Dr. Mark Eckel, Director, Mahseh Center

Androcles, a young Roman slave, sought escape in the wilderness from his unhappy life.  Finding respite in a cave, he found himself face to face with a lion.  The beast was anxious only for the removal of a thorn from his paw.  Upon its extraction by Androcles, the lion submitted to the man, caring for him.  After being captured as a runaway some time later, Androcles was sentenced to death-by-mauling within the coliseum.  However, the lion let loose upon Androcles was one and the same who had benefited from the slave’s earlier kindness.  Instead of attacking the defenseless man, the lion lay at his feet, whereupon both were released by an astounded Roman governor.[1]

Aesop’s “Androcles and the Lion” prompts reflection on Thanksgiving.  What should be our response to external grace?  To whom do we say “thank you”?  How does thankfulness change us?  John Wilson’s review of Alexander McCall Smith’s latest novel The Lost Art of Gratitude suggests

McCall Smith . . . has created a fictional microworld to highlight aspects of the ungraspable Real . . . of our common life . . . the reader-savors the pleasures of food and companionship, the wonder of a child, the haunting presence of Brother Fox . . . And all this moves [the heroine] to immense gratitude, which the book itself unashamedly urges on us as well.[2]

Scott Cairns’ “Thanksgiving Poem” sparks our collective awakening to thanks which produces “widespread and pervasive . . . giddy gratitude I recognize.”[3] Peggy Noonan, America’s essayist-laureate, recounts the gratitude of

A friend who emigrated from Nicaragua 21 years ago and lives now in New York knew right away what she was thankful for: her still-new country. “I’m mainly grateful that I could raise my son in freedom. I could vote for the first time in my life. I could express my opinions without being shot on the spot, jailed, or exiled like my grandfather. I could sleep through the night without fearing for my life. I could work and buy food without rationing.”[4]

Roger Scruton reminds us that Americans in 2006 were far and away the largest private contributors to charities worldwide.  He warns, however, that when government programs take over meeting the needs of people that “gifts are replaced by rights, so is gratitude replaced by claims. And claims breed resentment.”[5]

Not beholden to governments, we are beholden to each other.  Thankfulness is the recognition that our fullness comes from caring people outside ourselves.  W. H. Auden wrote a multi-section poem “A Thanksgiving for Habitat” which connected his physical home with personal friends.  Each room, each event, each remembrance is directly linked to anticipation of renewing human bonds.  My favorite, tear-stained stanzas include

Easy at first, the language of friendship

Is, as we soon discover,

Very difficult to speak well, a tongue

With no cognates, no resemblance

To the galimatias [gibberish] of nursery and bedroom,

Court rhyme or shepherd’s prose,

And, unless often spoken, soon goes rusty

Distance and duties divide us,

But absence will not seem an evil

If it make our re-meeting

A real occasion.  Come when you can:

Your room will be ready.[6]

“The lines have fallen for me in pleasant places; indeed I have a beautiful inheritance.”[7] God’s goodness to us is our ultimate change agent.  Ecclesiastes compares “life as a gift of God” with those who only see things “under the sun.”  The refrain which runs throughout the book[8] establishes the baseline barometer for human purpose.  Solomon calls to his readers for a shift of mindset.[9] For believers in The Personal Eternal Triune Creator, mindset shift is first upward, then inward, then outward.

To acknowledge life as a gift of God, one’s whole focus and concentration must be moved from ourselves to One outside ourselves.  Disciples of Jesus as Lord bow the knee to their Sovereign Savior both in response to Who He is as well as what He has done.  Appreciation is born out in worship.[10] Our love for God through others[11] brings joy in our God-given lives.  “Androcles and The Lion” teaches the lesson: Thanksgiving in this life begins by looking up, changing within,[12] and giving out.[13]

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[1] My retelling of the old tale is from James Baldwin’s retelling found in William Bennett’s The Book of Virtues (Simon and Schuster, 1993): 118-19.

[2] http://www.christianitytoday.com/bc/2009/novdec/gratitude.html?start=1

[3] Scott Cairns, “Thanksgiving Poem-for Franz Wright,” retrieved at http://www.christianitytoday.com/bc/2009/novdec/thanksgivingpoem.html

[4] Peggy Noonan, “Still Here After a Rough Year,” 20 November 09 Wall Street Journal Online. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704204304574546093616349588.html?mod=djemEditorialPage

[5] http://www.ttf.org/index/journal/detail/the-importance-of-gratitude/

[6] W.H. Auden. 1972, 2007. W. H. Auden: Selected Poems. “IX  For Friends Only (For John and Teckla Clark)” in Auden’s multi-part poem “Thanksgiving for a Habitat” (Reprint, Vintage, Random House): 280

[7] Psalm 16:6 (ESV).

[8] 2:24-26; 3:13-14; 5:18-20; 8:15; 9:9.

[9] “Mindset” is defined as a pattern of thinking established through habitual practice of a philosophy.

[10] “Worship” is the total response of the total person to our Lord Jesus.  “In all things He shall receive the preeminence” (Colossians 1:18) who has “reconciled all things to Himself” (1:20) that we should do “all things in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him” (3:17).

[11] Mark 12:30-31.

[12] I.e., 2 Kings 23:24-25.

[13] Gratitude signals acknowledgement that I am responsible to someone else.  Christians practice thanks through prayer (Psalm 75:1) in all things (Ephesians 5:20). Cf. Acts 2:42-47; 4:32-36; 2 Thessalonians 2:15-17.

Dr. Mark Eckel, Director, Mahseh Center

“Studying and Teaching the Bible” was one of my course titles as an education professor at Moody Bible Institute.  Instruction of a text began by committing one hour of time to show students 30 minutes of commercials.  In order to speak in our current culture, the point was to find clues about how others spoke to an audience.  Students watched for certain ideas: mottos, catch-phrases, key concepts.  But my interest always settled on what is called “the bridge.”  Each commercial uses something in culture to communicate their idea which sometimes has precious little to do with their product.

“The bridge” I most remember was from a Southwest Airlines commercial during football season; I fell off the couch, I laughed so hard.  There was a line outside a movie theatre for tickets.  A man dropped some money, stooping over to pick it up.  The woman just behind him sees his stance, instantly becoming a quarterback, hands ready to receive the snap.  In a very loud voice she begins to call out signals, “Two, Thirty-two!  Two, Thirty-two!  Hut! Hut!”  The scene ends with the woman’s contorted face mid-shout while the dumbfounded gentleman wonders what in the world is going on.  Abruptly the audience is now shown a simple picture of Southwest Airlines with the voiceover which says, “Want to get away?”  Southwest Airlines has some of the best commercials because they speak to their audience where they are, about their interests, at a certain time.

“Our word is our bond” is essential for commercial growth connecting interests to truth.  Firms must “deliver” on goods and services or they are out of business.  Companies that cater to deception do not last very long.  “The word” would spread quickly about poor service or inaccurate advertising.    Truth in business rests on verbal guarantees.

“Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!”  Germany celebrated the classic Ronald Reagan verbal broadside this month 20 years after the Berlin Wall fell.  President Reagan brought his common speaking approach that he learned through barnstorming for General Electric to The White House.  Confrontation with enemies was wrapped in absolute language.  As the architect of the infamous line, speech writer Anthony Dolan reminds us

Reagan spoke formally and repeatedly of deploying against criminal regimes the one weapon they fear more than military or economic sanction: the publicly-spoken truth about their moral absurdity, their ontological weakness. This was the sort of moral confrontation, as countless dissidents and resisters have noted, that makes these regimes conciliatory, precisely because it heartens those whom they fear most-their own oppressed people. Reagan’s understanding that rhetorical confrontation causes geopolitical conciliation led in no small part to the wall’s collapse 20 years ago today.[1]

“Trust but verify,” another Reagan phrase, turns on its head our contemporary love of sincerity.  Politicians who hope that dictators will change through conciliatory speech are laughed at behind dictatorial doors.  Unfortunately, commitment to a “religion” or life-view in western culture is premised upon sincerity.  Sincere people are anxious to believe in something.  But sincerity is not the basis for business or production, verification or accountability, truth or falsehood.  It makes no difference if I believe something or not.  What matters is if the something in which I believe is all together historically reliable, factually authentic, universally authoritative, and personally transforming.  Sincerity is nothing more than my opinion.

“And God said” is the plain spoken, repetitious phrase[2] in Genesis 1 which marks the inception of authoritative speech, true Truth, material origins, and the supremacy of The Word.  Genesis-unlike every other creation story-says the physical world is a result of God’s speech.  “It is a divine word of command that brings into existence what it expresses.”[3] Psalm 33:9 simply says, “He spoke and it was done.”  God’s will was a decision expressed creatively through His creation.  While The Creation Account begins by verifying what we see, what we see is based on what God says.

“Words matter.”[4] Words are first shaped by our thinking.[5] Words then shape the way we think.[6] Words are necessary to interpret what we see.[7] Words express our interpretation of the world.[8] Words counteract the drive toward the visual alone.  Words are pregnant with meaning.  Words trump image.  Word will always interpret our visual world.  “And God said” made “and there was.”

“An instrument of power”[9] is the word in the hands of an advertiser.  So I would end my lesson via commercials with my students.  The Church is susceptible to the abuse of language through “bumper sticker theology”: flotsam and jetsam awash on the shores of our Christian thinking from the wreckage of theological ships long ago lost at sea.  What we desperately need is a community within which to interpret words.[10] Further, we must recommit to the lost art of Scripture’s public reading.[11] We should, with Hebraic thinkers, “eat history”[12] so as to know God’s power through His words.  Apart from words, we are left outside the authority of “and God said” only able to say “in my opinion.”

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[1]http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704795604574522163362062796.html?mod=djemEditorialPage

[2] Genesis 1:3, 6, 9, 11, 14, 20, 24, 26, 28, 29.

[3] Gordon Wenham. 1987. Word Biblical Commentary: Genesis 1-15. (Nelson): 18.

[4] An internet search on the phrase suggests while our culture may abjure meaning, speech has power.

[5] What we believe drives our understanding.

[6] Benjamin Lee Whorf first made this hypothesis about language.

[7] Bruce K. Waltke. 2007. An Old Testament Theology. (Eerdmans): 63.

[8] Some would have us believe that Genesis is simply one nation’s construction of reality based on language.  “Signification” believes the sign bears relation to what it signifies.  “You can believe in God even if He doesn’t exist.”  Yet, the key to understanding Genesis is that the word emanates from the God who speaks.  We do not intuit interpretation.  God gives His interpretation by His authority.  God’s word is reliable whether we believe it or not.

[9] Josef Pieper. 1992. Abuse of Language-Abuse of Power. (Reprint, Ignatius): 23.  Pieper was concerned, “For the general public is being reduced to a state where people not only are unable to find out about the truth but also become unable even to search for the truth because they are satisfied with deception and trickery that have determined their convictions, satisfied with a fictitious reality created by design through the abuse of language” (34-35).

[10] Waltke, 13-14.  While I recoil at some of Kathleen Norris’ doctrinal definitions in Amazing Grace her explanation of monastic Scriptural interpretation is a lesson to all (Reprint, Riverhead, 1999): 253-56.

[11] http://www.challies.com/archives/sponsored/this-weeks-sponsor-unleashing-the-word

[12] Every Christian should read Marvin R. Wilson’s Our Father Abraham: Jewish Roots of the Christian Faith (Eerdmans, 1989) from whence comes this reminder of what Hebrews practice at seder, commemorating the Passover event of Exodus (chapter 12).

Dr. Mark Eckel, Director, Mahseh Center

Celtic Christianity teaches that there are “thin places”-locations where supernatural-natural worlds almost intersect spatially.[1] Sensitive folk have a sense of a sixth sense.  Perhaps Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s lines from “Aurora Leigh” capture the concept best with her line, “Earth’s crammed with heaven, and every common bush afire with God: but only he who sees, takes off his shoes-the rest sit around and pluck blackberries.”[2]

Church history is full of characters whose lives were intimately acquainted with supernatural sensitivities.  Aidan of Lindisfarne brought The Gospel to England after others declared the “Angles” to be uncivilized.[3] It is Aidan’s prayer that comes close to our Mahseh mission:

Leave me alone with God as much as may be.
As the tide draws the waters close in upon the shore,
Make me an island, set apart,
alone with you, God, holy to you.

Then with the turning of the tide
prepare me to carry your presence to the busy world beyond,
the world that rushes in on me
till the waters come again and fold me back to you.[4]

Brendan the Navigator established monasteries which functioned as places of contemplation as well as education.[5] St. Patrick prayed at day’s beginning for God’s “host to save me from snares of demons . . . I summon today all these powers between me and those evils, against . . . incantations . . . black laws . . . crafts of idolatry . . . spells of witches and smiths and wizards . . .every knowledge that corrupts man’s body and soul.”[6]

Historical, Scriptural events evidence the intersection of Heaven and earth.  Abraham entertains Heaven in human form outside his tent in Genesis 18.  Elisha asks Yahweh to open his servant’s eyes to see the angelic army surrounding the physical Syrian army in 2 Kings 6.  Supernatural battles keeping God’s messengers from delivering a message are recorded in Daniel 10.  Philip’s inexplicable transfer from one location to another for evangelism is found in Acts 8.  And Satan’s contention for Moses’ body with the archangel Michael is used as an example of worlds colliding in Jude 9.

A number of movies reflect a paranormal point of view.  In the Electric Mist Tommy Lee Jones’ character continues to meet a long-dead Civil War Confederate general who teaches him life-lessons.  First Snow presents a normal, everyday event transforming Guy Pearce whose life is changed because of a predictive utterance given by a sideshow card-reader.  Seraphim Falls starring Liam Neeson and Pierce Brosnan display the awful consequences of the Civil War which so haunt the two characters that their lives become interpretations of desert prophets.  The Exorcism of Emily Rose is an example of the horror genre which acknowledges another world.  Intersection of physic and mystic is a truer definition of reality.

The realism of Genesis 1:2, I believe, is the origin of “thin places.”  The phrase “without form and void” is not chaos but the pre-ordered world gently protected by The Spirit of God.  Before structures and systems are established within creation the raw materials are brought into being out of nothing.  Supernatural Spirit protection incubates the pre-formed created elements as a mother bird incubates her eggs.[7] Unlike non-historical myths of the day, Genesis’ primordial materials were not menacing, sinister, nor chaotic.[8] God’s personal presence in His world, the intersection of spirit and matter, is begun in Genesis 1:2.  “The account leaves mysterious what cannot help but be mysterious.”[9] As George MacDonald is heard to say over a century ago

Whenever you begin to speak of anything true, divine, heavenly, or supernatural, you cannot speak of it at all without speaking about it wrongly in some measure. We have no words, we have no phrases, we have no possible combination of sentences that do more than represent fragmentarily the greatness of the things that belong to the very vital being of our nature.[10]

People who arrive at Mahseh consistently say, “When I come on the property it is as if all my burdens have been lifted.”  A Celtic benediction entitled “The Hermit’s Song” is a possible explanation of the phenomenon called “thin places,” of which I believe Mahseh is one.

I wish, O Son of the living God, O ancient, eternal King,

For a hidden little hut in the wilderness, That it may be my dwelling . . . .

Quite near, a beautiful wood, Around it on every side,

To nurse many-voiced birds, Hiding it with its shelter. . . .

Raiment and food enough for me, From the King of fair fame,

And I to be sitting for a while, Praying God in every place.

In the infinity of night skies, in the free flashing of lightening, in whirling elemental winds, you are God.  In the impenetrable mists of dark clouds, in the wild gusts of lashing rain, in the ageless rocks of the sea, you are God and I bless you.  You are in all things and contained by no thing.  You are the Life of all life and beyond every name.  You are God and in the eternal mystery I praise you.

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[1] www.thinplaces.net

[2] Elizabeth Barrett Browning, “From Aurora Leigh.”  Reprinted in Poetry for The Spirit, ed. Alan Jacobs. (Watkins): 280-82.

[3] http://www.prayerfoundation.org/favoritemonks/favorite_monks_aidan_of_lindisfarne.htm

[4] http://www.prayerfoundation.org/aidans_prayer.htm

[5] http://www.prayerfoundation.org/favoritemonks/favorite_monks_brendan_the_navigator.htm

[6] http://www.prayerfoundation.org/st_patricks_breastplate_prayer.htm

[7] Deuteronomy 32:11.

[8] The explanation of Genesis 1:2 is best grasped by reading John H. Walton, The NIV Application Commentary: Genesis (Zondervan): 72-78.

[9] Leon R. Kass. 2003. The Beginning of Wisdom: Reading Genesis. (Free Press): 29.

[10] George MacDonald, from a sermon preached in June, 1882 entitled, ”Faith, the Proof of the Unseen.”

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