Life of The Way

2012-01-09T09:34:00.001-06:00

a chunk of rationality that I couldn't jettison

~ Christian Gehman

on tattered dreams

2011-12-28T11:06:00.002-06:00

In rested hope it seems
Amiss to rise on tattered dreams
Too high the galewind lifts
The heart's long drop in silted drifts
And yet the tats recall
O the glory, the sweet sad beauty of the fall

hopeless

2009-11-30T08:30:00.000-06:00

Who hopes for what he already has?

reader conflict

2009-09-14T11:51:00.001-05:00

Here's what you get when you have eclectic tastes. LOL.

living for you

2009-09-10T23:39:00.005-05:00

I can't live your life for you. It is enough for me to live my own. I can walk with you. I can listen to you. I can back you up. I can offer advice (such an ugly word, reminds me of vice grips). But I can't live your life for you.

I wonder if it's the same with God. I have heard (for a long time and many times over) that if you accept Jesus then God comes to live in your heart by his spirit. And there is also language of rebirth that is added in the mix--being "born from above". The idea is that you can be "God's offspring". In other words, you can be a shoot or a branch of the plant that is God, very like a vine and its branches. Jesus even said that if you remain in him and he in you then you will bear a lot of fruit. Because he is living in you.

But is it HIS life he's living in you, or YOUR life he's living in you? I wonder. And in God's way of looking at things, do YOU even have a life apart from him?

I think a lot of well meaning people have the assumption that there is only one real life, that it is an essential life defined in the Bible, and that you enjoy that life in direct relationship to how much you conform to it. There are variations of this theory. One is that God has given you everything you need to know in the Bible, and you just need to follow it to enjoy it. Another is that if you give yourself over to the Spirit of God, then God will mystically transform you more and more into the likeness of Jesus, producing an "accidental" enjoyment of life (I use accidental in the technical sense--not meaning a mistake but meaning a state that you could arrive at independent of any concerted, intentional effort on your part).

I'm not convinced.

I'm not so sure that there is ONE life. I think maybe there are billions of life, each having its uttermost source in the life of God, but each being completely different--themes and variations if you will. I think of a master pianist playing some very basic theme and then elaborating into (seemingly) infinite variations on that theme, giving color and depth and beauty to the theme. Giving the theme a body.

And that brings me back to this idea of living your life for you. I don't know if God really wants to live your life for you. I know I don't want to. I want your life to be different/better/richer/fuller/truer/something-er because I am WITH you, but not because I am taking over for you. I'm not your replacement life. I certainly have known people who want to live other people's lives for them, though. It's like an invasion of the body snatchers. They tell them what to do, get mad if they don't, and leave them if they consistently don't. And I think there is a popular image of God that works like that. But that sounds more like a banshee situation then "enthusiasm" to me (again, I am using enthusiasm in a technical sense enthusiasm meaning "God inside").

The other idea that goes along with this quite easily is guilt by association. If I have bought into the idea that there is this ONE life, and that it comes first from God, then goes from person to person as they take dominion over the world and all her children by either their words or their actions, then I start to expect causal relationships. I expect that a pastor whips his church into shape, that an educated person gets his friends in line. But I haven't bought into this idea.

The idea that I have bought into is that there is more than one life, that there are thousands and millions and billions of expressions of the Creator, all with their uttermost source in him, all knowing the others but not fully, none understanding completely what the others have and are because none understanding fully the Creator, all at their deepest and truest self simultaneously being pulled into oneness and scattered into diversity.

Sometimes it's hard for people to believe that I can put up with the stuff I do. How can I possibly accept someone and continue to embrace someone who continues to choose dark paths? Easy. I can't live your life for you. It is enough for me to live my own. I can walk with you. I can listen to you. I can back you up. I can offer advice. But I can't live your life for you. I can stick around and I can react to you. But I can't live your life for you. Frankly I don't know the end of you, don't know the end of the path you will walk, especially if you walk it with God, in God. Who can understand his ways?

I can't live your life for you. It is your cross to bear. It is your face to wear. It is your live to live. It is your soul to give.

a good day

2009-04-24T09:39:00.003-05:00

Today is a good day.

It started out with breakfast with the and helping Christopher get his blog set up.

to-day

2009-04-14T19:35:00.006-05:00

Happy the man, and happy he alone,
He who can call to-day his own;
He who, secure within, can say,
To-morrow, do thy worst, for I have liv'd to-day.

That's from Imitation of Horace. Book iii. Ode 29, Line 65. But honestly, it doesn't matter what book, chapter, and verse it's from, whether it's written in Horace, the Bible, the Torah, the Qur'an, the Bhagavad-Gita, the Scientology Handbook, the Book of Mormon, Why I Am an Agnostic, or the Tao-te-Ching.

One of the amazing things we in our little fellowship chewed on during Lent was this accusation that Jesus wasn't much of a planner. In Jesus Christ Superstar, Judas accused, "You'd have managed better if you had it all planned." Jesus is guilty as charged. He lived today. Tomorrow had its own designs. He lived today well. And since we've just come by Easter, I will also say: He lives today well. "In ten thousand places, lovely in limbs, and lovely in eyes not his, to the Father through the features of men's faces."

This is the way.

epexegesis

2009-03-12T21:55:00.004-05:00

ep·ex·e·ge·sis /ˌe-ˌpek-sə-ˈjē-səs/
n. (pl. -ses /-ˌsēz/) the addition of words to clarify meaning.

duty is doodie

2009-03-02T13:42:00.001-06:00

short and decisive

2009-02-11T17:11:00.005-06:00

I just read this. It was the thought of the moment over on the anagram server.

The belief in the possibility of a short, decisive war appears to be one of the most ancient and dangerous of human illusions. -Robert Lynd, writer (1879-1949)

This must be true. But why does it FEEL like short and decisive and war should go together?

This feeling accounts for a lot of misery and confusion in the church that meets at my house, and among some other friends, I think. Just like America felt like "shock and awe" in Iraq and Afghanistan would do the trick, everyone feels like God could just fix things by a little shock and awe smackdown on evil. Two thousand and some years later we're still embroiled in this thing. Maybe that's just not how things work.

So who is spinning this illusion? Our own laziness?

tempora mutantur

2009-02-09T11:53:00.003-06:00

tempora mutantur, nos et mutantur in illis

times change, and we change with them

the control deal

2009-01-08T08:46:00.003-06:00

If you control a man, you control everyone that deals with him.
- Frank Delaney

best christmas

2008-12-23T00:54:00.003-06:00

This may be the best Christmas gift I've ever received…

These are still available online here: http://www.lifetoday.org/site/PageServer?pagename=out_missionFeeding, and you can still get these in time for Christmas if you have that last minute gift you need to get for that guy, girl, or family who has everything. And if they're American, chances are they really do already have everything. And then some. Of course there are other ways of feeding the hungriest children in the poorest places. Not lots of other ways, but other ways no doubt. I have always liked James and Betty Robison because I know they could have easily been those shiny teeth televangelists with a huge national stage and lots of money, but they chose to drill clean drinking water wells and feed hungry children in the third world instead. Not because it proves their faith is superior, but just because it's a good thing to do.

To me, outreaches like the FEED 100 bags and Life Today are brilliant. To me, it's simple. They have a way to get food to starving people, and I have a way to get them the money to do it.

I believe and want to support lots of world-changing causes—everything from politics to education to spreading the gospel. But it's frankly a joke if I would do all that walking past starving people along the way. A dirty joke.

Thanks, Brent and Kindra. Thanks for riding along side us. Thanks for sharing our passion. Thanks for listening to our hearts. Thanks for accepting who we are.

sinners rule

2008-12-21T19:19:00.001-06:00

Sinners need lots of rules. Have you ever noticed this?

christmas gifts

2008-11-29T14:10:00.010-06:00

Here's where some of my Christmas gifts are coming from and going.

First, I ran across this website called LIGHT GIVES HEAT (www.lightgivesheat.org). It's an organization made up of young people who moved to Uganda to see if they could make a difference. They have entwined themselves with an African community called SUUBI. The women of SUUBI make these beautiful bead neacklaces and jewelry from recycled paper. LGH buys them from them consistently and at a better price than locals could or businesses would, and then they sell them online to wealthy people like me. The money allows allows the SUUBI women to have a sustainable income. LGH also lives among the SUUBI community and does other stuff like cooking, washing clothers, and teaching English. Anyway, I bought a few of the $20 necklaces, and they are beautiful.

Next, I was doing some shopping in Whole Foods in Austin, the original store, and came across these FEED 100 bags. Basically, it's a shopping bag replacement, an alternative to "paper or plastic". Or you could use it for a purse or gym bag or diaper bag or luggage.

Each bag you buy for about $30 provides 100 school lunches for Rwanda children through the UN World Food Program. You can see the bags front and center on Whole Foods' website (www.wholefoodsmarket.com) or you can get the full story on the FEED 100 Project website (www.feedprojects.org). There's also a pretty cool youtube video here.

Right now I've got the boys bringing out the Christmas decorations. To get in the spirit, they surfaced the Christmas music collection, and I can hear carols filling the house. Each Christmas I really hope this will be the year I don't spend too much on myself—feeding myself, my family, my rich neighbors...buying gifts for myself, my family, my rich neighbors... Each Christmas I hope this will be the year that Jesus gets his birthday wish.

When you put on a luncheon or a banquet, don’t invite your friends, brothers, relatives, and rich neighbors. For they will invite you back, and that will be your only reward. Instead, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind. Then at the resurrection of the righteous, God will reward you for inviting those who could not repay you.
Jesus

Happy Holidays!

Caleb's fall

2008-11-25T12:03:00.011-06:00

My youngest son, Caleb, gets very upset when he falls down or gets hurt. At three, most kids sit on the floor and cry until Mommy comes. Here’s how that scene plays for Caleb. First, he pauses to see if he’s really hurt. If not, he moves on. If he is, he either grits his teeth or runs out of the room screaming. If someone asks him, “Caleb, are you ok?” he runs out of the room screaming. It’s like he’s embarrassed for hurting himself, or ashamed or something. I’m not sure where this came from, but I will say that he is one tough kid! The one time he really cried was at two when he climbed up on the table and fell into the metal brads on the corner of the couch. That was a doozie. He cried as he bled all over the living room. This picture is from our recent holiday to the Smoky Mountains. The scuff on his cheek is from falling in the parking lot while his brothers were swinging him. The scar over his right eye is from the fall in the living room.

Yesterday, Caleb was at the park playing with his big brother Joshua, the one in the picture, and some other kids. A bigger boy began pushing Caleb in a swing. His mom was walking around the perimeter of the park with a friend. She could see him playing, and could see the boy was pushing him, and thought to herself that he was pushing Caleb a little too hard. She decided to tell him to get down when they got back around to the swing. Maybe the boy thought Caleb was older or stronger than he was because of his size (he’s rather big for a three year old). Whatever the case, Caleb lost his hold and went flying through the air. Now, what goes up must come down, and with Caleb that means a thud, a pause, and then that embarrassed scream.

But he didn’t scream this time. Jill wasn’t sure what happened at the time, because she looked up and saw Caleb whimpering and walking toward her. It was pretty easy to figure out when he got to her that he had fallen. She consoled him, and they went back to playing. But all day, Caleb was in his mother’s words, “edgy”.

When I got home, I said hi to him. He screamed and stomped his feet. He does this sometimes, but it’s usually for some immediate reason. I asked if I could hug him. He screamed and stomped his feet and ran out of the room. I backed off and tried again later. Usually I just try again later. He’s a very warm and friendly boy, but sometimes he’s slow to warm. Anyway, this happened several times. Later, Jill gave him a bowl of Pringles that he was walking around eating. I asked him for one. He screamed, ran into the next room, and stood with his back to me. (I asked him for one fully expecting him to say, no, which is ok. Because after he said no, I was going to share another one with him from the can, which I had. I like doing that kind of thing.) Anyway, his no was over the top. Jill, who knows Caleb very well, even wondered at this behavior. She said it was almost like Caleb is afraid of me or something. She asked me if something happened between us. I told her no.

Now, here’s one more thing about Caleb. He’s a boy. I say that to mean not that he has a penis, but that he’s a boy at heart. At night when he gets tired, he wants his juice, and he wants to lay next to his mother, rubbing her neck. He used to say, “want juice, want mommy neck” as he moved toward sleep. He’s not interested in daddy neck at all. In fact, if I lay down beside Caleb and his mom, he will often kick me out of the way. Oedipal? But one day I was spinning a top on the floor with Joshua. Caleb’s eyes filled with wonder. He came over to me, sat in my lap, and before you know it, he was touching my neck. Ever since then I have noticed that when it comes to kicking balls or throwing Frisbees or wrestling or playing catch or whatever, Caleb wants to be very close to me. There’s a real connection there with motion and strength and skill and performance.

I finally pulled Caleb back to me and forced him to look at me and tell me yes or no, through wails, to the question of the Pringle. I literally turned his face towards mine with a hand on either side of his head. Not until his mom finally came and held him in her lap to reassure him that he wasn’t in trouble did he answer. And the answer was no. I could not have a Pringle. “Well”, I asked him, “do you want one of my Pringles?” He kept crying, but you could see the wheels spinning. I asked again, and he shook his head ever so slightly yes. “Alright,” I said, and gave him one. He took it in his little fingers and stacked it snugly with his others. He was still whimpering, but he had stopped wailing. I asked him if he wanted another one. He shook his head yes again. So he got another one. And then he wiped his eyes and was quiet. Then he sat at the table in his mom’s lap, eating his stack of Pringles quietly.

So, with Caleb sitting in her lap eating Pringles, Jill starts talking about how edgy he’s been all day, and she tells me about him falling from the swing and the other events of his day. I asked Caleb about falling from the swing. He just stared at me. I asked him if the big boy pushed him too fast. I raised my arms in fists to communicate strength. He just stared at me flatly, maybe with a dazy-glazy look, hard to tell. I asked again several different ways. I kept bringing it back to the swing because I had a hunch that the fall, seemingly minor, was behind all this. Jill took my lead and asked him very tenderly if he fell from the swing when the big boy pushed him too high. And there it was. Caleb finally spoke, and when he did, this articulate little fellow, mouth full of Pringle glob, produced a jumbled mess of a sentence with swing and park and shopping and mommy and car and chips. Poor little guy. I don’t think he knew what to do with that fall. And because he didn’t know what to do with it, he didn’t know what to do with me or anyone else in his little world.

I went over to where Caleb was sitting in his mom’s lap and kneeled down so my head was on the level with his. I told him I was sorry he fell from the swing, and that it was ok, and that the big boy pushed him too high, and that I loved him. And then I kissed him on the cheek. He has such soft, chubby cheeks. I have such a prickly face.

Caleb went to bed in good spirits, and today he is back to his normal fun-loving self. He hugs and smiles and talks and makes a mess of the house.

I wondered last night, and woke up still wondering this morning, at how wounds work to shape our lives. Much is made of the father wound—whether it be violent physical abuse or shaming verbal constructs, or whether it’s a different sort of violence—abandonment, rejection, withdrawal, silence, passivity. But not all the hits we take are from our father or even from someone in our family. Some wounds come from thoughtless boys on playgrounds, and sometimes they come from actions that seem to carry no malice at all. Sometimes things just happen to us that hurt us, and we don’t know how to process them. I wonder how much bad behavior comes from this. Sometimes things happen to us that we don’t even know are hurtful immediately, like a meaningless kiss from a thoughtless boy or the first vision of a naked woman on a magazine page or a dirty joke. We enter that stunned stage where we are trying to figure out what just happened to us, and then maybe we move on. But then later, maybe we scream and stomp our feet, or get snippy and sarcastic with those we love. Maybe we lose it over something that would seem quite trivial. Maybe we slide into the other room and hide from the world.

Caleb needed to hear from his Daddy. And it was no use changing the subject. The subject was the fall. The issue was his heart. The cure was the words he desperately needed to hear.

It happened.

It hurt.

It’s not your fault.

I love you.

we are far too easily pleased

2008-11-25T11:32:00.004-06:00

More than anything else I have ever read, these words penned by C. S. Lewis changed my life. I came by it in little coffee table book by John Eldredge called Dare to Desire. It was basically a condensed, greeting card version of The Journey of Desire. I can't find that coffee table book for sale anywhere anymore, but I can find these words inscribed on my heart.

We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.

We are far too easily pleased.

on jon foreman and the art of not writing

2008-11-24T15:18:00.004-06:00

I haven’t been writing much lately. And I’ve been trying to figure out why. I think it has to do with me working more and more. This has been happening for over a year now. That and there is a certain numbness that comes with being busy. I really think the numbness is allowed to settle in like so many warts because there is no acidic joy to pierce it. And of course there is no joy where there is no grief. And grief is exactly what got drowned by the business and pettiness and drunkenness of work.

There is something else, though. I write to give voice to my soul. Many times when I write I learn how I feel, what I think, what I believe, who I am. Thoughts condense into words as they sink into black against a cool white canvas. They collect against the roof of the green house and trickle down its sides into dark, damp soil where life grows. It is good. But then, once in a decade or so something else comes along that sings my soul’s song as if God were reminding me that on the seventh day he rested and so must I. The something else this time is Jon Foreman’s little EP’s: Fall, Winter, Summer, and Spring. I list them in that order, not knowing what Jon intended, because that is the order I first listened to them, and that is the order they still sit like old friends around the communion table of my playlist, “strumming my pain with his fingers, singing my life with his words”. And it is good, too.

It really takes a lot to shock me. I’m sorry about this. I’m sure I’m the worst one to share news with. I can remember now several times when my wife or a friend has come to me all aglow with some excitement to blow me away with, only to meet a lackluster hoorah. And then there’s the moment when someone realizes I was dead on about something or someone, and they can’t wait to tell me how right my intuition was all along and roll out the wonderful “I told you so” red carpet for me to strut upon. But I think red carpet looks better on the wall. And then there’s the shock of finding out about some great crime, some great offense, some great sin, some great evil right here in River City. No snap, crackle, or pop there, either. I don’t think this is numbness in me, no matter how it actually comes across. I think it’s acceptance. I took Ayn Rand’s advice a long time ago—the advice about no one being as naïve as a cynic. But that’s where Jon Foreman’s words, words like these exposed the cynic hiding behind my eyes:

I'm gonna miss you, I'm gonna miss you when you're gone
She said, I love you. I'm gonna miss hearing your songs

And I said, Please, don't talk about the end—
Don't talk about how every living thing goes away. She said, Friend,

All along, thought I was learning how to take,
How to bend not how to break,
How to live not how to cry,
But really I've
Been learning how to die
I've been learning how to die.

I have been learning how to die, I really have. The classroom seems to follow me around, sitting me in a desk for another lecture or standing me up against the back wall when I’m too tired. The lesson is hard. When you’re still trying to keep from dying, that is. It’s hard to eke out a living when everyone is taking from you—payments, taxes, bills, losses, crashes—like so many leeches sucking the life out of you. But like I said, I’ve been learning how to die. Beat ‘em to the punch. Give more than they require. And it’s hard to love your friends and keep them, too. But someone will have to keep them for you when you’re dead. Again, beat ‘em to the punch.

This is just one song of the many that has been raising its voice in my stead. Maybe they'll keep it up. But it feels like a Monday morning.

first speech

2008-11-04T23:17:00.002-06:00

I watched for the first time Barack Obama make a speech. I wanted to hear what the next leader of the free world had to say. It was a decent speech, I think. But my first impression was that he doesn't speak from his heart. It's not his words as much as his face. He licks and purses his lips a lot. I do this when I'm nervous and concerned about how I look and what people are thinking about me. Maybe it's the same for him.

Before that I watched McCain's concession speech. I wasn't too happy with the boos in the crowd, but loved McCain by the end of the speech. He seems very sincere and appreciative of all he's received and all he's been allowed to serve. It's probably a lot easier to make a concession speech than a victory speech. Obama is already under the weight of leadership. McCain just had to say thanks, I'm done, and please everyone accept that and support your new President. This was the first time I watched John McCain make a speech, too.

Truly, Obama's speech may be his best, worst, or somewhere between. I don't know. It's just that it's my first one to see. And my reaction is a "Blink" analysis (if you've read that book).

I did wonder what he meant by saying that we were in the worst financial crisis of a hundred years. Maybe he knows we're in for something worse than the Great Depression? That could be scary.

One other thing I noticed was the Reverend Jesse Jackson, speechless, weeping. I smiled and was genuinely happy for him. I'm not sure why. I have never liked him very much. Ok, I've never liked him at all. And I'm sure that the Obama campaign made it very clear to him that he was to keep his mouth shut and stay away from the press during the campaign. And now that I think about it, I'm sure the Reverend knew the camera was on him, and so maybe he was putting on a show with the crying and all. Nonetheless, it was a beautiful picture.

without a fight

2008-10-23T09:05:00.004-05:00

Take anything good, true, or beautiful upon this earth and ask yourself, “Can this be protected without a fight?”

- John Eldredge, The Way of the Wild Heart, p. 141

I keep coming back to this. I come back to it at a time when it seems my country is a warmonger. I come back to it when it seems that the mark of a mature man is a conciliatory style. I come back to it as I look down and see the scars on my wrists, on my feet, on my heart. I come back to it when I second guess what today might have been had I just gone along quietly. I come back to it when I get so tired and want it all to be over.

I'm sure there are many ways to fight well. I know that sometimes fighting means abstaining. Sometimes it means compromising. I know that there's sometimes a marked difference between fighting the battle and fighting the war. I know about sacrifice. I know about non-violence.

But sometimes I have to be reminded that not fighting is not an option.

infectious cloud

2008-09-02T11:56:00.005-05:00

What would you do if an infectious cloud descended all around you, threatening to take your life? What if you had heard rumors of this cloud before, rumors of how it made its end of you? Some of the effects would be immediately felt--it would affect your vision and your hearing, and even darken the way you perceived reality. But, some of the damage would be slow and torturous, killing you one cell at a time. What if some of the rumors were even queerer? Rumors that the cloud would mutate you into a completely different kind of creature? One that had supernatural strength and perceptions, ate flesh and blood, and was even immortal? Do images of a vampire come to mind?

What kind of crisis would it be if this cloud descended not only around you, but your whole family? Your neighborhood? Your nation? The whole world?

This is exactly the striking image I got from reading Mere Christianity to my boys in the car last night as C. S. Lewis described the salvation process. There are two types of life, says Lewis: bios and zoe. Bios is natural life, created life, life that God made. Zoe is timeless life, the life of God that is and was always existing, the life that the Bible talks about us "entering". Salvation is when we enter that zoe life that was made available by Christ and leave behind the bios life. In fact the bios life is opposed to the zoe life, and will do everything it can to resist the process. No one wants to die. Even if rumors of a superior life exist.

There are many ways to "explain" salvation and many pictures to imagine it from different perspectives. Right now, I'm quite excited about the idea that the difficult part of eternal life has already been done. Christ has descended and envoloped you, me, our families, our neighborhoods, our nations, and the whole world. The question is:

How long can you hold your breath?

darkness

2008-08-24T22:46:00.004-05:00

I saw The Dark Knight again. Loved it. Enjoyed it more the second time.

Chaos is another one of those things that we all know is integral to reality and most of us hate. We want control. We like to plan. A good plan when it comes together gives us this wonderful sense of security. It is an illusion.

Heath Ledger will probably win an Oscar for his performance. And he should. Posthumously. God rest his soul. He made the Joker come alive in a way that no one else ever has. It was disturbing. The Joker in this one was chaos personified, a feral spirit, a word that took on flesh. I experienced something that I'm sure a lot of people did, if they could stop editing themselves. I call it the Archie Bunker phenomenon. The things the Joker said were so dark, so diabolical, so inhumane, so offensive to all propriety, and so...true. This was the most disturbing thing I think for people. We want to put on our good Western civilized hats and defy this lunatic criminal, but we find the words he says hitting close to home, scratching an itch deep in our throats that cannot be reached when we are awake to our better nature.

So we talked a bit about chaos in our Sunday gathering this afternoon.

I've often been told that God is not the "author of confusion" or something like that. I think there's a bible verse to go with it. I've also been preached at that God is a god of order. I think there's one for that one, too. The problem that monotheism has that polytheism doesn't is fitting all of reality into the personality of one god. When you have lots of gods, each one introduces a virtue or a vice, or a peculiar combination of both. When you have but one god, that god has to encompass them all. Or if you have no gods at all, just abstract spiritual things like yin and yang you get a by on this one, too. But, when you're a monotheist, you have to answer difficult questions like the problem of pain and the source of evil and how it is that bad things happen to good people. Stuff like that. Sometimes it's kind of like repacking your sleeping bag in that entirely too small stuff-bag.

Jesus, I think, copes with this problem quite well, but not if you listen to popular doctrine. In fact, I think Jesus is the only way to cope.

But Jesus, instead of encompassing the fullness of reality, sometimes just collects a bunch of asterisks. Like when he turns water to wine. (We talked about the account that has made the rounds several times among us of the elder's wife who, when studying the story in John 2 where Jesus' first miracle was turning water to wine, said, "I wish He hadn't done that.") Or like when Jesus trashed the temple, turning over tables, breaking open cages, and cracking the whip at the businessmen there. He introduced a little chaos.

But Jesus wasn't the first.

I ran a search to see what the Bible had to say about planning (all the while hearing in my head, "plan your work and work your plan"). I was surprised to see that the first mention of this is Genesis 11. I'm told by Hebrew scholars that the first mention of a word or the first occurrence of a concept is always the most important, and is critical to understanding subsequent words on the same concept. So that would make this one really important to understanding the nature of God and reality and everything. Anyway, the story goes like this.

Now the whole world had one language and a common speech. As men moved eastward, they found a plain in Shinar and settled there. They said to each other, “Come, let’s make bricks and bake them thoroughly.” They used brick instead of stone, and tar for mortar. Then they said, “Come, let us build ourselves a city, with a tower that reaches to the heavens, so that we may make a name for ourselves and not be scattered over the face of the whole earth.” But the LORD came down to see the city and the tower that the men were building. The LORD said, “If as one people speaking the same language they have begun to do this, then nothing they plan to do will be impossible for them. Come, let us go down and confuse their language so they will not understand each other.”

I don't know if you read this story as a myth or as science. Either way the point is the same. These guys, our ancestors, wanted control. They wanted to have a sense of security without appealing to a god, who might or might not give it to them. They didn't want to be scattered like some airheads. It would have been an illusion if they had achieved it. But the God of Confusion introduced a little chaos. And the rest, as they say, is history.

I love Death Cab for Cutie and their album, Plans. It's named for the leader's favorite joke, "How do you make God laugh? Make a plan." And really, that's just like any joke. Funny not in spite of being true, but because of it.

Jesus all but tells us not to make plans. His famous Sermon on the Mount (or as Dallas Willard calls it, Discourse on the Hill) has Jesus teaching us all to pray, "Give us this day our daily bread" and ending his midrash on this subject with, "Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own." Later, when he almost seems to be ok'ing making big plans, upon re-reading I think Jesus is just pointing out the folly of doing so. He says that if someone is going to build a tower or wage a war, doesn't he first need to sit down and figure out if he has the wherewithal to execute the plan? And if he doesn't he'd better save face before he commits to it. I rather think Jesus doesn't want us building towers or waging wars. The point is not winning wars or building towers, but what they will cost us. That's in Luke 14.

It sounds like heresy to talk about God introducing chaos. We who have been baked at 451 degrees for 451 years are so fully brainwashed with the virtues of order and safety that we can't even make room in the inn for chaos and confusion.

But God is bigger than order. God is in all and through all and over all. If life is in God then so is death. If good then evil. If love then hate. If heaven then hell.

Where can I flee from your presence?
If I go up to the heavens, you are there;
If I make my bed in hell, you are there.
If I rise on the wings of the dawn,
If I settle on the far side of the sea,
Even there your hand will guide me,
Your right hand will hold me fast.

If I say, “Surely the darkness will hide me
And the light become night around me,”
Even the darkness will not be dark to you;
The night will shine like the day,
For darkness is as light to you.

There really is no place to run to, no place to hide, nothing that can keep you from the light of God's love. When God considers darkness and light, they don't really affect him the same way they do you and me.

I am learning to not only accept chaos, but to embrace it. It is part of God, part of this over all and in all and through all deity that is wrapped around all that we can ask or imagine, and even more than we can ask or imagine. When I embrace the chaos of my days I find a joy and peace and harmony with the rhythms of reality. Flight delays, hurricanes, blizzards, cancellations. It's too bad that I need someone as twisted as the Joker to remind me of this. But in a world infatuated with everything going according to plan, sometimes we need a good laugh to set us free.

a perfect world

2008-08-21T13:05:00.001-05:00

Have you ever noticed that when someone starts a sentence with “In a perfect world” they always end it with something simpler than we experience here and now. And everyone accepts this. We all believe that as something approaches perfection it gets simpler, purer, less complicated, less mixed.

Why is that?

The other side the mouth gives voice to a belief that the nature of progress is moving from the simple to the complex, that something or someone mature is more complex. Adults are more complex than children. Mature economies are more complex than emerging ones. Late model cars are more complex than early ones. Version 2.0 is more complex than version 1.0. Even looking back in time theoretically, early forms of life were simpler than their evolutionary successors.

Can a mouth speak two voices at once?

forgiveness

2008-08-17T22:18:00.009-05:00

Forgiving is central to the teachings of Jesus, and to the life Jesus lived, which is way of saying the same thing.

Years ago I learned the dirty little secret about nursing grudges. And it is truthful to talk about them like this. Nursing them. Because the natural thing to do is forgive someone and get back to living. The difficult thing to do is exert the psychological effort to remain in a state of offence. This is not easy to do without being supernaturally endowed with evil intent—something that comes easily enough to fallen creatures. It’s easy to see how this is true. Just look at the lines on someone’s face and the weariness in someone’s body who has been holding a grudge against someone for years. How tiring. Anyway, like I said, the dirty little secret about nursing grudges is that I think I’m holding something against someone, but really it’s the something that is holding me.

But there is an underlying assumption that forgiving is this small thing that yields big results, that it’s some kind of secret weapon that you get issued to you once you become a Christian or a Muslim or a Jew or some other religious person. But the idea is not that forgiving is easy for anyone to do, though. In fact what a lot of people believe is that forgiving, simple and powerful as it may be, requires that you exert a lot of work to get over all your junk first, so that you can finally do the simple act of truly forgiving.

But I’ve been thinking that forgiveness itself is work. It’s not at all that you say, "I forgive you" over and over, even if you don’t feel it, to convince your soul of the already reality, to convince your heart to accept it and live like it’s true. Fake it till you make it will NEVER work.

The thing I’ve been thinking is that you have to do the work of forgiveness. Where you begin is with the determination to do the work of forgiveness. As surely as you would wake up one summer day and determine that today is the day to dig that trench, you would wake up one summer day and determine that today is the day to forgive that sin. But the determination is not the work. Once you determine to do it, you roll up your sleeves and start digging. This is quite backwards from the other way. Instead of starting with the act of forgiveness and then repeating the words over and over to convince yourself that you’ve already forgiven someone, you set out with forgiveness as the final goal and accept that there will be a process, and that process will require effort. You don’t assume that the work is already done just because you say it’s done. You don’t have slaves to do your work. You can’t contract this out. You have to do it.

If you dig a trench you know when it is done. You can see it. But how do you know when you’re finished forgiving someone? I think you can’t really know by counting to 490 or by setting some arbitrary goal. I think you don't know until the trench finally breaches the bank, channeling the river of life into your fields, returning the scorched earth to a verdant garden teeming with new life, and making a place to walk with God in the cool of the day.

maybe

2008-08-10T07:45:00.006-05:00

Something I read on Sam's blog yesterday morning reminded me of something I started writing a year ago and never finished. Sam wrote about this verse in the Bible (which has found its way into several worship songs) that talks about some day every knee bowing to Jesus. This verse, quoted with the requisite brashness, comes off as a taunt. And that has been bugging me for some time. Sam said that as he follows Christ, those words lose grip on the oppressor's sword. I seriously doubt that the people who came up with those words meant for them to be crusade language. So I hope that what happened to Sam can happen to everyone everywhere.

Anyway, I called what I wrote Biblical Uncertainty for lack of something better. I don't think I ever went public with any of it anywhere, but maybe I did. Here it is:

It's always bugged me about the name it and claim it crowd, and other fundamentalists as well, how certain they are, or rather how certain they need things to be. Mostly it bugs me because Jesus didn't come off that way. He just spoke calmly, expecting people to get it. Or not. I don't get the feeling from reading the gospels that he was a thumper, pounding the podium and stomping his feet and all that. And I don't get the idea that he would sayuh thingsuh with poweruh so thatuh the peopleuh would putuh their faiuthuh in Himuh.

So it bugged me enough that I started digging into some of these things.

There's a lot less certainty in the Bible than some Christians are representing. And I think this could be a big relief to a lot of people who feel intimidated in front of the firing line of Christian boldness. I know it has been a relief to me to know that I can simply shrug off most of the absolute-truthisms and authority-of-scripturisms that fly irresponsibly to and fro around the Bible Belt where I live. And in all that shrugging I have actually rediscovered a verb tense used in the original language of the Bible that seems to have been totally translated out. I call it the “maybe” tense. Its technical name is “subjunctive”.

For example, there's this popular worship song that goes...

One day every tongue will confess you are God
One day every knee will bow
Still the greatest treasure remains for those
Who gladly choose you now

Doesn't that inspire all the Christian Soldiers want to take up arms, and fight to the death, knowing that the day they get braggin' rights is just around the corner? (at least on God's timetable)

But there's a fly in the ointment. The problem is that it's just not true. Those words come from a stanza of poetry in Paul's letter to the Philippians where it says this (more or less)...

Your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus:

Who, being in very nature God,
did not consider equality with God
something to be grasped,
but made himself nothing,
taking the very nature of a servant,
being made in human likeness.
And being found in appearance as a man,
he humbled himself
and became obedient to death—
even death on a cross!
Therefore God exalted him
to the highest place
and gave him the name
that is above every name,
that at the name of Jesus
every knee should bow,
in heaven and on earth
and under the earth,
and every tongue confess
that Jesus Christ is Lord,
to the glory of God the Father.

So here, briefly, is the problem. In the Philippians 2 poem, there are no future tense verbs. At all. There are present, aorist (timeless tense, peculiar to Greek), and subjunctive (maybe tense). That says something to me. It does not say that this attitude WAS in Christ Jesus. It says this attitude IS in Christ Jesus. The verbs that aren’t present tense are aorist, which says to me that they should probably be written in present tense as well. The verb used for bowing and confessing is subjunctive. (Strongs Concordance says subjunctive: The subjunctive mood is the mood of possibility and potentiality. The action described may or may not occur, depending upon circumstances.) So it's basically: “Since Christ is Lord now, every knee should bow and every tongue should confess, but they may not.”

This is all very interesting to me. But I know I'm not really normal when I dig into ancient greek verb tenses. And I am quite sure that a thorough understanding of ancient greek is not required to follow Jesus. And I've the same sureness that an education in ancient greek is something that religious figures use to intimidate parishioners and protect their powerful seats. But like I said, this has been bugging me for a good while, and so I got under the covers a bit. As far as good contemporary translations go, at LEAST I would say that this is a better translation:

Let this mind be in you, which is also in Christ Jesus: Who, being in the form of God, thinks it not robbery to be equal with God: But makes himself of no reputation, and takes upon him the form of a servant, and is made in the likeness of men: And being found appearing as a man, he humbles himself, and becomes obedient unto death, even the death of the cross. Wherefore God also highly exalts him, and gives him a name which is above every name: So that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, those dwelling in heaven, and in earth, and under the earth; And every tongue should confess since Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.

The first thing that intrigues me is this. It doesn’t express any certainty that one fine day Jesus will finally really be Lord and then coerce everyone to accept his Lordship. It says He is Lord now, and therefore everyone and everything should accept that reality and submit to it. There’s no “well, you wait and see—you’re gonna get yours!” Christ IS Lord now so that every knee should bow and every tongue should confess, but they might not, depending on the circumstances. There’s no absolute promise of future knee bowing or tongue confessing or Lord exalting. It’s all now. It’s all yesterday, and it’s all today, and it’s all forever. Whatever is will be. The possibilities are endless.

This goes for all the people we meet when we're walking down the street, as well as for gods, demigods, spirits, demons, principalities, powers, even Satan himself. They may never kneel to the Lordship of Jesus, may never be able to see the beauty of the God who became man and humbled himself to die on a cross, and may never accept special favor God has given this Son because of it. But you can. You can do it anytime you want. Because of his humility, Jesus has now been given a name above all names. The choice is yours whether you will accept that same posture. If you decide to kneel, what you are saying is

This is the kind of Life I accept,
This is the kind of Man who lived it,
This is the Man who will rule my heart.

The second thing that intrigues me is that this is present tense. Christ is found in the form of God and man. He is now. Not he once was. Someone could say, “Well, yes, He is now bodily in heaven,” and that’s true. But it’s also true that he is now bodily in earth, “Lovely in limbs, and lovely in eyes not his / To the Father through the features of men’s faces."

Christ is found NOW as mankind. You should bow.

hickory nut falls

2008-08-09T20:31:00.007-05:00

I woke up this morning to cool, sweet summer air. A sensation not familiar to me in Texas. From the porch of my cabin I looked up on Chimney Rock where Last of the Mohicans was filmed. I couldn’t wait to wake the boys up and run the trails where Nathaniel pursued Cora, where Chingachgook defeated Magua, and where Alice tumbled over the sheer falls to find her death.

And now I sit on the same porch looking on the same green blanketed rock face under clouds raining lazily all around my umbrella, wistful.

The skyline trail that the Mohicans ran was closed for repair, and the other trail leading to the top of the falls where the final showdown was had been closed as well because of some forest fires on the other side of the mountain. Even though I always feel like the world conspires against me when these things happen I did grant plausible denial and dropped the charges for today because yesterday evening we enjoyed the sights and sounds of choppers flying over with buckets of water scooped from the river to quell the hottest outbursts. Even so, it felt like so much of my time here on earth. Nothing seems to fully deliver. Moments of pure joy are endlessly elusive.

So we hiked to the BOTTOM of Hickory Nut Falls on a gentle trail. The boys and girls both enjoyed it. Even Caleb, our beefy two year old, made it the whole way. While taking some pictures I noticed the boys had gone over the edge where the rocks piled up below the falls. Benjamin called up to me, asking if he could keep going. I yelled back, “You can go as far as you can!” I’m learning when the boys start doing what boys do not to stop them. I’m coming to the conclusion that it’s rather rebellious for an earthly parent to counter a heavenly parent. So after watching Benjamin’s head disappear, followed by Christopher and Joshua, I packed away my camera and headed down. That and Jill expressed to me some concern over the six year old tagging along.

We descended a long way. Longer than we should have. I was surprised that the boys made it as far as they did, actually. But they did, and it was a sight to behold. The crevice the river carved out of the mountain through the trees was quite steep, resulting in giant steps down where the water fell then rested then fell some more. The lush green forest and long trees shooting up to stretch for the morning sun were stunning. The flat rock plates jutting out invited the waters to make beautiful ribbons, which happily obliged, and the massive boulders squatting resolutely proved a great vantage to scout our trail to the next level down. With each level up or down we seemed to become more and more skilled. It was not difficult to imagine that if we had come in another time long ago and made a homestead here we should become as nimble as mountain goats bounding over rock and stream.

But the most beautiful sight was my six foot tall fifteen year old boosting his six year old brother, half his height, over a tricky spot, or pointing out hand and foot holds so he could follow along. There’s nothing quite like watching brothers on a taxing adventure, sticking together, waiting on each other, helping the weak.

We also went above the base of the falls, peering the steep face where Alice fell. It was gorgeous to look down from above at the pools below and imagine how an eagle feels as he soars his circles over all this. I could write forever about the beauties I have seen in this day, but I must be brief for the sake of anyone reading this and for the sake of the falling wine in my glass and the falling temperature on this damp porch. So I wanted to end with some observations on illegal rock climbing before the park ranger scolds you and tells you to return to the trail.

Going down is different from coming up. It’s not that the earth has changed, or that you have changed. But even if you face the mountain both ways and try to reverse your movements, some things are more difficult coming down, some more going up. It’s just the way it is.
Going down and coming up are both eventually tricky when you’re off the beaten path.
If you’re walking down a steep incline and start to slip, just go ahead and sit down. Having both hands and feet available to reach for salvation is a big bonus, and your butt makes a decent skidder.
The earth is your friend—keep as many points of contact with her as possible.
When climbing, test before you trust, or in other words, try before you buy.
Wet rocks are slippery.
Doing the “spider” helps on slightly declining flat wet rocks (the spider move is face up, hands and feet both on the rocks)
If you would like to learn to surf but don’t live near an ocean, you can practice on slightly declining flat wet rocks. Skip the spider.
No matter how steep something looks from the top or from the bottom, there is usually a way to navigate it.
No matter what, mothers will never be persuaded that their boys are safe when climbing.

It was after all a glorious day. We had looked into a full day top rope rock climbing session with an AMGA Accredited Guide Service. But after our off trail vertical adventure the boys said, who wants to go do that. This is just the kind of holiday a boy needs. I’m so grateful to God that the man’s body I’m trapped in still serves well the boy inside.

german coastguard

2008-07-25T19:50:00.003-05:00

My first big screen debut!

They are making a movie about me and my time at SAP. Check out the trailer:

Ze end is right.

don miller and love's torture

2008-07-15T09:39:00.002-05:00

I’m reading Don Miller’s Searching for God Knows What a second time. I’m reading it with a group of friends we call our book club. Everyone who knows me knows I love Don Miller’s writing. This book is no exception. I love this book.

But I have just come across a paragraph that’s really got me thinking, and I’m thinking that Don’s got it backward. I bet if I sat down with Don and told him what I was thinking he would listen. And I bet he wouldn’t discount me because I’m not a published writer like him. He might even rethink what he wrote. At least I think he would enjoy the discussion.

I just finished reading about Adam, Eve, and the Alien, and then about the Lifeboat. Now he’s talking about Jesus, and the subtitle is, Who needs a lifeboat? He’s talking about how Jesus must have really liked people, and I think that’s true. Then he talks about how Jesus never wrote a manifesto or a mission statement or anything for that matter, but instead put all his eggs in his followers’ baskets. And that’s really, really amazing when you think about it because it’s a precarious way to start a religion, and would Jesus even be taken serious in today’s world if he wasn’t published? And then Don talks about the impact Jesus had on people, how they went and lived amazing lives full of passion and dedication to the point of death for him. I don’t know who could argue with that observation, even if they’re not a Christian. And then he comes to this paragraph, the paragraph I can’t accept:

People don’t go out and get tortured and arrested for somebody who doesn’t love them. If somebody loves us we will do all kinds of things in their name, for them, because of them. They will make us who we are.

But I don’t think that’s true. It’s backwards actually. The truth is that people go out and get tortured all the time for somebody who doesn’t love them. Unrequited love is almost a proverb. I personally know of several instances where someone loves someone so much it hurts, but the object of their affection is not moved at all, and sometimes is even freaked out by their love. The truth is that some people cannot accept love, and some people can accept love, but cannot accept love from certain people. I think some of the time it’s because people cannot recognize love. It was certainly true in Pride and Prejudice. Elizabeth was repulsed at the very name of Mr. Darcy throughout the story. But in the end she discovered his love, and in the end she discovered her own love as well. If you see one of the movies or read the book you’ll know what I mean. It’s really quite moving. I can see why so many women like it.

People do get themselves tortured for somebody who doesn’t love them.

But that’s only half of how I think what Don wrote is backwards. The other half is that if somebody loves us we will do all kinds of things in their name, for them, because of them. That’s not really true, either. The truth is not that if we feel loved we will die for someone else. The truth is that if we love someone else we will die for them. We will do all kinds of things in their name, for them, because of them. We will lose sleep. We will write their name a million times on the cover of our geometry text book. We will spend hundreds of dollars a month on long distance phone calls. We will waste a small fortune on gasoline on trips to see them, or even just to drive by their house in hopes that we might see them when they go out to check their mail. If something goes wrong we will spend weeks going through correspondence and retracing our steps to create a timeline of events that led up to the catastrophe to figure out what went wrong when. We will pluck daisies. The truth is not that if someone loves us we will go the distance. The truth is that if we love someone we will go the distance. No price is too great when we are in love.

If we love someone we’re liable to do anything.

And this was the real secret of the Christ movement, in my way of thinking. It’s not that he loved his disciples so much that they turned the world upside down. It’s that they loved him so much that they turned the world upside down. Somehow that ancient romantic, irrational, desperate current swept them off their feet into something much bigger than could be written or explained or campaigned. They didn’t enlist in a school of discipleship. They fell in love.

So after disagreeing with Don in both directions, I want to savor his last sentence. They will make us who we are. The problem with falling in love with someone is that they will make us who we are. It quite cancels the life our guidance counselor helped us to identify and make plans for. It makes us who we are because it defines the object of our attention. It dictates where our time is spent. Without any discipline or planning at all it propels us to “have done with lesser things”. It makes us who we are by reorienting our priorities around the one who matters, the one we can’t let fall, can’t let go of. And ultimately, that makes us who we are.

To me this makes a lot of sense when I read what some of those disciples wrote. It does make me look at their letters differently, though. When I think about what they did and with what fervor they did it, I can only explain it as them being in love with someone. What they did goes beyond reason, certainly beyond what reasonable people would do. They turned the world upside down, and they did it because they were in love with someone, someone that it was only fitting for them to call Lord, someone who had captivated them. So then their letters have become to me more their defense of themselves, their explanation of their own actions, their own fervor. John called himself, “the one whom Jesus loved” in the hope that he would be excused for his radical behavior, his radical love of the dear woman and her children and all the others for whom he was tortured or exiled. And Paul wrote, “That is why I am suffering as I am. Yet I am not ashamed, because I know whom I have believed…” Paul actually wrote more than a few times the phrase, “I am not ashamed”. Peter defended his love by saying, “We did not follow cleverly invented stories… we were with him on the sacred mountain.” The thing is, it’s not what these guys wrote that was so powerful. It was their lives. The New Testament is this eclectic collection of theology, plus personal items that frankly belong in a journal, greetings, personal appeals, apologies, poetry, lyrics, and other stuff. The real power was in the writers’ lives. It was each of their lives that said loud and clear, “Love. It’s the only way.” It said it better than any song or poem or epistle ever could. Christ had captivated them. They had fallen in love with Him. They went on to live fanatically—not fanatically as crusaders trying to subject the rest of the world to their new religious order, but fanatically as a lover can’t help but pursue his beloved and everything his beloved loves. It was in that process, whether intentional or not, that they turned the world upside down. The writing was mainly to answer questions about all that energy being kicked off by their fanatical love and the effect it was having on the world. I know maybe it sounds weird for a bunch of men to fall in love with another man, but it happens. Especially when said man loved them so purely and so deeply from the start.

Finally, I saw again the other day the words that I think are so stupid. I was driving by the big Baptist church in Fort Worth on I30, and I saw on their marquee, “We love God because he first loved us.” It’s a misquote from 1 John 4:19. It’s a terrible misquote, because you can’t even make the case that you’re inserting God in there for clarity. Inserting God there actually changes the meaning. It’s quite simply, “We love because he first loved us.” You can look it up in your favorite Bible version. It’s what it says.

And this ties in nicely with what Don wrote, because it is true that we are able to love others because God lavished us with his love. There is something so comforting about being loved. There is something that provides so much security and warmth in knowing that you are loved. It’s not that we would die for someone if they loved us. What we would die for is the one we love. We would extinguish all that is our life for the object of our love. It’s not that we would die for someone once they loved us. It’s that we are able to love others once someone really loved us. It’s quite liberating to be loved, when you can accept it, that is. Once Elizabeth could accept that Mr. Darcy had done everything for her, she could then quit focusing on herself and all her complaints and just love everyone else from her heart. It was quite time consuming for her until then.

Somehow Christ, like Darcy, was able to captivate his beloved. Somehow he was able to do more than extend his love to her and earn her gratitude. Somehow he was able to turn her heart to love him back. And that is where all this came from.

God is in my backpack

2008-07-12T19:27:00.002-05:00

I went backpacking this morning—just on the forest trail close to my home. It was the first time I’ve been in a long time. I remember the first time I read the words—What I do is me: for that I came—how easily I swallowed them. I knew them to be declaring something deep and true and powerful. The way I knew is because I had been backpacking. Or maybe I should say because backpacking had been me.

I was born for backpacking. I have tried jogging several times. I jog a little while and then I walk or stop. Then, after just a few days my knees get sore and I can’t keep it up. I’ve biked, both street and mountain. I enjoy it. But I can live without it. I’ve lifted weights, but we won’t go there. When I backpack I am alive. The more I do it the more I want to do it. I can feel life rushing into and out of my heart with each rushing breath.

I used to pack every night, just around my block and the neighboring streets and parks. I thought about quitting my job, moving my family out to Colorado, and starting a ministry or business venture to take people out into the wilderness for a real journey—spiritual, physical, emotional. It was going to be great. I had bills, though.

At the height of my fitness back in the late 90’s, I would work out with my pack late at night, sometimes even after midnight, when it cooled down below 100 in the Texas summer. I started with about 40 lbs, a good target for a week long trek in the mountains. But as I got stronger I upped it to 50, 60, 70, even 80 lbs. I had an Iron Man watch with a lap timer on it. In those days I could power walk about 7 minutes for a half mile, which was the distance around my block. With a 70 lb pack, it took me about the same. I used to go 6 laps, 3 miles, and time myself around each. The first lap would usually be about 7:15, a little slow as the circulation got cranked up and my muscles and joints limbered and lubed up. The second lap I’d get around 7:00. The third was 6:50. 6:45 for the 4^th, 6:37 for the 5^th, and sometimes I’d even get faster on the 6^th as well. But usually the 5^th was the best. Like I said, I was born for this. I was packing as fast I was walking. A lot of that had to do with technique. When I first started I was bouncing up and down, the pack squeaking and clanging the rhythm of my walk. But after I got good I was so smooth, like a duck on the water, smooth and easy on the surface, paddling like heck underneath. I think the reason my 6^th lap was slower had less to do with me physical exhaustion and more to do with my ability to keep my focus up for that long.

I got so focused on this that I started timing my half-laps—quarter miles. The first half of my lap to the opposite corner of my block was down hill; the second was up. And it never failed that I was faster uphill then down. Never. It must have something to do with my posture and the distribution of weight. Whatever it is, it definitely points to a certain kind of skill, a kind of skill you only get by doing. But whatever skills and techniques I developed, I could never shake the feeling that I was born for this, that I was home somehow when I backpacked.

It was during this time that I used to nurture my dream of introducing backpacking as an Olympic sport. I figured you could have different classes of competition based on how much weight the trekker would carry. You could have a 40, 50, 60, 70, 80, and 90 lb competition. But since it’s the Olympics it would have to be in kg. The race would be cross-country, full of hills and valleys and tricky passes. A new cottage industry would be spawned to outfit competitors and all the kids who idolized this new class of athletes. And in my dream, I would actually compete, even in my thirties. Yeah, it was a good dream.

My love for backpacking began with my very first trek, on an amazing trip to Philmont Scout Ranch when I was 12 years old.

I will never forget Ranger Rick going through our packs during our briefing beneath the big evergreens, laying their shadows towards the mess hall, as he rifled through our packs tossing stuff over his shoulder saying, “You don’t need this…get rid of that…this is worthless…this’ll slow you down…I thought we told you to leave this at home…” It’s quite funny the things we think we need, the things we are convinced we can’t live without, even when those who have been there and back again are telling us we can survive just fine without them, telling us that in fact we will be better off without them. The funniest thing was that we had met probably 6 or 8 times before we left to pare down our packs, to read and re-read the list of stuff that we should take, and the stuff we should leave, and to downsize. We had all made some hard choices, and all felt so brave to enter the wild with so little. And there he was making fun of us for trying to urbanize the outback.

But that’s not my memory of the trip. I have a memory more vivid. It was morning, and we had just packed camp and found our trail head. I turned to take off and got waylaid. My Scoutmaster started yelling at me because I was always leading off, always blazing off and leaving everyone else in the dust, always setting a pace, and not letting some of these other boys go first. I think he probably had made several comments earlier, more subtle, expecting me to take a hint. I can remember talking back to him, and I can remember him really losing it. I was almost afraid. And then, an amazing thing happened. My dad stepped between me and him. The next thing I knew my dad and the other dad were telling all of us boys to go on ahead, and they’d catch up. We walked down a ways, but then we stopped, knowing we were getting too far ahead because we could hardly hear the yelling any more. My memory is my dad, chest to chest, with another man for me. Even though I couldn’t see it, and to this day don’t know what was said, I knew something powerful had just happened.

It was one of the best days of my life.

Nothing was said after that. I noticed a few wet eyes as the men caught up with us. But nothing was ever said. I do, however, remember being more considerate after that. I remember offering to let the other boys lead. I remember sometimes they would do it, but sometimes they wanted to get behind me. And I remember feeling small, humble, and to a certain extent noble.

I packed today. And I’ll pack tomorrow. I intend to lose some weight and feel better as I work out some of these toxins and some of this laziness. I’m glad to have packing back in my lifely routine, and I expect this thing that found me at an early age will carry me for the rest of my life. In truth I expect to pick up speed as I go. After all, my home is on top of a hill.

make it go away

2008-07-06T01:42:00.002-05:00

I just reread this from Journey of Desire.

Should the king in exile pretend he is happy there? Should he not seek his own country? His miseries are his ally; they urge him on. And so let them grow, if need be. But do not forsake the secret of life; do not despise those kingly desires. We abandon the most important journey of our lives when we abandon desire. We leave our hearts by the side of the road and head off in the direction of fitting in, getting by, being productive, what have you. Whatever we might gain— money, position, the approval of others, or just absence of the discontent itself—it’s not worth it. “What good will it be for a man if he gains the whole world, yet forfeits his soul?” (Matt. 16:26).
(John Eldredge, Journey of Desire)

But it's soooooo hard sometimes. I think I've been seeking the absence of discontent lately. This is where you run when you believe it doesn't really matter anyway. It's so hard to believe that my miseries are my allies. Hence, they don't urge me on. How can they urge me on when I'm busy telling them they don't exist? That doesn't work so well, though. It's kind of weird when you have a conversation with someone who isn't there. It's not the conversation that is weird. What's weird is when you realize you're having a conversation with someone who is supposed to not exist. For this aid is required. Strong medicine.

Maybe that's why the Bible says to get miserable people enough beer and wine until they forget (Proverbs 31).

I don't think God disparages people if they drink to dodge their misery.

But Eldredge asks if it is fitting for a king to forget his miseries. Aren't kings made of nobler stuff? Aren't kings forged of stuff to rise above the woes common to man, to push through, and to overcome?

I was thinking about Jesus, when they offered him wine with myrrh (spiced wine) to ease his suffering, and he refused it. All the gospels record that. But they also record that just as he was about to die, they gave him wine with vinegar (bitter wine). All the gospels record that, too, and John (the only gospel writer who was actually THERE) made it very clear that Jesus drank it.

I've always thought that the second wine was the "it's over" one. The first one was the "this can be easier" one.

And I think that's about right for kings. The peasant path is one of survival, of squirming to avoid the bitterness of reality with a little spice (when it can be found) to lighten the load. But the noble path is to face the harsh reality of misery, grief, and loss, and to be emboldened to endure the pain of it all to push through to greater joy. The noble path is focused on more than just the self and more than just the moment. "Bringing many sons to glory" can be a bitter path, and really, there's nothing for it. Except. At some point you have to swallow the bitter truth that it's over. It is finished. It is time to let it go. It is time for something new.

Maybe this is the defining moment, the moment that everything that has been suffered finally bursts open with the seeds of new life.

And maybe this is the moment that would only be possible once the eased path was rejected.

And maybe that's why the Bible says,

It is not for kings, O Lemuel—
not for kings to drink wine,
not for rulers to crave beer,
...
Give beer to those who are perishing,
wine to those who are in anguish;
let them drink and forget their poverty
and remember their misery no more.
(Proverbs 31)

So here I am. I don't know why I'm writing all this.

once

2008-06-30T22:29:00.002-05:00

One word:

Wow

how to save a life

2008-06-25T11:47:00.004-05:00

Lately I've been listening to this song by the fray called how to save a life. The song is about this guy wondering where he went wrong, and how things could have gone differently if he'd known what do do to save his friend's life. There's an interesting story behind it.

The thing is, I do know how to save a life. It's a value for value thing, a one-for-one.

Laying down a list of what is wrong won't do it.

Praying to God that he hears you won't do it.

Lowering your voice and slipping past his defenses and staying up with him all night and all the skill with people techniques in the world won't do it.

How to save a life is to lose yours.

It hurts. It costs.

And saving a life and saving a friend are not the same thing.

the call

2008-05-18T09:53:00.005-05:00

It started out as a feeling
Which then grew into a hope
Which then turned into a quiet thought
Which then turned into a quiet word
And then that word grew louder and louder
'Til it was a battle cry
I'll come back
When you call me
No need to say goodbye
Just because everything's changing
Doesn't mean it's never
Been this way before
All you can do is try to know
Who your friends are
As you head off to the war
Pick a star on the dark horizon
And follow the light
You'll come back
When it's over
No need to say good bye
Now we're back to the beginning
It's just a feeling and no one knows yet
But just because they can't feel it too
Doesn't mean that you have to forget
Let your memories grow stronger and stronger
'Til they're before your eyes
You'll come back
When it's over
No need to say good bye
- The Call by Regina Spektor

I saw Prince Caspian yesterday. Great stuff. I think I liked it more than the first movie...for several reasons. It was good to see the children older. Growing up is such a beautiful thing. For you who have been, "As you get bigger so do I."

There is something unmistakable the Chronicles of Narnia do to me, something the filmmakers captured. There is something indeed magical at work, something that begins to stir the cauldron inside me, waking me up from the spell I've been under, sparking hope, making me want to live for the first time, or maybe the second.

If you've never heard the call, keep listening. Or maybe stop listening and just hear.

transcendent

2008-05-06T10:15:00.003-05:00

Gary Barkalow showed this clip at the retreat last weekend in Colorado. He said every now and then TV catches a transcendent moment. It's very rare.

There are about 6,804,262,091 versions of this waiting to happen. All I want is to see every one of them.

As kingfishers catch fire, dragonflies dráw fláme;
As tumbled over rim in roundy wells
Stones ring; like each tucked string tells, each hung bell’s
Bow swung finds tongue to fling out broad its name;
Each mortal thing does one thing and the same:	5
Deals out that being indoors each one dwells;
Selves—goes itself; myself it speaks and spells,
Crying Whát I do is me: for that I came.

Í say móre: the just man justices;
Kéeps gráce: thát keeps all his goings graces;	10
Acts in God’s eye what in God’s eye he is—
Chríst—for Christ plays in ten thousand places,
Lovely in limbs, and lovely in eyes not his
To the Father through the features of men’s faces.
Gerard Manley Hopkins, 1918

power corrupts

2008-04-07T12:21:00.001-05:00

If power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely, then why doesn't God get corrupted?

your epic life, part ii

2008-03-15T11:50:00.007-05:00

I have come to the realization that the last post could use some expanding. That, and I feel like I’m going to explode if I don’t get some of these thoughts out of my head!

You can always be who you are in any situation.

That could mean anything. Stand up and fight. Run away in terror. Laugh. Listen. Stomp your feet. Cry out in anger, or in agony. Show undeserved kindness. Crack a joke. Put your hands in your pockets. Any human expression could be you.

Being you is not always taking the path of least resistance. Just because it feels like you doesn’t mean it is you.

Being who you are is telling the truth.

Life is not a gameshow. If there is no good answer to the question the moment is asking you, you don’t have to answer before the clock runs out. But you can always tell the truth. You can always be yourself. But I repeat myself. If someone is asking you a question that you are not the answer for you don’t have to make one up.

No one else can tell you who you are. Except God. And He hasn’t written it down anywhere. Except on your heart.

Reading God’s writing, the kind on the heart, is not like reading a book. It is much less explicit and cannot be grasped in a single reading. The writing takes form over time. It’s like invisible ink coming into focus. And the focus is not in the form of sentences. It is as if a question were roared in the halls of antiquity, and God said, “To answer that I am whispering a story.”

You can always be who you are where you are.

Changing careers won’t help. Changing churches won’t help. Changing friends won’t help. Changing spouses won’t help.

When you be, some things will go well for you, and some things won’t. This is the epic adventure.

In an epic adventure, the character sets out on a journey. He overcomes foes. He sustains losses. When things go well he presses on. When things go foul he presses on. The journey is over when he returns home, tells his story, and sees what everyone thinks about it. That’s when it’s over. When he goes back home. When he tells everyone and sees what they think about it. He’s no longer living the adventure at that point. He’s no longer living his life. He’s talking about the life that’s over. When he goes back.

Who you are cannot be expressed in a moment. It takes an entire story to express. This is because you don’t start perfect. You’re being perfected. You’re not finished. But I repeat myself.

The path of perfection starts at yourself. It ends at your tombstone. The hope of perfection is not that you get there and enjoy the rest of your time on earth in a perfected state. The hope is that when someone reads the last word and closes the lid they will say, “That was a good story.”

Being perfected means being finished. Nothing else. There is no remedy for imperfection but continuation. None.

And repentance? Repentance is getting back to being yourself. It is getting back to telling the truth. But I repeat myself again.

You will not become yourself by working on yourself.

Every action you take has consequences. Being yourself is not your defense. It is your charge.

The adventure you are on, your epic life, is not just for you. It is your contribution to the larger story, the larger answer. It is an offering you present that says, “This also is who God is.”

You cannot start the journey, cannot live an epic life, cannot be a good story, until you have an inkling of who you are.

You are not your personality. You are not a collection of wounds and wins. What you are is one thing. It is like the introduction in Spanish: “¿Como se llama? Me llamo _____,” which translates, “How are you called? I am called _____.” You are called. What you are is what God calls you. It is not what you call yourself. It is not what someone else calls you. You are called something. Life begins there. And more importantly, life finishes there.

Who can give a man this, his own name? God alone. For no one but God sees what the man is… It is the blossom, the perfection, the completeness, that determines the name: and God foresees that from the first because He made it so…
George MacDonald

It is not easy to be yourself. There are many diversions and temptations to be someone else, and many counterfeits are offered.

The easy thing is to be yourself. But this is a privilege only offered to those believing God is telling the truth and deciding that they will, too. There will be all kinds of things, good and bad, pleasure and pain, that you will get to enjoy and suffer when you give up on being someone else, when you give up trying to be a you that you read about somewhere besides on your own heart—whether in a book or on the faces of others or from a painful chapter early in your story.

The most epic adventure of your life comes when you simply be yourself.

your epic life

2008-03-12T21:44:00.000-05:00

The most epic adventure of your life comes when you simply be yourself.

why the next computer i buy will be an apple

2008-03-08T21:58:00.005-06:00

In the olden days, apple computer made a big mistake. They didn't embrace open standards--standards like ISA. They didn't open their hardware to communicate with many different devices from many manufacturers, all of which required an installation which was basically this: crack the case, seat the card into an available slot, configure the IRQ, memory address, and port for each device, and install special drivers. All us techies prided ourselves in figuring out how to come up with different configurations that allowed us to install lots of different stuff from different manufacturers in our PC's. Those days were great. Those days are over.

At the time apple's strategy was to take care of their customer by giving them limited options, but options that worked. How many apple users have I known to say, "Apple. It just works." I think that must have been one of their marketing messages. It was a bad strategy at the time. Bad in the sense of the apple community and platform was dwarfed by the PC community and platform, which wowed consumers with the dizzying array of cheap options.

But everything is different now.

I have spent most of the day on several phone calls with Lenovo tech support for trouble with my Thinkpad. I spent close to $3000 USD on this laptop about a year ago, which included the highest level of warranty possible with next day on-site repairs. Most of our conversations included one burst of fury from me when the tech suggested that the only thing the warranty covered was hardware problems, or that the best advice he had for me was to erase the hard drive and reinstall from the factory CD's (and he recommended that I back up all my files first. Thanks.).

In short the issue I am having is that the wireless network quit working all of the sudden. The first tech had me remove the IBM/Lenovo software that controlled the wireless and just use the Windows XP software, which did get me back connected to the internet, but left several issues unresolved. To start with, I liked the IBM/Lenovo software. I could configure all the wireless networks I connect to (a lot since I frequent coffee shops and hotels). And it was the only way this particular wireless adapter could connect to my super-fast 802.11N router at home. But worse than this is that I cannot press the hot key and enable/disable the wireless (something American Airlines frowns on) and cannot do a Repair (which if you run Windows and connect to many different networks, you know is something that keeps you from rebooting all the time and is the only way to resolve some routing and DNS caching issues). And it's just gotten progressively worse the more I follow their suggestions on fixing it. Eventually I will (apart from them) stumble across something that fixes it, and they will never hear back from me. I could call them and tell them what it was that fixed it, but they wouldn't care or know what to do with that information.

This is just symptomatic of the shift that has happened.

Lenovo tells me that only the hardware is covered. If I want them to transfer me over to the software team then it's going to be a $50 minimum charge for them to open a ticket. I'm sure that Lenovo has contracted out these guys and told them that they get points for not having to send a tech out with new parts, and to make the customer prove that it's a hardware issue or else send them to the software team to remove some more ca$h from their customers' pockets. And this, too, is symptomatic of the shift.

In a world where everyone is specializing and outsourcing, in a world where measurable metrics are put in place for each department and division, in a world that is increasingly dehumanized, why is anyone surprised that the world is disintegrated? Why is anyone surprised at being transferred 5 or 10 times to different parts of the world? Why is anyone surprised at extensive navigation through computerized phone menus? Why is anyone surprised that there is no more respect for customers anymore?

If I called apple with a problem, every person I talked to would know how to spell 802.11N, and someone I talked to would know how to get my network card back up. They wouldn't tell me that they only cover hardware. They recognize, like all of us now do, that there is no such thing as just hardware. Every piece of hardware has to have software that makes it play with the rest of the world. And they recognize that I don't buy a computer for the opportunity to negotiate with several groups of people who don't want to take responsibility for the problem someone else created and I paid for. Apple works.

I want to live in a world that is integrated. I want to be integrated. I am an apple.

new life

2008-03-01T13:01:00.002-06:00

I wonder if the journey towards new life doesn't begin with death: an ending, a letting go, a breakage or even a disillusionment. New life emerges when a capacity to receive something is created. Sometimes we make the room, but most of the time the space is made for us, whether we agree to it or not.

Expectations in my life most often provide opportunities for death. The person didn't measure up, I was disappointed, my illusions shattered, dreams broken, hopes dashed, and I am left frustrated and resentful. I am also left with an opportunity. Do I allow these emotions to grip and control my life, so I have no room for the newness? Or am I being invited to choose life anew, to let go of my expectations and answer life's beckoning call?

Keith Reynolds

Now darkness has a hunger that's insatiable
And lightness has a call that's hard to hear
I wrap my fear around me like a blanket
I sailed my ship of safety till I sank it
I'm crawling on your shores

Indigo Girls

i

2008-02-29T18:59:00.002-06:00

iPhone. Love it. I fired it up on the plane with my Bose noise canceling headphones, set up an On-The-Go list, hit Shuffle, and was swept into this eclectic collection of slices of my life and times and tastes. Love the iPhone.

iTunes. Love it. I’m amazed at how easy they make it to buy any song you can think of, and podcasts are more than I could ask for. It’s amazing. I don’t know why I resisted for so long. Oh yeah. I do remember that. It was apple’s proprietary format. But now it’s all MP3 and the world is good.

And on a similar note, I have found peace and happiness at work by carrying my own phone, my own laptop, my own hard drives, my own thumb drive, my own laptop, my own luggage, everything. I just took all their government issued, horribly supported equipment and parked it in the corner of my home office. It’s amazing how happy you can be when you stop thinking that someone else SHOULD be doing something for you. Sure, I shelled out 5 grand or so to fund my employer’s operations, which is not reimbursed nor appreciated, but it’s so liberating to quit requiring everyone to do the right thing and just be ok to get what you want by spending yourself and your money on it. It’ll come back on them eventually for screwing all of us. I don’t have to answer for that. I do have to answer to God and my own conscience. And for how I loved all the people God put me next to.

john's new book

2008-02-24T11:23:00.000-06:00

I’m enjoying John Eldredge’s new book, Walking with God. Brent, David, Christian, Christopher, and I went to see him in the TV audience for James Robin’s show. Again. That makes 4 of 4. We were all really surprised to have a pre-released copy of his book, a paperback, under our chairs when we arrived. The interview was way too short, and James talked way too much, and John didn’t talk near enough, but the book is awesome. I have also been listening to it on the Ransomed Heart podcast.

forty years in the wilderness

2008-02-10T14:32:00.000-06:00

I thought I would coast through my 40th birthday with 40 winks and a sugar free cake but OMG. If you're reading this and you participated in the outpouring of grace to me, thank you. I am humbled by the videos. As for the letters, they are tucked away in a notebook like a hope chest. I'm sure I'll read them one by one over the next week. It's honestly too overwhelming just now. If you're not reading this and you sent something then never mind. I'll be writing or calling everyone back, but I just wanted to post this as a way of letting you know that I'm swimming in a sea of it right now. And ya'll mean to me more than I can say.

And yes, it was a new moon on February 7th.

the mountains and the valley god

2008-02-07T22:33:00.000-06:00

Mountains. What words come to mind? Strength, grandeur, immense, majestic, ancient? I get this sense of awe when I stand at their feet, especially when they're snow-capped, rising above the earth, looking out over all creation, head and shoulders above all their would-be peers.

I was thinking about the mountains as I flew out of San Francisco over mountains and valleys today. It's one of the most beautiful places in America, which is why Jill and I will be spending our seventeenth anniversary there next week.

You are treated with lots of mountains and the valleys they protect when you fly west to east across the US. They run north and south like great waves. Like mighty waves. Like royal family lines, rising and falling and rising again to new heights. Majestic. Strong. Old.

Somewhere along the way, thousands of years ago, or maybe billions, depending on how old the Earth really is, those mountains arose to exert their strength and assert their right to tower above the valleys. But when you think about it, is that really the way it went? Didn't the true strength lie in the valleys below?

Somewhere along the way, there was this underground, superhot metal and dirt that began to press towards the sky, demanding to be released from its prison beneath the crusty sphere we call the Earth. Giant land masses shifted. Some tore. Others buckled. The weakest places became mountains. The strongest ones became valleys. Somehow, there was something inherently strong and cohesive about the land that is today's valleys. The valleys kept their cool. The valleys held it all together. Mountains are the kids. It's the valleys that are ancient.

When I fly over the valleys I always look for geometric shapes piercing the snow, sure evidence that humans have been at work…or play…marking off territory or laying fence or pipe or tracks. Not many live up on the mountains. Lots live in the valleys. The valleys are flat. Easy to build on. The valleys sustain life. And it makes sense, really.

Sometimes people get into moral dilemmas. And sometimes the advice they get from the pious is—take the high road. But the high road is really the weak road. It's the low road that is the way of strength. The low road keeps its cool. The high road is impressive. The low road is plain. It's easy to build on. The low road sustains life.

This reminds me of Jesus. He was always refusing the high road, refusing exaltation, refusing to be made king, refusing to seize power, accepting humiliation, keeping his cool, keeping it all together. He had no majesty that would make us desire him. He was a man of sorrows and familiar with suffering. He was the valley god. The strong god. The god who didn't buckle. The god you could build on. The god who sustains life.

Since the beginning wave upon wave of youngsters have been raised up to take their place and scrape the skies. But the ancient of days is in the valley.

las vegas

2008-01-13T01:33:00.000-06:00

In Las Vegas.

Hate it.

Why is this place called The Meadows anyway?

They're mirages.

I walked about 3 miles around town and another three in the hotel. In the HOTEL. This place looks like the Sistine Chapel. One part of the hotel is lined with high fashion shops with a river running through it and gondolas floating couples around just like in Venice, except that instead of an open sky (which would be something) it’s roofed. And painted to look like a blue sky with clouds, and is lit. I had a dizzy moment there while my brain adjusted…it was pitch dark outside but it looked and felt like late afternoon in there. My room is split level. It definitely outshines my home. It outshines my heavenly home, too, I think.

This place is really wasted on me. I walked around thinking those words Jesus once said, “Now is the prince of this world coming, but he’s got nothing in me.” This place has no hooks in me. No attraction. I have no desire to gamble, get drunk, take a hooker, go to an all night party, or have a lap dance. I’m not mad at anybody who loves it here, and I don’t think they’re evil or weak or (most of all) wrong. And I’m glad two and a half million people are just as happy as they can be living in the middle of an ugly desert. It’s just got nothing on me.

The reason Vegas doesn’t do it for me is because I’m too much of a realist.

And as I walked around, I wondered if it would work without the billions (strike that) trillions of dollars spent to hype it up. I think if it weren’t for all the lights and bells and whistles and sound and carnies and free drinks and free food and free rooms and free skin this place would flop. I think most people would think rationally and decide not to spend a minimum of TWENTY FIVE DOLLARS for a round of poker or craps or a spin of roulette. But when you look around and there’s a hundred thousand people shelling out twenty-five bucks a hand, it throws your reality check organ for a loop. I think there’s a frenzy that people get caught up in. That people PAY to get caught up in. I see entire groups of people that clearly came here together to lose their minds all at once. Like this bunch of women wearing Burger King crowns and drinking tequila shots and pinching eachother’s butts as they scream their way to the dance floor at an outdoor bar. And then there are the tattoo parlors right there in the casinos, people laying in there half naked, glass walls, so everyone can see them get permed.

Now that I’ve seen how people pay to come here, I have no trouble at all believing that people would choose the Matrix.

Did I mention that the porn star convention was at the other end of my hotel? Actually it was called the Adult Expo or something like that. A lot of them were walking the casino and hotel in living color. Everyone who was ever in a porno, and everyone who wants to be in a porno is here I think. The ones who are already stars walk around with an entourage like they own the place. The wannabe’s have a single escort, an older man who wears a badge, and they talk real loud. I guess it’s to make a splash. In the meadows.

There are a few dark spots, though. Two things that gave me a little smile. Some guys were standing around enjoying some cigars together. That looked real. And then I got hailed by two prostitutes in the casino. They were young, dark-skinned, had pretty eyes, and nice smiles. They looked like they were having fun. And they didn’t curse me when I smiled and walked on by.

I want a respite.
I want a place where the sun lightly bakes my cheeks while the cool breeze folds my arms.
I want a place where the rhythm is not a painted woman pounding my lap but careless ripples slapping my dingy.
I want to hear birds and crickets and fish and trees.
I want the night to be lit up with billions of lights billions of miles away, and watch some fall.
I’m so tired of having and so bereft of wanting.
Help me get someday back.
Help me to ache.

there is no better you

2008-01-10T18:07:00.000-06:00

Unfortunately when you travel through airports, you end up seeing this plastic smile a lot, which is attached to one of the most heinous ideas ever. I kept my mouth shut long enough.

There is no better you.

progress and the electric toothbrush

2007-12-28T07:18:00.000-06:00

For Christmas I got an insulated USB coffee mug. This is a picture of it plugged into one of my laptops.

It cracks me up. But I'm sure a lot of my people would call it the perfect gift for me. It's hard to think about me apart from coffee or computers. And if the people who gave it to me are reading this, thank you. I will use it. And to be fair it also has an adapter to plug it into your car cigarette lighter.

But here's what I'm wondering. I'm wondering how valuable progress really is, and where it's taking us.

If you don't know of Tim Hawkins, you may not appreciate the humor of an electric toothbrush (below). It's all about laziness. But now there's something for the more disciplined among us, or more fearful—the wireless toothbrush. The wireless toothbrush streams data to a remote display, prompting you how long and how hard to brush. I'll bet Wireless Toothbrush 2.0 will include an accelerometer based on the iPhone's to determine exactly which tooth you're brushing and at what angle. But then where does it go?

I know better than to make a slippery slope argument. But I do wonder what the slope might look like with the likes of a wireless toothbrush. Maybe the insurance companies will get ahold of this and give discounts to anyone who promises they have bought a wireless toothbrush, and that they brush their teeth 3 times a day for 2 minutes (hey, it could happen—they give me one if I promise I bought an alarm system for my home, and that it’s monitored). But then, men like control, don’t they? If those insurance companies could figure out a way to monitor my tooth brushing themselves, they wouldn’t need to trust my promise (kind of like the way the state dials my car’s computer into their computer when I get a mandatory yearly car inspection). I doubt the insurance companies would pass a law requiring me to submit tooth brushing data. But they don’t have to. If it costs $25/month with a wireless toothbrush and $150/month without, it’s law enough. There’s written laws and there’s unwritten laws. Ask anyone who doesn’t go to church.

When you think about it, the promise of progress is exaltation. Whether it's in technology or in the church or wherever, it's about me escaping the common human plight, setting me apart from the less fortunate, and making me feel like a god. It sounds great up front, but the side effects are hell.

to see through not with the eye

2007-12-21T05:56:00.000-06:00

I wonder what God is up to? It must be one of the most important questions that can ever be asked. I love Blake's poem. And I'm pierced by the term “practical agnosticism”. Thank God for Brent Curtis, God rest his soul.

I Wonder What God Is Up To?

12/20/2007

Several years ago I went through one of the most painful trials of my professional life. The story involves a colleague whom I will call Dave, a man I hired and with whom I had labored several years in ministry. We spent many hours on the road together, speaking to churches about the Christian life. A point came when I needed to confront Dave about some issues in his life that were hurting his own ministry and the larger purposes of our team. In all fairness, I think I handled it poorly, but I was totally unprepared for what happened next. Dave turned on me with the ferocity of a cornered animal. He fabricated lies and spread rumors in an attempt to destroy my career. His actions were so out of proportion it was hard to believe we were reacting to the same events. He went to the head pastor in an attempt to have me dismissed. The attempt failed, but our friendship was lost, and several others were hurt in the process.

In the midst of the crisis, I spoke with Brent one afternoon about the turn of events and the awful pain of betrayal. He said, “I wonder what God is up to in all this?”

“God?” I said. “What’s he got to do with it?” My practical agnosticism was revealed. I was caught up in the sociodrama, the smaller story, completely blind to the true story at that point in my life. Brent’s question arrested my attention and brought it to a higher level. In fact, the process of our sanctification, our journey, rests entirely on our ability to see life from the basis of that question. As the poet William Blake warned long ago, “Life’s dim window of the soul distorts the heavens from pole to pole, and leads you to believe a lie, when you see with, not through, the eye.”

(The Sacred Romance, 146–47)

From The Ransomed Heart, by John Eldredge, reading 354 Ransomed Heart Ministries http://www.ransomedheart.com/

do you see what I see? part ii

2007-12-12T20:55:00.000-06:00

Yeah, if there was another verse (which there wouldn't be), it would have to go something like this:

Said the people to the passers-by
“It is time to obey!
Look no further now, passers-by,
It is time to obey!
Your knees, your knees, you must surely bow
And confess like we tell you how,
And confess like we tell you how!”

It doesn't particularly stir me to anything. I'm not really tripping over myself to join up.

darkness

2007-12-10T02:30:00.000-06:00

I went room by room, flipping switches, turning off incandescents and fluorescents one by one and ten by ten. It was getting darker at every turn. But there are so many lights, and there is so much power being used. I could smell the aroma, so I knew it was somewhere, even if it was so faint and dim that the slightest slipped breath would have put it out. But for some reason I could not see it. I wanted to find it. I desperately wanted to find it—the candle, the light of the world. I would have this flame over all the wizardry of modern man, and against whatever perils crouch in the aegis of darkness. The lights had to go out.

do you see what I see?

2007-12-08T14:34:00.000-06:00

I've always liked this Christmas song, but I just noticed something new when I listened to it on the radio last week.

Said the night wind to the little lamb,
"Do you see what I see?
Way up in the sky, little lamb,
Do you see what I see?
A star, a star, dancing in the night,
With a tail as big as a kite,
With a tail as big as a kite."
Said the little lamb to the shepherd boy,
"Do you hear what I hear?
Ringing through the sky, shepherd boy,
Do you hear what I hear?
A song, a song high above the trees,
With a voice as big as the sea,
With a voice as big as the sea."
Said the shepherd boy to the mighty king,
"Do you know what I know?
In your palace warm, mighty king,
Do you know what I know?
A Child, a Child shivers in the cold.
Let us bring him silver and gold,
Let us bring him silver and gold."
Said the king to the people everywhere,
"Listen to what I say!
Pray for peace, people, everywhere,
Listen to what I say!
The Child, the Child sleeping in the night
He will bring us goodness and light,
He will bring us goodness and light."

What I just noticed is this. Every character in this tale asks a question except one. The king makes a statement, and then it's over. When you think about it, isn't that what all statements do?

And when you think about it, isn't that what Christianity has largely become?

Statements.

Really, the only thing there's room for at the end of a statement is an argument or an amen. There's no invitation, no wonder, no longing, no cast of characters, no story, no awe.

Thinking back to my childhood, I always liked this song, but it wasn't my favorite. I think it was because it left me feeling flat. I didn't know why until now. It just ends so abruptly. It so quickly flatlines.

Do you see what I see?
Do you hear what I hear?
Do you know what I know?
Listen to what I say!

I think I'll go join the night wind, the little lamb, the shepherd boy, and stay away from the king. I was liking the story.

when technology works

2007-12-07T14:29:00.000-06:00

...it's a beautiful thing.

I got a call from a former client who was in bad shape. From the airport in Atlanta, in 15 minutes I was able to fire up my Lenovo Thinkpad, connect to the net with my Sprint EVDOrA cell phone modem, tunnel into their network with the Cisco VPN client, run Windows XP's Remote Desktop, diagnose the problem, and tell them how to fix it. All the while, the client was sharing the session, so he could see everything I did. And we were on the cell phone together the whole time, talking busines, and sharing a few laughs.

It's a beautiful thing.

evocative

2007-12-06T05:27:00.000-06:00

It truly is remarkable the kind of man Jesus was. From baby to adult, there was something about him that was unmistakable: confident but humble, fully connected but disentangled, compassionate but not suckered, longing but not needy, a servant but not a debtor, a king but not a dictator, worshipped but not spongy.

I got a day behind on my Advent readings, so I just read this today. In The Miraculous Journey, Marty Bullis contrasts Herod with Jesus out of one little phrase. When the wise men came from the east, Herod “was frightened, and all Jerusalem with him”.

He comes into the world having accomplished nothing yet He is worshiped. He exits the world having brought salvation yet is scorned. He walks the entire way, from incarnation to crucifixion, needing no affirmation. He is content to simply be and do what He is.
…He [entered] the world through a broken family, in a city regarded as insignificant, and in the form of a helpless child. Yet in this we see the ways of God, where the least are greatest, where the poor are rich, where the meek inherit the earth. This Christ child is a King who can lead His people, not merely lord them, and who does not force them to mirror His emotional state. He is a babe who does not require our worship but evokes it as only an un-needy God can.

Evocative.

Now there’s a great yuletide word if there ever was one.

a thrill of hope

2007-12-01T00:02:00.000-06:00

a thrill of hope...
the weary world rejoices...

Are there any words in all of language as beautiful as these? Someday.

the most wonderful time

2007-11-30T23:21:00.000-06:00

Yes, it's time for Christmas. We put on an Amy Grant Christmas album and set up the tree tonight, and even though it's warm enough to go barefoot outside, it's beginning to feel like Christmas. It really is the most wonderful time of the year. I broke my fast tonight as well. Four days of the Master Cleanse was enough. So I'm sitting here at my computer with a glass of Chardonnay, writing this entry while I look into the pretty room where the most beautiful kids, smiles donned, are picking out ornaments and hanging them on the tree together. There's no better feeling. And it's the first time today, I think, that they haven't been snipping at each other or playing computer games.

One of the best parts about Christmas is discovery. It's not just the presents you finally get on that magical morning. There's lots of discovery. One of my joys is when we get the lights out and discover that I had a brain last year when I repacked them because they're all labeled and ready to hang. Then there's the discovery of ornaments, some made by hand, some special gifts, all bearing memories. There's the drives through the neighborhood where we see some familiar wookies and find some new ones. There's the discovery of who your true friends are as you make your Christmas card list--the ones who endure through the years and the ones who are most precious today.

Of course the best discovery of all is that once upon a time God came near, that Christ a saviour was born, that God lived with us, and if you're very lucky, you discover that he still does.

my cookie nightmare

2007-11-26T12:11:00.000-06:00

We just moved in to a new neighborhood. As usual someone brought by the proverbial cookies. My wife, knowing how much I like cookies, thanked the welcoming party, and left the cookies for me. I uncovered them and pulled one out. Interesting shape. I set the cookie down and wandered off into the living room to think about it. I wondered how they made that shape, and where they got the idea. I became so intrigued with it that I went to my tool shed, got some tin that came with us (for some bizarre reason), and began to fashion a cookie cutter to match the shape of those cookies. It was a little tricky, lemme tell ya. First, tin is unwieldy. And dirty. And it leaves this silvery black film on your hands that is quite difficult to get off. I cut myself several times and bled all over the kitchen after a few expletives. But I survived that phase. And the cookies for the most part did, too. The tin wasn’t really pliable enough, though, and my hands and wrists were beginning to feel it, so I heated up the tin in the oven. That actually worked great, but hot tin burns flesh. Gloves help. The other thing about tin is that it cools very quickly, so I had to go with this process of placing another cookie on a board, throwing the gloves on, swiping the tin out, darting over to the counter where the cookie was, and trying to trace it before the tin cooled and became rigid again. After a dozen or so iterations, I got pretty good at this. In fact I would even say I perfected it. But there were still problems. When the cookies first arrived they were warm and a little pliable. The problem was that I ended up misshaping them a bit with the tin. And of course I didn’t want a cookie in the image of my tin. I wanted a tin in the image of my cookie. During the time I worked out the process, though, they cooled and hardened, which solved that, but led to a new problem. I kept breaking the cookies with the tin. The shape of the cookies, if I could describe it, was almost a human shape. Almost, but not quite. And it was that not quite part that I really wanted to immortalize with my cookie cutter. So frustrating. I broke a leg here, a hand there, chipped a head, broke one right in half. And then the worst thing of all happened. I got ready to run the process again and found that I had run out of cookies. Yep. Every single one was either blood-stained or broken. Well by this time I was all in. You can imagine that this was no small thing. I mean, I had roped off the kitchen and threatened my wife and kids with bodily pain if they disturbed my lab in any way. Thus, the panic at the cookie basket’s silence. But then I had a comforting thought. I would just go and ask the neighbors that left the cookies if they’d mind cooking another batch. It seemed a little imposing I guess, but at this point it was for the greater good. So I checked the name on the card, warned my family once again, and headed out the front door. This would be quick. Right. I finally was informed that said family leaving said cookies had moved. This I found to be completely ridiculous and exponentially improbable and patently unacceptable and…unnerving. I walked then jogged then ran back to the kitchen to get at that basket to look for another clue as to the identity and whereabouts of the cookie people. I was beginning to worry. Ok it was an all out anxiety attack. I saw that card tied onto the wicker basket and ripped it off, which was not a good idea because I tore right through a handwritten note. When I pieced it back together here is what it said:

Welcome to the neighborhood and goodbye. We’re sorry we won’t get the chance to know you because we’re packed up and moving out again to follow another crazy dream. We hope you enjoy the neighborhood as much as we did, and that you can take as many and varied memories with you as we’re taking with us, starting with some warm cookies.

Sincerely,
The Striders

So here is my desperate plea. If anyone named the Striders moves in next door to you, PLEASE ask them if they have a special cookie cutter like the one described above and let me know immediately. I never even got to taste those cookies. But they sure had the most wonderful aroma when we first received them.

blasphemy or cosmic child abuse

2007-11-24T22:09:00.000-06:00

I ran across this video of some Christian slamming some other Christian. Two authors. Turns out the slammer is John Piper and the slammee is Steve Chalke. Chalke wrote a book where he refers to the way the cross is currently taught by conservative Christianity as "cosmic child abuse". Piper pulled out the blasphemy word.

This has intrigued me.

Doing a little research on this I discovered that this was a big controversy in some circles. Circles out of which I am. (what a correct use of English grammar, don't you think?)

The controversy, as best I understand it, is this:

Modern Evangelicals say that God is a just God, and therefore sin always has to be paid for. Sin has to be judged and punished or else God would be found to be unjust and indeed unholy. And even though this generally means that each individual sinner has to pay the consequences of his or her own sins, God (in his mercy) made a way for someone to pay for someone else's sins, if possible. The word they apply to this idea is "atonement". It traces back to the ancient practice of a certain category of sacrifice where a substitution is made, where God counts the death of a "holy" or "accursed" or "dedicated" animal (one set apart by a sinner or a group of sinners for this express purpose) in place of the sinner(s). God then pours out his wrath on this holy animal instead of on the sinner, so that his anger and judgment and wrath against the sinner is quenched, and then the sinner is able to be reconciled with God.

I'm pretty sure I fairly stated this because I was wholly indoctrinated with it. And I would add that it has a certain reasonableness and even beauty to it. If you accept the premise.

But here's where Chalke is rocking the boat. According to Chalke the cross was not Jesus satisfying his Father's demands for justice on our behalf. Rather, Jesus was demonstrating the fallacy of violence and fighting for your rights. Jesus taught that it was worth it, if what was to be gained was precious enough, to turn the other cheek, to not respond to hatred and injustice and violence with more hatred and injustice and violence. It's seen by God as good even to die rather than anwser. The resurrection of Jesus, then, becomes the proof that love is superior. In making his case, Chalke says that to begin with "God is justice" is starting off on the wrong foot. Equivocating God with "justice" is not supported, according to the Scriptures. However, equivocating God with "love" is. "God is love" says John (in 1 John 4). Twice. So viewing the cross, this apex of Christianity, the crux of the Christian faith, from a position of "God is just" rather than "God is love" leads to error.

This is an idea that is gaining a lot of steam among post-modern Christian groups and among Christ followers. It's not going much of anywhere in Christianity, though. The idea is that Christ's willingness to lay down his life is precious, not because his just father demanded it, but because he himself wanted to validate by his own actions that what he taught was good and true and beautiful.

I'm not taking sides here. I'm just standing back and watching the picture change as the colors swirl. With a certain pleasure, I might add, that comes from not being already overcommitted.

I have to say this, though. I'm reading through some of the arguments for "God's holy requirements" and I find them lacking. One source that is rebutting Chalke has listed these:

But God is described in the Bible as light (1 John 1:5) and Spirit (John 4:24). Moreover both Testaments affirm that God is a consuming fire (Deut. 4:24; Heb. 12:29), and dwells in unapproachable light (1 Tim.6:16). The sight of God's holiness filled Isaiah with dread and made him conscious of his guilt (Isa. 6:1-5). Christians are called to holiness not impurity (1 Thess. 4:7). This confusion of God's attributes of holiness and love is not just a basic error; it appears to be an intentional misrepresentation to serve his own agenda.

If that's the best you can do, and I'm not sure it is, then I say you're on pretty thin ice. Here's why:

First, God being light and wind does not lean him toward the vengeful aspect of justice in any way I'm aware of. Lights shines wonderfully illuminating things, changing our perception of them and opening our minds. Wind moves things around, whether they were happy where they were or not.

God being a consuming fire has nothing to do with vengeance for people who have sinned against him at all. Look it up. His consuming fire is his jealous love for his beloved. What wouldn't I do for someone I was infatuated with if they were being abused and mistreated? How much more a God who is pure love? (If you look up Deut. 4:24 and Heb. 12:29, also check out Proverbs 6:30-35 and 2 Corinthians 11:1-2. Or just click here to read about God's hot love.)

Unapproachable? I'm not sure how being unapproachable makes God scary or vindictive. I read that chapter, too, and I think it's talking about how not to get infatuated with rich or powerful people, or people you think are necessary to impress, but rather to keep looking to God, who alone is worth worshipping. Even Jesus said "only one is good". And is this really the way they want to go? God is not approachable? If so, they need to get their scratch-out pens out and do some Bible editing (I'm thinking about parts like Ephesians 3:10-12 and Hebrews 4:16)

As for Isaiah, he was aware of his specific guilt--that of his lips, not of his being generally unclean. And I also think it's interesting that no death was required for Isaiah's atonement--in his case a seraph flew a live coal between some tongs he got from a burning altar and singed his lips--in the seraph's words, "See this has touched your lips; your guilt is taken away and your sin atoned for."

That Christians are called to holiness and not impurity... duh. Am I missing something? Do you know of anyone out there saying "Jesus wants you to fornicate and defraud people"? I don't. And I don't see how this would tip the scale from "Christ dying to demonstrate violence's folly" to "Christ dying to demonstrate God's justice" anyway. So it's a basically a red herring.

Ok. The point of all this (to me) is something I keep coming upon. There's this trying that every counter-cultural author or speaker has to undergo, whereby he must be subjected to the established truth, whether or not that established truth was ever really God's view or not. This guy, Chalke, is saying that evangelicals have been getting it wrong because they've been starting with the wrong premise (to extremely simplify: "God is just" instead of "God is love"). But then he gets objected to with derivatives of the very premise he questions. What's that about?

Are we so far advanced that we cannot go back and check our premises? Is the tree so full grown that it cannot be uprooted and replanted?

a great story for congregants

2007-11-19T18:56:00.001-06:00

Once upon a time in a far off country with green pastures and blue ponds where it was always spring lived a prince who was the apple of his father's eye. But the king's advisors despised his child, so they kidnapped him, tied him in a woolen bag, and went to hide him in a cave where they would feed him stale bread and warm brine.

When the king missed his beloved son for dinner he decreed a search throughout the castle for the charmed lad but he was not to be immediately found. But some in the king's house became suspicious of the conspirators, so the king had them followed. Quickly enough they were found out, and the boy was rescued and returned safely. The king tried all the bad men and found that they had misbehaved. As a result, they reaped punishment for themselves and were not allowed to be the king's advisors anymore.

Life went back to being like it was supposed to be. The end.

the truth

2007-11-19T18:56:00.000-06:00

yield it don't wield it

satisfaction

2007-11-16T12:27:00.000-06:00

Some radio preacher was saying

Sanctification should be a healthy spiritual dissatisfaction with who you are. Not self-hatred. Not self-contempt...

I never heard the rest of what he said becuase I turned the radio off as fast as I could. Because I think that is completely false. I think

Sanctification should be a healthy spiritual satisfaction with who you are.

And at least according to Jesus it does include hating yourself. I think the reason statements like this get so much play is because there is a widespread misbelief that there is one way to be, and that Christ is a very well-defined standard. But there is way more variety to God than that.

But accepting who you are will cost you a lot. You'll have to say goodbye to lots of stuff you were convinced you should do and should have and should be. And be satisfied with who God calls you. God has lots of children. And he sets them all apart for something special.

Self-satisfaction is way underrated.

P.S. for those who don't know the term here's a link to sanctification on wikipedia.

way beyond words

2007-11-16T07:53:00.000-06:00

Not everything has a name. Some things lead us into realms beyond words. —Alexander Solzhenitsyn

Skepticism really is the mode of the day. I didn't like admitting this at first, because I have found myself somewhat more skeptical lately, especially of pulpits and all that they bring with them. But I've just finished a book called The Myth of Certainty and the author, Daniel Taylor, suggests “that among the things one should be skeptical about in our skeptical age” is skepticism itself.

We all know doubters—people who can find the massive black cloud in the middle of every silver lining. But are these people the clowns diverting our attention from the cowboy riding the one ton bull? Are they really all part of the same show?

There is a way of approaching things that is basically a glorified doubting game. A way of defending everything, proving everything, setting up every conversation or statement as an argument, cornering the truth.

Taylor says that behind all this “the person playing the doubting game is afraid of looking foolish, of not appearing logical, rigorous, and disciplined”. And that’s probably most of it. Nobody wants to be debunked or ridiculed. And deeper than that, nobody wants to find out someday that their whole life was meaningless. So what do you do? You play defense. You talk to yourself in the mirror. The man in that glass becomes your detractor, your doubter, your antagonist.

But you can’t corner the truth. You can’t trap it in the mirror. Not everything has a name.

One benefit of release from the monopoly of the doubting game is the awareness that a belief, feeling, intuition, or conviction does not have to be “defendable” to be worthwhile. Solzhenitsyn says, “Not everything has a name.” Likewise, not everything is explainable. Not everything can be put in terms that allow it to be ground through the doubting game machine. Even the concepts of explanation, defense, and proof are derived from one particular way of looking at the world which, while powerful and historically productive, has no valid claim to exclusive rule. Again, this is not an apology for anti-intellectualism or irrationalism, but a recognition that the search for truth is too important to limit ourselves to one faculty or one methodology. —Daniel Taylor, Myth of Certainty

This is all stuff so familiar to me. God rescued me from wanting to be right two and a half years ago. He painted the picture vividly. But I would add this as a word to the wise. Don’t expect everyone to accept your escape. Expect to be called irresponsible when you stop defending yourself. Expect to be accused of jeopardizing those around you when you don’t lock all the doors and arm the alarm. Expect to be ignored when you stop arguing. And don’t expect that if you lay down your weapons that a cease fire will happen. Smiles can be wiped off. Glass can be shattered.

But please escape. We need you to escape. We need you to stop defending yourself and get back to being yourself. We need creativity—stories, music, adventures, ideas, humor, painting, photography, philosophy. We need healing and restoration—causes, gifts, breakfast. “And aside from controversial things,” as Taylor says, “tasks accomplished which have nothing to do with partisanship of any kind, simply because we are human beings whom God has given many, many things to do.”

There is so much to life than cannot be defended or explained. There is another way.

life in truth

2007-11-15T00:13:00.001-06:00

want to live well?
submit to truth
wherever you find it
refuse
to the point of death
to wield it

1000

2007-11-14T17:29:00.000-06:00

HAhahahaw! I have exactly 1000 unread emails in my inbox as evidenced by the Inbox (1000). It's a magical moment.

heart matters

2007-11-14T11:53:00.000-06:00

The heart of a matter—the heart of anything—is the truth of it. Everything else is just packaging.

Packaging is ok. There’s nothing inherently good or evil about it. It’s just packaging, though.

Sometimes the packaging communicates something about the heart, sometimes it obfuscates.

Imagine the difference in the way you feel when you get two gifts. One is a cheap trinket packaged exquisitely. The other is a beautiful string of pearls wrapped in a shoe box with newspaper.

I have a huge distrust of packaging. Maybe it stems from my first gag gift. It was at our family Christmas. I must have been 6 or 8. Everyone drew names that year. One gift under the tree was much larger than the rest. Turns out it was from my cousin Cathi, my elder by two years, to me. Everyone was excited when it came my turn. I opened the box. Another box. Wrapped like the first. I opened that box. Another box. Also wrapped. This went on for about 5 or 6 iterations. Finally, I got to a very small box, wrapped with Christmas paper and ribbon. I shook it. Everyone looked on with anticipation. I opened it. It was a cheap, used tube of red lipstick. Everyone laughed. Ha ha ha ha! I was confused. “It’s a gag gift” someone said. “What’s a gag gift?” I completely didn’t understand.

I do now.

Since then I’ve been gagged many times. But never again with boxes and ribbons.

And I’ve found lots of treasures in stinky shoe boxes wrapped in yesterday’s news.

It’s the heart that matters.

in Spanish color ii

2007-11-12T23:56:00.000-06:00

I enjoyed so much looking back through my pictures of Spain that I put together a new album. Such a beautiful place.

From the album in Spanish color ii

without the frames:

From the album in Spanish color ii (full)

like or what

2007-11-12T10:41:00.000-06:00

Our friend Carla came over today. I was in the kitchen making coffee when my five year old ran in and started rummaging through the cabinet for a drinking cup. “We need to make Carla feel like she’s welcome!” he said. “But she is welcome,” I said. “I know, but we just need to give her pretty stuff,” he said. “If you say so,” I thought. It really was a sweet gesture.

There is a subtle but rather important distinction between “we need to make her feel like she’s welcome” and “we need to make her feel welcome”. I think Joshua actually meant the latter, even though he said the former.

There is a subtle but rather important distinction, isn’t there? This runs through all our beliefs and practices and gets at the core questions of what is the truth.

Do I want to make someone feel like they’re welcome, or do I want to make them feel how welcome they truly are?

Do I want to make someone feel like they’re forgiven, or do I want to make them feel how forgiven they truly are?

Do I want to make someone feel like they’re chosen, or do I want to make them feel how chosen they truly are?

Do I want to make someone feel like they bear the image of God, or do I want to make them feel the image of God they truly bear?

Honestly, when I look around, I see a lot of the former. Call it marketing, call it spinning, call it training, call it exposition, call it disbelief, call it spell casting, call it whatever. There is a lot of trying to make people feel LIKE they are, rather than feel WHAT they are.

in Spanish color

2007-11-10T11:07:00.000-06:00

Last year we visited my Spanish sister and her family in what was a breathtaking trip to Spain. The whole family. All seven of us. It was a great idea in so many ways. It was an experience of a lifetime for my kids, most of whom had never even been out of the States. It was theraputic for us to spend time with a family who really treasured us. It was not only educational but very soul-settling to breathe the air that birthed the discovery of America with the voyage of Columbus, and planted the seeds of liberation with immortal words like

no es causa justa de guerra el deseo de ensanchar el imperio
(it is not a just cause of war the desire to expand the empire)

There were so many sensations...smells, sounds, colors. I don't know why I'm just getting around to posting some of the photographs I snapped. Maybe it's because I didn't know the best way to do it. Anyway, I took a couple of thousand pictures with my (then) brand new Canon A620 digital. It is a remarkable camera. Highly recommended.

So here's a link to the album. These pictures are untouched. I only applied this framing effect and compressed them so I could enjoy the whole picture when I set it as my desktop background. Enjoy.

From the album in Spanish color

Update: Awesome! I was over on Molly's blog and found out that you can embed a mini-slide show. :)

infallible

2007-11-07T00:39:00.000-06:00

I have been thinking a lot today some continued thoughts. More confessions of an amateur Christian. One is the idea of the Bible being infallible. I don’t know if technically it is or is not, but practically it’s not.

But there’s this idea that the Bible is this book with no errors and is infallible, which means it cannot fail, I think. But it can fail. It can fail easily and often. For example, it fails to justify Hitler’s murdering millions of people, many of them Jews. It fails to keep an elder-in-training I know from devouring the life of a young woman I know and love. It fails to keep people from bludgeoning weaker Christians with its supposed rules. It fails to keep a former friend from blaming me for everything that didn’t go their way. It fails to keep people from having sex before they’re married, or sex with lots of people afterwards, or sex with people of the same sex before or after. It fails to prove that people are right when they put sinners down. It fails to make people regularly meditate and have consistent communion with God. It fails in many ways.

Of course I’m being master of the obvious here. And I’m sure I could be straightened out so that I have to admit some doctrinal tenet of infallibility. I’m sure it goes something like this, that human beings are fallible but the Word of God in the written form of the Bible is not. People fail the Bible, and not vice versa. And I would say that’s just about right. The problem is that the Bible is not written for anyone but people. So the claim is that it is perfect and incapable of failing when read and applied perfectly. Which it never is. Because we haven’t yet found the perfect person to read it and apply it. And if we did he/she would probably be disqualified because they’d be either lying or delusional about being perfect.

So the thing is, it doesn’t really mean all that much to have a perfect book that is incapable of failing when a person perfectly reads and applies it. What would really make a difference in the world is if someone treasured the ancient words and traditions so much that THEY decided to be infallible. Now that is something I could get really excited about. And I would love to be an apologist for a group of People who, no matter what they did wrong, never failed to love, and leave Book defending to people going the way of the dinosaur.

the Holy Spirit didn't write the Bible

2007-10-28T22:56:00.000-05:00

These things run through my head from time to time. They're never the main thing going on in my life, but they're these true and plain things that I haven't taken time to write. I don't really know if anybody does. So here's one...

The Holy Spirit didn't write the Bible.

Ok, if you're a fundamentalist, you're ready to rend your garment and spit on my face. If you're a normal person, you're either saying, "huh?" or "uh, yeah, no duh."

The thing is, sometimes people get this weird idea that the Holy Spirit sat down once upon a time and decided to write a book, which later came to be known as the Holy Bible. And the problem is that the people who believe this don't talk about it as if it's a mystical thing, a ghost writing a book. They talk about it like it's a real book straight from the pen of God to the paper between the covers of their Bible sitting on the front seat of their car.

If you have this idea I think I can help you out. You probably were told that the Holy Spirit did indeed write this book, and that's what makes it flawless. And you were told that it's imperitave to memorize as much of it as you can, and to live by it. And you were told that it's important that you don't interpret or make judgments on it, but that you should just read what it says and do exactly that. Because the Holy Spirit wrote it. And the Holy Spirit is God. God said it. You believe it. That's it. Period.

And you were probably given tips on how to handle objections, really good objections like, why are there discrepancies between the different gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John)? I won't go into those in detail because I'm sure you can easily find a good long list somewhere on the Net.

But this one about the obvious discrepancies is really important. The thing is, you were told that this one is easy to explain: the gospels were faithful accounts written by four different men from different vantage points. This is like if four eyewitnesses were describing an elephant, and could only be present at one place at a time, they would have very different accounts, but taken together, a reader removed completely from the elephant would get a good picture of what an elephant is. And that's a really good explanation if you ask me. But what happened to the Holy Spirit writing it? The problem is that the Holy Spirit has no vantage point. The Holy Spirit is everywhere. Omnipresent is your word for that. So if the Holy Spirit wrote it, you wouldn't need different versions that you hve to compile. If the Holy Spirit wrote it, then there's no vantage issue. But if men wrote it, there is.

The thing is, I believe you. The gospels were "written by four different men". Like you said. Not the Holy Spirit. And I'm sure they are faithful accounts, like you said, too. Stick with you story. They are human accounts. There's not a Holy Spirit account of "what really happened".

What seems most reasonable to me is that this Holy Ghost, or Wind of God, the same spirit that animates all life, brought clarity and truth and light and inspiration to some men in the first century who wanted to write about God and Jesus as they had encountered them. And so they did. And as a result, we have this collection of early human letters that we can read and appreciate and compile our own images of who and what God is. As we encounter Him.

And the same goes for Paul's writings, and James, and Peter, and even all the Old Testament stuff. The Spirit is way more mystical and flexible and way more generous with men than we've oft been told.

great company

2007-10-26T18:24:00.001-05:00

I work for a great company! It must be great because they tell me how lucky I am to have a job with them. it took me 20 @!$#fdjw9p%U(*$# minutes to log in to email on their GREAT email system. Not exactly efficient. But it's ok, because I get paid based on how many hours I bill my customers. Those 2o minutes were FREE! Thanks to me. I'm so generous.

in the blue

2007-10-22T20:02:00.000-05:00

Once upon a time there was a ship floating aimlessly at sea. A small boat it was, but sturdy and true. The waves tossed and buffeted the vessel, splashing up its side, pooling its hull with water as if to spit in it mockingly. But the ship was strong, and whether of bravery or numbness, pressed on. For days and days it rocked on, steady, now drowning, now baking in the hot sun. With nary a soul to keep, it moved onward, perhaps, but if so not knowing where.

At last it came to an island, a small patch of earth with a lone palm. At first this seemed to be salvation—from the monotony of the blues, and the incessancy of the salty slaps. But the sandy shore did chap its hide, and the lonely tree gave but few moments of relief from the scorching heat. And besides all this, the boat’s planks were drying out and beginning to harden.

The boat drifted off again with a long, melancholy howl blowing across its gunwale.

For two long years the empty hull navigated the sea, aimlessly, patiently, persistently, ever reaching for the horizon. Or running from it. But the sea will have its bigness. The little boat had run so long that all desire was gone—either to press on or to turn back. The boat had finally come to a place where there was no memory of former purpose or plan, nor was there any hope of renewal. It was utterly lost.

a story too good to waste

2007-10-22T19:09:00.000-05:00

My 5 year old, has invited the neighbor kids to join us for church or whatever this thing is we do on mid-day Sundays. The 5 year old has been coming, but the 7 year old is not sure he's in. The conversation basically went something like this...

Joshua: Hey you wanna come to Joy Kids?
Henry: I go to church on Sunday.
Joshua: That's ok. You can come after.
Henry: Well, I already go to one Bible study; wouldn't that be like doing two in one day?
Joshua: Not really. We talk about God and Jesus Christ!

Perfect.

generosity

2007-10-06T17:15:00.000-05:00

Last Sunday, we had some complimentary movie tickets, and a ticket for a free entrée and drink that expired the end of the month. We had already used several of them, and there were a couple left. We were hoping that Christian and Ally would use them. Saying yes meant we would need to babysit Reece (the cutest baby ever). They did and we did.

When they got back, they told us how they spent the coupons and their time, and they expressed their appreciation. And then Christian bursts out with, "Thank you very much for your generosity!" I told him he was welcome, but I felt uneasy with it. Couldn’t tell you exactly why. But I have always had a problem with people calling me generous. It’s almost like it’s a dirty word or something, like they’re accusing me of something.

I still couldn’t shake it Monday morning on the long drive to work. What is it with generosity? Why does that bother me so much? Besides that, I didn’t even pay for these tickets anyway. They were given to us because Christian, Brent, Christopher, Benjamin, and I suffered through an imax movie experience so close to our face that our eyes hurt for a week, and I had written the manager to complain. Christian had claim to his ticket anyway. I just kept thinking, I didn’t do anything big, anything extraordinary. That wasn't me being generous. That was just me loving my friends.

And then it hit me. The problem has been with me. I have had this warped view of generosity. For some reason I thought generous people were this superclass of humans. Big people. Wealthy people. People who have their act together. People who look down on the little people and have pity on their state. Benevolent people. And frankly, people who are better than others. And it would kill me if people saw me that way. Kill me quicker if they thought I saw myself like that. I don’t know where this idea came from. Maybe you’ve had this idea, too.

And then an amazing thing happened. Once I was able to put my finger on this thing, this thing I now know to be a big lie, I was free to rip it down. And I got something cool in its place. I was indeed just loving my friends.

Generosity is love dealing with the problem of abundance.

We had more than we could use. They had less than they could use. So we gave. That’s the way love works. No guilt. No ought. No pride. No division. And no room for feeling uneasy about doing it.

I started thinking that maybe love does lots of stuff like this. Maybe all the virtues are just love dealing with some problem.

Maybe...

Justice is love dealing with the problem of oppression.
Bravery is love dealing with the problem of fear.
Gratitude is love dealing with the problem of undeserved favor.
Loyalty is love dealing with the problem of being hurt by a friend.

Because somehow it's all about love. Everything good hangs on loving God and loving each other. And what's wrong with that?

why do you call me good?

2007-09-29T22:07:00.000-05:00

So there’s this new book out by Chip Ingram called Good to Great. It’s about, in his words, the only way the church is going to become the church, what it’s supposed to be, is if leaders and mature Christians take it to the next level. And so “good to great” is about getting to the next level. And personally, I like the idea of taking it up a notch.

The problem I have with this is, or the confusion I have, is this. There was this guy who went to Jesus and he addresses him, “Good Teacher”. And then Jesus says, whoa, hold on there. Why do you call me good? Because there is only one who is good, and it’s God.

So, I mean, Jesus looked out and he said, look, there’s no good people, there’s only one who’s good. It’s God. I know people who I would like to call good people, but can I? I know there are pockets of good in all of us, and I think it’s like a preview, a foretaste, a share of the divine nature. A helping. But is anybody only always good? To Jesus, nobody’s good. Nobody’s truly good. Except for God.

But this book is supposed to take us beyond good to great.

So what’s my problem?

I think somebody’s response to me about all this would be, “Steve, you’re harping on semantics. We’re not talking about nobody’s perfect (and that’s clearly what Jesus was talking about—no one is perfect), but we’re talking about good as in, “It’s good, you know, but it could be better.”

My question to that is: When did good get a downgrade? When did being good become less than being great? When did being good become less than being perfect? When did being good become less than being right? Who came up with the phrase, “a good thing is the enemy of the right thing” (the right thing being the greatest)?

When did good get a downgrade?

Because clearly to Jesus, good was not second place. There was only One who is good. There are all kinds of people that do things right, that do things well, that do things beautifully, but to Jesus there’s only one who’s really, truly good.

Jesus didn’t say there’s only One who is perfect. Actually, in another situation he said, “You be perfect, for your heavenly father is perfect”. So he does expect that some can be perfect.

But good…

Good, Jesus holds in highest honor. Jesus reveres Good. He says, “There’s only one who is good. Why do you call me good?”

So my question to Chip is, “Why do you call me good?”

the radio goes to heaven again

2007-09-29T01:23:00.001-05:00

So this morning Dr. Ed Young, whom I believe is the father of Megapastor Ed Young, is preaching a series on heaven, “the realm of eternal rewards". Not heaven the realm of God. Not heaven the realm of holiness. Not heaven the realm of goodness. But heaven the realm of eternal rewards.

And his interpretation of heaven is that it’s the place and time where you get all the rewards. It’s like a homecoming where you get recognized and rewarded.

He told a story about a missionary in years gone by who was on the same boat as the President of the United States whenever he arrived back from an overseas life in mission work. And there was all this fanfare for the President, and when he and his sick wife get off the boat, there’s no fanfare, nobody there to meet them, so he goes back to his hotel room to pray about that, the bitterness (which was a good idea). And God says to him, “but you’re not home yet.” Which is a moving story. And…it’s true. You’re not home yet. Why are you worried about not getting the praise of men? You’re not home. Your only home is me. But I don’t think that’s the way the doctor was looking at it. He was talking about it as in “You’re not home yet, because you haven’t died, you haven’t got your castle in the sky.”

So today he’s talking about heaven. The same heaven the other radio preachers have been talking about—the one that is for dead saints. And he brings up the story Jesus told of (bizarre enough!) the owner of the vineyard at harvest time who goes out and finds the workers. He finds the first workers and he promises to pay them a day’s wages, and then he goes back into town, makes another round and picks up some more workers, and he goes back into town to get even more workers, and he goes back into town however many times. The last crew he picks up an hour before sundown, and they come out for an hour and do the work, and he pays them a denarius. He pays them all a denarius. And then the first workers, who got paid last, so they got to see everybody else and how much they got paid, as if to RUB IT IN THEIR FACE, the owner of the vineyard pays them a denarius, one day’s wages, just like he promised them. He gave every single person the same exact reward.

And so this guy, Ed Young’s application of that, Dr. Ed Young, is…everybody gets heaven.

Everybody gets heaven.

So, you may serve your life faithfully for 30 years as a Christian, as a believer, 50, 100 years, and then some guy just accepts Christ at the last minute and gets in, and he’s going to get the same reward. He’s going to get heaven, too. He’s going to get to go to heaven. And you’re going to go, “Dude, how come he gets heaven, the same as me?”

He actually told a story about a man to whom he had witnessed for 10 years, trying to get him to accept Christ, and the guy “played games with God,” and “played games with the church”, and wouldn’t accept Christ. But then he got cancer, and 3 months before he died, he actually accepted Christ. He said the guy lived an incredible 3 months for Christ. He was a man of influence, and he used his influence and lived a great 3 months, whatever that means. But for 3 months? That’s all? He gets to go to heaven, too? (Note: I noticed that he didn’t say there was a guy on death row who just raped and murdered a handful of women, and he accepts Christ from the chaplain right before they throw the switch, but he did mention that there was this guy, and he was a “man of influence”, for 3 months. I wonder if he would have told about Jeffrey Dahmer, to whom it’s said that Dr. James Dobson witnessed and he accepted Christ while on death row…)
Anyway, the story of the workers in the field has nothing to do with the afterlife and the place where you go to get rewarded.

Oh! Before I go on… His applications were 3. He said this parable teaches you how to work for God: (1) You need to “invest” in God. The first guys, the ones who ended up bitter, came and worked their contract, whereas the later ones came out and just freely worked. They didn’t have a contract. They just trusted in God’s goodness. (2) You need to “prime the pump”, which is like a corollary to investing in God and trusting in him. Prime the pump because if you will work sometimes without having a guarantee on the table, it will come back to you and pay you dividends. (Prime the pump I think refers to giving in faith when you’re not receiving anything, in the hopes of a future return—I think he was referring to story #2 on this page) (3) And finally, it was this idea of not working for God in a contractual relationship, but trusting that God will reward you with what is—what he called—fair.

Ok, the parable is not about rewards. At all. I know us plain folks don't see all the story, but the doctor is looking at it backwards, from the reverse angle, from the same angle as the religious people Jesus was trying to reorient. Jesus is not trying to say, “You gotta trust God, and this is how it goes. You just gotta trust God and he’ll give everyone what is fair, because everybody deserves the same thing. You all get to go to heaven.” But this is how this parable gets filed. This parable gets thrown in to the conversation about heaven (the realm of rewards after you die), and it’s part of where this theory of heaven comes from. “Look, it’s all just about, did you say yes to God (in Jesus), and if you did you go to heaven and that’s perfect. That’s all. That’s the ultimate.” But that’s not at all what Jesus is talking about.

Jesus makes clear what the story is about. Jesus says this parable is about greed. Envy. The master comes to these people at the last and they complain. They say, “We worked the whole day, and we only got paid the same as them.” And the master says, “Don’t I have the right to do what I want with what is mine, or is my generosity making you envious?” As the KJV says, “Is thine eye evil because I am good?” It’s a stark contrast, isn’t it? Maybe even ironic. Certainly tragic.

Jesus is not trying to teach people what it’s like to die and go to heaven and get fairly rewarded. Not at all. What he’s trying to teach us about is how heaven is. Now. Heaven is like a generous vineyard owner. God is generous. And if you don’t take to generosity then you’re not going to take to heaven. So, if you’re concerned about the unfairness of God in dealing with people (he’s too generous), then you need to check and see what’s going on with your greed, your evil eye. And if you’re quite ok with your greed, the message of this story to you is that you’re going to miss out on heaven. If you’re not happy with the generosity of God, you’re not happy with the way heaven is. You’re not understanding God. You’re not abiding in heaven. You’re not inheriting eternal life.

The whole thing is about the generosity of God. This is how God is. This is what the kingdom of heaven is like. It’s like generosity. Do you like that? No? Then you don’t really want to inherit eternal life. You don’t really like the heaven that is available to you, even now. Jesus would say, the reason you don’t like me is because you’re greedy. You don’t like that I’m coming and offering something to sinners. This is the source of your woes, not the Romans.

One final observation. There are only a couple of places where I read about Jesus saying, “The kingdom of heaven will be like…” Mostly he said, “The kingdom of heaven is like…”

the radio goes to hell again, part iii

2007-09-28T00:49:00.001-05:00

And another problem with the theory that heaven is the place to go when you die if you have confessed Jesus as your personal savior....

The end justifies the means. It seems to authorize Christians to do whatever they want to do in the name of saving souls. It's like this trump card. I can make outrageous claims, beg, plead, cajole, pressure, exhaust financial resources, creatively interpret the truth, even lie to people because their situation is so dire (they'll go to hell and be tortured for a trillion years if they don't accept Jesus as their personal savior). It's all in the name of it being worse for that person to go to hell when they die than to suffer me right now and my antics.

This preacher on the radio the other day was saying that people give him this excuse when he tells them they need to evangelize: "Well, you can never know for sure who's going to heaven, so I'll just leave that to God." His response to these lazy Christians is, "It's true that we don't know who IS going to heaven when they die, but we can absolutely know who is NOT—it's the person who will not submit to your assertion that there is only one way to the Father." (Note for a future post: what a bizarre infatuation we have with "knowing for sure" - a very modern age philosophy to be sure. Like what? we can't live unless we know for sure?)

To me it's one thing if you are a true evangelist, if you have a passion for people to know Jesus, to be saved, as Rose said, "in every way a person can be saved". It's quite another if you have set up a hyperlogical scheme of prosecuting unbelief. And I'm pretty sure I smell some control issues and some power grabs there anyway.

But I have even a bigger problem than all the abuse....

My bigger problem with heaven being the eternal home of the dead is the whole idea of a reunion of the inhabitants (Christians).

I don't know if your experience is like mine, but there's all kinds of Christians who hate me, who do all kinds of things to hurt me, who snub me, who abuse me, abandon me, or who won't associate with me for whatever reason. And I know other Christians who have just been incredibly abused by other Christians, divorced by them, beaten by them, raped by them, murdered by them, you fill in the blank. Everything has been done. And to me, none of those are as bad as, "Well, we just see things differently, and so we won't be with you any more." I would rather you murder me.

And I just wonder, how does THAT work? So, I die and go to heaven because I did the legal transaction with Jesus while I was alive. And you die and go to heaven because you did the thing with Jesus while you were alive. And then, even though you won't talk to me here, and you have anxiety attacks that you might accidentally run into me somewhere, when we get to heaven, we're suddenly just going to be one big happy family? No wait. Not even one family, we're going to be ONE? even as Jesus and the Father are One?

If we don't go to heaven now and embrace each other now, what's going to be different after we die?

If the thing that's important is who's right, who's in the right, and who ought to submit to the other one, when is the magic moment? I mean is God going to come to along in heaven after we die and smack one of us on the head and say, "They were right. And so to make you one I'm going to put you in submission to them; you'll serve them for a trillion years, because, you know, you blew it. You had your chance. Yes, you're in heaven, but they were right. And now you have to admit that and they get to gloat for a trillion years."? I mean if that's what it is, how does that work?

It seems to me that Jesus was more concerned with, "Settle things quickly. Do it now. Don't wait. Life does not begin after you die. Life is now. Let the dead bury the dead. You live."

I don't know. I guess us plain folks don't see all the story.

the radio goes to hell again, part ii

2007-09-27T00:38:00.000-05:00

The problem with heaven being “the place you go if you die when you know Jesus” or as the evangelicals remind us, “when you die if you know Jesus” is…it’s such a small view of heaven, and it rejects the real heaven. The thing is, heaven is everywhere. It is all around. It affects everything. It flows in and out of every good deed, every act of godliness and love everywhere. It embraces everything. It pervades everything. It is in all, and through all. It’s here, it’s now, it’s past, it’s present, it’s future, it’s everything.

And so when you say, “Everyone needs to accept Jesus as their personal savior so that they’ll go to heaven when they die”, you are rejecting every other instance of heaven, except for the one you’re in after you die, wherever that happens to be. You’ve never seen it, experienced it, Jesus didn’t even really talk about it (except in the vaguest and most enigmatic terms). That’s the real problem.

And because you are rejecting heaven, you’re winding up with all kinds of unheavenly things…like a divorce rate that’s higher in the church than it is in the secular world, out of the church. Priests and pastors in these heinous sexual sins and crimes. Like, just bizarre stuff. Because heaven really hasn’t come to all those places.

Just like it hasn’t come to all of my life, and my domain. There are places in my life where I am not holy, where I have not been swept into heaven, been rescued from sin, and been given the peace that comes only in heaven. There are places. But I’m looking for heaven. I want heaven to sweep me away, to take over, to baptize me, to immerse me in goodness and holiness, in righteousness. I’m not writing it off to “oh well, it’ll just…someday when I die, then I’ll be perfected”. That is totally anti-Christ. Jesus talked about heaven, this heavy way to live, where you can experience the rule and the reign of God now. The rule and reign of God is awesome. You’ve never known what a real and good king, and the pleasure and joy and peace and satisfaction and freedom he brings until you’ve known…until you’ve been to heaven. There’s no abuse. There’s no abuse of power, no abuse of priviledge. It’s amazing.

But the thing is people put heaven off. And so you get people that casually divorce each other and abandon friends, that bail on people, that just act completely selfishly, and do other things that we’re tempted to say, “Oh it’s just a weakness of theirs”, but they end up hurting other people. Anyway, that’s another story.

the radio goes to hell again

2007-09-24T21:33:00.000-05:00

If I hear one more radio preacher say that Jesus talked more about hell than he did heaven I am going to puke. Jesus only talked about heaven. Everything Jesus said and did was heaven. It is all he offers us. Sometimes I get the impression from being around Christians that they think Jesus offers not only heaven, but also blessing and forgiveness and riches and abundance and a whole list of other things. Healing. Success. Conviction. Service. A long list. And when I engage that ideology, I get...tired. So many things to choose from. Do I get it all? Or do I decide which? Does he decide which?

Jesus only offers heaven. That's it. Heaven is way bigger and way more beautiful and way more real than these people make it.

When you talk about heaven as a real place somewhere else, and when you talk about hell as a real place somewhere else, you betray yourself. Your underwear is showing. You show how fragmented your belief in God is. You show that you think something called heaven is important, but so is paying bills and getting enough exercise and not flirting. The problem with this is that Jesus had no compartments. He wasn't concerned at all with paying bils or getting enough exercise or flirting.

Everywhere Jesus went he took heaven with him. This is why there is always a halo above his head in every painting.

All he talked about was heaven. When he talked about the chasm separating Lazarus and the rich man, and when he talked about the wedding feast, and when he talked about virgins, and when he talked about lost sheep and coins and people, he was talking about heaven. If you want to know where heaven is, look around. If you want to know where hell is, look around. You don't have to wait until you die. And you don't have to wonder what it is like. Ask someone who has been raped. Ask someone who has been cherished. Ask someone who has been bludgeoned by New Testament Law. Ask someone who has had their bills paid by someone who cared.

It's pretty easy to figure it out really. When God reveals himself somehow - whether through nature or by Jesus' words or whatever - everything that embraces him is in heaven, and everythying that refuses him is in hell. All the talk about judgment is just another way of saying that someday God will get to the end of his rope for letting the masquerade go on, and then everyone will be seen for who they are and for what they've been doing. The notion that sinners will be judged and Christians get off with their "get out of jail free" card is hogwash. Everything will be revealed.

I am certainly not convinced that Jesus promised that everyone who believes in him will go to a place called heaven when they die, where there are bizarre hybrid creatures and stuff made of gold and precious jewels.

I am certainly not convinced that Jesus promised that everyone who rejects him will go to a place called hell when they die, where there is pain and torture for a hundred years, a thousand years, a trillion years like the guy said on the radio today.

What I am convinced of is that Jesus lived in a certain way, a way he called heaven, or the kingdom of heaven, or the kingdom of God, or simply God. He lived it in wherever he was before Abraham was born, and he lived it when he was on earth, and he's living it now.

Heaven is the way things really are, not a place to go when you're done here. Hell is the way things become when you have a better idea than heaven.

number two

2007-09-12T11:43:00.000-05:00

There’s this hilarious video on youtube that some guy put together with movie clips form Pirates of the Caribbean. It’s called “Why is the Rum Gone? - REMIX”. To get the full effect, you should watch the 1-or-so minute clip of the original scene, and then the remix, which is easy to do because youtube lines up several other videos to the right that you might be interested in after watching the first (Like they do… Like they brilliantly do…) One of those is “HARRY POTTER WHY IS THE RUM GONE???”. The interesting thing about it is…they totally just ripped off the first guy’s original music (which was a quite good adaptation on the Pirates of the Carribean movie score) and replaced the first guy’s video with clips from the Harry Potter movies (I suppose…never seen them).

So the guy who had the original idea sees the second clip, and what do you think his response was?

He really had two choices.

One, he could express indignation at the blatant theft of his intellectual property, the product of his thought.

Two, he could be honored that someone enjoyed his creation, and appreciated it to the point of giving it a go on their own.

He chose number two. His exact words were, “Woah...no way!! Somebody spoofed my video! I feel so honored!! Thank you!”

I think God is like number two.

I think the world for the most part is like number one. And I include in the world politicians, celebrities, businesses, megachurches, and Western Christians. Most of what I see is people striving so hard to get ahead, and then protecting their interests. Remember the Flower Mound Pumpkin Patch Feud? This includes an obsession over who gets the credit. I’ve even heard sermons about “God gets the credit” more than twice.

Not only do I like the first guy’s creation. Because of his generosity, I also like the creator.

Regarding God and heaven and faith and hope and love and all that, I want to be like number two, too. Not so God will get the credit. Just because I think God’s production is cool. And because I think I have what it takes to do my own version of it. I know I’m not very good at imitating God most of the time, but I keep coming around to give it another try because I’m holding out for God to say about me, “Whoa…no way! Somebody spoofed my life! I feel so honored!! Thank you!”

the worst of both worlds

2007-08-10T07:49:00.000-05:00

Because if you’re going to work all alone, why would you drive sixty miles through highway construction into the sun both ways to do it, in a place with no cell phone access and all the network computing privileges of an indentured servant? And if you’re going to work with other people, why wouldn’t it be in a place where you could actually see their faces?

Cubeville.

The worst of both worlds.

And now they’ve even blocked my blog. I guess they’re on to me. If you’re reading this message it means that I’ve broken through and found a cell phone hotspot and uploaded.

independence day

2007-07-24T22:17:00.000-05:00

Been a melancholy day today. Nothing seemed to go right at work. Not to mention being triple-booked. People have expectations. And I as much as any.

I never expected my kids to grow up without my mom being around. I was sure I would have the other problem - keeping her from spoiling them. But today marks two years without her, and it's starting to settle in on my heart. And it's settling heavy.

I called my dad. He said he raised the flags today. I thought he meant he raised them to half mast. But he's been flying them half mast the whole month of July. He has dubbed today as my mom's Independence Day.

an appetite for reality

2007-07-20T22:44:00.000-05:00

The amazing thing is how infatuated everyone is with what's hot and exciting and "in" and how little we care about real value. That's why Paris Hilton (among many others) gets air time.

I read in this cheesy newsletter, which was really just an advertisement with a few oddball stories and some fortune cookie class proverbs, this one - "Fashion is so ugly and cheap that we can only stand it for about 6 months before we change it all." Yeah. But we stick with it.

But that's not as amazing as this guy who had such a hard time getting a novel published that he became convinced that it was just impossible, that unless you had an agent who worked the system of favors and whatever else they do, you can't get novel published. So he changed the character names and chapter titles to Jane Austen novels and sent them in. The publishers thought they were crap. Only one actually recognized the ruse and retorted.

It's the same way with preaching. Go to church. You don't hear things that are true and beautiful and painful, filled with joy and grief, filled with passion and adventure and romance. In other words, you don't get reality. You get the easy sell, what plays well, what's popular, what's in vogue, what can be expressed with style and rhythm and "amen?" and the know-it-all grin. In 42 minutes. And there's about 1000 varieties of the same cheap trick.

Those publishers have lost touch with what is good literature. They are living in a reality of what sells, and of who's who.

It's the same with preachers.

Oh, I know. Your church is "different". Your preacher even preaches about those other preachers who have sold out, or who are populists, or who water down the gospel, or who preach ear tickling sermons...and your ears tickle the whole time they talk.

If you're saying "not me, not my church, it's different" right now, then I'm talking about you. If this is you, if your church is different, you are still blind.

Thing is, you can't build a church today on the beauty of the gospel. People will vomit it up. The very reason they go is because they know they can get cheez whiz there. Just invert the can, bend that applicator, squeeze out some processed, predigested cheese-like substance on your cracker, and munch away.

You can't build a church on the beauty of the gospel anymore. People need something to say "amen" to. "Selah" is right out.

waiting to live

2007-07-17T08:26:00.000-05:00

The daily reading from Ransomed Heart today was entitled Eternal Life. When I stop my madness, pull over and watch the world go by, I realize that life is not only what I want...it's all I want.

But what is life?

And what is eternal life?

And what does it mean to cross over from death to life, to be saved from death?

Christianity hasn't been very useful here. I say that because whoever it is in the back room making up the talking points has decided that how people need to view eternal life is this. It's "going to heaven when you die". Another image is "not going to hell when you die". Salvation then is being ear-marked for heaven when you die, wherever that is. Nothing more. When someone tells you "I got saved" this is what they mean. It's what we were all told happens to us and how to view what happens to us.

It reminds me of the bulls my dad and I used to castrate, vaccinate, spray for ticks, brand, and pierce their ears with these plastic tags. But what are the (former) bulls supposed to do then? Stand around, eat grass, get fat, and wait for the slaughter? Apparently so.

There has to be more to life than this.

What Dallas Willard wrote in The Divine Conspiracy is intriguing to me.

Jesus offers himself as God’s doorway into the life that is truly life. Confidence in him leads us today, as in other times, to become his apprentices in eternal living. “Those who come through me will be safe,” he said. “They will go in and out and find all they need. I have come into their world that they may have life, and life to the limit.”

Could it be that salvation is being made an apprentice, rather than a fatted calf?

And what's all the business about going in and going out? I thought the goal was to get in and stay in.

Apparently, when you forfeit "eternal living" for "eternal life" you have to figure out what to do in the mean time.

I'm looking for a Way of Life that is not about learning where the fences are, not about learning how the grass really isn't greener on the other side, not about learning how to be fat and happy, not about learning how to convince other people to come into the safe pasture where all the rest of us saved creatures wait for our death so we can finally get started doing something besides waiting, not about learning how to keep from thinking about what's on the other side of the fence, not about learning how to figure out where the invisible fences within the fence are, not about learning how to argue about fence lines (invisible or otherwise) with other creatures who are outside or inside one or more fences.

Unfortunately, the pickins are slim. Judging from the sermons, magazines, Bible studies, and letters thanking me in advance for being a "friend of the ministry", I'm going to have to look somewhere besides Christianity.

I'm tired of waiting. Very tired.

I have to find the other way Jesus talked about.

advice and help

2007-07-13T18:27:00.000-05:00

There's a big difference between advice and help.

A big difference.

lost

2007-07-11T22:12:00.000-05:00

This is one of the most stirring things I have ever read. The whole parable is. But particularly this opening.

Once upon a time there lived a sea lion who had lost the sea.
He lived in a country known as the barren lands. High on a plateau, far from any coast, it was a place so dry and dusty that it could only be called a desert. A kind of coarse grass grew in patches here and there, and sometimes wind, which together make one very thirsty. Of course, it must seem strange to you that such a beautiful creature should wind up in a desert at all. He was, mind you, a sea lion. But things like this do happen.
How the sea lion came to the barren lands, no one could remember. It all seemed so very long ago. So long, in fact, it appeared as though he had always been there. Not that he belonged in such an arid place. How could that be? He was, after all, a sea lion. But as you know, once you have lived so long in a certain spot, no matter how odd, you come to think of it as home...
from The Journey of Desire by John Eldredge

adaptation

2007-07-10T23:12:00.000-05:00

I was reading MJ’s blog a while back—black background with white text. When I looked away from the screen, I could still see the image of it superimposed on my office wall.

A few weekend ago, I did some tree trimming with my son—hot work on a hot afternoon. When I first went out I noticed it was hot and muggy, but we just kept working. I finally realized I was getting dehydrated, so I went back inside for a while. Man was it cold! And dry. I wondered why on earth we would pay so much to keep the air running like that.

The other night I made grilled salsa and pickled jalapeños with my son. We were crying from the onions and sneezing from the jalapeños, but we just kept at it. It wasn’t too bad. I had to run to the store to get some canning jars. Everything was off the fire and cooling, so I just left it where it was. When I got back I walked in to this thick, overwhelming wave of odors, and I hoped everyone wasn’t too mad at me for stinking up the house.

I use this bible software program on my computer. One night I was scanning through it, looking for something. My mind started wandering, and before I realized, I was just scrolling and scrolling and scrolling back through scriptures and high speed. I finally broke out of my daze and let up on the mouse. But the screen kept moving. Only, it was now drifting back the opposite direction. And I was having a hard time catching up to it.

I read an intro to a story once where the script was leaning back, as if it were written by a person who was backhanded. It was kind of an interesting and archaic looking font. And then I got to chapter one. Regular font. I could hardly read it. It looked so strange, like it was going to fall off the page.

And then there are the noise-cancelling headphones my family gave me for birthday or Christmas or father’s day or something. Awesome. I let the flight attendant try them on the airplane. I thought she was going to freak out. The way they work is they have these built in microphones pointing out that listen for repeating patterns of noise, and then they produce a negative sound wave to cancel the external noise. So it’s actually louder inside the headphones than when it started (there’s no way to create anti-sound), but my ear adds the one sound to the other and gets something that’s flat but at a higher level, and so it gets interpreted as silence, but louder silence.

I also have on my car stereo this thing called Speed Controlled Volume (SCV). If I use this, it automatically adjusts the sound up when I’m going faster, and down when I slow down. This seemed strange to me at first, but I’m sure everybody’s experienced this thing where you’re listening to music going down the highway, and then you come to a stop sign, and it hurts your ears. You wonder what in the world you were thinking to make the music that loud. But it really wasn’t that loud. Your ears had adjusted up for all the engine and road noise so that the music wasn’t that much louder than “normal”, than “baseline”, than “rest”, than “peace”.

The human body is adaptable. Evolution theorists have told us for decades now that adaptation is the key to survival and even progress. They are quite pleased with themselves for figuring this out. And there may be some truth in it. But the most amazing thing to me about adaptation of our species is how quick we are to do it. Even in these simple things I’ve just written out. It’s amazing how quickly and how decidedly we adjust to what we are presented with, and are able to accept it as normal.

It makes me wonder how much our heart adjusts to and calls it normal. And how long the soul can survive in chaos and unholiness and call it peace and blessedness. It’s not that we’re wrong to accept things, to accept a life of sin, to accept a desert of lack. It’s not that we are rebellious if we are accepting something less than “God’s best” for us. It’s just that we have the amazing ability to adjust down or up to the version of reality that is being presented to us at the moment. It's part of our design. It's also why we need friends, why we were created to live in fellowship. We need people to say, “What’s up with that?” and “Is this what you really want?” and “Why is it you think this is the only response for that?” and “What would it take for you to wash your hands of this whole mess?" and even, “How long do you intend to keep living this way?”

-cide

2007-07-06T15:23:00.000-05:00

Homicide
Suicide
Infanticide
Genocide
Herbicide
Insecticide
Pesticide
Biocide
Algaecide
Bacteriocide
Decide

When you decide something, you end it.

an utterance

2007-06-21T20:31:00.000-05:00

They have turned My love affair into a lawsuit.

cheap signiture

2007-06-20T11:41:00.000-05:00

There's this cheap sign someone printed out and tacked to the bulletin board at one of my clients. Actually the bulletin board is the back of someone's corner cubicle. It's a permanent fixture as far as I know, because it's been there every time I have rounded that corner. Here's what it says:

Inspiration
To have a great day isn’t always doing what you like, but trying to like what you must do. Spruce up your attitude and have a great day no matter what the circumstances may be.

I have a word for that: bullshit.

The thing is, bless their hearts, these people are trying. They recognize that life as it presents itself to each of us is meaningless and depressing. But keeping your chin up does not infuse happiness, fulfillment, or destiny. You won't have a great day if you pretend it is. And "trying to like" something is just another way of saying, "lie to yourself". Telling the truth is a much better way to live.

The truth is, life as it presents itself is the lie. There is way more going on than meets the eye, obscured by shades of boredom, frustration, and futility. Salvation from boredom, frustration, and futility is not in selling yourself on accepting life as it presents itself to you. It comes from seeing what is truly going on, from discovering the Story that you were born into and the role that is yours to play. And positive attitudes won't get you there. You have to learn to look through the facade, to look mythically, to look with the eyes of your heart.

Trying will never get you there.

Trying will only get you further embedded into the lie.

More later. I have to go back to work. To do what I "must" do.

Whatever.

reception

2007-06-18T22:01:00.000-05:00

The client I work for right now has who-knows-how-many thousand employees. So when you walk in there is a receptionist. Well, when you walk in the North Entrance there is a North receptionist. I suppose there is a South receptionist as well. This woman is incredible. She must be Greek or Italian - something Mediterranean. She's got short black hair, a touch of gray, and is full of life, full of energy. You can't walk by and look her way without eye contact. And usually, even if you're across the way, just walking by, she'll talk to you. She always knows what's going on in the complex, how to get where you want to go, and there are not enough things going on to derail her. The phone can ring while you're standing there, she can answer that, still get you to where you're going, respond to the caller, and be jotting down a note at the same time. With a smile on her face.

Every time I see this woman part of me comes alive. I feel energized. I feel like getting something done. And I have this sense that everything is working, like the world is right side up and someone is probably in charge somewhere.

The other day I walked in and there was another woman there. At first I thought maybe they had switched shifts or something, but after passing several times throughout the day, I realized that the real receptionist must be on holiday. Or (God forbid) promoted. Or quit.

Anyway, this was the day after I had lost my cell phone there. Actually I know what happened. I was reclining on the couch checking my email, when it slipped out of my pocket. Fortunately someone turned it in to security. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

I walked up to the desk to ask the new receptionist if they have a lost and found. I waited forever. Well, I am an American, so you have to take that with a grain of salt. Actually, it may have been 45-50 seconds. And I really did wait patiently since she was engaged in something. I hate to interrupt, because I hate to be interrupted. But as I sat there waiting, I started thinking. Wait a minute, I said to myself, she's a receptionist. And even if she's not the real receptionist, I can't imagine that there's another priority for a receptionist besides receiving and responding to whomever walks up to the reception desk. Hmmmm....

She finally looked up, and I asked her about the lost and found. She said to check with security. Fortunately, there was a security guard walking by at the time...who was a real security guard. I asked her about lost and found, she picked up the phone and called down, and in a few minutes, I was sporting my good old cell phone.

You can run into lousy service everywhere, but this one has me thinking. Here's why. The thing the receptionist was looking up from was reading her Bible. She totally ignored me for the longest time, and when she did look up, it was as if she was returning from a trance. I suppose you've heard the term, "too heavenly minded to be any earthly good". C.S. Lewis had a lot of disdain for that phrase, and I think being "too heavenly minded" was not her problem at all. The first receptionist was heavenly minded. Not the second.

I think the receptionists in heaven are like the first one, not the second. I think the bakers and the programmers, and the accountants, and the bike repairmen in heaven are more like the first receptionist. I run into them from time to time, and whenever I do I always feel like my burden is light. I feel inspired to do whatever it is I do with all my might.

Paul wrote in one of the letters collected in the new testament how we should just let people people do whatever they can do. If someone can prophecy, then let him. Likewise, if there are people who can serve or teach or encourage or provide for others or lead or show mercy, then let them do that. It's not "compel them to do it" but "let them do it".

When I think about this receptionist, I just want to say, "Somebody wind her up and get out of her way, and you'll get the best damn reception you could ever imagine." I think that's what heaven is like. And when I'm around people doing what they can do, I'm sure I'm receiving heaven myself, or at least getting a foretaste.

sixteen

2007-06-18T21:21:00.002-05:00

My friend and I were at a favorite coffee bar last Saturday. I told him, "It's really starting to bother me all the waste. I look around in here and see all the cups..."This inspired Christian to write a letter to Starbucks telling them that with 40,000 stores worldwide, they should be more responsible and come up with a way for people to recycle their cups. That or at least make a receptacle for stacking cups so they don't convert more and more earth into landfill space.

I took a slightly different tack. I was inspired to see how many times I could reuse that same cup. It turns out that this cup was a high quality operation. It's coated paper on the inside, and some kind of insulated, styrofoamish material on the outside. I took a Sharpie and made a mark every time I used it. I used it sixteen times. SIX-TEEN. 16.

Anyway, here's the picture.

And here's a graphic illustration of all the cups I would have wasted.

random thought i've been thinking for about a year

2007-06-18T21:21:00.001-05:00

It's amazing how easy it is to be avoided when someone is nervous about running into you.

call it grace

2007-06-15T23:31:00.002-05:00

God brings things into my life. Beautiful things. Undeserved things. Unexpected things. Like this painting.

Whenever these days look you in the face, call it grace.

do what you can do

2007-06-12T23:18:00.000-05:00

And because things don't go like they should, a person who lives like he should finds himself in a continual state of frustration and confusion.

My friend Christian was telling me recently about a church that he and his wife used to be part of. The church had this bold, ambitious focus on evangelism, both world and local. It was a vibrant church. And all their talk of evangelism was genuine. As a group, they really wanted to do this. But the problem with groups wanting to do great things is that not everyone can. There are always some members of the group who really can and who are really passionate about something like evangelism, while there are others, who are really talented people with good hearts, but not passionate about—and therefore can't do—the great thing, like evangelism. Been there. Done that.

But even this is fine.

It only becomes toxic when everyone starts thinking that the group should do something, like evangelism.

And really, this is the same situation for lots of stuff in the spiritual life, the religious life. Doing the things you should do will absolutely wear you out. It will age you quickly. You will develop that odd hollowed and harried look.

Please, for God's sake, and for ours: Don't do what you should do. Do what you can do.

For the longest time I lived by the motto "Do what's right and then you’ll live with no regrets”. I have a book on my shelf (not a great book, but a great title) called How to Do Everything Right and Live to Regret It. Exactly. And thanks a lot. You could have told me that before all this.

Do what’s right. Do what you should. That’s the motto of a withered man.

I’m not dissing spiritual disciplines. Not at all. But there is a difference in keeping a spiritual discipline because you should and keeping a spiritual discipline because it is good for you. So, if you commit to a time of regular solitude every week or every day, because it is good for you, well then. But if it’s because you’re supposed to, then please, for God’s sake, and for ours: don’t do what you should do. Do what you can do.

Sometimes, I’ll admit, you have to make yourself do something to begin with, even if it doesn’t seem to work. Running, for example, seems like a completely foreign and counterproductive activity. But for some people, once they force themselves to do it for a couple of weeks, they realize they not only can do it, but they enjoy doing it, and they get lots of benefits. It’s good for them. I tried that. The longer I did it the more I hurt. So I quit. I know. Un-American. But I took up backpacking instead. Same health benefits, and it’s something I can do. It’s something I can be passionate about.

Back to the spiritual disciplines. Dallas Willard talks about the three central ones: solitude, silence, and fasting. Solitude ranks first.

For most of us, Sabbath will not become possible without extensive, regular practice of solitude. That is, we must practice time alone, out of contact with others, in a comfortable setting outdoors or indoors, doing no work. We must not take our work with us, even in the form of bible study, prayer or sermon preparation, for then we will not be alone. An afternoon walking by a stream or on the beach, in the mountains, or sitting in a comfortable room or yard, is a good way to start…This will be pretty scary for most of us. But we must not try to get God to “do something” to fill up our time. That will only throw us back into work. The command is: “Do no work.” Just make space. Attend to what is around you. Learn that you don't have to do to be. Accept the grace of doing nothing. Stay with it until you stop jerking and squirming.

This is such great advice. Especially for Americans. If there is any killer that is common to just about each of us Americans, it is a lack of solitude. But I gotta tell ya, if even solitude doesn’t work for you, don’t do it. If you can’t do solitude, then please, for God’s sake, and for ours: don’t do what you should do. Do what you can do.

And here’s why I get into trouble. When I start suggesting to people to stop doing what they should, to stop doing that severely subjective thing they call “what is right”, in favor of doing what they want to do, and what they can do—they look at me as if I’m recommending laziness, recommending that everyone just screw off, recommending that they throw in the towel and just go the way of all things.

But if what you can do is hang out with people and initiate great conversations about the stuff of life, then do it. If what you can do is be hospitable, then do it. If what you can do is visit people in distress, then do it. If what you can do is cook, then do it. If what you can do is give money, then do it. If what you can do is farm vegetables or raise livestock, then do it. If what you can do is nurse, then do it. If what you can do is be a good parent, then do it. If what you can do is throw great parties, then do it. I hate listing these things because there’s no way to include one thousandth of what you exclude. So if you can make a list of ways to be yourself, or in other words, to bear the image of God, then do it.

But whatever you do, for God’s sake, and for ours: don’t do what you should do. Do what you can do.

things don't happen like they should

2007-06-12T00:24:00.000-05:00

I was listening to this guy called in to a radio shrink. It wasn’t Dr. Laura. It was some Christian man and woman team. The guy was talking about how he was having problems with his 15 year old son, and asking advice. It was a classic case. The host asked him how he was connecting with his son. The guy was stunned. He said he tried to talk to him, but his son wouldn’t listen anymore. The female host interrupted. Yeah, so you’re talking at him and it’s not working. The male host reinserted himself – I asked you how you were connecting with your son and all you could come up with is that you talk at him, but he doesn’t listen. How else are you connecting with him right now? Silence. Poor guy. He couldn’t think of anything. The host tried again. What activities does a 15 year old boy like to do? You could go to a movie together. The caller said his son didn’t like movies. He likes to hunt. Aha! But the times for hunting is spring and fall, and that’s when I’m on the road. The host kept going. He said this was a classic case and started lecturing the guy. I got embarrassed for him and turned it off. The host was right. But there was something else that’s maybe deeper.

Until we realize that things don’t happen like they should, we will continue to be frustrated and confused. We will continue beating our heads against the wall. Teenage fathers should speak to their sons, imparting wisdom, giving them the benefit of their failures and successes, so that the sons don’t repeat the folly of their fathers. Teenage boys should listen to their fathers and respect them. Dad’s shouldn’t have to travel during the times their kids want them the most. Kids should like movies and books that their parents do so that they can share their love of them, and of the great ideas that those stories convey to us. Parents should share in the carefree life that comes naturally to their children. Everyone should have enough time to do everything they want. Love should envelope everything. Should.

But things don’t happen like they should. Not all the time. When they do it’s like an early thaw or a snow flurry in June. When they don’t it’s not because somebody didn’t follow the rules, and they’re screwing up my perfect life. It’s just because things don’t happen like they should. That’s the world we live in. It is made of thorn bushes and sweat and pain in bringing forth offspring. And the sooner we accept this, the sooner we can get on with living.

Yes, your son should listen to you. But if not, you still need the connection. You need it almost as much as he does. So you will have to figure out a way to connect if he doesn’t listen. You may have to listen instead of him. It’s not that it’s right for you to listen to him. And it’s not like someone needs to write a new rule. That’s no the point. The point is that things don’t happen like they should, and we have to live and love anyway. So, we walk humbly. We give up on some of our ambitions. We accept things as they are. I know this is very un-American. But it’s true life.

there and back again...

2007-06-04T23:59:00.001-05:00

Well, I'm back.

gods and pirates

2007-05-29T18:42:00.000-05:00

It snowed most of the day today (!) which kept me still in the cabin—here in Winter Park, Colorado—with time for my pen to catch up to some of my thoughts. Always high on the list, pirates.

The thing I liked most about Pirates of the Caribbean 3 is that the characters are true. Not true to their word or true to themselves, but true to who they are.

They are so true to who they are that they can be counted on by others, whether they be faithful sons, ambitious queens, heartsick lovers, tempestuous goddesses, tea-sipping/sea-tipping politicians, or scalawags.

They are true to who they are. They have this quality of being to them, which reminds me of God, who reveals himself primarily as “I am”.

George McDonald wrote, “There is endless room for rebellion against ourselves.” And how often do I see those little rebellions. You can usually tell when people aren’t being themselves. They explain themselves a lot. Or they pull all kinds of stunts. Or they sweat profusely. All the time. It’s very tiring not to be yourself. And rebellions are always costly.

The best line in the movie about this was when Davy Jones expressed his anger and hurt to his lover, who wasn’t there for him after waiting 10 years at her bidding. She offered no explanation. She said that’s who she is, and asks, “Would you love me if I were anything but what I am?” But who is prepared for a lover who will be who she will be, even if she is, as theologian Walter Bruggeman describes God, “wild, unfettered, dangerous, and free”?

One thing hard to swallow in PC3 is the scale—both of the pace and the action—from the flawless swordplay by the heroes and heroine to Jack’s acrobatics to the fantastic twists and turns in the plot. It’s all quite incredible. But when you have characters that are so bold, strong, unbalanced, and true, each playing their own hand, what do you expect?

I wonder.

I wonder what would happen in this story outside the movies if a handful of unbalanced and true people, whose lives intertwine, lived truly. It might be amazing and incredible, even miraculous.

And on a slightly sidish note, I was reading this morning from The Dangerous Book for Boys about the “golden age of piracy”. Iggulden says the most astonishing thing is that many pirates were given pardons in exchange for military aid or a cut of the loot. My have governments changed today! Yeh right. One famous pirate was even knighted, and made governor of Jamaica. But even if there were no scheming, thousand-faced, gutless politicians, it is still difficult to judge something like piracy according to the mores of one’s own comfy couch. If the world didn't need pirates, they probably wouldn't exist.

life in the woods

2007-05-28T20:49:00.000-05:00

Thoreau went to the woods because he wanted to live deliberately. I don't come to the woods to live my life, but to find some, to breathe deeply that pungent and elusive quality wisping among the stalks and stems, careless but not ambivalent to me as it meanders the ancient paths hoping for some soul to extinguish itself upon. I come to the woods to breathe deeply of life when I find it. At once I find life's breath and lose my own in moments whelming with wonder, beauty, and pleasure. I walk into a meadow, verdant, cool, and moist with spring, a green river of life banked by aspens and sage, rolling down the foothills. The gray clouds play with the sun, spreading blankets of warm light and cool shade, teasing me with a choice I anyways cannot make. Gentle raindrops tap my sunbaked cheeks and bare shoulders, spending all at once on me the refreshment they carried miles and miles across and above the earth. The thick pines and firs at the edge of the meadow stretch for the sky, and beyond a lonely mountain sits like a ruddy green giant covered by a tartan quilt of evergreens bleeding red, bearing two distinguished patches of white, the last vestiges of winter as it ages and yields to spring. The mountain calls to me, even dares me to come and try my brawn against its mass, and I accede. I close my eyes to breathe it all in and my soul utters, unprompted, “almost heaven”. At once an old red fox crosses the meadow in front of me, calmly trotting from side to side, cover to cover. Our accepting eyes meet and my breath is lost. It is in this moment that I am most aware of the nature of life. I did not arrange this moment, and could not. This moment was made for me, and would happen without me. I come to the woods to breathe deeply of life when I find it, or rather to breathe deeply of life when it finds me. It is only given freely, and it must be freely received.

And now the sun’s light drifts beyond the meadow’s reach. That moment is gone. The tallest evergreens silhouette themselves out of the black mountain curves into the deepest of blues. And the moon rises.

Here is no home to right or wrong or any of their children.

There is just life to find and to be found by.

important insignificance

2007-05-07T23:02:00.000-05:00

This goes with some other thoughts I've been mulling that are not quite ready to serve yet.

Whatever you do will be insignificant, but it is very important that you do it.
- Mahatma Gandhi

More later.

how to fly, part ii

2007-04-21T12:58:00.000-05:00

I was reading this article about Seung-Hui Cho and how all the people close to the Virginia Tech massacre are now second-guessing themselves, when I remembered one more thing about flying kites. It's quite obvious, and maybe that's why I didn't think to include it.

The article begins with a beautiful story of a professor, Lucinda Roy, who started a conversation with the very disturbed Cho about "the human need for friendship and the pain of being trapped inside oneself". She talked with him on three different occasions. But then she seems to me to have taken a different course. She alerted University officials about her fears of what was inside Cho, tried unsuccessfully to get him into counseling, and ultimately lost touch with him. The semester ended, and she went on leave.

Once the kite was off the ground and the big kids went to the hayride, I called Caleb (my 18 month old) over and offered to let him hold the string grip with me, which he did. Of course I didn't completely hand it over to him. And with that, here is:

8. Never let go of the string.

how to fly

2007-04-20T21:05:00.000-05:00

I flew a kite this evening. I had forgotten how much fun it is. The boys actually got it off the ground after contending with it quite a bit. Then they handed it to me and ran off to the hayride. It's actually a lot of work for a kite to get off the ground, especially if the people don't know what they're doing. And if you're patched together with a coat hanger.

There's a certain cooperation involved in flying a kite—not just the one holding and the one launching, but I mean with the kite itself. And the string. And the wind.

For my part, I learned (or maybe remembered) a few things tonight about flying.

1. If the kite starts to nose off to the left or the right and even goes into a hard dive, what you want to do is pull it real hard. But it's the wrong response. What the kite really needs at a time like this is more slack. With more slack it will actually complete the circle and point back up. You just have to wait for it to. Then you can help it back up to where it began.

2. In general, keeping your cool really pays. Sometimes the kite will free fall fast only to suddenly bounce back. The important thing to do is to let it. When it turns back up, then you can encourage it again.

3. If the kite goes down in a tree, keep cool. Usually, the kite will go ahead and bury its head in the back side of the tree and get the string tangled in the branches. Be patient. Don't rush it. Pulling on it at this point will successfully break the string. Short bursts followed by slack allow the kite to catch some wind and perhaps break free to soar again. Without the wind the kite is going nowhere. With the wind and a patient friend the kite is likely to fly again, even after being stuck and tangled.

4. Yelling at the kite never helps.

5. The kite doesn't really care where you stand.

6. Sometimes, no amount of patience or cool will save the kite. Sometimes the nose dive or free fall will end in a crash. (I've noticed that I always cringe when a kite hits the ground. You?) Yelling doesn't help at this point either. Nor does taking a stand. The only thing that really helps is getting the kite back into the wind. You need to cooperate with at least one other person for this. One will have to raise the kite, the other will have to run with it.

7. You can't make a kite fly. You have to let it.

Maybe you have learned some things flying yourself. How glorious it is when you finally reach the end of the rope and the kite's draw is strong enough to pull you along.