(I promise not to spoil the story.)

Today, I finished Dan Brown’s newest book, The Lost Symbol. This story is not as engaging as The Da Vinci Code, but it’s a fun read that causes the reader to think.

Brown slapped easily offended Christians in the face with his fiction about Jesus and Mary and such in The Da Vinci Code; now he will be loved by many of them. On second thought, he will not. While some characters express some warm fuzzies about Christianity, some readers are not going to like. …

Oh, I almost forgot I promised not to spoil the story.

I can say this: While the story has some flaws as a story (that “national security” line doesn’t work), it may provoke many to think about some things they have not thought about before. And I’m in favor of thinking.

Credit card dept is stupid, and I have way too much of it. I can defend myself by saying very little of it went for consumer purchases; there were medical bills, house repairs, a child’s college education. Also, I have great interest rates that are locked in because I transferred balances back when credit card companies were clamoring for our money. Also, I always pay my monthly payment on time and am bringing down the balances. But, still, it’s stupid of me to have so much.

Big banks who back these credit cards can also be stupid. Take Chase Bank for example. I have three Chase cards, and if they dug into their detailed numbers they would say this Drums guy is a great customer. He always pays on time, so while we’re not making the big bucks off of him, he’s still making us a fair return on investment.

But Chase is looking at a much bigger picture than Mr. Drums’ accounts, and they must need money badly or just don’t like making little bucks off of me. They couldn’t raise the interest rate, so they decided I would have to pay 5 percent of the balance each month, thus more than doubling my payment amounts.

My wife called; they didn’t care. I paid the greater amount a couple of months, but then our property tax bill came and I realized I couldn’t keep up with all of it.

So, goodbye, Chase Bank. I have moved my money elsewhere. You would never get the big bucks from me, and now you will not get the little ones either. And, unless I get really desperate, I don’t plan on you ever getting any of my money again.

You think these guys who are getting paid so much would have more sense. It’s just greed. I can understand that, but I will not reward it.

A college professor got my attention more than 30 years ago in an Introduction to Political Science course. He used the word, “contemplative.”

I had, of course, heard the word before, but he spoke in a way that arrested my attention. Rather than putting the accent on the “-pla-” syllable, he put it on “-tem-”. Now that seems a rather minor distinction, one supported by my dictionary, but that simple change woke me from my classroom slumber and made me listen.

The professor said the contemplative life was the best life, according to the ancient Greeks. I forgot most of what I heard in college, but I never forgot that and it has proved true in my own life. Life is best when contemplation is central part of it.

Now, it seems, there is a lot of talk about contemplation. That may seem to be the case because I’ve been reading Richard Rohr a good bit. Then comes this e-note from Richard’s Center for Action and Contemplation this morning:

“The contemplative mind is really just the mind that emerges when you pray instead of think first. Praying opens the field and moves beyond fear and judgment and agenda and analysis, and just lets the moment be what it is—as it is.”

I think I’m not alone when I confess that praying before thinking is very counterintuitive. Thinking is what I tend to do most. My wife has even accused me of over-thinking; and I grudgingly concur. So how can I pray first. I don’t know.

Richard says this:

“We really have to be taught that mind. We now are pretty sure that it was systematically taught—mostly in the monasteries—as late as the 13th and even into the 14th century. But once we got into the oppositional mind of the Reformation and the rational mind of the Enlightenment, the contemplative mind pretty much fell by the wayside. The wonderful thing is that it is now being rediscovered across denominations, and there is no select group that holds it or that teaches it. Catholics still use the word ‘contemplation,’ but usually have not been taught the practice, even monks and nuns and priests.”

Adapted from the CAC webcast, Nov. 8, 2008:
“What is The Emerging Church?”

So, there’s some food for thought, for contemplation.

Rushworth Kidder had a good piece yesterday on congressional ethics. He hearkened back to Nancy Pelosi’s 2006 commitment to “drain the swamp” of Congress and clean up ethics violations. Republicans were the primary sleeze merchants in the news then. Now that Democrat Charles Rangel is sleeze news, Pelosi has slowed the draining.

But criticizing Pelosi is not what I liked about Kidder’s column; it is the three points he makes.

“First, politics on either side of the aisle isn’t a dismal swamp. It’s a set of interpersonal relationships. If a few are putrid, many are not. To broad-brush the opposition so contemptuously may win you high-fives from fellow polarizers, but it sets you up for a fierce attack when next they see you compromising — as they saw Pelosi doing in the Rangel affair.

“Second, as homebuilders know, it’s often harder to change a landscape by draining it than by filling it with the rock, gravel, and sand that eventually displaces the mud. Real change, topographically as well as politically, often comes by addition, not subtraction.

“Third, in the age of environmentalists who recognize marshes, bogs, and wetlands as vital to our ecology, this is a startlingly unpropitious metaphor. There’s little argument, these days, that wetlands are not something to exploit but to protect.”

Great words. I especially like the positive direction of the second point — change by addition. We can all add some integrity to this world in our interpersonal relationships and in exercising our responsibilities.

“I saw a great many bones that were very dry,” Ezekiel wrote. And the Spirit of the Lord asked him, “Son of man, can these bones live?”

He was not talking about the church of recent years, of course, but he could have been.

Those who know the Ezekiel story, know that the answer to the question was a resounding “yes.” The prophet did as the Lord commanded and said, “Come from the four winds, O breath, and breathe into these slain, that they may live.” The result: “… breath entered them; they came to life and stood up on their feet–a vast army.”

John Shelby Spong has something special to say about the breath of God, the wind of God, the Holy Spirit — though he would not say it thus.

“The task of spirit was always to give life,” Spong writes. “In this ancient understanding, the spiritual person was not the pious person or the religious person, but the vital, alive, whole, and real person.” (Why Christianity Must Change or Die, p.105)

“Jesus was a ’spirit person’,” Spong says. “He was alive. He gave life to others. His life was expansive. It was not bound by traditional limits. Thus those who were touched by his spirit also came alive and began the expanding process of entering the limitless dimensions of their own lives. That was the experience to which the word spirit pointed.” (p. 106)

Spong is pushing for a God-less understanding of reality. I don’t know about that, but I think he’s right about spirit and Jesus — and therefore us in relation to them.

The breath of life is upon us to give life in a new and profound way. If we do not understand it completely, and I do not; that’s OK. Experience it as best we can.

It’s strange when a Christian throws another Christian an idealogical curveball and then equally strange when a athiest gives the believer something about which to say a hardy “amen.”

My first reading of John Shelby Spong accounts for the Christian curveball. I love his questions, his probing of conventional Christian wisdom; but sometimes he makes big jumps of seeming logic. In other words, sometimes he says A + B = C, but you’re not so sure.

It reminds me of being in geometry back in high school. The teacher kept talking to us about using the proper “proofs” to solve a problem, but it all seemed a bit arbitrary to my mind, which loved algebra. (Geometry caused me to cancel my plans for calculus and trig, and I’ve always blamed my geometry teacher; surely my struggles were no falt of my own.)

I’m going to blame Spong, as well; surely it’s not me. When he says evolutionary theory pulls the rug out from under traditional Christian notions of an external, personal God, I’m just not sure it does. I think I can deal with that reality if evolutionary theory really does what he says, but, convince me. To be fair to Spong, I’m not through reading the book, Why Christian Must Change or Die, but he didn’t have me from “hello.”

Then comes famed aitheist Richard Dawkins in the Oct. 5 issue of Newsweek, and he gives me a little unintended affirmation. In a Q&A titled “Darwin’s Rottweiler,” Lisa Miller asks him, “Are those incompatible positions: to believe in God and to believe in evolution?”

Dawkins: “No, I don’t think they’re incompatible if only because there are many intelligent evolutionary scientists who also believe in God. …”

That, to me, is a pretty weak proof since intelligent people are not the same as inerrant people, but I’ll take it. I’m not an intelligent evolutionary scientist, but I think there must be something to this evolution stuff and I have no problem seeing truth in it while also believing in God.

So, thank you Richard Dawkins, for helping me have faith for another day.

A quent little restaurant in a charming little town can be the scene of a very special encounter. My wife and I met another couple in such a place a couple of weekends ago.  It’s in a town in the deep woods of East Texas that is hardly even a town. Edom is more like a crossroads than a town. No slight intended; I’m just trying to be true to the story.

We met for breakfast. Almost three hours later, we said goodbye but probably should have just ordered lunch.

Why was this a special encounter? More than one reason could apply, but I will highlight two.

First, it’s nice to just share time in conversation and caring with two other folks. You’re sitting there with your life-partner with two others who are life-partners. You talk as four, but you also talk as two because each couple shares so much joint history. Such conversation is one of the finer joys of life.

The four of us also share something else in common. We’re all seeking to be followers of Christ. One of us is pretty traditional but still hsa deep sense of disconnectedness — pardon the cumbersome word, and there’s another — regarding the faith walk. The other three of us could not be described as traditional, at least not in an evangelical sense. We’re not thinking new thoughts, because after 2,000 of Christian history it’s really hard to come up with anything new; but we’re moving outside the dominant evangelical Christian approach to viewing God and His relationship to us. I believe our two friends would accept that description.

And it was this common and uncommon faith that provoked much of the conversation; that’s the second thing that made the encounter special. It is deeply rewarding to discuss with others the most important things of reality, even when you don’t agree on everything. And, I must add, it was a completely civil and decent conversation. Some tears were shed, but they were not tears of hurt or anger but of emotion, an emotion that arises out of deep feeling and care.

Treasures like this are part of what makes life like the burning bush of Exodus. God’s fire burns in the encounter and you get a sense that the divine is speaking to you through the ordinary. Holy ground. But we didn’t take our shoes off; maybe we should have.

The New York Times reported today:

“Mr. Obama said that the capital of Israel should be Jerusalem, but added that the matter should be settled through a negotiation by the parties.

“ ‘That’s an issue that has to be dealt with by the parties involved, the Palestinians and the Israelis, and it is not the job of the United States to dictate the form in which that will take,’ Mr. Obama said, ‘but rather to support the efforts that are being made right now to resolve these very difficult issues that have a long history.’ ”

The U.S. can’t dictate, but we can support. Excellent!

The New York Times today:

“President Bush agreed to ‘a general time horizon’ for withdrawing American troops in Iraq, the White House announced Friday, in a concession that reflected both progress in stabilizing Iraq and the depth of political opposition to an open-ended military presence in Iraq and at home.”

In other words, Sen. Obama was right all along. Kudos again to the Illinois senator.

The forgotten front fortunately is being remembered. This is APs characterization today of Sen. Obama’s position on Afganistan:

“Obama has made Afghanistan a centerpiece of his proposed strategy for dealing with terrorism threats. The Illinois senator has said the war in Afghanistan, where Taliban and al-Qaida-linked militants are resurgent, deserves more troops and more attention as opposed to the conflict in Iraq. Both Obama and his Republican rival for the presidency, Sen. John McCain, advocate sending more forces to the country.”

Excellent! The focus should have been on Afghanistan all along. Irag diverted our attention from the real task of fighting terrorism. Both Sens. Obama and McCain get it, but McCain made the shift as a follower of Obama–my words, of course, not his.