2024-01-09T15:38:30+00:00

NOT Another Post on Youth Sports

January 9, 2024/The Bridge Faith Community/Leave a comment

This is not another post on youth sports. It’ll feel like it is, but that’s only because youth sports is the superficial context for a deeper reality. Sort of like superhero movies not actually being about superheroes, at all. If we make the mistake of believing The Winter Soldier is about muscles and exaggerated fight scenes, we’ve missed the metaphorical forest for the neon-lighted trees.

I think officiating basketball has to be just about the hardest thing to do in the whole wide world. There’s almost no one that can do it at a level in shouting distance of competence. My biggest issue with this is that it puts these athletes at risk for injury. A boy goes out to learn the lessons sports can teach so effectively (about himself, others, cooperation, resilience, perseverance, and on and on), and the ridiculous ineptitude of the referees leaves him open to all kinds of assault far outside of the rules of the sport. Last night, as the game transmogrified into gang warfare, twice (!!) a boy put both hands on another and threw him to the floor, another boy has his shoulder separated in what was inexplicably deemed a completely clean play by the deafening silence of the whistle. The last play of the game, as a young man went up for an offensive rebound, he was clubbed with a forearm in his chest and power-bombed to the hardwood. There was, again, no call, as the 3 officials ran from the court as if they were being chased by ravenous pit bulls.

That was last night. And now the site prompt today is, What Is Your Mission? These 2 events are related, bound tightly in my heart, soul, and mind. You see, I want to be a referee. A very good one. This sounds like a unicorn, the imaginary stuff of myth and legend, and maybe it is, but I don’t actually want to be a referee. A very good referee is, by nature, absolutely taken for granted. If a contest is officiated well, they are unnoticed, no comments on how well they did, or how they allowed the players to decide the outcome. They just showed up and did their job with excellence.

I want to live my life in such a way that I do the extraordinary in such a way that everyone in my circles can take it as a given. I want to be consistent, reliable. I want to show up to every situation, to give the best of me (the best of what I have to give, honestly and openly) in every moment.

I want everyone who sits in the congregation to know that I am well-prepared, and that, for the next 40-ish minutes, they will be taken care of. I want my boys to know, when they look in the stands at their games, that I am there…so much so, that they don’t even bother to look. That I will always be waiting in the parking lot to take them home. I want them to know I will give my life for theirs in a heartbeat.

I want the Angel to know so deeply that she is adored by her husband, who will always be interested, faithful, and engaged, and that she will always be cared for, appreciated, and loved to the moooon and back. There would be no need for comment or thanks, because it is just beautifully sewn into the fabric of her life.

I want the staff at the gym to see me every day at the same time, that it is wholly unremarkable. I want you to know I respect and honor you in ways that may be unusual in the wild, but not here, now, with me. You will know you’re safe to try, to ask, to disagree, to jump without looking, because you know I’ll catch you.

I want you to be aware that I’ll make tons of mistakes living a full, passionate life – and take for granted that I’ll listen, recognize, acknowledge, apologize and grow from these missteps. That when it happens, (and it will), you’ll know I am committed to the art of becoming.

You should also know this is obviously not me, not yet. I’m probably much more like these high school basketball officials, allowing others to get hurt when I should be carefully protecting them. Creation can take some time, often in baby steps, and can often be embarrassingly slow. And it’s usually done alone, in the darkness of routine and practice, but since the site prompt asked what my dream, my mission, is, this is it.

Dumb Site Prompt

January 3, 2024/The Bridge Faith Community/Leave a comment

The prompt is, “What colleges have you attended?” I started at a branch campus of a major state university, then quit school altogether, only to transfer to a small-ish private liberal arts college, where I’d graduate with a business administration degree (marketing concentration). Then 15 years later, earned a degree and ordination from a Bible college & seminary.

I never liked school, hated every day of the branch campus and liberal arts college. But later, in a strange twist, loved every moment of the Bible school. Who knew?

I used my business degree to get a management job at a multinational company, where I was a terrible manager. When I gave my 2 week notice on the eve of my wedding, the relief in the general manager’s face was evident. He could finally be rid of me without having to fire me.

Then, after a short stint working at a retail store in a mall, I used that degree to drive a truck, delivering medical equipment to hospice patients. The degree was useless, but the job changed my life forever. After many years there, loving dying people and their families, I took the online Bible classes (working full time with a wife and 2 small children doesn’t leave much, no, doesn’t leave any time for sitting in class), lost my home in a flood, mourned the closing of the church I attended, began a new church in my new living room, and just held on with both hands.

I thought the site prompt was dumb today, but as I’m writing, thinking about the doors that opened, that closed, with the benefit of hindsight, on the 3rd day of a new year, I don’t think it’s so dumb anymore.

If I hadn’t taken 5 1/2 years to complete a 4 year degree (due to credits that wouldn’t transfer, several switched majors, and 1 unfinished semester), I would never have met The Angel. Our first date was in that last 1/2. If I hadn’t spent years working through the night, I wouldn’t have discovered the many many treasures of the Bible and of me that I did. If that flood wouldn’t have swallowed my home, we wouldn’t be here, in this town, with these neighbors. If the old church hadn’t closed it’s doors, if the old pastor/mentor hadn’t completely broken my heart by ignoring me in the years since, we wouldn’t have this amazing Bridge Faith Community and the Bridge would have a very different pastor than the me they have now.

Every new year, I reflect on what was, what is, what could be, but I do this with soft hands. If I had tried to control my life, tried to stay within the lines of what should be, wrestling white-knuckled with the steering wheel… well, I don’t know what sort of life I’d have now, but I know it wouldn’t be this one. It wouldn’t be this messy, beautiful, full, wonderful life.

I still don’t know what my Word of the Year is, and I’m starting to think it doesn’t matter. Maybe my word is blank to illustrate the hands that are, and have always been, holding me, and the blank space where all of the should’s and supposed to’s used to go. It’s just here and now, just the next step, just faith, just trust. Just staying awake to the Love that is holding us all together. Just. Maybe that’s my word: Just. Just me. Just you. Just us. Just all of this divine energy, crackling all around us. Just loving.

Pierced

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

This is not a post on the site prompt, youth sports or the woeful state of high school officiating. I have no shortage of material on those things, I’m just a little tired of typing the word referee.

Snowpiercer is a film starring Captain America, about an environmental catastrophe that kills all living things, except those lucky (?) enough to board a train that endlessly circles the globe. It sounds like a thin premise on which to base a movie or a tv series, much better suited to a novel, but it was excellent. (I am about to ruin the end. When do spoiler ethics expire? Surely 10 years is enough, isn’t it?)

At the end, Captain America fights Ed Harris and 2 others, believing the earth had slightly warmed and could now support life, set off a bomb that crashes the train. 2 people, both “train babies” (humans born on the train, never having set foot outside or breathed fresh air), one 16ish and one 8ish, ostensibly the only survivors of the crash, walk away through the snow, where they/we see a polar bear in the distance.

My very great friend saw this as an allegory on the death of the human race. The polar bear would surely eat them. As a matter of fact, being so naive and uneducated on dangerous predators, she reasoned they would likely serve themselves up trying to pet it’s soft white fur. The animals might survive and repopulate, without the destructive influence of you & me, and the earth would quietly, beautifully heal.

I hadn’t even considered this conclusion. As they walked, hand in hand, together into a brand new world, I found it unbelievably hopeful. Everything was possible, as a 2nd Adam & Eve, they could also survive and repopulate, free of their ancestors’ destructive influence, and the earth (including a new lineage of kind, innocent-ish people), would quietly, beautifully heal.

She’s right, of course. They are destined to be food. She’s super smart and hilarious, you’d love her like I do immediately.

But I don’t care about right and wrong, in this context. I don’t care about realism or food chains and predator/prey relationships. When the credits rolled, all I saw was a beginning, our beginning. Not an end. We are new and can build whatever we want, a New Creation with no ties at all to “how it’s always been.” Just because it was, doesn’t mean it is now.

It’s a pretty good illustration. The philosophy we can choose is one of hope and faith in God (that He is still here and hasn’t abandoned His creation), in us, in our divine design, that we can still remember who we are and what we’ve been called into. That, even with thousands of years to the contrary, we can live lives of love and peace instead of indifference, -isms, and war. All we have to do is blow up the old paradigm and have the courage to walk away from that garbage.

Have a fantastic Christmas, everybody.

One Thing

November 2, 2023/The Bridge Faith Community/Leave a comment

The prompt today is “One Thing I Think Everyone Should Know,” and I’ll get there in a minute.

First, last night I watched this documentary on Max called “Last Stop Larrimah,” about a missing (likely murdered) man in Larrimah, Australia. Larrimah had 11 residents, now it has 10, and no one knows who did it or why. Anyone could have done it, all 11 simultaneously liked and hated each other. But the review I sort of read referenced the often blurry line between telling a story and making fun of the subjects. The Larrimanians, well, they live in a town of 11 in Australia, so they’re quirky and odd. They are not like the people we see at the Whole Foods or high school basketball games.

I finished Birdman this morning, which plays like a documentary of the making of a Broadway play. It isn’t a doc, it’s fiction, and it won an Oscar several years ago. Birdman sounds/looks exactly like a movie I would LOOOOVE, except that it wasn’t. I didn’t like it at all. The performances were outstanding, especially Edward Norton’s, but left me standing in my living room, wondering why I felt nothing at all but sad. The story was, more or less, about the artifice of the industry – the only things that were real was the insecurity and desperate need for validation. Maybe they were on the other side of that same line, maybe they were making fun of their subjects, too. Maybe it was intentional.

An awful lot of things, on film and IRL, walk that line. We all carry that insecurity & desperation, we all have our quirks and personalities. As we walk around, feeling the friction of others who are nothing like us (or who are too much like us), how do we respond? Are our emotions and judgments celebration of another’s unique strangeness or are we laughing at the labels we place on them, labels that obscure their hearts but emphasize everything else.

I liked Last Stop Larrimah, and didn’t like Birdman, for pretty much the same reason: I really love people. This isn’t always an easy position to take, there is always violence and evil. There is never a shortage of examples of inhumanity. But in the face of the never ending avalanche of mistreatment and de-valuation, we simply have to persevere. Otherwise, those examples will continue, ad infinitum.

Birdman didn’t like it’s characters, and thats ok, I suppose. They didn’t, either. This tension between who they were and who they thought they should be or who they were trying to prove they were drove every plot point. Their self-loathing motivated every twist and turn. And I can’t help but think the critic who viewed Larrimah through the lens of ‘otherness is less, which makes it a punchline’ felt the same. He (or she) wanted them to be like us, cool and oh-so sophisticated, with the same hopes, dreams, decor and jeans. Wanted them saddled with the same self-loathing – and when they didn’t wear that on the outside, he branded them with it.

So, what do I want everyone to know? That we are amazing and wonderful. That we don’t have to be any of the should’s, that we don’t have anything to prove, that we don’t have to live like that for another second. That differences are just the best. That there’s nothing to make fun of, there’s nothing to mock. That we are who we are, and that is so much more than good enough. That’s what I want everyone to know.

Artists

October 10, 2023/The Bridge Faith Community/Leave a comment

Who are my favorite artists? That’s what the site wants to know today, and I have lots and lots of answers.

I recognize the idea is to lists singers, writers, painters, filmmakers, right? Morrissey & Rodin, Roth & Tarantino. There would have been a time that I would have jumped at the opportunity to make a list and explain (in great detail) why for each. Actually, I would still love, and may, in fact, do just that.

But I’ll start this list, not with Morrissey, but with my sister, who spent last week seeing U2 play at that new ball in Las Vegas, then Cirque du Soleil then next night, then visiting Red Rocks the next. I have a picture where she was, apparently, flying. In another one she was doing handstands on sand – I get those a lot. She’s a yoga master, and like all yogis, she yogas everywhere. She is now in her 50’s and has figured things out, to where her life is wild, imaginative and blindingly vibrant.

Next are my neighbors, who are teachers and young parents. Their daughter is a fireball of talent, which is fairly predictable, because her parents are overflowing with abilities, like musical superheroes. They’re also kind and funny, and last month brought home materials and built a deck onto their home. I guess their superhero-ism isn’t only musical.

You see, I think the greatest works of art are not albums or films, but our lives. We’ve all been created with limitless creativity and possibility, and when we can spot it, it’s exciting and hopeful. We are all inspired to do the same. It’s like invitations into our own lives, where we are free to run as fast as we can (whatever that means, whatever “running” is for any of us.)

The last one in this list is the one I’m most familiar with: The Angel. As the walls of her employer crumble, she is graceful and more and more stunning every moment, even as some of her dark hair is replaced with gray. Everybody with sense is abandoning that ship, yet she stays, she says “to care for her people.” Her people are, of course, all people. Now, completely superficially, she’s the most beautiful woman I know. I sometimes have to be careful on Sundays, I can easily lose my train of thought when I see her. But in a surprising twist, she’s way better inside, and I can think of no better compliment than that.

These artists, and their creations, aren’t perfect – it’s no accident that 2 of them are 2 of the people I know the deepest, and have had the biggest arguments with – but great art never is. We love Kurt Cobain and Against Me, we connect with them in ways we never could with Britney Spears and Backstreet Boys. The latter are sterile and produced, and the former are authentic and messy. Notes are missed, we might not understand the words, they’re flawed, with sharp edges. We love them. This is art, it’s the expression of the soul, not necessarily technical prowess, but humanity and, in that, intimate connection.

My favorite artists are Jetpack WordPress bloggers, self-publishers, youth sports coaches, RNs & CNAs, realtors, landscapers, therapists, teachers, secretaries – There’s no end to this list, I really could go on and on. I picked 4 to name here because…well…there isn’t a why. Part of my artistic call and talent is to point out awesome wherever I find it. There are constraints to this format, but there are no constraints to my life. And if every moment I can recognize and appreciate the countless artists I see, if every moment I can love another person and their art, then my life will be a masterpiece, too.

So, This Is What This Feels Like

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

The Angel is home from work sick today. She works in an elementary school, so early-September illness is part of the job description. As we all know, children are sometimes very cute, and they are always germ farms, little individual super-spreaders. Everybody feels great when school starts, but as the runny noses (wiped on forearms and sleeves leaving slime trails like giant slugs) begin, viruses and infections are generously given to all inside. It’s inevitable, we take our turn and move on.

So as it is the Angel’s turn now, we watched the Reese Witherspoon vehicle Sweet Home Alabama today. As far as rom-coms go, it’s above average. But there is one very notable, very surprising, characteristic.

Reese is someone called Melanie, Jake/Josh Lucas is her childhood boyfriend. They marry, she moves away and meets McDreamy (from Grey’s Anatomy fame) – Andrew/Patrick Dempsey – and they want to marry, so she has to go sweet home to Alabama to secure Jake’s signature on the divorce papers. All sorts of hijinks ensue. You see, she hasn’t told anyone from her new New York life that she was ever born, much less from embarrassing (but wonderfully quirky and endearing) parents in Alabama, and was once married. (I’ll spoil the ending in a minute.) Obviously, it’s fairly rote, could’ve been written by an early AI rom-com program.

There are a few movies, like the Karate Kid and the Hunger Games, where the stars/heroes are the worst. Daniel Larusso and Katniss Everdeen are, by miles, the most unlikeable characters in their respective stories. Reese and Josh Lucas are terrible, the script says they are “in love,” but they clearly hate each other’s guts. Their marriage was a train wreck, and honestly, it’s good she moved away and they both moved on (sort of).

Moving on in the same way we hang on to old awful relationships because we’re seeking “closure,” whatever that means. This mythical “closure” doesn’t have anything close to the power to make these relationships healthy, but we hang on and Hollywood calls it romance. Go figure.

The great big exception is McDreamy. Our recent pop culture creates, almost exclusively (except for superheroes), caricatures of men, where they are always confused, embarrassing, and ‘hilarious’ in their utter uselessness. They are Raymond Barone, we shake our heads and laugh.

McDreamy is awesome. Not only is he gorgeous, but he is principled and classy, he loves Reese unconditionally and forgives her lies, deception and infidelity. It’s quite jarring to see a man played like this. He’s confident and assured, which allows him to choose her, not because he needs her or that she completes him (2 reductive movie tropes), but because he will love her, they will love each other, without balls, chains, manipulation, or co-dependence. That’s what he thinks. That’s what marriage is. She does not want this kind of adult relationship, though.

She leaves him at the altar, and he says precisely what we are all thinking, as we watch a deep, positive depiction of masculinity: So, this is what this feels like. Yes, this is what it feels like to be left at the altar, but it’s also what it feels like to see our expectations met by a man who behaves well; kindly, gently, selflessly. He is a unicorn, at least on film. But he exists in real life. I know many just like him, and it is absolutely beautiful to watch and enjoy.

She made the wrong choice, to be sure, but we all won. Sweet Home Alabama is an A.

Why The Safety Dance Is So Important

August 29, 2023/The Bridge Faith Community/1 Comment

The Safety Dance is an ‘80’s song by Men Without Hats, not the be confused with the far superior Australian legends Men At Work. The biggest difference, to help us keep them straight, is that Men Without Hats had, as far as I can remember, 1 pretty good song (and a singer with a questionable haircut), and Men At Work were awesome.

In the grander scope, Men At Work are important. Down Under and Who Can It Be Now? are the monstrosities, but Overkill is the best. Lead singer Colin Hay gave significant contributions to the Garden State and Scrubs soundtracks. We are better people with better lives with Men At Work in them.

Men Without Hats, on the other hand, are mostly forgettable without the overwhelming number of ‘80’s 1 Hit Wonder compilations. But what I didn’t realize is how valuable The Safety Dance is to us today, in our current situation.

The song has one of the very worst lyrics ever written. “We can dance, we can dance,” (and here it is, get ready:) “everybody look at your hands.” It’s horrible, only there because it rhymes, as if a 2nd grade student wrote a poem at recess while everyone else was playing 4 square. We all cringe because there’s nothing else to do with it.

Meaningless awful lyrics are nothing new, but what’s interesting is that The Safety Dance also has one of the very best lyrics. “We can dance if we want to, we can leave your friends behind” (and here it is, get ready:) “’Cause your friends don’t dance and if they don’t dance, Well, they’re no friends of mine.” Awesome. I happen to agree, but the judgment twisted into the wordplay makes it so perfect.

It’s weird that the same band wrote both, creating a sort of dissonance. Our brain doesn’t know what to do with this. Are they embarrassing songwriters, or brilliant? Can both be true? Or does one cancel out the other? Does the bad drag the good down, or the good pull the bad up? Or. Or does it not matter at all, it’s just a dumb pop song and who cares about pop songs?

What I know for sure is that the last question is totally wrong. It’s not a dumb pop song. In fact, it can have a ton to teach us about moving around in an increasingly fractured world, where so many of our perspectives are from behind lenses of fear.

We are encouraged to set up divisions based on one facet of our personalities, one particular category (whether it is how we vote, wear our hair, shoe size, our color, sex, nationality, or anything else). In other words, we separate ourselves because others have an “everybody look at your hands.” We define others easily, cutting them up into pieces and then locking them in boxes based on just 1 piece.

The thing is, most everybody has a “your friends don’t dance and if they don’t dance, then they’re no friends of mine,” too! The reason I like everyone is the same reason I like The Safety Dance, because I choose to overlook our “everybody look at your hands.” Maybe not overlook, but I do choose to not judge the entire song because of one lyric.

I have an “everybody look at your hands,” and so do you. Everybody does. Maybe mine is that I voted for Donald Trump or Joe Biden. Maybe yours is that you have an addiction or a rough, checkered past. Or that you didn’t. Or that you live there, or wear that. Those things don’t have to close every door to keep us in & them out because somebody convinces us that we should be afraid of or distrust just one lyric in an otherwise good song. Our worlds get smaller, darker, and scarier with these overreactions.

We don’t have to like every song, Dave Matthews Band and Slipknot songs still exist. But the radio is better, more textured and interesting when everything doesn’t look and sound and think the same. So are our lives. Imagine how many songs we turn off immediately after their “everybody look at your hands” moments. This is no longer an acceptable place to live.

The Safety Dance is so important because, if we can adopt a Safety Dance mentality, where we can hold each other’s 10’s and zeroes, and stop missing so much beautiful music, we can begin to rebuild our lives and our world in a brand new cool new-wave image.

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??

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).

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.

Love With A Capital L

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

Tag: beauty