2020-12-28T14:05:50+00:00

Hurt

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

There’s this show called Song Exploder on Netflix and of course I love it. It is exactly my type. When the Angel and I walk around a clothing store, when we see a striped long sleeve shirt (or ‘top’), we both know and instinctively stop. This show is my long sleeve striped top. Or MaryAnne on Gilligan’s Island. Princess Leia. Janet Wood. I have opinions and specific tastes. Song Exploder is perfect.

This morning I watched the episode detailing ‘Hurt,’ by Nine Inch Nails, on the album The Downward Spiral. Released in 1994, it was a big hit and for 1994-me, it’s themes of loneliness and inadequacy were, um, familiar. The problem with the album was that it always gave me a headache and made me feel a little physically ill as I listened. In this Song Exploder show, Trent Reznor (who is Nine Inch Nails) explained that there were things you could “hide” in a song to make the listener “uncomfortable,” or “unsettled.” My physical reaction was totally unconscious but purposeful in it’s creation, and now looking at the album through 2020-me eyes, it’s even more brilliant.

I don’t really like the songs on the album too much anymore, but this one still moves me. It was covered by Johnny Cash and was reborn, for a new generation. And as it turns out, for it’s creator. The loneliness, inadequacy and pain that made it so relatable for me weren’t pretense at all. They were absolutely authentic, and he spoke about when the Johnny Cash version happened, he was questioning his worth, ability, talent, if he was enough.

This is the universal narrative for me, and to tell you the truth, it’s mostly why I do any of the things I do. To try to speak fresh words to this very human affliction, which is not affected by class, image, status, money. The voices in our heads scream us down just the same. Nine Inch Nails was famous, successful, popular, and unfulfilling. Johnny Cash covering that song was a re-telling of the looped false story in Reznor’s head, that told him he was not now, not ever, going to be enough. That beautiful cover was a crack in that wall.

Now, he seems easy and assured in interviews. I’m sure it comes and goes, like it does for all of us, but at least it comes now, right? It’s almost the new year and that means it’s time for dreaming. Wouldn’t it be cool if our lives could be covered by Johnny Cash and we could finally see them with new eyes? If we could finally see ourselves as we actually are, free of the sledgehammers in our heads? The song sounds different to him now. And to me. It’s not so hopeless anymore.

We’re Here

December 22, 2020December 22, 2020/The Bridge Faith Community/Leave a comment

“I want someone to know I’m here.” That is the heartache expressed by the title character in the book Britt-Marie Was Here. This is another novel written by Fredrik Backman, which may be a poor choice as I’m still recovering from My Grandmother Asked Me To Tell You She’s Sorry and The Deal Of A Lifetime.

I read once that if you take LSD, you are never the same as you were before. If you were a 5, you’re not a 5 anymore. That’s how I feel about those books. Like I was cracked wide open and now I’m a permanently different Chad.

Anyway. It’s Christmas in 2020 and on the one hand, we desperately need the hope of Christmas and the birth. On the other, I can’t imagine the despair of another holiday in isolation. This season is usually among the most depressed, presumably because the cold gray short days spent alone against the backdrop of other families gathered around a warm fire. What if I don’t have a family? What if the family I do have is broken? What if there’s 1 less around that fire? What if I don’t have a home, much less a fire? It’s no wonder the depression we barely keep at bay all year gets amplified in November & December.

This Britt-Marie book is about a woman newly single, alone because the husband she has pretended was faithful has been publicly exposed as what she knew he was. She’s kind of awful, but as Backman slowly peels back curtain after curtain, she’s all of us. She wants to be seen, wants to matter to someone.

We’re a culture that largely walks with our heads down, on our way to the next thing, saying “How are you?” as a greeting, but not at all interested in the answer. Even without a global pandemic and quarantine, we had been increasingly disconnected for years. This leaves us like those copper pans where nothing sticks. And we call it survival.

But it’s not. It’s killing us. We’re invisible and we are not meant to be invisible. We are meant to be together, sharing the moments of our lives. We are meant to ask how you are and to wait for the honest answer. We are meant to cry together, to celebrate together.

As I read, the thing that kills me is that I know how many Britt-Marie’s must be in my town, neighborhood, on my street, invisible. And this is a fact that is simply unacceptable. My dream is that we are all seen, accepted. That we all belong. That we are all loved. That the reality of Christmas become a reality in practice, that it’s not just a story of fairy-tale hope we tell in churches on Christmas Eve.

I want someone to know we’re here.

Less The Rock and More Lobot

December 16, 2020/The Bridge Faith Community/Leave a comment

Last week, I posted “So, Let Me Tell You About Yesterday,” on both of my blog sites. I write on the Bridge page and I write on a page called Love With A Capital L. Both are about spirituality because everything is. What’s different is that on the Love page, I don’t always mention God by name, like the book of Esther, but it’s always about Him. This ‘Yesterday’ post ended up in both spaces, and it received an extraordinary response on both.

I am a man who thinks (or probably more accurately, over-thinks) and I wondered, why? Why do some things strike chords and others swing and miss? Why this one? Why not that one?

Who knows? Maybe I don’t care, maybe I shouldn’t. If too much time is given to thinking about response, we’ll subconsciously (or not) begin to bend and shape ourselves into whatever position we think they’ll like best.

This can happen easily in any creative expression.

The bigger tragedy is how easily this can happen in our greatest creative expressions; our lives.

We look for approval, for the most “likes,” resembling actors on a stage. It’s interesting, the things that mean the most to me are those that are the most authentic, but when the artist attempts to mean the most to me, the very thing that was so appealing is compromised, disappears, and immediately stops meaning the most to me. It’s like the theory that observation affects behavior, so any study of “natural” behavior is impossible (unless it’s secret and invisible and probably unethical).

You know I’m going into the idea that we have an “audience of One,” right? That’s not terrible because that One is the only One who knows who we actually are, so moving towards that vision of us is, essentially, moving towards the version of us that is the most pure and true, the most authentic.

The filters I use that make me look like a cat or like I’m always supercool, pensive and mysterious aren’t me. I have rough skin and deep creases around my eyes from years and years of smiling. The sweater I wore on Sunday makes me look much better than I actually do. I get angry and am awfully mean to me from time to time, thankfully much less than I used to. I shave my head because it’s thin and moving backwards, less the Rock and more Lobot from Star Wars. I like to think my jokes are all pretty terrific and could edit a short YouTube video that makes me compare favorably to Dave Chappelle, but in real life, well… you know, probably he’s not even that funny all the time. (On second thought, he probably is.)

The idea here is not to point out all the ways we’re messy, or to advertise my faults. It’s not even to stop using filters. It is to love, and be loved, anyway. It is to see those rough edges. It is to dance with who and where we are right now, even as we acknowledge that we are, as my friend says, “perfectly in process,” moving (sometimes slowly) towards who we’ve been created to be. One of the coolest aspects I learned about the Scriptures were their absolute commitment to honesty. Not everyone is shiny, nobody is perfect. (Well, One is.) They yell and scream and shake their fists at God. They often make terrible decisions and aren’t always the heroes of the story. But it’s real. And Beautiful. Just like us.

So, Let Me Tell You About Yesterday

December 11, 2020/The Bridge Faith Community/Leave a comment

So, let me tell you about yesterday.

The Angel & I took the boys to school and left immediately, driving north to Scranton (home of Dunder Mifflin Paper) for the funeral service of a friend’s father. He (James Chickson) was a terrific dad, husband, and man – exactly like my friend. At the Bridge, we would call men like him bull elephants, and the world doesn’t have enough of those, so we gathered to mourn. It was a catholic service and as a general rule, I find catholic services a little sterile and impersonal (just me, just my opinion, but I am very messy, overly sensitive, mushy and untraditional, so I would), which this one was…UNTIL my friend stood to give the eulogy. He was beautiful. He was all of the things we love about him, and probably all of the things we loved about his dad. It was awesome and exhausting, just what a funeral service should be.

Then we came home, picked my boys up from school and had some ice cream because ice cream is perfect for a broken heart.

Then at the dinner table (dinner after dessert is also perfect for broken hearts…well, any hearts, really), we discovered that there were new PA COVID restrictions that would, among other things, “pause” school sports. It was then that my boys expressed their emotions in what is sometimes the only appropriate way, with tears of sadness and rage.

Now, I know school sports are comparatively minor in relation to the widespread wreckage COVID has wrought, but it is absolutely real to them. And to me. Because we all have those comparatively minor’s, right?

Once the tears stopped and we were able to re-focus and gain a smidgen of perspective, then I began the phone calls to the core group of the Bridge to discuss what we would do, if anything, to address the new restrictions. Again, a small church in Annville is comparatively minor in the grand scheme, but it is my family and it is definitely doesn’t feel comparatively minor.

We are losing loved ones, businesses, homes. We have been disconnected and isolated, and that leaves us raw and exposed, sensitive to very fine points. I remember months after the flood took our house, I had an appointment where I would need dress socks. I rarely wear dress socks and now that I needed them, I realized, I didn’t have dress socks. The pair I had was lost in the flood. I was working, driving on a major highway towards State College, when I realized this insignificant detail (big deal, stop anywhere and pick up a new pair) and had to pull my truck off the road when my sobbing made driving impossible. Everything was overflowing, all of the months of “What are we going to do????” and utter powerlessness to answer had crested, and dress socks pierced the thin shell that barely kept it all on the inside.

High school seniors have lost proms and graduations, weddings have been moved, suspended, our lives have been radically upended, and we know that a missed dinner & dance for upperclassmen is nothing in relation to 200,000+ dead in this country alone, countless more worldwide. But that doesn’t make a canceled school dance hurt less. There isn’t a finite amount of love and care in our souls, we can deeply feel all the things in this human experience. There isn’t a cause/effect relationship where ignoring our pain leads to an increase in empathy. I would suggest if there is a relationship, it’s an inverse connection, where turning the blind eye to suffering (in any and all forms, even our own) leads to a practiced desensitization to suffering (in any and all forms).

I bring all of this up because what I notice is that we often say the words, “but other people have it much worse than me/us,” as a way of minimizing or trivializing our own pain & suffering. At funerals, we say the person is in a much better place or that God has a plan (which are both true) and pretend that we are fine, that are hearts aren’t shattered. In the Scriptures, God asks us for 1 thing above all. He asks us to bring who we are, everything we are, honestly and without pretense, to Him. He says that He doesn’t want our sacrifices, He wants our hearts. He weeps over the death of a man He intends to resurrect to validate the suffering of his community.

The Bible says, as we walk through the valley of the shadow of death… and it’s that through that makes all the difference. We can’t walk around, or avoid, or fake that it’s not the shadow of death. We can’t get through anything without going through. My beautiful buddy’s eulogy had very evident pain and loss, and it also had a lived-in gratitude that his dad was his dad, and I’m pretty sure the 2nd doesn’t come without the first.

So, I guess what I’m saying is this: Sometimes you need ice cream to ease the ache of a broken heart, or screaming rage for a 3-week break from basketball, or an offering of bitter tears over dress socks. There are no comparatively minor’s with God. There is only us, and that’s enough.

Mando

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

As of Saturday morning, I am a subscriber to Disney+. It’s taken a pretty long time for me to make that commitment, considering my tastes, but this is no surprise. I’m usually a relatively late convert to new forms of entertainment. All of my friends had cds, dvds, and an iPod before me, all I eventually loved. I had to be wrestled into a membership to Amazon Prime music, which I immediately loved (that love has yet to fade even a little). I collected old 78 record players/records, 8-tracks, cassettes, VHS tapes, until a flood drank them all along with the house. I even still read actual, physical books! I do not have a Kindle, though I do have an iBooks app that has few downloads I never read. If there were still record stores, I would go there, too.

So, why?

Partly because it’s expensive to switch media. This morning I gave my son a pair of earbuds (wired!!!) from my iPod and asked him to please not ruin or lose them. These boys have such little respect for things. Can you believe they treat them like the soulless disposable trinkets that they have become? Anyway, don’t lose or break them, right? But why? I can’t imagine the circumstances that they will ever be used again. And that fact carries with it a significant amount of sadness, reflection on the money I spent, and disgust at my faithlessness, my disloyalty.

If you don’t subscribe to Disney+, you can’t watch the Mandalorian, and that would be a shame. It’s terrific. But maybe that’s my hesitance with adopting new, exclusive forms of media, because it leaves some behind. It’s like a first-class curtain on a plane (if either of those exist in a modern, pandemic world). Some are inside and others are outside. I want us all to watch at a scheduled time and talk about the Child the next day. I want us all to gather in front of the tv for the world premiere of “Thriller,” of the finale of Seinfeld.

Now, you might not even know who or what the Child is. And there’s no such thing as music videos anymore. Or sitcoms that anyone, much less everyone, cares about. Who would ever watch a show when it airs? Are there even shows that “air” anymore or do they simply appear in a queue to be streamed on the 4th of the month?

There is a program on Netflix called “The Toys That Made Us” that is awesome, and maybe new episodes exist, but I don’t know because I don’t know when they drop or whatever that’s called. They don’t on, for example, Thursday nights at 9.

I recognize this all sounds like the bitter nostalgic rants of the Oldest Man On Earth, and maybe it is. But I don’t ever want anyone to have to be on the outside of anything or feel like they don’t belong or aren’t cool or whatever enough. I made mixtapes for everyone I knew (especially girls I liked) so they could hear the songs that changed my life and would certainly change theirs. I pastor a church for the same reason. I guess I write this blog for that, too. I don’t want anyone to have a bad marriage or feel unloved or alone or worthless.

I don’t believe, like Syndrome says in The Incredibles, “When everyone’s super, no one is.” I think when everyone is super – or acknowledges that we are – then we’re all super. And there’s another scene where Mrs. Incredible says, “Everyone is special, Dash,” and her son responds, “Which is another way of saying that no one is.” He’s wrong. Everyone is special, it just might be in a different kind of way and take eyes that see, for us and for them.

This didn’t begin as an idealistic manifesto on how great you are, it was only supposed to be a little bit of nothing on how great the Mandalorian is. But maybe you won’t hear how great you are anywhere else today.

Mama’s Boy

December 3, 2020/The Bridge Faith Community/Leave a comment

I’ve been watching (and enjoying) I Love A Mama’s Boy on TLC. Now, this is a show about women who are in relationships with boys who are…um…let’s say, overly-bonded, with their mothers. In a text message to my very good friend, I confessed that I was “embarrassed” to watch and like this mess. It is, to use a current term, a guilty pleasure of mine.

Now, I have no idea why these women are in these relationships, why they would live with these boys’ mothers, why they would build houses on their in-laws properties, why they would share Valentine’s Day dinners, why they would stand idly by while mother and son practiced a tango, of all things, as their wedding dance, why why why. NO IDEA. I suppose it’s a deflated sense of worth combined with the bar being lowered so far that this is what passes as acceptable in a prospective mate. AND I have no idea why these boys would apply to be on a tv show that ridicules them, that shows them in such a pathetically emasculated light. (Actually I do know that one: just like in small children, even negative attention is attention. Being a punch line for our 15 minutes of fame is still 15 minutes of fame.)

I could probably go on asking questions in this vein, but the truth is, I don’t care. It’s not too many episodes and it’s sufficiently mindless, which can be fine for 42 minutes here or there.

What I do want to talk about, and what I do care about, is the phrase ‘guilty pleasure,’ and why I might say, even in jest, that I am embarrassed to watch.

Like so many things, it is a reflection of our bend towards image-making and an endless list of what we “should” or “should” not do or who we “should” or “should” not be. It’s a avalanche of should’s under which we bury ourselves. Why would I possibly be guilty over a tv show or a movie or song? Because I am so focused on being cool or whatever. For example, I am a music snob. I like songs and artists that you haven’t heard, which by some misguided logic makes those songs and artists better, which by the same misguided logic makes me better. I also like the Christina Aguilera song “Fighter” and Britney Spears’ “Toxic,” but you’d never know because I wouldn’t tell you about those.

I want my favorite movie to be Pulp Fiction because it’s cool and violent and independent, or better yet, something neither of us has heard of and is wildly uncomfortable to watch, but in reality it’s probably a Captain America movie or Point Break.

Guilty pleasure? Nope. It’s just me, and the second I can make peace with who that is the second I can unload the mountain of expectations that tear me apart. I’ve been so exhausted trying to live up to the ideal of me that is in only my head. The one that has everything together and makes all the right decisions, is wise and beautiful in equal amounts, and doesn’t watch garbage tv.

But the truth is that I am often a basket case when I’m alone over the poor decisions that are definitely not wise, and will always laugh when a mother and son decide to dance inappropriately. Is that shameful or is it simply human? Maybe human is the most beautiful thing of all.

Azkaban

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

A guy I used to work with once cornered me and began a shockingly intense and impassioned attack on the Harry Potter book series. He railed against the magical and, as he saw it, demonic framework of the story, that it was impossible for a Christian to read and enjoy the books. As a Christian who very much enjoyed the books, I asked if he had read them, actually read them. As you can guess, his answer was an indignant “NO! I would NEVER read such a thing!” Then how could you have such a strong opinion based solely on something somebody said? He shook his finger while he scolded me and stormed away.

I tell you this story for 2 reasons.

First, I like to make this space about what kind of pop culture art I am consuming. These works of art are usually documentaries, but I haven’t taken the time to watch much of anything, much less the documentary on the Nxivm cult I have been wanting to catch. Instead, what I do watch is football and whatever my family wants to watch on weekend evenings, which is the Harry Potter series. I had read all of the books, but had not seen all of the movies until Saturday.

Second, that guy was wrong.

Maybe you know that I’m a pastor of a church. But maybe you don’t. I am. AND I love the Harry Potter series. Demonic witchcraft and wizardry was the category box for that guy. I see so much more, but the problem is, if you choose to see the much more, then it doesn’t fit very neatly into any box at all. We like boxes. We like things we understand. The world is all too often chaotic and messy, which makes us frightened and anxious, so we are constantly trying to make sense of anything at all. General myopia can shrink what we experience into bite size pieces that are not too threatening, giving us the illusion of control.

The story uses magic as the context, but it’s really a story about these characters and worth and calling and loyalty and and and. And by the way, the first recorded people to bring gifts to honor and adore Jesus Christ were magicians. But this is good and evil and courage and purpose and selflessness and and and. This is ultimately a story, a series of books & movies about love.

I think building all kinds of walls to keep the scary things out more often end up keeping us in. These walls become prisons, like our own personal Azkaban. We’re building boxes to reinforce our need for control, our need to understand, to have the answers, to eliminate mystery and the unknown. The boxes we’re building are essentially altars to ourselves, and as far as things that run counter to God, idolatry is number 1 with a bullet.

Maybe I don’t have to have all of the answers. Maybe being sure isn’t the point. Maybe that’s what faith is, right?

10% More

November 6, 2020/The Bridge Faith Community/Leave a comment

Last week I told you about this leather bound notebook, a gift from my sister that I wrote quotes I find or ideas or things you say or do that I want to remember. Here’s one that’s very early in the book that might be particularly appropriate, here & now. Actually, it’s probably particularly appropriate whenever now is and wherever here is. It was originally said by a man named Hank Fortener.

Here it is: “How much is enough? The truth is…enough is enough, either now or never.”

I heard a statistic once that when people were asked how much income was enough, and the most common answer (from ALL income levels) was 10% more. Then, we could pay our bills and put some into savings and give to those charities we want and have a little left over to go out to the movies or to eat every now and again. Then, we would have enough. No matter how much we make, we think 10% more would be enough. We are always wrong, because then we neeeeeed another 10% more. It is never enough. If we meet somebody. If we get married. If we have a child. Or another. Or once they start going on the potty. Or going to school. Or once I get that job, that position. Or when I get that cleaner, that shampoo, those jeans. Or when we can retire…THEN, it will be different, better. THEN, we will have enough.

But it isn’t.

I don’t know when we learned that contentment is only found in more, but it simply isn’t true. If we are lacking now, right now, wherever we are, we will always lack. If we don’t appreciate what we have, the blessings, the people, the things, then we will never appreciate what we have, and any blessings, people, or things we receive/experience will pale in comparison to the next, the more that’s just around the bend.

Contentment is different from complacency.

Complacency is the mistaken belief that we are finished. That what we are at this moment is all we’ll ever be. That there’s no more to learn, discover. That we’re done growing. That (get ready for it….) it is what it is. Complacency has its roots in despair.

Contentment is security in our identity, confidence in our standing in the universe, stillness in our existence. We are content, peaceful, loved, and we belong here. We are on a journey and there’s joy and loss and fear and celebration and suffering at each step, but we continue to take the steps because there’s something going on here and we want to see what it is, but the journey itself is amazing and we don’t want to miss any part of this step, this moment, this snapshot of our lives in motion. The plant is beautiful today, it’ll grown into something very different tomorrow, but today, where it is right now is wonderful.

Complacency is a hideous lie. Contentment is awesome.

If we can’t (or won’t) dance today, what makes us think we’ll know how tomorrow, when the song changes? If we can’t (or won’t) enjoy that kiss, hug, or touch today, why would we assume tomorrow will magically bring a different response? No matter where we go, we are still there. The grass is never greener on the other side. The scenery might transform, but we’ll still interpret it through the same eyes.

So, what is it that we are waiting for?

My boy has been attending school 3 days/week at home (Tuesdays and Thursdays have been in person). Today is the last day. Monday he’ll go back full time. I’ll miss him more than he knows. I have absolutely LOVED him being at home with me. But Monday he’ll go because he must, and that’ll be ok, because we had this time, because we have today, and it is very, very good.

Far Away

October 21, 2020/The Bridge Faith Community/Leave a comment

“All we are is all we made” is a line from a song by Breaking Benjamin called “Far Away.” I don’t exactly know what it’s about, some comments I read say it’s about the rapture, religion, and/or God. Maybe. You know, some songs sound very obviously about one thing to later find out that’s not what the songwriter had in mind at all. I just watched a short form documentary on Netflix (called Song Exploder) about “Losing My Religion,” by R.E.M. and I didn’t really know what the song meant then and any of the guesses I did have turned out to be totally wrong. The good thing is that, with very few exceptions, I have learned to a. release these artists from the weight of my expectations, and b. release my need to know everything about every band I liked to be super cool and impress you. No one was ever all that impressed anyway. All that to say I don’t really care why the band’s name is Breaking Benjamin (is anyone named Benjamin? Who knows?) or why they wrote that song.

“Far Away” might have been written with the rapture or casserole or artificial intelligence in mind, but when I heard the line “all we are is all we made,” I knew that it would mean a great deal to me and that it would soon appear in this space. I heard it on a very good friend’s phone and ran for the nearest pen and index card so I wouldn’t forget.

Our lives are the structures created from many, many individual bricks stacked by many, many individual choices. That structure doesn’t exist by accident, it’s the sum total of each of these bricks. If we use a certain brick, we can’t expect them to magically transform into something different, like logs or steel or straw. If I wake up in a cornfield, there is a better than average chance that I planted corn.

In January of this year, 3 months before the world are to a screeching halt, this space was going to be a year-long exploration of the small, seemingly insignificant decisions and details that become these bricks that become us. Of course 2020 had other plans, but now, with this song, I wonder if it isn’t time to point ourselves back in that direction. Maybe it’s exactly what we need. Maybe after months and months of disruption/invitation, it’s time to re-evaluate what is happening, what needed to go and what needed to stay, and what kinds of people we’ll be and what we need to plant to grow those people.

The lyric asks us, if all we are is all we made, what have we made? And what are we making? The state of everything has illustrated that our passivity, our sleepwalking hasn’t served us very well. This is all going to take attention and intention. I so often refer to the final page of the Chuck Palahniuk book Choke:

“Paige and I just look at each other, at who each other is for real. For the first time. We can spend our lives letting the world tell us who we are. Sane or insane. Saints or sex addicts. Heroes or victims. Letting history tell us how good or bad we are. Letting our past decide our future. Or we can decide for ourselves. And maybe it’s our job to invent something better.

In the trees, a mourning dove calls. It must be midnight. And Denny says, “Hey, we could use some help here.”

Paige goes, and I go. The four of us dig with our hands under the edge of the rock. In the dark, the feeling is rough and cold and takes forever, and all of us together, we struggle to just put one rock on top of another.

….

It’s creepy, but here we are, the Pilgrims, the crackpots of our time, trying to establish our own alternate reality. To build a world out of rocks and chaos. What it’s going to be, I don’t know.

Even after all that rushing around, where we’ve ended up is the middle of nowhere in the middle of the night.

And maybe knowing isn’t the point.

Where we’re standing right now, in the ruins in the dark, what we build could be anything.”

This time truly feels like “nowhere in the middle of the night…in the ruins,” and that’s either terrifying or wonderfully exciting. Maybe both. Yes, both. It’s a good thing we are here to do this together.

The Spectacular Us

October 15, 2020/The Bridge Faith Community/Leave a comment

Last week in this space, I mentioned the “just” fallacy. There is no “just” anywhere, no “just” anything, certainly no “just” anyone. Everywhere is sacred, charged with meaning and potential, if we only have eyes to see and ears to hear.

Every other Wednesday, we are studying a terrific book called Inspired by Rachel Held Evans.

(I love that her name is Held. There is a song called “Held,” too, that is gorgeous. I have no idea if her middle name is Held or if it was her maiden name or if it was her name at all. Or maybe she took the name as a constant reminder of her place in the arms of God. It’s easy enough to find out, but I don’t think I want to. Like a song, I think I’ll live with the story it is to me.)

The last 2 meetings we have been in chapter 7: Fish Stories. It’s an exploration of the many miracles throughout the Bible and belief/faith. Initially reading it, I couldn’t really find much for discussion, which was ok, because I wasn’t this chapter’s facilitator. I didn’t need to find much for discussion. It was somebody else’s problem. I simply needed to show up.

As it turned out, our time was lively and full of the fantastic in each of our lives, those occurrences that can’t be explained in words or reason, like car, train, and tree accidents, amazing coincidences, forgiveness, and love.

This book is wonderful, but the real draw of the group are the people in it. I suspect it’s that way with most groups and communities. Where it might be an activity, event or shared interest that brings us together, it’s the relationships that keep us there.

It’s a trendy idea that I can follow Jesus on my own, in my bed or living room, by myself, privately, just me and God. I really don’t know how that started. I do know how and why it’s trendy – the independence and arrogant self-reliance is very modern. The more I think about it, it’s not really modern, it’s human. But the point is, this notion didn’t start in the Bible. In fact, it’s just the opposite. In Genesis 1 & 2, before the fall, it’s only the man and God, and God specifically deems it “NOT good.” It’s the only thing that isn’t good. So He takes a rib and makes another person.

We’re made to be together. (Not all the time, of course. We all need a break from each other from time to time;) This group makes me remember, and sometimes the learning comes outside of the explicit lesson. We were talking about miracles, trying to explain our way into loaves & fishes or walking on water. But as I looked at the Zoom pictures of each of our faces, brought into the space by a mutual love of our Creator and nothing else, sharing the extraordinary stories of our lives, I understood. This was the miracle, this safety, this connection, this love. We were God’s miracle. And it isn’t confined to this particular book study group or any particular group, not confined to the religious or spiritual, not confined by anything at all. I guess we miss it, or are looking for a parting of the sea, when it’s right here in front of us all along. It isn’t “just” a small group, not “just” a local church, community, football game, gym, class, office, grocery store, not “just” you or “just” me. It’s the breathtaking, spectacular us.

Love With A Capital L

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

Tag: Spirituality