2023-03-06T19:54:45+00:00

Another Last of the Firsts

March 6, 2023/The Bridge Faith Community/Leave a comment

Today is the first day of high school baseball practice for my son, whom I love more than I can ever tell you. He deserves everything wonderful, and if you know him, you agree with me. It’ll be the last first day of practice, and that fills me with every kind of emotion you can imagine. So let’s talk about Argo instead.

Argo won the best picture Oscar in 2012. I hadn’t seen it until yesterday, I always wanted to, and who knows why I didn’t? It was a full day with lots of weight, stimulation and being “on.” After speaking publicly, I am wide open and terribly vulnerable, so I usually try to avoid much personal contact afterwards for a block of time. Yesterday I didn’t have a choice, and by the time I returned home and finished the last of my responsibilities, I crashed into the belly of my soft, comfy sofa.

Probably the best thing I could’ve watched was something I’d seen a thousand times before, like Return of the Jedi or the first Avengers. I like them and don’t have to plug in at all. The worst thing would’ve been a breathlessly suspenseful thriller that I had never seen before about the extraction of American hostages trapped in Iran in 1979-80. 81% of Google users “liked” it, which makes me wonder about the other 19. Who are they, and why do they hate movies so much? Maybe they just hate Ben Affleck?

Instead of watching through half-closed eyelids in my couch, I watched the last hour standing in the middle of the room. This was not a restful experience in the least.

Anyway. When Affleck arrives in Iran, meets the hostages and informs them that they will be a movie crew scouting locations for a science-fiction movie (“Argo”), they have to decide if they will participate in this human heist. The 6 men & women haven’t left the Canadian embassy for months, are in grave danger, but this plan is “the best of the bad ideas” and presents overwhelming danger, as well. Would they become paralyzed by their fear and incapable of movement? Would they risk everything? And if so, would that risk end in America or in death?

How many times are we faced with the same decision? We’re confined to a “room” we know, whether it’s a relationship, job, worldview, whatever, and leaving is terrifying. Usually someone comes through the door with an offer, an invitation – someone has to, we simply don’t leave on our own – and the scene is the same. What if it doesn’t work out? What if we fail? What if there’s nothing and no one out there for me? How will it end?

We’ve all heard that awful cliche: better the devil you know. We all hate it, too. But cliches get that way because they’re often true. We do choose to stay in rotten dead-end jobs, with abusive, unfaithful boy- and girl-friends, seeing the world though cracked lenses because the fear of the unknown is vicious and unrelenting. The questions are the same, what if what if what if how will it end????? Will I be ok? Is this the right choice? How do I know?

The bad news is that we don’t. The hostages didn’t. It could’ve easily been a very different film, the tragedy of a doomed rescue attempt. We all know friends who have forgotten who they are and why they’re here and settled for 2am texts and generations of damage and a long tradition of outdated -isms. But the first step out the door, to write the 2 week notice, to take the shot, with the adrenaline freezing in your veins, is the hardest one, isn’t it?

High school is my boy’s Canadian embassy. And mine. He’s familiar, we’re familiar, it’s (relatively) safe, at least it appears safe. He knows where the rooms are, when the classes change. He is no prisoner here, at home, he’s only confined by the chains in his mind. What will he do when there are no more last firsts? Will he take that first, hardest step?

Will he fail? Of course he will. At least I hope he does. The only ones who don’t fail are the ones that stay inside these rooms. But that’s not true, either. What we don’t always recognize is that staying is failure, too, just a different sort. I hope he shoots a million times and misses a ton of them. I hope he dreams. And I hope he breaks out of all of these rooms and really lives.

Toothpaste Caps

February 27, 2023/The Bridge Faith Community/Leave a comment

In the modern classic The Incredibles, Bob (Mr. Incredible) returns home from some forbidden crime-fighting to an angry wife, Helen (Elastigirl, or Mrs. Incredible). They argue about the political ban on superheroes, moving, changing jobs, and sports for their son, but the argument isn’t about any of those things.

It’s the same in all of our relationships, isn’t it? The most common example of conflict in marriage revolves around the toothpaste cap. We all know no one actually leaves the cap off of the tube. Unless they do… Does this come from somewhere in real life? Why haven’t I thought about this sooner? I figured it was just some nonsensical hypothetical scenario, like making “widgets” in business classes. What kind of savage doesn’t put the cap back on? Maybe it is totally imagined, it has to be.

Anyway, it’s a solid example because toothpaste caps are small and insignificant, and the fights are big, loud, very significant, and not about oral hygiene or bathroom cleanliness at all. They’re about respect or value or minimization or resentment or fear or insecurity or inadequacy or regret, any number of reasons, really, and all things that have their roots much older and farther reaching than toothpaste. It’s like treating the cut in the skin rather than the broken bone that caused the tear.

There are 2 monsters in the closet here, 2 “broken bones,” as far as I can tell. First, we often hide, pretending that we’re perfect and nothing is wrong. That if we’re not fighting right now, then that must mean we have peace. We don’t communicate well, we ignore warning lights and signs, choosing to act like the white picket fence doesn’t have termites. This all comes from general, garden variety laziness and more importantly, our propensity to choose comfort, convenience, and ease.

I guess there’s only 1 monster, because that last paragraph was a list of symptoms, too. Helen finally ends the argument in the movie with, “This is NOT. ABOUT. YOU.” The bone that’s broken and in great need of attention is our narcissism. We are very selfish. The Bible calls this idolatry, and all that means is that we are our own gods, we are our own #1. I’m angry about the cap you left off because of what it says to/about me. I’m frustrated and resentful because you don’t do what I want you to do, what I think you should do. I’m offended because you are disrespectful of my wants and needs, scared because you aren’t properly deferential to me and my expectations, inadequate and insecure because you might not want or need me and what will that say about me???

This is almost entirely why we can’t talk about religion or politics like human beings. We identify with a position so closely that another position is not simply judging ideas or concepts or platforms, it is judging us. I’m so thoroughly identified, to discard my opinion is to discard me, to deem it less is to deem me less. We don’t usually do this with choice of condiments or sodas, so we can easily talk about the merits of ketchup without coming to blows. We cannot with our theology or our political affiliation.

Most conversations are variations on that Incredibles scene. We’re talking out loud about Dash playing sports, but barely concealed is a defense of our own worth and fear at becoming obsolete and discarded. And we are way too terrified to be vulnerable enough to drag the real issue into the light. So we dance around sports, tenets, and toothpaste caps, unable to say anything real.

It’s the most depressing scene in the movie by a mile, and every one of us can easily relate. We are all Bob Paar; Incredible, overflowing with so many talents, gifts and abilities…and wildly desperate that you notice. The thing is that all of the ways we try too hard to be these pathetic gods only obscure how super we really are.

Ant-Sized Expectations

February 22, 2023/The Bridge Faith Community/Leave a comment

I saw Ant-Man & The Wasp: Quantumania Monday afternoon. After the pieces of garbage that were Love & Thunder and She-Hulk, I was unsure that I’d see it at all, much less in the theater. But I did, on opening weekend, no less. And despite the terrible critical reviews, I very much liked it. Here are a few reasons why:

Love & Thunder and She-Hulk made fun of me. They treated these movies as if they had heard the criticism of “serious” auteurs and wanted to sit at the cool table, too, so they ridiculed those of us who found ourselves entertained and stimulated by their work. Before those 2 stinkers (and less so the output of the last few years), I made the argument that these movies were the mythology of our generation. Certainly not just sugary snacks for fanboys alone, they explored social and cultural issues through the lens of extraordinary people. The psychology of the characters (and all of us) were on display and gave us all more substance than we were prepared for, if only we had eyes to see and ears to hear. They were never Pulp Fiction or The Godfather, but to lazily write-off these movies as spandex daydreams for teenage boys was an offensively grievous error. Quantumania didn’t make fun of me. It wasn’t The Winter Soldier or Civil War, but it was a stand alone story that did not patronize (or at least, I did not feel patronized.) That’s 1.

The second is its wild visual unreality. Now, this was precisely the reason The Angel did not like it, but we are very different people. If our pop cultural preferences met at a party, not only would they not talk, mine would probably ask hers to leave immediately. Usually, our imaginations are drummed out of us as we age, we are encouraged to leave them behind and focus only on the world that we can see, touch, feel, and prove. When an artist remembers that we have been made to be fantastically creative beings, as in the Star Wars cantina (for example) or the Quantum Realm, we see our original imaging bursting through into an increasingly monochromatic landscape. There were no limits on colors, characters, no restraints on what could be possible. Of course, some of it didn’t work, but that’s what happens with shooting; sometimes, you miss. But I really love the risk of shooting. I hadn’t seen anything quite like it, and that’s inspiring to me.

But that’s enough about the actual movie (not that I don’t have anything else to say about it, I do). I’m wondering how much of my appreciation of Quantumania had to do with the steaming pile that was Love & Thunder. I think I’m sort of out on the MCU. Obviously, I’ll see the movies as they come out, I’ll watch the streaming shows, but they no longer captivate me. It was a beautiful time that I shared with my sons, we saw every one together as they were released. (Quantumania was the first one we didn’t, and don’t even get me started on the heartbreak of that.) Thor convinced me that those movies were of a time that had passed. Thor showed me what I already knew, everything changes. The movies change, we change, our reaction, our connection to them changes. With one swing of his hammer, Thor broke any idea of corporate trust or loyalty. I know, I know, the studios (including Marvel/Disney) care about me only as long as I’m buying tickets and paying for their streaming service, but the delusion is one I would have liked to keep. I took Love & Thunder and She-Hulk like a personal affront, like an act of disrespect. Why? They don’t care at all about me, they care about worldwide grosses and merchandising deals.

And on one hand, that stinks. But on the other, it’s pretty liberating. If I want to see the next one, I’ll see it. If not, I won’t. I don’t owe Disney anything. I’m a product, but so are they. (If it’s seems embarrassing for such an old man to come to such elementary conclusions this late, it’s not for me. I understand/understood perfectly, but I just didn’t want that to be the last word. I want to let my imagination run and dream, too.) I have no more expectations for quality – She-Hulk smashed that into tiny little pieces – so when something is good, like Quantumania, I enjoy myself. I don’t expect greatness, I don’t expect anything. I am free!

We Are In This Together

February 9, 2023/The Bridge Faith Community/Leave a comment

Last week, I wrote about my son’s high school basketball senior night, and I want to tell you that I was absolutely there, fully present and engaged. I wrote that there were 3 games left, so while it was the last home game, he still had games to play. The final game was last night. The last high school basketball game he will ever play.

It was wonderful. And it was awful. The Angel and I cried in the stands with a minute on the clock as the game reached its climax; the bad guys won on a basket with 9 seconds left. It was always going to take 2 hands (at least) to hold all of the flooding emotions with the care & respect they deserve. He’s learned so many lessons on the basketball court that will serve him well every day forward. And so did I.

Sports are important for lots of reasons, the least of them being the final score. I hope in 20 years, when he looks back, he is satisfied and carrying few regrets. My knees crack, my back hurts, I can’t sleep in certain positions because of my aching shoulders, and wouldn’t change a thing. I had dreams of being a Major League Baseball player, gave all I had through high school and college, and when I finally resigned to the fact that I simply wasn’t good enough (almost no one is), peace was all that remained. I loved all of it. Of course I wish I had enjoyed it more in moments, I wish I hadn’t carried losses for quite so long, I wish I had some more perspective. But those wishes are small and quiet, and when I sleep at night, I rest well (as long as it’s not in certain positions.) I hope he does, too.

The team we played last night was evenly matched, a solid rivalry. The gym is small and very, very noisy. I saw Billy Idol play at The Electric Factory in Philadelphia, and have not been the same since. When my family has to repeat themselves, they have Billy Idol to thank. This was not that, not soul rattling, but as far as high school basketball games go, it went to 11. Before games nowadays (do I sound like everyone’s dad?) they read a ridiculous sportsmanship pledge that no one listens to and even less follow. They say something along the lines of “cheer for your team, not against the other team,” and it’s all any of us can do to stifle our laughter. This school (Pequea Valley, the name has not been changed to protect the guilty) and their student section did not adhere. The most egregious offense was after the game, when a skinny underclassman, hyped up on his own insecurity, aggressively screamed in our players faces as they exited the court, almost following them into the locker room. I think the pre-game nonsense should be cut, it does nothing but draw attention to the inadequacy of the adults in the room. If we’re not going to follow through on the threat, we probably shouldn’t make it, right? If we don’t believe what we’re saying, everybody knows, and it feels disingenuous and embarrassing.

That last paragraph was a bit of a soap box, but this is a space where I work out what it means to live a life of love, what it means to live a beautiful life, and that requires processing. What you get here, if nothing else, is honesty. Maybe it’s garden variety narcissism to detail your own journey out loud, but I’m convinced it’s much more than that. When you listen to songs you love and read books & watch movies that make an impact, they are strikingly specific (Taylor Swift wrote a song about actually breaking up with John Mayer, John Lennon cried out for Help from inside his own deep despair), and in that specificity, they become universal.

I write about high school sports and who cares about high school sports? It’s simply a context for growth, adversity, effort, failure, and we all have that, no matter what the context is. I imagine no one particularly cares about my thoughts on some silly pledge of platitudes, but we all know hypocrisy and carefully crafted words that mean nothing at all, right? My heart swells and breaks as my boy becomes, and you totally understand 2 (or 2,000) hands. The Dallas Cowboys are my team, sadly, and that’s completely irrational – maybe yours isn’t a largely irrelevant football team, but we all have irrational attachments. We are in this together, far more similar than different.

One last thing. When a couple gets married, they honestly believe they will always feel the way they felt as they say “I do” every moment of every day. Then, a month, or 6 months, later, they look across the table and maybe don’t like that person very much, the love is gone, they’re broken, maybe they made a huge mistake, the marriage is over. And they hurt in isolation, hopeless. BUT if they would just reach out to the couple that’s been married for 30 years, and honestly share their fears, they’d hear that it’s everyone’s experience. It’s all natural and expected, nobody’s broken, just do the dishes, talk kindly, hold hands and lay like spoons when you go to bed.

It’s not narcissism or self-import, it’s the very human desire for connection and community. We are alive and we are here, now, sharing basketball games and our lives together.

Senior Night

January 31, 2023/The Bridge Faith Community/1 Comment

Tonight is Senior Night for the basketball team. There are 3 games left, and this is the last home game. Maybe there will be playoffs, but I don’t have anywhere close to the intellectual capacity to figure that out – the districts, sections, and classes have never made any sense to me. I imagine someone will tell me if we have more games.

This team is much much better than previous years. There was a toxic class to pass through the school and their influence will take time to dissipate, so this year was the first in rebuilding an entire culture and, playoffs or not, has been an almost total success in that. “Learning to win” is a tired sports cliche and the reason it’s tired is because it’s so often true. These boys are beginning to learn to win. Tonight, that isn’t an issue, they will probably not have to worry about winning. But the great thing about sports is that you never know. In the 1988 World Series, the Los Angeles Dodgers beat an unbeatable Oakland A’s team in 5 games. It was impossible, yet it happened. So maybe… but the result hardly matters.

Tonight is the first senior night for my oldest son (there will be another one for baseball in the spring.) We’ll walk him out to the middle of the court and smile and barely keep it together. Or we won’t and the Angel and I will cry like babies. Either way, we will be there, fully present, with each other and with all of the emotions surging in our hearts and souls.

I’m remembering the night I learned he was no longer an idea. The Angel took a test on the phone with me, of course I couldn’t wait to get home, and she gave me the news. I was on 422 coming through Lebanon and pulled over in front of the community college and wept, equal parts terror and elation. Well, not exactly equal parts. We had prayed for him and now he actually existed, it was more celebration and gratitude. But there was certainly terror, swirled in like the cream cheese filling in a pumpkin roll. What kind of daddy would I be? Was I ready? What kind of boy would he be? And a hundred million more questions.

If you’ve met him, you know how amazing he is. If you haven’t, I’m sorry, you really should.

We often refer to a 2 hands theology, and a 2 hands life. Nothing is usually just 1 thing, it’s a combination, more like a hurricane, of different, sometimes wildly conflicting emotions. Tonight, I’ll be proud of my boy, happy for the boy he’s been and the man he’s becoming and grateful that I got to watch and know him so well. I’ll also be heartbroken, crushed that he’ll not nap on my chest again, and frustrated that each day couldn’t have been forever. What a 2 hand anything requires is honesty. We show up as we are, feel what we feel, no hiding, no images. We don’t miss a thing. We don’t wake up and say “God was in this place and I was unaware.” We show up.

I think back to all of the moments that brought us here. I didn’t want to go to Lebanon Valley College, but somehow I found myself there, a business major in 2 classes with the Angel, who had a boyfriend for nearly all 4 years. She happened to drop him right on time. I happened to be in the computer lab one evening, and she happened to be there, too. I happened to talk to her, even though she was faaaaar out of my league. I happened to be on a plan that took more than 4 years – the last semester, which I shouldn’t have had, was when we met and went on our first date. We happened to go on that date, happened to get married, and happened to make this person who will have his senior night tonight.

I say “happened to” and “make” with the same posture. It all seems so orchestrated, almost as if there was a wonderfully loving God making paths, moving feet and softening so many hearts, which of course, He was. We didn’t make Samuel alone, couldn’t have ever made Samuel without the Creator of the Universe making him first.

So now, I want to tell you my answer, with 18 years of hindsight, to the question if I was a good daddy. Maybe. What I do know is that I was intentional. Everything I did (even the mistakes I made) I did on purpose. When he sits down with a therapist to complain about me, what he’ll say is that I hugged, kissed, and told him I loved him too much and too often. And I can live with that.

There are other places where I’ve written to him (beginning with that positive test on his first night), much more detail I could, and will, dive into, but those are only for him and I. Here, tonight is senior night and I will do the 2 things I have done every day of his life; I will be there, authentically, embarrassingly me, present and engaged, and more than that, more than anything else, I will love him.

High School Basketball

January 18, 2023/The Bridge Faith Community/Leave a comment

Earlier this week, I attended a high school basketball game and utterly lost my mind. I was embarrassed, my mother would have been mortified, everyone was looking at me in my head. It was just awful.

Now, I am very well aware of the woeful state of sports officiating. We all think it can’t get worse and then, of course, it does. It’s sort of a disorder where I can’t learn, and that means I am continually surprised. I imagine that that referees/umpires gather after games, heads down, disappointed, wondering if and how they can approach a passable level of competency. But I know some of them personally, and their posture is one of arrogant defiance, so that imagining I do is simply that, a dream with no basis in reality. Maybe they are great men, great dads, husbands, community leaders – in fact, I’d go so far as to say probably they are. They spend so much of their time in high school gyms and fields in service of these student-athletes, and that is no small feat.

It’s a pretty thankless job. Like in most things, we notice the bad and ignore the good. We scream in righteous indignation when the food is cold or the cashier is rude, and otherwise stay silent. In addition, with sports, the officials are dealing with delusional could-have-been’s living vicariously at the top of their lungs. They deserve our respect and kindness.

And in that thankless job, most officials are very, very bad. Both things can be true, and in this case, both things are. I spend most of our time post-game unpacking with my boys excusing the referees/umpires, reminding them they are human beings, how hard the job is and to remember that blame wasn’t helpful in Genesis 3 and it isn’t now.

So why was I crazy the other night? Sometimes bad calls are just bad calls: missed a strike, called a player safe, stepped on an end line, missed a travel. But sometimes, poor officials can lose control and put all of the players in danger of injury. It is no longer wins and losses, the issue is safety. The visiting team wasn’t very skilled so their game plan was much like the ‘80’s Pistons, MMA instead of basketball. I asked for fouls on both teams, tighten everything up, just something, anything, to protect the teams from each other and themselves.

When I wrote that I had lost my mind, that wasn’t entirely accurate. I hadn’t lost control, and certainly not everyone could even hear my comments. But I was embarrassed. Now what to do with that?

In the past, the old tapes would have ran rampant through my head, telling me how ridiculous I am, how I am one of those parents, how I’m a quick-tempered rage monster and I always would be. Those things aren’t true. I’m none of those things. As a teenager, there were holes in my bedroom walls because I didn’t know how to process my fear, hurt, and inadequacy. I am not a teenager anymore, and now I can understand me and my heart. I am not overwhelmed with my own lack of worth anymore. What I am is a work in progress, but what I also am is new. Both of those things can be true, and in this case, both things are. Those old tapes do not apply, they are obsolete. Those statements of identity no longer describe me.

I am grateful. The self-loathing is mostly gone, taking my crippling inadequacy and insecurities with it. The tapes are quieter and quieter, sometimes I can’t even hear them at all. The cool thing about growth is that if we keep our eyes open, there are teachers on every corner, even high school basketball games and incompetent officials to show us how far we’ve come and how far we’ve yet to go.

Best Of Me

January 11, 2023/The Bridge Faith Community/1 Comment

You already know what kind of films I like, but those are not the films that the Angel watches. To paraphrase something I read somewhere, if our cultural interests met at a party, they would not get along, would probably get into some sort of violent exchange. She likes love stories, of the rom-com genre, with or without the com. It’s the rom that stirs her. There was a time when her tastes would have been a dealbreaker, thankfully that time has past. Nick Hornby said maybe it doesn’t matter what you like, but what you are like, and that’s absolutely true.

Anyway, she’s quite sick lately, and yesterday we watched a movie called Best Of Me, based on a Nicholas Sparks novel. I didn’t really like it, but I like her very very much, so we watched it and cried together at the end.

This post is a little uncomfortable to write. You see, for most of my life, I have subscribed to the idea that great art comes from heartbreak. That nothing worthwhile comes from happiness or satisfaction. Blood On The Tracks, the Smiths, heartbreak, loss, painful revelation; those things are deep and heavy, authentic and honest. Losing My Religion was awesome, Shiny Happy People sucked.

In my line of work, I mostly deal with steaming heaps of relationship wreckage. I walk alongside and hold hands with broken hearts and spirits, that’s what I do and if I could compartmentalize or not invest so much of me, it wouldn’t hurt so much. But I can’t. I am a carrier, so every now and again, I fall apart out loud. (I recognize that’s not the most macho thing to say, maybe I’m not the most macho man. Whatever.) I see emotions, I feel energy every time I want into a room. You don’t have to tell me, I know. And that is who I am, and I’d have it no other way – I walk in & stay.

And I also often pretend that I am not deliriously happy, joyful, grateful and content in my home. These dumb tapes in my head that tell me those are shallow and superficial, there since junior high, squeal and hiss. But those tapes/beliefs are hopelessly defective. I talk, write, think so much about presence, not missing anything, living honest lives. That usually means the lows, because of our tendency to hide them, shoving them in the closets of our public Insta-image, lying that “everything is fine, great, couldn’t be better.” But it works both ways. To only give voice to the painful bass notes is equally disingenuous and leaves no room for the melody.

I looked at my wife through red, watery eyes and felt 2 distinct realities. A, I love this Angel as we are, and will for the rest of my life. We are full and totally recognize the blessings we have inexplicably been given. And 2, so many do not. So many live lives of sadness, emptiness, and meaninglessness. I have been in both spaces, probably more often in the second. But neither is superficial, neither is more valid or genuine than the other. Why would I not easily give voice to everything, ups, downs, celebrations, tears, Pulp Fiction AND Best of Me?

Great art comes from truth, and truth is found everywhere, if we only have eyes to see and the courage to be vulnerable in what we see and experience. Lives of presence and weight require 2 hands (to hold seemingly conflicting emotions/realities) and soft hearts that work exactly the way they’re designed. We rise and fall, dance and crumble, laugh and wail, honestly, without judgment or outdated, misguided valuations, and we do this all together.

And I suppose Shiny Happy People isn’t that bad.

The Hanggi Quote

January 4, 2023/The Bridge Faith Community/1 Comment

Kristin Hanggi wrote in a mass email I received today: How I create is a way I demonstrate self-love to myself.

This is the new year and a time that requires some examination, where and I and where do I want to go? Am I careful with you? Am I careful with me? What sort of energy am I releasing into the world? Maybe not so obviously, all of these questions are connected. If I am not careful with you, the energy I emit is a drain on us all, which will take me nowhere I’d like to go. I’d be actively impacting the world around me in a negative fashion.

Now, the only difficult question, from which I’ve historically turned my head, is if I’m careful with me. My focus points for the year address this deficiency. I never considered the connections until I read that we aren’t truly capable of caring for others without caring for ourselves. See, I used to think the crushing expectations I place on my own shoulders are are only for me. I used to think that if caring for you comes at the expense of my own well-being, that is an acceptable cost.

I’ve been wrong about that perspective. Expectations are expectations, and emptiness is always communicated. If I’m struggling to breathe, how can I help you breathe? If I’m smushed under the weight of my own burdens, how can I help to carry yours?

So I’m paying attention to the way I speak to me as an act of love. I’m watching my mouth when I talk about me as an act of love. And now, reading that Hanggi quote, I’m examining my spirit as I write this, considering the past effects on my heart anytime I build. Maybe I only think I need time away (that I call “down time”) – and maybe I’ve been wrong about that, too.

There’s no question time away from some things is valuable, we all need rest days, sometimes rest weeks, but what are those things? What if I’ve been taking the time away from the very things that give to me, that act as an infusion of life? Do I really need time down from that? If creation is an act of self-love, is down time choosing not to love?

It’s just a small sentence in a daily email that I very often quickly, mindlessly skim, but it asks so many important questions. And it’s entirely possible that the answer to the question “Do I really need time down from that?” is yes. Maybe we need time down from even the most wonderful, most energizing, things. But how will we know if we don’t ask???

A Christmas Life

December 27, 2022/The Bridge Faith Community/Leave a comment

I am the pastor of a small church in town. You might not know this because this space (lovewithacapitall.com) has been a separate room where I can talk about Morrissey (mostly) and other art and artists I like. At least as separate as I can be. The things we discuss here, we also discuss there – After all, I do write it, and the best, most authentic art comes from the most authentic parts of us. If I were to pretend I didn’t love Morrissey songs and Fight Club and superheroes, that would be to abandon certain important, meaningful parts of me. How can we connect on any sort of deep level while one of us is hiding or holding parts of him/her-self back and pretending to be something else,something we think the other wants us to be? Dishonesty and image making drive me insane. So, there (in the church virtual room), these cultural touchpoints relate explicitly to God and the complicated journey of faith. Here, not necessarily as explicitly, but they do relate.

Anyway, this particular faith community began in my living room, when the church to which I belonged closed its doors. That means I speak every Sunday, and each talk should probably contain one point the people who give their most valuable possession, their time, can use, just in case they don’t hear anything else. It’s shocking, but the truth is that not everyone present is hanging on each word I say. Gasp! On Saturday night, Christmas Eve, this ‘takeaway’ was that we don’t only celebrate Christmas once a year, but that we live Christmas lives.

What does that mean? What does a Christmas life look like? Maybe I should’ve given a bit more thought to that, it sounded like a pretty good phrase at the time, and maybe I did an adequate job at conveying the idea. Often times, we are having conversations in our heads & hearts, and very little has to be said to affect us in profound ways. For instance, let’s say you were feeling that you wanted to learn to play the guitar, then a character in the book you’re reading is a guitar player, then you’re listening to Howard Stern and he’s interviewing Slash, and then you come to a church service and I happen to be talking about Abraham and Campbell’s Heroes’ Journey and say, “Maybe you’re thinking of taking a new step…” And that’s all it takes. I don’t have to be eloquent or clear at all, it’s enough and your spirit and what I call God will do the rest.

I know a Christmas life doesn’t mean we spend money like wild animals buying things we don’t need and don’t really want in the first place, things we have to return or exchange. It doesn’t mean we buy landscaping and put it inside (though I guess it could mean that for you). It doesn’t mean we gain weight as if we’re preparing to hibernate for months (like I do). It doesn’t mean we make habits of superficial small talk with distant relatives (unless we actually care for them and the talk gets bigger and less superficial.)

It’s always easier to define what we are not, or who we don’t want to be, or what we don’t want to do, than it is to say Yes. But negative postures don’t change our lives. Wanting to not become my dad never got me closer to who I wanted to become, to who Chad was once the block of stone had been chipped away. What would it reveal? I wouldn’t be a groundhog or 10 million other things, but what would I be underneath it all? That’s the coolest thing about opening your eyes, what you’ll see.

So, here’s what I came up with. A Christmas life is one of imagination. It takes a very open mind that dreams to consider a story of a God coming as a baby to a 13 year old girl in a barn, and what it could all mean. It takes imagination to hope for something new, for a fresh word. A Christmas life hopes. We hope for more than we see, that I can be more, that you can be more, that it isn’t what it is, that we’re not simply what we’ve always been, that we can change our world. A Christmas life is relational. We ask, listen, think the best, hold each other, kiss, put our phones down and pay attention to the fantastic blessings in front of us. We have more friends than “friends.” Mostly a Christmas life loves. We love our people, our animals, our neighborhoods, our country, our planet. But we do not love these things at the expense of other neighborhoods, countries, or planets. We love those, too. We are awake and aware, looking for people to love and ways to love them that they understand and receive. A Christmas life does not miss sacred moments, and a Christmas life realizes that they are all sacred moments if we are intentionally present.

I wonder if all of that came across in my message. Who knows? I wonder if all of that comes across in my life. I think, to that thought, what a Christmas life would say is, “if it didn’t yesterday, it sure will today.”

(One more thing. You know, I know almost nothing about promotion or reaching more eyes for this blog. And what I do know, I shy away from, for several reasons. But it’s going to be a new year. Promotion doesn’t have to be to feed my ego and/or brag about numbers, it could totally be about connection and circles that overlap.So, I would love to know you’re there, so maybe we could dream together and talk about what A Christmas Life means to you, and maybe we could do what we can to usher in a new world. Just a thought.)

The Joy of Christmas

December 19, 2022/The Bridge Faith Community/Leave a comment

Another documentary I watched during my brief bout with COVID was Bob Ross: Happy Accidents, Betrayal & Greed. There might be quite a bit to say about the betrayal & greed parts, his shady business partners, but I have almost no interest in saying them. I’ll write next time about Ghislaine Maxwell, and similarly, I won’t spend a great deal of time detailing her many crimes, legal and otherwise.

Bob Ross was a painter on TV, teaching us all to be painters. I didn’t paint at all. I’d say it’s because I have next to no talent with a brush, Bob Ross would disagree. He believed we all could paint, and while you watched his Joy of Painting (a necessary addition to the “Joy of” craze of the time, along with the Joy of Sex and of Cooking), you would, too.

He made it look easy. So easy, in fact, that we’d all buy canvases and palettes and give it a whirl. I guess most of those who are truly gifted at anything make their talent look accessible. Slash is the guitarist for Guns N’ Roses and during his solos, I distinctly remember thinking that I could totally shred like that. I can play the guitar a little bit, but not like Slash. It turns out that it’s much harder than it looks. Especially so with Bob Ross. His landscapes seemed to require almost nothing to create, as if they were already there, only needing someone (anyone) to sweep away the outer layer and reveal them.

What Bob Ross wanted to do, more than anything, is to bring some beauty into the world. Or open our eyes to the beauty that already exists that we are all too distracted or busy or self-obsessed or broken or asleep to notice.

Christmas Day is Sunday.

[My youngest son loves Christmas music. I don’t know how it happened, the music that happens in this house is usually my choice and I NEVER listen to Christmas music. But he thinks the month of December is for carols and covers of old Christmas songs. As it turns out, he’s right and over the past few years has converted me. Yesterday I made a playlist of my favorites like Oi To The World and Merry Christmas (I Don’t Want To Fight Tonight) and especially Christmas (Baby Please Come Home). I have 13 versions of the latter on this playlist, and that seems just right.]

Too distracted or busy or self-obsessed or broken or asleep is as good a way as any to describe us all during the season. I’d also add too wrapped up in our to-do, to-buy lists. It’s over-commercialized and crass in it’s excess. But because a word has been hi-jacked doesn’t mean it can’t be reclaimed.

The lights on my neighbors house are lovely, my tree is awesome. We play music and sing along loudly as we decorate this house with ornaments and nativity sets and cards from close friends. We buy gifts for each other that none of us need because we want to express in this tiny, arbitrary way how much we care for them. And we really, really do. The Baby Please Come Home version by U2 is overwhelming. The whole season is built on The Baby That Changed Everything, and not Amazon, which is too easy to forget. But just because a holiday has been hi-jacked doesn’t mean it can’t be reclaimed, right?

So that’s what we’ll do. We’ll spend the time together, you and me, sharing our stories and our hearts, making the moments as significant and awesome as we are. Bob Ross was right, his idea was to create beauty with paint, but I was struck by the fact that his real artwork was his life and spirit. And so it is with us. We can wake up and create whatever we want, let’s just make it as spectacular is it should be, as that Baby deserves.

Love With A Capital L

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

Tag: perspective