If you're looking for a new blog to follow let me point you to the blog of Jonathan Storment over at Patheos. Many of you know Jonathan from his regular posting at Scot McKnight's blog Jesus Creed.

Jonathan is the pastor of my church here in Abilene, the Highland Church of Christ. He's also a good and dear friend.

One of the shared passions Jonathan and I have, and he and I talk about this all the time, is trying to help a disenchanted church recover enchantment in this our "secular age." Regular readers know I've written a ton over the last few years about enchantment. Last week Jonathan started a series on his blog entitle "The Gospel According to Stranger Things" based on the popular Netflix series. A show I loved. It's a series about enchantment, so I wanted to put this on your radar screen.

Plus, Jonathan is using David Dark's new book Life's Too Short to Pretend You’re Not Religious. I loved Dark's book and had plans to write about it, but since Jonathan is writing about the book it's just simpler to point you his way.

So, if you're not following it already, you should check out Jonathan's blog Part of Restoration Movement.

And if you're interested in re-enchanting the church be sure to follow the series Jonathan is starting with his first two posts from last week "I Believe in Stranger Things."
and "A World of Dungeons and Dragons", and this week's "Thin Places and All Saints Day."

Full disclosure: Jonathan has no idea I'm plugging his blog or series for him. I just want ya'll to follow his new series because 1) I'm passionate about the topic of enchantment, 2) I loved Stranger Things and 3) I wanted to put Dark's book on your radar screen.

Plus, in high school I was a huge Dungeons and Dragons fan. A child of the '80s I was...

Ya'll know I'm a fan of Johnny Cash.

And if you asked me today what my favorite Johnny Cash album is I'd have to say, today at least, that it's "All Aboard the Blue Train."

That is a bit of an unusual pick as "All Aboard the Blue Train" is not one of Cash's studio albums. In 1958 Cash left Sun Records to start recording with Columbia. But that didn't stop Sun from publishing a bunch of compilation albums after Cash left, mixing and matching all the recordings he had done with Sun.

Among these compilation albums is the 1962 release "All Aboard the Blue Train," an album full of train songs Cash had recorded at Sun.

I came across "All Aboard the Blue Train" in a used record store. I didn't recognize the album but I bought it as I was starting to collect Johnny Cash vinyl.

I started listening to the album and it has now become my favorite Cash recording. I've always preferred early Cash to later Cash. I love his voice during the Sun years and the Tennessee Two arrangements are simple and rudimentary. The Johnny Cash sound at its Boom-Chicka-Boom best. And I love the mix of songs on "All Aboard the Blue Train." The compilation includes the iconic songs "Folsom Prison Blues," "Give My Love to Rose," and "Hey, Porter."

All that to say, if you're new to Johnny Cash and looking for a first album, especially for early Cash, I'd recommend "All Aboard the Blue Train."

I don't know about you, but I'm a bit of a theological snob.

Well, I used to be. I'm much less of a snob than I once was. I used to roll my eyes at any theological notion I deemed stupid, simplistic or problematic.

Penal substitutionary atonement? Eye roll.

Original sin? Eye roll.

I'd do this for song lyrics as well.

"Some glad morning when this life is o'er, I'll fly away." Eye roll.

And boy, how I used roll my eyes at miracle stories.

Especially what I deemed to be trivial miracles stories. Stories of finding lost keys or a good parking space so that a meeting wasn't missed. I used to eye roll miracle stories that sounded a whole lot like lucky conscience or simply a good turn of fortune. Sometimes we get good test results back from the doctor. It happens. Even to godless atheists.

So I'd roll my eyes at miracle stories.

But as I've shared life among my more enchanted, charismatic friends I've been rolling my eyes a whole lot less.

Why?

Well, first, it's rude and elitist.

Second, rude and elitist behaviors and attitudes are spiritually corrosive. Snobbish judgments of others? Not good for the soul.

But the main reason I've stopped rolling my eyes is that I've found something in miracle stories that I consider to be vital to a vibrant spiritual walk.

What have I found in miracles stories?

Gratitude. Doxological gratitude.

Do you know what I hear now when I hear a friend praise God for the miraculous discovery of lost car keys or a nick of time parking spot? I don't hear what I used to hear: problematic metaphysics. What I heard in the story of found keys is praise and thanksgiving. Gratitude and doxology.

This is what I think, I think miracles are a hermeneutics of gratitude, reading the events of life with a readiness to give thanks and praise.

And so when I hear a miracle story I don't roll my eyes, I rejoice with those who rejoice, I join in the thanksgiving and the praise.

I know there is so much more that you and I can discuss about miracles. And I've left us here with more questions than answers. But at the end of that day, in my life at church, when I hear the miracle story of lost keys that have been found, all I hear is gratitude and praise.

For me, that's enough. I'll join and say, "Praise the Lord!"

Disenchanted, doubting and skeptical believers struggle with miracle stories. And what this means is that disenchanted, doubting and skeptical believers basically function as deists.

When you doubt miracles you still might believe in God, a distant God who exists as a theoretical possibility. But that sort of God--a distant God we struggle to believe in--doesn't really show up in day to day life. Day to day, the only agents in the drama are human beings. God is far away and doesn't really have much to do with daily life.

In short, our disenchantment, doubts and skepticism impairs our ability to experience God as relational. And without the experience of God as a lived relationship the spiritual life becomes abstract, intellectual and theoretical. And it's hard to maintain a vibrant Christian life if all you have are abstractions, ideas and theories.

Many disenchanted, doubting and skeptical Christians get this and have worked hard to rethink God's transcendence so that our doubts don't create deism. A lot of good work is being done by process theology folks on this front. Check out, for example, process theologian John Cobb's book Jesus' Abba: The God Who Has Not Failed. In his book Cobb recognizes how liberal theology, due to its disenchantment, robs us of relationship with God, and Cobb works to give these believers a way, via process theology, to recover relationship with Jesus' Abba by emphasizing God's immanence rather than transcendence.

And it's here where I find an interesting connection with miracles.

When I hear my enchanted Christian friends talk about their experiences of constant, tiny little miracles during the day I heard something close to what process theologians are talking about. That sounds wildly implausible because my friends who speak of constant, tiny little miracles most definitely believe in a transcendent God intervening in the world, the exact thing process theologians reject.

Yes, I'm aware that the metaphysics between these two groups, the process theologians and my enchanted friends telling stories of God changing red lights to green, are totally at odds. But what I find similar is the lived experience. Both groups experience God as ever-present in life, always working or calling us to the good.

Both reject a deistic experience in favor of a lived, relational experience with God. Both groups experience God as benevolently present and active.

In short, when it comes to miracle stories I think we get hung up too much on the metaphysics, finding this or that miracle story as either plausible or implausible. But if we shift to ponder the experiential aspect of miracle stories what we find is a relational experience, the experience of God being benevolently present in our daily lives. Theologically, I think you can get to that experience in different sorts ways, through transcendence or through immanence, but the final goal is the same.

A lived relationship with God.

I recently did a series on this blog entitled "Edging Toward Enchantment." In that series I talked a great deal about recovering a sacramental ontology where, in the words of Gerard Manley Hopkins, "the world is charged with the grandeur of God."

A part of recovering this sacramental ontology, I argued in that series, is practicing acts of hallowing. We hallow when we recognize a person, place or time as sacred and holy. This hallowing gives life sacred texture.

Miracles stories, as I've listened to them, are a hermeneutics of hallowing. And the hallowing here is less about persons, places or things than about events. Miracles are the hallowing of events.

To hallow, to name something as holy, is to set it apart from the mundane and common. To hallow is to give something existential weight, sacred import.

Miracles hallow events by giving them holy heaviness.

Whatever miracles might be, they name sacred events in life, experiences we set apart from the rest of life. Just as prayer hallows the needs, worries and burdens we share with each other, miracles name events that fill us with wonder, awe and gratitude.

I was watching the Netflix documentary The White Helmets about the Syrian volunteer force that rushes to locations of bombings to rescue those trapped in the rubble. In the documentary there is amazing--miraculous--footage of the White Helmets rescuing a baby only a few weeks old from the rubble of a bombed building.



The While Helmets call the baby "the miracle baby." The word miracle here isn't just saying that this child was very, very lucky. Hermeneutically, the word miracle hallows the event. For the White Helmets the rescue of that baby wasn't just a lucky break.

The rescue of that baby was a sacred and life-giving sign that gave the work and sacrifices of the White Helmets holy meaning and significance.

The rescue of that baby was an event that was holy and sacred.

A miracle.

We all interpret life events, big things and small. Life has meaning for us.

When I listen to my friends speak about miracles what I strikes me most is that it is a hermeneutical activity, an interpretive activity, a way of making meaning of life.

More specifically, speaking of miracles is to be engaged in a hermeneutics of enchantment, hallowing and relationship. Things happens in life. For one person an event means nothing, signifies nothing. Life, to borrow from Mark Twain's definition of history, is just one damn thing after another. A day is just a string of meaningless occurrences.

But when you speak of miracles, when you read your day with a hermeneutics of enchantment and hallowing, life isn't like that. Instead of one damn thing after another your day is filled with sacred moments, boredom is filled with adventure, and small, even trivial, events become experiences of grace.

All this to say, one of the theological triggers behind my hesitancy with miracles has been that I've tended to think about miracles metaphysically rather than hermeneutically. That is to say, I've focused more on mechanism than meaning-making. And since I've struggled with the mechanisms I've tended to be dismissive of miracle talk, especially when the events are trivial, like finding lost car keys.

But recently I've begun to think that miracles are a hermeneutical activity that gives life sacred weight, texture and meaning. Miracles are less about supernatural mechanisms--Did God, in fact, supernaturally intervene to help you find your lost keys?--than about experiencing life in a more interactive, relational and enchanted manner.

So what does this hermeneutics consist of? What experience does it seek to create?

In the next three posts I'll describe three features of the hermeneutics of miracles.

A few weeks ago Jana and I were in Chicago and we took in a show at The Second City, perhaps the most famous sketch and improv comedy club in the world.  The Second City alumni list is pretty spectacular: Dan Aykroyd, James Belushi, John Candy, Steve Carell, Stephen Colbert, Chris Farley, Tina Fey, Bill Murray, Mike Myers.

As regular readers know, Jana is the high school theater teacher at Abilene Christian Schools. Jana and I both love improv comedy, but our visit to The Second City was exciting for another reason. In a few weeks Jana is doing, for the first time in ACS history, an improv comedy show for a school production.

Jana is pretty excited about it. Rehearsals are going great. A lot of that has to do with how much Jana uses improv in her drama classes. The ACS kids are well schooled in the rules and art of improv, so it's time to let the world see how awesome they are.

All that to say, improv is a big part of our lives. In fact, Jana's love of improv shows up in my book  Reviving Old Scratch where I use the improv rule "Yes, and" to talk about how we might become better theological conversation partners.

One of the least talked about fissures within Christianity, running through denominations, local churches, friendships, families and marriages, is the division between an enchanted and a disenchanted Christianity.

And in my church experience this fissure is often associated with socioeconomic status. On the one hand you have educated, liberal elites who embrace the demythologized theology found among mainline Protestants. A disenchanted spirituality that doesn't have much truck with angels, the Devil or miracles.

On the other hand, you have blue collar and lower income Christians who give witness to an enchanted Christianity, a religious experience full of spiritual warfare and praying for miracles.

If you go to a socioeconomically and educationally diverse church you're likely living with this divide. Some even experience it in their own homes. I have married friends where one partner has a very enchanted spirituality and the other is disenchanted. These couples struggle a bit, finding it difficult to get their Christianity on the same page.

As I recount in Reviving Old Scratch, over the last few years I've been spending more time in enchanted Christian contexts, sharing life out at the prison and at our mission church plant Freedom Fellowship. As a skeptical disenchanted believer Reviving Old Scratch tells the story of how I built bridges to talk about the Devil in enchanted places.

But the Devil isn't the only thing you need to learn to talk about as a disenchanted Christian sharing life with enchanted believers. Beyond the Devil you also have to learn to talk about miracles.

Confession time. As an elite, educated and disenchanted believer I spent years being dismissive of Christians who spoke of God's daily miraculous interventions in the most mundane of circumstance. Praising God for helping find a good parking spot. For changing a red light to green. For finding a lost item in the house.

Over the years I've heard things that sound a whole lot like random or fortuitous coincidences described as God's miraculous intervention. And it can be hard for both intellectual and theological reasons to take these stories seriously.

But when you share life with enchanted believers you're going to be awash in miracles stories, from the grand to the trivial. And given that these miracles stories are being shared from the socioeconomic margins, my commitment to God's preferential option for the poor has caused me to stop rolling my eyes.

So like I did with the Devil in Reviving Old Scratch I've also had to rethink miracles. I don't want to listen to a miracle story, even the most trivial, with the elitist condescension of a theological snob.

If the poor are getting into the kingdom of heaven before the educated than I need to check my disenchanted tendencies when it comes to miracles stories.

But how to do that with theological and intellectual integrity?

In these posts I'd like to do with miracles what I did with the Devil in Reviving Old Scratch, I'd like to build some bridges between our disenchanted and enchanted worlds.

In the last two posts I have reflected on how hospitality brings holy and unclean into contact.

In light of that topic it might be good here to remember some of the insights I shared last February about the book Paul and the Gift by John Barclay.

According to Barclay, in the writings of Paul grace was very much about a social revolution, a revolution that brought holy and unclean into contact to create a "new humanity."

As Barclay argues it, the Apostle Paul's great theme concerned the incongruity of grace, that God gave the Christ-gift to the unworthy.

That understanding of grace--grace is for the unworthy--seems obvious to us today, but this was a revolutionary idea in the first century. The incongruity of grace was Paul's great theological innovation. But it's hard for us, thousands of years after Paul, to recover the shock of what he was saying.

The other problem we have understanding Paul's doctrine of grace is that we fail to attend to the social and corporate implications of grace.    

As Barclay argues in Paul and the Gift, Paul's message about the incongruity of grace is less about psychology--stirring up feelings of guilt and gratitude in our hearts to prompt an altar call--than sociology. Barclay wants us to appreciate how Paul's gospel of incongruous grace functioned in his mission to the Gentiles.

Specifically, God's incongruous grace justified Paul's mission to the Gentiles. Grace had been poured out upon the unworthy, upon the Gentiles as Gentiles. Further, Paul's message of incongruous grace was the supportive theology that allowed Jews and Gentiles to come together in table fellowship, the first, tentative social experiments on the road to becoming the church (see: Acts 11.19-26; Gal. 2.1-21).

This is the point I want us to appreciate, how grace brings holy and unclean people into contact.

How did the gospel of incongruous grace facilitate these social experiments, where clean and unclean people come into fellowship?

According to Barclay, these new and revolutionary communities were able to form as the fruit of Paul's gospel because the message of incongruous grace displaced social and cultural standards of value and worth, standards that had previously separated people as either "holy" or "unclean." In the face of the cross all those standards of social evaluation, significance and worth had been "crucified" and thrown away. Freed from these systems of social and cultural worth the Christian community was able to extend fellowship and love across social lines that had been taboo.

As Barclay writes (p. 394-395):

The cross shatters every ordered system of norms, however embedded in the seemingly "natural" order of "the world"... the cross of Christ breaks believers' allegiance to pre-constituted notions of the honorable, the superior, and the right...Paul parades the cross as the standard by which every norm is judged and every value relativized...

[As used by Paul in his argument in Galatians] The enormous creativity made possible by this vision of reality is immediately obvious: "For neither circumcision counts for anything, nor uncircumcision, but new creation."... Paul announces the irrelevance of taxonomic systems by which society had been divided in subtly hierarchical terms: old "antinomies" are here discounted in the wake of a new reality that has completely reordered the world..[I]n context the primary focus is the social novelty of communities that disregard former boundaries by discounting old systems of worth. The "new creation" is indifferent to traditional regulative norms and generates new patterns of social practice. 

We can clearly see the social effect of grace in Paul's famous declaration in Galatians 3.28:

There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus. 

What's important to remember here is how the distinction between Jew and Gentile was between the "holy" (the Jews) and the "unclean" (the Gentiles). Recall Peter's vision of unclean animals in Acts 10.

In all this we can appreciate the sociological impact of Paul's gospel as he attempted to plant Christians communities that violated social taboos throughout the Greco-Roman world. Jews and gentiles, slaves and masters, men and women crossing taboo social boundaries and discarding hierarchical systems of social capital. All these systems of social valuation, distinction and worth were rendered null and void, crucified with Christ in baptism, so that a new creation, tangibly incarnated in the new social reality of the Christian church, could be realized and enjoyed. As Barclay summarizes toward the end of Paul and the Gift (p. 566, emphasis his):

Paul's notion of the incongruous Christ-gift was originally part of this missionary theology, developed for and from the Gentile mission at the pioneering stage of community formation. Since God's incongruous grace dissolves former criteria of worth, it forms the basis for innovative groups of converts, by loosening their ties to pre-constituted norms and uniting them in their common faith in Christ.

Grace is a community, a sociological revolution where holy and unclean came together in love. Grace creates communities where cultural and social systems of worth are thrown away so that "new creation" can be experienced through surprising, boundary-crossing fellowship. As Barclay writes (p. 567):

Ancestry, education, and social power are subordinated to a common "calling" that disregards previous assumptions of worth (1 Cor. 1:26-31). Novel communities are encouraged to relativize the differences in culture, welcoming one another on the unconditional terms by which each was welcomed in Christ Jesus (Rom. 14-15).

Last week I shared a story from the prison, about a paradoxical object created when someone had thrown up on a bible. The book was simultaneously holy and unclean, too unclean to be used or touched, and too holy a book to be thrown into the trash.

As I noted in that post, my book Unclean is an exploration of the psychology of the holy and unclean and the tensions that are found at the boundary.

For example, since Halloween is coming up, I explore the topic of monsters in Unclean.

One of the things we see with monsters is hybridization. Many monsters are mixtures, say, half human and half animal. When this mixing is illicit and transgressive--bringing holy and unclean into contact--a monster is created.

And once a monster is created an explusive psychology is set into motion. We expel monsters from community.

All this creates a quandary for the missional community aiming to extend hospitality to the unclean, the way Jesus welcomed tax collectors and prostitutes to table fellowship. In the eyes of the religious leaders Jesus' hospitality was monstrous as it brought the clean into contact with the unclean. Jesus' table fellowship with notorious sinners was the most scandalous part of his practice.

And the point I'd like to highlight here are the psychological tensions and paradoxes that have to be attended to and managed in the act of hospitality. Hospitality isn't intuitive and easy. Hospitality can be troubling, paradoxical, scary and strange. And these psychological tensions cause churches to turn away from extending welcome to the outcasts and the unclean.

West Texas, in the eyes of many, doesn't have a lot of natural beauty. The land is flat and dry.

Our main attraction is the sky. With flat, open land the sky dominates our lives here. Our sunrises and sunsets are stunning. The night sky, with the vast canopy of stars, is full of wonder and magic. The huge cobalt blue sky with puffy white clouds from horizon to horizon looks hyperreal, the colors too vivid to be real. And a line of thunderstorms rolling in, with lighting flashing down from towering, roiling black clouds, is one of the most awe-inspiring sights you will ever behold.

Beyond the sky there isn't much natural beauty in West Texas. But we do have, for a couple days in the fall, the butterflies.

Every autumn the cold fronts from the north begin to push the Monarch butterflies southward toward Mexico where they will stay for the winter. The path of the annual Monarch butterfly migration goes right through Texas.

It happens fast, the butterflies only stay in town for a day or so, but there is always a day during the fall when assorted trees on our campus, mainly pecan trees, fill up with Monarchs. Hundreds of butterflies flying about and resting in a single tree.

It really is one of the most fairyland-like things you'll ever see, a tree full of butterflies.

All that to say, Tuesday in Abilene was that day. The butterflies chose a tree right outside the Psychology Department. It's hard to get a picture of butterflies up in a tree, but this picture was one photo I took with my phone of a Monarch-laden branch.

So, yeah, not a lot of natural beauty in West Texas.

But we do have the sky and the butterflies.

Michael, one of the inmates out at the prison, has been reading Unclean. He's totally fascinated by the psychology of disgust and divinity. It really is a fun psychology to explore. Once you read Unclean you'll see the dynamics at work all over the place. Truly, Unclean will change the way you see the world.

So the last few weeks before our bible study Michael and I have been talking about the psychology at work in Unclean, him sharing with me stories about examples he's stumbled upon or witnessed out at the prison.

For example, last week Michael shared with me a hilarious disgust/divinity paradox the inmates recently encountered.

The precipitating event was this: someone threw up on a bible.

And that created a problem.

On the one hand the vomit ruined the bible, contaminating the book. No one wanted to use it or touch it. The bible was ruined.

So what to do with the bible? Well, throw it away, right?

But that seemed wrong. The bible is a holy and divine object. You can't just throw a bible in the trash.

So the inmates were flummoxed. They didn't know what to do. The bible was ruined, but they couldn't throw it away.

So they just let the bible sit there all day, debating what to do.

"So what happened?" I asked Michael.

"Well, we all went to bed that night and when we woke up, the bible was gone."

The guards we presume disposed of the paradoxical object, a unique relic in the annuals of religious psychology.

An object both holy and unclean.

Yesterday I mentioned my use of an Orthodox prayer rope, also called a chotki. I had some readers contact me to ask about these ropes. What follows is from a post from 2013:

"I like your prayer rope. Are you Orthodox?"

Over the last year I've written a few times about my use of Anglican prayer beads. Many of you have written me about how, because of those posts, you've begun to use prayer beads and that they have been a great help to you and your prayer life. To receive notes like those is extremely touching.

In some of those posts about prayer beads a few of you, my Orthodox readers, have pointed me to the use of prayer ropes in the Orthodox tradition. Following your lead, and curious as always, I began investigating Orthodox prayers ropes.

Basically, prayer ropes work like prayer beads with knots working like the beads. For the Orthodox the knots on a rope are generally used to count the number of Jesus Prayers: "Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner."

The most common lengths of Orthodox prayer ropes are 100-knot or 150-knot ropes, though you can get ropes of 33 or 50 knots up to 300 or 500 knots. Similar to how the smaller week beads are separated by larger Cruciform beads on a string of Anglican prayer beads, the knots on a prayer rope are also separated by beads at regular intervals (usually at 25-knot intervals in the longer ropes).

The ends of an Orthodox prayer rope can differ. The Greek style ends with a knotted cross. The Russian style ends with a cross and tassel.

The traditional material and look of an Orthodox prayer rope is black wool, though ropes can be made from other materials and in other colors.

Finally, the knots of an Orthodox prayer rope are complicated, with many crossings and very symbolic. For an online tutorial in tying the knots see here.

Prayer ropes are carried in your pocket, but they can also be worn on the wrist.

Intrigued by the suggestions of Orthodox readers, last year I ordered a 100-knot, black wool, Greek-style prayer rope from St. Paisius Monastery. (Update: the 100-knot rope has been retired for the 150 knot rope I mentioned in yesterday's post.)

I began to wear the rope on my wrist as a prayer reminder and as a prayer aid (taking it off and using it to pray 100 Jesus Prayers). But just to make sure that this would be okay (I didn't want to be offensive to the Orthodox, a non-Orthodox wearing an Orthodox prayer rope) I emailed our local Orthodox priest, Fr. LeMasters. He gave me the green light stating that, from his perspective, anything that promotes prayerfulness is very much encouraged.

As so I wear an Orthodox prayer rope on my wrist. Most of the people I'm around just think it's a bracelet of sorts. No one knows (well, until now) that it's a prayer rope. There aren't many Orthodox in West Texas.

But when I travel out of state I've had an Orthodox person notice, every once in awhile, the prayer rope. Last time I was buying something at a store and the young man who was the cashier remarked, "I like your prayer rope. Are you Orthodox?" I explained, as I do, that I'm not, but that I owe a great deal to Orthodox theology and the prayer ropes of the Orthodox have been a great blessing to me spiritually.

And maybe, now, for you as well.

I mentioned last week that this summer I spent a day in contemplative retreat at a monastery.

I had my 150 knot Orthodox prayer rope with me. The Orthodox use the prayer rope to say one Jesus Prayer--"Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner."--for each knot.

I had planned to go through the rope like this, among other structured prayers and readings, a few times during the day. But in my first session using the rope I added something.

I spent some time thinking about and then listing on paper all my sins, all the places in my life where I struggle with pride and insecurity. All the places where my sin causes me to treat people poorly in my life. I also simply listed the names of people I was struggling with.

After writing down this list I began going through the knots and the Jesus Prayer, one by one looking at each of my sins for each prayer and knot.

It was a powerful way to go through the rope. Saying "Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner" over and over as you look at sins, vices, struggles, and the names of people made the prayer so much more specific and impactful.

It's a practice I'd recommend.

Two weeks ago Jana and I were grateful attend the Why Christian? conference hosted by our friends Rachel Held Evans and Nadia Bolz-Weber. As a part of the conference I led a breakout session entitled "Exorcism 101: A Progressive Vision of the Devil, Demons and Spiritual Warfare" based on my recent book Reviving Old Scratch.

I was curious, and not a little apprehensive, about how the session would go.

I knew that the Why Christian? crowd was very progressive and liberal, drawing from mainline traditions to post-evangelicals, a group I knew would be very suspicious about any attempt to rehabilitate the notion of "spiritual warfare." Would anyone come to the session? What would the reception be like?

Well, the room was packed. And the reaction was strong and positive.

I think it helped that we took some time at the start to talk about all the worries, concerns and potential for abuse attendant to any talk about the devil or demons.

After logging all those concerns I went on to sketch out six reasons progressive Christians need to invest in a theology of spiritual warfare, from Jesus to what I called the "colonialism of disenchantment" to the "spiritual dimensions of justice work."

I concluded by sketching out the foundations of a progressive theology of spiritual warfare, drawing from the last part of Reviving Old Scratch.

During the session and after, there was a strong and emotional desire to have this conversation. That surprised me.

Let me highlight two comments from the session.

One attendee talked about how she believed in the devil and spiritual warfare but feared sharing those beliefs in her liberal, mainline church for fear of educated members of her church looking down on her, intellectually and theologically. That struck me, that people in progressive churches feel shamed for believing in the devil. As I mentioned during the session, the enchanted/disenchanted divide is one of the least talked about fractures running through our churches. It's not just about the devil, but about prayer, miracles and host of other things.

Toward the end of the session another attendee shared experiences of spiritual attack and oppression but, again, felt silenced in her liberal, progressive church, fearing that people would think she's crazy. She had tears in her eyes sharing the painful isolation she was experiencing in her church.

All because liberal and progressive Christians don't want to talk about the devil.

I guess what struck me about these comments was the shame and the pain happening in progressive, liberal churches due to the silencing when it comes to the devil.

Given that I'm a statistics teacher I've been a long time fan of Nate Silver's work. I started following Silver's FiveThirtyEight blog during the 2008 presidential race.

(BTW, FiveThirtyEight refers to the fact that there are 538 electoral college votes.)

I check FiveThirtyEight a couple times a day to keep track of the presidential election. This election cycle FiveThirtyEight has introduced a new graph to display how the electoral college vote looks given state by state polling.

The "snake graph" is really an outstanding example of the fusion between visual design and quantitative display. It's the best graph I've ever seen if you want a quick, rich and easy to understand graph of the electoral college race.

The "snake graph" looks like this:

You can see and follow the current "snake graph" here.

During the summer I spent two nights and a day in contemplative retreat at the Benedictine Sisters of Erie monastery.

In the guest book in the room this is the welcome the Sisters have written for their guests:

By following Benedict's Rule to welcome the guest as Christ we open our hearts and receive you with reverence and respect. We offer you place and space to seek God. May it be an opportunity that leaves you with a clearer understanding of the Benedictine way of life as well as the Benedictine charism of hospitality. May it be an opportunity for our community to grow because of your presence among us. You are guest, you are Christ, you are gift. We welcome you.

--The Benedictine Sisters of Erie

A poem...

"Contemplative Prayer"

It is in the silence
here with You
where I can feel
the damage I have done to myself.

In the loudness and the hurry
there is no notice of the scarring,
the pain,
the wounds and cuts
that I inflict upon my soul.

I feel hurt
in the quiet.

Heal me.

This is my prayer.

One of the blessings being a Protestant who uses the Catholic Divine Office as a resource for structured prayer is being exposed to texts not included in Protestant Bibles.

One of those texts is the Song of the Three Holy Children from Daniel 3.

This canticle is included in Catholic and Orthodox Bibles in Daniel 3 after Nebuchadnezzar throws Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego into the fiery furnace. The song is a hymn of praise sung by Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego in response to God's deliverance.

If you're an evangelical Protestant you've likely never heard this song, I never had, but it's a common text in Catholic, Orthodox and Anglican liturgies and prayers. I think it's a beautiful song and would like to bring it to your attention.

Song of the Three Holy Children / Daniel 3.57-88

Bless the Lord, all you works of the Lord;
sing praise to him and highly exalt him forever.

Bless the Lord, you heavens;
sing praise to him and highly exalt him forever.

Bless the Lord, you angels of the Lord;
sing praise to him and highly exalt him forever.

Bless the Lord, all you waters above the heavens;
sing praise to him and highly exalt him forever.

Bless the Lord, all you powers of the Lord;
sing praise to him and highly exalt him forever.

Bless the Lord, sun and moon;
sing praise to him and highly exalt him forever.

Bless the Lord, stars of heaven;
sing praise to him and highly exalt him forever.

Bless the Lord, all rain and dew;
sing praise to him and highly exalt him forever.

Bless the Lord, all you winds;
sing praise to him and highly exalt him forever.

Bless the Lord, fire and heat;
sing praise to him and highly exalt him forever.

Bless the Lord, winter cold and summer heat;
sing praise to him and highly exalt him forever.

Bless the Lord, dews and falling snow;
sing praise to him and highly exalt him forever.

Bless the Lord, ice and cold;
sing praise to him and highly exalt him forever.

Bless the Lord, frosts and snows;
sing praise to him and highly exalt him forever.

Bless the Lord, nights and days;
sing praise to him and highly exalt him forever.

Bless the Lord, light and darkness;
sing praise to him and highly exalt him forever.

Bless the Lord, lightnings and clouds;
sing praise to him and highly exalt him forever.

Let the earth bless the Lord;
let it sing praise to him and highly exalt him forever.

Bless the Lord, mountains and hills;
sing praise to him and highly exalt him forever.

Bless the Lord, all that grows in the ground;
sing praise to him and highly exalt him forever.

Bless the Lord, you springs;
sing praise to him and highly exalt him forever.

Bless the Lord, seas and rivers;
sing praise to him and highly exalt him forever.

Bless the Lord, you whales and all that swim in the waters;
sing praise to him and highly exalt him forever.

Bless the Lord, all birds of the air;
sing praise to him and highly exalt him forever.

Bless the Lord, all wild animals and cattle;
sing praise to him and highly exalt him forever.

Bless the Lord, all people on earth;
sing praise to him and highly exalt him forever.

Bless the Lord, O Israel;
sing praise to him and highly exalt him forever.

Bless the Lord, you priests of the Lord;
sing praise to him and highly exalt him forever.

Bless the Lord, you servants of the Lord;
sing praise to him and highly exalt him forever.

Bless the Lord, spirits and souls of the righteous;
sing praise to him and highly exalt him forever.

Bless the Lord, you who are holy and humble in heart;
sing praise to him and highly exalt him forever.

Bless the Lord, Hananiah, Azariah, and Mishael;
sing praise to him and highly exalt him forever.
For he has rescued us from Hades and saved us from the power of death,
and delivered us from the midst of the burning fiery furnace;
from the midst of the fire he has delivered us.

I had a friend in the middle of some doubts ask if I had a book about the existence of God. He was wondering, Does God exist?

And my response was this: Of course God exists, that's not the question that is bothering you. What you are needing isn't apologetics, an argument for the existence of God. What you are looking for is a compelling vision of Christianity.

To be clear, I'm not saying this response is wholly satisfactory. Nor is it an answer that fits everyone. But it fits some people, like my friend. And for these sorts of people my answer is gesturing toward something I think is important but often missed in discussions about "doubts."

Specifically, a lot of people have a deep, often unarticulated, feeling that the world is mysterious and that "something" is going on with the universe. There is something transcendent tied up with and mixed up with truth, beauty and goodness. There is something sacred and hallowed. We suspect there is a God.

What is lacking, generally, isn't this experience of sacredness, transcendence or awe but a compelling vision of who or what God is and how we might find our place in the unfolding drama and adventure. The issue isn't really about if God exists but how our feelings of being haunted by transcendence can be translated into a compelling, vital and energized mode of living, working, creating and loving.