2023-04-26T14:20:33+00:00

Site Prompt

April 26, 2023April 26, 2023/The Bridge Faith Community/Leave a comment

The site prompt for today is: “Write about a time when you didn’t take action but wish you had. What would you have done differently?” This is easy, I remember the exact moment and can draw a straight line from my sickening passivity to this table, today.

In college, some friends and I were at a dance club. Maybe that’s a strange thing to type or to read. It seems like a lifetime ago, which, I suppose, it was. So, we’re at this dance club in Harrisburg, PA, the night is winding down, and I’m standing outside the bathroom waiting for these friends, staring through the lobby windows (this club was attached to a chain hotel.) A drunk woman and her equally drunk boy were just outside on the sidewalk. He was standing over her, screaming. She was crying. Just a really awful scene. Sadly, this sort of scene wasn’t/isn’t as rare as it should be.

I knew there was only one thing for me to do, yet I stood glued to the ugly lobby carpet, dearly wishing I was not there. Then he hit her with the bottle and dumped the rest over her head as she slumped to the curb with her head in her hands. My head and heart exploded into a fiery mess, I’m feverish even now as I write. Yet I stood stock still.

Then my friends came out, I told them what I had seen, and we ran out as the boy ran away. We checked on her, offered to call an ambulance (which she declined – as a matter of fact, she would later find a ride at the end of the night WITH HIM!!!!) and talked like we were big time Protectors of the Realm. We threatened him to each other, and detailed all of the ways we’d have thrashed him, if only we were there. But I was, there was no hypothetical “if only” for me to hide behind.

I was weak and afraid. That night, she was much less important than small, selfish me. Of course she went home with him, how could she possibly know her value, as long as there were guys like watching her be treated like this? She obviously thought she deserved this trash, and apparently, so did I. What a terrible thing to write. These prompts are supposed to be light and superficial, aren’t they? I guess I am misunderstanding the assignment.

I wallowed in shame for years, horrified by my disgusting behavior, until I began the long process of re-programming me from a soft, pathetic pleaser into something else. I can’t say it even mattered what the something else was, at the time, just that who I was simply wouldn’t do anymore. It wasn’t good enough for her, for my sister, mom, friends, for my future wife and sons. I didn’t believe in God then, but it certainly wouldn’t be good enough for Him. And it wasn’t good enough for me.

I badly want to go back to show & tell that girl that she was beautiful and worth everything, that she deserved much much more than table scraps, that she was loved. I’d like to show him that, too. Because to let him think that he was worth nothing more that to be that guy, overwhelmed by his own insecurity and inadequacy, is equally unacceptable.

So now, that’s what I do. Every moment of my life is given to sharing that message. (And I lift a lot of weights, not so I could break him in half, but so that that kid would think I might. And that any other time he – or anyone else – thinks about mistreating a woman, he would think there might be someone like me who also might.) I no longer carry the crushing shame, it’s now passion and purpose.

It’s a cliché that we wouldn’t change anything because then, we wouldn’t be the people we are now. And that’s totally true. But I still wish I would’ve gone outside 2 minutes earlier.

FIFA, Jimmy Johnson, and High School Sports

April 21, 2023/The Bridge Faith Community/Leave a comment

There is a Netflix documentary called FIFA Uncovered, that details the massive corruption scandal in the world’s largest soccer organization. It’s fascinating and disgusting. As power and greed grows, so does the brazenness of those at the top of the pyramid. What is always remarkable is how easy it is to see. Unfortunately, that vision is ignored until it isn’t, and then we’re all so very shocked. It’s like the the steroid era (as if it ended) in baseball; the players and statistics grew like balloons, we liked it a lot, and now they’re “cheaters” (which they were/are) and we pretend to be horrified (which we aren’t).

The coaches of most high school sports teams hold parents meetings where they spout good-sounding platitudes linking grades, showing up and effort to playing time. They threaten to remove players from the team for any and all infractions. I imagine that they do this with fingers crossed that they’ll never have to follow through on these ridiculous threats. Of course, every season they’re exposed.

What’s so offensive about those 2 stories is that, hidden in their obvious deception, is the belief that we are too stupid to recognize the scoops of excrement being shoveled onto our feet. The executive committee of FIFA, passing favors and business contracts on the eve of major elections, barely stifle their laughter while they reason mere coincidence. The baseball coach talks about character and integrity, passing drivel like “if you’re ineligible for 2 weeks, you’re off the team” with an expression that stops just short of winking at his assistants.

I say to my sons, “Do I look like your dumb little buddies? Do you think I’m the kind of person who will believe what you’re saying?” But they’re children, just testing the boundaries to see if, maybe, people are indeed that dumb. What they’ll find is that even their little buddies aren’t that dumb. That elementary discovery melts away as their proud arrogance grows and grows until they begin to think they are on a different level, better than you, and we are witless rocks lining the path to their thrones.

Of course, superficially, lies are designed to avoid responsibility. These lies are disrespectful because the deception is explicit evidence that their wants/needs/whatever are more important than yours. Just beneath that, barely concealed, is the blatant admission that Sepp Blatter, head of FIFA, or ex-boyfriend, or co-worker, or son’s coach, thinks you’ll believe it.

Most of us can deal with any truth, we’re very forgiving. Some of the people in the doc admitted wrongdoing, saying some version of, “I got caught,” and “it’s impossible to eliminate corruption.” Like Jose Canseco, cartoon-ish home run hitter, who said, “yes, everybody was doing it, I did too.” Now, we can talk about corruption or steroids. Now that we can see the problem, it can be addressed.

Jimmy Johnson was the coach of the Dallas Cowboys in the greatest years of the NFL, the early 90’s, when the Cowboys were winning 3 Super Bowls in 4 years. Once, the story goes, a marginal player fell asleep in a team meeting and was immediately cut from the team, in the meeting in front of the team. After explaining the importance of discipline and setting tones, Johnson was asked, “What if the player was Troy Aikman?” referring to their Hall Of Fame quarterback. He replied, “I’d go ask him to please wake up.”

Maybe it’s the disrespect that we can’t abide. Maybe that’s where all the division comes from. Maybe we can’t talk politics because we squish the other side, categorizing them as dumb, un-educated, ignorant, as less than us. That’s a pretty tough place to begin a conversation. I understand Jimmy Johnson’s perspective, it makes sense to me, I might even agree with it’s unfairness. But if you don’t even give me a chance, if you just assume I sit at the kids table, I can’t understand. The issue gets shelved until the lie gets revealed, our humanity suffers and trust dies.

FIFA Uncovered was fine, but I ended up feeling like I do after parents meetings: like I need a shower from being in the slime for too long.

Dreams

April 18, 2023/The Bridge Faith Community/Leave a comment

I just finished reading My Grandmother Asked Me To Tell You She’s Sorry, by Fredrik Backman. This isn’t my first time reading it and I cried just like I did each of the others. It’s absolutely beautiful. It’s inspiring and hopeful, and reminds us all why we don’t just give up when the news gets so bad and the searing pain of engagement gets so intense.

I turn down corners of pages that contain words, sentences, and/or passages that move me. When I re-read books, I look forward to those pages and sometimes I read the page several times and have no idea why I turned down that particular corner. Others, I know immediately. One of those turned down corners held this peach: “Because not all monsters were monsters in the beginning. Some are monsters born of sorrow.”

I’m thinking about the things we like and why we like the things we like. Maybe we choose the books/songs/movies, for whatever reasons (we like the cover art or it’s cheap or our friend gives us a gift). Or maybe those books/songs/films choose us (and we’d find them in our path somehow, over and over, until we finally pick it up when we’re exactly ready and explode). Do we like those things because we’re a certain way, or are we a certain way because we like them? Or a wonderful dance between the two? Maybe we are predisposed, open to the impact of a book about an 8 year-old girl, her grandmother, wurses, and monsters born of sorrow, and when we find each other, we join this dance.

On another page: “And probably a lot of people think Maud and Lennart shouldn’t do that, and that types of people like Sam shoudln’t even be allowed to live, let alone eat cookies. And those people are probably right. And they’re probably wrong too. But Maud says she’s firstly a grandmother and secondly a mother-in-law and thirdly a mother, and this is what grandmothers and mothers-in-law and mothers do. They fight for the good. And Lennart drinks coffee and agrees. And Maud bakes cookies, because when the darkness is too heavy to bear and too many things have been broken in too many ways to ever be fixed again, Maud doesn’t know what weapon to use if one can’t use dreams.”

I hope we’re all fighting for the good. In fact, I believe we’re all fighting for the good, in the way we fight for the good. (Well, mostly all – some people are selfish psychos who want to cause damage, but there are so few of them… Well, it’s like this. Bad pizza exists, but pizza is so rarely bad that it’s hardly worth ordering our lives around. Most bad pizzas aren’t psychos, they’re bad pizzas born of sorrow and loneliness and despair, and that sort of pizza doesn’t want to be awful at all.) So we’re fighting for the good, trying to find what weapons are ours to use.

Dreams are a Swedish cookie, that’s what Backman and Maud and Lennart are referring to. But when the darkness is too heavy to bear and too many things have been frozen in too many ways, maybe the other kind of dream is necessary, as well. (Actually, Maud and Lennart are the only ones referring to the cookie. Backman is obviously referring to both.) We get our imaginations drummed out of us very early, until we believe this is simply “how it is,” that people are untrustworthy, and all pizza is inherently bad. Reclaiming the truth requires, first, a dream. A dream that things can be better than they are, that we are worth fighting for, and that holding hands is still the best way to remember that all isn’t lost, that we are alive and that we are together.

Maybe amazing art like this is what made me so naive and awesome. Or maybe these books affirm my naïveté. It’s fun to think about but, in the end, who really cares? We have dreams to bake, people to love, and fighting to do.

Am I The Villain?

April 12, 2023/The Bridge Faith Community/Leave a comment

I ripped this title from a song called Beach Zombies by Skye, with the lyric, “ooh, I’m tryna be a f***ing villain.” The Beautiful South is a great band who writes songs that are sometimes very, very dark but always sound like angels (Woman In The Wall, for example.) Beach Zombies sounds like a sweet love song, except for the lyrics. I’m not tryna be a villain, but I’ve at least got to consider the possibility that I am. Do villains usually know they’re the villains, or is good and bad a matter of the perspective of the one with the pen (or keyboard or Twitter or TikTok account)?

As you already know, I have a complicated relationship with youth sports. There are 2 ways to look at a successful coach. A wrong way, measured solely in wins and losses. And a right way, where the athletes are mentored in a sport by well-meaning people with character and integrity. They are taught sport and competition, but they are also shown the connection between this specific sport and a beautiful life off the field/court/pitch/etc. We have not had awesome luck with either. And I drift in and out of that dad in the stands, complaining and pointing out the obvious deficiencies.

I also coach baseball and I do not win games too often, but I bet you’d like to trust me with your kids for an overwhelming amount of time in season. And once, last year, a previous coach walked up and down the line of parents/fans loudly detailing my every flaw (through his eyes). It was disappointing and embarrassing, until he spent a whole inning informing MY WIFE, the Angel, of my ‘mistakes,’ at which point it became hilarious. A, it’s my wife and that seems like some kind of societal code violation. And B, if you want to talk about my flaws and mistakes, the Angel is already very well aware.

Am I that guy, embarrassing myself as I loudly expose my insecurities???? Am I the villain in this story??

Yes, of course these coaches aren’t doing any mentoring (well, not any particularly good mentoring – they are certainly showing a kind of example), and aren’t winning. They are obviously, publicly, having a very rough time navigating the tremendous responsibility and wonderful honor of the position.

Do you know what the main feeling I had for that guy, walking up the sidelines trashing me? Yes, of course, I felt anger, indignation, embarrassment, shame, and the need to fight in relatively small amounts, but the biggest portion by a long shot was sadness. I wanted him to be ok with himself, to not have his inadequacy the keys to his behavior. I was sad that he looked so foolish. I wanted to hug him and tell him he was enough, and that I liked him.

Why don’t I feel sad for these coaches? I know it’s because the sideline guy was attacking me, these guys are hurting my son.

But as much as we can learn from a positive sports experience, we can learn an equal amount from the inverse. How do we respond to adversity, to unfairness, to frustration, rage, and broken hearts? Can we still relate with class and dignity in our pain? How do we lose well?

We’ve been discussing these questions and ideas in my house, I’m trying to guide him on this treacherous path. But then I am sitting in the stands with my big mouth and open wounds. I think I probably am a villain, but I think we probably are all villains at some points, in some spaces.

Today is a new day. There’s a game in a few hours and it’ll drive me crazy, but it is a new opportunity to answer for myself the same questions my boy is facing. How will I respond? It’s only youth sports, but it’s an awful lot more. It’s always, always, a variation of “Who am I?” Sure, sometimes we forget, but the truth remains, and every circumstance is another chance to affirm the beauty of that answer,

Dissonance

April 4, 2023April 4, 2023/The Bridge Faith Community/Leave a comment

The prompt today was: What are your morning rituals? What does the first hour of your morning look like? I wake up fast and get out of bed before I can begin to think about staying in my cozy warm bed. Then, I feed 2 guinea pigs and a rabbit, maybe eat something, and am at the gym in an hour. I don’t believe in motivation. In fact, I can’t exactly say if I want to do any of this anymore, these decisions were made years ago, now it’s simply who I am & what I do.

Now. Today, we’ll talk about Michael Jackson. Sort of. Do Michael Jackson songs sound different since we know how he conducted his personal life? Does the Cosby Show have the same appeal? Jonathan Majors, the actor who is playing big bad Kang the Conqueror in the MCU, was recently accused of domestic violence – I think the charges have been unfounded and dropped, but if he had been convicted, would we still line up and take the same pleasure in the upcoming movies?

We live in a culture that knows more behind-the-scenes personal information than ever before. When it’s negative personal information, does it matter? Does it factor in our enjoyment of the art? Is Thriller somehow tainted by gross legal charges? If so, why? Should it be that way?

I pastor a faith community, giving sermons every Sunday morning. Does the content suffer if my character is an issue? Is my commentary on the Bible somehow less relevant if my behavior is, um, problematic the rest of the week?

We have all been in situations where works of art have been made by reprehensible people (or people who’ve done reprehensible things). Now what? How do we reconcile that? Do we have to? Does it make a difference if the artist in an NFL player or a politician, if it’s in an arena or a church?

I seek out content in many places, and sometimes the transcript is solid and inspiring, but is much more complex when that same material is given by a flesh and blood human being. If a message about the importance of honesty comes from a wildly disingenuous mouth, well… And if that mouth is mine, you’d have to discern that I clearly don’t believe what I’m saying, and if I don’t believe it, can anyone? Should anyone?

Or maybe that’s too high a bar. Am I expecting perfection from artists? Or am I simply expecting authenticity? Is the problem when Bill Cosby is committing rapes in private AND publicly moralizing? And do the mega church pastors bother us because they’re hypocritically hiding their faults and missteps behind masks of self-righteousness and purity? Maybe our bar is actually embarrassingly low: don’t lie and don’t pretend.

I’ve been asking you all of these questions because I often ask me the same ones, but the truth is none of them matter. Maybe it’s not ok, maybe we shouldn’t, but we do. Maybe our expectations are too high,but they’re there. Maybe the art and artist should be taken separately, but they’re not. Whether we want to or not, whether it’s conscious or not, what we know creates a dissonance. The external context can unintentionally build walls and obstacles. The message is harder to hear from among the deafening noise the artist brings in the baggage of his/her life.

I said none of these questions matter, but that’s not entirely true. They need to be asked. As communicators, we have to acknowledge the potential pitfalls and hidden traps for the receiver. And as an audience, our biases and preconceived notions are things we need to confront. The more attention we pay to destroying any and all inauthenticity will lead to less and less connection interruption. Our images are the biggest, thickest dividers between us and the second the scales fall from our eyes and we see them, we can finally start to knock them down and finally start to really love each other.

When I Was 5

March 31, 2023/The Bridge Faith Community/Leave a comment

The website-generated prompt today is, When you were 5 years old, what did you want to be when you grew up? Well, I wanted to be a superhero, and I’ll tell you why in a minute.

Earlier this week, yet another mass shooting happened at a Christian school in Nashville. Actually, according to current statistics, probably around 10 happened this week, the one in Nashville is the only one we’re talking about every day on the news and setting flags at half-mast.

A mass shooting is considered any where at least 4 people are shot and injured or killed. As of 2 days ago, there have been 129 this year so far. That works out to be roughly 10 per week. In Nashville, 3 of the deaths were 9 year-olds, the others were administration.

The shooter was a transgender male with 7 legally obtained firearms and a long, complicated mental health history. This is all according to the specific reports I read. Maybe some of it isn’t true, entirely or at all. Or maybe it is. We don’t have his manifesto yet, it hasn’t yet been released, or at least anywhere that I can find.

On another note, my son began the games that count in his senior baseball season this week. They lost the first one. After this post, I will no longer be discussing my thoughts on this program, unless they are positive and/or illustrate growth and beauty in the wild.

But that’s after this post. The program is in ruins. The young men are being forcibly spoon fed gruel far below what they deserve, on any level. As you are well aware, I happen to not be a man who particularly values wins & losses. The W-L record might be in my list of the top 10 qualities of a successful program, maybe. But by any metric, this one is upside down, inside out, dead and stinking.

Now. As the baseball program slowly circles the drain, there doesn’t seem to be any interest in plugging said drain and rescuing the boys from this sinking mess. Everyone is obviously content to crawl along, looking at the dumpster fire, nodding, doing nothing at all but watching it burn.

I just looked up “albatross,” and when I did, the tab I had open was set on an article titled, “What’s behind the decline in teen mental health?” Yes, social media and stressful college requirements, of course, but it’s possible that another reason is that the adults in the room always seem content to do nothing at all except watch it burn, watch them burn. I don’t imagine it helps teen mental health to scream for help when none ever comes.

High school baseball is a trivial example, right? It’s just further evidence of what is either malicious violence on the human spirit or impotence. More kids get killed, we give “thoughts and prayers,” and then 9 more happen this week, and 10 more next week, and the next and the next and the next, ad infinitum.

I wanted to be a superhero for as long as I can remember because I didn’t like injustice. Watching people cry, in pain, living in fear or in despair, sits in my stomach and soul like acid, making it impossible to rest or find comfort. I wanted to fix all of it. But there aren’t real-life superheroes (as far as I know). I still want someone to show you, me and everybody else that there is someone who sees and will do whatever it takes to care for us. If we use that definition (and not simply people with cartoonish super powers), maybe we could all be superheroes?

Can we please stand up and say enough? Our politicians, CEOs, administrators, aren’t interested in extinguishing the fires that fuel benefit packages and lifestyles. Minding our own business hasn’t and doesn’t work, now or ever. The hope here is, right now, today, in our homes and communities, churches, workplaces, parks, fields, and grocery stores, to start to love each other, not only in more empty words but with hands and feet and our full, sad, broken hearts.

Eyes To See

March 22, 2023/The Bridge Faith Community/Leave a comment

I go to a local store for something called creamed pearl tapioca pudding on Tuesdays. Every Tuesday. And then I drop it off with the Angel at her office, along with a fountain soda as thanks. What I tell her is that it needs to be refrigerated and I’m unable to access our fridge. I don’t need to take it to her. I take it all through the winter, when my car is colder than any available appliance, mostly so I can see her for those 30 seconds.

Yesterday was Tuesday, and while I was there, I was overwhelmed, speechless and in awe of this woman. I sent her a text from the parking lot that read, “No kidding, I can not believe I get to be married to you. You are a KNOCKOUT,” and then I added 2 emoji faces with hearts for eyes. We’ll only talk about how she looks today, but as you probably already know, the beauty on the outside isn’t close to how lovely she is on the inside. She’s pretty far out of my league, but that’s her problem, not mine.

The point is that sometimes we can be so familiar with something that we take it for granted, easily and often. I live with this Angel, see her everyday, in pajamas and in heels, I know she’s gorgeous. I know her smile in my sleep, the way her eyes shine, how her laugh sounds, her skin feels. I know all of this, but there are surely lots of moments where I don’t truly appreciate all of this.

And there are so many things just like her (well, not just like her), but equally overlooked, or dismissed as common when they are anything but.

Pizza, Lord of the Rings, vinyl, this blanket, Catfish, creamed pearl tapioca. There are things we couldn’t wait to get, absolutely had to have, and changed our lives, that we don’t even give a second thought today. I’m not sure we need a change of scenery nearly as much as we need to open our eyes to the current scenery, because at some point that new scenery is going to be the current scenery we are looking to change.

I haven’t listened to The Queen Is Dead in months, and the last time I did, I skipped some tracks. It’s a perfect album, and I treat it so cavalierly that I skip tracks. We eat in front of the tv or in the car, concentrating and appreciating nothing. We see sunrises and sunsets everyday more perfect than the finest art. The Angel is so stunning she could stop clocks.

How and when did we get so distracted and jaded that we miss all of this splendor? Somewhere we were sold the lie that there was anything in this fantastic world that is “ordinary.” Ordinary is for the blind and imagination-less. In the Bible, scales fall from the apostle Paul’s eyes and he can finally see things as they are, see reality as it is. Maybe our scales need to fall, as well. I don’t really want to take anything for granted anymore, and I certainly don’t want to take people for granted ever again. I don’t want to become so familiar with laying like spoons with the Angel that it loses it’s tender warmth and simply becomes something we do. It IS something we do, but it’s not simple at all, it’s also significant and perfect.

I wonder how many other things in our everyday lives are significant and perfect, if we only had eyes to see, ears to hear, and hearts to feel them.

All At Once

March 10, 2023March 13, 2023/The Bridge Faith Community/Leave a comment

I finally saw Everything Everywhere All At Once. If you haven’t seen it, you know what you have to do. We’re not going to talk about it in this space, specifically. Instead, we’ll talk about great art.

You watch an awesome film, like Everything Everywhere All At Once or Fight Club or Eternal Sunshine of The Spotless Mind or Point Break or Pulp Fiction (there are a million honest examples), and the credits roll. How do you feel?

You hear an amazing song, like There Is A Light That Never Goes Out or Like A Rolling Stone or Let It Be or Party In The USA (again, a million examples), in your car as you’re driving home from work or to your sister’s house on Thanksgiving day. Where is your spirit?

You read a beautiful book, like Breakfast of Champions or Catch 22 or High Fidelity or Britt-Marie Was Here or Chronicles, Nehemiah & Other Books Nobody Reads, and close it after finishing the last words. What is the state of your heart?

I know the answer to these questions, and so do you. You feel soft and open, like you’ve been pried opened by soft, warm, loving fingers, which you have. The door is thrown wide and your mind is free to race around with no boundaries at all, free to jump and even to fly, if you’re so inclined. Anything and everything is possible. The usual rules and cynicism that keep us tethered to the rotted cracked boards that set the limits of our world no longer apply.

Someone exactly like you and me wrote the screenplay for Everything Everywhere All At Once. And we have somewhere bought the idea that “it is what it is,” we are all we’re ever be, and this is all we deserve. These are lies. And sometimes, in a chorus or scene, we are shown the undeniable truth.

Last night, Everything Everywhere won all of the Academy Awards, as it should have, and I am convinced that means we have all been aching to create something new for ourselves, our families, neighbors, strangers & enemies, for our world. Today is cold and gray outside of my window, but feels like sunshine and hope. These are the first moments of the new economy of creativity and love for everyone everywhere all at once

Another Last of the Firsts

March 6, 2023/The Bridge Faith Community/Leave a comment

Today is the first day of high school baseball practice for my son, whom I love more than I can ever tell you. He deserves everything wonderful, and if you know him, you agree with me. It’ll be the last first day of practice, and that fills me with every kind of emotion you can imagine. So let’s talk about Argo instead.

Argo won the best picture Oscar in 2012. I hadn’t seen it until yesterday, I always wanted to, and who knows why I didn’t? It was a full day with lots of weight, stimulation and being “on.” After speaking publicly, I am wide open and terribly vulnerable, so I usually try to avoid much personal contact afterwards for a block of time. Yesterday I didn’t have a choice, and by the time I returned home and finished the last of my responsibilities, I crashed into the belly of my soft, comfy sofa.

Probably the best thing I could’ve watched was something I’d seen a thousand times before, like Return of the Jedi or the first Avengers. I like them and don’t have to plug in at all. The worst thing would’ve been a breathlessly suspenseful thriller that I had never seen before about the extraction of American hostages trapped in Iran in 1979-80. 81% of Google users “liked” it, which makes me wonder about the other 19. Who are they, and why do they hate movies so much? Maybe they just hate Ben Affleck?

Instead of watching through half-closed eyelids in my couch, I watched the last hour standing in the middle of the room. This was not a restful experience in the least.

Anyway. When Affleck arrives in Iran, meets the hostages and informs them that they will be a movie crew scouting locations for a science-fiction movie (“Argo”), they have to decide if they will participate in this human heist. The 6 men & women haven’t left the Canadian embassy for months, are in grave danger, but this plan is “the best of the bad ideas” and presents overwhelming danger, as well. Would they become paralyzed by their fear and incapable of movement? Would they risk everything? And if so, would that risk end in America or in death?

How many times are we faced with the same decision? We’re confined to a “room” we know, whether it’s a relationship, job, worldview, whatever, and leaving is terrifying. Usually someone comes through the door with an offer, an invitation – someone has to, we simply don’t leave on our own – and the scene is the same. What if it doesn’t work out? What if we fail? What if there’s nothing and no one out there for me? How will it end?

We’ve all heard that awful cliche: better the devil you know. We all hate it, too. But cliches get that way because they’re often true. We do choose to stay in rotten dead-end jobs, with abusive, unfaithful boy- and girl-friends, seeing the world though cracked lenses because the fear of the unknown is vicious and unrelenting. The questions are the same, what if what if what if how will it end????? Will I be ok? Is this the right choice? How do I know?

The bad news is that we don’t. The hostages didn’t. It could’ve easily been a very different film, the tragedy of a doomed rescue attempt. We all know friends who have forgotten who they are and why they’re here and settled for 2am texts and generations of damage and a long tradition of outdated -isms. But the first step out the door, to write the 2 week notice, to take the shot, with the adrenaline freezing in your veins, is the hardest one, isn’t it?

High school is my boy’s Canadian embassy. And mine. He’s familiar, we’re familiar, it’s (relatively) safe, at least it appears safe. He knows where the rooms are, when the classes change. He is no prisoner here, at home, he’s only confined by the chains in his mind. What will he do when there are no more last firsts? Will he take that first, hardest step?

Will he fail? Of course he will. At least I hope he does. The only ones who don’t fail are the ones that stay inside these rooms. But that’s not true, either. What we don’t always recognize is that staying is failure, too, just a different sort. I hope he shoots a million times and misses a ton of them. I hope he dreams. And I hope he breaks out of all of these rooms and really lives.

Toothpaste Caps

February 27, 2023/The Bridge Faith Community/Leave a comment

In the modern classic The Incredibles, Bob (Mr. Incredible) returns home from some forbidden crime-fighting to an angry wife, Helen (Elastigirl, or Mrs. Incredible). They argue about the political ban on superheroes, moving, changing jobs, and sports for their son, but the argument isn’t about any of those things.

It’s the same in all of our relationships, isn’t it? The most common example of conflict in marriage revolves around the toothpaste cap. We all know no one actually leaves the cap off of the tube. Unless they do… Does this come from somewhere in real life? Why haven’t I thought about this sooner? I figured it was just some nonsensical hypothetical scenario, like making “widgets” in business classes. What kind of savage doesn’t put the cap back on? Maybe it is totally imagined, it has to be.

Anyway, it’s a solid example because toothpaste caps are small and insignificant, and the fights are big, loud, very significant, and not about oral hygiene or bathroom cleanliness at all. They’re about respect or value or minimization or resentment or fear or insecurity or inadequacy or regret, any number of reasons, really, and all things that have their roots much older and farther reaching than toothpaste. It’s like treating the cut in the skin rather than the broken bone that caused the tear.

There are 2 monsters in the closet here, 2 “broken bones,” as far as I can tell. First, we often hide, pretending that we’re perfect and nothing is wrong. That if we’re not fighting right now, then that must mean we have peace. We don’t communicate well, we ignore warning lights and signs, choosing to act like the white picket fence doesn’t have termites. This all comes from general, garden variety laziness and more importantly, our propensity to choose comfort, convenience, and ease.

I guess there’s only 1 monster, because that last paragraph was a list of symptoms, too. Helen finally ends the argument in the movie with, “This is NOT. ABOUT. YOU.” The bone that’s broken and in great need of attention is our narcissism. We are very selfish. The Bible calls this idolatry, and all that means is that we are our own gods, we are our own #1. I’m angry about the cap you left off because of what it says to/about me. I’m frustrated and resentful because you don’t do what I want you to do, what I think you should do. I’m offended because you are disrespectful of my wants and needs, scared because you aren’t properly deferential to me and my expectations, inadequate and insecure because you might not want or need me and what will that say about me???

This is almost entirely why we can’t talk about religion or politics like human beings. We identify with a position so closely that another position is not simply judging ideas or concepts or platforms, it is judging us. I’m so thoroughly identified, to discard my opinion is to discard me, to deem it less is to deem me less. We don’t usually do this with choice of condiments or sodas, so we can easily talk about the merits of ketchup without coming to blows. We cannot with our theology or our political affiliation.

Most conversations are variations on that Incredibles scene. We’re talking out loud about Dash playing sports, but barely concealed is a defense of our own worth and fear at becoming obsolete and discarded. And we are way too terrified to be vulnerable enough to drag the real issue into the light. So we dance around sports, tenets, and toothpaste caps, unable to say anything real.

It’s the most depressing scene in the movie by a mile, and every one of us can easily relate. We are all Bob Paar; Incredible, overflowing with so many talents, gifts and abilities…and wildly desperate that you notice. The thing is that all of the ways we try too hard to be these pathetic gods only obscure how super we really are.

Love With A Capital L

A journey towards living an inspired life of love in the modern world

Author: The Bridge Faith Community