Ode to Foucault

A fellow I worked for in college, Tommy Blanton, asked me, “You’re an English major—what are bibliographies for?” I had been around Tommy long enough to know he had the answer. And anyway, I had not really given it much thought. I suggested they were to document sources and point to areas of further investigation.

“Wrong!” he thundered. “The purpose of a bibliography is to obfuscate reality!”

I knew he wouldn’t let it drop so I kept working. He proceeded to explain that something gets published. Then someone makes reference to the previously published work. It ends up in a bibliography. A third work comes along, adding the second to its bibliography, and now the original source is enshrined in the literature, beyond reproach (this phenomenon is part of what Thomas Kuhn talks about in The Structure of Scientific Revolutions). Aha! A bibliography is developing…

So, imagine my chuckling to myself when I had to do an annotated bibliography to be ordained as a United Methodist Minister. No problem; I had contemplated doing a bibliography as my Master’s Thesis, and had started on it, but changed my topic. It was easy enough for me to do an annotated bibliography. But what good will it do a pastor?

I know the ostensible answer; it shows that you can do research, dig deeper into the Biblical literature. And yet, I knew enough to know that I could cite one set of “Authorities,” someone else could cite another, and there might not be much discussion of the actual value of the bibliography.

There is a practical outcome of the bibliography’s subversive purposes to obfucscate reality: whole movements and “traditions” in the Church have cropped up around issues and ideas that no longer, maybe never did, have a coherent point of contact with Scriptural Christianity.

You always go back to the source. This is why Vincent of Lerins said that when it comes to determining what we ought to believe, we follow what was believed by all, everywhere, from the beginning. Vincent’s great work, The Commonitory, was an attempt to distill the method, the interpretive principles of the four great Ecumenical Councils, the councils that hammered out what it means to believe in Jesus.

In the work of the Councils, we find a remarkable challenge because so many things we prize as modern people will have to go—they simply cannot jibe with following Jesus. They will have to go unless we keep talking them to death and calling it dialogue, write books and articles with opinions, cite them in secondary and tertiary sources, teach them in seminaries… Kuhn’s analysis of “paradigm shift” is apt; if something is accepted long enough, even if it is not accurate, it is hard to dislodge, because the people who need to dislodge it learned it as truth, and all the problems they studied to be so learned were built around the inaccuracy’s being reality. There’s nothing like a bibliography to build community! It defines shared values, passes on knowledge; it is culture in the literal sense.

As Christians, we believe that Jesus is the fullness of the revelation from God. He is the Truth. Remember that it was Pilate who wanted to quibble and prevaricate about that. The discipline required to maintain orthodoxy is immense—our natural inclination is to have something to say, to add to the debate, to see things changed to our models, to get our way. If we follow Vincent’s model, we will have to accede (submit) to a wisdom that is timeless, not subject to the whims of the present. And yet, it was not Vincent’s idea, not his summation of the work of the great ecumenical councils. Rather, it was the Apostle John, the longest-lived of the apostles, who advised: “See that what you have heard from the beginning remains in you” (I John 2:24).

What we have heard from the beginning is in conflict with the world and its values. There are plenty who have tried to harmonize the faith with the world, and thus have abandoned the apostolic heritage. And they have many voices, and writers, and teachers, a sound bibliography to back them up. Again, John says, “They went out from us, but they did not belong to us. If they had belonged to us, they would have remained with us” (I John 2:19).

I know, I know, you don’t think it comes down to anything as simple as bibliography. Bibliography is a thumb-nail sketch of the problem. If enough people repeat an idea, it gains force, whether it is true or not. The bibliography is one way, seemingly objective, to perpetuate lies. Talk about something long enough, and before long you’ll start to think that maybe Jesus is not the only way to salvation, that homosexuality is ok, that abortion is ok, that we can let go of straight talk about sin. There are even books written to advance those positions, books with extensive bibliographies!

Rambling

This past Sunday (October 22), we had another wonderful day of worship. About 20 of the Congolese people showed up, 7 different families. In fact, many more wanted to come, but there was not transportation for all of them. I believe there were as many Congolese children as there were kids normally present in the service. And: add another prayer victory: I have been hoping that there would be people available to translate. I speak French well enough, but not, perhaps, as idiomatically as necessary. Also, I don’t know a lot of theological words.

So, when Irma preached at the seminary, I met a student from Benin, another Francophone country in West Africa. I was put in touch with a young man at UK from Cote D’Ivoire. And at the service, two Congoloese men, Cedrick and Safari said they had been translators in Congo.

Since this is my blog, and I can pretty much say what I want and people will still read it: there are too many books, seminars, and gurus running around trying to convince everybody that they know or stumbled onto something spectacular, something that will make your church grow, or otherwise be awesome in the same ways that the guru’s church has grown or is awesome. God save me from the compulsion to be seen with the latest book. I’m only partially kidding when I say I don’t read anything written after the 4th century…

All I can say about what happens at the Rock La Roca is that we have been trying to follow the Holy Spirit. It will look different somewhere else. It will look different at the Rock La Roca next week! Strangely, I see very little difference between what I am up to at The Rock La Roca compared to what I was up to at Dunaway, a small church in the country. Very different ministries, but so much the same because what was important at Dunaway is important at the Rock La Roca: where is God working? That means: “where do we go if we’re following Him?” Follow Him down one path, and He’ll get you ready to go down yet another. And before you know it, you’ll be sold out to His purposes!

So, you can see that I will never make it as a guru. You can’t have a 3-day conference where you say, “Just listen to the Holy Spirit. Any questions?” Or you can’t have a preaching seminar where you’re strategy is: “Pray and plead for anointing from the Holy Spirit. Any questions?” The trap for churches and their ministers is we want a plan. “Five Slump-Busting Principles” that will invigorate not only your church but your love life. I know, I know; at this point, Courtnay is warning me about my “ministry of scorn.”

The point is: what is happening at the Rock La Roca does not need to be unique. I am not going to write a book or have seminars because in the end all we have done is listen to the Holy Spirit. What happens as you follow is a darn good story, and I’ll tell that all day long. But all I can really say is: take a close look at where you are. Meditate on Jesus. See where God is working. Pray for insight. And let the Holy Spirit have His way. Do something like that and you’ll be on your way to being as freaked out as we are.

What's In A Name

I guess I have an awkward blog address. My favorite band is a Canadian trio, Rush. The first album of theirs that I really liked was entitled Grace Under Pressure. The music was a little strange, and the lyrics told stories. I learned that the title came from Hemingway's definition of courage. The back cover of the album was an egg in a vise, with a sort of mathematical notation, p/g, or "grace under pressure."

Early in the cancer fight, my homeboy sent me and Melissa matching shirts of the Grace Under Pressure album. It's what we've needed, and what Melissa has definitely shown.

p/g

Platelets

Melissa's platelets are holding on, mid 60s Monday. She gets a lumbar puncture tomorrow, prevention against the cancer returning in the brain/spinal column.

If we dare to dream, we say that she is on the upswing-- the cancer hopefully does not return and she just has to deal with recovering from treatment and transplant, and that takes 6 mos- 1 year. Her intestinal tract has been the source of most pain and slow recovery--first in response to radiation, then, when she developed graft-vs-host disease (which she needs to have- it fights cancer) it attacked her GI tract. Then, she dealt with a long GI infection.

It seems to me that Melissa is finding more in the prophets these days, esp Jeremiah and Ezekiel. If you can enter into the painful story of Israel, you can also enter into the redeeming work of God. He is faithful, and because His story is real (a very raw and human story)you learn to depend on Him even when it seems darkest, because it is the darkest.

p/g

Missing the Plane to Jerusalem

I have been in prayer and thought over not so much what happened Sunday, but what the Lord still has in store for us.

A core commitment that I have had for years (at least 10 years now) is that the church has to find ways to reach all kinds of people. This is not simply a question of evangelism, of getting out into the neighborhood, attracting new members to the church. Rather, it is a realization of, or a living into, the work the Holy Spirit has for us to do. We have to recognize what the mission field looks like. The days of Church-that-Looks-Like-Us are gone. That idea was never biblical, but social forces were enough to allow it to flourish. Now we’re paying the price for years of comfort and ease: we don’t have the knowledge or the intensity to flow with the Spirit.

Among the many reasons Jesus died when He did is this: Jerusalem was full. Pilgrims had come from all over the world. It was not just Jews. The world in Jesus’ day was spiritually seeking, wondering what to make of the many gods and ways of worshipping. Sounds like today! So all kinds of people came: some faithful Jews, others who were just curious if the festivals of Judaism held the meaning for their lives.

But if you made that long journey, you didn’t stay for a few days. And anyway, Pentecost was not far away. Might as well stay for that. And the masses did, from all over the world, Jerusalem was filled. So when the Holy Spirit came at Pentecost, it was an opportune time, not just a miraculous event. When the Spirit descended on those gathered, tongues of fire came down and as they spoke, all the foreigners heard their own language being spoken.

It was an eminently practical miracle! If you were going to get the Gospel out, you had to speak the language. And there was no time for language classes. The people would leave Jerusalem, telling what they heard—both the language and the message. So the Gospel spread throughout the world.

It is plain as day what the Holy Spirit wants to do—the same work He has been doing; convicting, preparing, equipping the church for the work of preaching the Gospel. There is something going on that we cannot miss. People are coming from around the world to this country. This country is full of churches. There is a great and powerful opportunity to reach all the immigrants coming to the country. Some are already believers; we minister to them, disciple them, strengthen their faith. Others are not believers; we win them to Christ, and then both will, by natural affinity, either return home with the message, or support the work of spreading the Gospel in their home countries. So the very work of Pentecost is happening right here, under our very noses. People are coming to this country, filling it up. If the Church misses the opportunity, we are in deep trouble. Not because of numbers, but because we will miss what the Spirit is calling us to.

Already, the Rock La Roca has planted a church. Denis Diaz, our Hispanic worship leader, is from Honduras. His brother still lives there. Ruben and Irma visited him a while back. He was inspired, and started a church, “The Rock La Roca” in Honduras. This happened totally by accident as far as our plans were concerned. But the Holy Spirit moved, whether we knew it or not!

Now, we want to be open, ready, inviting. It is, as I said, clear what the Spirit does: He enables the Gospel to be preached. I can preach a great sermon, but if I have no anointing from the Holy Spirit, it is just air. And I have to say, the source of a great deal of my frustration these past months was revealed to me Sunday: very few discussions of preaching center on the power of the Holy Spirit. By the end of just about any preaching seminar or class, you’re convinced you have to do research, an outline, and prepare a well-delivered speech. And indeed, some people are very good at delivering precisely those things. But they do not add up to the Gospel. They may repeat and present the content of the Gospel, and yet not equal the convicting power of the Holy Spirit. I spent, and too many have spent, too much time trying to be good preachers rather than praying and pleading to be anointed preachers.

Since it is clear that the Holy Spirit is about the same work He always has been, the Church’s only option is to follow. To receive the gifts and power of the Holy Spirit to be witnesses to the ends of the earth. Unless we recognize that we are in a golden age of immigration, that we are uniquely placed with many churches to send out believing people back to their own people, there is no future for the church. And we have to realize that our Hispanic brothers and sisters are only part of the wave of immigration—that Africans, Asians, and Europeans are coming as well. It is like Jerusalem at Pentecost. Some churches will get this, will understand.

Platelets, Revival

Thursday, Melissa's platelets were 70. Just 2 weeks ago they were in the teens and she was getting platelets by transfusion. Something has kicked in, and we hope it continues!

I think Melissa is in a place where endurance and patience are the issues. Facing down the drastic treatment of bone marrow transplant was something that required lots of focus and attention. It was very quantifiable. You had something to say to people when they asked what's up. Now, it's harder to tell. How do you explain that the transplant is the rescue from the treatment, and that all kinds of weird stuff just crops up in its aftermath? It's not definable quickly, so what do you say?

And she just has to gut it out. All along, it is the little things like an infection or insomnia that are the things that bring you down.

The boys and I will be in Texas next week, so I don't know if there will be anything new on the blog. Maybe I'll get to it.

The revival went well. It was good to be back in Winchester. Lots of old friends, made some new ones. I hope people's hearts were opened and seeds were planted. The boys came with me a few nights. John and Joe sang a song with some help. One night, they wrote their names on some name tags and then stuck them to an offering envelope. Inside, they drew a heart and gave it to me after the service. Wow.

Yesterday was the day of seeing people from Louisville-- Barbie Dickens and her three awesome boys. I promise you-- I saw it with my own eyes-- she beat her boys in a game of King of the Hill on a haystack. She had no mercy. You can expect no less from a woman with three boys... And we also saw Carla Evers, without her kids, and I know she needed that break!

Outhouse Apples

I don’t know that I will ever meet anyone quite like Dave Moore. He would tell you about what he went thru in Korea, and you’d just cry. And in the same breath he’d have you laughing as hard as you ever did. Well, Dave planted some apple trees years back. I think maybe his brother Gene grafted them. If you asked what kind of apple they were, Dave’d tell you, “Outhouse Apples.” Except he didn’t say “outhouse…”

I met with two of the Congolese families, which given the extended family structure means 11 people. The patriarch, Norbert Itoula, has such grave dignity that you readily accede to his discussions! He taught me some more about the Congo’s difficult history. He kept saying how happy he was to be in America. He heard there were many Christians here, but he says, “maybe there are also many who do not believe in Christ?” He has found himself welcomed, and he is surprised. He spent 8 years in a refugee camp in Gabon, a neighboring country. A refrain of the family is that they are amazed to be in America, to find people helpful, when the neighboring countries in Africa are not very helpful at all. Talking to one of the boys, who grew up in a refugee camp, I mentioned the difficulties of Africa generally. He paused before he said, “Africa is full of hate.”

Norbert went on to say that he finds it tragic but predictable that France (“responsible for so much of our troubles—they were our ‘colonial masters’”) has no resettlement program for the refugees from their former colonies. The refugees rely on the U.S. and Canada.

I wonder what should be the real discussion(s) in our immigration debate in this country? What to do about/for people fleeing for their lives? And then, what of the church? A refugee family here, a refugee family there, makes for a great story and good work, but it is only a drop in the bucket.

Norbert said, “I have a witness. I am here because of Jesus. And I said if I made it to America, I would serve Him however I could.”

Norbert’s sister lives in California. “Where?” I asked. “San something,” he said. I told them we’d need to narrow it down, and we got to San Jose. Maybe there is something there—Joseph, Jesus’ father, the protector of the Holy Family when they were refugees in Egypt, escaping from those who would kill them.

We talked about winter. “Is it true,” Norsi, one of the sons, asked, “that you can wear a jacket and still shiver here?” I felt that way coming here from Mississippi…

I took them to the church to get a few food items until their Food Stamps come in. They took a jar of peanut butter, among other things. And let me tell you, George Washington Carver was my hero when I was a boy, and I can tell you everything about peanut butter! Norsi said proudly, “This is African!” I told them that the soil in Georgia is almost identical to the soil in West Africa, and I paused because it is hard to think about and say, “and the slaves from West Africa brought ngouba with them.” That’s why we call peanuts “goobers.”

As I left, I gave them a bag of Dave’s outhouse apples. I asked them if they ate apples in Congo. Adam’s eyes lit up. “Yes! But we have to import them, and they are expensive. What a treat!”

There was a boy from Fishing Creek, Kentucky who got sent a world away to kill, to see friends killed, to be haunted by unspeakable acts. It makes sense that he would bring so much joy to others, who have come from a world away, escaping unspeakable acts. Dave, you’re gone but not forgotten, and beneath that rough exterior was a heart of gold!

Platelets

Melissa's platelets were at 60 today. They were 44 Friday, and she hasn't received any since last Monday. Finally, she is crossing a major hurdle!

As always, we need continued prayer for recovery and that the cancer would be done with. Prayer has been and will continue to be what we need most!

What Happened Yesterday

We have not had a Sunday yet where someone did not come to the altar. That's not about me, it's about prayer. That can't happen unless people pray. Not just one person or 5, but many. The Holy Spirit doesn't show up where He's not welcomed by open prayer.

About About 7 or 8 of the Cogolese came to worship. Their presence opened us up; I preached in French as well as English, and some things emerged from that that were unexpected. The demands of translating were not so great; infact, I was so blessed to have great freedom in preaching in both langauges. But I felt like both sermons were disjointed. I would preach a bit in English, then in French, back and forth. So I never got into a good "flow." Lesson number one (one that I have providentially been reading about): the artfulness of a sermon, the quality of expression, the grandeur of thought, are meaningless without the power of the Holy Spirit. You can repeat the ideas and content of a Scripture passage, even make a brilliant application, and la-dee-da, who cares? There's lots of places you can hear deep thoughts and smooth words. Only the Spirit brings convicting power. So you can deliver a disjointed sermon, speak a foreign language like a 12-yr. old boy, and with the Spirit's power, hearts are melted.

Lesson number two: Give the spirit room. He has His own agenda! So, for example, I preached on the parable of the great banquet, Luke 14. I was emphasizing our true nature without Christ, with a call to evangelism. But at the altar call, some folks came forward for healing. AMEN!!

The altar call... man, I don't know what to say. Many people came forward. Our worship team was tearing it up with Spirit-filled songs. I would pray with someone and then some part of the congregation would start clapping about something. One man at the altar shared with me something he received from the Spirit before the service-- the substance of my sermon, but preached more poignantly and powerfully to him in his heart before I spoke a word.

When the last person had been prayed up, two young men, Brandon and Andrew asked to pray for me. What power there at the altar, what power of prayer!

I knew we were all blown away by the promise we have from God at the Rock La Roca. we say want to be a church for all nations. It happened. While I was preaching in French, Judy Rodriguez was translating for the Spanish speakers. Ruben's eyes lit up-- he is a technology fiend!-- when he thought how we're going to have to buy some new sound equipment for multilple channels of broadcast. Right now we only have one frequency, and we use it to translate into Spanish (or english). We'll need something for French and who knows what else, because it is coming.

But, there's this: I told the congregation that what happened today was still a sign of weakness. Yes, the Holy Spirit was present. Yes, we were blessed. But when the Holy Spirit came at Pentecost, tongues of fire descended and everyone heard the Gospel in his own language. NO translators!!! I asked them to pray for Pentecost, a real Pentecostal revival of hearts full of love, and power to preach to all nations, tribes, and races. There were some tears then.

More later, because I am still trying to get all this straight.

Hola

Sunday, as we were headed back home, the boys wanted to get a Hi-C at McDonald’s. As we got our drinks at the drive-thru, Joseph looked at the Hispanic woman at the register, waved and said, “Hola!” He is learning a little Spanish at school. The woman talked to him a little bit, more than he could understand, so he started counting. She got a big kick out of it, and handed him a toy.

John said, “Where’s mine?” All I could do was mumble something about his paying more attention in Spanish lessons!

As I had hoped, Thursday evening, we got to go down to the creek. We bundled up and headed down. The boys ended up playing their own game along a high steep bank. I kept an eye on them as I went up and down the bank, looking for fossils or interesting rocks. Joseph always gets a rock or two for me to take home and he tells me to take it to church, “because it’s the Rock.”

While we were looking for rocks, leaning down, I saw something under a rock ledge. I pointed it out to the boys, “What do you see?” John piped up, “Clay!” Indeed. We found the biggest streak of it yet, two feet high, 4, maybe 5, feet long. We’ll have enough clay for anything we want to do.

The clay is not great. It breaks apart too easily, still has chunks of the original rock in it. I don’t know much about geology; I read on the internet that clay is feldspar that has been ground down into very small particles. The rock flakes easily. The longer and more severe the erosion by wind and water, the finer the clay.

I often wonder how we’re so blessed. I don’t want anyone to get a false impression, like somehow life is just grand and I’m this perfect dad, doing all these cool things with my boys. The being blessed part is that they love me in spite of who I am. It’s a lesson that has been good for me to learn. At heart I am a pretty selfish person and have spent a lot of my life doing my thing. The boys, though, take you out of that selfish mode. We have each other. It’s not simply a community by choice. It’s harder on them, really; they’re dependent. What does it mean to live together? Can love really grow if we can walk away? The guys in my small group were talking about that. Someone in the group (not me, I promise!) brought up the Amish, and we discussed how the way they live is an intentional choice to stay together, to not be pulled apart by technology. I’ve said before that we need to be “Functionally Amish.” I don’t mean riding buggies and farming with horses. I mean thinking about how we live, to see if it builds togetherness or takes it away. This is a big step for me, because I am a very private and egotistical person. Generally, the more I think about something, the more likely it is that it’s not something I know or “live into;” rather, it’s a place I know I need head to!

Prayer and Miracle

Some of you may remember how perhaps a year ago I asked for prayer for a young girl, Anastasia. She lives in Louisville and is the granddaughter of the woman who was teaching me Ukrainian. She had a difficult medical problem, and was not getting any relief. The family had exhausted the medical options-- she was just going to have to live with it.

Ira, my teacher, told me tonight about how Anastasia was healed. The young girl has always been very devout (the family is Ukrainian Orthodox) and had prayed for some time about her condition, but was feeling very discouraged. She had a dream back in the winter; an angel came to her and told her she would receive a gift on her birthday. "What kind of gift?" she asked. "Wait," the angel said.

Her birthday came and her problem was gone. I was very glad to receive the report, and gratified by the power of prayer. It was not just that Anastasia and those closest to her prayed, but so many of you joined with her.

Growing Up Beige

I am hoping that more or the Congolese immigrants will come to the Rock tomorrow. There is so much potential for ministry under our noses... Wake up, Church! The world is coming to this nation, and we can send them back out as missionaries and supporters of Jesus' mission in their home countries!

When the World Cup was going on this summer, there were some interesting matches. I don't mean interesting in terms of soccer, but in terms of history. I was riveted to the Angola-Portugal match. Portugal was my team this year, but that match raised some difficult questions. Portugal ruled Angola until 1975 (I think; at any rate Angola's independence is recent). What are the emotions bound up in playing the "colonial masters?"

That phrase, "colonial masters," is tough. I first paid attention to it when Gaston Mukaz, a Congolese friend in Louisville used it to talk about the French. And then a family here used it about the Belgians. There's something disturbing about that phrase.

There are three Congos-- the former Zaire, now embattled Democratic Republic of Congo, Congo Brazzaville, and Congo Cabinda (taken by Angola). So much to learn, so much twisted history.

I guess it was Wednesday that I showed some of the Itoula family where the church is, and had a chance to talk to them about spiritual matters. At one point, one of the sons mentioned "Les blancs," "The whites." we can say so much in so little! Mostly it made me think of a humorous moment from childhood.

When I started Kindergarten, we lived on Cape Charles, on Virginia's Eastern Shore. It was an isolated radar station across the bay from Norfolk. My grandmother called me after the first day of school and asked how things went. Fine, I said. "And, Mimi, me and Cathy are the only beige kids on the bus." No way was I white!

Jim Grayson said, "give me directions to the church in Winchester." Here goes: If you get off at the second winchester exit on 64 from Lexington, head towards town, the church is on your left, just before you get to downtown. There is a large stone sign, "Trinity United Methodist." Come as you are! 6:30 each night, Sunday-Wednesday! The pastor is Eric Patterson, a great guy to know!

Let's See...

In the strange world of bone marrow transplant, Melissa is doing well while still battling infections and the occasional debilitating stomach cramps. Her counts are good, and her platelets actually came up! They were 24 Wed, 38 Friday, and she didn't get any since Monday. Could be a fluke, but Dr. Herzig says she is making them, but not enough yet. Melissa kept syaing if they were going to take the spleen, hurry up and do it, but it looks like patience may be winning out.

Did I mention her platelets were up?

We ask for continued prayers. It's a long haul. We're about halfway thru the normal recovery time, so keep praying and seding Melissa cards:
2041 Osprey Cover
Shelbyville, KY 40065

John, Joe, and I are heading to Texas week after next, for my grandparents' 60th anniversary! Lots of family the boys have not seen in a while.

I am preaching the revival services at Trinity United Methodist in Winchester, KY tomorrow thru Wed at 6:30 each evening. I am looking forward to it, not just in terms of getting back to Winchester, but also because I have wanted to do some revival preaching for a long time. We'll see what the Lord has planned.

Fall

Last night, the cold front really cleared out the air. You could look straight up and see the Milky Way. To think we are on the far edge of the one of the arms of this galaxy…

When I was a boy in Germany, we used to camp out most of the summer. We were like savages who came in only to get more supplies for our outdoor living. We stole potatoes and beer from our parents for our Kartoffelfeuer—“potato fire,” a big bonfire, potatoes baking in the coals, sausages and the pilfered beer. Then as the village slept we would creep out to mischief.

We slept in rough tents—bean poles with clear plastic draped over them. If we got caught, we told our parents we had to smoke to keep the mosquitoes out. They didn’t buy it and when our cigarettes were confiscated we smoked twigs of some plant, maybe clematis—if you cut off the ends just right, the stem was hollow.

As we lay on the ground, looking up at the stars, you could see the white haze we call the Milky Way. In German it is “Milchstrasse,” or “Milk Street.” It made sense then—it is a path in the sky that looks white—Milky Way sounds a bit archaic, I guess.

There’s too much light from the ground in most places to see the Milky Way. I wanted to wake the boys up, to see it, but there is time. As the night was turning cold and windy, I could see leaves falling, and planned out how we will bundle up, go to the creek and see what leaves are down. John is interested in collecting leaves, and Joe keeps waiting for the leaves on “the pretty road--” Old Frankfort Pike—to change.

Melissa said yesterday that God keeps reminding her that He is here. The recovery from all the infection and continued stomach problems taxes her endurance. Each day brings some new understanding of patient (or not so patient) endurance, reminders in our lives that only for brief moments are things normal.

I hope I will quit being such a whiner! I know one thing, now when I get sick or feel bad (I have a bruised tooth socket—I think from a wrestling match with the boys that did not go my way and believe me, I understand my fate; I know Tom and Chris Baker, and my boys are on their way), I realize it is nothing compared to what many people are dealing with. Perspective is always nice. I used to think I knew a lot.

Church for All Nations

I was able to visit some of the new Congolese families yesterday. I think it is going to be hard to figure out how the work among them will happen, but I believe it will happen. They are simply overjoyed to have someone speak to them in a language they are used to hearing. I wonder how hard it is going to be for them to get acclimated to life in Lexington. They are refugees from the terrible war and massacres in Congo, so it’s not simply immigration to find a better life. It’s to save life and adjusting from that to a very strange culture can be hard.

It’s counter-intuitive work, as well. It’s not a ministry that can really bring the rewards that churches look for. The numbers won’t be huge, either in terms of attendance or money. I think the clear answer is that those measures condemn us if they keep us from real ministry. Friends, this is why the Gospel is not practical-- if it works because it’s a naturally attractive and productive thing, we will boast that we did the work!

America is in a golden age of immigration. Hispanics are only a part of that. To all my pastor friends and members of churches: do not miss this chance to reach out to a huge part of the population. We missed it in the early 20th century, and it is no surprise that our churches are fading. We totally missed that the demographics of the nation were shifting. We totally missed the missionary and evangelistic impulse of the Spirit. I fear that if we miss this latest chance to minister, we will fall even more into the system of bureaucracy that knows only how to manage dying churches. Maybe you can hold on long enough for your pension funds to last your lifetime…

The Lord does not rest! Many of you know how 10 years ago as I kept running into Russians in Lexington, I tried to minister to them, begging the District to do something, anything, to reach out. It didn’t happen, and I vowed that if it happened again, that the Lord placed people in my path that perhaps I might be uniquely qualified to minister to that I would not let the chance go by. So, the Congolese are here, and I never thought speaking French would be much use in Kentucky.

When I got to Louisville, it seemed I met Ukrainians everywhere. I took that as a sign from the Lord, looked for someone to teach me Ukrainian (enough like Russian that I should be able to pick it up fairly quickly), found a woman who would. But it wasn’t going to jibe with were I was, so I had to let it go, and I trusted (kind of) that when I left Louisville, something would happen.

But I was worried. Why did the ministry to Ukrainians fail? What happened such that it was not going to be possible? What about the time I put into learning? How does ministry get so skewed that we can’t pursue what is of God? And if my vow had to be let go like that… There was a lot of soul-searching. You can spot Hispanics and Congolese people pretty easily. But Russians and Ukrainians, they look enough like us to blend in. I was not running into them by chance any more in Lexington.

Yesterday in John’s classroom, in a little Christian school in Shelby County, KY, I heard his teacher ask another boy, “has your mommy gotten back from the Ukraine?”

I made a note to call his parents. Last night, I did. His mother is Ukrainian, will be back in a few weeks. The boy’s father said she would love to meet with me, teach me Ukrainian and connect with some of the Ukrainians I know in Louisville.

Ruben and I have been worrying about our name, The Rock La Roca. Does it communicate that we are only Anglo and Hispanic? We joke about just having a symbol, being like Prince, “The Church Formerly Known As…” But something hit me earlier this week-- in for a penny, in for a pound. English and Spanish are our two languages. Ruben and I are the pastors. If we get labelled, so what-- that’s not our problem. But if we hedge ourselves in and say because I am Anglo and Ruben is Hispanic that we can’t minister to African-Americans or Congolese or Ukrainians or whatever, then we have much bigger problems than a name. No matter the language, who we are is who we are.

WOW

Wow is an Irma word. Irma Rodriguez is known for saying wow about the things of God. We definitely have a wow.

Yesterday, the day after her surgery, we had a day unlike any other. First, Melissa and I took the boys to her uncle's church in Henry County for a Fall Festival. The boys had a great time, and Melissa did ok. Then in the evening, she went out to eat. That is the first time she has done two things in one day. she paid for it today, being tired, but it was a big day. A day of small things!

Maybe lots of wows. The first Congolese man and his son came to the Rock this morning.

The evangelism team is out visiting, and one of the members has said he would like to take on training another team. Could it be possible to get a massive group of people out into the community spreading the Good News?!

WOW.

She's Doing Fine

Melissa came out of surgery fine. She didn't go completely under. She is sore from where they removed the port and put in the new line. The procedure seemed more like an interruption in the day than anything else. It just took longer at the office. We were happy that she didn't have much pain. Hopefully this clears up the infection. Before she went in, the idea of having to do it was aggravating her. She wants to be done with all this, wants to get to feeling better, not go to the clinic everyday. It keeps coming back to: you can get thru the huge stuff ok, but things like this are insult to injury. It's one thing to have to face one big issue. Or a really huge issue. But really huge issues come with every kind of smaller issue, and it takes a lot of endurance to see past each day's inconvenience and discomfort.

When we got home, I took the boys down to the creek. We were pretty quickly led away from interest in the clay bank by finding other things, namely an arrowhead and some bones.

It looks like an arrowhead, but it doesn't, so maybe it isn't. It's the right shape, looks like it has been worked, but something about the back, where it would fit the shaft doesn't seem right, or looks only half-right. The rocks around the creek are perfect for making arrows. I think there must have been a whole lot more people in North America than we think, or all they did was make arrows.

We also found some bones. I am guessing they are a hip and thigh from a deer. They were right by the water, couldn't find anything else. I wonder if something dragged that part of the deer to the water. Or perhaps the bones have been long buried and the recent floods exposed them?

Prayer Request

Melissa will be having a short surgery tomorrow (Friday). She will have her port taken out. She has been batlling an infection for a month, and they think it is in the port. They have wanted to put in a different port anyway, one that can handle more lines-- right now hers is a single line, and that makes it time consuming to run thru all the stuff they want to. So, she'll get a new line that can handle four different IV bags, and when the infection is cleared up, she'll get a new port. Yikes.

It has been the little things that are hardest. They needle at you. You don't feel right to begin with and then there are these many little things (some not so little, but when compared to the treatment, they're not as dire or severe) that add to your discomfort.

Melissa has been thinking and praying a lot about Job. On the outside, when we are well, we're not sure what to do with that book. It seems alien, foreign, menacing. Perhaps only the ill and suffering ought to have any say in its interpretation!

What Don Quixote Taught Me

Don Quixote, as a knight-errant, needed a fair maiden to love, and have that love unrequited until he could perform some daring feat and earn her favor. He settles on a peasant wench of no particular beauty. He changes her plain, even coarse, name to Dulcinea del Toboso, granting her some aristocracy.

Of course, we laugh at his folly. But there, I think, is the trap Cervantes sets for us. We have already laughed at his squire, Sancho Panza. We think, “This is a joke!” He’s no Percival or Gawain; no Oliver if Don Quixote could fancy himself to be Roland.

We crack up when he addresses the whores outside the tavern as if they were women worthy of respect.

And yet, they are. Don Quixote, towards the end of his life says that St. Paul was the greatest knight-errant there ever was. There, I think, is a key to understanding how Cervantes tweaks us.

Sure, Don Quixote isn’t all there. But, he is the forerunner of Dostoevsky’s Idiot, the prototypical holy fool. In the end, it is clear that Jesus would have greeted the whores outside the tavern as actual women, in spite of what anyone else might think. And what if God chose us, exalted us, based on our usefulness? This is precisely why Sancho Panza is such a precious character in literature. He is one of the “nothings” that St. Paul says God uses to shame the people who think they are something.

And then, Dulcinea. Only a hardened heart indeed would say that the young peasant woman did not deserve someone to love her, to give her a sweet nickname, to be willing to fight and even die for her.

Maybe the problem is that we find fault with Don Quixote’s sense of reality. Maybe the problem is that only a madman can see what ought to be in human relationships! The rest of us keep judging by the world’s standards, confessing (if ever we are ashamed or wonder, “How did it get this way?”) that it is a dog-eat-dog world.

And yet, who said you had to live with the dogs?

Sudoku

It seems a simple thing, Sudoku. 9 9x9 grids that you fill in, all numbers from 1-9 present and not repeated in any line or grid. It's addictive. Melissa and I started doing them back at the beginning of the year. When the cancer was causing a lot of pain back in April, she quit, and the transplant was pretty rough, and days were to be gotten through.

But yesterday, she picked up her pencil and started Sudoku again! I know it seems small, but it's huge. Not a return to anything other than her becoming herself. She keeps saying, "I can't wait to be normal again." Ha. Normal waved bye-bye to her a long time ago.

About ten years ago, we got to hankering to play battleship. We went and bought a game right as Toys R Us was closing. She beat me 11 straight times, which I think is statistically impossible. She just kept saying, "I look for the holes." THE WHOLE BOARD IS A HOLE!!!!! She says the same thing about Sudoku, and it's no help to me, plodding along. I keep wondering if there is some secret, some way to figure out the sum of the numbers not already there and find where they belong. An algorithm, anything to let off the hook of patiently trying to plug numbers in...

Melissa heard that it may be possible that if the spot in the brain is completely gone, they will not put the brain port in, they'll just keep doing chemo trough spinal injections.

Prayers: that she keeps getting stronger; that we are done with this; that our house sells.

Oh, a few months ago we were listening to the radio and the DJ gave the call sign and said, "Where Lexington comes to ROck!" One of the boys said, "Hey! That's our church!" Amen!

A City Went Mad

The first three years of my college life, my parents lived in Vaihingen, Germany, a well-to do university-town and suburb of Stuttgart. I went there for Christmas and Summer breaks. I spent my days going into Stuttgart and exploring. It is a wonderful city, particularly the city center, with its long pedestrian thoroughfare, easy access to all kinds of shops, museums, and cafes. Stuttgart was almost entirely destroyed by Allied bombing; much of it is new. I suspect it gets left off of most tourists’ itinerary—Munich and Berlin are the big cities you visit in Germany. But Stuttgart is a good stop.

One vacation while I was there, Mikhail Gorbachev was coming to the university to speak. We lived perhaps a kilometer away. The university subway station was where I caught the train to the city, and so as I walked there, crowds were pouring out and you could hear the buzz of tens of thousands of people somewhere in the distance, gathering to hear Gorbachev. I went down the stairs, onto the train that would take me to Koenigstrasse.

I was disgusted. That Gorbachev now has some kind of rehabilitated status is bad enough, but that he could in 1990 draw a crowd of educated people in Germany (of all nations!) was revolting. Many perhaps do not care who Gorbachev is. But for some who do, and perhaps have held him in esteem, let me caution you.

I have jokingly said I was a cold warrior as a kid, but it’s true. I had my own copy of the Army Field Manual Survival, Evasion, Resistance, and Escape. I had a bag boy job in 8th grade and sent money to a fund that said it bought bullets and supplies for the mujahedin in Afghanistan fighting the Soviet invasion.

I hated the Berlin Wall, and was ashamed to live in times where such a thing existed. I thought it would never come down.

I learned Russian for the purpose of fighting the enemy.

Most of my feelings came because of book on my father’s bookshelf, a big multivolume book. Each volume was huge. Where they were on the shelf, the back cover was visible from the side of the shelves. A bearded man with kind, intense eyes looked out from the cover. He was (is) Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. The books now sit on my shelf: Gulag Archipelago, a stunning piece of literature that chronicled in personal, legal, and historical terms the string of soviet prison camps (thus the Archipelago image). Millions died and tens of millions were brutalized in the camps. They even had Gulags for children. In some ways, people already knew what he wrote, but maybe it was better not to know. Maybe by not saying anything we wouldn’t aggravate the Soviets. Blah blah blah. When there are concentration camps, the world is always silent. Even today, the Chinese run an even more brutal system than the Soviets—the laogai camps. How we pretend that they are civilized or that we should even talk with their leaders as if they are men is beyond me.

One of my distant cousins was an expert on the Czar’s secret police and he worked with the team of people at the Hoover Institute who worked with Solzhenitsyn when he came to this country in exile, so I had some knowledge of Solzhenitsyn as a person, not just a famous, distant writer. I have read Gulag Archipelago perhaps 4 times. I do it to remember what happened. I do it because it is a great book by the greatest writer of the twentieth century. And it may be that after all is said and done, Solzhenitsyn passes his countrymen, Tolstoy and Dostoevsky, in honor as the greatest writer, period.

I went to Berlin after the Fall of Communism. (I had been there in 83 --I think it was 83-- when you could not go to the East.) Of course, there was a lot of Soviet memorabilia. I picked up a so-called Officer’s Watch. Who knows if it was authentic. But it had a red star. Some years later, I had a moment of shame and threw the watch away, because that red star stands for death; the red star and the hammer and sickle are every bit as revolting and evil as a swastika. No one thinks twice about a t-shirt with the hammer and sickle—no thought for the millions of Ukrainians killed under that banner. Or Poles. Or Russians. In a sick way, we learned to tolerate the Soviets. Imagine if we had gotten familiar enough with Nazis to think it was not as serious as it was? But wait! We did—it was called the 1930s! And we did it again in Rwanda. Doing it in Darfur. And in a strange fit of blindness that cannot see that anti-Semitism will not go away, that some people want another holocaust, the world coddles Hezbollah and Iran.

In Woody Allen’s great movie, Hannah and Her Sisters, Max von Sydow’s character says some memorable lines: “It has been ages since I sat in front of the television, aimlessly flipping channels. I came across a documentary on Auschwitz. More gruesome film footage, and more puzzled intellectuals proclaiming their mystification as to how it could have happened. The reason they will never answer that question is because it is the wrong question. The real question is, ‘Given what humans are, why doesn’t it happen more often?’”

I was not going to listen to Gorbachev. I was not going to allow myself to be polluted. See, his reputation is that he brought down the Soviet Union, that he tried to move it to some rapprochement with West, to avoid conflict. He gets to say that because that was the unintended result. Glasnost, perestroika, these were more propaganda tools to help the Soviet Union survive. His goal was to strengthen the weakening position of the Soviet Union, particularly in relation to the United States and our growing parity with their military power in the 1980s.

Gorbachev was a KGB man (like the current Russian President, Putin. And beware—lying and killing is their business). As such, he knew about and was involved in all kinds of repressive activities against anyone who wrote, said, or thought anything that the Communist Party did not like. While the Gulags were gone, torture, and numerous other kinds of repression were alive and well under comrade Gorbachev. His posturing as some kind of hero or statesman was typical of the ways such minds work; one of their own kind said, “The people will believe a big lie more readily than a small one,”
And again, “One death is a tragedy, a million is a statistic.”

In the past few years, some great books about or by Solzhenitsyn have come out (or been republished). In his Invisible Allies, he writes about the people who helped him get his work out. Most of it was banned in the Soviet Union. So people would get a copy and type out a few more and pass them around. In a book filled with personalities, one chapter is devoted to a group of people—“The Estonians.” Many of you know of my love for Estonia and Estonians. Over and over again in the literature of the Gulag, the Estonians come across as truly unique as a nation. They were well-respected by fellow prisoners for the suffering of their tiny nation, for their devotion to their language and culture, and for their resistance to the overwhelming force of first the Nazis then the Soviets.

I was filled with great excitement when I read that Solzhenitsyn not only spent time there, but that he and some others also worked cranking out the first typed copies of his greatest novel, First Circle, at a farmhouse near Voru, Estonia. Voru is where First Church’s last trip to Estonia went.

What it is about the Estonians, to survive the Nazi invasion, to be the first to pull out of the Soviet Union, to be the only group of Methodists who survived Soviet Rule?

I think it is part of God’s delicious irony that I got to go to Estonia on a mission trip. I went to the places I thought I might only go if there was a war. Russian was useful in making friends for Christ. I couldn’t have planned it any better! Where my thoughts were war, the Lord’s were peace, a peace that shattered the spear and bow.

If you want a good read, check our Solzhenitsyn: Soul in Exile, a study of his Orthodox faith. Most striking is how much the Western intelligentsia turned their backs on him when he openly professed his faith. It was one thing to attack Stalin and his legacy; quite another to stand up for Jesus!