The Vietnam Way

If you have ever been to Vietnam you will know that crossing the road is an adventure and a confidence builder. Basically the rule is, step out and just keep walking, wave your hand a little, but don't stop... the cars, bikes, trucks, food vans and pedestrians work on the rule of “Yield and forgive.”

It means that if you walk out in front of someone, they will yield, forgive that you got in their way and simply go around you. There is something very invigorating stepping out in front of 3-4 cars coming directly towards you and as you keep walking and watch them all go around you in all different directions. If you stop or step back or hesitate, you mess up the flow and then you cause a crash...

Even if you do crash, they still work on the basis and Yield and forgive, and generally if there is not too much damage, just keep on going. I am sure that it doesn't always work, but it was fascinating to watch what would have meant a serious traffic jam with no one moving in Australia. In Vietnam it all just keeps moving. It is especially great when you are wanting to turn in from a side street and join the traffic. In Australia you would be waiting all day for a break in the traffic. In Vietnam you just drive on into the traffic and everyone drives around you. It is funny there are traffic lights that generally keep order on the roads, but often they are described as “a suggestion.”

I was only there for 10 days, but it was quite interesting how quickly you get used to it. The first day I got home to Australia, I drove to the shops, went around the roundabout, thinking I had plenty of time to cut in before the car coming around would reach me, but I was met with a horn blast and some very choice words...clearly I thought he would just slow down and let me in.

It works in Vietnam because everyone lives by the same rules...Yield and forgive...It doesn't work when everyone is not willing to “yield and forgive”...OOPS ... I quickly was reminded that I was back in Australia.  The rules are different here and it sometimes feels more like “get out of my way or I will let you know how I feel about it”...I mean, seriously, there was plenty of time for me to come into the roundabout before him!

Anyway, we had a family meeting not long after that and I was talking about how we would live together in one house as a family this year. It is a good thing to do each year as so much changes from year to year.  It made me think it was a great way to live...being other-centred that allowed for “Yielding and forgiving”, working around each other, forgiving quickly when we get in each others way, empowering each other to stay on track and encouraging each other, building confidence as each person steps out, knowing we will support that, not get in each others way. Knowing we don't have to stop all the time and command our own space and especially not “honking” at each other because things are not always going our own way.  Of course there needs to be rules and guidelines and maybe they need to be more than a “suggestion”, but even when rules are broken, living in such a way where we “yield and forgive”, like the grace that God gives us when His rules are broken. It is definitely a better way to live, is it not? 

Imagine what life would be like if we lived this way in everything.  I can’t explain it but in Vietnam, it was freeing, it built my confidence, I felt empowered and it was exciting. I know that under God’s grace and forgiveness I feel the same, and to live that out towards others is surely the way we are called to live.

Of course it only works when we all live the same way. As soon as someone breaks that rhythm ... crashes happen. And in families or households (close quarters) it happens all the time.

The question is how should we respond, “blame or punishment” or “yield and forgive.” It certainly started some good conversation in our family that day and although it sounded like a such a great idea, it has become very challenging to live it out in our family daily. How about yours?

We are called to LEAVE HOME

I believe a key requirement of the spiritual journey is to go out, to leave home, to “fall” or even “fail”. Yet, It seems to me as a parent I have done everything I can to keep my children at “home” or “safe”. I have looked at the Story of the Prodigal all wrong. For many years, the message always came from the perspective of the Eldest son, who did the “right thing” and stayed home. That has certainly been my own personal journey.  Yet, his loyalty in doing the “right” thing, his own entitlement, his quest to be obedient is what kept him from the very “celebration” that the father prepared, even begged him to come to. It seems that in Western society in particular, we do all we can as parents and even in the Church and/or Christian Schools to keep our children  IN the fold. We have created “eldest sons” and “Pharisees” with merit stickers, who can recite the books of the bible and can quickly judge those outside the church as “sinners” who need help. We forget that the "sinners" are the people Jesus spent most of his time with.  Jesus never seemed upset with “sinners”. He had more to say to those who did not think they were sinners.

For each of us and our children, the journey and challenges will be different. Whether it is issues of sexuality, career options, belief systems, self-perception, narcissism or something else, there will certainly be times in our lives when we move from “one passage to another” and if not done well, it can stunt our growth in one of these areas.

“Western people are ritually starved people, and in this are different than most of human history” (R. Rohr, pg 44)

As I ponder on my teenage years and moving into marriage and moving out to create my own home, I feel that there were “rites of passage” that I missed, that stunted my ability to move to the next season of my life. The conversations that “good” Christians DON’T have about sex and relationships, rules that must be honoured. I was so busy trying to keep the rules, that once it was time to move into the next “passage”, I didn’t know how to enter the next phase well.

Richard Rohr describes this necessary process as “discharging your loyal soldier”. 

“Paradoxically, your loyal soldier gives you so much security and validation that you may confuse his voice with the very voice of God. If this inner and critical voice has kept you safe for many years as your inner voice of authority, you may end up not being able to hear the real voice of God” (R. Rohr, pg 46)

 Nowadays we seemed to have thrown the “baby out with the bath water” and now there are no rules. The “rites of passage” become inconsequential because there is nothing sacred to move into, as it has already been experimented with at an early age. Nothing is sacred or special these days. This is just as sad and negative as living strictly by the rules.

So, am I saying that the rules are there to be broken, that the safe house/environment is to be created only to be left and abandoned?  In some ways I am...which is very hard for me to say for an “eldest son” who has stayed in God’s house all her life, although I would like to think that I have fought the system from within. It is hard for me to say as a parent with an 18 year old son who is about to leave all that we have tried to create for him for the past 18 years, to go into the world where he must journey to find who he is for himself. It is hard for me to say as a teacher/speaker who longs to see safe environments across the ages, growing and learning together and parents fully engaged with their kids on this journey.

The legalist in me honours the guidelines God sets, fully knowing that it is often when they are broken that we come to understand more fully His love and grace. I am thankful for that in my own personal faith walk. For me it means the intentional “rites of passage” and the “safe places” we create are even more important. They are important because when one “fails or falls” or doubts and questions or even walks away for whatever reason, there is always potential for growth, even total transformation, because there is a safe place to process. This is a better option than hiding, growing bitter, escaping, blaming or settling and living as a victim all your life. There is way too much of that happening in families, in the church and in the world today.

But there is a fine balance we walk, between teaching and living in a way that honours God and acknowledging that when we “fall” (and we all will) that He is a safe place to process this through. One of the “fallings” of the church /faith community I see is that we try to keep our “failings” secret. I have found as a Pastor that people don’t like me talking about my “fallings”... we must keep it all upbeat and positive.  Pastors are supposed to have it all together. When we keep our spiritual walk private, we don’t have accountably. Conflict resolution, painful relationships and differences of opinions have not been handled very well in many of the church communities I have been a part of throughout my life. It is sad that we are not able to be an example to the world in the way that we live and love each other. That is a direct command from God for the community of faith that He is very clear about. The journey is meant to be done together, in true community, which sometimes means seeing “the good, the bad and the ugly,” instead of simply aiming to show our “best face” on a Sunday morning.

Some of our “fallings” as parents come when we do the same; we feel we need to present as if we have it all together, to our children and to each other. Some of the most significant times as a parent with our kids are times when we have shown them that we have messed up, made a mistake, needed to say “sorry”.  I worry about parents who aren’t able to be vulnerable with their kids at times, homes that are always happy and where there are no arguments or tears. How can they ever live in a way that helps their children understand how to process difficult times?  As parents in community together, I have found the hardest people to walk with are protective parents; either protecting their own kids, or protecting their reputation. This makes change and growth very difficult. When we are spending all our energy “saving face” and not letting our kids “fall” or venture out for fear of falling, we can very rarely get to the actual issues. When we shut down, over-protect, emotionally react, close ranks, we stunt everyone’s growth. 

“Sin happens when we refuse to keep growing.” St Gregory of Nyssa

When it comes to “rites of passage”, how can this help the process?  I don’t know about your experience, but I am surprised by just how many opportunities and changes happen within a child’s life from the age of 0-18, let alone what happens in adulthood. There are so many opportunities we miss as we move from “passage to passage,” opportunities to put “words” and “anchor points” in massive changes and growth. Almost every year in a person’s life in the early years has potential to create moments. From learning to talk to God and others, to pre-school, to friends, to social interaction, learning responsibility, puberty, decisions for Christ, significant others who speak into their life, driving, intellectual achievements, spiritual disciplines, relating to the opposite sex at all different ages, independence, gift development, conflict resolution, playing a part in the family and then in society, becoming other centred.  There is something always changing.

 As a family we have found being strategic and intentional each year with key focuses have helped us navigate life together and as a result we have created our own little “rites of passages” along the way. I believe these have helped form our kids to where they are today.  And, in many ways it has been about putting up boundaries and them breaking them, resetting the boundaries and re-checking our own responses over and over again, while always applying grace, love and forgiveness.

I do believe a key requirement of the spiritual journey is to go out, to leave home, to “fall” or even “fail”.  The questions I must then ponder as a parent and a person who is a part of a faith community are;

Do I encourage our young ones to “go”, or am I pressuring them to “stay”?

When one “falls”, do they feel safe enough to share the load or do they feel they have to hide it?

Have the “passages” been celebrated and communicated well enough that our young people are prepared to move through them in a healthy way?

What can I do to be a part of creating a HOME and FAITH COMMUNITY which lives in such a way that the world will know we are His children living under grace and love and forgiveness?

We are called to leave home.....it's a "necessary" rite of passage.

I get knocked down, but I get up again

The song “I get knocked down but I get up again ...you’re never gonna keep me down” (Tubthumping by Chumbawamba) – as fun and catchy as it is – on the surface can feel like a vitriolic song that states that we are strong, because no matter how many knock backs we get, we will keep getting up. I do resonate with this, and yet often I feel like life has thrown curve balls at me, for which I would like to stay down and simply give up.  Still, I have certainly learned more from choosing to get back up. There’s an emptiness in lost dreams and disappointments that is hard to escape, but again I am learning that is is more about the way we view the things that happen to us and around us more that the actual events. For me a “statement” that can and has been a “limiting belief” in my life is … “I am a failure.” It is easy to start blaming circumstances, other people, the fact that “life sucks” or even God for where we find ourselves or what we don’t have, our lost dreams, our disappointments, our failed “salvation projects.” But instead I have chosen to sing, “you’re never gonna keep me down”... with an English accent, and try to continue on being brave, or maybe listening to wise people like Nelson Mandela when he says,

“Don’t judge me by my successes, judge me by how many times I fell down and got back up again.”

There are times when this is a great help.

But when we look deeply into the silly song I began with, we see that the song is loosely based around a short story about a boy who beat all the odds in life and never let things get him down. Yet, the approach to “keeping on” reads like it is one big night on the town, where the singer seems quite happy about the fact that he keeps getting knocked down, because he is so drunk on whiskey. I am not passing judgement here, I am simply reminded that a lot of the times when we get knocked down in life, we can’t blame anyone but ourselves, our own poor choices, our mess ups. This reminds me that I have probably deserved at times to get knocked down, that there are many times when the failure lies squarely on my shoulders.

I was encouraged as I sat with a dear friend a while ago as he shared… “I desperately wanted to be empty so Jesus could fill me, but I never expected He would really do it.”  We laughed together and I appreciated his honesty as we reflected on the past 30 years of ministry and where we are, where we thought we would have been by now, the “failed salvations projects” as we have sought to serve Him, but have found ourselves lacking and needing to come to His feet again, simply to surrender and acknowledge our emptiness.

Another colleague said to me recently, “There is no such thing as failure...only feedback” (Brett White, 2015)

Viewing failure as feedback is probably really important, but it is still really hard. The pragmatist in me says, “let’s be honest and call it what it is.” But Brett is also talking about a mindset here. Whether you want to use the word “failure” or “feedback,” the mindset is really important. The scary thing for me is whose “feedback” are we listening to?  Richard Rohr gives us another “f” word. He would call this “falling” and says that somewhere in our western mindset we have lost the spiritual value of “falling.” In fact, the “falling” is actually necessary for any sort of growth.

“We grow spiritually much more by doing it wrong than by doing it right. That might just be the central message of how spiritual growth happens: yet nothing in us wants to believe it” (R. Rohr, ‘Falling Upward”, pg XXII)

It is one thing to get back up again in your own strength and sing with gusto, because you are so strong and amazing or maybe just plain stubborn. It is quite another to see that when we are knocked down through life’s events, some beyond our control or some due to our own wrong choices,  it is there in the “falling” that we often find a new truth from God’s perspective. In fact it is only because of the “falling” that we can discover His truth.

It is a change in mindset, a God-set, if you will. This mindset change is so freeing. He changes our perspective and we are not the same again. The courage comes in getting back up again and choosing to view each life event that has or hasn’t happened in a way that we might have otherwise viewed as a “failure” as a chance for growth and transformation to be more like Him.

“The genius of the gospel is that it included the problem inside the solution. The falling became the standing. The stumbling became the finding. The dying became the rising. The raft became the shore.” (R Rohr, “Falling Upward. Pg 159)

2 Corinthians 12: 10 – “It is when I am weak, He is strong.” I get knocked down, and He helps me get back up and I am stronger for the experience. Thank you, God, for in my “falling” your feedback says ... I can be stronger for it because I surrender to who You are and what You have done.