2025-06-19T19:37:04+00:00

Every New Beginning Comes From Some Other Beginning’s End

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

I’ve coached my last game, spent my last day in the high school weight room. My youngest son has graduated, and will be leaving for college in August. My oldest son has a great job. Better yet, they are 2 of the best human beings I’ve ever met. The Angel is The Angel (and yes, it’s still very obvious I’ve married well out of my league, but that’s her problem, not mine – I say that a lot, and I really, really like to say it). The church is on solid footing, or at least as solid of footing as a ministry can be. God can call any of us in a different direction at any time. It’s best not to be too comfortable with these sorts of things. I could lose some weight, but probably many of us could/would say that. Maybe I will. Maybe not.

But the question that keeps rearing it’s bright-eyed, exciting, excited head is one I love: Now what?

I referred, in my last post, to a hope for the time & space on vacation to bring some clarity, some light in a dark hallway for the next steps. It didn’t, exactly, which is both disappointing and awesome.

So, here’s what I’m thinking…

I am a rescued, redeemed child of God, husband, dad, brother, friend, pastor, possibly exceptional dancer, lover of everything, including this life I have been given, you and pop songs. My ministry is to love, and to tell everybody how much they are loved, what the Gospel is, and why that matters so much. That is who I am.

Now, what will I do, in service of that ministry/life?

I am always working on the sermons for Sunday mornings, and will continue my commitment to this call to pastor our beautiful community – an increased imagination will probably lead to more Saturday evening events, and different risks, at the Bridge. There will be a focus on a marriage curriculum. I do some marriage counseling (pre- and post- marital) and will make myself available for more and more of that, in pointed, individual & group, class-ish contexts. There is a new book in the works, which will be called, We Have a Weight Problem, which is not actually about body weight. (Well, it’s a little bit about body weight. It’s more about the value we give to things in our lives and how we’d go about changing those lives.) It’s a good title, right?

I post in 2 places every week (the Bridge Faith Community, and Love With A Capital L), and may increase that frequency. I should probably do some interesting things to get those posts in front of more eyes.

[I often treat my work as if it is a secret. I guess it’s residual ash from from setting fire to my imposter syndrome. As if I think you might not want to see or read it, and if you did, you might not like it. That’s silly. Of course it’s true!! You might not like it, but that’s ok. I don’t like all Morrissey songs, and I’m not the greatest singer of all time. I’m not for everyone, you might actually hate my work, but you might not, too. In fact, it might be cool, it might give you a new perspective, you might think it’s awesome. I’m going to stop treating these things as if they’re a fancy club, where you have to know the password to get in. I’m going to invite you to the Bridge.]

There’s a new series that will show up somewhere called “What I’ve Learned,” I just don’t know where. Maybe here. I might begin a podcast-type thing, like the old Facebook minis (10 minute shorts), but with other people and their ideas and viewpoints. I’ll follow up on the Bull Elephants (if you know what that means, you know, if not, I’ll explain it another time). I’ll make a new Instagram Bridge page, where I’ll invite you to the Bridge, and keep you posted on any-/everything else. I’ll be at our mid-week prayer group, and increase the opportunities for connection with the people I know, and the people I meet. These connections will be to counsel or coach, to provide space to ask questions and discover the answers, to study the Bible, to discern spiritual gifts, or to build & strengthen the bonds of friendship.

I don’t think the Church is a place people come to, I think the Church is a group of people that go from a certain geographical, local home. Our ministries are in places you are, at town squares, malls, grocery stores and fields. We cannot just walk around trying to build attendance in our local churches, as altars to ourselves. Instead, we’re called to GO. Much of the next steps, as far as I can see today, are loosely tied to where I/we already are (but maybe that’s bound to be the case) .

I am not discouraged at this. (I once would have been, and would have thrown this all away immediately.) What this means now is that I show up and am faithful with what is here in my ever-growing circles. Maybe there will be time for all of this, maybe just for one or 2. All I can be is fully present in where I am, what I am doing. But I am also paying attention to all the burning bushes, looking for the ones that aren’t consumed, because it’s often there that God gives our specific GO.

So, what now? Well, I’ll love who & what is in my path – Jesus, you, me, everybody, this lovely creation – in the ways I can, and if (and when) my path changes, or expands, I’ll love there, too. And i’ll be really, really grateful for all of it.

expectations

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

We have a summer family vacation every year. I’m always thrilled with it, as it is a time to (mostly) disconnect from devices and the strength taskmaster of the planet Busy, and connect with each other. Last year, it was also a time of pretty significant transformation for me – as I was in the ocean, a big beautiful Truth swam right up to me and punched me in the face. It’s not much of an overreach to say it changed me forever. I expected it again this year.

We usually stay in a hotel, but this year I chose to book with an Airbnb. Instead of 2 beds in 1 room, we would have different rooms, a kitchen and a living room. There would be privacy, time and space. I know there are many kinds of Airbnb’s, from mansions to single rooms in apartments. I am also sure that the one I chose was properly described. I just had a different picture in my head that I was expecting.

The Angel had wrapped up the school year 2 days before we left. Often, we go a few weeks after the end, after she has a solid start on her summer school responsibilities. This year, we left immediately, to allow her to breathe and decompress on the sand, before those responsibilities began. I expected her to easily transition from the extra-stressful end-of-year to the peaceful vacation state of rest.

Our summer vacation was outstanding, but…

Counting Crows released August & Everything After on September 14, 1993, and it remains a perfect album. When their next album, Recovering The Satellites, came out, we all expected another A+ album, and it was fine. But it was not our expectations and paled in comparison to the album in our heads.

The Goo Goo Dolls have never released an A+ album, they’re all pretty much in the B+ to C range. Some songs (like “We Are The Normal”) are really great, and some are absolutely unlistenable. This is what we expect from the Goo Goo Dolls, and they rarely disappoint. We don’t expect anything different, anything more. If Counting Crows would release a Goo Goo Dolls album, with great songs sitting neatly next to trash, it would be widely considered THE WORST ALBUM OF ALL TIME. But in our minds, it’s just a solid Goo Goo Dolls album.

Our opinion has very little to do with the actual album, it’s our interpretation of it, seen through the paradigm of our expectations.

Nothing life changing happened, the Airbnb was a 2 room ‘motel,’ with virtually no privacy or quiet space. The Angel needs the days to decompress to regain some semblance of control before we go. All of my expectations were wrong. I expected myself to be slow, easy, and fully present. I was mistaken about that, too. Expectations make presence nearly impossible, because we’re focused on how it is supposed to be.

In hindsight, our vacation was wonderful. I just wish I had taken some more time to enjoy it, free of the weight of should’s & supposed to’s. As a matter of fact, I want to take that last sentence into my life, to smash all expectations I have for things and people and myself, and just enjoy them as the beautiful gifts they/we are. I’m finding that gratitude and expectation are probably mutually exclusive.

But, now that I think about it, maybe that is the Truth of this trip. Maybe it was more transformative than I guessed. Maybe the laughter of the board games, the softness of the Angel’s tanned skin and lovely smile, and the time just eating, walking, swimming, and putting on suntan lotion, together, was the best gift of all. I wonder if this mindful look back is exactly what I needed to see it for what it was…

Maybe it was actually better than I expected.

Graduation Is Not Like Andor

June 2, 2025June 2, 2025/The Bridge Faith Community/Leave a comment

My youngest son’s high school graduation happened last Friday, and as it turned out, after much reflection, it was not like Andor at all.

This is what I wrote in last week’s post: The Angel & I have 2 sons, and the youngest one graduates from high school Friday. I’ll write about that next week, when it has passed and I have some sort of handle on my overflowing emotions. I also can’t seem to shake the notion that the 2nd season of Andor will help me with that handle. Who knows?

Andor was excellent, as good as anyone had any right to expect, as good as Star Wars can be, as good as any work of science fiction has ever been. The characters are awesome, well-written and complex, the story is layered, full of suspense, twists and turns. Maybe that’s like graduation. The students are complex and awesome. The story of their childhood & adolescence has been layered, full of suspense, ups, downs, surprises, heartbreak, elation, disappointment.

What I maybe didn’t like about Andor is pretty common in most modern storytelling. There aren’t exactly good guys & bad guys, just shades of gray. Sauron was baaaaad. Frodo, Aragorn, Gandalf were good. Superman was good, Lex Luther was bad. Tony Stark is good, most of the time, kind of, but flawed and quite capable of bad.

There’s a scene in Andor, where Cassian Andor is rescuing Mon Mothma from the senate floor, and he shoots & kills several people. He does the same in Rogue One – to a person on the same side of the rebellion!!!

So, maybe I don’t like that, but I recognize that it is a far more accurate picture of war and human beings. No one is all good, all the time, no one is all bad, all the time. The white hats aren’t as pure as we’d like to believe, just as the villains aren’t as irredeemable as lazy intellectual convenience might suggest. The only real difference between sides in war is where you stand. These new creators aren’t as concerned with my desire (sometimes) for easy delineation. They write for realism, which sounds ridiculous to say in a discussion of a space opera. And sometimes I like that, too.

I’m just like everyone else, complex and often inconsistent. Maybe this stood out because, as far as I can tell, the show was primarily about this blurriness between the heroes and villains. Luther Rael was a terrific character, but can not be considered a positive, ethical role model, under any definition, yet was the slimy uncle of the beginnings of the rebellion. It wasn’t just a part of the story, it was the story.

The graduates, including my son, are becoming adults, and I have been witness to the great beauty and the sickening lows of humanity. In that way, they’re just like Andor. From where I stand, my boy is the hero, but I’m not so naive to think that he hasn’t been callous and cutting along the way. Maybe he’s said things he’s not proud of, done things he’d change if given the opportunity.

But what’s not like Andor is that this duality is NOT the story. The story is one of transcending that moral confusion to bring real positive change in the world around them. It is a detail that adds to the narrative but is not the narrative. The characters in Andor accept the fact that their methods are the same as their enemy’s methods, with no discernible desire for anything else. They do what they have to do, the ends justify the means.

And maybe they do. Maybe the Death Star has to be destroyed, and however we do it, whatever compromise we make, is worth it.

I happen to have been lucky enough to know these kids who walked across the stage on Friday, and I still see/feel the wide-eyed, wild-eyed hope of youth. They have not had their imaginations beaten out of them by life, just yet. They seem to know the Death Star needs to be destroyed, but have not acquiesced to the notion that we have to become our enemy to defeat it. They’re imperfect, and they are aware of the imperfection, but they’re beautiful in those cracks and flaws.

I believe them, I admire their souls, I want them to win. I think my son is Luke Skywalker – but not the Luke Skywalker caricature of the original trilogy that all fanboys defend, by any means necessary. He’s more like the Luke Skywalker of The Last Jedi. My boy is authentic and funny, wonderful and messy. He can fail, but will ultimately show up, stand up, and fight for you & me until he has nothing left. He’s capable of everything, he’s all that a Jedi Knight should be. Of course, he’s not perfect, but he’s certainly one of the good guys, and in his (and his classmates) hands, the universe will be alright in the end.

New Ways

May 5, 2025May 5, 2025/The Bridge Faith Community/Leave a comment

Before we dive in, I wrote a post called Characters a few weeks ago, and received this super-sweet comment from a reader named pealsabdallah: “beautiful! AI-Powered Stethoscope Detects Heart Disease Early 2025 alluring.” Thank you, pealsabdallah, I think I’ll check out this AI-powered stethoscope that is so alluring, for sure.

I’ve heard that many accounts buy “followers” to boost their numbers, thus making them appear more attractive to advertisers. Maybe I’ll do that, too, if all of these pseudo-accounts are as kind as pealsabdallah.

I knew almost nothing about Twitter before last weekend, when I watched a documentary (on Max) called “Breaking The Bird.” It was very good, like the best soap operas. Founders were fired through back room shenanigans, only to be fired themselves through back room shenenigans, oodles of money was made & lost, everybody received death threats, and it all finally ended (as many things do) with Elon Musk.

I have a Twitter account, but never made one tweet. I was only a tourist. I’m mostly a tourist on Instagram, too. Now, though, I do wish I had engaged. It seemed to be a very interesting experiment, vital and alive. Maybe it failed. Whether it failed is hard to define. As Vision said to Ultron, (referring to humanity itself) “a thing isn’t beautiful because it lasts.”

Now Twitter is X and, sadly, nobody cares anymore. I missed the window.

One of the creators, Jack Dorsey, said, “I wanted to show the world a new way to see itself.” That quote is the primary reason I wish I had participated in Twitter. (I think that’s what we’re all doing, every day, with any work of art. I think it’s what the Bible does. It’s definitely what Jesus did.) It speaks to an extraordinary naïveté that I find incredibly refreshing and commendable, worthy of it’s inclusion in the history books.

This naïveté spurred these 3 to build a space where people could connect and discover themselves and their environment, without a trace of awareness that we can’t be trusted at all. If there is a thing, we will ruin it. Everybody knows that. Except for these 3, apparently. How could they have guessed that politicians would use their platform to espouse the most extremely nasty, venomous lies? Easy. A better question is, how could they not???

Is it reasonable to think killers would post videos of themselves killing? Of course. Or to believe people full of hate would direct that hate to ooze all over this platform? Obviously.

Now. I do have a new question, one that’s far more interesting to me. (Though, admittedly, that’s not that big of a deal. People being awful and lying their faces off is one of the least interesting things going.)

But first, do you remember Jeff Goldblum’s character in Jurassic Park, who said, “Yeah, yeah, but your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could that they didn’t stop to think if they should.”

Do they have to think about if they should, based on our propensity for evil? Does everything have to be considered through the filter of the lowest common denominator? If I invent a hammer to build, is it my responsibility to realize that we’d hit each other with it? Was it up to the Twitter founders to plan for the worst of our behavior? Isn’t it enough to make something beautiful, out of pure motives? Maybe not, but then that would mean nothing new would ever happen. No one would paint or sing or write. We ruin everything…does that mean we shouldn’t have anything??

And, with that kind of pessimism (realism?), where is the hope for us? Who will call us up? Into what? Can we evolve into better versions of ourselves?

And then I think of Oppenheimer’s bomb. Maybe it is true, maybe we shouldn’t have anything.

Political Disease

March 24, 2025/The Bridge Faith Community/Leave a comment

I fully recognize that part of this post will, most likely, be met with angry indignation. As a population, almost 99% of us voted to affirm the American 2 party political machine. We voted that we do not, in fact, deserve better. I disagree with this affirmation, but that makes complete sense.

My generation has not seen one day when our government has been a source of integrity, positive change, comfort, or hope. (The possible exception is Jimmy Carter, who, by all accounts, was a good man, if not a terrific President, but what happened in Washington D.C. before we were in grade school doesn’t really count as an influence.) Instead, it has been an abysmal embarrassment in an otherwise great country. (We can no longer conflate the government with the country – the country is the people that make it up, and not the entity that sits in the “high” places, thinking themselves gods.) We have never known a moment when it has been the answer, it has always been the problem.

That’s what has made the past year so difficult to take. In my line of work, I have seen (and cried with) beautiful humans who have had relationships crumble and fall, who have left groups and organizations, based solely on who may or may not have received our vote. What this means is that we have exchanged those folks who bring us soup when we are sick, know our kids names and where they’re going to school, who pray for us, help us move, share our meals and homes, who laugh & cry with us, for a group of people who not only don’t know us, but don’t like us, and would kick us instead of step over us if we were in their way.

I heard someone say, “the ocean doesn’t care if you drown or not, but God wants you to swim.” If this is true, why would anyone turn from God in favor of the ocean? Why would we leave the ones we sit with at youth sports games, or who live next door, in favor of the ocean? That analogy breaks down quickly when we realize the political system is not the ocean. The ocean is indifferent. The ocean will be the ocean with or without us. The government is not indifferent, faking smiles while using us to sustain their power, and if we happen to not agree, will do anything/everything to squish us. Of course, a poorly kept secret is that it will squish supporters, as well.

This is an abusive relationship that we refuse to leave. “But he looooves meee.” No, he doesn’t. If actions are a true reflection, an overflow of the heart, he quite clearly hates us. And 99% of us simply won’t leave.

If you believe in a spiritual enemy, like the devil, you know that one of his most important tactics is division. There is a God of unity, and an enemy of division. What does it say about someone/something that uses that same method of attack? Does it say anything good?

Why do we continue to fight so bitterly to support this hell-ish downward spiral of violent abuse? And, again, why would we throw away those who care for us to defend the aggressively destructive elephant and/or donkey?

Now. If the politicians are not the solution, if the government is not the answer, then what is? I think about this a lot, and I am more and more convinced that there are 2 answers.

In a time-less, eternal sense, Jesus is. The God of the Bible gives freely & abundantly, (no matter what we may have heard elsewhere.) He cares for us, rescues us, wants us all to swim.

And in a temporal, earthly sense, The Church is. This one is a bit more complex, due to all of the damage we have caused throughout the years. But It’s origin is as a community of people who follow a God Who loves without cause or reason, who brings us all inside, accepts, forgives, encourages, gets drinks for the thirsty, food for the hungry. These people pray for, care for, serve, and will teach us to swim, and until then, will put us on their backs and swim for us.

Yes, obviously, The Church has not been all it could, or was supposed to, be, but if you’ve been inside for any length of time, a second or a lifetime, I guarantee you’ve seen at least one example of selfless beauty that gave you hope for a better world. When have any of us seen an instant of selflessness in the political realm?

As my optimism for reclamation of our government is dashed on the rocks of reality over and over, my resolve for The Church gains strength. My vision for politics is hopelessly naive, broken into tiny shards of unrecognizable debris, and is only shared by 1% of citizens, so I’m finally willing to let it die. This is what we get, politically, this disease.

However, as human beings, created by a loving God in His own image, in/by/for love, our future is assured…and it is wonderful. There are several passages that “set a choice” before us. Choose life or death. Choose this day who we will serve. And those several passages urge us, in the strongest possible language, to choose life, to swim.

I don’t know why or when we decided to choose anything else, but I do know (and have 1 zillion reasons) why it’s time to let that go and, instead, choose life, choose The Church, and, especially, choose Jesus.

Hunchbacks

March 18, 2025/The Bridge Faith Community/Leave a comment

All 4 of us (the Angel, both boys, and myself) spent Sunday afternoon in a local high school auditorium watching their spring musical, The Hunchback of Norte Dame. I’ve seen them perform Mary Poppins and Anastasia the 2 previous years, and you would think I’d start to expect a certain level of excellence. Yet, every year, I am left awed. We go to see a student actor who we just love to pieces, and I am always surprised by his talent, too.

I was unfamiliar with The Hunchback of Norte Dame (as I was with Mary Poppins & Anastasia). If it was a book, I didn’t read it, I never saw the Disney cartoon, so I walked in blissfully blank. It’s pretty dark, to tell you the truth. There is religion, sex, assault, death, gypsies, and, obviously, a hunchback. (I won’t spoil anything about it, just in case you haven’t seen it – you probably should.)

The last song ended with these lyrics: “Someday. Life will be kinder. Love will be blinder. Some new afternoon. Godspeed this bright millennium. Hope lives on. Wish upon the moon. Let it come one day.” You can already guess it’s not the feel good hit of the summer. Then, “And we wish we could leave you a moral. Like a trinket you hold in your palm. But here is a riddle to guess if you can. Sing the bells of Notre Dame. What makes a monster. And what makes a man.”

Everyone in the story is a label; Father, brother, gypsy, hunchback, soldier, stone, martyr, villain, and on and on. And all of them prove greater than the box in which they are relegated. They all transcend, for better or worse, becoming more and more human (for all that means.) I even thought the musical did the same, giving us the respect to not leave it too tidy and glossy, to leave us wide open, questioning, wondering, confused, broken and angry with a world that is hardly ever tidy and glossy. We’re all kind of broken and confused with our own world, looking for happy endings and finding few.

What makes a monster, and what makes a man? The question reminds me of a song that asks, Is evil something we are, or something we do? We’re all monsters, all men, or at least all have the capacity to be everything. We’re all villains, sometimes. Maybe the real danger is in our blindness to that fact.

But we’re also all heroes, too. Both/And. Quasimodo had choices, all throughout. Stay inside, watching a world on fire, watching Esmeralda burn, or leave, engage, act. Of course, he makes that choice. He braves a cruel, cold society for just one reason: love. It’s probably the same reason that impels any of us to act in a positive direction. We can choose our own selves, comfort, power, or we can choose to try our very best to bring healing to others, to a creation crying out in pain.

(I’m about to write something that is going to sound – and totally is – embarrassingly cheesy, but one of the blessings of being as old as I am is that I don’t care at all;) We are the hunchbacks of our worlds. We want to cower from a harsh, often nasty environment that sees us as hopeless outcasts. This environment protects itself, at any and all costs. It stifles beauty it doesn’t understand. But the divine can’t be extinguished, beauty perseveres, it’s just so hard to see sometimes. Some new afternoon, love will be blinder, life will be kinder, right? I left that show with tears in my eyes, but a big strong overflow of hope in my heart.

Great art does that, over and over- stretches the limits of the possible. Yes, sure, now can feel dark and overwhelmed, but the dark isn’t forever. If this can happen… If a person can create this loveliness in a high school in central Pennsylvania, with a huge group of teenagers that have been gifted hand over fist with this sort of passion and heart… If Quasimodo can affect the culture of his world, with his own gifts, despite his flaws, then anything can happen. Anything. So, we hunchbacks sing the bells of Norte Dame. Let it be one day. Let it be today.

1982

March 11, 2025/The Bridge Faith Community/Leave a comment

The site is asking me what animal I would compare myself to, and this is something I’ve never considered. I guess I’d like to be something big, strong, and awesome, like a lion or a gorilla or something like that. What does that say about me? I wonder if it says anything good. Probably not. It might say I only value physical strength or predatory dominance, but I don’t. At least not consciously. Maybe prompts like this are designed to unconsciously reveal the conscious. Or maybe they’re just trivia. Who knows?

I like to watch The People’s Court, and now since we don’t have cable, I watch on YouTube. This is an infinitely better situation. There aren’t commercials, so cases are very short and tidy, in and out, easy peasy. Yesterday, I happened upon a case from 1982, presided over by Judge Wapner. In the hallway, Doug Llewelyn was a young man, and Rusty was our trusty bailiff. It was terrific, but the coolest part of it, by a wide margin, was the inclusion of 1982’s advertisements.

I saw McDonald’s offering a Christmas tree ornament, some kind of canned Danish ham called Dax, long distance phone calls (!!!!), and holiday jazz festivals at a mall in Rochester. I’m under no illusion that society or culture were perfect, but I do have the familiar twangs of nostalgia. It happens when I see original GI Joe or Star Wars toy packaging, or hear tv sitcom theme songs. The opening notes from Diff’rent Strokes or Facts of Life take me right back to my living room, holding a cassette recorder to the tv speaker. Thriller is brilliant, but it gains layers of depth with the memory of all of us sitting in our neighbor’s house for the world premiere of the music video, then trying to pretend I wasn’t a little scared to walk home.

I was 7 years old in 1982.

I wouldn’t want to go back there, necessarily. The Angel isn’t there. My boys aren’t then. Almost all pop art now is preferable. I loved “Mickey,” by Toni Basil, I still do, but, sheesh, it’s not exactly an artistic masterpiece. We just watched the 2nd episode of Daredevil, released last week, and it might be. I really like the internet, am very happy to Google in half of a second instead of consulting the Encyclopedia Brittanica at the local library.

What it was then is simple. That’s what I miss. Maybe it wasn’t actually simple, you’d have to ask my parents or other grown-ups about that, but it was simple to me. We played together, hung out together, drove to the mall to sit, talk, and watch people. These things are simple, easy, and filled us in ways our cell phones just can’t. “Friends” or followers aren’t friends. A Zoom meeting isn’t the same as face to face across a table, reading expressions, tones, and emotions.

I don’t want to snap Zoom or Instagram out of existence. I don’t want to bring back the overt racism & misogyny of the ‘80’s. You can’t take my Amazon Music from me, or my Disney+ (even though the monolithic corporations that created the AI that knows me more than my own mom are a giant part of the problem). I might want to just build a sort of hybrid.

1982 wasn’t paradise, any more than 2025 is, but there are certainly elements of heaven in every moment. These elements, I sometimes think, have been lost only because we weren’t paying enough attention to fight for them. Malls are mostly gone, and sure, they weren’t everything they are in my head, and we can agree the loss of a collection of stores isn’t anything to mourn, in and of themselves. But they facilitated something much much deeper, much more significant than retail transactions. They gave us a space to be, a context where we could gather.

When we exist only in our homes, we become avatars and screen names instead of flesh and blood. We become carefully curated characters, and real life becomes virtual. Hate becomes imaginary, and the ability to empathize is left behind because we/they are somehow less than human. The truth about 1982 is that it’s infinitely harder to cling to the idea that others are monsters when they’re enjoying a holiday jazz festival next to us, each with a shared free tree ornament from McDonald’s.

[That was supposed to be the end, I liked the last line that ties all of it up nicely, I am satisfied. But what I’m thinking now is that this is probably just more imagination, more nostalgic romanticizing. We had monsters then, too. Maybe it wasn’t infinitely harder. Maybe mall and jazz festivals weren’t the answers. I wonder what is…]

[That was now supposed to be the end, but there’s one more thing: even if we don’t know what the answer is, we can’t stop asking the questions, and searching for new answers. The only way we lose is if we give up. That’s the end, for real this time.]

How Did I Get Here?

March 4, 2025/The Bridge Faith Community/Leave a comment

The site is asking me, if I were writing my autobiography, what my opening sentence would be. Hm. Probably, “How did I get here?” Or maybe, “Where am I?”

I’ll turn 50 this year, in a few months, and with more years behind me than ahead, and can look back at the twists and turns and false starts and the forks in all of the roads. I’m not sure any of them make sense, by themselves, but looking around, there does seem to be a certain wisdom – NOT in my choices or planning (my participation looks more like a confused fumbling in the dark) but by a gentle hand that led with a looong leash that allowed me more freedom than I deserved, the freedom to hurt people (myself more than any others), the freedom to do the worst of all possibilities.

I made tons of terrific decisions for the wrong reasons. How? Or Why? Who knows? Not me, I don’t know, but I believe there’s One who does know, and it was His gentle hand in mine, His arms that held me in my broken-ness, His whisper in my ear, that brought me to this site prompt, today.

So, where am I? Here. And I think I got here by following what small flicker of Light I could see or feel. In my youth, I tried and tried to block that Light, to cover It up, to run away from It. But It could not be extinguished. It lit the way for 20+ years, through school, college, then to The Angel, and thankfully, I was smart (or lucky) enough to hold on tightly to her, then these 2 boys, then a faith community so deep and loving, then then then.

I guess how I got here is grace. That’s simple enough. And absolutely True. Just grace. Undeserved favor. (Which we all have, by the way. We all are loved beyond reason or limit. There is not now, and has never been, anything special about me, in that department.)

So, yes, “How did I get here?’ This is pretty fun, because I know that the Here I am today isn’t the Here I will stay. The story will change and morph, I’m nowhere close to a finished product. I guess, now that I’m thinking about it, the biography isn’t really mine at all.

No Subject

February 25, 2025/The Bridge Faith Community/Leave a comment

The site is asking me what word I’d excise from existence, and it’s actually a pretty fun, interesting question. It’s also one I couldn’t care less about, now.

You see, I finished the new Netflix documentary (called American Murder: Gabby Petito) on the murder of Gabby Petito and the suicide of her murderer/boyfriend Brian Laundrie. Apparently, there is “backlash” over something in it. It could be anything, really. I have found that wherever something exists, there is someone who is outraged about it. But that’s our culture, isn’t it? We get more attention (what used to be called “ratings” but is now “views”) with a higher volume – on our opinions, emotions, and voices. So we’re MAD, RAWRRRR!!!!!! Something feels a little askew when we’re angrier about the documentary than the deaths, but what do I know?

This couple – perfect on social media – began a YouTube “vanlife” vlog when they bought a tiny white van and hit the open road. He was abusive, I guess she thought that was ok, and then he killed her & left her body in the woods. He, then, drove home to his parents house, who promptly hired a lawyer and refused to talk to the police. They obstructed all investigations, while another’s child lay dead. The culture reached a fever pitch, as news of gabby’s disappearance blanketed all news outlets. She was young, pretty, and white, and if you don’t think that matters, I don’t know what to tell you. Anyway, under all of the guilt, stress, conscience, and publicity, Brian walked into the woods and shot himself, and his parents had to search for their own son with the same law enforcement team they so recently fought.

I also recently watched the new OJ Simpson documentary, where a domestic abuser eventually murdered his ex-wife. (We can now drop this “alleged” nonsense, can’t we?)

I don’t pretend to know what every abused person feels or why they stay, if they believe it’s ok, or that they deserve it, or if they don’t have any other options, or if the abuser lies to convince them it’s ok, they deserve it, or they don’t have other options. I know we have some pretty misguided understandings of what love is. OJ certainly didn’t love Nicole, and Brian Laundrie didn’t love Gabby Petito, no matter how many times he cried and told her he did.

I’ve been too close to too many of these violent, destructive relationships. I’ve cried more tears than you could possibly imagine. Well, maybe you can, you are, likely, well aware of my hyper-sensitivity and nature as, what is currently being labeled, an empath. I feel everything all at once. So, when I watch this sort of doc, it leaves me torn & exhausted. I see the parents eyes and know the toll this has exacted upon their fragile hearts. (We don’t see Brian’s parents, but they have lost their son, and even monsters hearts break with this kind of pain. – As I write that, we all know they’re not monsters, they’re myopic and selfish, but not monsters. They’re parents, and parents sometimes get things so wildly wrong, it’s impossible to know what they could have been thinking, don’t they?)

I finished coaching youth sports, and have had many hours of thought, many conversations on what I’ll do now. We all need to be in our communities, loving each other, or we begin to assume we are alone & unloved. This is an assumption we cannot allow. But what will I do? Who will I see? Where will I go?

And I’d like to go into the domestic violence field, to care for the battered while they hopefully can heal, learning different stories about worth & value. If I were Batman, this is where I’d give my time and attention – finding OJ’s, Brian’s, Gabby’s, and Nicole’s in time, working to end cycles with fresh words and forgiveness. However, the idea of a man in those spaces is mostly forbidden, probably for good reason. Just because I am trustworthy doesn’t mean everyone is.

I don’t know what my point is. Maybe there isn’t one. Maybe this is a very good example of not having any idea what the revolution looks like, but knowing where it starts. We all know where it starts. With love. (Real love, agape love, not the hollow meaningless hi-jack & redefinition we’ve been sold) This looks different in every situation, but it has always been the answer. We go one at a time, changing the world in baby steps. It’s slow and maddening, but we didn’t create this mess in an afternoon, it’ll take time to reclaim our humanity. But it’ll be so worth it.

Puzzles

February 18, 2025/The Bridge Faith Community/Leave a comment

I love to do jigsaw puzzles. I also love to listen to music, read, write, lift weights, watch documentaries, throw/catch baseballs, kiss and lay like spoons with the Angel, post on this website, I guess there’s not really an end to a list of things I love to do. I used to love making mixtapes, but they don’t exist anymore (which is terribly disappointing). Anyway, I find that puzzles are a space where the volume gets turned down on the world, and I can patiently focus.

Last night (while laying like spoons with the Angel, which I love), I wondered if I was getting significantly dumber. I lose more board games than I win nowadays (I my oldest son demolished me in a Boggle game 34-2 last week…34-2!??!), sometimes can’t find the words I know I want to use, forgot to pay the heating oil bill for 3 weeks, and my taxes still sit undone on my desk. I used to be very, very good at Boggle. Now, apparently, I can barely make 3 letter words at all. My explanation (rationalization, justification, hollow excuse) is that, while I don’t cry as often as I used to, my overwhelmed heart mainly stays silently inside, moving furniture and making a mess of me. I still feel the emotions, but they manifest differently, which might be using more and more capacity of the whole of me that I am finding some things, like winning word games or remembering which average cult documentaries I’ve already watched, difficult to navigate. Puzzles help to process feelings and breathe.

Kaizen is a principle where small, almost imperceptible, changes add up over time to complete transformation. Here’s a good example: If you eat a family size pack of Oreo cookies, and you don’t really want to anymore, you might try to cut out Oreos. This is not always a terrific idea, because (in simplistic terms) we miss it and go back . Kaizen says we eat a family size pack minus 1. We won’t ever miss 1 cookie. And then, we eat that pack minus 2. In this way, we build new roads in our minds until we’re eating the 1 or 2 cookies and not missing the rest. (This is the opposite of getting fit/healthy by just taking a massive axe to all of the carbs, sugars, and breads while planning 3 hour workouts every day…and failing by day 3) I find 2 puzzle pieces that fit and that’s a small win, in an ocean of 2000. But I keep finding 2 that fit, and eventually, a beautifully crisp picture takes shape. It’s like culture or government or anything. We can’t re-create the entire world today, we just find 2 pieces that fit until it’s new. We wake up & discover there are new roads in our collective mind.

We can’t reconnect in our marriages all in a moment or a day, we simply show up in a small way now, then another way tomorrow, and soon we have this awesome Spider-Man scene that I finished yesterday and is on my table now. We don’t begin a lasting prayer time by locking ourselves in a room for 2 hours each morning at 4am. Instead, we start with a minute or 2 today, and again, roads are built and the whole puzzle comes into view, and we are praying like crazy.

It’s a method I use to clean out the mess in my head/heart/soul so I can continue to show up in the way I want to show up, in the way you (or anyone) need me to show up, to build new roads and re-wire the world. It doesn’t matter if I get more than 2 points or know the right words, it only matters that I’m playing and listening. It doesn’t matter if my feet are cold, it matters that they’re where they’re supposed to be. Nobody cares if we can hold a tune, it only matters that we sing.

Love With A Capital L

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

Tag: imagination