“That word broadminded is spelled S-I-N
I read in my bible they shall not enter in
For Jesus shall answer, depart I never knew you
That word broadminded is spelled S-I-N”
Charlie and Ira Louvin – “Broadminded”
(from the album When I Stop Dreaming)

“There are two types of assholes, the unbelievers and the believers.”
Walker Percy. Conversations With Walker Percy. 234.

“One might even become a Christian if there were few if any Christians around.”
Walker Percy. The Second Coming. 188.

Challenged To Hear and Communicate the Word
I walked into this class frustrated with preaching. As a child, all I remember is praying to God that the sermon wouldn’t go long so that I might be able to get home in time for the noon pro-wrestling hour. As a teenager, I’d mastered the task of zoning out, hands over my face as if I was deeply in prayer, mind wandering to the pornography website I intended to visit once the service was over My parents always put the blame on me for failing to “get anything” out of the sermon. “If I only tried harder,” or “if I only trusted that God’s word would not return void…” But even as an adult believer, I can only recall a couple of sermons that have caught hold of my mind (let alone my soul). In this class, I encountered a Word of image, song, and story. This Word would not put me to sleep. This Word I can follow and live for. This Word might even be able to transform and save me.

Sensing and Sounding The Word
Whether it is in the iconography of a U2 concert, the etchings of an illuminated bible, the dislocated objects of the Saar family, or grace found in falling leaves and burning ice at Opawa Baptist Church, the Word has texture, sound, and bite. One would not be bored by this Word, one could spend a lifetime chasing after this Word. Respecting God as the Creative God who speaks this Word demands respecting God’s creativity. Embracing the Image of God within us, calls us to participate in joining God in that creative activity.

The skill of DJing existant images to bring them into the context of the Word can be a particularly useful in this media saturated culture. This skill is helpful, in that it allows us to see the light that the Word sheds on the images, sounds, and objects around us while also allowing those images to refocus our vision upon God’s Word. Learning to see the Word in this context allows us to take the world in which we live seriously, as a place where the Spirit moves and where God’s Word can be heard. In taking the world seriously, we take the Word seriously, as it is a Word that is living and active in our world. Taking both the Word and the world seriously requires the courage to hear both in their particularities, recognizing that they do not exist to be bent to serve our purposes.

As a legally blind student, the visual aspect of the Word has always been important, but somewhat alien, to me. In some ways, I am a visual person. A picture can still haunt me or challenge me. Light and darkness, in particular, take on a whole new depth of importance for me (I’m significantly more blind at night), and both in . I also have noticed that I engage more with someone I am listening to when that person is more visually animated.

Nonetheless, there is a foreigness about purely visual experiences that I can learn from. This past week, as I strained to read a museum placard or to see the detail on a picture, I was struck by how often I demand that those whose learning style is not aural strain to follow my ramblings when I preach. Learning to converse visually is important, and I’m grateful that I have enough vision to explore the possibilities of catching a glimpse of God in the light reflecting from a candle.

Through this course, I was also able to reflect on those moments when the Word becomes tangible to my other sense. Whether it was in the sounds of classmates struggling to turn colors into sound or in the description of falling leaves at Opawa, the sound and feel of God has always been important to me.

Community & Dialogue
Maybe this is why we need each other. People experience God and the world differently. People read texts differently. If I travel in my own circles, relying on people like me, I lose the value of God bursting forth through acts of racial reconciliation (my understanding of reconciliation will be eternally deeper thanks to the moment that Takeshi and Peter shared in our class). If I fail to listen to the artists in my midst, I will never recognize the way God’s beauty comes alive in bursts of color. As Diego Rodgriguez de Sila y Velazques taught us through his painting of The Moorish Kitchen Maid, if I don’t listen to the marginalized in my midst, how will I know what she has to offer to our conversation and how I am blocking her from entering that conversation?

The challenge for me, however, is how do I participate in a community around the Word when I am still unable to trust most Christians to not burn me at the stake in a burst of religious zeal? How am I to share in table fellowship, when so many of those whom I might dine would just assume keep me or my friends away from the table?

This class offered me at least a few possibilities. First, there are many “peg” events where people can safely share an experience without having to resort to dogma or arguments. Second, developing a community environment where dialogue, questions, and wonderment are valued above propositional truth also can provide safety (more on this in the next section). Third, individual conversations provide the flexibility to hear, and be heard by, people of remarkably different backgrounds – it seems like people on the level of individual relationships, are more capable of dealing with somebody as strange as me. Fourth, telling my story and recognizing my pain can allow community to form, as people can find commonality through their own difficulties.

At this point, all I think I can handle with most Christians are peg communities and individual conversations. Perhaps that will change, as different experiences like this past week allow my trust and expectations for Christian community to grow. At the very least, now I know what I’m looking for.

“We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.
Through the unknown, unremembered gate…
Not known, because not looked for.”
T.S. Eliot. "Four Quarters" (Complete Poems and Plays:1909-1950)

Weary

I'm not cynical just hopeless
I'm not tired just depressed
I'm not waiting here for answers
I don't have no questions left
Darren McDonald - I'm Not Cynical (Live)

There's a hole in the world. Feels like we should have known.
Spike (Joss Whedon - "A Hole In The World." Angel. Fox. 2/25/2004).

I wanted to get lost and love the questions there
Beauty and the truth, I could breathe like air
Then I finally found the signposts in a strange land
Sam Phillips - "Signposts" (Martinis & Bikinis)


I would not take away the very words by which you live
But I would show you things unseen and the silences instead
Just beneath the water, in the space between the ribs,
I don't want to talk, I just want to listen


Some kind of delicious music runs like light through the blood...
And anyway, I don't want to talk, I just want to listen
michelle [bloom] - "Listen [the Silences]" (Fever and Unremembered Wings)

"At home, I grew up to the sound of my mom vomiting from the pain of one physical ailment or another. At church, I grew up to the sound of "This is the Day the Lord Has Made." I've always felt a bit of a disconnect."
Darren McDonald. Emerging Church Blog Entry. 2/3/2006.

The church nearly killed me. God saved my life.

As a teenager, I was dangerously depressed and suicidal. In response, my youth group, feeling that I was too depressing for a Christian community, coined the phrase "pleasantly positive, Darren." So...Do I trust Christians to speak God's Word to me, let alone anyone else? Not exactly. I wish that relying on the community and the Spirit was enough to convince me that God's love can shine through our conversations...but too often I feel like God has to break through past the church to bring God's love.

But I've known that love. Growing up legally blind, I don't believe I would have survived the various traumas of my childhood apart from God. So, how does one share this story without pounding down those around him or her? How does a community allow God's Word to overcome, heal, and save us? Perhaps there is wisdom in the silence.