preparing for re-entry

i'm packing up and preparing to leave the bazaro universe known as disney world. no more haunting christmas music at every turn. no more cheesey and offensive approximation of diverse nations within mere footsteps. no more cartoon characters walking up to me and expecting that i will go crazy because they are waving a big, white foam hand in the air....and, no more enormous seas of people! yeah!

other things i'm leaving: spending 100% of my time with my parents and commercialism gone crazy, my dad (i know i already mentioned parents, but i think my dad deserved a second metion)

thing's i'm sad that i'm leaving: surprisingly good (though grossely over-priced) international wine, the span of a nation between me and my chuch/job, having my brother as a permabuffer between my parents and i.

the good news is, though, that in 12 hours, i'll be able to attempt some sort of real life again, without running to sacrasm and false laughter for defense at every turn.

my friends in seattle should know that the literal sea of people here has driven me to this decision: locking myself in my room for the majority of next week.

saturday i have a lock-in at church.
monday i'll be at greenlake - as always
tuesday and thursday i have youth group.
somewhere in there, i'm going to chill with jen.
other than this, i'm in my room and away from people - just a little detoxification time!

duet with jesse katsopolis

tonight, i sang with uncle jesse.

that's right, john stamos, formerly - and forever - uncle jesse from full house, and i had a sing along...with about a thousand other people....and only for one song in the middle of a choir concert he was narrating.

oh yes, the cheese is beyond mesaure here at disney world.

yesterday, we went to epcot. it was everything the simpsons spoofed and worse.

today we went to the animal kingdom. we saw numerous endangered species on a driven tour. the entire time, though, our "cast member/tour guide" (they call everyone who works here a "castmember") kept our minds on "big red" and "little red" - two fictional elephants who, in the end, are just like every other 1970's animatronic cheese-ball in disney world. depressing.

tomorrow - the magic kingdom.

the good/bad news: i've been in this non-sarcastic mood - trying to be present to the moment and not outside of it, judging it, and laughing rather than participating. in general, this is a good way to grow. the problem is that, at disney world, the moment is so ridiculously boring that being present to the moment means nap time. so.....i've reached new sarcastic heights and, paired with the biggest smart ass i know (my brother) i think tomorrow should be great fun!

i'll return to you with hokey photos and sincere posts once i return home and separate from my parents!

until then, dream sarcastic dreams for me!

free at last, free at last, thank God almighty, i'm free at at last!

over 100 pages - single spaced, but it's done and on a plane to Boston!

my final project from GCTS is finished and i am no longer a bi-coastal seminarian - just a mono-coastal one!


PRAISE GOD!
thank you friends for all your help and prayers!

look for a kick ass party in late january!

"You sit on a throne of lies."
-buddy the (not) elf

"liam neison is god"

-my intern neal

the day the lord has made

My mom and I can’t watch television together – least of all the news. She is drawn into the stories, makes dogmatic postulation and pronouncements of both judgment and affirmation. I laugh and constantly critique the information given and its validity. With local news, this is a laughable interaction. When we two step into the sacred world of Scriptures, on many levels these attitudes are troubling obstacles to relationship – both with each other and with the text. Put simply, this tectonic collide is a poster child for the meeting of modernity and post-modernity. If a mother and daughter who struggle so valiantly toward friendship abandon that sinking ship to the safety of separate shores and avoidance, where is unity? Beyond this uniquely unified relationship of mother and child, what hope is there for an already divided church? What does a church, who is one, do in the face of such a polarizing paradigmatic shift.

I am in the process of leaving an elderly church where I have been the youth minister for an agonizing year. In a conversation I recently had, I began to rage at the God who put me in this time – this desperate holding cell between modernity and post-modernity. Not only did we disagree, but our languages, though American English, were foreign. As in the wake of Babel, we were incapacitated to communicate. Like in Babel, our divergent generations seem hopelessly scattered. As these plates collide, the Himalayans are formed and old and young cry out on opposing sides – but with no language to be heard by each other.

Again, I wonder why I am here in this transition. Again, I wonder why I must inhabit the quick-sand between yesterday and tommorow? Then, again, is not the task of every servant, every generation, every morning which sun beakons, to live today - no matter how tattered the wake of yesterday and the pull of tomorrow may seem? Today may be a frustrating, paradoxical, and often strangling day to live - yet it is the day the Lord has made.

a broken heart for a broken world

i'm sitting in my office, sobbing uncontrollably.

today i recived my "one life revolution" resource packet. i watched some of the videos that come with it and my heart just broke.

where is God in a world where 20 million children are orphaned by aids?

where is God when a six year old contracts aids from caring for his dying mother's wounds?

how long have you been on the internet?
14 minutes? then one person has died of aids since you logged on.
28 minutes? less than a half an hour and two people are gone.

it's just too much.

how do you live in a world like this?
how do you worship God in this place?

job's life looks perfect in comparison.

what do we do?
how do i pay $13,000/year for school in the face of this?
how do i have netflix membership when that's nearly enough to care for an orphan?
how do i drive a car when one month's gas could send an orphan to school for a year?

more than one in three people in swaziland has aids.

how do you live?
how?

and in this, i want nothing to do with a God who allows such sorrow ---

------still, somewhere inside, i know that the ache i'm feeling right now is not mine, but Gods.

quotes and mullets: always beyond context

i went to everett yesterday - ooohhh the mulletude!

and....quotes out of context:

"Theraputic Llamas"

“Some of you eat, Some of you read theology. Again, how is that different than masturbation. Don’t fault me for occasionally pleasuring myself.”

“I think you find me attractive.”

“I’m not going to deny that I vomited 40 times.”

“I will eat you.”

Paraphrased: I hope the mariners beat the eagles tonight.

being kind to myself

here's my morning:

fear: shit. how did that happen? it's 10? at 3 i crawled into bed for a two-hour nap. shit. i'm so screwed!

resignation: there's no way i can get this project done.

frustration: [checking email] the church wants me do do what? before the 10th? do they even care that my final project is due then? why does no one there care about what they are doing to me?

fortitude: no, you know what, i am going to get this project done just so that i can get my masters and never end up at a church like that again.

resignation: who am i kidding. maybe if i hadn't gone to bed last night but...

epiphany: what if i weren't graduating? then i'd have an extra 8 days - 2 days after mhgs is finished.

budding hope: can i do that?

cynicism: probably not.

persistant hope: i should call them though.

[long confusing phone conversation of pulsating highs and lows as i eventually realized the girl i was talking to didn'y know what she was talking about and she finally knew too. finally, she asks someone else]

unbridaled enthusiasm: really!?! so all i do is fax you and tell you i'm not graduating in january and i get not 8 but 11 extra days! awesome.

cyncism bringing questions: one last question - i'm sorry - if i don't graduate in january, the only diffrence is that i don't get my diploma until may right?

unexpected glee: so i wouldn't get it until may again and since i'm not up for ordination or licensure, there absolutely no benefit to graduating now [brief moment of realizing how little my degree means - grieving that, but not caring since, no i get to sleep] awesome! thank you so much.

so, i'm not officially graduating in january.
seems a small thing...but if you know me, you know how driven i am.
so, i'm being kind and allowing myself to say, "who cares?"

scattered

"sounds like your life is pretty scattered," he kindly said - a wise understatement.

i am in constant motion passing from work to school to school work to my other school's work to a brief nap on annie's bedroom floor each night - only after forcing her to promise that she will make me get up at the end of my nap - to working on my arts organization. i want to scream most of the time, but don't simply for the lack of time.

again...prayers between now and 2006 are greatly appreciated.

to do lsd or to encounter - this is the question

“I wish you would try LSD.” I was lost in the wake of the words falling like pins off the tongue of my friend. One by one they had dropped – unheard. Suddenly, as the cumulative falling turned to a cascade, an unheard pin drop became a violently loud sound demanding response. She retreated from her shyly voiced hope, “But I know you never would.” My mind flew to many places. I remembered who I had always been. I remembered my negative morals, “I will never smoke. I will never drink. I will never have sex outside of marriage.” I remembered where these came from: my dad. More specifically, they came from the placard he placed on our door, “As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.” More specifically yet, they came from the oft repeated phrase, “We don’t do that, we are Christians.” I realized that my old identity was buried deep within the bounds of a sturdy wall between us and them. More than the words my friend so cautiously spilled on the floor between us, I was lost in the wake of that identity. I seriously stumbled over the question, would I do LSD? Why? Why not? As I worked to catch my balance on the issue, I met the meat of the interaction, knowing the point at hand was not whether I would do LSD but whether I would abandon old scripts in the name of encountering my friend.
Sometimes my gratitude for eternity encasing itself in a single tense moment is beyond measure. I had time to collect and reach out to her, “Hmm. I’m wondering why you are inviting me to this?” This intentional turn opened up dialogue and meeting as she faithfully recalled our greatest story. Late one night, after I read Buber the first time, we found ourselves in the most exquisite encounter. “It’s like that all the time when you’re on LSD – you feel this weird connection. It reminds me a lot of all that Buber stuff you talk about.” There is the dilemma: I don’t know why I won’t do LSD, and I do want encounter. Then, suddenly, I do know why I won’t do LSD: all the tumultuously transformational words that accompany encounter – mutuality, reciprocity, understanding, and care.

the last sunny day

The rain had pounded the earth with soothing violence for days. Fog had muddied vision and left us living in a haze. Today, however, the sky was blue and the sun was warm. As what seemed like a chilly spring day met with the fresh scent of fall-turning-winter rain, we sat outside of Caffé Ladro on top of Queen Anne. She struggled as always to avoid eye contact. I wanted to dive into the deep corners of her life, but I also didn’t want to. She wanted to be seen, but also didn’t want to, so we shallowly danced.

“It’s a beautiful day. I didn’t think we’d get another one of these.”
“Yeah. It’s nice.”
“How’s running start going?
“It’s really hard.”
[Shit. I told her it was easy. It was easy for me…but then I’m hoping to get a PhD…shit. I need to stop telling people what to do, or that things are easy when they aren’t. shit.]
“Oh, maybe we could study together sometime.”
“That’d be nice.”
[silence]
“Yeah.”
[silence and multiple sips of our respective hot chocolate and soy medici]

I don’t remember how the dance became something intimate. I don’t remember how we got there, but before I knew it, I found myself telling a 16-year-old, whom I am paid to teach to love God, to be angry at God.

“Please be angry at God. You have every right to be angry with God and I would hate for you to flee this moment of anger in thinking you should not be angry at God.”

I watched as those words somehow spoke some magic word that opened the door to her heart. “Speak friend and enter.” Her fast and dodgy eyes quit darting and held mine as we entered that space between us. When her eyes steadied, something left. Or, maybe when something left, her eyes could steady.

For years she had shown a perfect Christian front, fundamentalist, Bible-reading [bashing?], finger pointing, judging. For years, under that, she had been angry. Under that, she was ashamed for her anger at God. Present to her heart, I invited her to accept that anger, in response, she invited me to share that anger. We sat in transformative silence, both of our eyes dampened with the rain that wasn’t in the sky this day.

belated thanksgiving and early christmas

I am staring out the window and all I see is the foreground. In the foreground stands a desolate tree. Her leaves have forsaken her and left her with nothing but exposure. Her depressing grey brown bark is covered with patches of moss, the greenery that grows when the sky rains tears and the earth seeps dew-drop tears leaving the surface drenched with seasonal sorrow. The tree stands as a prophetic marker for me and my heart sinks with the idea of winter.

There is history to this sinking. The two worst seasons of my life were winters at Gordon-Conwell. Once the trees lost their friendly foliage, it was gone for months. The first snow came before Reformer’s day then the snow and bone-chilling cold stayed for six months. The first year I was there, my friend and I banned together to find the white witch and kill her so that winter would end. By the time the leaves returned, they reflected my mood, as I would be traveling home to my beloved, green Seattle.

Barren trees have come to mean death, fear, isolation, dry and weary days. So, as I gaze at this pitiful lifeless tree, I see in it dark days, and, addictively, I give into the Seattle scene depression.

Still staring out the window, I notice a host of green leaves still clinging to trees. They are still sprightly and still alive. Some have turned yellow, but those are still clinging to the tree in an act of loving defiance. I sigh a slight breath of relief then let go. They will soon be bare as well. Their presence does not ward off winter.

Staring further out the window and encountering the landscape, I hear the voice of a further friend. Behind the green leaves lives my forever and for-granted friend: the evergreens. Every weary day, they will be green. Their tone is not sprightly. It is not breath-takingly bright. It is not something to get high off of like a spring or summer day in Seattle. It is simple and constant. It is nourishing. It asks of me, walk with me, in soft peace.

This time of year, we ask what we are thankful for. I am thankful for a God who is near, who is a deep and consistent green. Who will not forsake me to the winter. Who is always there, and so, always for-granted. Where, I tend to want your love only if you threaten to leave me, only if it is a game, only if your presence sends me grasping for unsatiating more and more – this season, I am thankful for a God whose love endures even when my eyes are glued to the barren tree in the foreground of a forest of brilliant evergreens.

May I encounter you, my steadfast friend and father, as often as I see your faithful green trees this season.

Psalm 75:1
We give thanks to you, O God, we give thanks, for your Name is near; men tell of your wonderful deeds

I Chronicles 16:34
Give thanks to the LORD, for he is good; his love endures forever.

i would write something better...but i'm tired.

there are so many meaningful things i would write---if i wasn't utterly exhausted.

instead, two meaningless things:

people have expressed that i should clarify why rockibilly boys are a problem. it's not because i don't like rockibilly boys. it is because i do like them.

pray for me. i have like zero down time for the next three weeks. then i have a week of church and family parties. then i'm going to florida with my immediate family for a week. if i make it to 2006, i've done well.

day dreaming

i was driving in my car and tripped into a memory. as my car sped on auto pilot and my mind wrapped me up and delivered me to a small dank office with 1971 carpetting, a slow and familiar voice tiptoed into my ears.
"Wooooww Beeeeccccky, thaaaaatttt iiiiissss aaaa lloooootttt tottttttt thhhiiiiinnkk aaaaabooouuuuttttt. Iiiii'mmm veeeeerrrrrryyy exciiiiiiited fffoooooorr yooouuuuu." Even his memory annoyed me as Dr. Schutz made each and every syllable stretch into eternity. "Could I praaaaaayyyy foooorr youuuuuu now?" I nodded my head and in my memory, the lights faded as my eyes lids dropped like curtians.

I'm not sure where I was, but I know I was no longer in that dank little office. I was somewhere, somewhere open, sacred, close, with God. I lost track of Dr. Schutz's words as even time seemed to fade into the background. I knew I was loved and that God was going to heal the fear and anger that had attached themselves to me by occupying the hole my illusion of a father left. I felt peace.

Then these words pounded in my ears and brought me fearfully back....

"I'm getting a word from the Holy Spirit." Dr. Schutz spoke quick and crisp and may as well have had a finger to his ear as he sounded like a network news reported about to say, "this just in." He continued, "Yooooouuuuuu..." the slow Schutz returned making each sound excruciating in its pregnancy, "aaaarrrreeee gooooiinnggggg tooooooooooo."

what!? what!? what am i going to do - ahhh you're killing me. just say it!

I remembered the feeling, but as I was driving, the dvd of this ministry skipped. i couldn't remember what Dr. Schutz said I was going to do.

"giiiiiivvvee"

come one!, come on! I'm waiting, get to the point - I can't handle this!

"biiiirrrrtttthhhh"

WHAT! never mind. stop. stop right now. don't you dare finnish that sentence. if i have kids, they are going to be adopted. NEVER WILL I GIVE BIRTH! stop!

"too maaaaaaaaaaaannnnyyyy [slow happy chuckle]"

MANY? fuck no!! do not finnish what you are saying. there is no fucking way i'm giving birth to many anything. no. No. [insert trembling and more fear than i remember feeling in my life].

I remembered all of this as the DVD became unstuck with the feeling of fear and hilarity as i related this story to friends: the fear of many children relieved as he said the next word....but i could not remember what the next word was. i remember that i sighed a breath so deep i cold feel it all over my body - but i could not remeber the word. i tried and tried. I was no longer in the room, but in my car pounding the steering wheel..."many what? this is so fucked up. someone prophesies over me and i can't remembere what he said. shit. many what?"

finally I remembered - and as I remembered, i began to cry.

"miiiiinnnniiiiiiiiiiisssstttrrrrriiiiiieeeeeeesssss."


now to remember. now to have faith for the future. now to work with the end in mind.

i may dream many far fetched things, but that doesn't mean they can't come true.

the (non) future of food

please watch "the future of food" - a documentary on food production in america and it's world wide tyranny.

walk the line

i got all dressed up in black and went to the midnight showing of "walk the line."

i have three things to say:

1. A movie full of rockibilly boys is too much. i love seattle, but there are no rockibilly boys here - which is probably actually a good thing for me. :(

2. "Your fans are good Christian people, they don't want to hear you singing in a prison trying to cheer up a bunch of rapists and murderers." "Well then they aren't Christian."

word. there's a pastor in Bellevue who needs to hear that.

3. over all, the movie was pretty disappointing.

never, never, never, never, NEVER, N-E-V-EEEEEEE-RRRRRR fly sun country!

As I type this, I am listening to a 1983 version of Broadway while sitting on a slightly padded vinyl seat and drinking a $7 Mike’s Lemonade. The cheese of the music is an intimidating mass of cheese topped only and brilliantly by the airport bar. Why, you may ask, did I spend almost enough for a Martini at the posh Martini bar across from Caffe Minnie’s in Seattle on a Mikes. The clever bar tender was wise enough to name the steep price after handing me the drink and letting me take my first, expensive sip. Why, you may ask, at 4:00pm was I that desperate for a drink? Why, you might also ask, are you experiencing a premenition of yet another sarcastic rant? These are all good questions and to each of them I offer this answer: Sun Country Airlines.

I am in the drawn-out process of returning home from a children’s ministry training, so in the name of this event, I will describe my Sun Country experience via an acrostic.

Seattle eludes me remaining my beautiful home but ever

Unreachable across mountains and snow – and once I return.

Never again. Never will I leave my love on a craft painted with the words Sun Country

Couldn’t I have paid the extra $50 for a ticket
On
United Airlines?
No doubt a minimum wage job would have made up the price on time I have spent on hold, in a holding pattern, or waiting for a grossly
Tardy flight to finally deliver me to a destination
Really
Y would I ever fly Sun Country again?

Sunday night, unexpecting, I rushed to the airport – thinking I might be late. A breath of relief surged through my tense body as I read that my flight was delayed. How long? An hour and a half. I calmed myself and optimistically thanked God for the extra time to work on a paper that never had any hopes of being worthy. Finally the plane boarded and thanks to Christian morals, my ride to Still Water was waiting for me at 2am – 3am to her.

Three days later, I show my apparent learning disability as I rush to the airport – thinking I might be late. A breath of relief surges through my body as I realize my clock is wrong and I’m on time. A sigh of helpless anger brings an aftershock, returning every ounce of stress as I see the sign, “Sea 7:15.” At first, I wonder – ok I’m pretty dumb sometimes – “Who has a flight to the sea?” Then I realize Sea is short for something… “Sea…l? Sea….ting? Sea….first? Sea…fair? No. I shook my head and laughed – Seattle. Is that the time in Seattle? That’s not right. Seattle’s BEHIND Saint Paul. They’ve got it all wron….no. No. Shit. Shit. SHIT! That’s my flight. That’s my fucking flight. THREE HOURS DELAYED!! What am I supposed to do in this dinky air port for THREE hours!? Are you kidding me? Ok, fine, I’ll go to the bar.

So, here am I. Here I will be for three hours – a time barely surpassing the time I spent on hold working out mistakes the airline made on my ticket.

Like I said, never! NEVER NEVER EVER! fly Sun Country Airlines.


Post Script:
By the time I actually arrived, my flight was going on 5 hours late!

an ego

dear and beloved male friends, please do not take this as male-bashing or as anything against you.

egotistical men in a circle of women make me want to scream. they are right in all they say. they are experts on every subject. when they aren't experts, they tell you they are smart or that they know someone smart or that they've read some book by a smart person and therefore, they now know more than you.

why is it so hard for a man to admit a woman knows more than him on any subject other than the ones he has relegated to his wife - and in such a case, his wife knows more than you.

there is not an inch to live in. there is not an ounce of respect. there is no permission to retain your own thoughts, opinions, or convictions in light of theirs. there is no room for me - and in that i pitty such men because they will never have an i/thou moment with a woman because no woman is allowed to be thou.

in the wake of one such man, tonight i find my self in rage and sorrow. i feel as though when he pushed me out the door, something of me left and it will take a couple of days to find it again. i'm sad. just sad.

transversely, i met another man today who empowered and blessed me. when we parted and he said he'd pray for me and that he wanted to know where my life goes from here, i believed him....well, i guess i believed the other man when he said the same thing, but i think he wants to know where i go so that he can add any greatness i meet to the long list of stories that make him cool. the other man had enough compassion for meeting and enough cynicism to know nothing is as simple as we can make it seem.

i guess i don't really have a point...just frustration.

incarnation as the beginning of a new song

A recommendation:
Listen to the album War
Then listen to Yahweh from How to dismantle an atomic bomb
The lyrics say:
“How long must we sing this song?”
“I will sing a new song.”
“How long to sing this song?”
“Bodies strewn across the dead end street.”
“A new heart is what I need. Oh God, make it bleed.”

War laments yet hopes amidst Irish desperation.

The latter album is named for the hope of peace.
The lyrics say:
“Take these shoes clicking clacking down some dead end street. Take these shoes and make them fit.”
“Take this soul and make it sing. Yahweh.”
“Still I’m waiting for the dawn.”
“The Sun is coming up on the ocean. This love is like a drop in the ocean.”
“Take this heart and make it break.”

It feels as though Bono has found a new song.
It feels as though the not yet of the already not yet is beginning to be found.
It feels as though the questions of War are beginning to be answered in How to Dismantle and Atomic Bomb.
Maybe Bono asked for a new song and through the years has found that the life he lives – the life he co-authors with God is the new song we wait to sing,

Are our lives how to dismantle an atomic bomb?
Are our lives the answer to war?
Are we the already of the already/not yet?
Certainly the incarnation is.

My prayer for all of us: Let Jesus be born in us each day. Let us be makers of Shalom.

the body of christ - "i think i broke it"

as i am quitting my job and realizing how "broken" the church has made me...

picture "I think I broke it" from www.explodingdog.com

old wounds

ocean (my best friend's two-year old) fell and hit his chin so badly that he needed stitches a while ago. now, even though it's healed, every time he hits it slightly, it bruises.

old wounds are often that way.

today i walked into whole food and assumed i was safe. i have forgotten how often i am safe now that i live in seattle and am attending mhgs. the only bambi experiences* i have are at church - and i avoid that a lot. i live a safe life. so, i'm in whole foods, happily assuming everyon there is either a pagan or at least a liberal. i feel warm, like under a down blanket on a cold night, in the thought of an evangelical free zone - no one to pounce on old wounds.

in my confidence, i struck up conversation with the woman in front of me. already posing to apologize for being a part of the tradition that is soooo far from Christ, i stepped gently around the name of my school. when i finally said the words, "mars hill," her eyes rolled. i assured her that the school has nothing to do with the church. she said, i know, i go to the church. three or four sentences later, my safe grocery store visit turned into yet another condemnation for being a woman and a minister.

fuck. when will that end? if whole foods is not safe, is there a safe place???

it occurs to me, though, that i was ready to apologize for being christian, but not for being a minister.

like i said, old wounds are like that sometimes.



* a bambi experience comes from the scene where his mom tells him not to step out into the thicket - it's not safe there, hunters can see you there. when you step into unprotected ground with condemning evangelicals, that is a bambi experience. ie last year a friend and i were at gordon conwell joking with our friend johnny that he'd better shave his head now, because when he gets married in a couple of weeks, his wife won't let him. "Do you think that's what marriage is about? No. I'm not going to get my jollies before I get married...." he lectured us. Arrow in the heart - a bambi expereince.

manger art

December 3rd, 5:00pm-Midnight
At my house
$5 Suggested Donation
Live music
Art
Food
Espresso
Wine

Good times!

Artisan items for sale - good for Christmas gifts!

All money goes to benefit World Vision.

Manger Art is part of my small arts organization, "Work of Art"

Work of art seeks to affect global change on an organic, interpersonal, local and tangible level, putting faces on poverty and stories to injustice as we make the intangible tangible and the seemingly insurmountable within reach.

We desire to engage a generation emerging into adulthood in communal stewardship of time, talent, and finance by encouraging a life that engages global issues and values the beauty and voice of art.

warning!

i've been on hold the third time for 15 minutes.

never fly sun country airlines!

true confession

some time ago, i posted a link to one of dr. james' posts about reconciliation through confession. i asked people to envision what this might look like in seattle. dr. james lives in the town next to the infamous salem, ma, so confessing to witches was the proper confession for his context. what about seattle though? sure, we could confess to witches, and maybe we should, but my friend marilyn and i were talking yesterday and thought that the homosexual population in capitol hill might be a better fit.

i'm too busy to start dreaming about this until january. but, please start thinking about what that would look like.
* what community would the confessors come from?
* what would we confess?
* how do we bring sincerity to this rather than making something contrived?
* should we first study the history of the issue in capitol hill?
* what would something like this mean for our lives?
* how would we incarnate God in this?
* can we see God incarnated in those we confess to?

for james, kellie and jeff (not gentry - the one who was there), what do you think of this? for anyone from beverly or salem, what would be your wisdom in this regard?

dreams versus plans

a friend challenged me this week to dream and not just visualize.

dreams are often lofty, unatainable, wild etc. dreams rarely come true. but, the question is this: will the fact that dreams will not come true inhibit me from dreaming? the answer a friend offered was "no."

i can dream of a future or of a house church or of an art show that is far beyond my most insane hopes of reaching and allow that dream in itself to be art. i can allow it to testify to the image of God in me. i can allow it to testify that we are created for things better than this world could possibly offer. then, i can allow the dashed hopes that stingingly follow lost dreams to be prophetic testimonies against a world that destroys hope.

so, rather than visualizing what it possible and attempting to stretch it another step, i will attempt - dare - to dream....then maybe mediate the dream with a dose of reality.

i'm glad a house church is months away - time to dream before time to plan!

surprise

sometimes...just sometimes...growth doesn't have to hurt as much as you thought.

a cancerous body

with every passing day, i lose more hope for the church
do i lose hope for whose body she is?
with every passing day, i am bruised more deeply by the church
do i blame whose body she is?
with every passing day, i see her for more of a whore.
where is the fool whose bride she shall be?

with every passing day, she is more murderous.
with every passing day, she is treaterous
with every passing day, she further defaces me
until i am unrecognizeable

where is the face who held passion
where are the eyes in who's pupil was reflected a vision of hope
where are the cheeks that were rosey with the contentment of true love
where is the steady brow of faith
where has the voice of the prophet gone?

murdered. murdered. murdered. MURDERED!

"we have so long lived in the dark night of the soul that we know no light
if you bring it near us, we will kill you
in order to extinguish its faint but piercing glow"

and so today i declare my independence.
though i am you, you are nothing to me
and in that separation, i find an inch to breathe

may God raise me from the shallow grave you dug for me

may i, resurrected, one day have life enough to rejoin you
may i return to the body that has abused me
may i be rejoined to the dysfunctional family that has utterly destroyed me
may i find my face
may i find courage to live

another day

hoping

in

for

with

the cancerous body of Christ.

help!

i can't keep my eyes open.

i feel like i'm going to faint.

in two hours i'll be watching 20 kids until 10pm

then until midnight, i get to clean up

then get set up for the next morning when we walk the children through the exodus

then i have a work of art meeting

then i finish two papers and go to class all night on monday.


pray for me!!!

The icicles are always warmer on somebody else's home.

Sleepless (or near sleepless) night two of three begins.

I am sitting in my ice cold house. The heater is broken and I can no longer tell if the constant shivers and old-man like stiffness in my bones is sleeplessness or the beginnings of hypothermia. The table is so cold, I hesitate to put my computer on its surface. I feel as though I am back in Boston. I remember the night I wore two winter hats, a pair of tights, three sets of wool socks, three pairs of sweatpants, a t-shirt, a sweater, a hooded sweatshirt, a jacket, and three pairs of gloves to bed as a cuddled up inside a sleeping bag blanketed with three heavy blankets.

Then, at 3am, the fire alarm went off. Trust me! Trust me, there is no fucking fire! Nothing related to heat could possibly find an unthawed nook in our giant apartment complex. Finals are tomorrow and I will not leave the room temperature coccoon I've carefully made. I pull tighter into my warmer world where I can pretend it is a December night in Seattle, which would now seem like tropical paradise.

The alarm presists.

Then, the voice of a calm young woman, who obviously is not in danger herself of leaving a freezingt apartment complex to go into a below freezing night that, at 3am, is surely at least 20 below zero. Before coming to Boston, I never believed that there was even a purpose of single digit marks on a thermometer. Negative degrees? That's not possible. Are freezers even that cold? I still don't know. Kind of doubt it.

The woman says, "Floor 9, evacuate at the tone. Floor 9 evacuate at the tone."

I stared at the ceiling where her voice seemed to be coming from. "Don't you dare go down to floor five. If you go down to floor five, I will find you and rip those falsely soothing vocal cords right out of your safe and warm throat."

"Floor eight, evacuate at the tone."

"Floor seven,"

Her chorus dragged on like a blood curdling, sadistic version of 100 bottles of beer. "one thousand people sleeping warm in their beds. one thousand sleeping people. take 100 out, freeze them in three feet of snow, 900 people sleeping warm in their beds."

"Floor six."

I was no longer threatening and it was no longer in my head. Out loud I was praying: "God, you brought me to the fuckng tundra that has been a tundra to me in every sense of the world. It is spiritually dry and cold. It is freezing the life out of me making me hard and tired, and all I'm asking for in return for obediently following you to this wintery Hell is one night at room temperature, sleeping before a final exam. That is all."

God seemed not to care. There was more tundra for me to experience.

"Floor five, evacuate at the tone. Becky Tucker, move your freezing ass outside so that you can be emersed into an ice age at the tone."

I obeyed. I always obey. I talk big but am a people pleaser in the end. Authority runs me like Greenlake joggers run their pit bulls - the dogs may have been ferocious, but love lulled them into compliance and to matching the gate of some silly middle aged man in a bright blue sweat suit listening to sermon tapes from Chuck Colson as he starts his day at God's heal.

Five hours passed - ok 2 - ok, probably a half hour - but it felt like five hours and I'm writing the story so....five hours passed before they let us back in. "It's ok, there's no fire," they told us. I was too cold to be sarastic or indignant. I was too tired to run back to my bed. I gave in. Cold it is. Cold it will be. I give up fighting the weather - but not my dreams of home.

What's the point? I don't know. The table feels warmer now. The temperaturehas hints of a tropical breeze. Harry Middleton and fly fishermen everywhere are laughing at silly men claiming to know an equation for meldeing predestination and free will. Together with them I pitty those poor students who are cramming for their exams.

It could be worse. God has been good to show me the cold so that I can remember paradise when I am near it.

Two sleepless nights will be done in 8 short hours with only one more to endure. Praise God for Sunday night's rest. I'm sure I will meet God there and will have been changed in the compiled hours of deprivation.

why i hate fly fishing

so...i was up until 4am then up again at 7am. i'm probably going to be doing that two more times before monday.

i've to got be honest. i hate harry middleton and i hate fly fishing and if i have to read one more word about either, i might just quit school.

dreaming of brilliant fantasty worlds

i was talking with neal yesterday about a group from mhgs called eagle and child. i told him i might be ditching youth group on thursday so i can go.

he found the name first odd, then nerdy. i explained that it is the name of the pub that lewis and tolkien used to hang out at.

he laughed at me then asked, "are you going to dream up brilliant fantasy worlds." then he ventured on some silly tangent in a british accent. but i stayed with his words.

as i have been faced with the modern church and broken by it - made hopeless by it - it almost makes me scared to dream of something different. however, as i begin to ponder tomorrow's church - sinners and saints seattle maybe - i feel myself dreaming again...

so....yes neal, i hope we do dream of brilliant fantasy worlds.

...and that to the fantasy, may we add flesh

captian planet, kellie gentry, and a guy named jeff i don't think i know: forever my heroes

tears, the word wow, and swirling thoughts on how to do something similar are all i have in response to james' post, "Confessions Like Reed During Ren Fayre "

please read this blog...and if you're in seattle, think of what it might mean for us here.

oh to be sinners and sainst seattle - and to even remotely resemble our older brother...

academics runs through it

I read A River Runs Through It, watched the movie twice, and read the book again. I may still have missed it. Why? If Maclean is haunted by water, I am haunted by academics. The task of reading this text reminded me of walking to Kerry park with my friend Chris. “Where are you going?” he confoundedly asked. “K e r r y park?” I spoke the word so slowly it became at least four words. Why was Chris asking me where I was going when we just decided to walk to Kerry park. “Umm,” he still seemed confused, “is Kerry park going somewhere anytime soon? You’re walking like your chasing someone or something. What are you looking for.” Feeling chastised for my gate, I slowed, stood silent, and tapped my finger to my nose, as I always do when I am in deep thought. “Nothing I guess. Nothing. Maybe that’s the problem. What do I do when I’m looking for nothing? Am I present when I’m looking for something? Is it possible to be present here when I’m looking for something that must be ‘there’ because it isn’t ‘here.’ Or maybe it’s between us and I’m looking for encounter – but my rushing is a hinderance……….[on and on into nauseating infinity]” I’m sure Chris wondered if my existential response, floating once again to a cerebral place of philosophical inquiry, was a passive aggressive way to punish him for questioning me. At any rate, I’m sure he wished he had not interrupted my rush.

We walked in silence for a while as I thought. I am so used of rushing through academics and the many tasks academics push into a two-hour corner, that when I am not looking for the answer to a question, I don’t know how to be. “You’re doing it again. Dude, for a short chic, you walk really fast. Can you walk slowly and just take things in?” I stopped, breathed, and tried. Each step, I tried to match Chris’ gate. When I managed to match his gate, I began to multi-task by looking at the moonlit sky, the ivy growing on old brick walls, children and parents walking, elderly couples huddling for warmth, dogs dodging in and out of the brush, curious about every element and smell of their trek. All these things had been there always, but until I stopped and forced myself to look, I knew them not and robbed my journey of their beauty.

I am haunted by academics, and those few moments I allow a ghost to be nothing more and the haunting not to imprison me, I am raptured in a beauty that utterly destroys and reconstructs me. Nowhere is the difficulty of meeting such moments, nor the transformative beauty of these moments so stark as in reading.

Josipovici closes his chapter “reading” with a reading benediction:
Our task is to wrestle with this book as Jacob wrestled with the ‘man’ in pitch blackness, and not for the mere sake of the contest in order to wrest the book’s secret from it, but in order that we may hear it utter its blessing upon us: but that, we must not forget, is what we would expect of our encounter with any great book.

Though I’ve been thinking of that quote for four days, it still stings as powerfully as the first time it invaded my rushing mind just like Chris’ voice. I remember back to seminary when a TA suggested we read the Greek New Testament for devotions because the foreign language would “slow us down.” Expletives! I want to should endless expletives if this is what it has come down to. In order to encounter a text, I must have difficulty reading? In order to walk slowly, taking in the scenery from the Queen Anne Caffee Ladro to Kerry Park, maybe I need to forget how to walk or gain a physical impairment. So, after reading the text only to realize I failed miserably at encountering so much as a word, I watched the movie. After watching the movie a second time, I felt prepared to return to the text. I imagined the boys’ father with a metrenome, holding me to a gentle, artful pace as I sought God’s grace for the hurried mess that has become my reading. Could I enter the story the way Paul entered the water? Could I come even within three years of thinking like the characters? Could I sit on the shore and watch the way Norman did as the world melts into one thing and a river runs through it? Not quite, but I came closer, and that was enough for this week.

sinners and saints seattle

so...here's my new idea:
next summer or fall, i hope to start a house church.
i want to rent or possibly buy (scary but possible) a house in a poorer area of seattle then move in with a bunch of people (at least 6 or so but if i could, i'd love to get a HUGE house and have even more than that) to start a house church.

probably sometime in january, i want to sit down with all the people that are interested and start discussing what it would look like.

very little am i sure of except that the church would be called "sinners and saints seattle" and would be familially connected with my spiritual family back in boston.

righteous anger: an important story for knowing me

in this moment, i am overwhelmed with tearful, intense anger at gordon-conwell.

i realize a lot of you who read this now don't know the story, so here goes:
when i came to gordon-conwell, i wore my heart on my sleeve. i cried all afternoon every sunday my first four sundays because i missed the kids i worked with. empathy would make my eyes well up in phone conversations. the thought of global injustice, rather than burning as fotter for growing cynicism, broke my heart.

in a lot of ways, from the beginning, i feared that gcts would put me on spiritual prozac - evening out the once prophet-like emotion i had for the world, for those around me, and in my honest relationship with God. i vowed not to let this happen.

then, i come home for christmas and the rich oppertunity to enter into my friend's venture into motherhood. this christmas break was to be a time of new life - not death. after the punk rock baby shower i threw, we all went to lord of the rings. my brother and i came home tired and ready to sleep. he, though, hopped on the computer. as i put my pajamas on and hopped into the comfort of my childhood bed, the falsity of the comfort it offered - the falsity of comfort and of my childhood crashed to the floor and broke into irreconcilable shards as my brother knocked on the door. some haunting nuance to the knock informed me that what followed would change everything. i tended to be over-dramatic though, so i swallowed my fear and almost spoke as though i wasn't scared at all: "what's up jake?"
"ummm...you need to come down stairs and see what i found on the computer."
"is everything ok jake?"
my optimisticc brother said starkly, "no. no, nothing is ok."

i stopped in the moment and prayed, "God give me whatever i need for what is waiting in the dark cold of our "family" room."

what i found waas that my dad had been, yes, looking at some hardcore porn - but that was nothing. he had been ordering women's clothing, wigs, etc. he had been researching surgical procedures and had set up an identity not as michael but as micha.

where once my brother and i spent the week before christmas snooping for a peak at the gifts our parents had lovingly picked out and poorly hidden, we treked to my dad's office no in search of gifts or of love, but of a truth we began to realize went too deep to understand. we found letters, journal entries - proof after proof that my dad was living another life as a woman and was planning on leaving my mom to pursue this.

i didn't cry that night. i just sat shivering in bed until morning.

when morning came and my dad was gone, jake and i confronted our mother with the information. it was not news to her. it had been going on - to her knowledge - for at least 12 years. she never told us because she wanted us to have "normal" childhood. she was visibly broken by the fact that we now knew. jake was disturbed. i was disturbed. but, i decided to be strong for them and, when i returned to gordon-conwell, i would break down.

fast forward two excruciating weeks and arrive with me at gordon-conwell. michael paul and nate knew i needed them. i prepared them for me being a wreck. jenny picked me up at the airport and i dumped everything on her over some piss-poor pancakes at i-hop. she wanted to take care of me as i recovered and grieved. for possibly the first time, i was willing to be cared for. we arrived at gcts and it felt like relief - i could let go and fall apart.

jenny drove me to get my mail since my car was under about 5 feet of snow...how nice of gcts to transport all of the snow in the parking lot onto my car! i got my mail and there was a letter from the dean of students: concerns have been raised about your conduct as a student.

what! WHAT!!!!! i might have said fuck, but, at that point, i was still so evangelical and pure that i wouldn't have said fuck.

long story short, i almost got kicked out, and my instability as i began to fall apart over my dad played a huge role. i had to go to counseling for assessment and spent 10 weeks trying to prove to a stranger that i was stable.

meanwhile, michael paul, who had been protector and comfort in the fall now sat acroos a cafe table with me, arms crossed and leaning back in his chair. he laughed at my tears with judgement and told me - one month after finding out about my dad and two weeks after almost being kicked out of school - he told me, "you are wallowing. if you can't get over this, i don't know if we can be friends." probably not a verbatum re-telling, but essentially that is what i heard and i do know that he told me i was wallowing.

the conclusion: no one can hold my brokeness. when i grieve, i am unacceptable and will be abandoned and judged.

and so here i am - once fearless, once wearing my heart on my sleeve, and aparently, i have become hard.

maybe this is being hard, but fuck you gordon-conwell for that! fuck you for teaching me "pittied are those who mourn for they will not be comforted - they will be judged." i want myself back and don't know how to get there.

as i said, in this moment, i am overwhelmed with tearful, intense anger at gordon-conwell.

good news

my brother's recommendation got in. good thing. i didn't want to be a lapsed pacifist!

always a big sister

i'm a pacifist, but don't fucking fuck with my little brother!

he might not get into the degree he wants from his school because a recommendation is late in the mail and the dude who it was from may have failed to fax it.

so, rather than a degree in history with teaching certification, he might just have a degree in history - which is worth almost nothing.

i'm pissed for my little bro! i want to go yell at his reference then storm into western and demand they admit him.

i can't. i'm obviously a piss poor pacifist. but, i'll always be a protective older sister - nobody but me gets to mess with my brother!

...not to mention the heart attack my mom will have!

out of context

“Heavy drinking sometimes helps.”
“I am not like the other faces in this bland, cow-like universe.”
“[My wife and son] were both unhappy which is really the point of living well.”
“I was paying $50 a day for the privilege of having my child abused by someone else.”
“I found myself feeling like a free bird, a fat free bird.”
“My son and my wife collapsed in each other’s arms absolutely delighting in the violence they had just seen.”
-Dan Allender, 10/17/2005


though, this time especially, it seems off to quote him out of context as i -- who haven't cried in front of people since the gcts mess clumped itself with my dad and a close friend told me i was "wallowing." -- i was crying in class.

he said something to the effect that if you've lost the ability to weep over your story, then you've lost the capacity for compassion. have i lost compassion? it used to define me...but maybe i have lost it.

the question, then, is am i willing to mourn if that is the cost of compassion...is that a price i'm too stingy to pay?

lost

every once in a while, i get a glimpse of who i really am and am completely derailed.

this happened this weekend. at the end of a leadership training thing at school, i was struck with this question:
why am i in youth ministry (in a established church setting)?

it just isn't my passion anymore. i'm not sure if it ever was. i think i was trying to do what i am supposed to do and then i was locked into the fieldd my years of education and internship. my drive to achieve and accomplish took over and i ended up in a space where i cannot be anyting but tired, uninspired, and burnt-out.

so, what do i do?

if you know me well enough, you know my dreams and thoughts are scattered and ever changing.

here's some of the things i'm thinking about. please offer insight!!!

* starting a house church
* developing work of art ministries
* developing curriculum for missional communities/maybe eventually doing retreats or something
* creating opportunities for youth to interact with and serve diverse populations
* college ministry
* eventually, i think i want to be a professor
* maybe open a cafe/book store that creates space for christians to emerge from the ghetto and that is invitational for diverse interaction.

for the first time, i'm willing to admit that i'm lost and don't have a clue what comes next.
my cry to God and to God's many incarnations in my community is: help!

luther

Reformers days isabout a week and a half away...while working on a reformer's day post, I came across these quotes from Martin Luther:
(Note: I have left the sexist language in because, frankly, Luther was sexist.)

"God writes the Gospel not in the Bible alone, but also on trees, and in the flowers and clouds and stars."

"It is pleasing to God whenever thou rejoices or laughest from the bottom of thy heart"

"Grant that I may not pray alone with the mouth; help me that I may pray from the depths of my heart"

"So our Lord God commonly gives riches to those gross asses to whom He vouchsafes nothing else"

"Be thou comforted, little dog, Thou too in Resurrection shall have a little golden tail"

"When God wants to speak and deal with us, he does not avail himself of an angel but of parents, or the pastor, or of our neighbor"

"For in the true nature of things, if we rightly consider, every green tree is far more glorious than if it were made of gold and silver."

"I am more afraid of my own heart than the Pope and all his cardinals. I have within me the great Pope, Self."

"Grace is given to heal the spiritually sick, not to decorate spiritual heroes"

"Be a sinner and sin strongly, but more strongly have faith and rejoice in Christ."

"Every great book is an action, and every great action is a book."

beautiful death

(Photo by Tony Stone)

The leaves are changing. The season is changing. And fuck! It’s beautiful.

For those that don’t know me well enough, I love the color green. It makes me fall in love with God. The multiple colors of green in a single leaf amidst millions on a tree make me feel loved the way a little girl does when her father treats her as a princess. I feel like a royal heir to a kingdom too beautiful for words. Sometimes in a Seattle spring and summer I will simply stand and stare with so much awe that it is too much for mind to handle – I have to distract myself from the beauty so that I can remain living.

Now, all of that is dying, exiting my world. And the thing that is infuriating is that it is beautiful. When I see the death of my green gifts, and begin to delight in it, I sigh so deeply that even the sigh hurts and just want to shout, FUCK! DEATH IS BEAUTIFUL!

So, I can see the beauty in the death of beauty in my life.

The question that dawns on me, as I am feeling that I am living in a stage of the death of so much beauty: In the exiting of beautiful people, whose thoughts and way of seeking strike deep awe and longing in my heart, from my life. In the realization that, while amazing, Mars Hill is not the communal wonderland I had hoped. In the perpetual death and deeper death of my church. In the deepening realization that my keen intellect gets me less than nothing. In entering into practicum and feeling intensely that I am failing there and not receiving the transformation I so longed for and now shy away from.

In all this death, can I see beauty?

If I do, can I respond by saying anything other than FUCK!

Am I willing to see and receive seasons as a part of the story and to stop fighting the necessary death of transition and the loss that makes life life?

Can I thank God for and even see God in your rejection of me – in my rejection of me?

Is God there even? Or is it just one of those fallen fucked up things that is too dark even God cannot be present? Is death life or is it Hell?

dwight out of context

tuesday again! time for quotes out of context.

this week, i thought i'd give dan a bit of a rest. instead, this week, we have quotes out of context from dwight friesen.
(i hesitate to post these because i respect him soooooo much. i want to grow up and be just like dwight! - but he did say some crazy things yesterday.)


“If you’re every really mad and you just want to stare at someone, I find that using Foucault’s name sometimes works like you’re telling someone off, you know, ‘FOUCAULT!’ and you start to feel better.”

“It’s really fricking good!”

“[Brad Pitt] is so dreamy. Isn’t he? I mean he’s just gorgeous. Do you think I look like him?”

And…as a class, we sang “the B-I-B-L-E”

- Dwight Friesen, 10/10/2005

the world is beautiful sometimes

i left a party at a friend's house in greenlake today to see her neighbors out on the porch playing folk-ish music.

what a beutiful day.

what an amazing place i live in!

i'm going to make a point of really being "in" this place!

manger art

Work of art seeks to affect global change on an organic, interpersonal, local and tangible level, putting faces on poverty and stories to injustice as we make the intangible tangible and the seemingly insurmountable within reach.

We desire to engage a generation emerging into adulthood in communal stewardship of time, talent, and finance by encouraging a life that engages global issues and values the beauty and voice of art.

At Manger Art, our yearly art show and main event, we celebrate the incarnation by taking our prayers for the two-thirds world and stepping, ourselves, into incarnation. Our hope is that on the day of the art show, one could truly say and see, “Jesus Christ is born today.”

One year after desperation at the evil empire drove me to creativity and action, I am still moved by this calling. Here is maybe where I have enough faith in a loving God of grace to call myself Christian – that somehow, God chose me to head up this beautiful organization!

We met today to discuss the up-coming show.

Humbly, I need to seek your prayer and meditation on several issues:
Finding time enough to do everything.
Finding funds enough to make everything happen.
For more than 30 people to come this year - we're actually hoping for 250-300 each night for two nights.
For quality art to be either donated or loaned.
For those who come to truly value art and the two-thirds world enough to give and spend generously.
For enough capable volunteers

Here's the big one - we are debating renting a larger venue. This would be a huge leap of faith, and I'm faith poor these days. Please pray for wisdom and the perfect balance of prudence and courage - and ultimately for the grace to cover any imbalance of the two.

Humbly, I also need to seek help:
We need art/artists, street reps, church reps, supplies donated, musicians to play, poetry for a manger art book of poems, a discounted or free venue, music to sell, music to put on our "manger art" cd, tons of volunteers, and YOU THERE ON THE NIGHT!

Please, if you are in the Seattle area or if you know people in the Seattle area who might come, tell them to KEEP DECEMBER 2ND/3RD OPEN!!!!!!!!

Note: We need art to sell and art just to display. We are not auctioning this time. Instead we will have prices on the art that artists are willing to either donate or share the proceeds - ie, you might want $60 for a work and think it could sell for $80 - we could sell it for the $80 and $20 would go toward buying a farm for a family in the 2/3rd world.

Thank you and may Jesus Christ be born today in you and in those around you and in the blue sky and changing leaves!

jeremiah

this morning, i had a good conversation with my friend jeremiah...one of the few that i end with "well, i have to go do _______" and actually did have to go do ________. i wished i didn't have to. i didn't want the conversation to end.

he is so real, so honest, so still faith-filled.

he asked me what i still have faith in that makes me still a christian.

i tried to circumnavigate the question by starting, "Dan, the president of my school says________________" what a heap of shit.

he returned with more honesty and my eyes began to well up.

here is how i know jeremiah has more faith than he thinks - and more faith than i do: he is willing to admit his lack, to share those parts of himself that are obviously scared shitless that he might be faithless. it seems that such raw reality expresses a desire for genuine encounter - for incarnation. how stunningly beautiful he was on the phone.

to my dear, wise, real, ever passionate friend: thank you for being Jesus on the phone today. you may not be much more than this right now, but you are a striking follower of Christ - hold on to nothing else and i promise you will see his face!

hmmm...i wonder if your honesty and your open wrestling makes the face of your name sake shine in your own?

welcome

my first and most treasured house guest (jaguar) lounging on my pillow-covered bed:

spirit and truth

some visual thoughts on what truth is and how God is one:



a relationship occurs between text, author, and reader, that when perichortic (intimately dancing), they are joined and meet in genuine encounter. maybe, where they meet, that space is truth. you may have to squint and look closely to see truth. you may have to begin with faith that it is there. but once you see truth, you meet her and the world is changed.



what if God - Father, Son, and Spirit - are three distinct, separate persons, but the relationship, the dance between them is so intimate that it bonds them together. could it be that the spirit between God's I and Thou within God's self is what gives us a monotheistic religion and that a perichoretic relationship ought to be our primary doctrine and that as beings created and rstored in God's image, we should be growing in intimacy, dancing with God and with each other until we are one just as God is one. John 17.

a better blog

if you want to read some words that will change how you see God and others - that will invite you to transformation and reflect a wise and thoughtful journey, check out my friend bryan(d thou).

he's been writing some awesome stuff lately!

priority check

I am sitting in class eating canned corn and stale cheese nips for dinner because I can't afford anything better whilst wearing urban outfitter clothing.

My priorities are obviously fucked.

out of context quotes III

It's Tuesday again, and therefore, time to see what the wacky ring master (though actually wise leader) of the blessed circus that is MHGS said last night:

“I don’t know if you can remember junior high, but it is a prototype of hell.”

“Jeremiah has just discovered his penis.”

“the prophets were always getting stoned.”

“you need to become pregnant.”

“bray like an ass but bring some excrement so we can see what we might grow.”

and then he blew us a kiss.

Dan Allender 10/3/2005

battle scars

Sitting in class, I glanced down and noted the v-shaped scar on my hand. I remembered how I got it. The technician at the hospital told me it was impossible for him to cut me with the scissors he used to cut off my cast. He was cutting me, but assured me that it was just pinching and that I had a low pain tolerance. When he finally got the cast off, I was bleeding and the seed of my scar was created.

Stepping back, how did I, the overly cautious one, end up with a broken hand? My friend Dave said that I was a flake and that I never followed through on my plans with him. I made plans with him for Friday and swore to be there. When friends invited me out for drinks, I wanted Dave, then, to come – rather than flake out again. So, I ran to leave a note for him.

I was wearing platforms so that no one would know how short I was.

I tripped, fell hard, tried to save my cell phone with my right hand, landed badly on my left hand (i'm left handed) and broke my arm.

As I sit in class holding back brokenness and tears over my friend, and meet my scar again, I begin to wonder how many scars I will incur in attempt to have others see me in a kind light.

evil

the world seems grey and broken when you hear that a friend of a friend has a baby rushed to the hospital.

the darkened mess seems more empty when you hear that the child was moved to a different hospital and may not make it.

amidst these, life seems to continue with ease.

things stop and the darkened world seems dirty, evil, and filled with shameful hopelessness when the next news comes.

the problems are not a result of natural causes.
the baby's been abused by someone you know and might even count a friend.
your friend has been arressted for attempted homocide.

nothing is okay anymore.

when the depth of child - baby! - abuse steps onto your front door, the world feels too filthy and desperate to enter.

what the fuck is wrong with people?

i'm wise enough to know that the seed of this evil that found itself nestled and growing in my friend, is no different that that which is in me.

the evil is not out there, it is in here.
violence surrounds us.

my only prayer, "God save me and others from ourselves. Protect us for we know not what we do! God please protect these sweet, fragile gifts you've given the world!"

captive to memory

"You remind me of home: the paint cracks when the water leaks
from the rusty pipes that are just beneath my feet
You remind me of home: the heater's warm but fills the room with a
potpourri of dust and gas fumes"
-Ben Gibbard


i haven't thought of you in years
a punk rock skater with a mohawk
two teens in college
we banned together against the world
against the seriousness that crept in on us
against the depth of reality
against the impending fade of childhood dreams


driving to work i saw you today
in a memory of happy rebellion
before responsibility crept into your world
before the mohawk went with the buffalo
before seriousness and melancholy took me captive
before the depth of reality broke me
back when childhood dreams were vivid as a fresh painting

you took me captive
for a moment, i smiled

then you flew off in a family sudan
speeding to work
against traffic

god loves me?

one of my youth told me this weekend, "God loves you. I just had to say it. You say it to everyone, but does anyone say it to you?"

i had to face the reality that no one says it to me...and i'm not sure anymore if, in my heart, i believe it though my head knows the truth of the statement.

gcts would tell me this is why head knowledge is more important than emotions.

hmmm.

it just seems a sad excuse not to meet the sad reality that i don't feel loved by the only one who fully loves me.

...or maybe i need to spend sometime downtown and at kerry park and remember that God gave me the most beautiful city in the world!

the ocean breathes salty won't you carry it in

blue eyes
bluer than any sky
bluer than your name sake
giving new meaning to the word blue

stretching smile
more joyous than holidays
more natural than breath
giving new meaning to the word smile

tromping in tiny leap-like steps
arms waving, informing the world you don't yet care what she thinks of you

you say my name
and though it sounds less like becky than "bucky"
it is more my name than any other collection of syllables has ever been
i am more proud to be "bucky,"
the one to whom you bound and toddle
than ever to be becky
...the theologian
...the minister
...the student
...the one of whom much is expected

as you continue to bound my way
my heart wonders if her hope is ill founded
have i wondered onto a movie set
...where people pretend to love each other
...where one is over joyed to see another
...where hope seems possible especially on the darkest day
...where time stills until standing still as two meet, embrace, and dance in a brief moment of encounter

still you come as hope begins to shine as only in fiction
your arms spread expectantly as you near me
and you never think to slow - fully trusting, hoping, expecting my response

as though compelled
as my new name is shouted again and again
i lean and mimic your open-armed way of being

you reach me and my arms fold around you
i lift you to the sky who pails in your eyes

we laugh

in your laugh
in your eyes
in my laugh
and in what my eyes hold so tightly to
eternity spreads
...though only for seconds

letting go of god to meet God

"the problem is not that you don't beleivein God, it's that you beleive in a stupid God."
someone my brother quoted

"i pray God to rid me of God."
-meister eckhart

"to all outward appearances, persons who continue properly in their pious practices are holy. inwardly, however, they are asses for they know about God but do not know God."
-meister eckhart

may we let go of the stupid gods we have made in our image and of the propositions we attmpt to form into a one dimensional mosaic of the face of an infinate God in order to recieve a God much larger, more brilliant, more true, and less idolatrous God.

quotes out of context

“Drink a beer; get a life; don’t worry about it.”
“The work of counseling is the work of criminals.”
“Go back to 8th grade and be weird. Just be on the edge and wear fringe.”

“You have become a hemorrhoid.”

“You will likely be stoned often.”

“You are a hemorrhoid to the body of Christ.”


-Dan Allender 9/19/2005

transperancy for the journey

Yesterday I told my youth that I sometimes yell at, rebel against, hate, question, turn away from, ignore etc. God.

The response:
They listened. They thought. They engaged material, and each other. WE engaged each other. Encounter.

If lives are to be changed and if journeys are to be trekked, the shepherds and journey leaders along the way must emphasize that they are on a journey as well and that the perspective changes, grows, overwhelms, surprises, and differs. The perspective along the way takes the many things we know, such as God’s goodness, love, perfection and sovereignty and cultivates feeling and experience that appear to negate this knowledge. If we hold to our knowledge without encountering our experience, we lose relationship. God’s known love and goodness, then become the impassable block between our I and God’s Thou because we can never bring to Thou an I that experiences doubt over Thou’s goodness. Additionally, God becomes a list of attributes that cannot be denied and a person we refuse to meet if a step seems outside of these attributes. A list – and therefore, the God of list is a thing, an “it” and never a “thou.”

My anger at God when I watch my family suddenly decompose, whether founded or not, whether indicating a flaw in God’s goodness or not, must be brought to a God who is real and relational or else, by action, God’s personhood is denied in my hiding.

So what was the affect of my honesty with my youth?

First, I became a human being and not a position title.
Second, the mandate to meet God, even with filth in hand, is made.
Third, as the youth glanced around the room, their eyes revealed an interpersonal connection – they, we, must come to each other also with our perceptions that seem to negate each other’s goodness and promise to break our smiles and oddly heal our hearts.

elders strike again

after a summer full of exhausting and self-sacrificial service, full of learning and expereince for youth and children, full of beauty and growth, we launched a new year with my friend jamie's youth group visiting. we transformed the fellowship hall to create an expereince. one elder, not ratman or mrs.ratman, but a close aquaintence, we'll call her miss mouse happened in. she investigated and seemed happy with things. at the close of the night, i spent three hours returining the fellowship hall to its original state and making sure everything was clean.

the note i recieved in my box the next day read as follows (interlinear commentary included):
if the food on the shelves in the kitched belongs o the youth (who else would 24 bags of cheetos belong to?), we (who is we, or is this the royal we?) are asking if it could boxed and stored elsewhere (and, if you wouldn't mind, please also plastic wrap and store the youth only bringing them out to sit quietly during the 11:00 traditional service). it (and the youth)is not only unsightly from the fellowship hall, but it attracts ants and mice (how does individually packaged cheetos attract mice? i've never seen a single mouse or even an ant in the church). sally would provide a plastic bin with a tight lid (no, we'd perfer not to treat the youth like legitimate people who might want a cupboard and we'd rather not make things easy for you but instead have a bog box for you to search through to find things each week).

thanks for your help in this,
(crotchety old) miss mouse

luckily no one was here when i found this because i was unable to stop myself from saying, "what the fuck? fuck you!"

on sunday, i'm going to try to talk to her about it with love but still drawing attention to how the youth are being swept under a rug with no room to meet in and not even one shelf to store cheetos on.

why does no one care that the gospel is being taught and lived? why do unsightly cheetos bags mean more than changed lives? as i said, what the fuck!

my new home

as of october, i will live here - a few blocks from greenlake and a few more from whole foods and ten thousand villages.

i get a reading cove and a corner of the basement for art.

at mhgs the mdiv group is called "eagle and child" all the mdiv chics i've met paint so we might chill in my basement and be "easel and child."

good times!

two possible answers: i have no fucking clue or incarnation and maybe both are true

Does God exist?
How do you know?
What difference does it make?

Well, the obvious and honest answer is I don’t have a fucking clue.

If I dare to assume that what might be pride and stubbornness might actually be faith and claim that God does exist, I have to at least cling to the honesty that I don’t know this because of arguments, definitive experiences, I don’t know this because Dr. Davis told me so. I don’t know this because Jesus told me so. I know this because of relationship.

I have seen holiness in others that cannot be anything more or less that the face of God inhabiting the face of the other in a gleaming way like in the tabernacle of the Old Testament.

I have felt holiness saturate the once frigid, breathless separation and death stagnating the room between I and thou suddenly filled with a presence of glory that I know I did not bring to thou and doubt thou brought to me.

I have sat alone at 30,000 feet and felt thou address me though no visible thou lent a presence to me.

I know, if I know, that God exists because of incarnation.

What difference does this make?

One unexpectedly frigid October morning, the Indian summer, who I had fallen clingingly in-love with, fled Boston. Counting on at least another week of warmth before the white witch banished the aslant of summer and drenched my world in six months of winter, I awoke to a broken dream: snow falling gently with softness birthing a lethal blow to my false hope. When I glimpse the snow, I wished I hadn’t. I struggle to believe it had intruded on October. It was incomprehensible. However, once I glimpsed it, I knew it was there and could no longer avoid it.

My way of being in Boston changed. The sheet on my bed found a companion in a faux-down blanket. My scarves jumped out of their storage boxes and clung to my neck. Wool coats once seen as dorky and odd became the newest fashion in my eyes. Where I loved to wear skirts, I now found them repulsive.

As I said, my way of being and seeing was utterly transformed.

Once I have seen God’s face incarnating its uncontainable self in my world, that indescribable word, “incarnation” invades every corner of my life lifting a flag of transformation. I now live and see as though every corner, every face, every encounter, every institution, everything, is, to some degree, an incarnation and as though, even I am an incarnation and am somehow covenanted to the benevolent responsibility of incarnation.

So, other than “I don’t have a fucking clue,” i can supply a mustard seed "yes", and respond to the other two with this transcendent and immanent word, “incarnation.”

notes from class last night

as i sat in class recieving this message (at the end of the post), i tried not to cry because a) i like to pretend i'm tough and b) a friend had told me earlier that she doesn't handle others crying in her presence well...she's a counseling student. she'll get over it. but, i didn't feel the need to make her get over it last night.

then, after class, a man asked me - and i think meant it:
so, how are you

eh.

-long pause waiting for elaboration-

yeah. eh. eh sums it up pretty well.

-more long pause as i begin to understand that he might seriously want the real answer-

basically, i'm sort of a prohet type - always reaching for things to be better - redeemed. i'm tired and broken. i don't want to dream anymore.

i simply don't have the energy for hope but have ample cynicism to avoid faith and even the thought of loving and being loved makes me feel so lonely i don't even know how to anticipate the next breath and the moment it ushers in.

couldn't i have a day off? couldn't i have a gentle walk in a sunny park

he interrupted - a nice flower to brighten the dark night

yeah!

silence with twinges of awkward sauce.

-insert the difference between gcts and mhgs. he neither squirmed nor moaned or sighed in falsified sympathy.

yeah...i'm glad i have my flower

- he pointed as his pregnant wife came.

i have my wife and soon i'll have a baby!

the conversation continued but it was over at that point.

i was ecstatic for him, but broken even more than when he gently, kindly walked my way and offered to encounter my dispairing face.

here's the notes on faith, hope, and love that make me too tired for any of the words tattooed on my left shoulder blade:
What is faith:
A series of convictions of beliefs, which you claim to be true and if you believe them, you have faith. If you do not believe them, you do not have faith.

Faith is soooo much more than this.

There are many people who hold to the core set of beliefs but abuse others – these are not men and women of faith

Faith is confidence in the powerful presence of a God who redeems.
The odd component of faith is that the more confidence you have, the more you will doubt.
For most, faith and doubt are antonyms.
If you believe so much that you don’t have doubt, you do not have faith; you have dogmatic belief.
Nothing is more lethal to faith than dogmatism.

You enter faith through memory.
Faith has content.
Faith does have proposition.
But, one comes to faith as one enters into story.
You don’t remember facts. You remember stories.

The dilemma is that we have more stories that do not have endings.
We have more jagged stories than we have that we can hold with confidence.

We are all in story wars.

There are few stories where the presence of God is the most true thing of the story.

Faith is remembrance of redemptive acts of God where he moves to redeems his people

Can we ask in our unresolved stories, “Is God good?”

Faith creates foundation.
Faith creates identity.
Faith creates a foundation to stand on that is an anchor to your story.


My story opens the door to consider God’s story.

No one has a right to their own story because your story is written by God and it is his story.

What is hope:
The confidence that a certain ending is certain and so you can live with certainty.
It is positive. “Are you a hopeful person?” “Yeah, I’m pretty positive.”

Hope is faith for the future.

You cannot change the facts of the past, you can change the meaning of your past.

You meant it for evil. God meant it for good.

Hope is faith that tomorrow, redemption may show.

What is hope? As he has shown himself before, he will show himself again.

Hope opens the door to dreaming. You become what you are dreaming.

Always ask yourself, what I dream for – what is the dream about?
Whatever you dream, what the dream is about is probably good.

Chesterton, “Every man who knocks on the door of a brothel is looking for God.”

Every desire reflects something about God.

We invite people to dream about reconciliation.
About what it will be like for the lion to lay down with the lamb.
About what it will be like when power is no longer abused to hurt.

Faith without hope will bind you to your comfort.

Hope births holy discontent.

Hope gets you in trouble. The more hope you have the more you live on the edge of doubt.

Do you want hope?

What is love:
Getting along – being nice

Giving and receiving pleasure for the glory of God
Having a heart to give to another what will please them – bring them light and joy
The dilemma for most is that they are good givers.
You cannot love others unless you can receive from them the glory of what they have for you.
To the degree you cannot receive, you cannot let others love.

When you live by faith, hope, and love, you become alive.
You laugh more than you have ever laughed and weep more than you have ever wept.

As faith, hope, and love ground you, they give you a reason to live.

They dissipate those things which should not have a hold on your life.
“I know no other good but you.”

To be a person of faith, hope, and love, it leads to life – to passion.
It also leads to an end of those attachments that have no right to hold you.
This is freedom.

With faith, hope, and love, I have reason – the result of my life will bring difference. My life matters eternally.
There are people on earth that will never be the same because of my engagement in their lives.

The blessing to be invited into another person’s story.

Three words:
FREEDOM, LIFE, PURPOSE

Faith has been bitten hard by betrayal.
Facing betrayal opens the door to grappling where you have been orphaned by God
The odd root to faith is entering into the types of betrayal that have brought you to doubt

You will only enter into hope by entering to powerlessness
It is where you have felt powerlessness that you have felt hopelessness
It is where you have felt powerlessness that you have felt estranged
The art you create out of a desire to fit is not art
A true artist tells what others don’t.
When you refuse to fit – when you agree to be an alien.
When you are an alien, you can dream of redemption – call people back to it

Invitation to be a widow – someone who has lost intimacy.

When you enter the door to tragedy and heart ache, you enter into faith, hope, and love.

Your life is meant to portray God and betray evil.


We are priests – storytellers
We are prophets – trouble-makers, arousing change, truth tellers
We are kings – ones who leads and engages others in the battle for love

Who are you and how are you written to reveal the glory of God?

church

last night at the mhgs retreat, we did a labyrinth.

on the way out, you're supposed to be joining in with what God is doing.

i kept thinking about how i had to get up at 5 to catch a ferry and get to the church early enough to get all these petty last minute things done and all i could ask is "God, why is it that working at a church feels so antithetical to 'joining' you?"

this isn't burn out speaking anymore. it's honesty. how do i get out of this trap?

hipster hopes (steeped in sarcasm mind you)

i haven't been a hipster for years...though my aunt thinks i'm "hep" and that's about the coolest thing ever.

anyway, hopefully i'll be living in greenlake this time next month and driving one of these.

maybe my hipster days are resurrecting...though, i'm still an uber nerd.

an emo thought

---- i woke up this morning with the sober thought of erasing this uber emo post. i think it was posted out of too much mango rum last night (not frat boy or english professor too much, just emo too much...ok, two drinks)

...but if its touching and encourages the quest for community, then i'll bear the weight of emo, rum-drinking overly-emotional posts.

suffice to say, i miss sinners and saints. ----



rain has never sounded so beautiful, washing away the remains of a drowning deam i've kindled too long.
i feel like an emo kid as i lay on my bed with only my sleeping dog for company.

the rain begins to feel more like terential tears for a community i don't have.
i feel like an out-dated lower step of the ivory tower as i ramble theologically but spend days and nights alone.

the rain stopped and abandoned the dreams i had for it for me, for the life-giving spirit between i and the storm.
even wet drops abandon me like the dreams i had of community and closeness shy of the atlantic.
i feel like a country song as i wonder how long my old, tired dog can continue breathing in beat with lonely hours passing by,
one by one dying of disappointment.

will community sweep in like a storm and bath me with what i am longing for?
will incarnation find me?
i want to scream but only constrain forming tears.

as the rain begins again to beat like a metranome, this song plays softly in the wind:
"if all that's left is duty, then i'm falling on my sword.
atleast then, i would not serve an unseen distant lord.
can someone please tell me the stories of sinnerss ransomed from the fall.
i still have never seen you, and some days,
i don't love you at all."

and again, my pitter-patter friends flee somewhere in the dark night.

in honesty, like the moon, i know you are here tonight, like the sun you will be here tomorrow, like both, you saturate every day and night with radient light.
in honesty, that's no longer enough.
it never was.
if you won't give me more, i don't want to see that you are there at all.

too many candles

my 24th birthday is coming up. it's the last one i'm celebrating for a while, so i'd like to have a rockin' party.

saturday september 24th
meet in post alley (email for directions) for improv at 9pm
bring gum to put on the wall. if there's enough of us, i want to make a shape or something.
after improv, go to kells irish pub for drinks

neither the date nor the events are solid. it's more important to me that you come than that it's on the 24th or that it's improv and drinks. so, if that doesn't work for you, think of some different ideas.

make suggestions!

thanks,
becky

one of three options

how do we, who have a faith in an omnipotent and supposedly loving God encounter this?


from the heavens, it seems so beautiful, so perfect, so God-ordained, as though God dipped his finger in the sky and created a picture and a reality.




from the ground, it is devastation. it devastates more than even the people, it devastates faith. it draws me to look at God’s “thou” or “i” and de-vast-ate God by categorizing God as judge, absent, or one to whom I no longer exist.

i went to a weekly church service twice while in boston. both times, two different men named jeff preached in some capacity – one about prayer and another through prayer

one proclaimed that the tragedy is God’s judgment of the wicked. my jaw dropped and I struggled to see him as a part of “we” without categorizing him as “them.” I was afraid that my religion, my God was insensitive, unloving, and deceptive when God claims to love the poor.

I found a “we”, but still stewed.

the other confessed anger, rawness, questions of a God who claims to be loving and to care for the poor. my jaw clenched – if he is uncomfortable with God, if he doesn’t have answers, is my God real? is my God love? is my God true? is my God for the poor?

when I ask those questions of my God, I ask them about God – God is an it. God is already lost to me as i assess God in this historical moment rather than encountering God, being fully present with full sorrow, full fear, full anger and receiving God’s presence as God bestows in that moment – allowing the interchange, the air, the moment between God and me, between God and the world, between the world and me, to be the very spirit by which I live.

I retreat and hide in the objectivity of categorization and, though, the loss of the God I thought I held to, the God it turns out I might not hold to, the God I may not want to hold to is a scary reality, the scarier reality is bringing this fear, openly, undefendedly, bleedingly to God, a “thou” I’m not currently positive that I trust.

I felt “we” with the latter jeff and that scared me, I tried valiantly to run from the suffering, to medicate with philosophy, to escape encounter, ironically, in the pages of a book about counter, and in the circles I can run in my mind without venturing into the world.

I found a “we,” and for that reason, stewed.

it’s tempting to join the one jeff and explain the suffering making God the victim and those that are other than myself the offender. It is tempting to dig your feet into an answer and an ideal that explains the suffering – that justifies it.

it is not tempting to join the other jeff as he sits in ashes and sack cloth morning, tearing his metaphorical clothes in the face of God, proclaiming the injustice, facing how this seems to counter act our faith in a God who is for and with the poor, being openly angry, inviting our community into our suffering.

our choices are three: entrenchment, with the one jeff, encounter with the other, or, the great american way, numbness, ignorance, sitcoms instead of news, diving into a philosophical book, naval gazing, spiritualization: doing everything possible to distract myself from the pain - a path which, though I know it not, like leprosy, leads to death.

i do love God.
i do know that God is good that that God is for the poor.
but as these facts do not answer the questions, the fear, the pain, i must bring all of these to God and to the community of God for encounter, meeting, being present to one another, wounds and all.

thank you, latter preacher jeff, for a calling and a prophetic action to honest, sorriful encounter.