Fighting Fires

This past week a friend of mine posted a video on Facebook of a Samoan wildland firefighting crew singing together as they fought the wildfires blazing in California. (See: Samoan Firefighters) Their energy, their sound, their cohesion—even after ten hours of fighting fires in the rugged terrain of the mountains—was inspiring.

With closer inspection, I realized the video was originally posted in 2017—but that doesn’t take away from the beauty or the energy of those who were fighting these fires. And I’m sure similar sounds are arising from the mountains of California, Oregon, and Washington today.

Hearing these sounds, and seeing the firefighters’ characteristic yellow shirts and green pants, brought me back to my days as an AmeriCorps volunteer over twenty years ago. As part of our work, the team I was a part of was trained in wildland firefighting. We even received our redcards—the official document that gives you the clearance to go out and fight wildfires.

We took part in two prescribed burns—one in Shenandoah National Park and another in Prince William National Forest Park, just south of Washington, DC. Both of these kind of fizzled and neither amounted to as much excitement as they sound like they might be. And I left the team before they were called out to help with real wildfires in Florida that year—so my brief career as a wildland firefighter never really amounted to much.

Can you figure out which one is me?

But here’s the thing about wildland firefighting: it’s one of the best examples of teamwork you will find anywhere. Wildland firefighting is not about going out into the woods and directly battling the blaze—you’re rarely face to face with the flames, and you’re not doing it alone. Rather, wildland firefighting is about getting out ahead of the flames and hopefully creating a “deadzone” or barrier line that is completely devoid of any flammable material, so that when the fire reaches the line you’ve created, there’s nothing there for the fire to burn and the fire dies out. You just pray that when the fire gets there, it isn’t strong enough or hot enough to jump over the line you created and keep going. That’s why they talk about containment—firefighters are trying to create a barrier line that surrounds the fire that the fire cannot jump.

These barrier lines, however, are not created by individuals. They’re created by teams—teams of 12-20 individuals together. And once you’re on a team, you stick with that team. And each time your team goes out to “slam” line, you pick a tool. It might be a saw or an axe or a shovel or a rake—but each tool has a different purpose and a different role and a different place in the row of workers. And the row of workers doesn’t sit in one place, each person working on their little area until the group decides it’s good enough to move on, but rather the row of workers is constantly moving. The workers in front have the saws and the axes, maybe there’s a rake or two. Their job is to clear everything above ground. Then come the shovels and some more rakes to clear out the roots and anything just under the surface.

Each person takes one or two swipes with their tool and then takes a step forward and does it again. Nobody works one area more than those one or two swipes. Just as the workers ahead of you in the line are counting on you, you need to trust that the workers coming after you will do the job they’re assigned to do. It doesn’t look like you yourself accomplish that much, but by the time twenty people have passed through, each with a specialized tool doing something critical that contributes to the whole, suddenly you have a makeshift road through the forest—a barren path with absolutely no flammable material that is several feet wide. It’s both difficult and beautiful work at the same time.

Oddly, every time I think about both the beauty and difficulty of wildland firefighting, I think of the church. Each of us has different gifts, Paul tells us in 1 Corinthians 12, but together we make up one body. “The hand cannot say to the eye, ‘I don’t need you!’ and the head cannot say to the foot, ‘I don’t need you!’” That is, we need each other. And we need to work together.

In my own experience as a wildland firefighter, using an axe always seemed more glorious than using a shovel. And yet both were indispensable. If the whole team only used axes, the barrier line we were trying to create would end up a complete failure. Everybody had a role, and everybody was needed to do their part. It was difficult to need one another, difficult to trust one another, difficult to rely on one another—but in the end, it was beautiful. The same is true of the church.

How long?

As I was praying and wondering about what to write this week, a line from a song I’ve been listening to lately came to mind right away. The song is Daughters of Zion by The Porter’s Gate. And the line that came to mind is from the chorus: How long? How long? When will the daughters of Zion rejoice in the house of the Lord? It’s a song of lament and hope.

The readings in Teach Us to Pray have moved out of Exodus and into the book of Judges and earlier this week one of the passages was from Judges 4, part of the story of Deborah.

On our trip to Israel we visited Megiddo and looked over the battlefield where Barak fought Sisera and Jabin’s army. I asked Jay to take a picture of me so we could show the kids that here is where the story of Deborah happened. I wanted them to feel connected with her, one of the women God provided to lead the people through years of difficulty. To feel connected to her strength and wisdom. I wanted them to feel connected to Jael and her courage, too.

Elizabeth and the valley of Megiddo

I expected, when Bri announced that the reading was from Judges 4, that I would be drawn to something about Deborah, but instead it was the opening of the story that attracted my attention. The narrator begins the story by observing that the LORD handed the people over to the power of Jabin, who treated the Israelites very badly for 20 years. The twenty years part hit me. It seems like a long time.

I am mostly inconvenienced by the pandemic, though the losses are real, and six months feels like a very long time. The question, ‘How long?’ resonates in a different way than it did 6 months ago. How long will the pandemic last? How long will systemic racism go on? How long?

Another of the readings this week was from Judges 7, the beginning of the story of Gideon. Gideon, who is hiding, is greeted with the word, ‘Hail mighty warrior, the Lord is with you.’ And Gideon responds with, ‘Pardon me. You say the Lord is with us. Then why is all this happening to us?’

I’m reminded often these days that we’re part of a long line of people who have asked, ‘how long?’ Rebekah, Gideon, maybe Deborah under her oak tree, the Psalmists and prophets, Mary and Martha and Jesus. When God’s people are in trouble, they lament. They turn to God and ask, ‘How long?’ and ‘Why is this happening to me?’ and, ‘If only . . .’ We’re given their witness, their stories of crying out to God, of being honest with God, and of God responding with new life in the face of death.

When will the truth come out?
When will Your justice roll down?
When will Your kingdom come
And evil be undone?
When will the wicked kneel
And the abused be healed?
When will our sisters speak
With no more shame or fear?

How long? How long?
When will the daughters of Zion rejoice
In the house of the Lord?

Out of the miry clay
We will rise up someday
Sorrow won't always last
The dark will surely pass
Woe to the wicked ones
For what their hands have done
God is our righteous judge
And He will raise us up

So how long? How long?
When will the daughters of Zion rejoice
In the house of the Lord?

So let Your justice roll down
Let Your justice roll down
Let Your justice roll down (Let Your justice roll down)
Let Your justice roll down (Let Your justice roll down…)

 

-Daughters of Zion by The Porter’s Gate 2019

Starting with Why

This pandemic we’re in the midst of has caused an extraordinary amount of change in an incredibly short amount of time. And I think it’s fair to say we’re all a bit curious about which changes this pandemic has brought about in society are permanent and which are temporary.

What will things look like six months from now? A year? Two years? Twenty? Will we be back to hugging each other regularly? Shaking hands? Will the massive shift to working from home lead to long term effects in the way workplaces are structured and companies are run? Will air travel ever return to the levels it was at before COVID-19? Will movie theaters and live theater and concerts and sporting events ever be anything like what they were before?

Keith Doornbos, a Christian Reformed pastor with the Center for Church Renewal, recently wrote an article in which he notes that the pandemic hasn’t changed history so much as it has accelerated history. Many of the changes we’re experiencing were already in the works before—they’ve just jumped ahead at warp speed rather than taking years or decades to develop. And changes like this are happening in the church just as much as in society.

He lists seven changes in the church that have been accelerated by COVID-19—changes the church would have needed to face sooner or later. COVID-19 just made it sooner rather than later.

The first acceleration he lists is that “Mission clarity is essential to survival.” He argues that churches that have only a modest passion or a vague sense of “why” will have difficulty navigating the road ahead.

This has been true for a while already, but it’s ever more critical in navigating the pandemic. I’m reminded of a TED talk that Paul Rozeboom keeps recommending to me entitled How Great Leaders Inspire Action by Simon Sinek. The talk has now become a book entitled Start with Why. The basic concept is that with whatever you do, whatever decisions you make, start by asking why? Why is it that you’re doing this? What’s the purpose? What’s the point?

With a church, it might look like this: Why is it that we exist? Why do we worship? Why do we seek to make disciples of Jesus? Why do we tell others about Jesus? The answers to those questions then fundamentally shape how you go about doing each of those things. They clarify the purpose of all that we do and highlight why these things are important.

One of the benefits and challenges of the pandemic for the church has been that it has forced us to rethink what church is. Is it gathering on Sunday morning? Well—that’s important and I look forward to being able to do that again, but worship is still happening and ministry is still taking place. Our lives are still being shaped spiritually and we’re learning new ways to serve God with our time and energy. We’re learning to trust in ways we haven’t needed to before and God is placing different people into our lives and different routines and different connections than we ever expected before. We’re still a community together even as we are physically distant. We still care for one another and encourage and support each other. We are still the church even as we’re not gathering together in person in a building on Sunday morning.

The simple and most basic answer to the question of Why? for a church is Jesus, of course. We are a church because of Jesus. We gather to worship because of what God has done for us in Jesus. We shape our lives together in community because of Jesus. We go out into the world to serve God—individually and together—because of Jesus.

Beyond that, we have a mission statement at Boston Square. It’s no less true now in the midst of a pandemic than it was before. We are a passionate community, experiencing spiritual transformation, for building the Kingdom of God. We’re experiencing community together differently now than we did when gathering was easy and small groups could meet without distancing. We’re being transformed in new and different ways now than we were before—learning to trust and to live out our faith day to day. We’re still building the Kingdom of God now even as some of the ways we used to go about this are no longer possible at the moment.

The elders met together in our backyard a few weeks ago and talked through some of this—how are we doing in these areas, even as our usual way of going about them has changed? What are we doing well? What might we improve? We agreed that even as there’s plenty of room for improvement, these core values of who we are at Boston Square and why we exist are still strong, even in the midst of all the changes we’ve been experiencing.

I was encouraged by the sense that we had not lost sight of the why. Because my sense is—and maybe I’m wrong—but my sense is that there are plenty of people in the broader church that have lost sight of the why when it comes to their faith and to their engagement with church in particular. My prayer is that we at Boston Square might never lose sight of the why. But how about you? Have you lost sight of the why?

Delighting in Trees

We are learning about trees at our house these days. Brianna is working on a big leaf project for school, and we’ve been on several leaf collecting expeditions. We’re learning that identifying trees can take some time, more time than you might expect. (Some of us in this process have also learned that acorns float, and that you can balance small pebbles on lily pads, but not too many on a single lily pad). We’re beginning to notice the different kinds of trees in our neighborhood as we walk the dog and drive the kids to school.

One of Bri’s assignments was to find a poem about trees, and this got me thinking of various poems, including this one, by Mary Oliver:

Except for the body

of someone you love,

including all its expressions

in privacy and in public,

trees, I think,

are the most beautiful forms on earth.

 

Though admittedly,

if this were a contest,

the trees would come in

an extremely distant second.

 

We’ve been learning about trees these days, and I feel like we have also been learning about Moses. In addition to the lectionary preaching, the readings in Seeking God’s Face the last few weeks have all been from Exodus, and the readings in Teach Us to Pray have been too. And recently, both of them have included readings from Exodus 33. It’s after the Golden Calf, and Moses is talking with God, wondering how to go on, how to keep going, and God promises to go with Moses and says, ‘I know you by name and you have found favor with me’ and later ‘I am pleased with you and I know you by name.’

 

I’m trying to dwell with these words these days, to let them soak in deep and nourish my soul. “I know you by name.” God knows our names, our characters, the events and choices in life that have shaped us. God knit us together and knows us intimately, knows the private and public expressions of our bodies. God looks on us with a loving gaze.

 

“You have found favor with me” (echoes of Gabriel’s greeting to Mary: ‘you’re beautiful with God’s beauty, inside and out’) and “I am pleased with you.” God is smitten with us. And God’s pleasure in us, God’s delight in us, isn’t conditional. We don’t have to do everything right or make all the right decisions or even love everyone perfectly. God loves us because that’s what God does, who God is. God loves and delights in what God has made – trees, and us too.

Power Struggle (2 Bees or Not 2 Bees)

Our dog loves to be outside. Thankfully we have a fenced-in backyard, and she’ll spend pretty much all day back there if we let her. In fact, sometimes it can be downright challenging to get her to come back inside. Doesn’t matter if it’s hot or cold. In fact, I sometimes chuckle at the Facebook posts every winter that warn against leaving your dog outside in the cold with a meme of a forlorn-looking person sitting alone on their haunches in a snowstorm alongside a “How would you like it?” tagline. We have a hard time getting Luna to come inside during a blizzard—she (and her thick coat) would much rather be outside.

Last week was hot, however, and yet she still insisted on frolicking in the backyard. We made sure she had a water dish with plenty of water and shade that she could rest in when she wanted. I also made sure that I could see her from where I worked.

I went out to play with her every so often through the afternoon, and one time on my way back inside I was astounded at what I found in the water dish. Two large bumblebees had somehow both fallen into the water. I have no certainty about how they got there—it’s possible that they had started fighting among the blooms of the butterfly bush that arced over the water bowl, or perhaps they had both stopped for a drink and somehow fallen in. But the result was extraordinary. Because of the smooth edges of the water bowl, they were unable to pull themselves out of the water. That meant that the only way they could keep their mouths above water over time was to use the body of the other bumblebee as a float. And so they were locked in a furious embrace, each one trying to rise above the other to get some air while simultaneously pushing the other underwater.

I wish I could say I fished them out of the water bowl, and they both flew off, but right about that moment the phone rang and I went inside. And then I forgot about them. When I went back outside to check on the dog, there they were—locked in an embrace, floating in the water dish. At that point, I fished them out and they landed on the ground next to the water dish. After a moment, one of them flew off, and the other remained motionless. It was a battle only one of them could win, and it nearly cost them both their lives.

It strikes me that this is far too often how we view politics these days. It feels like it’s a life and death battle, each side often acting like their survival can only come through the destruction of the other side. We try to sink the other side so that our own viewpoint might rise to the top. Rarely are we working together to see how we might all survive. Rarely are we asking what’s in the best interest for all involved.

Now I’m not saying both sides are equally good or equally bad or that both sides would do an equally fine (or terrible) job running this county. Each of us has our own opinions on that and I hope each of us is making informed decisions not guided by destructive rhetoric but based on careful analysis and much prayer.

What I am saying, though, is that cutthroat politics is destructive. Politics based on fear of the other is destructive. Politics that implies only one side can survive or that we can’t exist peacefully together is destructive. And it’s not what we’re called to as Christians.

When we were in Mexico on sabbatical, Elizabeth participated in a community-building exercise led by an economics professor. In the middle of a circle of six participants was a bucket of corn kernels. Each participant had an empty water bottle they were told they needed to fill with corn. When the professor said go, they all raced to the bucket of corn and fought each other for the one scoop to put corn in their bottles. Even with the scoop, though, corn flew everywhere as it tried to get through the narrow openings of the bottles. Those who could not get the scoop tried to grab corn with their hands and fill their bottles that way—grabbing as much as possible as fast as possible. The end result was that no one ended up with a full bottle and there was corn spilled everywhere.

The professor reset the experiment. “This time,” he said, “take turns using the scoop.” And as he said go, no one raced to the bucket. When they got there, they took turns in an orderly way, helping each other get corn through the narrow openings in the bottles. It wasn’t long and everyone had a full bottle of corn and there was very little that had been spilled on the ground. In fact, there was plenty of corn left over in the bucket. The message was clear—when we look out for one another, when we look to the interests of others, we all benefit.

In our backyard water dish, two bumblebees fought until only the strongest of them survived. This is not the way of the cross.

“Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit. Rather, in humility value others above yourselves, not looking to your own interests but each of you to the interests of the others.” Philippians 2:3-4 (NIV)