hope

A Great Persecution Broke Out

I have always been fascinated by our propensity to remain in spaces that, if not exactly destructive (though they are often that), they are at the very least not working for us. I usually ask it like this: “I wonder why he/she stays there/continues to do that when they KNOW it’s wrong for them,” and I say it less with wonder than annoyance. The good news is that the “he/she” part is immediately replaced with “we,” because it doesn’t take long for me to remember.

I stayed at a job years after I knew it was time to go. I had relationships for far longer than either of us would’ve categorized as healthy. In almost every area of my life, I can point to patterns that existed past their obvious expiration date. You probably can, too. Not because you and I are particularly unique, but the opposite. This is a human problem that has been a thorn forever.

There’s an interesting passage in the Bible that illustrates this better than our unfulfilling jobs or broken relationships or pointless routines ever could.

That last words Jesus says, in Acts 1:7, are “you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.” Essentially, GO and tell everybody everywhere about me and this divine love. And then, in chapter 7, they are STILL in Jerusalem! Now, this was good because the number of disciples in Jerusalem was increasing daily, but this was not good because it was a violation of the specific command of Jesus. Chapter 7 details the murder of Stephen and then chapter 8 starts with this easily overlooked phrase: “on that day a great persecution broke out.” They wouldn’t go, so they were forced to go and then the story of the Church, of us, really begins. Without that great persecution, without those disciples telling everybody everywhere, who knows?

I don’t like to leave until there is a great persecution, either. Aadam Ali (on Physiqonomics) says often, in the context of health and fitness, that nobody changes until the pain of staying the same outgrows the pain of change. This is absolutely true, right?

How many of us are bored, tired, rudderless, aimless, just trying to get through another day with no challenge or big ask of us? Well, there is one challenge; get through another day and not let our soul wilt any more. Sometimes, as in my case, I used to drive to work miserable with a dream in my heart that I couldn’t/wouldn’t pursue. And why? Comfortability, stability, I had been there so long, knew the job inside out, complacency… The driving force behind all of it is fear. What if I can’t get another job? What if I don’t get another girlfriend? What if I’m alone for the rest of my life, living in a car under a bridge by a filthy river thinking about this moment when I threw it all away?

Of course, there is selfless responsibility and seasons in our lives where we are in valuable places, learning and growing. But my guess is that we mostly know the difference.

You may have heard some variation on this a hundred times from me, but today, this week, all of this is simply a way to celebrate my mom.

Now, my mom is the greatest. She strong, courageous, loyal and the most generous person I have ever known. If you know her, you know this, but what you don’t know is that she gave her 2 weeks notice at her job earlier this week. In our conversation where I told her how proud of her I am, she confessed that she was terrified and was full of second guesses. Faith is like this. It’s why the disciples didn’t leave until chapter 8.

Am I doing the right thing???? What if? What if? WHAT IF?????

In this same conversation, we spoke about her selling that house (the one I grew up in, that she has lived in for 35 years) and moving, too! Can you imagine the automatic negative thoughts in her head? Me, too. We don’t have to imagine, right?

And she did it anyway. Courage isn’t the absence of fear, it’s acting in spite of that monster. This is yet another example of how she’s inspired me in a list of a million. I’ve always wanted to be as beautiful as my mom when I grow up, and never more than right now.

When the disciples finally left, that proved to light the fire that still burns, still changing the world 2,000 years later. Every time I see an act of courage like this, taking steps in the darkness, I lean in and ask, wide-eyed and breathless, what amazing thing is God going to do here? And you know what? Almost every time it’s so much better than I could have ever imagined.

Hotels

One morning last week I woke with a physical exhaustion that has thankfully become quite rare. So when I came home from an unenthusiastic workout, I opened Netflix and crawled under a blanket.

In one of my searches, I discovered 2 documentaries that interested me and were listed to be streaming on Netflix, but were not! I scrolled and scrolled, past so many until I landed on The Vanishing At The Cecil Hotel. A young woman named Elisa Lam left Vancouver in a familiar quest for answers to the question we all ask at some point; Who am I? This quest took her to California, first San Diego through Los Angeles ending in San Francisco. She would get no further than LA, no further than the Cecil Hotel.

It was an eerie story of conspiracy and perhaps the supernatural as she simply disappeared. There was a surveillance video of her in an elevator and then no more. It was also a story of homelessness, hopelessness, mental illness, depression, bipolar disorder, the police, a hotel’s history of evil/tragedy and a musician in Mexico. 

The series was 4 episodes and in the 4th, we learned what actually happened. I’ll ruin the suspense here, this is the 4th paragraph and there wasn’t a conspiracy or governmental coverup, there was a lovely young woman who had serious mental issues that caused her, ostensibly, to climb into a water tank on the roof of a hotel and drown.

I intended to make this a post about easy characterizations and a need to understand that lead us down all sorts of paths we don’t want to go, and which have been adding to our disconnect and division. Maybe I will, but it’s so much more in my head now, I just can’t let this one go.

Elisa Lam was a very prolific blogger, posting every thought and idea on Tumblr. I imagine anyone who read her work felt as if they knew her, that’s probably why the story was so captivating for so many. She was our sister, daughter, friend, co-worker, wide open about every thing in her life. We wanted the best for her, wanted her to find meaning and love. If you’re reading this, do you feel like you know who I am? Do you think we’d be friends? I hope so. In all likelihood, we would. It’s sure a new, interesting world, where we can become close to people we’ve never met, and in Elisa Lam’s case, never even had a conversation. 

I like that. I think it’s one of the most beautiful side effects of social media. We are closer than ever before, nothing separates us (except physical space, I suppose.) And we are farther apart than ever before, falling prey to the delusion that online relationships can take the place of relationships IRL. She traveled to California and slowly fell apart in public and no one asked the smallest question, if she was ok. Maybe she would’ve lied, pretended like we do, that yes, she was fine. But maybe she would’ve told the truth, that no, she wasn’t.

I wonder how many times I pass by a person in distress, too busy or distracted or too minding my own business to look or listen. I wonder if a human connection – even a tiny, superficial one – would’ve saved Elisa Lam’s life.

You already know I think we’re here to walk together. We’re made for just this sort of human connection, and we’ve wandered so far off that path that when we are asked, it’s jarring and we feel a sense of intrusion. When did that happen? And I wonder if we felt it slipping away. 

In this film, one of the main characters was Los Angeles and a part of LA called Skid Row. Apparently, the idea was to take the homeless and other “undesirables” and imprison them in a square of the city where they could be ignored and forgotten. Human beings were “undesirable” and systematically, purposely ignored and forgotten? It seems like we all have to ask the question that drove Elisa Lam to California in the first place: Who are we???? 

Her death obviously wasn’t the Cecil Hotel’s fault, but it sure feels like a metaphor. The Cecil was crafted with great care and beauty and over time, seems to have forgotten it’s original creation. Great care and beauty were poured into this structure so that it could take creat care of others. But without a clear vision or purpose, it fell into disrepair and became just another flop house where the people who interacted with it were seen and treated as disposable, which in turn made this once grand hotel disposable, rotting from the inside.

It was a super sad documentary, but as Black Widow says to Bruce Banner in the 1st Avengers movie, “No, we need a little worse.” Not paying attention, whistling through graveyards and hiding behind masks of the images we desperately try to keep, has gotten us here. Maybe we need a little worse, too, a few more cameras shining the light of truth on our increasing dysfunction, to force a course correction. And if we do that, if we start to care or listen or love, maybe Elisa Lam’s death would’ve been for something. Now, it’s just a senseless casualty of modern life. 

But it doesn’t have to be. We get to choose what it is, and we get to choose here, now, today.

“Was Any Of It Real?”

I have 2 teen-aged boys, so one of my favorite experiences is to introduce them to the art that moved me during my life. One cannot live on Marvel movies alone, you know? Almost, but not quite. We’ve watched The Money Pit, Predator, Naked Gun, and Lord of the Rings, listened to Nevermind and The Joshua Tree, and the younger one has started to dip his toes into Kurt Vonnegut. They don’t always get it, but I certainly do. I remember why I loved these things and most of the time, love them even more with the benefit of the extra 10 (or 20 or 30) years on this spinning ball.

Saturday we watched The Truman Show. It’s about a guy who’s been the unwitting subject of a reality show since he was born, 24 hours a day, everything and everyone a production. Except for him. When Truman asks, “Was any of it real?” Christof (the creator) answers, “You were.” It’s beautiful and even more perfect today than it was in 1998, when it was released.

I thought then that it was a pretty sharp commentary on reality tv, like Running Man, a prophesy warning of the dangers of the path ahead of us. And maybe more importantly, a vehicle for Jim Carrey to explore something other than broad stretch-faced comedy. Both of those are still there, true, and very successful, but the film is bigger than that.

(It’s funny how something can be obvious to some and hidden to others until precisely the time when it would make the most profound, thunderous impact. This ‘new’ insight into this film surely isn’t new to everyone, but Saturday and still today, it’s crackling with the electricity of discovery in my mind and heart.)

In Rogue One, a character named Chirrut says, “There is more than one sort of prison, Captain, I sense that you carry yours wherever you go.”

That describes so many of us. We decide what we are and are not capable of, live lives as if “it is what it is” and “they are what they are” and worse, “we are who we are.” We build the walls that define our limits, and never test them. It’s like Truman. When asked why he never questions this artifice, Christof answers, “We accept the reality of the world that we are presented,” and there might not be a more accurate statement in the entire film. We accept a wide variety of settling simply because it’s been presented to us as reality. The dome that encircles Truman’s world isn’t unbreakable, it’s really fear – of water, or death, of the unknown – that keeps him inside.

I often think about my fear and the steel bars that make up my own cage. What are they and what would it mean if I were to tear them down? These 2 questions are absolutely vital to explore, and like this pretend town, very nearly impossible to notice until we do, then it’s all we see.

Maybe it’s time to stop accepting so much. Stop carrying our prisons around wherever we go. Stop settling. Stop relying on old habits that didn’t work then and don’t work now. And stop calling it reality.

Just because it happens to be true today doesn’t mean it’s true tomorrow. I’ve heard it said that we move, transform, start, leave, risk, jump only when the fear of staying the same outweighs the fear of change. Truman found that space, sailed that boat into the vicious mouth of his fear and walked through the door into a new reality. Yes, it was a reality that would be missing predictability and safety, but the old one was missing honesty, authenticity, love. It was missing the things that make life so wonderful. It was missing life. And as he chose life, I could no longer hold back my tears because it’s not just Truman, it’s you and me, too.

Because all discussions about new creations are really just discussions about the resurrection, aren’t they? We often live Saturday lives that are caged in by the belief that what we see is all there is…but Sunday came then, and it can come now. Here. For us.

So now what?

Watermelon Sugar

This is what I wrote last post: “We have the ability to choose life. I know it sometimes doesn’t feel like that, it feels more like there are footsteps marked out for us from which we are unable to deviate. That our lives are scripts where improvisation or rewrites are impossible. That we are powerless to our fate. That it is what it is. That I am what I am.”

Then I read this, by Erwin McManus: “What if we are more than we know and in our disconnection with God have become less than we were ever meant to be?”

And these, also by Erwin McManus: “If you are filled with despair, you fill the world with despair; if you are filled with bitterness, you fill the world with bitterness; if you are filled with fear, you fill the world with fear. Additionally, that’s all you will ever find. No matter where you go, your world is filled with the same energy and intention that fills you. In the same way, when (you are) filled with hope, you fill the world with hope; when you are filled with joy, you fill the world with joy; when you are filled with love, you fill the world with love.”

“Your internal mind-set designs your external world. If you believe the world is full of possibilities, it is.”

“We do not see the world as it is; we see the world as we are.”

Each of these segments are connected tentacles that have the potential to impact our lives on a level we can’t quite imagine. How we see God, the world around us (people, environment, art, etc), ourselves, our worth, simply cannot be understated.

We all stay in jobs and relationships that make us miserable because the pain of change is greater than the pain of staying the same. I know that’s generally regarded as true, but I don’t have to like or accept it.

More likely is, a lie was told and we believed it. I heard a guy say in a documentary that if somebody says something is true and somebody else believes it, it becomes true. That’s hogwash, right? If it’s not true, it doesn’t matter how many believe it, it’s still not true. (Or at least it shouldn’t matter.) We were told somewhere along the way that we didn’t deserve more than this, and for some reason, it played on an endless loop in our heads until it was fact. The lie continued to convince us that we couldn’t hope for more, that there were no possibilities, that there would be no joy. We settled for table scraps when we belong at the table, eating with the royal family as children of the King.

Since we bought a lesser reality, that reality becomes the lens through which we see the world. There are no possibilities and no joy for anyone else, either. They’ve been replaced with fear, resentment and despair. All of this is all it ever will be. I am all I’ll ever be. You are all you’ll ever be. This marriage, this job, everything stuck in suspended animation. It’s a skipping record (hopefully you remember what a record is and recognize the undeniable beauty of vinyl) that chains us to this moment, never changing. Our surroundings are bleak, unfulfilling and hopeless largely because we are.

I don’t want us to settle. I want us to Philippians 4:8; “whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things.” I think Paul probably wrote that verse because he knows us. As much as we evolve into such a sophisticated species, we stay pretty much the same and spend the moments of our lives thinking about what is false, horrible, wrong, and broken, dwelling on worries of tomorrow and regrets of the past.

We listen to that awful song “Watermelon Sugar,” lamenting the state of music today instead of focusing on how awesome Sea Girls, Strumbellas, Mat Kearney and Cold War Kids are.

I know I write about this lack of imagination a lot, but that’s because I talk about it a lot, and think about it even more. I want the world around me to be lively and bursting with life and color and I’m more and more convinced that it’ll only be that way if I finally acknowledge that this is God’s creation, He’s all through it, and the tomb is empty. It’ll only be that way if, filled with His love and abundance, I am lively and bursting with life and color, or as Jesus says, if I have eyes that see and ears that hear the beautiful music that is already playing all around us.

See You Next Year!

This will be my last post of the year. I love to do things on the 31st of December because I can say I won’t do them again until next year…and then I laugh like no one has ever said that before. I say “See you next year!!!” Like everybody’s dad ever…and then I laugh like I’m the first. It’s cheesy and silly and so am I.

This was my post on January 3rd of this year, before the world stopped: “Happy New Year, it’s 2 thousand twenty. It hardly seems possible, right. I was born in 1975, so that means I’ve now seen 6 decades. I suppose this is my favorite, if I had to choose – you see, all things considered, life gets better every single day. I imagine my 7th decade (if I get that far) will be even better yet.

Though if I were totally honest, this year has so far been a little bit of a bummer. I was a little sick at the end of last year for Christmas, and then I was seemingly better, then yesterday woke up with a cough! Nursing this tiny cold hasn’t been too much of a nuisance, with the giant exception of the 2 twin babies I’m dying to spend tons of time and smooches on that I can’t yet. I’m not one of those psychos that visit regardless of symptoms and hack all over their sweet soft round faces. The hugs and kisses are coming the second I am tip top, that I promise you.”

A bit of a bummer???? Ha! An enormous bummer. And I haven’t given any hugs and smooches to those twins since the first Sunday in March. Nor their parents. Nor their parents. Nor many of my closest friends. For a person as ‘physical touch’ as I am, this year has been a desert.

But I can tell you this, this decade is still my favorite.

I learned a lot about us this year. We were forced into the uncomfortable space where our delusions of control were ripped from our white knuckles. We were asked over and over by the universe, “Now what?” And as you may or may not know, that’s my favorite question, full of hope and imagination.

We’ve had a year, now what?

We’ve seen where we are, now what?

We’ve seen who we are, now what?

I’m insufferably optimistic about how we’ll answer those questions.

I ended last year’s post like this: “Genesis 1 says we’re made in the image of God, and it has been my experience that when we just strip away all of the fears, expectations, should’s, should not’s, and negative postures (I called it the Art of Subtraction in a message 2 years ago), we’ll find us – who we really are, in our deepest Genesis 1 Truths – and when we do, we’ll really like what we see.” I’ll end it like that, again.

See you next year!!!!!