2021-06-23T12:57:36+00:00

WW84 & Luca21

June 23, 2021/The Bridge Faith Community/Leave a comment

Last weekend, as a little bit of an act of aggression towards my son who had gone with a friend (who was NOT ME!!!!) to the beach for 4 days (4 DAYS!!!!), I watched Wonder Woman 1984. We had not yet seen it and this is usually the type of movie we watch for the first time together. But he was away and it was available on a free trial of HBO, so… In case you haven’t seen it, if you Google it, the first result is the question “Is Wonder Woman 1984 the worst movie ever?” Ha! It wasn’t great, but it started me on a path that leads me here, with you.

But first, let me tell you we also watched Luca, a Pixar film on Disney+. This one was tremendous and my favorite part in a movie of favorite parts was Luca’s wide eyes.

Before we tie WW84 and Luca’s eyes into a tidy bow, there’s a song called ‘Roses’ by the Band Camino and here are some of the lyrics:

“Why you wanna be a sad boy, waste your time?/Lookin’ for something that was right here all along/I think we’re gettin’ it wrongIt’s too bad/When did it get cool to be so sad?/We’re spinnin’ backwards, did we all go mad?/Yeah, we’re only human but wе’ve got hands and hearts and noses/So stop and smеll the — roses.”

There’s a young man I coach who is so similar to me, he drives me crazy. He hated the Wonder Woman sequel, but he happens to be that certain wonderful age and disposition where every single thing is just horrible. I know the age well, hyper-critical, painted with elitism, sarcasm and a deep grouchiness.

The younger me thought it was super cool to be bored, jaded, sad and dismissive of most art, most everything actually, because I was so far above it all. It was awesome to make fun and pick apart anything. I was sooooo funny and disaffected. And I was totally miserable.

Luca left the water for land and was overwhelmed with wonder. There wasn’t anxiety or routine or a mountain of inadequacy. There wasn’t a hierarchy of people or things he ‘should’ like or not, no such thing as a “guilty pleasure” – just pleasure. Just beauty. Just roses.

Of course he would have to deal with the thorns, like we all do, but unlike many of us, he chose to not be overcome with those sharp points. There was the local bully and antagonist Ercole Visconti (there always is) but there was also the lovely Guilia. Luca had the same choice we do. Which one do we allow to color our experiences? To which do we give the keys to our heart? Which one gets to chose our perspective?

Wonder Woman probably wasn’t a great film, but so what? Not every film has to be Fight Club or Pulp Fiction.

Has there ever been a circumstance where tearing something down led to the teeniest bit of our own growth?

Another ‘Roses’ line goes, “Maybe you’re the person that you always wanted to be,” and after a lot of thought, the truth is, the person I want to be is one who likes stuff, who can see beauty wherever I look. I want to live a life of wonder and joy, so I do (mostly), and I think if we did more of that…

Well, you know how it is when you get a new car and it seems like those are the only cars on the road? Maybe it’s like that with love and wonder and Luca and positive energy. Maybe it’s like an electricity that each of us feel and absorb.

So, yes, I think if we did more of that, there would be more of that. We’ve got hands and hearts and noses, so let’s just try to stop and smell the — roses.

Our Why

June 14, 2021/The Bridge Faith Community/Leave a comment

As you are probably very well aware, I care for youth sports a great deal and coach when I am qualified (which meant soccer and basketball when the kids were young and needed more of a babysitter than a coach and means only baseball now.) Every year there is a shortage of volunteers and that’s sometimes depressing even if it is predictable. The truth is, if I had an ounce of good sense, I wouldn’t do it either.

The most common guess is that nobody does it because of the time commitment, but that’s not true. Like everything else, we make time for what we value. If she says she doesn’t have time to call you back, it’s not because she doesn’t have time, it’s because she doesn’t have time to call you. Most parents who “don’t have time” are at all the games and always have time to write nasty texts about their future major leaguer’s playing time.

Having said that, parents are usually the biggest obstacle. As a parent of 2 athletes, I am comfortable saying that we are the absolute worst. We think our kids are the most talented, sweetest, hardest working people who have ever graced a field or laced up a pair of sneakers. Sure, we’re wrong, but that hardly matters. It only matters when you are the coach, like I am, and you’re honest that your son will get all of the preferential treatment possible.

Players are next in line. I find myself saying “nowadays,” “when I was young,” and “we used to ___” more than I ever thought I could. Yes, kids are different, probably because of the last paragraph, but they’re not monsters. They’re not all monsters.

You should know that I’m writing because, late last week, all of the coaches got an email detailing the myriad of ways we were misbehaving and the consequences we would face if we were to continue acting like petulant babies overflowing with insecurity and bad judgment. At that moment it became obvious that coaching wasn’t the most thankless position, it’s league president. Now why would anybody want to do that???

But I know why. And I know why I continue to choose to ignore my own good sense. It’s precisely because of all of the reasons not to engage.

We give our time to kids who need someone to trust, to count on, who will look at them, see them and to trust them back. To the kids who need fresh words and new stories believed and spoken about them. That is a far superior use of our moments than Netflix or scrolling through social media or even more hours of overtime. By giving our most valuable resource, these kids see that time isn’t our most valuable resource after all, they are.

We serve the parents (or the coaches serve us) because more people loving our children is muuuuch better than less.

But it’s the kids that give us our real why. I see a boy in my weight room who comes in every day. I ask everyone to do 7 sets of everything because it’s the number of completion, of wholeness. 7 because of Genesis 1. I sometimes ask him to do 8, because in John’s gospel, he gives 7 “signs” and then continues with an 8th (which is the resurrection of Jesus), signifying a new week (!!!!) and a new creation. I ask him to do 8 because he’s becoming a new person. He listens, or pretends to. And today after the 7th, he looks me in the eye and says, “I’m doing 8.” He is why we do any of it.

It’s how we love and it’s how, in whatever small or gigantic way we can, tell stories of a whole new world, one practice at a time.

I have nothing to say about the miserable behavior in the email. There’s always one or two, isn’t there? 😉

Jokers

February 23, 2021/The Bridge Faith Community/Leave a comment

So, last week was another week in 2021, which is shaping up to be even more of a bear than 2020. I’m soon going to be able to stop that sentence immediately after “last week was another week,” and we’ll all know what that means.

I lost a buddy I knew last week to a drug overdose. (This was the “horrible thing” I referenced in last week’s post on pyramid schemes and discouragement.) He left behind a wife and 2 small children. He struggled with addiction since high school, maybe earlier, and his was one of those stories that they say will end in a jail cell or a coffin. 2 days before his overdose, he posted a long grateful note of thanks to God on Facebook. It was his 7 months clean anniversary.

It’s common to wonder in situations like this, why? Why was he so disturbed, so sick? What was so bad that he would spend his life in the familiar pattern of detox and relapse? Or the question I asked of my own dad, that will surely haunt his family, why weren’t we enough? Where did these demons even come from?

I know some of those answers in my buddy’s case, if all that he had shared over the past 4 years had been true. This is not a certainty, of course. His service was for a person I never knew and barely recognized. If there weren’t pictures, I would have questioned if I stepped into the wrong church. But with this, for some reason I believe him. Like so many, the damage inflicted upon him by his family of origin (broken, dysfunctional in every way) was crushing, ultimately leading to his death. They dutifully carried on what are called generational curses. Midnight Oil, in the terrific song “Forgotten Years,” sing, “Few of the sins of the father, are visited upon the son.” In this case, it was significantly more than “few.” It was an avalanche of excrement for him to dig out of, too much in fact, and he simply could not.

Now. I have to be very careful when I get overwhelmed with the weight of loss and sadness, it can be pretty oppressive and increase my already hyper-sensitive soul. And there, on my dresser, was a borrowed copy of the movie Joker. I had good advice from the Angel to, under no circumstances, watch it while in this state. Very good advice that I ignored.

This movie was, essentially, a re-imagining of my buddy’s life. Abuse, neglect, illness, loneliness, depression, on and on – the Joker turned his violence outward and my buddy directed his mostly at himself. But other than that difference, it was the downward spiral of self-loathing that looked for all the world completely inevitable.

Was it?

One of the arguments against both is that, at some point, we have the choice and responsibility to build something new, something better. Maybe that’s simplistic ‘bootstrap’ psychology from those who have never been in that sort of darkness. (I happen to know that darkness, so total that the hope that there could ever be light again has faded and been replaced with emptiness.) But maybe it’s not.

We have the ability to choose life, don’t we? I know it doesn’t feel like that, it feels more like there are footsteps marked out for us from which we are unable to deviate. That our lives are scripts where improvisation or rewrites are impossible. That we are powerless to our fate.

If you’re familiar with me or my work, you’d think this is the point where I start painting pictures of love conquering all, detailing pyramid schemes of love, how love drives out that fear, how a small perspective shift and a bit of imagination and a hug will break those chains… but I’m not going to do that here. I just don’t feel like it this morning.

I believe those things I usually say, I have to. Otherwise, I’d have to resign myself to the robotic hopeless futures of those 2 sweet boys, and that is something I can not, something I will not.

Joker is a fictional character, but his story is real for so many of us. But it’s a really bad story and one that we have to believe can change. The 4 minute mile was impossible until it wasn’t. It just has to start with one (or an army of us) who keeps running into the impossibility.

One Of Those

February 15, 2021/The Bridge Faith Community/Leave a comment

Last week another horrible thing happened. Yet another. I’m telling you, there is no truth to the phrase, “we aren’t given any more than we can handle.” Sometimes, we are, we just don’t get to tell the story afterwards.

This has been a hard year, 2021 is taking over right where 2020 left off. I heard a man (I’m pretty sure it was Hank Fortener) say once that he was in a time of incredible stretching. Me, too. I am stretched to the point where my muscles feel like they’re about to tear into shreds. The kind of tearing that never can be put back together. But then again, I happen to be one of those insufferable types who stubbornly holds on to hope anyway. Maybe those muscles won’t tear at all, and instead the stretching will create a new strength. It doesn’t feel like that, but that’s sort of what hope is, isn’t it?

I’m learning that we will most often choose the option that hurts us the most. Of course, it might feel good now, but it leaves lasting scars. I lie but everybody finds out (everybody always finds out) and the consequences are bigger and far more painful than had I never lied in the first place. I do it anyway. I eat a bunch of sugar that tastes fantastic but (now that I’m no longer 12) I’ll feel rotten for 3 days. I eat it anyway. I stay in the relationship that leaves me feeling worthless and used because of course it’s easier than leaving but it also validates the suspicion I have that I am worthless and unloveable. I keep going to those sites where I have to erase the history but can’t erase the shame. I keep sinking a needle into my arm or wherever still has veins even though my marriage and family is feeling the polar opposite of high and picking up the pieces of that wreckage is impossible. I know this and make that choice anyway.

It seems like our deep self-loathing is insurmountable. My big dumb idea is for a pyramid scheme of love, where I love 2 people and they each love 2 people and so on until everybody is loved and we begin to act out of that abundance rather than our searing emptiness. It’s a dumb idea. Especially when all evidence points to our desperate need to cling to our brokenness, to choose self-hate over self-love, at all costs.

The big flaw in “love others as you love yourself” is that we don’t love ourselves. Maybe we are already loving others exactly like we love ourselves – not at all.

So. I’m sad today (and for the last few days). Do you know why I cry these tears? Because my eyes are wide open and my heart is in perfect working order. Why isn’t everybody?

Here’s the thing. When my heart isn’t broken and I am seeing clearly (instead of through these blurry pools where my eyes used to be), I know my pyramid scheme idea is a good one. Well, maybe it’s not a good one, but I really like it. I’m a man who sees a beach full of drying starfish and throws them back into the water 1 at a time. Maybe it won’t make a difference in the grand scheme…yeah, sigh…maybe it won’t. But I’m still that person doing it anyway. What I can tell you is that sometimes you will love someone and walk next to them and they kill themselves anyway. Yes, that’s true and real and happened last week. And you will, like me, wonder during restless nights if you could’ve/should’ve done more, if you should’ve walked closer for longer. And maybe if we did, they would’ve killed themselves anyway.

So we’ll sit on the beach for a little while looking at all the starfish wondering why in the world they keep ending up here. And then we’ll stand up and pick one up and throw it back into the water. And then another. And then 2 more. And then we’ll start dreaming again, wondering why a pyramid scheme couldn’t work, why love couldn’t work. Now maybe it couldn’t, but the way we’re going sure isn’t working, and it’s all I have.

Sports, etc.

February 11, 2021March 16, 2021/The Bridge Faith Community/Leave a comment

I write so many posts on sports because I grew up on a steady diet of sports, and often the things we eat when we are young remain integral to our lives. Teams, players, won-loss records, ERA, batting average, and second-guessing were often the only way my dad and I could relate and I’d be lying if I said I didn’t absolutely LOVE it. One year in the NFL playoffs, after I was out of the house and married to my Angel, Peyton Manning had a first half that was unbelievable, something like 5 straight TD drives, where he looked like a space alien brought here to play football. I was alone in my living room and called my dad. Just a father and son loving Peyton Manning together…

So, I love sports. Maybe I really just love my dad and the 2 have gotten mixed up over a lifetime into where I can’t tell the difference, and now he’s gone but sports are here and that’s going to have to be good enough.

Anyway. I can also see now that sports are primarily windows and illustrations – instead of ERA, points per game, completions percentage, sacks and batting average, I care far more about character, drive, and the human condition, perfectly displayed and refined on the practice field, bench, and weight room.

Both of my boys play basketball, and some days come home very frustrated and very angry. I understand this. There are some other boys on the team that, well…

Adolescence is marked by fear and insecurity, right? We are awkward and riddled with anxiety and acne, growing into the people we will become – but we’re scared to death that those people we’re becoming are somehow not enough. Of what? Whatever, we just live our lives wondering if we measure up. This leads kids to fight and claw and try to annihilate the ones standing nearby in a fruitless quest to appear better in proximity.

The most arrogant, condescending and nasty of us, it’s easy to see, are the ones who are most viciously ruled by this inadequacy. In schools, playgrounds, fields and courts – then later workplaces, offices, and conference rooms – this behavior is totally predictable.

I understand this, too.

I know what it is to wake up in fear, wondering if today will be the day I am exposed, that they ‘find out’ (whoever ‘they’ are and whatever they ‘find out.’) Faced with fear, we fight. We rip and claw at others to prove our dominance.

We sit and talk about these other boys, they vent and I listen.

I know these boys they talk about and the weight under which they are struggling that threatens every second to squish them. I want to hug these kids, hold them and tell them they are ok, that they are enough. I also know they won’t listen, will probably alienate everyone around them until they are alone and hollow, exhausted from the constant image-creating. I know how hard it is to see through the too-small eyeholes in the masks we wear.

When I was young, I wanted these other boys to get what they deserve. I wanted to give them what they deserve. Now, I still do, but the thing they deserve has changed. I don’t want them fed knuckle sandwiches anymore (though I always fear that’s where their path will lead them, though not from me), I want them loved, unconditionally and beyond reason, for no other reason than that they too are children of the King.

I think this is what Jesus meant when He said to love our enemies, the ones that are hardest to love, the ones that make it their business to make others feel small and embarrassed and worthless, the ones who pretend, the ones who bully our kids at school.

This impossible-sounding command is only possible if we can see them as they actually are, without their carefully curated disguises, as frightened children.

I want my boys to have these eyes that can see. I want to have these eyes that can see, too.

Now that we’re here, I also want those boys to have the eyes to see themselves as they are, as He does. We are walking this path together, and if Jesus is to be believed (and I truly believe He is), this kind of overwhelming love will drive out the fear and we can all begin the healing. Let’s imagine that, just for a second, for a day, forever…

Bears

January 19, 2021/The Bridge Faith Community/Leave a comment

Last weekend I finished Beartown, a novel written by my new favorite person in the world, Fredrik Backman. It’s difficult to know if you need to post about everything, and you probably shouldn’t, but I can’t seem to tell the difference and we’re friends, so here we go.

Here’s something to know about me: I love depth, complex themes, ambiguity, and don’t mind violence (mostly, I’ll explain in a second) or salty language at all in art. Fight Club and Pulp Fiction are my favorite movies. I’ve relatively recently started drawing lines at sex on screen and that’s simply because I squarely believe it’s not for me. We can talk about that another time, because it’s too big and complicated to drive by. But the violence I mind very much is of the sexual type. I cannot stomach rape or assault in any case or any context. There is a scene in 300 where a person manipulates, coerces someone else’s wife into a nauseating act and now I can never watch that movie (which I liked a lot) ever again. I barely got through it once. With my growing intolerance for this sort of plot device, I’m noticing that it is not an unusual subject in films I now have to avoid.

A possible exception: Carey Mulligan stars in a new film called Promising Young Woman, where she avenges the rape of her best friend and from there goes on to exact retribution on any similar feeling male she happens to find. At least I think it’s about that, and if it is, I’m in. I’m concerned that the initial act would be too much and that there would be a moral at the end where she gets punished. I don’t want her to be punished.

This is the thing about Beartown, the central points the story revolves around are a hockey game and the rape of a 15 year old girl. Once I realized the latter was coming, I cringed and contemplated leaving it unfinished. He’s such a masterful writer, I continued. I still don’t know if I’m sorry that I did.

If you have read anything here before, you’ve probably heard me write about destroying the walls that separate the imaginary divisions of us and them. We’re all just us. I’m empathetic to a fault, can see every side of every move, which makes me very non-judgy, forgiving and accepting. But I just wrote 2 paragraphs earlier that “I don’t want her to be punished.” I want this revenge fantasy to be consequence-free.

Now, of course it’s not. The best friend will endure consequences forever, will probably always be afraid of the dark. But the violators (I recognize that violators are not all male, but the proportions are so skewed, that’s what we’re concerned with) should absolutely face Carey Mulligan’s brand of justice. They should suffer consequences, too, in addition to the hell of being the kind of someone who would steal from another like that.

Now. Last time I wrote that I could be a CIA executioner or capitol rioter. We’re all us, isn’t that what I said? But here, there’s got to be a line here, right? I guess we all have blind spots. This is mine. Maybe I’m not as non-judgy, forgiving, and accepting as I thought.

Where is that line supposed to be, where we can start to scream for justice? In the Psalms, (in the Holy Bible!), writers asked God to bash the babies of their enemies on rocks, among lots of other awful things. Does that mean I can, too? Is that a holy position to take, this bashing on rocks?

I know, I know. It doesn’t mean I can, and it is most certainly not a holy position just because it’s in a holy book. And apparently, as far as I can tell, that line isn’t ideally supposed to be anywhere in our hearts. (That is not to be confused with political/social justice. Sometimes animals… um… sometimes we belong in cages.) I think it’s in that beautiful holy book because we need to acknowledge & examine each honest human emotion. If we are always hiding our trash in basements or corners, we can’t ever take it out.

The reason racism, sexism, nationalism, and any other -ism persists is because we’re too busy pretending there isn’t a monster under the bed. Who knows why my stomach turns at this particular atrocity more than others (that’s probably for a psychologist to figure out), but it does. Sure, it makes me want to do all sorts of things that would land me in prison, but it does make me want to act and as the oft repeated (and oft ignored) Edmund Burke quote goes: “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.”

So. I want to throw up every time any woman is dishonored and something is violently taken that should only be carefully given. I want to completely rework the system in their mercy and favor. I also want to castrate with rusty pliers those that would do the taking. And I also hope & pray to one day (maybe not today, but one day) love the perpetrators like I do the victims. All of these things can be true, and maybe all of these things are holy.

New Years Day

January 1, 2021/The Bridge Faith Community/Leave a comment

This morning, 5 seconds ago, I finished the Britt-Marie book by Fredrik Backman that I was telling you about. It was amazing. It’s interesting what gets you to where you are.

A great friend gave A Man Called Ove to me for Christmas and it took me over a year to read it. Then years later, I bought My Grandmother Asked Me To Tell You She’s Sorry at the beach because I didn’t adequately plan. I bought it with Adjustment Day by Chuck Pahlaniuk, which I immediately started. My Grandmother waited months for me and then it broke my heart in every wonderful way. Then I got The Deal Of A Lifetime and Britt-Marie Was Here from the library. (I’ll buy both of them today.) The titles are perfect and the covers are better. It’s interesting how superficial some things are, but they open the doors that need opening.

The first characteristic I noticed about my wife was her smile. Then her legs and the shape of her, like a guitar. She is the most beautiful girl I had ever seen, then and now. Her fonts and cover were excellent. But fonts and covers and clever titles only go so far.

These books are full of depth and soul, and so is she. To say that The Angel is the most beautiful girl I had ever seen, then and now, is a little offensive, like only seeing one small tree in a forest as big as the ocean. She is an ocean of everything lovely, a few things that are not lovely (because she is after all a human being), and the small tree that is her cover.

It’s New Years Day and I can’t tell you how thankful I am that I waited to work out until I finished Britt-Marie Was Here. It makes me feel that this year could be anything. That’s the same way I feel when she walks down the stairs everyday. Like I, we, all of us, are possible.

All is still quiet on New Years Day. She’s in this room in her pajamas on the couch. I am thankful. Content. Happy. And I can’t wait to see what’s next.

We’re Here

December 22, 2020December 22, 2020/The Bridge Faith Community/Leave a comment

“I want someone to know I’m here.” That is the heartache expressed by the title character in the book Britt-Marie Was Here. This is another novel written by Fredrik Backman, which may be a poor choice as I’m still recovering from My Grandmother Asked Me To Tell You She’s Sorry and The Deal Of A Lifetime.

I read once that if you take LSD, you are never the same as you were before. If you were a 5, you’re not a 5 anymore. That’s how I feel about those books. Like I was cracked wide open and now I’m a permanently different Chad.

Anyway. It’s Christmas in 2020 and on the one hand, we desperately need the hope of Christmas and the birth. On the other, I can’t imagine the despair of another holiday in isolation. This season is usually among the most depressed, presumably because the cold gray short days spent alone against the backdrop of other families gathered around a warm fire. What if I don’t have a family? What if the family I do have is broken? What if there’s 1 less around that fire? What if I don’t have a home, much less a fire? It’s no wonder the depression we barely keep at bay all year gets amplified in November & December.

This Britt-Marie book is about a woman newly single, alone because the husband she has pretended was faithful has been publicly exposed as what she knew he was. She’s kind of awful, but as Backman slowly peels back curtain after curtain, she’s all of us. She wants to be seen, wants to matter to someone.

We’re a culture that largely walks with our heads down, on our way to the next thing, saying “How are you?” as a greeting, but not at all interested in the answer. Even without a global pandemic and quarantine, we had been increasingly disconnected for years. This leaves us like those copper pans where nothing sticks. And we call it survival.

But it’s not. It’s killing us. We’re invisible and we are not meant to be invisible. We are meant to be together, sharing the moments of our lives. We are meant to ask how you are and to wait for the honest answer. We are meant to cry together, to celebrate together.

As I read, the thing that kills me is that I know how many Britt-Marie’s must be in my town, neighborhood, on my street, invisible. And this is a fact that is simply unacceptable. My dream is that we are all seen, accepted. That we all belong. That we are all loved. That the reality of Christmas become a reality in practice, that it’s not just a story of fairy-tale hope we tell in churches on Christmas Eve.

I want someone to know we’re here.

Less The Rock and More Lobot

December 16, 2020/The Bridge Faith Community/Leave a comment

Last week, I posted “So, Let Me Tell You About Yesterday,” on both of my blog sites. I write on the Bridge page and I write on a page called Love With A Capital L. Both are about spirituality because everything is. What’s different is that on the Love page, I don’t always mention God by name, like the book of Esther, but it’s always about Him. This ‘Yesterday’ post ended up in both spaces, and it received an extraordinary response on both.

I am a man who thinks (or probably more accurately, over-thinks) and I wondered, why? Why do some things strike chords and others swing and miss? Why this one? Why not that one?

Who knows? Maybe I don’t care, maybe I shouldn’t. If too much time is given to thinking about response, we’ll subconsciously (or not) begin to bend and shape ourselves into whatever position we think they’ll like best.

This can happen easily in any creative expression.

The bigger tragedy is how easily this can happen in our greatest creative expressions; our lives.

We look for approval, for the most “likes,” resembling actors on a stage. It’s interesting, the things that mean the most to me are those that are the most authentic, but when the artist attempts to mean the most to me, the very thing that was so appealing is compromised, disappears, and immediately stops meaning the most to me. It’s like the theory that observation affects behavior, so any study of “natural” behavior is impossible (unless it’s secret and invisible and probably unethical).

You know I’m going into the idea that we have an “audience of One,” right? That’s not terrible because that One is the only One who knows who we actually are, so moving towards that vision of us is, essentially, moving towards the version of us that is the most pure and true, the most authentic.

The filters I use that make me look like a cat or like I’m always supercool, pensive and mysterious aren’t me. I have rough skin and deep creases around my eyes from years and years of smiling. The sweater I wore on Sunday makes me look much better than I actually do. I get angry and am awfully mean to me from time to time, thankfully much less than I used to. I shave my head because it’s thin and moving backwards, less the Rock and more Lobot from Star Wars. I like to think my jokes are all pretty terrific and could edit a short YouTube video that makes me compare favorably to Dave Chappelle, but in real life, well… you know, probably he’s not even that funny all the time. (On second thought, he probably is.)

The idea here is not to point out all the ways we’re messy, or to advertise my faults. It’s not even to stop using filters. It is to love, and be loved, anyway. It is to see those rough edges. It is to dance with who and where we are right now, even as we acknowledge that we are, as my friend says, “perfectly in process,” moving (sometimes slowly) towards who we’ve been created to be. One of the coolest aspects I learned about the Scriptures were their absolute commitment to honesty. Not everyone is shiny, nobody is perfect. (Well, One is.) They yell and scream and shake their fists at God. They often make terrible decisions and aren’t always the heroes of the story. But it’s real. And Beautiful. Just like us.

Unplanned

August 17, 2020August 17, 2020/The Bridge Faith Community/Leave a comment

Last night was the reception for a wedding that I officiated in April. The couple were gorgeous and totally present. That’s not always the case. Sometimes, they are distant and preoccupied, hoping the families don’t fight and the food is hot. Wedding planning usually garners more time than marriage planning, so with that much of a commitment, it’s no surprise that who sits where gets the biggest piece of the pie and leaves only table scraps for the actual vows.

Not with these two, though. They are very well aware how extraordinary it is to have found each other, lovers, partners, friends. I dearly hope they don’t take each other for granted when the excitement of the day gets exchanged for the routine of the everyday like most of us do.

Anyway, I gave the prayer before the meal. In it, I said, “Today and on that day in April, nothing was how it was supposed to be, how it was planned, but it was just THE BEST,” or something like that. And then I paused. Maybe my silence was perceived as dramatic, but I was just thinking about how that’s absolutely true. Not just for their wedding, but probably for their marriage. Almost nothing will go how it’s supposed to, how it’s planned.

Maybe that’s the key to marriage. Maybe that’s the key to life. To ease our grip on the wheel a little. To not be more married to our calendars than we are to each other. To let things be what they are.

We plan, we prepare, then we allow the thing to breathe instead of choking it to death with our white knuckles. How many times have we completely missed the most significant moments of our lives by trying to shoehorn them into our expectations? Too many, right?

We had their wedding in her parents backyard, only immediate family (maybe 15 of us) and me, and to tell you the truth, I probably had the virus. I had been sick with a fever for days and days only getting out of bed to put on my suit and tie. But that horrible disruption may have been the greatest blessing of their lives. We were mercifully freed from ALL of the distractions (except for my mask;), and had no reason at all to be there (no food, no guests, no favors or centerpieces) other than for a man and woman to say “I do” to each other.

I really love weddings, except for the ones I don’t, but if I’m honest, this was one of my very favorites. I am overwhelmed with gratitude for the lovely gift we were given. These 2 reminded me, reminded all of us, that things don’t have to be perfect to be perfect. I hope I don’t forget.

Love With A Capital L

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

Tag: love