My Roots in a Theology of Fists and Flowers

My social media bio says I’m an “Appalachian Anabaptist Peregrinatio writing and living at the intersections of Shalom and a narrative Theology of fists and flowers.”

That’s a lot of big words for a man born where winding Appalachian coal country meets the river-bound steel mills of the Northern Appalachian Plateau.

I was raised in the shadow of both. I had family who made a living in both. I was weaned on the milk of mill-town mediocrity and the meat of union ideals shaping the world I knew.

I also grew up in church, not the snake-handling churches that have made Appalachia famous in yet another backwardly nefarious way, but in a non-denominational church comprised of two double wides placed together to form a “T” — a composite of a bunch of smaller communities that came together to build something bigger in the waning wake of the Jesus People movement.

Still, my earliest core spiritual memories are not there in something built to be bigger.

No, my earliest core memories are in house churches, living in drafty farmhouses with other families, and even six months spent living in a tent as my parents began building a house on land that was supposed to become a Christian commune of sorts.

In other words, my earliest core spiritual memories revolve around the idea that our faith is to be lived out with others. That there is a certain sanctification that lies outside of ourselves in the crucible of community.

Those earliest memories are wonderful.

Couple that juxtaposed against the socio-economic tension of large industry and the union labor that drove the ledgers of our region, and you have the theological incubator of my formative years.

It was filled with acoustic guitars and shared meals, labor strikes and picket lines.

It was filled with an abundance of loving spiritual community as well as watching my dad take odd jobs to make ends meet during forced layoffs.

Those first miles of my spiritual journey were filled with a radically loving Jesus who created us all with equal worth and the stark reality that we lived in a world hell-bent on making sure some people knew their place and stayed there — the deep promises of God’s Kingdom against the broken promises of human empire.

That is a journey of a stranger in a strange land, a spiritual exile without a known destination.

That is why I am a peregrinatio — a Holy wanderer, not a pilgrim — a spiritual seeker with a clear destination.

FISTS & FLOWERS

Recently, I posted on Twitter that I’ve always felt tension between these two identity markers, between what I read as Jesus’ call to non-violent resistance and my planted world of grit and bloody knuckles.

And at the end of that seminal tweet, I wrote something quickly that my heart had always known slowly, my theology is made up of a chaotic mix of “fists and flowers.”

Some of my kinder followers allowed me room to save face by suggesting my fists were filled with flowers, and maybe that is true on my better days, but I’d be lying to say it was my default.

I’m slow to fight for myself, but so fast to fight for those I feel may not feel they can fight for themselves.

Someone once told me the difference between being a safe person driven by love isn’t choosing to be either a hippy-dippy pacifist or a warrior protector. It’s actually a choice between capacity versus identity.

It is not that I do not have the capacity to fight, to rise up with fists that force change through violence and coercion. It’s this feeling I have deep in my soul that once my hands become tools of violence instead of tools of healing, I’ve already lost — Jesus reminding me in my gut that God’s Kingdom isn’t about desired domination but of sacrificial support.

I believe resisting an empire that is anti-Christ can be done creatively instead of violently.

I can fight for divinely created wholeness (Shalom)and against a human predisposition to oppressive injustice (Anti-Christ) without harming other created things.

I can offer the world flowers instead of fists.
I can offer the world beauty instead of blood.
I can offer the world creation instead of chaos.

… and in doing so, I not only battle the weed of human empire-building but I rip at the roots of empire methodology.

FOR THE HEART OF OUR KING

In the early mid-2000s, I led a small house church. I probably had no business doing so, but it happened fast, and it happened organically.

Our battle cry came from a book called, The Barbarian Way by Erwin Raphael McManus.

In it, he shares some folklore surrounding the Scottish King, Robert the Bruce.

The story goes that on his deathbed, Robert the Bruce requested his heart be removed and taken on a Crusade by a worthy knight.

James Douglas, one of Robert’s closest friends and advisors was at his bedside and vowed to take up the call. The heart of Robert the Bruce was embalmed and placed in a small container that Douglas carried around his neck, pressed against his own beating heart.

In the early spring of 1330, Douglas found himself engaged in a Spanish campaign against the Moors. By the end of a particular battle, Douglas found himself surrounded, death marching imminently toward him.

In his final moments, Douglas ripped the box from around his neck and flung it into his swarming enemy while crying out, “Fight for the heart of your king!”

I adopted that cry as my own. I could do a lot worse than living out my days for the heart of my King, a beautiful marriage of romantic idealism and gritty sacrificial love.

Some days you fight the shadows with fists. Some days you do it with flowers.

My wandering may always find its footing in the spaces between those atoms of tension. Maybe you feel my words deep within your own bones. Maybe God has used your experiences to offer the Kingdom a different set of skills.

Whatever the case might be, I pray you find your own spiritual tension and be bold enough to explore it. That is often where we find our purpose.

Peace and wholeness to all of you.