2025-09-19T14:36:30+00:00

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.

Zealots

November 5, 2021/The Bridge Faith Community/Leave a comment

My friend was wondering what zeal is and if it’s actually a positive or negative characteristic. I thought it was positive, but…

Yesterday, I was dying. (I’m saying that in the way you say that when you’re sick and miserable, not actually dying. I’m perfectly healthy today. Anyway.) I had gotten vaccinated the day before. Now. I usually keep things like this pretty close to the vest, only disclosing to my closest friends. The vision for my life is to build bridges and make relationships and that requires me to refrain from taking many firm “political” stands, which this has unfortunately become. I do from time to time, but I do not do it lightly. This is not a “political” statement for me, in fact, it fits into that life vision category. Being unvaccinated (I had actually gotten COVID earlier in the pandemic, so it wasn’t exactly a safety issue as much as a designation issue) was keeping me from certain people/relationships/spaces and, like I said, I can’t have that.

But we’re close friends, right? So I had a rough reaction to the shots, and yesterday I was sore and hurting from head to toe and while I laid on my couch trying not to move any part of me, I watched tv. A documentary I watched was called City Of Joel, and it was about a religious/political conflict in New York between a growing group of Orthodox Hasidic Jews and the rest of the town. The Jewish people were zealous about their religion and their families and the rest were zealous about their families and their community. Both were operating, on some level at least, like so many, from fear. Fear of persecution, fear of difference, fear of losing. And I thought of how many times the zealous have crossed very damaging lines into violence.

My son is studying the Salem witch trials in school – just wait until he gets to the crusades. We are zealous about our politicians, vaccination status, mask stances, positions on abortion & homosexuality, sports teams, religion, anything. Our deeply held beliefs create wildly different responses. Sometimes that zeal causes us to take a meal to our neighbor, sometimes it causes us to riot or pull triggers on our weapons of evangelism.

My friend put it this way – “How zealous must we be…Do we cut off ears? Or love like Jesus?” What a great question. He was referring to the moment where Peter pulled a sword and cut off a Roman soldier’s ear in defense of Jesus, who rebuked him and put it right back on his head. Obviously, we would say zeal in loving the way Jesus did is the right answer, but how quickly does that get misguided? Peter thought he was not only loving like Jesus, he was loving the real, flesh and blood Jesus. He was wrong.

I know physical violence isn’t the answer ever, and that’s easy to tell, but there are many other different kinds of violence. We manipulate each other through judgment, though withholding, through condescension, through gift-giving, through affection and on and on. That’s violence, too.

I wonder how many of the worst atrocities in human history were planted (at least originally, in the seed stage) by what we could consider positive motivations. Someone I know is so angry that I’ve been vaccinated that I have been effectively excised from his/her life. This anger started (hopefully) from a deep concern for my well being and became emotional violence.

I think so much of what we are feeling now in the culture is very similar. I desperately want you to vote my way, believe what I believe, listen to/read what I listen to/read because I think it’s the best thing for you. I think it will bring you enlightenment or happiness, because I think that’s what it has brought me. I know that is also a little condescending, but it stems from the simple fact that we want the best for those we care about. (Now, sometimes that’s not from where it stems – sometimes it’s to be right or powerful or to win. I’m not talking about that, that’s just insecurity and inadequacy.) I get off the path when I take offense to the fact that you don’t do/want what I offer and respond out of that offense.

So my friend asked this question. 1. I think we’re supposed to be completely overcome by love (for God and each other) that it has to come out. And 2. It sure takes a lot of careful wisdom to figure out how it comes out. This is the tricky part, isn’t it? I’m not certain about too much but I am positive it doesn’t happen with our hands in fists, grasping tightly to our scared, arrogant, fragile egos. It only happens with my hand holding yours, walking each other home.

Hotels

October 22, 2021October 25, 2021/The Bridge Faith Community/2 Comments

This morning I woke with a physical exhaustion that has thankfully become quite rare. So when I came home from an unenthusiastic workout, I opened Netflix and crawled under a blanket.

In one of my searches, I discovered 2 documentaries that interested me and were listed to be streaming on Netflix, but were not! I scrolled and scrolled, past so many until I landed on The Vanishing At The Cecil Hotel. A young woman named Elisa Lam left Vancouver in a familiar quest for answers to the question we all ask at some point; Who am I? This quest took her to California, first San Diego through Los Angeles ending in San Francisco. She would get no further than LA, no further than the Cecil Hotel.

It was an eerie story of conspiracy and perhaps the supernatural as she simply disappeared. There was a surveillance video of her in an elevator and then no more. It was also a story of homelessness, hopelessness, mental illness, depression, bipolar disorder, the police, a hotel’s history of evil/tragedy and a musician in Mexico.

The series was 4 episodes and in the 4th, we learned what actually happened. I’ll ruin the suspense here, this is the 4th paragraph and there wasn’t a conspiracy or governmental coverup, there was a lovely young woman who had serious mental issues that caused her, ostensibly, to climb into a water tank on the roof of a hotel and drown.

I intended to make this a post about easy characterizations and a need to understand that lead us down all sorts of paths we don’t want to go, and which have been adding to our disconnect and division. Maybe I will, but it’s so much more in my head now, I just can’t let this one go.

Elisa Lam was a very prolific blogger, posting every thought and idea on Tumblr. I imagine anyone who read her work felt as if they knew her, that’s probably why the story was so captivating for so many. She was our sister, daughter, friend, co-worker, wide open about every thing in her life. We wanted the best for her, wanted her to find meaning and love. If you’re reading this, do you feel like you know who I am? Do you think we’d be friends? I hope so. In all likelihood, we would. It’s sure a new, interesting world, where we can become close to people we’ve never met, and in Elisa Lam’s case, never even had a conversation.

I like that. I think it’s one of the most beautiful side effects of social media. We are closer than ever before, nothing separates us (except physical space, I suppose.) And we are farther apart than ever before, falling prey to the delusion that online relationships can take the place of relationships IRL. She traveled to California and slowly fell apart in public and no one asked the smallest question, if she was ok. Maybe she would’ve lied, pretended like we do, that yes, she was fine. But maybe she would’ve told the truth, that no, she wasn’t.

I wonder how many times I pass by a person in distress, too busy or distracted or too minding my own business to look or listen. I wonder if a human connection – even a tiny, superficial one – would’ve saved Elisa Lam’s life.

You already know I think we’re here to walk together. We’re made for just this sort of human connection, and we’ve wandered so far off that path that when we are asked, it’s jarring and we feel a sense of intrusion. When did that happen? And I wonder if we felt it slipping away.

In this film, one of the main characters was Los Angeles and a part of LA called Skid Row. Apparently, the idea was to take the homeless and other “undesirables” and imprison them in a square of the city where they could be ignored and forgotten. Human beings were “undesirable” and systematically, purposely ignored and forgotten? It seems like we all have to ask the question that drove Elisa Lam to California in the first place: Who are we????

Her death obviously wasn’t the Cecil Hotel’s fault, but it sure feels like a metaphor. The Cecil was crafted with great care and beauty and over time, seems to have forgotten it’s original creation. Great care and beauty were poured into this structure so that it could take creat care of others. But without a clear vision or purpose, it fell into disrepair and became just another flop house where the people who interacted with it were seen and treated as disposable, which in turn made this once grand hotel disposable, rotting from the inside.

It was a super sad documentary, but as Black Widow says to Bruce Banner in the 1st Avengers movie, “No, we need a little worse.” Not paying attention, whistling through graveyards and hiding behind masks of the images we desperately try to keep, has gotten us here. Maybe we need a little worse, too, a few more cameras shining the light of truth on our increasing dysfunction, to force a course correction. And if we do that, if we start to care or listen or love, maybe Elisa Lam’s death would’ve been for something. Now, it’s just a senseless casualty of modern life.

But it doesn’t have to be. We get to choose what it is, and we get to choose here, now, today.

Love With A Capital L

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

Tag: hope