love

1st Day

Today is the first day of school in my little circle. 3rd-5th grade children returned to the school where The Angel works, and classes began at Lycoming College for my youngest son. My oldest son is studying for his next new responsibility at work. And here I am, alone at home, writing, listening to the punk band Rise Against as loud as my speaker will comfortably go.

Life moves in rhythms. We soar along the clouds, plunge into the valleys, and take slow, sometimes boring steps in the flat straightaways. In the Church calendar, these are called sacred and ordinary times, and it has come to imply that some times are more charged with the Divine than others, that some Tuesdays are deeper than others, and that all Sundays are more spiritual than those Tuesdays. I disagree. Not with the idea that there are rhythms to life, it seems pretty silly to argue about that, but instead, with the assumption that there are places, spaces and times where God is not, or at least, where He is less.

Is the opening of classes today common, ordinary time? Or is this the sacred & holy? Was our wedding day more sacred than this Monday morning, 25+ years in, standing on our porch, me taking her 1st day picture, before we walked to her car and shared a soft smooch? Was last Friday moving my son into the dorm charged with big, heavy meaning and significance, or was it the day before when we all ate dinner together, played Pictionary, and went disc golfing?

I’m more and more certain that “ordinary” time is simply the moments and days, seasons or years, where we fall asleep or lose our vision.

If my oldest son can’t see the hand of God on his work, or even more importantly, on his life, then it truly is common. However, I can, and they are anything but common. They are miracles, he is a miracle. What about the kids that come into that elementary school today, terrified and alone, who find The Angel’s luminous smile that can stop a clock and her arms that will bring safety and solace to those storms raging in those little hearts? Does that sound ordinary? Do you think it’s ordinary to those kids?

We just forget to see.

I am here, alone in my chair, with this computer and these words. The song currently playing is called “Historia Calamitatum,” and here are the lyrics to the hook: “When it rains it pours Like summer storms, the skies as grey as leaves. The rivers flood the banks and spill into the streets. But the people laughed and swore that they’d restore The city piece by piece. And then the clouds gave way as if to agree. When it rains it pours.” If you heard it, you might let it play and miss that devastating poetry. That would be heartbreaking. But even if we do hear this song, how many songs do we miss?

There is nowhere God isn’t, nowhere there is less of Him.

Even in our sadness and tragedy. Even in our pain. Even in the news and on Facebook. Jesus says, “Whoever has ears, let them hear,” and I don’t think He was only talking about His parables. I think, maybe, He was referring to baseball games, punk rock songs, tv shows, sunsets, mangoes, Tuesdays AND Wednesdays (and all other days), wedding days, 1st days and every days. I think He was probably referring to everything He has made, trees, streams, red-eared slider turtles, families, neighbors and even enemies.

Ordinary time is likely intended as a way to protect against our tendency to want (or expect) every day to be fireworks and movie scenes, to want every song to be “There Is A Light That Never Goes Out.” And it is probably supposed to point us to the presence of God even in the “ordinary.” But I think we went too far, lost that point, believed the opposite, and went to sleep.

The revolution of His Kingdom begins when we start to wake up to the Divine, sacred, holy reality all around us.

Benediction

It’s a little later in the week than I typically like to post. I write on Mondays, when the message is fresh and I’m refocusing on the week ahead. It’s a cool way for us to connect – I reach out to you right away and you have the rest of the week, if you decide you want to check in at all.

I heard this kind of communication is actually one of the characteristics of modern communication that has far-reaching consequences. When we are face to face (or even on the telephone), we send messages (verbally, physically, and countless other ways), they are received and reacted to immediately. If I say something that hurts your feelings, I see it, and we both have the opportunity/responsibility to address the hurt right now. You don’t really get the chance to hide it or pretend, because if I’m present and paying attention, your cues give you away. We both build all kinds of interpersonal skills through this synchronous dance. Nowadays (do I sound like somebody’s grandfather???), we send texts or emails and they are responded to sometime later. The receiver gets the chance to edit their responses, and the sender may not ever know the wound he/she inflicted. We lose so much in this asynchronous communication, it’s like the medium creates AND requires a disconnectedness.

This affects our ability to be present in situations and especially with each other. I am writing later in the week because I have chosen this week to be wholly present at home with my youngest son, who returns to college this week. (Really, it may more accurately be stated that I have chosen to be wholly present all summer. You may have noticed this, in any number of ways.)

I just want to share a few thoughts with you, and then give a sort of benediction. A benediction is the end of a church service where someone gives a parting thought, a blessing. It usually begins with “May you ____” At the Bridge, ours is always taken from the book of Numbers (ch. 6, v. 24-26, ending with “[May] The Lord lift up His countenance upon you and give you peace.”)

I often talk about a 2 Hands faith. This means we are invited to hold all of the emotions that come with living a completely present human life. Being an actual authentic human being is complex and complicated. We can be lots of different things, experiencing wildly different emotions from one second to the next. They are all ok, all welcome, and integrate into us (sometimes not so easily) making us fully aware and empathetic.

A great example and the one that I am swimming in right now is bitter-sweetness. “The bittersweet side of appreciating life’s most precious moments is the unbearable awareness that those moments are passing.” Marc Parent wrote this. I have no idea who this is, but it came to me through Brene Brown’s brilliant Atlas of The Heart book.

My son and I are very close, I love him dearly, am so proud of him, and really enjoy his company. He is absolutely ready to leave, start his adult life and change this world. I want him to go, I’m excited for him to go, we are celebrating – he loves college, is responsible, and will be able to fly – and I’m heartbroken. This kind of heartbreak has its roots in the richest, most wonderful soil of gratitude. I don’t want him to stay, I want him to become all he’s been created to be, and I will be his biggest fan and admirer as he goes.

And it hurts like crazy.

I don’t ever pretend it doesn’t, because to pretend otherwise is to introduce dishonesty into this sacred space, where it most certainly doesn’t belong. We have been given these gifts by The Creator of The Universe, He’s given them in love, why would I hold back anything? Why would I hold back joy? How could I possibly put dimmer switches on my gratitude? He gave me this great big, soft heart, He gave me this boy to love, to raise and to let go, and asks me to hold all of this out loud, so that is exactly what I’m going to do.

We’re playing games this week, shopping for school/dorm stuff, eating meals, disc golfing, and laughing. 2 nights ago, we played basketball in the driveway, like we always have, and the old man soreness I feel is 1. Not that nice, and 2. The most beautiful ache. He plays video games in the next room and I can see him while I writes to you, and that brings us to the benediction…

May we be courageous enough to enter into these relationships, and be present to the kind of searing pain that comes with such a deep, wide love. May we experience all the fullness of emotion that comes with the blessings of these human lives. May we be torn in gratitude.

4 Steps To A Great New Life!!!!!

[Before we get to our 4 Steps To A Great New Life – or maybe it it simply part of building a great new life – I want to share what I’m noticing in our Bible In A Year passages in Ezra. Over and over, like the chorus of a song, he writes, “the gracious hand of God was upon us.” Things happen because of this “gracious hand of God.” I love the lenses through which he sees the world. He isn’t making anything happen, not making blessings or manufacturing miracles, the Source of everything is God and His “gracious hand(s).” We could all probably use more of that sort of perspective. Now, the 4 STEPS THAT WILL CHANGE YOUR LIFE!!!]

[…Well, not yet. I am using this title and putting it in a caps lock because I, generally, have a giant suspicion towards the entire library of this type of self-help industry. 4 (or 7 or 105) steps won’t change your life, there’s no magic pill, no cast iron formula for transformation. I use these words mostly as satire…but, only mostly. There is some truth in practice. Sometimes, we can find universal characteristics that help to point us in a certain direction. Eating dinner together as a family isn’t always going to lead to connection and foster beautiful close-knit relationships, but there’s a very good chance it will. So, in Sunday’s message, we discussed 4 ways we can cultivate an environment in which we can grow closer to (or, to use the word from the 2 Corinthians passage: know) God. Now, we’re ready to jump into these 4 STEPS THAT WILL…you get the point.]

STEP 1, Read your Bible. Through His Word, we can begin to discover the Story, the character of God, Who He is, and who we are in Him. We see this is a divine chase: He made us, we ran (and run) away, and He pursues. He loves. He is graceful, the “gracious hand of God” is upon us, no matter what kind or size of mess we can make. This is information, data, facts, head knowledge, as foundation. If we stop here, maybe our lives don’t change, but that leaves us to the 2nd BIG AWESOME STEP: Contemplate.

We read, pray, ask The Spirit to show us, to connect the dots, tie the clouds together. In our reading, we learn about Abraham, Elijah, Jonah, John the Baptizer, the man on the cross next to Jesus, Judas, and Thomas. And in the contemplative space, with the Spirit’s guidance, we learn that we are each of them. We get frustrated at the Israelites living the same tired loops, and have our eyes opened to our own loops that we live. The Story jumps to life and we can more and more easily see that these words, written thousands of years ago, are our words, too. The Spirit teaches, removes the scales from our eyes and hearts, as we see our place in this Creation.

STEP 3 (easy to disregard in our arrogant independence) is Community. We were never meant to be alone, even before the Fall, it is “not good,” so we are given the beautiful gift of each other, of The Church. We reach out, care for and are cared for, and in this, we begin to see the image of God in each of us. The us/them fallacy is exposed as pure, utter nonsense rooted in fear. There is only just us. And in STEPS 1 & 2, we have seen that God’s favorite method to bless us, to show His amazing, limitless love, IS us. We get to practice kindness, forgiveness, goodness, peace, joy, love every moment. In other words, in relationship, we get to practice living in His Kingdom.

The last STEP TO A GREAT NEW LIFE!!!!! is Mindful Awareness. In other words, this world is crackling with the energy of the God of the Universe, of His Universe, if we only have the eyes, ears and hearts to see, hear & experience it. Soooo, we need to pay attention! We have to notice His Kingdom all around us. If you are walking, totally distracted, you might not realize that I’m walking beside you. But if you do, you can hold my hand and we can walk through this life together.

That’s 4 STEPS!!! I wrote earlier that there’s no cast iron formula for transformation, but if there was, it might be this one. I guess it depends how you define a GREAT NEW LIFE, but a new perspective on our own lives, the world around us, and The One Who holds it all together, a terrific group of people to walk with, all of us finally awake, sounds like one to me.

Spirit

We have a prayer ministry at the Bridge. (I think every faith community should have a prayer ministry, where people can come together, share their burdens, requests, and celebrations, and then take them to the feet of Jesus together. So we do.) We’ve also added a short time before that to discuss what we’re reading in the Bible and/or other questions we might have about our faith. It’s a safe place to be vulnerable and explore. I sometimes picture us in the 1st century receiving letters from apostles, reading and wrestling with these new mind-blowing concepts in someone’s living room. And I usually take my shoes off, because we’re on holy ground (in a holy space, a holy posture).

This week, the conversation centered around the Holy Spirit, the Third Member of the Trinity Who receives relatively little mention in our lives. Maybe that’s because we’re confused about His/Her (often, The Spirit is given feminine characteristics and imagery) role, or that we’re simply used to using the Names of The Father, God, and The Son, Jesus the Christ. It probably doesn’t matter why or even if we use the Spirit specifically, as long as we recognize & acknowledge Her* enormous impact on our lives, impossible to understate.

(*or His, if you prefer – sometimes the words we use can be a huge obstacle, due to any and all sorts of human baggage. In that case, change the words. I’m certainly not interested in keeping obstacles. However, we must never abandon the principle and certainly not The Person based solely on an traumatic experience and negative semantic connotation.)

We are blind and The Spirit opens our eyes, deaf and The Spirit opens our ears, breaks our heart and heals it. When Jesus ascended, He left the Advocate/Counselor/Helper/Holy Spirit in us as a constant Divine presence. The prompts we receive to call that person or do that thing or whatever, that may be the Spirit leading us. The songs on the radio that connect to the passages we read earlier that “happen to” connect to a decision in our lives, there’s a great chance that’s The Spirit, too. Maybe you hear Her as an audible voice or a subtle nudge or a whisper or a shove, the way She moves is as different for each of us as it is for us at different days, times, situations in our own lives.

So, when I see the hosting site’s prompt today, “Scour the news for an entirely uninteresting story. Consider how it connects to your life. Write about that,” I can’t help but to see an obvious (though likely unintended) parallel. The uninteresting story, about other people doing other things in other places, does connect, we just can’t always see it. The prompt slows us down, asks us to focus, breathe, and look for connections. That the other places aren’t as “other” as we initially think, the other people definitely not “other” at all. What could possibly be unrelated or uninteresting?

I’ve heard this sort of exercise called “tying the clouds together,” and it absolutely isn’t something we do by ourselves. On our own, we divide and categorize, we look for trivial criteria to evaluate & compare. We fight and de-humanize. If (and when) we hear The Spirit, we can erase all of those walls, hope to forgive, and begin to love each other. Connection instead of separation, peace instead of war, kindness instead of violence, enough instead of more, you/we instead of me – these are all the work of The Spirit.

I don’t care too much about the story we find when we “scour the news,” but I care A LOT about the connection, and I’m pretty sure that’s the work of The Spirit, too.

Stables

Sometimes, I reference the writing prompt that the hosting website suggests. They can be interesting and thought-provoking, they’ve even been so good that I abandon the initial reason I opened this computer to discuss the site’s question. Today, it’s “If you could bring back 1 dinosaur, which one would it be?” They are not all interesting.

In our service last Sunday, I brought up the many prayer requests in our circle. Our individual circles are huge, because we are all so cool. In a Venn diagram, the overlap is the Bridge, but the way I figure, that connects each of the circles to each of us. We are all ‘members’ of the Bridge family.

But some people drift closer to the shaded, shared section. Our close friends have close friends that become our friends, too. One of those friends, a super-sweet man we all knew from a yearly party, (it would have been impossible not to notice him, know him, remember him, and be affected by him, even seeing him on such an infrequent basis), passed away suddenly, at far too young an age, last week. It hurts and leaves a deep wound that will become an obvious scar that we carry forever.

There are many others, who sit near the overlap, who are in need of prayer, struggling through medical procedures, surgeries, distance, isolation, and on and on. For a small community, we have these beautifully massive pools in which we each, in which we all, swim. These pools carry great joy, fulfillment, celebration. But they also carry pain. We get to go to the best parties, and the most crushing funerals. We get the phone calls for very good – and very bad – news. The weight is heavy and seems overwhelming.

Proverbs 14:4 says, “An empty stable stays clean, but no income comes from an empty stable.”

In times like this, when our friend is gone, we might really like an empty stable. Or at least one that’s not quite so full. Right? A prayer list where I don’t have to turn the page to continue.

We’ve all thought it’s better to not have loved, than faced the devastation of love lost. In that moment, in this moment, we might make the trade.

There’s a BRILLIANT science-fiction movie where a man chooses to have his ex-girlfriend erased from his memory, the suffering is simply too painful for him to bear. Most of the film takes place in his mind, as she is being eliminated. It unfolds in reverse, the first memories to go were the ones from the end of the relationship, and they seem to be easy to bid farewell. But as we move backwards, the beauty, the intensity, the meaning, the love… they go, too, and he decides that the empty stable he thought he wanted has a cost that is way too high. He begins to fight to keep the memories, fights to keep her, in his mind and his life.

This makes me think about our friend, and the very good friend who brought him into our lives. She is awesome, and you can see his fingerprints all over her life. She is a better person in every way because he was there. The income that came from her dirty pen is impossible to calculate.

I was thinking of this friend this morning while I was thinking of my son. He goes back to college in about 3-ish weeks, and even now, I’m seeing my screen through watery eyes and a very real pain in my heart. He considered an internship which would have kept him away for the summer, but he was here, instead, and now I get to send him off to school again, for the 2nd time. Maybe it would have been easier if he had not come home for these 3 months. Maybe.

Maybe an empty stable is clean, with less texture, less laughter, less hugs and gallons less tears. But the income is what makes life so wonderful. An empty stable has infinitely less beauty, too. And less passion, less love, less of everything that matters. My summer has been really fantastic, I haven’t missed it, I am deeply deeply grateful we are here.

My friend’s tears – and mine and yours – from her circles are really offerings of gratitude. The income is a full, awesome life. As Vision says in the WandaVision series, “what is grief but love persevering.” The pain my friend feels is directly proportional to the love they grew and experienced. If we’re blessed, very very blessed, we can know this terrible, beautiful pain. This is the gift and the curse of the Church, of a present life. We will be connected and full. We will have purpose. We will have hearts that are so big and soft you can see them from 100 miles away. And yes, we will hurt, mourn, and suffer. There’s never a way around the pain, only “through.” The thing about that, though, is the promise that we’ll have hands to hold and arms to fall into, for the “through.” And that is more than enough.

1’s & 2’s

Yesterday’s Bible In A Year New Testament reading was in Romans. Not that you asked, but I think, probably, Romans 2 is one of the most difficult and important passages in the Bible. And the consequence of continuing to ignore it is seen everywhere we look. It’s the cause of nearly all of the division we are experiencing and have experienced, from the garden to today.

Paul begins Romans like we would, like we do on Facebook. Look around, look at how bad these people are! They do this and this, they are like this and this. Can you believe how dumb, immoral, deceptive, how awful they are? There are Psalms that detail prayers asking God to destroy “the wicked.” Romans 1 reminds me of those prayers, the righteous passing their judgment on the wicked…“us” passing our judgment on “them.” It also reminds me of the Pharisee, who said of Jesus, “If this Man were a Prophet, He would know who was touching Him. He would know what kind of woman she is.” You can hear his condescension and disdain, she’s not even human. Neither are those “wicked” people. Nor the “others” of Romans 1. We stand here pointing…them…they’re the problem.

But then, in a brilliant twist, after we’re all on his side, feeling very superior talking about what’s wrong with the world, Paul says, “yeah, you ARE them!” (That’s my translation. Actually, he says, “You may think you can condemn such people, but you are just as bad, and you have no excuse! When you say they are wicked and should be punished, you are condemning yourself, for you who judge others do these very same things. 2 And we know that God, in his justice, will punish anyone who does such things. 3 Since you judge others for doing these things, why do you think you can avoid God’s judgment when you do the same things? 4 Don’t you see how wonderfully kind, tolerant, and patient God is with you? Does this mean nothing to you? Can’t you see that his kindness is intended to turn you from your sin? 5 But because you are stubborn and refuse to turn from your sin, you are storing up terrible punishment for yourself.”

Now, what if I make it a bit more personal, to reduce the narrative distance of reading something someone wrote to someone else 2,000 years ago? I’m just as bad, with no excuse. I condemn myself, with each cutting remark. I’m stubborn, refuse to turn from my sin, and am storing up terrible punishment for myself. God is kind and patient with me, and I do not extend those same qualities to others, it means nothing to me.

Ouch. We like Romans 1 much more than Romans 2. It makes us feel good, better than, it makes us feel right, but this is a delusion that we sometimes never expose. We like pointing. But this means we are also standing outside of the party.  

This is a reference to the Prodigal Son parable, where the King welcomes the son, who has been away squandering his inheritance, and throws a party. The older brother of the prodigal, who has always been there, is indignant at his brother’s welcome, and the parable ends with him standing outside with choices to make. The older brother likes to point at the “bad” brother, feeling like the “good” one, the one who listens and behaves. He is the one missing the party, too. He’s classic Romans 1, lying to himself while the King knows everybody is Romans 2 and has a great big eternal party for those 2’s.

If we think we’re so awesome, The King can’t really do too much for us, we won’t allow it. Step 1 is admitting we have a problem, admitting we’re the 2’s. We can’t accept the rescue as Romans 1 because Romans 1’s believe they can do it themselves, looking down incredulously on those pathetic 2’s inside at the party.

When Paul pulls that rug from under our feet, we are shaken into finally seeing that we are all 2’s. That is the reality we don’t want to face. But once we do, everything changes. There’s only 1 kind of woman/man: loved, forgiven, redeemed, accepted. There’s no one less than because there’s no one better than (well, there’s only One better than, and in Him, we live and move and have our being, in Him we find ourselves and our tremendous worth), so we can stop being so scared thinking we have to prove our value and earn the space we take up by knocking another down. We can just live into the divine economy of grace and love, and we can start to truly give the overflow of that grace and love to everybody else.

In other words, we can all come into the party.

Lies

[I wrote this post on my other blog, it’s about 2 documentaries I recently watched. I generally try to keep these blogs separate, but sometimes, the ideas drift across the lines. At the end, I’ll suggest we find our identity, worth, value in something other than fear, but the only “something other than fear” that truly defines us, pointing to our original design, is God, Jesus Christ, and Love. So, what is defining us? Who are we? Who or what has the keys to our identity? These are questions that are absolutely vital to ask AND answer, and anything that moves us to ask them (even silly tv shows) is invaluable. Sometimes the things that move us the most move us the most because they are found in unexpected places, we simply have to have eyes that see and ears that hear.]

I watched 2 documentaries lately. Anatomy of Lies, on Peacock, and Maternal Instinct, on Netflix. Anatomy details the “life” of Elisabeth Finch, a writer on several shows you would’ve heard of, the most popular being Grey’s Anatomy. I put the word ‘life’ in quotes because most of everything she said or wrote about her life was a fabrication, a hi-jack of other people’s actual stories. She was called a “trauma vampire,” sucking other’s traumas and passing them off as her own. Instinct chooses a woman named Taylor Parker as its subject. She also lied about everything, eventually murdering pregnant woman Reagan Simmons-Hancock, and c-sectioning her unborn baby in a strange attempt to, not keep it as her own, but to lend evidence to her 9 months of false pregnancy.

These are interesting, sad stories but they are certainly not unique. There is no shortage of documentaries and “based on a true story” dramatizations of pathologically dishonest pretenders. Sometimes, once the liars are exposed, they apologize in their own non-contrite way. Like the vast majority of apologies, they’re sorry for being caught, not what they did (for which everyone else is to blame). Finch confesses only for things that can be proven false, and nothing else. Parker doesn’t confess at all, the documentarians don’t even ask, they don’t interview her at all. 

[For an interesting, related context, I was only able to watch Anatomy of Lies because I subscribe to Peacock, and I only subscribe to Peacock because it has a show called Poker Face. The show is perfect, starring Natasha Lyonne as a drifter named Charlie Cale, who has the beautiful talent we wish we all had: the ability to know when someone is lying. She says, ‘everybody lies, it’s just a matter of finding out why.’]

Think about all of the really humongous relational messes you’ve either witnessed or experienced, how many of them had some level of deceit or dishonesty as the cornerstone? Some very recent, very close catastrophes left me saying, in each case, “If anyone, at any point, had told the truth, and even better, the whole truth, all of this drama could have been avoided.”

But they didn’t. Elisabeth Finch didn’t. Taylor Parker didn’t. And I wonder why. A woman in the Finch doc believes it all comes from an internal lack of worth creating a desperate need to be someone else. That’s probably true. 

Of course, we also lie to avoid punishment. If the lamp falls, we say “not me,” so we don’t have to pay for it. That makes sense, right? Well, I mean, it doesn’t, because everybody always finds out who broke the lamp, and instead of just taking responsibility for the lamp, now we’re dealing with the lie, which is much, much worse. But there’s not an awful lot for us to do with this one, people either become adults or they don’t.

But, the other one, tied to a deeply perceived worthlessness, is a bit more interesting. Why do we want to be someone or something else? Why do we want their story or their family or house or money or whatever? 

The 10th commandment (You shall not covet your neighbor’s house; you shall not covet your neighbor’s wife, or his male servant, or his female servant, or his ox, or his donkey, or anything that is your neighbor’s) is sometimes read not as a command, but as a reward. If you do the previous 9, you won’t want your neighbor’s wife or donkey or anything that isn’t yours, because what you have will be enough. Enough is sort of a dirty word in America, where we worship at the altar of MORE. There is never enough. We are never enough. We are steadily fed the narrative that we are always lacking, and we’ll do anything to fill that hole. We need facelifts and new boobs because who we are and what we have now is simply not enough, and getting a new whatever is the answer. 

Of course, the hole isn’t filled with more stuff or a new nose. We aren’t magically made whole with abs. 

I’m increasingly interested in why we keep trying the same methods that don’t work, and have never worked? Why do we keep thinking a new car or jeans or dishwashing liquid will fill our souls? Why do we keep thinking war will bring peace? Or a bigger account balance will bring us the joy & peace that have eluded us for so long? Or that a few well-placed lies will produce the image that will finally complete us?

Finch lied to everyone in her life, it fell apart, she lost those people – the chaos of her broken life was directly related to her truth problem, and yet, she continues to lie. Dishonesty (on any level) builds walls around us while tearing down the chance/hope of intimacy and connection. The lies are a symptom, of course, the fruit of our fear. And until we can be defined by something else, until we can find our identity in something other than terror, we’ll continue to live these same boring loops and keep making these tired documentaries.

The Kindness Manifesto

This week, I read a very long quote from a man about kindness, and I want to share it with you here, where you can read it slowly. When I first saw it, it was devastating. Then today, as I read it out loud in our faith community, surrounded by our family, it was even more so. It changed, mostly because I could see faces & hearts, see the commitment to following Jesus, and what could have been a completely overwhelming, impossible task now just seems inevitable.

Dr Barry Corey writes, “I’m willing to bet that if Christians leaned more into kindness and understood more its revolutionary power, the world would see a side of us that would cause many skeptical and irate folks on the other side to take notice. Our radical gestures of kindness may be rejected. They may be received. But they will not be forgotten.

By kindness, I’m not talking about when you buy a stranger coffee or when you bring in your neighbor’s trash cans or when you tell someone they have food in their teeth. These are nice random acts. But kindness is not a random act. It’s a radical life. Kindness is not limited to grandmothers or Boy Scouts. Never mistake kindness for niceness. Kindness is all over the Bible, plentiful in both Testaments. But you won’t find niceness in the Bible once—nor the word nice, for that matter. Kindness is fierce, brave and daring. It’s fearless and selfless, never to be mistaken for niceness. They’re not the same and never were. Kindness is neither timid nor frail. Niceness is kindness minus conviction. I think we should scrub “nice” from our vocabulary. We need to stop telling children to be nice and instead tell them to be kind, and then tell them the difference. The virtue of kindness is rooted in Scripture, forged on sound Christian theology and modeled over the centuries by followers of Jesus. Since the early church, disciples have walked the risky and sometimes dangerous road of kindness. Kindness is a radical way of living biblically. It’s a fruit of the Holy Spirit on Paul’s short list in Galatians 5. It’s not a duty or an act. It’s an imperative. It’s the natural outcome of the Holy Spirit’s presence in our lives. We exhale kindness after we inhale what’s been breathed into us by the Spirit. Kindness radiates when we’re earnest about living the way of Christ, the way of the Spirit. Kindness displays the wonder of Christ’s love through us…Kindness is a dimension of God’s common grace through us. It’s a civility grounded in gentleness and respect. At the same time, kindness is neither milquetoast nor weak. It is fierce and passionate. The God-authored spirit of kindness in us has the power to upend the enemy and season the world around us for the good. Kindness as Jesus lived it presents the highest hope for a renewal of Christian civility, a renewal needed now more than ever.”

The only thing left is the gigantic, loaded question the Scriptures always leave: Now what? Will we be fierce, brave, and daring, extending kindness and grace without condition? Will we “upend the enemy and season the world around us?” What will we do with this “revolutionary power” within us? I just can’t wait to find out.

25 Years?!

[I wrote this on my other blog, and thought I would share it here, as well. It’s about a specific pop song, but it’s also about marriage, and the blessings we can sometimes miss. Maybe you’ll like it.]

What does “having it all” mean to you? That’s what the site is asking, and it is actually a pretty revealing query. It certainly tells more than most of these prompts. Maybe I’d care to dive into this another day, but not today, hosting site, not today.

Today is our 25th wedding anniversary. The Angel has been married to me for a quarter of a century. I’ll get all mushy at the end of this post, but something happened this morning that perfectly illustrates what a healthy marriage is, and how to get one. (I don’t have all the answers, obviously, but when I do happen to come across one, I like to pass it along to you. I don’t only want me to have an A+ 25-year marriage, I want everybody to have that. Incidentally, I am not particularly special or unique, what I’m about to write about has nothing to do with me, it is open to all of us. Also incidentally, I used to think this A+ healthy marriage had to do with finding the Angel, and that blessing had more to do with her being a unicorn rather than any principle or idea. I don’t, anymore. That unicorn has everything to do with my marriage, but she is not the only avenue for anyone to have a beautiful relationship.)

Anyway, this morning on the way to school (through some turn of circumstance, I take her to and from work nowadays), I chose to listen to an Amazon Music playlist titled Rediscover: 90’s Alternative. The first song was the classic “Wonderwall,” by Oasis. I knew she’d sing along with me once the first word of the lyrics “Today…” started up. It’s also an awesome love song – “I don’t believe that anybody feels the way I do about you now…Maybe you’re gonna be the one that saves me, and after all, you’re my wonderwall.” Perfect beginning to a great day, right? Except she says, “I’m happy I’m getting out of the car.” Whaaaat???? The she explained, she doesn’t like Liam’s voice or the song or the greatest era of music, either. 

We had our first date in 1998, got married in 2001, and have been together almost every day since. How could I have possibly not known this? Before this moment, it had never ever crossed my mind that anyone would not absolutely love this song. I told my son, later, that “it was wildly overplayed, think “Shake It Off” (by Taylor Swift) levels of airplay, and still, it wasn’t enough.” Everyone loves “Wonderwall.” The fact that my wife doesn’t is impossible.

So, here’s what I learned… You marry someone, you learn all about them, who they are, what they dream of and care about, where they come from, what songs they love, and then they grow and change, and you learn those things again and again and again. I am not the boy she married, and I will not be the man I am now in 10 years. She is not the same woman who sat across from me in that restaurant in 1998. We are dynamic creatures by nature, made to move and evolve. (Sometimes we forget and stagnate, but that is not our design.)

My experience has been that relationships crack and break apart when we stop paying attention, stop learning each other, when we think that we know who the other is, that there are no more surprises or amazing revelations. We get bored. But we are very wrong. The harsh truth of that is, we’re not bored with them. We’re bored with ourselves, we checked out of our own lives and never came back. We’re the boring, uninterested & uninteresting, apathetic, pathetically incurious ones. 

Imagine if I believed the Angel was the college junior I met those many years ago? I would have missed countless wonderful (tiny and humongous) transformations. She looks the same, gorgeous as ever, but now she has some gray hairs and they are absolutely fantastic, adding a level of texture and interest. Imagine if I stopped looking at her so closely, so intently. Imagine if I expected her to look like a 20 year-old. I would have missed this wildly better, even more beautiful, version entirely. 

After 25 years, I’m married to the Angel, but the Angel is different, new, stronger, deeper, both more open and more assured. She’s cooler than I thought, and she’s everything I knew she was. She drives me crazy – in all the good ways as well as the bad. Of course, there have been growing pains, but they are also growing joys, growing pleasures, growing wonders, and growing peace. We have discovered each other in terrific new ways, and in not so terrific ways (like the “Wonderwall” tragedy). We have loved each other, and will continue to do so, for as long as we are given. 

I’ll never know why she wanted to be married to me for one day, much less 25 years, but that’s her problem, not mine. As for me, I’ll keep looking & listening closely, dreaming, learning, I’ll keep growing and moving forward, and I’ll stay forever grateful that I get to do it with her, whoever she becomes, and whatever horrible thing I might learn in the car, tomorrow.

Something Else About Judges

Yesterday, I wrote a very long post about an odd story in the Bible (called “It’s In The Bible”). The story is strange, but its inclusion in the Scriptures is even stranger. The point of the post was that I don’t get to decide what makes sense, what should happen, or how things are supposed to be, and that it’s wildly arrogant to think that I do.

But there is another layer to this, one that I didn’t mention yesterday. As the Micah account begins, verse 17:6 says, “In that day Israel had no king; all the people did whatever seemed right in their own eyes.” This verse is repeated, the last verse of the book, 21:25. Maybe that’s important.

The chapters immediately following the one on Micah are equally disturbing, I could’ve written yesterday’s post about them just as well. And twice, in 18:1 and 19:1, we find an abbreviated, “In that day Israel had no king.” Maybe that’s important, too.

What do these verses mean?

First, it’s just a fact, in those days Israel didn’t have a king. The people were decentralized, each tribe governed themselves. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but the next sentence (after a semi-colon) and these stories are clear clues as to what it meant then.

I say “then,” because “whatever seemed right in their own eyes” is kind of a cultural ideal today. My truth, your truth, follow your heart, do what feels good, and on and on. So, today, it is played as a positive direction. (Is it, really?) But then? These few stories in these few chapters are not at all what we’d consider awesome. The chapter following Micah’s is far more horrific, maybe one of the most shocking in the entire Bible. And the last is ugly and misogynistic.

But it’s the semi-colon that ties them. Even though “all the people did what was right in their own eyes” isn’t spelled out every time, the semi-colon of chapters 17 and 21 tells us it is still there, the continuation of an idea. They had no king, and this fact serves as a symbol of spiritual anarchy, chaotic and random, without vision or coherence.

These stories don’t make sense, and that’s probably the point. When we are left to our own devices, we choose what feels good, we choose pleasure, and we always choose comfort, always choose ourselves. There’s no right or wrong, up or down, so we’re always casting idols, selling out, and throwing our daughters to the mob to save ourselves (a reference to chapter 19.) Our lives begin to look like these chapters, messy, disturbing, and often horrific.

They sound objective, like journalism, but they most certainly are not. They’re charged and pointed lessons, teaching us what it is to be human. Of course, we haven’t learned, our news stories could carry the tagline, “In these days the people have no king, and do whatever seems right in their own eyes,” and we are drifting farther and farther away from our shared humanity. It’s a sad story, this history of us, but it’s one that can change the moment we open our eyes and get back to writing the Big Story that’s always been there, from the beginning.