2026-08-03T18:14:53+00:00

Bait & Switch

August 3, 2026/The Bridge Faith Community/Leave a comment

I started Money Heist, a Spanish drama series on Netflix, last week. I thought there were only 5 episodes of this intense story of a gigantic crime (I have no idea why I thought that now) so the Angel and I began. There isn’t 5 episodes, there is apparently a million. I just read on the Wikipedia page: “Pina [the show’s creator] was firm about making it a limited series, feeling that dilution had become a problem for his previous production.” I wonder if he envisioned “limited” as limited to a million episodes, or if dilution became a problem for this production, too.

Recently, I wrote about the etiquette of art: Do we finish what we start or can we end whenever we want, as soon as we lost interest? I came to the conclusion that I want to be a man who finishes what he begins. But that was before I began such a massive commitment. Probably I wouldn’t have watched 1 episode. But now what?

While I was on the Wikipedia page (just to innocently pull some details for this post), I read all of the season summaries. I read spoilers, it’s been spoiled, I know what happens and how it ends. Does that change anything about my decision to continue? And as long as we’re on the subject of etiquette, spoilers???? Am I a spoiler person? Could there be anything more disrespectful of an artists vision than a spoiler?

I don’t mind knowing the end. In fact, it can aid in my enjoyment. Here’s an example (with spoilers;) … In The Dark Knight Rises, I thought it was at least possible that Batman dies. I would spend the entire film in an anxious knot waiting for the end, so I asked a friend (who I had to relentlessly convince), who spoiled it for me, and then I was free to enjoy the film without waiting only for the climax & resolution.

But if you ask Christopher Nolan, NO, there probably wasn’t anything more disrespectful to him than what I did.

We live in a new world. The new Spiderman movie was released 4 days ago and it’s all over the internet, nearly impossible to avoid. I don’t think I like that, as a concept, even as I do like it for me. (Thankfully, not everyone is like me.) And maybe seasons of a series in the 80’s, released weekly, wasn’t as overwhelming as discovering a million episodes at once. Actually, there’s no maybe, it wasn’t nearly as overwhelming.

I don’t know if I’ll finish, or even if I’ll finish the 1st season.

This now reminds me of forgiveness. I understand forgiveness, that it’s important to my emotional/psychological/spiritual health, I am a man who is staunchly pro-forgiveness…until I have someone to actually forgive. I finish things, until there’s a million episodes to finish. Hm.

I guess we’ll see who I am together.

Stables

July 27, 2026/The Bridge Faith Community/Leave a comment

[This post is also on the Bridge Faith Community site, but I want to post it here, too. Maybe I’ll write a different one, exclusive to this site, later, or tomorrow or Friday. Maybe I won’t. I think this one is what I want to say, and all I want to say, today. It’s just my raw, open heart on the screen. You’ll like it or you won’t, but what I always hope is that it might mean something to you. The best things leave us different than when we started. The things I write about in this post have left me a very different man.]

Sometimes, I reference the writing prompt that the hosting website suggests. They can be interesting and thought-provoking, they’ve even been so good that I abandon the initial reason I opened this computer to discuss the site’s question. Today, it’s “If you could bring back 1 dinosaur, which one would it be?” They are not all interesting.

In our service last Sunday, I brought up the many prayer requests in our circle. Our individual circles are huge, because we are all so cool. In a Venn diagram, the overlap is the Bridge, but the way I figure, that connects each of the circles to each of us. We are all ‘members’ of the Bridge family.

But some people drift closer to the shaded, shared section. Our close friends have close friends that become our friends, too. One of those friends, a super-sweet man we all knew from a yearly party, (it would have been impossible not to notice him, know him, remember him, and be affected by him, even seeing him on such an infrequent basis), passed away suddenly, at far too young an age, last week. It hurts and leaves a deep wound that will become an obvious scar that we carry forever.

There are many others, who sit near the overlap, who are in need of prayer, struggling through medical procedures, surgeries, distance, isolation, and on and on. For a small community, we have these beautifully massive pools in which we each, in which we all, swim. These pools carry great joy, fulfillment, celebration. But they also carry pain. We get to go to the best parties, and the most crushing funerals. We get the phone calls for very good – and very bad – news. The weight is heavy and seems overwhelming.

Proverbs 14:4 says, “An empty stable stays clean, but no income comes from an empty stable.”

In times like this, when our friend is gone, we might really like an empty stable. Or at least one that’s not quite so full. Right? A prayer list where I don’t have to turn the page to continue.

We’ve all thought it’s better to not have loved, than faced the devastation of love lost. In that moment, in this moment, we might make the trade.

There’s a BRILLIANT science-fiction movie where a man chooses to have his ex-girlfriend erased from his memory, the suffering is simply too painful for him to bear. Most of the film takes place in his mind, as she is being eliminated. It unfolds in reverse, the first memories to go were the ones from the end of the relationship, and they seem to be easy to bid farewell. But as we move backwards, the beauty, the intensity, the meaning, the love… they go, too, and he decides that the empty stable he thought he wanted has a cost that is way too high. He begins to fight to keep the memories, fights to keep her, in his mind and his life.

This makes me think about our friend, and the very good friend who brought him into our lives. She is awesome, and you can see his fingerprints all over her life. She is a better person in every way because he was there. The income that came from her dirty pen is impossible to calculate.

I was thinking of this friend this morning while I was thinking of my son. He goes back to college in about 3-ish weeks, and even now, I’m seeing my screen through watery eyes and a very real pain in my heart. He considered an internship which would have kept him away for the summer, but he was here, instead, and now I get to send him off to school again, for the 2nd time. Maybe it would have been easier if he had not come home for these 3 months. Maybe.

Maybe an empty stable is clean, with less texture, less laughter, less hugs and gallons less tears. But the income is what makes life so wonderful. An empty stable has infinitely less beauty, too. And less passion, less love, less of everything that matters. My summer has been really fantastic, I haven’t missed it, I am deeply deeply grateful we are here.

My friend’s tears – and mine and yours – from her circles are really offerings of gratitude. The income is a full, awesome life. As Vision says in the WandaVision series, “what is grief but love persevering.” The pain my friend feels is directly proportional to the love they grew and experienced. If we’re blessed, very very blessed, we can know this terrible, beautiful pain. This is the gift and the curse of the Church, of a present life. We will be connected and full. We will have purpose. We will have hearts that are so big and soft you can see them from 100 miles away. And yes, we will hurt, mourn, and suffer. There’s never a way around the pain, only “through.” The thing about that, though, is the promise that we’ll have hands to hold and arms to fall into, for the “through.” And that is more than enough.

Rules of Engagement

July 21, 2026/The Bridge Faith Community/Leave a comment

I recently started watching the 8 episode Netflix series The Gentlemen. This show is created by Guy Ritchie (of the classics Lock, Stock & Two Smoking Barrels and Snatch, and I suppose, of the once married to Madonna fame), which was enough for me. His work is fast, funny, violent, ultra-stylized, and I was very interested to get invested. Also, season 2 is soon to be released, so I would have a deep-ish pool into which to jump.

[I can’t tell you how disappointed I am that Poker Face has been canceled. I know Rian Johnson is shopping it to other networks, but WITHOUT our perfect heroine Charlie Cale – the inimitable Natasha Lyonne. After watching each episode several times, I was happy to find a new cool show to like.]

So. Here’s the situation, a question of television etiquette: The show isn’t that great for me. Of course, it is fast, funny, violent and ultra-stylized, but apparently, those things actually aren’t enough. 15 minutes into episode 7 (out of 8, in season 1), I wondered if I should finish it or drop out. I only had a little over an hour in the season to go…but it is a little over an hour of my life. Was the hour+ better spent finishing the arc or doing something, anything, else? Did I somehow owe it to the Guy Ritchie, the writers, actors, network to see it through?

I had this same question of personal valuation years ago, but then it was about books. If I didn’t like the book, how late was too late to tap out and begin something new? My answer then was never. The commitment to a book is more intensive, longer, and requires more bandwidth, the cost of reading a book that has lost me (or that I’ve lost) is simply too high.

Tv is a different medium, demanding less of us. This seems to suggest that I should finish the season. But as background noise, what is the point? Maybe tv doesn’t really demand less, maybe we just give it less that it deserves. Maybe it is as disrespectful to the art as it is to each other when we work through family dinner, or scroll Instagram during a conversation.

Has the suggestion moved into the realm of not finishing if I don’t have the time, energy, or interest to give my full attention?

However. In a culture that struggles to commit to anything, maybe finishing anything is the ultimate act of rebellion, revolting against the faithlessness of the day. Maybe completing something (even as trivial as a Netflix series) is building the type of character I happen to value.

I asked 2 close friends, my boys, and the Angel, for their opinions. Ultimately, though, the decision was my own. I knew what they would do, but what would I do? To use a spiritual term, what weighed more to me? And was the character-building connection real or just me trying to artificially pump meaning into an inherently meaningless act?

I did finish it. Of course I did. And it was the character argument that tipped the scales – there is no artificial pumping because nothing is meaningless, everything matters. I’m rethinking my stance on books, too. I am going to be someone who shows up and stays. So? It wasn’t disappointing, but it wasn’t great, either. I will not watch season 2. I’ll probably watch the 2 seasons of Poker Face, again, instead.

Running

July 7, 2026/The Bridge Faith Community/Leave a comment

Today is cardio day, so that meant that this morning at 6am, you would have found me on a treadmill at the gym. Lately, I’ve been doing some interval training, and I want you to know something: I really, really HATE running. I know some people like it, even love it, but they’re wrong. This relationship I have with running is complex. I hate to run, but I very much love that I ran this morning. Each step is overflowing with sadness (that this is happening), madness (that I’m making it happen), inspiration (that I would make it happen), and gratitude (that it can physically happen). At the end, I am soaked, as if I were swimming in my clothes instead of running.

I’m moving into some soul work on self-control, of which this is another part. I want to be a man who does very hard things because there is something bigger than comfort and ease that characterize my life.

But also, I think I have an equally complex relationship with my body that I’d like to recalibrate. I can run, sometimes fast, hike, climb many flights of stairs, row, swim. I played college baseball. I’m 50 and can still bench press 300 lbs and do as many pull-ups as I need to – I am an active, athletic person, and for that I am very grateful. I wear large shirts and have a 34 inch waist.

The BMI calculator on the internet says I am “morbidly obese,” and the voices in my head tell me I am a (lots of words I won’t type here) when I look in the mirror or my face in the Zoom screen you would see. The aggressively harsh and nasty narrative in my head for most of my life is that I am a (more words I won’t type here.) It is a million miles better than it used to be, but this monster still rears it’s face from time to time, and remains a thorn in my spirit that needs healing.

If our bodies are, like the Bible says, “the temples of the Holy Spirit, given by God,” I would not like Jesus to hear what I say about His temple. He’s given me this sacred, amazingly functional vessel as a supremely generous gift, and what is my response? If you were to give me a gift, and let’s say I hated it, I still would thank you and acknowledge your kindness. But as for this gift from God that has given and given in such fascinating ways, I can only seem to see imperfection.

But what is imperfection? Who says what perfect actually is? Is it abs you can see? Is it perfect hair and teeth? Is it performance? Is it tanned, taut skin? Is a temple defined by the fixtures and wallpaper, or is it more beautifully identified by Who or what is inside? Is it intellect, spirit, emotion? Or just veined biceps and defined quads? Why have I been so mean to this temple based on only one small aspect, that I perceive to be lacking? I am lacking nothing, and maybe running reminds me of that.

I think spiritual maturity is probably nothing more than moving into the space where we can see ourselves as we have been created, like a process of chipping away at the image the world has sold us since the day we’re born that we’ve sadly carried for too long. The voices in my head aren’t the Voice of God. They’re not even my own voice. They’re not true, and they’re not kind or helpful.

There’s a shirt in my closet that is SO cool, it’s my favorite shirt I’ve even owned. And I’ve never worn it. You see, I think it’s too tight in some places. I sometimes think of it while I run. When I lose some weight and feel better about how I look, I’ll be able to wear it. But what I’ve learned is that this perception I have of the temple has very little to do with what the temple actually looks like. When I lose some weight, I’ll still have this mistaken picture of me. When is enough? If it isn’t now, I’m beginning to think it never will be.

Maybe this post is the next step in this reclamation project, the journey to becoming all of me. Maybe I’ll wear that shirt.

Mean

June 29, 2026/The Bridge Faith Community/Leave a comment

So, someone in my life is being terribly mean to me. This might sound like I’m a child on a playground, but that doesn’t make it less true. Anytime I speak or ask any sort of question, he/she is condescending & disrespectful, as if I am the dumbest neanderthal that has ever walked the earth. This is not awesome. It also has very little to do with me.

Last week I watched a limited series on Peacock called The Resort. Cristin Milioti stars as Emma, 1/2 of a married couple on a vacation where they end up getting caught up in a weirdly supernatural mystery. She’s also a nightmare, distant, short & nasty to her husband & everyone else. Ms Milioti is a fantastic, magnetic actor (one of the best going, and if you don’t believe me, watch The Penguin series, especially episode 4), but wildly unlikeable as Emma. This can be an obstacle, when the lead actor is so unsympathetic to the audience, but it can also be the catalyst to our own transformation.

You see, later in the show, we begin to learn that she has lost a newborn child and made an impossible decision that left her broken and miserable. This brokenness informs every relationship in her life, isolates, and creates this aggressively aloof person that we see.

I very much like the Marvel & Star Wars universes moving into series television. It gives us time to learn more, to add depth & nuance, leading us to connect on new levels with these characters. Instead of just 1 primary thread, they are able to slowly expand and show more of the full scope of their complicated humanity. (Andor is probably the best example.)

Emma has built walls that make her as unknowable as she is unlikeable. This is not uncommon in our world, and it’s usually here that our shared story ends. We don’t get to see the why. We don’t get the privilege of backstory. It’s up to us if we have the grace to give them mercy, even if only in our heads & hearts.

This person who is mean to me, he/she is clearly lashing out at the closest safe thing. Why? Who knows? It’s obviously based in fear and insecurity. I know this, and so do you. Bullies are never the most self-assured people in the room, and the meanest are never the happiest. Mostly they’re the opposite. But I don’t know, he/she also doesn’t (can’t?) communicate this terror, this inadequacy, this desperate striving to prove his/her worth. If he/she could, we could assure him/her that he/she is already much, much more than enough.

But nobody likes to be a punching bag for someone’s identity work. It makes me angry, and I want to fight. I want to lash back.

But Emma was just so sad that it made her awful. The people that were sharp with her wouldn’t see the broken pieces she was trying to hide behind miles of thick, thick skin. I wonder if we will. I wonder if I have the courage to extend unconditional kindness, caring for his/her currently jagged edges.

Mean people are never born in a vacuum, everyone has a story. The only question is IF we can give them a break and keep loving despite…well, despite their humanity. We’re all awful & mean sometimes, and this is because we’re all broken in ways we might not acknowledge or understand. Our lives aren’t tv, but what tv certainly teaches us is to reserve our judgment, at least for now, probably forever.

I Hated Barney

June 15, 2026/The Bridge Faith Community/Leave a comment

Barney is/was a purpose dinosaur who became a phenomenon and then a pariah. Kids lost their minds to the cult of Barney, loving him more and more as they watched VHS tapes and shows on PBS on repeat. Everybody else lost their minds for a different reason. Everybody knew and would sing that dumb song, loudly, “I love you, you love me, we’re a happy family, with a great big hug and a kiss from me to you, won’t you say you love me too?” I hated him, too.

But you know, I can’t figure out why. I never saw the show, not once. That would be like me hating The Wizard of Oz or Orange Is The New Black. Why would I loathe something that didn’t affect me at all? I don’t hate Phish or Niall Horan’s new album, how could I?

But with Barney, all he was about was loving people, all he was doing was telling kids they’re awesome. That seems like a strange thing to hate. Maybe it was pandering and mind-numbingly boring (and I truly mean maybe…like I said, I haven’t ever seen an episode), it may have been very bad, but it was good.

I watched a great documentary on this interesting dichotomy. Barney was terrific until he wasn’t. We loved him until we didn’t, and then we HATED him. It was one of the first illustrations of the destructive power of the internet. There were incredibly mean blogs where people could connect and hate together, pages where gatherings of hate could be planned & advertised. The internet is a boundary-less space of infinite possibility, and we immediately use it for porn and hating each other (or giant purpose dinosaurs). Maybe nothing connects us like having a common enemy, but that’s so depressing, I simply have to believe otherwise.

Why did I hate him? Why did anyone hate him? Because there was no gray area in Barney. The ‘90’s were the time where antiheroes began to truly define us, where the bad guys were fascinating and compelling. Superman is good, Batman is complex – there are lots of great, super-successful Batman movies and franchises, very few for Superman. Han Solo is our favorite Star Wars character, he’s in the rebellion but is kind of a scoundrel. Luke Skywalker was just the hero, uncomplicated.

My favorite characters have always been Luke Skywalker and Superman. Of course, I also believe in the goodness of people. The world is gray and confusing enough. So why would I hate Barney? I think it’s easy (and embarrassing): because everyone else did. We were the alternative all together. We were supposed to be cynical (which we called realistic), Barney was too bland. Good didn’t sell newspapers then, and it doesn’t garner clicks now.

As I watched the documentary, I thought of how we are, our design. It all makes sense, we’re made for this kind of community. And hate is a fuel that burns hot and quick. Of course, if we’re not careful, we run towards anger and rage, division, us/them dichotomies. We like enemies. And then we lose interest and move on.

What if we decided to connect and share something more sustaining, something beautiful and bright? What if we decided that Barney was right, that we were lovable, that we did, in fact, love each other, and that we were awesome, that we could all be awesome together? What if the internet blogs were less about tearing everything apart and, instead, about the ka-jillions of ways we can rebuild ourselves and our world? What if we all decided to give a great big hug and a kiss from me to you? I don’t hate Barney anymore.

Yeah, I know, I’m hopeless…

Ratings and Scores

June 8, 2026/The Bridge Faith Community/Leave a comment

The Last Word is a movie from 2017, starring Shirley MacLaine and Amanda Seyfried, that almost nobody saw or liked very much. It grossed $2.9 million (according to Wikipedia) and has a 40% approval (according to Rotten Tomatoes). It gets an average score of 4.9 out of 10. It is not widely considered a masterpiece of modern cinema.

But what does that mean, really? I wonder if those 40% absolutely LOVE it, if it’s their favorite movie? Or if it changed the lives of those who paid to see it in a theater? What if you watched it on Netflix, like I did, and it changed yours? Then, does it really matter how much money it makes or what kind of score it gets?

Episode 7 of the Star Wars saga (The Last Jedi) is often inexplicably considered the worst. Many, many Star Wars fans loudly hate it. And they’re all wrong. It’s fantastic and it would be impossible for me to care less what its Rotten Tomatoes score is (incidentally, critics give it a 91% while the audience rates it at 41%). These reviews can be interesting, but hopefully have no bearing on your own enjoyment. If it is meaningful to you, but not critics in Cleveland or college kids in Portland, it is still meaningful to you. You decide, not a legion of internet trolls. Or not even your friends.

Anyway. The movie is about an aging super-successful woman who hires a local obituary screenwriter to write her pre-death obituary. As it turns out, it’s not a great life to be remembered, so they start a journey to re-make her life into one better memorialized. As I write it, it sounds underwhelming, like one you’ve seen a thousand times. You know exactly what’s going to happen, there really isn’t anything new here. There were lots of Lifetime-esque tropes and eye-rolling dialogue.

BUT the journalist is writing a collection of essays that she lets no one read, afraid of any rejection. There’s a love interest (of course) that she keeps at arm’s length. She lives a safe unfulfilling life. The subject of the obit is a battle axe, terrible to everyone, ostracizing her family and everyone unlucky enough to have ever come across her path. Neither connects, truly, with anyone until they do with each other. One learns the joy of relationship while the other begins to find her own identity and is freed by that newfound authenticity.

Maybe we can relate, right? How many of us struggle to be ourselves, constantly choosing between vulnerable honesty and our carefully curated images? How about trust, and the fear of rejection & abandonment?

This movie was nothing special unless it was, to you. It would probably fit the description of a “guilty pleasure,” if you believe in that sort of nonsense. We’re all affected by different things at different times, sometimes it’s through a classic award-winning beloved film or a throwaway song on side 2 of a bad album. A commercial storyline or jingle can work as a sledgehammer, opening our hearts to truth. I think the best compliment any artist could ever receive is connection, that their work landed and moved even one person in the audience.

The “dumb” movie that bombed at the box office and in reviews, that I really loved, moved me and no critical score can diminish its beauty to me.

Of course, I think we’re all artists, too, and connection is the purpose of our greatest work, our lives. I also happen to think that anything we do that doesn’t move us closer to each other is opportunity squandered. We’re all looking for those sweet moments that help us feel less alone, even loved, and when we find them, they move us closer to our original divine design. That’s why they feel so right & natural, and anything else is so uncomfortable. It takes an overwhelming amount of courage to engage with our lives, and it’s possible that a movie with terrible reviews can give it to us.

Ego Was The Villain

June 1, 2026/The Bridge Faith Community/Leave a comment

Guardians Of The Galaxy, vol 2, is a fine movie. It’s not that great, it’s not even the best of the Guardians trilogy (Vol 1 is). But it does have an interesting idea that I think about often. To summarize, we discover Peter Quill (the leader of the Guardians) is half human & half god, when he meets his father, Ego. Ego’s big plan is to plant pieces of himself on every planet in every galaxy, so that eventually, every planet will be an extension of him. He’ll be everything, everywhere. He wants to make Quill a part of that plan, Quill doesn’t want to be a part of that plan, so they have to fight.

When I watch it, Ego is the villain. I’ve taken it for granted that everyone sees it that way, that Ego is always the villain.

In my area, there’s a mega-church. A mega-church is just like it sounds: a gigantic church. I’m not certain what the qualifications are for organizations like this, but it’s so massive, it might be a SuperDuperMegaChurch or just a SuperMegaChurch. Maybe those who know use words like Colossal or Monstrous, or maybe have dropped the ‘church’ part altogether and just go by mega-behemoth or something. The one in my area used to be called an acronym of letters, the last 2 being Bible Church, but once they began to grow and grow, they kept the letters and changed what they meant, dropping Bible Church. I guess they outgrew the first group of words.

Like most mega-churches, they have a main campus and lots and lots of branch campuses (campi?) in surrounding towns. If you go to one of them, you can watch the preacher give the sermon live-streamed (or recorded) on movie screens. Like the Walmart effect on smaller stores, often times local churches suffer (and sometimes die), as their membership moves into the newer, fancier, bigger, trendier arms of the giant.

I wonder if the members of a mega-church think Ego is the villain? Maybe they think it’s nice to have a shared value system. McDonald’s exists on the same principle: Everyone having the same hamburger everywhere is comfortable and awesome. Maybe they like Ego, and think he’s very charismatic (he is played by Kurt Russell, who might be one of the most handsome men ever on earth) and buy into his vision for a universe united under him.

This isn’t too much of a stretch. We also try to whitewash cultures, too, trying to mash each textured, interesting area, people, history & practice into one bland piece of white bread that is for everyone and no one because it’s missing anything ethnic. If we eliminate all of the differences, then… then what?? Every store is a Target and restaurant is a Texas Roadhouse or Applebee’s, with the same fashion and corporate art on the same colored walls. The food is quite good at Texas Roadhouse, and Target has great stuff. Corporate art is pretty nice. Maybe we want to eliminate differences, and sand down every sharp edge. Amazon.

Maybe to the Roadhouse or mega-church CEO, GOTG 2 is a tragedy. Maybe he/she cries when Ego is defeated.

This might sound like I don’t think Amazon or McDonald’s has a place in our world, they certainly do, I just think it’s not a better place when they have ALL the places. I happen to like the pastor of the church on the corner near my house, he has a cool quirky delivery and is awfully likable. And, full disclosure, I might have a bias, I pastor a local church, and I love my job and our small community. Even if I don’t like the pastor on the corner, I do like the world that has space for him/her. I value places where we know and are known, where we can’t hide, where we can engage and connect. (YES, I KNOW that this can happen at mammoths, it’s just not the rule.) I prefer the record shop clerk who recommends a new album you’ve never heard “but will just love,” to the cashier who doesn’t remember your face or name, much less your favorite album. I love differences & new perspectives. I like opinions (even, maybe especially, if I don’t agree) – I want more than 2 political parties. I want to hear about your life & experiences, how you see the world around you. I don’t want to get on an airplane for 3 hours, get off, and not know I’m anywhere new. I love you and your story.

Ego was the villain to me.

Improvement

May 13, 2026/The Bridge Faith Community/Leave a comment

The site just asked me, what’s one small improvement you could make in your life? That feels like the beginning of a very long, detailed, vulnerable answer. Maybe that’s why it only asked for 1. So, I’ll think of one.

Should it be a physical improvement (like bigger arms), or an intellectual one (like learning what data centers are)? Maybe emotional? I should probably not overreact so much, probably shouldn’t hyper-focus and ruminate, either. A habitual improvement is the answer, right? I should not watch so much tv, should eat better, should build a deck and finish the wood floors in our dining room. Or maybe I should eliminate so many “should’s.”

Does answering that prompt somehow imply an unhappiness with who I am right now? Can we be both content AND driven to improve?

I just looked it up on the internet and the first result says, no, that we should not be content ever. The guy on reddit reasoned that contentment means we will not move forward. Others say yes, you can. We can be satisfied and ambitious.

Someone named Wong Sr Chin writes, “To attain contentment, you must change the CONTENT of your improvement [that’s clever, isn’t it??] so that it caters more for the needs of your inner being, besides satisfying your outer needs.” Sometimes, people write and talk in such a way that it gets pretty confusing. In short, Wong Sr Chin is advocating spirituality – that any contentment in materiality is ultimately empty. That’s true, despite what advertisements would have us believe – that new car or gambling addiction isn’t the missing piece to our wholeness.

What is the content of my contentment? More important than ‘what’ is ‘why’ I would want to improve. Why do I want to grow or evolve or become anyone other than who I am right now? First, DO I want to grow or evolve or become? And yes, I do. Now, why?

I think we are created to grow. It is our natural state. We are one thing, a seed, say, and we are given the task to become a tree or a vegetable or a bush. If we stay static, we get dull and uninspired, wasting away inside, until there’s just a dim light barely shining. Now the question is, what kind of tree do I want to grow into? Once I answer that, I will work backwards and create the framework. What does that tree do, what is it like, what does it like, what makes up that tree’s daily routine?

I’m very happy with me. I could not always say that, but I can now, and that does not mean that I am a finished product, or that who I am is who I will always be. So, what’s one small improvement I could make? Trees (of any kind) probably don’t grow so big and strong eating Oreos and blueberry muffins, so I could not eat as much sugar.

Another Cult Documentary

May 5, 2026/The Bridge Faith Community/Leave a comment

I watched a cult documentary on Hulu last weekend: The Rise & Fall of the Jesus Army. I wouldn’t say I liked it, but maybe it was educational. But even in that, I don’t know if I learned anything truly new. These accounts use the same template. Part I is the beginning, a community forms and people find acceptance, belonging, and meaning. It’s uplifting, the music is buoyant and light. Of course, it doesn’t end after part I so the beauty is tempered by the promise of pain to come. Part II brings that pain, the leader starts to demand more from the members (some combination of money & sex, always money & sex), he (with very few exceptions, always a he) begins taking advantage of his position. People begin to notice, very quietly at first, then finally those people start talking to each other and the water begins to boil. Part III is the reckoning, where the authorities get involved – arrests and death usually follow – and the community dissolves. The end.

The Jesus Army piled up so many offenses (so many), most of which were hidden and eventually unprosecuted.

These docs leave us wondering how the teachings of Jesus lead to manipulation (sexual and otherwise) and violence. It just doesn’t make any sense at all. How do we take the actual Bible (not just the one we’ve been sold on tv), a book about love and life, and make it about hate and death?

Yes, I’ve heard that absolute power corrupts absolutely, but is it that simple? Do these people plant these beautiful spaces, and then turn monstrous when they are held up as superheroes? Do they mean well at the beginning, then lose their way? Do they just see an opportunity to satisfy their desires and leave Jesus behind? OR are they using the Gospel and Christianity as vehicles they can drive anywhere, even to hell?

I like to think there are no such things as monsters, just degrees of confusion and brokenness (which, of course, lead to monstrous behavior.) I think these people are very similar to everyone else, just wildly misguided at some particular significant point in their lives. Maybe that’s not true.

Morrissey asks in his great song “Sister, I’m A Poet,” “Is evil something you are? Or something you do?” And I believe the answer is that it’s something we do, not what we are. But is that just the optimistic naivety of a sucker? Are there people who are evil, through and through, who have corrupted their created nature?

Maybe more importantly, when are we all going to learn anything from this template? I never blame the followers, I know why and how they get tangled up in these cults. But the repetition of the leadership is maddening. That saying, those who don’t know the past are doomed to repeat it, is nonsense. We know it very well, and yet we keep running it on a loop, over and over again.

Now that I’m thinking, maybe all of this finding who we are from what we do is the thing that isn’t working. Maybe the real answer is to discover who we really are, and let that inform everything we do, instead.

…And maybe I’ll just stay a hopeful sucker forever. I hope so.

Love With A Capital L

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

Tag: perspective