Our Christmas Letter

Christmas 2016

Dear Friends,

Sometimes life is pretty ordinary.

Today, is a lazy Saturday. We just ate breakfast.  Logan made pancakes and eggs.  We shared jokes.  I explained my fitness plan for the New Year.  I am going to a nice restaurant and ordering mussels.

Linda worked at the community garden again this summer.  Planting things, watching them grow, and helping the 32 gardeners feel comfortable – ordinary stuff common to the human race since Adam and Eve negotiated where to plant the next pomegranate tree.  We’re thankful for the ordinary beauty and simplicity of this special plot in our community.

I, Lowell, had a chance to work with local employers to form a business association.  We are expanding our job training program to include other business services.  As part of the project I participated in a leadership training course during which I reflected on my leadership style.  I found myself coming back to ordinary things like character and just doing the next right thing.   I sat with other community leaders like someone from the Times Square Alliance, the Downtown Alliance in Lower Manhattan (where the World Trade Center is), and other world class neighborhoods.  I on the other hand represented Cypress Hills, a somewhat forgotten neighborhood tucked in a far corner of Brooklyn.  All we have is a long row of small businesses with an average of 4.2 employees each.  Small businesses with emphasis on the word small – scrappy, immigrant-owned, mom and pops where folks work 14 hr. days to keep the laundromat, or take out restaurant, or barber shop open.  These are ordinary sort of folks, and I am blessed to work with them.

The big event of our autumn was sending the boys back to Followers of Jesus School.  Somehow this ordinary routine repeated by millions of families across this country seemed to be an accomplishment for us.  Starting a new normal with unpredictable tweens proved to be a feat.  Linda began an ordinary job as middle school part time teacher, and I volunteered to teach PE.  We are now very familiar with teenage eye-rolling.

Yesterday was an ordinary, brisk day.  I walked 2 ½ blocks to work and stopped in at a local merchant, Juan Diaz’ corner store, one of the participants in the business association.  I found him opening the business like he does every day.  Looking closer I saw he had stitches in his lip and forehead.  He had been robbed the evening before and spent most of the night in the ER.  I asked why he is at work after such trauma. In his thick Dominican accent he said, “I had to take my son to school, so I came on in.  It could have been worse.  I am grateful.  There is no sense him missing school because of me.  That is what America is all about.  You keep working to be successful.”  An ordinary man doing ordinary things like working every day and taking care of his family.

I couldn’t stop thinking of Juan all day.

It turns out there is a fine line between the ordinary and the extraordinary.  Juan reminds me of another ordinary/extraordinary father,  “He who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all--how will he not also, along with him, graciously give us all things?” (Romans 8:32).  Could it be that the Father has ordinary feelings of compassion, pain, and thankless sacrifice?  I am not sure if anyone noticed that Juan had his store open again less than 24 hours after a gun was put in his face.  Did anyone notice his gutsy, painful, vulnerability?  If it were not for the angels, would anyone have noticed the Father’s own ordinary-looking sacrifice on the first Christmas? 

I pray that we can all notice the ordinary/extraordinary gift of God this season in the middle of our ordinary lives. 

How do I live a life that matters?

Three years ago today, we were getting ready to fly North in a snowstorm for the funeral of my father, David Herschberger.  I can't think back to that day without reflecting a bit on what makes a life that matters.  Like many of us, my dad's life was one of big dreams and "small" accomplishments. He never quite did what he dreamed of doing, but ironically some of this greatest accomplishments came in the middle of his deepest pain.  Dealing with his own hurts helped him to enter others' hurts.  Isn't this the irony of Christmas as well?  Big events in small stables.  Amazing love among common people.  I pray I can live a life like that, a life that matters.

Here's an excerpt of the Eulogy I wrote 3 years ago.  Perhaps it will be an inspiration for you today as it was for me. 

David’s life was one of service.  As a young man he served briefly in Chicago, Arkansas, Germany, and Austria before settling in Northwestern Ontario where he served as pastor, counselor, and bookstore manager for 49 years.

Several months ago, David said he would not consider himself to have been a successful person.  He always had dreams far beyond what he accomplished. By some measures, he was not successful, but I think he was a great man. His greatness was not in buildings, or money, or organizations. After having worked on David’s life story this past Fall, I am convinced that David’s greatness was in his brokenness and his response to pain. He did not run from shame, hurt, guilt, and loss. He didn’t try to distract himself or blame others.  

He was pushed by his pain through brokenness all the way to the Gentle Healer. He learned who alone could bear the full weight of his heart, and he allowed many of you to be God’s agents of healing in his life.

It happened over and over and over again.  

Beginning with abuse, mental illness, and spiritual emptiness in his childhood, his first 18 years included much brokenness.  His father told me that sometimes David would just lie down and cry and cry as a child. In his pain, he became hungry for God and began seeking spiritual wholeness.  While he was working the night shift at a mental hospital in Chicago, he read all types of Christian books.  After that, he knew he wanted something more.  He traveled to several different states until he found God in a little band of Christians in Northern Indiana. This led to his first stint of Christian service in Arkansas, and that is where he was truly discipled for the first time. His brokenness had led him to the Healer.  The core message of grace that he found there would become the mantra of his life.

Several years later when his dreams of church planting seemed to fall apart, he felt broken again and wanted to give up.  Amazingly, God met him in his little cabin north of Lac Suel. “That was where it all happened,” he told me once.  The Gentle Healer arrived and showed him a glory that surpassed all of the brokenness.  Soon afterward, a dear friend went with him to attend the Canadian Revival where he could continue his journey to wholeness.

At age 60, he went to college.  “I have a good twenty years left in me,” I remember him saying.  Now, over 20 years later, we know how right he was.  Once again, though, this journey brought a lot of pain and revealed brokenness. He almost didn’t graduate, but, again, his pain pushed him closer to the Healer, and, in turn, he became a conduit of healing in the lives of others.

Then on a cold night in January, all his plans came to a crashing halt as Esther passed away.  He wanted to give up, curse God and die, but again he didn’t cut corners. He walked the valley of the shadow of death, and again, the Gentle Healer brought healing and love into his life again.

On my last visit, Dad said that he was working on one more message.  He said that Jesus died to forgive our sins, but the way that He died illustrated how he wants to heal our shame.  He was spit on, publically rejected, and exposed -- a death of shame to take away our shame.  The Bible says, ^“Surely he hath borne our griefs, and carried our sorrows . . . with his stripes we are healed.”

For dad, those words weren’t just nice words for a song or liturgy.  He had been to the bottom. He knew pain, shame, loneliness and hurt, but the Gentle Healer had come and that was what made all the difference. 

Why do I grieve for this election?

I have never cried over an election before.

It sounds even odd to write it, but it is true.  I cried.

Why?  Because I am a bleeding heart liberal? Perhaps,but the number that really got to me was that 80% of my white evangelical brothers and sisters voted for him.  That's not even close.

What do white evangelicals see?

My tears come from what they do NOT see.  Like this . . .

• The three young immigrants who started in my job program last week who expect to have their eligibility to work revoked on January 20. 
• The young black man from my church who walks in the rain because if he ran he might get stopped and frisked by the police or worse still.
• The LGBTQ teens who are 2-3 times more likely to attempt suicide.  
• The infant death rate in minority communities for lack of good prenatal care.
• The thousands who will die when we "carpet bomb ISIS" 
• The sparrow who falls or in this case entire species who we were commanded by our Creator to care for.
• The young women who dismisses threats of sexual assault as "just locker room talk" until it is too late.
• The millions around the world who confuse the "Christian" label with imperialism, a point of confusion that doesn't seem much like confusion when you have centuries of hard evidence behind it.
• The meager life that welfare brings in spite of the persistent caricature of the "free loader" who is living well at other's expense.
• The host of really smart, well-developed programs that lift people out of poverty only to be dismissed as "big government" and defunded in favor of tax breaks for those making more than 250K.
• The 200 hate incidents ranging from swastikas and physical threats that occurred in the week after the election. (http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2016/11/12/bad-year-for-minorities/93637192/)

And this might be the biggest issue for me. I grieve that the white church doesn't see the black and brown churches, that us whites don't stop and think that maybe our brothers of color have some spiritual discernment on issues of politics.  The voting patterns incidentally are almost reversed among churches of color.  Why can't we see that there are two sides to the issues in our culture, and Jesus was clear that, if anything, the marginalized have generally better Spiritual discernment than those "rich in this world's goods."  White folks cling to six or seven isolated verses that support their political position, while the world roles their eyes.  Christianity is being laughed at or feared in dark blue places like NYC.

I will concede that God is not on the side of either particular candidate.  Is it too much to ask that the church would listen to each other, and start being the conscience of society rather than just a reflection of the racism and polarity.  There has got to be a better way!

Why is rest so hard?

There are regular moments when I feel like no one believes in stopping. Survival of the fittest seems to be the law of the land. Life feels like a maze designed by a stone-faced researcher in a long lab coat  and I am the mouse.

But this is not one of those moments.

This is a moment of rest. It's the weekend after a full week. Ahhhhh

Ever wonder why God commanded the Israelites to rest one day in seven?  We need this. How ironic that the Pharisees created a million rules to govern Sabbath rest? They turned rest itself into work.

So why am I resting now?

Because I am weak. Ironic, isn't it?  

A complex array of challenging issues at work today culminated in a conversation with leaders saying to each other essentially, we have to support each other. We are weak leaders. Moments later, I debriefed with another staffer as we reflected on a 5 1/2 year project that appears to be going up in smoke. We reminded each other that there is goodness in the process. Loving, listening, sharing hard truthes -- these things are never wasted even when the outcome is not what we had hoped. It was still good work.

Yes. The perfect word to end a weak week.

And there is another reason I am resting now.  Last night I set a foolhardy goal.  I am training to run a half marathon, and I want to do it well this time. Last night was my first attempt to run the whole thing, all 13.1 miles of it without ever breaking my stride. I decided to go real slow but try to never stop for any reason.  To keep a long story short, I over did it.  I have been limping ever since.  Last evening I could barely climb the stairs.  So now I am resting because I am weak. 

Maybe that's why God had to command us to observe a day of rest. He knew we wouldn't do it. We wouldn't do it because rest and weakness feel like synonyms.

Most of us are petrified of our own weakness. We run ourselves ragged to avoid that feeling of weakness. We even do lofty things like run marathons when we should be resting.  But God comes for us just like he did 6,000 years ago.  He calls us in the garden at the cool of the day or on the running trail. He writes in stone from the fiery mountain because sometimes a command is the only thing driven people hear. He has to really get our attention. "Rest, regularly, you are too weak to do anything more!"

So, Father, tonight, I embrace my weakness and Your rest.  I will accept reality as it is not as it should be. I bow my bruised body and fall into the rest prepared for me. There is simply nothing better.

Why is colorblindness not enough?

I have heard it a million times from white folk. "I am not racist. I see everyone alike. I am colorblind. What more do you want?"

Great . . . sort of.

Something about this logic feels hollow.

But why? Didn't MLK say, "I look to a day when people will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character."

So what is wrong with colorblindness?

Lately, I have been thinking of a few reasons why colorblindness is not enough.  I am curious to hear if folks resonate with these thoughts.  Perhaps you can expand on them.

1. True love isn't blind.  We say love is blind, but if a person who doesn't know me, says that they love me, it doesn't mean much. For someone's affirmation to really mean something they have to know something about me.

When I tell people around here in Brooklyn that I am from Canada, inevitably, I hear something like this, "Oh, I like Canada.  Its nice. I went to Toronto once."

Seriously?

That's like saying you love Canada because you like the smell of Pine Sol.  You don't know anything about where I am from by visiting Toronto once.  I hear the good intentions, but it doesn't mean much..

To love or affirm someone, you can't be blind.  What makes me feel loved is when someone takes the time to hear what it feels like to drift asleep by a glassy lake serenaded by the distinctive laugh of the loon or what it felt like to travel across America in a sweaty station wagon as a missionary coming "home" to a place that didn't feel like home. Don't say I am like you, when you don't really know me.

2. Colorblindness is not enough because sometimes it means, "I see you as if you were a White person." Can you pause a minute and listen for the hurtful assumptions?  The statement is not saying that you actually accept that person. You are saying that you are accepting them into the White culture -- at least if they keep "acting White."  The hidden assumption is that the Black person wants to be White and that it is somehow better to be White.  

3. Declaring colorblindness minimizes the African American experience. The truth is that as a White person I don't have the foggiest understanding of the African American experience. As White people we think we can erase all of someone's life time of experience just by saying we don't see it!

I would call this the Great White Fantasy.  Racism has been called "America's original sin."  It's the only thing that brought us to a civil war. I really think it is a source of deep shame to most White people. At times the shame is unconscious and is expressed as anger.  More than anything, I believe that most White people, want the issue to disappear from our history and culture.  We think that by proclaiming our personal commitment to equality, we can erase race. While it might be the first step, it won't go away with just a proclamation.

Let's make it super concrete.  Imagine you walk down the street and pick-pocket $20 that is hanging out of someone's purse.  When they notice and ask you about it, you say, "Oh, I believe in fairness. Let's split the $20.  You have $10 and I will take $10, and just forget that this ever happened."

Jesus idea of justice is much more extreme than we would like.  "Without the shedding of blood there is no remission of sins"(Hebrews 9:22).  Its not that easy to get ride of something as evil as racism.  I really believe it takes a spiritual and sometimes physical act of death.  Are we White people willing to die?

4, Claiming colorblindness is claiming that we have not internalized the dominant values of our culture.  I am afraid that this is classic, individualistic, American narcissism. What is more American than freedom and independence for the individual?  We believe in the self-made man.  Unfortunately, we have been blinded to the collective forces that shape our values and beliefs.   We do well to cry with the ancients, "Woe to me . . . .  I am a man of unclean lips and I live among a people of unclean lips" (Isaiah 6:5).

5. Claiming colorblindness is a conversation ender. It's really an attempt to end the dialogue rather than grow in our understanding and enter the place of listening.

So, I am afraid I have to say it like it is. Colorblindness is still blindness.

The good news is that there is an alternative.  Light.  "But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus, his Son, purifies us from all sin." (I John 1:7).  Freely acknowledging our junk and the junk of our culture, cracks open the door for fellowship and healing. Like Isaiah, if we can declare that we are unclean and we live in an unclean culture, perhaps then we can experience a bit of the fire of God's purification in our lives.  Perhaps we can experience a death and a resurrection.

I know that's what I want!

What do you have to show for yourself? Reflections on "results."

During a recent moment of reflection, I got to thinking about results.  

I put an awful lot of effort into things that don't show much results. Sometimes I feel like a hamster stuck on one of those little wheels.  Am I a "loser" or "disaster" as Donald Trump likes to say?  Should I work harder -- change my strategy perhaps? 

I found myself asking a hard question, "Do results matter?"

Results do matter. When I paid a pretty penny last year to get a new water and sewer line put in, I wanted results. Though I appreciated that the workers put in a lot of effort, results is what I was looking for. 

A "results mindset" has served our culture well, or has it? From America back to Great Britain and further back to Rome, we have always valued results more than effort.  Show me the bottom line, don't tell me how hard you worked.  What is the profit margin?  What is the quality of your product?  Prices should be determined by results alone.  It is in our economics in the form of capitalism, in our polictics in the form of term limits, in sports on the jumbo-tron -- have you ever wondered why we use so many number in Western sports? It's in religion too where successful pastors are rewarded with TV contracts and book deals, unsuccessful ones are fired. We have built super-powers on this mantra, from the Roman Empire, to Spain, to Portugal, to Germany, to Russia, to England and now the USA we dominated the world through our tyrannical commitment to this ideal.  Results at all costs!  We built unprecedented wealth through industrialization and a focus on efficiency. There is unprecedented innovation in medicine because of a profit motive.  The standard of living has skyrocketed in the last several centuries due in part to our focus on results.  Even in my profession of Social Work, we talk a lot about evidenced-based practice. The assumption is that we should not be doing anything that doesn't produce results.  

Like a multitude of minions, it seems we all chime in . . . 

No whining.  Just do it. 

In most recent times, some say this focus on results is slipping away, and we need to "make America great again."  There be some truth to that, but when I think about the real impact of my life, this results mindset rings hollow. Do results alone matter? What about the process?  Does the effort in the process have any intrinsic value separate from the measurable results? Does winning alone matter or is there value in how you play the game?"  

It seems there are at least five problems with the results mindset. 

1. The results mindset begs a finite definition of success, but most of what I want for people in my life is infinitely complex.  I want my sons to be obedient yet independent, steadfast yet flexible, compassionate but not soft, honorable but not proud -- the list could go on and on.  The results I really want defy reasonable definition.  The results mindset works well when you are talking about sewer pipes -- not so good when you are talking about the impact that my life has on my sons.  

2. The results mindset assumes that I can control others.  Control is really the dark underbelly of the results mindset. In the rush to results, I take control of the whole thing.  I need to sterilize the environment and take complete control of all variables to get clear, precise, good results.   That works in some sciences but not so much when impacting people.  It makes me think of the workplace adage, "The beatings will continue until morale improves."   

3. The results mindset tends to reduces the focus to minor outcomes. In my profession, we help people get jobs.  We are successful at it partly because we focus narrowly on jobs. The real needs of young people like love, confidence, compassion, responsibility, etc. we don't measure because we couldn't possibly document results even though these are the most important things.  So we settle for a small definition of success because we need to show measurable results.

4. The results mindset assumes that life is linear. A causes B which then causes C. If C doesn't happen, B is to blame, or perhaps A. People are just so much more complex than that. Behavior is reciprocal and fluid. "The wind blows wherever it pleases. You hear its sound, but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going. So it is with everyone born of the Spirit." (John 3:8 NIV)

5. The results mindset exhausts me because it puts responsibility on the cause (me) which leads to the effect (people I am suppose to be helping). In the middle of the exhaustion, I forget to be the person I am. The Gospel puts being before doing and results are barely mentioned. "So in Christ Jesus you are all children of God through faith," (Galatians 3:26 NIV). "For we are God's handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do."(Ephesians 2:10 NIV). In Scripture, results are way behind both "being" and "doing!" In fact, Jesus repeatedly promises disaster on those who try to make a difference in people's lives. People will even think they are doing good by getting rid of you!

So ...

"Good news" I say to myself. When it comes to the measure of my life on people, the pop phrase is actually pretty true. "Be the change you wish to see in the world." "Results" are important but always imperfect. I like Paul's words, "... our first duty is to be faithful to the one we work for" (I Corinthians 4:2, CEV). Having heard His voice personally, that's a life worth living. It is certainly a long way from the hamster cage.