is certainly understanding.

So, what’s wrong with this sort of nostalgia?

  1. It is fiction

    Is there a single point in British history where this country has vaguely resembled the Kingdom of God? The Christianity of the Middle Ages condoned the crusades. The Christianity of the Reformation was perfectly happy to torture and burn heretics. The Christianity of the early modern period accepted and often provided the moral justification for the transatlantic slave trade. The Christianity of the industrial revolution had little critique for the mass exploitation of labour and creation, and the avarice of global imperialism. The Christianity of the twentieth century held onto a colonial legacy and remained broadly silent on the dehumanising persecution of minorities.

    Of course, there were countless voices of dissent along the way – faithfully living the way of Jesus in the midst of a Christendom that looked nothing like its Christ. But those faithful disciples have tended to be the exception.

    It is just too simple to wish for the good old days where everyone went to church. Maybe in the 1950s most people did go to church. But we must not mistake church attendance for devoted discipleship and transformed lives. Breadth is not depth. Christendom bred a form of cultural Christianity that brought social reward to nominal belief but which generally frowned upon belief too zealous or committed. In other words, Christianity was accommodated to the dominant culture – where faith could be diluted and twisted to bolster the status quo all was well, but where faith might subvert or challenge the status quo it was supressed or mocked.

    Of course, Christendom was not all bad. But we should be very careful not to assume that social and political power was a good thing for the church. When we wish for the good old days of Christendom, we too easily imagine a fictional past and whitewash the reality that power and comfort may have helped get bums in pews and it may have made us feel like we were more in control of moral norms, but it was a poor environment for growing deep faithful disciples.  

    2. It misunderstands discipleship

      Most Christendom nostalgia comes across as being self-interested. Why do we desire a past where it was easier to identify as Christian, where it brough social and cultural benefit, and where Christians had more political clout? Maybe there are some more altruistic motives there but it certainly sounds like we just want our lives to be more comfortable.

      Discipleship is always the tension of the yoke and the cross – there is comfort, for sure, but the comfort found is in a messiah who is with us in the daily dying to self, the daily bearing of our cross.

      I wouldn’t mind the blatant self-interest of much of the Christendom nostalgia if it was in the context of a consistent care for others. For example, if the logic was that we fight for religious liberty for those of all faiths, because we’re concerned about the common good. But too often, we are far more concerned about my rights and my liberty, and I can’t help but think that Jesus generally seemed to be far more concerned about the wellbeing and flourishing of others. Are we aligning more closely with the hyper-individualism of American libertarianism than we are with the way of Jesus? Or worse, are we aligning with the uglier forms of Christian nationalism than, implicitly or explicitly, feel threatened by migration and think that the country would be better without those who think (or look) different from ‘us?’

      3. It misunderstands the politics of Jesus

      Christendom nostalgia wants Christians to be in power. Rather than the revolutionary subordination of Jesus, it fully co-opts the fallen power-games of the world.

      We may not have quite the same degree of cultural-captivity as in the US, where the majority of white evangelicals have become so fixated on the quest for power that they are prepared to support candidates like Trump. But I still often hear among fellow believers the assumption that it is a good thing to have Christians in power (provided, of course, they are the right kind of Christian). I am certainly not opposed to Christians running for political office, but I seriously worry that when we assume putting Christians in charge is unambiguously a good thing we have assimilated the politics of power, not the politics of the kingdom. We are playing by the rules of the enemy, not by the rules of Jesus.  

      4. It misunderstands the mission of the church

      And let’s be clear, when the politics of Christians looks like a self-interested quest to cling onto power, to guard privilege, to put people ‘like us’ in charge, and to reminisce about an old order without acknowledging or repenting of the vast sins in which the Church of the past colluded, it is hugely damaging to the witness of the church.

      Christendom nostalgia assumes that the mission of the church relies on the exertion of political and social power. The way that we join in with God’s redemptive mission to put right all that is broken in creation, according to Christendom, is to legislate it into being.

      While I think there absolutely is a place for Christian vocation in politics, this assumption that the kingdom of God requires top-down political enforcement seems wildly at odds with the bible. The kingdom is like yeast and mustard seeds – it begins small and insignificant. And God’s method of establishing his kingdom is the cross – God-forsaken, humiliation, defeat, shame, suffering, weakness – the antithesis of any political power play, or strong man, or PR campaign.

      We are in a cultural moment of compounding crisis and breakdown of trust in institutions. It is an incredible missional opportunity for the church to offer a better story – a politics of justice, peace, reconciliation, flourishing and self-giving love in an age of violence, polarization, self-interest, greed and isolation. But we’re too often opting for assimilation rather than distinctiveness. Is it any surprise that people are not particularly interested in Jesus if all they see from the church is more of the same?

      5. It is inconsistent in its political critique

      This one is very much influenced by the religious right in the US, but I am increasingly encountering it here in the UK.

      Christendom nostalgia does seem, more often than not, to be accompanied by an uncritical allegiance to those elements of the political right that seem determined to wage culture wars. That means that what might start as a more innocent fear at the pace of social change can often become morphed into a wider, and more insidious, agenda of conspiracy theories, political populism, anti-immigration xenophobia, misogyny, homophobia and racism.

      I am all for a healthy critique of leftist ideology. But the politics of Jesus compels us distrust political ideologies from across the spectrum. What frustrates me is the inconsistency with which my brothers and sisters point out the dangers of critical theory or cultural Marxism or post-modernism, while uncritically upholding (and often benefiting from) the status quo of industrial capitalism, militarism, consumerism and cultural imperialism.

      If our political witness is to be faithful and consistent, we need to be prepared to critique all ideology that is dehumanising and destructive. We need to model an alternative politics in our church communities. And from there we seek the welfare, the common good, of society.

      So what should we do instead?

      Perhaps I can write more about these another time, but some very quick ideas to get us started…

      1. Cultivate hope, not fear

      Fear brings out the worst in us. When our posture towards the world is one of fear, we do two things: we look for strong men (and it is almost always men) who will fight our cause. And we look for others who seem to share our fears, forming homogenous echo chambers. These are both dangerous on so many levels.

      We need to be a people of resurrection hope – hope that Jesus is risen, that he is Lord, and that he is at work, in the midst of all that is wrong and broken in our world to put things right. That hope is the antidote to the politics of fear.

      2. Embrace marginality

      The western church has lost most of its social and political power. What if we embraced that? What if we dared to believe that God’s mission has never been dependent on our power? What if we saw it as an opportunity for greater solidarity with those on the margins and greater intimacy with the messiah who moves towards the margins? What if we saw the marginality of the western church as a missional opportunity, rather than a threat to our comfort?

      3. Find hills worth dying on 

      Christendom nostalgia picks the wrong fights. When we make a fuss about not being allowed to wear crosses in certain jobs, or being punished for offering prayer, or about other religions apparently getting preferential treatment (as in ‘they wouldn’t be allowed to say that about Muslims’) all the while staying silent on racial justice, or climate justice, or economic justice it communicates pure hypocrisy and self-interest. We have to decide what we focus our limited time and energy and resources on. Surely we need to focus it on where our fellow image-bearers across the globe are in greatest need.  

      4. Take political discipleship seriously in our churches

      Most churches that I’ve been part of are very cautious of being ‘political.’ This often comes from a good place – a desire to stay out of the mess and tribalism of party politics. It tends to draw on Romans 13, which is an important passage for political theology, but certainly not all the bible has to say about politics. The problem is that if we are not forming disciples in our churches who are able to navigate the nuance and complexities of what faithful engagement with politics looks like, other forces will fill that discipleship void. The best antidote of the bad is the practice of the good. It’s complex, but I wonder if these contested and volatile times require us to re-imagine what it looks like to disciple our congregations in the politics of Jesus.

      [1] It’s important to say that this is only true of the West (Europe and the US). Post-Christendom is not necessarily the same as Post-Christian – Tom Holland, in his book Dominion, makes a compelling case for the enduring legacy of Judeo-Christian heritage in western society, in spite of the decline in church attendance, religious affiliation and power.

      Reflecting on Sabbatical

      Having been back at work for a few weeks now, it feels like a good time to reflect on my three-month sabbatical. I came into sabbatical excited but also in quite a cynical and exhausted place. I hoped for a time of deep rest – a slowing down to be present to God and to my family. I wrote in the first week about a desire to go back to the basics – to simply receive and delight in God’s goodness.

      So, how did it go? My workplace’s sabbath policy did not require me to accomplish anything to justify my sabbatical. I’ve been hugely grateful for that freedom.  Overall, I have loved this time. Sabbath rest in its various forms is always a gift – God’s gift – which I am grateful to receive. I have loved the simplicity and spaciousness of it. It was precious to have time to play with my son without worrying about getting to the next meeting, time to go for long walks and bike rides, time to read books just because I wanted to read them.

      And yet, in many ways, it did not go how I had hoped. Midway through I had to return to work because our funding looked like it was in trouble. I didn’t return full-time, but it meant that the second half of sabbatical was very different from the first – less present and restful, more distracted and stressful and hurried. It felt like my mind, body and soul were just beginning to recover from the toll of a difficult season of work and life, and then I was unexpectedly thrown back in again.

      There was definitely some grief there. Grief that my sabbatical was not going to not match up to the years of hopes and dreams I had invested in it. I found myself frustrated at God. In the Hebrew Bible, the practice of sabbath is an act of trust in God’s provision – trusting that God will provide even when we stop work. And, honestly, it felt like God had not kept His side of the deal. There were some hard days processing that disappointment, but I was able to land with some perspective, remembering that sabbatical is a gift, not an entitlement, and a gift that the vast majority of people do not get to enjoy. I could be angry and frustrated that it did not go to plan, or I could make the most of the time that I had. I tried, imperfectly, to choose the latter.

      There are no great achievements from my sabbatical – no book, no qualification, no dramatic spiritual breakthrough. I did read quite a few books and got myself a bit fitter. And I think sabbatical has changed me.

      Chatting with my spiritual director earlier this week, the theme that kept coming up as we reflected on sabbatical was that I think it humbled me.

      Slowing down and being more present at home are lovely in theory, but I found them hard in practice. Maybe for the first time in adult life I could not avoid the question of who I am when I am not working hard and achieving things. I liked to imagine that I was basically quite a kind and patient person, but I was humbled to discover that it only took a few days of childcare or bad sleep or my wife being ill to break that façade. My son is wonderful, but he is two, and that comes with a whirlwind of big feelings and an endless supply of energy. The mundanity of parenting confronted me with my deep selfishness. To my shame, I would catch myself fantasising about how much more fun sabbatical would be without a child.  

      The humbling came on other levels too – the humbling of achieving far less than I’d hoped for even after I’d tried to manage my expectations and ambitions, and the humbling of realising that I had not done enough to set my team up to thrive while I was off. It wasn’t what I expected from sabbatical, but at the same time, the humbling was not unwelcome. There haven’t been dramatic moments of spiritual encounter over this time, but I’m confident that God has been at work in me – and I think there is grace in the way that I’ve been confronted with my own weakness and self-reliance.  

      I was nervous about returning to work, but I’ve actually really enjoyed returning fully into the swing of things over the last few weeks. Where I was quite tired and cynical in May, I’ve come back with a fresh energy, vision and passion for work. In the final weeks of sabbatical I re-read some of the books that got me excited about a radical pursuit of Jesus and justice when I was an undergraduate and I felt a re-affirmation of vocation – a renewed clarity that this role and this movement is where God is calling me right now. Being confronted with my selfishness has helped me, very imperfectly, to love my wife and my son better. And on a very simple level, I love Jesus more. I’ve been angry at him, for sure, but I’ve also been wooed again by his beauty and goodness. I don’t need to justify sabbatical, but if I did, I’d say those are good outcomes.

      I don’t want to try to force a positive spin on this. Parts of it have been really hard, sad and frustrating. But that is the reality of life this side of new creation. Many more parts have been gentle, precious and deeply restful. It may not have been exactly the gift I had anticipated, but it was most certainly a gift.

      Gardening as Liturgy: Part 2

      Tending a garden is slow work. Little can be achieved in a hurry. Germinating, training, ripening, improving the soil – even with the best conditions – requires a lot of waiting. There are few short cuts which do not compromise the long-term health of the garden.  

      I am struck by how loose my control over my garden really is. At the mercy of weather, pests and disease, there are significant limits to the influence I am able to wield over the process. My intervention might be able to keep a plant healthy, or even hasten its growth, but always with the risk of damage. In this last year I have had very little time for my garden. But the snowdrops still came in February, daffodils in March, tulips in April. The soft fruits are plentiful, foxgloves and nigella have seeded themselves bountifully and the echinops are putting out great thistles. All this has happened in spite of me – I can claim very little credit.

      For the most part, gardening is dull and repetitive. What little work I have done over the last year has mostly been weeding – the ultimate war of attrition. Weeding is never done; there will always be some that escape and, without fail, more will have grown back in a week’s time. It would be easy to despair at the futility of it, but you cling on to the hope of summer – you imagine your flourishing borders unencumbered by competing weeds – and somehow that makes the drudgery worth it.

      The sentimentalist in me gets pretty disheartened by all of this. I find it easier to like the idea of gardening far more than the actual practice of gardening. It’s easy to idealise the beauty of a well-tended garden and to persuade yourself that it can be achieved with minimal effort or cost. But, like all sentimentalism, this is a recipe for disappointment and disillusionment.

      Here it might be helpful to recap James K.A. Smith’s idea of a liturgy. We are what we love: where we focus our desire and how we imagine the good life forms our identity. And our desires, in turn, are shaped by repetitive practices and rituals. Think of how the practice of shopping may train us to desire certain products and to imagine a good life that involves an abundance of possessions, or how the practice of weightlifting may train us to desire a certain body shape and to imagine a good life that involves physical prowess. These identity-forming practices are what Smith calls liturgies.

      I think gardening is a liturgy. Or, to take it a step further, I wonder if gardening is best thought of as a counter-liturgy. The idea here is that we are, all of the time, being formed by liturgies. Most of those liturgies are secular liturgies – liturgies which mis-direct our desires towards things other than (and often opposed to) the kingdom of God. Discipleship, says Smith, often attempts to counter these secular liturgies with ideas and beliefs – thinking the right things – which is always doomed to failure because we are not purely rational beings. Instead, we need to counter those secular liturgies with counter-liturgies – practices which re-order our desires towards the Kingdom.

      Gardening re-orients my desires in many ways.

      The slowness of gardening counters those secular liturgies which train me to hurry, to rush, to compete. It calls into question the story of joyless, restless efficiency and production, and situates me in a better story – of seasons and patience and margin.

      The limits of my control over my garden counter those secular liturgies which teach me to be a rugged, sovereign individual – the lonely captain of my fate. It calls into question the story of ever advancing technological innovation ushering in a utopia where all risk (including the perpetual risk of love) is eliminated, and it situates me in a better story – where there is beauty in knowing the limits of my wisdom and foresight. Where community, humility and integrity matter more than conquest, safety and comfort.

      The dullness and mundanity of gardening counter those secular liturgies which insist that the only life living is one of spontaneity, self-centred hype, exaggerated achievements and rampant hedonism. It calls into question the story of empty celebrity and the unrealistic expectations of an Instagram-able life, and it situates me in a better story of rhythm and discipline, of humble aspirations, of good honest hard work, and hope of redemption. A story that values the glamourless work of character formation and showing up to reality higher than the synthetic sheen of marketing, relentless maintenance of my personal ‘brand’ and the untethered morality of being ‘true to myself.’

      In so many ways, gardening is a counter-liturgy which is transplanting me and my desires from the lifeless, claggy soil of late modern secular culture into the deep, rich loam on the Kingdom. That uprooting is not a given. It’s contested. In the garden, there is always the temptation towards hacks and shortcuts. It is always tempting to squash the redemptive potential by doubling down on those secular liturgies I have been schooled in. But slowly, imperfectly, by the grace of God, I trust that my garden is an arena for counter-liturgy – for transformation.

      Gardening as Liturgy: Part 1

      In his essay, Think Little, Wendell Berry says that ‘I can think of no better form of personal involvement in the cure of the environment than that of gardening.’ It’s a good challenge to my tendency to assume that big problems require big solutions. I struggle to believe that small, local, personal action could make any significant dent in an issue as massive as the climate crisis.

      Berry is not saying that we should opt for small, local actions (like gardening) instead of pursuing change on the level of national and international politics, economics and business. He is warning that we should be sceptical of any ‘big’ ecological solutions that are abstracted from any meaningful, real relationship of cultivation and care-giving with the land.

      I think that Berry would claim that the root causes of the climate crisis are a fundamentalist addiction to limitless growth, to ever accelerating technological innovation and to the assumption that bigger is better. He is sceptical of solutions that uncritically perpetuate those root causes and insists that real change needs to begin in cultivating deep, stable, flourishing local economies.

      ‘Our understandable wish to preserve the planet must somehow be reduced to the scale of our competence – that is, the wish to preserve all of its humble households and neighborhoods’

      ‘Word and Flesh,’ in Wendell Berry, The World-Ending Fire: The Essential Wendell Berry (London: Penguin, 2018)

      Whether or not gardening really is the best form of personal involvement in the cure of the environment, the claim got me thinking. Perhaps I have too limited, even too secular, a view of gardening. What if gardening is more than just a nice hobby or a good, mindful leisure activity? What if it’s actually closer to a spiritual discipline – a practice that is not merely an expression or outworking of my identity, but is involved in forming and shaping my identity?

      James K.A. Smith is a writer I’ve been wanting to explore for a while – I’ve had multiple friends recommend him and read multiple authors who seem heavily influenced by his work. Recently, I finally read Desiring the Kingdom where he unpacks the idea of liturgies. Let me try a brief summary:

      Much of western protestant theology, he says, operates with a faulty philosophical anthropology. In other words, an inaccurate understanding of what it means to be human. This ‘rationalist’ distortion, inherited from the Enlightenment, has tended to treat human beings primarily as ‘thinking things’ – as minds which happen to have bodies attached. This has led to an overemphasis in Christian education and discipleship on doctrine, on believing the right things, and a neglect of the importance of what we do with our bodies: practices and rituals.

      Smith argues that a holistic, biblical anthropology sees human beings as embodied creatures.

      ‘What if the core of our identity is located more in the body that the mind? Being a disciple of Jesus is not primarily a matter of getting the right ideas and doctrines and beliefs into your head in order to guarantee proper behavior; rather, it’s a matter of being the kind of person who loves rightly.’

      James K.A. Smith, Desiring the Kingdom: Worship, Worldview, and Cultural Formation (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2009), 32

      Our desires – what we love, what we hope for, our visions for the good life – shape us on a deeper level than what we believe on a purely intellectual level. Hence Smith’s snappy phrase ‘you are what you love.’ And our desires are not innate or static – they are dynamic and fluid – and formed by liturgy. Smith has a specific definition of liturgies: they are embodied rituals that are formative for identity. Liturgies are the practices which shape who we become.

      All of us, all of the time, are being shaped by liturgies – whether religious worship or ‘secular liturgies’ like watching TV or shopping – our desires are shaped in particular directions and trained towards a certain imagination of what human flourishing is. And so I want to explore gardening as a liturgy – as an identify-forming habit. In what ways are the mundane routines of sowing and harvesting, tending and weeding shaping what I love, and therefore shaping the person I am becoming? My hope is that the reflections that follow this post will allow me to familiarise myself with Smith’s ideas at the same time as reframing how I think about gardening.

      Retreating with Keating

      I began my sabbatical last week with three days of retreat at a friary. Amidst the rhythms of prayer and seaside walks, I read Fr Thomas Keating’s Invitation to Love. I haven’t read any of his work before, but I wanted to deepen my practice of centring prayer and a quick bit of research suggested that this book would be a good place to start. I say deepen my practice of centring prayer; it would be more honest to say resuscitate. There have been times when I’ve got into something of a rhythm with periods of 10-20 minutes of silent, contemplative prayer (charismatics might be more familiar with the language of soaking or sitting in the presence or abiding) but since parenthood arrived, I have barely managed a handful of unhurried stints of resting in God.

      The book draws fairly heavily on mystics like St Anthony, John of the Cross and Teresa of Avila, as well as some psychology. I feel the need to check the psychology in with friends who know about that sort of thing, I’m not sure how well it has aged since the early nineties. Regardless, it was a good, challenging read.

      Keating speaks particularly into a dilemma I have tried to articulate before: the challenge of change and spiritual growth when my go-to methods of change and growth – discipline, self-help and hard work – are exactly the things that I want to change.

      Much of the book is about the journey from the false self to the true self. Keating describes the false self as the ‘emotional programs for happiness’ that we learn from a young age – those motivations, patterns, values, and practices that we learn in order to survive and to meet unmet needs.

      Crucially, we cannot take the journey from the false self to our true, in-Christ selves by relying on the methods provided by the false self:

      ‘The conscious resolution to change our values and behaviour is not enough to alter the unconscious value system of the false self and the behaviour they engender’

      This hits against the same dilemma I’ve been wrestling with. Keating’s solution?

      ‘Only the passive purification of contemplative prayer can affect this profound healing’

      In previous posts I’ve wrestled with the idea of surrender – and the danger that the language of surrender can be Christian-ese for abdicating responsibility for my own discipleship. Keating seems to be suggesting that contemplative practices – and especially centring prayer – are how we surrender, how we learn to depend on God and not on the ‘emotional programs for happiness’ of the false self.

      A sabbatical seems like a good time to try this out, so I’m aiming to sit in silence, to rest in God ‘beyond thoughts, feelings and commentaries,’ for at least 20 minutes a day. So far, I’ve mostly found the practice quite frustrating – I’m confronted with the sheer volume and mundanity of my internal chatter, and with my discomfort for silence. But Keating would urge caution with expecting quick results from the practice. I think he’s right when he warns that ‘our expectations of what should happen and our commentaries about what is happening are the causes of most of our anxiety and distress.’ The goal is communion with God: becoming the integrated, calm, non-anxious person of love I have been created to be. But Keating is clear that God will inevitably surprise and subvert our methods of getting there.

      Let’s see how it goes.  

      Setting Out On Sabbatical

      My sabbatical has begun. As I’ve spoken to people about it, especially people outside of the church-y world, I’ve noticed that it is a word in need of definition. Either people haven’t heard of a sabbatical before, or maybe they remember their minister taking a year out to do some study, or something more akin to an academic sabbatical. Though I’d be excited by the prospect of study leave, I’ve been convinced that these next three months of sabbatical require a different approach. At its root, sabbatical (like sabbath) derives from the Hebrew shabbat, which means to stop. It is a ceasing from work in order to rest and delight, to re-root my true identity in God, and to resist a culture of overwork, frantic busyness and joyless anxiety. Reading over notes I took from Ruth Hayley Barton’s Embracing Rhythms of Work and Rest, I was particularly struck by these lines:

      ‘Knowing that sabbatical is a gift from a loving God – and not merely a gift from one’s church or institution – makes quite a difference… Rather than feeling guilty or entitled, I was able to gratefully receive sabbatical as God’s care for me, a beloved child’

      I have not struggled to recognise the immense privilege that it is to work for an organisation that has a generous sabbatical policy, and that has allowed me the freedom to design this time according to what I need. But I had, perhaps, been less alert to the basic goodness of God – who wove rhythms of sabbath rest into creation and whose invitation to me in this season is to rest in his goodness.

      This last year has been tough. Adopting has been joyful but also the hardest thing we have ever done. I love my job but this has been the toughest year of work I’ve known. Changes in our team, transitioning into our second decade as a movement and financial struggles have presented big challenges. My response to those challenges has been to be strong and rely on hard work. I have taken it upon myself to find solutions and save the day, and as a result I have lived at a pace that is not sustainable or healthy.

      As I settle into sabbatical, my temptation is to try to optimise – to freight it with expectations, goals and ambitions. I have drilled myself in a self-centred, industrial mindset that frantically seeks to extract the maximum productivity from every opportunity. If my sabbatical is about stopping work, then I think it will require me to go deep down to the roots and to part ways with this industrial mindset.

      I want this sabbatical to be a time of slowing down enough to love others well, of being present and interruptible and unhurried. I want to cultivate what John Swinton calls ‘timefulness,’ an alertness to God’s presence in the every-day and a simple delight.

      Perhaps that simplicity is key. I’ve had fads on minimalism but my life over the last year has felt cluttered and complicated. My faith is fragile and distracted. Scandals and frustrations at older leaders I had looked up to have bred a creeping cynicism and distrust. I worry that I am becoming harder, sharper, and more judgemental rather than softer, wiser and kinder.    

      I’m hungry for simplicity. I walked on the beach a few days ago and the words of psalm 23 came to me. I sang it over and over into the wind. If this sabbatical is to have any aim (and I am very cautious of loading it with the goals that my industrial mindset craves) then I think it is this: to go back to the basics. To return again to the Lord who is my shepherd. To strip away the baggage, the ego, the pride, the self-reliance, the frustration, the cynicism, the shame – and to know that I lack nothing, that I need fear no evil, that his goodness and mercy follow me all the days of my life.

      This sabbatical is an incredible gift and I want to choose simply to receive – without needing to justify or earn it. I want to simply receive and to delight in God’s goodness. If that is all I do, that will be enough.

      Review: Restless Devices by Felicia Wu Song

      One of the best books that I have read this year is Felicia Wu Song’s Restless Devices: Recovering Personhood, Presence, and Place in the Digital Age. It is a diagnosis of much that is unhealthy with the culture of permanent connectivity that has been proliferated by digital technology. Her assessment never romanticises the past to dismiss the benefits of digital technology, but she outlines clearly and persuasively many of the costs we are (often) uncritically paying as individuals and as society as a result of our digital addiction. There are many parts of what she writes that I would like to explore more. In this article, I’ll focus on her reflections on being human and having limits.

      One of Song’s starting points is to dismiss the idea that digital technologies are merely tools – neutral instruments that can be used for good or bad. Instead, she argues that their design privileges certain options. Social media, for example, is designed to captivate our attention and mine us of our data. It does so very successfully because it is designed to be addictive by delivering the emotions we crave rather than the complexity we need to interact healthily with the world. Far from a benign tool, digital technology tells a powerful story about what it is to be human and how we should live together; a story narrated by corporations whose concern is for their profits not our best interests.    

      The story that digital technology immerses us in bends our assumptions about what it means to be human. It teaches us to view the very limits that make us human – the limits of our bodies, of time, and of place – as inconvenient restraints to transcend. I will try to briefly summarise each of those.

      The digital impacts our relationship with our bodies in many ways – not least in its leaning towards disembodiment. The physical limitations of our bodies are regarded as a nuisance. Living rooted in community with actual in-the-flesh human beings – in particular those ‘others’ who are not like us – is regarded as unnecessary when online connection allows us to self-define who we are in the abstract.

      The digital encourages us to transcend the limits of time by at once monopolising our attention (distracting us from the things that really matter) and bombarding us far more opportunities than we could ever have time for. This keeps us in a state of FOMO (fear of missing out) and anxious busyness where virtually all stillness is removed from our lives by a constant urge to check our phones to ensure that we are not missing out. Time becomes a competitor we race against and try (always unsuccessfully) to master.

      The digital immerses us in a story that is placeless and displacing, that interacts with the physical world only as potential fodder for our social media profiles, that places no value on rootedness or fidelity to a particular place. Some might say it fosters a nomadic lifestyle, but that is to misunderstand the strong community dynamics in nomadic tribes. Instead, what digital technology fosters is a form of hyper-individualism that masquerades as ‘freedom’ but which in reality is an isolating force severing us from any connection to place or people.

      Recently, I re-read The Shepherd’s Life by James Rebanks. It is the beautifully written story of a Lake District Shepherd. The book ends with the haunting line ‘this is my life, I want no other.’ I say haunting because I am struck by how few people I know who could honestly say that of their lives. The digital technology that we are immersed in feeds off and encourages the exact opposite – shaping us into people who long for lives other than the one we are living. That is at the heart of the attempts to transcend the limits of bodies, time and place – it is essentially saying ‘this is my life, and I desperately want another.’ And the tragedy of this drive towards transcendence is that it diminishes the exact things that make for human flourishing. Instead, we are being shaped into disembodied, lonely, angry, narcissistic, frantic, displaced and uprooted people. And this isn’t accidental. The power-brokers of digital capitalism know that disembodied, lonely, angry, narcissistic, frantic, displaced and uprooted people will consume more social media. And so, they hook our attention and sell it to advertisers, at huge profit for them and huge cost to the wellbeing and flourishing of human beings, of local communities, of our politics and our societies.         

      We need a better story. That is what Song proposes in the second half of the book. If our digital routines are ‘secular liturgies’ which form our habits, values and imagination, then we must practice ‘counter-liturgies,’ which ground us in a better story. The main practices she outlines are designed to reorient us around the limits of bodies, time and place – and receiving those limits as gifts, rather than as restrains to transcend.

      She talks about embodied, faithful presence and the importance of being with others in real physical community – especially those who are not like us. She talks about sabbath as a practice to root us in the gift of time. And she talks about sacred space as a practice that dares us to show up to our place without digital distraction.

      These counter-liturgies excite me. They frame spiritual practices as acts of resistance – habits which, through simple repetition and mundane persistence, might just make plausible that elusive line from James Rebanks. I’m not sure about this, but I wonder if a significant test of our faithfulness at making disciples in the digital age, is the extent to which we cultivate the conditions that make it possible for us to honestly declare ‘this is my life, I want no other.’ To that end, I hugely recommend Song’s book to anyone interested in spiritual formation in this cultural moment.

      Comfortably Numb

      I haven’t cried for at least five years. In the last decade, I can only think of two occasions when I have properly wept. And I’m increasingly thinking that this is a problem.

      Many writers I really respect have a lot to say about the importance of grief and lament. To give a few quick examples…

      ‘Lament is a public protest against the way things are. It enables victims of evil to express anger and disappointment with God and the ways things are… lamentation is a process of spiritual catharsis, affirmation, and empowerment. As such it is a gesture of resistance in the face of evil’

      John Swinton, Raging With Compassion

      ‘Mourning is intuition that things are not right – that more is possible. To think that more is possible is an act of political resistance in a world that wants us to believe that consumption is all there is… Hungering and thirsting for justice is nothing less than the continued longing for God to come and set things right… it is to hope that the things that cause us to mourn will not get the last word’

      Esau McCaulley, Reading While Black

      ‘We do know from our own pain and hurt and loneliness that tears break barriers like no harshness or anger. Tears are a way of solidarity in pain when no other form of solidarity remains’

      Walter Brueggemann, The Prophetic Imagination

      I’ve always found this sort of thing inspiring, but it also disturbs me. It confronts me with the possibility that my spiritual formation and my pursuit of justice are, in some important ways, being stunted by my inability to grieve healthily. If Brueggemann is right that ‘hope expressed without knowledge of and participation in grief is likely to be false hope,’ then I have an issue.

      It hit home recently when I found out that a young man on my estate had died from substance abuse. I’ve lost count of how many times this has happened now in the seven years that I’ve been here. I greeted the news with sadness and anger, but not with tears. A life bearing all the beauty, potential and worth of the divine image has been cut abruptly, appallingly, meaninglessly short by an addiction that was itself a symptom of so many other layers of injustice. And my response to such evil was barely enough sadness to break the stride of my well-scheduled day.

       I can’t pinpoint exactly why I struggle to weep. I have wondered if it might just be a personality thing – perhaps I am wired in a way that predisposes me to a more stoic, internalised approach to grief and I just need to accept who I am and cut myself some slack. But I’m not convinced. First, because I’m cautious of misusing personality typologies to reduce people into neat, fixed and predictable ways of being in the world. Even if I had a learned preference that made externalising grief difficult, that doesn’t mean a) that it is healthy, b) that God made me to be that way, or c) that I can’t change or develop that.

      Second, on all the personality tests I’ve done, I generally align more closely to a feeling rather than a thinking preference. I am relatively emotionally intelligent and empathetic. I just don’t cry much. In other words, the struggle with grief is an anomaly rather than part of a wider trend of emotional repression.

      I’ve also wondered if toxic masculinity is to blame. I don’t want to dismiss the possibility out of hand. The culture I have been formed in has undoubtedly conditioned me to see weakness as a bad thing and crying as un-manly. By and large, though, I don’t like that sort of masculinity and I’ve never felt comfortable in ‘laddish’ spaces where that sort of group identity proliferates. So, while I am sure that I am not immune to the influence of toxic masculinity, I don’t think that it is primarily to blame for my struggle. When I’m sad, I don’t (consciously, at least) tell myself to man-up or to keep a stiff upper lip.     

      I wonder if the real issue is to do with comfort. I have made various choices which could probably convince most people that I haven’t sold out to the materialist fantasy of comfort that comes through consumption and the avoidance of suffering. But I am discovering that it is very possible to be physically engaged in working for justice, and yet mentally insulated from the inevitable exposure to suffering. I have learned that numbness is an effective coping mechanism when I’m confronted with pain. It allows me to stay steady and it protects me from the scary possibility of being out of control and wrecked by sorrow. As a defence mechanism, it has served me very well. But the cost, I’m learning, is high.

      Numbness may be a convenient way to avoid or minimise my own experience of pain. But it also restricts my own humanity. If Jesus is our model of human flourishing, then flourishing requires the ability to grieve and mourn healthily. And linked, my numbness reduces my capacity to love others. If I really want to give my life in service of others, then I think that requires the willingness to meet others in their grief – not to maintain the aloof safety of emotional distance.

      So, what should I do? I am very much open to suggestions. I’m reading Aundi Kolber’s Try Softer at the moment, so I’m alert to the temptation I have to ‘white knuckle’ my way to a solution and try to fix this with strategy and will-power. I’m confident that there is some deep work needed here, and that trying softer is therefore going to be far better than trying harder, and progress is likely to be slow. Once again, I am staring my idol of control in the face, and as I have written about previously, I am not quite sure what it looks like to actively surrender control – in this case to actively surrender my emotions. I have tried to manufacture sadness – sitting still and willing myself to cry – with little success. It feels a fine line to tread between deliberately paying attention to the sorrow and suffering around me and going out looking for tragedy in a masochistic way.

      I suppose prayer is the best place to start. I remember years ago reading Richard Foster talking about praying for the gift of tears. That seems the best way to frame what I need – not a project, but a gift. Once again, with my tried and trusted techniques unavailable to me, I have no choice but to return to the unhurried rhythm of grace.