recklessly dreaming

“Being right” is something that stopped being appealing to me several years ago. Don’t misread this to say that I don’t care about truth. I am in a constant search for truth, but the days where things have simple answers or just one layer are long gone. If anything I ask more questions than ever before. Truth is big enough for the questions, truth is big enough for the dialogue. Truth is too big to be limited by one group of people. Truth is too big to be limited by one time and place and culture and….

In twenty years, I don’t want to believe exactly what I do now. If that happens, I will have stop looking, learning, and questioning.

These past few months I have been able to get back into doing several things that I love. One of them is being able to write and then give it (teach/preach/talk) - especially to my college students.

The past Wednesday, I did the second of these with my student leaders – FREEDOM. I have been thinking about freedom since leading a group at Kadesh this summer where the theme was freedom.

It is amazing how Americanized this idea of freedom has become. I spent the first part of our time together debunking this individualistic, William Wallace, power driven version of freedom. Maybe my frustration at this is rooted in the prevalence, during my lifetime, to view war and violence and oppression as the means and method for freedom. Maybe it is rooted in this idea that our way is better and this one size will fit all.

On the other hand, maybe it comes because I live in a place where people have the epitome of what it means to be free according to the American version of freedom but I watch them live lives that are bound by so many things and long for freedom. Maybe when I look at John 8:31-47, I see us (however you want to define us) today – where we can’t see that we have a cheap version of freedom.

When I started working on my talk about freedom, I asked several of my students what came to mind when I said the word freedom. The dominant response was Braveheart (that pre-battle, St. Crispin’s day-esque speech) and if you google ‘freedom’ you are bombarded with red, white, and blue images.

Granted Braveheart shows great passion, sacrifice, etc. But, the more I read scripture, the less I see freedom. For me it all falls apart when freedom is something that you can get on your own (or with buddies). When it is something that if you just have enough power, strength, might – if you just fight hard and long enough freedom is yours. It is a freedom to and for the powerful - freedom that is rooted in the harm of others.  I read John 8 and find that people are set free and they don’t achieve it on their own – that it is something that happens to you but that you can’t do yourself. I read in Mark and the man who was possessed by a legion of demons and was set free. It is a freedom that once someone is set free it not just for them, but for others.

My intern finished us out as he painted a picture of what real freedom looks like and is lived out.

As I write this there is a commercial for Chase credit cards talking about freedom – the images are  an island, a vacation, and $100 bills – what is the cost of buying into this as freedom.

This is where i live. Nights like this keep me centered.

The majority of today has been spent getting ready for classes next week - readings and writings for the week ahead.

However, tonight I have been side tracked by Trickster makes this World - Lewis Hyde. Mischief, Myth, and Art are the avenues by which Hyde visits trickster both in the ancient stories/mythologies and in more contemporary places.

This book has found its place on my reading list after a session at 2006 Soliton and a evening conversation with Kester Brewin and others (for those of you in Abilene - Greg/Travis - yes, this was an emergent gathering).

This is my first detailed look at trickster and the role he has played and continues to play. On more than one occasion, I have heard reference to him. his behavior, and/or its impact. However, before now, it hasn’t been a theme I’ve looked at specifically - seeing how it is woven beyond one genre, story, culture, time……

Due to the hectic nature of this semester, I won’t have time to sit and read it as quickly as I would prefer.

Here are some quotations of his observations from the intro.
- trickster is a boundary crosser
- he also attends to internal boundaries
- We constantly distinguish – right and wrong, sacred and profane, clean and dirty, male and female, young and old, living and dead – and in every case trickster will cross the line and confuse the distinction.’ Trickster is the creative idiot, therefore the wise fool, the gray-haired baby, the cross-dresser, the speaker of sacred profanities.
- Trickster is the mythic embodiment of ambiguity and ambivalence, doubleness and duplicity, contradiction and paradox.
- …for there are also cases in which trickster creates a boundary, or brings to the surface a distinction previously hidden from sight.
- In spite of all their disruptive behavior, tricksters are regularly honored as the creators of culture.

‘I want to argue a paradox that the myth asserts: that the origins, liveliness, and durability of cultures require that there be space for figures whose function is to uncover and disrupt the very things that cultures are based on.’

Many thoughts and implications are running around in my head. More to come.