2026-03-23T16:48:34+00:00

Weather?

March 23, 2026/The Bridge Faith Community/Leave a comment

What is my favorite kind of weather, the site wants to know. They’re not all great, right? You would be hard pressed to find a less interesting way to spend your writing/reading time. But then, this morning, one of the email lists I subscribe to sent these thoughts & questions (with the title “Do you wish life was different?”):

“Your life simply reflects what you’ve prioritized…What does your life tell you about your priorities? Do you wish it were different?”

We talk about values & the Biblical concept of weight (as in, what weighs more, observing the Sabbath or pulling your donkey out of a hole?) often. We discuss the foundations on which we build our lives. What do you believe about God, the world & yourself? And would your actions testify to those answers, or would they be a jarring contradiction?

This email doesn’t come from an espoused Christian, but it certainly asks a question that is inherently “Christian.” You have this wonderful gift of life, how will you spend it? What is important to you?

After I fell in love with Jesus, there were months where I didn’t open my Bible, where my fingers didn’t touch the spine, where it just sat on my bedside table collecting dust. But I would’ve absolutely told you that the Scriptures were very important to me. That’s just one of many hypocrisies that had to be addressed, before I could comfortably state that consistency was one of my core values. If it’s so important to me that you know what you’ll be getting from me, that I am authentically me all the time, that the principles I hold would be in the same room at a party, then I have to do quite a bit of work to honestly look at my thoughts, actions, motivations. I have to constantly examine myself in the harsh light of the mirror. It has been terribly frightening to confront the possibility that my boys and the Angel (the 3 who live in my house and know me the best) would not recognize the preacher at the Bridge. Would they hear me speak about the importance of the Bible and never have seen me read it? Would they hear me talk about honoring our spouses, while I am cutting and disrespectful to my own wife? Judgment, generosity, etc. I don’t know if you know, but we regularly read 1 Corinthians 13 on Sunday mornings, what if I am neither patient nor kind? What sort of example is that? Am I a Pharisee? I mean, yes, of course I am, but am I growing? Am I on the path, following Jesus? Is my life one marked by love?

We all have these spaces that confront – let’s call them invitations. That sounds much less aggressive, doesn’t it? Would we put family at number 1 but haven’t made it home for dinner in weeks, and haven’t spoken to my parents since last Christmas? Is eating right or exercise a “value” of ours, when we haven’t seen the gym lately and don’t remember the last time we’ve eaten a vegetable? Do we say we love our church community, while we don’t really go? Is giving an important discipline, but it’s often the first thing to get cut? Do we say we “love like Jesus,” but we really hate our enemies? It’s endless, and each example we give might hit a little too close to home. (Of course, the rub is: we would have to be willing to tell the truth, to and about ourselves. That’s where this can so easily break down.)

This emailer – Mark Manson – asks what our lives tell us about our priorities, and do we wish it was different? Do we wish we were more present? More faithful? More loving, caring, thoughtful? Do we wish our marriages were stronger, our families closer? Do we wish we were more responsible with our money, our time, our calories? Do we wish we were more mindfully enjoying the blessings in our lives?

I’ve been saying “more” and “better,” but that’s not the only thing we wish, right? Are we overwhelmed? Do we wish our calendars were less full? That we were less busy and distracted all the time?

What do all of these factors and characteristics say about our lives? Easter is such a great season to evaluate what goes into our hearts and lives. The resurrection is the best time to ask what we truly believe is possible. Where does the empty tomb fit into our priorities? If we answered yes to any of my own questions, do we trust that we can set a new course? That who we are right now might not be who we will be, that we just might not be done growing yet?

Easter is a time of intense hope… do we believe that? Does the way we live our lives affirm that theology? Probably not, but what better time could there possibly be to transform than right now???

Blue Paint

March 19, 2026/The Bridge Faith Community/Leave a comment

The site is asking what one word describes me…One word I want to describe me? Or the one that actually does? I think this is the kind of thing that is best left for others to answer. Maybe I’ll ask the Angel. Or maybe I don’t want to know.

I have a steel hot/cold cup (the brand is Bubba) and I fill and refill it with ice and water all day every day. I fill it before I go to bed, put it in the fridge and drink it first thing in the morning. It’s several years old and the blue paint on it is flaking all over the place. It’s on my hands, in the dish water, the cup holders in the car, the kitchen counter, everywhere. You will always know where I’ve been.

This morning I was talking with my brother in law about influence. With the avalanche of information/stimulation that we encounter, there’s no way it wouldn’t influence us. Even the way we access this information is an influence. Marshall McLuhan wrote a book called The Medium Is The Message, and I can’t help but notice how our language has transformed. We speak in text fragments, accurate spelling is a relic of a time long past, our metaphors and references are often technologically based, we are forever changed by the internet & social media. The algorithms and AI buddies on our devices can shape us in the same way advertising always has. (Maybe not the same way – they’re likely much more effective.) We’re influenced by the videos, books, voices we choose, as well as the lenses we use through which we see the world. Our experiences, opinions, beliefs and interpretations are a complex web.

I don’t think this is necessarily a bad thing. It just needs to be an intentional thing. The days where we could delude ourselves into the notion that we can avoid any of this are long, long past. Indifference, not choosing, is simply not an option.

We need to know where we’re picking up the blue paint that’s helping to color us. And in the same way, we should acknowledge what kind of paint chips we’re leaving on others. Maybe we could start to decide what we are influenced by, what kinds of colors are mixing into our own. Maybe that’s the difference between an ugly random mess and a beautifully varied mosaic.

The world is an increasingly terrifying place. The machines will probably make us their slaves in no time, if we even leave a world for them to usurp. Maybe we’ll destroy ourselves in our mad desire to destroy each other long before the Matrix can become reality (assuming it hasn’t already.)

But I’ve always believed in the original goodness of people – that the story begins in Genesis 1, where humans are made in the image of a wonderfully loving, creative God, and not the catastrophic fall of Genesis 3. Yes, it’s terrifying, but the road in front of us hasn’t been paved, not yet. We can reclaim our creativity and build a new tomorrow, and we can reclaim our nature of love and do it together. Whether we think we can or can’t has probably been influenced to a greater degree than we’d ever imagine by the kinds of paint we’ve gotten on and in our skin. Maybe it’s time to choose that paint.

[Upon further consideration, maybe my one word is hopeful. Very, very hopeful.]

Sarah

September 19, 2025/The Bridge Faith Community/Leave a comment

The new Sarah McLachlan album, Better Broken, came out today. A very great friend gave her review first thing this morning, as “Nothing beats Fumbling Towards Ecstasy.” That’s about as brief and whip-smart as a review of this album can be, she’s absolutely right. Nothing does beat Fumbling Towards Ecstasy.

This album is fine, some parts are awesome, but she is a victim of her own brilliance. Maybe that’s fair. Without Fumbling, this album is solid, pleasant and comfortable. But we don’t live in a “without Fumbling” world. Would you have a loving, respectful, fulfilling relationship (that ends), if it meant that new partners can’t fill those shoes? Would you have a transcendent album that changed everybody’s perception of what an album could be, that completely transformed the landscape for female artists forever, if it meant that everything after paled in comparison? (This is the Counting Crows situation, too, speaking of “everything after.”)

I know it would feel disappointing, to you, to everyone, but I think I hope you say yes. Fumbling Towards Ecstasy has ruined me for Better Broken, but we all had our worlds shaken. We all deserve a respectful, fulfilling, loving relationship, at least once, to show us what’s truly possible. I think that would destroy the nonsensical settling that is so pervasive. Because here’s the thing, my questions were kind of disingenuous. New partners can fill those shoes, everything after doesn’t always pale in comparison. These “unicorns” prove to us that unicorns exists, and give us the courage and hope to not stop listening to albums, to not sadly lower the criteria to accept anything less.

Fumbling Towards Ecstasy happened, and it happened to us.

Middle Ground

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

The site prompt is asking me what my top ten favorite movies are. I used to be a person who had lists like these at the ready, walking around hoping someone would ask. Desert Island discs, top 5 foods, books, drinks, moments, and on and on. Once, I made a Top 500 songs list, and took real time thinking if I actually liked Rebel Yell (Billy Idol) or I Will Remember You (Skid Row) more, listening many times to each. As it turns out, I like Billy Idol much more, but I Will Remember You won the song battle.

I can’t give you 10, but what I can tell you is Fight Club and Pulp Fiction are my top 2, and Point Break is the movie I watched, and loved, most often. I saw it more than 15 times in the theater! That was, of course, when movies were affordable, the one where I saw the most Point Break showings cost $1.

So lately I’m having a lot of trouble in my head. It’s not unusual that I think I’m losing my mind. Either the world around me is completely insane, or I am. But it has to be one, there isn’t an awfully wide middle ground.

For example, in a recent poll, more people trust Donald Trump than their anyone else in their lives; religious leaders, teachers, even their friends & family. What are we supposed to do with that? In this particular poll, he had a 71% rate of trust. Families were in the low-mid 60’s. I recognize that this was a poll of very specific people, but still. Again, what are we supposed to do with this madness?

I see us stay in relationships that are nothing more than evidence of a damaged self-image. Where partners treat us like so much garbage, and we fight to stay, because any relationship is better than none? We stay in jobs we hate that are eating our souls, because we’re terrified of ones that are awesome. Why? Is it me, am I the one that has lost my mind?

The school district in which I live is in ruins, and the school board is shockingly brazen in their ineffectiveness. They tell anyone who will listen what they can’t do, which includes everything, as far as I can tell. That’s not entirely true, they vote on who can take tickets at football games. There aren’t checks and balances, the administration is dismantling any semblance of trust or respect with almost every decision. Why? Doesn’t a crumbling district reflect on them? Of course, but rather drive the bus into a wall than be a passenger in one that arrives safely, right??? Leadership is in short supply everywhere, it’s not just our local schools and Washington D.C. that are lacking.

The final scene of Fight Club is one where the 2 main characters watch buildings crumble. The system is broken beyond repair, so in a final act of domestic terrorism designed to tear it all down, absolute zero, to start anew. I am no terrorist, will never destroy cities, but it rings true for us as a metaphor. Is everything too broken to continue, are we too lost to ever be redeemed?

They stand and watch, hand in hand, and it’s beautiful. It’s strangely, deeply hopeful. Today my son is meeting a basketball coach at 7:30am at a nearby court. This coach is waking up early on a summer day to pour into my boy. I’m meeting 2 friends this morning for breakfast and bagels, we’ll look at each other, listen, talk and laugh, and maybe cry a little.

I sort of knew where this post would end. I do wonder if I’m the crazy one, if our collective psyche is too shattered to repair. But you probably know I think we’re standing in the thin middle ground. The world is incomprehensible sometimes (a lot of the time), and I am a fool. But I absolutely believe.

I believe in the power of Skid Row to ease our pain for a moment, and connect us. I believe in holding hands dreaming of better tomorrows. As a matter of fact, I dream of better todays. I believe one person can make a difference, like a coach at 7:30am, for a 16 year old boy. He will see this morning that it’s not all lost.

We put this back together, not trusting in Donald Trump or waiting for a school district to act responsibly, but in loving each other. In 2 hurting people holding hands and acting. When we look around, it appears to be a garbage dump, but that’s all a mirage. Yes, it might be garbage, but it’s not a dump. It’s not the end of the story, for the refuse or for us. It’s a gallery in waiting, where we can take these discarded pieces and make art with them. It simply takes some imagination, and the courage to jump.

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.

Another Last of the Firsts

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A Christmas Life

December 27, 2022/The Bridge Faith Community/Leave a comment

I am the pastor of a small church in town. You might not know this because this space (lovewithacapitall.com) has been a separate room where I can talk about Morrissey (mostly) and other art and artists I like. At least as separate as I can be. The things we discuss here, we also discuss there – After all, I do write it, and the best, most authentic art comes from the most authentic parts of us. If I were to pretend I didn’t love Morrissey songs and Fight Club and superheroes, that would be to abandon certain important, meaningful parts of me. How can we connect on any sort of deep level while one of us is hiding or holding parts of him/her-self back and pretending to be something else,something we think the other wants us to be? Dishonesty and image making drive me insane. So, there (in the church virtual room), these cultural touchpoints relate explicitly to God and the complicated journey of faith. Here, not necessarily as explicitly, but they do relate.

Anyway, this particular faith community began in my living room, when the church to which I belonged closed its doors. That means I speak every Sunday, and each talk should probably contain one point the people who give their most valuable possession, their time, can use, just in case they don’t hear anything else. It’s shocking, but the truth is that not everyone present is hanging on each word I say. Gasp! On Saturday night, Christmas Eve, this ‘takeaway’ was that we don’t only celebrate Christmas once a year, but that we live Christmas lives.

What does that mean? What does a Christmas life look like? Maybe I should’ve given a bit more thought to that, it sounded like a pretty good phrase at the time, and maybe I did an adequate job at conveying the idea. Often times, we are having conversations in our heads & hearts, and very little has to be said to affect us in profound ways. For instance, let’s say you were feeling that you wanted to learn to play the guitar, then a character in the book you’re reading is a guitar player, then you’re listening to Howard Stern and he’s interviewing Slash, and then you come to a church service and I happen to be talking about Abraham and Campbell’s Heroes’ Journey and say, “Maybe you’re thinking of taking a new step…” And that’s all it takes. I don’t have to be eloquent or clear at all, it’s enough and your spirit and what I call God will do the rest.

I know a Christmas life doesn’t mean we spend money like wild animals buying things we don’t need and don’t really want in the first place, things we have to return or exchange. It doesn’t mean we buy landscaping and put it inside (though I guess it could mean that for you). It doesn’t mean we gain weight as if we’re preparing to hibernate for months (like I do). It doesn’t mean we make habits of superficial small talk with distant relatives (unless we actually care for them and the talk gets bigger and less superficial.)

It’s always easier to define what we are not, or who we don’t want to be, or what we don’t want to do, than it is to say Yes. But negative postures don’t change our lives. Wanting to not become my dad never got me closer to who I wanted to become, to who Chad was once the block of stone had been chipped away. What would it reveal? I wouldn’t be a groundhog or 10 million other things, but what would I be underneath it all? That’s the coolest thing about opening your eyes, what you’ll see.

So, here’s what I came up with. A Christmas life is one of imagination. It takes a very open mind that dreams to consider a story of a God coming as a baby to a 13 year old girl in a barn, and what it could all mean. It takes imagination to hope for something new, for a fresh word. A Christmas life hopes. We hope for more than we see, that I can be more, that you can be more, that it isn’t what it is, that we’re not simply what we’ve always been, that we can change our world. A Christmas life is relational. We ask, listen, think the best, hold each other, kiss, put our phones down and pay attention to the fantastic blessings in front of us. We have more friends than “friends.” Mostly a Christmas life loves. We love our people, our animals, our neighborhoods, our country, our planet. But we do not love these things at the expense of other neighborhoods, countries, or planets. We love those, too. We are awake and aware, looking for people to love and ways to love them that they understand and receive. A Christmas life does not miss sacred moments, and a Christmas life realizes that they are all sacred moments if we are intentionally present.

I wonder if all of that came across in my message. Who knows? I wonder if all of that comes across in my life. I think, to that thought, what a Christmas life would say is, “if it didn’t yesterday, it sure will today.”

(One more thing. You know, I know almost nothing about promotion or reaching more eyes for this blog. And what I do know, I shy away from, for several reasons. But it’s going to be a new year. Promotion doesn’t have to be to feed my ego and/or brag about numbers, it could totally be about connection and circles that overlap.So, I would love to know you’re there, so maybe we could dream together and talk about what A Christmas Life means to you, and maybe we could do what we can to usher in a new world. Just a thought.)

Into Darkness

December 11, 2022December 12, 2022/The Bridge Faith Community/Leave a comment

I have the COVID. It’s nothing serious, just a cold, really. Though I’m feeling better, my chest remains tight and probably will for the next few days & weeks. I’m violating my own HIPAA rights to tell you this because the week on the couch has allowed me to watch too much tv, and you know, tv for me usually means documentaries, and the way I feel about these docs ends up in words here.

I watched some of Sons of Sam: A Descent Into Darkness, on Netflix, about a serial killer (or serial killers) in New York in the ‘70’s and beyond. David Berkowitz is widely regarded as the only “Son of Sam,” but there’s evidence to suggest that there are many more, centered around a satanic cult and a church called The Process. It’s super creepy and disturbing and I do not recommend it at all.

I said it was about serial killings, but it’s not entirely. It’s more about a guy named Maury Terry, a journalist who got wrapped up and dragged underwater by this case and obsessively chasing unexplored leads to the truth. Did he find that truth? Who knows? I guess he’s probably right, (that it was more than 1 person), but at what cost? You could probably count his life as another one taken by the Son(s) of Sam.

I also said I watched “some” of it. I used to be someone who, once I started something (book, album, movie, etc) would have to finish it. I no longer feel that way. When the doc turned down the dark paths of the occult, animal sacrifice, and snuff films, I skipped episodes 2 & 3, and watched the last.

If you eat nothing but Oreos, you will feel heavy, lethargic, and sick. In much the same way, the media we listen to and watch will affect our soul and spirit. This is good and bad. If we listen to positive messages, we begin to feel hopeful and optimistic. If we watch documentaries on the Son of Sam, we start to feel like there are bugs crawling under our skin and we can see the world outside through darkened lenses. This guy, Maury Terry, devoted his entire life to this quest, and I couldn’t take 4 hours before I needed to cleanse my mind.

Of course, we say it has no effect, but that’s like saying marketing and advertising have no effect. Those ridiculous beliefs come from a place of dangerous arrogance and lead to the McDonald’s drive-through eating McRib sandwiches without ever wondering why. The why is because what goes in matters. If pornography is something I enjoy, isn’t it likely the way I see sex and women will reflect those images? How about if I make a point to follow the “upworthy” Instagram page, a sort of a news site for beautiful things, might that change how I see the people around me?

What do we listen to? Watch? What do we eat? All of these things matter. Will we descend into darkness or keep our heads up in the clouds? This decision isn’t a magical way to avoid pain or sadness or depression or anything. Those things happen, they’re an integral part of life, we can’t wish them away. But we do get to choose how to interpret them. We get to pick the lenses through which we see the world.

We can skip 2 episodes or we can read the article and skip it all. We can turn it off and go outside. What feeds us? What inspires us? Maybe we could do more of those things. Maybe this kind of documentary does inspire some of us. The point is that we are intentional about it, that we are awake to the energy swirling around, and inside, of us and that we begin to pay attention to just how much of a say we actually get. And maybe, just for today, we spend a little less time descending and a few minutes more looking up?

Saying Yes

January 8, 2022/The Bridge Faith Community/Leave a comment

For the first 40some-ish years of my life, I had a pattern, It was an unhealthy pattern, but it was a pattern nonetheless. So, life would get big & heavy and as it would threaten to crush me under it’s vicious paws, I would fully, completely check out. If you would happen to call me (and later, text me), I wouldn’t call you back. I wouldn’t respond at all. If we had plans, I would break them. I’d listen to tons and tons of Morrissey songs. Life was lived squarely from a NO posture, deep in the dark. The suicidal thoughts (that seems weird to write so nonchalantly, but since I wrote about it a little in my book, it is a little easier, and since I’m not that guy anymore, it’s a lot easier. I’m not him, but I do love him, which is much more than I could ever say then) came with the darkness. That darkness was so total and my desperation so loud, I truly believed it might never be light again and if it wouldn’t be light, then… you get the point.

Anyway. Then my faith in the darkness was replaced with faith in Jesus, and with it, the suggestions of suicide were replaced with (what was at first a flimsy) hope. That’s more awesome than I can tell you, but my pattern continued.

Now, 2 things. There is a good book called Yes Man by Danny Wallace, and a less good movie adaptation with Jim Carrey. The premise is that a guy just says yes to every single thing that comes in his direction. That’s first. Then surprisingly, George Costanza is second. In an perfect episode of Seinfeld, George discovers that, “It became very clear to me sitting out there today, that every decision I’ve ever made, in my entire life, has been wrong. My life is the opposite of everything I want it to be. Every instinct I have, in every of life, be it something to wear, something to eat… It’s all been wrong.” Later, Jerry says, “If every instinct you have is wrong, then the opposite would have to be right.” So he does the opposite and it’s hilarious, but it got me thinking. This pattern has not served me well. It is not who I want to be and it’s not what the who I want to be would do.

Here, on the post I wrote for New Years, I stated that it was a good year. What made it a good year? So many bad things happened, wheels fell off, bones/relationships/lives were broken, hope and people were lost. Last week, we set a new record for numbers of COVID cases. By most objective measures, it was not a good year. What made it good in my perspective?

If every instinct I have ever had about checking out, about isolating myself, about disappearing, has been wrong, then the opposite would have to be right. (Incidentally, the instinct I had about listening to tins and tons of Morrissey happens to be right, in all situations, so that stayed.) So I hesitantly, slowly started reaching out. If when young children get scared, they climb into their parents bed, maybe I should begin to do the same, I reasoned, metaphorically speaking.

I called you, said I was afraid or overwhelmed or angry or frustrated or confused or lost in darkness. I kept the meetings I had scheduled. (I now schedule meetings, phone calls, texts with friends & family. Of course, it feels sort of impersonal, but it’s actually the polar opposite. I decide what is the most important and carve it into my daily/weekly/monthly planner. You write the most important checks first. If we just wait until we think of it or have the time, it’ll be months and months and that conversation will start with “I’m sorry it’s been so long…”) I said yes. I showed up all the time, no matter if I felt like it. You were more important than my feelings right now. I was more important than my feelings right now.

And guess what? In a wonderful twist of fate, my relationships grew in quantity AND quality. I knew and was known, loved and was loved. I opened all parts of me to you (whoever you are) and you were really lovely, trustworthy, and careful.

I teach the Bible and say, “we were never meant to do this alone,” referencing the book of Genesis, always feeling like a humongous hypocrite, mostly because I was a humongous hypocrite. But as my life began to shift into alignment, the doctrine I believed in my head made the wide treacherous leap to my heart, I could see cracks in the oppressive darkness. Cracks where beautifully blinding light could enter.

Darkness still comes (I have a condition) but it’s never total because you’re there. Who would’ve guessed? Well, probably a lot of people could have guessed. I build bridges, but now I do something else. The walls of the cells we create that mark the boundaries of our lives that keep us sick need to come down, we each need to smash our own to pieces, so now I carry a big, heavy sledgehammer to lend to let the light, and life, in. It hurts, it’s terrifying, and it’s sooo worth it.

Spider-Man

December 22, 2021/The Bridge Faith Community/1 Comment

No Way Home, the 3rd in the Marvel/Sony Spider-Man trilogy, was released last week, broke records, and thrilled me more than I can tell you. I’m going to write about it a little and try not to give any spoilers.

I had a tough time getting tickets for our family and the theater was jammed. The atmosphere was electric, the buzz in the air reminded us all of what it felt like to be sharing experiences. Netflix is awesome but it really can’t do that. Streaming Hawkeye on Disney+ in the living room simply isn’t the same as a theater full of human beings. Nobody wears superhero suits in my house anymore, but they did at the movies.

I don’t know why they wear masks and dress up like characters, seems odd to me. But here’s the thing about that, it doesn’t matter if I understand. I am me and that guy (or girl) is that guy (or girl) and we are different. What I think we’ve forgotten over the last 2 years of quarantine and isolation is that different is a very good thing. We might disagree on cosplay but we all love Spider-Man.

(As you know, I am a spiritual person and that’s one of the coolest parts about the Church and the local church. We can be different, disagree on a great many issues, but we all love Jesus.)

So there are weirdos in costumes and I am totally normal. (That’s a joke. Ha.) We’re all different, but there was a moment, maybe several moments, where none of that mattered at all. We completely lost our collective minds and gasped or cheered or yelled or cried tears of joy or anything. Together.

I get pretty emotional at Christmas. I mean, more than usual. When I saw Into The Spider-Verse, I remember thinking, “this changes everything.” In that animated film, we were forced to confront our ideas of what is possible in a movie. In the context of Christmas, COVID variants, division, anger, riots, and school shootings, this Spider-Man also can change everything. No Way Home gives us the opportunity to confront our ideas of what is possible in our communities, this world, in society, in us.

I don’t know if we’ll take that opportunity, and answer that invitation. I hope we do. I hope we remember who we are and who we can be. I hope we can discover that our differences are actually wonderful and can bring us closer through curiosity, interest & openness.

If I’m totally honest, I do know. Of course we’ll open that door. I’m relentlessly hopeful and it has served me very well. Yes, I get my heart broken and am disappointed from time to time (ok, lots of times) but my trust, belief, faith and love gets rewarded even more spectacularly, much more often. I am one of those who goes in to Spider-Man expecting it to be great…and sometimes, like this one, it’s better than that.

Love With A Capital L

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

Tag: hope