That Guy Frodo

Wild Iris

2026-01-08T20:55:00.000-08:00

"Chew your cud, dear," Iris' mother said.
Iris pretended not to hear her. It wasn't difficult, the pretending. Her mind was elsewhere.
"And stop moving around so much. Your trampling perfectly good grass."
Iris and her Family had been trampling this particular grass for three days now. This grass didn't taste any different than the grass they had trampled before and she was reasonably sure it going to be pretty much the same when it came time to trample some more.

Iris made a few token chews and then trampled a bit more. She couldn't seem to stand still these days. It wasn't that she wasn't interested in chewing her cud--or any of the other Four Activities that had kept buffalo busy for thousands of years--she just found herself interested in something else. Something she couldn't find herself willing to share with her fellow buffalo. Something...forbidden.
Iris was curious.

Now Iris knew nothing about the human saying that "curiosity killed the cat", but she wouldn't have been surprised by it. The buffalo had a similar saying: "You don't have to be the least curious buffalo, you just have to be less curious than the one trampling next to you." Curiosity just wasn't prized among Iris' people. The proper response to curious things was to do the third of the Activities: Running for Your Life. Rustling in the leaves meant there was a lion over there. Watching small creatures under your feet meant you weren't looking for lions. What was over the next hill? Probably a lion.

Fear was the proper attitude for any self-respecting Buffalo. Fear was what had made the Buffalo strong, kept them going, protected them. Iris didn't have a healthy respect for fear. And because of that, she found herself curious. But curiosity is a curious emotion. It's something one feels, but the feeling shows a humility of knowledge. A desire to know more than one already does. Fear, the normal state of buffalo-ness, is also something one feels. But there's no desire to know more. There is just the desire to run. (Or, for some species, to fight. But not Buffalo.) The only proper response to fear is Running For Your Life. Iris didn't want to Run. She was tired of running. She wanted to Know.

And so it came to be that when Iris and her Herd crested the next hill, they realized that this wasn't just another hill, it was the Last Hill. Specifically, the Last Hill of the Great Expanse that marked the boundary between the Places to Chew Cud and the Place to Avoid at All Costs. The Place to Avoid At All Costs was (humanly speaking for the reader's sake) a town. Just a town. Full of humans who thought buffalo where nice to look while they drank their coffee. Maybe sometimes Awe-inspiring. Maybe sometimes even a kind of almost spiritually reverence-inducing totem. But usually more of something they appreciated seeing out their windows, at least until the next sub-division was built and they no longer had the view. Humans are silly that way.

But Humans were anything but scenery for Iris. She wanted to know more. What did they do in those caves they lived in? Why where they always looking out the holes at them? What were they drinking? Always drinking?

And so Iris did the unthinkable. The unthinkable is always something you do without thinking because if you thought about it you wouldn't have done it. Without thinking, Iris asked a Question. "What are they doing in those caves?" she asked. Out loud. The already pretty quiet Herd became even more silent. The chewing stopped, the grunting ceased. If anything could have been heard at all, it was the grass sighing relief as the Trampling paused. "What do you mean?", her mother replied. "I mean, why do they sit there, drinking that liquid and moving their mouths? Do they chew cud? Are they like us?". This clarification, despite its thoroughness, was met with absolute silence. These were thoughts no one had ever contemplated before. These were thoughts that no buffalo had ever wondered (a word nearly always followed with a shudder). And there is only one response to wonder. FEAR.

No one would ever know which buffalo it was that make the first lunge forward. It's a pointless question anyway. They all knew what to do and they all did exactly what every buffalo always does when faced with the Unknown. They Ran For Their Lives. Everyone. All at once. Humans call it a Stampede. But this is a crude way of seeing it. As if the buffalo had lost control. As if they were participating mindless group-think. For a buffalo, there was no thinking except for group-think. So group-think can't be bad, because there is no other way of thinking. As a group, they thought about how terrifying it was that humans drank liquids seemingly (and therefore: factually) non-stop. They thought about all the water in the whole world would one day pass into and through them. They thought about how the Place to Avoid At All Costs was one hill closer than it was the last time they grazed this area. They thought...well, the thinking ended there because that one buffalo lunged. And they were off.

Normally, Buffalo all Run For Their Lives in the same direction. That's kind of why it works so well. But Iris, of course, was at the moment...curious. So when she Ran, she broke from the group and ran straight down the hill. Away from her family, away from everything she had ever known and directly towards the liquid drinking and occasionally staring humans. Directly for their cave.

No one would notice Iris was going the wrong direction Running for Your Life was not a time for any kind of thinking whatsoever. Even Iris didn't realize she had somehow ran the wrong direction. But once that direction had been chosen, there was not much one could do. Iris was still a buffalo after all. She was curious, yes, but she was also Running for Her Life. And so she ran. And ran. And ran. At least until she reached the wall of the cave.

At some point she realized that things were not going as they usually did. Usually Running for One's Life just deposited one in a safer place. Tired, yes, but not dead. And definitely not in front of a large (what do you even call this thing? A wall? Sure, why not. We're learning all sorts of new things today) ... wall. Because buffalo are not designed for quick turns, she just kept running, right for the wall. Until she actually met the wall. At full speed. Head on.

One can probably imagine the sound of the crash that ensued. The sound of a buffalo the size of a small car running full speed into the wall of a coffee shop. It was loud. But when the dust had settled and everyone had a chance to come to terms with what had happened, Iris found herself looking directly into the "cave" she had wondered about. But now she could do more than see it from a distance. She could see it up close. There were the humans with their mugs full of some liquid that smelled amazing. There were sounds they were making as they drank, almost musical in their back-and-forth sing-song melody. Iris no longer felt fear. She was even more than curious. She was fascinated.

For their parts, the humans were surprisingly cavalier about the whole thing. A lifetime of CGI wonders had made them somewhat numb to things like this--even to what should have been the shocking fact that a buffalo had just run into the side of their coffee shop and rammed her head right through. But its maybe not that surprising as the the coffee was quite good and the conversations they were having were even more attention-grabbing. After a few moments of surprise on the amount of plaster suddenly on the floor, they noted the always-changing decor of the shop and continued their sipping, debating and catching up.

For her part, Iris found herself a bit in shock. She was tired from Running. She still had cud in her mouth. But what she heard was something she had never heard before. The susurration of human conversation. The back and forth of ideas. Jokes. Stories. Life. Oh, and coffee. She had never smelled coffee before, but now that she had she would never want to not smell it. Iris realized suddenly that...she was home. This was the perfect place for a curious buffalo. Safely on the other side of the wall, but just close enough to the humans to satisfy her curiosity. She finally found a place to satisfy her curiosity while not being afraid. Iris was still a buffalo. But she had found something most buffalo (and more humans for that matter) look for their entire lives. The place between curiosity and fear. The place one can want to know without being afraid to know. Iris, standing outside a coffee shop with her head poking through a hole in the wall (as ridiculous as that sounds) was finally...home.

2017-11-04T21:46:00.001-07:00

One day, listening to a show on NPR, I learned of a fascinating study someone had done on how we make moral choices on a biological level. They had done scans of the brain while asking morally ambiguous questions. What they discovered was that it appeared the choice to choose one option over another wasn't a centrally located buzz of activity, but rather several locations battling it out for the correct choice. For instance, one zone would win over another in the choice between saving five people versus one. But that same zone would lose the battle if that one person was your child. It was as if every choice being made was a debate of options, even at the most fundamental level. The conclusion was that there is no centrally located "judge" in our brains that does the choosing. In fact, the more they study the brain, the more it seems like a collection of partial persons who somehow work together to form a single person greater than all of them. We are Legion.

And as these things usually do, I began to wonder what this means and how it fits with what I believe about God. And it was especially challenging this time because this idea of decentralized organization has shown itself to be amazingly efficient in all sorts of systems. Planetary environments, biological bodies, economics, governments, the list goes on and on. It has even been proposed that one argument against the existence of God is the simple fact that things left to themselves without management naturally seem to organize themselves in some fashion! Even a pot of boiling water forms hexagonal columns of circulation. Liquid hexagons!

But if God is the King of Kings, the Lord of Lords, if he is the mover and Shaker of all things, why is our universe, even ourselves, arranged in such a way that precludes the necessity of Divine central control? How is God's "eternal power" and "Divine nature" clearly seen through what had been made?

You know that feeling you get when you pull out yet another loop of tangled headphone wires and suddenly the whole knot comes lose, the wires falling straight and the loops opening up? The separate voices in my head clamoring for the answer had finally reached a consensus. And here is the conclusion they came to.

God's eternal power and his divine nature are summed up in his divine love. His selfless, gracious, merciful love. God himself is the source of all being and holds the universe together in his hand. And yet, he seems to have done everything possible to create a universe and people that operate apart from him. We can explain the things of nature without mentioning God. We can make decisions for ourselves, for better or worse, without God. In fact, unless you get down to the very basic philosophical questions about the source of our existence, God doesn't seem to be necessary.

What kind of person writes himself out of the story? A selflessly loving person, that's who. Only selfless love is capable of creating another being capable of selflessly loving it back. And a group of people, selflessly loving each other doesn't require a centralized organizer of that love. As a young twiterpated couple doesn't need one of them to be superior to the other, as a brain doesn't need one lobe superior to the other, as a government doesn't need one branch superior to another, when selfless love is the foundation of all things, they organize themselves into something greater than themselves. This is the Glory of God.

In the end we realize that he didn't write himself out of the story after all. As it happens, he is the story. For he is Love.

Prescription Strength

2017-08-11T22:48:00.000-07:00

The stories of my faith tell of many men and women who stood before the "face of God". Not just in front of Jesus, who, being truly human would normally just appear human, but before the Father himself, maybe even the entire trinity. Elijah, Moses, the disciples to whom Jesus revealed his true self during the transfiguration, all of these stood face to face with God himself. And we often think that if we could have such an experience, then maybe our faith wouldn't be so hard. It would be so much easier to believe in God if he were standing (or floating or whatever) right there, right?
This is a challenging time in my life. After losing my job and my home at the same time, my family and I have moved into the home of a gracious and generous family in our church. The house is plenty big enough for both of our families--would we choose to use the back door instead of the front we would never even have to see them. But we do use the front door and for various other reasons (for instance we do not have an oven of our own or even all of our dishes), we share both of our spaces to a limited extent.
For the most part, this setup is working just fine. But one of the main areas of tension always brewing just under the surface is over cleanliness. Now, I have never thought of my family as being dirty. We have four small children and tend to leave a lot of clutter around, we never take the time to organize toys that are just going to be dumped out and stirred up again the next day and often just getting out the door is much more important to us than making sure the last of the peanut butter and jelly is removed from the table (or couch or wherever it was smeared). Our host family, on the other hand is amazingly tidy and clean. It is almost to the point where there is rarely any evidence that they live upstairs at all if they are not actually present. They make dinner without a mess. They eat dinner without a mess. They free play all over the house without a mess. They too have small children. They are never messy. I have decided to just leave the dirt on my two year old's face just so people will recognize him because it is rarely not there. Their children sometimes have frizzy hair.
I am continually in awe of this. And, because in my new life situation I am now the stay-at-home parent, I am seriously intimidated. The other day, my host found a roach in their area of the house. The same plea was repeated. "Please please watch the food and be careful". Now I know that roaches are just a fact of life and do not necessarily indicate filth. Honestly I don't even know if it was a roach at all (as an outdoor education instructor for fifteen years, you must earn a certain level of respect from me before I believe you saw anything in particular beyond the standard pets). But the shame hit me hard. I remembered that they had walked through our area earlier that day as I napped on the couch, the table littered with the sticky remains of the PB&J my children had just slaughtered and consumed. How lazy and disgusting must I have appeared?
It gets worse though. Because in my attempt to relieve my shame, I begin thinking of all the ways our family is in fact superior to theirs. And then I realized that not only am I a slob, but I am also a judgemental, arrogant (and let's be honest a little lazy) slob. And I just want to crawl into a hole.
Which brings me back to my original (and somewhat aprupt) introduction. If this is how I feel in the presence of someone who clearly has (at least part of) their life together far more than me, how would I feel before the face of God, the creator of said life? Those stories also speak of men falling down on their faces in the dirt, begging God to go away. People who got too close to him, too familiar, and would just drop dead. How can we not feel some level of fear before a God who is so Good, so Loving, we cannot stand it?
Maybe it is a great mercy that God hides himself from us. That we only experience him in measured doses: the kindness of a stranger or even worse, a friend; the beauty of a sunrise; the giggle of a little girl. I can barely stand it when my daughter smiles at me. My heart would surely explode were I to see the smile of God.
I have spent much of my life seeking after God. Desiring to know him more and more fully. But I have not spent nearly enough time working on my own self, practicing the kinds of things that would make me slightly less ashamed to stand before him. I know he loves me. But I think I am becoming more thankful that he reveals that love in measured doses. I do not think I could handle much more than I am getting right now. There is just too much peanut butter smeared into my beard.

Together

2017-01-20T22:40:00.000-08:00

Yesterday, at break, one of my coworkers made a joke about something our new president had tweeted. Instantly my blood pressure rose and while I continued to banter along with him, I struggled to keep it civil. These days opinions are just as divided as ever, but there seems to be a greater chasm between them. What unites us appears to be less and less important this year as what divides us. And tensions are running high, as I can attest to personally.
This idea of how people get along when they believe very different things about how the world works is not a new subject to me. I grew up in a protestant church, so focusing on what divides us comes very naturally to me. Protestants have traditionally dealt with differing opinions in one of two ways.
First, they have taken the easiest route and simply left to form a new church. This is pretty much the way protestantism started actually. Martin Luther fought against very real abuses in the catholic church of his day. Eventually he gave up trying to change the church from the inside and left it entirely, forming his own church to stand in contrast to it. His example was followed by many others: Calvin, Zwingli and it seems like every protestant name you'd recognize since then. I believe I heard recently there were over 2,500 different protestant denominations in the world today. And considering how many opinions even the least opinionated of us have, I imagine that number will continue to grow.
What is sad about this state of things is that the only unity a church has is only temporary. It can honestly be said that the only reason they exist is because they haven't yet figured out why they shouldn't. Is this really the way humanity was meant to function? This fracturing of society on the basis of opinion can be seen in our politics, or neighborhoods, even our families. There are clear lines drawn in the sand and if I happen to share a space with someone that's only because we have't yet gotten around to dragging our stick between us.
The second option seems better. There is a movement in protestantism towards more unity. Maybe its not new, I've only recently become aware of it. Unity is important--so important that we should pursue it whether we agree or not. In a recent conversation with a friend, he told me that he is fine if his pastor follows a different theological path than this own as long as it lines up for the most part. He knows what he knows and he is willing to accept that others may not be as far along the path as he is. And so, in "love", he accepts his less "immature" brother, hoping that one day he'll agree with him.
This isn't just my friend. Whole denominations have been built on this premise. And in the short term it works pretty well. Maybe some of those "immature" people even end up changing their minds and coming around to someone else's version of truth. But in reality the only way this can work is if everyone just stops talking about anything of any importance at all.
In Orthodoxy, which I will admit I am a part of so I may have some bias, they have a different approach to unity. The Unity of Acceptance and Tolerance looks to them like a whitewashed tomb. It is pretty on the outside. But in the heart, from which all things flow, there is pride and arrogance. In the Orthodox approach, unity begins and ends with humility. What I think about anything is not as important as what we think about anything. The rule of thumb is "all believers, everywhere and at all times". When it comes to theology, nobody gets to be creative, at least not outside the bounds of tradition. I am right to say that I live 2,000 years after Christ, I know him only through what has been taught to me by my church and what I read in scriptures written in a different language and culture than my own. And so my opinion does not actually carry a lot of weight.
As an American, that is a painful thought to bear, at least at first. We are taught from birth that our opinion about everything IS everything. I was asking my baby boy what he wanted to wear as soon as he was able to gesture towards one shirt or another. Why? Can it be possible that his thoughts about what onesie to put on that day has any bearing on what he actually should put on? Can my opinions about the deep things of God be any different?
Unity isn't a pipe dream. It is real and it is achievable. But it is also costly. It will cost every one of us our very lives. It is not an easy thing to consider another's point of view. It is risky. They may actually be right. Which would make me wrong. It would make me the less "mature" one. Maybe maturity isn't about being correct as much as it is being humble. Maybe unity isn't as much about not-fighting as much as it is about submitting. Maybe what our country needs from its churches is an example of actual unity. Of loving submission and care. Of humility.
For my part I will continue to say "I don't know" to nearly every political thought thrown at me. I will continue to play devil's advocate and stand up for the side that isn't present to defend themselves. And that's hard because I really do have an opinion and I really do think I'm more mature than you. But I also know that that kind of thinking isn't going to get us anywhere. And so I shall submit as best I can in the name of love. It is the only thing I can think of that will save us.

Deer Paths

2016-05-12T14:35:00.000-07:00

I am very tired tonight as I write this. Not sleepy, per se, but that deep weariness in your chest tired. The kind of tired you can push through, but only with a lot of sighing and occasionally staring off into the distance. There is rest in the near future. I can see it on the horizon. But for now I must push on.
It was a long day at work. And I have been doing push ups and pull ups, so that would explain why it feels so good to take deep breaths, to stretch out my chest. And of course I have 4 kids under 5 and a wife that is just as exhausted as I am by the end of the day. And there are so many dishes. And toys. And why does it take so long for kids to put on underwear?
As I was wondering what to write about tonight, it occurred to me that this deep down tired is something I have been feeling on a spiritual level as well. Spiritually tired.
I have always been interested in God. And I think I have always had a picture of what God needed to be if he was to be true. He must be loving. He must be good. If he was neither of these things, then even if he was real he was not someone I wanted to worship or even appease. And so as I learned more of my faith, the various approaches to it, the various argued doctrines and practices, I would try one and then the other, picking and choosing as I went.
I went for a hike by myself one time while camping with some friends. It was supposedly an established trail, but at some point I lost the trail and found myself following what was probably just a deer path. Instead of turning around though, I looked at my map and decided that I could probably just keep going and eventually run into where the trail should be. As I wandered the forest, I could see landmarks in the distance that helped me orient, I could see the lay of the land and compare it to the map on my phone, and above all, I just had this deep "feeling" that I was going the right way. This went on for about an hour as I climbed higher into the mountain. I would follow one deer path, then another that would fizzle out. Then I would backtrack a bit and keep going. Eventually I found myself in an open part of the forest on an unexpectedly flat ridge and thought maybe I had made a bad decision to keep going. I was just following animal paths, for crying out loud! And animals rarely care to go the same places I do. Just as I was considering giving up and turning around, I saw an actual deer trotting across my path up ahead. I stood still and he had nearly passed me when he realized I was standing there. And then he bolted. I jogged forward to watch him bound away and suddenly realized that while I had been following the paths of his people, he had been following the paths of mine. The trail had appeared out of nowhere and I immediatly knew where I was.
This is a great metaphor for my spiritual life so far. I knew where I was going. I had the landmarks of scripture and the good examples of the men and women I respected to follow. But I still just didn't know where I was. In the end, no matter how good I was at orienteering, no matter what my dying phone was telling me, I had never been to that forest before and I had NOTHING to tell me if I was on the right track. I mean, people did tell me I was on the right track. Or they argued that their track was better. But they were just as lost in that forest as I was. They had no more credentials, no more authority that I had. So where the hell was I? And where was that F'ing trail?
The problem with Protestant Christianity lies in the fact that they fought the wrong battle. In their desire to free themselves from the corruption of the Catholic Church, they decided that the only real authority they needed in their lives was the Scripture. Which would be fine if the Scripture was written for that purpose. But it is not. Rarely does it answer directly the question we want answers to. If we want to know about things like the Trinity, a foundational Christian doctrine, we must piece it together from random indirect references to it in books and letters that really aren't talking about it.
The battle was never about the authority of scripture. In fact, the Catholics themselves recognize that scripture is authoritative. Everyone does, actually. Scripture is the one thing we can point to outside of ourselves to give credence to whatever we're saying. The authority of scripture just isn't in question. Its the interpretation of it that is. Protestants claim that every person has the ability to read scripture and determine the Truth about God. They are constantly claiming things are "scriptural" and "Bible Based" as if their opinions about what the scriptures say is completley obvious. But its not obvious. That's why none of us agree with each other. We all read the same scripture and either copy what someone else says or come up with our own ideas. Solo Scriptura doesn't work. No matter how strongly I feel about whatever deer path I'm on, I don't know any more than any other bloke lost in the woods where it goes.
And then I found Orthodoxy. They have a Tradition of interpretation that can be traced back to the disciples of the disciples of Jesus himself. And there's the real revelation. Jesus says that to know the Father you must know him. He is the full revelation of God. Scripture, written by other people about Jesus may be very informative, but it is the person of Jesus who fully reveals who God is. And to think that I, 2,000 years later would be able to understand the person of Jesus better than anyone who came before me, even those who sat at his feet as children, that's the kind of arrogance that gets you really lost on the wrong side of the mountain. That's when I realized I was so tired. Tired of having to be right. Tired of realizing I was wrong and I needed to come up with a new way of seeing things. Tired of pretending like I had any idea where I was. I needed to see that the whole time I was following that deer path, the deer were following the actual trail. I thought I could get myself out of the woods, but what I needed to do all along was just look up and see the actual deer with enough humility to follow.
I am ready to submit to a Tradition. I am ready to say that maybe I don't know it all and can't figure it out all on my own. I am thankful that Jesus did not reveal God to his disciples and then leave the rest of us hanging, desperatly clawing meaning out of whatever scraps are left two centuries later. I am ready to admit that I'm lost and I need some guidance on where the trail is. I am ready to get out of these woods.

20/20

2016-04-28T14:20:00.000-07:00

When I was in 6th grade, I was told that I had failed an eye exam and would need to get glasses. I thought this was patently absurd. For one thing, I just didn't fail things. Granted, I never really tried to pass tests, but it wasn't that hard for me to get by without really working at. And I worked at that vision test. I squinted and leaned forward, but those damn letters were just too small.
The test and the test results did not convince me though. I insisted that the reason I couldn't see the board was because it was white chalk on a green background. There's no contrast! Everyone has problems seeing those colors. And the teacher writes so small. Maybe they should get an actual black board. Or one of those fancy new white boards I saw on TV (this was the eighties).
But the glasses were fitted and no classrooms were renovated. I was not immediately impressed by the improvement. Sure I could see better, but what was I seeing that I had previously been missing? Its not like I really cared what was happening across the street before. Now that I could see it I still didn't see why I needed to. And then I went to school.
I had not worn the glasses into class. They sat safely encased in the pleather case in my backpack. I wasn't ready to face my classmates through two pieces of glass. So when class started and the chalkboard began filling up, I slipped them on hoping no one would notice. And my world changed.
I had never before realized how much stuff decorated the walls of my classroom. I knew what all the posters said because I had stood before them at one point or another, but now I could see every single one of them from my seat in the middle of the classroom! And the chalk board! Crisp white lines formed perfectly legible words. I could see every dot over every i. I could see the pattern the teacher had wiped the board with the last time it was erased. I could even see the chalk in the tray--the chalk the teacher wouldn't even use any more because it was too small. I was suddenly seeing so many details about a place I had spent so much time and had never realized they were there. I must have spent the whole day just gawking around me at everything in the room. I probably looked like a fool. But I felt as if I had seen God.
That feeling of absolute astonishment at finally seeing something I had been looking at for so long has always stuck with me. To think the world exists a certain way, only to find out that nothing is as it seems is quite a trip. I recently read an article by Father Freeman that gave me a similar feeling. Actually, I lot of the things I'm learning as I journey towards Orthodoxy (even before I knew that was the likely destination) feel this way.
The article was about PSA--Penal Substitution Atonement theory. PSA is the dominant, dare I say only, theory of atonement in Protestant churches. Other theories exist, but at least as an Evangelical, they all border on heresy compared to this one. PSA states that our sin has caused us to be in debt of some kind towards God. "For the wages of sin is death", Paul says, so according to PSA, the sins we commit require us to die, or more accurately, spend eternity in the debtor's prison of Hell. The negative account can only be balanced out by the shedding of blood. And that blood has to not have debt of its own, or it won't be enough. Hence, Jesus had to die. His innocent blood paid our sin debt.
Since this is they way we've all been raised as evangelicals, most of us don't even question this. At least not very hard. Any serious inquiry is usually met with claims that you just don't have enough faith. But the theory is riddled with questions I've never been able to answer, despite faithfully believing it for so long. To whom is our debt owed? Why does God tell us to turn the other cheek, but cannot do so himself? Why does God tell us to forgive each other's debt without payment when he doesn't do so himself? Why does he have to kill his own son in order to fulfill a legal requirement that he himself set up? Why can't God be...God? Why can't he just do whatever he wants? Why can't he forgive without compensation-- especially when he tells us to do exactly that?
These questions were, to be honest, never quite expressed so bluntly in my evangelical days. But they always sat there at the back of my conscious, quietly troubling my soul. Like the fuzzy patches of color around the room in my pre-glasses days, they never really bothered me too much but also never let me forget they were there.
Orthodoxy presents a different story of Atonement. In their take on things, the real miracle in the story of salvation wasn't so much the death and resurrection, but the incarnation that made the death and resurrection possible in the first place. They see sin as apart from us. It may be something I do which is wrong, but it is also much more than that. It is a broken world, a twisted body, a weakened will. It is not me so much as it is a condition that I have. I am not my sin the way that I am not my Diabetes. Or my Cancer. These things govern my life in ways I wish they wouldn't, but they are not me. They are apart from me. I may struggle with them fight them, give in to them, but I am separate from them. (for the record, I do not actually have diabetes and am not aware of having cancer). Christ became Human. He gave up all it meant to be God and took on flesh. My flesh. And then he went through all of the sucky things in life that I have gone through, passed me by going into death itself before finally being resurrected. Scripture even says he "became sin for us". Jesus, the holy, immortal and sinless God became Sin for me. And after dying he was resurrected into life. He trampled down death by death. He became what we are so that we might become what he is.
Then he told us to take up our own cross and follow him. And so the Orthodox believe that our life as Christians should be one of continually dying to ourselves and to the world around us. We follow Christ into the grave because we know that our resurrection lies on the other side. This is the good news. That salvation is hard. But it is possible because Christ has led the way and he will take us to the other side.
When I was first introduced to Orthodoxy, I heard the story of a saint who on his deathbed claimed to be frightened by the prospect of dying and laying eyes on God. His fellow monks tried to pacify him, saying that since he had spent years repenting of his sin, surely if God would accept anyone He would accept him. But the saint replied that he "had not even begun repenting!" To my evangelical ears, this was a sad state to die in. As evangelicals we revel in our salvation. "Everything is permissible"! There is no more consequence for our action, at least not on a spiritual level. There is no reason to fear God because God never actually sees us. He only sees Jesus who has paid our debt and stands before us. To spend a lifetime repenting without the assurance of salvation is such a pity. Better to live in the victory that Christ has brought.
But in PSA, its not really a victory, is it? At least no more a victory than finally paying off those school loans or a house mortgage? And what about the part where God doesn't see you, he only sees Jesus? How sad is that? We now spend eternity hiding behind Jesus, pretending that we're not actually there? We never actually see God and he never actually sees us.
As I've come to understand the Orthodox view of salvation more, I see the continual repentance (and it is continual, nearly repetitive) in a different light. Because we are not our sin, because sin is a condition we live in, a sickness within ourselves, we repent not (just) as a confession of our wrong doing, but an acknowledgement of our situation. The Orthodox are like AA members who have been sober for thirty years. They have not touched alcohol for so long, but they still introduce themselves at every meeting (which they still go to) as "an alcoholic". Because they recognize that they still need saving. They may not be actually sinning, but the Sin is still there, threatening to pull them down at every turn. It still brings sorrow and pain. It still warps our view of the world around us in ways we aren't even aware of.
In this view of Sin, we can actually do what the Evangelicals say we should do-- rejoice in the victory that Jesus has brought-- while at the same time remain aware of the great peril we are still in. This is the Narrow Road that Jesus talks about (in my opinion, anyway). On one side lies the depth of arrogance and pride which comes when we live as if there are no more consequences. On the other lies despair and hopelessness when we fail to trust God to save us.
And this is how my world has changed in the last few years. I have put on a new set of glasses and cannot stop gawking at the world around me. Everything I see in a new light and when people talk about the things across the street, I wonder why they don't put on their glasses too. Leaving PSA behind for the Orthodox viewpoint has changed the way I read scripture, the way I relate to the people around me (especially the non-christians), they way I actively pursue God. I can honestly say that God is Love now. Those pesky fuzzy questions in the distance are not what I thought they were and the i's are finally dotted. I can finally see. May all of this lead one day to my seeing the very face of God!

Farewell

2016-04-10T13:27:00.000-07:00

This is the letter I sent to my former pastor before leaving for the Orthodox Church. I post it here in explanation, even if in hindsight I find it woefully lacking.

Pastor,
My wife said that today she told you we were moving to the Orthodox church. She then told me I had to write to you and explain why. Since you preached on mutual submission between husband and wife today, I am doing so, though I usually keep my thoughts to myself.
For a long time, much longer than we have been in this town and attending your church, I have had a feeling that something was missing in every church I attended. I came to realize after moving to this town that my misgivings weren't really with the particular churches I had attended--most of them were really good churches that I got a lot out of--but rather with evangelical Christianity in general. Something was missing, things just weren't fitting together for me theologically any more.
In college I had learned about Orthodoxy and the teachings I had picked up there have influenced me ever since. It is only recently I have realized that I was never going to find the kind of teaching I desperately wanted to receive from the churches I was attending. If I was going to bring Orthodox ideas into every discussion I had, maybe I should just be Orthodox? And so with that door passed through, I began the process of learning what I could before going farther and waiting for my wife to catch up to what I was seeing.
I do not know what you know of Orthodoxy, most Christians seem pretty ignorant of them or think they are just weird Catholics. That is not the case. I probably feel the same way about Catholicism that you do! Orthodoxy is a branch (they would say the main trunk) that extends all the way back to Jesus through the laying on of hands and a consistent theology. That cannot be said of any other church in history, even the Catholics. They adamantly proclaim that God is Love and their theology jives with that (I have trouble saying that about most protestant theologies). Their view of salvation and sin differs in significant ways from protestant theologies, but in my opinion is deeper, fuller, and more applicable to real life. They desperately want to know God and and the depths of His love. And they have 2000 years of experience training people to do so. Everything in Orthodoxy revolves around Love.
For example. In your sermon today, which for the most part was good, you said that in the event of a standstill between husband and wife, the husband has the final say. Let's ignore the simple logisitical problem that this gives the husband total domination over his wife--which I don't think you really believe, but there are those that do and practically speaking, you can't use this rule and mean otherwise. The real problem is that there is no Love in it. There is no love in authoritarianism and the use of force or rank is equally unloving. And I would bet that you have never actually played that card in your own marriage without some pretty negative results. Because it is not loving. Love never plays the power card. We can see this demonstrated by God himself. He loves us and wants to save us, but he never forces us. I often wondered why God wasn't more forceful in doing what is best for us. But he wants us to love him in return and you cannot force that kind of response truthfully. He must woo us subtly. He must play the part of the father waiting patiently for his son to return because if he does not, the son will never come back. He must play the part of the husband waiting for his cheating wife to return because if he does not she will never see him as someone she has harmed by her cheating--she will always be able to say, "See how controlling and manipulative he is? See how he throws his weight around?" This is the kind of love God and Jesus demonstrate for us. Completely self-sacrificing shame-bearing Love.
When God tells husbands to love their wives as Christ loves the church, he is asking them to take up their crosses and follow him in that kind of Love. Which means when you and your wife are at a standstill, it is the God-given responsibility of the husband to lay his own life down first. He must put his own opinions to death. He must put his own pride to death. He must submit himself to his wife willingly for her own sake the way that Jesus submitted himself to our will for our sake. That is love. Husbands do have something to answer for as the head of the household. But we will not be asked "why did you not control your woman?" We will be asked "Why did you not show your wife how to submit by submitting yourself? Why did you not show your wife how to apologize by apologizing first? Why were you not the first to be patient, kind, the first to change diapers and vacuum, why did you lord it over her?"
From a practical standpoint, this is way more strategic anyway. If you submit and she's right, then you saved yourself the embarrassment of messing things up. If she is wrong, then she will learn to trust your judgment the next time. By playing the Man Card, you only cause her to be resentful of you because you are always right or because you are too stupid to listen to reason and too prideful to give in.
You aren't the only pastor preaching this. I've never heard it preached another way, at least not in evangelical churches. So my complaint isn't against you specifically, but against all of evangelicalism and probably all of protestantism. And this specific example doesn't even touch the issues I have with solo-scriptura, the invisible church, the Forensic Model of Atonement, WWJD and more. I just am not an evangelical Christian anymore and its hard for me to worship in that environment knowing I am so different than everyone around me. Even my ideas of what worship really is have changed.
And so I am leaving for the Orthodox church. In them I have found friends and fellow believers. It is not an easy move, as they take their Christianity way more seriously than I've ever known possible. They seem to have such a fuller and deeper understanding of God and Man though, so I am willing to learn from them on other issues that are more foreign to me, like icons and Mary.
I hope I haven't offended you in this email. If so, forgive me. I am head-strong and prideful and have found it is safer for me to just not open my mouth than reveal myself to be so. Again, let's blame this on my wife, to whom I am submitting. There is so much more to my conversion than I can possibly relate in one (really loooonnnggg) email, so if you are interested in learning more I would love to talk more over beers or Cokes, whichever you prefer. You are welcome to try to convince me to stay Evangelical, I welcome the critique of my thoughts.
More than anything I just want to know God. I think you would say the same. If nothing else, please allow us to go with grace and love. We have heard some scary conversion stories and I would really like to look back on my time at your church with fond memories of understanding. I don't actually expect anything less from you, to be honest.
Thank you for the time we spent at your church. I will miss seeing friends there on Sunday and the love you have given our children. We may still be in and out for a while though. As I said, my wife is still a few steps behind me and I will not force her to follow. She would still like to attend your church from time to time.
With what I hope is Love,
ThatGuyFrodo

The pastor did try once to meet with me, but schedules did not work out. We heard it from a friend that he explained why we left because I "wanted something more liturgical".
Sigh.

No Longer Protestant

2016-02-22T13:08:00.000-08:00

I have been on a journey for many years. Maybe my whole life. For as long as I can remember I have desired to know God. Maybe it was because of the family I was raised in, a good, God-loving family in a evangelical church. My dad was basically a pastor, even if he wasn't officially one for most of my childhood. My mother's family has a long tradition of protestant christian service: all of my aunts and uncles are in some form of ministry. I went to a Christian college and studied to become a pastor. I spent over a year of my life overseas on mission trips. And through it all there has been one goal: to know God.
There are parts of me that are almost certainly a product of my family. Would I even be a Christian today had my family not started me in that belief system? We also have a long tradition of camping (the summer camp kind of camping, but also just tent camping) on both sides of my family. Without any intention of getting here, I find myself working at a camp now as my career. There are also certainly parts of me that are a product of my culture. I am very individualistic. I strive to be happy, comfortable and free. I tend to see the world in very concrete terms. So much so that even my spirituality has been a struggle at times, even if I couldn't ignore it in the end. And there are parts of me that come from my religious heritage, a evangelical protestant church. I love to define God and all that is spiritual. I have a strong commitment to the scriptures and a conviction that the Spirit will lead us all into the Truth. I know that I am saved through faith alone, by grace alone through Christ alone.
I know that my readers will read those traits and think of all of them positively. They are some of the things that are central to being a Maki, being an American, being a Christian. But my view of many of those things is changing, has been changing for a long time. I don't think I would disagree with any of them yet, but what I mean when I say them doesn't mean the same thing that my protestant friends and family mean anymore. I know this because as I've tried to explain some of the things I've been thinking to them, I get nods of agreement to things they shouldn't be agreeing to and warnings of doom for things they do not understand. It is my hope, through this blog that I will clarify some of these things, if only for myself.
For lack of any ideas on where else to start, I will start with the thing that has been nagging at me for pretty much forever. Well, maybe not forever. But for at least as long as I've been learning Christian theology. I believe that was the starting point because at that point I started having to wrestle with the Truth of Scripture, as it was taught by my church. While I don't remember voicing it very often, there seemed to be a gap between what we wanted to believe about God and what our theology actually stated about God. What I mean by that is that I was always taught that God is Love. That's a verse right out of scripture and I don't know any Christians of any flavor that would disagree with it (though I imagine that they exist). What I learned in theology though, didn't seem like God was Love. It usually sounds like this: "God is Love, but he is also Just". Which I guess is technically true, but isn't from a Bible verse. And the rest of scripture was very difficult to understand in light of a loving God as well. The God that was taught to me through my church's interpretation of the scripture wanted to be loving, but was held back by his sense of Honor. His devotion to justice is more powerful than his devotion to Love. And ultimately what God really wants to be is to be recognized as the greatest, the biggest, the best. And so he chose favorites, destroyed civilizations and threatened doom upon anyone who would threaten his Glory--all the while really really wanting to love us. Fortuantly he had a plan that would meet his Justice and it involved sacrificing his son. Which, don't get me wrong, is a very loving thing to do. But he only had to do it in order to satisfy the demands of his own pride, which seems strange since his own Son taught us to get rid of all our pride. In fact what Scripture teaches us about Love, and it does so quite explicitly, can't be applied to the Father. The Father does not love self-sacrificially. He only loves conditionally, as defined by his Justice. And to make it worse, the only one he's willing to sacrifice is his own son.
Ok, I'm characterizing a little bit. Please trust me when I say I know all the answers to these lines of thought. God is the only being in the universe for whom pride and Glory are ok for because he is the ultimate being, the creator of all. That kind of makes sense to me I suppose. His justice is important. A lovey-dovey god who just lets us walk all over him would be impotent and embarassing. I agree. Sacrificing your son is a kind of self-sacrifice. Well, I suppose so. In any case, I get it. I'm trained to be a pastor, remember? But it just never set right with me.
And that's where everyone is going to jump all over me. "It just doesn't seem right?" they'll ask. "You can't base your beliefs about God on what you feel," they'll smirk. But what else am I to do? I know quite rationally that things I think quite rational now are the very things I thought quite irrational not that long ago. So I can't trust my rationality. "Faith", they'll say. But faith in what? Why would I place my faith in something I just can't quite want to believe is true? Would that even be true faith? Maybe that gut feeling I have that God must be better than that, that ticking in my conscience that the universe just cannot work that way, that intuition that there is something I'm missing, maybe that's the Holy Spirit? Can anyone really say otherwise? And why should I not want there to be something better? What if salvation were something so much more than just going to Heaven? What if God really does love everyone--and not just love as in have good feeling towards, but actively and successfully pursuing their benefit? What if being a Christian actually played out the way we say it does? What if it actually played out better?
Never fear though. The gut feeling has motivated me, driven me in my search for the Truth, but it has not always sent me down the right path. It has pushed me, but I have had to use my reason and a sense of humility to make any progress (and the humility does not come easily). I hope to continue this blog with more reasoned arguments. But you should know the thing that started it all. A deep-in-my-gut feeling that something just isn't right.

Fear and Trembling

2015-09-10T12:51:00.000-07:00

I never set out to be a professional ropes course guy. It just kind of happened as a side-effect of my other jobs at camp. I was (and like to think I still am) pretty responsible with an engineering brain and a perhaps too cautious nature and these traits make for a good ropes course manager. When running ropes courses, one of the main topics to come up is fear. Fear of heights, fear of putting on a harness that reveals parts of our waistlines we'd rather ignore, fear of looking silly or not even knowing why--just being afraid. As a facilitator who has had to spend a lot of time up in the trees working with people, dealing with my own fear has been a large part of the job. And I'm proud to say that 10 or so years into the game, I'm still afraid of ropes courses.
I've had two kinds of people work for me as facilitators: good ones and bad ones. Richie was a bad one. He had no fear at all. It was impressive watching him work his way through the trees, never hesitating, never acting like he was on a thin log 40 feet in the air. Casual and cool. But as a fellow facilitator, it was scary to watch. He would frequently release his safety line if it got tangled, exposing himself to gravity should his grip suddenly fail. He would allow his participants to launch themselves off the platforms in ways not approved by his training, exposing them to danger he had not anticipated. He showed no respect for his training or the policies put into place and was a hazard to himself and everyone around him. He should not have worked for me as long as he did.
On the other hand, Angela was quite the opposite. She could not stop thinking about the terrible things that could go wrong up there. She worked hard to make the course as idiot-proof as possible, so there was no way a simple uneducated mistake would result in a participant injury. She stuck to the procedures and held others to that standard. She never lost that fear of what could go wrong. But she never let it stop her either. She was afraid, but that fear guided her, protected her and made her one of my best facilitators.
The scriptures tell us that Fear is the beginning of Wisdom. I think all too often in evangelical circles we make God out to be someone who should not be feared at all. He is loving and kind and gracious, you don't need to tremble before him (thanks to Jesus). But the scriptures don't talk about God that way. Everyone who meets God face to face is very very afraid. They drop to their knees, begging for mercy as they suddenly realize that not only could God wipe them out with a word, but probably should. The scriptures also describe the God that we want to have: a good, kind god who has gone out of his way to reunite us with himself. But how do we reconcile a god who should be feared with a god who should not be feared?
Perhaps fear itself isn't the whole issue. Perhaps it is also our approach to it. One should have a fear of God, for sure. To have no fear is to be like a toddler who has never been allowed to climb. No climbing means no falling. No falling means you don't even realize why you should be afraid. Ignorance does not make you safe. On the other hand, fear can be paralyzing if left unchecked. So many people are afraid to climb up into the ropes course because they are afraid they are going to fall. But it is only because they do not know the equipment, they do not understand that it is nearly impossible to be injured falling from the course because of the systems put into place. Fear of God is the same way. It is a fool that does not fear God. Even if one does not believe in god, they must admit that should god actually exist they should fear him. But fear is the beginning of Wisdom. And wisdom is the equipment that keeps you safe while falling. Knowledge of him, his motivations, his characteristics, his story tempers the fear. The fear still exists, but it does not control. It keeps us from losing what he has given us while the wisdom draws us closer to him. We tremble as we approach the throne, but we still approach it.
I love my God. I am enamored by him. But I also fear him in the same way I fear falling from the trees. It does not keep me from climbing ever closer to my goal, but it keeps me safe along the way.

Mind the Gap

2015-08-31T12:38:00.000-07:00

Recently I went bike riding with a seven year old. The nice thing about riding with a seven year old is that you might not be that good, but your bike is probably better than his and you probably have a bit more experience, so you come out feeling pretty good about yourself. Pretty soon he'll be eight and I'll feel old, but for now I feel pretty awesome.
At one point in the ride I found myself on a trail strewn with fairly large rocks. I know from when I was seven myself that if my tire were to even brush up against one of those rocks the wrong way, it would take my tire one direction while I went the other. But I also remember what a friend who rode dirt bikes told me. He said the secret was to never take your eyes off the path you want to your tires to take. And so I did. I focused on the gaps, moving my eyes quickly from one safe passage to another. I could feel the rocks pulling at my attention. I wanted to see the thing I wanted to avoid. I could also feel myself wanting to forget about the rocks entirely. This section of trail was beautiful and I was missing the scenery. But I looked steadfastly at the gaps and felt my muscles fight me. It seemed as if I could not make such sharp turns, that my tires would slip out from under me. I could not seem to make my arms turn the handle bars. But even as I watched the gap, I watched my wheel go through it. Without understanding how it had happened, I had passed through unscathed.
I was raised to be a good evangelical Christian. Evangelical Christians are taught that they are terrible sinners, completely unworthy of God's love. And yet, we have God's love. We have been saved from our own sinfulness and do not live in a state of hell. Life is full of promises made to us by God. Promises that we will be free of sin, saved from hell, able to live a life worthy of the divine princes and princesses that we are. I was taught that the best way to escape the bondages of sin was to learn to see myself for the new creation that I am through Christ. Since there is no condemnation for us, according to Paul, then we should not condemn ourselves. Since God has removed us from our sins, as far as the east from the west, then we should not dwell on them. Confess them, surely. But move on. Heaven awaits!
Ever since college though, I have always been interested in the orthodox church. They had answers to so many questions I had, inconsistencies I saw in my own tradition. Of course there were many things I couldn't agree with. But on the whole I felt they seemed to understand things in a way I did not and I wanted to know more.
One of the things my orthodox friends are proud of (if I can say that) are their saints. The orthodox place as much emphasis on repentance as evangelicals place on grace. They would tell me with glee in their voices how some of their saints would live what we would consider nearly perfect lives but cry out on their deathbeds that they had not even begun to repent. Since as an evangelical repentance was an experience I had done once but never dwelled on my curiosity was peaked.
But at the same time a life of constant repentance has very little appeal to it. Is that the life we were meant to live by our heavenly Father? At the same time how can I ever truly stop repenting? I was tired of the whitewashed life of the evangelical, pretending as if everything was all right.
I've decided that, as many other aspects of Christianity, this is a matter of balance between two extremes, either of which is a rock or a hard place (if you will). I think a life lived only with promises accepted is the life of a spoiled child. How can the prodigal son ever forget that he was the prodigal son? And yet, it was surely not the wish of the father that he remain in the pig sty. He welcomed him back as a son, not as a charity case.
And so now I find myself on a path towards a life of either unceasing repentance, groveling for the forgiveness I know I do not deserve, and hopeful carefree acceptance of my salvation, so comfortably happy in my father's house I forget where I was just yesterday. On the one hand I find myself trying to earn favor with God through my pleas for forgiveness and never fully accepting it. On the other I trample the price my god paid for my salvation under my comfy slippers as I flaunt my freedom before him and the world.
The goal of course is neither a comfortable life nor even an honest one. The goal is God. And God is in the gap. If I can just keep my eyes on him I will pass through. Do not be tempted to look at the stone which will take me down. Do not be tempted to gaze upon the lovely scenery I am surely missing as I barrel down this trail. Focus on the gap because that is where salvation lies. And somehow, though my arms will resist, I know that somehow my wheel will turn and find its way there.

I Do

2015-07-15T08:17:00.000-07:00

I was asked to conduct a wedding of two good friends. This is what I said to them.

There are many reasons to get married. Taxes, convenience, companionship, help with the chores, a warmer bed. But there is an even better reason that all of those. God made man in the garden and called him good. But then he said it was not good for him to be alone. And so he created Eve. God created us to be in relationships, both with each other and with him. Marriage is the finest relationship we can have on earth. No other relationship costs us so much, puts us at so much risk of hurt and failure, and no other relationship holds such reward. I want to share with you the secret to marriage.
I guess the secret really isn't that secret because its pretty much the central story of christianity: That christ died for us, gave up his life for us. We are told in the scriptures that we are Christ's bride, that he looks forward to the day that this day represents: the day we are joined to him eternally and forever more despite all we have intentionally and unintentionally done to drive him away.
And that is the secret. Its dying to yourself. In marriage you devote yourself to the other--and the more fully you devote your self, the more you will find yourself in the other. In some ways marriage is very unamerican. It is very anti-individual. I don't have choices so much as we have choices. I don't have a future, we have a future. There are two ways you can handle that. The first is to imagine some puritanical ideal of what a husband or wife should look like and try your best to ignore yourself and fit into the mold that you've seen or heard or been taught. That way will only lead to depression and distance because you are not marrying the ideal the other is striving to be. You are marrying Sam and Katie. The other is to live completely as Sam and Katie, as two people who are sharing a house and a bank account and who like to hang out a lot. This too will lead no where, because it is not marriage. Marriage is the giving of your Self to each other. And that means honesty and generosity and forgiveness and always assuming the best of each other. When you give your selves to each other, you will find yourselves reflected back. Your true self. Because man and woman were not meant to be alone.
But it gets better. Not only do you find yourselves in marriage when you give your selves to each other, but you also find God himself there. Because marriage follows the pattern that Jesus laid out for us on the cross, it is the best way for two people to experience the love of God on this earth. There is no better picture of God's love for us--his unearned, unending, committed, self-sacrificing, self-giving love--than the relationship between a husband and wife. If you both truly want to see God on this earth, love each other as God has loved you and you will see his true reflection beaming out of your partner so much it will hurt.

Platitudes

2014-11-10T21:01:00.000-08:00

"You simply need to have more faith" --a well meaning friend.

I have always been that guy who asked the tough questions in Sunday School.

"Why would God allow people to be born if he knew that he wouldn't choose them for salvation and then punish them for being what they were born to be?"

"Why did God wait 6,000 years to bring a messiah?"

"If God won't remove this sin from my life, then what exactly am I being saved from?"

They are tough questions. And I have wrestled with them for as long as I can remember having rational thoughts about anything. Sometimes the questions have brought me to tears. Sometimes they have led me away from where I wanted to be. Sometimes they have sat on the back burner for years before I even realized they were there. I have held my devotion ransom to get answers. I have yelled and sneered. I have begged and pleaded. But whatever my tactic, I have always asked.

That is why it is so frustrating when a well meaning friend told me yesterday, "You just need to have more faith." We had gotten to the point in the discussion where they couldn't answer me anymore. The truth they were trying to get me to accept was illogical. It made God into a twisted monster. It didn't allow him to be Love he must also be Just and for some reason those two things are not compatible. And when I asked them to explain why this wasn't so, they patiently explained to me that it is a "mystery".

Now I'm all for mysteries. I love mysteries. I think the evangelical church could do with a few more Divine Mysteries. But a logical fallacy is not a mystery. Its a problem. And problems need to be solved.

"Oh, but you are seeking after Human wisdom. The Wisdom of God is not something man can understand."

Phooey.

The "Wisdom of God" is Jesus. Jesus is the revelation of God to Man. He is the embodiment of all Divine Wisdom--embodied in human flesh. I don't expect to understand God fully any time in the near future. In fact, I'm looking forward to plumbing the endless depths of His beauty and fullness for the rest of Eternity. But God has gone to great lengths to reveal himself to us. He spent 30 years as one of his own creation demonstrating to us who He is. And this follows 6,000 years of revelations to his people, and precedes the indwelling of his own Spirit within us to teach and guide and transform us. To simply pass off difficult questions as being above our pay grade seems rather ungrateful.

Which brings me back to the original helpful suggestion. "You need to have more faith." Faith in what, exactly? Faith that the endless parade of sermons I've heard have been completely accurate? Faith that my branch of Christianity is the center around which all other branches revolve? Faith that the codifying theological statements made by men just as endowed with the Holy Spirit as I am are flawless? Which men shall I choose? Which translation should I choose? Which denomination? How many more branches does the protestant branch need to have before we realize that maybe we are the problem?

I will tell you what I have faith in. Or rather, Who I have faith in. Whenever I ask these questions, I expect to get an answer. Maybe not now and maybe not one I was expecting. But an answer is inevitable. I believe this with all of my being because I worship a God who reveals himself to us. Who is a Person--the Ultimate Person--not a doctrinal statement. I seek after God Himself and he has promised me that I will find him. I would not be the first to sacrifice something to gain Him. And to that end I will hold nothing dear, not even my own theology.

I have faith in God. And like Job, like Hannah, like Isaiah and like Paul I will beg and plead and question and argue and grapple with my understanding of Him until I know Him.

And that, my friend, is the kind of faith that you should have too.

God Is...

2014-02-02T20:37:00.000-08:00

There are three ideas about God and myself that have shaped my relationship with him over the years. The first one is this:

God...

...is...

...wait for it...

...a person.

Boom.

Mind blown, right?

Its way more profound than it sounds though. In fact, it sounds at first like something so simple I shouldn't have to say it at all. But that's what makes it so life-changing. I actually need to say it.

See, I like to talk about God. He has been a cosmic problem I have been trying to wrap my mind around since I was a little kid and I thought I could go over my parents' heads and ask him for a cookie (he said "no", just like they did). I've spent countless hours dissecting, proving and disproving, explaining, and reading about who God is and why he's done the things he's done. For instance:

How can God be both Just and Loving?

How can I harness the power of prayer?

Why does he do such mean things?

The list goes on. And a simple statement like "God is a person" certainly doesn't answer them outright. But remembering that God is a person will most certainly shape the answer.

For whatever reason, it is easy for us humans to relegate others to the world of material objects. Just listen to people having even a civil conversation about the president and you'll quickly discover that they know virtually nothing about him on personal level. Persons are much more simple and much more complicated than we ever give them credit for. Who of us can really explain our own motivations for a decision much less someone else's? And yet at the same time when we actually take the time to get to know them, we find there are things in their past that make those decisions at least partway explainable.

When we took our foster parent classes, we learned that being a foster parent can be really hard because most foster kids are, well, damaged. They tend to be rebellious, unloving, emotionally distant and we should be prepared for some really weird and upsetting behaviors. We all cowered in our seats, wondering why they were telling us this. Then they told us why. Because nearly every foster kid is in the system because a lot of bad stuff has happened in their lives. They come from broken, often abusive homes. They've been hurt badly and the reason they act the way they do is because that's the only way they know how to deal with all the crap. Suddenly our perceptions of them turned from something to be feared to something to be loved because we were reminded that they are not just "youths", but they were people. Like us.

I'm not sure comparing God to a broken child is quite the metaphor I want to use all the time, but I think God is the same way. I think there is a reason he has always explained himself to us using personal and relational metaphors. God is the king and we are his subjects. God is the shepherd and we are his sheep. God is the father and we are his children. God is the groom and we are his bride.

So, you could say that God is like the space shuttle and we like an ant, crawling over the heat shield tiles without a clue as to the power beneath us. But God is much more like a firefighter, rushing into a burning building to save the puppy of a small child, who is us. It isn't entirely wrong to say that God is a power that can be harnessed through earnest prayer and a healthy dosage of faith. But it is so much more accurate to say that God is our father who wants us to grow up and have an inner strength like his own one day.

When God becomes a person in our minds, the questions either get easier to answer or don't even apply anymore.

Can a loving person even be loving without being just?
Maybe we should talk about prayer the same way we talk about good conversation. First rule? Find out about the other person.
My two year old boy probably wonders why his dad is so mean sometimes. But I know that if I'm not "mean" now, then the police will be mean later on if he keeps throwing pointy objects at people. Maybe our father in heaven acts the same way.

God has always hated idols because they reduce him to a mere thing. They oversimplify, suggesting that he is completely knowable and understood. Understood things are easily manipulated. We've always liked idols for the same reasons.

But God is not completely knowable and understood, any more than any of us are (at least by each other). God is a person, and being in his image, so are we. To truly understand him, we must look past our logic rules, doctrine statements, and misguided metaphors. We must get to know him personally. We must try to understand the universe from his point of view. We must get to know his history, his motivations for why he acts, his likes and dislikes. And above all, we must allow him to be mysterious, just as we allow each other to be that way.

If our own relationships are any sign of how great a challenge it is to truly know another person, then we know we can easily spend eternity plumbing the depths of the personality on which all others are based on. And if that's the case, then for all intents and purposes, I've only just shaken his hand and learned his name. This is a conversation that is going to make for a very long, pleasant evening.

Messy Theology

2012-09-11T22:35:00.001-07:00

We have been watching a new show on Hulu lately. It is called "Rev" and tells the story of a small town Church of England vicar who is now in charge of an inner city London church. Being a (sort of) Preacher's Kid and having studied to be a pastor myself, I can relate to many of the main character's difficulties. I can remember situations that I or my father have had to deal with as each show progresses: drug-addled beggars at the door, well-meaning but slightly embarrassing lay workers, a bishop that seems to working for a corporation rather than a church-these could all be characters from my own life.

But there are some big differences as well. The church of England, assuming they are portrayed correctly (and when I think of how my own faith is portrayed on TV, I doubt it), comes at their faith with a very different perspective. And this intrigues me almost more than the similarities. Where as my faith tradition (conservative evangelicalism) tends to lean towards an unthinking acceptance of the cold hard Truth (i.e. hell is not only real, but you should be happy about it), the church of England takes the opposite approach to truth. In this latest episode, the vicar allows a Muslim children's club to use the church to teach prayer classes because they lost their space at the community center. He is impressed by their strong moral stance, their surety about right and wrong and decides to try a bit of it himself. He organizes a strike against a gentleman's club which is due to open across the street from the parish school (he being the only one to even think that that is a bad idea, though he isn't quite sure of it himself) and struggles through the whole episode with the feeling that he is being judgmental, that who is he to say that enjoying dancing naked ladies on stage is wrong and praying for some sort of moral certitude like his Muslim friends.

I wouldn't even want to hear what the leaders of my tradition would say to such an episode. It would be full of appalled looks, astonished speech, and vehemence against such moral emptiness. I watched a movie once with a friend and his father in which a teenage boy and girl had to face the reality that they were pregnant. The father spent half the movie sneering and saying things like "that's what you get for sleeping around" and "maybe next time wait for marriage"-completely missing the redemptive way the boy decided to give up his football career to make things right and be there for his new family.

I finished the episode feeling like I didn't know what to think. On the one hand, I cannot relate to a faith that cannot see what is wrong with a woman stripping for a living...on the other I am disgusted by an approach to theology and morality that is devoid of understanding, love or humility. I feel there must be a middle road somewhere between the two extremes, one in which I can act righteously, but not arrogantly. One where I will not be frozen in doubt, but will still be flexible enough in my understanding to continue to grow and change.

I like to think I know what I believe, but am willing to admit that what I believe may be wrong. In fact it has been wrong for most of my life. If what I believe now is the closest I've come to understanding Truth, then I've been a heretic all along since I've never understood things like I do at this moment. But on the other side of that coin, the side this episode made me see, I must be willing to act on what I believe, to not be frozen by doubt. Which shouldn't be as hard as it sounds because I know that if I am confronted with the chance that I am wrong, I will be able to grow from it and change the way I act. The humility of theology enables the boldness of action. The boldness of action checks the humility of theology.

Of course it isn't as clean as that. It never is. I am actually quite arrogant about my theological humility and never as bold as I would like. But if the house ain't messy, it's because nobody lives there. And I'd like to think there is an awfully big Somebody living in this house.

Season's Greetings

2011-12-16T07:17:00.000-08:00

This Christmas feels a little different than Christmases in the past. There’s a little more excitement, a little more anticipation of what I’ll be getting than there has been for a long time. It’s not because I have no idea what my wife is getting for me or how many presents will be under the tree. Whatever it is will be will be less than $30 and probably add up to approximately four gifts—all of this stipulated by the Maki Family gift exchange list and budgetary requirements. Christmas hasn’t held much anticipation for me since my teen years when I learned to play it cool like my parents. That and the evolution of family gift giving policies designed to hold back the materialism of our culture have helped to make Christmas happy, joyful, family-oriented and fattening but have severely limited the anticipation of what’s to come. But this year is different because this year I’m anticipating a newborn son.

I can’t help but feel that this puts me in a somewhat unique position when it comes to considering what Christmas means. After all, the anticipation of a coming baby was basically what the Christmas story is about. Almost. There’s something that Mary and Joseph knew about their baby that ups their anticipation to heights I’m not sure I will ever relate to. Jesus wasn’t just the next piece of their family, a continuation of their family lines, a step up in society and economic status, a child who would grow up to be someone they could be proud of. Mary and Joseph knew that their newborn son was going to be the Messiah. The Savior. Of the World.

Mary and Joseph spent the first Christmas wondering about what was to come. What kind of man would this Messiah be? How would he save them? Would his people finally be free of Roman oppression? Would he make their fields more productive, their armies stronger, their people more respected in the world? Would there be war or would he conquer peacefully? Would they all become rulers or would there be no one else left to rule? What will the world be like when he is done?

I am sure the anticipation of all these things kept Joseph and Mary, the shepherd and the wise men awake with excitement for many nights that first Christmas. But in these days of corporation-driven celebrations and adult sensibilities we don’t find ourselves anticipating Christmas very often. For us Christmas is a time of remembrance, a time of looking back and being thankful for what God did that day. Maybe that’s why God orchestrated for Christmas to be so close to our New Year. Because the New Year still brings that sense of wonder of what’s to come. It’s the end of the old and the beginning of something else. Something that may be more of the same, but just might be gloriously different as well.

I know there are those whose collars ruffle when others wish them a “Happy Holidays” instead of a “Merry Christmas”, but maybe the two holidays together come close to what the first Christmas was really like. Christmas wasn’t a memorial, it was the day everything changed and the world became a new place. What hopes will be fulfilled this next year because of Christmas? What wars will cease, what sorrows will be quenched, what pain will be soothed because of Christmas?

As for me, I will be laying awake at night during the holidays wondering what kind of person my son will become and what kind of father I will be. May your nights be more restful than mine but may you also experience a sense of wonder at what kind of person you will become this year and what kind of Father our God has always been. And may you have a merry Christmas—and a Happy New Year.

Death and Taxes, Minus the Taxes

2011-09-18T08:45:00.000-07:00

Last week I was asked to be the speaker at a camp that was being run by my coworker. I didn't want to. I actually kind of like public speaking, but public speaking about the things of God has always been something I've avoided if I could. And so I had, at least up until then.

My wife, of course, has been saying I should do something like this for nearly as long as we've been married. And then my boss suggested to my coworker that maybe I would be a good speaker for his camp. And then it turns out there's no money in the budget to hire a speaker anyway and I'm already on the payroll and nobody else really wants to do it either and, well, there's this little part of me that actually kind of wants to do it to and so it was just a matter of time. I pretended to be "considering" it for as long as I could so at least I didn't have to feel committed and then gave in.

It went well. It went really well, actually. And, after I had pushed through the agonizing torture of preparing a talk (someone once likened it to birth pains and while I won't know those personally I think its a good analogy), I even kind of enjoyed it.

I bring this up because yesterday I read Donald Miller's blog and the article was entitled "The Best Writing Advice I’ve Ever Received". You should read it for yourself because its as well written as any of Don's stuff, but I'll sum it up for you now: Love your reader.

Now if I had read that a month ago, I think I would have thought it was a great piece of advice and stuck it in my Reservoir of Wise Things I Heard Someone Say One Time. But it was yesterday, and it hit me a little differently. See, those talks I did for that camp were on the topic of Love being the greatest commandment. And I took the opportunity to go into detail about what it actually means to love and how hard it is to love. I'll sum up my talks for you too: Love means dying to yourself.

So this idea has been simmering in my mind for nearly 24 hours now. To be a good writer (or speaker) I need to die to myself if it means my readers and listeners will benefit. Which is true. I never actually want to write, I only want to have written. And those 2 days spent preparing my talks in earnest were torture. There were so many things I wanted to do besides locking myself in an empty meeting room and hashing my way through what is a much more difficult topic that you'd expect and making it relevant to people 20 years younger than myself. It may sound a little melodramatic, but for those two days I felt like a part of me was dying. The part that didn't want to work this hard, the part that didn't want to be embarrassed if I messed up, the part that remembered the critical comments I received on my sermons back in college, the part that always harbors that flicker of doubt that I actually know anything about anything.

Like I said, the talks went very well. The kids went home after the final talk and actually shared their hearts with each other in a way that their leaders were still in awe over at breakfast the next morning. I have to be honest when I say that I was a little surprised by the results of it. I only share it here because it still seems like something that happened to someone else rather than to me. But maybe I shouldn't be so surprised. Isn't it written somewhere that love never fails? And that what greater love can there be than that someone dies for someone else?

And so I come to the reason I started writing this particular piece in the first place. I was contentedly reading my book, drinking my tea and waiting for my wife to come home. But in the back of my mind I just kept remembering my mother calling me nearly every time she reads my blog to tell me how much it meant to her. How Jesse comments on nearly every post and has always been an encouragement to me. How I hardly ever write anymore even though it seems like it brings other people such joy. How all I really wanted to do right then was just read my book and drink my tea. Getting up and turning on the computer felt just a little like death.

So I shall leave you with this question. It is actually the same question I posed to my campers just last week, though I am only just now realizing that I have been asking it of myself ever since then. What is it that stands between you and being a loving person? What part of you needs to die so that you can bring joy to someone else?

I haven't fully nailed it down for myself just yet, but I am confident in this: that there is One who will not fail to complete my transformation from the selfish person I am now to the loving person I was meant to be. Even if he has to do it one small little death at a time.

Inter Romanorum quod VCR

2011-08-24T08:38:00.000-07:00

I'm still writing, just not very often unfortunately. Here is a blog entry I wrote for the camp I work for:

Yesterday, as I was deep in concentration over some new problem that had cropped up in our soon-to-be-released redesigned website, Laura came in to ask a favor.“There’s a family here to visit the grounds and I need someone to take them around,” she asked. “You’re the only one available.”Generally, it takes me a few minutes to switch to people mode when I’ve been coding web pages all day, but when the woman who hands you your check every other week asks a favor…well…

The family turned out to be from Utah and they had come all the way to Prescott for a whirlwind one day tour of all that was special to grandpa when he lived here as a boy. Grandpa himself was leading the tour and from the smile on his face as we climbed into the golf cart I could tell this was going to be a fun trip.

Our first stop was the Chapel. After a family picture outside the door, he stepped inside and began describing in detail how it had looked so long ago.“There were pews and the front was on the end, over here.There was a banner on the wall that said ‘I can do all things through Christ’ above the stage. And I was sitting right here when I gave my life to the Lord.” He was standing right under the left projector, surrounded by chairs facing the wrong way and staring at a blank, banner-less wall, but you could tell that the decision he’d made so long ago on that very spot hadn’t changed at all.

Now I was born in the ‘70’s, so when people talk about coming to camp in 1948, it falls into that realm of history sometime after the Romans, but before the VCR.And the difference between that time and this one seems like an impossibly long time.But as we continued the tour (his level of excitement rising to an almost giddy level when he discovered his cabin is still—barely—standing), I was reminded of something a pastor once said to me.“I’ve made a lot of decisions in my life, starting from a very young age.What I was going to be, where I was going to live, what I was going to do.But there is only one decision that has stuck with me for all these years: the decision to follow Christ.I don’t know how, but I am who I am because of that decision.”

Like I said, I’m working on a new web site.We just built a new dining hall.We’ve got grandiose plans to make this place as unrecognizable in another 60 years as it is now compared to back then.But nothing excites me more than this:that when my own childhood joins the Roman Empire in ancient history, my work here will have helped people know the One Who Never Changes and who will still be loving me.

Peachy, You Might Even Say

2011-05-01T22:33:00.000-07:00

Montgomery Bartholomew Sodinsky III loves peaches. And not just peaches by themselves, but anything containing peaches. Peach ice cream, peach smoothies, peach candy, peach soda, peach air freshener, peach shampoo--he even sliced up peaches and laid them on his steak one time. (He insisted that it was delicious, but his wife is inclined to disbelieve him since he has never tried it again).

At this very moment, in fact, he is eating a peach. A very juicy peach. And this is pleasent for two reasons. One, it is a peach. A very juicy peach, his favorite kind. Two, it is a celebration peach. For Montgomery Bartholomew Sodinsky III has just finished his fence. Monty (as anyone with anything to do this afternoon would rather call him) has just moved into this house with his new wife. The house is exactly the kind of house that most newly married young couples dream of: quiet neighborhood, green lawn, two car garage, new carpet. The backyard was not finished though, in Monty's opinion, because the well manicured back yard is not fenced in. It backs up to a national forest and the former owners had enjoyed the idea that their backyard stretched for miles and miles. Not Monty. A backyard isn't really your backyard until nobody else can get there. So up went the fence. And since Monty was the kind of guy who hated to pay someone to do things that he could do himself, he was the one that put it up.

And so, standing back and admiring his handiwork, he takes the last very juicy bite out of his celebratory peach (which was preceded by a regular peach and would probably be followed by one as well) and throws the pit over the fence into the forest.

Well, lots of stuff happens after that, far more things than this story has time to tell, even if many of those things are worth telling. There is a funny moment when Monty's wife goes into the backyard just before Monty comes home and she comes back in after he's gone upstairs to bed thinking she'll be home later. So she stays up all night in the recliner waiting for him while he sleeps soundly upstairs. And then there is a sad moment when Monty's dog finally curls up in front of the fireplace for the last time and is buried in the backyard. But none of these stories are important to us here in this story, so they will have to wait for another time.

What is important to this story is that peach pit that Monty threw over the fence so long ago. It has done very well for itself in the passing years, having landed in a rather lucky place of good soil and light and is now a strapping peach tree with wide branches, brilliantly green leaves and--most importantly--very juicy peaches. Monty noticed the tree a little while back when it had just started to peek over the fence into his backyard. He didn't realize what it was at first, but as a few more years passed he started smelling his favorite smell every fall and began to be suspicious. It was only last year that he realized what he had just beyond his fence. A Very Juicy Peach Tree. The day he discovered it has been marked on his calendar and is celebrated each year with a peach pie. An additional peach pie, that is.

The problem Monty has now is that even though the peach tree is so close, he cannot get to it easily. Everyone else on his street have fences as well, so to get to the other side of his fence he has to walk to the end of the block, down an alley and then through the woods along the back of his neighbors' yards. It's a good twenty minute walk to the peach tree and another twenty back and he doesn't carry too many peaches with him for fear that the neighbors will notice his bounty and go collecting as well. His wife has become a bit frustrated with his absence and insists that she can buy just as good peaches at the store that don't require her husband to go out for an hour every night after dinner, but he won't have any of it. "These are the best peaches in the world!" he cries, as if it was sheer lunacy to think that his peach fetching hikes were not worth it.

One day, during dinner, his wife, a quiet and unassuming woman who, if it weren't for her love for her husband, would be quite happy to never see another peach again, suggests an idea: "What if you just took down a section of fence in the back yard? Then you could just walk out the back door and have a peach right off the tree whenever you want!"

"It's not our backyard unless there's a fence around it, honey. The fence needs to stay," he replies.

And she persists. "But honey, who is going to come into our backyard? It takes twenty minutes to get back there now; have you ever even seen anyone back there?"

"Everyone has a fence around their backyard. That's what makes it a backyard!" he answers again in a frustrated voice. The idea of a fenceless backyard disturbs him deeply for reasons he does not understand. He knows the reasons he gives for a fence sound silly, but he cannot think of better ones. All he knows, deep in his peach-sized heart, is that a backyard needs a fence.

And so it goes for several more months. Long evening walks to fetch the peaches, a lonely wife cleaning up the dishes by herself, a backyard that is never used and soon grows a bit disheveled. But something is happening to Monty that he finds fascinating and disturbing at the same time. He is beginning to see hints that backyards and fences may not be quite as symbiotic as he has always believed. The first time is a magazine in the grocery aisle that features a picture of a beach house along the shore in Virginia. His eye is first caught (though he'll never admit it) by the headline about two women fighting over a particular celebrity, but is then drawn to the house. The house just backs up to the beach. There is no fence. "It's a beach house," he says to himself, and that explains everything.

But it keeps happening. His brother talks about his in-laws' cabin which sits by itself in a quiet valley. "You look out your window and there's the forest!" he tells Monty, "Nothing stopping you from just walking for miles!" Another time it is a visit to a friend's house who lives on a golf course. He can tee off to the fourth hole from his back patio, only a row of pansies showing the course mowers where to stop and let him take care of his own grass. Bit by bit Monty's belief in the necessary boundary between his patio furniture and the outside world is worn away. And Monty is getting tired. Tired of walking to the peach tree, tired of arguing with his wife, tired of that stupid fence.

And so Monty, peach in one hand and hammer in the other walks out to the fence one afternoon. His wife is out shopping, he's chosen this particular afternoon carefully. Upsetting one's beliefs about fences is hard enough without someone watching you. He looks at the fence he built so carefully, so long ago and eats the peach. It's a good fence. And there is nothing wrong with it but for its location between him and the peach tree. He considers his options one more time. And then tossing the peach pit over the fence, he raises his hammer and grabs a slightly protruding nail head.

One by one the nails pull free, one by one the slats come down. Several more peaches are eaten and his wife comes home. She stays inside and begins to prepare a crust for the peach pie she expects to be able to make later on. And when it is all finished, Monty stands in the middle of his back yard and looks out at the forest beyond. The forest that contains a very juicy peach tree. Then he takes no more than fifteen steps forward and pulls a peach off the tree.

Today is the best day in Montgomery Bartholomew Sodinsky III's life.

Let Us Re-joice!

2011-02-19T12:00:00.000-08:00

It was a brisk and bright autumn day when I left my car along the side of the road and began my hike. The trail meandered next to a nearly empty creek that occasionally burbled and more often than not barely made the ground wet. The leaves were golden on the ground and the trees bare, letting more light into the small space between the hills than had been there earlier in the year. I followed the trail out to where the struggling creek made its way into a small lake and sat on a rock to look out at the distant kayakers and listen to the lapping waves.

At some point I looked up from my barely comfortable seat on the boulder to notice three large birds sitting in a nearby tree. They were larger than the usual birds one sees on a regular basis and being so close, their size was a bit offensive to one's sense of order in the world. Birds and toddlers should not be able to wear the same size shoe. And it did not help that these birds were not only very large, but also somewhat ugly. Not just ugly in a too-large-for-their-kind kind of ugly, like seeing a huge spider, but just plain ugly for any size of bird. They were Short Neck Buzzards. And they were bored.

Now Buzzards of any kind are a somewhat necessary if disturbing part of our world. The simple truth is that things are dying out there in the natural world all the time and buzzards perform the necessary act of cleaning up. I won't go into the details of what would happen should buzzards and the others of their kind suddenly took the vegetarian route, but let's just say it would not be pretty. Or smell pretty either.

Even so, it is a comforting thought to know that there are three buzzards in the world on this beautiful afternoon that have nothing to do. But even as I thought this, one of the buzzards suddenly perked up its head as if realizing something and fell forward onto it's outspread wings and up into the air.

"Where did it go?" I wondered. "What did it smell?". "What sad misfortune has befallen some poor creature?"

Before I had the chance to follow these thoughts to their end, the second short-necked buzzard spread its own wings and fell forward into flight as well. It hadn't just been a false clue then, the first buzzard really had noticed something evil afoot in the forest. My heart quickened its duties, my stomach sank in response to the thought that something very bad had happened nearby. But there was still a chance. One buzzard still sat in that dead tree and as long as that was true, maybe disaster had been avoided after all.

But it wasn't true. The buzzard was no longer there. At some point during my most recent reflections, alas!, he had left on his own grisly task. "Oh, what a shame!" I cried aloud to whomever was left alive to listen. This serene beautiful world around me had just revealed its true nature and I was horrified and frightened and desperately saddened by it. "It's not fair!" I sobbed, "It's just not fair!" And now, as I looked out over the lake, all I could see was that infernal Dead Tree. That Dead Tree that symbolized everything that had just come to pass.

But then Hope flickered. With a significant amount of whooshing, the first buzzard swooped in over my head and placed itself in its original place with an impressive amount of grace. I felt a tingle come over my skin as my clouds of grief began to thin.

And then it happened again. Another buzzard arrived and took its place next to the first. These birds had just brought me through such an emotional torment by this point I knew them each individually and had given them the names that seemed to describe their personalities. The first was Grace, the second was Hip-Hop because even now he was bobbing his head to some internal beat that I suddenly realized I could hear. It was the beat of Goodness. The rhythm of Holiness, the strum of Grace. The buzzards had returned! What had appeared as the true nature of the world suddenly could be seen for what it was: a costume, a disguise, a grimy covering hiding its true beauty.

And then my heart lept with joy to heights I had not dreamed possible before this moment because even now the third buzzard was taking its place next to the other three! My tears continued flowing, but no longer from my well of grief, rather from a fountain of bottomless joy and gratitude! I knew it could not last, this mountainous peak of Peace and Life my immediate surroundings and I found ourselves in, but for now All was Right in the world. All was Good. All was Alive.

And then I realized that the kayakers had made it to the other side of the lake and had found a place to jump off the rocks into the water. I smiled at how fun it looked, leaping safely into the air only to be caught without any other harm than the shock of the cold water. And I noticed that the barely comfortable rock I had been sitting on had at some point changed itself into a not-comfortable-at-all rock without my realizing it. So I stood, took one last look at my friends the buzzards to make sure they were still there and turned back along the leaf strewn path to my car.

Frozen Destiny

2011-01-04T21:34:00.000-08:00

Strawberry. That was its flavor, its "kind", if you will. A scoop of ice cream feels about its ingredients the way most people think about their ethnicity. They are either passionate about whether they have real fruit or chunks of candy or if they're a purebred flavor like chocolate or vanilla--or they hardly notice it at all. This particular scoop was strawberry. With real strawberry chunks folded in. Nothing artificial, no preservatives, only real sugar. The real deal.

Proud though it was of its heritage, that didn't make it feel any better about its current state of being: Doomed. Doomed by a clumsy child, a complete lack of engineering ability in the waitress and the foolishness of the father who had ordered three scoops. It had been exciting at first, being on the top of a tower of delight, but it only lasted until they had all teetered and tottered out the door. Goodbye fellow scoops, goodbye waffle cone, goodbye Destiny. Hello, sidewalk.

It was hot too. The scoop could see itself slowly oozing away, following a crack that meandered towards the gutter. The child hadn't even bothered to mourn its loss, as there were still two more left and she was looking forward to the waffle cone at the bottom more than anything else.

Such a cliche. An ice cream scoop lying on a sidewalk, melting in the hot sun. Frosty the snowman at least had a song sung about him as he dripped away in front of his friends. The scoop's friends didn't even know what had happened. They all sat back in the freezer looking forward to their Day of Destiny. The ultimate event in the life of a scoop of ice cream. To be enjoyed. Savored. Every errant drip quickly lapped up before it was wasted.

The scoop turned its attention away from the crack. There was a large black bird eyeing it from the small fence next to the sidewalk. The bird's head moved in quick jerky movements looking first at the scoop, then up at something else. The scoop had never seen a bird before, but there are some things that need no explanation--even to a melting chunk of frozen dairy product. That bird was hungry.

The scoop turned again at a flapping noise coming from behind. Another bird had landed just out of reach, its sharp toes submerged in the thick stream of cream dribbling down the crack. Almost as soon as he had turned his attention he was brought back to the first which had landed just opposite and taken a small bite. The first bird cocked its head to one side as its beak opened and closed and its small strange tongue went up and down, tasting the strawberries, sugar and cream. Another sharp poke from the other side and the second bird stuck the same thoughtful pose. Like two fine wine tasters, the birds smacked and slurped and tried to identify the flavors swirling in their mouths.

The scoop felt a small tingle of pleasure as it watched this. The birds seemed to actually enjoy what they were experiencing. Not what he had expected or hoped for, but a little pleasure is not so bad when one is melting away in sorrow. Suddenly the birds began feeding in earnest, quickly pecking small bites and then hopping away to swallow in safety. The scoop wasn't really sure what they were wary of until it realized they were evading each other. Sure enough, after several more bites, the first bird moved in front of the second, who chose to take a bite of its tail instead of the scoop. From there it was a full on battle scene as the birds danced around each other and the scoop of strawberry ice cream, jabbing at each other, their feet and soon wings and heads pink with melted milk.

Through the flurry of feathery movement around it, the scoop began to notice the sun had been blotted out and a wall had begun to form around it. A wall of people! The very people who had up till now been avoiding the scoop of strawberry goodness as if it were a scoop of something else entirely were now focusing all of their attention on the scene around it. Fingers were pointed and smiles stretched across faces and a crowd began to form to watch the molten battle scene the scoop had become. This was not what the scoop had imagined at all when it considered its Destiny back in the freezer, but it reveled in the attention and joy focused on it and the birds.

That was when it decided to just go for it. Ice cream scoops rarely get second chances. If you fall off the cone, there's no getting back up. But fate had dealt this scoop a royal flush and he was betting all his chips. If the people wanted to see messy birds, then messy birds where just what they were going to get.

And so the scoop of ice cream, who until now and been doing everything it could to hold itself together in a dignified scoop-like shape threw caution to the wind and began to melt like no ice cream had ever melted before. In no time the two angry birds--who were having a very different kind of day--where covered in sticky gooey cream and could barely get up into the air when they realized their dinner was now gone and they were surrounded by Danger. Little drops of cream and chunks of strawberry flew everywhere as their wings beat their escape. Men laughed and women screamed as the dairy shower struck everyone with sticky deliciousness.

As the crowd broke up, the last of the scoop listened to them laughing about the various places they now needed to wash and the funny looks on their faces in the pictures they had taken at just the right moments. The scoop was very small now, but what it lacked in size and general "scoopiness", it had ten-fold in joy. Surely no ice cream scoop had brought such happiness to so many people.

And with a final sigh and the ice cream equivalent of tears in its eyes, the scoop of all natural strawberry ice cream welcomed the heat of the sidewalk and sank once and for all into the crack.

My Happy Place

2010-09-15T21:23:00.000-07:00

I dreamed again last night. I dream fairly often, but I only occasionally remember them in detail enough to share. A few of my dreams have been told and retold even by others since my college days. The one about the giant squirrel and the other about the Devil's Nachos are my favorites.

But I digress. This dream was one of the recurring ones. I've had a recurring theme all my life where I discover a room/apartment/cave where there wasn't one before and finding it is so...cool. The feeling I have as I walk into that space is adventure and mystery and excitement--even if all I find there is some crazy Hawaiian shirts (which in that particular dream world were actually Mexican shirts). Some of these rooms are attached to specific places. There is a secret room in the attic of Mr Morley's house in the town where I grew up. The entrance is behind the pool table--when its there at all--and its full of candlelit beds with frilly canopies. There is also a secret cave branching off the entrance to Subway Caverns near Redding, CA. That dream was so real that I mentioned it to some friends who were in the dream as if it had actually happened. It took another visit before I was fully convinced it wasn't real.

This one was an apartment. It isn't attached anywhere, but its at the top or at the back of a large apartment building. In the last dream I was contemplating moving to that apartment, but even in my dream I'd wonder if I'd be able to find it again after I left. This time I was looking for our missing pillow. We lost a pillow somewhere in the 1/4 mile move into our new house. I never found it, but my wife was there--an unusual occurrence in itself--as well as a very billowy set of the aforementioned Hawaiian shirts that were actually Mexican shirts.

What do these dreams mean? A quick search of online "dream dictionaries" tells me I'm discovering or exploring a new aspect of my personality. I'm not really sure what that means exactly, having the personality that I do, but it sounds cool. Trouble is, I can't really think of any new aspects of my personality that I hadn't known about already.

The other option to the room theme focused on my feelings about the room. Feelings of excitement when entering the room are supposed to represent satisfaction about life. This one seems a little more relevant, as I am supremely satisfied with my life these days. I have a great job with a great boss and coworkers, my newly decorated little house looks awesome, I am actually planting a garden with brick planters and everything, I love my new town, my wife is even more beautiful, exciting, patient, kind, loving, intelligent, radiant, talented and amazing to me then she was when we got married.

So I guess that's what the dream means. I'm happy with life. I've found that passageway that leads to joy that isn't always there and may not be again. Its a feeling that's so real and vivid, but hard to explain and even the memory of it flees too quickly leaving behind only odd floral shirts and frilly beds. But I talk about it and write about it in the hopes that those details will remain. That when the wall behind the pool table no longer opens to a staircase we together will be able to remember what it was like when it did.

I'm still looking for that pillow though.

Dreamworks

2010-08-31T08:47:00.000-07:00

I dreamed again last night. I dream fairly often, but I only occasionally remember them in detail enough to share. A few of my dreams have been told and retold even by others since my college days. The one about the giant squirrel and the other about the Devil's Nachos are my favorites.

But I digress. This dream was one of the recurring ones. I've had a recurring theme all my life where I discover a room/apartment/cave where there wasn't one before and finding it is so...cool. The feeling I have as I walk into that space is adventure and mystery and excitement--even if all I find there is some crazy Hawaiian shirts (which in that particular dream world were actually Mexican shirts). Some of these rooms are attached to specific places. There is a secret room in the attic of Mr Morley's house in the town where I grew up. The entrance is behind the pool table--when its there at all--and its full of candlelit beds with frilly canopies. There is also a secret cave branching off the entrance to Subway Caverns near Redding, CA. That dream was so real that I mentioned it to some friends who were in the dream as if it had actually happened. It took another visit before I was fully convinced it wasn't real.

This one was an apartment. It isn't attached anywhere, but its at the top or at the back of a large apartment building. In the last dream I was contemplating moving to that apartment, but even in my dream I'd wonder if I'd be able to find it again after I left. This time I was looking for our missing pillow. We lost a pillow somewhere in the 1/4 mile move into our new house. I never found it, but my wife was there--an unusual occurrence in itself--as well as a very billowy set of the aforementioned hawaiian shirts that were actually mexican shirts.

What do these dreams mean? A quick search of online "dream dictionaries" tells me I'm discovering or exploring a new aspect of my personality. I'm not really sure what that means exactly, having the personality that I do, but it sounds cool. Trouble is, I can't really think of any new aspects of my personality that I hadn't known about already.

The other option to the room theme focused on my feelings about the room. Feelings of excitement when entering the room are supposed to represent satisfaction about life. This one seems a little more relevant, as I am supremely satisfied with my life these days. I have a great job with a great boss and coworkers, my newly decorated little house looks awesome, I am actually planting a garden with brick planters and everything, I love my new town, my wife is even more beautiful, exciting, patient, kind, loving, intelligent, radiant, talented and amazing to me then she was when we got married.

So I guess that's what the dream means. I'm happy with life. I've found that passageway that leads to joy that isn't always there and may not be again. Its a feeling that's so real and vivid, but hard to explain and even the memory of it flees too quickly leaving behind only oddly floraled shirts and canopied beds. But I talk about it and write about it in the hopes that those details will remain. That when the wall behind the pool table no longer opens to a staircase we together will be able to remember what it was like when it did.

I'm still looking for that pillow though.

Data Type Error

2010-08-20T08:28:00.000-07:00

I spent all day with a computer today. It's a database I've been working on for my newest place of employment. I cannot wait for it to be done because so many cool things will be possible when it is. So I chained myself to my desk and stared at query grids and code for nearly eight straight hours. For the second day in a row. When I got home I told my wife that I think I need to spend some time doing something else tomorrow because I think I'm losing my humanity. To deal with computers, one has to learn to think like them. And computers are very black and white, literal and particular creatures. Anal you might even say--though my mother would not approve if you did.

Needles to say, this style of thinking is not all that compatible when dealing with actual people instead of personified ones. If I were to tell my wife with a blank look on my face that she committed a "stack overflow error" by putting too much food on my plate and then refused to eat anything before she cooked the meal over again from scratch, I would probably be "shut down" until I installed a few "upgrades."

It occurred to me as I sat here tonight that many of us approach God in the same way. We know exactly what his specifications are, what he should be capable of, but we find ourselves unable to harness that power because we realize that we just aren't "god" people. Or maybe we were taught to do a few things with God back in the day and we don't really want or think we need any of those fancy new features he's got now. I've seen this kind of thing between people and their computers. There is a disconnect at a very basic level, an incompatibility of thought that stands between man and machine that is kind of sad when you stop to consider what could be accomplished if that gulf could be spanned.

Of course if you're already a christian, you've immediately thought of the problem of sin, and you're right. That gulf will never be jumped without the cross. But after salvation we need to continually remind ourselves that God is not a machine. That particular incompatibility doesn't have to exist been us and God. But it will as long as we insist on reducing our god to a list of concise doctrines and our relationship with him to a step by step process.

You will lose your humanity if you spend your life trying to understand who God is and how to use him. But you will find it again when you desire to know him as the person he is: complexities, ambiguities and all.

blog.completed = true
End blog

The Good Stuff is on the Top Shelf

2010-08-01T22:56:00.000-07:00

No.

That is what I am saying to the force that is keeping me from writing in this blog for nearly a month.

No. Not one more day.

So, um, what to write about? I hate it when people write blogs about not having anything to write. But in my defense, we really only hate things in other people that remind us of ourselves. That, and this is totally just an exercise to sit me down and get me to start writing--in the desperate hope that something awesome will flow out of my fingertips. Kind of like when you turn on the tv on saturday afternoon in sheer desperation for entertainment and your favorite movie is just starting on That Movie Show For People With No Life. I'm staring at my keyboard right now, wondering how the awesomeness would affect the delicate inner workings of my computer and hoping it fares better than my camera did in the Pacific Ocean.

Ah, the Pacific Ocean. I saw a map today at a church we visited that had the good ol' PC in the middle of the map instead of the usual wrap-around-the-edges treatment it usually gets. Seems like the Atlantic Ocean would have been a better candidate for that, but it did provide a nice empty spot in the middle of the planet for their sign. I feel like I can relate a little bit to the PC. (That's right, we're on an initials-only basis now). I mean, PC always gets the wrap-around just because it happens to be the widest body of water on the planet. And since nobody's bothered to map that giant ocean of trash that's floating somewhere in the middle, then there's really no reason to include anything between Hawaii and New Zealand. It goes the same for me. Being a tall guy, I'm always in the back for pictures, always in the front seat of the car, always being hunted for by small old ladies in grocery stores who only buy things off the top shelf.

But this is my lot in life. Or should I say, these are our lots in life. It could be worse. Nobody even remembers the Arctic Ocean even exists--heck the Antarctic Ocean is still fighting for the right to call itself that. And I, well, I could be short for one. Or still unemployed, poor, starving, or living in Nevada. It could always be worse. Being content in life is really just a matter of perspective, isn't it? The sweet spot is just above average--doing better than most but not so much as to appear snobby or have to work too hard to stay there. And average is just a statistic. You can do whatever you want with statistics! So there. There's the secret to contentedness. A nice even 60%.

Well look at that. I started this thing with nothing to say and I ended up improving everyone's outlook on life. Sweet. Now does anyone know how to get awesomeness out of a keyboard? I think my "ggggggggggggggggggggggggg" Kgey isg stucgk.

Bottle Rocket

2010-06-17T09:57:00.000-07:00

My wife and I just drove through Las Vegas as we travel north towards home. Vegas always strikes me as an odd town for several reasons. First, it's so stinkin' big! And right in the middle of one of the least attractive parts of the country! Second, I know several people that live there and claim its a great place to raise a family. And third, there's sex and gambling on nearly every street corner.

I couldn't help but wonder as we drove past the adult bookstore across the street from our hotel if this was just the natural state of American culture. If the laws in other states suddenly relaxed, would we find slot machines at Trader Joes in Santa Rosa? Would it be as easy to get a lap dance in Seattle as it is to get a cup of coffee?

My mind went to Paul's words: "All we like sheep have gone astray." And "there is none righteous, no, not one". Surely, given the chance, we would all dwell in the same moral desert as Nevada. By the time we'd gotten out of the city, I was even disgusted by the fireworks for sale just outside the city line. My moral superiority sneered at the thought that they don't even care if they start forest fires.

And so, just as I was thanking God for the gift of moral restraint he had bestowed on the rest of the country, I remembered something else Paul had said: "I am the greatest sinner of them all". This is Paul we're talking about here, a guy who was to the average jew what Salt Lake City is to Las Vegas: the epitomy of moral restraint and superiority. In the end though, Paul realized that his pride in being so Good was actually quite Bad. And that at least those folks in Vegas are having a good time, but nobody likes a self-righteous bastard.

So here I sit, a little humbler, a little wiser. And wishing we had stopped at that fireworks booth.