2026-09-09T17:32:27+00:00

Now, What You Hear Is Not A Test

September 9, 2026/The Bridge Faith Community/Leave a comment

The Angel & I spent last weekend’s holiday at a Labor Day party/picnic/bocce ball tournament. The food and company were excellent, we lost both of our games badly, and I got to spend some time with my family. The soundtrack for this sacred time was a best of the ‘80’s playlist. During the Sugar Hill Gang’s classic hit “Rapper’s Delight,” I watched my cousins sitting next to each other across the yard. They weren’t talking, they were just moving individually, in perfect time (with the music and each other), and mouthing every word (which is really saying something, “Rapper’s Delight” is very, very long). This continued for quite a while, covering quite a few songs.

My family hasn’t always been this close, there was a too-many-year period where we were estranged. We used to live next door to each other, then we moved, things happened, grudges & resentments happened, distance happened, then another thing happened, that distance didn’t matter anymore and we were reconciled. As I watched them, I thought of all that. I thought of my sister, and the language that close relationships have that transcends language and time. I thought of us and how much we all missed, and how much we still miss, deciding some sort of thing or another was more important than this.

So, then, I started to think about the relationships we share, and the reasons they end (or are placed on pause). I wonder if we even remember the reasons. We remember the times we spent, the fun we had, the memories we made, together, but we usually have a much harder time remembering the nonsense that keeps us apart.

We’ve taken to reading the “love chapter” in 1st Corinthians 13 every Sunday. Love is patient and kind and doesn’t keep any record of wrongs and never fails. Do these characteristics describe each of our interactions & conversations, do they even describe our homes and/or marriages?? I said earlier that the holiday was a “sacred time,” and the worship music was “Rapper’s Delight,” and that was true. Every time love becomes the cause and the effect, the motivation and the result, of our lives, God is the main character, and we may as well call those spaces church. Every time our love asks us to lay our own interests, vanity, control, and need to win, down, and we respond by doing just that, it is absolutely church. When we hold each other, listen, laugh, play, cry, these things are all church, and wherever they happen is the temple of God.

I’ve been in churches full of bitterness and unforgiveness and I’ve been in bars and gyms full of support, encouragement and capital L love. Monday, that yard was a temple, a monument to the God who made us and sustains us.

You know what else I thought? That we live in a world (comprised of millions of homes, streets, neighborhoods, communities, districts, states, countries, planets, and galaxies) in desperate need of the message of Jesus, the love of Jesus, the Gospel of Jesus. And we need to be the so-called (for lack of a better term) “brand ambassadors,” of the Gospel. We need to sing & dance along to this divine Story, over and over again, being living examples of possibility instead of clinging to our own little stories.

I realize that this, of course, doesn’t come easy (and spiritual attack is, sadly, very real), and can be quite painful, but that is also part of the Story we happen to be in. That’s why we simply can’t continue to miss the most beautiful, inspiring parts just because we’ve chosen to be somewhere else, divided by who cares what. These are our lives and we are our people, church is anywhere & everywhere, “Rapper’s Delight” is awesome, and I am truly grateful for (or in) all of it.

New Years Day

August 31, 2026/The Bridge Faith Community/Leave a comment

I’m thinking about New Years Day today.

Not the song, “New Years Day,” by U2, though it is fascinating what is happening with that band lately. There seems to be a severe backlash against them that is threatening to rewrite history. We all know and can agree their recent output is, um, not that good. (The free forced download of an album of this lesser work into our iTunes libraries several years ago didn’t help. Usually subpar albums come out, we may or may not listen, and we can immediately ignore it – this involuntary addition was an everyday reminder that we have this album we don’t like at all. We looked at U2, thought of this marketing ploy and underwhelming songs, and were incensed. It was a bad decision we couldn’t ignore.) Lately, U2 is average at best. (Incidentally, another thing that doesn’t help is that Bono has a son who is releasing terrific music under the band’s name Inhaler, further magnifying his father’s decline.) So now we’re deciding that they were never that great. The Joshua Tree is now just fine, “Sunday Bloody Sunday” was ok, and Zoo TV was too pretentious and self-important, just like they always were. Maybe some of this is true, (the “pretentious and self-important” part certainly is), and maybe “I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For,” isn’t as transcendent as we want it to be, but I kind of hate this kind of revisionism. U2 mattered, it’s impossible to tell the story of our generation without them. They are important and we loved them (though we could never love them as much as they love them). The Joshua Tree is in fact awesome, “One” is the best thing they did and is absolutely as life-changing as we thought it was. They’re pretty awful now, but that simply doesn’t change yesterday. Morrissey’s newest, Make-Up Is A Lie, is heartbreakingly bad, very nearly unlistenable, but could never tarnish “Suedehead” and “The World Is Full Of Crashing Bores.” If he releases a thousand more stinkers like Make-Up, we’ll all keep getting our hearts smashed, but they can never touch his legacy.

But this is not what I mean. Actual New Years Day, January 1, is the day we decide to change our lives. We wait and wait for that day to flip the calendar and magically, completely transform our lives.

Why wait? That’s what I’m interested in. Is it simply because we have an easy anniversary date: The Day I (whatever)? I’m thinking I’ll lose weight, begin a new daily schedule, floss my teeth, write this new book, start a hobby, it can be anything. Everything is possible today, just like it is on New Year’s Day.

I guess we wait because we don’t really want to make that change, we want to continue in the old ways for a few more months/days/hours. That has to be it, right? In that case, it probably won’t take, will it? If my diet is beginning tomorrow so today I can gorge myself on chocolate cake and Oreos, maybe the diet is doomed to failure.

It’s a life changed based in “should’s” – “I should not eat this chocolate cake and Oreos“ – and that kind of should almost never changed us for long. It’s a shift rooted in guilt, shame, who others say we’re supposed to be. The main idea is usually a negative, we should not (whatever), no more (whatever).

I guess I just think we all need more Yes’s. Yes to ourselves, our bodies, spirits, our minds, souls, to each other, to Our Creator. Yes to show up to these wonderful gifts that are our lives. Every real, lasting transformation begins with a yes, rather than a no.

And yes’s cant wait for tomorrow.

A Day of Possibility

August 24, 2026/The Bridge Faith Community/Leave a comment

The site is asking what my favorite recipe is, and I bet that is interesting to a certain group (even a very large group) of people, I’m just not sure that it’s me. We’ll talk about Mrs. Davis, instead.

Mrs. Davis is a fantastic Peacock limited science-fiction series that was released in 2023 and that I watched 2 weeks ago. Mrs. Davis is an Artificial Intelligence that has, essentially, become a god to the world. There is a nun on a quest to find the holy grail, and if she does, she intends to shut down Mrs. Davis. Her husband is Jesus, an ex-boyfriend who leads a group of “alpha” males, a horse, a mom who we all hate until the last 5 minutes of the last episode, and David Arquette as her dad. The show is truly original. I don’t remember the last time I had absolutely no idea what was going to happen.

The Jesus character was the most fascinating to me, for what might be obvious reasons by now. He is beautifully written and played as a loving, kind Savior (and restaurant cook/server). There are a few things, about Him and His story arc, that would definitely be considered blasphemous by some folks, but far more that is in keeping with the Jesus of the Bible. One of my very favorite exchanges is: Simone: Do you love her?!!? Jesus: I love everybody!!! It stops her and forces us all to look at His heart. I loved it, you should watch it immediately. Great art inspires us to run and makes us think we can totally fly.

I’m going to subscribe to Apple TV+ and start Ted Lasso this week. Nearly everyone I know has told me that I HAVE TO WATCH IT. So, I will, and I’ll tell you what I think. I imagine I’ll tell you how much I loooove it. If they’re right, I’ll tell you that.

Today is everybody’s 1st day back to school . The Angel works at an elementary school, and students came back today. My youngest son started his classes for his sophomore year at college. And my oldest is cramming for his next opportunity at work, which will begin next week. And here I am, listening to Rise Against, writing and catching up.

A very good friend and I recorded the 1st episode of a spirituality podcast yesterday. I plan to finish the book I’ve been working on forever (called We Have A Weight Problem, which isn’t about numbers on a scale at all) by Christmas. There’s a new space at our faith community that I just love (to clarify, I “just love” the space AND the faith community), where we create space to ask our questions about God, the Bible, and our spiritual lives.

It’s a new season that feels like possibility for so many of us. Many of those in my circle are choosing new pathways and leaning into who they are becoming and who they will become.

I’ll paraphrase my favorite Dr Seuss book, Horton Hatches The Egg, again: “And they sent me home happy, 100 percent.”

Slip

August 10, 2026/The Bridge Faith Community/Leave a comment

Over the last few weeks, I watched a show called Slip. (This show seems to have originally aired on Roku, I watched it on Peacock.) It’s weird and quirky – if I were to describe it here, you could only infer that I really loved it. It is everything I look for in art, a new perspective that is challenging and deep and speaks to my own life. Rotten Tomatoes gave it a 100%. It must have been awesome. But I’m not sure I did love it.

There’s a married woman, Mae, who “slips” into parallel worlds (I guess it’s not that weird to us, we understand this from the MCU and it’s multiversal phase), where she has different lives, different marriages, partners, habits and values. The woman (Zoe Lister-Jones, who created, wrote, directed & starred) has something to learn (about life, in general, maybe, but certainly about her life) and she does. Lister-Jones is wildly talented. In episode 7, she even sings a version of “Every Breath You Take” that will stop you and bring you to tears. It still sounds like I loved it. I wonder if I did.

A website called Den of Geek writes, “Essentially, the mystery points back to the exhibit in the pilot, where Mae tells us about the Hungry Ghost. She says they are beings living in six different realms of existence in a state of chronic deprivation and longing. They crave nourishment (both literally and figuratively), but they’re incapable of digesting it. This perfectly symbolizes Mae’s journey: no matter what alternate reality she’s in (with multiple different versions of who she could be), she’s unequipped to find peace and acceptance without looking for a solution within herself. She has to face and address her own struggles and internal suffering head-on to find the kind of life that can make her happy.”

Maybe our culture makes sure we’re all always in a state of chronic deprivation and longing? What do we do when what we crave doesn’t provide the peace and acceptance we’re searching for, and we’re left with our own struggles and internal suffering? We don’t like to face things, especially our own emptiness and sense of meaninglessness – what if the “new” and “more” don’t fulfill? Then what? Probably, we keep walking the same paths “new” and “more,” keeping the noise loud and fast so we can’t hear our hearts break.

I may spoil it here, so beware…Her original, episode 1 life was simple and what can look like what we are sometimes told is the boring monotony of commitment. But it was that relationship that she sought the rest of the journey, and to which she eventually returned. This was fairly surprising. Hollywood has a very hard time showing the beauty of a connected marriage, after the peaks and above the valleys, once we settle into real life. Maybe Lister-Jones isn’t married, but I’m guessing she is, and I suspect she might be very happy and full. She says to her husband, “we weren’t perfect, but we were a team and there was a lot of love and support.” That’s every marriage. It’s a lie that passion and spontaneity and surprise doesn’t happen in long, loving marriages. The passion is deeper and weighs so much more without any superficiality. And as we each grow and change, we are never without surprise, it’s just that we stop looking, listening, and learning. “More” and “new” might seem cool, but we end up just looking to slip into something more substantial.

Still, it sounds like I loved it, and I keep thinking that might not be accurate. Why? Why can’t I just say it? I want to say “it’s complicated,” but the more I consider, it’s not too complicated at all. I watched a show that was interesting – I thought about BIG spiritual concepts, about meaning and purpose, it made me think of The Angel, and a million other things. This show has me thinking about it the next day and might for a while. Of course, I loved it.

Stables

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Lovemaxxing

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

The hosting site, in their daily prompt, is wondering what bothers me and why. I have an answer, there is something that bothers me A LOT. I’ll tell you in a minute.

1st, let me tell you about a documentary I watched about incels, a relatively new term (what does “new” mean in a world in hyper speed?) describing “INvoluntary CELibates,” usually young male teens/adults. It’s disturbing and inextricably linked to another phenomenon/movement called looksmaxxing (the more X’s, the better, I guess.) This whole thing is about believing worth is tied to appearance, that women only want the most beautiful (i.e. not them), and that keeps them home, online, and fearing/hating women. It’s also tied to a thing I wrote about before called “the manosphere,” where cartoon-caricature macho males celebrate misogyny and their own thinly veiled insecurity. Looksmaxxing operates on a scale:

“The looksmaxxing scale, often referred to as the PSL scale (an acronym for either Pretty Scale Level or Perceived Sexual Market Value Scale), is a subjective, crowd-sourced 1-10 scoring system used in aesthetics-obsessed online communities. It evaluates physical attractiveness based on four core metrics: harmony, dimorphism, angularity, and miscellaneous features (such as skin clarity and eye color).

The Tier Breakdown. The scale translates to specific categories based on perceived genetic value and physical traits:

1–3 (Subhuman / Low-Tier Normie): Individuals with severe facial deformities or an “ordinary level of unattractiveness”.
4–6 (Normies): The vast majority of the population. People in this tier have average features with a mix of minor flaws and proportional benefits.
7–7.75 (Chadlite / Chad): Considerably above-average features, high facial symmetry, good dimorphism, and strong jawlines.
8–10 (True Adam / Gigachad): Extremely rare outliers who possess top-tier structural genetics.

“Chad” is a weird kind of idea, it’s mostly a term of derision based in envy. It’s also my name, which I may change to “Gigachad,” from now on. I wonder how the Angel will feel about that. I wonder how she feels being married to a “Chad.” I wonder if she knows I am apparently at the tippy top of the Perceived Sexual Market Value Scale.

I just want to point out that yes, you did read that there’s a category called “Subhuman.”

Some looksmaxxers try to jump categories by physically changing their looks by, for example, hitting their cheekbones with hammers until they become more Chad-like. I guess this type of focus, -maxxing, is what drives the plastic surgery industry, too. I wonder if it also is at the deepest roots of my Running post last week. Is any form of visual self-improvement (weightlifting, makeup, brushing our teeth, BBLs, hammering our faces, etc) -maxxing? Are they all attempts to outrun, or outmodify our own poor self-images?

I don’t think so. I don’t think running on a treadmill is the same as surgery (but maybe that’s because I run on a treadmill and haven’t had even one cosmetic procedure yet). However, I can see a through-line that will become my answer to this curious site.

Whether it’s advertising or social media, so much of a world who’s religion is consumerism is designed to make us (the consumers) feel a lack, which would need to be filled (through some sort of product). We are born and raised to feel a lack. We compare our real lives to the filtered, pretend lives on Instagram, then operate out of that false comparison to achieve the fictional lives on our screens. So, we’re inadequate, in some way, by cultural design. We think our value is found in the brands we wear, our mates, or our jawlines, and we move around wearing masks, afraid and hiding.

I believe the only cure for anything is love. We find our true identity and worth in God, Who loves us despite our puny biceps and our outdated phones, and that love so fills us that it comes out of our ears, eyes, hearts, and gets all over everybody else, without condition, whether they’re Chads or not.

What bothers me is that we don’t do that. What bothers me is that so many of us are missing something so deeply that we’d hit ourselves with hammers and watch dark-web domestic violence & murder, that we’d be embarrassed to even go outside because our faces aren’t dimorphic or angular enough, that we’d undergo such painful transformations just to try to correct the countless mistakes we think our Creator made with us. I’m bothered that we’re waging war, on others, on ourselves, instead of waging campaigns of love.

We should be lovemaxxing, and it bothers me that we’re not, yet. But I promise we will, and there’s no way we’ll stop until we do.

Running

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Shoulds

June 30, 2026/The Bridge Faith Community/Leave a comment

I ran on a treadmill this morning. Well, not entirely. I walk, increasing the speed every minute, then every 9th and 10th minute, I run, increasing that speed every 30 seconds. It’s like this: minute 1: 3.7 mph, minute 2: 3.8 mph, and so on, then when I get to 8 minutes, the speed moves to 6.0 mph, then at 8:30: 6.5 mph, 9:00: 7.0 mph, 9:30 7.5 mph. I do this for 1 hour, every Tuesday and Thursday. (I lift weights Mon, Wed, & Fri.) If I were to tell you I like to run, I would be lying to you, and I do a lot of things here but lying to you is never one of them. While running is mostly horrible, it does have some psychological benefits and today, running led me into a nice train of thought that I may or may not agree with, yet.

There are 2 kinds of perfectionism. I run because I am seeking to become more and more of who I have been created to be, to show up to myself in ways I might not have in the past. Yesterday, I posted about not overreacting to disrespectful, demeaning comments. I often do. And I think rejecting the complacency of “oh well, nobody’s perfect, that’s just who I am,” is vital to our development and growth. I know the danger of the shoulds, but maybe I shouldn’t be raising my voice because I can’t control myself, right?

I want my wife to always have the best time, safe and fulfilling, in all situations and experiences, because she deserves it. If she doesn’t, maybe it’s not the worst thing to want to be better for her. I want to have a heart that is healthy to be here for the 3 who I live with, my sister, mom, my beloved church community, friends, neighbors, and the whole world, who might need what I have to bring, because they all deserve it. (Yes, that feels like the delusions of a narcissist, but I think it’s true, and I also think you can replace the “I” with “you,” the world desperately needs all of us to show up, just as we are.) If that means I run, that means I run. And if it means I run harder and harder each time, and feel some disappointment if I cut corners or blow the workout off because I don’t feeeeel like it, that is an altogether good thing.

Last Saturday, I was given the honor of officiating a wedding. This is not unusual, I get to do quite a lot. But what was unusual is that I had a moment where I stumbled over some words.

No big deal, right? Actually, yes it was a very big deal to me. You see, 2 or 5 or 15 years ago, this would have led me to acknowledge it, then and there, stopping the ceremony, apologizing, then lying awake night after night ruminating on the FACT that I had absolutely ruined their ceremony and probably their marriage. Everyone was worse for me being there, I had a responsibility and I failed. I was ill-suited for this line of work, who did I think I was, anyway? I was mistaken for believing I ever could have been good enough for something so beautiful. [This is a brief glimpse into the dysfunctional downward spiraling loops I have lived for so long.]

But Saturday, my tongue had somehow gotten itself in knots, and as someone who makes a living communicating clearly, this is not ideal. However, it was only a few short moments, I smiled, remembered to breathe, and moved forward. Maybe no one even really noticed, except for the Angel & I, and even if they did, they would have discovered that I am a person. It wasn’t a lack of professionalism or preparation. It was like tripping on a sidewalk crack, which doesn’t mean I can’t walk, or shouldn’t be walking. We just sometimes trip.

Old me was the perfectionist you imagine, unhealthy and psychologically violent. Anything less than perfect was an indictment on my value. It meant I was totally worthless, that the voices were right, I wasn’t enough and never would be. The searing noise in my head drowned out the obvious truth that those voices were lies. My identity isn’t tied at all to my production, no matter how good or bad it is. My worth isn’t found in a grade or a title or a paycheck or a status or relationship, it isn’t found in anything other than the reality of who (and far more importantly, Whose) I am.

It’s funny, I am never confused about that when it comes to you. I’m only so mean and unforgiving to me. Or maybe, I used to be…I slept like a baby Saturday night, peaceful and contented. I should prepare like I do, I should do everything as well as I possibly can, as if I’m working for God and not man. And I should give myself a break when I trip and fall. And I should definitely not listen to any voices whose shoulds might bring shame.

Maybe, in these contexts, growing is learning to tell the difference between the shoulds that kill and the shoulds that call up, that heal. And recognizing that the same word doesn’t always have the same meaning.

Mean

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Lies

June 23, 2026/The Bridge Faith Community/Leave a comment

I watched 2 documentaries lately. Anatomy of Lies, on Peacock, and Maternal Instinct, on Netflix. Anatomy details the “life” of Elisabeth Finch, a writer on several shows you would’ve heard of, the most popular being Grey’s Anatomy. I put the word ‘life’ in quotes because most of everything she said or wrote about her life was a fabrication, a hi-jack of other people’s actual stories. She was called a “trauma vampire,” sucking other’s traumas and passing them off as her own. Instinct chooses a woman named Taylor Parker as its subject. She also lied about everything, eventually murdering pregnant woman Reagan Simmons-Hancock, and c-sectioning her unborn baby in a strange attempt to, not keep it as her own, but to lend evidence to her 9 months of false pregnancy.

These are interesting, sad stories but they are certainly not unique. There is no shortage of documentaries and “based on a true story” dramatizations of pathologically dishonest pretenders. Sometimes, once the liars are exposed, they apologize in their own non-contrite way. Like the vast majority of apologies, they’re sorry for being caught, not what they did (for which everyone else is to blame). Finch confesses only for things that can be proven false, and nothing else. Parker doesn’t confess at all, the documentarians don’t even ask, they don’t interview her at all.

[For an interesting, related context, I was only able to watch Anatomy of Lies because I subscribe to Peacock, and I only subscribe to Peacock because it has a show called Poker Face. The show is perfect, starring Natasha Lyonne as a drifter named Charlie Cale, who has the beautiful talent we wish we all had: the ability to know when someone is lying. She says, ‘everybody lies, it’s just a matter of finding out why.’]

Think about all of the really humongous relational messes you’ve either witnessed or experienced, how many of them had some level of deceit or dishonesty as the cornerstone? Some very recent, very close catastrophes left me saying, in each case, “If anyone, at any point, had told the truth, and even better, the whole truth, all of this drama could have been avoided.”

But they didn’t. Elisabeth Finch didn’t. Taylor Parker didn’t. And I wonder why. A woman in the Finch doc believes it all comes from an internal lack of worth creating a desperate need to be someone else. That’s probably true.

Of course, we also lie to avoid punishment. If the lamp falls, we say “not me,” so we don’t have to pay for it. That makes sense, right? Well, I mean, it doesn’t, because everybody always finds out who broke the lamp, and instead of just taking responsibility for the lamp, now we’re dealing with the lie, which is much, much worse. But there’s not an awful lot for us to do with this one, people either become adults or they don’t.

But, the other one, tied to a deeply perceived worthlessness, is a bit more interesting. Why do we want to be someone or something else? Why do we want their story or their family or house or money or whatever?

The 10th commandment (You shall not covet your neighbor’s house; you shall not covet your neighbor’s wife, or his male servant, or his female servant, or his ox, or his donkey, or anything that is your neighbor’s) is sometimes read not as a command, but as a reward. If you do the previous 9, you won’t want your neighbor’s wife or donkey or anything that isn’t yours, because what you have will be enough. Enough is sort of a dirty word in America, where we worship at the altar of MORE. There is never enough. We are never enough. We are steadily fed the narrative that we are always lacking, and we’ll do anything to fill that hole. We need facelifts and new boobs because who we are and what we have now is simply not enough, and getting a new whatever is the answer.

Of course, the hole isn’t filled with more stuff or a new nose. We aren’t magically made whole with abs.

I’m increasingly interested in why we keep trying the same methods that don’t work, and have never worked? Why do we keep thinking a new car or jeans or dishwashing liquid will fill our souls? Why do we keep thinking war will bring peace? Or a bigger account balance will bring us the joy & peace that have eluded us for so long? Or that a few well-placed lies will produce the image that will finally complete us?

Finch lied to everyone in her life, it fell apart, she lost those people – the chaos of her broken life was directly related to her truth problem, and yet, she continues to lie. Dishonesty (on any level) builds walls around us while tearing down the chance/hope of intimacy and connection. The lies are a symptom, of course, the fruit of our fear. And until we can be defined by something else, until we can find our identity in something other than terror, we’ll continue to live these same boring loops and keep making these tired documentaries.

Love With A Capital L

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

Tag: Spirituality