Excerpt: God Hides in Plain Sight

« 1 2 View All»

Dr. Nelson's new book was released on September 1st, 2009

Dr. Dean Nelson is the founder and director of Point Loma Nazarene University’s journalism department.  His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Boston Globe, Christianity Today, and Sojourners.  He has won several awards from the Society of Professional Journalists for his reporting, and has written or co-written 11 books, mostly on spirituality themes. Nelson is a frequent speaker at writing workshops and conducts retreats that focus on spiritual depth.

Dr. Nelson also hosts the annual Writer’s Symposium By The Sea, where prominent writers come to discuss the craft of writing.  His interview subjects have included Amy Tan, Anne Lamott, Ray Bradbury, George Plimpton, Kathleen Norris, Donald Miller, Bill Moyers, Jim Wallis, Barbara Brown Taylor, Eugene Peterson, and Philip Yancey, among many others, which you can view here.  You can find more information on Dean Nelson at his blog.

Burnside is proud to know Dr. Nelson, and pleased to feature the following: an excerpt from his newly-released book, God Hides in Plain Site: How to See the Sacred in a Chaotic World.  The book is published by Brazos Press, and can be purchased here.

—

Leaving The Porch

Look again. There’s a great deal more. I know that narrow world by heart and I can tell you from here a few things you may not have noticed. – Walker Percy

One December night while I was in graduate school in southern Ohio, our elderly next door neighbor knocked on our door and asked if we wanted to see how she and her husband had decorated their house for Christmas.

“My husband made all of the ornaments for our Christmas tree. He carved a lot of other decorations, too, like a little pond with ice skaters on it. It’s very pretty. I think the kids will really like it.”

We practically leapt to our feet in assent.

The reason we were so excited was that we were bored out of our minds. At Ohio University, where I was attending, classes for the fall term had been out since before Thanksgiving. That gave me lots of concentrated time in the library for work on my dissertation, but for the rest of the family, it was anything but fun. It was cold, snowy, with a stainless-steel hue to the sky that made it seem like it was nearly night all day long. Plus, with school out of session, this already-slow college town crept to a crawl.

Blake was three and Vanessa seven months. With kids that age, in dreary weather, a little cabin fever sets in on everyone. A highlight for Marcia and the kids was to walk to the city bus stop, catch the bus, ride it to the end of its route, which was at a shopping mall at the edge of town. The mall was deserted, by and large, from the day it opened. Only about one-third of its available space had been leased to stores. The rest of it sat empty, like much of the town that month. When the bus driver was done with his lunch, he would turn the bus around and drive back. Often, Marcia and the kids were its only passengers.

So a chance to go to the neighbor’s house and see some craftsmanship? Woo-hoo! Maybe even stay for a cup of hot chocolate? Does it get any better than this? Get the nitro pills, dear – we’re going next door!

Marcia got Blake bundled up in his borrowed snow suit, hat, mittens, scarf and boots. I put heavy clothes on baby Vanessa and zipped her into the heavy wool, hooded papoose we had gotten in a baby shower. Her arms and legs were inside the cocoon, so all that you could see of her was this tiny oval where her face peeked out. Held upside-down she looked like a large, plaid raindrop with a face. Then Marcia and I quickly got on our heavy coats, hats and boots and headed out for the 20-step walk from our house to our neighbors’. We crunched through the snow and talked to the kids about how wonderful this was going to be. People in Athens had the time and talent to really do Christmas right, we told the kids. It wasn’t like lame San Diego, where they string lights on sailboat masts and parade around in the bay in 80-degree weather smugly singing “I’m Dreaming of a White Christmas.”

Within a few seconds we were at the neighbor’s house. We knocked on the door of the front porch, and she came out to greet us. We stood, shivering, as she pointed out their Christmas tree through the window. The tree and the decorations were inside the house. We were on the porch.

“See those lights on the tree? Each one lights up one of the ornaments my husband made,” she said.

We leaned forward to see. I could tell that they had a roaring fire in the fireplace. In our drafty, rented house next door there was no fireplace.

“I can’t see, mom,” Blake said.

I handed Vanessa to Marcia and picked up Blake, who weighed at least 15 pounds more, with all of his winter gear.

“Can you see the skating rink on the table? My husband made it and the skaters.”

“Where are they, mom?” Blake said.

Vanessa was a little young to realize how odd this all was. Especially when I hung her upside-down. But one of the great things about kids who have recently learned to talk is that they don’t know how to sugarcoat things.

“Why aren’t we going inside, mom?” Blake asked, as he leaned practically out of my arms, trying to see the decorations. “Aren’t we going to have some hot chocolate, mom?”

We all stood on the porch for a while longer. Freezing. We waited for what we were sure would be an invitation inside the house.

“Well, thanks for coming over,” our neighbor said. “I thought the kids would enjoy this.”

“Thanks so much for inviting us,” Marcia said. “It was fun.”

I was speechless. We spent more time putting winter clothes on the kids than we did on this ice-box porch, straining to see some carve-by-number figurines safe in the confines of a warm house? We couldn’t go inside at least to thaw?

After an awkward moment of silence, Marcia said, “Well, thanks again. Merry Christmas,” and we left.

“Why are we leaving, mom?” Blake said. “We didn’t go inside and see the decorations.”

When we got back inside our house, Marcia and I looked at each other and said, “What was that about?”

“Where’s the hot chocolate, mom?” Blake said.

So I went out to the garage, got in the car, drove to the grocery store and bought some hot chocolate for us all, shivering the entire way.

Later, I came to two insights about this experience. One had to do with how strange our neighbors were.

The other was that this illustrated the spiritual journeys of many of us. A lot of the time it seems that we know there is something special, wonderful, meaningful, inside. So we get outfitted for the trip to the interior – our personal Great Interior. We walk through some difficult elements to get there. We get a college degree in the subject, maybe. We get on the porch and see what is next. And we never get off the porch. We catch glimpses of what life is like in the interior rooms, but for whatever reason, we remain on the porch bundled up in our shallow, shivering lives.

All the while there is a voice, like my son’s, that keeps saying, “Aren’t you (we) going in?”

—

We want you to check out Dean Nelson’s book, but you don’t have to take our word for it!

“Dean Nelson has a lively, conversational writing style, and this book has wonderful and valuable things to say. I won’t soon forget  them.” – Frederick Buechner, author of Listening to Your Life

“Dean Nelson writes beautifully. And no less wonderful, he sees beautifully and knows how to help us see what he sees. In God Hides in Plain Sight, he will help you spot what is most worth seeing (and very  easily missed): the beauty of God camouflaged in the sacrament of your daily experience, around you, right now, whoever and wherever you are.” – Brian McLaren, author, activist

“The church has long used the concept of sacraments-outward signs of inward grace-to name the spaces where God meets us in an especially present way. But for many Christians, that language seems abstract, even (sadly) foreign.  Dean Nelson lovingly explores those spaces of encountering God; his luminous book has helped me see the sacred in the ordinary anew.  I am grateful.” – Lauren Winner, Duke Divinity School, author of Girl Meets God

“In a world where so much miraculous is perceived as ordinary, Dean Nelson points out the places where we see God in our everyday lives,helping us understand that the mundane might actually be holy. In a wonderful narrative, Nelson weaves the sacred presence of God through his text, and reveals that thread also running through our own lives. A lovely read.” – Donald Miller, author of Blue Like Jazz

“Dean Nelson is God’s spy, looking for God in all the times and places most of us would never think to explore. He doesn’t miss much. Nelson combines a journalist’s gift for involving us in the stories that are happening all around us with a professor’s attentiveness to the sacramental nature of this God-created, Christ-redeemed life in which we are immersed. Combining the readability of excellent writing and the reliability of sound scholarship, God Hides in Plain Sight is better than a spy novel.” – Eugene Peterson, translator of The Message, professor of spiritual theology emeritus, Regent College, Vancouver

“If God is indeed hidden in the world around us, then we’re blessed to have a warm, entertaining tour guide in Dean Nelson. He leads us through the sacraments with humor and creative insight, expertly pointing out the places-and the Presence-most of us miss along the way.” – Jason Boyett, author of Pocket Guide to the Bible and Pocket Guide to the Afterlife

« 1 2 View All»