2023-08-08T17:13:20+00:00

Reminders

August 8, 2023/The Bridge Faith Community/Leave a comment

The site prompt is to find an “entirely uninteresting story,” and consider how it relates to your life. I don’t understand it at all. There is almost nothing that is entirely uninteresting, and as everything is connected, considering doesn’t take much time or effort. Maybe finding uninteresting things requires being uninteresting ourselves, and we are lots of things, but uninteresting is not one of them. If anyone told you otherwise, they lied to you.

I watched 2 movies – fiction, not documentaries, as is my usual practice. Both were excellent. Well, maybe they weren’t excellent, but I sure loved them. I would, because they were pretty sweet and very hopeful. I shed buckets of tears at both, which felt like a beautiful soul-cleansing rather than the anguished expulsion of the broken-hearted.

The first excellent movie was Puss In Boots: The Last Wish. I was surprised, too. Dreamworks isn’t Pixar, after all. There aren’t any Up’s or Inside Out’s to be found on their slate, and with few exceptions (the How To Train Your Dragon and Kung Fu Panda trilogies), they’re all sort of average. Shrek is mostly ok, but the sequels bring the property values waaay down. I wouldn’t say I wanted to watch The Last Wish, but my son suggested it, and I like him a lot, so much so that it would more than make up for an hour and a half of garbage. But it was great, the feel good hit of the summer, as they say. I don’t know or care about any of the characters, but mortality, family, the battle between selfishness & selflessness, and love transcend studios or personalities. Everything negative said about it is true, it was predictable and broad. But we like what we like, and there doesn’t have to be a good critical reason. Some Britney Spears songs are terrific.

Guardians of the Galaxy 3 was the other. Finding original material instead of sequels/prequels/re-makes/re-imaginings is apparently quite difficult. The MCU has been on a losing streak lately, scattered and sophomoric, and this affected my expectations for GotG3, which I chose not to spend the million dollars to see in the theater. And maybe there are mountains of negative press for this, too, and probably they’re accurate, too.

I watched it twice in 2 days. The second viewing was better than the first. I have a bit of anxiety when I watch a new movie, ignoring (or trying to ignore the) questions: What’s going to happen? Will these characters live or die? And then, I don’t want them to die, I want them to live happily ever after. I like when the good guys win, evil is vanquished, the one ring is destroyed, and the emperor dies. So I can’t relax while I focus on plot and consequence. Afterwards, I can think about writing and performance, cgi and music. I can finally see the film.

Anyway, if you didn’t like it (and some in this house didn’t), that doesn’t matter to me. I wish you would have, obviously, but that’s because I want you to have a great life and enjoy the things you eat/see/hear/read/experience. I want you to feel the significance & delight in his/her lips when you kiss them. I want you to dance wildly and sing out loud. You deserve wonderful things.

Anyway (again!!), it doesn’t matter because I did. I don’t need you to, I don’t even really need it to be great high art. Like The Last Wish, it’s mortality, pain, meaning, selfishness v selflessness, identity, family, and most of all, love. I love it even more as I’m thinking about it now.

I guess that’s the point that young me so often missed, it doesn’t have to be “great” to be awesome. Kid A is a masterpiece and clearly a superior work than The Bends. But The Bends is perfect, something we all can listen to forever, and Kid A is horrible.

The things that matter touch us in ways we can’t always explain, but they leave us transformed. I might not be able to articulate why I love Local Natives cover of “Right Down The Line,” (which you should listen to as soon as you can), I don’t know the chords or the time signatures, but I do know it makes me get so lost in the Angel that the 2 become inextricably linked. It’s not Dylan, but baby, it’s .

The Last Wish and Guardians 3 are not Taxi Driver or Pulp Fiction, but not everything has to be. We just have to feel them. They remind us we’re alive, and what better compliment could there ever be??

4 Quick Reviews For Films I’ll Immediately Forget

July 30, 2023/The Bridge Faith Community/Leave a comment

Baseball is over, and I’m so thankful for the rest and the time that I haven’t even began to feel the hole. I’ll miss the coaches, players, their parents, and the time spent together like crazy. I will not, however, miss the drama adults create anytime egos are allowed to roughhouse without any supervision or guardrails. Not at all.

The new open time has given me a chance to catch up on some pop culture; The Monster of Wall Street, Arnold, Across The Spider-Verse, and Secret Wars. As I’m considering them, I they lend themselves very nicely to comparison.

The Monster is about Bernie Madoff and his Ponzi scheme to steal mountains of dollars. Arnold is a 3 part documentary on the life of Arnold Schwarzenegger, told by Arnold Schwarzenegger (as it absolutely should be.) One of the last lines of the Arnold doc was him refuting the idea that he was/is a “self-made man.” In no uncertain terms, he states that he is not at all self-made. He stood on parents, coaches, teachers, friends, mentors, and on and on, his story is testament to the importance of community and relationships. It was fairly surprising to hear, I assumed he was a narcissistic ego-maniac bent on money, power and fame. He may be, but he is a man grateful to all of the everyday contractors who built his empire to a far greater degree. Madoff, on the other hand, was a thief. I expected layers, nuance, context, and shades of gray.

Usually, these Netflix documentaries are brilliant at displaying facets of their subjects. There are never simply good guys and bad guys. This is the exception. Madoff appears to be a paper-thin mannequin without depth or complexity. He is sort of the anti-Schwarzenegger – he is his own god, prideful, selfish, and nothing else. Where Arnold saw hands and shoulders who would lift him to greater heights than he could ever achieve alone, Madoff saw backs to step on and necks to break to get an inch taller.

I can’t say I liked either, much. I’ll forget them, but it reminds me of the Maya Angelou quote, “people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.” Arnold made me feel buoyant and hopeful, Madoff made me want to throw up and take a shower.

Across the Spider-Verse and Secret Wars (not technically a film, instead categorized a series – only because it was arbitrarily cut into 6 pieces) are 2 new superhero movies. The MCU (I recognize that the Spider-Verse is not technically in the MCU, but it’s close enough) has recently mostly left me behind, and I am honestly disappointed about it. As I have detailed & defended many times, I loved the Avengers in the Infinity Saga. LOVED. Now, the MCU has seemingly forgotten what made those movies and that story so great, and haphazardly pumps out newer, louder, predictable-er fare that leaves me pretty unfulfilled.

The 1st Spider-Verse movie was an explosion of creativity, and so is this one. The characters are well-written and complex (everything Madoff in real life isn’t, incidentally), with human emotions and motivations. Across the Spider-Verse was surprising, defying most genre clichés. It was good, but will only be able to be accurately assessed after the 3rd is released (whenever that is.) This is remarkably similar to Secret Wars. I liked it well enough. And maybe it was important and maybe it wasn’t. Maybe it was just another pointless cash-grab from Marvel/Disney. Only time will tell. The producers set up the rules to eschew stand alone films in favor of interconnectedness, and when they aren’t connected, then they’re just dead end roads, full of sound and fury and signifying nothing at all.

None of the 4 feel particularly vital, I was one way before I saw them and I am still that way. I suppose that’s the worst thing I can say about a work of art. I don’t mean to say “the worst” things about them, they weren’t that bad. They just weren’t great. They just were.

The Machines

July 24, 2023/The Bridge Faith Community/Leave a comment

The prompt today is asking me what I listen to when I work. Well, I am listening to “Dancing in the Courthouse,” by Dominic Fike. Well, I was. Now I’m listening to “Sail Away,” by lovelytheband. It’s not that those are my favorite songs, they just happen to be on the “Songs For You” suggested playlist on my Amazon Music app.

I sometimes wonder why our undergarments are so twisted up about AI (Artificial Intelligence). This algorithm knows me better than any human on earth. The Angel and I have trouble agreeing on shirt patterns in stores, but I always agree with the You Might Like section of My Amazon. The Machines know exactly what I like, and what I will like. All I have to do is casually mention at the dinner table that my feet hurt or that I could use a new pair of sneakers, and I’ll get an avalanche of advertisements for precisely what I need. It’s a modern miracle. We’re living in the golden age.

My in-laws and I often talk about being ‘tracked’ in a newer, scarier minority report, and all I can think about is how often I forget my size or how big my living room is, and how cool it would be if The Machines could remind me.

“Dial Drunk,” by Noah Kahan, is on now. Do you know who Noah Kahan is? How would I have heard this song 35 years ago, when I was deciding that a music guy is what kind of person I was going to be? Maybe MTV, but Music television doesn’t play music anymore, there’s only regrettable shows about people with abs, who drink more alcohol than most sports teams, living near the beach, and a new show about infidelity.

Why would I want to watch a show about infidelity? I don’t, and the algorithm knows it. Why would anyone? I know reality tv isn’t reality, but it’s marketed as such, so we suspend disbelief and pretend it’s authentic. So, again, why would I want to see a person get their heart broken because their loved one doesn’t love them? Why would I want to see somebody cry rivers of tears because they’ve been lied to? I see enough tears in actual real life, I don’t need more in “real life” on tv.

But The Machines know this, too. The suggested follows I get on Instagram are beavers, capybaras, bunnies, kids falling, fantastic artwork, and acoustic versions of 90’s songs They know I love. Not betrayal or ads for beers.

I guess I could’ve heard “Dial Drunk,” on cassettes my sister used to send me from KROQ in California. She’d just pop in a tape and press record until Side A’s 45 minutes were up. And speaking of those tapes, they’re still the best, I have the local commercials sandwiched between Goo Goo Dolls’ (pre-“Iris,” when they were interesting) “We Are The Normal,” and 10,000 Maniacs’ “Like The Weather.” Good times.

But The Machines presumably know about those cassettes, too. They surely know about my sister.

Of course, my in-laws are right, it is awfully scary. Maybe They shouldn’t know my shoe size or where I live. Maybe They shouldn’t be quite so much in charge. (Maybe it’s too late.) But honestly, sadly, we haven’t exactly done a great job with all of this, either. What if, in a supreme irony, The Machines (without the weight of our selfishness) are more careful with us, kinder, gentler, more loving, more beautifully human, than we ever were?

Who knows? But until we find out, I’ll be listening to the AWESOME “Letter To Myself,” by the Lottery Winners (featuring Frank Turner).

Last Night

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

With this blank screen in front of me, I know what I want to say, I just don’t know how to say it. Or even if I should, Our words should be used to build, and that is usually what I try to do in this space, but sometimes the point is in our bad behavior, hidden in our our most regrettable moments. And writing anything is about honesty, especially in a non-fiction blog situation. If we feel like the writer is curating an image, what on earth is the point? Anybody can wear a mask and lie. The only way to find connection is through a mutual authenticity, and sometimes that is ugly on the outside.

Last night the baseball season ended. The first day, I sat the boys down and said something like, teenage boys are awful a lot of the time. But that’s only because they usually deal in Lord of the Flies type social dynamics. They’re mean, sarcastic, cutting. They mock and tease, try to shrink others to make themselves appear taller. This is ridiculous and rooted, as everyone knows, in fear and a raging insecurity. They wear masks to try to hide the overwhelming inadequacy in their hearts.

Of course, this is not just teenage boys. It’s just as much women at your office or men at the grocery store. We act out of our perceived lack, and that makes us nasty and awfully dangerous.

So I tell them we will not do that here, we will operate from a different reality. You don’t have to be insecure here, you don’t have to be afraid. We’ll stand up straight, support and love each other. And that’s largely what happened. Errors and mistakes were easily forgotten, lots and lots of encouragement was poured out like water, and we won everything there was to win.

A side note: It’s not often enough that the best people are the best performers. The kindest, gentlest, most caring people don’t always win. When they do, as was the case this season, it must be acknowledged and savored. As written in the masterpiece Horton Hatches The Egg, “and it should be, it should be, it should be like that!”

Last night was the league celebration, where they got the trophies they had earned through hard work and commitment – to themselves, their gifts, the game, and each other. The second place team in the year end tournament was also there to collect theirs, as well.

Then the coach was invited to give the medals to the players, and he (clad in sunglasses and a skull t-shirt instead of a team/sponsor/uniform shirt), wearing an uninterested disguise, walked to the front, using foul language and disrespect as weapons.

Another side note: I don’t mind foul language, not much is offensive to me, but there is a time and a place. A youth sports event, in front of the league administration, players and parents, is not the place (whether they’ve all ‘heard it before’ or not.)

He handed his medals to the players without regard for them and their work. Then as we got ours, he made a derisive comment and they all refused to acknowledge any of us, as we collected tournament and league championships, and our players received their all-tournament & MVP awards.

It was so so sad. It might have been something, anything else if the behavior wasn’t so hollow and obvious. I wanted to cry and give him a hug.

My question was, why? Why would anyone want to discount or diminish an achievement, any achievement, of another? But I already know. The desperate quest for proving your worth, and the accompanying terror of not knowing if you’ll ever find it, is very powerful and has crushed far more than just him.

I don’t know if my team made the connection. When we were alone, I reiterated the importance of living free of the inadequacy/insecurity that weighs down so many of our moments – I wonder if they recognized that they were given a perfect illustration of the result of a lifetime under the boot of unworthiness, like the ghost of Christmas future.

As for the boys I coached, I told them they were beautiful, that I was so proud of them (championship or not), and that they were loved. I told them every minute we spent together was an honor for which I could never adequately express. Then we said goodbye for the last time this season.

As for that guy, I wish he hadn’t embarrassed himself so thoroughly. But more, I wish and pray that he finds some sort of peace in who he is and feels the familiar arms of a loving God around him, whispering in his ear that he is, and has always been, loved.

And as for me, (to again borrow from Horton and his egg), they sent me home happy, one hundred percent.

Knots

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

I say, without a hint of sarcasm or hyperbole, that I like everyone. I give an A the first day of class, in a manner of speaking. Some don’t trust until they have reason to, I trust until I have a reason not to. Of course, this doesn’t always work out well. I have been damaged, had my heart broken, been betrayed. But in these situation, forced to reconsider my position as a wide-open door, I choose to stay the course. Come in, make yourself at home.

Boundaries are a necessity that I’m learning. Not everyone should get unfettered access to you, especially after they’ve been careless a time or 2 or 80.

I say that, and it’s mostly true. But Friday I realized it has limits. I cut my mom’s grass and, without exception, there are piles of dog poop in her yard. She has no dog. There are monsters in this world. Some let their dogs off leash to do as they please, and others watch them defecate and make the conscious decision to leave it in another’s yard. As it turns out, I don’t like everyone.

So, Friday as I’m cleaning my shoes, I realize these monsters shouldn’t have dogs. But in all likelihood, they would agree. When they got the dog, they thought in music montage, running in the sunshine with their best buddy, scratching her ears, to an upbeat ‘60’s tune. They believe this is an accurate representation of having a dog. They’re wrong. Having a dog is those things; they’re wonderful, and wonderfully fun, but they’re also veterinarian appointments, barking, expensive food, vomit, and plastic bags. (This is not to mention the worst part of having a pet – they don’t live that long, so we are virtually assured of having our hearts crushed by their passing.) The monsters actually don’t want dogs, they want a “dog.”

This is like 6 pack abs. They are cool, sexy, and awesome, but they are also crunches, sweat, Russian twists, forgone desserts, protein shakes. There are no 2nd helpings. We want the glamorous, romanticized result, but we absolutely do not want the truth.

This is also like management. We want to be in charge, want the corner office, door plaque, we want to lead, but we do not want the nighttime calls, the pressure, stress, responsibility, the hard conversations and painful decisions.

This is also like marriage. We want the A+ relationship, but that’s only if it’s the hazy rose-petal dream of the movies. We certainly don’t want the tears, the fights, the “worse” part of “for better or worse,” the sacrifice, the communication and work of an A+ marriage.

We don’t want to pick up the poop.

I think that’s probably why we have such trouble committing. Maybe the reason our marriages fail in such high numbers, the reason why our relationships don’t last and are so superficial, why churches, bowling leagues, and teams have declining membership. We only want what we like, what is comfortable and convenient, we want idealized versions, and when the dogs stop in my mom’s front yard or there’s morning breath or the pastor says something we don’t agree with or we’re sore and don’t feel like going, we’re out. When the unrealistic picture we’ve been sold doesn’t match reality, we run from reality (rather than the other way around). We leave the excrement there for somebody else to clean up.

The thing that we don’t understand is that those rough patches add the most texture, the most value. We navigate the differences, disagreements, hold their hair when they’re sick, and we’re deeper and stronger as a result. The negatives aren’t negative at all, they’re the tension that makes knots tighter. And I’d suggest we all need tighter knots.

Steel Pipes

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

The site prompt today is “What are you most worried about for the future?” I don’t really have an answer for that. Of course, there are a bunch of things I care about, interests, hopes I have for the future: that my boys find God, peace, joy, a community, and a woman to love…that the Angel and I can grow into little shriveled old people together, deeply in love…that we, as human beings, don’t tear the whole earth apart, killing ourselves and each other. Pretty universal, but not what I’d call worries. Most worried about? Maybe that we’d never recover our imaginations, and keep believing the lie that it is what it is, this is all there is, and we are all we’ll ever be.

Yesterday while my son was mowing my neighbor’s lawn, I heard a very loud noise, like a terrible cross between a clank and a bang. I ran to the window and he was no longer mowing, just looking at the machine with concern (like I sometimes look at him;). He started again, and stopped after a few yards. So I go outside to, well, I don’t know what I went outside for. What do I know about lawn mowers? As it turns out, I do know what it looks like when the blades are twisted and bent. I also know what damage twisted, bent blades do to a few yards of grass.

He drove right over a steel pipe (what I think is the outside access point for the sewer) in the front yard. Rather than avoid the obvious obstacle, he made a different, destructive choice.

I was frustrated – especially when I ask what he was thinking, and he responded with the all-purpose old faithful, “I don’t know.” But here’s the thing, how many times have I made the choice to disregard obvious obstructions or dangers, crashed into them and left sections of my life torn up and broken? I see the obstacle, the steel pipe in my path, and instead of navigating around it, instead of avoiding the thing that will wreck me, I continue to go headlong into what will surely bring pain and destruction. Now, why?

He had gone over this steel pipe before without trouble, but this time he lowered the deck because he didn’t want to mow again too soon. I am lazy, too. That is likely the reason I most often sabotage my own life, because I’m too lazy to change course. I’m prideful, too. Sometimes nobody can tell me anything because I know better. I know I can safely go over the steel pipe, until I can’t, then I have all of the lame excuses why it happened and why I wasn’t actually wrong.

Those are only 2 of a million, but now we have a chewed up patch of lawn that will take weeks to heal, a mower that will need (maybe expensive) repair, and we need to borrow another one in the meantime. 1 second of bad decision leaves many wide ripples of consequences. Consequences for a moment of weakness are the worst, but they’re probably the only way we’d ever learn, right? And if my boy is like me, he’ll have to hit that lousy sewer pipe over and over before it sinks in.

But it will.

Bowling Alone

June 23, 2023June 25, 2023/The Bridge Faith Community/Leave a comment

I read that more people are bowling, but leagues are suffering. The reason is because we are bowling alone!??! Bowling alone. Have you ever seen those social media posts that say, “tell me you’re ____ without telling me you’re ____.” Tell me your society is busted without telling me your society is busted: Bowling alone is increasing while bowling together is down.

I recognize that relationships are out of fashion. Our religion is individuality and self-reliance. The main tenet of the social contract is superficiality. I’m fine, it’s fine, everything is fine. Even when, especially when, I’m not and it’s not. Membership is suffering everywhere, because commitment is suffering everywhere. This seems like a relatively insignificant consequence of modern life. Who really cares if we don’t commit to institutions through such an antiquated concept as membership? Maybe. But the list of problems with bowling alone is infinite.

But most, if not all, of these problems can be traced back to a self-obsessed view of the surrounding world. How do you make me feeeel? How does it make me feel? What are you giving me? Are you feeding me enough of what I want? If the answer to any of these is less than positive, treating me like I deserve to be treated, I will move on and never look back.

Close relationships need friction to grow – up and down. Beautiful flowers we can see and enjoy, but also the kind of roots that go deep enough to withstand all kinds of weather. Mark Manson writes, “Greater commitment allows for greater depth. A lack of commitment requires superficiality.”

The Angel and I, we know things about each other, love things about each other, that no one else sees. We only see them because we have committed to any terrain, any obstacles. We only see them because we committed to each other, regardless of…well, anything. Our roots go very, very deep. We bowl together.

Community is an inherently unselfish activity; a community is a selfless organism. We give up certain rights, privileges, and responsibilities for others to gain certain rights, privileges, and responsibilities. The illogical part is that, in becoming smaller, we find a new significance and value that we couldn’t have dreamed otherwise. Illogical, but absolutely true. I sacrifice the ability to date any and every other woman, when I say yes to the Angel, but that sacrifice is hardly loss, considering the knowing, intimacy and love we have built over 20+ years.

When we join a bowling league, we give up some flexibility and individuality, but we have partners, teammates. When we’re not there, we are missed. How many spaces care if we don’t show up? If no one knows my name at the mega church, no one will know my name when I’m not there. There’s a humongous difference between “Where’s that guy that sat there 2 weeks ago?” and “Where’s Chad? He doesn’t usually miss. I’ll text him, see if he’s ok.”

I’ve believed that I am an island, that I can do it myself, and I’ve been way too proud to admit when I can’t. I’ve hurt my back more times than I can count moving furniture rather than call somebody to help. But I don’t believe that anymore. Instead of disappearing when my heart or spirit breaks, I make some calls and tell the truth. All of it. And the dark periods get shorter, more manageable, less dark.

I wish we’d tear up that social contract, shred the pages with all the lies of isolation as virtue, and write a new one. We can start creating a new world right now, today, but none of that happens by ourselves, alone in a cave. This is something we can only do together.

Baby Steps

June 20, 2023/The Bridge Faith Community/Leave a comment

There is this Japanese concept called Kaizen, where small, nearly imperceptible, steps stack up and we find that we are miles from where we began. Usually, we decide we need to change something (exercise, food, any pattern/habit you can think of) and jump into the deep end. Our diet is bad, we feel like garbage, so we cut out carbs, sugar, soda, AND dairy. We are healthy and awesome, for 15 minutes, and then we binge on all of the things we recently excised. We’re stuck on the couch, maybe we’ve never worked out before, so we commit to going to the gym, deciding to lift heavy weights every day for 3 hours/day. We are strong and believe our shirts are much tighter around the arms, we are fit and ripped. Until the morning of day 3, when we’re in so much pain we can’t put pants on or brush our teeth, and that’s the end of that.

Kaizen laughs at this “strategy” – we’ll call this method Foolish. In the diet example, if every day we are eating an entire package of Oreos, today we eat that package minus one. We can do that easily enough, so we do. We throw the extra one away. Then tomorrow, we eat the package minus 2. And so on. But the time we even consider going a day without Oreos, we’ve already had 30ish successes and are feeling quite good about our chances.

In the Foolish paradigm, we fail, fall off wagons, and end up worse than when we started (mostly because we have yet another false start and the automatic negative voices in our heads have more evidence of our lack of will power.) We totally bought the lies of no pain, no gain. If it’s not, at least, uncomfortable (searing pain is much much better) it’s not worth doing.

But Kaizen takes time. Sometimes lots and lots of time. We barely notice just how far we’ve come, but we are completely transformed. The pounds stay off, the gym is a lifestyle, we read, learn, grow, our relationships are stronger, we are more flexible and consistent, we are new.

In a culture whose religion is instant gratification, Kaizen doesn’t play well. We don’t want to deadlift the bar for a month to fine tune our form, we’d rather load it up until our spines bend and crack and we break. We don’t want to lose 1 pound this week when we can lose 10 with snake oil supplements and the latest trend in thermogenic diarrheal cleansing. We don’t want Meditation for Beginners, 1-5 minutes a try for a thousand tries before we level up to 6-10 minutes, we’d rather lock ourselves in a closet for an excruciating hour once.

We’ve exchanged patience for boredom. Small, consistent growth is boooooring. Small, consistent growth is also awesome and lasting.

[Of course, some things require drastic immediate change to save your life. Kaizen is not the best choice for heroin addiction or alcoholism. There is no weaning off an extramarital affair. Some things must be amputated now, with a swift motion. We are not talking about those things.]

If our marriage is lukewarm and we are drifting apart, losing our connection, maybe a monthlong intensive 1-on-1 immersive experience is counterproductive and will magnify our small annoyances and increase the space between us. Instead, let’s turn our phones off and have dinner tonight, just tonight. Then again next week (or even next month), then maybe twice. Maybe we start to look forward to it, maybe we begin to remember why we got together in the first place. Or if we’ve lost physical touch and intimacy, committing to a weekend sexfest might not be the best path. Maybe if we hold hands in the car on the way to pick the kids up, or a quick kiss on the cheek goodbye, would be more effective to tearing down those walls.

The walls won’t come down today or tomorrow or next months, but the relatively comfortable baby steps continue, steady and slow, until those walls are down and we’re heading out to that sexfest with our special people 35 pounds lighter with thick arms and a robust meditation practice, not missing the Oreos even a little.

Bones Brigade

June 14, 2023/The Bridge Faith Community/Leave a comment

I’m at the beach right now – well, not at the beach right now – I’m at the hotel in a Delaware beach town. While the rest of my family sleeps, I am in the common area writing. This weekend is Father’s Day, it’s my second favorite Sunday of the year to give a talk, so I’m working.

But while we’re here, I watched a documentary on Amazon called Bones Brigade: An Autobiography, about a revolutionary skateboarding ‘team’ (probably more accurately called a skateboarding family.) I grew up with the VHS tapes and Thrasher magazine, so I am very familiar with skateboarders like Tony Hawk, Steve Caballero, and Mike McGill, and the Bones Brigade.

Of course I knew the skating, the tricks, the video games, the impact and artwork, but as usual, that is only a small part of the story. In fact, they’re the least compelling part of the story. Lance Mountain and Rodney Mullen (the ones I didn’t know as well) were insecure and damaged, and the damage didn’t make them any less beautiful. What this film accomplished extraordinarily well, was to detail this time for these people – the highs & lows, the glory AND the heartbreak, the 1st place finishes as well as the times each quit and returned home. The depth and texture of reality made them even more beautiful, if that’s possible.

I think that’s what makes a person like ex-President Trump so difficult to embrace. He curates an image without pain, self-doubt, or flaws. He is only bombastic confidence and success, and that makes him appear like a caricature, like he’s attending a masquerade party where this is what a “man” says and does. I don’t know Donald Trump, and I know to mention his name in any context invites rage. But yesterday, he was in a courtroom to plead ‘not guilty’ to 37 counts and was described as humble and downcast, eyes down and hands folded in his lap. This snapshot of brokenness did what nothing else has, ever: humanized him. (Now, last night he was back to the character, so who knows?) He was far more relatable in the courtroom than he has ever been on a stage or television screen.

Maybe what made the Bones Brigade so honest and open with their fragilities and imperfections was the love they had for each other. Or maybe it was the reverse. Maybe they loved each other into vulnerability and authenticity, or maybe their vulnerability and authenticity opened the door into this deep love. It’s hard to imagine a football or baseball team that would have held Rodney Mullen with such kindness, grace and respect, or that would have been a family to him, where he was, who he was, regardless of his place in today’s competition. All of the members spoke with protective reverence of both he and Hawk as they both made the decision to not win as much, or at least not make winning the only goal.

All of these dumb cult documentaries I watch always leave us with a question: How does this happen? How do people get caught up in this insanity? And the answer is always the same, we’re all looking for community and relationship, and when we find it, (hopefully it’s a ground-breaking skateboarding family and not some crazy religious leader who only wants to sleep with the young girls in the group), we lean in. I’m pretty sure former President Trump doesn’t have a circle like that, who will accept him unconditionally, protect and walk with him – politics might not be the best place to find it. But these boys/men sure did, and they changed so many of us by simply building a home and letting us watch.

Last Times

June 5, 2023/The Bridge Faith Community/Leave a comment

So I had this pet rabbit (I can’t even tell you how depressing it was to change the word “have” to “had”) for over 9 years. Her name was HoneyBunny. The Angel named her, and I loved it because Tim Roth’s character in Pulp Fiction called his special lady (Amanda Plummer) Honey Bunny, and I can always hear him say, “I love you, Honey Bunny,” in my head. Bunnies live 5-7 years, it says on cards at pet stores. They live much fewer in the wild, but in houses, there are far fewer predators. Ours live forever, in rabbit years.

Smoothie lived to be over 11. We asked the vet if he looked good for 11, and he answered, incredulously, “I don’t know.” He had never seen one that old, which made him in GREAT shape.

I work from home, so I was the primary caregiver for HoneyBunny. Every day for over 9 years, I let her out of her cage, feed & water her, change her litter box, and love her. Thursday was the last day I did any of those things. I let her out and she went under the ottoman, as was her recent practice. I gave her lettuce and treats on a plate under there. Then, around 4, she had an ‘episode’ that I can’t accurately describe. I held her tightly while my boys called local-ish veterinarians. We finally found one to see her by the time the Angel came home, and went there immediately.

She fell asleep in my hands, with the Angel stroking her ears and back. Of course it was horrible, but way too many pass alone, I’m grateful she had 4 hands on her with care and love. She deserved at least that much.

At home, I dug a hole to place her in and watered it with my tears.

Now, why I tell you all of this is because of Thursday morning, when I let her out and gave her the last treat I’d ever give. Sometimes we know when the last times are…

Friday morning Samuel went to the Annville-Cleona high school as a student for the last time. Last night he and his friends said goodbye to a young man who came as a foreign exchange student and was leaving as a close friend.

And others we don’t. How often do I reference Genesis 28:16, “Surely the Lord was in this place and I was unaware?” It’s a serious danger to live these beautiful lives of ours asleep, walking through the days & moments in a daze, oblivious to the fact that the ground on which we’re walking and the people we walk alongside, is all holy. I’d like to think I spoke to her with kindness and intention many many many many more times than I was absent or in a hurry or treating her like she was a nuisance, under my feet or chewing cords, boxes, and furniture. I’d like to hope I was as good to her as she was to me.

The message is always the same – God has so graciously given these blessings to us, we need to stay alert, keep showing up expecting wonder and beauty, keep our eyes open to/for this extraordinary grace.

Yes, she was just a rabbit, but if only you knew her, you’d know there was nothing “just” about her. And now the cage she slept in is empty and I miss her. This is the deal – to love something or someone means, at some point, it’ll hurt, it’ll break our heart into a bazillion pieces. Those pieces are a wonderful gift. She’s gone, but I had her for a long time, forever it rabbit years. My heart is broken but it grew 9 sizes while she was here. I’m really thankful.

I loved that HoneyBunny, and I love her still.

Love With A Capital L

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