2020-09-02T18:05:25+00:00

Wrong.

September 2, 2020/The Bridge Faith Community/Leave a comment

When the Fight Club movie was released, Lisa Schwartzbaum (critic for Entertainment Weekly) gave it a D. In the current issue, she reflected on that grade and said she hasn’t reconsidered, that all reviews are confined to a certain time period and should stay that way. Like, for instance, we cannot consider ‘80’s comedies through a 2020 lens. There will be socially problematic characters, jokes, plot lines and countless else that just doesn’t hold up. It has to be viewed as part of a complicated amalgam of context.

I think Citizen Kane is grossly overrated. I know exactly what Rosebud is and wish I didn’t, wish I didn’t spend the time watching wondering what the big deal was. However, it must have been awesome once.

Anyway, maybe Lisa Schwartzbaum had a point then, though I cannot imagine what it was, and surely would change that review today with the benefit of hindsight and wisdom. Maybe she wouldn’t, either, maybe she’d just continue to be wrong.

The point is, we change. Society changes. Our perspective changes. This is a given, right? Of course. Could you picture how much you would dislike the 18 year-old you if you ran into you at a party? I would at least feel very sorry for that very opinionated, misguided, insecure kid. And then I would be equally grateful that I’m not that kid, that I was open enough to change my deeply held positions on almost everything.

I think we’re probably all that way, which makes it all the more perplexing why we’re all so violently defending our current dogmas as if we have arrived at the apex of our own evolution. Doesn’t wisdom carry with it a level of experience and, with it, humility that we might not know everything about everything? Doesn’t it require that we hold with a looser grip?

I’m not mad at Lisa Schwartzbaum. Everybody makes mistakes from time to time, and I totally understand her desire not to amend her review. Who we were is who we were, not who we are, unless we haven’t learned anything, unless we stayed stubbornly planted in the mindset of our youth, unless we haven’t grown, unless we haven’t changed. And I can’t think of anything more depressing than that.

Army of Consumers

August 28, 2020/The Bridge Faith Community/Leave a comment

There were several people lining the Main Street of my town this morning painting buildings on canvases. We have a cool town square with an old theater, a college, and many small businesses – it’s a perfect place to paint and a better place to live. I like it here.

Anyway, immediately following these artists at work, on the outdoor chairs in front of the coffee shop were 2 kids, maybe 10 or 11 years old, both gazing at phone screens inches from their faces.

Sadly, I’m becoming an old man shaking my head about “these kids today.” I never wanted to be that guy, sweating through the crust on my face shouting from the porch to “Get off my lawn!!!” And yet here I am… I guess every person since the beginning of time swore they weren’t going to be their parents and then woke up one day with ear hair, wrinkly eyes and unreasonably strong opinions on underwear and weather.

Now that I have shamefully admitted to this condition, I can embrace it. It certainly looks like “these kids today” (like my own) are satisfied to consume, so what happens when there are no more producers? What happens when the painters are gone? What happens when the filmmakers are replaced by TikTok-ers?

Obviously, I love the blog format – it’s immediate and timely, perfect pictures and commentary of our rapidly changing culture. But will the things we create here last longer than a cycle? I wrote one called Echo 2 weeks ago that I was very pleased with, posted on both of my sites (!!), and it was well-received for a few days…and not read since. Will people be reading our heads & hearts in a year? In a month? Next week? Will the middle-schoolers in 2053 still be reading To Kill A Mockingbird and The Outsiders?

I know it’s not like no one under 25 is writing, it’s just an exaggeration. I’m just wondering out loud how much of an exaggeration it is. We wanted to write the Next Great Novel, now my boys and their friends want to be the next YouTube Fortnite sensation or Influencer (which is a legitimate thing to aspire to.) Or maybe they don’t. Maybe they just want to watch the next YouTube Fortnite sensation or be influenced.

I don’t know what that means for the poets and performers, but maybe COVID has already gutted that community anyway. Maybe it’ll be ok, just different. This is probably what our grandparents said when The Beatles were on Ed Sullivan, isn’t it? On some level we all think the things we like are better than their replacement, and I should just chill out about it.

I just wish that kid I saw would’ve been painting, too.

A guy at the gym

August 13, 2020/The Bridge Faith Community/Leave a comment

I go to the gym everyday. This isn’t a source of pride, it’s actually just the opposite. It’s an admission of my lack of discipline. I don’t take rest days, even though I know how important they are and would really like to take one here and there. It’s interesting how something healthy can transform so quickly, so quietly into a negative. I’m smart about the workouts themselves. I don’t train body parts on consecutive days, so I stay relatively strong and energetic, focused and grateful. The problem is with my spirit. Where my body is moving forward, for me working out every day subtly reinforces the belief that I am what I can do, what I look like, what I can lift, what I can accomplish, the number on a scale or plates on a bar. It may be arriving at the right house using the wrong road. Or using the right road and the wrong house. One of those.

That’s enough of that. AND I took yesterday off from the gym so that problem has pretty much been solved. (That’s how it works, right?)

There’s this guy at the gym who doesn’t re-rack the weights from the bar or clean the equipment when he’s finished (IN A GLOBAL PANDEMIC!!!!) I know! He leaves the bar loaded with sweat, germs, and weights like a monster.

Seriously? Seriously. So, I’m judging him as a monster and this morning had the opportunity to parent him a little. “Are you still working over there?” I asked. “Yes.” “Then why don’t you come with me and I’ll help you take those weights off.” He mumbled and shuffled over like a scolded child. I was the Hero of the Gym, keeping the world safe for everyone from the rude, selfish and disrespectful.

Except for afterwards in the locker room he says, “Goodbye,” (the 2nd time we’ve spoken) and asked me about my supersets and day splits. Now, I know he’s not been lifting weights too long, evidenced by his poor form and lack of any discernible plan, but I must have failed to remember somewhere along the way that he was just a guy in the gym.

I’m a man who reads the Bible and today I ended up in Matthew 9:36 “When he (Jesus) saw the crowds, he had compassion on them because they were confused and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd.” My Bible, which is apparently an older version of this one, says “their problems were so great and they didn’t know where to go for help.”

Isn’t that quite the picture of our environment right now? Our problems are all so great (all different, but we’re all feeling something huge on our hearts and shoulders) and we don’t know where to go for help. And then we turn around, our practical amnesia kicks in and we forget that so is everybody else. The vast majority aren’t monsters, just other human beings in a mess with no idea what to do or where to go for help.

Jesus had compassion on them, on us, on me, and maybe I could do the same.

RAIN!!!!

August 4, 2020/The Bridge Faith Community/Leave a comment

It’s raining. Actually, that’s an understatement. Tropical storm Isaias (pronounced, I think, E – sah – E – yas, I heard it’s Portuguese and that sounds like it might be true) is pounding the east coast of the United States, which is where I live. We need the rain, the grass has been brown-ish and dry and it has been unbearably humid for weeks and weeks.

On this damned humidity: I have asthma, but I don’t usually suffer anymore. When I was a child, I did, but not much anymore. Only if I exercise outside in the winter (so I don’t) or if the humidity is so high it strangles me. This is that kind of humidity. It’s like having a serial killer just outside my front door, lying in wait to choke me the second I leave.

So, we need the rain.

But in September 2011, another tropical storm (Lee) barreled into town, loaded like a freight train and flying like an aero plane. (That is a reference to a perfect Guns N’ Roses song as well as a story about a G N’ R cover band written by Chuck Klosterman that I just loooove. The song is Nightrain, by the way.) Lee came in and set up in the sky over my town, unmoving, and 3 days later, my house and everything I owned was underwater. This event was so significant to my family and I that we often speak of our lives in before- and after- flood terms. Each of us were forever changed. People were terrific and people (mostly people in utterly broken systems, like insurance companies and government agencies) were horrible. To quote a famous novel, “it was the best of times, it was the worst of times.”

Now we watch the weather and consume forecast models like addicts. A hard prolonged rain sets us on edge until the sun comes out. We check the basements and gutters over and over, every puddle is a sign that we should at least start to consider packing up our photo albums and overnight bags.

When we had to evacuate our home in 2011, we took only 1 tub of toys (Rescue Hero figures) because whose house really goes underwater in Pennsylvania? A few years later, we lent those Rescue Heroes to another family for their boys and they were returned 2 weeks ago, so as it pours against this window, that exact tub of toys is within arms reach.

My wife texted me an hour ago with a sad face and I know, baby, I know.

It’s interesting. If you ask me about it, I would tell you it’s one of the best things to ever happen to me. I am different and I wouldn’t be without that time of growth, of tremendous stretching. That’s true of most pain, though, isn’t it? While we don’t wish it to happen to anyone else, and likely wouldn’t choose to travel those roads again, we are thankful for who we are now. (At least I am;)

Except when it rains.

Family

July 8, 2020/The Bridge Faith Community/Leave a comment

We need to talk about The Family on Netflix. It’s about a super-secret Christian organization that may or may not be pulling all of the strings in America. Full disclosure: I’m only 2 episodes in (out of 5), maybe by episode 4 or 5 I will no longer use the phrase “may or may not be pulling the strings.” That appears to be the way it’s going. The music is ominous and in my experience, it’s not usually very awesome anytime anything is super-secret. But I don’t know that yet.

So far, it’s a group of boys hanging out together having Bible studies and playing football, men having clandestine meetings with politicians and world leaders, and women who say things like, “the men spend all their time serving others, who is serving them?” Maybe that’s ok. Maybe it’s even ok to have frat house-ish buildings with tax-exempt religious status, too.

But politicians seem to historically have pretty much trouble with infidelity, and this super-secret Family rationalizes these indiscretions with a shoulder shrug and a questionable reading of the story of David & Bathsheba: an “oh well, when you’re chosen by God, these missteps don’t matter much.” And then the bright lights go away, politicians keep their offices and their club memberships. And maybe that is how it should be. Forgiveness is a vital tenet of the faith, right? We all fall, right? These politicians get caught, (then, ONLY then, always after they get caught) are sorry, have a community in place around them to help pick up the pieces of their lives and re-dedicate themselves to their wives, children and constituents. Is that cool? Redemption in real time?

I suppose it depends on where you stand how you tell (or interpret) the story.

For the first 22 years of my life, I hated God and Christians. I would have heard this story as one of pure corruption. The “Family’ of swine are grossly manipulating a nation of marks, using Bible verses to achieve and increase their money and power. It would make me want to throw up all over their frat-houses and twisted insincere ‘apologies.’

Then I fell in love with Jesus and for the last 8 years, have been a pastor of a local church. Now, I hear this story and…

Well, if I am honest, I hear it exactly the same. However, the big difference is that now I can hear that there might be another side of the story. I can watch 2 episodes and think that though I don’t personally know John Ensign (former Senator from Nevada, whose repaired marriage ended in divorce after he resigned from his seat), he might not be a high character guy. But if he is in fact a swine, maybe they all aren’t. Maybe some are just young guys looking for meaning and a space where they can support the leaders of our country, love the people who live here, and play football in Washington DC grass.

When you gain or lose weight, it’s slow and over time, totally unnoticeable until someone you haven’t seen for a while reacts, right? It’s that way with spiritual growth. We don’t really feel like we’re moving all that much, still make mistakes, still raise our voices to our children, get heated when we’re cut off in traffic. But it’s less often. And there’s less and less time between when we act like idiots and when we know we’ve acted like idiots. Watching this documentary, I can recognize that I am different. I still don’t have all the answers, but I’m far less inclined to pretend that I do, and that’s really something.

The Beach

July 2, 2020/The Bridge Faith Community/Leave a comment

Last week, my family took a short vacation to a Delaware beach and here are a few observations from our time away.

Human beings continue to grow while the bathing suits continue to shrink, at an almost equal rate. There was more skin on very public display than I was prepared to see, and I just cannot imagine the hormonal overdrive my teenage sons were forced to manage. I guess the takeaway is that maybe the self-loathing body consciousness that so many deal with on a daily basis is disappearing. That’s a very good thing, but I’m left wondering what acceptable beach attire will be in 10, 15, 20 years. I also now understand the stodgy old folks who were always complaining that “nothing is left to the imagination.” If we are shown everything all the time, what are the consequences? I know I’m dangerously close to becoming stodgy and old, but there is something to be said for butterflies, anticipation, and those beautiful intimate things we share only with another, isn’t there?

At the beach we stayed (Rehoboth), masks were mandatory only on the boardwalk. That said, in one block, we counted 60 individuals without any sort of face covering. Why? Why do we so strongly resist this mandate? I was in a convenience store recently where NO ONE (including the employee) wore the masks the signs lied were required. This screaming rebellion is obviously an act of aggression, but against who? Me? (What did I do?) You? (What did you do?) The Governor? The entire government? Authority? Maybe it’s simply a re-claiming of our personal freedom. In that case, I can probably get on board with that. 1 question: Is this revolution against any and all forms of law? Or just this one? It’s just a mask. Honestly, I hate it, too. I miss your faces & smiles and to wear them forever seems like that might be too high a cost, but it’s been 3 months and maybe we’ve saved lives…but we all draw our battle lines in different places.

Speaking of masks, I ordered a sport mask in early April that hasn’t arrived yet. They sent another when I complained that also hasn’t arrived. If masks are so important, I wish we could get some. Or at least, I wish I could someday get mine. (There’s going to be a super nasty review on Amazon coming.)

On the way home from the beach, I discovered that there was a COVID-19 outbreak and anyone who was there should be tested immediately. So I’m mostly quarantined again. I’ve been waiting like an animal for my gym to open and it does tomorrow and I CAN’T GO!!! I still don’t know if it’s a “new normal” or if this, too, shall pass, but I do know I’m different than when this all began. My vision is clear and focused – many of the things that proved distracting are being excised. My restlessness is being replaced with patience, gratitude and kindness. There’s a renewed sense of meaning and purpose. And to be honest with you, that’s a pretty great place to be.

It’ll be fascinating to look back in 1 or 5 or 20 years to see who we all became.

Both Hands

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

Both Hands is a terrific song by Ani DiFranco. It’s also what I’m calling this post. I should probably call it 2 Hands Theology, but if you’re reading this, maybe you’ll check that song out as you’re reading this (or after you read this, the two are unrelated as far as I can tell – the song is about a last night of passion and this post is about Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa. Hmm. Maybe they are related…I’ll try to tie these 2 clouds together at the end.)

So. The new 30 For 30 ESPN documentary is about the great home run race of 1998. These 2 behemoths hit homeruns at a rate we hadn’t seen before, breaking all records and “saving baseball.” Later, we’d acknowledge the fact that was hiding in plain sight all along: that they were juiced out of their minds. Of course we knew. Everybody knew. But we agreed to act shocked and disgusted later if anybody pointed out this heaving musclebound mammoth in the middle of the room. A few years later, Barry Bonds would return from the offseason with 30 extra pounds of muscle and a hat sized 25% bigger than last year and break that homerun record.

Now, I really couldn’t care less about the discussion of performance enhancing drugs and statistics and halls of fame. We were happy then to pretend, so maybe the asterisk belongs in our homes and not next to Bonds’ 73. Whatever.

What I care about is how our lives and the surrounding circumstances are rarely strictly black and white. We pretend they are, too. We have such frustration with the complexity of reality, of authenticity.

We loved the home run race. They were just really great guys playing the game they loved for us. (Probably not.)

Then, they were “outed” as “cheaters.” Sosa lied to Congress and pretended he couldn’t speak English. They were monsters. (Also probably not.)

Instead, I would be willing to bet they are human beings, just like me and you. Maybe under the weight of expectation and dollars, I would make the same decision.

I pastor a small church in a small town and all through the old Testament, we read the story of the Israelites, “God’s chosen people.” The narrative is a roller coaster, where they make all the mistakes, call out and are rescued, then make all the mistakes again until they call out and are rescued again, then make all the mistakes again and on and on, ad nauseam. We read that and say “Those people,” while shaking our heads. King David is “a man after God’s own heart,” AND a guy who slept with his buddy’s wife and when she was pregnant, had him killed. There are examples on nearly every page of the Bible of things that don’t fit. Our palms get sweaty because of the unresolved nature, the inability to generalize. What do we do when our boxes absolutely don’t apply?

Barry Bonds is the best baseball player I’ve ever seen, narrowly beating Roger Clemens for that imaginary honor. Both were, by all accounts, humongous donkeys to everyone they viewed as less than them. All of that is true. I had posters of Clemens on my wall growing up. (I also had posters of Morrissey. On one side was toxic masculinity and on the other, its antithesis.)

The danger of judgment is that judgment is usually based on only one aspect of our personality or behavior. McGwire and Sosa are cheaters…and dads and friends and grandfathers and neighbors and would probably carry an elderly woman’s groceries into her house for her. (I’m not sure about Bonds or Clemens carrying groceries, though, but who knows? For sure not me.)

David is flawed. He’s also courageous and forgiving and faithful. The Israelites are a foolish, stubborn lot who live a maddening loop. And yet there is tremendous kindness and generosity as this loop repeats. We are all of this. God, and the Bible, seem very comfortable with us, with this dichotomy.

Ani and her girlfriend can’t make it work, no matter “how hard they tried.” This is their “swan song.” And yet they are sharing this moment, clearly still in love. Both can be true. As a country, as neighbors, as a culture, we’ve been sold a lie that we are all 1 thing. We are Democrats OR Republicans and forced to draw battle lines and choose sides. The truth is, we are far more like a Venn diagram, where the vast majority of us overlap. Of course there are parts that don’t, but when did we start to believe that those were the only parts that matter?

It’s easy to hold tightly to our need to judge and label, it neatly suits our need for control. And look where easy got us; do you feel in control? Maybe we need to adopt this 2 Hands Theology and this fresh, new metanarrative where we are fingers AND toes, cheaters AND daddies, foolish AND faithful, but always human.

A Tale of Two 30 For 30’s

June 10, 2020/The Bridge Faith Community/Leave a comment

2 different documentaries were released by ESPN this year followed much the same outline: Huge star athlete brought down by scandal and where is he now? They clung pretty close to the template, but they felt like polar opposites.

Lance Armstrong won 7 Tour de France’s (Tours de France?) amid wide doping speculation that he vehemently denied, destroying the lives of all those who happened to get in his way. As it turns out, he was using performance enhancing drugs forever and if you search Tour de France winners, his name is excised. Nobody won those years.

Michael Vick transformed football by transforming the quarterback position – everything is different today directly because of his talent, success and impact…until he was jailed for nearly 2 years for dogfighting. He returned to football and was, again, successful on the field but still walks around with the criminal brand he earned.

Now, why are they so different? On the surface, it’s just 2 supremely gifted athletes who lost everything. And so what? Why do we care?

They are different because Armstrong continues to blame everyone else. He was, by all accounts, a mean, nasty, arrogant jerk. It is still not his fault. He admits his act through clenched teeth, but it is only in the context of “everyone else was doing it.” The real villains in his story are the people who blew the whistle to bring down such an American hero. The film ends and we did not enjoy it. We do not like him. We would NEVER trust Lance Armstrong.

They are different because Vick has looked (and continues to look) squarely in the mirror at his own wrongdoing. He has reasons but never excuses. He was the one responsible for his downfall. We did enjoy this film. We may not like or understand him, but we are proud of him. His is a story of redemption and beauty.

(I recognize 2 things. 1. That Vick’s crimes were far more heinous than Armstrong’s. I do not and could not ever defend what he did. 2. I never guessed that I’d call a film that included some of the ugliest behavior I’ve seen “a story of… beauty.”)

Now, so what, why do we care? Genesis 3 has a man passively, quietly stand by while the woman eats the fruit specifically forbidden. When God asks them about it, the man says, “She did it!” Then continues, “And as far as that goes, You put her here!” God asks her, and she says, “It was the serpent, he tricked me!”

Today has us all explaining that “He did it!” “She made me!” “I was scared what would happen if I didn’t go along.” I clicked because she didn’t…”

Genesis 3, Adam, Eden, 2020, me, you, Cleona, Los Angeles. “I’m sorry, but…” is just another way to say “you’re mad, but it’s not my fault.” It’s your fault, or his, or theirs. I only know it’s not mine, or if it is, I’m going to do any sort of contortion to avoid the responsibility of the action.

We care because blame is as old as human beings and it is still just as gross as it was the first time. It has never gotten less obvious or less pathetic.

The problem is that it’s such a lie. Dishonesty interrupts relationship, distracts from connection, until we are so far apart we have no idea what’s real and what isn’t. You and I will have conflict. You and I will disagree. I will let you down. You will, too. Each close relationship has countless hiccups, missteps and offenses that we endure. Blame is the wall that makes forgiveness impossible and prevents reconciliation absolutely, our arrogance in this deception keeps us behind masks of being “right.”

There is amazing power in “I’m sorry,” the kind of power that allows us to celebrate Michael Vick and shake our heads at Lance Armstrong. The kind that makes marriages work and friendships last. The kind that that gives fresh starts, leads us to grow and transform into brand new me’s and you’s and Michael Vick’s (but not yet Lance Armstrong’s), and sees what is possible instead of what has always been.

The Barkley

May 26, 2020/The Bridge Faith Community/Leave a comment

You know I love to watch documentaries… I may need forgiveness in a minute, my neighbor just flooded the street with the sweet smell of burning tires and my headache is beginning and stomach turning and maybe the fumes will cause all kinds of nonsense. No, I don’t know why they do the things they do, I just know they do. I don’t have to know why. If you come by any night between 9-11pm, they’re outside revving various engines and you can ask them yourself.

Anyway, I love documentaries, right? I saw one Friday that was my very favorite. It’s called The Barkley Marathons and details a roughly 130 mile ultra marathon through the mountains of Tennessee. Most years, people don’t finish. Since its inception, 13 people have finished. It’s called a race, but that implies competition and the only competition is against the course and against the voices in your own head that tell you to stop, you can’t do it.

I have 3 quotes I wrote down to talk about with you.

The Barkley was created to “Give people the opportunity to really find out something about themselves.” What would I find out about myself in 130 miles that I wouldn’t otherwise? Everything. We do planks in this house and they always end with my face inches from Samuel’s, saying, “you can do this, your body can do this, it’s only your mind telling you you can’t, and that isn’t true, it’s lying to you. I KNOW you can.” And then he does, goes longer than he thought was possible for his screaming muscles, and he finds out that the limits he thought he had minutes ago aren’t actually his limits at all.

“You never know how much you can do until you try to do more.” I think we’re conditioned to seek comfort, so when that desire is threatened, we stop. It’s called our Comfort Zone, and it’s so much more dangerous than bears and mountain lions and my neighbors. Our soft cozy couches encourage complacency, and complacent isn’t where we were called to be. (Contentment is. They are different, and we should maybe talk about that some time.) We are called to grow and growth requires discomfort. Growth requires us to try something new, something we hadn’t done, something at which we might fail (gasp!).

What is that old cliche? The only way you can not fail is to never try anything new. The only way you can never miss the last shot is to never take it.

Growth requires us to risk. Because maybe we can. This Barkley Marathon is like everything else – nobody could do it until somebody did. It was impossible until it wasn’t. No one could run a sub-4 minute mile, but then when Bannister did, many others followed.

I don’t know if we’re afraid to fail or afraid to succeed (probably both), I just know we’re afraid.

So these people start the race and it’s hot or it rains. They have no idea where to go, there’s no map and the route changes every year. The creator, Lazarus, says, “So many things aren’t going to be the way you planned it,” and that sounds EXACTLY like this year, 2020. Well, it sounds like every year, to be honest.

And when we face these uncertainties, these disruptions, then what do we do? Do we hold tighter to our plans? Grasp even angrier for some form of control? Do we quit? Do we hide?

Or will we take another step?

I married a couple Saturday and, every wedding I officiate, I reflect on the tremendous risk they’re taking. Saying “I do” to another and saying “I do” to this ridiculous marathon is so similar. We don’t know where it’s going, and when it goes there, will I be enough, can I do it??? It’s the same as saying “I do” to Jesus and “I do” to our lives. Maybe we can’t do it today, maybe not tomorrow, but we have to ask, we have to try. It’s the greatest moment of a wedding, that space between my question and their answer. I saw the significance of the choice in their eyes, and I knew they understood what it meant to look straight up a mountain face they did not know for sure they could climb. And we all celebrated like crazy when they said they would find out

Panem & Pennsylvania

May 19, 2020May 19, 2020/The Bridge Faith Community/Leave a comment

The Hunger Games was a wildly successful trilogy of books that was adapted into 4 movies. They were so successful that a brand new prequel novel is/has been released this month – wildly successful things aren’t ever left alone to age gracefully, every cent must be ruthlessly squeezed from marks whose only crime is appreciation. They were so successful that I protested their popularity and avoided them at all costs. I imagine I would be avoiding them still if it wasn’t for the woman who lives in this house. You make all sorts of compromises when you get married, right? Watching movies you would never watch under any other circumstance is just one. (Letting your sweet bride hog all of the covers is another, but that isn’t really the point here.)

We are spending the quarantine watching lots of movies, and my lovely Angel has been wanting to see the entire Hunger Games series, so we spent 4 days with our heroine Katniss Everdeen. I won’t go into any reviews or explanations here, but I will potentially spoil the ending.

(Incidentally, I did like it a lot, as it turns out. But I like everything. Except Coldplay, I don’t like Coldplay.)

So stop here if you care, if 5 years just wasn’t enough time to see it.

If you’re still here, it’s your problem now. Anyway, the last lines of the movie are spoken to her baby: “ Did you have a nightmare? I have nightmares too. Someday I’ll explain it to you. Why they came. Why they won’t ever go away. But I’ll tell you how I survive it. I make a list in my head. Of all the good things I’ve seen someone do. Every little thing I could remember. It’s like a game. I do it over and over. Gets a little tedious after all these years, but… There are much worse games to play.”

It’s an awesome moment, but why am I writing about it? There are many, many awesome moments every day. (Hugs, kisses, magic tricks, chocolate, pushups, walks, People’s Court, when my boys wake up, when my special lady comes home, great songs…so many awesome moments.) This one, though, was particularly relevant. We have nightmares. We’re caught in a global nightmare in addition to the nightmares we face every day. Broken relationships, broken hearts, broken bones, lost jobs, divorce, war, anger, bitterness, fear, inadequacy, illness, headaches, anxiety, fear, and on and on… and what we all want to know is how do we survive them? How do we move through them? How do we keep waking up and getting out of bed in the morning???

And Katniss has the same answer that the apostle Paul had 2 thousand years ago. He writes in Philippians 4:8, “Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable–if anything is excellent or praiseworthy–think about such things.” Now, Paul has been through much pain, suffering, an almost endless string of trials, and he says he knows how to be content “whatever the circumstances.” I think this is the why and how that Katniss has figured out.

I know we are all dealing with so much – whatever our specific nightmares are – and we are all desperately searching for a why and a how. And we have been looking to contemporaries for answers. Maybe our search is too limited. Too often, the Bible gets mistaken as outdated, ancient words for ancient people in ancient times that has no use for us here, now, today. But this Divine wisdom might be exactly what we’re looking for, if only we have eyes to see it wherever it shows up. Maybe it was the answer in Philippi & Jerusalem then, in Panem & Pennsylvania today.

If we make a list of what’s noble, pure, lovely, of all the good things we’ve seen people do, every little thing we can remember…I wonder how much that could impact mornings and the way we see our noisy neighbors and our shady politicians. I wonder how much that could impact our lives, and in that, how much that would impact our world.

Love With A Capital L

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

Tag: perspective