Category "Life With God"

The Gardener by Brian Zahnd

Brian Dolleman - May 8, 2016 - Guest Posts, Life With God, Uncategorized

I’ve been thinking a lot about metaphors lately—especially the ones most commonly used in church. Whatever metaphor or metaphors we choose to be primary will inevitably shape both our perspective and approach—how we think and how we behave.

The military metaphor is one we’re all familiar with. “I’m in the Lord’s army… Yes Sir!” (I sang that a lot as a kid growing up in church). What I don’t love about this metaphor is how simplistic, black and white, its perspective is. Either you’re fighting with me or you are my enemy. Everyone is either a good guy or a bad guy. Life is a battle. There are winners and there are losers.

The competitive metaphor is similar. Psychologist Jonathan Haidt says, “This tribal psychology is so deeply pleasurable that even when we don’t have tribes, we go ahead and make them, because it’s fun. Sports is to war as pornography is to sex. We get to exercise some ancient, ancient drives.” So in sports, you’re either fighting with me or you are my opposition. Life is a contest. There are winners and there are losers. Nobody wants a tie.

While these types of metaphors are certainly found in Scripture, I do wonder about people who… Read More

Small Whimsical Resistance From Quakers To A Big Corporation

Brian Dolleman - May 4, 2016 - Fun / Humor, Life With God, Uncategorized

I really enjoyed Jarrod McKenna’s tweet yesterday…

Here’s the post:

Orange County Friends Meeting
Religious Society of Friends (Quakers)

Irvine, California

Dear Mr. William Lovett:

I am the attorney at the Quaker Oats Company responsible for trademark matters. As you probably know, our company manufactures numerous food products, the most famous of which is oatmeal. In addition to having used the Quaker Oats name as our company name for close to 100 years, we have registered the Quaker name as a trademark.

It was therefore quite a surprise to discover that you are operating a business under the name “Quaker Oats Christmas Tree Farm.” Your use of our trademark is likely to mislead consumers into believing that your business is associated with the Quaker Oats Company. It is also likely to weaken our very strong trademark. In light of the foregoing, we hereby demand that you… Read More

The Point Of Being Human Is…

Brian Dolleman - May 3, 2016 - Life With God, Uncategorized

From Dr. David G. Benner’s book Surrender To Love: Discovering The Heart Of Christian Spirituality…

Transformation into love is a shift from focus on me to an awareness of the greater we.

Egocentricity and its bondage of self is always the enemy of love.

Conversion points us toward fellow human beings, not simply toward God. Like the grain of wheat that must fall into the earth and die if it is to flourish, the person who is becoming love leaves behind the broken husk of the isolated self and embraces the new possibilities of life in the human community.

Self-interest suffocates life. Life implodes when self-interest is at the core. This is why the kingdom of self is based on death.

Ultimately, taking care of Number One takes care of no one.

For the only way to truly care for myself is to… Read More

Low & Slow Enough To Listen

Brian Dolleman - May 2, 2016 - Life With God, Uncategorized

If men do not keep on speaking terms with children, they cease to be men, and become merely machines for eating and for earning money. —John Updike

I wonder if we are “maturing” to a place where most of what we do is a never ending cycle of producing and consuming, consuming and producing. Or as Updike put it, machines for eating and for earning money.

Tina Francis spoke of this recently—when she talked about being still and knowing He is God. She said, “It’s when I’m no longer producing or consuming that I am most able to experience God’s love.”

We often think in terms of how the poor need us, or how children need us – for help, instruction, advice, etc.

But truthfully, we need the poor, and we need the child. They instruct us in the way of the Kingdom.

They remind us to play, to listen, to enjoy small and simple things.

They remind us to celebrate, to sing, to imagine.

They remind us to make use of cardboard boxes and sticks and to not be afraid of the dirt.

If we do not keep on speaking terms with the poor, with the child, we lose… Read More

Sunday Shout Out: Parker Palmer On The Gift Of Presence & The Perils Of Advice

Brian Dolleman - May 1, 2016 - Guest Posts, Life With God, Uncategorized

On Sundays, I like to give a shout out and share something (generally a blog post, story, or video) that spoke to me. The piece I want to share today is by Parker Palmer…

When my mother went into a nursing home not long before she died, my wife and I were told that, for a modest increase in the monthly fee, the staff would provide a few extra services to improve her quality of life. We gladly paid, grateful that we could afford it.

Now in our mid-seventies, my wife and I have no imminent need for assisted living or nursing care. But the house we live in is, by definition, a two-person residential facility for the aging. Here at what we fondly call The Home, it’s not uncommon for one of us to try “improve” the other’s quality of life by offering “extra services.”

Unfortunately, those services often take the form of advice.

A few years ago, my wife gave me some advice that struck me as — how shall I say? — superfluous. Remembering our experience with my mother, I said, “Could I pay a little less this month?” To this day, that line gives us a chance to laugh instead of getting defensive when one of us attempts, as both of us do now and then, to give the other unsolicited and unwanted “help.”

Advice-giving comes naturally to our species, and is mostly done with good intent. But in my experience, the driver behind a lot of advice has as much to do with… Read More

Ow Foddo en evan (Teaching The Lord’s Prayer To My Children)

Brian Dolleman - April 24, 2016 - Guest Posts, Life With God, Uncategorized

It’s Sunday and I have a shout out…

This post by Ryan Flanagan is honestly my favorite thing I’ve ever read on the Lord’s prayer. Hope you’ll read the whole thing.

* * *

Over the past couple of months I have been teaching my kids the Lord’s Prayer. It’s amazing how fast they pick these kinds of things up. They’ve already got “The Doxology” down, as well as the first verse to “Be Thou My Vision” (the most requested bedtime song these days) and “Bless Us, O Lord” (the mealtime prayer). And even though they have no idea what some of the words mean, I do believe their hearts are being shaped by the practice.

I know mine certainly is.

I have to admit that up to this point praying the Lord’s Prayer has not been a regular practice in my life. I have given mental assent to it, studied its contents, and recited it in corporate worship on occasion, but it has never blossomed in my heart like it has recently, especially this past week.

I would venture to say that the Lord’s Prayer for most of us is an abstract, in-the-clouds sort of prayer. Many of the words that make up the prayer–like heaven, kingdom, sin, and forgive–have been so churchified that they’ve lost any and all sensibleness and relatedness to our everyday lives. This cannot be what Jesus had in mind when teaching his disciples how to pray. To those first followers of Jesus this prayer was as down-to-earth as was his physical presence; these words were as basic as the language of two and four-year-olds.

This is what the Lord has taught me in teaching his prayer to my children.

Ow Foddo en evan, ho-yee is… Read More

Cops, Convicted Felons, Communion, & Church

Brian Dolleman - April 21, 2016 - Life With God, Uncategorized

*picture above: Barry (left) and Don (right) at church together last night

* * *

Cops, convicted felons, communion, and church… these concepts might, at first glance, seem like they are worlds apart, but if we pause and think about it long enough, we’ll see how beautifully they go together.

Barry shared his story at church last night. He committed a violent crime when he was 13 years old, was sentenced to die in jail – life without the possibility of parole. The youngest in our country to ever receive this sentence, Barry was placed in a Washington state adult prison at the age of 15. It is a miracle that he is out today. Because of the work of Bryan Stevenson and the Equal Justice Initiative, the laws have been changed making life without parole sentences no longer possible for children.

After serving 29 years in prison, Barry Massey was released because of these new reforms. He has never stepped foot inside a high school, and has never driven a car, having spent his teens, twenties, and thirties behind prison walls.

Don, a Seattle police officer who attends our church, was also at the… Read More

Coretta

Brian Dolleman - April 20, 2016 - Life With God, Uncategorized

*from A.J. Swoboda’s book A Glorious Dark

* * *

I think of the Christmas my mom and I flew to Atlanta to visit my dad while he was in treatment. Near the end of our visit, we walked around old downtown Atlanta on a Sunday morning. We entered this old church building that Mom said was famous. It was my very first, however fleeting, experience of being a racial minority—we were the only white people in the whole place. I learned at that point in my life that black people seem to love God way louder and more rhythmically than white people do.

Black people worship with their… Read More

Loving People Means Divesting Ourselves of Status

Brian Dolleman - April 19, 2016 - Life With God, Uncategorized

*picture above: Henri Nouwen, attempting to ride a skateboard

On Sunday, my sermon was about “leadership” – I was attempting to point out that the world’s idea of leadership doesn’t hold much water in the kingdom of God. The big idea of the message, the call to action, was to “base my leadership success on how well I am following and imitating Jesus.”

At the end of the 5pm service when Shari came up to join me and say some stuff… well, what she said was better than the message. She talked about a young woman named Chelsea, who is a… Read More

God & Guns N’ Roses

Brian Dolleman - April 18, 2016 - Life With God, Uncategorized

*picture above: concord grapes growing at my dad’s house, September 2015

We planted our vegetable garden on Saturday. There were a few “starts” – small, already growing tomato plants we purchased from a nursery, but the rest of it was seeds—seeds we deposited beneath the soil.

And now we wait.

The various seeds, and the plants they represent, all have their own timeline: days to germination, days to maturity – or harvest. I asked when we will see the first green shoots of life breaking through the soil. Shari said a couple of the plants might germinate in as little as 7-10 days. That kinda bummed me out. I was hoping to see something in a day or two.

It’s easy to be impatient.

* * *

On Tuesday of this past week, I went to the Mariner’s game with Moses. As we were lined up outside with a crowd of people waiting to get through the security check, a street preacher was blasting his message through a powerful loudspeaker. You need to… Read More