life

Thoughts on life, in general.
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3
Feb 12

boundaries

some thoughts on self-awareness
When I’ve had to be someone else’s version of me, I’ve not been happy.  We hear things like this all the time: that we’re living in someone else’s shadow, that someone is living vicariously through us, that we want to finally become independent, to grow to flourish.  There exists a pressure that bears down on us as we try harder and harder to live a another’s definition of ourselves.

We all live with rules and expectations that come from our parents and family, our schools, our faith communities, and other important people in our lives.  Some of these rules are healthy and some are not.  Regardless, though, until we convincingly decide the expectations that we want to incorporate into our lives, this pressure continues.

Over the past couple of years, this has been a prominent theme in my life.  Looking back, I realize that much of the stress and anxiety that we experienced over a dreadfully important stint in Asheville was the result of a definition of me that I did not own.  No one was actively living vicariously through me, but all of these voices from my past decided that Asheville would be the site of an epic battle.

Taking an overly guilty conscience, riddling it with long-standing rules and regulations, separating it from everything it has known and everyone it has loved, and clouding its sense of purpose is not unlike leading the perpetrator to the end of the gallery, placing a patch over his heart and a hood on his head, and starting the final countdown.  It is an emotional firing squad.  It is the moment of truth.

A couple of weeks ago, a pastor of mine spoke about boundaries – and the importance of defining them.  In context, the talk was about living in romantic relationships with others – defining who you are, what you value, and how a clear definition of your self will help spawn healthy relationships with others.

Of course, it goes much deeper than this, too.  I would argue that really thinking about what we value as individual people, really putting in the work to decide for ourselves what is important to us – in other words, defining who we are – leads to a basic sense of self-awareness.  We will know when we’re moving into arenas that we may not want to be in.  We may be OK with taking a pencil from work – but money from the cash register may be a bit of a stretch.

When we look inward, when we decide who we are, when we determine what is important to us we contribute to a deep sense of self-confidence.  Some people would say that confidence leads to healthy boundaries and a healthy sense of self.  While that may be the case – for me, it seems to be happening in reverse order.  As I’m defining who I am and what I value I am becoming a much more confident person.

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8
Aug 11

intimacy

Perhaps it’s just the current state of my emotions talking, but I’m more and more convinced that the human condition is marked by a need for and/or a desire for meaningful intimacy.  We’ve perverted this idea in such a way that the sexual connotations are usually the first to our minds – and while that’s an aspect of what we’re looking for – the crux of what we’re trying to find is summed up in word “meaningful.”

Over the past few years now, I’ve found myself at a place in life where the relationships that I have with others are incredibly important to me.  Essentially, this is because they’re real and relationships I’ve had in my past have been fabricated.  In much the same way that I often say I don’t have the tool-set for “thing x” I feel like much of my life was filled with relationships that were generally assumed, if not forced.  But now I am at a place where the pursuit of others is quite possibly the result of some passion that has laid dormant for a long, long time.

I’m learning about the redemptive power of intimacy.

Some people call it vulnerability.  We say that when we’re comfortable in a relationship or confident in the confines of a conversation that we’re willing to be vulnerable and let the true self out.  It’s the “My name is Desmond, and I’m an alcoholic” scene that we’re all familiar with.  It’s the “I have something to tell you” statement of guilt or the “I think we’re having another baby!” celebration.  We long to share these moments with real, living bodies.  To be vulnerable is to share emotional intimacy.

Not too long ago I shared on Facebook that I wanted to hug more (I think I’ve done well with that – sometimes with mixed results from people who aren’t expecting it, but I’m on a mission).  It’s because I’m some freak (… it’s not JUST because I’m some freak…).  There is some part of me that just wants to love on my friends. I want to share this close, intimate moment.  I will resist becoming the sort of person, lost in a culture where, as one foreign visitor said when observing a busy city street, “Nobody here touches.  No one smiles.”

Sharing these moments is only good for our collective psyches. This closeness, this inherent trust only serves to strengthen already important and valuable relationships.  Recently, my friend of nearly 10 years and I realized that we both were dealing with a similar issue, because of a similar past, and we’ve been able to commit to collectively making things better.  Because we were vulnerable.

I would love to redeem the concept of intimacy.  I would love to rescue it from just being about sex and to make it about sharing the celebrations and disappointments of life together, wading through the bad times and dancing through the good.  (Even as I’m writing this, I’m wondering how people are going to take it!).  There is great value in the deep, spiritual, emotional connections that we make with others.

So, if we cross paths and I pull you in for a bear hug or spill my guts about something…. it’s not because I’m some sort of freak.

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21
May 11

camping out

It’s 9:44pm on Saturday, May 21, 2011.  I’m still here.  Planes are not falling out of the sky.  There was no trumpet blast.  Jesus isn’t riding on a white stallion or waiting in the air to resurrect the dead according to the timezone their buried in.

Judgement day was, yet again, a dud.

Matters of faith are obviously compelling for people.  It can literally alter our behavior, cause us to sit back and consider others before we act, compel us to give generously of our resources.

It can also plunge society into a state of either mass hysteria, or mass mockery of those in hysterics.

As someone who believes that Jesus does give us the best example of how we should be thinking and living and doing, all of the talk about the rapture and judgement day has honestly made me queasy at times over the past few days.  For some reason, we get the idea from reading God’s message of love that the approach to life is to be preaching of a dire doomsday; hellfire and brimstone will rain from the sky and burn our flesh.  Come to Jesus now for your fire insurance.  Come now before it’s too late – before Jeeeeeezus casts you into a churning lake of molten evil.

Over and over and over and over – we miss the point.  Not just those guys like Camping who sit around and crunch numbers in an effort to know the infallible instant of the lord’s returning, but those of us who make life about a collection of individuals deciding either right or wrong, damnation or paradise, heaven or hell.  Over and over we make accusations based on our time-tested, God-inspired interpretation of scripture… even though it’s in opposition to your time-tested, God-inspired interpretation.  Over and over, the message that is presented is that a solitary collection of individuals has it right and are giving you the last-chance-in-a-lifetime opportunity to sign up (and, many times, support) and escape the horrors of life on the wrong side of eternity.

So now that another Christian’s prophecy has crashed and burned in a spectacularly humiliating affair what does that mean for those left behind?

It means we go on, living the kind of life that approximates Jesus gently rather than insists on Jesus forcibly.  It means we continue in generosity and encouragement and grace, without much concern about whether or not we or anyone else are going to be here tomorrow.  It means that love without preconditions is still a better gauge of the state of  your soul than the degree to which you want to leave everyone else behind.

Life is about the joys and sorrows, the messiness, the victories that we experience here – not escaping it all for some mansion in the sky, but making what we have right here, right now better by loving the people we come into contact with.

One day at a time.

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8
May 11

deliver

Seth Godin says that Lynchpins deliver.

The people that are indispensable to organizations, companies, and others have due dates that they meet, materials that they send, ideas that come to fruition.  They have hundreds of ideas and a couple are even viable.

I want so badly to be like this.  I have the idea thing down – that’s not the issue.

But I don’t deliver.  I’m not sure why – perhaps I have too many irons in the fire.  Maybe my niche is too big (that’s what she … never mind).  I just know that I have a lot of ideas that have filled up the back burners on my stove.  It’s blocked back there.

So please hold me accountable.

I need you to keep me focused.  I need you to hold me to setting deliver dates and actually sending some product out the door.

With your help… more to come :)

faith / life — 3 Comments
14
Mar 11

out of hiding

“Don’t turn your speculation into dogma.” // Rob Bell

Rob Bell has brought me out of hiding.

I have been following the firestorm that has erupted surrounding Rob Bell’s latest (to-be-released-tomorrow) book, “Love Wins,” since one pastor was moved to simply tweet, “Farewell, Rob Bell.”  At issue is the charge that Rob is a “universalist” preaching damaging messages for his millions of wayward disciples.

Tonight, he spoke in NYC during a LiveStream.com interview with Lisa Miller.

Already I’ve read responses both for and against his interpretations and answers (or avoidances) to questions posed by the audience and the online community.  I’ve read that there is no room for questioning basic tenets of scripture.  I’ve read that Rob himself is destined for the fires that “he seems to think are but imaginary”.

I’ve just now finished watching the interview.  As I’m scouring through my scrawled notes, I can’t find anything that I disagree with or that would make the world a worse place to be. Like Rob, I’m no theologian.  But I have a profound trust that God is primarily interested in grace and love and mercy, about generosity to the poor, about deliverance for the captive.

Early in the discussion, Rob admitted that there are hundreds and thousands of theories and speculation about what happens at the end of time – but that problems being to arise when we plant a stake in the ground and declare that which we cannot know as true.  ”Don’t turn your speculation into Dogma.”  God has been redeeming people for years, delivering people, graciously “saving” people in ways that offend our constructed categories of who deserves what.

One of the concepts that turned loose the dogs was speculation that we cannot know with certainty where Gandhi is spending his eternity.  Whether I try to address this through the eyes of the stauchest evangelical or the freest liberal, I can’t find where we can have issue with this on any sort of logical ground.  We cannot see Gandhi.  We cannot see heaven.  We cannot see hell.  We cannot see the surface of Mars.  We have no idea where he is.  And yet it seems to matter to so many people that Rob Bell said what we already know to be true if we could only get to the core of why this offends us.

Tonight he said that “Grace and Love always rattle people.” And went on to ask why we seem to think that it’s about narrowing who “gets in.”  We have a real issue with widening the pathway.  I tend to think that this is a result of our church past – especially in protestant circles.  Protestants are protestants because they disagreed with some stuff and decided that they were right.  Then a smaller group of protestants thought that another group of protestants were wrong and protested against them and left.  Our trajectory has been away from grace and mercy and towards a “we’re more right than you” target.  Is that what this is about?

Take that concept further and faith begins to subconsciously develop a superiority complex.

Once that takes hold, it is offensive to ask questions.  It is easy to see how people aren’t like you, don’t believe what you believe.

Ultimately, I believe this controversy is about selfishness.  I believe that many of us feel as though we’ve got it right, we’ve got years invested in this thing, we’ve got years of trying to do the right thing and to think that some Joe-Schmoe Atheist might end up at the banquet table next to me is the most offensive heresy imaginable.  As if it’s about us.

A consequence of teaching fire and brimstone and fear of hell is that we’ve moved into preservation mode. This belief structure sets up eternity of feasts or flames and we want the former for ourselves over the latter.  Fear then overruns each part of our life.  When bad friends lead our kids astray we are afraid that our kids will spend eternity in hell.  When we mess up we become overcome with guilt knowing that the world could end at any second and, by God, we had better be ready.

Grace is hard to swallow because it takes the focus of salvation off of my good life and onto someone else’s “bad” one.  We want to know God for ourselves.  We want to get into heaven and celebrate.  We want to avoid eternal damnation.

Our perspectives, though have turned a faith based on perhaps the most selfless figure in world history into one of the most self-centered expressions of belief ever.  I believe now more than ever that we have put our own self-interests at the center of this debate.  I happen to be reading “The Prodigal God” by Tim Keller at the moment who describes (among other things) the concept of debt as it relates to the two brothers.  Both felt that a debt needed to be paid – the younger brother felt that he owed something to the father for his waywardness, and the older brother felt that the father owed HIM money since he stayed around and worked faithfully every day.  Ultimately, the father said that both “debts” were invalid.

We’re the older brother.  We’ve worked for years living a certain way, believing a certain thing, dogmatically knowing that someday our reward would be given to us.  God owes us the inheritance of streets of gold and mansions with many rooms because we have done what we’ve been told.

And it’s time to change.

It’s time to admit that Love DOES win.

It’s time we stop worrying about the destination of our bodies and trust with a “childlike” faith that we’re going to be OK, and that we want more people to come play and enjoy the innocence.

Our selfishness and interest in self-preservation has turned the afterlife from a grace-filled promise to a boisterous distraction.  We spend so much time arguing and bickering and discussing and fighting about what matters and the sad thing is that none of it really does.

Thank God that He is love.

life — Comments Off
22
Feb 11

Coming Soon

So, I know I’ve been dragging my feet here lately. I’ve been overwhelmed with a few other projects and have neglected by brain.

But new posts should begin appearing here soon.

Thanks!

life — 3 Comments
28
Nov 10

babies

Today I heard this:

“Infants are like consumers.”

It got me thinking. I’m probably going to make some assumptions here and use lots of faulty logic to make some points.  Please forgive me and read this anyway.

Now I recognize that even if this is true, it is not a given that there is any truth in the corollary “Consumers are like infants.”  One doesn’t necessarily follow from the other, even if we want it to.  And I really want it to.

Instead, I’m forced to think it through and make the case all by myself.  I’ll attempt to do so by harnessing the the three energies that make infants so incredibly remarkable.

Eat. Sleep. Poop.

I propose that consumers, like babies, are defined by these three core competencies.

1) Eat

All babies have to eat.  For our purposes, it is the most obvious parallel to consumption.  They eat. Consumers consume.  It doesn’t take an incredible amont of mental prowess to make this connection.

To take it farther though, babies are voracious eaters.  It is almost as if they’re desperate for nourishment, that if they don’t eat at exactly this moment, they will disintegrate into a puff of baby powder.  And it is no secret when they’re ready to eat because they’re incredibly vocal (did I mean to write obnoxious?) about letting you know.

They need to eat.

Consumers consume voraciously too.  In a way, our economy depends on it, but we don’t spend money as a act of patriotism.  We buy things because we have some real or fabricated need to have those things.  We buy things because to deny ourselves would be to risk disintegrating into a puff of moola.  And it is no secret when we’ve procured something new because we’re incredibly vocal (same question) about letting you know.

We need to consume.

2) Sleep

Babies sleep a lot.  Sure they need to, but they can only do so when their other needs are met.  Babies won’t sleep if they need to eat. They have priorities.  Assuming that their bellies are full, and they’re in a safe, quiet environment where they don’t have any other concerns sleep is most likely what you’ll find them doing.

Consumers also seem to sleep well at night.  We surround ourselves with safe surroundings that block out all of the noise outside.  Not just the sounds of passing cars and sirens and trains.  The noise of those whose voice has been compromised.  Those living in poverty whose voice isn’t loud enough to be noticed.  Those having to endure dangerous circumstances because we have drowned them out.

Like babies, we sleep well at night.  I wonder: those times when we wake up at 3:00am because we thought we heard something, did we actually hear something?

3) Poop

Our consumption comes stinky, revolting waste – the kind that we’ve seen in our children’s diapers.  We try to find ways to make it manageable in the same way that humankind has been inspired by the disposable diaper.

Amazingly, it seems uncontrollable.  For consumers AND babies.  There’s just a lot of waste that goes along with being a kid.

So, I wonder what all this means for consumerism.  Are the biggest consumers among us less advanced, less grown up than those that are less bourgeois?  Is it a less advanced state to be obsessed with acquisitions?

If this is in fact true, how does the comparison hold up when we make the observation that no one wants (or chooses, for that matter) to remain a baby for their entire lives?  If the natural thing to do is to become more advanced, to learn more, to progress, to “grow up”, what does that mean for our consumer culture, and our individual materialism?

As important (and fun) as eating, sleeping, and pooping is, there comes a time when we all have to grow up.

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7
Nov 10

community-ish

All around me, people are engaged in pursuits.  Personal ventures.  Journeys. Marathons. Self-discovery.

Truth.

These are the well-known pursuits.  These are the ones that we have come to expect.  The thirty-something has pride on the line as he dons his iPod and prepares for the half-marathon.  It says, “I’ve still got it.”  Somewhere there’s a small-business woman who keeps pushing through levels of exhaustion that would do most of us in to make her business succeed.  It says, “This is what I can accomplish when I stick with it.”  We do our counselors proud when we have a moment of epiphany.  We say, “I’m finding myself.”

We’re deep, spiritual beings, us humans.  Our souls run deep into the existential realm.  We can pursue ourselves for a lifetime, identifying desires and working hard to meet them, analyzing shifts in our passions and aiming our longings at other targets.  Contributing to the notion that the west is incredibly materialistic is this very inward drive. Those scratching the surface in this journey often respond by buying clothes or cars or catamarans.  It’s not hard to understand why much of the world takes this self-centeredness for granted.

At our core, though, I don’t believe that our culture, or any person, is wired to be self-consumed.  I don’t believe that we are designed to be islands unto ourselves, to exist as idealized individuals.

And our rampant materialism proves it.

I would argue that our pursuit of positions and possessions are more an indication of a desire for community than anything else.  Yes, it’s obviously misdirected, but it speaks volumes.  Some will argue otherwise, but I have a strong sense that most luxuries we pursue have much to do with our standing relative to others.  I don’t just mean in terms of comparisons – i.e. Look at my thing; my thing is better than your thing, therefore I’m better than you.

There’s also the desire to fill the role of provider.

We have come to a point in this crazy journey called the “human race” where need and want are nearly synonymous.  Take this completely believable example: Maybe you own a high speed train.  Given that we’ve misconstrued one’s want to ride on a high-speed train with a need to ride on a high-speed train, your offer for me to ride your high-speed train is actually contributing to community.  It may well be driving your self-centeredness and feelings of grandeur through the roof…. I get that.  But we have a notion that the community benefits as well.

You can feel free to replace “high-speed train” with “sailboat,” “awesome sick car,” or “deck with an incredible pool and to-die-for grill.”  It all works the same (except for riding on the grill which could get to be slightly less confortable than the sail boat).

Even in what seems like were being selfish, perhaps we’re being community-ish.

We exist in a culture where the dominant message reinforces a strong sense of self-worth, self-dependance, and self-reward.  It’s impossible not to incorporate some of these concepts into out daily routine and understanding.  But even in the most extreme examples, I argue, that there is an underlying innate sense of community life – dare I say, of communal life.  A world where what I have is (somewhat) yours.

There are plenty of questions to be raised at this point about trust and choice and freedom and liberty and Russia and China.  Even as tribesmen we shared the spoils of the hunt with our tribe while we tried to annihilate other tribes.

I’m simply saying that maybe the fame and fortune and position and possessions that we’re pursuing is not all meant for ourselves.

And if that’s the case, what else can we do for our community?

general / life — 4 Comments
6
Nov 10

matter

God of the worn and tattered

All of your people matter

Give us more than words to speak

‘Cause we are hearts and arms that reach

And Love climbs up and down the human ladder

There are three new women in my life that I can’t get off of my heart.  They are loving and kind and beautiful.  The story of how our paths first crossed is an interesting one, involving my wife, a school project that she was not looking forward to, and an introduction by a mutual friend from another country.

It’s never been tempting to say that we met by chance.

My friends are actually a happy, loving family: a mother and her two precious daughters.  The mom has endured some pretty tough circumstances, but her heart has remained soft and compassionate.  Her daughters, 3 and 5, are supernova-energy-balls wrapped up in tiny human bodies with cute little human faces.  They are curious and loving.  It is incredible to spend time with them, hearing about what they did that day and what they want to do tomorrow, deciding what kind of cake they want on their birthday and which Disney or NickJr character is currently the focus of their attention (FYI: it’s Dora).

It’s one of those friendships where you have to be strategic about visiting.  Kristy and I have to been keenly aware of what sort of appointments are bookending these visits, because once the conversation gets rolling time morphs and stretches, shrinks and reconfigures until we’ve missed class or are late for work.  Yet somehow it’s still worth it.

To be fair, one of the reasons why we have to watch our time is because time is far less of a concern for this family.  Their days are much more loosely organized.  They get up, and get some breakfast at no set time.  From then on it’s pretty laid back until dinner, and pretty laid back again until some indeterminate bedtime.  There is no job to interfere with their daily plans.  It’s free and easy.

Except, it’s not free and it’s significantly difficult.

You see my friends live in abject poverty, at least by American standards.  Now they’re fighting circumstances, consequences, and systemic shortcomings in a effort to find a better way.  The story of how they got her is heart-breaking and filled with abuse and pain.  What is even more depressing for me as their friend is to have to stand beside them and watch as with every positive step they take some mysterious force deals them another blow.

I know how it is.  Middle-classers can say with relative ease that “They’re just dealing with the consequences of their choices,” or “Let them pull themselves up by their bootstraps… America is land of opportunity.”  Few, if any, of their choices landed them where they are.  Pulling themselves up by their bootstraps is only possible if they could afford to buy boots instead of being forced to wear the same pair of $5 Old Navy flip flops that the mother has owned since the first day we met.

Systems have failed her.  Forms that should have been filed in duplicate were accidentally filed in triplicate at some head office and so this mother went without any sure way of providing food because she was suspected of trying to game the system.  Social workers have advised her to stand in line for three hours at facilities that have never claimed to be able to meet any of her needs.  State child care workers have tried to enforce what can only be described as their own petty preferences instead of prescribed policy.

Yet, this family understand that it’s just another day with another adversity to overcome.

I see her and her situation.  I hear her trying to figure out a way to get winter coats for her kids, and who of her friends can help provide meals for them until her food stamps are reinstated (after being mistakingly cut off).  I see her kids attempting to process what it means for a woman to have a loving husband.

More than this I see her desperately trying to make life better for her kids, finding a way out of her dangerous neighborhood, applying at every business that might hire a woman with less than a high-school education while looking for ways to achieve her GED.  I hear the fear in her voice as she talks about what it could mean when the father of her children gets released from prison.

All this happening in the shadow cast by some meaningless skyscrapers where meaningless finances are traded and bought and sold every day for meaningless profit and meaningless bonuses.

Take away everything that I’ve just described about this family.  The government assistance.  The prison terms.  The questionable practices by social workers.  The lack of food.   The high-school drop-out. The abuse.  The five dollar flip-flops.

Laid bare as a generic mother with two generic children, you and I would have no trouble whatsoever in saying that these people have worth and are deserving of opportunities and some basic necessities.  It’s only as we pile on circumstances that we begin to doubt and question and wonder if she should be left to deal with the bed that she has made.  It’s a sorry state of affairs but I’m glad we keep her all but locked away in public housing where I don’t have to deal with it.

By God, this woman still matters.  She is worn and tattered, but she still matters.

And there are millions like them.  And there are $millions frivolously wasted and metaphorically burned each day simply because it’s mine.  What are we doing?  More appropriately, perhaps, what are we not doing?

Give us more than words to speak

‘Cause we are hearts and arms that reach

And Love climbs up and down the human ladder

faith / life — 1 Comment
1
Nov 10

pursuit

I am beginning to capture the essence of the pursuit.

Pursuit is not merely chasing something that you’ve longed for. It can be, and it is often rewarding when you reach the end of the journey. Recently, though, I have begun to re-evaluate the pursuit, to see it in a completely different light, and to recognize the central role that it plays in our lives.

It started with my wife.

As is the case with most couples, we faced a shifting landscape – from a love filled with dates, and flowers, and sappy love songs composed on a whim at the piano to one filled with an understanding that one of us usually takes the trash out and sometimes she really does have a headache.

There is a falsehood that many couples begin to believe and that is that the pursuit ends with “I do.” One lavish ceremony marks with near laser precision that transition between passion and tolerance.

We say that God is an infinite universe of knowledge and depth and love and that we are created in His image. If that is true, how can we so decidedly declare that we have reached the end of what it is to know another human being? Each of us are creatures of infinite worth and value and mystery. There is no end to what there is to know.

And so the pursuit.

It never ends.

We get so enthralled with a perceived end that we miss the excitement of the pursuit.

This is not just true with romantic relationships. It’s true of every pursuit of value that I can think of.

There is no end to the spiritual realm, for example. It weaves and twists and turns and while there may be a trajectory towards some ultimate reality, the pursuit always goes on. At the end there may be a truth that we’re pursuing but each experience along the ways forms us, molds us, and makes our path unique.

The pursuit is the point. It translates as “I still care. I’ve not figured it all out. I’m not so proud as to think that THIS way, MY way, is THE way. The pursuit is where we feel life with it’s joy and it’s sorrow and pain and frustration and meaning.

No one ever says, “Remember when we finished our trip? Remember when it was all over?”

They say things like:

“Remember when we took that wrong turn and got lost in New Jersey?”, or…

“Remember when we found that awesome little mexican place where we had the best tacos of our lives?”, or…

“Remember when we first drove north into Virginia and saw those amazing views for the first time?”

I would argue that you don’t make memories by arriving. They aren’t given out as your trip comes to an end.

It’s important to visualize goals – to reach for something of worth. But the goal is never the point, or the reward. It merely orients us towards something. It gives us a direction, a trajectory, a launching pad.

Life is lived, relationships are forged, meaning is discovered, pain becomes teacher, loss becomes gain on the journey. It is the pursuit that matters.

The pursuit is the point.

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