All Is Not Lost

Our plan was to backpack close to forty miles along the Colorado River on the rarely traveled Escalante Route in the Grand Canyon. 

But in one of the busiest national parks in the United States, even permits for the more remote routes are incredibly difficult to secure. After days of arduous back and forth, switching dates and negotiating where we would pitch our tents each night, we finally landed one of the most epic permits in the park. 

In my excitement, I shared this great news with my wife, who just stared at me blankly with no visible emotion on her face. 

“You do realize those dates are during Easter, right?” she asked, knowing exactly how I would answer.

“Um, no,” I sheepishly confessed.

These kinds of oversights are typical for me, though.

Like the time I left the car seat in the car and showed up at the airport terminal with Starbucks in hand, only to have my wife, baby in arms, ask where the car seat was. 

Like the time I left a week’s worth of breast milk at home when we went to my wife’s friend’s wedding in Florida with our newborn. I was supposed to be the one watching our daughter while my wife participated in all of the wedding activities.

You get the picture.

Life is full of inevitable disruptions and difficulties. 

Sometimes they are of our own doing. 

Other times, they are out of our control.

Like this season of the pandemic.

While we have made important and necessary sacrifices to protect the most vulnerable among us, there is no question that our isolation has created a sense of disruption, helplessness, and loss.

We have lost embraces to standing six feet apart.

We have lost the subtlety of a smile to face coverings.

We have lost the ease of conversations to dividers and shields.

We have lost plays and musicals and concerts, sporting events, parades and block parties, community social events, faith community gatherings, schools and classmates, work and coworkers, meals with extended families and friends.

We have lost the physical to the virtual, our natural rhythm to an unfamiliar beat.

And to compound our isolation, our sense of helplessness, and our loss of control during this time, we are fed nonstop media narratives that continue to polarize us, pit us against one another, and make us feel increasingly anxious and depressed. 

In a desperate attempt to find some semblance of community and connectedness in our isolation, we retreat to social media only to find more anger, division, and hostility, which leaves us even more fragmented and alone.

We are losing so much more than lives to this virus.

We are losing our humanity.

We are being broken down individually into isolated and fragmented parts that are increasingly anxious and angry. We are rapidly losing our sense of what it means to be a fully integrated, fully alive human being that works toward healthy relationships and community. And we can either continue down this hateful and antagonistic trajectory, feeding the beast until it consumes our souls and causes us to devolve into utter chaos, or we can draw a line in the sand and resolve to fight for our hearts and take back our humanity, finding a different, more life-giving way forward in the process.

But it has to begin with each one of us.

For there is no remedying the whole until the parts themselves find wholeness. 

As a people, we always have this mistaken idea that our help, our change, our salvation can only come from on high… from elected officials, from governments, from courts, from social organizations, from political action groups, and so on. 

But every wisdom tradition I have ever studied teaches us that our communities only change when we change individually. Our communities only find health when we find health individually. Our communities only become just, merciful, forgiving when we become just, merciful, and forgiving individually. And our communities only become whole and healed when we become whole and healed ourselves.

Jesus said that even a little yeast will permeate the entire batch of dough.

It is always the transformation of the smallest part that leads to the transformation of the whole.

While I grieve for those affected by the virus, I believe this season of loss is giving us an opportunity to look inward and evaluate who we are as individuals. 

Every construct upon which we have depended and that have held us up feebly like a crutch have been violently ripped away. Our endless rat races around life’s circumference have all ended abruptly. Our preoccupations prioritizing the exterior to the continual neglect of our interior have all ceased. 

We have never been more naked and exposed and vulnerable in our lifetime than right now. There are no metaphorical bushes behind which we can hide. We have been given an opportunity during this time of loss to honestly look inward and see ourselves and rediscover our inherent goodness and our shared humanity.

But what are we doing with this opportunity? Do we go through this unchanged and continue down this downward spiral together? Or, do we embrace this time of disruption and difficulty as an opportunity to find our hearts again and save our communities?

On Easter morning of 2014, the guys and I sat in a circle on large rocks next to the Colorado River in the heart of the Grand Canyon and watched the sunrise. I unwrapped the foil that had preserved the homemade honey-molasses communion bread I had baked before the trip. While aching and feeling the loss of not being with my family to celebrate the day, I prayed with my brothers, broke the bread, and savored one of the most life-giving and holy Easter moments I have ever experienced.

Life is difficult and many times feels like profound loss, but we always have the opportunity to embrace the moment and look-inwardly. For it is only in this place where we can recover that which is life-giving and holy.

This Body of Death, Part 2

With the purchase of my last book Beauty in the Wreckage I offered a free bonus chapter. I have decided to make that bonus chapter available now as two blog posts. This is part two. Part one can be found here. Thank you so much for your continued prayers and support friends.

I am not one who has much affection for the King James Version of the Bible. It’s too hard to read and understand. But, on occasion, I go back to ole King James to see how a verse is translated. And I have been surprised quite a few times with my discoveries.

As a lover of Romans 8, I can almost tell you word for word what it says from memory. But there is some phrasing that most modern versions of the Bible surprisingly leave out, which I have recently uncovered in the King James Version. 

Verses 22-23 in the King James read like this, “For we know that the whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain together until now. And not only they, but ourselves also, which have the firstfruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, waiting for the adoption, to wit, the redemption of our body.”

And if you don’t immediately see the beauty here, let me paint the picture for you.

All of creation, all of God’s good creation, brought into being by the loving and creative hand of God, is groaning and travailing. 

All of God’s good creation is crying out. 

All of God’s good creation is laboring through this painful experience. 

And it is not just every delicate blade of grass, every towering tree, every mighty body of water, every magnificent celestial body, and every beautifully diverse animal that runs across the land and swims in the sea, it is we too, God’s image bearers, God’s partners and caretakers, who join this collective chorus of pain and suffering, together, even while we embody and manifest the Spirit of God, a life of shalom.

It is not just that the King James Version rightly included both words, groaneth and travaileth, while other versions include just one of the words, it is that the King James Version uniquely says that we groan and travail together. 

I can’t underscore just how important this point is- we groan and cry out in this painful life experience together.

And that is the real beauty and insight of the text. The passage not only assumes that each one of us will experience and live through pain and suffering, it assumes that we will do it together.

That is why we should never be afraid to talk about what we are going through with others. That is why we should never have to suffer quietly or alone. That is why we should never have to hide in embarrassment or believe that no one else will understand.

Because we all suffer through this, together. 

Each one of us should be able to share the pain we are experiencing without judgment, condemnation, or questions about our faith, or lack of faith, in God. 

Each one of us should be able to be real about the stress, anxiety, and depression we are experiencing without being told that we simply need to read the Bible more or pray more, as if those things alone are the simple fixes to make everything go away. 

And each one of us should be able to be honest about our mental illnesses without feeling like a “lesser Christian.” 

The goal is not to be healed with enough faith. The goal is the journey of who we are becoming, in light of what we are suffering, in light of the pain we are experiencing, in light of what we are going through. 

And that is why you should never apologize for singing the praises of God in one breath, and groaning in the next.     

Because there is shalom in this fractured place. And we hold both together within us in hope.

I just attended the funeral of my 87-year old uncle who died with Parkinson’s disease. He had been a preacher almost as long as he had been alive. And the church he started was the same church I grew up in for the first 20 years of my life.

I probably didn’t agree with every doctrine of that church. And I didn’t necessarily agree with every nuance of their theology. But man, my uncle loved people. The love of the Christ radiated outward in his words and in his actions. He loved and cared for all of the people he knew and even people he didn’t know. He was one of the most loving people I have ever met. 

The amazing truth is that love can cover a multitude of differing doctrines and theologies, because it is all ultimately about how much we love God, love others, and love ourselves.

That he did. 

And it was a beautiful thing to hear all of the stories of how he loved. 

Even when his health was deteriorating, even when he was in pain, even when his body continued to tremor from his disease, he loved God and everyone around him. He lived in the wholeness of the Christ, he resided in the completeness of the Christ. And in this harmonious relationship with the Christ was the deep well of God’s goodness. It was his fullness and satisfaction, even while his body deteriorated and failed, even while his body deteriorated and failed.

That is what I want in my life.

I want to experience and share a love that transcends my broken body, that reaches down deep into the well of God’s goodness despite my pain and suffering. 

For it is in that place where we discover beauty, despite the wreckage.

God, we praise you for your goodness, but we also groan longingly, and hopefully, looking toward a future in which every tear will be wiped away, every heartache will be healed, and every burdened body will be lifted.

But for today, we groan and travail together, seeking the shalom of the Christ.

Even while these bodies exist in dysfunction, disability, debilitation, and disorder, we pray for your deep well of goodness to be our satisfaction. 

For when we are prospering, let us be satisfied in your fullness. And when we are in need, let us be satisfied in your fullness. 

For when we have plenty, let us be satisfied in your fullness. And when we are in want, let us be satisfied in your fullness.

For when we are well-fed, let us be satisfied in your fullness. And when we are hungry, let us be satisfied in your fullness.

For when our bodies are healthy and functional, let us be satisfied in your fullness. And when our bodies are unhealthy and broken, let us be satisfied in your fullness.

For when our minds are clear and balanced and thinking rightly, let us be satisfied in your fullness. And when our minds are cloudy and imbalanced and confused, let us be satisfied in your fullness.

Father, let us be patient, content, and joyful examples of what it looks like to bear the tension of our bodily pain and suffering, while becoming the wholeness, completeness, and harmony of your shalom. 

Let us experience and share your love that transcends our broken bodies.

Work in and through our every weakness, our every physical, mental, and emotional dysfunction, our every pain and through our suffering to reveal that which is eternal and valuable.

Amen.

Beauty in the Wreckage: Finding Peace in the Age of Outrage is available everywhere online in digital, audiobook, and paper versions. It is also available as a signed paperback at Viewpoint Bookstore.

MANIFESTO for a Divided Country

Every time I go backpacking, I find myself in some of the most remote and isolated backcountry in the world.

On my most recent endeavor to Wrangell-St. Elias National Park and Preserve, from which I am now returning, I was more distant and separated from civilization than I have ever been in my entire life. The closest town, McCarthy, Alaska (population 45) was 50 miles from where we would be backpacking over the week and was only reachable by bush plane.

I don’t know if you have ever had a similar experience, of finding yourself literally cut of from the world- from communication, from news media, from the current geopolitical climate, from domestic unrest, from political upheaval, but it is one of the most liberating, yet terrifying experiences of my life.

In one sense, there is a sweet relief in finding solace in the stillness of the wilderness. Yet, in another sense, there is a profound unease upon reentering the “real world.”

Metaphorically, it is as if this retreat into the wild always provides a necessary cleansing or washing from the accumulated daily muck and mire and mudslinging of our culture, but then is unceremoniously followed by the ugly realization that the mudslinging continues all the while and there is a sad inevitability of having to walk back into it.

And I was told as much upon my first communication the other day when one of my friends said, “After the events of this past week, I suggest heading straight back into the wilderness.”

I seriously thought about it after taking a quick look at the news and social media.

There is a crushing agony to experiencing so much stillness and peace and serenity, but then walking back into so much antipathy, hatred, and division. 

These are certainly the times that try men’s and women’s souls, but retreat is for those who have lost hope that life can actually be better.

Retreat is for those who have lost the prophetic ability to help people imagine and begin working toward a different and better future.

Retreat is for those who have submitted to a defeated reality in which the healing, restorative, reconciling, and saving power of God through Christ has no victory.

And I want each of you to know that I will absolutely not retreat.

I have not lost hope that every single life can be better. I have not lost the prophetic ability to help others imagine and then begin working toward a different and better future. And I will never submit to a defeated reality, because I believe with every ounce of my soul, every ounce of my being, in the healing, restorative, reconciling, and saving power of God through Christ and the victory that is found there for every single individual, for every single relationship, and for every single community, across every culture, every ethnic group, every race, every orientation and lifestyle, and from every tongue, tribe, and nation.

Listen to me, our future can and will be better. 

But it seems, now more than ever, that there is a wide disparity amongst those who ought to be helping make this future better, a great divide between Christians and the Jesus we profess to follow. In fact, many who profess Jesus with their lips do not actively follow Jesus with their lives and this leaves many wondering who we are, where our allegiance lies, and for what purpose we exist.

While this should be obvious, it must be stated, that a follower of Jesus is one who has given their full allegiance and fidelity to Jesus and then one who strives moment by moment to follow the way of Jesus, in word, action, and deed.

As followers of Jesus Christ, we will love God and every single human being created in the image of God with our hearts, minds, and souls. And the way this love of God manifests in our lives is, not in guilting, shaming, wounding, hurting, devaluing, standing against, or damning another, but by a willingness to sacrifice one’s self in order to demonstrate this radical love of God to another.

As followers of Jesus Christ, we will affirm the God-given worth and value of every single person on the planet from the time of their conception to their final breath of life, no matter their gender, gender identity, orientation, race, ethnicity, nationality, affiliation, ideology, religion, socio-economic status, citizenship status, or the sin in their life.

As followers of Jesus Christ, we will stand for and will actively work as peacemakers, not just in our own lives, but on behalf of every single life, every single relationship, every single community, and every single situation in which we find ourselves.

As followers of Jesus Christ, we will unambiguously and self-sacrificially stand, in solidarity and love with, by, and for every individual or group who is being marginalized, victimized, oppressed, harassed, terrorized, or threatened, no matter who the aggressor may be, no matter if it is a person or a group with whom we may have previously aligned.

As followers of Jesus Christ, we will only respond to any verbal or physical antagonism, threat, or offense by another in love.  For each person, even the most violent offender has immeasurable worth and value. Even more, a life fully rooted in the radical love of God can only respond in love, therefore we will respond to every verbal and physical aggression only in love.

As followers of Jesus Christ, we will work actively toward forgiveness and reconciliation, not just in our own lives, but between individuals and God, between individuals, and between people-groups, even when this means that we will likely loose standing or position from people or groups with whom we may have previously aligned, for there is no other way forward in a hostile and divided world than in forgiveness and reconciliation.

As followers of Jesus Christ, we will strive for lives that emanate love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control regardless of the changing conditions around us, regardless of how people, social media, the government, politicians, or the media may try to turn us against others through propaganda and misinformation. We will choose to give others the benefit of a doubt and to love them despite what is said about them, even if it means standing against those with whom we previously aligned.

As followers of Jesus Christ, we will work tirelessly to invite every single person in the world out of systems, structures, organizations, and ideologies that work to divide and build antagonism between people through words and actions, whether it be political, governmental, religious, military, corporate, economic, or ideological, and into a new reality in which love is our absolute foundation, care and compassion is the means by which we relate to one another, grace and forgiveness and reconciliation is our modus operandi, peace is our undying disposition, and unity is the fabric of our relationships and communities.

As followers of Jesus Christ, we choose a different way in this hostile and divided world.

Because right now, there is so much on the line and the world needs the saving, healing, and restorative Body of Christ now more than ever.

Because right now, the world needs those who manifest God’s radiant, self-sacrificing, other-centered love.

Because right now, the world needs those who value all life and believe each person is made in God’s image with immeasurable worth.

Because right now, the world needs those who are actively working to be ambassadors of peace among all people in every situation.

Because right now, the world needs those who are willing to go to their death by standing in love with those are stigmatized as outcasts and pushed to the edges.

Because right now, the world needs those who have taken the path of non-retaliation against hateful litanies and insults, as well as physical aggressions.

Because right now, the world needs those who are working tirelessly to bring the broken pieces back together by working toward forgiveness and reconciliation in all things.

Because right now, the world needs those who are steadfast in moment-by-moment Christ-like character, and who are not easily swayed or manipulated into being anything less than Christ-like.

And because right now, the world needs an invitation into this new, beautiful, life-giving present reality of the Kingdom of God and a people who are willing to extend the invitation.

Brothers and sisters, now more than ever, this worldwide body of Christ must resurrect and come to life, we must unite and lock together arms behind the way of Jesus.

This fractured, broken, and beaten Body of Christ must rise to new life today.

Rise, Church, Rise!

Brandon

This excerpt is from my book Beauty in the Wreckage: Finding Peace in the Age of Outrage available everywhere online.

The Kindle Version is currently $0.99 and the paperback is $10.99 on Amazon!