2024-06-17T14:17:02+00:00

My Favorite Thing

June 17, 2024/The Bridge Faith Community/Leave a comment

The site is asking a fun question, “What is my favorite thing about myself?” Now, this is a space we don’t often like to explore, either because we can’t see the great in us, or because we can, but don’t want to seem arrogant or boastful.

Humility isn’t thinking less of ourselves, like one of those negative voices in our heads that lie like rugs and tell us we’re not enough, that we’re worthless. Humility is an accurate picture of ourselves, that’s all. It’s seeing, acknowledging the beauty in us, as well as the not so beautiful parts. It is knowing who we are, honestly, with all that entails.

I have believed those voices for many of my years, only relatively recently have I allowed some new programming in to recalibrate my self-image. And, baby, that’s a nice, new development.

I love how much I love music, how art touches me in the deepest reaches of my soul. I love that my heart responds in the way it does to Morrissey. Not everyone’s does; those people are wrong, and I’m sad for them. I love the color of my eyes, and the shape of my head (to make my shaved bald dome not look so odd.) I can catch and throw baseballs easily.

I wonder if tomorrow’s site prompt will be the things we like least about ourselves? I could/would answer that, too.

But my favorite thing about me is… Well, there are 2. First, you know that friend who is enthusiastic about everything? This ride, this movie, this song, this moment is his/her favorite EVER. That’s me. I’m like a golden retriever. I’m pretty present. I leave my phone in the car so that you are the only one on earth for me right now. I get excited for new releases, lose sleep over your wedding, because these are the moments of my life (our lives) and they are real and awesome. Built into this is immense, overwhelming gratitude.

And the second is how sensitive & empathetic I am. I feel everything (for me and for you) soooo deeply.

Of course, as it usually works, the best thing is also the worst thing. I do have to be careful of being what’s called a ‘prisoner of the moment.’ I am an “always” and “never” person, because this is happening now, which means it’s the only thing happening.

AND, my soft mushy heart makes my life significantly harder and infinitely more painful. It’s wonderful, and it’s horrible.

But these things are me, how I was created, the gifts I’ve been given, and I wouldn’t have it any other way.

Luxury Living

June 10, 2024/The Bridge Faith Community/Leave a comment

The site wants to know what luxury I can’t live without. The definition of luxury is “the condition of abundance,’ so I suppose that’s The Angel. She is a walking, talking, smooching illustration of the abundant blessings that have rained on my life. The definition also says, “…that isn’t necessary,” but she is, right? Not everyone is married to The Angel, just me, and lots of people live wonderful lives without her. Maybe they have their own The Angel, and that’s probably their luxury, whether it’s a job or car (though I certainly hope it’s not), or a Sally or Kristen or Helen. We all hopefully have our own Angel.

In my marriage book, Be Very Careful Who You Marry, I talk about an Angel Paradigm. The idea is that I love marriage – the idea of, as well as the actual manifestation – but is that because I have The Angel and, of course, anyone who is married to The Angel would love it?

Well, yes and no. The anyone who is married to The Angel is me, and I didn’t have such a high opinion before her, when I was avoiding any hint of marriage as a reality. So, yes. But no, because nobody else has this particular Angel. But everybody has the opportunity to have their own, and work like crazy to build their relationship in a beautiful way (like we did.) So, no with an asterisk.

Of course, it’s a little dangerous to write in such a way about a great anything. JLo and Ben Affleck told everyone who would listen about their great, persevering Love. And, according to celebrity gossip, after a little over a year, that great Love isn’t persevering the way it once did. If you gave a lecture on how to be a rad salesperson, and then 2 weeks later were shown the door, how would that lecture sound in hindsight? Or if you wrote a marriage book called, say, Be Very Careful Who You Marry and then a thousand posts on abundant blessing in marriage…then, that spouse got wise to the undeniable fact that she married down and took off, then what? The man who wrote those many things might not feel so terrific about them.

But, so what? There’s nothing embarrassing or shameful about a failure. I watched this silly documentary about a trek across the Amazon, called Expedition From Hell, that purported to be the account of a maniac who led regular people on a walking tour across the big part of South America. About halfway, he was arrested and contracted dengue fever, and took a secret solo pathway (without cameras) to avoid the authorities. He, then, reappeared in Guyana for the final leg (with cameras). So, he did it, and loudly proclaimed his success. As it turned out, he lied his buns off and the secret solo pathway was a flight back to Florida for a few months before flying back to Guyana. When the producers confronted him, he continued to dig his feet into the deception.

A guy that the lying wildman earlier kicked off the tour said (something like), “So what? It doesn’t make him a failure. He tried something awesome and that’s never a failure.” And he’s totally right. JLo, Batman, The Angel & I are trying something awesome, and that something is hard and doesn’t always work out. (Maybe it could, but that’s not what we’re talking about today.) Our luxury is love and, on second thought, it IS absolutely necessary. We take our gear into some treacherous terrain, commit 100%, see if we can survive, together, and if we happen to make it, we know what abundant blessing it all is.

23

May 29, 2024/The Bridge Faith Community/Leave a comment

Last time, we talked about “having it all” or living a “best life.” This week was my 23rd wedding anniversary, so maybe I should have mentioned that.

I’m a simple man, and that’s a very good thing, because my life and ministry is primarily to climb into complicated, chaotic situations. Work, for me, is connection/relationships and doing the best I can to bring peace and hope into anxious, hopeless, sometimes wildly unstable spaces. This is work, but the thing about having identical personal & vocational missions is there’s no division between on and off. I don’t really have days off. But I don’t want them, either. To me, this is purpose, and it’s heavy and keeps me up lots of nights, but I wouldn’t want it any other way.

However, the truth is, I couldn’t do it at all if my home & marriage wasn’t a place of physical, emotional, spiritual rest. It’s very difficult to step into the drama of others when your life is dramatic. There’s simply not enough left to fully engage with the storms others are facing when we’re exhausted with our own raging storms. If I’m being punched in the face, it’s harder to notice your fight, much less come to your aid.

This brings me to the Angel. She’s calm and easy. It’s 23 years but sometimes feels like 100, but, at other times, feels like I met her yesterday. I don’t know what 23 years feels like, or should feel like, but what I know is that I am completely, totally open with her (as the Bible says, “naked and unashamed”), but I also get butterflies when I kiss her, just like the first time.

I told her last night, that I very often focus (at least out loud) on the ‘lover’ aspect of our relationship. I very often tell her how foxy she is, and how 23 years of marriage has done nothing to dull my attraction to her. So, on a public pie chart, that’s the biggest piece. But on the pie chart of my heart, it’s probably a smaller piece than the rest. She’s my best friend, my partner, an inspiration and model for living a life of faith. She gives strength by simply being who she is in a world that isn’t always kind to the beautiful ones. Kind, merciful, the best mother to her sons and mentor to the rest of the people lucky enough to be in her orbit. She’s creative and confident, capable, talented, driven, brilliant, gifted hand over fist by her Creator. Did I mention knock-down gorgeous? How staggering is it that when thinking/speaking about the best looking woman in the world, her looks aren’t anywhere close to the best thing about her? We’ve built a calm life from the ground up, so that we can walk anywhere, enter into any circumstance, because this soft, loving home is waiting to refill all we’ve lost outside.

We make choices, right? The best choices feel easy & obvious in retrospect, but upon further inspection, require days and years of building. The path to our particular marriage and home is marked with uncomfortability and perseverance (only Heaven knows how many arguments and sleepless nights this path has contained, so far), where it might have been easier to check out (in whatever form “checking out” takes) than to keep building. “Having it all” certainly isn’t easy, and it has lots and lots of exit ramps, but those obstacles don’t make it less of a blessing. Maybe they make it more. More significant, more valuable, more our own.

I have no idea why she’d marry someone like me, but that’s her problem, not mine. My responsibility in all of this is to remain grateful, with wide open eyes to this amazing life I’ve been given.

The Best All

May 25, 2024/The Bridge Faith Community/Leave a comment

Today, the blog website is asking, “What does ‘having it all’ mean to you? Is it attainable?” I can’t say that I’ve ever considered this, even as the phrase “have it all” has been used in songs and advertising campaigns pretty much forever. It reminds me of that other mindless, subjective cliche, “live your best life.” What is this best life? Doesn’t that sound like having it all?

So. What is this ‘all?’ Is it money? How much is enough? Does anyone actually have enough? I heard a statistic once that, when people were asked how much money they needed to be comfortable, everyone, regardless of income, answered 10% more. Greed (or the lust for more) is a wild contrast with the process of transformation (or the desire for growth.) Success? What is that? Is it a great job? Is a great job one you love or one that pays very well? Great is awfully subjective, too. Is ‘all’ marriage, children, pets?

Marriage and children is fairly controversial now, I guess, but pets aren’t. Do I need a pet to have it all? And will a fish do? Or a guinea pig? A nice car? Hot tub? White picket fence? Perfect white teeth and washboard abs? Do other people have to envy me? Does this have anything to do with anyone else? Is this concept of all, or best life, universal? Or is it as individual as we are?

What about spirituality or education? Or mental & physical health? Is it as simple as having out needs met? But in this country, do we even know what we need? Or is it a matter of want? Or have we completely conflated the two? Is there a practical difference? Significance, meaning, purpose, connection…do these things matter?

If these prompts are designed to spur thought or conversation, this is a fantastic success. I suppose everyone’s answer is unique, but what probably isn’t is a sense of gratitude & contentment. It doesn’t really matter what the what is, it’s how we hold it. If we wrestle our lives and aspirations, squeezing them into submission, as we continue to climb higher and higher, desperately looking for the next rung, or mile-marker, nothing is (or will ever be) all. But if it’s what we have, here and now, and we can hold what we have been given with soft careful hands for as long as we have them, those things become treasures that are absolutely priceless. We become the kind of people who fall in love with all of this beauty, and that sounds exactly like a best life, if you ask me.

Donkeys

May 24, 2024/The Bridge Faith Community/Leave a comment

Who would I like to talk to soon? That’s the prompt today, and the answer is you. I made a decision, perhaps tentatively and surely doomed to fail, to write every day as form of gratitude and evangelism (not the crazy tv preacher/political posturing type, but the type that is telling others something awesome, like a new album or documentary or why there’s meaning, purpose, and joy in my life.) Then, this week, I haven’t written at all. This New Leaf lasted 3 days.

I have been busy this week, lots of appointments, meetings, youth sports, work, yesterday I spent in the Philadelphia Phillies stadium watching them beat the Texas Rangers with a very good friend. So, I could have cut all of those things short, or excised them altogether. And in my free time, I could have either answered the prompt or given my absolute attention (and smooches) to the Angel. I chose to not write.

I think that was a good decision.

Sometimes there are a million good things, and we choose based on our values and how we’ve assigned weight in our lives. There’s a story in the Bible about rescuing donkeys on the Sabbath. You can either obey the law and not work on the Sabbath. That’s a good thing, a right answer. Or you can rescue the donkey that’s fallen into a hole. That’s also a good thing. Now what?

Almost always, I’ll choose the donkey over rules and ritual. Maybe you wouldn’t, and you wouldn’t be wrong. That would simply be what weighs more to you. So, what and who are my donkeys? I chose the Angel, my sons, friends, family, cutting my mom’s grass, prayer, the baseball team, and working out, and I’m not too sorry about that. The thing about weight is, it’s actually a choice of presence and opportunity over obligation and distraction.

However, before I leave this house and this computer to meet a friend, before a Zoom meeting about a wedding, before I go to work, then a ballgame, the most important thing is this. Is here, now. Is you. You’re my donkey. And I’m not sorry about that, either.

Sacrifice

May 17, 2024/The Bridge Faith Community/Leave a comment

What sacrifices have you made in life? is the site prompt today. I’m not exactly certain how to answer. Each Yes comes with a thousand No’s. To choose this shirt or these shoes requires not choosing that or those. Is that a sacrifice? Living where I do, maybe we don’t know what true sacrifice is, yet relativity exists, so our perception makes our sacrifices (whether they match up with others or not) true.

The pain of a middle school heartbreak is not the pain of living in the Middle East at wartime. The anxiety of college acceptance is a different kind of anxiety than the citizens of Ukraine feel, but that doesn’t make the heartbreak less painful or the anxiety less authentic.

So, my American middle class sacrifice is real, in theory. Now, what’s mine? I chose time at home over time at work chasing a high paying job. Consequently, I do not have the nicest car in my neighborhood or a house out of a magazine. But I do have an A+ marriage, kids I actually like, and I’ve not missed a game or concert throughout school. I have 2 college degrees and am the pastor or a church we started in my house. I could have a different career – unless you are one of the legion of the pastors of a megachurch, this is not a path to obscene wealth. Maybe I could have made different decisions, but considering the joy I live with, and the happiness I feel, why would I have made them?

I could probably kiss another woman, but the Angel’s kiss is the sweetest, and I don’t ever want anyone else, even the tiniest bit. Is that sacrifice? Does sacrifice have to feel like a sacrifice? And if it doesn’t, is it simply agency?

I’ll tell you what sacrifice I’d like to make in my life, and intend to make: I’m heavier than I’ve been since 2017, and this cannot continue. Not because I’m vain or have a poor body image (which, I suppose, I do), but because my joints ache a little more than they did 15 pounds ago and because I have a pair of shorts I like that I can’t fit into (and am not wasting any money to replace), but mostly because I’d like to live as long as I can with the blessings I’ve been given. So, under either definition, this is a sacrifice. Making different choices in the kitchen is agency and it sucks. Wish me luck…

The Elusive WHY

May 16, 2024/The Bridge Faith Community/Leave a comment

The site is asking what is the oldest thing I’m wearing today. I have a pair of white Old Navy gym shorts that are easily 15 years old. They’re white so they always look vaguely dirty, but they fit well and I still like the way they look well enough.

I just got off the phone with a good friend, who filled me in on the happenings of her life, husband, mixed Brady Bunch family, ex-spouses, livestock, and in-laws. It’s a lot, messy and dramatic, just like the stories you & I would tell. She’s probably funnier than most of us are. But the interesting thing is that she wrapped up with the incredulous phrase, “this is exactly the life I wanted.”

Now, maybe tomorrow I’ll write about the importance of the peace in her marriage relationship, but today it’ll be her Why. When we have a clear why, a purpose for being/doing that explains all of this, it gives the focus and strength to endure almost any What.

So, what’s mine? What’s yours? In the Bible, Jesus asks a man, “What do you want me to do for you?” I wonder how we’d respond. Do we know what we want? Do we know who we are and what we’d ask for, if the one who could provide was standing in front of us? Do we have a Why we do the things we do? Maybe the Why isn’t great, and maybe today’s Why can’t really sustain and we need a new one for tomorrow & next week. But life gets pretty overwhelming sometimes, and things don’t make an awful lot of sense, it’s nice to have a rock to tie our pieces of string around so we don’t get lost.

One Small Step

May 13, 2024/The Bridge Faith Community/Leave a comment

What’s one small improvement you can make in your life? That’s the site prompt today, and probably deserves an answer.

I watched 2 documentaries and a movie this weekend. I’m still recovering from a cold that I am getting more and more resigned to carrying for the rest of my life. And it was raining, so it was a perfect weekend to climb under a blanket and watch something other than the NBA playoffs.

Finding Andrea is a 3 episode series following the disappearance of a woman in Kentucky who, incidentally, belonged to an organization that searched for (and was instrumental in finding) missing persons. She was complex, hiding the many facets of her life to the point that very few would claim to have actually known her. She died having lived a mostly dishonest, inauthentic life with lots & lots of secret compartments. She was probably killed by her sister and her boyfriend (at least that’s the implication I took from the doc). I don’t imagine we’ll ever know, because Andrea wasn’t the only one in the family who wasn’t interested in honesty. Her own dad would rather protect the possibly guilty daughter/boyfriend (who didn’t participate in the film) than be further torn apart by the truth. I guess I can’t blame him, who knows what I’d do in his place??

Max Joseph was a co-host of the Catfish TV show, and created a documentary called 15 Minutes of Shame with Monica Lewinsky. Lewinsky knows of what she speaks, as her life was torn apart by a series of very public poor decisions and behavior. This film looked at a guy who tried to sell and sanitizer at a ridiculous price during COVID, a woman who sent an ugly joke on Facebook and became the object of national scorn, and a man who was “cancelled” over a mistaken hand gesture in a company van. We think we know these people based on 1 small aspect of their personalities or an isolated incident, sometimes misunderstood, always without any shred of context. I don’t know Andrea’s dad, and to assume I know his motivations based on 2 or 3 clips is the height of arrogant condescension. Of course, he seems like something, the hand sanitizer guy seems like a scumbag, the woman seems heartlessly callous (as do the political pundits who condemned her). The hand gesture guy is obviously pretty silly, and the product of a culture gone power-crazy. But how do we actually know? I bet I seem all kinds of ways, based on extracted phrases in any one of these posts, or in overheard conversations at my dinner table.

The movie was My Big Fat Greek Wedding, and was absolutely as great as I remembered. It’s funny and feels good. But what’s notable is that no one is played as only a fool. Everyone acts like a fool at times, everyone is embarrassing in moments, but they all just seemed like “normal people.” Sort of. Admittedly, most are caricatures, but the caricatures leaned towards a positive, good nature rather than the mean, minimizing, debasing cartoons we are usually fed. I would guess that Ms. Vardalos sees the rest of us, sees “normal people,” through beautiful lenses that believe the best. I would guess that she likes us. That her idea of “abnormal” is abuse, betrayal, and violence. I believe the same.

We are made to walk together, to hold hands, and to love each other, and I’ll never be convinced otherwise. Maybe the shamed examples in 15 Minutes weren’t sorry they were caught as much as they were heartbroken they were led down a path so antithetical to their design. I thought the fiction of the movie was far closer to truth than the documentaries, because it showed the world in which I live, where the overwhelming majority are like you, trustworthy and awesome. Monsters exist, but in such small numbers, they stand out like neon signs at midnight. We’ve just bought lies for too long, choosing to acknowledge the missteps and failures as complete pictures, that we stopped seeing the beauty in each other.

I don’t know who Monica Lewinsky is, no matter how many pages I can read on the internet about her. And I’ll say the improvement I can make is to stop pretending I do.

Hellville

May 8, 2024/The Bridge Faith Community/Leave a comment

So, I watched the Brandy Hellville & the Cult of Fast Fashion documentary on Max last weekend. Brandy Melville is, apparently, a wildly popular clothing store for young-ish girls that I have never heard of. I don’t know how to feel about that. Of course, a middle-aged man (and I don’t know how to feel about that, either) maybe shouldn’t be too concerned with the fashion trends & habits of girls. There is an argument to be made that a middle-aged man maybe shouldn’t be too concerned with fashion trends & habits, at all, but whatever. I happen to like to be familiar with popular culture, as it is what we generally regard as our principal connector, and as I happen to like to connect, the popular culture is important to me.

Brandy Melville was created and operated by an older man named Stephan Marsan. Maybe that’s weird. The men are pretty creepy, sexist and racist, which is worse than weird, but if we knew who runs all of the companies we patronize, it might not be a collection of the best people in the world. This guy might not be such an exception.

The idea is that our clothes are disposable and our conscienceless consumption is unsustainable. In the service of providing them to us inexpensively, the supply chain is overflowing with slavery and human trafficking. This obviously isn’t only clothing, I’m typing on an iPad that’s production story would absolutely horrify us. And our phones and tvs and food and furniture. Everything probably has a similarly sordid path to our nameless big box retailer. And afterwards, we discard the old without thinking, and they end up in landfills or on, as this doc details, on the beaches of Ghana.

Why do we need so much? When will we finally see the manipulations of marketers/advertisers as the lies that they are? These solutions for modern life that we neeeeed will not fill our holes or our broken parts. They never did, they were never supposed to – it’s how they stay in business. If those jeans or that car did make us whole, we wouldn’t buy next season’s models, which would leave them all unemployed. The consumption is an issue, but not the one I am interested in today. The disposability is.

Everything in our culture is made with a shortened shelf-life. We use them today and throw them away when they no longer serve us, and get a new one. This is troubling when we’re talking about t-shirts, but exponentially more so when we begin to talk about people & relationships. The t-shirts are cheap, temporary, and we carry that to our commitments, friends and marriages. The second they stop serving us, making us feel a certain way, we toss them aside and get a new one.

I just don’t think this sort of perspective should be allowed to exist any longer, anywhere. Maybe 4 friends we’d die for are much, much better that 4,000 “friends” we barely know. Maybe 1 pair of jeans that’ll last for the rest of our lives is preferable to 8 or 10 to last the month. Instead of trading our partners in, maybe marriages should last, even after the excitement of falling in love fades. Maybe we all feel that we’re only as good as our last conversation or report, and maybe that’s causing us all to feel very, very anxious. Maybe that’s the birthplace of everybody’s increasing perfectionism.

Maybe not, of course, maybe it’s progress, and maybe I’m just hopelessly old-fashioned… Either way, I’m going to buy less cheap garbage and keep the Angel forever.

You Just Are.

April 29, 2024/The Bridge Faith Community/Leave a comment

Here’s the first thing I read today (from Morning Brew): “In unsurprising news, middle school kids in Norway have been feeling mentally healthier and performing better academically since a public health initiative banned smartphones in schools, according to a new study. After three years of the policy, girls’ GPAs increased, while visits to mental health professionals decreased by 60%—and girls from lower-income families benefited the most. There wasn’t much effect on boys’ academic standings, but both boys and girls experienced 43%–46% less bullying after putting their phones away.”

And here’s the second (from Mark Manson’s newsletter): “We are often drawn to chaotic romantic partners because their chaos guarantees that we will feel needed…We can become insecure around stable romantic partners because we worry that they’ll never fully need us. And that’s because: they won’t.”

The first one is something we would call fairly obvious, right? Social media and screen time are behind any number of concerning effects. So, why will we not follow in Norway’s footsteps? And further, why do we need studies to make decisions to eliminate our phones in schools? Why wouldn’t we just choose to ban our own phones for hours, during the day? Why don’t we turn them off from time to time? We won’t, but studies like this make me ask why not.

The second is less apparent, maybe. I’ve often wondered why we stay in overly dramatic relationships, is it really as simple as our own insecurity? We’re not actually needed, chaos doesn’t require us, just more chaos. Drama doesn’t care what the drama is, or who is involved, as long as there is drama.

Now, is it possible they’re connected? If our phones are the new most important relationship in our lives, our de facto romantic partners, do we allow the chaos and damage they inflict, because they make us feel needed? We quickly, instinctually, reach when it beckons. Silence is evidence of loneliness, a lack of “likes” shows our irrelevance or unworthiness. I only exist if others see and comment. The internet is chaotic by nature, it doesn’t neeeed us, wouldn’t miss us if we unplugged, the ocean doesn’t care of we drown. Mental health is of no consequence to the machines in our hands. But that doesn’t mean we don’t believe we’re necessary, important, and valuable to their survival, especially the quality of their lives.

Your value isn’t tied to followers or subscribers. Or to your girlfriend or boyfriend, for that matter. All of this is based on lies that our performance is the most important thing about us, bringing us back to the first question we ask (and keep asking ever after): Am I good enough?

That answer is yes, no matter how crazy your life is or how many messages are in your inbox. You just are.

Love With A Capital L

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

Tag: Spirituality