2024-04-22T19:25:42+00:00

Face-Melters

April 22, 2024April 22, 2024/The Bridge Faith Community/Leave a comment

A session musician in the terrific documentary I watched yesterday (called Hired Gun) said he only plays on songs he likes. If he were to play on songs he hates, just for the paycheck, it would be a violation of his soul. Not only were they buying (renting) his skill on guitar, they were also buying everything that had ever gone into his development to get to this point. Every experience, every hour, every broken string, every ounce of sweat, disappointment, and joy. Every opportunity forgone in service of his passion & craft.

I am the pastor of a church, and when this faith community began, I promised I’d never take a salary. The lines between religion and commerce could not be crossed. To enmesh God and business is wildly offensive.

Now, here’s the problem with narrow, closed-minded thinking. On one hand, I was right. It IS offensive, having a sanctuary that exists for the merchandise table is gross. But on the other, always/never is pretty dangerous. Maybe it’s not always so disgusting. Maybe there’s a space between using offerings for private jets and closing the church doors because we can’t afford to keep the light on.

The other problem is promising, or saying, “I’d never ____,” is that sometimes, people and circumstances change. I worked full time (+ on call) delivering medical equipment, full time for the church, and much more than full time being a husband and daddy of 2. Either I suffer a painful, absolute break down (where I am not a full time anything), or something had to go. An adjustment had to be made, and that adjustment, if it was to continue the ministry we started in my living room, I would have to accept some kind of compensation.

I felt dirty for a long, long time. Then, I began officiating weddings. My first few I didn’t charge any money, accepting only what they’d put in cards handed to me as I left. Of course, this meant I did Saturday weddings away from my family for nothing at all except the beauty of the moment. These experiences were wonderful, but were they worth the cost? On my family, on my heart, on the church, on my mental/physical health, worth missing the people & things I missed?

So, I started to charge, I was always the cheapest option, and even then, always with a certain embarrassment. Some people wouldn’t pay before being asked several times. Once I had to ask up to, on the wedding day, and afterwards. Months later, my last message said, “I guess you won’t be addressing this (still too embarrassed to call it a “fee” or “payment”), so I won’t ask again.” Now, I get it before, but it’s never easy and never without the familiar, “I hate to ask this, but ____.”

Yes, familiar, but is it true? Do I honestly hate to ask? Can I love to do the thing and still charge to do it? Do you like your job? Would you do it for free? Is ministry different, in that regard? Paul writes in plenty of his letters that everybody, even ministers of the Gospel, should be paid for what they do, but the distance from our head to our heart can be very, very long.

I wrote a book on marriage that I believe could help everybody in the whole world. (Of course I do, why else would I write it? Well, I suppose also, like all art, because it’s on my heart and has to get out or I’ll never sleep again.) Yet, I apologize sheepishly for charging. Why do I do that? Because of that whole church-commerce separation, that’s why. I am not housing a fleet of Rolls Royces in my massive garage. I am not wearing suits that cost thousands of dollars. I drive a Focus with real transmission problems and wear thrift store sweaters. I’m not amassing an empire.

But I am trying to take a sledgehammer to all things that could separate anyone from the love of Jesus. And what separates us quicker and easier than greed & fortune in His name?

But that guitarist is absolutely right. He didn’t just roll out of bed today to play a face-melting solo in a vacuum. And neither did I (but a face-melting sermon, or wedding ceremony, in my case;). Everything I say on Sunday mornings or Tuesday evenings or Saturday nights was forged in middle school hell, and the grunge-ish band I was in, and my degree, and my issues, and my pain, and my family dynamics, and the times I had my heart broken, and the years I spent raging agains the machines of government and religion. My words come from hours and hours of study funneled through my unique perspective, that came from countless experiences, positive and negative. My ministry is a flaming ball of passion, life, divine gifts, and failures.

And so is yours. We’re all face-melters. My perspective is unique, but not in how it came about. We are not just slices of pie, we are pies. And to think we can have a bite without all that went into the creation of the whole is remarkably misguided. You became you in midnights and 4pms, in makes and misses, in sweats and suits, and you wouldn’t be you without all of them. And there’s enormous value in the school that produced you – it’s a priceless process and we wouldn’t have the joy of me or you any other way.

I appreciate that guy. I don’t know his name, and that’s sort of the point of the doc, but I’ll remember him forever. In fact, I’m going to double my prices, starting today. Ok, maybe tomorrow, but they’re going up.

A Heartbreaking Disappointment

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

For Christmas, the past several years, I’ve taken my son to an NBA basketball game. We live in Pennsylvania, so we go to a game when the 76ers play the Dallas Mavericks.The Mavericks are his favorite team because Luka Doncic is his favorite player by a mile. Last Christmas, I thought it would be amazing to take him to Dallas (his first flight) to see them at their home arena, to play a team other than the 76ers – in this case, Steph Curry & the Golden State Warriors. This was a bigger decision than it might sound, because we can’t exactly afford a flight, hotel, car, and game, but sometimes paying for a debt all year is absolutely worth it. The game is next week, and the season has gone in a direction for both that makes it a very big game. How exciting, right?

Well, apparently the Dallas Mavericks and/or the NBA thought so, too, so they rescheduled the game. The first, the one I bought and gave as Christmas gift, was Tuesday, April 2, Warriors AT Mavericks. Yesterday, I received confirmation for my tickets: Friday, April 5, Warriors at Mavericks. Tuesday, the Mavericks are now going to Golden State. My game tickets are still good, the game has just been moved. Just.

Sometimes, NFL games are “flexed” and change times or even dates, depending on the importance of the game. That is usually ok with me, because, like everybody else, I don’t think much about the impact of a dumb game on others. Things mostly only matter to me in direct correlation to their proximity to me. In other words, I only care if it happens to me. I recognize that isn’t something exclusive to me, it’s a human disease, and if we are interested enough to change, we spend our whole lives taking baby steps to open our minds and hearts to notice and understand the lives of others.

I did think of those poor suckers who have sports tickets to a game to only get it flexed, or rescheduled, away. Today, I am that poor sucker. I am not the usual poor sucker, I know full well that tv contracts drive sports leagues far more than ticket sales. And I know the ticket sales of once/year fathers & sons really doesn’t move any needles at all. Yes, I know these things, and today, I don’t care. I think it’s awful. And I think it’s awful I have to tell my boy the biggest part of the trip we’ve been planning for months has disappeared. I wonder if it’s worth it to fly to Dallas to rent a car and stay at some hotel to eat a few meals out? I wonder if the trees or sun look different there.

Of course, like everybody else, we’d like to see the stadium where the Cowboys play… Is it worth a year of debt? If they let us work out in the team weightroom with the team, maybe. But now that I think about it, I like the Cowboys because of the star on the helmet far more than the name on the back of the jersey (at least since Troy Aikman retired). If I don’t ever do curls with Dak Prescott, it’s not a loss I’ll regret.

When I say it’s awful, I do it in full awareness that in the eternal scope of things, a family missing an NBA game is very low. But relativity simply doesn’t matter when it comes to heartbreak. When a teenage girl breaks up with a boy, the tears don’t come less because the Middle East is in a perpetual war. The diagnosis of a 90 year old woman in Tennessee certainly isn’t as big as the bombs in Ukraine that will kill many, many more over a line on a map (yes, it’s an oversimplification, but you get the point). But it’s not inconsequential to that woman in Tennessee or to her family. It’s seismic and earth-shattering. The boy who has lost his first girlfriend will find another, we all know that, but it doesn’t make it better, it never has and never will.

Our pain is just that, ours. And it doesn’t have much at all to do with relativity. Yours is yours and mine is mine, and one moment spent comparing the 2 is pointless and disrespectful. A broken finger is not a fractured rib, but it still hurts like crazy. We talk honesty here, right? How many times has it made sense when a friend told you what they were walking through but didn’t want to tell you because others have it worse? None. Not one. Not now, not ever.

Because we hurt doesn’t minimize their suffering. We can hold them all in our great big beautiful hearts. I’m angry and disappointed over this ticket catastrophe, but in no way do I confuse it as being a monumental global disaster. Or even as any bigger than it is. But I do think the God that created and loves me cares. A LOT. And is disappointed with us (not in us). I bet He saw that reschedule and all of the fathers & sons who will lose the experience and was disappointed. I bet He saw me when I read that email and longed to hold me with His human arms and ease the storm inside my chest. And that’s good enough for me.

So maybe I’ll see you in Dallas, on Tuesday, at some awesome bbq restaurant or working out with the offensive line. And maybe I won’t.

March

March 19, 2024/The Bridge Faith Community/Leave a comment

I struggle in the month of March. This is the month of several anniversaries that are quite painful, the end of a long dark gray winter, loss, overwhelming responsibilities, and this one in particular carrying some very good friends who are suffering as they carry heavy burdens and I walk alongside, trying to ease their weight with an extra pair of hands to hold.

I didn’t always know that March affected me the way it did (maybe it didn’t always), I just knew it was another part of regular emotional/psychological cycles, like any other. But that’s not really true. Once the Angel and I noticed, it became obvious. So, for the last many years, I/we have made provision for this disruption, and that was smart. All year, March looms large, and in winter, plans are made to address it, well before the first symptoms emerge.

But there is an interesting question here. What if March is no longer a problem? The responsibilities, relationships, and pain of friends could just as easily occur in September or June, maybe March has no impact anymore. How would I know? Is March causing the mindset or is the mindset concerning March the problem?

Parents & politicians used to argue about a genre of music called gangsta rap. NWA was brilliant & the most often targeted, and everybody wondered if the songs were simply reflecting cultural observations of a specific reality, or the songs, that were perhaps born out of a concerning reality, had outgrown and were now shaping the reality.

Are our lives creating our words or are our words creating our lives?

In the Bible, God spoke and created everything that is, and maybe you don’t believe that, but even so, it does contain an important truth: words have undeniable power. If you say you can’t do a pull-up, you almost certainly can’t. Luke Skywalker is attempting to lift the X-wing out of the swamp on Dagobah with his mind, can’t, and says, “I don’t believe it.” To which Jedi master and supercool sage Yoda replies, “that is why you fail,” and then does it himself. How much do we write the future when we say, “that’s just who I am/who he is/how she is?” I am convinced more than we would ever realize.

This is not ‘name it-claim it,’ ‘speak it into existence’ popular, flawed philosophy. Like most clever names, it’s not that simple. But also like most clever ideas, there is truth at the root. I might not be able to dunk a basketball, no matter how much I believe it, or if I say I can – but I for sure can’t if I’m convinced I can’t. The high school basketball team, historically, were beaten before the bus parked because they knew they were about to lose. They didn’t even have to play the game to find out.

When I tell you I’m a mess in March, I don’t even give myself a chance to find out if it still is. Maybe I WAS, maybe it WAS, but we absolutely need to give ourselves, ideas and realities the opportunity to grow and transform. Just because we were doesn’t mean we still are, right? I used to be lots of things I am not today. And I used to not be a million thing I am now. These boxes we build need to be dismantled with extreme prejudice, not with screwdrivers and care, but with wrecking balls and dynamite. Leave nothing left with which to rebuild. Start fresh, write a new story, imagine, dream, become.

Now, as it turns out, March actually is a bitch. But now I know.

Anxious People

March 15, 2024/The Bridge Faith Community/Leave a comment

I just finished Anxious People, a novel written by Fredrik Backman. It’s the 2nd time, and I’m fairly certain I’ll read it every 6 months for the rest of my life. I finished the last 50 or so pages in my bedroom with the door closed, my son is home from work today, and I can’t stop crying.

(It’s nothing he hasn’t seen, he’s pretty comfortable with this kind of scene, but I don’t want to stop until the tears have finished on their own and I’m good and ready to stand.) It’s sometimes difficult to explain these tears. I’m not sad, I’m in love, and they are quite different tears.

If I were to be a book, I would want to be this one. It’s about a bank robber, hostages, death, beautiful boundless life, music, books, fathers & mothers & sons & daughters, spouses, marriage, divorce, mistakes, suicide, forgiveness, deep hopelessness and the perseverance of deeper hope, God, and love – for ourselves, each other, and this wonderfully complicated mess of today, every day, and this world.

This week was full. My mushy heart was broken several times, and grew 2 sizes every time. I was very very hurt and very angry, argued, fought, slept, wrote lots of pages of things I’d probably never say, sang too loudly, danced, ate less food than I wanted, threw baseballs, ran, lifted weights, screamed, laughed, held hands, kissed, my spirit fell so far I thought we might never get up, then we did. And here we are, alive and so thankful.

There’s no big, ‘important’ purpose to this post. I really just wanted to say hello, and that I hope you’re ok. Actually, now that I think about it, what could be more important than that?

Silly Site Prompt

February 27, 2024/The Bridge Faith Community/Leave a comment

The site prompt today is, “If you could be someone else for a day, who would it be, and why?” W

hy would I ever want to be anyone else???? Why would I want a different life? And If I did want a different life, why wouldn’t I set a new course and change mine?

Maybe our lives would become different if we’d simply lean in to the beauty that is already there that we’ve been missing, wishing we could be someone else. Nope, I wouldn’t want to be anyone else. I’m very grateful and happy where and who I am right now.

A Design For Life

February 26, 2024/The Bridge Faith Community/Leave a comment

This morning, I was listening to a playlist (the modern ‘mixtape’), and the song “Internet Killed The Video Star,” by the Limousines came on. It’s a perfect title and a terrific song, and it has this peach of a lyric:

“Well, I’m a horrible dancer; I ain’t gonna lie, but I’ll be damned if that means that I ain’t gonna try. Yeah, I’m a shitty romancer, baby; I ain’t gonna lie, but I’ll be damned if that means that I ain’t gonna try. Get up, get up, get up, and dance.”

So, I texted this song and lyric to my brother and sister, and she shared with me the message from her yoga class (written by yoga master Becky Hemsley):

“I know there may have been times in your life when you’ve stopped dancing, stopped singing, stopped being yourself, because someone was watching you. Judging you….We’ve been taught that we must only be ourselves if it suits other people…The birds sing – not because we might listen – but simply with the joy of being alive….So sing as loud as you wish, and dance as much as you like. You do not exist for the enjoyment of others. You exist to be alive. Properly, fully, beautifully alive.“

Sometimes the world sends you messages so obvious, so clear, so coincidental that coincidence is impossible. It’s a specific message from the Creator of the Universe to us – in this case, a message to dance and/or romance, or share the message to dance and/or romance, or witness to the importance and imperative that we all dance and/or romance. I’m choosing to do all 3 today.

We have been conditioned into self-consciousness, even when that means we miss out on all sorts of beauty and wonder. When did that happen? When did we stop dancing (even if we’re bad at it)? Who told us we’re bad at it? For that matter, who are they to decide? When did we stop romancing (even if we don’t know how to do it yet)? When did we stop singing, stop living, and when did we replace it with just quietly getting by?

Well, I don’t think we should do that anymore. I think we should dance whenever and however we want. It’s super fun to be so free.

And as far as romancing, the characteristic that makes each of us so sexy is confidence, passion, interest, joy. We are good dancers when we dance when we love to turn the music up and move. We are great romancers when we lean in and give our authentic selves to each other, with vulnerability, honesty, trust, and open-ness. We are great lovers when we love. And the more we practice, the better we are.

You don’t have to apologize for dancing or singing. If anything, you can apologize for not dancing and singing earlier. Have a good time. This life is a gift, and it can be very hard and hurt a lot, so we are well served to enjoy it when we can, to move our hips when whenever we feel like it.

The next song in the playlist was “Murder On The Dance Floor,” where Sophie Ellis-Bextor sings, “you better not kill this groove,” which is more solid advice as we design our lives. The point is to not kill any more grooves, to not squash anyone else’s dancing, and to sing and romance as loud as we can.

This Book

February 23, 2024February 23, 2024/The Bridge Faith Community/Leave a comment

I wrote a book called Be Very Careful Who You Marry, released just before the Christmas of 2023. It is my second book. The first, called Chronicles, Nehemiah, and Other Books Nobody Reads, is a collection of many different subjects and ideas. Be Very Careful is just one: marriage – in theory and in practice. This isn’t to say it’s only for married people, any more than Marvel movies are only for superheroes or Britpop is only for the English.

As I write on the back cover, “…but it’s not only a marriage book. It’s about Jesus, the Angel, spirituality, sex, money, words, Mr & Mrs Rupert Holmes and their affinity for pina coladas, but mostly, it’s about you and me and what we choose to build.”

The image on the cover (and this post) is of 2 tiny metal figures that the Angel & I bought on our honeymoon in Aruba. Their arms are in position to embrace each other, but we didn’t always feel like embracing each other, and in those cases, we’d separate them. So many marriage relationships are victims of silent erosion, beaten down by the unrealistic expectations of “how it’s supposed to be.” We are sold a faulty premise that, when we say “I do,” we will always feeeeeeel in love, hearts in our eyes and tingly butterflies in our bellies, forever and ever. And if we don’t, even for a moment, we figure we are broken, we made a terrible decision, and there are only 2 options from here: divorce, or a life of abject misery. What we’d quickly find, if we’d only give this fear a voice, is that sometimes the figures aren’t holding each other. They are driving each other crazy, far apart on the TV stand. Nothing is broken, we haven’t “fallen out of love,” we’re simply, wonderfully married. There are times of brilliant, sweet, wonderful roses and there are times of old, dead, dried petals. The question is, what do we do then?

That’s what the book is about. What we do then is keep having dinner together, listening, talking, holding hands, having sex, opening the door for each other, and doing the dishes. We keep loving each other, even when we don’t necessarily feel like it. Love always protects, always trusts, always hopes, and always perseveres. Love never fails. (I read that somewhere.) We won’t always feel hope, but that’s not what it says at all. We hope anyway.

In a marriage, we become Always and Even If people.

The exhilarating dance of creation is complicated. What makes me think I have anything new to say about marriage or relationships? What makes me think anyone will want to read anything I write (or think or say) anyway? Is it unbridled arrogance? Where do these mean, nasty voices in our heads come from when we are inspired to build? The truth is that maybe I don’t have anything new to say, maybe no one will want to read it, maybe it is arrogance. But that’s not the point at all, is it? We are creative beings, made in the image of a wildly creative God, and we have been called to offer ourselves and our hearts to each other. So, yes, maybe nobody will care. OR maybe one person will read it at precisely the right time, they’ll lean into their spouse (instead of away from), re-commit to each other, and this new connection will bless their children and neighbors and you and me and everybody everywhere. That’s how the world changes. Of course, I’m dreaming. But anything/everything significant begins as unrestrained imagination. All dreams start as an impossibility.

Maybe a billion people will read this book. Or maybe just the Angel and my mom. I want you, and I want all of your friends, to read it. I want you to love it, too. Not to make me the next big thing, but so that you can love your wives and husbands, and be loved by your wives and husbands. We were given this amazing gift of marriage, a person with whom to truly share our every part of our lives (what could be more lovely??), and I’m not convinced we’ve even scratched the surface of it’s depth and beauty.

You can get it from me (I have enough copies and can get more, just come to my home, message me, or come to the Bridge on Sunday morning). Or you can go to the Books, Etc page on my blog, lovewithacapitall.com, where you can click a link that will take you to a store to buy it and get it shipped to your home.

Chuck Palahniuk writes, in his novel Choke, “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… Where we’re standing right now, in the ruins in the dark, what we build could be anything.”

What we build could be anything, we just need to start.

Bored.

February 22, 2024/The Bridge Faith Community/Leave a comment

What bores me? That’s the site prompt today, and I don’t have much of an answer. There is a saying that only boring people are bored.

Rose Goldberg writes (on a site called Medium) that it’s actually a compliment. She reasons that we achieve a state of boredom when we’ve “drained all outside distractions,” that “being bored is being aware of yourself.” I don’t know her final conclusions, because Medium won’t let you read an entire article until you’ve created an account. I don’t need more accounts, and to tell you the truth, I don’t care enough about Ms. Goldberg’s final conclusions to add another.

What I do know is that I would not call awareness boredom. In those moments when I am free of distraction, when I am alone with myself and my own thoughts or emotions, when I am quiet, I am engaged and inspired. There, I am rested and content, not bored. When my children whine about boredom, they are restless and discontented. They are desperately searching to be entertained.

Perhaps boredom has exponentially increased as screen time has exponentially increased. When our imagination atrophied, our ability to entertain ourselves did as well. Or maybe none of that’s accurate.

I wonder what the actual definition is of boredom. Merrian-Webster says, it’s “the state of being weary and restless through lack of interest.” Cambridge dictionary calls it “the state of being unhappy and uninterested.” I’m glad I didn’t create a Medium account, now it sounds like she’s simply excusing or rationalizing, normalizing a negative. We probably do that a lot, we don’t like to be told what we feel is, in any way, not awesome. Is this ennui shaming? Who are you to tell me anything I am, feel, think, say, or feel isn’t perfect?

Maybe these emotions are like warning lights on a dashboard, asking us to address possible problem areas. Maybe they’re not destructive today, but they might become a hazard eventually. And if we re-classify the “check engine” light, we ignore the possible dangers. Boredom might be an early warning indicator for things like depression or despair, and calling it awareness is a disservice, like ignoring our skyrocketing blood pressure or headaches.

Or maybe this is an emotion that isn’t really an issue. Maybe we should sit aimlessly, facing the maddening avalanche of an overwhelming nothing with no idea of how to address it. Maybe the headache is just a headache, not a symptom of stress or anxiety. But even if it is, who says stress and anxiety are so bad? Maybe the self-esteem benefit of never hearing we’re wrong or broken or on the wrong path (or that there is even a wrong path at all) is worth any cost.

There’s an interesting disconnect with tolerance and normalizing everything. Let’s say I disagree, and think boredom or being left-handed or liking the NY Giants is wrong and mentally unhealthy. Is my opinion equally normal, or am I wrong? If we decide there’s no ‘wrong’ in the interest of validating every opinion, then what about if I disagree? If my opinion to be validated is invalidation? Can we be truly tolerant if we outlaw intolerance? I know I’m not the first to bring up these inconsistencies, and this site prompt isn’t about tolerance, it’s about boredom.

So, to answer: I’m not often bored. I don’t remember when I was last bored.

Out Of Sorts

February 7, 2024February 7, 2024/The Bridge Faith Community/Leave a comment

Last week, I said I’d write a post on my new book in this space. It’s called Be Very Careful Who You Marry, and I’m not writing it today. You see, I’m a little out of sorts this week. The site post is “What do you need a break from?” And these 2 things seem to be related, but I’m not totally sure how.

I haven’t been sleeping much, and when I do, I wake up exhausted. I can only think of 2 reasons for this. The Angel is convinced I have sleep apnea. I think it’s more likely that I’ve created a second personality and have been building underground fight clubs while I think I’m asleep. True, there aren’t any new unexplainable bruises, but maybe that’s just because I’m winning.

Everything looks fuzzy and a little distorted, my neck (actually, If you look up “where is my trapezius?” that’s exactly where) is so stiff, it hurts to move, my head is pounding no matter how many pills I swallow. My whole body is sore. I want to watch tv, but it’s impossible to pay attention. I’m pretty sure I’m irritable and short with responses, but you’d have to ask those in my house.

There’s a book I’m reading right now, called As Good As Dead, by Elizabeth Evans. It’s fantastic, which is no surprise, as she is fantastic, but it’s about a this married woman who was unfaithful to her future husband 20ish years ago with the future husband of her best friend. Nobody found out, and now the best friend, with whom she had lost touch, is at her front door. Probably, she now knows, and eventually, the husband will discover what happened.

I read Fargo Rock City, by Chuck Klosterman, and Generation X, by Douglas Coupland, in a few days each. The Angel, who is the greatest, has been replacing my favorite books that we lost in our 2011 flood. There are times when people like you and me read and read and read, insatiably. I don’t want to read As Good As It Gets. A brilliant author, like Evans, can put us into the narrative, and this situation is deeply unsettling. I don’t want him to find out. I don’t want to feel what he feels, when he does. I don’t want her to have done it. I don’t want hearts to break and relationships to end. I know they do, but I don’t have to accept it. And, if I’m honest, I don’t mind that it bothers me.

I don’t watch 300, either, because I absolutely hate a scene in it. I don’t need to watch it, there are plenty of ultra-violent movies without sexual assault in them. I’ll watch them. And there are so many books where writers don’t devastate me. It’s weird, the thing that makes me love her (her ability to so accurately, so beautifully, capture human emotion) is the reason I am dragging my feet to read this book.

But I couldn’t read it now, even if I wanted to, my head is a mess. So, what do I need a break from? Who knows? Maybe stimulation. Maybe the pain of the world around me – my emotional/empathetic sensitivity (I am extraordinarily high maintenance) requires time to integrate & decompress. Maybe I haven’t had that, maybe I haven’t had enough. I guess I do feel like I’ve been run over by something big and nasty. Maybe the big, nasty something is the life I have been called into, have chosen to embrace, and love more than I can tell you.

Or maybe I just have sleep apnea.

That Book

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

I wrote a book called Chronicles, Nehemiah, and Other Books Nobody Reads. It’s a terrific title, and I really love the whole thing. It’s not perfect, by any means. It’s a little unfriendly, there isn’t a Table of Contents and there aren’t page numbers. It’s a book of essays, so there’s no arc, and it follows no real discernible path. It’s equal parts memoir, the story of our faith community, The Bridge, and Bible commentary. It includes a number of blog posts from the Bridge site (and not this one), and a fiction piece called “Bands We Don’t Even Like.”

At the end of every service, we stand and hold hands for closing prayer, and we do that (in part) because of 2 songs: “Dance, Dance, Christa Paffgen,” by Anberlin, and “Rumors Of My Demise Have Been Greatly Exaggerated,” by Rise Against. I explain why in the book, and I also break down the bible verse that most informs my every day (Genesis 28:16 “Surely the Lord is in this place, and I was unaware.”)

Incidentally, the Anberlin line is “if a touch is worth 1,000 words, then a touch is worth them all.” And I just now read an online lyric page that reads, “…then YOUR touch is worth them all.” If that is, indeed, what it says, I’m going to continue to pretend it doesn’t, and still says “…A touch is worth them all.”

The reason for the Rise Against song is, “Let’s take this one day at a time, I’ll hold your hand if you hold mine.” I can’t play this one in church because there are language issues, and I don’t play the Anberlin because it’s over 7 minutes long.

I’ve been dying to play a Morrissey song, and “Death Of A Disco Dancer” fit perfectly last Sunday, but that song is long, as well, so I just read the lyrics.

I love the book because it was my first, and it was my heart spilled onto the pages. Of course it’s not perfect, how could it be? It’s messy and feels urgent, like I had to get it out immediately or I’d never sleep again. It’s sweat, blood, joy, exhaustion, tears, confusion, frustration, brokenness and gratitude.

I didn’t think I’d write another one – I love the blog format. The sermon is such a cool art form because it’s also immediate, but electric and personal, human, flowing, physical, thoughtful, life-changing (for the giver as well as anyone who hears.) Blogs feel very similar. I’m writing this now and you can read it within 5 minutes. Books are different. I began this 2nd one a few years ago, put my head down and worked like crazy for most of last year, and finally finished it in October. The first people read a physical copy a few days before Christmas, and it won’t be approved by Amazon to sell there until late spring (hopefully). I self-publish for the same reason everybody else does, because it gets out fast and is relatively easy.

I started the process to put a little commerce store on this lovewithacapitall.com site to sell it, but it requires an upgrade, and I don’t feel like that now. As I write that last sentence, it feels silly. If I want the new book in the world, an upgrade is a small price to pay. We’ll see. It’s for sale now on Lulu.com, and it’s called Be Very Careful Who You Marry. It’s much friendlier, one subject (marriage), chapters, a Table of Contents, and even page numbers!!! I’ll tell you about it next time.

I am going to go back and clean up the last one, …Books Nobody Reads, and get that out again for summer or fall. Maybe you’ll love it like I do, but making anything is an interesting dance. Obviously, I’d love everyone to love everything, for this to be the biggest blog in the world, and for people to find tons of value in it, but the truth is, we are made to create. It’s an offering, isn’t it? We listen, live, process, and then we express it, however we express it. Maybe it’ll connect – after all, we’re all having these beautiful, and beautifully unique, intensely personal yet strangely universal, human experiences. And maybe it won’t. But it has to get out, we have to open our hearts and hands.

I tell you all of this to encourage & celebrate the impulse to build, to construct bridges between us, however we do. You either know you’re an artist, or you don’t – but you certainly are one. Let’s do this, I’ll hold your hand if you hold mine, and we’ll jump together.

Love With A Capital L

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

Tag: Spirituality