2022-12-19T20:48:26+00:00

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.

Plumb Lines

December 15, 2022December 15, 2022/The Bridge Faith Community/Leave a comment

As we race towards the end of the year and the beginning of a new one, it is my practice to reflect on where I’ve come from and look to where I’m going. I pick a focus word or 2 and make a plan to move forward (in pencil). There have been times when what is in front of me is intimidating in its scope, like staring at a smooth, slick wall stretching up into the clouds. Where do I even start?

If you’ve ever watched the show Hoarders, as the houses fall into such a state of disrepair, the people fall into a state of apathy. The work is so vast, it’s hard to see any way out. They have no idea how to clean what used to be their home but is now just a storage space for dirty dishes, trash, and junk. There is no end in sight, no light at the end of a massive tunnel.

A life can feel exactly the same. I remember many times, for seasons or years, where my soul was one of those houses. There were behaviors that didn’t serve me well, destructive habits, the worst tape loops playing in my head, self-sabotage, all buried under an avalanche of unhealthy perspectives. The task, cleaning me up, creating new pathways, was so enormous, I ended the next year with, at best, the same work ahead as the previous.

What I so clearly see now is that the answer is the same for the houses as my life, put a few dishes in the sink today. Then a few more tomorrow. In the Bible, the exiled Jewish people return home and work begins to rebuild the temple. The old temple that had been razed was so grand, fantastically ornate and glorious, how could they ever possibly rebuild that one? The prophet Zechariah wrote, “Do not despise these small beginnings, for the Lord rejoices to see the work begin, to see the plumb line in Zerubbabel’s hand.” (Zech. 4:10)

There is a Japanese concept called kaisen, where continuous small, almost imperceptible changes compound, leaving the company, or process, drastically transformed.

I think this is what Zechariah is talking about, kaisen, or small beginnings. Set a plumb line – in this case, set our eyes on God and His vision for the temple, or our lives, families, communities, nations. This plumb line stays static, not swaying to meet the popular, convenient, or comfortable, and we begin to build with that as our guide. One block at a time. One dish. One moment. One lie in the tape loops that screamed in my ears. Just one. One step. We don’t need to know when the tunnel ends, or even where it will lead. We have a plumb line, and that plumb line is trustworthy and certain.

I know one step seems insignificant. We want to lose 100lbs by working out for 7 hours a day every day, but the next time that works will be the first, and we end up doing nothing. If we eat a bag of Oreos every day, maybe instead of eating none, we eat a bag minus one today. Or we do 1 pushup. Or read 1 verse.

We set the plumb line, don’t despise the small beginnings, and know that Our God, Our Creator, rejoices to see the work begin. Then, the next year, we look back and barely recognize the person who began the work. We are increasingly new. We can see our bed and sleep in it without risk of suffocating under all of the ways we harm ourselves.

There is an old adage, an answer to the question, “How do you eat an elephant?” One bite at a time. Maybe this year, we start taking bites.

Into Darkness

December 11, 2022December 12, 2022/The Bridge Faith Community/Leave a comment

I have the COVID. It’s nothing serious, just a cold, really. Though I’m feeling better, my chest remains tight and probably will for the next few days & weeks. I’m violating my own HIPAA rights to tell you this because the week on the couch has allowed me to watch too much tv, and you know, tv for me usually means documentaries, and the way I feel about these docs ends up in words here.

I watched some of Sons of Sam: A Descent Into Darkness, on Netflix, about a serial killer (or serial killers) in New York in the ‘70’s and beyond. David Berkowitz is widely regarded as the only “Son of Sam,” but there’s evidence to suggest that there are many more, centered around a satanic cult and a church called The Process. It’s super creepy and disturbing and I do not recommend it at all.

I said it was about serial killings, but it’s not entirely. It’s more about a guy named Maury Terry, a journalist who got wrapped up and dragged underwater by this case and obsessively chasing unexplored leads to the truth. Did he find that truth? Who knows? I guess he’s probably right, (that it was more than 1 person), but at what cost? You could probably count his life as another one taken by the Son(s) of Sam.

I also said I watched “some” of it. I used to be someone who, once I started something (book, album, movie, etc) would have to finish it. I no longer feel that way. When the doc turned down the dark paths of the occult, animal sacrifice, and snuff films, I skipped episodes 2 & 3, and watched the last.

If you eat nothing but Oreos, you will feel heavy, lethargic, and sick. In much the same way, the media we listen to and watch will affect our soul and spirit. This is good and bad. If we listen to positive messages, we begin to feel hopeful and optimistic. If we watch documentaries on the Son of Sam, we start to feel like there are bugs crawling under our skin and we can see the world outside through darkened lenses. This guy, Maury Terry, devoted his entire life to this quest, and I couldn’t take 4 hours before I needed to cleanse my mind.

Of course, we say it has no effect, but that’s like saying marketing and advertising have no effect. Those ridiculous beliefs come from a place of dangerous arrogance and lead to the McDonald’s drive-through eating McRib sandwiches without ever wondering why. The why is because what goes in matters. If pornography is something I enjoy, isn’t it likely the way I see sex and women will reflect those images? How about if I make a point to follow the “upworthy” Instagram page, a sort of a news site for beautiful things, might that change how I see the people around me?

What do we listen to? Watch? What do we eat? All of these things matter. Will we descend into darkness or keep our heads up in the clouds? This decision isn’t a magical way to avoid pain or sadness or depression or anything. Those things happen, they’re an integral part of life, we can’t wish them away. But we do get to choose how to interpret them. We get to pick the lenses through which we see the world.

We can skip 2 episodes or we can read the article and skip it all. We can turn it off and go outside. What feeds us? What inspires us? Maybe we could do more of those things. Maybe this kind of documentary does inspire some of us. The point is that we are intentional about it, that we are awake to the energy swirling around, and inside, of us and that we begin to pay attention to just how much of a say we actually get. And maybe, just for today, we spend a little less time descending and a few minutes more looking up?

Ruth Ryan

November 30, 2022/The Bridge Faith Community/Leave a comment

I took a short break from cult documentaries to watch the Netflix documentary on major league pitcher Nolan Ryan, Facing Nolan. If you were a ballplayer around that time, as I was, it would have been impossible to not love Nolan Ryan. He was the ultimate strikeout pitcher – the defensive flip side of the home run hitter – who threw a million miles an hour and had the confidence of all great strikeout pitchers. My very favorite moments in baseball were when a fastball pitcher faced a fastball hitter and both were absolutely positive that they were better. The pitcher threw fastballs, the hitter swung as hard as he could at those fastballs, and that’s how we figured things out. I was a pitcher who threw hard enough, so Nolan Ryan was a hero of mine.

The documentary was great (if unremarkable on it’s own) and brought back truckloads of memories. Sports, like songs, are time machines, precisely transporting us to who we were when we first experienced them. I remembered my dad, my room, the posters on the wall, my Swatch phone, my Nintendo, my bad haircuts and pegged acid-washed jeans, like I was there again.

Titled Facing Nolan, it would be understandable if you guessed Nolan Ryan was the subject, but you would be wrong, like I was. The real hero was Ruth Ryan, Nolan’s wife. 15 year-old me looked up to Nolan, but 47 year-old me sees Ruth as being the one we could emulate. I only cared about Nolan because he had freakish athletic gifts and an unparalleled work ethic, I never thought about if he was faithful to his wife, honest, a good friend or dad. It doesn’t matter anymore to me if someone is famous because they led the league in strikeouts (well, it doesn’t matter much;). I know now that it matters much more if we are rich in character and love, measuring our lives by the people around us.

The myth of the self-made man is make-believe, a fallacy dreamed up in marketers and filmmakers minds to sell products. They know very well, as long as we try to fill ourselves with stuff (experiences, cars, money, sneakers, etc) as islands, we can never be satisfied, so we will continue to buy and buy, moving on to the Next Big Thing to quench our insatiable thirst for more.

Nolan could be a hall of famer (he is) and have all the records (he does), but what if he got that predictable call from the Hall of Fame in an empty room with no one to celebrate with or to call? We can build more and bigger buildings to hold all of our countless possessions and have nothing at all.

Nolan was my hero then, but for the wrong reasons. His house was a home and his life was full of people to love, and who loved him. That was the real significance of his life, and all of our lives. I just don’t want to wake up some day and find out that I wasted my days trying to hold things instead of hands.

Church on a Thursday

November 22, 2022/The Bridge Faith Community/Leave a comment

Last night I took my son Samuel to see his first live music show. 2 artists (American Authors and the unfortunately named Phillip Phillips) in the Midtown Arts Center in the state capital. Adding to the excitement of the adventure, there wasn’t any parking and the building was barely marked and so easily missed that we weren’t entirely sure we had arrived even as we were walking inside.

So, we go in and sit and wait for the doors to the concert area to open, watching people and talking like friends. It is a beautiful under-acknowledged gift to actually like your children. Of course, we love them, we sort of have to. Also of course, there are times they drive us craazy. But to like them? That is an unguaranteed, unexpected, overwhelming blessing that is not to be overlooked.

American Authors opened – they were the reason we went, he feels like he discovered them and loves them like they’re pretty much his secret – and were terrific. He even got his picture taken with them that I’ll show you when I see you. But they played this one song, Deep Water, that is providing the thread that stitched us all, the entire night, this entire season of our lives, together, and is sliding seamlessly into the narrative of our communities (at church, work, school, towns & cities.)

Before I give you the lyrics, there’s a story in the Bible where the prophet Elijah is fleeing an evil king and queen and ends up hiding in a cave. He thinks he’s alone, but it’s there that he is ministered to by God – definitely not alone. Elijah is scared and complains that he’s being chased, and why is he being chased, what is going on, why why why, and that he’s the only one left. God answers the way God usually answers, without answering any of Elijah’s questions, BUT what He does is tell Elijah that there are more just like him and where to find them. God knows what we so easily forget; we don’t need answers, we just need someone to hold our hand. We just need someone to walk alongside. We just need someone to listen, to care, and to love (and who will love us.)

Now, Deep Water – the singer-songwriter referenced some heavy struggles (the deep water of the title) and his gratitude for the people who willingly waded into that water, sometimes to rescue, other times just to tread the same water in which he was treading.

“Please, tell me I won’t wash away. When it pulls me under, Will you make me stronger? Will you be my breath through the deep, deep water? Take me farther, give me one day longer Will you be my breath through the deep, deep water? When I’m sinking like a stone, At least I know I’m not alone.”

It’s not a superficial pretending that there isn’t water, or that the water isn’t deep, or that he wasn’t sinking like a stone. There was, it was, and he was. It’s not the need to fix that overflows from our fearful uncomfortability of this deep water. It’s only presence, sensitive to the times where we can “tell [him he] won’t wash away,” “make [him] stronger,” to “be [his] breath,” or to simply be in the water when he’s “sinking like a stone.”

This is our call.

I looked through watery eyes at my son who is, and will be again, in deep water. Just like the rest of us in that room and in every room. I pray that he has a tribe who will hold him up and be his breath, and that he can become the kind of person who will be theirs.

The most beautiful thing about a concert is that we are all there, we are all now, connected by the purity of our shared love. Life can be hard and we can think we are very, very different, but in the dark, on a Thursday night, affirming the creative spark that has been generously given by our Creator, we were all human, nothing more and nothing less.

Then, Phil Phil performed his biggest hit, Home, with these lyrics: “Hold on to me as we go, As we roll down this unfamiliar road. And although this wave (wave) is stringing us along, Just know you’re not alone ‘Cause I’m gonna make this place your home. Settle down, it’ll all be clear. Don’t pay no mind to the demons, They fill you with fear. The trouble, it might drag you down. If you get lost, you can always be found. Just know you’re not alone ‘Cause I’m gonna make this place your home.”

Well, this is just great, now I’m writing through watery eyes as I think about him again, about those who I have held onto as we go, who have been my breath, who found me when I was lost, about you. I know I’m not alone, you have all made this place my home.

The thing that gives me the most hope is my love pyramid scheme dream. If we can do this for each other, and we have, and we will continue, eventually we can all know we’re not alone and that we are all extravagantly loved.

Alternative Conclusions

November 16, 2022/The Bridge Faith Community/Leave a comment

Michael J Fox has been married to Tracy Pollan for 34 years. I remember her on Family Ties. I’m happy they’re still married. It’s always impressive when 2 people can stay in relationship for long periods of time, especially in one as close as a marriage. There are many, many reasons a couple wouldn’t make it, would become a statistic, and only one they would, so whenever I see it, I am encouraged in my own marriage and it gives me hope for all of us.

What I mean by that second one – hope for all of us – is that it’s obviously a boom time for division in this country, in this culture, where any disagreement or difference becomes a crack that soon evolves into a huge chasm that will separate us forever. So how does Alex P Keaton and a co-worker build a marriage that lasts, through kids, new jobs, and now Parkinson’s disease?

By most accounts, he’s a good person, but good people have bad moments, days, seasons, years. I imagine a debilitating disease like his, where his body no longer listens and behaves, easily feeds more and more of the bad – annoyance, anger, frustration, everything running the spectrum of human emotion. I’m pretty hard to live with without a good excuse, just because. So how? What’s the secret?

In a People magazine (remember magazines??) article, Tracy Pollan says, “We assume the best.”

You know how a somebody sends you a text and, even as you are reading it, you’ve given it a tone and ascribed a complete story to his/her motivation? It’s almost never a soft tone or great story. Or someone is walking your direction and you tighten up a little bit, expecting aggression, so the slightest action, however innocuous, becomes evidence to your fear-based hypothesis.

I’ve been working this out in my soul for months (maybe the years and years since my twenties), if you’ve read this space lately, you know about my hyper-focus on perspective. Yesterday I was invited to a ‘clergy’ breakfast at the local high school (I said I would go before I could talk myself out of it) and wasn’t looking forward. Religious people make me uncomfortable. The stories of what I would experience ran rampant through my head – not one of them positive. I was irritated before I even had an opportunity to be irritated.

So I turned up the CD (remember cds??) in my car – Madonna (remember Madonna??), ‘Like A Prayer’ on repeat, I love when she sings “just like a dream, you are not what you seem,” and sing along as loud as I can – and remembered. The Bible seems to have the word remember as a sort of refrain, there are things we do to remember. We remember because it usually leads to a perspective shift and eventually gratitude. Like, “This time was horrible, I thought I wouldn’t make it, but I did, and now when I remember that, I can probably weather today, too.” I happen to see the ‘how I made it’ as a gift and something for which to be thankful, so I lift my eyes and take another step.

Just because religious people have historically made me uncomfortable, maybe they won’t today. I am not who I was, and maybe they aren’t either. The meeting was good, for the record, but maybe it wouldn’t have been if I continued in the same old footprints. I wonder how many times we tell the same stories in the same tones that only lead down dark paths in our souls, leaving no room for alternative conclusions.

If we assume the best of each other, is it possible that we might find those alternative conclusions are actually not conclusions at all, but beginnings of conversation, understanding, and relationships? Maybe and maybe not, but it can’t be worse.

How Many Tricks Can a Pig Do In 1 Minute?

November 2, 2022/The Bridge Faith Community/Leave a comment

178 people named Hirokazu Tanaka came together in Tokyo on Saturday to break the Guinness World Record for largest gathering of people with the same first and last name, breaking a group of Martha Stewarts. That’s fascinating for lots of reasons. Hirokazu Tanaka? I don’t know 1 Martha Stewart (of course, there is the celebrity, but I don’t personally know even one), for people with that name to hold a world record and to have never crossed paths with one seems unlikely in retrospect. Maybe I have and just didn’t know. And, there’s a world record for this?

Most toothpicks in a beard (3,500), most tricks by a pig in one minute (13), longest duration spinning a basketball on a toothbrush (1 min 8 secs). People are very strange. I don’t know why any of these things matter enough to be noteworthy. Do we really need to know how many cans a parrot can open in a minute (35)? More importantly, do we care? How fast can someone burst 3 balloons using just their back (6 secs) or how many t-shirts can someone remove while heading a soccer ball (22)? I don’t think I care, yet here we are, so maybe I do.

Last week, in this space, I wrote about perspective. Is the world actually falling apart or are we looking only for pieces of the sky on the ground? Is today really a worse, more frightening time to live, or are we simply building a case and finding evidence to support that hypothesis? DO we see the world as it is, or as we are?

I pastor a church and teach the Bible. One of the most dangerous paths to travel is to seek and twist verses to match my already held beliefs, instead of discovering what they mean and bringing my ideas to them. (I do recognize it’s mostly impossible to read/teach an unbiased version of anything. Everything is colored by our experiences and filtered through our minds, hearts & souls. It is the height of arrogance to think we have the right answers on everything, untouched by footprints in the snow. It’s like those who think marketing doesn’t affect them. But we can, and must, try to find truth while remaining open to the very real possibility that the opinions we currently hold could, in fact, be wrong.)

Anyway, back to parrots opening cans, gatherings of Hirokazu Tanakas, and finding what we’re searching for. We read these stories and can come to a great number of conclusions that are not exactly complimentary. But we can also see them from a different angle, which is where I generally choose to stand. Human beings are amazing; interesting, quirky, and endlessly amusing. What makes someone wonder how many tricks their pig can do??? And then, makes them reach out to preserve that number for posterity?

What makes someone choose to be a nurse, or a therapist, or makes them get out of bed at 4am to workout? Why does she have that particular tattoo or listen to that podcast? What is it about that song or singer or movie that makes him love it the way he does? Why do we pick dogs or cats or bunnies or snakes as pets? What is your favorite color or dessert or topping on pizza?

And we are constantly growing and becoming, so the answers to those questions today will certainly (hopefully) not be the answers next year. I married the Angel and every day I learn more about her, every day I am surprised. We’ve been together for almost 25 years.

I get to pastor a church, and that means that one of the best parts of my job is getting to talk with, learn about/from others, and connect. I ask a million questions and listen to what they say, how they move, how their face scrunches up or eyes water, how they shift uncomfortably in their seats. It’s so great because you are so great.

The point is, it’s sometimes easy to think people are awful, untrustworthy, selfish, and sometimes we are. But that’s not all we are. There are other, much larger pieces to us that are smart, funny, generous, loyal, honest. Maybe if we could only open our eyes to those parts a bit more often, the world around us might transform to meet our imaginations, and then there would be less nasty political ads to mourn and more super weird world records to celebrate.

Stone Etchings

October 28, 2022/The Bridge Faith Community/Leave a comment

I’ve been thinking lately. The world around us has been crazy. I recognize that election cycles bring this sort of angry division to the forefront, but it certainly isn’t solely in and political discourse and nasty advertisements. It’s on Facebook and highways and in grocery stores and schools, Tuesday afternoons and Sunday mornings. Nowhere is exempt from this rage-filled polarization, seeping into the culture and transforming it into it’s own image.

Or is it?

Of course I see the mean posts, condescending looks, the (physical, emotional, spiritual) violence. How could I miss them? But they remain exceptions. I mostly find people to be kind, gracious, smart, funny, and generous.

Once I read that negative experiences print on our souls immediately, positive experiences take much longer to make an impact. This is why you can get 900 hearts or thumbs up and forget them, and 1 mean face emoji and wonder why for the rest of the day, week, year. That 1 mean face seems to weigh significantly more than 900 hearts.

Is that why the 1 person that cut us off on the road today stings in our brain while the rest of the relatively capable, conscientious drivers (99.99%) are unnoticed? Or the umpire’s 1 bad call trumps the 200 good ones?

I am not saying that the bad calls or dangerous risky drivers are unimportant. I’m not saying hateful posts are not problematic, or that the horrible incidents of violence should be ignored. They are symptoms of a broken world, of which we are all a part. We act out of our insecurities and fear just the same as the people that lead the news, and they all must be studied and addressed, all must be given their proper, loving attention.

What I think I am saying is that those heartbreaking incidents don’t have to steal our hope or drive us into despair. That person’s cutting remark isn’t proof that people are all awful. True, that person might be (or they might not be, they might be overwhelmed or tired or depressed or anything), but it isn’t a judgment on everyone.

My idea is that we probably get what we’re looking for. If we’re looking for fantastic songs, we’ll find them. Or smiles or empathy or help or respect or love. People hold doors open, let you go first, say hi, and are willing to spot your bench press.

The songs that suck are still there (Coldplay’s will, sadly, always exist;) but they don’t have to occupy as much of us and color as much of our outlook as we usually let them. Some marriages will still end in divorce, but lots and lots of marriages are inspiring and fulfilling. Some days it rains and the weather forecasters are shockingly wrong, and those errors stick out in our minds, but they are right waaaay more often, probably 352 days of the year.

It’s not that the good moments don’t print, it’s just that they take longer. The key is to give them that time. When someone says your shoes are nice, maybe we don’t shrug it off or tell them they’re wrong (like we so regularly do), maybe we just say “thanks,” and take a breath and appreciate our shoes and the person with the compliment with whom we should spend more time. Or look at the heart reaction on the picture of your dinner, think about the person who sent it, and count to 15. Or 100. However long it takes. Take the time to feel the softness of the skin on someone’s hand when you hold it, or the sweetness of their lips in a kiss. We all know there’s no one to vote for, but we get to vote – do we ever take the time to acknowledge how extraordinary that is?

It’s the difference between entitlement and gratitude, I suppose, and we won’t always get on the right side of that divide, but usually all it takes is some attention to the beautiful things to regain perspective. To look up and around. My son is going to have a high school “Senior Night” at the football game tonight, and if you listen carefully, wherever you are, you might hear my heart break. But I will be there, fully present. I have been there, truly been there, every day of his life so far, and I have thoroughly enjoyed those days. And yes, it’s sad that he’s not my baby boy anymore, but he’s not my baby boy anymore and that is no small gift. I will hold this moment tonight with 2 hands, I’ll cry and I’ll laugh, mourn and celebrate, and give it all the time it needs to etch into me in stone.

Last Season’s Clothes

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

So we’re all on a path, right? A long, sometimes wonderful, sometimes very rough, usually some level of uncomfortable, journey of growth and transformation. Sometimes we start on our own search for discovery, realization, and revelation. Sometimes we need to be kicked.

This is completely natural. This process comes standard from the factory, it’s built into everything. From Joseph Campbell’s literary Heroes Journey to Star Wars, the 4 part invitation of the Gospels (what Alexander Shaia calls the Quadratos) to Google.

But just because it’s natural doesn’t mean it’s easy.

If you take a long view, my life has followed a gradual line up and to the right, walking into becoming more and more myself. Of course there have been too many steps backwards (actually, who decides how many is too many – maybe it was just the right amount of stops and starts, the perfect number of falls and skinned knees) and that gradual line has been marked with spikes up as well as down, where I was thrust into periods of great ‘stretching.’ In the last week, it would appear that I happen to be in one of those right about now.

How it feels is like my clothes don’t fit anymore. They’re tight, restrictive, and leave me tugging at the seams, akwardly trying to adjust the garments or myself, in a doomed effort to stay in yesterday’s size. Like I said, it’s not the first or the last time.

How it feels is that I’m tired, which is to say, restless and uninspired, bored. And my life, my family, my community – they are anything but boring. It’s a mostly spiritual lethargy, and historically means I’m about to be kicked. So I do what I do, I sit down, metaphorically speaking. I sit down like a petulant toddler in the middle of this narrow path I’m on.

A very good friend said to me this morning, he had something to say but I wasn’t going to like it. I already knew what he would say, but sometimes you just need to hear it out loud. He said, “move.” I don’t think he meant pack my stuff and leave Pennsylvania, unless he did, but I’m pretty sure it was less specific. Move. Listen & do something new and fresh. Create. Climb up on the roof of my soul and jump off.

He’s right. I’m not sure when we talk about the people that impact us, we say, “he/she watched a lot of tv (or took tons of naps or had so many subscriptions to porn sites or was drunk every night or whatever, you get the point) and that was SOOOO awesome.” Those people took chances and followed the divine call on their lives (and nobody’s call is sitcom reruns, porn or alcohol), whatever it was. That call looks different for all of us, but we all have one.

I don’t think mine is to become a social media influencer or a boxer. The only thing I ever wanted to invent is weight sensitive windshield wipers that worked when they sensed a certain amount of water, but it turns out that already exists. I can’t sing or cook or complete higher math equations. I probably am here to love others up close in relationships (as opposed to loving others a million at a time, like…well, like somebody. I wonder if there is any way to love others other than face to face, one at a time. Anyway.) and I can’t do that from the ground with these clothes on.

It’s weird that the clothes that fit so well last season are so constricting now, and this space on the path used to seem so far away. We think when we get somewhere, we’ll have ‘made it,’ but as we soon discover, we’ve simply made it here, then there’s a new challenge, a new beginning, a new mountain to climb. We are thankful to have gotten here, content but not complacent. We have to choose to keep growing, keep stepping into the cycle. Otherwise, we stay where we are, lose our flavor and our light dims.

So here I go. I don’t know what this means, for me or for anyone else, but I do know I am, we are, in great hands. It reminds me of the last page of Chuck Palahniuk’s book Choke, where the characters muse, “I wonder what we’ll build.” It’s the phrase of anticipation and hope, as if everything will be different but that new everything will be wonderful.

HOCO 2022

October 10, 2022/The Bridge Faith Community/Leave a comment

My oldest son, in his senior year, went to his first Homecoming dance. I’m not convinced he would have, but as luck would have it, he was approached to escort one of the ladies on the homecoming court. She was quite lovely, so of course he said yes, and then proceeded to ask her to the dance.

If you’re not aware, asking a young woman to this dance is a PRODUCTION. Gone are the days when, after several weeks of battle with the fear of humiliating rejection, you would take a deep breath and ask, “do you wanna go to the homecoming dance with me?” And then wait what seemed like months for the answer. The same familiar fear of embarrassment remains, but now, the young man must create an adequately clever sign (somehow appearing light-hearted AND committed) and venture to the girl’s house to pop the question.

Anyway, she said yes, they both looked gorgeous, went (as friends, as far as I know) and had a wonderful time. That’s not what I want to talk about. I want to talk about the story of 2 other boys that I do not know. (The Angel & I were permitted to attend the dance – much to my boy’s horror – for pictures as the court and their escorts were announced.)

The first boy was very tall and very thin. He was dancing with his date, a girl, in a shockingly intimate fashion. (I recognize that I sometimes sound like everyone’s parents, old, old, old. I suppose that’s ok, I am someone’s parent and, there’s no way around it, pretty old.) I felt like I was watching something not meant for my eyes, for anyone else’s eyes. She was wearing a red dress. And so was he.

The next boy brought a girl who was wearing a too-short, shiny dress, carefully multi-colored hair, pulling him by the hand through the crowd, past the group of out of place parents, to reach her friends. He had scraggly unkempt patches of facial hair, disheveled hair, wore sneakers, jeans, and the piece de resistance, a Champion t-shirt.

The contrast was striking and obvious. One was totally respectful of his date, the formality of the evening, and himself. The other wore a t-shirt. One offered his special girl his most significant possession, the gift of his time – the time to plan, search for, and choose an appropriate oufit. The other wore dirty sneakers. One was unconventional, but clearly intentional. He lavished his undivided attention on his date, before just as much as during the actual event, who must’ve felt like the only woman in the world to him (which is exactly how every woman should feel to the man lucky enough to be taking her out). The other, an immature child, couldn’t even manage to shave.

Now, I have no interest in participating in the discussion of whether he should or should not have worn a dress. What is far more important to me is what’s happening underneath the skin rather than what we put over it.

Wide disrespect for everyone and everything and selfishness are direct descendants of insecurity and inadequacy. He simply can’t see others because he’s too busy looking for himself and who he is. And until he finds him, this silly facade will have to do, and for at least 1 night, the uniform of a sad pretender was a t-shirt. I have a giant soft spot in my heart for him because I know exactly the violence & pain of the “not enough” loop in my head. I didn’t wear t-shirts to formals or anything, my inadequacy manifested in different ways, whispered rather than screamed. But we know our own kinds, and can hear similar heartaches.

Maybe a red dress isn’t your preference, but this young man was nothing more or less than who he is right now. Maybe he won’t always wear a dress, or maybe he will. Like all of us, he’ll grow and change in lots of ways throughout his life, but one thing I hope sticks is his kind, passionate, thoughtfulness. The world needs more of that, more like him, no matter what they’re wearing.

Love With A Capital L

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

Tag: perspective