on being trapped

as I was planning for this week's sermon something came to mind and i just wanted to write it down-- i figured this might be as good a place as any.

We were talking about knowing in our lives that Jesus is enough to save us. Paul urges the colossian believers to not let anyone judge them- or push them to follow some kind of code of behaviors and living as a way of trying to get the favor of God. they already have the favor of God because of Jesus!!!

So as i was thinking about the sermon- a thought came to mind and i believe it was the Holy Spirit who planted it there:

We can know when we have lost connection with the fact that Jesus is enough for our salvation when God's gifts become obligations to us.

For example: God gave us a gift in giving us the Bible. He gave us a wonderful book to help us know him- a book that continues to speak to our souls no matter how much we read it. A great and wonderful gift and yet when we forget that Jesus is enough- when we forget that he and he alone makes us acceptable to God; the gift of reading the Bible becomes an obligation. We no longer see it as a wonderful blessing but something we must do in order to make God pleased with us! Prayer is another example. what an amazing gift to be able to talk with the God of the universe, my savior Jesus- and to have a relationship that changes me and yet when i forget Jesus is enough- the voice changes from "I GET to spend time with God" to "I HAVE to spend time with God". It becomes less a blessed opportunity and more something I have to do to avoid the wrath of a God who keeps a long laundry list of all i do wrong..

We get trapped by our religion. We get trapped. I know I have been. I still continue to be. i miss the gifts in life and make them things I must do to earn worth and acceptance of God and even my own self acceptance... messes with my head... Some kind of profound thought though...

on week 2 as a lead pastor

I just completed my second week as a lead pastor...

Oh dear God- is it going to be like this every week? If it is-- how long can I do this?

I'm just finding that leading an organization- like a church or a business can be extremely complicated because people are there. I mean, who know what a person's motivations really are? Are they there to help you; to be a friend; or an enemy?

I had this meeting this past week with that same lady I talked about in the last blog; that I've been deeply considering. If everything she said is true- then we need to do some hard work to really rebuild some relationships and reconcile. But as i look back over our two conversations- i can't help but wonder why she didn't approach this subject the night of the first conversation; when all of our elders were there. Why did she wait to talk with me about it? I can't help but feeling like the "nice parent"- you know what i mean? when a child wants to do something- they may ask the mean parent and they say "no" so then they go to the nice parent and ask again hoping for a different result. After a while- the child foregoes drama with the mean parent and just goes straight to nice parent.

Intrinsic in this is the fact the child feels they have a better chance of getting the dsired result with nice parent- possibly because they sense a weakness is nice parent- or an ability to be manipulated.

Am I nice parent? Do I portray an air of weakness- neediness- lack of backbone. a lack of- for lack of a better way of putting it- assholishness.

that's a new word possibility- "Assholishness". I can see it in Wesbters:

Assholishness-- noun- a state of being where one simply doesn't give a rat's behind about pissing others off..

i remember a conversation with a good friend a few years back where he confided in me that he could be a real asshole sometimes. i remember thinking how awesome it would be to be able to turn that on and off a little more in my own life. I find I'm just more apt to be nice- and maybe this woman senses it in me. Like a shark with blood in the water. she can smell my fear? She wants to manipulate me perhaps?

I've been praying about it a ton because the truth is- I need to be firm and i need to not let myself get walked on. i need to stand for what convictions the Lord has placed on my heart. Which leads me to my final question:

"How do I get a frickin backbone?" I know I have a spine- I've seen it emerge. How do I find more of that?

i'm finding that some of the problem is due to the fact that I don't know myself or my opinions very well. I spent nine years working with college students and now that i'm in a different atmosphere- i find there is a large learning curve- alot to be thinknig about; and little time to put conclusions together.

Perhaps if I had more bedrock I could stand. but sometimes I feel as if i'm one- two- or more steps behind where people need me to be. It feels and tastes alot like failure to me... I hate that taste.

So back to this question of backbone. Yea- got no answers there. It seems the apostle paul had found a backbone. he wrote that he was no longer trying to please men but God. I want that. That is one thing I found over these past couple weeks. peoples' opinions can change like a wave going in out and out to sea. The only opinion that does not change is God's.. An old switchfoot song has these lyrics:

"Let me know that you hear me;

let me know your touch

Let me know that you love me

Let that be enough.

Oh Lord- let that be enough. How do I let that be enough on my own? I cannot... I just need you.. Bring on week three Lord...

on big realizations

Have you ever had an epiphany that just knocks you over? it may come out of nowhere- or it may come through major painful issues; having a difficult discussion or just processing something that is going on in your lfie then: wham-o! Huge realization!!!!

I've had that recently. I just realized that i push people away who don't feel safe to me. I push them away and most of that is self protection and fear. And while that may make sense- it doesn't always work out for the best for several reasons:

1) just because they feel unsafe; doesn't mean they ARE unsafe. I shut myself out from relationships and possible amazing experiences; because i'm afraid.

2) The world is not a safe place- people are not safe. I can't live my life in fear of them; or in some inner shame, because then I spend most of my time hiding.

I just became a pastor of a church. This is the last day of my first week and i couldn't be more grateful. So many realizations this week alone. I had several difficult meetings this week that began to open my heart up to some major reconstructive work I believe God wants to do on my life...

I'm sitting here realizing I need a place to process. and it seems like this is as good a place as any.. Seeing as nobody really knows about this blog. There's only eleven of you out there who may have read a post at some time... I'm thinking the purpose here is going to change. I apologize in advance if I come in here and bitch alot. But i may need it.

So last night i had this realization. It came on the heels of a very difficult conversation with a lady at my church. she was civil enough; and graciously sought to share her heart. She shared how she felt i was cold and uncaring towards her. She gave me concrete examples... it sucked because she was right. I sat there feeling this coldness as she shared with me- and feeling like something was ripping open inside of me. I couldn't escape; I just took it because in my heart of hearts, i know she's right.

I have been cold to her. I have avoided her. I have not shown warmth to her; or pursued her in even a remotely friendly way. i've done these things...

The crazy thing is I went to this meeting thinking we were going to set her straight... But in my soul I sensed something deeper- that something momentous was going to happen in this meeting. It was like The Holy Spirit was telling me to pay attention to this moment; to not let it go unnoticed... i kept feeling like something great was at stake before we went into this meeting.

I didn't realize the great thing at stake was my own heart, my own character. Here i thought we were going into this meeting to help this woman see she can't control us; and have things our own way; and she graciously opened my eyes to how hurtful some of my behaviors are to her and... i have no defense. she's right.

I have been cold and uncaring. i realized further, that i've been these things because She feels unsafe. She feels unsafe because I feel like i am not pleasing her now; and will be soon disappointing her again.. I don't like to be in that space with someone... So I avoid her...

THE bIG REALIZATION??? I label people as unsafe if I suspect they are or will be disappointed in me. This is classic people pleaser stuff and fear.

But I am a leader. people will be unhappy with me. They will be disappointed from time to time. and I have trouble seeing just how deep my fear of this goes...

It sucks. But I also know this.. and this may be my greatest hope... God has allowed for me to hear these things- and to realize this. that must mean something right? It must mean; or at least I choose to believe; that God is going to use this to bring more freedom; more maturity; more intimacy with him and others. The pain of the big realization is vindicated by the beauty of healing.

So anyway.... my hope is I'll write here more. i need to keep processing all that is going on. I've been in this role for one week and have gotten my ass thoroughly kicked...

Is every week going to be like this one? Sure hope not. but I feel i need to process this further.... so..That man's blog is back in business!!!!

That man's thoughts on parkour.

I just recently discovered something that makes me almost instantly envious.

Parkour

What is this? It's also called "free running".
Why should I be envious of this? Yes I know it doesn't make alot of sense. Seeing as the activity called "Running" is never something I would classify as something where I feel "free". No, for the entire duration of said "Running"; I feel as if I am imprisoned by forces like gravity; and entropy (see creaky ankles Or Cankles). No Running is not free for me but...

These guys doing parkour (French for making spider man look like a fat raider fan) are running around free from the laws of gravity and reason. Just turn on youtube and type in "parkour", and you'll see what I mean; guys swinging around flying from bar to bar like spider monkeys, flipping off walls like...uh..more spider monkeys and running down the street, kicking their legs in front of them as the fly over a wall. Like a spider monkey.
They climb up the sides of buildings!! not walls, not stairs, buildings, then they run and do handstands on rooftops and jump from 30 feet up, hit the ground and roll and then...Keep running.
Every boy I know has once dreamt they could fly. Some even stood on their rooftops, with cardboard taped to their arms, jumped and flapped their wings furiously only to come crashing to earth, but somewhere along the way a little french boy jumped, hit the ground and rolled forward in a graceful somersault and he thought to himself: "Sacre bleu I Deed EEt!"
Here's the thing. I see parkour guys doing their thing and I am instantly envious. I want to run up the sides of walls! I want to swing from pole to pole and jump through thin window sills without getting stuck. I want to be able to run and look like a cheetah and I leap over tables, walls, small children, buses; alligator filled bogs; and redwoods! I want that freedom! I think something about it makes me feel more than free. It makes me feel super human! like an xmen.

What would I do if I was a parkour stud? I think i'd use it to freak people out. I walk around in a downtown area and in front of all these plebeian commonplace humans sitting out front of a coffee shop sipping their lattes I'd scream, "Aahh no, they told me it didn't have caffeine!! and then i'd go crazy and just jump over a building", or I'd be walking by a wall and start screaming: "Shut up! Shut up, i'll kick you you circus animal" then I'd kick at my imaginary foe and then scream while standing on one leg: "Let me go you fool!!!" And then run full out into a wll but right before i slam myself flat I step up, run up the wall and gracefully flip over, then I assume my stance and yell: "You're gonna have to do better than that"! Then stop and walk away.
I could do all kinds of crazy stuff with parkour!!! I'd jump off a roof and land in front of ome old women and say: "Hello...Am i here? You mean i'm back? What time is it? 5pm? You mean it took no time? It didn't exist in time?" Then i look at the sky and say: "Bye.."

As you can see, parkour is ridiculously awesome and I am super envious. unfortunately gravity, and cankles form an ominous wall between me and running free... But I'm working hard and some day i'll get there. so for now, I watch youtube Russian ninjas and try handstands when nobody is looking....in a pool. Cuz i'm parkour like that!!!

That man's thoughts on my neighbors

We have officially moved. we have left the womb called Biola. my neighbors are no longer screaming college kids.....they are screaming drunken fifty year old unemployed men. Seriously, last weekend, saturday night, I was kept awake by four people on their patio barely able to stand, barely able to converse without cursing and barely able to keep from vomitting. One of the guys basically spewed all over the deck.
It's really quite interesting. I sat there, clandestinely watching them through the blinds of my window, trying to decide what to do: should I walk out on my patio and tell them "Hey, shut up you cads!!!", then bravely run back inside? Maybe I should walk over to their patio as they try to clean up their friends honk and avoid it showering upon me as they dump it over the side of their patio onto the street below (Yea...they did that..), and then say: "Uh...Yea...Do you guys think you might take this classy little soiree into your apartment because that would greatly reduce the noise level"? Perhaps I should put on my black ninja pajamas (they are white with little black ninjas on them..i mean c'mon, why would you have black ninja jammies with black ninjas on them, then you couldn't see the ninjas...Unless of course the ninjas were white, but if they were white, then they wouldn't be very effective at night, which we all know ninjas do their best work at night...assassins you know), and skulk in the shadows, shimmy up a drainage pipe, avoid the previously mentioned vomit spilling from above, and knock them out one by one as I pull them into the shadows... But then again, i was quite sore from helping my friend move earlier in the day, and the chik-fil a I karate chopped earlier was not acting very feng shui at the moment.
or maybe i should select the easiest of all choices... Call the cops. I mean here's the reality: these guys aren't going to listen to reason..they are vomitting. The cops can come over and shut things down. But whom do I call? 911? the city police department?
I gotta admit, this felt like a chicken poop way to go. Kind of cowardly. I never had to deal with this at Biola, ironically living with college students but it is a dry campus. So what do i do?
I'll tell you what I did!!! I grabbed my sudoku book and waited it out. That's what i did! very brave huh? Yea, i showed them!!! I dominated that sudoku puzzle, I laughed at it's simplistic form. I made that puzzle suffer all the while direct my vehement energies through my quivering pencil. The puzzle didn't stand a chance and my fifty year old neighbors finally had enough at 12:30 am.

Yea,....I showed them. now it's friday. it's the weekend and they probably will be getting their party on again. sigh...Well, better sharpen my pencils...

that man's thoughts on endings

I'm currently sitting on a mattress in an empty apartment...well, empty except for the mattress....
My cough echoes off the walls that were once covered by furniture or pictures. Now the room is empty and man how my voice carries in here.
This apartment is mine. well, it's my apartment for three more days and then i will finally hand the keys over to my boss. I will contact the IT department and tell them to come get my old computer so they can scrub it clean and store it in some room in the bowels of an undisclosed building on campus maybe. And like that, my career as a Resident director will be over. The ending of an Era has officially, irrevocably, inexorably arrived.
But for now I sit writing this blog on a mattress in an empty apartment reflecting on all I experienced here. In some ways I feel a little lacking in the feeling department when it comes to my reflections. I think maybe I should be crying or feeling deep overwhelming sadness, mourning the loss of this place. To be sure, I did love it here. I loved my job. and i' excited for a new chapter. It's so weird: a few days ago, I was in my office doing some cleaning and a student came up to me and asked me if I was the RD. I said "Yes". I don't know why I didn't have the heart to tell him otherwise. To be honest, It wasn't because I secretly wished I still was, but rather I didn't know how to explain what I had really become. A man stuck between two worlds, yesterday and tomorrow. The present is a waiting place and if you remember what doctor seuss says:

The Waiting Place…for people just waiting.

Waiting for a train to go or a bus to come, or a plane to go or the mail to come, or the rain to go or the phone to ring, or the snow to snow or waiting around for a Yes or No or waiting for their hair to grow. Everyone is just waiting.

Waiting for the fish to bite or waiting for wind to fly a kite or waiting around for Friday night or waiting, perhaps, for their Uncle Jake or a pot to boil, or a Better Break or a string of pearls, or a pair of pants or a wig with curls, or Another Chance. Everyone is just waiting.

Yea, that's the present these days, waiting for tomorrow. Anyway, the student asks me if I'm the RD. The answer is: "well, uh, no technically I'm not, but I still have the keys, still have the office, still have the sign over the door, still have some furniture left to move, a stove to scrub, a reimbursement check to pick up (Yea!). No, That would be too much a pain in the butt, so I just say: 'Yea I'm him", then the student proceeds to tell me he works for campus safety and I've parked my car in an unacceptable fashion. I smile and tell him I'll move it in a few minutes. I won't miss that.

But i will miss this apartment. i will miss having the couch along THAT wall, and the picture of that lemon tree that stood guard over our kitchen table. I'll miss the backyard that seemed to be impossible to keep tidy because of all the pine needles continually shedding from the huge pine tree in the backyard. Heck I might even miss the stomping of men on the floor above us like tribal drumbeats at any part of the day...Naw actually I won't miss that crap at all..:)

It's weird to be in the place of ending. I know tomorrow is just around the bend, but this ending has got me beginning something new and in the meantime I'm waiting in the present, on a mattress in an empty apartment, a shadow of what once was and a reminder of what is now true....this is no longer my home. I'm not coming back. I'm standing on the precipice of something new. It's kind of a sacred place really.

I want to say "Thank you" to Biola... These last eighteen years as a student and employee have been an absolute gift. I'm grateful to be on this mattress; grateful there is a new home, new challenges and new memories to build.

That man's thoughts on idols...

In the religious tradition I come from, we talk about how we can place certain things in our lives that become idols, things we worship over what is most important. I have sometimes wondered: "How do we really know when something has become an idol to us?" Well perhaps what happened to me today is a good description.
I must say, I think we can know something has become an idol to us when it becomes a part of our decision making, maybe even becomes part of our natural responses even when it shouldn't be. I know this doesn't totally make sense so let me illustrate.

today i was eating lunch with my friend Charlotte. We had just finished and were walking in front to our next destinations when this lady walks towards us and begins to stumble. The heel of her shoe got caught in a groove in the concrete causing her shoe to twist and throw off her balance.

A perplexed look crossed the ladies face as she began to stumble. she was probably in her late forties, early fifties, a bit overweight, and dressed nicely. I say this to point to the fact that she was not an athletic person, and it was likely that she had not done many acrobatic kinds of things in quite some time. I don't mean to be rude here, she looked like a grandma who's best athletic years seemed to be behind her and thus stumbling and catching herself might be more challenging for her than someone twenty years her junior.
everything seemed to pay out in slow motion. It was like a big redwood being chopped over. the axe digs splinters the wood, the tree cracks and slowly the tree begins to sway, then it starts to lean, then it starts to move, all the while filling the air with cracks and snaps. At first one who watches the tree may not be certain if anything is happening, but in a matter of moments, it becomes apparent that the tree is coming down. This is kind of how the lady went. The shoes twisted, she looked perplexed and began to lean. A quick huffle of feet did not dorrect the slight lean which became a larger lean, which led to a more pronounced lean and an utterance of primal exclamation which usually is either an expletive or just a guttural noise. In her case it was: "UUUUUUUHHHHHHH!"
Charlotte and I watched this lady stumbling towards us and for a moment I wasn't sure if she'd need my help, but her momentum began to pick up and she was heading right towards me. At the last minute, I reached out my right hand, that ahd my keys in it and slid it under her right armpit. This helped steady her. She said thank you, and to many aroudn us, I was a hero.
I actually felt good about myself until i played the scene again in my head like Tom Cruise in the Last Samurai. and this is where my intial point about idols comes in to this story.
In my replay, i see the lady, dressed in her black flower print blouse, black slacks and wide heeled black dress shoes, stumbling towards me, her momentume carrying her inevitably towards me, or destruction. Replay me is wondering if she needs my help. Replay me barely has time to think, it is really only a time for instinct. Replay me reaches his right hand out and this is not the part that disturbs me. it's what i do with my left hand...
You see, in my left hand was a big 32 oz cup of coca cola. In this brief instinctual moment, one could see my priority, for as my right hand was reaching out, (the hand that was holding my keys by the way), my left hand was sliding the cola away as if to protect it!
Do you see the idolatry? would a normal person who did not idolize cola simply throw it away and do their best to help this dear lady? I think they might. but i'm not a normal person, In one simultaneous and instinctual moment, I reached out with one hand to help the lady in distress but made darn sure with the other that my Cola would be safe. How dear has cola become to me? It was like: "Help the lady...Protect the Cola!!!!!"
I think it is little moments like these that sometimes tell us of our idolatry. Little moments where we do things to protect something we love even though it would be better if we didn't. I mean c'mon, it's not like they wouldn't have given me a free refill.
Well, I gotta conclude and say, many around me told me I was a hero, but I knew the truth. I am a hero who worships at the altar of Cola..... It just goes to show you, While doing a dangerous activity around me, make sure i don't have Cola near me, you never know...You might be on your own.... :(