imagination

Coincidence

What stories are we telling ourselves? What meaning are we assigning to the circumstances of our lives? Where have we believed lies instead of Truth? What lies, specifically? Where do they come from?

The last few months have held some of the most important practical implications of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, and faith, in general. Too often, we stow our faith away in a nice, tidy box in the corner and take it out at convenient times, comfortable places. Sunday morning, (maybe not every Sunday morning), we go to a special building, spend an hour or two, and come home to watch football. Maybe we remember what the sermon was about, but probably not, more likely a few words or phrases. Maybe we talk to someone else, maybe we sing along to the band, maybe someone asks us how we are and maybe we tell the truth.

That last paragraph is a generalization of the American church that may be true for each of us to a certain extent. The point is, sometimes we have different sides of us – a work Chad, sports Chad, friend Chad, spouse Chad, church Chad, on and on. And our spirituality is something where the gap between theology and practice can be very, very wide. What in the world could the rebellion of David’s son Absalom possibly have to do with us, here, now? And we can list facts of Jesus’ birth, life, and death, but do any of those facts really impact my cubicle or today’s math test or my next text message?

The short answers are A LOT, and YES, they absolutely do!

So, these last few months have had a bunch of planks that make a sweet bridge across that theology-practice chasm. Yesterday, we discussed the stories we tell and why? What makes us believe what we do – about God, about us, about everything and everyone else?

It’s always surprising (though I don’t know why it continues to surprise…it’s like being surprised when the sun sets, the rain stops, or our Dallas Cowboys win) how these passages we study are weaved into current or calendar events. We choose a book (that I will admit sometimes feel random to me) and the 4th chapter on unity/division happens to line up with an election cycle. Or right as we’re diving into helmets of salvation and digging through the trash of the damaging lies we’ve accepted, New Year’s Day is 3 weeks away and we’re reflecting on the year that was and that will be, where we’ve come from and where we’re going to. What could be more vital in engaging our imaginations to paving the new roads of our lives than this?!?

This isn’t coincidence. This is invitation.

Now we have a choice as to what box we’ll check: Yes or No? He comes in our direction in a million different ways, extending His hand to us – will we take it and jump? Can we finally erase the disconnect between all of our faces, combining them into the one He calls us to wear? Of course, it’s scary and hard, that’s why He gave us each other to do it all together.

Current Favorite

I’m going to share my lovewithacapitall post, again. There was a prompt on the hosting website and, as I began to fill this screen, I realized what I was actually writing about. The post, instead of being about the movies and songs we like now, superficial and light (as was surely intended by the prompt), quickly morphed into Sunday’s message on salvation, grace, and the cultural attraction to conditionality.

We are MFPs, extravagantly loved, and accepted, adopted into God’s family without a trace of the word “current.” And we are invited to also eliminate the currency of our love and commitment, become hi-fi brothers and sisters, and change the world, one extension of forgiveness & grace at a time, together.

Here it is:

Yesterday’s site prompt was, Who are your current most favorite people? It’s an strange question, feeling clunky and slightly unsettling. Most Favorite People should surely be capitalized, as if a title or award that is bestowed on the deserving. However, the inclusion of the word “current” implies that this title can also be rescinded. What is earned can be taken away.

Current MFPs are Chris Evans and Bong Joon-ho, star and director of the dystopian nightmare (yet still hopeful) Snowpiercer movie. Dallas Cowboys quarterback Dak Prescott, who is expecting a baby with his girlfriend Sarah Jane Ramos, is, too. Why do I know who his girlfriend is? Or especially that they are pregnant? Is this really important for us to know? I’m not certain that all lines between public and private should be erased, but that’s a little strange for me to say as I sit in my living room chair writing a blog where I share all of the personal, sometimes intimate, details of my life with you. But I get to choose what is shared. Maybe Dak Prescott or Ms. Ramos issued a press release, but very often the breaking information/news is clearly not for me. The social contract of fame, whether I like it or not, has a very high cost.

What is unsettling to me about this question is the conditionality of it all. If Snowpiercer was terrible, would Joon-ho make this list? I wasted an hour of a Netflix movie, 6 Underground, before I had to turn it off with extreme judgment, and that director isn’t an MFP. Dak has been awesome lately, but the next time he throws 4 interceptions, or loses another playoff game, will he, his girlfriend, and his baby still be Most Favorites?

Nev Schulman, Max Joseph, and Kamie Crawford – hosts of Catfish – are perpetual MFPs. That sounds right. If they are truly our Favorites, they should remain favorites, right? Not all episodes of Catfish are great. In fact, most new episodes aren’t.

Morrissey is the best example of this contrast. He often says regrettable, problematic things, not every song is an A+ anymore, some solo albums are admittedly average, but he will stay my #1 MFP forever.

I’m so far considering celebrities or famous artists I’ve never met, but the temptation to carry this idea of currency is insidious, infiltrating our actual relationships and lives. We commit to our spouses, children and friends with the same level of faithfulness as our quarterbacks, and directors. If we don’t feel it right now, we move on, they were a current love, but that’s over and we’re down the road onto the next “current.”

Fidelity means “the quality or state of being faithful or loyal,” and maybe the term hi-fi shouldn’t apply only to our stereos. Maybe we should be hi-fi. Currency is fine for singers and sports teams, but not families and communities. I wonder how everything would change overnight if the impulse to disconnect, leave and find a new current based on this moment alone, were left behind. If our MFPs were never again current, and just remained the favorites they are now. Maybe we could just give our love, based not on performance, covering over the metaphorical interceptions and 6 Undergrounds. Maybe we could begin to choose hi-fi over why-fi, and just see what we could build.

About The Weather

1 Thessalonians 5:16-18 says, “Rejoice always, pray continually, give thanks in all circumstances…”

Next week is Thanksgiving, so it’s a terrific time to reference these verses. Give thanks in all circumstances. We talk often about creating lives of gratitude, and the reason we do it so often is because it’s so difficult. It’s far more natural to allow lives of resentment and lack. Nobody has to tell us to take anything for granted, to hold grudges, or to try to control everything and everyone. I don’t remember any class syllabus with, “The Necessity of Wanting What We Don’t Have.” Yet, these are the wide paths we regularly walk.

Do we rejoice always? Pray continually? Give thanks in all circumstances? All? Really?

The words of Scripture confront us with a gigantic, usually unspoken, question. Are these characteristics we are asked to build realistic? Is the life Jesus (and in this case, Paul) calls us into possible? Or are they simply ideals, never meant for practical use?

It’s easy to argue the latter. Listen to how that passage begins (verses 13-15): “Live in peace with each other. And we urge you, brothers and sisters, warn those who are idle and disruptive, encourage the disheartened, help the weak, be patient with everyone. Make sure that nobody pays back wrong for wrong, but always strive to do what is good for each other and for everyone else.”

Do I even have to ask if we live in peace with each other? How about our success in being patient with everyone? Everyone? And strive to do what’s good for each other and for everyone else? That’s infinitely more complicated when we’re focused on doing what’s good for ourselves, right?

In a world where peace is in such short supply, where the accepted norm is to pay back wrong for wrong, these words seem so far away. Loving our brothers and sisters, moms and dads, loving ourselves, is so challenging, how can we honestly be expected to love our neighbors, much less our enemies? It’s hard to even guess what it means to love our enemies. Is it hyperbole? Just pie-in-the-sky rhetoric that sounds awesome on a mountainside or in a letter to a church?

But there is the end of verse 18: “…for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus.” What about that? We wish to know God’s will for us and our lives, but maybe we already do, we just keep asking because we don’t like the answer. God’s will for us is that we are patient? Sounds that way. That we give thanks in all circumstances? But what if the circumstances are terrible?!? (Just a quick note; it does say in all circumstances, not for all circumstances, and that’s a big distinction.)

The last 3 words are the keys to all of it, of course. Chad alone can’t do any of these things with any consistency, if at all. But Chad in Christ Jesus is a new creation with a new nature, and with those things being true, anything and everything is now possible. We can be patient, kind people in a chaotic, upside down world. We can rejoice always, and we can give thanks in all circumstances. We don’t have to live the way we have been, we can live beautiful lives of hope & love in the middle of this hurricane. And maybe that can calm the hurricane. Or maybe it can’t. I don’t know. But it doesn’t really matter if I know or not, that’s what faith is.

Next week is Thanksgiving, and it sounds perfect to be the jumping point into living 1st Thessalonians 5 lives. Even if the turkey is dry or the pies are burned. Even if we happen to be alone (and if you are, maybe you would call me). Even if lots of things. We can start there, one day, step, moment, at a time. Let’s try to change this weather together.

Questions…

“…as we contemplate how we spend our time and money, it’s important that we realize that being a healthy member of a healthy church will have a direct impact on those issues as well. There’s nothing we can do for our families that will have a greater positive impact than making sure we’re members of a healthy local church.

I’ve seen evidence of this firsthand as I’ve had conversation after conversation with fathers and mothers who are committed to family discipleship, but who are struggling tremendously as they either attend an unhealthy church or no church at all. These families don’t testify of overwhelming joy and fulfillment because “family is enough.” On the contrary, they testify to struggle, strain, loneliness, fear, isolation, and despair.

Family discipleship is absolutely critical, but there’s no substitute for healthy membership in a healthy local church.”

Voddie Baucham Jr wrote that in a book called Family Shepherds. It’s the perfect kind of book; it’s convicting, challenging, an absolute call up to me (and, honestly, probably all of us), but it is also a book with which I don’t always agree. These parts engage me, invite me to dive a bit more deeply into what I say I believe, what I truly believe, if they are the same, and why I believe those things. Then I am satisfied because I still disagree (based on solid teaching, learning, understanding, and/or practice) or, in a very uncomfortable twist, I am left untethered to my own ideas (either because they come from a faulty theology, a cultural hijacking of my spirituality, or from nowhere at all, simply because I’ve never examined them) and have a decision to make. Do I let go of the known past and step into the unknown abyss? Or do I continue to cling to old, wrong, misguided baggage?

You already know which I’d prefer to choose. You also know which I actually choose.

This is not why I included the earlier quote, it’s just why I care about the book, and why I like it so much.

I included the passage because it confronts all of us, on some level or another. Do we belong to a local church? Should we? Do we take it seriously? What exactly is family discipleship? What do we testify to, in our own lives and families? Is it joy and fulfillment? Or is our story one of struggle, strain, loneliness, fear, isolation, and despair? What does it mean to have a “healthy” membership? What is a “healthy” local church? Is the Bridge one of those?

3 small-ish paragraphs that beg soooo many questions. Are we asking them or just turning the page? Are we wrestling with these concepts or falling asleep as we try to finish the chapter?

Is there really “nothing we can do for our families that will have a greater positive impact than making sure we’re members of a healthy local church?” It feels like a conflict of interest for me to ask these questions, because I happen to know of a local church that would love to have you. But if I take my job seriously, my purpose isn’t to increase Sunday morning attendance (well, I suppose it is a purpose, or part of a purpose, but it’s nowhere close to THE main purpose, which is to share the Gospel, point everybody to Jesus, tell & show them He loves us here and now, loving in the way I do all along the way). My professional and my personal missions happen to be the same, so my call is to ask questions that will lead us to who we really are, which will always, always lead us to Him.

Maybe there isn’t a clever last line to this post. I usually like to do that;) But maybe we’re just asking questions and figuring out if we’ll answer them honestly, and then, if we’ll move based on those answers. Who knows? I just love that we can find out together.

Teleological

“Don, all relationships are teleological.”

I asked him what the word teleological means.

“It means they’re going somewhere,” Al said. “All relationships are living and alive and moving and becoming something. My question to you,” Al said seriously, “is, where is the relationship you’ve started with this woman going?”

This is a passage from a book called Scary Close, by Donald Miller (who wrote Blue Like Jazz, which happens to be the very first spiritual book I ever read.) It’s about plans and visions. He later writes, “I would never walk into my office without a plan. As the leader of my company, my team depends on me to know where we are going and how important each of them are to the journey. I can’t believe I almost went into my marriage, which is infinitely more important than my business, without a plan.”

He’s writing about a romantic relationship, and his point is deeply convicting to me. It’s making me consider where my marriage is going, and if it’s actually where we think it is, and if it encompasses the values we both hold. Sometimes, we can start with a plan (loosely held, of course – God has a way of changing the plans written in pen) and over time, for whatever reason (busyness, distraction, laziness, success, career, taking the other for granted, and on and on), we lose or ignore our initial vision. Then we’re just moving mindlessly, hoping to end somewhere good.

But that’s not exactly what I want to talk about here, together in this space. The word teleological is used here to describe relationships, and that might be the only proper usage, but I haven’t really cared about proper usage before, so I’m not going to start now. Our own interior lives – physically, emotionally, intellectually, and I would suggest most importantly, spiritually – are teleological, too. We are going somewhere, and to pretend that we’re not, or that we can move in a certain direction without a plan, is itself a plan, but it’s a dangerous one that will lead nowhere.

We have 5 year strategic plans at work, but none for our greatest work of art; our lives.

It is confusing (and sort of maddening, if I’m honest) that we would be so resistant to change, if we choose to be intentional with our lives. We notice there’s food between our teeth, so we decide to floss (and then floss). That sounds reasonably obvious. But when we notice red lights on our dashboard or food between the metaphorical teeth of our soul, we completely ignore it, and we justify that, in ourselves and others, as being our fear of change.

We’re going somewhere. So, where is it? Are we leaning into a new future, holding on to the past, or just sitting down in the aisle like I used to do in the toy section of the Hills department store, hoping eventually to get what I want.

A plan doesn’t mean it’ll be easy or smooth, it simply means we get to choose our pain. Will the inevitable pain be meaningful, as we are on the road to becoming who we have been created to be? Or will it be random and chaotic, just turbulence on the dark road where we happen to find ourselves, with no purpose or significance?

But it does require examination, honesty, vulnerability, and courage; 4 characteristics that have been phased out by comfort, immediate gratification, and convenience. It’s really time to take them back, to take us back. We are Resurrection people, who desperately need to engage our imaginations, invite them back into our lives and dream again about where this could all go, if we would only show up.

Saturday Afternoons

Last week in this space, I wrote that I sometimes get the overwhelming privilege of officiating weddings. I’ve always liked weddings, because I have always really loved marriage. Even before I fell in love with Jesus, I found this particular gift of His deeply significant. I’m certain I wouldn’t have used the word sacred, but that’s exactly what I felt. In the best of situations, the space is thin, God stands with them as they make their promises before Him to each other. It’s impossible to understate the weight of this moment that will affect the rest of their lives.

Last Saturday, at a cool old barn in the country, I had the opportunity to do it again. I can be found on an app (a story too long to explain here, maybe another time), which means I don’t often know the couple as well as I’d like. These 2 were lovely, I knew that, and I liked them a lot, but at the time, as I arrived for the wedding, I didn’t know how extraordinary they were. (I could write forever, with great detail, but I’ll try to do my best not to. Try.)

The ceremony was outside on a perfect day, and as the guests filed in, they were dressed peculiarly. I didn’t know what was going on, except to say it was wonderful. I’d later ask and discover the style was called “steampunk.” As a very old man, I try to stay up on things, knew the word, had heard it before, but was unfamiliar with it in the wild. If you Google “steampunk” and choose images, you’ll see exactly what I saw.

Culturally, we are moving towards a blurry, undifferentiated everything. Nothing is set apart, nothing is special. People regularly show up late for everything, and that’s a shame, but we also show up late for weddings, and that is much worse than a shame. That is heartbreaking in its disrespect – for the couple, the commitment, and the institution, as well as for themselves. But we also now arrive dressed in t-shirts and shorts, as well. The lines defining common and sacred are erased, and in these cases, it doesn’t make everything sacred, it does the opposite.

These steampunks had prepared for weeks or months, and looked like all the money in the world. They cared so much for their friends and the day to set it aside, to make it different from all others. We should all have ‘family’ like them. Each one was absolutely stunning, fit for the first day of a new marriage.

My message is usually about the kind of love called agape, which is a love that doesn’t care if we want to. We see love not as selfish, temporary feelings and emotions, but as vital decisions made every minute of every day. This couple chose a film quotation to be read, and that passage, with lines like, “when [love as a feeling] subsides, you have to make a decision…love is not breathlessness…not excitement…not eternal passion…love is what’s left over…an art.” This “left over” love are “roots that grow towards each other.”

Then, then!!! The vows they wrote for, and read to, each other left all of us awestruck. He is not an overly gushy, public orator, but he was eloquent and soft, kind, awake to the gift he had been given. She began and spoke of love as noun, how he made her want to believe in it, but she still did not. She believes in the noun as verb, as a choice. In the most gorgeous poetry you’d ever hear, she detailed a list of “I will choose you’s.” I will choose you when we do this. I will choose you when we do that, when we feel this, when we don’t feel that, over and over, each one more impactful than the last.

When she finished, this professional officiant had no words. The right words were “please put the ring on her finger and repeat after me,” words I had said a hundred times, words I could utter in my sleep, and words I started no less than 3 times before realizing I could not say them at that particular moment.

We had not planned anything together, didn’t share messages with each other, this was solely the work of the God that was there, then, celebrating in that moment, and is also here, now, present in this moment. He moved in each of us, in our solitude, in our individual preparation (which was obviously never individual at all), to craft a masterpiece of divine love and revelation. Of course, I was speechless, how could I be anything else?

This matters today, because there are many things I don’t understand and cannot fix, that are emotionally exacting a great toll. Just one specific example of too many is the local school district, which is in ruins, crumbling around our heads as we whistle through the debris. I ask why? What is happening? What good could possibly come from this wreckage? What now? Doesn’t anyone see?

And as I ask/scream those questions, I am reminded of Saturday afternoon. I am reminded of the many previous “Saturday afternoons,” where God spectacularly revealed the Hands we were in, and were always in. If He was there, He might be here, too. Maybe instead of crumbling down, instead of falling apart, maybe these things are falling into place. Maybe to build His new masterpiece, He (or we) have to tear down the old. I’m not sure, I don’t have any evidence of any of it, but that’s what trust is, right? To have faith that the same God who brought Rachel & Brandon together and has been creating their wedding day for who knows how many years is also working in the schools, relationships and offices we think are broken beyond repair. Maybe we’re wrong. Maybe if we have eyes to see, ears to hear, and hearts that work, He’s going to take our breath away, like He has a million times before.

1’s & 2’s

Many years ago (far too many to think about for long), a very close friend said that she wished her daughter would find a man who looked at her like I look at the Angel. I can’t say I knew what that meant, then, I was simply looking at my special lady. It wasn’t calculated, like I was performing for an audience who would immediately decide that I was the most Wonderful Man on Earth, romantic and love struck. (Obviously I was, and am, none of those things, except probably love struck.)

Now I know what her comment means. (And the “love” I knew in the phrase “love struck” isn’t even close to the “love” that I know now, the old one was a child’s love, emotional, temperamental, and, sadly, selfish. My definition of love has sure changed, but I am still love struck;)

I get the amazing honor of officiating marriages, in addition to the even more amazing honor of being a pastor of a faith community. I meet lots of engaged couples, and walk alongside people in various states of relationship in the ministry in which I have been called and in which I have embraced. Sometimes, the relationships are rock solid and inspiring. But often, those relationships are hurting and/or broken, the engaged couples are shaky, and the love they are chasing to the altar and have based their marriages on is the teenage kind.

One of those couples, due to marry in September, is a beautiful exception. The man is kind and gentle and looks at his fiancé with such devotion it almost makes me cry. They have been together for years and the first several years were not easy. Not at all. There were challenges & trials that would have driven the majority of couples apart, but he remained. They remained. People that show up and stay are very remarkable. I left our recent meeting shortly after them and caught him opening the passenger door for her. He didn’t know I was there, the performance was for no one but her, which probably makes it no performance at all. It’s just what he does. Of course, this isn’t to say opening car doors is the main evidence of love, but it is context.

I asked if they were writing their own vows, and that is usually met with the answer, “I really want to, but he doesn’t.” I don’t think that answer is charming. This couple, though, she said, “I don’t think so,” and he tilted his head and asked why. After her answer, he said, “I’d like to, I’ve already been writing them.”

A few times, I’ve asked the bride-to-be, “Are you sure?” I will not ask this couple. Their love is deep and real, the agape kind. Hopefully, there’s a truckload of Eros and Philia, too, but I don’t care about those nearly as much. They are sure.

Almost every wedding, I leave and say prayers that their love will transform into agape and they will stay together and slow the trend in the marriage statistics that say more fail than ever before. I will pray for them, but I don’t need to hope for transformation. I will just pray they remember to choose each other every time.

I know how I look at the Angel, and how I feel about her, and how I choose her. I’m not special, not the basis of countless romance novels or rom-coms. I have more than my fair share of faults that you are well aware of by now. I am not such hot stuff. But even I can notice that the way we love each other is rare, indeed.

The way I’m writing it in this marriage book I’m working on (still!!!!) is in terms of 1’s and 2’s. First, the 1, always and all ways, is Jesus. But with that fundamental exception, the 1 should be our partner, significant other, spouse. If he/she is the 1, our selfish nature is quiet and the love will likely be an intentional, agape love. We will look at them (and treat them) with kindness, patience, forgiveness, with care, we will love them, even in those times we don’t particularly like them. Way too often, in our relationships, we are the 2, coming in behind anything: another person, work, sports, bowling, video games, cars, working out, etc. The secret here is that, what we think the 1 is never the actual 1. Instead, the 1 is always ME. This is not the healthy love/care for yourself, it’s grounded in What I want, What you can do for me, How you can make me feel. This sort of relationship ends with any uncomfortability for me, and I’d call it “falling out of love,” or my personal favorite nonsensical excuse, “I still love them, I’m just not in love with them.” Really, it’s just that they are no longer meeting my every need when and how I want. They are the 2 in this fragile union.

She is not his 2, and that is worthy of the greatest celebration.

Imagination

This series on love (based on the Love chapter, 1 Corinthians 13) is awfully uncomfortable. I’m not sure how something so disruptive could have ever made the leap from a wild animal into a soft, cuddly stuffed toy. How could a passage designed to crawl into our hearts, and expose our selfish instincts in such an aggressive way, ever be a sterile poem our grandma’s read at weddings to which no one pays any attention? How could “Love keeps no record of wrongs” not tear each of us to shreds when we so clearly do?

There are songs & artists I love that seem alien. Like what they do, what they are, is something far off that I have no category for outside of themselves. Their creativity is shocking. They keep me at a distance, standing on the sidelines or sitting in the cheap seats.

Others make me want to sing.

Some books make me want to never write again. Yet others drive me right to my notebook.

The basketball world changed when Steph Curry remade the game. We could never in a million years do what LeBron James and Michael Jordan can do, the game is far off, like superheroes and mythology. Steph makes us think we could do it, too. We bought basketballs and went to the local hoops and shot all day. Jordan left us in awe, Steph inspired us to play.

It really doesn’t have much to do with the quality. Steph is an unbelievable basketball player, and the truth is, we probably couldn’t do what he does. He’s one of the greats. High Fidelity is an A+ work of fiction, and makes me want to create an A+ work, and perhaps more importantly, makes me think I can. If Nick Hornby could do it, maybe I could.

What does this have to do with the Love chapter? What does Steph Curry have to do with Paul’s letter to the Corinthians?

The Bible wants us out of our seats, wants us to play. Sure, the ideals of “Love is patient and kind,” are high, maybe we can’t get there (certainly not all the time), but what the Bible does is tell us over and over who we are. We are not space aliens, we are made in the image of he Living God, and we have His power (the same power that raised Jesus from the dead!!!!) inside of us, and with that, all things are possible. If Paul does his job, and if we do ours, the vision is compelling, beautiful, and better yet, the kind that explodes our imaginations to where we actually participate as He changes our lives. This newly engaged imagination inspires us to be patient and kind, to not anger quite so easily, to think about throwing our records of rights/wrongs in the garbage where they belong. We begin to look for people and ways to love.

These words are tickets backstage, they’re invitations to sing. They’re tigers that have never been safe or comfortable, they weren’t supposed to be, but we are told that we are the artists of our lives. We are the songs. And what it means to be made in the image is that we are designed with the creativity to re-write the code of our own game into one where the players always hope, bear all things, and never fail. We simply have to start to shoot.

Agape Doesn’t Care, but I Do

I’m sitting here, still dreaming. Sunday morning, I suggested something that I often suggest: Love could/would change everything about the world we live in, on every level. So I’m dreaming about that.

I’m thinking about marriages and friendships, churches and schools. This pyramid scheme of love, where we love someone (or 2), then they love someone (or 2), allowed to naturally multiply using the agape definition, would leave modern culture virtually unrecognizable.

Without dishonoring posts & comments on our social media sites, it would just be an open space for family pictures, cat videos, and memes. Entire industries would vanish. Imagine a life free of envy, free of wanting anyone’s donkey. How different would our lives be if we were simply grateful for our own donkey’s? If kindness were the currency in grocery stores and classrooms, we would not be so afraid, hiding behind masks to keep from being today’s targets.

There was a story of a group of people keeping reminders of grudges and vendettas – what would we be able to do with the intellectual/emotional bandwidth we currently devote to bitter resentment? What about if we always protected, always persevered?

It’s a really good dream, but I think maybe my biggest problem is that it doesn’t feel so impossibly far away. It’s more like a parallel timeline that would easily merge with a few small adjustments from each of us. Like if I didn’t say those things about those people, that’s it. I don’t drag them through the mud, and I don’t feel horrible for opening my mouth. Then that negative energy never sees the light of day, is never expressed. What has been done in our impatient frustrated rage disintegrates, as we breathe and pray instead.

Sounds simple when I say it, right? It’s probably not. But it helps me “always persevere.”

I’ve already tried the other path, where I’m sarcastic, cutting, self-loathing. Where I assume the worst of you and me. Where I tear down before I am torn down. Where I am desperate and hopeless, endlessly searching for more evidence that it’s all broken beyond repair. Where it is what it is, and we are what we are.

And after that, all I felt was miserable. But loving you (and me and my neighbors and the cashier and the tv stars & politicians) and thinking about the pure, true, and beautiful makes every moment brighter. We get to choose the stories we live, and the glasses we wear through which we see our surroundings. We can choose something new and fresh. As it says in the book of Deuteronomy, it’s all set before us, we can Choose Life.

Words

My reading lately has been pointing in the same direction. Everything I see or hear, intentionally or otherwise, sticks to the theme, like neon arrows moving me along a certain path. It feels as if it’s a conspiracy to make absolutely sure I don’t miss it, subtle as a sledgehammer.

This obvious theme is the words we use.

This shouldn’t be a surprise, if you’ve been awake and aware. The manner in which we speak to each other is disheartening, at best. We cut, we divide, we use our mouths violently to inflict the most damage. We used to try to retain some semblance of civility, even courtesy, but now that is mostly gone. Our fear and insecurity has outweighed our humanity, so we weaponize our posts and remarks, using tones we wouldn’t have dreamed of a few short years ago. Even when they’re not directed purposefully at others, our words are hopeless and cynical. We obsess over problems and worst-case scenarios.

I’m finished doing the same thing here, pointing out the broken parts. Instead, we’ll use one of my very favorite questions: What now? Where do we go from here? Is it really as inevitable as we’ve accepted?

Starting with the 3rd question, of course it isn’t. The tomb was empty, and nothing ever again can be said “is what it is,” because it’s simply not. It can be different and it can be today.

As for What now? and Where do we go from here? I have some ideas.

Proverbs 15:4 Gentle words bring life and health, a deceitful tongue crushes the spirit. Proverbs 18:4 A person’s words can be life-giving water. Proverbs 12:6 …the words of the godly save lives, and 12:18 …the words of the wise bring healing. James 3:9-12 Sometimes [the tongue] praises Our Lord and Father, and sometimes it breaks out in curses against those who have been made in the image of God. And so blessing and cursing come pouring out of the same mouth…this is not right! Does a spring of water bubble out with both fresh water and bitter water? Can you pick olives from a fig tree or figs from a grapevine? No, and you can’t draw fresh water from a salty pool.

The tongue has the power of life and death (Prov 18:21), and I’m guilty of both not acknowledging that overwhelming fact and not caring. That James passage cracks me like a giant egg with that praising God AND curing those made in His image. Right? I’m too often a salty pool. I’ve crushed spirits instead of healed, brought death instead of life.

So, here’s the idea, and there is an order. Waiting for others to change first, for us to respond got us all in this mess. Let’s just operate as if we’re the answers to our own prayers of reconciliation, and go from there. Let’s be fresh, life-giving water. Let’s be springs (instead of salty pools). We’ve tried to gauge & match the temperature of the world around us, and it has been a resounding failure. That temperature is way too cold. It’s time for us to set the environment. We can decide to forgive, to not hold grudges, to call up, build, point out beauty everywhere we see it, give grace, give the benefit of the doubt, throw away our scorecards and start new.

Yes, of course, this is sometimes going to end up hurting. Some of us are monsters and will take advantage of our kindness and love. It’ll feel like we’re alone, and we’ll second-guess, “what can we really do?” Yep, that’s all true. But it already hurts, we’re already taken advantage of, beaten up and attacked, the only difference will be why.

We can start to push against the tide of darkness. You know, the more I think about it. We only think we’re pushing against the tide. It’s probably more like this garbage of inhumanity is like a dam – that our original bend, present since our creation, to worship, to engage in authentic relationships, to love extravagantly, is actually the tide and once we can all bang hard enough to cause a few cracks, it’s only a matter of time until it all comes down. And that all starts with a word.