Soul Graffiti

WHY A BOOK CALLED SOUL GRAFFITI?

What would you write on walls or sidewalks about your spiritual questions and longings if you could do so anonymously? In every literate society since ancient times people have acted on the impulse to scratch their names, their questions, their wisdom or their subversive messages upon walls and other public spaces. Graffiti, as a medium of deconstruction,  reveals a primitive hunger for renewal that makes space for what is emerging. This book is for people with honest discontent and heartfelt questions about what it means to be truly spiritual in the times and places where we live.

You and I are alive during a time that many believe to be one of the great turning points in history—a  time when previous constructions are breaking down and we search together for solutions in an increasingly complex, mobile, interconnected, and fragmented world. This is a time of great possibility– for healing, reconciliation and greater awareness about how we can live together in harmony with our Maker on the planet we call home. Yet these changing times have created fault lines, particularly within religious communities. As I write there is widespread intrigue and controversy about what some describe as “the emerging church.” I suggest that this phenomenon, rather than representing a particular group or movement, is the historic and pervasive process of our response to an ever evolving and emerging flow of human consciousness. In this sense, the church of Jesus has always been emerging—wrestling with what it means to follow his message and teachings in particular times and places. I believe we are invited to add to the many scribbles of soul graffiti on the walls of our religious landscape as an integral part of the messy process of becoming.

Graffiti, in its most provocative form, is a tool for revolution that sounds the alarm and calls us to action.  Among forward thinking people and younger generations there is tremendous dissatisfaction with religion as usual—a quest for perspectives and practices that integrate body, mind and spirit with moral, social and political conscienciousness to address tangible needs and opportunities in our world. This book is for people searching for an integrative spiritual path that is not merely a way to believe, but a way of life. I like to think of this book as a tool for the revolution—a collection of ideas, stories, and experiments that can awaken you to take new action to bring greater wholeness to our world.

We can’t forget that most often graffiti is a form of vandalism.  There is perhaps nothing more disruptive, scandalous, or criminal than the possibility that God might actually be speaking into our history and humanity, spraying a message of subversion onto the hard brick walls of our souls, disrupting our assumptions, guiding us toward a new way of being human and inviting us into the freedom we fear through the frailty of a messiah/prophet. This book is for people who recognized the enduring scandal of the life, message and sufferings of a 1st century rabbi called Yeshua.

Experts debate at what point graffiti crosses the line from art-crime to art work. Gradually the voice of dissent can become the voice of hope, generosity and beauty. It is my hope that we can move from being “haters” to creators—imagining and working towards a different and better future together. If we don’t like the way things are, we can collaborate with our Maker to seek the kingdom “on earth as it is in heaven.”  This book is for people who want to make beauty with their lives—expanding the boundaries of love in forgotten and unlikely places.

This is one of the chapters in SOUL GRAFFITI that has really captured reader’s interest, and a topic I’m often asked to speak about. I recently did a talk based on this chapter that is available for free here.

ENTER THE JESUS DOJO

We could smell the sawdust and see the power tools—but for the first six weeks of eighth grade woodshop class we were glued to our desks studying an instruction book and taking pop quizzes. My hands were itching to touch the pine boards and press the trigger on a power drill. By week six we were literally salivating for the chance to make something with our hands. At the end of the semester I was thoroughly disappointed that all I had to show for my work was a small wooden candy bowl that I reluctantly gave to my mother.
Two years later I transferred from the big city to a small rural high school in central Alabama, where the only elective class was Agricultural Science—or “Ag” for short. On the first day of Ag class, the teacher, Mr. Mac King, handed me an Oxy/Acetylene torch and taught me how to cut steel. The next week I learned how to arc weld when he slapped a welding mask on my head and sent me into the shed to draw a few beads with high-voltage current. Every week there was a new project—for instance, building kitchen cabinets. We replaced the playground equipment at the elementary school, installed new bleachers in the school gym, and fixed creaking floorboards and broken windows in classrooms. Mr. Mac King also got us involved in his own personal projects. We rotated the tires and changed the oil in his pickup truck, repaired the leaking bottom of his fishing boat, and manufactured new shutters and steel stairs for his home. I even crafted a beautiful cedar chest that he gave to his daughter as a graduation gift. His approach may have been unorthodox, and possibly illegal, but I learned more about the trades from him than I would have in twenty years worth of textbooks, lectures, and pop quizzes.
Sometimes our dignified and sophisticated approaches to education yield poorer results than more primitive and applied methods. When Jesus said, “Repent and believe the good news,” it was an invitation to become students of the master. And like being in Mr. Mac King’s Ag class, those who responded to his call were immediately swept up into his work and mission, inhabiting their belief by learning to do what he showed them. The way Jesus taught his disciples, as a first-century rabbi, was more like being in woodshop or a karate dojo than a lecture hall. Jesus taught his disciples on hillsides, along the road and in the market place, giving them assignments and sending them out as advocates to towns and villages—even before they understood what they were doing.
If we want to believe Jesus’ message and become the kind of followers his early disciples were, we may have to shift our expectations about what spiritual education looks like—leaving the metaphor of the lecture hall to enter the “Jesus dojo.A dojo is a Japanese word meaning “the place where you learn the way.” Jesus once declared, “I am the way and the truth and the life” (John 14:6), implying that he is both a savior and a teacher for life—he provided the way to God and he teaches us how to live in the Way of God.
Many of our structures and venues for religious education are set up to be passive and cognitive rather than active and participatory. Most people, for instance, think of a church as a place to sit and listen—not a context in which they will be coached and stretched to practice new skills. How do the schedule and programs of a church reveal what is thought to be most important? How is success measured? (Too frequently by attendance, buildings and budgets.) Even home groups are often just smaller venues for knowledge and study and knowledge. We might ask, Did Jesus give his life on the cross so that we could sit around reading and discussing books about him, or so we could join the revolution?
EAST MEETS WEST

While hiking together recently, I asked my friend Wolfgang about his spiritual journey. Raised in postwar Germany, Wolfgang had some painful experiences with the church that alienated him from Christian belief. His quest for integration prompted him to travel the globe in search of insights and techniques that would lead to greater wholeness. He studied with many gurus and teachers, eventually developing his own practice of inner simplicity, yoga, and daily meditation. At one point in our hike Wolfgang urged me to say something about my own pilgrimage. As I began he interrupted, saying, “Mark, my impression is that you are more Buddhist than Christian.”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“Well, your spirituality seems so much about awareness and practice—embracing all of life as sacred. Those aren’t things I associate with Christianity.”
We stopped to look at a waterfall, and after some contemplation I responded, “I see my beliefs as deeply rooted in the life and teachings of Jesus, the Judeo-Christian scriptures, and trustworthy streams of Christian tradition. Perhaps it doesn’t sound like the Christian belief you are familiar with because in Western society, experience and practice are so rarely emphasized.”
Nodding, Wolfgang added, “We seem so obsessed with the rational and theoretical, and maybe especially being German, I find myself wanting a path that helps me move from my mind into my body, to be aware of life in the here and now. I want to experience this waterfall, for instance, not just analyze and dissect it with thoughts and words.”
“I understand the desire for just being,” I said. “Yet, for me the epic narrative of creation and redemption is still significant.” I offered, “But I do find myself trying to strike a balance between the mind of reason and the richness of practice and experience. But we need not be opposed to rationality.”
“That reminds me of something an encounter I hadonce saw during one of my trips to India,” Wolfgang said. “Someone was hit by a car and everyone started screaming and crying. No one helped or called for an ambulance as the person lay dying. The people had a beautiful way of being present to their feelings and experiences, but were paralyzed by their lack of reasoning. It was there that I realized that the consciousness of the East needs the rational mind of the West.”
REASON AND EXPERIENCE

Our conversation illustrates the tension we often feel between reason and experience. The Western obsession with theory and rationality can be spiritually toxic. I believe this explains the a growing fascination with Eastern mysticism and more practice based spiritualities. Like so many people, I was taught that Christian belief is based on facts and, explicitly, not on experience. Instructions and warnings like “Don’t trust your feelings” and “Experiences and emotions can lead you astray” betray the Western quest for certainty and objectivity—a desire to make faith reasonable and appealing to the scientific mind. The difficulty with a purely rationalistic view is that life is full of many uncertainties, ambiguities, and subjective experiences. If the expression of orthodox faith can only be rational and verifiable, then belief must be relegated to an exercise of the mind and statements about words.
Paul of Tarsus noted that “the kingdom of God is not a matter of talk but of power” (I Corinthians 4:20). I think of how personally addicted I am to words and ideas that are often fragmented from my sensations, feelings, and relationships. We struggle to live in our bodies what we believe in our minds. How is it that so many of us have energy to debate about words but lack the passion to seek love and reconciliation? Or why do we tend to look for God in the pages of a book more than in the face of a friend? In the West we have more ideas about God than encounters with God, treating the message of the kingdom more as an elegant theory than a present reality. Is the name and power of Jesus something to be understood or a presence and power to encounter? From our fragmentation we struggle for a unity between thought and experience.
FAITH AND OBEDIENCE

How do people groomed in a Western mindset recover from the separation of body, mind, and spirit? Let me quickly suggest that the solution is not to swing the pendulum from West to East. We’ve already discussed how two things can be true simultaneously—in this case the rationality of a biblical narrative and our subjective experience of the present reality of the kingdom of God. Jesus suggested that his message is best understood through obedience. Once when he was asked to defend himself in rational terms, Jesus responded, “If anyone chooses to do God’s will, he will find out whether my teaching comes from God or whether I speak on my own”(John 7:17). We verify the truth claims of Jesus by learning to obey what he taught.
During my life I’ve watched many friends abandon faith, though most never took the risk of obedience. Their “belief” was more like an unconsummated intellectual game, and the stakes were low. “I’m done believing,” they would say—and I wanted to ask, “When did you ever start? When did you seek solidarity with the poor? How did you try to love your neighbor as yourself? When did you work to discipline your appetites? Have you struggled to exchange love of money for the pursuit of greater wholeness?” We think that our beliefs or unbelief flow from logical evidence, when it may be that our beliefs are more influenced by the choices we make in our moral and ethical lives. Perhaps we can only believe to the extent that we are willing to obey.
Although many would say that San Franciscans are irreligious, you can see thousands of people huddled outside of synagogues and churches sipping coffee and smoking cigarettes after early morning Alcoholics Anonymous meetings. In those meetings people are learning to trust a God whose name they might not even know, accessing power to make changes—and seeking reconciliation, healing, and restoration. My friend Elizabeth, who just celebrated her two-year sobriety birthday, explains that she has learned to have what she calls “functional faith.” Like a simple pair of walking shoes, functional faith, rather than being elegant or fancy, is utilitarian and basic—but it can help you get around in the real world. The Jesus dojo is about learning to connect faith with the messy details of everyday life.
LIFE IN THE JESUS DOJO

You enter the Jesus Dojo through new experiences. Perhaps you have been in a setting where in which someone spoke or a group discussed the theme of compassion and justice and in the teachings of Jesus. Several years ago I realized that merely talking about it wasn’t helping me live any betterdifferently. I heard the rattle of grocery carts outside our door every morning as homeless people dug through our trash to collect recycling. Sometimes we saw these same people holding signs out by the freeway. With a group of friends, our family decided to become friends with our homeless neighbors. Instead of having our normal church meeting we went underneath the freeway overpass where nearly a hundred people, many struggling with addictions or mental illness, were living in tents. We cooked together, told stories, and played games. Eventually these neighborhood parties became a regular occurrence. Having this new experience helped us reflect on and internalize what Jesus taught in more profound ways.
I often hear people comment about the life-changing experiences they have had while on a mission’s trip or disaster relief project. “We worked hard together all day, slept on concrete floors, and ate rice and beans all week,” they say, “and it was really great.” !” If these experiences are so helpful to formation, we may want to consider how to make them more a part of our normal patterns of life and community. Most of us live within a short distance of places where there are similar needs and opportunities.
You enter the Jesus Dojo by moving from ideas to action. It is pretty clear that Jesus had some strong things to say about money, wealth, and empire. Reading or discussing a teaching like “Sell your possessions and give to the poor,” we are often quick to suggest that Jesus could not have meant for us to take him seriously. “Of course,” we reason, “he only said this to remind us not to become overly attached to our possessions.” But what if he intended these statements to provoke transformation? The early church certainly took his words literally: “Selling their possessions and goods they gave to anyone as [they] had need” (Acts 2:45). The soles of our walking shoes connect with the grit of asphalt as we struggle together to apply the hard sayings of Jesus.
Last year I worked with a group of friends to develop a two-month project to explore the radical teachings of Jesus on money and stuff. We called the project HAVE2GIVE1, inspired by the statement, “The person who has two [coats] should share with him who has none” (Luke 3:11). We publicly invited people to join us in a campaign to divest of half of what we owned, giving the proceeds to the poorest people in the world through disaster relief. Our groups met once a week to work through the details about how to sell our clothes, music, bicycles, and automobiles. We collected others items for garage sales and recycling. We also took a systematic look at everything Jesus taught about generosity, trust, contentment, and simplicity. One evening we brought our personal budgets and told each other how much we earn and spend. The things we learned together during that time spurred us on to create some group resolutions about how we wanted to change our habits in regard to money and possessions. I was surprised by the number of people who were ready to sign up for such an audacious project—which made me suspect that many people would take bolder steps to pursue genesis-vision if they were merely invited to do so.
You enter the Jesus dojo by creating a social culture where formation is expected. Through social conditioning many of us have learned to approach church or group life as consumers or spectators. It may take a lot of work, but we should try to change our contracts with one another so that action and obedience are anticipated group norms. In our faith community we are learning to gently explain that it is our regular practice to discern an action we will take together. The projects or assignments we give to each othercommit to create momentum for the next time we are gathered. Some examples: This week, write a letter or have lunch with someone you need to reconcile with; Before our next meeting, take one tangible step to love someone you perceive as your enemy; During the next week, do one thing each day to secretly honor a person you live or work with.
You enter the Jesus Dojo through greater intentionality. Many people will tell you they aspire to follow the ways of Jesus. A hip-hop diva may declare her allegiance to Jesus while receiving an award—just as a president might amid the crucible of an impending war. What separates mere sentiment from true substance is intentionality?
Near my thirtieth birthday I came to the painful realization that I was not becoming the person I hoped to be. Part of my dilemma came from the realization that, if the gospel of Jesus is holistic and integrative, then everything matters. Where do I start? How do I begin to live by the example of Jesus? I invited a trusted mentor to speak into my life. He gave me gentle but firm advice: “Mark,” he told me, “the abilities that got you to thirty aren’t going to get you to forty. If you are serious about seeking the ways of the kingdom, then you need to be deliberate, specific, and systematic in your approach—and you are going to have to work at developing your character, skills, and capacities.”
I began reading the Gospels in search of images that I could use to summarize how Jesus lived. My first list included four images: companion, artist, healer, and mystic. Using these images as guides I began to ask, “How can I be a companion, artist, healer, and mystic?” For several years these categories have shaped my planning and experiments (and they are reflected in the four themes of this book). I try to have two or three tangible goals or activities attached to each image that are also reflected in my schedule. As you read the Gospels, I encourage you to come up with your own short list of descriptors to guide your experiments.
Our family is part of a community of faith in San Francisco called SEVEN—because we want to live into the Way of Jesus seven days a week. As a group we are committed to a deliberate approach to making a life together in the Way of Jesus. We reviewed the Gospels and identified seven themes based on how Jesus lived and what he taught: service, simplicity, creativity, obedience, prayer, community, and love. We spend seven weeks every year focusing on each theme and have designed a one-year, project-based, group formation process we call “the Jesus Dojo” that meets weekly. We have also developed common rhythms and vows based on these seven themes that we invite one another to take each year. Our specific practices and rhythms are continually evolving because we see each year as a new phase of our experiment. A summary of our vows (omitting specific rhythms and practices), is included next, but I encourage you to review the Gospels yourself and make a list of themes that fit the language and sensibilities of your community and context.
1. Service. We are made to collaborate with our maker in caring for all of creation. We recognize the sacredness of work and use the capacities of our minds and bodies to serve others with our talents and skills according to the needs of the place where we find ourselves.
2. Simplicity. We acknowledge the abundant provision of our Maker and seek to live in trust, radical contentment, and generosity within an empire of scarcity and greed.
3. Creativity. We seek to be awakened in our imaginations and actions, inspired by the epic story of God’s kingdom and creation, and connected to our cultural context. We want to live artfully, taking risks, experimenting, and using the language and mediums of our culture to explore the story of God’s kingdom together.
4. Obedience. We recognize Jesus as our teacher and authority, and wrestle with how to surrender to the way of love in every detail of our lives. We submit ourselves to one another in love and strive to keep our vows to God and our commitments to one another.
5. Prayer. We seek the fruitfulness and guidance of the Spirit that comes from being centered and surrendered to the will and presence of our Creator. We practice rhythms of prayer, study, silence, and solitude that help us remain open to the voice and power of the Spirit.
6. Community. We seek to practice forgiveness and reconciliation, honor, encouragement, humility, and hospitality in all of our relationships. We are committed to taking the journey of faith in solidarity with our sisters and brothers around the world.
7. Love. We acknowledge that love is the greatest force in the universe, and in every dimension of our lives we seek to cooperate with the reign of God’s love.
You enter the Jesus Dojo by making promises. If the invitation into the kingdom dance leads us toward repentance and transformation, how exactly do we change? In short, by whatever means are necessary. We have the intelligence, resources and capacity to learn to live in new ways, if choose to do so. Change happens by turning desire into concrete resolutions. If you want to see change, you will have to do something different. Jesus suggested an initial step in this process is announcing your intentions. He said, “Simply let your ‘Yes’ be ‘Yes,’ and your ‘No,’ ‘No’” (Matthew 5: 37). An ancient secret for change is found through making and keeping vows. King David of Israel once declared,
For you have heard my vows, O God;
you have given me the heritage of those who fear your name. . . .
Then will I ever sing praise to your name
and fulfill my vows day after day. (Psalm 61:5,8)
A vow is a solemn promise made before God and people, to take or refrain from a specific action. Some would relate this to the concept of spiritual disciplines. A vow translates sentiment into tangible action. Paul of Tarsus, for example, once made a vow and did not cut his hair until his short-term promise was completed. I like to think of vows as experiments in truth, opportunities to see if making a specific change over a certain period of time will produce desired results.
Recently a group of friends and I decided that we wanted to become more centered and better at listening to God’s voice. We promised each other that for thirty days we would sit still for fifteen minutes in the morning and evening each day. We all noticed the effects this change had on our sense of focus and peace.
Most of us know that it is difficult to keep resolutions or change on our own. That’s why so many of us join gyms or weight loss clubs or attend Alcoholics Anonymousrecovery meetings. When a group of people make promises together they can support and encourage one another through the process of transformation. Common vows can be seen as improvisational experiments in obedience. By making temporary vows with one another, we can learn which practices are the most helpful to making a life in the Way of Jesus.
You enter the Jesus dojo by taking an experimental approach to life. Tired of sitting and writing all day, I close the computer and walk out the door in search of the a presence that is more real than words. The Israelites tasted manna in the desert and roasted quail by their campfires. John the Baptist ate grasshoppers and wild honey. And tonight I am a middle-class homeowner with a wallet full of cash and credit cards, scavenging the streets for my dinner. I want to remember what it is like to wander with primitive trust in the great mystery. And the streets yield what I need for my journey—along with ample food to take home to my family: hot caffeine-free herbal tea when I’m cold; a cup of water when I am thirsty; a piece of banana bread and two French pastries when I am hungry; pasta with meat sauce, still warm atop the garbage can, along with organic salad and two dozen chocolate chip cookies wrapped in tin; and, in a bag by the bus stop, five loaves of hearty European artisan bread and two dozen exquisite ginger cookies.
I recall Jesus and his disciples walking through the grain fields on the Sabbath, picking the heads of wheat while earning the scorn of more dignified religious leaders who would not stoop to scavenge for their food or break their own rules. No, tonight I will be free—I will walk fifteen miles and roam city streets in the silence of prayer, looking up at the stars under a bridge in darkness, feeling the wind on my face and tasting the salty air. I will remember that the Earth was made to provide for our needs through the Creator’s abundance—not the work of our hands or the cash in our pockets. I want to experience the goodness that money cannot buy, resisting internal and external forces that pressure me toward greater security, control, and conformity. I will remember that life is ultimately about risk and adventure and that we die a certain death when we resign ourselves to propriety and convention. I will affirm, perhaps only in symbolic gesture, the spirit of the wandering Messiah-prophet, spreading the propaganda of hope, like soul graffiti, on the canvas of Earth and eternity.
“As for you, the anointing you received from him remains in you, and you do not need anyone to teach you. But as his anointing teaches you about all things and as that anointing is real, not counterfeit—just as it has taught you, remain in him” (I John 2:27).
CONVERSATION
Reason and faith and experience. Do you agree that our tendency as a society is to focus on knowledge over action and obedience? Why or why not? Does your faith tend to be more functional or theoretical? How does a person who has mostly a theoretical knowledge of God learn to integrate faith into all aspects of their life experience?
The risk of obedience. How would life be different for you if you took Jesus more seriously as a literal teacher for life? What seem to be the most challenging or counter intuitive things that Jesus said or did?
Vows and promises. Making vows and taking common action is a foreign concept to many of us, and to some ears it may sound exclusive or suspicious. The fact that making a commitment is so unfamiliar to our culture doesn’t imply that doing so is either exclusivist or cult-like. What makes us so cautious about making verbal commitments to God or to one another? What does this say about the norms and values of the culture we live in?
Experiments
An intentional and systematic approach. Reread the gospel texts, noticing the instructions Jesus gave. Put these teachings into 5-7 categories and develop a plan for how you will attempt to integrate them into your life over the next year.
Live with greater intentionality. Live by a budget. Manage your calendar. Examine how you are spending your time and your money and journal about what it would mean for you to become more centered and focused in how you are using your life energy.
Experiment by taking a small vows. We only find out what is transformational through practice and experimentation. With a friend or in a small group, invite one another to commit to a certain practice or activity as an experiment in applied obedience. Your experiment can be as short as a day or as long as a year. If you don’t “cheat” on your commitment you will be better able to determine if the practice was beneficial.
Finding people to share your journey with. If your community is not quite ready for the level of intentionality you seek, consider initiating an experimental group. Some people have found people locally who resonate with their longings by postings on websites or attending conferences or events. If you start moving towards what you have imagined, you will find people in your path to journey with. (It might be just 5 people in a living room.) You may also want to consider visiting or connecting with groups that embody many of the themes in this book. They may be able to encourage you and put you in contact with people closer to where you live. Here is a short list of places to start:
SEVEN is a missional community in San Francisco (www.Sevensf.org)
ReIMAGINE is a Center for Life Integration in San Francisco that hosts workshops, projects and internships. (www.Reimagine.org)
Emergent Village is a web-based network of faith seekers committed to the Way of Jesus and generative friendship (www.emergentvillage.com)
Relational tithe is an online community that encourages the global redistribution of wealth (www.relationaltithe.com)
Innerchange is a global order among the poor. (www.innerchange.org)
The Church of the Sojourners is a residential “church family of disciples” (www.churchofthesojourners.org)
The Simple Way is an activist residential community of faith (www.thesimpleway.org)
Mustard Seed Associates (MSA) provide resources and a network for people committed to seeking the kingdom of God and making a difference (www.msainfo.org)
Solomon’s Porch is an example of a larger faith community seeking to follow God in the way of Jesus through intentional formation (www.solomonsporch.com).
Rutba House is a new monastic community helping to network people exploring radical Christian community (www.newmonasticism.org)
Allelon Foundation sponsors initiatives to help churches and organizations develop missional leadership (www.allelon.org)

A fine French champagne is uncorked and poured as more guests arrive, shedding umbrellas and raincoats on a cold and rainy winter night. Some are beckoned to help with preparations for potato latkes while others mingle and nibble on crackers, salad, and noodle kugel. We are clustered in the kitchen between the counter where the bottles of wine are set to breathe and the stove where soups simmer and latkes sizzle in the pan. Excited children run in and out of the room with handfuls of golden plastic dreidel coins. Our host, Michael, collects fascinating friends, and at this party we are all on display: artists, photographers, horticulturists, writers, an attorney, an expert in the classics, a screenwriter and opera singer, an offshore accounts portfolio manager, and the production designer from a major film studio. As I scan the familiar faces in the room I notice: this is a Hanukkah party mostly for and by Jewish atheists who married gentile and relocated from New York to California.
Conversations at Michael’s parties are always interesting, smart, and spirited. It is not long before someone brings up religion, a sore point with many because of the current political administration’s aggressive foreign policies and alliances with religious conservatives The expert in the classics, raised in the Dutch Reformed tradition in Grand Rapids, Michigan, opens the discussion with a merry declaration, “The only religion I’m against is Christianity!” He holds up a tumbler of whiskey and provides a detailed and mocking elucidation of the five points of Calvinism. One woman warns the group to be nice because she is a devout Catholic. With panache the opera singer exclaims, “Just don’t talk to me about intelligent design. I can’t stand to hear that crap,” he says with a teasing smile. “Evolution is a scientific fact.”
Perhaps taking our conversation a little more seriously, I suggest that evolutionary process doesn’t negate the possibility of divine origins. “The greater question,” I add, “is whether life comes from chaos or some benevolent force.”
“Well, the only thing I hate more than Christians is agnostics,” the opera singer retorts with a sly laugh. “I mean, get off the fence. Make a decision. Either God exists or doesn’t.”
I quietly interject, “Some would say that atheists have the most courage—because of the terrorizing implication that life is without meaning or purpose.”
“Well, if there is anything I hate more than Christians or agnostics, it’s nihilists. I can’t stand nihilism and drab talk about how everything is meaningless,” the opera singer says, feigning melancholy. Someone else proposes that it may actually take more courage to believe that God does exist—because of the haunting possibility that how we choose to live really matters. “Even if we try to avoid the tensions and debate about the existence of God, we are still faced with the persistent question: Is there a meaning and purpose to our existence? And if so, what is it?” I add. There is an awkward pause.
“More latkes anyone?” Michael asks.
We drift off to refill soup bowls and wine glasses, mixing into more intimate side conversations. The classics professor continues to monologue about total depravity, unconditional election, and limited atonement, but by now no one is listening.
When I get involved in the same conversation over and over, I start to wonder whether we are having an honest exchange or simply talking past one another to affirm what we already believe or doubt. Early impressions of spiritual beliefs can be enduring, even while they may be simplistic or misinformed, and can serve to vaccinate us from further spiritual curiosity. The limits of childhood understanding often continue to inhibit our adult imaginations—and we frequently resist information that would challenge our embryonic assumptions. Real spiritual investigation sometimes requires overcoming or undoing our earlier impressions, including notions about the message of Jesus.

SCARY JESUS

I can still see my daughter Hailey’s big blue eyes welling up with tears, her soft face grimacing with pain as she began to cry. I was telling her about Jesus and showing her a book of pictures. They were the usual images: Jesus as a baby nestled in a feed trough; Jesus bleeding and hanging on a cross; Jesus lying dead in a tomb; and Jesus sitting on a golden throne. Generally I don’t show pictures of bloody dead people to children—but this was an exception, it was Jesus. The morbidity of these brightly colored pictures did not occur to me—since I had seen them all of my life. As I turned the pages I told her an abbreviated version of the story, finishing with the phrase, “Jesus died on the cross so that someday we can go to a wonderful placed called heaven.” That was when Hailey burst into tears. Sobbing, she murmured, “Daddy, I don’t want to go to heaven! I want to stay here with you and Mommy.” I took her in my arms, attempting to comfort and explain, but my words were no help. For the next few weeks Hailey cried every time she saw the book cover. We hid the book, promising we would not show her any more scary pictures of that man Jesus.

JESUS THE SADOMASOCHIST

My ill-fated telling of the story to Hailey reminded me of my earliest impressions of Jesus and his message. These recollections play in my mind like film noir, with heightened contrasts between shadows and light—juxtapositions between the warmth I felt when my family held hands and prayed to Jesus at meals and bedtime and the cold mildew of the church basement where we sat in rusty folding chairs listening to old ladies teach us songs and use paper cutouts stuck to flannel boards to tell us stories about Jesus. In the pictures and porcelain figurines, Jesus was a white man with soft brown hair sitting with children like me on his lap, or carrying a lamb on his shoulders, or bleeding on a cross, or knocking on a metaphorical door—the “door” to my heart.
When I was three I heard a man on the radio describe the fiery flames and torment of eternal damnation as we bumped along in the old green Pontiac one summer afternoon. The backs of my preschool legs were sweating against the hot vinyl seats as I heard the preacher say, “Believe or burn! Believe that you have sinned and that Jesus died in your place.” “If this is true,” I thought, “then I would be a fool not to pray ‘the sinner’s prayer.’” And I prayed it: “Jesus, forgive my sins and come into my heart.” And in some soothing strange haunting and intangible way Jesus became my savior and I was going to heaven someday when I died.

In my child-mind the story, as I heard it, had sadomasochistic qualities. The world I enjoyed (ice cream, toys, zoos, and movies) was, unbeknownst to me, a dark wasteland that would ultimately be destroyed. God had me tied down and dangling over the flames of hell, demonstrating his love by offering to release me, but only if I would beg for mercy. Love, pain, and intimacy commingled. God was obviously powerful, but was God truly good? And could this God be trusted? I would have to move from fear to trust and unlearn what I knew in order to embrace a life with God more fully.
I later realized that the story was told to me in such a dire manner and with cataclysmic effect in order to bring me to a point of singular decision. Who wouldn’t want to believe when the stakes were so high? My decision was a matter of life or death, heaven or hell. I had to choose now. Telling the story in terms of eternal destiny might have expedited my decision, but it offered little incentive for me to keep seeking or believing.

High-pressure sales tactics had forced the deal but did not produce a satisfied repeat customer. I had done my business with God and was now glad to have God off my back.
If my early impression of the gospel of Jesus seems distorted or peculiar, you don’t have to look far to hear the same story being told today. It is probably the version of the message familiar to the most people. At home I have a growing collection of gospel tracts that are handed to me by well-meaning Evangelistas when I walk down Mission Street. They all contain a message similar to the one I heard and told Hailey—that the message about Jesus should drive you toward one decision, motivated by fear of punishment that will determine your eternal destiny.
As I grew older it didn’t take me long to begin wondering about whether what I was told was really the whole story. Does someone have to become fixated on death and damnation before the life of Jesus makes any sense? Is the message of Jesus only about a distant God and the future in another world? Is fear of eternal punishment the healthiest or most enduring reason to seek your Maker? And, is choosing the path of life really as simple as saying “the sinner’s prayer”?

OBSESSED WITH ETERNITY

On my third helping of latkes Kendal sits down next to me. We chat about our kids (my son Isaiah and her son are best buddies) and then about our families and work responsibilities. She is a production designer at a major film studio. I was fascinated to learn more about the intricacies involved in creating big-budget animated movies. When she eventually asked about my work, I found myself hesitating. People have so many preconceived ideas about ministers, churches, and religious organizations. If I sound too excited about what I do will she think I’m proselytizing?
Once I searched for the word pastor in an online thesaurus and found the following synonyms suggested: “Holy Joe, Glory roader, Sin Hound, Harp Polisher, and Sky Pilot.” The definitions assumed that someone with my vocation is singularly interested, even obsessed, with preparing people to die and meet their Maker. God and eternity are often conceived as being far away and disconnected from our current reality. Sometimes people who are deeply interested in eternity have the tendency to dismiss the significance of life in the here and now—as if a person has to choose between concern about their eternal destiny and caring for the immediate needs in our world. If this world is destined for the wrecking ball, as the logic goes, why seek personal or social transformation? The only thing that matters is spreading the apocalyptic message so that others might believe and be airlifted away from the here and now. It is not surprising, then, that so many people who think that the message of Jesus is primarily about another world struggle to find a meaningful and integrated spiritual path in the here and now. If good news is about another time and place, you may be ready for heaven, but feel unprepared for life on Earth.
Our understanding of the time dimension of the message of Jesus can either limit or expand our creativity and imagination for life here and now. Even if we suspect that an extended version of the Jesus story might reveal a more holistic, nuanced, and tangible message, the fact remains that the collapsed version familiar to the most people is biased toward the apocalypse. Perhaps we see the otherworldly ramifications of the story because this is what we were first invited to observe, and we tend to only notice what we are expecting.
In psychology class at my university a professor asked us to count how many times a basketball was passed between players on a video recording. We watched the ball dutifully. At the conclusion of the five-minute video clip he asked how many times the ball had been passed. Our numbers varied just slightly. “And class, how many of you saw a woman walk across the court through the players holding a rainbow-colored umbrella?” Huh? We didn’t see any woman carrying a rainbow-colored umbrella. When the professor replayed the video clip, there she was. Some of the players had to move out of the way to avoid being hit by her large bright umbrella. Most of us hadn’t noticed her because we were looking for something else: basketballs.
If we are invited to look at the significance of Jesus’ message solely in terms of the afterlife, that is all we are likely to find. In groups, when I have asked, “What is the message of the gospel?” most people predictably respond with a statement like, “Jesus died for our sins so we can be forgiven and go to heaven when we die.” I then ask, “Where, exactly, did Jesus state this as his message?” Awkward silence. There is little evidence within the gospel accounts to suggest that Jesus’ message was primarily about another world or the afterlife. We should wonder about the difference between what Jesus proclaimed as “good news” and what is now commonly thought of as “the gospel.”
Is the message of Jesus primarily about another world or about life in the here and now? The Gospel writer Mark wrote that Jesus came to proclaim the “good news of God”—to illuminate or remind us of the fact that there has always been and will always be a source of life who is present, caring, and active in our world. In context, Jesus spoke as an ambassador of hope for the future and for the present. According to Mark’s Gospel, he traveled throughout Galilee announcing, “The time has come, the kingdom of God is at hand” (Mark 1:15). When asked by what power he performed miraculous signs he explained that it was because “the kingdom of God has come to you” (Luke 11:20). When people misunderstood and thought that he was only speaking about the future reign of God he clarified, “The kingdom of God does not come with your careful observations, nor will people say, ‘Here it is,’ or ‘There it is,’ because the kingdom of God is within you” (Luke 17:21).
Maybe there isn’t such a clear distinction between our world and eternity. Jesus described the kingdom of God as a present reality stretching perpetually into the future. He spoke of “eternal life” not as a destination but as an enduring quality of relationship with our Maker. He once prayed, “Now this is eternal life: that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent” (John 17:3). Eternal life is the reconciled connection to our source that is made available through the sacrifice of Jesus. God is not far off and eternity is not in another world. If we find a connection to the eternal life of God in the present, the future will take care of itself.
What difference do these clarifications make? I believe we are more ready to embrace our lives in the here and now when we are able to recognize the continuity between the immanence of God in our worldand eternity. Rather than simply waiting to be liberated to another time or place, we are being invited to collaborate in the healing and redemption of our world.

EXPLORING THE ESSENCE OF JESUS’ MESSAGE

After we finish the latkes and soup and refill our glasses, it’s time for the lighting of the menorah. Excited children gather around to light the candles. “Remind me again of the historical background for this holiday,” one adult asks. It takes several of us brainstorming together to assemble an answer. Something about the Maccabean wars and an oil lamp that miraculously stayed lit for eight days without fuel. “Really a minor Jewish holiday that took on inflated significance as an alternative to Christmas,” someone adds. The lights in the room are switched off, and with gusto Michael leads us in a Hanukkah song, sung in Hebrew; those of us who know it sing along. In the dark room under the glow of candles Michael says, “Hanukkah, it’s the festival of light” and concludes with a toast: “LeChaim! To Life!”
Light and life were two of the favorite words the disciple John used to describe the message of Jesus. Toward the end of his life John was sequestered on the Island of Patmos. As the last of the original disciples, he made an attempt to summarize the essential message of Jesus—and he did it in three words. In the preface to his first general letter he wrote, “That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked at and our hands have touched—this we proclaim concerning the Word of life.” Here John reminded his readers that he was intimately acquainted with Jesus. He goes on to say, “The life appeared. We have seen it and testify to it. And we proclaim to you the eternal life which was with the father and has appeared to us.” In John’s mind, eternal life was less a destination and more an immediate personal connection. Then John described the essence of Jesus’ teaching: “This is the message we have heard from him and declare to you: God is light, in him there is no darkness at all” (I John 1:1–5). Three words, “God is light.” Light here implies warmth and illumination, and the clarity to move without fear. John is saying that we can walk confidently in the awareness that the source of all life is good, and that everything Jesus said and did simply confirms that our Creator is good and can be trusted.
Imagine someone asking, “John, what was the message of Jesus about?” And John answering, “Well, it’s really simple; God is light.” I can’t help but notice how different John’s summary of the gospel was from what I heard as a child, or what I told Hailey, or the impression many people have. If I could start over to explain the message of Jesus to Hailey, I would begin in a different place, maybe starting with something like, “Hailey, God is light. Jesus came to remind us that our Maker is good and can be fully trusted. Jesus taught people how to trust the ways of their Maker again. Some people didn’t want to remember that God is good, so they had Jesus killed. But love is stronger than hate. And light is brighter than darkness. And Jesus came back from the dead to keep reminding us that God is light.”
The evidence for a good God can seem ambiguous at times. Life doesn’t always feel good. We can easily look out on our world or within ourselves with eyes that see more darkness than light. Perhaps this is why Jesus said, “The eye is the lamp of the body. If your eyes are good, your whole body will be full of light. But if your eyes are bad, your whole body will be full of darkness” (Matthew 6:22–23). We are invited to have eyes that recognize the essential goodness of the Creator and creation—to read the narrative of history and the narratives of our own lives searching for signs of life and noting the ways that God can be trusted.

THE CHOICES WE MAKE

At the break during a lecture a young man approached me and asked a familiar question: “Do you think gay people can go to heaven?”
I replied, “I didn’t know I was in charge of deciding who goes to heaven.”
It is commonly assumed that it is our responsibility to assess who is “in” and who is “out” of God’s plan. One day a friend asked my wife Lisa a similar but more personal question: “I need to know if you think our family is going to hell—since we are not Christian. Because if you believe we are going to hell then I don’t think we can stay friends.” Historically, emphasis on a singular spiritual decision has been motivated by an attempt by an institution or community to judge who is “saved” and who is not. Jesus described the way to life as a metaphorical road that we may travel down (Matthew 7:14). Perhaps we should be more concerned about our own pace and direction on that road than someone else’s. Certainly we will each end up at the destination in the direction we are heading toward: either life or death.
I’ve notice that people suddenly become more generous in their assessments about eternal destiny when someone is experiencing loss. My friend Brad was fifteen when he and some friends got drunk and drove a car up a hill on the wrong side of the road and smashed into an oncoming truck at 80 miles an hour. His parents rushed to the scene and held his hand as he took his last breaths trapped in the back seat of the mangled vehicle. I recall standing with his parents in front of the casket, his body patched with embalmer’s putty and heavy makeup, searching for words to console them. At the funeral the minister comforted the family with the hope that Brad had said “the sinner’s prayer” earlier in life. The family clung to any evidence that Brad had chosen the road to life.
At the Hanukkah dinner, the first pangs of flu come over me just as I finish the strudel we have for dessert. I am talking with a professional photographer I just met when my stomach began to rumble violently. “Excuse me for a moment,” I said as I rushed to the upstairs bathroom. When I was finished, I quickly collected our coats and weakly said “Good-bye” and “Thanks for the nice evening.” We walked out the door into the darkness of a winter night to begin the mile and a half walk home over the hill in the rain.
It is later than I thought, and we have to walk slowly because of the trembling aftershocks in my intestines. We follow the path of streetlights past the dim doorways where groups of men lurk in the shadows to conduct nocturnal business. We are usually asleep before this cast of characters appears on the streets. “What series of choices would lead a person out into this cold darkness?” I wondered. My mother-in-law always says that nothing good ever happens after midnight, and I believe she was mostly right. The disciple John concluded that in contrast to the fact that “God is light,” we tend to choose darkness when our deeds are evil. Every choice we make seems to be either a step into darkness or a step toward the light. John concluded that our greatest choice is between remaining in the darkness and learning to walk in the light of God’s love (I John 1:5–7).
Is belief in God one epic decision or a series of choices in the same direction? As a child I was pressed to make a singular decision to believe. The assumption was that this epic decision, once made, endures for all time. Practically we know this is not the case with the other decisions we make. When two people, for instance, decide to get married, they must confirm their choice in daily care and fidelity. Marriage is a persistent series of choices in the same direction.
Spiritual belief functions similarly. Each day we decide whether or not to trust that our Maker is good and has our best interests in mind. We see this in the ancient contracts of the Tanakh: “This day I call heaven and earth as witnesses against you that I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Now choose life” (Deuteronomy 30:19). Each day and each moment we are choosing a path toward life or death. All of our choices matter and function cumulatively to express faith or doubt in the goodness of our Maker.
For three days after the Hanukkah party I lay sick in bed, hoping that I hadn’t given anyone else the flu. For some reason when I’m sick I think more about God. Maybe it’s the altered state brought on by nausea and dehydration or the feeling I have that I am dying. I don’t think it is necessarily a bad thing, on occasion, to consider one’s mortality. There is a certain reverence that comes by contemplating this finality. Lying on my bed with the blinds drawn, I am the little boy again in the back seat of the green Pontiac with sweating legs, except that now I am less afraid and more entranced by the chance to seek a God that can be found, to find my place in the greater scheme of a good creation. I find comfort in the whisper of words I once memorized: “You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart” (Jeremiah 29:13).
Jesus declared, “The time has come.”
The time has come for us to see the thin space between our lives and eternity.
The time has come for us to imagine again that God is light and that we are cared for by a Maker who is good.
The time has come for us to seek light over darkness and to perpetually choose life over death.

CONVERSATION

The Present? The Future? Or Both? What effect do you think it has that so many people believe the message of Jesus is primarily or exclusively about the future? How would a here and now orientation affect your perception of the message of Jesus?

Good News about What? If heaven or eternity were not the primary concerns of first-century people who heard the message of Jesus, what else was compelling to them about his message? Why was his message so controversial?
God as Light. Does the suggestion that the message of Jesus can be summarized with the statement “God is light” seem attractively simple or fuzzily disturbing?

EXPERIMENTS

Reminiscing. Write a journal entry exploring how your view of God has evolved and changed as you have grown and experienced more of life. Include a few interesting anecdotes that illustrate the shifts in your perceptions. What are the critical decisions, to seek, ignore or reject God, that have shaped your current reality and direction?

Choosing Life Today. If eternal life is something we access now and in the future, this implies that we are continually choosing whether or not to walk in the light of God’s presence. Consider what tangible trust in God implies for you today. Try spending the day in conscious awareness of the maker’s presence. Some people find it helpful to use a method called breath prayer as an aid in doing this. As you go about the day, whisper a phrase (such as “Lord Jesus have mercy on me.” Or “your love endures forever.” Repeat the phrase under your breath as you go about daily tasks. See if this helps you stay more aware of God’s care and presence.

SOUL GRAFFITI
Chapter Four: Experiments in Truth
By Mark Scandrette

It is bittersweet to recall the first few years that our family lived in San Francisco. We had moved to the city with a dream: to form a community of people who would take Jesus seriously as the teacher and revolutionary he intended to be. Our new neighbors and acquaintances were quick to point out that people who called themselves “Christians” were responsible for the inquisitions, religious wars, and homophobia—not to mention the historic use of scripture to justify slavery, the massacre of native peoples, aggressive foreign policy, and the destruction of the Earth’s resources. I had to agree that there was tremendous dissonance between the dominant reputation of Christianity and the life of Christ and the early church. We desperately wanted to be people who embodied the revolution of the kingdom of love—offering an apologetic for the authenticity of the Way of Jesus as an alternative to mainstream Christianity.

A small group of us began meeting together to study the gospel accounts and the documents of the early church. We were drawn to the communal nature of the primitive church and the power, solidarity, and compassion followers of Jesus exhibited under persecution during the Roman Empire. Our faith community, which at the time we called a house church, attracted zealous idealists as well as people who had been hurt or marginalized through their experiences with organized religion. For a while we felt criticized and misunderstood, both by the culture and by the mainstream church. It took some time to move beyond critical deconstruction—to define ourselves more by what we were for than what we were against.

Gradually we learned to channel our group energy toward experimenting with how to imitate the path of Jesus and the early disciples. Some things we took quite literally. We tried fasting and praying for forty days. I grew a beard and long hair. We began living communally. And we hosted parties for neighbors and offered hospitality and friendship to people battling addictions, personality disorders, and depression. It was, in retrospect, a fertile and chaotic period for our family. We were being formed through these experiences with great intensity. One thing we try to preserve from that time is a sense of humility and risk taking.

We found that one of the best ways for our group to learn the Way of Jesus was by trying to imitate his example through some tangible exercise or activity. Mahatma Gandhi described this kind of intentional pursuit as an “experiment in truth.” Experiments are always successful on some level, because by taking a risk you learn both from your failures and accomplishments. And there is a depth of understanding that can only be achieved through conscious activity.

It is my hope with this book not only to explore ideas about making a life in the Way of Jesus, but also to share some of our family and community “experiments in truth.”

Emperor Arcadia

After reading about the kind of companion Jesus was, and knowing what he taught about love for neighbors, my friend Joseph and I decided to try some experiments in radical openness to people. We began by making a daily practice of picking up trash on our block. In the evenings, along with my kids, we walked around the block with trash sticks and plastic bags greeting neighbors and collecting debris. The sidewalks in our neighborhood were notoriously dirty, strewn with household garbage, old couches, bed frames, and broken TVs. People’s reactions to our nightly trash walks varied. One person offered us cold beers. Another asked us to pray for his family. One neighbor thanked us for our kindness and another cussed us out because he thought our clean-up was a manifestation of privilege and gentrification. What we hoped would be a sign of neighborly affection was interpreted ambiguously.

After a few months of picking up garbage we prayed that God would bring someone into our path that we could care for more deeply. Riding the bus home from work one night, Joseph met an elderly man who seemed lonely and in need of a friend. He invited Joseph to visit and the next day Joseph took me along to see him.

“Come on in, boys. Will you smoke a joint with me?” the old man said as Joseph and I climbed the steps of the rusty old school bus, searching for a place to sit. The bus, parked in a vacant lot on Portrero Hill, was painted in bold letters that read: “I HAVE BEEN CONDUCTING EXPERIMENTS ON MYSELF FOR 30 YEARS—EXPLORING THE MYSTERIES OF CHEMISTRY AND HEALTH. MY PRESCRIPTION: EAT A CLOVE OF GARLIC AND DRINK YOUR OWN URINE AND SEMEN TWICE A DAY.” Joseph and I glanced at each other and wondered what we were getting ourselves into. Shaking my hand, the small old man, wearing a black evening gown, took a bow saying, “You may call me Emperor Arcadia.” Seated again, his arthritic hands struggled to roll a joint while he spoke. “I’ve been taking speed for thirty years, medicating myself. The combination of speed and special topical chemicals is curing me of all human diseases.” As he continued we stole glances around the crowded old bus containing soiled clothes, salvaged computer monitors, and buckets of urine. A mix of curious smells strained my nose for recognition.

“The government has lied to us! It’s a conspiracy to exterminate the planet! If I were in charge I would burn all the money and declare the planet monetary and class free. We will all be equal and wealthy.”

I attempted to break into his monologue with a question: “Emperor, how long have you lived in San Francisco?”
He quickly replied, “Too long. Do you have an estate in the country where you would like me to be the caretaker?”
I tried again: “How old are you?”
He quickly answered, “I’m not old, I’m as young as they come.”
I persisted, “Where did you grow up?”
“Grow up? I haven’t grown up. . . .” He then returned to his speech, “Boys, I advise you to drink your own urine twice a day, those golden showers will cure what ails ya.” When he could sense that we were only listening to be polite, he became defensive, “I can see you don’t believe me. But you had better. I am a messenger from God.”
Joseph spoke up, “What a coincidence. We are also followers of God’s messenger, Jesus.” That was the wrong thing to say, for the emperor grew agitated and exclaimed, “I’m #$%! Jesus Christ, the G——n messiah, Jesus isn’t coming back so you had better listen to me! If you don’t believe me, then get out my bus!”

We groped for a diplomatic way to end our visit. “It was good to meet you, Emperor!” I said, as we exited the bus, befuddled by this strange encounter.
I turned to Joseph. “Well, I guess that attempt to be intentional about having relationships with people on the margins failed,” I said.
“We can’t make someone be our friend,” Joseph said,  “if they don’t want a relationship.”

A few months later I ran into the emperor at the plaza downtown. Slumped over, sunburned and haggard and sitting in a wheelchair, he was hardly recognizable. Yet he was dressed impeccably, decked out in a costume crown and bright gold jewelry, wielding a royal amulet in his jittering hand. When I greeted him, he smiled, saying, “I’m doing better than ever, can’t you see? I was just going to get something to eat, would you like to join me?” Recalling our first encounter, I was taken aback by his friendliness. He insisted on buying me a strawberry shake. As he went up to pay, several tablets of methamphetamines fell out of his wallet onto the counter. Sitting in a booth across from me, he repeated, verbatim, the monologue from our first visit. I looked at him intently—his hands brown with filth, dirt caught in the creases of his worn skin. That mouth!—grotesque, toothless, and rotting, wildly chomping chicken sandwich. My stomach turned. Sputtering incoherently now, he was desperately trying to get through to me, as his spit and chicken sandwich landed on my face. I stared into his hazel green eyes, wondering what he was thinking and feeling inside. “Emperor Arcadia, what has it been like living by yourself in that bus all these years?”
He paused dramatically. “It feels . . . lonely sometimes.”
I pressed for more. “What do you do when you are lonely?”
Subdued for a moment, he answered, “I lock myself in my bus for three or four days, or come down to this corner.” And then he quickly changed the subject. “I need to get a shower. . . Hey! Look at him, I’d like to have him on a chain to dominate. . . .”
I racked my conflicted brain and heart to understand. I wondered, “Am I wasting my time with this man, or is he teaching me something about the compassion of Jesus?” When I told Joseph about my encounter with the emperor, we debated about engaging him further. We had previously written him off because we didn’t see much hope for change in his life. He also didn’t make us feel rewarded for our efforts. “Is an act of love only significant because of the change it produces? Or, can the meaning be in the act itself?” I pondered aloud. It seemed like God had brought the emperor back into our lives. While Joseph and I were discussing what to do, we thought of Jesus’ teachings about giving to others without expecting anything in return and the fact that God is kind, even to the ungrateful (Luke 6:35). We realized that, as followers of the Way, we were being invited to love the emperor despite his prickly hostility and highly unusual personal habits.

A few days later Joseph and I stopped by the emperor’s bus. More sedated, he expressed that he was glad to see us, and explained that he had just completed one of his “cycles of treatment,” which involved covering his entire body with menthol vapor rub followed by petroleum jelly, then taking a hit of methamphetamines. “We all have these bugs living in our bodies that are killing us. I’m slowly sweating them out,” he said. “This treatment forces the bugs from deep within the body to surface where they drown.” He explained how he then washes in a solution of vinegar, bleach, dish soap, and urine. “The whole process takes three days. Look at how young and fresh my skin looks now. Pretty good for being sixty-three years old.”
“Emperor, is there anything we can do for you?” I asked.
“Well, I’m hungry and I haven’t eaten for days. My legs aren’t working too good so I can’t get to the store.” Handing us some money, he asked us to buy him an Italian sausage sandwich. “Make sure you get it with mayonnaise and provolone cheese—and buy yourselves sandwiches with my money too. They are very delicious.”

As we ate the sandwiches together, two young men approached the bus. Dressed in leather pants and jackets, with their faces covered in sores and their hands black with grease, they looked like survivors of a nuclear holocaust. He handed these men, his drug suppliers, a wad of cash. “Keep the change, honey, for a personal favor I might ask of you later,” he said with a wink.

Along with other friends from our community we began visiting the emperor several times a week, bringing groceries, helping cut his hair or clip his toe nails, and cleaning up around his camp. Gradually he began to trust our friendship and revealed more about himself. His real name was Robert. Estranged from his family after years in mental institutions, he had moved west from Wisconsin. During the sexual revolution of the 1970s he was something of a celebrity in San Francisco’s gay club scene, hosting “naked pool” on Sunday afternoons at a popular bar South of Market where he would prance nude around the pool table exchanging fiery jabs with patrons. The club owner let him live in the basement of the building for many years. We learned that Emperor Arcadia was locally famous for crashing society balls, civic celebrations and parades, announcing himself, swathed in a velvet cape and crown, accompanied by his matching miniature poodles on leashes. As he got older and more peculiar, he lost his social currency and became more isolated.

The emperor’s health continued to deteriorate and by December he was confined to a wheelchair. In addition to this trouble, the owner of the property where he was squatting was taking legal action to have him removed. We advocated for the emperor with the health department and social services and pleaded with him to move into an assisted living facility. He pessimistically predicted that the apocalypse would come by the first of the year. “I’m going to kill myself on New Year’s Eve,” he told us, by mixing vodka with a fatal dose of Phenobarbital.
“I would be really sad if you chose to kill yourself,” I told him.
“Why should you care if I live or die?” he asked indignantly.
“Emperor, you are valuable to God and to the people who love you. We would miss you.”
“Nobody has ever cared about me,” he replied bitterly.
“I’m really sorry you feel that way. After all the time we’ve spent together the past few months, I hoped that you might consider Joseph and me your friends.”
.   .   .

At Christmas we decided to throw a party for the emperor, including his favorite foods and a birthday cake. I told him that I was going to bring my family along, so he would need to be on his best behavior. We could never predict what the emperor would say or do.
There was a full moon on that December evening when I knocked at the door to the emperor’s bus. He came out wearing an elegant purple bonnet, with freshly painted fingernails. A thin young woman, who we knew worked as a prostitute, lived in a trailer on the street nearby, joined us, along with one of her “clients.” We ate by candlelight serenaded by music from a transistor radio. The emperor declared that the food was delicious, a collection of favorite dishes he requested. After dinner my wife Lisa put candles on a cake. “Let’s sing happy birthday to someone who hasn’t celebrated their birthday in awhile,” I said. “Who could we sing happy birthday to?”
Just then, beaming, our three-year-old son Noah blurted, “It’s Christmas, lets sing happy birthday to Jesus!”
I panicked. The name Jesus was the worst thing I could imagine mentioning in front of the emperor, and I waited to see how he would react. Slowly, with a big toothless grin, he said, “Yes, let’s sing happy birthday to Jesus.” Under a clear and starry night the eight of us sang together—Lisa and me, a streetwalker and her john, a sixty-three-year-old transvestite, and three small blond children with red cheeks. As I helped the emperor back into his bus, he turned to me and said, “This was the best night of my life. Thank you!”
.   .   .

We told the emperor that the following Sunday we would stop by with some friends to help move the bus and his belongings off the property to comply with the owner’s injunction. When we arrived Sunday morning Joseph and I knocked at the door of the bus. There was no response, but we heard a faint groaning from inside. We broke down the door and found the emperor collapsed on the floor, lying in a pool of his own waste. He tried to talk, and through his slurred speech, I deciphered that he wanted water. We sat him up, though he was semiconscious and weak, and gave him a drink. As we began to change his clothes and wash his body, what had happened slowly dawned on us—he had taken the Phenobarbital as planned. Searching quickly we found a few of the tablets scattered across the floor by a bottle of vodka. The rest of our group had just arrived when we called for an ambulance.
As the paramedics lifted him onto the gurney he pleaded for me to stay beside him. I rode along to the hospital in the back of the ambulance holding his hand.
At the emergency room after he was stabilized a nurse invited me into the examining room where I stood alone by his side. “Emperor,” I said, “it’s Mark.” With his eyes still shut he murmured, “I wanted to die. Why did you save my life?”
I hesitated for a moment searching for words. “You are my friend and I care about you.”
Agitated, with speech still slurred he asked, “But why do you care about me?” And then louder and more desperately he repeated, “Why do you care about me?”
Slowly I lifted my hand and began to caress his bald head. “Emperor, we are all loved,” I said. Then I heard him snoring and watched his chest rise and fall with each belabored breath.
I stood there for a long time, praying, and thinking about this man who felt so isolated and lonely that it was impossible for him to imagine that anyone would care. Perhaps he was a living caricature of the feelings we all share—doubts about our worth.
When Joseph and I arrived at the hospital the next day he was wide awake and smiling. With hugs he greeted us like long-lost sons. He quickly handed Joseph some money and told him to go out and buy each of us a prime rib dinner to eat together. The hospital psychologist was anxious to meet me and discretely invited me into her office. I held the keys to his bus and kept all his legal and personal papers and gave her as much of his life story as I had pieced together through our conversations. As I shared what I knew I had the strange realization that, although I had only known the emperor for six months, I was closer to him now than anyone else alive.

After the interview the doctor curiously asked, “What exactly is your role in the neighborhood?” I explained that Joseph and I were part of a small church community trying to imitate the example of Jesus by making friends with lonely people. “That sounds like the kind of church I would love to join,” she replied.
.   .   .
Even now as I retell this story I am drawn back into the sights and smells and complicated emotions I felt during that time.  I realize there is unique absurdity to the characters and situation—two idealistic young men and their experiment in friendship with an eccentric old man with a death wish. By telling this story I’m not suggesting that everyone could or should make friends with someone like the emperor. What I do know is that I feel alive when I am testing the limits of my own boundaries– finding a source of love that is greater than my own and discovering beauty in unexpected places.

Conversation
Credibility. What kind of reputation does the Way of Jesus have with the people in your community? How might this be changed or improved by people who take Jesus more seriously as an example and guide?
An Experiment in Friendship. What were your feelings or thoughts as you read about the emperor? What did the details and ambiguities of the story provoke in you?
Experiments
Be open to the peculiar. There is likely someone in the periphery of your relationships who is lonely or peculiar. Quite often the public services and support offered to people living with mental illness are inadequate. In the gospels these kinds of people were often drawn toward encounters with Jesus and his disciples. Go out of your way to cultivate a friendship with such a person—in partnership with a friend who can help you navigate the relationship.

Teach a child to care. You may wonder if it is safe for children to be around unstable or addicted people. If there is adequate guidance and supervision it can be helpful to introduce children to the more sobering realities of our society– and they may be less likely to have an unhealthy fascination with illicit activities if they learn to care about people in those circumstances. Take a child with you to visit a shelter, prison, soup kitchen or assisted living facility. Kids learn to be compassionate by watching their parents and elders care for the needs of others.

Some people have finished reading SOUL GRAFFITI and here’s what they have to say:
“One of the things that I find intoxicating about good filmmakers, like the Cohen brothers who made among other films Fargo, is their ability to climb inside of a certain cultural context and then speak from that place with authenticity and meaning. This is exactly what I love about Mark Scandrette’s work Soul Graffiti. As a person who grew up in church in Minnesota and has spent the last decade in the Mission District of San Francisco, he provides a practical and prophetic look at life and faith in one of America’s most progressive cities. His work is a perfect collision of his grounded upper-middle America upbringing and the sometimes wheels off life on the streets of San Francisco. He interprets life and faith as a street-wise pastor struggling with people in their search for more. He brings passion, hope and a new language to those of us who sometimes fall a word or two short in our ability to put words to our experiences. As Donald Miller and Blue Like Jazz was to the average Baptist youth grouped southerner, Soul Graffiti is to everyone else . . . .only better.”

–Jason Mitchell, Dallas, Texas. Also see a Video podcast by Jason Mitchell.

“A creative smart version of Blue Like Jazz. If one were to take the mind of Dallas Willard, the tongue of a beat poet, and the heart of a Franciscan brother, put them in a blender, and pour them into a book, you might end up with Soul Graffiti. Soul Graffiti is a poetic, prophetic, call to follow the radical Way of Jesus. Mark Scandrette rips off the scab of encrusted, safe, sentimental American Christianity and invites the reader into the provocative, fresh, improvisational riff of discipleship with Christ. The book is a call to imagine the Way of Christ for the Post-Christian West.”
–Mark Van Steenwyk, Minneapolis

POETRY FEATURED IN SOUL GRAFFITI:

reimagine.mp3

spring-blossoms.mp3

lonely-highways.mp3

OTHER RECENT POEMS BY MARK SCANDRETTE:
25th-and-shotwell.mp3

finish-the-work-you-began.mp3

From the author:

Soul Graffiti explores the message of Jesus as an invitation to embrace life as a sacred journey— learning to collaborate with our Maker’s intentions to bring healing and greater wholeness to our world. Through stories and reflections, Soul Graffiti addresses the questions, “What was the essential message of Jesus and how can we inhabit that message as a way of life?” What if everything matters? Soul Graffiti, is an invitation to explore the life and teachings of Jesus as a pattern for pursuing a spiritual path that is fueled by compassion, creativity, community and connection.

From the publisher:

Mark Scandrette thinks that the message and method of Jesus were a lot like graffiti—immediate, street level, and personal. Jesus spoke as one who knew the struggles and joys and longings of the people he encountered. And he spoke as one who also suffered. The good news Jesus proclaimed is relevant for our day if the real issues of our lives, the places where we feel pain, loneliness, failure, and abandon are acknowledged as part of the story. The “good news of God” must speak to the whole person: our bodies, our minds, our emotions and our relationships with people and the planet we call home. And like graffiti at its best, the message becomes a two-way conversation of intimacy and respect.

In Soul Graffiti Mark Scandrette—writer, poet, and leader in the Emergent church movement—uses vivid stories of his own life and the lives of the many people he has encountered in his home in the Mission District of San Francisco to explore what “good news of God” might mean for our particular time and place. He seeks to answer the central question: “How can we be about making a life in the way of Jesus?” Soul Graffiti is a simple and lyrical exploration of the essential message of Jesus as it relates to the experiences of contemporary spiritual seekers. He integrates theological insight with awareness of human psychology, culture, and daily life. Written to appeal to the sensibilities of those who inhabit a post-Christendom milieu, Mark Scandrette’s deepest hope is to give readers greater motivation for, and a fuller sense of what it means to make a life in, the way of Jesus.

Review of SOUL GRAFFITI: Making a Life in the Way of Jesus from Publisher’s Weekly, February 26, 2007

“Mark Scandrette guides us in this beautifully written and brilliantly illustrated book along a path towards actualized spirituality in a postmodern world. The book provides new avenues to ancient truths.”

—Tony Campolo, professor of sociology, Eastern University

“Soul Graffiti is not so much a book as it is an encounter—a deadly serious encounter—with a Christianity that is urban, American, un-institutionalized, and now. If you truly like your own Christian walk just the way it is, you definitely should not read this book.”

—Phyllis Tickle, religion analyst and compiler, The Divine Hours

“When I heard that Mark Scandrette was writing a book I knew that it would be good– partly because Mark is an artist and poet and I knew he would be good with words. But even more I knew that he is living a beautiful, gritty, honest and hopeful story that deserves to be told. Now that I’ve read SOUL GRAFFITI I can say that it is even better than I had hoped. Through Mark’s rich insights and reflections, and especially through his stories … about Jack, Richard, Gary, Caroline, Emperor Arcadia (you’ll never forget him!), Michelle, Beryl, and many others, you’ll get an honest and inspiring view of what ‘the emergent conversation’ is really about, and what it’s for.”

—Brian McLaren, author/activist (brianmclaren.net)

“As I look at the world and read the Scripture, I cannot help but ask – Have we even begun to be Christian?” This book is a gift to all of us who are trying to re-imagine what it means to be Christian today.

–Shane Claiborne, Activist & Author

“In Soul Graffiti, Mark Scandrette strips away the religious traditions that cloud our view of Jesus and gives us the courage to investigate the transformational message. If the challenge for churches and for individual followers of Christ is to live out the gospel, this is the help we need.”

—Nancy Ortberg, Founding Partner, Teamworx2

“Soul Graffiti is creative, inspiring and challenging in equal measure. Mark has a wonderful way with language weaving together stories, metaphors, and insights that combine into a poetic call to take seriously the radical nature of Christ’s life and teaching and live it out in our own communities.”

—Jonny Baker, Church Mission Society, London, UK

“Scandrette guides us down a winding, beautiful path through an urban park of whole-life Jesus-y spirituality. It’s a story-weaver’s bountiful spread - filled with chocolate and wine and artisan bread—of the present Kingdom of God. See that the Lord is good, indeed.”

—Mark Oestreicher, president, Youth Specialties

“Soul Graffiti chronicles Mark Scandrette’s brave exploration into an intentional, lived Christianity. In a world numb to religion, inhabiting the way of love may be the only apologetic left.”

—Sally Morgenthaler, www.trueconversations.com

Published by Jossey-Bass

Release Date: April 2007

From the introduction…

My hope with this book is to have a conversation about what it might mean to follow the way of Jesus—not as an advertisement for an unattainable ideal, but as a messy, fertile experiment we can live into, that acknowledges the depths of our varied experiences and the complexities of contemporary society. I would like to explore how the generative life of the Creator can take root in the soil of our humanity.

Every day we are bombarded with corporate advertisements trying to get us to buy things. This one-way communication is often slick and salacious. In urban areas, such as where I live, people have tangibly resisted the messages on billboards and bus shelters. With spray paint they scrawl their own names or tags across the advertisements or leave comments that question assumptions, turning one-way communication into public discourse. With wheat paste they hang homemade posters or artwork over corporate advertisements to subvert the dominance of the mass market, in an attempt to restore the voice of local people.

Tagging, the most primitive form of graffiti, is often seen as a way of marking territory or an attempt to claim personal space in the crowded metropolis. Writing tags on buses, trucks, or trains is like sending a message in a bottle, a cry to be known that will travel through the neighborhood and out into the wider world. Many underground artists tag or poster obsessively, addicted to expanding their names or causes at the risk of prosecution. Graffiti artists often leave messages for one another in their work, signatures that serve as a sign of respect or connection.
No matter our aesthetics, there is something in the motivation of the graffiti artist that we can identify with, a guttural yelp to be heard and understood, to talk back to the universe or to God when we feel helpless, abandoned, or overwhelmed. It may be that impulse we feel to find our place and of significance in the wider world, or to initiate conversation with the our Maker.

Not all graffiti is illegal or self-aggrandizing. Muralists and other underground artists eschew the pretentious nature of the gallery scene in order to bring beauty to the streets, where people live and work and die and love. Most people will never see the artwork that hangs on gallery walls unless the galleries are sidewalks, fences, and telephone poles. An artist I met named Dave hangs hundreds of simple, brightly colored paintings throughout the city, bringing smiles to the faces of people as they walk to the store or subway. Stenciled on the sidewalk at my feet I see proclamations left by neighbors: “Your existence gives me hope”; “Sluts against rape”; “Stop oil wars!” or, from a now deceased friend, simply the word “Grace” written with flowing cursive letters. One artist even fills the gaps in the concrete with rows of glass jewels. In our heavily pedestrian neighborhood, we have learned to look for the messages scrawled in chalk or stuck in the cracks of the sidewalk and to find beauty in small and hidden places. I am drawn to this kind of communication, because it speaks words of hope and life at the level where people actually live. And there the words don’t sound like spin.

“Jesus went into Galilee proclaiming the good news of God” (Mark 1:14). I like to think that the message and method of Jesus was a lot like graffiti—immediate, street level, and personal. Jesus spoke as one who knew the struggles and joys of the people in his region. He spoke in words that connected with their longings. And he spoke as one who also suffered. I’m convinced that the good news Jesus proclaimed is relevant for our day if the real issues of our lives, the places where we feel pain, loneliness, failure, and abandon are acknowledged as part of the story. The “good news of God” must speak to the whole person: our bodies, our minds, our emotions, and our relationships with people and the planet we call home. And like graffiti at its best, the message becomes a two-way conversation of intimacy and respect.

One of my favorite graffiti artists weaves designs into wire fences using fallen leaves from local neighboring trees. Often people who live in cities, perhaps due to limited open space, have an acute awareness of our responsibility to care for the natural world. My friend Andrew Jones, a Kiwi gypsy, speculates that current interest in organic produce and concern for the environment is related to our deeper quest for connection with the Creator. “I like to speak of spiritual realities in terms of organic symbols,” he says, “beginning with the tree of life in the garden of Eden.” Mountains and trees have often been places where humans waited to hear the voice of God. Ancient peoples wandered in the hills and wilderness seeking the will of the Creator. Prophets heard the voice of God in the silence of the desert. Devout Hebrews, such as Deborah the Judge, sat under trees to pray for wisdom, guidance, and just decisions. Trees symbolically represented the synchronicity between humans and the divine—a connection point stretching between Earth and eternity. After Jesus’ death, Peter the disciple began speaking of Jesus being hung on a tree rather than a cross—alluding to the Nazarene as a bridge between Earth and eternity.
Today we are still being invited to wander in the wilderness, in mountains and among trees, and on the streets of cities to discover the connection between the eternal life of the Creator and the particulars of our lives in the here and now.

I wonder, if Jesus were present in our time, what he might write on the sidewalks and walls. We know that he shouted along the Sea of Galilee, “Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God. Blessed are you who hunger now, for you will be satisfied. Blessed are you who weep now, for you will laugh” (Luke 6:20–21). Jesus came offering the propaganda of hope. To people longing for purpose and wholeness he declared, “You are the salt of the earth! You are the light of the world!” (Matthew 5:13–14).

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Soul Graffiti

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