Editor's note: Br. Rog, by his own admission, is under the influence of prescription medications which deeply effect brain chemistry. In any event, he has completely consumed an entire month's portion of double-entendres, puns, and word-plays in this single column. Tread carefully.

Say what you like, there are some sorts of fear & pain that are unique.

Take blindness, for example. Until recently I had a mental image of blindness that was sort of surrounding blackness, like being in a dark room. Frankly, being a rather proud and independent sort of guy, blindness frightens me. As my multiple sclerosis has progressed, and along with it some macular degeneration, I have learned a lot more about blindness on a personal level. And it isn't at all what I expected.

I have macular blind spots on both eyes, but until recently, except at close range, those spots didn't "line up" between the eyes, meaning that as long as I kept both eyes open, I had a full field of vision. But the macular spots have been slowly increasing, and right now I have some notable areas of sure-nuff, for-real "blindness." I'm not ready for a white cane, thanks, and I'm still driving, albeit only in the immediate neighborhood. I have my computer monitor set to a lower resolution (i.e., big letters.) But instead of a dim future, blindness is now something tangible and inescapable, something real. Something in my future, though to what degree, no one can say.

The weird part is that blindness isn't blackness. I had always pictured Stevie Wonder in his own bubble of musical, happy blackness, with no optical stimulation whatever. Maybe that's the way it is for him. But my areas of blindness are an attractive blue-grey color with occasional flashes of bright light behind them. They pulse with the beat of my heart. I can actually feel the spots in the left eye, a very odd sensation to be physically aware of something occuring on the inside of your eye. It's not painful, and the overall sensory experience is only just annoying enough to make it hard to doze-off at night.

But it's the difference in perception I want to tell you about. It isn't blackness, it's something else. Blindness, even in the tiny dosage I am expeiencing, is vastly different from what I expected. My optical blindness is both physical (the sensors aren't getting the light) and electrical (the neurons aren't carrying the signal.) It perfectly matches my own spiritual blindness in many ways.

I have come to realize that spiritual blindness isn't some lack of theological education or insight. Any first-year seminarian knows this (guess I slept through that lecture!) Spiritual blindness is less about ignorance than a lack of perception. It is an inability to grasp the spiritual rather than the lack of a framework in which to fit spiritual ideas.

Children illustrate the differences beautifully.  They often know that Grandma or Rover is with God in heaven, and trying to argue dogma (or karma) with them is pointless. They just know. Maybe that's what children are here for, so we'll have someone who simply knows.

I have also begun to realize that people who want to help you find your way in the dark aren't necessarily the ones you want leading you. Sometimes people want to take your arm and steer you to some convenient corner where you can be parked, observed, or ignored. Blind guides, indeed (doesn't English create wonderful squinting modifiers?) But those thirsting for spiritual nourishment cannot be easily disuaded. They hear the call of the living water. They want to drink deep.

I continue to be blessed as God entrusts me with wonderful insights each day as I experience this disease. It is not a curse, it is a sacred trust of sorts, and I share it with you. Like the woman who found the coin in the darl corner of the room, each day I discover new hints of who God is by seeing my self as less significant and more dependent. If you're jealous, you have reason to be so.  But I'll try to share!

Now where did I put those glases. . . ?

Okay, I'm pulling out the soap box. (scraping sound)

I don't like privacy fences. They are ruining the neighborhood familiality I love about neighborhoods. I like knowing who my neighbors are, the names of their pets, their children, and even what they like to eat. I like to chat about work and about life, complain about taxes, and in general "chew the fat" with people I live near. Privacy fences tear at that wonderful familiar feeling that comes from being part of a community. They make it easy for neighbors to avoid each other. We can sneak into and out of our houses, wave at the people next door ("what was his name? Rob? Bob?") and feel snug and secure, carefully managing not to have any uncomfortable relationships intrude on our little slice of suburban paradise. It makes the mess that sometimes ends up in our backyard invisible to the neighbors. If we just keep the front yard trimmed and the music down, and we'll all get along.

Life isn't like that. Behind the privacy fences and drawn curtains is the messiness of family life. That includes things like uncomfortable marriages, disobediant children, failing automobiles, missed dinners, trash that needs to be taken out, and teenagers. Life is not the clutter-free existence we see in Better Homes & Gardens. Life includes spilled coffee, dirty laundry, and sometimes overdue notices in the mailbox. Privacy fences allow us to present only our best images to the world. This might be a slice of the truth, but it isn't the whole truth. Don't get me wrong, I don't want a reality TV show to be shot in my house or in my neighborhood. I just want a comfortable existence that allows us to get to know one another beyond the simple head nods and smiles that often accompanies surburban life in the United States.

In my Northern Virginia neighborhood, privacy fences are allowed only in the back yard and they cannot extend more than 4 feet high. That's enough to hide the situation when your three-year old has sprung naked from the tub to play with your cocker spaniel in the mud, but not much else is hidden. I like that a lot. I know my neighbors can see me if I fetch the mail in my bathrobe or take the trash out in my pajamas. It makes me take better care of what I do. But I also want to make a good impression on my neighbors and get to know them. I open my neighborhood doors with my own recipe for chocolate chip-peanut butter-coconut cookies, usually served warm from the oven on a plate I've stacked with a good portion. Maybe it's sneaky, but I'd rather open my door to a nice plate of cookies any day.

Okay, now making the metaphor fit the church.

We insulate ourselves in church attendance. We usually sit in pretty much the same pew and often we hear the same sermon (some of us preach the same sermon - can I get an "amen?") The church on Sunday sees a much different crowd than Monday through Saturday. It's not that Sunday gives us a dishonest view, but that Sunday isn't the whole truth. We (the church leadership) minister to a Sunday crowd, but forget that the real world is behind the privacy fence of Monday through Saturday. In the church, Monday through Saturday is when the children are catechised, the poor are fed, the dead are buried, the sick are visited. In the life away from the church, Monday through Saturday is the period of labor or study, and sometimes of entertainment. Sunday is offten less reflective of our spiritual lives than our spiritual ideals and goals. In my denomination (United Methodist) we seem bent on a course of emphasizing Sunday moring attendance and membership as the primary metric for measuring the success of a church and thus of the pastor. This, too, is true but it isn't the whole truth. Ecclesial success is much more about the "loving community" of Dr. Martin Luther King's vision, a community that stretches past Sunday and intrudes into the daily life of members. The successful church is messy. It has people with real problems, it has resources that are meager compared to the demands placed upon it, it has failures as well as successes. The loving community is engaged with Monday through Saturday, and rests on Sunday, waiting to hear again the good news and receive the sacraments.

When we, as church leaders, whether lay or clergy, fail to acknowledge the truth that church life is messy, we raise new barriers for people to become part of our community. Potential congregants and potential converts know that life in church on Sunday reflects our vision and our goals, not our current reality. Sadly, sometimes we in the church forget this fact. We need to share the difficulties and struggles of our church life with the loving community: budgets and expenses, failings and successes, controversies and areas of disagreement. It's too easy to hide behind the privacy fences of wanting everything to "look right" for the neighbors. That's not engagement. That's not the whole truth. And more importantly, that's not the good news of the Gospel.

I think the Gospel of Jesus Christ is the good news that despite the messiness we can still become part of the Kingdom of God. Jesus didn't ignore the difficulties of his time, he confronted them. He had his full share of controversy and certainly experienced a decline in membership. He didn't worry about demographics, he didn't fret because his apostles weren't all trained theologians, and he made certain his disciples were sent out expecting that there would be those who did not want to hear their message. For me, this is all tied up in the mystery of the Incarnation. God Incarnate is a messy theological concept. It has to be. Human existence is slippery, awkward, clumsy, and demanding. From our Christian perspective, only a God Incarnate can be trusted to fully understand the human condition.

So when I say that in some ways privacy fences seem to me to deny the mystery of the Incarnation, here's how I reach that conclusion. Privacy fences are a metaphor about making sure that everything appears nice and neat. The Incarnation is about the full truth, the reality that sometimes we don't mow the backyard, sometimes, the trash bin is overflowing, sometimes we yell at each other or howl at the moon. Human life, full of tears and pain, also encloses the highest joys we know: childbirth, marriage, love of neighbors, and the transcendental sacramental experience.  Give me a chain link fence if I have to keep Rover or Junior from wandering off, but better yet, let's just tear down all the fences. We already have too many barriers between each other and between ourselves and God.

Don't even get me started on churches with privacy fences.

Yes, the title is correct. If you’re a UMC elder, this is the appointive season, wherein elders wait for the dreaded (or longed-for) call from the district superintendant to discover whether or not they’ll likely be moved at the next annual conference.

Of course, UMC purists will correct me: the bishop makes the appointments, and the consultation with the elder and charge involved is just that, a consultation. But suffice it to say that for many UMC elders (a substantial portion of our OSL membership) this is a season of both positive and negative expectation. Fear and wondering, if you please, shock and awe if you’re so minded. Awe or “aw, shucks!” for that matter.

The epiphany part is a reference to the fact that in some conferences, if you’ve settled-in comfortably and don’t wish to be “discovered” and moved, you keep a low profile. You might also have the epiphany of discovering that you’re not compensated as well as your peers, since this is the time of year that many conferences finally release their annual conference journals from the preceding year, listing salary and years in appointment.

Another epiphany is when you discover a shift in your calling, perhaps to the superintendancy or perhaps delegacy of General or Jurisdictional Conference. And, of course, there is the desire to be “discovered” when assigned to a smaller church. Many smaller churches that cannot afford an elder except those who are at the lowest rates of compensation, i.e., usually those just starting out. These elders with less longevity necessarily wait in line to receive appointments to the churches able to better compensate their pastors. Out of a need and desire to provide better lives for their families through increased income, some elders sometimes wish for the phone to ring.

The appointive process effects the elder's family. For some families, the process of itinerancy is a positive thing. For others, it is an infliction annually threatened when the previous wound seems to have healed somewhat.  Families are subject to a sort of annual trial of trembling, wondering if their established school relationships and friendships will be rent again.

For me, I don’t think involuntary movement is a paradigm that the United Methodist Church needs to continue to embrace. In a world that is constantly moving, having more stability within the pastorate and pastoral families seems to me to be a worthwhile goal. Many conferences seem to agree, extending the average time for pastoral appointments to achieve this stability. What hasn’t changed is the time of fear and trembling.

My first appointment was rather awkward. For a variety of reasons, my prospective congregation was greatly opposed to my appointment. As the DS met me for my introduction to the congregation, he handed me a petition signed by the entire congregation asking that I not be appointed (this was before they’d even met me!) The “sales talk” by the DS was fairly well limited to “it’s a very pretty church, the paint is in good shape.”  On the other hand, it should be said that this appointment went wonderfully and that I felt the hand of God almost every moment that my family and I served this charge.

I’m no alone with the above sort of horror story. If you’re not a UMC elder, just ask one. If you are, feel free to share your story in the comments below.

Please pray for those experiencing the difficult season of pastoral appointment-making. Oh, me? I’m pleased to quietly say that I’ve been promised a nice part-time appointment very near my home in Virginia, I won’t need to move my family, children can stay in the same school, etc. . . provided the bishop thinks it’s a good idea.

It was fully a decade ago when I made this prediction - for me, that's pre-children, pre-seminary, and before my life had been shaped by a one-two punch of ordination and disability. I was acting as an occasional unpaid pulpit fill at one of the smaller local United Methodist Churches. The country was uneffected by the Y2K "crisis," but was still reeling from the shock of a group of web designers called "Heaven's Gate" who had committed mass suicide three years earlier. As a web designer, I took the time to use my then-uncommon broadband connection to research apocolyptic movement triggers among North Americans Christians. I spent a few days grabbing sources (this is before Wikipedia) and cross-referencing before I had my prediction. I boldly announced (to my wife) that a wave of "end of the world" pronouncements was certain to hit in the period leading up to 2012. My conclusions weren't based on the "end" of the Mayan calendar, though I noted that. My prediction was based on a pair of natural phenomena: first, the peak of the current solar cycle was predicted to occur sometime in 2012 (NOAA has revised this to 2013); second, the asteroid 433 Eros will pass dramatically close to the Earth in 2012 (close in astronomical terms, a touch more than 16 million miles.) To those who need to find evidence of the "end of the age", any evidence will do, but these two phenomena seemed particularly attractive to me.

I regret to say that it appears that I was right. Of course, the Discovery Channel managed to kick-off a few interesting documentaries on the Mayan calendar hypothesis early on, and the pop-film disaster (or is that pop disaster film?) "2012" crashed through theaters in late 2009. Last weekend my children (ages 7 & 9) were approached by a stranger on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., and given a pamphlet describing the coming Judgement Day on May 21, 2012. I was taking the disabled elevator, and my wife was within arm's reach of both boys. She saw what was being handed out, and held back a bit to catch the boys' reactions. I'm rather pleased that my eldest simply replied politely, "That's silly, God isn't going to end the world next year." I confess that before drawing conclusions, I read their brochure first (you can get a free copy here.) Grasping for a handle to characterize this astounding work of theological arithemetical nonsense, I was reminded of a line delivered by Sir John Geilgud in his role as the curmudgeon butler "Hobson" in the movie "Arthur." Responding to an introduction to a very lower-class Liza Minelli, Sir John responds, "Normally to meet someone of your caliber, one must travel to a bowling alley." This pamphlet is bowling alley theology at its best. At the very least, you'll need a score sheet to follow the ideas. I won't bore you with the various formulae used to support the dubious thesis. This column isn't about "they're wrong and I'm right." This column is about fear-mongering the Gospel.

Jesus' great initial message in the Scriptures is the proclaimation of freedom to the captives taken from Isaiah. Some would shackle us to the idea of a cruel and vindictive god, a god whose justice can only be understood in the stark tones of black and white, whose capacity for justice extends to everylasting joy on one hand and perpetual anguish on the other. Certainly some who proclaim this god of vengeance are sincere - perhaps most are. But I think many Christian pastors have made the discovery that by preaching a God of wrath, they themselves hold considerable power. This is not the power of love, but the power of fear. As it was explained to me very early in my quest for ordination, most people just want to know "what sort of god is God?" If you hold that knowledge, you're in a position of power. If you hold the sole power to forgive sins, that power increases dramatically. If you set an immediate timeline for God's final judgement, your power becomes almost overwhelming.  Of course, setting dates for the eschaton isn't anything new. The 19th century Millerites weren't nearly the first, and the Heaven's Gate crew of a decade ago won't be the last. The Apostle Paul reminds us as Christians, we need to be ready to give an account for the hope we have. That hope includes the return of Christ. It's not a threat, it's a blessed event! If Christ came to free us from the tyranny of sin, surely part of that tyranny includes those who would hold us hostage to our sins. Holding us hostage to the calendar as well doesn't square with the character of the God who created the Sabbath to free us from the tyranny of time itself.

Pop-eschatologists are supported by a thriving business in the end-of-time market. Writers like John Hagee, Hal Lindsey, Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins are selling a horror story of the worst kind. While warning us of the coming wrath, they reinforce their own stereotypes of who & what a "real" Christian is and who it is that God really loves.

I'm not a five-point Calvinist. I believe that Christ died for all, not just for the elect. I believe that the forgiveness won by Jesus Christ is available to all to the very last instant. I believe that the perfect sacrificial love of Jesus Christ, the omnipotence of God, and the omniscience of God, taken together, point us towards a very different picture of God than the one held by John Calvin. Dispensational premillenialism strikes me as denying the essential "lovingness" of God. If we are saved by grace, is not that grace infinite where it touches upon the very nature of creation? Or is God less than omnipotent? Or less than omniscient?

Bluntly, disabling the gospel with half-truths and arithmetical formulas strikes me as the same sort of foolishness that brought on the current worldwide "Great Recession."  The gospel was in no small part was a rejection of the tyranny of the priestly classes over the simplicity of the traditional believer.  For those of us in the Christian church who lead worship, we need to be sure our liturgical practices do not reinforce theological ideas we reject. In Matthew 25, Jesus offers the wonderful illustration about sheep and goats. Sheep follow their shepherd. Goats must be herded. Following involves trust and love. Herding involves fear and threats. As liturgists, are we goatherds or shepherds? Do we invite the congregation to be seated or do we give them permission? Do our rituals become diminished through human errors, or do we actively acknowledge our own failings and credit all holiness to God? Is the center of worship the Word, the message, or the messenger?

As a disabled person, I am intensely aware of my physical weaknesses. My "thorn in the flesh" has made my personal necessity for grace apparent in every moment of the day. In this I am richly blessed - I get to see just how much I need God, and I give thanks that God meets those needs! To turn my increased awareness of the need for grace into a curse would be to stand Jesus' explanation in John 9:3 on its head. Likewise, to proclaim threats rather than the Gospel proclamation of "release to the captives" is to turn love into fear-mongering. Sibs, please watch for this coming trend. May God give us strength to proclaim a God of love and grace in the midst of those who preach fear and threats. May the Holy Spirit enable us in worship leadership to best embody the presence of the God of love.