Love With A Capital L

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

Tag: identity

You & I — May 30, 2024

You & I

/The Bridge Faith Community/Leave a comment

The site is asking me what quality I value most in a friend. I know what I value most in myself, and I’m thinking that there is probably quite a bit of overlap in the 2 lists.

Authenticity. Without a certain degree of honesty, relationship is mostly impossible, isn’t it? If you and I are talking with masks on, creating pretend narratives from behind carefully curated images…who is actually talking? Who am I? Who are you? Does it matter, at that point? If we’re only relating from behind halloween costumes, neither of us care too much. Friends trust each other, and trust is totally impossible without honesty/authenticity. Why would you ever open up in a vulnerable way while I stay safely behind walls of disguise? Right, you wouldn’t. What’s the point? Batman & Robin aren’t real-life friends (or whatever they are), they’re fictional characters, which is what we are when we live dishonest lives.

I have many more values for myself: consistency, reliability, faithfulness, loyalty. I think it’s important that I show up and give you what I have to give. I think I should be open, forgiving, non-judgmental, safe. But maybe those things don’t matter so much in friends.

Let’s say you are always late. I’ve had plenty of good friends I can’t rely on to show up on time (sometimes not showing up at all). But when they do, they are real and wonderful. I just tell them things start 30 minutes before they do. Some are pretty judgy, some of the same ones are awfully opinionated and not too safe with conflicting viewpoints (they’re very “tolerant”). That’s ok, I call it ‘principled,’ and argue with them anyway. They’re the only ones that get mad, I don’t mind at all. But outside of the “tolerant” lie, they are terrific in a million other ways.

They just don’t value the same things I do. And a lot of what I value requires that I accept that, and them, exactly the way they are. (This is why I struggle to set boundaries, and why it takes me so so so long to set them.) Maybe my first statement wasn’t right at all. There isn’t much overlap at all, just one: authenticity.

(But that’s 100% on your side – so that’s full overlap – but only, say, 5% of mine. That’s an interesting commentary on perspective, there is surely a wider application for that to be discussed.)

Ok, I’m starting to lose focus. My answer to the prompt is: Authenticity. I value real, messy, beautiful people.

Site Prompt — April 26, 2023

Site Prompt

/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.

Patterns… — April 14, 2022

Patterns…

/The Bridge Faith Community/Leave a comment

I can’t count how many posts I’ve written on Catfish, which I suppose would have to be called my favorite tv show right now. The last 2 shows on Netflix I’ve watched are Inventing Anna and Bad Vegan. There’s something about that…a pattern…

Bad Vegan was the account of a fancy vegan restaurant in New York City. Mostly, it was the account of it’s owner Sarma, her striking rise and equally striking downfall that landed her in prison for a few minutes. It was also the account of her husband Shane (or Anthony,) who was maybe insane or maybe just a lying fraud. I guess it’s possible he was just misunderstood, was actually fighting evil forces and was totally going to make Sarma and her dog immortal once the fight was over. For the first 2 episodes, I wondered how a brilliant business-woman could be duped by such an obvious con. But during the last 2, I wondered how I was duped by such an obvious con for 2 episodes.

One of my favorite things to say to my sons is, “You can’t possibly expect me to believe this – I’m not one of your dumb little buddies.” It’s condescending and rude, I explain, to assume I am the kind of person who is so incapable of reason and intelligent thought that I would accept the excrement you’re shoveling.

But maybe I am that kind of person. Sarma assumed I am exactly that kind of person, too. She also assumed you are, and so is everyone we know. And I DID buy it for 2 episodes!!!!

Whatever, I don’t really care about Sarma, her marriage, restaurant or her immortality. What’s interesting is how the vast majority of the things I like have everything to do with identity; who we are and the bizarre ways we contort ourselves to portray characters different than the ones we truly are.

I pastor a church and the main problem we all have with churches and the people in them is what we call hypocrisy. In the Bible, the word is an acting term, so calling me a hypocrite is exactly like saying I’m an actor, playing different roles for different audiences. This isn’t a phenomenon exclusive to the church. In fact, the harshest words in the Bible are reserved for these actors, it seems it’s not just our main problem. I spend tons of time on Sunday mornings talking about authenticity, being fully present as we are – instead of holding up this exhausting facade.

I bet this is so important to me, and why I gravitate to this sort of art, because I spent an inordinate amount of my life pretending to be someone else, someone cooler, more capable, smarter, more awesome. Once I was able to begin to set some of this baggage down and walk around as simply me, it felt light, airy, and wonderful, and I desperately wanted that for everyone.

Then of course I’d pick the baggage up again, and see the worst parts of me in that million-part Anna series and Catfish and in the kids in the high school where I work, and become overwhelmingly frustrated with them. That’s probably why I can’t stand hypocrisy, isn’t it? Because I just can’t seem to stop myself from acting.

Mama’s Boy — December 3, 2020

Mama’s Boy

/The Bridge Faith Community/Leave a comment

I’ve been watching (and enjoying) I Love A Mama’s Boy on TLC. Now, this is a show about women who are in relationships with boys who are…um…let’s say, overly-bonded, with their mothers. In a text message to my very good friend, I confessed that I was “embarrassed” to watch and like this mess. It is, to use a current term, a guilty pleasure of mine.

Now, I have no idea why these women are in these relationships, why they would live with these boys’ mothers, why they would build houses on their in-laws properties, why they would share Valentine’s Day dinners, why they would stand idly by while mother and son practiced a tango, of all things, as their wedding dance, why why why. NO IDEA. I suppose it’s a deflated sense of worth combined with the bar being lowered so far that this is what passes as acceptable in a prospective mate. AND I have no idea why these boys would apply to be on a tv show that ridicules them, that shows them in such a pathetically emasculated light. (Actually I do know that one: just like in small children, even negative attention is attention. Being a punch line for our 15 minutes of fame is still 15 minutes of fame.)

I could probably go on asking questions in this vein, but the truth is, I don’t care. It’s not too many episodes and it’s sufficiently mindless, which can be fine for 42 minutes here or there.

What I do want to talk about, and what I do care about, is the phrase ‘guilty pleasure,’ and why I might say, even in jest, that I am embarrassed to watch.

Like so many things, it is a reflection of our bend towards image-making and an endless list of what we “should” or “should” not do or who we “should” or “should” not be. It’s a avalanche of should’s under which we bury ourselves. Why would I possibly be guilty over a tv show or a movie or song? Because I am so focused on being cool or whatever. For example, I am a music snob. I like songs and artists that you haven’t heard, which by some misguided logic makes those songs and artists better, which by the same misguided logic makes me better. I also like the Christina Aguilera song “Fighter” and Britney Spears’ “Toxic,” but you’d never know because I wouldn’t tell you about those.

I want my favorite movie to be Pulp Fiction because it’s cool and violent and independent, or better yet, something neither of us has heard of and is wildly uncomfortable to watch, but in reality it’s probably a Captain America movie or Point Break.

Guilty pleasure? Nope. It’s just me, and the second I can make peace with who that is the second I can unload the mountain of expectations that tear me apart. I’ve been so exhausted trying to live up to the ideal of me that is in only my head. The one that has everything together and makes all the right decisions, is wise and beautiful in equal amounts, and doesn’t watch garbage tv.

But the truth is that I am often a basket case when I’m alone over the poor decisions that are definitely not wise, and will always laugh when a mother and son decide to dance inappropriately. Is that shameful or is it simply human? Maybe human is the most beautiful thing of all.