2023-07-04T18:40:28+00:00

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.

Under Pressure

May 23, 2023May 23, 2023/The Bridge Faith Community/Leave a comment

The site prompt today is, “How do you feel about cold weather?” Probably just like everyone else. And I’m titling this post Under Pressure a little because it fits with what I’ll be talking about (which is NOT cold weather) and mostly because the Queen/Bowie song is just the best.

I write about youth sports a lot as a doorway. What happens between end lines is a perfect microcosm of the things we all experience everywhere else and a terrific conversation starter.

Last night the high school baseball team had their first playoff team, against a much better team. We won roughly as many as we lost, they didn’t, they won almost all of their games. In fact, they beat us 3 times by a combined 30-3 margin. They are a Catholic school and behaved, as I have found, as is sadly common to religious schools. They’re extraordinarily arrogant and without a shred of sportsmanship. (I know this is usually what teams say when they’ve lost by a combined 30-3, but that doesn’t make it false.)

Our local school, a massive underdog, won the playoff game, the Catholic school’s season is over and we play on. That’s great, but not the point. The boys on the other side acted like babies, pouted, and cried afterwards, reminding us that they are still boys, no matter how big they are or how hard they throw. That isn’t even the point. Kids are pretty much the same wherever you go, emotional, irrational, and generally obnoxious. If we like them, their immaturity is endearing. If we don’t, it’s an indictment.

The Catholic school coaches are very, very good, their team is always sound. And when they win, they’ve been composed and well-mannered. But last night, they sulked, cursed loudly at the umpires (who, curiously, chose to shrink rather than enforce conduct regulations), continuously broke dugout/bench rules for players and coaches, and thoroughly embarrassed themselves.

It says, in Proverbs 24:10, “If you fail under pressure, your strength is not very great.” They say times of trial reveal character, and I’ve always been secretly afraid of the implications of that. I don’t really want the trial, but I do want to see my character as it truly is. It’s so easy to show class when the roads are smooth and all of the lights are green. What about in traffic on Pennsylvania highways? What about when things start to tighten up?

These coaches failed miserably yesterday. I don’t know them at all, and maybe this was a snapshot of their worst moments. Maybe they’re great dads and husbands. Maybe they’re usually community leaders and wonderful examples for their players. Maybe this is the exception. But on a big stage, in front of a lot of people, they tripped and fell.

That’s the thing about character, a lifetime of behavior can be dismantled in one regrettable moment or playoff ballgame. Of course that’s not fair, but it is reality. The storms are coming, the question is how will we navigate them? I guess we prepare, we train, we read, pray, grow, develop, we lift weights, not for today, but for the times we’ll have to use those muscles. We’ll find out how we’ll navigate them, we’ll discover what’s underneath; the hope is that who we are then is who we have been all along.

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.

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.

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.

Senior Night

January 31, 2023/The Bridge Faith Community/1 Comment

Tonight is Senior Night for the basketball team. There are 3 games left, and this is the last home game. Maybe there will be playoffs, but I don’t have anywhere close to the intellectual capacity to figure that out – the districts, sections, and classes have never made any sense to me. I imagine someone will tell me if we have more games.

This team is much much better than previous years. There was a toxic class to pass through the school and their influence will take time to dissipate, so this year was the first in rebuilding an entire culture and, playoffs or not, has been an almost total success in that. “Learning to win” is a tired sports cliche and the reason it’s tired is because it’s so often true. These boys are beginning to learn to win. Tonight, that isn’t an issue, they will probably not have to worry about winning. But the great thing about sports is that you never know. In the 1988 World Series, the Los Angeles Dodgers beat an unbeatable Oakland A’s team in 5 games. It was impossible, yet it happened. So maybe… but the result hardly matters.

Tonight is the first senior night for my oldest son (there will be another one for baseball in the spring.) We’ll walk him out to the middle of the court and smile and barely keep it together. Or we won’t and the Angel and I will cry like babies. Either way, we will be there, fully present, with each other and with all of the emotions surging in our hearts and souls.

I’m remembering the night I learned he was no longer an idea. The Angel took a test on the phone with me, of course I couldn’t wait to get home, and she gave me the news. I was on 422 coming through Lebanon and pulled over in front of the community college and wept, equal parts terror and elation. Well, not exactly equal parts. We had prayed for him and now he actually existed, it was more celebration and gratitude. But there was certainly terror, swirled in like the cream cheese filling in a pumpkin roll. What kind of daddy would I be? Was I ready? What kind of boy would he be? And a hundred million more questions.

If you’ve met him, you know how amazing he is. If you haven’t, I’m sorry, you really should.

We often refer to a 2 hands theology, and a 2 hands life. Nothing is usually just 1 thing, it’s a combination, more like a hurricane, of different, sometimes wildly conflicting emotions. Tonight, I’ll be proud of my boy, happy for the boy he’s been and the man he’s becoming and grateful that I got to watch and know him so well. I’ll also be heartbroken, crushed that he’ll not nap on my chest again, and frustrated that each day couldn’t have been forever. What a 2 hand anything requires is honesty. We show up as we are, feel what we feel, no hiding, no images. We don’t miss a thing. We don’t wake up and say “God was in this place and I was unaware.” We show up.

I think back to all of the moments that brought us here. I didn’t want to go to Lebanon Valley College, but somehow I found myself there, a business major in 2 classes with the Angel, who had a boyfriend for nearly all 4 years. She happened to drop him right on time. I happened to be in the computer lab one evening, and she happened to be there, too. I happened to talk to her, even though she was faaaaar out of my league. I happened to be on a plan that took more than 4 years – the last semester, which I shouldn’t have had, was when we met and went on our first date. We happened to go on that date, happened to get married, and happened to make this person who will have his senior night tonight.

I say “happened to” and “make” with the same posture. It all seems so orchestrated, almost as if there was a wonderfully loving God making paths, moving feet and softening so many hearts, which of course, He was. We didn’t make Samuel alone, couldn’t have ever made Samuel without the Creator of the Universe making him first.

So now, I want to tell you my answer, with 18 years of hindsight, to the question if I was a good daddy. Maybe. What I do know is that I was intentional. Everything I did (even the mistakes I made) I did on purpose. When he sits down with a therapist to complain about me, what he’ll say is that I hugged, kissed, and told him I loved him too much and too often. And I can live with that.

There are other places where I’ve written to him (beginning with that positive test on his first night), much more detail I could, and will, dive into, but those are only for him and I. Here, tonight is senior night and I will do the 2 things I have done every day of his life; I will be there, authentically, embarrassingly me, present and engaged, and more than that, more than anything else, I will love him.

High School Basketball

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

Earlier this week, I attended a high school basketball game and utterly lost my mind. I was embarrassed, my mother would have been mortified, everyone was looking at me in my head. It was just awful.

Now, I am very well aware of the woeful state of sports officiating. We all think it can’t get worse and then, of course, it does. It’s sort of a disorder where I can’t learn, and that means I am continually surprised. I imagine that that referees/umpires gather after games, heads down, disappointed, wondering if and how they can approach a passable level of competency. But I know some of them personally, and their posture is one of arrogant defiance, so that imagining I do is simply that, a dream with no basis in reality. Maybe they are great men, great dads, husbands, community leaders – in fact, I’d go so far as to say probably they are. They spend so much of their time in high school gyms and fields in service of these student-athletes, and that is no small feat.

It’s a pretty thankless job. Like in most things, we notice the bad and ignore the good. We scream in righteous indignation when the food is cold or the cashier is rude, and otherwise stay silent. In addition, with sports, the officials are dealing with delusional could-have-been’s living vicariously at the top of their lungs. They deserve our respect and kindness.

And in that thankless job, most officials are very, very bad. Both things can be true, and in this case, both things are. I spend most of our time post-game unpacking with my boys excusing the referees/umpires, reminding them they are human beings, how hard the job is and to remember that blame wasn’t helpful in Genesis 3 and it isn’t now.

So why was I crazy the other night? Sometimes bad calls are just bad calls: missed a strike, called a player safe, stepped on an end line, missed a travel. But sometimes, poor officials can lose control and put all of the players in danger of injury. It is no longer wins and losses, the issue is safety. The visiting team wasn’t very skilled so their game plan was much like the ‘80’s Pistons, MMA instead of basketball. I asked for fouls on both teams, tighten everything up, just something, anything, to protect the teams from each other and themselves.

When I wrote that I had lost my mind, that wasn’t entirely accurate. I hadn’t lost control, and certainly not everyone could even hear my comments. But I was embarrassed. Now what to do with that?

In the past, the old tapes would have ran rampant through my head, telling me how ridiculous I am, how I am one of those parents, how I’m a quick-tempered rage monster and I always would be. Those things aren’t true. I’m none of those things. As a teenager, there were holes in my bedroom walls because I didn’t know how to process my fear, hurt, and inadequacy. I am not a teenager anymore, and now I can understand me and my heart. I am not overwhelmed with my own lack of worth anymore. What I am is a work in progress, but what I also am is new. Both of those things can be true, and in this case, both things are. Those old tapes do not apply, they are obsolete. Those statements of identity no longer describe me.

I am grateful. The self-loathing is mostly gone, taking my crippling inadequacy and insecurities with it. The tapes are quieter and quieter, sometimes I can’t even hear them at all. The cool thing about growth is that if we keep our eyes open, there are teachers on every corner, even high school basketball games and incompetent officials to show us how far we’ve come and how far we’ve yet to go.

Best Of Me

January 11, 2023/The Bridge Faith Community/1 Comment

You already know what kind of films I like, but those are not the films that the Angel watches. To paraphrase something I read somewhere, if our cultural interests met at a party, they would not get along, would probably get into some sort of violent exchange. She likes love stories, of the rom-com genre, with or without the com. It’s the rom that stirs her. There was a time when her tastes would have been a dealbreaker, thankfully that time has past. Nick Hornby said maybe it doesn’t matter what you like, but what you are like, and that’s absolutely true.

Anyway, she’s quite sick lately, and yesterday we watched a movie called Best Of Me, based on a Nicholas Sparks novel. I didn’t really like it, but I like her very very much, so we watched it and cried together at the end.

This post is a little uncomfortable to write. You see, for most of my life, I have subscribed to the idea that great art comes from heartbreak. That nothing worthwhile comes from happiness or satisfaction. Blood On The Tracks, the Smiths, heartbreak, loss, painful revelation; those things are deep and heavy, authentic and honest. Losing My Religion was awesome, Shiny Happy People sucked.

In my line of work, I mostly deal with steaming heaps of relationship wreckage. I walk alongside and hold hands with broken hearts and spirits, that’s what I do and if I could compartmentalize or not invest so much of me, it wouldn’t hurt so much. But I can’t. I am a carrier, so every now and again, I fall apart out loud. (I recognize that’s not the most macho thing to say, maybe I’m not the most macho man. Whatever.) I see emotions, I feel energy every time I want into a room. You don’t have to tell me, I know. And that is who I am, and I’d have it no other way – I walk in & stay.

And I also often pretend that I am not deliriously happy, joyful, grateful and content in my home. These dumb tapes in my head that tell me those are shallow and superficial, there since junior high, squeal and hiss. But those tapes/beliefs are hopelessly defective. I talk, write, think so much about presence, not missing anything, living honest lives. That usually means the lows, because of our tendency to hide them, shoving them in the closets of our public Insta-image, lying that “everything is fine, great, couldn’t be better.” But it works both ways. To only give voice to the painful bass notes is equally disingenuous and leaves no room for the melody.

I looked at my wife through red, watery eyes and felt 2 distinct realities. A, I love this Angel as we are, and will for the rest of my life. We are full and totally recognize the blessings we have inexplicably been given. And 2, so many do not. So many live lives of sadness, emptiness, and meaninglessness. I have been in both spaces, probably more often in the second. But neither is superficial, neither is more valid or genuine than the other. Why would I not easily give voice to everything, ups, downs, celebrations, tears, Pulp Fiction AND Best of Me?

Great art comes from truth, and truth is found everywhere, if we only have eyes to see and the courage to be vulnerable in what we see and experience. Lives of presence and weight require 2 hands (to hold seemingly conflicting emotions/realities) and soft hearts that work exactly the way they’re designed. We rise and fall, dance and crumble, laugh and wail, honestly, without judgment or outdated, misguided valuations, and we do this all together.

And I suppose Shiny Happy People isn’t that bad.

The Hanggi Quote

January 4, 2023/The Bridge Faith Community/1 Comment

Kristin Hanggi wrote in a mass email I received today: How I create is a way I demonstrate self-love to myself.

This is the new year and a time that requires some examination, where and I and where do I want to go? Am I careful with you? Am I careful with me? What sort of energy am I releasing into the world? Maybe not so obviously, all of these questions are connected. If I am not careful with you, the energy I emit is a drain on us all, which will take me nowhere I’d like to go. I’d be actively impacting the world around me in a negative fashion.

Now, the only difficult question, from which I’ve historically turned my head, is if I’m careful with me. My focus points for the year address this deficiency. I never considered the connections until I read that we aren’t truly capable of caring for others without caring for ourselves. See, I used to think the crushing expectations I place on my own shoulders are are only for me. I used to think that if caring for you comes at the expense of my own well-being, that is an acceptable cost.

I’ve been wrong about that perspective. Expectations are expectations, and emptiness is always communicated. If I’m struggling to breathe, how can I help you breathe? If I’m smushed under the weight of my own burdens, how can I help to carry yours?

So I’m paying attention to the way I speak to me as an act of love. I’m watching my mouth when I talk about me as an act of love. And now, reading that Hanggi quote, I’m examining my spirit as I write this, considering the past effects on my heart anytime I build. Maybe I only think I need time away (that I call “down time”) – and maybe I’ve been wrong about that, too.

There’s no question time away from some things is valuable, we all need rest days, sometimes rest weeks, but what are those things? What if I’ve been taking the time away from the very things that give to me, that act as an infusion of life? Do I really need time down from that? If creation is an act of self-love, is down time choosing not to love?

It’s just a small sentence in a daily email that I very often quickly, mindlessly skim, but it asks so many important questions. And it’s entirely possible that the answer to the question “Do I really need time down from that?” is yes. Maybe we need time down from even the most wonderful, most energizing, things. But how will we know if we don’t ask???

Love With A Capital L

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

Tag: honesty