Stop Motion

I moved to Issaquah, WA at the beginning of my third grade year from Redmond, WA.  I was always pudgy.  In a socioeconomic environment where 1/2 the kids worked for Fortune 500 companies and lived in huge houses in one of the most expensive housing markets in the country and the other 1/2 ran the grocery stores for the other kids to shop at, I found myself somewhere in the middle.  I was a natural target.

I sucked at sports and PE was the bane of my existence.  My PE teacher referred to me a few times as butterball in front of all my peers, which only encouraged an already popular form of sport amongst my classmates that consisted in making my life a wretched mess.  When I started in Issaquah, I just wanted to play with the other kids.  By the time I was starting 5th grade, a good day meant just being left alone.

Girls didn't seem to like me, either.  At church and at school, I would try to make friends with my twin sister's friends, but to no avail.  I was a second-class citizen to them, for the most part.  It was hard for me to get along with people since my cultural conditioning in church was making me socially incompatible with my classmates, but my inquisitive and introspective nature didn't make me many friends at church, either.  I had one ally among my peers at school, and he was dealing with the same crap I was.

When fifth grade rolled around, they offered a beginning orchestra program that fed into the orchestra program at the middle school level.  There were limited seats in the program, so all the students who were interested in joining would submit their names for a lottery which would determine membership in the program, and I wanted it.  I didn't know why, but I wanted it bad.

The list was posted at the end of the week, and I went to check if my name was on the list.  I was second place on the waiting list, while Katie had gotten into the viola section straight away.  I was devastated.  I immediately started crying and cried the entire bus ride home.  I had no idea why.

A few days time would create a shuffle in the list which would ensure my entry into the program.  My orchestra teacher, Mr. Townsend, was the only teacher I'd ever had who made a major investment of time into my life outside of what he had to do, and it remained that way until college.  Since then, I have found a significant portion of my identity in music.

It turned out that music was my "in" at church, too.  I started playing guitar for Kid's Church and found a niche there where people (smaller than me) respected me.  I tried to get involved in youth leadership, but I had too soft a heart for the social ladder and I got beat back many times.  Again, I found myself an easy target, and I decided to shift out of the limelight instead of keep taking shots.

I could continue relating this progression to you, the reader, in detail, but I am laying this foundation for you for you to see a theme in my life which I have been dwelling upon recently.  I have been using music as a means to carve a place in society for myself because I have perceived that who I am without music is not generally palatable to the majority of my peers.  When I speak up about an injustice I see in a youth ministry or an inequality I see in the way a person looks at the world, or when I speak about the color of my soul and ask a girl about the color of hers, I find very few people who are willing to suffer me through the process of sorting these things out...much less take my comments as what they're meant to be––a gift of feedback meant with love.

And I understand fully that this makes me an outcast statistically.  I am an INTP according to Myers-Briggs, and there ain't a ton of us out there (3-5%, to be precise).  I am an analyzer and an interpreter and a reviewer.  It is my gift and my curse.  I use my gifts of analysis and interpretation and review to make music, but music is not my passion.  I don't love it for its own sake.  I love it for the acceptance and approval that has been almost my only oasis in this sea of people whom I don't understand and I don't function well with, but whom I am drawn to love and receive love from.

Unemployment has given me a lot of time to think about a lot of things that I haven't thought about before.  Of course, these aren't the best conditions under which to evaluate the scope of my life, I'm sure, since loss of job, having to move, a birth/death in the family, and loneliness in your early twenties are all some pretty big freaking stressors.  But I have come to one firm conclusion in all this mess: God loves me.

I know this because there is no reason for me to still care for the people who have, for the most part, so utterly discarded me.  But I do.  I don't know why.  

It would be a lot easier for me to travel the way of Nietzsche and nihilism as I teeter endlessly toward insanity and alienation, but a still small voice bids me swim upstream.  

I could call myself a super-man and look down upon the people around me who make me feel so small just to feed this starving ego, but the ailing voice of a Jewish peasant dying under the heel of the people for whom he cared so deeply echoes in my brain with the words "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do," and I know he was talking about them AND me.  

Or I could whither under all the self-accusation and doubt that accompanies these times and sail into this open sea of human depression, but the living voice of a dead God calls to me from the shore and bids me "feed my sheep".

So this writing, dear friends, is a public confession of God's word in my life.  I may not be the loudest or the coolest or the prettiest shepherd that God ever imagined, but He has called me to devote my life to the care of his sheep and I said 'yes'.  It was a long time ago and I was young and I didn't know what I was doing, but I said 'yes'.  And today I say 'yes' again.  I don't know how or where or when or with whom, but I am publicly devoting myself to this task with the witness of all you, my readers. (Any of you who have gotten this far must truly be good friends or truly bored.)

If you get a chance over the next few days, would you pray for me?  Ask God to continue to help me figure this stuff out?  Pray his provision in the midst of this difficult time?  And ask that he give me the strength and endurance I will need to finish this story well?  I will need as much of your prayer as I can get, I'm sure.

Destination: Love

I have to admit something to you, dear reader, at the outset of this essay and in the name of "full disclosure".  Love is topic about which I have very little knowledge and about which I certainly have no special expertise.  This essay is the third installment in a series based on the three virtues listed by the Apostle Paul in I Corinthians 13:13.  These virtues, you may remember, are faith, hope, and love.  On matters of faith, I have some experience–enough to write cogently on the issue, at least.  And in the area of hope; I would say that I have partaken on occasion in this blessed thing (although less than anyone might like to...I usually only recognize that I'd been experiencing hope when it is disappointed).

But love is entirely a new thing.  

In my last essay concerning hope, I wrote that faith guides, hope fuels, and love acts.  What I withhold from the reader in that statement is Paul's commentary on these three things.  I will quote the verse to you in its entirety: "And now these three remain: faith, hope, and love.  But the greatest of these is love." (NIV)

This verse is on the tail end of what we have come to call the "Love Chapter" of the Bible.  Of course, there are many areas in Scripture that talk about love, but this chapter stands out ahead of the rest.  This chapter is Paul breaking out in poetic verse about the nature of this thing called "love"–this great mystery.  Dear reader, what you may not realize from reading this verse in isolation is that it is poetry.

Don't worry if you can't see it; it wasn't written in English originally.  There is no rhyme to be heard here–although both sentences do end in love...I don't think that's a real rhyme though.  No, no...the device used in this particular verse is even more cunning and genius, and it is a beautiful sketch of what love really means.

Paul provides us here with a list of three virtues with which we are all now thoroughly familiar.  For those of you who aren't familiar with linguistics of any kind, here is a crash course in syntax.  Certain languages use different means to identify parts of speech, i.e., subjects, verbs, pronouns, adjectives, etc.  In English (as well as Spanish, French, Italian, German, etc) we use the order of the words to help identify how they function in the sentence.  Note how important the difference between the sentence, "Bob hit the ball," and, "The ball hit Bob," is.  In Greek, however, it is the ending of the words that indicate how that word is to be interpreted (similar to the way we might say, "I hit," vs. "Bob hits.").

If this grammar lesson is boring you, be patient because it comes back around in a huge way.  In the Greek language in which the book of Corinthians was written, the most important words are put at the beginning of the sentence (kind of like bold letters are to us).  Now that we understand that principle, take careful notice of how Paul has assembled the list.

Faith................Hope..................Love.

Despite the fact that love is the greatest element on the list, it is in the least position.  Paul put grammar to work to paint a picture of love in its natural habitat.

For many in the church, faith is seen as the leverage whereby one gains notoriety, popularity, health, or wealth.  It can indeed procure these things for you if you wish, but not as a matter of God's work, mind you.  Similarly, more often than not we cultivate hope in our lives for the things that will bring us success or keep us from pain, and we are just as often disappointed.  

But love gives us a new target for these two great sources of human strength.  If we are to be the greatest, we must become the least.  These are the teachings of the Jesus whom the church claims to worship.  Yet, how often do we distort faith, hope, trust, patience, or any of the other gifts that God has given us to serve our needs and feed our fragile egos?  Do we even realize that the God whom we serve stands as a witness to all eternity of the ultimate need to come down from our lofty heights and be willing to suffer anything for the sake of another?

Even as I write this, I stand condemned of failing God in this way.  I, just like so many of you, manipulate the Scripture or the voice of God into something more comfortable and decidedly less revolutionary.  My prayer in sharing this with you is that we would all change course and run to the end of this list, seeking our greatness in our tender and passionate desire to see others succeed beyond ourselves.  This is the only Kingdom that Christ is coming to serve and to reign over.  When the time comes, I'd like to at least have an application worth submitting for my citizenship there.

Hope: Supreme Unleaded Virtue with Techron™

The Swiss psychologist Carl Jung identified two distinct ways that people organize the information that they perceive and thus make decisions from them: thinking and feeling. He also established the fact that people tend to prefer one of these processes over the other. For the record, I am very much a thinker.

Now, this is the second in a series of articles that my friend and pastor Dan Rice asked me to write regarding what have been called the three great Christian virtues: faith, hope, and love (I Corinthians 13:13). Writing an article about faith was a simple task for a thinker, since faith is mostly a positive, lateral extension of empirical thinking and can exist entirely devoid of emotion—in fact, it often exists despite emotion. But hope exists in the nebulous ocean of human emotion.

Hope is a feeling. Since I’m a thinker, I tend to try to find words to describe the world around and inside me. Perhaps this is why I avoid emotional situations; it is so hard to find the words. Yet, where definitions fail, stories and poems and melodies prevail. Thus, out of deference for these arts, I will share here the words of a song by the band Nickel Creek that I believe speaks to the nature of hope.

"The Lighthouse's Tale"

I am a lighthouse, worn by the weather and the waves.

I keep my lamp lit, to warn the sailors on their way.

I'll tell a story, paint you a picture from my past.

I was so happy, but joy in this life seldom lasts.

I had a keeper, he helped me warn the ships at sea.

We had grown closer, 'till his joy meant everything to me.

And he was to marry, a girl who shone with beauty and light.

And they loved each other, and with me watched the sunsets into night.

And the waves crashing around me, the sand slips out to sea.

And the winds that blow remind me, of what has been, and what can never be.

She'd had to leave us, my keeper he prayed for a safe return.

But when the night came, the weather to a raging storm had turned.

He watched her ship fight, but in vain against the wild and terrible wave.

In me so helpless, as dashed against the rock she met her end.

And the waves crashing around me, the sand slips out to sea.

And the winds that blow remind me, of what has been, and what can never be.

Then on the next day, my keeper found her washed up on the shore.

He kissed her cold face, that they'd be together soon he'd swore.

I saw him crying, watched as he buried her in the sand.

And then he climbed my tower, and off of the edge of me he ran.

And the waves crashing around me, the sand slips out to sea.

And the winds that blow remind me, of what has been, and what can never be.

I am a lighthouse, worn by the weather and the waves.

And though I am empty, I still warn the sailors on their way.

Faith guides. Hope fuels. Love acts. The Lighthouse’s Tale is about a man who has experienced love and tragedy. Faith guided two people to begin to build their lives together, they wholly hoped to be together forever, and they very much loved each other. Yet, the circumstances of life would not allow this condition to be expressed into longevity on this side of death.

When we find that the woman is dead, we understand the terrible pressure of lost hope that the keeper must feel. Again, words fail to do justice to the heartache. It would seem that all hope was lost.

However, faith resisted this onslaught and provided the keeper a means of reuniting the couple (although this means was doubtless a tragic distortion of good sense). The man believed that there was a morrow to this life, and that he had only to hasten that day for himself if he would be with his beloved again. With this, he clearly gained hope for his future with her as he kissed her face and swore they’d be together soon. And as a final act of consummation of his faith, his hope, and his love for her, he joined her in perishing.

This is an illustration of the extremes to which hope can fuel us beyond what we might otherwise be capable of performing. Provide a loving mother with the hope that she might see her estranged daughter again and you can persuade her to perform unimaginable horrors or impossible feats of bravery. Hope, in and of itself is like rocket fuel exploding—it is useless and potentially destructive without the guidance of a jet. With the appropriate directionality, hope (like rocket fuel) can take us to the moon and beyond.

And so, I leave you, dear reader, with one final thought. If Jung is right and we all have a preference toward a particular means of judging the world around us—whether thinking (faith) or feeling (hope)—let us not ever discount the perspectives of the people who prefer our opposite. In letting thought and faith guide the fuel of hope, we become one in the kind of love that can make a real, lasting difference in the world.

The Reason for Faith

     When I was a kid, I liked to ride my bike a lot.  In fact, I still like to ride my bike, but back then it was different.  My bike represented something to me that was unfathomable and beautiful: freedom.  I would ride down the massive hill upon which my neighborhood was built—reflecting only briefly on the fact that I would have to scale that hill to return—and I would make my escape from the tyranny of domesticated life.  I was free. 

     My favorite thing to do on my bike, by far, was to use the little ramps that driveways create in a sidewalk as a chance to get a little air.  Now, I’ve never been a small fella, but when you get enough speed and the right angle, you can feel light.  And that is exactly how I felt as I would surge toward my miniature stunt ramps, jacking my handlebars upwards toward the sky.  I was light; I was free. 

     As I got older, I forsook my bike for a sturdier form of transport, as most adults do.  The internal combustion engine on my bright red Plymouth Voyager was far superior to the 18-speed, 2-pedal propulsion on my Costco special.  These were happy times because my freedom was now nearly limitless.  And yet, I can’t help but feel as though I lost something when I exchanged the lightness of my earlier freedom for the heaviness of the Detroit method of transportation.  What I made up for in comfort and capacity, I lost in the thrill of hang time. 

     Something else that I liked about my childhood was that it was so easy to believe in God.  Secondary and higher education hadn’t yet activated my left-brain to the point where reason was my dominant facility.  I had no reason to be discontented with the bits that I had been taught about the way the universe worked when I was younger.  Then, I met René Descartes. 

     Without boring you with philosophical pedantry, I will express to you that my meeting with this man was quite bittersweet.  Perhaps his most famous contribution to philosophy is his Method of Doubt.  I was ready to tackle it head on.  Doubt was no match for me.  I was an Evangelical deacon’s kid who did Bible Quiz in elementary school; bring it on, Frenchie! 

     Well, he brought it, and it turned out I had underestimated the Frenchman’s talents.  His logic was indefatigable and his reasoning as sound as any could be.  His famous statement, “Cogito ergo sum,” (“I think, therefore, I am”) had been tossed around by my teachers for decades.  But, I didn’t know what it meant, so I didn’t think much of it.   

     To sum it up, Descartes proved through the use of logic that the only thing that can be proved is your existence.  If you’re thinking, then you exist.  Everything else is inaccessible to pure logical reasoning.  Everything else is assumption. 

     What I didn’t correlate at the time was the relationship between assumption and faith.  In a logical brain, assumptions are detestable when they’re spotted out, and they are to immediately be discounted for the pursuit of more empirical data.  But as Descartes so eloquently proved to me, even empirical data could be a great 

lie (reference the first few scenes of The Matrix for details).  What was a poor little evangelical boy to do in light of this information? 

     This lead to a solid year-and-a-half of soul-scathing, mind-bending, and psychologically depressing labor.  I scoured over books by Tim LaHaye and the good C.S. Lewis, but none addressed this void.  I talked to pastors, but none had any answers except, of course, to scold me for my lack of faith.  And I dove into the deepest wells of my soul to see if the experiences of my childhood spirituality were nothing but bunk, to be discarded with the Tooth Fairy and Santa Claus. 

     One day while I was studying for my undergraduate degree, I got a call from my sister who was taking a course at the same college where I studied philosophy for the first time.  She told me that the instructor who had introduced me to Descartes and Nietzsche had lapsed into a manic episode in front of the class, cussing everyone out and getting physical with a student.  He was forcibly removed from the classroom by security and summarily fired.   

     It was only then that I remembered why it was so important to believe. 

     Belief is food to the human soul; without it, even the brain—with all of its logical proficiency—is doomed to death and starvation.  Faith is the precursor to any sturdy happiness.  One cannot plan without faith; one cannot act without faith.  One cannot hope without faith, and one cannot love without faith.   

     If the human life is to produce any enjoyment, it must be through faith.  Even atheist evolutionists have faith, although their faith is in the ability of human intelligence and nature to solve all the ills of the universe given enough time.  A person without faith is merely an aspiring mental patient…not a contributing member of society. 

     It wasn’t explained to me until years later that reason is not evil and faith is not stupid.  Reason and logic are the ramp off of which one leaps into faith, and it is within the nature of every human being to make this leap.  Our souls require it of us.  Staying put is not an option.   

     It is in faith that I reclaimed the lightness which I’d left leaning against the wall in my garage as I pulled the car out for the first time by myself.  In faith, my soul barrels down the sidewalk at blazing speeds, jerking the handlebars upward to experience that moment of lightness—to experience freedom. 

“To the Jews who had believed him, Jesus said, ‘If you hold to my teaching, you are really my disciples.  Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.’" 

-John 8:31-32 (TNIV) 

The Discrepancy

To suffer
To share in the sorrow
To help bear the grief of the wounded or widowed
To carry the call of God into the darkness of the world

Difficult to imagine.

Better change the channel.

Ponderings of a Night Owl

Sometimes it makes me angry,
Most times it makes me sad,
Often it leaves me hungry
For having what others had.

And rarely it makes me joyful,
But sometimes it makes me cry,
Yet most times it makes me mindless
And leaves me to wonder why.

This sore of my heart is empty,
but so is the blight-ridden cold,
as the sun takes the day with its vengance,
and plunges me in to so-so.

September 30th

What falls in Spring to renew life,
in Autumn heralds slumber,
Tiny drops like tiny seeds grow tiny thoughts to meet this need
Of needing time to think of things when Summer fun is in full-swing,
But with the closing of September
comes the time to ponder life.

Compliments in conversation
grace these lips whene'er I please,
The rate at which I give them seems proportioned to what I receive,
And in this karmic pondering,
a truth alights inside of me,
That every karmic human being gives in order to receive.

This, my last thought from September, ushered down by Autumn rain;
Drops that drizzle down my window,
down my heart, into my brain,
Collected pools of sheet and pen
from which I drink this Summer's end.
What fell in Spring renewed this life, but left me wanting Fall again.

Eugenic Hymn

Violence and progress: No screams, no cries for help
In this vaccuum-cruciblie of evolution.

Mercy and progress: No sympathy from natural selection
In this species' suicidal improvements.

Progress and culture:
Terrorists in each other's lands.

Driven to succeed are we; to lose the softer poetry,
To gain the upper hand and kill the weaker man,
And revel in the win made by our progress' sin.

Isn't it funny how the biggest ideas are most accurately represented with the least number of words?

Two distinct revelations I've had of late concerning the Christian life...

#1: The most obvious and binding points of commonality between the members of a church congregation are the things they're not willing to give up for the cause of Christ.

Think about it. Then, comment. I'd love to open that idea up to discussion. I think I stand on solid experiential ground, but I recognize that there are most assuredly exceptions. So, don't you dare accuse me of making hasty generalizations. I know this principle is not universal--but it surely seems to be a pattern worth observing.

#2: The boldest and most controversial action in the history of mankind was an act of undeserved forgiveness.

Not a mind-blowing discovery, but still a meaningful revelation for me. It hit me at a time where forgiving was the only course of action that people weren't really suggesting for me. But God dropped this 'nugget' on me while I was in the shower--I think God uses showers in my life more than he uses altar calls, now. Anyways, just let that one sink in if it's meant to hit you, or nod your head and move on if it isn't.

Material Witness

I'm reading this book about the history of western music--a topic that's not too overly broad... :) It specifically concerns, however, the progression of our methods for tuning instruments over the years. As it turns out, the greatest obstacles to developing our present tuning system was not placed by musicians or scientists, but by philosophers and theologians. These opponents of our modern system (called equal-temperament) were motivated by a strong adherence to tradition and a sense of mysticism coupled with this pervasive notion that God / nature were required in some way to correspond to each other through the language of mathematics. Anything that did not fit into their predetermined mold was not just considered undesirable, but irrational or completely heretical.

Now, I know you're probably not getting a very good portrait of this whole struggle from my poor summary, but bear with me as it brings me around to an important point. (If you wish to hear more of the struggle, read the book Temperament by Stuart Isacoff.) Why is it that we as humans require that everything fall into our little mold? For generations, humanity has struggled to cope with that which we do not understand. This problem has plagued our churches and our academies, has been the source of endless struggle and war, and has perhaps been one of the most formidable blockades to progress that we have ever encountered.

This problem is the great enemy of both the faithful and the cynic. It has bound the thoughts of both the least and the greatest of the thinkers. And it seeks to destroy me. Even now, as I write, I become that man. It is something that no man desires in times of gentle reflection to be, but does inevitably succumb to upon the challenging of their ideals. My prayer for myself is that I will always have the presence of mind to grasp those things which challenge my ideals and to withstand those blows to my ego that might otherwise crush a lesser man.