am I project or a person?

Before you invite me to one of your "service" times, can I come over for dinner and tell you my life story?

I can't believe how many times in the past during the holiday season I have invited someone at work or someone at the coffee shop to the "holiday service" at the church building I was attending.

Today I was sitting in a local coffee shop working on my 50,000 words and I noticed the guy in front of me. He had Philip Yancey's book on prayer and a Bible on his table. He never really looked at me. Finally I asked him if he liked Yancy's work. We began talking and within 30 seconds he told me that he was preaching next week and invited me to the service. His invitation seemed so cold. It was like I wasn't even a person but just another object to collect in the project. I looked at him and I saw myself just a few years ago, so confident in my church role. I know the guy has the best intentions and he is a brother in the faith, but I was so surprised by how impersonal his initial interaction was with me. Again, I think the thing that disturbed me the most was how easily I could hear the same words that I have said to others and how now the words seem so fake, even though they are not intended to be.

We continued to talk for 20 minutes or so, the conversation was good once we got past that part. Of course he asked where I went to church, and I replied with, I guess you might say I am going through the exile story in my journey of faith. He was ok with that answer.

At one point we discovered that we both had made the jump from corporate Amercia and were both pursuing what it meant for each of us to fulfill our "calling." Finding common ground is a good place for conversations to naturally go.

Interesting enough, just before I struck up the conversation with him, I was working on my 50k words. He asked what I was writing about, and I said it is beginning to take shape as a story of making the jump from the expected life to the life that is crying out inside each of us to be lived. I mentioned the scene in The Matrix, where Neo is going through the "jump simulation" of which he fails. I was writing about when things on the outside appear to be a failed attempt at making the jump.

He ended the converation to go pick up his youngest from pre-K, which is exactly where I was headed. We wished each other the best on our respective journey. It ended up as a pleasant dialogue overall.

I am very excited as today I broke the 20,000 word mark. I can't believe it; this thing gives me so much hope that something is still at work. Like Neo, I too find myself in the "jump simulation." I have just jumped and have fallen....no, I have crashed into the concrete of despair because things did not go as I thought they would. Lying there on the ground broken and bleeding, I am hearing the voice that says "get up, get up, Neo." I am thinking to myself, that is the same vocie that led me to make the jump in the first place. I'm not sure if I want to listen anymore. But here I am picking myself up off the floor,wondering what is next.