A Burning in My Bones: The Authorized Biography of Eugene H. Peterson, Translator of The Message

by Winn Collier

William Blake believed that we become what we behold.

the blood of things.

“That butcher shop was my introduction into the world of congregation,”

The butcher shop was a place, as he would later describe the church, with “a lot of misfits and oddballs.” It placed him, day after day, in a context of unspectacular ordinariness—and he learned to see it as holy.

and I was embarrassed for my pastor who seemed so out of place in this holy place of work.”

This likely was due in part to his rigid Pentecostal upbringing that caused him to view others with suspicion.

Prayer wasn’t something he did—it was something he was. He lived a life of prayer. It took me about six or seven years to understand what he had done.

Sure, he didn’t have the credentials or experience typically required, but in the Pentecostal world, protocol readily gave way to zeal.

“He Refused to Be King,” proclaiming that if we are ever to crown Jesus as king of our hearts, it will happen “among confession and tears and great laughter.” It was these final two words, with their unequivocal invitation to joy, that struck the flint.

I’m having the time of my life talking to all these people at West Park and preaching this informal gospel across coffee cups.

I’ve been meeting early in the mornings with Donn and Dick at their request to pray for the H.S. I agreed to do it only if I could do whatever I felt like—talk in tongues, sing, pray loud…anything.

If I were to define what for me makes up the core Pentecostal identity, it is the lived conviction that everything, absolutely everything, in the scriptures is livable. Not just true, but livable. Not just an idea or a cause, but livable in real life. Everything that is revealed in Jesus and the scriptures, the gospel, is there to be lived by ordinary Christians in ordinary times. This is the supernatural core, a lived resurrection and Holy Spirit core, of the Christian life. What Karl Barth expressed dialectically as the “impossible possibility.” I had always believed that. I believed it still.

When I become too intellectual I sacrifice spiritually—so I’ve gotten afraid of it.

He understood his writing to be an act of worship as well as work honoring the God who from “in the beginning” has always pulsed with creative energy.

“We had never been very close,” Eugene stated years later in his memoir. “He gave most of his attention to his meat-cutting business. I was covetous of his attention but never got what I wanted. But in these ten final days of his life, I received a full measure of the intimacy that I had missed growing up. It was more than enough.”

What do I want from Israel: I want to be there—at the beginning, source-places. I want a sense of first-handedness….I want to engage in pilgrimage: feel some of the difficulty, testing and arduousness of living the faith in physical conditions: rock and sun, sand and rain. The conjunction of holiness and weather—working out the integration of worlds.

Got rid of the sense that I was just passive and now was shouting down the devil: used Psalms 24, 114, tongues, Yahweh Elohim, chant. Haven’t done this for a long time, but it was wonderful, even though temporary.

I keep reflecting on what is going on/not going on with me, he journaled. Why is every day so difficult? Why am I so tired! Is this something the Sabbatical will cure, or is there something else? How can everything seem to be working so well and I not feel better about it?

When I am in conversation with her I am at my best—her presence/life are so true that I am true. I hope I have that effect on people—at least a few of them.

Jan—my icon spouse.

This is a beautiful attribution

It is just fine for information and accreditations. But it sure does wipe out the imagination.

In one of his last courses, Eugene recounted, with his raspy voice, the sad contours of David’s final years, how this man with such desire and fervor, such promise and intention, squandered the last part of his life. Eugene paused often. “He would just be very quiet,” Cuba remembered. And then, after one long stillness, Eugene offered a single line: “We don’t always finish so well.”

Something has happened to the word “homosexual” in our time: the word has become polemicized; it has become a depersonalizing label, with consequent dehumanizing attitudes. “Homosexual” is taken out of the context of Paul’s list (idolaters, adulterers, thieves, greedy, drunks, slanderers, swindlers) and treated no longer in terms of an immoral behavior but as an immoral identity which is then attacked as an enemy. The term has been used so frequently in mean, dehumanizing ways, that it is difficult to use it in the spirit of Paul and Jesus in our culture.

Then use it for with its right intention. If Paul mean't homosexuals then it doesn't matter if the current culture has lambasted the term into nothingness. I do not agree with Peterson's conclusion here.

I translated the text that is in The Message directly from the original Hebrew and Greek texts. I have taught both of these languages in evangelical Christian seminaries for years….When people have addressed me as you have with questions and asking for clarification, I have always answered them as best I could, and have never had a single person respond to me whether thanking me or condemning me. And so finally I quit. What I do now is suggest that my critics learn Hebrew and Greek and we can discuss the word or sentence in question. But I find it nearly useless to discuss something totally out of context—if you are not willing to deal with the language from which I was translating I don’t think we can do much. I have never had any takers. Three or four years on each language should equip you to discuss my translation. But I am 82 years old now and so will probably be dead by the time you are ready.

ballsy

If I am ever to be a saint, it is a saint of the basics: love Jan, be faithful at my prayers, write well and abundantly, prepare to die.

Don’t spend your time trying to get your congregation to live the truths or the way you want them to do. Instead, you just live this way, with them. It doesn’t work very well to impose anything on a congregation.

“Together, we are witnesses to this glad fact: that in sure and certain hope of the resurrection to eternal life, through Christ Jesus our Lord, I declare that the baptism of Eugene Hoiland Peterson is now complete. ‘Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord…,’ says the Spirit, ‘that they rest from their labors, and their works follow them.’