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.

sad departure

a couple of hours ago, i said good bye to brooke - the last of sinners and saints that i will see for many months and possibily a year or so.

the last few days have been amazing - a community truly living life together.

i already miss sinners and saints and don't know how to return to lake city after this true expereince of church.

i don't want to universalize, but i don't know that any form of christianity other than house churches out-lives the unity Christ calls us to - or, at least i know now that once my current position is exhausted, house church is where i will be.

free money cause i'm smart

i just found out that i am recieving the stan grenz memorial scholarship from my school - 5,000 a year for three years!

is buddy jesus i, thou, or it?

as kaufmann discusses the jewishness of i and thou, he makes this daunting (as a believer in Jesus) statement:

"the hebrews did not visualize their god and expressly forbade attempts to make [god] an object - a visual object, a concrete object, any object. their god was not to be seen. [god] was to be heard and listened to. [god] was not an it but an i - or a you."

note: in this and my previous post, i edited the quotes not to refer to god as he. last week in sunday school one of the kids got really mad at me when i said god isn't a man...so i guess it's on my mind - also, when we talk about a god who cannot be contained, this seems an appropriate time to remove god from the container of human understanding of gender.

an encounter at 30 thousand feet

with time to think again, i've decided to re-read i and thou. if you haven't read it, you should - as soon as possible - but slowly.

anyway, during my 14 hour trek of car to plane to exhaustive lay-over to plane to late luggage to bus to subway to train to walking to final exhausted arrival, i re-encountered walter kaufmann's introduction to i and thou.

here's what struck me:

the good way must be clearly good but not wholey clear

if the recommended path were utterly devoid of mystery, it would cease to fascinate [people].

the only god worth keeping is a god that cannot be kept. the only god worth talking about is a god that cannot be talked about. [god] is not object of discourse, knowledge or even experience. [god] cannot be spoken of but [god] can be spoken to; [god] cannot be seen but [god] can be listened to. the only possible relatoinship with [god] is to address [god] and be addressed by [god].

god is present when i confront you. but if i look away from you, i ignore [god]. as long as i merely experience and use you, i deny god, but when i encounter you, i encounter [god].



then, as i stared, overwhelmed, out the window, i met God:
flying away
from the work you've given
into the rest you've invited
my eyes accidentally meet yours
majestically burning, washing, and watching above the world you redeem

my mind rushes to accusation and projection
my heart tosses in a sea of question and distrust
my soul is drawn in and repulsed in a nausiating instant
my strength is gone and so does nothing

our heads are hung and our eyes are weepy
as we stand in a moment of tense experience

you speak silently:
you stand in a shadow of disappointment
of things waited for
the dark, loveless, graceless shadow
in whose darkness you hide
it is not my shadow
it is not the shadow of who i wait for
it is the shadow of the you that you are tired of waiting for.

do not create me in your image

i look again,
you stand regally over the world
with open hands
your weepy eyes weep
not with exhaustion....as mine do
not with disappointment...as mine do
not with pity...as mine do

they weep with perfect and present love
i see you
i adress you
i am adressed by you

encounter

how long have you been there
waiting for me
to peer honestly into your fire and ocean eyes
to be in present love

peaceful retrospective

i can hear the gentle scraping away of excess foam as the world class musician/barista prepares to perfect foam art that will soon be hidden, desrtoyed beneath a lid.

the gently playing acoustic emo for the first time in months beats more than the passage of rushing time.

the tired face of the old woman braving a chilled breeze outside the window is suddenly present where nothing but my computer screen and persistant cell phone have been here with me.

i am sitting at lardos with a decaf medici and no rushing thoughts. i almost don't know what to do. so i sit and absorb. i people watch and slowly ponder the way i'd almost forgotten in the endless rollercoaster of summer responsibility, rush, restlessness and occasional resentment.

i just came home from my youth retreat. my summer is over and i could not be happier. while the youth moan that school is on the way, i breathe deep like i haven't since may 1st.

and now, as my capacity for thought returns to me, a retrospective is born.

this summer encapsulated two ill-thought missoin trips, endless comittee meetings, elders scratching out deep flesh wounds, created, raise, and destoyed dreams for children's ministry, seven credits of class, growth and withdrawl, encouragement and discouragement, stress, learning, drawing near to some, walking away from others, alienating in the name of self-preservation from time to time, righteous and not-so-righteous anger, vbs, youth vbs, a retreat, the cementing of two key friendships and missed growth in one, hopes of finally being in a good living situation replaced with a declined wedding invitation, nearly literally losing my mind to lack of sleep and weight of work, and always looking forward to this exact moment: the end of it all.

i would say that surviving this summer proves i have super-human strength..but, i think it proves that i have a super-human father/mother, friend, grace-giver, and savior, and that this divine other has amply supplied me with the super-human co-pilgrims to weather this summer.

so....


to james and brooke: thank you a million times in advance for creating space (literal and figurative) for me to recover from this tearing and tattering season - and for housing the constant light at the end of my rigorous summer.

to jeff: thanks for remaining my pastor even across a nation

to neal: thanks for walking with me in a maze of angry old people and lofty goals

to jen and caleb: you have become my family, thank you for suffering with me

to jaguar, though i know you cannot read: thank you for joy and "sunshine." i think i love you more than any other person.

to jeremiah: thanks for keeping dreams alive and reminding me that the world can change - and just as in high school, though we've both changed so much, this is our purpose

to crystal: wow. i don't think i ever would have dared to work at the church during the day if you weren't there. thanks for extending deadlines and bending over backwards to help me get things done...and those picture cds are still coming...i promise.

to hallack: thanks for dreams, hilarity, guidance, and for being so much more gentle, nurturing, encouraging, partnering, hopefully realistic...than i ever hoped a pastor could be

to heidi: thanks for picking up what i dropped along the way, for optimism, for support, and for always reminding me to pray

to debbie: thank you for a safe place to learn, grow, create, and struggle.

to bryan: thanks for wisdom, kind eyes, joining me in cussing about my church, and poop at greenlake.

to ratman and mrs. ratman (the elder who refers to the youth at church as rats and his wife who is pissed that she doesn't "see" the youth in service): may i return from vacation with enough rejuvination, grace, and love to more than endure your presence - to even see God in you?

peering through a window, i saw God

today when i saw you, peering into a moment
i found beauty too infinate to hold
too precious to depict
too bright to hold a gaze

today when you shined in my window
i found an art too perfect to own and hang
too delicately painted to understand
too true to ever look away

today when your presence met me
i knew God

is an artist beyond parallel
is a gift-giver beyond thanking
is an author of the most tender
perfect
intricate
admirable
complex
characters

i knew God is good
and wise to say that "it is very good."

too much work

it's 2:30 am and i am just now leaving the church.


when i take vacation next week, i only get paid 75%.

now i know i'm not here for the money.

too busy to worry?

the living situation freaking out has now escalated!

i'll be in boston in a week and when i come back it will be september and i have no clue where i'll be living (except for with my parents which is more scary than most other possibilities).

jen said i should be too busy to worry.

i told her i'm never too busy to worry.

materialistic confession

i got an ipod for my birthday (which is still approxinately - i'm not letting anyone know when my birthday is because this is the last one i'm celebrating and caleb is plotting a surprise party for next year - one month away).

my ipod makes me happy.

mass emails

one of my youth's parents has added me to her mass emailing group. today's email asked me to sigh a petition asking bush to lower gas prices. i have nothing more to say.

i'm proud of myself

the never ending story is my baby, my art work. i've been killing myself to perfectly (or near perfectly) craft it.

my intern is teaching on "conversation" tonight.

so what i'm proud of is that i put aside the self-inflating rumors in my mind that if i'm not there it will fall apart. i took my baby, prayed, placed it in God's hands and said, i'm taking a much needed day off.

time for sabbath, absorbing every blessing, the sun, the almost blue sky blanketed like a child on a hot summer night with only a light white sheet of clouds, leaves with a million different flecks of green, a light breeze, the unmistakeable beauty of my city.

this is the life - the real life - i've been missing for weeks.

crisis

last night, as i was teaching, i totally tore apart my own heart.

we made this beautiful tree, which is serving as our on-going object lesson. when we taught crisis - last night - we tore off the leaves, fruit, and bark to reveal a dark, forelorn tree bearing fruit such as alienation, pestalence, shame, hatred, and death. then we put out three black bowls filled with grey leaves and black flowers. one bowl represented our relationship with God, another our relationship with others, and the final bowl represented our relationship with the earth. we asked the kids to think of ways they have contibuted to the crisis and decorate the tree with the "fruit" of their contributions - sins i guess.

it was hard to hold myself together as i joined them - realiazing that every seemingly insignificant sin adds to the chaos and further alienates from the garden of unity with God, others, and the world.

even when the sin is anger toward God, this alienates me from the one i am meant to be uniquely united with and therefore destroys me and makes me into a seed of destruction in the lives of others and in the world. i cause the crisis that enrages me, then i rage at God because of it.


we then gave the youth a list of questions, a slide show of "crisis" and an awesome built to spill song as neal and i went around the room and removed all of the beautiful things we put up, replacing them with black candles, table cloths etc. we hung black and grey ribbon over the christmas lights we hung. all of the beautiful things went into a garbage bag and we told the kids they are gone forever. we removed eden from our room.

"removing eden" killed me.





now to sit in the shit that rests between day two and day seven.

we will be re-decorating the tree with beautiful flowers, leaves, golden leaves and bark etc. there will be a great feast. beauty will be restored and the death that exists in the garbage bag that holds our eden will be defeated...but we live in the time between day two and day seven.

so symbolic, so rich, so real.

i am happily broken.

15 hour rest stop!

i finished my papers!

now i'm going to go get a drink (or two - which is a lot for me) and sleep til noon!

intentions rock...even when they come to nothing

jen was totally exhausted after vbs, so she went home and napped, but here was her plan:

buy me a bunch of candy and other stuff
go to ladros and buy me a coffee card
put them in a basket
ask the ladros baristas to give it to me when i inevitably end up at ladros to write my two papers


maybe she got the nap i needed and maybe there was no care package waiting for me at ladros, but it's nice to know that i have a community that cares and is affected when i am over-worked and that wants to support me in what i'm cramming into my life.



hmmm....i'm too tired to really think about it, but i wonder how sharing both our intentions and our failure to live up to them in a humble and loving way...and then recieving the failure of others with humility and grace would affect community?

could even failed intentions be a vital part of intentional community?

i think yes. i think i could write a 9-11 page paper on that right now...but i have another one to write...so i'll leave that thought to you.

6 shots is not enough

vbs is over.

there are six shots of espresso pumping through my veins and, while my hands are jittering from the caffeine, my eyes won't stay open and all my muscles have decided they are done for the day - week? - month? and have begun to nap with or without my mind.

my brain is begging to turn off for just a few minutes - hours? - weeks? - years? but, one mclaren paper is done and another is begging attention.

i'm almost to a rest stop on the high speeding highway that is my august '05, but when you're tired the question always remains, can i make it to the rest stop before falling asleep at the wheel and crashing?

time will tell.

white people are bible tyrants

ok, given that flannelgraph sucks, it should be disposed of like yesterdays trash...which most churches have already done, but my church lives like 20 or 30 or 50 years in the past.


anyway, for a mission trip next year i want to get hispanic looking flannelgraph characters. there are hispanic families -- but not bible characters.

so, i look for jewish bible flannelgraph characters...unless jewish people back then had blue eyes and pale skin - and always washed their lily white faces of the dessert dirt before applying like sfp 80 sun screen, there are no jewish flannelgraphs either.

why do white people think we own the bible?

episode 1: creation

the first night of "the never ending story" has concluded.

it was beautiful - absolutely beautiful (pictures to come this weekend).

now that i remember why i'm doing this, it's time to crank out two papers and a closing assembly for "kingdom of the son, a prayer safari."

hours i have worked today

i left for church at 6:30.

traffic was unbelievable. i got to work at 9:00.

it is almost 11pm and i am almost ready to leave.

tomorrow: twelve hours of work followed by all nighter for my mclaren papers.

vacation in t minus 12 days!

yet another roommate disaster

i really didn't want to do this, but i am really freaking out.

my roommate for the fall told me like a week and a half ago that she is getting married at the end of the month...so, i don't have a roommate and therefore don't have a way to move out.

i've been working on finding something, but things aren't working out, and if you know my past with roommates, you can understand how scared i am.

i can't keep living with my parents -- if you know that situation, you understand that.

i really don't know what to do or where else to look and i'm just broken at the thought of living at home.

please, please, please pray for this situation.

thank you.

a rut

i discovered that my lj is still active and re-read my posts. as i read them, i realized that, thought theologically i'm in a diffeterent place and my christian-ese has changed, for the most part, i'm still sitting in the same shit as almost two years ago.

two posts from october 03:

"so the kingdom of God is supposed to be like a mustard seed that grows into a tree. it starts small and grows large. however, it seems to be shrinking. Christians haven't a clue what brotherly love should look like - even my house church which has a communal emphasis is fractioned. Christians don't care about the poor and social justice. there seems, sometimes, to be nothing right in the world. all i want is to change the world. all i want is for things to be right...or atleast a vacation from all the wrong. i want simplicity. i want God. i want the time that i owe him...but studying him robs me of that time.

then, there is God. in romans, we read that the benefits of knowing God include peace, hope and love. if i feel void of these, it is not because the world has robbed me - it is because i have given up the true sense of Christian hope. all will be set right. God will be victorious.

then, however, there is impatience - i find myself crying out "Just come back Jesus!" I find myself jealous of Johhny Cash and of my Grandma who is weeks or maybe days away from paradise. How am I to wait?

then there is 1 corinthians. i must run the race, finish the course that is set before me. living every day with God ought to be enough. though i may not see them, the new mercies depicted in "great is thy faithfulness" are mine every morning.

still, i am home sick in the worst way."





and


"i had a discussion and came to this conclusion: the difference between knowing the glorious future and longing for it to the point of pain and tears and finding hope and joy as you wait expectantly without complaint is comparison. i cannot think about what the world should be, what it will be and how wrong things are. i need to assess that the world is not right and seek the kingdom of God - all the while taking heart in the assurance that the kingdom is already, not yet - it is here in part but will be here in full soon enough."



jeremiah and i have discussed a bit the stretching pain of dark truth in one hand and the joy of the lord in the other.

re-reading these, it seems as though stretching is happeing without any growth. it just feels shitty that my own out-dated voice is so convicting years later.

i'm still home sick and now i am a hypocrit - teaching my youth that the kingdom is coming while i am straining to see it.

vbs

today, i took my over-education and used it to purchase jungle stuffed animals from an over-priced thrift store then use them to decorate a classroom. then me and my nearly finished gradauate degree drove home and ironed "kingdom of the son" onto $1 hand puppets of zebras, giraffes, lions, and monkeys. i failed a bit in that endeavor as i over-estimated the quality of the puppets and some of them melted together under the heat. i fixed it though.

yep. you guessed it, vbs starts monday.

in preparation for vbs, i tried to get myself psyched by thinking back to when i used to go to vbs - i tried to remeber everything i learned. some thoughts came to mind:

"shoot, why did i pray for salvation when i was three. that kid gets extra points (and therefore a bigger toy) because he got the friend he brought to pray for salvation. if i hadn't already done it, i could do it now and my friend and i could split the loot."

"wow, i got an awesome t-shirt (i still have it now) out of the deal, but what does God have to do with a st.bernard and why did the adults spell 'sun mountian' wrong?"

"wow. i really suck at crafts. when's snack time. i hope it's not those stupid raisin on peanut butter and celery - they call it ants on a log. i am sooo tied of that. a) logs aren't green, b) only four ants can sit on a log?, c) what am i supposed to do with the celery and raisins after i eat the peanut butter"

"that's a really cool palm tree my teacher put up. i wish school had palm trees and themes. what am i going to do with my hair for crazy hair day. maybe my mom will let me get a mohawk...yeah right. oh, was the teacher telling us the story? something about a dude and a whale, oh yeah, i've heard that one before. my mom tells it to me everytime i get a time-out for not obeying. where was i, oh yeah, my hair, maybe i could get a mullet...that would rock!"


i've been telling my staff to spend more time connecting with the kids and connecting them to God and to eachother than cramming the week with fun things that the kids either won't remember or will remember at the cost of the bible stories. i hope they listen, otherwise, here goes an over-educated exercise in futility!

to quote shakespeare, "i want it written that i am an ass!"

there's this dude that hangs out at ladros that has been creeping me out for a long time. he keeps trying to make eye contact and smiling at me - i just want to study and be left alone. there have been like five creepy guys there that have made me want to switch cafes.

anyway, one day i had to applaud him for guts if nothing else. he tried to make eye contact and i obviously, painstakingly avoided it. then, he got up and walked over to me.

"Do you remember me?"

ummm...if you mean from many days of staring at me and ruining my morning coffee, then, yeah, i remember you.

"If I'm right, you used to work at Starbucks."

oh, so you got coffee a couple of times and i'm supposed to remember you and have a conversation with you when i'm rushing to finish a paper?

"We talked about religion? Is that the kind of thing you do?"

yeah...with everyone...we probably did have a conversation. so what?

"I told you about my struggles. I used to be a youth pastor but now I'm not. You really don't remember me?"

I'm beginning to realize that I'm an ass.

"I poured my heart out to you and you really don't even remember me?!"

shit. big fat pile of shit. i am a total ass.

i told him that i've tried to forget everything about starbucks and that i'd love to have a conversation again, sometime when i'm not rushing to finish a paper (which i don't think i meant). we talked a bit more then he said we'd talk a different time.

i finished the freaking paper i don't remember everything i wrote, but i do remember that i am an ass.

the demise of caffe minnies

new management has taken down the posters that used to cover every inch of walls, replaced dingy old carpet with bright tiles, brought new denny's style menus and (total shock) uniforms!!! freaking uniforms at caffee minnies! if minnies was my home during undergrad, then i suppose it is true that you can never go home.

needless to say, my favorite waiter and bono look alike, Jim, has quit.

the soup is still awesome, but it's lost its addictive quality in the environment change.

misadventures at the evil empire

in response to my post on the intellectuality of starbucks employees, david shared a story from his dad, and jeremiah one from his own experience as a slave to the empire.

i think all of us who have sold our souls to the mermaid (whore) of babylon should share customer stories.

the reaon things are looking up today

PUNKY BREWSTER IS COMING OUT ON DVD!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

they're everywhere!

i have never been so happily greeted. arms waving in the air, three voices, one from someone i've never met, shouting out, "Hi Becky." i knew that i spend too much time at lardo, but i didn't have the expectation it would turn into "cheers." as i naively looked into the bright faces of the trio of baristas, i didn't realize the sarcasm. "we just had a wonderful customer. the best customer ever."

"oh, that's great. how was this the 'best'?"

a seemingly sweet little old lady walked up and politely asked, "what kind of reaction do you get to your music?" celeste, one of the baristas who has at least three weezer tattoos, said that the reaction is generally positive. the woman stared at her and continued, "i guess i'm just more of a starbucks type - you know, better educated. they play the kind of music that well educated people listen to. it's just a better environment for us."

fucking bull shit!

do educated people enjoy uniformity? do they enjoy corporate sludge? do educated people perfer popular, hypnotic, talentless music to the feeling of buying fair trade, organic, shade grown coffee? bullshit.

one of the baristas informed her that graduate students like to study at the cafe; she just walked away.

the same barista wished that i had been there, "here's becky, she's almost done with one graduate degree from the east coast and she's working on two more - she's a regular."

i am so tired of passive agressive elderly people who think their way is the only way and everything else is below them. i assumed they were limited to my church, but i guess it's comforting to know the blight exists outside of the confining walls of lake city presbyterian as well. they are fucking everywhere - even the hip corner cafe - it is inescapable!

so, i stood and joined the ladro trinity's frustration, launched into a tyraid on fair trade - narrowly escaped a moment of turrets and a sea of four letter words, tipped very well and retired to my graduate work as ladro's music danced in my head - if i fail my paper, i'll blame the music at ladro for being "uneducated."

currently, there is a two-year-old dancing to the music in front of me. there you have it, you can't get less educated than a two-year old. still i perfer his youthful white-boy dancing to some breakable, dressed in black, icy woman's passive agressive complaints.

lazy workaholics

yesterday i was in a parade. by the time the parade was over, i had worked 42 hours in a 3 day period. i sped home, went to sleep, got up after 6 hours of sleep, and sped back to the church to teach sunday school twice. i have done nothing but work - save one afternoon at greenlake, a prayer gathering, and an evening with the oglesbys - for an entire week. even as i ventured into those excursions, the entire time i was plagued by guilt that i should be working. next week won't be much different - except that i have a final paper to write. the next week after that will be the same with two final papers.

there is a light at the end of the tunnle though, vacation at the end of august.

here's my parents' response:

"we are so proud of you for working so hard. it makes us really happy."

and,

"you're taking a vacation? you've only been full time for a while. you should keep working. besides, that's a waste of your money."

i came home from church today and took a half-hour nap and my dad said (as he sat infront of the television complaining that nothing good is on, but watching none-the-less), "don't you have a paper to write?"

so...is sabbath one of my family values? hardly - workaholism - that is the highest value in my family.


back to the parade - we dressed up as safari animals and decorated the church bus with a safari theme and walked in the lake city days parade as a song blasted (a song not of my choice) the words, "monkey see, monkey do, the lying devil is after you. monkey see, monkey do, dare to be one of God's chosen few." i faked a smile as every cell in my body cringed at the words screaming from our bus with the logo, "knowing Christ, making Christ known." was this a picture of Christ? hardly.

so, when he asked, i told my dad how frustrated i was with that and his reply, "at least you're working hard." then he returned his gaze to his closest friend, the television, and began to tell me a story from survivor. i walked away as he was in mid-sentence.


what is it in america that makes us value work above anything else and then fail at that ethic as we meld into our couches so that we are indistingushable from their common, meaningless, dirtied-by-life fabric? until our dreams, ideas, ponderings, morals, are better informed by the mass populous than the best educated theologian is informed by God? how have we become so good at setting a worthless goal, failing at it, and escaping that worthwhile failing by diving into the imaginary lives of clowns?

eye heart the door magazine

yesterday's quote

i forgot to post this yesterday.

a friend who a) usually speaks wisdom, depth, truth etc. and b) who will remain nameless due to the content of the quote said, as we walked across the brittle summer grass under a brilliant blue sky at greenlake,

"i always poop here."

later, he wondered why i thought the lake was too dirty to swim in?

yes, there is context, but what's the fun in that?

2 quotes for the day

when my pastor opened his door and stepped out into the treturous world that is lake city presbyterian, he announced, "i'm emerging from the cave."

when he later overheard a conversation i was having about violent video games - wherein i described a close friend and epitome of a family-man beating his video game wife to a pulp then getting pissed because she wouldn't have sex with him right after, he said, "i always beat my wife. my kids too. the bible tells me i can. what? it does! i can!"

of course, he was being sarcastic, which i realize is lost in text, but it was hilarious.

just enough

always just enough. always just before i quit. always barely there.

the motivation to continue on a path of fruitless struggle.

always soft, small, relationship. always the unexpected source. always barely in time.

the voice of the other reaches and holds me where i reluctantly belong.

always obvious. always when i am beaten near to death. always clearly there.

the true, unchanging life of ministry breaks through the clouds of struggle over what is right.



tonight was CE meeting. once again, i tried to be the director ans was denied. once again, i asked myself what the fuck i am doing at an old unchanging church - bent more on tradition than on spiritual health and growth. once again, i felt my passion being crowdedd into a bottle too small and being sent into the sea of tomorrow with hopes that it will arrive on a friendlier shorw - and that i will have survived to follow it. once again, i left church wanting badly to drink, to cry, to distract myself from the uselessness that has been heaped upon my pile of passionate dreams.

i began to reason, we've just got too different of ministerial visions. i could site this as the reason and bow out, early, but gracefully. a youth ministers career, after all is 7 months to 2 years. i'm at 8. by the time i find something else, i'll probably be at a year...or i could wait until jeremiah comes and leave to minster with him and his wife. i can leave. i should leave. this is purposeless, painful, abusive. i'd be co-dependant to stay. i'm done.

i actually began to feel the release i was hoping for in trying to gather friends together for drinks - quitting is even better than distraction.


then my phone rang. "i don't care about history - rock rock rock and roll high school." it was someone from youth group. crap. church invading my momentary exodus. i looked, it was luke on the phone.

luke i love. luke is real. luke is growing. luke is curious. luke is love.

i answered the phone, trying to disguise my decision to abandon them.

he explained why he's been missing church - he explained that he's not fallen away...i didn't tell him i'd rather fall away than go to the church i work at.

he continued to say he'd be there on thursday - love the kid, but yeah right.

he said if he didn't come - which he won't - that it's not because of me.

then he said that he talked about me at dinner with his aunt and uncle (who he lives with) he said that i'm a great youth minister. he said that he's getting along with his parents and making good decisons. he said that it's because of God and that his grandmother has been praying for this. he said that i'm an answer to his grandmother's prayer.

he said, "i love you becky."

he said, "i hope you're our youth pastor for a long time."



and so i will be.

if, as every sunday school class i've ever taken is right and Jesus would die to save just one person, then i can let the next few years of my life be drenched and saturated in pain, uselessness, seeming waste - if only for Luke to meet the love of God.

his call was just enough, just before i quit, just bareley there - but he gave me the face of the other into which i look and, ethically, can, no must continue.

i wish for every minister at least one luke, whose face shows God's face so brilliantly it is blinding.

un-evening the valleys

when i came to gordon-conwell, i was pissed because i thought they were trying to feed me spiritual prozac. "even out the valleys." did God want us to flat-line? i wondered if i was manic depressive as i said to myself, "fuck if i'm going to live a flat-line life." and so began my rebellion against gcts.

gcts continued to rebel against my head-strong honesty. "you are irresponsible for getting a tattoo," "you'll take your nose ring out when God convicts you" "you need counseling to even out your creative spirit" "can Christians really be punk?" "oh yeah, you sit at the freak table" etc.


"becky, we are going to let you stay because we can see that you have a heart for youth, but we're going to mandate that you get counseling."


somewhere in the war, maybe when i became a pacifist, i surrendered without even realizing it.

when a treasured friend told me today that it is my nature to fight, first my heart sunk as i realized that after a year, he didn't know me at all - i avoid conflict at too much cost. then, he explained that i fight in myself and with God - that i make God be God and that it's good - inspiring even.

i worked, thought, slowed down, concentrated, and sat half smiling half broken as i tried to recieve what he was saying. all i heard was dean borgman's voice, "what i wish for you becky is a good counselor to even out your creative spirit." i heard another friend - not from GCTS - "becky, you need to stop struggling and just rest in God." in my mind, struggle means bad.

i thanked him as my mind recognized what he said as a compliment but continued to work double time to accept it as such.

how could i have given up in such a good fight, to protect and maintain the passion of my life with God.

in the nooma video, "rain," struggling in the arms of God is a almost oasis like place - an unequaled moment of connection and love with God.

scripture tells us that when we walk through the valley, God is with us. why, then, would be avoid the valley? why would we take spiritual prozac and even out those dark, death-filled nights where God stands with us in the shadow, holds our hands and is the only comfort we can know.


so, finally, not in rebellion, but in relationship, the flat-line ends, valleys and mountians arise as the earth quakes with resurrected life, prozac is lost in the vivacity of life and the ambivilant joy and pain of climbing and descending can be celebrated as what it is: abundant life with God.

fuck if i'm going to live, lead, or walk in the path of a flat-line life.

Quote of the day

"Only the pure in spirit may find the treasure of knowledge" - Teddy Ruxpin


(I watched Teddy Ruxpin with Ocean today.)

death penalty

a friend of one of my sinners and saints bros has started a discussion of the death penalty.


check it out and comment.

http://evolvingconsciousness.blogspot.com/

saturday sabbath

one of my courses was cancelled...for uber lame reasons, but, none-the-less, i have a free day.

debbie and i are spending the day at pike place.

here is my quote of the day -- i couldn't believe i said it as i watched it drip off my tongue and stand in the air like the words on sesame street:

"i do have one errand that i have to do. I HAVE TO GO TO LEFT BANK BOOKS AND GET A BUMPER STICKER."

getting a bumper sticker is on my "have-to" list.


only me.

commute

speeding the seemingly endless stretch of i-5 between home and work, singing along with poor old lu to keep my tired eyes open and drifting mind conscious, i finally round the last corner before my exit ramp. as i do, the towering evergreens seem to slide left and right to make way for the perfect view that briefly distracts truly attentive drivers. once the trees fell into their place, mt. rainier slinks into place and stands at attention. my breath escapes.

minutes later, my lungs end their sabbath as my mind reminds me it is time to signal, exit, and complete the trek to work.

how blessed are seattlites that this picture is the morning commute?

sure, traffic sucks, but it is a built in tour of God's art museum - who else has the gift of mandatory art time after work?

our youth vbs

"all one face"

after mexico and othello, american kids drive me nuts. they are so spoiled, so distant, so demanding.

then, sunday morning, as i emerged from my tent to a line of kids waiting to 1) chastise me for sleeping in so late and 2) hug me, i began to wonder if the kids are really all that much different?

bryan insightfully reflected on the faces of children (www.bnixon.blogspot.com). in the last scene of "imposters" with stanley tucci, a confused communist with a bomb detinator in hand preaches about his ideal world where all people are the same. he looks across the faces of the people present and, in their pain, humiliation, love, hope, desparation, he sees that across class and nationality, we are all the same. he chants, "all one face, all one face, all one face!" then he throws the detinator away.

are our faces that different when all is said?

and, if we are in Christ, shouldn't we all be a portion of the great mosaic that is the one incarnational face of Jesus?

the love of a child as key to community

Ocean, since my life has nose-dived (dove?) into insanity, misses me and so he will grab a book and sit on their patio, where i often sit (sat) while reading for school. Once he gets situated with his book, he'll announce, "Becky be here soon." When Jen says, "No Ocean, I don't think Becky's coming today," Oceans stares crossly at her and says, "Yep. Becky be here soon." Then he looks down at his book and patiently waits as my absesnse continues.

When Jaguar sees me - those days when I do find time to visit - she shakes and her mouth stretches out into that pure golden sunshine smile as she anticipates my rushing over to pick her up, play with her, and remind her that she is my precious sunshine.

My response:
1) holy shit. this is too much responsibility. i have become these kids' family. my absense, my busyness affects them. ocean feels abandoned and angry when i don't come around often enough. the lack of responsibility to pure little people who love without reserve was one of the few benefits of being single and childless. crap. what's going to happen if/when i move to ireland? will they feel abandoned? will they suffer loss? can i move despite this?

2) holy crap, i have never felt so loved as when ocean wakes up groggy from a nap but smiles to see that i'm there, when i hear that he asks constantly where i'm at, when jaguar's sunshine stretches across her face simply because i walked into a room. kids are amazing.

3) holy God, you are beyond compare that you have created these little people. thank you for the extravagent grace to be placed in the middle of their lives - let me walk well within their world. let me be like them, giving love as the sun gives light.

4) why do they love me so? sure, i've given them so much i hope i give my own children less so that they won't get spoiled. but they don't understand that most of their clothing are gifts i saw and couldn't keep from buying for them. sure i pray for them more than for myself, but they don't know that. all they know is my presence.

then i realize, if we are to learn about community, children are the best teachers. maybe biting, stealing toys, hitting when you don't get what you want etc. are not good community traits, but loving someone - not for what you get from them, how charismatic they are, the sense of satisfaction their presence gives you etc. - loving someone for their presence in your life and craving that presence when it is absent - this root would grow a community too beautiful to put in words or contain in a picture. it's beyond my comprehension.

then i wonder, what were the children thinking as they approached Jesus.
- dude, he's really important, i want to talk to him so i can drop his name on the play ground
- my ankle's been hurting, maybe he can heal me
- i hit my sister alot, maybe if i'm nice to him he'll forgive me
- maybe that dude has some better food than my mom gave me
- he's teaching some cool stuff, maybe we can hit up a pub, get some root beer and talk philosophy
- that dude said he's "THE way, THE truth, THE life." if i don't want to go to hell, i'd better get on his good side
- hey, maybe if i hang with this dude, i can be a star player in a social group based on his teachings
- if he's God, maybe he has a super power for me!

probably not.

how, then, did the children come to Jesus? was he simply so loving and the children so absorbed in the pursuit of simple love that as love beemed through his gently eyes and kind smile, they had no choice but to run into his arms and recieve his love?

is this, then, what community does, as the collective body of christ? each of us, from childhood, seek the loving relationship God created us for - love between God, others, and God's world. when we come together as community, are we dually the child running to the arms of an incarnational representative of Christ as well as, ourselves, being an incarnation of Christ, giving love as determinedly and freely as Jesus did to those children?

when ocean sits on that patio and occasionally is awarded with my approach, when i kneel down, hug him, pick him up, tell him i love him soooooo much and tickle him until his angelic laugh climaxes and his smile grows so big i wonder if it hurts his face, am i bringing to him a piece of Jesus? without a second thought, i know that, in that moment, he has brought Jesus to me.

el cape - you know what this town needs? some non-conversational white people with jesus tracts!

what the f

today will mark nine straight days of working 12 hours at church (or mission trip) and at least 5 on school work. i'm leaving for a church camp out and won't get a day off church until monday.

in an email from a church member, i revieced this image and realized just how much i need a vacation.

Mexico 2 - life in a moment

first, you should maybe know that my mexico post comes from two nights of not sleeping because i thought i had a black widow bite and might die --- it wasn't a black widow (though one did make a web and take up residence on my computer charger), but it was some sort of spider that i'm alergic to and that made my leg swell more than it ever has before (if you don't know, i have a height complex, wear tall shoes, and sprain my ankle all the time -- it is no stranger to swelling :-).

anyway, when i stop deconstructing the mission and review moments, there was beauty in the mission trip - pushing children in swings as they giggled with simple joy, being drug all around a play ground as one girl calledd me "gringa" and would not let go of my hand for even one minute - seeing the joy in her face as i sat next to her after she finally did let go, welcoming youth into a conservative church and letting them brake dance during sunday school, the breath-taking joy as kristi, one of my youth - in the above picture - embraced a girl she's longed to see all year, talking with one black colorado youth who is the only minority in his youth group of 90 and is not even allowed to call himself "black," and listening to his story and struggle, meeting a college student/artist from mill creek who wants me to connect her to art community and wants to get involved in "work of art." these are good moments.

discipline opens the door to putting aside over analysis and allowing these moments to be what they are and to have awe and appreciation for their beauty.

Mexico

i think i have some sort of problem, but i was perplexed the entire time in mexico. i didn't know this ahead of time, but the orphanage is AG and they have started a bunch of churches that are teaching that people with tattoos aren't christian. why on earth would you take teaching time to cover this? i don't know. but, there i was, tattoo'd and furthering a mission that says that i am not a christian. good times. we also did door to door paper evangelism. the people are starving, living in unsafe condition etc. and we bring papers that share the good news of a Jesus who, aparently, as represented by us, can't help them except to walk around, speaking a different language and passing out paper - - more trash to fill the dirt roads.

anyway, the pictures are cool.

mclaren thought #5

In response to the 30 years war over religion and fear of it coming to France, Descartes creates a knowledge in a public sphere that is free of religion so that members of different religions can step out and dialogue on a neutral certainty.

“[Descartes’ method created] certainty without moral wisdom, certainty without compassion. This kind of certainty is dangerous.”

“Excessive confidence is like a cancer. We need to treat it with chemotherapy and there are two chemotherapies to absolutism: pluralism and relativism.”

“If any place had created a secular public sphere, it was Germany.”

In response, philosophers seek to diminish this certainty.

“You introduce pluralism and relativism and absolutism retreats – but religious faith plummets.”

“Today we have people who think [reason] is the answer.
There are people who think pluralism and relativism are the answer.
There are still those who think religion is the answer.”

“The story is not an absolutist metanarrative or a private personal true-for-me relativist narrative.”

“What the biblical narrative is an all-embracing mega narrative. This type of narrative always has room for and cares for the other. It does not want to destroy others but always has room for them.”

“I believe that we can and must as Christians within a postmodern world give an account of human knowing that will apply to music, mathematics, to biology and to history, to theology and to chemistry. We need to articulate for the [post-modern] world what we call an epistemology of love.”
NT Wright

“If the gospel of Jesus cannot solve this problem, (jaw dropped and head shaking in befuddlement) then I don’t know who can do it.”

mclaren thought #4.1 on homosexuality

this is how homosexuality has been traditionally viewed.


i think most of us can understand that this is inappropriate. Read on.

mclaren thought #4.2 on homosexuality

This is a schema that McLaren drew for us today - revealing some of the complexity of the homosexuality issue. He suggests that there are many causes and degrees of homosexuality and that for many - maybe most, we should interact with dysfunction and move them into committed heterosexual relationships. Some, with a low sex drive could be led to celibacy.

However, for those who are very homosexual and have high sexual drive, what it best?
More dysfuction through promiscuity?

The question is posed, if it is possible that not so much was known about homosexuality at the time, for Paul to have made an exception for committed relationships, it would be the same sort of non-sensical statement as if Jesus had encountered a "demon" possessed person and said, "Well maybe it's OCD or Bi-Polar."

So today, with our knowledge, we might be able to look at this section of homosexuals and love them the same way we love people with OCD - which is a soley biological disorder. For OCD patients, we give them what is available - pharmisuticacls and counseling. For a sexually charged homosexual, could - and I'm not saying it's right - nor am I denying the complexity of it - could it be possible that love would be taking this group of people and giving them committed realtionships filtering out some of the sin that promiscuity and sexual dysfunction bring?

Please discuss this.

McLaren thought #3

A summary of a thought in class:
Military super powers build their armies at the cost of their economy. When the military becomes too much of a financial burden for the economy to afford, then the country goes into economic spiral and the military must also decrease. Thereby, the super power is no longer a super power.


In Iraq, they are saying that we need to "stand down" and they need to "stand up."

McLaren hypothesizes that this is because the economic burden is becoming too much and the country could begin to spiral and concludes, "in this way, 'he who lives by the sword dies by the sword.' maybe this is how these things happen."

mclaren thought #2

a parable from class today:
there is a man along a stream who sees someone drowning. he saves the person and puts him on aid car. then another person is drowing - who is saved and put on the aid car again. then there is a third and a fourth and so on. saving them is mercy. at some point, though, you have to ask, "who is throwing these people in the stream?" and you need to go seek justice up stream.

a collection of quotes:
“If all you do is mercy, you can have the unintended consequence of empowering injustice”
“When we enter the public sphere, we can enter in either mercy or justice or both. It may be that some branches of the church are better at mercy and others justice, but we have to stop seeing each other as enemies.”
“If you try to do either [justice or mercy] without walking humbly with God you will be worn out”

mclaren thought #1

“In Western society there is the assumption that smart white men define reality. Western civilization and the Gospel so linked that when Western civilization goes down, the Gospel goes down. So, out of fidelity to the Gospel [a conservative Christian author] defends Western culture and denigrates other cultures.”
McLaren

My thought:

In Chariots of fire – there is a scene where the British are trying to talk Eric into running on Sunday, they say, in my day it was “country first, God second.”

We need to not let our country and our Western view do this to us – demand our allegiance to anything on a level above or equal to our allegiance to God.

A parable – a baseball player might think that wearing the same pair of underwear every day –without washing them- makes the team win. So, out of devotion to the team, he wears the same underwear everyday. He smells. He gets sick. He’s uncomfortable and cannot play well because of it. But when you try to take the underwear away, he’ll fight you for the seeming sake of his team.

We cannot allow this to be the church. We, as people who see this and people who love the church (as in God’s people – not as in the institutional organization – have the responsibility to expose that they are aligned to something unworthy of their alignment.

blessed

okay, maybe i did have time for one more thought.

i am sitting lazily at ladros doing the same exact thing i've done for the past 8 years of my life - reading over some cold coffee i've taken too long to drink.

a year and a couple months ago, i was doing the same thing - but in boston - in starbucks - pounding my pencil deeper and deeper into the page betraying pacifism to the fantacy that maybe my page could be the author's jugular and i could end the closed minded, old-day pining, blind to post-modern beauty spewings of a staunch reformed tradition.

six months ago - no, less - i was sitting in seattle at a ladro's steaming over how petty if not idiotic my professors taped words were. i saw gcts graduates as being aptly prepared for ministry 50 years ago. my thought was "gcts graduates are like milk put on the shelf past its expiration date. it is not sweet to taste. it is not nurishing. it is not useful."

now, i am tired and forgetting to count my blessings as i gently read one of the first theology text books that has not upset me. i am highlighting and pondering rather tha fuming and pounding. pacifism is not a test.

no matter how busy, over-worked, perplexed about the church, hurt by reluctant pilgrims etc. i am, i know i am blessed. my life has taken many pleasant meanders and directional shifts. i feel home. i feel loved. i feel shined upon. i feel useful. i feel blessed.

sabbath

for the next week and a half, i don't have time to think (or atleast think out) my own thoughts, so i'll be posting quotes.

these are quotes from the sabbath course i took at the end of last month:

When asked if he was encouraging a life of powerlessness, my profesor said, “Me, no. I’m not.


But, Jesus does.”

He continued to reflect on the baptism of Christ and said this, “Jesus’ power didn’t come from being the messiah, his power came from a voice saying, ‘You are loved.’”


“The main problem in life is men.”

“My new book is the purpose driven prayer of jabez for those left behind.”

“Sabbath is not what you do. Sabbath is what you don’t do.”

”We live in a society where people are apoplectic about gay marriage but don’t raise any uproar about the fact that we are not a culture of Sabbath. That’s one of the commandments.”

“Why do you have a Messiah complex when Jesus doesn’t even have a Messiah complex.”

“As soon as we are certain about our image of God, God must mercifully shatter it.”
-Lewis

We need to keep our thumbs off the scale of reciprocity

“A pervasive form of contemporary violence and that is activism and over-work.”
-Merton

The Chinese word for busy – a combination of “heart” and “to kill” – to kill the heart



note that the catalyst for posting quotes is my busy, sabbath-free life and that i am painfully aware of the inherent irony and conviction.

hallack

with all sarcasm, my pastor said today, "Every day is a party with Jesus." he also refered to a loud hawaiian shirt he was wearing as his "party shirt" and said "yo" when i knocked on the door. i heart my pastor.

a few things drawing my mind back to home church

1) i'm pretty sure i'm going to boston at the beginning of september! woohoo!! - note that this woohoo would be completely negated if i planned on venturing to the spiritual war zone that is gordon-conwell - but i have no such intention. i just miss the restful feeling of the fellowship in my spiritual home in beverly.

2) i'll get to see sinners and saints and andrea - the remnant of people i'd be stoked to see

3) jeff's given me the title "liturgical poet." i don't know what to do with that. what does that mean? what responsibilities come with that? what would that have meant at home church? what on earth can that mean at my church?


i want to stop working and just write. alas, that's not possible for at least three years - so i'll try to pretend the idea didn't occur to me.

Insanity's Hope

i'm going to start posting occasional entries from the books i'm writing (or at least that i was writing before getting a full-time ministry position). this is the preface (or atleast the beginning of the preface) for a book entitled, "of the world and not in it: the historical separatistic syncretism of the church."


Trekking hotly across a dry desert, the drops of sea water on weary feet must have birthed a slight sigh of relief as he stood on the edge of death. Just as the pounding waves, however, his thought eroded the momentary rest. An army pressed in on him with nothing but water for escape. Surely, throwing the children into the bulging sea would be more humane than waiting for destruction at the hand of an enraged slave master. Truth whispered what seemed insanity. The haggard prince turned slave turned shepherd turned leader in a fit of either frustration or obedience – only he knows – thrust a shepherd’s scepter into the air and bellowed. Truth swirled and whispered again – to the sea. One could almost depict hands reaching from the sky down to the sea and gently pulling it back like a majestic curtain. The soggy ground dried as though watching water spill in reverse and the people swarmed the newly-made passage way. Running from one side to the other, the people knew no difference had been made. Their wearied feet could never out speed the pounding of the horses’ feet behind them. Death would meet them on the other side of the path. Some even prayed for the sea to swallow them with peaceful drowning.

Safely on the other shore, fears became fact. The army followed them and death was one step closer. Again, Truth whispered insanity – which surely seemed more and more sane with every moment. The shepherd again hoisted his staff and bellowed. The sea responded, closing in and devouring the slave masters and their steeds. Truth somehow, broke through desperation with insanity and won.

Some of you know this story and wonder what my point might be. In the pages to follow, you will encounter utter desperation. You should despair – Truth is nearly lost. However, hope is not. Truth’s habit is to whisper insanity in the final moment of fear and frustration only to lead to regal victory. Through all of the fact mixed with opinion, sarcasm, cynicism, and deep fear that I will share over the next many pages, never lose hope. We have read the end of the book and know that no army of modernity, post-modernity, syncretism, sin, slave-master or of any kind will overcome. Truth will win. In truth, Truth is poised for a victorious march and is only biding time before, once again, insanity is uttered and triumph birthed.

Many of my peers say we cannot know Truth. I agree. Still, to doubt our ability to know something is one issue. Questioning the ability of Truth to meet us speaks more cynically of Truth than it does of us. Truth can, is determined to, and will be know. That said, my hope remains to depress and shock you leaving only insanity’s hope.

beginning and end

today i had endcap-like encouonters.

holding jaguar as she discovered nature - seeing the absoulte wonder in her glistening ocean-blue eyes as she touched and held the branches of a pine tree, leaves, a flower - she took such joy in such simplicity. softly i whispered in her ear, "Jesus made these because He loves you - his precious princess - sunshine." together we giggled and basked in the sun, absorbing every miniscule blessing - down to the blades of grass.

dashing into church hoping to avoid an elder, i was caught in an undesired encounter. he judged me for sloppy hand writing, too few youth going to mexico, my intern's mathmatical mistake on an employment form, poor communication in our church. in two minutes i went from euphoric to pissed - and behind being pissed, deep wound and increasingly deep rooted fear of what might come at my church. the voice calling me to flawlessness and perfection and shaming me for every misstep grew louder and louder until i had the ramones on full blast singing "i wanna be sedated" to drown out (sedate) the pain i was feeling.

what possesses a person to inflict wound over such petty things?

bryan recently blogged a desire to "journey well" with his niece.

how does a person go from jaguar to my church elder? collective shame? collective de-facing wound? soul age? a journey that is in no way "well" traveled?

with all my heart i love jaguar and prayerfully plead that everyone she encounters cares for and journeys "well" with her.


i wonder if between the two endcaps - jaguar and the elder - stands me - increasingly wounded by the church and still grasping with weakening fingers for even a weak hold on faith, hope, and love. in my journey, will i find footing to become more child-like or will consistant shame and pain lead me to the same end as my church elder?



also...a break through in my understanding of encounter:

maria and i had dinner tonight and discussed what exists between "i and thou." she explained an intense need ot allow that as well as the other to exists as it is - this need is so great that she doesn't allow her "i" to exist. it dawned on me that in doing so, she takes such control over the interaction so as to remove the one thing she rightly should control, herself. when we interact this way, we are violent and rob encounter of what we uniquely bring. as i shared these words and we sat in silence, we both knew our own presences in this encounter and were acutely aware that the encounter had a presence of its own.

luke

he has an amazing heart
he loves God
he would rather help people than do anything else


he's been abandoned by his biological mom
he's been disowned by his adopted mom

all i have to offer him is love mixed with tears and a broken heart

they said he's lazy and he shouldn't have come on the trip
they told him to leave his skateboard at home
he bought one so he could give it to one of the kids

"right"

rarely do i feel like i'm going something "right."

almost never while working in the church do i feel like anything is "right."

today we had church outside. i read a poetic book about creation - the event - to the children then they used all sorts of art supplies, puppets, flowers etc. to create a parade. during the last hymn of church, they marched around rcelebrating God's love of creation. the down point - they had posters that read "God so loved the world" "so" should really be "in such a manner." usually, i'd get caught up in the theological incorrectness of this, but i didn't. i couldn't. i knew this morning was right. i felt at home and knew the kingdom is present.

definately a sacred moment.

good old days

the paradox
concerts every weekend
a pizza mart
one crappy band and a candy break
tomato basil most nights
three sisters who aren't really mine
ryan, sammy, adrian - too much fun
my college experience